71 When the Lord your God takes you into the land where you are going, which is to be your heritage, and has sent out the nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you; 2 And when the Lord has given them up into your hands and you have overcome them, give them up to complete destruction: make no agreement with them, and have no mercy on them: 3 Do not take wives or husbands from among them; do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons. 4 For through them your sons will be turned from me to the worship of other gods: and the Lord will be moved to wrath against you and send destruction on you quickly. 5 But this is what you are to do to them: their altars are to be pulled down and their pillars broken, and their holy trees cut down and their images burned with fire.
6 For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: marked out by the Lord your God to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth. 7 The Lord did not give you his love or take you for himself because you were more in number than any other people; for you were the smallest of the nations: 8 But because of his love for you, and in order to keep his oath to your fathers, the Lord took you out with the strength of his hand, making you free from the prison-house and from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. 9 Be certain, then, that the Lord your God is God; whose faith and mercy are unchanging, who keeps his word through a thousand generations to those who have love for him and keep his laws; 10 Rewarding his haters to their face with destruction; he will have no mercy on his hater, but will give him open punishment. 11 So keep the orders and the laws and the decisions which I give you today and do them.
12 And it will be, that if you give attention to these decisions and keep and do them, then the Lord will keep his agreement with you and his mercy, as he said in his oath to your fathers. 13 And he will give you his love, blessing you and increasing you: he will send his blessing on the offspring of your body and the fruit of your land, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which by his oath to your fathers he undertook to give you. 14 You will have greater blessings than any other people: no male or female among you or among your cattle will be without offspring. 15 And the Lord will take away from you all disease, and will not put on you any of the evil diseases of Egypt which you have seen, but will put them on your haters. 16 And you are to send destruction on all the peoples which the Lord your God gives into your hands; have no pity on them, and do not give worship to their gods; for that will be a cause of sin to you. 17 If you say in your hearts, These nations are greater in number than we are: how are we to take their land from them? 18 Have no fear of them, but keep well in mind what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt; 19 The great punishments which your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders and the strong hand and the stretched-out arm, by which the Lord your God took you out: so will the Lord your God do to all the peoples who are the cause of your fears. 20 And the Lord will send a hornet among them, till all the rest who have kept themselves safe from you in secret places have been cut off. 21 Have no fear of them: for the Lord your God is with you, a great God greatly to be feared. 22 The Lord your God will send out the nations before you little by little; they are not to be rooted out quickly, for fear that the beasts of the field may be increased overmuch against you. 23 But the Lord your God will give them up into your hands, overpowering them till their destruction is complete. 24 He will give their kings into your hands, and you will put their names out of existence under heaven; there is not one of them who will not give way before you, till their destruction is complete. 25 The images of their gods are to be burned with fire: have no desire for the gold and silver on them, and do not take it for yourselves, for it will be a danger to you: it is a thing disgusting to the Lord your God: 26 And you may not take a disgusting thing into your house, and so become cursed with its curse: but keep yourselves from it, turning from it with fear and hate, for it is a cursed thing.
81 Take care to keep all the orders which I give you today, so that you may have life and be increased and go in and take as a heritage the land which the Lord, by his oath to your fathers, undertook to give you. 2 And keep in mind the way by which the Lord your God has taken you through the waste land these forty years, so that he might make low your pride and put you to the test, to see what was in your heart and if you would keep his orders or not. 3 And he made low your pride and let you be without food and gave you manna for your food, a thing new to you, which your fathers never saw; so that he might make it clear to you that bread is not man's only need, but his life is in every word which comes out of the mouth of the Lord. 4 Through all these forty years your clothing did not get old or your feet become tired. 5 Keep in mind this thought, that as a son is trained by his father, so you have been trained by the Lord your God. 6 Then keep the orders of the Lord your God, fearing him and walking in his ways. 7 For the Lord your God is guiding you into a good land, a land of water-springs, of fountains, and deep streams flowing out from the valleys and the hills; 8 A land of grain and vines and fig-trees and fair fruits; a land of oil-giving olive-trees and honey; 9 Where there will be bread for you in full measure and you will be in need of nothing; a land where the very stones are iron and from whose hills you may get copper.
10 And you will have food enough and be full, praising the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
11 Then take care that you are not turned away from the Lord your God and from keeping his orders and decisions and laws which I give you this day: 12 And when you have taken food and are full, and have made fair houses for yourselves and are living in them; 13 And when your herds and your flocks are increased, and your stores of silver and gold, and you have wealth of every sort; 14 Take care that your hearts are not lifted up in pride, giving no thought to the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house; 15 Who was your guide through that great and cruel waste, where there were poison-snakes and scorpions and a dry land without water; who made water come out of the hard rock for you; 16 Who gave you manna for your food in the waste land, a food which your fathers had never seen; so that your pride might be broken and your hearts tested for your good in the end; 17 Say not then, in your hearts, My power and the strength of my hands have got me this wealth. 18 But keep in mind the Lord your God: for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth, so that he may give effect to the agreement which he made by his oath with your fathers, as at this day. 19 And it is certain that if at any time you are turned away from the Lord your God, and go after other gods, to be their servants and to give them worship, destruction will overtake you. 20 Like the nations which the Lord is cutting off before you, so you will be cut off; because you would not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God.
91 Give ear, O Israel: today you are to go over Jordan, to take the heritage of nations greater and stronger than yourselves, and towns of great size with walls as high as heaven; 2 A people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, of whom you have knowledge and of whom it has been said, All are forced to give way before the sons of Anak. 3 Be certain then today that it is the Lord your God who goes over before you like an all-burning fire; he will send destruction on them, crushing them before you; and you will send them in flight, putting an end to them quickly, as the Lord has said. 4 And after the Lord has sent them in flight from before you, say not in your heart, Because of my righteousness the Lord has given me this land; when it is because of their evil-doing that the Lord is driving these nations out before you. 5 Not for your righteousness or because your hearts are upright are you going in to take their land; but because of the evil-doing of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and to give effect to his oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Be certain then that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land as a reward for your righteousness; for you are a stiff-necked people.
7 Keep well in mind how you made the Lord your God angry in the waste land; from the day when you went out of Egypt till you came to this place, you have gone against the orders of the Lord. 8 Again in Horeb you made the Lord angry, and in his wrath he would have put an end to you. 9 When I had gone up into the mountain to be given the stones on which was recorded the agreement which the Lord made with you, I was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights without taking food or drinking water. 10 And the Lord gave me the two stones with writing on them done by the finger of God: on them were recorded all the words which the Lord said to you on the mountain out of the heart of the fire, on the day of the great meeting. 11 Then at the end of forty days and forty nights the Lord gave me those stones, the stones of the agreement. 12 And the Lord said to me, Get up now, and go down quickly from this place; for the people you have taken out of Egypt have given themselves over to evil; they have quickly been turned from the way in which I gave them orders to go; they have made themselves a metal image. 13 And then the Lord said to me, I have seen that this people is stiff-necked: 14 Let me send destruction on them till their very name is cut off; and I will make of you a nation greater and stronger than they. 15 So turning round I came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire; and the two stones of the agreement were in my hands. 16 And I saw that you had done evil against the Lord, and had made for yourselves a metal image of a young ox: you had quickly been turned from the way in which the Lord had given you orders to go. 17 And I let the stones go from my hands, and they were broken before your eyes. 18 And I went down on my face before the Lord, as at the first, for forty days and forty nights, without taking food or drinking water, because of all your sin, in doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and moving him to wrath. 19 For I was full of fear because of the wrath of the Lord which was burning against you, with your destruction in view. But again the Lord's ear was open to my prayer. 20 And the Lord, in his wrath, would have put Aaron to death: and I made prayer for Aaron at the same time. 21 And I took your sin, the image which you had made, and put it in the fire and had it hammered and crushed very small till it was only dust: and the dust I put in the stream flowing down from the mountain. 22 Again at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you made the Lord angry. 23 And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, Go up and take the land which I have given you; you went against the orders of the Lord your God, and had no faith in him, and would not give ear to his voice. 24 From the day when I first had knowledge of you, you have gone against the word of the Lord. 25 So I went down on my face in prayer before the Lord for forty days and forty nights as I did at first; because the Lord had said that he would put an end to you. 26 And I made prayer to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not send destruction on your people and your heritage, to whom, by your great power, you have given salvation, whom you have taken out of Egypt by the strength of your hand. 27 Keep in mind your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not looking at the hard heart of this people, or their evil-doing and their sin: 28 Or it may be said in the land from which you have taken them, Because the Lord was not able to take them into the land which he said he would give them, and because of his hate for them, he has taken them out to put them to death in the waste land. 29 But still they are your people and your heritage, whom you took out by your great power and by your stretched-out arm.
19 And every evening he went out of the town.
20 And when they were going by in the morning, they saw the fig-tree dead from the roots. 21 And Peter, having a memory of it, said to him, Master, see, the tree which was cursed by you is dead. 22 And Jesus, answering, said to them, Have God's faith. 23 Truly I say to you, Whoever says to this mountain, Be taken up and be put into the sea; and has no doubt in his heart, but has faith that what he says will come about, he will have his desire. 24 For this reason I say to you, Whatever you make a request for in prayer, have faith that it has been given to you, and you will have it. 25 And whenever you make a prayer, let there be forgiveness in your hearts, if you have anything against anyone; so that you may have forgiveness for your sins from your Father who is in heaven. 26 []
27 And they came again to Jerusalem: and while he was walking in the Temple, there came to him the chief priests and the scribes and those in authority: 28 And they said to him, By what authority do you do these things? or who gave you authority to do these things? 29 And Jesus said to them, I will put to you one question; give me an answer, and I will say by what authority I do these things. 30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men? give me an answer. 31 And they gave thought to it among themselves, saying, If we say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did you not have faith in him? 32 But if we say, From men—they were in fear of the people, because all took John to be truly a prophet. 33 And they said in answer to Jesus, We have no idea. And Jesus said to them, And I will not say to you by what authority I do these things.
(Read Mark 11:19-26)
The disciples could not think why that fig-tree should so soon wither away; but all wither who reject Christ; it represented the state of the Jewish church. We should rest in no religion that does not make us fruitful in good works. Christ taught them from hence to pray in faith. It may be applied to that mighty faith with which all true Christians are endued, and which does wonders in spiritual things. It justifies us, and so removes mountains of guilt, never to rise up in judgment against us. It purifies the heart, and so removes mountains of corruption, and makes them plain before the grace of God. One great errand to the throne of grace is to pray for the pardon of our sins; and care about this ought to be our daily concern.
(Read Mark 11:27-33)
Our Saviour shows how near akin his doctrine and baptism were to those of John; they had the same design and tendency, to bring in the gospel kingdom. These elders did not deserve to be taught; for it was plain that they contended not for truth, but victory: nor did he need to tell them; for the works he did, told them plainly he had authority from God; since no man could do the miracles which he did, unless God were with him.
