Warnings and Prophecy

When God led the children of Israel into the promised land, He enabled them to have victory over their enemies.  At the same time there was a degree of personal responsibility required from each tribe to rise up and possess their inheritance.  This meant dispossessing the inhabitants of the land who were well-established there.

God promised to give tribes and families land by lot according to their relative size.  Then He provided a sobering warning in Numbers 33:55-56:  "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. ⁵⁶ Moreover it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them.'"  I have learned that God never gives warning needlessly.  When He warns it is not to draw attention to what could theoretically occur but what will most certainly happen.  Warnings are always prophetic in a sense, for there is not a boundary God has set man has not willfully transgressed.

Land with defined boarders had all been given to the children of Israel by God's grace, yet labour was required by them to drive out the inhabitants of the land.  If they were slack to do this, God would see to it those remaining people would be like irritants in their eyes and painful thorns in their sides that would harass them.  And then God said an even more confronting thing:  "...I will do to you as I thought to do to them."  What had God determined for the inhabitants of the land when their sin was full?  To drive them out, to destroy them completely.  If God's people would not be His faithful instruments of justice, then their folly would be returned upon their own heads.  They would be the ones driven out and destroyed.

The follower of Jesus is under no such command of conquest of land under the New Covenant.  Our inheritance is in heaven, and we also have rest to enter today by faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him.  Our weapons of warfare are not carnal but mighty in God to pull down strongholds in our own minds and hearts, to bring our physical bodies under submission to God's rule, being transformed from within rather than allowing ourselves to be conformed to a worldly mould.  We are to put to death the sins in our flesh like pride, selfishness, lying and stealing.  Our call is to humble ourselves before God, love God and one another, and be led by the Spirit according to God's word.  Jesus guides us to walk righteously personally in public and private.

If we choose a life of sin, there will be inescapable consequences because God does not show partiality in judgment.  The neglect of the children of Israel to fully drive out their enemies caused problems for them, and the believer's reluctance to put sin to death leads to ongoing problems and pain for us also.  Since God has an abundant life promised and a full reward planned for us, let us be those who labour to enter into His rest by faith marked by obedience in our personal lives.  God's grace is sufficient for us, and in our weakness His strength is made perfect.  It is not our failures we are to glory in but our Saviour Who is glorious and good.  We glorify our LORD when we heed his warnings and do all He has said.