Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Joshua Any Different Than the Taliban? | Joshua 10:16-28

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilman. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the Book of Joshua. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. This week, alongside many Americans, I've watched.

Starting point is 00:00:34 the horrifying videos of Afghans trying to escape their country before the Taliban takes over. Two videos, I mean, literally, they made me feel sick. The first was a mother, and she's pressed up against a wall with barbed wire on the top of it, and there are American soldiers on top, and they're reaching over. And she begins to lift up her baby, begging this military officer to take her baby, and he finally reaches down. He grabs the baby by an arm, its diapers falling off. It looks incredibly painful, and he lifts this baby.

Starting point is 00:01:04 over the wire and he hands it to a fellow soldier. As a parent, I can't even imagine being so desperate for my child's safety that I entrust her to someone I don't know from a different country's military force, but that's obviously where this mom was. There's another video which a lot of people saw, and it's several Afghanis clinging to the landing gear of an American plane as it's taking off. And once it gets airborne, you can see them fall off of the airplane, tiny little dots crashing hundreds of feet to the ground. I mean, how desperate do you have to be to risk something like that? And as I watched it, I couldn't help but remember similar scenes from September 11th. I will never forget being a teenager, I'm watching the news, and it was horrifying.

Starting point is 00:01:47 You see these tiny little dots falling from the Twin Towers, and the news anchors say that it's people jumping in desperation. In the aftermath of 9-11 and now the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Christians are faced with tremendous. tremendously hard questions. How could a good God allow these kinds of things to happen? How can he not intervene? And the Bible's answer is dark in its realism. God chose to limit himself the minute he gave humans free will. The minute he allowed Adam and Eve to be thinking, choosing beings and not just robotic automaton's. He took a tremendous risk. And his goal was that they would follow him, that they would fill the world with love and justice, beauty, and mercy. But of course, the result is quite different. We've built violent empire after violent empire. We've abused the weak,

Starting point is 00:02:41 discriminated against the powerless, crushed the poor. And yet the Bible is the most sustained critique of human power in human history. The first five books of the Bible set Israel in opposition to the megalomaniacal child-murring Pharaoh of Egypt. The prophets, they cry foul, against the Israelite kings who bend their knees to idols and carry out the injustices that idolatry always demands. God's answer to the suffering caused by humans who are redefining good and evil how they want it to be, his answer is that he never gives up. He calls Abraham and Israel and eventually the one true Israelite, Jesus, to reboot his mission, to fill the world with Eden, with love, with justice, and mercy. God's ultimate answer is that he became a human.

Starting point is 00:03:29 He became a poor human who spent his entire life as a non-citizen under the occupying forces of Rome, who experienced desperation like few of us even know, who was tried under false charges and wrongly sentenced to an excruciating death on a cross, where he literally became human sin and God poured out his wrath on that sin as he hung there, broken, and betrayed. God's answer to suffering is to suffer himself to end all suffering and to set forth a promise that all things will one day be set back into joint, that there will be justice for the Taliban and every oppressor. And yet there will be forgiveness for those of us who come to him and resurrection into a new reality where life is really the way it's supposed to be. But there is another question that comes to mind as we hear these events, especially as we read Joshua. how is the warfare of the Israelites in the Bible really any different than what we saw with ISIS or now with the Taliban what's done in the name of Allah? Well, let's just read a passage to highlight

Starting point is 00:04:35 how challenging this question is. Joshua 10, verse 23. So they brought the five kings, these are five Canaanite kings, the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmouth, Lashish, and Eglon. And when they had brought these Canaan kings to Joshua, he summoned all the men of Israel and said to the army and to the commanders who had come with him. Come here and put your feet on the neck of these kings. So they came forward and placed their feet on their necks. Joshua said to them, do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, be strong and courageous. This is what the Lord will do to all the enemies who you are going to fight. Then Joshua put the kings to death and exposed their bodies on five poles and they were left hanging on the poles until evening. Now look, in half of a 10-minute Bible talk,

Starting point is 00:05:21 hard to address challenging passages like this. But let me offer a few brief thoughts that I think explain why what happened in Joshua is radically different than what we see happening in holy wars, which are advocated by other religions. I want to look at seven different things. First, there's the geographical angle. Israel's war is only appropriate within a specific geographical space, a space that God gave to Israel. They are not commanded to take other lands. In fact, they're commanded against taking other lands. Second, there's the holy distinction angle. The conquest is for the sake of Israel's distinctive morality, worship, and calling. The threat of becoming idle worshippers, like the nations that they were kicking out, well, it was dire. And Israel couldn't be God's

Starting point is 00:06:07 bridgehead of justice into the world if it committed idolatrous injustice itself. It had to be different. And that's why the conquest had to happen. Number three, there's the justice angle. Yahweh, according to Genesis 15, gave the Canaanites hundreds of patient years to repent of their abuse and murder of children, their sexual abuse of women, and eventually Yahweh decided to bring justice against them for their wrongdoing. It's worth noting, by the way, that Yahweh also judges Israel without impunity. And so his judgment is not against an ethnic group. His judgment is against all injustice. Number four, there's the rhetorical angle. In ancient near eastern warfare literature, hyperbole, exaggeration, that's often used.

Starting point is 00:06:52 And so these wars were likely not as total as they sound. Number five, there's the chronological angle. Historically, this kind of war, it only took place largely within a single generation. And later wars were clearly condemned by the prophets. This means that Israel was not called to an ongoing holy war, but to a one-time war in the land of Canaan. Okay. Number six, there is the end-time. justice angle. You see, at the end of time, God will judge the living and the dead. And there's a

Starting point is 00:07:23 in which what happens in Joshua is that God is carrying out that end time justice against the Canaanites. He's carrying that end time justice out in the present. Now, this is something only God gets to do because God's the only one who knows how things end. Number seven, there's the universal blessing angle. See, God, in his sovereign goodness, he uses this particular act of justice on the Canaanites to ultimately bless all of the nations. Judgment is not the end of the story from planet Earth because God works through Israel to rescue all creation. I want to give you a closing thought.

Starting point is 00:08:01 In light of the news, we can't help but feel horrified by the depravity of humanity. That's a depravity that's out there and it's a depravity that's in my own heart. The world and myself, we're both more corrupt and broken than we ever really want to admit. And yet Jesus did not let the wheel of violence carry forward like an endless cycle, a succession of death and conquest and destruction. He threw himself onto that wheel and it crushed him. It killed him. But then he rose again.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Ever since that day, the wheel of violence, the wheel of destruction, the wheel of conquest, that wheel has stopped. And through his resurrection power, he is actively working towards turning it back. What's happening now is tragic. but it's temporary. It's not ultimate. Jesus has risen again. And that's our hope, not just for ourselves, but for all creation. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Joshua Any Different Than the Taliban? | Joshua 10:16-28

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