This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our last day, day five in week four of our look through the book of
Joshua, Joshua chapter 16 to 17 today. And this has been the week of Canaanites
and Hivites and Mekanites and Jebusites. It sounds like countertops if you don't
understand the Old Testament and all these different tribes' names.

It's a great, great example to us of how we need to drive out the enemy from the
land and just some lessons about how you begin to possess God's promise. If
you're going to possess God's promise, you can't live in your life right
alongside of the enemy. So, you drive out the enemy and it makes room for God's
promise or you put in God's promise and it drives out the enemy.

Today we look at the Canaanites. Now, the Canaanites, that term actually is an
all-encompassing name for all of these peoples, these tribes and all of Israel.
The idea that if I'm in California, I'm a Californian, but I'm also a citizen,
I'm also an American.

The idea of the Canaanites was all-inclusive, included all of the states, these
small states that were in Israel at that time. And we find as we read through
what they did in their attempts to have victory that the initial victory was
taken by Joshua, but then the minor battles that should have been fought, they
weren't all fought. And so, the enemy remained.

In chapter 16, verse 10, "They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gazar.
To this day, the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim, but are required
to do forced labor. " Or then you go to chapter 17, verses 12 and 13, "Yet the
Manassites were not able to occupy these towns, for the Canaanites were
determined to live in that region.

However, when the Israelites grew stronger, they subjected the Canaanites to
forced labor, but did not drive them out completely. " This Canaanite enemy, the
lesson that's so powerful in this section of the book of Joshua is this
Canaanite enemy eventually led to Israel's destruction. Seven hundred years
after the time of Joshua, this enemy led to Israel's destruction.

Now if you're an expert in Bible history, you might be thinking, wait a minute,
I thought the Babylonians destroyed Israel. No, they were simply God's
instrument of judgment against a nation that had already been destroyed from
within by succumbing to the influence of the enemy. It was this Canaanite enemy
that influenced them from within that brought God's judgment against Israel.

Now the enemy within, there's a lot of things we could look at, but there are
three particular things that are very powerful lessons to us today. These
influences that eventually brought destruction in their lives, three of them.
First, a material wealth without a personal responsibility.

Second, a faith that offered benefits yet lacked demands. And third, an
enslavement to the slaves. Number one, they were influenced by a material wealth
without personal responsibility.

The Canaanite culture was materially ahead of that of Israel. They'd been living
in this land. They had gained things.

They had gained houses. They had gained jewels and gold. The Israelites had been
wandering out in the desert for 40 years.

They'd lost everything. And Israel quickly incorporated this materialism into
their own society. I just have to admit in my own life, I hope you can admit
too, that we are so easily influenced by wealth.

We're so easily prone to attacks of materialism, especially wealth without
seeming responsibility. Wealth is just for my benefit. Wealth is just to show
what a great person I am or that I'm smarter than everybody else or that I get
more than you got.

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. So you have to watch out for
this enemy influence in your life. Now we live in a world where there is wealth.

So how do you watch out for this enemy influence? You realize that wealth is
given, but there's responsibility that's given with it. It is a stewardship.

It's not the wealth that's the problem. It's the lack of stewardship that's the
problem. It's not the money that's the problem.

It's the love of money that's the problem. So you realize that we're blessed to
be a blessing, that if God puts something into your hand, it's meant to be used
for his sake. It's meant to be used to make a difference in this world.

And if you're holding onto it as a selfish prize to show how you're better than
everybody else, it's going to take you down in the end. But if you hold it with
an open hand saying, "God, how can you use it in the world? " God's going to use
it for his glory.

The second enemy from within that defeated them was a faith that offered
benefits yet lacked demands. This was the faith of the false gods of the
Canaanites. They were called the Baals, B-A-A-L-S.

These were the local gods, and these local gods you called on when you needed a
blessing. You had a god for everything, a god of fertility, a god of the crop, a
god for family, a god for rain, a god for sun. You had a god for everything.

Now, did these Baals ever become an influence in Israel? You better believe they
did. You read later in Israel's history that 850 worshippers of Baal sat at the
king of Israel's table, King Ahab's table.

The problem that Israel had was they tried to combine the worship of Baal with
the worship of God, and you can never do that. You can't, Jesus said, love both
God and money. It just doesn't work.

As they worshiped Baal, the reason this was so attractive to them is the worship
of these false gods offered them benefits, offered them things. I'll give you
rain, I'll give you fertility, I'll give you sun, but there was no demand. There
was no responsibility again in their lives.

The challenge for you and I, don't try to live out a Christianity which offers
benefits yet lacks demands. Jesus came into this world to save you, absolutely.
There's huge benefits for knowing him.

There's huge blessings for knowing him. There's blessing after blessing in the
Christian life, but if you don't realize that that comes with the demand of
discipleship, the call to follow him, then somehow you're thinking wrong.
Somehow you're thinking like Baal would think, like a false god would think.

You're trying to use God rather than realizing that God has come to save you and
to work through your life. There is no such thing as salvation without
discipleship. There is no such thing as knowing and loving God without knowing
that you're supposed to serve others and love others.

In fact in 1 John we're told if you say you love God but don't love others, you
are lying to yourself. You're just lying to yourself. Now the truth of the
matter is when it comes to blessings, you'll discover this if you haven't
already in your life, that actually the greatest blessings come out of what you
give.

The greatest blessings come out of how you serve. The greatest blessings come
out of taking whatever God's put into your life and following him as a disciple
and then watching him work on other people's lives. But they bought into this
idea of a selfish faith and it ruined them from within.

They bought into this idea of materialism and it ruined them from within. And
then there's a third thing that ruined them and I'd call it an enslavement to
their slaves. We read earlier that Israel made slaves out of the Canaanites who
remained.

That was their compromise with what God had told them to do. Instead of driving
the enemy out, they made slaves of the enemy. They could have told themselves
this is a much better idea.

They get to live, we get to have them work for us, this is just a better idea.
But the truth of the matter is it was actually Israel who became enslaved to the
attitudes and to the worship of the Canaanites. God tells us to not make a
partnership with evil.

God tells us to purify ourselves from evil. And every one of us in our Christian
life, there is this little thought in the back of our minds, "Oh, I can handle
it. I can use the enemy for your good Lord.

I can get close to the fire without being burned. " But God knows us. He knows
that if the temptation is there, we're going to fall to it.

He knows we're going to watch this person at our office who seems because of
their selfishness and their self-righteousness to be gaining more and more
influence, we're going to be tempted to be like them rather than be like God. He
knows that if we see somebody who seems to be getting rich, getting more
material wealth, while we seem to be getting poor even though we love the Lord,
and these riches are coming because of just some little lack of integrity, it's
not that big a deal. He knows we're going to be tempted and he knows we're going
to fall to that temptation because we're all just human.

He knows us. He loves us and he knows us. So this idea of using the enemy for
good, of enslaving the enemy somehow, God says, "No, don't make those kind of
partnerships because if you do, eventually it's going to ruin your life.

" This week we've looked at the first major lesson to possessing God's promise
in our lives and it's a tough lesson. It's a lesson all about my sin and your
sin and the fact that when we try to make compromises with our sin, it ends up
ruining our lives. I'd rather lie to myself and say that sin's no big deal.

I don't want to do the hard work of prayer, of confession, of fellowship so that
that sin can be dealt with in my life. In fact, I'd rather lie to myself and
just do nothing. However, when I do the work of allowing God to do that work of
prayer and fellowship and confession, something changes in my life and all of a
sudden instead of just feeling like I'm a Christian who knows the promises of
God, something begins to filter into my heart, into my life where I begin to
realize I am a follower of Jesus and the promises of God are mine, given by him
a gift and I get to live out the life of a promise-filled saint, follower of
Jesus.

You want to possess the promise? Lesson number one is drive out the enemy.
You're like me.

You're never going to get there perfectly in this life. How about if you and I
together at the end of this week make a commitment that we're not going to give
up on this the rest of our lives. By God's strength, by God's power, we're going
to watch that enemy be driven out day by day the rest of our lives.

If we falter, if we fall down, we're going to have him pick us up again, carry
us forward again. We're going to watch him do a victory, complete a victory in
our lives that only he could complete. Jesus, we bring this to you.

And we ask that instead of excusing our sin or ignoring our sin or pretending
it's some small thing, that you give us a new freedom in our hearts, a new
freedom to know first that sin is forgiven because of the cross, but also that
sin can be a place of victory in our lives because of the resurrection, because
of new life. And so instead of making peace with the enemy, help us to drive out
the enemy. Let that be one of the marks of our life.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Join us next week.

We're going to look at some other major lessons, even some more positive lessons
for possessing the promises of God, the lessons of anticipating God's presence,
of watching your words, of choosing his challenge, powerful ways that you and I
possess God's promise in our daily lives.