71 " When the Lord your God brings you into the land where e you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before e 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 your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. 3 "Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons , nor shall you take their daughters for your sons . 4 "For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods ; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you. 5 "But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars , and smash their sacred pillars , and hew down their Asherim , and burn their graven images with fire .
6 "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God ; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth . 7 " The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples , for you were the fewest of all peoples , 8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers , the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery , from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt . 9 "Know therefore that the Lord your God , He is God , the faithful God , who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments ; 10 but repays those who hate Him to their faces , to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face . 11 "Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today , to do them.
12 " Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you His covenant and His lovingkindness which He swore to your forefathers . 13 "He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground , your grain and your new wine and your oil , the increase of your herd and the young of your flock , in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. 14 "You shall be blessed above all peoples ; there will be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle . 15 " The Lord will remove from you all sickness ; and He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known , but He will lay them on all who hate you. 16 "You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will deliver to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods , for that would be a snare to you. 17 "If you should say in your heart , 'These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?' 18 you shall not be afraid of them; you shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt : 19 the great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid . 20 "Moreover , the Lord your God will send the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish . 21 "You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst , a great and awesome God . 22 " The Lord your God will clear away these nations before e you little by little ; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly , for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you. 23 " But the Lord your God will deliver them before you, and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed . 24 " He will deliver their kings into your hand so that you will make their name perish from under heaven ; no man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them. 25 "The graven images of their gods you are to burn with fire ; you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be snared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God . 26 "You shall not bring an abomination into your house , and like it come under the ban ; you shall utterly detest it and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is something banned .
81 "All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do , that you may live and multiply , and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers . 2 " You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years , that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart , whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 "He humbled you and let you be hungry , and fed you with manna which you did not know , nor did your fathers know , that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone , but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord . 4 " Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years . 5 " Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son . 6 "Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God , to walk in His ways and to fear Him. 7 "For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land , a land of brooks of water , of fountains and springs , flowing forth in valleys and hills ; 8 a land of wheat and barley , of vines and fig trees and pomegranates , a land of olive oil and honey ; 9 a land where you will eat food without scarcity , in which you will not lack anything ; a land whose stones are iron , and out of whose hills you can dig copper .
10 "When you have eaten and are satisfied , you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.
11 "Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today ; 12 otherwise , when you have eaten and are satisfied , and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply , and your silver and gold multiply , and all that you have multiplies , 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt , out of the house of slavery . 15 "He led you through the great and terrible wilderness , with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water ; He brought water for you out of the rock of flint . 16 "In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know , that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end . 17 "Otherwise, you may say in your heart , 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth .' 18 "But you shall remember the Lord your God , for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth , that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers , as it is this day . 19 "It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish . 20 "Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before e you, so you shall perish ; because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God .
91 "Hear , O Israel ! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven , 2 a people great and tall , the sons of the Anakim , whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ' Who can stand before the sons of Anak ?' 3 "Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire . He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly , just as the Lord has spoken to you. 4 " Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before e you, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land ,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before e you. 5 "It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land , but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before e you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers , to Abraham , Isaac and Jacob .
6 "Know , then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess , for you are a stubborn e people .
7 "Remember , do not forget how e you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness ; from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place , you have been rebellious against the Lord . 8 "Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath , and the Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you. 9 "When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone , the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you, then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights ; I neither ate bread nor drank water . 10 "The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God ; and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly . 11 "It came about at the end of forty days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone , the tablets of the covenant . 12 " Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise , go down from here quickly , for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly . They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made a molten image for themselves.' 13 "The Lord spoke further to me, saying , 'I have seen this people , and indeed , it is a stubborn e people . 14 ' Let Me alone e , that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven ; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.' 15 " So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire , and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands . 16 "And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God . You had made for yourselves a molten calf ; you had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. 17 "I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes . 18 " I fell down before the Lord , as at the first , forty days and nights ; I neither ate bread nor drank water , because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to anger . 19 "For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time also . 20 "The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him; so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time . 21 " I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made , and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until e it was as fine as dust ; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain . 22 "Again at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath . 23 "When the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea , saying , ' Go up and possess the land which I have given you,' then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God ; you neither believed Him nor listened to His voice . 24 " You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you. 25 " So I fell down before the Lord the forty days and nights , which I did because the Lord had said He would destroy you. 26 " I prayed to the Lord and said , 'O Lord GOD , do not destroy Your people , even Your inheritance , whom You have redeemed through Your greatness , whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand . 27 'Remember Your servants , Abraham , Isaac , and Jacob ; do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin . 28 'Otherwise the land from which You brought us may say , " Because e the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He had promised them and because He hated them He has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness ." 29 'Yet they are Your people , even Your inheritance , whom You have brought out by Your great power and Your outstretched arm .'
19 When evening came , they would go out of the city .
20 As they were passing by in the morning , they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. 21 Being reminded , Peter said to Him, " Rabbi , look , the fig tree which You cursed has withered ." 22 And Jesus answered saying to them, " Have faith in God . 23 " Truly I say to you, whoever e says to this mountain , 'Be taken up and cast into the sea ,' and does not doubt in his heart , but believes that what he says is going to happen , it will be granted him. 24 "Therefore e I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask , believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. 25 "Whenever you stand praying , forgive , if you have anything against anyone , so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions . 26 [" But if you do not forgive , neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions ."]
27 They came again to Jerusalem . And as He was walking in the temple , the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to Him, 28 and began saying to Him, "By what authority are You doing these things , or who gave You this authority to do these things ?" 29 And Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one question , and you answer Me, and then I will tell you by what authority I do these things . 30 "Was the baptism of John from heaven , or from men ? Answer Me." 31 They began reasoning among themselves , saying , "If we say , 'From heaven ,' He will say , 'Then why e did you not believe him?' 32 "But shall we say , 'From men '?"-they were afraid of the people , for everyone considered John to have been a real prophet . 33 Answering Jesus , they said , "We do not know ." And Jesus said to them, "Nor will I tell 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.
