Strategizing for Victory Against Deception and Opposition

**Accursed and gave us life again.**
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And you're not afraid to show you my weakness, failures, and you.
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Scars, the God on the mountain.
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Grace won't find me again.
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And you.
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And you.
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Change Your Glory to Garden-ing.
You turn bones into armies.
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None better than you.
You've nothing better than you.
There's nothing, and nothing is better than you.
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Oh, there's nothing better, better than.
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Graves, Graves who turned bones into.
You turn seas into highways.
You're the only crazy.
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We saw that your name, Jesus.
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Good morning, Village Church! It is great to be here to worship with all of you this morning. We are so grateful that every week we have guests with us for the first time, so we want to take a moment to say a special welcome and hello to you. We're glad that you're here.

We want you to know that our mission at Village Church is to worship God by helping as many people as possible become fully devoted followers of Jesus, and we'd love the chance to get to know you better. In the seat pocket in front of you is a card that says "I'm new here" right at the top of it. If you'll take that, fill that out, and put that in the offering boxes in the back after the service, we'd love the chance this week to send you an email, answer any questions you may have, and connect with you in that way. Those boxes are also where you can drop your offering after the service. Everything that you give here at Village Church goes to advance the mission of Jesus through this local church to the ends of the Earth, and so we thank everyone who has already given online.

Hopefully, as you came in, you received a handout. Be sure to check that for events coming up. But last week we had a great Sunday Funday. Over 700 people were worshiping with us throughout the morning, and we had dozens of guests. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who helped serve at that event. The next one's coming up in August, so be looking forward to that.

But right now, we're going to keep worshiping together. So please sing with us. There's only one name that's worthy of our praise, worthy of all honor, and that is the name of Jesus. We're here to lift up his name this morning.

I'm going to read to you this morning our text in Joshua 9:14-15. Though there's nothing better than You knew, there's nothing better than You. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than You. And You're not afraid to show You my weakness, failures, and You scars. The God on the mountain, grace won't find me again.

And You changed Your glory to garden-ing, You turn bones into armies. None better than You, nothing better than You knew, there's nothing, and nothing is better than You. Oh, there's nothing better, better than Graves, Graves who turned bones into You, turn seas into highways. You're the only crazy we saw that Your name is Jesus.

We took the place of nails; no one else could do what you have done. One name, one name is higher, one name is stronger than any grave, than any throne. Christ exalted, oh no more from the grave where death would die, you rose again and brought us life. You're reigning now, the savior of the world, Jesus is reigning all over. We lift your name, Jesus, overall, we'll sing your praise, we'll sing your praise forever. We lift your name, we lift your name so all.

Christ alone is the cornerstone, weak made strong in the savior's love, through the storm he is Lord, Lord of all. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but holy trust in Jesus' name. Christ alone is the cornerstone, weak made strong in the savior's love, through the storm he is Lord, Lord of all.

We give him his praise this morning, we praise you God, we thank you Jesus. Amen. Christ is our firm foundation, the cornerstone of the church of our life. Father, we are grateful this morning for the sacrifice of your son Jesus Christ for all that he has done to be the cornerstone of our faith, that we can build our very lives and our very eternity upon.

Lord, this morning we ask that you would give us the faith that we need to believe, to trust, to build our lives upon that cornerstone. Be merciful to me, a sinner, in the name of Jesus I pray. Amen.

Welcome to Village Church. If this is your first time here, my name is Steve, I'm one of the pastors here at Village Church, and as always I am thankful and grateful to see each and every one of you. If you have a Bible, go ahead and open it to Joshua chapter 9, that's where we will be this morning.

Every once in a while you will come upon a narrative of scripture where you might ask yourself, "What in the world did I learn there?" I think Joshua 9 might fit that category. As soon as all the kings beyond the Jordan in the Hill Country and in the lowland all along the coast of the great sea toward Lebanon heard of what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Aiken, they gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel. The inhabitants of Gibeon, however, acted with cunning. They made ready provisions and took worn out sacks for their donkeys and wine skins worn out and torn and mended.

God uses wisdom, strategy, and vigilance by his people to deliver on his promises. Therefore, it is not a Christian posture to simply sit and wait for God's will to be delivered into our lives. We must be people of action, thinking through the decisions and actions we make in order to ensure they line up with what God has revealed and what God wants to deliver into our lives.

Joshua chapter 9 serves as a great example of how the people of God can be lulled into a place of simply doing whatever seems easiest at the moment, rather than remaining vigilant and seeking God's input in the decisions we make in our lives. The key that God wants us to remember in life is that if we have been forgiven, there is nothing holding us back from moving forward in the promises of God. We must move forward in faith and obedience because God will always deliver on every one of his promises. It takes a real change of mind to believe that and to form our very lives around that.

My hope is that this sermon is helpful and edifying, encouraging and even exhorting, so that you can begin to see how the narratives of scripture form the very lives that we live. This morning, I want you to understand that God's promise of victory requires strategy. When God promised Joshua that no one would be able to stand against Israel in Joshua chapter one, it was predicated on the reality that people would try to stand against Israel throughout the entire conquest. Such is the case that we see in the first few verses of Joshua chapter 9, where there is now a coalition of kings that have come together to try to stand against Israel.

They have seen AI fall and Jericho fall, and so now all of the kings of the region have made a treaty with one another and are going to collectively act as one in order to stand against the advance that Israel is making on the promised land.

When you are seeking to obey God, you need to understand that word often spreads. A word of success spreads, words of the blessing of God spreads, and there are going to be people that are going to seek to stymie your advance on the promises of God. They are going to seek to discourage you, whether it is that you are seeking to live an evangelistic lifestyle, make disciples, influence the culture around you for righteousness, or raise a family in the way that God intended. Understand that you must realize that you're going to face opposition in every one of those things.

No matter how many times you remind yourself, you're rarely going to be ready for the opposition that you're going to face. You're rarely going to be ready for the people that are going to try to discourage you, vilify you, mock you, and say all types of terrible things against you. The nations in this category of Israel that might rise against you to seek to stop the conquest of God, but also understand that you need to be prepared in all times that the enemy, Satan, is always going to stand against the advancement of the kingdom of God, not just for Israel but in your life as well.

The modern world can lull you into a sense of comfort. I think the problem that many people have is that you get far too comfortable with what God has promised, the blessings that God gives into your life, and what you experience, whereas material blessings in your life are concerned. But when you deal with the issue of building dynamic faith and following Jesus, it's important to remind ourselves that we must be prepared for opposition.

You may believe that since you aren't encountering resistance, everything's going great and everything's easy. There's no difficulty in my life, there's no one standing against me. In my life, I'm not encountering a single bit of resistance and you may be tempted to, when you're laying in bed at night, say, "Oh thank you Lord because you've blessed me with a lifestyle by which I face zero resistance." But what you don't understand is that God's not blessing you with it; you're just not going anywhere that resists. That lack of resistance may actually be a judgment of God in your life.

A lack of resistance in your life typically means you're not growing, you're not getting anywhere, there's no forward movement, you're stagnant. The opposite of the blessing of God may be true in your life because you will not encounter any resistance if you're standing still, if you're not moving anywhere. You should expect there to be no resistance, but here's the deal: if you're not moving anywhere, you should expect to never advance on anything, never grow in your life, and you become stagnant.

My experience is that stagnant people never take personal responsibility for their own stagnancy. You say, "Man, well you know, maybe a leader needs to do something more in my life because I'm stagnant and I'm stagnant because of everyone else's lack of involvement in my life." Friends, that's not the reality. The reason that you may feel that you're not being led is because you're not going anywhere and they're advancing without you, they're moving forward without you.

You may say, and I've heard this many times, I've been criticized for this many times, "Jack, I just feel so disconnected from leadership." I can tell you why you're disconnected: because we're miles ahead of you and we're not waiting for you. I can tell you where the Kingdom of Heaven is concerned, I'm not going to wait for any of you to catch up; I'm moving with God. So long as God is moving forward, that's where I want to be, that's where I'm going to bring all the leaders of the church, and we're going to move with God.

So if you decide to stay stagnant, miles behind where the movement of God is, understand one thing for certain: my response is that's not my problem. I'm not waiting; I'm going where God's going. And so the answer for you is not to criticize those that are ahead of you. The answer for you is to get your feet out of the mud and move with God. Place some catch up. It's amazing how quickly the grace of God allows you to catch up when you're stagnant. God will move you a mile in a minute if you'll simply look to him and say, "Father, forgive me for my stagnancy, forgive me for lacking the faith that I needed to move forward with you."

The resistance, though, won't always be physical. It's amazing to me that most of the resistance that I've faced in my life has not been physical in nature; it's been spiritual in nature. I go with the Ephesians chapter 6, says the Apostle Paul writes and he says, "Finally, be strong in the Lord." Now what's fascinating about this is that the resistance that we face in our lives is not always physical; it's spiritual.

Be strong and courageous. This is what Joshua was told in Joshua 1 and again last week in Joshua chapter 8. The Apostle Paul says the same thing: be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, not in what you can accomplish or what you are capable of. This isn't about reaching your potential; this is about the strength of the Lord. He says to put on the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of this present darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. The spiritual battle is not merely physical; there is an undergirding spiritual world that is at play in the resistance as well as the temptation that we face every day. Understand that there are cosmic and dark powers that will stand against you. To be lulled into a false sense of comfort is a tool of the enemy to keep you from preparing for the reality of battle that you will encounter when you follow Jesus Christ.

Some of the greatest spiritual warfare is the type that keeps you fat and happy, standing still and enjoying all the gifts that God has given you, not realizing that Romans 1 warns us that the very gifts and blessings of this life that God gives us can quickly become our objects of worship, and we worship the gifts rather than the Gift Giver.

Friend, remain vigilant and strategic in your life. The command for Joshua and Israel to be strong and courageous was not a one-time command or decision; it was a call to always be ready. They needed to be vigilant and strategic in every decision they made as they obeyed God in the mission of conquest that He had called them into.

Many people want to live for God, but don't want to think about living for God. They want it to be a paint-by-numbers life, but that is not the reality of the world that is cursed by sin all around us. Everything requires thought. To have a relationship with Jesus requires that you pay attention, think through your decisions, actions, and reactions, and be strategic in thinking through how all of the decisions you make in your life will impact your relationship with God, those around you, your growth in the gospel, and ultimately the Kingdom of Heaven in this world.

In life, you may feel like you're nobody and that your decisions don't matter or impact anybody else. However, I would say that you are downplaying the role and impact that God has called you to play in the gospel. Your decisions can and do impact the kingdom of God. Jesus himself said in Matthew 10:16, "Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." This means that we need to think through our lives and the decisions we make, as they can have an impact on the kingdom of God.

We need to be wise and cunning in our strategy, just as the Gibeonites were in their plan. We also need to seek purity and holiness in our lives, as God hates sin.

We can see this in action when we look at the example of my son taking me out to lunch for my birthday. He took me to my second favorite restaurant, Taco Bell, as McDonald's will always be number one in my heart. This is a great example of how we can be wise and innocent in our decisions, as we seek to honor God in all that we do.

For 40 years, I have been telling people what a blessing of God it is that they figured out how to create fake meat that tastes just like a real cow. I love it! If I had McDonald's every day, I would die happy, even if it was quick. My son knows my love language, so we went to Taco Bell. There was a gentleman there with ratty clothes, holes in his t-shirt, ripped jeans, and shoes that looked like they were from World War One. We watched as he got into a car much newer than mine and drove away. That's the Gibeonite deception.

I said we need to look like we are road worn, so we should rip our clothes up a little bit, wear shoes that are from two seasons ago, and look like we are homeless travelers.

We went to Joshua and said we were from a distant country and asked him to make a treaty with us. We showed him our bread, which was still warm when we took it from our houses, but was now dry and crumbly. We also showed him our wine skins, which were new when we filled them, but had now burst. Our garments and sandals were worn out from the long journey. The men took some of their provisions, but did not ask counsel from the Lord. Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live, and the leaders of the congregation swore to them.

You're going to be lied to and deceived in this life. People are deceptive and the default mode of the corruption of sin and human existence forces some people into a place where they believe that deception is better than honesty, that lies are more powerful than truth, and that to get the things they want in this life they must deceive those around them. This is the tool of the enemy that the Gibeonites fell for and what happened to Israel in this instance.

The clearest discernment in life is always going to be God's word. You always make decisions according to God's word and you will always be in truth, but you will always be more perceptive with your mind saturated in God's word than without. If you don't saturate your mind with the Bible, you won't know truth from error.

The Gibeonites seemed to have formed a strategy to use the law of God against Israel. Moses told them in Deuteronomy 20:10 when you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. However, this offer of a peace treaty was not to be made to anyone in the Promised Land; it was only to be made to people they came into contact with outside of the promised land. The Gibeonites made it look like they were from a distant country and asked if Israel had to make a peace treaty with them. The only option for the Gibeonites where Israel was concerned was total annihilation. It is not revealed if they knew this, but that was their strategy.

Israel went about making the decision to offer a peace treaty to the people of Gibeon without consulting the Lord. This is important because it is a decision made outside of faith. Numbers 27:21 states that a special revelation was available to Israel in circumstances like this. Joshua had available the special revelation of the Lord to see whether or not the Gibeonites were telling the truth. However, Israel became prideful and made decisions without going to the revelation of God that was available to them.

Romans 14 states that anything that is not done by faith is a sin. This is because when we cease to understand that everything comes out of a life of faith for the follower of Jesus Christ, we make decisions out of pride. We think we are smart enough and wise enough to make decisions without consulting the Lord.

The clearest discernment in life is always available from the sources that God provides. We should never trust ourselves more than we trust God. Every moment of sin in our life is us saying we trust ourselves more than we trust God.

To have the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need to saturate our minds with the Word of God. The work of the Spirit does not work like a magical power, where we just ask the Holy Spirit what to do and expect an indicator light. If we want the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need to rely on the Word of God.

John 14 and 16 both tell us that Jesus Christ said he had to go because someone better than him was coming - the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will remind us of everything Jesus taught us, which was his word. We cannot solely trust our gut instinct, as the enemy will use it against us. We must saturate our lives with the word of God in order to understand and have discernment from God.

We must be careful not to claim that the thoughts in our own prideful minds are the words of God. We must be careful to ensure that any prompting we receive from the Holy Spirit matches the word of God. We cannot add anything to the Book of Revelation, as it is sealed. We must be careful to ensure that any prompting we receive is from the Holy Spirit and not the influence of the demonic. God speaks through his word, and we must trust in the Lord with all our heart, not lean on our own understanding, and acknowledge Him in all our ways. Proverbs 3:5-6 is often quoted, but rarely applied. We must be careful not to make a mess of our lives by claiming it applies to us.

Many times, we ask God to speak to us, but then we just sit there. We must humble ourselves and submit our lives to the leadership of God in our lives. We can seek God by prayerfully saturating our minds with scripture. That is how the Spirit reveals Himself to us and that is where His promptings are.

If Israel had taken the time to go before the presence of God, they would have made a wiser decision and would have avoided the deception of Gibeon. But when we won't humble ourselves to receive direction from God, we will go down roads that God does not intend us to go. We may even go down that road saying the Lord is leading me here, because we believe a lie. It is the enemy that is leading us down the road that is away from God's direction. There is always a price to pay when we put our ego in front of submission to God.

God's grace is greater than our foolishness and we should praise Him for that every single day. In the story of Israel advancing on Canaan, they were walking in the promised land and were getting closer to Gibeon. One of the foreigners from a distant country might have said, "Hey guys, you want to come over to my house for dinner?" As it turns out, the deception came out and Israel looked foolish. The reason why people sometimes look foolish is because they were foolish.

Israel and Gibeon are not the heroes of this story. After three days, the people of Israel set out and reached their cities. They did not attack them because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. All the congregation murmured against the leaders, but the leaders said that they had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. We should never use grace as an excuse, but always as a comfort.

Excuse me, may not touch them. We will do to them let them live lest the Wrath be upon us because of the oath that we swore to them and the leaders said to them let them live. So they became cutters of wood, drawers of water for all the congregation just as the leaders said. Joshua summoned them and he said to them why did you deceive us saying we are very far from you when you dwell among us? Now therefore you are cursed and some of you shall never be anything but servants, cutters of wood, drawers of water for the house of my God.

As I said, lies never last. I know someone thinks in this room that you're the exception to the rule; your life is full of lies, you deceive people all the time and you're like it's working out for me, but understand that's always temporary. Eventually, your lives will become like rotten milk, just sour to the taste. Friends, lies are always uncovered and even if you are able to deceive people, you are not deceiving God. You will stand in judgment for your lies and such is the case with the Gibeonite deception.

Once they got close, the lies came out and because of integrity, Israel had sworn by God. That's why you should be very careful of the commitments that you make in life. Never give a commitment to anything easily because some of you make yourselves a liar because you don't want to tell somebody you're not going to do something. Don't commit. I rarely commit to anything; it keeps me honest. And you need to be careful of what you commit to, who you commit to. Only commit to something that you are going to honor, but once you've committed, honor your commitments.

And Israel, in their integrity, they honor the commitment. They're not going to attack the Gibeonites as they should have because they were deceived. But understand God's judgment on the Gibeonites was clear. They got the land; Israel did. The Gibeonites lost everything, an entire people cursed to slavery by God forever because of the lie that they gave to Israel.

This is another narrative that reveals God to be the hero of the story. Israel is not the hero; the Gibeonites are not the hero; God is the hero. Israel still gets the land because God is gracious to Israel. They sinned against God, excuse me, by not seeking his presence in the decision-making process, yet God was gracious that they continued on conquest with the Gibeonites as servants.

Friends, many times I've considered the foolish decisions and the mistakes and the actions that I have made, yet God has forgiven me. Yet God continues to bless me; yet God continues to use me because of God's grace towards me in the gospel, and I praise God for his grace towards me every single day. He continues to be gracious through all of my failures and mistakes, and I'll tell you that's a comfort.

That's why I say, God then, friends, you don't have faith in Jesus Christ if you don't realize what you deserve versus what God has given in his grace. You're not thinking through what forgiveness really is all about. You're not thinking through the. God is gracious to His people and it should be a soft pillow for us to sleep on at night, knowing that we are forgiven and freed persons indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God.

However, the comfort of God's grace must never become an excuse to sin and fail in life, which is what it becomes for many people. We need to look at the scriptures to see what grace is meant to give us and turn us to in our lives. For example, what should the grace of God have done for Israel in a specific instance? It should have said, "We made a decision without God and now we are stuck with all of these people. Next time, we need to seek the counsel of God before we make a bad decision like that."

At times, we are tempted to use God's grace in our temptation to sin. We may look at the temptation to sin and think, "God is gracious so it doesn't matter what I do. I can sin against God and He's just going to forgive me again." This is sinning on top of sin and it gives us a sinful comfort on top of all of it. Romans 6 warns us that in the renewed mind in Christ, we must not use God's grace as an excuse to sin. It says, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?"

We have a new life and we must repent rather than continue in sinful states. God's grace for Israel was to push them on in conquest and it is the same for us. Our conquest is not over the promised land; it is over sin and for the world around us to come to faith in Christ. When we accept sin, we curse ourselves to never being a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. A continual pattern of sin in our lives reveals that we are no followers of Jesus at all. Grace must propel us to a life of obedience and it must not pacify us into a life of sin.

Therefore, let the grace of God propel us into a life of following Christ because that is what it is meant to do. Be on alert for the deception of the enemy and be weary of it. It happens more than we think and it will happen in our lives. It is not just people trying to deceive us at all.

It's vital to understand that growing in discipleship requires strategy and effort. We must choose to enter into environments of growth, repent of sin, and pursue areas that will give us greater growth. We must also beware of trusting our own thoughts over God. The scriptures, the Word of God, can help us to differentiate between indigestion and the power of the Spirit. We must weaponize God's grace to live His mission faithfully.

Every Sunday, we reflect on the Word through the Lord's Supper. The bread represents the broken body of Christ and the cup represents His shed blood. Jesus Christ purchased the power of His Spirit into our lives. He took the penalty for our sin onto the cross and through His death, if we trust in Him, He will forgive us of sin for all time. Through His resurrection, He wants to give us a new life empowered to follow Him in this world.

Hallelujah, what a Savior! He is our Redeemer and our reward. His grace is meant to lead us somewhere, spark a new life in us, and transform us. Jesus is our portion and shall forever be. No matter what happens in our lives, He will be there forever.

We look to you this week as we go about our lives. You are our Cornerstone, our Strong Tower we can turn to. We trust you, God, foreign and near. We love you and pray all this in Jesus' mighty name. God, protect us, guide us, and show us your way. Go live the mission.