The story of Israel in the book of Joshua is triumphal and victorious. It is filled with obedience, worship, and delight in God.
The story of Israel in the book of Judges is sorrow and defeat. Judges is everything that Joshua isn’t. It is a book of disobedience, idolatrous worship, and rejection of God. And it is a story of the grace of God.
And in Judges 3, there is a most unique demonstration of that grace.
At the conclusion of the book of Joshua, all the major battles for the promised land had been won. Israel had possession of the land, though there were still minor skirmishes that the individual tribes were responsible to carry out to completely eradicate the land of the pagans. They were to make no covenants with the inhabitants of the land and they were to completely destroy all the false systems of worship and all the various idols.
They didn’t.
So, confronted by God with their sin, they repented (2:4-5). And then they sinned again in the same way, worshipping the gods of Baal, rejecting God (2:11-13).
So the Lord provided them a series of judges to lead them back to Him as they repeatedly, generation after generation, rejected God. And God did not drive out the Canaanites.
That seems counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t God in grace drive out the Canaanites for them, so they would no longer be tempted to follow these ungodly idols? No, God in His grace left the Canaanites so they would learn the sufficiency of His grace and His power. Chapter 3 explains:
Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan; only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, those who had not experienced it formerly).
In other words, God left the Canaanites in the land to give the Israelites an opportunity to be tested — to have their faith examined. The generations that arose after Joshua did not know of the power of God to eradicate the land of the enemy. So God left the Canaanites there — in all their ungodly activity and worship — to demonstrate to Israel that God is powerful to remove the enemy for them and sustain them in their distress and battles.
Israel needed to know what all men need to know. That having God is enough. When we have Him we need nothing else. And they would never know that if they were granted a life of ease and freedom from temptation. They would never know His power if they had no battles to fight. They would never learn dependence upon Him if their ease seduced them into mistakenly believing in their own self-sufficiency.
Hear this: it was a demonstration of God’s grace to Israel to leave the ungodly Canaanites in the land.
And it is likewise God’s grace when He still leaves “Canaanites” in our land. It is His grace to give ungodly leaders and bosses and unwise judges and unrighteous laws and unholy worship for only then will we recognize that we are in a battle that can be won only by the force and power of God. Only then will we recognize that only the gospel is adequate to transform the evil of men’s hearts. Only then will we experience the full weight of the battle that is raging in the heavenly places and avail ourselves of the spiritual weaponry granted to us by God.
And further, it is God’s grace not only when He leaves “Canaanites” in our country, but when He graces our personal lives with the Canaanites of sickness and death and evil spoken against us and persecution and unjust hardship, for only then will we recognize our personal daily dependence on God and His sustaining grace.
Our lives are at times “tormented” so that we will learn the surpassing comfort of Christ. If there is no torment, then there will be no stimulant to learn of His kindness and provision. His testing and His leaving the Canaanites in the land and the hardship in our lives is His best tool to stimulate us to treasure Him above all else.
There are Canaanites in the land! Yes, there are. Give thanks to God — they were His gift to Israel and they are His gift to us.
Words of Grace 