Courage For The Hard Seasons

Angela (0:00)

The only way out is through, and it is through with complete reliance and trust on the one true God.

SPEAKER_2 (0:25)

That you will rise up like Joshua, and you will seek God's voice, and you will watch God crush the enemy before you.

Angela (0:40)

All right. I would like to say that my entire outfit is thrifted today.

SPEAKER_4 (0:45)

I'm very proud of this. So I don't know if any of you are that way, but I love thrifting.

Angela (0:55)

And so, to be a, what did, how did you say it, Catherine? Carefully curated. So anyways, so much fun.

So this one today, I'm going to start with a warning label because I'm going to talk about some things that are really hard for us to hear. But I think that it's really important that we hear them so that we can understand why complete annihilation was what God called for for Canaan. So I'm going to start with prayer.

And Heavenly Father, we just, we lift this up to you, Lord, understanding what pagans believed and what the Canaanites did and how you allowed it to go on for so long, hoping that or trying for them to know you, to call out to you, Lord, but in the end, knowing what you would have to do, Lord, help us to also understand what you called Joshua to do in the Israelites and why. And we just thank you, Lord, for your word, and that we can study it and come to understanding, Lord, like it says in Proverbs, that we gain understanding and wisdom from you. We thank you for that. Amen.

So the extreme nature of God's command to completely rid the land of all who breathe, is so extensive and it seems cruel and almost graceless. So that's where I want to start today. I want to start with some archaeological findings. So when I was in high school, which was a minute ago, and I graduated, my pastor of my little tiny small town, I think there were three of us that graduated that year, he gave us a present and he had called us up to the stage and he gave us this book. And it's called the Haley's Handbook or Bible Handbook.

SPEAKER_4 (2:50)

And I looked at it as an 18-year-old and thought, what am I going to do with that? I don't need this.

SPEAKER_5 (2:58)

I mean, I hardly even read my Bible.

SPEAKER_6 (3:00)

What am I going to do with this book?

Angela (3:02)

Well, let me tell you, that book, for whatever reason, God did not allow me to get rid of it because it followed me all through college. It stayed in my bookshelf. And it has been, for the last 21 years, one of my most go-to books when I'm trying to understand the Bible. And it sorts it out by the book of the Bible and the different chapters, and it helps you understand. And the author did so much research. His first book was like 16 pages in the early 1900s, and it turned into an 864 page book of resources and research.

So it's called Haley's Bible Handbook. And so it is something that when you're looking to understand, you know, just research that's been done around the Bible so we can understand the Bible, it's a great resource. So I'm going to read from you there for out of that, what they have found. So Baal was the principal god, Asterith, Baal's wife, was their principal goddess. She was the personification of reproductive principle in nature. Ishtar was her Babylonian name. Astarte was a sacred pole or a cone or stone, cone of stone or a tree trunk representing the goddess. Temples of Baal and Asterith were typically together, and other Canaanite gods also consisted together, and they were all part of or revolved around extravagant orgies. Their temples were centers of vices. So in excavations at Gezer, Macalester, so if you guys remember in your study this week, Gezer was one, or Gezer, G-E-Z-E-R, was one of the areas that was taken over, right? That Joshua overcame, one of the kings came from. So in excavations, archaeological digs at those places, Gezer, Macalester, it was part of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1904 and 1909 They found in the Canaanite stratum, so the Canaanite stratum is the layer that would have been when the Canaanites, they found relics from the Canaanite period, right? So really interesting is that there was an ash layer, and on top of the ash layer, everything was Israeli, right? Israelite. And below the ash layer, everything was Canaanite. So it symbolizes that time when Joshua came through and actually annihilated everything. So from that Canaanite stratum, which preceded Israelite occupation of about 1500 BC, the ruins of a high place, which had been the temple in which they worshiped their god Bael and their goddess Ashtoreth. It was an enclosure of about 150 feet by 120 feet, and it was surrounded by a wall, but was open to the sky. This is where the inhabitants held their religious festivals. Within the walls were 10 rude stone pillars, five to 11 feet high, before which the sacrifices were offered. Now, under the Dupree, in the high places, Macalester found great numbers of jars containing remains of children who had been sacrificed to Bael. The whole area proved to be a cemetery for infant and children sacrifice.