“You are to burn up completely the carved statues of their gods. Don’t be greedy for the silver or gold on them; don’t take it with you, or you will be trapped by it; for it is abhorrent to Adonai your God. Don’t bring something abhorrent into your house, or you will share in the curse that is on it; instead, you are to detest it completely, loathe it utterly; for it is set apart for destruction.”-Deuteronomy 7:25-26
At the very end of Deuteronomy 7, Moses finishes up with yet another stern warning on the two aspects of idolatry we’ve discussed before.
The first aspect is objects of worship.
The Israelites are to completely destroy all of the carved images of the Canaanites’ gods because they might end up worshipping them.
The second aspect is the gold and silver.
Once they begin conquering the Land of Canaan, they are to set aside the gold and silver for destruction.
Why?
Because the desire to worship gold and silver can become just as idolatrous as worshipping the idols themselves.
Verse 26 makes it clear that the Lord utterly abhors anything that could potentially be a rival to Him as the most important thing in our lives…
These things MUST BE DESTROYED so that they will not draw us away from the Lord our God.
Understand that this doesn’t mean God wants us to be poor or…
…that He doesn’t want us to have nice things or…
…that He wants us to live an uncomfortable life.
Obviously those things can’t be true because here we see that God prepared a beautiful land flowing with milk and honey for the Israelites to inherit.
They’re not going to have to till the fields or build their own houses or do any of the mind-numbing exhausting work that a new nation has to do in order to get itself established.
The Lord doesn’t want us to suffer.
He wants us to obey Him so that we will NOT suffer in the future.
I’m done.
NEXT TIME WE BEGIN DEUTERONOMY CHAPTER EIGHT
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