God's War on Idolatry

"On the day after the Passover, the people of Israel went out triumphantly in the sight of all the Egyptians, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had struck down among them. On their gods also the Lord executed judgments. [And God said to Moses] 'Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places. If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.'"
- Numbers 33:3-4, 51-52, 55-56

The main focus in the story of the Exodus is God's redemption of His people out of slavery in Egypt. It is a glorious story to every Christian, because it serves as a type of our rescue from slavery to sin by the atoning cross work of Jesus Christ.

However, that is not the whole of the story.

I want to point especially at the words of Numbers 33:4, included above: "On their [i. e., the Egyptians'] gods also the Lord executed judgments." The ten plagues are seen to be on the Egyptian people, yet, somehow, they were also judgments on the deceiving spirits that they considered to be gods.

Jehovah continues in His exhortation to Israel: "Just as you saw Me destroy the gods of Egypt, so shall you do the religion of the Canaanites" (paraphrased from Num. 33:52). This demonstrates that the conquest of the Promised Land by the Israelites was not the capricious, vindictive act portrayed by liberal theologians. Rather, it was an act of judgment, one that was deserved by the Canaanites. Why? Because God is jealous of His divine prerogatives: "You shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14). Worshiping any god but Jehovah is to steal from Him what is properly His alone, an act of severe treason. That's why the abolition of it is the first of the Ten Commandments. Is the violation of the Prime Directive (to borrow a Star Trek term) not sufficient reason for capital punishment? I don't believe that any person can say that it is not, except as a self-serving effort to protect his own idolatry (Romans 1:18).