Promises and Precautions for the Land of Promise
Notes
Transcript
This closing section to the Book of the Covenant is both a strongly encouraging as well as strongly challenging epilogue for the people of Israel. In this section, there is an intensity from what has been previous. Here we see the shift from the third-person form of the legal cases to the “I-you” style of address. As the climax of the Book of the Covenant, the LORD will reiterate both His promises and the precautions that the children of Israel must heed.
A. The LORD’s presence: guidance and protection, 23:20-23.
A. The LORD’s presence: guidance and protection, 23:20-23.
23:20 – This is God Himself speaking, the Hebrew is emphatic here. He is going to send an angel before the children of Israel. We have met this angel before. We have seen him at the burning bush in Exodus 3 and saw him go between the children of Israel and the Egyptians in Exodus 14. More than likely this is the angel of the Lord, the manifestation of the preincarnate Son of God. The use of reciprocal language seems to bear this out, as I will point out. There are two things that the angel is to do for the children of Israel as they go from this place to the land promised in this verse (there are 4 in this text):
The First Promise: The angel will guard them along the way; He will protect them during their travel.
The Second Promise: The angel will bring them into the place which God has prepared; He will give them guidance and direct their path to successfully achieve the land of promise.
AS we continue,
23:21 – Israel is told to pay attention and obey whatever the angel says. This introduces the third promise, with an attached warning:
The Third Promise: The angel will instruct you, so do what he says.
The Warning: “do not be rebellious toward him.” The term used here has a technical connotation of covenant-breaking, demonstrated by passages such as 1 Kings 12:19 and 2 Kings 8:20, 22.
So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.
In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made a king over themselves.
So Edom revolted against Judah to this day. Then Libnah revolted at the same time.
If the people of Israel broke the covenant with this behavior, the LORD would have no more obligations to them. The text goes on to say that their rebellion (transgression) would not be pardoned by the angel. What angel can pardon sin? An angel cannot; the one whom the LORD says, “My name is in him,” can because his words are God’s words, his name is God’s Name! This makes this connection even stronger.
It is quite likely that the communication of the angel’s instructions would be through Moses, then to the children of Israel. Later, Moses would have direct face-to-face conversations with God in a tent set up for this purpose. There, God would answer inquiries and give instructions through Moses. Whenever Moses entered the “tent of meeting,” the cloud of God’s presence would come down (Exodus 33:7-11).
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.
And it came about, whenever Moses went out to the tent, that all the people would arise and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent.
Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent; and the Lord would speak with Moses.
When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent.
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
We imagine that it was this angel, or God through His angel, with whom Moses was speaking. The cloud and the angel worked together in Exodus 14:19-20, and at the end of Exodus the cloud will perform the same guiding function as is ascribed here to this angel, Exodus 40:34-38.
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Throughout all their journeys whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the sons of Israel would set out;
but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day when it was taken up.
For throughout all their journeys, the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel.
“Both are tangible manifestations of God’s presence with his people to bring them to their final goal.” [Enns, Exodus, 475]
23:22-23 – Note in this first part of verse 22 the reciprocal idea: “But if you truly obey his [angel’s] voice and do all that I [the LORD] say.” Once again this points out that obedience to the angel’s voice = obedience to the LORD. This is a conditional promise for covenantal loyalty. Here are the positive results of obedience:
I will be a foe to those opposed to you; I will show hostility to those openly hostile to you!
How will the LORD do this? For the second time, adding certainty to the promise of verse 20, God’s angel, the one whom God’s name is in, will go before the children of Israel and He will bring them in to the land promised, the land currently occupied by the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites. This land is where God will “completely destroy” [annihilate] the occupiers, for this is the place which He has prepared for His people. The enemies of the LORD have no place here.
B. The LORD’s plan for possessing the land, 23:24-31.
B. The LORD’s plan for possessing the land, 23:24-31.
The children of Israel have personal responsibility to preserve their part of the covenant relationship with the LORD.
1) "You shall not worship their gods....”, v. 24a.
The children of Israel must not fall into the same idolatries and practices as these Canaanite nations (v. 23). They are not to worship these false gods, neither serve them nor do anything according to the deeds associated with worshipping these false gods (v. 24a).
2) “…you shall utterly overthrow them [these gods] ....”, v. 24b.
The children of Israel shall utterly overthrow these gods, and they shall shatter their sacred pillars into pieces (v. 24b). This is one of the positive acts they must do as a demonstration of covenant loyalty, the second follows in verse 25a:
3) “You shall serve the LORD your God”, v. 25.
Here follows, in verses 25-26) the conditional promise of God, a promise for health, fertility and long life. These blessings would be greatly expanded in Leviticus 16:3-13 and Deuteronomy 28:1-14.
The blessings typify what people need to survive—to “fulfill the number of your days” (v. 26)—in the highlands of Palestine: food and drink, good health, and successful procreation. These basic components of daily life and family continuity are not to be taken for granted; they are provided by God to those who are faithful to the covenant precepts. [Meyers, Exodus, 204]
4) “I will send My terror ahead of you....”, vs 27-28.
How will the LORD let them possess the land? Verses 27-28 tells us that the LORD is sending “My terror ahead of you." Just as the LORD brought confusion to the Egyptians (Exodus 14:24), He will also do to Israel’s future enemies. God Himself will make His enemies tremble, as Moses anticipated in Exodus 15:14-16
“The peoples have heard, they tremble; Anguish has gripped the inhabitants of Philistia.
“Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed; The leaders of Moab, trembling grips them; All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.
“Terror and dread fall upon them; By the greatness of Your arm they are motionless as stone; Until Your people pass over, O Lord, Until the people pass over whom You have purchased.
and as Rahab confirmed (Joshua 2:8-11):
Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof,
and said to the men, “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 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.
“The first thing the nations will see as Israel approaches is not Israel’s spears or armor or chariots or hordes, but Israel’s God.” [Enns, Exodus, 425]
We really should not be surprised when the angel of the LORD turns up in his military role and apparel in the land itself, with words that he had first spoken to Moses (Joshua 5:13-15).
Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?”
He said, “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?”
The captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
The hornets are probably an illustration: just as we would flee from hornets, the Canaanites will flee from the terror the LORD will cause among them.
5) The possession of the land will take time, verses 29-30.
The Fourth Promise: The LORD will establish them in the land
God’s plan for taking over the land is not by a massive genocide. The destruction and slaughter in Joshua was mostly confined to the small fortified cities where the local kings (or chiefs) had their military power bases. Later in Joshua, certainly in Judges, we will discover that Israel’s settlement in the land took place over an extended period, and in that process some of the indigenous peoples sought accommodations one way or another with the Israelites. There was a practical consideration as well expressed in verse 29—the conquest was to be “little by little” to prevent the land from becoming desolate and overrun by wild animals. The LORD would establish them in the land on the basis of their obedience.
6) The LORD would fix their boundary, verse 31.
God was willing to give the children of Israel an extensive border if they were obedient to the covenant with the LORD. The LORD would do His part, and He would use His covenant people as the means to accomplish it (v. 31b).
C. The LORD’s Priority: Serve no other gods, 23:32-33.
C. The LORD’s Priority: Serve no other gods, 23:32-33.
AS the Book of the Covenant began, so it ends: a command to worship the LORD your God only and no other. The warning here is for the children of Israel to make no covenant with the occupiers of the land promised. To do so is to invite their gods into a covenant relationship with the Israelites, breaking their covenant with the LORD. Verse 33 warns what will happen if these people are not driven out of the land: “they will make you sin against Me,” enticing Israel to serve their gods as well, and ensnaring them in the folly of rejecting their covenant with the LORD, rebelling against His covenant. How easy this was to do and their rebellion prolonged the conquest of the land, according to the angel of the LORD in Judges 2:1-3;
Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you,
and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done?
“Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’ ”
they became a test for Israel because of Israel’s unfaithfulness, Judges 2:20-23.
So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers and has not listened to My voice,
I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died,
in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.”
So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.
They failed their part of the covenant conditions.
Let’s finish with a couple of things…
Even with the presence of conditionality, there is the thread of unconditionality that runs throughout these promises in this conclusion to the Book of the Covenant. We read that God will give them the land; He will destroy their enemies; He will give them posterity in the land. One of the great themes in the OT is this issue of God’s faithfulness against all the odds. Biblical history reveals that time after time the people would break all their promises; they would rebel against Him and His covenant again and again. Yet the LORD’s determination to save them and the world by bringing as many as possible into a life-giving relationship with Himself has won out again and again. We need to recognize the intermingling of the individual and the community in the OT. The fact that God will be faithful to His covenant to create a people for Himself is not a guarantee to every individual under the covenant. Individuals who rebelled would experience the results of that rebellion, as this generation at Mount Sinai would learn to its sorrow. But not every individual would rebel, and out of that remnant, God would forge a people again and again. The same is true of the church today. The church of Jesus Christ will survive and triumph because God keeps His word. But that does not mean that every individual who was ever a faithful member of Christ’s local church will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Faithfulness to the church should flow out of a personal relationship with God through Christ; without that relationship, being a faithful member of a church has no value. Check who you belong to!
Now think about the God who warns, the God who punishes, the God who forgives. God says He will not acquit the guilty in Exodus 23:7. God says He will not forgive in Exodus 23:21. The OT saints knew well that the LORD’s terrible warnings had to be taken with the utmost seriousness; after all, the consequences could be (and would be) horrendous. These saints also knew the LORD, the same God who was unlike any other gods of the nations, was the God of forgiveness. The prophet Micah could not adequately express this truth without using a graphic double metaphor in Micah 7:18-19.
Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity And passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in unchanging love.
He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. Yes, You will cast all their sins Into the depths of the sea.
The national sin that Micah was addressing would lead to the wrath and death of the exile. That would certainly need, and ultimately receive, “the forgiveness of sins” as Jeremiah 31:34 says.
“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
But at a very personal level also, even the psalmist could call upon his soul to praise God for such blessings in Psalm 103:1-4.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
The mystery of our God who says He will not acquit the guilty but then does, and who says He will not forgive but then does, can only be resolved at the cross of Christ. It was there the guilt of the wicked was borne by God Himself in the Person of His Son, Jesus the Christ, so that sin can be forgiven, and sinners can be saved. Have you received the salvation offered to you freely by God Himself through Jesus? He bore in His own body on that cross your sins and mine, bearing the wrath of a just, righteous and holy God against rebels of the heart, mind and actions. Will you stop rebelling against God and receive His warm embrace as your savior from the penalty of sin?