Deuteronomy 9:1-29; Romans 9:10-24

That Wonderful, Awful Doctrine

Preached at Sycamore RPC

Kokomo, IN

October 28, 2001

Scripture Text

1 “Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven,  2 a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard  it said,’Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’  3 “Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD has spoken to you.

4 “Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ but  it is because of the wickedness of these nations  that the LORD is dispossessing them before you.  5 “It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but  it is because of the wickedness of these nations  that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

6 “Know, then,  it is not because of your righteousness  that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.  7 “Remember, do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.  8 “Even at Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you.  9 “When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the LORD had made with you, then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water.  10 “The LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God; and on them  were all the words which the LORD had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.  11 “It came about at the end of forty days and nights that the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.  12 “Then the LORD said to me, ‘Arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made a molten image for themselves.’  13 “The LORD spoke further to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a stubborn people.  14 ‘Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

15 “So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.  16 “And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the LORD your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf; you had turned aside quickly from the way which the LORD had commanded you.  17 “I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes.  18 “I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD to provoke Him to anger.  19 “For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the LORD listened to me that time also.  20 “The LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him; so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time.  21 “I took your sinful  thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

22 “Again at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the LORD to wrath.  23 “When the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and possess the land which I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God; you neither believed Him nor listened to His voice.  24 “You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day I knew you.

25 “So I fell down before the LORD the forty days and nights, which I did because the LORD had said He would destroy you.  26 “I prayed to the LORD and said, ‘O Lord GOD, do not destroy Your people, even Your inheritance, whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.  27 ‘Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin.  28 ‘Otherwise the land from which You brought us may say, “Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land which He had promised them and because He hated them He has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.”  29 ‘Yet they are Your people, even Your inheritance, whom You have brought out by Your great power and Your outstretched arm.’

In Church History this past week we heard the story of a man named Gotteschalk. Gotteschalk was a German monk of the ninth century. When his appeal as a young man to be released from monastic life was denied by the emperor, he was sent to a French monastery. Here he began to study the writings of Augustine, and to his wonder discovered Augustine taught the doctrine of double predestination. What is this doctrine? Double predestination is the teaching that God chose the righteous before the foundation of the world unto salvation, and that He also ordained the wicked to destruction. This dual-edged teaching is often referred to as the doctrines of election and reprobation. Gotteschalk began to travel and teach this doctrine widely, and it was vigorously denied by the church of Rome. He made his teachings so widespread and others were being converted to them that the church leadership grew alarmed. So much so that it got to the point that two consecutive synods were called by bishops of the church, and Gotteschalk’s teachings were condemned as heresy. Here in the Medieval Church, hundreds of years before Luther, Calvin and Knox, a monk with a funny name taught the truths of the Reformation. When he refused to recant, he was imprisoned for 20 years and died in jail.

Does the Bible really teach double predestination? The classic chapter on this teaching is Romans 9, which we just read. Many refer to this as one of the hardest chapters in all of Scripture. Yet it is not hard in the sense that it is difficult to interpret as to what is being said, as say an apocalyptic piece of prophecy might be. It is only hard in the sense of accepting what it so clearly states. Here the Apostle Paul uses a series of contrasting Biblical figures and imagery to demonstrate the reality of this teaching:

• Paul says that before the twins Jacob and Esau were even born, God determined that He would love Jacob and hate Esau. This was worked out in how their lives were directed.
• Even as God set the children of Israel free, He used Pharaoh as a tool to display His power. He hardened the heart of Pharaoh to the point Pharaoh was destroyed. Paul concludes this section by saying that God shows mercy to whom He will, and He also hardens whom He will.
• Paul clearly delineates that humanity is divided into two categories, that there are “vessels of wrath” and “vessels of mercy” that God has created. The vessels of mercy receive honor, while the vessels of wrath are for dishonor and eventual destruction.

It’s pretty difficult to deny. Gotteschalk has been referred to as the “German Calvin,” as he was a precursor to the teachings that the Swiss Reformer, also heavily influenced by Augustine, would make more widely known centuries later. Calvin calls this teaching ”dreadful indeed” in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Like lightening and thunderbolts over a canyon, this doctrine creates echoes of terror in the hearts of men.

But even if the Bible teaches it, why would it be important enough to lose your life over, as Gotteschalk did? Can we not just pass over this doctrine, read quickly from Romans 8 to Romans 10 and ignore this chapter exists, or at least somehow soften its blow? What Gotteschalk, Calvin, Luther and a host of others have seen is that it is not just a teaching in one difficult passage of Scripture. It is at the heart of the gospel of salvation, and it is taught and implied throughout Scripture. Indeed, Moses in this passage from Deuteronomy is using it to motivate God’s people to faithfulness in the land of promise. God’s people must believe and accept the doctrine of double presdestination. Why?

I. You are to be awestruck over the fury of His wrath (vss. 1-5).

Moses speaks of the Anakim in the first verses of chapter 9. These were the descendants of Anak, a people who dwelt in the region of Hebron in the Promised Land. The Anakim were giants – literally! – who, you will recall, were the ones a generation earlier that had terrified the spies of Israel (except for Joshua and Caleb). The spies’ description of them had led Israel to doubt God’s power to give them the Promised Land, and was the cause of their forty-year wilderness wanderings. Israel had felt like “grasshoppers” in their sight. Recall that they had cried out that God had brought them out of Egypt to this land only to fall by the Anakim’s sword (Numbers 14:3). So terrible were these people that the question in Deuteronomy 9:2 must have become proverbial among Israel. “Who can stand before the Anakim?” Moses had recounted the fear the Anakim had caused Israel earlier in Deuteronomy 1:26-29:

“Nevertheless you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God; 27and you complained in your tents, and said, ‘Because the LORD hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. 28Where can we go up? Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, “The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.”’

29 “Then I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified, or afraid of them.”

(Later, when Joshua conquers the Promised Land, we hear the Anakim are defeated and none were left, except in a few cities, one of which was Gath of the Philistines. Since this is where Goliath came from, it is likely he was a descendant of this people. So Israel had been called to fight a whole nation of Goliaths!).

Notice what Moses now tells Israel here the LORD is going to do with the Anakim, what moves us into this doctrine of double predestination. In verses 3-4 we read that the LORD is a consuming fire, and “He will destroy them.” He does not say “ Israel” but that the LORD will destroy them. This is deliberate language. Israel will be the tool, but the LORD will be the one who wields the tool. Your God destroyed these people.

The Scriptures tell us that God ordains the boundaries of nations. Acts 17:26 says “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.” It raises a question. Why did God create these giant people, only to see them become the fodder for Israel’s swords? Why did God raise up Goliath, only to have him slain by the hand of David?

Some would skirt this question by saying these giants were just wicked and deserved punishment. Certainly they were wicked, as verse 5 indicates (read). Israel’s destruction of them was God’s judgment against the evil practices of these people, evil practices that will be explained later in this book and are so horrible we will feel ill reading about them. Does this mean then God was showing how evil the Anakim were and how righteous Israel was? Certainly not! That’s the three-fold point Moses makes in verse 4-6.

• Don’t think in your heart, after the LORD has cast them out, “Because of my righteousness God has done this (vs. 4)
• It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart (vs. 5)
• Therefore understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness (vs. 6)

So it was not to contrast the righteousness of Israel with these people that they were destroyed. So why couldn’t God have just given Israel a land where there were no giants?

The terrible answer to this question is found in Romans 9:22-23:

“What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory?”

Can you hear that? God wanted to show His wrath and power, so much so that He was willing to endure these evil people dwelling for a time on the face of His earth! So ON whom did God want to show His wrath and power? These vessels of wrath (here in this story the Anakim) prepared for destruction. But TO whom did He want to show this, so they would know the riches of His glory? To the vessels of mercy, so they could know of His glory. You see, this is why Moses calls Israel stiff-necked and rebellious (verse 6). They had thought God had brought them out of Egypt to die by hand of the Anakim. They unfaithfully believed they were the vessels of wrath. Just the opposite was true. God wanted to demonstrate His wrath and power to them, that Israel might know the riches of His glory.

People detest this doctrine. They claim man’s free will is denied by it, for if man is predestined to good or destruction, then who can resist God’s will? That is why the Apostle Paul, anticipating this objection, said when presenting this truth, “ But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” Men are worried about their free will, but what about the free will of Almighty God? Are we as quick to defend the freedom of the Almighty’s will, as dreadful as that may be to ponder?

Yet this is what we are to ponder. You have enemies led by Satan that sought to ruin you eternally. The wicked who may have been false teachers or even your own family members who blinded you, controlled you, taught you falsehoods, and who were leading you to destruction. The Esaus, Pharaohs, the giants in your life that nearly led you to tumble into the eternal pit. Even still there are those who seek your ruin if possible. Are you awestruck over the fury God has shown in setting you free by breaking their power? Have you seen or can you look ahead and see the judgments prepared for those who have sought to keep you from the land of promise? Can you look at the enemies of the church today, be they the liberals in our land who deny the gospel or dictators in foreign lands who persecute the gospel, can you look at them and see their downfall? As a vessel of mercy, you must tremble over this dreadful doctrine, and be awestruck over the riches of His glory. For…

II. You are to be humbled by the wonder of His pity (vss. 7-28).

Some get a hold of the doctrine of double predestination and it goes to their head. “I’m of the elect; they are of the reprobate” gets translated in proud hearts as “My righteousness made me great; their wickedness brought their downfall.” Never is the believer to rest in his own righteousness, as we saw in verses 4-6. To do so is arrogance and pride in the eyes of God. Now let us read verses 7-8 as we hear yet again the command not to forget, but to remember a very important aspect of our life with God (read). The very anger you have seen displayed against the wicked you have been in danger of receiving yourselves.

Ephesians 2 tells you that “you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” We come from the same lump of clay as the vessels of wrath, we all came from “one blood” as we heard from Acts, and we are to consider ourselves by our former nature to have been “children of wrath, just as the others.” The danger in being a believer for very long is that we forget from whence we came. We can see this in forgetting how humbled we should be by how rich the grace of God has been toward us. Moses is explaining to Israel why she should not forget that.

Certainly Israel was in danger of this. Moses reminds them of this by telling them again the story of Sinai, but with a twist from the way he told them in Deuteronomy 5 before he repeated the Ten Commandments. He wants them to see Sinai from his angle, from what he experienced on that mountain. So he explains that:

• “I was on that mountain with the LORD for forty days and nights. What a blessed time of fellowship that was.
• I did not eat bread or even drink water, so glorious was that time.
• I beheld the finger of God writing down His laws on the tablets, the laws that He gave us to guide us and give us life in the Promised Land.
• The LORD wrote these on two tablets of stone so we would have them in permanent form. We would never have to wonder what He requires of us.

Yet the glory of that beautiful fellowship was disrupted by God’s hot displeasure. God’s anger began to burn on that mountain, and I was chased off of it. You had made an image, God said, and when I hurried down and saw that golden calf I knew that it was true. I lifted those tablets and smashed them to show you what you had done in breaking the law of God.”

Moses went on and explained that was the way it has been throughout his forty years with Israel. Time and again they had spurned the LORD. The comments in verses 22-24 are parenthetical in nature, as he is listing other occasions Israel had committed spiritual idolatry that was no better than what she had done at Sinai. Moses is in essence saying, “You have complained all the time. We had to name one place Taberah, which means burning, because God sent fire when you complained. Another place we called Massah, or testing, because you tested the patience of the LORD with your lack of trust in Him. Yet another we named Kibroth Hattaavah, or the Graves of Craving, because you cried for the meat of Egypt, but when the quail came into camp your greediness caused God to make it but spoil between you teeth and many of our people died. Don’t you see what has happened during all my time with you? Don’t you see that unless I had plead with God, He would have destroyed every last one of you?” (See verse 26).

Friend, you may not like to hear this, but every time you complain, you are showing your old nature. Every time you break one of the commandments, you are showing how you deserve wrath just like the Anakim, just like Esau, just like Pharaoh. You came out of the same lump. Instead of asking, “Who can stand before the Anakim?”, you know what we are supposed to be asking? “Who can stand before the fierce wrath of the LORD?”

Moses could not. In verse 25 we read that on the occasion of Sinai, he fell prostrate before the LORD and plead for the people. Just as we have been singing in Psalm 106 “Therefore He said He would destroy them, had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach, to turn away His wrath, lest He destroy them.” Over and over Israel provoked the wrath of God, and over and over Moses interceded and plead for God to spare them, reminding God of His promises, beseeching God to glorify Himself by bringing these people into the land of promise.

Is it any different for us?

Day by day your sins are like sparks igniting the wrath of God. He gives you heaven’s riches, and you complain. He promises the church great victories, and we doubt. He tells you exactly how to behave, and you purposefully wander. What keeps you from falling, from seeing His fury explode into your life? Is it not that you have Christ, the new Moses, seated at the right hand of God always living that He may make intercession for you? Can you not hear our LORD pleading for us through these words of Moses?

“Father, I know they have angered you. But if you destroy them, the world will say my salvation was not powerful enough. That you could not do as You promised. Father, consider the price I have already paid for their sin, and turn Your wrath away.” And the Father looks at the face of His beloved Son pleading for you, remembers what the Son has done for you, and He turns from His hot displeasure as His wrath is averted.

Does not the riches of God’s mercy and pity toward you humble you? Does not peering into the heart of your Savior, who cares more for your life than you do, does that not touch you, quiet you, create love in you? Then…

III. You are to be consecrated to the praise of His power (verse 29).

Read verse 29 again. Moses prays for Israel so that by God’s power and outstretched arm the world might now that they have been redeemed. You see, to fail to teach these truths of double predestination and proclaim them and stand for them and worship God for them is to strike at the very heart of what Jesus came to do. He came to glorify God by saving the elect even as the wicked are destroyed. The night before His death He prayed “Glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify You.” And He went on to pray how that would happen, as not the world but the chosen ones would be redeemed (John 17). When we deny the doctrine of double predestination, we deny the glory that is to go to God and to Him alone.

That is what Moses could not do, and that is what Gotteschalk could not do. To be like Gotteschalk, you must be a “servant of God,” for that is what his name means. You are to be a servant, a vessel, who has been consecrated by beholding the wrath of God and experiencing the mercy of God, so that your life’s meaning is seen in living to the praise of this wonderful, awful truth. May we be faithful to offer our lives to that end. Amen.