The Downward Spiral of Compromise Text: Psalm 106:34-39
Introduction: The Slow Boil of Apostasy
There is a kind of spiritual rot that does not happen all at once. It is not a sudden, catastrophic collapse, but rather a slow, creeping infection. It is the kind of compromise that begins with what seems to be a minor act of disobedience, a small accommodation with the world, a slight blurring of the lines. But small disobediences, left unchecked, never remain small. They are seeds that grow into monstrous trees, and their fruit is always death. This is the lesson of Psalm 106, and it is a lesson our generation of Christians has forgotten to its great peril.
This psalm is a national confession. It is a history lesson, but not the kind you get in a secular textbook. This is covenant history, which means it is a record of God's faithfulness set against the stark backdrop of Israel's persistent, thick-headed rebellion. The psalmist is not recounting these failures to shame his ancestors, but to warn his contemporaries. He is saying, "Look at the pattern. See how this works. See how our fathers sinned, and understand that we are cut from the same cloth."
Our passage today picks up in the middle of this litany of failures. Israel had been given a clear command from God concerning the Canaanites. They were to be God's instrument of judgment against a thoroughly debauched and wicked civilization. The command was not for ethnic cleansing, as the scoffers say, but for judicial cleansing. God was fumigating the land, and He commanded Israel to be the exterminators. But they failed. They did not do what God commanded, and what followed was not a happy story of multicultural bliss. What followed was a predictable, downward spiral into cultural and spiritual apostasy, culminating in the most grotesque forms of pagan evil.
This is a story about the profound danger of syncretism. It is about what happens when the people of God decide that they can be friends with the world, that they can learn its ways, adopt its practices, and worship its gods, all while maintaining some semblance of faith in Yahweh. But the God of Abraham is not a God who shares His throne. He will not be part of a pantheon. He is everything, or He is nothing. Israel's failure to obey God's command to destroy the peoples was a failure of faith. They feared the chariots of the Canaanites more than they feared the wrath of God. And this fear, this disobedience, opened the door to a spiritual cancer that would nearly consume them.
The Text
They did not destroy the peoples, As Yahweh commanded them,
But they mingled with the nations And learned their works,
And served their idols, Which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,
And they shed innocent blood, The blood of their sons and their daughters, Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; And the land was polluted with the blood.
Thus they became unclean in their works, And played the harlot in their actions.
(Psalm 106:34-39 LSB)
The First Step Down: Disobedience and Mingling (v. 34-35)
The tragic cascade begins with a simple, direct failure to obey.
"They did not destroy the peoples, As Yahweh commanded them, But they mingled with the nations And learned their works," (Psalm 106:34-35)
The command was not ambiguous. God had made it clear that the Canaanite cultures were under the ban, under the sentence of destruction, for their high-handed sins (Deut. 7:2). This was not a suggestion. It was a command from the sovereign King of the universe. But Israel, in a fit of either cowardice, misplaced compassion, or simple greed, disobeyed. They left the job half-done. They made treaties. They made accommodations. They decided they knew better than God.
And what is the immediate result of this disobedience? "They mingled with the nations." The word here means to mix, to blend together. They began to erase the line of separation that God had drawn around them. God had called them to be a holy nation, a peculiar people, set apart for His purposes. But they wanted to be like everyone else. They wanted to fit in. They saw the allure of the Canaanite culture, its technology, its art, its religion, and they were drawn in. This is the perennial temptation for the church: to seek the approval of the world by becoming indistinguishable from it.
Notice the progression. First, they failed to destroy the evil. Then, they mingled with the evil. And the inevitable result is that they "learned their works." You cannot have intimate fellowship with the ungodly without being influenced by them. You cannot swim in a sewer and come out smelling like a rose. The apostle Paul warns us of this very thing: "Do not be deceived: 'Bad company corrupts good morals'" (1 Cor. 15:33). Israel thought they could manage the relationship, that they could take the good from the Canaanites and leave the bad. But it never works that way. Compromise is a one-way street, and it always leads away from God.
The Second Step Down: Idolatry and Ensnarement (v. 36)
From learning their works, the next logical step is serving their gods.
"And served their idols, Which became a snare to them." (Psalm 106:36 LSB)
Once you start acting like a pagan, it is only a matter of time before you start worshipping like one. The works of the Canaanites were inextricably linked to their worship. Their agriculture, their politics, their family life, it was all religious. To learn their works was to be catechized in their idolatry. And so, Israel began to serve their idols.
The word "serve" here is the word for worship and slavery. They bowed down to blocks of wood and stone. They gave their allegiance to the Baals and the Asherahs, the gods of fertility and power. They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (Rom. 1:23). This is the height of foolishness, to worship the creature rather than the Creator.
And the text tells us the result: these idols "became a snare to them." An idol is a trap. It promises freedom, power, and pleasure, but it delivers only bondage and death. The hook is baited with something that appeals to our fallen desires, but underneath is the sharp point of judgment. Idolatry is not just a religious mistake; it is a spiritual trap set by the enemy. Once you are caught, it is exceedingly difficult to get free. The idols demand more and more, and the worshipper gives it, until he has nothing left.
The Third Step Down: Demonic Sacrifice (v. 37-38)
This is where the spiral hits rock bottom. The service of idols descends into the most horrific practice imaginable.
"They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons, And they shed innocent blood, The blood of their sons and their daughters, Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; And the land was polluted with the blood." (Psalm 106:37-38 LSB)
Let us not mince words here. The psalmist pulls back the curtain to show us what is really happening behind the idol. When you worship an idol, you are not just worshipping a piece of wood. Paul tells us plainly that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God" (1 Cor. 10:20). All idolatry is ultimately demon worship. The idols are the mailing address, but the demons are the recipients of the worship.
And what do these demons demand? They demand the ultimate sacrifice. They demand the blood of children. The Canaanite god Molech was particularly known for this. Worshippers would heat a bronze statue of the god until it was glowing red-hot, and then they would place their living infants into its outstretched arms. This is the logical end of a worldview that rejects the Creator. If there is no God, then man is God. And if man is God, he can define good and evil for himself. He can decide that the ultimate act of religious devotion, or the ultimate solution to an inconvenient pregnancy, is to kill his own child.
We must not read this as some ancient, barbaric practice that we have evolved beyond. Our nation has sacrificed over sixty million of its sons and daughters on the altar of convenience, on the idol of sexual freedom. We call it "choice," but the demons call it worship. The psalmist says they "shed innocent blood," and that this blood "polluted the land." The land itself becomes defiled by this sin. Innocent blood cries out from the ground for vengeance (Gen. 4:10). This is not a sin that God takes lightly. A land that is polluted with the blood of its own children is a land that is ripe for judgment.
The Summary of Sin: Unclean and Unfaithful (v. 39)
The final verse of our section summarizes the spiritual condition of the people.
"Thus they became unclean in their works, And played the harlot in their actions." (Psalm 106:39 LSB)
Their works, which they had learned from the nations, made them ceremonially and morally "unclean." They were defiled. They could not approach a holy God because they had immersed themselves in filth. Their actions had separated them from the God who had called them to be holy as He is holy.
And the final description is the most potent biblical metaphor for covenant unfaithfulness: they "played the harlot." Israel was the bride of Yahweh. He had rescued her from slavery in Egypt, made a covenant with her at Sinai, and promised to be her husband. Her allegiance was to be to Him alone. But by chasing after other gods, she had committed spiritual adultery. She had become a prostitute, selling her affections to the highest bidder, giving herself to the false gods of Canaan.
This is the story of Israel, but it is also our story. The temptation to mingle, to learn the works of the world, to serve its idols, and to break covenant with our God is ever-present. The downward spiral is always just one act of disobedience away.
The Only Hope: A Better Sacrifice
This is a bleak picture. It is a portrait of a people who were given everything, grace, law, covenant, and promise, and who threw it all away for the cheap thrills of paganism. If this were the end of the story, we would be left in despair. But this is not the end of the story.
The psalm goes on to describe God's judgment, but it also describes His mercy. Again and again, He delivered them. He remembered His covenant, not because they were faithful, but because He is faithful. The entire Old Testament is a testament to the fact that we cannot keep our end of the covenant. We are all spiritual harlots, prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love.
The pollution of the land required a cleansing. The shedding of innocent blood required a payment. But the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin, and the blood of sacrificed children only deepened the pollution. The only thing that could cleanse a land so polluted with innocent blood was the shedding of the most innocent blood of all.
On a hill outside Jerusalem, the Son of God, the only truly innocent one who ever lived, was sacrificed. But He was not sacrificed to demons by the hands of disobedient men. He was offered up to God the Father by His own will, as a perfect sacrifice for sin. He took upon Himself the filth of our idolatry, the guilt of our spiritual harlotry, the full weight of our covenant-breaking. His blood, and His blood alone, can cleanse a polluted land and a polluted heart.
The story of Israel's failure is a warning to us. But it is also a signpost that points us to our desperate need for a Savior. We cannot save ourselves from this downward spiral. Our only hope is to cling to the one who entered into our filth to make us clean, who died the death of a covenant-breaker so that we might become the righteousness of God. Our only hope is to turn from our idols and our compromises and to worship the one true God, through the one true sacrifice, Jesus Christ our Lord.