Joshua 7-8

Introduction

We have a lot to cover. We’ll see how we do. I have to admit, uh Wednesday, I was looking at all the stuff that we had to cover, and I said, David’s never coming. There’s no way. Oh and behold, right at the end of glass these happens. How does he do that? So I’m going to try to hit the high points, but there’s a lot of high points. So what we may end up doing is we can’t quite wrap up three today. We’ll wrap up three on Wednesday and do lesson four. So just because we don’t, if we don’t finish lesson three, that’s no reason to not do lesson four for Wednesday. Okay, so we left off at the end of Joshua chapter 5. We’re picking up in verse 13.

Preparing for the beginning of the conquest of Canaan. We’ve been leading up to this first battle. We’re five chapters in.

1. The Commander of the Army of the Lord

So let’s pick it up in Joshua 5, verse 13. When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in hand. And Joshua went to him and said, Are you for us? Or for our adversaries? And he said, No. But I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant? And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy. And Joshua did so. So who is this guy? Who did Joshua encounter?

Who did he think it was at first?

He thought, this is somebody I’ve got to fight. And was he prepared to fight? Yeah. He was obviously prepared to go to battle. I read in a commentary where they kind of likened it to maybe Goliath battling, you know, for the Philistines. This may have been the battle between the two leaders, and Joshua was prepared to fight if that’s what was necessary. But was it a battle that this person, this being he encountered, was looking for? No. I asked who it was, never you said Christ. Why did you say Christ?

Okay. Some say it was an angel. Who would think it would be an angel? I thought it was. Okay. It was sent from God. Okay. Who thinks it’s not an angel? Why would it not probably be an angel? We have no occasion for an angel except to worship. Exactly. Well, it didn’t say that he worshiped the angel, it said he worshiped. He bowed down and worshiped. Did the angel say, Hey, whoa, wait a minute. Don’t worship me. I’m not God. He accepted worship, and then what did he say about the place where they stood? Holy. The place is holy. What does that recall in our minds a similar situation? With Moses, and was it an angel speaking to Moses? Was God speaking to Moses? Well, it also said Joshua says, What is my Lord say to his servant?

So it’s the Lord. He’s calling him the Lord.

Right. There’s a, of course, men are going to dispute this and say it’s an angel or it’s this or it’s that. I think we can gather that it’s deity of some kind, whether it’s Christ or the Holy Spirit or God or whatever it is. It’s it’s deity of some kind. They’re accepting worship. The place where they are is holy. Why is the place where they are holy? Because this deity is there. Okay? So that makes the place special, and that leads to instruction later because of his appearance here. Needless to say it was from God. Well, needless to say it was from God. And why do you think? Why this encounter?

Okay, it says, it says there at the beginning that Joshua was by Jericho. You think of maybe, okay, the battle is about to begin, and Joshua is standing there observing the city, thinking about all right, here we go.

Okay, Sarah. She may have said this, I can’t hear her, but he gave him the battle plan. He gave them the battle plan, but also I think it’s a reminder to Joshua where the victory is coming from. This is the commander of the army of the Lord. Who is Israel representing? Is it Israel’s plan or is it God’s plan? It’s for God’s plan, it’s for God’s purpose, and he’s coming to give the battle plan. And I think it’s partly to remind Joshua where this is coming from. While you are a great leader, and I will make you great among your people, this is coming from me. It reminded me of 1 Corinthians 3, where it says, Who then is Paul who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believe?

As the Lord gave to each one, I planted Apollo’s water, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. It reminds me of of the spiritual things that we do, of the spiritual plans that we have in our lives for ourselves and for other people, that it’s not through our strength that anything’s going to be attained. It’s through God. And when we try to attain great things on our own without God, we’re not going to have the success. We need to lean on God for the direction.

2. Jericho Shut Up and the Big Plan

Okay, on to chapter 6. Starting in verse 1. Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, see, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and mighty men of valor. So what’s the state of the mind of mind of the people of Jericho? They’re afraid.

And who’s shut up inside with them? It says they’re mighty men of valor. The people that would go to war, the people whose job it is to go out and defend the city, are shut up inside. And they’re afraid.

Go ahead, John. The ones. The ones inside hope to outlast the supplies and the will of the ones outside. It’s basically a waiting game. Alright. You can’t get outside to get anything because we’re waiting for you. And you’re inside the city, and you’re saying, well, you can’t get inside to get us. There’s a spring of water, source of water, inside those walls. And what do we know about the time of year that this is taking place? Based on when they cross the Jordan. Harvest time. So what this what is the city probably full of?

Food. So fine, we’ll outlast you. Right? I don’t know if you’ve seen much about what these cities at this time were like, especially a city like Jericho. God talked about the things they would encounter in Deuteronomy chapter 9. He says in verse 1, Hero Israel, you’re going over the cross of Jordan today. And go into dispossessed nations greater and mightier than yourself. Cities great and fortified up to heaven.

With a stone retaining wall at its base.

Okay? Not, I mean, up on a hill, high up. And you’ve got a retaining wall about 12 to 15 feet high that is essentially keeping erosion from happening, keeping the land from sliding down. Okay? And beyond that retaining wall, you have another wall six feet thick and about 20 to 26 feet high. The city of Jericho was located at the bottom of the gorge. It’s 800 feet below street level, the lowest city on the face of the earth.

Beyond that 26-foot high wall, you would have to go up an embankment to another wall that was 46 feet above the ground level of the outside retaining wall. So something that’s easy to scale? Something that’s easy to penetrate? No. Something that logically, we’re going to go attack this city makes a whole lot of sense. Not really. Okay? This is something that when you look at it, you go, wow. Now, they don’t have planes, they don’t have bombs, they don’t have ways of scaling the wall easily to get inside and cause destruction. They might just throw ropes around and climb, but you can’t do that a whole lot of people at a time, maybe throw ladders up at the walls. But you got two walls, so you make it over the first wall, and you’re trapped between the first wall and the second wall, and what can archers on the wall do?

Just pick you off as you come over the wall, okay? So it’s a it’s a very difficult thing to do. It would take a large number of people and a long period of time in order for this to happen. So here’s the big plan. Man of war, Joshua, ready to fight, and he gets the big plan, starting in verse 3. You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus you shall do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of ram’s horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets, and when they make a long blast with a ram’s horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before them.

So Joshua, the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, Take up the ark of the covenant, let seven priests bear seven trumpets of ramhorns before the ark of the Lord. And he said to the people, go forward, march around the city and let the armed men pass before the Ark of the Lord. So no battering rams, no trenches, no batteries, nothing erected to scale the walls. Does this sound like a logical military plan?

To us, does it sound like it makes sense? No. No. I think the conquest of Jericho had already been accomplished. To God it had already been accomplished. It was just a matter of submission and obedience to God, whether it made sense or not. God wanted to see, wanted them to obey. Exactly. Yes. God had already given them the victory. God had yes, God had given them the victory from from the time they left Egypt. But they didn’t want to do it God’s way. This could in part be a test.

What’s significant about what’s going to be with them as they’re walking around the wall? The ark. Why is that significant?

Shows that God’s with them, that that’s their representation of God being with them. And God giving them the victory. Do you think there were doubters? Yeah.

3. By Faith the Walls of Jericho Fell

Do you think there were people that said this is never going to work? I don’t know about that. Because in Hebrews chapter 11, starting in verse 29, talking about faith. He says, by faith the people crossed the Red Sea, as on dry land, and the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. Does he say by the power of God that happened? Well you had faith in God, so obviously, yes. They believed it would happen. Yes. Because if they didn’t believe it would happen, I don’t think it would have happened. And the important thing I think that that’s included in these lists of examples of faith is that they believed something that seems unbelievable.

Impossible. They believed it, Sarah. If they hadn’t done it, it wouldn’t have happened. And it’s a weapon that God used. I mean, you wouldn’t say that it’s not a natural thing. It was God. But marching, the sound that was created by this is what God used to break down the laws. And I think that it’s not just the Israelites that were taught that God was trying to reach.

Right. But I I think the key element that we have to get from that is that the people had to believe.

When God’s plan doesn’t make sense to us, when we want to do things our way, we’ve got to trust.

Silly comparison, but it reminds me of the movie Miracle on 34th Street, when all through the movie they’re trying to convince this little girl to not believe in Santa Claus, and then at the end they want her to believe, and she doesn’t get it, and she’s there’s that shot of her going, it’s silly, but I believe, it’s silly, but I believe, it’s silly. She’s trying to convince herself to believe. It doesn’t make any sense, but she’s trying to convince herself. If we do that with our faith, it’s not faith. If we just go whatever. Okay, I guess I’ll believe. I guess I’ll do it, but I don’t, you know. Faith is belief. Faith is believing what he says he will do, he will do. And he’s continued to give us example after example here of God being faithful to his promises.

Things that seem impossible are possible with God. Things in our lives that seem impossible in our walk with him. I can’t get over this problem I’m having. I can’t get through, I can’t get over this temptation, this sin, or whatever. God can deliver us. He says he will and he can. But we have to have the faith, yes. But if God is in it, there’s no way that it’s not going to work. If you believe in God and you live it and you honestly believe by faith that God is in it, it’s gonna happen. Well, and that’s what he was trying to teach the Israelites, I believe. That it’s more than just doing, you have to have faith, you have to believe. And it’s the same thing he accepts of us, expects of us today.

Exactly. Why did the old law not save? Because you couldn’t keep it perfectly. No. Right? Just following a list of requirements, you couldn’t do.

It’s it’s what’s your faith, it’s your heart, it’s your interest.

If you don’t believe it in your heart, you don’t have a thing. You’re right. You’re right. Yes, ma’am. I think also when um you know when we obey, you know, we have when we have obstacles in our lives, when we obey and submit to God, it may not be what we expect, how God should do it, but God knows what is needed for that situation. So I think we should, you know, like you say, trust and believe that you know he’ll take care of whatever it is. It’s that that’s what you say this brought to mind as well in 1 Corinthians 1 when he says, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Things that don’t make sense to us.

Or my ways are higher, my ways are my thoughts are much higher than you. Exactly. So he has the big picture. And we have to trust it, yeah. I think sometimes too, God, we have some more faith because when we ask something, whether it be something big or something small, if we don’t get it in the next two seconds, our faith thought dropping down to that, oh I knew I wasn’t going to get it, I knew this wasn’t gonna happen. But he’s trying to show them that faith is very important, but you’ve got to have the patience to wait. Things don’t always happen when you want it, like God said. You get them on time as we use the praise. You may not give it to one, but you get it on time.

Right. And that’s true faith. Uh having to have him, God, do something for us, for us to say, okay, I believe. That’s not faith.

Okay, continuing on.

4. Everything Devoted to God

He continues to give them the instruction, and what I want to do is pick up in verse 18. He talks about what they need to do, how they started it, how they’re going to save Rahab. Verse 18 says, But you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction. Lest when you have devoted them, you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing of destruction and bring trouble upon it. But all silver and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord. They shall go into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, and the wall fell down flat.

So the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they captured the city. Then they devoted all the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys, with the edge of the sword. Why destroy everything?

Why destroy everything? Nobody thought about why they would do this. First of all, the Lord commanded it. Okay. That’s a big part of it. They become evil. Just like when the world in the time of Noah. The world can become evil and destroyed because of the evilness of the world.

Become the sample. Okay. Anybody else dated? Part of it goes and loaded. Armies go and plunder. They do so for personal reasons. They look for gain. They weren’t taking the city of Jericho for personal gain. This is all belonging to God. And partly I wonder if the all belonging to God is a reference to the place being holy because God appeared there to Joshua. And that was a holy place that now everything was devoted to God. Everything was given back to God. It wasn’t, as David said, for the purpose of them acquiring things. And maybe it was a little bit of a test. Were they going to find great riches inside this city? Obviously, there were great things inside this city. And they needed to have the self-control to destroy it, to have the faith to do it God’s ways.

Maybe the analogy to the first fruits. Could have been.

Into the treasury of the house of the Lord. But Rahab the prostitute in her father’s household and all that belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in the city, lived in Israel to this day because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Joshua laid an oath on them at that time saying, Cursed be the Lord. Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up his gates. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land. What does that mean? Everybody knew about him. Everybody knew about him, not only inside Israel, but outside of Israel.

Okay.

5. Defeat at Ai: No Consultation With God

Everybody knew what happened. And not only does this give fear to the people of Canaan, but it gives confidence to the people of Israel in their new leader. They know that they’re going to be able to accomplish the things that God has said that he will do. But then they run into something. They decide next to go into Ai. What is missing from the battle plan for AI?

They didn’t have some. Do you see any consultation with God? Do we see any direction from God? I don’t know.

I don’t know if that’s a big deal or not. But did they suffer a defeat? Yes. It doesn’t specifically say they suffer defeat because they didn’t consult with God, but if Joshua had consulted with God first, maybe he would have said, there’s a problem in your camp, and you gotta get it worked out. But they didn’t. And the reason I wonder if that’s significant is because of Joshua’s reaction to the defeat. Did Joshua take it easy or did Joshua take it pretty hard? Joshua took it pretty hard, yeah.

So they go in, they make a plan. What seems wise to them for this plan? Is AI the city of Jericho’s stature? No. No. Okay? And are there thousands and thousands and thousands of people there? No. So what do they decide the best course of action is?

We don’t need that many people. We have 40,000 men of war. We’ll just take 3,000 of them. This is going to be an easy battle. And what happens? Is it an easy victory? Not a victory at all. What happened? They’re chased out, they’re chased back, and 36 of them were killed. 36 of them were killed. What’s significant? If is 36 men, now that’s 36 lives, but in a battle, is 36 people being killed? Wow! Catastrophic losses? No. So what does that indicate to you? Were they expecting for there to be any losses? I don’t think they were expecting to be any losses. For 36 men to be killed, and Joshua, let’s pick it up. In verse 6. Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the Ark of the Lord until the evening.

He and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their heads. And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, why have you brought this people over to Jordan at all? To give us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? Would that we have been content to dwell in the land of Jordan? O Lord, what can I say when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies? For the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will we and what will you do for your great name? What’s Joshua doing here? God would be our first thing blind somebody else out of sight. Okay. That’s the first thing we do when we point somebody.

I think that’s great. Joshua’s being human. Does Joshua say, okay, something’s wrong? Because you said you’d give us this land and it’s not happening, so there must be something wrong. That’s not his reaction. His reaction is similar to what Israel’s reaction has been all throughout this process. When something goes wrong, oh, why didn’t you just kill his wife? And I think that’s a natural reaction. While Joshua is an extreme man of faith and an example of a leader for us, he’s still human. He’s young man. And yeah.

Yeah, this is this big thing here, okay? I think that could be an example to us as how to react when things don’t go as we think they should. When defeat is set before us. And maybe, and I think it applies specifically to spiritual matters, to things that we’re trying to do in our service to God, when we suffer defeat, maybe our first inclination is to blame God rather than I’m not trying hard. And God, why can’t you keep me from this temptation? You said you would never lay something before me that I couldn’t resist, but you keep laying this before me, and and how am I supposed to fight this temptation when you keep laying it before me when maybe if you’d stop putting yourself in this position, maybe if you would stop and think before you act, we don’t want to blame ourselves, we want to blame God.

6. Israel Has Sinned: Nothing Is Hidden From God

So they had a million plus people God says in verse 10, the Lord said to Joshua, get up, why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned. They have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. So a million plus people. And 750,000 of them took stuff from Jericho, right? 750 of them took something from Jericho. One. And does he say one man has sinned? This man’s guilt is laid upon the entire nation. First of all, what is hidden from God?

Obviously, from here, nothing is hidden from God. Being in your room with the lights off isn’t hidden from God. Being off in a field, but God sees all, God knows all. And our mistake can cause transgression to fall upon other people. A poor decision that we make can cause us maybe to lead others in the wrong direction. And those people could suffer from our sin. This one man caused this defeat for Israel. Why is this such a big deal? He’s one guy, he took a few things. They’re buried in his tent. Is that a big deal? It’s just my guy. Why is it a big deal? God told them in the first before they had the birth victory, not pretending to be. And because Joshua didn’t um God had a battle plan for I as well, but Joshua didn’t hear that battle plan.

So because being human, like she said, he wanted to go and try, you know, to do it himself with his arms like sent spies out. And if the spies came back, he’s like those will go in and see, you know, take this blanket, you know. And um he just you know he he just I think he just wasn’t obese. You know, he did not, and I know he thinks that uh it wasn’t just because he did not consult with God, but I think that um if he would have said Laura, well, what do you think I should do with this matter? And he did before, you know, God would have given him the victory a second time. And because I think the thing was athens, and because aphids have dispoils, you know, like you said, just because of his sin, it just it cost everybody.

And uh which is a lesson of us like you said. What impact could this have on the entire nation if this was overlooked? That could be good to say. Well, God didn’t really mean what he says. I mean, after all, you see that co-acid guy? That’s pretty cool. He’s been marching around camping that thing. He looks pretty good in that. So next time, I’ll just take a couple of things, or I’ll just I’ll just do this, or I won’t do that. Because it God doesn’t really mean what he says. He meant that we all shouldn’t. But if just a couple of us do. Does God mean what he says? Absolutely. And when we transgress against what God says, what can that start? That can start a pattern.

We think, well, this is okay.

We can not only influence others, but it opens the door to where, well, if God didn’t really mean this, well, then he didn’t really mean this, and he didn’t really mean this, and he didn’t really mean this, and God’s over here, and we keep moving further away from God because we think, well, it doesn’t really mean that. It’s 2012. Come on! And so and so. You really think God doesn’t want somebody who’s a homosexual to be happy? It’s too come on. This isn’t the 1700s. We’ve progressed. It’s okay because there, you know, everybody deserves the same rights as everybody else. God didn’t really mean that. That was at a different time. What God says, God means. And we have to follow it. Or we open the door to where, well, if if he didn’t mean this, then what else did he not mean?

We’ve got to follow the pattern, we’ve got to follow what he says. There’s a reason for it. We may not always understand the reason, but we have to have the faith to follow, isn’t it? David gave the lesson of an exhortation about who he take something from God and it was about angels. God told him from all of us in the church and treasures, so the things of value were to go, yes, to the treasury of God. So, yes, in effect, he was he was stealing from God. The important thing we’ve got to remember is number one, God sees everything, nothing is hidden from God, and our transgressions can affect those around us. And it doesn’t matter how small we think a commandment of God is or an instruction from God is or an example from God is, we need to follow it.

Because if we don’t do that, we’re opening the door for so much of what we think. Right? Very popular today, what I think, what I don’t think, well, it doesn’t make sense to me. Oh, you know what? That’s great.

What we think. There you go. As Nancy says, then Matthew Hill beans what we think, and that’s if we’re looking to follow God, it doesn’t. Does he have a right for it to be his way? Yes. We’re all about rights. Okay, well, God has a right to ask us to do things his way. Because who started it all? Who is the creator of everything? Whose plan is in action? It’s all from God. When we look at what Jesus did for us, we that if if we don’t follow God, we’re just imbeciles. That’s all I think. Well, yeah, I but the weakness of our flesh causes us to do things against what God asked. And fortunately, there’s not someone following me around with a pencil in a book and writing down everything that I do and every poor decision I make.

Yeah, but generations to read about. What’s that? But God knows everything that you do. I understand. My point is we all do that. We all follow what we think is right at times and it’s wrong. We just have an example of other people that we can read and hopefully learn about so that we we don’t follow that same pattern.

We’re better following. We’re no better than any other people on the planet of God. We are we are under the law of grace and truth. I’m so thankful about all the examples of the Bible, where Christ came and he did those things that people who were Jews thought that they shouldn’t be done. It’s like when the woman is speaking with the tears. Oh didn’t he know that that’s a she’s touching us, she’s touching the we have to get away from being so self-righteous that we look down on those people for their sin. All safely separates us from God. No matter what it is. All things, it’s our job of being the child of God to help bring up children in the home. There’s a long list of things that they could do that he just killed us.

He says murder breakers and he said it’s such for some of you. Those people who obey the gospel and try to make us up. We have to really, really be careful that we don’t try to do God’s job for us. Exactly right. What we have is a gift from God. Being saved, being in Christ does not make me better than someone else. It makes me obligated. Yes. And I think too often we look at that more as an obligation and less as a privilege to share that with other people. We think, oh, I gotta talk, oh, I gotta go knock on doors, oh I gotta have to teach somebody, I gotta no, you should that should be in your heart. You should want because you are no better than them, you should want to share it with them.

So when we try to take on something that we think we know that, oh, I can handle this, you know, I can do this, and without you know, God’s counsel, you know, we don’t have to fail, you know, we don’t follow our faith. So you know, and I think with the faith that Joshua had and very for them your, you know, for the walls all the year. It’s the lesson for us about obedience and submission, no matter what. You’re definitely right.

We’ve got to lean on God, we’ve got to depend on God. Alright, continuing on in verse uh 12, I think is where we left. Therefore, the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies because they have become devoted to the destruction. I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Get up, consecrate the people, and say, consecrate yourselves tomorrow. What did David talk about on Wednesday? What does consecrate mean? To cleanse, get this wickedness away from you. They can’t stand before God. God’s not going to be with them with this wickedness among them. So what does he uh what does he tell them to do? Does he tell them who it is?

Go find this guy. He’s right over here, tent number 221, and he’s got it buried in and get rid of him. What’s the process? Uh lots. They called tribe and then clan and then family and then house and then all of this in the sight of who? In the sight of everyone, so everyone sees it. Everyone sees that it’s going from a million plus down to a king. Right? What’s the purpose of that?

Conclusion

So everybody knows what’s going on. This is why we lost the battle, and it’s this guy. So you can’t hide anything from God. Don’t think you can hide anything. Don’t think you can get away from anything. Because God knows. And it’s the same with us, with the billions of people on the planet. Not only does God love us and care about us, he sees us. We’re not hidden from God. And he has the same plan for us as he does the other billions of people on the planet to serve him. And he can see that. So we’re reminded that is sin a minor issue? Is sin something that’s not that big of a deal? Grace is going to cover us, so we can kind of get away with a few things.

Sin is a serious issue in our lives. And those that are around us, the way it can impact you. It has a negative impact, and we’ve got to always remember how serious sin is. There are no minor sins that we can just commit and it’s not a big deal. God expects us to do our best, just to strive to do our best. Okay, we didn’t quite make it. But uh we’ll pick up there near the end of uh