Driving out the giants

“That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. They were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place.” Deuteronomy 2:20-21
In Deuteronomy 2 we read of several of the nations that lived near the land of Canaan: the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Caphtorites, and how they had driven various peoples of giants out of their lands before settling in them. The Moabites drove out the Emites (Deut. 2:10-11), the Edomites drove out the Horites (Deut. 2:22), the Ammonites drove out the Zamzummites (Deut. 2:21), and the Caphtorites drove out the Avvites (Deut. 2:23).
All of these peoples were Rephaites (descendants of Rapha), a second wave of Nephilim. We recall how in Numbers 13 the children of Israel rebelled against God and refused to enter the land because of the bad report about there being giants (Anakites) living there. As a result, God was angry with them and sentenced them to wander in the wilderness for forty years until that entire generation had died out.
But here we see that Israel’s rebellion was completely unnecessary. Here were these other nations, who had no covenant with God, but had driven out giants with God’s help (Deut. 2:21-22).
There’s a lesson here for us. God has made a covenant with us, just as He did with the nation Israel. He has promised us victory over the enemy, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and much more. Yet how often do we look at some mountainous challenge in life, that many unbelievers before us have endured, and think we can’t do it? God is with us – of course we can make it.