Dennis Tuuri

# Exodus 23:20-33 – Resurrection Sunday Sermon

The Jebusites, and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. So you shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land.

I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my fear before you. I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field become too numerous for you.

Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and you inherit the land. And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea Philistia and from the desert to the river. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me.

For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the words of your scriptures. And we pray that your Holy Spirit would open this text for understanding. May our joy and our fear be increased today as a result of hearing this word of yours. Minister it to us, Lord God, who loves us as a father loves his children and more so. So love us, Father, and move in our hearts today that we might find ourselves in fuller obedience to our Savior as a result of the indwelling Spirit writing this word upon our hearts.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. We have moved from consideration of the Feast of Ingathering last week, sort of summing up the three festivals listed at the end of the Book of the Covenant, the law of the covenant. We spent many weeks on one or two passages essentially and now we’re going to spend one Lord’s day on many passages, many verses—14 of them. There is this transition in the text from the Feast of Ingathering to now this angel going before them and in the providence of God here we are.

John mentioned last week that another image of the Feast of Ingathering is that of the children of Israel coming to Elim early in their journeys, and Elim is a place that’s specifically designated for us in Exodus 15:27 as a place of having 12 springs of water and 70 date palms and they camped there beside the waters. So the tribes of Israel represented by the 12 springs of water are to water the 70 plants, the palm trees representing the nations of the earth. And so the Feast of Ingathering, palm Sunday—we remember what that palm means. And the Feast of Ingathering, the 70 bowls offered for the 70 nations. And so we have this great promise that Christ’s kingdom will fill all the earth as the result of the faithful dispersing of those living waters that come out from the middle of our being. So the Savior told us at the Feast of Ingathering your tabernacles recorded in the Gospel of John.

Today we have then a consideration of Easter and the angel, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ to go before us as we move forward conquering and in victorious in his name.

Holiday messages are always a little—I always approach them with a little trepidation. It’s hard to meet the occasion. God’s text is so rich in this particular case. It’s hard to touch on all the aspects of it and do them justice.

But it seems like this is one section, the epilogue to this book of the covenant that we can regard as one section. And I want to talk about it in terms of the angel who keeps and delivers—the two tasks of this angel given forth for us early in the text and then in the middle of the text as well. And as a subtitle, I want to talk today about the bad news of the resurrection. We’re used to hearing about the good news of the resurrection, but I think that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ properly understood including a full understanding of this text will help us to see that resurrection is indeed very bad news for some while it is very good news for others.

We’ll first consider the text itself and we can see it in two halves. The first half has four and a half verses. The angel of the Lord—in a literary sense the angel is mentioned, the angel is mentioned again wrapping off, I think, one distinct unit from the midst of this overall epilogue. And then the second half we’ll consider as a separate unit. And if we do that and we look at this first half, it seems to fall nicely into this five-fold structure, a structure that we’re becoming more and more familiar with in scripture.

Anytime we see a reference to an angel and then some stuff going on and then the angel, a subject matter, then some other stuff and back to the subject matter, we sort of want to look at what God is having us meditate on as a result of how these passages flow. And so we’ll consider the text here, and particularly the first half of the text to begin with.

He gave for us in verse 20 the provision and purpose for this provision of this wonderful angel, the angel of the Lord who will move the people into the land. Verse 20 says, “Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared for you.”

Now, this angel is the angel of the Lord. We’re told in the next few verses that my name will be in him. And because my name will be in him, he will not forgive your transgressions. This angel apparently has the ability to forgive which only God can do. And as the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrates his deity in the gospel accounts where he forgives sins, so this angel has an identification with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is him.

Now it says it in a negative sense—he will not forgive your transgressions which is your rebellion. But the obvious implication is he can forgive other things. Additionally, this angel is identified as the angel of the Lord throughout the Old Testament. The Old Testament writers identify him with the person of Yahweh. The name, the person, the essence of who Yahweh is in him. There’s an identification of the angel with Yahweh. And so we have all these demonstrations that this angel is this resurrected Jesus Christ whom we worship today.

But we have a very distinct reference to this in 1 Corinthians 10:6-9. These things being our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted, speaking of the wilderness wanderings of the people of God. This very group—the events that are now being preceded by this prologue, or epilogue rather, to the law of the covenant—God will march through you in the wilderness, be in front of you rather, and will bring you into the land. So this 1 Corinthians 10 passage talks about that time period.

Do not become idolators as were some of them. And we’ll see that the essence of this epilogue to the law of the covenant is a warning against idolatry as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day 23,000 fell.” Now listen. “Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents.” This angel is clearly identified in 1 Corinthians 10. We don’t need it there—got all these other evidences—but it’s clearly identified as the Lord Jesus Christ.

This angel who guards and brings us into the land is the one whom we worship this day, the resurrected Savior.

And he is resurrected for the purpose of guarding us and being with us and taking us into all the earth as he promised in the Great Commission.

Now, when it says this angel will keep you as well as bring you in, this word for keep is that same word “guard” that Adam had as one of his two great tasks that we know so well in this church: to guard and nurture his wife, his garden, his children, himself. And the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who guards us. People of God are going to march forward and the Lord God is with us accompanying us. He is by our side at all times to guard us.

But secondly, the purpose for this provision of this wonderful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, this angel of the Lord in Exodus 23—this provision of the angel has as its purpose our guarding, but it also has as its purpose our bringing in. We were excluded from paradise. And as we sung today, the Lord Jesus opens the doors to paradise for us. We were excluded from the garden, but Jesus is in the business of bringing us into the full maturation of the garden of God, represented typologically here in the Old Testament by the land of Canaan.

So Jesus brings us in and guards us. He brings us into the destruction of our enemies and our supplanting them in the land. He brings us into his kingdom filling the earth. That is his purpose being the resurrected angel of God and he brings us into the victory over our very sins that are the result of our disobedience to God.

The angel—the provision of God made—this, in what we celebrate this wonderful Resurrection Sunday, is the Savior who will guard us and will bring us into victory and who will eventually, of course, be with us in eternity in full maturation of his kingdom.

Well, what’s the proper response to this great truth? We’re told in verse 21: proper response is to beware of him, obey his voice, do not provoke him. So we have this wonderful provision for a particular purpose that is joyous to us. But immediately we have a response called for from us to this amazing provision of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the proper response is to beware of him, to obey his voice and to not provoke him.

To beware of him, to be on your guard before him is what the New American Standard says. To take ye heed is what the ASV says in its translation of this. It means to be very careful in reference to this angel. We love him. We love the Lord Jesus Christ, but do not think that he is that wimpy kind of guy who saves everyone that so much of evangelicalism portrays, even on this Resurrection Sunday.

This is a Sunday when great amounts of people go into churches—so-called Christmas and Easter Christians, I heard them referred to a week or so ago—and the church is prone to want to give them great comfort that the Lord Jesus Christ is their friend and their Savior. And well, he is to those elect in Christ. But immediately here we are told that our proper response, and the proper response of the children of this church and of the next generation, be based on this great truth of the resurrection that Christ is leading us into all victory and guarding us on the way.

Our response is to be very careful of this angel, to recognize that his presence with us through the Holy Spirit is a great comfort but it’s also a great danger to us. We are so close to Christ now. He dwells in us through the spirit and the scriptures tell us beware of the proximity of this angel. This is an angel who is not just some soft cuddly buddy. He is our elder brother, but he is our King. And we must be very careful to avoid displeasing him in any way.

We must beware. We must obey his voice—not as a potential or possibility of the Christian life, but as an identification that indeed we’re following the Savior and he indwells us. We must obey his voice. And third, we must not provoke him. We must not discomfort him. We must not make him uncomfortable through our actions.

Genesis 49 tells us that Joseph was grieved. “The archers have bitterly grieved him, shot at him, and hated him.” It’s the same deal. They provoked Joseph in the context of that passage. In Exodus 1:14, the slave masters in Egypt made the lives of the people of Israel bitter with hard bondage. These are the same words—provoked—to make bitter. Our actions, our sin, our failure to obey this angel can provoke him against us, can make him sorrowful, make him irritated as it were. Not petulantly like we are prone to, but very much provoked by us.

And we are warned on the basis of this incredible news of provision and purpose for provision that there’s a proper response that we’re to enter into: to beware of him and to obey his voice and to not provoke this angel because he is not an angel that will look lightly at our trespasses and sins. Beware of him.

Now the text goes on to give us, I think, at the center of this first half a warning in relationship to this proper response. If we don’t do these things, if we’re not very careful of our actions relative to this Angel, if we don’t obey and if we aren’t worried about provoking him, what will happen to us? Well, this next verse tells us. Verse 21: “he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.”

My name is in him and he will not pardon your transgressions. This verse shocks us at first. Here we are celebrating the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and resurrection, the death to make provision for our sins, that he will pardon transgressions. That’s the whole message of Easter, right? We raise up in resurrection strength on the basis of the good news that he will pardon transgressions.

But here, this Savior who has come to effect the Great Commission pictured by this entry into Canaan calls forth a response from his people of carefulness and then says, “If you’re not careful, if you’re not wary, if you’re not diligent in your lives to avoid displeasing this Savior, if you do not obey his voice”—which voice has just articulated three chapters of regulations of our community life and our personal relationships and our civil polity and then our festival season before God—”If we displease him in these things, he will not pardon our transgressions because my name is in him.”

Joshua in his concluding actions of his ministry warned the people that God also. He repeats this same truth in Joshua 24. He says, “God will not pardon your transgressions.” Let’s read the context. He says in verse 14 of Joshua 24 that fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth. Same message, right? Fear him. Don’t provoke him. Be wary. Fear him and obey him in sincerity and truth.

Put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river. Put away idolatry. That’s the message of Exodus 23:20-33. Serve the Lord. And that’s the message today to us to flee idolatry and to have a wholesome fear of offending the Lord Jesus Christ and obey his word in all its aspects. Same message to us.

Serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, if you don’t like serving the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. There’s only one choice. You serve God or you serve idols. There’s no neutral ground for this church or the members of this church.

We either put off idolatry and cleave with an intense fidelity to Christ or we are serving those other gods. That’s what Joshua says. And then of course he gives his famous declaration: “As for me and my household will serve the Lord.” The people answered and said, “Be it far from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord our God is he who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Israel from the house of bondage, who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we passed. And though the Lord drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites who dwelt in the land, we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”

Reasonable response. Yes. Why not serve God? He’s the only God there is. The idols of the earth are nothing. This God has brought you forth into deliverance through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect, reasonable response to the plain implication, explicit implication of our text repeated throughout scripture is of course we’ll serve God. Why not? That’s who made us. That’s who created us. That’s who redeemed us.

It’s perfectly reasonable this afternoon to put aside idolatry. It’s perfectly reasonable tomorrow and the next day and the next day when faced with the temptation of sin to say, “No, why would I want to serve an idol who is meaningless? Why would I want to displease our Savior who strikes at me with his rod as he surely will, as the good shepherd.”

It’s perfectly reasonable we should serve God.

But Joshua says to the people, “You cannot serve the Lord. He is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done you good.” And the people say, “No, we’ll serve God.” And finally, he makes covenant with them there. They take covenant. But he warns them over and over again of the implications of that covenant message.

And he says here the same thing that our text says. He says, “He is holy. He is jealous. He will not pardon your transgressions.”

Now, lest you think I’m preaching a gospel of works or a gospel of complete bad news today instead of good news, the context for both Joshua and the context of this statement here—this great warning that this angel, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name God dwells, will not pardon transgressions—clearly puts those transgressions as rebellion against the Lord God. It doesn’t mean falling short. It means a turning away from God.

But you see, we’re prone to turn away from God and think of it as falling short of the mark. And God warns us here in big huge letters that if that’s what you think the Christian life is all about—if you think you can obey the festival season, for instance, on Christmas and Easter alone and ignore the Lord’s day the other 50 Sundays of the week—then you are involved in practical idolatry and your sins and transgressions, he will not forgive.

So God warns us here to not take this faith lightly, to not take this day of resurrection good news without understanding the inherent bad news it is for enemies of God—no pardon for sins. The Lord’s name is in him. That Lord’s name, we’re told in several places of scripture, is related to holiness. The Lord Jesus is holy. The Holy Spirit indwells us. And because he is holy, he will not pardon the sin of transgression or rebellion against him. He will cut us off.

Now, this is clearly pointed out and Exodus 24 follows this section. Exodus 24 is the confirmation of the covenant. It will be read at our communion service today immediately following this epilogue. You have the law of the covenant, this epilogue, and then you have the confirmation of the covenant with a meal. And clearly, there’s sacrifices that go on in Exodus 24: an ascension offering, a peace offering. So, you know, again, don’t think that this is somehow works righteousness. This is saying that God does forgive sins on the basis of the blood atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he will not forgive the sins of rebellion against him and serving idols. So sin can be forgiven but transgressions in the sense of rebellion against God cannot.

And indeed we find this very thing—an example of this happening—in Exodus 32:33 and following. We have here the golden calf incident. The Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him out of my book.” He will not pardon transgressions. He will not be in the book of those whose sins are forgiven and pardoned through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If they commit idolatry, if they rebel against God, he will cut them off, blot them out from my book.

“Therefore, go lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment”—it’s the Lord’s day, the day when I visit for punishment—”I will visit punishment upon them for their sins.” So the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf, which Aaron made.

Again, in Numbers 14, in the declaration of the 40 years of wandering to come because they failed to go into the land trusting God, verse 35 of Numbers 14: “I the Lord have spoken this. I will surely do so to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against me in this wilderness. They shall be consumed and there shall they die.”

And 1 Corinthians tells us in this example to us to be fearful and beware of our sins because if we rebel against God, he will not pardon our transgressions.

Now, that’s at the center. And as we pivot back out to the last portion of this first half of the text, our proper response is repeated again. Verse 22: “If you indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak.” See the literary construction: obey his voice, do all that I speak. His voice and I speaking are identified. This is the angel—is Christ—and we’re to obey his voice and to do all that I speak. That’s the proper response. Again, it mirrors beware and don’t provoke him and do what he tells you to do. Obey his voice.

We’re to obey the law of the covenant. We are to have a proper sense of our relationship to God and one another as determined in these various laws. We spent so much time on 28 sermons on the law of the covenant chapters 21-23. “Obey his voice. Do all that I speak.”

Well, he’s just spoken three chapters. He’s talking. He’s given us civil precepts. He’s given us laws about tongues and actions relative to our parents and to the authorities that he has placed us in. He’s given us laws about how to encourage and promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that is property—and how our property is to be used in the context of community. How we’re to have our liberty for the sake of vocational calling, not for the sake of just simply sitting around, but rather liberty is identified with calling and vocation. We spoken to these matters in the past year.

“If you obey these festival seasons of God that we’ve just talked about”—the implications for the Lord’s day activities of all the feast cycles of the Old Testament—”you see, he says the proper response to the warning that he will not pardon your transgressions is to obey all of these things, to walk in obedience to them, to obey and do.”

And then as we back out from this center of warning to us of God’s punishment, we again have a statement of provision and purpose. It says in verse 22, “Then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. My angel will go before you and bring you into the Amorites and the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will cut them off.”

For my angel—there’s the provision restated for us here—will go before you. He’ll keep you in the way, in other words, and bring you in. Second purpose: to bring us in to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will cut them off. So we have this repetition that God’s provision of the angel is for the purpose of taking us on the way and protecting us and bringing us into the land with the added emphasis that indeed the Lord Jesus Christ will cut off all of our enemies.

Turn to Psalm 68 if you will. This is one of the psalms that the church has traditionally used at Easter time, identified with Resurrection Sunday. And it’s not hard to understand why. For instance, in verse 17 of chapter 68, “Chariots of God are 20,000, even thousands of angels. The Lord is among them as in Sinai in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hast led captivity captive. Thou hast received gifts for men. Yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.”

“Blessed be the Lord who daily loadest us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. He that is our God is the God of salvation, and unto God the Lord belong the issues from death. But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses.”

Well, this is a psalm that talks about this very thing we’re considering in Exodus and the march into the promised land, but it’s appropriated by the New Testament for the ascension of the Savior on high from verse 18, giving gifts to men. God daily loads us with benefits. To him belong the issues from death. Ultimately, all this is a picture of the resurrection angel of the Lord. And so this psalm applies appropriately to Resurrection Sunday.

It goes on to say though that to God belongs the issues from death. But God shall wound the head of his enemies. And the hairy scalp of such a one as goes on still in his trespasses. You see in that psalm, in that verse, he sort of brings these two things together. Whether you’re an Amorite, a Hivite, a Jebusite, an idolator playing it out, or whether you’re a part of the covenant community of God that rebels against him and that doesn’t engage in a wariness before the Lord and a heartfelt obedience to him and a fear of provoking him—those two are brought together here. Jesus will crush your head. That’s the message of Easter.

To him belong the issues from death. But God shall wound the head of his enemies, the Hittites, the Perizzites, etc. And the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses, us if we don’t heed the resurrection message. Easter, Resurrection Sunday is about Jesus bringing life but also bringing death. It’s good news but it’s also very bad news for some.

Look at the first verse of this psalm, verse 1 of Psalm 68. “Let God arise. Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed.”—the traditional greeting of the church on the Resurrection Sunday. “He is risen. He is risen indeed. Let God arise. Let his enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As wax melt before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous be glad. Let them rejoice before God. Yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.”

You see, resurrection is about the issues from death, but it’s also about bringing death and judgment to the enemies of God. And so at the end of this first half, God says he’ll bring you in and he will destroy his enemies.

Let’s look at the second half briefly, verses 24-30. In light of this great first half message that Jesus has made this wonderful provision for a purpose, calling forth a response and giving us a very strong warning in response to that good news, that gospel, we have a response called forth in verses 24-25.

Verse 24: “You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them completely break down their sacred pillars. So shall you serve the Lord your God.”

You see, it’s not enough to simply seek personal holiness and righteousness in relationship to this angel who indwells us, this resurrected Savior. Not enough just to be careful about ourselves. And I would venture to say that we all in this congregation need to hear that message over and over. We need to be very wary of the indwelling person of Jesus Christ through the spirit. We need to be very careful of not falling into the idolatries of this nation. Very careful. They’re a snare to us and we can avoid them, but they’re a snare.

But secondly, this text tells us that’s not enough. If you’re going to serve God, then you have to be positively committed to the destruction of idolatry in the place that God has placed you. Jesus comes to bring a sword and it’s a sword that we must wield now properly through prayer, through the preaching of the word, but we must wield it nonetheless. We cannot be said to serve the risen Savior if we do not utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.

The scriptures seem to tell us this message is one of warfare conducted through the army of the Lord, the church. Simple avoidance is not enough. We must be positively dedicated to the expansion of Christ’s kingdom and therefore the utter destruction of any and every kingdom that will not bow the knee to King Jesus.

Well, that’s what the Lord’s prayer tells us, isn’t it? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And when we pray that Christ’s kingdom be manifested, we are praying for the destruction of every kingdom that raises itself up against the kingdom of our Savior.

So God says, you know, that the resurrection is very, very bad news because not only has Christ arisen, he raises up an army from himself—to through prayer and the preaching of the word to tear down the strongholds as Paul puts it, to tear down every idol that raises itself up against Christ in our own hearts and in the culture in which we find ourselves as well.

God says that in kind relationship to this he blesses positively. What happens when the church matures covenantally? What happens when indeed the church is committed to be very careful in terms of personal holiness and very committed to the tearing down of the idols of the nations in which we’re placed? He will bless your bread and your wine. “I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land. I fulfill the number of your days.”

Jesus will bless our bread and our water. He’ll bless our food. He’ll bless our substance. He’ll bless our health. He’ll take away sickness from the midst of you. He’ll bless us in terms of prosperity. We won’t have miscarriages or barrenness in the context of our homes or in the context of our animals either—clearly stated in other portions of scripture. And he will fulfill the number of our days. He will give us length of life. That’s what the maturation of the kingdom has in store. The resurrection of the Savior is wonderful news from the very simple things of eating every day to the great important things of our health and our well-being and our longevity.

Let’s not cut these promises short. Let’s not just glance over them and say, “Well, yeah, he’ll kind of make it that way and kind of not because we’re not all long. We don’t live long. Some of us die young. We have these sad occurrences of miscarriages still. Some are barren still. Some of us don’t have really nice food to eat. Some of us don’t have health.” But understand that these are covenantal blessings. But don’t take away the impact of this or we lose the impact of the good news of the resurrection.

Christian culture as it matures in terms of personal holiness and seeking the extermination of idolatry in the world that is owned by the Savior, Christian culture will increasingly manifest these very things: increasing prosperity, increasing health, increasing length of life. Those are the great blessings that God says he promises to us if we do these things as a group and as a nation that he has called us to do.

The other side of it, he also blesses negatively. I suppose it didn’t quite use the right grammatical phrasing here, but you know, he promises all these great blessings to us of health and life and prosperity and all those things. But he also says that part of his blessings are negative.

Verse 27: “I will send my fear before you. I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come. Will make all your enemies turn their backs to you, and I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hittite, the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate, the beast of the fields become too numerous from you.

“Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and you inherit the land.”

So there’s another side of these blessings is negative—to the enemies of God, to those that were dispossessing in the context of the earth. God promises us victory over our enemies. You know, repeatedly in the Psalter, Peter Leithart made this observation recently on the BH list. Repeatedly in the Psalter when David prays for deliverance or the psalmist prays for justification from God, it isn’t just escape or that he’s declared okay in terms of his relationship to God. It is that the judge answers with the destruction of his enemies.

Jim Jordan has commented that really redemption is correlated to this judgment aspect, the vengeance of God as well. God is our redeemer and at the same time our God of vengeance against our enemies. The judge, the model of the judge in the scriptures is not somebody who passively declares you righteous and that’s the end of it. He activates the sentence. He saves you and he kills your opponent. That’s the picture of God.

So when we consider the resurrection of Christ being resurrected for our justification, Romans says, “See, it’s related to these very blessings that the resurrection affects our justification, our right standing with God, but also the destruction of our enemies.”

So these blessings—how is he going to destroy them? Well, says he’s going to put great fear before them. Abraham, Abram, as he goes to make covenant with God, and God puts him into a deep sleep and a great horror comes over Abram. It’s de-construction. It’s de-creation. It’s deep death is what God brings. And he brings that kind of fear to the enemies of his church as they act in obedience to the requirements of holiness and serving God by the propagation of the gospel in the world in which we’re placed.

God sets fear. He causes confusion amongst them. He discomforts them. He makes them uncomfortable. He causes them to run around thinking, “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” And he bring hornets to them as well. He moves in providential acts, in this case maybe actual hornets, killer bees. It’s what God sends forth to his enemies that his people might be given the land.

Now, it doesn’t happen overnight. We’re in the process of a long gradual proclamation of the gospel till all the earth is eventually conquered as all of Canaan was to be conquered. It happens in the context of gradualism. Gradualism—Matthew Henry says, “It is the wisdom of God. It’s to be observed in the gradual advances of the church’s interests. It is in real kindness to the church that its enemies are subdued by little and little. For thus we are kept upon our guard and a continual dependence upon God. Corruptions are thus driven out of the hearts of God’s people, not all at once, but little by little.”

Richard Vigory wrote a book years ago, “We’re Ready to Lead.” And if we write a book for the Christian church today, it’d be “We’re Not Ready to Lead.” Please God, don’t take away all of the pagan rulers because we would have chaos in the streets today if it was left to the church to run this country. We don’t like that. What? What? You know, we’re just terrible sinners. We’re just terrible in our grumblings and disputings.

God says that it is his providence to leave some of these nations in place and to drive them out little by little. And he tells us today that it is his providence, his love for us, his consideration to us that we still have civil rulers who are not submissive to the Lord Jesus Christ and in the marketplace and in the school etc. We kick against that. We can’t stand it.

We had a family over a while back and one of their young children came in from playing with the other kids, sat in the chair and looks sort of upset. “Oh, what’s wrong?” “They won’t obey me, man.” You know, that’s what we’re like. “They won’t obey us.” So we want everybody to obey us now. We’re not the deal, though. God is. God is so gracious and loving to accomplish the effects of the resurrection gradually through the proclamation of the gospel both to advance things we’ll keep in an orderly sense in which we’re going, plus as Matthew Henry points out, that we would be introspective about our things and understand our dependence upon God. It’s his goodness to us and we don’t like it. We kick against his very goodness. We’re such sinners and the scriptures are such a wonderful correction to us that tells us indeed that it’s God’s blessings that he’s going to drive out the enemies of the church and his enemies, but he’s going to do it gradually.

Okay, God blesses positively and negatively. These blessings, positive and negative, are sort of summed up in verse 31. “I’ll set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea Philistia, and from the desert to the river, and I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.”

As Matthew Henry says, “The league shall be offensive and defensive, like with Abraham, ‘I will bless him that blesses thee, and curse him that curses thee.’ Thus is God pleased to twist his interests and friendships with his people, all wrapped up together.”

And then finally, at the end of this section, at the end of this entire epilogue, in verses 32 and 33, again the proper response from his people is called for.

Verse 32: “You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. This is a covenant document. God’s covenant and his law are placed in opposition to the covenant and law of his enemies. Law is the means of warfare. The proclamation of that law through the preaching of the gospel is the means of warfare. Prayer in terms of that covenant is the means of warfare by which the nations will be conquered. Make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

“They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

And that’s how it ends. A snare. It’s the end of the good news. Be warned. Be careful of the snare.

Now, Proverbs 12 tells us in verse 13, “The wicked is ensnared by the transgression of his lips.” How do you get away from the snare? Don’t transgress with your tongues, Christians. Be careful with your speech. We saw that, did we not, in the law of the covenant relative to authorities. We’re ensnared by the transgressions of our lips.

Proverbs 13:14: “The law of the wise is a fountain of life to turn one away from the snares of death.” How do we live in the context of a nation that lays snares for us everywhere? We don’t engage in sins of the tongue and we cleave to the law of God that brings life and it keeps us out of the snares of death in the context of this culture.

In Proverbs 14:27: “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life to turn one away from the snares of death.” The fear of the Lord. Not enough to be an intellectual reformed guy who just sort of intellectually assumes the law of God, tries to change his life a little bit to meet these intellectual requirements. We must have a fear of God and his just punishments and that he threatens that he will not pardon our transgressions if we are idolatrous. That proper fear will keep us from the snares of this culture that are round about us everywhere.

All right, let’s sum up. What is this bad news of the resurrection?

The bad news is that at the center of the first half of this, the pivotal center point, the holiness of Christ means the certitude of destruction. That is bad news, very bad news for all opposed to Christ.

Secondly, in the second half, destruction is assured for God’s enemies. Throughout this epilogue, speaking of this wondrous angel whom we celebrate the resurrection of today, is this bad, bad news that Christ’s holiness and God’s purposes assure the destruction of his enemies.

Well, it’s bad news for them, not bad news for us. You’re saying in your heart, no. It’s very bad news for us too because point C says, and I think this is correct: God’s friends are going to be saved and his enemies are going to be destroyed.

Now you know, don’t misunderstand this point. I’m not saying these things are unimportant that we’re going to talk about here. But listen to what I’m saying. God’s friends are not ultimately defined in this text nor the Christian life by birth. You’ve got the great privilege, young people, of being born into Christian households. But that is not enough. There is no indication here that physical descent will keep you from the sword that is very, very bad news of that risen Savior who arises and scatters his enemies. Be fearful, children of this church. If that’s what you’re placing your trust in—that you’re in a Christian home—be very, very fearful.

God’s friends are not defined by church membership. I’m a member of this church because of the family or I’ve made a profession of faith. I’m okay. No, you’re not okay. Remember that the warning is given to us in Corinthians that they were baptized. They ate communion in the wilderness. Yet with many of them God was not well pleased. They were his enemies. And the risen Savior scattered them as his enemies and killed them and dispossessed them.

God’s friendship are not defined by the covenant sign or seal. God’s friends are not defined by the attitude that Jesus is just all right with me. He’s okay. Sure, I try to give Jesus his due and you know, I’m a CE Christian. Come twice a year, whatever it is. God says, “Forget it.” God says that a nominal approach to the faith means you are not one of God’s friends. And this great truth of the angel who guards and delivers—this great truth is very bad news to you.

God’s friends are defined by a wariness—that carefulness we spoke of right—proper sense of fear and reverence. That’s why we spank our children to teach them the fear of God in the context of the home. It’s why we use a rod, the sign and symbol of Christ’s authority when we do it, you know. We don’t do it self-consciously every time, but that’s the point. We should be very frightened of displeasing Christ.

We had a wariness to us. They’re defined by an obedience, a doing of this law, not understanding intellectually, not knowing about chiastic structures and heptamerous covenantal structures.