No Room for Neutrality: The Statutes of Possession Text: Numbers 33:50-56
Introduction: The Myth of a Benign Pluralism
We live in an age that worships at the altar of tolerance. Our modern sensibilities are conditioned to believe that the highest virtue is a kind of soft, non-judgmental acceptance of everything, provided it harms no one, or at least no one that our culture deems important. The idea of a holy God issuing commands that involve dispossession, destruction, and exclusive claims to land and worship strikes the modern ear as barbaric, intolerant, and frankly, embarrassing. The secularist scoffs at it, and many an evangelical pastor shuffles his feet and tries to change the subject.
But the Word of God is not embarrassed. It does not stutter. It speaks with absolute clarity about the nature of reality, the nature of sin, and the nature of holiness. Our passage today in Numbers 33 is one of those texts that draws a sharp, bright line in the sand. It is a text that demolishes the flimsy modern idol of neutral ground. It teaches us that there is no such thing as a religiously neutral public square, a religiously neutral education, or a religiously neutral nation. Every square foot of this planet either belongs to King Jesus or it is in rebellion against Him. Every nation either worships the true and living God, or it worships idols. There is no third way.
The commands given to Israel on the plains of Moab are not some archaic, tribalistic oddity. They are a stark illustration of a permanent, unchangeable spiritual principle: God's kingdom and the kingdom of idols cannot coexist peacefully. One must dispossess the other. Light does not negotiate with darkness; it drives it out. Holiness does not compromise with corruption; it cleanses it. This is not about ethnicity; it is about worship. The conquest of Canaan was not a racial crusade; it was a divine act of judgment against a culture that had filled its cup of iniquity to the brim. And it was a foreshadowing of the greater conquest to come, the conquest of the entire globe through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So as we come to this text, we must resist the temptation to apologize for it. We must instead seek to understand the righteous principles it reveals. God is laying down the terms of victory, the statutes of possessing the land. And in doing so, He is teaching us how His people must live in any generation if they are to take possession of the inheritance He has promised them.
The Text
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan opposite Jericho, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their carved stones and destroy all their molten images and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and inhabit it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. And you shall inherit the land by lot according to your families; to the larger you shall give a larger inheritance, and to the smaller you shall give a smaller inheritance. Wherever the lot falls to anyone, that shall be his. You shall inherit according to the tribes of your fathers. But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it will be that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land which you inhabit. And it will be as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.'"
(Numbers 33:50-56 LSB)
The Uncompromising Commission (vv. 50-53)
The command from God is direct and absolute. There is no room for ambiguity.
"Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their carved stones and destroy all their molten images and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and inhabit it, for I have given the land to you to possess it.'" (Numbers 33:51-53)
First, notice the foundation of the command: "I have given the land to you to possess it." This is not a war of imperial ambition. This is not Israel deciding they want some new real estate. This is an act of obedience based on a divine grant. God, the creator and owner of all things, is reassigning a piece of His property. The basis for Israel's action is not their own strength or merit, but God's sovereign gift. This is crucial. All that we have, all that we are, is by grace. Our inheritance is a gift, not a wage.
The primary command is to "dispossess all the inhabitants of the land." This is not, as our squeamish age likes to imagine, a command for genocide. The word for dispossess, yarash, means to drive out, to take possession from. God's primary intention was to evict the squatters. The Canaanites were being judged for their profound moral and spiritual corruption. God had told Abraham centuries earlier that the conquest would wait, because "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (Gen. 15:16). Their cup was now full. Their culture was saturated with child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and every form of sexual perversion. This was a divine eviction notice served on a culture that had become a spiritual cancer on the face of the earth.
But driving out the people was not enough. The spiritual infrastructure of their rebellion had to be dismantled completely. "Destroy all their carved stones...destroy all their molten images...demolish all their high places." God does not simply want the people gone; He wants their entire system of worship obliterated. Why? Because idolatry is never neutral. An idol is not just a quaint piece of folk art. It is a declaration of war against the true God. It is a rival claim to authority. To leave the idols standing would be to leave the enemy's flag flying over the territory. It would be to say that Yahweh is just one god among many, perhaps the strongest, but not the only one. This is the very essence of syncretism, and it is a poison that God will not tolerate.
We must see the application. The Great Commission is our Canaan conquest. Jesus has been given all authority, and He has given us the world as our inheritance (Matt. 28:18; Ps. 2:8). As the gospel advances, it must dispossess rival worldviews. It must tear down the idols of secular humanism, of materialism, of sexual autonomy. We are not called to a physical war with swords, but to a spiritual war with the Word of God, which is "mighty to the pulling down of strong holds" (2 Cor. 10:4). We cannot make peace with the high places of our culture, the abortion clinics, the temples of godless education, the monuments to sexual confusion. We are called to demolish them, not with dynamite, but with the truth of the gospel, preached without compromise.
The Covenantal Allotment (v. 54)
After the command to conquer, God lays out the plan for settlement.
"And you shall inherit the land by lot according to your families; to the larger you shall give a larger inheritance, and to the smaller you shall give a smaller inheritance. Wherever the lot falls to anyone, that shall be his. You shall inherit according to the tribes of your fathers." (Numbers 33:54)
The land is to be divided by lot. This is significant. The casting of the lot was a way of seeking God's direct will (Prov. 16:33). This means that the specific inheritance of each family was not to be determined by political maneuvering or military might, but by divine appointment. God not only gives the land generally, but He assigns the specific plots individually. This underscores His meticulous sovereignty over the lives of His people. He is not a distant, deistic landlord; He is the Father who assigns each child his portion.
The division is also to be proportional: "to the larger you shall give a larger inheritance." This is a principle of equity and justice. God's provision is tailored to the needs of His people. This is not a communistic leveling, but a just distribution that recognizes the varying sizes and needs of the tribes and families. It establishes a foundation for a stable society built on the principle of private property under God's ultimate ownership.
This points us to our own inheritance in Christ. In the new covenant, every believer has an inheritance, a specific place and calling within the body of Christ. God distributes spiritual gifts as He wills (1 Cor. 12:11), and He assigns each of us our sphere of influence, our "lot." Our task is not to covet the lot of another, but to faithfully steward the portion God has given to us, whether large or small in the eyes of the world.
The Consequences of Compromise (vv. 55-56)
Here we find one of the most sobering warnings in all of Scripture. God outlines with chilling clarity what will happen if Israel fails to carry out His commands completely.
"But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it will be that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land which you inhabit. And it will be as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.'" (Numbers 33:55-56)
The language is graphic and visceral. If you leave the Canaanites, they will become "pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides." This is not a picture of pleasant multicultural harmony. It is a picture of constant, painful, debilitating irritation. A thorn in your side is a perpetual source of agony that hinders your movement and saps your strength. A prick in your eye blinds you, distorting your vision and making you unable to see clearly.
This is precisely what happens when the church compromises with the world. The idols we fail to tear down become the thorns that torment us. The worldly philosophies we tolerate become the pricks that blind us. We think we are being compassionate by making peace with sin, but we are actually inviting a cancer into our own body. If you allow the inhabitants of the land, their false gods and their corrupt morality, to remain, they will not be converted by your mere presence. They will corrupt you. They will trouble you. Their idolatry will become your idolatry. Their immorality will become your children's immorality. The subsequent history of Israel in the book of Judges is a tragic, bloody commentary on the truth of this verse.
But the warning gets even more severe. "And it will be as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you." This is the terrifying principle of covenantal consequences. The judgment that God had ordained for the Canaanites, eviction from the land, would fall upon Israel if they became like the Canaanites. If you adopt the sins of the people you were supposed to judge, you will inherit their judgment. God is no respecter of persons. He does not grade on a curve. The covenant has blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deut. 28). If Israel chose to live like Canaan, they would be vomited out of the land just as Canaan was (Lev. 18:28). And this is exactly what happened, centuries later, in the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles.
Conclusion: No Truce with the World
This passage confronts us with a hard truth: there can be no truce between Christ and chaos. There can be no lasting peace between the worship of God and the worship of idols. The modern church is shot through with the spirit of compromise. We have left the high places standing. We have made treaties with the inhabitants of the land. We have convinced ourselves that we can be faithful to God while tolerating abortion, celebrating sexual rebellion, and sending our children to be discipled by the state.
And what has been the result? The world has become pricks in our eyes and thorns in our sides. The church is blinded, confused, and tormented. We have lost our vision and our vitality because we refused to obey the command to be separate, to be holy, to tear down the idols.
The warning still stands. If we, the church, continue to imitate the world, we will receive the world's judgment. The judgment God plans for a corrupt and rebellious culture will fall on a corrupt and rebellious church. God will do to us what He planned to do to them.
But the promise also still stands. The inheritance is ours in Christ. The whole earth has been given to Him, and we are co-heirs with Him. The command is not to retreat into a holy huddle, but to advance. Our commission is to go and disciple the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything Christ has commanded. This is a program of total conquest. It is a command to dispossess the lies of the devil with the truth of the gospel. It is a command to demolish every high place, every proud ideology that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
This is not a task for the faint of heart. It is a task for a church that is willing to be hated by the world, a church that refuses to compromise, a church that takes God at His Word. We must cleanse our own lives, our own homes, and our own churches of every idol. We must refuse to make peace with the sins of our age. And as we do, we will find that the Lord of Hosts goes before us, and the land He has promised will be ours.