BROADCASTS.com

Sunday, April 21, 2013 God isn't playing God, He is God Audio Blog Now on iTunes as a podcast Awaiting His return! God isn't playing God, He is God Originally posted on Google Groups 1/10/12 ____________________ For the LORD hardened their hearts and caused them to fight the Israelites. So they were completely destroyed without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses. Joshua 11:20 _____________________ Joshua 11 is an uncomfortable chapter to read, especially if you do not want to accept God as good and right. We want to make God in our own image, but not even a true image of ourselves but a made up false God. God fights for his people. God utterly destroys the enemies of his people. God does not want his people to trust in the might of military technology. God required his people to disable it all the horses and the chariots. God controls the hearts of the enemies. God demands obedience from his people. A couple little footnotes, Joshua and Caleb were the two spies who forty years previous said God would give them the land but the other ten spies said the land was too hard to conquer because of the walled cities and the giants. Chapter eleven here is telling us that the giants are no more in the conquered areas of the land. The descendants of Anak were the giants and now they are gone except in the surrounding areas. We hear more of the giants later, when a boy slays the last of them. But this chapter here (Joshua 11) is full of war, slaughter, genocide, animal crippling, looting, destruction of cultures, men, woman, and children, killed, and Kings killed. This was all done as God had instructed. This was God's plan. This plan was God's plan for over 40 years, in fact for nearly 500 years since Abraham. Can you trust this God? Can you accept that this is the way God works? Can you praise God for doing this? God's wrath is not a thing of the past. There is coming wrath; It is being stored up and these are the ways God unleashes his wrath. We must see God for who he is and fear him, love him and trust Him. God has not changed. He is the same now as he was then. EN Joshua Chapter 11 Israel Defeats the Northern Armies 1 When King Jabin of Hazor heard what had happened, he sent messages to the following kings: King Jobab of Madon; the king of Shimron; the king of Acshaph;2 all the kings of the northern hill country; the kings in the Jordan Valley south of Galileet; the kings in the Galilean foothillst; the kings of Naphoth-dor on the west; 3 the kings of Canaan, both east and west; the kings of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites in the hill country, and the Hivites in the towns on the slopes of Mount Hermon in the land of Mizpah. 4 All these kings came out to fight. Their combined armies formed a vast horde. And with all their horses and chariots, they covered the landscape like the sand on the seashore. 5 The kings joined forces and established their camp around the water near Merom to fight against Israel. 6 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them. By this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over to Israel as dead men. Then you must cripple their horses and burn their chariots.” 7 So Joshua and all his fighting men traveled to the water near Merom and attacked suddenly.8 And the LORD gave them victory over their enemies. The Israelites chased them as far as Greater Sidon and Misrephoth-maim, and eastward into the valley of Mizpah, until not one enemy warrior was left alive. 9 Then Joshua crippled the horses and burned all the chariots, as the LORD had instructed. 10 Joshua then turned back and captured Hazor and killed its king. (Hazor had at one time been the capital of all these kingdoms.) 11 The Israelites completely destroyedt every living thing in the city, leaving no survivors. Not a single person was spared. And then Joshua burned the city. 12 Joshua slaughtered all the other kings and their people, completely destroying them, just as Moses,