This time shall we turn to the book
of Joshua, chapter 9, as we begin our
study this evening.
Now the children of Israel had conquered Jericho
and Ai, which were strong cities.
And the kings that were in the land
of Canaan, where they were coming, felt that
their only hope of stopping this migration of
these people into the land would be by
a combined effort, pooling all of their armies,
all of their resources, in one massive assault
against Israel.
Now this strategy was really prompted by the
fact that the Gibeonites, which did cover an
area of several cities, had determined that their
only hope of survival was by a peace
treaty.
And so he starts out the ninth chapter,
the first three verses, talking about the kings
that were getting together to present a united
front against this invasion, lest they would just
be picked off kingdom by kingdom.
They felt that they should all get together.
And then, beginning with verse 4, they tell
of this Gibeonite conspiracy to develop a peace
treaty with the Israelites as they were coming
into the land.
Now the Gibeonites had heard of how God
had delivered these people out of Egypt and
how he had destroyed the Egyptians.
They had heard of how the kings of
Og and Sihon, with their kingdoms on the
other side of Jordan, had been conquered by
Israel.
They heard, of course, that Jericho had fallen,
that Ai had fallen.
And so they determined their best course of
action was to make a peace treaty.
However, they also knew that these people that
were coming into the land, the Israelites, had
no intention of making any peace treaties with
the inhabitants of the land.
For they were under the orders of God
to utterly drive out all of the inhabitants
of the land.
To destroy, to drive out.
Not to make any covenant with them.
Deuteronomy chapter 7.
God commands them not to make any covenants
with those in the land.
So they knew that their only hope of
making a covenant was by a disguise, which
they perpetrated.
They got some fellows who put on some
old ragged clothes, old clotted shoes.
They had some old wine skins that were
falling to pieces that they bound up.
They had some dry, moldy bread.
And so they came to the camp of
Israel.
And they said that we have come a
long journey.
But the fame of your God has spread
abroad through the world and we've come to
make peace with you.
They said, how do we know that you're
not our neighbors?
And they said, oh listen, when we left
home this bread was hot in our hands.
And now look at it.
It's all dry and moldy.
That's how far we've come.
Our shoes were new on our feet, but
look how ragged they are.
Now we've really come a long way.
And so the children of Israel took up
their vituals and inquired not from the Lord
or sought not the counsel from the mouth
of the Lord.
And they made this covenant or peace treaty
with the Gibeonites.
And they swore unto them by God that
they would have sort of a mutual defense
pact that they would be allied together.
So as the children of Israel then moved
on from Ai, they started coming into the
area of the kingdom of the Gibeonites, these
cities.
And so as they started to deploy the
troops to attack the cities, the men said,
oh no, no, you can't do that.
They said, what do you mean?
They said, we just made a pact with
you and you've sworn to us by God
that you would not attack us.
So they honored the pact that they had
made.
They realized that they had been deceived, but
they honored the pact that they had made
with the Gibeonites.
However, the people began to murmur against Joshua
because of his strategic blunder.
And it is interesting to note that this
is really the second mistake that Joshua made
as a leader.
The first mistake was in the case of
Ai, where they sent up only a few
thousand troops and the men of Ai came
out against them and defeated them.
And how that when Joshua cried unto the
Lord, the Lord told him the reason for
the defeat was because of the sin that
was in the camp, that one of the
children of Israel had taken of the accursed
thing out of the spoils of Jericho, which
were all to go to God.
So Joshua then sought the Lord, got rid
of the sin, and the Lord directed them
then on how the conquest of Ai should
go.
Now the problem with Ai was his failure
to pray and seek counsel from God before
they deployed the troops to attack the city.
The same problem existed here.
It was a failure to pray and inquire
of God concerning the Gibeonites.
They just looked at the outward circumstances.
They saw the dry, moldy bread and the
ragged clothes, and they just were deceived.
Now had they sought counsel from God, had
he come to Eliezer, the high priest, and
inquired of the Lord concerning these people, the
Lord would have shown to them that these
people were fakes.
They would have realized that these men were
just seeking to disguise themselves as having come
on a long journey, but in reality they
were fakes, and the Lord would have revealed
that.
But they inquired not of the Lord.
Their mistake was that of failure to seek
God's counsel, and it got them into an
ungodly alliance.
How many times we've found ourselves in ungodly
situations because we failed to seek God first.
Oh, for sure when we get in these
conditions, then we seek God like everything.
But if we would only seek God first,
we could be spared so many of these
tragic experiences that we encounter in life.
And so the failure to seek God's guidance
led them into this alliance with the Gibeonites.
But having once made it, they honored it.
However, Joshua called them and said, All right,
you guys, why did you deceive us like
this?
And they said, Hey, we knew that God
was with you, that God was turning the
land over to you, and we feared for
our lives.
And we felt that the only way we
could survive was by this little ruse.
And Joshua said, All right, but now as
a result of this, you fellows are going
to have to be the hewers of wood
and become our servants.
They said, That's fine.
We'll agree to that.
We'll be your servants, and we will serve
you, but we're just glad to be alive.
And so the people of Gibeon and the
cities of Gibeon were spared.
Now, the names of the city of the
Gibeonites are listed there.
And in the listing of the names in
verse 17, the last name, Kirjath-Jerim, is
an interesting name and city because it was
at Kirjath-Jerim that the Ark of the
Covenant was kept up until the time of
David when he moved it from there to
Jerusalem.
So one of the cities of the Gibeonites
became the place where the Ark of the
Covenant was kept.
Now, when these five kings heard that the
Gibeonites had made this league with the children
of Israel, then they decided to attack the
Gibeonites more or less as traitors.
And so they came against the Gibeonites, and
in verse 6 of chapter 10, the men
of Gibeon sent an urgent notice to Joshua
that they were being attacked.
And they said, Now we have this mutual
defense pact with you, so come to our
aid.
And Joshua, honoring the pact that he had
made, took his men of war in a
forced march all night long, and they came
to the area of Gibeon where the Gibeonites
were being attacked by these kings with all
their chariots and horses and all.
And the Lord spoke unto Joshua before going
into battle and promised Joshua that he would
be with him.
Verse 8, chapter 10.
And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear them
not, for I have delivered them into your
hand.
There shall not a man of them stand
before thee.
And Joshua came upon them suddenly, and he
went up from Gilgal all night long, this
forced march.
The Lord disconfitted them before Israel.
He slew them with a great slaughter at
Gibeon, chased them along the way to Beth
-horon and to Azekah and to Makedah.
And it came to pass as they fled
from before Israel, they were in the going
down to Beth-horon.
The Lord cast down great stones from heaven
upon them unto Azekah, and they died.
And there were more that died with the
hailstones than those whom the children of Israel
slew with a sword.
And then spake Joshua to the Lord in
the day when the Lord delivered up the
Amorites before the children of Israel.
And he said in the sight of Israel,
Son, stand still upon Gibeon, and thou moon
in the valley of Ahalon.
And the sun stood still and the moon
stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon
their enemies.
Is this not written in the book of
Jasher?
So the sun stood still in the midst
of heaven and hasted not to go down
about a whole day.
And there was no day like that before
it or after it that the Lord hearkened
unto the voice of a man, for the
Lord fought for Israel."
Now, a very unusual event indeed.
And whenever you get to miraculous events in
the Bible, that's all it takes to trigger
some people, especially those who do not believe
in God or those who have an anthropomorphic
concept of God.
Think of God in terms of a man
and limited as a man.
The miracles always create doubts and problems in
the minds of people.
And of course, they then begin to exaggerate
the problems that they see.
For instance, one of the things that they
make fun of with this particular passage and
find it quite incredible, that if the earth
should suddenly stand still, and here you are
standing on the earth and it's rotating at
almost a thousand miles an hour, that if
it would suddenly stand still, your body would
still be going a thousand miles an hour,
so all the people would just be sort
of wiped out, you know.
You'd all go flying off the earth if
it would suddenly stand still.
And so they envision the impracticability of the
earth standing still.
In other words, he said sun stands still,
but we know that the earth is actually
rotating on its axis, which makes the sun
appear to rise and set and so forth.
And so obviously it was, they say, the
earth stopping on its axis, but then they
saw all of these men flying off the
earth because of it stopping so rapidly.
However, there is nothing that indicated that it
was a sudden stop like hitting a brick
wall.
Now, if it, say, took six hours to
stop, that would be equivalent to stopping your
car going 60 miles an hour and stopping
your car to zero in 20 minutes, as
far as the force that would be exerted
against you.
Now, I would like to suggest if you
were going 60 miles an hour in your
car and you brought it to a 20
minute stop, that you would hardly notice any
inertia against your body at all.
Now, if it should stop in eight minutes,
it would be equivalent to stopping your car
at 60 miles an hour in 30 seconds.
You wouldn't even need your seatbelts for that.
So there is nothing that indicated that it
came to a sudden jerky halt.
God could have just put on the brakes
and brought it to a stop in, say,
eight or 10 minutes.
And again, the only way that you feel
motion is by the jerks.
You really don't discern motion except for the
jerks in motion.
You, on a train, a lot of times
you don't even know the train is moving
until you look out the window and then
you see the station gradually going by.
Or on the airplane, so many times you
don't know that the airplane has actually started
moving until you look out and you see
the motion outside.
But you don't feel motion unless there are
jerks.
So God could have brought the earth to
a halt in a eight, 10 minute period
and no one would have gone flying out
in space and no one would have really
noticed a sudden jerky stop at all.
A few years ago, there were some articles
in various magazines, there were some tracks written,
that some NASA scientists with a computer were
trying to predict the trajectory of a particular
rocket.
And in going back in time in the
computer, the computer came to a place where
it found a missing date.
That is not factual.
That didn't happen.
It's one of those stories that got widespread
publicity, but there's no truth to it.
However, if there was a long day, Joshua
saw that it was, you know, that they
needed more time to wipe out the enemy.
And so he said, son, stand still.
That would be sort of a, quite a
thing to say in the sight of all
the people.
I mean, you're going to look like a
fool or a real powerful guy, one of
the two.
And in sound of all the people, he
said, son, stand still.
Now, whether or not he really was expecting
it to do it or not, nevertheless, it
did for about the space of a day,
giving them time to totally obliterate the enemy.
Now, notice that along with this, there was
a tremendous hailstorm and that more people were
killed by the hailstones than they killed with
a sword.
There's a very interesting book entitled Worlds in
Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky.
Now, his theory is that the planet Venus
entered into our solar system during the period
of man's history upon the earth, that planet
Venus has actually come within our solar system
within the last 6,000 years, that it
actually made two or it made two orbits.
And on the second orbit, it got fixed
in its own orbit and in alignment as
the planets are around the sun.
It got locked into an orbit around the
sun.
The first time it orbited in and out,
according to his theory, was about the time
that the children of Israel were coming out
of Egypt.
And he ties many of the plagues in
Egypt to a close pass of the planet
Venus to the earth.
The second close pass, he times at this
long day of Joshua.
In fact, he accounts for the long day
of Joshua as to have resulted from this
near miss of the planet Venus to the
earth.
He believes that the earth used to rotate
the opposite direction on its axis until this
near pass.
Now, he theorized that if there was a
long day there at Joshua's time, that other
periods or other places in the world, there
would be recorded a long night.
For instance, here in America, the Indians would
have recorded a long night.
If there was a long day there, they'd
have to be a long night here.
And that in different places of the world,
it would be recorded as either a long
afternoon, long morning, or whatever, as it related
to the time there in Joshua.
So he carefully traced through the history of
the Inca Indians.
And sure enough, he found in their records
the story of a long night over here
when the sun didn't come up for the
space of a whole night.
And also of cataclysmic things that took place
at that time—earthquakes, tremendous storms, violent storms, and
tidal waves and all.
Because of course the earth stopping would create
tremendous tidal waves by the movement of the
water, would keep rolling faster than the earth
and would create tremendous tidal waves.
And he has gone through this approximate period
of history and followed in the records of
people around the world the stories of either
long mornings, long afternoons, long nights, or whatever,
and the cataclysmic things that took place at
the same time.
Now, Immanuel Velikovsky is not a Christian, neither
is he necessarily a believer in God.
He is a scientist who has a theory
that the planet Venus came into our solar
system during the time of recorded history, and
he uses the Bible as one of the
proofs.
This particular long day of Joshua as one
of the proofs, but in order to use
the Bible as a proof, he also follows
it and proves historically that that event took
place, showing it in the records, ancient records
of peoples around the world.
So I like his book, not that I
necessarily agree with the theory of the introduction
of the planet Venus into our solar system
at that particular time, and yet I'm sure
open.
It's very interesting, and I found it very
fascinating to think about.
But the thing that I really enjoyed is
his laying out such conclusive proof for the
skeptics who scoff at the idea of the
sun standing still or the earth stopping on
its rotation.
Those who scoff at that idea as totally
impossible, and how he proves that it was
an actual historic event.
Otherwise, it wouldn't have been recorded around the
world in the ancient records of history such
as it was, and he does a very
masterful job in proving that such an event
did take place, in case you happen to
be skeptical and need proof.
But if you have a right concept of
God, you don't need any proof.
You can just believe it because God's Word
declared it.
But some people have a problem believing just
because God's Word declares something, and they need
some kind of proof, especially when you get
into stories which seem to be a little
incredible, at least on the surface, that the
guy could say, sun stands still, and it
would stand still in the heavens for a
whole day.
So, such a thing is recorded in history
outside of the Bible.
It is interesting that it did happen at
that psychic moment when they were chasing these
kings, and Joshua felt he needed more daylight
in order to wipe them out utterly, and
so he commanded, and the sun stood still
in the heavens.
So, this story of Joshua which has brought
a lot of skepticism and criticism against the
Bible, as all of the miracles do, has
pretty well been scientifically proven, as much as
you can prove anything, with science and historic
records.
So, you might find that book, Worlds in
Collision, very fascinating.
I did.
I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Now, there was no day like that before
it or after it that the Lord hearkened
to the voice of man, for the Lord
fought for Israel.
It is, of course, his theory also that
at this time the earth became tilted on
its axis.
There was a shift of the polar axis,
and now to our 23 and a third
degree kind of an angle that the polar
axis has in its relationship to the sun,
which gives us actually now the ice caps
in the north and in the south, and
he has quite a bit to say about
that too.
So, Joshua returned and all of Israel with
him to the camp of Gilgal, but the
five kings hid themselves in a cave, and
so they came and told Joshua these five
kings were hiding in the cave.
So, Joshua said, throw a bunch of stones
over the cave, seal it up, and stand
outside and guard the thing.
And so they went ahead then, and inasmuch
as these men had come out from all
of these cities to fight, the cities were
left pretty well defenseless at this point, so
Joshua and the children of Israel started going
around, and they took all of the cities
and the areas where these people had come
from in this big battle against Gibeon.
And they went and they took all of
these cities with the exception of Jerusalem, a
city that they did not take, but it
lists the cities that they took, Lachish and
Hebron and so forth.
And so then he ordered them to take
the rocks down and bring these kings out,
and then he told some of these guys,
put your feet on the necks of these
kings, and so God is going to let
you put your foot down on the necks
of your enemies to defeat them.
And then Joshua killed these kings and threw
their bodies back into the cave, hung them
actually on five trees until evening.
Then they threw their carcasses into the caves,
and they threw the rocks over the caves
which remained there until the day that this
particular book was written.
And so he went ahead then and took
all of these cities that had sent their
armies out against them.
Verse 42 of chapter 10, And all these
kings and their land did Joshua take at
one time, because the Lord God of Israel
fought for Israel.
Now in verse 14 and verse 42, declaration
is that the Lord God of Israel fought
for Israel.
And Joshua returned in all Israel with him
under the camp of Gilgal.
Now there is a song later in the
book of Judges that speaks of God using
the stars and so forth in fighting for
his people.
There are those who call themselves theistic evolutionists.
They acknowledge God in the origins, God in
an ambiguous kind of a terminology, a force,
a power.
There was something that started the whole thing
going.
But once God started the whole process, once
he created the universe, then he more or
less stepped back.
He may have created the first cell, but
he stepped back and let all things sort
of develop and evolve as far as life
forms and all.
It's known as theistic evolution.
It was an attempt to harmonize evolutionary thought
with the Bible, though it surely doesn't bring
any real harmony with the Bible.
It creates more problems than it answers.
Those who teach theistic evolution are more or
less those who believe in the uniformitarianism concept
of our universe and of the planet earth.
Their theory is pretty well described by Peter,
who said in the last days scoffers would
arise saying, where is the promise of his
coming?
For since our fathers have fallen asleep, all
things continue as they were from the beginning.
The doctrine or the idea of uniformitarianism is
pretty well expressed in all things continue as
they were from the beginning.
In other words, there aren't any real changes,
no real catastrophic kind of changes.
You can explain everything in the geological column
and everything as far as life processes are
concerned by observable phenomena today.
So the idea of uniformitarianism really is in
direct contrast to the Bible.
You cannot be a true believer in the
Bible and be a uniformitarian.
They are sort of mutually exclusive.
Now, this same fellow, Immanuel Velikovsky, has in
the last few years written another book, Earth
in Upheaval, in which he thoroughly, totally destroys
the idea of uniformitarianism, absolutely wipes it out
with incontrovertible evidence.
He has twice now sent the scientists on
their ears.
His first book, Worlds in Collision, created quite
a furore in the scientific community because, of
course, it also challenged the idea of uniformitarianism.
But his second book, he attacks it directly
and does a devastating job in piling up
evidence that shows that things cannot be explained
by a uniform pattern, that there had to
be cataclysmic changes on the earth's surface and
so forth, catastrophic changes that you cannot really
explain all of the phenomena by the idea
of uniformitarianism.
In the book Earth in Upheaval, he gives
some very solid evidence for the universal flood
of Noah, though he isn't really trying to
prove the flood.
He talks about the deposits of the bones
of various animals that have been found in
the caves in England, the bones severely fractured.
All of them seem to be deposited at
the same time by some violent thrust.
But saber-toothed tigers along with rabbits and
all kinds of animals that are really antagonistic
towards each other, and yet all heaved in
there and crushed and broken at the same
time and planted there.
He gives some powerful evidence of violent upheavals,
which, of course, the Scriptures do testify have
taken place upon the earth in various periods
of history.
But God intervening.
Now, you see, we are prone to subconsciously
think of God as far off and unrelated
to the affairs of our lives.
We so often think of God in a
remote sense, not of one who is actively
interested in me at this moment in what
I am doing.
I think of God as just being out
there, remote from me, sort of governing over
the whole universe, but certainly He has no
personal interest in me or in my daily
problems.
Now, one of the most important things that
all of us need to develop is that
consciousness of God's presence with us at all
times, in all places, and the realization that
God is vitally interested even with those just
piddling little things about your life.
God is concerned with you.
He's concerned with those things that are worrying
you.
The Bible speaks about God's ear being open
to the righteous.
When you call unto the Lord, and God
talks about not oppressing the poor because when
they cry unto me, the Lord said, I
will hear, and I will surely avenge their
cause.
Now, when you're poor, when you're needing money,
and when you're there saying, oh God, I
don't know what I can do about these
bills.
This guy's really pressing me, Lord.
I don't know what to do.
He's really pushing me to the wall.
The Lord hears your cry, though you don't
think that He does.
And yet the Lord is vitally concerned in
your life.
And here is a guy just like you
and me who is fighting a battle.
They've got the enemy on the run, but
it's getting towards evening.
Oh, if the sun goes down, we won't
be able to finish wiping them out.
Sun stands still, and suddenly the sun stands
still in the heaven and stays in that
spot all day long.
Now, you may believe that God can heal
your sore toe or an earache, but we
don't think of God as really intervening in
a dramatic, powerful way within our lives.
When I was starting a church out in
Corona, in order to meet the needs of
the family, I was building a motel up
in Idyllwild.
I had a daily radio program on KREL,
15-minute Bible study every morning.
And I used to like to listen to
my program when I would drive up to
Idyllwild, because it would just help pass the
time of day, and I could also critique
myself.
But driving, oh, hundreds of miles every week,
commuting back and forth to Idyllwild, because I
had several Bible studies going at night, I'd
have to drive down at night, have my
Bible studies, drive back up to Idyllwild the
next morning.
My car was really getting some real wear
and tear.
And the front speaker had gone out in
my radio, and I could only play the
thing on the rear speaker.
And I was headed up to Idyllwild, and
I went to turn on my radio broadcast
so I could listen and pass the time
and critique it.
And I was out about the area of
March Field, going out towards San Jacinto from
395, and there was so much static on
that radio that I couldn't hear my program.
And so, I sort of started complaining to
the Lord.
I said, Lord, I came down last night
so I could teach the Bible study.
I'm running the wheels off my car and
off of me, trying to serve You.
I need to feed the family.
That's why I'm building the motel up in
Idyllwild.
And Lord, I don't like this drive.
It gets monotonous.
And the radio does help, Lord.
I really wish I could hear my program
and listen to the radio, because it just
helps the drive not be so long.
And I don't want to complain, Lord, but
it sure would be nice to have my
radio.
And I was really just talking to the
Lord like that, as I was driving along
about the area where they were building the
dam for Paris Lake.
And while I was sort of just laying
this trip on the Lord, I had a
vision in my mind.
I saw the rear speaker, and I saw
a little two-prong connection going into wires
that came out of the rear speaker.
And I saw that connection loose and jiggling.
And I saw this vividly in my mind,
so vividly, that just as you're going up
the hill and making that turn around where
you come down into the valley towards San
Jacinto, I pulled off the side of the
road right there.
And I popped my trunk lid open, and
I climbed underneath to see what kind of
connection they had to that rear speaker on
my radio.
And sure enough, just as I saw in
my mind a loose connection dangling and jiggling,
so this connection was loose, I pushed the
thing in tight, closed the lid, ran around
quickly, and turned on the radio.
Clears a bell.
And I said, wow, Lord, that's unreal.
You mean you're interested in me and in
my listening to my radio?
That's all right, Lord.
I love it.
To realize that God is so close and
desires to be deeply involved in your life.
You just don't give Him the chance.
You say, well, God's never spoken to me.
Have you ever asked Him to?
Have you ever asked Him a direct question
and then waited to get a direct answer?
Now, I have to admit, I wasn't really
expecting an answer.
I was just sort of complaining.
But then I began to discover that if
I would ask God direct questions, I would
often get direct answers.
And I realized that so many times I
just had not because I had asked not.
God was there.
God is interested.
God wants to work.
He's not remote, off somewhere in the universe.
That's what Elijah was taunting those priests of
Baal concerning their God.
Maybe He's off someplace on a vacation.
Maybe He's playing golf.
You know, cry a little louder.
But God is not remote and far off.
He is vitally interested in you and in
your life and even in those little things
that are troubling you.
You're His child.
He doesn't like to see you distressed.
He doesn't like to see you worried or
fretting.
He wants to reach out and help you.
Don't think of God as way off, untouchable,
unreachable, unapproachable.
As Paul said to the Athenian philosophers, the
Epicureans, for in Him we live, we move,
we have our being.
God is interested in us.
God wants to demonstrate His presence, His power,
His love to you.
You have not because you ask not.
Become aware of the presence of God.
Begin to realize, hey, God is here.
God is with me.
So, God demonstrated here in a very powerful
way His interest, His presence to Joshua and
to the people.
Now, having conquered these kings, they really, at
this point, conquered the major enemies within the
land.
The major conquests were made all at this
one shot when these kings came out against
them.
So, from there on, it was almost like
just going out and mopping up.
So, in chapter 11, the other kings, when
they heard of what had happened to these
kings that had come out against them, they
also went out with their hosts.
And these are now the kings that are
in the area of the Galilee and Upper
Galilee region.
In the first three verses, clearing up to
Mount Hermon.
And they went out and all of their
hosts with them, many people, even as the
sand is upon the seashore, a multitude with
very many horses and chariots.
And these kings met together and they came
to the waters of Meron to fight against
Israel.
And the Lord said to Joshua, be not
afraid because of them for tomorrow about this
time, I will deliver them all slain before
Israel and thou shalt heal their horses and
burn their chariots with fire.
So, again, Joshua came with all of his
men suddenly upon these people.
And the Lord delivered them into the hand
of Israel, who smote them and chased them
even unto Sidon, clearing over the upper part
or the lower part of Lebanon there, the
upper part of the area of Israel.
And Joshua took Hazor, which of course is
up in the Upper Galilee and one of
the major cities at that time in that
area.
And he smote all of those with the
edge of the sword and he utterly wiped
out the cattle and the horses and burned
the chariots and did all this the Lord
had commanded Moses to do when they took
the land.
So, verse 23, Joshua took the whole land
according to all that the Lord said unto
Moses.
Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel
according to their divisions by their tribes and
the land rested from war.
Now, he took the whole land and yet
there were pockets of resistance that they did
not take.
There was a failure on their part to
inhabit the whole territory that God had given
to them.
Now, God had said every place you put
the sole of your foot, I have given
it to you.
One of the tragedies was the incomplete conquest
of the land.
For instance, the Jebusite city of Jerusalem was
not taken by Joshua.
In fact, it was not taken until the
time of David.
And David took the city of Jerusalem and
hence it was called after that the city
of David.
But we will read of other areas, Gaza,
Ashdod and so forth that they did not
take at that time.
Yet they conquered not all the land.
Now, that was a tragedy that they did
leave unconquered territory.
And because they left it, it did become
a problem later on to them.
Now, in chapter 11, it gives a list
of the names of the kings that were
in this land that they destroyed or that
they had come against.
And so chapter 12 gives you a roster
of the kings that they defeated.
In chapter 13, now Joshua was old and
stricken in years.
It means that he was beginning to be
a little feeble.
The idea of stricken in years refers to
more or less the feebleness that oftentimes accompanies
old age.
And there remaineth yet very much land to
be possessed.
This, as I said, was one of the
tragedies.
Is there failure to continue until they had
taken all of the land that God had
promised?
Now, there is a sequel to that in
our own spiritual lives.
As I have told you before, coming into
the land of promise and taking the land
of promise has as a spiritual sequel the
life of victory, the walking in the Spirit
that God wants you to know, the victory
over the flesh and your old flesh life.
Now, God has promised you victory over your
flesh life.
It is a victory that all you have
to do is go in and claim, lay
claim to it.
Every place you put your foot, God has
given it to you for a possession.
Now, the tragic thing with so many Christians
is they start off in the Spirit in
a very powerful way, and they make great
initial spiritual strides in their lives.
But then they will hit a spiritual plateau
where a complacency will settle over them, and
they are no longer eager for conquest.
They are no longer really striving towards the
mark for the prize of the high calling
of God.
But they begin to sort of kick back
in spiritual ease and resting upon the past
victories, so that oftentimes when you talk to
them, their conversation is always of some past
spiritual victory and blessing that they experienced in
their life.
But there is nothing fresh and up-to
-date.
Most of the spiritual victories are relegated to
some historic period in their own walk and
experience, and they are always relating the glory
days of the past.
Oh, I can remember the days of the
tent and glorying, you know, in the work
of God in my life while we were
in the tent.
Or the days in the little church.
But it is always a sign of spiritual
stagnation when you've got to look back to
relate some vital experience with God.
God wants you to have an up-to
-the-moment experience of His grace and power
and love in your life and His victory.
Now they came to the place where they
were satisfied, they were content, they didn't press
on to the full victory.
Beware of spiritual plateaus.
Beware of that spiritual complacency where you come
to the place where you're spiritually satisfied.
This is as far as I need to
go, as far as I desire to go,
as far as the rest of the things
in my life.
Well, I can live with them.
Whenever you can start living comfortably with your
flesh, you are in danger spiritually.
Our flesh is a constant enemy to our
walk in the Spirit.
The Spirit is lusting against the flesh and
the flesh against the Spirit, and these two
are contrary, the Scripture says.
They're opposed to each other.
And thus, how important that we press on
to the full possession of that which God
has promised unto us.
But there remained yet very much land to
be possessed.
And so it tells the territories that they
had not yet conquered.
Now God had told them to divide it
by lot to the Israelites for an inheritance
as I have commanded you.
Verse 14, only under the tribe of Levi
there is no inheritance.
The sacrifices of the Lord God of Israel
made by fire are their inheritance as he
said unto them.
Now Moses gave to the tribe and the
children of Reuben the inheritance according to their
families, and he describes the borders on the
other side of the Jordan River that belonged
to Reuben.
And then to the tribe of Gad he
describes from verse 25 to the end the
borders of the area that were given to
Gad, again on the other side of the
Jordan River east from Jericho.
Now in chapter 14, we have the interesting
account of this fellow Caleb.
When Moses had sent out the 12 spies
to go into the land, Caleb was a
companion to Joshua, and they spied out the
south country of Israel from near Jerusalem to
the Dead Sea, the Valley of Eshkol, on
over to the Valley of Elah, and southwards
towards Hebron and Beersheba on down to the
southern border of Kadesh Barnea.
Now when they came back and brought the
good report that, hey, that land is great.
They had a big bunch of grapes that
they carried on a stake between them.
They got this pole and they tied this
huge bunch of grapes.
And I'll tell you, there in the Valley
of Eshkol, they have some beautiful, beautiful grapes.
Some of the most, oh, can't talk about
it.
They are good.
They are eating grapes.
The Jews only really grow table grapes.
And they're just a delicious, or that is
the Muslims only grow the table grapes, the
Jews grow the wine grapes, but the Muslims
grow the eating grapes because the Muslims don't
believe in drinking wine.
And so they only grow table grapes.
And the area, of course, there in the
Valley of Eshkol, Hebron, and so forth, is
Muslim territory, the Arabs.
But they have some of the most delicious
grapes, even to the present day, and huge
bunches.
And so these guys picked one of these
great bunches of grapes.
They were some of the first tourists to
go into the land of Israel.
The word spies is actually the word for
tourist in Hebrew.
And they brought back souvenirs, this big bunch
of grapes.
They said, wow, that land is all right.
You know, it's flowing with milk and honey.
Look at this bunch of grapes that we
picked.
Oh, it's a good land.
But the 10 other spies said, oh man,
it's a land that eats up its inhabitants.
They have huge cities, big walls, and they're
giants there.
We were like grasshoppers.
And these 10 spies put fear in the
heart of Israel.
They turned away.
Now Moses, when God said, all right, you
know, you're going to have to wonder.
Moses promised Caleb.
He said, look, Caleb, when we take the
land, you can have that territory that you
spied out.
That's yours.
So they had covered, they conquered pretty much
the northern part, the upper Galilee region, the
area of Samaria.
And now Caleb came to Joshua and he
said, Joshua, when you and I spied out
the land, when we came back and gave
our report to Moses, you'll remember that Moses
promised me that I could have for my
family the territory that we spied out.
He said, now look, I'm 85 years old,
but I'm just as strong as the day
that we spied out the land.
And he said, I want your permission now
to go down and take that land that
was promised to me.
I love the grit of this old fellow.
85 years old.
He says, man, I'm ready to go to
battle.
I'm ready to take that land that God
had promised to me that Moses promised that
I could have.
I want your permission now to go down
and take it.
And so Joshua gave unto Caleb the permission
to go down in the area of Hebron
and those areas around Hebron, the areas that
were promised to Caleb.
And so Caleb went down and conquered that
area around Hebron.
He was from the tribe of Judah, and
Judah actually had that entire area south from
Jerusalem, east to the Dead Sea, Jordan River,
Dead Sea, and west all the way on
over towards the Elah Valley, where from there
to the coast was the tribe of Dan.
So Joshua blessed him, verse 13 of chapter
14, and he gave him Hebron and the
environs about it for his inheritance.
And the reason being given the end of
verse 14, because he wholly followed the Lord
God of Israel.
So in chapter 15, he describes the portion
that was given from Judah, and he tells
the borders of the land that was given
to Judah, going over at one point clear
to the Mediterranean, the area of Hebron, and
the area basically south of Jerusalem.
Then it tells of the various villages and
the cities and all that were in the
land that was given to Judah.
In verse 62, one of the interesting cities
is En Gedi, which is down by the
Dead Sea.
It is still existing there today.
It is one of my favorite places to
visit.
They have fantastic dates in En Gedi, and
they also have a beautiful waterfall, fern grotto,
just an absolutely gorgeous area.
We've got some beautiful pictures of En Gedi,
and we are hoping to get our film
edited pretty soon, sort of a travelogue of
Israel, and let you see some of that
beautiful, beautiful country.
In chapter 16, he describes the areas that
were given then to Manasseh and to Ephraim,
the sons or the descendants of Joseph.
Now, part of the tribe of Manasseh settled
on the east banks of the Jordan River,
but the other part settled on the west
banks of the Jordan, from the area of
Jericho on up through Bethel, and the area
basically just north from the area of Jerusalem,
and going north from there, north of Judah.
And so verse 10, chapter 16, they drove
not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer,
but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites, and
to this day, and they serve under tribute.
So again, the failure of totally conquering the
land.
And as we get into the book of
Judges, we'll see the cost of this disobedience,
of failing to totally take the land, but
allowing some of the people to remain.
As the Scripture had predicted, they did become
thorns in their sides and pricks, and they
became a real problem to them in time
to come.
We'll cover that as we move on into
Judges, but we'll finish the book of Joshua
next Sunday.
Now, in some of the reading that we
skipped over tonight, the listing of all those
names, you can't even find the ruins of
all those cities anymore, so it's no sense
of reading all those names.
When you get to those listing of names,
just jump over them, else your Bible reading
will become tedious indeed.
So, just jump over whenever you start getting
a list of a lot of names.
Now, I do suggest that you get a
good Bible map of the division of the
land to the twelve tribes, and a good
map will do a lot more for you
to understand the places where the twelve tribes
lived than trying to read the borders of
the cities that don't even exist anymore.
So, just get you a good Bible map,
and you can study it on a good
Bible map, the apportionment of the land.
Now, what they did is that they would
draw out the area, and then they would
have all the tribes' names in a little
box or something, and they'd pull, you know,
they'd say, okay, now this area on down
from Jerusalem on south and so forth, all
right, now who's going to have this?
They'd draw the lot, and oh, Judah, okay,
that's Judas.
And so, they apportioned the land by lot,
by the drawing of lots, and they would
circumscribe an area, then draw lots, and it
would go to that tribe who was drawn
for that particular area.
So, next week we move on to the
finishing of the apportionment of the land to
the various tribes and to Joshua's final charge
to the people and his death.
Shall we stand?
May the Lord bring you into a special
consciousness of his presence, of his love, of
his interest in your life, and may you
walk in the consciousness of God's grace and
be led by his Spirit.
May you come into a new relationship with
God, a very personal relationship with God.
In Jesus' name.