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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Total Destruction, #5
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—(Deuteronomy 7:1—NIV)
I would like to turn now to an Old Testament parallel that contains much truth concerning deliverance from the chains of sin. In the Old Testament accounts the enemy consisted of flesh and blood people. Under the New Testament the enemy consists of unclean, rebellious spirits.
But we shall find that the battle the Jews engaged in and the battle we now are engaging in have many points in common.
First we notice (above) that it is God who is bringing us into our land of promise, and it is God who in the ultimate sense will be the One who drives the enemy from the land.
We see immediately that entrance into Canaan is not a type of our entering Heaven. Heaven is not our land of promise. Our land of promise is change into the image of Christ, untroubled rest in the Father through Christ, and then the possession of the saved nations of the earth.
Satan wars against our being changed into the image of Christ. Satan wars against our entering untroubled rest in the Father through Christ. Satan wars against our taking possession of the saved nations of the earth. None of this has anything to do with our going to Heaven. Perhaps Satan actually desires that we go to Heaven so we will not interfere with his hold on the people of the earth. When Satan murders Christians he sends them to Heaven. So it does not appear he is too concerned about our going to Heaven, just about our being coheirs with Jesus Christ and inheriting the nations and the farthest reaches of the earth.
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. (Deuteronomy 7:2—NIV)
I think three steps are revealed in the above verse.
- The Lord delivers the enemy over to us.
- We have defeated them.
- We destroy them totally.
We see this pattern operating when the Israelites invaded Canaan.
The Lord delivered the Canaanites into their hand, guiding them by His Spirit, pushing over the walls of Jericho, raining hailstones on the enemy, and so forth. While the Israelite warriors were fighting under the leadership of Joshua, the angels of God were fighting under the leadership of the Captain of the Lord's forces.
The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so. (Joshua 5:15—NIV)
As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites. (Joshua 10:11—NIV)
As the Lord delivered the Canaanites into their hands, the Israelites defeated them.
It was the third step that was the problem. After the inhabitants of the Land of Canaan were defeated, the Israelites destroyed some of them but not all of them.
To be continued.