(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
Deuteronomy 12:1–4, “These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God.”
The first task that Israel was called upon to perform was to remove any remnants of worshipping strange gods. When Abraham was first given the promise of the Land he was told that his family would have to wait until the iniquity of the Amorites was complete before they could take possession of the Land (Gen 15:16, “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”) This meant that the iniquity of the Amorites was complete at that stage. They had reached that stage of spiritual and emotional debasement because they worshipped these gods. If Israel were going to worship these gods then they would reach the same stage, eventually, as the Amorites had reached just before the Lord brought Israel to conquer them. This would not accomplish the Lord’s purpose of using Abraham’s descendants to be a source of blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen 12:1–3, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”) These people had replace the worship of the true God of heaven with a worship of His creation. It is impossible to manipulate the true God of heaven because He has established an ordered world with Himself at the apex of this order. However, when people worship creation rather than the Creator, they worship a reduced god, who they can manipulate. The Canaanites were worshipping these kinds of gods and they regularly tried to manipulate their gods. These gods were fertility gods and the people who worshipped them were debased by the sexual immortality that follows from this kind of worship. When a person follows the Lord’s practices that person follows moral practices and can be joined to one spouse. However, if a person tries to join themselves to many different people then that person damages their own emotions so that he can no longer form a satisfying relationship with one partner. After that every relationship becomes a selfish, unsatisfiable desire for personal fulfilment. At that stage the person is no longer able to form a relationship with the Lord God and he can no longer appreciate the Lord’s goodness that he was created to enjoy. This is the ultimate stage of debasement. Israel had to make sure that there was no chance of temptation to start this long road to moral decay.
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