Give Sin No Quarter

Perry’s Scope 9 Give Sin No Quarter

For years I have heard Christians are to draw a parallel to heaven with the Hebrews’ entrance into Canaan. Songs like “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” reinforce this idea. The first stanza of the song reads:

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,

and cast a wishful eye

to Canaan's fair and happy land,

where my possessions lie.

One of my college teachers used to draw a timeline on the board to help us understand lessons in the Old Testament. He described the Hebrews leaving Egypt as a shadow of Christians leaving sin by the sacrifice of the Passover lambs and the application of their blood. He pointed out their passage through the Red Sea as a type of New Testament baptism, as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 10:2. My teacher talked about the “wilderness wanderings” as our time on earth and their entrance into the Promised Land as heaven.

Let me point out that the Hebrews may have felt like they wandered in the desert for forty years, but God led them in that place until the sinful generation died off. They had witnessed His presence and received His law at Sinai yet refused to enter Canaan for fear of the giants. The next generation returned to the border of the Promised Land, lacking the memory of God’s dramatic deliverance of Israel from Egypt as this generation was born in the desert or had been young children there. Moses presented his “farewell address” to them in the form of the book of Deuteronomy, where he reviewed the history of Israel and God’s law. Then he climbed Mt. Nebo to witness the Hebrews’ entrance into Canaan, after which he died, and God buried his body.

Living in the Promised Land was not a life of ease for the Hebrews as the “Sabbath rest” we expect heaven to be. Joshua led the Hebrews into the Land to subdue it and remove the wicked inhabitants. Living in Canaan sounds like the life we live now, where our “Joshua” or Jesus leads us to conquer the sinfulness of our lives and time. While there is a loose comparison to heaven, it is more accurate to see this as life following the Son of God.

As the Hebrews conquered the land of Canaan, the tribe of Joseph complained to Joshua about their allotment. Let’s focus on driving out the Canaanites in Joshua’s declaration, Joshua 17:18 (NKJV):

18 but the mountain country shall be yours. Although it is wooded, you shall cut it down, and its farthest extent shall be yours; for you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots and are strong.”

While Joshua is describing sinful people and their powerful weapons, we can make an application. God charges us with driving out the sins of our lives. In a way, Canaan represents our walk with God. The Hebrews represent those who follow God and the Canaanites embody those who do not. As God’s people, we applied the lamb’s blood to our lives through obedient faith. We gain the forgiveness of sin as entrance into the Land, but there is yet much to conquer. Our sinful nature does not magically disappear; we must fight and subdue it. We must drive sin out of our lives like the Israelis drove out the Canaanites, the epitome of evil. Regardless of their superior iron chariots, they had to go.

The Hebrew nation conquered much of the Land but not all. God had intended for the borders of His Land to be much larger, including wherever the Hebrews walked (see Joshua 14:9). Over time, the people wearied of the fighting and became satisfied with what they had accomplished so that they stopped fighting their enemies.

We tend to hang on to our sins, especially our “pet sins” or the tenacious ones. We become satisfied with our progress, tire of the battle, and stop. Some sins we readily remove, and we don’t miss them that much, and they are relatively easy to conquer. However, some sins are not so easy to dismiss, and we make excuses for ourselves like, “It’s just how I am,” or “I’m human!” So, we let them ride in our lives like a parasite sucking the life out of us.

God wants us to fight this internal spiritual war as well as the external. There are spiritual enemies all around us as we have become increasingly aware. The most brutal battle is within. It is easy for me to remove the speck from your eye and neglect the log in my eye. The lust of our eyes, flesh, and pride adversely affect us. We must fight to remain pure in a world filled with temptations to impurity.

Temptations never announce their arrival ahead of time, but as the thief, they strike when we least expect them and our guard is down. How we react to our temptations is critical. James 1:2-5 (NKJV) reads: