fierce anger of the Lord

51.s. Wilderness – 15.y. “A Man Hanged on a Tree Is Cursed”

Deu 21:22  “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Numbers 25:4    And the LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the LORD, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.”

Joshua 7:12    Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction.

Galatians 3:13  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”.

1 Corinthians 16:22    If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!

Leviticus 18:25    and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.

Numbers 35:33-34   You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.  You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the LORD dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

The curse of God, That is, it is the highest degree of reproach that can attach to a man, and proclaims him under the curse of God as much as any external punishment can. They that see him thus hanging between heaven and earth, will conclude him abandoned of both, and unworthy of either.

Under the Law, a person who was determined guilty and deserving of death would be killed and then hung on a tree. I would imagine it was meant to be an example to the people of God’s laws, judgment, and abhorrence of those acts He proclaimed worthy of death. The Romans seemingly removed the killing of them before hanging them on a tree and cruelly hung them alive until they died in agony. Such it was for our blessed Savior.

It has been a little over 3 weeks since we celebrated/remembered the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. How much of the memory is still residing in your thoughts? How much do you think of His great love and sacrifice? Does it change how you live each day? Are you mindful of the price that was paid for your sin?

His death and resurrection should never be forgotten. In His death, our minds should ever be in remembrance. Our sin and penalty was placed upon Him and He graciously and lovingly took them on. Every scourge of the whip, every fist against His face, every thorn piercing His head, and every blow of the hammer nailing Him to the cross was due to mine and your sin.

What love, what grace, and what mercy He has freely given. What manner of person should we be in light of this great sacrifice?

Let no waking minute ever be without this memory and understanding. Let it permeate thoughts of your mind and be in praise and worship of Him. Live humbly with these thoughts. Live to honor and glorify Him, who is worthy, in all you think, say, and do.

48.s. Wilderness – 12.y. “Do not take us across the Jordan.”

Num 32:1-18 Now the people of Reuben and the people of Gad had a very great number of livestock. And they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, and behold, the place was a place for livestock. So the people of Gad and the people of Reuben came and said to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the chiefs of the congregation, “Ataroth, Dibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Sebam, Nebo, and Beon, the land that the LORD struck down before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock.” And they said, “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession. Do not take us across the Jordan.” But Moses said to the people of Gad and to the people of Reuben, “Shall your brothers go to the war while you sit here? Why will you discourage the heart of the people of Israel from going over into the land that the LORD has given them? Your fathers did this, when I sent them from Kadesh-barnea to see the land. For when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the people of Israel from going into the land that the LORD had given them. And the LORD’s anger was kindled on that day, and he swore, saying, ‘Surely none of the men who came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, because they have not wholly followed me, none except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have wholly followed the LORD.’ And the LORD’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the LORD was gone. And behold, you have risen in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the LORD against Israel! For if you turn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all this people.” Then they came near to him and said, “We will build sheepfolds here for our livestock, and cities for our little ones, but we will take up arms, ready to go before the people of Israel, until we have brought them to their place. And our little ones shall live in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return to our homes until each of the people of Israel has gained his inheritance.

Num 32:23 But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out.

Here is a proposal made by the Reubenites and Gadites, that the land lately conquered might be allotted to them. Two things common in the world might lead these tribes to make this choice; the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. There was much amiss in the principle they went upon; they consulted their own private convenience more than the public good. Thus to the present time, many seek their own things more than the things of Jesus Christ; and are led by worldly interests and advantages to take up short of the heavenly Canaan. The proposal showed disregard to the land of Canaan, distrust of the Lord’s promise, and unwillingness to encounter the difficulties and dangers of conquering and driving out the inhabitants of that land. Moses is wroth with them. It will becomes any of God’s Israel to sit down unconcerned about the difficult and perilous concerns of their brethren, whether public or personal. He reminds them of the fatal consequences of the unbelief and faint-heartedness of their fathers, when they were, as themselves, just ready to enter Canaan. If men considered as they ought what would be the end of sin, they would be afraid of the beginning of it.

Here is the good effect of plain dealing. Moses, by showing their sin, and the danger of it, brought them to their duty, without murmuring or disputing. All men ought to consider the interests of others as well as their own; the law of love requires us to labour, venture, or suffer for each other as there may be occasion. They propose that their men of war should go ready armed before the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, and that they should not return till the conquest of Canaan was ended. Moses grants their request, but he warns them of the danger of breaking their word. If you fail, you sin against the Lord, and not against your brethren only; God will certainly reckon with you for it. Be sure your sin will find you out. Sin will surely find out the sinner sooner or later. It concerns us now to find our sins out, that we may repent of them, and forsake them, lest they find us out to our ruin. (Henry)

8.f. “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins,”

Revelation 18:4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’ For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.”

Jeremiah 51:6    “Flee from the midst of Babylon; let every one save his life! Be not cut off in her punishment, for this is the time of the LORD’s vengeance, the repayment he is rendering her.

Jeremiah 51:45     “Go out of the midst of her, my people! Let every one save his life from the fierce anger of the LORD!

2 Corinthians 6:17   Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,

How applicable is this indictment of Babylon on today’s society, which embraces “spiritualism” at the expense of true worship? As the apostle Paul warns, “But know this: Difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to

a form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

When we boast that we are spiritual but not religious; when we lament the addition of a fish to the endangered species list but celebrate the right to end the life of an unborn child for any reason; when we abrogate the responsibility of individuals and families to work hard and care for their own by increasing our dependence on government entitlements; when we insist that ethics are situational and reject absolute truth as a vestige of less-enlightened times; when we say all forms of religious expression are fine as long as the name of Jesus is excluded; when a 50th wedding anniversary between a man and a woman is rare but gay marriage is normative; and when a theory of origins based on time and chance is called an indisputable fact but a theory that points to intelligent design is considered rank scientific heresy–we have become the people who

drink the wine of Babylon the Great’s sexual –that is, spiritual–immorality. And we have invited the wrath of God.

Throughout human history, God has called His people to separate themselves from those devoted to the worldly system that opposes God. The Lord instructs Abram to leave his country (Gen. 12:1). He rescues the Israelites from bondage in Egypt and instructs them never to return. And the church today is commanded to steer clear of the ungodly (Rom. 16:17-18; 2 Cor. 6:14 –7:1). No doubt the first readers of Revelation would connect the voice of God in Rev. 18:4 with Jeremiah 50-51 and understand the link between ancient Babylon and the contemporary paganism of Rome and/or the worldliness of first-century Israel.

Matthew Henry notes, “When the sins of a people reach up to heaven, the wrath of God will reach down to the earth” (Henry, Rev. 18:1-8) But what crimes has Babylon

committed? Pride, living proudly in luxury and ignoring the needs of others (pride of life, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes.)

We do well to take to heart God’s Word regarding the draw of this world to our sinful nature and the consequences of it. “Come out of her” lest you take part in her sins”