Can Honor Survive Amidst Deception?

CAN HONOR SURVIVE AMIDST DECEPTION?

JOSHUA 9:1-27.

There is a story about a Methodist preacher who often spoke on the subject of sin. He defined sin as that abominable thing that God hates. One day some of the leading laymen came to urge their pastor to stop using the word sin. The laymen told their pastor that they want him to stop being so plain and always talking about sin. We believe that because you speak against it so often that our young people are more likely to try it. Couldn’t you just call it an error, a mistake or even that it was the fault of nature. The pastor said I think I understand what you are saying. Then he got up went to his book shelf and took a bottle from the shelf. He pointed to the bottle and said according to this label this bottle contains strychnine and the label is saying that it is poison. Then the pastor took some paper wrote on the paper and glued it to the bottle. The he handed the bottle to the laymen and said have a drink because as you now can see the label say soda pop. The laymen looked at their pastor and said are you trying to kill us. It doesn’t matter that you have changed the label the bottle still contains poison. The pastor looked at his laymen and said isn’t that what you want me to do. You think that just because I call sin something else that it will suddenly become harmless.

When we last visited Joshua we saw that Joshua had stopped the war for the purpose of getting the people together to spend time worshiping the Lord. I know that we probably think that since they took all that time to worship and read the covenant they made with the Lord that things in their lives would go the way the should go. It look like after they had worship the Lord that they threw their common sense away. I am sure that you heard people say about someone they haven’t got the sense that God gave a goose or that person just doesn’t have a lick of sense. Common sense is given to us by the Lord and our common sense is developed over the years and made better by our life experiences and by the information that we receive. I am sure that you all know that there is a but here. A born again Christian is not supposed to live their life by common sense but by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, their faith in the lord and the direction from the Word of God. We have all had dealing with people who for one reason or another just seem like they threw their common sense out the window, like the lady who called the poison control center because her daughter was eating ants. Just as the mother was about to hang up she said I know that the ants won’t hurt my daughter because I gave her some ant poison to drink to kill the ants.

I guess we can say that through out most of our lives our common sense seems to be ok but there are time when our common sense can get us into trouble particular when those decisions affect our conduct, character and our actions.

A. This chapter teaches us is that Satan doesn’t always come against us in the way that we are prepared spiritually.

We need to be prepared because blessing and battles can occur at the same time. While Joshua and the people are worshiping their enemies have gathered together to plan an attack.

Satan doesn’t always use conventional methods. We may not like it but there are times when Satan will use our wives, friends and our neighbors to get us. There is nothing in the Bible that requires Satan to broadcast what he is going to do nor does the bible teach that Satan can only attach us in a way that we can detect so we can defeat him. The Gibeonites heard the same reports that Rahab had but they did not allow that knowledge to lead them to proper actions. They had heard about the power of Israel and may have even realized that Israel got their power from God. Rahab heard about the God of Israel and she had a heart that was open to learn more of him and worship Him. The knowledge that the Gibeonites had didn’t lead them to worship the Lord; instead the knowledge lead the Gibeonites to fear and doing anything necessary to save their skins. There are people today who will do whatever they feel a person has to do to get them through the difficulties of life. If the Gibeonites would have simply turned to God in repentance: as Rahab had, then no deception would have been necessary. But instead of repenting they decided to deceive the Israelites. Now whether we believe it or not but I believe that Satan is behind this whole mess. Satan doesn’t want anyone to turn to the Lord. Anytime mankind comes up with a plan that will lead people to do the opposite of what would bring glory to the Lord you can be sure that Satan is behind it. Satan is a master at getting people to follow his plans to deceive people. Satan would rather that we do as the Gibeonites did and do whatever we have to do so we can succeed without following the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Satan would love for people to be really scared of the lord instead of having a relationship with the lord.