Our Father in heaven, as we have just sung, so we wait on Thee, the sweet hour or moment as the case may be of prayer. So we ask now that You would give us ears to hear, You might anoint the preaching of Your Word by Your Holy Spirit to sound forth with great power and authority, and that You might do a work in our hearts, just what each one of us needs to hear. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Our text this morning, moving through the book of Joshua, we come to Joshua chapter 9. Such a great story. They all are, but this one is filled with drama and intrigue and even perhaps some irony and humor. There are lessons for us here, surprising lessons for us from this passage.
Joshua chapter 9, beginning at verse 1.
“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.”
You may have noticed throughout this book so far several times we read that phrase we find at the end in verse 27, “to this day,” which tells us this was written somewhat within a few years, decades, generation perhaps of these things taking place. For example, chapter 4 verse 9, the stones commemorating the crossing of the Red Sea it is said are there to this day.
Chapter 6:25 – Rahab as she’s spared from Jericho has lived in Israel with her family to this day.
Chapter 7:26 – A heap of stones was put over Achan after he was killed, it remains to this day.
8:29 – Joshua raised over Ai after they destroyed it, a great heap of stones which stands there to this day.
And then here in 9:27, these Gibeonites are cutters of wood, drawers of water, to this day.
Why that refrain, “to this very day”?
Well, one of the reasons is that God’s people could open their eyes and look around and say, yes, it is so. There is a commemoration, there are the stones for crossing the Jordan, there are the stones over Achan, there are the stones over Ai. Yes, here are the Gibeonites among us. They could see with their own eyes and remember that God had done.
The other reason has to do with etiology, which is the study of causes. How do things come to be.
I was doing in Sunday school class this morning, the lecture was on the Wesley’s. So in my research this week I looked up Wesley Chapel, which is just south of town here, formed in 1832 because Methodists built there a Wesley Chapel. That’s etiology, where did we get that name? Charlotte was the queen of the house of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Germany, the Hanoverian dynasty, and so Mecklenburg County. So that’s etiology, how did these things come to be.
So God’s people would have seen stones there and a heap there and the Gibeonites there, and these stories helped to explain why these curiosities, mom and dad, why these stones? Grandma and grandpa, how come the Gibeonites weren’t destroyed with the rest of the people of the Hivites? And this book gives those explanations.
But more than that, it’s not just a bit of historical curiosity, it is telling us something about God and His ways and His people. This chapter is full of surprises, and I don’t just mean the surprise that happened to Israel when ta-da, these people are right near you. That’s a surprise.
But surprises for us. There are three of them and that will be our outline this morning. Three surprises.
Number one. Number one, we see the surprising failure of God’s people. The surprising failure.
So the setting here. Gibeon is six, seven, eight miles north, a little west of Jerusalem. The people don’t yet have Jerusalem, it’s the city of the Jebusites, but it’s that part of Israel, later Judea. You notice in verses 1 and 2 the kings beyond the Jordan and of the hill country and down by the great sea, all of these –ites, they prepare for war. But verse 3 introduces us to a different set of –ites, the Gibeonites, and instead of preparing for way, they prepare for peace.
You see down in verse 15 the result of their deception, Joshua made peace with them. Shalom. So there is a fight or flight response and the Gibeonites choose a third –fraud. We’re not going to fight you, we’re not going to flee, we’re going to fake, fraud. We’re going to deceive you. It is a cunning deception you read there in verse 3. They on their part acted with cunning.
So they get their worn out sacks, they get their worn out sandals, their worn out clothes, their cracked wineskin twice, dry and crumbly bread. If ever something goes wrong with your homemade bread and it’s dry and crumbly, just say, “Honey, this is biblical bread. Dry and crumbly, just like the Gibeonites.”
Now Israel had specific instructions how to deal with the people of the land. So keep your finger here in Joshua and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 7. Now we don’t know that the Gibeonites would have been aware of these provisions, maybe by somehow word traveled and they knew what the law of Moses said, they do have a lot of information about these people, or maybe it just was a hunch or maybe these laws reflect some common practice. But there’s a kind of intuition that the Gibeonites have, and certainly God’s people should have known better.
So I want you to look first at Deuteronomy 7, verse 1: When the Lord brings you into the land you are entering to take possession of it, clears away these many nations, verse 1, verse 2, when He gives you over to defeat them, you must devote them to complete destruction.
Look at verse 3: You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.
Now that may sound harsh, but the next verses explain why, because otherwise if they’re in the midst of you, they will lead you astray. You will worship their gods. You will become idolaters like them. You will intermarry with them. It will lead to your spiritual compromise and downfall. So you do not make any covenants, no treaties, with the people of the land.
But turn to another passage in Deuteronomy. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 20. Because there were some specific instructions that allowed for an exception. Look at Deuteronomy 20, verse 10.
Deuteronomy 20, verse 10: “When you draw near to a city to fight against it,” this is looking forward to the conquest, “offer terms of peace to it, and if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword but the women and the little ones, the livestock and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you.”
Now pause right there. You’re saying now how does that go with chapter 7? Chapter 7, no mercy, no treaties. Here it says you go and you make a covenant.
Well, look at verse 15. It’s not a covenant with everyone, it’s only an exception. Verse 15: Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here but in the cities of these people that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but devote them to destruction.
So there’s the background. Israel had been given very specific instructions. When you come into the land, you devote the people to destruction so that they don’t become a snare and lead to your compromise and idolatry. But here’s an exception – some of the cities that are far away you can make a covenant with them, a treaty of peace with them, and then they will be your servants.
Again, we don’t know, were the Gibeonites aware of that loophole in the law of Moses? Maybe it reflected just the normal practices of warfare in the region, that wouldn’t undermine the inspiration of Scripture in any way. Or maybe they just got “lucky.” Whatever the case may be, they have this intuition that if Joshua knows we’re nearby, we’re toast, but if he thinks we’ve come from a long way, we might be able to save our hide.
Go back to Joshua chapter 9. The men of Israel are suspicious. You see verse 7, they say to the Hivites, so the Gibeonites must have been a group of Hivites, perhaps you live among us? How do we know that you just moseyed on up to us? How do we know that you’re not one of our nations that we’re supposed to wipe out?
And of course they have this elaborate ruse with all of their wineskins bursting and their worn-out shoes and the people went around Gibeon and said, “Honey, did you throw those things out?” “No.” “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve been saving all this. You never brought it to Goodwill. Great. We need all of the junk. We’re going to have it here and we’re going to wear it and we’re going to go.”
And they fool them. And in the end, the Israelites walk by sight, not by faith. This was their failure.
Go down to verse 14: “So the men.” Now which men? Well, the closest antecedent is the men of Israel. “The men of Israel took some of their provisions.” In other words, their inspecting. They say, “Okay, come a little bit closer. All right. Let’s see. Let’s, let me see that bread. Yep. Hey, Joshua, take a look at this. Dry and crumbly, dry and crumbly. Dry and crumbly, right? Moldy bread. Burst wineskins.” So they make a treaty with them. They look at their provisions but did not ask counsel from the Lord.
Now note very well this kind of commentary. We wish we had it more often, but it’s actually pretty rare in Old Testament narrative. Once in a while we get God’s inspired commentary, like when David sins with Bathsheba, we read at the end, “the thing David had done displeased the Lord.” But most often we’re left to just sort of piece things together by context. Abraham and Sarah lie, and Isaac lies, and Rebekah lies, and Rahab, we’re not told what God thinks about Rahab’s deception. We’re not even told what God thinks about the Gibeonites deception.
Very rarely does the Bible interject, okay, here is the lesson you are to learn. Well, this is one of those cases, verse 14, where God puts it in black and white – here was their failure. They did not ask the Lord. They had not because they asked not.
Now what did it mean for them to ask? Did it mean that they would just pray and wait until they got some liver shiver? No. At this time in redemptive history, it probably meant that they went to the priest, Numbers 27 tells us the priests were given the Urim and the Thummim, which as best as we can figure were kind of stones or some kind of objects that were meant to give the Lord’s will a primitive way of giving the Lord’s yes or no. At this time in redemptive history, we don’t have the completed Scriptures, we don’t have the Holy Spirit in the same way, and so God, the Urim and the Thummim. They were probably supposed to go to the priest and say, “Time out, Gibeonites. Something smells a little fishy, and I don’t mean your bread and your supposed cracked wineskins. We’re going to have to get back to you tomorrow after we seek the Lord.” But they did not do it.
So this is the lesson for us. Joshua 9 is the literal embodiment of Deuteronomy 8:3, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Isn’t that their failure? They lived by looking at the bread alone and they did not seek the Word of the Lord.
So what’s the lesson for us? Slow down and ask for the Lord’s help.
Now some of you know I, years ago, I wrote a little book called Just Do Something which is about you need to go and do something. We get all tied up in this hyper subjectivity, thinking that we need to be throwing out fleeces all the time and look for writing in the sky.
One time, I have a picture of this on my phone, I was somewhere out of the country, and I saw in the sky there was a plane that had with its, you know, fumes had written in big letters in the sky, “No.” Don’t know why it was there and I just pitied any man who had proposed to a girl on that day and she said “let me think and ask the Lord.” Oh, boy, there’s a sign in the sky.
So this is not telling us to be perpetually indecisive. Romans 12, we are transformed by the renewal of our mind. We are at a different moment in redemptive history. We have the Holy Spirit. We have the Church. We have the Scriptures. We don’t normally get dreams and visions and audible voices. We aren’t told to cast lots or roll dice to determine God’s will. They did cast lots to fill Judas’s successor, but you notice that never was the new means of choosing an elder or a pastor.
So what does it mean for us? Well, certainly, it means to read our Bibles, to come before the Lord humbly, not to flip open to a passage and expect God to speak to us that way but to search the Scriptures, especially when we have something difficult to consider. It means we should expect to hear from God through the wisdom of good counselors.
Which means, this is what we often do, is we ask people’s advice but we tell the story in such a way so they give us the advice that we know that they know we want to hear. When’s the last time somebody told you something you didn’t want to hear and you still went with their advice? Usually our asking for advice is just would you confirm what I already have decided I want to do.
And of course this passage means we should pray. I’ll tell you, and there’s nothing absolutely biblical about this prayer, but hopefully it’s wise. I’ll tell you one of my simple frequent prayers and I think the Lord has honored it and kept me out of trouble over these many years, I have prayed this prayer many times: Dear Lord, don’t let me be stupid or sinful.
Those two things. Sometimes it’s sinful, sometimes it’s Lord, this may not be a sin, but maybe this would just be a really dumb thing to do. And the Lord has been gracious. Maybe my wife or kids would say, “Well, you haven’t prayed that enough, I can tell you.” It’s not foolproof. But I remember one time in Michigan, we were moving from one house to the next house, a little bigger house, nicer house, and we really liked it at first and it was so, it was all well-done inside and it was a beautiful house inside and outside, so we put an offer on it and we had just some misgivings. It was on a busy street corner and it was maxing out, stretching us in our finances and we weren’t sure, and I prayed that prayer, “Lord, if there’s something sinful in this or something stupid in this, would You show it to me?”
Now I can’t be certain, but I think the Lord answered that prayer. We did the inspection as everyone does and they found some work, $20,000 of work that needed to be done on the roof and the seller was not willing to do it and we said we can’t add another $20,000 to it, very pressure, and she was very distraught understandably, but we backed out and we felt a great sense of relief about it and I think the Lord answered the prayer. Lord, would You just help us not to make a mistake here.
Now again, friends, this doesn’t mean you have to hesitate at every single decision. ___ sometimes you move ahead. I remember I always thought before I would propose to someone I was going to fast for a week, two weeks, I was just going to seek the Lord and I think I missed breakfast because it just seemed so obvious. Of course I’m going to propose to Trisha. So I did. Missed breakfast, maybe lunch.
So this isn’t calling us for perpetual indecision. But it does mean, it’s a good word for us, a hard word for us. If you’re facing a difficult ethical question, to just say time out. Sometimes when people want to pressure you and you need to decide this right now, is often a very good indication that you should probably, if they’re not willing to give you some time, it may need to be a no.
If your spiritual Spidey senses tell you something doesn’t seem right… See, the men here, they knew something isn’t right. I don’t know. Where are you really from, you supposed distant travelers? If you have that sense, maybe it’s from the Spirit to slow down, to stop, and to pray. No, it isn’t always the case that you have peace about big decisions. There’s a reason. When they’re big decisions, they often feel very big and scary. But God may surprise you by giving you clarity or even a supernatural insight.
The lesson here is obvious for Joshua and the leaders of Israel. If they had simply prayed for a moment, Lord, before we make this treaty with these travelers, would You help us to see if we are doing something stupid or something sinful, God surely would have helped them and would have answered their prayer.
Slow down, pause, ask for the Lord. He wants to help us. That’s the first, the surprising failure of God’s people.
But here’s a second lesson and this one may be even more surprising. After the failure, we also see the surprising faithfulness of God’s people. See, it’s not all bad news here. Granted, this is probably not what Joshua and the leaders put on their spiritual CV, on their spiritual resume. This is one of the few times where Joshua really blows it as a leader. But notice they do not add to the first sin or failure a subsequent sin or failure. This is what happens. Many people hit rock bottom and then they ask for shovels to keep digging and they make matters worse.
Look at what happens. Go back to Joshua chapter 9, see verse 18. The people of Israel did not attack them because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them. Then all the congregation murmured against the leaders.
This was not a good time for the leaders, whoever it might be, Joshua, the elders, the chiefs, the head of tribes. The leaders.
You can understand why the people are upset. Guys, you know that meme, you had one job. You had one job. Just ask the Lord. Now we have these Gibeonites living among us. God’s going to be angry with us. Surely we should kill them.
And you can understand the temptation that Joshua and the leaders must have felt. They must have thought, okay, we have all of our people who are mad at us, they’re murmuring against us. We were supposed to destroy them and we didn’t, so surely the answer, let’s make the people happy because I don’t want all the people being mad at their leaders, and wouldn’t this be the right thing, make God happy, and we just go out, go ahead, go at them, kill all the Gibeonites. But they didn’t do it.
Notice the language, verse 18. The leaders of the congregation had sworn to them. Verse 19, we have sworn to them by the Lord. Verse 20, this we will do, let them live because of the oath we swore to them.
It must have been tempting to want to go out and just make an end of the Gibeonites. They embarrassed you. You look bad. The people are angry. You were supposed to wipe them out in the first place and so let’s just be done with this, sorry, a big oops moment, go get the Gibeonites.
But the leaders of Israel embodied the truth of Psalm 15 – O Lord, who should sojourn in Your tent? Who shall dwell in Your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; who does not slander with his tongue, does not evil to his neighbor nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord… And then here’s verse 4 of this psalm: Who swears to his own hurt and does not change.
They swore to their hurt. There’s a verse that is not very popular among anyone today. Many of us, I fear, would have advised Joshua simply announce to the Gibeonites you made a mistake and they’re through. After all, they lied to you. They tricked you. Just tell the Gibeonites sorry, you’re liars. I know we made a promise but you’re gone.
But three times, verse 18, verse 19, verse 20. It is underscored for us. They swore to them, they promised to them, they made an oath to them.
One of my mentors, even before I was a pastor and was an intern, I’m convinced that he had Psalm 15:4 as one of his life verses. It was one of his mantras, swear to your hurt. Maybe he was slightly inflexible at times, but he set an example that stuck with me. I remember one time I was an intern at the church and I had laid out a summer teaching series that I was going to do. It was actually on the will of God and it was four weeks and announced these Thursday nights and people signed up for the class and somehow I had missed or had come up subsequently to that, I knew I was going to be in a friend’s wedding in Chicago and then I learned, oh, the wedding rehearsal was not on Friday, I think it was two nights before or something and it was going to be on Thursday. So I had planned out this class, it seemed like a very simple thing, just explain to the class that I couldn’t be there and, you know, I don’t know that it actually would have been wrong to have rescheduled the class, but he was probably trying to teach me a lesson and he said, “You have swore to your hurt and you said, and these people set aside the time, and you are going to teach this class.” So I did it. I talked to my friend. He was okay. I missed the rehearsal. I drove to Chicago late that night, got in at midnight because I had swore to my hurt.
It’s a lesson worth learning as a young man.
Maybe some of you know the name in church history, Theodore Frelinghuysen. Good Dutch name. He was a pastor in New Jersey and to this day Frelinghuysen is a name with a long political history in the state of New Jersey. Well, he was a pastor in the middle part of the 18th century. He was remembered by George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards as being one of the forerunners of the Great Awakening. He was a fiery preacher who had moved from The Netherlands to the middle colonies.
But he only came to America by an “accident.” He was born in 1691 in Friesland in The Netherlands and ordained by the Dutch Reformed Church at 26. He served for two years and then at 28 he was approached by the Classis, like the presbytery of Amsterdam, and they asked him if he was willing to take a church in Raritans, a place in The Netherlands. So he said yes. Well, it turned out that they meant the Raritan Valley in New Jersey.
Now again, maybe the brother could have been excused for saying “oops,” but he clung to Psalm 15:4 and he said, “I have swore to my hurt,” and he moved to the other side of the world. And he moved to New Jersey, to the Raritan Valley and was a forerunner to the Great Awakening, “I have given you my word, my promise.”
Now obviously it is not always wrong to change our plans. Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians and some of the Corinthians were upset and they said he was fickle and he said, no, sometimes our plans change. You make a mistake and you double book and something has to give.
But I’m sure we do not take seriously enough what it means when we give someone our word. Do we do what is right even to face the negative consequences of making a mistake? Will you own up to a mistake? That’s what Joshua and the leaders did. I mean, it must not have been comfortable to come out before the congregation, who’s furious with them, and say, “Let us at the Gibeonites,” and say, “We own it. We let you down but we’re not going to let you add to one mistake by making another mistake.”
This is the way of the world. How do you get out of one mistake? You make more mistakes. Surely if I sin over here or fail over here, and I have negative consequences, God wouldn’t want me to bear those negative consequences. So we go and we fail I some other area. When you give someone your word of what you’re going to do or where you will be, do you only do it until something better comes up? Are you known at the workplace as someone who absolutely does the job that is required of you and you keep your commitment?
Or what about the most important vow that most of us will ever make? Til death do us part. It’s true, the Bible gives some reasons for divorce. The Westminster Confession gives two biblical grounds for divorce – sexual immorality, desertion by an unbelieving spouse, and the elders take very seriously trying to discern those things.
Yet it’s also the case that many, many people simply violate those vows when they realize this is difficult. I maybe even made a mistake. Maybe there’s even negative consequences here. Do we swear to our hurt? Or do we think if I am going to suffer consequences, then surely the Lord and everyone else understands that my promise was merely provisional.
Look, we are never better in the long run by trying to overturn one sin with another sin. Let us be like Joshua and these leaders. When we make a vow, when we make a promise, we swear to our hurt.
Then a final surprise is the surprising grace of God. You say grace? I don’t see grace in this chapter? The Israelites are deceived, the Gibeonites are little more than servants and slaves, but surely you notice the massive grace – Gibeon was not wiped out. Gibeon is a great city. We’ll come to it next week. This is leading to this fight with the surrounding environs of the Gibeonites. But not only is Gibeon allowed to survive but look again at the very last verse, 27: He made them cutters of wood, so you’re going to fell the trees for all the building projects, drawers of water, no one has running water, of course, you have to go to the well and bring it up so they’re going to be fetching water for the people all the time, and for the alter of the Lord in the place that He should choose.
So they have a tabernacle right now but they know at some point the Lord will choose a permanent dwelling place for His tabernacle, which will be the temple, and right here we read the Gibeonites, these interlopers, they were supposed to be wiped out and God says, “You know what? They will have a privileged place, yes, they’re woodcutters and water drawers, but eventually they will attend even to My altar and they will be there at the construction of the temple.”
So the Gibeonites, of all people, will have the privilege of being brought near to the holiest place and the holiest people and the holiest things in Israel. And if we had time, which we don’t, we could trace out throughout the Old Testament the number of times that the Gibeonites show up. In fact, in 2 Samuel 21, David avenges the Gibeonites because Saul had put some of them to death. He said this is not so. Even centuries later they look back and said, “No, we made a promise and hundreds of years later we are true to the covenant we made.” Saul slaughtered some of the Gibeonites and David avenges the Gibeonites and he destroys Saul’s remaining sons.
He brought the Gibeonites near. Surely this is evidence of undeserved mercy.
You know that this is a book about conquest, but I hope nine chapters in you realize there is a surprising amount of grace. We’ve said many times the hardest thing about this book are all the people that get destroyed, but have you noticed destruction is not the only option for the nations of Canaan. You have Rahab, her only family is saved. Did you notice at the end of chapter 8, look at verse 35. Didn’t bring it out two weeks ago – There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, number one, and the women, number two, and the little ones, number three, and the sojourners who lived among them.
There were sojourners. There were people of the land who had aligned themselves with the God of Israel and they were saved.
These Gibeonites, they did not have the same faith as Rahab, but the parallels are interesting. Think about Rahab and the Gibeonites. Both fear the God of Israel. They say we’ve heard what’s happened and we are afraid for our lives. They both look to be spared when the inevitable destruction comes. Rahab, however, is ready to commit herself to Israel’s God and join Israel’s community.
Think about this important difference. Rahab and the Gibeonites both engage in deception, but Rahab deceives in order to save God’s people at the risk of her own life, the Gibeonites deceive God’s people to save their own lives.
So you can debate, lots of people do, is Rahab justified in what she did? There’s no justification in what the Gibeonites did. And yet the Gibeonites, they, too, are spared and throughout the Old Testament we see they live among God’s people. Yes, they’re woodcutters, they’re water drawers, but as time goes on, they are brought near to the altar and to the priests to the very holy things of God.
Here’s the point. Underline it in your mind – God is more eager to save than to condemn.
That was true in the Old Testament, it’s true in the New Testament. It’s true for you today.
2 Peter 3:9 – God does not wish that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
God sent His Son the Lord Jesus Christ into the world not to condemn the world but to save the world. And yes, those who reject Christ do not know Christ, stand condemned already, but it’s not of equal ultimacy. God loves to save and maybe some of you, your story is like the Gibeonites, and maybe some of you, your story starting today will be like the Gibeonites and you come to the Lord with imperfect motives.
Oh, I’ve met many people who came through the flirt and convert method. Now I don’t recommend it, I don’t want my children to do it. I want them to date believers but God is gracious. A whole bunch of people some to a youth group because boys are there or girls are there. They come with less than perfect motives. Maybe they just got dragged along to church and they just wanted a parent to get off their back. Maybe they came in just looking to make business connections, or they thought that it would be a good thing in the community. Well, those aren’t the right motives.
The Gibeonites didn’t have the right motives, either. Who knows that God might save you just like He did the Gibeonites. You may come and come to God not knowing who God really is; the Gibeonites just had a little sliver of knowledge. You may not know much about God’s Word; the get into, but only knew that the God of Israel was powerful and would destroy. You may come to God motivated solely by self-preservation, that’s all you want, just like the Gibeonites, I just want to save my skin.
Well, that’s not where you should end as a Christian, but it may be that that’s where you begin as God hears your cry.
So friends, if you have mixed motives, come. If you’re not sure, come. If there’s lots of things you don’t know, still come. God sent Christ into the world to save the world through His death and resurrection. Don’t we see through the ministry of the Lord Jesus how eager He is. If you come ready to defend yourself, He pushes away, puts a finger in your eye. But if you come with just the smallest sliver of faith, just the smallest even sense of your need and you come to Jesus and you know you’re blind, and you know you’re a harlot and you know you’re in need of forgiveness, Jesus opens wide His arms. Come with your weakness, come with your need, come with your sins.
The Gibeonites did a lot of things wrong but the one thing they got right is they came. And you, too, can live among God’s people, and like the Gibeonites you can draw near to the one true God. He is eager to show you grace. Come to Him for rescue.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we give thanks for Your Word. So many of us are Gibeonites, some Israelites, and some Gibeonites. We did not come for the right reasons but You saved us anyway. So may You do this work among us in great and powerful ways. We would be happy to be woodcutters, to be drawers of wood, to be servants, to be a doorkeeper as long as we can be in the house of our God. So we look forward to all You will do, to save us, now and to the end. In Jesus’ name. Amen.