The Kindness of a Holy War Text: Deuteronomy 7:1-6
Introduction: The Scandal of a Holy God
We come this morning to a passage that is a great stumbling block for our sentimental, effeminate, and thoroughly compromised generation. The modern mind, which strains at the gnat of a harsh word in Deuteronomy while swallowing the camel of abortion on demand, reads a text like this and immediately recoils. They call our God a moral monster. They accuse the Scriptures of promoting genocide. And many Christians, sadly, get flustered and embarrassed, and try to change the subject or explain it all away with a series of apologetic gymnastics.
But we must do no such thing. We are not ashamed of the judgments of God. This passage is not a problem to be solved, but rather a glorious revelation of the holiness of God, the gravity of sin, and the fierce, protective love that God has for His people. This is not ethnic cleansing. This is spiritual sanitation. This is not about race; it is about religion. The Canaanites were not being judged for their ethnicity, but for their abominations. This was a culture that had ripened in its iniquity for over four hundred years, a promise God made to Abraham (Gen. 15:16). Their cup was full. They were a culture saturated with child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and every form of sexual perversion. They were a spiritual cancer in the heart of the land God had promised to His people.
And so God, the sovereign landlord of the entire earth, was moving to evict these wicked tenants. And He appointed Israel to be His bailiff. This was a one time, unrepeatable event in redemptive history. This was not a license for all future holy wars. This was a specific command, for a specific people, at a specific time, for a specific purpose: to cleanse the incubator of the promised Messiah. To be kind to the cancer would have been to be cruel to the patient. God's severity toward the Canaanites was in fact a profound kindness to Israel, and through them, to the entire world that would be blessed by the seed of Abraham.
What we have here is a lesson in absolute antithesis. There can be no peace treaty between the City of God and the City of Man. There can be no compromise between the worship of Yahweh and the worship of demons. We must choose this day whom we will serve, and this text forces that choice upon us with unflinching clarity.
The Text
When Yahweh your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and He clears away 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 more numerous and stronger than you, and when Yahweh your God gives them over before you and you strike them down, then you shall devote them to destruction. You shall cut no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, and they will serve other gods; then the anger of Yahweh will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you. But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars and shatter their sacred pillars and cut their Asherim in pieces and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for His own treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
(Deuteronomy 7:1-6 LSB)
God's War, God's Victory (v. 1-2)
The first thing to notice is who the primary actor is. This is God's initiative from start to finish.
"When Yahweh your God brings you into the land... and He clears away many nations before you... seven nations more numerous and stronger than you, and when Yahweh your God gives them over before you and you strike them down, then you shall devote them to destruction." (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)
Notice the repetition: "Yahweh your God brings you," "He clears away," "Yahweh your God gives them over." Israel is the instrument, but God is the agent. This is crucial. This is not Israel's land grab. This is God's reclamation project. And to make this point unmistakably clear, He points out that these seven nations are "more numerous and stronger than you." This whole operation is designed to be a miracle. Israel's victory is not going to be because of their military genius or their superior numbers. It will be a clear, undeniable act of God, so that no one can boast. This is a faith-based war. They are to go in, trusting that God has already gone before them and secured the victory.
The central command is to "devote them to destruction." The Hebrew word is herem. This is a technical term. It does not simply mean to kill. It means to consecrate something to God for destruction, to remove it from common use and place it under a divine ban. It was a form of corporate capital punishment, executed by God upon a nation that had reached the terminal stage of its depravity. This was not something Israel could decide to do on their own. It was a direct command from the Judge of all the earth, who most certainly has the right to do right.
And because this is a matter of divine judgment, there can be no compromise. "You shall cut no covenant with them and show no favor to them." A covenant in the ancient world was a religious bond that acknowledged the legitimacy of the other party's gods. To make a treaty with the Canaanites would be to make a treaty with their demons. To show favor would be to treat their abominations as a light thing. God demands total separation. There is to be no fellowship between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial.
The Poison of Compromise (v. 3-4)
God then identifies the primary avenue through which this spiritual poison would infect His people: the family.
"Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them... For they will turn your sons away from following Me, and they will serve other gods; then the anger of Yahweh will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you." (Deuteronomy 7:3-4 LSB)
Let us be clear. This is not a prohibition against interracial marriage. This is a prohibition against inter-religious marriage. The Bible is not concerned with melanin content; it is concerned with covenantal faithfulness. Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth the Moabitess were both grafted into the line of the Messiah because they forsook their gods and clung to Yahweh. The issue is always worship.
God gives the reason plainly: "For they will turn your sons away from following Me." This is not speculation; it is a divine certainty. God knows the weakness of our hearts. He knows that you cannot be unequally yoked with an unbeliever in the most intimate of human relationships without it resulting in spiritual disaster. One of you will convert the other, and God says it is far more likely that the pagan spouse will pull the Israelite away from true worship. The home is the seminary of the covenant. To bring an idolater into the heart of the home is to plant a spiritual bomb at the very foundation of the nation.
And notice the consequence. If Israel becomes like the Canaanites through intermarriage, they will face the same judgment as the Canaanites. "He will quickly destroy you." God is no respecter of persons. The same sin will receive the same righteous anger. If Israel wants to act like Canaan, God will treat them like Canaan. Covenant privilege does not mean you can sin with impunity. It means you are held to a higher standard.
Liturgical Cleansing (v. 5)
The warfare described here is not just military, but fundamentally liturgical. The real enemy is the false worship system.
"But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars and shatter their sacred pillars and cut their Asherim in pieces and burn their graven images with fire." (Deuteronomy 7:5 LSB)
This is a command to de-paganize the land. The very infrastructure of their demonic worship must be dismantled and destroyed. The altars where they sacrificed their children, the sacred pillars representing their male gods, the Asherah poles representing their female fertility goddesses, the graven images of their idols, all of it must be utterly demolished. This is a picture of what it means to take dominion. It means you don't just move in and set up your own stuff next to the pagan stuff. You tear their stuff down. You cleanse the public square of all idolatrous filth.
This is a direct assault on pluralism. God does not want a seat at the table of the world's religions. He is not one option among many. He demands exclusive worship. Therefore, the symbols of false worship must not be tolerated in His land. This is a principle that applies directly to us. We are not to make peace with the idols of our age, whether they are the idols of sexual autonomy in the public schools or the idols of materialism in our own homes. We are called to tear them down.
The Foundation of Peculiarity (v. 6)
Finally, God gives the ultimate reason for all these radical commands. It is grounded in Israel's identity, an identity given to them by grace alone.
"For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for His own treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." (Deuteronomy 7:6 LSB)
This is the foundation. "For." Because you are this, you must do this. Their identity precedes their duty. They are a "holy people," which means they are a set-apart people. Their entire existence is defined by their separation from the nations unto God. This holiness was not something they achieved; it was something God declared them to be. "Yahweh your God has chosen you." This is the doctrine of unconditional election, stated as plainly as can be. They were not chosen because they were better, stronger, or more righteous than the other nations. They were chosen because God, in His sovereign good pleasure, set His love upon them.
And what did He choose them for? To be "a people for His own treasured possession." The Hebrew word is segullah. It refers to a special, private treasure, something a king would keep in his personal treasury. This is a term of profound affection and value. This is why God is so jealous for them. This is why He commands such a ferocious separation from the Canaanites. He is protecting His treasure. The harshness of the herem is born out of the tenderness of God's love for His segullah. He is cleansing a home for His beloved, and He will not tolerate anything that would defile or corrupt her.
The Gospel of Herem
So what do we do with this today? We do not pick up swords and march on the modern-day Canaanites in Washington D.C. The form of the command has changed in the new covenant, but the principle of herem remains.
First, we recognize that we, the Church, are now the holy people, God's treasured possession (1 Peter 2:9). We have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Our identity is in Him, and we are called to be holy, set apart from the world.
Second, we recognize that the battle has moved inward. The command to "devote to destruction" is now applied to the sin that remains in our own hearts. Paul tells us to "put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5). We are to make no covenant with our pet sins. We are to show no favor to our pride. We are to tear down the altars of self-worship in our hearts and burn the graven images of our lusts with the fire of the Holy Spirit. We must conduct a ruthless, internal herem against our own remaining corruption.
And finally, we see the ultimate herem at the cross. On that cross, Jesus Christ was made a curse for us. He was devoted to destruction in our place. The full, righteous anger of God against all our Canaanite sin was poured out upon Him. He was handed over to the ban so that we, His treasured possession, could be spared. God's holy war against sin culminated in the death of His own Son.
Therefore, we do not apologize for this text. We preach it. We see in it the holiness of God that will not abide sin. We see in it the love of God that protects His people. And we see in it a foreshadowing of the cross of Christ, where God's perfect justice and His treasured love met, and where our salvation was won.