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- There's little question this has been
one of the toughest questions Christians
have faced through the centuries.
This isn't a modern question.
It's an older question.
But, modern sensitivities had made the question
that much more pertinent.
We feel the pain of this far much more now.
One of the hardest things about it is in fact
we see and read of God's own thoughts
in the commanding of the extermination of the Canaanites.
Making it feel so much worse is that women
and children are discussed in this context.
I think it is shocking and I think we're supposed
to feel the weight of it.
The second thing that makes it so difficult,
unlike, let's say, a so-called act of God,
a tornado or an earthquake that kills women and children,
is that in this case, God commands His people
to be His agents of extermination.
The shocking thing about that is that His people,
they are sinful themselves.
There is the difficult side that we look at
but if we are to be honest with the Bible,
we have to take a look at what else the Bible teaches us
that is really the other side of the coin.
First of all, comes up at the very heart of this question
is this ethically just?
Is it even right because of these women and children?
Well, not everyone will accept this answer.
I, myself, before I was a Christian
would've hated this answer.
The answer is that God alone is a righteous judge.
Will the God of all the earth judge righteously.
You may not or maybe I might not
see how reading the Bible, reading the story
of life around me, how God can be just
and allow these things to happen.
I think there's a biblical teaching that I hope
I can show at least some of the reasons
why we should trust that God really is just
in the way He does these things.
But, fundamentally, what the Bible teaches us
is that God is just whether we completely understand how.
And that for us to assume He is somehow unjust
is in fact to assume to that we know more
about things than we really do.
We don't know everything.
So, God alone is in a place of righteousness
where He can pronounce these judgements.
That's important fundamentally as part
of the answer to this problem.
Second, we need to understand this was not
an arbitrary ethnic cleansing.
Indeed, the Bible highlights this as
a very important event in God's rescue plan
for the human race, and more on that shortly.
But, in fact, this is a specific judgment
on a morally degraded people.
We know this not only from biblical descriptions
of what the Canaanite people were like,
but from archeology and the sorts of horrific
sacrificial practices, as just one example,
of offering their children to gods in very
painful sorts of deaths.
In fact, the Bible shows that God's judgment
on the Canaanites was held back.
He predicts it 400 years before it happens
in the book of Genesis in chapter 15
and describes it as he's waiting until
the sin of the Canaanite people is full.
A very interesting theological concept.
Again, it's not arbitrary.
The measure of their degradation was full.
This leads, then, to a very important point
I already alluded to.
God, beginning with Abraham, has a mission
to rescue a sinful human people.
It involves fallible and sinful agents like Abraham,
all the way to the present with people like me.
One of the things that's clear in this extermination,
is that God warns that the very people,
by that time a whole nation,
would be corrupted by the Canaanites
if in fact they are allowed to remain.
One of the interesting things that's often mentioned
when people stumble over this question is that
in fact the Bible makes clear that the Canaanites
were never fully exterminated, number one.
And number two, exactly what God says happened.
Indeed, throughout the Old Testament the major problem
is that over and over again, the people of God
mix the worship of God the creator, the one true God
with Baal or some other version of Canaanite religion.
The judgment was not only righteous,
it was part of a necessary attempt
to protect the very people of God He would use
as part of His mission.
There's another point here, lest it seem
unfair that the people of God were told
to be the instruments of His judgment in this case.
It is that God judged His own people, Israel,
harsher than He did anyone else.
In fact, the story throughout the Old Testament
over and again is that because of their sinfulness,
which is worse than the Canaanites
because they knew the one true God.
God uses the pagan nations, the very same kinds
of people, whether Egyptians or Assyrians,
or earlier Babylonians, to bring judgment
on the very people of God.
There's a warning here, I think,
that we need to think about in conclusion.
Jesus tells a story in His day
where Jewish thinkers were wondering
about natural disasters.
Why certain people, let's say,
if a tower fell on someone, God clearly allowed it
to happen, they must've been terrible sinners.
Jesus warns and says, "Don't think that somehow
"you're better because this hasn't happened to you."
These things serve as a warning to all of us
who are sinful and this shocking story
of the extermination command is in fact
highlighted in the very story itself
in the book of Joshua with God's rescue
of a prostitute Canaanite, Rahab.
Because she seeks the God, the one true God,
she is spared and her family.
Not only is she spared, she will become the grandmother
of King David and will end up in the genealogy
of Jesus in Matthew 1.
In fact, she's mentioned in the book of James,
the book of Hebrew.
She stands out as a kind of hero of the faith.
It's a foreshadowing of the very,
and there are many others in the Bible.
This one just gets our attention.
But there are many of these kinds of judgments
and they are all around us to this day
that we are supposed to be forewarned by.
No one gives us a greater warning of the dangers
of the life to come in an unredeemed state
than Jesus Christ Himself.
Jesus had more to say about the pending judgment.
Yet, He Himself was the very one who gave Himself
a sacrifice that those who believe in Him
might be saved.
This is the amazing grace, the other side of judgment
that we see in the unique story that's the Bible.
I think if we think of it in the bigger picture
in the light of Jesus' teachings,
then I think we actually see it for what it is.
It is a merciful warning.
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching Honest Answers.
Don't forget to subscribe to find out the answer
to next Wednesday's question.
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