Break! Smash! Cut! Burn!

These are adverbs. They are action words. They are words that God spoke to the children of Israel. He had just brought them out of Egypt. He was taking them to possess the land of the Hittites, Perizzites, Girashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites. These seven nations were larger and stronger than the Israelites. But God chose to give these lands to the Israelites His chosen one. However, there was a condition. These people did not know God, in fact they had other gods. They had their ways which were not pleasing to God. And so God objected to the children of Israel marrying these indigenous people. He was so against them going into any covenant whatsoever, that He wanted the Israelites to destroy them and all they owned according to Deuteronomy 7:2. They were to show no mercy. They were not to be complacent in anyway. They were to break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.

And why were they to do this? The word of God says of the Israelites: you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

That was why? They were a holy people! God wanted them to stay that way.

We have to pay attention to what God wanted them to do. He wanted them to reject anything that was not pleasing to Him. No excuses. None will do. We are to smash, break, cut and burn what is not pleasing to God. Many times we make excuses for those things because they are easy, or we feel they are harmless; or we might see some benefit in them. We say to ourselves, ‘it does not harm. It is affecting no one.’ Yes it does hurt. It hurts God’s heart. The harm to you might be spiritual first, and later physical. And so you might not pay attention to the harm. But God sees the harm before we see it. He sees what maintaining the altars, the sacred stones, the Asherah poles and the idols will do. And they might not be explicit altars, sacred stones, Asherah poles and idols. Yet they might be things that represent them. Even that is bad and cannot be allowed. So I encourage you to be careful to heed God’s word, and do away with anything that will take you away from God’s perfect plan and love for you. Do not be nice to such things. In fact you have the permission to be intolerant. This intolerance is not to be vented towards other people with different faiths, beliefs, cultures etc. This intolerance must be vented against anything within you in your personal life that will separate you from the love of God. Yes, this intolerance must be vented against anything you see in your home, family, relationship that does not please God. Yes, any sinful lifestyle that we might have must be broken, smashed, cut and burnt. I encourage you to ask God to give you two graces for this. First, the grace of open eyes so that you will identify the things to be broken, smashed, cut and burnt; and second, the grace to have the conviction and passion to do the breaking, smashing, cutting and burning. Jesus’ coming is not about maintaining land purity; His coming requires the purity of the heart. That is why we are told individually to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Linda Faith
Linda faith is the Editor in Chief of Jewels Magazine. She has authored eight books. She is a prolific writer and powerful speaker, inspiring many women to be all God has called them to be. She is the founder of Joy Women’s conference which reaches out to empower, inspire and motivate women in their faith walk. She was a software developer before she started writing.