W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume What is New

SECTION  2

Deuteronomy, the Prodigious Prophecy through Moses:

and what went with it ...

The Call of the Covenant

and the Thrall of Misconception

The Power of Enactive Providence,

and Instructive Parallels

Among the Nations Today

A Preliminary word from a Chapter below:

"Thus has Israel found in the Lord’s absence, through their disfaith,
what they formerly found through His presence, except in reverse!"

The following is taken from Grand Biblical Perspectives Chs. 3, 4, 5.

 Contents Page for Volume  

Chapter 3

Vision of Truth

and Vindication of Vision

Moses tells Israel by the Word of God

and History tells man to listen! 

Deuteronomy 32 Speaks,
Ahead of Time

Part I

 I  THE FIRST CONTRAST (32:1-15)

First, we learn that God is filled with righteousness, void of iniquity. He is THE ROCK (farewell Peter, the magic mock-up of Rome), and His work is perfect. The Rock NEEDS to have His work perfect. Man in his fallen estate is a mass of yearning, turning in the wrong direction, aspiring for the right, feeling doom in the wrong, missing the point, being out of step with spirituality, going from  God, casting longing eyes in His direction, inventing gods to short-circuit the problem, using force to put their ways into the mouths of the distressed, in order to increase their fallen power, envies and idolatries, cunning and nobility, self-sacrifice and sacrifice of all to himself, that the muddle is like a mountain inverted, obscuring the sun.

It is well that God is the Rock, not the Peter who was rocked by trouble, and had again and again to be hauled out, whether from the sea where he was drowning, or that spiritual sea where he had already gone down twice, till Christ looked at him, and he repented with piercing grief for his weakness and folly. It is well that Peter is that stone, in the Greek, manifestly CONTRASTED with the Rock, another word meaning living rock. This contrast is readily apparent in our hiking, where fine stones attract, but huge masses of rock, embedded as one in the hillside or the mountain surround, inspire with their greatness.

The Rock is Christ, as I Corinthians 10 advises us, and the appeal to any other is merely a symbol of what has already been rocked! Christ, seen by faith and received in reality, sound and sure, steadfast and unchangeable, Lord of love and author of comfort, exhibition of the invisible God, and His only begotten Son: HE is the rock! He is the very Prophet of whom Moses spoke, who would fulfil his own testimony, the One to whom all must turn (Deuteronomy 18). Then as now, it is the Lord who is the Rock. Small wonder, man being fallen, that we next find in this passage in Deuteronomy, the contrast between the Lord and man in his own ways, at 32:5.

Then we find that so vast is the corruption of THEMSELVES by mankind in general, by Israel in particular, that they are "not His children." God is a SPIRIT, and whatever promises He may make will never contravene His insistence on a new birth, in Christ, a new life and a new Spirit in the heart, for new features and focus, with renewed strength (Ephesians 3:16). God does not require form (Isaiah 1), but FACT. He is the God of facts and acts (Acts 4:19-20), and no one who does not enter the home in Christ, need bother about attacking the windows. There is one door (John 10:9), and entry through this is final and glorious, ensuring salvation and keeping. Using pictures of doors does nothing, and inventing them is worse yet.

This teaching about man as such NOT being the children of God, applied to the unbelieving nation of Israel,  is the message of Hosea. Yet here, in the end, there is the glorious grace of redemption, the only way to restore anything of mankind, and those who receive Him, thus are restored to the nominal place of the race, but now in reality, to that from which they rushed in riotous seizures, amidst judgments which though restrained, at last became catastrophic.

From all of this, the Lord asks them to reflect on former times "Remember the days of old!" Ask father and elder, and realise that God in early history appointed places for the nations, boundaries, and of these He gave one to Israel (32:7-9). Although the Jewish race started in adverse circumstances, God not only took 'him', but "encircled him, He instructed him, he kept him as the apple of His eye."

Tenderness was vast.

"As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings,
taking them up, Carrying them on its wings,
So the LORD alone led him, and there as no foreign god with him.
He made him ride on the high places of the earth."

"But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked ... You are obese!"

There was the travail of tenderness, the amoury of amour, the patience of watchful parenthood, the empathy with strivings to learn, the comfort of power to assist, wrapped in the love that inspires effort and contrives comfort. But what happened when the strength grew and the bird could at last fly ?

Self-will, injustice, self-preservation, self-regard soon led to direct rebellion in the complacency of spiritual obesity, fatness of heart, a bulging spirit.  

 II  THE CRUDE DEVELOPMENT AND THE REFINED REBUKE (32:16-21)

What then ? "Then he forsook God who made him, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods, with abominations they provoked Him to anger." How abominable are the devices instead of deity, with which mankind loves to populate his fallen heart! "They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals"

They carried on with infamous and imperious innovations, making gods as they went, as if their memories were atrophied. What were these human constructions which to this day make up the vast types of religion which appal the earth, and lead to endless violence ? Naturalistic gods, gods of war, gods of splendour, reflecting childish desires, atheistic gods of ideological illusion and strutting assertion, making man god to utter truth while denying the God who alone could give it: all these came on the scene.

Without the spirit of Christ, man is ready to dupe and be duped, to deceive and be deceived, and lacking spiritual power, employs armies of insurgents, whether from sects or with guns, to solace sin and extend its domain. Small wonder God was wrath (cf. Romans 1:17ff.), and He is provoked in no less way to this very day in nations like the USA and Australia, like those of Europe, who have known better but done worse, as by others who simply use force to make false prophets rule, as in Iran and other virtual dictatorships at the spiritual level (cf. More Marvels ...Ch. 4). The Rock of salvation is less than slightly esteemed, and folly forces a faith which being of the hart, is not relevant to such imperiousness. .

So has man in masses, followed the errors of early Israel as accounted in Deuteronomy 32.

Whatever it is, they think of it, as a child its dummy, new gods, new arrivals, gods they did not know (Muhammad coming around 600 A.D. was millenia too late with the 'solution', which could not come by relying on the Old Testament prophets, as he did for forerunners, since these wholly contradicted his teaching (cf. Isaiah 53).

God proceeds to deal with Israel in Deuteronomy, and declares:  "Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful." The child forgets its mother, and man his Father. If it were a car, it would be like forgetting the designer, the draftsmen, the conferences, the engineering expertise that preceded its application, the co-operation of mathematician and scientist, of industrialist and work-relation specialists, of testing and refinement that led to its creation: it would remember only its power and the road! This sort of attitude: It is not mere folly; it is an atrocity against reality which has then its parallels within the race, as they dissect and dismember each other, slaughtering as if cattle, and killing as if murder were a way of life.

Anything will do, as long as it is not true. Such has been the SA Government's approach in educational curriculum, since 1988, in the field of science and religion. Defining religion as void of testable truth, and worthy of abstract reverence, but of no place in empirical reality at all, it then miraculously knows all this, presumably by guesswork and glory. Of God who begot them, they are unmindful, filling youthful minds with fables as foretold (II Timothy 4:4). This is parallel to the early falls and to Israel's in particular, where myths substituted for reality, and symbol for power. Hence they fell. 

III  DESERTS AND DESIRE (32:22-29)

With no response but heel-kicking in mindless oblivion of fact, they inherited the ruins of rambunction; for "when the Lord saw it, He spurned them." Yet doubtless they complain.

Complain ? It was "because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters." So the Lord resolves to hide His face from them. This is that awful situation when "your heavens like iron and  your earth like bronze" (cf. Leviticus 26:19). A fire which will "burn to the lowest hell" is incited (Deuteronomy 32:22).  Plague and pestilence disadorn the ordered landscape while the bounty of the Creator is despised. As with Egypt, but here with more gradual impact as appeal after appeal was launched, and as an expression of the curse given after the early fall of mankind, so does this whirl of calamity traverse the nation. That is what God foretold and did.

For this perennial rebelliousness and gross abuse of privilege, justice, wisdom and grace, this treachery, as if spending divinely given capital on palpable disgrace and obvious untruth, results at last would come, were foretold, and came. Thus catastrophe, as scheduled for such riots against reason and righteousness alike,  commenced her stolid walk in their midst. As they were indifferent, so would indifference seem to scorn them, each in its turn, like a dance.

Moreover, they were forewarned!

Indeed, their obliteration from memory itself was an appealing option: would God simply destroy them (Deuteronomy 32:26) ? Yet God does not desire man to exalt himself, as if this or that people or nation were powerful, and this  were Israel's reason for weakness and defeat, as if man were the nemesis, rather than sin! "Void of counsel," yet Israel is still contemplated by the Lord with sorrow. "Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end." Pity pours out like a lake set free; but the citizens are vanished. No one stops to drink. They are on vacation from the Lord.  

IV  FUNDAMENTALS OF FACT (32:30-32)

When it comes to religion, exactly as in the SA case noted, they ignore the practical realities of God, sunk in symbols, myths and ignorance. HOW, God asks, "could one chase a thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had surrendered them!" Just as Australian education, according to the nation's PM, has lost track of how it was constructed, the ways in which it was founded and hence what it is all about, as if schools were shielding from fact rather than strengthening them in these areas, so has man forgotten still more ultimately the God of creation.

Is it imagined that the vast and prodigious deliverances of Israel, from Egypt on, were some sort of statistical nightmare ? as if a vast factory assembly plant just strolled up one day and began 'creating'! It is no longer realised that these victories of early Israel (like the more recent ones - cf. SMR Ch. 9) were foretold, enabled, prophetically conducted and powerfully fulfilled. Peoples who fell, having forsaken the Lord, were in turn forsaken, but He aided Israel. As to this land, it is like a vine of bitter grapes,  and "their wine is... the cruel venom of cobras." Such is the tenor of the Lord's charge, and it applies to this day, and not to Israel only, but to many who in person or in populations, turn the back on righteousness and smack the face of Truth. 

Ingratitude vies with self-fulfilment, and power-hunger with voidance of creation ties.  They have forgotten their Rock. The number of times in which the Lord delivered Protestant England with the Bible as its officially recognised book of Wisdom at coronation time, from the remarkable victory over the Spanish Armadas (yes there was more than one such), to the win in the Seven Years War, and a remarkable turn-around, Waterloo where Wellington escaped unhurt in his endless encouragements to many units on the front, and French Marshals failed in liaison^*1, to Dunkirk, meeting that other 'Napoleon', the German one this time, Adolf Hitler, on no less a scale, back and forth: it  has been prodigious.

Yet England has turned towards secularism and symbolism, formalism and an unknown destiny in Europe^*1A.

Unbowed in martial conflict, it still bows in cultural confusion and mist! The chunnel is only a funnel, and Europe is pouring into this drifting land, its demeaning indifference and vague relativism, already ordering once Protestant Britain into new immoral infamies^*2, as if the dictator had won after all! There are spiritual battles far more imposing and important than military one; for when the heart is gone, what use are the legs and thighs!

That is made clear officially, as to the EU, they do not know where they are going. It is this which is indicated in their aversion from religious statement and commitment to a common destiny undefined, on the other, a cultural adventure, in the preliminary rejections and debate, and in the result in  a version of their Constitution.  and begins to fall. Gone is the reality of the basic Rock in the national affairs. While the British Empire has gone, much more importantly, so has the living scheduling of the Christian faith as any clear authorised guidance for the nation. Now the big three false prophecies seek to find their place, one, Romanism beginning to fail and not at all honoured by the EU in its Constitution, in line with the prophecy of Revelation 17^*3, one seeking to intimidate as before, by irrelevant force, in itself showing the folly of its militant posture even in the Koran*4, and the third, though being eclipsed, yet seeking a formal face in a merely brutalised China, mouthing the words but contradicting them in its actions.

The world has no more cushion, but awaits the antichrist, who will take by surprise all of the aspirants, of whom the world is not a little weary in their vile extremes, whether now or earlier or both, as he exalts humanity in his own self, and his own self in the ruin that was once a man. This is to come; and it is well to do better than Israel, which did NOT heed Moses' warning. The whole Gentile world is warned (SMR pp. 644ff.).

Australia is basking in amazingly low unemployment, high wages, increased standard of material living, and scarcely can manage even to agree on a national water approach in the midst of a vast national challenge. South Australia talks of 25 years, or this or that number for leisurely water programs, as if afraid to protect the billions of dollars of capital in their State, by relatively small outlays, and to laugh while the future fulfils itself. It seems as though no trends were seen, like a mute Churchill, so that it begins to grow more like a land without little boats ... for the Dunkirks.

But the Lord has still the power and the pity, still yearns for His people, still implores them to consider their ways and not optimistically to minimise sin and judgment. They should not laugh in the face of reality, but consider the past of this nation, and of its Protestant mother country in terms of founding, and what has been the criterion of its call into being! (cf. Journey to God or Fantasy's Flight to the Infernal Ch. 7).

Back to the Book, that Bible which is the Book of the Lord, to the Christ, the Lord of the Book, to the Cross of sin cancellation, the path of pardon, to repentance, the door to faith, and to the resurrection as the greatest practical demonstration of the power of God, of all time, this mixed with the mountain of His mercy, like a paradise of glory.

Futile is non-faith; functional is faith; but necessary is the Lord as its object, without idols, without other books or boast! The body that Rome could not hold, Jerusalem could not sufficiently kill and history could not contain, spectre of atheism's nightmare, fulfilment of Bible's forecast, and that of the slain Messiah wrought into life, resurrected the very THIRD day specified^*5, following the crucifixion: it still haunts the huntsman for killing the Lord!

It is still the awakening that stings the conscience of those who still kill, in mind, in spirit, in ill-will, the knowledge of God to this day, as in Romans 1:17ff.. Millenia of warning from God, and what happens ? They CANNOT produce the corpse, and the Church, fulfilled and commissioned,  rushes like a torrent in the power of truth, vitalised by that stark fact of the royal resurrection (cf. I Corinthians 15:1-4. Romans 10:9, Luke 24), crown of His Messianic wonders, consummation of the thrust of precision and power which attended all  God's works, whether from heaven, or in Christ, on earth where healing and resurrection of such as Lazarus were the prelude to this movement from the gory to the glory of His power... ^*6.

Christ's resurrection was a test of truth, and He continued to attest (cf. Acts 1:1) in that very same irresistible power amid mercy and grace as the apostles proclaimed by the Spirit of God, with His gracious working to confirm, the very things that having happened. Thus they made abiding testimony to the love of God and the self-imposed bane of this world (cf.  Galatians 1).

Yet the nation of Israel, which scorned it, was dispersed for two millenia, Jerusalem itself destroyed as Christ in lamentation, foretold (Luke 19:42ff.). So has the positive thrived, while the negative waited its day of restoration (cf. Micah 7's poignant rehearsal of that time!).

It is life which flows and floods, not guards who insanely know what happened in their sleep (Matthew 28), who cannot keep a corpse; and it is life which penetrates to the heart of this earth; and if, reflected like sunlight from airplane paths lit across the skies, its saving impact is destroyed, yet it is merely the madness of self-destruction, mockery of meaning and tirade against truth that rejects it. God cannot be held in the puny power of dissident man, but remains in dynamic and directive power, which He shows in the majestic performance of His word, while He invites man to repent (Acts 2:23-24) into reality.

He could not do more: love is ever restrained. He has come in empathy, suffered in the grip of what is antipathy to His rule, that some might be found, becoming a sin sacrifice itself: fascination for the morbid, delight to the jurist, cleaning the follies which murdered Him with the same zeal that He ended the profane fear of death by breaking its ground, sin, in Himself, and rising in that eternal life which being His, is His to confer (Hebrews 2, I John 1:1-4, 5:11-13).

His word, written, inscribed and ineluctable,  through the gaunt history of the world in rejection and alienation, has continued to come to fulfilment without cease,  like waves striking on the shores of time, this world awaiting the convulsion of judgment.

That same biblical word rings true at every turn, phase and craze, in mercy and in hope, in the final cascade of judgments, like storm clouds relentlessly assembling, while man remorselessly proceeds to stir the skies with his follies, and frown in his faithlessness (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

All this He has done as He has moved in the times of the Gentiles, who have had the second innings for humanity, an innings nearing its terminus in encroaching darkness (cf. John 9:4).

Ah for that little but important nation of Israel, itself one of the testimonies to the truth of God's almighty word,  its city destroyed, then rebuilt, crowned with the abominable horror of a flase prophet's emblem, in the very Temple mount, which was to come, and is in itself a testimony of no mean import to the developments foretold in Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 2. It was left desolate as foretold (Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff.) with such lamentation by the Lord, just as He had lamented earlier in its history when judgment could no more be deferred (cf. Jeremiah 9, Isaiah 48), while truth told its tale, and mercy was rebutted with relish by a wayward people (as in Isaiah 30!).

Back to their land, Israel attests the near return of Christ (Luke 21:24), and not yet back to its Lord, it attests the convulsions to come (cf. Zechariah 12:10-13:1). These are both spiritual and martial (as in Micah 7:15ff., Ezekiel 38ff., Deuteronomy 32 cf. SMR Appendix A, It Bubbles ... Ch. 10). The all-encompassing hand of the Lord, is not weakened by the crucifixion, and continues in its resurrected power ^*6., death itself a mere remnant; for where guilt is removed on the Cross, death has no more power (cf. Hebrews 2).

Thus while death stalks, life rollicks, is grand in vitality and deep in love, filled with mercy and achieving its vast spiritual harvest in the souls of men, while the world totters and truth rules (John 10:10, 16:22, I Peter 1:5-8, 4:14).

Meanwhile, earnestly oblivious,  man in masses witlessly gloats over the despatch of God, while without any truth to find, in an imaginary world of reactions which excludes absolutely the power to know it, one in which he is felt to be a mere particle^*7  as he alogically tells it to us as he shuts the eyes that see, and the ears that hear, in order to shout about new gods, 'nature' and 'self' and 'evolution' and 'survival of the fittest', as if the power and the skill in this world's construction and life's array arose from fatuous and irrelevant phrases. He invents phrases and crazes, but never once does any experimental verification arise^*8; never once does information increase of its own free accord ^*9, never once does that series of irresolvable conundrums which leads to unending and lethal attacks by the partisans of this and that hypothesis of evolutionism, on each other; and never does there lack anything in resolving power and harmony of concept in the biblical faith, examinable at leisure, verified in continuity such that volumes are required merely to record it!^*10

Worship God! All else is fiasco. Act in faith; all else is futile. Act with reason; for God who made man made also his mind. Act in repentance: arrogance deserves the doom that Israel suffered, and humility is the option of life. Act to receive and follow Christ crucified and risen, for here alone are credentials that stand, and cannot be overthrown; and here is life that spurns the grave, life eternal (Romans 6:23, 5:15). It is free and its method of gift is free; it is the pathway of holiness, dealing with God (Isaiah 35:8).

 Parallel chapter, in part: Let God be God Ch. 4.

Next Chapter

 NOTES

*1

This point is strongly attested in the extensive account of the Battle of Waterloo to be found in Sir Edward Creasy's 1851 work, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, From Marathon to Waterloo.

Marshal Ney, suddenly and belatedly brought up from Paris to the front line, not only had little time to familiarise himself with the details of his new task and extensive army, which was to liaise with Napoleon, but despite the impassioned pleadings of one of his subordinates, did not relate at the right time, to the embattled emperor, continuing merely on his primary assignment.

This was almost as remarkable as Dunkirk. While many elements featured in this war, such as a detestation for the provocative imperialism and derring-do of Europe-infesting Napoleon, in striking parallel to the case of Hitler, always, behind the scenes, there are timings and episodes and events extraordinary which, superadded to the contest in context, can bring differing conclusion.

In this case, it assuredly helped to made the conclusion conclusive.

*1A

On this topic, see for example

The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God, the Bible True to Test Ch. 6.

 

 

*2

On the extent of Britain's fall, see Deserts and Desserts ... Ch.  6, with

The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God, the Bible True to Test Ch. 6,

Wake Up World! ... Ch. 3.

The world is currently convulsing. Terrorism, religiously speaking, is merely a flex of ancient muscles and hopeful aspirants, destroyers who want power they did not create, to rob and grab it in religious settings, in which they may or may not believe (there was, for example,  real question about Saddam Hussein's Moslem convictions, but little about his parade in the precincts of power, wherever it was). Its falsity is shown in the irrelevance of force to faith, in the midst of its 'faith' type alleged orientation, as in its failure for any kind of verification.

The Moslem like the rest, fail having no background in fact to demonstrate the claims, whether in book, or in sufficiently early arrival of the book, or in the testability of the book. All we see is the failure of what it does specify in terms of the Almighty, and in ardent contest, reminding one of that of Pharaoh in Egypt of old, with the word of God as recorded in the Bible (Exodus). Israel as Mahathir of Malaysia so well pointed out, has had a remarkable triumph in continuing unruined before the myriad Moslem forces for so long (cf. His Time is Near  Ch. 10).

 This is as it had to be, in the face of WHATEVER forces, after its return, as clearly and repeatedly biblically predicted (SMR Ch. 9). It is as useless to seek to have people believe by faith, because of bombs, what is failed in test and in testability except where power lacks and cries to the Allah fail for so long, precisely as shown in the prophecies of the Bible, as to hack off their heads, and seek to instruct them.

The big three false prophecies with papacy, Marx and Muhammad leaders in them, like the three hopping frogs coming from the mouth of the false prophet, seen in Revelation 16,   account in population and formal terms,  for nearly half the globe of this cursed planet, in which the Gospel shines like relief from cancer, through ONE ONLY operation, that of God! (Galatians 1, Romans 1-3).

*3

On this biblical prediction concerning the three, see Overflight in Christ Ch. 3.

*4

On this see the following.

More Marvels ... Ch.     4, esp.  *4, 

SMR   pp. 829ff. ,

Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A

Lord of Life Ch.  3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages  ... Ch.   5; 

His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch.    4;     3

Stepping Out for Christ Ch.    9,  

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.    8 (in perspective), see also *1,

Divine Agenda Chs.    6,  3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran);

Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective,  in the former;  and in the latter,  futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in Christ Ch.   1 (and the Koran's musings).

 

*5

See SMR Ch. 6.

*6

See:

Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 5

News   85

Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 11

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ...    Ch. 1

Things Old and New Ch.  2, Excursion 2A

Ancient Words: Modern Deeds Ch.    8 (on resurrection and Lazarus, yes and both with Jerusalem); contrasting Greek bodily terms - GBG 2 ;

The Magnificence of the Messiah, Endnote 1, 

The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.  9,

Bible Translations 33  ,

Joyful Jottings  25

Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, Extended Endnote 2.
 

*7

See:

The gods of naturalism have no go! Ch. 36,

Repent or Perish Ch. 7,

Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13. 

 

*8

See SMR pp. 140ff., Ch. 2, TMR Ch. 1, and The gods of naturalism have no go!

*9

The Desire of the Nations Ch.  2 EPI

Little Things 3 (esp. *3),

Beauty of Holiness Ch.     4,

Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Chs.    3,  5

*10

See on contrasts in confusion in the naturalistic wake, such works as:

Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6,

TMR Ch. 1,

SMR Chs. 1-2.

The gods of naturalism have no go!

See on the biblical faith,  for example, the approx. quarter of one million word volumes:

       LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST; and with these,

REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy.

 

Contents Page for Volume  

Chapter 4

ENCORE to the FORE,

Deuteronomy 32 Nearer to Completing the Vision

while Man Completes His Plunge

and God Multiply Delivers His Saints! 

Part II

Deuteronomy 32:21,23,25,28-33

 V

RECAPITULATION and EXPANSION (32:21)

before the Finale

We now see more distinctly that there is a certain reciprocity in these national affairs.

Would Israel act shamelessly, like a possessed wife, rich in a fertility of foulness, moving to dishonour her 'husband', the Lord (in the imagery of covenant made) ?

As to the people, will they provoke their husband who is not other than God Almighty, with what is not-God! Will they worship, follow, obey, dally with that!

Will infinite purity of God be dropped for evil performance in polluted follies ? Very well. Let it be so, if that is the way of the will of this people, and if they so abuse the liberty God created to help display and  dispose the way of man. If they want to be wanton with their will, what then ? Is that their design with the design called man ? Is this their purpose ? or practice ? or both!

God has then a wise manoeuvre. They choose therefore not-God instead of God, a trifling mistake no doubt! Then HE will provoke them reciprocally. Perhaps then the terrible truth of their inward trauma may awaken their sunken souls from the precincts of the pit, before they are quite gone (cf. Psalm 83:16).

How will God provoke Israel to awaken it ? He will make it to be distressed by a 'foolish nation'. No more will they be prominent and dominant, as He does this to them. Did He not raise Jerusalem itself from obscurity, as they are reminded by Ezekiel (Ch. 16)! Now let a godless people, near in mouth, far in spirit from God (Isaiah 29:13), experience life alone, as traveling divorcees.

^"Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

'Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say,

              "Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem:

'Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

^'As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you; you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.

'No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you,
to have compassion on you;
but you were thrown out into the open field,
when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born.
And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood,
I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ ..."

There was Jerusalem in former times,  a city in Canaan, and there was Canaan into which belatedly Israel came, having failed through cowardice to enter the promised land, the step of faith  at the first (Numbers 14). When at last they did come, God did things for them in the purity of His principles and the mercy of His reclamation project, His covenant.

He made Jerusalem a name, a place of wonder! and what did they do ? They repeatedly imbibed  the foolish principles of the land and reverted to such practices as make of any race, little more than ruins away rubbish collection, like those who cut themselves or use drugs, as if wishing to defile their design or demolish their own construction.

In this prophecy through Moses, God foresees the nation returning to such polluted practices FREELY, as following gods that are not there, and ways that mock reality. In Egypt they were oppressed by such cultural wildness and such religious cruelty in a land of gods who were yet NOT GOD. Now however they are using the liberty of their own created spirits, to BIND themselves, as if self-made slaves to ignorance, vileness and untruth. Thus they now freely and of their own wills make NOT GOD into their god, and so provoke their Prince and their Partner.

VI 

BALANCING BRILLIANT FOLLY WITH WISE REBUKE

Pondering Principles

What more fitting, then than this, that He would provoke them by having a 'foolish nation', a people like those whom they so would willingly allow to seduce them spiritually, to RULE OVER THEM. If the true God is not good enough for such spiritual goons, a term not too strong for the characterisation God is giving to them for that day, then results flow!

What are these ? Then a non-nation, a trivial people will be divinely authorised and enabled to rule over them!  Their lovers will become their bosses. If they are so holy and wonderful that they even dare to TALK of religion (as is the custom today in much of the Gentile world), as if it were something worthy, when in all their words they defile the truth and trivialise reality, mere daring exhibitionists of rebellion, slithering with callow phrases like some new serpent: then let this wonder and acclaim be seen. Let it be seen where it really belongs by their having a clottish nation rule them. Let them have a people with a corrupt culture giving them orders, and being imperial at their expense! Let those who played the fool, work for the foolish, and those drawn to evil, now find evil their mentor, equipped with force.

 How much of this sort of situation, polluted princes ruling a polluted people has the nation of Israel in fact suffered, over its arduous and rebellious history, as Moses’ prediction has come to pass. In many ways remarkable, this people whose whole being and fame rested on One, the revealed and covenantal Lord - this all granted through His grace, yet quashed their glory, and acted acridly to wallow in sham and shame (cf. Isaiah 1).

Having violated their 'marriage' vows and played the spiritual harlot widely and wildly - this is the charge of the Lord, made especially definitive in Hosea and Ezekiel 16, 20 – what have they done ?  divorced Him ? Let their new 'partner' then rule with that vehemence and violence, that vileness and unfeeling folly which makes of Israel a dupe to folly. Yes, God, being provoked to 'jealousy' (that is, zealous concern and horror) by a polluted people, will provoke them to jealousy by a foolish nation. That is the imagery of ‘marriage’ violated; but its result is also the fact of history.  

HOW they despise the Lord and refuse to see virtue where it is! What will they now find following such perversity ? It is this. HOW the foolish nation will despise them, and fail to see anything to value in them! Israel will wonder how on earth such a low nation could control them. Such is the prediction, abundantly and often fulfilled, but where ? Why, in pogrom and death camp, in the Inquisition of Romanism, in the UN  of secularism and in the USSR, that nation  of covert religion (cf. News 97, 98).

Why ? It is because they have forsaken the Lord (32:15).

Indeed, as Moses foretold their future in this way, so did it unfold precisely (cf. Jeremiah 8:4-10). In fact, in Jeremiah 3, you see the poignant seeking for them of the Lord, despite all their wild spiritual eclecticism. To already lost Israel, God looked if by any means before the catastrophe they sought, they might be wooed back. Judah by that time was involved in unspeakable folly, so the Lord looked back to the scattered Israel, if by any means some might be found, from them, even at that lat date.

"Then the LORD said to me,

'Backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. God and proclaim these words towards the North and say,

"Return, backsliding Israel," says the LORD.
"I will not cause My anger to fall on you, for I am merciful," says the Lord. "I will not remain angry forever.
Only acknowledge your iniquity,
that you have transgressed against the LORD you God..."

Yet Israel was already lost, and few were found, and Judah was losing itself vigorously, and much was ruined, including Jerusalem and the city, soon after these dramatic pleas of Jeremiah. Thus was the divine foresight exhibited through Moses in Deuteronomy, abundantly fulfilled, the foreknowledge becoming history.

To this prediction, then we return, having tasted the history which hallowed it, in the nation which did not hallow the Lord, even the Rock of their salvation. It was He who had as a nation delivered them with dynamic divine, only to have them sup like a dog on its vomit, mingling freely with  the polluted cultures and religiosities of ignorance, which surrounded them, stricken with their own injustice, callowness, callousness, child burning rituals and inane gambits in gambolling about like Spring lambs never growing into sheep (cf. II Kings 17).

"The sword shall destroy outside, there shall be terror within
for the young man and virgin..." (Deuteronomy 32:25). This is the coming fruit of folly.

Consider what is recorded in the book of  Lamentations, as eventual outcome of this spirit of rebellion, where Jeremiah having in vain exhorted the nation to seek the Lord while there was time, despite their being at the very brink of judgment, surveys at last the broken ruin that was once Jerusalem in its glory, and the horrific cruelties which a 'foolish' victor nation imposed on them, heartless and merciless alike.

                           Which has been brought on me..."

Devastation replaced desire, and horror fed on unholiness till the explosion had to come;
and it came.

When you take dope, you get dopey. What do you expect! Spiritual dope attacks the very heart and soul of man, and makes him foolish beyond belief. Hence the protection both of mature understanding of reality and the Lord who made it, alike is blighted! Foolish things invite foolish nations, and attacks!

VII

THE DIVINE REMINDER

After reminding Israel of the miraculous powers of God who delivered them not once, but many times, and reasoning with them that this is not part of the natural universe but the supernatural and merciful provision of the redeeming God (32:28ff.), the Lord insists that there is another comparison to be made. ROCK ? Is this not what the LORD declared Himself to be for them, their Rock ? Is it not He in whom is NO iniquity who has this place! It is the divine salvation, not the human sinner situation, which can and does act for His people who know Him as the Rock! Romanism today as for centuries is as far astray as Israel in this, inventing a 'Peter' who never existed in history, to be the Rock, despite the fact that his very name, as also his own early action,  speaks the contrary lesson, as we saw last week.

God jogs their memory and their conscience. Why did nations, strong ones, fall before Israel when there was war, even though Israel appeared the weaker ? It was because those other nations were spiritually bankrupt,  "their Rock had sold them" (32:30). Far from the Lord who had 'surrendered' them in their infamy of folly, such nations were sold by any vain idols they chose in vain to rely on!

The point is made acutely strident, as we see in reading in Judges 10:10ff. (once more looking to the days of fulfilments of these prophecies, in one phase - NASB):

"Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD,

'We have sinned against you; we have forsaken our God
and have served the Baals.'

"The LORD answered the Israelites:

'Did not the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines,

the Sidonians, the Amalekites, and the Midianites oppress you?

Yet when you cried out to me, and I saved you from their grasp,

you still forsook me and worshiped other gods.

'Therefore I will save you no more.

'Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen;
let them save you now that you are in distress.'

"But the Israelites said to the LORD,

'We have sinned. Do to us whatever you please. Only save us this day.' "

Thus in painful need and seeking God, was Israel; but it did not end there!

Following this, first those of Israel put away their foolish gods, false worship modes and models, and then it grieved the Lord that they were in such distress before the nations, and He acted to raise up one to deliver them, Jephthah, by name. If man will but return to the Lord, and play straight, walk in the right way and put his trust in the Redeemer, then the way opens. Yet Israel many times and at times cumulatively suffered as Moses foretold, and fell into ever new pits, as new seizures of blindness afflicted their straying souls. Such is the tenor of Psalm 106, Ezekiel 20; and of history. So it was foretold. So history in turn told it as the bell has tolled and tragedy escalated.

In such ways, through Deuteronomy 32:31ff., the Lord reminds Israel of their enemies, of the foolish nation syndrome which afflicted them, to mirror their own foolishness before the Lord, pointing out that "their rock is not like our Rock." The Lord then denounces the infamous ways of the opposing nation, "their wine is the poison of serpents, and the cruel venom of cobras." Not once, but many times, has Israel found the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, and often has it fallen into distress, under duress as Leviticus 26 likewise foretold. The outrageous activities, from Assyria (cf. Nahum), to Babylon (cf. Jeremiah 50-51, Isaiah 13) -  well repaid in both cases as history abundantly records,  and on to Louis XIV’s abuse, Russian pogrom and Hitler’s Auschwitz alike, have ended at length in the dirt. Yet Israel remains as promised (Matthew 24:34).

Thus has Israel found in the Lord’s absence, through their disfaith, what they formerly found through His presence, except in reverse! The latter added, the former subtracted, but not only so, it had an addition of its own, as does puss in a sore, add to the flesh it infects. Disastrous have been the assaults on Israel over its time of rebellion; and though as forecast in the Bible (Zech. 12), Israel has recently had great victories, to this day it suffers acutely. To be sure,  its ‘good deeds’ are many, as it seeks even in the midst of horror and ravaging wars, to show humanitarian feeling, even to its enemies, providing medical aid and the like. Yet the Lord looks on the heart: and until they evacuate what Paul describes in Romans 10, seeking to establish themselves by their own works, and come to rest on that very work of Jesus Christ, their own Messiah who has gone to the Gentiles while the nation pants, their path remains sad, though the nation will be preserved.

Meanwhile we all must realise that Jew or Gentile, we are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-28), if we come to Him. Jesus ? Where are you today relative to Him ? Do you need the history of Israel to be added to your own ? HE is the ROCK. There is no other for this life, since He created it (Colossians 1:15, John 1:3). As inventions of God, each must ask, What is my intention ? The intention of the invention is crucial. Is it life abundant in the Lord (John 10:10) ? Then wash from sin in the blood of Jesus Christ, and being pardoned, be purified by His presence, as He changes you from glory to glory according to His likeness (II Cor. 3:18). Have a history in Christ, worthy of the name!

VIII

PAUSE AND PONDER

Thus has Israel found in the Lord’s absence, through their disfaith, what they formerly found through His presence, except in reverse! The latter added, the former subtracted, but not only so, it had an addition of its own, as does puss in a sore, add to the flesh it infects. Disastrous have been the assaults on Israel to this day, and though as forecast in the Bible (Zech. 12), Israel has had great victories, to this day it suffers acutely, and its ‘good deeds’ which are many, as it seeks even in the midst of horror and ravaging wars, to show humanitarian feeling, even to its enemies, providing medical aid and the like.

Yet the Lord looks on the heart, and until they evacuate what Paul describes in Romans 10, seeking to establish themselves by their own works, and rest on that very work of Jesus Christ, their own Messiah who has gone to the Gentiles while the nation pants, their path remains sad, though the nation will be preserved.

Meanwhile we all must realise that Jew or Gentile, we are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 2:26-28), if we come to Him. Jesus ? Where are you today relative to Him ? Do you need the history of Israel to be added to your own ? HE is the ROCK. There is no other for this life, since He created it (Colossians 1:15, John 1:3). As inventions of God, each must ask, What is my intention ? The intention of the invention is crucial. Is it life abundant in the Lord ? Then wash from sin in the blood of Jesus Christ, and being pardoned, be purified by His presence, as He changes you from glory to glory according to His likeness (II Corinthians 3:18). Have a history in Christ, worthy of the name!

There is always an end, as we shall find in our next Chapter,   as we revert to the forecast history of Israel.

 Contents Page for Volume  

Chapter 5

ENCORE to the FORE,

Deuteronomy 32 Completes the Vision

while Man Completes His Plunge

and God Multiply Delivers His Saints! 

Part III

Deuteronomy 32:34-43

IX

THE DIVINE DENOUEMENT

ENCORE to the FORE,

Deuteronomy 32 Completes the Vision

while Man Completes His Plunge

and God Multiply Delivers His Saints! 

I

THE DIVINE DENOUEMENT

We have been considering Deuteronomy 32, and seen the preliminary pronouncements, the setting, the purpose and the trends.

However as the prediction of Deuteronomy 32 proceeds, we come at last to the dénouement. It occurs when Israel's strength is no longer at full flow (32:36).

"When He sees that their power is gone ...", then the Lord "will judge His people".

When He sees this lapse, this lack, He does not rejoice with arrogant disdain. Rather, when a man or people humbles itself before the Lord, sees resolution in repentance, returns to the Lord with faith, calls upon His name and trusts in Him for salvation, whether with pain or prosperity, the spiritual need is met and the course of life becomes changed, like the stormy seas brought to serenity. At that, there may be conflict, but it is for victory and overcoming in a peace which passes understanding. There could be pain, but it is for improvement or testimony if need be; and there may be hatred and contempt and death, from the enemies of the Lord, but it is for the glory of God, meaningful in mastery, grand in conception, beautiful in dimension, a work in this world to stand, not in failure but in triumph for ever.

Such is His grace that even our feeble efforts are made strong, and our least cry is heard, when it is made in faith (Psalm 145:18-19, Mark 11:23-24, Matthew 17:20).

He will have compassion for He IS compassionate (cf. Micah 7:19ff.). He will as Micah foretells in the case of Israel, remember His covenant with Abraham, one which had unconditional elements concerning the land (Genesis 17:7-8). He will act (as in Zechariah 12:10-13:1, there in a spiritual mode also at the climax, as earlier in the physical - 12:1ff.), and He will deliver His erring people. It is then that the full force of the saying, "Vengeance is Mine" comes to pass (Deuteronomy 32:35).

For His afflicted people, now His by faith, He declares this (Micah 7:16-20):

             From days of old."

At last the enemy exalted for a season, teaching Israel the price of folly, comes to its own end, at the finale, just as so many enemies have done on the way, when they have served their purpose (cf. Jeremiah 51:49, Isaiah 51:22-23). Such is the prediction for the next phase of history, for which we currently wait.

A number of things now happen, and Micah 7:15 shows this as we have noted,  in its terminal coverage. Here is seen the extent, the grandeur of the SCALE of this vast divine enterprise of deliverance, yes one of the scope of the Exodus when the mightiest power on earth was abased to the dirt, to the sludge of the sea. As near its beginning, so near the end, God acts for Israel.

Having seen the enemies of Israel at this juncture, characterised, we see their end discovered. "The day of their calamity is at hand" (Deuteronomy 32:35). "Their foot shall slip in due time." Things now hasten to the end. This focus on the enemies of His people continues from 32:31.

Is the foreign failure in having false gods to be overlooked ? far from it. Let their gods and rocks arise to save them, for the Lord Himself will act in His own name, and with surpassing directness. Indeed, these same words serve to remind Israel of the folly of trusting in naturalistic devices and concepts, just as their enemies now become an object lesson in the weakness which such wickedness brings, like a dividend from woeful shares, in the form of a loss of capital!

The Lord, having identified Himself in contradistinction to all natural forces, powers and cultures, whether those of fallen Israel in her spiritual promiscuity or in the other fallen races, and having apostrophised them on their papier-mâché rocks, by contrast, He Himself acts, having compassion on His people.

Having made the point that other gods are mere naming of nullities, not God, a place of impotence before His own power as Creator and Redeemer, the Lord, declaring "there is no God beside Me", demonstrates His own prerogative to kill and make alive (32:39), to wound and to heal.

About to exhibit as often, that there is none who can deliver from the hand (Deuteronomy 32:39) of God, who Himself lives for ever (32:40), He indicates the principle of the thing, here precisely put into direct practice. For some, these things were obscured by so many complex phenomena as Israel sinned, other nations sinned, these oppressed Israel, and all fell into the pitfall of pollution. Now however, the essential simplicity of the situation will appear. His people call on Him, where He may be found, in Christ Jesus (Zechariah 12:10 shows this); and He hears. He promised; He will do.

“IF I WHET MY SWORD ... “  - the Lord indicates, speaking very directly: and if His hand takes hold of judgment, where does it end! He will render vengeance to His enemies. The enemies of His people have exalted themselves just as Babylon once did, or as Assyria inanely did likewise (cf. Isaiah 37); and they fall in the asinine self-exaltations in which they exult, like stuffed rabbits trying to run. Israel had already suffered long; but now, they call and He acts.

Such is the oft-painted episode to come in a culminating flourish, after so many lessons and so much for so long.

"I will make My arrows drunk with blood."

Such is the message of Deuteronomy 32:42.

Thus there is the divine motive, the divine power, the divine uniqueness, the divine passion, the divine vengeance, the divine exhibition of the power of false gods and the true, the divine deliverance of oppressed Israel, despite all its sins, the divine straightening out once and for all of the record before the very eyes of the bully-boy oppressors who exalt in false gods, wholly incapable of any deliverance (cf. Ezekiel 37:23, 28). This is the tableau into which we are now brought to witness. Indeed, this is the prelude to coming fact, the divinely inspired prediction given by Moses to Israel the nation, for the culmination of its drama! Has any nation suffered more ? Who will complain!

'My sword shall devour flesh," including the blood of the heads of the leaders of the enemy.

Carnage, vengeance, deliverance of Israel amidst a vast desolation of its enemies in which divine power ruins and ravages their arrogant pretensions, where blood flows and the remedy of the riots of ages is corrected amid the nations: all this now comes into view. It is as in Isaiah 66 precisely (66:12-17), where likewise the Lord declares His intention to show "His indignation to His enemies" as He comes with chariots, to judge all flesh, and to comfort Jerusalem.

It is not process but finality, not poetry but power, not release but devastation, not construction but destruction, and the recipient is as defined. It is a people who knew Him, and left Him, who knew His power and in generations failed even to recognise their Saviour, who were subjected to divine discipline, brought back to their nation and then, suddenly, with the power of God upon them, repenting, find deliverance in Christ.

It is always appalling to consider how many Pentecostalists would act to twist such contexts, which are parallel to Micah 7:15 where after such judgments the nations grovel and move for safety into holes, with some kind of spiritual experience of being 'slain'. This is tortuous twisting,  as if this vengeance and desolation, this judgment and explosive lesson in vast degradation and devastation were construction and regeneration.

On the contrary, the move is shown, the result is given, the intent is clear, the appalling ravages are detailed, the inability to be delivered is exposed and the power of God versus oppressors of His people is indicated with the vast, gory loss of glory on the part of those who having resisted in natural power, lie strewn in battle, exhibits of judgment, ruined for ever, corpses for the birds (as in Revelation 19).

It is precisely such exploits of making void the word of the Lord by false traditions which the Lord detests (Mark 7:7ff.), and in which Israel itself, by His own indictment as there seen, excelled.

It shows once more that the  Gentile religious world is by no means to look down on Israel, for just such things it also does. This is not to say that in either event, it is always on purpose; for blindness such as the Lord indicates of even religious Israel (as in Isaiah 42:18-19 - who is blind like My servant, or deaf as My messenger whom I send!) does not require that one see at what one stumbles.

Thus vengeance to the Lord's enemies, after so much patience and forbearance, is at last wrought and their shame and impotence is exposed in the acme of battles, the exhibit of the slain as in the Exodus (Micah 7:15). There they populated the maritime basement, were lost beneath, the sea drowning them in disaster and horror. Here is the parallel of that Exodus debacle of Pharaoh.

"Drunk with blood" in this physical reign of horror is not repentant with joy! Thus do the Gentiles, the peoples other than Israel, then have ground to rejoice that Israel, itself so astray for so long but so abused, is back in faith, in its place, like a lost brother (cf. Deuteronomy 32:43, Romans 11:12).

Here has the Lord given vengeance to His adversaries. In their day,  they ruined in profundity and visibly; and here have the nations crept into their holes (Micah 7:17), being "ashamed of all their might.” Here is the epochal demonstration as in the Exodus of the omnipotence of God, of His judgment, of the annihilation of iniquity when its pride has risen to the skies, and its morals have fallen to the depths. Once it was implicit; now it is explicit. It is nothing to Pentecostalise with imaginary symbolism (Isaiah 66:16) as if being ‘slain in the Spirit’, a hideous misuse of the tenor of the text, and one able to lead to improper parodies where psychological dynamic can create mischief through misapplication.

But what of the oppressive nations, seeking to overwhelm latter day Israel, returned to its land ? Once they vaunted; now they are exposed in a ruin that is international in its depravity and apparent to all. “Where are their gods!” the Lord mocks (Deut.32:37-38). It is as unfigurative as blood, and as devastatingly obtrusive as defeat before their prey, vengeance apparent. World history is transfigured through the obliterative force that exposes international pomp and pride, oppression and attacks on Israel. To be sure, this is that once sanctified and then sanctimonious people, that rebellious nation after such covenantal elevation before God. It is one unique in history as a political entity, unfaithful; but now through faith in the New Covenant Christ, it is delivered. Its long trek is over.

Thus does the Song of Moses draw near to its end. But its message continues.  

II

UNITY IN GOSPEL AND GRACE

Irrevocable, Unrescindable, Definable, Delightful

In this way do we see expanded before us, from the day of Moses, the history of Israel, its spiritual cause and spiritual result, the derivative physical horrors suffered with the evil of its enemies which accentuate its follies, and the final overpowering of those powers in their futile blustering,  by the very hand of the Lord. This ? it comes when the power of Israel is gone (Deuteronomy 32:36), so that God alone will act in His own name directly.  It is then that  many among the Gentiles will "rejoice" and do with "with His people."

Why will they rejoice ? It is because they are back from alienation, separation and rebellion, and now have their tragic history brought to a happier fulfilment along with themselves, who also have received, this nation with that, of that blessing for all nations which in the first place was one of the major commissions and blessings of Israel itself (Genesis 12).

Now is that the Gospel of the grace of God is its place,

with the prophet who was to be and now is the replacement for Moses,

as he foretold in Deuteronomy 18:15-19,

that Messiah, Jesus Christ,  who knows how to deal with the nations at war.

This is clear also in Psalm 2!

which traces the scope

of Saviour and rejection, resurrection (as in Psalm 16) and restoration,

and then His rule.

 

Therefore we come to an entrance of Israel in vast numbers, into the new era. This, it is as described by Paul: 

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

This no more removes specifics than it allows differentiation of kind. It is one kind, and all the details are subsumed into oneness. Diversification is now in detail only, not in type.

In this way does the promise to Abraham find fulfilment:
that in a seed of his, all the nations of the earth would be blessed:

There is no playing of games in the obsolete (Hebrews 8:13), no reconstitution of that which is "ready to vanish away", no reversion from the fulfilled mission of the Messiah  (Jeremiah 3:16, Galatians 1:6-9, Ephesians 1:10), no confusion of imagery with reality; for the former things have passed away. It is necessary to realise, with Hebrews 6, that there is no scope for any reversion to the sacrificial system of yore, recasting of history: it is finished indeed.

Thus abhorrent indeed is any thought of animal sacrifice now that the Lord has exposed His heart and His arm (Isaiah 66:3), nor any place for self-exaltation or the derivation of differences in national recouping (Isaiah 2,19), as if the disastrous repudiations of Israel in its anti-Messianic category - Isaiah 65:13-15 and 30:8ff.,Zechariah 11:10ff. had never been made, and Isaiah 19:20ff.  had never been written.

There is no glory for ANY (Isaiah 2:11). All are ashamed and none exalts himself, his nation or his will or way. Even the human will itself, is derogated into its own shame (John 1:12, Romans 9:16, John 15:1-7), for it too is corrupted. Yet for all that, in the love of God, the human heart is known, and though sin excludes all but from grace and in mercy, yet seeing all past sin's domain, region and regime, God foreknows apart from works, His own. In His knowledge, as elemental and comprehensive as that of Adam before he fell, there is no difference in what would choose, as that fallen first man did (Romans 5, Genesis 3). Where sin is not seen in possession, the no differential of morals, sensitivity or susceptibility exists, since nothing is dulled at all!

When sin is not present there is no differentiation of inheritance, and when God sees, He knows all. When sin is absent, will is present, and though will be disabled in this realm by sin (I Corinthians 2:14), yet when God determines, He envisages all.

Man being so made that will expresses love and hate, loyalty and disloyalty, so it is implemented. Hence is man - not the Jew only or the nation only - responsible; and indeed, it is BECAUSE they preferred darkness to the light of Christ, duly come among them, that they are condemned (as shown in the context of John 3:19).Moreover, as Christ Himself declared, HIMSELF the eternal word of God:  IF they had NOT seen and known His works, then they would not have been condemned: this is the application of the principle (John 15:21ff.). God loves but love does not force. There is never a divine love deficiency, but love proficiency, this there is.

Hence for Jew and Gentile, individual of this and that culture, there is no excuse, and only responsibility. The God who would have all reconciled to Himself (Colossians 1:19ff.), yes whether those in heaven or on earth, in all time and for all time, and for all the race: that is the scope. He who neither lets the fallen will choose for itself, or be neglected as will, in His own sight, before whom all is manifest, and sin is seen as disease, it is He who acts. He loses not a chirp or chirrup, but is active, ready for solicitation, solicitous to the uttermost.

Let then those who are the Lord's, depart from iniquity (II Timothy 2:19), for what HE has taken is as really cleared as is the battle-field to come (Titus 3:5-7), when the officious arrogances of nations are to be humbled.

What is, does what it is, as James so rightly stresses. What is honest, acknowledges sin, as I John 1 emphasises. It does not, however,  wallow in it, but is characterised in obedience as I John 3:9 shows (the term being 'practise sin' when rightly translated).

Let then Jew and Gentile get the perspective: One God, one Lord, one faith, one series of erratic errancies among the nations, moving this way and that, among individuals, each to his or her own way (Isaiah 53:6), one way of return, one Redeemer, one Mediator (I Timothy 2), one baptism (Ephesians 4:4, I Peter 3:21), one baptism of the Spirit at conversion, when all are baptised into the body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:13).  There are many fillings as the Lord blesses (Acts 3:19ff.) but it is by one Spirit,  with one assurance of eternal life (Romans 8:16, I Thessalonians 5:9-10, Romans 5:9ff.), one judgment, unutterable in horror for when mercy is deleted by desire, reality is as ruinous in destiny as it is in fact (Mark 9).

Such then does Moses begin to depict, and so do his words have fruit, each in its place and turn. Each intimation or indication is fulfilled to the uttermost, whether here or in Leviticus 26, in Deuteronomy 18 or in the command of sacrifice, which Christ so divinely deleted in His own office as High Priest, sacrifice, sin-bearer, temple and truth.

III

The Messiah is for All

but not All are for the Messiah!

Strong Medicine for the Sinners

Great Food for the Saved Saints

In conclusion, let us reflect on part of the Jewish history, in terms of our own, not as British or Portugese, but as individuals.

In Deuteronomy 32:36, we read, as we saw:

"For the LORD will judge His people
And have compassion on His servants,
When He sees that their power is gone..."

Does not the entire history of Israel, from Abraham to the present,
have an exemplary force for all ?

Thus in Abraham, there is the call to faith, as came to this land from Britain when it was first founded. Some moved on this call, from the first, as did Abraham, and were children of God, and many were thus in this land, and many the institutions which had such a Christian basis that toleration and trust, labour and love alike were plentifully found in her midst, along of course with all the greed and folly that is in man in general. There was a salt in the life of the nation, however, and it was strong in flavour.

However, sin has bloated and many have gloated in greed, sated themselves in evil passions and have little regard for the Lord, just like Israel as traced in predictive prophecy, in Deuteronomy 32. The land is now becoming pagan, just as Israel moved that way, in the days of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as foretold by Moses.

"They sacrificed ... to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals "

and

"of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful,
and have forgotten the God who fathered you."

The nation now teaches organic evolution freely in its institutions, and in this State, critical answers are quashed in the schools. Love of self, divorce from parents, easy movement from home to drugs in the name of independence, support for folly from the State, all are forthcoming; while homes too deteriorate and the amount of child abuse of one kind and another is appalling, both in white and aboriginal conditions. A new 'culture' is coming, and a new way, which alas is as old as Eve! It is separation from the Lord, and its end is not different from that which Israel has displayed for some centuries! Nor is it merely national. It is private and personal, and brings grief to the depressed, to the insane, to the varied persons in grave distress, who have no faith, or if faith, only a subjective feeling, not the ROCK on whom to REST.

Israel has, in its sufferings,  thus taught lessons, and many should thank God for that, as they continue to pray for that nation, through whom came the Old Testament, and in whom Christ was found! (cf.  Romans 9). Yet it is at the personal level that most must think. Who is rocked like those who have no rock! and who can find power like that of the living God, who shepherds His people, not with pieces of mutant bread (cf. John 6:51,62-63) illicitly worshipped^*A, not with emotional frenzies, not with false dreams and foolish hopes, not with prosperity Christianity which seeks to make taking up your cross a double-cross, and to abound not in life but in its possessions, and its selfish satisfactions.

Taking up your cross and following Christ, however, is not an exercise in pain for practice. It is the pain which accompanies an abundant life which knows God, His will, His way, His work of salvation and His current workings in the heart, both to will and to do, while seeking to serve in His Spirit by His power and in His company, and loving God with ALL the heart.

Love does NOT seek its own, but the service of Christ. Rest is not found in Him by self-exaltation or national differentiation as a ground, but by HIS work on the Cross, HIS power in resurrection, HIS presence through the Holy Spirit, HIS return which comes as the Cross came surely, and by abiding in His beauty in the holiness which He desires (I Thessalonians 5:23-24, Acts 1:7-11), until He comes.

Love does not love to WANDER, as did Israel, but is happy to move in the land of love, on the ground of grace, in the salvation of blood, bought by the ransom of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, whose promised land for all, the history soon past of the preliminaries, is none other than the haven of heaven. On the way, what does Peter say ? it is this, found in I Peter 1:3-10, and with this we conclude this series, for it speaks for itself. Yet three emphases appear to which we finally look.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled
and that does not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you,
who are kept by the power of God through faith
for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

"In this you greatly rejoice,
though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
that the genuineness of your faith,
being much more precious than gold that perishes,
though it is tested by fire,
may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
whom having not seen you love.

"Though now you do not see Him,
yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
receiving the end of your faith - the salvation of your souls.
Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully,
who prophesied of the grace that would come to you ..."

First, notice that THIS gift, THIS salvation DOES NOT FADE AWAY, like the promised land which Israel did not enter as in Numbers 14. It did remain, but how long they had to wait for their folly, and for millenia since removing its King, they have not possessed it, though now at last the Lord has brought them back physically, as promised in Ezekiel 36ff., before the final spiritual conversion still to come for many there, as in Ezekiel 37 (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10).

Second consider this: that such an estrangement is not a Jewish monopoly. How many Gentiles have done much the same with the promised haven of rest and strength, joy and peace and knowledge of the Lord in Christ Jesus, whom  Moses prophesied but whom milling millions of Jew and Gentile alike, have spurned, with or without passion, like babes who hate milk, and never know in their weakness, the very meaning of meat.

Thirdly, consider the joy inexpressible and full of glory of which Peter speaks. This is the condition of life in Christ - not without cross, not without suffering which may be great, but without regret because its reality is as deep as God, as prime as love and as wonderful as the power of creation shown in resurrection whether of Lazarus as a prelude or of Christ as consummation. This is what man waits for in the return of Jesus Christ, for which all the swelling events of today are a prelude (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), as gasping of death; but this is a panting in His people, who eagerly await His coming, who having been crucified, remains and will rule as King (Psalm 2, Hebrews 9:28).

Let none despise the truth which though it bring trouble and even death in this world, never moves, though it can move mountains, for it is Christ crucified, yes rather risen, the Lord of glory, Maker of the earth and the heavens, and of peace in the heart of man until the curtain falls, and this world goes and eternal life has its final fruition as in Revelation 21-22, for which man was prepared. He has done all He said, both on earth and from heaven, and is the same yesterday, today and forever, immovable in majesty, gracious in humility, perfect in holiness, practically reliable and spiritually a joy beyond all description.

NOTE

* See SMR pp. 1032-1088H and in particular 1086 -1088D.