Setting - God speaks to Moses saying that Israel is to drive out the inhabitants of the land.
Content - Israel is to drive out the Canaanites and destroy their images, figures of stone and the high places and possess the land. If they don’t, the Canaanites will be as “pricks” in Israel’s eyes and “thorns in their sides”. God would then do to Israel as He is to do to the Canaanites.
Application - God wants ‘non-Godly’ things (people and things) to not contaminate our life. Hebrews 12:1 says, “…let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us…” and Romans 6:13, “and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness…” In regards to people, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33). We see in the life of Solomon how not removing the land of non-Jews brought him away from his undivided devotion to the Lord.
Our decision to follow God is not only to gain the blessing from Him, but to also remove those items that would diminish, degrade or destroy the blessings prepared for us. God was to bring Israel into the Promise Land (blessing). If they didn’t rid themselves of the inhabitants and their images, they would experience consequences (non-blessings).
We have to get into our thinking that blessings are a natural outpouring from God, instead of earned tokens. When we avoid sin, the ‘faucet’ of blessing remains on, but sinning closes the ‘blessing faucet’. We want to have both the Godly blessings AND the experience of sin, but they don’t coexist, it’s either one or the other.
Content - Israel is to drive out the Canaanites and destroy their images, figures of stone and the high places and possess the land. If they don’t, the Canaanites will be as “pricks” in Israel’s eyes and “thorns in their sides”. God would then do to Israel as He is to do to the Canaanites.
Application - God wants ‘non-Godly’ things (people and things) to not contaminate our life. Hebrews 12:1 says, “…let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us…” and Romans 6:13, “and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness…” In regards to people, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33). We see in the life of Solomon how not removing the land of non-Jews brought him away from his undivided devotion to the Lord.
Our decision to follow God is not only to gain the blessing from Him, but to also remove those items that would diminish, degrade or destroy the blessings prepared for us. God was to bring Israel into the Promise Land (blessing). If they didn’t rid themselves of the inhabitants and their images, they would experience consequences (non-blessings).
We have to get into our thinking that blessings are a natural outpouring from God, instead of earned tokens. When we avoid sin, the ‘faucet’ of blessing remains on, but sinning closes the ‘blessing faucet’. We want to have both the Godly blessings AND the experience of sin, but they don’t coexist, it’s either one or the other.
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