The Urgency of Dispossession

Deuteronomy 11-12:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut%2011-12&version=NIV

            Deuteronomy 11-12 offers more insight into why the Canaanites have to be completely dispossessed of the land, namely, the Canaanite religion will be a snare and a trap to Israel.

            Notice that Moses warns the people of Israel that Canaan is not like Egypt.  In Egypt, the crops were fed and watered by the rising of Nile; in Canaan, they are nourished by falling rain.  So, the Egyptian religion focused on the gods of the Nile, and the Canaanite religion focused on the god of the storm.  Now, when Israel, who lately had been slaves and historically had been herdsmen, settles in Canaan, they will have to learn how to work and farm this new land.  What would be more natural than to ask, “What do those who already work the land do to ensure good crops?”  The answer was obvious, “They worship Baal.”  I suppose it’s the same way in the modern West.  If we were to ask, “How do people today define and ensure prosperity?” the answer would have to do with the pursuit of the almighty buck, and we are certainly enticed to make that the center of our lives.  Anyhow, the Canaanites must go lest their ‘technology’ for farming entices the Israelites to idolatry.

            Further, the Canaanites have their religion diffused over the entire land.  Moses warns about high places that must be destroyed.  Israel is not to worship willy-nilly, each man as seems best and where seems best to him.  Israel has a clearly defined style of worship and a divinely designated place of worship.  The point—one of the points—is that Israel cannot just safely cordon off the Canaanites; the Canaanites influence is too insidious.  They and their idolatry must be driven out completely.

            So, two reasons are presented for getting rid of the Canaanites rather than co-existing with them:  the enticement of their religion and its insidiousness.

            Now, look, in the New Testament, the Church’s focus has shifted from Old Testament Israel’s.  We are not called to preserve the promise until its fulfillment; we are called to proclaim that the promise has been fulfilled.  So, it will not do for us to hunker down in our own sanitized and safe bunkers; Christians cannot be separatists from the world around us—not if we are going to be effective witnesses to that world.  We are going to have to risk contact—substantial contact—with the world.  On the other hand, the call for purity is still there.  But for us it’s a purity of heart.  The purification we need is a purification of heart, not of land, because each one of us carries Christ with us; we carry a  kernel of the land of promise wherever we go.