The NXR Podcast - September 05, 2023


DAILY TRUTH - Just War Theory & Biblical Genocide


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

164.98

Word count

1,464

Sentence count

98

Harmful content

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Joshua and Israel honored the Lord when they put women and children to the sword. They were doing good in the sight of God. Not only were they absolved from moral guilt, but they sanctified what they were doing as a pleasing service to the Lord.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:28.200 Matthew Henry, a late great Puritan and commentating on our text today, says the following,
00:00:33.120 nothing could justify this military execution, but that herein they did exactly as the Lord God
00:00:41.420 of Israel commanded. We see that in verse 40 of our text, which was sufficient not only to save
00:00:48.020 them, that is Israel, to save them from the imputation of guilt and cruelty, but also to
00:00:55.680 sanctify, not only to spare them to maintain a sense of moral innocence that they wouldn't be
00:01:01.200 guilty of cruelty, but also to sanctify what Israel did and make it an acceptable piece of
00:01:08.660 service to God's justice. So what Israel is doing, remember the text that I've just read, 0.67
00:01:14.440 what we're seeing, the whole text can be summed up in this. What we're seeing is Joshua is going
00:01:18.960 to city, to city, to city, town, to town, to town, king, to king, to king, and he's slaughtering
00:01:25.220 everyone. And the Lord loves it. It's good. It's just. It's right. Now, the point is, that's unique.
00:01:36.480 No country today has this kind of prescription or commandment from God today.
00:01:43.620 It would be incredibly wicked to go into another nation, as wicked as that nation might be,
00:01:51.200 and to offer no quarter to anyone, to slaughter not only the fighting men, but also the women
00:01:57.340 and the children. Today, in this gospel age, church age, New Testament age, we are to operate
00:02:04.540 underneath the principles of just war theory. And just war theory, well, there's multiple
00:02:11.920 different nuance factors going on, but a few of them is that the war, the cause of the war itself
00:02:16.760 must be just. It can't just be to go and pillage somebody else because they have a resource
00:02:23.140 that you want. There needs to be a just cause for the war. There need to be just fighting tactics
00:02:29.620 in the war. And there has to be a quarter provided for those who would seek to surrender.
00:02:36.740 There actually are. One of the seven different factors of just war theory coming from St.
00:02:42.640 Augustine and other guys who have refined it over the centuries, is that there has to first be
00:02:48.660 thorough diplomatic efforts that have been employed. That fighting, physical warfare,
00:02:55.140 is not the first effort. It's not your first resort. There's been diplomatic efforts
00:03:02.140 made. Now that said, hear me, that doesn't mean that God has changed. Behold, I am the Lord,
00:03:09.380 I change it not so that you, the sons of Jacob are not consumed. I am the same yesterday, today,
00:03:15.020 and forevermore. God is not a man that he should change his mind. God doesn't change. So God does
00:03:22.360 still wipe out entire nations, including women and children. The difference is that he doesn't
00:03:29.740 use another nation and their militia in order to do it while justifying that nation. God does this
00:03:38.020 providentially. So nations that are seeking to honor the Lord today, Joshua and Israel honored
00:03:43.760 the Lord when they put women and children to the sword. It's not only that God's commandment,
00:03:49.620 it was an express, explicit commandment from the Lord to put everyone to death. And that commandment
00:03:55.640 from the Lord, it didn't just absolve Joshua and Israel from guilt, but actually it's more than
00:04:01.040 just that. It didn't only absolve them from moral guilt, but it also sanctified what they were doing
00:04:07.640 as a pleasing service to the Lord.
00:04:10.800 So not only were they not doing bad,
00:04:13.120 they were doing good in the sight of God.
00:04:16.520 Not only being absolved from moral guilt,
00:04:19.500 but sanctifying their warfare as a service
00:04:22.560 that was pleasing to the Lord.
00:04:24.300 That's not going on anymore today.
00:04:26.780 However, God has not changed.
00:04:29.280 God does still decimate nations.
00:04:31.560 And at times, God does wipe out entire nations,
00:04:35.220 entire populations, including women and children.
00:04:37.340 but he does not do it through another nation's militia in such a way that that nation would be
00:04:44.120 justified and morally right. God does it providentially. He might do it through war,
00:04:51.100 but then in terms of wiping out not just the fighting men in war, but wiping out an entire
00:04:56.120 nation's population, he would do it through other providential means. He would do it through famine.
00:05:00.900 He would do it through plague, right? 0.93
00:05:03.900 Or he might use another nation that does put everyone to death, 0.82
00:05:07.380 not just the fighting men, but an entire population.
00:05:09.920 But that nation wouldn't be just.
00:05:11.740 God would providentially be using that nation.
00:05:14.200 That nation would bear its own guilt.
00:05:16.200 They wouldn't be righteous.
00:05:17.120 But God would maintain his righteousness in his sovereignty
00:05:20.560 using this nation and its own sin, its own sinful warlike practices.
00:05:27.220 God would still absolve his own righteousness
00:05:29.380 in doing what is good and what is just,
00:05:32.060 but this nation would not be absolved of moral guilt.
00:05:35.060 They would actually be going too far.
00:05:36.860 They would be doing something in the sight of God
00:05:39.000 that would be wicked. 0.96
00:05:40.120 And later on, God would probably use another nation
00:05:42.540 or some other providential means such as famine
00:05:44.940 or drought or plague to judge this nation.
00:05:47.680 And that's what you see in the Old Testament
00:05:49.340 again and again and again,
00:05:50.820 is that God will use, he'll raise up one nation, 0.99
00:05:53.960 often in order as a judgment to Israel 0.54
00:05:56.400 for their hardened hearts, for the rebellion against God.
00:05:59.560 He'll raise up one nation.
00:06:00.600 He'll use that nation as his rod and his sovereignty 0.98
00:06:04.320 to discipline Israel. 0.94
00:06:07.540 And then later on, the very nation that he used, 0.65
00:06:10.100 that he raised up and underneath his sovereignty, 0.68
00:06:12.520 he caused them to come against Israel. 0.72
00:06:14.580 He'll then use Israel going back or another nation
00:06:18.200 to judge this nation that he used to discipline Israel.
00:06:22.220 Meaning that God is sovereignty,
00:06:24.120 he's sovereignly working in such a way that he is not the author of evil. He is not the origin
00:06:30.420 of anything that is sinful. God is righteous. Let God be true and every man a liar is what the
00:06:36.620 scripture says. So God is working in such a way that all his ways are holy and he may use one
00:06:42.740 group of people to do one thing and his purposes in doing that are holy and good and just. But the
00:06:50.220 nation that he uses, their purposes, their intent, their moral fabric is wicked and wrong. And so he
00:06:57.460 uses them to bring judgment to these people over here. And then he uses someone else to bring
00:07:02.140 judgment to these people that he just used to bring judgment to the prior. I know it's a little
00:07:07.400 bit complicated, but that's, that's the point of what we see going on. Again, it's twofold
00:07:12.240 because, and the reason why I'm laboring this is because people, because I don't want our church to
00:07:17.500 unhitch from the Old Testament. That's why. People read the Old Testament, and they render it
00:07:24.300 impotent. They say, this is not who God is anymore. God has changed. God doesn't do this.
00:07:30.120 You know, we're not Israel, and that's true. We are Israel if we're speaking to the church. We're
00:07:34.840 not Israel if we're speaking of America, right? This is Old Covenant. Now we're under grace, 0.92
00:07:39.760 New Testament. And what you effectively do is you basically just make the entirety of the Old
00:07:45.640 Testament, a bunch of fables and myths and stories for kids. And that's not how we study the
00:07:51.600 scripture. That's not what the Bible is. This is the infallible word of God. So yes, there is not
00:07:57.140 a nation state like Israel was, not today, but under the old covenant that God has promised to
00:08:03.960 bring into a particular geographic region and give them that land as an inheritance. It's true that 0.64
00:08:11.540 that is over. No more of that. But that is not the only thing occurring in the book of Joshua.
00:08:17.520 So what I want to be on the forefront of your minds as we work through multiple texts today
00:08:22.620 is this. There are two things, not one, but two things happening throughout the entirety of the
00:08:27.500 book of Joshua. One, God is fulfilling his good promises to Israel. Two, God is fulfilling his
00:08:35.480 just judgments to non-Israel. And that second part, that is just as alive and well today 1.00
00:08:44.340 as it was 3,000 years ago. God still raises up nations and decimates nations.