Joshua Part 2 (unlocking the Bible Series)
David Pawson
▶Now after they crossed the Jordan, they stayed at Gilgal for quite some time. They put a can of stones (stone files); they took 12 stones from the bed of the Jordan and made a little can of them at Gilgal as a reminder of future generations of how God dried up the River for them. Remembrance is a very important part of Old Testament piety constant to remember what the Lord has done for you. Of course, Christians are the same we take bread and wine to this as remembrance. We need constant reminders of what has done in the past and their favorite way is to erect cans of stones and especially 12 stones one for each tribe.
They also did something else. This all new generation have not been circumcised so all the men in this new generation were now circumcised. It meant they had to stay in camp until their bodies are recovered and they are in pain. They are very vulnerable to be attacked at that time. Had the Jericho people realized, they could have marched off and really walked over them at that time but they did not and after few days they were ready to go.
The manna stopped as soon as they crossed the Jordan because in the other side it is very fertile. If you go to Jericho today it is the whole oasis, the best grape fruit and oranges you’ll ever taste are in Jericho. I see some of you have been. And as soon as they go over there they have food and vegetable and food again. Then they called the place Gilgal which means 'rolled away' because God had rolled away the reproach of Egypt. They could forget Egypt now, they are now in.
▶Now a lot of strange things happened. Joshua decided to have a personal recognizing of the town to walk around it by himself and he went by night. He was walking around this town when he came across an armed man. And he said 'whose side are you on?' the man said 'No'. I think it is lovely answer. Whose side are you on? Are you on their side or us? No. Then the person went on to say important thing as whose side are you on Joshua? 'You are on God’s side?' and it was a captain of the Lord’s host. I believe that means a senior angel, an archangel. I don’t believe it was a son of God but I believe he was a senior archangel, captain of the Lord's hosts. But you are entitled to what you believe. What happened was Joshua was being reminded that he is not the highest officer in the Lord’s army but he was an under officer. It is gently to remind him.
So they set about conquering the land and as I have told you they drove away in the center first and then cleaned up the south and then cleaned up the north, brilliant strategy.
◑Jericho
▶Now the small space given to the first two towns and any others later that is because the first two towns were terribly significant, one positively and the other negatively. one was a complete victory and the other was a disaster, Jericho was a victory. Now Jericho is still there even ancient Jericho, the modern Jericho is a mile down the road.
Now here are some rather poor photographs but this is looking across the Jordan valley to the hills of Moab. Beyond, the Jordan is running there. Here is the oasis of Jericho. And in the middle of it, heap of rubble is, it towers above everything else. It is just a big heap of dust apparently. It is what we call a 'Tell'. In other words. Tell simply means the ruins of the city or least of many cities that had been built on top of the each other as a city was destroyed. So they built another on the top of it, so gradually a manmade hill emerges. You might have noticed in some old villages in the England that the front doors of the cottages are way below the street level. That is because the street has been built up on top of it, and the Tell is formed that way. So archeologist, one method is to take one level and then the next level and then the next level but that destroys each layer they go down. Another method is to take a slice right out of the middle and sees it like a sandwich cake and then notice the particular pottery in each layers dated and so on. This is what they have done in this mount. It is just this long mount here looking down from it from the air, this is what you would see. Here are the fruit trees of the Jericho oasis. But here is the old, Old Testament city. Nobody is living in it now, it is just a heap of rubble and ruin as you can see but they have actually cut a trench right across the middle and unearth the oldest building in the world, which I will show you in a moment.
They have discovered that Jericho is actually the oldest city in the whole world. To our knowledge it actually dated from 8000 B.C. In fact there is one building in it, a round tower with a spiral stairs inside of it. You can go down but they have to put a grid over it because people are wearing the stones way but this round fortification is 8000 B.C, it is ten thousand years old and that are the oldest building in the world. They found that by digging this trench right through the middle.
They have also found a lot of features of the city and one unusual feature that it has double walls, two walls. The outer wall and then a fifteen foot gap and then the inner wall, the outer wall was 6 feet thick and made of rock and the inner wall was 12 feet thick and made of brick. That was the kind of problem that the Israelites faced. That is a mighty big fortification but something had happened.
Now let us look at Jericho. That is a very over simplified cross section of the Tell and you can see how the different ages of cities have been built on top of each other. There is not much of the city left just a little bit that is the late bronze city in the time of Joshua. The main road that you drive along is here. The bus will take you alongside this mount of dirt and the spring which supplies all the
water for Jericho is just alongside it. Lovely fresh water but if you remember in Elisha’s day that spring became radioactive and have to be cured with a miracle again.
But here we have the different cities, the Neolithic, the pre-pottery age and then the Neolithic pottery age and then the early bronze, the late bronze, ion age and finally bits of the later but now it is just a rough dusty thing. And they found buried bits of wall here that is where they found the double wall. Now then because of that wall Jericho was very limited in size but the population grew. So what did they do? They decided to build houses over the two walls bridging them actually just to find more space. So it is a very crowded little city with houses actually sitting on top of this 6 feet wall then the gap and then the 12 wall. The walls were about 30 feet high.
Now bear in mind that it is already on this layers of previous cities. Can you see that the walls were the actual weights of houses on top of them are not very strong? Can you see that? Again I am not trying to explain the miracle I am trying to show you the situation as it was. A slight earth tremble would bring the whole lot down whether it was an earth tremble that God used to bring that or not, I don’t know. It I could even have been quite feasible that in fact a large sustained noise would have done that and it is very interesting that God told them to blow this horns and it says immediately when the horns were blown the walls came down. You know that some singers can burst the light bulb if they get the right note. It maybe that God knew that those walls were already procuring balanced on these slopes and had the extra weight of houses asking for collapsed.
▶Whatever, I do not know. The fact is that God says you must march 7 times once a day in total silence and on the 8th day you blow. And they blew these horns and you can imagine all those horns blowing on the same note and the people shouted as laud as they could. And after 6 days silence the walls collapsed and the houses on them except for one because if you remember the prostitute Rahab, her house was on the walls. God saved one bit of wall and the scarlet thread fell out of the window saved her life and her family. That is she became the great, great, great grandmother of King David, and she became the great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus Himself. And putting in the genealogy of Matthew one, that is a great story. Well they did not even have street fighting they just walked in the city and took it.
▶But God said this city is the first fruit, it is mine. You don’t touch a thing in it. And in that way God told them the victory is mine not yours. You do not deserve anything from the city, this is my victory. You can conquer the other cities and you can lout the other cities but you can’t lout this city and we know that the men did.
◑Ai
The next place they went to is a place called Ai further up the hill. That is all that is left of AI that is the best photograph I could get of Ai it is just a heap of ruins but it was a flourishing city and they made two errors, two blunders.
▶Number one is 'over confidence' and Joshua said we do not need too many troops for this one it is easy conquering this land. How fatal it is to think that because God has blessed you ones He will be doing it again or because you have success in one’s field that will be repeated.
So often when I have been to an occasion where God is really been present and blessed us, the immediate reaction of people after is we must do it again. I said no we must not do it again because you are thinking to go out and do just you do before.
That is what Samson said, “I’ll you go out as I did before”. You can’t repeat God. And they were over confident and thought that only a few troops would get Ai.
▶More than that a man called Achan had stolen something from Jericho, he stole some nice clothes and he thought they are no use to God but I can make use to them and he stole some gold as well and he took it.
Now when Joshua’s troops first attacked Ai they were routed and they fled. Joshua came back to God and said, “God why did you let that happen now the words will go around the whole country that we are not invincible. We are finished.” He blamed God for it. God said "Joshua it could be your fault, you know? Find out who took the forbidden thing in Jericho." That is why they call the tribes to gala again the used lottery and by lot they settled on this tribe then they got the different clans together and by lot they settle on this clan and they got the family in the clan together and by lottery found the family of Achan.
▶Now why did lots work in the Old Testament? The answer is very simple. They believe that God was in control of any/every situation and that when (just for sake of argument) they toss the coin God could catch it and turn it the right number of times to tell them what He wanted. That is the theory, theologically as it thoroughly sound, if God can pull down walls of Jericho He can certainly determine lots.
They use lots deliberately so that man had no influence in the situation. We do that as well, we toss a coin that for who goes into back first at the cricket match that is to stop any person's choosing. But the difference is when they cast lots they believe it allowed God to choose because He could control a lot. And that is why they did it right up to the day of Pentecost, after that God’s spirit guided them. So we do not need to toss coins now we have God’s spirit to guide us.
But in the Old Testament days that is what they did. The priest carried two stones inside his breast plate a black and a white stone and they call it the Urim and Thumim, one means yes and one means no. they would go to the priest and the man would go to the priest and say does God want me to marry this girl or not and the priest would close his eyes and pull out the stone, if it is a black stone the answer is no and if it is the white stone, it is yes.
I wish we could have guidance that way now. It would be very much simpler and easier. Just go to the pastor and say pick a stone for me and then he knows what to do. Actually God wants to have more personal relationship with us than that, He wants to work it much more personally but that was the way they did it and we shall see that is the way they divide the land later. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Achan, as later the sailors on a ship heading for Spain cast and the lot fell on Jonah. You’ll find this again and again that God controls the lot, He does not control the national lottery in our country but he does control the lot in the Old Testament and that is important.
▶So Ai was a disaster and Achan and his family had to die. They clearly knew what he had done and they welcomed it, they were glad to have the clothes and the gold. But one man sin causes the people of God to fail. It is almost frightening isn't it? that one member of the church could have the same effect. When the sin in the camp, you can’t sin to yourself, it can affect everybody else and the people of God.
◑The Other Events
▶Well finally they reached mount Ebal and they obeyed Moses.
Moses said when you get to the mountains, in the center; there are two mountains, Ebal and Gerizim. He said you are to stand on both mountains, some of you, and on one mountain you shout blessings and on the other mountain you shout the curses. And if you go to those two hills today there are just near Shechem and there is a kind of an amphitheater, both hills are hollow on the face towards each other. So can you imagine a huge two natural amphitheaters? You can hear perfectly right across the valley and there they stood and they shout at the blessings and the curses and the reminder, the covenant.
▶Then they went on to the south, they clean out the south and that is when the sun stood still. They were attacked by five Amorite kings led by the king of Jerusalem, the man who called himself lord of righteous. Jerusalem was still in enemy's hands and he led five kings to attack them in the valley of Ajalon. Here is a photograph at the book as you can see of the valley of Ajalon with the sun. That is the place where it happens, where the sun stood still. Now what do we make of that?
I’m going to read you something. Written by Mr. Harold Hill, the President of the Curtis engine company of the United State, a consultant in the American Space Program. I think one of the amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronaut and space scientist at green belt Indiana. They were checking on the position of the sun, moon, planets out in the space, where they would be in a hundred years and a thousand years from now. We have to know this in order that we do not send up a satellite and it collides with something later on in one of its orbits. We have to lay out the orbit in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets orbit and that the whole thing will not go wrong. They ran the computer measurements backwards and forward towards the centuries and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal which meant that there is something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the result that compared to the standards. They called in the service department to check it out and they said it was perfect. The head of the operation said what is wrong. Well we found that there is a day missing in space in a lapse time. They were puzzled and there seemed no answer. Then one man in the team remembered he was told at Sunday school of the sun standing still. They did not believe him but there is no attentive which is forth coming. They asked him to find it in the Bible and he did in the book of Joshua chapter 10. The space men said there is a missing day. When they check the computers going back into the time it was written and finds it was close but not close enough. The elapse time which was missing in Joshua’s day was 23 hours and 20 minutes not a whole day. They read the Bible again and then it says in the book of Joshua ‘about a day’.
These little words in the Bible are important but they were still in trouble because if you can’t account for 40 minutes you will be in trouble a hundred years from now. 40 minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. Then it was this same man remembered somewhere in the Bible it said that the sun went back backwards and the spacemen told him he was out of his mind but hey got out the Bible and found Hezekiah in his death bed was visited by the prophet Isaiah that he is not going to die. Then Hezekiah asked for a sign and Isaiah said this “And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken; and the shadow shall go forward 10 degrees or go back 10 degrees. And Hezekiah answered it is a light thing for the shadow to go down 10 degrees, neigh but let the shadow go back 10 degrees and Isaiah cried into the Lord and he brought the shadows 10 degrees backward by which should have gone down on the sun dial of Ahaz. 10 degrees is exactly 40 minutes, so 23 hours and 20 minute in Joshua plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings make the missing 24 hours which they have to log in the log book as being the missing day in the universe. Make of that what you will. That is where is happened.
▶At this point they begun to divide the land and they did it with the national lotteries so there will be no human influence on the choice. And Joshua sent out surveys and they came back with the complete survey of the land. It has a fascinating little land, size of Wales. It has purely green bit in the Middle East, the Arabian Desert is this (East) side and the Negev of desert is on the south. The rain comes in the Mediterranean and drops these hills first and then on the hills over the riff valley. That is all it is, that is the Promised Land but it was divided up, surveyed and they gave by lot, the portion to the tribes. Two and a half tribes, one to this part of the land over the other side of the Jordan which is Trance-Jordan as we call it today. And so Moses had made them promised that they could have that land provided they came and helped their other tribes to conquer this side. If they helped their brethren to get this land, they can then go back and settle that way. so that is what happened, two and a half tribes settled here and the other nine and a half settled on this side and the land was divided and everybody was happy with the division. That occupies quite a few chapters of Joshua.
▶They were of course special city is, they had to be six cities of refuge three other side of the Jordan when people guilty of man slaughters flee and not being killed for having murdered. And they were also cities for the Levites; it is all there in the book of Joshua.
◑So we come to the last two chapters,
the final epilogue where he preaches his magnificent sermon.
There are just two things I want to say about this. He is an old man, a 120, called at the same age as Moses’ 80 but now he knows he is going to die.
It is amazing how many people in the Bible know when they come to die. Even Christianity knows the way of death as well as the way of life. There is a man at Bakens field who wrote all of his relatives when the doctor told him he had reached the end of the road and he said 'come and stay with me, come and see the way how a Christian dies.' What a challenge!
So the great men of God, when their time comes they know they are going and they usually leave behind them a message for which they will be remembered.
▶The first thing we notice is the office of leadership. Joshua did not appoint a successor, Moses did Joshua did not, because for now on one man can’t handle. The people was scattered, one man would be inaccessible to many of the tribes. From now on each tribe had to have their elders. That is a very significant move. It actually failed and the people wanted one man leadership again and demanded a king but it is not God’s will, God’s will was that there is one elder in that tribe that should takeover the tribe because that means that people have immediate access to the elders and that is a very important principle.
Once you build an hierarchy with a man to the top he becomes an accessible and it is very important that the will of God for the people was a local elders in immediate contact with the local people but they did not accept that and it did not work but that is God’s will.
So he reminded them of the covenant and he reminded that God had promised not only to bless but to curse. He promised both and he said God always keep His promises. He brought us into this land but He won’t stop dealing with us now. Interesting that Joshua gave all the credit for getting the land to God. He took no credit himself that he had led them, he said, “God brought us in, God fought for us, God gave us this land, God did it and you should be grateful of Him.” So he made them take an oath of loyalty to God.
▶In chapter 24 a unique thing happens, He speaks in the first person singular as he does in chapter 23. But in chapter 24 ‘I’ means God, he is now prophesying and his last message was prophecy from beginning to end. Though he still says ‘I’ where in chapter 23 means Joshua, where in chapter 24 ‘I’ means God Yahweh, always the God of Hosts.
This is what God said through Joshua, He says “I have done all this for you.” There is just one statement of God that I love, “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build and you live in them. You eat from vineyard, on olive trees that you did not plant. You did not but I gave them to you. I have given you all these and now out of gratitude, Joshua speaks again in his own name, “So fear the Lord and serve Him and be faithful to Him and throw away all other gods. That is when he spoke that magnificent statement, “AS for me and my family we will serve the Lord”.
Now I said that is a choice. You have the land, whose god is going to be your god now, now that you had what you want now. That is a very significant challenge and they said we will serve the Lord. So is it right? I’m going to put that on a stone here and he set up a stone of witness. Three times they said we will serve the Lord.
▶The last few verses are two burials. The boreal of Joshua, the boreal of Joseph’s bones that all the way for 40 years they have carried a coffin out of Egypt. As well as everything else they actually carried a coffin all that way with Joseph’s bones in it because his dying wish was burry me in the Promised Land. Now at last they have buried Joshua. They buried Joseph’s bones, and they buried Eleazar the son of Aaron. So there is a triple funeral that rounds off this book and it says this that as long as Joshua and his generation of leaders lived the people were faithful to God but when the next generation came things went roughly bad.
One of the biggest problems was passing their faith on to the next generation, it is really is. For a second generation of Christian’s children to be as enthusiastic as their converted parents who first came to the Lord, it is not easy. That is a problem that follows the Christian world for a long time. Each generation of Christians has to rediscover God for themselves. And although they may hear of what God did for their parents and grandparent that does not make the children go.
▶So now let’s summarize what we learned form Joshua. As I read Joshua these are the lessons I have learned. I can sum it up in two simple sentences.
Without him they could not have done it. But without them he wouldn’t have done it.
Now those are the two very important lessons. There is a balance here. It is so easy to go overboard and put all the responsibility on God or to put it all on us. But here is a biblical balance, without God we can’t do it. But without us He won’t do it. Notice the change of verb it is not as without as He can’t, it is as without as He won’t. This is the beautiful balance that goes all the way to the Bible, with God all things are possible, without Him He chooses not to work with us. He needs us, He wants us. We are called to be co-workers with God. If Joshua and the people of Israel hadn’t cooperated with God, it would not happen. And yet without Him and without His intervention we could not possibly do it.
Now that is the beautiful balance. So first of all we see a lot of divine intervention in the book of Joshua. We see God’s words and we see His deeds. He makes His promises and He keeps them. He made a solemn covenant which He never broke. Not for one minute did God go back to His word. He had sworn by himself, “By Myself, by God, I will stay with you. If it means punishing you, I’ll punish you. Blessing you, I will bless you but I’m going to stay with you. It is for better or worse for richer or poorer, I am your God.” God can’t tell a lie.
I once made of list that God can't do because you know when you think of God almighty, you think He can’t do anything. No He can’t, there are many things God can’t do and the first thing I wrote down is God can’t tell a lie. I have finished up with a list of 31 things that God can’t do. With a shock I realized that I could do everyone of them, does that made me greater than God, NO. Thank God there are some things He can’t do. I will tell you one thing He can’t do, He can’t change the past. once it has happened, even God can’t change it. He can change its effect and its result but he can’t change the event.
So God Himself can’t undo the cross, it is happened. God can’t tell a lie, He can’t break a promise. He just can’t, it is against His whole nature. He couldn’t just promise you one thing and not do it, that is God. I think the thing He can’t do is as wonderful as the things that He can do and He can’t break His word.
Now we have broken our promise, I’m sure but He can’t it is against His whole character. He can’t make promises with Israel and then go back in it. Thank God for that. It says God gave to Israel all the land He promised to their fathers, He did it.
▶And His deeds, He said in the beginning of Joshua, “I will fight for you and I will drive them out, I’ll do it”. That is the meaning of the word Emmanuel.
Now I’m going to give you 4 possible meanings of that word and I want you to vote on what you think is correct.
1. GOD is with us
2. God IS with us
3. God is WITH us
4. God is with US
Now it only means one of those four things. Let’s take a quick vote.
That is pretty evenly divided but then the 4th was right. Emmanuel means God is on our side. The emphasis is He is going to fight for us not them. So the emphasis is on US, God is with US. Emmanuel sums up the God who said to Joshua, “I will fight for you; I’m on your side if you are on My side.”
And so we have the division of the Jordan River, the collapse of Jericho’s walls, the secession of the manna, another is the battle that they won because of an almighty hail storm, the lengthening of the day in the valley of Ajalon, and another time God sent hornets. And even while the enemy was marching toward them, these harlots came. Now if you can imagine forms of hornets, I tell you, you don’t stand a fight, you run. That is how they won one of the biggest battles, just through hornets.
See God controls the insect world again and all His doing is marvelous in their side but the other side is equally important.
▶God does it through human cooperation. He did not fight by Himself. They had to be in the battle field, they had to go and God fought for them.
Now this is the balance. Some people just say, “OH I’ll leave it to God, He will do it all.” Other people say “Oh I can do it all”. You’ll find it both of those Christians both balanced Christian prays as if all depends on God and work as if it all depends on them. There is a kind of beautiful balance in the Bible here. Without them He would not have done it, they have to go in. he said every bit of land you stand on, I will give it to you but you have to go and stand on it. So without that He would not have done it. If their attitude remain one of the confidence and act of obedience they would win every battle, but if their attitude become self-confidence and their action became disobedience, they lose every battles. That is why the book of Joshua covers 40 years with two major parts of it, the story of Jericho and the story of Ai. If you learn the lessons of those two towns then you set for the conquest of the land. Very interesting isn’t it?
▶Well the Bible I have said earlier is a very honest book and it says that they have made 3 mistakes. only three, when they took the land. First was at Ai, they were defeated by superior troops because they have too much self-confidence.
The second I have not mention was where one of the tribes already in the land tricked them and they put their tore coats and they put on old shoes and they blacken their faces and they came to the Israelites and they said we came from a distant land because we heard God is with you. Look at our clothes, look at our shoes. We have walked hundreds of miles because we heard about your God. They only came from around the corner. And because they have put on this show, it says Joshua did not ask the Lord above and he was fooled and he made a peace treaty with them. A devastating thing to do and only then discovered that they were just living around the corner and this is a way of escaping defeat. He did not ask God about it so they were tricked.
The third time was when the two and a half tribe that is going to live in the far side of Jordan finally went off to claimed their territory. And when they cross the Jordan they put up a can of stones (files of stone) and the tribes on this side of the Jordan said 'Hey they have built an altar so they are not going to be part of us', a misunderstanding among God’s people. And they said to them we are going to fight you and they gathered their army to go and defeat that two and a half tribe, internal misunderstanding. The two and a half tribes said no we have done that to remind our children and the children of our children that we came from your side of the Jordan and they belong with you. The misunderstanding was removed and peace came back. So even in among the people of God there can be misunderstanding when you do not ask God about things.
▶Well what is the Christian application of Joshua? In the new testament Joshua is used as an example of faith, Rahab the prostitute was used as an example of faith again and again, Achan is use as an example of sin in the people of God and their corresponding event in the New Testament is Ananias and Sapphira which exactly corresponds to the sin of Achan in the old people of God. And then of course it is used for salvation because in fact, Joshua’s name means salvation, it is originally Hoshea but Jesus changed it to Yeshua which is the same as Jesus that means God saves.
When my wife and I moved to the village where we lived the post master was called Mr. Godsaves and it was delightful to visit Mr. Godsaves but in the Hebrew he is actually Mr. Yeshua or Mr. Jesus, Mr. Godsaves.
▶And finally what is the Promised Land for the Christians that we are to be brought into. Not heaven, when you sang “When tread the verge of Jordan” I wonder what you were thinking about, were you thinking about death? Because the Promise Land for us is not heaven. The promised land is our holiness. Because the promised land is the rest from "battle". It is the promised land of victory, when you have won the battle and you can enjoy what God asked for you. And because whenever you your own temptation, you have your own foretaste of the rest, don’t you? You have won the battle and there is a rest from the conflict. There remains a Sabbath rest of Hebrew 4 for the people of God. Joshua did not put people in to that rest but there remains a Sabbath rest for us to get into. And it is to cease from our own works, it is to take a holiday from yourself and rest. That is the most holidays we take ourselves away with us that is not rest. But take a holiday from yourself and cease into your own work and enter into the promise land of God’s rest and enjoy his victorious life.
There is this book on Joshua I have read, it is Adam Red Pass’ little book, “Victorious Christian Living”. Do get that book. It is how the book of Joshua enables Christians to enter into the promise land of rest to battle. AMEN
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