284 ~ TAKING THE LAND ~ PART 3

We welcome you to the Via Zion Sermon podcast.

We are a church based out of Chennai, India.

We are thrilled that you're tuned in today and hope that you

will be refreshed, revived, and energized by what you hear.

Our desire is that you will live life with a renewed sense of

purpose that stems from a vibrant faith in Jesus.

The year 2025 is 1 where we will be positioned by God to possess

our promise. We are believing that God is

bringing us into our place of promise.

It is now time to take the land and to do so we need to get our

spiritual posture and place and stop looking back so that we can

face forward with courage and faith.

Let's get going and possess our promise.

God bless you. It's so nice that you know we

get to look at the book of Joshua together.

Like we've been telling you, this has been our manual when we

planted the church 7 years back. And it can't be an accident that

as we step into a new season, a new era of seven years, God is

preparing us for what is to come through this book.

And today we're looking at Taking the Land Part 3 and I've

titled today's sermon Demolishing Deception because

the two instances we're going to be looking at in this this part

of the series are basically 2 mistakes that Joshua made.

Joshua was an exemplary leader. He was an exceptional military

leader. He was, he followed in the

footsteps of Moses. God lifted him up in the at the

Jordan River like he did Moses at the Red Sea.

He established his leadership to the people.

He was so in tune with God. He had the commander, the Angel

armies would come and met him. He had battle strategies in

place. And yet there were times when

Joshua, like us, had failures. And we're going to be looking at

two of those failures today. And I believe they can be

combined and placed under this larger topic of deception,

things that we sometimes overlook thinking, you know

what, it's not a big deal, but they actually are tactics from

the enemy camp to pull us down, to keep us trapped and shackled.

And I believe God is calling us to demolish these things that

are deceptive in our lives. Anything that is deceptive does

not come from God. It comes from the father of

lies, the one who is the ultimate deceiver himself.

God, on the other hand, is truth personified.

He dwells in unapproachable light.

He is holiness, nothing unholy. I think dark or or deceptive can

stand in his presence. And so we need to establish that

before we start. So today we're going to be

looking at how we can demolish deception.

We're looking at Joshua Chapter 6.

Joshua 6 · chapter mention

I just want to read verses 16 to 19 to set a bit of context for

today. Joshua chapter 6, verses 16 to

Joshua 6:16–19

19 says this the seventh time around.

We're talking about the battle of Jericho when the priest

sounded the trumpet blast. Joshua commanded the army shout,

For the Lord has given you the city.

The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord.

Only Rahab the prostitute, and all who are with her in her

house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent.

But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not

bring about your own destruction by taking any of them.

Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction,

and bring trouble on it. All the silver and gold and the

articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go

into His treasure. Clear instructions.

God has told Joshua, this is what you want to say.

And so He passes this instruction on to the people so

they know exactly what is expected of them after the

battle of Jericho. Now look at Joshua Chapter 7

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

verse one. It says, but the Israelites were

unfaithful in regard to the devoted things.

Eakins son of Khami, the son of Zimri, the son of Zara of the

tribe of Judah, took some of them.

So the Lord's anger burned against Israel.

There's a command and there's a direct disobedience.

And The thing is, it says the people of Israel, the Israelites

were unfaithful. It wasn't the whole camp.

It was a, it was a small family. And yet the whole, all of them

collectively, I said it, it riled up God's anger.

And I want us to look today at what that means.

The devoted things. It is not stuff that was pure

and spotless. It was stuff that was designated

for punishment. It was stuff that was designated

for annihilation. These were the the flocks of the

enemy people. It was those, it was the people

of the land. Nothing was meant to be kept

alive. All the stuff that could pass

through fire was to be put through fire.

The metals, the gold and the silver was supposed to be put in

a treasury. Very clear instructions and yet

this family decided to go against the norm, right?

When something is devoted for destruction, it means it's meant

to be destroyed in our lives. This does not apply to us and

people. We don't get to annihilate any

people group. We don't get to harm a person.

Based on this chapter, not at all.

What it's talking about is in the New Covenant, So the things

we fight are not flesh and blood, but principalities and

powers. And there are things in our

lives that are devoted to destruction.

Certain habits, certain terrible lifestyle choices, certain

addictions, certain frames of reference, certain ways of

thinking and being. And God is saying those are

things that don't please me. I wanted it to be devoted to

destruction. We have to be avid about

destruction. These are not things we can

covet and put into our lives and assimilate.

Instead we need to single it out and destroy it.

What were the repercussions? Was God seriously angry with

them? Yes.

What happens after this is that they were supposed to go take a

small little city called the City of I.

They were supposed to go and capture it.

And the people just went. There were two couple of guys

who went there, checked the landlord and said, you know

what, we just need a very few number of our soldiers.

Let's just go. We'll take it down.

You know, in in Indian terms, it's Juju P.

It's very easy. Let's just do that.

They send a small and that The thing is, in this moment, Joshua

didn't check with the Lord. That was Joshua's mistake.

Did Joshua sin by taking anything?

No, his hands were clean, but he forgot, probably to check with

God because it felt like such a small city in comparison to

Jericho. You have to understand, in the

ancient times, Jericho was the center of this.

The strength of the promised land it was.

It had walls that were almost 20 feet thick in some places.

For the walls to fall, it had to have been supernatural.

So the fall of Jericho symbolized that God was with

them. So obviously they thought, I is

a small city. This is nothing for us.

We've got skilled warriors. We'll we'll finish it in half a

day and we'll be back home. They went out there.

They get routed by the land and come get chased back to camp.

When they come back devastated, Joshua and his leaders lay

before God. They lay before they they told

their clothes and they wept and said, God, what just happened?

Why did you bring us here if you were going to be defeated?

You've allowed us to look bad before other people. 36 men were

killed in this one attack. Joshua 7 verses 11:50.

The Lord said to Joshua, stand up.

What are you doing down on your face?

Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant

which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the

devoted things they have stolen. They have lied.

They have put them up with their own possessions.

That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their

enemies. They turn their backs and run

because they have been made liable to destruction.

I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever

among you is devoted to destruction.

This one line really got to me. It said over there.

That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their

enemies. Have you ever seen in your life

that you seem to be under attack constantly?

You seem to not be able to kick that habit.

You don't seem to be able to establish those good

relationships. It's like, you know, you feel

like you're up against a wall again and again.

You fight down 1 and you feel like another one comes up.

And I wonder if it's because in our lives there is an element of

sin that is deeply rooted because of which we are not able

to stand up victorious against the enemy.

You have to understand that in Jesus we we fight from a

position of victory, not for victory.

The victory is 1. We fight from this position.

But what happens when we have been made liable to destruction?

That means there's an open door in our life.

There is a sin. There is an an ungodliness.

There is something that is compromising us and allowing us

to be open season for the enemy, and I believe God is asking us

to destroy what is destroying us.

What is it that is destroying you?

What is that one element that destroys your joy?

What is that one element that is destroying your peace?

What is that one thing that you do which is destroying your

marriage? What is that one thing which is

destroying your blissful state of singleness?

You need to identify what is destroying that, and you need to

destroy it. When I say destroy, I don't mean

destroy a person or a but it might mean stepping out of a

relationship that is toxic to you.

It might mean saying no to certain friendships in certain

circles and saying yes to God and His Holy Spirit's power in

your life. Sin causes us to become

susceptible to the enemy's work in our life.

It's a chink in the armor, it's an Achilles heel.

It's a door left wide open for the enemy to all sin and have

his way. Many times we wonder when as we

get older we have children who are growing and we just see one

thing after the other coming at them and then you need to go

closer to God and say God, is there some chink in my armor?

Is there some door I am leaving open?

That this is happening to us. Self examining is very important

in the Christian life and it's not looking at us with ourselves

with condemnation and guilt and shame and regret, but it's going

to God and his through his word and saying, Lord, reveal to me

the areas in my life which are so destructive that you want me

to remove and destroy so that I can live at peace with God and

with man. Will you destroy what is

destroying you? Interestingly, the man who

actually did this akin, he's the man who committed this grave sin

and he didn't come forward. He didn't come clean.

You know, maybe we don't know how the story would have turned

as if as soon as they were going to head out to I the city, if

Aiken had come in, come clean with Joshua, they could have

averted that disaster or maybe even when they came back and

fell before the Lord. If Aiken had a major for

conscience, he could have said maybe this is because of me.

Somehow Aiken didn't see the ramifications of his sin in such

a broad scale. So let's look at Joshua Chapter

Joshua 7:14–21

7, verses 14 to 21. OK.

And this is what happens in this in the morning.

Present yourself try by try. The tribe the Lord chooses shall

come forward, clan by clan. Verse 15.

Whoever's caught with the devoted things shall be

destroyed by fire, along with all that belongs to him.

He is violated the covenant of the Lord and has done an

outrageous thing in Israel. Now I just want to pause that.

So this happened the previous night, right?

God has given this instruction to Joshua.

There was still time for an Aiken to have had conviction and

come forward, but he didn't. Verse 16 Early the next morning,

Joshua had Israel come forward by tribes and Judah was chosen.

The clans of Judah came forward. The tribe of and the Zehrahites

were chosen. The Zehrahites came forward by

families and Zimri was chosen. Joshua had his family come

forward man by man, and Akin son of Kami, the son of Zimli, the

son of Zera of the tribe of Judah, was chosen.

Then Joshua said to Akin, My son, give glory to God, the God

of Israel, and honor him. Tell me what you have done.

Do not hide it from me, Akin replied.

It is true I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel.

This is what I have done. When I saw in the plunder a

beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver and a bar

of gold weighing 50 shekels. I coveted them and took them.

They are hidden in the ground inside my tent with the silver

underneath. He's had a direct, direct

disobedience to one of the laws in the 10 commandments.

Thou shalt not covet. He had broken a very fundamental

law. Not just that, he had lied over

and above it. He had hidden it.

And before we start judging Aiken, I think you and I are so

similar to Aiken in so many ways because first of all, synth

thrives in hiddenness. Synth thrives in hiddenness.

You know, as a biology student, we used to study a lot about,

you know, microbes and fungi and other things.

And all of these grow in dank, dark places, right?

Of course, bacteria and viruses grow in living organisms and all

of that. But when you look at stuff that

is left in dark, dingy places where the air is moist and it's

not, it doesn't have sunlight. It doesn't have, you know, good,

fresh, clean air, nothing good grows there.

We have terrible molds, cerebral fungus, funguses that, you know,

grow in these places. And so I wonder if sin is any

different. Nothing good comes in darkness,

nothing good comes in hiddenness.

And obviously Aiken thought it was hidden, it was done, it was

dusted, He and his family covered it up.

They thought they could move on with their lives.

But private sins, hidden sins always have public consequences.

When you look at this thing, it says over there came back man by

man, Aiken, son of Kami, son of Zimri, son of Zerah, tribe of

Judah. Meaning that he was not just one

individual, he was part of a larger 'cause he was part of a

larger tribe, an important tribe at that.

And in spite of that, he could have thought it was hidden, he

could have thought it was just confined to his family.

But the whole of the Israelite camp went through judgment

because of their actions. Your hidden sins have public

consequences. Let's not kid ourselves.

You know, the beautiful thing about the way the enemy works,

when I say beautiful life, I mean it sarcastically, is that

he'll convince you that what is hidden cannot harm anyone.

He'll say, who's going to know? Your wife's not going to know,

your husband's not going to know.

You're doing this in private. You can deal with it in private.

You can get rid of it in private.

But the thing about living in the in the Kingdom of God is

it's a Kingdom of light and the king is his is the light

himself. And when he's in our life, his

light shines on every part of us.

Even the dark hidden things will come into the light.

Nothing stays hidden forever. What you think is is hidden and

and kept, you know, really stuffed down.

We'll find the light of day when we walk in the Kingdom of light,

things come into the light. Ephesians 5 verses 8 to 13 says

Ephesians 5:8–13

this. For you were once darkness, but

now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness,

righteousness, and truth. And find out what pleases the

Lord. Have nothing to do with the

fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in

secret. But everything exposed by the

light becomes visible, and everything that is illuminated

becomes a light. You'll be surprised at what

happens when you expose your hidden sins to God.

It's amazing when you come clean before Him and say, Lord, you

saw what I was watching last night.

You saw who I was texting. You know what I have been up to?

Help me, help me. When we bring it into the light

of God, we can truly walk as children of light.

We can put on the armor of light, stand against the enemy

and be stand victorious. The reason many of us are unable

to climb out of those pits of despair and out of those those

shackles of addiction is because we haven't brought the hidden

things to the light. We are assuming that it will

just die with us. But I have to tell you this, we

have a God who sees everything. We have a God who sees

everything. He knows what you and I do.

He knows what we are thinking and the Christian life must be

marked by 1 of repentance, periodic regular repentance

where we keep bringing things to the surface and saying Lord, you

saw how I reacted today. That was terrible.

I'm sorry, Lord, that I just cussed on the road when I was

crossing Lord, and forgive me for those words which which trip

out of my mouth. Forgive me for the way that I

react to my child, to my spouse. You see the anger, you see the

lust, you see the grid. Bringing it to him, bring it

into the light changes it. It could have changed for Akin

had he brought the hidden things to the surface, but he didn't.

The second thing about sin, which we look from the story is

that sin thrives where compromise exists.

We live in times of compromise. Even people who know the Lord

live in compromise. Bribes are common.

Infidelity is very common. Sexual immorality has become

rampant. Gender identification has become

complicated. Pronouns which were just he,

she, or they used in the in in the connotation of literature

has spread into all of culture. In the name of inclusivity,

people have decided to let go of convictions.

Compromise has come in. You know, it's, it's so

interesting here. Akin had must have heard the

instruction that Joshua got from God.

Everything is devoted to that destruction.

Don't take anything. This whole of Jericho has to be

destroyed. The reason being Jericho was

steeped in idolatry and God didn't want any of the artifacts

from there to come into the Israelite camp and corrupt them.

God has an intention behind every law.

God has a the most loving of intentions in giving us rules

and boundaries when we compromise.

God, when we say, you know what, I don't think I can accept the

scripture for what it is. I will do as I like.

I have to remember what Paul says.

Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.

Compromise comes in when it realizes, when it decides that

you know what, This is beneficial to me, so I will make

it work. We live in such a relative

culture. People have this hashtag of

living my truth. I want to live this kind of

lifestyle. It could be a homosexual

lifestyle, it could be a lifestyle of an open marriage.

This is what I will choose to live because it works for me, it

works for my spouse, it works for my boyfriend, it works for

me and my kids. Whatever it is, what works for

you is not the truth. The truth is a person and to

discover the person you need to get into his word because why do

you need his word? We've been, we're going to be

talking about the word a lot over the next two months because

without this, you don't have a blueprint for God's plan for

your life. It is not enough to say, I just

heard God say something. If it doesn't line up with this

word, you got it wrong. You could say I feel like I

should do this, but if the word doesn't back it up, it's just a

feeling. And the problem is compromise

has come in because we're going more with our feelings than what

the Word of God says. Compromise is coming because,

well, I need to fit in and I'm sure Jesus wanted us to love

everyone and just be one with the crowd.

So let me just do what works for everybody else.

But that is not the Jesus that I know.

Jesus lived an uncompromised life.

He sat at tables we may never be able to sit at, but he lived

uncompromised in every situation.

The way you count a compromise is by having conviction.

And not just any conviction, not just beliefs in the things you

believe. But godly convictions,

convictions that are based on the word of God, convictions

that are based on what Jesus has said, Jesus has instructed that

what the Holy Spirit has breathed through the Word of

God. I love this verse from One

Thessalonians chapter 1, two to five.

I'm reading from the message translation.

It says every time we think of you, we thank God for you.

Day and night you're in our prayers as we call to mind your

work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope

in following our Master Jesus Christ before God our Father.

It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very

much, but also has put His hand on you for something special.

When the message we preached came to you, it wasn't just

words. Something happened in you.

The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.

You paid careful attention to the way we lived among you and

determined to live that way yourselves.

In imitating us, you imitated the Master.

Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were

able to take great joy from the Holy Spirit.

Taking the trouble with the joy. The joy with the trouble

compromises very dangerous territory.

You you see a cat on the wall. You're in the grey.

But you know what? Eventually, you'll have to pick

a side. We can't live compromised in

comprom in a compromised world. We need to live with

convictions. You need to know what you

believe. You need to know who you

believe. You need to know what you

believe because it will change your life in the best way

possible. Compromise can only be countered

by godly conviction. It talks here about the Holy

Spirit. The Holy Spirit putting steel in

your convictions, what does that look like?

You know, up until now, your convictions may have been

flopping around you. You give in to the whims of your

friend circle at church, and then you give in to the whims of

your friend circle at office. You're playing both sides, but

God's going to put steel in your back and say you need to pick a

side, sweetheart, you need to stand for me.

You need to live for me. What you put into your body,

what you allow to be fed, fed upon, all of that matters to me

steal in your convictions. And it's interesting that once

the entire, you know, land of Israel, the people of Israel are

exposed to what has happened. God gives the judgment.

He says stone them and then cover them up and burn them,

them and their property. It feels very excessive, but it

it's an inkling of how God wants us to deal with sin in our

lives. Be ruthless about the sin in

your life. If it is your gadget that is

create causing you to sin, that is causing you to wander, get

rid of it. If it is a friendship that has

taken you off track, put you in a ditch, left you alone there,

you need to dust yourself off, get up and get better friends.

You need to find a godly community.

You need to find people who will mentor you and shape you in the

ways of God, who will speak the truth and love to you.

You don't need friends who only speak what you want to hear.

You need people who will call you out.

What are the changes you need to make?

We need to be ruthless about the sin in our lives.

What happens after that is they settle down for a bit.

Joshua reads the word of God to them.

It's probably the 10 commandments.

He reads it. He engraves it on stones, right?

And after that they as a community read the blessings and

the curses. It's almost like that event of

dealing with the sins so violently and so physically must

have been a strain on the people.

This was one of them after all, and God was now restoring them

to a place of joy, restoring them to a place of contentment

through the reading of the Word. And He also reminds them of the

blessings and curses. If you choose life, you choose

these things, you choose death, you choose this.

He was giving them their options.

Again, I love that we serve a God who gives us options.

He says choose life or choose death.

It's up to you. I want to remind you today, it's

up to you whether you will destroy that which is destroying

you or whether you choose to cohabit with it.

That's on you coming down to the second kind of deception.

Like I said, I titled this as demolishing deception, right,

demolishing deception. And I love the the movie that

Transformer movies and I don't watch all of them, but I watch

some of the old ones. And I remember I was asking my

son to find the clip of this. We couldn't find it, but the

pictures probably going to come up on the screen of this cute

little enemy bot, right? And his name was Frenzy.

And Frenzy has this remarkable way of being hidden and suddenly

transforming into this terrible, terrible villain like Bot,

right? And as his name indicates, he

causes chaos, right? This tiny little thing, much

like the hidden sin in our lives, camouflage into the neat

spaces of our life, tends to take over our lives and

completely destroy us. And like I was saying, hidden

sins have public consequences. Compromise is a problem because

we need to have convictions. And when I look at this, when I

was watching a few clips of this particular bot frenzy, I

realized that that's what hidden sense do.

And it actually fights with this the, you know, the lead actor,

the guy called Sam, they had this huge fight with him and

this little robot. And he's a tiny guy.

The robot is really small, but he's, he's powerful and he's,

he's creepy. So when he's fighting with him,

he actually drags this guy on the ground and removes his

clothing, his pants, you know, and he's running with his

boxers. And I was thinking when I was

watching it, this is what the enemy does through deception.

When there is hidden sins in our life, when there is compromise,

when we're least expecting it, he will RIP us off our dignity.

He will publicly humiliate us, point at us and laugh.

And that's what hidden sins do to us.

They leave us completely susceptible to the world with

judgement who hatred to slander. And I want to ask you today,

would you come clean with a hidden sense, expose it to the

light so that the enemy has no foothold, so that he has no

point of entry, so that he cannot do to you what is not

what God does not allow. The second kind of deception

here we're going to be looking at the Gibeonite deception.

It was another mistake that Joshua made and it's interesting

because you think Joshua would have been smarter than that,

right? You would think, well, OK,

Joshua knew better. Joshua consulted the Lord.

He had the, you know, angelic commander on his side.

He knew he probably knew everything.

Well, he didn't because God had called him in the promised land

on for a day by day by day dependence.

It was not once a month. I need to the commander.

I get the, you know, plans for the month and then I move on

with my life. No, it was an everyday thing,

which is why in Joshua chapter 1 he says meditate on the Word of

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

the Lord constantly by night and day.

Let it not leave you. Which meant in today's context

for us in the times of the new Covenant, the Word became flesh

and made His dwelling among us. We have seen the glory, the

glory of the Father through the Son.

So I have Jesus with me, and I can constantly be in meditation

and connection with this Savior who's my friend, who's my

counselor as I commune with him. I had this constant dependency

on Him. Joshua had the word deeply

hidden. He knew God, and yet this

deception touched him. Let's look at Joshua Chapter 9,

Joshua 9:1–14

verses 1 to 14. Now when all the kings West of

the Jordan heard about these things, the kings in the Hill

Country, in the western foothills and along the entire

coast of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Lebanon, the kings of

the Hittites, Hammerites, Canaanites, Perisites, Hivites

and Jebusites, they came together to wage war against

Joshua and Israel. However, when the people of

Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and I, they

resorted to a reuse. They went as a delegation whose

donkeys were loaded with walnut sacks and old wineskins cracked

and mended. They put worn and patched

sandals on their feet and wore old clothes.

All the bread of their food supply was dry and moldy.

Then they went to Joshua and the camp at Gilgal and said to him

and the Israelites, We have come from a distant country, Make a

treaty with us. The Israelites said to the

Hibais, but perhaps you live near us, so how can we make a

treaty with you? Let's just pause that.

This was a very momentous situation because the Israelites

are suspicious, rightly so, because these guys did come from

close by. What was the follow up to that?

If you have a gut feeling you have a suspicion, the next step

is not to proceed rushing into getting to know the situation

better. This the the best situation.

The the best solution would be to step back and say, Lord, can

you please display to me or explain to me what's going on?

I feel like I'm getting conned. Most of us do exactly what

Joshua and his team did. Let's go back to that.

It says we are your servants. They said to Joshua.

But Joshua asked who are you and where do you come from?

They answered, Your servants have come from a very distant

country because of the fame of the Lord your God.

So we have heard reports of him, all that he did in Egypt and all

that he did to the 2 kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan,

Sihon king of Heshbourne and all king of Bashan who reigned in

Ashtaroth. And our elders and all those

living in our country said, take these provisions for your

journey. Go and meet them and say to

them, we are your servants. Make a treaty with us.

Again I want to pause that many times we get conned because of

the senses being so triggered and the spirit being dead.

Here they were showing them evidence of a long journey.

Verse 12 says this bread of ours was warm when we packed it at

home on the day we left to come to you.

But now see how dry and moldy it is.

And these wineskins that we filled were new, but see how

cracked they are. And our clothes and sandals are

worn out by the very long journey.

The Israelites. Israelites sampled their

provisions but did not inquire of the Lord.

Then Joshua made a Treaty of peace with them to let them

live, and the leaders of the assembly ratified it by oath.

You know, when I, when I read this, I feel comforted that even

Joshua made such a mistake. It makes you feel really like

you know you're in good company. The family of God is good

company because we have such monumental mess ups when it

comes to relationships, networking.

We make so many, you know, bad decisions based on just our

senses. Oh, I felt connected to them.

Oh, I, I just kind of connected. I felt, you know, emotionally

charged when they were talking. The vibe was right.

But hey, did you inquire of the Lord?

What was God's response to you? Can we take a day or two to Mull

this over and pray about it? That should be our usual

response. Instead, usually we just jump in

and say, let's make peace. Let's shake hands.

And the worst is in Deuteronomy 7 verses 1:00 to 2:00 to give

you background to why this was wrong.

It says when the Lord your God brings you into the land you are

entering to possess and drives out before you many nations,

those seven nations larger and stronger than you.

And when the Lord 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.

This was the basis in which God was giving them territory.

He's saying you will enter this place, people will try to make

treaties with you, people try to intermarry with you, people will

try to befriend you. Basically what all of that will

do is lower your defenses, make you susceptible to idolatry,

make you susceptible to immorality, lead you astray.

But no, you do not make treaties.

You are a people set apart. This was God's instruction and

Joshua unknowingly, unknowingly because he did not seek God,

made a Treaty of peace with them.

First thing is deception will bring you into the wrong

alliances and relationships. Simple things as we were

watching this show recently about a a guy who dates a girl,

she becomes his girlfriend. His mother keeps warning him

that she's not the one and eventually his mom's right

because the girl is really not all right.

She's a bit crazy, but it's too late.

And I wonder how many of you have gotten into relationships

which were completely driven by deception.

The person presented themselves to you as something else, That

friendship that you developed which suddenly turned toxic.

You don't know when it turned toxic, but it turned out it

started out OK. Maybe there's a business partner

who got into business with you, but now you just you're going

through hell. Deception will bring you into

the wrong alliances. When God says in his Word, I

think it's in the New Testament, one of the episodes he says do

not be yoked with an unbeliever, which means that these are not

negotiables. Once you do get yoked, you have

a different kind of consequence to deal with.

Be it business, be it marriage. Who are you yoked to?

You need to examine that in friendships.

Yes, we are called to be friends with with whoever God brings in

our life. But these alliances, which will

extend into godly connections and Kingdom influence are

important. Who are you connected to?

The Gibeonite connection. They were enemies.

They were part of the seven nations that had to be pulled

down and destroyed by the people of God to take up territory.

Instead they had come into a peace treaty, so now they would

live in their midst. What a tragedy.

Of course it turned out well. Joshua said.

You know what, we found out you cheated us.

You guys are only going to be woodcutters and and water

carriers because eventually they set up a high place in Gibeon,

which was like a temple and they would have needed water for

sacrifices. They would have needed wood for

the altars. They relegated them to

servitude. But the point is this, they were

supposed to have been cleared out so that the land would be

given to the people of God. Unfortunately, they were now in

alliance with them. Deception will bring you the

wrong alliances. The second thing about

deception, it will lead you into unnecessary battles, battles

that are not even yours. If you look in further chapters,

the other kings of of Canaan get so angry with Gibeon for siding

with Israel, for getting covered by Israel.

So they come to attack Gibeon and Joshua, because he and his

people have signed a peace treaty with Gibeon, are forced

to go and fight the battle to protect Gibeon.

Now while that turned out for good, 5 Amorite kings were

completely annihilated because of that one attack.

Joshua was able to hit literally 5 five birds with one stone.

That was how it turned out. God turns these things around to

good, but many times because of the wrong alliances that have

come in by deception, because the enemy has whispered things,

lies in our ears and connected us to the wrong people,

connected us to the wrong wrong places, wrong situations.

We are fighting battles that were never meant for us.

And I wonder if we need to come clean about the deception, the

deceptive people in our lives, the deceptive connections in our

life, and we have to counter it by divine discernment and a soul

dependency on God. Why do I say divine discernment?

You know, a lot of times we think my gut is telling me

something is off. That's not divine discernment.

That is just maybe you know, like it's this street smarts,

but you need God smarts. You need the wisdom of God to

lead you in a situation, to lead you out of a situation, lead you

out of a relationship, lead you into the right relationships.

And that comes when God gives you discernment.

When the Holy Spirit gives you discernment, he will show you.

He will help you listen to certain conversations which give

you greater clarity. He will enable you to have a

dream about it. He could open any Ave. or

connect you with someone from that person's past for you to

have an idea of who they really are before you step into

something. But you need to be completely

dependent on him. The problem here was these guys

were on a high after the battle of AI.

They were they were resting easy when these guys came in and made

peace and they convinced them with their language.

They said we want to be your servants.

They feigned humility, they feigned subservience.

They feigned a love for their God.

He says your, your God. We we heard about your God.

They were taking the easy way out.

They were latching on to the mighty land of Israel, whose God

was a living God. They were latching on.

But these guys didn't read read into it.

And I want to ask you, would you be dependent on God for

everything, big or small? I have found that I've needed to

be dependent on God about everything, like even who to

hire as a cook, who to get as a driver, who to help me in

certain decisions, who to help me in certain projects or

events, who to get as a partner in marriage, who to get in

business. Everything needs dependency on

God, even if it means your your finances.

You need help with finances. You want to grow your money, you

don't know where to put it. Lord, connect me to the right

people. Lord, I want my money to grow,

but I don't know what to do. Lord, when do I withdraw money

that I have invested? Is it a good time or other

markets going to crash or are they going to go up?

I don't know a lot. Can you help me?

Can you leave me? Too many times we trust

ourselves more than we trust God, and our dependency becomes

on ourselves, our advisors, our friends, and not on the one who

holds everything together. The one who gives us power to

get wealth, the one who helps us to succeed, the one who puts us

in families, the ones one who cares so deeply about us.

The problem is that we have relegated God to either the very

huge things or only the small things.

I'll ask you for new shoes. Log that phone.

God has to be the God of even the in between.

He's not just mega, he's not just micro, He's everything in

between. He cares about everything.

That's what I'm discovering. He cares about the the stuff in

between the mundane stuff, where to invest, what to do, who to

speak to, who to text, who not to.

Will you come to a place of deeper dependence and divine

discernment? But you know, probably you're

listening to this whole thing and saying what a depressing

sermon. I get it.

I'm probably having a couple of deceptive engagements in terms

of my business or my job or a relationship.

You're making me feel bad. You make me feel bad about my

hidden sins, but I want to bring us back to this that our God is

a Redeemer and there's redemption in this entire story.

There's redemption through and through, right?

He redeems us from every deceptive relationship.

He redeems us from every wrong alliances.

He redeems us from even the hidden sinfulness that we bring

to the light. Redemption is his MO.

And you know, if you if you look at the book of Joshua and Joshua

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

Chapter 7 and 8. It talks about how Aiken and his

family are stoned and burnt in this valley called the Valley of

Akor, meaning the Valley of trouble, and it is remembered

for generations as the place where Israel's sin was publicly

dealt with, right? But so beautifully, God brings

redemption to this very place in Hosea chapter 2, verses 14 to

Hosea 2:14–16

16. I want to read it for you,

Mosia, chapter 2, verses 14 to 16.

Therefore I'm now going to allure her.

I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to

her there. I will give her back her

vineyards and will make the valley of Achor a door of hope.

There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day

she came up out of Egypt. In that day, declares the Lord,

you will call me my husband. You will no longer call me my

master. And it goes on.

When you read that whole chapter, it's beautiful because

it's talking about a coming Redeemer, a coming God who is

going to change this valley of trouble to a door of hope, that

who walks through him. Jesus is the door right when you

walk through. When you enter through him, you

no longer call him your master. You call him your husband.

That is the level of intimacy God was promising in Jesus.

This redemption, even in the story of Akin that you know,

even no matter what hidden sin is there in your life, when you

bring it to the light, you enter the door of hope and there is so

much ahead for you. It's no longer valley of

trouble. It is the valley of hope, right?

Jesus also redeems the situations we put ourselves in

because of deception. You know, so many of us have

been cheated of things. So many of us have experienced

deceptive people, people who have stolen money from us,

people who have stolen joy out of us, people who have used us

and thrown us. People who have completely

entered your inner circle, devastated you, and left.

I'm sure you've been through that.

But my Redeemer Jesus turns even that for good.

Think about it. Gibeon is now being attacked. 5

kings of Canaan, the major cities, you know, the kings of

those major cities have come against Gibeon.

Joshua and his people go there to defend Gibeon.

They get to finish off 5 enemy kings at once.

More territory is reclaimed. More territory is taken back for

God, right? God can do that in your life

even in the worst of your situations when you turn to him

and say, Lord, give me discernment at this point.

I lacked it when I made this decision, but now I need you,

God. I want to be dependent on you

deeply, completely. He is capable of bringing a

mighty restoration. The beautiful thing is, the

restoration doesn't end there for the people of Gibeon.

When we look at Nehemiah, the book of Nehemiahs, many years

later, they've gone into exile, but a group has returned.

A remnant has returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls,

right? And in Nehemiah chapter 3, verse

Nehemiah 3:7

7, it talks about a group of people who helped Nehemiah

rebuild the wall. Let's see that verse 7 next to

them, repairs were made by men from Gabion and Mizpah.

Melatia of Gabion and Jayden of Maranath places under the

authority of the governor of Trans Euphrates.

Look at the power of redemption. Men who were just relegated to

water carrier stone cutters, their descendants are now coming

here and helping Nehemiah rebuild the wall, making it

habitable for the people of Israel again.

This is our God. Even the worst situations of our

life, even the worst connections, the most desperate

times when we have been left in the lurch by people, by by

relationships, God meets us there.

He redeems even those things that we thought were beyond

redemption. So you and I, with all of our

baggage hidden or exposed, we have open Jesus.

God can turn everything to good. When we talk about a Redeemer,

we're talking about someone who can take the broken pieces of

our life. Maybe your life is like ash.

He brings beauty out of that. He brings such wholeness from

the battered pieces of our hearts, but it requires that you

and I live in deep dependence on God, that we will live in this

place where we keep saying, Lord, I'm exposing my life to

you. Will you shine your light on me,

on the hidden paths so that I can live as a child of light?

This week, as I was preparing this the whole time I was my

prayer had been this, Lord, that I would live from the inside out

before you, not before people because that's scary, or before

God, that I would live inside out, that what is inside would

be bad to you. God, you would know what's on my

heart. You would know my prejudices.

You would know my brokenness. You will know my my motives and

that you would keep cleansing it because it's an ongoing journey.

I've also been asking God, give me more discernment God, because

the problem is that discernment dips when my dependency is on

myself, but when I'm wholly dependent on God, He just

blesses me with the discernment I need in certain situations.

We need to stop living by our gut and start living by the

Spirit. So even as I close, I want to

just play with you. I don't know what sin you have

that is hidden deep in your life.

It's kept in that black box hidden in the back of your

closet. It could be something that you

have not talked about for years, but it still plagues you.

Maybe you're living in compromise.

Your marriage is compromised. Your sexuality has been

compromised. God is bringing you back to a

place of putting steel in your convictions if you would let

him, because that's the Holy Spirit's job.

It's not a person's job. And so, Holy Spirit, we just

welcome you. Would you come?

Holy Spirit, I pray that you would bring us into the light.

Every part of our lives will be brought into the light so that

Lord, your light would cleanse us and your light brings life,

it says. So we pray that the dead things

of our life, the things that have been growing in darkness,

will come into the light and thrive now, Lord, they will be

transformed into things that are good and pleasing and perfect.

Or Father in your sight. Father, I pray for the areas of

compromise in our life, that Lord you will make us people

with steely Holy Spirit LED convictions.

Mother, I pray right now for anyone who has been deceived,

anyone who Lord has gotten into the wrong alliance, was fighting

battles that has not even meant for them.

God, I pray in the name of Jesus that you will give them victory

over the deceiver. We bind every power of darkness.

We release the Holy Spirit of truth upon them.

We pray that the Spirit of truth would lead them into all truth.

I pray for deep dependency on you God.

I pray for Lord, a true discernment that comes from the

Holy Spirit to lead them, guide them and go before them.

We just commit all of this into your mighty hands.

Help us God, thank you, Jesus, our Redeemer.

Thank you. Father, we love you and we thank

you. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

Amen. God bless you.

Even as you get into this week, I pray that you will continually

be positioned to take the land God has marked for you.

It is your time to possess that you will deal with the

deceptions in your life. You would move forward in faith,

in hope and love. Remember this that whoever finds

Jesus finds life. God bless you.

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