Deception

Deception

A Sermon on Joshua 9 — Reading Text: Proverbs 14:12

By A Disciple of Jesus Christ · Pleasant Springs Church · August 30, 2026

Key Texts: Proverbs 14:12 • Joshua 9:7–16 • Deuteronomy 7:1–2 • Deuteronomy 20:15 • Proverbs 3:5–7 • Genesis 3:6

Israel has just beaten Jericho and Ai. The next enemy does not come with an army. He comes with worn-out sandals, mouldy bread, and a story that checks out. Joshua 9 is the one chapter in the conquest where Israel loses without a battle being fought — and it happens because the wrong thing looked right. They looked. They questioned. They examined. They reasoned. They made a decision. But they never asked God.

Gibeon was close. Close enough that the Gibeonites knew Israel’s conquest would reach them next. And Israel even suspected it — it is the first thing out of their mouths:

And three days after the covenant was cut, they found out.

What were some of their tactics?

• They used worn-out sacks to pack their goods for the journey.
• They wore worn-out sandals and worn-out clothes.
• They carried old, cracked, leaky wineskins.
• They brought dry, crumbly, mouldy bread for their food, to look as if they had come a long way.
• And they lied about where they had come from.

The enemy doesn’t always attack with force. Sometimes deception is the strategy. The Hivites came in old clothes and a convincing story. All the evidence appeared to point to what they were saying being true. Simply put — they looked the part.

Joshua asked the right questions. The Hivites presented their evidence, and the men took some of their provisions. The Scriptures don’t say it outright, but what we can conclude from the passage is that after looking at what they had been presented and the story they had been given, all things seemed to check out.

And sometimes that is exactly how deception works. It doesn’t always look evil. Sometimes it looks reasonable.

They investigated. They looked. They reasoned. And that brings us straight back to our opening text: there is a way that seems right.

Evidence is valuable. Reasoning is necessary. But neither evidence nor reasoning is a substitute for seeking God. Faith is not intellectual laziness. Faith is trusting God rather than making our own understanding ultimate.

They had been told not to make a covenant with these nations — and the Hivites are named on the list.

But there was one door left open.

Now hear the lie again:

The problem wasn’t that Israel didn’t investigate. The problem was that Israel investigated without consulting God.

Neither did they inquire of God before making the covenant. So ask yourself: what would have happened if they had inquired of God first?

Not every wrong decision begins with rebellion. Some are made with self-confidence. And there are consequences for our actions. But God can work through the consequences of decisions we wish we had made differently.

God is sovereign enough to bring good even out of situations we wish we had handled differently. Even though Israel was deceived, Israel stayed faithful to the covenant they had made. And some of the Gibeonites became servants to Israel and to the house of the LORD.

Why does this matter so much? Because of three things Scripture says plainly — about God, about our hearts, and about our own judgment.

Remember, in the garden, the serpent directed Eve’s attention toward what appeared desirable.

Joshua 9 rewards a slow reading, because almost every detail is doing work — how close Gibeon actually was, the precise words the Gibeonites chose, and one small Hebrew phrase in verse 14 that tells you exactly what Israel skipped. The following background is offered for deeper study.

About six miles from Ai, and roughly the same from Jerusalem — a morning’s walk. These were not distant strangers; they were the next town over. And Gibeon was no village.

That is the scale of what the disguise concealed. Israel did not accidentally spare a handful of refugees; they bound themselves by oath to a large fortified city with a standing army, sitting squarely inside the land they had been sent to take. The three-day delay in verse 16 is the point — it took less than a week for the truth to surface. Almost any inquiry would have found it.

The ESV renders Joshua 9:14 “did not ask counsel from the LORD.” The Hebrew is more concrete than that: pî YHWH lo’ sha’alu — literally, they did not ask the mouth of the LORD. The King James keeps the idiom: “and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD.”

So this is not a case of a man who had no way to hear from God. Joshua had a priest, an ephod, and a standing instruction that at God’s word he was to go out and come in. The machinery for asking was in the camp the whole time. He simply did not use it — because the evidence in front of him looked conclusive.

The sermon says Israel stayed faithful to the covenant they had made. Scripture proves it in a place most people never connect to Joshua 9 — centuries later, in the reign of David.

An oath sworn under false pretences, by leaders who had not asked God, was still binding four hundred years later — and God Himself enforced it against a king of Israel who broke it. That is how seriously He takes our word, even when we gave it unwisely.

Here is the turn that belongs with the sermon’s third point. The city that lied its way into the covenant became, generations later, the place where the tent of meeting stood.

It is where Solomon went to sacrifice, and where God appeared to him and offered him whatever he asked (2 Chronicles 1:3–7). The wood-cutters and water-carriers of Joshua 9:27 were carrying wood and water for that. God did not undo the consequence — the Gibeonites stayed servants. But He worked straight through it, until the place born out of a deception was the place His people came to meet Him.

This is the sixth sermon in a series walking through Joshua. Keep growing: