Our Great Inheritance

This evening, I would like to focus on two questions: 1. Why all this destruction in Joshua? 2. Why all this fuss about the land?

1. Why all this destruction?

I have been promising for some time to address the question of why God commanded the killing of all the inhabitants of Canaan during the time of Joshua. This morning I mentioned the stereotype of the Bible, where the God of the OT is vindictive and bloodthirsty, and the God of the NT—Jesus—is peace-loving and gentle. We should not dismiss this question hastily. Just because many people around us in these pews are OK with the Joshua accounts, doesn’t mean we should not have a solid biblical defense of the events recorded in Joshua.

In our study of Joshua, the Israelites killed all the inhabitants of Jericho, save Rahab and her family, and all the inhabitants of Ai. Chapters 10 and 11 tell of the mass destruction of people in a quite a few cities. Look at 10:40- a typical statement in Joshua. Men, women, children. Killed in war. We call this genocide today. This would be a war crime.

The atheist Richard Dawkins, says this about the Bible:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a…capriciously malevolent bully.”

This is a question we must wrestle with, and search the Bible to answer. Let’s start at the beginning.

A. First, we must take what the whole Bible says about God. He is the creator of all, and the judge of all. He gets to determine the course of our lives, and the rules we live by. He is the perfect standard, and we have deviated severely from this standard. That is the backdrop of this whole discussion. If you don’t believe that God is perfectly righteous, and we are awful sinners, this discussion, let alone the Bible as a whole, will not make sense to you.

More specifically, let’s trace God’s promises about the land to Israel and his commands about it. I hope you’re ready to flip through your Bibles.

Genesis 15:13-16- Here God promises Abram that his descendants will inherit the land of Canaan. Notice what verse 16 says- the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. The conquest of the land of Canaan does not show that God is blood thirsty. It shows that he is patient. He waits 400 years to judge the sin of the Amorites, the inhabitants of the land (Canaanites is another term for them).

Leviticus 18:24-30- Leviticus 18 commands against a long list of sexual sins- sins that the inhabitants of the land were committing. They would also burn their children alive to their god Molech. God had enough. The land had enough- it spit them out! These people were clearly deserving of God’s judgment.

Deuteronomy 9:4-5- Again, the wickedness of the nations is in view.

Deuteronomy 20:16-18- Here, the destruction is commanded, but with another reason- so that these people would teach Israel their sin.

Joshua 11:20- We see how this happened. God hardened their hearts, so they would attack Israel and be destroyed.

There are two specific reasons, then, for the destruction of the Canaanites.

B. Punishment for their sin. Not just lying and stealing. Extreme sexual deviancy and child sacrifice.

C. Purity for Israel. Israel was to destroy them, so they would follow their sins. In this they failed. This is basically the book of Judges. The Israelites failed to drive out all the Canaanites, and instead forsook the Lord and followed the Canaanites idols and sins.

We must realize that these commands to destroy the Canaanites were, in the words of one commentator, “specific in time, intent, and geography.” It’s not like wherever Israel went, and in every battle they fought, they slaughtered every single person. The conquest of Canaan, was for a specific time.

In one sense, God was establishing his rule on that piece of land. It is a small picture of what will happen when Jesus returns. When Christ returns to rule, he is not going to say to enemies: “Let sit down over humus and figs, and discuss why you have rebelled against my rule.” Revelation 19:15 says this: “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”

The justice of God on display in Joshua, in Revelation, and everywhere in between, should not make us ashamed of God. “God, let me cover you on this one. You’re a bit of an embarrassment to me.” God’s justice should bring great hope to believers, because evil will be ended once and for all.

2. Why all this fuss about the land?

If you have read through the entire OT, there are two parts that stand out as tedious. The first is the genealogies in the first nine chapters of I Chronicles.
The second is this middle section of Joshua, with mounds of city names and boundary descriptions. If you have never read Joshua 12-22, give it a try (15:20-32). It goes on for chapters!

Before, we look at the reasons for this, let’s take a quick overview (powerpoint)
-Chapter overview
-2 maps

Why, then, all this fuss about the land?

A. This was God’s gift to Israel
Joshua 1:1-3. This was God’s promise to Joshua, his promise to Moses, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This land belonged to Israel. The land was a sign of God’s blessing on the nation of Israel. If they kept his covenant and laws, they would be blessed in the land. If they disobeyed him and broke his covenant, he would remove them from the land, which is what happened (read 2 Kings 17ff).

God’s promise did not have an end date. Israel had the land in the time of Joshua, in the time of the judges, and in the time of their kings. In God’s grand scheme of things, he is now working through the church. But the time will come, when the true nation of Israel will have their land back.

B. This specific land belonged to Israel
God gave Israel a specific land to live in. He did not promise them land in general. He promised them the land of Canaan. When God gives you a gift, you don’t ask for something different.

Remember King Ahab. Ahab was a very bad king in Israel. But if you thought he was bad, you should have met his wife, Jezebel. I Kings 21 records this story:

Now Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. 2 And after this Ahab said to Naboth, “Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house, and I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money.” 3 But Naboth said to Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.”

Notice the words of Naboth. THIS is my land, my inheritance from God. It was given to my forefathers, and it will be for my children. The land was God’s precious gift to Israel for their sustenance. It was not be despised.

As the population in our country becomes more urban and less rural, we might struggle to grasp this. If live in an apartment, or have a small lot of land for your house, the land doesn’t mean a whole lot to you. But I’m sure to some of you, there is land that quite special to you, because who it belongs to or what happened there.

My father and his brother and sister still own a few dozen acres of land in Michigan near the family farm. The farm and the house have been sold, but they still have those acres nearby. That land is special to me too, because I have fond memories of walking in the woods there with my father and his father. It’s not just a space, it’s a place.

My geography prof in seminary gave this story to illustrate space versus place. Up the highway a few miles from the seminary, there was a 6 Flags Great America. When they were completing the construction of the park, they realized that they had no easy access to a major road for the park entrance. So, they picked a street, and offered all the people with homes on the street double the appraised value of their house and property. The sale when on fine, but when the houses began to be torn down, there was an outcry. It’s not just a building. It is not just a wooded lot. It a precious place. And that’s what the land was to Israel. Not a space, but a place.

C. These are God’s blessings today
Perhaps another reason that these lists of the inheritance of the tribes don’t make a whole lot of sense to us, is that we have a hard time grasping God’s tangible blessings. This land was God’s unmistakable blessing for Israel. Look at 21:43-45. God kept his promises. You can walk on those promises. You can grow food and raise cattle on those blessings. The land shows the concrete nature of God’s gifts to his people. One commentator called it “real – estate.”

Yes, there are many blessings that we as Christians cannot see or have yet to realize. But God’s blessings are concrete realities today. The clothes and shoes who wore tonight- they are a gift from God. The house you will drive home to, it is God’s blessing. Your family and friends, everything happening in your life right now- it is all God’s gift to you.

Application: Our great inheritance
We do not have the promise of land that Israel did, but we do have a great spiritual inheritance. We read about that in I Peter at the beginning of the service:

he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

The inheritance awaiting us is beyond our imagination. And it will not fail or be destroyed. Our final salvation, our complete transformation, and eternity with God are going to be awesome. But sometimes I think we treat eternity as some kind of mystical experience that has no physical part at all. Like the spiritual version of staring blankly at a half-interesting TV show.

Reve 21:3- “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

When everything is said and done, God will be living with us here on earth. As part of our salvation, the whole creation will be restored. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” If you are Christ’s everything in yours, including the earth.