The Foreigner

A foreigner is someone who comes from a country or kingdom that is different from the one they are currently in.

For example, an American soldier who gets orders to get stationed overseas is considered a foreigner. They are not considered a sojourner because they generally stay under US protection on the post while stationed in a foreign country. They may be able to work and go out into the community, but essentially they are foreigners abiding by the rules set forth by where they came from the USA.

Sometimes, a soldier will have served their time in the army and receive an honorable discharge. If this happens overseas, they are given a choice. They can either go back home or, if they meet the requirements, they can sojourn within the country they served in. Though they are still considered a foreigner, now they are considered a sojourner because they choose to acclimate to the culture of said country.

God’s Perspective

In Deuteronomy 7, God used Moses to explain to Israel that they would face some hardcore challenges when they finally entered the promised land. The LORD explained he would give Israel victory over seven nations that were much bigger and in greater numbers than them. The nations currently inhabiting the land of Canaan had to be completely and utterly destroyed.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you, and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take them for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and quickly destroy you. You are to do this to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord, your God, has chosen you out of all the peoples on the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

Deuteronomy 7:1-6

These nations praised false idols. They would worship and sacrifice to false “gods.”

God intended to use Israel to do something about these nations’ so-called worship of false gods. He explicitly warned them not to intermarry. Why? If a person, as a foreigner or a sojourner, embraces a culture or system that denies Jesus as Lord and Savior, they will surely follow the gods of their spouse or significant other.

King Solomon

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart to other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David, his father, had been. He followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek, the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David, his father, had done.

On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek, the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. So the Lord told Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.  Nevertheless, for the sake of David, your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him but will give him one tribe for the sake of David, my servant, and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

1 Kings 11:1-12

Everyone knows how God blessed King Solomon from an early age. The King could have asked for anything, yet he asked for the discernment to rule God’s people.

Most people don’t convey that he took on a thousand different females as he grew older. Seven hundred as wives and three hundred mistresses. What makes matters worse, his wives (700 of them) changed his heart to chase after the gods of their birth.

The Bible says his wives turned his heart. That means he married foreign women, v1, and let their representation from a foreign land overrule what he knew to be true of the one true living God.

Know your Kingdom

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

John 18:36

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were, by nature, deserving of wrath.

Ephesians 2:1-3

We must understand a hardcore reality. The Kingdom of God is not of this world. When we accept Jesus at his word (Knowing and believing that he died and rose again), we are given the Holy Spirit on deposit, and our citizenship changes. In other words, those who seek the Kingdom and follow Jesus as our King are foreigners here on Earth.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Colossians 1:13-14

Call it what it is…

This earth has a prince ruling over the disobedient and deceived. Without Christ, satan has the authority to steal, kill, and destroy those who follow in his dark domain. Simply put, he rules through deception tactics using money, power, and fame and does this with his followers of fallen angels (demons).

The simple truth is, as foreigners on the earth, we are told by the Lord not to marry a foreigner, a citizen from the domain of darkness. If we do that, we become a sojourner to the domain of darkness. This should begin to explain some things.

For example, a young person grows up in the church and eventually surrenders and gives their life to Jesus. Without discipleship, that young person can get overwhelmingly confused with the amount of information out there. Discipleship helps to answer the questions of who they are in Jesus and how to begin to learn to use the gifts given to them to impact the Kingdom. Discipleship will also help that young person to stay Kingdom-minded and focused in every situation that may arise. Without it, that young person will eventually find answers from the world and its various dark systems.

Let’s say this young person finds a young lady very attractive. He knows she has never heard of Jesus before, but who cares? She gives him attention. That young person doesn’t know any better and, without true discipleship, gets duped into thinking they can have sex all they want as long as they get married.

Wrong!

If that young person marries that unsaved female, no matter how good-intentioned his heart is, from God’s perspective, he just married a foreign wife from the domain of darkness. He did not marry a Kingdom citizen.

Now he must deal with the consequences of his choice to share his life with demons.

No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, too; you cannot have a part in the Lord’s table and the table of demons.

1 Corinthians 10:20-21

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

John 8:12

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

2 Corinthians 6:14-18

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 3:20