– Cleansing the land.
God gave Israel each of the feasts so they would remember:
- Who He is,
- Their special relationship with Him,
- What He had done and will do for them.
Let’s remember God’s instructions about the land He gave to them.
God chose a specific place, a particular piece of land, on which He would put His name. He said that to this place, all the nations would come to worship Him. Then God gave that land, that place, to Israel to be her inheritance. To fulfill that destiny and God’s purpose, the land and the people had to be holy.
Therefore God gave Israel specific instructions that might seem very strange and unfair to us today. But God had a reason and a purpose for commanding Israel to cleanse the land – the former inhabitants had defiled it.
Numbers 33:50-53; 55-56
Now the Lord spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you have crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their engraved stones, destroy all their molded images, and demolish all their high places; you shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land and dwell in it, for I have given you the land to possess…. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell. Moreover it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them.’”
But Israel did not totally destroy the inhabitants, as God warned, and they are still thorns in Israel’s side.
PRAY THAT ISRAEL WILL FINALLY POSSES HER INHERITANCE AND BRING HOLINESS TO THE LAND.
