On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols and demolish all their high places. Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them.'” (Numbers 33:50-53, 55-56, NIV 1984).
My Musings – “Drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you…take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess.” This may seem harsh and unfair to the inhabitants of the land, for up to this time, the land had never been possessed by Abraham or his descendants. They has sojourned there but had not possessed it.
But God has promised it to Abraham’s descendants, and it was His to give to whomever He pleased. “The Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river [Nile] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” (Exodus 15:18-21, NIV 1984). And He was pleased to give it to the descendants of Abraham.
But the time was not yet right. “The Lord said to [Abram], ‘know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country [Egypt] not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.'” (Exodus 15:13-16, NIV 1984).
In other words, the sins of inhabitants of the land had not yet become so grievous or beyond repair that they required immediate judgment. God was giving them time to repent, even though He knew they never would. For, “the Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” (Numbers 14:18, NIV 1984). But at the time of His promise to Abram, “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Unfair? No. He gave them ample time to repent. Harsh? No. Justice demands that the guilty not go unpunished.
My Advice – “But if you do not drive them out,” then what? “I will do to you what I plan to do to them.” They did not drive all of them out and ultimately God did what He said He would. Because the “cancer” was not completely “cut out” it spread among the Israelites. In 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians. In 586 BC, the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians. they were, in part, driven from the land themselves.
As individuals, we can learn from this. “Don’t [we] know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast.” (1 Corinthians 5:6, NIV 1984). Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we must cut out all of the cancer.
The Brew Is A Musing 