Please turn to Joshua chapter 6. This is a passage actually that some evangelicals whom I love and pray for are embarrassed by. There's really no reason to be embarrassed about this passage, but some of them are, and I myself glory in the fact that our God who is tender and compassionate and loving is also a mighty warrior who wrecks vengeance on his enemies, and to me it's a great comfort. So I'm going to read verses 15 through 21. But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning of the day and marched around the city seven times in the same manner. On that day only, they marched around the city seven times. And the seventh time it happened, when the priests blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction, it and all who are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live and all who are with her in the house. because she hid the messengers that we sent, and you, by all means, abstain from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take the accursed things and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it. But all the silver and gold and vessels of bronze and iron are consecrated to the Lord, and they shall come into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets, and it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down flat. And then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city, and they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. Amen. Father, we thank you for your Word, every bit of it, and I pray that we would relish your Word as we study it, that what is a scandal to many would not be a scandal to us, but we would glory in the incredible salvation that you have wrought in our lives. We are people who deserved to be under the curse just as Jericho was, and yet in your sovereign grace, you saved us, and we bless you, we thank you. It is our glory to continue to worship you as we study your word, in Jesus' name, amen. Hugh Latimer was a reformer in England who was beheaded by King Henry VIII. King Henry actually had previously appointed him to be the Bishop of Worcester because he was a very acclaimed scholar, and later the king regretted it because those two were butting heads with each other. The king considered himself to be the head of the church, and he expected all of the bishops to be subservient. Now, most of the bishops went along with that, but not Hugh Latimer. For example, it was customary on New Year's Day of each year for the bishops to bring bag of gold or some other precious things to the king to show their loyalty to him. And Hugh Lautamer, he did show up, he visited the king, but instead of bringing a bag of gold like everybody else did, he gave a gift of a New Testament with a page very prominently folded down to Hebrews 13.4, which says, whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. And since the king was very scandalously involved in both of those sins, this was not a politically correct gift for him to be giving. If you look in your bulletins at that first little painting that I put into your outline, you can see the other bishops are very nervous. This was definitely not a politically correct thing to be saying, you know, rebuking the king or for sure saying that he was in danger of hellfire. After all, he was the head of the Church of England, and it would be not surprising at all to me if this was one of many reasons why King Henry VIII beheaded him several years later. It took courage. for Hugh Latimer to preach the whole counsel of God, including the uncomfortable portions of Scripture. And I pray that God would raise up many such leaders in the modern church to replace the deafening silence on important topics. Most modern preachers tend to avoid anything controversial in the Bible. I'll just give you one example of controversies that have been avoided, there's been some recent surveys that have been done of pastors that have shown that among the evangelical church, pastors almost never preach on hell, and almost never preach on historical judgments like this one. In fact, some pastors are very apologetic about Joshua chapter 6, especially in front of atheists and others that they might talk to. Let me read from one very famous commentary that I own and show that even commentaries many times apologize for this passage. Andrew Knowles says, how can we understand the killing fields of the days of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, and David? Did God really command such bloodshed? Or were even these great men affected by the times in which they lived? Did they slay their enemies, believing it was God's will, or assume that God approved because He gave them victory? One thing is certain, our picture of God gets clearer as the Bible story unfolds. It becomes perfectly clear only when we see the life and example of Jesus. It isn't that God has changed, but our understanding of Him has developed. God's way is not to destroy, but to save. Not to take life, but to give it. Not to wreck vengeance, but to forgive and make peace. He is clearly embarrassed by this passage, and to me, to make a statement like that, he's obviously not read the book of Revelation, where Jesus wrecks vengeance on Rome and on Israel. Anyway, my point is that verse 21 has become a scandal to many believers. Let me read that verse again. If I can find it here. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. Now it's tempting for people to skip over passages like that or to try to, you know, explain them in a way that's a little bit more acceptable, but when we do that, the passage loses its intended punch and its intended purpose. God wants us to wrestle with these questions rather than ignoring them. Why are they even included in the Bible? There is a purpose. And far from being a scandalous passage, I hope to show you how the glory of God beautifully shines through this passage. It's passages like these that make our salvation seem all the more amazing and glorious. But I think it's helpful if we take it in context and not read it out of context, and we're going to begin with verse 15. But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the downing of the day and marched around the city seven times in the same manner. On that day only, they marched around the city seven times. Now, the word but and on that day only remind us of the previous context. And in that previous context, they had been marching for seven days, carrying, so that it was visible to all, the Ark of the Covenant, which was the mercy seat of God. In a previous sermon, I showed that God's mercy seat offered mercy to any who would repent. Of course, the only ones that God had granted the gift of repentance and faith to were Rahab and her family. But the point is, Jericho didn't want mercy. They didn't even believe they needed mercy. They were enemies of God, and therefore that same mercy seat became a throne of judgment to those who persisted in the rebellion. For seven days, this throne had been visible to all, where the priests had summoned one and all to submit to the one true God of the earth. And so Jericho was without excuse. and they were without excuse for their own capital crimes. There isn't much Canaanite literature that has survived, but the little bit that we know of shows that Jericho was the dregs of society, harboring people who engaged in every vile deed, including torture, body mutilation, Child sacrifice, human trafficking, including sexual slavery, sodomy, bestiality. Actually, bestiality may be one of the reasons why God had all the animals killed. Every vice that is beginning to be practiced in America was there. According to Genesis, God was not going to judge them until their cup of iniquity was full, and it was. But at a minimum, Jericho was not without warning. Next, if you believe that the Scriptures are the infallible revelation from God, as I do, then there is no escaping the fact that God Himself authorized this destruction. Andrew Knoll's suggestion that Joshua was just a product of his times, you know, the pagans did this, and he just assumed this was an okay—that is as far from the truth as you could possibly get. Now this was not just Joshua taking this into his own hands. This was commanded by God himself. So look next at verses 16 through 17. And the seventh time it happened, when the priests blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction, it and all who are in it. Now, he'd just make that up out of thin air. No, God had previously commanded him to do this. In fact, he had included it in the law, in the Pentateuch. Here's what Deuteronomy 20, 16 through 18 says. 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, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God." Notice he doesn't want them teaching the Israelites anything of their pagan ways. All of it was to be destroyed, and that included the books. We saw before that God especially targeted the library cities for burning. God did not want the wisdom of the pagans infecting the Israelites. But the point of this authorized destruction is that the God of love and the God of justice are one and the same God. And Hebrews 13.8 says He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so let's not buy into this idea God somehow acts differently in the New Testament than He did in the Old. The book of Revelation completely denies that. Third, the text affirms that God's judgments are totally, totally consistent with His grace. In fact, the cross shows there couldn't be any grace without God's judgment. It's totally consistent with grace. Verse 17 goes on to talk about his grace to Rahab. Now, if Jericho was the dregs of humanity, than Rahab was the dregs of the dregs. And yet God saved her because she had faith and she hid those messengers by faith. And the fact that her family did not turn her in to the authorities in order to save their necks, instead they went into the house for their own rescue shows it's a hint that they had saving faith as well. In saving her family, we see that God displayed remarkable grace right side by side with remarkable judgments, and we'll return to that in a bit. The fourth, God hates sin wherever it is found, whether it is found inside the church or outside the church, does not matter. He tells Israel in verse 18, and you, by all means, abstain from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it. It is of God's very nature to curse sin and rebellion wherever it is found. Now, our salvation was not achieved by shoving sin under the carpet and somehow dealing away with it. No, the only way we could be saved is for God's curse to rest upon Jesus as our substitute, for His wrath to be poured out upon Jesus as our substitute. Galatians 3 verse 13 says, He became a curse for us. God has not changed. The only reason that Rahab escaped the curse was because she cast her sins on the future Messiah by faith and received his righteousness. But let's think about this four-fold repetition of God's curse on those who side with the accursed things of Jericho. Even though believers cannot lose their salvation, praise God, They too can be cursed when they fail to maintain antithesis. And this is so important to understand. We're actually gonna be looking at this in more detail next week, the blessings and the curses of God. But salvation doesn't remove God's desire for antithesis between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and bad. When we get to chapter 7, we'll see Israel was defeated precisely because Achan took some of the precious things out of Jericho. It was so beautiful, he just couldn't bear to see those things destroyed. And this is the very problem I see happening in the modern church. Admiration for the wisdom and the beauty of the pagan Greeks has made Christians adopt their natural law theories and their philosophy, especially those of Aristotle and Plato. Admiration for the beauty of pagan science and art and architecture and other things has made Christians take the accursed things into their home through classical education. But God tells us his opinion of those Greek and Roman foundations in Daniel chapter 2. That chapter contains God's vision for the kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. You've got a picture of that in your outlines there. And those are the empires in which all of the classics found in classical education come from. And in that chapter, God doesn't deny that the four kingdoms had a lot to be admired. He speaks of the statue representing the four kingdoms as, quote, a great image whose splendor was excellent and its form was awesome. So God himself said that there was a certain beauty about it, and yet despite the splendor and beauty of that image, actually maybe because, precisely because of the splendor and beauty that would make it awesome and tempting, he wanted it destroyed. He didn't want Christians captivated by it. Now it's not as if those pagans didn't have truth, they did. Everybody has truth. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness, right? Romans says they hold the truth in unrighteousness. which makes their presentation of partial truth ultra-dangerous. And so, brothers and sisters, I am pleading with those of you who still love classical education to read Daniel chapter 2. Daniel 2 goes on to say that God's kingdom of heaven, represented by a stone cut without hands, struck the image at the feet, which would be the Roman Empire at Christ's first coming, and Christ's kingdom gradually broke the entire statue to pieces and replaced it. Replaced what? Replaced even what was glorious and beautiful about all four kingdoms. And then verse 35 ends by declaring God's end result. It says, the kingdoms became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. That is God's goal for the most glorious features of those classical empires that no trace of them will eventually be found. No trace. The antithesis between pagan achievements and the biblical achievements of God's kingdom will eventually become more and more consistent over history until not a trace of pagan wisdom, beauty, or splendor will compete with the beauty, wisdom, and splendor of God's Word and of God's Kingdom. That should be our goal. That is the exact opposite of the goal of classical education. It rescues the accursed things from Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and immerses children in the splendor and the beauty of pagan classics. The point is, God's desire for antithesis, his hatred for paganism continues even after salvation. God doesn't add grace or add things to paganism to beautify paganism. He replaces it. The whole conquest of Canaan was a similar type or picture of Christ's kingdom, replacing the kingdoms of this world, leaving nothing of the wisdom of the previous kingdoms remaining. As Deuteronomy 20, commanded they were not to learn from the Canaanites, but were to utterly destroy that civilization. God has not changed, and we should glory in this passage and not be scandalized by it. It has so much to teach us. But you might wonder, what about verse 19? Doesn't that contradict your thesis against classical education, Pastor Kaiser? No, it does not. Let's read it, and then I'll read the commands given by Moses on how this was to be done. Verse 19 says, but all the silver and gold and vessels of bronze and iron are consecrated to the Lord. They shall come into the treasury of the Lord. Now, Numbers 31 specified that any carvings or idols that were made from metal had to be melted. Any other metal articles still had to be purified by fire. Let me read that. It says, only the gold, the silver, the bronze, the iron, and tin, and the lead Everything that can endure fire, you shall put through the fire and it shall be clean. So it wasn't carvings that were saved, just the metal itself was saved. It was similar to the land that was sanctified to the Lord and then used to His glory. But none of the wisdom of the Canaanites made it into Israel. This was to be a total antithesis. Now, friends of mine call this legalism. But if you're following the Scripture, it's not legalism. Legalism is adding to the Scripture some rules or thinking you can be saved by rule-keeping. This is not legalism. This is simply following the Scripture. And I don't know how you can get around the conclusion of the image of Daniel 2 or the symbolism of this context. Let me give you one more scripture. Paul uses exactly this image from Numbers of purifying by fire to show what from our lives we'll be pleasing to the Lord and make it into heaven. He guarantees it won't be the wisdom of the world. And I'm going to be reading from 1 Corinthians 3, beginning at verse 9. For we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, you are God's building. According to the grace of God which was given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. anyone's work is burned he will suffer loss but he himself will be saved yet so as through fire do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you if anyone defiles the temple of God God will destroy him for the temple of God is holy and which temple you are. He says, only the things that can endure the fire are to be brought into the temple. This is the imagery from Canaan, right? You are the temple. And then he goes on to say, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, verse 19. Therefore, let no one boast in men, verse 21. And so the conquest of Canaan teaches us that we must be biblicists in our worldview and education. Now in stark contrast, I would challenge you to read a book. Well, maybe it's, I won't recommend you read the book. You can glance at the book in my library by W.G.T. Shedd. It's a two-volume set on the history of Christian doctrine. And he says, you cannot understand Christian doctrine without starting with Aristotle and Plato. And he says, they are the foundation of Christian doctrine. I mean, it's just absolutely astonishing. He thinks, well, they're so good, they're so wise, that God's probably saved them somehow. And he says, this is the beginning of Christian doctrine, is Plato and Aristotle. This is really consistent with classical education. Contrary to Stephen Wolfe, who recently wrote The Case for Christian Nationalism, grace does not perfect the beauty of the pagans, it replaces it. So this is the first scandal. God's judgment did away with a lot of the wisdom and the beauty from that culture, just like the stone in Daniel's image did. I say it's a scandal, but it's not a scandal for us. This is something we should glory in. And in verse 20, we see Israel submitting to God. Okay, Lord, if that's what you want us to do, we're gonna do that. We're gonna be conformed to your will. Our mind, our actions are gonna be conformed to your wisdom. So it says, so the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets, and it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Now, we already, in a previous sermon, looked at the miraculous nature of this falling of the wall. It wasn't an earthquake because, you know, Rahab's part of the wall was spared. All the rest of the wall fell down. This was a miracle of God's grace. And we also looked at the fact that human responsibility has to go hand in hand with God's miraculous intervention. They had to shout. They had to fight, right? And so there's no inconsistency between human responsibility and divine sovereignty. And because they completely surrounded the city, they ran straight forward into the city, they took it as God commanded. And so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that verse other than to say that God calls us to conform to all of the details of his word as well. Not to the standard of your favorite teacher, not to the standard of Phil Kaiser. Ignore what I have to say if you cannot see it in the scripture. It's got to be the Word of God. Paul praised the Bereans for checking out everything he said by the Scriptures. Our minds must be held captive by the Word of God and our actions must be held captive to God's will. And this is true even on the so-called scandal of verse 21, which is what I'm gonna concentrate on now. Verse 21 says, and they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey with the edge of the sword. Now, many people have raised objections to this verse down through history. Thomas Jefferson was one of the few founding fathers who took offense to this passage and other passages in the Pentateuch. Most of our founding fathers, I think, were fairly orthodox. But Jefferson said that this showed God to be, quote, cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust, unquote. More recently, Pastor Charles Templeton, who was a famous evangelist, lost his faith over passages like this one. They didn't comport with his independently derived view of God. He said the God of the Old Testament is utterly unlike the God believed in by most practicing Christians. He is an all-too-human deity with the human failings, weaknesses, and passions of men, but on a grand scale. His justice is, by modern standards, outrageous, and his prejudices are deep-seated and inflexible. He is biased, quarrelous, vindictive, and jealous of his prerogatives. And I would ask him, how in the world would you know justice? God is the standard of justice, not man. In any case, I bring up these examples because this verse is a scandal to many people, including many Christians. Craigie's book, The Problem of War in the Old Testament, sees three problems with this passage, and I'm going to go through all three. He labels the first scandal a theological contradiction with the God of love. He says, it is not easy to reconcile this conception of God with the New Testament description of God as loving and self-giving. And actually, a friend of mine that I grew up with became so disillusioned with passages like this that he was an evangelical pastor, he became a liberal pastor in the United Church of Canada, and he told me he no longer believed in the God of the Old Testament because that God was a God of wrath. Now this viewpoint goes all the way back to the second century heretic by the name of Marcion. But Marcion's little trick of saying, well, that's a different God, we've got the God of the New Testament, simply doesn't work. As I pointed out to this man, the book of Revelation, last book of the New Testament, is far more gruesome than the book of Joshua ever was. And after we talked about that and I read some scriptures, he said, well, I guess I don't believe in the God of the book of Revelation either. Okay, after an hour of arguing, he told me that God had revealed himself to him and his God wouldn't hurt a fly. Well, I'm sorry, his God is a false God, a demonic God. And that's the second problem. From where do we get our idea of God anyway? People object that God could not have revealed these things. So Craigie lists the second problem as a revelational problem. Is this simply history, or is it truly the inspired Word of God? And who determines what is and is not the inspired word of God and on what basis? That was a problem with my friend. He went from being a charismatic pastor to being a liberal because he trusted his own experiences and his own supposed revelations more than scripture. Initially, he was just following the New Testament, but then I read the following passage from Revelation to him. Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her. for true and righteous are his judgments, because he has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants shed by her." Again they said, Alleluia, and her smoke rises up forever and ever. Now here's the point. Both Testaments show grace. Both Testaments show love. Both Testaments show a judgment. And so to be honest, we can't pick and choose what we want from the Bible. You've got to either accept everything in the Bible or you reject everything in the Bible. And that's what my liberal friend finally chose to do. He no longer believes any of the Bible is the Word of God. Very sad. The third scandal that Craigie brings up is the ethical problem, and this is perhaps the most frequent issue that is brought up. Let me quote Theodore Drange on this so-called ethical problem. He said, it seems quite unethical for God to order the execution of so many people, whatever their offense might have been, especially in the case of the children who were presumably innocent. Now what's the assumption of all of these objections? The assumption is that God is not the determiner of truth and of ethics. Man is. And so they judge God based on their opinion of what is truth and what is ethical. And until that orientation is changed by the regeneration of our hearts and of their hearts, they won't like the biblical answers anymore than they like the ethical questions that are brought up. And I'm gonna give you the biblical answers now, but those biblical answers are just as offensive to unregenerate man as this passage is. Anyway, here goes. First answer given in the Bible is there is no problem with pain and suffering and death. There is no problem. This is what you would expect in a sinful world is pain and suffering and death. The real problem, according to 2 Peter 3, is why on earth is God so patient given all of the sin that is around us? That's what's astounding. And Peter's answer is that God's long-suffering puts off the judgment until men are given an opportunity to repent. We saw already that God had given Jericho time to repent. John H. Gerstner in his book Repent or Perish said this, If you recognize that basic Christian teaching that all deserve hell because all are sinners, you'll understand why I wrote a little primer entitled The Problem of Pleasure. We talk so much about the problem of pain. There is no such thing as the problem of pain. You tell me how excruciating it is, and I'll still look you in the face and say there's no problem. Why? Because we're sinners. We deserve the eternal wrath of God. I don't care who you are or where you are, that you are breathing at all is incredibly gracious. What needs explaining is not that there's pain in the world. If there wasn't any pain, we would have a problem. How can God be holy? and this world be wholly sinful and there be anything but pain. It's incredible that there is non-pain. Why is anybody not suffering? That's a problem. Christ solves that problem. Temporary freedom from pain is given you so that you may repent and not perish. The only answer to the problem of pleasure is that God is pleased to give hell-deserving sinners an opportunity to repent. And you might say, yeah, but what about the children? Were they not innocent? And Gerstner's reply is that there is absolutely no one in this world who was innocent. No one. And let me give you some Scripture proofs. Romans says there is none righteous, no, not one. Psalm 51.5 says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. Psalm 58.3, the wicked are restrained from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. Isaiah 48, verse 8 says, for I knew that you would deal very treacherously and were called a transgressor from the womb. Now, ultimately, we have to rest on the fact that God defines justice, and since He is the standard by definition, He could do no wrong. Okay? We must say with Jesus, as Jesus said to the Father, Your word is truth. It is the standard of truth by which all other truth claims are judged. It's not as if we say, your word is true, as if our mind determines the truth of God's word. No, your word is truth, and it is the judge by which everything we think is going to be evaluated. So we must submit to Him and to Him alone. Romans chapter 9 shows the arrogance of human clay speaking against the potter and telling the potter what he can and cannot do. That's not the way it works. The second biblical answer is not much more acceptable to the unregenerate. People are just as scandalized by this answer. But the answer that the Bible gives is that God is no different today. Now, we've already dealt with this a bit. But Hebrews 11 praises the destruction of Jericho as being an evidence of faith. Hebrews has absolutely no problem whatsoever with this event in the book of Joshua. And as I mentioned earlier, the last book of the Bible, Revelation, teaches God's right to judge all. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so if we are offended with the God of the Old Testament, we're gonna be offended with the God of the New Testament, it's the same God. Christ not only spoke of God's justice in destroying every living being in Sodom and Gomorrah, but he said it would be far worse for the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida. Jesus spoke more of hell than he did of heaven. And so if we're gonna see a problem, let's make sure we see how pervasive the problem is in scripture. It covers God's judgment in the flood of every man, woman, and child, everything breathing except for that which made it in the ark, Noah and his family and the animals that God put in the ark. You see, we serve an unchanging God, a God of judgment, wrath, and fury against sin. And when his patience has completely worn out, there will be such fury unleashed in hell as will make anything in this world pale into insignificance. You have to reject the doctrine of hell in order to have any problems with this passage in Joshua 6 whatsoever. And of course, many people are doing exactly that. They've jettisoned the doctrine of hell because it doesn't comport with their idea of justice. They have made their puny mind the judge of what could be true or not. But I love the God who has revealed himself in the scriptures just the way he's revealed himself to be. And I'll tell you later why this is such an encouragement. But first, let me tell you of the third scandalous answer that the Bible gives. The Bible is one unified, cohesive document. You can't reject one part of it and accept another part of it. The whole book is interwoven. Some like the fact that Rahab got saved. Okay, that's cool. But the same chapter speaks of her compatriots being judged and condemned. The New Testament supports the Old Testament lock, stock, and barrel, and Acts says that Paul didn't teach anything that he didn't support with the Old Testament, and he praised the Bereans for checking everything he taught against the Old Testament. The fourth answer, which is just as scandalous as the question, is that God judges consistently with his justice. And people object, hey, no one was given a fair trial. What gives Israel the right to exterminate a population? And the answer is, God judged the Canaanites, not Israel. This was not standing warfare policy. Israel was actually not allowed to fight this way in their ordinary warfare. This was a unique kind of warfare called harem warfare. where God commanded them to be his instruments of justice and of judgment. They were simply the executioners of the people whom God had already judged in his courtroom. And in later history, Israel was absolutely forbidden to engage in this kind of indiscriminate killing. And the reason is Israel can't read people's hearts like God can, right? It would take special revelation from God for this kind of warfare to ever be resurrected. And because all inspired prophecy ended in 8070, it's guaranteed that no human can ever again justly engage in this kind of indiscriminate killing. Human courts can only deal with objective behavior that God has clearly defined as a crime in his Bible, clearly given a penalty for that crime. Okay? Our justice is limited by that revealed word. And because God could see the sins of every human heart, there was no principle of justice that is overturned in this passage. By the way, my thicker book on canon, I think, gives the exegetical demonstration that the Bible predicted that all prophecy would cease in AD 70. Because of that, nobody can claim new revelation to justify killing such as Israel was commanded by God to do. Now, the last answer that the Bible gives is that God is a God of patience, love, and grace, even in this passage. Let's look at the patience. God had put up with the iniquities of the Amorites, Jebusites, Perizzites, the other Canaanites, until their cup of iniquity was full, and he could bear it no more. In Deuteronomy 2, he said, no, don't mess with those nations. God's patience had not worn thin with them, right? So there was patience that God had endured for so long with these Canaanites. But here's the thing. Rebels don't want patience. They want their rebellion overlooked or positively praised. Nowadays, if you don't praise homosexuality or gender fluidity or physicians cutting off the body parts of little kids on some whim, you're the one who's going to be demonized and screamed at. You're the one who is going to be in trouble with our woke society. And so even the concept of patience is a scandal to the sinner because it implies that the sinner sins and is deserving of judgment. People don't want a patient God. They want a God who approves of their sins. And certainly the concept of grace is a scandal because it too rules out the idea that anybody can deserve God's favor. It reminds us that none deserve God's grace. Think of Rahab. Most self-righteous people would think, why would God save her? If Jericho was the dregs of Canaanite society, wasn't she the dregs of Jericho? And I think if we're honest, we'd have to say, yeah, there is nothing in Rahab that would warrant salvation. But see, that's the beauty of it. That makes her a prime example of what grace looks like, of what faith looks like, of what good works, according to James. She's the example for James of what good works looks like. So faith and good works flows from God's mercy, not vice versa. And so this is offensive to man because humans want to take credit for something and at least look a little bit better than they really are. It is a sign of God's grace when we admit that we are sinners deserving of hell. It is a sign of grace when we are humbled into admitting that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. It's a sign of grace to powerfully experience Christ's statement, without me, you can do nothing. We say, yes, I see that, Lord. If your heart thinks God had no right to order the slaughter of everybody in that city, you have not even remotely understood the sinfulness and the hatefulness of sin. The only reason this judgment by God is offensive in our eyes is because we still have this illusion we don't deserve God's judgment. We can't picture ourselves as being like those Canaanites deserving of being destroyed. We cannot imagine our children deserving of being destroyed. Most Christians nowadays think of their children as being innocent. Most Christians today think of the problem with unbelievers as an intellectual problem, not a problem of rebellion of the heart. And how do I know that? their method of evangelism. They spend less than a minute on sin and most of their time on God's grace. But if you don't understand your sinfulness, then you're not going to even be ready to appreciate God's grace. Until people get over the scandal of passages like these, they will never be able to fully glory in the graciousness of grace and the richness of God's gift of salvation. And thus this passage also serves as a two-fold warning for us Christians. It's first of all a warning of where our hearts are at. If your heart rebels against what God did in this passage, it is a warning that you are more aligned with Jericho than you are with God's people and God's cause. You're identifying more with them than you do with God's justice. God deliberately tests our hearts with passages like this to see where our heart is at. And if our heart rebels against God's right to destroy the Canaanites, the Sodomites, the Gomorrahites, the pre-Diluvians, and all of the others, it's a sign that our blind eyes have not yet been opened by the Holy Spirit and our hard hearts have not yet been softened by His grace. It may be a sign you are one of the Canaanites who is right now doomed to eternal destruction And so I would call you, if that's the state of your heart, please repent. Without repentance, you will face God's judgment. It's your only hope because God is a God of judgment. The judgment either fell on Jesus on your behalf or it will fall on you. If you see a problem in this passage, it's not God who needs to change, it's us. It's not the Bible that needs to change. It's we who need to change. If we find a problem with God's perspective on Jericho, it simply means you're still viewing life like the Canaanites did. Look at verse 18 again. And you, by all means, keep yourselves from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it. Now, in the next chapter, Achan had a hard time seeing what was so repulsive about these things. Why would they be accursed? They're beautiful. And part of the problem was that he still did not have a holy revulsion for sin. God is the measure of what is shameful and what is glorious, what is sin, what is righteousness, what is accursed and what is blessed. And there are plenty of scriptures which test whether we have grace in our hearts or whether we are still rebels. And so there's a subjective warning, but there's also an objective warning. that God does still judge rebellion just as surely as he blesses repentance. It's a warning that cultures have their D-Day, and yet Rahab is an example. that where there is repentance, doesn't matter how deep the sin may be, God's forgiveness and His grace and His rescue and His salvation is there. But Canaan, whose cup of iniquity was finally full, is also an example that there does come a time, as Hebrews words it, where you cannot be renewed again to repentance. It will be impossible for them to repent. We don't know when people cross that line. Without repentance, judgment is a foregone conclusion. Now let's just see how Jesus draws this out, and if you wanna follow along, it's in Luke chapter 13, and verses one through five. Luke 13, one through five. What Jesus is gonna do here, he's gonna apply historical judgments that had happened, that people faced, he's gonna apply it to us. Luke 13, beginning at verse one. There were present that season some who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish, okay? Notice, first of all, Jesus did not say, oh, wow, what a tragedy. Those people didn't deserve that. Why do terrible things happen to good people? No, he said the exact opposite. He said they were sinners, they deserve judgment. But then secondly, Christ corrects the notion of any Jerusalemites who might have smugly thought, oh yeah, the Galileans, yeah, they deserve that. They're far worse sinners. And Jesus said, no, you guys deserve judgment as well. In fact, he says that historical judgments have fallen on their side of the railroad tracks. They've fallen in Jerusalem. So this is verses four through five. or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Historical judgments teach us that God sees all men as sinners and there aren't any who can claim that God has been unfair. God said that Job had no right to complain. Hey, if Job, a man who is far more righteous than I am, if Job had no right to complain, then I need to shut my mouth when I think that God has mistreated me and I deserve better treatment than what God has given to me. Are Americans worse than Canaanites? Probably not. Probably not by a long shot. But Christ's words still apply. He says, I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. So it doesn't matter how severe the historical judgment may be, it is a just dessert for our sins. Now I want to end by showing that the very thing that is a scandal for the unregenerate is a glory and a comfort and a joy for God's people. This passage should cause the elect to rejoice for at least three reasons. First, it proves that God hates sin. Why is that a comfort? The reason it's a comfort and a glory to the believer is that indifference to sin could be discouraging and perhaps even frightening. But when we know that God hates abortion in our land far more than we do, we know that that is a sin that is eventually going to be expunged. When we know that God hates the sin that we commit more than we do, then we know that His plan for sanctification in our life is going to be successful, right? That's encouraging. If God was apathetic about sin, it would be terribly discouraging when we are devoted to fighting against sin. But since God is against our sin, Our fight against sin must prevail. It's a tremendous glory to realize God hates sin. Second, it is a glory to realize that we were the people of Jericho in a spiritual sense, and yet God saved us. The greater our sense of sin, the greater the glory of our salvation will appear. You might remember in Luke 7 the statement by Jesus about the harlot, you know, she was kissing his feet, anointing his feet with oil, so thankful to Jesus for her salvation, she was being criticized, Jesus was being criticized by others in the room, and he said this, therefore I say to you that her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. She knew She was forgivative a lot, and she loved the Lord a lot. And the people in that room who were judging the prostitute for kissing Jesus' feet, I mean, they had plenty of hateful sin themselves. They just didn't see it. They didn't recognize it. And that's why they didn't love the Lord so much. To whom much is forgiven, the same loves much. But the third glorious thing about this passage is that God's grace extends not just to individuals, but also to families. Notice that verse 17 says, only Rahab the harlot shall live. she and all who are with her in the house." And that's repeated again in verse 22, where Joshua's command is, bring out the woman and all that she has. And it's repeated again in verse 23, which says, and the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had. So they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp of Israel. We'll deal with the last phrase next week, but aren't those three statements incredibly glorious statements that we can bank on? They brought out all her relatives. Praise God. Perhaps some of you have unsaved relatives that you have been pouring your heart out for and praying for. Continue to pray and do not waver. There are many, many scriptures you can lay claim to for their salvation. Let me read some. 1 Corinthians 7.14 says, the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by her husband. Set apart. That's something you can camp on. You can claim it. Do not waver in your faith concerning it. The same passage sets aside the children as sanctified to the Lord. Or you can camp out on Psalm 72.4. He will save the children of the needy. Hallelujah. I love verses like this. Or Isaiah 49, 25, I will save your children. Just claim it. Say, Lord, you promised. You promised this, and I have faith in you. I have faith that you will do this. Or Luke 19, verse 9, where Jesus said to the tax collector, today's salvation has come to this household because he also is a son of Abraham. Or Acts 11, 14, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved. Or Acts 16, 31, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. Or Galatians 4, 1, which calls your children heirs. Or the numerous promises that families will be saved. I'll just read one of the many promises. Acts 3, 25, saying to Abraham, and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. This passage is a glory to Christians because they realize only sovereign grace could have saved Rahab and her family. And if it takes sovereign grace to save us, then there isn't anybody in our families that is too tough of a case for God's grace to save. Nobody. God says it, we need to believe it, that should settle it. Brethren and sisters, may this passage not be an embarrassment or a scandal to you. Glory in the true God, not the precious moments, God, of your own imagination. Glory in the fact that the God who can be tender and compassionate to you is also a God of fury and wrath against your enemies. He is an awesome, powerful warrior God who is worthy of our respect and admiration. Learn to adore him for who he is. Amen. Father, I pray you would take what is faithful in this preaching and quicken it to the hearts of your people and take away whatever is dross. We pray that you would help us more and more to recognize the glory of our salvation, that we were utterly unworthy of the least of your mercies. And yet, you exalted us as not only slaves in your kingdom, but you adopted us as sons and daughters. You seated us with Christ in the heavenlies as princes and princesses. And we thank you and we bless you. None of this is deserved, and yet we receive it by faith. We believe it. We believe it because we know it has nothing to do with how worthy we are, but how worthy Jesus is on our behalf. And so we thank you in Jesus' name. Help us to glory in you, and help us, Father, to agree with your judgments, to pray your judgments, that those judgments would either, that we are going to be singing shortly, would either fall on, have fallen on Jesus as a substitute, or that the wickedness of our land would be taken away. We want the Holy Spirit to no longer be grieved with the iniquity that is in our land, with the abortion that defiles the land. We long for the angels of heaven to rejoice over the repentance of sinners. We long for there to be reformation and revival in church and in culture. And so we pray, Father, that you would hear us as we sing this next Psalm, Psalm 68, and we sing it by faith. Be exalted in our praises, in Jesus' name, amen.