Holy War
1 Samuel 15 & Background Scriptures
Opening Prayer
“Our Father, we are so very grateful for your grace toward us. We are
sinners. It does not matter what sins we have committed. We were born
spiritually dead because of Adam’s sin. Every single one of us, no matter who
we are or what we have done, are all under that condemnation. But the only
solution that You have provided, is the death of Christ on the cross. That is
the only hope and the ultimate solution.
Father, we pray for this nation at this time because we are in desperate
need of hearing the truth of the gospel and having an exhibition of Your grace
and of Your unconditional love. Father, we are specifically mindful of the
situation that occurred, this horrible attack that occurred in Orlando,
Florida.
We pray for the chaplains and the others that are talking to the
survivors and the families. We pray that there are those who understand the
gospel and can minister to those folks and help them understand Your grace and
Your goodness and the redemption solution of Jesus Christ.
Father, we pray that as Christians we might be able to exemplify the
truth in this situation, the need to communicate grace, and that the spiritual
life is the only real solution. But, in terms of a temporary solution, we need
a secure nation. We are at war, not because we choose to be at war, but because
a religion has chosen to declare Holy War against the West and against the
United States. Failure to identify that as the problem creates myopia that is self-destructive.
Father, we need to understand that what this man did was directly
related to his religious beliefs, and that until we face the role of religious
beliefs in these kinds of events, we will never be able to solve the problem
because we cannot identify it. We pray that You will raise up leaders who can
accurately identify the problem and address the problem that we might have a
secure nation.
Father, tonight as we study Your Word, as we touch on themes related to
this, we pray that You will help us to understand more about who You are, more
about Your righteousness and justice, and that we can help others to understand
what these issues are and how they apply to these contemporary events. We pray
this in Christ’s Name. Amen.”
We are in a section in 1 Samuel 15 that is based on the issue of what
some call Holy War. We have to raise this question, especially in light of the
things that have happened just this last weekend:
What is Holy War?
I want to make one comment about what happened this last weekend because
we are hearing so much that is coming out that is sympathetic to the LGBT
community. Since they are all human beings, it does not matter what peoples’
sins are, whether in all these sin lists we have in Scripture that include homosexuality
and lesbianism and all these things, they also include sins such as gossip,
slander, arrogance, and divisiveness. It may be a sin that has more extreme
consequences than others, but we are all sinners. It is not about what these
folks have ever done, because every one of us is in a boat where we have
committed sin.
There is one pastor, whose name I will not mention, and I hesitate to
even call him a pastor because he is an absolute blight on the escutcheon of the
cross. He is an enemy of the cross. He is an enemy of grace. He has a pastorate
or a church or a group of followers in Arizona.
It is not really a church, but he has published a number of things over
the years that are hostile to dispensationalism. He is anti-Semitic. And he has
come out and said that these homosexuals got exactly what they deserved and
probably ended their life early so they will not suffer any diseases or
anything.
This exemplifies a person who is not a biblical Christian. He does not
understand biblical truth. He does not understand grace. He does not understand
the cross. He does not understand sin. It is just a person whose soul, like
everybody else's, has been
influenced by arrogance and evil.
This is a great opportunity for people to demonstrate tremendous love
and compassion. I read a report from someone just this morning. The Chick-fil-A in Orlando came in on
Sunday, when they are normally closed, and cooked a full array of food and
meals and took it to the folks who were standing in those enormous lines in
order to give blood to help those who were injured. That is a great example of
grace. They did not want publicity. They did not do it for attention. They
wanted to keep it all under the radar. That is how Christianity operates. That
is exemplifying the grace of Jesus Christ.
But there is going to be a lot of talk about how this is a hate crime.
All crimes are hate crimes in my opinion. They will say this is related to
homosexuality in some way. The evidence so far at this point seems to indicate
that this guy has a problem with homosexuality. He was probably torn. He has a
belief drilled into his conscience from Islam that he is going to go to
wherever they go, hell, lake of fire, whatever they have, eternal judgment,
because he is a homosexual.
This is why you have to understand religious beliefs and why everything
that I have taught you for years is driven ultimately by your understanding of
God and your understanding of man’s nature and your understanding of God’s
solution.
In Islam, the only way that you can have any kind of forgiveness for
that kind of guilt is to commit jihad
and be killed in the process and be a martyr. Immediately you are ushered into
their understanding of paradise.
That is what I believe happened. I believe that this guy had this
psychological tension and guilt that had built up over the years because he had
homosexual tendencies. On the one hand, this violated his Islamic conscience.
On the other hand, the only way he could resolve everything was to commit jihad. It was Islam/ISIS
that gave him a rationale. You cannot separate what he did.
That is what the focus from some elements in our culture will do. They
will try to separate what he did. It is not really Islam. He really was not
involved with ISIS. They are going to come up with all that rationale. And that
is hogwash. It is garbage. You have to understand what is going on here. He
needed cleansing, and he felt like the only way he could do it was by going out
in jihad. That was his whole
strategy.
I want to talk some tonight—and we will hit this a little more in the
next couple of weeks—but based on what we have in 1 Samuel 15, this whole idea
of so-called Holy War and jihad,
which is what you get out of Islamic theology, and whether or not this is
justified, is ultimately what we are going to see.
This comes down to the same basic question we were dealing with in the
third and fourth sessions in the Holocaust Special. That is the problem of
evil, because the issue that comes up here is this:
If God authorizes the annihilation of a group of people, how can that be
explained in light of God’s love, God’s justice, and God’s righteousness?
It is usually presented as if this is very arbitrary. God is this
wicked, mean, and horrible god who authorized the slaughter of the Canaanites.
We have to look at this from a holistic framework in the Scriptures. We cannot
come in and look at it as it is indicated here in 1 Samuel.
We have to take time and look at what these answers are. It is basically
the same answer that I covered in that last lesson dealing with the problem of
evil. It relates. It is the same issue. In the problem of evil the question is
what about God’s righteousness? What about His justice?
How can a righteous, just, and omnipotent God allow evil?
Because He is not:
That is the argument. The same thing undergirds this particular issue.
We need to take some time and think about this. We are going to look at the
first few verses of 1 Samuel 15 in order to set the stage. This is one of those
critical chapters that we have in the Scripture related to several important
doctrines that are brought out in this section.
1 Samuel 15:1, “Samuel also said
to Saul, ‘The Lord sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now
therefore, heed the voice of the words of the Lord.’ ”
Here’s an observation: when the Bible says that God chose a specific
group of people for a mission, that is an exclusivity. This runs in the face of
all political correctness and all liberalism, whether it is religious
liberalism or political liberalism. That is the idea that there is a special
group for any purpose.
The whole idea of democratic thinking has been so perverted in the last
100 years as a result of the influence of Marxism, social justice ideas, and
these things that say everybody ought to get the same thing. It is a distortion
of the ideas of equality and liberty.
God selected Israel for a specific mission. God can do that because He
is God. He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He has a right to
select whom He will in order to accomplish whatever tasks He has.
The mission that God is giving Saul in 1 Samuel 15:2, “Thus says the Lord of hosts …” This is a title that relates to
God’s sovereign authority over the armies. The word for “hosts” is the Hebrew
word צְבָאֹות, tsebaoth, which
is a plural term. The English word “host” is just an antiquated term for armies
and the military. God is the Commander of the Armies. This brings to bear both
the invisible armies of the angels, as well as He is the Lord over the armies
of Israel.
“Thus says the Lord of
hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel …’ ” Poor, poor Amalek.
What did the Amalekites ever do to deserve complete annihilation? How
mean is God to have this kind of punishment?
“ ‘I will punish Amalek for
what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from
Egypt.’ ” Wait a minute. Do we not have a contradiction
in Scripture here? Scripture says, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
Did Amalek try to totally annihilate Israel?
No they did not. They did not totally annihilate Israel. So how come God
is going to punish them with total annihilation? That is background.
1 Samuel 15:3, “ ‘ “Now go and
attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them.
But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child …” ’ ” Who is left
out?
“ ‘ “But kill both man and
woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” ’ ”
What did those poor animals do? I can understand killing the camels.
They are pretty nasty creatures, but what did the animals do? Why is there this
complete annihilation of all of the livestock and all of the people, men,
women, children, and infants? How can a just God do this?
That is the question we have to ask, and we cannot answer that question
in isolation.
On the map, the green is the land of Canaan. That is the land God
promised to Israel. In the south is the territory that is occupied by Amalek.
The Amalekites are basically a people that do not have a specific location.
They had a few cities, but they moved around a lot. They were somewhat like the
Bedouin, except they were more organized. They were almost like land pirates.
They are down in the south.
We have the Wadi of Egypt, Wadi el-Arish. This is the southern boundary
of the land God promised to Israel. The groups that are located around here:
We know that Edom, the Edomites, are descendants of whom? Esau. The
Amalekites are also descendants of Esau. Keep that in mind—this is a family
affair.
The Moabites and the Ammonites are the descendants of the two sons of
Lot, from committing incest with his two daughters, who initiated it and got
Lot drunk.
So that gives us the basic geographical orientation.
This map shows us a blue line. That is Saul’s line of attack against the
Amalekites in the south. We will get back to that attack later.
Now when we look at 1 Samuel 15:3, we have to understand what it means
to utterly destroy. That is not the best translation, although that is what it
ultimately indicates. It is a total and absolute annihilation of every man,
woman, child, and all livestock. It is the Hebrew word charam. I softened that a bit. I do not have the guttural sound (heth in Hebrew). I said herem not charam (the correct pronunciation).
Does anybody hear a word that sounds familiar? The word “harem.”
That is a cognate from this word. It means to isolate. You have a sheik
that has a harem. All those women are isolated and kept away from everybody
else. That is the basic idea in that word. It means to ban anyone else from the
harem with women. It is to ban anyone else from being involved with them. They
are to be devoted exclusively, set apart almost.
It borders on that idea of being set apart or sanctified or consecrated
to something. It implies, in some cases, complete destruction. That is another
meaning. So we have to understand this whole thing, but first let’s get to the
background on the Amalekites.
To understand why God is doing this, we have to understand the
historical relation of Amalek to Israel. We have to understand the role the
Amalekites played since the time of the Exodus, and a few other things for
background, and in answering this question:
Who were the Amalekites?
I do not think that is a biblical concept or a biblical term. And I do
not like it. I will either refer to this as the “ban” or I will refer to it as
“charam”, the Hebrew word. When charam is called for, then that is
something unique and distinct in God’s plan that we have to understand.
They are the descendants of Esau through his wife Adah. Remember, Esau
is the older twin brother of Jacob. Jacob came out second. Esau came out first.
He was ruddy. He was given the nickname Edom, which is a cognate of Adam. When
God created Adam from the dust of the earth, He named him “man.” Adam is a word
that sounds like the word for red. That would have referred probably to his
skin color. Esau is also called Edom and his descendants are the Edomites.
Adah is a Canaanite woman. The lineage of Esau is related to the
Canaanites through his wife, Adah. She is also specifically identified as a
Hittite in Genesis 36:2.
And in Genesis 36:12, “Now Timna
was the concubine of Eliphaz, Esau’s son, and she bore Amalek to Eliphaz.
These were the sons of Adah, Esau’s wife.” So through Adah, Esau
has a son, Eliphaz. Timna has a son, Amalek. “… and she bore Amalek.” So Amalek is Esau’s grandson.
Genesis 36:16, “Chief Korah, Chief
Gatam, and Chief Amalek. These were the chiefs of Eliphaz in the land of Edom.
They were the sons of Adah.” These are three tribal groups or clans that
are descendants from Esau.
These sons are located off to the southeast, the territory of Edom. Now
who is a famous Edomite in the New Testament? Herod the Great.
By the time of Herod the Great, the territory is moved up into the area
of Judah, but at this time it is down south. This is the area around Petra.
According to Numbers 13:29, “The
Amalekites dwell in the land of the South.” “The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South; the Hittites, the Jebusites,
and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea
and along the banks of the Jordan.”
The Hebrew word for south is Negev.
In the United States we had the Civil War between the North and the Negev. Negev is just the word for south. The Negev in Israel is “down south.” The Amalekites dwell in the Negev.
“The Hittites, the
Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains.” That would be in the center part of
the land of Canaan, the ridge that runs down from north to south.
“The Canaanites dwell by the
seas.” Along with the Philistines they were living
along the seacoast in the Shephelah
area in Israel and along the banks of the Jordon.
Part of the problem with studying the pre-Israel period is that you have
all these “ites:” the Amorites, the Jebusites, the Amalekites, and the
Canaanites, along with several other groups.
In Judges 12:15 we see that this is during the judgeship of a minor
judge named Abdon: “Then Abdon the son of
Hillel the Pirathonite died and was buried in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim,
in the mountains of the Amalekites.”
By that period, the Amalekites had taken over part of that center area
in the hill country of Samaria. This is what later becomes the Northern
Kingdom. They have made greater incursions there.
This shows that Amalek has been a continuous problem with the
Israelites. The Amalekites have opposed Israel from the beginning. That is the
next point that I want us to see.
According to this map, that area is to the north. The traditional
location of Mt. Sinai is down in the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. I do
not think that is where it was located, but this gives us an idea of the area.
If you look at these small yellow triangles with a circle in the middle,
these are alternate sites that various people have suggested. The traditional
Mt. Sinai is too far in terms of what the Bible says about the distance they
traveled, how long it took them to travel from Sinai to Kadesh Barnea.
When they would probably travel about the same rate of speed as a
caravan, which was between 5–10 miles a day, they could not get from the
traditional Mount Sinai to Kadesh-Barnea in the length of time the Bible says.
It would just be too short.
So Mt. Sinai is probably located up this way, which makes more sense.
Where Rephidim is located on this map is very close to Mt. Sinai, Jebel Musa
(J. Musa), which is the traditional site, but it would be easier for the
Amalekites if it were further north in the Sinai Peninsula.
If we look at Exodus 17, the first part of it talks about the problem at
Massa and Meribah with the lack of water. But while they are there they are attacked by Amalek. Think about this for a minute: How many Israelites are there?
Based on the numbers given us in the book of Numbers, related to the
number of men that were of fighting age, you have 600,000 to 650,000 males. If
you have one woman and two children for every family, you just multiply 650,000
by 4 and you have about 2.5 million people. If they were having more than two
children, and remember they were extremely prolific during the years that they
were in Egypt, then they probably had a lot more children. You could have as
many as 3.5 million Israelites.
Think of a city one-half the size of Houston. If Moses has to move them
every single day, then it is a very slow operation. You are not making a lot of
progress, but you are going to be attacked by a huge army that is an
existential threat.
So how many Amalekites are there? Not a couple of thousand. You have got
a large army that is attacking, and this puts everybody at risk. The Israelites
marshal their army, which probably, based on those numbers, would be 200,000 to
300,000 that are out there fighting the Amalekites.
Exodus 17:9, “And Moses said to
Joshua, ‘Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will
stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.’ ”
Moses has his staff. This is the same staff that turned into serpents in
front of Pharaoh, and that he used to split the Red Sea. He is going to hold
this up. He says that he “will stand on
top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.”
Exodus 17:10, “So Joshua did as
Moses said to him, and fought with Amalek, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to
the top of the hill.”
Hur is another leader among Israel. That is where Lou Wallace came up
with the name “Ben Hur,” meaning son of Hur. If you remember the story, his
whole name was Judah Ben Hur, which is Judah son of Hur, a descendant of this
line.
Exodus 17:11–12, “And so it was,
when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his
hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses’ hands
became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he
sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the
other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the
sun.”
Aaron and Hur stood on each side of Moses, and as long as Moses held the
staff up, Israel was winning. But if he got tired and the staff began to come
down, as it got lower and lower, the tide turned. What happened is that Aaron
and Hur stood on each side of Moses and held his arms up. As long as his arms
were up, God gave them the victory until we read:
Exodus 17:13, “So Joshua defeated
Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”
Now this is the critical verse in Exodus 17:14, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this for a memorial in the book
and recount it in the hearing of Joshua that I will utterly blot out the
remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.’ ”
God’s promise here is that He is going to obliterate Amalek from the
face of the earth because Amalek stands in opposition to Israel and God’s plan
to take His people to the Promised Land.
Then He announced that He is going to annihilate the Amalekites in
Exodus 17:15, “And Moses built an altar
and called its name, The-LORD-is-My-Banner ...”—the Lord is the One who
stands over me and protects me.
Exodus 17:16, “for he said,
‘Because the Lord has sworn; the Lord will have war with Amalek from
generations to generation.’ ”
This is a long-term conflict. How does this then develop?
Numbers 24:20 is talking about one of the oracles of Balaam. Balaam
looks at Amalek and pronounces an oracle:
“Amalek was first among the nations, but shall be last until he perishes.”
This is another prophecy of the total destruction of the Amalekites.
In Deuteronomy 25:17–19, God is speaking to the Israelites. He says, “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way
as you were coming out of Egypt 18 how he met you on the way
and attacked your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear, when
you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God. 19 Therefore
it shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from your
enemies all around, in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to
possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the
remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.”
That event at Massa and Meribah at Rephidim, where the Israelites fought
the Amalekites, that is your benchmark for understanding what God is doing
against the Amalekites. They attempted to obliterate and annihilate Israel.
Deuteronomy 25:17, “Remember what
Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt,”
Deuteronomy 25:18, “how he met you
on the way and attacked your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear, when
you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God.” That is some more
information that we did not get in Exodus.
Deuteronomy 25:19, “Therefore it
shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from your enemies all
around in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an
inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under
heaven. You shall not forget.”
This is our third prophecy about total obliteration, wiping it out. That
is the Hebrew word that means “blot out.” It means to
blot out or wipe out or eradicate. Amalek will be wiped out from under Heaven.
We have a couple of references in the book of Judges. Judges 3:13 shows
Amalek is in an alliance with Eglon, the king of Moab. Remember Eglon the king
of Moab? That is “Fatty.” He was the corpulent king that was killed by Ehud,
the left-handed assassin. We are told about this alliance.
Judges 3:13, “Then he (Eglon) gathered
to himself the people of Ammon and Amalek, went and defeated Israel, and took
possession of the City of Palms.” What is the City of Palms? It is Jericho. Jericho is the City of
Palms.
Judges 6:3 is the episode leading into the introduction of Gideon. “So it was, whenever Israel had sown,
Midianites would come up; also Amalekites and the people of the East would come
up against them.”
The Midianites, Amalekites, and other peoples are invading into Israel.
This is when Gideon goes and hides in the wine press.
Judges 10:12 is the lead in to Japhthath’s episode. “Also the Sidonians and Amalekites and Maonites oppressed you; and you
cried out to Me, and I delivered you from their hand.”
What we are seeing here is that again and again and again it is the
Amalekites who are attacking and trying to destroy and wipe out Israel. This is
the background. This has created a long-term adversarial relationship with
Israel.
When you look at 1 Samuel 15, the king of the Amalekites at that time is
a guy named Agag. Agag is mentioned one other time in the Scripture in book of
Esther. You have the anti-Semite, Haman, who seeks to destroy and obliterate
all the Jews in Persia and gets permission to do it.
Haman is described as an Agagite. He is a descendant of Agag. As a
result of that, in Jewish history the Jews will refer to all of their enemies
as “Amalek.”
The Jews do that to this day. You will read something and they will say
that they are being attacked by Amalek again. Wait a minute. The Amalekites got
wiped out a long time ago. But they use that title to refer to all of their
enemies.
So what happens in 1 Samuel 15 is that because of the Amalekites’ past
aggression against Israel and their hostility to Israel, God is going to
totally destroy them. He announced that to Moses. He reaffirmed that again in
Numbers. He restated that several more times. This is what God is going to do.
He is going to wipe out the Amalekites. So what is this thing that we call Holy War?
Is there such a thing as biblical Holy
War? In Islam you have a thing called jihad.
What is the relationship? Where does that come from? Is jihad a heretical perversion of this so-called idea of “Holy War” in the Bible? I think it is,
but let’s break this down.
From the research I was able to do—which was not exhaustive. I did not
go out and write a PhD dissertation on the topic—but from the research that I
did, the term Holy War does not
really appear until you get the idea of jihad
with Islam. The concept of Holy War
comes from the Latin word sacra for
holy and bellum for war. That becomes
a common term during the period of the Crusades, which is roughly 1,000 years
after Christ.
There is no equivalent term in the Hebrew. It is called “the ban,” charam. That is not a term that is ever
translated anywhere as Holy War. It
is just something put under “the ban.” It is something devoted to God. This
term seems to be a perversion or misunderstanding that grows out of an
allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament. It is misapplied to what was
going on in the Middle Ages. It was also misapplied and distorted by Mohammad
in the Quran.
What does the Bible say about it? It is not as overtly expressed as some
other things. What we get from our modern post-enlightenment is “we know more
than anybody else does in society.” This is judgmentalism that comes out of
Protestant liberalism toward the God of the Old Testament who would authorize
something like this. There is a lot of garbage on this whole idea that needs to
be peeled back.
I went to a couple of different sources for an understanding of this
word. The first source is the Theological
Wordbook of the Old Testament. That was put together and came out in the
late 1970s by evangelical scholars. It is a good source. The key thing that you
need to notice is the first sentence:
“The basic meaning is the exclusion of an object from the use or abuse
of man and its irrevocable surrender to God.”
It is very close to the idea of qadosh,
to set something apart to the use of God. We are going to see that this stands
as a picture for understanding sanctification. That is an application of
understanding this kind of warfare because it is going to relate to spiritual
warfare in the Christian life.
“The basic meaning is the exclusion of an object from the use or abuse
of man and its irrevocable surrender to God. The word is related to an Arabic
root meaning “to prohibit, especially to ordinary use.” The word “harem,”
meaning the special quarters for Muslim wives, comes from it. It is related
also to an Ethiopic root, meaning “to forbid, prohibit, lay under a curse.”
Surrendering something to God meant devoting it to the service of God or
putting it under a ban for utter destruction.
It is like a whole burnt offering. When you put that animal on the
altar, everything is burned up, all the smoke, everything goes up to God. No
humans eat from it. The fellowship offering they ate from part of it. But
nothing is left for man in the whole burnt offering. It all goes to God.
That was the idea. We will see this when Joshua attacks Jericho:
Unlike jihad or these other
perversions of this concept, there is no individual benefit to anybody.
Everything goes to God. It is set apart for God.
The NIDOTTE is the New International
Dictionary of Old Testament Theology Exegesis. This is a five-volume set
that came out in the late 1990s. This is the opening paragraph summary:
“Consecration for service to God is dealt with in Leviticus 27:28
(persons and things); Joshua 6:18; Micah 4:13 (objects). Whatever is devoted to
the Lord, be it human being, animal, or property, is considered most holy by
God and is therefore not to be sold or redeemed by substituting something else.
According to Numbers 18:14 and Ezekiel 44:29, all such objects are to be given
to the priests for the support of the religious ceremonies. The gold, silver,
bronze, and iron from Jericho, for instance, were so designated (Joshua 6:19).”
It is not to go to the benefit to make anybody wealthy. That is the
idea. What is the first word? “Consecration.” When you hear a word like
consecration or sanctification, we need to think, “Okay, there is an
application here related to the spiritual life.”
Some things are set apart for God’s use. That is the idea in the
Christian way of life. Where we are going to see an area of application from
the Old Testament concept of charam
is in the New Testament concept of spiritual warfare.
In the Church Age the only authorized warfare for the believer, other
than to defend your national entity, is spiritual warfare. That is the
individual believer’s battle to grow spiritually.
Unlike Islamic jihad or the
heresy of the Christian Crusades, fighting in a charam did nothing toward salvation or spiritual life or spiritual
status. It did not make them holier. It did not improve their spiritual life.
It did not guarantee them a place in Heaven. (That is what happens in Islamic jihad. They are guaranteed a place in
Heaven).
You have none of that in charam.
That was part of what was promised by the Popes to the Catholics who went on
the Crusades. It was that they would have indulgences. Their sins would be
cancelled out. It was the same kind of idea that you have in Islam. But none of
those ideas are part of biblical truth or biblical Christianity.
These were Canaanite groups. If we really understood, if I stood up here
and described as I have come to understand what went on in Canaanite religion,
some of you would throw-up. Others of you would be so embarrassed you would
never want to show your face at church again. It was sexual perversion to the
grossest limit of anything that is going on in this country today and much,
much worse.
There were infant sacrifices: tens of thousands of babies were immolated
in the arms of their idols and burned alive day in and day out. It was
considered in the ancient world the worse of all the religions. God allowed
them to go on for almost 600 years before He wiped them out. God did not wake
up one day and say, “Okay, we are going to obliterate the Canaanites.” This was
something that took place over an extremely long period of time.
He is telling Abraham you are going to go through several generations,
and then your descendants are going to end up in a land that is not theirs. It
is not the Promised Land. They are going to serve the people in that land for
four hundred years. That is the Egyptian captivity and slavery.
Genesis 15:16, “But in the fourth
generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet
complete.” God multitasks. He is going to take the seventy or so that are
with Jacob down to Israel and isolate them in Goshen. He is going to bless them
with hyper fertility. They are going to grow rapidly to about 3.5 million
people. He is protecting the seed.
The Egyptians have this great prejudice and hostility toward the
Semites. They will not even sit in the same room and eat with them. They will
not have anything to do with them. The Egyptians’ level of segregation would
have made the Ku Klux Clan look like a bunch of wannabes.
The Egyptians were so hyper in their hatred and dislike of the Semites
that there were no Egyptians who would marry or have sexual relations with any
Semites. That would be the last thing in the world that they would want to do.
This is going to allow God to preserve the ethnic purity of the Jews.
The Jews are going to come back to the land in the fourth generation
because by that time, after 400+ years, the Canaanite perversion is going to
reach its fullness. God is going to give them enough rope to hang themselves.
They are going to destroy themselves through their own perversion.
I want to look first of all at Exodus 23. In Exodus 23:20ff, God is
talking to Moses telling him how He is going to protect them, and what He is
going to do in leading them back to the land that He had promised them. “Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep
you in the way and to bring you into place which I have prepared.” That is
the Angel of Yahweh. That is the Angel that appears to Joshua and is the real
General who leads the troops, the hosts of Israel, against the Canaanites.
Exodus 23:21, “Beware of Him and
obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions;
for My Name is in Him.” “for My Name
is in Him” sounds pretty harsh.
And He is not talking to the Canaanites. He is talking to His own
people. It says that if you do not do exactly as He says, then the punishment
on you is going to be pretty harsh. We will see that next time when we look at
Joshua 7 and what happens when Achan sinned.
Exodus 23:22–23, “But if you
indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your
enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My Angel (preincarnate Jesus
Christ) will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites
and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I
will cut them off.”
Did I mention the Amalekites? No. The Amalekites are not on the list.
These are all the other Canaanite groups who are in the land.
Exodus 23:24, “You shall not bow
down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you
shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.”
In other words, you wipe out everything.
Exodus 23:25–26, “So you shall
serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I
will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage
or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.”
He goes on to describe in Exodus 23:28–29, “And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the
Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive
them out from before you in one year …” Why?
Because if I drive them out in one year, you have not settled the land
yet. It is going to be progressive, just like sanctification is progressive. It
will be progressive because if you did it all at one time, then the land would
be barren. There would be nobody to work it or anything.
You do not want to do that, so you will take it: (Exodus 23:30), “Little by little I will drive them out
from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land. And I will
set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea of Philistia, and from the desert
to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand,
and you shall drive them out before you.”
This is the rationale for charam.
Because of their sin, judgment is coming; and Israel is the instrument of that
judgment.
Now let’s turn over to Numbers 33:40–53. Here we are going to see again
the significance of Amalek.
Numbers 33:40–41, “Now the king of
Arad, the Canaanite, who dwelt in the south (Negev) in the land of Canaan,
heard of the coming of the children of Israel. So they departed from Mount Hor
and camped at Zalmonah.” It gives you their travel log as they go through
the Negev and leading up to coming into the land—the purpose for looking at Numbers
33:40–53.
Numbers 33:50–52, “Now the Lord
spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho,
saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: “When you have
crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the
inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their engraved stones.” ’
” You run everybody out. Kill them. Destroy all the engraved stones. That
is their idols.
“Destroy all their molded
images, and demolish all their high places.” That
is where they were sacrificing children.
Numbers 33:53, “You shall
dispossess the inhabitants of the land and dwell in it, for I have given you
the land to possess”—because God as the Creator has the right to dispose of
land the way He sees fit.
Leviticus 18:24–27, “Do not defile
yourselves with any of these things.” That word translated “defile” means
to become ritually unclean. It is talking about their ritual cleanness and
uncleanness. It is always going to relate to sanctification. “For by all these the nations are defiled,
which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled.”
See, we get this idea that sin only impacts our soul, that it only
impacts the immaterial or spiritual dimension, but what we see in Genesis 3 and
we see it here, is that there is a connection between sin and the land. There
is a connection between the immaterial dimension of sin, the spiritual state of
a people, and the physical condition of the land and their physical blessing or
cursing. The land itself is unclean.
Leviticus 18:25–26, “For the land
is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the
land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My
judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your
own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the
men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled.)”
The land itself is unclean. Sin defiles a land. There is a connection
there. There is a connection between the spiritual and the physical.
Just read about the Exodus generation:
The only two that had any spiritual sense were Caleb and Joshua.
Everybody else was a spiritual failure. The New Testament in Hebrews talks
about that spiritual failure.
God says that they are stiff-necked people. He says that He does not
choose them for that reason. In Deuteronomy 9:5 we read: “It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your
heart that you go into possess the land, but because of the wickedness of these
nations that the Lord your God drives them out.”
God said I am not giving you the land because you have been so good. I
am taking the land away from them because they have been so evil. It is a
judgment on them. “God drives them out
before you that He may fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your fathers,
to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Those who lived around Canaan were not to be treated in the same way.
They would go to these other cities. They would give them the opportunity to
surrender. If they did, everything was fine. If they did not, they were to kill
all the men, but the women and children were to be taken care of. The animals
were not supposed to be killed. But if they were a Canaanite in the land,
everything was wiped out.
No one since ca. 1050 BC
(this event in 1 Samuel 15), no one since then has been authorized to engage in
charam, no one. It never happened
again in the Old Testament. This has to do with a unique and distinct
situation.
We will come back next time and look at these descriptions in
Deuteronomy 20, as well as review the character of God problem. Then we are
going to look at examples of this in the book of Joshua, which will be kind of
interesting in some other dimensions.
I want to bring in some of the things that I learned when I was in
Israel on the last trip. We were walking between Ai and Bethel and all the
debate that goes on in those locations, and that kind of a thing. That will be
next time.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for the opportunity to study these things this
evening. May we be encouraged with the fact that we learn important things
here. We learn about Your righteousness and justice.
We learn about Your grace and Your longsuffering directed
toward those who continually sin in the most perverse ways. We learn about Your grace toward Israel. Despite their rebelliousness, You still provided them with this rich land and promised to
give it to them for all eternity. It is theirs forever and ever, and never to
be taken away.
Father, we pray for us, that we might continue to focus on our own
spiritual warfare, recognizing that we are to have a “no holes barred, no
prisoners taken” mentality toward the sin in our own life. We pray this in Christ’s
Name. Amen.”