Teen Podcast Episode 55 – We Have Not Followed Cunningly Devised Fables - a podcast by Magnify Him Together - Podcasts for Teens

This is the fourth episode in a the series titled, “We Have Not Followed Cunningly Devised Fables” by Jonathan Bowen.  This episode is titled, “Yahweh Hearkened Unto the Voice of a Man.”  Tune in again next week for the episode five of this series.

Transcript:

Hi everyone, this is Jonathan Bowen with Episode #55 of the “Magnify Him Together” podcasts. Today we are going to continue our field trip through time, back to the lifetime of Joshua. It is a short trip, travelling roughly 3590 years into the past to BC 1570. Moses has died, and Joshua has been given the charge to lead the children of Israel into the promised land.

Joshua’s friend Caleb tells us in Joshua 14:

Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh-barnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart.

Caleb tells us how old he was after the wilderness wanderings when they came to Hebron to take it in verses 10–11

And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in. 

Joshua would have been a little bit younger than Caleb. Joshua lived 110 years as we read in Joshua 24:29

And it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years old.

So if he judged Israel for 40 years, was wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, he would have been about 30 years old when he was a spy, and 70 years old when he took over as leader. Like Caleb, he was as strong as the day that Moses sent him out to be a spy. Imagine your grandfather at 70, leading the armies of Israel to battle!

(We’ve included a link to a genealogy at the end of the podcast transcript for you to have a look at. Feel free to send us any more interesting information you find, and we can add it to it.)

We know the story of Joshua from our Sunday School lessons. We’re not going to tell the whole thing over again, but encourage you to take a read through it.

If you remember, when Israel entered the land, they were instructed to destroy the pagan inhabitants because of their wicked way of life.

After they were victorious at Jericho and Ai, a group of people deceived them called the Gibeonites, as we read in Joshua 9:3–5

And when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai, They did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up; And old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy.

Joshua and the people made a mistake. They didn’t ask God whether they should make a covenant (an agreement) with these people or not.

Once they had made a covenant with the Gibeonites, they had to honour it. The rest of the Canaanite nations around were terrified and angry at the Gibeonites. We read in Joshua 10:1–3

Now it came to pass, when Adonizedek king of Jerusalem had heard how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it; as he had done to Jericho and her king, so he had done to Ai and her king; and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel, and were among them; That they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty. 

Adionzedek leads the five kings of the Amorites against Gibeon. We read in verse 5

Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron,

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