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Joshua 9

Joshua
JoshuaSteve Gregg

This discussion by Steve Gregg reflects on the biblical story of Joshua 9, where Joshua and the Israelites come across the Gibeonites who trick them into making a peace treaty. Despite being deceived, Joshua chooses to honor the treaty and make the Gibeonites servants of the Israelites rather than killing them. Gregg explores the themes of commitments and covenants in the face of deceit and highlights the importance of fulfilling promises, even when it may seem inconvenient or difficult. The discussion ultimately raises questions about the sovereignty and providential working of God in both good and bad situations.

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Transcript

In chapters 7 and 8 of Joshua, we had the story of Ai, the city of Ai, the second city that Joshua and the children of Israel encountered after coming into the land. Jeremiah was such a tremendous victory that they were quite self-confident that they would have no trouble with a smaller city like Ai. And so initially, they just sent a small number of troops, perhaps certainly a number that would have been adequate to conquer the city under normal circumstances, but they were roundly defeated and we're not sure why until God revealed that it was because there had been a compromise, a violation of things that were dedicated to God by a man named Achan in the camp, and he had to be dealt with.
He was exposed and he was
killed for his crime. And you know, this really illustrates, frankly, how seriously God takes things that are supposed to be dedicated to him. You know, that he would allow 36 Israelites to be killed in battle because one man had done this.
The whole nation put to shame because one man had taken something that was dedicated to God.
Everything in Jericho was supposed to be dedicated to God. Well, he had stolen something that belonged to God.
And if we would seek to understand God's attitude towards such things and apply it to our own modern case, but remember that we have been dedicated to God and we have been placed on the altar.
You remember the statement in Leviticus that whatever touches the altar is holy. That means any animal that is placed on an altar was now belonging to God is holy unto the Lord could not be used for common purposes.
It was not an animal you could take off the altar and go home and have a barbecue and eat it there. You could do that with that lamb until it touched the altar. You could exchange it for another at the last minute, if you wish, before you presented it.
But once it touched the altar, it was settled. It belonged to God and you could do nothing with it except let God have it. So whatever is dedicated to God is his.
And the Bible says that we have presented ourselves a living sacrifice, holy, but is separated and acceptable unto God.
And that being so, we are things dedicated and to take our lives, take our things that we have dedicated to God and then take them back from him and use them for ourselves instead of for him is the same kind of violation, really. Something that is dedicated to God is God's.
And it's always frightening to me when I see Christians who backslide or who walk away from their commitment because clearly when they came to Christ, they made all kinds of promises and commitments of themselves to God. That's what coming to Christ involves. You promise yourself to God.
It's entering into a covenant. And they become God's and then at some point in their life, they just decide it doesn't matter that much to them and they walk away and do something else.
It's like stealing something off the altar from God and saying, I'm taking it back for myself.
It's not as likely when God will allow the whole nation of Israel to suffer defeat until such a crime has been rectified. It's just one of the ways that we see the importance God places on commitments and rendering what is his. Remember, Jesus said, rendered his fees are what is Caesar's and render to God what is his and so what is his has got to be given to him.
And this man, Achan, violated that and it caused all kinds of trouble. And his name means trouble. And he was killed in the Valley of Achor, which means trouble.
And after that was remedied, they attacked Ai again, this time in chapter eight of Joshua, and they were more successful.
They had a strategy of ambush. They attacked the city from the front, the main armies did, and then retreated as if they were defeated a second time by these people.
So that people of Ai in great self-confidence fled the city, left the gates open, chased after Israel as Israel fled. But then the ambush party that was behind the city came in, burned the city. The people of Ai looked behind them and saw their city on fire.
They realized there's no, no, you cannot go home, you know, you can never go home now.
Now you're just living right out there on the battlefield and there's nowhere else to go. Their spirit failed.
The Israelites they were pursuing now turned on them and the ambush party came out of the city and attacked them from the rear. This was, this was, this went very badly for Ai. And all the battles that remain, of which we will read in chapters nine, ten, and eleven, for the further conquest of the land, went similarly
for those who fought Israel.
Now, in chapter nine, there was a confederacy formed of southern cities in the southern region against Israel because they now knew that both Jericho and Ai had fallen. And they could tell that Joshua was on an aggressive course, he'd be coming after them too. So they thought, well, if Jericho can't stand against them, then probably we can't, so we'd better join them.
Hand in hand with our nearby cities and cause, you know, an allied force to come against Joshua. And that's what we read in chapter nine, verse one. It came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, in the hills and in the lowland and in the coast of the great sea toward Lebanon, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites heard about it, that they gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel, which one of these groups that gathered with the other tribes were the Hivites.
But among the Hivites, there were a few cities, apparently four, of which Gibeon was the primary leader. Gibeon, we are told elsewhere, was a royal city. Chapter ten, we're going to read in chapter ten that it was a royal city, verse two.
I don't know what that means, a royal city.
Most of these cities had kings, but it may be that this city was a city that itself governed over some of the neighboring towns because it was Confederate with three other towns that are mentioned with it. And these cities decided that they didn't want to resist Joshua.
They were Hivites also. There were other Hivites apparently that joined in the Confederacy against them, but the Gibeonites were Hivites by race. And we're told that later on also.
In chapter nine, verse seven, I'm sorry, eleven, verse nineteen, I think maybe is where it is, somewhere later on. I'm not going to take the time to look for it now, but we're told that they are Hivites. A couple of times it mentions that later.
So these people thought, well, we're not going to fight against Joshua. We're going to join him. But there's a problem.
God had commanded
Moses, and of course by extension Joshua, that when they conquered the land of Canaan, they must not make any treaties. They must not intermarry. They must not make peace with any of the Canaanites.
These were not ordinary wars.
Actually, in Deuteronomy chapter 20, God specifically made a distinction between the Canaanites and all other Gentiles that might eventually come into conflict with Israel. And he made it clear that with other cities that were not Canaanites, they should not follow the procedure of extermination that was commanded in the case of Canaan.
You might want to look at Deuteronomy chapter 20, where God is giving instructions for war.
In the time of Moses, and this is really, he gives these instructions up through verse 14, Deuteronomy 20. And these instructions are, when you go against a city, you give them the opportunity to surrender.
If they surrender, then they pay tribute to you forever. If they don't surrender, you fight them, you kill off the males, but you leave the women and the children alive. Now, then it says in verse 15, these you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you.
Which
are not the cities of these nations, not the Canaanites. But verse 16, but of the cities of these peoples, which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive. And that's what we read again and again in Joshua.
They left nothing breathing in these cities. But God said there are other cities outside of Canaan. They don't follow this scorched earth policy in all their wars.
If they happen to be at war with somebody that's not Canaanite, outside the country in an international conflict, they are not
supposed to kill everything that breathes. They're supposed to follow this other procedure that's considerably more humane. And so the Gibeonites thought, well, it would go better for us if we were not Canaanites.
I mean, Joshua would not target us for destruction. But we are Canaanites. They actually were only a few miles away from where Joshua was in camp.
Excuse me. And so they decided to perpetrate a scam.
On Joshua and try to convince him that they weren't locals, that they're from far away, and get him to enter into a treaty on a ruse, a treaty of mutual non-aggressions.
So that when he would discover that they were nearby, he'd be obligated to leave them alone.
Now, this story is what chapter 9 is about. This decision of the Gibeonites to join, to make peace with Joshua ended up causing the Gibeonites to have extra problems with their neighboring fellow Canaanites because it was obviously seen by their fellow Canaanites as an act of treason against Canaan for them to side with Joshua.
So they took some risks in doing this. And many commentators, in fact almost all commentators and preachers who talk about
this, they use this almost as an example of these were con artists. This is like an example of the devil deceiving God's people.
And we need to be careful about those who would deceive and so forth and so on. And I think, actually I see this as providential. I see this like Rahab.
You know, Rahab took sides against her people with God's people and God blessed her for it. And even though the Israelites were not supposed to intermarry with the Canaanites,
when one came to faith, that changed things. Rahab became a believer in Yahweh.
And as a result, it apparently was not considered wrong for her to be allowed to be married to a Jewish man. And so also, though in general the Canaanites were to be exterminated, and they were not really offered terms of peace, they were not offered the option of conversion. Yet if on their own they came to faith in Yahweh, apparently God allowed, you know,
the exception.
Now I say God allowed, even though we would really say, well this is all done between Joshua and these people and he didn't consult the Lord, so maybe God shouldn't be considered to be in this. But on the other hand, God required Joshua to honor the peace treaty they made. It's true that Joshua would not have made it had he known all the facts, but even Joshua's ignorance of it may in some way be God's providence.
Because
the Gideonites became allies of Israel and remain so. And it was because they believed in Yahweh. I'm not sure that they gave up all of their pagan beliefs, but you know, we don't know that they didn't.
What we know is that they believed Yahweh was more powerful than their gods, which is why they wanted to come over to Israel's side. They were willing to take sides against all the other Canaanites combined and take their chances with Joshua, because
they believed Joshua had the real God on his side, and they say so. So it seems that these are Canaanite pagans who decided, you know, this Yahweh, I'm impressed with him.
I think I want to fear him. And they adopted the fear of Yahweh as their position. And as we know, as the story comes to its end, that once Joshua realized they were, you know, near neighbors, and yet he'd made an oath and he couldn't kill them, he made them servants.
Water carriers and woodcarvers poured the house for the Lord. That is, they were occupied forever afterwards in activities around the tabernacle, which would sort of remove them from their pagan shrines rather permanently. I mean, if they're occupied all day long around the tabernacle and they're believers in Yahweh, we don't ever read that they were circumcised, though they may have eventually been.
We do know that forever afterward, God was on the side of the Gibeonites, so much so that when they were attacked by their fellow Canaanites in the next chapter, in chapter 10, and Joshua was obliged to go and help them, God actually caused, it would seem, the sun to stand still in order for the Gibeonites to be protected. Of all the wars fought by Joshua, we don't ever see a miracle like that which God performed, not in what is an ordinary wars of conquest, but in his war of protection of the Gibeonites. And God honored that.
I mean, think of how God could have gotten Joshua out of a bad situation by just letting the neighboring people wipe out the Gibeonites.
Joshua was stuck with a covenant he'd made inadvisably, and when the other Canaanites wanted to come against Gibeah, God could either get Joshua out of that deal by just causing the Gibeonites to be wiped out by their enemies. But in Joshua's battle to defend Gibeon, that's when God did this great miracle, which is said to be like no other day that ever was, when God hearkened to a man and caused the sun to stand still.
That miracle occurred in defense of Gibeon, God's defense of Gibeon. Later on, in 2 Samuel, I think it's in chapter 21, King Saul is said to have killed Gibeonites in his zeal to eradicate the land of pagans, and God brought trouble on Israel, famine, drought, because he was angry that Saul had violated this covenant with the Gibeonites. And David had to do something to rectify the situation before Israel came out from under God's judgment on that.
The Gibeonites, it is said, are the same people who were called the Nephthynim in the time of Nehemiah and Ezra. They apparently, because they were part of Judah in later years, were carried away into Babylon with the people of Judah. And many of these came back with Zerubbabel and were involved in building the temple in the days of Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah.
The Gibeonites were. They were called the Nephthynim in those days. There are some writers who say that some of the modern Arab Christians are descendants of the Gibeonites.
Whether this can be established with certainty, I don't know. It's very difficult to trace with certainty the ancestry of these nomadic peoples in the Middle East. They come and go.
But there is some thought that the Gibeonites still exist in some of the Christian Arabs. So, looking at this in the big picture, it would have seemed very tragic if the Gibeonites had been wiped out like the rest of the Canaanites. And it could be said that God sovereignly caused Joshua to be negligent in looking into this more and inquiring of the Lord so that this would happen.
After all, the Gibeonites became part of Israel. They were Gentiles that became part of Israel by siding with Israel's God, just like Rahab was. A similar situation.
They made a vow to Rahab. They made a vow to Gibeon. In both cases, these people would have been wiped out had they not embraced Yahweh.
But because of the vow, they became part of Israel and part of Israel's charge. Joshua was as obligated to defend them as he would be any Jewish city. So, this is what happens in these chapters we're about to look at.
In verse 3, And said to him and to the men of Israel, We have come from a far country. Now, therefore, make a covenant with us. Then the men of Israel said to the Gibeonites, You see, these people are Gibeonites.
Perhaps you dwell among us. So, how can we make a covenant with you? But they said to Joshua, We are your servants. And Joshua said to them, Who are you and where do you come from? So, they said to him, From a very far country your servants have come.
Because of the name of Yahweh your God. For we have heard of the fame, of his fame and of all that he did in Egypt. And all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, Desion, king of Heshbon and Od, the king of Bashan.
These were the kings that were conquered on the east side of the Jordan prior to the entry in the land. This was how the Reubenites and the Gadites and the Manassites had obtained their inheritance on the east side. Because they had conquered previously in the lifetime of Moses, two kings over there, Od and Sion.
And that land became the inheritance of the two and a half tribes before they entered the land. So, these people said, We heard what your God has done over there and over here in this land. And so, we decided we want to be on your side.
It says in verse 11, Therefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us saying, Take provisions with you for the journey and go to meet them and say to them, We are your servants, now therefore make a covenant with us. This bread of ours we took hot for our provision from our houses on the day that we departed to come to you. But now look, it's dry and moldy.
And these wineskins which we filled were new, and see they are torn. These, our garments and our sandals have been old because of the very long journey. Now, I don't know how long they were professing to be, how much distance they had professed the cross.
If your clothes get old on a journey, I mean, how long does it take clothes to get old? It's not like in a week or two. I mean, they sound like they've been traveling for six months or something or a year. It's hard to know really what they're trying to convey.
They're being very evasive. Josh says, where are you from? Oh, a very far country. Well, does it have a name? Well, it's a very far country, you know.
But they were evasive. They said, oh, from a far country, but we heard about your God. And so, he kind of changed the subject, and then he'll give the name of the country.
And perhaps you'd think that Joshua would hold out for more specific information, though it is also possible that in those days with information not traveling very fast, that there could be many countries some distance away that Joshua would never have known by name, even if he's told. So, I mean, they could have been implying, you know, you've never really heard of us. After all, they don't even claim they had a king.
They claim that the elders of their people sent them. This too is, you know, they make it sound like maybe there are nomadic tribes from some far distant area, not a very significant people, although Gibeon was a royal city, we're told. We don't ever read of Gibeon actually having a king.
So, some commoners think they really did only have elders of their people governing them. It was more like a republic, more than most of the cities around. Almost all of the conquests that Joshua made at this time were specifically told he took the king and did to him the way he treated the king of Jericho and the way he treated the king of Ai.
In one case, five kings are hiding in a cave and he pulls them out and kills them. The kings of these countries are considered to be, you know, the main trophies of conquest. And in fact, when all the conquests are over, a long list of kings is given that were conquered by Joshua.
But we never read of this city having a king, the Gibeonites. They might have had one who's not mentioned, but they talk about the elders of their people. And so, it's possible that they were somewhat more civilized and more advanced and had more, you know, more of a self-governing type of population, like the Greeks later would have.
No one knows for sure. They could have just been lying about it too. They could have had a king there.
It was a royal city. I'm not really sure what royal city means, nor do the commentators necessarily know. But it was an important city.
But so was Athens, an important city later on. And it was, you know, a republic. Or it was not necessarily, they didn't have the old-fashioned kind of monarchy there.
So anyway, I don't know. I really don't know very much and I don't think we have enough to go on. But they sound like they're kind of a loose-knit community in some distant area, who are governed by a body of elders.
And yet, if they're really that far away, why are they coming to Joshua fearing anything from him? Do they think Joshua is going to become, you know, a world empire somewhere? Well, they might have thought that. I mean, you know, some people have such ambitions. But obviously, their story is made up.
And they had really thought it through. They thought out the details. They had the visuals, you know, the evidence, the moldy bread, everything.
They really had figured out how to do this ruse. And it says, verse 14, Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel from the Lord. Now, this one line, probably more than any in the whole chapter, is usually the one from which sermons are derived when preaching through Joshua, because it seems to have a very practical application.
They made a mistake because they didn't ask God. And obviously, they wouldn't have made a mistake if they had asked God. We know also, though, they didn't ask of God when they sent their troops off to Ai the first time.
And they didn't think of that as necessarily wrong. And the problem they had there, of course, is there was an unknown sin. If they'd asked God, he would have told them.
But this is not the first time they didn't inquire the Lord. Maybe we could just see that every time they didn't inquire the Lord, something undesirable happened that would have been better, would have been avoided if they'd inquired. Over in Proverbs, chapter three, verses five and six, it says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. God will direct you if you consult him, if you acknowledge him.
And don't lean on your own understanding, but lean on his counsel. That is, in general, a rule for godly people, and especially for a man who's ruling Israel, a nation that God is their king, and Joshua's only the general leading them in war. He should have consulted God.
But had he done so, like I said, the Gibeonites would have been killed rather than had this treaty entered into. And it's hard to know, with God's sovereign working behind the scenes and everything, whether this was something that God wanted to turn out this way. I don't know.
But in chapter 11 of Joshua, verses 19 and 20, it says, Of the other cities that they didn't spare, it says, There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. All the others they took in battle, for it was of the Lord to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in the battle that he might utterly destroy them. Notice, all the cities except Gibeon, God hardened their hearts to not make peace with Israel.
Now, it doesn't say that he put it in the hearts of the Gibeonites to make peace, but he obviously didn't harden their hearts like he did the others. The others didn't try to make peace with Israel because God didn't want them to. It was God's will for them to be destroyed, it says.
It was of the Lord to destroy them, and he hardened their hearts. But not the Gibeonites, he didn't harden their hearts. So, it seems to me that there's more than one layer to God's intentions in all of this.
On one level, Joshua should have consulted the Lord, but on another level, it's kind of a good thing he didn't. Good for the Gibeonites, and maybe good in God's eyes too, because if God didn't want this to happen, why did he neglect to harden the Gibeonite hearts? Why did he allow them to have soft hearts? That were willing to come under God's people and to fear their God. I'm actually very sympathetic to the Gibeonites.
It's true, they lied and did these ruse and so forth, and I'm not saying that that's the right thing to do. Rahab lied too. And in a sense, we can say Rahab lied at one level to protect herself.
You know, we commend Rahab because she protected the spies. But when the guards of her country are at her door saying, are you harboring spies? And she says, no, I didn't know who they were. I found them all.
I mean, she's covering her own backside too. Because if she said, yeah, I've got them right here, I've been harboring them, then that'd be her neck. So, there's a sense in which her lie, though it protected the people of God, was also, of course, protecting herself.
These guys lie to protect themselves. We're not recommending that people lie. And therefore, sometimes, although the end is a good end, it doesn't necessarily justify the means.
The means by which this deception took place was a lie. That's not a really good means. But the end may, in fact, be of the Lord.
Many times, you know, it says in one place of Samson in the book of Judges, that he didn't hearken to his parents' counsel, because it was of the Lord to destroy the Philistines, who became the objects of Samson's wrath, and he destroyed them, due to his doing something stupid that his parents advised him not to do. But it's interesting how it says that he didn't hearken to his parents because it was of the Lord to do this other thing. So, Samson made a wrong, even a sinful choice, but God had intentions for that to be used of him.
Does that mean that God made Samson make a wrong choice? No. Does it mean that God made these people lie? No, God didn't make them do it, but he used it. He didn't intervene to prevent it, because there was an outcome that he apparently wanted.
And the Gileadites, I believe, especially in view of the fact that their descendants became loyal workers at the Temple, builders of the Temple in Zerubbabel's day, true Israelites, not by blood, but by conversion. Just like Rahab, they belonged in Israel, not because of their bloodline, but because of their common faith. They adopted faith and fear of Israel's God.
So, it's kind of interesting to think of how many different layers there are of God's providence and God's will in that, because on one level, Joshua really should have counseled the Lord. He didn't. And for the Gibeonites, and maybe for the purpose of the audience, it ended up being better that way.
But from Joshua's standpoint, he made a mistake. And, you know, people should consult the Lord. But I think these stories make it very clear that the end does not justify the means.
God can bring a good end without bringing about the means that end. Which is basically a direct contradiction of something that we sometimes hear from our Calvinist friends, because if you're talking with a Calvinist, and they say, well, you know, God of predestined, who's going to get saved, is not going to say, well, then why do I need to even preach to him? If they're going to get saved because of predestined to be saved, then why do I have to bother myself and convince myself to preach the gospel? They say, well, because God intends for you to reach. He intends for them to be saved through you preaching to them.
And they say God ordains not only the end, but the means also. He not only has ordained that they get saved, but he has specifically ordained that he gets saved through your actions of witnessing to them. So it's a common line among Calvinists when they're talking about this.
God ordains not only the end, but the means as well. But that's not necessarily correct. God sometimes sees an end in view, and he doesn't necessarily approve of the means that it's going to happen by.
For example, Jesus' crucifixion. God ordained that Jesus would die for the sins of the world. It doesn't mean he approved of what Judas did or what Caiaphas did.
How could he judge them for it if he approved of it? How could he judge Caiaphas and the Jews for killing Christ if that's something he ordained for them to do? How can he judge them for doing what he ordained for them to do? It's not just they made their decisions. They were sinful decisions. It's like what God said about the Assyrians in Isaiah chapter 10, about how they were going to be used to judge the northern kingdom of Israel.
It says they don't see it that way. The Assyrians just intended to conquer territory. That's all they want.
They're just trying to expand their borders. They don't see themselves as being used by God. God doesn't approve of their hearts and their motives and everything.
They're doing the wrong thing, but he's using it. He's going to bring about an end that he wants to see brought about. So anyway, these are just some of the deeper issues that present themselves in a story like this.
Should Joshua have consulted the Lord? Yeah, everyone should consult the Lord. But he didn't. And did the outcome, was it a bad outcome? I don't think so.
You know, the concern that God expressed when he told Israel to wipe out all the Canaanites was this. If you don't, they will corrupt you. They'll teach you their ways.
You'll worship their gods, and then I'll have to destroy you. So get rid of them. Get rid of that influence.
The Gibeonites, as it turned out, didn't end up corrupting Israel. They didn't promote their own pagan religion in Israel. It went the other way.
They adopted the religion of Israel. So while in general, it is true that a lot of the Canaanites that remained did corrupt Israel. These ones didn't.
And therefore, God's purpose for wiping out the Canaanites would not be applicable to these ones because they converted to Yahweh. And as such, they are a picture of Gentiles coming into the commonwealth of Israel in the New Testament. As Paul describes us in Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11.
Paul says, Therefore, remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcised by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. That is, we weren't part of Israel in those days. We were aliens from that.
Strangers from the covenants, the promise, having no hope and without God in the world, just like the Gibeonites were. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far off have been made near by the blood of Christ. The Gibeonites had claimed to be people from a far off region and on those terms were accepted in, but had actually were brought near and actually were near all the time.
But we have been brought near to God and to our Jewish brethren who are Christians by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, has broken down the middle wall of division between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity that is the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself, that is in the body of Christ, one new man from the two, the Jew and the Gentile, thus making peace that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And it says he came and preached peace to you who were a far off.
And to those who were near. And so we Gentiles were a far off. We were a people of far off from the commonwealth of Israel.
We were without God, without hope in the world. We're aliens to the commonwealth of Israel and foreigners, strangers to the promises and the covenants, Paul says. That's what these people were.
However, they entered into a covenant with Israel. They claim to be people of far off and therefore not Jewish at all. They aren't Jewish, but they weren't that far geographically off.
And what does it say in verse 15 of Joshua, Joshua 9, 15. So Joshua made peace with them. Just like Paul says in Ephesians, Christ is our peace.
He reconciled the two, still making peace, it says. So Joshua too, a type of Christ, made peace with these Gentiles and brought them into the commonwealth of Israel. Just as we have come to be.
In Ephesians 2, Paul goes on to say, but now we are no longer strangers, but we are members of the household of God. And that is what the Gideonites became. They became part of the Jewish community and part of Israel.
So Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them and let them live. And the rulers of the congregation swore to him. So this was an oath they made.
And you'll find it in the Bible. Taking an oath is a very binding thing. It happened at the end of three days after they made a covenant with them that they heard that they were their neighbors who dwelt near them.
Then the children of Israel journeyed and came to the cities the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Shepherah, Beeroth and Tergith-Jerom. So it was not just one city, Gibeon, but the Gideonites apparently kind of were the royal city ruling over these other three cities nearby.
So the covenant applied to all of these in this coalition. Perhaps all the members of these cities were considered Gideonites. But the children of Israel did not attack them because the rulers of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel.
And all the congregation murmured against the rulers. So they realized, oh man, you guys made a dumb mistake. So the rulers were taking some flack from the general citizenry of Israel.
Hey, look what you got us into now. These people are neighbors. That was really bad.
That was really dumb. And so they murmured against them. However, all the rulers said to the congregation in response, we have sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel.
Now, therefore, we may not touch them. So this is an interesting thing. Because we would tend to think probably differently than that in our society.
We think that if we entered into an agreement upon false, you know, the partner we entered into, you know, gave false information. We would consider that the covenant then would be something that you could get out of legitimately because it was, you know, there's fraud involved. You know, yeah, you want to keep your promises and keep your contracts.
And if there's fraud involved, most courts of law would let you out of it, I think. But they didn't consider God would. Same thing with Rahab.
They made a vow that to her that they wouldn't kill her or anyone in her household. They might have felt badly about that later thing. We were not really supposed to spare these kids, but they made a promise and they kept the promise.
Keeping promises is a very important thing in God's mind, because integrity is an important thing to God. Integrity, in other words, for faithfulness. You know, the reason God has certain ethical requirements that he places upon us is because he wants our ethics to mirror his own.
Why? Well, because for one thing, his own are good and anything that's not like him is bad. So he wants us to be good. He wants to be compatible with us.
If he's good and faithful and we're unfaithful and wicked, then there's really no common ground between us to have fellowship with him. But it's more than that. It's partly this, too, because the world cannot see God, that they can see us.
They know that we represent him. And they will, in many respects, judge him by what they see in our behavior. There are many people who reject Christ, not because they've really ever seen any fault in him, but they've seen plenty of fault in the Christians.
Because they've had Christians who've cheated them or Christians who were hypocrites, Christians who made them angry. They get angry at God as if he did that. And that's the reason is because they can't see God.
They can see us. A lot of times when we're trying to talk to them about Christ and they bring up some example of a Christian that has let them down, we hardly know what to say. But we usually say, well, yeah, but don't look at the Christians.
Look at Jesus. But where are they supposed to see him? You know, if they don't see him in the Christians, where are they going to see him? God wants us to have his character, because otherwise the world will have no way of knowing what his character is like. Now, the one thing he wants, seemingly among more than many other things, is for people to trust him.
He has made faith in him the condition for salvation and for answered prayer and for authority over demons and for receiving the spirit and for just about everything. James said, if a man doesn't have faith, let him not think that he'll receive anything from the Lord. It's like believing God, trusting God is one thing that's a very high premium.
He wants everyone to trust him and to put their faith in him. But you can't trust somebody if you view them as untrustworthy. I mean, you can try, but you can't trust them.
We're not required to trust what is not reliable. We're told to trust God because he is reliable, because he does have integrity, because when he says something, he means it and he keeps his word. That's what God is like.
That's his faithfulness. You are to have faith in him because he is faithful. That is, you can rely on him because he's reliable.
You can trust him because he's trustworthy. Trustworthy, reliable, faithful. These are all terms for integrity of character.
If somebody has integrity, you can trust them. In fact, if you know for sure that they have integrity, you trust them without even thinking about it. If you wonder about their character and integrity, then it's not easy to trust them.
And if you know that they have integrity, you never trust them. In other words, faith isn't something that requires a lot of energy. If you have faith in that which you know to be faithful, it's effortless.
You effortlessly believe what you know is trustworthy, but you can't make yourself trust what you know is untrustworthy. Faith isn't something that takes energy. It's something that is a judgment call you make about the object of your faith.
Do you judge that they're faithful? Then you trust them. You judge they're dishonest? Then you won't trust them. If you're not sure, then you won't know whether you can trust them or not.
Because trust really is the natural response to the perception that you're looking at someone who's faithful. Now, the faithfulness of God is a primary trait of his that the world needs to know about, because otherwise they can't trust him. God wants the world to believe in him, to trust him.
When he speaks, they're supposed to be aware that they can put their confidence in what he says. But if God's people aren't that way, then there's no way the world will tend to think that God is that way. The people who espouse to be followers of God, the people who espouse to be loyal to him, they worship him.
And yet, if they're unfaithful, then where are we supposed to see any evidence that God is a faithful God if not reflected in the character of his people? And this is why faithfulness, personal integrity, has got to be one of the highest, if not the highest, premium in your own life, in your own character. When you say you'll do it, you do it, unless it becomes absolutely impossible. And you simply cannot pull it off.
In which case, and the Bible does talk about that, too, in Proverbs. It says, if you struck hands with a stranger, if you made an agreement with someone, by implication, you've done something very foolish and you can't really carry it out. He says, go and deliver yourself like a bird from the hand of a fowler.
Go and ask him to let you out of the deal. In other words, if you can't keep it, then at least seek to get permission to get out of it from them. Don't just leave an obligation unfulfilled, because then you're being unfaithful.
Certainly, there are times when you make a promise and you realize, oops, I can't do that. I just, you know, I've got the flu. I can't get out of bed.
I can't go do the thing I said I was going to do. So, try to get relief from the obligation if you can. Because keeping your promise should be something you just, it's non-negotiable.
If you promise it, you do it. That was understood in biblical times. It's stated as a value in some of the wisdom literature and in the Psalms.
For example, in Psalm 15, a short psalm begins with a question, then it answers the question. The question is, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill? That is, God, who can stay with you? Who can fellowship with you? Who can be a guest in your home with your welcome? Who can live with you in your house and in your holy hill? The answer then comes in a series of qualities of those that God will allow to live with him and stay on good terms with him. He who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart.
That means he's true inside as well as out. He's not just speaking it with his mouth, but his heart is true. He's got integrity.
Who does not backbite with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach against his friend, doesn't get involved in slander, gossip, and so forth. In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear the Lord. That is, he doesn't respect wicked people, he respects godly people.
And then at the end of verse four, he who swears to his own hurt and does not change. Now this is what Joshua did. Joshua swore, he made an oath, but it was to his own hurt.
What that means, that's an expression that means you make us an oath to do something, but keeping the oath is going to hurt more than you thought. In other words, you made the oath not on having full information of how things would turn out and the way they do turn out, it'll actually be hurtful to you to keep your oath. That's what it means to swear to your own hurt.
To swear to do that which will hurt you to fulfill. The man who swears to his own hurt, but does not deviate from what he said he would do, does not change. He says, okay, this is going to hurt me, but I swore, so I'm going to do it anyway.
I'm going to go through with it and hurt myself rather than hurt my integrity, rather than compromise my faithfulness. And of course, I always point this out, and I always did even back before I was ever married, because I always say this, marriage is really the main arena for faithfulness to an oath. Can be exhibited because there aren't many oaths or covenants that are still used in modern times.
We have contracts, we have agreements, verbal agreements, but when it comes to making a covenant and an oath, they did this all the time in the ancient world. We don't have much of that anymore, but we still retained it in one institution, that's in marriage. People make a promise.
They swear in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be faithful to each other as long as they live. And they even eliminate any back doors, you know, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse. They cover all the bases.
There's no way out of this for me. I promise. Now, upon that promise, the other person trusts and makes a similar promise.
And then you've entered a covenant. Now, when people get married, do they swear to their own hurt? Almost always they do. I mean, even a happy marriage, I mean, there are some happy marriages that would be an exception to this, but even the general happy marriage has its moments.
It has its moments when the couple finds that they don't agree with each other as much as they thought they were going to. And they don't settle their differences as easily as they thought they would. Before they got married, they thought they were marrying somebody that's going to be in an easy road, you know.
This person I picked because we're in love, we can just escape through life happily ever after like in the fairy tales. And so, of course, I promise to be in the fairy tales. Who wouldn't? Who doesn't want a fairy tale life for the rest of your life? So, they make a promise and then they find out what the person's like in real life.
And hopefully it's not really a huge, huge disillusionment. I mean, hopefully they really know what they married beforehand, but there's always things that were unanticipated. Just areas of conflict that didn't get talked through or weren't predicted.
And they find out they didn't marry Prince Charming or, you know, an angel. And so, they swore. But they now realize, oh, this is, it's not going to be as easy as I dreamed it was going to be to stay forever in this marriage, for better or for worse.
I said for better or for worse, but I really wasn't thinking there would be very much worse. And now I find out there's worse. But I made an oath.
Now, when a person finds themself in that situation, sometimes it's very bad in some marriages. Other times it's just not as good as they thought it would be. And in some very few cases, it's never been as good as they thought it would be.
I've heard some people testify that. But more often than not, that's not what you hear and not what people will say. But it doesn't matter whether it's as good as you thought or whether you find that keeping your oath is going to hurt you.
If you're a person of integrity, it doesn't change your decision. You still go forward. You stay faithful.
You do what you said you'd do. Only one thing causes divorce. Not several different things.
You can't make a list of things that cause divorce. There's only one. Sometimes people say, well, most people divorce over problems about money, problems about sex, disagreements about children.
No, people don't divorce over those things. People divorce for one reason. Because they decide to be unfaithful.
Because they decide they don't want to keep their promises anymore. Differences over money, sex, children. Those things don't cause marriages to break up.
You know how I know? Because I was in a marriage where there were those differences and I didn't break up. And if my wife had been like me, we'd still be married. Because those things don't break marriages up.
Unfaithfulness to a vow breaks people up. No matter how bad things get in a marriage, as long as both people say, I'm going to keep my promise because that's who I am. I'm a promise-keeping person.
I'm a person of integrity. And that's one thing I will not sacrifice is my integrity before God. If both people have that commitment, a marriage can never end except with death.
Nothing else can cause it to end. And so, we live in an unfaithful society. A society where faithfulness is not a value to people.
Not as it should be. The one who wants to dwell in God fully, has got to be a person who will swear even to their own hurt and they won't change. In business, believe it or not, I've actually worked real jobs before.
And sometimes I was a self-employed window cleaner and I'd make an agreement. I'd make a... I'd tell someone, I'll wash your windows for this amount of money. And I'd show up to do the job and it turned out it was going to take a lot longer than I thought.
There were things I found on the windows that were going to take about three times as long to remove. I'm going to lose my shirt on this job. I remember very specifically thinking, I should just tell these people I can't do it for that.
But then I thought of this verse. This very verse. You know, this verse is always on my mind.
He that swears to his own hurt and does not change. I hadn't sworn, but I had promised. And Jesus said, you shouldn't have to use ults.
Just let your yes be yes and your no, no. In other words, when you say yes, let that be as binding to you as if you've made an oath. You don't need ults.
Don't use ults. Just say yes and mean it. Just say no and mean it.
So I had made a promise and so I fulfilled it. I lost money on it in many cases. You learn how to bid better.
You know, you learn how to be more careful when you make promises. But the one thing that I do not believe a Christian ever should allow themselves to do is to compromise their integrity. This is the problem that Jephthah found he had when he made an oath to God.
If you give me victory over our enemies, I'll sacrifice the first thing to you that comes out of my door when I get home. Well, it turned out to be his daughter. And he didn't say, oh, well, I take that back.
He just said, wow, this is going to hurt. I've sworn to my own hurt. But he didn't change.
You know, in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, it says in verse 2, Do not be rash with your mouth and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.
Now, what do you mean by speaking hastily? Don't make promises to God that are ill advised or poorly thought through. Don't be hasty to promising. Why? He says in verse 4, when you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it, for he has no pleasure in fools.
Pay what you have vowed. It is better not to vow than to vow and not to pay. Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say to the messenger of God it was an error.
I don't know who this messenger of God is. Maybe I guess people made pledges at the temple and the temple would send someone over to collect the pledge. Oh, I made a mistake.
I really thought I had more money than I had. It turns out I can't afford. No, don't say it was an error.
Just give it. It's better not to vow at all than to vow and not pay. Now, there probably are situations that would be exceptions, but I can't imagine what they would be if sacrificing your daughter isn't one.
I mean, I think people can break their vows and be forgiven by God, but we can do all kinds of sins and be forgiven by God. That's not an argument in their favor. You know, the fact that God can forgive us is not an argument for allowing ourselves to do things.
Sin is sin, but we can see that this attitude, it was taken for granted. It's not like Joshua had to consult God and God said, now you keep your promise. Joshua knew you keep your promise.
Joshua knew he made a blunder and his blunder even included him agreeing to do what God had told him not to do. But he knew one thing worse than doing what God told him not to do in Scripture mechanics would be to do what God never wants you to do and that's to break your oath. He was bound by the words of his mouth, as he said, as Solomon said.
And so, this is how the Israelites saw the situation and they were pretty bummed about it and yet they had to keep their word. So, what happens? They do keep their word. But they put these people under servitude.
It says in verse 20, Joshua 9, 20, this we will do to them. We will let them live, that's keeping their oath, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them. And the ruler said to them, let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers, hard labor servants, carrying water.
Water is heavy. For all the congregation, as the rulers had promised them, then Joshua called for them and he spoke to them saying, why have you deceived us saying we are very far from you when you dwell near us? Now, therefore, you are cursed and none of you shall be freed from being slaves, woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God. So, they answered Joshua and said, because it was certainly told your servants that Yahweh, your God, commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you.
Therefore, we were very much afraid for our lives because of you and have done this thing. And now here we are in your hands. Do with us as it seems good and right to you to do to us.
So, he did to them and he delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel so that they did not kill them. And that day, Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord in the place which he would choose even to this day. That is even to a later time when this was written down, they were still in that position.
And as I said, they did never they never betrayed their trust. They never corrupted Israel as other Canaanites did that were allowed to stay alive in the land wrongfully. They seem to truly converted.
So, we heard about your God, Yahweh. We were impressed. We decided to believe what we heard.
We decided to put our trust in God, your God, instead of in our gods. We didn't think our gods could defend us from your God. And in fact, we were willing to take the risk of our lives because all of our friends around us are going to come after us.
You know, all the other Canaanites are going to come and try to destroy us because of our alliance with you. But we're willing to take that risk because we actually believe your God can save us from all the other Canaanites, too. That's really what they're saying.
We're just this is the choice we're making to throw in our lot with the God of the Hebrews instead of with the pagan gods. To me, that looks like the closest thing to conversion in an Old Testament setting like this that you could hope for. The only thing they could have done more is that and circumcise us, too.
We want to be Israelites. They didn't go quite that far, as far as we know, but they certainly became God-fearers and came under God's protection along with Israel, just like Gentiles do who come into the New Israel under God's protection as Christians.

Series by Steve Gregg

How Can I Know That I Am Really Saved?
How Can I Know That I Am Really Saved?
In this four-part series, Steve Gregg explores the concept of salvation using 1 John as a template and emphasizes the importance of love, faith, godli
Isaiah
Isaiah
A thorough analysis of the book of Isaiah by Steve Gregg, covering various themes like prophecy, eschatology, and the servant songs, providing insight
Jeremiah
Jeremiah
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through a 16-part analysis of the book of Jeremiah, discussing its themes of repentance, faithfulness, and the cons
Creation and Evolution
Creation and Evolution
In the series "Creation and Evolution" by Steve Gregg, the evidence against the theory of evolution is examined, questioning the scientific foundation
Galatians
Galatians
In this six-part series, Steve Gregg provides verse-by-verse commentary on the book of Galatians, discussing topics such as true obedience, faith vers
Original Sin & Depravity
Original Sin & Depravity
In this two-part series by Steve Gregg, he explores the theological concepts of Original Sin and Human Depravity, delving into different perspectives
Hebrews
Hebrews
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the book of Hebrews, focusing on themes, warnings, the new covenant, judgment, faith, Jesus' authority, and
Church History
Church History
Steve Gregg gives a comprehensive overview of church history from the time of the Apostles to the modern day, covering important figures, events, move
Genesis
Genesis
Steve Gregg provides a detailed analysis of the book of Genesis in this 40-part series, exploring concepts of Christian discipleship, faith, obedience
Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
In this 32-part series, Steve Gregg provides in-depth commentary and historical context on each chapter of the Gospel of Luke, shedding new light on i
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