Alright, we're going to be again looking in the book of Joshua. I don't know how many was here about six weeks ago, I guess now, when I taught before, but we looked at the sin of Achan. I told my sister-in-law there would be no pop quiz, so it's okay. We would invite you to remember that Achan, we looked at him and his sin and hiding things, taking sin into our life and having our own little pet sins and burying it and keeping it covered up and the effects that that has. on everyone around us. We are, especially within a church, within a church body, we are so connected to each other. We're supposed to be, you know. My thumb is connected to me as any other part of me, and if I whack at it with a hammer, boy, every bit of me is going to feel it. It's going to elicit a reaction, so if we allow stuff like that to enter into our lives, it does have its effect. Now, we're going to skip over a portion of the scripture here, but you know, Achan, he and his family were punished for his sin, a death punishment. They took the accursed thing, and so every bit of them had to be excised. They took them out and they stoned them to death. him and his family and his sheep and all that was with him. Then in chapter 8, we have Joshua, we're going to be actually in chapter 9, but I'm going to summarize chapter 8. Chapter 8, Joshua leads the children of Israel in a fairly decisive victory over Ai, using some tactics and stuff you read through there, it's kind of interesting, they drew the the armies of Ai out and then actually surrounded them on the back end and sort of sandwiched them from both sides and took them. It was a great victory to be had there. The Lord was pleased with how they dealt with the sin of Achan. And then we get to chapter 9. Joshua, it's one of my favorite books because it is a book about conquest and about victory, but it's also about failures, a lot of failures that we often can run into. So we're going to look at Joshua chapter 9. here in the first verse, and it came to pass when all the kings that were on this side, Jordan, in the hills and in the valleys and in the coast of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite heard thereof that they gathered themselves together to fight with Joshua and with Israel with one accord. Now, This almost seems separate from the chapter, but I do want to bring it in here. We're actually going to talk about when Joshua and all the princes of Israel got fooled by some people that lived just over a hill from them. The first part of this chapter kind of seems separate from the narrative that we're actually fixing to receive, which is about the people of Gibeon. But it's actually not. If you look, we have five kings, or it will be five kings if you look in chapter 10 and beyond, that will rise up and they create an alliance to go to war against Joshua. Now, as where with the people of Gibeon, who we're fixing to address here in just a moment, These five kings were very bold. They come out and they ally themselves together and they want to meet them on the field of battle. And I will state firstly, before we get into the subtility of the people of Gibeon, that a lot of our problems that we meet in our life are not going to be as forthcoming as these five kings were. The Gibeonites wanted nothing to do with this. Why? Because they knew they couldn't stand with them toe-to-toe on the field of battle. Much in the same way, I think we as Christians, when we're fully clad in the armor of God, when we have Jesus fighting our battles for us, we have that closeness and relationship, we're an unstoppable force in spiritual battle. We should be. There's no reason for us not to be. The only place where we see failure in spiritual battle comes from us. comes from some mistake that we made. In the same way, I mean, God was fighting all of Israel's battles for them, and any battle that God wasn't present for, they lost. They lost to the smallest town that they would come across during this campaign, Ai, because what? Because somebody had sinned. Somebody had messed up. But the things that we face in this life are not always going to be as easy to spot as these five kings were. Joshua and his people, actually they're going to be marching to meet these five kings in battle, which is when they run across the Gibeonites. They knew where the battle was, they knew who the enemy was, and I think oftentimes we think we know, and you know, we can, I'm sure if I ask for a show of hands here, somebody come up with some glaring issue in our country, in our society, in the morality of said country and society, that we could say, there's the enemy. Well, I would say none of us in this room would argue that the sin of sodomy, which has plagued this country, is not something that we should eschew. But sometimes the things that we face are not as open and shut. Sometimes the things that we face are not as easy to identify as abortion or any of those other big issues that we can thump our Bibles and say, yeah, yeah, let's go to fight those. There's some things that are more delicate that aren't as easy to come out. And the devil is rarely, rarely going to ride out with his standard bearers and all of his armies behind him and say, here I am, let's go to war with each other. That's never how he's done business. The first attack upon humanity from Satan was not Here I am, I'm the devil, would you like to barter with me here?" He didn't jump up on a stump and say, you want to try for a fiddle of gold? That's not how the devil operates, that's not how the devil works. No, he showed up in the form of a serpent. More subtle than any beast of the field. You shall not surely die. He even took the words of God and just put a little bit of a twist and an angle on them. He's very rarely going to come at you like the five kings did. Moving on to verse 3. And when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai, they did work wildly and went and made as if they had been ambassadors and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles, old and rent and bound up, and shoes and clouded upon their feet, and old garments upon them, and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him and to the men of Israel, We come from a far country, now therefore make a league with us. So the people of Gibeon, they look at Jericho. Jericho fell almost without a shot. I mean, I'm sure there was some killing once the walls came down, but as far as there was no siege, God just sort of said, there's your opening, now you can go in. With AI, yeah, there was a little heck up there, but the slaughter that we see in chapter, I think it says like 15,000 men were killed in AI. They look at that and say, we can't meet these people. field, they've got God on their side. Nothing has been able to stop them. We don't think this alliance that they're working together, and it doesn't, if I get to teach again we may visit those scriptures as well, but that doesn't work out either. And they said, what can we do to fool them? We got a brilliant idea. We're going to pretend to be from somewhere else and We're going to rip up our clothes, we're going to roll around in the dirt for a little bit." And they said they had these shoes that were clouded, basically means patched. So they had shoes that they had to patch the bottoms of and it looked like they walked the soles plumb out of them. They got their wine bottle, it says that they were bound, basically it looked like they had twisted them dry, that they just sucked their wine bottles dry trying to get liquid out of there, and their bread was all moldy. I mean, they had the works. Hollywood could not have come up with a better disguise than these fellas had. And they showed up and said, you should make a league with us. Now it's very interesting that they took this specific angle of attack, not just because, you know, subterfuge and all that other stuff, but this actually kind of circumvents some of how God told them to take Canaan. Now, real quick, and keep your thumb there in Joshua 9. You don't have to turn with me if you don't want to, but you can go to Numbers chapter 33. This was Moses' instruction for how to take the land of Canaan. Numbers chapter 33 in verse 50. And the Lord spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho." Now this is when they were talking about going into the land the first time. Then everybody said, yeah, they got giants over there. It's a little scary. And Joshua and Caleb says, I think we can take them. And everybody's like, no, we don't think we can. And then they spent 40 years waiting for an entire generation to die out who didn't want to serve God. This is the battle plan. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan, then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places. And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein. For I have given you the land to possess it." and you shall divide the land a lot for an inheritance among your families, and to the more you shall give the more inheritance, and the fewer shall give the less inheritance. Every man's inheritance shall be in one place, and where his lot falleth, according to the tribes of your fathers you shall inherit. But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come to pass that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein you dwell. What was the battle plan from God from the very earliest time they were thinking about going in? Well, anybody that lives in areas that you were supposed to possess, drive them completely out. And it wasn't just, hey, get rid of the people, get rid of their idols, get rid of their pictures, basically obliterate them. and their culture and uproot them out of their land. When God said that he wanted them to inherit, to possess this land, he wanted it to be all Israel and nobody else. Now, the thing about that is, in Joshua chapter 9, the people of Gibeon kind of went around this because they claimed they weren't from the Promised Land. They just sort of circumvented the entire thing entirely. It's like, we're not technically messing up, messing with your entire, your entire thing that you've got going here where, you know, you're sort of raising everything that you come across. We're from Egypt or we're from, you know, Ethiopia or some, you know, Greece, some distant country that's way outside of the promised land. You have nothing to worry about. You have nothing to worry about. I would submit to you, church, that most of the time when the devil comes to us, When he has got an idea, that idea is going to sound so good. It is going to be reasonable. It is going to be advantageous for both parties. It is going to be helpful, at least on the outset. It is going to be everything you've ever asked for in a deal, apart from the fact that the devil is the one that always wins those things. I don't know, Brother Robbie may experience this more than we know about, but up in, I used to check the mail for the church. We had a P.O. box there at the church at New Testament up in Tennessee, and I had the key. I worked, my barber shop was literally right up in the post office, so it was easy for me to go down there and grab it. Nobody else worked right there in town, so it was easy for that. And I would go in there and we would get letters constantly all the time from Catholics, from Presbyterians, from any denomination you could think of, holiness people, Church of God, all of them inviting us to do this collaborative worship service together in which everybody would be benefited and we would just come together and worship the Lord together. Now, on the outset, that sounds pretty good. We're all going to worship God together. Aren't we all just Christians? Can't we just throw that label up on top of it and forget tonight that some of us believe that the Lord's table actually becomes the body of Christ. Let's forget for a moment that a certain group there jibber-jabbers and calls it speaking in tongues. Let's forget for a moment. Let's just put all that stuff aside and come together in this worship. Now that sounds peaceful, doesn't it? It's my personal thought that when the Antichrist rears his head, it'll be so peaceful. His idea will be so great. He's the devil. The woman saw that the fruit was good for food and pleasant to the eye. It doesn't state this, but Adam must have thought so too because he ate with her. It's going to always be something that is very, very pleasant and advantageous. We cannot look always, and like I said, you've got these five kings here, but we cannot always look for the devil to ride out there with a pitchfork and his horns, and I think that's what the devil looks like, but it's not going to be that blatant. Your Looney Tunes Satan is not going to be the guy that you're going up against. No, it says that even the devil himself can appear as an angel of light. He was an archangel. Technically, I guess still is just a fallen archangel. He was in the throne room of God at some point. His entire purpose was to uplift God. So when you get the good feelings and the good vibes off of a bad idea, where do you think that's coming from? Verse 7, And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, Peradventure ye dwell among us, and how shall we make a league with you? Now, immediately they're suspicious, which is good. We should be suspicious when somebody comes with the old saying, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. The men of Israel, very prudent, said, Yeah, but what if you live close? What if you're just right over the hill from us? What if you're only three days journey up the road from where we're at? What if? And they said to Joshua, we are thy servants. And Joshua said to them, who are ye, and from whence are ye? And they said, from a far country. Thy servants are come because of the name of the Lord thy God, for we have heard the fame of him and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, which were beyond Jordan, to Sihon, king of Heshbon, and to Gog, king of Bashan, who was at Ashtoreth. Wherefore, our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake to us, saying, Take victuals with you for the journey, and go and meet them, and saying to them, We are your servants, therefore now make a league with us. This is our bread, which we took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day we came forth to go unto you. But now, behold, it is dry And it is moldy. So they were suspicious. And what argument do they bring back to it? Well, it's the same argument they had before. It's, hey, we've come from a long way. And look, we have proof we came from a long way. These bottles of wine which were filled were new. And behold, they be rent, and these our garments and our shoes are become old by the reason of the very long journey. And the men," that's speaking of Joshua and the princes of Israel, "...took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord." Now, up until this point, Joshua and the men of Israel had played this exactly how they were supposed to. Immediately suspicious when these dudes just show up out of nowhere. Immediately wondering why they want to leave, they present this argument and there is no consulting with the Lord. I would never blame anyone because I myself have fallen into situations, compromises if you will, where you're duped. It seemed so good on the outset. Everything seems to, you know, well, I mean, they're even using the Bible. You know, they've got some scripture to back up what they're saying. I would never blame anyone for hearing those arguments. The problem, I think, and this is the takeaway, if you want a general takeaway from what I'm saying tonight, the problem is, when we have these situations, and there was some confusion here, because you could be from just over this hill over here, They didn't ask anything of God. There was no counsel. There was no point in which somebody said, you know what, let's sit on this for a few days and think about it, and pray about it, seek God's face about it, and then we'll get back to you with an answer. You see, you would think, and we're talking in the span of 7, 8, and 9, Joshua 7, 8, and 9, in the span of three chapters of this book, that Israel would have learned a big lesson from Achan, right? Achan commits the sin, Joshua and all the princes of Israel wall around the ground. Oh, everything's so awful and terrible. And the Lord says, well, you didn't consult me when you sent troops out. And second of all, you know what the problem is. There was no consulting of God in that situation. There was no consulting of God in this situation. Unfortunately, this one, they're not going to be able just to take out back in stone and fix the problem. No. What they do next, and Joshua made peace with them and made a league with them and let them live and the princes of Israel swear unto them. Now it doesn't state it here but it will further up in the chapter. We will read it in a moment. But they swear to them by the Lord. They made a binding league in the name of God with these people. Now Hopefully, none of us ever work ourselves into a situation like that, but I'm not going to ask for hands, but I'm going to let everybody reflect upon themselves that we should all be capable of some self-reflection and think about the number of things, little things, that we compromise here and there and how taxing and vexing it is upon us. What was the curse that was added into the orders on taking the land of Canaan? Numbers 33-55, but if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, then it shall come to pass that those which you let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides and shall vex you in the land that you dwell." Now, did it say that it was going to kill them? Did it say that they weren't going to be able to possess the land? No, but it would forever be a problem. We allow these things into our life, a lot of times just like the children of Israel, never checking with God, never saying, you know, this is a confusing situation. I'm not sure what to do here. They've got a convincing argument. Let's go to the one who holds all truth, that has all plan, that has omniscience. that knows everything that's going to happen. And let's get his opinion on this situation. See, I think in the fight, and I don't know if y'all have ever looked at any kind of warfare, but even in the Civil War, battles are very chaotic. When we're out here fighting the Christian war, if you want to call it that, we're out here doing battle in the spiritual realm. Battles are very ugly. They are chaotic. They are terrible. In the Civil War, They had two things to guide troops. They had a drummer and they had a standard bearer. You think in all those pictures, you see those paintings of the Civil War and whatnot, that they were just carrying flags out there to look cool? No. If I'm a soldier and I get in the middle of a situation and I get confused And I don't know where I'm supposed to be. I don't know where my other men are at. I don't know. I can look above the heads of everybody around me and see the standard right there. I can run back to the line. You know, that's actually how Stonewall Jackson died. He didn't have his own men shot him coming back into his own lines because they didn't know who he was. The standard's always there. Through prayer and through this right here, every problem can be answered. All of them. I'm confident in it. I'm so confident I stake my life and my soul upon it. And so the standard's always there, and yet we're so in the battle, we might be cutting down our own troops, We might be swinging at the wrong enemies. We might not even be fighting on the right line. Because we hesitate just to do this. To listen for those drums that say, hey, or drums or trumpets to retreat. To push forward. Go here, go there. No, we're out here doing our own little thing. We're so caught up and so confused we never look to God for any guidance. We never look to Him and say, hey, is this right? And I'll say personally, a lot of times you sort of come to yourself and you're like, this is something I never would have allowed before and yet here I am, I'm neck deep in it. Why is that? Well, you strayed off the path somewhere. I strayed off the path somewhere. Verse 16, It came to pass, at the end of three days, after they made a league with them, that they heard that they were their neighbors, and that they dwelt among them. And the children of Israel journeyed and came unto their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Kiphora, Baroth, and Kirgeth-Jerim. And the children of Israel smote them not, because the princes of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel, and all the congregation murmured against the princes. But the princes said unto all the congregation, We have sworn unto them by the Lord God of Israel, now therefore we may not touch them. And the princes said unto them, Let them live, but let them be hewers of wood and drawers of water unto all the congregation, as the princes have promised them. And Joshua called for them, and he spake unto them, saying, Wherefore have you beguiled us, saying, We are very far from you, when you dwell among us? Now therefore you are cursed, and there shall be none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hewers of wood, and drawers of water, for the house of my God. Now the end part of this chapter, Joshua is forced to deal with the situation they created. Joshua was forced to sort of tie up the loose end that they created. And you look in verse 18, it says, and all the congregation murmured against the princes. When we find these areas of compromise, areas where we're wrong, where we're way off, where we weren't guided, where we refused to be guided, and I'll put myself in that one, when God says, hey, go over here, and you're like, yeah, no. Look at Jonah. Same situation. When we discover these problems, it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be pretty. You're going to have people say some pretty awful things about you. They're going to use labels. It's not going to be a fun ride. The children of Israel murmured against them, but they had to set the house in order. We've got to quit being afraid of being embarrassed. We've got to quit being afraid of losing our pride. We've got to quit being afraid of all these little things. You know, sticks and stones, people. We're not under persecution. I haven't had a rock fly at me yet that I didn't throw when I was a kid. It's not so bad a situation. We're just going to have to sacrifice a little bit of our own hubris. We're going to have to admit a mistake and come with a spirit of humility and honesty. and deal with it in the best way we know how. Now, hey, some of this stuff you're never going to be able to get rid of. If it's a family issue, guess what? Those folks are never going to stop being your family. You're kind of bound to them by this little thing called blood. It just is what it is. You're going to have to deal with them. And if you've let your guard down with them, that problem is going to persist. You're going to have that thorn. You're going to have that vex in your side forever. It's got to be dealt with. You've got to come to them and say, hey, this is the situation. I'm sorry I let the situation get this way, but this is where we come. I'm going back to the standard. And I'm going to have to leave you here. You can, you know, and this is one of the reasons I like Joshua, the end of Joshua has, choose you this day whom you will serve. We've got to go back. I'm going back home to my father to the standard, to the path that was laid before me, and everybody else is going to have to do their own thing, even if I must walk alone. And that's not going to win you any friends. That's not going to win you any favors. People don't like that. People like conformity. We are herd creatures, we like living in social groups, and if anybody acts a little different from the group, we ostracize them, right? That's just how that works. And in our current day, now the people that should be ostracized are trying to convince the group that they're the group, and that's a whole other issue, but we're dealing with it. We're dealing with it right now. When it comes to the Word of God, when it comes to whatever gift or path that the Lord has set you on, we can't compromise that. Do we want to be able? at the end of our days, to be like Paul, who said, I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. Now, Paul was a murderer. Paul had beat the church up pretty early on in his ministry, but from the moment that he met Christ forward, he did everything, every day, to the point he argued with well-known church leaders. Him and Peter bickered like two married people. He got mad at John Mark for not willing to go the distance. At the end of his life, though, no regrets. Everybody here, I love you, you're great. I'm not going home when I die to be with any of you. I'm going to be with him. I know there's a lot of songs, and believe me, with the loss that Landmark is feeling right now, I'm all too aware of this, but we're not going home to be, you know, I'm not going there to be with my grandfather, my dad's dad, he died when I was six. I'm not going there to see him. He's with Jesus now. Do I want to stand before an almighty God saying, well, I mostly did okay. Is that where we want to live? Well, you know, I let my guard down on a few 15 or 16 things, but mostly I did good, right? And with the blood of Jesus, you know, we're not going to be judged for our sin and all that other stuff. There is talk in the New Testament about crowns and rewards, things that we can cast back at the feet of Jesus and say, it was all about you. We have to run well. And to run, we've got to be on the path. We can't compromise that. We can't change just to suit others. The effects of compromise can be long-standing, can affect your Christian walk, vexing you, whether you know it or not. Let us strive not to compromise, to seek the Lord's face in moments of decision, and deal with the areas that we've ceded to the enemy. Brother Will, if you would, dismiss us.