Victory by Faith | Sunday, May 24, 2020 (Full Service)

Then we turned and went up the road to Bashan; and Og king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. And the Lord said to me, "Do not fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand... So the Lord our God also delivered into our hands Og king of Bashan, with all his people, and we attacked him until he had no survivors remaining... For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead... Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width, according to the standard cubit.

When a hard passage offends us, we can miss the Bible's greatest point: God wins our impossible battles by faith.

Remembering Ravi Zacharias

Before we begin our study today in Deuteronomy chapter 3, I want to acknowledge a few things. This last Tuesday, evangelist and apologist Ravi Zacharias died of cancer at age 74. As the Scriptures reveal in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope, but we do sorrow. I am grateful that Ravi is with Jesus. Psalm 16 declares, "In His presence is fullness of joy and at His right hand pleasures forevermore." Ravi is in the presence of our Lord, yet we—myself included—are sorrowful.

The name may not be familiar to you, but I began reading Ravi's books and listening to his lectures almost twenty years ago. Without exaggeration, my approach to the Scriptures and the way I preach them has been significantly affected by his writing and teaching. I began listening to his radio program, Let My People Think, in 2003, and I've heard probably hundreds of hours of his lectures. If you're not familiar with him, search for his podcast, and for a good summer read, consider his book Can Man Live Without God?

Ravi came to faith at age 17 after a suicide attempt. The words of Jesus in John 14:19, "Because I live, you also will live," forever changed his life. He found hope, peace, and meaning in Jesus Christ and spent the next 57 years imparting the same to others through the gospel. My theo-philosophical approach to Scripture is in many ways attributed to Ravi. I often say that any worthwhile worldview must have compelling and coherent answers to the basic questions of life: identity, purpose, origin, destiny, and morality. Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where do I go after this? What is right and wrong? I am wholly unashamed to say I learned the truth of these things from Ravi. As King David said in 2 Samuel 3:38, "A prince and a great man has fallen this day."

A Day for Trusting Christ Alone

Ravi is in the presence of Christ today because of those words he loved so much: "Because I live, you also will live." Jesus is alive, and we celebrate His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. This last Thursday was the celebration of the ascension of Jesus. For 2,000 years the church has partaken of the supper the Lord instituted the night before His crucifixion, and we will continue until He comes again.

Today, May 24th, is also an important day in church history. One of my favorite figures is the founder of the Methodist church, John Wesley—I'm such a fan that my youngest son's middle name is Wesley. Wesley lived in 18th-century England and is, in my opinion, one of the most important Christians of the last thousand years. On May 24th, 1738, 282 years ago today, he experienced a radical transformation by the power and grace of God. Though I believe he was already a Christian, what happened that day was a sacred waypoint. The 35-year-old Wesley had been about to give up his work as a minister. He described it in his journal:

In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading from Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Some of you watching need to trust in Christ alone for salvation, too. Your heart has been cold and hard, and you've been fighting the work God desires to do in your life. You cannot answer in any meaningful way the question of identity, purpose, origin, destiny, or morality. You feel the weight of your sins and lack the assurance and peace found in Christ. Today is the day. Trusting in Christ is not complicated: admit you are a sinner, believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins and paid the penalty, and confess your sins to God, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior. If that's you, bow with me and follow this simple prayer:

Dear Jesus, I pray that You would come into my life and forgive me of my sins. I recognize my need for You. I recognize that I've come short of Your perfect standard in Your law. I've broken Your law. But I pray that You would forgive me on the basis of what Your Son Jesus did on the cross. I thank You that You have loved me and given Yourself for me. I pray that You would come into my life and forgive me of my sin, in Jesus' name. Amen.

If you prayed that today, send us a message at commit.lifeconnection.com. We'd love to send you a Bible and help you begin your walk with Jesus.

A Hard Passage and the Judgment of God

We are studying through the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible. Moses is reminding the children of Israel of their recent history just before they cross the Jordan to take the land promised to them some 400 years earlier. Last week we dealt with the destruction of the Amorite people of Heshbon and their king Sihon—a challenging passage because it offends the sensibilities of people in our time. As we read in Deuteronomy 2:33–35:

And the Lord our God delivered him over to us; so we defeated him, his sons, and all his people. We took all his cities at that time, and we utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city; we left none remaining. We took only the livestock as plunder for ourselves, with the spoil of the cities which we took.

Understandably, these words are a stumbling block to many. Such passages are ridiculed by skeptics as genocide texts, and Christians are made to feel ridiculous for following a "warmongering" God. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins calls the God of the Old Testament "the most unpleasant character in all of fiction"—a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser. As a result, many Christians have distanced themselves from the Old Testament. One Christian writer refers to passages like these as "skeletons in God's closet."

How do we reconcile this with the commands just three chapters later in Deuteronomy 5: "You shall not murder" and "You shall not steal"? Here's the problem: the objections to these passages are often distractions from the point. Do we object, by 21st-century standards, to the way the Amorites were dealt with? Yes. And if the Amorites were peaceful innocents, the way God and Israel dealt with them would seem wrong. But in ridiculing these events, we miss something important.

God Judges All Who Stand Against Him

Because of sin, God judged the whole world in Genesis 6–9; the instrument of His judgment was a flood. He judged Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19; the instrument was fire from heaven. He judged Egypt in the opening chapters of Exodus; the instrument was plagues. Here He judges the Amorites; the instrument was the people of Israel. Then He will judge the Canaanites in Joshua, again using Israel. We have a hard time with the instrument He chooses, but this is what the Bible describes.

And later God judged Israel for their own sin—using Assyria in the time of Isaiah and Babylon in the time of Jeremiah. Going forward in Deuteronomy, God repeatedly warns Israel that He will judge them if they rebel. As Deuteronomy 8:19–20 says:

Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the Lord your God... I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God.

I bring this up to make a simple point: God will judge all who stand in enmity against Him. We may not like it, but it is what the Bible teaches. Romans 1:18 says, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Your objections to God's judgment might make you feel vindicated for your moral stand against Him, but they won't vindicate you on the day of judgment, "as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment."

The Old Testament presents the justice and judgment of God without mercy, and none of us like that image. All of us want and desire mercy. When we are presented with judgment without mercy, we are tempted to self-righteously indict God as unjust while justifying ourselves as the righteous ones. It makes us feel better—but it distracts from the point. God will judge all. That means you. One day you will stand before God, and your self-justifications won't save you.

The Greater Point: Victory by Faith

This passage teaches us something far more important than a lesson about judgment, and God's judgment of the Amorites can keep us from seeing it. We begin reading in Deuteronomy 3:

Then we turned and went up the road to Bashan; and Og king of Bashan came out against us... And the Lord said to me, "Do not fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand"... So the Lord our God also delivered into our hands Og king of Bashan, with all his people, and we attacked him until he had no survivors remaining. And we took all his cities at that time... sixty cities, all the region of Argob... all fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, besides a great many rural towns... For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead... nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width.

The destruction of Og teaches us that God will judge all who stand against Him. But Israel's victory over Og teaches us something of greater importance: God overcomes our overwhelming enemies by faith.

In the light of what offends our modern sensitivities, we are blinded to some crazy details. Don't miss what this text says. Israel—a bunch of former slaves, shepherds who had been camping in the desert for forty years, with virtually no weapons, no military training, and no strategy we can detect—overcame and destroyed King Og, a giant, along with his sixty high-walled fortified cities and many rural towns. How is that even possible?

Thirty-eight years before this victory, the people of Israel were too fearful to go up into the promised land because it was filled with fortified cities and giants. They knew there was no way in their own strength to overcome such overwhelming enemies. The task was insurmountable. Humanly speaking, there was no possible way Israel could hope for victory. But then we read in Deuteronomy 3:1–3:

And the Lord said to me, "Do not fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and all his land into your hand"... So the Lord our God also delivered into our hands Og king of Bashan, with all his people, and we attacked him until he had no survivors remaining.

God faithfully delivers victory to those who trust in Him. We can be so distracted by something that bothers us that we miss the main point of the whole Bible. Yes, God will judge all who stand in rebellion against Him—just as He judged the world with a flood, Sodom and Gomorrah with fire, King Sihon and Heshbon, King Og and Bashan, the Canaanites, and even His own people Israel. But God will act and faithfully deliver victory to those who trust Him in faith. He gives mercy and grace to those who put their trust in Him for salvation. Don't miss the bigger point of the Bible because you are fixated on the points of the story that stumble you.

Closing Prayer

Father God, there are challenging passages in the Scriptures—things that we have a hard time with, especially as we see them from our perspective in the year 2020. But I pray that You would open our ears, our minds, and our hearts, that we would not harden our hearts, and that we would hear what You by Your Spirit are trying to speak to us from the text. Lord, there will be a day of judgment. As Hebrews 9 says, it is appointed for all men to die once and then comes judgment. We will all stand before You. But Jesus, You went to the cross and died in our place, so that as we trust in Your finished work, You are our substitute, and we can find mercy and grace in You. In the same way that messengers were sent with a word of peace to the people of Bashan and Heshbon, I pray that we would receive Your word of peace through the gospel, readily turn to You in faith, and experience Your saving grace. God, do a work in our hearts, and help us not to be stumbled or distracted from the truth of what Your Word teaches. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.