The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1301-C, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 5." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1976. All Rights Reserved.
Question
Why did God wipe out whole towns of people in the Old Testament?
Answer
That’s a fair question. We hear that God is a God of love—coming out of the Bible, we preach that God is a God of love, and, invariably, people ask us the question, “If God is such a loving God, why does He wipe out nations of people? Why would He take Israel into the Promised Land and tell them to wipe out the whole nation of the Canaanites? Why did God destroy a certain village or a certain town or a certain society?”
Well, the answer to that is really simple if you think about it. God is not only a God of love, but He is a God of justice. When people sin, they incur his judgment; and when people incur his judgment, God is patient, but his patience runs out eventually. God will tolerate sin for so long and then God will move in judgment against that sin.
So, in some of these towns we see in the Bible—only God’s people moving in and judgment coming, and we don’t stop to think about what’s gone on for the 500 or a thousand or whatever amount of years before that, that brought them to the place of sinfulness where God just removed them from the earth. We have to remember that. In addition, one of the things that God has always endeavored to do is preserve society. The reason, for example, that it says that a criminal or a murderer should be killed was because you can’t have murderers running around in society and it isn’t really too safe to put a murderer in a prison because if he’s a murderer, he’ll murder somebody in the prison. The reason God instituted prisons and places to keep people for other crimes was to get them out of society. The reason God removes whole people or whole towns is because all of society is in jeopardy as long as they exist.
When God destroyed the Canaanites, He did it to preserve his truth among the Israelites. They were like cancer and when cancer exists, the only wise thing to do is to cut it out. And God does that in a preserving act.
Further, I would add this: it is not only surgery removing a cancer in society, but remember that in every case where God ever did that, He always offered to those people salvation. In Malachi, He says, “I’m going to come in and wipe out the land.” But He says, “For those of you who believe in me, you will be mine in the day that I make up my jewels, and I will have a book of remembrance and I’ll write your name in it.” He always does that! Before He wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah, what did He do? He preached the truth there. God always gives an opportunity to the righteous or those who are willing to be believers in him before there is ever a judgment.
I would add a further word and that is that God is tremendously patient. Tremendously tolerant. Just look at Genesis 15 for a moment and I’ll point out something there. Genesis 15:13: “God said to Abram, ‘Know of a surety that thy seed shall be in sojourn in a land that is not theirs and serve them; and they shall afflict them 400 years.’” Now, Israel went out of their land, they were in Egypt; God says, “They’ll be here 400 years.” Well, that’s a long time! Four hundred years! Why so long?
Verse 14: “Also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge. And afterwards shall they come out with great substance.” In other words, they’re going to come out of Egypt and “go to thy fathers in peace and be buried in a good old age. In the fourth generation, they shall come here again.” They’ll come back to the land of Canaan in the fourth generation—400 years later. “For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet”—what? “Full.”
God says, “I can’t yet destroy the Amorites because their iniquity has not yet run its limits out, where judgment is the only answer.” In other words, God gave the Amorites 400 years in which to get things straightened out, and it wasn’t until that period of time that God would let the Israelites move in. God, in his grace toward the Amorites, kept the Israelites 400 years in slavery just to give the Amorites the same 400 years. In that period of time, they consummated and filled up their iniquities so that it was time for God to move in and judge before they infected society and the world to a great degree.
So, in Leviticus 18, we find it says in verse 24, “Defile not yourselves in any of these things for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you; and the land is defiled. Therefore do I visit the iniquity thereof on it, and the land itself vomited out her inhabitants.” They have so debauched the land, they have so defiled the land that even the land itself throws them out. “But you shall keep my statutes, my ordinances, and don’t commit any of these abominations" and so forth. "For all these abominations," verse 27, "have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled; That the land spew not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spewed out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God." In other words, "I don't care you are if you this and you keep doing this you are going to bring upon your self ultimate judgment."
So, you see God first of all is patient, and God second of all is just, and He will judge for the preservation of total society by removing a cancer, even if it is a citywide, or a nationwide influence.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
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