“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, 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. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 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. 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.
One of the many truths believers tend to forget is that the work of spiritual growth and spiritual success is on the back of Jesus and not us. We are to walk in obedient faith and express the love that God has created in our hearts for Him and others. It is all based upon faith. In the above passage we read about the nation of Israel who are being prepared, by Moses, to enter the promise land. In the above passage Moses reminds them of three things:
1). Any victory of any enemy will be because God did it! We, like them, don’t secure our own victories over sin. It is by faith through obedience that we secure any victory in Christ.
2). There is no compromise with sin, there is only the utter destruction (mortification) of sin. Like the nation of Israel coming into the promise land, our sanctification is not compromising with sin. We are to utterly destroy sin in our lives. We are not to dance with it. We are not to flirt with it. We are to completely destroy it. They were not to inter-marry with the people of the land. We are not to inter-marry with the sin of our day. The world is not our affection. God is!
3). They were not to have any fellowship with the spiritual practices of the world around them. They were to utterly destroy any of those artifacts. The same is true with us today. We are not to have any relationship with false doctrine and worldly myths. We are to focus on the true God and our faith in loving obedience to Him. We are not to entertain new doctrine that fits today’s philosophical world. We are to burn it with fire.
The people of Israel were to enter the promise land and these three points were to be observed. Believers today are to enter into the promise land of holiness with God. These three truths are to be observed by us, as well.
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