Moses and our Modern Mandate

The Church Militant.

You don't really hear that term anymore, but there was a time when the phrase itself would stir hearts. Why? What does it mean?

First, what it does NOT mean. It does not mean politically or economically dominating a population and coercing them to adopt your beliefs, customs and cultures. When preachers reduce spreading the gospel to a Coke vs. Pepsi, marketing battle they've got it about as wrong as it can be.

The Church militant is comprised of those people standing upright on Terra Firma, who are standing in the Here and Now, and look forward to the Hereafter. They have been Redeemed by Christ, and do (or should) contend for the faith, to persuade "whosoever will" to trust in Christ.

No armies, no bullets. Just an eternal and infallible Word proclaimed by temporal and fallible men.

Let's look in Deuteronomy 7 for a glimpse of how this looks.

(As you know, today we are not fighting to win territory but the hearts and minds of men.)

Verse 1: When the Lord brings you into the land you are entering to take possession of it and clears away many nations before you (names them) seven nations more numerous and mighty then yourselves...

When ... brings ... are entering... take possession ... clears away

There is no ambiguity in this language. There is no IF, of possibly, or conditional promise. There is a directive, and they have been thrust into it. In fact, at this point, it has already begun, because God ordained that 2 other nations initiated hostilities with Israel, that God could hand them over to Israel. (Deut 2:30-32, 3:1-11) Which can remind us that often when someone picks a fight with us, it's because God wants us to win it.

The Lord is also taking an ownership role in verse 1. He is bringing, and He is clearing away therefore, this promise is not a function of our method, our tactics, our manpower, our budget or whatever else we might trust in. The odds are against us, and that's exactly the way God wants it so He can be recognized as the ultimate architect of the victory. Two Thousand years of Church history with Empires and Ideologies falling like dominoes show us that God is still doing this today.

V. 2 "And when the Lord gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

Working from the assumption of success prior to the attempt, Moses is telling them what to do with their victory. Defeat them. Destroy them. Do we destroy them today? Not the people, since our battle is for the hears and minds of men. But we must clash with ideas and ideologies. No covenant, no mercy. We do it in the same way that MADD (for example) is aggressively targeting the practice of drunk driving with the intention of thoroughly destroying it. We offer the olive branch to people, but not to poisonous ideas.

Today, the words NAZI and KKK are so thoroughly stigmatized and repulsive that people want to distance themselves from any association with these ideas. That is the objective here.

v. 3 is a warning against intermarriage, and v. 4 explains why: because their children would turn to worship other gods.

Much of Israel's historical problem came from Syncretism. That is, a blending of Jewish and pagan religious beliefs and practices. Not much has changed today. We have imprecise belief, and do-it-yourself theology. We've got golden calves popping up all over the place. We make judgments about what scripture we will or will not accept based on what we assume about God.

What happens when you've become a god-crafter, when you tweak Him to suit your tastes? What is he trying to avoid by putting such a strong emphasis of not merely co-existing with these ideologies? v. 4 goes on to say that God's wrath would include ourselves.

Illustration: your city's rickety apartment block that even the rats and cockroaches have abandoned for safety reasons is scheduled to be knocked down. Signs are posted. Explosives are set. You ignore them and hop the fence in the dark of night, sneak into a bedroom on the top floor, and congratulate yourself on your room with a view. You took up residence in a condemned building, knowing that you risked being caught in the destruction, but ignored the warnings. The building comes down with you in it. Who is responsible? You or the city? You, naturally. That's more or less what this is trying to convey.

(Notice the shift from "I" to "you". God is responsible for verses 1 and 2a. Israel for 2b through 4.)

God gives the solution: BUT...

Doesn't the goodness of God just blaze through that one word?
Danger. Don't go there. Don't cross that line. Stay out of harms' way. I'm going to tell you what you can do to avoid it. Hear me. Heed the warnings.

What does he say we must do?

Break down their altars. Dash in pieces their pillars. Chop down their Asherim. Burn their carved images with fire.

Target the idols and ideologies. Reduce them to nothing. Do not let them hold sway over people. Do not make peace with them or keep them as trophies. Do not adapt them to your culture. If it strives to rival the position and place of God, hunt it down.

Why? (v. 6) Because you are a people holy to the Lord.

If we truly value the righteousness and holiness of God, if the souls of men are precious to us, we do them no favours by playing patty-cake with the very ideas and convictions that enslave them and hold them back from knowing and loving Jesus Christ.

If we saw a child about to drink a bottle of drain cleaner, we would intervene. Yet we see people drinking the spirit of this age all the time, and do nothing. Which has the more far-reaching effect?

Jesus Christ lived the perfect life, and conquered sin, and suffered death, and rose to life eternal, so that we too, could share in His victory over sin, and the eternal life He offers.

The way we participate in the Holiness that makes us His treasured possessions, isn't from keeping score on an ethical check-list. It's by accepting that His death in my place and yours is sufficient to satisfy the same wrath of a holy God that verse 4 warned of, and that his righteousness is freely given as a gift to us. One we can never earn and could never repay. We are not his debtors, but his children, if we trust in Jesus, and turn from our sin.

Four Constants -- Redemption

Say, heavenly pow'rs, where shall we find such love?
Which of ye will be mortal to redeem
Man's mortal crime, and just th' unjust to save.

-- John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book III 1.213)

You can determine the importance of a thing by the priority given to it.

Consider medical treatment, for example. The average healthy person would never voluntarily injest a chemical cocktail whose properties would cause hair loss, vomiting, appetite loss, weakness, lethargy, immunosuppresion, sleep disruptions, general malaise and a host of other unpleasant consequences. Not even on a dare or a bet.

Take that same person, and tell them that they have a form of cancer which responds very well to Chemotherapy. Though still unpleasant, it suddenly seems a small price to pay. Life, in this example, is shown to take priority over convenience.

In addressing God's Redemption of Creation, it is no exaggeration to say that we are examining the single most pivitol event of all Time.

How can that be said with confidence? By examining the priority given to it by God Himself in His Word. (I Peter 1.19,20-- But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,).

When did God foreordain this? Before Man ever rebelled, before He created man a living soul, and even before He said "let there be light," the sacrificial death of Jesus had already become an accomplished fact in the mind of God.

Let's back up a little...

Knowing, then, that this is the pivitol event in history, it is impossible to give a full accounting of it here.

Redemption, in a theological sense, is the complete reversal of the curse initiated in The Fall (see previous post). It is, principally, the final payment of the totality of divine Wrath upon Sin. Secondarily, it is the reconciliation -- by God -- of fallen man to Himself.

The redeemed -- as those who will benefit from redemption are called -- had the plan gradually revealed to them:

Adam and Eve, received the promise of the Messiah, and then had their ineffective fig-leaf coverings replaced, by God, with clothes made from the skins of animals, foreshadowing sacrificial death as the remedy for sin. (Genesis 3)

Notice that the promise of the final resolution of sin (Messiah, or Seed of the Woman) was given greater priority than the temporary, symbolic measure of animal sacrifice. Notice also that God prepared the skins FOR Adam and Eve, a foreshadowing of divine grace, apart from works.

There were countless other types and symbols throughout Biblical history: God's substitute for Issac, Noah's Ark, and Passover being only three of them.

Everything was setting the stage for the Great Event.

Keep in mind, the sacrifice must be: (1) Freely Offered. (2) Unblemished. (3) Of Sufficient Value to Redeem.

None in the natural family of man would be a suitable sacrifice. All of us are tainted, having received, through Adam, a fallen nature. A sacrifice suitable to God must free of Sin. The sacrifice must also be of adequate value.

The sacrifice had to be sufficient to satisfy God's wrath against man's sin, and it had to be holy.

The only way God could be true to His Holiness, at the same time as extending grace and compassion to His Image-bearer, is to have His Son receive the due penalty of Divine Wrath in man's place. Sin having been punished, those who are found to be "In Christ" could be reconciled to God.

Having seen what was accomplished, namely the propitiation of sin, the restoration of relationship with God, and even the beginnings of the reversal of our corruption, let us examine the cost.

The Triune God had to send His Son to rescue us. Jesus, fully-God and fully-Man, was born into obscurity, misunderstood, mistreated, betrayed, sold out, mocked, beaten, cursed, humiliated, spat upon, forced to carry a cross, His scalp pierced with a mock crown, stripped naked, and then whipped until he was unrecognizable as a man, and His back looked like a ploughed field. Then He was committed to a form of death so horrific that even the bloodthirsty Romans had to devise a new word to describe the suffering involved. The word? "Excruciating".

This was the price. But as we saw in the opening remarks, there are times when the price, as unpleasant as it may be, has a 'payoff' that outweighs the price.

Jesus shared in our every weakness as people, yet did not sin. He knew apprehension. He would recoil at pain. He slept and wept and ate. He even sweat blood while praying in the Garden the night of His arrest.

Jesus had a priority that outweighed the pain, the shame, and the horror He would endure. It is summed up nicely in one verse:

Hebrews 12:2 "...looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

What was the joy set before Him?
The result of the Cross: the Redemption of Man.

Such is His love for us.
(more here)