Month: April 2021

156. Rejoice Over Us

Deuteronomy 30:9 And the Lord thy God will make thee plenteous in every good work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good: for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers.

The Lord repeats His promise to make His people plenteous if they keep the stipulations (Ten Commandments) of the Covenant. They will be rich in good works, in children, in livestock, and in crops. These are all the ways in which one is considered rich, bountiful, and plenteous. Of course, as OT history unfolds Israel did not become and remain as plenteous as God promised, because they did not keep the Commandments.

The spiritual promise of plenty comes through in the NT, in which we are told that Jesus kept the covenant stipulations perfectly for us, in our place. By faith in Jesus we are also accounted righteous and covenant keeping. Jesus Christ has deserved the plenteous promises for us and given them to us by grace. We have eternal life by faith. Such a plenteous and fruitful life begins in us the moment we believe in Christ, and such riches keep growing and abounding through all eternity. Thus it is called eternal life, and such a life is promised to us for Christ’s sake. The Spirit, who comes to dwell in believers and to rule over the inward kingdom of God, blesses the work of our hands (which are good works), makes happy families, and multiplies wealth. And all of this He does for our good.

We do not see it, but we can believe it: we are superabundantly rich in spiritual blessings, spiritual abundance and wealth, and the production of fruit for generations to come. Plenteous growth is slowed by sin and neglect of God, but it grows through repentance and faith in the Gospel. Thank God for Jesus; thank God for His promise of spiritual plenty through Christ; thank God for an abundant life that never stops.

The further part of this promise (and more interesting part) is that the Lord will rejoice over us for good. God loves to bless, and it makes Him happy to do so; He loves to be thanked and appreciated for He knows that makes us feel better. The Lord is watching over us always, and we don’t even know how often He joyfully rejoices over us when we get it; neither do we know when He is warmly smiling upon us for good. Think of it: we make God happy! Remember also: we grieve the Spirit within by the sinful things we think and do. So we pray constantly and repent daily to keep a happy communication open between us. It’s always for our good. “If God is happy, we are happy.” He promises to rejoice over us.

155. Circumcise Your Heart

Deuteronomy 30:6 And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

God promises to circumcise our hearts and the hearts of our seed. This happens to us through baptism and faith in Christ. When we come to Christ and believe in Him the world in the heart is “rolled away.” The purpose of circumcision is that we may love the Lord with all our heart and soul, and when we love God fully and always we will truly live.

Circumcision of the heart = faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus = truly living and loving. Eternal life = God’s very own life shared with us. Or: living depends on loving; loving depends on believing; believing depends on hearing the Gospel. Circumcising the heart is giving up on selfish desires and worldly distractions (repentance) to make room for the Spirit to live and breathe in us and work on us. It is being made willing, though God’s Word, to let the Spirit have His way in us. 

We cannot circumcise ourselves; at least, we shouldn’t try it. So also we cannot circumcise the heart: we cannot do it ourselves. God does it for us and in us. The promise: God will circumcise the heart. The Lord God, the Holy Spirit, does it first in Baptism and then daily through life as we grow in the Word of God. The old life, the Old Adam, the “world” in us, the flesh, the sinner, is always in us and about us. It never finally leaves, but its power is slowly diminished and weakened as the Life of God (the Holy Spirit) continues to make us better people, to cleanse us by the blood, to make new life stronger, to richly and daily forgive sins, and to transform us by the renewal of the mind closer to the likeness of Christ. We love God more and then we live. We claim this promise so that we are motivated to sincerely repent and believe the Gospel. Believe God: He will do it.

159. Destroy the Evil Enemies

Deuteronomy 31:3, 4 The Lord thy God, he will go over before thee, and he will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them: and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the Lord hath said. And the Lord shall do unto them as he did to Sihon and to Og, kings of the Amorites, and unto the land of them, whom he destroyed.

This is not a pretty sight, and the Book of Joshua is not a pretty sight. Destroying enemies is not a pretty sight. Spiritual Warfare is not a pretty sight. But Sin, Death, and the Devil are not pretty; they must be destroyed. God promises to do it. We can read the actual history of Moses, Joshua and the Children of Israel going into the Promised Land and see how God, though them, destroys the enemy nations.

This is the spiritual promise for us. The Lord Jesus goes before us into the hearts of people, where the Land (Kingdom) is, destroys the Enemies of the heart, takes it back and gives it to the believers in Christ. We must see and believe the spiritual promises involved in the physical history: God will destroy! The battleground, and the prize of the battle, is the Kingdom of the Heart, the place of God’s Rule, which the Enemy has usurped by subtlety and lies. Now Joshua (Jesus) is taking back the Reign of God in the hearts of His people by destroying the Enemy with Love and Truth. “Grace and Truth has come through Jesus Christ, and we beheld His glory.”

“These things were written for our learning.” The OT history of God’s people is inspired by the Spirit and written down for ourlearning and edification. We are to take comfort and courage in the spiritual promises contained therein. Sin is serious. Death is terrible. Satan is worthy only of destruction. Jesus has overcome every enemy of the soul to give us the Kingdom and possess the Land. We, in Christ, have overcome. Salvation and Victory belongs to God, and He gives it to us. Spiritual Warfare is serious business, and we take it seriously. There is no tolerance for Sin, no joking around about Death and Hell, and no playing with the Devil. They do not joke or play around nor tolerate anything good. The battle is bruising and bloody and eternal souls are at stake. But we rest in the violent resurrection, which has destroyed the enemies of the kingdom ruling in the soul of the believer. We destroy by complete repentance and simple faith. The weapons are in the mouth and the heart. Destruction is a beautiful promise. Embrace it. Our God is a consuming fire; He will surely judge all the evil that tries to destroy us, so that He can save the sinner. God knows how to hate the sin and love the sinner. Wield the weapon and let the fire burn.

154. Bring You In

Deuteronomy 30:5 And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

After the Exile, the Lord promises to bring the people into the land which their fathers possessed. This promise is a predictive prophecy about the return from exile in Babylon. Moses is actually speaking to the future generations long after his own time. The fathers possessing the land are the people of the immediate future, who would go in and possess the land under Joshua. The descendants will go into exile in a foreign land and then be brought back.

And then and there in the land the Lord promises good to them and He will multiply then in the land in even greater ways.

The spiritual promise for us today that through Jesus Christ the Lord will bring us out of Captivity to the world under the control of sin, death, and the devil and He will bring us into the Kingdom of God. This spiritual kingdom is eternal life for believers in Christ. When Jesus died and rose He brought us out of the captivity of darkness into the freedom of His marvelous light. This Eternal Life we possess by faith. We enjoy the blessings of forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation now by faith, and we will live in the Promised Land later in actual sight.

The simple promise, “He will do you good,” is a big deal. We can trust God to be good and to do good, all the time. The Lord God is our Highest Good, and we look to Him alone for all the good we will ever need. He showers abundant spiritual blessings upon us every day, more than we are ever able to receive or hold on to with our “little faith.”

And He will multiply good to us as the Lord multiplies and grows the Church of all believers living in the Kingdom. Blessings are multiplied in our lives and the people of God are multiplied, for the Church is made up of myriads and myriads standing before the throne of God.

153. Return, Compassion, Gathering

Deuteronomy 30:3 That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.

When the people have learned their lesson from the Exile that there is only One God and one right way of believing and living, then the Lord God promises to turn their captivity. We, as God’s people, also need to learn our lesson: that the Lord is the only God and His ways are the only ways, and then we will be turned from captivity. We have been captive to the Devil, the World, and our own sinful Flesh, but the Lord Jesus has turned our captivity at the Cross and the Empty Tomb. And now we are free to live comfortably, safely, and happily in the Land, the Kingdom of God.

We are always in danger of wanting to go back to Egypt (the world and its slavery to Sin) and to Babylon (the world and its captivity to Satan). This temptation is close to us every day, for the world, the devil and our flesh is always around us, never leaving us alone. For this reason, the promise of return from captivity and deliverance from the Enemy is so important. By daily repentance and faith the Lord turns from captivity. Taking hold of the promise we return to the Lord all the time. He is always there to turn our captivity into freedom in the Land. “Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord.

Second, He promise to have compassion upon us. The knowledge of this promise and faith in the Lord moves us to repent and return. We know that “God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance [Romans 2:4].” If we didn’t know that the Lord was going to be compassionate, forgiving, and kind we would not return to Him when we fail and fall. We would pretend God doesn’t exist, or think He doesn’t care, or ignore God’s lessons and reminders and just say, “My God wouldn’t send anyone into captivity.” But God will be compassionate and He will receive you again to Himself.

Third, He promises to gather us from the world of darkness and death. The Holy Spirit is constantly calling, gathering, sanctifying and keeping us in the one true faith by the Gospel. The shepherd calls the sheep. The hen gathers her chicks. The father welcomes home the returning son. There is a place where all is well, where it is safe and secure, where we can live confidently and joyfully, where we are free from every evil force that opposes us.

152. Revelation Belongs to Us

Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

There are many mysterious things that we cannot understand, and we will not understand until we die, are changed in the resurrection, and live with God in heaven. We have many questions, many of which will only be answered in eternity. Or we may simply ask the Lord when we get there.

Meanwhile, although it may be fun to speculate about the things we can’t know now, it is dangerous to speculate about the things that God has kept secret, the things that belong to the Lord. We should be especially wary of building our faith or our life on speculations about the mysteries we can’t understand. 

It is enough for lifelong learning to pay attention to the things that are revealed: these things belong to us. We will never exhaust all the revelations that God has given to us in the Bible. It is “these things revealed” that God has given to us. This is the pro0mise. And they are received by us from the teaching of the Spirit, who brings new things and old out of the storehouse. We avail ourselves of this promise when we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Holy Scriptures. The revealed things always edify, strengthen, and encourage us. They are for us and our children, that is, for all the people of God.

A further part of this promise of the revealed Word is that we will begin to actually do and keep the Ten Words of the Law. By faith we have kept the Law in Christ, and the Spirit works in us to do the words of this law better and better. Sanctification is an ongoing process of God’s working. Good works arise out of a heart where the Spirit lives and works through the reading and hearing of the revealed Word. Get in the Word and trust the promises.

151. A People Established

Deuteronomy 29:13 That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy father, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

The common, oft-repeated, promise of the OT is: “You shall be my people and I will be your God.” This concept is fraught with weight and glory, involving two wonderful truths meaning one thing: God loves us.

We are His People. We belong to Him. I am my Beloved’s. He owns me and controls my life for every good thing. God is responsible for us and for our wellbeing. He will for sure take good care of us, like a Shepherd tends the sheep. There is nothing safer, more secure, or more comfortable than resting in the loving arms of God the Father. The picture of Jesus holding the little lamb close to His heart should move us to tears of joy and shouts of gladness. “I am His; and He is mine.” Israel and the NT Church are one and the same people enjoying the same promises and blessings through faith in Jesus the Messiah, our Savior, Shepherd, and Lord. The flock is content when the shepherd is nearby. Should he disappear from view fear and panic and imminent danger sets in immediately. So it is with us as His people, but the Lord promises to be with us always. We are constantly under His watchful eye. No Fear!

He is our God. He will always be our God. There is no other. Many other false idols, worldly institutions, temporal goods, money, pleasures, worldly fame, false philosophies, ideologies, religions, and ideas compete for our attention and trust. One is our God. We know enough about Him to feel eternally secure and comfortable, for the Lord has revealed to us everything we need to know about who God is, what He does, and how He loves.God has promised to establish us as His people on the solid rock foundation of the Word and the Promises, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. This building (the Church, the People) will stand tall and strong against all the attacks of evil, no matter how overwhelming they may feel. The Lord God has established us.

150. Prosper

Deuteronomy 29:9 Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.

The promise of prosperity in all that you do can be understood physically or spiritually, earthly or heavenly. For earthly prosperity there is a condition, as most of the words of Moses in Deuteronomy suggest. The condition is “keep the words of this covenant.” If you obey, then you will prosper. For heavenly prosperity the condition has been perfectly met by Jesus Christ in our place: because of Christ God gives His righteousness for free, and we become keepers of the covenant by faith. We are accounted righteous by grace through faith; therefore, we will prosper in all that we do in the spiritual and eternal world. Prosperity in the spiritual world is guaranteed unconditionally. Worldly prosperity may or may not result in our earthly life, but that is only temporary and will pass away like the grass of the field. Can worldly prosperity really be considered prosperity if it will end, perish, be eaten up, and taken away? We look for the unseen prosperity that is eternal.

Spiritual prosperity is a blessing and a promise that we will be able to enjoy today and forever without end. We will prosper in all that we do as Christians in the name of the Lord. Psalm 1:3: “In all that he does, he prospers.” “He” in this verse refers to the person who delights in the Word of God and meditates on the Gospel day and night. He abides in the Vine, and is so doing he bears fruit. “In all that you do” refers to all the mundane activities of living whether at home, at work, at play, or at worship. The wealth of the soul cannot be measured, and the fruit that it bears lasts forever; it cannot be measured either. But God knows; and He blesses, and grows, and multiplies, and makes it last.

Just look at one example (out of a million): one act of kindness like “giving a cup of cold water to one of these little ones” will have a reward and multiply fruit forever. We could never count up how rich we are spiritually and eternally, but the Lord is able to count that far. We don’t see or appreciate how prosperous we are. So believe it.

149. Be the Head and Be Above

Deuteronomy 28:13 And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them.

The conditional promises for keeping God’s commandments are extended. Here the promise is that we, God’s people, will be the head and not the tail; we will be above and not beneath. Politically, this did not happen because they did not keep the commandments. But for us believers in Christ the promise is still in effect: we are the head and we are above. In Christ we are seated with Him in the heavenly places. In the spiritual world we are over and above our enemies; we are in Christ greater and stronger than the forces that oppose our wellbeing.

Christ is ever victorious, and by faith we are in Him, and so we are victorious under His Lordship in His kingdom. The old joke goes like this: One says, “How are you?” The other answers, “Not bad, under the circumstances.” The first one says, “What are you doing under the circumstances?” The humorous truth is that the Christian does not need to be under; for the promise is that we are above. Our Lord Jesus is the head and He is in charge of our life. The devil, the world, and our flesh will continually try to bring us down, but by faith we rise up and live above. Our Lord is much greater than circumstances.

The question, however, is this: are we obeying the commandments? No. So we can’t claim the promise until we repent and receive forgiveness through the Gospel. Then the promise is true: We will be above, and not beneath. The burden has been lifted; we feel lighter; we are unbound; we are released; we are set free. This is all true, but we don’t always apply the truth to our lives. Our circumstances are always messed up, confusing and scary, but we live with Christ, above them. It may be hard to believe, but we really are the head over the enemies that weigh us down.

148. His Good Treasure

Deuteronomy 28:12 The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shall not borrow.

If you keep the commandments the Lord will open to you His good treasure. For Israel in the land this means rain in the right amount at the right time and blessing on all the work of your hand. In the material, earthly realm treasure is blessing and growth on the work of your hands, whatever that work may be. In the spiritual realm treasure is a blessing on your life in the spiritual and eternal kingdom of God. Your spiritual life will grow and abound with rich blessing in all the things of God, the things we don’t see with physical eyes.

Israel as a nation never did quite reach the zenith of wealth that was conditionally promised, but the spiritual blessing of the Messiah gives far greater wealth and blessing than we can even believe. Jesus is our priceless treasure. The real fulfillment of the promise comes out in the New Testament Gospel through which the Lord opens to us His good treasure.

The Kingdom of God is like treasure in a field, that a man finds and sells everything he has to buy that field. That kingdom is like a treasure. It is in us. Jesus promises the rich young ruler that he could have “treasure in heaven.” By faith in Christ we possess “treasure in heaven.” Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount not to lay up treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also. This means, “seek first the kingdom of God,” and then you won’t need to worry about all these things on earth. The heart pants after the living God, for He is treasure indeed. We seek the things that are above.

When we seek after treasure in heaven (Jesus and His Kingdom) we have God’s promise that we will find it. He guarantees that we will not be disappointed. Everyone seeks treasure: the only difference is whether they seek the treasure of the Kingdom or the treasures of the world. Receive God’s good treasure.