You saw the abominations and idols among them made of wood and stone, of silver and gold. Sermons
I. INEXCUSABLE UNBELIEF. (Vers. 16-18.) The man who, turning from Jehovah, went after the gods by the nations, was doubly inexcusable. 1. The true God had been revealed to him. 2. The worthlessness of heathen idols had been demonstrated. He had the light, and could compare it with the darkness of the nations around. If not himself, a witness of God's mighty works in Egypt and in the desert, he had heard of them from his forefathers, or could read of them in his Scriptures (ver. 20). The existence of the nation was a proof that such things had been done. Unbelief is not less inexcusable in us: 1. With the Bible in our hands. 2. With so large a body of evidences of Divine truth. 3. With centuries of experience of the regenerative influence of Christianity. 4. With a wide knowledge of heathen nations, discovering to us by contrast our own advantages. Unbelief may be: 1. Speculative. 2. Practical. It is enough that our practice be shaped on the hypothesis of the untruth of God's Word, to constitute us unbelievers (1 Timothy 5:8). II. GROSS SELF-DECEIT. (Ver. 19.) The act of this wicked man is very remarkable. He blesses himself in his heart, and says, "I will have peace," at the very time that God's curses are being read out to him. Yet his case is not a solitary one. He does no more than men do every day in the teeth of the threatenings of the Bible. Satan whispers, "Ye shall not surely die" (Genesis 3:4); "Be it far from thee: this shall rot be unto thee" (Matthew 16:22); and Satan, not God, is believed. We may explain this self-deceit: 1. From want of consideration (cf. Isaiah 1:3). The wicked man does not really trouble himself about the curses. They are mere words to him. The mind makes no application, scarcely even asks the meaning, of what it hears. The oracle with which the wicked man consults is in his own heart (Psalm 36:1-5), and the "oracles of God get no attention. 2. From want of faith. God's Word, even if attended to, could not compel belief in a heart already possessed by an opposite set of beliefs, and determined not to part with them. 3. From self-will. Will enters into the question of our beliefs; so long as it can twist evidence, resist unwelcome conclusions, find evasions and pretexts, it will not accept what is contrary to its ordinary bent. While, if the worst comes to the worst, it can cut the knot by a simple I won't," and obstinately refuse to believe aught but what it likes. The account of the sinner's unbelief and self-deceit is therefore this: 1. He has not liked to retain God in his knowledge. 2. Unwelcome subjects have been banished from his mind. 3. Through unfamiliarity to his thoughts, the supersensual world has become less and less a reality to him. 4. He acquires the power of ignoring it, and ends by disbelief in it. III. UNUTTERABLE FOLLY. (Vers. 20, 21.) Unbelief, unhappily for the sinner, cannot alter the actual state of the case. God's auger smokes against him, and will certainly destroy him. His sin, agreeable as it may appear at present, will yield at last gall and wormwood. Contending with the Almighty, he rushes on his ruin. The curses written in the Book will not fail to overtake him. It is easy for sinners to "laugh now" (Luke 6:25), but there awaits them a terrible undeceiving - a day when they shall "mourn and weep." - J.O.
Ye stand...before the Lord your God. I. THAT COVENANTING WITH GOD, AND THAT PUBLICLY, IS NOT AN UNPRECEDENTED THING IN THE CHURCH OF GOD, BUT HAS BEEN USUAL IN FORMER AGES.II. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THAT COVENANT INTO WHICH THE PEOPLE OF GOD HAVE ENTERED, AND INTO WHICH WE ARE CALLED TO ENTER WITH HIM? AND HOW DO WE ENTER INTO IT? The Christian covenant is founded "upon better promises" (Hebrews 8:6). Its ceremonies are only two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, both most significant. Its conditions or duties are most reasonable, necessary in the nature of things, and easy. Its worship is pure and spiritual, and confined to neither time nor place. Its privileges and blessings are spiritual and eternal Now, this covenant can only be entered into by a Mediator (Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 7:22-28). III. THE END FOR WHICH WE SHOULD ENTER INTO OR RENEW OUR COVENANT. "That He may establish thee for a people to Himself." 1. A believing people, receiving in faith all His truths and promises. 2. A loving people (Deuteronomy 30:6, 16, 20), esteeming, desiring, grateful to, and delighting in Him. 3. An obedient people (Deuteronomy 30:20). (J. Benson.) 2. The thought that we stand before God involves not only a sense of warning, but a sense of elevation, of ennoblement. It is a sweet and a lofty doctrine, the highest source of all the dignity and grandeur of life. 3. A third consequence of life spent consciously in God's presence is a firm, unflinching, unwavering sense of duty. A life regardful of duty is crowned with an object, directed by a purpose, inspired by an enthusiasm, till the very humblest routine carried out conscientiously for the sake of God is elevated into moral grandeur, and the very obscurest office becomes an imperial stage on which all the virtues play. 4. The fourth consequence is a sense of holiness. God requires not only duty, but holiness. He searcheth the spirits; He discerneth the very reins and heart. 5. This thought encourages us with a certainty of help and strength. The God before whom we stand is not only our Judge and our Creator, but also our Father and our Friend. (Dean Farrar.) I. Moses requires the Israelites to consider THE SANCTITY OF THE PLACE IN WHICH THE COVENANT WAS CONTRACTED WITH GOD. It was consecrated by the Divine presence. "Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord." The Christians having more enlightened notions of the Divinity than the Jews, have the less need to be apprised that God is an Omnipresent Being, and unconfined by local residence. But let us be cautious lest, under a pretence of removing some superstitious notions, we refine too far. God presides in a peculiar manner in our temples, and in a peculiar manner even where two or three are met together in His name: more especially in a house consecrated to His glory; more especially in places in which a whole nation come to pay their devotion. The more solemn our worship, the more is God intimately near. And what part of the worship we render to God can be more august than that we have celebrated in the Lord's Supper? In what situation can the thought, "I am seen and heard of God," be more affecting? II. Moses required the Israelites, in renewing their covenant with God, to consider THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE CONTRACT. "Ye stand all of you before the Lord." Would to God that your preachers could say, on sacramental occasions, as Moses said to the Jews, "Ye stand all of you this day before the Lord your God; the captains of your tribes, your elders, your officers, your wives, your little ones, from the hewer of wood to the drawer of water." But alas! how defective are our assemblies on these solemn occasions! There was a time, among the Jews, when a man who should have had the assurance to neglect the rites which constituted the essence of the law, would have been cut off from the people: This law has varied in regard to circumstances, but in essence it still subsists, and in all its force. III. Moses required the Israelites, in renewing their covenant with God, TO CONSIDER WHAT CONSTITUTED ITS ESSENCE: WHICH, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF THE LAWGIVER, WAS THE RECIPROCAL ENGAGEMENT. Be attentive to this term reciprocal; it is the soul of my definition. What constitutes the essence of a covenant is the reciprocal engagements of the contracting parties. This is obvious from the words of my text, "that thou shouldest (stipulate or) enter." Here we distinctly find mutual conditions; here we distinctly find that God engaged with the Israelites to be their God; and they engaged to be His people. We proved at the commencement of this discourse that the covenant of God with the Israelites was in substance the same as that contracted with Christians. This being considered, what idea ought we to form of those Christians (if we may give that name to men who can entertain such singular notions of Christianity) who venture to affirm that the ideas of conditions and reciprocal engagements are dangerous expressions, when applied to the evangelical covenant: that what distinguishes the Jews from Christians is, that God then promised and required, whereas now He promises and requires nothing? IV. Moses required the Israelites to consider, in renewing their covenant with God, THE EXTENT OF THE ENGAGEMENT: "That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into His oath; that He may establish thee today for a people unto Himself; and that He may be unto thee a God." This engagement of God with the Jews implies that He would be their God; or, to comprehend the whole in a single word, that He would procure them a happiness correspondent to the eminence of His perfections. Cases occur in which the attributes of God are at variance with the happiness of men. It implies, for instance, an inconsistency with the Divine perfections, not only that the wicked should be happy, but also that the righteous should have perfect felicity, while their purity is incomplete. There are miseries inseparable from our imperfection in holiness; and, imperfections being coeval with life, our happiness will be incomplete till after death. On the removal of this obstruction, by virtue of the covenant, God having engaged to be our God, we shall attain supreme felicity. When God engaged with the Israelites, the Israelites engaged with God. Their covenant implies that they should be His people; that is, that they should obey His precepts so far as human frailty would admit. By virtue of this clause, they engaged not only to abstain from gross idolatry, but also to eradicate the principle. It is not enough to be exempt from crimes, we must exterminate the principle. For example, in theft there is both the root and the plant productive of wormwood and gall. There is theft gross and refined; the act of theft, and the principle of theft. To steal the goods of a neighbour is the gross act of theft; but to indulge an exorbitant wish for the acquisition of wealth, to make enormous charges, to be indelicate as to the means of gaining money, to reject the mortifying claims of restitution, is refined fraud or, if you please, the principle of fraud productive of wormwood and gall. V. Moses lastly required the Israelites to consider THE OATH AND EXECRATION WITH WHICH THEIR ACCEPTANCE OF THE COVENANT WAS ATTENDED: that thou shouldest enter into covenant, and into this oath. What is meant by their entering into the oath of execration? That they pledged themselves by oath to fulfil every clause of the covenant, and, in case of violation, to subject themselves to all the curses God had denounced against those who should be guilty of so perfidious a crime. The words which we render, "that thou shouldest enter into covenant," have a peculiar energy in the original, and signify that thou shouldest pass into covenant. The interpreters of whom I speak, think they refer to a ceremony formerly practised in contracting covenants. On immolating the victims, they divided the flesh into two parts, placing the one opposite to the other. The contracting parties passed in the open space between the two, thereby testifying their consent to be slaughtered as those victims if they did not religiously confirm the covenant contracted in so mysterious a manner. Perhaps one of my hearers may say to himself that the terrific circumstances of this ceremony regarded the Israelites alone, whom God addressed in lightnings and thunders from the top of Sinai. What! was there no victim immolated when God contracted His covenant with us? Does not St. Paul expressly say, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins? (Hebrews 9:22.) What were the lightnings, what were the thunders of Sinai? What were all the execrations, and all the curses of the law? They were the just punishments every sinner shall suffer who neglects an entrance into favour with God. Now, these lightnings, these thunders, these execrations, these curses, did they not all unite against the slaughtered victim when God contracted His covenant with us — I would say, against the head of Jesus Christ? Sinner, here is the victim immolated on contracting thy covenant with God! Here are the sufferings thou didst subject thyself to endure, if ever thou shouldest perfidiously violate it! Thou hast entered, thou hast passed into covenant, and into the oath of execration which God has required. Application: No man should presume to disguise the nature of his engagements and the high characters of the Gospel. To enter into covenant with God is to accept the Gospel precisely as it was delivered by Jesus Christ, and to submit to all its stipulations. This Gospel expressly declares that fornicators, that liars, that drunkards, and the covetous shall Lot inherit the kingdom of God. Therefore, on accepting the Gospel, we submit to be excluded the kingdom of God if we are either drunkards, or liars, or covetous, or fornicators, and if after the commission of any of these crimes, we do not recover by repentance. And what is submission to this clause if it is not to enter into the oath of execration, which God requires of us on the ratification of His covenant? Let us be sincere, and He will give us power to be faithful. Let us ask His aid, and He will not withhold the grace destined to lead us to this noble end. (J. Saurin.) People Gadites, Isaac, Israelites, Jacob, Manasseh, Manassites, Moses, Og, Pharaoh, Reubenites, SihonPlaces Admah, Bashan, Egypt, Gomorrah, Heshbon, Horeb, Moab, Sodom, ZeboiimTopics Abominations, Detestable, Disgusting, Doings, Gold, Idols, Images, Moreover, Silver, Stone, WoodOutline 1. Moses exhorts them to obedience, reminding of the works they had seen10. All are presented before the Lord to enter into his covenant 18. The great wrath on him who flatters himself in his wickedness 29. Secret things belong unto God Dictionary of Bible Themes Deuteronomy 29:17 4333 gold Library Covenant Duties. It is here proposed to show, that every incumbent duty ought, in suitable circumstances, to be engaged to in the exercise of Covenanting. The law and covenant of God are co-extensive; and what is enjoined in the one is confirmed in the other. The proposals of that Covenant include its promises and its duties. The former are made and fulfilled by its glorious Originator; the latter are enjoined and obligatory on man. The duties of that Covenant are God's law; and the demands of the law are all made … John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting God Willing that all Men Should be Saved. The Parable of the Householder. A Sermon, by Bishop Latimer. Promises and Threatenings The Unity of the Divine Essence, and the Trinity of Persons. "He is the Rock, his Work is Perfect. For all his Ways are Judgment. A God of Truth, and Without Iniquity, Just and Right is He. Forasmuch as Each Man is a Part of the Human Race... Conflict. Manner of Covenanting. "Now the End of the Commandment," &C. Palestine Eighteen Centuries Ago The Holy Spirit as a Teacher. "But Whereunto Shall I Liken this Generation?" Covenanting Performed in Former Ages with Approbation from Above. Peace Discourse on Spiritual Food and True Discipleship. Peter's Confession. Covenanting Confers Obligation. "The Carnal Mind is Enmity against God for it is not Subject to the Law of God, Neither Indeed Can Be. So Then they that Are "Thou Shall Keep Him in Perfect Peace, Whose Mind is Stayed on Thee, Because He Trusteth in Thee. " Deuteronomy Links Deuteronomy 29:17 NIVDeuteronomy 29:17 NLT Deuteronomy 29:17 ESV Deuteronomy 29:17 NASB Deuteronomy 29:17 KJV Deuteronomy 29:17 Bible Apps Deuteronomy 29:17 Parallel Deuteronomy 29:17 Biblia Paralela Deuteronomy 29:17 Chinese Bible Deuteronomy 29:17 French Bible Deuteronomy 29:17 German Bible Deuteronomy 29:17 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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