Weekly Devotional 8-26-13 An Open Door to Spiritual Disaster
Deuteronomy 7:1-11 NKJV: “1When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. 6aFor you are a holy people to the Lord your God.”
2 Corinthians 6:14-16a NKJV: “14Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God.”
The Christian walk is not an easy walk. We are called to be uncompromising with the world and often times this is very hard, especially in our personal relationships. It would be easier if we could leave our emotions at the door (so to speak), but that is not of the human makeup. Nonetheless, we are called to a life of separation. It, perhaps, would be easier for us if we did not entangle ourselves with nonbelievers in the first place. This of course doesn’t mean that we are to seclude ourselves completely from them, but we are not to enter into allegiances with them. We are called to be lights in this world of darkness (Matthew 5:14). That would not be possible if we were to hide ourselves from the world. It’s a fine line that we are to walk, but there are safeguards. In His instructions to Israel (Deuteronomy 7:7-11) God commanded that they not enter into any type of covenant, or to make marriages with the peoples of the named nations, nor were they to give their daughters or sons in marriage to those peoples. God gave similar instructions to the church through His spokesman Paul.
Old Testament Israel, the people of Paul’s day and we of today are not to be unequally yoked with nonbelievers. The reason for this is found in the Deuteronomy passage. Such allegiances were bound to turn them away from worshipping and serving God in the way they ought. We of today may not follow after the gods of the peoples of the nations mentioned, but we may be seduced into compromising our faith in order to make happy those to whom we became yoked. This is a spiritual matter and transcends time, locations, race and ethnicities. It is a matter between God’s people and those who are not.
A person of one race or ethnic group may enter into covenant or marriage with a person of another race or ethnic group without spiritual injury if God is the center of both of their lives (There is no command of God against such a union). But, in both of the above passages God specifically commands against a spiritual union. The command is “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2nd Corinthians 6:14). And the reason is clearly found in God’s command to the Israelites of old “For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:4).
Further, God emphatically stated, “3You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Exodus 20:3-6 NKJV ).
Anything or anybody that would cause us to compromise these commands should be shunned because they may open the door to spiritual disaster.
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