3-15-26 - The LORD Will Drive Out All These Nation From Before You

So

this morning, we're gonna be returning to Deuteronomy chapter 11. We've been working our way through it for a little over a year and a half now, I think. In this section, Moses is calling the people to love and serve God. And then if they do that, he will drive out their enemies, all the inhabitants of the Canaanites. And he'll give or the Canaan the land of Canaan.

And he'll give them that land that was promised to them, to Abraham, hundreds of years before. In In our passage, God draws a clear connection between their behavior and receiving his blessings. If they obey, they will receive the land and the nations will fear. It's going to take some, explanation to understand what he's talking about here. This is not a, a works righteousness.

God is not a vending machine. We don't put things into him to get things out of him. And yet, there is a connection between their obedience and God's blessing. So we're gonna tease that out and look at that. But what I think is underneath all of that, underneath that connection is this question of unbelief, whether you believe God, whether they will believe God or whether and trust in his promises or whether they'll believe in something else.

Unbelief is the root of this passage. And it is also the root of all disobedience. And so that will be the main focus of our sermon this morning. And my hope is that God will expose in us any root of our own unbelief so that we're able to repent of it and to trust and obey him no matter where he leads us. You can imagine if you were in Israel being led into the land of Canaan, you'd have occasion for fear.

And yet fear is no justification for disobedience. Read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 11. This is verses 22 through 20. If you are careful to keep all the commandment, which I am commanding you to. Will be from the wilderness to Lebanon and from the river, the river Euphrates as far as the Westerns.

No man will be able to stand before. Which you set foot as he has spoken to you. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. You may be seated.

Our passage starts with a conditional statement for if you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I'm commanding you to love the Lord your God, walk in his ways, and to hold fast. This theme of careful obedience is one that we've talked about in the past. It's it's a it's a recurring theme. It's like if the early chapters of Deuteronomy were were a song, this is the this is the refrain. This is the chorus.

Careful obedience. Careful obedience. Careful obedience. It keeps coming up. And so I want to ask the question this morning as we start out, what motivates careful obedience?

Like how is it that

we're to to to do what's required here? How are the Israelites

to do what's required to, to do what's required here? How are the Israelites to do what was required? Well, what was required of them is that they believed that what God was telling them to do was the right and good thing to do. That may sound simple to say. I find often that our actions don't testify to the fact that we think God's commands are good for us to follow.

Our actions are a testimony of what we believe. Right? A tree is known by its fruit. And so when we sin, when we have a habit of sin, we're not just sinning. We're testifying about what we believe to be true.

Right? We're not nearly as we're hypocritical in the sense that we don't we say one thing and we do another, but we don't believe one thing and do another. Right. And so when we sin, we're saying we believe this is the best path. Always rational and reasonable and that all of the steps that we take, good or bad, are deliberate.

And I realize that they're not sin by its very nature is irrational. It must it must discount God's word and his promises and his warnings. It doesn't make any rational sense to disobey God. And so I'm not arguing that our sins are always reason steps. I'm going to do what I know God says not

to do. And so I'm not arguing that our sins are always reason steps. I'm going

to do what I know God says not to do.

But as we step out of

any particular, decision or sin, and we back out and we look at our lives as a whole, we look at the trajectory of our lives, we look at the habits of our lives, we start to be able to see or discern what we believe. And many times, what we believe based on our actions is contrary to what God has said. If that weren't true, we wouldn't have like, repentance would be very, very infrequent. But repentance is predicated on you looking and saying, God says one thing, but I'm doing another thing. And my heart wants to do it.

And that's a problem. And so Israel's obedience or their disobedience, whatever it was they were going to do, was really a testimony of what they believed. Another way of thinking about this is to say that Satan is at work in all of these things. His interest is in your actions, but before your actions, he understands that a tree is known by its fruit. He's interested in what you believe.

He's at work in your heart to, to persuade you. According to what you believe. He is a liar and a father of lies. And he wants you to believe lies because he knows if you believe lies, you will then act in accord with those. And so he comes and he exploits our weaknesses, our fears, our a ngers, the injustices, the offenses that we've experienced, our lusts.

He knows our frame, and he exploits it, and gets us to believe lies, because he wants us to act on them. It's fair to say that Satan and the Lord are in a battle over your heart and its affections, what you believe to be true. This idea of careful obedience and and doing exactly what the Lord said. This is not a new theme with Israel. They were called to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to hold fast many, many years before.

Forty years before, in fact. And so they sent spies into that land. This land that they're about to go in now, they spent sent spies into that land forty years before. And when they went in, what did they see? They saw a land flowing with milk and honey.

And what else? Giants. Right? The Anakin. The sons of Anakin are the Anakin are there.

And they're like, and their hearts melted with fear. And so they came back. All the spies saved Jacob or, Joshua and Caleb. They come back and they go, it's not possible. It's not possible.

We do not believe it's possible for us to go in and to defeat this these nations greater, greater and mightier than we are. If we go, we're going to die. The Lord has brought us out

of

Egypt to die at the hand of the canine. And so they were making a confession of what they believe to be true, of their faith, what they, what they said, this is how it is. These are the facts of the matter. And this is this is it's important for us to sort out. Were they wrong about what they saw in the land of Canaan?

Were they wrong about the giants? No. Were they wrong that the cities were tall and fortified? No. They were right.

And even Moses says here again that these nations that are to be dispossessed are greater and mightier than Israel. It's like David and Goliath put on a national scale. And so you might understand how they would come away practically fearful and asking the question, how are we supposed to do this? How's that actually going to work? They couldn't map that out.

They couldn't come up with a game plan. So this is how we can do it. And so they despaired, they feared, and they re disobeyed. They refused to go in. You see what they believed led to their action.

Well, in this case, their So why did God promise to give them a land that they couldn't take possession of themselves?

Do you

ever feel like God sort of backs you up against the Red Sea this about? There's nowhere to turn. There's nowhere to go. They've gone through the through the through the mountain pass to the shore, and there's a sea. With with an army approaching.

How do I trust him in that moment? Well, by faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. What you believe is always being revealed to you. And it's often being revealed to you when you feel like you're backed up against the Red Sea.

When you have nothing else to to do and nowhere else to turn, you have to figure out in that moment, what is your hope? Who do you trust? And what will you do? So how did they get across the Red Sea? Did they whoop up on the Egyptians?

They just decided in the last blaze of glory, they were just gonna go forward. What happened, Olivia? God help them. In a miraculous way, God help them. He parted the waters.

Right? This big wind comes parts the waters. I can't imagine how loud it was. Imagine how loud it had to be for that much wind to have pushed it away. And in my reading recently about this, they crossed the Red Sea at night.

So all of this all of this noise and all of this this this tumult and it's dark. And here you are walking across on dry land in the dark. It's just terrifying. Just just terrifying. God help them.

He was called them out of Egypt and wasn't going to call them out as they thought time and time again. His intention actually wasn't to call them out of Egypt to kill them in the wilderness. But they kept thinking that's what was going on. They kept thinking, surely you've brought us out here to die, Moses. You brought us out here and here's no water.

You brought us out here and there's no food. You brought us out here and there's no meat. They kept believing that God wouldn't provide for them, that he wouldn't be faithful to them. They were they were they were too pragmatic. And all of their men.

Unbelief. And now they've come up again to the border. Forty years later, they've been brought up up up the up the side and are about to cross over. And that's where Moses is giving them the the Deuteronomy, the the second giving of the law. He's telling them all the same stuff again as they're about to go over.

And he's repeating this, careful obedience to the commandment that I'm giving to you. To love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to hold fast to Backed up against the Red Sea. Going in to dispossess the nations that are miter and greater or greater than you. Love the Lord your God, walk in his ways, and hold fast to him, not to anything else. The trouble with unbelief is it often takes hold of our rational thought.

And it makes sense not to believe. It makes sense not to believe. His people. We love we love logical, systematic, organized answers to questions. We get nervous and people start talking about their feelings.

We don't trust them. But I mean to tell you, there's as much danger to your soul with rational thought as there are to being led astray by whatever feeling you've got.

Be

like, well, there might be some there might sometimes be some truth to that. Sometimes moms know something. Makes sense, we'll do it. And if it doesn't make sense, we won't do it. And so we will never cross the Red Sea, or the Jordan or receive a land given to us by God because we go, well, it doesn't make sense that I could have that.

And so we despair. Because it didn't make sense to us. Here's the thing about obedience, careful obedience. It doesn't actually require your understanding or agreement on the front side. You don't actually have to understand it.

How many times have you told your children, I want you to do this. It's past their bedtime. They're they're they're they've they've, you know, my house, we call them pumpkins. It's like you've it's, you know, it's like Cinderella. It's like the clock has struck twelve, and you have now turned into a pumpkin, and you're just not what you should be.

Are you tired? No. I'm tired.

Do you wanna play? I don't wanna play. You wanna drink? I don't wanna drink. You wanna go to bed?

I don't wanna go to bed.

What do you do? You rationalize with your three year old about why it's good for them to go to bed, right? Well, honey, you have to understand that it's past your bedtime and your nap was, you know, and tomorrow and mommy and You take your child upstairs as they're crying, and you comfort them because you kept them a play. And you put them in bed. And you pray with them, and you talk them in.

And it's and it's magic. They wake up feeling better. Were never the wiser about what was going on.

But they needed to obey you.

And sometimes, they're they're so unsure of whether you're right that when you put them to bed, they will get back up out of bed. So then what? You might have to spank them. You might have to spank the tired kid who doesn't understand what's going on, who's like eyes are like, you know, you may actually have to discipline them to to convince them that they can trust you. They will never understand what what the problem is.

But the goal is obedience. Right? I know what's good for you, what's best for you. I love you.

You need sleep.

We're gonna get you to sleep. And they didn't have to understand it, and they didn't have to agree with it. In fact, they tried to register their protest, and you said no. No protests. Obedience does not actually require understanding or agreement.

If it did, then all it make all the sense in the world for them to say, we're not going into that land. Are you kidding me? Careful, obedient. Cling to me when you're scared. And so faith or belief is what Israel lacked.

Love God and to walk in his ways and to cling to him, he was calling them to demonstrate their faith through their obedience to We see the same thing again in the New Testament where James writes this. This is, chapter two verses 17 to 20. He says, even so, if it has no works is dead, being but someone may well say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith. By my way, you believe that God is one, you do well.

The demons also believe in But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless. And this passage referring to obedience as an expression of your trust in Jesus Christ. What we do, believe. That is what James is arguing here. That is what Moses is calling them to do.

He says, if you believe, Belief is not something that that that that is beginning and ends in our heads or even in our hearts. It it begins there and it ends with our behavior. It ends with obedience. Says. And we need to repent.

Which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. It's quite the promise. Did it happen? Were all the nations dispossessed? Did the soul did every place where the soul of their foot tread, was it theirs over the course of Israel going forward?

No. No. Actually, from this point on until David, there's these statements that happened. David was a king, right? David was a was a king of war.

He couldn't build the house of God because he was a man of bloodshed. But there's a time where it says in in in the testimony of David's life that David had peace on all sides. And what we learned from that is that there was never peace. That the nations that were greater and mightier that they because the Israelites didn't dispossess them the way that they should have thoroughly. People there because they thought, well, here's a here's a labor force.

And they intermarried with them. They were constant conflict and turmoil with these people until David was raised up by God, and they found peace. This thing that's being described here, that they'll be dispossessed, that you'll wherever you walk is is is going to be your land, and and and everyone's going to be afraid of you. That is a description of peace. But they never had that peace because they never did what God said completely and thoroughly.

Not until David came. So then we have to ask the question, why'd they receive the land at all? If they didn't dispossess the people, in fact, why were they getting a second chance at all of this? This is again the second time that they're supposed to go into the land. They failed.

They've refused the first time. Why do they get a second chance? It wasn't because they had done well. They had done poorly. So how do we process this conditional statement?

If you're careful, then I will drive out these lands. When we see that they didn't carefully obey the Lord, but dug in their heels out of fear and refused, why then did they receive this land? God gave them this land in spite of their disobedience. In the absence of their trust, God did that to demonstrate to them and to teach us that whatever good thing we get or have in our life, we get, not because we've earned it or deserved, but because God gives good gifts to his children. Corinthians, what good thing do you have that you didn't receive from the Lord?

And and dependence on God, it's a somewhat of a foreign concept. Or it's a maybe it's not a foreign concept, but it's a theoretical concept to us as as as as regards our lived experience. We haven't lived depending on God's provision because We've been able to get what we need ourselves. And what we've missed is an opportunity to give glory to God. Each day, for its blossom of us is sinful.

For his blessing of us as sinful And so when God says to them, if you will obey, then I will give them these things. He's not setting up a conditional, these things. He's not setting up a conditional, conditions on the covenant that he's and promises he's made to them. He's using that language to teach them to trust and to obey. If you obey me, my blessings will be will will will be lavished upon you.

But when you disobey me, you're still my son, and you still get these things. But they come with they're coming with troubles now and hardships. Not because God isn't good or able, but because they haven't believed as deeply and thoroughly as they ought to. If you think about what that land represents, there's a physical land to Israel. It was it had boundaries, right?

We're told here it's it has boundaries from Lebanon over to there and from the river to the sea. It's you know, you could draw it on a map. That place. Physical boundary like that. We can't draw it on a map.

That's my space. That's my plot. That's what God's going to give to you. Our land that we look forward to. It's in glory.

It's heaven. It's the new heavens and the new come down after the return of Jesus Christ, where he sorts out the sheep from the goat. And so when we come and look at this, this land that they're receiving, you go, did they receive that land under different terms than we receive our land? And the answer is no. They were called to live by faith.

They had less understanding. I'm not arguing that they would have understood this this promised land in the same way that we do. Though we're told of Abraham that he was a sojourner and he went out looking for a land or a city that had foundations, whose architect and builder was God. And so I believe even when Abraham was given the promise of the promised land, he understood that there was something more than that physical land to be received from God. And I think he understood that because he was a faithful man.

And so I don't want us to get too caught up as Christians in this idea of land. I want you simply to understand that the things that you receive from God, you receive to him, you receive from him by his mercy. Even up to and including your salvation and your eternal rest. I want to take the pressure off of you. You're not earning that stuff.

You're not performing for that stuff. If you're going to go to glory and rest with Jesus Christ, you'll go there because he's provided the path and the way. He's made the payments. He's prepared the place, and he will welcome you into it. In light of that, and because he's done

these things, we have no excuse for unbelief.

We have no excuse for unbelief. We have

no

We have no excuse for unbloated. And so we're called to care for obdience. Would you like to be would you like it set of you, the Lord your God will lay the dread of you in the the land on which you parading around like a peacock through,

what

is the application of that passage to us? Well, it was true in the Old Testament, even, that the nation, some of them had the fear and the dread of Israel in their hearts, which is to say they had faith. To read to you from Joshua, nine through 11. It says Rahab said to the men to the spies. She says, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the terror of you has fallen on us.

And that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away from before you. Water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt. And what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who are beyond the Jordan to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. Our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you. So the Lord your God, he is God in heaven, above and on earth beneath.

After all of this, right? Deuteronomy is happening right before they go over the border. And Joshua too is pretty soon after that. Amorite kings, Sion and Og being utterly destroyed, that was not in a distant past. Months.

Not.

And so, God, put the fear of them in the hearts of the Kane and Nite. So how's that work out today? How do we see this this passage being fulfilled in our lives? Should should does the world still have any fear of God's people? Contend with you that the fear that is being put on them and in them is not because of our our military strength and our valor.

The fear that's put into the hearts of the unbeliever is that where their hearts melt away and they have no courage because of the power of God and the wrath of God, Christians have comfort, and Christians have strength, and Christians persevere. Christians are not just afraid of losing their bodies, but ultimately they're afraid of losing the one who, after having killed the body, has authority to cast them into hell. And that's recognizable in your day to day life who you fear Especially when trials come. How you process those trials is indicative of what you believe to be true and who you fear. And someone who's not afraid of dying and is not is not grumbling and complaining under burden is testifying to their faith in Jesus Christ.

And people see it. And go, I don't know how to make any sense. That's not what I would do. There's something about that man or that woman or that child. There's something about that marriage that we don't have.

You have to ask yourself, like the martyrs of the early church and throughout church history, like, what was the response of the people to their death? There's a couple of responses. The Christians often were stirred up toward faith and to further obedience. That was their response. What was the response of the unbeliever?

Frustration, redoubled effort to eradicate these people from the land because they weren't afraid of the normal things. They couldn't be manipulated and controlled by the pressures of this world. Considered it joy to go and to be with their Lord Jesus Christ. They understood personally in their lives what Paul said in Philippians, which is, as for me, I don't know which is better. To live is Christ and to die is to gain and I don't know which to How do you deal with somebody like that?

How do you compel someone like that to to get in line and obey and and and submit to wickedness? You're right. You submit to wickedness. You can't and that's a fearful thing. To deal with someone that you can't control through fear.

It's not that Christians don't fear. It's that they don't fear death. They ought not to fear death. They ought not to look on suffering and hardship as though something has gone wrong. Peter calls these things momentary light afflictions.

Probably, the most obnoxious thing. It's like, we're dying over here. And he's calling, you know, and now remember, Peter was crucified upside down, not like his lord because he didn't consider himself worthy to be killed in the same manner. Like, like he wasn't speaking from a, from a comfy chair, you know? Momentary light afflictions.

It's producing in you an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comprehension. And so the Christian life is simple to understand, but it takes faith to accomplish. And so as you think about your own lives and you think about what you're afraid of and you think about what you believe, when you feel like you can't go on, when you feel like I shouldn't have to go on, I want you to hear these words and go, I have now the opportunity to testify as to what I believe is true. And I'm going to testify as to what I believe is true. And Lord help me to believe.

Right? I believe. Help my unbelief midst of trials and hardships, to bear up underneath them. This is our firm foundation. This is Jesus Christ, our solid rock.

With a house anchored to him, a life anchored to him as opposed to built on sand, which when the storm it stands as long as there's no storm. But when there's a storm, now we see what we believe. Now the underside is exposed. What are you what are you connected to?

What is your root in? What is your root in? What is your root in? What is your root in? What is

your root You know, in Hebrews, they warn against the evil, unbelieving heart, a root of bitterness. There's this idea of like we grow and send our our our feet our our roots down into something. What is it into? Is it into Jesus Christ? Intellect?

Is it into our own What is it for you? That's the question you have to ask. What do I trust in? And when softer and you'll probably learn a lesson about yourself. And other people will probably learn a lesson about yourself.

And may it be that the lesson that's learned is that by God's grace, I'm found in him. Frustrations. Therefore, we can face whatever comes our way without wavering. That's an ambitious goal. But nobody gets to walk the the the victorious march if they haven't taken on the dragon, on they haven't conquered the monster, Goliath, or whatever you want to put out there.

They do have to we do have to overcome it. Insurmountable walls for his people today, just the same as he did for Israel in the Old Testament. He parted the Red Sea. He consumed the Egyptians. He sent confusion and fear into the land of Canaan ahead of his people.

We ought not to live like he doesn't do these kinds of things, and that our our fears are real fears. I would not have wanted to be speaking personally from like my own comfort and flesh, I would not have wanted to have been there then. That would have been a rough time to be around. And yet he delivered them from the hand of all their enemies. And even the ones who died went to their rest and received their prize.

And so even in death, you don't lose. The Christian doesn't lose even in death. And so this ought to be our mind. This is the mind of Christ. We ought to be giving ourselves to careful obedience, to living by faith, to looking for opportunities to demonstrate what we believe and who we fear.

And we shouldn't be making any excuses for our own weaknesses and our and what other people around us are doing and how it doesn't seem fair that we have to suffer and everyone else does. Who do you love? If he's led you into a season of difficulty and hardship, where you feel like you're backed up against the wall, then he's led you into that. And he'll be faithful to you in that season. Will you be faithful to him?

Let's pray.