James Meehan - Why Would God Let That Happen?
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Well, have you ever questioned God? Like have you ever heard something about what God did or read something in the Bible that just left you wondering why? Like how could a God Who is good and loving allow that? How could a God Who is good and loving do that? Those are the very kinds of questions many people have when they read the Book of Joshua, a book found in the Old Testament that details the story of God's people, the people of Israel conquering the Canaanites and taking the promised land. All of this takes place after they'd been freed from their slavery in Egypt, after they had wandered the wilderness for 40 years, and it is while they're entering into the promised land and it tells the story of battle after battle and there's a whole lot of messiness throughout.
As a matter of fact, Joshua Chapter 6, verses 20 and 21 tells us this, that "When the people heard the sound of the rams' horns, they shouted as loud as they could, and then suddenly the walls of Jericho collapsed. And the Israelites," these are God's people, "Charged straight into the town and captured it. They completely destroyed everything in it with their swords, men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys". How could a God Who is good allow that? How could a God Who is good seemingly command such brutal acts of violence? Well, that's exactly what we are talking about in today's message. If you're taking notes, go ahead and write this down, because this is the main point and the main idea. It's that God uses all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly to tell a better story.
God uses all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly to tell a better story. And while we believe that is always true, it's not always obvious, because sometimes, and in some places, it is much harder to see than others. That's why it matters so much that we learn how to read the Bible wisely, because then we can actually begin to see how God uses all of it, every verse, every chapter, and every book to tell the story of His love and our redemption, how God uses all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly to lead us to Jesus and to teach us how to become more like Jesus. If you want to read the Bible well, the best thing you can do is remember that Jesus is king and context is everything. Jesus is king and context is everything.
So what we're gonna do is apply that idea to the Book of Joshua so that we can learn to see how God's goodness shows up on every page, starting with Jesus is king. This is what we know about Jesus, that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that He is the visible image of the invisible God. Here's what that means. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. And what we see in Jesus is our unchanging savior Whose love for us is unconditional. And because He's the same yesterday, today, and forever, we can trust that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. The God of Joshua is the God of Jesus, and the closer we look at Jesus, the more we recognize how radically different His love is from our love. You see, God's love is big enough to hold justice, mercy, and grace together.
God's love is big enough to hold justice, mercy, and grace together. These ideas, justice, mercy, and grace, they are qualities, attributes that are held together in the love of God. Every single one has their place. My son, Jace, is two and a half years old, and as his father, I love the kid, and as his father, I'm telling you my love is a drop in the bucket compared to God's love for His kids. But sometimes the best way I can love my son is with justice. Like, if he just starts wailing on another two year old, I need to step in, pull my son off the other kid so the other kid is safe and my son can learn that that is not okay.
Sometimes, the best way I can love my son is with mercy. Like, if he doesn't want to eat his dinner and so he just decides to spill it all over the floor, instead of like getting really angry, sometimes the best thing I can do is let it go because he's two and a half. He doesn't really know what he's doing. And sometimes the way that I love my son is by showing him grace, by giving him a gift that he doesn't deserve and he hasn't earned, like a couple weeks back when we went to Barnes & Noble and he really wanted this ridiculously overpriced Simba stuffed animal. And because it's from Disney, it was way too expensive. But we bought it for him because we love him and we wanted him to have it. Justice, mercy, and Grace, three different expressions of God's love, that His love is big enough to hold them together.
So what is justice? Well, justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy, a little bit different, is not getting what you deserve, and grace, grace is getting what you don't deserve. So what we're gonna do is walk through some of the more violent events in the Book of Joshua with this perspective, the lens of God's big enough love that holds justice, mercy, and grace together, starting with justice, getting what you deserve. The battles that show up in the Book of Joshua take place between the people of Israel on one side and the people of Canaan on the other side. Now, super important context. The people of Israel are a freshly freed band of former slaves who have spent the last 40 years wandering in the wilderness. And then on the other side you've got the Canaanites. This is an empire filled with walled cities, trained soldiers, horse-drawn chariots, a thriving economy and established alliances.
The battle between Israel and Canaan is kind of like a kindergartner stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson in his prime. It's like a fourth grade YMCA basketball team going up against the 96 Chicago bulls when MJ was dominating. That's what we read here. And to make things even worse, the Canaanites, this empire, they were notorious for pushing to the margins the least of these in their communities, for violently oppressing their neighbors. They had become so riddled with injustice and idolatry that child sacrifice was a part of their everyday routine. Archeologists have uncovered graveyards filled with the remains of thousands of infant corpses that had been sacrificed to the bloodthirsty Canaanite Gods.
This is what we're reading about, God bringing justice to an empire that had been acting horribly for hundreds of years, because for the entire time that the people of Israel were in slavery, the people of Canaan were dominating and acting unjustly toward others. So when we read the Book of Joshua and about these battles that take place, it is so important to remember that we are not reading a story of God using the strong to push around the weak. We're reading a story of God using a band of slaves to bring down an empire. Justice, it's about getting what you deserve. And for hundreds of years, God was patient with the people of Canaan, until eventually the time came for justice to finally show up.
Next, we're gonna talk about mercy. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And in addition to the fact that God literally waited hundreds of years to finally put a stop to the evils being done in Canaan, that is a big picture example, but a more personal one shows up with a woman named Rahab. Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who was living in the city of Jericho who sheltered a few of these Israelites spies. And because of that when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, some of those Israelites went on a rescue mission to save Rahab. Here's what we read in Joshua 6. This is Joshua speaking. "He says, 'Go to the prostitute's house and bring her out along with all her family.' And the men who had been spies, they went in and they brought out Rahab, her father, mother, brothers, and all the other relatives who were with her and they moved her whole family to a safe place near the camp of Israel".
God will bring justice, but He will always offer mercy. He gave the people of Canaan hundreds of years to change their ways and they never did. And yet, this Rahab, this Canaanite prostitute who asked to be spared was, because God is always looking to show people mercy. And here's what you need to understand, is that God wants to show you mercy as well, that no matter what you've done in the past, no matter how horrible some of the actions you've taken are, God's mercy is available to you. All you have to do is ask for it, just like Rahab did, and He will give it to you. And that mercy absolutely has the power to change your life and your story, and not just yours, but your entire family's as well. Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve, and grace, well, grace is getting what we don't deserve. And grace shows up all over the Book of Joshua.
You see, it was grace that God rescued the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. It was grace that God chose to be with them in the wilderness. It was grace that God chose to use them to bring justice to the promised land. It was grace that every step of the way, God chose to forgive them because they messed up a ton, but God never turned his back on them. And it was grace that God chose Rahab, that Canaanite prostitute to be an ancestor of Jesus the Messiah. In the opening chapter of the New Testament, Matthew's Gospel Chapter 1 begins with Jesus' family tree. We read that this is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham. And if you keep reading in verse five, we see that Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, Who is called the Messiah.
God's love is big enough to hold justice, mercy, and grace together. Not only did God show mercy to Rahab and her family, but God chose to include Rahab in the legacy of Jesus that she is included in the line of people that brought the Savior into the world, why? Because God uses all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He uses rebellious Israelites. He uses sinful Canaanites. He uses violence and bloodshed that makes us squirm to tell a better story. That's who He is and that is what He does. So what does that mean for you? What does it mean for us today? Well, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And just like then, He was assembling a kingdom of people who would show His love to the world. He's doing the same thing now. As followers of Jesus, we have been called to bring justice, to show mercy, and to offer grace to others just as God has done for us.
So, become a person of love. Become a person of love. Become someone who holds justice, mercy, and grace together. Becoming a person of justice means getting yourself right before you try to fix anybody else, because it's so important to remember that before God ever brought the people of Israel into the promised land, before they ever drove out the Canaanites, they spent 40 years in the wilderness where God was teaching them how to get their lives right so that they could be in right relationship with God and one another.
So for some of you, get your life right. It's time for you to finally confess that sin that you've been hiding in the dark. For some of you, it's time for you to finally make being at Switch and being in God's word a priority. Others of you, it's time to stop going to the same places, with the same people, to do the same things that you know are not right. Become a person of justice and become a person of mercy. Become someone who is patient with others, just as God has been patient with you.
God gave the people of Canaan hundreds of years to change their ways, and most of us won't give people a second chance. Resist the urge to get even. Instead, choose to forgive. Choose to let it go. Choose to become a person of mercy and become a person of grace. That begins with receiving the grace that God has offered to us through Jesus. When we do, He will make you new. He will forgive your sins. He will start writing a new story with your life. Become a person of love, someone who holds justice, mercy, and grace together, because that's exactly what God's love does for us. He meets us with justice. He always shows us mercy, and He offers us grace, because He uses all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly to tell a better story.
Now, I've got one more thing for you, and I couldn't leave this out because it is like too stinking good. So if you just keep reading a little bit later into Matthew's Gospel after the genealogy, in verse 21, we see that she, this is Mary, will have a son and you are to name him Jesus for He will save His people from their sins.
Now, you see that little bubble right there. If you're reading in the YouVersion Bible app and you click on that, the next thing that pops up will be this, a little footnote that says Jesus, His name means the Lord saves. Now, that's if you're reading in the New Living Translation version, but if you jump over to another Bible version, the NET, here's what the footnote tells us, that Jesus is the same as the Hebrew Yeshua, which means Joshua. Don't miss this. The Book of Joshua, the most violent book in the Bible is a book literally named the Book of God's Saves. And the name that was given to Jesus is Yeshua, it is Joshua, because He will save His people from their sins.
Here's what that means, that the Book of Joshua is a preview leading to Jesus. And just like in the Book of Joshua, we see God's big enough love, justice, mercy, and grace. In the life of Jesus, we see God's big enough love, justice, mercy, and grace, like let me show you. Throughout the Book of Joshua and in the life of Jesus, we see wandering in the wilderness, right? The Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days. Then after that time, they crossed the Jordan River to enter into the land of Israel. Once they get there, they go to war with the enemy. For the Israelites, it was the Canaanites. For Jesus, it was the forces of darkness, sin, death, and the devil, who He conquered decisively through His sacrificial death on the cross, the moment when God's love, His justice, mercy, and grace came together like never before.
God established the nation of Israel after the Canaanites were driven out. Jesus is establishing His kingdom, the church, here on earth as it is in heaven. Why? So that the promised land could be secured then, and so that the promise of eternal life with God could be secured now. This is what the Book of Joshua is all about. It is a story that leads to Jesus and teaches us how to become like Jesus. It is a story that, in some messy and even ugly ways, shows off God's love that is big enough to hold justice, mercy, and grace together, and all of it is for the purpose of leading to Jesus and showing us how to become like Jesus. Because God uses all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly to tell a better story.
Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for just how good You are, for how much You love us. Even when it doesn't always feel like love, we're choosing to trust that Your justice, Your mercy, and grace is always for our good. And so, God, help us become people of love. Help us become people who love others the same way that You have loved us, we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.
Now, there are some of you that you are listening to this message right now, and all of it sounds like really good in theory, but in reality there is something missing, and that thing is a real relationship with Jesus. Like, you've heard us talk about the Bible, you've listened to all of this stuff, and maybe it sounds good, but you know that there's more, and that more is a relationship with Jesus.
You see, God, the God of heaven and earth, was not satisfied with simply shouting His love from heaven. He loves you so much that He showed up in person, as the person of Jesus to make His love visible so that we could know just how much He loves us, so that we could understand how far He would go to save us.
How far did Jesus go for you? He went all the way to the cross. He laid down his life so that you could really find yours. This is the good news of the gospel, that God so loved the world that anybody who believes in Jesus would be saved. They would be changed, they would be forgiven, and they would be made new. And maybe that's why you're here watching this message today so that you could begin a relationship with Jesus and be changed forever.