Daily Devotion (July 24, 2024)
Deuteronomy 9:1–4 (NKJV)
1“Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven,
2a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?’
3Therefore understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you.
4“Do not think in your heart, after the LORD your God has cast them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land’; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out from before you.
Do not boast in your righteousness. When you start looking and boasting in your own righteousness then you need to fall on your knees before God and confess your self-centered sin to Him.
God has prepared a “Promise Land” for us! We must cross over the river to the land God has prepared for us. Our salvation has already been prepared for us. There is the enemy working to stop us from claiming God’s promise. The enemy is greater and stronger than any believer. The saying, “Who can stand up against the Anakites”, the giants who oppose God and His chosen. There is no follower of Christ that can boast in his salvation. The victory of crossing the river and entering into the Promise Land is possible only because of God. God goes before us. The victory belongs to God. God has destroyed and suppressed the enemy.
Written in these words is a warning. It is a warning against self-righteousness. We cannot destroy the enemy. In verses 5 and 6 God makes it plain. It is God who destroys the enemy. We must remember it is God who has destroyed the enemy. Without God we would still be captives in Egypt.
So, what do we do with our spiritual freedom? We are to follow God! We are to serve God! We are to remember life is all about God! If we have a problem with this then maybe we need to go back and reexamine our salvation.
Later in Scripture Israel was taken into captivity again. They forgot about God. They started worshiping the created instead of the Creator. Their focus was on the world and self, not God. We are seeing the destruction of a great nation. The sanctuaries of God are now being filled with worship of self and not of God. The cry from the people is not one of repentance and seeking God but of self-centered righteousness. When the church becomes indistinguishable from the world then we see the destruction of the nation.
Instead of standing tall in praise of self we need to be on our knees praying for God to once again fill us with His power. We need to be praying for God to go before us and destroy the enemy standing before us. Maybe we need to be praying for God to destroy the enemy that is living in us.