Joshua 9:18-27

Fourth—and this is kind of the saddest one of all—the human leaders and the congregation must live with the consequences of their bad decisions. This is in Joshua 9:18-27. They had made an oath to the Gibeonites. They had made a treaty with them, saying that they would be their servants. And then they found out that they had been hoodwinked. But because they had made the oath, they would not go back on it. Which was worse: going back on the oath or just living with it?

And the best thing to do—because God is a God of covenants—they said, we will not go back on this oath. We will go ahead and take the consequences of this decision. And in this case—and in other cases in which human leaders make bad decisions in the church—the consequences can last for generations. And in this case with the Gibeonites, it lasted almost 1,000 years. You could say that it at least lasted through the conquest—had repercussions which we will see—but it lasted all the way through David's reign and down, I guess we could say, all the way to the fall of Jerusalem, when basically that covenant went kaput because both the Gibeonites and the Jews—the Israelites—were gone as nations.

I mean, good on Israel that they kept the oath. But it did come back to bite them. Because after somebody makes a mistake, God does not just wave a wand and it all goes away. He makes us live with the consequences of our decisions and uses them then to correct us and train us. He wants us to learn from our mistakes, not to have Daddy come and make everything better. So, He made Joshua and Israel—and Israel for many generations—live under this covenant with the Gibeonites. And it keeps coming back up through Israelite history that the Gibeonites ended up being a bit of a thorn in their side. They were one of the nations that they were supposed to kick out. But because of this trick, they could not.