Exodus 23:26

The Bible says in Exodus 23:26, “There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.” This is another verse in which Jesus is telling the children of Israel how He will take care of them as they follow Him and enter the Promised Land. Yes, there will be enemies, and difficulties, and dangers just as there always are in this life; but God will guide them and take care of them. Notice especially the last part of Exodus 23:26. God said, “the number of thy days I will fulfil.” Every person has just so many “days” that is given to them as a gift from God. Life on this earth is a gift from God. The day is coming when each of us will leave this earth, and we are each getting closer to that last day. It says in Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”

God said in Exodus 23:26, “the number of thy days I will fulfil.” In other words there is the possibility that your days will not be fulfilled: that you will die before your time. God can chastise His children. If the failure of the believer is great enough, God might even take that believer off this earth earlier than otherwise. It says in First John 5:16, “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” It is possible to commit a sin, and God decides that the consequence is that the believer must be taken off the earth earlier than planned. That would mean a loss of opportunity for that believer, and that believer will also lose the rewards that he otherwise would have gained.

God said to the children of Israel in Exodus 23:27-30, “I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.” God is the all-powerful God. Everyone on the earth reports to Him. He can do with them as He wills. Jesus is the Lord of lords and the King of kings. God had already told the Israelites several times that He would take care of their enemies. In other words they do not need to worry or be anxious about it. Notice that God is not in a big hurry to get rid of the enemies of Israel. God said, “By little and little I will drive them out from before thee.” The Lord can do tremendous miracles and make big changes instantly, but often He also works very slowly. As someone once said, the wheels of God turn slowly, but ever so finely. God is always at work in the world whether we are aware of His work being done or not. Jesus gave a parable about this. The Bible says in Matthew 13:33, “Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” In a way the kingdom of Christ is hid in this world. In other words you cannot see it growing, but it is. You will not see in the headlines of the newspaper that some poor, lost sinner came to know Jesus as Savior. And yet just such an event might be the most important event of the day. Jesus said in Luke 15:3-7, “And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”

The Bible says in Exodus 23:31-33, “And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.” These verses tell us the boundaries that God had intended for the nation of Israel. What is interesting is that these boundaries are much larger than Israel has ever occupied. Notice that the east-west boundary was meant to go all the way from the desert (the Sinai Peninsula) to the Euphrates River: that is what is meant by “the desert unto the river.” Of course, Israel has never occupied all this land, not even in the days of King David and King Solomon, and is much smaller than that today. When Jesus returns to the earth and is King in Israel, the land will finally be all that it was intended to be. What man has failed to do, Jesus will do for us. This spiritual principle works out this way in everyone’s life. God has a beautiful purpose for your life. He put you on this earth to come to know Jesus at an early age, to follow Him faithfully every day, and to grow consistently in the grace and knowledge of Christ. By doing so, you will become everything God wants you to be, and you will accomplish in your life everything God wants you to accomplish. But the sad truth is that because of sin, and lack of faith, and selfish decisions, we have not become everything that we could have become. But the wonderful truth is that when Jesus appears, He will finally change us into what He has been preparing us for in eternity. This final change for each believer is described in First Corinthians 15:51-53, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

The Bible says in Exodus 24:1-8, “And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him. And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.”

This passage of scripture demonstrates two very important differences between law and grace. Remember that there is one very big difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament which has to do with the difference between law and grace. The Bible says in John 1:17, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Law says, “You have not obeyed, and therefore must be punished.” Grace says, “You have not obeyed, but I will forgive you.” The first difference between law and grace found in Exodus 24:1-8 has to do with access into the presence of God. Notice that it says in Exodus 24:2, “And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him.” Only Moses could come “near the Lord,” but most of the other people could not. The law demonstrates man’s unrighteousness, and man’s failure, and therefore, man’s inability to approach God because of the contrast between God’s holiness and man’s unholiness. Contrast this with what we are taught in the New Testament. It says in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” The Apostle Paul also wrote in Ephesians 3:8-12, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.” It is wonderful being a Christian in this age of grace. We are so fortunate to always be able to come “boldly before the throne of grace.” We have this confidence, this boldness, this free access: not because of ourselves, but because of Jesus. Don’t ever think that you have failed the Lord so much that you no longer have access. You will always have this access to God through Christ: that is what grace is all about.

The second difference between law and grace that we can see in Exodus 24:1-8 is found in Exodus 24:3 and Exodus 24:7. It says in Exodus 24:3, “all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.” And it says in Exodus 24:7, “and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” The people were responding both times to hearing the reading of the law. They promised to obey the law. The agreement that they made with God was that they would obey. The Old Testament was a covenant based upon human obedience. If you obeyed the law, you obtained the blessings. But if you did not obey, then you earned punishment and deserved no blessings. This is a great problem for mankind since we have all failed to keep the law. We have all sinned. This problem with mankind’s inability to keep the Old Testament law, and the solution to the problem, is described in Galatians 3:10-14, “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” The law brings a curse because of our failure to obey the law, but Jesus frees His believers from the curse. That is the great difference between the law of the Old Testament, and the grace of Christ which is revealed so clearly in the New Testament. We are not under law, but under grace. Beware of false teachers that exist in these last days in which we live. The false teachers will continually try to put you under the law, and try to make you think that the great blessings of God are dependent upon your obedience to law and religious rules and regulations. Don’t ever forget that the great blessings from God come by believing. That is why it says in Galatians 3:14, “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Make an effort in your heart to believe, to trust, and to have confidence in Christ. That is how to please God.

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