The questions here posed are legitimate. The same
questions existed shortly after Jesus’ day, as His apostles were carrying the
message of His paradoxical all-conquering victory via death and Resurrection
into the world. To wit, in the second letter of Peter, one is able to
read questioning words like “Where is His promised return? For ever since
our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning
of creation” (2 Peter 3:4).
In the face of the message that Jesus had conquered death,
hearers in that day were no less able than “astute observers” today (who always
think that they are the first to notice that there is evil all around them), to
take in their surroundings and see violence, death, and inexplicable
destruction, and say “Nothing much has changed. Things pretty much look
the same way that they have always looked.” It’s a legitimate
observation, so how is the question to be answered?
Naturally, this is a difficult
issue that has plagued all that have ever posited a God of love and a
victorious Messiah. As they fought to take possession of that which they believed
had been promised to them, Israel would have been tempted to pose the same type
of statement and its implied question to their God. They could easily cast
a collective gaze upwards and say, “Lord, You promised this land to our
ancestors and to us. You brought us out of Egypt. You directed us
to cross the Jordan and to re-claim that which you said is ours. Why
don’t these people know this? You brought plagues on Egypt, parted the
Red Sea, destroyed the Egyptian army, and gave us food and water in the
wilderness, so why not just drive these people from the land with the obvious
mighty power of your outstretched arm? Would that not be easier?
Would that not be a greater demonstration of your power than us having to carry
out these campaigns?”
One could even imagine the covenant people attempting to
employ some reverse psychology on the Creator God by saying, “Seriously, Lord,
if you just drive them out, then you will get all the glory. If we have
to do battle against these people and these rulers, then we might get some of
the glory too. We don’t want that. You don’t really want that, do
you?”
How might the God of Israel be
disposed to respond to such thinking?
After all (and putting aside the potential ploy at reverse psychology),
based on the reported experience of Israel in their journey out of and from
Egypt, these are legitimate points. Returning then to the eleventh
chapter of Joshua so as to pick up where this study left off, and in response
to the concerns of the covenant people of the Creator God, it is said that “the
Lord determined to make them obstinate so they would attack Israel. He
wanted Israel to annihilate them without mercy, as He had instructed Moses”
(11:20).
Without getting sidetracked by the thought that this, in
isolation, paints the picture of something less than a loving God, one finds
that though the land had been given to Israel, and though the people of the
land had been handed over to Israel, the Creator God wanted His people to
annihilate them (though some could certainly see such reports as after-the-fact
justification). Regardless, the narrative suggests that Israel’s God did
in fact desire that His people have a hand in the battle.
Indeed, Scripture seems to suggest that the Creator God
wanted to work through His people and empower His people to come alongside Him
and work with Him to deal with and overcome that which despoiled, defaced, and
decimated their land of promise---that first part of the creation that was to
be redeemed through the care and stewardship of His covenant people. In
the end then, Israel should have been compelled to point to their God, and the
power of their promise-making God, as the means by which they emerged
victorious.
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