December Devotional pt. 2

Hate what He Hates - 7:1-11

Which brings us to our final example for how God’s people show love for God - by hating what He hates. Look with me at chapter 7:1, ““1“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,” Remember that God was expelling these nations from the Land because of their sin and idolatry. By thrusting them out of the Promised Land, Israel would have been removing the temptation to join in their sin and their worship of false gods. If instead they covenanted and married with these tribes they would be led into the sin of idolatry.

This was not meant to preserve racial purity, as some of mistakenly used this passage. Instead this was to keep the heart of God’s people holy by destroying that which would lead to idolatry and spiritual adultery, verse 4, “4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. 6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.” God’s people are holy, set apart for His purposes. They are to love Him and Him exclusively. This is what was commanded in the first 2 commands and in the Shema. Loving God means choosing Him and what He wants over and above anyone or anything else. Conversely, to love something on this same level is to chose not to love God - to chose to hate Him instead. Which is why God commands the radical removal of the nations inhabiting Canaan. They hated Him by worshiping idols and if left where they were they would turn His people’s heart to hate Him as well. Israel was to hate idolatry and deal sternly with anyone or anything that tempted them to idolatry. I will again quote Abner Chou here, “God’s demand for Israel’s actions are not because of some arbitrary hatred for foreigners but rather to ensure Israel’s purity (all the while establishing God’s justice). It is to ensure that nothing lures Israel away from their God. Compassion to such temptation is not “kind” but rather an affront to God”

Put into a New Testament context, to love God is to hate that which causes you to stumble by cutting it out of your life. We must not deal mildly with temptation and sin. Instead we must treat act with radical zeal by running from temptation and mortifying our sin. Remember, God demands exclusive love and acting like this demonstrates that we have love for Him and Him alone.

To motivate such radical love for God, Moses reminds the people of God’s choice of them as a nation, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” See that God chose them, not because of any quality within themselves but because He loved them. He chose them out of all the nations to be their God. He was faithful to them and to their fathers. He delivered them. Therefore they were to know that YHWH is God - He alone is God and they should worship and obey Him alone.