“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: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land”—Because, as we saw in chapter seven, the accursed thing had been blotted out of Israel, and God is once more with His people. We are cast down, but not destroyed. Once we are back on firm footing again, once we have sorted out false teaching from true and repudiated the false we are once again ready for battle and ready to receive more of the inheritance. But because we have been overcome previously by the enemy now facing us, we must resort to different tactics to win the battle, we must adopt a new strategy. And God tells Joshua, “Lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.” We may be harmless as doves, but we will also be cunning as serpents. And this time Joshua will take all the people to war with him, we will employ all our strength against Ai lest we lose the battle a second time. In chapter four we note that there were about forty thousand men prepared for battle, and now we see that Joshua sends thirty thousand to lie in wait in ambush behind the city of Ai to the north, and then he also prepares a smaller ambush of five thousand to the west of the city, between Bethel and Ai, leaving only the remainder to openly face the enemy. Now all the people of Ai were only twelve thousand, and Joshua plans to draw them after him as he falls back from their attacks, leaving their city open and undefended for the main thrust of Joshua’s forces kept hidden up to that point.
And this we will do, if God permit. The forces against us are the Amorites of Ai, that is, our own human desires for peace in our lives and love from all those about us. Why must we destroy them, these human desires for peace and love? In order to gain more of our inheritance. Jesus has taught us that if a man love father or mother, brother or sister, wife or children more than Him then that man is not worthy of Him. We are taught to destroy our very natural desires for pace at any price and love at all costs—to deny ourselves—in order to gain more of what God has in store for us. These would hold us back, keep us from our full inheritance, retard our progress, and overcome our spiritual desires, as some of us already know. They must be totally overthrown if we are to follow our great Overcomer into the promised land, even Jesus our Lord and Master. Had the children not been caught up in the false teaching concerning the resurrection, the accursed thing out of Jericho, they would have by now overcome these Amorites through simple godliness, with “three thousand men.” But having been snared into doubting, and that by false teachers, the Amorites have been strengthened and the tide of battle changed. Therefore we are shown that in order to accomplish what was earlier an easy task we must now be vary careful, we must see all the forces at our disposal, we must use craftiness to win this battle ahead of us. The way we are shown to do it is to lure our human desires away from their stronghold, to bring them out into the open, and then to destroy their stronghold, using the greater part of our strength to accomplish that objective.
Once we have been cast down at any point it is not enough to go on again in simple godliness. We must then plan our conduct so that we can bring our warrior strength to bear in the most telling way possible. Jesus will show us how to do it if we fix our eyes on Him, and pay attention to Him alone. He will direct us. He will direct the assault on Ai, an assault deliberately aimed at overcoming these Amorites. He will position us in such a way that the next time our desires for peace-at-any-price and love-at-all-costs come out from their city against us we will fall back from before them. Then He will rally our strength in God and with righteous indignation we will burn forever the city of these Amorites and we will fall upon these desires which are then openly exposed to us and exterminate them once and for all. Only the spoil of the city will remain to us—we will have greater peace and love in our lives than ever before as the inheritance once more opens up before us. We can safely leave the plan and the details of the working out of this matter in the hands of our Lord Jesus. He is subject to God; we need only be subject to Him. He is taught of God, we are taught of Jesus. He has already overcome all His foes, and in Him we too will overcome all our foes. Only fear not, neither be dismayed, everything is in His hands, and our part is to burn with righteous indignation and to bring the sword of the Spirit into play at the appropriate moment. Thus we will destroy forever our desires for peace-at-any-price, and with His help we will overcome our innermost desire for love-at-all-costs, so that we might have His peace and the love of God with us.
Let us look for a moment at the life of Christ. At the age of twelve He is found in the temple in Jerusalem, while for three days of distracted care Mary and Joseph seek Him, sorrowing. Where then were His natural desires for peace in the family, for love of human relationships at all costs? Does He apologize? No, He demands to know how it was that they needed to search for Him! Did they not yet understand He must be about His Father’s business? Or again, for His first public sermon in the synagogue, He told the people such a truth that they could not endure it, but took Him out in a headlong rush to throw Him over the brow of a hill. Did He seek peace at any price, or love at all costs there? Listen to Him in the Pharisee’s house answering the scribes and the lawyers. Whited sepulchures, He calls them, hypocrites, blind leaders of the blind. And He was a guest in that house that day! Where in His life do we find a desire for peace at any price? Where in His ministry do we find Him succumbing to His natural desires for love at all costs? They crucified Him because He fought and won every battle for the truth, because they hated Him. And if we go on to the apostles, we find Peter charging the leaders of Israel with the murder of the Lord of Glory, we find Paul turning the world upside down, creating turmoil and animosity wherever he went. But Christ is the Prince of Peace, and it was the apostles who preached the gospel of peace. Christians are not rebels or revolutionaries or violent men—they are preachers of peace who have conquered through Jesus Christ their own natural desires for peace at any price and love at all costs, in order to bring peace and the love of God into a troubled world.
There is in our chapter a picture we would do well to dwell on. “And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raised thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day.” If we are not sure of any point of scripture the Holy Spirit will direct us always to fasten our eyes upon Jesus. If we are ever in any perplexity God turns our eyes back to Calvary. And so here, it is when we see the King of peace and love taken and hanged on a tree, it is when we look at the Cross of Christ in a new light, that we realize that this is indeed the way that Jesus came and we are following in His footsteps. “He that cometh after Me,” said Jesus, “let him take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Then we find another truth here also, that Joshua reiterates and upholds all the law of God given to Moses. We are not under law, but Jesus will guide us lawfully nevertheless. We are not under law, but we see it was at Calvary Christ endured that hill of cursing that all the blessings might come upon us. We not under law, but we understand that not one word spoken by Christ will ever pass away, and His last words before He turned Himself over to God were, “It is finished.” Jesus is our great Overcomer, He who overcame death itself that we might have life. We need to know that it was for our sakes that Jesus voluntarily and of Himself hanged the Prince of peace on a tree outside the gate of the city of peace. “No man taketh My life from me,” He cried, “but I lay it down of Myself.”
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Joshua Chapter 8
December 16, 2010 — Ron“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: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land”—Because, as we saw in chapter seven, the accursed thing had been blotted out of Israel, and God is once more with His people. We are cast down, but not destroyed. Once we are back on firm footing again, once we have sorted out false teaching from true and repudiated the false we are once again ready for battle and ready to receive more of the inheritance. But because we have been overcome previously by the enemy now facing us, we must resort to different tactics to win the battle, we must adopt a new strategy. And God tells Joshua, “Lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.” We may be harmless as doves, but we will also be cunning as serpents. And this time Joshua will take all the people to war with him, we will employ all our strength against Ai lest we lose the battle a second time. In chapter four we note that there were about forty thousand men prepared for battle, and now we see that Joshua sends thirty thousand to lie in wait in ambush behind the city of Ai to the north, and then he also prepares a smaller ambush of five thousand to the west of the city, between Bethel and Ai, leaving only the remainder to openly face the enemy. Now all the people of Ai were only twelve thousand, and Joshua plans to draw them after him as he falls back from their attacks, leaving their city open and undefended for the main thrust of Joshua’s forces kept hidden up to that point.
And this we will do, if God permit. The forces against us are the Amorites of Ai, that is, our own human desires for peace in our lives and love from all those about us. Why must we destroy them, these human desires for peace and love? In order to gain more of our inheritance. Jesus has taught us that if a man love father or mother, brother or sister, wife or children more than Him then that man is not worthy of Him. We are taught to destroy our very natural desires for pace at any price and love at all costs—to deny ourselves—in order to gain more of what God has in store for us. These would hold us back, keep us from our full inheritance, retard our progress, and overcome our spiritual desires, as some of us already know. They must be totally overthrown if we are to follow our great Overcomer into the promised land, even Jesus our Lord and Master. Had the children not been caught up in the false teaching concerning the resurrection, the accursed thing out of Jericho, they would have by now overcome these Amorites through simple godliness, with “three thousand men.” But having been snared into doubting, and that by false teachers, the Amorites have been strengthened and the tide of battle changed. Therefore we are shown that in order to accomplish what was earlier an easy task we must now be vary careful, we must see all the forces at our disposal, we must use craftiness to win this battle ahead of us. The way we are shown to do it is to lure our human desires away from their stronghold, to bring them out into the open, and then to destroy their stronghold, using the greater part of our strength to accomplish that objective.
Once we have been cast down at any point it is not enough to go on again in simple godliness. We must then plan our conduct so that we can bring our warrior strength to bear in the most telling way possible. Jesus will show us how to do it if we fix our eyes on Him, and pay attention to Him alone. He will direct us. He will direct the assault on Ai, an assault deliberately aimed at overcoming these Amorites. He will position us in such a way that the next time our desires for peace-at-any-price and love-at-all-costs come out from their city against us we will fall back from before them. Then He will rally our strength in God and with righteous indignation we will burn forever the city of these Amorites and we will fall upon these desires which are then openly exposed to us and exterminate them once and for all. Only the spoil of the city will remain to us—we will have greater peace and love in our lives than ever before as the inheritance once more opens up before us. We can safely leave the plan and the details of the working out of this matter in the hands of our Lord Jesus. He is subject to God; we need only be subject to Him. He is taught of God, we are taught of Jesus. He has already overcome all His foes, and in Him we too will overcome all our foes. Only fear not, neither be dismayed, everything is in His hands, and our part is to burn with righteous indignation and to bring the sword of the Spirit into play at the appropriate moment. Thus we will destroy forever our desires for peace-at-any-price, and with His help we will overcome our innermost desire for love-at-all-costs, so that we might have His peace and the love of God with us.
Let us look for a moment at the life of Christ. At the age of twelve He is found in the temple in Jerusalem, while for three days of distracted care Mary and Joseph seek Him, sorrowing. Where then were His natural desires for peace in the family, for love of human relationships at all costs? Does He apologize? No, He demands to know how it was that they needed to search for Him! Did they not yet understand He must be about His Father’s business? Or again, for His first public sermon in the synagogue, He told the people such a truth that they could not endure it, but took Him out in a headlong rush to throw Him over the brow of a hill. Did He seek peace at any price, or love at all costs there? Listen to Him in the Pharisee’s house answering the scribes and the lawyers. Whited sepulchures, He calls them, hypocrites, blind leaders of the blind. And He was a guest in that house that day! Where in His life do we find a desire for peace at any price? Where in His ministry do we find Him succumbing to His natural desires for love at all costs? They crucified Him because He fought and won every battle for the truth, because they hated Him. And if we go on to the apostles, we find Peter charging the leaders of Israel with the murder of the Lord of Glory, we find Paul turning the world upside down, creating turmoil and animosity wherever he went. But Christ is the Prince of Peace, and it was the apostles who preached the gospel of peace. Christians are not rebels or revolutionaries or violent men—they are preachers of peace who have conquered through Jesus Christ their own natural desires for peace at any price and love at all costs, in order to bring peace and the love of God into a troubled world.
There is in our chapter a picture we would do well to dwell on. “And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raised thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day.” If we are not sure of any point of scripture the Holy Spirit will direct us always to fasten our eyes upon Jesus. If we are ever in any perplexity God turns our eyes back to Calvary. And so here, it is when we see the King of peace and love taken and hanged on a tree, it is when we look at the Cross of Christ in a new light, that we realize that this is indeed the way that Jesus came and we are following in His footsteps. “He that cometh after Me,” said Jesus, “let him take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Then we find another truth here also, that Joshua reiterates and upholds all the law of God given to Moses. We are not under law, but Jesus will guide us lawfully nevertheless. We are not under law, but we see it was at Calvary Christ endured that hill of cursing that all the blessings might come upon us. We not under law, but we understand that not one word spoken by Christ will ever pass away, and His last words before He turned Himself over to God were, “It is finished.” Jesus is our great Overcomer, He who overcame death itself that we might have life. We need to know that it was for our sakes that Jesus voluntarily and of Himself hanged the Prince of peace on a tree outside the gate of the city of peace. “No man taketh My life from me,” He cried, “but I lay it down of Myself.”
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