April 24, 2021
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Deuteronomy? Here’s today’s reading:
Deuteronomy 7 (NIV)
Driving Out the Nations
1 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy......Continue Reading
You know what stood out to me is the confidence we should have in God’s power. When you think of the insurmountable odds the Israelites faced and how He delivered them out off enemy after enemy’s hand how can he not stand against our problems. He loves us and wants what’s best for us and it is an honor to keep His commands and live a life for Him and put no other idols before Him like the world does.
Deuteronomy 7
Deuteronomy 7
It’s amazing how God is so protective of His people.
Deuteronomy 7
We must remember that the nations that were in Canaan were evil and so driving them out was as much about stopping the evil as it was to bless His people. It is unique to Israel’s situation that God would call them to obliterate those who occupied the land, but it was about the expression of His holiness, the condemning of their evil and the elimination of the influence they would have on Israel. We know from our own lives and the history of Israel how easy it is to be sucked into the godless influence that is in the world. We are called to be in the world but not of it, the Israelites here are called to eliminate it. As much as God is a God of love, He is also a God of righteousness and justice and that righteousness judges evil and sets consequences in place to teach us to stay away from it.
But God not only judges disobedience, He also rewards obedience. Look at all the things He will bless and how He will provide for the Israelites if they follow Him. Consider the power that would be made available to them to vanquish nations that are stronger and more powerful than them. We too will be blessed if we follow God even if our blessings might take a different form, but at times I think those blessing also defy how the world normally works and causes us and the world to stand in the amazement of how God still works on behalf of His people. I do wonder if this will be greater as the world gets darker. We just need to trust God when He works powerfully and when He doesn’t and realize that He always knows what He is doing.
One thing that I have been struggling with in the book of Joshua is that utter destruction of these nations and the “slaying with the sword” – man, woman and child. Like you said, Pastor, in researching these nations, and confirmed here, these nations HATE GOD. They worship false gods in the most heinous means imaginable. God knows that the Israelites will be lead astray if they live, intermarry, etc with these people.
In our upcoming study in Joshua we are actually going to discuss war and capital punishment. I think the reason why capital punishment sits wrong with us is because of Christ. We know that we are now in a spiritual war and that it can be won by winning people to Christ. It is not our place to determine who God will redeem and who hates Him. I do think that we should not be afraid to call evil evil though and call for it’s punishment, even by death.
11Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.
12If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. 13He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers.