Have you ever puzzled over the Old Testament passages where God directs the Israelites to take a city and kill everybody in it—including women and children and sometimes all animals too?
God knows best, and He has His reasons, but destroying everything in such situations sometimes seems harsh. Can you imagine the repercussions today if an army went into another country and killed all men, women, and children?
Those instructions were for the children of God, a people set apart for Him. I appreciate the Lord’s desire to protect them from worldly influences and the worship of strange gods. He is a jealous God, and He was willing to take drastic measures to protect His children from harm.
These seemingly harsh commands make logical sense, but it is still difficult to imagine today. I’ve concluded that the reason we struggle to understand is that we don’t understand holiness.
Our God is holy, and He called us to be a holy people, to be set apart, sacred, consecrated.
God knew His children could not live among pagan people and not be negatively influenced. They would not be able to remain set apart.
If we don’t understand cleaning the land of contamination, it probably indicates we don’t hold the same standard for what it means to be holy.
A friend’s recent prognosis gave me new insight into why God said to kill all the inhabitants of the land. An 8-year-old is fighting for his life against cancer.
The treatments are harsh. In fact, they are causing complications in treatment and damage in his body. However, getting rid of just the big tumor isn’t enough. They’re trying to destroy every deadly cell to minimize the chance of cancer’s future destruction.
God told Israel to kill all the inhabitants of the land in order to remove anything and everything that might bring about Israel’s future destruction. When Israel didn’t obey, it led to their ruin.
Likewise, the Lord wants us to be violent with things in our lives that will destroy us.
Just as the inhabitants of the land were eliminated before the children of God settled the Promised Land, we need to get rid of the old, sinful nature within ourselves—even if it seems drastic. If we rid of the obvious bad stuff and hold onto little things that don’t seem so bad, it will lead to our destruction.
Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force” (Matt. 11:12). Unless we are violent with the things in our lives that are not godly—just as the Israelites were commanded to be violent with the former inhabitants of the Promised Land—they will undermine us in our efforts to walk in victory with Jesus. In fact, they could lead to our destruction.
“Do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy ourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:14-16).