LET US NOT BE ASHAMED OF THE PROMISE OF ETERNAL JUDGMENT BUT MOTIVATED BY IT

We have to take to heart the destruction of the Canaanites. This wasn’t about Israel wanting to grab land as other nations have always done. In fact, at first, Israel refused to battle against the Canaanites. Instead, this destruction was ordered by God as His judgment upon the Canaanites, who had embraced highly detestable practices like killing their own children (reminds me of abortion.)

Sin is serious to God. This divinely commanded destruction should serve as a necessary warning for all of us about the eternal consequences of sin and of rejecting the one hope offered by God. In fact, the prospect of eternal punishment is far more disturbing than just the destruction of the body, as Jesus had claimed:

·       And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)

Consequently, if we are playing with a full-deck, we should be far more concerned about eternal punishment, the destruction of both body and soul, than the merely physical destruction of the Canaanites. This is why the NT writers do not tire about warning us of this prospect:

·       For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. (2 Peter 2:4-6, 9)

Had such consequences not been recorded, we would even more likely sneer at God’s warnings of eternal punishment to our great detriment.

In addition to these warnings, we also intuitively know that we deserve such punishment:

·       Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:32; 2:14-16)

Consequently, the unrepentant sinner deserves what he will receive. Because the stakes are so high, we must evangelize:

·       Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others…Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:11, 20-21)