Oh, America, What Has Happened to You?

O. T. #386  "Oh, America, What Has Happened to You?
October 15, 2014
Deuteronomy 7
The LORD did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people: for ye were fewest of all people. but because the LORD loved you...
Deuteronomy 7:7-8a

LET IT GLOW

Did the Lord blessed America in her first two hundred years? Just look at our industrial development, food production, population, military, plenteous churches, governing laws, moral communities and how they have developed. We were blessed.
Now take a look at how we have deteriorated in the past 50 years or even 20 years. Where has our immorality, diseases, evil, and falling away from God come from?
Have we not accepted the heathens' idols, religious practices, customs, food, and citizenship into our nation? Were we not warned as Israel was? Oh, America, what has happened to you?

Israel was God's treasured possession because He loved them. God kept His oath with their forefathers in bringing them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and redeemed them from the land of slavery and the power of Pharaoh. However, those who hate God will be destroyed.

If Israel would follow the laws of God, then He would do what?

• keep His covenant of love with them to a thousand generations, (verse 9, 12)
• love and bless them, more than other people, (verse 13)
• increase their numbers, not be childless, (verse 13)
• bless their children (fruit of their womb) (verse 13)
• give crops of their land-grain, new wine, oil, cattle, sheep (verse 13-14)
• keep them free from diseases, (inflict them on their enemies), (verse 15)

God promised Israel particular blessings for their obedience, which are further enumerated in 28:1-14. (MacArthur)

It couldn't get any better than this-God's provisions and blessings.
Do we desire the same? Are we willing to do whatever it takes in order for God to bless us in this manner?


LET IT GROW


God spoke plainly to His children. He warned them of what lay ahead, yet He would take care of them if they:

• Drive out the 7 nations, which were larger and stronger, that occupying the land.
• Destroy them totally.
• Make no treaty with them.
• Do not show them mercy.
• Do not intermarry with them, nor your children do so.
• Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.
• Israel was to be a holy people to the LORD their God.

Utterly destroy the heathen nations and in no way compromise with them. They were wicked and ripe for judgment, and if left in the land, the nations would lead Israel into sin. A defiled Israel could never give the world God's Word and God's Son. (Wiersbe)

Just as Israel was to be separated from the other nations, so is the church to be separated from the world. (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)
Are we a testimony to the world and others around us or do we hinder the work of God by mingling with them?

LET IT GO

Turn away from the world's ways, ideas, immorality and turn to Jesus, His ways, Word, and morality.

Stay faithful to God.

Do not accept the gods or idols of the heathens.