Hard Words and Hardened Hearts

Introduction

Staff getting spoof emails that are not from me. They can tell that it is a spoof email because it doesn’t sound like me.

Joshua 11 (ESV) 1 When Jabin, king of Hazor, heard of this, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, 2 and to the kings who were in the northern hill country, and in the Arabah south of Chinneroth, and in the lowland, and in Naphoth-dor on the west, 3 to the Canaanites in the east and the west, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the Jebusites in the hill country, and the Hivites under Hermon in the land of Mizpah. 4 And they came out with all their troops, a great horde, in number like the sand that is on the seashore, with very many horses and chariots. 5 And all these kings joined their forces and came and encamped together at the waters of Merom to fight against Israel.

6 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, for tomorrow at this time I will give over all of them, slain, to Israel. You shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire.” 7 So Joshua and all his warriors came suddenly against them by the waters of Merom and fell upon them. 8 And the Lord gave them into the hand of Israel, who struck them and chased them as far as Great Sidon and Misrephoth-maim, and eastward as far as the Valley of Mizpeh. And they struck them until he left none remaining. 9 And Joshua did to them just as the Lord said to him: he hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots with fire. 10 And Joshua turned back at that time and captured Hazor and struck its king with the sword, for Hazor formerly was the head of all those kingdoms. 11 And they struck with the sword all who were in it, devoting them to destruction; there was none left that breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire. 12 And all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua captured, and struck them with the edge of the sword, devoting them to destruction, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. 13 But none of the cities that stood on mounds did Israel burn, except Hazor alone; that Joshua burned. 14 And all the spoil of these cities and the livestock, the people of Israel took for their plunder. But every person they struck with the edge of the sword until they had destroyed them, and they did not leave any who breathed. 15 Just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did. He left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Moses. 16 So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland 17 from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them and put them to death. 18 Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. 19 There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. 20 For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses. 21 And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. 22 There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain. 23 So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war.

We had previously seen Joshua and the Israelites defeat southern Canaan - Jericho, Ai, five other kings at Gibeon. This chapter is a summary of the conquest of northern Canaan.

This chapter raises the whole issue of the destruction of the Canaanites and presents us with difficult verses to address:

Joshua 11:20 ESV

20 For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses.

It raises questions such as:

Did God command genocide for an entire race of people?

Is the God of the OT different from the God of the NT?

Can we trust the Bible if it calls for the destruction of people in one place and to love our enemies in another?

Is the destruction of the Canaanites a justification for the violence against non-Christians today?

No, No, Yes, No

Ready to move on?

How many are satisfied and are ready to move to the next chapter?

This difficult passage raises first the issue of how we should deal with any difficult passage.

How NOT to deal with difficult passages:

Make too LITTLE of them

Don’t avoid them. Avoiding it doesn’t make it disappear.

Why might we avoid these passages?

We don’t have a good answer

We are afraid there is no answer

Acts 20:27 ESV

27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

Make too MUCH of them

Don’t miss the forest for the trees

Don’t die on theological molehills

How to deal with difficult passages:

Approach it Prayerfully

Ask the one who gave the Word to explain the word

ILLUST - I would ask my wife what she means instead of simply guessing

Examine it thoroughly

Look around

Read the paragraph before / after

Look into

Who are the people about and to whom this is written?

Step into the sandals of those about and to whom the Bible is written.

Compare it Biblically

What is the genre of the book?

What is the main purpose of the book / passage?

Hold it loosely

Be prepared to release your understanding should you be given more evidence for another conclusion.

If something looks / sounds out of character for God, hold it loosely until you have more information.

So, how can we understand the destruction of the Canaanites? Some thoughts:

1. God does no evil (James 1:13; in addition to Scripture, it is a necessary aspect of the character of God for God to be God.) The fact that God command Joshua to destroy the Canaanites is justification enough regardless of how distasteful it seems to us (although not a compelling argument alone, it is true).

James 1:13 ESV

13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

The destruction of the Canaanites was directed by God:

6 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, for tomorrow at this time I will give over all of them, slain, to Israel.

8 And the Lord gave them into the hand of Israel

20 For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle,

The reference to God’s hardening the Canaanites’ hearts obviously recalls the same idea in the events of the exodus. There God hardened the pharaoh’s heart (Exod 9:12; 10:1, 27; 11:10; etc.) and sent the plagues. A careful reading of the Exodus passages shows that God’s actions in Egypt were tied to the pharaoh’s defiance. He responded to Moses and Aaron’s request to be allowed to leave Egypt with a defiant statement: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go” (5:2). He repeatedly hardened his own heart (7:13–14, 22; 8:15 [Hb. 11]; etc.). As a result, God sent the plagues, the purpose of which were that the Egyptians would know that “I am the Lord” (7:5, 17; 8:10 [Hb. 6], 22 [Hb. 18]; 9:14, 16, 29; 10:2; 14:4, 18). God could have forced Israel’s release after just one plague, but his purpose was to display his own power against the Egyptians and against their gods (Exod 12:12 states this clearly: “I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord”). God’s hardening of the pharaoh’s heart must be seen in the context of the pharaoh’s stubbornness and resistance of the Lord

2. God’s understanding of the good (and His actions to achieve it) may be different from ours. (Isaiah 55:8–9 “8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Children who are compelled to eat broccoli may see it as the parent perpetuating “evil;” however, parents understand the consumption of broccoli to be “good” for the child. The difference between the two understandings is 1. A definition of what is “good” for me (child = taste, parent = heart) 2.  A myopic view of discomfort (child = instant gratification, parent = long-term view)

Exodus contains both the command to destroy one who sacrifices to another god and the prohibition of murder. To question one begs the question of the other.

3. The Canaanites were being destroyed due to their wickedness and they may have been even more wicked than we know.

In the ANE, a nation or people were often directly associated with a deity (for example, Israel is associated with Yahweh). When God speaks of the Canaanites

ILLUST - Clark’s example of ISIS

There appears to have been rampant incest, adultery, child sacrifice, practicing homosexuality, beastiality, necromancy, mistreatment of aging parents, sorcery, black magic, male and female cult prostitution, selling of daughters as prostitutes, treachery, deceit, oppression of poor, etc.

During Abraham's days the Canaanites were not so evil; "the wickedness of the Canaanites is not yet full" (Genesis 15:16)

(Many Canaanites Were Presumably "Driven Out.")

4. The word herem is a difficult Hebrew word to understand and may indicate something other than complete genocide. 

Often, the OT stories contain hyperbole. It is not the case that ALL the Canaanites were wiped out. We obviously know some remained. In addition, the word herem is sometimes understood to mean “devoted for only one purpose” (it is actually where the word “harem” originated). Clearly, many Canaanites were killed in the battles with Joshua, but it is not clear that the command to herem necessitates unmitigated slaughter. 

5. ANE war history often used hyperbole

While we are told that ALL were destroyed, it is not actually the case

23 So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war.

Joshua 13:1 ESV

1 Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the Lord said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.

6. The destruction of the Canaanites was not an act of favoritism toward the Israelites nor was it a favoring of one race over another. Enmeshed in His command to destroy the Canaanites God warns the Israelites should they become as degenerate as the Canaanites God will see that they are likewise destroyed (or as God states, “the land will vomit you out”).

In fact, that is exactly what happened with the Assyrian captivity and the Babylonian captivity.

In addition, the destruction was only limited to Canaanites in the land and not to all of Israel’s enemies (such as world domination).

God’s use of the Israelites to remove the Canaanites had more to do with God’s choosing for God’s purposes than it did with Israel’s specialness and for Israel’s purposes.

7. God desires to save any who follow Him, including “righteous” Canaanites. The examples of Rahab and possibly the Gibeonites reveals God’s default heart of mercy and willingness to save.

Shamgar - Judges 3:31 - probably a Hittite

Judges 3:31 ESV

31 After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an oxgoad, and he also saved Israel.

The fact that there are so few examples among the Canaanites likely speaks of the level of their wickedness.  There are a few more that could be listed but I think this sets the case well enough. 

With all of this understanding we can at least (loosely) say the following:

God directed Joshua to carry out his good purpose of stopping the evil actions and influence of the Canaanites by removing them from the land even up to the point of death.

Lessons we learn from difficult passages:

You don’t need to understand God fully to know him truly.

*if we need every action and move of God to be justified and satisfied in our own minds before we will trust him then we are not looking for God, we are looking for a mirror. 

God does not need to be understood in order to be believed in?

ILLUST - Christine and learning to drive manual trans - I like to know how it all works, she is content to know how to use it. Whether I or she knows how it works or not - it still works.

If you could fully understand God, would he be a God worth following?

John 13:6–7 ESV

6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”

Abraham, having waited so long for Isaac, only to be instructed by God to offer the boy as a sacrifice (Genesis 22);

Jacob wrestling with God, and being lamed in the hip, just before he was to meet Esau (Genesis 32);

Joseph wondering what God was doing as his young adulthood wasted away in an Egyptian prison (Genesis 37–41);

Moses not understanding why God would choose him to lead Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3–4);

Gideon being given far more than he could possibly handle (Judges 7);

Jehoshaphat being instructed to send a choir as his military vanguard against an overwhelming foe (2 Chronicles 20);

Nehemiah having to deal with so many seemingly unnecessary adversities, obstacles, and inefficiencies that slowed down the work in rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls (Nehemiah 4);

Joseph trying to navigate so many unforeseen, confusing detours in the first few years of Jesus’s life (Matthew 1–2);

The man born blind, who didn’t know until midlife what purposes God could possibly have in his suffering (John 9);

And Martha’s and Mary’s grief-laced bewilderment over why Jesus didn’t come to heal Lazarus (John 11).

2 Corinthians 5:7 ESV

7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.

God may be incomprehensible but not illogical

Lord, don’t you care? Mark 4

*Where are you holding back because you are not sure what God is doing or what he might do with you?

*In what ways are you using a lack of fully knowing as a justification to not fully trust?

The Bible was not written to you but all of the Bible is for you.

While not written to us we can learn a lot about who God is.

*How much do you want to know God?

How often do we read Scripture to:

get wisdom for life

encouragement

fulfill a religious duty

What if we treated our spouse this way?

Let’s only speak for utilitarian reasons.

The cross is the center of everything.

When God or his Word are difficult to understand, look to the cross.

When things seem difficult to understand, come back to what you know to be true.

ILLUST - towers of the power plant were orienting for me as a child.It helped me to know where I was and where home was.

how is trusting God truly without full understanding different from Islam? Don’t we criticize other worldviews which demand unquestioned loyalty? How then is the Christian faith any different? The cross. The empty tomb. 

1 Corinthians 15:1–4 ESV

1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

The life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is one of the best attested and supported truths of history.

Hold everything else loosely and grip tightly to the cross.

When the OT seems too confusing walk back to the cross

When contemporary issues cause you to question your faith, walk back to the cross.

The cross shows God is a God of both mercy and justice / wrath and love.