Video Transcript: Destroying the Canaanites

Video Transcript: Destroying the Canaanites

Our Bible reading this morning is from the first five verses of Deuteronomy chapter seven. 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, Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier are 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 are 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. This ends the reading of God's word, and God always blesses His Word to those who listen. 

This is not the kind of passage you choose because it is your favorite. If it is your favorite, you probably have a major problem. If someone reads this passage, and the further passages that speak of the destruction that was actually carried out, when various towns and cities were conquered, and every living thing in it was wiped out, if you can read such passages and say, “Hey, that was cool,” then there is a problem. Because anybody who has a heart with any sensitivity and a mind that thinks for a few minutes, can find this kind of statement disturbing; that God would give such a command, and that God's chosen people would be expected to carry out such a command. Living in a time like ours you might say to yourself, “Well, what doesn't that sound like the radical Islamic terrorists? Doesn't that sound like ISIS are Boko Haram, where they conquer and kill indiscriminately and do horrible things, and have no respect for people of other faiths and just smash and destroy wherever they go? Doesn't this sound pretty much like marching orders for groups like that?” 

When you read such things, from the scriptures, you wonder, again, did God really say this? Deuteronomy seven, verse two, you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. And it's elaborated later, but in the cities of these peoples, that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive, nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods and so you sin against the Lord your God.

This command, and the way in which it was at least partially carried out has troubled many Christians. C.S Lewis, in writing about this passage, commented that he believed that Joshua was wrong to carry out these orders, and it was wrong that these orders be given. And he said that doctrine of the goodness of God is more important than the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. And so, we must conclude that at some points at least, the Bible was mistaken, if we're going to hold on to our view that God is good. I think there is a, an element of wisdom in what Lewis says. I do not agree with him, that the Bible contains errors. But the element of wisdom in what he says is sometimes at the very least, you have to say, “Boy, this gives me a headache. And I do not know what to make of it. And so, I'm going to put it on hold if I can't make sense of it, and simply trust that God is good. No matter what kind of headache, this kind of passage gives me.” You're not necessarily saying there are errors in the Bible, but you are saying, boy, I don't know what to make of this. And I know God is good. And I know that we as followers of Jesus aren't commanded to behave that in that manner in relation to our enemies anymore. I know that much. So, I'll just move on from here. And that's the way I think probably a lot of us have managed the passage and what it says. Kind of skating over and sometimes it is the better course of wisdom to not ponder too deeply when you, in a sense, need to focus on God's goodness, His mercy, His love, and His forgiveness. 

But there does come a time too to say, well, let's try our very best with the help of God to understand what is actually going on. And maybe not just take the easy way out in saying, maybe it was just a mistake. But well, let's just ask that question. Did God really say this? Well, let's see what the New Testament has to say. The great and holy man Stephen just before he was martyred and saw heaven open and Jesus at the right hand of God said this, “The Israelites dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers.” The apostle Paul said, “After destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, God gave them their land as an inheritance.” The book of Hebrews says, “By faith Rahab, the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient.” So again, and again, followers of Jesus in the New Testament, take it as a given, that God did this, that God commanded it that He destroyed those seven nations. 

And if we were like some people do, go to the red letters. They almost want to discard the whole rest of the Bible and focus only on what are direct quotes from Jesus. Well, even that won't quite rescue us. What does Jesus think of Deuteronomy? Well, it seems to have been His favorite book of the Old Testament. When Jesus was asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is a well you know the commandments, do not murder do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. He is quoting from the 10 commandments, which are located in Deuteronomy five. When He is asked what is the most important thing, the most important commandment of all, then He quotes Deuteronomy six. The most important is, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy six, verses four and five. Now the mighty mathematicians among you, what comes after five and six? We just read Deuteronomy seven, this morning. So, the one who quoted five and six as the most crucial things in the world might have had a high opinion of seven as well and He goes on, we'll find out that He quotes from eight. When Jesus faced Satan, how did He handle Satan? Satan, three times brought temptations to Him. One temptation was change these stones to bread and look out for yourself and Jesus says man does not live by bread alone. But man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD, a direct quote from Deuteronomy eight, verse three. I'll give you the whole world, says Satan if you fall down and worship me. And Jesus says, “Well, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve,” a quote from Deuteronomy six, verse 13. And he says, “Well, if You're really the Son of God, throw Yourself down from the highest point of the temple, and let the angels catch You and show everybody that You're the Son of God,” and Jesus says, “It is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Deuteronomy six, verse 16. So, when Jesus was dealing with the devil himself, what does He do? He quotes from Deuteronomy six, and Deuteronomy eight. And if you were to do more study of the Gospels, you'll find many places where Jesus is quoting from the book of Deuteronomy. Now, if He liked six and eight, it's pretty unlikely that He just scratched seven and said that was an oopsy daisy. The fact of the matter is Jesus is the Lord God Yahweh. He is the one who gave the order, in Deuteronomy chapter seven. 

Well as we weigh the terrible command to wipe out those cities, we have to consider some key facts. They might not make everything okay. They might even make some things kind of harder in our minds, but nonetheless, they are things revealed in God's Word. One is, this isn't the first judgement that you're going to find in the Bible. The flood, the flood, covered the whole world and a total of eight people were spared. In Sodom less than eight people made out of it made it out of Sodom alive when God's judgment fell on that city. When God struck down the firstborn of Egypt, even including the babies, that was a very severe judgment. And we need to face the simple fact that we live on this earth, as long as God gives us, just in the matter how long we live. God gives life, He does have the right to take it. But this is a particularly difficult one because it wasn't just God sending diseases or God sending plagues, or Gods sending floods, or God sending fire from heaven, it was God telling people to do this. That is maybe what makes it a harder thing than simply God sending the judgment directly that He gives this command to people. 

We need to again, just face the fact that what the Bible says. It says God spoke with Moses, face to face as a man speaks with his friend. It says that God sometimes spoke to other prophets in somewhat less direct and more mysterious ways. But when He spoke to Moses, He spoke in a very direct and audible form, which couldn't be misunderstood. And Joshua, Moses’ apprentice, was also often in that tent of meeting where the glory of the Lord came. And Moses and Joshua, were very unlikely to misunderstand the one who had revealed to them all these other great truths, as well. And so, we need to just accept the fact that God did indeed speak directly and clearly to Moses. And we also need to face the fact that killing all those people would have been absolutely wrong if they were doing it just because they were greedy for what those people had. Or just because they were nasty and enjoyed slaughtering people and doing horrible atrocities. It would have been absolutely wicked, had they done it out of those motivations. But it is always right to obey God's command, and in this case, it was a direct command from God. So, it was right, that they should obey it. 

Here's another fact to keep in mind, why do some of us find this passage so troubling? Because we have been shaped in a certain manner. We have been shaped by the God who has revealed Himself as a God of faithfulness, and mercy, and love. We've been shaped by the message, you shall love your enemies, by the way, that's in the book of Deuteronomy, too and in the mouth of Jesus. The reason we find this kind of passage, hard to handle, is exactly because we've been shaped by the God who gave it. God set apart for Himself a people in a world that did not value human life. In a world that was absolutely unforgiving. In a world where the thing, the only thing you ever did with enemies was wipe them out. And He had to set that people apart, absolutely, so that they would be a different people. And it is only because through that people and through the Judeo-Christian message, that we even have the message that human life matters, that forgiveness is important, and that we are to love our enemies. 

By the way, before we get on our high horse, about the killing of babies. There were a lot less babies in those towns than are killed in any given year in Planned Parenthood clinics. So, you know, before we get too snooty, and decide we've got, that was horrible what they did back there 3400 years ago, we should really pay at least some attention to what goes on right now. But and it is because God accomplished these things in working with the people that we even have the sensitivities to object. This was just a standard way of just greed and killing that people dealt with their enemies. 

Another key fact, of course, is that this was unique. This was not a universal command, this was not God saying, “This is how you shall always treat everybody you don't like. He did not say that. He also, He limits it to this particular moment in history and this particular people. The people of Israel are to take this particular land from these particular nations. And they aren't to go any further than that. Those are the boundaries that God sets for them. 

Another fact, keep in mind, God waited 500 years to bring this judgment on Canaan. His dear friend, Abraham, be it for living from the year maybe 2000, in that era, he lived 175 years, but the date you generally give for Abraham would be about 2000 and then he lived from there. But from time of Abraham to the time of the Exodus and into the conquest would be roughly 500 years. Now what happened to Israel during that time? God had promised Abraham that land in the meantime, God said in Genesis 15, verse 16, you're not going to get it yet, because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. He says, they're not so bad yet that they deserve, or at least they're not bad enough yet that I'm going to determine to wipe them out totally. But in 500 years, it's going to hit that point. He says, “For 400 years, your people are going to be slaves in another land.” So, God lets His own people suffer for 400 years without a land because He's being so patient with the Canaanites. We wonder, how could He do that? An equally good question is, why did He wait another 500 years, when His own people and His dear friend Abraham were left wandering without a land and then enslaved, just because He did not want to bring too premature and too harsh judgment, on the Canaanites. 

The archaeologists as well as the Bible can tell you that the Canaanites were unusually vile in their practices in sexuality. They had temple prostitutes and all sorts of perversions and terrible things in the worship of their gods, their god Molech and other gods. They would burn babies and little children and young people in the fire, they would throw them alive onto the roasting hot arms of their idols and burn them. This was how the Canaanites were treating their own families and their own children. And as I said, before, God didn't allow the Israelites, He said you can't invade Moab, you can't take land from this nation you can't take land from those nations are off limits. They're not yours. You don't get to invade and invade and spread just the way you want to. So those are all very key facts in the setting that we do have to keep in mind. 

And back to that top one for a minute. It was unique and not a universal command. Sometimes passages like this had been terribly misused. Sometimes, settlers in America thought it was their mandate to wipe out and destroy Native American tribes because God was giving them the land, and they had the right to exterminate anybody who was in their way. 

I've heard people even say, “Well, if they had carried out that command back then you wouldn't have all this problem with Israelis and the Palestinians today. They should have wiped them out back then.” Well, that's, that's a terrible mistake. Because the people who are called Palestinians are not descendants of the Canaanites. Okay, that's kind of an important point to keep in mind. They're the descendants of Ishmael. So that the notion that there'd be no problems, if they just exterminated the right people back then. That's just not true, because the Arabs, the Arab peoples today are descendants of the Canaanites and God had said to Ishmael that He was going to make of his descendants. He said to Abraham, that He was going to make Ishmael’s descendants great nations.

So, we have to be really, really very careful about observing the limits of this passage to wipe out the Canaanites. Oh, and one more thing that's really, really important. If you acted like a Canaanite even though you were an Israelite, you got what they got. It's not that you had a racial right, to be a total rotter, and to worship other gods; but it was racism against the Canaanites, that's not so. If an Israelites city served other gods, it was commanded in Deuteronomy to totally destroy that city, just the way you would have destroyed one of the Canaanite cities. If you act like them, you meet their fate. You shall purge the evil from your midst is a refrain that comes up over and over again, in terms of God's command for how Israel ought to treat their own idolaters and wicked people. And it says, in Deuteronomy, eight, if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. So, God warned them, if you act like the people whom I've just taken out, you will face the same result. 

Now, why all this, and here we can get into a little bit more of a hint of why God would command such things. It's maybe not a complete or a satisfactory explanation, but it's sure some things to keep in mind. One is that God had a plan to bring His revelation and salvation into a world that was totally lost and totally dark, where nobody really knew Him. He called Abraham out of an idol worshipping family, and that was just one little group. And the knowledge of God, and the love of God and obedience to God were nearly lost to the whole world. And so, He decided to deal with one people and make a start from there. And God's revelation and salvation had its only foothold in the world, in this chosen people of Israel. Israel was fragile, paganism was everywhere, and it was strong. As I mentioned before, the main conflict was not racial. It was a religious conflict between God lovers, and God haters. 

And God, even before any of the taking of the land, Israel had to separate from the gods of other nations before they could lead other nations to God. And that's why God said you cannot make a covenant with them. Because in making a covenant among nations in those days, you recognized the legitimacy of the other nations’ gods, that they were real and that they were valid and you recognize The right of the two nations to intermarry and to worship each other's gods. You could not make a covenant like that, if there was one true God, and if God had allowed them simply to make a covenant like that, and let things take their course, the knowledge of God would have been lost to the world. And God's plan to bring salvation to all nations would have fallen because He had this plan to do it through Israel. He started early by keeping Israel as a separate people by just not giving them any land. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their clan, they just wandered, they didn't have a true land of their own. They didn't have a group of people to identify with. Lot, got a land of his own, didn't work out so well. Lot settled in Sodom. And Lot's daughters were corrupted by Sodom. His sons- in-law were wiped out in the destruction of Sodom, his wife was destroyed and became a pillar of salt when God destroyed Sodom. That settling didn't work out so well. So, God had His people living as nomads, where they wouldn't get attached to any pagan way of doing things. He called Abraham out of the land of Ur and then He kept him on the move.

And all along, Israel had a weakness for other gods even before God gave them their own. And look, look what happened. They were kind of attracted to some of the gods of Egypt. God judged those gods with the plagues and brought them out of Egypt. And He brought them to Mount Sinai and revealed Himself in the 10 commandments and said, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” And in less than two months, they were worshiping a golden calf. They were not exactly stalwarts, who were always strong in faith, and devoted to God. They had a terrible weakness for other gods, and if they mingled with the nations who worshipped other gods, they soon would be worshipping them too. 

So, God says, it's not because of your righteousness, or the uprightness of your heart, that you're going into possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you and that He may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. God gave them the land of the Canaanites, because the Canaanites were ripe for judgment and God decided to bring His judgment upon them. It was because of their wickedness, that they lost the land. It was not because Israel was so wonderful that God was giving it to them. In fact, part of the command to wipe out the Canaanites is precisely because Israel was so weak and so vulnerable to sin and wickedness. If they intermingled, Israel would be corrupted. And of course, history bears that out exactly. 

We follow what the Bible says, God brought down the walls of Jericho. Joshua and the Israelites completely destroyed everything in Jericho. And that was that for that city, and they handled some other towns in a similar fashion. But even in the destruction of Jericho, you had a man named Achan, who decided to swipe for himself a bit of gold and a fancy garment and some really nice stuff that he wanted, and they were not allowed to take any booty or any, any good stuff from the people they captured. They were to just destroy it all not to enrich themselves from it. Well, Achan did and he was found out. And so, he, and his family and everything that he owned, was treated just like the inhabitants of Jericho. He was wiped out. Meanwhile, Rahab, a prostitute from Jericho wanted to follow the true God, and she was spared. So, if you decided to join up with the true God of Israel, you could be spared. But if you're going to act like God's commands didn't matter, you could be wiped out the way that Achan was. 

And if you follow the history of Joshua, and what followed – Joshua and his generation, they took a lot of the cities of the land. And they destroyed the Canaanites in those cities. But as things progressed, and the Israelites didn't complete the job, and they settle down among the Canaanites. And during the period of the Judges, they're worshipping the gods of the Canaanites a lot of the time. And so, God sends judgment on them. And they're in a world of hurt, and then they cry out to the Lord and rescue them. And then in a 40-year cycle, they just do it again. And they do it again, then they do it again. So, you have this terrible pattern of them falling into the terrible practices of those false gods around them. 

That you get to the time of Samuel the prophet, there's a revival. And the Bible says when Samuel before he was a baby, it says the word of the Lord was rare in those days. And then when Samuel came preaching the word of the Lord, there was a great return to God among many people. But then King Saul, the first king of Israel, was told, “You've got to wipe out the Amalekites.” They're  terrible enemies of God. And so, he wipes out most of them. And then he keeps some of the good stuff. And he spares his fellow king. And that kings name is Agag. And Samuel comes up to him and says, what's all this bleating of sheep that I hear and all these animals around here? And Saul says, well, I decided to save. He makes his excuse; I was going to save some of them to make a sacrifice to the Lord. And Samuel says, well, to obey is better than sacrifice. And, by the way, Jesus later on quotes from that very passage in the New Testament as well.

At any rate, you have King Saul not killing King Agag and the kingship was taken away from him for that reason. And you know you say oh boy, that would have been mean. Yeah, it would have been. You read about somebody, somebody else must have got missed in that whole deal, because later on, you hear, you read about somebody named Haman, the Agagite. Ever heard of Haman, the guy who nearly wiped out the entire people of Israel. So sometimes, you know, when these things were going on, we claim we know better, but they it was often, either you will die or we will. That we should know that again. I mentioned that we're very snooty about babies when our country's killing millions of them. 

Let's talk about cities for a moment. Anybody ever studied the history of World War Two? How did it go for the cities of Germany and the cities of Japan in that horrible, horrible war? You know, we call ourselves the good guys. And we were on the side of right, but I don't know if that was the only way to do it. But the fact is, that entire cities were firebombed, a couple of cities were hit with nuclear weapons. Those things were done in the name of preserving some kind of civilization against the aggression of Hitler and Tojo. It's amazing what people will do when it seems like evil is going to take over and destroy everything. So, we should weigh those kinds of things, you know, as we consider even passages like this.

Now King Solomon, you get to him. And we get a quote from Deuteronomy seven. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage. This is a direct quote, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely, they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clung to these women in love, and his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God. The great temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem is often remembered, you know, Solomon built this fantastic temple for the Lord. What's not remembered so well, is that he also built some temples for the gods of his wives, right there in Jerusalem. And that Solomon, the great son of David led Israel into the worship of these other gods, which eventually again, turned into child sacrifice, and temple prostitution into all kinds of horrid practices. His behavior led to the split of the kingdom in which what the 10 tribes began to worship the golden calves, and then the Baals and then all the gods of the Canaanites. 

And there is Ahab and Jezebel, it got about as bad as it could get, but it just kept happening. And Judah wasn't a whole lot better. So, what happens? The 10 tribes are absolutely removed. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, and they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings. Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of His sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. So, acting like Canaanites led to being punished, like Canaanites. 

Then the judgment fell on Judah. One of the horrible Kings was Manasseh. Even though he did repent late in life and was himself saved. But Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord had destroyed before the people of Israel. Now if you get worse than the Canaanites, things are going to get bad. And then it finally says, you know, in 587, the Lord destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem by sending Nebuchadnezzar and the armies of the Babylonians. Because of the anger of the Lord it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah, that He casted them out from His presence. They kept mocking the messengers of God, despising His words and scoffing at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against these people until there was no remedy. 

They didn't deal with the cancer, there's different ways to deal with cancer. It's a horrible disease. But if you're told that, let's say a radical surgery, will get rid of it all, you might not want to undertake such a radical surgery. And you might want to undertake lesser measures, or no measures at all. But sometimes that radical measure is the thing that will do it and the less lesser measures might go on for years and years and cause more pain and affliction, and that's what happened with Israel. They were commanded not to mingle with those Canaanites. It took more than 1000 years for God to turn them into monotheists. They went through this and that and the other thing. And finally, when the terrible judgment came, they learned the largest part of that lesson. 

When Jerusalem fell, when the temple was burned, lamentations, in the dust of the streets lie the young and the old.... You've killed them in the day of Your anger, slaughtering without pity. Babies killed, women killed, men killed, terrible judgment and the whole book of Lamentations has written about that. By the way, that's the book where we get our song “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. 

People have to understand, you got to understand that it's in the midst of these kinds of judgments that people believe in the faithfulness of God, and in the goodness of God, and supremely in the holiness of God. Because in all of this, God dealt with His people, Israel, they went into exile, what happened to them? In exile away from their land, with most of their people dead, and only a small remnant here and there, they finally gave up on the idols. Strange as that may seem, it seemed maybe that their God had been defeated, and the idols had won. But it was right then, under those terrible judgments that they understood at last, that there is one God, and we cannot act like Canaanites, and be blessed like Israelites. And it was in exile after about 1000 years after all of this, that Israel finally became pretty consistently believers in one God, who followed the teachings and the commandments of the Lord. 

So those terrible judgments and then ultimately, there is coming a final judgment when God brings His own into a great heritage. And when there is a complete separation, Jesus speaks of God sending His angels, and they will sort out one group from another, and one group will enter into glory and bliss, and the others into eternal judgment and destruction and be wiped out. In Revelation it says, the one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and He will be My son. So, like Joshua, and Caleb, you're like the one who conquers, and God is your God, and you have that heritage of eternal life. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. So, The God who spoke in Deuteronomy seven also spoke in Revelation, that there will be a great separation, and that there will be nothing wicked, that enters into the eternal city. 

Like it or not, that's what it says, in part of us should like it. Because God does it for a reason. He does it to keep out the cancer. He does it to keep out what would otherwise destroy or ruin heaven itself. He cannot let evil and sin into His heaven because for one thing, He is too pure to look on evil, and for another, His people will be destroyed by it if He lets it in. So, we need to understand God's absolute fierce final determination to wipe out anything that continues in opposition to Him. And anything that poisons the well-being of the people and of the world that He loves. God is absolutely holy. And He is absolutely determined to do that. 

And that is why, from a biblical point of view, the cross solves a very difficult problem. How can such a holy and righteous God declare just anybody who has any sin at all. And that God, who had sent such terrible judgments, took the worst of the judgments upon Himself in the person of His Son. And that is the only way that such a holy God could spare sinners and then turn them into righteous people. And He did that, first of all, by paying the terrible penalty Himself on the cross. And then by sending into us, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. One reason Israel was so vulnerable to sin, was that they did not have that tremendous indwelling power that would be unleashed through the New Covenant, and through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so today, we're not called to wipe out everybody around us just because we're so wimpy and so weak that we're going to be corrupted in the next 10 minutes, unless we obliterate them. The Bible says that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. And so, we can be in the world and not of it. 

And yet, we have to take to heart the message here in Deuteronomy seven how it applies to us today. It does not apply to us by saying, strap on your sword, haul off your gun, wipe out everybody that you think is bad. And that's not our judgment call to make. God gave a direct revelation to Moses. He hasn't given one to you or me, on wiping out our enemies, in fact, He has even quite the opposite judgment. He says this is the day of grace. This is the age of the New Covenant. This is the age where you and in special way love your enemies and you still need to fight evil. You still need to overcome it but not with swords loud crashing or roll of stirring drums. With deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes. 

So, you don't be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. How do you do that? Well, that very passage tells you how. It says, you don't try to take vengeance on your enemies. It says bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. The apostle Paul says elsewhere, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. So, we still need a warfare mentality. But it is not a warfare mentality of destruction with weapons, or of obliterating and attacking all who oppose us. But instead of overcoming them with good, and with the divine weapons of righteousness, and peace and joy, in the Holy Spirit. That's how we were to live in this world and overcome and bring God's message to it and win many people to Him.

Just a word about the new holy nation, and how things are different from one covenant to the next. The holy nation of the old covenant was Israel. It was one people out of all the peoples of the world. It was one land in a particular geographic location. The holy nation of the new covenant is the Church, which has many peoples living in many lands all over the world. And God's program is not to locate one land and purge it of all the wicked who live in it, but rather to place His people in all the lands and have the church exists as a holy community among them. The Church does not govern any particular nation. The church is not called upon to punish unchurched evildoers. We're not called to run the government, bear the power of the sword, and punish those who are not obeying the laws of God who don't claim to be followers of Jesus at all. The church is to teach God's ways – the way of salvation, and the way of following Jesus and to rebuke sin. And when the church has to deal with sinners within it, the manner that it deals with them is by excommunicating, but not executing blatant sinners who claimed to be Christians but refuse to repent. So, there's a there's a shift between Israel and how it conducted itself as a people and how the church is to conduct itself. 

So, there is still nonetheless a call to remove the evil from among you. The apostle Paul talks about that second Corinthians five, there is sexual immorality among you, let him who has done this be removed from among you. Purge the evil person from among you. So that and that's done by kicking him out of the church, not by killing him. And then later on, when the person repents, the apostle says, well, this punishment by the majority is enough. So, you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, so that he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So, I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. So, there's a call to church discipline and church discipline is to be used only in the most severe and grievous cases of obvious and public sin. Church discipline is not meant for church leaders to get really pleased with their authority, and to pull a rank and when you disagree with me, you're out of here, because you're supposed to submit to authority. And it's been abused in that manner, in at many times throughout history, just as some of the commands of the Bible get abused. It's not meant to be able to just pull rank and leaders are always right, so they can boot out anybody who disagrees with – this is a case of incest in the church. 

And also, it's not, authority is not used to settle every little spat between two different believers in the church. Sometimes the church has to learn to bear with one another and do those things but not weigh in on one side of the other and give the boot and say you're excluded from the kingdom of God, and of Christ. But having said all that, there is a role and it, it has something in common with those Deuteronomy commands regarding the Canaanites within the church. The church is in serious trouble if it thinks that it can survive, allowing obvious, grievous, unrepentant sin to continue within it. People who continue in that manner do need to be removed and then if they repent, to be restored. That command not to intermarry with the Canaanites. There's a New Testament version of that don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Don't make covenants with unbelievers that are going to bind your conduct and lock you in step with them. And above all, the marriage covenant – don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? What fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God.

The bloodshed phase is long behind. The importance of separation of being a holy people of a Holy God; that remains. And it's as important as ever, not to be unequally yoked. So, to summarize, what’s no compromise with Canaan mean for us today? It means that we're still involved in warfare just as they were then. But it's a different kind of warfare that overcomes evil with good, using spiritual weapons and not physical weapons. Church discipline rather than execution removes unrepentant sinners. And it's kind of hard to restore somebody who's been executed. When somebody has been excommunicated, on the other hand, that's a great opportunity for grace and for receiving somebody back in and restoring them. Holy separation is an important ongoing principle. It's one that the church needs to pay some attention to these days. Avoids compromise with the world, avoids yoking together with unbelievers and pretending all religions are just fine. There's there are great differences among religious teachings and the way of Jesus is very different. If you want to follow the way, let's say of Hinduism, less than a century ago, they're still burning widows, and still do in some of the outlying villages. So, there are certain kinds of religion that do terrible things. And in our own society, we need to be aware of the temptation to compromise. 

And finally, and most importantly, reverent awe. This I think, is especially important in our own time to consider. Because God has gotten a little too nice, a little too tame, and a little too wimpy, and a little too friendly with everything that is evil, in our own time. And we can hardly figure out why Jesus had to die. Why, why all that fuss? When God would be too nice to punish anybody anyway. And so, we have lost the Holy One of Israel. We have lost the  One whose throne is built on righteousness.  We've lost the One whose eyes are too pure to look on sin. And as we read the passages we don't like very much, they're not much fun. But we might begin to rediscover the real God, not the one we invented. The One who isn't whoever we want Him to be or imagined Him to be. But the I am, who I am the one. Who says the Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, pardoning sin, but who will not leave the guilty on punished. So, in reverent awe we worship that Holy One, who's going to completely destroy all evil. He's going to destroy it all, and will settle His people, those who live by faith and trust in Him, who are washed by the blood of Jesus Christ, who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, He will bring them into that promised land, and only them. 

Dear Lord, we, we pray that You will minister to us by Your Holy Spirit and help us when we consider hard passages like this, that really jolt us and even offend us. We pray that we will trust Your goodness and know that Your love is real. And know that You are all that You've revealed Yourself to be in our Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time, Lord, take to heart these facts about Your holiness, the reality of Your judgement, of the need to be a peculiar people that people set apart to the Lord. A people, Lord, who overcome evil by doing good, who seek Your face. Who will not compromise or make covenants with the ways of the world but seek to follow the Lamb wherever He leads. We pray, Lord, that Your spirit of holiness, will more and more work that holiness in us not a holiness that's arrogant, or aggressive or cruel, but a holiness that is pure and separate, and that looks to You. Lord, we leave all matters of vengeance and punishment in Your hands as You Lord Jesus have taught us and we pray even now that You will destroy many of Your enemies by changing them into Your friends, as You've been doing for so long, and as You have done with us. And so, we pray again for our enemies. We pray for those even now who are persecutors in our world, that You will have mercy on many of them and draw them to salvation in You. We pray, Lord, that where there are those who would try to destroy Your church or try to corrupt it, You will bring them down either by humbling them before Your throne and making them into Christians or by breaking their strength and by bringing Your judgment upon them. We pray Lord that You will show Yourself mighty and righteous and holy and good and loving and pure in our own time and in our own lives. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.