Canaan Conquest: A Lesson on Justice and Mercy

God, the Same Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Welcome back First Baptist Church of Hoquiam.

We are gathering here this morning, returning once again to our sermon series in Deuteronomy titled: Changing Times and our Unchanging God.

And as we’ve been looking at the law that the Lord gave to Israel, we’ve been able to see who God is.

Today’s passage deals with a topic that could be difficult: two attributes of God that seem difficult to justify together. I’m referring to God’s justice and his mercy.

Our passage deals with God’s justice toward sinful nations, yet his plan to enact mercy through his covenant people.

And some people, when they hear of God’s justice, that he has the power to wipe out entire groups of people, or that he will stand as judge on judgment day and send humans to hell for the offense of their sin, reject the Lord because they see his justice as cruel and harsh.

So let me ask you: do we serve a harsh and cruel God?

Harsh and Cruel God?

There are many who take up this argument. I spoke to one young woman over this very topic just a few weeks ago. The argument is they don’t want to believe in a God who instructed the Israelites go in and commit genocide, wiping out entire groups of people, man, woman, and child. They don’t want to believe in a God who allowed for slavery to exist within Israel (because apparently to them all forms of slavery are pure evil). They don’t want to believe in a God or be held accountable to a God who maintains a holy standard by which we are all supposed to live. It’s because of these reasons that they believe the God of Israel to be harsh and cruel.

There was a teacher in early church history who taught this. His name was Cerdo. Cerdo arrived in Rome sometime between 135 and 140 AD. He believed and taught that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were two completely different Gods. Whereas the God of the Old Testament was sheer justice and vengeance, wiping out peoples and nations, the God of the New Testament was loving and gracious. Cerdo spread his teachings to a young man named Marcion, who would take these ideas and run further with them, leading to his expulsion from the church and becoming a thorn in the side for the early Christians throughout the second century. But it all started with this teaching that the Old Testament God should be rejected because how could a loving and gracious God lead his people to destroy entire groups of other people? How could a loving and gracious God send Israel into exile?

And it’s a fair question to ask. After all, serving a harsh and cruel God doesn’t sound appealing. But the argument that the God of the Old Testament isn’t loving and merciful holds no water when you take a deeper look at what the Old Testament teaches. Or the New Testament for that matter.

Yes, it is true that God is just. This means that when he determines for a people to be wiped out because of the greatness of their sin against him, that he is right to do so. It is a gift of God that those people were provided for and existed to begin with, that the Lord let the offense of their sin stand before him and defile the world which the Lord created. The Lord is slow to anger and rich in love.

When we see Israel conquer the land of Caanan, it is a lesson on divine judgment. God is enacting justice through divine warfare. He’s using Israel as his instrument, his tool, to accomplish that. And it’s not because of anything Israel had done. God would later use Assyria and Babylon for the same purpose: to enact justice on his own people because of their wickedness.

And yet, throughout all of it, there is one reason why God didn’t completely wipe out Israel. Unlike the nations that inhabited the land of Caanan before them, God had a covenant with this people. This covenant was a specific promise from God toward Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would occupy the land of Caanan and be as numerous as the stars in heaven and the sands on the seashore; that Israel would receive the blessings from God and be a blessing to the surrounding nations.

Despite being a sinful and broken people, God’s mercy abounds through this covenant. And it’s because of God’s mercy and his faithfulness to remember his covenant with Israel that he brought them back from exile And not only did God bring them back after experiencing the discipline of the Lord, but he blesses them, providing them ample materials and permissions to rebuild the temple of the Lord and Jerusalem’s walls.

The God of the Old Testament is just, but he’s also merciful and full of love. God did not have to make a covenant with anyone, and yet he chose Abram, a moon-god worshipper from Ur to come and be the father of many nations.

And so we come back to our two themes, justice and mercy.

Justice is giving the right payment for something that someone did.

And according to God’s word, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, and again “the wages of sin is death.” For all of mankind, the right payment for our attitude toward rejecting God and trying to live life our own way is death.

But YHWH is merciful.

Mercy is not receiving the judgment that you deserve.

God didn’t destroy the people of Israel because he remembered the covenant he had with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He doesn’t destroy sinners like you and I because of the covenant he has through his son, Jesus Christ. Though we deserve death, though our actions lead us to slander God and his holy name and we are led into many types of evil, he gives the free gift of eternal life and forgiveness of sins for anyone who would believe and enter into covenant with him.

In our passage this morning, we see these two character attributes of God carefully balanced.

And that brings us to our main idea for today:

God’s is Just yet Merciful.

God is divinely able to choose who will experience the fullness of his justice, and who he will have mercy on. Mercy in a system of pure justice is never warranted. The Lord saves because he has chosen to. This speaks immensely to the character of God. He has extended mercy not because of the good things that you’ve done or the things you do to try to please him. No one can demand salvation from God. He is sovereign and free, the law above man’s. God chooses who he extends his mercy to.

In the same way, God chooses who he will not extend further mercy towards. The Lord has not saved because he has chosen to not save. And in defending justice in this way God maintains his holiness.

So if you have your Bibles please turn with me to Deuteronomy 9:1-5. (repeat)

It’s a short section, but it’s really the preface for our passage next week as well. So follow along with me as we read through our passage and then discuss what it means for us today.

Deuteronomy 9:1–5 ESV

“Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you. So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the Lord has promised you. “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Let us pray. (prays)

Discussion of the Text

In verses 1-2 we see a display of the might of the nations that are in Caanan:

Deuteronomy 9:1 ESV

“Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven,

Deuteronomy 9:2 ESV

a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’

The sons of the Anakim were the giants. The average height of a person during this time is purported to be around five foot. The height of the Anakim were between 9 and 13 feet tall. There’s archaeological evidence for the Anakim in this part of the world that you can go and see in museums to this day: the giant spear tips and chain mail that these warriors wore. These were the kinds of people Israel would go in to conquer.

Elsewhere in scripture we also see that there are seven nations that Israel is to drive out:

Deuteronomy 7:1 ESV

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you,

So we see the might of humans. And these humans, in their pride, rejected the God who made the world and worshipped idols and many kinds of false gods, offering sacrifices so that the fertility gods would bless the land and bring abundance. Their acts of false worship and utterly detestable sin would evoke God’s justice. It’s important to note here that though the sin of the Caananites deserved death, the Lord set in place a measure for sin and determined not to wipe them out. He could have done so when Abraham was first living in the land, but rather the Lord says to Abraham:

Genesis 15:16 ESV

And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

And so it was that in the time between Abraham and the time Israel arrived at the edge of the promised land, the transgressions of the Canaanites had reached its full measure.

It’s important to note, that this is not a targeted attack based on ethnicity- God gave the Canaanites opportunity. And he threatens Israel with the same destruction if they fail to remember their covenant with the Lord.

But the Lord is divinely just. The wages of sin is death. God’s testament of himself had been spread to the Canaanites: through the witness of Abraham and his descendants, through news of the defeat of Egypt at the hand of YHWH, through the witness of God as clearly shown in nature. And yet they clung to their sin.

So the Lord enacted just judgment. Verse 3-

Deuteronomy 9:3 ESV

Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you. So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

The might of men is nothing compared to the power of God. The Lord has the power to give and take away. Even the strongest of men, even the mightiest of cities, even the most technologically advanced thing that humanity can conjure, is nothing compared to the Lord, who upholds the universe through the power of his spoken word.

The Lord will have Israel drive out the sinful nations and make them perish quickly … why? To preserve the Lord as the one and true God worshipped in this land. Remember our context: we’re still under the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” A delay of the people in the land would lead to the sure corruption of Israel into idolatry.

And note, it’s the Lord that defeats the enemies, though Israel is acting on his behalf. When we are faithful to God, he will use us to accomplish his will.

So we have that commission to destroy the nations in verses 1-3. And then we have a transition in verses 4 and 5.

Deuteronomy 9:4 ESV

“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.

Moses’ sermon addresses a specific idea: the idea that Israel’s righteousness plus God’s power equals defeat of the enemies of God. He wants to make sure this idea is put to rest, that it’s not because of Israel’s righteousness that they deserve the land. Rather, it’s the Lord’s gift through his covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as outlined in verse 5-

Deuteronomy 9:5 ESV

Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

There’s a message here for us as Christians-

God’s kingdom comes through His choice, not through our works.

There are some Christians that think they come to salvation because of their conscious effort to come to God. This is a stream of thought called Armenianism. It’s a stream of thought that’s quite prevalent in America. If I were to summarize their belief in a nutshell, I would say that Armenians are Christians who believe that it’s their own actions coming to the table alongside the actions of God that works toward their salvation. Based on Christian testimony, we can see how this at first seems true: that a person believes in the Lord and the expression of that belief is confirmed through verbal proclamation of repentance of sins and declaring Jesus Christ as Lord. But if we peel back the layers and look deeper, scripture is clear that the seeds of a person’s belief come from the Lord. It is only by the working of the Spirit in a person’s life from beforehand that any person is able to inherit the spiritual kingdom of eternal life. And the message for the church from this passage is just as clear: Just as Israel was warned not to commend their own righteousness in inheriting the promised land, we as Christians should not commend any effort of ours to inheriting eternal life, but should see the inheritance of spiritual blessing as a mercy of God given through his covenant.

This is confirmed in scripture. I think of the book of Ephesians, specifically Ephesians 2:8-9

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Our salvation is first a work of God before we ever have any part in it.

The gift of God’s kingdom comes through divine covenant- through a promise of his word. And this gift is given based on God’s own choosing. God chose Abraham, not because of anything that Abram had done. God formed and created a nation from Abraham’s descendants, out of a slave people living in Egypt, and led them to the promised land because of his divine covenant. And that’s where the mercy of the Lord comes in.

And there’s an important principle to mercy-

God is free to exercise mercy.

In his exercise of mercy, he is free to show more mercy to some than to others.

God expresses mercy to all people. The reason why evil exists in this world still is because of God’s relenting from complete destruction. If he didn’t hold back, you wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be here. We would all face God’s judgment day. But the Lord is slow to anger, desiring that many should come to know him through his son.

But the covenant that God made with Israel was a special mercy, which the Canaanites did not have. Nor did the Mesopotamians, nor the Aboriginals in Australia, nor the Mayans or Aztecs in North America. This mercy was a special promise of God to restore Israel and to bring about blessing from them.

Just as Israel did not choose to receive God’s covenant of mercy, but they were born into it as God had planned ahead of time, so are Christians recipients of Christ’s covenant. We are born into it in the sense that God predestined for us to be adopted as his sons and daughters before the foundations of the world were laid. There are those of us, who through Christ, receive more mercy than our neighbors, those who are perishing.

So we get to the question, “Is this fair?” Is it fair for God to choose one nation Israel and not another? Is it fair for God to choose to save some people from this world and not others? What about all the “good people” that are perishing?

Well, we have our response in Romans chapter 9:

Romans 9:14–16 ESV

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

God is free to exercise mercy, not because there is a compulsion from humans. The Lord doesn’t need to prove himself to them, he already has through their creation, their existence, their blessings they have received. But God shows greater mercies yet.

This begs the question, “Why?”. Why would God choose some people from the world to be saved and not others? Why would he show more mercy to some people that they might have eternal life and not show the same extended mercy to others? We also have our answer from scripture:

Romans 9:22–23 ESV

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—

The riches of God’s glory are to be displayed to the vessels of mercy, who are saved from destruction. The Lord is the maker and creator God of you and I. Should what was formed talk back to its maker? Should we be upset that God planned for people to face destruction, that those who are saved might yet deeper realize the depth of God’s love and mercy toward us, who didn’t deserve to be saved and yet received his kindness?

The answer should be no. God is free to exercise mercy. He is not obligated, but he does it out of his own goodwill and kindness, that some may experience his salvation.

And speaking of salvation, there’s a place where God’s divine justice and his mercy perfectly meet: that place is on the cross with Jesus Christ.

Jesus perfectly embodies God’s Justice and Mercy

Isaiah 42:1–3 ESV

Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

Jesus- Divine Retributionist through Humility; Conquest through Mercy

Condition of those whom he comes to - bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks

Church is often compared to weak things- to a dove amidst the fowls; to a vine amongst the plants; to a sheep among beasts; to a woman (who is the weaker vessel)

Bruising allows us to come to conversion (to understand our need for Christ) and after conversion to help us understand that we are reeds, not oaks. Bruising allows us to combat pride and realize that we live by mercy.

When Christ came, he could have come to crush the reeds, to extinguish the burning wick so that all evil might be vanquished and justice be upheld. He still came to uphold justice, but in a different way, in the way of mercy, by offering himself as the payment we owe to God for our rebellion against him.

Rather than letting us experience God’s wrath, Christ took it upon himself.

Christ’s Bruising: Isaiah 53:5

Isaiah 53:5 ESV

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

This is the covenant which the Lord freely offers to all mankind through Christ, to be received in grace through faith. For those who are in Christ, God has mercifully relented from giving you the payment you deserved.

The Lord is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He offers mercy for those who would otherwise perish. The Lord did not have to save Israel - they rebelled against him. The Lord did not have to reveal himself to Abram, and yet Abram was chosen. The Lord did not have to die on your behalf … he could have let you perish eternally due to your transgressions against God, and yet died he did.

He made him who knew no sin to bear the weight of your sin upon the cross, that through Jesus Christ you might have the righteousness of God.

This is mystery of the grace of God.

Hear oh church … It is not because of your righteousness or your goodness that you receive the blessings from God. He gives them to you through his own goodwill. He predestined you, he chose you, before the world began that you might one day be seated with him in eternity.

Application

3 Application points

Application:

Mediate upon the wonders of his mercy.

Do not become stiff-necked.

Follow Christ’s example of humility.

1. Meditate upon the wonders of his mercy.

If you are a Christian, you are a vessel that has been saved from wrath and destruction. Rather than receiving the just punishment from the Lord for your sins, you have been brought to new pastures and to life.

Meditating upon God’s kindness toward us should push our eyes upward toward God. The result of our salvation should be praise and worship toward him, if indeed we recognize what we have been saved from.

Ephesians 2:5–7 ESV

even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

The Lord has shown mercy. He has relented from his wrath against you for your trespasses by offering his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to pay for your sin. This is the mystery and wonder we should marvel at each and every morning, that we should remind ourselves of when we wake up and when we go to bed, when we are out and about walking or doing work, or when we are home with our families or by ourselves.

Meditate upon the wonders of the Lord’s mercy, in his covenant love toward you in Jesus Christ, for his mercies are meant to draw you in to further awe and admiration of the one true Lord.

2. Do not become stiff-necked.

Should we boast as Christians that we are better than others? By no means. If salvation is something which God has worked for us which we did not accomplish, we should not reserve any of the glory or praise for ourselves.

Let us not become stiff-necked, as the nation of Israel became. As Israel grew and prospered, they developed a symptom of pride, that held themselves above the other nations as God’s chosen people. They bragged about this, to their own detriment. It was this pride that Jesus came to dissolve, to show that God’s blessing is intended for all nations and people, just as he had promised to Abraham.

So in order to avoid the same pitfall as Israel, we as the church must be reminded to loosen our necks and not to hold our noses up so high, but to remember who it was we were and how God in HIS divine choosing saved us.

Jeremiah 9:23–24 ESV

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

How do you avoid becoming a stiff-necked people? You delve into the covenant which he made with you- a covenant of mercy and not of works (so that no one may boast).

Do not become stiff-necked, but remember the undeserved gifts of mercy and grace in kindness toward you.

3. Follow Christ’s example of humility.

Not only does mercy save us from the Lord’s wrath, but it also calls us forward into living humbly and following Christ’s example.

The world would argue that you can build a kingdom for yourself, that you should be a lord unto yourself. But scripture teaches that there is one Lord and king. And that king shows how to live humbly.

Philippians 2:3 ESV

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

God not giving us the punishment we deserve should drive us to see his self-sacrificial love. He sets the example for us to follow in the same way. Christ came not to be served but to serve.

Humility is the counterbalance to pride. Christ is the best example of this: he came and did not come to destroy, he did not utter a word against humanity, but was led to the slaughter like a lamb so that through his demeanor he should put to shame the proud and arrogant. He did not snuff out any wick or bruise any reed, but he came to redeem, heal, and to save.

If this is how Christ came, when justice for mankind’s sin was needed: the proper payment was deserved, how much more ought we to live forgiving lives that bear with sin, that are not easily angered, that do not demand our own way but rejoice during persecution and slander?

Let us follow Christ’s example of humility, and realize that we are vessels made for the Lord, and not lords ourselves.

Conclusion

Commissioning

As we enter this week, as we exit these church doors and walls, enter the world now with the same cloak- as a reed that is bruised, but not broken. Full of God’s power through the Spirit, alive in Christ, worshipping the Lord. Humbly proclaiming is grace and kindness toward sinners, who do not deserve God’s forgiveness but who can freely accept it, even here and even now.

Let’s pray.