“Judah could not to dislodge the Jebusites; who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the people of Judah.” (Joshua 15:63 NIV)
As we continue to read through the allocation of land in the book of Joshua, we find at least three tribes that were content to live with the enemy among them, despite God’s specific and repeated instructions to defeat them completely. It seems like the Judeans, Ephraimites and Manassites were willing to stop fighting and settle in before the war was entirely won. The challenge? They had to learn to live with the enemy among them. The problem? The enemy was (and still is) terribly persuasive.
Have you ever been to another country for any amount of time? The longer you are there, the more the local customs take hold of you. In Paris, you start wearing black to camouflage your tourist status. In Mexico, the nightlife is inviting, no one goes to bed before midnight. In Istanbul, you start drinking strong tea. In Portugal, the friendly nature of the people takes ahold of your heart. In Israel, you want to tie knots to the corners of your clothing to remember the law. Not to mention the local words that slip their way into your speech wherever you go. We trip over this habit every time we transplant from north to south or back again. Is it pop or coke? We’ll never know. We inadvertently pick up traditions when we travel to different places.
People are highly impressionable. And for some reason, it is far easier to pull folks away from God than toward Him. The leftover inhabitants in the land were going to be an ongoing temptation to the Israelites in culture, marriage, and most importantly, worship. Their pagan practices would seep into the Jewish way of life – a way that was designed to be set apart from other nations – devoted to God alone. The Canaanites had had their opportunity to follow God and they had run the clock out. God knew the evil the previous inhabitants indulged in and thus He instructed His people to eradicate them completely.
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations – the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you – and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for yours sons, for they will give turn your children away from following Me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the people on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession.” (Dueteronomy 7:1-6 NIV)
Yesterday, Fox news reported about a tremendous archeological discovery in an affluent suburb of Jerusalem. They believe the find to be an ancient storage facility, containing the records of King Hezekiah and Menashe. My heart hurt, though, when the article described uncovering many small clay statues in the form of women, horse and rider and animals. I didn’t need to read the reporter’s conclusion to know they were idols intermingled with the king’s daily diaries, evidence of a nation led astray.
God knew the temptation that the inhabitants of Canaan would present. He knew their hearts were far from Him and their ways were wicked and He was duly concerned that their idolatry would infect His people. This is why He instructed the Israelites to fight until the enemy was obsolete, not just overpowered. But the Israelites grow weary of war and they wound up settling for far less than God’s best. The locals remained among them and slowly corrupted the hearts of God’s people. Generations later, the nation of Israel was destroyed as a direct result of their sins against God. The Israelites never reached their full potential because they never carried out God’s instructions entirely.
What about us? What kind of implication does this narrative have upon our own? We read of the Israelites poor follow-through and consider our personal record of obedience. God has so much for His children, yet oftentimes we settle for a partial inheritance because it’s just too much work to pry the rest out of the enemy’s hands. We live with sin still stuck in the cracks of our lives. We fail to forgive completely, settling instead for coexisting and uncomfortable exchanges. We allow ourselves to be influenced by the world. We let sewage flow into ur hearts through screens little and large alike. We bow before false gods thinly veiled: greed, any, lust, comfort, gluttony, self. Any place we have not claimed completely for God is compromise and a potential foothold for our enemy.
We let the enemy keep residence with us when do not give ourselves over to the process of sanctification –
the complete overhaul of the sin’s desecration in our story.
The flesh and blood battle of personal sanctification requires sustained effort. We have to continue to campaign against the enemy in order to claim our territory totally. Be encouraged in your combat: the biggest battle in the war’s been won. Jesus’ work on the cross tipped the scale forever in the direction of Heaven. We are only in final skirmishes before the enemy is evicted eternally. But know that these last skirmishes are highly personal because they involve our land and our loved ones. We don’t want to lose. Don’t give up and and don’t give in to the weariness that clings to your limbs today. Keep fighting fo the Kingdom cause until we possess the land completely!
“Let us not come weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9 NIV)
Lord, forgive us for giving in to our exhaustion. Forgive us for all the ways we compromise and allow the enemy into the edges of our existence. Help us see our tendency to settle. Anger us against it. Strengthen us for the fight as we realize we are battling for land and people we love. Give us the gumption to keep swinging until the whole territory is Kingdom forever. Amen.