Joshua 23

An Island in the Sea – 12 & 13

 

[Tape begins in middle of sentence] …significantly large part of the people who attend Lubbock Bible Church are university students.  You probably also aware that this will probably be the last time most of them will be here for the summer and during the summer we shift gears and move into other areas.  So I’ve asked two of the university students to come to the pulpit and share with you some of their experiences as a Christian student.  My feeling is that your independent Bible church movement has not made a significant impact on the American campus because the local independent Bible churches have not made an attempt to answer the questions that college students are asking.  It’s not that we don’t have programs; you can see case after case where many churches have many programs; we’ve found that basically there is no program for college students.  The issue that a college student is faced with is the issue of overall framework in which he is to correlate the material that he gets.  There’s no such thing as education today going on outside of the Word of God because it’s only the Word of God that gives you the framework to put all of the subjects in truthful relationship to each other and you see the big picture. 

 

I remember my days as a student, becoming a Christian in the latter part of my freshman year at MIT and one of the great frustrations I experienced was a lack of knowledge of the basics of the Word of God and a lack of someone to point me to the answers in the questions that I was getting in the classroom.  Now this is a very critical time for a student because later on the more a person leaves the academic world and moves into a job, etc. the more tendency, it really doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be, there’s more of a tendency to become more and more set in your ways and not be so opened minded to different ideas and views.  And this is largely to the detriment of the church of Christ because we believe that if God is alive and powerful today as He was in the time of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is the same, the Holy Spirit hasn’t changed, then our relationship to the Holy Spirit should be the same in the sense that we are equally sensitive to His leading regardless of our age, regardless of our education, but too often it doesn’t turn out this way.  And so we find a thermometer that as you look across society it’s largely the college students today that are the most responsive to the gospel as an age group. So this is a very critical mission field; as I tried to say when I first came to this church, instead of sending missionaries all the way out to Africa, we should realize that just within a mile of this property you have one of the richest mission fields in your own backyard.   So I’ve asked if these students will come and share four or five minutes of their experience [not transcribed]. 

 

Shall we turn in the Old Testament to the book of Joshua.  Basically one of the things that I think that has helped in the student ministry, and it has not been the reluctance on the part of students to demand, to seek for and demand a Biblical answer to the problems that they face, and this is one reason why I hope in the men’s group this summer that we can do the same thing; in other words, not be truly satisfied with ourselves in any area of activity until we have a Biblical solution.  This goes for a job, it goes for classroom behavior, it goes for military life, it goes for whatever area of life you want to think about, but regardless of the area of life the Word of God is the absolute authority, and so I, as a pastor, if I am to properly feed the flock must know the kind of problems that people are facing; otherwise when I study it would largely be answering questions that you are not answering.  So we hope to get more and more of these so-called feedback effects going; in this way it keeps us all on the target.

Now in Joshua 12 we come to the midpoint of the book of Joshua.  Whether it’s on the campus or on the job, our problem as 20th century believers is the problem of holy war.  It’s a problem which Christian, I think, have absorbed the mentality of their surroundings, “war” is a bad word; “military” is a bad word, “judgment” is a bad word, and yet the Christians who have been serious believers all down through history have been insisting that the Christian life, the walk in the Christian life now is only won in the deep internal areas of the human heart.  But exponently Christianity always involves confrontation, clash, and battle.  And it’s this concept that we want to see as we come to Joshua. 

 

We come now to Joshua 12 where we have the official declaration of the completion of the conquest.  Up to this point in the history we have had in Joshua an exposition of how this land was conquered, piece by piece.  We’ve had some of the techniques that were used by these Old Testament saints.  The last half of the book of Joshua shifts gears and beginning in chapter 13 and going through chapter 22 we have an exposition of the distribution of the land, or the divvying up of the inheritance; in other words parcels out the inheritance, parcels out the land and assigns it to tribes.  But before he does this we have this 12th that sort of ends the first section and begins the second section.  And this is the official declaration that the conquest is complete.  Please notice that the distribution of the land does not begin until after the conquest is complete.  This is significant so hold on to it because at the end we’re going to tie this to a New Testament truth, i.e. that the battle must be completely fought before one square inch of real estate is given as a possession to Israel.  In other words, the war up until this point is not, repeat, is not a war of occupation; it’s a war of extermination, it’s a war of sheer destruction and blood, it’s a war that annihilates everything in its path and then after that comes the possession. 

 

So we have a detailed list, scanning the chapter, looking down for example verses 9 through the end of verse 24 you see all these details, I just counted them, there are 31 kings listed there, and  you wonder what is the significance of going through all these little details.  The significance of going through these details is that this confirms the promises of God.  In other words, God promised that they would take the land and there must be a legal document that witnesses to the fact that God has been faithful.  So chapter 12 is a legal document; it was probably copied off to some real estate records that were used in dividing up the land.  And this book becomes crucial because it’s this book of Joshua, remember we start with the first five books, the Pentateuch; the Pentateuch is the Law, that’s the constitution of the nation and that forms the Law for the rest of the Bible on up to the time of Jesus Christ.  But the book of Joshua also starts here and moves on up to the time of Jesus Christ, not as the controlling legislation but as the title deeds.  If you go to the county courthouse you have lot numbers, and your property is legally defined.  That is the way of this book from this point on.  It defines the property of the tribes; it defines the inheritance.  So this is why we have these many details.

 

I want you to also notice that many of these kings, for example in verse 10, the king of Jerusalem, just because the king of Jerusalem has been destroyed does not mean the city of Jerusalem has been destroyed.  The kings often time were killed but the city remained in enemy hands.  The reason for this is that Joshua is listing in verses 9-24 authority, the sign of authority of the unbelief in the land.  This relates back to something we covered last time where we said the three reasons why this land, why the people in this land were thrown out. 

The first one was the fact that they had sexual depravity, and you have various listings given.  We studied these last time in Lev. 18.  And the sexual depravity is evident, for example, if you study Ugaritic records, you compare them to the Mesopotamian, the Sumerian records, the Babylon records, you compare them to the Egyptian records and nothing is more detestable than the Ugaritic text and the Phoenician inscriptions, these kind of things.  In other words, it really go to the point where it was just almost a sex orgy every time they got together and they did everything under the sun, A to Z as you can imagine.  So the first reason was sexual depravity.

 

The second reason which is almost as bad was apostate religion.  Keep in mind these kings, because these are the kings that fostered this stuff off in the land.  Apostate religion, we dealt with one example of apostate religion last time, Molech, and you remember how gruesome this religion was, where they’d take an iron statue and they’d put a fire inside this iron statue and Molech would have his hands out, and the parents would have to bring their young children and set them down into the white hot arms of Molech and watch their children burn to death and while a child was screaming his lungs out the priests would be beating the drums to drown out the screams of these infants as they would be slaughtered systematically in this apostate religion.  But don’t think that this is just a religion of Molech.  Recall what’s [can’t understand words] and said about the classroom; somebody is going to roast in hell for the kind of stuff that these people have learned in classrooms because spiritually we have the religion of Molech in the classrooms of this country and as this country goes through the academic pipes comes out at the end with the end with the scars of Molech on his soul.  You can’t get an education in this country because there’s no framework for it; all you do is pick up scar tissue.  We have a very detestable system in this country, one of the worst that’s ever been in existence, and we have therefore contributed to the breakdown of our society by the systematic indoctrination of people in human good, apostate religious values, human values that are floating in thin air, there is no such thing as human rights apart from God’s word, and various things like this.  So we’ve had this operate in our country and I must say that every student who has graduated and has his degree has effectively the spiritual marks of Molech on him. 

 

Then we have the third thing which is more pertinent today and that is the problem of spiritism.  You recall this was the third reason why the Canaanites were kicked out of this land.  These kings that you see listed were practitioners of all of these things.  They were practitioners of abhorrent sexual behavior; they were practitioners of apostate religion; and they were practitioners of spiritism.  This is why they were slaughtered.  And this is something that you have to see, again I say this, you have to see the necessity for capital punishment. 

 

Someone asked, what about capital punishment? Capital punishment is the very basis for law because capital punishment is the base of human life being delegated to the institution of government; government does not exist if it does not have the power to take life.  When we have reached the point in this country where we have people in high places, from the Congress all the way up to the White House who will allow mobs to mob through a city, stop traffic and openly say we are going to stop the government, this is an act of treason, we are going to stop the government and then block traffic and slash tires.  We have come to the place in this country where the leaders of our land have forsaken their responsib­ility as ministers of God in the institution of government.  The institution of government is the fourth divine institution; the institution of government is the sword, Rom. 13; by the way capital punishment is not negated by the New Testament, the sword of God stands in the hand, the symbol in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation of government power is the sword, the bare naked sword that is sharp.   And that is the symbol the Bible gives you of government.  And whenever we have people who are leaders in government who refuse to define evil, for after all people that are stopping traffic and slashing tires, this is a violation of God’s law, since it is a violation of God’s law it is a violation of His will and therefore is an act of sin. Since it is an act of sin and since the fourth divine institution was brought into existence to punish and execute God’s vengeance upon evil, the government at that point should take every step, including that of armed force if necessary to put down this sort of activity.  There’s no excuse for it.  But what do we have instead; we have the ridiculous picture of certain congressmen saying we have to watch those Washington policemen because they might be too tough on the little brats.  So what do we do, we coddle and play with people who are in open rebellion against the laws of God. 

 

But this is one example of how we have this breakdown, this weakness today, all resulting from the lack of [can’t understand word] evil, which you do not find in the book of Joshua.  Back in Joshua’s day the issue is clear, capital punishment was clear, and people who engaged in various forms of violating God’s will paid for it with their life.   Many of you have been through Psalm 51 in connection with the framework course and you know the problem there, and again we show this because this is spelling out for you as a believer where we are as a nation today.  You have God, you have people down here, there is no such thing as horizontal human rights.  This is why David, in Psalm 51:4, after committing adultery and murdering, social sins, David does not say I’m sorry Bathsheba, and I sinned against Uriah.  What does he say?  He says “Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned.”  In other words, human rights come from God.  If you do not have God there to establish inner discipline and give the standards for a people, then what replaces God?  What has always replaced God in history?  You never have anarchy tolerated for long.  In every case in world history, particularly in Western Europe in the last 400 years, every time there’s been a breakdown in government you’ve gone into an anarchy situation for one or two years and after that you have a dictatorship, and that is where we are headed in this country.  Unless we have a back to the Bible movement on a mass scale the only way you can read history when you have mobs in the capital city, in Washington DC as we do, and a President and a Congress who refuse to take the necessary to drive them out, then we have reached the point where the government is too weak to function. 

 

You are going to be the believers that are going to be living when this happens and when it happens you will have an opportunity to testify to your neighbors about the gospel that you never had before because up until that time people have been too busy with material things, getting their bread, their entertainment, watching the idiot box and all the rest of the things that come in as explanations why I can’t study the Word, etc.  These people are going to be brought up short and they’re going to be crying out, why did this happen to the glorious United States of America and it will be your privilege to declare the councils of God and show cause and effect and why it happened.  You will probably be in the position of the Old Testament prophets.  When these great men could stand as their country went down in front of them and it wasn’t an “I told you so” in a nasty way, they were simply saying don’t you see now the cause and effect.  If you let go of the absolutes of God and you let go of the categories of good and evil we must have.  Either God is the source of your standards or man is the source of your standards but you have to have a source of standards and it will either be God or it will be a dictatorship.  That’s always the way it’s been in history, that’s always the way it will be in history.  So you can see we are in a very grave problem so it behooves you as believers to understand the mechanics of history and politics as we see them operating, particularly in the Old Testament though these principles do carry over into our time in history. 

 

Now in Joshua 12:1 we have the beginning of this summary of the conquest, this execution of judgment upon these evil people.  I always get this negative reaction when I start talking about capital punishment.  People always say oh, he’s for vengeance, and he’s for all these bad things.  No, that’s not the case.  What we’re saying is that there is vengeance involved but it’s not that of government.  It is God’s wrath being executed upon the criminal through the medium of government; it is not the wrath of society that is executed against the criminal, it is God’s wrath is executed.  So I hope I never see any of you on this idiotic program against punishment.  We need capital punishment in every state; we need a mandatory capital punishment sentence for first degree murder, at least the second offense.  And it should be done in public.  This is the Biblical way of handling the problem.  That may sound gruesome to you but this is the way it is done in the Old Testament and this is the way God honors that.  You think that’s gruesome, what about the thousands of murders that are going on in this country, what about that in God’s sight.  If you’re worrying about something being gruesome worry about the boys that have been shot in Vietnam and slaughtered because we have had a government who won’t protect them, who won’t give them enough arms, etc. a government who will not stand behind people who are rotting to death in prisoner of war camps.  So before you start throwing your barbs about how vicious capital punishment is, throw them where they belong, and where they belong is the whole program that we’re involved with. 

 

So in verse 1 we have these kings who were executed, “Now these are the kings of the land, whom the children of Israel smote and possess their land on the other side of the Jordan, toward the rising of the sun,” and now we’re going to have a description of Transjordania.  This is the land on the other side of Jordan; it starts here and moves north; this is a whole area called Transjordania, not part of the Abrahamic Covenant but nevertheless God graciously gave this to the nation Israel.  And it describes two kingdom, the first kingdom, verses 2-3, “Sihon, king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and ruled from Aroer, which is upon the bank of the River Arnon,” etc. notice the exact… and to you this is tedious to go through and I know this; it’s tedious for me but please remember in the flow of history, when God does something He does it exactly.  And this is a [can’t understand word] presentation of the evidences that God is faithful.

 

Application: as a Christian today you should be as detailed and as nitpicky on little things that would have to do with, say, the resurrection of Jesus Christ as this has to do with the real estate.  You should be able to cite evidence after evidence after evidence to substantiate the claim that Jesus Christ rose literally and physically and that such men like Schoenfield, authors of The Passover Plot and other idiotic works are absolutely wrong.  This is shoddy scholarship and they never can show that this whole thing is a plot; not on the basis of the objective historical documents.  Yet do we have; we have some of the most prominent people in Lubbock saying these books, oh, they’re wonderful, they’re the greatest thing that ever came off.  They are blasphemous and unscholarly works that have ever come out and the Christians ought to say so.  You ought to make some waves, this is the only way you’re ever going to be heard is to make waves so make them. 

Verses 4-6, “And the border of Og, king of Bashan, who was of the remnant of the giants who dwelt at Ashtaroth…” etc. here’s the second kingdom.  Down south you had a man by the name of Sihon and north you had a man by the name of Og and extra-Biblical evidences tell us through the Jewish extra-Biblical tradition that Og was one of the great giants; we know in the Bible his bed was 13 feet long and six feet wide.  This is the size of this man, and he was the last of that famous race of giants, the Rephaim. 

 

Then we come down to verse 6, “Then did Moses, the servant of the LORD, and the children of Israel smite; and Moses the servant of the LORD, gave it for a possession unto the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh.”  Remember before Moses died, in the last part of Deuteronomy he gave this to these people. 

 

Now beginning at verse 7 we have Joshua continuing the work of Moses.  The way to visualize these two men in Scripture is two heads of a spear, and that on one half you have Moses and on the other half you have Joshua and neither is complete without the other for both of these men typify the Lord Jesus Christ.  Moses gains the legal base, Joshua actually establishes the inheritance.  So you have the two men together; verses 1-6 describe Moses work, verses 7 following Joshua’s follow-up.  “These are the kings of the country which Joshua and the children of Israel smote on this side of the Jordan on the west, from Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon even unto Mount Halak, that goes up to Seir, which Joshua gave unto the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisions. [8] In the mountains, and in the valleys, and in the plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness, and in the south country: the Hittites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

 

Now we’re going to have to go back to a certain element of Biblical history to understand why these six names continue to come up, and will continue to come up throughout the Old Testament.  So turn back to Gen. 10, the famous table of nations passage.  In Gen. 10:15-18 we have the sons of Canaan.  Now this is the way you want to look at history if you want to look at it Biblically.  The way you learn history in the schoolroom is all wrong.  You start off with a civilization over here, and a civilization over here, and everything starts off disjointed, there’s no unity about it, you have the Mesopotamian civilization, over a thousand miles to the east you have the Indus culture and then down in northeast Africa you have the Egyptian culture, and it’s all disjointed, there’s no unity about it because obviously in a non-Christian basis you don’t have room for unity; you don’t have the absolutes to build it. 

 

But the Bible gives us a unity for history from Noah; all civilizations come from Noah.  You have Shem, Ham and Japheth.  These are absolutely crucial to understand history.  The first people out are the Hamites, they are the cavemen, they become the men that are found in the caves of France, etc. all the skulls are very Hamitic like and so you have this phenomenon.  Incidentally, people have never noticed something, a very simple thing, all you have to do is take a map of the world and isn’t it strange, everybody agrees there is the center of civilization, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, the fertile crescent, there’s the center of civilization, but nobody has ever taken the time to plot on a world map where these cavemen are found.  And it’s interesting when you plot them, the further out from this valley they become the more primitive they become; it’s a very interesting correlation.  Which leads you so suspect that the cavemen are not primitive men at all, they are simply the pioneers after the flood, the first men who moved away from the Ararat region that moved away out into the areas that were just recovering from the flood.  So they had very poor conditions as far as diet, health, etc. and suffered these various deficiency diseases leading to the lot in cave men, and these men are not millions of years old, in fact they are thousands of years old, they are actually Hamites.  That is the first wave.  The second wave of Hamites that moved out from Ararat actually gave us every major technological invention.  Ever major technological advance man has ever made has come from the Hamites.  For example, all your basic medicine has come from the Hamites.  All your basic engineering has come from the Hamites, including the wheel and various other things.  All of your basic mathematics has come from your Hamite civilization, China, Sumer in the Mesopotamian valley in Egypt, all of these technological advances. 

 

So as God says in Genesis, and if you turn back to Gen. 9:25-27 to see how this works out, you’ll see a great promise and these three verses give you a framework for all of history and all of subsequent history can fit within this framework.  “And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren,” and actually this involves the whole Hamitic race and a “servant of servants” means the best servants, oftentimes people read that in a derogatory simply because the word “curse” is there and there is a derogatory note but the Hebrew has a way of suppressing a superlative in the Hebrew language is not “most,” the Hebrews don’t have a word for “most” so the only way in the Hebrew that you can express a superlative is to repeat the noun after itself.  You see how this happens, the Song of Songs, the most beautiful song is really what is meant and Solomon wrote that as his love song, etc.  So you have the Song of Songs, you have the God of Gods, very God of very God, it’s repeated in a very English way, almost a Greek and Roman Latin way in the Council of Nicea, etc.  But you have this repetition of noun and that’s what this repetition is in verse 25, “a servants of servants.”  So we have the Hamites as the great servants; these people have functioned in two ways in the world.  They have been the pioneers, every early civilization is Hamitic, every one; every early civilization is Hamitic, no matter where you go on the face of the globe, it always is Hamitic.

 

The second thing that the Hamites are noted for is providing for man’s physical needs and so they have fulfilled that role, that role was basically fulfilled about 2000 BC, the Hamites had done their job.  Then along came the Shemites or the Semitic races and they, according to this promise in verse 26, “Blessed be the LORD God of Shem;” do you notice something different about that text; notice in verse 25 and 27 it’s only the word “God,” but in verse 26 you have Jehovah God of Shem.  That’s God’s covenant name and that means that through Shem God will reveal Himself verbally and men will have a relationship to God and it will come through the Shemites.  And if you look up your history, what are the only three religions in the world that hold to verbal revelation from God?  They are all Shemite religions: (1) Islam; (2) Judaism and (3) Christianity.  No other religion holds to verbal revelation and a personal infinite God.  So you have both these coming out, basically, of the Old Testament.  So the Shemites have made their contribution through the Old Testament.

 

Then the Japhetics, most of you come from a Japhetic background because you come from Europe; Indo-European races are Japhetic, and their contribution according to God in verse 27, “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”  This means that Japheth’s contributions to men follow some two things in verse 27, first “he will dwell in the tents of Shem,” that means that he is going to be supplied with Semitic resources, and of course what has been the great Japhetic contribution? Science and philosophy. 

That is not found in the east, it’s only found in the west, and science and philosophy, in the days when they were contributing something, were grounded on assumptions borrowed from Christianity.  It’s very ironic that modern science must depend on Christianity for its base; if it doesn’t have it it collapses.  So science and philosophy have been contributed by Japheth and they have rooted in the tents of Shem, meaning that it has been based on Christian presuppositions.  And notice too that “Canaan shall be his servant” and that is that all of the great things that we think are all [can’t understand word] inventions we have nothing more than improved upon those things that the Hamites have given to us, medicine, technology, science, whatever you have, have come out of Shem.  Japheth, we are able to improve upon it, but remember we historically we have borrowed most of our inventions from Ham and we have borrowed our framework for philosophy and religion from Shem.  So this should destroy any concept that one race is superior; there’s no superior race, there’s no inferior race but at times there are degenerate subsections of races, such as the Canaanites, which we are now going to see in Gen. 10.

 

Gen. 10:15-18, here’s the story of how a race became degenerate and had to be eliminated.  “And Canaan begot Sidon,” who is Sidon?  Sidon is the ancient name that you will find in Herodotus and other writings for the Phoenicians, so if you want to translate this, Sidon actually was a place of the cities, if you have a map in your Bible you’ll see a city called Sidon.  Sidon is located up here around the area of Dan.  It is Phoenician and this is one of the great civilizations in the ancient world in the eastern Mediterranean.  So “Canaan begot Sidon,” Sidon was a man’s name, the people came and set up a city with the name Sidon after this man.  That was “his first-born, and Heth.”  Heth sets off the second group of Canaanites.  In the Hebrew it looks like this, this is a hard “h” and this is a [not sure of word], you combine this and you get the [sounds like: Kethites] the Hittites.  Here you have the progenitor of a strange race by the name of the Hittites, a race which many critics never existed until recent times when it was found that the whole area of Syria was called Hatti land and the people dwelling therein the Hittites.

 

Then it says also coming forth from Canaan were the Jebusites; the Jebusites, the third group, are those who are basically settled in Jerusalem.  Look how this is shaping up.  Notice the area of geography where these people are settling in.  You have Sidon here, next you have the Hittites, they are up here around Damascus; and then you have the Jebusites, they’re in Jerusalem.  Then you have the Amorites, now the name can be used several ways, basically it means the highlanders and it means the people that settled in the mountainous areas, though the name Amorites can be applied to a whole group and at times it is, so it’s hard to be specific here.  The Girgashites, nobody really knows too much about the Girgashites except they did live in the land with small minor tribes.  The Hivites, you know those, those are another name for the Gibeonites, so again you have a group of people located right about here.  The Arkites were a people who lived in a city up north along the coast.  And the Arvadites, Arvad was a city again up on this northern coast.  And the Zemarites are people who lived over here just north of where Damascus is. 

 

Now why I go to all this trouble to show you this is I want you to see that they lived in an extensive geographic location.  It starts here and goes northeast, almost to the Tigris-Euphrates River.  So those of you who think that Israel’s land is just this little piece that they occupy today, that’s wrong because they were given all the land that was occupied by this racial group.  This racial group, the three sins that I mentioned before, sexual depravity, apostate religion and spiritism had degenerated as a race, so the entire race had come into a state of beyond redemption; that is, the whole culture was saturated with apostasy. And therefore God ordered its annihilation.  And this is the whole role of Joshua; he is to exterminate this entire race from history.  We’ll see that he never did this and one of the great surviving races of this whole Phoenician complex you know in history as the Carthaginians.  The Carthaginians are Phoenicians who decided they couldn’t take it any longer and they got in their boats, they got mad and the left, and they went west and settled in North Africa.  The Carthaginians were subsequently massacred by the Romans.  Why were they massacred by the Romans?  Because everywhere you have Hamites you find them massacred by the Japhetics.  It worked out in American history.  Who were the American Indians?  They were Hamitics.  Who was it that destroyed the American Indian civilization? They were Japhetics.  You go to Central and South America, what group were the Aztecs and Incas?  They were all Hamitic civilization.  Who was it that destroyed them? Spaniards, Japhetic civilization.  You can go to Italy; you have the Etruscans who were Hamitic, destroyed later on by the progenitors of the Romans coming down into the peninsula.  You can go to India and the first [can’t understand words] to India were all Hamitics and they were all subsequently destroyed by the Arians coming across the Himalayas.  So it seems like on every continent this has worked out that the Hamitic civilizations have been destroyed and replaced with Japhetic civilizations.

 

So this whole 12th chapter of Joshua depicts the annihilation of the center of this civilization.  But please notice, not all of the areas are included.  So now we start the second half of the book of Joshua in chapter 13.  Let’s first get a rough outline of the second half of Joshua.  It runs from chapter 13-22.  Chapter 13 gives you the basis for the distribution of the land; chapters 14-17 give you the first distribution.  In other words, there are several distributions; chapter 13 sets up the reason for it, chapters 14-17 the first distribution, chapters 18-19 the second distribution, chapters 20-21 deal with the administrative provision, such as the cities of refuge and the Levite Bible teaching, etc.  By the way, one-third of the national budget… one-third of the national budget of Israel went to Bible teaching.  You compare that with what’s going on today, one-third of the budget of this nation went to finance itinerant Bible teachers, from city to city.  Fantastic! The Levites had a share of one-third of this.  And then chapter 22 we have the dismissal from a central camp.  So that’s a rough outline of where we’re headed. 

 

Now let’s look at chapter 13.  The 13th chapter starts the second part of the book of Joshua.  The 13th chapter is going to give a basis as to why this land was distributed.  Verses 1-7 is the Lord’s commission to Joshua.  “Now Joshua was old and stricken in years, and the LORD said unto him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed.”  Now if you’re in a habit of underlining, this would be a good section in verse 1 to underline because we have here for the first time in the history of Israel a new concept introduced, a concept that was going to plague them for the rest of their existence in history.  And that is that that ideal promise of the Abrahamic Covenant, that they would have all the land of Canaan, all the way from Wadi El-Aresh in the south, this little river down there that flows northward into the Mediterranean, all the way on up, up, up, north to the Tigris-Euphrates valley, west of the Mediterranean, east to the Jordan Valley, everything in that area was to be theirs.  But notice as Joshua dies “there remains very much land to be possessed.”  This land is never secured, and this is one of the reasons why liberal scholarship such as you get in your University religion course is absolutely wrong.  The one thing liberals have never been able to explain about this is if this book was written late, why is it that the prophets, who we know lived late, never concerned them with the ideal limits of the land.  These ideal limits were forgotten after the book of Joshua.  Isaiah never bothered about the limits of the land; Jeremiah never did, Ezekiel never did.  How come if this book was a late redaction, why is it that we have strange thing. Do you know what the reason is? Because the Bible was written the way it said it was written.  This was written in the era just succeeding Joshua, so the liberal theory breaks down at this point, a very obvious point. 

 

Verse 2, “This is the land that yet remains,” now we’re going to have listed the area that remains.  Now let’s look at the land that remains; the first section, and this is going to set you up for the whole rest of the Old Testament here because these pockets are going to be the trouble spots. “This is the land that yet remains,” the first area, verses 2-3, “all the borders of the Philistines, and all Geshuri,” this is a small tribe in that area, [3] “From Shihor, which is before Egypt,” the Black River, “even unto the borders of Ekron northward, which is counted to the Canaanites: five lords of the Philistines: the Gazites, and the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites, and also the Avvim.”  By the way, notice how they make people’s names in the Old Testament.  If you’re at all familiar with your Bible you’ll notice soothing about those last names; they are all names of cities.  People were named for the central city, so they’re all Philistines and they lived in Gaza, if you just drop the “ite” you get the city name; Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gitta, these are the Hebrew abbreviations of these things, and the Ekrons, and you can see this is the Philistine group, and here’s area one.  It was from this area that time after time you had the Philistines break out and begin to invade Israel.  This is going to be a picture of our life as believers in a moment here so watch how this works.

 

There are pockets that Joshua leaves and it’s from these pockets that you have breakouts.  Now notice the phrase in verse 3, notice what it says, “It “is counted to the Canaanites.”  But you say wait a minute, I thought it says in verse 2 the borders of the Philistines.  The Philistines are not the Canaanites.  How come?  Turn back to Deut. 2:23, again this is one of those little things in the Bible but it shows the greatness of our sovereign God in history; when God says that there’s going to be a land that’s going to be there, it’s going to be there.  Watch what happens.  This is how the Philistines got into trouble that they wished they’d never got into. 

 

Deut. 2:23, “And the Avvim, who dwelt in Hazerim, even unto Gaza, the Caphtorim,” now the Caphtorim are another name for the Philistines; now the problem is we don’t know where Caphtor was, so we don’t know for sure where these Philistines came from but they appear to come from either Cypress or Crete and they are associated in some mysterious way with a group of people called the Sea People, and scholars are working on this to find out who these Sea Peoples are.  It’s a mysterious people that raided all through the eastern Mediterranean; they even went down into Egypt and raided.  They are a fierce group, apparently somewhat related to the early Greeks of the Trojan War era, etc.  So you have these Sea Peoples and the Philistines are somehow tied in with them but verse 23 says “the Caphtorim, who came forth out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and dwelt in their stead.”  In other words, this is a notice which says that the Sea Peoples landed here and established a beachhead and they took over part of the Canaanite territory. 

 

Now turn back to Joshua and see what happens; they are in the wrong place and God is going to judge this area and they get it.  What God says, I don’t care whether you came in here and cleaned the Canaanites out or not, this land belongs to My people and they are going to have it.  And so the Philistines actually did a very silly thing, they moved down here and that is a condemned real estate section; it’s condemned real estate and God is going to clean them.  So whether they’re Canaanites or not God has pronounced judgment on the land and the Philistines are going to get theirs.  That’s why that little notice is in verse 3, it “is counted to the Canaanite, even though the Canaanites aren’t there, the Philistine is there but it’s credited, that’s the word credit, it is credited to the Canaanites.  Do you see.

 

Now we have a small picture of this in Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ comes to die on the cross for your sins; Jesus Christ, as it were is like the Philistines, He comes into condemned territory and when He comes in God does not spare His sentence even for His own Son.  And so when our sins are transferred over to Christ, Christ still bears the judgment that was ours, just as the Philistines bear the judgment which was to come upon the Canaanites. 

 

So now we come to the second area, verse 4, “From the south, all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that is beside the Sidonians, unto Aphek, to the borders of the Amorites,” to the “borders of the Amorites” means a coastal strip.  Here you have area one, Philistia.  Area two extends up, it’s a coastal strip, all the way on up to what is now [can’t understand word], and this is area number two.  So the whole entire coast line is still left unconquered.  That’s area 2.  Now verses five and six give you area three. “And the land of the Gebalites, and all Lebanon, toward the sun-rising, from Baal-gad under Mount Hermon unto the entrance into Hamath. [6] All the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon unto Misrephoth-maim,” etc. and he lists area three.  Area three starts here and goes all the way up to the northern border.  So you have area one, area two and area three.  So actually the conquest extended in a great… you have Transjordania here and in this area that I’m drawing now, that’s the area of the conquest.  All this area remained unconquered, area one, two and three. 

 

And it’s significant that on down in history, what came out of area one that Israel had problems with all the time?  The Philistines.  What came out of area two?  Remember what happened in the divided kingdom; remember a king who married a woman called Jezebel?  Where did she come from?  She came from Tyre.  What did that woman do?  She almost destroyed the entire nation because of her apostate religion.  So we have religion coming out of area two.  And what came out of are three?  The famous Arameans of Damascus and they were always attacking from the north. 

 

So you see, isn’t this remarkable that the three areas left unconquered are the three areas from which judgment comes upon the nation.  Why is this?  We’ll see this in a moment but look at 13:6, the last part, “them will I drive out from before the children of Israel; only” you divide, notice the “thou” there, addressed to Joshua, “only divide thou it by lot unto the Israelites for an inheritance as I have commanded thee.”  Now isn’t this strange; here Joshua is an old man and God says look Joshua, area one, area two, area three are left unconquered.  You haven’t had a chance to do this but I’ll tell you what to do Joshua, I want you to parcel out that land even though it is unconquered.  So Joshua, before he dies, he is going to fulfill the promise that was given him, turn to Joshua 1:6.  God had made solemn promise with Joshua and God is going to see that His promise is vindicated.  And in Joshua 1:6 we have an outline of Joshua’s life.  “Be strong and of good courage; for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swore unto their fathers to give them.”  God said I swore unto the fathers and Joshua, I promise that you, not your sons, not somebody else, not the judges, you Joshua will be the one who parcels out this land.  And we have this promise answered in the chapter before us; before Joshua died God’s promise comes true.  Application to us as believers: God has a plan for your life, you’re living today; if you check yourself you’re breathing, you’re alive and God has a plan for your life.  And God is not going to allow you to die unless you commit some silly ridiculous thing called sin unto death, God will not permit you to die before your tour of duty is up.  He will see to it that you are a recipient of the promises that He has made to you.  Just like Joshua, God will not take you home until your plan is fulfilled.

 

Now quickly verses 8-33 we have this section which simply repeats what we covered in Deuteronomy, we won’t go into it, this is the settling of Transjordania, this is the area over here east of the Jordan River, just simply to show a continuity with Moses, because beginning in chapter 14 we’re going to have Joshua continuing Moses’ work. So this chapter deals with Moses.

 

Now let’s turn to Judges 3:1-4 and apply this to the Christian life.  What about this unconquered land?  Why is it that God, so faithful to His promises, provides all this land for Israel but does not provide a total conquest?  Why is this?  Why is it that there are pieces there left to the nations responsibility to secure?  We have the answer here.  Verses 1, “Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove [test] Israel” by the way, the Hebrew verb “to prove” here means to test by pressure, “to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan. [2] Only that the generations of the children might know, to teach them war, at the least to such as before knew nothing of it.”  Now translated into 20th century English what it’s trying to say here in the text is this: that the fathers conquered this land under Joshua, but what about their children, what about their sons, and what about their sons, and what about their grandsons.  These children are never going to have the experience of a good knockdown brawl and they are not going to have the experience of having to claim God’s promises against adversity.  Therefore, God leaves these people to train his people.  The word “prove” in verse 1 means to train or press by pressure; if you’ve been in the service, this is boot training, ranger training, something like that; it’s that kind of training, a serious kind of training.  [4 “And they were to test Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which He commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.”]

 

Now we can apply this finally to the Christians by turning to Eph. 6, the classic passage on the Christian’s battle. We find that we as believers today face a battle.  This battle isn’t over some trivial issue, this battle is over the very heart and guts of what it means to be a man, to live, to have purpose and meaning in your life, and to accomplish something in history that’s worthwhile for all eternity.  So in verses 10 and following, Paul says: “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. [11] Put on the whole armor of God,” the emphasis is not on the whole-ness but the fact that it’s on the armor of God, “that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”  In other words Christian, we are in a similar situation to this.  Christ has secured the main victory but He has left pockets and these pockets are, collectively, inside the sin nature. Every one of you has a sin nature; I have a sin nature, so you can relax, we all know it.  We have sin natures; we have areas of strength, areas of weakness. Everyone has a sin nature.  And it is out of this sin nature plus demonic influences that operate on the sin nature, etc. it’s out of these two areas where we, as ancient Israel, have unconquered pockets and it’s in these pockets, like the Philistines attack, you have false religions from Tyre, you have the Arameans of Damascus come south in this area, etc.   You have all these unconquered pockets that are the sources of strife and struggle. 

 

Now, let’s put two and two together.  God said… why did He say back in the Old Testament I’ve given you things?   Why did He say this?  Because He said believers have to be trained, they have to have the experience themselves of struggle.  Now apply that to the Christian life.  This is why once you’re saved, we believe in eternal security, but once you’re saved you begin a struggle and a battle.  Why is it that God doesn’t just save you and take you to heaven?  Because that does not complete your salvation.  Your salvation has to be completed through a series of acts that you do in history, of claiming God’s promise as active resistance to something.  And this is why many of you have the problem, we all do, most of our suffering is SIM, self-induced misery. 

 

In other words, we ask for trouble.  God doesn’t have to send trials our way because oftentimes we just ask for it.  How do we ask for it, now and applied to this?  We ask for every time we fail to meet a challenge from our sin nature, through Satan, etc. analogous to the Philistines.  And so God says well, you didn’t learn that time so I guess I have to repeat the trial.  And so He throws another trial your way to see how you handle this one.  And again you fall apart, and again you fail to trust His promises in active resistance against the strong pressure.  And so the result is you’re a flabby Christian, not saying you personally, it’s just this is a principle, is that we become flabby Christians unless we’re constantly agitated. 

 

Now this doesn’t mean you go around with a chip on your shoulder.  This not what I’m saying; I’m simply saying that the Christian has to be exercised and this principle we have of the unconquered land you can visualize your own battle.  You possess a sin nature with unconquered portions.  If you want a more medically correct thing, think of your central nervous system; your central nervous system has already been programmed to act certain ways from your non-Christian background and so therefore when someone comes up to you and makes some snotty remark you immediately have this reaction out of your sin nature, you have a learned behavior pattern and this learned behavior pattern swings into action, it’s part of the unconquered territory in you that God has assigned you to conquer through grace.  And a part of your growth as a believer is to gradually eliminate and transform these areas so that though the sin nature is still there, at least you don’t have this almost automatic response to get even with somebody or do something else, try to impress people, approbation lust, I want to have so many friends so I am going to put on a phony front and impress everybody and all the rest, this kind of thing.

 

So these are these lusts that come forth and I want you to connect this with the historic background of Israel.  This is an actual historical situation.  And all you have to do is read the rest of the Old Testament to see that is the source of your troubles; but it was left there for a reason and the reason why you have a sin nature, and as a real concerned Christian, this is a tremendous problem for us, why does God leave us with the thing?  The reason is He wants us trained under pressure, and you have to, in the middle of adversities claim and rest on the promises of God.