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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4b
Leviticus 18:26, 27
. “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my
judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither
any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you
(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
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.”
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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,
and he would have brought them immediately to the promised land,
if they had submitted, and loved to be led by him; and 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 of 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 Esar-haddon, 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 a 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. Then the people of the land weakened the