Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


10.21.2004  

Compromise

Tonight Rob told me, "my soul just wants to be free from this flesh!"



Amen, brother, amen.



I told him that it's sickening; we become so numb to the pleasures of the world, we don't even know what we're missing. I was reading in Deuteronomy 7 earlier today where God is telling the Israelites that they shall "utterly destroy" the enemies that God defeats for them. Furthermore, He tells them that they not to intermarry with those who are conquered, and that they are to destroy their pagan places of worship. Why is this? Isn't this rather unloving of God?



Hardly. If we stop there, we miss the point. Heed the words of the Lord in Deuteronomy 7.



"You shall make no covenant with them." We must remember a great degree of the Lord's relationship with Israel was His covenant with them. That's why we describe God's relationship with us as Hiscovenant relationship with His chosen people! The covenant He entered with them was one that required holy living and absolute dedication to and trust in the Lord; anything less simply would not do. The covenants with the other nations that are spoken of here would have brought the Israelites into a position where their covenant with the Lord would have been compromised, and the very nature of God's covenant does not allow for compromise. God demands all of our lives!



"You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you." The intermarriage relations that the Israelites could enter into would simply not be acceptable. The compromise here would be horrendous, and the Lord was making it abundantly clear that they were not to allow their own desires to override what the Lord had called them to be: a holy people, set apart for His purpose.



"But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire." The idolatry that those other nations practiced was an abomination to the Lord. In my mind, I want to question the validity of God's command to the Israelites, I want to find some way to justify the shock in my heart at the fact that God would cause the utter destruction of a nation. Yet, I must realize that if I view it from my own perspective, if I assume that I can come to the Lord and demand that He be kind to those who have infinitely offended Him, then I am making presumptions upon my rights as a created being. I am making demands upon the Creator, the One who has every right to do as He pleases. "My God is in the heavens, He does whatever He pleases." Yes, He does! But does the Lord stop there? Does the Lord stop at simply destorying those who make a mockery of His holy nature? Nope.



The Lord goes on to describe His actions toward Israel, saying, "for you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 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. Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them." *Sigh*...how easily we forget the Lord's actions toward us. How easily we forget that the Lord has absolutely no obligation to act in kindness toward us, and that we have absolutely no claim upon His kindness other than the fact that He has promised it. The very reasons the Lord commanded Israel to undertake those actions were that they might know the Lord better, that their hearts might see and taste and know that the Lord is good! If we, in our sinful state, allow any sort of compromise to enter our lives, we're done for. The Lord knows this very well; that was the reason He warned Israel time and time again. To ignore the warnings of the Lord in our lives is to deny the horrible essence of sin and turn away from the gracious work of Christ on the cross. I pray I do not; I pray that I, as the Lord commanded His holy nation so long ago, undertake to root out any compromise with the world, that I might live to know Him more.

posted by Bolo | 11:38 PM
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