by Pastor Derek Gitsham
These are the statutes and judgments, which
ye shall observe to do in the land, which the
Lord God thy Fathers giveth thee to possess it,
all the days that you live upon the earth.
Deuteronomy 12:1
The words of the Lord to Israel have made it
clearly known that God intends His people to
live in blessing all the days of their lives.
Not sporadically but continually. Of course to
be able to do this there are things that have
to be done. It was the lack of doing these
things that was going to prove costly to Israel
in the days to come, to the point of being
overtaken by foreign nations and dispossessed
of their land.
Their failure to not do what the second verse
said was oh so important. God said you shall
utterly destroy all the places wherein the
nations which you shall possess served their
gods, upon the high mountains, upon the hills,
and under every green tree.
Verse three continues in the same vein. Failure
to destroy and utterly destroy all the world’s
things proved to be very costly. Oftentimes we
are afraid to be radical for fear of what men
shall say of us, but God requires radical behaviour
from His people if they were going to possess all
that God promised them.
In Numbers 33:55 God warned Israel that if they
did not drive out the inhabitants of the land
from before them; then it shall come to pass that
those which you let remain of them shall be pricks
in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall
vex you in the land wherein you dwell. The word
in Hebrew for pricks means “hedged in,” “vexed
means “cramped, and blind distress”; most
uncomfortable words.
Going part way with God and not all the way can
cause more trouble to a believer than what he
knew before he knew the Lord. This is a warning.
No friendship with the world, everything has got
to be destroyed and cast out if we are to know
our true heritage in the Lord.
Pastor Derek Gitsham
Deuteronomy 12:1
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