What would you do if you were a Gibeonite? Well, what they did was resort to a deception. They decided that because they weren’t strong enough to beat the Jewish armies, they were going to have to fool Israel somehow if their lives were to be spared. So they came up with a plan.
To put it in very basic terms, we cannot say, “This is the path that seems good to me” and, therefore, choose it. What we have to do is inquire of the Lord and follow His direction as we find it in Scripture, regardless of whether or not that is the path that seems good to us personally.
Yesterday, we looked at the first two points from Ephesians 6 about our spiritual warfare. The third is that we’re to carry the offensive weapon, our sword, which is the Word of God. It means we have to know it. We have to be able to use it. We have to have it at our disposal.
Perhaps you can apply how the Israelites regarded their treaty by supplying specifics from your own experiences. You get into something that perhaps was wrong for you, but you said you would do it and now you have to stand by it. You said, “Well, I’m in a business venture, but it’s costing me.” Well, that’s alright. If you said there was something you were going to do, you have to do it. You have to stand by it even though it’s costly.
The point I want to conclude with is simply to say that in many ways, we are like the Gibeonites. All the parallels are there. We were ignorant of the true God, and we worshipped false gods. We were under judgment, but we heard about God and we responded. And so, by the grace of God, we were brought into the fellowship of the covenant people. The same thing can be said about the Gibeonites. Were the Gibeonites liars and deceivers? Yes, they were; but so were we. Were they under judgment? Yes, they were. They had no hope in the world apart from God. But we were as well. Paul tells the Ephesians that as Gentiles they were cut off from the covenant of Israel. They were without God and without hope, just as we were.
We already looked in some detail at the southern campaign. The northern one is given in even less detail than the southern one, although it is similar in many respects. Like the southern campaign, the one in the north is also waged against a coalition of kings who gathered together to try and repulse the Israelite conquest of Canaan. We’re told at the very beginning of chapter 11 that there was a king in the north, the king of Hazor, whose name was Jabin. He saw what was happening and decided to respond by getting together all of the forces at his disposal.
In our study of the southern campaign I talked about Joshua’s leadership characteristics. This story of the northern campaign reminds us of the importance of spiritual leadership. The same principles that he put into practice in his military campaigns are principles that you and I need to put into our spiritual campaigns.
In some ways, at least as his story is told to us, Joshua was not a spectacular individual. At least he did not have a lot of spectacular experiences. There were miracles, of course, but basically, Joshua was a soldier. He was told what to do, and he did it. His strength was found in that, and that kind of obedience is a great thing.
Yesterday, we listed the first thing we must do if we are to fulfill Joshua 11:15, which is to truly believe on Jesus Christ by following him as a faithful disciple. The second thing is this. In Matthew 28, at the very end of that chapter where we have the Great Commission, we’re told that if we believe on Jesus, then we have an obligation to tell other people about Him.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:20, “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” What He is saying is that if you really are a justified man or woman, if His righteousness really has been imputed to you, if you have been made spiritually alive, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, there will be such a power in you and such a desire to please God that your good deeds will exceed the good deeds of the scribes and Pharisees.
The magnificent old man to which I am referring here in Joshua 14 is Caleb, who was Joshua’s companion and fellow soldier during all these long years of the conquest of Canaan. It’s often the case that in the presence of an outstanding leader, other people are overlooked. And it’s not because the other people are not great in themselves. Sometimes they’re even greater in some ways than the leader who’s getting all the attention. But, for one reason or another, perhaps just because he or she has a position of visibility, the leader gets the attention, and the other people are overshadowed.
Now when Numbers 13 begins to tell us about the work of the spies, it doesn’t give us very much detail as to how they went about their work. We don’t know, for example, whether they toured around in a body or whether they divided up. We might suspect that they divided up so as not to attract too much attention. One thing I suspect as I read about this is that whether they divided up or whether they went around as a group, Caleb must have expressed some particular interest in Hebron. Hebron is the only one of the cities of the land that’s described in any detail in Numbers 13.
Now it’s worth asking at this point what the secret of this man’s greatness was. In fact, it was no great secret. Caleb had total faith in God, and he gave himself to God utterly. It’s not hard to see his faith. That comes out very simply in this matter of the spies’ initial report.
The second thing that we see in Joshua 14 comes out in this word, “wholeheartedly,” which is repeated there three times (vv. 8, 9, 14). That’s the same idea that is involved in Deuteronomy 6:5, which Jesus quoted when He was asked what was the first and greatest of all the commandments. He said, “It’s that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Because Caleb loved the Lord his God with all his heart, he served him with all his heart. And he did it through a long, long lifetime. And here at the end, he’s still doing it.
There’s a great contrast here in this story, and I’m sure it’s why it’s told at this point, right in the middle of this account of the division of the land. It’s the contrast between Caleb, who followed the Lord wholeheartedly to the very end and took the land that he’d been promised so many years before, and the people who, for the most part, failed to fully possess these possessions. Oh, they had the land. They were there. The power of the Canaanites was broken during the seven years of military conquest. All of the great cities had been overthrown. But when the land was divided up, they were to go into their individual portions of the land, subdue it, and drive the inhabitants out. And we’re told again and again in these chapters that they didn’t quite do it. They settled down, and instead enjoyed the conquest without carrying it through to completion.
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