Joshua 19
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right – 9:1-27
Last time we got through verse 15 of Joshua 9. We learned many things and this Gibeonite
incident is good review because the Gibeonite incident is going to be a lesson
in many different particulars. This is
the situation as it develops in the 9th chapter. Joshua has his base camp at a place called
Gilgal. To the southwest is a place
called
We said, therefore, that chapter 9 is the beginning of a series of
attacks on Joshua and they depict spiritual principles in the Christian life
where Satan attacks us. Now if you will
notice on this chart I have here the area of the central highland
confederacy. There is a group of cities
here, Eglon,
So therefore they decided to do something about it, and they decided to
toss their allegiance into
It indicates two things; it indicates first that the Gibeonites had a
tremendous intelligence system; they knew exactly, not only the fact that the
Israelites were conquering but they also knew something else. They knew that there was a two-fold foreign
policy to the nation
Now why is this? Right here we
have a principle of warfare. The
principle is that noncombatants who are killed are not necessarily
noncombatants. What we say is that as
Bible-believing Christians we should seize this opportunity to review in our
minds the principles the Bible gives us in this very touchy area of
warfare. We reviewed the doctrine of
just war; Christians down through the ages have always held to just war, and we
have said that the Vietnam War is a just war.
But tonight we want to deal with two principles of war, one of which
comes out here, one of which comes out later.
The first principle taken from Deut. 20 and this problem of the
difference in policies is that men, women and children can be considered combatant. Just because they are not armed does not mean
they are noncombatant. Any five year old
child can put a mine in the way of an armored column and blow it up as
effectively as a 25 year old child; it doesn’t take any brains to put a mine on
a road to kill somebody. And you don’t
have to be a man to shoot a rifle, etc.
So don’t be hooked into this thing, just because somebody isn’t armed
that makes them noncombatant. Nonsense;
if that’s true then God’s wrong because in Deut.
For example, you need not but go back to World War II when American
strategic bombers were bombing Germany, they bombed and destroyed hundreds and
thousands of civilians; they were unarmed, but they were combatant, they were
busily involved in making more materials to support those armies, therefore by
legal definition they are combatants, therefore it is not a sin to kill
them. American bombing attacks,
therefore, were not wrong as far as the Christian. The Christian who was the American pilot
could in good conscience bomb the targets, knowing he would destroy women who
worked in the factories, probably children who worked in the factories because
this was God’s judgment upon the combatant segment of the population.
So by Deut. 20 we now have principles we can bring to bear. This is not always true, for in verses 10-15
you remember, covering the cities out here, cities that would be to the east,
these cities were cities which the Israelites would come to and they would
proclaim peace unto them, and if the city did not submit to Jehovah, then only
the males over 20 were killed. Now why
the distinction? Because in that particular standpoint, from God’s viewpoint,
the women and the children were noncombatant.
Why? Because they were not
responsibly involved in the decision to go to war.
So therefore we find within the pages of describing the foreign policy
of
Now we come to this problem of the Gibeonites; the Gibeonites are coming
to them in subterfuge, for in verses 9-12 they deceive Joshua. Now what is their thinking here? What they’re worried about is that they know
they’re in category one, not category two; category one are the cities that
will be totally annihilated; category two are the cities that can make peace
with
The same thing could have happened here; God could have taken care of
the Gibeonite believers; they didn’t have to deceive but they did because like
Rahab they came from a deceptive background.
Remember what Rahab did? She
lied, when the soldiers came to the door and they said have you got Jews in
here, she said no, Jews, where’s the Jews, never heard the word. So she put on this front, the phony front,
and she deceived. And so similarly the
Gibeonites, it’s just part of their non-Christian background coming to the
surface, they can’t cope with the situation so they have to try some human
viewpoint solution.
From the standpoint of the Gibeonites they don’t really consider this to
be wrong, but now what we want to do is to find out Joshua’s standpoint. We’ve looked at the Gibeonites, now let’s
come around and look at Joshua’s side of the story. And we begin to do this we pick up some more
principles. First of all, last time, the
principle that we learned last time in verses 1-15 and then tonight we’ll close
out verses 16-7. In verses 1-15 Joshua
learned a very vital lesson; we can learn from this also. And that is we have the classic means Satan
uses to deceive. The means that Satan
uses to deceive is to get us to operate independently of the revelation of
God. Stated in a nutshell this is how it
operates.
First, if you’ll notice the first step in the downfall of Joshua is in
9:8-10, because in these three verses Joshua asks them to explain why it is
that they’ve come. We know from verse 3
that they were of the land, they knew about the thing that happened at Jericho
and Ai. But if you look carefully
comparing verse 3 with verses 9-10 you’ll see that the content of verse 3 is
not stressed in verses 9-10. In other
words, they told a story which was partially true, it just had a little bit
left off, that’s all. But within the
area that they told they were logically consistent; it did check out. So Joshua, operating on the logical test of
Deut. 13, the principle taught there, not exactly the test, namely the test, is
it consistent with itself; yes, the Gibeonite story was consistent with
itself. So it passed the logical
test. But please remember, as I’ve
warned you, I warned you when we went through Deuteronomy, Deut. 13 is very
carefully worded. The more I work with
this the more I see God in this every, every syllable. It’s very carefully worded so that it only
eliminates the error but it does not prove the truth. The logical test only shows if something is
wrong but it doesn’t show if it’s right.
In other words, in this case the story checked out; you can look from
verses 8-10 and they are all perfectly consistent, nothing wrong with that,
nothing there that would arouse your suspicions. It all fits logically together. And we know from now that verse 3 was the
missing element.
So we have a graphic illustration of how Satan deceives. Satan’s method of deception is always partial
truth. There’s not a cult, for example,
on earth that’s totally wrong; there’s not one false religious system that is
totally wrong in all its details—not one, because if it was it’d be very
obvious it was wrong. Satan never
operates this way. So when you come to
your cult they will use words like Jesus Christ, etc. etc. etc. and use many
things that are familiar to you so it sounds nice. That’s one example and we could cite many
other examples but the principle is that verses 8-10 warn the believer against
putting his absolute confidence in logical tests. In other words, if the logical test worked
and you can see something obviously wrong, throw it out. In other words, you can rely on it, if the
logical test comes up with a red light, you’ve got something, you’ve nailed the
thing, you can chuck it. If you ever do
any research work in science, those of you who work in statistics know the
thing you hope and pray for when you’re doing your experiments is falsification
of the hypothesis because you know if you set a hypothesis, you falsify it,
you’ve learned something definite, you’ve got a grip on something. Like Thomas Edison, you may not have made an
electric bulb but at least you know how not to make it. You’ve learned something concrete.
The second thing, the second area is verses 11-13. Here we have the empirical test. What is the empirical test? That’s found in
Deut. 18 and that simply is does the thing fit history and experience. Does it connect, does it link up and it
does. There’s nothing wrong with verses
11-13, they present all the evidence. Verse 11 they say our elders told us
this, and verse 12, see our bread, we took it hot and now it’s dry and become
crumbly, verse 13, see the bottles of wine when we filled and they’ve become
old. See, here’s the empirical evidence,
it all fits; logically and empirically it all fits. There’s no error in this, therefore you would
think it’s okay but is absolutely wrong.
How do detect this kind of an error?
In other words, the logical test and the empirical test filter out most
of the errors, but you haven’t got a hundred percent sure focus, so how do you
filter out these devices. The answer is
given in verse 14; they should have taken “counsel at the mouth of the
Lord.” And by this we drew the analogy
between the Urim and the Thummim and the conscience of the believer. This is why Paul in Rom. 14:23 says if you’re
in doubt, don’t. Again using the two
circles that we have developed, this is the circle of your destiny; the circle
of your election, this is the circle that God has called you to as He did
Abraham, He said Abraham, I promise you the seed, the blessing, and I promise
you the real estate. That was Abraham’s
top circle, that was Abraham’s destiny to which Abraham was called, to which
Abraham knew certainly that he would one day attain. That top circle, by the way, is not a
theoretically unattainable ideal; it will ultimately be attained. Now the bottom circle is the will of God now
in capital N-O-W, in other words, this bottom circle changes. Example, Abraham didn’t every day have to
sacrifice his son Isaac, there was only one time, only morning did the alarm go
off and he got up and he said today I sacrifice my son, and tomorrow it was not
part of the bottom circle. The bottom
circle in other words, is this moment’s step toward the top circle. It is the step that God wants you to take now
to move on to the next position which is this top circle.
So we have this bottom circle; now that bottom circle we can also call
the circle of certainty; and outside the circle is doubt. You can look at it this way: in fellowship,
out of fellowship; we can also look upon it as in certainty or in doubt. And if you are in the bottom circle, you are
in fellowship with the Lord; you have a certainty about it. When you are not in
fellowship your heart condemns you, conscience works and so you don’t have
certainty. So you can look upon this as
the sphere of certainty at this moment.
This is what you have to protect yourself in your prayer, that you don’t
pray Satan’s prayers. You pray prayers
that you can pray and still stay in the bottom circle. In other words you pray prayers the content
of which you know definitely to be the will of God, and if you don’t know that
the content of your prayer is in the will of God you can’t pray it without
being fake about it, so you have “fakey” prayer. The only way you can have prayers of faith is
to make sure the content or the content of the petition is actually in the
Lord’s will, and this, of course, requires a conscience.
Now if you’ll turn briefly to Romans 4 we’ll see how this worked with
Abraham. This should be a classical
passage for every believer because you encounter every 24 hours the same kind
of struggles Abraham faces in the area of faith. I want you to notice something here, the
difference between Abraham and Joshua.
Joshua looked at the logical evidence and he looked at the empirical
evidence and he stopped there, it’s okay, make a covenant. So he gave it a quick run-through. Logically, empirically and then it’s all
right. In other words, he operated only
with his intellect, but he had no conscience; conscience didn’t come into the
picture so now we have Romans 4 and you’ll notice the contrast. First verse 19, Abraham having the problem of
his top circle; what was the top circle of Abraham? A seed, God promised him a seed forever, in
other words, Abraham was going to have a baby boy and this baby boy would be
the father of many nations and it would go out, etc.
Now Rom. 4:19 occurs before God gives him his son… before God gives him
his son! And so in verse 19, “And being
not weak in faith he considered his own body,” it’s not “he considered not,”
the not shouldn’t even be there, “he considered his own body now dead, when he
was about an hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.” In other words, he looks at the empirical
evidence, unlike Joshua, however, he doesn’t stop with just that; he looks at
it and he sees that his body is incapable of having children, that his wife is;
now what does he do? This is the
empirical evidence. By the way, this
should show you a vital lesson, faith is not blind; there’s no such thing in
Scripture as blind faith. You hear that,
that ought to be abolished in your vocabulary.
There is no such thing as blind faith, like there is no such thing as
blind love. Real love in Scripture is
never blind. And if you have the kind of
a love affair where you have to close your eyes and hope you’ve got the wrong
kind; you don’t have love Biblically.
It’s the same thing with faith, if you have the kind of faith that has
to shut its eyes to evolution, biological facts, fossils and everything else,
you’ve got the wrong kind of faith; it’s not related to the Bible.
So in Romans 4:19 we learn the empirical evidence is important but when
he looked at this he did something else, and that “something else” is found in
verse 20, “But he doubted [staggered] not at the promise of God through
unbelief, but was strengthened,” it’s not “was strong” like your King James
reads, it is a verb in the passive voice, the subject receives the action. And so what this means is as he looked on this
evidence of verse 19 and as he looked on he didn’t doubt, not “staggered” but
he didn’t doubt, and not only didn’t he doubt, but he was actually strengthened
in his faith. Now how could he
conceivable be strengthened in his faith as he was trying to grapple with the
obstacle? We have this in the last part
of verse 20 and 21; we have two participles, participles always modify the main
verb and in this case we have aorist participles and aorist participles always precede
the action, or 95% of the time, as they do here, precede the action of the main
verb. So we have “giving glory to God,
and being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to
perform.” If you want to read this in
the logical sequence it should be read in, you should say: Abraham first gave
glory to God and He was fully persuaded, and therefore he was strengthened. The
strengthening occurs after those two.
Now what does it mean that Abraham gave glory to God. Well, I presume, as I recreate the scene,
that Abraham was grappling with the problem of infertility and as he looked at
the problem of infertility he must have realized, coming as he did, according
to Joshua 24:2, out of the Mesopotamian pantheon where all the Mesopotamian
gods were nothing but personified nature forces, he must have reasoned within
himself, if I’ve got this kind of problem and it’s beyond the normal natural
processes of reproduction, then the gods of reproduction being nothing but the
personification of the natural process, can’t solve my problem. In other words, Abraham, by looking at the
problem, saw the problem exceeded the capacity of the Mesopotamian gods’
solution; in other words, their gods were too small. And so ironically the greater the obstacle
the more anti-human viewpoint it becomes because… you might have an obstacle,
it may be this big today, and you may be tempted to try human viewpoint
solution and you leap over it and you can get over it the first time. So what does God do? It’s like you’re learning to run hurdles in
track, they elevate the hurdle up again so the hurdle goes up, it cranks up 3”
and now you come along again and again
you can just barely make it with your own little concocted human
viewpoint solution. So you glide over it
and so God says all right, you still haven’t learned to trust me, now I’m going
to crank it all the way up and now you run and bang, oh God, why did this
happen to me kind of thing. And it’s the
reaction of the fact that you’ve got this obstacle that is bigger than your
human viewpoint solution and this forces you back to a divine viewpoint
solution.
This, by the way, is the reason why many of us have obstacles in our
lives. It’s simply a teaching device, a
device by which God intends to break down apparently deep seated human
viewpoint reactions we all have even though we don’t want to admit them and
even though we don’t like them, oftentimes we’ve programmed ourselves from our
carnality to respond to various areas of life on a human viewpoint plain; we’ve
trained ourselves that way, we’re almost unconscious of it, it’s like breaking
a bad habit, we’re almost unconscious of it.
And so what God does, He begins because of the doctrine of
predestination says He is going to get us in shape to be conformed to Christ
for eternity and so He begins to work on us in these areas. And so He begins to close in on what He says,
you have a bad human viewpoint habit because every time you react to this kind
of a problem, bang, you go naturalistic, you go human viewpoint. So God says I’m going to have a little
training program, I am your heavenly Father, a father’s job is to care for his
sons; so I’m going to care for you and to care for you and express My love to
you I’m going to drop an obstacle in your lap that is so big that nothing you
can think of is going to solve it until you get straightened out and I’m doing
this not to be a meany to you; I’m doing this because I love you and I want
most of all to see that you’re straightened out. So bang, in comes the
obstacle. Now what happens? The very obstacle tends to falsify your human
viewpoint solution. In other words, what
couldn’t have been falsified by just passively sitting back there and saying
well, logically it fits, empirically it fits, it must be right. What God does,
he moves in and He gives you more data you might say, by His grace in your life
He gives more data into the problem so you begin to say no, this doesn’t fit
and go back to Joshua 9, this is what God could have given Joshua at verse
14.
In other words, at this point God could have said no; why, because God
is an infinite God, God is absolute and because God is infinite He’s
omniscient, He knows all things, and therefore He gives us orientation. So we have the fact that Joshua ignored special
revelation. I want you to notice something
else here too; this is not the kind of… this is a sneaky kind of problem we all
face many, many times, notice the problem that Joshua faces here is not
initially one of knowing the will of God, because he has Deut. 20, the
Gibeonites have Deut. 20, everybody, all the parties to the disagreement know
what God’s will is. The problem he has
is in applying God’s will to that specific point in space and time. That’s the problem. And oftentimes you’ll find that, you know the
general will of God, you’ve had it preached to you, you know this, but it’s the
question of grappling with it in that situation. And this is the thing that Joshua is
struggling with here; he knows Deut. 20 but what he’s got to find out is aid in
applying it right now. And therefore
verse 14 is actually analogous to a moment by moment relationship with
Christ. You see, Jehovah was the king of
the nation and He ruled the nation from this place called “the tent of God.” Now you watch this word “tent of God” because
this is going to occur again tonight; the “tent of God” or “tabernacle.”
The tent of God or the tabernacle, here is where the king is ruling the
nation. Now notice the difference here
because this will sharpen up perspective in your Christian life. God is ruling the nation two ways; He’s
ruling the nation one way through the Law, the Law was that which was given,
revealed and everybody could read it; there’s the general will of God. But He is working with the nation on a moment
by moment basis in aiding them in applying the Law. So similarly you have contact with God at two
points. You’re a believer tonight, you
have contact with God at two places; the first place you have contact with God is
right here in that this book gives you the general outline and plan of God. That would be analogous to Deut. 20. But you need a moment by moment relationship
with Christ to give you the guidance in applying this. And this is where conscience comes in and the
Urim and Thummim came in nationally in verse 14.
Now in verses 16-27 we have a tremendous lesson and this is going to
give us the second principle applying to the Vietnam thing. And that is in chapter 9:16-27 we have how to
recover from a satanic deception. This
is a very important passage because it gives us the principles to do after you
made a goof. There are certain things
not to do after you’ve goofed and the tendency for Christians, oftentimes they
suddenly realize I’ve been tricked. The
point is the Christian will sit down and he will suddenly realize that I have
been misled, Satan has deceived me, I’m wrong.
And it’s worse if you’re in a position of leadership, you’ve probably
led a hundred or so believers down the wrong path and you suddenly wake up to
this and now what do you do? The
tendency immediately is to panic and undo everything that you did while you
were being deceived. And that is
wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right
and you’re going to see in 9:16-27.
“And it came to pass at the end of three days, after they had made a
league with them, that they heard that they were their neighbors, and that they
dwelt among them. [17] And the children of Israel journeyed, and came unto
their cities on the third day. Now their
cities were Gideon, and Cephirah, and Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim. [18] And the children of Israel smote them
not, because the princes of the congregation had sworn unto them by the LORD
God of Israel. And all the congregation
murmured against the princes. [19] But all the princes said unto all the congregation,
We have sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel; now, therefore, we may not
touch them. [20] This we will do to them: we will even let them live, lest
wrath be upon us, because of the oath which we swore unto them. [21] And the
princes said unto them, Let them live, but let them be hewers of wood and
drawers of water unto all the congregation; as the princes had promised them.
[22] And Joshua called for them, and he spoke unto them, saying, Why have ye
beguiled us, saying, We are very far from you; when ye dwell among us? [23] Now,
therefore, ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being
slaves, and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God. [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.
[25] And now, behold, we are in thine hand; as it seems good and right unto
thee to do unto us, do. [26] And so did he unto them, and delivered them out of
the hand of the children of Israel, that they slew them not. [27] And Joshua
made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation,
and for the altar of the LORD, even unto this day, in the place which he should
choose.”
By the way, that last notice, for those of you who are doing in depth
study of the book of Joshua, you see where it says that last place, “in the
place which he should choose,” that’s a tip-off that this book could never have
been written very late because after Jerusalem was chosen as a permanent site
this expression dropped out. So this is
a clear indication this book was not written so late, like the liberals say,
because of this notice at the end of verse 27.
But going back to the incident; you know, obviously having read this,
that after they discover there’s something wrong here, the crowd threatens to
become a mob and you notice in verse 18 we have something that we mentioned
when dealing with mob action; the role of the pastor, the role of an officer,
the role of any political office is to stop mobs. Mobs are always anti-God. There never was a godly mob in the world;
mobs have always opposed God’s will in every place in history. You find this with Moses, you find it with
Aaron, you find it with Samuel, you find it with Jesus with the Palm Sunday mob,
you find Him condemned at the trial some 48 hours later by the very people that
were throwing palms down. Why is this? Because when people are involved in mobs
they act like animals; you turn your intellect off and your emotions on; no one
can think rationally if you are in a mob.
Therefore the Christian has no excuse under any condition to ever
participate in any kind of mob activity.
If you see a mob forming, get out!
And don’t blame the National Guard if they come along and shoot a
few. They should have been in Paris when
Napoleon Bonaparte dealt with the mobs; do you know how he handled the
mobs? He was given jurisdiction for
Paris for a certain limited time and these mobs started in and Napoleon was the
kind of guy that he wanted solutions and he wanted them now, so what he did, he
took his artillery unit and set it right up across the street and said go ahead
and have a riot. They did and he lowered
his artillery to zero range and blasted the mob with great shot, murdering
thousands of people in the city of Paris.
He point blank fired his artillery, not just M-1’s like the Guard did at
Kent State, he fired what would be equivalent to howitzers into the mobs. Just lowered it to zero elevation and let it
go. He didn’t have any criminal
investigation; in fact Napoleon had a very peaceful time after that, no mobs
for some reason. And that’s how you deal
with mobs, that’s the only way you can control mobs is by gas or by mass
weapons. That’s the only way because
mobs are always brutal, mobs are anti-Christian, mobs are animalistic.
Here you have a case of a mob and what they want to do is commit a
second wrong. Now to get the perspective
on this, what you have to realize is that they have entered into a treaty. This is going to have some interesting
parallels to Vietnam in a moment. They
have entered into a treaty; the treaty was done in the name of Yahweh. So the treaty, therefore, hinged on His
reputation. It was an oath that they
swore in the name of Jehovah. Now the
crowd in verse 18 begins to realize that there’s an error, they goofed. And they are angry at their leaders, first of
all for being deceived, and they say we ought to get rid of you all, etc. we
ought to go down there, we ought to clean them out. Now the leaders have one very bad mistake;
this was a bad mistake, it was poor judgment, but I want you to notice
something, the leadership at this point did not do what so many leaders in our
country are doing at the moment, they realized they were wrong, they got right
and they did not listen to mobs.
You see, they would have done a second wrong had they gone down and
cleaned out the Gibeonites because the Gibeonites were now under treaty in
Jehovah’s name, and for that mob to go down there and eliminate the Gibeonites
would mean they were doing another sin.
Not only was it wrong to get in the treaty in the first place, but it
would be wrong to break the treaty once you made it having sworn it in
Jehovah’s name. And so therefore the
leaders begin to recover and they realize, look, the mob is right and we are
wrong. Think of the guts this must have
taken because nothing will shake you up more in a leadership position than to
realize that you made a tactical goof, a major blunder, and the whole majority
knows it. So you can imagine the
pressure in verse 18 against the leadership as they realized the whole group
knows we’ve goofed. The tendency would
have been to back off and say all right, you just go down the road and clean
‘em.
That would have been the tendency, but they realized something. They realized that they had made one mistake
and two wrongs don’t make a right and so they get in straight with the Lord and
they begin to realize look, if we do down and let that crowd down there, verse
19, all the princes said, we have sworn unto the Lord, therefore we may not
touch them; verse 20, they use the word wrath, “This we will do to them: we
will let them live, lest wrath be upon us,” and by this it shows the leaders
recognize the principle of the oath, a principle that is neglected in American
society even by Christians, and yet one that is stressed almost with complete
solidarity from Genesis to Revelation; oaths made in God’s name, God holds you
responsible, always and forever, until the performance of that oath.
For example, turn to Ezekiel 17, you’ll see a case in point, a very
unusual case but again to show you how powerful is this oath theme in
Scripture. Remember in Exodus 20 God is
the One who commands believers not to take His name in vain. Now many of you associate that with
cursing. That’s not what that verse
means, although it includes that. That
verse means to place God’s name on something that is not compatible with His
character. For example, think of it this
way, any organization that calls itself by the name Jesus Christ that does not
faithfully portray Christ is breaking this commandment, for they are taking
God’s name and attaching it to that which is vain. You have to be careful as Christians; we can
become walking violations of that; the Christian who identifies himself with
Christ and then lives like it doesn’t matter is actually breaking that
commandment. He is taking God’s name and
labeled something which is vain with it.
Well, we have this thing coming out in the area of oaths, and in Ezekiel
17:12 we get into an incident that happened down to the days of the end of the
kingdom, around 586, but this time Nebuchadnezzar from the east had come into
Israel. Here you have the eastern end of
the Mediterranean, Israel, and you have what’s called the Neo-Babylonian Empire
moving under Nebuchadnezzar. They come
in there, Nebuchadnezzar decides through demonic influence to attack
Jerusalem. We know this by the arrow
incident, etc. He decides to attack
Jerusalem. At this particular point
Nebuchadnezzar is able to bring Israel or Judah, the southern Kingdom, the
northern kingdom is out so you just have the southern kingdom called Judah
left, he brings Judah under his control.
And he is a very wise individual, you don’t get to be king of Babylon by
being an idiot, and he was a very strong leader and a brilliant leader. And he decided if he was going to rule Judah
he would place his own puppet on the throne.
He placed a man whose name was Gedaliah; Gedaliah is actually the last
king of Israel and Gedaliah is placed on the throne, and verse 11, “Moreover,
the word of the LORD came unto me” Ezekiel, [12] Say now to the rebellious
house, Know ye not what these things mean? Tell them, Behold, the king of
Babylon has come to Jerusalem, and has taken her king” that was Jehoiakim, he
has taken him away, “and the princes, and led them with him to Babylon: [13]
And has taken of the king’s seed, and made a covenant with him, and has taken
an oath of him; he has also taken the mighty of the land, [14] That the kingdom
might be base, that it might not lift itself up,” etc.
Now in verse 15 it’s describing an incident that happened between
Gedaliah and Nebuchadnezzar.
Gedaliah agreed to rule Judah for Nebuchadnezzar. In other words, if the Russians or the
Chinese conquer the United States they would undoubtedly place some left wing
CBS character as President and he would be in charge of running the country for
us. So they would place him in charge of
running the country and he would be their puppet. But puppets usually always get their throat
in history because they never understand a principle, that they have entered
into an agreement that is their own destruction. And here you have Gedaliah, who swore by an
oath to rule Judah for Nebuchadnezzar.
Now, having sworn this in verse 15, God holds Gedaliah… now get this,
this is a tremendous point about this oath business. The covenant isn’t with a godly man, the
covenant is with a Gentile king, but once the covenant has been made in God’s
name God holds the believers responsible.
And in verses 15 Gedaliah is the subject of the verb, Gedaliah “rebelled
against him” Nebuchadnezzar “in sending his ambassadors into Egypt,” in other
words, Gedaliah decided listen, I think I’ve got a deal worked out here, he
ruled about ten years and he decided he could outsmart Nebuchadnezzar, so he
sent down a sneaky ambassador thing, he got his state department busy and they
went down and tried to get Pharaoh to come up and knock out
Nebuchadnezzar.
But notice, he had made an oath in the name of Jehovah with this Gentile
and God holds him responsible to keep that oath. So in verse 15 God is angry and he says
Gedaliah “rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar in sending his ambassadors into
Egypt, that they might give him horses and many people. Shall he prosper? Shall he escape, that does such things? Or shall he break the covenant, and be
delivered?” God raises the question,
what do you think Ezekiel, do you think the man who made a treaty in My name is
going to break it and get away with it.
Oh no, verse 16, “As I live, saith the Lord God, surely in the place
where the king dwells who made him king, whose oath he despised, and whose
covenant he broke, even with him in the midst of Babylon he shall die.” And he started a revolt, Nebuchadnezzar came
in, Ezekiel warned him, and they wouldn’t get out of the city so they stayed
there and when Nebuchadnezzar’s armies reached that city and they broke into
that city they went straight to Gedaliah.
And they grabbed him and they had a little special treatment in store
for Gedaliah; they held him with the soldiers while they took every one of his
sons and cut them down in front of him so he could watch his son’s blood all
over the ground in front of him. Then he
said that’s the last sight you’re ever going to see and they punched his eyes
out. So the last thing that Gedaliah
ever saw was the slaughter and the death of his sons and then they came along
and punched his eyeballs out and that’s how they ended Gedaliah. But God says He was behind that. Why?
Because they made an oath in His name and they broke it. [Verse 18, “Seeing he despised the oath by
breaking the covenant when, lo, he had given his hand, and hath done all these
things, he shall not escape. [19] Therefore, thus saith the Lord God: As I
live, surely Mine oath that he hath despised, and My covenant that he hath
broken, even it will I recompense upon his own head.”]
Principle: Once an oath is made even if it’s a wrong one it has to be
kept, regardless, period, over and out, no exceptions.
You see this again, turn to Heb. 6 and here it works for our behalf, for
here we have a typology between the Gibeonites with whom Joshua has made a
covenant, he’s admitted them to the kingdom of God, and they got in the
kingdom; Joshua’s sorry he ever made the treaty but he holds to the
treaty. Now just think of yourself as
Gibeonites for a moment. God admits you
to His kingdom when you become a believer in Jesus Christ. And then you are a goofball, and God must
many times look down and look at you and look at me and say I’m sorry I ever
admitted that Charlie Brown or so and so to the kingdom of God. That person is a clod and I’m sorry I ever
did but there’s only one thing, God has promised to keep us there and He can’t
break His own oath.
Look at Heb. 6:17, here He is swearing, in Heb. 6:17 He is swearing to
Abraham, “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of
promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, [18] That by
two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have
a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set
before us. [19] Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and
steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil.” In other words, the fact that this oath… why
does God make so much of oaths? Because
He has made an oath with you if you are a believer. And He has promised I am going to save you
and nothing is going to stop it, I have sworn by it, I have given you an oath
by it and I don’t want you breaking your oaths because He is saying that every
time you break an oath you destroy the typology of the oath. Every time someone swears in God’s name and
breaks it he is breaking down the power of God’s revelation for God is trying
to use the very concept of an oath to get across eternal security to the
believer. So when someone swears and
they regret and they repent they ever made that thing, the covenant, and they
want to get out from it and they break their oath, it’s like God saying I’m
tired of you, you goofball every day, you’ve got some problem today, another
problem tomorrow, you’re whiny, a crybaby, you’re always fussing about
something, you are never thankful for anything from one day to the next, you
never give me five minutes thanks for anything, all you do is gripe, gripe,
gripe and complain and complain and complain and I’m tired of listening to it
and so boom, you’re out of the kingdom.
You see, God would break His oath this way but God doesn’t. He is stuck with you and He is stuck with me
by His oath; just like Joshua was stuck with the Gibeonites.
Now we come to the problem. How,
if you’ve made an oath, like Joshua, like this nation that has entered into
treaties which are stupid, what do you do when you wake up to the fact that
you’re in a stupid thing like this and you’ve made a foolish mistake and you’ve
gotten yourself involved. The principle
is given to us in Psalm 15:4, here we derive a principle that applies in many,
many areas of our life today. This is a
great and tremendous promise that God has given to those believers who fouled
up, who’ve gotten themselves involved by an oath in a stupid situation, they
never should have gotten themselves involved with, but nevertheless they’ve
done it in the name of the Lord, they’ve sworn and they’re in a jam. Now in Psalm 15:4, first verse 1, it’s a
Psalm of praise from David, “LORD, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall
dwell in Thy holy hill? [2] He that
walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart.
[3] He that backbites not with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor
takes up a reproach against his neighbor. [4] In whose eyes a vile person is
despised, but he honors them who fear the LORD,” notice the next sentence, a
very crucial sentence, “he that swears to his own hurt, yet he doesn’t change
[and changes not].”
In other words, that’s a righteousness, that is as important as far as
God is concerned as verse 2 where he walks uprightly. This is praise to a righteous person and
righteousness is defined as one who swears to his won hurt, meaning he makes a
foolish treaty, he makes a foolish business deal in the name of the Lord or
something, and they get themselves obligated in this situation, after realizing
that he has been deceived, realizing that he was foolish, he doesn’t make two
wrongs to make a right. He sticks with
it and he starts claiming this promise.
God said He is going to bless, because this whole Psalm is a Psalm of
blessing, “he honoreth them who fear the LORD,” in other words, he honors other
believers, “and he that swears to his own hurt, and does not change.” You have this principle, God will protect and
God will superintend and supercede your foolishness.
You made a foolish decision, you may have gotten involved by this oath;
this applies to Joshua, Joshua is stupid at this point. As a leader he made a stupid decision, one of
the few this man is ever recorded to have made, and he goofed, he got himself
involved, but what does he do? Make two
wrongs? No, he says all right look, I
have made an oath to protect these Gibeonites, they have come down here, these
Gibeonites, they have come over from their alliance, now we’re stuck with
them. They’ve entered into the
fellowship of Israel, there’s no way we can get them out, and so what we are
going to do is we are going to claim God’s promises to supercede our
foolishness, and God will bless us in the middle of our foolishness, but we are
going to stick by the oath.
Now let’s give two quick applications for this before we finish
Joshua. There are two quick
applications, one in the area of marriage.
We’ll [can’t understand word] over this business of the wedding
ceremony, I’m not so hot on wedding ceremonies but nevertheless, a wedding
ceremony is crucial because vows are exchanged, and those vows are exchanged in
the eyes of God and those are vows that God holds you responsible to keep,
regardless of the problem. And this is
the same kind of thing, you may have been an ignoramus when you married, you
may have been like so many young people, oh, I’ll just date a non-Christian and
that’s all it’ll be; first thing, they wind up with the romance of the century
and you find yourself tripping down the aisle with one of Satan’s children on
your arm. And this is what happens, because
you fell and were foolish and ignored the admonitions of the Word of God, and
so you get down to the altar and maybe your marriage slides along for 2 or 3
years, and then you begin to hit a rocky road, and you begin to have problem,
and this problem happens, finances or something else, and you may have a
problem spiritually. The point is that
we have these situations develop. All
right, people have made one mistake but you don’t correct the mistake by making
another one.
And here’s the same principle: once trapped in a situation like this you
trust the Lord to make the best of the situation. It’s that simple. And we can apply this to Vietnam, if we are
engaged in a treaty relationship and Christian citizens have done this, we
partook of this, when the Senate signed the treaty [can’t understand
words]. And so Christians have partaken
of various treaties, they were foolish, we should have listened to George
Washington when he told us never to make it in the first place, we’ve made the
treaties, now that we’ve made them we’re stuck with them and we are stuck in
Vietnam, we’re paying with our own son’s lives for our foolishness, but we have
to stick it out. The trouble is that
this nation isn’t going to stick it out, we’re going to cut and run, let the
whole thing go down the drain. So we
made two wrongs, first of all we promised somebody we’d protect them and then
when the going got a little too rough for us we pull out, so we’re wrong on two
counts. So here’s an application in the
area of Vietnam.
Now 9:23, we’ll quickly review the end of this because it ends very
quickly and I want to show you where the Gibeonites wind up. In verse 23 Joshua condemns them to be the
janitorial service for the tabernacle.
This is the nearest thing they had to piped in water. They had these people carrying water back and
forth, etc. and they had their own built in plumbing system, maintenance,
janitorial service, etc. and notice what it is.
It’s God’s house; isn’t this ironic.
Here these people are, outside of the kingdom of God, condemned to
judgment, they are brought into the kingdom and placed right next to the
tabernacle which is a picture of Jesus Christ.
And ironically the Gibeonites who start out in this chapter as the great
deceivers wind up in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ as He is pictured in
the tabernacle.
To show you what this means, turn to 2 Sam. 21 when the last times the
Gibeonites actually get involved in a crucial thing, although the Gibeonites
come back in Ezra’s day after the captivity to help rebuild the walls. But in 2 Sam. 21 we have an incident that
happened some 400 years later after this Joshua 9 incident. In 1400 we have the conquest of the land; in
1000 we have Saul, the rise of the monarch, Saul being replaced by David. Saul
was an emotional type of believer; Saul was the kind of man who showed early
signs when he became king of being an emotional type of leader where he
reacted, very emotional to things without thinking them through, etc. Well, here reacted emotionally one day and
decided he was going to kill some Gibeonites.
Remember now, this is 400 years later and Joshua has committed the
Lord. When Joshua signed this treaty and
made this covenant with the Gibeonites he did it in the name of Jehovah and
that means forever; it means that the Gibeonites forever are going to be bound
by this treaty and God is going to hold them responsible.
So Saul decides, for some reason he picks a fight with these people and
slaughters them. And then in 21:1 we
begin to have some problems. “Then there
was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David
inquired of the LORD. And the LORD
answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the
Gibeonites.” Isn’t this interesting, 400
years later God honors His oath; He is sworn protection and you don’t break
God’s oath without being broken yourself.
And here we have it, David, three years under drought conditions and he
begins to ask if maybe this is not just a meteorological statistic, there’s a
reason, this is not just statistics, there’s a personal reason here why we’re
having this drought and it’s a spiritual one and so he demands an answer from
God and finally God comes through. And
in the Hebrew this is the idea that he went there and he pled with God and he
asked him over and over and over and over, and finally God gave him the
answer. Do you know why David, because
your predecessor went down there and he slew the Gibeonites, people with whom I
was bound by an oath in My name.
So in verse 2, “And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them,
(now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel,” you have a notice
there, where they came from, “but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the
children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his
zeal for the children of Israel and Judah).”
Verse 3, “Wherefore, David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for
you? And wherewith shall I make the
atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD? [4] And the
Gibeonites said unto him,” notice the nobility now. Up from the time when they were deceivers and
they tried to get into the kingdom by their own gimmicks, notice the tremendous
nobility of these people. Verse 4, “And
the Gibeonites said unto him, We will nave no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of
his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I
do for you. [5] And they answered the king, As for the man who consumed us, and
who devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the
borders of Israel, [6] Let seven of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will
hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them. [7] But
the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of
the LORD’s oath,” etc.
In other words, they could have claimed a mass revenge and all they
claimed was a simple trial of justice of the execution of these sons for the
various principles involved in the monarchy, etc. But it shows you a people that had
tremendously improved, and one is tempted to reason that these people being in
the presence of Christ in the tabernacle actually became more and more mature
as the years went by and we find them by 2 Sam. 21 actually more mature than
even Saul the king of Israel.
So this is the incident of the Gibeonites, next week we’re going to see
Joshua getting into a fantastic war because of a foolish treaty. Keep in mind, he made a foolish treaty, he
stuck with the treaty trusting God to work it out and he got caught in a war, a
very bad war but a war that’s going to come to a very startling
conclusion. With our heads bowed….