Exodus (Lesson 44)

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delaney, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.

Now here's your host, Pastor James W.

Knox.

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I'm Brother James, and I greet you once again in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

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We are in the book of Exodus.

This is broadcast number 44.

In our study of the book of Exodus, we come on the program today to Exodus 23 and verse number 26.

Moses is on Mount Sinai.

God is on Mount Sinai.

God is speaking to Moses.

Those commandments by which the nation of Israel will be governed throughout their history.

We are learning much about God's views on social matters, God's views on legal matters, and we have not been surprised, but we have been impressed as we see how God's wisdom excels the wisdom of man, that his thoughts are high above man's thoughts, as the heavens are high above the earth.

Now, Exodus 23, 26 says this.

And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, the Hittite from before thee.

I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee, but little and little I will drive them out from before thee until thou be increased and inherit the land.

And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea, even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river.

For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

They shall not dwell in thy land lest they make thee sin against me.

For if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.

Okay.

I've got to start out, before we discuss this passage, I've got to start out by saying what I have said so many times during this study, and I have to keep repeating it because some people still don't get it.

In the Old Testament, God is dealing primarily with one nation, the nation of Israel.

They are an earthly, physical people descended from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

What God gave them was a piece of territory, a piece of land.

And he gave them that land.

First of all, first of all, he took that land from those who occupied it because they had thoroughly and completely rejected him, the one true and living God, the real God, the creator God, they rejected him for vanities and invented gods and deities of their own making.

And these gods that they invented tolerated their gross sin and vile immoralities.

These gods that they invented approved of all of their heinous misconduct.

And so the Lord is going to rid one piece of land on this earth of those people whose actions were so despicable that they were not fit to live.

And he's going to give that land to the Israelites as long as the children of Israel will obey God's laws and God's commandments.

And if, and if they should make themselves as vile and as wicked as the former inhabitants of the land made themselves, then God would send them into captivity and allow someone else to occupy that land and that territory.

So this is an experiment on God's part to see if one people can get it right if he gives them explicit details, telling them how he wants them to live.

And we've been reading some of those details.

Now that's that's that's the primary focus of the Old Testament.

Now, in the New Testament, in the New Testament, the primary focus is on the church.

I don't mean the Baptist Church or the Catholic Church or the Methodist Church.

I mean, as the Bible defines it, those people who have put their faith and trust in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his death, his burial, his resurrection to pay for their sins.

Those who have trusted Jesus Christ have been given by God not only salvation and eternal life, not only a new birth, but they have been given a place in the very body of Jesus Christ.

The Lord's body is the church.

It is a spiritual birth of a spiritual people who make up a spiritual body and proclaim spiritual truth.

Never, never is Israel the church, never is the church Israel.

You've got to get that.

You've got to get that.

Now, let me read this as a liberal minister who denies the truth that Israel and the church are not the same.

Let me read this as a papist who believes that the New Testament church is a substitute for or a continuation of the nation of Israel, and watch how absurd this becomes.

Verse 26 There shall nothing that belongs to a Christian cast its young nor be barren in America.

The number of thy days I will fulfill.

I will send my fear before Christians, and Christians will destroy the people to whom they come, and I will make all the enemies of Christians turn their backs unto Christians, and I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Muslim and the Jew and the Mormon and the Hindu before thee.

I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against the Christians.

But little by little I will drive out people who aren't Christians until the Christians are increased and inherit the whole earth.

And I will set thy bounds.

Well now see here it gets even more bizarre.

All the Christians will live from the Red Sea under the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert under the river.

So no Christians gonna live in Europe, South America, Latin America, United States, Asia, Philippines.

No, all the Christians are gonna have to go to the Middle East, and we say, well, that's not what that means.

Of course it's not what it means.

Of course it's not what it means.

Now, God's earthly people, Israel, are given an earthly assignment and earthly promises, and the fulfillment of that assignment will earn for them earthly rewards.

That's how it's going to work.

Now, here we go.

If God's nation, chosen nation, the nation of Israel, keeps God's commandments, he will deliver them from the grief and the heartache of premature death, and he will see to it that their livestock is absolutely, absolutely reproduced and replenished year by year, season by season.

The only way you can make any sense of verse number 26 is if it is literal truth for a physical people, and it can't be any other people than Israel.

Verse 27.

I will send, this is God, saying to Israel, I will send my fear before thee as they enter the land of the Canaanite races.

God will cause those Canaanite peoples to be afraid of the Israelites.

That's what it says, that's what it means.

It doesn't mean anything else.

And God said he would destroy all the people to whom they would come.

Now, they didn't go to China, they didn't go to Britain, they didn't go to Brazil, they didn't go to the Congo, they went to a very specific piece of territory for the purpose of dispossessing the incredibly wicked people of that region from that land and occupying that land so that God, God could show the world how blessed a people could be who would live in obedience to his word and his commandments.

Now, who are we talking about?

Which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before thee.

Now, these people, these people have existed on planet Earth for two thousand five hundred years when Moses goes up on Mount Sinai.

They are one of the tribal groups that was scattered when God divided the people at the Tower of Babel incident recording in Genesis chapter 11, nine hundred years, give or take a few decades, nine hundred years before Moses goes up on Mount Sinai.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Over the course of those hundreds and hundreds of years, the Canaanite peoples had rejected all revelation from the true God, all fear of the true God, and having done so, they were living examples of the description of reprobate sinners that is laid out in Romans chapter number one.

You just name a sin, and it was practiced to the fullest extent without shame and without consequence by the Canaanite tribes.

They were so vile and so wicked that just as God had destroyed the men of the earth in the days of Noah, that just as God had destroyed the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, he would now destroy the Canaanites.

Now, he said, he said, What I want you, the Israelites, what I want you to do, I want you to go up into that land in my name, in my fear, keeping my commandments, and my power and my might will be manifest as I rid this piece of the earth of these atrocious human beings.

Now that's you say, Well, I don't believe God would do that.

Look, you just we we've just read together four chapters where God said, You must exterminate the murderer, you must exterminate the child molester, you must exterminate the kidnapper.

Look, if the whole town is engaged in that practice, then you have to exterminate the whole town.

If a whole tribe is engaged in that practice, you have to exterminate an entire tribe.

We're not talking about Christians going on crusades and killing people of other religions.

Please, please try, try to think scripturally and rationally for a change.

Just just if you could, just just tip your head to one side and unstop one of your ears and see if you can let all of that Oprah, PBS, public school, Dr.

Phil, MTV, see if you could let all of that pour out of your brain.

How's it working?

How's it working?

You see, it's tough, it's tough when you're angry.

Listen, God said, verse 29, I'll not drive them out from before thee in one year.

Lest the land become desolate, the beasts of the field multiply against thee.

Okay, here we go again.

People are not animals, and animals are not people.

If there's too many animals and not enough people, the animals will hurt the people.

Now, if it's a choice between people having dominion over the animals or animals having dominion over the people, that was established by God in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

He gave Adam, the man, dominion over all the beasts of the field.

So the Lord says, I I could, I could, just as I sent the flood, just as I sent the fire from heaven, I could, all by myself in one night, just like I did in Egypt, I could eliminate all of the Canaanites, and then you, the Israelites, could go up and start to possess that land.

But what would happen is the wild animals and beasts, the lions and the bears and and all of those uh serpents and adders and vipers, why they would multiply so rapidly and become so powerful that you would have a terrible time.

Why you'd have a more difficult time doing battle with them than you would with the Canaanites.

So I'm gonna bring you up little by little, year by year, city by city, town by town, area by area, and we are going to conquer the land of Canaan.

I'm gonna do it by my power, but just as I used Moses and Aaron in Pharaoh's court, I'm gonna use you, the Israelites, to do the job.

Makes perfect sense.

And he says in verse number 30, by little and little I will drive them out from before thee, and or until thou be increased and inherit the land.

Now, what's the boundary?

What's the territory?

It's set forth in verse number 31.

Now, if you think, if you think there's a big stink been going on in the Middle East since 1947, 1948, because the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Jews, are trying to maintain a foothold in one little tiny piece of territory in one little tiny part of the Middle East.

Man, oh man, what would this world do if you tried to enforce the Bible borders that God gave to the children of Abraham?

They are, they are, from the mouth of the Nile River across to the mouth of the Euphrates River, up the Euphrates River on the east, up the Mediterranean Sea on the west, all the way up to the mountains of Ararat in modern day Turkey, all the land between Egypt and the Euphrates, northward to the mountains of Ararat, that's what God gave the children of Israel, every bit of it.

They had it almost in the days of Joshua.

They had it kind of, but not properly in the days of Solomon.

They will have it completely, totally, absolutely in the days when Jesus Christ returns.

Now, what's happened?

What happened since Exodus 23?

Why didn't they take all the land?

Why didn't they exterminate all the Canaanites?

Why didn't they stay there and dwell there in safely in safety and live out all their days and enjoy all this perfect health and prosperity that God promised them?

Well, verse 32 and 33 tell the tale.

Thou should make no covenant with them, nor were their gods.

They should not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me.

For if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.

If a man in a perfect garden without a fallen nature, with a wife living with him in a perfect garden without a fallen nature, if the two of them couldn't get it right, you can be pretty sure a nation of three million people, all of them possessed of a fallen sin nature, you can be pretty sure they're not gonna get it right.

What was the problem?

Because of their sin nature.

Those Israelites had an appetite for that which displeased God.

Now think about it.

Why would God have to say, Thou shalt not kill, unless fallen man had an appetite for murder?

Why would God have to say thou shalt not covet, unless fallen man had an appetite for somebody else's property?

Why would God have to say thou should not commit adultery unless fallen man had some sort of an appetite for immorality?

Now hear me.

The same God that gave those commandments said, Thou shalt have no other gods.

Why would he have to say that?

Why would God have to command his people, his redeemed people, not to have any other gods?

Because sadly he knows the tendency of the human heart in every fallen man is to replace a holy God with an unholy God, to replace a righteous God with an unrighteous God, to replace a God who does not tolerate sin with a God who finds sin acceptable.

Thus the commandment, thus the warning.

What did the Israelites do when they went into Canaan?

Because they're driving them out little by little, because God did not destroy them all at once, it gave the Israelite men an opportunity to take a good look at the sins indulged in by the men of Canaan.

It gave the Israelite women an opportunity to take a good long look at the sins engaged in by the Canaanite women.

And as the lust of the flesh did, what the lust of the flesh always does, as the rebellious heart of fallen man does, what the rebellious heart of fallen man always does, they began to desire the ways of the Canaanites over the ways of God.

They began to appreciate the gods of the Canaanite who are far more tolerant, far more broad-minded, far more understanding, far more loving than that mean, cruel, nasty God of the Israelites.

And so the people of Israel never actually said, We don't believe in Jehovah God.

They never actually said we are rejecting the I Am.

They never actually said what they did, but they did it.

Little by little they began to turn away from the God of absolute truth to a God who did not exist, from a God who sought to govern the minute details of their lives, to a God who would let them get away with anything.

And the children of Israel eventually made themselves just as vile as the heathen.

And so God allowed the heathen to overrun the land of promise and to take the chosen people into captivity.

And to this day, to this day, they are scattered from one end of this earth to the other.

And as far as their morals are concerned, and their manners are concerned, and their behavior is concerned, and their conduct is concerned, you couldn't tell them, you couldn't tell them from a Gentile, from a Hindu, from an animist, from a pagan, from a Baptist.

Just everybody doing their own thing their own way, sinning from morning, noon to night, and at the end of the day saying their prayers.

So God, God gave a piece of land to one people.

Then he gave his law to that one people.

And his purpose was to show how wonderful life could be under his government, living in obedience to his commandments.

That was the duty and purpose of the nation of Israel on this earth.

Sadly, they have failed miserably.

He'll try it again when Jesus gets back, and they'll almost get it right then.

Not quite, but almost.

Now, let me just say again quickly, our time's almost gone.

None of this, none of this has to do with the New Testament church.

We don't kill people, we don't take territory.

However, we are to have a good testimony.

We are to live different from the world.

We are not to make covenant with and follow after the gods of the heathen that are vain.

But there's plenty of places to preach that.

It's not, it's not in Exodus 23.

And if you're not careful, you're going to end up marching people through Europe into Palestine on crusades to take the holy land back for the church.

And you're going to cause the name of Christianity to be despised among the peoples of this earth for thousand years or more to come, once you pull a stunt like that.

So let's keep it straight.

Israel over here, the church over there, physical people over here, spiritual people over there.

And let's get our Bible right.

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