SUNDAY SERMON - The Destructive Power Of Soft Men

Theology Applied

Right Response Ministries

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 801 Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2023

⏱️ 74 minutes

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Summary

Israel had just finished a long and tiring conquest of the land of Canaan. They appear to have silently determined that they were done with war. They had witnessed the barbarism of the authoritarian leaders of Canaan. And now, their own leader, Joshua, was dead. In Joshua's absence, a poisonous potion of fatigue, apathy, and misguided pity for Israel's enemies was brewed. The “postwar sentiment” took root in Israel. It has been said: “Hard times create hard men. Hard men create soft times. Soft times create soft men. And soft men create hard times.” It is on the backdrop of Israel's slavery and subjection to those who hate them that God raises up the Judges. Many of the Judges do not possess the godly character of Moses or Joshua. They are hard men, but many of them also possess hard hearts. We are entering a time where there will soon be a massive crop of young, hard men. These young, hard men will not follow titles, they will only follow courage. But in their zeal, they pose the threat of destroying all the good in the world along with the evil. The key is for the strength of these young, hard men to be harnessed by even harder men who possess softer hearts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Amen. This morning we continue with our series through the book of Joshua. If you were with us last week, I gave a little bit of the 30,000 foot view and some of the broader context.
0:10.0	The plan was to deal with the first 11 chapters of the book that all have to do with the conquest of Canaan.
0:17.0	And so we see Joshua at the helm of Israel being used to the Lord to conquer all the pagan, wicked Canaanite tribes to put them to the edge of the sword to death and in the case of some to drive them out.
0:30.6	And so we've finished Joshua chapter 1 through 11. That's the conquest, all the different battles that occur with Israel in Canaan and
0:38.6	then the next few chapters several chapters in fact deal with the allotments of land as specific
0:45.9	apportioned inherences for each of the tribes of Israel and so all scripture is God breathed and
0:53.7	inspired and useful and so I believe that
0:57.9	these chapters are important. So you can read them and should read them. But I'm not going to be
1:04.1	skipping these chapters to give you, you know, something that's extra biblical. We're skipping a few
1:10.5	chapters of scripture so that we can
1:12.6	teach other scripture. So we're not going to be spending months through the apportioning of
1:20.0	land inheritances for each of the tribes of Israel, but it is valuable, and I encourage you to study
1:26.0	it on your own time. Today we're actually going to
1:28.8	conclude our series through the book of Joshua by looking at chapter 23. Some of Joshua's final
1:35.7	words, his farewell addressed to Israel right before his death. And I'm going to be taking a
1:41.4	sneak peek at judges, which is the next book, and what happens
1:46.7	after Joshua dies so that we can see the result of this is what God brought about.
1:51.9	God gave strength to Israel to conquer her adversaries.
1:55.6	They did inhabit the land as God promised.
1:59.6	Everything that God said through Moses and through Joshua was fulfilled
2:03.2	God was faithful and then we'll skip forward to Joshua judges rather to be able to briefly look and say
2:09.8	okay so God did his part he did all these things what was the final result spoiler alert it was not good
	...

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