A Genocidal God?

00:00 - Speaker 1 (Host) Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture Is God a bad God or is God a good God? 00:12 - Speaker 2 (Host) Well, when the Bible says that God had this community or this people group completely destroyed, was he being good or was he being bad? Let's answer the question. 00:23 - Speaker 1 (Host) You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbscom slash podcast Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 00:52 - Speaker 2 (Host) Hey, getting questions and we love this and this is a great one. It's an ancient question, it is applicable to all of us and I have to be honest with you. If you heard about the Bible or if you've had a little bit of Bible, then you're going to have this question and you have quite a bit of criticism regarding who God is and what God is. If you don't know him, you can know him by reading his letters to you. The Bible is the unfolding. Yes, of course, it deals with Israel and it deals with Moses and it deals with Noah and it deals with Adam and Eve and it deals with cultures and it deals with Moses and it deals with Noah and it deals with Adam and Eve and it deals with cultures and it deals with continents and it deals with, frankly, both the created universe and the eternal spiritual realm. Yes, it's the Bible, god's word to man, covers everything that we need to know regarding the whys why are we here, why do I exist, those things but if you don't read the full counsel of God, the Bible, completely, then you're going to miss what we're going to be talking about and I don't want you to miss it. You owe it to yourself to know the truth about this. Now I got to tell you this is a particular topic that when I first got saved as a believer, started reading and it really bothered me. So I did a deep dive right from the beginning, and once you do deep dives with God, you get the answers and it's no longer an issue. It's so fun, it's really the answer when God says if you, if you want me, pursue me with all of your heart, come after me. And uh, you do that and you'll be pleasantly surprised. Here's one of those things. 02:51 Um, what's this thing about God in the Bible and the old Testament? About God just killing people, destroying cultures, destroying cities destroying, destroying tribes or groups or certain peoples? What's with God? The temptation is for us to criticize God and to assume that he's doing something wrong, and I get the assumption. But you shouldn't live by assumptions. So let me kind of set this up. 03:26 A question to you Does God do good? Has God done good? Is God doing good right now? The question to you is is there anything that's good In your life, in this world? What you see, what you hear, is it a symphony, is it a flower, is it the ocean, waves, is it mountains, of course, obviously, the answer is, of course he does good. So if God then does good, does God do bad? Well, what do you mean by bad? Because you mean sin? No, he can't do that. You mean can God do evil? Nope, he cannot do that either. So if God does good and we can observe it, then what do we and how do we explain the evil and the bad that's in the world? Or how do we explain God when it looks like he's doing bad or doing evil? 04:41 Meaning this, when you read, for example, in the Old Testament, you see God destroying cultures, you see God destroying complete people, groups, utterly destroying them, and you would come to the conclusion yikes, wow, I don't want to know a God like that. That's horrible. I would agree with you if that's the kind of God he was. But that's not the kind of God he is. You need to read your Bible completely. So, for example, noah. 05:15 Have you ever heard of Noah? Noah in the ark, noah, the famous man who got saved from off the earth. Noah's flood, noah. The Bible tells you exactly what's going on and there's no question to it. God says there that before the flood came, the entire earth was full of evil. And what people were doing were horrifically dangerous, sensual pagan acts that were so bad that the Bible tells us that Noah was the only man found perfect in his generation. And the word perfect doesn't mean sinless. The word perfect means Noah was not tainted. So in all of the generation that was living, noah was the only one who was untainted. Isn't that an interesting word? 06:17 What in the world was going on for God to say Noah, we're down to the last man that I'm going to work with. He's the only one and for his sake and for the human race, I'm going to save him. Yes, mrs Noah, she gets to come Offspring and spouses, they get to come. Eight total they can come. Nobody else can come. All are tainted. And God said I'm going to destroy the world. That that is. I'm going to destroy it. I'm going to drown it. Drown it in water, I'm going to flood it. 07:02 And you think God is what wrong in doing that? You think God's bad in doing that. Why would you think God's bad? I'm so curious. Why would you think that God is bad if God looks around and all of the people but the eight and even listen, the seven? The seven, I believe, were actually saved by the eighth guy. The eighth guy is Noah. Noah's untainted, and God allows him to bring his family with them, but all the rest are so tainted that they are to be washed away, destroyed. You don't like to hear this, but I want you to ask yourself this question. I don't like to hear it, but why is it happening? God says all of the people are corrupt beyond hope. Wow, so let's file that over here for a moment. That's Noah. 07:54 You come to the book of Deuteronomy and God tells Moses to tell the children of Israel, when you come into the land that I've promised you to inherit the promised land, that I've promised you to inherit the promised land. And, by the way, there's no guess, the layout of the land was given to Abraham. This is way before Moses shows up. This is after Noah, but before Moses is Abraham. And God tells Abraham and shows Abraham and gives him the borders of the promised land. And it is massive. It goes all the way down to the Nile. It goes all the way up into Syria and Lebanon. It goes all the way over to the Tigris and the Euphrates River. It goes all the way down to the. What we would say today is the Suez Canal area or the Red Sea, and then back over toward the Mediterranean north part, the northern tip of Egypt. It's massive and, by the way, that is the realm. That is the promised land given to Abraham. Uh, the man Solomon, king Solomon came the closest to reigning over that region. No one ever has and no one's going to, until Jesus returns and the thousand year reign of Christ will be the fulfillment of the promised land given to Abraham. 09:35 God tells Moses when you come into that promised land, I want you to go to these people and I want you to destroy them completely. Listen, destroy men, destroy women. You have to destroy the children, even to the infant, and you must destroy the sheep, the camels and the donkeys, all living things you shall destroy in this group, if it's Amalekites or Hittites or Jebusites or Canaanites. Stop for a moment and think. If God destroyed the world in Genesis because all of humanity was tainted, something was wrong with them and Noah was the only one pure, untainted. Yet he's a sinner. The people outside the ark, they were sinners. Noah and his family, they're sinners. What's going on here? One group is tainted and eight people, or at least one person we know for sure. Noah, or, yeah, noah is not tainted. So what's happening? 10:59 And you fast forward to God saying destroy everybody in these villages, destroy everybody in this people group. They have to be not only destroyed many, many times. God will say when you're all done killing them, burn it all. You got to burn it all. You think God has lost his mind. You think God is out of control. You think God has just woke up on the wrong side of the universe and he's just angry that day. God has just woke up on the wrong side of the universe and he's just angry that day. Now there's a lot of gods out there with lowercase g, but the God of the Bible, the real God, the one and living God, is not that way. So then, jack, what is he doing? Isn't it interesting? And here's what he's doing. In fact, I'll preface it by asking you this question what does God have against donkeys? How upset can the creator of the universe be at sheep? He says kill them all. Well, what about camels? Nope, kill them. Why would he do this? He makes camels and donkeys, and then he's all upset and he says destroy them. No, no, no, no, no, no. Only destroy the animals that are in association with this particular people group, why it all comes down to this. What were their worship practices like? What did they do like? What did they do? Those people, for example, that you see in the Bible where it says God says to either Moses or God says to Joshua you got to kill them all and burn everything. Burn their houses, burn the ground, burn the animals, burn the bones, burn it all. 12:38 For those of you who have any experience in the medical industry, you know what the word autoclave means. So thank God, right, thank God that before you go in and get stitches or surgery or scalpel or sutures or clamps, or if they're going to open up your chest for open heart surgery, thank God they take all of those stainless steel tools and they autoclave them before they put them on you. Because, why? Because earlier that day they were being used on somebody else's body. Why would they do that? Why would they take the scalpel that was used on that guy's liver surgery? That was at 9 am this morning. Why would they take this and put it in an autoclave chamber, press the button and then, when it's all done, going through that cycle, bring it out and they reseal it and then they get it ready for your gallbladder surgery, which is scheduled at three o'clock the same day. Why would they do that? You know? Why don't you? And you're starting to get the answer. 13:44 God says there may be contaminants. I mean, the doctor says there might be contaminants from that guy's body. We can't cross contaminate. We have got to destroy every possible poison, blood cell disease, everything. Anything must be completely dead. So they autoclave it. What is that? They put it into a chamber, they shut it, secure it and they turn it on. And it uses a series. Think of a think about a super glorified dishwasher. It goes through cycles there's humidity, there's dryness, there's extreme heat, there's wash. There's all of this to deliver it to you perfectly, without being tainted, and then it can be used. 14:35 When God said to Joshua or to Moses or to whoever David, destroy them all, make sure you throw the animals in there too. Whoever David, destroy them all, make sure you throw the animals in there too. You got to kill them all and burn it all, because all of those worship systems used animals and children in their pagan practices. Everything was contaminated. There was contaminated blood, there was contaminated biology and chemistry, and all of these pagan worshiping practices they had. Listen, why do you think God says I condemn bestiality. If anybody engages in bestiality, listen to this, are you listening? That man or that woman must be killed immediately, and so must the animal be killed immediately. Why? Because that human or that animal are contaminated by now I'll put it this way nicely by the act of paganism. So, god, listen. 15:41 So many people who think they know God, they don't know God at all. They say, oh, I can't believe in the Bible because God said to do that. How mean, how brilliant it was of God that when the children of Israel were coming into an area, that somebody who was contaminated with sexually transmitted diseases were not only killed, they had to be killed. Their bodies were burned, their homes were burned, the dirt was burned because it all had to be autoclaved, it had to be purified before the children of Israel could take the promised land because of the pagan practices that were so diseased. So it sounds cruel. It's not cruel at all. It's an act of mercy. If they didn't do that, then the children of Israel would eventually die of these poisonous, transmittable diseases. 16:36 So the truth of the matter is, folks, god's not losing his temper, he's not out of his mind, he's not doing bad, he's not doing evil, he's actually doing good. Righteousness, friends, righteousness and justice can be a brutal thing when it's executed by God himself. We have no authority to do that, because we're tainted, we're messed up. But it's quite remarkable to realize that when we think God's doing something odd and weird, we should pause right there and do a Bible study on it. And if you do a good Bible study on it, that Bible study is going to also take you into history and you're going to study cultures and you're going to learn all about. You can go to, I think, the British Museum of History online, or you could, I don't know. There's resources. There's Bar the Biblical Archaeological Review. You could go there and read all about oh my goodness, this group. 17:41 They practice their worship with animals and with children and then with each other, and they're all poison. They're all—I'm going to use modern-day current diseases. They've got gonorrhea, they've got syphilis, they've got AIDS, they've got all these things that come out of sexual, aberrant sexual union, and God knows how to fix things. And so please understand that your perception of what God's doing you immediately jump to the bad side. Or God's lost his mind. I understand that because we don't know him. But when we find out him in the Bible, we realize, wow, I didn't see that coming. I see what he was doing as an act of mercy to actually prolong life, because in the lives of those who are already contaminated, they were diseased and infected. And wow, you know, you don't have to go that far back. 18:40 I don't know if you're aware of this or that far back. I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but even during the colonial period in the United States, the punishment. Did you know that George Washington, general George Washington, and the same with General Howell and his brother, admiral Howell, both of the brothers for the British Empire, did you know that both the colonial forces of America and the British forces did you know that those generals demanded that when and if a soldier raped someone, they were not only examined— but many of them were actually put to death for doing that? But some of the reasons is that they were put to death because it was found out that they had sexual relationships with prostitutes. And Washington ordered a soldier that if he had sex with a prostitute the guy was killed because his disease would spread through the camp. England did the same thing. See, man, that's harsh. It is harsh. Sometimes it's got to be harsh because if you're not harsh on that one guy, it could spread to 500 guys. Man, tough stuff right. Unusual topic, unusual conversation, but it's one that you thought about. 20:21 Why does the God of the Bible have his people go into this land and kill all those people? Oh look, he's killing all the innocent people. First of all, the people are not innocent. The children have been used, raped and abused. And the innocent people? First of all, the people are not innocent. The children have been used, raped and abused. And the animals have been vandalized and victimized by the perverse humans. Because they're poisoned and tainted, they've got to be eliminated. And then the area has got to be purified by fire, which leads me to the closing remarks by fire, which leads me to the closing remarks. 20:57 The Bible says in 1 and 2 Peter that God is going to once again judge the earth and he's going to destroy it just like he did. It says in the days of Noah. So wait a minute. He didn't destroy the earth. Oh yes, he did destroy the earth. He destroyed the earth, he flooded it by water. You say well, I mean it was still the earth. Destroyed the earth, he flooded it by water. You say, well, I mean, it was still the earth. Oh, I see what you're thinking. He flooded the earth. God says he destroyed it, but you're thinking, well, it's still round, or for some of you discers, it's still flat. Well, okay, here's the thing. It's the same, but it got scrubbed by water. He scrubbed it with a flood. Are you with me when God created the heavens and the earth? But it got scrubbed by water? He scrubbed it with a flood. Are you with me when God created the heavens and the earth? 21:37 When the Bible says he's going to create a new heaven and a new earth, don't think that he's going to dissolve this earth in its entirety. The Bible says he's going to burn it up. It's going to stay the ball that it is. So is the sun and so is Jupiter. He's going to burn them with fire and scrub the universe, starting with the earth, by fire. He's going to autoclave it. 22:01 When God, at the end of the thousand-year reign of Christ, when the thousand-year reign of Christ is over, god is going to create a new heaven and a new earth. A new heavens, a new earth, how's he going to do it? The Bible says he's going to scrub it, not with water, but with fire. Next time he's going to burn, autoclave the earth and he's going to start over. And this is so cool. It's consistent with his nature what he creates, he redeems. He's going to redeem this old, worn out earth. He's going to redeem it. He's going to make it new. The universe, the stars he's going to scrub them with fire and he's going to make them new. He's going to restore them fire and he's going to make them new. He's going to restore them. 22:54 I hope that you allow in your life the love and the power of God to do that same scrub, as it were, on your life, that you might be redeemed and restored and made new, new. 23:15 Listen, when we become Christians and followers of Jesus, he doesn't kill us and create a brand new person to live in this world with our name. 23:21 There's no redemption in that, there's no reconciliation with that. There's no restoration in that. Our God is a restorative God, that Our God is a restorative God. Our God is a redeeming God. Our God is a recreating God. And so he takes us who are fallen, puts a new heart in us and he begins to work his will out from the inside out. And the ultimate, ultimate act of redemption for us now who trust him and believe in him is when our lives, I should say our bodies, think about it. Our bodies are turned to dust, interesting right, and he resurrects us Resurrection. He's going to reassemble the dust that our bodies disintegrate in the grave or in the crematorium by. He's going to reassemble the dust in the resurrection because he redeems all things. He doesn't flush anything down the toilet. He redeems that which is destroyed because he's a redemptive God. I hope you know him that way. Listen until next time. God bless you tremendously. 24:39 - Speaker 1 (Host) This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.