Hey, everybody, welcome to Ask Me Anything where Pastor J.D. Greer answers your questions.

I'm Matt Love, and we have got a bonus episode for you this week.

So go ahead and check this out.

How could God have ordained the Old Testament conquests?

The Old Testament has places where God told Joshua

or Moses to wipe out an entire city. And that included kids. And you're like, that just seems unfair.

Okay, this can be a little bit hard to get your mind around, but let me try to be brief here. Okay.

First, we live in a cursed world. And that means we all experience the effects of sin.

We're not supposed to always think of particular calamities as retribution for particular sins

that we've committed the curse of death is over all of us, and that's because we've all

participated in the rebellion. So when a bad thing happens to somebody, you don't say,

oh, that bad thing happened because you did that there.

No, we all live under the curse and things happen somewhat indiscriminately.

We just live in a cursed world and there's death all around us.

So even the supposedly innocent people that suffered in those conquests, ultimately we're

not innocent because we've all participated in the rebellion of sin.

You say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but wait a minute, those children in those cities that died,

they hadn't committed sins that would make them worthy of God's particular judgment.

Right.

I mean, I get that, but we also recognize, don't we, that sin has a communal dimension to it.

I mean, it's hard for Americans to get their mind around this, but it's true. sin has a communal dimension to it. I mean, it's hard for Americans to get their

mind around this, but it's true. Sin has a communal dimension, and the sins of the father,

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