Deuteronomy
28:43 The
foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and
higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44
They
will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the
head, but you will be the tail. 45 All these curses will come on you.
They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed,
because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands
and decrees he gave you.
Here
we find ourselves face to face with God’s words to national Israel
detailing what His opposition would look like should Israel decide to
forsake obedience to His Law. And what this opposition looks like is
that Israel as a nation will be no longer be in control of their
Nation. Instead, the Christ hating enemy will swoop in and displace
the Hebrews in their own land.
This
idea is raised again in Psalm 106, only there the enemy who will take
over seems to refer to the aliens outside Israel and not within
Israel.
40So
the anger of the LORD burned against His people, and He abhorred His
own inheritance. 41He delivered them into the hand of
the nations, and those who hated them ruled over
them.
We
might say it this way, when considering God’s promise in Deuteronomy
28 … “The Hebrews will lose their land, their culture, and their
identity. They will not rule, but they will be ruled over by those
who are foreigners – not Hebrews.”
Now
before we get into this we must keep in mind there is a whole swath
of Reformed clergy and Churches who do not believe this passage
applies any longer. They do not believe there can be Christian
nations and if there can not be Christian nations it cannot be the
case that the Christians lose their position and status as head and
so become the tail. This passage, it is said, is no longer in effect
since it is not possible for Nations to be Christian. I don’t want to
belabor this point this morning. I just want you to be aware of it. I
want you to be aware that much of the Reformed Church could not
preach this sermon because they do not believe that it any longer
applies. This was, so the saying goes, something that was for the OT
economy.
But
for those of us, who like John Calvin, do believe this passage apply
after the Resurrection of Christ what might we say when we consider
this passage?
Well,
we might first ask, what would this becoming the tail and not the
head look like? What might the alien rising higher and higher among
the Hebrews look like? What would it have looked like for the Hebrews
to have been pursued and overtaken and so destroyed? What might
always borrowing and never lending look like?
Well,
we can only offer suppositions but the suppositions to follow would
certainly be consistent with that kind of language.
Concretely
speaking I think what the Hebrews might have faced to be made the
head and not the tail is that their heroes may have been changed out.
As the Alien rises higher and higher the statuary of the Hebrews
would have doubtless been taken down and replaced. Down go the
statues of David, or Moses, or Elijah, and up go the statues of
Goliath, Haman, and Pharaoh. Hebrew School names and street names
would have doubtless been changed out. As the Hebrews became the tail
and the Aliens the head the school and street names honoring Elisha,
Joshua, and Caleb would have been changed in order to honor Achan,
Jambres and Jannes and Jezebel.
Another
sign doubtlessly of the Hebrews being destroyed and the Alien
ascending would have been a drop in the Hebrew birth rate to below
replacement levels and an increase in the birth rate of the Alien.
This would definitely over time lead to their destruction and
eventual genocide.
This
would be part of a broader attack on the family of the Hebrews by the
Alien. The Alien rising higher and higher in order to make sure that
the Hebrews continued to sink lower and lower would do all that it
could to destroy the integrity of the Hebrew family. They would
separate Hebrew parents from Hebrew children. The rising Alien would
introduce gross irregularities into Hebrew marriage. The rising Alien
would seek to normalize perversion among the Hebrew people which
would contribute to the declining birth rate mentioned earlier. They
would seek to alienate young Hebrew men from young Hebrew women by
infecting the former with irresponsibility and the latter with
feminism.
Doubtless
a sign of the Hebrews becoming the tail would be a decided increase
in the suicide rate of Hebrew men, a decided increase in the usage of
Ritalin by Hebrew boys,
Doubtless
in the lending department the Alien would construct and control a
centralized bank that would forever keep the Hebrews in debt by the
usage of fiat money. In such a way the Hebrews would forever be
receiving the loans and never the ones to do the lending. In such a
way the truth of Proverbs 22:7 would be seen;
The
rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender’s
slave.
Another
sign of the Alien rising higher and higher over the Hebrews would be
for the Hebrews to decide that since their economy needed cheap labor
in order to manufacture cheap goods what would be advisable is to
invite even more non-Hebrews into their land.
In
the Hebrews history, this warning in Dt. 28 came to pass more than
once. In Isaiah for example we read,
“Your
country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire, strangers
devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown
by strangers…” -Isaiah 1:7
And
all this because of a refusal to live by God’s law. The result of all
this is that the Hebrews came down very low; into a very mean
condition, to be in great subjection, a vassal and a slave in their
own land.
