Scripture: Deuteronomy 7:1-19 (NKJV)
1 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and
has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the
Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the
Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD
your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy
them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall
you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son,
nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from
following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused
against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall deal with them: you
shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down
their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.
6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen
you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the
face of the earth. 7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you
because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least
of all peoples; 8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the
oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty
hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king
of Egypt. 9 Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God
who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him
and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face,
to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him
to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the
judgments which I command you today, to observe them.
12 “Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep
and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the
mercy which He swore to your fathers. 13 And He will love you and bless you and
multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your
land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle
and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers
to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a
male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15 And the LORD will
take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible
diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate
you. 16 And you shall destroy all the peoples whom the LORD your God delivers
over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their
gods, for that will be a snare to you.
17 “If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can
I dispossess them?’—18 you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember
well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the great
trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the
outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So shall the LORD
your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.”
Devotion
In our text for today God commands that when His people go into the Promised
Land they are to destroy all the people and all vestiges of their false
worship. He does this because He knows the people will fall away. As God told
them, they were a stiff-necked people.
In spite of their hardheartedness He brought them into the Promised Land as He
had promised He would. And they did rebel. But God is faithful and He cannot
deny His promises to His people, even His faithless people.
In 1 Corinthians 1 St. Paul writes of this faithfulness to the New Testament
Church. “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to
you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all
utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in
you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be
blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you
were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Indeed, through Word and Sacrament, our faithful God has brought us into His
kingdom and keeps us there.
In faith we pray: Everlasting God, give us the increase of faith, hope, and
love, that we may obtain that which You promise and make us to love that which
You command; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
The Lutheran Herald is a publication of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of
North America. These daily devotions are authored by the bishop, pastors, and
deacons of the diocese. Daily posts are provided by The Reverend Jeffrey A.
Ahonen.
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