Prepared Land and Hearts
Opening Prayer
Lord, Your commandments are designed for our benefit, not our harm. Help me to appreciate this eternal principle.
Read Exodus 23:20–33
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. 24 Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. 25 Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, 26 and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.
27 “I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. 28 I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. 29 But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.
31 “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. 32 Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. 33 Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
“Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods… because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you” (Exod. 23:32,33).
As the people needed to prepare themselves before approaching the mountain, so they needed to prepare themselves before taking the land. God had already prepared the land for them (20), but before he disclosed his plans to bring them into it he told them that they were to obey and not rebel against the angel he would send ahead of them (20–22). Beginning with Moses, the covenant was to be two-sided: with the Israelites and with us. All of us are saved by grace, but all of us are required to maintain a godly walk.
Repeatedly throughout Exodus 17–23 there has been the command to worship God only and not to make idols or bow down to foreign gods. The temptation to put something in God’s place was ever-present and could happen almost imperceptibly. By listening, obeying and not flouting God’s clear commandments the Israelites could refrain from following the practices of all the surrounding cultures.
When the Israelites reached the land, they were to break down the indigenous gods. God, for his part, would drive out the Canaanites, little by little, until the Israelites became a large enough nation to take possession of the land (23,27–30). God’s timing is not always our timing. He sometimes does things little by little. When we become Christians and break down the idols in our lives, we might expect all our weaknesses and vices to be driven out at once, but character transformation is a long process. Little by little, he transforms us into the likeness of Christ as we listen and obey, working out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). The passage ends with a warning of the dangers of the Canaanites’ influence, reminding us again of Paul’s injunction against giving the devil a foothold (Eph. 4:27).
Apply
The perversion of truth and uprightness always ends up on God’s hit list. Consider Psalm 15:1,2.
Closing prayer
Father in Heaven, we are so apt to turn from You. Help me, I pray, to constantly guard against it. May I always worship You alone.
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