Tuesday 15 March 2011

Saved for Conquest

Deuteronomy 1-3

On the cusp of entering the promised land, Moses now encourages the people to remember all that God has done for them and what he will continue to do for them as they go on from there.

In the previous three books there was a lot of The LORD telling Moses to tell the people ... but here Moses speaks directly. This exemplifies the whole theme of the book which is succession / handover. It also is testimony to how Moses has matured as the mouthpiece for God, and is a picture of Jesus.

God saved a people out of Egypt so that he could give them a land to settle in. He could have wiped out the people of that land with a word, but he didn't, he chose to make his people go out and conquer it. God trained his people to be warriors, and not only warriors, but as ch 3 puts it: giant slayers. Just as Morpheus saves Neo out of the Matrix and then trains him for battle, so God saves his people and then trains them to be giant slayers and to take the promised land.

The first time round there was such a failure of courage and faith amongst the people, that he wiped out all the men of military service age. Now he begins again with a new generation who are attentive to obey all that God says.

Today, there is no more military campaigning for the people of God to do, but there is still a conquest to complete. The land is now the whole world, the weapons of war are the word of truth and righteous prayer, the enemies are all those entities both of the seen (persons, institutions) and unseen (sinful desires, demonic forces) world who set themselves up against a knowledge of God, the captain of the army is the Holy Spirit as he shows us how to follow in the servant-hearted footsteps of Jesus and the goal is genuine love.

God's people are God's destructive-creative agent spreading across the face of the whole earth, who by loving self-sacrifice bring all things together into unity under Christ.

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