Take Shelter in God

9/21/1995

Ok, the end of Deuteronomy 7, starting at verse 23, it says, “But the Lord your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet the silver and gold on them, and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the Lord your God. Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction. Utterly abhor and detest it, for it is set apart for destruction.”

And I am just sure that the things, some of the things that are in our lives that stay there, there’s no way that we utterly abhor and detest them, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. We would have taken steps before now to see that they were gotten rid of. If we abhorred them and detested them and hated them, certainly we would have been driven to a point of desperation to get rid of them by now. But if you don’t, cry out to God and ask Him for His heart on it. Ask Him to really show it to you clearly for the ugliness that it is. “Soften my heart, God, that I’d see this the way…that I’d hate it the way that You do.” That I’d just somehow that I could somehow peacefully co-exist with things that aren’t like Jesus in my life. “Ya know, highlight those things, bring them out, show them to me. So that I might be able to…together we can more clearly deal with those things.”

A verse that caught my eye is that God’s intention with all this – we’ve said this several different ways tonight already. But here’s one more way to think about it: “He will give their kings into your hand and you will wipe out their name from under heaven.” That’s the kind of analogy we’re talking about, that “you will wipe out their name from under heaven.” No trace. The prince of darkness has come and he has no hold on me. He’s wiping its name out.

I also wanted to look real quick in Deuteronomy 4. This section through here starts…Chapter 4, verse 32. Mostly this is just really just to be in awe of God, just some of the picture and some of the devotion that He has to us is just really precious. Starting at verse 32, “Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. Because he loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land and to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today. Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.”

Something in there that stuck out to me the other day was just the thing about “to drive out nations greater and stronger than you.” Well, you know what, they are! They are greater and stronger, but that’s okay. I wasn’t intimidated by it, it was more like, “Well, that’s true! They are!” And that’s the whole point, is that God wants to drive them out before me, He wants to go before me and before all of us and be our shelter. And we have to hide our life in Him. I mean, if we step out of that and try to take this into our own hands, we’ve lost it. You know how that is. When you step out of abiding in Jesus, you have left yourself open to all kinds of trash and all sorts of enemy things. But if we hide our life in Him and really believe Him to be our rear guard, believe Him to be the captain of the host and to go before us, that He’ll shelter us, He’ll hide us under His wing. We have got to hide our life in Him and believe that He wants to drive these things out. That’s the whole point, is that God wants to show Himself great and mighty to all the peoples in the unseen world that He really can annihilate these things and change us from the inside out.