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Visualize a setting like that visualized by Moses in Deuteronomy 29. "The whole land brimstone and salt, and a burnt-out waste, unsown, and growing nothing, where no grass can sprout". Visualize the people of this land, accursed, for which reason the land itself is cursed, filling the land with their accursed things, "their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold," clinging to their unclean images, unclean themselves, revolting against God and, hence, revolting to Him.
Now visualize a people whom God has converted and cleansed of such filth, whom He has separated from such vile practices and practitioners and set apart for Himself and His service, whom He has gathered unto Himself on eagles' wings, like an eagle Himself, sparing them from His talons while rending their enemies with the same, a people like the Jews, God's people, whose heart God has taken captive by faith, all at once losing faith and face, turning away from God to go and serve the brazen images of the nations that surround them, brazen-hearted themselves.
Visualize these branches of the true Vine, God, once bright and blossoming with divine promise and laden with the fruit of God; visualize them turning back into chips off the old block and sprouting "a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit".
Visualize such a people who, when they hear the words of God's Self-sworn covenant, His testament whereby they are His people and He is their God, instead of repenting and relenting and returning to God as from this wasteland of spoiled fruit and ruined and ruinous fruit trees to God's garden of delights, stiffen their stiff necks and bless themselves, saying, "I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart. I will be well"--even though they're sick at heart, sick unto death, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, sin-sick and impenitent and beyond healing.
Visualize God, in reaction to their rebellion, sweeping away moist and dry alike, not pardoning the unpardonable but rather smoking against these noxious weeds, smoking them out in His fierce anger and smoldering jealousy, pouring out the curses contained in His covenant and reserved for the likes of them, exacting punishment to the nth degree, blotting out them and their name from under heaven.
Visualize God saying, "And the generation to come, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, would say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the Lord has made it sick--the whole land brimstone and salt, and a burnt-out waste, unsown, and growing nothing, where no grass can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomor'rah, Admah and Ze-boi'im, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and wrath--yea, all the nations would say, 'Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What means the heat of this great anger?'
"Then men would say, 'It is because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them.
"Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book; and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as at this day'" (Deut 29:22-28).
So, what's the difference between us and them? How do you visualize us in comparison with them? We can only answer as God's Word answers. By His Spirit working through His Word God has converted us who are weeds by nature into His wholesome wheat.
By His latter rain in Baptism God has softened our hard hearts and made them receptive to Him and His Word, as He softens the clods of the earth with rain from His heaven, making them receptive to His sown seed. What's more, by the faith He thereby implants God has written His Word upon our hearts, not merely impressed it upon our minds.
And that implanted and inscribed Word bears the fruit of faith unto eternal life. And, behold, the fields are white unto harvest! The wholesome grain is ripe for the reaper's blade. So, swing low, sweet chariot, and swing the sickle, coming for to carry me home! We will be safely gathered in and stored in God's everlasting garners, 'ere the winter storms begin.
And what God said of His penitent Old Testament people will apply to us also. "And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has [scattered] you", because the Lord has had compassion on us and restored our fortunes and gathered us, His precious grain, from all the fields where He has scattered us, we will return to Him, even when we stray into alien pastures--especially then--we and our children begotten by Him of the same faith.
And we'll obey His voice in all that He commands us, with all our heart and with all our soul, as He Himself attests. "If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will fetch youÖ. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
"And you shall again obey the voice of the Lord, and keep all his commandments which I command you this day. For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it." Amen.
- Pastor Erickson