Good afternoon to you. Let us first pray.

“Our dear Lord and our Father in heaven, as You speak to us today, today if we will hear Your voice, let us not harden our hearts as was in the day of rebellion. And You swore in Your wrath that Your people would not enter Your land. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.”

Now there are hard sayings that we find in the Bible. These sayings are hard but possibly because they are difficult for the human brain to understand. There is a saying when Jesus talked about His second coming. He said no one knows the day nor the hour. No one knows, not even the Son but only the Father. That is a hard saying. How does that work? Jesus doesn’t know, but the Father knows. There are some hard sayings that are hard not because they are difficult to understand but they’re difficult to accept. And so today right before us, we have a hard saying. Now I believe this is difficult to accept because many misunderstand it.

And so what we want to do today is in order to understand this saying, let us look at the full context first. Let us understand it properly before we understand what this saying is all about. And so we are at Joshua 11. Three headings to help us through this entire chapter. Three words- defiance, destruction, and divine hardening. Let’s start with defiance. Verse 1: “And it came to pass, when Jabin king of Hazor heard these things”. Chapter 9 starts this way, chapter 10 starts this way. In similar fashion, chapter 11 begins. It always starts off with somebody heard the news, and this is how they responded. How does Jabin respond? Jabin king of Hazor, he heard these things and this is what he did. He called his friends. He called people he knows.

He called the king of this place and that place, from the north in the mountains, in the lowlands, in the east, in the west. He gathered people. How many? How many people did he gather? Verse 4: “they went out, they and all their armies with them, as many people as the sand that is on the seashore”. He gathered an enormous amount of people, cannot even count like the sand on the seashore. So many. He gathered everybody together. And you see these people all united together in verse 5: “When all these kings met together, they came and camped together”. Why they all come together for? Why are they all so united? Three words- “fight against Israel”.

Now Jabin king of Hazor had the benefit of going last, we might say la. You know he heard the news. He heard of all the stories. Everybody went ahead first. Jericho tried to fight against Israel, got burned. The city of Ai although victorious for a while, after that still lost. Everybody who chose to fight perished. Gibeon chose not to fight and they were spared. The five kings of the south chose to fight, they got destroyed. And so Jabin is weighing out the pros and cons. He has information. It’s not that he doesn’t know. He heard. He heard enough, and yet this is his choice. We want to fight against Israel. Hasn’t he learned enough? Hasn’t he understood enough that it is useless to fight against Israel?

Now what we notice in the first five verses over here is a lack of information about who these people were. Now, why doesn’t the narrator give us more information? Now I believe it is because this is the final conquest. These are not strangers to us. Enough has been said about these people. Leviticus chapter 18 is a full chapter if you want to know what kind of people are living here- performing child sacrifices, worshipping their god, Molech, performing all sorts of sexual immoralities, homosexual bestiality. All forms of evil they are practicing over here. This is the people who are living in this land. And actually, even way before that in Leviticus 18, they were referenced in Genesis 15. All the way back when God made promises to Abram.

He said to Abram your descendants are going to return to this land, but not yet. Four hundred plus plus years later, they will come back. Why the long delay? Because their iniquity is not yet full. What does that mean? Are these Canaanites not sinful enough? Is it unfair for God to judge them then? That’s why God said must wait first. Their iniquity not full, not sinful enough. That cannot be true because if you want to talk about a moment when it is fair for God to judge men, you can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden when God told Adam if you eat this you will die. And Adam chose to eat it. God could have destroyed Adam and Eve there, but God did not do that.

Now, this is what we call a manifestation of the common grace of God. Now I’m going to use this word a lot today, so let us try and understand this word. The common grace of God. Grace is goodness shown to people who don’t deserve it. Common grace. The word ‘common’ says that this goodness is shown to not just a specific group of people but to both believer and unbeliever, those who are God’s people and those who are not God’s people. Common grace is God’s goodness shown to everyone indiscriminately. And that is what we find even from the Garden of Eden where God showed in His delaying judgement, He’s showing goodness. That is grace.

Adam when he sinned, he hide himself. God was the one who came looking for him, calling out to him: Where are you? And so this is the people. The narrator doesn’t spend any more time because He expects us to know who these people were. A wicked people who have been shown grace. God gave them time. God said I’m not going to destroy all of you yet. I’m going to give you more than four hundred years. But with time, what is the result when God was patient with these people? Finally, when we come to Joshua chapter 11, we find them defiant. Defiant until the end.

They understood that if we were to surrender like Gibeon, you surrender, you’re gonna have to do what? I’m gonna have to stop my sinful ways of life. Surrender means I’m gonna have to stop worshipping my gods. Surrender means I have to humble myself. Don’t forget, Gibeon was known as a city with strong armies, strong people. They humbled themselves. They chose not to fight. Now this is what it means to surrender to Israel. And so for Jabin king of Hazor, he says no. We rather fight. We rather fight against Israel. And as we can see, maybe they’re feeling a bit confident. Verse 4 says what? How many people they got? Cannot count, innumerable amount of people. They got many horses. They got many chariots. They feel strong. They feel confident. They dare to fight against Israel.

Now before I move any further, let me just say that these people that we just described here (wicked people), it seems to be an especially wicked people. And yet, this is exactly us. This is the world that we live in today. We’re not that much different from them. We are also living in a world where people are following their gods. They are performing all sorts of abominations. How different. If you read Leviticus 18, how different is that from the world we live in today? There is no difference. And the world that we live in today, these are people who also heard these things just like Jabin king of Hazor. He heard these things. He can tell what happens when I surrender, what happens when I don’t surrender.

And yet this is their decision. We won’t surrender. We want to fight. We will fight. We will be defiant until the end. And just like these people, the world today also feels that they are on the winning side. I mean we are in the majority. These people who preach the gospel, those people who reject the gospel more than the people who respond to the gospel. We are on the majority. We are feeling confident. We put our trust in our horses, our chariots. These will be the instruments to our victory. Well at this point, let us listen to the words of Moses. Moses gave laws about war. And let us just turn back a little bit to Deuteronomy chapter 20. And keep your finger there because we’ll be flipping here quite a bit.

This is a chapter about war. And Moses said in verse 1 of Deuteronomy chapter 20: “When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them”. Why? “For the LORD your God is with you”. Now very often the people of God do not need new promises. All we need is to be reminded of the promises that have already been made. And so in Joshua 11:6, God reminds Joshua do not be afraid because of them. And that is all Joshua needs to hear- the promises of God reminded to Joshua. God is on my side, that is enough. Joshua can say along with the psalmist in Psalm 20:7 some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

And so Israel went to war. Verse 7: “So Joshua and all the people of war with him came against them suddenly by the waters of Merom, and attacked them.”. Now in verse 8, these people ran all different directions. They split, but Israel pursued them, attacked them relentlessly. They left none of them remaining. A defiant people who remain defiant until the end were destroyed at the end. And let us now consider their total destruction. What you will notice at this point is this particular instruction of hamstringing their horses.

Now actually I learned something new when I was studying this passage. I did not know that the hamstring can be used as a verb. And so I always thought hamstring was just a noun. Hamstring, by the way, is our leg muscle behind the thigh. I’m pointing to it now, but you can’t see, but somewhere behind here. Now our hamstring, if you use it as a verb, it can be used. I didn’t know this until now. So I can actually hamstring you. When I hamstring you mean I just cut your hamstrings only la okay? So it’s quite easy to understand. And so by hamstringing their horses, they are crippling the horses.

And so these tools that these people trusted in, God wanted to make an end of it. God wanted to show that these things which you put your trust in, which you thought you could trust to save you, they are futile, useless. I will render them useless. The horse’s hamstrung, the chariots burned, and end of it. Now in verse 9 onwards all the way to verse 15, it is a description of their total destruction. I won’t go in detail, but what you will read and notice is the repeated phrase of “none were left breathing”. They were utterly destroyed. But don’t forget the repeated phrase also is “Joshua did as the LORD told him”. Joshua did as God commanded him. And so there is a total destruction.

And Joshua was only doing this not because he was angry with them, not because he was raging and unleashing his anger and killing people and burning them. He was only doing what God told him. This is what God wanted, the total annihilation of these people. Now this is too much for some. Some people say: Oh, the Old Testament God is too violent and too harsh. I prefer the New Testament God. That’s nonsense. The New Testament God is the same as the Old Testament’s God. There is no difference. Do we understand why, why the need for such a total destruction? Moses tells us the reason why. He tells us explicitly what is the reason. Deuteronomy 20 again.

Now as we read this chapter, now don’t make the same mistake as me. I was just briefly reading through, and then I suddenly notice from verse 10, from verse 14 eh, something strange ah. You’re supposed to actually proclaim peace first, offer them peace. You’re supposed to spare the women and the little ones. No, no, no, no. These are laws about war when you are fighting those nations who are far away. There is a special set of instructions starting in verse 16 for these people. Verse 16: “But of the cities of these peoples” (there’s something different), you don’t treat them the same way as you treat others, “which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, you shall utterly destroy them”.

Joshua was just obeying what God wanted, “just as the LORD your God has commanded you”. This is the word of Moses which he passed down to Joshua. God gave specific instructions. For these people, treat them differently. Kill them all. Why? Verse 18 is the reason: “lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the LORD your God.”. When we read Joshua 11, when we read verse 10 all the way to verse 15, we shouldn’t be seeing violence and how harsh is God and how cruel is all this action.

We should see the holiness of God here. This is a God who cannot stand sin. This is a God who says you Canaanites, don’t dwell with Israelites. There’s no harmony. Don’t expect to live together as if nothing is going on. There is no happily ever after when you want to come together and live together. Sin is so serious that God in Joshua chapter 7 when Achan just made one sin, God threatened to disown His own people. One sin is enough, how about a whole nation full of sin? Do you see the holiness of God? Let’s not try to be smart. Good thing Joshua did not try to be smart and say: Oh, actually we should spare some. Maybe they will be useful to us. Maybe we can make them our servants. Maybe the young ones, let’s spare them.

He trusted God. When God said they are going to teach you their abominations, Joshua trusted God. Let us not try to be smart. Israel needs to be pure. The church needs to be pure. Let us not try to say: Oh, one sin is okay. Let us tolerate this particular thing. It’s okay. Maybe an unregenerate person, accepts them into the membership. It’s okay, never mind. We can teach them. Holy people can teach these people and influence them. God says, no. No, they are going to teach you. It’s the other way around. In Judges, that’s exactly what happens. Sadly when people disobey God, when they don’t destroy them all, what happens? When they leave a bit, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Don’t try to use your human mind and say: Oh, it’s okay. It’s okay. We’re gonna be able to influence them.

No, they will teach you and then you sin against your God. And so this is what we see- a defiant people, defiant until the end. A defiant people destroyed totally at the end. Which leads us to our final point. Verse 16 to verse 23 forms a unit, a section. Verse 16 starts with Joshua took all this land. Verse 23 says: “So Joshua took the whole land”. Now using our little book end tool, we can conclude that verse 16 all the way to verse 23 in between here, sandwiched in between here is a section about Joshua taking the land. And that is exactly what we see actually for the first half of this book. All the way since day one, Joshua chapter 1 all the way to Joshua chapter 11, the entire conquest is about Israel entering the Land and taking the Land.

And so this is a summary of all that we have seen so far. And what is in the narrator’s mind here as he makes some kind of a summary? This is my summary. This is what I see. You took the whole land and I want you to see one thing. What is at the heart of this summary as we continue this little book end tool and go in the middle, in the middle, in the middle? What is at the heart of the narrator over here? Verse 19 and 20. This is the centre of his summary. I observe nobody. Nobody wanted to make peace. Everybody wanted war. Apart from Gibeon, nobody wanted peace.

Now, this is the shocking one. Verse 20: “For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts”. God hardened them. Why would God harden people? “So that they should come against Israel in battle”. God hardened them so that they would choose to fight. Why does God want them to fight? “So that He might utterly destroy them”. Why would God want to destroy them? So that He doesn’t need to, that they might receive no mercy. Now this is too much for some. Our third point is the divine hardening of God, and this is a difficult doctrine. So let us understand it properly in this context. Let us understand this properly.

Upon first reading, the most common interpretation of this is what? God, how can you do this? These people could have chosen to do good, could have chosen to do evil. While they were making this choice, You go make them do bad. You hardened them. Why? Now that interpretation could not be further from the truth. That would be utter nonsense. It is a lie to say that God is making people do bad. God doesn’t need to do that. Earlier on we talk about the common grace of God. Even from the beginning- even from the beginning if God wanted to destroy men, it would have been the right thing to do. It would have been fair for God to just destroy Adam and Eve because they chose to sin. God’s common grace is shown when He delayed judgement.

And so for these people as well in Genesis 15 when He was making the promise, He was saying that I’m going to judge these people but I’m giving them time. Four hundred plus years I’m gonna give them. This is a manifestation of God’s common grace. He doesn’t wipe out the entire world today. Why? Is it because we’re not sinful enough? No, it’s common grace which He shows to everyone indiscriminately. Now let us understand the condition of man. When God chose to delay judgement, He did not destroy Adam and Eve, let them live. Let them live. And then what happens? When they were allowed to live, this is what God found. In Genesis 6:5- “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”.

God let them live. What happens when God let us live? We want to sin. I want to sin. I want to sin. All I want to do is sin. When I’m free, I’m thinking about sin. That’s all, only evil continually. Not my actions, my intentions also. That is the condition of man. The Puritan Thomas Watson uses a nice word-picture just to summarise this condition of man. He says: “A bowl that rolls downhill seldom stops in the middle”. That is the condition of man. If you let the bowl roll down the hill, it’s going to go on and on and on. Can it stop suddenly? Can we stop suddenly? That is our condition.

Now the common grace of God is manifested not just in delaying judgement but in restraining evil. How do we know this? Answer this question. Are we as bad as can be today? And what is our answer? What is our understanding of this? In Romans 1:24, we find this. Romans 1:24, describing the condition of man. Knowing God, not wanting to glorify Him, verse 24 says what? “Therefore God also gave them up”. If God can give people up, it means there was a point in time where God did not give them up. And this is a manifestation of the common grace of God. He delayed judgement, He restrains evil.

Now some of us might not see this. What do you mean God is restraining evil? Today we are all so evil. We are not as evil as can be. God restrained evil by His common grace, and He sets up authorities, rulers. Our rulers set up laws. These laws, although maybe not Christian, not from the Bible, but at least these laws promote some kind of moral, some form of restraining evil in society. Apart from that, religion. There are many false religions, of course. But by God’s common grace, so many of these religions are doing what? Restraining evil, pulling them back, at least promoting some good. Moral good, but at least still restraining evil. And so God is good to us, not destroying the whole world today, giving us time, restraining evil.

Now let us understand these things first, then we can understand this very difficult doctrine of divine hardening. If you understand that this is the condition of man that we are wicked and we are always wanting to do bad, always wanting to do evil, it’s our sinful nature. God holding us back. Now once in a while, God lifts the restraints. That is divine hardening. God doesn’t need to make you do bad. All God needs to do is stop doing good to you. That is divine hardening. Consider this chilling statement from Pastor Sinclair Ferguson. He says: “If you want to do your own will, one day God may just say: “May your will be done on earth as it is in hell.””. That is what is going to happen. God is restraining evil.

But when He restrains evil, when He gives us time wanting us to repent, we kick and scream. We say no. We hardened our hearts. When He sets up rules, laws, governments who are saying illegal to do this, illegal to do that, what do we see? People protesting. I want to do this. I want to sin. I want to sin. Now once in a while, God, who is restraining sin, let go. When governments start to promote sin, when governments start to legalise sin, that is a sign of God hardening our hearts. This is a very tragic, tragic, tragic truth. Consider the tragic consequences of divine hardening. When God hardens you, it is a terrible, terrible thing. Do not celebrate.

Some people were celebrating pride month, oh yeah yeah. Our government finally legalised it, celebrate. That’s not blessing, that’s judgement. God telling you I let you do what you want to do, it leads to your destruction only. Whenever God hardens somebody, whenever God lets you do what you want to do, you always choose death. You always choose destruction. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, God hardened his heart. And in Exodus 14:4, what does it say? Exodus 14:4, God says: “Then I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will pursue them”. Pharaoh wants to sin. God was holding him back. When Pharaoh continued to harden his heart, God let him go. God let him do what he wants. And what Pharaoh chooses always leads to destruction. He chose to pursue them, he drowned in the Red Sea.

Joshua 11, what do these people want? What does Jabin king of Hazor want? He wants to carry on his abominations. He wants to carry on his sinful ways. When verse 20 says God hardened his heart, when God hardened their hearts, God doesn’t need to make Jabin do bad. God just needs to stop doing good to Jabin. God is letting Jabin do what he wants to do. Jabin and all the kings of the north from verse 1 to verse 5, you don’t sense any force here, any unwillingness here. Oh, God forced me to fight against Israel. No, God just let them do what they want to do. And that is verse 20, God hardened them. When God lets you do what you want to do, you always choose to sin. You always choose death.

Consider a person who by God’s grace has kind friends, godly friends telling him: Hey, let me explain the gospel to you. Hey, would you like to come to church? Would you like to visit us on Sunday? And perhaps you, perhaps this person hardened his heart. This person said: No thanks, no thanks. This person said don’t want, don’t want. Now when that day comes, when God removes all these and his Christian friends are gone, when his godly friends are all taken away from him, is this guy going to celebrate? Yay, no more annoying people. The annoying Christian brother always telling me to do this do that, finally he’s gone. That’s not blessing; that’s judgement. If you choose to harden your own heart, who knows one day God will just stop doing good to you, and that is God hardening your heart.

This is a severe warning to us. Many of us have gone through since the beginning. Joshua chapter 1. In many ways we are like Jabin. We heard everything. We heard what happened to Jericho, what happened to Ai, what happened to the five kings of the south. Until now you, like Jabin, have heard these things. Are you gonna respond like Jabin who chose to gather all his friends, uniting to fight against Israel, hardening yourself? Now there is hope for us, of course. Let us take a look from the lens of the Israelites here. Joshua chapter 11 was written for them. When the Israelites read this, they see the faithfulness of God. God was faithful to them all the way through. When they took the whole land, you will even see from verse 21 all the way, even their worst fears were taken away when they trusted.

Remember the previous generation? This land got so many strong people. This land got giants. We don’t want, but these people trusted in God, and God showed them there was nothing to be afraid. Even the giants, all removed. Now they saw the faithfulness of God. But as they were part of this conquest, they see the holiness of God. They know their God. He doesn’t take his warning lightly. He doesn’t go back on any of His Word. If He says idolatry will bring you death, He means it. But they also see the grace of God because they know that they themselves are not better than them. The Israelites are not better than the Canaanites. Gibeon, as sinful as them. Gibeon deserved to be punished. It is by grace that some people are spared.

Our God is gracious to us, gracious in delaying judgement, gracious in restraining sin, gracious to send us a saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ just like Joshua, obeyed. Obeyed everything, just like verse 15, he left nothing undone that the LORD had commanded Moses. Our Lord Jesus lived a perfect life. That means He was not only without sin, but positively He was always doing the will of the Father, always pleasing God. Whatever God commands, He left nothing undone. And you will see in this summary it is Joshua and his obedience that gave them victory. Joshua took the land in verse 23 and gave it as an inheritance to Israel; Jesus won our rest and He gave it to us. Then the land rested from war.

This is good news. Those of us who are God’s people, we know that we have done nothing to deserve it. We are not people who are able to soften our own hearts because we were dead also, just like them. We all hardened our hearts. It was God who first worked in us, gave us a heart of flesh. But the warning is this. Let us heed the warning in Hebrews chapter 3 and chapter 4, the repeated line: “Today if you are hearing these words today, do not harden your heart” because who knows, today you may still choose to harden your heart. Maybe by next week, it is God who hardens your heart. Let us pray.

“Our dear Father in heaven, we should be trembling before You for we know You are a holy God and we know we do not deserve anything good. O Lord, we pray this day we can only plead for mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy on anyone who still do not know You, who this day still harden their heart. Have mercy on them because if they carry on hardening their heart, one day You might harden them. We plead for time, we plead for patience. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.