Dennis Tuuri

Our scripture text today is Exodus 23:20-33. Exodus 23:20-33. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. And I’m might just say that this is the conclusion of the portion of Exodus referred to as the case laws, beginning at verse 20.

Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.

But if you indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For my angel will go before you and bring you into the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and 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 beasts 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 of 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. Lord God, we thank you for this text. Help us to understand it. May your spirit transform us by it. We thank you for the gift of knowledge that it is to us to see properly where we are and what’s to be our view as we attempt to see this land once more become a land of blessing from your hand.

Bless us, Lord God. Challenge us. Help us to indeed beware of sinning against the Holy Spirit or our Savior Jesus Christ. Help us, Father, to be prevented from being ensnared by the sins of those with whom we have to deal. And help us, Lord God, to be as a result of this committed once more to follow the first of your Ten Words. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

The basic plan we have going through the Ten Words is to speak about them primarily from the text of Deuteronomy and the long sermon that Moses gives after he presents the Ten Words to God’s people, and we will also bring in the context of our series of sermons on the Ten Words, the book of Daniel.

Let me mention there by the way that last week we saw sort of an emphasis on the positive aspects of the first word—the proper response, the reality of God, declaration that he has won a great love for God and a hearing of his word and a teaching it to our children. And I would just say that the book of Daniel is a wonderful book of stories that teach the Ten Words. And so as you begin to teach your families, the younger children particularly, the Ten Words stories are a wonderful device to do that with in the book of Daniel.

That’s what it is essentially—a series of historical events, particularly in the first half of it, that demonstrate the Ten Words in action and are written to be an encouragement and a pedagogic device to God’s people back in the land from the exiled Daniel.

So we’ll look at Daniel as example in the brief stories there. We’ll look also at the case laws in Exodus 20 to 23 that relate to the different words. It’s not sequential going through the Ten Words, but we can kind of line things up with those words. We’ll also look at some aspects of Leviticus 19, which is yet another summary of the Ten Words. This is in a sermon out of 70 commands. Again, not sequentially going through the Ten Words, but with a particular structure that we’ll talk about next week as we look at Leviticus 19 and the single section of it that deals—seems to deal with the first word.

So next week we’ll talk about Leviticus 19 and then we’ll move on the following week to the second word and we’ll go about it the same basic way. So that’s sort of the structure by which we’re going through this.

And if we look at the case laws—so-called case laws, the sermon as it were of Exodus 20-23 articulating the Ten Words—it seems like this concluding section is the only one that has direct reference to both the first and second commandments.

Let me say also that another device as you teach the Ten Words in your family can be these responsive readings. I get sort of hung up on them. I’m continuing to say words that we learned as our church first got started 20 years ago and recited for years and years and years. I still have trouble with the New King James as opposed to the King James, but we have changed the New Testament responses to the first three to make it a little clearer that the second word deals with mediation, the first word deals with loyalty to God—it’s prohibiting what we might call covenantal idolatry as the second word prohibits liturgical idolatry. And so those Ten Word summations are useful to use in your families as well as we obey that great positive message from Deuteronomy 6 known as the great Shema, with all of its wonderful blessings attached to it.

Today’s sermon is sort of in a sense the other side of the coin. If the great Shema is filled with all kinds of positive statements about love and esteem and then teaching these things to our children—are basically talking about the blessings of the first word to us—here with the conclusion of the case law in Exodus 23, we’re now told to beware of the angel that God sends to us. And we’re also told—and while that’s in spirit in Deuteronomy 6, but here very explicitly the message is one of conquest.

The message is one of the antithesis—that there is this other set of people in the context of where we live who we are in antithetical opposition to because of our commitment to the gospel and to the first word and our job as the church. Last week said that Jesus is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and the primary responsibility in terms of the conclusion of the case laws—this exhortation at the end of them here—is conquest.

The whole thing is about conquest, and so in the providence of God, that’s where we’re at today.

The cover picture on your orders of worship as well as the coloring picture for the young kids we’re reminded as we read these words of the angel that’ll go before them to conquer that while it takes 40 years or 38 more years, indeed that’s what happens in Joshua 1 and 2. Joshua is the angel of the Lord, the man who is neither for Joshua nor against his enemies, but who is the captain of the Lord’s host, the captain of the Lord’s army.

So, you know, he is the one who then repeats to Joshua the careful instructions for the conquest of Jericho. And so, he is this angel personified who will lead Joshua and the people into a conquest of the land. And that’s why we’ve chosen that particular picture for the bulletin this morning in the front of the order of worship.

But conquest is the theme. You know, our responsive reading from the New Testament makes this clear. Reading it again, the passage from 2 Corinthians 10:4 and 5: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We’ll see that today. But mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”

This is a very important aspect of who we are—that as we engage in missional work in the context of this city or the greater city in Portland or of our culture, that missional work has to see itself both in the Old Testament in this passage of conquest and in the text from 2 Corinthians, that we are pulling down strongholds. We’re bringing thoughts into captivity any of the exultations of the good things that God has given us in an improper way that makes them a god over God, makes him the ruler and founder of our lives and makes him the focal point of what we do every day. Those things must be torn down. They are idols for destruction. And so this is very much a New Testament teaching. It helps give us a sense of the identity of who we are in Jesus Christ.

We are part of the army of God. And we don’t do that through physical warfare normally. The normal way of doing that is rather through this destruction of the thought forms that are raised in opposition to the kingdom of Christ through the implications of Jesus in every area of life and thought. And we’ll see that in today’s text.

So, we’re just going to go through it very in kind of just verse by verse or sections of verses by sections of verses.

The subtitle for the sermon is “How the Christian Will Reconquer the World.” Back in 1981, I believe I was starting to become moved toward reformed theology through reconstructionism. And I heard about this conference that would happen in Seattle. And the pastor of the large evangelical church we were in, one of the pastors was going to—he knew about it and one of the chairman of the board of elders was going to go, but they didn’t really want me to know about it. Kind of radical stuff. But I found out about it, and it was the first annual Pacific Northwest Conference for Christian Reconstruction. And the title of the conference was “How the Christian Will Reconquer the World.” And I was, well, I didn’t even know we were supposed to do that. Number one, sounds interesting. Number two, they’re going to tell me how to do it. That’s really interesting.

Well, that’s what today’s text is. It is a description of how we reconquer the world. I mean, Abraham had lived in that promised land and now the world is going to be reconquered through this particular text. So, let’s look and see how God’s method of conquest is delineated for us.

So number one: the angel of the conquest.

First of all, his mission. Verse 20: “Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.”

So first of all, this conquest is accomplished by an angel. There’s this angel who is sent to them. They’re being told the angel will come and the purpose of the coming of the angel is to bring them into the place that God has prepared for them. And again, the cover of the order of worship today—the angel comes to affect conquest.

Secondly, our proper response is delineated to us to this angel. So, he’s come to lead us into victory and to conquer the world. What’s our response? “Beware of him and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.”

Now, if you do obey, he’ll lead you into victory. But the very first response for us, the way we reconquer the world is to beware of the messenger of God. I’ll get here in a moment to the identification, but it seems clear the identification is the person of Jesus Christ—the incarnate, the pre-incarnate manifestation of him to Joshua as the captain of the host—and to the angel whose God’s name is in. In other words, God’s person is in this angel.

And the proper response of God’s people is one that we don’t think of a whole lot. Our proper response to the Lord Jesus Christ who has come to bring us into conquest is to beware of him. As Otto Scott says, God is no buttercup. We are not to be nicer than Jesus because Jesus isn’t nice in that sense of the term. And he will not be nice to us if we do not approach him with great reverence, with great fearfulness of displeasing him by not listening to his voice and being careful to do what he has commanded us to do.

Don’t provoke him. What happened? The people that this was spoken to did tempt. They provoked Christ in the wilderness. And what happened? They died in that wilderness.

Beware of him. John Calvin says this in his commentary: “But in the next verse, he seeks by terror to arouse them from their listlessness when he commands them to beware of his presence since he would take vengeance on their transgressions.”

Now, the word is transgression. Transgression means an absolute violation of a particular boundary marker or a command that God has done. It’s a breaking of the word. And when we break that word, and are not careful and have a proper sense of terror of the Lord Jesus Christ, he will not forgive our sins. If we are faithful and just to confess our sins, then he forgives us of our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

But do not take that grace as cheap grace where it’s kind of an automatic deal: “Now you’re in there, now you’ve been baptized, now you’re part of the church, everything’s cool, and you don’t have to beware of anybody.” No. As Calvin says, he takes such listlessness that our culture has today, Christian culture, through the doctrine of cheap grace and through a blanket forgiveness and a “once-saved-always-saved” and “it makes no difference how we live our lives” and “there is no relationship between our works and our faith.” “All you have to do is believe and you can do whatever you want.” That’s creates a listlessness, a moral torpor, a listlessness to us. And if we are prone to that—and we are because we live in this particular context—as Calvin says, he would rouse us through terror. He would tell you today, Christian, that the way to reconquer the world is by following the Savior’s lead, and when you follow the Savior’s lead, beware of the presence of God in your midst.

You know, the Old Testament sacrificial system—the closer you got to the Holy of Holies, the more dangerous it was. The closer you get to the presence of God under the Levitical system were dangerous. It seems counterintuitive. It seems like you should want to get close and snuggle up to Jesus, right? Should want to get close to God, but no, there are all kinds of warnings and people didn’t want to get too close. They had a proper sense of the dread of God.

Now, we’re brought near by the Holy Spirit affirming to us that indeed he loves us and we can love him. All that’s true, but that is not true if we see that love as somehow getting rid of the need to beware of not treating Jesus Christ with the great awe of the presence of God dwelling in the midst of him.

The mount of transfiguration. We’ve got Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. And one of the brighter disciples says, “Well, let’s build three tabernacles,” kind of thinking of an equality between Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. We read in verse 5: “While Peter was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. And suddenly, a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Hear him.’”

He’s the one that has the presence of the father abiding with him. This is the second person of the Trinity. Hear him. Attend carefully to his voice. Beware—in other words, be very careful. Hear his words.

And indeed, our savior himself in Matthew 28:20 teaches us to observe all things that he has commanded us. And lo, I’m with you always, even unto the end of the ages. That’s a statement of conquest. It’s the same statement of this angel that would lead them into conquest. And we’re to be careful because he’s going to teach us all the things that we need to obey to fulfill this conquest.

His presence in the conquest of named and diverse enemies.

So there’s not just a general statement, but verse 22 says: “If you indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.”

Now, that’s a wonderful blessing and note it carefully before we move on quickly. He doesn’t say “you’ll be an enemy to my enemies” or “you’ll be an adversary to my adversaries.” That’s the way we normally think of it, right? Well, if we line ourselves up with God, then we’ll have the proper enemies. But he actually puts it in a way of emphasis of his identification with us in our particular setting in which we find ourselves—the enemies and the adversaries to us as Christians that we find. He says that if we do indeed beware of the presence of Christ and try to please him in all that we do and that we respond with that love of Jesus and the power of the spirit, that he will be an enemy to our enemies. He’ll be an adversary to our adversaries.

What greater ally could one have than the God of all the universe?

Oh, we’ve got the forces of national socialism going in our country. Oh, we’ve got the American legislature. Oh, we’ve got them taking away all the money that we make through excessive taxation. Oh, we’ve got the imposition of bureaucratic bureaucracies that tell us more and more what we can and can’t do. And our lives become cramped. And now the great power of one in whom men put their trust—our president, they look to him now for the change and hope that’ll fill the world, much as the way that Japan, by the way, today also votes in a liberal government. Not because they like it, but because they rejected the other. But still, “hope and change” has come and we sit here and we worry. We know our history. We saw the beginnings of the buildings of bureaucratic control in other socialist governments.

And we see it here now. We’ve got all these powerful forces arrayed against us. The FBI and all the government and the state control, the mechanism, everything’s working against us. And then there’s the spiritual forces in high places. There is that kind of element to the whole thing. There are thoughts at play in our world that are antithetical to Christianity and we feel so helpless. We see all the enemies that we have. We see all the adversaries.

We hear of the homeschooled girl last week being ordered back to public school. We hear of Obama mandating certain health procedures for all people. We know their distrust of the Christian church and their disdain for that. And we see all these things starting to happen. And what do we have? We’ve got little churches. We’ve got jobs that we can eke out a living at. We have some children. Yes, we have a future. But what we have is the conqueror of nations. What we have is the creator of the world.

The only thing that’s on our side is the only thing that matters in the battle. The only weapon for which can effectively do the work of the world that all the world is seeking to do against us. They’re incapable of it. Because on our side of the equation, when we’re careful to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and love him and attend to the work of the Holy Spirit in conquering our sinful tendencies, the sinful tendencies in our homes and our neighborhoods and eventually the culture, what we have is the creator of the whole universe, the omnipotent God, the omniscient God who is an adversary to all of our adversaries and an enemy to all of our enemies.

What more do we need? That’s all we need. All the forces arrayed against us pale in comparison. This is not some giant arm wrestling match that the future is undetermined. This is the God who made the ark. This is him. And he says that he’s going to lead us into conquest. And not just generally—generally he gives us that. But then he says, “My angel will go before you and bring you into the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Washingtonians, the Oregonians, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Libertarians, every system that’s formed not in conformity to the obligations of the first word—that all powers should be subjugated to Yahweh.”

God says they’re all out there. They’re diverse enemies that you have, many enemies. And Calvin says what God is doing here is pushing home the realization that the only way we can wage war against all those forces at one fell swoop is through obedience to the conquering angel, the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

He gives us specific delineated enemies and we could take the time. Herbert Schlossberg did it in his book *Idols for Destruction*. We could think through the current idolatries of our country. Statism is certainly one. You know, sex is another, just like it always has been. Forces of nature, collectivism, radical individualism. There are all kinds of idols out there, and any one of them that sees themselves as the ultimate power—although maybe a properly created thing from God, the state, sexuality, physical forces, parents—all those things are good and wonderful. But as they are perverted by a culture, we see them round about us. And our job is to conquer each of them individually as well as collectively.

And so this angel will lead us into blessings, and he’ll lead us into the blessings, not just generally, but he’ll lead us into the blessings against specific named adversaries.

Calvin says, “Make room then for his grace, that by the hand of the angel, he may lead you into his rest.” “In order to stimulate them still more, he points out to them their need of his aid, as though he had said that nothing could be more miserable than their case. You got all those nations lined up against you, just waiting for you to come in. Nothing could be more miserable than in their case, unless they were protected from so many enemies by his defense. For he enumerates several most important nations to which they would by no means be a match unless they should fight under the guidance of the angel.”

So he brings them into this conquest.

So the angel is seen as the great conqueror to bring us victory.

And then secondly, the section the text moves on to talk now about specifically the relationship to the first commandment and second commandment to conquest.

Total warfare against all idols is the necessary implication of the first and second words. 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 and completely break down their sacred pillars.”

Here it is. We want to be missional. We want to engage the city. We want to engage Portland. We want to engage the culture and we want to do that in a sensitive way. We want to do that in a proper way. We don’t want to draw lines where they don’t exist. On the other hand, we have to be very careful not to forget that there is an antithetical relationship between those whom God has called in the Lord Jesus Christ and those who are committed to various other gods and idols that will not forsake them.

God has built in this antithesis between those two kinds of people. And as we go about the work of, you know, bringing Portland and Oregon City into subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ, to their joy and delight, I would add, we have to do it in such a way that we have to understand our obligation, this total warfare against every other idol.

Now, it’s not against the things the gods are made of that are proper—sexuality, parents, the state—aren’t the enemies. The enemies are a deified form of each of those things that demands man’s full attention which isn’t properly subjugated to Yahweh. And Yahweh tells us that the first commandment requires total warfare against every other person or system that forms itself under supreme allegiance to some other God. That has to not be allowed long term.

Very specifically their high places and places of worship have to be stopped.

Now if we do that, if we go about this warfare, he gives us tremendous blessings of obedience. So if this is what we do, if we take up this mission, verse 25: “So you shall serve the Lord your God and he will bless your bread and your water.”

So sustenance—physical life, you know, food stamps, welfare, surplus food. You see, the state tries to become God by providing bread and water, sustenance of life to everyone, but it’s not its job and it can’t ever do it correctly. But God says that he is indeed our provider apart from the state. He will bless us as we go about following him in the conquest of the land through simple sustenance. He doesn’t promise us great things, but he promises us the things of sustenance: bread and water will be ours.

Secondly, health: “I will take sickness away from the midst of you.”

Well, this is a big topic this month. How do we get health insurance? You know, there is no health insurance available. Of course, there’s nothing you can buy that’ll, you know, ensure your healthiness. What you can buy is risk insurance, right? It’s money insurance. It’s to ensure you against great financial loss. But you can’t have a system that will guarantee you health because it’s not in the state’s capability to guarantee health. Here again, it’s the sovereign Lord who says that part of his process of conquering the implications of the first word are exalting him above every other god and trying to bring down and humble everything to him—including in your own life—and he’ll give you physical sustenance, bread and life, and he’ll give you health. He’ll give you increased health.

Here is God’s health insurance program.

You know, why do health care costs spiral up in our world? Well, it’s a very complicated question and I’m not trying to give all the answers, but there’s a couple of big obvious reasons, and one obvious reason is the state control of insurance carriers. So, insurance companies have to give benefits on, you know, hundreds of things literally now that they would just as soon not insure. And so, in some civil jurisdictions, you know, transsexual operations are part of a pro healthcare benefit. Well, that’s going to drive up costs. So, the state’s involvement in trying to insist on dictating to insurance companies what their insurance will look like has certainly raised costs.

But, let’s face it, there’s a lot of other things that are raising costs as well. There is a lot of cancer. There is a lot of AIDS. There is a lot of sexually transmitted diseases. There is a lot of psychiatric problems. There is a lot of results in women’s lives who have killed their own children while yet in their womb.

We have—in the last 30 or 40 years, primarily 50 years—moved away from the angel. We moved away from obeying Jesus Christ. Our culture has moved away from the laws of God. And the end result of that is we’ve moved away from the blessings of health that God here promises to us.

And what that means is we’re going to have—and I’m not, you know, these are covenantal realities. These are not individual. Don’t think of yourself atomistically in this stuff. “Why am I sick?” I’m not saying “why you’re sick.” But I’m saying that he gives this promise to a covenantal nation. And covenantally, we’re part of this nation now that is more and more in rebellion against God. And as that happens, just as literacy declines, good health declines because people do things directly that bring bad health. And the special judgments of God include health—or lack thereof.

So God says that one of the great blessings the civil state can never guarantee you, but he can, is that a Christian people who increasingly grow as a Christian influence in the context of a culture, covenantally those Christian people will be given sustenance and those people will be given health.

Third, he says you’ll have profound fecundity—many children: “No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land.”

So you’re going to have a lot of kids. Don’t worry about it. And even your cattle—he says in another text—won’t miscarry either. So there’s blessings to your livestock that are given in another text in Job. But here the point is you’ll have increased birth rates. You’ll have greater numbers of children. And this is part of God—remember, the whole point of this, the subtext, is “how the Christian will conquer the world.” He’ll do it by getting healthier. He’ll do it by having sustenance. He’ll do it by the blessings of God upon having children. He’ll do all that stuff through the blessings of God.

Again, the state can’t guarantee you whether you’re going to have miscarriages or not, but God can. That’s his special province. And he says that’s what’ll happen. And even barrenness will become less and less a reality in a Christian nation.

And finally, positively, long life and the horizon of cultural development: “He’ll fulfill the number of our days” is the way it’s specifically stated.

Now, all these blessings—these are blessings that we take on faith from the hand of God in this text, right? I mean, we believe this. We don’t need him to show us that it works. But we also have the history of our country and the history of Western Christian cultures, and our country specifically. What’s happened as a result of the planting of this nation as a Christian nation and the development of business and technology without the constraints of the state that are now trying to be overlaid on everything?

What’s happened is Christian men didn’t seek a way out of work, but rather sought ways to make their work productive for the kingdom. What happened as a result of the renaissance—where we knew that we were at peace with God the father and we can know the world through God the son—what happened was a tremendous increase in knowledge that did indeed do these very things. Infant mortality tremendously lowered in the course of the last 150 years. Longevity—70 is nothing anymore statistically. Women live far longer than that, and men even live longer than that. Longevity has gone up. Infant mortality has gone down. Food—even if all we’re talking about is bread and water—this country is awash in it. Nobody’s hungry in this country who desires to eat. And part of that’s the benevolence of God’s people.

But the things that we read about here we take on faith from the word of God. But we can look at our own history as a Christian nation and see the blessings that accrue to a people who are trying to honor him.

And what do we fear about health care and the government involvement is that it is a declension of each of these things—that things will get worse. That health will get worse. That pharmaceutical companies won’t have the profits to make new drugs and new medications. That insurers will be driven out of the business and take, and as a result lead to a system where the government decides who gets what, and health care declines.

What we’re looking at is a potential drift downward in each of these things. Why? Because the country is becoming idolatrous.

So God has these wonderful blessings that—part that’s part of his method of conquering.

Then there’s some other things in this list that goes on as well.

Number five: dread, fear, and panic terror to our enemies.

“I will send my fear before you.” That word “fear” is not the former word for “being afraid.” It’s only used 17 times in the Old Testament. And the first place it’s used is actually about Abraham. When God takes him, he puts him into deep sleep. It’s twilight. It’s darkness. God is going to cut the covenant by fulfilling the terms of it himself. But Abraham goes through decreased and great panic or dread comes upon Abraham in his comatose state. This is the sort of panic, terror, sort of fear. This is not just, “Oh gosh, that kind of fright. Oh, there’s a spider.” No, this is like your world is going through decreation.

And what he says is he will put that fear—he’ll send that fear before us. “He’ll cause confusion among all the peoples to whom you come. And I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets as well.”

Some people translate hornets as panic, confusion, or terror. So what God is doing is he’s waging war against not the externals of our enemies. He’s waging war against their very heart of their motivation. And what he does is—in blessings to an obedient people who beware of displeasing Christ and who want to obey him and want to listen to the Holy Spirit teach us how to apply the Ten Words in our specific lives as we go about changing the face of Aarchus—as we go about that great and glorious work, he will take care of our enemies through psychological warfare. This is PsyOps is what God’s going to do.

The hornets are an actual deal that he sends out there. You know, little tiny wars. But even beyond that, there’s nothing involved in the PsyOps except God has the heart of men. And when he wants to bring you and grab your courage and just wrench it out of you and bring you into a state of decreation and great anxiety and dread, he does it. He’s done it. To me, I’ve had panic attacks in the past. I am telling you, there is—if you’ve not gone through, if you’re going through it, you know what I’m talking about. But it is this dread. It is this panic, terror, dread. You want to confess every sin you’ve ever done in your life. It all comes back to you. There is no—and you can’t explain it because it is this panic, fear that God puts in the heart of people to shake their pridefulness and bring them down and make them humble before him.

God has used it in my life. And I don’t know why. But he says here, he promises that is what he’ll do to the opponents of the church. He will bring upon them confusing and dispiriting things.

Calvin puts it this way. Actually, this is the Word Bible commentary. It says that this refers to the confusing and dispiriting depression that comes upon those against whom war is divinely waged. In result, Israel’s enemies will be in total disarray when they arrive.

So, it’s this depression state. Calvin puts it this way: “God is said to send forth his fear when by his secret inspiration, he depresses men’s hearts. Whence we gather that fear as well as courage is in his hand. Of this, no doubtful examples exist in every history. If only God obtained his due rights amongst man. It will often happen that the courage of brave men give way to alarm. And on the other hand, that the timid and cowardly awake to sudden bravery. Where the cause is not discovered, the profane have recourse to the hidden dominion of fortune to account for it or imagine that men’s minds have been stupified by panic or by the Stoics. Let us however learn that it is in God’s power to bend men’s hearts either way so as both to cast down the courageous with terror as well as to animate the mind of his people.”

So you know, this is what happens. Of course, Joshua 2—Rahab says, “The fear and dread of you have come upon the people,” and this is what happens. This is exactly what God is fulfilling 38 years later what he has promised here.

So we should take heart. Yeah, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mental, and the Lord God will bring mental terror and depression to his enemies to prepare them for conquest. That’s why people come to faith a lot of times. God takes away their courage. He crushes them in his hand. They become humble. They throw off their stupid idolatries that they know are useless at that point in time. And God brings the gospel and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ to them.

We should expect that in the people that we end up testifying to or witnessing to about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then sixth: little warrior insect allies.

“I’ll send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hittite, the Hivite, and the Hivite from amongst you.”

He doesn’t need big huge animals to rush in—dinosaur, little—the smallest little things, little hornets. Maybe they’re big, I don’t know, but they’re insects. He can use insects to affect his purposes in driving out of people. You know, people got scared about the honeybees. Where did they all go? And I don’t know if some of that stuff is real or the news media trying to scare you about this, that, or the other thing, but God does those kind of things. He removes and causes the appearance of bees according to his command.

And what he here assures us is that the very forces of nature itself—under his control. The psychology of man and the forces of nature are being used by him to conquer the world in the name and via the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the spirit.

Seventh: the sovereign grace of a gradual conquest.

“I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts 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.”

Matthew Henry’s commentary says this: “The wisdom of God is 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 under our guard and in a continual dependence upon God. Corruptions are thus driven out of the heart of God’s people, not all at once, but by little and little. The old man is crucified and therefore dies slowly.”

“God and his providence often delays mercies because we are not ready for them yet.”

Richard Viguerie wrote a book years ago, *The New Right We’re Ready to Lead*. And I thought we ought to have a book, *The Christian Right We’re Not Ready to Lead*. We don’t know how to do anything. This was true 20 years ago. It’s not much better today. It’s somewhat better. There is more of a Christian competence that’s beginning to develop. But can we run the sanitation? If God affected overnight, brought Christians into control of running the culture overnight, can we run the water plants? Can we run the sanitation facilities? Could we even be as good as judges as some of the pagan judges that God uses in the civil courts? Do we have a knowledge?

I remember a guy years ago I met and he was convinced that only there were only three men in the world—E.L. Hebden Taylor, T. Robert Ingram, and R.J. Rushdoony—who could rebuild a Christian culture because the rest of the church and Christians were incapable of knowing how to run things. Well, I don’t think it’s that bad. But clearly, you know, first of all, this text tells us that God is not revolutionary. We’re not revolutionary. His program—the normal kingdom program—is, you know, first the seed and then the plant grows up and then there’s the ear and then there’s the full grain in the ear or whatever it is—it’s a gradual growth of the kingdom.

And this tells us number one that God uses pagans to subdue wild animals. He uses pagans to conduct systems for our well-being. It’s part of the sovereign grace control of God to use his very enemies to affect order for his people. Now, I know the wild animals are coming back. That’s what happens when people move away from obedience. But the point is we should be thankful for the what we would call the common grace that God exhibits in having, you know, pagans able to understand the world and how to do things with it.

And now secondly, we don’t get overconfident and we don’t get listless with that. We want to eventually be the people that will do that even better than them and to learn from some of that stuff. To do that our kids are going to have to go to colleges where they control the educational activities. You can send your kid to college to learn about water sanitation plants. That’s okay. Even if the guy’s not a Christian, he’s being used in the sovereign grace of God to provide clean water for us and to take care of the dirty stuff.

So, gradualism is the program of God. We should be thankful for that. We should not expect—we’ll reconquer the world gradually through the application of the faith and the small details of life, preparing us more and more for the day when we’re able to run more generally the societies of large urban populations. So, we’re just not ready to do it yet. That’s okay. And it’s okay that the Lord God sovereignly controls even those in opposition to Christ for the well-being, for the gracious acts of his toward us, to keep the wild animals at bay and to keep the clean water flowing.

Eight: Abrahamic covenantal material blessings.

Genesis 15:18—he says you’re going to conquer north, south, east, and west. This is Abrahamic language, from the Abrahamic covenant. The law in obedience to the law is not seen as an opposition to the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is fulfilled to those who use the law wisely and righteously under the control of the Holy Spirit, and as a result will receive the blessings of the four points of the earth.

And this is what Jesus said, right? Ends of the earth disciple all of the nations. And these are material blessings.

Third: concluding point—a concluding warning against snares.

This verse that tells us that we should be careful not to fall into the idolatries of our particular situation. The concluding verse of the text which says: “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.”

So we return to first covenant, first commandment and second commandment language, and it’s a reiteration that the first commandment is absolutely vital in terms of conquest—from keeping us while we do missional work from becoming conformed to the spirit of the age and the people that we’re properly trying to love and serve in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s why I like Love Inc. It’s benevolent activities in the name of Christ. It’s not benevolent activities in the name of humanism. I heard of a pastor recently. He’s writing a book and it’s against bullying in the public schools and he can’t include any scripture citations or reference to Christianity. He’s trying to make moral children in the context of the public schools. And the end result is he’s in danger of being snared by a moralistic humanism that’s quite separate from the obligation to serve and to encourage growth in children and adults in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Joshua repeats this same truth. Joshua 23:12 and 13: “Or else, if indeed you do go back and cling to the remnant of these nations, these that remain among you, and make marriages with them, and go into them, and they to you, know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations from before you, but they shall be snares and traps to you, and scourges on your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from the good land which the Lord your God has given you.”

Matthew Henry, or maybe this is Calvin, says: “By familiar intercourse with idolaters their dread and detestation of the sin would wear off. They would think it no harm in compliment to their friends to pay some respect to their gods, and so by degrees would be drawn into the fatal snare. This is Matthew Henry—note those that would be kept from bad courses must keep from bad company. It’s dangerous living in a bad neighborhood. Other sins will be our snares if we look not well to ourselves. We must always look upon our greatest danger to be from those that would cause us to sin against God. Whatever friendship is pretended, that is really our worst enemy that draws us away from obeying him.”

Yes, our job is to conquer in the name of Jesus Christ. Yes, yes, we’re to embrace people in the context of this city in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to seek to get them to cast off their idols, to burn their books of enchantments as they did at Ephesus, and to come worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, we have a missional perspective to take into the context of Portland. And yes, we don’t want to throw up big barriers at the doors of the church that would keep out the very people that we’re seeking to ministry. And we don’t want to throw up big barriers in personal conversations and activities with others that would be barriers to accomplishing this job we have of conquering the world. We’re not in a holding position and there’s a ditch in that direction—where things people do or don’t want to be around them, we think it’s always bad to have bad friends and all this stuff, and we’re going to say “bad company will corrupt good morals.” We have all those warnings, and so one ditch is to just cloister up, to wait it out in an amillennial sort of fashion and just hang out that way. That’s a ditch. We cannot go there. We will not go there.

We will talk about this again next week when we talk about tattoos. But the other ditch is that as we seek to become more missional in our own personal lives, in our families, and our communities, and with this church and other churches we may plant—be warned of this last segment of Exodus. The last bit of the case law warns us to be very careful that indeed there is a truth to the fact that bad company corrupts good morals. When you start to treat their idols as something other than idols, when you stop having a desire to get them to go away from their sins, you are no longer being a friend to that person. Really, you’re harming them as well.

We talked a few weeks ago about the woman taken in adultery and Jesus being a friend of sinners. Well, that’s half the story. But of course, the other part is that in that story, he commands the woman to go and sin no more. He does not—there is no evidence of long-term friendly relationships with people that clung to their idols or to their sins. There’s no evidence of that.

Yes, we want to embrace people who find themselves bound in various sinful patterns. Yes, we want to reach them, love them with the grace of Christ. Yes, we want to reconquer the world through the proclamation of the great news that God has sent his son as an offering for sin to remove the sin of the world. And that’s wonderful news. But we must never allow that perspective to cause us to somehow get soft on urging people to repent of their idolatries and to move away from them.

Yeah. Friend with converted sinners, friendly to sinners to the end that they may put off their sin and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we fail to do that, then we’re no help to them. If we don’t convince them that what they’re engaged in is an idolatry and rebellion against their creator and against themselves, we’ve not helped them. And further, we haven’t helped ourselves because we then start thinking like the world.

How do you think liberals got there? It wasn’t because they decided one day to forget their Bibles. It was an overemphasis in one ditch without a reminder that the first word is a call to conquer through the gospel, but it’s also a call to conquer by means of us personally cleaving to the God of scriptures and not being drawn off into other forms of idolatry.

Only if we do that are we any good to this culture in which we live. Only if we do that do we bring the water and bread of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for the warning of the text. We thank you for the great blessings of the text. We thank you, Father, for the huge movement of this text, warning about psychological judgments against your foes and the use of even nature itself, and then reminding us of your great blessings of physical sustenance, health, long life, and lots of kids to the culture that honors the Lord Jesus Christ.

Make us that people. We desire to conquer the world in the name of Jesus Christ by cleaving to the first word. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.