Driving out Sin

Read Numbers 33.

When God decimated the Egyptians in Exodus and in 33:51-53 He gave the command to drive out the inhabitants of Canaan.  The underlying motive must be remembered.  God was executing judgment on the sin of His enemies.  It was not Israel against them, but them against God.  This was spiritual warfare.  33:4b-"On their gods also the LORD executed judgments."

33:52b-"...destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places."

The spiritual purification of the Canaan was crucial to Israel's future as a nation.  God warned them about this at the end of the chapter.  As Creator and Owner of all things, He will not allow the people He created to ignore Him, to be lured by the unbelieving world around them, or to devote their lives to man-made things.

Exodus 20:3-"You shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God..."

Again, in Exodus 34:12-14-"Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst.  You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name in Jealous, is a jealous God)".

Tolerating sin in ourselves, a community, or a nation always leads to destruction of every kind.  Sin becomes "as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you..." (v.55).  It also leads to God's judgmental intervention.  "And I will do to you as I thought to do to them." (v.56).  

"You shall be holy, for I am holy." (1 Peter 1:16)