Revering the Word
Joshua 11 Why did God command for the destruction of Canaan?
good morning everyone this morning we're in Joshua chapter 11 and here again we're gonna see Joshua utterly destroy the nations around him because God asked them to do that and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that today I watched an interesting video yesterday that I'll comment on in a moment but let's begin and take it in as challenging as it may be you know I've read the Bible many times but I've never had to teach through this season of history when God is giving the people the promised land and and they're they're wiping out the people of the land and it's you know it it's unlike what you learn today and this is why it is important to read the whole Bible because sometimes we only get part of the picture when we only know certain parts and we only know you know God is love and he is but yet this is part of the history of God and God's people and we need to know how serious he is about creating holy people and how serious is about sin to it it's just important we know the whole thing so that we don't grow up with some kind of false notion now as I've said many times we are living in a new dispensation a new church age a new season and God is asking us to win the people around him to Jesus but yet this is still part of God's past and Israel's past all right verse one then it came about when Job in King of Hizor heard of it and this is the military victories of Israel that he sent Jobab King of Medan and to the King of Shimran and to the King of Asaf and to the kings who were of the North in the hill country and in the Arabah south of Chineroth and in the low land on the heights of the door on the west to the Canaanite on the east and on the west and the Amorai and the Hittai and the Persai and the Jubizai in the hill country and the Hivar at the foot of Mount Herman in the land of Mitzvah so basically there's this huge alliance that's being created to come against Israel that's one thing to keep in mind as well I mean indeed God has asked them to come and take this land he gave Abraham and now he's going to deliver it to them but it in many instances it's really kill or be killed you know I've never been in the military but when people are shooting at you to kill you and you are you know you have a choice you either can fight or die so it becomes a different mindset that I haven't you know totally experienced myself but when someone's trying to kill you you're gonna take on a different process in your mind as well they came out they and all their armies with them so they're gonna they're trying to fight Israel and destroy Joshua and his people as many people as a sand that is in the seashore with very many horses and chariots so all these kings having agreed to meet came and camped together at the waters of Miram to fight against Israel then the Lord said to Joshua this had to be very comforting do not be afraid because of them for tomorrow at this time I will deliver them all of them slain before you you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire so Joshua and all the people of war with him came upon them suddenly so sometimes they they used you know they attacked first instead of just waiting to be attacked by the waters of Miram and attacked them the Lord delivered them into the hand of Israel so that they defeated them and pursued them so some ran away as far as the great sit-on and Mirasath that name and the valley of Mitzvah to the east and they struck them until no survivor was left to them Joshua did to them as the Lord told him he strung hum strung their horses and burned their chariots with fire so God asked them to destroy all the people and it said over and over and over in this chapter and throughout Joshua and even in other books of the laws of Moses that we've been reading that God had asked them to do that that he did not want them to leave a survivor then Joshua turned back at that time and captured his or and struck its king with the sword for his or formerly was the head of all these kingdoms they struck every person who was in it with the edge of the sword utterly destroying them there was no one left to breathe and he burned Hazor with fire Joshua captured all the cities of these kings and all their kings and he struck them with the edge of the sword and utterly destroyed them and this is what it said just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded however Israel did not burn any cities that stood on their mounds except Hazor alone which Joshua burned that's kind of an interesting note and I see there's no note in my study Bible here for why that would be so I'm gonna say I don't really understand verse 13 all the spoil of these cries in the cattle the sons of Israel took as their plunder but they struck every man with the edge of the sword until they had destroyed them they left no one who breathed just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servants so Moses commanded Joshua and so Joshua did so what we're seeing is that this is a real active obedience because God asked him to do in fact this is what it says in Acts in verse 15 he left nothing undone of all that Moses had commanded of all that the Lord had commanded Moses so let me finish and then I'll have some thoughts then Joshua took all that land the hill country of the Negev and all the land of Goshan the low land of the Arabah the hill country of Israel and its low land from Mount Halak that rises towards seer even as bow gad in the valley of Lebanon at the foot of Mount Hermit and he captured all their kings instruct them down and put them to death Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings there was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the hivites living in Gibeon those we that we discussed in the last several chapters they took them all in battle except for the Gibeonites for it was of the Lord to harden their hearts to meet Israel in battle so you know the Lord apparently made these kings want to come up against Israel so that Israel had to fight and destroy them and he did that it says here in verse 20 that he might utterly destroy them that they might receive no mercy but that he might destroy them just as the Lord commanded Moses do you see the pattern but this is something God commanded and as a as a part of honor and obedience to God they needed to follow through on what God said now as we'll see as we continue to go they didn't entirely do this in this chapter it appears they were faithful but in future chapters and future battles they won't be and I'll have some comments on that in a moment let's finish then Joshua came at that time and cut off the anachim from the hill country those are a lot of times we're known as giants from Hebron from Debeir from Enab and from all the hill country of Judah which is where Jerusalem was and from all the hill country of Israel Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities there was no anachim left in the land of the sons of Israel now listen to this only in Gaza in Gath and in Ashtad some remain so listen to that some were left in Gaza isn't that interesting so Joshua took the whole land according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses and Joshua gave it foreign inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes thus the land had rest from war and I guess this was one way of producing rest because if your enemies are no longer you're going to have you're going to be able to have rest so yesterday I watched a video somehow it came up on something on social media or something that I was looking at but it was a video of a woman who had been captured by Hamas when they came in and took Israel she was at that music festival and she was fleeing in her car and they saw her and shot her in the arm and lit her car on fire her friend died and other people were being shot around her and screaming her car was on fire and she was trying to act dead in the car and she wasn't being burned yet but the fire was getting close so she had no choice then but to get out of the car well once they saw that she was alive then they took her as hostage back to Gaza and she was in captivity for many months she was one of the people that has been released and that's why she got a video her arm was terribly wounded it still was wounded in the video that they made and she was doing physical therapy on it but she talked about her time in Israel and she didn't she was there for like I think five months she didn't bathe one time in five months and she most the time was actually being guarded in a home and in the home there were no windows and no don't like no it was dark and she stayed basically in a dark room but she could hear the wife and the children of the person who held her captive you know there and sometimes she had interaction with them and what she said which is really interesting that the woman this woman was pretty attractive I guess and her well you know I saw a video of her but her the main guy who took her captive they kind of ended up talking quite a bit and apparently the guy didn't get along with his wife very well so she hated this beautiful Israeli and the the woman said she was just evil towards her and the kids would come in sometimes and display like candy only to then put it back in the bag and leave she said the kids looked at her with hate that they had been trained to to hate Israelis that basically they're raised and they grow up hating Israel and just an interesting perspective from a woman who was was captured she said sometimes they'd say you're going home and then she wouldn't and she said it was just all trying to break her emotionally anyways it was a very very challenging difficult thing that this woman went through and she talked about the brutality of what happened when Hamas came in and what this made me think of is God knows the future and what would happen if they intermixed or didn't destroy the people of the land that God was giving them is that they would have enemies around them wanting to kill them or defeat them listen I don't know everything that would have happened but God knows and the point is look what's happening now so look what's happening in Israel and we would say and I would say you know I wish everyone could be one to Jesus you know and we could all be united you know but in that area right now people want to kill and destroy the Israelites and you know it'd be great if there could be peace but the people don't want peace the people don't want a two-state solution they want Israel gone they want Israel out of there they want them killed they hate them so living together next to each other against people who want to destroy you and kill you it's like an impossible situation and you know people think we're gonna broker peace these people hate each other the only one who could bring peace would be God and him alone so the point is is that as brutal as this is I think God knows the future and God knows that if they didn't do what was happening they were never gonna have rest and they were never gonna have peace and they were always gonna be at war and you know there's other reasons too this was a pagan area with pagan people who didn't worship God and God was trying to create a people that would worship him and worship him well now sometimes what we can do is you know in talking about this some time somehow how to justify and I will you know I will include some links to God got questions and they do some explanations as to why this happened and why God ordained for this to happen and and you can read it and possibly it will help give you some reasons at the end of one of the articles is kind of making the point that I'm making but let me read it to you it says surely the issue of God commanding violence in Old Testament is difficult however we must remember that God sees things from an eternal perspective in his ways are not our ways the Apostle Paul tells us that God is both kind and severe and I've talked about that passage quite a bit in my life from Romans 11 22 it said can consider the kindness and the severity of God kindness basically to you who believe but severity to those who do not while it is true that God's holy character demands that sin be punished his grace and mercy remain extended to those who are willing to repent and be saved the Canaanite destruction provides us with a silver reminder that while our God is gracious and merciful he is also a God of holiness and wrath and that is true and so many times we're painted a picture that God is a one-sided coin called love and I'm telling you it's not working that that that's not working that does not create a holy people when you just tell people well that God just approves everything you do and God is love and that's the only part of his characteristic is love it does not proves people that worship him because then they think they can worship whatever they want they can do whatever they want that there's no accountability that that we don't have to follow God's word and in the end I'm a good person and God is loving so therefore everything's going to be okay that philosophy does not create a people that are devoted to living for God it just doesn't and we need to know the holiness and wrath of God as well and that he desires us to live for him now praise God we have the forgiveness of sins and we live in the grace of this new covenant but that is not a permit just to go our own way God is still desiring that we would be his people that we would be a reflection of who he is that we would be holy as he is holy thank God for his grace but don't use as an excuse to live your own life absent from God's guidance and instruction and that's it's rampant today what people are doing today it's a very similar thought to what we just read today people are thinking they can make God in their own image they can make him who they want to be and that they think they're good people the Bible says that there's no one good not not even one and we all need the sacrifice of Jesus in order to be forgiven but then as a result of realizing that Jesus did die for us hallelujah and saved us he's given us his Holy Spirit not to live any way we want but to live to honor the one who died for us and where there's what where there's a lack of obedience there's really a lack of faith where there's a where there's people just doing their own thing and making God in their own image I really question whether they really believe and likely many do not and those who do believe but are are very misinformed that's a very sad thing as well and we need to get the truth out that God wants us to worship him and honor him and you need Jesus today hallelujah so I hope that provides some comfort for you in understanding the difficulties of the Old Testament I really think we just God knows the future and he had Israel do what they did so that they could have an opportunity to live in peace and to be the people of God but today God is operating hallelujah in a different way I hope this has been edifying and helpful to you in your journey of following our Lord and Savior Jesus God bless you all