God Loves Us

or have recently started attending, or this is your first time, we are going through, studying together, Lord willing, the book of Deuteronomy. And as we've been looking at Deuteronomy, one of the first things I wanted to point out was that Deuteronomy is made up of three sermons. We're starting the second sermon. So we've been breaking it up into different parts of these sermons. So if you look at Deuteronomy, and if you don't have a Bible and you need one, there's a pew Bible in front of you, please take that with you. The passage we'll be studying today is on page 150, starts on 151. But Deuteronomy chapters one through four, that was the first sermon Moses preached. to the new, the second generation of Israel as they're about to go in. And the main emphasis there, and this is important to remember as we look at our passage, the emphasis in chapters one through four, that first sermon, don't be like your fathers, who when God said, go to battle, I'm fighting for you, they rebelled, they resisted. They would not listen to God. They would not obey God. They did not trust Him. Even though they had been delivered out of Egypt, even though they had seen what this almighty, powerful God could do to the mightiest nation, they were afraid. It's important to remember they were afraid and they would not obey. So Moses is pressing in and giving this new generation, the second generation instructions like the first. That's why in chapter five, he gave the 10 commandments again. Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law. And in this sermon that we're in the middle of now, that's an explanation of and an exposition of those 10 commandments for this new generation. Really, last week's chapter, and this week's chapter, and the next four week's chapters, really are all emphasizing that first command, or the first three commands. You shall have no other gods before me. That's the simple truth we're thinking about right now. And of course that means there's no idols, and of course that means we don't take the Lord's name in vain. There's no other God. There's one God. Have no other gods We saw this stated in a different way last week in Deuteronomy 6, 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Another way of emphasizing that, the Lord is our God. Worship Him alone. There is no other God. So as we're focusing in on that there's one God, and of course, Israel has to recognize that that one God has called them and commands them. and must trust Him. So we're in Deuteronomy chapter 7. He's given the Ten Commandments. He's now walking through and He's expositing and explaining what it means to have no other gods before us. It means why it's so important to not have images. Last week we saw that you are to love God alone because He's the one God. This week we're looking at the one God who fights for His people. Again, we're in Deuteronomy 7 and let me just give us some framework because Deuteronomy 7 has a lot of stuff in it. Deuteronomy 7 has a lot of stuff in it. So let me just help you see it before you hear it so that you can appreciate it Lord willing. There's four parts. These are the four parts. Obey God because He fights for you. That's verses one through five. Obey God because He loves you. Look at verse, I'm sorry, it begins in verse six through eight. Look at verse six, the way it starts, four. God's gonna fight for you, he has a command for you, and there's a four there, there's a grounding. So God, obey God because he fights for you, but obey God because he loves you. Next, obey God because he blesses you. Verse 14, you shall be blessed above all peoples. That's verses nine through 17. And then this may sound familiar. Obey God because he fights for you. Verses 18 through 26. The first half and the first point and the last point, they're redundant. They're bookends. He begins with the same message he ends on. There's one message here. God's going to fight for you. You're a holy people set apart from God. He's going to bless you. Keep yourself from idols. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. He is one. There's bookends. It says what God will do, He's going to fight for you. Look at the language. You can just see it. Look at verse one. God brings you into the land. He will clear away the many nations. He will give them over to you. You will defeat them. Look at down to verse 17. Don't be afraid. Remember that first generation, they were afraid because there were so many and so mighty. God will give them over to you. He will destroy them. God's going to fight for you. Destroy. Destroy the people and their idols so that you do not fall into their idolatry. The second point gives us a reason for God chose you. You're holy to God. He has declared you holy. Act like it. And then the third point, the third section, If you reject God, you will be rejected. If you obey God, He will bless you. We could give it a further explanation. Obey God by trusting Him in battle. Obey God by keeping yourself holy. Obey God because He loves you and makes you holy. Obey God because He blesses you. Obey God by trusting Him in battle. Obey God by keeping yourself from the snares of any idols. It's about obeying that one God. Hear the Word of the Lord, Deuteronomy 7. Again, the second generation, they're about to go in. When the Lord your God brings you into land, how are you going to live? Who are you going to worship? 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. 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. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons. 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. But thus shall you deal with them. You shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and chop down their ashram, and burn their carved images with fire. 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, It was not because you are more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you, for you are fewest of all peoples. 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. 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 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. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today. And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. He will love you. bless you and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock and the land that He swore to your fathers to give to you. You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. And the Lord will take away from you all sickness and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew He will inflict on you. But He will lay them on all who hate you. And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you. Your eyes shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. If you say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, 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. Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among them until those who are left hide themselves from you or destroy. You shall not be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. 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. But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under the heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 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. 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. Almighty God, we thank you that you have made yourself known, mighty in battle. We thank you that you have made yourself known in your love. Help us to worship you as you deserve to be worshiped, single-minded, wholehearted. Correct us, Almighty God, so that there is no other God before you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. First thing we want to see is the call to obey Obey the God who fights for you. Obey the God who fights for you. Now, as we've already looked at here, when the Lord your God brings you, it's expected. He's made a promise to a people, I will have a people in this particular land. And here he's saying this second generation, you're the ones that are going to be in the land. Don't be like your fathers. Notice who does all the action here at the beginning. When God takes in the land, when He clears away the many nations, when He gives them over to you, then you'll defeat them. There's also something here, there's seven nations mentioned. It's totality. He also doesn't hesitate to say, these nations, they're greater than you and mightier than you. But it's God who's fighting for you. Something here that needs to be explained because it may rub us a little odd. God says, do not show mercy. Do not make a covenant with them. Show no mercy, devote them to destruction completely and absolutely. Why would God say this? Why would God do this? Well, if we go back to Genesis 15, you can see that God had told Abraham way back then that 430 years from now, Abraham has a child. He doesn't have a child. He has a promise of a child. He has no children. Your people are going to go into a land and they're going to take possession of it, but I'm going to let some time pass because I'm going to let 400 years of grace exist for the inhabitants of that land so that they can repent of their idolatry. For 400 years, God gave the inhabitants of this land, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hivites, the Hittites, he gave them grace to repent of their idolatry. They did not repent. They remained committed to worshiping everything but God. Now, is God gracious enough here? Everything that should be known about God to show them that He has power and goodness and order, it's made evident to them. God's made them in His image so they can see the created order, so that whenever they look at the power and the goodness and the wisdom and the order of God, they should see that they're small and chaotic and wicked. They should have repented, but they remained committed to worshiping everything but God. And God is just. We don't like it when God is just against our sin, but we certainly think God needs to be just to those who are murderers and rapists. We want a God who is good. The key issue here, the key pressing point, God is just and good to everybody. His moral standard is perfect, and we all fail, so we really all deserve to die and be devoted to destruction and judgment. Really, it's not the fact that these people are wiped off the face of the earth. It's that when they die, they will stand before judgment. That's what should be shocking. They will stand before God, and they will have to give an answer for all the idols they made, all the idols they worshiped, This is what is really terrifying. Moses is emphasizing, don't be afraid of these people. Yes, they're greater than you, they're taller than you, they're mightier than you, but I am fighting for you. Don't be like your parents who failed. Don't be fearful. Moses tells them what to do. God will give them over to your hand. He will defeat them. Whenever you go in, don't be tempted to make a covenant. Don't be tempted to act out of God's will. Don't be tempted to show mercy and make a covenant and intermarry. Now, God isn't necessarily as committed to making sure that that line is made pure, the bloodline. That isn't it. He gives a reason why mercy and covenant making, especially intermarriage, is dangerous. Look at verse four. This is about having no other God before Him, the one God. What God is doing, what He's directing is worship, that we would have no other God before Him. He gives them a warning because if you keep them in your presence, especially if you intermarry with them, they'll defile you. Because he knows the Israelites, their faith is fickle. They have a tendency towards idolatry. Now, the emphasis here is don't show mercy, don't make a covenant, do not intermarry. Now, he emphasizes, I think, the intermarry because that is the most significant covenant you can go into with another human. It's the most significant covenant you make, the most significant decision you make next to choosing who is your God and who will you worship. Who you marry affects your relationship with God. Look, do not intermarry with them because they will turn your hearts to serve other gods. Our married life affects our worship. So if you're single, Think about who you're looking for. Think about what you prioritize and who you want to marry. You need to think alike. You have the similar desires. You need to marry someone who has the same doctrine and desires that you have. If you're single, look for a spouse who believes God's Word is the primary authority over their life. If they ask a lot of questions about God's Word as if they're always trying to disprove it, Run away. Look for somebody who's constantly seeking to trust God completely and trust His Word. You need to look for somebody who's clinging to Christ for their identity. It's not in their work, it's not in their friends, it's not in what they do. It's someone who's seeking to say, Christ is my primary identity. Look for someone who's teachable. That goes along with Christ, His word being their primary identity. Look for someone who's teachable. Look for someone who's desiring to love Christ more. Their priorities need to be focused on Christ and growing in Him. If you're looking for somebody who has any other, if you're prioritizing someone who has any other qualities, you're looking for someone who could turn your heart away from true worship. If you're married, Be reminded of your covenant commitment to your spouse, to stir them up to loving Christ more. Be reminded that you're committed to pointing them to Christ, to protecting them from sin and not enabling their sin, to building them up. The marriage is strong when they're both focused together. You have to have that same united commitment. Look at verse 5. This is really violent here. Break down the altars, dash in pieces the pillars, chop down their ashram, burn their carved image. These are the different kinds of religious relics that were part of the culture. This was what defined the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites. Their lives revolved around these images, these religious relics, the ashram, the altars, the pillars. Destroy them completely. There's a bit of irony there. Think about it. Go in and destroy their gods. You as a human being, go in and destroy their gods. You shouldn't be able to kill a god. Logically speaking, no army of any humans, no matter how powerful, should be able to destroy a god, but yet you can set them on fire, turn them to ash. Break them. Destroy them. The very instruction says they are not gods. They're not worthy of worship. You actually can pick them up and destroy them. Now, he calls them to destroy them because if they let them linger, they're going to be tempted to worship them. These people have hearts that are bent towards idols. Just go to the historical books of the Kings and the Chronicles and go through and just look at how the Kings are remembered. He followed his father in wickedness. He did not cut down the ashram. He followed his father in evil. He did not tear down the high places over and over again. They did not destroy the idols. You know what's even scarier is Solomon, and I haven't figured this out, he's the wisest man supposedly, other than Jesus. But yet that fool married all those other women who led him to worship all those other gods, and Solomon led Israel to worship other gods. That's his tombstone. It's incredible. That's why who you marry matters so much. It can make you foolish. For us, remember the command that 1 John ends, keep yourselves from idols. 1 Thessalonians 5, abstain from every appearance of evil. Everything that directs you away from Christ, cut it out, destroy it. Put it off. The language of Paul, mortify it, kill it, destroy it. And what we're destroying are our desires that linger in our hearts. Put away everything that keeps you from true worship. This means we need boundaries. We need to put up things that keep us from seeing the things that will easily lead us into sin. We need to keep ourselves from the places and the people who easily lead us into sins. I think one of the idols of our culture, we don't have ashram and altars. We may. Worship takes place in stadiums and arenas, malls. There's places of worship. I think one of the biggest focuses of worship as Americans is our independence. I'm gonna do it all by myself. God did not design us that way. That the idea of a self-sufficiency is just so against God and every way He designed us. Put aside that idol that makes you think, I don't need others. The whole beauty of God's plan is to call sinners together, to build one another up, to work with one another for the one goal of loving Christ. Other temptation is to keep yourselves from. Those wicked sins of the tongue, well, once that gets out there, you kind of sometimes want to grab, and you just can't get it back. The sins of the tongue, lashing out in anger, gossip, slander. This is something that shouldn't make us different as Christians. It's not the fact that we don't have an ashram in our front yard. It's the way we talk to people and talk about people. Using our words to build up, not tear down. That's how the sins of the eyes, what we look at, what we lust after, what we covet, put up the proper boundaries, destroy the things that lead you so quickly and easily to sin. So we've seen, God says, I'm going to take you into the land. I'm going to give them over to you. You need to be obedient and destroy them. Most of all, destroy their idols. Look at verse six. Destroy their idols. Destroy every religious relic that's going to tempt you. For, it's a grounding, right? It's a reason. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Now, isn't it nice to be special? We all want to be special. Some of us are. But here it says, do this because you're special to God. Do this because you're unique. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Let me continue to make sure we understand exactly what the special aspect is. For the Lord your God, He chose you to be a people for His treasured possession. We want to be special because of something about us, but look what He says in verse 7 and 8. It's not actually because you're special. God doesn't love you because of something about you. God doesn't love you because you're mighty and many. Look at verse eight. It's because He loves you. We can see this above. He chose you. He set His love upon you. You need to keep yourselves from idols because God said, you're my one people that I'm going to protect from idols. You're my one people that I'm going to lead into true worship. Let me focus on that image here, treasured possession. This isn't the first time God's said this about his people. We can go back to Exodus 19. But the way I would liken this is, whenever you find that one woman you want to marry, men, what's the traditional way or the cultural way of letting her know that she's the one woman you want? You give her a diamond. a very treasured possession, that that symbolizes you are the one treasured possession that I want to pursue and to keep and to love among all the women in the world. You're the one. I'm giving you this as a symbol of how much I treasure you. It's not a possession as in you're possessive as a piece of property, but I want to adore you and cherish you and value you. Among all the other women, you're the one woman, no other woman before you. God says to Israel, you're my one people. You are my one people. There's really nothing lovely about you. But I said, I'm going to set my love on you. I'm going to choose you. I'm going to take you as my bride. He says this, I'm going to protect you, provide for you, lead you. He chose Israel out of all the other people. It demonstrates his power and his love. Because he doesn't choose them because they're many. Honestly, they wouldn't even exist if it weren't for God. Remember Abraham and Sarah, the womb is barren and God reverses the curse and gives them a child. And that child, he's kind of a trickster. God then gives him children and then them children and them children, and he takes them to Israel or to Egypt, rather, and they multiply. They would be nothing without God. He chose them. He set his love on them. We talked about this last week, what real love is. It's not a feeling. It's not something passive. It's not something that we receive only, in the sense of what we give. Love is something you choose to give. It's something you must set upon the object. It's not imposed upon you who you love. It's an active, volitional choice. So it's interesting if you think about it. Who do you love? It says a lot about you. Who do you choose to set your affections upon? Another way of reflecting upon that is who do you choose not to love? God loves His people. He says, I'm going to love you. I'm going to draw you to me. I'm going to receive you. I'm going to lead you to the land. It's a beautiful declaration of His love. I love you because I love you. Something we have to always remember as Christians, there's nothing about us that attracted God to us. There's nothing about us that made God love us. Again, these people who he's saying this to, they've grumbled, they've complained, they've worshiped other gods, they've given other gods credit for what God did. But he said, I'm going to remain steadfast. If you think about this as a church, Our identity must be found in what God says about us, what God chooses to do for us. Let's go into God's blessing because we're gonna see this more played out. God blesses his people. Know therefore the Lord your God is God. The faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keeps his commandment to a thousand generations and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them. He will not be slack with the one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. This passage is interesting here. Because God just gave one of the greatest declarations of his unconditional love. I love you because I love you. and then gave us the great declaration, no, therefore, that he's faithful in his love. But if you hate him, he will judge you. He will punish you. What we see here in this nation is that God has initiated His love. God has said, you as a nation, I'm going to pour out my specific blessings on you. You have my law. You have my commitment. I will build you up. You have my love. And now these people who make up this nation, they have to choose. Will they love Him? Will they obey Him as King? Will they love Him as Lord? Will they trust Him as God? There's a great conundrum here because God's saying, my love is unconditional. My promise is I'm steadfast. And in my covenant love, you have to respond. You have to demonstrate that you love God. Let me focus on something real quick. Listen to verse 10 again. I repay you to your face? He says this twice? God's not some distant God, some abstract idea. No, this is personal for God. Remember, He's a jealous God. He created us to know Him. He created us for His love and to receive love. He created us to worship Him. This isn't some abstract, distant God. No, He's jealous. He cares. He will punish us. It's personal. It's in our face. As we think about this unconditional love, this need to respond, there's something unique about Israel. Israel has been chosen and unconditionally God has chosen them and given them two things to fulfill his unconditional purpose. First, he has given them his words. God has loved them and said, you will forever be the people who have my words. They have the law of God, what Paul calls the oracles in Romans. That's the first thing that is the unique loving gift that God gave to Israel. The second one is this, the promise that the one child to be born who will save the entire world from their sins, he will be born in the line of Israel. The hope of the world rests in the promise of one child. Israel was the chosen nation who would be the people through whom that child will be born. We know this to be Jesus Christ. He came not just to be an Israelite. He came to start a whole nother human race. He came to start a whole nother humanity. He's not just like the old Adam. He's a new Adam who gives new life because he purchases us with His blood. See, Jesus Christ, He's come to create a new people who are loved by Him and are given a new heart so that we can obey Him. This is the problem with the nation of Israel. God chose them as a nation and loved them as a nation with specific ways, but that nation never obeyed. Those people never obeyed. Until that one Son came, He obeyed, He's begun a new people. For us as a church, we have to realize God loves us. In a way that Israel did not know, God loves us with a foreign love. We have to remember something. When God looks down at us, He loves us because He sees Christ on us. If he doesn't see Christ on us, if he doesn't see that we believe in Christ and he doesn't see Christ on us, he sees our sin and he hates us. He judges us. His wrath is upon us because we have loved and worshiped everything but God. Unless we believe in Christ, then he looks down and he loves us with the same love that he loves his son. The big difference between church and Israel. You're a member of Israel by birthright. You're born into the nation. You're a member of the church when you're born again by the power of the Holy Spirit who applies the work of Jesus to your heart. We're not children of God by birth. We're children of God when the Holy Spirit adopts us and applies what Christ accomplished to us. We must be obedient. Go back to that word chosen. A lot of folks are bothered by the concept of election and God setting His love on someone. We need to remember something. The only way you know that you're chosen is that you persevere in the faith. The only way that you are a chosen member of God, you're a chosen child, that you're adopted, that you've got His love set upon you, it's if you persevere. Assurance isn't found in making a one-time decision a long time ago and you just walk around and say, well, I've got my card to heaven. It's been punched. That's not where assurance is found. Assurance is found in the ongoing growing faith that leads to obedience. This is what God is calling for. Don't walk around thinking I can be as disobedient as I want to be and everything's good because I've got a ticket to heaven. No, He will repay evil to your face. The only reason you should have any assurance that you're an elect child of God is that you're pursuing Christ. You're seeking to obey Him. Look at verses 12 and 13. There's a clear pattern here. Here we're looking at the specifics of the blessing. Because you listen and you keep and do them, these rules, the Lord your God will keep you in the covenant and He will bless you. Listen, keep, be blessed. That's simple enough. Listen, keep, and be blessed. It usually breaks down somewhere either before or after listen. Listen to this because this is extremely important for us to understand why we don't believe in the prosperity gospel. If you've been here before, we don't believe in a prosperity gospel that many preach. Think about the things that he's promising here that I'll bless you. I'll bless your wine, your oil, the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, your grain. If you were to go back and you look at all the different gods, the Hivites, the Girgashites, Hittites they worshipped, they were gods of grain, fertility. They were gods committed to these particular blessings. What he's saying here, don't look to any other god for the blessing. It's all mine. Because it's all mine and I love you, it's all yours. Do not worship some other God trying to get anything else. I am the one true God, he says. Don't turn to idols when you're having troubles in pregnancy. Don't turn to idols when there's no rain. Don't turn to idols when you're hungry. Turn to me. I'm the one who gives these things. It's interesting how the old covenant promises are so tied up with earthly possessions and blessings. A question we have to ask ourselves, what kind of prosperity does God promise for us today? How do we take these promises that we won't be sick, that we won't be barren, that we will have plenty of food and water and wine and oil? How do we take these promises and apply them today? What kind of prosperity does God intend for His people to have today? Well, the easy answer is this. God intends you to give you every kind of the best prosperity you could possibly imagine. God intends to give you the greatest prosperity you could ever imagine. And when you die, you'll get it. Think about it. You'll eat with the king. You'll be at the table in the palace. with a new life, a new body, dressed in the finest purity of Christ's salvation, applied, redeemed, and clear. If you want prosperity, you're gonna get it. It's an inheritance that's sealed by the Holy Spirit now, but it's not going to be fully experienced until you die. And what great hope that gives us for those who have gone before us. What about today, though? What about today? What should I expect today? We have great blessing. You get to call God Dad. You get to go into His presence with boldness in the name of Jesus Christ. You get to know that His grace is great in our weakness. Yeah, God heals the sick. God cares for us and heals us. He lets us apply medicine. He himself even stretched out his mighty right hand and healed sickness. We have to remember also that he uses sickness to remind us we are not self-sufficient. He uses sickness for his own glory. He uses sickness to refine us. One of those great promises that we need to cling to as Christians is that everything works out for the good of those who love him. This is important because it's in that passage where God says, Paul tells us, he didn't spare his own son. What will he not give you? If you look at the context of Romans 8, it's about persecution. Paul never says that persecution's gonna stop. He simply says it's not gonna separate you from the love of God. He's in the middle of being sick, He doesn't say the sickness is going to stop. He says it's not going to separate you from the love of God. We have to realize that the prosperity we have is being adopted children of God who are loved. That's your inheritance you get to enjoy now. Romans 8 is all about having a miserable life that's groaning. Oh, this is horrible. The creation's groaning with you. This is horrible. But nothing can separate you from the love of God. The other way to think about this blessing or this prosperity, there's two categories for church. There's the church militant and the church at rest. We have lots of army veterans or military veterans. When you're at war, you're not really eating the best food. You're not really enjoying the posh prosperity. You're fighting with full expectation that you will receive that when you're done fighting. Friends, we're not the church at rest. We gotta quit pretending it. We're the church militant. We're still at battle against sin, Satan. We're still at battle against the world. We're at battle. Why do we think we need to have this prosperity? We're at battle. We long for that prosperity we're gonna get when we die, but we're the church militant. There's a great danger in wanting the blessing before its proper time. If we look at the last point, verses 17 through 26, if you look at those later, you'll hear the emphasis a little bit stronger, do not fear, do not dread, do not be afraid like your fathers. Fight because God fights for you. It is God's will that he fights for you. and continues that command, completely devote the idols to destruction. We are the church militant. We're supposed to be the church militant. We're supposed to be the church at battle, longing for that day of rest when we die or when Christ returns. And here's three ways we're supposed to battle. Let me focus these three ways. Last thing I'll say, we'll see how quickly I say them, One, you're at battle with the war within. There's still sin lingering in this heart. This is why we have to put it off and put on the righteousness of Christ. It's a constant, ongoing process. It's a constant, ongoing battle. And sometimes that fight is fierce. But God is greater. God is greater. Greater is he who is in me than he is in the world. That power to overcome the sin and the temptation, to ask for forgiveness, to be kept from the transgressions, to be kept from the snares. Trust God to fight that battle. Secondly, instead of going out and trying to kill everybody who's in our way, we as a church are meant to use a more powerful weapon than a sword or a gun or even a bomb. We're called to use the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most powerful weapon that this world has ever known or ever will know. Because it doesn't destroy, it gives life. It's the power of God to save sinners. Just as these Israelites looked over and saw how many people there were and how big they were, it seemed impossible. Trust God, he said. When you look out and you think how sinful your neighbor is, you see the ashram, you see the pillars, you see the altars all over their lives. Do you not trust God and the power of his gospel can change them? If not, you've misunderstood how much of a sinner and idol worshiper you were. Friends, we're the church militant. We have the power. We just simply have to trust it. To proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, it changes lives. The third way. When someone makes you angry, I don't expect that anybody here is a murderer. But sometimes we do wish they were just gonna be gone. It'd be easier to remove somebody than to forgive them. That's the power of the gospel that he commands us. It's forgiveness. That is a powerful tool, a powerful command that when we're with others, when others offend us, we don't say, get out of my way. We don't attack them with slander or gossip. We don't go at them with anger. We extend forgiveness. I think this is probably harder than the command to go and wipe out an entire nation. Because to forgive means you have to deny yourself. To forgive means I'm going to die to my right, my feeling that I have a right to let them know how much I hurt. I'm going to die to what I think is my right to be hurt. I'm going to die to what I think is my right to bring vengeance and justice. Forgiveness. To forgive is a harder command than to go and destroy. Because you're destroying something it feels so natural. Friends, this is what Christ commands us. Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Let's pray. Father, we praise you and we thank you that you are the great God Almighty who is worthy of all worship. Help us to know there are gods before you. Help us to worship you alone. Help us to love you. Help us to seek your forgiveness. Help us to find your forgiveness. Help us to extend it. Help us to proclaim that gospel that will change a life. Lord, as we hear testimonies of those who are joining our church, help that to constantly remind us how far we were and how close you came down to us with love, and remind us of the power of the gospel so that we have an urgency to share it because we know it's your power to save sinners. We thank you, God, for your word. Give us the grace to abstain from every form of evil and to keep ourselves from idols, to love you alone. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.