6/14/26 - THE CANAANITE JUDGEMENT / Deuteronomy 20, Leviticus 18 | The Bible House
6/14/26 - THE CANAANITE JUDGEMENT / Deuteronomy 20, Leviticus 18
14 iýun 2026
Transcription
Why won't men believe in God? Why won't God? Why won't men trust in God who is good? Can't they see that God alone is light and love and mercy ever more? So much confusion in this world of lies and pain. So much seduction everywhere. There is no gain. So many voices calling out to you with promises that won't be kept, and now tears fill your eyes from disappointment, sorrow, and shame. You followed your own path with no one else to blame. And now you're reaping a harvest of pain.
Why won't you believe in God as you should? He came to seek and save the lost, just like you. But continue. His love is burn and you will pay and you will burn, and then tears will fill your eyes. 'Cause your judgment will be real when your sins have cost you soul and you refuse to yield. But at the throne, the throne of God, you will. Why won't men believe in God?
Amen. Why don't we go ahead and ask God's blessing? Let's pray together. God, our father, it's a privilege to be together tonight around your word. We thank you for your goodness. Uh, you are so good, oh God. Uh, we read, taste and see that the Lord is good, and we certainly have proven that. We thank you. We thank you tonight for what you have planned. Bless through your word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
So I would like to to talk tonight, uh, about something we started last week, and, uh, that is spiritual warfare. Now, spiritual warfare began when the devil Lucifer, uh, fell and sinned against God and and enticed many of the angels to follow him. So that that started a battle between God who is light and, uh, this darkness that came in through the rebellion of Lucifer. Unfortunately, uh, because, uh, men will have a tendency really to believe a lie rather than the truth, Adam and Eve, Eve first of course, listened to the tempter and fell. And ever since the Garden of Eden, man has joined the powers of darkness in this battle against God.
And, uh, we see that at the cross, man's rebellion together with Satan against God when men crucified the very son of God, the one that, uh, the devil hates. The devil hates God. He hates his son. He had he had, uh, twisted the truth in such a way that men rejected Christ, crucified him. So this is the the greatest sin that has ever taken place in this world. What a what a crime against God himself. When God comes in love and mercy and grace to save men, uh, to transform their lives, and men hate him. The Lord Jesus said, "For my love, they've given me hatred. They hated me without a cause." So that spiritual warfare goes on today. And what's at stake is the souls of men.
So the powers of darkness, headed by the devil, wants to bring as many men and women, keep them from, uh, God all their lives so that they will be damned. Uh, he does not want those that have been created in the image of God, which is all of mankind, to honor and glorify God. Uh, he wants, uh, men and women to follow him. And of course, that is the pattern of all of our lives. All of us have, uh, entered into darkness and sin, and we've suffering many of the consequences of it until God awakens us, uh, to his love and his salvation through Jesus Christ.
But this warfare that continues to go on, God pictures it in the Old Testament, and he pictures it through the nation Israel. God had taken Abraham from what's called the Chaldees, probably around present-day Iraq, and had called him to come to himself, and God gave him promises. Those promises were passed on to Isaac and then to Jacob and then to Jacob's 12 sons. Well, that family went into Egypt because Joseph, one of the sons, you know, became Pharaoh. And, uh, anyway, they grew and became a great people, a great nation, but they were under, uh, servitude to, you know, slavery to Pharaoh. Well, God came and he delivered them from that slavery by the blood of the Passover lamb and through the Red Sea. And then he was taking them to the land of Israel, the land of Canaan, that they might possess that land. And God called that land, his land, the land of, uh, Emanuel, God's land.
But in the land were, uh, tribes of nations called the Canaanites. And God had told Abraham back in Genesis 15 that God would give these people 400 more years to repent. They were living in the land of Canaan. They were terrible sinners. And God said, "I'm going to be longsuffering with them that they might repent." So for 400 years while, uh, Israel was in Egypt and captivity, God was waiting for this sinful people, the Canaanites, to repent. Of course, they never did. And you can back up even to Genesis 9 and verse 25. And there was a curse put upon Canaan, those nations represented there in the land of Canaan. A curse. Now the curse was because of Ham's sin. Remember Ham looked upon his father Noah's nakedness. But God had already blessed Noah and his sons. So he didn't curse Ham. He cursed his son Canaan. So the Canaanites were a cursed people. But that didn't mean that they were obligated to sin. No.
Uh, we're all under the curse of the law, and we can repent at any time and trust in Christ as Lord and Savior. But you know, uh, people want to blame God when he does things in judgment. But you know, God gives life, and he is under no obligation to extend anyone's life. He's under no under obligation to bless anyone. God is a blesser because God is good. But you should never think that we deserve a blessing. We certainly don't. It's all by the grace of God if we are blessed. So these Canaanites, uh, they were under this, uh, terrible curse because of their sin. And God told Israel because Israel is to represent him. Now, he could have destroyed the Canaanites by some pestilence or natural disaster, but he chose to judge them through Israel because Israel was his representative. So, this is very important to see that God's sword, the the sword in the hand of God, was Israel. Just like today, the governments of the world have a sword. And if if people commit crimes, then that sword is used against them. They have authority. They have power. And so, in the same way, Israel was given authority and power and to stand for God in this unholy world. They were to be a holy people.
And it should be mentioned that they, uh, weren't called to destroy all the nations, but just the Canaanite nations. Now, that's important. The Canaanites were special sinners. Everyone's a sinner, but you know, we can go deeper and deeper and deeper into darkness and sin. And the Canaanites, those nations, certainly had. In fact, I'm going to read it in Deuteronomy 20:es 10-18. God says, "When thou speaking to Israel, when thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, first thing you do, proclaim peace unto it, and it shall be, if it make thee an answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if they will make no peace with thee, but make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it." So the point is is that, uh, the first thing that Israel was to do was to preach peace. If if they when they were going on the way to, uh, Canaan and they came through all these other nations, they were to preach peace to them. But the Canaanites were a different situation.
And he says in verse verse 16 of Deuteronomy 20, "But of the cities of these people, meaning the Canaanites, which the Lord thy God doth give unto thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee." You see, people get all upset when God acts in judgment. My friend, listen. Every time someone has has died and you go to their services, that's because they've sinned and God has called them to account. And we know that because Romans 6:23 says, "The wages of sin is death." So death is God's judgment upon sinful men. Now, of course, if you're saved, death becomes a doorway to glory. Hallelujah. But my point is is that sin, uh, brings judgment, and God's the judge. Sin is against him. So God said that these particular nations, the Canaanite nations, there's no recovery for them. And he and the reason he did this, one reason why they were supposed to destroy them in verse 18 of Deuteronomy 20, that they teach you not to do after their abominations which they have done unto their gods, so should ye sin against the Lord your God. In other words, if you allow these people to continue, you will be infected by their sin.
Oh, how important it is who we spend time with, who we call friends, who we fellowship with. You know, you cannot join hand in hand with the the powers of darkness, with people that are living in sin, and then pretend that you're a child of light, that you're a child of God, that you're on God's side. No, no, no, no, no, no. Uh, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. The Bible says, "What fellowship hath light with darkness?" And so there is a eternal separation between light, who is God, and darkness, which speaks of sin, and all those that have fallen into it.
Now, just to to mention some of the filthy things that the Canaanites were involved in and why, uh, God demanded their judgment and death, they were involved. I'm going to read from, uh, Leviticus 18:6 and it says, "One of the first sins he mentions is incest. None of you shall approach to any that is nearkin to him to uncover their nakedness. I am the Lord." Incest is an evil that goes on all the time in our nation. It doesn't matter if it's a father molesting his daughter, brothers, or uncles, or whoever it is. Incest goes on. This is not something a sin that's just a old-fashioned. No, this is man hasn't changed. The filthiness in man's hand in man's heart has not changed. So the first thing he says is this sexual immorality of incest.
The next thing he mentioned in verse 21 is child sacrifice. "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech." That means they b they they heated up this stone, this altar, and they would place their children. They would place their babies on this fiery stone and let them be burned in sacrifice to this unholy god, this satanic dog god Molech. And and so what about today? I mean, the murder of the unborn, we promote it. We promote it. I mean, not Christians shouldn't promote it. We should stand up against it because it's the murder of the unborn. It doesn't matter if a child is in his mother's womb or if a child's been born, that child has a right to LIFE BECAUSE GOD has given that child life and that child has personhood. And so, if any of us says, "I have been involved in that sin, the murder of the unborn in abortion, all sin is forgivable by God." But we need to recognize that it was a terrible sin and cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness. For those of us that have been involved in that sin, we know that our children are in heaven. And if we receive Christ as Lord and Savior, one day we'll see them. And that's my hope, my absolute confidence that I will meet my two children there in the glory. And I and I say this very ashamedly, but but it it's it's something that's real. And it goes on.
And then the next sin in verse 22 of Leviticus 18, homosexuality. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination." God says it's an abomination. Homosexuality. He created male and female. Read Romans 1. Romans 1, the first sin that he mentions next right after idolatry is the sin of homosexuality. You see, that's an when a nation, uh, takes on and and openly promotes homosexuality, that's because they have turned away from God. And that's just the facts. That's the truth. That's what the Bible says over and over again. God created them male and female. Why did he do that? That mankind might continue, uh, to, uh, reproduce and and that that there would be blessing upon the children that there would be families. This was God's will that the world would be filled with families. So the that this homosexuality is a sin and then amazingly beastiality. Verse 23, "Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith. Neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down there unto. It is confusion." So this was going on. This was going on in the Canaanite nations and and idolatry of course we already mentioned. So all these evils were in Canaan and God says I will judge them. And you know what God says? He's going to judge this world and this nation as well. And if you don't want to be under that judgment, hallelujah, I tell you there's a way of escape. It's through Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord. You call out for mercy in the name of Jesus, you will receive mercy. But we need mercy. We need forgiveness because we're under God's judgment. And rightly so.
And so in verse 24, continuing on in Leviticus 18, he says, "Defile," he's talking to Israel, "Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things. For in all these things the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you." So defiled means dirty. It doesn't matter how clean you might make your body, your soul is defiled. It's dirty in the sight of God by sin. But hallelujah, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses from all sin. You could be so clean in the sight of God that you're fit for heaven the moment that you receive JESUS CHRIST. NO MATTER WHAT YOU'VE DONE, God shows mercy to the greatest of sinners. Hallelujah. And we're all sinners. Don't matter if we're small sinners or or big sinners, we all need a savior. And Jesus Christ is big enough for the biggest sinner and the smallest. Hallelujah.
So going on then in Deuteronomy 7, uh, God has this to say. This is verse 2 and six through six. "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, listen, this is the judgment upon the Canaanites, and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, no, nor show mercy unto them, neither shalt thou make marriages with them. Thy daughter shall not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. They will turn you away from following me that you may serve other gods. And so the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and destroy thee suddenly." So he says, "But the in verse five, listen to this. But thus shall ye deal with them. Ye shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves, burn their graven images with fire." See, God says this is an unholy idolatrous people. They worship anything and everything but the true God. And idolatry is not is not gone away. There are religions that have these emblems and all that they bow down before. Great idol of the United States is money. And in Colossians 3 it reads, uh, covetousness is idolatry. When you love money, when you love things, then that is idolatry. That's putting something before God himself. And which of us cannot understand that money has a hold upon our souls. We need to recognize that it's idolatry and we need to condemn it whenever we see it in our hearts or lives.
And then God goes on to say of Israel, "for thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all the peoples that are on the face of the earth." And I want to tell you today, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you've been chosen. You know when you were chosen, Ephesians tells us before the foundation of the world. Hallelujah. And why has God chosen us? That we might do works that would honor and glorify him, that he might find pleasure in our lives. Oh, get a hold of this. You come to Christ and God will find pleasure in your life. He's might have found no pleasure in our lives so far if we've been living in sin, but he will find pleasure in our lives.
Now, now we're just about finished. Uh, Israel failed. We know that Israel went ahead and and adopted the idolatry of these nations. They refused to destroy them and and they made marriages with them. And I'm going to read in Joshua 2:2, God said this, "And thou shalt make no league with the inhabit inhabitants of this land. Ye shall throw down their altars, but ye have not obeyed my voice." Now listen to this. God says this, "Why have ye done this? Why have ye done this?" What a a question. You know, I have in the back of my Bible questions that God has asked, and this is one of them. Why have you done this? I mean, look at your life. Why have you done this? No. No. It's not someone else that did it. WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS? WHY DID I live the life of sin that I lived? Why did I do it? Oh, my friend, we are guilty before God. And God calls us to account.
Verse three, he goes on with Israel. "Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their God shall be a snare unto you." God says, listen, you have departed from me. You've lost power. You've lost the power to overcome the enemy. And I want to tell you many of you you might be in bondage to some kind of sin whether it's some kind of drug or alcohol or, uh, you know, something that that that's sexual, whatever it might be, that you will lose power to overcome that if you are not right with God. You will not overcome it. That that that sin will continue to be a snare to you. You can get a Bible. You can buy a really nice one. It's not going to make any difference. You go to church won't make any difference. Only Christ bowing to the lordship of Jesus Christ will make a difference.
And listen to this in Jeremiah 2:9. "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee. Oh, I think some of us tonight know a little bit about that. Our own wickedness shall correct thee, and our and thy backsliding shall reprove thee. Know therefore and see. Listen to this. Know therefore and see. It is an evil thing and bitter that thou has forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, sayaeth the Lord of hosts." Oh, you see, God uses our sin in order to correct us, to reprove us. He says it's an evil thing, and then he says, "And it's bitter." How many of us know the bitterness of of the judgment of God because of our sin? Oh, it's intended to humble us. God's judgment is never an end in itself. God's judgment is always to call men to repentance. And with if you're without Christ tonight, oh my friend, in this moment, God is calling you to repentance. You're in the situation perhaps you're in right now and you're experiencing bitterness because the decision sins that you've made against God and God's calling you calling you in this bitterness to come to Christ to find forgiveness and eternal life. Hallelujah. May you do it even in this moment as we close in prayer.
Our blessed God and father, we thank you. We thank you that you are so longsuffering, wishing that none should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Oh God, if there's someone listening tonight, if they've never turned to Christ and they're going through some bitterness because of their own sin, let them know that there's still hope, that this bitterness, this judgment was not to that they would be lost, but that they might turn to thee and find forgiveness and eternal life in the name of Jesus. May it be so in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
