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In our session tonight, we must try to complete our survey of the first phase of the conquest of the land of Palestine undertaken by Joshua and the Israelites. We have been noticing in our previous sessions that the- in this first phase of the conquest, Joshua set before himself three main objectives. The first one was the obvious one. His first objective was to bring its Israel literally to stand within their great God-given inheritance. God did the great miracle to facilitate this objective, in that by his ark he parted the waters of Jordan and made a passage for the Israelites to enter into their inheritance.
That first objective being achieved, then Joshua set before the people the second objective, and that was to establish the holy law of God in the land of Canaan, once more as Moses had commanded them. Destroying, therefore, the cities of Jericho and Ai that lay in the way as obstacles, Joshua took then the nation to the mountains Ebal and Gerizim. There, in the presence of the ark and the altar and the law of God written, he called upon the Levites to pronounce the blessings of the law, and Israel, gathered in their thousands, responded with a full-hearted and a full-throated amen, so be it done.
When he called upon the Levites to pronounce the curses of God that must come upon any who disobeyed that law, and once more the nation responded with its fervent amen. So was the second objective achieved, the law of God established in that once evil civilization. Now we come to the third objective that was set before Joshua by Moses, the man of God, before Joshua led Israel into Palestine. And that was that not only should Joshua execute the judgments of God upon all the Canaanites in those cities, but in particular, Joshua should destroy all the kings, the principa- the the princes, the powers, the principalities in the land of Canaan.
And it is of that that we shall be thinking tonight, how by God's grace and his determination, Joshua and Israel managed to achieve this tremendous objective. Judgments of God were exercised and executed, and all the kings, the mights, the dominions, the principalities, and power were put down, and the land had rest from war. As we think of those far off events, once more the Holy Spirit will be through them directing our attention to the New Testament, and notably, of course, to our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
Once more, the lesson tonight will in part be very solemn. It will remind us that one day the greater than Joshua, the New Testament Joshua, even our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, shall come in the glory of his Father and in the glory of his holy angels. He shall come, says the New Testament, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be destroyed with everlasting destruction from the presence of his glory. One day God is going to purge our earth and purge his kingdom of all things that offend.
Evil shall be put down. And what is more, one Corinthians chapter fifteen encourages us in the hope that our blessed Lord will take up the reins of government. Heaven and earth shall rejoice when God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, takes to himself his great power and begins to reign. And the time shall come for the dead to be judged and reward to be given to his servants, the prophets, and to them that fear his name, and for evil men and evil governments to be put down completely. He shall in fact reign until he has put down all rule and all authority, and the very last enemy itself, death itself, shall be destroyed.
So shall our blessed Lord bring in the great age of rest for his people, to which we look forward with inextinguishable hope. As we think, however, again of Joshua putting down the opposition, and in particular the kings, the princes, the powers, and the principalities. We shall be thinking of our Lord and how he has likewise dealt with what the New Testament describes in those very selfsame terms. The powers, the principalities, the world rulers of this darkness. For nowadays, let us not mistake the lessons we learned from the old.
It is not ours, is it, to go around the countryside defending the faith and propagating the faith by carnal weapons, as the manner of some is. The weapons of our warfare nowadays are not carnal. We are strictly forbidden the use of the sword, either to protect Christ or to promote his cause. We wrestle, as the New Testament says, not against flesh and blood. We wrestle against principalities and powers, mights and dominions, the world rulers of this darkness, who have and exercise their authority in the spiritual realms of the heavenly places. Therefore, because we are still engaged ourselves in this struggle, we to this very present wrestle against these principalities and powers.
We shall be delighted to allow the story of Joshua to remind us of what our blessed Lord has already done in his warfare against these principalities and powers. With what joy leaping in our hearts shall we read again tonight those lovely words from the New Testament, that when at last our blessed Lord Jesus hung upon the cross and took the handwriting of the ordinances that was against us and hammered it to his cross, then, says Holy Scripture, he stripped the principalities and powers, breaking the weapons from their hands and putting us beyond destruction from them, beyond every accusation that could be hurled from them against us.
So in one sense, our blessed Lord has already triumphed over the principalities and powers. That is not to say, but what we still, in another sense, have to wrestle against them. And from our passage tonight, we shall receive likewise encouragement to take our courage in both hands, and at the Lord's command to come, so to speak, and put our feet on the necks of God's enemies. Just like the Israelites at Joshua's command came and put their feet on the necks of the defeated kings of Canaan and executed them.
And then, of course, as I we have already said, we shall look forward to the glorious consummation and the final victory when Satan and his hosts shall be cast down and eventually consigned to the lake of fire, and Christ will usher in an et- an eternity of complete rest, when there shall be neither war nor evil occurring. You may care to notice, therefore, as we embark upon our study tonight, that this third division of the first phase of the conquest comprises three major stories. There is first the story of the Gibeonites and their salvation.
How, amidst all the judgment and destruction of the Canaanite cities, the Gibeonites were saved. Then there is the story of the southern confederacy of Canaanite kings who came up to attack the Gibeonites for converting to Israel. And finally, there is the story of the northern confederacy who gathered their hosts and came in their attempt to destroy Joshua and the Israelites. We shall think of them, of course, in that order, and we start our stories with the Gibeonites. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have to confess to you that the Gibeonites have had, down the centuries, a very bad press.
And like the woman in the Gospel of Luke, they have suffered things, if not of many physicians, of many commentators. To be deceived the Israelites. No wonder they have had a very severe press from commentators by the thousand. And worse than that, uh, it has been the Israelites that have come in for most of the criticism, isn't it? That they allowed themselves to be deceived. For, as the holy text says, they did not, uh, inquire of the Lord, who might, who knows, have told them that the Gibeonites were telling them lies. But Israel didn't inquire of the Lord and therefore were deceived, and, uh, made a covenant with the Gibeonites and swore an oath to them in the name of God that they would be saved from the judgment that befell all other cities.
And I can tell you now the lesson that has been drawn by generations of preachers from this Old Testament incident. The preaching will go somewhat like this. Now look, it is a thing that could happen to any one of us. Israel had just come through a series of astounding victories. They had seen the miraculous power of God put forth on their behalf in the city of Jericho, bringing down its walls, and they had triumphantly destroyed that city. They had run into some initial difficulty at the Ai, but upon confessing their sin, once more they had seen the hand of God take them on the tide of victory, and they had exterminated AI.
And then, says the preacher, you know, after those two great successes, they fell into a spiritual danger. Because, you know, it is also possible when you have experienced two great successes in the spiritual warfare of the Lord, to become, even without noticing it, somewhat independent of the Lord. Confident now in past victories, you no longer seek quite so intensively to depend upon the Lord, but, uh, confident in your past victories, you go forward without consulting the Lord. And using your own wisdom and your own strength, you fall into situations, you make all sorts of arrangements that can trap you up and ensnare you and involve you for the rest of your days in unfortunate conditions.
And so the preachers preach the lesson of the Gibeonites. They are, they came telling Israel a lie. God wanted these people destroyed, but they made out they came from afar off. They told their lie to the Israelites. The Israelites didn't inquire of the Lord. The Israelites were taken in, made a covenant, and thereafter were never able to reverse it and had to live with their mistake for the rest of their days. The lesson, therefore, is that we must always be careful, and particularly careful when we have recently experienced some great victory, lest we grow overconfident and independent of the Lord.
So say the many preachers and the commentators. And to be sure, the lesson is true, isn't it? The lesson, I mean, in itself is true. But the more I read the story of the Gibeonites, the more I come to the conclusion that the lesson cannot be drawn from the story of the Gibeonites, now can it? You say, why not? Well, for the very obvious reason. Let's suppose the Israelites were mistaken, and that God really wanted the Gibeonites destroyed, and through their mistake, the Israelites went and promised them that they would be preserved. But now, let me remind you all, when the Gibeonites made peace with Israel, then all the surrounding cities gathered their armies to come and attack the Gibeonites.
And when that happened, God not only sent Joshua to protect the Gibeonites, but God himself rained down mighty stones from heaven and destroyed their enemies. And God himself fought for the Gibeonites and saved them by the intervention of his power. And not content with that, God performed a spectacular miracle to preserve these Gibeonites. In answer to the prayer of Joshua, God commanded the sun itself to stand still and the moon to stand still while the Lord himself fought for the Gibeonites. So says scripture.
So now tell me, what was the real situation? Do you suppose God sat, I speak reverently, God sat up in heaven upon his throne, and he was intending to destroy the Gibeonites. He didn't want to save the Gibeonites. The last thing he wanted to do was to save those Gibeonites. He wanted them destroyed, and his stupid people went and swore an oath in the name of God that God would save them. And am I to think that God sat on his throne and said, dear me, what an unfortunate thing they've gone and done now. I really wanted to destroy them. I didn't want to save them, and now I shall have to save them, though I don't want to.
Do you suppose God spoke like that? Well, I hope he didn't, because if he did, then my knees would begin to bend and to quail right now. Do you suppose one of these days you'll get up to heaven and find that God didn't want really to save you at all, but some foolish preacher went and told you that God loved you and, uh, uh, whosoever will might come, and you responded and you believed, and God says, look here now, they've believed my word, and I didn't want them to believe. I didn't want to save them, but now I shall have to save them because some servant of mine went and assured them of the promises of the gospel applied to them and backed it home by pointing them to the oath of God. Oh dear. No, you'll never, you'll never experience that, friend.
If God saves anybody, he saves them because he always did intend to save them. That goes for the Gibeonites as well, doesn't it? You say, well, perhaps it does. Um, but they told a whopper of a lie, you say. Well, so they did, and I'm not going to defend them, not really. But perhaps our, our sanest way would be to start the story right from the ground floor, wouldn't it, and see where it leads us. Let's think for a moment of these Gibeonites, and who on earth were they, and what were they, and why did they do what they did? Well, these Gibeonites, I have to admit, told a whopper of a lie, but when you look at them in the plain light of a Monday morning, do you know, they were, you'd have to admit, old pagans, of course.
They weren't respectable Christians living in a hockel. They were ancient pagans living in the land of Canaan. They were Gentiles, of course. Sinners of the Gentiles, and not to put too fine a point on it, of course they were, to be honest, not all that much different from what we were once upon a time, were they? For they were Gentiles, you'll see, dead in their trespasses and in sins, besmirched and betarred with the evils of that ancient godless and pagan society. They went about doing the lusts of the flesh and of the mind.
And who can doubt that even in those far off days they walked according to the course of this world, lived in the grip of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that even then worked in the children of disobedience. Evil living Gentiles they were, but then all their society was. When God's judgment was pronounced upon the civilizations of Canaan, you could have seen it with your own eyes, couldn't you, had you been there? They were children of wrath. Men and women who so far gone from God, they deserve the very wrath of God.
They were children of God, even as the rest of us. But while I paint them in lurid colors, really, ladies and gentlemen, am I not painting you? What were you anyway? I take it that you all are Gentiles. My apologies if only one of you or two of you are actually Jews, but then the most of us here tonight will be Gentiles, and before you met Christ, were you any better than these Gibeonites? Really? I'll tell you a very sad thing about those Gibeonites. They were, of course, not members of Israel. They were called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision. They were, in fact, alienated from the covenants of Israel, the great and glorious covenants of God that he made with these ancient people i- in the Old Testament had nothing to do with these Gentiles.
They didn't know a thing about them anyway. Alienated from the covenants of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, and they're without the Messiah. Israel, even at that time, had had the gospel preached to them, the beginnings of that glowing light, the promise that one day the seed of the woman would come into our world and bruise the serpent's head. Glowing promise added to by, uh, Jacob in his prophecy and Moses in his farewell addresses, when he promised that the Lord your God shall raise up a prophet like unto me. Promises that one day God would send the Messiah into our world and deliver his people and restore all things.
The Israelites knew it, and they had a hope, glorious hope. But these Gibeonites, being Gentiles, were without the Messiah. They had no messianic hope of salvation. And then they were without God, of course. Their ancestors had long since rejected the knowledge of the true and one God, Lord of creation, and had gone over to the weak, beggarly idolatry of the ancient world. And they worship- worshiped the sun and the moon and the storm god. They worshiped the god of fertility and physiology, the god of reproduction. They worshiped the goddess of love, and they worshiped the god of war.
They were sunk in their foolish idolatries, and being without God, they were without hope. Yes, and I remind you that many of our modern fellow citizens are in that precise position at this present day. And this is not merely the man who's wandering up the street with his head full of drugs and his stomach full of beer? Some of our most brilliant citizens are in precisely that same position, aren't they? Gentiles, they know nothing of the hope of a coming savior and a Messiah, and they are without God. They've given up the idea of God.
They say the whole great universe came into being, who knows how, but ultimately by chance. They mock at those that would believe in God as though they were primitive savages. But the truth is that your modern humanist, your modern atheist, is no better off ultimately than those ancient Gibeonites. They have no hope, have they? For if you ask your humanist friend, your atheist friend, now come on, tell me, old chap, you don't believe in God, so tell me now, what does determine your life? What controls your life? What brought you here into this world, and what in the end will take you out of this world?
What ultimately controls you? Do you control yourself? Do you run the universe? And your atheist perforce will say, no, of course I don't. Well, then tell me, what does rule your life? What are the ultimate things that control our world and men and women within it? And your humanist and atheist will be bound to reply. Well, the things that control us are the, are the elemental powers of the universe. Basic energy, ask the physicists, matter, the great atomic forces, the weak atomic force, the strong atomic force, gravity, the processes of physiology and reproduction, chemistry, if you like.
These are the things that your atheist will say really control us in this world. Of course, your modern atheist doesn't call them gods, does he? He thinks himself vastly superior to the Gibeonites, but actually he's doing exactly the same thing. The Gibeonites would have worshipped the powers of the universe, the sun, the moon. They didn't know about atomic power, but they made a god out of the sun and the moon and the storm god, and they made gods out of the processes of fertility and physiology. They didn't understand how those things work, but they saw as clear as a man can see that these are the things that control human life, and they made gods out of them as being the ultimate powers that control men and women.
And it led them into a fearful, hopeless bondage. Now, sometimes I try to bring it home to my atheist and humanist friends. I say, all right, you mock at us who believe in the true and one God. But I say, let's take a sample. Here is a good lady, she's thirty three, mother of three children. The doctors have just told her that she has terminal cancer. I said, come on, you atheist, you and I will go and talk to the woman. What will you say? I'll go first.
I- I- I know what I'll tell the dear lady. I say, my dear, I'm very sorry to hear the verdict of the doctors. But you know, there is hope. You, like the rest of us, are a creature of a personal God who made you and loves you. You, like the rest of us, have sinned, part of a fallen creation, but God loves you, and there's a way of reconciliation, a way to be forgiven. And there is an eternity, an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that that fades not away.
And if you would only trust the Savior, he would not only forgive you now, but give you sure and certain hope of heaven. And he would take these very sufferings, which the Bible says are for a little while, and he would use them to work for you an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. You were made in the image of God. The image has been distorted, but through Christ it can be restored, and not only forgiven, you shall one day reign with the Lord Jesus when he comes to reign. Oh, my dear friend, I'd say, do make sure you let the Savior enter your heart.
And I say, come on, old atheist, come on, you speak to the woman. What will you say? What can the atheist say? Be a modern, be he a modern or a Gibeonite, for that matter. He has to say, well, I'm sorry, my woman, there is utterly no hope. Your illness could help the doctors, help other people, maybe, to get over their illnesses in times to come. Who knows? It might help science forward, but as far as you're concerned, there is no hope.
No hope in this life, and there is none to come. You might as well shoot your brains out now. We'll see God's word is not exaggerating when it says of Gentiles like this who don't know God, that they have no hope. And all there is, is a looking forward to of judgment. Like Joshua was about to descend on the Canaanite, uh, pagan cities, executing the judgment of God, so our godless world, what has it to look forward to, save the coming of our Lord in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God.
And now I want to tell you a marvelous story. Those pagan Gentiles, God in his mercy saved them. And if you'll listen to me, you'll come to believe that God saved them, not because he didn't want to and the Israelites forced him to, but he saved them because he wanted to save them. And not only saved them in the sense that he spared them from the judgment, but he gave them the high privilege of being servants to his people. And what is more, he gave them the exceedingly high privilege for the rest of their days and all the subsequent centuries.
He gave to the Gibeonites the privilege of being servants to the altar. When the praises of Israel ascended in their symbolic language on the fires of the altar in the tabernacle and then in the temple of God, it was the Gibeonites who had the privilege of supplying the wood and seeing to all the practical matters that facilitated the worship of the great Almighty God. Oh, I can picture many a Gibeon, I can't you, coming along with his bundle of wood to the altar and watching the priest take it and put it on the fire that was upon the altar, watching the animals cut and their limbs put on the fire, and watching the smoke go up before God, and hearing the music of the praise of God's people praising the great God of mercy, and a tear running down the old Gibeonite's eye and saying, who am I that I am allowed the holy privilege of supplying the wood that rises with the prayers and praises of the people of God?
I owe it to the mercy of that same God who not only saved his people, but saved me, a pagan old Gentile. How about you say, ah yes, but you're hiding the fact they did tell a lie. Oh yes, well, I must come to that now then. They did tell a big old lie, didn't they? And did it very deliberately with all that dressing up in old fashioned clothes and shoes with holes in and moldy bread and things like that. They did tell a big whopper of a lie. Yes, well, I say they are pagan gentiles, they're not converted Christians. You see? Yes. And then...
What would you have done? I have to observe that pagan Rahab, in the very moment of her getting converted, told a big whopper of a lie, didn't she? For when the old army boys came knocking on the door and said, here, we hear you've got some men in here. She said, oh, no, no, no, they did come, but they've gone out and gone away across the brook. And God in his mercy, who saw the motives of her heart, has recorded it in the New Testament that she was not only justified by faith, but if you please, she was justified by works. For God read the motive in the woman's heart and the why she did it, even though what she did technically might have been flawed by a lie.
Well, wait a minute. Is your obedience to the Lord absolutely one hundred percent still? Or have there been occasions when you too have told a fib? Why did they do it anyway? Perhaps we ought to inquire along that line. Why on earth did they did tell this? You know, after Joshua and the Israelites had sworn an oath in the name of God so they couldn't go back on it, and the Gibeonites knew that they were now safe. They were saved, and that couldn't be undone. Then Joshua called the Gibeonites and he said, tell me, gentlemen, as a matter of interest, he said, why did you do it, deceiving us like this?
Well, the Gibeonites answered, well, of course we did it because we heard what Moses, the man of God, said. That's why we did it. Oh, and what did Moses, the man of God, say then? Well, fortunately, we have it written down in the book of Deuteronomy, what Moses, the man of God, said, and what therefore the Gibeonites heard. Moses said that when the Israelites came and they went to battle, they were to make a distinction between cities that were afar off and cities that were near. If a city was afar off, when they approached it, they were at first to offer that city conditions of peace.
And if the people wanted to accept the offer of peace, then they could be, uh, given peace on this condition, that they were prepared to come out and abandon their city and give up their city to the Israelites. Two, they had to be prepared to be servants to the Israelites for the rest of their days. But if they were prepared to fulfill those two conditions, abandoning the city, being servants to Israel, then the Israelites were to make a covenant of peace with them. That's what the Israelites were to do to cities that were afar off. But if the city were near at hand, then the Israelites were to destroy them without making any offer of peace whatsoever.
And the Gibeonites heard it. And the elders met that night in conference, didn't they? What are we going to do? What would you have done? They said, you know, this is serious. You know what? We are unfortunately very near at hand to the Israelites. They were only three days journey up the road. And they said, strictly speaking, according to what this mo- man Moses, this man of God says, we ought to be slaughtered, one and all. Do you know, they said, there is just one glimmer of hope. If only somehow we could persuade the Israelites that we were afar off, then we might be allowed to live.
And they began to knock their oriental heads together, you know, and how could we persuade them that we are really far off? You'll have to dress up in some curious way to persuade the Israelites you were far off. Well, they said, never mind, we can do that. And they got their old wise dressing gown and a few old funny looking things patched and what have you, and moldy bread and wine skins that were hold and patches on them, and shoes that once came glorious from Marks and Spencer, but now have been used up completely. They looked horrible. And they did their best, and in the end succeeded in proving to the Israelites, uh, that they came from afar off. But what would you have done?
You're good holy Christians, of course. What would you advise them? No, would you have said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Gibeonites, you mustn't do that. That would be telling a lie. Uh, what shall we do? Well, I'm sorry, you're, you are near at hand, so you'll have to sit there and wait for Moses and for the Joshua and the Israelites to come and slit your throats. That's all you'll do. You have to just sit here. Well, the Gibeonites thought otherwise. They said, if there's one chance in ten million of proving to the Israelites we are far off, and so we can save ourselves, we'll try it. And so they did, and it proved successful. Will you begrudge it to them?
The Israelites would have they'd inquired of the Lord, but they didn't. I am tempted to say, what a mercy. And they swore them an oath of God that God himself honored thereafter forever. I say, would you begrudge the Gibeonites that they got saved? Hey, wait a minute. Tell me, how did you get saved? Ah, am I not right to think that the whole lot of you are a lot of old Gentiles, isn't that so? Hm. And before you found the Lord Jesus, you too were children of wrath, even as the rest.
You weren't Jews, you had nothing to do with the promises given to Israel. You were alienated from the covenants given to Israel, weren't you? You were without Christ and without God, with no hope in the world. How on earth are you sitting here tonight saved of the Lord? Ah, you say, but ha, I can tell you well, we were afar off, you know. Yes, you were, weren't you? Not geographically a far off, but something far worse than that, spiritually, weren't you? You were a far off. And all the mercy of God, I'd love to remind you of it tonight, the mercy of God that the blessed Lord Jesus, the greater than Joshua, he came the first time and he preached peace to those that were afar off.
How you say, but yes, how that's true, but you see, we didn't have to tell a lie about it. We were really far off. I could believe that for some of you, any rate, you were, weren't you? You were really far off. Were you any worse or better than those Gibeonites. And if God had mercy upon they, on you, and the blessed Lord Jesus came not in flaming fire taking vengeance on you, but came in lowly guise to Bethlehem's manger and Calvary's cross, and came and bridged the distance. Oh, how near he came, didn't he? And who shall describe his stupendous message?
He came and preached peace to you that were afar off. If you were worse than the Gibeonites, I think it is this, that your moral and spiritual robes were a bit moldy. If nobody else tells you, told you at the time, let me tell you it now. And your old shoes weren't worth looking at. And you sit here saved because God not only had mercy on you, came and preached peace, but he's guaranteed you eternal salvation with his word and with his oath. And you know, I know you'll tell me still when I go out, when you go out of the role tonight, but they did tell a lie, so they did.
But what were they trying to deceive Moses? Would you say that they were genuine men, just wishing, just making up this story to save their skin? Were they really genuine? And in my book, according to my estimate, they were really genuine men and women, weren't they? Because it wasn't with them just a question of saving their skin. Moses had said that a city that was afar off when it was offered peace could have peace on these, this condition, that they gave up their city, surrendered the lot, no longer claimed it as their own, and were prepared to become servants to the people of God. And you notice how sincere and true those men of Gideon were when they came to the Israelites and said, please make peace with us.
The civil servants said, you? How can we make peace with you? You might come from around the corner, for all we know. We can't make peace with you. The Gibeonites didn't stay to argue it, did they? They said, ah, but we are your servants. They had been reading Moses, hadn't they? And when Joshua called them eventually to come and give an account of themselves and said, why did you do it, gentlemen? They said, because we heard what Moses said. All right, said Joshua, now the oath of God stands. You are forever safe from his judgment, but you must fall under his, his, his sentence. You must become servants to the people of God and servants to the altar.
The Gibeonites said, yes, Joshua, yes, we've faced that long since. We are one hundred percent prepared to become servants to the people of God and servants to the altar of the Lord. And they kept their promise, didn't they? All down the long centuries, they and their successors became servants to Israel and servants to the altar in the temple. I say they were genuinely converted. Might I just examine you and me a minute? You say you were afar off, and you've been made nigh through the blood of Christ, and you are eternally saved. How sincere are we, my brethren?
What do you get saved for? Just to save your skin? And then live thereafter to your own pleasure as before? But if we think we can thus get saved, we have gravely misunderstood God's salvation. For to be saved by God's grace means that you, like the apostles themselves, become thereafter a slave to the Lord Jesus. Paul, a servant of the Lord Jesus. You become like Priscilla and Aquila and many more who laid down their very mix for the people of God.
Oh, my brother, my sister, are you really saved? Have you done like the Gibeons, come out of your little city and said, Lord, I, I, I don't, I, if it had not been for your grace, I wouldn't have survived. I would have perished eternally. Lord, all that I am here is yours. I seek nothing more than to be your servant, your slave from now on and forever. You a slave to the altar, friend? You say, what do you mean? Well, I'm not thinking now of a literal altar that has to be stoked with literal wood and flames, but I'm thinking of our blessed Lord Jesus.
He died for us, didn't he? One died for all. We're called upon to judge this, that if he died for all, then he died that they which live should no longer live to themselves, but to him that died and rose again. Here, it seems to me, is the mark of a genuine conversion. Not doing it just to save our, our souls from an eternal hell. We're prepared for the implications that forever after we be servants of God's people and not our own any longer, but servants to him who for our sake gave himself upon the altar of Calvary and claims us as his own.
Anyway, the Gibeonites were saved, and I call your attention to the wonderful security that God gave them. When they converted and and trusted the Lord and joined his people, then the other Canaanite cities heard of it and resented the fact that Gibeon, being a great city, had gone over to the other side. And as has often happened in history, the, uh, Canaanites gathered their armies together to come and attack, not Joshua, but to attack these new converts because they regarded them as traitors. It happens in many a country still. When a person trusts the Savior, he runs the risk of being disowned by family and friends to become socially an outcast.
And of course, his satanic majesty will be after the new convert, won't he? And the rest of us all our days. I read, however, that when the Canaanites came against the Gibeonites, then the Lord instructed Joshua, the Savior, to come with his armies, and he slaughtered the enemy and drove them away. And as the enemy were running away as fast as their little hairy legs would take them, God himself intervened, and God threw down stones, mighty stones from heaven, and there were more that died under the stones than died under the sword of Joshua. Ah, that's God. Not only gives his word and gives his oath, guarantees the soul that on Jesus to Je- the soul that to Jesus has fled for repose, he'll never, he said it, give up to its foes.
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, he'll never, no, never, no, never forsake. I love the words, along with you, that Paul pens in Romans chapter eight. If God be for us, who shall be against us? I am persuaded, says Paul, that neither things present nor things to come, life, death, nor all the principalities and powers combined shall be able to separate your love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. For God fights for you.
God is for us. Not only so, not only the security of their salvation, I remind you of the glory of it. For as Joshua was chasing the enemy away, ha, he saw that the day was fast declining, and there would not be enough daylight to finish the task. So Joshua, we are told, stood, and looking heavenward, he said, Sun stand thou still, and moon stand still over the valley of Ajalon. And the moon stood still, and the sun stood still, and hasted not to go down about a whole day until Israel, uh, is- uh, the Gibeonites and Israel were avenged of their enemy.
Ah, you say, now at last we've got a preacher's come, he's going to explain this great thing to us. Please, you say, Mr. Preacher, give us the explanation of that tremendous miracle. Can you really believe it, that the sun stood still in the sky and the moon stood still in the sky? Explain it now to us in the laws of physics. Well, I'm afraid you will be disappointed. For one, I'm not a scientist, nor a physicist, nor a cosmologist, and I do not know what the scientific explanation is. I was rather hoping that you would tell me. Uh, please do if you can before you go. Now, for our purposes tonight, I want to concentrate on the bigger miracle. For there was a bigger miracle that day, wasn't there, than the sun standing still and the moon standing still.
It's the miracle to which the inspired historian himself calls our attention. For did you notice what he said? He said, you know, there was no day like that before it. There was no day like that after it. That what? Well, you say that the sun stood still. No, that's not what the historian is saying. He says there was no day like it before it, there was no day like it after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man. Oh, that's a bigger miracle than the sun standing still, I tell you what. For a man to stand two feet on earth, a man, and command the Lord to interfere in the running of the heavens, and for the Lord to listen to a man and do what a man says.
Well, if you've any sense of proportion in your heart, you will see at once that that is an infinitely bigger miracle than a mere sun standing still or a moonlight hour. And the historian sees the point, doesn't he? No day like it before it, or since up to my time, says he. But of course he was writing thirteen hundred years ago. Oh no, nearly three thousand, wasn't he? Writing about perhaps, who knows, thirteen hundred to eight BC, who knows. The record's been broken since, ladies and gentlemen, hasn't it? Yes. Somewhere about AD thirty three, a man stood just outside Jerusalem City.
He was on his way to Gethsemane and Calvary. A real man, as real a man as we are, and he lifted his eyes to heaven, and he prayed, Father, and the Lord hearkened to the voice of that man. All praise God he did. And what a tremendous prayer it was. It began like this, Father, I finished the work, now glorify thou me with the glory I had before you, before the whole creation began to be. And the Father heard his prayer. And though Calvary intervened, yet the third day he raised him from the dead, and wonder of wonders, on the fortieth day he was raised to glory, a real man the likes of you and me, born in Bethlehem's manger of a virgin, living in Nazareth.
God listened to the prayer of the man, glorify thou me, and today he's in glory, a real man with a real body, a human body, though glorified still. Oh, the wonder of it. I'll tell you something in its way more staggeringly wonderful than that. When he came to the end of the prayer, that lovely man, Jesus Christ our Lord, standing near Gethsemane and still lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, I will. What a way to talk to the Almighty. Father, he said, I will that they whom thou has given me be with me where I am, that they might behold my glory, for you loved their me before the very foundation of the world.
Ah, my friend, that prayer shall yet be answered. There'll come a moment when the blessed Lord shall come and take all his redeemed people home to the Father's house in heaven. And, and what is more, not only shall, but listen to the inspired apostle talking to the Gentiles in his letter to the Ephesians. You once were afar off, he says, but our blessed Lord came and preached peace to them that were nigh. And I do pray that God will give you a spirit of revelation and wisdom and the knowledge of him to understand the illimitable power of God that he wrought in Christ when he raised the Lord Jesus from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, and when he quickened you and gave you life and seated you in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Oh, paltry little thing called the sun and moon up in the sky. Let them stop however they stop. Tonight we're interested in bigger things, aren't we? I tell you what, for your sake, my good friend, though really for his son's sake, God has altered the very constitution of the heavens. Since the ascension of our Lord, heaven is seeing what it never saw before, a human being with a human body in the glory. Not only shall we be bodily with him one day, but now, even as you sit here tonight, you are seated with Christ in heavenly places. You say, I find the concept difficult. Well, it is, isn't it? But you see, we have to learn to think as citizens of heaven, and think not only in spatial terms, but in spiritual terms.
You see, if I say to you, Her Gracious Majesty sits on the throne of England, what will you take me to mean? Ah, well, you say when she was crowned queen, she went along to Westminster Abbey, and they sat her on a big chair in Westminster Abbey. The throne, you see, she sits on the throne. Oh. So that's one sense of it, physically sitting on the throne. Yes. But is there not another sense? Even if the queen travels off to Jamaica or somewhere, she's still queen of England, isn't she? She's still on the throne of England. Nobody has toppled her off, no? In the political sense, she's on the throne, isn't she? And what about King Charles? He belongs to the reigning house already, doesn't he?
I was thinking the other day a possibility of suggesting the Queen, to the Queen, she might a- adopt me so I could be raised to the position of the reigning house of England, but she apparently prefers me to stay a private citizen and pay my taxes rather meddling than meddling in the royal family, we'll say. So that's how we'll have to be. But you'll see, it doesn't matter whether the Queen is in Jamaica, she's still sitting on the throne, isn't she? And Prince Charles, wherever he gets to, is part of the reigning house. Our blessed Lord physically is in the presence of God, but though he traveled the whole universe, he would still be at the right hand of God in the authority that he has. And though you sit here in a hocko, if you be Christ, you sit with Christ, you reign with Christ in heavenly places.
I like the story, how when that was done, the enemy tried to to run off, you know, and some of them got into the cave. Five of the kings got into a cave. They put a lid on the front of it till the battle was mopped, the final enemy were mopped up, and then Joshua brought out those five great kings and calling his captains. He says, come here, put your feet on their necks. And then he called upon them to slay the kings, and they took the kings and they hung, hanged them on five and made a show of them openly. So they did. Ah, said Joshua, so shall the Lord do to all your enemies until there's not one left.
We are seated in Christ in heavenly places, my brothers, my sisters. There is another sense, isn't there? Though we fight still, we war still against principalities, mights, powers, and dominions in heavenly places. The fight is real. Are we real converts? Are we in the war? You can't fight in this spiritual warfare, can you, without running the risk of getting hurt? And the enemy comes at you from all sorts of directions, and sometimes the most unexpected directions, and sometimes from within the church itself. Oh.
Shall we fight still? Or do we take ourselves to the sidelines and watch the battle from our deck chairs through binoculars. There's a war on. God give us the grace so that we do not give the enemy any advantage or allow ourselves to be used as his tools. God give us the grace to stand firm, our loins gird, our feet shod with the readiness to take the gospel of peace to those who, like ourselves once, are still in danger of perishing.
For the final victory is assured, and he who at Calvary stripped the principalities and powers of their weapons shall at last cast his satanic majesty where he deserves to be, in the eternal lake of fire, and the promise shall be fulfilled that the woman's seed shall crush the serpent's head. Finally, there was that northern confederacy. They came to attack Joshua and Israel and were summarily destroyed. As Moses had commanded, they were destroyed.
The Bible solemnly says, for the fact is that God hardened their heart so that they should come against Joshua and should be destroyed. Ah, we have been thinking tonight of the goodness of God, how he spared the Gibeonites. Now the severity of God, how he hardened the hearts of some so that they resisted Joshua and were destroyed. Think not hardly of God, will you? You know, those northern confederates had the biggest chance of anybody. If Rahab had heard about God and hearing, repented, believed, and was saved, so could the northerners.
If the Gibeonites, for all their frailty, the fact that they told a lie, if the Gibeonites could hear what Moses said and could come out and come over to the other side and stand with the people of God and seek his mercy and be saved, well, the northerners were much further off than the Gibeonites ever were. It is impossible to think that they never heard what Rahab heard, what the Gibeonites heard, and had they taken the same steps, they too could have been saved. Instead, they determined to resist, and there came a point when God said, then have it your way, and he hardened their hearts, and they perished.
Also it will be with some. God shall send them a strong delusion that they believe the lie who would not accept the love of the truth. And the Lord's coming draws near. God help us, my brothers and sisters, who have known such great sa- the great salvation of God and have a hope beyond all description. God give us the grace to enter the battle and take the gospel to those, who knows who, that God in his mercy would still be willing to save before the day of judgment falls.
The Lord bless his word to all our hearts.
