Be Careful

 DEVOTION

JOSHUA

BE CAREFUL

Josh 23:9-13

9 "The LORD has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. 10 One of you routs a thousand, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as he promised. 11 So be very careful to love the LORD your God. 12 "But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, 13 then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.

NIV

When they held fast and loved the LORD, he would fight their battles, and no one could withstand the Israelites. Here we are told that one of them could rout a thousand because of the LORD. However, Joshua also warned them not to intermarry with any of the foreign nations that were among them, and if they did the LORD would no longer drive out nations before them. Instead, those people become snares and traps. Here is where we come into this narrative. We already have a place in the promised land, which is the kingdom of God where we will live with the Lord our God in the new city of Jerusalem on the new earth. However, at the present time, we also live in this current world, a nation the Lord has driven out of our hearts and minds. But if we intermarry with any of this world, any of its ideologies, and its philosophies, religions, or anything that would be considered its gods, then we are in deep trouble. The ways of the world are traps and snares meant to engulf us, deceiving us into believing or trusting in our own abilities, our own strength, or our own educational achievements, as well as our material achievements, or celebrations are meaningful and that we should amass as much wealth as possible for our retirement or some other scheme to accomplish our successful life ending in retirement. It is all a scam of the world which is run by another nation other than the kingdom of God, to trap us into false thinking and if we accept any of the world’s systems for life, we may end up in those snares and traps that are whips on our backs and thorns in our eyes, until we perish from the promised land, the kingdom of God. Let us live with open eyes seeing those horrible traps and snares and hold fast to the ways of our Lord. We have been redeemed; we belong to our Lord. If we continue to trust in the Lord, and only the Lord, we will not perish but have life everlasting. We cannot either be married to both the Lord and the world, that would be bigamy, and we cannot be married to our Lord and have an affair with the world, that would be adultery. We cannot even hold dual citizenship; we are either citizens of this kingdom of God or this world. Holding fast to the Lord is the only way to life. We must be careful to always love the Lord our God.