The main passage for this sermon is taken from Deuteronomy 20:10-18 and Matthew 5: 43-48 is used as a contrast.
So the two readings we had today could not be more different. In fact most people would avoid the first in its entirety and the second is a real challenge but of almost the opposite nature. To love your enemy is hard and we all struggle with that, but to be told to wipe them out doesn’t sit right either with anyone who feels like they have good morals. You could be forgiven for thinking that the God of the Old Testament is different to the God of the New. Or that He has somehow changed His mind or at the very least got a new PR guy. Those who seek to undermine our faith in a loving God love passages like the Deuteronomy one, it seems like an easy shot, an obvious contradiction. But it’s not. To start we need to look at God’s love. What sort of love does God give to us. What sort of love does Jesus teach. It’s all inclusive, excluding no-one, its generous, its never ending. But it’s also just. It’s a love that doesn’t ignore wrongs, it challenges them. God never gives us permission to do wrong, he challenges us, he reminds us to change. We are not to go on sinning but are to turn away from those ways. The Bible makes it clear that if we ignore the call to righteousness then we can’t enter the heaven. That’s not to say if we sin we cannot enter, it’s to say that if we don’t ever try to change, if we carry on doing what we know is wrong because we simply don’t care. Then we aren’t truly saved. God is a God of love but also a God of Justice. He is slow to anger and rich in love. But ultimately He is just. And it is that which the Bible is rooted in. Love and justice; you can’t have one without the other can you. You can’t love someone yet allow them to be hurt or allow them to hurt themselves. And if you are just but have no love, no compassion then the earth would have been wiped out as soon as we had fallen. No-one would stand a chance. So let’s get stuck into these passages. Firstly we have to bear in mind that the passages in Deuteronomy were given at a very different time in very different circumstances to the ones we find ourselves in currently and as such they cannot simply be read at surface value. So, God instructs the nation of Israel to wipe out completely the nations which occupy the land He is giving them. Men, women, children, livestock; the whole lot. Now my instant gut reaction to this, I don’t know about you, but on surface reading it makes me more than a little uncomfortable. Especially in the light of the fact that this is the same God we worship to this day. He hasn’t changed. Why does he command this then? Well firstly what these nations got up to was pretty horrific, including child sacrifice and burning people alive as a sacrifice to their idols. Not a particularly nice group of people then. So God, in His justice, decides that enough is enough and it is time to end their evil ways using Israel as His chosen tool to do this. Secondly, He, in His mercy, has given them time to turn away, He has given them generations to grow and to change from their awful practices. If we flick back to Genesis chapter 15 we see God promising to make Abraham the father of a great nation. Verse 16 states... He shows Abraham the land his descendants will live in but will not yet give it to Abraham because he is still giving the nations currently living in it a chance to repent. And between this meeting and their destruction lies about 400 years. God is not swift to wipe these people out, he stays his hand for so long but knows that eventually he must put a stop to it. God, in His wisdom, knows that Israel is a young nation, that it can only handle so much, just like a young child. And as such He knows that if He allows these nations, even a fraction of them, to continue to exist alongside Israel then Israel will eventually start to follow their ways and do those same awful things. And if we flick forwards a bit we see that Israel doesn’t wipe out the nations fully and that, as God knew, they start to follow these nations practices, including child sacrifice. Oh dear. It’s also worth noting that God doesn’t allow Israel to go around indiscriminately wiping out people, He only allows them to do this to the nations he has given over to them, He limits this destruction. They are not simply given free rein to grab whatever land they wish. God explicitly forbids them from invading or attack other surrounding nations such as Moab and Ammon, even Edom, who you would think might be in for it after they refused to help Israel He also uses these same methods against Israel when it doesn’t follow His commands and does awful and terrible things. He deals with them in the exact same way, driving them out of their land and only sparing them because of His promise to Abraham. God is just, to all, He doesn’t let Israel off the hook any more than He lets anyone else. So God calls for the destruction of these nations because they do appalling things, because He has given them plenty of time to stop doing these things, because they will encourage His people, who are to be an example of his way to the rest of the world, to do these things. But He also uses these same methods against Israel and doesn’t allow them to go around conquering anyone. Elsewhere God makes similar threats of destroying nations but then relents when they turn from their ways, notably in the book of Jonah where the titular prophet gets actually pretty annoyed that God didn’t wipe them out. There’s food for thought. So moving forward a bit; what about other parts of the Old Testament where God commands Israel to go out and destroy everyone, men, women, young and old. Well let’s take a look at Jericho as an example of this specific command being used. Jericho was a fairly small city, meaning Israel could circle it seven times and conquer it all in the same day. Well it turns out that a few of our assumptions about wiping out all men, women, young and old in this city are a bit wrong. For starters the word city ‘ir’ at this time in Canaan refers to where the military king, army and priesthood resided. They were garrisons. In fact there is no archaeological evidence that there was a civilian population of any kind living in Jericho. In fact it turns out that the term ‘all men, women, young and old’ is stock ancient near east language to simply leave no one alive and doesn’t require there to be any women or children in the city for it to be used. Saul’s battles against the Amalekites follow a similar trend. Now is this the world we live in today? Is God in the business of wiping out nations because they do detestable things. Well no. We may sometimes wish He did when we look at the news but the fact is that he simply doesn’t do that. And Jesus holds the answer here. Matt 19: 8-9 ‘Because your hearts were hard’. God didn’t want people to divorce but he allowed even though it was not his ideal. Could it be that God wiped out these nations not because that is what he wanted to do but because that was the only way of getting the message across, could it be that he accommodated his will to use those methods available and most appropriate for that time. God uses our fallen human nature to accomplish his purposes even if it is not how he would truly want it to be done. Solomon was born out of David’s failings but God used Solomon to build His temple. It is not how God would have chosen to do it but he knows he is working with fallen humanity. And when Jesus came he stopped the need for sacrifice for forgiveness by providing the perfect sacrifice to forgive sins for all time. God doesn’t operate like that anymore because he no longer needs to, he no longer requires sacrifice because he has done away with it and he no longer wipes out nations because he is staying his hand, giving them time to repent before he comes again to hold all accountable for their actions. But we need not fear that day because through Christ we are made innocent of any guilt we may have incurred, the slate is wiped clean so we need not fear. And in this day and age God uses us, the church, to call people to repentance and to come back to him. And when you see terrible things happening in the news remember that God will do justice when he returns but stays his hand for now because God desires that all should return to him and does not take pleasure in the death or condemnation of anyone. Our God is a God of Love, He is a God of Justice. You cannot have one without the other. And his mercy endures for generations. Amen
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AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
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