My Way Is Best... Or So It Seemed

So interesting to me how the stories in my daily reading in both Genesis and Joshua seem to line up so closely with one another.

In the sixteenth chapter of both Genesis and Joshua God's plan is sidetracked by the seemingly good ideas of people who really don't have a clue about the devastation they are introducing.

In Genesis God has promised Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) that they would have a son who would be the heir through which He would make Abraham into a great nation.  But God took too long to give them a son.  So Sarah in her wisdom and in the custom of the day, she gave her maidservant, Hagar to Abraham as a sort of concubine, a lesser wife, who would provide for Abraham a son (they hoped) and Sarah thought she could raise the boy as her own and usher in God's plan of blessing through her act of will.

Well, it sort of worked.  Abraham did succeed in having a son through Hagar but as soon as Hagar realized she was pregnant she knew what was going to happen.  She had heard of the promise and she knew Sarah would want to "take" her son as her own.  So Hagar is not looking forward to this situation.  Sarah is now mad at God for taking too long in fulfilling His promise.  She's mad at Hagar for having a fertile womb and she's mad at Abraham for agreeing to sleep with Hagar (even though all of this was Sarah's idea).

Anyway, God is not going to fulfill His promise through Hagar and her son Ishmael, He has a better and more perfect plan.  But because of Abraham he blessed Hagar and Ishmael and made Ishmael into a great nation as well.  Little did Sarah and Abraham know that for the rest of time Abraham's offspring and the descendants of Ishmael would be bitter enemies.  Bloodshed and strife and death would be present down through the line any time these two people groups crossed paths... like in Joshua.

In Joshua the Israelites are actively capturing territory that had been promised to them by God.  They were driving the indigenous peoples from their homes by force and taking what God had promised them all the way back in Abraham's day.

In chapter 16 Manasseh and Ephraim (Joseph's sons... God called Abraham, Abraham had Isaac who had twins Jacob and Esau, Jacob's name was changed to Israel and he had 10 sons but then "adopted" his next to youngest son Joshua's two sons as his own thus making 12 "tribes" or sons of Israel, got it?) are receiving their inheritance of land and driving out the people but verse 10 tells us that they, "did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer... they became forced laborers."

Whether Ephraim and Manasseh got tired or just had a "brilliant" idea I don't know.  But for whatever reason they decided not to drive out the Canaanites in Gezer and instead make them cut their firewood and deliver their water every day.

Here's the problem.  Ishmael and later Esau are actually the ancestral "fathers" of pretty much every body that the people of Israel are now driving out of the promised land!  And in a few years from Joshua 16 the Canaanites that were allowed to stay would introduce the Israelites to the worship of other gods and begin the moral decay of the nation of Israel that wold eventually split the nation into norther and southern kingdoms and even brings about the destruction of the Temple of God and most of the Jewish nation is hauled off to Babylon under lock and key.

Abraham and Sarah waited 10 years for God to give them a son before they tried to force God's hand through Hagar and Ishmael.  They would have to wait another 13 years (23 years from the promise) for Isaac to be born (Abraham would be 99).  Had the Israelites completely driven out the Canaanites how much would they have been spared?

When we decide we know best it never ends well for us.  When we trust God even when we can't make sense of it and we follow even when we can't really see where He's leading the outcome is always better.  Who knows the pain we would avoid if we just followed God's plan.
Honor the marriage bed and keep it holy...
Obey the law of the land, for the king doesn't bear the sword for nothing...
Do not covet, steal, murder...
Do not take God's Name in vain, serve and love Him only...
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth...
Do not forsake the gathering together of yourselves for worship...