Holy War!
Text: Joshua 10-11 Pew Bible page 344
I need to start my message this morning with some disclaimers. Oh yes, it’s one of those!
First of all, I am asking for a fair hearing. I know that this is a controversial topic and I also know that if you only hear the buzz words and headlines, you will misunderstand what I intend to say, jumping to conclusions about what you thought I said!
Second, I may be wrong. Some of you won’t agree with my conclusions. In fact, some of you won’t even like a lot of what I say today, but my request is that you will consider it before concluding I’m deluded or a fool!
In generations past, we used to sing songs like “Onward, Christian Soldiers” with little thought about the militaristic theme of the words. Many pastors, including this one, preached series on the subject of “spiritual warfare” including strong emphasis on confronting and defeating evil. Then, September 11 happened. Suddenly ‘holy war’ had a whole new meaning. 19 men, in the name of Allah, attacked the US, giving their lives in God’s service- or at they thought so. For most us, the mix of military metaphors in our Christian language became much more tricky, lest we be identified with those terrorists.
In our text today we will find 2 difficult chapters in the story of Israel’s conquest of Canaan, the land promised to His people by God. These chapters are summary reports of two military campaigns, one that brought about the conquest of the southern part of Canaan, the other that did the same in the north. They are about ‘holy war’ and as I read them, will likely raise some serious questions in your mind. I want to springboard from these chapters and think about how we are to engage evil around us as Christian soldiers.
Let me give you a taste of these chapters with a couple of excerpts -
READ Joshua 10: 7-11, 20-21; 29-30; 11 6-10, 18-20, 23
There’s no way to sugarcoat those accounts! They are violent, bloody, holy wars waged - according to Joshua- at God’s specific command to His people. It is very hard for me to reconcile what I read about in these two chapters in Joshua with the words of Jesus that command us to ‘love our enemies, to do good to those who mistreat us.’ In fact, the whole idea of a ‘holy war’ is a very tough concept that brings to mind Osama Bin Laden and terrorists that commandeer airplanes to kill people and destroy property in a spasm of religious hatred for the United States which is viewed by those fanatical Muslims as the ‘great Satan.’
What do we do with these accounts and how do we understand them as applying to our lives?
Let’s start with a negative. We must not lower our view of the authority and inspiration of the Bible!
That is the way that some students choose to deal with this kind of passage. They say, “Joshua wrote about the world as he understood it. God didn’t really want the Canaanites destroyed, but that was how the world operated at that time so Joshua just assumed that he was doing God’s will.” This kind of arrogance has led many to rob the Holy Scripture of the authority that comes from Truth! That’s a slippery slope that destroys our faith in the Bible’s authoritative instruction for us as Christians. First we only apply that kind of reasoning to passages like this and eventually we end up discarding the Bible as a reliable guide to Truth and conduct because we conclude it is a book belonging to another time!
In my previous pastorate in New England, I was friends with many pastors who had nothing left to preach because they had abandoned the Bible as the Source of revealed Truth. One highly educated pastor told me,
“I only regard the words of Jesus Himself as the Word of God.” Then, she quickly even qualified that statement — “and it’s hard to know exactly what Jesus said, isn’t it?”
Believer, we must always approach the Scripture with reverent awe, with humility that does not require the Word to fit into our worldview, but with the willingness to adjust our understanding to the Word! That is why we are told to be diligent in our study and to let the Spirit unfold the Wisdom to us.
Let’s try to understand these texts for what they do say and in their context.
Did God really command the destruction of the Canaanites?
YES! If we go back 50 plus years before the time of our text, to the time of Moses, we will discover that God’s instructions were clear.
“But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you," (Deuteronomy 20:16-17, NKJV)
The NIV Bible has a footnote for that verse that brings some clarity to that phrase ‘utterly destroy.’ It says, “The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the LORD, often by totally destroying them.” The word is “charem” and was used to describe giving something to God by offering it up for destruction. If a sacrifice was burnt up, the person could never reclaim it as their own.
God is consistently portrayed as desiring that the land of Canaan be claimed by His people in His name, and that the wealth become His, the people destroyed as a sacrifice to Him! Again and again, the Israelites were told to “charem” the land, to utterly destroy the people and give the wealth to God.
Note this, too.
This was not Israel’s war or Joshua’s war. This was God’s war. As Joshua was preparing for the invasion he had an experience that the Bible records in(Joshua 5:13-15, The Message)
"And then this, while Joshua was there near Jericho: He looked up and saw right in front of him a man standing, holding his drawn sword. Joshua stepped up to him and said, “Whose side are you on—ours or our enemies’?” He said, “Neither. I’m commander of God’s army. I’ve just arrived.”Joshua fell, face to the ground, and worshipped. He asked, “What orders does my Master have for his servant?” God’s army commander ordered Joshua, “Take your sandals off your feet. The place you are standing is holy.” Joshua did it. "
Joshua, according to the Bible, was not doing what HE thought best. He was acting on God’s behalf. He was not asking God to be on his side, he was ON GOD’S SIDE.
Why would God require that the Canaanite people be destroyed so violently?
Once again, there is an explanation offering in Deuteronomy.
"You must completely destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, just as the Lord your God has commanded you.
This will keep the people of the land from teaching you their detestable customs in the worship of their gods, which would cause you to sin deeply against the Lord your God."
Deuteronomy 20:17-18, NLT
I don’t think many of us appreciate God’s holiness well enough to understand this! Most of us are quite casual about what it means to belong to God, to live in a way that pleases and honors Him. God demanded holiness of His people then, and He demands it of us now! Holiness means to be owned by God, to be set apart for His purposes!
The Bible portrays a side of God that many of us conveniently choose to ignore because it strikes a deep fear, even terror, into our hearts. Many passages reveal an Almighty, Jealous, All Consuming Fire, God who hates evil and moves actively to bring about the defeat of evil. Why? Just so He can strut about as the Victor? Not at all.
His desire is to reclaim Creation as His own, to make Creation and those of us who live in it, holy - that is — HIS OWN! One writer observes that God “isn’t a kindly old grandpa, full of good ideas and helpful suggestions but frail and slow and safe. He is a mighty warrior King, terrifying and powerful.” - Steven Simala Grant
The eradication of Evil is often a violent process! In the First Covenant, there were constant ritual sacrifices offered to God for the offenses of the people. We who live under the New Covenant, trust in the One Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of our offenses against a holy God. God makes Holy War by destroying evil.
He wanted Israel to belong to Him and wanted them to settle in a land that was pure so they would follow Him whole-heartedly. The Israelites did not do what He told them to do in destroying the inhabitants of Canaan. The result was that they were seduced by false gods of the Canaanites within a generation or two of their conquest!
Even the Good News of the restoration of our relationship to God in this age comes at the cost of great violence - the death of Jesus Christ, a bloody offering! It’s a hard picture for us to look on. We prefer to think of Jesus playing in pleasant meadows with little children, or standing by the Lake to teach. And He did those things, but He confronted evil and defeated Satan at the Cross in a violent, gory encounter of death. If we turn our eyes from that Cross, the transformational power of Christianity is lost. What is left is a system of ethics, a nice concept of being loving that none of us is capable of really living up to because of our flawed human natures. Only when we are willing to die with Christ, to let His sacrifice make us holy, are we able to begin to die with Him, letting the Life of God emerge where our ego has perished!
So, does this mean that we adopt the pattern of Joshua and go out as Christians to wage holy war,
even killing every enemy of Christ?
The answer is both yes and no. We are called to occupy the world in Christ’s name and to establish His Kingdom.
Oh, don’t stop paying attention now. But, the Kingdom we are building is now a different Kingdom!
The kingdom of God in Joshua’s time involved a land called Canaan and a people called the Jews. God’s Presence was with those people in a physical place called the Temple and the worship of God happened there on an altar. No longer is God’s kingdom centered in an ethnic group or in a physical location on this planet. The Kingdom of God is now a spiritual kingdom that takes in people of every nation and ethnicity. The place of that kingdom is the heart of humanity and the acts of worship of that kingdom are performed on the altars of our hearts. Peter says this about God’s Kingdom,
"But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God’s holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. “Once you were not a people; now you are the people of God. Once you received none of God’s mercy; now you have received his mercy.” Dear brothers and sisters, you are foreigners and aliens here. So I warn you to keep away from evil desires because they fight against your very souls." (1 Peter 2:9-11, NLT)
There IS and ongoing war against evil, but we don’t war against people, killing those who resist the invitation to become God’s own. Instead the Bible says this about the Holy War we wage —
we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12, NLT)
In this, the Holy War waged by those who are truly followers of Jesus Christ is completely different from the holy war espoused by the likes of Osama Bin Laden! Their war is based on hatred, ours on love. Theirs is focused on excluding or eradicating those who are not pure. We focus on inviting those who are not pure to become pure as we embrace them with a powerful love that is supernatural!
Now let me become more controversial and offer a caution.
There is a deception that grasps even Christians all too easily. We confuse being on God’s side, with God being on our side! God is not interested in endorsing your agenda, but His non-negotiable demand of those who are His is that we take up His plans and purposes.
There are plenty of examples of how people have confused being on God’s side with claiming that God was on their side!
∙ Various nations, kings, and Popes down through the ages have waged wars claiming God’s authority to do so. A thousand years ago the Europeans reacted to the occupation of Palestine (the so-called Holy Land) by the Muslims with the Crusades. With the strong support of the official Church, armies were raised and sent off to fight the ‘infidels.’ In 1099 the Crusaders finally conquered Jerusalem slaughtering the people of the city indiscriminately, including the Muslims, Jews, and Christians who lived there in such a massacre that blood ran like rivers down the narrow streets! One knight recorded that the conquerors waded in blood up to their ankles! And this was all done with the assumption that God was on their side!
∙ Even Adolf Hitler claimed that God was on his side during the early days of World War II! The Nazi army issued some of its soldiers belt buckles inscribed “Gott Mit Uns” - meaning “God with us!” over the Nazi swastika! Imagine that evil empire claiming divine endorsement.
There is a story that starkly contrasts with that mindset that “God is on my side.” It comes from Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. When he took note of how both the Northern Union and the Southern Confederacy were claiming to be on God’s side, the great President remarked that the ‘key issue is not whether God is on my side, but whether I am on God’s side!’
We should be quite reluctant to claim that our purposes and plans are one with those of God! We risk violating the 4th commandment that forbids misusing the Lord’s name! We mistakenly think that commandments only speaks to using that Name in a curse when the much important application is to how we invoke God’s authority – claiming God’s endorsement of our agenda! He is not amused when we say, “God told me” and in truth, He’s done nothing of the kind.
Let me wrap it up today. Some of you probably are relieved to hear that, as this message is a difficultone that demands careful thought! I have deliberately tried to speak to your head more than your emotions today.
Joshua’s campaign was God’s Holy War. Even though we may be uncomfortable with the details of the manner in which that war was waged, we must accept that God’s aim was not simply destruction, but to prepare for Himself a holy, pure, and beautiful people to represent His honor and glory on earth.
He still desires a holy, pure, and beautiful people to represent Him on earth - those who are in Christ, called from every race, every nation, every ethnicity, and every age.
Are you responding to that call?
Do you understand that when you do, you enlist in God’s army and become a part of His ongoing Holy War?
But our general is Jesus, not Joshua. Our Sword is Truth. Our method is Love. The war is waged in minds and hearts, first and foremost.
It will cost you to be on God’s side! Some will hate you just because you love Jesus!
Others will try to manipulate you in His Name, attempting to get you to join a religious system, or a political party - telling you ‘we are God’s true people and if you are really His you will join our Crusade.’ Don’t believe it!
Instead, be willing to die to yourself, to give of yourself, to love even those who hate God with a costly love that is powered by God’s supernatural love which the Bible says will conquer all evil!
His Kingdom will prevail, but it will not be focused on any earthly throne or power until Christ Himself is seated to rule and reign.
Let me return to our text for a final thought.
READ Joshua 10:7-14
In the Holy War for the defeat of Evil, we will prevail IF we are God’s side, for God will fight for us!
May the Lord give us humility and insight to accept and understand these things.
Amen.
