THEME: A Chosen People Against a Formidable Foe
TEXT: DEUTERONOMY 26:5-10
DATE: 2/29/04
Pastor Bruce Skelton
When one considers the history of the people of Israel presented to us in the Scriptures, one of the things that stands out more than any other is the sheer impossibility of their victory over the Egyptians. First of all, they arose from nothing. They were the descendents of a wandering Aramean. A lowly sheepherder named Jacob, whom God later re-named Israel. Israel and his family would have died in a famine had not God seen fit to take one of his sons, Joseph, from being a slave to the second most powerful man in Egypt. Joseph then brought his father and his family to that country and cared for them, but after Joseph died all that he did for Egypt was soon forgotten, and Israel’s descendants became slaves there.
Some 200 years later the people of Israel were no longer just a family but a nation unto themselves and God sent Moses to bring them out of Egypt and return them to their rightful inheritance in the Promised Land. At the time, however, that seemed quite unlikely. Egypt was the most powerful nation on the planet. It was in fact the lone superpower in the world. It had a powerful economy; it was vastly wealthy compared to any other nation. They were also the most technologically advanced people on earth and had a very sophisticated culture.
In contrast, Israel had nothing. They were, as I said, slaves. Slaves to be worked to death at the will of their Egyptian taskmasters. They should have been squashed like bugs under the feet of their formidable foe. But God of course had other plans for His chosen people, didn’t he? I don’t need to relate the history of the exodus, because the story of the plagues the Lord visited upon Egypt and the defeat of Pharaoh’s army in the waters of the red sea is well known. But the unlikelihood of Israel’s divinely aided victory was and is still astounding and amazing, which is why Moses, before his death, instructs that they are to remember and confess it every time they worship.
If we read the verses immediately preceding our text, we can see this:
When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it, take some of the first fruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the Lord your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling place for his Name and say to the priest in office at the time, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us.” The priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: …
Then it continues with the rest of our text for today.
So you see what is going on here is very important. Every time the Israelites were to go and worship they were to humbly confess before God that it was He, the Lord God, and He alone made them a great nation and that He alone had delivered them out of the hands of their formidable foe, and that He alone gave them the promised land. Now, the question comes: Why did Moses have them do this?
The answer is that Moses knew the nature of sinful man very well. So he knew that over time, the Israelites would become proud and begin to think that they were responsible for their own deliverance. He knew that they would succumb to the temptation and believe that is was by their own strength or their own works that they had overcome Egypt and won the promised land, and that they could do it again. They could gain salvation on their own, without God’s help.
And Moses concern that they would do so is well founded, because that problem has been the problem from the very beginning, and still is the problem today. The idea that somehow people have won or can win their own salvation, that they can defeat the power of evil on their own, or that something that they have done in the past, or are doing today makes them worthy of heaven.
Beloved in Christ, you chosen people of God, you must know that nothing could be further from the truth. The Law of God shows us quite clearly that we all have sinned and fall far short of the Glory of God. The Scriptures say that we are all conceived and born in sin and that we start to act on that proclivity as soon as we are able. From the beginning in the garden of Eden, the power of the Tempter has proven irresistible to humankind it is as Luther wrote and we have just sung: Deep guile and great might are his dread arms in fight, on earth is not his equal. And in the next verse…With might of ours could naught be done, soon were our loss effected.
Yet, the devil, has deceived and still is deceiving millions today with the lie that they can somehow work their way to heaven. It is the common ingredient to every false religion, including by the way, some that try to masquerade as Christian, and they call to us with alluring voices, but like the sirens of ancient Greek mythology who with their beautiful songs beckoned unsuspecting seafarers to their deaths, so it will be with us if we listen to the subtle theology of works righteousness peddled by too many false teachers in the church today.
Yes, our old evil foe is formidable, but the good news is that he has been overcome. Not by us or any other sinful man or woman, but by the same Lord and God of Moses. The same Lord and God who impossibly delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt has impossibly delivered us from the guile and power of Satan. And we see it so clearly in our Gospel lesson appointed for today as our Lord resists one temptation after another and in so doing, he accomplished what we could not.
This is what theologians call his called his active obedience. Jesus actively resisted the temptations of the devil, not only here, but throughout his life as our substitute. He lived the only perfect life that ever has been lived, or that ever will be lived, so that by faith in him, it could be credited to us and to all who believe. And not only was Jesus actively obedient, but he was passively obedient. He allowed himself to be tortured and killed on a cross as a sacrifice for our sins.
Some of you have already watched, Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of The Christ. I will warn you if you have not seen it, that it is tremendously violent and I don’t recommend it for children under 13 or 14 years of age, because it graphically and accurately depicts the bitter suffering and death of our Lord. But the most amazing thing about all the brutality that Jesus endured was that he could have stopped it at any point. At any point along the way from Gethsemane to Golgotha, he could have simply said, “Enough!” and used his divine power or called an army of angels down to destroy his enemies and stop his suffering, but he did not instead he endured it all. Why? Out of love for you and me and all people.
Jesus the Christ was perfectly obedient, actively and passively in our place, so that by faith in him, we could stand before our heavenly Father clothed his perfect holiness and righteousness. And indeed that is how we now stand. In spite of our many sins, in spite of the many times we have succumb to temptation, in spite of the fact that we have been guilty of thinking we can gain heaven through our own merits, we are forgiven we through faith in Him, faith given us freely by the grace of God, through the work of God the Holy Spirit.
We have been chosen, chosen as God’s holy and precious children, born anew in the waters of Holy Baptism, chosen and fed at His altar, fed with Christ’s own body and blood, with the bread and wine given and shed for the forgiveness of our sin, chosen through His Word of Gospel which is the very power of God for the salvation of all who believe, chosen to be raised up from the dead and to live with him and with all the faithful in his glorious kingdom for all eternity.
Yes, as hard as it is to believe, our formidable foe Satan has been defeated. He’s judged, the deed is done, Christ holds the field, he has won the battle forever, All we need do, is believe it and know that it is true, and like the ancient Israelites when we bring our offerings and come to worship him humbly confess that he has done it all. Indeed, to him be all the glory, honor, power and might now and forever. Amen.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
05/06/2004