Section 04 - Dealing With Gibeon

Joshua 9:14 to 16 says:

And the men took of their provisions, and did not ask for a word from the LORD [Yahweh].
And Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live: and the princes of the congregation made a covenant vow.
Then at the end of three days after they had made a covenant with them, they heard that they [were] their neighbors, and [that] they lived among them.

2 Corinthians 6:17 and 18 says:

Therefore come out from among them, and be set apart, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you,
And will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

When I was younger I didn't have many friends. There were several reasons for this. One of them was the fact that I was insecure and felt inferior, and I couldn't mix easily with other kids.

But that was not the main reason. The main reason was that I was brought up in a Christian home, by parents that had been spawned from the early Pentecostal revival that took place at the beginning of the last century.

It was a revival that was characterized by a move of the Spirit of God and an emphasis on extreme holiness. There was an emphasis on evangelism and on living a life that was totally committed to the Lord; of going out and taking that life out into the world, demonstrating it and presenting to the world what you stood for.

I remember being told by my father how he was mocked at work. This was when the people that he worked with found out that he belonged to what was then known as the Apostolic Church. They would say,

"Oh, you're one of those apostolics. You're the guys who switch off the lights and roll around on the floor during your meetings, right?"

Separate from the World

It was considered important that a child of God separated himself from the world and did not partake of the same things that the world did. Even going to the movies was considered a sin.

Going to parties was considered a sin. Drinking and smoking and swearing were considered sin. Anything whatsoever that involved being part of and tainted with the world, was considered sin amongst those early Pentecostal holiness preachers.

I grew up in that environment. I grew up in a church where the gospel was preached every Sunday night, and souls were saved every Sunday night. People went forward on a Sunday night to rededicate their lives to the Lord, because they felt that during the week they had allowed sin to get into their lives.

If you have been to some of the modern revival churches you may have seen something similar taking place, even in this day and age.

As a child I grew up having been programmed, and having had it bred into me that a Christian is different to the world. I was taught that we are not part of the world; that we are in the world but not of the world.

I could probably quote for you verbatim just about every Scripture in the New Testament that speaks about being separated from the world. I can tell you there are a lot of them, because the Bible speaks quite extensively, especially in the New Testament, about being separated from the world.

So as a child I grew up not wanting to mix with my friends at School, because they were unbelievers and worldly, and I had nothing in common with them. I couldn't discuss with them the fun that they had over the weekend going and doing worldly things, because I didn't do things like that.

I had nothing to share with them or to discuss with them. And I wasn't interested in what they were doing, because what they were doing was totally contrary to the way I had been brought up.

Then I had had it bred into me from a very early age that every believer should be witnessing; that every child of God should be telling somebody else about their faith and about Jesus. So as insecure, frail and weak as I was, it was my duty to tell people that I was a Christian and to try and somehow witness for the Lord, ignorant as what I was.

I did not even understanding salvation myself properly yet, but we had heard it preached from the pulpit. You were a second-rate Christian if you didn't witness. It was part and parcel of what was meant by becoming a Christian. That is what was expected of you.

Rebellion and Double Life

Then as I grew up I came to a place in my life where I rebelled against my upbringing. I was tired of being alone. I was tired of not having friends and not having a social life. And at about the age of 17 I decided to taste the world.

I decided to go against those principles that I had stood for all my life. And for the first time I began to hang around with the guys in my class at School and started to have something in common with them.

I used to go to the dances with them and to the movies with them, and to engage in the same things that they did for entertainment and pleasure. I didn't turn my back on the Lord. I still went to church every Sunday. I just let go of some of that aspect of commitment.

I figured I could still serve the Lord and do these things. What was the big deal?

So I began to make friends with some of the guys at School, and it was as though I was living a double life. When I was with them I was part and parcel of their way of thinking. I would use their language and I could talk like them.

But on Sunday it was time to go to church. Then I went with my parents to church, because I was still at home at that time.

My parents didn't know the kind of double life that I was living. They didn't know when I came back in the early hours of the morning stone drunk. They would never have known that their wonderful son that they had brought up so well principled, was going out with the boys and drinking.

Then something happened that put me on the spot. This was a difficult one. I had become very close friends with one of the guys at School, to the point where I had gone to his home and had met his parents, and they knew who I was.

I was considered a good friend of his, and they spoke to me the one day and said,

"Since you and our son are such good friends we'd like to meet your parents so that we could become friends with them as well."

Oh no, I could just imagine these worldly unbelievers coming to meet my parents, who were brought up in strict Holiness and who stood firm for the principles of God, to try and get something in common with them. What could I say?

I said, "Yes sure, I'll speak to my folks."

They got together and they had nothing in common. They had nothing to talk about, and I was stuck there in the middle.

I realized that I needed to make a choice. It became clear the one day as I spoke to this guy's mother, and they wanted to invite me to go with them to some place on a Sunday.

I said, "I'm sorry, but I have to go to church."

She got all sarcastic with me and said,

"Well please will you pray for me as well."

Don't Entertain the World

I realized that I had stepped outside of where I should have been as a Christian. I had stepped outside of the bounds of what God intended me to be.

Instead of being a testimony for the Lord I was starting to become a shame and a stumbling block to the Kingdom of God. I had allowed the world to enter into my heart. And I had entertained it, in innocence, thinking that I wasn't going to go too bad.

I wasn't going to get really rotten and become a really bad sinner. I didn't do heavy things. I didn't go and do drugs and become a vile sinner. I was just tasting a bit of the entertainment of the world, that's all.

There was nothing really bad about that. Hey, the Lord couldn't hold that against me. I was still going to church. I was still serving Him and still kind of witnessing. That is how subtle the world is.

Why am I speaking about the world when we are trying to speak about Joshua and Gibeon? It is because that is exactly what is pictured with Joshua and the deception of the Gibeonites.

The Gibeonites saw how the Israelites had come in and conquered the land, had defeated the kings, had taken Jericho and Ai, and they were next on the list. They knew that their time was coming next and they were going to be slaughtered and wiped out, because that was the order. It was,

"Go in and wipe them out."

Deceptiveness

They feared for their lives. So they concocted a plan to come to Joshua and to deceive him, by saying that they were not part of the land; that they came from a far country.

I am not going to go into details, but you can read the story of how they brought old worn out vessels and things that they said they had brought with them. And they brought food that had gone stale already because they had traveled so far.

Joshua and the elders of Israel went and made a covenant with them. How stupid. A covenant in those days involved a whole lot more than just saying,

"Okay, we'll be friends with you guys and we'll come and visit you sometime."

There was a covenant vow that they could not break in the future. That vow was a Blood Covenant vow which says,

"We're entering into a Blood Covenant with you, and what is ours is yours and what is yours is ours, and we promise that we won't kill you. We vow it before God that we will let you live if ever we come to your land."