40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Joshua 8:1-31 (Episode 188)

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

Israel makes another attempt to overthrow the city of Ai and this time is successful. God confirms again that Joshua is His appointed leader. Everything is destroyed and something very unpleasant is done to the king of Ai that ends up pointing us to Jesus. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Houston City Event Las Vegas City Event Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other things that we got going on over there. We have a Streams of Mercy podcast featuring Chad Bird. You can hear Chad Bird and John Schreiner and some other people do some exegesis on the Psalms. That's what this all is about. It's a little devotional podcast.

You can go check it out. The first episodes are available. Also, season two of The Soul of Christianity is out. If you're one of those serial podcast listeners, you can check that out. Also, if you are in Houston, you are in the Houston area, we are going to be coming to you at the end of February. February 22nd, we're going to be in Houston, Texas. I'll be there.

Chad will be there. Matt Popovitz will be there. Losa will be there. Scott Keith will be there. Gretchen Ronovic will be there. We're going to be talking about what happens when people encounter Jesus in the Gospels. You know what happens? All kinds of crazy stuff happens.

So you should come check that out. It's free. All you have to do is go over to the 1517 event page. You can just click on that Houston event, and you can register for free. But we would like you to register so we know how many people to come. Now, I know that Chad's got people down in Texas. I mean, it's a Texas event. I know Chad's got people down there.

And I know we've got listeners in the great state of Texas. I've seen those demographics. People all over Texas listen in 40 minutes. So, yeah, we want to see you down in Houston. Also, even if you just were looking to get away in the snow, I guarantee you there's not going to be any snow in Houston at any time of year. Not in February, not in January, not ever. So you can escape if you want to and come hang out with us.

But also, if you happen to live in Sin City in Las Vegas, Chad won't be there, but I'll be there, along with a whole bunch of other people, Eric Sorensen, Scott Keith, Adam Francisco. It's going to be a great time, so you can come hang out with us in Las Vegas, And we're going to be talking about the book of Galatians, six speakers, six chapters. Theme is Galatians in Sin City. That's what we're going to talk about.

That is also free. That is in March. So if you want to come do that with us, also go to the events page, click on that Las Vegas event, register for free. We'd love to see you there. All right, Chad, where are we at in this book of Joshua? we uh i had to like i had to check a couple times because it's been it's been a couple weeks since we recorded we did that live recording you know in san diego i know some of our our folks were there watching us and uh encouraging us so we did that one and uh so i had to look at look

and see where we were we're in chapter eight of joshua we have a city to conquer today yeah well you know here we still stand like throws you off a little bit because we don't do an episode chronologically we get thrown off our our whole path when we go to hear we still said even though it's my favorite episode of the year always i mean it's the most fun episode to do obviously yeah it is mine too yeah i was uh i always enjoy it i mean it's it's just different when you're when you're when you're speaking to a crowd you know you got the people out there and of course eric's able to join us which is always great so yeah i i love doing that episode every year and yeah it's it's usually thematic so that's a little bit different too which is fun yeah but

here we are we got to pick it back up because we we left israel in a in a situation where there was uh some not good things happening some not good things yeah we left him in a a valley of trouble quite literally that's the way uh that's the way chapter seven ends it was the whole story for those of you who who uh might have listened to it a couple weeks ago slept a few times since then it was a story of aiken and everything that happened with his theft of the the harem the devoted things of the lord and how he was uh he was executed and then buried pile of stones heaped over him and that place is called the valley of trouble or the valley of acor to this day so we kind of ended there on that uh that negative note so we uh we got to figure out what

we're going to do with the city of i if you remember that's what happened uh that's kind of what was the uh the revelatory event if you will that disclosed that something was not right so Achan had taken all this stuff secretly hid it underneath the floor of his tent nobody knew except maybe some of his family we're not even sure about that but Israel did not know so they go and they in chapter seven they there's this smaller city not nearly as big as Jericho and they're like ah this this is not gonna be any problem whatsoever let's just send a few guys they can take the city we'll be good to go well that didn't work out so well they uh they got beat up a few of them got killed they got back and that's when they found

out about Achan so what are we going to do about the city called Ai which is uh usually written in English as A-I it means by the way I don't think I brought this up when we talked about before it it has a it doesn't have the the best of of meanings it's called literally in in Hebrew it means heap like a pile of something so the city itself is uh the heap and this could this could sort of be one of those uh you'll see this sometimes in uh in the old testament where something is named in a in an insulting kind of way almost a nickname sort of way uh or it could actually have been the name of the city prior to this uh it could have been built atop a ruined city. And so it was already called the heap. It was already called Ai by the time these

inhabitants built their city on the ruins of an earlier city. But whatever the reason is, that's what it means. And we'll get back to that a little bit later when we get to the end of this story. So what are we going to do? Well, Achan's dead. Ai has beat them before. So we're going to pick up beginning of chapter eight with the Lord's new directions to Joshua. So the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear or be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you and arise and go up to Ai. See, I've given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. And you shall do to Ai and its king, just as you did to Jericho and its king, you shall take only its spoil and its cattle as plunder for yourselves. Set an ambush for the city behind it. So this is

going to be similar to what happens at jericho but also a different number of ways uh so of course the city is still going to be destroyed its king is going to be is going to be killed just like happened to the city of jericho and its king but there's a couple of a couple of differences here first of all the battle plan is different right with jericho because it was the the first city that they conquered as if to kind of you know set the stage for what was what was to come later there was a whole lot of time devoted to preparing for the destruction of jericho you know they march around it all those times once a day seven days seventh day they march around it seven times so there's a lot of a lot of build-up to the particular battle that's going to destroy jericho

it's a a big deal is made out of it's not going to be that way with i it's going to be a very different battle plan. The Battle of Jericho was almost ritualistic. Well, I won't even say it was almost, it was. It was ritualistic to the core, the preparation for it, the fact that the Ark of the Covenant circled the city, and you had the blast of the trumpets, the people shouting. So it was a ritualistic preparation and a ritualistic victory. And when we get to the particular plan for i it's going to be different because this is this is sort of an ancient military strategy that's going to be used by by israel at the instruction of god to take this city that's a one the one difference and another difference is even though quite a bit of the city the city is going

to be uh considered harem again these things that are devoted to destruction not everything so if you remember with jericho everything was destroyed people animals everything and the city was burnt to the ground the only thing that went to god were like the gold the silver the bronze things like that in the case of i it's it's spoil and its cattle are going to actually be plunder for for the israelites so even though they're going to kill all the people they're not going to kill all the livestock and some of the spoil of the city that's going to be actually for the israelites to use so what's going to happen well there's going to be an ambush that sets up that's going to be set up in order to to take the city so that's what we're going to hear about hear about

next pick up here with verse three so god gives these instructions and uh basically what follows in the verses in the in the next few verses is how they carry that out joshua rises with all the people to go up to to war against i and he chooses 30 000 valiant soldiers and sends them out at night and he commands them that they're going to ambush the city from behind it he says don't go very far from the city but all of you be ready then i and all the people who are with me will approach the city and will come about when they come out to meet us as at the first that we will flee before them and they will come out after us until we've drawn them away from the city for they will say they're fleeing before us as at the first so we will flee before them so they're gonna be acting

this out of course and then you shall rise from your ambush and take possession of the city for the lord your god will deliver it into your hand then it will be when you've seized the city that you set the city on fire you shall do it according to the word of the lord see i have commanded you so we'll stop there for a minute so this is all the speech of joshua to the people of israel so basically this is like chain of command right god says to joshua i want you to attack the city of i and here's the battle plan so joshua turns around to his people and says all right we're going to attack the city of i and here's the battle plan and then he passes that on to the people and he passes it on to these people who are going to be waiting in ambush for uh for the the people of i

to leave the city so this is a i mean you think you put yourself in the ancient world and you're going to attack a walled city well there's there's a limited number of options right as to how you can actually take a city like this and we uh we have examples in the bible of various methods that are used of how to get into a walled city we have examples as well from other eastern near eastern writings as to how this was done so you basically i think i think it's like five options five different ways you're going to take a city that is well fortified has a wall so you can go over the fortifications right you can uh you we've all seen this in movies where the guys run forward with the ladders right and then they you know they

they climb the ladders i'm always thinking man i would not want to be the first guy because they always die yeah this the the over seems like the what you do if you just know that you have like 10 times as many guys as them because it seems like the casualties that you would suffer going over are just catastrophic so you just have to have just you just have to outnumber them by so much that you're willing to just sacrifice all kinds of people to get in there but uh yeah yeah the oh that's like alamo stuff man yeah yeah that's takes a heavy toll on the army and i really i suspect that is that's the way it had to have been you had to have an overwhelming force to be able to to uh actually go over the city that's why these places had walls

the the advantage that a wall gave you is is huge back back then i mean it's not like now where you just like bomb that wall uh i mean even even back i mean even in an instant like the alamo i mean they were able to hold that thing for a long time just based on the fact that there was walls around it you know and they have this massive army out there and they're able to fight them off for a long time uh with with far inferior numbers because the the wall is the great equalizer and so you don't want to do that yeah so that's that's one option you can go over uh the other option is you can go under you know you can you can tunnel underneath uh that that uh and i think when david took the city of jerusalem from the jebusites he didn't tunnel underneath

but if i remember i'll have to go look at that story again but anyway there was like a secret way into the city underneath it that that he was able to find so you know that's that's one way you go underneath it either through some sort of secret entryway uh like a cave or spring or something or you actually tunnel underneath the city or that option also is uh you need to make sure that you do that one by surprise because if you come popping out of that up and up into the ground like a mole one at a time that's that's easy pickings it seems like you better make sure they don't they don't see that ground starting to move inside the walls or yeah one at a time the guys are trying to pop out of there and you don't need too many guys on the other side of that

to take care of that yeah yeah that would that would not be uh not be a safe way to emerge the other way of course uh we see this too depicted in movies is uh through the wall right i mean you we've all seen these uh these scenes where guys have the uh oh my gosh i'm drawing a blank it's a battering uh battering ram yeah you know they go up to the city gates and go to the wall they go to city gates and they're trying to trying to use the battering ram to knock the gates down or to burn it set it on fire i mean there's lots of different ways i don't want to be the first guy on the bike holding the battering ram either yeah i don't i don't i want to be in the back like overseeing everything i'll be the general uh so those are you know above underneath

or through um another another way was actually to this was very very very popular uh was to lay siege to a city this happened in the bible as well uh where you surround the sitting you basically starve it out either you wait until there's no food or there's no water and eventually everybody's going to die or they're going to surrender so this was actually this was practiced a lot in the ancient world especially when you had overwhelming armies who had plenty of time plenty of resources and so they would just surround the city cut off every entry and exit and wait for the people to get to the point of starvation where they'd actually surrender yeah this was done all those are the all the way up until the 16th century that kind of stuff was

practiced i mean if you if you know anything about the uh during the reformation the the munster rebellion they had a whole city and they had all these people in there and they didn't want to kill them all uh and so they didn't storm saying they just surrounded and starved them out man and it took it took a long time but eventually they knew they just didn't let anything go in or out and uh yeah that that this is a war of attrition at this point and you don't have the resources to win it yeah something similar happened uh for those who have visited israel and i have not but if you if you visited israel you probably went to masada which was the last holdout of some of the Jewish rebels in the early second century AD. And I cannot remember

how long the Romans had that fortress encircled. It was a long time though. And they eventually actually built this huge earthwork ramp up to the city of Masada, the fortress of Masada, which had been built by Herod in order to finally be able to get to the Jewish rebels. And when they did, they found that the day before, almost everyone with the exception of just a few women and children had actually committed mass suicide so that they wouldn't be taken. So those are the four main ways to take a city. The other is what we see in Joshua chapter 8,

and that is by a ruse to in some way trick the warriors of the city into coming out and when they come out to stage an ambush and by means of that to gain control first of all of the city gates that's that's key and once you've gained control the city gates to have access into the rest of the city and be able to take uh take the city so those are over under through lay a siege or actually try and lure them out in some way. And as we see in Joshua chapter 8, as the story unfolds from here, it worked very well. So there's a little confusion on the numbers,

which I'll get to in just a minute. You'll remember that in verse 3, Joshua chose 30,000 men to kind of hide and ambush, a number which seems pretty high to me. But anyway, we'll get to a different number in just a minute. let me pick up with a story and see how this happens so we're at verse nine so joshua sends them away they went to the place of ambush all these guys and they remain there between bethel and i now notice this is the first mention of this chapter of bethel i thought this was all about i well it is but as it turns out bethel and i are only like probably about two miles apart in fact

they're often grouped together. Already back in Genesis 12, I believe it is, the story of Abraham is the first mention of Bethel and I. I could have that chapter wrong. But anyway, they're often grouped together because they were so close together. And there's not a lot of talk elsewhere about the conquest of Bethel. So most scholars assume that actually Bethel was taken during this same attack against the city of Ai. But the important thing to note is that as the story unfolds, it wasn't just Ai that was concerned, Bethel, and Bethel's soldiers were also part of this. So anyway, they remain there between Bethel and Ai on the west of Ai. Joshua spends a night with the people, gets up early in the morning, verse 10, gets them all together with the elders

of the people, and they, verse 11, all the men of war, they go in front of the city, and they camp in front of the city in this valley. So they've made their presence known to the people of Ai. And here in verse 12 is where we have this different number. So we had the 30,000 guys earlier. Verse 12 says he took about 5,000 men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai on the west of the city. So you got various explanations as to how do we explain 30,000 and 5,000. I think the easiest is actually that this was an additional force that for whatever reason that we're not told that Joshua decided to also set aside, maybe in a little bit different place for the ambush. I don't think there's any reason to assume there was like a scribal error

in the copying or any of those sorts of things that are sometimes used as explanations. I think it's just a matter of he set aside 5,000 more people that were also going to be part of this ambush that was coming up. So if you notice that when you're reading through Joshua 8, I think that's the easiest explanation. But anyway, so he stations the people, verse 13, all the army on the north side of the city, and they have this rear guard on the west side of the city. They spend the night once again in this valley in front of the city. And then, verse 14, the city of Ai gets into action. The king sees them, the men of the city, they get up early, they hurry, they go out to meet Israel in battle at this appointed place. And verse 14 adds, he did not know there

was an ambush against him behind the city. Yeah, that's for sure, or none of this would have happened. Now, verse 15 says that Joshua and all Israel pretended to be beaten before them and fled by the way of the wilderness. There's a great scene in the Patriot where they do the same thing. If you remember toward the end of the Patriot, they who were they, the Minutemen, the volunteers who were always they were always running away from the British general and the British general knew this. And so they came up with this plan where as soon as the firing started, the guys would the the the colonial soldiers would turn around and run away as, you know, like they'd done on purpose in many other situations out of fear. but in this particular case in that movie the patriot they do that because there's a bigger army waiting right over the edge of the hill i love that movie by the way the united states won that uh that war based on just breaking all the rules of warfare

they were like you know what we could probably have a better chance if we just didn't line up and shoot at each other yeah yeah develop a new uh a new military strategy it wasn't it wasn't even knew it was uh they went old school yeah this is true yeah yeah the the old guerrilla warfare it worked so that's what happens here too the i mean this has happened before of course uh happened back in chapter seven when the people of israel went against i they they had to turn around and run away so the the king and the soldiers of i think ah we've seen this before you know this is gonna be no problem whatsoever look at those israelites they're running away from us again so they pursue them uh verse 16 all the people in the city were called together to

pursue them and they pursued joshua and were drawn away from the city so that not verse 17 not a man was left in i or bethel so this is bethel comes up again here so evidently these two cities were in cahoots they had some kind of you know agreement together and so that all their soldiers together are going against the Israelites. So they left the city unguarded and pursued Israel. Then verse 18, see if this sounds familiar. We've seen something like this before. The Lord said to Joshua, stretch out the javelin that's in your hand toward I, for I will give it into your hand. So Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city. So we haven't seen the javelin before, but we certainly have seen the leader of Israel stretching out his hand with something in it as a sign of upcoming victory.

We saw it at the Red Sea to begin with, when Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and that led to the defeat of the Egyptians and the salvation of the Israelites. But we also saw it in Exodus chapter 17, where Moses had to hold up his arms while the Israelites were doing battle. And he had his arms to get tired. They'd start losing when his arms started going down. So he had to have two helpers on one on each side to hold up his arms. So I suspect that part of what's going on here in verse 18 is we're meant to see Joshua as a new Moses. I mean, that's at least one of the ways that I'm reading this. Is that what it seems to you?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's even probably for the benefit of the people. This is God doing the thing again through this guy. And so I think it helps the people be like, okay, that indeed is God's guy. Yeah. And we saw this made explicit when Israel crossed the Jordan. This was God's way of exalting Joshua in the eyes of the people. back when they crossed the Jordan. Yeah, it's not as though these people are above questioning the leadership.

I mean, they did this all throughout Moses' leadership. They were like, who's this guy again? Like, why are we doing this? And they easily, you know, they quickly forget all these things, and they're like, you know, I think I could do a better job. And so it seems that God goes out of his way to affirm Joshua as the guy so that they don't decide, you know what, maybe we'll just pick someone else. you know moses is gone like why why why did he get to decide i mean if you know anything about

human nature you know there's some other dudes that'll be like i mean i think i could lead this oh yeah they're just waiting for the chance yeah waiting for a little chink in the armor and there they there they go every time you have an election you have 50 people be like i'm the guy yeah yeah well you think about the context here too i mean they just uh they went through some some uh pretty dark days they got beat by this little bitty city and then you said they were humiliated which led to them questioning you know is god really with us uh or not i mean joshua certainly was was wondering was wondering that and they had you know there's the whole mess with aiken and and all of that so israel needs at this point to have god once more confirm that joshua is

indeed his chosen leader and and he's like Moses who led them all those years so I think that's probably what part of what anyway is going on here with uh with the stretching out of the javelin so he stretched it out toward the city and that was uh that was a that was a a signal for the men in ambush they they they rise up and they run into the city and capture it they set it on fire and uh it's at this point that the men of i realize what's happened verse 20 says they turn back and looked and behold the smoke of the city ascended to the sky and they had no place to flee this way or that for the people who had been fleeing to the wilderness turned against the pursuers so now they're trapped they can't go back to the city it's now on fire they realize

that they're between a rock and a hard place. They've got nowhere to go back for refuge. And the people that they had been chasing now turn around and begin chasing them. So what happens after this is basically a complete defeat on the part of Ai. It says that all of those who were soldiers from Ai were slain on the battlefield.

not one of them survived or escaped the only one we're told that actually lived at least temporarily was the king of i verse 23 says they took alive the king of i and then brought him to joshua verse 24 says that we'll pick him up in just a second but all the israelites finished off the inhabitants of i uh they they chased him down and so that not one of them not one of them were left. Then we have verse 26, this further echo, speaking of the javelin, this further echo of what's happened earlier with Moses. It says, for Joshua did not withdraw his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Now that is, I mean, you can't get much more of an explicit reference to earlier battles than that,

because that's precisely what happened when the Amalekites attacked the Israelites, and they had this battle in which Israel won as long, was winning as long as Moses was stretching out his hands over the battlefield. So they take the cattle and the spoil of the city for themselves, just as God had commanded them. They burned the city of Ai and made it a heap forever, a desolation to this day I want to stop there just a minute uh so this this Hebrew word for heap is is tail and it's usually written in English as either t-e-l which we say is tell or t-e-l-l and the the city that immediately comes to mind that still has a name like this is Tel Aviv which is i think the second most populous city in uh in modern israel coastal city so tel aviv is

actually that name tel aviv is based upon a an arabic name and it's also based upon a a hebrew name of a town that's referenced i believe in the third chapter of ezekiel but anyway so tel aviv is that particular name is based upon this uh the same hebrew slash arabic word and you'll sometimes if you if you do any reading in archaeology you know already know what a tell is a tell is basically you'll be you know going along somewhere and you see this big like this this hill that seemed to emerge out of nowhere it's it's like it's a basically a mound or a heap on the ground and it could you know it could be you know relatively tall or very tall uh in relationship to the surrounding landscape well these are there are actually thousands of these all over the

ancient near east and most of these were actually what remains of ancient cities so you'd have a city and maybe it you know it catches on fire or it's destroyed and they build another city on top of it well same thing happens to that one and this might be 100 years apart might be 50 years apart might be two or three hundred years apart but what happens over time is that every time you add build a new city you're adding a new layer and so the city gets higher and higher and higher and And so eventually the whole thing looks like a hill or a heap or a mound. And so that's why they're referred to as a tell. So that's what happens here to the city of Ai.

It's made into a heap or made into a tell forever, a desolation to this day. So they do this to the city of Ai and then come back to the king, verse 29. It says that they hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. and then at sunset Joshua gave the command they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the city gate and raised over it a great heap of stones that stands to the stay same thing they did to Achan after they had executed him now this hanging of a of the king of I on a tree until evening we have we've been we've talked about this before in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 21 there's also mention of it elsewhere in the in the Torah most of the time

when someone was was hanged on a tree it's not what we think of it's not like they were in fact we don't have at least in my recollection we don't have any instance of the old testament of someone being executed by what we refer to as hanging with a rope it said most of the time they were either executed beforehand and then hung up on a post or a tree as a way of basically humiliation or shaming or they were uh in some in some cultures i don't know if this happened in israel but in some cultures they were actually impaled i know the assyrians did that they were infamous for executing people that way by impaling them on on poles but one thing that couldn't happen when some when a body was hung on a tree like that is it had to be taken down before the sunset

that this was actually made explicit in Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 32. And, you know, with all that kind of background in mind, isn't it interesting how the same thing happened to Jesus? So he is, in fact, that verse from Deuteronomy about anyone who's hanged on a tree is accursed of God, that's actually quoted by Paul in Galatians chapter 3, in reference to jesus becoming a curse for us and even though it was the romans who were executing jesus not the jews even though it was the romans who were executing him still christ was taken down from the cross before sunset because the next day was the sabbath and placed into the tomb

so we have these this is one of these one of these strange sort of uh biblical parallels that it's not the only one where you have something happening here to an enemy of israel to one who is shamed who actually in in in this strange sort of way is also a picture of what eventually is going to happen to to the messiah what you have in the i mean these stories are we've talked about before you know joshua is rough like this because i mean you you read this and you're like good grief man i mean we've talked about ad nauseum uh about this is how the judgment of god works and how in the totality of it and all this sort of thing and so maybe you could wrap your head around that and be like okay so this is like a picture like this is these aren't good

people pagan worship practices that involve all kinds of horrible things and when the judgment of god comes in the form of israel it's it's total but then you're like okay but seriously you gotta like hang guys on trees like i mean come on yeah and if you have a picture of something though what you do is you have the representative of this sinful god-hating people the headpiece of this like hung out for all to see right so this is this is the he's the representative of the of the entire city uh and in this way so christ is hung on a tree as the one who bears the shame of the whole world for all to see uh he is the rep he's the second adam he is the representative of all mankind uh and he too is propped up and that is part of this is i mean

even paul will say this that that it is a it is a shame to endure right i mean like that's that's part of crucifixion was horrible a horrible way to die yes because it's extremely painful it's also a horrible way to die because you you die in just abject shame i mean this is why crucifixion was public i mean they did this you know off in a back room somewhere like you know in some place where no one could see it it would be horrible but that you have horrible upon horrible when they do this publicly in this way this king becomes this very strange image of christ who bears the shame of his of his people yeah yeah i mean i don't i if i read this or heard this recently anyway that that the purpose of crucifixion was not to kill people the purpose

of the crucifixion was to to heap shame and serve as as a warning to others right of course yeah the person eventually died but they could have put a sword through his heart it'd been a lot faster and just as just as efficient so the purpose of crucifixion was to bring shame and humiliation and and terror and fear well you see this because once the shame is over they'll go break the leg so the person dies faster yes yeah yeah so they're like okay the shaming's done like let's just get it over with right so you you you take all of that with the roman crucifixion you take uh passages like this and joshua where a body is tongue up of the enemy in order to bring shame upon the defeated ones you bring all that together into the picture of what's happening on

the cross and it really gives you a complete picture of the totality of evil that christ has taken into himself yeah so it wasn't just it wasn't just wrongdoing that christ suffered for it was shame and death and terror and everything wrong in this world was heaped upon him in order that he might make everything right right for us so yeah this is this is a great instance of where When you read the Old Testament with a Christ-centered perspective, even verses like this, which on the surface, yeah, are just hard to read and full of brutality. You can see how in one way or another, the Spirit is using even narratives like this to point us toward what the entire scriptures point toward, and that is the work of the Messiah. We'll do two more verses. We're almost to the end of chapter.

Joshua builds an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, in Mount Ebal, just as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the sons of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of uncut stones on which no man had wielded an iron tool. And they offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord and sacrifice to peace offerings. Now we'll come back to this in the next episode. So the one thing I want to point out when we wrap this up is that it isn't fascinating how it seems like from just a very practical perspective that the very next thing they would have done is to march on to the next city. I mean, they're fresh from battle. They've gone back to Ai and not only conquered Ai,

but also probably Bethel. And so why not just move on immediately to whatever's next? But they don't, because one of the purposes, one of the things God told them to do was when you cross into the Holy Land, I want you to build an altar and to write on some stones, the words of the law, and then to have this almost antiphonal response of blessings and curses. So that's what they do. They take a break from the battle and they travel northward and they're between these

two mountains. We'll come back to this next week. And here they build an altar and they offer sacrifices because ultimately this is their acknowledgement of the fact that this battle that they just won was not due to their own military strategies, but it was due to the gift of the Lord. He's the one who plans. He's the one who fights for them. He's the one who's actually already given them this land. And because of his work, they'll be able to take possession of it. Yeah, it seems pretty obvious that Israel can't accomplish much of anything apart from God. Because if you actually look at the numbers, you know, as it talks about, I mean, I does not is not a big place. It says it says all 12,000 of the people of I.

Well, that's that. So you have to assume this. This is the entirety of I. So this is not it's not a huge place. I mean, Joshua apparently has 30,000 fighting guys. Yeah, right. Never mind everybody else. Like, apparently, it's like no big deal for him to call 30,000 soldiers, you know? So, I mean, the fact that they got beat before is God saying, hey, so you know. Like, even when it would seem naturally that you should have no problem doing this, it doesn't happen apart from me. Yeah, everything is, every time that they try and do something on their own, and we'll see this in the next chapter, where they don't consult the Lord, they don't follow his word,

things do not turn out well for them. But every time that they're basically acknowledging the fact that this is all gift, that everything that they're winning as victories is also pure gift from God, well then, yeah, everything is as it should be. And every time they think that they can do it on their own or they'll consult the Lord is when things go badly. Well, I'm sure they've learned their lesson, and they won't get in any more trouble along the way.

Oh, no, no. Everything's going to be smooth sailing from here on out. All right. Well, that's it, guys. That's 40 minutes. If the podcast has been helpful to you, you can go over to 1517.org and go to the Donate page, and you can chip in.

A whole bunch of people doing a little bit makes it all possible and free for everyone. And thank you so much to those of you who do that. Chad, I will see you next week. See you here. We'll see you next time.