I champion the Israelites as our (current Christians) people because we are, in so many ways, exactly like them. Put simply, we are mirror images of each other in every way that matters, which is why it’s so brilliant to read through the struggles of the Israelite people and identify with them as I do so. It also makes for great teaching material because we can see exactly what helped them succeed and what caused them to fail. If our God is a God of metaphors, which I say He is, then the Israelites are our big metaphor, our great comparison.
And in Deuteronomy, they have quite a lot to teach us on how to best sin.
Doing What We Don’t Want
For me, it’s a fact of the matter that I sometimes feel too weak to stand up to the sin I perpetuate in my life. When I’m in a cycle of, as Paul says, doing things I don’t want to do, that I know are wrong, I frequently feel incapable of driving out the feelings, temptations, and behaviors I know are incorrect.
But what is truly factual is that I, and we, have the strength to destroy sin at its source in the flesh, just as the Israelites did, thanks to the power of God going before us and fighting the battle.
The Big Metaphor
If you pay close attention as you read the Old Testament, you’ll find an incredibly stark contrast between the Israelites and everyone else, and if you break that contrast down to its simplest pieces, you get two different adjectives to describe them. For the Israelites, we have righteous; for everyone else, we have sinful.
It’s fairly easy to work out: God’s people are righteous, just as we are made righteous when we become His today, and everything that is not with God is against God. Every person and thing that does not belong to God is sin.
It’s simple, then, to carry on this idea of the Israelites driving other peoples out of the Promised Land as driving out sin. (It’s even easier to carry on the idea when you read Deut. 7 because the Bible just tells you, but I had to explain the big comparison between the Israelites and us for teaching’s sake.)
The Strength to Thoroughly Destroy Sin
Jumping back up to the idea from the introduction in this post, the Israelites, then, felt too weak to destroy the sin they faced in the Promised Land. If you’ll remember, they were exiled from the land for 40 years because they were too afraid to fight for it, thinking they would be destroyed by the nations in it.
But, what the Israelites, and we, often forgot in fear, is that they had the strength from God to drive out that which does not belong, that which is not good.
Deuteronomy 7:15b, 17-19 says, “He will not put on you all the terrible diseases of Egypt that you know about, but He will inflict them on all who hate you. (17) If you say to yourself, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I drive them out?’ do not be afraid of them. Be sure to remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt: the great trials that you saw, the signs and wonders, the strong hand and outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you fear.”
Fear of being incapable, fear of the sin we face, even fear of facing God in our failures can hold us back from defeating sin. But God has given us the strength to destroy it, just like He gave the Israelites strength to destroy the nations inhabiting the Promised Land if they would stop being afraid of the people because of what they looked like.
But if we remember the strength of God to defeat our sinful natures and pull us to Him for salvation, if we remember the miracles He worked to draw us away from death in the first place, we’ll remember He easily has the power to inflict destruction on our sin now that we are His.
Why We Fail to Defeat Sin
Sometimes, even though we have the strength of God on our side, we still fail to defeat sin, though, right? Paul most certainly had the Lord with him whenever he was tempted, and still he sinned and did things he didn’t want to do. That’s because, so often, we fail to completely drive out and annihilate sin in the place we live.
Deuteronomy 7:1-2 says, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and He drives out many nations before you—the Hittities, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”
And just like the Israelites, when we fail to completely destroy sin and route any chances it has at coming back to us, it slithers its way back into our lives. That’s why Matthew 5:29-30 urges us to gouge out our eye or cut off our hand if it causes us to sin because that’s the kind of extremism we need to go to in order to completely eliminate sin. (Please don’t actually go cutting your hands off and pulling your eyes out at the behest of this blog post.) It’s a metaphorical expression of extremism: whatever it takes for you, do it to stop yourself from sinning.
Extremist Application Methods
God’s goal with the Israelites was to create a land without even the barest hint of potential temptation for idolatry because He knew that was the only way the Israelites could resist putting the gods of Earth above Himself. That’s why Deuteronomy 7 is almost completely full of God telling them to destroy literally every last bit of the culture, practices, and evidences of the people who once lived there.
For us, it’s much of the same. When you allow yourself to even briefly consider sin, you’ve opened yourself up to temptation that is difficult to resist (Matthew 5:27-28). That’s why you must go to incredible extremes to avoid the hints of sin all around us. If that means you have to give up social media, TV, music, reading, sports, games, whatever, you should do it until you are capable of standing up to the temptation with God-given strength.
You have to destroy the world around you (metaphorically) to keep it from infecting you with sin until you glow brightly enough with the power of God to walk through the darkness without stumbling.