Joshua 18
Joshua is Deceived - 9:1-15
We had a question turned in last week about chapter 8:30-35 that dealt
with the installation or the making effective of the Deuteronomy treaty and the
question reads as follows, which is a very good question, very perceptive: If
the Old Testament Law, specifically the Ten Words, were not a legalistic
framework for salvation, how could one by damned by disobedience to the
Law? Did the cursings pertain to
spiritual salvation or earthly life? In
other words, we said last time how
The point here is that the Law reveals the absolute righteousness of God
and this was theoretically possible for Adam, it was actually true for Jesus
Christ. Then we have the second thing
and the second thing was the Law was to drive the people back to grace. In other words, the Law was deliberately
frustrating to drive men and women back, back, back to depend upon God’s grace
for solutions to the sin problem. In the
very structure of the Law itself, do you remember the sacrifices; the
sacrifices were given to take care of the sin problem, the violations of the Law,
with a few exceptions. Murder was not
forgivable under the sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law. When David found that he had murdered, David
was placed in a position whereby all means of the Law he was condemned and
within the system of the Law he had no solution to the sin problem. Therefore David had to do something; he had
to totally rely upon the Lord’s grace.
So then the Mosaic Law is not saving at all. See the Mosaic Law is just
actually a delineation of the absolute requirements of God. And the Mosaic Law,
when you can fail it can only supply us with topological solutions, the
sacrificial system. But then grace
itself does not come from the Mosaic Law; the grace comes from God’s character
promised in the Abrahamic Covenant. The
Abrahamic Covenant is the ground of all salvation and forgiveness in the whole
Bible, after Abraham that is. And so you
have the grace and the forgiveness and the enablement, all of this proceeds
forth from Abraham, not from Moses.
Moses simply condemned. So that
would be the answer to that, it is not a legalistic framework for salvation and
it isn’t even a legalistic system for living the Christian life. And the believer today is not under the Ten
Commandments.
Now in Joshua 9-10 we come to an exciting section in the book of
Joshua. This is where the sun stood
still and the moon stopped and everything else, so we’ll have a lot of activity
and action here in these few chapters.
Let’s orient ourselves to what is happening and see this section for
what it is. Chapters 9-10 deal with the
central and southern campaigns of the conquest of the land. This is in the larger section, chapters 5-11,
that deal with the conquest of the land.
I want to review briefly the link between Joshua and you, living in the
Church Age centuries and centuries after, how can you read chapters like this
and have it apply and mean something to you as a believer. How you can do this is make the parallel
between the holy war that Joshua was fighting and the holy war you are
fighting. You have to see this, these
two holy wars that are going on here.
The first holy war that we’re fighting looks like this. Beginning at Pentecost we have the Church
Age. Then we have the Tribulation, the
Second Advent of Christ and the thousand year reign. Under this Church Age we have something new
being created; it’s called technically as the Christ, or Christ’s body. The head is Christ; the body is all born
again believers between Pentecost and the rapture. So you have this body built
up of all believers and this body is destined, evidently from Ephesians and
other passages, to replace the angelic council that controls the universe at
the moment. This is why some Christian
theologians have projected the Church Age will be over when the number of believers
that accept Christ in this age equal the number of angels that fell with
Satan. And so we have the Church Age
over a certain point in time. This means
the body of Christ is now complete; it means the first phase of the new
universe is started.
In other words, up to this point
in the dispensation of the Church we have the calling forth of individuals to
receive Christ as Savior and be “in Christ.”
And this means His body. When the
body is finished it is translated to heaven.
At this time, at the end of the Church Age, which could come tonight,
could come tomorrow, it could come any time, no fulfilled prophecy is required
before the end of the Church Age. So the
Church Age terminates, the Church is translated to heaven and at this point the
Church is considered the bride of Christ as she prepares herself for this
wedding. And during this time her dirty garments are put off, that is the sin
nature, etc. rewards etc. Then in the
seven plus years of the tribulation this preparation occurs. But since the body is now complete, the legal
basis for bumping the angelic council is also complete and so we find the
tribulation, the book of Revelation, the angels are bumped. In other words, Satan is thrown from heaven
and the angels are cast down to the earth with him, and this begins the final
climactic moment in history when there will be a parallel to the kinds of
phenomena you are going to see in chapters 9-10.
These chapters in the struggle of Joshua’s fighting is but a small
version of the tribulational events, when we are going to see many, many things
in the tribulation that happened in a small way back here with Joshua. Reason: because both time periods in history
are those periods which usher in the
And so we would say that during this time, obviously Satan isn’t too
pleased with the Church Age and he’s definitely not pleased in the tribulation,
and he’s definitely not pleased in the Millennium, he goes to jail, he has a
thousand year sentence, no probation, by the way, a thousand year sentence and
God doesn’t say oh, you’ve been such a nice boy, we’ll let you out after 30
years. Nothing like that, He keeps him
in for a full thousand years. But Satan
is interesting in stopping this plan, so in the Church Age Satan begins his
attack in a way which is parallel to Joshua, but of course more intense that
Joshua. Satan is interested in the
delaying of the edifying of the body of Christ.
The longer he can postpone the growth of the church, the more people he
can keep from hearing the gospel and receiving the gospel, and the more he can
keep believers out of shape, the more he can sow discord among the brethren,
the more he can foul up operation Church the better off he is because that
gives him extra years to work in history.
It’s sovereignty to say that this is all according to plan but remember
it’s a response to history open to Satan’s own volition. Satan’s volition has a lot to do with history
and the intensity and velocity of his attacks have a lot to do with certain
things that have occurred in history.
So we might summarize at least the parallels, I’m not interested in
drawing the differences; I just want you to see the parallels. We live, as it were, the Church and
tribulation as that which is a threshold into the ultimate solution to history. But I want you to see at least some parallels
and two of these parallels are in the way Satan attacks back here in the book
of Joshua because we are going to introduce ourselves to a particular way Satan
attacks believers. Let’s divide Satan’s
attacks into two categories.
The first category of satanic attack is what we would call a spiritual
attack; the other kind is a physical attack.
These are two modes that he uses in the Word of God. Most of you, I would anticipate, if you have
been actively seeking God’s will have come across definitely the spiritual
attack and some of you have encountered the physical side. The first kind of attack, the spiritual
attack is in the area of ideas that motivate people. And these ideas [can’t understand word/s]
false doctrines or just pettiness; any form of human viewpoint formal or
informal, it can be either one. Formal
means it’s a systematic theology, such things referred to, for example, in 1
Tim. 4:1; 1 John 4:1, those are two New Testament references speaking of a
formally developed, well-thought out logical satanic system. And this is one way Satan has of attacking
believers and knocking them off balance.
He always does it through the cults; cults are an illustration of a
formal human viewpoint system. Notice,
for example, the cults will never chase after agnostics; the cults will never
chase after non-Christian, they are always after people who have had enough of
Christian to be confused by it. They’ll
never break virgin grounds in other words; this is typical of cults.
Now the informal, this is sheer pettiness and human viewpoint, you get
this in James 3:15; 4:7, where pettiness on the part of believers is labeled as
satanic. James 3:15 says that the wisdom
that descends from above and the wisdom from below that is demonical, he
says. And he’s referring not to a
developed theological system; he is simply referring to pettiness, personality
clashes, etc. You have this in any
congregation; we’ve had our share. You
have person X over here, person & over here and if they naturally have
personalities that are in friction Satan will deliberately do everything to
increase the friction; anything to tear apart believers by increasing
pettiness, etc. And anytime you let
pettiness influence you and anytime you wear your feelings on your sleeve,
someone doesn’t make the proper clucking noise at the door when you leave or
something like this and you’re wearing your feelings on your sleeve you are
contributing to the satanic destruction of Lubbock Bible Church because you are
just opening a door for Satan to drive right on in 60 mph. This is exactly how he operates; he’s looking
for self-pitying believers so he can fan the flames a little bit. You start off with self-pity, sin nature, and
he comes along with his fan and just fans the flames a little bit more and
first thing you know you’ve got a conflagration going, everybody is feeling
sorry for themselves, so and so didn’t speak to them on Sunday or something
like that. So we have this kind of thing
and this is labeled as satanic in James 3:15 and 4:7. Those are the spiritual attacks.
Now we have physical attacks; these are also of two types. They represent pressures and they can be
individual or [can’t understand word] attacks against your physical health such
as 2 Cor. 12:7; when Paul labels disease as the emissary of Satan, and he
calls, therefore, attacks against the health, attacks against the bodies of
believers to [can’t understand words].
And I might add at this point, literally, you should not take verses out
of context in the New Testament particularly the ones in 1 Timothy where it
says bodily exercise profits for a little but godliness profits for
eternity. Now that is not saying you
shouldn’t take care of your body and I have heard Christians say well, I don’t
have to get exercise and I don’t have to watch my diet and I don’t have to do
anything else because after all, “bodily exercise profits little.” That is a misreading of that verse. What it’s talking about is that it profits
for a little time; it does profit, that’s the whole point of the verse, it
profits for a short time, godliness profits for a long time. And believers have stewardship over their
body and that means you should watch what you eat and you should watch your
exercise; otherwise you are again opening the door to Satan. You watch your mental attitude; you should
watch your mental attitude, your mental attitude, if bad and carnal is just a
breeding ground for Satan, and physically if you let your body get run down you
are asking for trouble because he will take advantage of it.
The second thing about the physical attacks is simply outward
circumstances and various circumstances that are blocking. Satan throws a block and we’re knocked down or
something, we’re obstructed and we have this mentioned and we have this
mentioned in 1 Thess. 2:18 and 1 Peter 5:8.
Now the objective of a satanic attack in the physical is to disturb you
spiritually; Satan isn’t interested in just causing suffering. Satan is
interested in knocking you out spiritually.
And so he will attack you in one of these two areas. Perhaps he will obstruct you economically or
obstruct you in some other way and throw a block around you so you can’t
move. And so the result is that you
begin to pass informal human viewpoint, worry, so you sit there and you worry
about it. Worry, worry, worry, and now
he’s got you on two grounds, he’s got you first of all because he’s got you
blocked at the moment and now he’s got inside and he’s affecting the way you
think so he’s got you on two counts, and that’s exactly the way he operates,
through the physical to get to the spiritual.
So we see these attacks.
Now we come to Joshua 9 and we’re going to see a peculiar form of
satanic attack that is passed against Joshua.
And I might say, 1 Cor. 10:11 tells us in the New Testament, these
things in the Old Testament happened unto them for examples and they are
written for our counseling, so the Old Testament is a [can’t understand word/s]
for counseling believers on their life.
Now this whole unit of material starts in chapter 9 and goes through
chapter 10. We won’t get through that
tonight but we want to divide it up into three sections for your study and
consideration. First, 9:1-27 deal with
the Gibeon incident; this is where the trouble started with this outfit called
Gibeonites, and then secondly, 10:1-27 with the result of the Gibeon
incident. There is a fantastic result
that led to the stopping of the sun. I
have a friend of mine in the ministry who facetiously refers to the fact that
if they were handing out medals for prayer, on answered prayer, Joshua would
win hands down, because he had one of the most fantastic answers to prayer any
person ever prayed. Ever hear a believer
praying “sun, stand still” and it stood still.
That was one of the most fantastic answers to prayer in all of history
and Joshua takes the prize. Then the
third section is 10:28-the end of the chapter and that deals with the
breakthrough to the south, the southern campaign. You might say that this is the central
campaign and the last part is the southern campaign.
To first look at this we have to orient ourselves geographically and
once again look at the land of Canaan and the objective Joshua had. We have the land of Canaan and an area called
Transjordania which has already by now been secured. Joshua has secured this area and now he is
penetrating west, across to Bethel. He
is going to cut the land in half; he’s going to set up a corridor and this is
technically known in military parlance as an interior line; in other words,
he’s always attacking with his logistic lines behind him and controlled by him;
it’s called in military terms interior line.
And so he moves westward, his objective is to split the land of Israel,
having it split, breaking up the communications, he’s going to drive south,
wipe out the south and then come quickly north and wipe out the north. This is a three-pronged attack that he’s
going to use.
This is the same military operation the Jordanian army was trying to
pull off two or three years ago and this is why Israel was so concerned and why
I predict that Israel will not return the land west of Jordan freely to Amman,
they are not going to give this to the Jordanians because it would be opening a
hole and the Israelis know from the doctrine of the Old Testament that when you
open a hole in Palestine, you let the Arabs have this much of the land you are
asking yourself to be cut in half and they are not going to do it. The next thing that’s going to happen in
Israel is going to be the destruction of the Mosque of Omar and the Temple;
that’s the next thing that’s going to have to happen and you watch, there will
be a series of incidents, somebody will drop a bomb some place and sure enough,
it’s going to land right on the Mosque of Omar and that’ll be blown. So we’ll be one step further to the
fulfillment of prophecy. But that’s the
next thing that has to happen for the tribulation, is another Arab-Israeli
incident in which the Mosque of Omar will be blown up because that’s got to be
cleared off Mount Zion before Christ returns.
They’ve already secured Mount Zion, that’s the result of the Six-Day
War, the next thing is to secure the top of Mount Zion and get rid of the Islam
temple there.
So we have this land and this represents Joshua’s objective. So in 9:1 we read this, notice please that
Satan always begins to attack after God moves.
This will explain something in your Christian life that you may never
have understood or figured out, why it always appears like as soon as you latch
on to the will of God you begin to move and then it just [can’t understand
word] and it sounds like God is punishing you, you wonder, is God punishing me
for seeking His will. No, it’s because
you have begun to move for Him and the result is a massive and immediate
counterattack by Satan. And this is
what’s happening. Joshua has already
done something, he has hurt these people, he has given them, you might say, a
bloody nose and this can be a grim picture; geographically this is what is
happening; he has moved across the Jordan River and this is his camp,
Gilgal. Jericho is his first conquest;
last time we saw he had moved to Ai and Bethel, he had knocked them out. And then he moved north and set up the
theocracy, Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.
Notice this whole line, so you can say that this represents the front as
it exists at 9:1. He has made a
penetration, he’s got a beachhead, he’s moved both west and northwest, and now
he’s secured, right in the belly of the land, a vital piece of real
estate. Now the reaction is not long in
coming. Up to now the warfare has been
defensive; the Canaanites have fled behind the walls of Jericho, they stayed
there. Joshua had to use the Lord’s
artillery to get them out. Then finally
we have come to Ai and Bethel and there again it was mostly passive on the part
of the Canaanites, they stood behind the walls, opted for a fortified warfare
instead of field warfare, Joshua always goes mobile. So now Joshua is going to be attacked, so the
counterattack of Satan is not long in coming and this is what we read in verses
1-2.
“And it came to pass, when all the kings who were on this side of the
Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the Great
Sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the
Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof, [2] That they gathered
themselves together to fight with Joshua and with Israel, with one accord.” You might say that this is an adumbration of
Psalm 2. Do you remember what Psalm 2
says? That in the great tribulation the kings of the world will gather
themselves together to do battle against the Lord and His anointed one, or His Christ. So you have a repeat, history repeats itself
in certain respects. And here we have
satanically caused… don’t fail to see that behind this physical picture is a
spiritual working of Satan. Satan knows the kingdom is coming in and Satan is
motivating these men to stop it from coming in.
And so Satan is working behind the scenes, and the words in verse 2 that
speak about “they gathered themselves together”
and “with one accord” emphasize the unity of the Canaanites and this is
phenomenal because this is one of the few times in history that the Canaanites
ever got together. They were all loners,
they were all independents, they never could work together, and yet when it
comes to opposing God’s will that was the one thing that solidified them. So now we face a tremendous alliance, notice
it says “all the kings.” This means the
kings of all the land began to seek ways, send letters back and forth saying
how are we going to stop this, already we’ve lost this much territory, we’ve
got to counterattack and drive them back across Jordan.
So beginning in verse 3 we have an incident which is also satanically
propagated. The battle isn’t going to
begin until 10:1. If you read in 10:1,
“Now it came to pass, when Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem, had heard how Joshua
had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it; as he had done to Jericho and her
king, so he had done to Ai and her king; and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had
made peace with Israel, and were among them, [2] That they feared greatly,
because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was
greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty.” Therefore he gathered
them together, verses 3-5, and begins the assault. This war, this battle is begun not by Joshua;
the battle is begun by Satan operating through the Canaanites. And here we have Joshua reacting to a
counterattack.
Now come back to Joshua 9:3 having this.
From 9:3 to the end of chapter 9, what this is a parenthesis. Chapter 10:1 starts the battle. This section, from verses 3-27 explains why
you get involved in a mess in chapter 10.
This is an introduction to what happens in chapter 10; it’s going to
explain why it is that Joshua is counterattacked. But in verse 3 we have a peculiar form of
attack. It’s by the Gibeonites. Who are the Gibeonites? To the northwest of Jerusalem is a city
called Gibeon. And if you look in 9:17
you’ll see that the Gibeonites came from several cities. Here’s a minor alliance, the cities were
Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim.
These were the cities that had united.
Now south of them are a group of these kings, Jerusalem, and we have
Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon and these formed an alliance, evidently part
and parcel with Gibeon. This is all a
mountain area, and you have in this mountainous area an alliance of kings. Now the north part of this alliance decides
things are getting a little too shaky because if you notice the front is moving
west; Joshua’s next plan looks like it’s going to be Gibeon. And Gibeon starts to get a little nervous and
they say well all you guys talk big but I think I’d prefer to go over to Joshua
and rely on the help of my alliance. So
there’s going to be a breakout here, the Gibeonites are going to opt out of
their alliance and they’re going to go north to this other area and ally
themselves, as a group, with Joshua.
This is going to trigger the next incident.
Now in verse 4, “They did work wilily,” isn’t that thrilling King James,
that means they worked skillfully or cleverly, and the next part is all goofed
up, “and they went” and it doesn’t say “made as if they had been ambassadors,”
it’s a word that means they stocked up with provisions, there’s nothing about
ambassadors in the text. “…and they took
old sacks upon their asses, and wine skins, old and torn, and bound up; [5] And
old and patched shoes upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the
bread of their provision was dry and moldy.”
It might have been moldy but that’s not what the Hebrew means, it means
it had crumpled. So they dressed
themselves up to make it appear as though they came from another land.
Now there’s several things we want to see here. There are two basic things I want you to see
before we get involved any further. The
first one is, why do you suppose, looking at the map, besides just the military
factor, why do you suppose the Gibeonites were the ones that reacted the way
that they did when they had no more information than all the rest of the kings
in the alliance. Here you have kings all
over the place, you even have the kings at Ai and Bethel; they didn’t react
like Gibeon. The only explanation we
have is verse 9 and verse 24, in verse 9 when they finally come to Joshua they
make this statement: “From a very far country thy servants have come because of
the name of the LORD thy God’ for we have heard the fame of Him, and all that
He did in Egypt.” Then look at verse 24,
“And they answered Joshua, and said, Because it was certainly told thy
servants, how the LORD thy God commanded his servant, Moses to give you all the
land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you;
therefore, we were very much afraid of our lives because of you and have done
this thing.”
So it appears that these people, at least in part, were believers in
Jesus Christ. They had come to the
conclusion; they had heard the gospel through the grapevine just as Rahab did
in the book of Joshua. And you’re going to see a startling parallel between
Rahab as an individual and the Gibeonites as a group and it illustrates a
principle: God’s judgment always is open
to last minute reception of Jesus Christ, always. When they surrounded Jericho they were going
to annihilate Jericho there was one prostitute, the lowest of the low and this
one lady defied her king, she defied the whole society, the city and she
believed in Jesus Christ and God protected that woman. He threw a net around her of invisible
spiritual power that preserved her from the cracks in the walls and everything
else. And here we find the same thing, the Gibeonites react and respond to all
this information that’s floating throughout the ancient world and the rumors
and so on that are being brought to them, how Israel is doing this, Israel is
doing that, Israel is doing that and the thing they notice is not just the
historical event of Israel doing these things, they see something else, and the
“something else” is the claim that Israel makes. The claim is God is the One
who’s doing it. It’s not just an historic event. True, it is a historic event
but it’s more than that, it is part and parcel of a program of God and
conquest.
And so you can see what a fantastic testimony Israel is having and this
should be a blessing to you as a believer.
If you are living your life as unto the Lord Jesus Christ it means that
people are going to be impressed, and it doesn’t mean the majority are going to
be impressed. Certainly the majority of
people in the land of Palestine weren’t impressed enough to come over to
Joshua’s side; we only read two incidents, Rahab and the Gibeonites. But, they proved that when a person is
operating in the will of God he’s operating in that bottom circle, the known
will of God and carrying it out, people, those whom God is calling, will
respond because of your life. Your life
can be a testimony and will attract people t Jesus Christ but at that moment
are struggling with the issue.
So I want you to notice something, this parallel between them and Rahab,
but I want you to notice another parallel, verses 4-5, they’re going to deceive
Joshua. You’ve got to be careful here
because there are some godly things going on and there are some ungodly things
going on and you’ve got to separate the wheat from the chaff here. On the one hand there is something
tremendous, there are believers coming out of the wall. On the other hand these believers are
carrying with them their old pre-salvation behavior patterns. Remember what Rahab did? She was a prostitute, for all we know she was
an active prostitute after she accepted Christ and it could have been years
after she accepted Christ that she still continued in prostitution. And if that shocks you that’s too bad because
you aren’t oriented to grace yet. But
Rahab could have well continued her prostitution after salvation; that’s no
excuse for you doing it because we have a clear illustration in the New
Testament, but the point is that Rahab didn’t and the known will of God for
Rahab is a very small area and she operated on what she knew and that was
it.
And now we come t these people and they are deceivers, they are liars
and they’re going to try to get into the kingdom of God by their lying and by
their works. So they are believers who
actually spiritually are already in the kingdom, not realizing this however,
they are going to try to get into the physical kingdom of God by
deception. And so like Rahab they’re
going to lie and they’re going to carry into this their previous learned
behavior patterns from their pre-Christian days. And if this seems bad to you, that
prostitutes come into the kingdom of God, liars, deceivers come into the
kingdom of God, [can’t understand words] you were before you became a
Christian.
Verse 6, “And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto
him, and to the men of Israel, We have come from a far country; now, therefore,
make ye a covenant with us.” It’s
important that you see this, it’s not a league, this is the word “covenant” and
it’s the same word used of God’s covenant with Israel. Now what is the issue here with this
covenant? Again let’s go back to the map
where we have the land of Canaan. There
were two parts to Israel’s foreign policy.
Turn back to Deut. 20:10-15, all cities outside of those boundaries on
the map were covered by the foreign policy described in verses 10-15. All cities outside those boundaries were to
be handled in accordance with Deut. 20:10-15, they could make league with them,
if, verse 11, they made peace. In other
words, if there was a city outside the land of Canaan that voluntarily accepted
Yahweh as their God, that entire city could be annexed to Israel and come into
covenant relationship with Israel; there’s nothing wrong with that. I want you to notice, the G-2 squad that the
Gibeonites had was fantastic. They knew
the foreign policy better than the Israeli’s knew it at this point. They realized that they would have to pose as
coming from outside of those boundaries if they were to encourage them to make
a covenant with them.
That’s the whole issue; you won’t understand this unless you know
Deuteronomy 20. Verses 10-15 deal with
the outside; see, they had to pretend they were outside the land because if
they were inside the land, then verses 16-18 dealt with them. And that means no covenant, not covenant
whatever, total slaughter, with exception of believers. Now here’s where you have to weave the good
and the evil together here and keep them separate while you’re doing it. These people were believers; however, they
had human viewpoint as believers and tried to save their necks by means of
their own solution. And so they said to
themselves, look, the Bible says, Deut. 20:10-15, they probably had access to
this, their intelligence squad, we’re going to get slaughtered. Now that is not true; why isn’t that true? Because God always is open to believers; He
didn’t slaughter Rahab. These believers
would have been preserved by some other means than making a covenant; they
would have been preserved, they would have been saved. But they didn’t know this, they were
operating on human viewpoint and so they had their own little gimmick cooked
up, their own system of salvation, it was going to be convincing them that they
weren’t so bad as they actually were in God’s sight.
What’s the significance of this?
There’s a tremendous lesson here for us today and applies directly to the
area of evangelism and that is that every city inside this territory was under
the judgment of God… under the judgment of God!
God had totally and emphatically rejected this entire Canaanite
population. An individual could receive
Yahweh as their Savior, had to first understand that they were damned
individuals because they were in this area, they were in the world that God had
condemned and that issue had to be faced.
And then secondarily God, if they had received Him personally by faith,
then they would be accepted individually, like Rahab was. But, notice what’s happening here; these
believers are trying to deny that they are under the sentence of death and they
are trying to get into the kingdom of God too fast; they’re trying to pose as
sitting outside, who are not under the direct judgment of God.
And so this would be analogous in our time to evangelism that goes like
this: Do you want a plan for your life, don’t you have a plan for your life;
that’s correct, so far so good. And then
never failing to point out the reason why you don’t have a plan for your life
is because you are a sinner that is guilty before the holy God. And so much of our evangelism is like what
the Gibeonites are doing here; they are believers, true; they get into the kingdom,
true. But they’re trying to get into the
kingdom bypassing the very critical issue that they stand under the judgment of
God and they are trying to deny this and get out from under this sentence. And so this is what is wrong, I feel, with a
lot of evangelism that tries to get people to believe in Christ without going
to the very sticky issue that unless you accept Christ you are damned to
hell. That’s not a positive form of
evangelism but nevertheless it’s there, it’s part of the Bible. And so you see this has to be faced and this
is what the whole issue of Joshua 9, the first part is about.
Let’s return to Joshua 9; we have people who are believers, they are
trying to lie and bribe their way into the kingdom when it’s totally
unnecessary, God would have accepted these people, but they’re trying to do it
by means of a covenant in verses 6. In
other words, some form of salvation by works and the Israelites are stupid
enough to buy it, one of the greatest deceptions ever worked.
So in verse 7, the mean of Israel begin to be skeptical, and this is
good, and they “said unto the Hivites,” notice this, it doesn’t say the
Gibeonites here. Do you know why? Because the author of this book is intending
you to see something here. It’s a little
sarcastic. In other words, verses 7-8
show the Jews coming to the Gibeonites, they’re carrying on a conversation; the
Gibeonites are posing as non-Gibeonites; they’re posing as people who are not
truly what they are and so the author when he presents this to you and he’s
drawing the scene in front of you, he says look at the stupid idiots here
they’re talking to these Hivites, and if you look in Deut. 7:1 it lists the
Hivites as one of the damned races of Canaan.
So you see the author, of course inspired by the Holy Spirit, is trying
to show you something here in verse 7, he’s saying look at this, here are these
people pretending to be what they aren’t and they really are Hivites which
stand under the wrath of God and these Hivites are saying, etc. he goes on. And then the men of Israel come back and they
say, “Perhaps you dwell among us;” and the word “dwell among us” means maybe
you form a category of Deut. 20:16-18, that’s what he’s talking about
here.
Verse 8 Joshua begins, and I want you to see carefully as we move
through these verses, verses 8-15, I want you to see how a great believer gets
taken. Joshua got took, and this is one of the rare times that this man fell
apart. And he made a mistake here and
this mistake is for your benefit as believers so you won’t make the same
mistake, so watch carefully. This man is
going to make a blunder and it’s been recorded by the Holy Spirit to teach us
so we don’t make the same blunder.
Verse 8, he begins; he starts his interrogation. It’s very abrupt in the Hebrew and it gives
you the indication when you translate this that he’s kind of hacked, a very
gruff reply, “who are you? And from where do you come?” So far so good, he wants to find out where
they’re from because he knows Deut. 20; everybody knows the will of God
here. Keep this in mind because the
deception is going to start right here.
Everybody knows the will of God is Deut. 20:10-15 or Deut. 20:16-18. That’s known to both sides in this case. Both sides know this, both sets of believers
know this. Now the [can’t understand
words] is around whether you’re going to apply this will of God, and so this
problem is analogous to times when Satan confuses you in applying Bible
doctrine to a problem in your life. This
would be analogous. He is trying to confuse
you, trying to confuse me, even though we know the Biblical principle he’s
trying to confuse its application. So
beginning here we find both sides know the will of God; that isn’t the problem,
the problem is going to be in how they apply the known will of God.
So we start in verses 9; let’s read this: “And they said unto him, From
a very far country thy servants have come because of the name of the LORD thy
God; for we have heard the fame of him, and all that He did in Egypt. [10] And
all that He did to the two kings of the Amorites, that were beyond the Jordan,
to Sihon, king of Heshbon, and to Og, king of Bashan, who was at Ashtaroth.
[11] Wherefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us,
saying, Take provisions with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say
unto them, We are your servants; therefore, now, make ye a league with us. [12]
This our bread we took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day we
came forth to go unto you’ but no, behold, it is dry, and it is moldy; [13] And
these skins of wine, which we filled, were new, and, behold, they are torn; and
these our garments and our shoes have become old by reason of the very long
journey. [14] And the men took of their provisions, and asked not counsel at the
mouth of the LORD. [15] And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with
them, to let them live; and the princes of the congregation swore unto
them.”
Next week we’ll see, incidentally, one of the problems of the Vietnam
question about when you make a treaty you stick by it, you can see now this is
a bad treaty. And you’re going to see if
you read the rest of this chapter God required him to stick with it, even
though it’s a bad treaty to begin with.
But let’s look at verse 9, come back to verse 9 and see where is it
they’re getting off the track, something has gone wrong here. You can just flippantly refer to verse 14 but
I want you to see something before you get to verse 14 too fast. They answered him in verse 9 and they give
him in verse 9 and 10 a partial answer.
Notice in verse 10 what they tell him, “And all that He did” Yahweh “to
the two kings of the Amorites, that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon, king of
Heshbon, and to Og, king of Bashan, who was at Ashtaroth.” So what’s left out? In other words there are a lot of events that
have happened that they are conveniently leaving out. And if you look at verse 2 you know they knew
the other event because if you look at verse 3 what does it say they knew? They knew about the fall of Jericho; they
knew about this, but they pretended to be afar off, so they just conveniently
said we don’t know anything about recent news, when actually it was the recent
news that prompted them to do what they did.
If they had told Joshua they had heard about Jericho obviously they’d be
nearby and so they conveniently eliminated the news that they really had in
verse 3.
And so we come to the first failure on the part of both Joshua and the
people of Israel and this is our failure too.
We fail to understand a principle of thinking and that is the logical
test. The logical test is does it all
hang together logically; does what you tell me fit logically. Does it fit logically with the Bible,
etc? Does it fit together? Remember the test of Deut. 13? The teacher’s teachings must fit the
teachings of Moses. But notice, the
Bible when it gives you the logical test, Deut. 13 says if the teacher’s
teachings don’t fit together, kill him.
But it doesn’t say to do anything if it does fit together. So the logical test can only falsify but it
cannot verify. In other words, it can
only disprove, it can only point out what is wrong but it cannot prove, and
Joshua is being taken here, because in verses 10 and 11 their story fits
together all right, but just because it fits together doesn’t mean it’s
right. The logical test does not prove,
it can only disprove. So the most that
can be said that by the end of verse 11 is well, it fits what we know, and
that’s all you can say. It doesn’t
emphatically prove it certainly to be true.
So immediately the logical test is being used in a wrong way here, and
I’ve seen many believers do the same thing.
Logical test, does it hang together; just because something seems to fit
together does not prove it’s true because there could be something else out
there that you don’t know yet that would falsify it. And there was something,
verse 3, see if verse 3 had been added to verse 10 what would that do to the
Gibeonites; probably earned them a quick trip to the hangman’s noose. So verse 3 is your missing data; verse 3 is
what makes verses 10 and 11 incomplete and even though verses 10 and 11 by
themselves seem to be okay, Joshua and the Christian leaders at this point are
wrong. Just because something seems to
fit together isn’t proof; all you can say is it doesn’t have any apparent error
in it so far.
Now watch what happens in verse 12-13, “This our bread which we took hot
for our provision out of our houses on the day we came forth to go unto you;
but now, behold, it is dry, and become crumbly,” not moldy. [13] “And these
skins of wine, which we filled, were new,” etc.
What kind of evidence is that?
Empirical evidence. And so you
come to the second test, the empirical test and the empirical test given to you
in Deuteronomy is also a test to falsify but not verify, to only disprove;
that’s the only way you can read that text.
If it doesn’t fit then it’s wrong but if it does fit, it still doesn’t
finally prove the case. So what these
men have done here is what believers do over and over and over and over again,
just because a picture seems to fit together, just because it seems to fit the
data it’s immediately accepted as the truth.
And this is an error that people are doing in our own day. There is a final problem here, and this shows
you something and that is how does a Christian know something to be certainly
true, because obviously Joshua and the men are struggling with the problem. How can they be certain these people are who
they claim to be? Can they ever get
enough information? Here they didn’t
have enough information.
So how can you be certain of the will of God, there’s always another
piece of information that you can get hold of.
How can you be certain then, knowing there is always another piece out
there that can blow the whole thing, as there was very clearly here; this was a
total deception. And this is how Satan
always works in Scripture. He reverses
these two tests; that is how you deceive somebody; you get them to misapply
Deut. 13 and Deut. 18; you make something that appears to hold together and you
make something that appears to fit and hope the guy doesn’t press it too
far. That’s how you deceive somebody;
you don’t come up to them and say hey, I’m Satan, I’m going to make you sing
today; it doesn’t work, that’s not deception. So this is how Satan does it and
he always does this, this is the guts of deception right here, you reverse
these two tests and you make them misapply.
And without reading verse 14 for a moment, because I want to hold that
in the background, verse 15. “And Joshua
made peace with them, and made a covenant with them, to let them live,” now he
is in contrast and violation of Deut. 20.
He has violated the will of God and he’s wrong and he’s out of
fellowship as a nation; this whole thing, they have made a bad decision, it’s
been based on partial information and they are completely wrong, they are out
of it, and they’re asking for trouble and it’s going to require God’s grace to
reverse the effects of this very, very bad, unwise decision. What should they have done; let’s go back to
verse 14.
In verse 14 we have the other factor that the Christians always have to
take into account and that is, when you have human viewpoint sitting here and
you have these things, the logic and the empirical data, the shoes, the bread,
etc. all of this, this can go either way.
The logic and the empirical test can go either way. The thing that makes the difference is the
Lord Himself; He alone has perfect and total knowledge and therefore the will
of God has to be His will derived directly from Him. And so therefore in verse 14, “And the men
took of their provisions,” that means they bought the whole story, and sat down
and had some hamburger with them or something, moldy bread, hamburgers on moldy
bread. So they showed themselves
friendly. And they “asked not counsel at
the mouth of the LORD.” Do you know what
“the mouth of the LORD is?” Turn to Num.
27:21, in Numbers 27:21 we have the mouth of the Lord as Joshua knew it in his
generation. See, God didn’t speak
directly to Joshua except at rare times; with Moses He did.
Num. 17:21, “And he shall stand before Eleazar, the priest, who shall
ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the LORD; at his word
shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the
children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.” Now the Urim and the Thummim are the… it’s
not really clear what they are but they were something on the breastplate of
the high priest that was a yes/no answer.
That’s all it conveyed, no direct revelation. It was just yes/no, yes/no, it was either or,
and it was the Urim and the Thummim that was to be consulted and this
interpreted the data. In other words,
that’s how they got their certainty; they went directly to the Lord at the Urim
and the Thummim. And this is the point
where they should have checked it out.
In other words, the data itself did not falsify; if it had falsified
they wouldn’t have had to go to the Lord.
If they’d shown there was a hitch in their story they could have
disproved it; if the data, the empirical data [can’t understand word] they
could have disproved that. But they had
to finally, if that failed and they couldn’t get a hold of it either by Deut.
13 or 18, the next test was Num. 27 and that was the Urim/Thummim test, and
that is to find out whether the Lord Himself would give an okay.
Now how does this correspond to us today? The thing where the Urim and the Thummim
correspond being on the breastplate of the high priest is the conscience of the
believer. Turn to Rom. 14. This is a lost term today; in Rom. 14:23, on
doubtful things, Paul lays down a principle, “And he that doubts is condemned”
or disciplined “if he eats, because he eats not of faith; for whatever is not
of faith is sin.” Here’s the bottom
circle, the known will of God for you as a believer. If you know the will of God you do it; there’s
a characteristic of the will of God, there’s a certainty, there’s an assurance
about it. And if there’s a doubt, the doubt is out here, and in order to go in
this thing that’s a doubtful thing, Paul says just don’t do it; if in doubt,
don’t! If you can’t get a green light
from your conscience on it, you are to refrain from it.
You see, in verse 23 when it’s talking about this it’s talking about
something that might be right on objective grounds. Notice this, on objective grounds this might
be right, it might be okay to eat, nothing wrong with eating these things
mentioned in chapter 14. The point that
Paul is trying to make is that the believer doesn’t know that yet. You see these are immature believers and they
don’t know whether to do this or not and so they look at some other believer
and they see him going in there and they say gee, I can’t do that. And they just wouldn’t have the knowledge,
they wouldn’t have the known will of God for them, and they couldn’t eat. See, eating this meat, this particular kind
of meat is out here; later on when they grew as believers and mature their
bottom circle would include that and so they could eat that and not get out of
fellowship. But at this point in their
life they can’t do it. They can’t do it
without getting out of fellowship and walking in doubt. And this, if you want a subjective [can’t
understand word] on faith, walking by faith is really walking in certainty, if
you want the New Testament thrust here.
And walking out of faith is walking in doubt; there is just a nagging
uncertainty about this. This is why the
New Testament says even if you can’t get agreement from your conscience, just
don’t do it.
Let’s take another case, let’s suppose we have a Christian and say the
Christians gang up on him to go witnessing, just as an illustration. So now we have this kind of thing; he is a
new Christian and he may have unsettled questions or something, and he
shouldn’t because if he was won to Christ in the right way he wouldn’t have the
problem, the trouble is not many are won to Christ in the right way so
therefore they doubt the gospel after they believe it. So he’s not sure of the gospel, he’s not sure
enough to stand up there and talk to somebody about Jesus Christ. He can’t do it in faith because he can’t get
a green light from his conscience. So
what does he do? He’s around 20 other
Christians, and oh, brother, if you don’t go out witnessing you’re not going to
get your brownie points today, this, that and the other thing. So they start
putting the heat on, and maybe it’s unconscious; you know, you’re number 20 in
a group of 20 and all 19 go trotting around and they’re talking about Christ
and it makes you feel like kind of a clod.
So there’s an unconscious… sometimes Christians don’t mean to do it,
it’s just an unconscious thing.
Sometimes it’s malicious but not usually, it’s just an unconscious
thing. So the group pressure is put on,
and so what does brother X do? He goes
out and does it even while he is doubting.
And that is a violation of Rom. 14:23.
You see, he hasn’t followed his conscience. He’ll get there with growth, he ought to
straighten it out because it shows you something wrong about brother X, he
doesn’t know the gospel too well. But
nevertheless, if that’s the case with Brother X and he’s having the problem his
job is to grow until he can witness with confidence, and therefore in
conscience he can do it by faith.
What’s happened in our day? We
have made faith a problem of the intellect and it isn’t. The Bible makes faith a problem of the
conscience; this is something the Puritans saw.
Ever wonder why in the Puritan theology there’s always, almost what
appears to you as morbidity about sin.
Did you ever notice this, you read through this and they’re always
talking about sin and really in grotesque ways.
Read Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God, he has everybody hanging over the pit of hell,
and you wonder… I often wonder, why did these people do that because Jonathan
Edwards was a brilliant man, this wasn’t just the frontier fire and brimstone
type, it wasn’t that kind of thing where you just scare people into the
kingdom. This was something else, the
Puritans, after he was a Christian still emphasized hell. Why did they have
this morbid thing, what appears to us as morbid. I think the answer is right here; the
Puritans realized that if he was a man of faith, he had to walk with his
conscience clear, and so therefore it was a continual struggle for the Puritan
to keep his conscience clear because he knew and he latched onto the principle
in the New Testament, he couldn’t walk by faith, he couldn’t faith it in other
words; he had to have his conscience clear so it is always a problem of
cleansing, cleansing, cleansing, cleansing, making the conscience clear so that
I am standing before God totally acceptable and now I can walk in
confidence.
Turn to 1 Cor. 8:7 because I want to show you something about the
relation of the intellect and the conscience.
“However, there is not in every man that knowledge [gnosis]; for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it
as a thing offered unto an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is
defiled.” See, the conscience that is
weak is not filled with the norms and the standards from the intellect; the
intellect is the source of the standards for the conscience, but once those
standards get over into the conscience, the conscience latches on and begins to
use them, then you can go, you can move.
Now turn to 1 John 1, this is why John points out a very vital principle
of Christian joy and Christian fellowship.
A Christian that is walking in doubt can never be a Christian that’s
really joyful because one of the most nagging things that cuts you at the very
deepest levels of your heart is when you go through life and you really aren’t
sure that you’re walking in God’s will.
It just psychically drains you but the thing that energizes the believer
is when he knows he’s in the will of God, there’s something exciting, there’s
something lifting, there’s something elevating about it that enables him to stare
death in the face, literally. In any
situation he can just stand relaxed because he knows, I don’t care what you
think, I’m in the will of God, you can think all you want to and Satan can
throw in all his artillery, it doesn’t bother me a bit, I’m in the will of
God. There’s a relaxed attitude that
comes from this, etc.
Now 1 John 1:4, “These things we write unto you, that your joy may be
full.” “…that your joy may be full,” and
what is the first thing John deals with to get the joy? He deals with “walking in the light” and the
cleansing in verse 7, “the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all
sin.” That cleansing there is not really
salvation; John is talking to people who are already saved. What he’s talking about is the cleansing that
comes from real confession of sin and that confession leads to a cleansing that
cannot be reproduced or imitated by any psychological gimmick. There’s a deep seated cleansing and that’s
why in 1 John 3, that’s why he says in prayer, here are some practical
applications of this, in prayer, verse 19-22, “And hereby we know that we are
of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.” There’s your certainty, no doubt there. Then he explains why you can have certainty.
[20] “For if our heart condemn us,” that is if you don’t have certainty, just
remember, “God is greater than our heart, and He knows all things.” And what he’s talking about there is a
believer is out of fellowship and you don’t have this confidence, and your
heart condemns you, there’s your conscience operating.
But then in verse 21, if you utilize 1 John 1:9 and you have confessed,
and there is a cleansing, then in verse 21, “Beloved, if our heart condemn us
not, then have we certainty [confidence] toward God.” There’s no statistical knowledge of God,
God’s Word is not 99% probable, it’s certain and it comes about by the
cleansing of the conscience. That’s what
John means here when he says in verse 21, “we have certainty,” there’s no problem
here, there’s no intellectual problem with how do you know this. That’s something that’s manufactured by human
viewpoint philosophy. It’s something we
have to deal with, incidentally, true, but nevertheless in our Christian life
the confidence comes from a cleansed conscience.
And then in verse 22, the final application, that is why verse 22 is a
prayer promise, “And whatever we ask,” notice “whatsoever we ask,” it’s
qualified by verse 21, you know the will of God, you have certainty, but the
request is the will of God so you pray it also with certainty, knowing He also
will give you an answer. That’s the
whole thrust of the passage. There’s
never a hesitation in this kind of a prayer.
You don’t say oh God, please do this for me because I like it, or I hope
or I think it’s Your will. Before the
prayer is actually made John says there’s some research done, is the request
doctrinal, is the request what God wants you to pray at that moment? And if it is, then verse 22 takes over,
“Whatever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do
those things that are pleasing in His sight.”
With our heads bowed…