Sunday Morning Service

Joshua 8

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“Back In The High Life Again!” • 12.8.13 • Calvary Christian Fellowship, Sunday Morning Service

Intro.

- We left chapter 7 with our heads down at the severity of God's holy and justified response to Achan's selfish sinful transgression.

- Sin had reared it's ugly head and a dismal failure had now blotted the record of the Israelis.

- When the people of God cooperated with the Lord in levying His judgment upon Achan and those complicit with him, God's wrath turned from the people of Israel.

- How will God respond toward the people of Israel now after they have failed? How will they respond to Him? Take note of the two divisions of chapter 8:

I. The Return To Victory (v.1-29)

II. The Recommitment To God's Law (v.30-35)

Text

I. The Return To Victory (v.1-29)

• Joshua 8:1,2 : "Now the Lord said to Joshua: 'Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed; take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it.'" : Now that the nation had been obedient, God unveils His plan for Ai.

- Many Christians wonder about the process of God's favor returning to them after they have sinned. Upon repentance, the favor flows again immediately without delay.

- God is not like us. He has the perfect ability to see a contrite heart and a resolute spirit. He knows when He can release blessing back toward us.

- This is a comforting fact for us, who believe that God may never bless us in the same manner as before. Think again! God's grace waits to be extended! His mercies are new every morning!

- Truthfully, it's not that God has changed. We're the ones hiding in the garden! He is all grace and goodness to His people. It's our perspective of Him that has been skewed by sin.

- Notice that Joshua has to be told again not to be afraid or dismayed, literally broken down with fear. Sin has caused him to be timid when he should be confident.

- Sin robs you of your confidence before the Lord. Before long you are questioning what was once easy for you to distinguish. Joshua has to be built up again by the Lord.

- God's plan was much more exhaustive than the plan of the people of Israel had proposed. He sent all the people into war. None were to be left behind.

- Resistance against sin requires our full force, our total energy! Even little Ai would require the engagement of Israel's entire armed force!

- The battle would go the same as it had in Jericho, with the addition being that they were free to ransack the place for themselves. Imagine that!

- Jericho was off limits to them, to be burnt whole, a sign of complete consecration to God. But Ai was a place for their enrichment!

- If Achan had only obeyed and waited, he would have had his share of this plunder for himself! God's plan to enrich him was just around the corner had he trusted the Lord.

- But this is the problem: We don't trust the Lord! We cut corners and take disastrous short cuts which rob us of salvation's joy and peace.

- What we settle for is far less that what He intends when we choose to rush ahead.

- None who have ever waited on the Lord have ever been disappointed. He knows what you need and want and better still, He knows when it's best for you to have it! Trust Him!

- The other difference with Ai was the battle plan. There would be no marching, but there was an ambush to be laid. Joshua gives these details beginning in verse 3.

• Joshua 8:3-8 : "So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai; and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. And he commanded them, saying: 'Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city; and it will come about, when they come out against us as at the first, that we shall flee before them. For they will come out after us till we have drawn them from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing before us as at the first.’ Therefore we will flee before them. Then you shall rise from the ambush and seize the city, for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand. And it will be, when you have taken the city, that you shall set the city on fire. According to the commandment of the Lord you shall do. See, I have commanded you.'" : God's plan given to Joshua sounds much more conventional to us today, but was not heard of in Joshua's time.

- What is described here is what the military defines as a "V shaped" ambush.

- Half of the fighting force would lie in wait behind the city, while a smaller force would draw the attention of Ai's fighting force away from the city. Later an additional 5,000 would cover the north.

- Ai would eventually pour out and be out flanked in every direction.

- In dealing with how God does battle, there is never a static model to trust in. He could have had them march again and blow the trumpets again, but this was completely different.

- We should never be surprised when God does things a different way than we suppose and a different way than He has previously worked in our lives.

- This is an additional reason to wait patiently upon Him, as His instructions on the particulars of our assignment are pivotal to our success.

- This group behind the city was to wait for the city to empty out. Joshua was confident that Ai would be drawn out against the smaller force, while the larger force entered and set fire to the city.

• Joshua 8:9-13 : "Joshua therefore sent them out; and they went to lie in ambush, and stayed between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai; but Joshua lodged that night among the people. Then Joshua rose up early in the morning and mustered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai. And all the people of war who were with him went up and drew near; and they came before the city and camped on the north side of Ai. Now a valley lay between them and Ai. So he took about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city. And when they had set the people, all the army that was on the north of the city, and its rear guard on the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley." : Ai was situated very closely to Bethel, a small city 2 miles to the west.

- Joshua stayed with the people in Jericho and led them early in the morning to the edge of the valley facing Ai. At this point, he sent another 5,000 men to cover the western border or Ai.

- Unbeknownst to Ai, the city is surrounded, and any help from Bethel is cut off.

- They are unaware of the ambush group behind the city and the troop movement in the early morning, which puzzles me. Is it that they were over confident given their previous victory?

- What an irony, as overconfidence lay at the root of Israel's previous defeat. Now, their overconfidence will be their undoing!

• Joshua 8:14-23 : "Now it happened, when the king of Ai saw it, that the men of the city hurried and rose early and went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at an appointed place before the plain. But he did not know that there was an ambush against him behind the city. And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness. So all the people who were in Ai were called together to pursue them. And they pursued Joshua and were drawn away from the city. There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. So they left the city open and pursued Israel. Then the Lord said to Joshua, 'Stretch out the spear that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.' And Joshua stretched out the spear that was in his hand toward the city. So those in ambush arose quickly out of their place; they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand, and they entered the city and took it, and hurried to set the city on fire. And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and behold, the smoke of the city ascended to heaven. So they had no power to flee this way or that way, and the people who had fled to the wilderness turned back on the pursuers. Now when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that the smoke of the city ascended, they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. Then the others came out of the city against them; so they were caught in the midst of Israel, some on this side and some on that side. And they struck them down, so that they let none of them remain or escape. But the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua." : When the King saw Joshua's force, he ordered the men out of the city and they hurried out after them. They had no idea of their predicament. They did not know of the ambush behind them.

- The people of Ai believed that their rout of Israel had been a final victory. They had handily defeated them and perhaps believed that they would not attempt to take the land again.

- When there wasn't a person left in Ai or Bethel, when they were far out enough from their city, Joshua stopped and turned around, raising his spear.

- This must have been the sign for the ambush to begin. Joshua's men ran in quickly and set the city on fire. The men of Ai were trapped in their own pride.

- One moment, they believed that their victory would be final. In the very next moment, they turn to see their city going up in flames!

- Soon, their entire number dwindled in the sea of Israelis encompassing them from all sides.

- All who had come out to fight the Israeli army were cut down, except for the King or General of the city who was brought to Joshua.

• Joshua 8:24-27 : "And it came to pass when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness where they pursued them, and when they all had fallen by the edge of the sword until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword. So it was that all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand—all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as booty for themselves, according to the word of the Lord which He had commanded Joshua." : 12,000 fell at their hands. All the people of Ai. God's people were enriched with what they left behind.

- When was it that Joshua quit? When all had been utterly destroyed. That should be our attitude against our own sin. What vestige remains? What could pop up and hurt us again?

- The only thing our sin deserves is our violent vigilance against it!

• Joshua 8:28,29 : "So Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever, a desolation to this day. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until evening. And as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his corpse down from the tree, cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raise over it a great heap of stones that remains to this day." : Other commanders would have left the King hanging there until he rotted.

- Joshua had seen enough after the day was out. He left the King's corpse and buried it with stones which stood there at the writing of this record.

II. The Rededication To God's Law (v.30-35)

• Joshua 8:30,31 : "Now Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: 'an altar of whole stones over which no man has wielded an iron tool.' And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings." : There are a few things geographically that are important here. Mt. Ebal is about 30 miles north of Ai. This trip is out of the way.

- This visit is a spiritual exercise as God's people will stand in the valley of decision.

- They have experienced two rousing victories and one crushing defeat. Now is the time, given that context to renew themselves in the things of God.

- Mt. Ebal faces Mt. Gerizim, with a valley separating the two by a third of a mile. Mt. Gerizim is a lush little mount, with a lot of vegetation and greenery. Mt. Ebal is as bare as a rock!

- From Mt. Ebal, the curses connected with disobedience will be affirmed, while Mt. Gerizim will affirm the blessings which come from the law.

- Mt. Ebal is where Joshua builds an altar to the Lord, according to what was commanded him in Deuteronomy 27.

- These stones were not to be designed by an artisan or beautified in any way. They were simply to be whitewashed and arranged in order.  

- No human ingenuity was to stand in the way of the purpose of these stones. Nothing was to take away from the message contained on the stones. That was the attraction.

- Joshua obeyed this completely and then offered both burnt and peace offerings.

- The burnt offering spoke of their consecration to the Lord. Joshua is saying with this offering that he acknowledges their sin as well as their readiness to be His once again.

- After this, Joshua also offered peace offerings to the Lord, symbolizing their way to reconciliation with God which was based on the death of innocent substitutes.

- As believers, we do not offer the physical offerings that Israel did. We do however enter into the spirit of those offerings, deciding to be wholly consecrated to the Lord.

- Our minds, hearts, and bodies belong to Him and are solely intended for His use.

- We continually relate to the Lord based on the peace that He has established for us in the death of His innocent Son, Jesus Christ.

• Joshua 8:32,33 : "And there, in the presence of the children of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. Then all Israel, with their elders and officers and judges, stood on either side of the ark before the priests, the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, the stranger as well as he who was born among them. Half of them were in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel. " : Joshua inscribed the copy of the law of Moses on the stones that he assembled.

- Some postulate that he wrote the entire book of Deuteronomy, while others, simply a summation of the law, perhaps even the 10 Commandments. Whatever it was, it was complete.

- Notice who is here. The elders, officers and judges represent the civil authorities among the people, while the Priests and Levites represent the spiritual authority.

- Right in the center is the presence of God, the ark of the covenant, ruling over both entities! He was their leader, the One that they owed their faithful allegiance to.

- Deuteronomy 27:11-13 tells us that In front of Mt. Ebal stood Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali. In front of Mt. Gerizim were Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin.

- Everyone was present, including those who were foreigners who had joined the nation in their journey. The entire nation stood before this memorial to God's law.

- Whether they were rich or poor, old or young, native Israeli or foreigner. One law was to be their blessing to receive and live by.    

• Joshua 8:34,35 : "And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them." : What did Joshua do after he had written all of the words of the law? He read all the words of the law!

- It was written for their reading and read for their hearing. Why? Because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God! Every time we hear the word, our faith is grown.

- Did he read just the good, juicy and relative parts or just the positive portions? He read the blessings and the cursings! Everything!

- Every word is necessary for every Christian who wants to grow to be like Christ!

- There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which he did not read to them! The women, the children and the strangers all heard the same message.

- Israel knew what it was like when they obeyed. Blessings followed, victories were won. They also knew what it was like to disobey. Curses followed and defeat was the norm.

Conclusion

- Where was the offering made? On the mount where cursings were proclaimed. Jesus did not proclaim a curse. He became a curse and died on a Mt. for the sins of His people.

- Would you look again at this chapter? Would you see the confidence, joy and wonder of living in God's favor? Would you see the victory that is yours?

- What is the key? Obedience to His Word, made possible by the One who took every curse that you deserve upon Himself.