Joshua 16

Holy War by Normal Means – 8:1-29

In Ephesians 6 we have the concept of holy war for the believer. We want to unite this concept in Ephesians 6 with what we are covering in the book of Joshua. In Ephesians 6 we are told that we have ground which can be yielded to Satan. This is the concept that we have using these circles, the top and bottom circle, when we receive Christ and become a Christian God the Holy Spirit puts us in union with Christ. That’s the circle of sovereign. The bottom circle, or the will of God is the range over which we are having fellowship with God. So we can think of the Christian life as having three dimensions: one the dimension of maturity as this circle increases. And as you mature the area of the known will of God increases. But at any given moment you are either in the will of God or out of the will of God. So there’s two dimensions, there’s an either/or, either we’re in the will of God or we’re not; and then there’s the relative dimension of the relative slow gradual expansion of that circle.

So we have these two concepts of the Christian life, added now on top of these is a third concept which is the attacks or the assaults of Satan. And in Eph. 4 we dealt with this from the problem of yielding ground; again let’s redraw the bottom circle, here is the will of God, yielding ground can be pictured as Satan trying to come in and take away a chunk of the will of God for you and remove you from that area, knock you off the will of God that’s definitely valid for your life. And Satan will apply pressure to drag you off that ground. If you can think of that bottom circle as actual ground with boundaries on it, Satan is trying to shove you back so that we have a situation develop where he usually applies certain tactics, can shove a Christian back on any given issue.

And this is why in Eph. 6 you read in verse 11, “That ye might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” the “wiles” being the strategies that Satan uses to attack you and drag you off of that ground. “For we are not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities,” but notice the wrestling is wrestling still, he says it’s not against flesh and blood but the word still applies to these spiritual powers and principalities that it is a wrestling. So just because this is not flesh and blood don’t drop in your mind, tune out and say okay, then it’s not wrestling either. A wrestling match is no coming out and waving Kleenexes at each other. This is not either the concept of the Christians battle; the Christians battle is a wrestling, and this means we wrestle against Satan and his wiles, and his stratagems, etc. One of the key weapons we have in our arsenal is prayer, verse 18. But I only briefly referred to Eph. 6 to show you that now what we’re going to see at Joshua should apply right at this point to you as a believer.

So let’s turn to Joshua 8, we’ve got the problem of retaking given ground. In Joshua 7 we had the city of Ai. On this map, here’s where they came into the land of Canaan. Joshua and the army moved across to a place called Jericho and eliminated that in chapter 6. In chapter 7 they moved on to a place called Ai, and a place to the northwest known as Bethel. They moved in on Ai and they got slaughtered, 36 lost out of a small group of men, very foolishly sent against this stronghold. This is the geographical location; this is the next city in Joshua’s conquest by [can’t hear word]. The ground is the ground that God has given them; remember He promised that every place the sole of your foot has stepped on is your ground. But they lost ground at Ai. Let’s draw another picture. Here’s Ai and here’s Bethel; you have these two cities in a southeast northwest orientation. Joshua moved in and he loses ground at Ai. This is a retreat; it’s a loss of ground. Now notice something, and this introduces the first principle of this chapter applied to the Christian life. The very next thing Joshua does is not go somewhere else; he stays at the place where he lost and retakes the ground. In other words, God’s first priority is to take back that which Satan has removed; it is not God’s will if Satan has taken ground for you to worry about some problem over here or some problem over there, you concentrate right here and don’t let that go any further and bump them off. That is the area that has to be dealt with. So immediately when we come to chapter 8 we find Joshua being led of the Lord, back to his original problem; the problem is not avoided, he comes right back to it. And it has to be dealt with.

8:1, “And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed. Take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai,” and with this we have to see the fact that again the book of Joshua is a book of history written from the divine viewpoint by prophets of God. Their objective is to show that God will act in history according to His words. If God has promised He will act and it’s a recording of this acting out of His Word so that God’s claims will be validated in space/ time history. This applies to us in our Christian life because we, from the time we accept Christ until the time we die, from the time we become a Christian, all the way over until the time we die, all this interval of time is a time interval when we are recording history; history being your experience, your Christian life. And your history, your personal history becomes just as important to see whether God’s promises validate in space/time history as this history here. God promised them certain victories and when they were not victorious it was due to their own sin. And if they didn’t have sin it was God’s obligation to give the victory, literally, no allegorical interpretation, literal! And so the promises that God has given you in your Christian life, the question is does your life verify His claims. Of course we would have to say as Christians they verify God’s claims in two ways: His cursing and blessing, and if we disobey, misery; if we obey, happiness, one or the other.

In Joshua 8 we come to this crisis point and notice from verse 1-17 we have reestablished for us the cycle of the prophetic historian. I want to remind you of that cycle, the way this man is writing history, or whoever wrote Joshua, you have the Lord, chain of command to Joshua; chain of command to the people. And it’s always in that cycle; and you notice, all the book has been written that way until one chapter. In chapter 7 the cycle was broken and the historian was trying to tell you they did not consult the Lord. Now in verse 1 we have it reestablished, “the LORD said,” it continues to verse 3 when it says “Joshua arose,” and then the people fought, and it’s kind of mixed up there, Joshua and the people together down to verse 17. So if you think of this whole text of Scripture as one block you’ll again have the cycle established. The Lord says, Joshua tells the people, the people do it; the cycle is reestablished.

Now in verse 1 a very strange thing is stated. “And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed.” That is a recurrent phrase from Joshua 1 and is a signal that they are back in fellowship with the Lord. Why? Because in chapter 7:27 it says the “the LORD turned from the fierceness of His anger” over the Achan incident. They solved the problem and now they are going to reestablish the cycle and this is the signal here. He’s saying Joshua, you have no need to fear. And this tells you when you are in the bottom circle, if you are in the bottom circle in fellowship your conscience is on green, green light, and you have a deep inner confidence; if you are outside, red, your conscience is red. So the fear is a produce of this, so when He says “Fear not” it means that he is cleared in his conscience, he can move out in faith. If your conscience is on red you cannot walk by faith. If your conscience is a red light flashing on it’s an indicator light saying take care of it, take care of it, take care of it, take care of it. You’re not going to go one inch in the Christian life until you take care of this problem.

Then God promises, “arise, go up to Ai; see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land. [2] And thou shalt do to Ai and its king as thou did to Jericho and its king; except the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall you take for a prey unto yourself.” Now isn’t this ironic; there are several things to notice here. If Achan had just waited he could have had all the booty he wanted. The point was that when they were dealing with Jericho over here old Achan just couldn’t wait, he had to have his Babylonish wardrobe, etc. and some of the money he stole. But if he had just waited one more city he could have had it, lawfully he could have had it. And it shows you one of the problems we all have, impatience. God give it to me NOW, Your way, and give it to me anyhow if it’s not Your way. That’s the story of Achan. He wanted it and he wanted it now and He didn’t want to wait until God gave the clearance. And it’s ironic that God said look, the very next city you’re going to have this opportunity. So if Achan was alive at this point, which he isn’t, but had he been alive he could have had all the spoil he wanted to, he might have had the highest spoil [can’t understand words] business at the time; he could have had it, but he didn’t.

The other thing to notice about this and again this applies to the Christian life is the tactics of Ai differ from Jericho. There’s a shift in tactics and this should clue you that God’s leading is flexible; He will never lead you into the same situation, there will always be some one factor that’s different. And you never can go on how God led you in the past in a specific way; general the principle is true, but if God led you one way in one situation He is going to lead you in another way in another situation. You always, in other words, have to have fresh divine guidance; you can’t operate on yesterdays. Divine guidance gets stale and you have to upgrade it constantly.

And God is going to lead you in many different ways and God is flexible. Example: here if he is to use his entire fighting force to move in on Ai, for various reasons which we’ll get into, but this is one great difference, and it is to be taken by (quote) “natural” cause and effect, a completely natural maneuver, there’s no miraculous falling of the walls, there’s no miraculous suspension of anything like the sun that we’ll see in chapter 10, there’s no whatever in this, apparently. So it’s more of a natural thing. So here don’t be deceived; God in verses 1 and 2 decreed this, this is not Joshua saying something like this: well, God hasn’t promised me that He’s going to knock the walls of Ai down so I deduce from this that I’m supposed to go in here in a normal straightforward military fashion and take the city. That’s not what he’s saying. In both cases it’s God who gives the instructions—in BOTH cases. But the case is different so the instructions are different. So here in verses 1 and 2 we have the Lord’s address.

Now in verse 3-9 we have the activities of the first day of preparation. I’m going to go through these preparations because I want you to see the tactics. I think if you’ll leave this book having recalled what we’ve done with these cities and the tactics you’ll never be confused as a believer about employing secondary means to accomplish God’s plan. In verses 3-9 Joshua has a very, very clever military tactic called the envelopment. And from verses 3-9 he begins to lay the ground work for this military tactic. “So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai; and Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valor, and sent them away by night. [4] And he commanded them, saying, Behold, ye shall lie in wait against the city, even behind the city; go not very from the city, but be ye all ready. [5] And I, and all the people who are with me, will approach unto the city; and it shall come to pass, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them. [6] (For they will come out after us), till we have drawn them from the city; for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first. Therefore we will flee before them. [7] Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city; for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand. [8] And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire, according to the commandment of the LORD shall ye do. See, I have commanded you. [9] Joshua therefore sent them forth; and they went to lie in ambush, and abode between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai; but Joshua lodged that night among the people.”

He’s going to use an envelopment tactic. What he’s going to do is he’s going to drive a… he’s down here at Jericho, and he’s going to place a force of 30,000 men right in this position, west of Ai. This is [can’t understand words] corps. So let this be E-corps for the envelopment force; so you have 30,000 men, almost three divisions, west of Ai. Their job is to envelop, when the main force is going to come down from the north; the main force, which is equivalent to a whole army, 160,000 men and they’re going to move down from the north. They’re going to rapidly retreat and as they retreat the envelopment force comes in and destroys the city. So we have this normal, straightforward military strategy. Notice that God didn’t give him the details for the strategy as far as we can tell from verses 1-2. God told him to use all his men, and then it was up to Joshua to use his logic to deduce what tactic would be best. There’s nothing unsanctified or impious about using secondary means as long as you keep it within the divine viewpoint framework. And so Joshua picks this military tactic to use against the city; [that was] Joshua’s responsibility.

So the first day ends at nightfall when the 30,000 men apparently infiltrate around to the south of Ai because the north of Ai is a valley. And they either go through the valley up to the west or they go around to the south of Ai, anyway by the morning when the sun rises these 30,000 men have been placed west of the city. Now here’s a problem because Bethel and Ai are two cities. Bethel has sent forces down and they are also within the city; there is a vast number, thousands and thousands of fighting men inside the city. The Canaanites have, very foolishly, chosen to fight fixed warfare. Joshua has chosen to fight field warfare; in other words, Joshua is the one that’s moving. Joshua chooses to be the one that moves; the Canaanites have very foolishly chosen to be the ones that fight from fixed fortifications, a very wrong tactic and this, of course, leads to their downfall.

So the envelopment corps, Corps E is now in position. And in verse 8 the instructions of this envelopment force are that when you see the main force retreat rapidly from the north, you come in from the west, and when you hit the city, “you shall set the city on fire, according to the commandment of the LORD shall ye do.” Now notice again, this is not the commandment of verses 1-2. Where do you get this commandment from? This is the commandment which I showed you last week and why we went through last week the mechanics of the covenant. He got this from Deuteronomy 20, that passage that deals with the strategy of holy war. So this again is an indicator that Joshua really did not sit down and the Lord said, well now Joshua, you’re going to take 30,000 men and you’re going to put them west of the city and Joshua, you’re going to bring the main force down from the north. The Lord didn’t do that! The Lord gave him a general plan and within the framework of the general plan Joshua used his brain, as a thinking individual unto the Lord, and figured out the details. That’s human creativity. Look at this way; if God told you to do every detail, EVERY detail, then your life is nothing but a legalistic following of dead instructions. There’s no art, there’s no creativity to your life.

The Christian life is a creative life, you are creating your historical record, and God is giving you guidelines in the New Testament but they are only guidelines and it’s up to you to apply those guidelines onto the Lord in your specific situation. That’s where creativity comes in; don’t expect God to be dictating every little detail. God did not tell Joshua how many men to put here and there; that was Joshua’s responsibility as a military commander, to use his moxy to do this. This is not getting away from the sovereignty of God; it’s simply saying that God respects the range of our choices, and He expects us to use creatively our minds. Don’t be frustrated, this should be a good example; don’t be frustrated when God doesn’t give you a plan that outlines what you’re to be doing every hour of the day from now until two years from now. God is not going to give you that kind of a plan; He is going to limit His guidance to general principles and He is giving you a whole canon of Scripture, and it’s up to you to apply this moment by moment. All right, this is what God has given to Joshua.

Now verses 10-13 the second day, and we come now to a second force. “Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai. [11] And all the people, even the people of war who were with him, went up, and drew near, and came before the city, and encamped on the north side of Ai. Now there was a valley between them and Ai.” Now here’s what’s happening. Just to the north there happens to be a valley; to the east there is also a valley. To the west he’s got his envelopment force, E Corps, 30,000 men. Now he comes down from the north; this force is estimated by commentators to be close to about 160,000 men, so he outnumbered the people about ten to one at this point. Why did he outnumber them ten to one? Because, one thing, and this gets back to why God operated this way, he had to prove to his people that they would be victorious and He had to overcome this mental attitude of defeat. In other words, this victory had to be a whopper; they had to clobber. In other words they had lost and when they took that ground they had to take it in a most forceful fashion, total victory, total annihilation of the enemy. This had to happen and on the second day this operated to restore the mental attitude of hope and victory in the people’s hearts.

So in verses 10-13 you have the second day and he takes a force of five thousand, in verse 12, and it looks like there’s confusion between verse 12 and this 30,000 force but there isn’t. In verse 12, “And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.” But this force is located, apparently, as best we can tell, down here across the valley because of the context in which it is mentioned, also west of the city. Here’s Ai, the force of 30,000 is over to the west, this is force E. To the north of this is a valley; Joshua’s main force is here, 160,000. Then he takes 5,000 men and he blocks the valley. That’s force B. He’s blocking the valley and their job is to stay in the valley. They’re not going to do anything through this whole operation except block. Why? Because there’s a valley on the east and high terrain on the north, and so what’s going to happen is he is going to move ahead, retreat, draw Ai down into the valley, this is all terrain, and he’ll draw them down into that valley and when they get down in the valley they’re just going to close in and clobber them. All of a sudden they are going to turn around and clobber, the blocking force is going keep them from escaping out of the valley, there’s a valley and a ravine down here, and this force is going to come in behind the city and burn the city while the rest of the men are down in the valley. So it’s all timed crucially.

So verses 1-17 should show you this: you have to retake lost ground. Joshua recognizes this immediately; the ground has been lost, it must be retaken and you can’t worry about some other problem in your life. You have to get the problem that’s under consideration straightened out first and then worry about the other ones. So now Joshua comes back to retake this ground.

Then in verse 18 and following we have another story and this gets into the mechanics of taking back the ground; and here the mechanics are a repeat performance of the staff problem. Let’s look at it briefly. “And the LORD said unto Joshua,” see, here’s your cycle, “the LORD said,” and then the end of verse 18, Joshua did, and then the people. “And the LORD said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thine hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.” Now what kind of a ludicrous ridiculous thing is this? You sit here, there are about a hundred and some odd thousand men out there fighting and here’s a [can’t hear word] holding his javelin up in the air. What’s going on? Why does God insist upon using these, what appear to be, ridiculous… ridiculous things? And if he had not extended the spear they wouldn’t have won.

Let me show you something, turn back to Exodus 14:16, what’s happening here. You’ve got the Exodus situation, you’ve got the army crossing the Red Sea and what does Moses do, “Lift up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it,” now Moses is not an uneducated person and he knows that the rod isn’t going to divide the sea, but he’s asked by God to hold the rod up, point it towards the Red Sea, and the Red Sea divides. Turn to Exodus 17:11, the problem when they dealt with Amalek. “And it came to pass that when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. [12] But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat there” and he held this rod hour after hour after hour he held this rod. Now why?

I believe that God uses these means as He does consistently throughout Scripture of having men apparently use an indirect cause/effect because of the invisible spiritual warfare that’s going on. In other words, what he is trying to say is hold your rod up and I’ll do it. There is not a direct link between the rod and what’s happening out there. And this is a lesson taught over and over again in God’s Word. The tactics that we use do not directly produce the results. The rod didn’t divide the Red Sea, and the rod here in Joshua 8 does nothing directly to do with the soldiers that are fighting down in the valley. Why is this? I believe it is because God wants us to see that there is a chain, there’s our works, there’s God and there are the results. But our works do not accomplish the results. Our works are directly in obedience toward God and God gives the results. And this is why God has all the key leadership of the Old Testament do something that is obviously teaching indirect cause/effect, to show them over and over and over and over again that your works do not produce those results. Your works are a pattern of obedience to God and it is God, not you, who produces the results. And this is a lesson which is taught over and over. The rods are not magic sticks; keep this in mind because a lot of people think this, these rods are magic sticks that did this. That’s not the lesson at all! The rods are there to deliberately destroy any information of a direct link.

Example: Christian work, you may do many things for the Lord but if you have the grace orientation in Scripture the result of your ministry and the results of your work in a person’s life will always be credited to the Lord. God accomplishes the results, not you. And this is the problem of Christians over and over again; they’ve got the triangle in the wrong place. The Christians who operate on works draw a line from their works to results and it’s absolutely wrong. God says you draw the line to Him and He draws the line back down to the results. So this is the problem of this eternal triangle; the word “triangle” here represents the connection between your works and your results, it’s God that stands between them.

Now let’s turn to Joshua 8. At the end of Joshua 8 we have another lesson that is a recurrent lesson in the Old Testament again and again and again. This section ends in verse 29, after slaughtering the inhabitants, after taking the spoil, after doing all these things, he does something peculiar, and at the end of verse 19, “And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide; and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcass down from the tree and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones,” and then notice the last note, “that remains until this day.” And here you have what I mentioned in the framework course and that is that there’s always an historical evidence for God’s work.

These are not sweet stories that are just told; they are stories that are told to explain something that’s there and observable. This is not a set of sweet Sunday School stories, oh isn’t that nice, dear Joshua went up to the walls of Ai, and dear Joshua did this and that. But rather at the very end of the incident the author of the Scripture says don’t think of this as a story; don’t think of this as just an idea, this isn’t that at all. And you can go there until this day, the author is saying to you go up to Ai and look at it, just go up to Ai, you’ve got empirical evidences that this is valid, just look at them. So he always links God’s work with the historical evidences. And you have seen this already in the book of Joshua, in Joshua 3 and 4 when they crossed the Jordan River, what was the issue there? What did they leave behind to preserve a historical memory? Twelve stones. What did they leave to preserve behind in Jericho? The wall, and they left the curse behind and anybody who broke that curse, his children would die. So there are all sorts of empirical evidences left behind to develop historical memory in Israel and link God’s actions to space/time history.

Now beginning in verse 30 we get into an entirely new section of this chapter and we do not have time to completely develop this so we’ll cut it short tonight because I don’t want to start this thing. This has to be handled as a unit, from verses 30-35, this is the covenant renewal and it’s very significant because this is the application of the entire book of Deuteronomy. All that we learned about Deuteronomy comes into force now in these next six verses. So I want to tie this together as a unit and I don’t want to lose you by splitting it, so we’ll cut it short tonight and next time we’ll discuss all six verses.