The Lord makes promises to Israel about His protection and provision in the promised land.
"See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and do what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since My name is in him." (Exodus 23:20-21) The majority of mainstream Christian scholars appear to hold to the theory that this "angel" is also the one known as "the angel of God" in the Old Testament---the pre-incarnate Christ. I don't see any problem with that theory and if I'd never even heard of it I don't think I could help interpreting this angel as being the person of God the Son. Another good candidate for this "angel" would be God the Holy Spirit, for the Father tells them to "pay attention to him and do what he says". The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to convict us in our hearts of sin and to lead us to repentance and to guide us at every turn in our lives. But God the Son being this "angel" is the theory I most agree with, for the Lord says "My name is in him." Who else ever called themselves by the name of God or equated themselves with God except the Lord Jesus Christ? The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthian church, seems to be identifying this angel with Christ when he states that Christ was with the Israelites in the wilderness. (1 Corinthians 10:3-4)
For further proof that this angel is the pre-incarnate Christ we take a look at the dire warning given in verse 21 about rebelling against Him. This is no mere man. The Lord wouldn't warn the people about rebelling to the point of being lost and facing judgment if this were the instructions of a mere man. This angel is not Moses or Moses' successor, Joshua. This is also not the object the Israelites will later fashion known as the Ark of the Covenant which they took ahead of them into battle. This is a person, a person so holy that rebellion against His perfect commandments and laws comes with a warning that implies an eternal separation from His presence if a person rejects Him utterly. This lines up with what the Lord Jesus said about Himself, such as: "No man comes to the Father except through Me," (John 14:6) and, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father," (John 14:9) and, "The one who looks at Me is seeing the One who sent Me." (John 12:45)
To reject Christ is to reject the Father who sent Him. The Father is issuing a warning in verse 21 that rejecting the voice of the "angel"---His Son---puts a person in danger of eternally being separated from the presence of the Lord. If we reject the only One who can grant us absolution for our sins, no further recourse is available to us, therefore the Lord can say there is no forgiveness for their rebellion. In the Old Testament the Lord Jesus had not yet made His sacrifice for sins but the people looked forward in faith to the Promised One, and like King David they knew that only the Lord could impute righteousness upon them, for in Old Testament times David said in one of his many prayers to the Lord, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." (Psalm 51:1-2) The people of the exodus knew they had to depend on the Lord to make them righteous; they could not do it on their own. They knew salvation was by faith and not by works.
In our passage today the Lord makes many promises to them. The promise of salvation by faith is implied in verses 20 and 21. The majority of the remainder of our passage today involves earthly promises that can be theirs if they remain faithful and obedient to the One who leads them.
Remember yesterday when we said that some of God's promises depend on Him alone? He will fulfill those types of promises regardless of what man does or does not do. He will fulfill them because He is holy and righteous and loving and merciful. The sending of the Redeemer is an example of one of the promises that no one could prevent from coming true. Other promises, such as the various blessings of life, depend on them remaining faithful to the Lord and doing what He says to do. To provide some examples for our own lives, if the Lord tells us a particular path to take and we do not take it, the blessings He intended to strew along that particular path will not be ours. In the same way, if the Lord tells us not to do something and we do it anyway, we will bring trouble upon ourselves. Sin will bear some kind of awful fruit eventually, whether the consequences come on the day we deliberately disobey God or whether they come to fruition later. But we can see how it's possible to either gain greater blessings or lose blessings based on the way we live our lives.
We will be looking at half of the remainder of Chapter 23 today and the other half tomorrow. The Lord promises to do great things for the people if they will obey the voice of the One that He sends ahead of them. "If you listen carefully to what He says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you." (Exodus 23:22) Some of the promises of the Bible are for Israel specifically and others are promises that any faithful believer can claim. I feel verse 22 can apply to any of us who love the Lord, for the Lord certainly looks out for His children. I think we can confidently say He is an enemy to the enemy of His children and that He will oppose anyone who opposes us. I think we can pray a prayer David prayed---and I have prayed this prayer during a time or two in my life when facing intense opposition and betrayal: "Contend, Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me." (Psalm 35:1) If a person or persons is doing you wrong, or if someone has made himself your enemy, I believe if you are a child of God you can pray a prayer like this with confidence that the Lord will hear it and fight on your side.
This next verse is specific to Israel alone. "My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out." (Exodus 23:23) The Lord did not promise these territories to anyone but Israel. He didn't make this promise to Gentiles; in fact, it's Gentiles He's driving out of the promised land. He didn't make this promise to the church. No one but Israel can lay claim to verse 23.
While the Lord is enabling the Israelites to drive out and take control of the promised land, they are not to intermingle with the pagan Gentiles there. They are not to adopt any of their religious practices. They are instead to destroy the pagan religious sites so that their eyes can't even rest upon these objects and so their hearts will not turn astray from the Lord. "Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces." (Exodus 23:24) The idols and the altars and the temples of these false deities are to be wiped from the land. They must not be allowed to remain to pique anyone's curiosity or to tempt anyone into the occult or into a false religion.
A song that's sometimes sung in my church goes, "Oh, Lord, we cast down our idols." The Lord is instructing the Israelites to cast down the idols of the tribes of Canaan when they move into the promised land. Idols that are not cast down have a tendency to "rise up", if you will, because their importance in a person's eyes can begin to grow. If the Israelites don't remove these objects from the land then the importance of these objects might grow in their eyes.
An idol doesn't have to be an image before which we bow or to which we bring offerings. An idol can be anyone or anything we value more than we value our relationship with the Lord. It can be work. It can be money or possessions. It can be an addiction---and addiction can take far more forms than just drugs or alcohol. An addiction can be anything that comes in between a person and the Lord or between a person and his loved ones. If it's preventing you from enjoying wholesome relationships and isolating you from a normal amount of contact with others and if it's keeping you from spending time with the Lord, it's an addiction and it needs to be dealt with. Gaming is something that comes to mind; a lot of people these days are addicted to gaming to the point of spending hardly any time at all with their spouse and children. An idol can be a relationship, such as when a person chooses to begin or maintain an unhealthy or illicit relationship instead of following the good path the Lord sets before them. There are all sorts of ways we might give someone or something the top spot in our lives. But the top spot is where God is supposed to be, and it's so important for us to remember this that He made it the first commandment.
Join us tomorrow as we take a further look into blessings that can be Israel's (and ours too, in some cases) if they remain faithful to the Lord and if they will obey His voice.
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