Study 12
Chapter 9 – The Gibeonites
Introduction
In our last study we were considering together the way in which Joshua and the people of God, having experienced a humiliating defeat at Ai, had returned to the place of defeat, re-engaged the enemy and gained a glorious victory over them.
In the course of our sermon I pointed out that whilst the ultimate reason for Israel’s initial defeat at Ai was the sin of Achan, it seems from the way the narrative is constructed in the early part of ch7 that another factor that led to that defeat was what we might call the humanly reasoned, common sense approach Joshua and the leaders had taken in adopting their strategy for attacking Ai. Instead of seeking counsel of the Lord they had gone ahead and attacked with just a few thousand soldiers, after all Ai wasn’t anywhere near as big a city nor as well fortified a city as Jericho, and well, Jericho hadn’t proven to be any great problem for them. And so they reasoned, let’s just send 3,000 of our troops up to capture this city. And from the human perspective this seemed a sensible decision. The problem with decisions based solely on a common sense approach to a given situation is that they are not necessarily the decisions God wants us to take, leading as they sometimes do to us following a course of action which is actually contrary to His will. This is what happened at Ai. Now you would think that having made such a faux-pas at Ai Joshua and the leaders of the people would have learned their lesson and not made the same stupid mistake again. You would have thought that they would have sought guidance from God whenever they were faced with any new decision making situation, especially if they were not 100% sure what to do. However, as we are going to see this evening, Joshua and his fellow leaders were just as human, and just as fallible as the rest of us and so just as liable to make the same mistakes over again.
After the victory at Ai Joshua led the people on a march of some 25 miles in a northerly direction until the came to the valley which dissected two mountains, Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim. Here the people of God renewed their covenant with the Lord. An altar was built on Mount Ebal and sacrifices were offered in worship and this was followed by the reading of the whole law, the Curses of the Law being read from Mount Ebal and the Blessings of the Covenant being read from mount Gerazim. Now this was undoubtedly a high point in the experience of God’s people. Under God they had just turned defeat in to victory. They had held a huge open air worship service and rededicated themselves to God. This was a time of great blessing. And it is against this background that the events recorded in Ch9 & 10 occurred.
As we turn to those events notice with me first of all
1) The Danger of Carnal Reasoning: Impetuous Decision-Making
We see this in the way in which Joshua and the princes, that is the other leaders in Israel, dealt with the issue of the Gibeonites. Gibeon lay about 25 miles from Gilgal and the people of Gibeon knew only too well that if Israel’s advance continued they would be the be the next city to be attacked. Although they had been invited to join the alliance that the other Canaanite nations had formed against Israel, the Gibeonites, probably realising that they were on a hiding to nothing despite the military power of the alliance, decided to opt out of the alliance and try to save their skin by using different tactics. They planned to deceive the Israelites into making a peace treaty with them and their planned was based on information they had somehow gleaned about Israel’s military policy in relation to nations that were not part of the seven nearby nations of Canaan. According to Deuteronomy 7 the Israelites were to destroy all these seven nations, sparing none. However according to Deut 20v10-20 Israel were allowed to offer peace treaties to other nations who lived ‘at a distance from them’. And so the Gibeonites decided to deceive the Israelites into thinking that they represented the people of a nation from ‘a distant land’ and on that basis to seek to negotiate peace terms. And so in vs 3-13 you have the record of how they went about this deception. They got together a delegation of men and made them up in such a way as to appear as though they had been travelling for a long time from a distant country. They put the oldest, most worn out sacks they could find over their donkeys and filled the sacks with dry mouldy old bread. They gave them old cracked wineskins and made the men in the delegation wear old worn out clothes. Then they worked out a convincing little story that they would tell the Israelites, about how they came from a country far away and how they had heard about the mighty things their God had done in Egypt and to the Kings on the other side of the Jordan and because of what they had heard abut them and about their great God they wanted to make a peace treaty with them. It was a great idea. But would it work?
Well as we read through the narrative we discover that it did work. Although Joshua and the leaders were somewhat cautious at first as we see from v 7. Responding to their initial request for peace by saying ‘but perhaps you live near us. How then can we make a treaty with you/?’ They were nevertheless taken in both by what they heard and by what they saw. The Gibeonites story sounded so convincing. And there was plenty of evidence to back up what they were saying. It appeared that they had indeed come from a distant country and this being the case they could and should make a peace treaty with them. And so Joshua and the leaders of the people took the decision to do so. The problem of course was that things were not what they appeared. Joshua and the leaders had been taken in. They had been deceived. And the reason they had been deceived was because they took this decision without consulting the Lord. They worked solely on the basis of human wisdom, of carnal reasoning. They thought, ‘well the story sounds very plausible, we have no reason to doubt the honesty of these people and after all the evidence was there for all to see’ This seemed the sensible thing to do. But no matter how sensible and right their reasoning and their subsequent decision seemed to be to them, the fact of the matter was it was a wrong decision and a wrong course of action. It wasn’t that Joshua and the leaders failed to use their brains, they asked questions, they looked at the evidence, they weighed up the situation and so on. But what they didn’t do was bring the matter to God and seek his guidance. Look at those words in v 14 “the men of Israel…did not inquire of the Lord.” Maybe they thought, ‘there is no need to inquire of the Lord about this matter, its so obvious that these people are telling the truth. Its obvious what we should do. No need to take this to the Lord.’
As a result of this impetuous decision that was based solely on carnal reasoning they in effect not only allowed an enemy battalion that should have been destroyed of the hook but also allowed the enemy into their camp. It was a mistake, a foolish mistake, and Joshua and the people had to live with the consequences of their mistake and all because they didn’t seek guidance from God on the matter. They took a hasty decision about an important matter, based solely upon their own powers of human reasoning and without seeking clear guidance from God, and they got it wrong. If only they had taken the time to bring the matter before God.
You know we must beware of falling into the same trap into which Joshua and his fellow leaders fell. We need to guard against taking decisions in our life without first of all seeking God’s guidance and God’s will in the matter. Not of course that we should as it were have a special time of prayer each day with our family around the kitchen table in order to decide whether we should have Cornflakes for breakfast or Weetabix; or a special time of prayer each morning when we get up in order to decide whether we should wear a blue shirt or a white shirt today. But there are issues which we all face in life, where the decisions that we take will have very real and lasting repercussions. Some of us will have decisions to make in relation to our career. Some of you young people will be thinking perhaps about what sort of career you want to pursue and in doing so you might be weighing up various factors such as your potential for achieving the required academic standard for such a career, the availability of job opportunities within that particular job sector, the amount of money that you will be able to earn, and so on; Things which one has to take into consideration and things which will inevitably influence the decision one makes. But if these are the only things that you consider then a very important element has been left out of the equation of your decision-making and that is the element of seeking to discern the Lord’s will in the matter. Some of you might be thinking about changing your present job or of giving up paid employment altogether in order to give yourself to some other responsibility or task in life and you have looked at the prospect from many different angles. Let me ask you have you brought the mater to God in prayer. Have you sought His will for you in this? Some of you might be thinking about the whole area of Church affiliation. Perhaps, for one reason or another, you are thinking about the possibility of moving Church, and you have looked at various churches and considered each of them from this angle and that angle – What have they for our children, what is the preaching like, how far is it from our house, do I agree with everything they stand for and so on – all important considerations of course. But have you brought the matter to God in prayer and sought his leading and guiding? And it is so easy when faced with having to make a decision to do what Joshua did. To make hasty decisions based solely upon the fruit of our own reasoning - logical, and sensible as that reasoning may indeed appear at the time
We will have personal decisions to make – maybe about our career, our relationships in life, our spiritual needs and Church affiliation, our finances, whatever. And it is so easy when faced with having to make a decision to do what Joshua did. To make hasty decisions based solely upon what we think is right in the situation, without ever taking time to refer the matter to God in prayer and seeking His guidance and his will.
And of course what is true of personal individual decision making is also true of family decision making and Congregational decision making. It is not that we are not to use our heads. It is not that we are not to think through the issues in a rational way. But if that’s all we do. If that is the sole basis of our choice, then we have left out the most important element in Christian decision making – the element of the prayerful seeking of God’s will for us in relation to the issue under consideration.
One commentator draws the following practical application from this section of Joshua 9 – “No proposed course of conduct can be so clear to a Christian as to excuse him from the duty of seeking direction from above” (Quoted in Ralph Davies commentary p78). The apparently obvious course of action is not necessarily always the right one to take. Brethren in all your major decision making in life be sure to seek guidance and direction from God, both at the throne of grace in prayer and also by searching the scriptures with a view to finding relevant principles that you can take and legitimately apply to your specific situation.
There is a second thing that I want you to notice this evening from this passage and that is
2) The Importance of Keeping Our Promises
Three days after the treaty had been ratified Joshua, somehow or other, we are not told how, discovers that he had been deceived by the Gibeonites. They were not representatives of a distant nation, they were represent-atives of a group of people who lived 25 miles up the road. Now when word got out about this, the rest of the people of Israel were not happy bunnies. Look at v18c – “the whole assembly grumbled against the leaders.” Some commentators have suggested that the reason they grumbled was because in making such a treaty with Gibeon the people would loose out on the personal benefits of gathering the spoils of victory from this city, which by the way was much bigger than Ai. Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is the people were not pleased with the decision the leaders had taken and the Peace Treaty they had signed. And it seems that in the midst of the discontent there was a general feeling that because the oath, the promise of peace had been obtained by means of deception, that it was therefore invalid and Israel should not feel under any obligation to these people, but should instead attack their cities. But notice what Joshua says in v19 “We have given them our oath by the Lord, the God of Israel, and we cannot touch them now…we will let them live so that wrath will not fall on us for breaking the oath we swore to them” Joshua recognised that to break a promise, a promise made before God and in God’s name, would bring the wrath of God upon them as such breaking of the oath would mean that they had brought dishonour upon the name and character of God, giving to the Gibeonites the impression that the God of Israel cannot be trusted. As far as Joshua was concerned they had made a promise before God and that promise had to be kept. It is interesting to note that several generations later (about 400 years) King Saul violated this oath, he slew the Gibeonites, and God judged the nation severely because this oath was broken, even though it had been made 400 years earlier by people who were now long dead (2 Samuel 21). It was a mistake to have made this promise in the first place but once the oath had been made in God’s name, God expected it to be honoured.
You know brethren if we make promises, we are to stick to and keep those promises, even when the keeping of those promises proves to be an inconvenience to us or proves to be costly to us. The keeping of this promise to the Gibeonites was costly for the Children of Israel. They lost out on the booty they would otherwise have enjoyed had this promise of protection not been given. It also cost them as we see from the next chapter in that when the Gibeonite cities were attacked by an alliance of Canaanite kings who were angry with Gibeon for defecting to the other side, Israel had to go up and protect them and fight for them. The keeping of the promise proved costly for Israel in more ways than one. But the promise had been made and they were duty bound to keep that promise. And this is something that Christians today need to take note of and be careful to apply to their own lives. The only promises that we are not obliged to keep is an unlawful oath, that is a promise which were we to keep it would involve us committing a sin.
We live in a society today where promises are all too easily and quickly broken. We can see this in many different realms. Take the realm of marriage for example. When a man and woman get married they take marriage vows, that is promises. Those promises are made not only before the people gathered to witness the marriage but more importantly are made in the sight of God. Promises to stick by their spouse in bad times as well as good. Promises to be faithful to their spouse throughout their life and so on. Sadly today those promises that people take upon their lips mean so little to many people today. Many have no intention whatsoever of keeping those promises if things don’t work out quite the way they had hoped as the ever rising divorce statistics prove. We see promises being broken time and time again in the realm of politics. As general elections approach the political parties promise they will cut taxes here and give more benefits there, that they will put more money into the national health service and into education and so on and of course when they get into power those promises more often than not are set aside in favour of some other political goal. And there are many other areas where this fickle attitude to promises one has made can be clearly seen.
And you know brethren I feel very strongly that against such a background Christian people like you and me are to be seen to be different. We are to be men and women who are known to be people of our word. People who once they make a promise, do not renege on that promise, even if the keeping of our word will cause us personal inconvenience. If we promise we will do something we should do it. We shouldn’t be the sort of person who says we will do something for someone, say for instance that we will go somewhere with someone and then as the time comes round we decide we couldn’t be bothered going and so we phone up and make some excuse for not going.
I remember on one occasion booking someone to take a service for me. Yes no problem they would do that. It was a number of months away and they had checked their diary and they were free. And so the booking was made. A couple of weeks before the person was due to come they phoned me to say they wouldn’t be able to preach that day because they had decided to go away for that week-end. There was a good deal that some travel agent was doing on a special week-end break and he and his family had decided this would be a good opportunity to get away for a few days. Now I have to say I was very annoyed about that. Not only because it meant I had then to try and find someone at short notice to fill in for me but more so because the person concerned had simply decided that the promise they had made to deputise for me wasn’t that big a deal. It was alright to promise to do something and then to go back on it simply because it didn’t really suit, or simply because there was something that one would rather do instead. Which is basically what this siotuation boiled down to. Now you might think, ‘come off it Robert, the fella had an opportunity of getting away with his family for a few days, surely there was nothing wrong in that.’ Well brethren what about the principle that is set out here in this passage in Joshua, and which is underscored very clearly in psalm 15/4 – the principle of fulfilling ones promises, of keeping ones agreed commitments even when personal cost is involved. He who “swears to his own hurt (that is who makes a promise the fulfilment of which is going to cost him or be a personal inconvenience to him in some way) – who “swears to his own hurt but does not change.”
We are supposed to be men and women of our word.
I have to say it grieves me when people promise that they will do something, maybe promise that they will come along to a meeting, promise that they will help out in some way in the Church, maybe at the Youth Club or Holiday Bible club, or in giving out literature around the doors, promise perhaps that they will be more faithful in their attendance and commitment to the Church and yet do not fulfil those promises that they have made.
What about the promises you made when you became a member of this Church, are you keeping them? What about those promises that you made when you presented your child for Baptism, promises that you would ‘pray that your child will be renewed and brought to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ…promise to set an example of a holy and consistent life and attend with regularity to personal, family and public worship.’ Are you keeping those promises?
What about the promises you made before God the night I was installed as your minister – ‘to encourage me and support me in my work…’ Are you keeping that promise? Or was were those just empty meaningless words? Well they were not empty meaningless words in God’s eyes. As far as he is concerned you promised, before Him, that you would do so.
We are told in Ecc 5/5 “It is better not to make a promise than to make a promise and not keep it.”
The importance of keeping our promises. I wonder brethren how do we fair in this respect.
Well there is one more point that I want to draw out from this passage this evening and that is
3) The Evidence of God’s Over-ruling Providence:
Joshua’s peace treaty with Gibeon should never have taken place. It was a mistake on his and the leaders part, a mistake they had to live with and make the best off. But the fact of the matter is that God in grace and mercy over-ruled that mistake and brought blessing out of what was a potentially dangerous situation.
First of all he over-ruled it by blessing the Gibeonites. As a punishment for their deception, Joshua put them to work by giving them the arduous task of cutting wood and carrying water every day for the altar in the tablernbacle. This was no easy job. It was hard work. But the fact of the matter was that these people, who had come into the midst of God’s people by deception, by pretending to be what they were not, actually ultimately derived spiritual blessing as a result of the work they undertook. They were there at the altar day in day out. They saw the sacrifices. They observed the true worship of the true God and from the rest of the records of the O.T. it is quite clear that these people were eventually fully incorporated into the congregation of Israel. Despite their deceitful beginnings they came to know and to serve the God of Israel.
Here were people who conned there way into the community of God’s people by appearing to be what they were not and who in time as a result of the various influences that were brought to bear upon them came to be fully and legitimately incorporated into the covenant community, in other words in time came to be true worshippers of God.
You know some people who come into membership in the Church, are not true believers when they join. For whatever reason, pressure from their family, pressure from their minister, a desire to follow the crowd, or whatever, they portray themselves in such a way as to appear to be what they are not. In other words in their whole approach to the membership classes and then subsequently in the answers they give to the questions that are put to them for admission to membership, they give those who are interviewing and assessing them the impression that they have personally repented of their sins and trusted Jesus Christ as Saviour, i.e that they are Christians; when in fact deep down they know rightly they are not. Just like the Gibeonites who fooled Joshua by appearing to be what they were not. But you know God in grace sometimes over-rules in such a situation and in mercy and grace causes that person to be truly and genuinely incorporated into the body of Christ; causes them, under the spiritual influences to which they are regularly being exposed, to be truly born again.
But then too God also over-ruled in this situation by blessing the Israelites. As we are going to see in the next few chapters this treaty with Gibeon resulted in the formation of a political allaince being made between various other nations within Canaan with a view to wiping ut the Gibeonites and ultimatley wiping out the Israelites. In fact in their coming together in this way God was going to help joshua to defeat several enemy nations at once. Under normal circumstances Joshua and Israel would have expected to fight each of these nations individually but instead of having to defeat these five city states one by one God was going to give them into his hands in one battle. God actually used Joshua’s mistake in relation to Gibeon, to as it were accelerate the conquest of Canaan.
Warren Weirsbe comments “The mistakes we make embarrass us, especially those mistakes that are caused by our running ahead of the Lord and not seeking his will. But we need to remember no mistake is final for the dedicated Christian. God can use even our blunders to accomplish his purposes.” This of course is not an excuse for carelessness but it is a comfort and an encouragement when we do make mistakes.
