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Transcript
Dan:
Hi, everyone. And welcome again to training for life redeemed. I’m your host, Dan , and as always, I am joined by my dad, David Jackson. We are working our way through Joshua at the moment. And we are today up to chapters 9 and 10 Dad in chapter nine, it’s quite a long chapter, but it just deals with one kind of episode here where the Gibeonites come and deceive Joshua and the Israelites. Yeah , they’re very clever with their old stale food that’s mouldy they to see them as they were from far away, sign a treaty with us, they don’t inquire with God. They signed the treaty. What’s the point of this story for us, because you know, they give you a eye to being tricky. They actually lying. Uh, and Joshua, the Israelites are not doing what they’re meant to be doing in terms of asking God. So I feel like they’re both doing the wrong thing.
David:
Yeah. You don’t come away from this story, writing a children’s talk about be like Joshua or be like the Gibeonites, do you. This isn’t Aesop’s Fables. It is actually, it’s like a layer cake. Um, and at the bottom layer, you’ve got Joshua and the Gibeonites, doing silly stuff. So Joshua doesn’t inquire of the Lord. He just makes a big assumption. And we all know that the assumptions are the mother of all stuff ups. So he makes the wrong assumptions. The Gibeonites are incredibly clever, they are well-informed and they lie through their teeth. So they discovered, and it’s fun. How many different ways they could have learned this. But when Israel went through the Eastern territory, they offered Og king of Bashan uh, and Sihon , a deal. The deal would be, you could be our vassal. We won’t wipe you out, sign the contract. And those guys said no. And we all know what happened to Sihon and Og. And all the guys in Gibeon knew about that. And they knew that God had plan A for Jericho type cities and plan B for cities that signed up as a vassal if they were far away. So if you weren’t in a Canaanite territory, you could become a vassal. And that made you a water boy, and a wood carrier wood cutter. And they thought, well, that’s a better deal. So you’ve got this deception going on. You’ve got assumptions going on. Layer one, layer two. Um, is it, God is teaching Joshua and the Israelites a lesson about talk to me, fellows don’t make assumptions. He’s also saying to the rest of the people, you know, what, what are you prepared to do to get saved? So the Gibeonites had a plan to get about how to get saved like Rahab. Uh, they believed Yahweh, but at the third level above, that is what we get to in chapter 10 is God set the whole thing up to hand Israel, the top of the Ridge without having to fight a battle. And so, because they’ve got to honor their agreement with the Gibeonites, the guys that occupy the top of the Ridge and dominate the whole south are now neutralized, Israel can just walk up there and take over. Um, so there’s planning happening at all these different levels. So when you, you know, when you mess up, you’ve got to sit back and go, okay, Lord, what are you up to? Um, what’s the plan here? Let’s watch what God is doing. Things aren’t out of control, a good message in the middle of what’s going on now.
Dan:
All right . And then we have , um, Adoni-zedek the king of Jerusalem. Who’s going to cause issues here. And we know Jerusalem’s going to have to defeat or try and defeat Jerusalem multiple times before they actually get it. And it’s going to be , uh , Joshua’s left-hand man, would you say the guy went and did the spine with him? The truth that defeats it really, really old Caleb , the oldest guy in the camp really other than Joshua. So what’s going on here Dad we’ve got stuff happening. The sun’s going to stand still for this battle and the Israelites aren’t even going to fight really, because God’s going to kill more than they do .
David:
You’ve got to know the geography to be able to make sense of this chapter and probably the rest of Joshua. But you know, when you climb that thousand meter climb to get to the top of the Ridge, the land just opens up and it opens up to the south so that you’ve got on the Western side, all these Creek beds and gullies , um, and you follow the Ridge down to the coast. So the big, the major Ridge there is called the Beth Horon Ridge. Um, that’s in Benjamin’s territory. And if you can get down that Ridge, then you can sweep right along the, like the foothills all along, down the south, all the way down to Beer Sheva. Um, so if , if you can just stop anybody coming up that , that main Ridge line, which Gibeon does, you’ve got the tactical advantage. And the other side of the story is that means that none of the troops associated with Gibeon, which is this massive territory. It’s not just the city, it’s all of the people in that region like Benjamin, they’ve all, they’re not allowed to fight Israel. They’re Israel’s allies now. So as far as the rest of the Canaanites concerned, they are traitors. They’re worse than the enemy. So instead of attacking Israel , uh, the guys from the south go up and attack own blokes for being traitors. And that’s tactically, that’s God just setting Israel up to play the chess game on the battlefield and just mow them all down, which they do after. You’ve sort of stumbled around, down there, making assumptions and doing the wrong thing. This is an amazing outcome. Uh , God, just hands Israel, the whole territory of Judah , um, in one big sweep. Um , and yeah, it , I dunno , um, you’re the hiker in the family. I, you know, I’ve done, I’ve done some pretty good hikes in my day, but I cannot imagine hiking all night, up a kilometer, 14 K you know, it’s probably a 15-18 K hike overnight to protect Gideon. So you’re attacking the enemy from behind while they’re attacking a city and you’re fresh enough in the morning. Not only to fight them through to the middle of the day, but to chase them down the Ridge and then stop and say, please, God, make the sun stop. I want to finish the day’s work. It’s a massive undertaking. Isn’t that about the relationship between faith and good works. I commit myself to trusting the Lord, but I’ve still got to climb that hill. I’ve still got to go into battle all day. I’ve still got to chase the enemy down in the other side, and God is gifting me everything in the process, but it’s still one foot after the other to go and finish the job. Yeah . This marks a real turning point. This is , this is the territory they’re about to conquer is Judah. This is the part of Israel. That’s probably one of the best parts of the land and it’s the part they’re going to hang on to the longest. And they sweep it in one go, it’s brilliant. You know , when God fights for you, even when you mess up, you just keep trusting him.
Dan:
Definitely has you covered his
David:
He sure does and Caleb’s lots of fun, but he’s laid a really , oh yeah, he’s a , yeah. I like , I liked the fact that an 85 year old man wants to finish the job.
Dan:
All right . So then Joshua is going to execute our five Ammonite king. Am I right? Not Ammonite. Am I right? Am I’m all right. Kings , uh, which is just, it’s just that area really. And the conquest of the south is then described to us throughout the rest of this chapter. Uh , so what’s significant dad about all these places. I know it’s the area of Judah, but why, why do we need a whole chapter this long? And it being this there’s a lot of detail in this section of defeating this guy, defeating that guy. And I feel like I kind of need to have a map up and just tick off the cities as we go . Yeah,
David:
You do. And , um , fortunately most Bibles have one in the back. Um, but yeah, without a map, you really can’t appreciate the , just what God is doing. Um, this is not a big area. Um, I think you could probably fit the area. They’re conquering here in Judah, in the greater Sydney basin. So if you think, you know, at the most from Katoomba to the Harbor bridge from Wollongong up to the central coast, that’s the area that they’re about to sweep through and just take. Um, so there’s more than a days March in this it’s just the day is just getting started, but yeah. Yeah, but they’re going to take all the key fortress cities and those fortress cities govern valleys. So once you’ve got the Fort that governs the valley, you’ve got all the farmland and , uh, and that the reason we’re telling this and we’re going to do this right through Joshua, we’re going to do the geography in great detail. Um, and I think, I mean , even for people today , uh , you can actually go and put your foot on the ground and walk this and appreciate what’s going on some years ago. Uh , your mother and I went to France , um, and we walked , uh, we walked through some battlefields from world war I and I , I bought a book that had , um, you know, had the battle field maps as overlays to where things are today. And you read the stories of, of what was going on. I’ve gone , I’ll dig his diary from , um, uh, July, 1916, massive slaughter in this place. But when you can identify this place and that place, and he marched from here to there on the 30th of May or something, and you actually walk that journey, what God has done , uh , in these battles, in those places, it comes alive. And so our faith is not grounded in reading a bedtime story. He’s actually giving you the map . and said go and check it out. I did this, I did it here and I did it then. Um, and it’s a powerful, powerful scene. So yeah, I , I sold, I strongly recommend anybody gets to change , go and walk the land. But, you know , th the remnants of what they did are still lying in the field that that’s exciting , uh , this really happened. Um, and that tells me that God who worked then is , and , you know , because he had a plan of salvation, the people of Israel got that bit of land. Those enemies had to change sides. I am a Gibeonite effectively. I have to change sides. And when I do , um, God acts in real time and space to work with his people. And these are just some of the places and the times. So, yeah, I like the maps.
Dan:
Well, that that’s sounds like it’s a pretty good place for us to wrap up this episode. So if you guys enjoyed this episode, please make sure that you leave a review. We would love to hear from you in that sense, if you want to grab the study notes that go along with this episode, head on over to trainingforliferedeemed.com/41, and you can grab all the notes and there’s transcripts and video and stuff there. And we would love for you to subscribe and they come back and join us next week. As we continue our journey through Joshua.
