A very good morning to you. Let us first open in prayer.

“Our dear God and our Father in heaven, when people do not fear You, it is because people do not know You. Reveal Yourself to us this day that we may know You more and more, that we may fear You more and more, that we may love You more and more, in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

Did you know that the average amount of words spoken by people in a day is roughly around seven thousand? That seems to be a pretty high number according to research, and that is on the low side. Seven thousand is on the low side. It’s a bit shocking, isn’t it, to know that we say so many words in a day? Seven thousand, think about that. Perhaps it is even more scary to know that out of these seven thousand words we speak in a day, Matthew 12:36 says we will be judged for every idle word we speak. Every careless word we speak, we will be judged. 

We have a story today before us. A story about words. We use words every day, all the time, in so many ways. When we tell lies, we break our word. When we give a promise to somebody, we are giving them our word. When we fulfil that promise, we are keeping our word. And that is our story. That is our three headings for today- breaking our word, giving our word, keeping our word. 

Now let me just quickly bring you up to speed. We are now at Joshua chapter 9, and you could say that Israel (this powerful nation of Israel) is like a rampaging bull, charging on and on, destroying everything in their way. They have been given a commission, a task from God to enter the Promised Land. And in this holy land, there are wicked nations there. You drive them out. Destroy them all. And that is exactly what they have been doing.

How do you think the other nations might be feeling right now? Jericho, the walls of Jericho has just fallen, the nation of Ai destroyed, the king hanging on a tree. Who can stop this nation of Israel? Let us read verse 1, and then we see how the nations are reacting. “And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, in the hills and in the lowland and in all the coasts of the Great Sea toward Lebanon—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, the Jebusite—heard about it”.

Of course, news travelled fast. It sent shockwaves to all the neighbouring nations. And what is their response? Verse 2: “they gathered together to fight”. But that is what we expect from people of this world as we bring about this message of the kingdom, as we are given this royal task to preach the gospel. This is a gospel of good news. But to those who don’t believe it, it is a message of judgement to them. And they will defy until their very last breath. They rather die before they surrender. They will fight to the very end.

But this is not the only response we would find. Some openly defy, openly opposed God. There are some who take a very different strategy, and this brings us to our first heading- breaking our word. We find a very different people with a very different strategy. Verse 3: “But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily”. We don’t need to fight. If we fight, we sure lose. Let’s go a different strategy. Let us be sneaky. Let us be cunning. Let us trick them with our words.

And verse 4 and verse 5, what you see here is a preparation. They are coming up. They are cooking up a story, and we will see soon enough what is their preparation for. But in verse 6, they charge up straight to the base camp in Gilgal. They meet straight with their leader Joshua and they say in verse 6: “We have come from a far country; now therefore, make a covenant with us.”.

Now I have to explain a little bit about what a covenant is. In those days, it is a practice where a smaller weaker nation will go to a more powerful nation. And of course, that seems logical. If I’m weak, I cannot defend myself. I better go to a powerful nation. Please protect me. I’ll give you something in return. I’ll give you some gifts, some presents. Maybe I’ll send you some servants to help you out. There is a trade going on. There’s a deal that is being made.

And so what do you say? Can you protect us? And we’ll give you some gifts. Now as we break down their story, I’ll like to call this a threefold strategy that the Gibeonites have. Strategy number one, tell them that we are from far away. Why? Because perhaps by now news has travelled quickly enough, and they know that this nation of Israel so powerful has been given a task to wipe out all the inhabitants of this land.

Deuteronomy 20:16-17: “let nothing that breathes remain”. That’s what God told them. And more explicitly in Deuteronomy 7:2- “You shall make no covenant with them”. Don’t make deals with them. These are your enemies. These are wicked nations. Do not make a covenant with them. So it is logical. If they are here to wipe us out, if they are here to destroy all the people who are from around here, strategy number one, tell them we are not from around here. We come from far away. Let’s trick them.

Of course, it’s not so easy, and so verse 7: “The men of Israel said to the Hivites (this is their race), “Perhaps you dwell among us; so how can we make a covenant with you?””. Not so quick. How do we know you’re not lying? Maybe you’re from around here. We are not supposed to make any deals with people from around here, remember? But they carry on. “We are your servants.” And Joshua asked them, “Who are you, and where do you come from?” And they said: “We are from a very far country””.

Look at them. Look at the lie they are cooking up. It reminds you of the movie “Shrek” right, where the people come from a kingdom from far, far away? And what is the name of that kingdom? The kingdom is called “Far, Far Away”. You’re making no sense. I don’t want to reveal any information. When I lie, I better be general. I don’t want to reveal specifics. Where do you come from? From a far country. What country is that? From a very far country I came. That is their response. They are very clever. They are very clever over here. 

Strategy number one, convince them that we come from far. We are not from around here. We are not your enemies. Strategy number two, let’s butter them up. These Israelites, they have a God who knows everything. We will be exposed. How about we make them feel good? They go to them and they praise them. We are your servants. You are so powerful, that’s why we came. Now in verse 9, we see: “because of the name of the LORD your God; for we have heard of His fame, and all that He did in Egypt”.

You are so powerful. We just come to be your servant. It is a win-win situation. Verse 10 is genius. They are very careful with their words here because we see in verse 3 they knew what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, but this is recent news. No Al Jazeera, no CNN, no Channel News Asia. The news cannot travel that fast. If they mention Jericho and Ai, their cover will be blown. 

And so they are very smart. Verse 10, they mentioned something that happened much longer ago. What you do to Sihon and Og, those kings, we heard of it. We heard of how powerful you are. They are so careful. They say we want to come and serve you only. Strategy number one, we come from far away. Strategy number two, we butter them up. Strategy number three, they bring in the big guns now.

Here is cold hard evidence. Believe us. You see this bread that we took hot from our provision, from our houses on the day we departed to come to you? Look, it is dry and mouldy. How do you fight science? Impossible we are telling lies. These wineskins which we filled, they were new. Look at now. they’re torn. Our garments, our sandals, old because of the very long journey. Look at my clothes. Hole here, hole there. I patch it up. I patch it up. You cannot fight that.

I baked nice bread for you, fresh from my oven. It was hot when it came out from the oven. Now, look at that. Only science can explain this right? I took a long time. What a long journey. I really came from far. We want your protection. Make a covenant with us. What can Israel do? When lies are being fed, when the story is being cooked up, what can Israel do?

You cannot fight science. You cannot fight this convincing story. How else do you explain the torn clothes and the old wineskins and the mouldy bread? If only- if only someone could help them out. If only there was a person so powerful that they can see through lies and expose it. If only there was a person, a being who could even read the thoughts of men and see into the heart of man. If only.

Well, we know there is. In Ezekiel 11:5 God says: “I know the things that come into your mind”. The psalmist in Psalm 90:8 said: “You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.”. They have a God who knows everything. They have a situation now where they cannot decide is this truth, is this lie, and what do they do? From broken words, we move on to our second heading- giving our word.

What did they do in verse 14? “Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions”. They offered them the bread. They say deal or no deal? And Israel says, deal. I believe you. They did not ask counsel of the LORD. Why did they fail? Why did they fall into this trap? The reason is right here: “they did not ask counsel of the LORD”. A convincing deception led to a careless decision. 

What did we expect them to do, and how else could they have responded? Put ourselves in their shoes. How else today could we have sought the counsel of the Lord? Perhaps for them, they should have gone to God in prayer. Joshua could have interceded here and spoke to God and asked Him. 

Today we have something very different. We have the Word of God. We have this means that God has provided for us. If we ever need the counsel of the Lord, it is right here. There is prayer. There is the church. There is fellowship. There are all these means that God has given to us if we ever need the counsel of the Lord. But what is our problem? Very often we don’t seek the counsel of the Lord, Christians acting carelessly.

We live in a world where we are bombarded by lies every day. What does the world tell us? What does the world feed us? They have their advice. They have their views on almost every issue. Whether it be your career or your relationship or your marriage, the world has something to say about all these things. They have their views. As we process all this with our mind, how do we know whether they are speaking truth or lies?

But even more than that, the church has a responsibility to tell what is truth and what is lie. The church has a responsibility to weed out false doctrine. And how do we know when a new doctrine comes around? How do we know as we decide is this truth, is this lie? The church has a very heavy duty of keeping it pure to assess people, new people who are joining the church. Sometimes this is a very difficult decision we have to make. How do we know when we cannot read people’s minds?

They can come like these Gibeonites- tell us their profession, show us evidence of their salvation. They can come to us with a big, long story, a convincing story. How do we assess? How do we know? We have the Word of God. We have these means to seek the counsel of the Lord because only God knows. God can expose all these. And do we go to Him? So sadly we don’t. We say I have been a Christian long enough. What for always go to the Word? I know enough. I know what God’s Word is gonna say about this issue and that issue. When a new situation arises, I know what to do.

Dr Dale Ralph Davis in his commentary on Joshua, I like his title for this chapter. His title is simply this, “The Problem with Common Sense”. We like to use common sense. Over here we have this- the Word of God, the source of truth. And then we have this small, little brain. We often go to the small, little brain to decide for ourselves what is truth, what is lies. We say we don’t need to keep on praying about this and that.

And so devastating end. So verse 15: “So Joshua made peace with them”. This forward sounds wrong. Why do you make peace with your enemies, these liars? Joshua made peace with them. You’re not supposed to do that. He made a covenant with them to let them live, and the rulers of the congregation were all there to ratify it.

This is a devastating end. They made a careless mistake. They made a serious mistake. They gave their word when they were not supposed to. Now just one verse later, we read: “And it happened at the end of three days, after they had made a covenant with them, that they heard that they were neighbours who dwelt near them.”. Now the leaders of Israel here might be feeling like a big bunch of fools right now.

Thirteen verses, the narrator tells us is this true, is this lie? Is this true, is this lie? And then finally when they said I think it’s true, one verse later, it was a lie! Exposed! And they’re left red-faced. Humiliated. Oh, I wished I sought the counsel of the LORD. Why didn’t we ask God? We could have exposed them immediately. We chose to use common sense. We got tricked by them, and now we are in trouble. We have given carelessly our word. How did Israel respond? That leads us to our third heading- keeping our word.

“Then the children of Israel journeyed and came to their cities on the third day”, and there are four cities over here- Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, Kirjath Jearim. “But the children of Israel did not attack them”. Why? Because they cannot. They made an oath to protect them now. What a terrible thing it is. How inconvenient during war you have to go and protect your enemies! How do you fight like that? And yet this is what the rulers say. Verse 20: “This we will do to them: We will let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them.”.

Israel made a mistake; now they have to keep their word. They rather endure the consequences of their mistake than to incur the wrath of God. At least they knew this. At least they knew that we rather endure some inconvenience. We rather experience some trouble than incur the wrath of God, which is far, far worse. We can act carelessly. Due to our complacency, we do make mistakes. But we must remember this: Just because we realise our mistake, just because we repent of our sin doesn’t mean that God will remove all the consequences. There will be consequences of our sin that we may need to endure in this life.

Take for example David who prayed that prayer of repentance when he sinned and committed adultery. When David finally realised and repented of his sin, what did Nathan say to him? It’s a bit too late. God will spare your life, but you will lose your child. David paid for his mistakes. God forgave him, but just because there is forgiveness doesn’t mean God will take away the consequences of your sin. And David lost his son. David lost his kingdom. 

Remember Lot who made a terrible mistake? He paid for his mistake. He came out finally from Sodom and Gomorrah, yes. He realised his mistake, but he lost his wife. He lost his daughters. We may have to bear the consequences of our sins and our mistakes. 

Now a very immediate example that comes to mind, a very common example that we may hear a lot. Imagine. Imagine young Christians, maybe a couple. And perhaps due to falling into some temptation they had an unwanted pregnancy before their marriage. What do they do? They committed some sin. How humiliating. Maybe there are children of some elders of the church, even more humiliating. Reputation is gone now, scandal in the church. Do they try to hide it? 

There is a simple way to hide it- kill the baby. Solution, but we must remember it is never God’s will for us to cover our sin with more sin, and at least Israel knew that. They could have said: Oh, these people tricked us ah. Very bad. Let us break our promise and just kill them off. No, at least they knew that two wrongs do not make one right. They do not try to cover their first sin by sinning some more. They chose to keep their word.

Now, this is the story we have before us of people lying, of people accidentally giving their word, and of people keeping their word. What can we learn from this? We always like to ask ourselves: Why is this even written? What’s it for? Why is the narrator telling us this story? First, why was it written for the people then? And I believe this was written as a warning to them.

Each time the Israelites were to read back on this account, they will remember their foolishness, their complacency. Each time in their daily life they walk around and they meet a neighbour: Hey, another Gibeonite here. Hey, another Gibeonite here. The Gibeonites are among us. Enemies are among us. We are paying for our mistakes. And they will remember this warning of their complacency, of their carelessness, choosing not to seek the counsel of God. They are paying for their mistakes.

A warning to us as well surely because we are exactly like this sometimes. Very complacent, thinking that we know the Word of God enough. We enter big decisions sometimes, and we say I know what to do. But that is the problem with common sense. We know what to do, what for read so much? What for seek godly advice? So this was written here as a warning to them and perhaps to us as well.

But more than that, this story here, this account is written as a reminder because yes, we see terrible mistakes being made. Yes, we see sin. But do you see grace? Do you see God working graciously? Although He’s not being explicitly mentioned here of doing something, but as we trace the story we see grace. We are reminded of the gospel of grace. How so? 

If we were honest, if we looked at this story, and very often this is the way with the Old Testament. We don’t read an Old Testament story and think that we are the heroes there. No. If anything, we are the Gibeonites living in the land where they don’t belong, living in God’s land when they are wicked, fully deserving of God’s judgement. We are exactly like the Gibeonites.

Now even if we let go of their past sins, let’s not talk about the Gibeonites’ past sins. Let’s just focus here. Even with the sins of their tongue, of their words, that is enough. That is enough for God to judge them because God is a holy God. Imagine for us. Imagine for a while that God says I know you’ve sinned a lot, but let’s just forget about all your other sins. Just focus on maybe your sin of your tongue, of the words you say. Can anybody tell me that they’ve never sinned with their tongue before, never sinned with their words before? And I’ll let them go to heaven. Can anyone go to heaven?

Let’s read James chapter 3. What does James say in James 3? Verse 2: “If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man”. There is none. No one on earth can say that they have not stumbled in their words. We are exactly like the Gibeonites. If you want to not talk about their past sins, just talk about the sin in chapter 9. They are a bunch of liars, and so are we. And the sin of the tongue is enough for you and me to spend an eternity in hell.

Verse 6 in James chapter 3: “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.”. The words that we use, the words that we speak, it is enough to cast us all into hell. We are all like the Gibeonites, fully deserving of God’s judgement.

James goes on to talk about the deadly inconsistency of the tongue. With this same tongue we praise God, and then curse men. On Sunday we are singing hallelujah, God bless you. On Mondays, gossip, flattery, white lies. It goes on and on, outbursts of wrath and impatience. And back on Sunday, we are praising God again with this same tongue.

You see the deadly inconsistency of our words. With this same tongue we praise God, and then curse men. Backstab people, full of envy, jealousy, malice. All from the tongue. And so like these Gibeonites, we are fully deserving of God’s judgement. We should be under the wrath of God. And yet we find these four words which we said sound so wrong and yet so amazing. Verse 15: “So Joshua made peace with them”.

The Gibeonites did not deserve it. They lied to them, they tricked them, and yet what we find is Joshua making peace with them. He made a covenant with them to let them live. Now it costs Israel to make such a covenant. In order to keep this promise, this oath, it is much to Israel’s inconvenience. Fighting the wars, they have to keep on protecting the Gibeonites as we will see soon enough in chapter 10. The Gibeonites will call for help, and Israel will have to come and help them.

And so it cost them. They have to suffer the consequences of trying to keep this oath. And so it is for us. Joshua made peace with them, but for us in the New Testament, it is Jesus who made peace with us, making a covenant to let us live. He is the good Shepherd who says He will give His life for the sheep.

Doesn’t it amaze us to know that a covenant, a promise has been made even before creation, even before humans fell, even before Genesis 3, before all creation, there was a covenant made by God, a rescue plan already started? God making a covenant to save His people, and that is what we see from this passage: Jesus making peace with us, making a covenant to spare us, to let us live. 

Now to Israel, they had to suffer much inconvenience to keep this covenant. But so much more for Jesus. For Jesus to keep His covenant to let us live, it cost Him His life. That was the price He had to pay to keep this covenant, to keep His word. And so Philip Bliss in his hymn, he pens these words: “Guilty, vile, and helpless we; Spotless Lamb of God was He; Full atonement! Can it be? Hallelujah! What a Saviour!”. What a Saviour.

Jesus is our Joshua. He made peace with liars such as you and me. There is no other way to respond than to respond like the Gibeonites in verse 25: “And now, here we are, in your hands; do with us as it seems good and right to do to us.”. We are your servants. You spared our life, we will now be slaves in the house of God from this day forward.

That was their punishment. They will be slaves in this nation of Israel now, but eventually, they were fully assimilated, became a part of this nation. Grace, gospel of grace here. They did not deserve it. And may we also respond just like them to say to our new Master, our Saviour, to say to our Lord Jesus Christ You have brought us at a price. Whatever You want us to do now, we will do, for You have made peace with liars. Let us pray.

“O Lord, our Father in heaven, we plead for mercy. For as we open up Your Scriptures and read, we find what we cannot do. We are utterly helpless to save ourselves, and yet we find grace over and over again. While we were dead in our sins and trespasses, Christ died for us. Like these Gibeonites we were undeserving. We praise You for Your sent Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ who made a covenant to save His people. And to keep that covenant, He gave His life. We thank You, in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.