Victory at Ai (Part A)

So this conflict between Israel and Ai, between my flesh and my spirit, it is to the death. It is force versus force, and there's no other way around it.

When we get that in our heads, we have the advantage. So as with Ai, God had to set the battle plan if there was going to be a victory. Remember he showed up to Joshua as the commander with his sword out ready for war.

But for now, here's Pastor Rick in the book of Joshua chapter 8, with a brand new message called Victory at Ai. Which was because of the sin of Achan. And God wanted to expose what the cause of the defeat was in a very dramatic way. And he had, of course, the clans and tribes march before until Achan was singled out. So that they all understood that their defeat was because of flagrant disobedience that was not addressed. And that it would affect all of them. And it did affect all of them.

Thirty-six men killed in action. Get rid of Achan, get the victory. That was the message. But they could not get rid of Achan. They could not identify the sin without God. And so the dependency on God is just something that we're never going to get away from as his people, and nor do we want to. Another lesson that came out of the story of Achan is there on the field of battle was an enormous temptation. Here you are serving God, fighting the enemy, and temptation comes your way. Jesus warned his disciples. He warned all of us. Then he got to the disciples.

He said, when you pray, pray this way, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for yours is the kingdom, power, and the glory. For Achan, it was only one thing. One thing that tripped him up. Covetousness. That involved several things, of course.

There was the silver, the gold, Babylonian garment, the garment from Shinar. And it spread to others who were as covetous as he was, his own family members. Jesus, there in Gethsemane, told his disciples, watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. And I think we are susceptible in serving God to think that because we're serving him, we're somehow shielded from things that we would otherwise not be shielded from.

Well, we are not fully shielded from anything in this life without prayer, paying attention, and hard work. This eighth chapter, of course, keeping chapter seven in mind, and the way it was written, it wasn't split into chapters. These were events that just moved one onto the other. We have the destruction of Ai in verses one through 29, and then in verses 30 through 35, we have the proclamation of the law of God with worship in a very dramatic way. In preparing this through the week, just thinking about it in my head time to time, looking forward to the first 29 verses, the battle, but then in preparation, getting to verses 30 and 35, this is better. What a bonus. The proclamation of the law, the blessing for the obedient, the curses for the disobedient, that is the law.

Thank God we've got grace. Douglas MacArthur, one of America's greatest generals, and Nimitz might not like hearing that. He said, in war, there is no substitute for victory. Isn't that true of spiritual war? I believe the parallels exist everywhere.

They abound with the facts of the laws we find in application in physics, in life. They exist spiritually also. Israel in this chapter is fighting for their survival. They can't go back to the wilderness.

They have to win. There's no return. There's no opting out. There's nowhere else to go. When Jesus said to those who had a problem with his sermon, he said to his apostles, are you two going to leave?

Because everybody was leaving. Simon Peter, as often was the case, it tells us in John chapter 6, but Simon Peter, it's so typical, it's so courageous, but Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. There's nowhere else. This is it.

Everything is on this fight. There's no getting out of it. We try to get that across to unbelievers. We should spend our life trying to get that across to unbelievers. That's the gospel.

These truths that are held in the book we love so much, the Bible, the word of God. Ai, of course, the flesh in type, but the city of Ai was fighting for its life. They refused to leave. It is such an apt picture of our spirit fighting against the flesh. The flesh refuses to leave.

It's got nowhere else to go where it can practice its dastardly deeds. It stays with us. We're stuck with it for one lifetime, and we have to fight it every step of the way.

There are going to be setbacks and losses and disappointments and mistakes of all kind, but the one thing that Satan can't stop is when we get up and we keep going, and this is pictured a bit here where the Jews were defeated, and they come back. 1 Peter 2, Beloved, I beg you, as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. Peter is saying, I've been around a long time. I've been old.

I've been young. I've never seen the righteous forsaken or their offspring begging for bread, and I've never seen a Christian not fighting the flesh. Now, I added that, but I added it on the strength of everything the New Testament tells us about the flesh, that sinful nature of ours, propensity to sin. So he says these things, they war against us, though we're just traveling through this life. We're not here forever.

We're making it through. We are pilgrims and sojourners. We have a destination.

This is not it. But we have a cause here on the way to the destination, which is the story of Pilgrim's Progress, incidentally. Galatians 5 17, for the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to another so that you do not do the things that you wish. Romans 8 7, because carnal mind is at war against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So this conflict between Israel and Ai, between my flesh and my spirit, it is to the death. It is force versus force, and there's no other way around it.

When we get that in our heads, we have the advantage. So as with Ai, God had to set the battle plan if there was going to be a victory. Remember, he showed up to Joshua as the commander with his sword out, ready for war, and he is going to assert himself in this chapter just that way, and that's the only way they get the victory. Verse 1 now, we read, Now Yahweh said to Joshua, Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you, and arise and go up to Ai.

See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. Yeah, well, with that tragic loss behind him, Joshua was kind of confused, even though the Lord said, Just sit in the camp, get up, why do you lay here before me? All right, that was settled, but still Joshua was, I'm not in a hurry to go back to this. I don't want another taste of defeat.

Is there anything else we should, anybody needs to march in front of us now? What about the New Testament? Does it have that strong kind of a cheer for the Christian to, don't be dismayed, be strong, go back after Ai again, you failed yesterday, your flesh got the upper hand, get up, get back in there, yes it does. Corinthians, the first one, chapter 16, Paul says to the Corinthians as he's ending his letter, and just, you know, I always don't take shots, I just always bring it to mind, because we see it everywhere, the Corinthian church was problematic head to toe, and yet Paul does not give up on them. At the end of his letter he says, Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. I would have said something like, I'm out of here, get yourself another pastor if you had people out, I say that, I don't think I would at all, because I've got this thing called the fear of God.

I don't want him telling me, what do you think you're doing? Get back in there, I'd rather just get back in there and not have to hear it. So the language stands. We're not going to read this in Joshua and say, that was for those Jews, everybody else but me.

No, this is for us. He continues in verse 1, See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. The promise of the promised land is unfolding right there, as Moses said it would, by faith and fighting. When God says, I am giving you this land, I would have said, give like in here you go, or give like here, go fight for it.

Go fight for it. Well, is that not true in Christianity? I mean, some become disillusioned with this.

They give their life to Christ, they're all emotional, and then they find out how much warring takes place against everything, and they quit. Well, God calls for an invasion force, so we read again in verse 1, take all the people of war with you and arise and go up to Ai, God as commander. He does not call for reduced troop strength, as did the reconnaissance force that came out of spying on Ai. We don't send all the people we don't need, and we can take Ai. They were trying to look out, doing the right thing.

They don't sense that they were puffed up with pride or anything like that. God says, no, you're going to need 10 times as much as you sent to bring down Ai. He called for an invasion in force. Ai was a little city compared to Jericho. But the little things in life can become great obstacles very quickly, especially in the pursuit of God's directives. God told them, go to Ai.

They went, they did everything they thought by the book, and were clobbered. But, and that is a wonderful disjunctive at this point, unless we move forward according to the word of God, in pursuit of holiness, we are going to get beaten. But if we pursue holiness according to the word, we're still going to take hits, but we will prevail. You're going through junk, you got personal battles, stuff you're up against, stick to the Lord, you will prevail. You're going to be frightened, you're going to, again, be wounded a little bit. But in the end, the Lord will say, well done, and the day will come when you will be off the planet with your father, and you'll know you're there because you'll see me waving.

Hey, I'm in the right place, okay? Verse 2, and you shall do to Ai as its king, pardon me, and its king, as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves, lay in ambush for the city behind it.

Oh, had Achan waited, he would have gotten the spoils from this city, there's a lesson there. God says, lay in ambush for the city. He's forming the battle plan.

Who shall set the order to the battle? Ahab, that creepy king, once asked one of the prophets, and the prophet said, you. Of course he failed, but he was given a chance, he won the battle but failed to serve God. Here, God is ordering the battle, and he's saying, I need some slick tactics to bring these guys down. Remember, God is not the author of confusion for his people, but for everybody else, he has the prerogative of setting them up, of deceiving them, because that's what they want.

They want life without him, and it's very clear in Scripture. It's in the end of Isaiah, it's in Thessalonians, it's in other places in Scripture, and it's war. Verse 3, so Joshua arose and all the people of war to go up against Ai, and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them away by night.

Up early again, there's Joshua, we see that, can't miss it with this man. And the people with him, God's mercies are new every morning, we love that part. We don't want the forgiveness, but also the battles, that's why the mercy is given.

Mercies are given so we can be up and again to war against the flesh in the interest of our Lord. And Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. Well, he has five hundred and fifty thousand men ready for war. Now, you can't send them all, they'd just be tripping over each other, not enough space. But still, thirty thousand is ten times more than the three thousand sent initially that was defeated.

The population of Ai was about thirteen thousand. Again, not room enough for five hundred thousand men to invade. Today, this would be equal to a core, sending in a core. Military divisions, they're very careful, they want to know how many to send because they've got to supply them.

And if you send too many one way, you won't have enough the other way, there's just a lot that goes into it. And it helps to divide your troop numbers into companies, battalions, regiments, divisions, and cores. And then once you get up to sixty thousand or so, you have yourself an army, classification as armies. Well, here he's sending in a core, that's a large force of thirty thousand men. Now, we like to say, well, Gideon only needed three hundred.

Well, no, he did not. He did to start the battle, but to finish it, God brought the other tribes in. And it's very clear there in the book of Judges, which we'll be getting to at some point, one man armies like Samson are rare.

Samson took out a battalion of men with the jawbone of a donkey, but that's rare. Small churches, and usually small because of troop desertion, you cannot accomplish very much. You just don't have the strength.

What can you do? I know we hear a lot of folks say, I don't like large churches, you can't fellowship. Well, that's not the reason you should or should not like a church, because the word preach there, that's paramount.

Those other things are secondary, but let's not beat up on the big ones or the small ones or any of them. But let's remember, there is strength in numbers, thus we have a book called Numbers. Why is it called Numbers, the book of Numbers? It's the book of battalions of how many troops each tribe had.

That's why it's called Numbers. Ishkar had this many men of valor for war. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to war, I want as many helpers as I can get.

So we look at this lesson here and we see that the 3,000 were not enough. You know, Napoleon said God was on the side of big battalions. And as a younger Christian, reading other Christians, I used to think that was wrong, but he's right. Now Napoleon was wrong overall, but at that point, there is a need for force in dealing with my flesh. And I think that is one of the great lessons that comes out of this chapter.

AI, difficult to beat, easy to underestimate. And so we gobble up the lessons that come out of the Scriptures, and we learn what it takes to bring down the flesh. Courage, Joshua be strong. Large numbers, send in 30,000 men this time. Weapons, we'll see Joshua has a spear in his hand and he's the commander.

You'd think he'd, you know, he's just a dagger. And then it also took the battle plan of God. God commanded the marching around Jericho with horns.

Now he is commanding the Israelites to throw a feint, an ambush, put a rear guard in place, and then to attack. That is God's battle plan. There's a saying of military saying, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Well, God's plans do. God's plan survives contact with the enemy. And what it means is you can plan whatever you want, but when you get on the battlefield, everything shifts and changes and things don't come out the way you thought they were going to happen. But not with God. With God, they come out precisely the way he knew they would happen. Our role is to be ready as Joshua was, verse 4, And he, now Joshua, commanded them, the people, saying, Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city.

Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. These battle tactics that are being given, we have no reason to think that Joshua has recorded every detail. He has recorded the facts. And God does not say, Joshua, I've given you 30,000 men, storm the gates. And he says, you better think this one through.

In fact, I've done it for you. And God has told him how to do it, and charging right in. What a lesson for so many missionaries, for many Christians, for pastors, for churches, for all of us. Just because you want something and you feel the fire, doesn't mean you can just charge right in and get it. Unfortunately, many folks that think that way, you can't tell them otherwise.

And then they do it, it fails, they try it again. He says, but all of you be ready. There's another thing that we can't lose sight of as believers. God expects us to be ready on the battlefield. Not just says, you know, we're magically equipped.

Not. Being unprepared is not faith. You know, you talk about a pastor come up and just speaking without notes. Well, he can do that if he's giving a gospel message if he's an evangelist, because the message is just very simple. But if you're going to teach the Word of God, you better start fact-checking your own ideas and thoughts before you get up and start telling people what you have found it means.

You better be prepared. And blaming the Holy Spirit for you not doing what you're supposed to do is not recommended. It is not good enough to want to serve the Lord. You have to have more. You've got to have diligence. The desire has to be long-lasting. Flash in the pan doesn't really help anyone, it hurts. And we say, well, I can go on about this, I do from time to time, so I'm just going to move forward.

But you can listen to all the recorded messages to find out what else I have to say about it, if you really must know. Verse 5, then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city, and it will come about when they come out against us as at the first that we shall flee before them. So Joshua is saying we're going to draw their forces out, we're going to get them to commit their forces. This is standard battle tactics against another army that doesn't know better. A smarter force would say we're leaving troops in reserve. We're not going to commit all of our forces into this.

It could be an ambush. Well, Ai didn't have the manual, and Joshua is the invading force. God the commander who has set the battle plan. John's Gospel, chapter 15, verse 5, Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him will bear much fruit, for without me you could do nothing.

And may we not forget it. We can't truly conquer without Christ, nor should we want. So here is a faint victory through apparent defeat. So they're coming up to Ai, and then they're retreating, and Ai is going to say, ha, we've got them again, we're going to defeat them again, and this is Christianity. The cross of Christ is victory through apparent defeat. He saved others, he can't save himself. That's what they said when they mocked him on the cross. If you are the Son of God, come down off that cross, dictating this is what we want you to do, as though they were sovereign. And the disciples, of course, they were devastated because apparently they were defeated.

And then came Sunday morning. And this is the story of Christianity, victory through apparent defeat. I can tell story upon story, not only in my own life and others around me, the thought they lost only to find out they won. But they won God's way, not their own way. So, verse 6, for they will come out after us till we have drawn them from the city, for they will say they are fleeing before us as at the first, therefore we will flee before them. Then you shall rise from the ambush and seize the city, for Yahweh your God will deliver it into your hands. So Joshua's laying out the battle plan as God laid it out to him. And Joshua's reading the enemy well. He's saying this is what they're going to do, this is the battle plan, it's going to survive. His plan survives and that's exactly what happens. He knows they're going to be overconfident, they're going to commit all their forces, and then the Jews will wipe them out.

And the hills, the ravines, and maybe forest in that area at that time would have provided ample coverage for them to lie low, as they moved at night, they set up at night, they went tactical, very quietly. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Joshua. Cross Reference is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you're interested in more information about this ministry, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

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