Joshua & Judges
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This year I am preaching through the entire Bible. We went slowly through the book of Genesis, because it sets the stage for the rest of the Bible. As a matter of fact, the first five books of the Bible, written by Moses, called the Pentateuch are considered the foundation that the rest of the Bible is built on, so it’s important to have a grasp of those books. Maybe next year, we can try and work slowly through Deuteronomy since it is such a pivotal book. But today we have some catching up to do. Last week was Easter, the week before we didn’t have service because of the weather and next week is homecoming. So today we have a lot to cover.
Let’s open up in prayer.
Today I’m going to cover Joshua and Judges as one main topic. Judgment. God judges sin, he always has, and he always will. It’s something that people don’t like to hear or think about, so they really don’t like the books of Joshua and Judges, because we see God bringing his judgment against large numbers of people, and it doesn’t make us feel good inside. It bothers us. It makes us cringe. And I think that’s a good thing. We shouldn’t feel good about people being punished and suffering, that would mean that we have something wrong with us. It means we are made in God’s image, and are like Him. He too doesn’t feel good about judging people, but He does the right thing, even when it’s hard.
How many people like super hero movies? How many people like Police shows, whether it’s reality tv or not, where you follow the officers around and they are always facing danger? How many like novels where there is a hero and a villain, or many? Who do you find yourself rooting for? The hero, or the villain? Who do you want to win in the end and have things turn out their way? What makes a villain a villain? Their actions. And their actions can be described by what word? Evil. Sin.
The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to us. God is without sin is He not? Don’t you find it interesting that almost every page of the Bible addresses sin? Not God’s sin, of course, but our sin. the first two chapters of Genesis describe a sinless world, let me show them to you. Can you see these pages? This is how much of the Bible is devoted to the world that we live in before sin entered the picture. The last two chapters of the Bible describe when God will create a new world without sin. Do you see these pages. Now even these last two chapters still talk about sin.
Adam and Eve, they sinned in the garden and were judged by God by being kicked out of the garden, and the man and woman now having to labor in pain. Cain did not rule over sin and killed his brother Abel and was judged by God by being banished from His presence. Then the whole world went into a downward spiral of sin so bad that God judged the entire world through the flood in the days of Noah, but He spared the most blameless man on earth and his family. What does blameless mean? It means he lived a life without sinning to the best of his ability, obviously not perfectly, but better than anyone else on earth, and that’s saying something. But what happened after he got out of the ark. He sinned. Even the best of us can’t be perfect, we still sin. After Noah God called Abraham to go to a land that He would show him and that He would give him the land and make him into a great nation in order to point all the nations to Himself. And what did Abraham do over and over again? Sin. Within three months of God promising Abraham that he would have a son with his wife Sarah and that through her God would give him offspring that would form a nation as numerous as the stars in the sky, Abraham gave Sarah to a king because he was afraid that the king would kill him. He gave his wife away. His son Isaac fell into the same sins, Jacob constantly sinned, destroying his family, just like his father Isaac, and then we get to Joseph.
Now he was about a good a role model as we could ask for. We need people like Joseph in the Bible to show us how we should live and what to do in the hard times in life, but even he was bitter and vengeful towards his brothers, throwing them in jail, one of them he kept in jail for two years, because he did not forgive them for what they had done to him. Eventually after the two years, he finally broke down and forgave them, but throughout Joseph’s life we see constant sinfulness. The sinfulness of his brothers, of Potiphar’s wife, and of Joseph himself. Then we see the sinfulness of Pharaoh and of Moses. Pharaoh killed countless male Hebrew babies, Moses killed an Egyptian, and we see God judge Pharaoh, Egypt and all of their false gods. Then God saves the Israelites by judging Pharaoh’s army, and then the Israelites themselves become the ones who constantly rebel against God, and we see God constantly judging the sins of the Israelites. He sends plagues against them, 3,000 are killed after they worship the golden calf, he sends snakes against them, and finally he doesn’t allow them to enter the promised land, they have to wander in the desert 40 years until that whole generation passes away. He even judges Moses’ sin by not allowing him to enter the promised land either.
And that brings us to the books of Joshua and Judges. Joshua begins with the next generation being allowed to enter the promised land with Joshua as their new leader and not Moses. The book of Joshua is full of bloodshed. God brought the nation of Israel into the land of promise and ordered them to kill everyone who lived there. In my mind it was all about the nation of Israel and these people that lived there were just innocent people who happened to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that’s not what God said. God had promised that land to Abraham 400 years earlier, but He didn’t give the land to him then. Why not? He told us.
13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. 15 But you will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
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God said, I am going to judge the Amorites, and all the inhabitants who live here with the sword, but I’m not going to do it for another 400 years, because their sinfulness has not yet reached the point that I am willing to do that yet. You see God was being patient, and longsuffering with the Amorites, even though he knew that they would not repent and turn back to Him, He still waited 400 years until their sinfulness got to the point where He would finally judge them. And when he finally did decide to allow Israel to cross over the Jordan, He made it very clear to them, that it wasn’t because of their own righteousness that God was judging these people with sword, but it was because of their sinfulness that He was judging them.
4 When the Lord your God drives them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The Lord brought me in to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ Instead, the Lord will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness. 5 You are not going to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or your integrity. Instead, the Lord your God will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness, in order to fulfill the promise he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6 Understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.
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You see, God had no desire for the Israelites to begin a campaign of world domination. He set boundaries for them, and that was as far as they were allowed to go. They were to judge the nations within those boundaries, and they were to stop. They were to then get along with their neighbors and point the whole world to Him. God picked the nations that he would judge because of their sin, and He waited hundreds of years until their sinfulness had gotten so bad that God felt that their punishment was deserved in relation to their sin. And you need to remember that was hundreds of years of people crying out for help from the people who were committing crimes that was not answered because of His patience. There are always two people involved in crimes. The perpetrator, and the victim. God’s patience with the sins of the perpetrators, was at the same time a delay in justice for the victims. So to say that God is too loving to judge those who do evil, is to say that God is too loving to defend and rescue those who are suffering at the hands of evildoers. You can’t have it both ways.
And after the conquest of Canaan, we get to the book of Judges. Once Israel moved into Canaan and killed many of the people groups living there, but not all of them, they were a leaderless nation. Now God was supposed to be their king, and He would have been, if they would have just submitted to Him as their king, but they didn’t. They did not obey God and we see the same story from them that we have been seeing throughout the entire Bible so far. They sinned, sinned, and sinned some more.
16 The Lord raised up judges, who saved them from the power of their marauders, 17 but they did not listen to their judges. Instead, they prostituted themselves with other gods, bowing down to them. They quickly turned from the way of their fathers, who had walked in obedience to the Lord’s commands. They did not do as their fathers did. 18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for the Israelites, the Lord was with him and saved the people from the power of their enemies while the judge was still alive. The Lord was moved to pity whenever they groaned because of those who were oppressing and afflicting them. 19 Whenever the judge died, the Israelites would act even more corruptly than their fathers, following other gods to serve them and bow in worship to them. They did not turn from their evil practices or their obstinate ways.
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When I read judges, I always thought judges, like judges today. Someone you would take a case to who would decide the outcome. But that’s not what these judges were. These were warriors that God raised up to “judge” other nations through battle. These were people that God used to bring his judgment against those who were oppressing Israel. This is probably one of Israel’s worst periods in their history. There was constant killing of each other and worship of false gods. They completely abandoned God and obeying Him. And the book of Judges ends with this verse.
25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.
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The last verse in the book gives the theme of the entire book. Everyone did whatever they wanted, whatever seemed right in their own eyes, instead of obeying God’s commands that He had given them, and using God’s law as the means of determining what was right and what was wrong. God determines what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is bad. What is sin is determined by God, not by us. And God does not tolerate sin.
This is where I and many other people have had a hard time with the Old Testament because it records in great detail God leading Israel into battle against the inhabitants of the land of Caanan, and killing them. The reason I had so much difficulty with it in the past is two-fold. The first reason is because, growing up, I had created an image in my mind of God as one of complete love and forgiveness devoid of any form of judgment and justice. See I always thought that the only thing that God really cared about was what you believed about Him. You see, in my mind, I had separated belief from obedience, as if you could have one without the other. What was in your head is what was most important. What you actually did, was just secondary. As long as you had the right understanding in your mind, you and God were ok. Even if you didn’t actually obey Him. The God I had made in my mind was a God who didn’t want you to sin, but He was not a God who would actually bring judgment on you or punish you for sin. My God was “too loving,” “too forgiving,” “too slow to anger” to actually bring judgement on you for your sin. Which is why when I chose to read the Old Testament for the first time, I was confronted with a God that didn’t seem to match the God I had in my mind at all. And that’s because the God that I had shaped in my mind, was not the same as how God has revealed Himself to us in His Scriptures.
The God I read about in the Old Testament didn’t tolerate sin at all, and He actually did something about it. He didn’t just sweep sin under the rug and pretend it wasn’t happening. He actually punished people for their sins, even to the point of death. He judged sin, on small individual scales, and on worldwide scales. He sentenced individuals to death, and he sentenced the entire world to death through the worldwide flood. And then when I read the New Testament for the first time, I noticed the same thing. Ananias and Sapphira were judged by God and dropped dead on the spot for lying to the Holy Spirit. There were some early christians in Corinth who were participating in the Lord’s supper in an unworthy manner and did not repent and God judged them by causing them to become sick and some of them even died because they would not repent. And the Scriptures are very very clear that these were genuine Christians in Corinth. Saved, born again Christians that God was judging and sentencing to death because of their sins so that they would not be condemned to hell. And I noticed Jesus’ teachings were constantly warning people to stop sinning, and to repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.
17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
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He told them that if their righteousness which is another way of saying obedience to God’s commands, did not surpass that of the Pharisees that they would not enter the kingdom of heaven.
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
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He told them point blank, that all people will perish unless they repent of their sins.
2 And he responded to them, “Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well. 4 Or those eighteen that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed—do you think they were more sinful than all the other people who live in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.”
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The entire Bible, beginning to end, is constantly telling us how sinful we are. How hopelessly sinful we are. That we can not live perfectly holy, which is why we need someone to save us, because we can’t save ourselves. God is clear, that the one thing that separates us from Him is our sin. The reason that we are lost and are going to spend eternity in hell unless someone saves us is because of our sin. The only person who can save us is Jesus, who came to earth and lived as a human without sinning, and died on a cross for us. Why did He die on a cross, because God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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Why did Jesus have to come and die in our place, because of our sin. What does both the Old Testament and the New Testament talk about on almost every page? Our sinfulness. And the fact that Jesus has redeemed us, and has offered us salvation in Himself, if we would just repent, turn from sin, and believe, place our faith in Him, trust in Him for our salvation.
Paul said to the Ephesian Elders
20 You know that I did not avoid proclaiming to you anything that was profitable or from teaching you publicly and from house to house. 21 I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus.
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The last words that Luke records Jesus saying to his disciples were these:
46 He also said to them, “This is what is written: The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day, 47 and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
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And at Pentecost, this is how the Apostle Peter led the first 3,000 people to faith in Christ
37 When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles: “Brothers, what should we do?”
38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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and again in the next chapter he said:
19 Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped out,
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And the Apostle Paul, while preaching to Gentiles in the Areopagus said:
30 “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
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God always has judged sin, and he always will, and one day soon he has set a day to judge the whole world again in righteousness by Jesus Christ, and he commands all people everywhere to repent because of that day of judgment that is coming for each one of us. Do you believe that Jesus will judge you when you die? Do you believe that He is your only hope of salvation? Have you repented of sin, and made a commitment to turn from all sin and to obey Him as your Lord? Sin is why we are in this mess. Sin is why Jesus had to die for us. Sin is not something that we can solve on our own. We have to be made into new creations by God. We have to trust in Him for our salvation, and rebirth, and he will give us the Holy Spirit who will enable us to live in obedience to Him. There is nothing more important than your life. God made you for Himself. He wants you. And He is giving you an opportunity right now for your sins to be wiped clean forever. Will you trust Him and turn from sin to Him? He has not offered to be your Savior, and not your Lord. He has not offered to be your Lord and not your Savior. It’s not an either or, it’s both and. He wants to be your Lord and your Savior. That’s the only offer that He has laid on the table. Will you take it? Is anything else worth giving that offer up? Are drugs worth giving that offer up? Is money worth giving that offer up? Is pleasure worth passing that offer up?
25 For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself?
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