A People Chosen, Holy & Blessed (Deuteronomy 7:1-8:10)", Will DuVal | 3/1/26
Deuteronomy 7:1-8:10 | 3/1/26 | Will DuVal
If I asked you to describe yourself in 3 words - 3 adjectives - what would you say? I’ve been interviewing folks for our “Office Manager” position this week, so the question’s been on my mind. It’s a question we’d probably all stand to BENEFIT from asking regularly of ourselves… asking those CLOSEST to us: “How would YOU describe me in 3 words?”
Well, more important than YOUR answer to the question is GOD’S answer. And here is His answer this morning in Deuteronomy chs7 and first part of 8, how God sees those who belong to Him, His people - Israel in the Old Testament; the Church today - we are “Chosen, Holy, and Blessed”. Perhaps no 3 words better describe God’s children than these: “chosen, holy, and BLESSED.” (And I did ADD the word “Chosen” to my title, if you want to revise your bulletins. For that matter, I’m gonna make a few ADDITIONAL additions: a FOURTH blessing, and actually four CURSES as well, the COUNTER-points to each of these blessings that we’re gonna be warned against in this passage).
But here’s the overarching point of the text, the MAIN idea God wants to get across to us this morning: “Because we are chosen and blessed, we pursue holiness.”
That’s how those three adjectives - traits - are related: our being chosen & blessed ought to COMPEL us to live lives of holiness.
That was supposed to be true of ISRAEL: God CHOSE them, He’ll remind them this morning, long BEFORE they even knew HOW to obey Him, before He’d even given them His LAW, God graciously (grace is a FREE GIFT we don’t deserve; and God graciously) adopted Israel as His people by calling, choosing their father Abram. And God made with him a covenant - a promise - of BLESSING - “Abram, I’m going to bless you and your descendants with 1) a PEOPLE, 2) a PLACE, and 3) a PROMISE of prosperity; 1) a family, 2) a homeland, and 3) my divine FAVOR. Israel was God’s CHOSEN and BLESSED people.
“...Now LIVE like it!,” God exhorts them. “Be HOLY, as I am HOLY,” cuz you’re MY people now.
And so too, we today - all who are IN Christ Jesus, who’ve been saved through our faith in HIM, we too have been CHOSEN & BLESSED by God, who now calls us to LIVE like it; as HOLY.
Ephesians 1:3-6 ties all three of these traits together nicely: “[God] has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons [and daughters] through Jesus Christ… to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
Now that may be the most GLORIOUS, BEAUTIFUL, TRUE sentence (it’s all one sentence in the Greek) that has EVER been uttered by any one in any language at ANY time in all of human HISTORY! And you could spend a LIFETIME trying to mine it for all its riches and still have more to uncover. But here’s the upshot: “We’ve been chosen and blessed by God; now let’s LIVE like it; “holy and blameless”. And we’re gonna see FOUR BLESSINGS in particular here in Deuteronomy 7 & 8, that ought to propel that pursuit.
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Would you STAND with me (as you’re able)... Deut 7:1 - 8:10; Hear the word of the Lord:
““When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, 10 and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. 11 You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
12 “And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. 13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15 And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. 16 And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
17 “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them?’ 18 you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, 19 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. 21 You shall not be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. 22 The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. 23 But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. 24 And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25 The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. 26 And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.
8:1 “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.”
This is the word of God…
We pursue holiness, because we are chosen and blessed, in FOUR WAYS:
#1- We’ve been blessed with a PLACE OF PRIVILEGE (7:1-11), in God’s family: we are His CHILDREN. And that was true FIRST of ISRAEL, His OT people.
Now, as we work our way back through the passage, I wanna suggest we actually BEGIN in v. SIX of ch7. Vv1-5 are filled with a lot of imperatives: “Do THIS, this and THIS…”; “DEFEAT them”, “DEVOTE them”, “break DOWN”, “CHOP down”, “BURN UP”...
But the word “FOR” that opens v6 tips us off that the 12 imperatives we find in vv1-5 are all predicated upon the 14 INDICATIVES that we now find in vv6-10: “You DO this…” (imperative) - Why? - “...because you ARE this” (indicative), OR “because I - the LORD - am this…”.
Pursue HOLINESS and obedience; Why?
Because you are 1) HOLY (v6); 2) CHOSEN (v7); 3) God’s TREASURED POSSESSION (v7); 4) you are LOVED (v7)…
Then he switches over in v8, to even MORE glorious indicatives about THE LORD; we obey Him because of who HE is. He is: 1) LOVING (v8); 2) FAITHFUL (‘keeping his promise to your fathers’); 3) God is REDEEMER (He ‘brought you OUT… REDEEMED you from the house of slavery…’); 4) He is GOD, v9; “Yahweh your God is THE God”, the One and ONLY true God, the Sovereign King of the UNIVERSE. THAT’S why we obey Him! And because (fifth) He is a holy JUDGE, v10, who “repays those who HATE him”, those who PROVE it, by DIS-obeying Him.
But MOST of all, we obey because a God like THAT nevertheless “set His LOVE” on us - v7 - He CHOSE us. To be “HOLY” unto Him, v6; we are “set apart” specially for Yahweh, for His good purpose and pleasure. To be His “treasured possession, out of all the peoples on earth”.
God could’ve chosen ANYONE; why ISRAEL? Why YOU, Christian? There are 8 billion people on the planet; how many, you think, are SAVED? TRULY saved; they enjoy restored relationship with a holy and otherwise totally unapproachable God, who is NOW their heavenly Father, only because they put their trust in God’s SON - Jesus’s atoning death and empowering resurrection - and they’ve been FORGIVEN, therefore, of all their sins; how many? It sure as HEAVEN isn’t the 29% who CLAIM to be “Christians”; it’s probably closer to 2-POINT-9 percent. Is it YOU? I sure HOPE so.
And IF so, WHY? Why’d God CHOOSE you? Because you’re special? Because you’re more righteous than your non-Christian friends and family? Cuz God saw a lot of POTENTIAL in you? Did He choose you because YOU are so LOV-ABLE? Or was it because HE is so LOV-ING, that He is EVEN able to love a WRETCH like YOU, like ME, like ISRAEL.
“It was not because you were GREATER in number [or in RIGHTEOUSNESS] than any other people”; as a matter of fact, it wasn’t a result of ANY positive trait in US; rather, v8: “it is because the Lord LOVES you and is keeping the promise he swore” - it is HIS love and faithfulness, not OURS, that makes all the difference; He is, v9, “the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love”.
Church, we have been graciously BLESSED - in SPITE of us - to be “a people “set apart” to the Lord our God”, to be HIS “chosen… treasured possession” (v6). The New Testament - 1 Peter 2 - echoes: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession” (v9). What a position of PRIVILEGE… what a BLESSING!
But now we flip BACK to vv1-5, where God warns us of the converse: Yes, our blessing OUGHT to lead us to HOLINESS, but if we INSTEAD allow ourselves to be INFLUENCED by IMMORALITY, we’ll be CURSED.
““When the Lord your God brings you into the land…” – Notice: not “IF” He brings you in, but WHEN; last week, ch6 ended with an “IF” - tiny word, MASSIVE implications: “it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all [God’s] commandments…” - that’s a pretty big “IF”! But now ch7 opens with a “WHEN”: “When I give you the land…”. ‘Because when I, God, promise it, it’s as good as DONE.’
“And when I bring you in, I’m gonna clear OUT “the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, SEVEN nations more numerous and mightier than you” - we noted a few weeks back: YES, these were actual, literal “nations” that God, as land-LORD, evicted from the land; but they’re also meant to be a SYMBOL for us, spiritually, of SIN. In the same way that God “gave them over” to Israel, v2, to “DEFEAT them”, now through Christ’s death and resurrection, God has given SIN over to US, and He calls us to “defeat” it, “devote [your SIN] to complete destruction”; “ make no covenant with [it; no compromises] and show no mercy”. Battling on our OWN, our sins are far too “numerous and mightier than you”; they must be “given OVER to you”, by CHRIST; HE has won the victory!
…Over these “seven nations” - seven is the biblical number of WHOLE-ness, COMPLETION; these peoples - back to the LITERAL interpretation now - were so COMPLETELY wicked, that they must be COMPLETELY annihilated: “devote them to complete destruction”. That may sound HARSH, but back in ch3 I gave you NINE reasons why we shouldn’t feel BAD, take any PITY on these wicked people; I won’t go through all of it again, but think “child sacrifice” and “ritualized gang rape” - terrible stuff. And even SO, God had given them 400 YEARS to REPENT! He will even give them advanced WARNING that Israel is on the way, so that SOME of them, like Rahab, could be saved, by turning back to God. But here in ch7, Israel’s called to show them “no mercy” - WHY? V4: “for they would turn [you] away from following me, to serve other gods.” They will INFLUENCE you toward immorality… IDOLATRY. So you must RID the land of their pagan paraphernalia: “break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.”
The most interesting of God’s prohibitions here is v3: “You shall not intermarry with them”. How do you “intermarry” with people you’ve “completely DESTROYED”? Exactly. Even as God was giving this command (“complete destruction”), He knew that Israel would balk, come up short. So God said, “If you FAIL to annihilate them, at least don’t MARRY them!”; don’t become “one FLESH” with them. Otherwise they will OBVIOUSLY influence you toward immorality and idolatry!
I had a young couple come in to the office just last week, wanting premarital counseling - she’s a believer; he’s not. So I got out my Bible, and read her 2 Corinthians 6:
““Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? …God said, “I will make my dwelling among them… and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord… Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” (6:14-7:1)
We have some believers here at West Hills who are “unequally yoked” with an unbelieving spouse, and it may be too late for you, but I’d love to get you connected with this young lady, so you can WARN her: “Don’t DO it! You are inviting a WORLD of difficulty and HEART-break on yourself, if you go through with this marriage”. And worst of all, you’ll be disobeying GOD.
Because Church, we are called to be “holy”, literally, “set apart”, “distinct”. “A people dwelling alone,” Numbers 23:9, “and not counting itself among the nations”; we’re DIFFERENT! And as our OWN society drifts farther and farther away from anything even REMOTELY resembling “cultural Christianity”, and now openly embraces SIN - calling “good” what the Lord has called “evil”, and vice versa - the Church needs to recognize that our most powerful witness is our HOLINESS. You wanna be “light and salt” in your workplace, your neighborhood, your extended family get togethers? By all means, share the gospel; we MUST tell them about JESUS. But we must ALSO SHOW them Jesus, in our actions, our lifestyle.
In the WORDS we use… and DON’T use.
In the SHOWS we watch… and DON’T watch.
In the hope we place in CHRIST, not in politicians.
In the Sundays that we spend worshiping here, not at the altar of youth sports.
Church: we must be DIFFERENT, “holy”, “set apart to the Lord your GOD”.
Lastly under blessing #1: In v8, God subtly slips in another reason - the most IMPORTANT one of ALL - for our pursuit of holiness: because “the Lord has brought you out… and redeemed you from the house of slavery”.
We FOLLOW, because He FREED us.
We SUBMIT, because He SAVED us.
We RESPOND in obedience, because He RESCUED us.
“Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy”, Titus 3:5. “Because HE - the Lord - is LOVING and faithful”.
#2 - We pursue holiness because we’ve been BLESSED with…
PROSPERITY & PROTECTION. (7:12-8:1, 4, 7-10)
Just COUNT with me here the BLESSINGS of prosperity and protection that Israel is promised here in vv12 thru… really the end of the passage here: “BECAUSE you listen to these rules and keep and do them…” - there it is AGAIN: the “IF”; now it’s “BECAUSE”, or “to the EXTENT that you obey me”, God says, “I will BLESS you with…”
V12: covenant faithfulness and LOVE.
V13: “I will LOVE you, BLESS you, and MULTIPLY you”;
V13: I’ll bless you with prosperous families, crops, herds, and flocks.
V14: “You shall be blessed above all peoples.”
“No BARREN-ness”
“No SICK-ness or DISEASES”; instead...
V15: God says, “I’ll lay those illnesses on your ENEMIES instead, as a means of PROTECTING you, Israel”.
“I will prosper you in WAR against them”; v16: “you shall consume all the peoples that I - the Lord your God - will give over to you”. Notice, again, the INTERPLAY here between God’s sovereignty and our OWN free AGENCY; “We can’t win without GOD, but He won’t FIGHT without US.” So he commands us AGAIN: “Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods” - show no mercy, make no compromises… with SIN.
God blesses us with PEACE, v18: “you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh”. Remember the CROSS! If Jesus has ALREADY defeated Sin and Hell and Death, what “enemy” in your life could possibly be too BIG for Him? NONE! “So will the Lord your God do to all the [enemies] of whom you are afraid”!
V20: “Moreover, He’ll send hornets among them…”; Warren Wiersbe points out (321): “Insects are sometimes used in the Bible as metaphors for nations (Isa 7:18); so some understand ‘hornets’ to refer to invading nations that God sent into Canaan PRIOR to Israel’s arrival. These local wars would weaken the Canaanite military defenses and prepare the way for Israel’s invasion.” But MOREOVER…
God PROTECTED Israel - he protects US - with His very own PRESENCE; v21: “the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God.” “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).
God says, “I’m gonna PROVIDE for you - GIVE you the land - “LITTLE BY LITTLE”... lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.” Consider our SIN analogy once again: sometimes God gives us TOTAL victory over sin all at once. Perhaps some of you came to saving faith in Christ, and you haven’t struggled ONCE since then with your previous besetting sins - your gossipping tongue, your lusting eyes, your anxious mind, your self-centered heart - the MINUTE you came to Christ, they were GONE. God of course CAN do that, and every so often, He WILL do that to REMIND us of it, and to give us FREEDOM from sin, which He LOVES to do; if that’s you: PRAISE GOD for it!
But MORE often than not, God loves to free us from sin GRADUALLY, “little by little” – Why? Well, for one thing, so we remain dependent on HIM. But we might say by analogy here: to make sure we have enough love for GOD coming INTO our hearts… to replace all the love for SIN that He is gradually DIS-placing. Otherwise, we’ll just keep bouncing from ONE idol to another. You might quit porn, but you’ll just replace it with alcohol. You no longer live for WORK, like you did in your 20s, chasing MONEY; but now in your 30s, you live for your FAMILY, chasing MEMORIES. You’re just trading IDOLS; wicked peoples for wild beasts. But God wants to “make an end” of ALL our sin. So He does it “little by little”, until - v23 - “they are destroyed”.
More victory promised in v24… more warnings against worldly “ensnarements” in vv25 & 26…And then we read this summary statement to open ch8: “OBEY and be BLESSED”, specifically, “in the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers”. Which, for THEM, was CANAAN; skip down to v7: “[I’m] bringing you into a good land, with brooks of water, of fountains and springs, [pretty important in the dry Middle East] 8 a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig trees and pomegranates, olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you’ll eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing” - blessing on top of BLESSING!
But Church, Canaan’s prosperity doesn’t come CLOSE to the blessings God has waiting in store for US, in our infinitely - ETERNALLY - BETTER “promised land”, in HEAVEN! So let’s not SETTLE for anything LESS.
Many people wanna take God’s promises here of PROSPERITY and PROTECTION, and apply them in a temporal, earthly sense for God’s people still today: “God wants to bless us with HEALTH and WEALTH and HAPPINESS.” And to that, we must say, “AMEN!” It’s just a lot MORE health & wealth & happiness than these so-called “prosperity gospel” preachers are selling you.
*Don’t settle for 80 or 90 or 100 years; GOD wants to bless you with ETERNAL life with “NO more sickness, NO more pain, NO more death”!
*Don’t settle for a few MILLION dollars; GOD wants to bless you with ALL “the riches of his glorious inheritance” in CHRIST (Eph 1:18); with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1:3), where moths and rust (and inflation and tariffs) cannot destroy.
*Don’t settle for a little happiness in THIS life, when GOD wants to bless you with “ETERNAL joy”, “pleasures forevermore”, which are found ONLY “in HIS presence”, with Him, in HEAVEN.
We need a BETTER “prosperity gospel”, a prosperity that will OUTLIVE these fleeting earthly existences of ours. And praise God, in CHRIST, He offers us eternal prosperity and protection.
And here’s the THING, let’s add a fourteenth and FINAL blessing that we find in the text now, if we back up to ch8, v4: even while we’re STUCK here in the “wilderness”, God promises to at least PRESERVE us. ONE day He’s gonna prosper us, and make all this worth it. But for now He PRESERVES us, as He did it for ISRAEL during their 40 years in the desert: “I fed you with manna,” bread from heaven, and “Your clothing didn’t wear out on you and your feet didn’t swell”. God worked MIRACLES to provide for His people. And friends, He is STILL working miracles today. I could tell you story after story of folks whose LIVES have been changed - SAVED, PRESERVED - through the generosity of this church, through our Mercy Ministry, our Missions. If that’s YOU this morning, you’re going through a DESERT, and need a LIFE-line, we wanna help.
But you should know that even more than counting on the CHURCH to come through and provide, you can count on THE LORD: “Do not be anxious about your life,” Jesus reassured us, “what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will put on (clothes). …Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. And are you not of more value than they? …Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or… ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after such things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Mt 6:25-34)
All these things… and MORE. Let’s be honest: God may not PROMISE us prosperity in this life, but for MOST of us, in THIS church anyway, He’s GIVEN it. If you’ve got indoor plumbing, you are automatically in the top 1% all-time, world-wide; if you’ve got a SMART phone, and enough money in your bank account to order ANYTHING you WANT right now for brunch on DoorDash, and have it delivered to you in under 40 minutes to your doorstep, that means you’re in the top POINT one %.
We are SO RIDICULOUSLY blessed. And what’s the right response to such blessing? V10: “you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God”. Try that today, after lunch. I hope you pray and ask God to bless your food BEFORE you eat; that’s good. But why not pray AFTERWARD too, and bless HIM for the meal you’ve just ENJOYED. After all, we oughta be even MORE grateful once it’s IN our bellies…
May we NOT get COMPLACENT in our COMFORTS.
That was LAST week’s warning, remember? ch6:
“when the Lord your God brings you into the land… with great and good cities you didn’t build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you didn’t fill, and cisterns… and vineyards and olive trees… and when you eat and are full [there it is…] 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord” (vv10-12).
And we noted last week that SADLY, sometimes it’s actually easier to “forget the Lord” on a FULL belly… than an EMPTY one. On a FULL bank account… than an EMPTY one.
May we not become spiritually COMPLACENT in our earthly comforts. If you DO start to, you’re better off just giving it all AWAY. If you find yourself, like the “rich young ruler” who came to Jesus in Mark 10, but was so possessed by his “many POSSESSIONS” that he couldn’t bear to leave them behind in order to be with JESUS, so he could have “treasures in HEAVEN” instead; if that’s YOU, just go SELL it all, and be FREED from your enslavement.“Keep your life free from love of money” (Heb 13:5); “For [it] is a root of all kinds of evils. And it is through this craving that some have even wandered away from the faith” (1 Tim 6:10). Jesus put it plainest of all: “No one can serve two masters… You cannot be devoted to both God and money” (Mt 6:24).
Which is a good segue way to God’s THIRD blessing offered us here: a PROPER PRUNING. (8:2-3, 5-6)
Proper means “fitting”; pruning is “the practice of getting rid of undesirable elements or excess.” The word God uses now in v5 is “DISCIPLINE”. You “discipline” your body by going to the GYM, working out, to prune away those extra calories, your excess FAT. But God wants to prune away our SIN and our SELF-RELIANCE in order to make us more dependent on HIM. That’s why He LEADS us through life’s “WILDERNESSES”.
V2: “remember the way [I] led you these forty years in the wilderness, that [I] might humble you”, force you to DEPEND on me. And “test you to know what was in your heart”; not so that GOD could know - He’s omniscience - so that WE would know what’s in there. You don’t really know who you are, what’s in your heart, til you’re in the DESERT, the FIRE, the CRUCIBLE. Will you STILL “keep God’s commandments… walk in His ways” when He’s not working things out the way you hoped He would, or WORSE: when it FEELS like He’s PUNISHING you. That’s what it must’ve felt like to ISRAEL, when God, “let them hunger”, v3, and I know that’s some of YOU this morning.
-God is letting you HUNGER for a child that He STILL has not blessed you with yet...
-Letting you hunger for a spouse, for a MARRIAGE - some of you HAVE a spouse, but not the MARRIAGE that you long for…
-God’s letting you hunger for physical, or emotional, or relational HEALING, for a JOB, for a RAISE, for a FRIEND, for a BREAK! I’m freaking TIRED; Spring Break cannot come soon ENOUGH!
Why does God let us HUNGER? He tells us here, in v3: “that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but… by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
“My WORD” - THIS - is your LIFE.
Not your KIDS, not your SPOUSE, not your JOB, not your upcoming vacation… not even your LITERAL BREAD! God let Israel suffer from literal hunger… He let JESUS suffer, for 40 days in the wilderness, tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread. And He could’ve DONE it! But what did Jesus quote BACK to him? “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of GOD” (Mt 4:4).
Is this your “daily bread”? Do you CRAVE it first thing in the morning, more than breakfast? If NOT, maybe SKIP breakfast… skip EATING for a day. The discipline of FASTING TRAINS us to hunger for God’s word above earthly pleasures, even earthly NEEDS. And it reminds us that we need THIS spiritually, EVERY bit as much as we need food, physically.
God tests us in ABUNDANCE (“Dont FORGET me”), but He tests us in ABSENCE as well - “I’ll SHOW you how much you NEED me; I may just strip everything ELSE away, if that’s what it takes to get you clinging to ME instead”.
So Proverbs 3:11 & 12 warns us: “My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline, or be weary of his reproof,
for the Lord reproves him whom he loves.”
Lastly, #4: may we NOT FORGET our FUTURE (where we’re HEADED).
God’s word exhorts us to “Set your minds on things above, not on things here on earth.” (Col 3:2) It reminds us that when it comes to OUR hope in life and death, “we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:18) We look to CHRIST!
And when we do, we’ll be propelled to pursue HOLINESS remembering that we are BLESSED with 4) the PROMISE of PARADISE (8:7-10) - a place WITH Him in Heaven.
““Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus encourages us: “Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms [and] I go to prepare a place for you [and] I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (Jn 14:1-3 )
This is Jesus’s blessed PROMISE to you, for all who believe in Him - trust in Him - by faith. “You shall NOT perish, but have EVERLASTING LIFE.”
Amen. Let’s pray…