Day 180: God's Just Wars 2

Today's Connected Passages: 
Joshua 6:20-21 [Hebrews 11:30]; 

Joshua 8:1-29; 10:1-43; 

Joshua 11:1-23; 

Judges 20:18-48

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. I am so glad you've decided to join us for day number 180 of the Canon Connected. And oh, we're so close to being halfway through the year. Truly an amazing uh milestone for those of you who have done this plan since the beginning. And if you're newer to the plan, or maybe even if this is your first day, I say welcome, of course, and I hope you continue to do it. This is the kind of plan you can fall out of and jump right back in on, and it doesn't really affect, I think, you know, the momentum of the plan at all. And yet I'm very appreciative of those of you who have who have been with us since the beginning and you've hung in there tight. This is so hard to do. It definitely takes discipline, and you know, from I definitely believe that's from God if you're a Christian. It's spirit, you know, led. But it's still something I think you have to make a choice. You have to choose every day when you get up, if you're gonna read the Bible, pray, you know, and and and and do the disciplines of Christianity. And right now we're finishing up a week-long series of um what I've been calling the land of Israel, the physical, you know, geographical land of Israel in the Old Testament, uh often referred to as Cana early on in the in the in the Old Testament. This is the land God promised them all the way back to the time of Abraham, and this is the land God gave them, as we saw for a couple of days in several various passages, and then they divided the land, and now we're kind of doing a retroactive look at the middle part of that study about God giving them the land, because in order for God to give the people of Israel the land where he wanted them to be, the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey, that was a huge point of controversy, even like with the with the twelve spray spies in Numbers 13 and 14. Um, in order for God to accomplish that, there had to be war. And even after you know, these stories we saw with David yesterday, um, there continued to be war between Israel and other nations, and God didn't just allow it passively, God, you know, led it and he ordained it. And when David talked to God about war, I mean, he he typically said yes. In fact, I think in every situation, every passage we read, he said yes. But today we're kind of gonna go back to the actual Joshua story because today all the passages but one are truly about the conquering of the land through war that ties in again perfectly with the promise giving and distribution of the land, the dividing of the land. Um, because all these passages today are again about how they had to go in and fight and how God told them to. Joshua 6, with the falling of the walls of Jericho, God ordained this whole thing down to every the tiniest little details. And that's one of those stories that we're going to study later when we talk about how God doesn't make sense because of how God told him to do it. But we can see from the two verses today, and we've studied the verse in context, studied these, the story in context before, but we can just see how the walls of Jericho collapsed, and then the people went in and took the city. Hebrews 11 again, verse 30, as we've talked about, makes a comment on that. By faith, the people of Israel marched around Jericho for seven days, and the walls came crashing down. You don't have faith unless God has told you to do it. This is definitely one of God's just wars. And then that doesn't end there because now we see three different entire lengthy passages in Joshua where the Lord, again, chapter 8 of Joshua, verse 1, the Lord said to Joshua, Do not be afraid or discouraged, take all your fighting men and attack I, so that to inhabit this whole land, again, they have to fight. It's more than just the walls of Jericho. They're going to continue to have to go into the land and continue to wage war with other peoples. And we're going to, you see, through the second two passages today. And by the way, the repetition of God being with them, God fulfilling his promises, we've seen so many times we can't even count them. They're part of the story. That's something that you see. God is with his people. God gave promised them this, so they they need to remember this. And so the people of Ai didn't stand a chance. And then when these other kings and these other parts of the promised land, you know, hear about Israel's coming and they hear what they've done and how they've allied with the Gibeans, they try to fight back, but they don't stand a chance. Okay. And again, these are promises we've seen through the God of heaven's armies. We've seen in the studies that we've done through the sovereignty of God that God promises them that He's going to give them victory, and He tells them, do not be afraid. When I hear do not be afraid in Joshua's stories, though, it's a lot different than when I hear it with Hezekiah and Jehoshaphat and those stories, because Joshua was a man of war. He was just so good at what he did. I mean, he was he was the one Moses sent out all the way back in Exodus. So I don't think that people like King Hezekiah and Jehoshaphat should have been afraid, and they weren't, truly, not at the end of the day. But that just hits my ear differently when God tells Joshua, do not be afraid, because I know I can just see Joshua, you know, bowing up. Let's let's get it done. You know, let's do it. By the way, that's from, you know, um, where I'm getting this from is from Joshua 10, verse 8. God tells Joshua, do not be afraid of them, for I have given you victory over them. Not a single one of them will be able to stand up to you. Sounds again very much like Snacker King of Assyria in that Hezekiah story. But I knew Joshua was going to do it differently. Sometimes God does it by wiping out 186,000 men with the angel of death overnight, and sometimes he uses Joshua in a mighty army, you know, um, along with God, the God of heaven's armies. It's still God, even whenever human beings do it. And then Joshua chapter 11, the king of Jabin of Hazel heard what had happened. He sent messengers to the following kings, very similar thing. And we see that at the end of this uh the end of this story, so the land finally had rest from war. And by the way, I didn't include it as a connection, but this does make me think about that Sabbath rest that the New Testament talks about. The land had rest from war. We know that God wanted the land to rest even whenever they were growing crops, that was part of the law all the way back in Moses' day. But here we see a land having rest from war. That is what heaven is truly going to be. That is the Sabbath rest of heaven, okay? No more conflict, no more fighting, no more war, no more any of that, all that other stuff. But including this, we want rest, and the land needed rest after all of this. And so um, as we talked about yesterday, they didn't wipe all the people out completely, and there continued to be conflicts in the future, okay, and there continued to be false, you know, religion in the land because they didn't wipe all the people out. But this one verse at the end of Joshua 11 testifies to this. Joshua took control of the entire land, just as the Lord had instructed Moses. He gave it to the people of Israel as their special possession. That's why there's seven days of this, okay? Dividing the land among the tribes. So the land finally had rest from war. But we do see in all these passages, God told him what to do. You know, this was God ordained, God led, God inspired, however you want to say it. And then finally, a very interesting one, but it connects to me, okay, because it sounds just like Joshua chapter, or excuse me, Judges chapter one. And this is Judges chapter 20, and it ties into all of these just war passages. This is God's own people. We studied this earlier this year and we talked about unity because God, you know, had to um had to judge the tribe of Benjamin for what they did in the book of Judges with the idolatry. Um and uh in Judges chapter 19, which again is so unspeakable. We won't revisit that in the details, but you know, we read it already. But the tribe of Benjamin had to be judged, and we talked about how God didn't, and the people even, God, I believe, didn't want this, and you know, the other eleven tribes didn't want to wipe out Benjamin completely. And so they made arrangements for that. But notice in Judges chapter 20, verse 18, before the battle, the Israelites went to Bethel and asked God which tribe should go first to attack the people of Benjamin. The Lord answered, Judah is to go first. Very similar. Again, it echoes Judges chapter one, which we read a couple of days ago. But the idea is God ordained this. Okay, God uh minimum allowed it, okay, but however you want to say, whatever verb or in passive or active tense you want to use. Um this is one of God's just wars, and it was a civil war. Um and so, and it was for good reason. Benjamin deserved this, and yet God in his graciousness didn't wipe them out completely, and even gave them the men who were left wives in order that they can they could continue, because God loved all of his people. And so, again, as hard of uh of a subject it is, and as you know, uh again, just hard it is to digest sometimes. Um we have to if we're gonna read through the Bible and especially the Old Testament, you have to come to grips with the fact that God ordained war, and there it was the the the tail of the tape, so to speak, and in the and and in that in that time. And it had to happen because I believe God could have chosen anything that he wanted, but this is how he chose it. And so if it's God's sovereign will, then we yield to it and we do our best to understand it, and it doesn't mean we have to always like it, but it does mean we have to honor God and studying it and responding to it. And so Today we're gonna turn the page uh to a just a two-day study. We're gonna do a series now of just uh uh two one or two day off studies. We don't have like a big theme uniting the next uh several days of study, but tomorrow and the next day, as we finish up the month of June, if you're all caught up in the plan, is God leads his dear children along, just like the hymn says, some through the water, some through the flood, some through the fire, but all through the blood. We see this idea, not the hymn necessarily per se, although the the words do ring true in a lot of passages, but the basic idea, God leads his dear children along all throughout the uh the Old and New Testament. So we're gonna look at two days worth of that. So please come back and be with us as we continue to read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections. Thank you.