Israel and ethnic cleansing (Joshua 9-13, Luke 16)

Whatever you make of what is happening in Israel, we can all agree it is awful to see such suffering. It is strange to be reading through the book of Joshua while all this is happening.

What are we to make of the conquest of Israel and the driving out of the nations? The first thing that God makes clear is that it’s not because Israel are righteous, he makes it very clear that they are a stubborn people (Deuteronomy 9:5-8). It’s not because of their righteousness but because of the wickedness of the nations. The nations were driven out of the promised land because of their wickedness.

Whenever God judges, He is just, for all of us have fallen short of His perfect standards and deserve His judgment. All of us get better than we deserve each and every day.

So God judging the nations inside the promised land was just, but it was also necessary for Israel was to be a distinct nation. In the Old Testament there was no division between God’s people and the state, so all Israel had to be pure. They were warned that if they did not remain faithful to the Lord, they would be driven from the land, and that’s what happened in the exiles to both Assyria and Babylon.

In the New Testament, Christians are told that we are aliens and strangers in the world. There is a divide between the state and the church, and although it would be great to see the state going God’s way, Christians do not take up arms when it doesn’t.

The judgment on the nations in Israel was a foretaste of the judgment that will come on all the earth when Jesus returns as judge. The promised land is no longer Israel, but the new heaven and the new earth. As we read Joshua it should drive us to our knees to pray for God’s mercy on the many in our world who do not go God’s way. It should lead us to be serious about our own repentance, and to seek to help others do the same. In our gospel reading, Jesus uses the example of the shrewd manager to challenge his followers to use our energy and resources for the good of others coming into the kingdom so that we may rejoice in seeing them there. If the judgment in Joshua is a foretaste of what is to come, we would be wise to invest our energy helping others learn how to be safe on that day.