Joshua 21
Cursing Turning to Blessing – 10:15-27
Tonight we finish verses 15-27 and with this completion of this section
we end the detailed section on holy war of this book. From this point on in the rest of Joshua move
very rapidly; next week we’ll probably go through two chapters and them move
quite quickly through the rest of the book because the rest of the book has
detailed lists that have to do with property boundaries, etc. and these lists
have a spiritual principle that comes to us again in the fourth chapter of
Hebrews in the New Testament. We have,
therefore, to include this last part of Joshua but the details of how to wage
holy war are not covered again. In other
words, the first part of this book is a detailed summary which we kind of slugged
out verse by verse. Beginning next time
we’ll deal with the overview of the rest of the book because this shows the
accomplishments of using the tactics of the first part of the book. So tonight we finish verses 15-27 and we come
to an end stage actually, in this portion of the Old Testament.
We have been working with chapter 10, beginning with verse 1 we have the
Gibeonite incident or the result of the Gibeonite incident. The problem with this Gibeonite incident, you
will recall, is that it mirrors for us as believers today the problem of
satanic deception. This is a classic
passage in the Old Testament, in that Joshua, in possession of the known will
of God, failed in knowing the will of God, because he used his intellect
divorced from his conscience. And he used what we call the verification tests
the wrong way. These tests, the
empirical test, checking whether it fits the data and the logic test, testing
whether it’s self-consistent, are both only to be used to show error but never
used to show truth. So therefore every
time you use your intellect divorced from conscience you reverse the proper
roles of these, what we call, verification tests, with the result that Satan is
able to deceive. And as he deceived
Joshua we find Joshua and the nation plunged into an unwanted war.
We also found that the Gibeonites are basically types of believers,
people who want to believe the gospel, who want to come to the gospel as though
they are not under the sentence of condemnation. The Gibeonites wanted to come into the
The last thing we learned from this section is that two wrongs don’t
make a right in that when a mistake is made, Joshua doesn’t make a second one
following it up. In other words, Joshua
made a very bad decision. He made a
decision to enter into an oath with people he had no business entering into an
oath with, it was a wrong leading, it was a violation of the will of God and it
was the wrong situation all the way around.
Yet, Joshua stuck it out. The
analogy for us as believers is you may have got yourself into a marriage that
you don’t want; you may have got yourself into a situation that you don’t want
where you’ve made some vow before God or some contraction agreement and it was
a bad decision and you had no business doing it, and after you did it you
recognized your wrong. The tactics of
Joshua would advise us here is to follow what he did and that is you trust the
Lord to work it out but you don’t break that thing even though it’s wrong. So Joshua refused to break the treaty, even
though that treaty was out of the will of God.
He had sworn it in God’s name and he would carry it out in God’s name
and God would reward his faithfulness, as we saw last time, by stopping the
sun.
Now beginning in verse 15 we have another area showing how God is
faithful to honor those who trust Him.
Joshua has gone through a very agonizing situation. He has made a bad decision; he has gotten
himself into something that we’ve gotten ourselves into in
So Joshua had a great fantastic answer to prayer, but we still find
ourselves involved in this combat situation.
Viewed diagrammatically it would be viewed this way: he has hit the
Gibeonites here and it’s a long struggle, it goes all the way down to a place
called Makkedah. So the battle begins at
I repeat, you may have gotten yourself into a jam by your own
foolishness, and yet God asks you to trust Him and if you begin to trust Him as
Joshua did here, He pulls you out of the jam and turns the very cursing back
around as a blessing. So out of this
tremendous cursing situation of getting in an unwanted war we have blessing;
not only is there perfect defeat but some very fantastic things are yet to
happen. The sun has stood still but
that’s just the beginning.
In verse 15, “And Joshua returned, and all
Now because of certain typology in this chapter, and by typology I mean
this: that in the Old Testament often times you will read these historical
narratives and if you’re sensitive spiritually you will see immediately that
these reflect a lot more than just that historical incident. They begin to set in motion analogies that
you begin to pick up in other portions of Scripture. And if you are thinking you will immediately
read this verse, verse 16, the “kings fled and hid themselves in a cave” and it
should call to your mind a famous passage in the New Testament where the kings
of the earth flee to the caves to hide from the wrath of God. Turn to Revelation 6:15, you’ll see where
this eventually will come about in history; evidently by the time of the
tribulation there are many bomb shelters built throughout the earth, perhaps
this may imply the threat had existed prior to this point of nuclear war; this
would be like the Air Force’s shelter in Cheyenne, Wyoming, etc. “And the kings of the earth, and the great
men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every
slave, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the
mountains. [16] And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us
from the face of Him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
[17] For the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”
I want you to notice that the kings of the earth in the future are going
to do exactly what these kings are doing in Joshua’s day; they are going to not
acquiesce in grace, accept God’s grace, they are going to defy God, even down
to the last second of judgment. And this
is a characteristic that you’ll find every time God begins to judge in history,
when God finally judges, 99.99% of the people defy Him to the last second
before they are judged. There is no
repentance and there’s no turning away, and this is why in the New Testament
the emphasis is always on “today” is the time to change your mind, do not wait
until the time that the wrath comes.
When the wrath comes it is already a signal that the volitions of men
have already hardened into a defiant configuration and because they have already
hardened, God’s wheels of judgment are already moving.
Now if you turn back to Joshua you’ll see that there are some more
typologies here but keep this Revelation example in mind so you can see that in
one way this is a type of what is to come, on a very small scale, yes, but this
is a type of what is to come. Verse 17,
“And it was told Joshua, saying, The five kings are found hidden in a cave at
Makkedah. [18] And Joshua said, Roll great stones upon the mouth of the cave,
and set men by it to guard them;” now why is Joshua taking this strange
tactic? It’s explained in verse 19, “And
stay ye not there, but pursue after your enemies, and smite the rear of
them. Permit them not to enter into
their cities; for the LORD your God has delivered them into your hand.” What Joshua is doing here is following the
military principle of war known as the principle of pursuit. Now you remember in Joshua 8 he did not
follow the principle of pursuit because God had a higher purpose for him, but
it is one of the classical rules of warfare that when you have engaged your
enemy and he is partially defeated you always try to follow up that defeat and
you try everything you can do.
For example, this is what the United Nations forces tried to do in Korea
when they broke the back of the North Korean resistance by the Inchon landing,
remember Douglas MacArthur made a brilliant, brilliant amphibious landing on
the east side of the peninsula of Korea and they broke the North Korean
strangle hold on all of Korea. These men
hit the beaches and completely cut off the North Korean support. Well, the North Koreans began to retreat and
rightly so the United Nations pushed northward very rapidly. Why?
To take advantage of the temporary break they had; when the enemy starts
to run you run after him because that is when he is most vulnerable. This is what Joshua is doing, he has the five
kings trapped in the cave so he asks them to seal the cave and move on and
that’s the point of verse 19, don’t stop, go after the soldiers that are not in
the caves, kill them, and then you can come back and take care of the
kings.
In verse 20, “And it came to pass, when Joshua and the children of
Israel had ceased slaying them with a very great slaughter, till they were
consumed, that the rest who remained of them entered into fenced [fortified]
cities.” That’s not “fenced,” it means
fortified cities and it says you’ve got a certain remnant survived in this
great catastrophe. Although the Lord had
rained His own artillery on the enemy from heaven, and although the sun stood
still for Joshua’s troops to do a maximum amount of work, verse 20 certainly
indicates that not all escaped. And
later on they would come back to plague the nations.
But in verse 21 we have one of those little notices that you would be
apt to read quickly and never tie this in to the overall concept. God is turning cursing into blessing. And in verse 21 one of these blessings is
mentioned. “And all the people returned
to the camp to Joshua at Makkedah in peace; none moved his tongue against any
of the children of Israel.” That is an
idiom that refers to the fact of the third great miracle in this entire
operation. The first miracle was the
stones from heaven; the second miracle was the sun standing still, and this is
the third one, zero casualties. This is
an idiom which means not one, not ONE of the army of Israel was even injured;
no wounded, no fatalities, zero casualties.
And this again shows you how God can turn cursing into blessing. Think of it; what Joshua feared as an
unwanted war, what the soldiers feared as an unnecessary battle, turned out to
be a complete [can’t understand word] with total victory. So here is an example of how God can turn
cursing into blessing.
Then verses 23-24 describe the various kings and they are listed for us
for future reference. Notice all five of
the kings are killed or walled up anyway, and later four of the five cities are
destroyed; the one city that is not destroyed is the city of Jerusalem, saved
by the way, for 400 years for David to take over. In verse 24 Joshua is going to do a very
strange thing and this shows you one of the, I think shows you the brilliance
of this man. Joshua is a man who
understood how other men think. He
understood that after he died there would be men who would not have the
fortitude that he had and so he is going to do a very unusual thing.
In verse 24 we read, “And it came to pass, when they brought out those
kings unto Joshua,” they went into the caves, broke the seal and went into the
caves and got these five kings. Joshua
“called for all of the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of
war who went with him,” these are the general staff, the “captains of the men
of war” is a term which refers to his top general staff. So he picks out his general staff and says
something to them, “Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they came near and put their feet upon
the necks of them. [25] And Joshua said unto them, Fear not, nor be dismayed,
be strong and of good courage; for thus shall the LORD do to all your enemies
against whom ye fight. [26] And afterward Joshua smote them, and slew them, and
hanged them on five trees; and they were hanging upon the trees until the
evening.”
Now what is Joshua doing here, having his general staff come along, here
are the five kings, evidently he’s made them bow down to the ground and each
one of the general staff is to come up and put their foot right on this guy’s
neck, on the back of it. Now why does he
go through this ceremony, for that’s what this is; it’s an actual military
ceremony of the general staff parading before and putting their feet down upon
the necks of these men. It is to connect
in two ways our thinking with the great struggle we all face. First, it is to teach these commanders that
in their generation the promise of God’s victory is just as valid as it would
be in Joshua’s day. In other words, the
promise will not diminish in force, and they have had empirical evidence that
God is faithful to His promise to obtain victory.
But there’s something greater than just this. Remember I began tonight by taking us to Rev.
6 and I said you’ve got to watch these passages because they have what we call
typology or they have analogies built in them that mirror something that’s
going to happen or has happened. In
other words, there’s a greater meaning here than just what appears on the
surface. If you hold the place and turn
back to Gen. 3, we have back in Gen. 3 the first mention of the gospel of Jesus
Christ in the Garden of Eden. Remember
in Gen. 3:15 God promised the serpent, who was Satan incarnate, “I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall
bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel.” Notice that last part of verse 15, “he,” the
seed of the woman, is going to bruise or wound Satan’s head and Satan is going
to wound His heel. Now watch it; head and
heel, notice what’s happening. The picture is that Christ is going to come and
He’s going to put His foot down on Satan, and in the process he’s going to have
his foot bitten, which is the cross, but in the end He will crush Satan under
His feet.
Now turn to the New Testament to see how this theme is carried out, Rom.
16:20 where this promise is applied to believers. Again, part of the great angelic conflict
that extends down through history; the way to look at this on a time line would
be this way: here’s the death of Christ, the resurrection, the ascent and the
session at which time He sends the Holy Spirit, the Church Age begins at
Pentecost. Down through here, Pentecost
until the rapture, when the Church is completed, Christ takes us to heaven to
be with Himself, we have the tribulation and then the millennium. But during this time, beginning with the
resurrection we have Christ in the final stages of history. This is why you often hear it stated in
Scripture these are the latter days and you say well, the latter days never
seem to get here. Why is it that the
whole Church Age is called the latter days?
It is because these latter days are the last days of history. In other words, all the issues of history
have been decided except one.
For example, we can go back to Plato and the Greeks and we can see how
all the philosophical issues were basically laid forth before Christ came. That’s why in Galatians it says He came in
the fullness of time; God waited, as it were, for men to get all their
philosophical problems laid out on the table to realize that they did not, on the
basis of no revelation from God, on the basis of a vacuum of Revelation, could
not have answers to these great problems.
Those issues have all been resolved; the one issue that has not been
resolved yet in history is what do you do with the forces of evil that operate
behind history. In other words, if you
are to look at history from the standpoint of the Bible, what you see in your
history books, what you read in your newspapers is only the surface; it’s like
an ice berg, nine-tenths of it is underwater and you do not see the dark forces
that are operating in history, but the Bible testifies that behind war, behind
even peace, behind the great national movements today, you will find the
movement of angelic beings. And when
Arnold comes here for the prophetic conference you’ll see how it operates in
Israel. We see today, for example,
strange things, things that can’t be attributed just to men’s ingenuity. How can you attribute just to man’s ingenuity
the high success of the Israeli Air Force in catching all the Egyptian planes
on the ground? Is that just purposed so
that when the Israeli air craft came in they were able not just to shoot the
planes that had the Egyptian pilots in it and not the dummies? Was it just the
timing, just precisely due to human skill?
Is it just an accident that Nasser who happens to be one of the great
personages opposing Israel today happens to drop dead at a very crucial moment
and the United Arab Republic begins to fold? Is this just an accident? No, the Bible would say that there are these
forces that are operating to bring about God’s prophetic picture for
history.
Now, in Romans 16 Paul deals with these powers of darkness and this is
why he says this strange thing to the Roman church, “And the God of peace shall
bruise Satan under your feet shortly.”
The same imagery that you pick up in Genesis, that we see in Joshua, now
we see in Romans. Turn to 1 Cor. 15:25,
again another picture of this angelic conflict that goes on. Notice what it says of Jesus Christ, “For He
must reign,” until a certain point of history, “till He has put all enemies
under His feet. [26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.]” Verse 27, “For He hat put all things under
his feet. But when He said all things
are put under Him, it is clear that He is excepted who did put all things under
Him. [28] And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son
also Himself be subject unto” the Father, and He will turn him over to the
Father, that’s the eternal state. So the
point here is that there’s a common theme that runs.
I want to take you to one more passage in the New Testament that shows
you that Christ has already attained victory over the powers of darkness. Col 2:15, “And having spoiled principalities
and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” Here we have a situation where it’s quite
obvious that these demonic forces operate and that Christ has already obtained
the victory. Jesus Christ has secured a
victory that is real over these powers of darkness. Talk to some of the missionaries that have to
operate in the darkness of these tribes where the demonic powers have
completely obtained control over these areas.
I was talking with one recently and he said the one thing that seems to
convince these people and make them take notice immediately when the Christians
walk into the tribe is that the Christian, of all the people that come, only
the Christian can walk into the tribe and not be afraid of the demons, and it
floors them how people can walk into the tribe and not be afraid of the
demons. Now we have certain smug
Americans who disbelieve this. Actually you know less about the nature of the
universe than the tribes in Africa. They
know more about what’s really going on in history than you do because you have
what is called philosophically a reductionist view of reality where you have
reduced all reality to material forces.
And reductionism is a pretty bad situation as far as logic is concerned.
So Col. 2:15 has taken on in our time a tremendous importance and it is
an adumbration of this very same thing Joshua is trying to get the believers to
see in his day. Go to Deut. 18 for I
want to tie this together in a more tight fashion, that what’s at issue with
the kings is not the kings; the issue is what is behind the kings. It’s not just five kings with their heads in
the dirt and the general staff comes along and walks on them; that’s not just
the issue. There’s something operating
behind these five kings and that’s in Deut. 18:9. God warns that they, Israel, should not go
“after the abominations of those nations,” and these nations refer to the
nations of the five kings. And in verse
10-11 spiritism is described, which I must say, sadly, is coming back into
America. Spiritism is on the rise in
this country where people think it’s cute to play around with these things, and
yet we know from years and years of research in Europe that where people fool
with this kind of demonic power, within 20 or 30 years you have set in motion
tremendous neuroses in the minds of people, tremendous psychic disturbances are
created by people who play with spiritism.
So our generation is just asking for trouble. But in verse 12, “all they that do these
things are an abomination unto the LORD; and because of these abominations the
LORD thy God does drive them out from before thee.”
Now this verse, verse 12, tells you what it is that is behind these five
kings. It is not simply a case of five
kings; these five kings have sold themselves and prostituted themselves to
these demonic forces of darkness. And so
when we come to Joshua 10 we find Joshua trying desperately to make the men
see, look, you don’t have to be afraid of this, put your feet on the neck, and
what he is doing is drilling home a lesson.
The general staff in years to come will have many crises to face, they
will have many times of pressure and adversity and in those times of pressure
and adversity when everything is falling apart they should recall in their
minds, well I remember that time when Joshua had those kings down in the dirt
and we put our feet on their neck. It
was the way, in other words, that Joshua had of drilling home to them that God
would give them the victory.
Then he does a strange thing, a small thing here, but there’s a
tremendous lesson at the end of verse 26-27.
He hung them on five trees until evening; that is the time when the sun
finally came down. The Jewish Talmud
tells us that this day was 18 hours longer than the normal day, but whatever it
was, finally the sun did go down, or I might say the earth revolved. Now there’s one other trite criticism; I
forgot to deal with this last week, let me just make a little footnote
here. Oftentimes people criticize Joshua
for saying, “Sun, stand still.” They say
see, don’t these people believe in a geocentric theory of the universe, aren’t
they [can’t understand word], don’t they believe that the sun rotates, see,
here’s proof that the people in the Bible [can’t understand word/s] “sun, stand
still.” Now is this really proof that
they believe in a theocentric universe.
Not necessarily, because how often do you use the word “sunrise” and
“sunset.” See it’s a normal phenomenal
language; I have never yet… maybe you have, but I have never yet heard anybody
say it’s getting dark because the earth is rotating out of the sun. Have you heard someone say that
recently? No, it’s not the way people in
20th century America talk.
And if someone were to tape record you and write it, for a thousand
years later if the Lord tarries, and someone would say why, those stupid
people, back in 1971 they believed in the geocentric theory of the universe
because they said the sun rose and the sun set.
So this is really a nonsense criticism of Joshua 10.
Verse 27, the sun goes down, and then when it does, “Joshua commanded,
and they took them down from the trees, and cast them into the cave in which
they had hidden, and laid great stones in the cave’s mouth.” Now what I want you to do is go back to
Joshua 8:29 and notice something there.
Notice what he did to the king of Ai.
“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 carcass
down.” Why is this? What is going on here? We have the answer in Deut. 21, going back to
the Mosaic Law again. We have to keep
going back here because this is the control over [can’t understand word]
history. I wish we had some control over
a few other people.
Deut. 21, this chapter is made up of two parts; verses 1-9 and verses
22-23. There’s a parenthesis, verses
10-21 which we won’t deal with but verses 1-9 and 22-23 are the reason why
Joshua behaved in this queer fashion.
And I’m building you for something because this is going to illuminate a
certain phrase in the New Testament that has why Christ hung on the cross when
He did and why Christ had to be taken off the cross when He did. So I’m developing a principle which we will
then use to illuminate the New Testament.
In Deuteronomy we have these laws of purity for the land; now all this
talk about ecology… by the way, ecology is a legitimate Christian…Christians
should be in the forefront of stewardship over the environment, but I want you
to notice that ecology in the Bible is a lot larger than just what you hear
about dumping garbage and detergent into the water, etc. There’s something else found here, a very
peculiar thing, something that at first glance it doesn’t seem to register. But there is an ecological pollution
mentioned in verses 1-9. “If one be
found slain in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee to possess, lying in
the field, and it be not known who has slain him, [2] Then the elders and the
judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round
about him that is slain; [3] And it shall be, that the city which is next unto
the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which has not
been worked, and which has not drawn a yoke; [4] And the elders of that city
shall bring down the heifer into the Wadi of continuous flow,” literally where
there will be a drainage of water.
They’ve got to do this ceremony where there’s a drainage of water. “…which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall
strike off the heifer’s neck there in the valley. [5] And the priests, the sons
of Levi, shall come near; for them the LORD thy God has chosen…” Verse 6, “And all the elders of that city,
that are next unto the slain man shall, shall wash their hands over the heifer
that is beheaded in the valley. [7] And they shall answer and say, Our hands
have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.” [8] This is a prayer
that’s issued, they hold their hands up, they’ve washed them, and they begin to
pray. “Be merciful, O Jehovah, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed,
and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them. [9] So
shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt
do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord.”
What they’re worried about here is actually polluting the land through
murder. Now isn’t it funny, I don’t hear
any of the ecologists bothering about a crackdown on murderers, and yet if we
are to have a consistent ecology from a Christian base, that which pollutes the
land in God’s eyes is murder. When was
the last time you heard about the courts, we haven’t even got enough judges and
prosecuting attorneys in the state of Texas to process crime. The crime in downtown Lubbock in the
courthouse those cases are running 2 and 3 years behind; I know, I just served
on a jury, we tried a person who had committed a crime Aug. 9, 1969. How is a policeman who arrested you two years
ago going to remember every little nitpicking detail? He doesn’t so some smart defense attorney
picks away at the cop, the guy can’t remember exactly what he did two years ago
and the guy gets off. That’s exactly the way it works. I did a little checking, I went down to the
district attorney’s office and said what is the story, why is it that we can’t
get the people who are committing crimes in the state of Texas to court? Why is
it that when the constitution insures us of a speedy and fair trial we can’t
have it? The answer was there is not
enough money in the state of Texas to pay for judges. We don’t have enough money to pay for a
judge; we don’t have enough money to pay for prosecuting attorneys. Yet strangely we have enough money to make
civic centers, nobody knows what’s going to go into them, etc. got money for
all of these things but when you come down to the basics, the fundamentals of
law and order from the Biblical point of view we don’t have enough money to pay
a judges salary and the result is that men are off. This should infuriate you as a Christian
citizen, yet how many Christian citizens do you see protest?
Now the last part of Deuteronomy gets into this area about the body
hanging on the trees. Verses 22-23,
again going along and developing the same theme of these first nine verses
about polluting the land through murder.
In verse 22, “If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be
put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, [23] His body shall not remain all
night upon the tree, but thou shalt surely bury him that day (for he who is
hanged is accursed by God), that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy
God giveth thee for an inheritance.” In
other words, again the theme that a body hanging on a tree was the sign of a
man who had received the judgment of God.
Let’s put it in more gruesome terms.
Today it would be as though we had a public execution in downtown
Lubbock where a man who was convicted of murder was publicly executed and his
body hung on the Pioneer Building or something.
We’d have this person hanging there and his body would have to hang on
that building all the way till sundown and then he would have to be removed
because that body would typify the wrath of God on that man; to leave the body
there would then begin to generate the impression that God had put wrath upon
the entire land.
Now let’s come over to the New Testament and we’ll see how this is
applied to Jesus Christ. I can’t resist
this particular side point when we go through Joshua because this has a
tremendous lesson in illuminating the cross of Christ. Gal. 3:13, Keep in mind the law that I just
showed you, keep in mind what it was for, and keep in mind particularly what
the body means, the display of that body means there we have empirical evidence
of the wrath of God. Now in Gal. 3:13,
“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us;
for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” Now do you see what it means? This surely teaches that Christ has become
guilty for us. You have the substitutionary
atonement in this one verse if you understand the Old Testament and when it
says that Christ hung on a tree and He was cursed for you and for me, it means
that Jesus Christ personally took your sins upon Him and he experienced the
wrath of God.
That’s what it means, sins plus the wrath of God. Jesus Christ, the innocent man, became
guilty. I don’t know, it’s hard for some
Christians to see this, they say oh, yeah, I believe Christ died for sins, but
I find what Christians have a hard time seeing is that the innocent Savior
actually in God’s sight became sin on the cross. This is why Christ prayed, “Father, if this
cup can pass from Me, let it pass from Me.”
He did not want to come in contact with Sin. Christ was made one big mass of sin on the
cross; he was sin condemned into one person, and this is why in the New
Testament Gospel narratives you have the strange phenomenon that happens on
Good Friday or Good Wednesday, whichever day you want, where the darkness comes
and nobody can see the cross. It’s a
strange supernatural darkness that descends; it is as though Christ becomes so
horrible in bearing the sins of the world that God throws a blanket over it so
no man can see what really happened on that cross.
So out of this, from this whole typology of the Old Testament you begin
to get appreciation on how the early Christians understood the cross. And by the way, one final sub point here on
how Christ died on the cross for our sins, can you see now why the gospel was a
stumbling block to Jewish people in that day.
Do you see now the problem the Christians had, because when they
proclaimed their Messiah, what did they have to proclaim? Our Messiah was hung on a tree and that, to
every law abiding Jew meant that Messiah, their Messiah, that Messiah, that
Jesus of Nazareth that you’re talking about, do you know what He was? He was a condemned criminal who experienced
the wrath of God. And this is one of the
great problems of the early Christian church, and this is why the early
Christian church emphasized the resurrection so strongly, because it was the
resurrection that neutralized the cross.
The early church did not have any crucifixes; the crucifix speaks of
death and the wrath of God. They didn’t
go around wearing crosses either. The early
church went around talking about the resurrection, not the cross. The cross is a sign of wrath, and if it were
just the cross, as I’ve often say when we have communion, recently I’ve been
saying communion doesn’t tell the complete story, but there has to be the
declaration of judgment and we sing the fact that He is risen again. Why do we do this? Because if you’re left with just the cross
you’re left with just that which is a curse in God’s sight. And you have to have something to neutralize
this, and so it didn’t stop with just the cross; it stopped with the
resurrection. That’s why the early Christians emphasized the resurrection and
they did not have crucifixes; the early Christians emphasized
resurrection.
Turn back to Joshua. What we’re going
to do in the closing moments is to summarize, since we have arrived at the end
of verse 27, we’ve arrived at the end of that section of Joshua which deals
with the details of holy war, I want very quickly to summarize eleven
principles of holy war that we have learned in this section of Joshua. It’ll be a time of review and summary. I might add, these are not theoretical, these
are not abstract. If you read the paper
this morning you saw where the sub finance committee is considering the
proposal, one of the most blasphemous proposals I’ve ever seen advocated at the
federal level, where they are proposing to have a President’s council on child
control; there are some people in this country that want a council with the
power to come into your home and tell you how you’re going to run your
children. They want the authority to
walk into your home and give your children birth control information, whether
you like it or not you can lump it, because they are going to do it anyway,
regardless of the age of your child. In
other words, we have from the federal level on down the breakdown and
interference into the third divine institutions. Those of you who know divine institutions realize
they are ordered: (1) volition, (2) marriage, (3) family, (4) national
government. You cannot make number 4
strong if numbers 1, 2, &3 are weak.
And you don’t strengthen the nation by weakening the family. You strengthen the nation by strengthening
the family and our government is doing everything they can to tear the family
apart.
This is why at Lubbock Bible Church one thing we’re going to have in the
future is we’re going to put the monkey back on the parent’s back and it’s
going to be the parents that are going to teach their children. Our Sunday School will be there to show the
parents how to teach their children but it will be up to the parents to do it
because I feel that when the church says we’ve got a Sunday School for your
children, you’re doing exactly the same thing we’re condemning the public
schools for, we’re taking your children away from you, when God has placed the
burden upon you to do it and you can do it far more effectively than any Sunday
School teacher can ever do it. It’s the
same with missions, in the future in Lubbock Bible Church in our missionary
program individual families will be giving to missionaries, the church will
give only a token amount to missionaries, the reason for this being because too
many people come out of denominations where they just throw the money in and
somebody back down in a bureaucracy some where cranks the money out to some
mission field and there’s no personal contact whatever. So what we plan to have the church give a
token amount and then have the missionary visit the families and the families
themselves will be giving to the missionary directly, not through the
church. In this way we established a
family centered operation in direct opposition to the trend of our
environment. We have got to fight this,
and this is one area where these eleven principles are going to come in
handy. You are going to have to resist
at all odds the breakdown of marriage and family under the power of the
government.
Now let’s review some of these principles we’ve learned in the book of
Joshua. I’ll just give you key verses,
eleven key sections of the book so that you can use these to summarize these
principles. Remember we’re in holy war,
God’s war, and these are these are principles of application.
The first principle we learn in Joshua 1:3, “Every place that the sole
of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto
Moses.” So the first principle we get in
holy war is that the war proceeds from a position of victory. In other words, by your position you already
have the victory; holy war is only actualizing the victory that you have
already been given by God. Application
to the church: in Jesus Christ there is no condemnation for you, if you are a
member of the body of Christ through personal faith in Christ right now you
personally have the potential victory for resisting sin and resisting the
powers of darkness; it is all yours potentially. And the struggle of your life as a believer
is to bring this out so it’s empirically demonstratable to people who are looking.
The second principle we find in Joshua 1:8, “This book of the law shall
not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night,
that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for
then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good
success.” The point here is that Joshua
is to meditate upon the book of the Law and remember this included Genesis
1-11; it meant, in other words, that Joshua had to have a knowledge of the
divine viewpoint framework. And this
included the whole doctrine of suffering, it included the doctrine of creation,
it included the whole framework in which he would treat every problem he
met. So the second principle of holy war
is that you must know the truth. You as
a believer should strive, personally in your own life so that whenever you meet
a situation in your life immediately when you begin to think of that situation,
part of the Word of God flows into your conscious mind. You should train yourself and not be satisfied
until you get to the position that you can face any crisis in your life and as
you begin to face that crisis the Word of God begins to flow in your mind and
you begin to know, well the Word of God says this about this, this about this,
and at least you know where to find the answers. So knowledge of the truth is an issue.
The third principle that we learn, Joshua 1:11, is the principle of
divine guidance. The principle here is
that God does not make your decisions for you, and you can sit there and say
oh, I yield to God, yield to God, and all the rest of it, and go passive, which
is only opening you up to demonic influence.
This is one of my peeves with certain deeper life conferences that go
around; they are striving to promote a passivity that is actually dangerous,
dangerous because… and this is not a blanket condemnation, there are very
excellent Bible teachers in this group, however, some of them that I have seen
while at seminary were absolutely ridiculous, people going around yielding to
Christ, yielding to Christ, and all the rest of it and what it meant was that
they wanted God to make their decisions for them.
Now divine guidance doesn’t work this way. You recall in verse 11 where Joshua is faced
with Jordan, and He said: “Pass through
the host and command the people, saying, Prepare food supplies; for within
three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land which
the LORD your God gives you to possess
it.” We have illustrated for us one of
the great things of divine guidance. You
start with the known, you move to the unknown.
The unknown was how to get across Jordan; the unknown was found by two
principles. That is, first you always
operate within the divine viewpoint framework; you reject every temptation at a
human solution. For example, I’ve
illustrated this, here may be a problem that you’re facing in your Christian
life and you come walking along at 90 mph and all of a sudden there’s a block
right in the road. So, many Christians
have the tendency, well, I know how to get around that, you just go around it
and move on and yet it turns out that to go around it would be getting out of
the Lord’s will. It would be
compromising. For example, you see
churches do this, they have budget problems and oh, no money, what are we going
to do, so they put on some high pressure campaign where they get all the men
cranked up to go get pledge cards and all the rest of the malarkey. All of this is human viewpoint. It is an attempt at bypassing God’s
solution.
So you come up to this point and you simply stop, that’s the rule of
divine guidance; when you have a block and you can’t move to the right or the
left without going out of the will of God, you just stop and you wait. That’s God’s will, and this is what Joshua
did here, he stopped and he waited, and he had the faith that if God wanted
them over the river, He’d get them over the river. He had no boats, no bridges, and they
couldn’t swim across. Therefore he
waited and the Lord graciously worked.
That’s called divine guidance at the critical point.
The fourth principle we learned is found in Joshua 2:9-11, with Rahab,
the prostitute. Notice interestingly,
the only woman, the only person who ever received Christ when they went into
Jericho was one lone prostitute, which should forever cut down any false images
you have of people. When God looks on the human heart He looks on that heart as
it’s responding to His grace. And this
prostitute recognized her need and she had just as much right to be saved as anybody
else, and later on, this woman becomes, from a prostitute to a princess, and
you recall how Rahab actually becomes one of the great great great great
grandmothers of Jesus Christ. So we have
in verses 9-11 what led her to Christ, so our fourth principle concerns
evangelism.
“And she said unto the men, I know that the LORD has given you the land,
and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the
land faint because of you. [10] For we have heard how the LORD dried up the
water of the Red Sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto
the two kings of the Amorites, who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon
and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. [11]
And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither rid
there remain any more courage in any man, because of you; for the LORD your
God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.”
The principle we get here is that evangelism results when the words and
works of God are clearly known and set forth.
This means more than just a bragimony, how Christ supposedly changed
your life. That’s good if it’s put in a
context of God’s words and works. And
when God’s works are made public, those people whom He has will respond. Rahab is an example; nobody went knocking on
doors in Jericho and yet this woman received Christ. How?
Because she responded to information that was made known. So the issue in evangelism is making clear
the works of God in history. I would
say, therefore, one application is we need more accurate evangelism. It may take longer but it will be a lot more
accurate.
The fifth principle is found in Joshua 3:4, 7, 10, and this concerns
faith. The fourth one concerned
evangelism; the fifth one concerns faith of the believer in chapter 3:4,
remember when they were going across Jordan, God said certain things, Joshua
commanded them. He said this, [4] “Yet
there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by
measure; come not near unto it, that you may
know the way by which you must go….”
Verse 7, “And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to
magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know, that I was with Moses I will be with you.” Verse 10, “And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among
you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you….” So the fifth principle is that faith, your
faith, will increase in direct proportion to your knowledge of the truth, the words
and the works of God. In other words,
the fourth principle deals with the non-Christian, he will be attracted to
Christ proportionately to the knowledge he knows about God’s Words and His
works, and your faith itself will grow in proportion to your knowledge about
the words and the works of God. If
you’re worried about your lack of faith the problem is basically that you have
a lack of exposure to what God has done, beside the personal problem of
course.
The sixth principle, Joshua 4:6-7, the sixth principle in holy war that
we have learned is, remember, in verses 6-7 they crossed Jordan and when they
crossed Jordan they left behind memorial stones. “That this may be a sign among you, that when
your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these
stones? [7] Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of the Jordan were cut
off before the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD: when it passed over the Jordan,
the waters of the Jordan were cut off.
And these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever.” With this we have a crucial thing in holy war
that is amplified in Romans 6 and that is to do the Lord’s work requires a
point which you pass from death to life; it requires, as Romans 6 says, you die
with Christ and you rise with Him, in other words, you become a believer, you
become a new creation in Him. This
nation became a new nation because they went down into what was the valley of
death, and when they got out on the west side of Jordan they were essentially a
new transformed nation. And notice too
that not only was there a point of actual transition when this nation passed
from its old status to its new status, and when you become a believer you die
with Christ, you rise with Him, not only is there a point in time but notice
there is a memorial to that point in time, to develop and cultivate a
historical memory. What is the memorial
of your death and resurrection with Christ?
It’s obviously water baptism, so water baptism becomes important, it
becomes the memorialization of something that has been transacted between you
and the Lord.
The seventh principle is found in Joshua 5:4-9, the seventh principle
means that we have to apply this transition moment by moment. “And this is the reason why Joshua did
circumcise: all the people who came out of Egypt, who were males,” etc., you
recall that, the circumcision. He had
his entire army circumcised, which again was a parallel to the sixth principle
and illustrated the fact that he had to appropriate this moment the resources
that God had given him as a new nation. In other words, God had positionally
made them a new nation crossing Jordan but there actually had to be a personal
appropriation of this before they went into battle. So similarly before you or are effective in a
holy war as a believer there must be a personal appropriation by you of the
assets we have in the resurrected Christ.
In other words, you must make your position come into your experience by
faith; you must appropriate by faith the results of your position and that’s
analogous here to circumcision.
The eighth principle is found in 5:13-15, this is when Joshua met Jesus
Christ in His preincarnate form. “And it
came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and
looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him” and you recall that
passage. You recall how he met Christ in
a most fantastic way. Joshua, the old
soldier, standing outside of the camp, evidently he was on a reconnaissance;
this man would never send his troops into a position where he himself first had
not gone, so one night, apparently when everybody else was sacked out, Joshua
said I’m going to take a walk and I’m going to go up to that city and we’re
going to find out what Jericho really looks like. So he took a walk and he was on this walk and
this man appeared in the path with a sword drawn and he said whose side are you
on, mine or theirs. And it turns out it
was the Lord in His preincarnate form, a fantastic meeting place between Joshua
and Jesus Christ.
So this eighth principle teaches us that the battle is the Lord’s. In other words, Jesus Christ is the one who
is doing the battle, not you. He doesn’t
ask you to conduct your battle and He’s going to help you with your battle;
it’s rather the fact that He asks you to submit to Him and let Him fight His
battle through your life. The battle or
the holy war of the Christian faith is not his own, it is Christ’s battle.
The ninth principle, turn back to 3:4, the principle and then we’ll see
it illustrated, it follows pretty closely from the eighth principle, and that
is that spiritual battles involve spiritual weapons. Remember in Joshua 3:4 that famous phrase,
“come not near to the ark that you may know the way by which you must go.” What is that verse talking about? It’s not talking about that you need a road
map, get your road map and find out how to get into the land. That’s not what it’s talking about. It’s talking about the manner in which you
go; they had not been that way before.
In other words, they had not yet been involved in spiritual battle and
they had to learn to rely on the Lord.
Let’s get a few vivid pictures of this.
Joshua 6:2-5, what happened then?
The walls of Jericho. Remember
what the Lord said in 6:2-5 to illustrate this ninth principle. [And the LORD said not Joshua, See, I have
given into thine hand Jericho, and its king, and the mighty men of valor. [3]
And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city
once. Thus shalt thou do six days,”
etc.]
Remember He had them walk around the walls, now walking around a cement
wall is never going to do any damage to it; even talking to it is not going to
do any damage to it, even yelling at it is not going to do any damage to
it. Why do you suppose God had them
almost make asses out of themselves by doing this ridiculous tactic of walking
around the walls and all of a sudden God would collapse the walls? Why do you suppose He had them do that? Turn to 8:18, same principle, spiritual
battle with spiritual weapons. Remember
at Ai, what did He ask Joshua to do?
“And the LORD said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thine
hand toward Ai;” now that really scares them, standing there with your spear
holding in midair, don’t do anything, don’t fight, don’t shoot at anybody, just
stand there holding it. That’s what he
did the whole battle, standing there holding his spear in mid air. […”for I will give it into thine hand. And
Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.”] In Joshua 10:11 and following all Joshua did
was ask for the sun to stop still, but he didn’t do it. Now what is the common thing that seems to
tie all these together? Don’t you see? God had the men do something that could
never, never, never be used to explain cause and effect. Holding his spear up, you can never say well,
you know, we got a tremendous victory of the soldiers because I held my spear
up; all during the war I sat there and held my spear up. See, no cause/effect. Why did God do this? To show that He was the One who was
responsible for the defeat, not them. So
He had them do some ridiculous thing to divide the cause/effect up so that he
would be in that chain of cause and effect.
So this is the lesson we learn, the ninth principle, that spiritual
battles always involve spiritual weapons.
And one of your great spiritual weapons as a believer is prayer. Prayer is the great spiritual weapon that we
have as believers.
The tenth principle, Joshua 7, and that is the failure due to sin.
Remember they tried to go to Ai and completely blew it. They had them outnumbered, but they still
blew it. Why? Sin. And so the tenth
principle we learn about holy war is that when you are out of the bottom
circle, when you are out of fellowship, when you are a Christian Christ puts
you in union with Himself and here you have this bottom circle of fellowship,
and when you are out of fellowship you are useless in holy war and you will
always experience defeat. Always! So when we’re out of fellowship defeat and
that’s the message of Joshua 7.
Finally, the eleventh principle that we have learned from this book is
in Joshua 8, 9 and 10 which we have just summarized, and that is that nor can
you be victorious when you allow yourself to be deceived by Satan, and when he
misguides you and you allow yourself to make stupid decisions because of
satanic blindness you’re never going to be a soldier either. And Joshua wasn’t and he had to recover from
deception first.
With our heads bowed.