January 1, 2023

Passage Read: Joshua 10-13
Meditation Verse: 11:20

Thought

The Lord hardened the hearts of the Canaanites so that they would fight against Israel so He could exterminate them without mercy. That is a brutal statement. The time had arrived when the Lord destroyed the Canaanites from off the face of the earth. He had told Abraham four hundred years before that this day would come, when the Canaanites had filled up the full measure of their sin, when God had had enough of them. They were not getting better, but worse, so their time was up. He could have caused them all to drop dead of disease or heart attack or nothing at all, but he chose war, perhaps to briefly expose the Israelites to the wickedness they were to exterminate and reject in their own fledgling nation. Whatever the reason, the time had come to exterminate the Canaanites.

Application

God does set limits for individuals and for nations. No one will endure forever on the face of the earth. So everyone must make the effort to find God and make peace with Him, though neither of those things are very hard now. The Canaanites had a witness of God among them for more than a century, from Abraham and Lot to Jacob, but they learned nothing from them. They could have repented, they could have abandoned their gods for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they didn't. And they grew worse. They weren't bad enough in Abraham's day or Isaac's or even Jacob's. It took them another 400 years to earn extermination. So though it says God destroyed them without mercy, that is true of this moment, but not of their whole history. God is merciful, up to a point. I should be changing my ways while He is merciful, so I never get to a point where it's too late.