Back to the Promised Land

Introduction
The Judges
The First Seed of Destruction
The Second Seed of Destruction
Resources

Introduction

After the forty years of wandering in the wilderness while everyone twenty years of age and older died for their faithlessness, it was time for the younger generation to enter the Promised Land. But before they did, two significant things happened.

First, Moses preached a sermon series to the new generation reminding them of their past and of the laws and regulations that were given at Mt. Sinai and challenging them to follow God’s ways in their new homeland. Those messages are the book of Deuteronomy. And second, Moses died. He was 120 years old, but he didn’t die of old age, he died because God took him home as a consequence of an act of disobedience during the years of wandering in the wilderness when he struck the rock instead of speaking to it as God had instructed. (Numbers 20)

Joshua, one of the original twelve spies, was picked by God to succeed Moses as the leader and the book of Joshua begins the second assault on the Promised Land.

“After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them-to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates - all the Hittite country - to the Great Sea on the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:1-9

And so, the younger generation entered The Promised Land.

Joshua 1-4 is the story of the nation entering the land by crossing the Jordan River. God did for them what he did for their parents forty-two years earlier when they left Egypt. He stopped the water of the Jordan River and they crossed on dry ground! In chapter 6 they conquered the city of Jericho by marching around the city for 6 days and on the 7th day they marched around it 7 times. The walls fell down. The rest of the book of Joshua (chapters 7-24) tells the story of the military campaign to conquer the land. They drove west and split the land in half and then conquered south and then the north. It took seven years to gain control of the land.

The Judges

For the next 325 years, the nation of Israel was led by leaders called, Judges.

There were 14 Judges. Most, but not all, were military leaders. A couple of the more familiar Judges were Gideon, who routed a massive army that threatened Israel using 300 soldiers with trumpets, pitchers and lanterns and Samson, the judge with the long hair who was a ‘womanizer’.

The events recorded in the book of Ruth take place during the period of the Judges. It is a wonderful story of heartache, romance and God’s providence.

Candidly, the period of the Judges was a long period of spiritual and moral decay; punctuated by ‘spikes’ of spiritual renewal. During the years under the Judges, the nation went through periods of “cycles” when they would sin, God would punish them by allowing an enemy to conquer them, they would cry out to God for deliverance and he would deliver them through the leadership of a “judge” and they would enjoy peace once again. This cycle was repeated six times in the book of Judges.

The First Seed of Destruction

Unfortunately, the seeds of the “3-century-long moral and spiritual roller coaster” – which had more downs than ups - were planted by the 1st generation that invaded the Promised Land.One of the ‘seeds’ they planted was the way they compromised with the depraved culture of Canaan.

Here are the words given to the Israelites prior to invading the land.

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations — the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you — and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” Deuteronomy 7:1-6

They got a great start, but didn’t complete the job. Under the leadership of Joshua they conquered the land, but following the initial military campaign, each tribe was responsible to go into their territory and do the final clean-up.

Judges 1 records the disastrous pattern. It begins in 1:1, “After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, ‘Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites?’ The Lord answered, ‘Judah is to go…”

And the ‘mop-up operation’ began. However, a problem developed that becomes apparent from certain statements in the rest of the chapter.

v. 19 The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.

v. 20 As Moses had promised, Hebron was given to Caleb (the other spy who said they could take the land in the first place), who drove from it the three sons of Anak.

v. 21 The Benjamites, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites.

v. 27 But Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth Shan or their surrounding settlements, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land.

v. 28 When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely.

v. 29 Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them.

v. 30 Neither did Zebulun drive out the Canaanites living in Kitron who remained among them.

v. 31 Nor did Asher drive out those living in Sidon or Ahlab or or Helbah or Aphek or Rehob, and because of this the people of Asher lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land.

v. 33 Neither did Naphtali drive out those living in Beth Shemesh or Beth Anath; but the Naphtalites too lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land.

They left some of the people and some of the religion and some of the culture intact and in place! And the cultural influences of the Canaanites on the Hebrews was devastating.

One of the notes in the Life Application Bible from Judges 1:1 says, “Canaan’s greatest threat to Israel was not its army, but its religion. Canaanite religion idealized evil traits: sexual immorality, selfish greed, and materialism. It was a ‘me-first-anything-goes’ society.

Our methods are very different today in the church. Today we do not drive people out of our neighborhoods and communities who differ with our values and beliefs. We are to show love to them. But the question for us is the same: How much have we been influenced by the culture to the detriment to our calling to live a holy life? Collectively, the answer is, “a lot”.

As Michael Horton has written, “Evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered and sexually immoral as the world in general.”

But Paul wrote in Romans 12:2, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”

Let me just ask some personal questions:

Where do you draw the moral/ethical line? Where do you say, ‘no’? I won’t go there, do that, watch that, or take that?
Is your entertainment ‘boundaries’ honoring to Jesus? Is it any different than the average person who does not follow Jesus?
What does it take for you to change the channel, leave the theater, the party?
Does your spending and giving habits communicate that you follow Jesus?

Our call is to be holy…the question is, are we? This generation let this one slip, and the consequences were disastrous.

The Second Seed of Destruction

The 2nd ‘seed’ was that they failed to successfully pass on their spiritual heritage to the next generation.

“After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to his own inheritance. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths…” Judges 2:6-13

Not only did the younger generation get a ‘full-dose’ of Canaanite culture, they got nothing by way of spiritual input from their parents! Evidently, their parents were too busy fighting, building homes, cultivating fields and raising sheep to pass along the stories and lessons of their faith!

And this generation of parents was the one who first heard Moses say these words…
Deuteronomy 6:4-9, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.”

These words were spoken to the Jewish parents just before they entered the Land!

Moms and dads with children still in your home, it’s your job to develop the moral and spiritual framework in your kid’s lives. Use the Church and Christian schools, but don’t rely on them exclusively for your plan to develop spiritually capable offspring.

You do it by, first, pursuing God yourself. If you are not growing spiritually; spending time with God in his Word and in prayer, don’t expect your kids to. They might, but it will be in spite of you, not because of you and that is not the plan.

Second, you do it by teaching your children God’s spiritual and moral truths.

I understand that life is busy. I understand the pressures of both parents working, school activities, homework, music lessons and sports. But if there is no time for you, as a parent, to pass some spiritual guidance and truth on to your children on a regular basis, you are either too busy or it is too low of a priority and for the sake of your children, you need to change it, because the culture is most assuredly going to teach them their values!

Here are some suggestions:

Once a week, read the Bible together at a meal or at bedtime.
Read Christian adventure books together.
Once a week, read a devotional with your children from
Listen to Adventures in Odyssey from Focus on the Family
Memorize a Bible verse together as a family.
Talk about what your children learned in their S.S. class on Sunday.

Resources

Here are some resources for you to use to help you develop a plan to teach your children about God and his ways.

Each week material is posted on the River Oak’s Website for parents of children in our KidsWorld ministry to use at home to help reinforce the teaching from the previous week’s class.

Visit cbd.com (Christian Book Distributors) for a great selection of bibles for your pre-schooler, gradeschooler or teenager.

For some great ideas for interactive family devotions, check out these books at amazon.com:
For elementary:
Mashed Potatoes, Paint Balls: And Other Indoor/Outdoor Devotionals You Can Do with Your Kids

For preK:
Bible Stories for Preschoolers: Family Nights Tool Chest: New Testament
Wiggles, Giggles, & Popcorn

For parents who want to be motivated and equipped to pass along the Christian faith to their children, here are three books to help you do that:
Revolutionary Parenting by George Barna
Age of Opportunity by Paul Tripp
Faith Begins at Home by Mark Holmen

My challenge for all of us is to embrace the final words of Joshua as a motto for our homes and our lives, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15