Genocide or Judgment?

Transcript

So yeah, so a nice cherry subject of genocide in the Bible does God command it. So, you know, sometimes we come across these passages in the Bible that we can be stumped at, that we don't quite understand, certainly not with the casual reading. I know for myself, there was always that account of that guy, Uzzah, if I'm pronouncing his name, right, who carries the Ark of the Covenant, and then he stumbles and he touches the Ark so he doesn't fall, and he's stricken dead by God, because, you know, that's what God commanded. No one can touch it. And I don't know how many times I read it, but every time I read it, I would say, geez, it just doesn't, the guy was just trying to keep it so the Ark wouldn't fall. He was just trying to steady it. It was just a reaction. And I used to think, boy, that's pretty harsh. And, you know, like I said, I read it several times, and that's what I would say. And then finally, I was like, well, you know, there must be a reason. I've got to take a deeper dive, and that's what we have to do. And, of course, once you do that, you go, oh, okay, I see why you did it. Makes perfect sense. Surprise, surprise, God is righteous, and I am not. So, you know, this one, when we come to the genocide, as some refer to it as, it's that, you know, the conquest of the Canaanites. And many like to say the atheists like to use this as ammunition. How could you serve a god that would commit genocide like that? I would never. And they get on their high horse and say that they're more righteous than God, because that's what we're saying when we're calling out God's righteousness, is we're saying we're more righteous than God, and we know, well, that's just foolish. So we're going to take a closer look, and, you know, maybe, you know, you've come across these passages, and, you know, you kind of wince a little bit. So maybe we can answer some questions about that for your own purposes, or if someone ever asks you, you know, why did God do that, you'll be able to give an answer. Hopefully, that's the goal anyway. If you've got any questions along the way, I don't know how long the class is, but we have a lot to cover. But if you have questions, feel free to interrupt me. Okay, here we go. So, you know, so this guy over here, Richard Dawkins, he is an atheist. He's a scientist, self-proclaimed brilliant man.

He's an author of The God Delusion, and in his book, he goes about and says that there's God of the Old Testament, and he's angry, and he's violent, and you can see the adjective he uses there in his quotes, and he says a lot more. And, you know, God commits genocide, and he, you know, lays out all that stuff that God does, kills the innocent. And how could anyone worship God like that? And he's very popular among, like, the college crowd, because, you know, he's a scientist, so he must be brilliant, and they tend to follow, and they quote him quite, quite often. And the other man over here, Frank Turk, he's a Christian man. He's got a lot of, like, little YouTube videos that, through the years, I've watched a few of them, and he usually takes on atheists. And, of course, one of the questions will always be that angry, violent God of the Old Testament, and what he did to the poor Canaanites. And so, Frank's, he's a good debater. He will, you know, he takes on, he goes to colleges, he'll take on the students, professors will come on there as well, and he'll give some of the answers that we'll look at tonight that are pretty straightforward stuff, like, hey, it's God, he's the creator. He gives life, and he can take it away. And yeah, sure, we're fine with that. God can do that. What is all-powerful? And then he'll say things like, and, you know, the people of Canaan were evil. And we'll take a look at that as well. And then, you

know, sometimes, you know, he also goes to Christian churches, and this will be the big topic, and he'll answer their questions, and this will be the topic that many people will bring up, right? They can't reconcile the God of the Old Testament, who's violent, to the God of the New Testament, i.e. Jesus, because, you know, Jesus only talks about love and forgiveness, and he claims that it's one of the biggest problems with Christians leaving their faith, is they can't reconcile the God of the Old Testament and God of the New Testament. Now, of course, we know that there is only one God, and that's not the reason why people leave. We know why people leave, but he says it's a big problem. So he's got an ace in the hole. If he feels his audience isn't really, you know, satisfied with his answers that, hey, God's powerful, he can do it, the people are wicked, and that's why. He says, listen, the problem is the children, isn't it? And they go, yeah, the children is the problem. And he says, well, listen, you know, when God kills, no one really dies anyway. We're just moved to a different place, right? It's the doctrine of the immortal soul. And then he finishes off with, and of course, babies, they go to heaven, and they're in a better place. And, you know, and, you know, that's the ace in the hole to satisfy, you know, tell the people what

they want to hear. So we're going to touch on a few of these things, but we're going to dig a little bit deeper into it. So these are the passages, and a casual Christian, a casual read of this, you know, you can see why it's, you know, again, we kind of wince when we come across this. This is when they're going to possess the land. This is what God tells them, right? When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land where thou goest to possess it, and has cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Pessarites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou. And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shall mercy unto them. So, okay, that's pretty harsh. And then with Saul and the Israelites, God says, now go and smite Amal. I can utterly destroy all that they have, spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infants, suckling, ox, sheep, camel, and ass. And again, it's like, wow, with no context to this, without digging deeper, you're thinking, wow, this is, you know, what happened to love thy neighbor, and thou shalt not kill? Why does God do this? And, you know, the atheists will say God is immoral for doing this. He's a bloodthirsty God that does not deserve anyone's worship. So first of all, we're going to define what a genocide is. Okay, the United Nations in 1948, for some reason, decided that they needed to come up with a term for this. Well, of course, that was following World War II and the Holocaust. So the General Assembly of the United Nations came up with this definition. In the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, ethnical, racial, or religious group, such as killing members of the group, causing seriously bodily or mental harm to any members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent then the group possibly transferring children of the group to another group.

So this was the definition. And just, you know, keep that in mind. Why does God

tell Israel to destroy the Canaanites and the Amalekites? Is it because of their nationality, their ethnicity? Is it because of their race or because of their religion? So these are just a few examples of some relatively recent genocides in history. Of course, the Holocaust, right? Nazi Germany's goal was to exterminate the Jews from Europe because they were Jews. In Rwanda, the Houthi group tried to exterminate the Tutsi group. Why? Because they weren't part of their group. In the Armenian Genocide, the Armenians lost half of its population to the Turks. In Bosnia, the acts of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs against the Muslims because they were Muslim for no other reason. So does this line up with what God has done? Of course, the answer is going to be no. So in Exodus 23, when speaking of driving these people out, God says, I will send whom that's before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite Canaanite and the Hittite before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee within one year, at least the land become desolate. But little by little, I will drive them out from before thee until they'll be increased and inherit the land. And I will set the bounds in the Red Sea into the Sea of the Philistines, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and thou shalt drive them out before thee. So he doesn't say to slaughter them. He doesn't say to follow them no matter where they go and kill them. The instruction is to drive them out of the land. And he even uses hornets. He says, I sent the hornets in Joshua 24. I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, even the two kings of their Amorites, not with your sword and not with your bow, but the hornets. Now, I read a little bit about the hornets. They said they were quite vicious back in these days. But unless you were stung many, many times, they probably wouldn't kill you. But you wouldn't want to be around them. So you would leave. And that's what God was trying to do. It's not a genocide. He was trying to drive out the inhabitants of the land. And he was going to do it. And I think this is important. He was going to do it little by little. This wasn't an ambush. This wasn't just this big invasion of the land that the people had no idea what was coming. They knew what was coming. And they knew why. And they knew who it was from. And it was done little by little so that they would know there was going to be a decision on the part of these nations on what they would do. So this is the law of warfare, the law of Moses' Deuteronomy. God says, When thou comest near unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee an answer, a feast then open unto thee, then it shall be that the people therein shall be bond-servants unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then besiege it and smite every male by the edge of the sword. Now this is a little different. And then it goes on to say, the women and the children of the Catalan, all that is in the city thou shalt take for yourself,

thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are far off from thee. So it's a little different than what he said to the Canaanites. This is for other nations that they would come into contact with. Make peace to them. The war, if they want war, okay, we'll smite them, but only the males. Take the women and the children, and maybe we can answer to that in a second, because then he goes on to say, you know, not the cities, however, that are in the land of Bramas, in the land of Canaan, but of these cities, of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. Thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Baratheists, Jebusites, as the Lord thy God commanded thee. So for those cities, for some reason, it's utter destruction. Some can be delivered, the women and the children, from the other nations, but not these nations. The God says that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods, so you should sin against the Lord your God. So God is looking to protect his people. He wants them removed so his people don't learn from them in turn on God to sin against him, to perform these abominations. So what were the abominations that were being done in the land of Canaan? Incest, child sacrifice, bestiality, homosexuality, temple prostitution, adultery, rape. Now you might think, butch, come on, that's a little graphic. It's a Bible class. Well, this stuff is in the Bible. God warned his people not to do these things.

And, you know, it is an adult Bible class. And I'll tell you that, you know, archaeologists have found writings from the people living in the land of Canaan. Poetry, writings of certain rituals. I've read a few. I will not share those. You can look at these things up here. I think these are you can let your imagination run wild and you'll fall short of the abominable things that they did. Men and women both participated in this. Their religion was sexually dominated and depraved, but it was so completely ingrained into their society. It was universally accepted. People weren't complaining that things had to change. They accepted it as the norm, so that all had to be destroyed. So some say, you know, God did, you know, God did these things. Then when pointed out these things, they said, yeah, those things are terrible. However, I mean, it couldn't have been all of society. There must have been just a few that were doing this. But what about all the innocent people? Well, there weren't any. It was so ingrained into the society, so accepted, right? God does not kill the righteous with the wicked. He delivers the righteous. He doesn't destroy them with the wicked. So the fact that God destroyed everything tells

us that there was nothing worth to be redeemed in these nations. Well, yet, when we look back at those other nations afar off, save the women and the children. There was something that could be redeemed there. They weren't too far gone. Even the children of the Canaanites were too damaged to be allowed to be brought into the nation of Israel because it would end up corrupting the nation. The damage was already done to the children. They thought that this was normal. You know, sometimes we think, and I'm far from certainly no expert on this, but I think we naively think that if you take a child from an abusive household, no matter how old or how long the abuse has been going on for, and you're going to bring them into a loving home, and you think that that makes everything right, and I think sometimes we maybe we think that, but there's already been a lot of damage that's already been done. So was it for their religion? You know, hey, that was part of their religion. God did kill them for their religion. No, because he says, for all these abominations that were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled, and he says, and if you defile the land, Israel, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you. So this, you know, Israel going in there to destroy these people, if that's what they chose, if they chose to stay in the land, if they chose war, they were going to be destroyed. It was going to be a lesson, right, for not only other nations around, but for Israel as well. This is what's

you perform, sin against me, and perform these abominations, and sadly, we'll see that that's exactly what they did. So why did God kill them? Well, he tells us, it's not because of your righteousness, Israel, or your integrity that you're going to take possession of their land, but on account of the wickedness of the nations. It had nothing to do with their race, with their religion, other than it was depraved, nothing to do with their ethnicity, their nationality. It had to do with their wickedness, and the Lord your God will drive them up before you to accomplish what he swore also to the fathers, right, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was time to bring the seed of Abraham into the promised land, because God keeps his promises. But the reason that these people are going to be removed, that are going to be taken to the sword, is because of their wickedness. So it's not genocide, it's divine judgment. And guess what? God's a judge. This is what God does. He will repay them for their sins, destroy them for their wickedness. The Lord our God will destroy them. He makes the nations great and then destroys them, right? God uses Israel here to judge the Gentile nations. He also uses the Gentile nations to judge his people. And then he punishes those nations like Babylon, right? He used Babylon, built them up to make them great, and they punish Israel. That's how he uses them. And then he says, you know what? You can't do that. I'm going to destroy you now. I'm punishing you for what you did to my people. He's a judge. I will also gather all nations and bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and we'll judge them there for my people, for my heritage, Israel. So God judges the nations for their wickedness and for how they treat his people, Israel. So here we see in 2 Kings, so the people of Israel were taken from their homeland into exile, into Assyria. Yeah, they had done exactly what God warned them not to. Don't learn of these nations,

or you'll be vomited out of the land. Well, they sinned against God, they worshiped the idols, and they sacrificed their children. And God did exactly what he said he would do. He vomited them out of the land, and many were slaughtered. So judgment, right? We don't really like judgment, right? We shouldn't be surprised. This shouldn't be a big tricky question. What is God doing to these people? Because we're introduced to judgment right off the bat in Genesis, right? With the

wickedness of man was great in the earth. No surprise. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. He warned them. He preached. No one wanted to hear. They were wicked. God brings judgment. That's what God is. Now therefore the Lord thy God, he is God, faithful God, which keepeth the covenant and mercy unto them that love him, keep his commandments for a thousand generations and repayeth them that hate him to their face to destroy them. He will not be slack to him that hateth him. He will repay him to his face. You want to disregard God? You want to hate his people, Israel? Well, he's going to judge you. That's just a fact of life. Someone's going to, well, I don't like judgment. Well, you know what? I don't like the fact that we die. But guess what? That's part of the game. We do die. And judgment happens. God will judge mankind. We don't like it as the quote says at the top. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. We don't want to be held accountable for our actions. So we don't like the whole idea of judgment. Several years ago, I was reading an article and it was about attendance at Christian churches in America and it was dwindling. And this one church decided that, you know, we want to increase our attendance. So they hired a consulting firm that apparently is specialized in this. And they said, you know, we want to increase our membership. What should we do? And they came back and they told them, well, this is what you have to do. You have to stop talking about judgment and you have to stop talking about repentance. People don't like it. They don't want to hear it. Tell them what they want to hear, right? Just tell them God loves you for who you are. There's no need to repent. Don't worry about judgment, right? People with itching ears. Tell them what they want to hear. So, you know, there's another way to just look at this and you can make this a really short class and just say, hey, God has the authority, not man, right? Our God is in heaven. He has done whatever he pleases. God can do what he wants. He is the Almighty. As a brother, David Levine said in his class, God is unlimited, right? Limitless. Well, man is limited, right? God can do as he pleases. And luckily, you know, the Lord is righteous in all his ways, holy in all his works. Woe unto him that quarrels with his maker. Does the clay say to the potter, what are you making, right? Who are we? Who are we with nothing? Who are we to question the Almighty? For the Lord is righteous. He loves justice. This is the Old Testament angry God that some say. He's righteous and he shall judge the world in righteousness. Whether man is comfortable with it or not, it will happen. So there's also, you know, the account of the Malachites. Let's say at the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Malachi did unto Israel, how he did wait for him when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant, socklet, ox, sheep, camel, and ass. And then, you know, this was, you know, here's the judgment on the Amalekites. It's finally time. And back in Deuteronomy, he tells Israel, remember what Amalek did unto thee, how he met thee and smote those behind thee that were all feeble, right? This is when they're coming up out of Egypt. You were feeble, you were faint and weary. And you know what else? Amalek did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord was giving you rest in the land, thou shalt plot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Don't forget it, is what he tells them. And it says in Exodus, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. The Amalekites were descendants of Esau. There's going to be a problem with the Amalekites and the Israelites for a long time. They're always going to be a problem. They're always going to stand in the way of God's people. And now God's going to finally deal with them. God told Israel, if you listen to my commands, if you follow me, I will be an enemy unto thine enemies. For he that touches Israel touches the apple of God's eye. You touch Israel, God's going to respond. But we know that God is not evil, that God is not immoral, that he's not an angry God. He's merciful, he's compassionate, he's willing to forgive. And this is what he says to Abram, know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years. This is when they're in Egypt. But I will punish that nation that they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with the great possessions. And in the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here. For the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. Amorites, they were in the land of Canaan, and God gave them 400 years to turn away from their evil doings, to repent of their ways. That's a merciful, compassionate God who's willing to forgive. He's patient with us. We know that. He's patient with each and every one of us can say, no doubt, God is compassionate and long-suffering. Right? Peter says, the Lord is not slack in sin of his promise, but long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. So, when we're talking about the judgments that were on Egypt, and what was its purpose, of course, to free God's people, it was time. There was enough of them. There was a nation in there. God said, okay, that's enough. Let's go to the promised land. He says, for I will send, speaking to Pharaoh, I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so that you may know there is no one like me in all the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. All those nations anywhere in that vicinity would have known what the God of Israel did to the mighty Egyptian gods, to the mighty Pharaoh and his army. They all heard about it. And then in Deuteronomy, this is Moses speaking to the people. He says, I have taught you decrees, laws, as the Lord my God demanded me. Follow them in the land you are entering. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, surely this great nation is wise and an understanding people. So of course, Israel was supposed to be a light to

the nations. In these laws of God, the nations were to see the wisdom of God's laws. They were to look and say, this is a mighty and powerful God. We know what he did to Egypt. We know what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. We've heard the accounts. This is a powerful God. And look at his laws. There's a lot of wisdom in here. And look at our laws. There's some crazy laws. And you look at other nations today even, and back then you would have seen some pretty crazy laws. Matter of fact, you can see some pretty crazy laws in the state of Massachusetts that are still on the books, like all men must bring their shotguns to church on Sunday. So I think we need an AB meeting and we're going to have to discuss because we don't want to break the laws. And then there's another one that says, gorillas cannot ride in the back seat of your car. Now there's got to be a great story behind that I would think. But these are crazy laws. And God's laws are not. And the nations would hear about these laws. So sometimes we think that there was just this incredible invasion that came upon the cities in Canaan and they had no idea what was going on. Who were these people? Who was this Israelite? Who's the God of Israel? We don't even know what's going on. They knew. Little by little, he was going to do it. And they knew what was coming. They knew how powerful God was. And they knew about his laws and his decree. So God sought repentance and conversion from the nations. And that's what's in the promises to Abraham. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless those that bless you, curse those that curse you, and all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you. All the nations. Abraham was a preacher. He was telling people about the Almighty God.

And David writes here, may God be gracious to us, bless us, make his face to shine upon us, that you always may be known on earth, your salvation among all the nations. May the people praise you. Oh God, may all the people praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth. The ultimate goal. And David's prayer, he goes, I want all the nations. And God's like, yeah, so do I. This is what I want. We'll have to wait for the kingdom to come. But that's the goal. That's what God is looking to do. Of course, you got the example of the nation of Nineveh. Jonah goes and says, in 40 days, stop your wicked ways or you're going to be destroyed. And Nineveh, the king said, hey, we are doing wickedly. They knew again about the laws and decrees of God. And they said, yeah, God's not, he doesn't like what we're doing. We get a change. And they repented of their evil ways. They stopped. And God's spirit had his judgment on them. It says, so the people of Nineveh believed God. They believed that, well, we fear him. He will destroy us. He means what he says. And we have been doing wickedly. They knew full well who the God of Israel was and how mighty he was. They believed him. And so if you use an example of those who did convert, we wonder, did they really hear? Yeah. Rahab says it. For we heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings and the Amorites whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts did melt. They were in fear of the mighty God of Israel. And all those nations would have heard and then said, they're coming this way. Right. And then you have the conversion, Rahab, for the Lord, your God. He is God in heaven above and in the earth beneath. She just denounced the Canaanites God, all of them, and said, it's your God, Israel. And of course, her and her family join Israel and they become part of Israel. And you've got Uriah, the Hittite, Caleb, the Kenazite, Ruth, the Moabite. You've got the Abianites. You know, they use some, you know, some trickery. However, they feared God of Israel. They knew. They said, hey, we can see what's coming. He's hitting all these cities. Pretty soon, he's going to get to us. We better come up with a plan, right? They weren't oblivious to what was taking place like Neville Chamberlain, right? I've got, you know, peace in our day. I've got to attack us. Really, he's attacking everybody else, right? They give him the answer, like, eventually he's going to come to us. Let's go make peace and we'll serve Israel.

Now, there's not a lot I could find anyway, really, about Uriah, the Hittite, but he was, you know, in the elite army of David. He was loyal to David. He was loyal to Israel. He did the right thing, and his name, you know, he's got a Hebrew name. You know, Yah is light. So somewhere along the line, his forefathers must have taken up the offer of peace. Now, I'm just, I'm kind of, you know, there's nothing that says this in the scripture. I'm kind of reading into this. So take it for what you'd like, but it seems to me that his forefathers, the Hittites, would have said, who's coming? The God of Israel? Yeah. You know what? That's a God. Our gods are useless against him. Let's join them. Let's go and say, we will serve you. And I think that's what is, what must have taken place there. And I'm sure you can think of some other examples of those that did convert. And it says in Acts, God accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. So the tougher question, what about, what about those children? Even from birth, the wicked go astray. From the womb, their wayward speak lies. In Ephesians, it says, we were by nature deserving of wrath. That human nature that we're born with, that self-serving, sin-leaning nature that we are born with, is deserving of the wrath of God. Every way of man is right in his own eyes, but it's the Lord that plunders the heart. He knows the intentions, the motives. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows those who will respond to the gospel, who will repent. Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his maker? And again, this is when, you know, we question God's righteousness or other people question God's righteousness. Maybe we'll be able to give an answer. And of course, we can go to Abraham, right? Abraham, when he's told about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, starts to intercede on the behalf of the righteous. Fifty, God, you won't destroy the city for fifty, forty, thirty, right? And he says, If I be it from you to do such a thing as to kill the righteous with the wicked. The God doesn't do that. He kills the wicked. He delivers the righteous. He delivered Noah. He delivered Lot, Rahab. He delivers the righteous. He doesn't by mistake. I had to kill them all because it was just a few that were wicked. That's not what he does. And so far, if this hasn't satisfied you, well, Abraham finishes with, Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? That righteous judge, God who is righteous, on all his decisions, righteous. So now the question we'll try to address here, try to go quickly. New Testament God, right? Jesus, right? He's all about love and forgiveness. How can we reconcile these two? Well, is he really just all about love and forgiveness? You know, love thy neighbor and, you know, it's all forgiveness, right? This is the words of Jesus. Those eighteen who died on the tower of Siloam fell on them. Do you think they were more guilty than all others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no. Unless you repent, you too will all perish. So there's a warning. Repent or perish. Of course, what he tells the disciples before he ascends to heaven, go out and preach the gospel. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned, condemned to death. And Christ is a judge, right? God is a judge. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. So again, judgment, it's just what it is. It's there. It's going to happen. And God judged his own people, right? These are the words of Jesus, speaking about AD 70. For these are the days of vengeance, judgment for what God's people did to his Son, and they shall fall, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, they shall fall by the edge of the sword. So those are the words of Jesus there. No, it's not all about love and forgiveness. There's also judgment. But God, of course, there isn't two Gods. The Son is the of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. Jesus perfectly reflects his Father. And what becomes of the wicked when Christ returns?

Well, the righteous will be glad when they're avenged. Who's going to avenge them? Christ, when he comes, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked, for evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land. In Revelation it says, I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true. Christ's with justice, he judges and he makes war. So when we look at the conquest of the Canaanites, it's all, you know, there's some lessons there for us for sure. And it's also a shadowing of the work that Christ, when he comes back, will finish with the saints. Christ and the saints will pick up the work of Joshua and the Israelites and

they'll make all nations submit. So after Armageddon, the saints will go out and deliver a message to the nations, guess what, there's a new sheriff in town and you better submit or you'll be destroyed. We'll be back tomorrow for your answer. Kiss the son, submit to Christ. Lest he be angry and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are they who put their trust in him and there's a warning. Hey, don't put your, don't trust in yourselves, man. That's what you always do and you always come up short. Put your trust in him. Okay, so just one quick spiritual lesson. I think we can pull from here again, there's probably many. Right, we see Israel freed from bondage in Egypt only to become enslaved again by the Canaanites because they didn't do all that the Lord had commanded them. They kept alive some of the Canaanites for their own purpose. So in Galatians Paul says it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not get yourselves, let yourselves be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Remove, right, if the Canaanites have sinned, we've got to remove sin from our lives

because we've been freed from it. If we leave a little behind for our own purpose, it won't be long before we're slaves to it again. In Romans Paul says don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin which leads to death or you can choose to obey God which leads to righteousness. All right, last slide, just a little recap. You know, was this genocide or was this judgment? Well, I hope we were able to come to a determination to say that without a doubt this was divine judgment. It does not fit the criteria of the definition of genocide and God is a judge and he will bring judgments and we have plenty of examples and there's another one to count. Is God cruel? No, he calls all to repentance. He doesn't make rash decisions to destroy a nation, he's long suffering. God is working among the nations to call out a people. We saw those people like Rahab, he's working in them to call out a people and, you know, we got to remember the heart of man is evil. So anytime we think we might question God, just stop, right, because the heart of man is evil. But, you know, the fact that, you know, I think we're enlightened to this because we do understand the nature of man. Many don't and say man's pretty good and sometimes we do bad things. Maybe there's a few bad apples, most people are good. We don't believe that and really if you need to remind and sometimes maybe we forget because we don't like to look at ourselves that way. Our loved ones, we have friends, oh what a great guy, he's a good guy, good man.

Sometimes we might have to remind ourselves, just go back to Deuteronomy where God has to talk about those abominations and has to tell the people don't do these abominations and he describes them. And you look at those abominations, you go, why does he have to tell us this? Why, why would anyone do these things? It's not normal, but yet he's got to tell us because, oh man has done it. If repentance is refused, then judgment awaits. God judges the nations for their wickedness and for their treatment of Israel. In all judgments from God, all right, that we can be confident in. And we may never be asked by a friend or a worker about the judgment or the genocide on the Canaanites. We might be asked about what's going on today. The media portrays this as the genocide in Gaza. We may be asked about that, but I don't think anything has changed.

The inhabitants in Gaza hate Israel. They hate God's people. They don't like the God of Israel. They want to do harm to God's people. But God will curse those that curse you. Your enemies will be my enemies. If you touch Israel, you've poked God in the eye and you'll get a response. If you don't fear the God of Israel, you'll get a response. It's judgment. So maybe that we can give an answer to a question. So that's all I've got. If anyone's got any comments, hopefully that was helpful. That was something you weren't comfortable with, or perhaps it will help us to give an answer as to some of those tough passages.