Nancy: Welcome To Immerse: The Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day 100 and 51
when the Lord your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy,
he will clear away many nations ahead of you, the Hittites, Gsites, Amorites,
Canaanites, parasites, HIEs, and Jebus.
These seven nations are greater and more numerous than you.
When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer
them, you must completely destroy them.
Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy.
You must not intermarry with them.
Do not let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters for
they will lead your children away from me to worship other gods.
Then the anger of the Lord will burn against you and
he will quickly destroy you.
This is what you must do.
You must break down their pagan altars and shatter their sacred pillars, cut down
their asherah poles and burn their idols.
For you are a holy people who belong to the Lord your God
of all the people on earth.
The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure.
The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were
more en, numerous than other nations.
For you we're the smallest of all nations.
Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you and he was keeping the
oath he had sworn to your ancestors.
That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your
slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Understand therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God.
He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations.
And lavish is his unveiling love on those who love him and obey his
commands, but he does not hesitate to punish and destroy those who reject him.
Therefore, you must obey all these commands, decrees, and
regulations I am giving you today.
If you listen to these regulations and faithfully obey them, the Lord,
your God will keep his covenant of unfailing love with you as he promised
with an oath to your ancestors.
He will love you and bless you, and he will give you many children.
He will give fertility to your land and your animals.
When you arrive in the land he swore to give your ancestors.
You will have large harvests of grain, new wine and olive oil, and great
herds of cattle, sheep, and goats.
You will be blessed above all the nations of the earth.
None of your men or women will be childless.
And all your livestock will bear young, and the Lord will
protect you from all sickness.
He will not let you suffer from the terrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but
he will inflict them on all your enemies.
You must destroy all the nations, the Lord your God, hands over to you.
Show them no mercy and do not worship their gods, or they will trap you.
Perhaps you will think to yourselves, how can we ever conquer these nations that
are so much more powerful than we are?
But don't be afraid of them.
Just remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the land of Egypt.
Remember the great terrors, the Lord your God sent against them.
You saw it all with your own eyes.
And remember the miraculous signs and wonders and the strong
hand and powerful arm with which he brought you out of Egypt.
The Lord your God will use this same power against all the people you
fear, and then the Lord your God will send terror to drive out the
few survivors still hiding from you.
No, do not be afraid of those nations.
For the Lord, your God is among you and he's a great and awesome God.
The Lord your God will drive those nations out ahead of you little by little.
You will not clear them away all at once.
Otherwise, the wild animals would multiply too quickly for you.
But the Lord your God will hand them over to you.
He will throw them into complete confusion until they are destroyed.
He will put their kings in your power and you will erase their
names from the face of the earth.
No one will be able to stand against you and you will destroy them all.
You must burn their idols in fire and you must not covet the
silver or gold that covers them.
You must not take it or it'll become a trap to you.
For it is detestable to the Lord your God.
Do not bring any detestable objects into your home for then you will
be destroyed just like them.
You must utterly detest such things for they are set apart for destruction.
Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today.
Then you will live and multiply, and you will enter and occupy the land
the Lord swore to give your ancestors.
Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these 40 years,
humbling you and testing you to prove your character and to find out whether
or not you would obey his commands.
Yes.
He humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna.
A food previously unknown to you and your ancestors.
He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone.
Rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
For all these 40 years, your clothes didn't wear out and your
feet didn't blister or swell.
Think about it just as a parent, disciplines a child.
The Lord your God disciplines you for your own good.
So obey the commands of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and fearing
him for the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land of flowing streams and
pools of water with fountains and springs that gush out in the valleys and hills.
It is a land of wheat and barley of grapevines, fig trees and
pomegranates of olive oil and honey.
It is a land where food is plentiful and nothing is lacking.
It is a land where iron is as common as stone and copper is abundant in the
hills When you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the Lord your God
for the good land he has given you.
But that is the time to be careful.
Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey
his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today for when
you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in.
And when your flocks and herds have become very large and your silver and gold have
multiplied along with everything else.
Be careful.
Do not become proud at that time and forget the Lord your God, who rescued
you from slavery in the land of Egypt.
Do not forget that he led you through the great and terrifying wilderness
with its poisonous snakes and scorpions where it was so hot and dry.
He gave you water from the rock he fed you with manna and the wilderness
of food, unknown to your ancestors.
He did this to humble you and test you for your own good.
He did all this so you would never say to yourself, I have achieved this
wealth with my own strength and energy.
Remember the Lord your God, he's the one who gives you power to be successful
in order to fulfill the covenant.
He confirmed to your ancestors with an oath, but I assure you of this.
If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other Gods
worshiping and bowing down to them, you will certainly be destroyed.
Just as the Lord has destroyed other nations in your path, you also will be
destroyed If you refuse to obey the Lord your God, listen O Israel today, you
are about to cross the Jordan River, to take over the land belonging to nations
much greater and more powerful than you.
They live in cities with walls that reach to the sky.
The people are strong and tall.
Descendants of the famous Anite giants, you've heard the saying who can stand
up to the an kites, but recognize today that the Lord your God is the
one who will cross over ahead of you like a devouring fire to destroy them.
He will subdue them so that you will quickly conquer them and drive them
out just as the Lord has promised.
After the Lord, your God has done this for you.
Don't say in your hearts the Lord has given us this land
because we are such good people.
No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he's
pushing them out of your way.
It is not because you are so good or have such integrity that you
are about to occupy their land.
The Lord your God will drive these nations out ahead of you
only because of their wickedness.
And to fulfill the oath he swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
you must recognize that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land
because you are good for you are not.
You are a stubborn people.
Remember and never forget how angry you made the Lord your God out in
the wilderness from the day you left Egypt until now, you have been
constantly rebelling against him.
Even at Mount Sinai, you made the Lord so angry he was ready to destroy you.
This happened when I was on the mountain receiving the tablets of
stone inscribed with the words of the covenant that the Lord had made with you.
I was there for 40 days and 40 nights.
At all that time, I ate no food and drank no water.
The Lord gave me the two tablets on which God had written with his own
finger, all the words he had spoken to you from the heart of the fire.
When you were assembled at the mountain, at the end of the 40 days and nights,
the Lord handed me the two stone tablets inscribed with the words of the covenant.
Then the Lord said to me, get up, go down immediately for the people you brought
out of Egypt have corrupted themselves.
How quickly they have turned away from the way I commanded them to live.
They have melted gold and made an idol for themselves.
The Lord also said to me, I have seen how stubborn and rebellious
these people are, leave me alone.
So I may destroy them and erase their name from under heaven.
Then I will make a mighty nation of your descendants, a nation larger
and more powerful than they are.
So while the mountain was blazing with fire, I turned and came down holding
in my hands the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant.
There below me, I could see that you had sinned against the Lord
your God, you had melted gold and made a calf idle for yourselves.
How quickly you had turned away from the path the Lord had commanded you to follow.
So I took the stone tablets and threw them to the ground,
smashing them before your eyes.
Then as before, I threw myself down before the Lord for 40 days and nights.
I ate no bread and drank no water because of the great sin you had
committed by doing what the Lord hated, provoking him to anger.
I feared that the furious anger of the Lord, which turned him against
you, would drive him to destroy you.
But again, he listened to me.
The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he wanted to destroy him too.
But I prayed for Aaron and the Lord spared him.
I took your sin, the calf you had made, and I melted it down in the
fire and grounded into fine dust.
Then I threw the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.
You also made the Lord angry.
Attra Masa and Kra Eva.
And at Kish Baria, the Lord sent you out with this command.
Go up and take over the land.
I have given you.
But you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and refuse to
put your trust in him or obey him.
Yes, you have been rebelling against the Lord as long as I have known you.
That is why I threw myself down before the Lord for 40 days and nights for
the Lord said he would destroy you.
I prayed to the Lord and said, oh, sovereign Lord, do not destroy them.
They are your own people.
They are your special possession whom you redeemed from Egypt by your
mighty power and your strong hand, please overlook the stubbornness
and the awful sin of these people.
And remember, instead, your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if you
destroy these people, the Egyptians will say The Israelites died because
the Lord wasn't able to bring them to the land he had promised to give them.
Or they might say he destroyed them because he hated them.
He deliberately took them into the wilderness to slaughter them.
But they are your people and your special possession, whom you brought out of Egypt
by your great strength and powerful arm.
This concludes today's immerse reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.