We're reading from Joshua chapter 9. This is going to be the 36th message in this book. Joshua 9, and I'll begin reading at verse 3. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors, and they took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves, and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. When they went to Joshua to the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, we have come from a far country, now therefore make a covenant with us. Then the men of Israel said to the Hivites, perhaps you dwell among us, so how can we make a covenant with you? But they said to Joshua, we are your servants. And Joshua said to them, who are you and where do you come from? So they said to him, from a very far country your servants have come because of the name of the Lord your God, for we have heard of his fame and all that he did in Egypt and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan who was at Ashteroth. Therefore, our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us saying, take provisions with you for the journey and go to meet them and say to them, we are your servants. Now therefore, make a covenant with us. This bread of ours we took, hot for our provision from our houses on the day we departed to come to you. But now look, it is dry and moldy. And these wineskins which we filled were new, and see, they are torn. And these our garments and our sandals have become old because of the very long journey. Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. So Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live, and the rulers of the congregation swore to them." Let's pray. Father, as we dig into this, your Word, I pray your Holy Spirit would quicken the Word to our hearts and enable each one of us to grow in the ways you desire us to grow. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. When we looked at the last six verses of chapter 8, we saw that God had brought His people to a place of consecration, dependence, and commitment to His Word, and we saw that this turned them into a powerful, formidable, unstoppable force. And Satan had to act very quickly. to try to prevent what he could see was a disaster forming. And so we began looking at the first of three different strategies that Satan used to try to divert Israel and keep them from, you know, make them sidelined, basically. We spent most of our time looking at his strategy of intimidation, and we started looking at his strategy of deception. We didn't get very far. We just got into the first phrase or clause of verse 4, and then we'll look at his third strategy next week. But let's pick up where we left off. Verse four says about the Gibeonites, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors. And then you read on and you realize they pretended to be on Israel's side, to come from a far country and to be thrilled with what Israel was doing. I mean, they're amazing con artists. Have you ever had the wool pulled over your eyes by a con artist? I've had that happen more times than I would like to admit. I think the most embarrassing one for me happened up in Calgary, Alberta, when I was out on the streets witnessing, panning out tracks, trying to share the gospel with anybody who would listen to me, and there was one young man who gave the most remarkable play acting that I have ever seen. He pretended to be under deep, deep conviction of sin. And as I shared the gospel with him, he said, but you know, I'm addicted to drugs and I want help with this. He emptied his pockets, threw away his drugs. He asked for counseling. And anyway, he, had a conversion, it seemed like. So I brought him to the campus at Prairie Bible Institute, let him sleep on my bed. I slept on the floor. And we introduced him to the counselors on campus, and he had them completely buffaloed as well. And in the time that he was there, two weeks, he not only ripped me off of a bunch of money, but he sweet-talked a whole bunch of girls on campus out of money. And it was in talking to these girls we first began to realize that there's some lying that's going on here. So we began to do some background checking. And lo and behold, this guy is actually a criminal, and his probation officer said, oh, not again. This guy is a professional at this. He has had multitudes of conversions, and he's talked people out of cars and all kinds of things. Oh, talk about embarrassing. And I believe Satan used that fake conversion to divert me away from what God wanted me to do during those a couple of weeks. It was an intense two weeks. Don't think that every ministry that is thrown your way is a ministry God wants you to do. Satan is quite willing for you to do ministry, so long as it's not ministry that God has anointed you to do and has guided you to do. If you read Matthew 7, sometime you will see that Satan actually involves people in church work. Yes, church work. In that particular chapter, they prophesied in Christ's name, they cast out demons in Christ's name, and Christ says they weren't actually even believers. He says on the final day of judgment, he's going to say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. He didn't say they lost their salvation. He said he never knew them. They were fakes. And we want to look at hints in this chapter as to how to avoid being sidelined by that. And if you have been sucked in already, how to profit from your mistakes. Deception is something that we all continually face. There are unscrupulous salespeople who will lie about their product. There's politicians who will do the exact opposite of what they have promised. There are podcasters who will teach you false doctrine. Okay, those are the obvious ones. But there are also less obvious ways in which we can be taken in. And before we look at this passage and how to recover from the mistakes that we have made, I want to give a brief survey of some of the biblical illustrations of deception, because it presents deception as being much more subtle than we might at first imagine. And the first passage is Mark 4, verse 19, that speaks of the deception of riches. Now you might not have thought of tangible things like riches as in any way being able to deceive, but they can be deceptive. Christ was explaining part of the parable of the sower, and he said that the seed is the word of God that is sown in people's hearts. And then I'm going to begin reading at verse 18 to see his explanation of the seed choked out by the thorns and thistles. It says, now these are the ones sown among the thorns. They are the ones who hear the word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things entering in, choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. So the deceitfulness of riches chokes out the word and it becomes unfruitful. Riches can be deceitful because it can give you temporary joy when it's really only God who can give you true joy. It can give you a sense of security when it's only God who gives the true security. It gives you a sense of power when power can slip through your hands, the wealthiest people's hands, very, very quickly. And I dare say that the allurement of riches has probably been a greater con artist in some of your lives than these Gibeonites were in these leaders' lives. So many people go out and they buy something when they are depressed because there is a transitory euphoria and comfort that they get from getting something new. They feel better, but it's not the transformational work of God's grace. Ecclesiastes, if you read that book sometime, it will show you what a con artist riches can be. Doesn't have to be, but it can be. It can leave you empty if you do not have Christ first and foremost in your life. Ecclesiastes also shows the deceitfulness of entertainment. Many Christians fail to take the dominion that they should be taking because, you know, the lure of dopamine hits on social media or hours spent on gaming or watching too much YouTube or TV makes them feel good, actually gives them the illusion that they are taking dominion. Look at all of the points I've racked up on this game. But it's an illusion of fulfillment. It sidelines them from taking dominion. The pursuit of knowledge has deceived people into thinking that they're doing everything that needs to be done. These people must be spiritual because they study theology, talk theology, they write theology, and yet James 1.22 says, if you're hearers of the word and not doers, then you deceive your own selves. We think we're okay, and God says, no, you're really not. 1 Corinthians 15.33 says that you can be calmed out of your reward in heaven by succumbing to peer pressure. And this is actually one that I battled with for years. Likewise, We can be conned anytime we substitute the wisdom of man for God's ways of doing things. Now Moses initially, according to Hebrews, seems to be that he was taken in by the wisdom of Egypt, but he eventually threw that all away, tossed it away, so as to pursue the riches of Christ. So there are many subtle ways that we can be conned out of God's best for our lives, and we need to be on guard. The words deceit, deceive, or deception are used 163 times in the Bible. Now, we're going to use this passage here to illustrate at least some, not all, but at least some of the reasons why we can be conned. Why do we buy things that we later regret? Okay, why do we cave into temptations? I do have a much longer handout that you can download. Just talk to Daniel, he'll show you how to do that. But on some of the sales techniques that Satan does to try to get us into temptation, and that's specifically written against pornography. And you can download that. But I'm just going to go through about a dozen reasons here that we need to recognize we need to be on guard against. First comes packaging. Any unethical salesperson who's trying to sell a less than stellar product knows that he's got to package this product in a way that impresses your senses so that The customer will buy it before their rational research mode starts to kick in. Now, in this case, it was trying to get the Israelite leaders to see things that would make them believe that the Gibeonites really had sacrificed a lot to get in contact with the God of Israel. It was similar to the guy in Calgary who had me completely fooled. Now the packaging here says they've obviously traveled a long ways, and what the packaging hides is important as well. Nothing about this packaging reveals the fact that these people were one of the nearby enemies that God had doomed to destruction, whose cup of iniquity was already full. Now we'll pick up where we left off in the second sentence of verse four. And they took old sacks on the donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves, and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, we have come from a far country, now therefore make a covenant with us. Now, in advertising, packaging involves a number of things. I'll only mention a couple. It anticipates skepticism and it tries to give a superficial and yet an attractive answer to that skepticism. It associates the product with something non-threatening. And in this case, the packaging is designed to convince these leaders that they're going to be loyal to Israel, loyal to God, that they're from a far country. They pose absolutely no danger. They have nothing but praise and flattery for Israel. How many times have you made decisions because you have trusted your senses and the immediate impressions that those senses have made upon you? Most impulse buying is based on the packaging and is not really the result of doing good research on the content, okay? And most impulse decisions are bad decisions because the association at least seems good. I'll give you one biblical illustration. The prostitute being described in Proverbs 7 does not reveal to her customer the real dangers involved. No, she hides those very, very well and does everything she can to appeal to his concupiscence through all five senses. So she doesn't say, oh, by the way, I've got incurable VD, and I've just come off of my fourth customer today. and I want to destroy your marriage, and I've got a whole bunch of demons inhabiting me, and one of them is going to inhabit you as soon as you sleep with me. That would turn every customer, even pagans, off, right? That's not the packaging she wants. No, what she does is she says, I've just come back from worshiping God, verse 14. In other words, I'm a good woman, but I just happen to be tempted by you. And she says that she's married, implying she's not a loose woman, that her husband's gone on a trip, implying maybe she's lonely, maybe You know, there's no danger, because my husband's not going to come back. And she describes beautiful tapestries and perfumes and delightful atmosphere, and we can delight ourselves in love. And she uses EQ to build him up, make him feel very, very important. Packaging. It was all packaging. Well, in Proverbs 7, God does the exact opposite. He shows the true nature of the content that has been wrapped up so beautifully, and the content is not so pretty. Okay, the true content includes disease, demons, hell, dead men's bones, death, destruction, stinking filth, and evil. What he's saying to, it's a dad talking to his son, basically, telling his son, look out the window here, I'm gonna tell you exactly what's going on. He's training him how not to be taken in. And he wants them not to be taken in by packaging, realize there are dangers there. You young men who are tempted by pornography, I think it would be a helpful thing if you worked through the sheet that I mentioned earlier of sales resistance to porn. We saw last week that Satan also presents himself as an angel of light. Satan is described in Ezekiel 28 as being full of beauty. He knows how to package his product in such a way as to lure you in. And so if you are one who trusts your senses too much, and you make impulse purchases based on packaging, The likelihood is you are going to be making decisions in every other area of your life, not based on research and real thinking. And the way to deal with that is through prayer, research, transparency, accountability, getting wisdom from your elders, and avoiding the next technique, the next point. Next technique is in verse six. The men pressure the leaders to make a quick decision. Now this should have appeared extremely odd to them because for two nations to come into covenant with each other is such a momentous decision that I think it's ridiculous to expect anybody to be making a decision right there on the spot, and yet that's exactly what they're asking them to do. In effect, what they are saying is, we have sacrificed a lot to make this trip. You can tell by how old everything is and how worn out our shoes are. We can't afford to stick around much longer, so could you quickly make a covenant with us? It'll be worth it. We'll be your most faithful allies. I have learned from many hard knocks not to be pressured into making hasty financial decisions. Those are usually the worst. And what these leaders could have said was, oh, thanks. That's great. We can send some agents to your country to investigate what's happening and do some due diligence. After all, you're honest folks. You shouldn't mind due diligence, should you? But no, they didn't do that. There must have been some warning signals that were going off in their head, because they do say in verse 7, Perhaps you dwell among us, so how can we make a covenant with you? I mean, they're almost on to the truth, but they eventually get pressured into making a quick decision. A third way that we get taken in very frequently is to fail to think biblically. Now, I am amazed. These guys were not taken in on at least one point. But I'm amazed at the discernment that grows in people as they prayerfully study the scriptures. And Joshua applies the scripture well in verse seven. He knows he's not supposed to make a covenant with the Canaanites. And he's seeking to apply the scripture to rule out that possibility. So that's good. We can take a cue from Joshua on this. But here's the point I'm making here. Don't let yourself start with scripture and then get sidetracked. This is where I tended to stumble in my teens and into my 20s. I sometimes let people talk and talk and talk around the subject where I would forget where we'd even started. Cults are famous at really not answering your question. Look at their clever use of this device here. In verse 6, they claim to be from a far country. They don't specify, and that made the Israelites a little suspicious. So in verse 7, the men of Israel said to the Hivites, perhaps you dwell among us. So how can we make a covenant with you? Now, their answer is not an answer at all. Look at verse 8. But they said to Joshua, we are your servants. That's not an answer either, right? In the next phrase, Joshua tries again to get the identity of their nation out of them. And Joshua said to them, who are you? Where do you come from? So it's obvious that Joshua does not, he wants answers. He does not want evasions. And so they try a different tactic. They try talking for a long time to change the subject. And their speech from verses nine through 13 succeeds in finally getting the people to change the subject. We've got to learn to not be taken in by this deceptive tactic. It's used by cults. It's used by unbelievers who don't want to be under conviction of the law of God. That's exactly what the woman at the well did with Jesus, right? She changed the subject. Oh, by the way, and she brings up a very interesting, controversial question, so he'll get off of her conviction. It's used by Christians when they don't want to reveal their stand on issues. When I was in the PCA, I remember many times when people would be asked a question on feminism, full-preterism, evolution, other hot-button issues, and they would dance all around the question without ever answering the question. And this leads to the next point, which really is related. Many deceivers will get fact finders off their backs by letting them feel like they have done an adequate job of engaging in due diligence. I remember being frustrated with some men from Covenant Seminary who were coached by one of the professors there on how to not answer questions about evolution and other hot-button issues, but to give the appearance of answering by enthusiastically saying, I agree with the language of the Confession. Now, of course, they reinterpreted the language of the Confession, so it meant something different than the original writers, and they didn't tell you that. But most of the trusting pastors in our PCA presbytery would think, great, they're confessional. They affirmed the confession, they were satisfied. And I'll just give you one example. Almost the same language happened several times with different candidates, but on this occasion, I prefaced my question to the candidate by saying, I realize that the PCA allows for different views on creation, has different views of the six days. My question is not about which of those views you hold to. My question is, were there millions of years of death and suffering prior to Adam and Eve? Pretty straightforward question, should be easy to answer. He hadn't been prepped for that particular question by the professor, so his answer seemed a little bit odd, but he said, I believe the world was created in six days and all very good. Now, even though it wasn't an answer to my question, most of the elders in the presbytery thought, great, he's a six-day creationist. He believes the world was created in six days. I knew better. So I followed up with, yes, I understand that you hold to one of the views of six days. That's not my question. My question is, were there millions of years of death and suffering prior to Adam and Eve? He gave exactly the same answer. I followed up by saying, so by not answering my question, are you affirming that there were millions of years of death and suffering before Adam and Eve? He responded, I believe the world was created in six days and all very good. And after getting one more deflection, I told the presbytery, if this person does not have the integrity to answer a straightforward question on an exam, then I cannot vote for him. I am sorry. He has something to hide, I said. And he did. Come to find out, he was a full-fledged evolutionist. Full-fledged evolutionist. He didn't want to say so because of all the six-day creationists that were in the presbytery. Now, he didn't do a good job of hiding his position, but he'd been carefully coached on how to make presbytery feel like they had done due diligence in asking questions. Now, some people were much more sophisticated than him on that. Salespeople are very adept at giving you tons of information. It's just not the information you need. It's information they want you to have, right? Now, the next technique is to appear humble and eager to serve. Verse 8 says, But they said to Joshua, We are your servants. Although that was not answering the question, they wanted to appear humble and eager to serve. I mean, what enemy is going to come to you and say, we like what you're doing, you know, we want to be your servants, we want to be in a subservient role to you. Now, I should remind you that God had already made provision for individual Canaanites to defect from their nations and to profess faith in Christ. In fact, in the last verses of chapter 8 we already saw a number who had done so. In verses 33 and 35 it speaks of strangers who covenanted with God at that ceremony. These are former pagans who had defected from their nations and who had embraced the God of Israel. So it's not as if God's arms were closed to repentant Canaanites, not at all. God's arms were open to any and all who repented. But what the Gibeonites were doing was different. They were bypassing repentance. They were seeking to get Israel to blindly covenant with a nation as a nation without ascertaining whether the nation was a believing nation. So their deception was not consistent with repentance, at least not at this stage, and was designed to keep their national status intact. And as we've pointed out before, every one of the nations was declared by God to have their cup of iniquity so full that they were worthy of judgment. It was a very, very corrupt culture. And so these Gibeonites were worthy, and they should have really done investigation, even if they didn't know where they were coming, at some future date. And Israel in later history fell into this sin repeatedly. When another nation pretended humility of taking a subservient role, what we call a vassal role, so there's the Sutheran is in charge, and then the vassal country would be underneath him. A lot of these later kings thought, well, a nation in covenant with you is safer than a nation that's fighting against you. And God says, no, it is never safe to covenant with God's enemies. Those of you who are visitors missed the previous sermons that pointed out that God actually made this backfire on Satan. Satan intended this to really take Israel down. And God is eventually, through their serving at the temple, constant exposure to the gospel, they get converted, and for the next 700 years are incredibly faithful people. We'll get into that another time. But at this stage, they were saving their skin, not saving their souls. Now, obviously, Joshua's not taken in by such a brief answer because he repeats his question. And Joshua said to them, who are you? Where do you come from? And so the next strategy of deception was to downplay danger. Joshua was obviously nervous about whether these ambassadors were from a nation under God's judgment. So the Gibeonites downplayed that precise danger, verse nine. So they said to him, from a very far country, your servants have come. And this has been Satan's strategy all down through time. Satan told Eve, don't worry, you shall not surely die, right? The harlot of Proverbs 7, downplays the dangers. Pornographers appeal to curiosity by posting something that's maybe not as serious. Tobacco companies minimize the negative impact that cigarette smoking can have on you. Casinos don't advertise all the losses that an individual has sustained over the previous seven months. All they point to is the $300 he won this time, or a thousand, whatever it is. Well, in most cases, they've lost way more money before than what they gained in this thing here. So it's important that we teach our children to be skeptical of invitations that promise no cost. There is always a cost, whether the cost is your time, energy, reputation, money, or something else. There is always a cost, and it's important that we know for sure what that cost is. The next ploy is to win trust by identifying with God and with the Israelite cause. Verse 9 continues their speech. Because of the name of the Lord your God, for we have heard of his fame and all that he did in Egypt and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan who was at Ashteroth. Now they didn't mention any of the recent battles because a faraway nation wouldn't have known, something that just happened recently. So they only mentioned the battles that were done months before on the other side of the Jordan and the miracles back in Egypt. And they use the name of God, Yehoah. If you see Lord in all capital letters, that's the name Yehoah. How did they know that name? We aren't told. Could be they had scouts, you know, that saw the covenant in chapter eight. In any case, winning trust by identifying with your core issues is a common way for advertisers to get you to click on clickbait. One of my aunts got married to a man who identified with her core values, but did so deceptively. He joined the church. and then joined the choir, but he wasn't a believer. He did so just to get a Christian woman who would be submissive. And as soon as he married my aunt, he quit going to church and he told her, well, I wasn't a Christian anyway. I just got there, went there to get married. And he had been falsely appealing to her core issues, what she valued in order to get married. Now, why do I share stories like this? Well, I want you to have a degree of skepticism. Not so much skepticism that you become cynical, but enough that you have your guard up. Last week we saw God's repeated warnings to be on guard. So online criminals who want to drain your bank accounts, they're not going to reveal what their real identity is or what their intent is. You've probably gotten some of these emails. It looks exactly like the email that comes from your bank. The logo, the name, everything looks exactly like it's coming from your bank unless you click on the name and see what the real name is. And they will say something like this. This is your bank notifying you that someone has tried to hack your account. Please click this link. to log into your bank account and change your password. So they're pretending to be identifying with your interests, having concerns for your well-being. And how many people have given away their bank credentials after clicking on that link and then had their entire bank account drained of its money? Okay, the internet's a dangerous place with Gibeonites pretending to have your interests, to agree with your causes, who give links that they hope you'll click on in order to gain information from you or maybe to lead you to a porn site. So I'm not trying to make you overly paranoid, just cautious. We live in a world of sin and the Bible cautions us to be on guard. Another strategy used is stroking the ego of these leaders in verse 11. Therefore, our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us saying, take provisions with you for the journey and go to meet them and say to them, we are your servants. Now, therefore, make a covenant with us. Now, in effect, they were saying, wow, God has used you so powerfully. We have so much respect for you. It would be a privilege to be your servants. I mean, whoa, that was really stroking. Now, they did it in the context of lifting up God's name, so it sounded good, but let me tell you something. Pride is a deadly enemy to true biblical discernment. Pride is an enemy to discernment, and if you start feeling your pride being stoked, watch out. Commentators point out that the offer to be servants meant that they were offering to be in a subservient relationship, a vassal relationship. And among other things, that could easily have been an appeal to pride. Next, in verses 12 through 13, the Gibeonites played on their sympathies by appearing to be weary travelers who had been on a long journey, who have made huge, huge sacrifices just for the benefit of Israel, right? And the implication is, if Israel rejects this offer, their sacrifices, their love for Israel is being spurned. Have you ever had people manipulate your sympathies this way? I mean, narcissists can be expert at manipulating empathetic people and abusing your sympathy and generosity. Actually, they probably use all of these strategies at one time or another, like bending the truth and making you feel bad about their situation, even though they've been abusing you, making you feel so bad about them that you protect them from their bad behavior. But if you are led by emotion, that's the only point I'm wanting to make, if you are led by emotion, you are gonna be so easy to be manipulated in your sympathies. And the remedy is to learn to please God first and foremost and to act on principle even if it hurts. And one good book that can help you to do that is Ed Welch's book, When People Are Big and God is Small. I've recommended that a number of times. The next issue is playing on our desires to be polite. I have made bad decisions in the past because I didn't want to be rude. These leaders, no doubt, didn't want to act like jerks. They were offered food. And you've got to understand that the pressure is not like here. Back in those days in Middle Eastern culture, it was extremely offensive to be offered food and to turn it down, to be offered hospitality and to turn it down, even if the food was bad, okay? There was huge social pressure to accept hospitality and tokens of friendship. How many people have been taken in because they're embarrassed to ask the right questions because they just don't want to appear to be impolite? I have to confess, I hate controversy. I hate appearing impolite, but that makes me vulnerable, and I've had to learn to compensate for that. And again, Ed Welch's book was super, super helpful for me. But Paul takes away that excuse when he says this. For do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ." And in the same book, he points to Peter to show how even godly leaders like Peter can be fooled in this direction because they succumb to this peer pressure and wanting to be pride. So what happened was that Peter left eating with the Gentiles to go eat with the Judaizers because he did not want to offend the Judaizers. And the irony of it is, in the process, he offended the Gentiles, and Paul, and God. There is always going to be somebody you will offend, and the point is, you've got to ask God, which offense do I accept, okay? And so you can't allow that to be driving you. It's a really dangerous area. Okay, a related technique is when people offer friendship and you feel bad rebuffing the friendship because you can't think of a good reason to rebuff it. It feels rude to defriend somebody on Facebook. I've had to do it a number of times because of the bad influence that that person was having on my other friends. Okay, the first part of verse 14 says, then the men of Israel took some of their provisions. They were being polite, they were accepting the signs or tokens of friendship. Many commentaries agree with Calvin in thinking that eating bread was ratifying a suzerainty, vassal relationship via covenant. Now whether that's true or not, at a minimum in that verse, sampling their food is at least trying to be friendly, to not act needlessly hostile. Proverbs 27.6 says, faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. But the fundamental issue that led to their deception can be seen in the second part of verse 14. Verse 14 says, then the men of Israel took, or as some translate it, sampled some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. Now, I agree with Calvin that sampling their provisions was actually what the next verse talks about, of entering into covenant with them. They entered into covenant without seeking the Lord's guidance. And this was a clear violation of Numbers 27, 18-21, which said that Joshua was supposed to inquire of the Urim and the Thummim for all his goings out and his comings in. God's Word had already given them instructions that they needed for taking the land, but this guidance helped to apply the Scripture to specific situations. It gave wisdom for navigating the specifics. And the Bible promises us guidance to apply the principles of Scripture to the specifics of life. I'll just give you one example. Colossians 1.9 prays that everyone in that church, quote, may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. And what's the purpose for this guidance? The next verse says, that they may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. So what's going on here is that the Spirit of God takes the Scriptures we have internalized and helps us to apply those Scriptures to the concrete issues of life. You cannot separate guidance from Scripture, but we need the Spirit's guidance to avoid the deceptions of modern Gibeonites. By the way, when you ask God for guidance, The Lord will many times expose your own double-mindedness. He's done this to me a number of times. In fact, even this morning in our devotions, Kathy and I were reading, or singing actually, Psalm 139. And I'm thinking, okay, right there is the same thing where it's asking God to keep us from deceiving ourselves. We have this tendency to deceive ourselves. And I'll use myself as an illustration. When I was a kid, I remember one time I was arguing with my dad for a couple of minutes. And it was on an issue I was just convinced I was in the right on. This was a very legitimate disagreement, and we weren't getting anywhere on this argument. So my dad says, you know what? Let's pray about this, and you can start praying. Now, I, to this day, don't remember what the argument was about, but I remember feeling how unfair this was when he asked me to start praying. As soon as I started praying, I knew I was wrong. It was just almost instantaneous because I was able to hide my double-mindedness, my bad attitudes and motives from myself and from my dad. I just couldn't hide them from God. That was a case of really not wanting to know God's will. And that's a sign of being on dangerous footing. If you sense that you really don't want to know what the truth is, because it might be tough, it might be embarrassing or whatever, you are on dangerous ground, brother or sister. 2 Timothy 4 says that those who are out of fellowship with God sometimes want to be deceived. It's strange. But that's what unconfessed sin eventually will do to us. Uncrucified pride will do that to us. Uncrucified bitterness will do that to us. We want to be deceived. We prefer to remain deceived than in the dark. 2 Thessalonians 2, 8 through 12 says that sometimes we lack a love for the truth. Let me read that. It speaks of, quote, deception because they did not receive the love of the truth. So here's my question to you. Do you love the truth that God's going to bring to you from the scripture even before you've heard it, no matter how painful that truth is going to be? Do you love the truth? If not, you are going to be vulnerable to deception, including self-deception. But if you truly want the truth, God's guidance will expose whatever has been hindering your discernment. He'll open your eyes. He'll help you to think more biblically. And that's what true guidance is all about anyway. It's thinking more biblically in the concrete details of life. Well, finally, they entered a covenant that they should not have entered. Verse 15 says, So Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live, and the rulers of the congregation swore to them. Now we'll see in the future that this covenant got them into big trouble, but once made, they were bound by it. I have talked to couples that have wanted a divorce because, you know, a couple years into their marriage, they have discovered things about each other they didn't like so well. And I remember, in particular, one lady that I was dialoguing with, and I said, no, you do not have any grounds for divorce, even pointed to this particular passage. But she says, but I hate him. And I responded, you know, the Bible even commands you to love your enemies. You just need to learn to love. Don't be overcome by evil, overcome evil with love. This covenant was so binding that when Saul sought to slaughter some of the Gibeonites 400 years later, because on the pretext that he was cleansing the land of Canaanites, I'm just obeying God's word, but it was a selective obedience. God treats Saul and his family that was involved in that as guilty of murder and covenant breakers. God clearly honored this covenant even 400 years later, and there's evidence that we'll look at next week that over more than 700 years, these Gibeonites actually were faithful to God, more faithful than Israel was to God. some pretty remarkable people among the Gibeonites. But we should make sure that we are never at peace with what God is at war with. As I mentioned last week, what you watch on TV can imply a peace treaty with the worldview of that movie, unless you discuss it afterwards and say what you disagree with. Turn it into an educational opportunity. The unstated assumption that children might make when you state that you love a movie is that you endorse everything in it. So we must be very careful with what our children see us at peace with and what things they realize we are still at war with. They need to understand the clear antithesis that we have with the world. Now next week, we'll look at what to do when you've blown it. And I think every one of us has blown it more than once. But for now, it's sufficient to say, begin to recognize, have a heightened alert, be on guard, begin to recognize the kinds of things that can lead us into making ungodly decisions. Jesus said, take heed that you do not be deceived, Luke 21.8. Or as Paul worded it, let no one deceive you by any means. Second Thessalonians 2.3. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the illustrations of the principles of your word in these historical books. And I pray that as we continue to dig into the book of Joshua, that our own lives would be motivated to be more and more conformed to your holy word. We love you and we hate the fact that We sometimes stray from you. We sometimes deceive our own hearts We sometimes don't want to know the truth and I pray father you would give us a holy love for your truth truth that we would be sold out to you and to your kingdom and I pray this for every one here and all of these churches that are represented here. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen