A Pure Life

No. 28 of Returning Home (Renewed)

Before Joshua led the people of Israel to conquer Canaan, Jehovah gave them specific commands. He began by saying, “When you go to war against your enemies…” and He told them what to do. They were not to be afraid but remember God was fighting for them and would give them the victory. In the last verses of Deuteronomy 20, God drew a division between warring with the inhabitants of outside nations and warring with the people of Canaan. Israel was permitted to make peace with outside nations who surrendered to them and to let them live, but the nations within Canaan were not given the same mercy. Jehovah told Israel,

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, ¹⁷ but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, ¹⁸ 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. – Deuteronomy 20:16-18ESV

God expressly stated to them why the Canaanites were to be utterly destroyed: they practiced filthy acts to false gods, and they would teach the Israelites to practice this destructive behavior if they were allowed to live.

Israel did not destroy the nations living in Canaan. Instead, their children embraced the abominable practices of those evil peoples and destroyed themselves. From Joshua onward, God kept record of Israel’s path and how He reached out to them, through His prophets, to warn them not to fall into that destructive, impure life.  Ezra quotes God’s warning.

For we have forsaken your commandments, ¹¹ which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. ¹² Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.’ – Ezra 9:10b-12ESV

Israel had been weakened from the inside by intermingling their lives with these impure nations. They had paid the price for the filth and uncleanness they’d accepted into their lives, but had they learned from their mistakes?

¹³ And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this, ¹⁴ shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations? Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us, so that there should be no remnant, nor any to escape? ¹⁵ O Lord, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this.” – Ezra 9:13-15ESV

Ezra makes a bare and direct statement about Israel’s existence: they do not deserve to live. God has every reason to consume them with the fire of their own destruction. Yet, those who remain of the Israelite nation are there because of God’s mercy.

Life is a gift. When I sin, my life is forfeited. Sister, we stand before God in our guilt when we dirty our souls by going against His good covenant. No one can stand before Holy God in a state of impurity. Death is our only wage; and, yet, He offers us hope. He offers cleansing from impurity. So, why do we, who have put on the pure, sinless Christ, go back to impure living? Why do we welcome into our hearts the influences of the people around us? Why do we open our homes to those impure influences that will teach us and our children to accept and be entertained by what is abomination in God’s eyes? We are not seeking peace when we participate in destructive practices, when we fill our eyes and our children’s eyes with the practices of the unclean. That filthy television show, that adulterous movie is not entertainment. It is not harmless. We are weakening our children’s hearts, preparing them to be taken into captivity. As Ezra asked long ago, “Shall we break His commandments again?”