Victory by Faith | Sunday, May 24, 2020

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... 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.

When God's victory seems impossible, faith sees what offends our sensibilities give way to the faithfulness of God.

Remembering Ravi Zacharias

Before we begin our study in Deuteronomy 3, I want to acknowledge a few things. This last Tuesday, evangelist and apologist Ravi Zacharias died of cancer at age 74. As Scripture reveals 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. The Bible declares in Psalm 16 that in His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore.

The name Ravi Zacharias may not be familiar to you, but I began reading his 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 have listened to probably hundreds of hours of his lectures. I would highly recommend searching 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"—changed Ravi's life. He found hope, peace, and meaning in Jesus Christ, and he spent the next 57 years imparting the same to others through the gospel.

If you've followed my teaching for any length of time, you'll notice the influence of Zacharias. I often say that any worldview, to be worthwhile, must have compelling and coherent answers to the basic philosophical questions of life: identity, purpose, origin, destiny, and morality. If your worldview does not answer the questions—Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where do I go after this? What is right and wrong?—in a compelling and coherent manner, then your philosophy is lacking. I am wholly unashamed to say I learned the truth of these things from Ravi. As David said in 2 Samuel 3:38, "A prince and a great man has fallen this day."

The Living Christ and John Wesley

Ravi is in the presence of Christ today because of the reality of those words of Jesus 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, May 21st, was the celebration of the Ascension. In celebration of the continuing life of Christ, the church has partaken for the last 2,000 years of the supper the Lord instituted the night before His crucifixion. Next Sunday we will celebrate communion together, even at home, so today between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. you can drive through the church parking lot and we will provide you with the bread and the cup.

Today, May 24th, is also an important day in church history. One of my favorite figures is John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church—so much so 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; his life and work have fundamentally altered the Western world for the last 250 years.

On May 24, 1738—282 years ago today—Wesley experienced a radical transformation by the power and grace of God. Though I believe he was a Christian prior to this, what happened that day was a sacred waypoint. The 35-year-old Wesley was about to give up on his ministry. He described it this way: "In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading 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."

A Call to Trust Christ Alone

Some of you watching this morning need to trust in Christ alone for salvation. Your heart has been cold and hard, and in some way you've been fighting the work God desires to do in your life. You cannot answer in any meaningful way the questions of identity, purpose, origin, destiny, or morality. You feel the weight of your sins, and you don't have the assurance and peace found in Christ. Today is the day to trust in Christ alone and ask Him to take away your sins.

Trusting in Christ is not complicated. First, you admit that you are a sinner. Second, you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and paid the penalty. Third, you confess your sins to God through prayer and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. If that's you, bow with me and follow along:

"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, God, that You would forgive me on the basis of what Your Son Jesus did on the cross. Thank You that You have loved me and given Yourself for me. Come into my life and forgive me of my sin. In Jesus' name, amen."

If you did that today, send us a message at commit.lifeinconnection.com. We would love to be in contact with you, send you a Bible if you don't have one, and help you begin your walk with Jesus.

A Challenging Passage in Context

We are studying through Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, and last week we were in a very challenging passage dealing with the beginning of Israel's conquest of the Promised Land. Moses is reminding the children of Israel of their recent history, just before they cross the Jordan to take possession of the land promised some four hundred years before. Last week's passage dealt with the destruction of the Amorite people of Heshbon and their king Sihon.

This is a challenging passage because it offends the sensibilities of people in our time. In Deuteronomy 2:33–35 we read:

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. Skeptics ridicule passages like this as genocide texts, and Christians are made to feel ridiculous for following a so-called war-mongering God. In his book 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; a capriciously malevolent bully." As a result, many Christians have distanced themselves from the Old Testament. One Christian writer even refers to passages like these as "skeletons in God's closet."

God Will Judge All Who Stand Against Him

I grant at the outset that these passages are challenging. How do we reconcile what I just read with the commands just three chapters later in Deuteronomy 5:17, 19—"You shall not murder" and "You shall not steal"? The problem is that objections to these passages often distract us from the point. Do we, by 21st-century standards, object to the way the Amorites were dealt with? Yes. And if the Amorites were peaceful innocents, then the way God and Israel dealt with them would seem wrong.

But in ridiculing these events we miss some important things. Most importantly, we miss that because of sin, God judged the whole world in Genesis 6–9; the instrument was a flood. He judged Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 with fire from heaven. He judged Egypt with plagues. Here He judges the Amorites, and the instrument is the people of Israel. Then He will judge the Canaanites, again using Israel. We have a hard time with the instrument He chooses, but this is what the Bible describes.

Later God will judge Israel for their sin—using Assyria in Isaiah's time and Babylon in Jeremiah's time. In fact, at least four passages in Deuteronomy warn Israel of this. For example, Deuteronomy 8:19–20:

Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, 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.

The simple point is this: God will judge all who stand in enmity against Him. We may not like this point, but it is what the Bible teaches. We may not like how the Bible pictures God's judgment, or who it describes as worthy of judgment, but like it or not, that is what it 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 might make you feel vindicated for your moral position against God, but they won't vindicate you on the day of judgment, "for 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. So when we are presented with the judgment of God without mercy, we are tempted to self-righteously indict Him 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.

Victory by Faith

But this passage teaches us something far more important than a lesson about judgment. Fixating on God's judgment of the Amorites can keep us from seeing a much greater point. We begin reading in Deuteronomy 3, where Israel attacks Og king of Bashan until he has no survivors remaining, taking sixty fortified cities with high walls, gates, and bars, besides a great many rural towns. Og was a giant—the remnant of the giants—whose iron bedstead was nine cubits long and four cubits wide.

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

In the light of what offends our 21st-century sensitivities, we are blinded to some really crazy details. Don't miss what this text says. Israel—a bunch of former slaves, a group of shepherds who had been camping in the desert for forty years, with virtually no weapons and no military training or strategy we can detect—overcame and destroyed King Og, a giant, his sixty high-walled fortified cities, and many rural towns. How is that even possible?

Thirty-eight years prior to this victory, the people of Israel were 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 come to Deuteronomy 3:1–3:

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.

God faithfully delivers victory to those who trust in Him. We can be so distracted by something in the Bible that bothers us that we miss the main point. 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 when they rebelled. But God will also act and faithfully deliver victory to those who trust in Him by faith. He will give 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 so fixated on the points of the story that stumble you.

Closing Prayer

Father God, there are challenging passages in the Scriptures—things that, when we come to them like this passage in Deuteronomy 3 and the previous one in chapter 2, 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, minds, and 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 one day. But Jesus, You went to the cross and died in our place, so that as we trust in Your finished work, You become our substitute, and we 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. Do a work in our hearts, and help us not to be stumbled or distracted and kept from the truth of what Your Word teaches. Open our ears and our hearts to receive from You. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.