Power of Example
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(for all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were
before you, and the land is defiled).”
Deuteronomy 32:16-22
: “They provoked Him to jealousy with
strange gods, with abominations provoked they Him to anger. They
sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to
new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of the
Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that
formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, He abhorred them, because
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of the provoking of His sons, and of His daughters. And He said, I
will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for
they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They
have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have
provoked Me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to
jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to
anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and
shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her
increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.”
We here read the warnings which God gave to ancient Israel. It
was not His good pleasure that they should wander so long in the
wilderness; He would have brought them immediately to the Promised
Land had they submitted and loved to be led by Him; but because they
so often grieved Him in the desert, He sware in His wrath that they
should not enter into His rest, save two who wholly followed Him.
God required His people to trust in Him alone. He did not wish them
to receive help from those who did not serve Him.
Please read
Ezra 4:1-5
: “Now when the adversaries of Judah and
Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple
unto the Lord God of Israel; then they came to Zerubbabel, and to
the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you:
for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto Him since
the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither.
But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of
Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house
unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God
of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. Then
the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah,
and troubled them in building, and hired counselors against them, to
frustrate their purpose.”
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