Go Take the Land!!

9/21/1995

Last night when we were together we read out of Deuteronomy 7 and I thought that we could do that again. Just I know it’s really given me a really helpful picture in all of this as I’m going after these enemies, these things that God is not happy with.

Before I read this I’m going to read Deuteronomy 20. The first couple of verses in there. It really is true that these are enemies that we are up against, and we’ve got to arm ourselves, be prepared for action; I think Peter talks about that. Prepare your minds for action. We have got to be ready. This is going to take some work, it’s going to take some energy, it’s gonna take some effort, but God is with us, who can be against us? He is with us, and He is not against us. He is with us, and He is very, very excited and desirous of seeing us walk these things out. He really does want to help us go after these things in a real way.

Chapter 20: “When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours, do not be afraid of them, because the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt will be with you. When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. He shall say: “Hear, O Israel, today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid. Do not be terrified or give way to panic before them. For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.”

It’s just real clear. He’s with us, He’s not against us. He’s very much with us. And the specific things that can come up in our face – we’d be growing fainthearted, becoming fearful, panicking, ya know, what’s this going to be like – but let’s just take it one day at a time. God will give us the grace. His grace is sufficient to supply all that we will need.

Deuteronomy 7: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations – the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. And the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people and his treasured possession.”

And you just can’t help but think that there has got to be a vengeance. This is going to require a very sober mind and intent that this pattern of thinking will not rule my life any more, it will not. “God, I need you. This is because of your grace, it’s not out of my own strength that I can do this, but I cannot make any treaties with this thing, I can’t coddle it.” It can’t be like Amanda’s dragon where you’re pettin’ this cute little thing or trying to refine it and make it somehow acceptable before God. There has got to be an attitude of breaking it and smashing it and burning it and cutting it down and destroying this thing. That it’s got to go. With an attitude of faith in your heart that you know that it has not pleased Jesus in your life, it hinders you from being fruitful and effective, it hinders you from being holy in His sight and it must go, having that attitude of faith.

I know that we can’t…that God’s not calling us to be like…I don’t want to emphasize like that “Rambo” thing, where you’re, ya know, just, “I’m gonna go out!” Because that thing can wither pretty quickly. I mean I don’t know that God’s asking us to maintain this feverish pitch throughout trying to conquer our enemies. But I know that there does have to be something in our heart that has a clarity, that has a real hatred for the things that God hates. Basically, “I’m fed up with this thing and it just cannot any longer be something that continues in my life. It cannot, it just cannot. I will not have anything to do with this thing. I renounce it!” as we’ve heard before. “I renounce this thing and the robbery that it’s caused of my life before Jesus and the things that He wants for His People.” As Bryan said before, “This is about His People becoming holy and His People being the Bride that Jesus deserves.”

And I did think, it kinda struck me in verse 6 where it said, “For you are a people HOLY to the Lord your God...” Ya know, that word “HOLY” in there. And just before that was “go after these things, break them down, make no treaty with them, don’t intermarry with them, don’t touch them, don’t flirt with them, don’t look at them from a distance and coddle them in any way in your heart.” After all, we are a people called to be holy to the Lord. We’re holy, we’re set apart, He’s redeemed us and brought us out of bondage and slavery and delivered us from the hand of death. And we’re redeemed and cleaned and washed people. We’ve been set apart by His blood. He deserves that we would go after these things.

Verse 7: “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations to those who love him and keep his commands. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws that I give you today. If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land - your grain, new wine and oil - the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the people you now fear. Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. Do not be terrified by them, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you.”

That particular verse about the “little by little” had meant something to me because I thought, ya know, it really is a walk that Jesus is desiring with Him. Through all of this it’s because He wants to know us, He wants us to be His friend and fellowship with Him, and learn how to worship Him and interact with Him, and just how to treat Him as a person, draw close to Him, know His thoughts, walk in His ways. And I thought, ya know, really this whole thing is a walk with Him, I mean, this is a process. Ya know, how the destination is the journey itself and walking along the way.

And it’s little by little that God’s going to make these advancements in my life. Now I’m not at all saying that as a cop out, of “somewhere down the road things are going to change.” No. I can see the little by little. If you ask me I can tell you the little by little that’s happening in my life, and I know it is. I’m seeing it before my eyes. Little by little God is giving me territory that once did not belong to me; it was the enemy’s. Little by little. I can tell you tangible, specific areas of my life where God is giving me territory. I mean, He is. And it is again, as I said before, that it’s a conscientious choice, ya know, it’s a thought that we make, it’s day by day staying faithful, obeying his commands and decrees as God says over and over and over again in these sections. Walking day by day in His ways, loving His ways, pursuing Him on these things, treating Him as a person, loving Him as a person, drawing near to Him and He’ll draw near to me. Believing His commandments, believing His word, trusting Him, walking in the light with my brothers and sisters. As I’m walking with Him day by day it really is a journey that He’s out to be drawing us up into. It’s not gonna be this, I mean it’s not this…ya know big shootout kind of thing that’s going to happen where everything is just blown up in a day. But it’s little by little God drives these enemies out before us…as I’m walking with Him, as I’m caring about the things He cares about and I have these specific things in my mind. I know the specific areas that He’s trying to get at. They’re clearly fixed there. I know that God wants to deal with them. I can talk about them in a very specific way. The times with God are clear, the times with other people are clear, I know where it is that I’m going with these things and I can tell you about the ground that I’ve already taken. And I have a great expectation that the whole thing is going to be mine, the whole land.

This whole analogy has been really helpful for me, because just the picture of how we really as individuals and as a body – we have – we’ll just talk about it on an individual basis, that you have a certain territory that you own. You’re sitting on a certain plot of land spiritually. You own a certain territory. There are things in your life that you understand, that you have clarity on. God’s been very gracious, you’ve seen things, and you are sitting on a territory of land. Well, there’s times – the picture that had come to me last week – was that there’s times when the enemy throws things at me. He’ll throw a dart over my wall and try to pin me on something, some accusation or temptation. And I can put my shield up and maybe thwart that thing off. Sometimes it’s kind of a skirmish, but I can fight it off. But I haven’t taken any land. I’ve succeeded maybe in holding my ground a little bit, but I haven’t taken any land in that particular area.

Now the difference is when you decide you are going to wake up the next morning, walk outside of your safe haven of the walls that surround you, and you’re going to choose to go and do some warfare against the enemy. You are going to make a choice to say, “I am sick of this. I am sick of having to deal with these imaginations and junk and guilt and doubt about this particular area of my life. I’m tired of it. And I’m going to go out and fight some, I’m going to go out and fight, I’m going to go take some land. This is not my inheritance as a child of God to be a slave to impatience. I’m just not meant to be that way. I respond that way so many times, I hate it, I want to get rid of it. I don’t want to be an impatient person. I’ve thwarted off the arrows that come my way.” But that is not really what God intends for me to live in, is to be batting off arrows of impatience. He wants me to take the land and make that a slave to me.

That that thing would be not only annihilated, but those particular situations that once caused me impatience would be turned around and used in a splendid way to throw it back in satan’s face and glorify God. That my weaknesses would actually become my strengths. Situations that once caused me to sin through the sin of impatience, now those situations become something that gets turned around and used in a glorious way for me to draw close to Jesus, to trust in Him, to be patient, to look in someone’s eyes and care about them rather than just trying to get onto the next thing. Now it’s something that’s actually been turned into an opportunity where I can do God’s work. So I don’t know if you can picture the analogy I’m talking about of not just staying in your safe haven of where you are, but saying, “I’m really not meant to live that way anymore. God doesn’t want me to live that way. I’m supposed to be on top of this thing, not buried by it or thwarted by it every so often.”

So just this picture has been very valuable to me of saying that, “I’m going to go out and make some advances in these particular areas.” And as was talked about last week, about the thing about we are not meant to struggle our whole lives with the same issues. We are not meant to struggle forever. This kind of, “This thing comes up. I wrestle with it, I go through it, and maybe I come out okay, a little bit bruised, but people helped me through it” or whatever. The nature of our struggles are meant to change. We talked about this last night and it’s not to say that the temptations won’t be there, but the nature of your battle with particular issues should change dramatically as you are being changed in these areas. Because the impatient person will no longer be who I am. That’s not who I am anymore. Now I’m somebody who’s…I’m on top of the mountain fighting those enemies instead of buried under them each time. So, do you understand what I’m saying about that? That there may be wrestlings with those areas, but the nature of the battle changes dramatically.

Like, think of a specific thing inside. I don’t know. I’m trying to think of an area where there would be…well, I’ll just use the example of food because everybody can relate to that, and I can really relate to it because I’m thinking about it a lot. But there’s a thing with food, ok, we’ll say that, that there’s a war that goes on inside of you, like somebody that – there’s food and you know you shouldn’t eat it, but there this battle that’s going on inside.

Ya know, there’s just this thing, back and forth “I really want it,” and you’re just kinda going back and forth. And there’s this lust of your flesh that really wants it and you know you shouldn’t and you’re just miserable. It wipes you out. You know, you’re just back and forth. Half the time you end up failing or most the time you end up failing. Well, it’s not meant to be that kind of struggle the rest of my life. It is not meant to be. As time goes on, those temptations may come to lust after food, but it’s meant to be that I would be…and the example I gave last night was at one point I felt like I was standing in quicksand, flailing my arms trying to hold a sword up and really having no hope because I just kept sinking the more I tried to fight…but God wants to step us out of that and put us on solid ground, put our feet on solid ground where we have a little bit better footing, we can rage the war a little bit better. And then he wants to take us up the mountain a little bit, so that we have a posture of strength, we’re standing in a position of strength over these things. And I’m able to see it more clearly when it comes.

All of that really is just a different way of saying levels of maturity. Ya know how that is, like the number one thing is you didn’t even see the sin, somebody had to tell you about it. Then there is a stage you go through where you’re right in the middle of it, and you’re still committing it, and you grow and eventually get to a place where you see it before it comes, and you’re able to see the signs. And you know the thing is there, but it’s on the outside of you instead of being this inward, consuming, driving, lustful thing that’s happening inside that just totally wipes you out. It’s meant to be something that it might be a temptation that comes at you and the struggle is there, but the nature of the battle changes over time so that you’d be a productive, fruitful person set free from those things. And really, what I’ve been coming to find is that I have been a slave to things, I’ve been in slavery, I’ve been in bondage to certain ways of thinking, patterns of thinking, things that I do, lusts of my flesh. I’ve been a slave to those things.