Sermon Transcript

Let me invite you to open your Bible up this morning to Joshua chapter 9. If you’ve been with us over the last ten weeks, we’ve been walking verse-by-verse through the book of Joshua. We’ve entitled this series Onward, and we’re learning that the direction of the Christian life is always. . .what? Onward!

I’m curious, as you’re getting your place in Joshua, how many of you—in the last ten weeks—feel like you have made some onward progress with God? I’d just like to see testimony to that, by you raising your hands. You say, “Hey, God is using this series to get me to a better place.” I’m so glad!

Let me ask those of you who lifted your hands. How many of you have felt like you’ve also faced some resistance in that progress? Does it just seem like something is against you? Well, there is. You have an enemy.

Let me introduce to you what we’re going to study here from Joshua 9 this morning. The big idea is this:

 

When you meet the enemy, don’t let his lies deceive you into compromising your obedience to God.

 

You have an enemy. His number one weapon against you is a lie, and if you believe that lie, your onward progress will stop with God. However, if you have committed to fill your mind, your heart and your life with truth, there is not a weapon formed against you that will stand. No lie will be able to stop your onward progress.

How many of you feel like you’ve ever been lied to? Have you ever been lied to? Have you found out that somebody told you something that wasn’t true? Let me tell you a story of something that happened a couple of months ago. My seventy-three-year-old mother, who lives in Oklahoma, called me and said, “Trent, Zac went to Mexico last weekend with some friends. He was in a car that got pulled over by the Mexican police. Zac wasn’t doing anything wrong, but they found drug paraphernalia in the car. I just got off the phone with Zac. He is in a Mexican prison and he needs $8000 to get out of prison and make his way back home.” How would you have reacted to that?

My son is in a Mexican prison? Why didn’t Zac call me? Why did he call his grandmother? “Um, Mom, I’m pretty sure Zac is in Cedarville, Ohio this weekend. I’m pretty sure he’s not in Mexico.” You know what happened, right? Some scammers, some deceivers, some liars called the sympathetic grandmother and laid out this story to try to extort money from Grandma, because she loved her grandson. It was a lie! It was deceitful.

Do you understand the level of anger I had toward someone who was using my son as leverage against my mother to get something from her? Well, it wasn’t true of course…at least I don’t think it’s true—if anybody has any information on Zac’s whereabouts, let me know! But I’m pretty sure that whole scenario didn’t happen! It was a lie, and so often we believe those lies, and it creates a compromising position for us, and it stops our onward progress with God.

We’re going to see three realities in the passage here. Let’s begin reading. I’ll give you the first point as we jump into it:

 

• The enemy is real. (v. 1-2)

 

Let’s see it here in Joshua 9:1. Joshua’s enemies were a little different than ours. It says here), “As soon as all the kings who were beyond the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland all along the coast of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, [here they are] the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, heard of this. . .” So, there’s this collected group of people who have been watching the onward progress of God’s people. Those people got together and they said, “Uh-oh! We’re next.” So they formed an alliance.

Joshua 9:2, “. . .they gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel.” Joshua and God’s people had a real enemy. Now Joshua could actually physically see those enemies. He could do hand-to-hand combat with them, because they were physical enemies. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in Joshua’s day—you don’t have to fight those battles? Well, you still have a battle to fight, and there are still real enemies who are fighting against the people of God!

If you have faced any resistance in your onward progress toward God, it’s probably because you have met three enemies of the Christian individual. And the church of Jesus Christ faces these three. Do you want to know what they are? Can we expose the lies of the enemies here this morning?

The first enemy is:

 

• the world

 

Jesus prayed for you and I to withstand the attack of the world in John 17:14. He said this, “I have given them your word. . .” That’s our number one weapon—the truth of God’s Word to combat the lies of the enemy. Jesus said, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”

             So, we need to define what this thing is called “the world.” Now, when He’s talking about the world, He’s not talking about planet Earth; He’s not talking about things physically that we can see and lay our hands on. Jesus is talking about a worldview or a world system that stands against God’s truth.

Those of us that are in Christ, those of us who have given our hearts and our lives and our allegiance to Jesus Christ, we have given Him the right to form our values and form the way that we view the world. Yet, those that stand outside of Christ see things a little differently, don’t they? This world system sometimes shows up in politics, sometimes it shows up in education, sometimes it shows up in entertainment—all of those things are running countercurrent to the direction that we are moving.

It’s almost as if you were to jump in a river. I remember when I was about twelve years old – I was hanging out with some buddies. There had been some flooding in our area, and yet there was this wonderful creek that ran through our town, and we got some inner tubes and we jumped on those things, and we went from one side of the town to the other. But I remember one time, my inner tube got kind of caught on a tree limb and I was stuck and I couldn’t move. I needed to go back upriver in order to get back down, but I couldn’t move back up because the current was so strong. That’s exactly what you face the moment you walk out of this building and into the world. You are swimming upstream and all the current is going the other direction,

The good news is this: Jesus has prayed for you and He’s given you His Word so that you can move onward, even in the face of the opposition of the world. And listen, don’t be surprised when you are hated by the world. If you are a Christian, you are not going to win popularity contests in this world; you are not going to be voted most popular in your school or your business. If you stand for Christ, mark it down, you will be hated!

Here’s the second enemy. It is called;

 

• the flesh

 

Again, we’re reading in the New Testament about the enemies you and I face in our battle to move onward in the Christian life. 1 Peter 2:11 tells us about the flesh, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles…” Great word—it goes back to what we understand about our enemy the world—we are sojourners in this world, exiles in this world. This world is not our home—we’re living temporarily as citizens in a land that doesn’t belong to us.

But, even as sojourners and exiles—notice what Peter says—we’ve got a second enemy. While you’re battling the world, you’ve also got “…to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” You see, our battle is not with Hittites and Jebusites. Our battle is with our self.

If you are a Christian, you have an appetite to please God and to obey God, and yet at the same time we have that desire, so often we fall and we’re defeated by the appetites of our flesh. What is the flesh? It’s not just skin and flesh and muscle and sinew. Our flesh is a bent.

Remember, a long time ago, when it used to snow in Michiana back in the winter? Remember those ruts that would form in the road? There would be these two ruts where all the cars had gone, and it made it difficult to get out of the rut. Our flesh is the residual sin nature in us that has run ruts across our lives—habit patterns and forms and thoughts and ways of thinking that are not in line with Christ, and it’s so hard to jerk ourselves out of it.

So often it has to do with our appetites, even physically, that appeal to our senses—things that we feel or see or smell or touch or taste. I have a continual war with Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Anybody with me there? Anybody losing the battle? All these different things that appeal to us.

You know what the flesh does? The flesh turns good things into “god things” (little g). There’s nothing wrong with a Krispy Kreme doughnut. I need an amen! There is something wrong with eating a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts in one sitting, right? So, if you turn a Krispy Kreme doughnut into a god, then all of a sudden you’re worshipping that which is created, rather than the Creator who created the doughnut.

That’s what our flesh so often does—it wants to get our eyes off of things that should please us in God, and our hearts get wrapped around things that He’s created for our pleasure, but not to be God. So that’s our second enemy.

Well, you’ve got another enemy—not only the world, not only the flesh. Anybody know this one? You know what’s coming, right? What is it?

 

• the devil

1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober-minded; be watchful…” Keep your head on a swivel. That means there is real enemy that we need to know where he’s coming from. “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone [whom he may] to devour.” He is not to be joked about; he is not to be made fun of. He is a serious, formidable foe.

Now, these three enemies have gathered together as one to fight against you. Just as we saw in verse 2, that the enemies in Canaan had gathered together as one to fight against Joshua, these three enemies have gathered together against you to stop your onward progress toward God.

The Bible describes Satan as the prince of this world who opposes God and lies to you, to appeal to the appetites of your flesh. That’s how they’ve gathered together and aligned themselves against you. We need to be aware of them. The Bible says, “I don’t want you to be ignorant of his devices.” He’s a schemer.

As a matter of fact, that’s what we’re going to learn next: the enemy is real, and:

 

• The enemy will do anything to win. (v. 3-5)

 

Let’s see it here in Joshua 9:3, “But when the inhabitants of Gibeon…” This is a new city, a new enemy. Notice, Gibeon did not align with all those other Hivites and “termites” and Amorites and all those other people. Gibeon said, “We have a different strategy. If we’re going to survive, the way we’re going to survive is not by winning through fighting; we want to win through lying.” Watch what happened.

            “When the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai…” Anybody remember what happened to Jericho and Ai? Total destruction, right? The Gibeonites thought, “Hmm, we don’t want to be the next on the list to lose these battles.” Continue with verse 4, …“they on their part acted with cunning…” Underline the word “cunning” there. The word cunning means crafty or clever or wily or tricky or—if you’re under thirty—sketchy. The word actually means “strategic.” This was a well-thought-through battle plan that they were going to use. If you have the NIV, it says, “they resorted to a ruse,” which means that this was a very thought-out strategy to win the battle.

The Gibeonites were cunning, “and [they] went and made ready provisions and took worn-out sacks for their donkeys, and wineskins, worn-out and torn and mended, with worn-out, patched sandals on their feet, and worn-out clothes…” It sounds like your wardrobe, right? “And all their provisions were dry and crumbly.” (Joshua 9:5)

Do you see what they were trying to do? They were trying to convince Joshua and Israel that they were not a threat. Let me show you what they did. Again, keep reading. Verses 6-9: “And they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, ‘We have come from a distant country, so now make a covenant with us.’ But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, ‘Perhaps you live among us; then how can we make a covenant with you?’ They said to Joshua, ‘We are your servants.’ And Joshua” wisely “said to them, ‘Who are you? And where do you come from?’ They said to him, ‘From a very distant country your servants have come. . .’” “From such a long, long way away. Why else would our clothes be so worn out, and why would our bread be crumbling? Because it was fresh when we took it out of the oven and started our journey—and now, look, it’s all stale!” It was a very well-conceived strategy to try to deceive and to lie.

Verse 9 continues, “’…because of the name of the Lord your God…” They even dropped names! “Don’t they sound so religious?! They might even be aligned with us!” “For we have heard a report of him, and all that he did in Egypt.’” They’d done their homework, and they knew the history of where these people had come from, and they used religious language to try to deceive them. Listen! The enemy is a liar, and our enemy is a liar.

Do you know what Joshua should have said as soon as they said, “We’re your servants; we’ve come from such a long, long way away”? If Joshua would have been wise, he would have said “Liar, liar, pants on fire! You are not! You’re here to defeat us!” But they were in the process of being deceived.

Our enemy is a liar as well. As a matter of fact, Jesus told us about him in John 8:44. He said, “You are of your father the devil…” He was speaking to a bunch of religious people. They had a form of religion. They denied the power of that religion, and Jesus went right to the heart. He was wearing a “Be Bold” T-shirt at that moment. And He said, “You are of your father the devil. . .He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Do you know what Jesus was saying? “He’s not a liar because he lies; he lies because he is a liar.” It’s all he can do. It’s his character, it’s his nature, it’s his number one weapon to try to stop the onward progress of you and your family in relationship to God.

Paul was so concerned about the strategy of the devil in the church, writing to the Corinthians – you know how messed up the Corinthian church was. He goes back and says, “Here’s my fear for the church…” (2 Corinthians 11:3), “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning…” Sound familiar? “…Your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

I am looking into the faces of people whose heart’s desire is to love Christ, to worship Christ, to obey Christ. But every week you leave this place, and you don’t! Because you are believing the lies of your enemy. You’ve been deceived into thinking that if you do it his way, life will turn out better. And you come back again the next week and you’re guilty and you feel ashamed and you’re afraid and you’re defeated and you didn’t make any onward progress, and you say with a hang-dog attitude, “I just don’t know why I can’t live the Christian life!” It’s because you’re listening to lies, and you’re not filling your mind with the truth.

Paul went on to say to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:14), “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.” Who are the servants of Satan? Well, you have to understand the background here. If you read Ezekiel chapter 14 and Isaiah chapter 28, you find out the history of Satan.

Satan was not created as this evil monster—as we think of him. He was created as an angel in Heaven. He was the worship leader in Heaven. I do not know what that implies about Micah, but Satan was the worship leader in Heaven. But do you know what happened? He got proud, and instead of directing all the praise and all the attention to God, he wanted some of it for himself. And so he led a rebellion against God, and he was able to influence one-third of the angels to come with him! You don’t think that you’re more powerful than an angel, do you? He was able to deceive the angels to come with him.

God kicked him out of Heaven and He cast him to a very specific spot in the universe. How many stars, how many galaxies, how many planets are there out there? Hundreds of billions. And the place that God chose to put Satan, when He cast him out of Heaven, was planet Earth. Now, if I was God (that is not an announcement!), I would have chosen a much more distant planet for him to reside on. A very hot planet. But, for some reason, God put him right on the surface of the Earth.

Do you know what that means? That your enemy occupies the same geographic territory as you and your children. And do you know what he’s doing today on planet Earth? He’s doing the same thing he was doing on the day he was kicked out of Heaven. He’s leading a rebellion against God, and he’s trying to influence you to come with him. And he disguises himself as an angel of light – beautiful, charming, funny, winsome, extrovert, rich, powerful – and he wants you to come with him. That’s his disguise.

Sometimes he disguises himself as a boyfriend, or a girlfriend. Sometimes he disguises himself as a preacher or a church. Sometimes he disguises himself as a romantic comedy, to get you to laugh at things that actually break the heart of God.

Sometimes he disguises himself as a witty professor, who gets you to trust him and respect him and to believe what he has to say (he wouldn’t lie to you!), so that he can put in your mind a philosophy that is counter to the truth of God’s Word. Satan disguises himself; he doesn’t show up in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork. He wants you to believe he really has your best interests in mind. That’s exactly what happened to Joshua.

Joshua was deceived by this enemy who was trying to convince him, “We are not a threat!” There are five lies I want you to see, from this passage, because Satan is still using them today.

 

            LIE: Disobedience is harmless.

 

Disobedience is harmless is the first one. That’s how these Gibeonites were trying to convince Joshua. The enemy wants to present himself to you as harmless. They were saying, “Look how frail we are! We’re just a bunch of vagabonds and we’re not some big army, trying to take you down. We’re no match for you! You’re so strong and you’re so powerful! You would defeat us if we tried to fight you. We don’t want to fight you; we want to be friends! And we’ve come from such a long, long way away! The consequences of dealing with us are so far off! Nothing’s going to happen to you! There will be no harm caused in being friends with us.”

The enemy doesn’t want you to know his true identity. “We’re not a threat; we’re just a bunch of innocent itty-bitty, teeny-weeny people. We just want to be friends!” The enemy wants to win you over with charm. “Can’t you see how hard we’ve tried to be friends? Don’t you feel sorry for us? I mean, everybody else is so cruel and mean and hateful and bigoted. And they just want to destroy us. But you’re not like that at all: you’re so loving and tolerant and nice—not like those rigid, legalistic people that just want to keep all the rules.” Those are the lies that Satan uses to try to convince you that there are no consequences—or the consequences are so far off that there is no threat.

Has anybody, along with me, been watching this O.J. Simpson thing where, in a ten-part miniseries, they’ve gone back and reenacted the whole O.J. trial? Has anybody seen that? I’ve just kind of been fascinated by that thing. I remember, that was 1994; I remember watching some of that on TV. It was incredible to watch how the facts and the evidence and the truth were trumped by the charm of this incredibly engaging athlete.

And, so often, that’s what happened. We’re charmed into thinking that something so nice, something so funny, something so wonderful wouldn’t deliver something that could be so devastating. Here’s the truth; we need to replace the lie with the truth; the truth is this:

 

TRUTH: Disobedience is devastating.

 

It stops your progress with God! That’s why some of you are not moving onward with God, because you’re playing around with things that are designed to defeat you.

Here’s the second lie:

 

            LIE: The fight isn’t worth the effort.

 

Notice, in verse 6 they say, “We want to make a covenant with you; we want to make peace. We want to be friends. You see all the worn-out clothes and the worn-out sandals? We’re so worn out, we don’t want to fight anymore. Aren’t you worn out, too? I mean, you’ve already had this strong battle with Jericho, and this battle with Ai, and you’ve been fighting so long. Don’t you just kind of want to take a break? Do you want to sit this one out? Let’s not fight; let’s just be friends.” That’s a lie that the enemy wants to tell you—that the Christian life is so hard – resisting temptation, obeying God is so hard, it’s not worth the fight.

I picked up the latest copy of TIME magazine this week. It’s got one big word on the cover of it. I would have brought it in here, but it’s also got an explicit image on the front of it. The word is “porn,” and the feature story in that magazine says this, “The first generation to be raised on unlimited online pornography is now calling for young men to turn it off.” Not on moral grounds, not because they want to honor God—but because this first generation whose brain has been fried by porn is now physically unable to have real sex.

The lie is this: God wants to keep sex from you. The truth is this: God wants to keep sex for you. This generation that has indulged themselves on internet pornography—something is happening chemically in the brain, that when they actually try to engage in sex with a real person, like a marriage partner, God’s design, they can’t—because this image, this lie (pornography is a lie, it’s a fantasy world), has so affected the chemistry in the brain that they can’t enjoy the good gift that God has given to a permanently married couple, to enjoy that marriage relationship.

Listen! The devil will try to convince you that the fight against the temptation is not worth it. The truth is this:

 

TRUTH: Every square inch of onward progress in the spiritual life is a battle fought by faith.

 

Were you expecting the Christian life to be easy? The crosshairs of your enemy have landed on you, and the only way you go onward with God, the only way you glorify God, the only way that you leave a legacy to your children, the only way you enjoy the good gifts God has given you, is by fighting against the strategy of the enemy.

Here’s the third lie:

 

LIE: God’s Word can’t be trusted.

 

Look down here at Joshua 1:14. They continue this conversation and finally they get down to Joshua, and Joshua has to make a decision. “So the men took some of their provisions…” “Here’s a worn-out shirt; here’s a crumbling piece of bread.” They took them, “…but [they] did not ask counsel from the Lord.”

            The Gibeonites were so deceptive that they caused the Israelites to get their eyes off of God and just assume that God was okay with it. That’s the lie of the enemy. He wants to make you think, “God really is not that concerned with the choices you make! God really doesn’t have any advice for you. God really doesn’t give you any counsel.”

In fact, God had already given these people, not only counsel, but a command. The reality was they really didn’t need counsel, they just needed to obey the command. Here was the command, way back in Deuteronomy 7:1, God told them this episode would take place, and He warned them: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you and you defeat them. . .then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them.”

            Is there any ambiguity in that statement? Is that pretty clear? And yet, here they are, entering into a covenant—compromising the Word of God. Joshua 9:14 says they didn’t seek counsel from the Lord. Listen, you should never seek counsel from someone who would give you counsel contrary to the commands of the Lord.

We’ve got a wonderful soul-care ministry around here—we’re training up biblical counselors. We are a church of biblical counselors, not just a church with biblical counseling. So we counsel one another in small groups, we counsel one another all the time. But there are still people who need to come in and we have opportunity for people to sit with a counselor. But you might be a little surprised if you come to us for counseling, because what we have discovered is a lot of people who seek counseling are not real interested in counsel.

If you come and say, “What should I do?”—what you’re going to hear us say is, “Here’s our counsel—obey the command. That’s our counsel.” You respond, “Well, can’t we just kind of talk about it, because that’s kind of hard. Surely there’s a different…” “No, you just kind of got to obey the command.”  “Well, that’s hard!” “Yeah, it’s hard! But it’s the only way to victory.”

And what people want to think is, somehow there’s got to be a different way. “It’s just too hard. You can’t trust God’s Word.” The truth is:

 

TRUTH: God’s Word is the only word that can be trusted.

 

If you try to live your life by any other counsel, you will be defeated and the consequences are not going well for you. Every time God gives you a command, He’s giving you guard rails for safety. So, they disobey the command. They don’t believe God’s Word.

Here’s the fourth lie:

 

LIE: Compromise is less costly than obedience.

 

“I mean, obedience is so hard, and it’s going to cost me so much to obey. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I just don’t know if I can do it. It’s going to cost me money…it’s going to cost me time…it’s going to cost me embarrassment…it’s going to cost me a relationship…it’s going to cost me friends. It might cost me my boyfriend…it might cost me my job if I obey. It’s so costly! Can’t I just compromise?”

That’s what the Israelites wanted to do. Let’s see what it cost them (Joshua 9:15): “Joshua made peace…” – c’mon, Joshua—you’re supposed to be making war with these people – “…with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live, and the leaders of the congregation swore to them.”

And then, in verse 16, “At the end of three days after they had made a covenant with them, they heard that they were [actually] their neighbors and that they lived among them.” Remember how they said, “We live such a long, long way away. We’re no threat!” It turns out, they were right around the corner and down the street—and they posed an incredible threat! And so they compromised, they made peace, instead of doing what they should have done in the first place.

It says here in verse 17, “And the people of Israel set out and reached their cities on the third day.” Look at verse 18: “But the people of Israel did not attack them, because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them…” Notice, “by the Lord, the God of Israel. Then all the congregation murmured against the leaders.”

            So, this nation that was so aligned and had so much clarity about their mission, and where they were going, was now fractured—murmuring and fighting among each other and griping against the leader. Joshua lost the clarity of what they were supposed to do, and it created compromise. You had these people over here who wanted to make a covenant, and these people over here who wanted to make war, and now you’ve got fighting and faction among yourselves. The cost was high.

Notice, it says they made this covenant “by the Lord.” That is not insignificant. One of the Ten Commandments – maybe you’ve heard of these – is, “You should not take the Lord’s Name in vain.” So, when Joshua entered into a covenant with them, he used the Name of the Lord in the covenant, and then later on he finds out, “I never should have done that!” But now he’s in a predicament, and two wrongs don’t make a right. You say, “Well, why didn’t he just break the covenant and wipe them out?” Then he would have sinned again. He would have taken the Name of the Lord in vain.

So, now he’s got a predicament. That’s what sin always does! It backs you into a corner where there are no easy answers. It ties knots that are hard to get out of! So, if he had made the covenant, he would have sinned. And he did. If he had broken the covenant, now he would have sinned. There’s no way out. And so, the compromise cost them dearly.

2 Corinthians 6:14 is a warning to us about making peace and making partnerships and alliances with things that are not aligned with God. Paul says, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” They’re not moving in the same direction as you. You’ve seen a yoke. Back in the day, the way you’d get a field plowed was, you would take these two oxen and you would put a yoke over them so that they would move at the same pace, move in the same direction.

But if you had a strong-willed ox that wanted to go that way, and you had another ox that wanted to go this way, how much plowing would you get done? Not a whole lot. “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” Be careful of the partnerships you enter into. Young people, be careful and wise about the relationships you enter into, and be super-careful and wise about the people that you marry. Unless you are equally yoked, you will constantly be pulling against one another.

And the truth is this – obedience is costly! I’m not going to tell you it’s not hard. Obedience is costly, but here’s the reality—it is not as costly as compromise!

 

TRUTH: Obedience to God is costly, but not as costly as compromise.

 

There’s a cost either way.

Here’s the last lie: I should not have to live with unmet longings.

 

            LIE: Sin will fulfill all my unmet longings.

 

Now, I’m assuming there are some people in here who have some unmet longings. Is there anybody here who has some longings? You want some stuff that you just can’t have—some desires of your heart? You’ve prayed that God would provide.

Maybe you’re single and you want a spouse. Maybe you have a spouse and you’d like God to kill them. It happens! Maybe you’re a couple and you’d like to have a child. Maybe you’re underemployed. You’d like to have a job. Maybe you live here and you’d like to live somewhere else. Maybe you’d like to make better grades or more money. Maybe you’d like relationships to be better off. Maybe you have a prodigal child that you’d like to see come back. And you think, “Why isn’t God granting this?”

Maybe you have a disease or a sickness or an illness or a hardship, and you’re like, “Why is God allowing this? Why doesn’t God take away this unmet longing? Why doesn’t God meet my every need?” Do you know, the same lie was used here? Do you know what the basis of their whole argument was? They said it over and over, but it’s back in verse 8. They said this, “We’re here to be your servants! We want to meet all of your wants and needs. You just tell us what to do and we will help you get there. We’ll make your life easier; we’re here to serve!”

And that’s the lie of sin. Sin promises to meet your unmet longings. Sin promises to make your life better. And when you believe the lie and try to get sin to serve you, do you know what actually happens? You become the servant of sin. The truth is this: Some of my longings will not be met until I am with Christ in Heaven.”

But if you believe the lie that you can have a life of ease and comfort and success, it will stop your onward progress with God, because the first time you meet resistance, or the first time you get sick, or the first time you’re unemployed, or the first time you have relational conflict, you’re going to lash out at God and think, “God, You promised to be my servant!” Newsflash! God is not your servant.

I want you to see how Joshua resolved the problem. It’s fascinating. Look down here at verses 21-23. They discover that they’ve been deceived, “…the leaders said to them, ‘Let them live.’ So they became cutters of wood and drawers of water for all the congregation, just as the leaders had said of them. Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, ‘Why did you deceive us, saying, “We are very far from you,” when you dwell among us? Now therefore you are cursed, and some of you shall never be anything but servants, cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my [our] God.’”

Here’s the last thing we’re going to learn:

 

• The enemy is defeated through Christ. (v. 22-27)

 

I want you to notice what happened. Joshua pronounces a curse on them, which he rightly did, but he let them live. But the only way that they were allowed to live was if they were completely disarmed and if they were turned from enemies into servants in the house of God. Joshua gave them two responsibilities: “You’re going to chop wood and you’re going to draw water.”

Now, why would you need wood in the house of God? And why would you need water? Do you know what happened in the house of God, in the place of worship? Part of Israel’s worship was sacrifice. It was a bloody event. Innocent lambs were slain—blood flowed. They would take those lambs and they would place them on the altar, and those lambs would be burned as a burnt sacrifice to God. There was a lot of wood that was needed for the place of worship where the lamb was offered as a sacrifice.

And there was a lot of water needed after this whole bloody event took place, because you had to clean up the blood. Joshua said, “If you’re going to live among us, you’re going to get close to the blood; you’re going to watch the sacrifice; you’re going to get to know this God, because you’re going to live in the House, and you are going to be constantly exposed to the blood of the lamb.”

And Joshua, I believe – a little speculation on my part – wanted them to eventually serve God, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. God used this whole scenario as an act of redemption for the Gibeonites. God used their deception, and God used, this unlawful covenant actually, to expose these enemies of God and transform them into servants of God.

Do you understand, that’s exactly what Christ has done for you? Our God is the Lion of Judah; our God is the Lamb slain for the sin of the world. His blood flowed to turn you and I from enemies into His servants. You and I are the Gibeonites in the story. And we try to lie and fight against God, and be strategic about how to avoid God, and yet God has drawn us into relationship and made us His servants, made us His friends. And the enemy has been defeated through Christ.

Do you remember those three enemies we have? Understand this, Christ has overcome the world. 1 John 5:4, “For everyone who has been born of God [have you been born of God? Then you. . .] overcome[s] the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” You enter into a relationship with Christ solely by faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, as you understand that on the cross He became the sacrifice for sin. He was the Lamb of God, and because of that sacrifice, we have overcome the world.

Christ has crucified the flesh, that battle and appetites that we have. Galatians 5:24 says, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” We’ve been crucified with Christ; our flesh has been crucified. Remember the devil? What a formidable foe he is! But Christ has conquered the devil, and so can you!

Revelation 12:10-11: “I heard a loud voice in heaven saying ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser [that’s the devil] of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.’” They would rather die than disobey, because, “We’re just here to serve.”

Do you have victory in Christ? Is that your story? Do you understand that there’s been a time when you were an enemy of God, and God has brought you to be a servant through the blood of the Lamb? If that’s not your story, then you—by faith—need to embrace this offer, this sacrifice for your sin. Don’t be deceived by the lies of the enemy. Hear the truth of the gospel this morning!

One of the lies in which Satan has convinced you is, “You don’t need that. You’re a good person.” Or, “You don’t need to do that right now—you’ve got plenty of time.” Or, “You’ve already done that. You grew up in church, you went through some spiritual motions.” Now, listen, the truth is this: it’s only through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on your behalf—and it’s only by repentance and faith—that we have access to this forgiveness and cleansing power of God.