The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29
Deuteronomy 29
The Lord has brought you through everything you have been through, trials, suffering, need, and provision so that you can be the person you were born to be, the person He called you to be. Verses 1-4 read,
These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.
2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.
Before Salvation, we do not have the ability to truly grasp who God is, who we are in respect to Him, and the depth of the Gospel. We hear the message, we are invited to enter into fellowship with Him and we either have faith or do not. But every moment leading up to that point God has been calling you. He has been there waiting for you to come to the point of decision. You have lived in slavery. You have the chance to grasp ahold of The Gospel and proclaim Christ.
Believer it is then that we wander the wilderness, following the Lord, learning, and becoming the sons and daughter of God or following our own hearts and remaining wanderers. It’s funny how we can experience the same things and some clearly see God’s loving hand while others only see the circumstances. Verses 5-9 read,
I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. 6 You have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. 7 And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, but we defeated them. 8 We took their land and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites. 9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
The wilderness is not easy, but we are not there alone. God is with us, He goes before, He stands behind, He walks beside, and He teaches and guides. He has provided our every need while we walked. He fought the enemy and with each step He has made the obedient and acquiescent into His image. We can’t see Him perfectly yet, but we know one day we will. In the mean time we keep on following, keep on obeying and keep on glorifying.
Look at what God has done for you. Consider His awesome provision and protection. Remember you were once a slave, pitiable and poor. Now, Believer, you are the noble son or daughter of the King of kings, you are a holy nation, a royal priest, you are the temple of the LORD! You have become an entirely new person. Or have you? If you are still the same person you used to be, maybe you are still a slave to the prince of the world, stubbornly refusing to accept the truth before you. You stand at the gateway from your old life to eternity, the choice is yours. Verses 10-15 read,
“You are standing today all of you before the Lord your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel,11 your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,12 so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, 13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, 15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.”
The covenant, the agreement we enter is not just you and God, me and God, and him and God. It is us together and God. We are responsible for ourselves and we are responsible for one another. We too often say, “That’s his business, it’s between him and God.” The thing is, if we are a body and all members of one another, then we are in a relationship together with God. My actions affect you. Yours affect me. Colossians 3:12-17 reads,
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
We are responsible to pay attention to those among us. What is their spiritual condition? Have they stayed an infant in Christ these last few years? Have they become burdened under an attack they have not shared? Are they even saved? If you love them, you care and you want the best for them. Pay attention. Just because they’re in church with you doesn’t mean they are one of the church. Their blind stubbornness will absolutely affect their eternity and it may very well affect the eternity of outsiders as well. Verses 16-19 read,
“You know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed. 17 And you have seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them. 18 Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.”
Do you love them enough to want good for them? Do you love them enough to want eternal life for them? Those who reject Christ need to be given the chance to accept Him and if they continue to reject Him, if their obstinate rebellion will not give in, it is better to let them be out in the world than contaminating the body with lies and sin. Verses 20-28 read,
“The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 And the Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. 22 And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the Lord has made it sick— 23 the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and wrath— 24 all the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ 25 Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26 and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. 27 Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land ,bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, 28 and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.’
That may seem harsh, but we can trust God to be God. We don’t save, He does. How deeply do you care about the heart condition of the brethren and the lost? If we really care sometimes we have to do the difficult things.
1 Corinthians 5:1-7 reads,
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
If his heart is not so immovable and he is able to listen then it doesn’t have to go that far. In Matthew 18:15-17 Jesus said,
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Allowing those people to stay in the body sends the wrong message to everyone. The person assumes his sins are acceptable to God. Outsiders see that God does not have an impact on the saved, they’re just like them. The church becomes accepting of sin and before long it is not one man but 20 and then 50 and so on, who are living in the flesh instead of walking in the Spirit.
God’s Word has a purpose. His revelation has a reason. His desire will be accomplished and the how is not up to us. Verse 29 reads,
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
God brought you to salvation, Believer. Do you trust He can bring others to eternal life as well? He is the Lord your God.
The Lord has brought you through everything you have been through, trials, suffering, need, and provision so that you can be the person you were born to be, the person He called you to be. Verses 1-4 read,
These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.
2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.
Before Salvation, we do not have the ability to truly grasp who God is, who we are in respect to Him, and the depth of the Gospel. We hear the message, we are invited to enter into fellowship with Him and we either have faith or do not. But every moment leading up to that point God has been calling you. He has been there waiting for you to come to the point of decision. You have lived in slavery. You have the chance to grasp ahold of The Gospel and proclaim Christ.
Believer it is then that we wander the wilderness, following the Lord, learning, and becoming the sons and daughter of God or following our own hearts and remaining wanderers. It’s funny how we can experience the same things and some clearly see God’s loving hand while others only see the circumstances. Verses 5-9 read,
I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. 6 You have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. 7 And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, but we defeated them. 8 We took their land and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites. 9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
The wilderness is not easy, but we are not there alone. God is with us, He goes before, He stands behind, He walks beside, and He teaches and guides. He has provided our every need while we walked. He fought the enemy and with each step He has made the obedient and acquiescent into His image. We can’t see Him perfectly yet, but we know one day we will. In the mean time we keep on following, keep on obeying and keep on glorifying.
Look at what God has done for you. Consider His awesome provision and protection. Remember you were once a slave, pitiable and poor. Now, Believer, you are the noble son or daughter of the King of kings, you are a holy nation, a royal priest, you are the temple of the LORD! You have become an entirely new person. Or have you? If you are still the same person you used to be, maybe you are still a slave to the prince of the world, stubbornly refusing to accept the truth before you. You stand at the gateway from your old life to eternity, the choice is yours. Verses 10-15 read,
“You are standing today all of you before the Lord your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel,11 your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,12 so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, 13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, 15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.”
The covenant, the agreement we enter is not just you and God, me and God, and him and God. It is us together and God. We are responsible for ourselves and we are responsible for one another. We too often say, “That’s his business, it’s between him and God.” The thing is, if we are a body and all members of one another, then we are in a relationship together with God. My actions affect you. Yours affect me. Colossians 3:12-17 reads,
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
We are responsible to pay attention to those among us. What is their spiritual condition? Have they stayed an infant in Christ these last few years? Have they become burdened under an attack they have not shared? Are they even saved? If you love them, you care and you want the best for them. Pay attention. Just because they’re in church with you doesn’t mean they are one of the church. Their blind stubbornness will absolutely affect their eternity and it may very well affect the eternity of outsiders as well. Verses 16-19 read,
“You know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed. 17 And you have seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them. 18 Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.”
Do you love them enough to want good for them? Do you love them enough to want eternal life for them? Those who reject Christ need to be given the chance to accept Him and if they continue to reject Him, if their obstinate rebellion will not give in, it is better to let them be out in the world than contaminating the body with lies and sin. Verses 20-28 read,
“The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 And the Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. 22 And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the Lord has made it sick— 23 the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and wrath— 24 all the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ 25 Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26 and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. 27 Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land ,bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, 28 and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.’
That may seem harsh, but we can trust God to be God. We don’t save, He does. How deeply do you care about the heart condition of the brethren and the lost? If we really care sometimes we have to do the difficult things.
1 Corinthians 5:1-7 reads,
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
If his heart is not so immovable and he is able to listen then it doesn’t have to go that far. In Matthew 18:15-17 Jesus said,
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Allowing those people to stay in the body sends the wrong message to everyone. The person assumes his sins are acceptable to God. Outsiders see that God does not have an impact on the saved, they’re just like them. The church becomes accepting of sin and before long it is not one man but 20 and then 50 and so on, who are living in the flesh instead of walking in the Spirit.
God’s Word has a purpose. His revelation has a reason. His desire will be accomplished and the how is not up to us. Verse 29 reads,
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
God brought you to salvation, Believer. Do you trust He can bring others to eternal life as well? He is the Lord your God.
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