The NXR Podcast - September 05, 2023


DAILY TRUTH - Just War Theory & Biblical Genocide

Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Joshua Matthew Henry Jesus Christ Behold Jacob
DAILY TRUTH - Zionism, Covenant Theology, & God’s Judgment On Nations DAILY TRUTH - Christian Nationalism In Jeremiah 18

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

164.98

Word count

1,464

Sentence count

101

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 .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:28 Matthew Henry, a late great Puritan and commentating on our text today, says the following,
00:00:33 nothing could justify this military execution, but that herein they did exactly as the Lord God
00:00:41 of Israel commanded. We see that in verse 40 of our text, which was sufficient not only to save
00:00:48 them, that is Israel, to save them from the imputation of guilt and cruelty, but also to
00:00:55 sanctify, not only to spare them to maintain a sense of moral innocence that they wouldn't be
00:01:01 guilty of cruelty, but also to sanctify what Israel did and make it an acceptable piece of
00:01:08 service to God's justice. So what Israel is doing, remember the text that I've just read, 0.67
00:01:14 what we're seeing, the whole text can be summed up in this. What we're seeing is Joshua is going
00:01:18 to city, to city, to city, town, to town, to town, king, to king, to king, and he's slaughtering
00:01:25 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 No country today has this kind of prescription or commandment from God today.
00:01:43 It would be incredibly wicked to go into another nation, as wicked as that nation might be,
00:01:51 and to offer no quarter to anyone, to slaughter not only the fighting men, but also the women
00:01:57 and the children. Today, in this gospel age, church age, New Testament age, we are to operate
00:02:04 underneath the principles of just war theory. And just war theory, well, there's multiple
00:02:11 different nuance factors going on, but a few of them is that the war, the cause of the war itself
00:02:16 must be just. It can't just be to go and pillage somebody else because they have a resource
00:02:23 that you want. There needs to be a just cause for the war. There need to be just fighting tactics
00:02:29 in the war. And there has to be a quarter provided for those who would seek to surrender.
00:02:36 There actually are. One of the seven different factors of just war theory coming from St.
00:02:42 Augustine and other guys who have refined it over the centuries, is that there has to first be
00:02:48 thorough diplomatic efforts that have been employed. That fighting, physical warfare,
00:02:55 is not the first effort. It's not your first resort. There's been diplomatic efforts
00:03:02 made. Now that said, hear me, that doesn't mean that God has changed. Behold, I am the Lord,
00:03:09 I change it not so that you, the sons of Jacob are not consumed. I am the same yesterday, today,
00:03:15 and forevermore. God is not a man that he should change his mind. God doesn't change. So God does
00:03:22 still wipe out entire nations, including women and children. The difference is that he doesn't
00:03:29 use another nation and their militia in order to do it while justifying that nation. God does this
00:03:38 providentially. So nations that are seeking to honor the Lord today, Joshua and Israel honored
00:03:43 the Lord when they put women and children to the sword. It's not only that God's commandment,
00:03:49 it was an express, explicit commandment from the Lord to put everyone to death. And that commandment
00:03:55 from the Lord, it didn't just absolve Joshua and Israel from guilt, but actually it's more than
00:04:01 just that. It didn't only absolve them from moral guilt, but it also sanctified what they were doing
00:04:07 as a pleasing service to the Lord.
00:04:10 So not only were they not doing bad,
00:04:13 they were doing good in the sight of God.
00:04:16 Not only being absolved from moral guilt,
00:04:19 but sanctifying their warfare as a service
00:04:22 that was pleasing to the Lord.
00:04:24 That's not going on anymore today.
00:04:26 However, God has not changed.
00:04:29 God does still decimate nations.
00:04:31 And at times, God does wipe out entire nations,
00:04:35 entire populations, including women and children.
00:04:37 but he does not do it through another nation's militia in such a way that that nation would be
00:04:44 justified and morally right. God does it providentially. He might do it through war,
00:04:51 but then in terms of wiping out not just the fighting men in war, but wiping out an entire
00:04:56 nation's population, he would do it through other providential means. He would do it through famine.
00:05:00 He would do it through plague, right? 0.93
00:05:03 Or he might use another nation that does put everyone to death, 0.82
00:05:07 not just the fighting men, but an entire population.
00:05:09 But that nation wouldn't be just.
00:05:11 God would providentially be using that nation.
00:05:14 That nation would bear its own guilt.
00:05:16 They wouldn't be righteous.
00:05:17 But God would maintain his righteousness in his sovereignty
00:05:20 using this nation and its own sin, its own sinful warlike practices.
00:05:27 God would still absolve his own righteousness
00:05:29 in doing what is good and what is just,
00:05:32 but this nation would not be absolved of moral guilt.
00:05:35 They would actually be going too far.
00:05:36 They would be doing something in the sight of God
00:05:39 that would be wicked. 0.96
00:05:40 And later on, God would probably use another nation
00:05:42 or some other providential means such as famine
00:05:44 or drought or plague to judge this nation.
00:05:47 And that's what you see in the Old Testament
00:05:49 again and again and again,
00:05:50 is that God will use, he'll raise up one nation, 0.99
00:05:53 often in order as a judgment to Israel 0.54
00:05:56 for their hardened hearts, for the rebellion against God.
00:05:59 He'll raise up one nation.
00:06:00 He'll use that nation as his rod and his sovereignty 0.98
00:06:04 to discipline Israel. 0.94
00:06:07 And then later on, the very nation that he used, 0.65
00:06:10 that he raised up and underneath his sovereignty, 0.68
00:06:12 he caused them to come against Israel. 0.72
00:06:14 He'll then use Israel going back or another nation
00:06:18 to judge this nation that he used to discipline Israel.
00:06:22 Meaning that God is sovereignty,
00:06:24 he's sovereignly working in such a way that he is not the author of evil. He is not the origin
00:06:30 of anything that is sinful. God is righteous. Let God be true and every man a liar is what the
00:06:36 scripture says. So God is working in such a way that all his ways are holy and he may use one
00:06:42 group of people to do one thing and his purposes in doing that are holy and good and just. But the
00:06:50 nation that he uses, their purposes, their intent, their moral fabric is wicked and wrong. And so he
00:06:57 uses them to bring judgment to these people over here. And then he uses someone else to bring
00:07:02 judgment to these people that he just used to bring judgment to the prior. I know it's a little
00:07:07 bit complicated, but that's, that's the point of what we see going on. Again, it's twofold
00:07:12 because, and the reason why I'm laboring this is because people, because I don't want our church to
00:07:17 unhitch from the Old Testament. That's why. People read the Old Testament, and they render it
00:07:24 impotent. They say, this is not who God is anymore. God has changed. God doesn't do this.
00:07:30 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 not Israel if we're speaking of America, right? This is Old Covenant. Now we're under grace, 0.92
00:07:39 New Testament. And what you effectively do is you basically just make the entirety of the Old
00:07:45 Testament, a bunch of fables and myths and stories for kids. And that's not how we study the
00:07:51 scripture. That's not what the Bible is. This is the infallible word of God. So yes, there is not
00:07:57 a nation state like Israel was, not today, but under the old covenant that God has promised to
00:08:03 bring into a particular geographic region and give them that land as an inheritance. It's true that 0.64
00:08:11 that is over. No more of that. But that is not the only thing occurring in the book of Joshua.
00:08:17 So what I want to be on the forefront of your minds as we work through multiple texts today
00:08:22 is this. There are two things, not one, but two things happening throughout the entirety of the
00:08:27 book of Joshua. One, God is fulfilling his good promises to Israel. Two, God is fulfilling his
00:08:35 just judgments to non-Israel. And that second part, that is just as alive and well today 1.00
00:08:44 as it was 3,000 years ago. God still raises up nations and decimates nations.