The Lord's Assurance (Deut. 20:1)

6/4/2009 9:50 AM

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY

 

My Worship Time                              Focus:  The Lord’s assurance

 

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Deut. 20:1

 

            Message of the verses:  “1 ¶  "When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you.”

            16  "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. 17  "But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18  so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.”

            The SD begins a new section in Warren Wiersbe’s book or commentary on Deuteronomy.  The section is entitled “War in the land” and it covers chapter 20:1-9 and also verses 16-18.  The other verses in this chapter cover a section from his book called “War outside the Land.”  As I looked at the first section I did not see anything written on verses 16-18 and so I will write on these verses in today’s SD as well as verse one.

            In verse one Moses is telling the children of Israel that they need not be afraid of the size or the armor of the enemies that are in the land of Canaan for the Lord who is their God who brought them up out of Egypt with a might hand will fight fro them and be with them.  Thirty-eight years before the spies saw the large people and the horses and chariots and began to fear what they saw, but if one fears the Lord then one does not need to fear anything else.

            In verses sixteen through eighteen one can see a difficult section of Scripture if one does not study it to see why these commands are give to the children of Israel.  Way back in Genesis, (I believe chapter fifteen), God had told Abraham that His cup of wrath for these nations in Canaan would be filled at the time when Israel was to come out of Egypt and not only would God destroy Egypt for the way that they treated Israel, but He would use the children of Israel to destroy those who live in the land of Canaan because of the sinful way that they were living.  One can go further back in Genesis to when Noah got drunk with wine and was lying naked in his tent and his son Ham looked upon his nakedness and Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan who probably had not been born yet and now Israel was given the orders from God to destroy all of these Canaanites because of their sin.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Jesus said in the Gospels that if your right hand causes you to sin that you are to cut it off, and I believe that He was talking about Spiritual surgery, but Moses was talking about real destruction of a number of sinful nations and what I can learn from this is that I need to deal with the sinful problems that I have with the same kind of ruthlessness, because it is that serious.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:

 

1. Deal with sin the same way that God dealt with the Canaanites.
2. Trust the Lord to guide my path today.
3. Continue to learn contentment.
4. Keep a short list with the Lord.

 

Memory verses for the week:                                  Ephesians 4:14-16

 

14.  For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,

15.  from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

16.  that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,

 

6/4/2009 10:17 AM