God Says What He Means

^'Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor's landmark.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen!'

Deuteronomy 27:17

After delivering the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt, God delivered His Law to His people.  God was faithful to provide and guide His people through years in the wilderness, and brought them into a land flowing with milk and honey according to His promise.  By lot each tribe and family (save the tribe of Levi) were given land as an inheritance.  The boundaries of the land were ordained and established by God.  It was against the Law to re-locate boundary markers, for they had been laid down by God Himself.  To move a landmark constituted theft and was rebellion against God which brought a curse.

The principle of God establishing boundaries extends beyond the borders of land.  Even as God made a division between water and land when He formed the earth, God has clearly set apart right from wrong.  He held forth an absolute righteous standard in His Law, and God does not change.  Seismic cultural shifts, persistent waves of unbelief, satanic sabotage under the cover of darkness, and the folly of men have shifted around many of the markers God established from the beginning.  This subjective shift has not only taken place in the public sphere, but also concerning doctrines in the church.  The departure from a literal view of scriptural truth has been a catalyst for great error.  As generations flood by, some markers have been lost and others have been moved so far from the original place God hammered them down they might as well not exist.

This reality is nothing new.  The first thing Satan is recorded as doing in Genesis was questioning, contradicting, and lying about God's words.  It is through deceiving God's people where Satan has enjoyed consistent success.  The church's gravest adversary operates best from within.  Paul exhorted and warned Timothy concerning what was occurring in the early church in 2 Timothy 4:1-4:  "I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: ² Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; ⁴ and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables."  Fables like macro evolution are heralded as fact by many Christians, and the existence of Adam and Eve as actual people has been turned to a fable.  Some believe the entire book of the Revelation is allegorical!  It's time for people of the Book to be people who believe what the Book says and live like it.

You've likely seen land surveyors at work near roads or job sites with their precise equipment, carefully, meticulously measuring and marking property boundaries.  Their job is essential in building and development, establishing the legal boundaries of fences, motorways, and buildings.  Imagine a skilled land surveyor mapped out a set of drawings on a flat dirt lot intended to be a carpark.  His careful measurements were taken and the elevation marked with stakes.  Let's say during the night rain joyriding hoons tore through the lot, plowed through the mud, and scattered all the stakes.  The surveyor returned the next day shocked to find the site a mess. Do you think he would be able to replace the perfectly accurate arrangement of stakes to the correct height by memory alone?  No way!  It would be ludicrous to think placing stakes at random spots would result in a carpark which matched the design perfectly.  He would need to refer back to the drawings and use his specialised equipment to find the precise location for each marked stake.

The point of the story is to illustrate the importance of the absolute truth the church has been given by God in the Bible.  Even as a land surveyor requires precise instruments to perform his job, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to discern spiritual truth and apply it faithfully to our lives.  This shifting of the boundaries has occurred again and again based upon man's wisdom - not God's.  Many men intentionally shifted markers to suit their sins or accommodate an unbelieving culture.  The departure from belief in the naked Word has been shifted to mesh with scholarly interpretations, worldly speculation, and spiritualisation of texts to shift further from God's established landmarks.  God said through the prophet in Isaiah 57:20-21:  "But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. ²¹ "There is no peace," says my God, "for the wicked."  Satan has used many tactics to muddy the waters of God's pristine truth, and under the guise of higher learning has undermined the faith of many.  It is only through faith in God and His Word we can know with certainty truth from error.

The exhortation given by C.H. Spurgeon to his students I take to heart and share today:  "The Bible is not a compilation of clever allegories or instructive poetical traditions; it teaches literal facts and reveals tremendous realities:  let your full persuasion of this truth be manifest to all who attend your ministry.  It will be an ill day for the church if the pulpit should even appear to endorse the skeptical hypothesis that Holy Scripture is but the record of a refined mythology, in which globules of truth are dissolved in seas of poetic and imaginary detail." (Lectures to My Students, pg. 102)  God says what He means and means what He says, regardless of what so called experts say.  How wrong were the scribes and experts of the Law in the day of Jesus!  If my views and the clear teachings of the Bible are at odds, it is I who need to change.  Otherwise I run the risk of bringing myself under a curse for moving the boundaries God has set and lead others to do the same.  I thank God for the Bible, for it will endure unchanged forever.  Only Jesus Christ can open our understanding to comprehend the scriptures, and blessed is the man who rightly divides the Word of Truth!