THE MINISTRY OF THE GIBEONITES

THE MINISTRY OF THE GIBEONITES (Joshua 9)
The ministry of the Gibeonites is the ministry of deceit that is mainly targeted at leadership. The Gibeonites are experts in deceiving leaders that do not work in the spirit. In 2Cor.11:13 Apostle Paul described them as “….false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.” Make no mistake about it, the Gibeonites are still very much around us today, and the same deceit they perpetrated in the days of Joshua is still being perpetrated in the church today by these agents of hell. However, it’s only those that “asked counsel at the mouth of the Lord” that will be able to detect their lies. The modern day Gibeonites uses everything at their disposal such as gifts, eye service, vain praises, and all forms of falsehood to perfect their deception. Until the Gobeonites enters into a league with the leadership that they are under, they will never give up.
There is nothing that blinds the eyes of a leader like gifts, and the Gibeonites of today are experts in using gifts as instrument of deception in getting what their heart desires. Here is the catch; when a leader is fund of accepting gifts from anybody, soon his spiritual eyes will be blinded by those gifts, and making right and sound judgment about people will become difficult, let alone seeking God’s face concerning them. This is because just as the bible says in Prov.18:19, that “a man’s gift makes room for him,” the Gibeonites use their gifts to gain access to the heart of a leader, thereby destroying it for sound judgment, Ecc. 7:7 says, “…. and a gift destroyeth the heart.” Because of this reason, the Gibeonites are occupying sensitive positions today in the church, and we are ignorantly suffering for it.
According to Joshua 9, Joshua and the children of Israel were deceived by the Gibeonites because they did not ask for “…counsel at the mouth of the Lord” (Joshua 9:14). It is most likely that they got to the point of being “too familiar with God” that they felt it wasn’t necessary to seek for His counsel regarding the Gibeonites. Because of this same problem of “familiarity with God,” some of our leaders and the led hardly seek after the mind of God in prayers before giving or accepting positions in the church. When we give people positions based on who they claim to be or what we feel rather than what God says and feels about them, then we are likely to fall into the same pit of deceit that Joshua and the children of Israel fell into in the hands of the Gibeonites.
Only the Lord knows the heart of man; no man knows, and that is why seeking for His counsel regarding anybody or anything shouldn’t be something we joke with; and until we are sure of what God is saying, we must not take any step. If our judgment of people is based on how good they are to us, their services or availability, we may fall into the trap of the Gibeonites. We must form the habit of seeking for counsel from the mouth of the Lord before taking any step, because anybody can be a Gibeonite.
Prayer: May we never fall victims of the Gibeonites’ ministry in Jesus name. Amen