Deut 2:30, "But Sihon king of Heshbon was not willing for us to pass through his land; for the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand, as he is today. 
    	This morning we have a most interesting chapter to consider. In it, we have the travels of the Chosen Nation of God going forward toward the Promised Land. The first generation had died off and the second generation was on the verge of receiving the inheritance that had been given to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob all those centuries earlier. The nation, forged by the wilderness experience under God’s provision and protection and direction was about to cross the Jordon River to inhabit Canaan land. 
	As they were traveling toward that territory that was beckoning them through the ages of ages, the Lord directed them to avoid conflict with a number of other inhabitants of land over which they were passing. God was very specific in detailing the peoples that were not to be attacked nor provoked because they were living in territory that The Lord God Almighty had previously given to them. We read several accounts from the Lord as to how He had given the many years removed cousins and other relations the land that they had won in battle from various other peoples as God had dispossessed them. This shows that the Israelites were not the first people whom God had placed within lands as He so determined for them. 
	The earth belongs to its Creator and the Lord chose which people would dwell in which territories as detailed in this chapter of Deuteronomy. He is the Sovereign Lord of all and what He determines and puts into action is the course of the history of the humanity which He created. This must never be minimized or forgotten as we look at the means by which nation after nation was moved by God to accomplish His will. It all becomes a matter of how His will is clearly displayed on this earth. Nothing is just happenstance nor is it the whim of probability. God directs nation after nation to bring about the course of His plan and His purpose to the fulfillment of His glory. All will happen throughout the whole universe only as He directs and as He manifests.
	That is why we come to the passage of this morning with the knowledge that what Sihon, king of Heshbon, refused to do with regard to the safe passage of the Children of Israel was in exact accordance with the plan and the purpose of God. You see, the land that Sihon’s people inhabited was part of the trans-Jordan territory that was to be given to the nation of Israel. All those other nations, which the Israelites were told to by-pass, were not dwelling in the land of Promise. Heshbon, however, did fall into the territory that was part of the Children of Israel’s course to inhabit. It would be given to the people through conquest showing the power of God, and instilling fear into the other nations across the Jordan river.
	This was the means by which God would begin to bring into place the habitation of the Promised Land with the elimination of those peoples who were so wicked and defiled and corrupt in their hearts toward the holiness of God. In line with this, the Lord hardened the heart of Sihon in order that he would choose to begin the fight against the Lord’s people and become their first conquest. This was the manner in which God accomplished the setting up of the Nation of Israel as to bring terror into the hearts of those who would soon be conquered. It was the evidence that God was going before His people and fighting the battle for them even in the minds and conscious thoughts of those who were to be dispossessed because of their wickedness.
	This was not the first time that God did so with the heart and the mind of mankind as we well know. We can hearken back to the fact that Pharaoh, the leader of the then most powerful nation of the world, would have his heart so hardened by God. This was in order to show the power and the might and the awesome deliverance that God would bring forth in order to have His people released with all the treasures of Egypt that they could carry.
	The Lord even made this known to Moses before he was sent back to Egypt if you will recall as recorded in Ex 4:21. Ex 4:21, And the Lord said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Moses went to Egypt knowing that the Lord would do all that was necessary to deliver His people despite the worst that Pharaoh would bring against God. Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world at that time, would not honor God, but would resist with every fiber of his ability in order to try to sway God from the deliverance of His people. 
	Even after Moses and Aaron did all the wonders of the plagues before the nation of Egypt and the eyes of Pharaoh, it would not move that king to release the Children of Israel. All of this was because God so hardened the king’s heart to stand against the will of the Lord as we have reiterated in Ex 11:10. Ex 11:10, And Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land. 
    	It was not until the Passover had been accomplished, that the Children of Israel were released to go forth unto the Promised Land. The Passover instituted the type of the sacrifice that was going to be necessary to release hard-hearted humanity from the slavery of sin and death. This freedom is for all who believe in and call upon the name of Jesus Christ. 
After the Passover with the death of all the first born of Egypt, God again hardened the heart of Pharaoh to go forth with his army of chariots to chase the Israelites. God knew that it would take the threat of that army to cause that stubborn people, whom He had chosen and whom He had released from their slavery, to flee across the dried passage of the Red Sea unto His deliverance into the wilderness.
	Returning back to the course of this morning’s consideration, Joshua, in Joshua 11:19+20, laid out the plan and the purpose of why God hardened the hearts of those nations that were dispossessed. He detailed exactly how and why those nations were dealt with by the Lord hardening their hearts in order to bring them unto the destruction that was their just judgment before the holiness of God. 
Josh 11:19+20, There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle. For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. 
    	It was not just the hearts of the nations to be dispossessed that had hard hearts to the Lord. The Children of Israel, themselves, were obstinately defiant unto the Lord and His commandments. They dealt faithlessly with the Lord God Almighty, Who was their salvation. We hear this in the words of God pronounced through the Prophet Isaiah, as recorded in Isa 48:1-7. This is in dealing with the nation that had so turned away from Jehovah.
	Please open to Isa 48:1-7, so we can read it together. Isa 48:1-7, "Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are named Israel And who came forth from the loins of Judah, Who swear by the name of the Lord And invoke the God of Israel, But not in truth nor in righteousness. "For they call themselves after the holy city, And lean on the God of Israel; The Lord of hosts is His name. "I declared the former things long ago And they went forth from My mouth, and I proclaimed them. Suddenly I acted, and they came to pass. "Because I know that you are obstinate, And your neck is an iron sinew, And your forehead bronze, Therefore I declared them to you long ago, Before they took place I proclaimed them to you, Lest you should say, 'My idol has done them, And my graven image and my molten image have commanded them.' "You have heard; look at all this. And you, will you not declare it? I proclaim to you new things from this time, Even hidden things which you have not known. "They are created now and not long ago; And before today you have not heard them, Lest you should say, 'Behold, I knew them.' 
     	As humans, every one of us are so good at taking the things of God and making them our own. We take His provisions and His providential care and His protection and His wisdom and His mercy and His grace and label it as something we have done for ourselves. We set our hearts against Him, hardened in the deceitfulness of our own arrogance and animosity to the holiness and the commandments of God. We declare that we can take care of ourselves with only the help of that which we make with our own hands and our minds and our wills. We set ourselves against the plan and the purpose of God because we think we know better than the Omniscient Creator of Heaven and earth what is best for our lives. We want the control and we want the glory for ourselves, so we find that our hearts are hardened to the hand of God operating in and around us, despite the fact of all that He has done and all that He continues to do.
	As a further delineation of this hardness that becomes part of even those who know the working hand of God, please open now to the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, Rom 2:3-8. In this passage is highlighted the attitude that needs to be broken in each one of our hearts before the throne of God’s grace. 
	Rom 2:3-8, And do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment upon those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. 
   	The Apostle goes on to highlight exactly what the Lord did through the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart in Romans Chapter 9, verses 17-24. This needs to be a lesson to each one of us as to the fact that what the Lord chooses to do is in His Sovereign will and knowledge of the end from the beginning. We are not to be foolish and think that if we harden our hearts, that God will just let it slide. We need to beseech Him to work in us to the full extent that all hardness and bitterness and obstinacy will be dealt with in order to make us those soft and pliable creations who honor Him, Alone. 
Rom 9:17-24, For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. 
	From the very beginning, God had in His heart to include both Jew and Gentile in the salvation ministry of His Only Begotten Son. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was not just for the sake of the release of the Jewish nation, but to usher in all that would bring forth the Messiah of the Jews and the Savior of the Gentiles, Jesus Christ.
We finish this morning back in Deuteronomy, Chapter 29, verses 2-13, where Moses proclaimed to the Children of Israel the truth that what the Lord did in the hardening of the heart of Sihon was fully in place in order to bring about the beginning of the conquest of the Promised Land. This was in full accordance with the faithfulness of God’s word to His people. He kept them through those 40 years of wilderness wandering despite the fact that the people murmured and complained and rebelled against the Lord.
Deut 29:2-13, And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, "You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land; the great trials which your eyes have seen, those great signs and wonders. Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear. And I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot. You have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, in order that you might know that I am the Lord your God. When you reached this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out to meet us for battle, but we defeated them; and we took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites. So keep the words of this covenant to do them, that you may prosper in all that you do. "You stand today, all of you, before the Lord your God: your chiefs, your tribes, your elders and your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the alien who is within your camps, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, that you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath which the Lord your God is making with you today, in order that He may establish you today as His people and that He may be your God, just as He spoke to you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So be it!

	
This morning’s benediction is Ps 67:1. God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us — Selah. Amen.