Toss Them Out! – The Kingdom Curriculum VI (3)

Toss Them Out!

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image…” Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8

“When My angel goes before you and brings to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.” Exodus 23:23, 24

Just get rid of it all.

The Lord knew that His fickle people would find pagan religion curious, if not alluring. They would be tempted to make compromises with paganism, not just to placate the remnants of pagans living among them, but because some of their practices had a certain allure. Like temple prostitutes, for example. And drunken orgies. Not instead of the worship of Jahweh, mind you, but as a form of worship in addition to what He commanded. After all, what could it hurt, if we were using these forms to worship our God?

But God knew that one thing could lead to another, and those Israelites who would allow the practice of religious prostitution would ultimately offer their children as sacrifices to blood-thirsty deities, cheat on their wives, deceive their neighbors in the marketplace, and much more besides, all in the name of seeking to ensure a comfortable, prosperous, and relevant existence. So God commanded the complete extirpation of every last vestige of pagan religion from the land of promise. Every site was to be destroyed, every object was to be dismantled and burned. Nothing was to be left of pagan religious practices that could affect the way Israel sought to worship God. God told the people of Israel to lay hold on everything the pagans used to connect with or celebrate their false deities, and simply to toss them out.

God does not desire pagan practices in the worship He seeks from His people. Nor does He want us to embrace pagan ways of living. There is much in unbelieving culture that can be useful to our work of seeking the Kingdom of God. Israel, after all, took over cities, homes, farms, and much else besides which the pagans had spent many years building and developing. But those practices, institutions, and artifacts most clearly associated with pagan worship were strictly forbidden.

What would those be in our day, when materialism and secularism are the most widespread religions, and wealth and success are the most adored false deities? Status symbols? Memberships in exclusive clubs? “Harmless” affairs of the heart at the office? Mounting debt in order to acquire things to impress others? Whatever they are, whatever are those tools and conventions that lock us in to materialism and the worship of wealth, they have no place in the believer’s life. We cannot hold on to these pagan symbols and forms and worship the one true God as He requires. Rather than “having” Him as we should, we’ll be making and indulging false gods and phony religions.

The way to begin to love God’s Law is to spend time reading and meditating on it. Order your copy of The Law of God today by going to www.MyParuchia.com, clicking on Publications, then clicking Waxed Tablet.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.