God's 2nd tactic: 'Drive 'em out with hornets'

People say all the time, "Well, look at the church; it's full of hypocrites." That's a rationalization because they still go to the movies and there are hypocrites there. They still go to football games and there's hypocrites there. Their attitude is simply a self-serving justification, says David Reid in an online study entitled, "Why Do Devils Act Differently Today?"

Now, this is what Satan does and it's beyond obnoxious. Think with me just about the Old Testament for a minute. Israel goes into Egypt for hundreds of years and then God brings them out.

When God prepares to bring Israel into the Promised Land and Israel sends spies into the land, what do the spies find? Giants. More generally, they find the Canaanites, the Jebusites and so on. They find a bunch of people who are there for the purpose of resisting Israel.

Satan could have said, "Well, look, God has promised the Promised Land to Israel so I'm going to respect that and put all my people over in northern Alaska and leave them there."

The reason he didn't do that is the following. What was it that turned Solomon's heart away? His heart was turned away by his wives; the wives of the other nations.

Satan has his people in the land because he wants them to learn the practices of those in the land and get them to worship idols. And when they do those things, you know what Satan's going to do?

Revelation 12: [10] And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

Satan is "the accuser of the brethren." What he does with Old Testament Israel is he tempts them and tempts them and tempts them to try to get them to do evil.

When they do that, what does Satan immediately do? He accuses them "before our God day and night": "You did it! You did it! I baited you into it, I entrapped you!"

So does that ministry exist during the dispensation of grace? Yes. Satan seeks to tempt the Body of Christ and when they fail what follows is reproach. 

Is there anything more prominent today than sort of celebrity-Christian scandals? There's a well-known religious leader and then they have some failing. What happens is it's publicized to ruin their reputation and mock and criticize the church.

We are involved in doctrinal warfare today. All the sensational ideas people have about devils, possession, this and that, it's all focusing on the wrong thing. It's confusion and deception.

The nature of Satan's warfare today is doctrinal, meaning the most important thing we can do in self-defense, and to protect ourselves from that deception, is "search the scriptures daily whether those things we so."

II Corinthians 4: [3] But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

[4] In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

If Satan's desire is to blind their minds, then what do we need to be doing? Preach the accurate gospel because that's the only thing that can help people avoid the snare of the devil. If our warfare with Satan is doctrinal in nature, we need to be doctrinal people, studying and preaching the Word rightly divided.

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Here's an outtake from a study by Pastor Alex Kurz:

Deuteronomy 7: [1] When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, 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 thou;

[2] And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:

I Samuel 15: [3] Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

It's rather hypocritical for an atheist to express outrage that God would issue such a command as killing men, women, children and sucklings, meaning nursing babies

The atheist says, "Agh, what kind of God is this to kill babies?!" First of all, where does the atheist get off arguing morality?

They reject that there is such a thing as objective morality; moral right or wrong. One leading atheist says, "The universe doesn't care." Where does morality come from if were just a bunch of amoebas and cells that morph . . .

Those babies are just as exposed and vulnerable to some satanic activity that's taking place in the land. You remember in the gospels how there were children who were possessed by devils?

Exodus 23: [27] I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.

God's first tactic is, "I'm going to send fear before your enemies and if they're smart they're going to run away."

Genocide would demand you've got to hunt them down and kill them and God never said that.

Then God said, and this is weird, "I'm going to send hornets."

[28] And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
[29] I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

Now, there's a lot of controversy about that. Should we take it literally? I say why not. What did God do in Egypt? Did He not send swarms of flies? Did not God use swarms of locusts?

God's saying, "If they're not terrified by you, Israel, then I'm going to send a pestilence, but I'm going to do it little by little until I drive them out."

[30] By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

So there's a second tactic there. There are some things God does to buy the inhabitants a little bit of time: "Israel's coming and you have the opportunity to get out and if you don't get out, then I'm going to destroy you all."

Numbers 33: [51] Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan;

[52] Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:

When God says, "Destroy them," that is the last resort or consequence for not leaving the land. God says, "There's a limit to my tolerance; there's a limit to the persistent wickedness."