Did God Command Genocide?

At several points throughout the book of Joshua, God commands Israel to "utterly destroy" enemy cities. Sometimes that command includes women and children. Skeptics sometime use the book of Joshua to accuse God of genocide. David and Seth talk about the legitimacy of this accusation, the history of Israel and how this accusation against God can lead us to good news.

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Welcome to Spoken Gospel. This is our journey to speak the gospel out of every corner of scripture. Each week author and poet David Bowden sits down with preacher and blogger Seth Stewart to address one pericope of scripture and show how it points to Jesus. We believe that the whole Bible is about Jesus. In fact, everything is about Jesus.

“From him, through him, and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36).

“For by him all things were created…all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16-17).

Since everything in the world is about Jesus, certainly the Bible, which is his word, is about him too.

“And Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk. 24:25-27)

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (Jn. 5:39)

In fact, we are convinced that reading the Bible without seeing how it points us to Jesus is to read the Bible with a veil over it.

“For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Cor. 3:14-16).

This text goes on to say that it is the Gospel that is veiled. But when the veil is taken away by the Spirit, and we see the Gospel throughout the Bible, we don’t just get new information or discover clever connections. We actually see, “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Seeing Jesus and his Gospel throughout the whole Bible is not about trying to see something that isn’t really there, but trusting the Spirit of God to show us what is really there. And what is really there is the image and glory of God in Jesus.

This isn’t about seeing beyond the text or through the text. It isn’t about overlooking the historical events or the author’s intent, to see something mystical and secret. It is about seeing how God operated in historical events, through authorial intent, in the texts of scripture to show us more of his glory in Jesus.

That is our goal in this podcast. We will work through books of the Bible in segments. Usually these segments will be broken up by the text itself, pausing for reflection where the literature seems to tell us to stop and take account.

Our hope is to make it through the whole Bible, speaking the Gospel out of every corner of Scripture. Welcome to our public experiment to test this thesis. Welcome to Spoken Gospel.

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