Deuteronomy 19:1 When the LORD thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the LORD thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses
Whether you are a fisherman or not, you probably have stories of the one that got away. Maybe you are the guy who sold the ‘65 Mustang back in ’68 and wish you had kept it. Maybe you have talked to old men who tell about the girl who got away. Maybe you have met someone who talks about the job that got away. They had a chance to be the CEO of some huge corporation and now they are stuck where they are. All of us have stories of the one that got away.
Deuteronomy 19 is a story of the ones that got away, namely, cities that had been offered but not possessed. Verses 1-2 say, “When the LORD thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the LORD thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedeth them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses; thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.” What follows is instruction about “cities of refuge.”
In those days there was no sheriff’s department, so there were laws for the Jewish people to provide for justice. There is a difference, as we find in verse 13, between guilt and innocence. If you were to accidentally kill someone, that is not murder. It was not intended. On the other hand, if you intended to kill someone and you did, that is murder. There was no sheriff, but there was the avenger, someone in the family who would take vengeance and mete out justice. The Bible does not give intricate detail on this, but I am just giving you background. By the way, the premise for all this is that this is the land that God gave. Canaan didn’t surrender it; Israel didn’t grab it. God made it and gave it.
The Bible picks back up in verse 8, “And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers; if thou shalt keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the LORD thy God, and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three.” Again, as in previous chapters, God puts loving God and living for God together. The expression of loving God is living for God, doing what He has commanded. I’m commanded to love, and loving is obeying God’s command. It is hopelessly intertwined in the Old and New Testaments. So, God says to Israel, “If you love Me and live for Me, then you are just going to keep on possessing land, and you will need additional cities of refuge because of the additional territory that I will give you.” It was conditional.
Now, back to the one that got away. What is success? Is it keeping the ’65 Mustang, marrying the princess, and getting the CEO job? Notice verse 1 says, “Whose land the LORD thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them.” To succeed means “to turn out well; to attain a desired end.” You are victorious, a success; you attain that for which you set out. The other meaning of succeed is “to follow after another in order.” In Deuteronomy 19 the two meanings are combined. It means “to follow after another” and it means “to attain a desired end.” That is success. In short, God tells them how they can be a success, “If you love and live for Me, you will succeed; you will follow those who are currently in the land.” That is success.
If you don’t know how to define success, you will find out a day late and a dollar short that you got the money, got the girl, got the mustang, and all the things you thought you wanted, but they were not what you wanted because if success is ill-defined, you won’t have it once you think you’ve got it. Based on the ethic of Deuteronomy 19, success is attaining all that God intends. God says, “I’ve given the land and I will enlarge the land if you love Me and live for Me.” Success is attaining all that God intends.
Is that how you thought of success yesterday? Were you striving to attain all that God intends? Was your measure of success based on God’s intent? Success is not comparative to others. That is what we usually do. We look around and say, “I want what is beyond the borders of what God has given me.” In Deuteronomy 17:14 God says that at some point Israel will want to be like all the nations and have a king. How did that pan out for Israel? The bottom line is that if I am continuously looking around at other people to judge my success, I am judging on an inferior standard. Success is not comparative to others. Success is not merely based on what is available beyond my borders. It is not a matter of market share.
Friend, we live in a market economy where the world is continuously pushing discontentment, desire, and products. They are not selling things; they are selling ideas. If I have this food, this car, this garment, this thing, then I will be ultimately happy. Well, we get whatever it is, success by our standard, and we are no happier than we were before because success was defined by us and not by the God who created the desire we have in the first place.
Someone has said that God has created every desire for a reason. Ultimately those desires cannot be fulfilled without a love for God Himself. So, it is not market share or other people; it is what God intends. Verse 9 gives the command to love. Living for God is an expression of that love for God. By one metric, contentment is simply accepting what God offers. Are you doing that today? Is your first line of action when achieving success to say, “What does God want? What does God intend?” The poet John Greenleaf Whittier said, “For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’” Nothing will get away that God intends if you will follow God with all your heart. Success is attaining all that God intends.