Hard hearts
This week is on Joshua 11:19-20:
Things end badly for those communities who don't know God. They lost their birthright to the land they possessed, and were killed in an act of genocide prearranged by God himself. God hardened their hearts and made them pointlessly stubborn, like kamikaze pilots attacking a decoy ship. Why?
The stuff about God hardening people's hearts is always hard to explain in the context of "buddy Jesus." Why would God constrict people's free will, or aid and abet them in pursuing a suicidal, self-destructive path? How do people get themselves into a situation where that can happen?
I believe that people often get themselves into a mindset where they figure they can avoid God if they just ignore him. They picture it like Lord of the Rings, where if they just keep from putting on the "ring" that lets them see God, God won't be able to see them either. In reality, it's more like the two year old sticking his head in a box and thinking he's invisible. It just doesn't work like that.
The people groups surrounding the nation of Israel were living a lifestyle apart from God. They chose to ignore God, and so that opened them up to being treated as foreigners by him. He could still see and affect every single detail about them, but he didn't have a relationship with them, and so they weren't really significantly different than any other object he's created. There was no difference between clearing the land of these willfully ignorant peoples and clearing the land of overgrown brush, when it came down to it. They're collections of molecules, not friends.
Things change when we get to know God. We're reunited with our creator. We share experience and eternity. Ironically, the way to avoid the consequences of our sin and to live the best life possible is not to hide from God, but to meet him. The people whose hearts God hardened were people who chose to harden themselves against God. In trying to steal God's mercy, they brought his judgment upon themselves.
Knowing God seemingly transforms us from broken machinery to living eternal beings. We're no longer collections of molecules and metabolic processes, flesh-robots controlled by electrical signals firing in our brains, but God's adopted children. The breath he breathed into us is reconnected with its source. It's so important to make that connection before it's too late.
The people God threw before the Israelites to be slaughtered were strong, prosperous peoples. The fact that they ended up on the business end of ethnic cleansing wasn't due to some kind of inherent weakness. They were proud, hard-working people who stood tall and thought they could stand apart from God. Every one of us has probably been in that position before, and most of us probably know people today who are still in that situation: People who refuse to be corrected, refuse to forgive, refuse to admit weakness, refuse to share their hard-earned stuff, refuse to be helped, and so on, because they're so very strong and so very proud. Pray for those people.
Take a moment and be thankful for your relationship with God. Thank God for your freedom and the grace you've been willing to accept. Ask for ways to help others find that same freedom and grace and peace. Things did not end well for the people who ignored God and thought they could run things on their own. We are surrounded by those people today.
Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses.
Things end badly for those communities who don't know God. They lost their birthright to the land they possessed, and were killed in an act of genocide prearranged by God himself. God hardened their hearts and made them pointlessly stubborn, like kamikaze pilots attacking a decoy ship. Why?
The stuff about God hardening people's hearts is always hard to explain in the context of "buddy Jesus." Why would God constrict people's free will, or aid and abet them in pursuing a suicidal, self-destructive path? How do people get themselves into a situation where that can happen?
I believe that people often get themselves into a mindset where they figure they can avoid God if they just ignore him. They picture it like Lord of the Rings, where if they just keep from putting on the "ring" that lets them see God, God won't be able to see them either. In reality, it's more like the two year old sticking his head in a box and thinking he's invisible. It just doesn't work like that.
The people groups surrounding the nation of Israel were living a lifestyle apart from God. They chose to ignore God, and so that opened them up to being treated as foreigners by him. He could still see and affect every single detail about them, but he didn't have a relationship with them, and so they weren't really significantly different than any other object he's created. There was no difference between clearing the land of these willfully ignorant peoples and clearing the land of overgrown brush, when it came down to it. They're collections of molecules, not friends.
Things change when we get to know God. We're reunited with our creator. We share experience and eternity. Ironically, the way to avoid the consequences of our sin and to live the best life possible is not to hide from God, but to meet him. The people whose hearts God hardened were people who chose to harden themselves against God. In trying to steal God's mercy, they brought his judgment upon themselves.
Knowing God seemingly transforms us from broken machinery to living eternal beings. We're no longer collections of molecules and metabolic processes, flesh-robots controlled by electrical signals firing in our brains, but God's adopted children. The breath he breathed into us is reconnected with its source. It's so important to make that connection before it's too late.
The people God threw before the Israelites to be slaughtered were strong, prosperous peoples. The fact that they ended up on the business end of ethnic cleansing wasn't due to some kind of inherent weakness. They were proud, hard-working people who stood tall and thought they could stand apart from God. Every one of us has probably been in that position before, and most of us probably know people today who are still in that situation: People who refuse to be corrected, refuse to forgive, refuse to admit weakness, refuse to share their hard-earned stuff, refuse to be helped, and so on, because they're so very strong and so very proud. Pray for those people.
Take a moment and be thankful for your relationship with God. Thank God for your freedom and the grace you've been willing to accept. Ask for ways to help others find that same freedom and grace and peace. Things did not end well for the people who ignored God and thought they could run things on their own. We are surrounded by those people today.
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