Links for today’s readings:
Read: Deuteronomy 9 Listen: (5:06) Read: 2 Corinthians 3 Listen: (2:25)
Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 9.4-6
4 After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. 5 It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 6 Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.
Reflection: Grace Not Merit
By John Tillman
Moses clears something up for the people before the conquest of Canaan begins and we need to hear it too. “You aren’t better than them,” God says.
God chooses by grace, not merit. The Canaanites deserved to lose the promised land because of their wickedness, but Israel did not deserve to take it because of righteousness or integrity.
God told Abraham the sins in Canaan had not “reached their full measure.” (Genesis 15.16-21) The Canaanites experienced God’s grace and patience, but that patience ran out. By the time Moses and the people arrived, the measuring cup overflowed. Canaanite culture was promiscuous and abusive. Their kings were brutal and unjust. Their gods were false and degrading. God intended to wipe out the way they lived, the way they governed, and the way they worshiped.
Moses also warned, live up to this or lose it.
After generations, God’s people hadn’t wiped out wickedness, they soaked it up. They adopted Canaanite cultural practices, demanded a similar government, and placed idols to false gods in God’s temple. By the time Manasseh took the throne, God testified that Judah was worse than the nations he drove out.
God shows no partiality. God used the Assyrians and Babylonians to drive out Israel and Judah, just as he used Israel to drive out the Canaanites. What do we learn from this?
Living in the shade of God’s grace, we can develop a sense of divine entitlement. “We deserve this power, this comfort, this pleasure.” We don’t. This spiritual entitlement indicates a loss of the fear of the Lord and paves the way for us, like Israel, to conform to things we should confront.
Our culture’s lusts lead to promiscuity and abuse, its greed leads to brutality and injustice, and its idols lead to deception and degradation. Our salvation and identity as God’s children is secure in Jesus, but there will be judgment both in this world and after for what we fail to confront and what we fail to do. (Revelation 2.5, 15-16; 3.3, 16-19; 1 Corinthians 3.10-17; 2 Corinthians 5.9-11)
Let God begin his conquest in our hearts. Holy Spirit, help us wipe from our hearts lusts that lead to promiscuity and abuse, greed that leads to brutality and injustice, and idols that degrade and deceive.
We should be different. The way we live, govern, and worship should reflect the humility of knowing we are unworthy and the conviction of knowing all are invited into God’s grace.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living. — Psalm 116.8
– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle
Read more: Repeating History
Like Israel, we have failures in our past, both individually and as the global Church…At times, we have been more like Anakites than God’s people.
Read more: Glimpsing the Promise
If we don’t trust that “God’s way” will work, we will abuse power, act rashly, and mistake angry words or actions for holy ones.