The LORD Will Drive Out All These Nations From Before You

So this morning, we're going to be returning to Deuteronomy chapter 11. We've been working our way through it for a little over a year and a half now, I think. In this section, Moses is calling the people to love and serve God. And that if they do that, he will drive out their enemies, all the inhabitants of the Canaanites, or the land of Canaan, and he'll give them that land that was promised to them, to Abraham, hundreds of years before. In our passage, God draws a clear connection between their behavior and receiving If they obey, they will receive the land and the nations will fear them. It's going to take some explanation to understand what he's talking about here. This is not a works righteousness. God is not a vending machine. We don't put things into him to get things out of him. And yet there is a connection between their obedience and God's blessing. So we're going to tease that out and look at that. But what I think is underneath all of that,

underneath that connection is this question of unbelief. Whether you believe God, whether they will believe God and trust in his promises, or whether they'll believe in something else. Unbelief is the root of this passage, and it is also the root of all disobedience. And so that will be the main focus of our sermon this morning. And my hope is that God will expose in us any root of our own unbelief so that we're able to repent of it and to trust and obey him, no matter where he leads us. You can imagine if you were in Israel being led into the land of Canaan, you'd have occasion for fear. And yet fear is no justification for disobedience. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 11. This is verses 22 through 25. For if you are careful to keep all the commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and to hold fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you.

and he will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the Western Sea. No man will be able to stand before you. The Lord your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you on all the land on which you set foot as he has spoken to you. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Our passage starts with a conditional statement for if you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I'm commanding you to love the Lord your God, walk in his ways, and to hold fast to him. This theme of careful obedience is one that we've talked about in the past. It's a recurring theme. It's like if the early chapters of Deuteronomy were a song, this is the refrain. This is the chorus. Careful obedience. Careful obedience. Careful obedience. It keeps coming up.

And so I want to ask the question this morning as we start out, what motivates careful obedience? Like, how is it that we're to do what's required here? How are the Israelites to do what was required? Well, what was required of them is that they believed that what God was telling them to do was the right and good thing to do. That may sound simple to say. I find often that our actions don't testify to the fact that we think God's commands are good for us to follow. Our actions are a testimony of what we believe, right? A tree is known by its fruit. And so when we sin, when we have a habit of sin, we're not just sinning, we're testifying about what we believe to be true, all right? We're hypocritical in the sense that we say one thing and we do another.

but we don't believe one thing into another. We do and act according to what we believe to be true and good and right. And so when we sin, we're saying we believe this is the best path. Now, I might make it sound like that sin is always rational and reasonable and that all of the steps that we take, good or bad, are deliberate, and I realize that they're not. Sin, by its very nature, is irrational. It must discount God's... and his promises and his warnings. It doesn't make any rational sense to disobey God. And so I'm not arguing that our sins are always reasoned steps. I'm going to do what I know God says not to do. But as we step out of any particular decision or sin and we back out and we look at our lives as a whole and we look at the trajectory of our lives and we look at the habits of our lives, we start to be able to see or discern

what we believe. And many times, what we believe based on our actions is contrary to what God has said. If that weren't true, repentance would be very, very infrequent. But repentance is predicated on you looking and saying, God says one thing, but I'm doing another thing, and my heart wants to do it. And that's a problem. And so Israel's obedience or their disobedience, whatever it was they were going to do, was really a testimony of what they believed. Another way of thinking about this is to say that Satan is at work in all of these things. His interest is in your actions, but before your actions, he understands that a tree is known by its fruit. He's interested in what you believe. He's at work in your heart to persuade you according to what you believe. He is a liar and a father of lies.

And he wants you to believe lies because he knows if you believe lies, you will then act in accord with those lies because you'll treat them as though they're true. And so he comes and he exploits our weaknesses, our fears, our angers, the injustices, the offenses that we've experienced, our lusts. He knows our frame and he exploits it and gets us to believe lies. because he wants us to act on them. It's fair to say that Satan and the Lord are in a battle over your heart and its affections, what you believe to be true. This idea of careful obedience and doing exactly what the Lord said, this is not a new theme with Israel. They were called to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to hold fast many, many years before, 40 years before, in fact.

And so they sent spies into that land. This land that they're about to go in now, they sent spies into that land 40 years before. And when they went in, what did they see? They saw land flowing with milk and honey, and what else? Giants, right? The Anakim, the sons of Anakim, or the Anak are there. And they're like, and their hearts melted with fear. And so they came back, all the spies, save Joshua and Caleb, they come back and they go, it's not possible. It's not possible. We do not believe it's possible for us to go in and to defeat these nations greater and mightier than we are. If we go, we're going to die. The Lord has brought us out of Egypt to die at the hand of the Canaanites. We can't do it. And so they were making a confession of what they believed to be true, of their faith, what they said, this is how it is. These are the facts of the matter. And this is...

It's important for us to sort out, were they wrong about what they saw in the land of Canaan? Were they wrong about the giants? No. Were they wrong that the cities were tall and fortified? No. They were right. The problem wasn't in what they saw. The problem was in what they believed to be true about what they saw. They were right. And even Moses says here again that these nations that are to be dispossessed are greater and mightier than Israel. It's like David and Goliath, but on a national scale. And so you might understand how they would come away practically fearful and asking the question, how are we supposed to do this? How's that actually going to work? They couldn't map that out. They couldn't come up with a game plan and say, this is how we can do it. And so they despaired, they feared, and they disobeyed. They refused to go in. You see, what they believed led to their action. Well, in this case, their inaction.

So why did God promise to give them a land that they couldn't take possession of themselves? Do you ever feel like God sort of backs you up against the Red Sea with nowhere to turn? And you're like, why? What's this about? There's nowhere to turn. There's nowhere to go. They've gone through the mountain pass to the shore, and there's a sea, and there's rock walls, and there's an Egyptian army. Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? Why did the Lord bring me to this place? To make you trust him. But many times we go, well, it's just too much. It's just too much to trust him, you know, backed up against the Red Sea with an army approaching. How do I trust him in that moment? Well, by faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. What you believe is always being revealed to you.

And it's often being revealed to you when you feel like you're backed up against the Red Sea. When you have nothing else to do and nowhere else to turn, you have to figure out in that moment, what is your hope? Who do you trust? And what will you do? So how did they get across the Red Sea? Did they whoop up on the Egyptians? They just decided in a last blaze of glory they were just going to go forward? What happened, Olivia? God helped them. In a miraculous way, God helped them. He parted the waters. This big wind comes, parts the water. I can't imagine how loud it was. Imagine how loud it had to be for that much wind to have pushed it away. And in my reading recently about this, they crossed the Red Sea at night. So all of this noise and all of this tumult, and it's dark. And here you are walking across on dry land in the dark. It's just terrifying, just terrifying. But God helped them. He was...

called them out of Egypt and wasn't going to call them out as they thought time and time again. His intention actually wasn't to call them out of Egypt to kill them in the wilderness. But they kept thinking that's what was going on. They kept thinking, surely you've brought us out here to die, Moses. You brought us out here and here's no water. You brought us out here and there's no food. You brought us out here and there's no meat. They kept believing that God wouldn't provide for them, that he wouldn't be faithful to them. They were too pragmatic. It cost them their pragmatism. Their practical reasoning cost them 40 years in the wilderness and all of their men. 40 years. And all of the husbands and fathers and brothers over 20 years old. What a price. What a price to pay for unbelief.

And now they've come up again to the border. 40 years later, they've been brought up the side and are about to cross over. And that's where Moses is giving them the Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law. He's telling them all the same stuff again as they're about to go over. And he's repeating this careful obedience to the commandments that I'm giving to you. To love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to hold fast to him. Backed up against the Red Sea, going in to dispossess the nations that are mightier and greater than you. Love the Lord your God, walk in his ways, and hold fast to him, not to anything else. The trouble with unbelief is it often takes hold of our rational thought, and it makes sense not to believe. It makes sense not to believe. The problem with that is that unbelief refuses to acknowledge what God has done and promised to do for his people. Have you ever thought of rational thought and reasoning as being a danger to you?

We're good reformed people. We love logical, systematic, organized answers to questions. We get nervous when people start talking about their feelings. We don't trust them. But I mean to tell you, there's as much danger to your soul with rational thought as there are to being led astray by whatever feeling you've got. We might have a category when it comes to feelings for like intuition. Maybe a woman's intuition might be like, well, there might be some, there might sometimes be some truth to that. Sometimes moms know something. But as a general rule of thumb, we think that if it makes sense, we'll do it. And if it doesn't make sense, we won't do it. And so we will never cross the Red Sea or the Jordan or receive a land given to us by God because we go, well, it doesn't make sense that I could have that. And so we despair because it didn't make sense to us. Here's the thing about obedience, careful obedience. It doesn't actually require your understanding or agreement on the front side.

You don't actually have to understand it. How many times have you told your children, I want you to do this? It's past their bedtime. My house, we call them pumpkins. It's like Cinderella. It's like the clock has struck 12, and you have now turned into a pumpkin, and you're just not what you should be. Are you tired? No, I'm tired. Do you want to play? I don't want to play. Do you want to drink? I don't want to drink. Do you want to go to bed? I don't want to go to bed. What do you do? be rationalized with your three-year-old about why it's good for them to go to bed, right? Well, honey, you have to understand that it's past your bedtime and your nap was, you know, and tomorrow and mommy and, no. You take your child upstairs as they're crying and you comfort them because you kept them up late and you put them in bed and you pray with them and you tuck them in and it's magic. They wake up feeling better. And they were never the wiser about what was going on.

But they needed to obey you. And sometimes they're so unsure of whether you're right that when you put them to bed, they will get back up out of bed. So then what? You might have to spank them. You might have to spank the tired kid who doesn't understand what's going on, whose eyes are like, you know. You may actually have to discipline them to convince them that they can trust you. They will never understand what the problem is. But the goal is obedience, right? I know what's good for you, what's best for you. I love you. You need sleep. We're going to get you to sleep. And they didn't have to understand it, and they didn't have to agree with it. In fact, they tried to register their protest, and you said, no, no protests. Obedience does not actually require understanding or agreement. If it did, then it'd make all the sense in the world for them to say, we're not going into that land. Are you kidding me? But God calls them to faith when he calls them to careful obedience.

Cling to me when you're scared. And so faith or belief is what Israel lacked. It's often what God's people lacked. When Moses called them to love God and to walk in his ways and to cling to him, he was calling them to demonstrate their faith through their obedience to God. We see the same thing again in the New Testament where James writes this. This is chapter 2, verses 17 to 20. He says, even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. The demons also believe and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? Works in this passage referring to obedience as an expression of your trust in Jesus Christ.

Which will seem irrational to the foolish, depraved, darkened mind. And so what we do, particularly when we're under pressure, reveals what we believe. That is what James is arguing here. That is what Moses is calling them to do. He says, if you believe, act like it. Belief has an expression. Belief is not something that is beginning and ends in our heads or even in our hearts. It begins there and it ends with our behavior. It ends with obedience. And so if we disobey repeatedly at an area, we have found and discovered an area where we don't believe God. We'll do what he says and we need to repent.

Then it says, It's quite the promise. Did it happen? Were all the nations dispossessed? Did every place where the sole of their foot tread, was it theirs over the course of Israel going forward? No. No. Actually, from this point on until David, there's these statements that happen. David was a king, right? David was a king of war. He couldn't build the house of God because he was a man of bloodshed. But there's a time where it says in the testimony of David's life that David had peace on all sides. And what we learn from that is that there was never peace, that the nations that were greatier and mightier, that they, because the Israelites didn't dispossess them the way that they should have, thoroughly.

Because they kept the people there because they thought, well, here's a labor force. And they intermarried with them. They were constant conflict and turmoil with these people until David was raised up by God and they found peace. This thing that's being described here, that they'll be dispossessed, that wherever you walk is going to be your land and everyone's going to be afraid of you, that is a description of peace. But they never had that peace because they never did what God said completely and thoroughly. Not until David came. So then we have to ask the question, why'd they receive the land at all? If they didn't dispossess the people. In fact, why were they getting a second chance at all of this? This is, again, the second time that they're supposed to go into the land. They failed. They refused the first time. Why did they get a second chance? It wasn't because they had done well. They had done poorly. So how do we process this conditional statement? If you're careful, then I will drive out these lands when we see that they didn't.

carefully obey the Lord, but dug in their heels out of fear and refused, why then did they receive this land? God gave them this land in spite of their disobedience, in the absence of their trust. God did that to demonstrate to them and to teach us that whatever good thing we get or have in our life, we get not because we've earned it or deserve it, but because God gives good gifts to his children. And that's a mark of, that truth is something that God's people ought to take a hold of. Not that they're good and they earn these things, but that God is good and gives to the undeserving. Paul argues to the Corinthians, what good thing do you have that you didn't receive from the Lord? I think part of our problem is that we're not weak and small and miserable like they were. We're big and strong and wealthy. And so this humility, and dependence on God. It's somewhat of a foreign concept. Maybe it's not a foreign concept, but it's a theoretical concept to us as regards our lived experience. We haven't lived depending on God's provision because we've been able to get what we need ourselves. And what we've missed is an opportunity to give glory to God each day for his blessing of us as sinful men and women. And so when God says to them, if you will obey, then I will give them.

these things. He's not setting up a conditional conditions on the covenant and promises he's made to them. He's using that language to teach them to trust and to obey. If you obey me, my blessings will be lavished upon you. But when you disobey me, you're still my son and you still get these things, but they're coming with troubles now and hardships. Not because God isn't good or able, but because they haven't believed as deeply and thoroughly as they ought to have. If you think about what that land represents, it was a physical land to Israel. It had boundaries, right? We're told here it has boundaries from Lebanon over to there and from the river to the sea. You could draw it on a map, that place. For us, the land that we look forward to doesn't have a physical boundary like that. We can't draw it on a map. Say, that's my space. That's my plot. That's what God's going to give to me.

Our land that we look forward to is in glory. It's heaven. It's the new heavens and the new earth come down after the return of Jesus Christ where he sorts out the sheep from the goats and he executes his judgments and he welcomes all of his people into his rest. That's our land. And so when we come and look at this land that they're receiving, you go, did they receive that land under different terms than we receive our land? And the answer is no. They were called. to live by faith. They had less understanding. I'm not arguing that they would have understood this promised land in the same way that we do, though we're told of Abraham that he was a sojourner and he went out looking for a land or a city that had foundations, whose architect and builder was God. And so I believe even when Abraham was given the promise of the promised land, he understood that there was something more than that physical land to be received from God.

And I think he understood that because he was a faithful man, the father of faith. And so I don't want us to get too caught up as Christians in this idea of land. I want you simply to understand that things that you receive from God, you receive from him by his mercy, even up to and including your salvation and your eternal rest. I want to take the pressure off of you. You're not earning that stuff. You're not performing for that stuff. God's not keeping a tally to see if you can find your way into heaven. There's none of that. If you're going to go to glory and rest with Jesus Christ, you'll go there because he's provided the path and the way. He's made the payments. He's prepared the place. And he will welcome you into it. In light of that, and because he's done these things, we have no excuse for unbelief. And so we're called to careful obedience.

Would you like it said of you that the Lord your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you on all the land on which you set your foot? Doesn't that sound martial? Doesn't that sound militant and victorious and like stand up to your full height and stick out your chest? But if you don't have a land to go marching and parading around like a peacock through, What is the application of that passage to us? Well, it was true in the Old Testament even that the nation, some of them, had the fear and the dread of Israel in their hearts, which is to say they had faith. Think about Rahab for a minute. I want to read to you from Joshua 2, 9 through 11. It says, Rahab said to the men, to the spies, she says, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the terror of you has fallen on us.

and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away from before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. When we heard it, our hearts melted, and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. And that wasn't too long after all of this, right? Deuteronomy is happening right before they go over the border. And Joshua 2 is pretty soon after that. That news of the two Amorite kings, Sion and Og, being utterly destroyed, that was not in the distant past. Months. Red Sea was 40 years previous. But Sion and Og's destruction was not. And so God put the fear of them.

in the hearts of the Canaanites. So how's that work out today? How do we see this passage being fulfilled in our lives? Does the world still have any fear of God's people? Maybe we look to the Crusades and say, well, that was a time when these things were especially true. But I would contend with you that the fear that is being put on them and in them is not because of our military strength and our valor. The fear that's put into the hearts of the unbeliever is that where their hearts melt away and they have no courage because of the power of God and the wrath of God, Christians have comfort and Christians have strength and Christians persevere. Christians are not...

just afraid of losing their bodies, but ultimately they're afraid of losing the one who, after having killed the body, has authority to cast them into hell. And that's recognizable in your day-to-day life, who you fear and what you fear, especially when trials come. How you process those trials is indicative of what you believe to be true and who you fear. And someone who's not afraid of dying and is not... grumbling and complaining under burden is testifying to their faith in Jesus Christ. And people see it and go, I don't know how to make any sense of that. That's not what I'm like. That's not how I feel. That's not what I would do. There's something about that man or that woman or that child. There's something about that marriage that we don't have. You have to ask yourself, like the martyrs of the early church and throughout church history, like, What was the response of the people to their death? There's a couple of responses. The Christians often were stirred up toward faith and to further obedience. That was their response. What was the response of the unbeliever? Frustration, redoubled effort to eradicate these people from the land because they weren't afraid of the normal things. They couldn't be manipulated and controlled by the pressures of this world. They were willing to die.

And they considered it joy to go and to be with their Lord Jesus Christ. They understood personally in their lives what Paul said in Philippians, which is, as for me, I don't know which is better, to live as Christ and to die as to gain, and I don't know which to choose. How do you deal with somebody like that? How do you compel someone like that to get in line and obey and submit to wickedness? You can't. And that's a fearful thing, to deal with someone that you can't control through fear. It's not that Christians don't fear. It's that they don't fear death. They ought not to fear death. They ought not to look on suffering and hardship as though something has gone wrong. Peter calls these things momentary light afflictions. Probably the most obnoxious thing. It's like, we're dying over here. And now remember, Peter was crucified.

upside down, not like his Lord because he didn't consider himself worthy to be killed in the same manner. Like he wasn't speaking from a comfy chair, you know? Momentary light afflictions is producing in you an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comprehension. And so the Christian life is simple to understand, but it takes faith to accomplish. And so as you think about your own lives and you think about what you're afraid of and you think about what you believe, when you feel like you can't go on, when you feel like I shouldn't have to go on, I want you to hear these words and go, I have now the opportunity to testify as to what I believe is true. And I'm going to testify as to what I believe is true. And Lord, help me to believe, right? I believe, help my unbelief ought to be our cry in the midst of trials and hardships, to bear up underneath them. This is our firm foundation. This is Jesus Christ, our solid rock.

This is us being able to weather the storms with a house anchored to him, a life anchored to him, as opposed to built on sand, which when the storm, it stands as long as there's no storm, but when there's a storm, now we see what we believe. Now the underside is exposed. What are you connected to? What is your root in? You know, in Hebrews, they warn against the evil, unbelieving heart, a root of bitterness. There's this idea of like we grow and send our roots down into something. What is it into? Is it into Jesus Christ? Or is it into our own strength? Is it into our own intellect? Is it into our own wealth? What is it for you? That's the question you have to ask. What do I trust in? And when suffering comes, you'll probably learn a lesson about yourself. And other people will probably learn a lesson about yourself.

And may it be that the lesson that's learned is that by God's grace, I'm found in him. And so I'm going to obey him even in the middle of a storm, even when things are scary and hard, even when everyone around would understand and excuse my frustrations. If it would not be acceptable to God, then it ought not to be acceptable to us. We have a hope that extends beyond the grave. Therefore, we can face whatever comes our way without wavering. That's an ambitious goal. But nobody gets to walk the victorious march if they haven't taken on the dragon, they haven't conquered the monster or Goliath or whatever you want to put out there. We do have to overcome it in the grace and the strength that God provides. And I'll tell you, he clears out your sufferings and your hardships and those insurmountable walls for his people today just the same as he did for Israel in the Old Testament. He parted the Red Sea.

He consumed the Egyptians. He sent confusion and fear into the land of Canaan ahead of his people. We ought not to live like he doesn't do these kinds of things and that our fears are real fears. I would not have wanted to be, speaking personally from like my own comfort and flesh, I would not have wanted to have been there then. That would have been a rough time to be around. And yet he delivered them from the hand of all their enemies. And even the ones who died went to their rest. And received their prize. And so even in death, you don't lose. The Christian doesn't lose even in death. And so this ought to be our mind. This is the mind of Christ. We ought to be giving ourselves to careful obedience, to living by faith, to looking for opportunities to demonstrate what we believe and who we fear and who we trust. And we shouldn't be making any excuses for our own weaknesses and what other people around us are doing and how it doesn't seem fair that we have to suffer and everyone else doesn't. Who do you love?

If he's led you into a season of difficulty and hardship where you feel like you're backed up against the wall, then he's led you into that. And he'll be faithful to you in that season. Will you be faithful to him? Let's pray.