Be Who You Were Meant to Be

1 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and He drives out many nations before you—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you 2 and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.

Moses says about the nations Israel must fight: 1. They are many. 2. They are the same one’s that should have been fought 40 years ago 3. 7 (Totality of the nations) 4. more numerous than Israel 5. stronger than Israel.

Israel was to defeat their military, slaughter the population, burn the towns, curse the town, and consecrate it to God. verse 1

Further they were NOT to enter treaties, show mercy.

We should not see this as normal, or repeatable. We shouldn’t view as though 2 Gods, one of OT and one of NT. We should see this as a unique, and specific to conquering the Holy Land.

The Canaanites constituted a moral cancer in the land and toward Israel if they did not deal with it radically.

It should also be noted that this is a very small scale version of the judgement to come in the last days. Therefore we should not try to make this allegorical or split the Old Testament God from the New Testament God.

God is going to one day judge the whole world… global scale… and all those who don’t know Jesus… all those who have decided to live life their way. Every rebel… every sinner. Every defiant one who has rebelled against Holy God, will meet a damnable eternity in Hell.

Do you know Jesus? We should learn to be as ruthless with sin in our own lives as Israel was commanded to be against the Canaanites.

Set apart in what they worshipped:

Deuteronomy 7:5 HCSB

5 Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn up their carved images.

Notable principles: As we have stated many times, idolatry cannot coexist in the heart of a believer. But lets add to this. We need to be careful of our companions. I have heard all my Christian life that Jesus hung out with sinners and so should we. To a point that is true. With the purpose of seeing them come to Jesus. But the point of Jesus hanging out with sinners, is not that we should too. The point is that Jesus will hang out with us… we are the sinners who need a savior.

Set apart in who they married

Note of huge importance in the passage: No intermarriage Deuteronomy 7.3

Deuteronomy 7:3 HCSB

3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,

Please pay attention: This is not a reference to ethnicity. The Scripture does not speak to “marrying someone of a different race.” and that is NOT what is in view here. What is in view, is not intermarrying outside of your faith. and verse 4 explains why.

Deuteronomy 7:4 HCSB

4 because they will turn your sons away from Me to worship other gods. Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you.

Paul, in the NT teaches this concept. 2 Cor. 6.14 and 1 Corinthians 7.39 (Don’t be unequally yoked… a widow can remarry but only in the Lord.

Dear Abby once said “If religion is an important part of your life, shop only in a store you can buy from.”

Someone will say, well it worked out for us. When I married my husband he was a heathen, but he got saved. To be clear that is awesome. That is wonderful grace preventing catastrophe. But that IS not what the Scripture says.

Don’t do evangelistic dating. One of the first things I have asked my boys about anyone they have been interested in is “do they know the Lord? Where do they worship?”

Getting this right will keep us from a world of problems down the road.

Chosen

Deuteronomy 7:6–8 HCSB

6 For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be His own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 “The Lord was devoted to you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath He swore to your fathers, He brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Israel is a people holy to the Lord, a treasured possession. They had been chosen to receive His grace. This involved keeping them through the years, and getting them out of Egyptian slavery.

God had chosen Israel for his holy possession. In the same way He has chosen the church.

They belonged to Him, and he got to set the dictates of how they were to live.

When we come to faith in Jesus, the same is true.

We go where he would have us go, stay away from what He tells us to avoid. We look to be a holy and special people for Him.

He gets to tell us what to worship, with whom to associated, where to go, and even what kind of person to marry. And when we do this HIS WAY, it is a blessing to our lives.

God chose us. To be the recipients of His grace and mercy, His presence in our lives, and eternity with Him in heaven. How precious is this?

Do or Done?

Deuteronomy 7:12 HCSB

12 “If you listen to and are careful to keep these ordinances, the Lord your God will keep His covenant loyalty with you, as He swore to your fathers.

Listen, keep, do.

Here is where we can get really confused as New Testament Christians. Please don’t come away from this passage thinking that you have to work to be saved.

As I have mentioned many times, the book of Deuteronomy is a book of “do”. The Old Covenant was not “Doable”. As Galatians makes clear, the law is not bad. The things God told Israel are not bad. They are perfect for their purpose. They expose over and over again that our best effort to do never measure up, we need GRACE.

Being right with God, being a Christian is about trusting what Christ has already done on the cross, not about doing.

Any act of obedience to Him is because I belong to Him, not SO I will belong to Him.

Ephesians 2:8–10 HCSB

8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.

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