Promises and Conditions: Lessons from Reuben and Gad

Your Bible is to Deuteronomy chapter 33. Moses is going through a period of time in which he's giving a blessing to the nations, to the different tribes as they're getting ready to enter the land of promise. They're similar to the blessings that Jacob gave to the tribes when he died. At that time, they were smaller, and he was just giving the promises, the blessings to his sons as he was dying, and sort of talking about what he wanted God to do with them. And many of these promises that were made in Genesis 49 are very similar to the ones that Moses made in Deuteronomy chapter 33, but some of them are quite different. Now, whenever we look at this, we realize that while Jacob may have said, this is my blessing for you, and sort of made a prediction about what would happen in the lives of these of his children, the reality didn't always match what the blessing was. I think we understand how that happens. You can have somebody who starts out with their Christian faith saying, I commit my life to the Lord. If you've been in church very long, you've seen this, and they're on fire for God, they're faithful to God, they serve Him faithfully. And then as time goes on in their life, they stop attending very much, they stop reading the Bible, and sometimes their life drifts a long way away from God. Now, God cannot give us the fulfillment of what He wants to give us if we don't put ourselves in a position to do what He tells us to do. It's like you go to the doctor and he says, I have something that really can help you. Here's the medication, or here's the exercise you can take to make it all different for you. And then you say, OK, I'm going to do that, and you quit taking the medicine, or you quit doing the exercise, and then complain because you aren't healed. There are certain things that are necessary for a person to be able to receive what God wants to give us. You might think about this a minute. Is it possible that God wants you to have a better life than you actually have? It could be. It could be that God wants your life to be better, but what you're doing may not allow Him to be able to make your life better. For example, if He wants you to grow in a certain area of your life, and you don't read the Bible to find out what things He wants you to change, so you're reading the Bible, you say, well, this is something I'm doing. He says not to do, so I know to quit. Well, here's something I should start doing, and you're reading, and you start doing it. If you don't do that, then there's not much of a way God can communicate to you how He can help you. And all of these things are part of the plan that God has for us, and even though He may have said to Jacob, here's a blessing I want you to give to one of your sons, the fulfillment of that blessing is not automatic. Just like you come and commit your life to Christ and say, I give my life to you, and God says, here's what I want to have happen in your life. I want you to learn how to trust me so that you can live without anxiety or fear. But if you don't learn how to trust Him, you can't live without anxiety or fear. Because you still are living thinking, I have to solve all my problems myself. So whenever we see the promises that Jacob made or the prayers for Jacob made for his sons, and then we come to later on when Moses makes the same prayer, some of them are a little bit different. Because what's happened in the intermediate time is things have changed with this group, this people, that tribe. And so they're no longer in a position to receive the promises that Jacob had given to them, and now a new promise has to be made to them, maybe even one that's not quite so attractive or quite so rewarding. So we'll look at these in Deuteronomy chapter 33, and then look back at the promises made in chapter 49 of Genesis to see how similar they might be. I want to start with verse 20. God lives there like a lion, tearing at arm or head. He chose the best land for Himself. The leader's portion was kept for Him. When the heads of the people assembled, He carried out the Lord's righteous will and His judgments concerning Israel. Now Gad's promise from chapter 49 of Genesis is quite different. Gad will be attacked by a band of raiders, Jacob said, but He will attack them at their heels. In other words, there will be raiders attack Him, and He will fight them so fiercely that they run, and He will grab at their heels. So the event is changed considerably. Now another thing takes place, Reuben is one of the sons of Jacob, and the blessing was given to Reuben both in the chapter 49 of Genesis and also in chapter 33 of Deuteronomy. And Gad's blessing was given, let me find it, oh Reuben is what I was going to read, read Reuben's. Reuben, you are the first of my firstborn, my might, the first sign of my strength, excellent in honor, excelling in power. And then he says in verse 4, turbulent as the water, you will no longer excel, for you went up into your father's bed, onto my couch and defiled it. The promise he made to Reuben was a very sad promise that he had to make, or a blessing, I guess it was supposed to be a blessing, and I don't know if you remember the story of what took place or not, but Jacob when he had, he had two wives, Rebecca and Leah. He had the two wives because he loved Rachel and he wanted to marry her, but his father-in-law deceived him, and when he came to marry, he married the wrong girl. As a kid growing up I used to hear this story and they'd say, well he had a veil over their face, but I've been to weddings before and you have a veil over the face, you can see the bride perfectly clear. But now when you see pictures of the Middle East women, and this is all you can see, you can understand how that mistake could be made. And he deceived him and gave him Leah instead, and she never was loved by Jacob. You talk about dysfunctional families. Here's a man that marries a woman he doesn't love. She knows it, everybody else knows it. He married then Rachel after seven years. Leah had children, and Gad was one of the children that, see how that process worked. Rachel, Rachel was the wife that he loved, and she was not able to have children. Leah was the wife that he didn't love, and she was able to have children. So that her, the children that she had were, she felt like a reward from God. I think chapter 12 of Genesis, where that is, no, chapter 30, 29, when the Lord saw Leah was not loved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, it is because the Lord has seen my misery, surely my husband will love me now. That's a terrible thing to say to your children and in your family. But Reuben then was her firstborn, and born in a situation in which there was no love between her and her husband, not the kind of love that he gave to Rachel. Rachel wanted to have a child, but never could, and in those days they had a system of surrogacy, births, different than ours where we have medical treatment, but the man would take the wife or the servant, and they would conceive a child, and the child would belong to the man and his wife. The concubine might not have that privilege, but the wife would keep the child. So Rachel wanted to have a child, she couldn't have a child. Jacob became angry with her because she kept wanting that, and she said, here is my maidservant Bilhah, you take him and have a child by him. And so he slept with her, and she had a son by him. To this family was born Gad and Reuben. In this prophecy, or the blessings that come, the blessings don't match what took place. Reuben later, even though he was her firstborn son, he slept with Jacob's wife, his first wife's maid, Bilhah. And because of that, when the promise came from Jacob, that's what you hear in Genesis 49. The whole history of this nation is tied to these events that took place. So that Reuben, when he was given the promise by Jacob in Genesis, Reuben you are my firstborn, he should have all the privileges of the family. My might, the first sign of my strength, the child was seen as evidence of the father's strength or power, excelling in honor, excelling in power, turbulent as the waters, you will no longer excel, because of what he did. Now the curse is placed on the nation of Reuben. When you get to the promise given by Moses to these different nations, you'll see that the nation of Reuben, the promise given to Reuben is not nearly favorable. And what takes place over the history of time is that the nation of Reuben disappears, no longer in existence. The same thing happened to Simeon, one of the twelve tribes. So that the promises that were made to Gad and Reuben about land were lost. So they're ready to go in the promised land, and they gathered, ready to go over the side. Reuben and Gad and half-tribe of Manasseh went to Moses and said, we like this ground here. Give us this, this will be our future. Moses said, he was first upset with them, and then said, if you do this, you have to come and help us fight to get the land that we've been promised. And the tribe of Reuben, Gad, and half-tribe of Manasseh said, of course we'll do that. And in fact, we will lead the charges when the attacks are made. We'll be right in the front fighting where the worst fighting really is. So when they invaded the land of promise, these tribes that were across on the east side of the Jordan, not actually what we would call the holy land today, on the east side of the Jordan River, they were fighting, but they got none of the land on the west side of the Jordan River. When the war was over, they went back to the land that they'd taken. They asked for a privilege to be able to build their land, build their houses there and keep their cattle there and leave some people there to protect them, which Moses gave them permission for that. So all the time they were fighting in the land of Canaan, their families were safe back across the border. So when it was over, they went back to their homeland. The conflict came as they were doing this because when they crossed the Jordan, the Lord had said, when you're in the land of promise, you'll worship only where I tell you to worship. So when they crossed the Jordan to go back, they said, we don't want to be separated from our brothers and sisters across the Jordan. So let's build a big altar here as a sign that we are part of the people on the other side of the Jordan. When the word came that they were building this, Gad and the tribe of Reuben and half tribe of Manasseh were building this big altar, the rest of the tribe said, they're not going to come over here and worship. And so they began to build their armies again with the intent of going over and destroying all of the tribe of Gad, Reuben and half tribe of Manasseh. When they finally came and were ready to fight, one of the people said, maybe we should go talk to him about this. So they went across the Jordan and talked to him. They said, oh, no, we're not building an altar to worship or make sacrifices on. This altar is to remind us that we are a part of what you guys are over there. This is an altar to remind us that we are one people of Israel. So the big war was passed by. But Reuben's tribe had already been identified as one of those, the firstborn child who should have received the greatest part of the inheritance was disinherited. And now he was not to have anything. So by the time the New Testament comes around, there is no tribe of Reuben. The one who ought to have received the greatest blessing from God missed that because of the failure to be obedient to him. Now what we see in this story is that what God wants to give to us and tries to give to us is really conditioned on our response to God. You can read every promise in the Bible you want to, and you can claim that promise. But there are certain conditions that are necessary to allow God to fulfill his promise in your life. If he promises you that he's going to provide for you, then it requires you to get a job. You can't just sit down in your chair on the front porch and say, OK, God, I'm ready. Bring the money on. It requires you to get a job. And then once you have got a job and you receive the money, stewardship is required of you. To stewards that are found faithful, God blesses that. So if you don't get a job, you're not going to get the blessings of God. If you get the job and you don't spend your money wisely, you're not going to receive the blessings of God. All that's connected to both the promise God makes and our willingness to do what he tells us he wants us to do. I think many people's spiritual lives are difficult because they hear the promises of God, they believe the promises of God, but they're not prepared to do the things that would allow him to fulfill what he wants to fulfill in their life. So the story that we read in Deuteronomy is sort of a next step in letting us see from where they started now to what God is prepared to do for them about Gad, he said, blessed as he who enlarges or helps Gad's domain. Now, keep in mind that Gad and Reuben are the two tribes on the east side of the Jordan River. Their territories are next to each other. So the failure of Reuben and his followers to be faithful to God meant that God was not able to keep the promise that he would have made to the firstborn son. So blessed is he who enlarges or helps God's domain. He's saying Gad is going to receive the blessing that would have gone to Reuben and blessed is the person who helps him be able to fulfill that. So if you help Gad be able to expand his territory to include both his and Reuben's, it fulfills the promise that God has made to cut Reuben out of the picture. But God lives there like a lion tearing at arm and head. He's describing Gad, both Reuben and Gad were powerful military forces. They were the ones who led the charge in the battle. I don't know what they call people like that when they maybe the Marines. I don't know that we'd say that, but, you know, they're the ones that are there in the beginning. They're the ones that initially are out there ready to be killed first. So Gad and Reuben and half tribe of Manasseh were those people who were leading the charge in every battle. Now Reuben's gone, Reuben's disappearing and Gad lives there like a lion tearing at arm and head. God is able to fulfill the promise made to Gad because Gad did what he's supposed to do. He was faithful in doing it and God rewarded him for it. So the promise that Moses makes or the blessing Moses gives indicates that this warrior will find himself successful in battle. He chooses the best land for himself. The leader's portion was kept for him. When the heads of the people assembled, he carried out the Lord's righteous will. So the first part of this is describing what God's blessing for the nation of Gad is. You're going to be militarily successful in taking the land that I've given to you. You will even not only be able to have the land I've given to you, you will be enlarged enough so that even the land given to the tribe of Reuben will become yours because of the failure of Reuben to be faithful to what God asked. And then he finishes this by saying the tribe of Gad will have another responsibility. When the heads of the people assembled, he carried out the Lord's righteous will. He's saying so the court system in the biblical times is like this. If you had a complaint about your neighbor, you went downtown to the where the people would gather at the gates of the cities and you would find there the older and more wise people of the community, the elders, and you would get a group of them together and say, I have a quarrel with Steve and we live next door to each other and he's cut my grass and I'm mad at him. He needs to fix my grass. So they would get in a circle and they would listen to your charges and then they would talk to each other and they would make a verdict and that verdict would stand so that what he's talking about here is the nation of Gad would become the people who would be settlers of disputes, judges we might call them, for the nation. Not only mighty warriors, but after the war is over, they would be people in leadership positions of authority and power. So Gad is to be able to carry out the Lord's righteous will and his judgments concerning Israel. Now, the righteous will is to say, we want to direct you in the way God tells us we should go. So you're looking at the commandments given in the Old Testament and interpreting how those commandments should be kept. What does it mean to keep the Sabbath day? What is violation of the Sabbath day? And the village judges would pass their judgment on that. And not only that, but also the judgments concerning Israel. For example, if someone cheated another person, what would be the proper payment based on the scriptures given and then the common sense that they would need to be able to make the choices? So Gad is elevated. Far above Ruben's position because of his faithfulness to God and Ruben's failure to keep what God had wanted. Now, he moves to the tribe of Dan. Can I get a phone call? OK. I guess it could have been a different kind of sound and I'm very thankful for that one. About Dan, he said, Dan is a liads club springing out of Bashin. And here he's talking about he being a being able to be a judge in the. In Dan's settlement in the land of Egypt, Israel, he never found a real place. His territory is given to him in the center part of Israel, but Dan didn't take that. He didn't count captured like he was supposed to. So he drifted, the whole tribe drifted to another part of the nation, and then they finally drifted to the north. And if you look at any map of the promised land, you'll see that the city of Dan is the farthest most one in the north. And there they settled, but on their way there, they ran across a community where the people there had hired a Levi. And this Levite was hired to be the priest for that, for that, how that community. And when they came there, they said, we need to have a priest for our own. So they hired this priest away from the community where he was and he had made some idols that he had and they took the idols with them. And those idols were established in the town of Dan, far in the north of Israel. The result of that was that all of the whole history of Dan then become became colored with this failure to acknowledge the authority of God. They acknowledged the authority of the idols and they used them and they set up a temple there and worshiped there. And from the whole time of Israel's history, God saw this tribe as a rebellious tribe. Dan is a lion's cub springing out of Bashan. He's talking about he's like a small lion who's frisky and runs around but has no strength. So the tribe of Dan became sort of the outcast of the nation of Israel. Naphtali, he said, Naphtali is abounding with favor in God and full of blessings. He will hear it southward toward the lake. Naphtali was given property in the northern part of Israel and it was good territory, very fertile valleys. If the lake he's talking about is the Sea of Galilee, we call it, it's called by several different names, but that's probably the most common one we have. So the tribe then is given a promise that they're going to get good farmland, good ground to be able to be prosperous and successful. And if Naphtali was, they were faithful to God and it allowed God to provide for them the very thing that he said he wanted to give them. I want to give you prosperity. One of the covenant promises, you know, there are four of them that I keep emphasizing. If you notice, all of these have a similar kind of idea behind them. One of those covenant promises are emphasized with each of these tribes. With the one with Naphtali, he's promising them prosperity. The same is true with the promise to Asher. Naphtali is abounding with favor of the Lord and is full of his blessings. He will inherit southward toward the lake. And what happened as time went on is his family grew and his nation grew, his community grew, and they took more and more land until they came all the way down to the Sea of Galilee. About Asher, he said, Most blessed sons of Asher, let him be favored by his brothers. Let him bathe his feet in oil. The bolts of your gate will be iron and bronze and your strength will equal your days. I read, was it back in one of the times of the one of the wars that Israel had with its neighbors around them? There was a man in the United States who proposed that he had found where they could get oil in Israel. And he was raising money here from the Christian people who would believe him that he knew exactly where they could drill oil. And this was the scripture he took it from. God made a promise to Asher, let him favor his brothers and let him bathe his feet in oil. So he went over to try to discover the part of the territory that Asher lived in and develop people who would pay him money to go drill oil wells over there. Well, that wasn't what he was talking about. Whenever you take the Bible, it's really critical that you understand what the Bible really is talking about. For example, it wouldn't have made any sense to say to Asher, we're going to put you on ground where in 3000 years somebody is going to be able to find petroleum oil that was of no value to them. They wouldn't even known what it was. What are you really talking about here is olive oil, which in the biblical days was the sign of wealth. For example, if you say to somebody, here's a guy that's an oil man, we think, well, he has made some money because he's in the oil business. Well, in the biblical days, if you say, here's somebody that has petroleum, they wouldn't even know what you were talking about, much less think there was anything of value about it. But if you were to say, here's a man who has lots of olive orchards and is pressing olive oil and is wealthy with olive oil, you would know that he had real wealth. It was one of the ways by which the most prosperous people made their money. So what he's promising Asher and the name Asher really means blessed or happy person. So the whole name gives an idea of God's blessings to him. Most blessed is the sons of Asher. Let him be favored by his brothers so that he's making a promise that Asher would be one of those tribes that everyone would look at and say, God has really blessed that tribe. And he'll be blessed by letting him bathe his feet in oil. He'll have so much olive oil that he'll be able to take a bath in it or wash his feet in it. Sort of like, I mean, you know, if somebody offered you olive oil to cook with, you'd say, that's great. But if they said, and you can use it to wash your feet in, you'd say, that's a waste of good olive oil. So what they're saying, what this what this is poetically saying is he'll have so much olive oil that he can even waste it to wash his feet in so much that he has even expensive things to use for washing his feet. It's like you say, somebody has bought a gold towel to wash their feet in. It means that they have enough money that they don't care. They can even buy a very expensive towel to wash their dirty feet in. So he's talking about the extended wealth that Asher would have. The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze. You'll be protected because you'll have in front of you walls that will keep people from taking the wealth that you have. It's one thing to have wealth. It's another to be able to retain it. And your strength will equal your days. The longer, the older you get, the more strength you will have. Now, the opposite is normally true for us. The older you get, the less strength that you have. But the promise to the tribe was you will not find yourself as you get bigger and bigger and bigger, getting weaker and weaker and weaker as a nation or community or tribe. Instead, the larger you get, the more power and vigor your nation or your tribe will have. These are all the promises that Moses blessed on the people of Israel. The promises, as I've indicated, don't always come true because there are two dimensions. One is what God says, this is what I want to do with you. And the other one is when people say, we are ready to allow you to do these for us. There are a lot of people in church, you know, who sit side by side in church, who have the same opportunities, who have the same abilities, but one receives the great blessings of God and the other never does. It's not that God wants to restrain these from us, but to receive the blessings of God requires, first of all, that you believe that God can and will do those things for you. God never forces on anybody the blessings he wants to give. So whenever you hear, read in the Bible or hear someone say, God wants to guide your life, he wants to provide for you, he wants to protect you, and he wants to make your life meaningful and influential and helpful to others. When you hear those four promises, they're promises God makes to us. But not everybody experiences that. Because if you don't believe that it's true, you're not going to say to God, I give my life to you. So that's a big stumbling block. God's not going to give you anything if you don't want it. So if you do want it and you say, OK, I'm ready to receive it, then there comes the process of letting God shape your life so that he can give it to you. I read a story one time about a guy who'd moved away from home and his mother was a widow years and years ago, and he would mail her money. But he didn't mail her money, he just mailed her certificates so that she could go to the bank and get cashed into money. And when those came to her, she didn't know what they were. And they had pictures on them, so they were bonds. So she just put them on her walls. And she had her little house covered, the walls, with these bonds. And he finally came to see her one time, was able to travel back years ago, and it's hard traveling, made there and went in the house where his mother was, and she was living in very meager circumstances. Little bitty house, furnishings worn out. And he looked around the walls and she had thousands of dollars worth of bonds on the wall. And she was living in poverty. The picture is kind of a picture of what happens with us in God. I'm going to guide your life. If you don't ever ask God, he can't tell you. If you haven't learned to listen to him, he can't give you guidance. I'm going to provide for you, but it requires you to get a job, it requires you to be a good steward with what he gives you. If you don't do either of those, then he can't give that to you. Even though the promise is there, and the fulfillment's ready, you can't receive it. I'm going to protect you. Well, he promises, I'm going to stand between you and disaster. But you know, it doesn't matter how much strength someone has if you're afraid. You can be in a house that's fortified all around with steel walls, and you can have windows barred, and still be crouched inside in terror and fear. You have to believe that the windows that are barred and the doors that are steel will stand against whatever's outside of you, or you're going to be terrified. Fear is not a reaction to reality. Fear is a reaction to what you imagine could happen. So your imagination has to be affected. You have to learn how to think differently. Fears go away. So if a person, and a lot of people, start following Christ, then they still are afraid. Because they don't have the confidence that the things God said he was going to do, he's actually going to do. And people can look at their lives and say, Well, I've been faithful to God, but I don't know anybody my life has impacted. Some of you may know a song where you get to heaven, and people tell you how wonderful your life has meant to them. But you look at people over history, and many of them never knew the impact their life had on the course of world history, and of the kingdom of God. But being faithful to God allows us to claim the promise, even though we don't see it, that's what a promise is. I promise this will take place. You have to believe the promiser, and you have to do what is necessary to receive the promise. In the stories you read in the Old Testament, the promises God made to those who were faithful came true. The promises he made to those who were not faithful, they were never able to realize. And this is a picture of how God deals with us. When you go through the Bible, if you have trust in God, and you read, he says, I'm going to do this for you, you feel excited and exhilarated, because you know it's going to come true, even though in front of you you can't see it. But if you don't believe that that's true, then it doesn't matter what you read. You're still going to have those fears inside of you. What God wants us to know is his promise is true, and it's real, but it doesn't come to everyone. It only comes to those who allow him to do in them what he wants to do. Would you bow your head, please, for a moment to pray? What is it that you want God to do in your life? And what do you want to have happen in your life? The first question you have to ask yourself is, do I really believe that God can and would do this in my life? And believing that that's true is what faith really is. I believe I can trust the promises of God. So if you think, well, I'm not the kind of person God would ever use, and you don't want to try, then you're never going to find that to be true. But if you do believe that, then you have to make sure that what you do is the things that God allows, that you do the thing that allows God to do in your life what he wants. Do you read the Bible to find out how he wants you to think and react in circumstances? Do you ask God to give you the ability and willingness to act as you should? You do those things, and God does all the rest. It would be interesting for each of us to know what plans you have for us. We might be able to read our own story and hear that you had great dreams for us, but because of our failure to trust and our failure to obey, you could never really give them to us. What a tragedy we would face. I ask for each of us, Father, that you would help us to come to grips with what you have promised us. We know that the promises oftentimes relate to the need we have. So help us to look at the needs we have, and then read the Bible and listen to the promises you've made to people who have those needs. Give us the trust in you that you will do what you've said. Give us the faith to allow you to shape us so that you can do what you want to do. In the name of Christ we pray, Amen.