Jihad and You

Exodus 23:20-33

Jihad on Thornton

So, many of you know, before and after church a good many of our kids are out there by the tree and the bushes over by the Creek there. They call it the Thicket, and they are the Thicket kids. And, usually, they are at War.

There are changing alliances, boys vs. girls, older kids vs. younger kids. Knights or Indians or who knows. There is a huge part of me that just loves it all. I kind of want to be out there, too. Logan is considering learning elvish so the Thicket kids can communicate securely.

Another part of me is concerned about the fighting aspect, at some point, someone will lose an eye to a sharpened stick arrow. And Logan tells me “we totally won against the other kids” and I wonder what it means. Like, are the other kids dead? Just sad?

Usually it means they invaded their base or knocked it down.

What if we took that mentality to Thornton and Northglenn?

What if I told you God was calling us to a Jihad, a Holy War. That he would drive out other people, out of their homes, so that we could take over their homes.

He is going to drive other churches out of town so that we can take over their buildings. That Crossroads building up the street, that’s really nice, that’s ours now.

Some of the thicket kids might say "Yes, we have some strategies." For the rest of us, that should raise some tension.

In our passage today:

God calls the people of Israel to an intolerant, uncompromising holy war for their health and wealth.

Some moral implications. Some theological implications.

But there is that within me that responds to that War language, that Warrior image. And I think it is because we are called to a kind of Holy War, you, me and the thicket kids.

The Promise

So, here we go, the Holy War of Ancient Israel.

Coming off the Covenant Code, all sorts of detailed law tacked on after the 10 commandments, God reiterates the Covenant Promise of the aptly named “Promised Land.” This was part of the covenant with Abraham, it continues through the Mosaic Covenant.

It starts and ends really well:

Exodus 23:20-22

20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.

Just vague enough to still be pleasant. God is for His people, an enemy to their enemies, good stuff.

But then, God adds some detail to this “Promised Land” business. A little bit of the nitty-gritty… and it makes me deeply uncomfortable. Because the actual execution of this Promised Land business looks like… Execution.

Rather than just read straight through the rest of passage I am going to pull in some highlights that illustrate what I said above.

God calls the people of Israel to an intolerant, uncompromising holy war for their health and wealth.

Violent genocide

This is a violent holy war, a genocide, really.

Verses 23-24

23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. 24 Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces.

There is a list of tribes here, but it is clear, these are representative of every tribe, people and culture in the bounders of the Promised Land. You must demolish them!

27-28

27 “I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. 28 I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.

God promises to fight with them, to fight for them, to fight ahead of them. More than a little terrifying if you’re a Jebusite

For earthly health and wealth

Verses 25-26

And right in the middle of those, why is all this happening? Why is God doing this? The first reason given is all health and wealth.

25 Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, 26 and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.

And the prosperity of the land takes on some semi-specific borders in Verse 31:

31 “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you.

There is not even enough people in Israel now to pull that off, so this is a long-term plan for their prosperity:

Verses 29-30

29 But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.

Intolerant and Uncompromising

And finally, this war was intolerant and uncompromising. A holy war.

24

24 Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces.

Verses 32-33

32 Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. 33 Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”

Religious and Cultural Intolerance! Close-mindedness!

God calls the people of Israel to an intolerant, uncompromising holy war for their health and wealth.

You may feel some tension at this point. That’s okay. I do too.

And it all Failed

Let’s make worse!

And as brutal as all of that sounds. This all never quite comes to pass!

Sometimes it’s because the people lose their courage and don’t follow God into war.

Sometimes it’s because the people get over eager and jump ahead of God’s leading.

But, and this raises the tension for me, often the people failed to possess the land because they weren’t intolerant and uncompromising enough. They did not “blot” them out when they were commanded to do so. They spared too many, they allowed tribes to continue.

They compromised with the peoples of the lands… and so compromised with their culture and their gods.

The Purpose

Which leads us to God’s purpose for this brutal holy war. Tucked in right at the end of the passage.

33 Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”

They will cause you to sin.

They will be a snare to you.

Which says this to me. God desires His people to be set apart, to be reserved, to be unpolluted by the surrounding peoples and cultures and religions. He wants His people to be His and His alone.

And He wants that so badly He is willing to carve out space for it. With fire and sword, with hornets, terror and confusion.

The Moral Resolution

There are a whole lot of questions here that I am not going to resolve for you this morning. There is still tension in me.

Is commanding and implementing genocide a moral issue here? We can talk about how this is the way war was waged, this is standard tribal behavior for the region, but if we are talking about global moral issues that doesn’t really help us. It might help that God has absolute ownership over all persons, we are His to do so as He pleases, so there is no moral issue with Him ordering the destruction of what is His… but I still feel really uncomfortable!

He is sovereign, He is just, I don’t have to like it or understand it.

God had actually spoken judgment on most of these nations back in the days of Abraham, and we can trust that He is more concerned with the Justice of situation here than we are…

But ultimately, there really is nothing that reduces this tension. It is the tension that we should feel when we read that sweet childrens’ story, the Ark and the Flood, my favorite world holocaust story of all time.

God puts a high value on human life… but apparently it really is a certain type of life he is interested in. Righteousness, human beings in right relationship with God, is so value that He is willing to carve out space for His people, whatever it takes.

That is uncomfortable. That is how much God wants His people to be His people.

Our Holy War

Now take that, with all of that tension, and all that that says about how much God is for His people and desires to preserve and protect them.

Take that and realize this.

God desires you to be His people.

With that same passion, that same jealousy, that same zeal, that same commitment. He is for you.

God desires you to be His people.

And this war language does not disappear from Scripture.

The Jews in the first century expected more of this from their Messiah. Jesus brought total victory, but not in the way they expected it. He took this war for holiness to its final battleground. Creating a small space, a separate culture and religion in a small nation in the Middle East was never the final purpose.

Rescuing the human soul was the purpose. Rescuing persons. And then waging an all-out assault to Redeem and Rescue, to Sanctify… that was always the final purpose.

And God turns this idea of a holy war for land into a war for the heart. A war for the mind. A mission to rescue and redeem all of His people. All peoples. All persons.

In fact, that was always the Mission, from the first covenant to the last. Carving out the Promised Land was a piece of it. Carving out space in your heart and mind is the Next Step.

Sadly, Christendom through the ages has occasionally gotten confused and pursued political and military power. Bad news. They even took the Promised Land boundaries for their own for awhile there.

Well, thankfully, Scripture is very specific about how this “holy war” idea plays out in our lives. This warrior language all comes across in one of my favorite chapters of the Bible, from my early obsession with Knights and Swords and Armor. This is for the Thicket kids. Ephesians 6

Ephesians 6:12

12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

And the battleground this war takes place on is mostly between our ears, within our hearts, then playing out in our daily habits and life choices.

It is Righteousness to guard our hearts, the knowledge of our salvation to guard our minds. Truth and peace, faith and Spirit, these are our tools.

And now, I want you to picture this, this is not what this passage from Exodus 23 says, I want to make it super clear that I am hijacking this passage for a metaphor of Christian living, but this is the image I got this week. I think God had something to do with it. See if it helps you.

Your life. All your habits, all your choices, all your actions laid out on the land before you. God says, this is a Promised Land, you and I are going to inhabit all of this together.

But scattered throughout that land are strongholds of the enemy. Strongholds of sin. Strongholds of stupid. Strongholds of mistakes made, of guilt and shame. And God says this to you:

You and I will conquer this land. You and I will live together in this land. And it’ll be good.

To me, that is a helpful image, a powerful image. I want to be everything God wants me to be, created me to be. I want every part of my life to be beautiful, to be captured and made whole and new.

And if this image helps you, we can take at least 2 really important things from the way God intended His people to take hold of the Promised Land.

God leads this process. Just as He intended to with the people of Israel.

God writes His law on your heart: He convicts you of something you need to deal with. You don’t have to rack your brain trying to think of something bad about yourself, not so much. Neither do you have to be intimidated when you look at yourself and it’s hard to see anything good for all the sin and stupid I have going on! God writes His law on your heart, He leads you through this process of Redemption. Sanctification, one Step a Time.

Even with the children of Israel, God was going to take them one step at a time as they became numerous enough to fill the land.

It is a war for your heart and mind, for your time and attention; but it is a war led by God.

Second, this war is uncompromising. It is intolerant.

Like the AA member who doesn’t touch a single drop of alcohol because, for them, that is a stronghold of the enemy, that is an invitation to sin. So they setup an absolute boundary to protect their relationship with God and others.

And when it comes to a stronghold of sin or stupid in our life, half measures won’t cut it.

It is an uncompromising intolerance that leads to freedom

The end-game here is not to dig a hole and live in it to avoid temptation. Instead, on the other side of this process lies incredible freedom, freedom in Christ.

Every victory here means space for you. A new aspect of your life that can be used to love God and one another. Part of you was in bondage, it can be set to free to be all that God intended.

All that metaphorical cleared land within you becomes space. Space in which you can love and worship God, your Creator and your Savior.

Space in which you can love your family. Love your friends. Love your neighbor. You know how sin and stupid can hijack whole parts of your life, crippling your ability to live and love. God is not content with that. God wants all of you and He wants you free from sin, from stupid, from Satan, from any power or authority that would shackle or cripple you.

One step at a time. What is your next step, your next battle, in God’s war for your heart, your mind, your strength and your soul? How can you participate in that battle? How can I, how can we help?

God calls you to an intolerant, uncompromising holy war for your life and freedom. He has already won the victory.