In The Word
Read: Deuteronomy 7
Warnings
7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to take possession of it, and He drives away many nations from before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God turns them over to you and you defeat them, you shall utterly destroy them. You shall not make a covenant with them nor be gracious to them.3 Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them: you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, and they will serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you. 5 But this is what you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, smash their memorial stones, cut their Asherim to pieces, and burn their carved images in the fire. 6 For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His personal possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
7 “The Lord did not make you His beloved nor choose you because you were greater in number than any of the peoples, since you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His faithfulness to a thousand generations for those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 but He repays those who hate Him to their faces, to eliminate them; He will not hesitate toward him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore, you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them.
Promises of God
12 “Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep His covenant with you and His faithfulness which He swore to your forefathers. 13 And He will love you, bless you, and make you numerous; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain, your new wine, and your oil, the newborn of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no sterile male or infertile female among you or among your cattle. 15 And the Lord will remove from you all sickness; and He will not inflict upon you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will give them to all who hate you. 16 You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will turn over to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
17 “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’ 18 you are not to be afraid of them; you shall remember well what the Lordyour God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders, and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 Indeed, the Lord your God will send the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish.21 You are not to be terrified of them, because the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. 22 And the Lord your God will drive away these nations from you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you. 23 But the Lordyour God will turn them over to you, and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 And He will hand over their kings to you, so that you will eliminate their name from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25 The carved images of their gods you are to burn with fire; you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be trapped by it; for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. 26 And you shall not bring an abomination into your house and become designated for destruction, like it; you are to utterly detest it, and you are to utterly loathe it, for it is something designated for destruction.
New American Standard Bible (NASB) Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Walking In The Word
Are you amazed that God chose you to be one of His children by rescuing you out of the world? We did nothing to deserve this precious gift, but He decided to demonstrate His love to us anyway. When God chose the Israelites to be His people and rescued them from slavery in Egypt, He told them, “You are a holy people to the Lord your God.” (7:6)
By using the word “holy,” God meant they were not to act like the Egyptians, and other nations around them who did not follow God’s ways. God said this not to keep them from something good, but to keep them from ways that were detestable to Him and that would lead them back into slavery.
The lessons for us are to not look at the world’s ways as good and to not see sin as pleasure. If we follow sin’s temptation we give it access and influence in our lives. (Romans 6:12, 16) The problem is that sin is a trap meant to capture us and harm us. (John 10:10)
Let’s take time now to thank God for the love He poured on us by saving us from the world. Also let’s examine ourselves to see if there is anything in our lives that the world would applaud but would grieve God. If there is any of the world still in us, let’s use the power God supplies to reject it and fully commit to Him.