Deception and Devotion


Sermon by David Strain on March 27, 2022 Joshua 9:1-27

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Well do keep your Bibles in hand and turn this time with me please to the book of Joshua, chapter 9; Joshua chapter 9, as we continue our studies in the book of Joshua. You can find it on page 184 if you’re using one of our church Bibles.

Chapter 9 begins a new section in the book of Joshua that outlines the various battles in which the Israelites are engaged in the south and then in the north of the country as they make their way ever more deeply into the land of promise. Now chapter 8, you may remember, concluded on something of a high note. After their victory at Ai, the nation of Israel march about 20 miles north and they assemble in the valley near Shechem between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. They have a solemn worship service, there is a ceremony of covenant renewal that takes place as the Law of Moses is read in full in the hearing of all the people, and they rededicate themselves to a life of obedience to the Lord. I wonder if you remember – it put me in mind of that great moment on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus is transformed and Moses and Elijah are there and Peter says, as only Peter would, “It is really good being here! Let me build some accommodation and we can stick around a little longer! You know, keep this going!”  And I think it’s a helpful moment in the story because we all want to stay up there, don’t we, on the mountaintop with Jesus. The lesson that Peter had to learn, the same lesson we are being taught in this part of the book of Joshua, after the spiritual high at the end of chapter 8 we come back to reality now in chapter 9 with a bump.

Let me highlight just a few aspects of the very helpful realism of Joshua chapter 9 in three words. The first word is “fight,” chapter 9, verses 1 and 2. The nations, for the first time in the book of Joshua, the nations mobilize for war. The second word is “fraud” in verses 3 through 15. The people of Gibeon, one of the nations in the land of Canaan, they take a different tack and they seek a peace treaty with Israel but they do it obliquely. They do it by means of deception. So “fight,” “fraud,” the third word is “failure,” highlighted for us in verse 14. The people of Israel, for their part, fail to consult the Lord. Fight, fraud and failure – those are the three grim realities of this passage that remind us that the Christian life is lived not on the mountaintop but in the real world. Fight, fraud, and failure.

There is, however, one final word that we must not overlook that helps us face unflinchingly the hard realities of fight, fraud and failure, and that is the word “faithfulness.” Faithfulness, as we’ll see in verses 16 through 27, Israel’s faithfulness in keeping their promises and ultimately the Lord’s faithfulness in showing mercy to those who seek Him. And so that’s our outline – fight, fraud, failure and faithfulness. Before we consider those headings in turn, let’s pause briefly and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us pray.

Lord our God, we cry to You now that by Your Spirit You might speak into our hearts with all the force and authority of Your holy Word, that You would reform us, guide us, instruct us, rebuke and discipline us, call us back to Christ, granting the gift of repentance and faith, strengthening us and renewing us in obedience. For we ask it all in Jesus’ name, amen.

Joshua chapter 9. This is the Word of God:

“As soon as all the kings who were beyond the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland all along the coast of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, heard of this, they gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel.

But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, they on their part acted with cunning and went and made ready provisions and took worn-out sacks for their donkeys, and wineskins, worn-out and torn and mended, with worn-out, patched sandals on their feet, and worn-out clothes. And all their provisions were dry and crumbly. And they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, ‘We have come from a distant country, so now make a covenant with us.’ But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, ‘Perhaps you live among us; then how can we make a covenant with you?’ They said to Joshua, ‘We are your servants.’ And Joshua said to them, ‘Who are you? And where do you come from?’ They said to him, ‘From a very distant country your servants have come, because of the name of the Lord your God. For we have heard a report of him, and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon the king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth. So our elders and all the inhabitants of our country said to us, ‘Take provisions in your hand for the journey and go to meet them and say to them, ‘We are your servants. Come now, make a covenant with us.’ Here is our bread. It was still warm when we took it from our houses as our food for the journey on the day we set out to come to you, but now, behold, it is dry and crumbly. These wineskins were new when we filled them, and behold, they have burst. And these garments and sandals of ours are worn out from the very long journey.’ So the men took some of their provisions, but did not ask counsel from the Lord. And Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live, and the leaders of the congregation swore to them.

At the end of three days after they had made a covenant with them, they heard that they were their neighbors and that they lived among them. And the people of Israel set out and reached their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim. But the people of Israel did not attack them, because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. Then all the congregation murmured against the leaders. But all the leaders said to all the congregation, ‘We have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. This we will do to them: let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath that we swore to them.’ And the leaders said to them, ‘Let them live.’ So they became cutters of wood and drawers of water for all the congregation, just as the leaders had said of them.

Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, ‘Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us? Now therefore you are cursed, and some of you shall never be anything but servants, cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.’ They answered Joshua, ‘Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the Lord your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you – so we feared greatly for our lives because of you and did this thing. And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.’ So he did this to them and delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, to this day, in the place that he should choose.”

Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.

Fight

Well we’re all familiar, I’m sure, with the fight or flight reflex. It’s that physiological and neurological response to potentially dangerous situations that sets us up, sets our bodies up either to stand our ground and deal with the problem or to flee to safety from a fight we cannot possibly win. And so far it has been the flight reflex that has dominated the responses of the various Canaanite peoples as word has reached them of Israel’s advance into the promised land. Rahab, you will remember, back in chapter 2, told the Israelite spies at Jericho that the hearts of the people at the city and all the people of the land “melt away before them.” In chapter 5 we are told at the beginning of the chapter that the hearts of all the kings of the people were melting and there was no spirit left in them because of the people of Israel. And so again and again as we’ve seen, the people retreat behind their walls and hunker down and adopt a defensive posture. It’s the flight reflex.

But as chapter 9 opens, that is no longer the response of the nations of Canaan, is it? They have adopted not a flight reflex but a fight reflex. You see that in verses 1 and 2 if you’d look there with me. “As soon as all the kings who were beyond the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland all along the coast of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, heard of this” – now that statement has been thus far concluded with a phrase like, “When they heard it, their hearts melted in fear.” But not anymore. Look at what happens now. “When they heard this, they gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel.” So what has changed?

Well you’ll notice how Joshua puts it. “As soon as all the kings heard of this they gathered together to fight.” So what is the “this” that makes them suddenly want to go to war? Well it can’t simply be news of the defeat of Jericho and Ai like the news of Israel’s other victories thus far. Surely these new triumphs would only have further reinforced their existing fears, not galvanized their resolve to fight. No, I think the “this” that they heard of that makes them want to fight was the covenant renewal ceremony at Shechem at the valley between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim with which the previous chapter concluded. They had to march 20 miles north from Ai into the heart, if you like, of Canaanite territory and there they worshiped the living God, right in the middle of the land. And I think that the peoples of the land knew that was a sort of a claim made by the living God Himself that this land really belongs to Him and to the people to whom He was giving it. It was a flag planted right in their midst, claiming their territory for the Lord. And that is what has so provoked them into open hostility and armed resistance.

We are being reminded here, I think, that when the Lord meets His people in grace as He did with Israel near Shechem at the end of chapter 8, when they worship Him in Spirit and in truth, when their covenant with Him is renewed and their devotion is revived, when there is a season of revitalization and rededication, there will also always be a counter assault from the enemy. When God’s people live in spiritual mediocrity, there will be little resistance. When our witness is compromised and our testimony clouded by worldliness, neither the world nor the devil will take much notice of us. We’re not much of a threat, you see. But when the fires of zeal begin once more to burn brightly, when the grace of God revives and renews us by His Word and Spirit, well then we ought not to be surprised when opposition and persecution and spiritual assaults of various kinds begin in earnest once more.

I came across a passage in my studies this past week in John Stott’s commentary on the book of Acts that I found relevant to this part of Joshua. Stott noticed the repeating cycles of persecution, compromise and division that threaten to undermine the witness of the New Testament church in the early pages of the book of Acts. And he said they are ultimately rooted in the malice of Satan. And then he adds this. “I claim no very close or intimate familiarity with the devil, but I am persuaded that he exists and that he is utterly unscrupulous. Something else I have learned about him is that he is peculiarly lacking in imagination. Over the years he has changed neither his strategy nor his tactics nor his weapons. He is still in the same old rut. So a study of his campaign against the early church should alert us to his probable strategy today. If we are taken by surprise, we shall have no excuse.”

And I think the same might just as readily be said for the experience of the people of God here in this part of the book of Joshua. We get to see here the typical reaction of the world and the flesh and the devil whenever the kingdom of God begins to advance. And it is still the probable strategy taken in opposition to the church today. And so as John Stott puts it, we need to hear the warning and if we are taken by surprise we really shall have no excuse. This is the way it is, so watch out. If the Lord blesses and you begin to grow and you renew your commitments and you are living in the riches of His grace and increasing faithfulness to Him and your witness is burning bright and clear, watch out! There will be a counter assault by the enemy. Fight. That’s the first word.

Fraud

Then look at verses 3 through 15. There is another word that I want you to see. If the majority of the people of the land have turned now from flight to fight, there is at least one tribe among them, the Gibeonites, who have chosen a third way. Neither fight nor flight, but fraud. Verse 4 tells us the Gibeonites were a sneaky bunch. They somehow know of the requirements, it seems, of Deuteronomy chapter 20 verse 10 and following that stipulated that any city far from the people of Israel that sought peace with them and surrendered to them was to be spared and allowed to live in the land as Israel’s servants. That was the requirement of the Mosaic law. And it seems as though somehow the Gibeonites are aware of this.

And so armed with that intelligence, verses 4 and 5 tells us their plan. They went into their attics, they pulled out granddad’s threadbare, worn out old sneakers, they put on that grubby pair of jeans you only wear to do yard work in, they grabbed that dented old water bottle left in your cupboard that your teenager used years ago before he left for college, they rummaged in the back of the fridge for that stale, half-eaten sandwich in the to-go box you’ve been pretending still wasn’t there six weeks after you brought it home from Newks. Everything they had on, everything they took with them, all their food, everything, Joshua says is “worn out.” Do you see that phrase being repeated again and again in verses 4 and 5? So now they look the part, right? They look as though they’ve been traveling on foot for weeks to get to Joshua’s encampment at Gilgal. And in verse 6 they go to Joshua and they say precisely that. “We are from a far country and we want a peace treaty with Israel.” And at first the Israelites are a little suspicious, aren’t they, and they question the Gibeonites in verses 7 and 8. “Are you guys sure you’re not from around here?” It’s like those immigration forms that I used to have to fill out as a foreigner on the airplane flying into the United States that asked the ridiculous question, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?” as though a terrorist would ever answer in the affirmative on the plane into the country.

So in other words, it’s not much of an interrogation, is it? “Are you sure you’re not from around here? Because if you are, we have to kill you!” Turkeys don’t vote for Thanksgiving, after all. “No, no,” they say, verses 9 through 13, “definitely not from around here. We are from far far away – you wouldn’t know it! We’ve made the trek” – notice this now – “because we heard of the name of the Lord your God. We heard what He did in Egypt, what He did to Sihon and Og, and we’ve been sent to make a covenant with you. We want peace. And look, if you need proof of how far we’ve traveled, check out my Nike’s with my toes sticking through. These things were brand new when I put them on, and I picked out this sandwich fresh, you know, for the journey, and now look at it.” And the Israelites check out their clothing and they rummage through their supplies and they are completely taken in by it all. And pretty soon, a covenant has been ratified between Israel and the Gibeonites but it’s all one giant fraud, isn’t it? The Gibeonites have deceived them.

Here is another part of the helpful realism of this chapter. It is a fraud. The Gibeonites are lying. Deuteronomy 20 does not apply to them. They are not from a far country. They live right in the middle of the land. They are their neighbors, and so they are under the ban of divine judgment just like the other Canaanites and they have deceived Israel to save their skins. That’s all true, but did you notice how the sneaky Gibeonites sneak into their elaborate story a confession of faith in the God of Israel? It sounds remarkably like the confession of Rahab back in chapter 2 that Joshua saved alive. Like Rahab, they too have heard of “the LORD, Israel’s God.” Notice the use of God’s covenant name, “the LORD,” in all caps. And like Rahab, they know about His mighty deeds in delivering Israel from Egyptian bondage and how they won a victory over Sihon and Og. God, the Lord, is the Savior of His people, they know. And like Rahab, they do not wish to face His wrath and they are seeking a way to find mercy. And so they want a covenant with Israel. It’s messy. It is clouded with clear sin right on the surface.

And yet sometimes – here is the realism of it all – sometimes that is the way it is with saving faith. Isn’t that so? Do you remember the story in the gospels, Matthew chapter 9, of the woman with the flow of blood for 12 years? This poor lady was a mess. She was hurt, she was unclean, she was an outcast, she was in pain, she was isolated and ashamed and confused. But she thought to herself, “If I can sneak up behind Jesus and touch even just the hem of His garment and then I can just get lost in the crowd, if I can get in and get out, Jesus won’t ever have to know about it and I’ll still be healed.” Sneaky faith. Wrong-headed faith. Faulty faith. Clouded with mistakes and miscalculations and misunderstandings. All of that’s true. Still, real faith. And faith that is real, however weak and confused, always, nevertheless, receives power from Christ for cleansing and mercy. So it was with that woman in Capernaum in Jesus’ day, and so it was with the Gibeonites in Joshua’s day. And maybe it’s that way with you too here today. Your faith is messy, it’s complicated, confused, clouded, with a lot of weird hang-ups and worldly misunderstandings. Maybe you think still you have to somehow manipulate mercy from God. You think you have to come at Jesus obliquely and find some angle to get to Him so that He will show you His mercy and His grace. In time, you know, you will learn you don’t have to do any of that. You will learn that His grace is free. That’s what grace is.

But for now, would you allow the faith of the Gibeonites to comfort you no matter how messed up you remain, how clouded with hang-ups and confusion you may still be. If you come to the Lord God who delivers from Egypt and defeats Sihon and Og, if you come to Jesus who makes the bleeding woman whole, who died and rose in victory over sin and death and hell, if you come to Him with faith, not great faith, not strong faith, not clear faith but real faith, however fragile and compromised it may be, in the end you will find covenant mercy, covenant mercy flowing to you from Him. Because you see, in the end, it is not the quality or strength of your faith that saves but the strength of its object – the Lord Jesus Christ – who is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him.

Failure

Okay so we’ve thought about the response of the various tribes to Israel’s advance and the word that sums that up is “fight.” There’s a war on. Are you ready for it? And then we’ve thought about the Gibeonites and their confused, wrongheaded, and yet real belief in the mighty work of God and they have come not to oppose Him but to seek mercy. “Fraud.” Now let’s turn our attention to Israel and the third word I want you to think about here is “failure.” The failure in question is not their lame attempts to interrogate adequately the Gibeonite envoys. Their failure is actually called out plainly in verse 14. Do you see it? Verse 14. The Gibeonites spin their fascinating yarn for the Israelite leadership and verse 14, “The men took some of their provisions but they did not ask counsel from the Lord.” And so Joshua makes peace with them and ratifies a covenant. The reason for the failure of discernment – that’s what this is; a failure of discernment. They are taken in by the fraudulent Gibeonites.

And the reason for this failure of discernment is not because they needed better interrogators. It wasn’t that they were asking the wrong questions. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they did not ask the counsel of the Lord. Literally, they did not ask “the mouth of the Lord.” Discernment, sound, spiritual judgment, it’s not some weird feeling that comes over you, you know. It’s not new information downloaded directly into your mind out of nowhere. Spiritual discernment comes from attentiveness to the mouth of God. It comes from holy Scripture. It comes from His Word. The particular sting of this story of course is that this is not the first time the Israelites have made this mistake. They did not seek the counsel of the Lord before the first battle of Ai, did they? And we know how that turned out. You would think they would have learned their lesson by now. To neglect the Word of God is to walk through life blindfolded. You cannot hope to discern truth from error if the truth of God revealed in holy Scripture does not govern your thinking. That’s the lesson here, surely. We must be Bible people or else, as we seek to live on what passes for wisdom in the eyes of the world, we become fools in the eyes of God. Fight, fraud and failure – three pretty tough and discouraging words, let’s be honest.

Faithfulness

There is one more word to see before we are done, however, that helps us face all of that with confidence and hope. It’s the word “faithfulness.” You’ll notice in verses 16 through 21 the Gibeonites fraud is discovered. The Israelites hear that they were their neighbors and that they lived among them, so when they come to their cities, instead of attacking them as Deuteronomy 20 would have required, in verse 17 we are told they spare the Gibeonite cities. And so the people, the electorate as it were, they’re not best pleased with this situation as it’s playing out before them and the promises made by their leadership. They murmur, we are told, against their leaders for being so easily duped and not attacking the cities. And yet, the leaders stand their ground. Do you notice this in verse 19? “We have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. This we will do to them: let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath that we swore to them.” The Gibeonites’ fraud is answered not by Israelite fury but by Israelite faithfulness. “We have sworn to them by the Lord. Let them live. We may not touch them.”

You see, Israel’s failure in one area of their duty does not become to them an excuse for yet more failure in another area of duty. They did not seek the guidance of God and so they have been taken in and deceived. But they must not now add to that sin the failure to stand by their own word and promise. Like many of you, I’ve tried all sorts of diets over the years to help me try and lose weight. I’ve not really managed to maintain any of them terribly long. Please note, by the way, this is not an invitation for you all to come and tell me about your weight loss program and how easy it will be! I’ve got it! It’s fine! Keep it to yourself, thank you! My problem has been that I go along well enough on the diet plan for a while and then I go out to dinner some place or it’s a special occasion or it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas and I fall off the wagon. And then, all my resolve crumbles and yesterday’s failure flows very neatly into tomorrow’s failure and the failure of the day after that. And I add failure to failure to failure. And I sort of throw my hands up and cave in. Now that might not be your problem. Maybe you have an iron will and can resist the pull of cheesecake at twenty paces, but I know, I know, no matter who you are, that this pattern will show up in your life when it comes to the care of your soul even if it does not always obtain when it comes to the care of your waistline.

Just think about it with me for a minute. We struggle to make progress in one area or another of our Christian life – in patience or kindness, in generosity, in purity of eye and mind and heart, in integrity, in prayer, in Bible reading, in service. And we’re going along well enough, for a while, until we stumble and fall back again into the old habit and the old pattern. And instead of repentance and renewed faithfulness, we sort of throw our hands up and we collapse in defeat and we say, “What’s the use?” and soon we’re backsliding in all sorts of other areas as well. Prayer gets neglected and it’s been weeks since you’ve opened your Bible and our tempers flare and all our graces are weakened and our vices are strengthened. You’ve been there, done that – haven’t you?

Well Israel’s faithfulness here shows us a better way. They do not let their previous failure make room for future failure. In fact, it seems like they use yesterday’s failure, yesterday’s sin, to strengthen their resolve not to give into more sin tomorrow. Faithfulness. Faithfulness. That’s our call. But of course their faithfulness in keeping their promises to unfaithful Gibeon is really only an echo of God’s faithfulness in keeping His covenant promises to all His faithless people. Something of the wonder of God’s faithfulness to the Gibeonites is hinted at in verses 22 through 27 when Joshua finally confronts them. “Why did you lie to us?” And then he pronounces his sentence. Do you see this? “Now therefore you are cursed. Some of you will never be anything but servants, cutters of wood and drawers of water, for the house of my God.” They spend their time in the service of the congregation we are told “and the altar of the Lord.” The Gibeonites, for their part, confess; they own up. They acknowledge their wrong motives and all that they have done and they affirm that they know God has promised Moses to give the Israelites all of this land. And so Joshua delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel. They did not kill them. He “made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, to this day, in the place that he should choose.”

Their lives are spared and they are made servants of the altar of the Lord in the place that He should choose. It sounds menial. It is menial. But it is also holy. Who would not want to be a servant of the altar of the living God? Even King David, even King David would say in Psalm 84, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in tents of sin.” Better to be a menial worker in service to the God of glory and grace than outside the camp, cut off from His mercy. Everyday they are cutting wood, used on the altar for burnt offerings. Every day they’re drawing water for ritual purification in the temple or in the tabernacle. Their role is connected very intimately to the molten center of Israel’s fellowship and communion with almighty God, do you see. What better place to be than come and find refuge there. Psalm 84 again. I can imagine Gibeonites singing Psalm 84 with great gusto – “Even the sparrows find a home and the swallows a nest for herself where she may lay her young at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” Even Gibeonites can find refuge under the shadow of the wing of God Almighty, full of mercy and faithfulness and love. At the altar of God, we might say, there is a welcome for every sinner. In Jesus Christ, our Priest and sacrifice, there is a hiding place even for you. The Gibeonites were a mess. They were a mess. Liars – they ought to have been condemned under the ban and curse of God, and yet they are spared in covenant mercy. This is the same God who has given His own Son that you might be welcomed and not condemned, all your mess notwithstanding, if only like the Gibeonites you would confess and come and seek shelter under His wings.

Fight. There is a war on. Fraud. Our faith is messy and inconsistent and often compromised. Failure. Let’s not let yesterday’s failure give way to fresh failures tomorrow. And faithfulness. We face it all not in our own strength or with our own resolve or courage, but confident in the faithfulness of the God who keeps promises. When we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. Praise the Lord. Let’s pray together.

Our Father, we bow and we give You our praises and thanks that You are indeed the faithful God, the God of mercy and love. And we find in Jesus Christ, whom You have appointed for sinners, our hiding place and our Rock of refuge. Have mercy on us, we pray, for His sake. Hear our cries that we might be spared in the service of the altar of our God for this day and forevermore. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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