Turn with me, please, to Joshua chapter 10. Joshua chapter 10. Now, it came about when Adonai Zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard that Joshua had captured Ai and had utterly destroyed it, just as he had done to Jericho and its king, so he had done to Ai and its king, and that the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were within their land. that he feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were mighty. Therefore Adonai Zedek of Jerusalem sent word to Hotham king of Hebron, and to Parham king of Jarmuth, and to Japhia king of Lachish, and to Dabir king of Eglon, saying, Come up to me, and help me, and let us attack Gibeon, for it has made peace with Joshua, and with the sons of Israel. So the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gathered together and went up. They went with all their armies and camped by Gibeon and fought against it. Then the men of Gibeon sent word to Joshua to the camp at Gilgal, saying, Do not abandon your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites that live in the hill country have assembled against us. So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the valiant warriors. And the Lord said to Joshua, Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not one of them shall stand before you. So Joshua came upon them suddenly by marching all night from Gilgal. And the Lord confounded them before Israel, and He slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and pursued them by the way of the ascent of Beth Haran, and struck them as far as Azekah and Makeda. And it came about, as they fled from before Israel while they were at the descent of Beth-haran, that the LORD threw large stones from heaven on them as far as Ezekiah. And there were more who died from the hail stones than those whom the sons of Israel killed with the sword. Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel. And he said in the sight of Israel, O son, stand still at Gibeon. and O moon in the valley of Ajalon. So the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation avenged themselves or their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jasher, the sun stopped in the middle of the day and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day? And there was no day like that before it or after it when the Lord listened to the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. Then Joshua and all Israel with him returned to the camp to Gilgal. Now these five kings had fled and hidden themselves in the cave of Makeda, and it was told Joshua, saying, The five kings have been found hidden in the cave of Makeda. And Joshua said, Roll large stones against the mouth of the cave, and assign men by it to guard them. But do not stay there yourselves. Pursue your enemies and attack them in the rear. Do not allow them to enter into their cities, for the Lord your God has delivered them into your hand. And it came about when Joshua and the sons of Israel had finished slaying them with a very great slaughter, until they were destroyed and the survivors who remained of them had entered the fortified cities, that all the people returned to the camp to Joshua at Makeda in peace. No one uttered a word against any of the sons of Israel. Then Joshua said, Open the mouth of the cave and bring these five kings out to me from the cave. And they did so and brought these five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. And it came about when they brought these kings out to Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of war who had gone with them, Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. So they came near and put their feet on their necks. Joshua then said to them, Do not fear or be dismayed, be strong and courageous, for thus the Lord will do to all your enemies with whom you fight. So afterwards Joshua struck them and put them to death, and he hanged them on five trees, and they hung on the trees until evening. And it came about at sunset that Joshua commanded and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves and put large stones over the mouth of the cave to this very day. Now Joshua captured Makeda on that day and struck it and its king with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it. He left no survivor. Thus he did to the king of Makeda just as he had done to the king of Jericho. Then Joshua and all Israel with him passed on from Achaia to Libna, and fought against Libna. And the Lord gave it also with its king into the hands of Israel, and he struck it, and every person who was in it with the edge of the sword, he left no survivor in it. Thus he did to its king, just as he had done to the king of Jericho. And Joshua and all Israel with him passed on from Libna to Lachish, and they camped by it and fought against it. And the LORD gave Lachish into the hands of Israel, and he captured it on the second day, and struck it, and every person who was in it with the edge of the sword, according to all that he had done to Libna. Then Horeb king of Gezer came up to help Lachish, and Joshua defeated him and his people until he left him no survivor. And Joshua and all Israel with him passed on from Lachish to Eglon, and they camped by it and fought against it. And they captured it on that day and struck it with the edge of the sword, and he utterly destroyed that day every person who was in it, according to all that he had done to Lachish. Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. And they captured it, and struck it and its king, and all the cities, and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon, and he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it. Then Joshua and all Israel with him returned to Deborah, and they fought against it. And he captured it and its king, and all its cities, and they struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed every person who was in it. He left no survivor. just as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Deborah and its king, as he had done also to Lebanon and its king. Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country, the Negif, the low land, the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded. And Joshua struck them from Kadesh Barnea, even as far as Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even as far as Gibeon. And Joshua captured all these kings and their lands at one time because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel. So Joshua and all Israel with him returned to the camp at Gilgal. This battle for Gibeon at Beth-Aron we saw last week is one of the most important battles in all of the wars of human history. In history, we study the great wars of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and all the rest. But this little battle at Beth Haran where Israel was called to come to the rescue of the Gibeonites to protect them from a massive alliance of five Canaanite kings is one of the most unfamiliar battles in all of history and yet at the same time one of the most important battles in all of history. Because this was the first time there was a major resistance formed against the advance of Israel in its invasion of Canaan, the Promised Land. Had Israel lost at this Battle of Beth-Haram, there would have been no chosen people. Had there been no chosen people, there would have been no Messiah. Had there been no Messiah, there would have been no salvation, and we all would have been lost. So this battle at Beth Haran is obviously one of the most important battles in the history of human warfare. It is so important, in fact, you remember how, what God used to defeat them, and remember it was God that defeated this alliance of kings. Notice there in verse 42. And Joshua captured all these kings, their lands, at one time because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel. Whenever Israel won victories, Joshua was very quick to say it was God who did it. We were just the instruments. Our fighting men risked their lives. They fought bravely. They fought well. But there was no merit in it. There was no worth in it. They were simply instruments, swords, spears, bows and arrows in the hands of Jehovah. And whenever a battle was fought, it was Jehovah who was to be praised, and Jehovah won the battle. And so notice how he won the battle. He won it by swords and by hailstones, you remember? First of all, he used Israel to attack the alliance of five kings. They slaughtered them with the sword, the rest fled, and then God wiped out the rest pertineer with hail, and more people died from hail. than died by the sword. By the way, let me tell you an interesting fact that you weren't told in your history classes. Recently, Otto Scott, a great historian from our perspective in America, was reviewing a book, and I was listening to his review of a book on World War II. Do you know that more German soldiers died in American concentration camps after the war than on the battlefield during the war. More German soldiers died in American concentration camps after the war than died during the war in battle. But anyway, Situation here was a lot of these Amorites, this alliance of kings, died in the battlefield. God killed a significant group afterwards by the hailstones. God threw the stones at them. Well, they needed a couple extra, they needed a few extra hours of daylight that day to finish the battle. Because if night had come when it was supposed to, they would have to cut off the fighting and then the enemy could regroup and rearm itself and refresh itself and come back the next day in full force. And Joshua needed a few extra hours that day to finish them off. So he commands, after going to the Lord for counsel and advice in faith, he commands the sun and the moon to stand still in the skies. And they do it, and that day is doubled almost in its length. And here we said last week, why in the world such a miracle of galactic, cosmic proportions? Why couldn't have God performed a nice, smaller miracle, something that wouldn't have been quite so, have so many ramifications for the entire universe, to have the sun and the moon stand still? And the reason is, is because of the importance of this battle. God performed a miracle of galactic proportions to impress us with the importance of what was going on in that battle, and it caused the sun to stand still. I gave you a little paper when you came in, that I thought was interesting and you might enjoy and give some of your agnostic friends. And I want to read it to you because it is something Cannon Reynolds referred to last week. And I have it there before you. The sun did stand still because it's quite a fascinating story. Let's read it. I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Greenbelt, Maryland. They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in space where they would be a hundred years and a thousand years from now. Now we have to know this so we don't send a satellite up and have it bump into something later on in its orbits. We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be so the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down. They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards. They called in the service department to check it out and they said, it's perfect. The head of the operation said, what's wrong? Well, they found there's a day missing in space in elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair, there was no answer. One religious fellow on the team said, you know, one time I was in Sunday school and they talked about the sun standing still. They didn't believe him. They didn't have any other answers, so they said, show us. He got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for anybody who has common sense. There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, fear not, for I have delivered them into thy hand. There shall not a man of them stand before thee. Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy, and if darkness fell, they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still. That's right, the sun stood still and the moon stayed, and hasted not to go down about a whole day, Joshua 10. The spacemen said, there's the missing day. They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close, but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes, not a whole day. They read the Bible and there it was, it says not a whole day but about a day. These little words in the Bible are important but they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes, you'll still be in trouble a thousand years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. This religious fellow also remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went backwards. The spacemen told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the book and read these words in 2 Kings. Hezekiah on his deathbed was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said, do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees? Hezekiah said, it's nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees, 2 Kings 20. Isaiah spoke to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadow 10 degrees backwards. 10 degrees is exactly 40 minutes. 23 hours and 20 minutes in 2 Kings make the missing 24 hours the space travelers had to log in the logbook as being the missing day in the universe. Our God is rubbing their noses in His truth. So I thought you might like, you might enjoy that little ditty. All right, now let's go on with the 10th chapter of Joshua. Beginning with verse 12, Joshua commands the sun and the moon to stand still after consulting God, and they stand still. They win the battle that day, and then after winning the battle, they proceed to take after all of the combatants as they go back to the various fortified cities. In verse 16 through 27, you see the total victory of Israel over all the alliance of kings. They were slaughtered with a very great slaughter, says the Word of God. In fact, their defeat was so shattering and so total, look at verse 21, no one uttered a word against any of the sons of Israel. Not only they were not shooting anything at them anymore, wasn't even anybody left to shoot at them. There wasn't anybody that had the heart to even say something sarcastic to them. That the battle was so total that all of the critics of Israel perished. and were destroyed. And then the kings were rounded up, put in a cave, and at the end of the day they got these five kings that headed this alliance. And they came and Israel put their feet on the necks of the kings, symbolizing the total subjection of these kings, the total triumph of Israel over them. And of course, one of its purposes was to remind us of Genesis 3.15. Because there we read about Christ in history crushing the serpent's head, ending the force and the advance of evil in this world. It's not just simply something that's going to take place at the end of time when time shall be no more after history has come to an end. But the victory the Lord Jesus Christ wins over evil forces and evil men takes place in history. And one of the reasons Joshua had them put their necks on these kings is to teach Israel this is prophecy coming true. This is God being faithful to his promise. You remember what God said up there a little earlier when he was encouraging him? He said in verse 25, Joshua had said to them, and this is on the basis of what God told Joshua a little earlier, do not fear or be dismayed, be strong and courageous, for thus the Lord will do to all your enemies with whom you fight. So whenever there's enemies that raise themselves up to assault the faithful people of God, God will fight against them until they are destroyed. And so they put their feet on the necks of these kings in faith believing that that promise is true, that they're experiencing it, and they will continue to experience it. And it's just as true today as it ever was. That whenever any enemy, whether it's an institution, or a nation, or a group of people, or a police force, or whatever it be, whenever any people raise themselves up to assault and do harm to God's faithful people, God will destroy them. You say, well, Joe, we've been going on now some 150 years. We've had one wave of enemy after another assault the people of God. And instead of diminishing, they seem to increase in power and in the intensity of their assault against the church. Well, that's right. But now remember what I just said a minute ago, that whenever any enemy rises up to assault the faithful people of God, God will destroy them. You see, you can't assume that the people of God as a corporate unit in the United States has been faithful for 150 years. For at least 150 years, she's been in some of the deepest spiritual declension in her history. And whenever enemies rise up to assault the unfaithful, spiritually apostate or backslidden church, They can't expect God to come to their rescue and defeat their enemies because God is the one who's using these enemies as an instrument in His hands to whip His people back into obedience. You remember what Isaiah 10 said? Isaiah 10, for the prophets have been warning Israel time after time after time to repent and they wouldn't repent and so God through Isaiah said, I'm going to raise up Assyria as the rod of my anger. to take my vengeance out on Israel, and it shall trample them down like mud in the streets. And here you have a prophecy that Israel, the chosen people of God, are going to be trampled in the mud. Defeat, not victory. And it's God that does it. And God does it by raising up enemy nations who hate his people to assault his people. So don't let that affect your faith. Don't say to yourself, well, God hadn't been faithful to us in America because we have one enemy after another who's assaulted us, not yet necessarily with bullets and bombs, with the words imprisonment, slander, ridicule, sarcasm, libel, and the rest. When's God coming to our rescue? Once he's whipped us back to submission. Once He's brought us to revival and we're a faithful people again. There are some faithful people here and there throughout the United States. There are some faithful churches here and there throughout the United States. But by and large, God's Israel in the United States is apostate at worst and terribly spiritually backslidden at best. And so anytime we're assaulted today, it is to chasten us and to drive us to our knees. But were the people of God strong in this country, and anybody in the world tried to touch a hair on our head, they would have God to deal with. Because God always comes to the rescue of His faithful people when they're under attack, and always, always, always defeats their enemies. So that's what Joshua wanted Israel to remember as he had them put their feet on the necks of these kings, that Christ really does win the victory for his people in time and in history as they are faithful to him. Then he executed the five kings, and then after executing them, he hanged them on trees. Now you remember, anything that was hanging on a tree was accursed. And just as the feet on the neck symbolized the victory of the people of God over their enemies, hanging these five kings representing the Amorite nations was symbolic of the fact that all of those people are under the curse of God because of their sin and their rebellion against him. So the major resistance was broken. And now the armies of Israel swept forward, and one after another, the great city-states of southern Canaan fell before Israel's advance. Oh, this would make a great movie. The wedge now is expanded. The north and south are separated. The north can't come to the south's assistance. And now Israel, without any significant obstacle, just sweeps forward and slaughters one city and one army after another until the whole land of southern Canaan has been conquered for Christ. Look at these cities, and every time you see a city and what it says about it, you ought to praise the Lord, because this is the Lord now fighting for Israel, clearing the way, getting the land of promise back to His people. You remember? The whole story of the book of Joshua is God getting the land of promise back into the hands of those to whom it was covenanted and to whom it was given, and that is His faithful people. And so what you're having now is what you're seeing is a bunch of Canaanites that have taken the land. They're living on it. They're in rebellion against God. They have no right to be there. And now you see God evicting them, dispossessing them by means of fire and hail and sword, using the energies of creation as well as the military might of Israel to rid the land of the false heirs of the anti-Christian squatters and get the land of promise back to the people to whom it belonged, the people of God. Verse 28, a city-state of Makeda is squashed. And notice what it says about it in verse 28. Now, Joshua captured Makeda on that day and struck it and its king with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed it. You see, utterly destroyed it? That phrase occurs several times in reference to cities that were destroyed. And you remember our word harem, H-E-R-E-M, the harem principle? that when God pronounced the harem principle upon a people, He devoted that people to destruction. Well, that's what utterly destroyed here. It occurs where? In verse 28, there's the word harem. On down in, I don't have time, to verse 35, verse 37, verse 39, verse 40. Throughout the various campaigns, the word harem occurs. And harem means to devote to destruction. that whenever God pronounced harem upon a nation or a city, everybody was to be destroyed. There was to be no living person left alive. So he comes to Makeda. They besiege Makeda. It falls, and every person in it is struck with the sword. No survivor in the whole city. Israel besieges this big pagan city. When they leave, there's nobody left alive in the entire city. Then they go to another city, Libna. And that's verse 29 and 30. And notice what happened in Libna. Verse 30, the Lord gave it also with its kings into the hands of Israel, and he struck it and every person who was in it with the sword left no survivor. So here's another city, Libna. They come to the city full of people, soldiers. When they leave, no human being left alive. Why? Because God gave the city. God graciously, mercifully gave the city of their enemies to the people of God. They couldn't do it on their own. They didn't deserve to have it done to them. They didn't have the power and the equipment and the ingenuity and the courage to do it by themselves. So God gave Libna to the people of God. And when he gave Libna to them, they killed everybody in it. And not one little baby was left alive. Verse 31 and 32, they go to Lachish. Same things happened in Lachish. Verse 32, the Lord gave Lachish in the hands of Israel. He captured it, struck it. Every person in it struck with the sword. Verse 33, old king of Gezer made the biggest mistake in his whole life because here he wasn't even a part of the battle. He came to Libna's defense and so God stomped than the armies of Gezer, and not one of them survived. Then we come to Eglon. Notice the same thing there, verses 34 and 35. Israel faces a city full of people. When they're finished at the end of the day, there's not one living person left in Eglon. And then after that, in verse 36 and 37, it goes to Hebron. Who knows how many thousands of people at the beginning of the day? At the end of the day, nobody left standing but the Israelis. Verse 38 and 39, you come to Deborah. Another city-state, the beginning of the day, who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people squaring off against the Israeli. At the end of the day, everybody in the whole town of Debron is dead, having been slaughtered by the sword of Israel. And then in verses 40 and 43, you see a summary and a concluding statement about the whole thing. The whole land was taken, notice. Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country, the Negev, the lowland, the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded. He makes Sherman look like a bunny rabbit in what he did to southern Canaan. When Joshua got through with southern Canaan, there was nobody left alive. He conquered nation after nation after nation after nation and struck them all with the sword so they would never rise again. Notice how it says it. Verse 40, he left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed. You say, ooh, what a bloodthirsty killer. Am I glad I believe in the New Testament, not the Old Testament? Their bloody ethics, and oh, Joshua, how could God even tolerate Joshua and his armies? But look at the next phrase, after breathed. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as Jehovah, the God of Israel, had commanded. Jehovah commanded Joshua to slaughter the entire populace of nation after nation, so there was no one left alive. True or false? Don't say it out loud. True or false? In the history of mankind, genocide is always evil. No. Joshua committed holy genocide and wiped out whole populations of people for one reason, because Jehovah commanded him to do so. Had Jehovah not commanded Joshua to do so, he never would have done it. Now, you know who Jehovah is, don't you? You say, yeah, he's that mean old God of the Old Testament. Well, He is that God of the Old Testament, but there's something else you need to know about Jehovah. And that is that Jehovah is the Father of Jesus. So when we say Jehovah commanded Joshua to commit genocide against thousands of people, what we're saying is the Father of Jesus commanded Joshua to wipe out whole nations of people. And, like Father, like son. The Lord Jesus Christ is no different than his father. And right now before your eyes you are seeing Jesus commit genocide against a whole generation of people and in fact more people than Joshua ever thought of killing. And in even bloodier fashion than Joshua killed the Amorites. Jesus is committing bloodier genocide today to vastly more people than Joshua could ever have killed in his lifetime. Psalm 20, 21. Psalm 21 is a messianic psalm. Now you know what that means. That means the psalm is a prophecy and a foretelling and a prefiguring of the Lord Jesus Christ. So without going into detail, a lot of the pronouns in this psalm refer to Christ. In verse 8, for instance, the your refers to Christ. So let's read it in that fashion because that's the way it's intended. We don't have time to look into it. Study it your own. Verse 8. Psalm 21. Your hand, Messiah, your hand will find out all your enemies. Your hand, right hand, will find out those who hate you. You will make them as a fiery oven in the time of your anger. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath. The fire will devour them. Their offspring. Put some synonyms for offspring. Babies. Children. Descendants. their offspring thou will destroy from the earth and their descendants from among the sons of men. That verse you ought to burn into your consciences, brethren, because it tells you what Jesus Christ is doing in the 20th century. At this very moment, the Lord Jesus Christ is destroying the offspring of His enemies from the earth and His descendants from among the sons of men. and he's doing it to the tunes of millions every year, at least by abortion. We've got to look at this abortion holocaust from a biblical perspective, without condoning the wicked hands of those that kill babies, just like without condoning the wicked hands of Judas, because the Bible says it was better for Judas that he'd never been born because he betrayed Christ, and yet the same Bible says that what Judas did was predestined by a sovereign God. So without condoning the hands of the instruments of the abortionists. What is Jesus Christ doing in our day? He is slaughtering the children of his enemies. Whole generations of people are dying by the sword of abortion. And the sword of the abortionist is an instrument in the hands of that greater Joshua. who is still committing holy genocide against those who seek to live on his land and still rebel against his moral order. So like father like son, Jehovah commanded Joshua to destroy his enemies and Jesus still carries out the work of his father. Well now let's talk about this thing of the extermination of the Canaanites for just a little bit because That is a problem that a lot of people have with the Bible. And you know the one reason you have a problem, a person has that problem? When you read something like Joshua 10 and it talks about everybody was killed over here and everybody was killed over there at the direct command of God. You know why people have that problem? There's only one reason why anybody would have a problem with Joshua 10. Only one reason why anybody would have a problem with God commanding people to kill thousands upon thousands of people. You know what that is? You only have a problem with that when you think you're God and your moral standards are higher than God. When you think you're God and your standards for morality are so high that you dare criticize the God of the Bible, that's the only time you can have a problem with this passage of Scripture when you think you're God. and your moral standards are higher than God's. But when you submit yourself to Scripture and you realize there's only one God and He would never do anything wrong, He would never do anything unjust, He would never do anything unrighteous, He would never do anything overly severe, and far be it for me to ever stand in a position of judging God, I'm always to be judged by God. When you have that perspective of the God of the Bible, Joshua 10 is no problem. It's only when you believe you're God that you have a problem with Joshua 10. And your moral standards are higher than the moral standards of Almighty God. Don't you ever judge God. You'll always be willing to be judged by Him. All right, now, why did He do it? Why did God command Him to exterminate, literally exterminate the Canaanites, a bunch of human beings made in the image of God, just like they were rats and rodents? Well, let's turn to Genesis 15. Let's look at about three or four passages and we'll see. Genesis 15. In Genesis 15, God specifically gave, promised the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants. God called Abraham to be the father of a multitude of nations, to be the chosen people, and then He promised Abraham that He would give him a land whereupon these descendants could build a culture to the glory of God. And He called Abraham out of the earth, the Chaldees, and said, I want you to go to the land of Palestine, the land of Canaan, because that's the land I'm giving to you. Now there were people on the land at that time living there, but that's okay because to whom does the land ultimately belong? God. Can God do what He will with what belongs to Him? Or does God have to ask our permission? Can God do whatever He wants with whatever belongs to Him? This earth, say, can God do with this earth whatever He wants to do even if there's people living on it or not? Or does He have to ask permission of the people who live on the earth? God can do whatever he wants to do with this earth because it belongs to him. He gave it to godly man in the first chapter of Genesis to subdue it. Sin came into the picture, so he wiped the slate clean with Noah's flood and reiterated the promise to Noah, this land belongs to faithful people who will subdue it to my glory. And he made clear with Abraham that there's a definite relationship between land occupancy and lifestyle. You remember when we talked about the land of promise? There's a distinct relationship between land occupancy and lifestyle that it all depends on how you live as whether or not you're allowed to remain in the land of promise. And the only people who are allowed to live in the land of promise and enjoy the resources of the land of the promise are those who are faithful to me. If you're unfaithful to me, you get evicted from the land. That's a principle by which God deals with men and with nations, particularly in the Old Testament as it relates to the land of promise. So here the God who owns all the earth said to Abraham, Abraham, that land's yours. I don't care who's living on it. That land's yours. And there's going to come a time when you're going to get it, but something's got to happen first. Now let's go to Genesis 15, verse 13. And God said to Abraham, know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that's not theirs, where they'll be enslaved and oppressed 400 years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. And as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. Oh, God is such a wise sovereign of history and human events. He says, Abraham, I'm going to give you the land of promise, but not yet. Why? You can't take it. The only way you're going to have the land of promise and be able to benefit from it is to have a big family full of people. Soldiers to fight, men to work, to educate, priests. So therefore, about 400 years are going to go by so that you can grow to be a nation of 3 million people. And then when you're a nation of 3 million people, then I'm going to give you the land. You can't do anything with it now. It's bigger than you can handle. But there's coming, that's why I don't believe the Lord's going to give us America anywhere soon. I mean, what if the Lord turned over to us right now, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, the state legislatures, the capitals, all of the judge, all of the courtrooms, all the public schools. What if God just said, here, they're all yours today? What in the world would we do with all that stuff? I mean, we're in no position to take all that stuff. We need several million more people. Well, that's the way Abraham was. God said, Abraham, I'm going to give you the promised land. Christians, I'm going to give you America. But not yet. You've got to increase in your numbers. You've got to go through times of suffering and slavery and tribulation and trials and testing. I've got to make you strong. You've got to inherit wealth. You've got to develop and create wealth. You've got to have money to conquer the world and run the world. You've got to have time to create wealth and increase your numbers. And then I'm going to give you the land. And besides that, God says, In verse 16, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. In other words, these Canaanites that live, these Amorites and Canaanites that live on Canaan, on the land of Canaan, they're wicked, but they still got a time to go before they reach the peak of their wickedness when I'm not going to be patient with them anymore and I'm going to wipe them off the face of the earth. There's going to be a lapse of time. They're going to become progressively evil. And there is going to come a time, however, when their iniquity has reached full peak, and the Amorites' iniquity is going to reach full peak at the same time that you're going to reach your full peak of strength, and then I'm going to take you into the land of Canaan, and you're going to be executors of my judgment upon the Amorites. What a wise and brilliant sovereign of history we have. At the same period of time that the Amorites became as wicked as they could be, was the same period of time that Israel became as strong as it has ever been up to that point in time. And then God took this mighty nation of millions into this wicked culture of the Amorites, and the Amorites were evicted by God. Now turn to Deuteronomy 7. Deuteronomy chapter 7, verses 1 through 6. Here is a promise. Now they've reached their pinnacle of strength and prosperity. They're very wealthy. They've brought the wealth of Egypt with them. They've been purified and tried and tested through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. They're about 2, 3, 4, 5 million strong. They're ready now to take Canaan. When the Lord your God shall bring you into the land where you're entering to possess it, and shall clear away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you. And when the Lord your God shall deliver them before you and you shall defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them, harem. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you. But thus you shall do to them, you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are upon the face of the earth. And there is the direct command to commence invasion and take the land. Now turn over to Leviticus chapter 18. Leviticus chapter 18 verse 24. Leviticus 18 verse 24. Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you, God's casting them out before Israel, have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have visited its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native nor the alien who sojourns among you. For the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled, so that the land may not spew them out, should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you. God says, now the time has come, the land is sufficiently defiled, more than I can tolerate, And therefore, God says, I'm going to raise you up to cast out these nations and the whole land is just going to vomit the Canaanites out. The whole land, the whole land is going to be so sick and so nauseated at the presence of the wicked Canaanites that I'm going to use the land itself to vomit the Canaanites off the land. Brothers, by God's grace, there's coming a time in this country when God's church will be revived by His Spirit and it will be faithful again and the 50 states of this union will vomit out of its system the Canaanites that remain here. But not until we're faithful. And so that's why Joshua makes clear, I'm just doing what God commanded me to do. So what do we learn here? We learn that God is the absolute ruler and judge of all the earth. He executes judgment on nations and peoples by whatever instrumentality seems good to Him. He destroyed the five cities in the plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah, with fire. He destroyed the five alliance of kings by hailstones and by the sword. He's an absolute ruler. He does what he will with what belongs to him. He justly and righteously judges all nations, and he will destroy nations who rebel against him by whatever means seems good to him. A just sentence, a capital sentence had been passed upon the Canaanites, and the Hebrews were simply the God-appointed executioners. And the principle, the application of this whole passage, which you and I must not forget, is this. Write it down somewhere on your consciences. Because it's as true as the United States, as it was of the southern regions of Canaan. Nations, nations that forget God will be turned into hell. Nations, that forget God will be turned into hell. And those nations and people that persist in violating and assaulting God's moral order and who assault God's faithful people, God will exterminate them. And the thing that we must remember in our age is that fearful statement in the New Testament, judgment begins in the house of the Lord. Do you know what God does before he goes to exterminating the Israelites? He cleans house. He cleans his house. And he exterminates the rats and the roaches in the church of God. And then when he has exterminated the rats and roaches and spiders in the church of God, then he goes after his enemies. outside the church. So remember what you're praying for. When you're praying for God to destroy his enemies and vomit them out of the land and give the land back to his people, you're praying. God, let judgment begin in the house of the Lord. And once we've gone through the 40 years in the wilderness of basic training and purifying and strengthening, then we're ready to invade Canaan. And then Canaan will be taken, but not one day before. And you know, hard days are coming. I want to tell you something. You've got to count the cost. I've been thinking and praying a lot about this this past week. You know what you're going to have to cost, the price you're going to have to pay for believing this Calvinistic post-millennial Christian reconstructionism and acting like it and living by it and standing for Christ and doing everything you're supposed to do? You know the cost you're going to have to pay? The price is if you teach your children to love this. Now, if you teach your children to be better Calvinists and better Christians and better Christian Reconstructionists than you have been, and if there is no revival in America for the next 10, 20 years, the cost for teaching your children to love the Reformed faith will be the overt, physical, actual, torturous persecution of your children. The Bible says when you go to build a house, you better count the cost first. And if there's no revival that comes in the next 10 or 20 years, and the enemies harden themselves in their resistance against God and become more perverse, the people who are going to have to suffer real persecution will be the little children that you're teaching to love the Reformed faith. My children, your children, they're going to have to suffer for what you're teaching. And if there is no revival for 30 or 40 years, your grandchildren may die because you've taught your children to love the Reformed faith. That's the cost. Before you go to build a house, you better count the cost. Now, what's the cost for not teaching your children to love the Reformed faith? Your children go to hell when they die. So if you don't teach them to love Christ and the Reformed faith, they go to hell. If you do teach them to love Christ and the Reformed faith, they'll go to heaven. And before they go to heaven, they'll be martyrs for the faith. And because they're martyrs from the faith, their influence in relaying the foundation of the kingdom of God in this country will be far greater than any of us who die a natural death will ever have the privilege of serving. So it's going to cost us something. I mean, this isn't a game. If you think it's a game and you want to play a game, go on home. Go on somewhere else. I'm giving you fair warning. I don't want anybody to go. But I'm giving you fair warning. If you believe this stuff and teach your children to believe this stuff, they're going to go to jail, they're going to be killed, they're going to be liable, they're going to be slandered, they're going to be persecuted unless a revival comes. I'm just giving you fair warning. And if you just want to play little games, there's all kinds of churches in Atlanta where you can play little games. But you've got to count the cost. Let us pray. Lord, help us to be serious-minded about these things. And as we are serious-minded, we pray, Lord, that You make us men and women of faith, men and women of great optimism and hope and of triumph, orientation, men and women who know that the land will be given to our descendants, that our descendants will be raised up by you to be godly men and women, and they will repossess the earth. But Lord, we know the method by which you've always worked in your church to give your people exaltation is by way of humiliation, because Lord, we know the way of the cross leads home, and that we're not better than our master, and if our master had to experience the cross before he experienced the crown, so were we. And so, Lord, we pray that you'd teach us that any suffering we have to bear is just one more step of cleansing and strengthening toward total victory. And we pray, Lord, you'd make us faithful parents. And we pray that you'd make our children strong. And we pray that you'd make our grandchildren stronger. We pray that you'd raise up thousands of generations of those who love you and keep your commandments from these people in this room tonight. And we pray, Lord, for this country. Lord, in your wisdom and in your providence, we don't know when you have revival planned. Lord, we know that it could take place many years off. We know it could take place over a generation. We know it could take place over a couple months because it's happened before in the Word of God. So, Lord, may we always pray and live as people watching keeping our eyes on the horizon for the Holy Spirit to bring reinforcements, for the Holy Spirit to bring revival. We pray that we would always be praying and not give you any rest until you make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Lord, we want this American Canaan back. We want it not for our own sake or enjoyment or comfort or affluence, but we want it for the sake of your own righteous and holy name, and we pray that you'd vindicate your name, save your people, and destroy your enemies, and give the land to whom it belongs, and protect our children and our grandchildren, and make of them a mighty, victorious army of the Lord, invading this land and taking nation after nation after nation under the banner of the cross. For the sake of Christ we pray, amen.