“Overthrow, or Else!” – FBC Morning Light (2/29/2024)

Well a good Thursday morning to you, and the last day of February, an extra day this year, February 29th. I do have to give a shout out, we have a couple of people in our church whose birthday is today.

They were born on February 29th, so they haven't had a birthday for four years, so they're certainly due, and wish them a happy birthday on this leap year day. Well today we're reading in the book of Numbers again in chapters 31 to 33, and I want to look at the last few verses in our reading today, verses 55 and 56, but before we get to those verses, let's run up to them by looking at what the Lord tells Moses and gives the instructions to the people of Israel prior to verses 55.

The Command to Drive Out the Canaanites

The Lord said, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when you have crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan, and they are about to do that, all right, this is coming up pretty quickly here, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, you shall drive out, you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their engraved stones, destroy all their molded images, and demolish all of their high places.

You shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land and dwell in it, for I have given you the land to possess. Now, on the one hand, in our modern ears and sensibilities, this sounds horrible, you know, God is telling these people to commit genocide and to just wipe out all the people of this land and to take it over, I mean, this is a horrible, horrible thing.

Sounds really bad, and in our ears it is. I mean, we're living in an era where we have completely forgotten about the savagery that existed on the North American continent through the various Native American tribes, as they were just brutal toward one another, and the white man came, and the story today is the white man just butchered all of the Native Americans in utter cruelty and just took over their land, and they did it just because they wanted to take over their land.

Well, there may be some element of truth to some of that, but what's often overlooked is the complete savagery of those who were overcome, and the comparative civilizing effect of the Europeans that came.

My point is not to get into that too much, but just to emphasize how easy it is to forget the bad and look at the conquest as if that was all bad. Well, the Lord had told Israel, the people of Israel, that they hadn't been given the land yet because the iniquity of the Canaanites was not yet full.

The people who dwelt in that land were...they were a wicked, wicked people. I mean, you think...they thought nothing of things like child sacrifice, taking their children and offering them up to their gods.

They were just brutal in those regards, and there's so many other things. I don't want to get too much into that, but the point of the matter is that God promised this land, and he promised them this land, and the way they were to get this land was to drive out the inhabitants who were exceedingly wicked, and they were going to take over the land.

And they were to eradicate all of the idols, all of the high places in the land, and so forth. And then comes this warning in verse 55. If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell.

Moreover, it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them. If you let them stay, those that you allow to stay are just going to be a pain in your side. You're going to be sorry. There are going to be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your flesh.

And as you know your history of Israel and look forward to the book of Judges and so forth, then you know that's exactly what ended up happening. But here, I think, is the lesson for us. This, I think, is a sober warning to us to be actively engaged in the overthrow of those areas in our lives where we know we struggle with sin, and not to develop a laissez-faire attitude towards sin, but to be on the constant quest to overcome, to be overcomers and overthrowers and mortifiers, as the old Puritans used to say, to mortify our flesh, to put these things to death.

If we don't, if we take a laissez-faire attitude, a live-and-let live attitude towards sin, then we can be sure that it's going to be an irritant in our eyes and a thorn in our side. So let's be careful not to develop that kind of an attitude, but instead, as God commanded the Old Testament Israelites, to be actively engaged in the warfare of eradicating the idols and the false worship, the sin of our hearts.

Mortifying the Flesh Instead of Tolerating Sin

Our Heavenly Father, we pray we would take this warning today, and we would be indeed actively engaged in the eradicating, the mortifying of the flesh. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Thursday, and may the Lord bless you in it.

Good day.