Why Would a Loving God Tell Israel to Wipe Out Her Enemies? | thebereancall.org

Why Would a Loving God Tell Israel to Wipe Out Her Enemies?

November 28, 2002
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Tom: You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him.

Dave, I don’t think our listeners know, but I sort of set up what we are going to talk about each week on the program, and we’re going through your book In Defense of the Faith, which is a book that has many questions that you have received over the years and are tough questions. Some of them are negative, and you caught me skipping over some negative questions, Dave, because I don’t want people to think we are negative. But on the other hand, you’re reprimanding me for sort of skipping over some questions that maybe people think about, they ask.

Dave: They are questions that occupy people. I have them asked to me all the time.

Tom: So I shouldn’t have skipped over them, that’s what you are telling me.

Dave: I said you could come back to them some other time and you said, “Well, let’s do it now.”

Tom: Yeah, let’s do it now, and these are tough questions. We’re not afraid of tough questions, but I thought, Well, we would ease up a little bit. But let’s not, let’s get right to it. And here’s the question: “God told Israel to wipe out cities completely, to ‘save alive nothing that breatheth’ (Deuteronomy:20:16-17). What justification can there possibly be for such indiscriminate slaughter?”

Dave: Well, it wasn’t indiscriminate, number one. Number two, Tom, the reason I thought we ought to deal with this is because this is one of the things that Muslims throw at you now. We’ve talked about Islam; we know that Muhammad killed every Jew in the Arabian Peninsula…

Tom: Except for those who escaped, right?

Dave: Right. Well, except for the women and children also, which they took as wives and slaves. We know that he claims that Allah said he must fight against all people to spread Islam everywhere. It was spread with the sword everywhere; it is spread with the sword…

Tom: Even though the Qur’an says there is no compulsion religion.

Dave: Surrah 2:256, of course, but that was a “revelation,” so-called, at a particular time when he could not compel anybody to do anything. And they would say that verse is still applicable in America today, or other places where they do not have the power, so they put on a face of peace. The terrorists are the forerunners of people that prepare this, soften you up ahead of time. But when we say, “Look at what Muhammad did and look what Muslims have done, slaughtered people all over the world” (that’s how they spread it, from France to China), they say, “Yes, but what about the Israelites? They went in there and wiped out the Canaanites.” That was a specific case—we read of it in Genesis 15. God said to Abraham, “I’m going to give you that land, your descendants that land.” But, Tom, we talked about this last time, wasn’t it?

Tom: Last time, but we’re sort of developing this. But here’s another application.

Dave: All right. “The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full,” not yet ripe. I guess we didn’t really go into details on this, and we won’t go into great detail. These were a people that God said, “Their wickedness is not great enough for Me to be justified in wiping them out now.”

Tom: Now, the reference here is to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Dave: Well, Sodom and Gomorrah was a special case. It was because of the wickedness of these particular people. No, the reference here in Deuteronomy:20:16-17, that is to the nations that occupied the land of Canaan. And, 400 years after God gave this promise to Abraham, these people—I do not know the details, the Bible doesn’t give it to us. I mean, they were sacrificing their babies to the god Molech, but the perversion, corruption and perhaps demon possession, it was so bad that God in His holiness and righteousness could not allow them to continue to exist, and there must have been diseases and so forth, that I do not know.

Tom: That’s why I mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah, because there’s an insight, an example into people who were just so wicked there was nothing else God could do.

Dave: And you remember that Abraham pleaded with God because Lot was with him there—“Well, if there are 50 righteous, would You spare it?” God said yes. “If there are 40 righteous, would You spare it?” Finally, he gets down to 10. “If there were 10 righteous in there, would you spare it?” God said, “I would spare the whole place for 10 righteous, but there’s not 10 righteous.” And God took Lot and part of his family out of Sodom and Gomorrah before it was destroyed. It’s a picture of the rapture. The Lord will take the church out of here.

But anyway, Tom, just in a nut shell, it was because of the wickedness of these people. It was a specific case, a special case. The Israelites were not told to take over the world. They were not told to convert people at the edge of the sword. They were told to destroy these particular people, and I have to trust God.

And finally, God is a God of holiness and righteousness. He’s not a granddaddy, you know, like I’m a grandfather—ten grandchildren. Grandparents tend to be a little bit soft. As I travel around, I see a little child that defies his parents—Mama says, “You do that again, you’re going to get it,” and the child goes ahead and does it again and no consequences. There are some of these little kids, they ought to wear an emperor’s crown. Two-year-old in the family that they are all afraid to cross this child, it might throw a tantrum. Well, then you are teaching the child that what you say doesn’t matter, that you don’t really mean what you say. When God says something, He means it. He is reluctant to bring His judgment. He pleaded, for example, with Israel for some centuries before finally, reluctantly, He had to bring judgment upon them.

Tom: Let me quote Ezekiel:33:11: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

Dave: So the same thing was applied to Israel, but God had to finally bring judgment, otherwise, He is not righteous. It would be like a judge—let’s say my only son stands before me. He has been found guilty of multiple murders, let’s say, and the jury has weighed the evidence. Now I, as the judge, must pronounce the sentence. And, somebody sitting in the back of the courtroom says, “Well, Dave is going to let him off because that’s his son.” No, I would then be an accessory to his crime; I would be a partner in his crime. The jury has pronounced the guilt. The penalty has to be meted out according to the law, and God is righteous. As you read that terrific verse, Tom, He does not want to bring judgment upon people. But when He is forced to, He does. There’s nothing else that He can possibly do in His righteousness. So, He told them to go in and wipe out these cities. That was a specific case—that is not Muhammad claiming that Allah tells him to wipe out all people on the face of the earth unless they will confess that “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”

Tom: Dave, you quote Genesis:18:25. There are some verses that God claims—He not only claims, He demonstrates who He is. But this particular verse and others like it, I’ll read two—Genesis:18:25: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” One of my favorite verses with regard to things that I don’t understand, you know, I haven’t figured out yet according to the Scriptures.

But there’s another verse, that’s what I am looking up. Deuteronomy:32:4: “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” That’s the God that we serve, but He is a God of love, for He “so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son.” So He’s going to do right and He does do right, no matter what.

Dave: And He does not predestine some people to heaven and some to hell and give them no chance. They are predestined to eternal damnation, and he’s given them no chance to believe—that is not the God of the Bible!

But anyway, we’re comparing, at the moment, Islam, which indiscriminately—what are they doing? Targeting women and children, suicide bombers and so forth. Knocking down the Twin Towers—killed about 3,000 people. What do these people have to do with Islam? They had never defied Allah. There could be no judgment being brought upon them. This was indiscriminate slaughter in order to pressure people into doing what the Muslims want them to do. What they did, they did it in the name of Allah. So we are contrasting—God did, yes, He did send Israel to wipe out some people. It was a particular people because of their sin. It was in a limited area, and they were not told to do this and take over the whole world, nor did they threaten anyone: “You will be killed unless you believe in our God.” So, there is a big difference, and we need to recognize that.

Tom: But, Dave, now, here is what many would believe, and I think you have mentioned this before—this is a tougher question, or a tougher issue. “A verse in the Old Testament that I have never been able to reconcile with my belief in God and which therefore has troubled me for years is this: ‘Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones,’ Psalm:137:9. God is telling Israel to be happy in destroying innocent babies? One preacher tried to say that these heathen were so thoroughly demon-possessed that even the babies had to be killed. Surely God could deliver babies from demons rather than kill them!”

Dave: Yeah, that is a verse that troubles many people, but that is not what this verse is saying. God is not telling Israel to smash the heads of infants against the rocks; he is actually not speaking to Israel at all. He is pronouncing judgment upon Babylon, and it’s a prophecy that just as Babylon destroyed Israel—and it was because of Israel’s sin that God allowed that to happen—but God is saying through His prophet, “One day you are going to get it, and you will find that your enemy will be so horrible that they will just smash the heads of your babies against the stones.” And that is exactly what happened. In fact, it says, “O, daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy shall he be one day…someone is going to relish just smashing the heads of your babies against stones. And they are going to take over and you’re going to have your come-uppance too.” But I think that that could be understood very readily. We don’t have to spend any more time on that one.

Tom: Okay. Now we are going to move to another subject, Dave, and this has to do with healing, which is a subject most people are interested in, especially with as much sickness that we find in the world today in our families and so on. But the question is: “Even apart from skepticism as to whether miracles occur, I have problems with the healings which Christ supposedly effected while upon earth. Some accounts seem so straightforward, while others raise questions. For example, the ‘healing’ didn’t seem to work for one man and had to be done again (Mark:8:22-25). That hardly sounds as though Christ were God in the flesh. Furthermore, if He could really heal, why didn’t He heal everyone? Better still, if God really loves all mankind, why not do away with sickness and suffering completely?”

 Now, Dave, just before you start on this, I’ve got other examples here from the Scriptures of different ways that Jesus healed, and that’s going to bring up something I want to get into after you begin with regard to—are we being taught methodologies and techniques here that we need to apply to see healing accomplished?

Dave: Well, obviously not, because there was no one methodology or technique that Jesus used, and that may be one of the reasons for these variations. I think there are, possibly, other reasons. For example, the man referred to Mark:8:22-25, who saw men as trees walking. I don’t know why the Lord allowed this, because we know that the Lord could heal him instantly in everything—what lesson He wanted us to learn from this. But it could be that his eyes were healed so he could see, but he had never seen a man, he had never seen a tree, and he was maybe a little confused and his mind needed some healing, too. I don’t know, Tom, about that.

Tom: So, when it says he saw every man clearly, you’re thinking in terms of his understanding as well as his physical vision.

Dave: Right. He saw—his sight was apparently restored.

Tom: Well, let me go back to the point of methodology. Verse 22: “And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.” So they were looking for Jesus to reach out and physically touch him. “And he [that is, Jesus] took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; [He didn’t have to do that, it doesn’t seem] and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him [two more physical aspects of this], he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, ‘I see men as trees, walking.’ After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”

Verses before that in Mark 7, Jesus has brought a man who is deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and again, the people besought this man to touch Jesus or have Jesus touch him. Verse 33 says, “And he took him aside from the multitude [there we go again], and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, ‘Epaphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”

Also, in John:9:6-7, we have Jesus spitting on the ground and making a little clay from the spittle and anointing the man’s eyes. All kinds of techniques, it seems.

Dave: Well, they are not techniques, Tom, because Jesus, on many occasions, all he did was speak the word. Or…a woman—remember?—who just touched the hem of His garment, and Jesus wasn’t even saying anything to her or doing anything. She was instantly healed. But what the lesson is, Tom, God is in charge, and I think it’s saying that He can heal in any way He wants to.

Tom: Through medical people, through people changing their diet to all kinds of ways.

Dave: We have no demands that we can make upon Him. There is no particular technique. That would be similar to sacramentalism, and we trust the Lord to do it in His way, in His time, and in His will. That would be all I could learn from that, because you’re not learning a technique. Jesus is not doing the same thing every time, and perhaps He is just indicating that there is no technique. He can heal any way He wants to, partially heal and then in stages and so forth. I don’t know.

But the deeper question here is, well, why doesn’t God stop all sickness? Why doesn’t He stop all pain if He can do it? And, you know, again, we have mentioned it before, this is a common complaint of an atheist: “If your God cannot stop all suffering and all sickness, can’t cure all disease, then He’s not strong enough to be God. And if He can and He doesn’t, then He is a monster and either way.” And so they would say, “You see, that proves there is no God. There’s not a God who is strong enough, or He is a monster.”

Well, there is more to it than that. When Adam and Eve sinned, the first thing God did was to drive them out of the garden and He explains why—lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever. There was a Tree of Life in the midst of the garden and apparently, if they continued—I don’t think just one bite or just one meal off of that fruit—apparently, you have to continue—maybe where they got the idea of the fountain of youth, I don’t know. But you have to continue eating of this fruit, and God cast them out of the garden lest they eat, to prevent them from eating, to prevent them from living forever.

In other words, God does not want man to live forever in his sinful state. That would not be a kindness at all. If no one ever died—think of the over population of this earth. And I believe the death penalty is a deterrent. I know there are arguments about that.

Furthermore, the death penalty was pronounced by God: “The soul that sinneth, it will die. The day you eat thereof, you will die.” This shows how seriously God looks upon sin. Sin is rebellion against him. He is not going to allow this. So, if God just healed everybody, nobody ever died, nobody ever got sick, there were no consequences of our evil—in fact, the consequences have built up in the human race, the pool of disease and so forth from the wrong living, from the immoral practices and so forth. A pool of disease is built up in the human race. But God is not going to let us continue in this manner and live forever in this way.

Tom: It’s mercy, isn’t it, Dave?

Dave: I would say that it is God’s mercy. And so there is a penalty for sin. It also comes from God’s righteousness, His holiness. You know what cancer is? It’s a horrible thing. Cancer is a cell that doesn’t follow the operating instructions, doesn’t follow what the DNA—it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do, and we would have to acknowledge man is a cancer on this earth that has to be cut out. We are running amuck. We are doing our own thing. We are denying the God who created us. And we have set out to build our own civilization, our own paradise, to do our own thing, to take our own way, to follow our own plans, and God has been cast aside.

We have problems in the world today, problems in the Middle East, problems everywhere. Do we look to God? Do we go back to God’s Word to the rulers? Wouldn’t that be something! If the United Nations opened a Bible and said, “Well now, let’s see, where have we gone wrong? Oh, we’ve rebelled; we have sinned. Let us cry out to God for mercy, and let us acknowledge who He really is.” But they don’t do that because there are many gods. You couldn’t all agree on the God, on the Bible. There are atheists and so forth.

So, man is in rebellion against God, and God is not going to allow this to continue forever. He has His plans. He sent His Son to die to pay the penalty for our sins, so that those who believe in Him would be forgiven, but one day it’s coming to an end. The Bible talks about the last days, the end of the world, and so forth, and God is going to have the final say. And this is the day of God’s grace and His mercy.

Very often, Tom, I would have to confess in my life (I think our listeners would know that), you suddenly get ill and it changes your perspective. You cry out to God, “Lord, help me!” So, it is pointing man back to God. But He has the ultimate solution: “a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” He has made us new creatures in Christ Jesus, those of us who have received Christ into our hearts. We have been born again of the Spirit of God, and one day He’s going to give us new bodies that will never sicken and die, and we will live in a new universe in which sin will never enter. Anyone who wants that, they can have that future for eternity if they will trust Jesus Christ.

Program Number: 
1152a

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