Well, good morning to everybody. Please open your Bibles with me to Joshua chapter 11. And if you didn't bring a Bible with you, you can use one of the ones in the pew right in front of you. And it is important for you to have a Bible. I hope you will open one up. As I preach, I assume people are looking at a Bible. This morning in Sunday school, we were talking in Acts about the Bereans. We talked about that section a little bit. And the Bereans were more noble than those in Thessalonica because they looked at the scriptures and they checked to see if what Paul was preaching to them was accurate. And that's how you should be when I'm preaching. You should be looking at your Bible, checking to see if what Pastor Ben says is right. And that's going to be especially important this morning because I'm going to say some controversial things, some debatable things, and it's important that we see this from scripture and not just from my mouth. I read earlier this passage in Joshua 11. I'm just going to read two verses again now. Joshua 11, verses 19 and 20. This is on page 187 if you're using one of those Red Pew Bibles. Joshua 11, verse 19. There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses." Let's pray again together. God, there are some difficult statements in your word and we wrestle to understand them. We pray that your spirit will be in our midst this morning to illumine our minds. I pray that you will be our teacher today and help us to understand these deep things about you, these deep things that are revealed about you to us in your word. And I pray that we can come to terms with these things and even though The depth of your will and purposes goes far beyond our comprehension. I pray that we will come to a place of being at peace with who you are and your sovereign freedom. So please build us up today as we look to you and understand you more deeply. I pray that will happen this morning. It's in Jesus' name and for His glory that we pray it. Amen. Well, have you ever wrestled with the question of God's sovereignty and human responsibility, how these two things piece together, how they relate? This is a major theological question, one that I refer to with some regularity, and I do so because I think it's important for us to think about this, especially since there's such a temptation to simplify this discussion in ways that don't quite line up with Scripture. If we say that God is completely in control of every decision that humans make, does that mean that we're basically robots and therefore not truly responsible for our actions? Or if we affirm that humans do make meaningful choices and we are held accountable for those choices, does that mean that God can't be totally in control of those choices? and therefore can't be totally in control of what happens in the world. Mid-week, this past week, I decided to narrow the focus of this sermon. I had been planning to cover the remaining events of chapters 10 to 12 of Joshua, but I was so intrigued by chapter 11, verse 20 that I just read to you. I was so intrigued by this that I decided to focus the study for this morning on this one theme, the theme of hardening. hardened hearts leading to destruction. I want us to think about the Lord's role in hardening hearts as well as the human guilt of hardening one's own heart. I'll start with a real brief overview of these chapters in Joshua 10-12 and then we'll move into a discussion of the Lord hardening the hearts of the Canaanites. Last Sunday I preached on the first part of Joshua 10 where we read of the amazing miracle of the sun standing still. Remember that amazing passage? The Gibeonites were being attacked by five other armies and they sent to Joshua for help. You remember the Gibeonites, what they had done, they had previously lied to Israel, tricked them into making a covenant with them, and now, what are they doing? They're calling for Joshua, come and help us, we're being attacked by these other armies, come and save us. So Joshua, he went amazingly. He responded to the call. He went along with the Israelite army. They marched all night long to get there for a surprise attack first thing in the morning. The Lord came and fought for them in an amazing way, fired down these lethal hailstones on the enemies. Joshua then in the midst of that battle prayed for the sun to stop. in the sky and it did until they were able to vanquish all of those enemies. It was a major advance in the conquest of the Promised Land. And interestingly, that is the last battle that is recorded for us in detail in the book of Joshua. There was the taking of Jericho, that first great battle that we all remember so well, one of the very memorable stories in all of scripture. There was the taking of Jericho, then there were the two battles with Ai, because the first battle, Israel lost and had to run away. Then the second battle, they came back with the Lord's help. and defeated AI, and then now this battle against the five armies threatening Gibeon. Those battles, those three battles, made up what we would call the central campaign of the promised land. The Israelites have moved into the promised land and took Jericho, then they went up the hill, up into the hill country, and took Ai, and now have defeated these five armies, and they've taken control of a significant and central portion of Canaan. The rest of the conquest is told to us in rapid succession in a very concise manner. In chapter 10 beginning in verse 29 and going to the end of that chapter we read of the southern campaign. So they go from central Canaan south and defeat several cities in the southern portion. And then chapter 11 tells of the northern campaign. They head back north and go quite a ways north in Canaan and defeat several cities there. And then chapter 12 of Joshua is basically a summary of that whole thing. And next Sunday I'll go into more detail on these campaigns. But let's hone in now on chapter 11 verses 19 and 20. Verse 19 makes an interesting statement highlighting the unique response of the Gibeonites. So the Gibeonites, they were the one group that made peace with Israel. And again, we remember the story. It was through deceit that the Gibeonites accomplished that. But still, it was a remarkable thing that they separated themselves from all these other armies and they said, no, we're going to make peace with Israel. That's our goal. We're going to make peace. with Israel. They separated themselves from all the other peoples of Canaan in that way. We saw this at the start of chapter 9. If you want to look back there for a moment, Joshua 9. The other kings were gathering together. They were making an alliance against Israel. I mean, everybody saw this threat of Israel. and Israel's God. They are defeating people as they go. And we're scared. So we better align ourselves together if we have any hope of defeating them. And that's what these kings and these armies were doing. But Gibeon did the exact opposite. If you can't beat them, join them. That was their philosophy. I don't think we can beat these guys. Let's have our strategy be to try to join them. Let's try to make peace with them. And in a way similar to Rahab, remember Rahab back in Joshua 2? In a way similar to Rahab, these Gibeonites, they succeeded in becoming joined to Israel. God was gracious to allow this to happen and there were ongoing blessings for the Gibeonites because of this. This statement in 1119 is interesting because it seems to imply that it might have been possible for other peoples to have done something similar. It leaves us asking, what if? What if there were other peoples in Canaan who had the same idea as Gibeon or something like it? Instead of resisting, instead of saying, how can we fight against Israel? Instead saying, how do we make peace with these guys? How do we become part of Israel? How could their God become our God? Matthew Henry, a well-known Bible teacher from the 1600s, whose Bible commentary is still popular, he says this about this verse. He says, it is intimated that other cities might have made as good terms for themselves without ragged clothes and clouded shoes if they would have humbled themselves, but they never so much as desired conditions of peace. So, I mean, it's just a hypothetical consideration, this what-if question. The real point of Joshua 11, 19, as Matthew Henry stresses at the end of that quote, is to emphasize the hardness of heart on the part of all the other peoples in the land. Gibeon being the only exception, the only people group that that resisted and would not make peace. Only one people group made peace with Israel. All the other groups resisted peace, they made war against Israel, and Israel defeated them because the Lord was fighting on their behalf. The end of verse 19 says that Israel took all of these other people groups, took them all in battle. And that leads to our first main point for this morning, the consequences of a hard heart. For the peoples of Canaan, the consequence of hardening their hearts against Yahweh The consequence was complete annihilation. They were destroyed at the hands of Israel's army. We do know some things about the Canaanites, about their hardness of heart. They were hardened against God. They were involved in such things as incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexual acts, bestiality. We know this from Leviticus 18. I referred to this some weeks ago when we were talking about the Canaanites. Leviticus 18 gives many prohibitions about these kinds of sins and just prior to that list of commands, those prohibitions, the Lord says, you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. That's toward the beginning of that chapter. And then following all those prohibitions toward the end of that, the Lord says again, reiterates this, do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things. For by all these, the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean. So it's clear that the people living in the land of Canaan, living in this promised land, the land that God was going to be giving to Israel, all these peoples inhabiting that land, they had sunk very low in their sexual perversions and their idolatry. And now they're receiving the judgment they deserve. I'll go back to something I mentioned when we were in chapter 6, in Joshua 6, verse 1, when they're moving in to take Jericho, there's a description of Jericho being shut up inside and out. And that picture of Jericho being shut up in that way gives us a picture not only of the physical state of the city, but we could think of it as a description of the spiritual condition of their hearts as well. They were closed off, they were shut up against Yahweh and Yahweh's people. Remember the one opening? The one opening was Rahab's window. Rahab's window was open with the scarlet cord hanging down just as the spies had instructed her. There was that one opening, one place where there was an openness to the God of Israel. But the rest of the city remained shut up, hardened against Yahweh. A very important thing to understand in that scene is that it was not the wickedness of the people of Jericho, it was not their wickedness that made their destruction certain. It was rather their hardness of heart, their refusal to repent, their refusal to make peace with Yahweh. They resisted Him to the end. Rahab was the exception. Rahab was spared destruction in spite of her wickedness. The Gibeonites likewise, they were spared destruction in spite of their deceit and their wickedness. So, I hope you get the point. It's not about, oh, I need to become virtuous and then I'll be spared destruction. That's not the picture that's painted here. It's about humbly moving toward the Lord in spite of all this junk, in spite of how messed up I am, in spite of my wickedness, moving toward the one true and living God. We need to be reminded of this again and again. The contrast between Rahab and the rest of Jericho is not a contrast between holy living and wicked living. The contrast between Gibeon and the rest of the peoples of Canaan is not a contrast between holy living and wicked living. It's a contrast, rather, between faith, moving toward the Lord in faith, and rejecting Him. It's a contrast between making peace with the Lord and not making peace with Him. Rahab and the Gibeonites, they had some recognition. I mean, we don't know how much they understood or knew or believed, but they had some recognition of and appreciation for Israel's God. They were looking to Him, not rejecting Him or fighting against Him, but wanting to be united to Him, wanting to be included among His people. Another example from scripture is the city of Nineveh. You remember the story of Nineveh in the book of Jonah? Provides another illustration that's helpful here. Nineveh was another very wicked city in ancient times. But after Jonah preached there, much to Jonah's chagrin, they repented. They repented of their sins and God relented of the destruction he intended for them. The same might have been true for other groups in the Promised Land if they had responded like Rahab or the Gibeonites, if they had responded like Nineveh. What about you? Are you hard-hearted? Are you digging in your heels against the Lord? Are you resisting Him, rejecting Him, rebelling against Him? I warn you from God's Word this morning, don't continue down that path. It leads to destruction. There are consequences if you continue to harden your heart against the Lord. There are consequences both in this life, very practical consequences of sin, and there are eternal consequences. There is destruction in hell eternally for those who never repent. Your only hope is in Jesus Christ. Don't resist Him. You cannot beat Him. Your only hope is to join Him, to be joined to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. Look to Him in faith. Plead for His mercy. And it will be given to you. The many nations within Canaan were destroyed for their stubborn rebellion against the one true and living God. And, looking at it from another perspective, in God's providence, the destruction they deserved was also the victory that He had promised to Israel. And this leads to our second main point, which is to recognize God's sovereignty over hard hearts. Do you see how this is stated so plainly in verse 20 of our text? Joshua 11, verse 20. For it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses." God was sovereign over the hardening of their hearts. It was God's will for their hearts to remain hardened against Him, leading to their destruction, leading them to receiving no mercy. This had been planned by God from long beforehand. The Lord had given Moses those commands which he relayed to the Israelites that they should go into the promised land and they should destroy all the inhabitants of Canaan. And the Lord gave those commands to Moses and to Israel. The Lord gave those commands knowing and ordaining that those Canaanite peoples would indeed remain hardened. Now to further explore this concept of hardening, we need to go to a couple other places in the Bible where we see other examples of this. And a very clear one is the example of Pharaoh. And that story is told in the book of Exodus, but the place I want to start is in Romans 9, where Paul reflects back on that Old Testament story as he's teaching us about unconditional election and how the Lord has mercy on some but hardens others. So, I want to encourage you to turn in your Bibles now to the New Testament book of Romans, and this is on page 945 in the Pew Bibles. Romans chapter 9, we're going to be looking at these verses in some detail because they're closely related to Joshua 11-20. I'm going to start by reading Romans 9, verses 14-18. Romans 9, 14. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then, it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills." It's interesting to see in this paragraph the contrast between human will and God's will. You know, we often speak of human free will. But how much time have you spent thinking about God's free will? God's absolutely free will. That's what this passage is about. God's sovereign and free will. He does as He pleases. Verse 16 says that God's bestowal of mercy does not depend on human will. Verse 18 refers twice to God's free will. He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills. The teaching about God's hardening of individuals may be very difficult to grasp, even more difficult to accept, but we have to recognize this about our God. He is this great. He is this powerful. He is this sovereign. He is free. So let's think back now to the story of Exodus as Paul does to try to understand what's going on here and how this factors into human choices. Because what's so interesting about God's dealings with Pharaoh is that we see God's complete sovereignty and even his sovereignty over evil actions. And then on the other hand, we also see Pharaoh's personal rebellion against God, his, quote unquote, free choices in rebelling against God. We could ask the question, did God harden Pharaoh's heart, as Paul indicates here in the verses I just read, did God harden Pharaoh's heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart? And even in putting the question that way and making that dichotomy, I think we're making a false dichotomy, but that's how the question might arise. And if it were put that way, we could respond by saying, well, yes, it's both. God hardened Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart. God is in control. He has mercy on whom He wills, He hardens whom He wills, but that does not mean that we're robots. God's sovereignty does not cancel out our real choices for which we are held responsible. On the one hand, those whom God chooses for salvation, they will make a real choice for Christ and will repent and believe On the other hand, those whom God hardens, they too will make choices. They will decide again and again to harden themselves against God, to resist Him, to rebel against Him. That's the case with Pharaoh. If you go back and trace the narrative in the early chapters of Exodus, you'll see that the very first place where it mentions Pharaoh's hard heart, it says, it's the Lord saying, I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. That's in Exodus 4.21. And then there are several other places where it says that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. There are also places where it leaves it a bit ambiguous and just uses the passive voice in saying Pharaoh's heart was hardened. And then there are just a few places, just three I think, where it says, where it mentions Pharaoh's active role in this as well, where it says that Pharaoh sinned and hardened his heart. So it's both and. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh hardened his own heart. We get into trouble when we try to be more philosophically satisfying than biblical. God's ways are not going to fit into neat philosophical categories for us. Our focus should be on seeing God as He reveals Himself in Scripture, not trying to squeeze Him into our preconceived notions of who He should be or how He should act. God is free. He is absolutely free to do as He pleases. And in His freedom, He acts with a very clear purpose, which Romans 9.17 reveals to us. God has determined to make His power known and to proclaim His name in all the earth. This is God's overarching aim in all that He does. And there's nothing unfair about this. There's nothing unjust about this. As R.C. Sproul puts it very succinctly, he says, the elect get grace, the non-elect get justice. Nobody gets injustice. So you see, there's nothing unfair about this. Those who are saved, that's sheer mercy. Those who are condemned, that's what they deserve. That's what we all deserve, in fact. So if you're a believer, you have no right to boast in yourself that you are saved. You once had a hard heart toward the Lord, and you deserve to be left in that hardened Condition you also deserve the consequences that come along with that, but we have Received mercy God did not leave us to ourselves. He did not leave us there He rescued us praise be to God In Romans 9 19 as we move on here to the next few verses in Romans 9 Paul brings up the question. Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? And this directly states the question of how God's sovereignty and human responsibility relate. If God is sovereign in all of this, then how can he still hold human beings responsible for their actions? In the case of Pharaoh, for instance, if God hardened Pharaoh's heart, how can he still condemn Pharaoh for hardening his heart? Or thinking of the Canaanites in a similar way. If it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts, how can He still punish them, destroy them for their hard hearts? This is the tension we feel and our finite minds want to resolve this tension in some kind of simplistic manner. So we assume that one of these pieces needs to cancel out the other. or at least diminish the other in some way. And since we tend to cherish, almost idolize human free will, that's usually the one that wins out. The common viewpoint is that our free will limits God's sovereignty. In our day, that's a very common objection to what we're looking at here in Romans 9, what we've seen in Joshua 11. Now, I think a good place to start is to clarify what God's will is referring to in the question posed in Romans 9, 19. For who can resist His will? You see that question there? What does Paul have in mind there when he speaks of God's will? It's helpful here to recognize that the Bible speaks of God's will in a couple different ways. Theologians use various terms in making this distinction. All speak of God's revealed will and His secret will. Okay? God's revealed will is what we see throughout the Bible in all of God's guidelines, all His commands, all His instructions to us. God gives commands which He wants us to obey. It is His will for us to obey His commands. He is deeply saddened by our rebellion when we disobey His commands. He is saddened by that. In this sense, as we think about the Canaanites, we could think in terms of Ezekiel 33, 11, where the Lord says, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. That's Ezekiel 33, 11. So it doesn't make God happy to see people hardening their hearts against Him and going to destruction. This is not a pleasant thing to God. His revealed will, His revealed desire is that they repent and turn to Him and live. But there's a depth to God's purposes that is far beyond our comprehension. As we're seeing in these verses, Joshua 11 and Romans 9, God also ordains that certain individuals remain hardened against Him. And this we would understand in terms of God's secret will, His secret sovereign will. Such is the mystery of God's plans. He ordains that certain individuals be hardened, even though He does not find delight in their hardening in and of itself. What He does delight in is the overall outcome, which is the display of His own glory in all of its fullness, both in justice and in mercy. Think of Judas. God does not look at the heart of Judas and find pleasure in what he sees there. It does not warm God's heart to see that cold-hearted betrayal playing out as Judas did that. But God does find great joy, He does derive great delight in the redemption of many, many, many multitudes of people through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, which came about in the midst of these providential plans which Judas had a role in, and his betrayal of Jesus. Similarly, in the case of Pharaoh, God is not happy about Pharaoh's pride and stubbornness and rebellion, but God does rejoice to manifest His infinite power over such an evil leader as Pharaoh. And similarly in the case of the Canaanites, as we're seeing in the book of Joshua. God isn't giddy about seeing their hard-heartedness or their destruction, but He is very passionate, joyfully passionate about fulfilling His promises to Israel. So you see, there is a complexity to God's purposes. There is a complexity to God's will. There's also a mysterious relationship between God's sovereignty and our choices, such that even if we can't get our minds around it, both of these things do remain entirely intact in biblical revelation. We stick to the Bible and read the Bible, we see both of these upheld without one diminishing the other. Well, in which sense is the objection of Romans 9.19 referring to God's will? The objection is, why does He still find fault? And the basis for the objection is, for who can resist His will? Is that a reference to God's revealed will or His secret will? Well, it must be His secret will. Who can resist His will? Meaning, nobody can resist His will. And that would be a reference to God's secret sovereign will. Because people resist God's revealed will all the time. The commands of God, people resist those all the time. That's exactly what Pharaoh was doing. God's revealed will to Pharaoh was, let my people go. That was the Lord's command to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh resisted that, resisted it again, hardened his heart against that command from God. And even though his resistance to God's revealed will was at the same time exactly according to God's secret will. God ordained that Pharaoh, of his own volition, would remain hardened. and rebellious." So it's this secret will of God that is at the center of this question in Romans 9-19. God's sovereign decree of all things, including evil choices made by men and women. That's what this objection has to do with. If God planned all of this, if God is sovereign over all of this, then is everyone just a puppet? That's the question you see that Paul is raising in Romans 9-19. And it's important to notice that Paul, in his response to that question, does not try to modify the assumption which is the basis for the question. I hope you're tracking with me here. Look closely at Romans 9, 19. Paul completely agrees with the premise of the question. Namely, that nobody can resist God's sovereign will. Paul doesn't try to get God off the hook here by limiting his sovereignty. He takes it as a given that nobody can resist God's will. Every human decision, whether good or bad, is ordained by Almighty God. Now as we look at Paul's explanation for this, there are two pieces to the explanation. And I'm not going to go much longer here. I want to explain these two pieces of the explanation. It might be that neither of these pieces of the explanation is quite what we're looking for, but that's the case sometimes, isn't it, when we look to God's Word? The answer God gives is not quite what we were anticipating. Well, the answer here transcends the philosophical conundrums we can get ourselves into when we're trying to piece together divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The answer emphasizes Not trying to piece those together, but the answer, the response is God's overarching plans throughout history. So look at verse 22. The first piece of the explanation comes in verse 22, which tells of God's desire to show His wrath and to make known His power. That's very close to what God said to Pharaoh, quoted in verse 17, that I might show my power in you. God wants to manifest His glory, and part of how He does that is by defeating and destroying those who oppose Him. This is what verse 22 is talking about. God has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. This means that God has ordained that certain individuals will end up in hell. They will remain hardened against God and in the end they will experience God's wrath. But God is patient. Isn't it amazing that even that verse is speaking of God's patience? God is patient even with those individuals in the sense that He does not destroy them immediately. But instead, He allows them to live, allows them to continue in their rebellion against Him. Why would God do this? Well, Pharaoh is a fitting example again. God could have destroyed Pharaoh right at the start of that whole narrative, right at the first plague, or even before the first plague. God could have destroyed Pharaoh then. But He kept Pharaoh alive, allowed Pharaoh to continue rebelling. God ordained that Pharaoh's heart would continue to be hardened. For what purpose? So that God's power over Pharaoh would be seen even more clearly and gloriously. Similarly with the Canaanites. We keep seeing these parallels between the story of Pharaoh and the story of these Canaanites. The Canaanites, they weren't destroyed all at once. Joshua 11, 18, that I read earlier, it says Joshua made war a long time with all of those kings. And as we try to estimate the timeframe of the conquest, based on what we know about the timing of Caleb's life, it's estimated that the conquest may have taken about seven years. So this wasn't, you know, these battles didn't all take place in a month or two. This was years of taking the land. God could have destroyed all the inhabitants in a moment. He's capable of that. But instead, he glorified himself in battle after battle after battle, showing his power over each of those cities. But that's not all. That's just the first piece of the explanation. And that's not even the main objective here. God's patience with vessels of wrath is a secondary goal which serves a higher goal. Notice the purpose in Romans 9.23, which is the second piece. I said there were two pieces of the explanation. This is the second piece of it. Verse 23 says, "...in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy which He has prepared beforehand for glory." So verse 22 is the backdrop for verse 23. God showing His wrath is the backdrop to Him showing the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy. He demonstrates His wrath upon vessels of wrath, not merely as an end in itself, not because He delights in that in particular, but for the greater purpose of making known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy. I hope you see that. I hope you'll continue to look at those verses and see this about our God. So, we don't get a direct answer to our philosophical questions, but we get something better than that, actually. We get a revelation of God's eternal and mysterious plans. God wants to display the full spectrum of His divine and glorious attributes, including His justice, and especially His mercy. Especially His mercy. And forever in heaven, we will praise our God for these characteristics. And again, especially for His mercy. God doesn't delight in His wrath in the same way He delights in His mercy. But, if it wasn't for His wrath, what would His mercy mean to us? So as we come back to the story of the Israelites taking the land, in conclusion here now, We should marvel at the wonderful mercy of God to His people. He poured out His wrath on hard-hearted rebels. He ordained their hardness of heart, and they were also fully responsible, culpable. for their hardness of heart. They truly deserved it, as we all deserve to remain in that condition and deserve the consequences for that hardness of heart. But in stark contrast to that, out of that darkness, the Lord had mercy on a people whom He freely chose as His own. The take-home lesson for the Israelites as well as for us is summarized in Deuteronomy 9 verses 4 and 5, which say, do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you. This is the Lord speaking to the people through Moses right before they were going to go into the promised land. And the word is, don't say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, don't say in your heart, it's because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land. Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land. But because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that the Lord may confirm the word that He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." Let me speak briefly to unbelievers and then to believers as I close. If you're an unbeliever here this morning and you're paying close attention to what I've been saying, you might be wondering, well, if God has hardened my heart, then there's absolutely no hope for me. There must be no hope for me. And I might as well just give up because I'm going to go to hell no matter what. That's not at all the conclusion you should come to. As long as you're alive, there's hope. Because as long as you're alive, there's an opportunity for repentance. Remember what I said about Rahab? Remember what I said about the Gibeonites? There was mercy for them. They sought mercy and they found it. They received mercy from the Lord. That can be your story as well. Simply cry out to God for mercy. Ask Him to forgive you for your sins. Look to Jesus. Look to the cross. Look to His resurrection. There is hope. If you look to Him in faith and turn away from your sin, you will be saved. And for believers, this is a reminder of our utter dependency on God. It's a reminder of what He saved us from. It's a vivid picture that we should look at often, a picture of unrepentant rebellion. That's what we see among these Canaanite peoples. And in stark contrast to that, against the dark backdrop of that hardness of heart, We should be overcome with the brilliance of what God is doing in our lives now. He has given us new hearts. He has changed our desires so that we repent of sin. We hate sin. We respond to His warnings. We hope in His promises. We can live with confidence that He is for us, that He is with us, fighting for us in our battles against our spiritual foes. And we'll return to that theme and others next week as we continue to look at these chapters in Joshua 10-12. Let's pray. God, we've looked at some weighty things here in Your Word, in Joshua 11 and Romans 9. God, we want to be a people who don't avoid the hard portions of Your Word. I pray that you'll help us as we wrestle to understand these things as best we can and then at the end of the day to rest in the fact that you are God and you are free and you do what is right and good. And we are the recipients of your mercy. We praise you for that. We will praise you forever for that. May Jesus Christ, our Savior, be magnified in our hearts and minds as we reflect on these things. Amen.