All right, if you'll open your
Bibles to Joshua chapter 8. Now this is the third week we've
spent on this chapter, and we probably have one more week to
go, it gives us the account of the
conquest of the city of Ai. What we, in the first lesson,
we simply spoke about the nature of war. We really didn't address
anything in the scriptures except to take note that their way of
waging war, it's not the way modern so-called
civilized war is carried out. But we need not be embarrassed
of that fact, if we're ever challenged on it, because God did not have
these stories recorded for us as patterns to follow in our
natural day-to-day lives. They are to be understood spiritually. God had told Joshua and the Israeli
army whenever they took a city, they were to put everyone to
the sword and we normally don't do that kind of thing. Western, the culture of Western Europe
generally has held that once an enemy is subdued, you don't
do any more to them. And so their way of waging warfare,
it does offend our modern sensibilities. But the manner in which God told
them to attack and conquer the city of Ai was by ambush. And they set, well Joshua went
there with 30,000 men, 5,000 of them were to hide, and the
other 25,000 along with Joshua would approach the city openly.
And when the men of the city came out to engage in battle,
Joshua and the 25,000 would turn and run. And when they did, of
course, the soldiers of Ai assumed this was going to be like the
first time when the Israelis went into retreat and the men
of Ai were victorious. So they pursued the Israelites. And evidently, they didn't shut
the door behind them. when they went outside the gate
of the city. So the 5,000 came out of their hiding place, went
into the city, and put everybody there to the sword. Remember,
there weren't any soldiers left in the city. And put them to
the sword, and set the city on fire. Then they came out of the
city, and they put the squeeze, you know, on the men of AI. And
I read one commentary, and I'm not sure exactly where they got
it, but evidently the city of Bethel, which was nearby, they
came out to help. But that army, that is the men of Ai, they got
put in the squeeze because at the appropriate time, when Joshua
saw the smoke of the city come up, God had told him to hold
out his javelin. Now, one writer pointed out,
and I think that this is legitimate, it wasn't just a spear, so to
speak. It was a spear with a flag on
it. And you've seen that kind of thing in pictures of medieval
warfare, you know, with the soldiers and the knights and whatnot.
And you'd have, you know, all of them had spears, but there
were spears with signal flags on them. some of them, and so
whoever was in charge and directed the affairs of the battle, you
know, he would have different flags he could put up on the
spear and that would tell the soldiers what they were supposed
to do. So Joshua held up his javelin and it was a signal to
the 25,000 with him to turn around. Because see, their retreat, they
just feigned a retreat. They had no intention of running. It was simply for the purpose
of drawing out the army. So they turned, and when they
turned on the men of Ai, and of course, the battle ensues,
and then the men of Ai realize their city's on fire, and in
between them and their city is another 5,000 soldiers. of the army of Israel. And essentially,
they got destroyed. Every one of them was put to
death, and they took the king of Ai, and as was typical in
that time, they killed him. It doesn't say just how they
killed him, but it said they hanged him up before the Lord.
And that was according to the law that says, cursed is everyone
who's hanged on a tree. And the point was that, you know,
you take someone either who has been executed for a particularly
serious crime, one that would, under the old covenant, would
have put him outside the commonwealth of Israel, that he was considered
cursed. You would take the body of the
executed person and just hang them out there. as though they
were displayed in the presence of the Lord. And so that's what
they did with the king of Ai, but again, according to the law,
they took him down before sundown, put him at the gate of the city,
and piled rocks over top of him. Now this ambush, this method
of warfare, gives us some insight into just how it is that believers
carry on the business of their spiritual warfare. It is, in
many regards, an ambush, not the kind of ambush in which we
are trying to be sneaky or deceptive in what we're doing. We should
never engage in any kind of deceptive tactics. And a fellow I know,
a young man, who was involved in a ministry on the East Coast,
And he'd gone there expecting that they were planting a church,
and he expected they were going to do one thing, but they ended
up doing another. They didn't just go out and preach
the gospel, which is the way our Lord said to do things. They
did what was called relational evangelism. And he would go on
campus at the local university, and he'd go there and he'd just
try to befriend people. And then after you befriend them
and establish a relationship with them, then you begin to
tell them about the gospel. And one of, with whom he had
developed something of a relationship, I believe I'm getting this story
correct, but once this young man began telling
this student about the gospel. After a little bit, the fellow
says, if I don't believe what you're teaching me, are you still
going to be my friend? You see, here's what he saw.
The only reason that a relationship was established was in the hope
of being able to leverage that into a conversion. Now, I will
say this, one of the best ways, most effective means of testifying
to the gospel is to testify to those with whom you already have
a relationship. But that doesn't mean you go
out and make fake relationships with people just to give you
a platform from which to preach the gospel to them. We can be
very open in what we're doing all the time. Relational evangelism
is good. Those people you already have
a relationship with and have the kind of relationship that's
not going to change no matter what their response to the gospel
is, tell them the gospel. Who knows, it may be that God
has brought you into that person's life expressly for the purpose
of bringing the gospel to them. But we don't have to do any manipulating,
we don't have to do anything underhanded. But what we mean
by it being an ambush, we are engaging in a warfare that is
much greater and against much greater enemies than any natural
warfare that's ever been engaged. You know, we had two world wars
in the last century. And you know, the World War I was so
bad, They called it the war to end all wars, which it's amazing
the optimism of man about man. No, that was just the next step.
You know, the next war was going to be even worse. Because man
is a violent creature by nature, and unless the Lord restrains
him, he will try to subdue other men and women, willing to do
so, willing to kill, even if necessary to do so. But we had,
there were just horrible wars, and the pictures, that they have
of that. It just seems so awful. But that's
nothing compared to what's going on in the spiritual world. You
and I don't see it. And neither do the people whom
we are confronting with the Gospel. And one reason that we don't
see it, and in particular, they don't see the warfare going on,
is that it's a spiritual warfare, and as Paul said, we're not wrestling
against flesh and blood. When we go out preaching the
gospel, the enemy is not the people we're talking to. They are on the other side, so
to speak. But our desire for them is not
their defeat, but their rescue. See what I mean? No, the warfare's
going on in the spiritual realm. Paul says, we are wars with spiritual
wickedness in the high places. Interestingly enough, where it
says high places, I believe that's King James, it's exactly the
same wording, and this is in the book of Ephesians, it's exactly
the same wording that he used when he says, we're blessed with
all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. And what is translated as heavenly
places in chapter one, later on in Ephesians, is called spiritual
wickedness in high places. There's a warfare going on. We're
involved in it, but we can't see it. But we know that the
enemy, the enemy of God, the enemy of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the enemy of the church, Satan, the devil, the serpent, however
you want to call him. He and all his agents in the
world and the ones that are in the spiritual world, they're
much more than you and I can deal with. From time to time, I watch television
shows or movies or whatever that involve the idea of demon possession. Not that I believe anything that
they're putting on those TV shows. I look at it just like it's any
other fantasy show. But one that I watched recently,
it's supposed to be a documentary. And in the documentary sometimes
you see the guy that was actually involved, a policeman, who in
league with a priest, and I believe this was in New York City, they
were confronting some especially bad criminals who they believed
were possessed by demons and supposedly casting them out.
But I always kind of get tickled when I see the way these so-called
exorcisms are supposedly carried out, it takes forever. Day after
day, the priest is there hitting them with holy water and showing
them a crucifix and all that. As though demons are so superstitious,
they think, you know, oh, he just showed me a crucifix. What
am I going to do? As though there's power in it.
Or some water blessed by a priest or even the Pope himself or whoever
it is that does that blessing. And somehow or another, that
has power. And the demon comes back from
it, and they're saying things like, you know, the power of
Christ commands you. The power of Christ commands
you. And as long as it takes, I keep thinking, well, the power
of Christ must not be much. Because the power of Christ has
been commanding this demon for the last two or three days, and
he hasn't left yet. fantasy versions of demon possession
and exorcism. What they do demonstrate, though,
is that we don't have the power to deal with them. When I say
we don't have the power, that is our power. We're no match
for them. But, as Paul says, the weapons
of our warfare are not fleshly, they're not natural. We're not
relying on what we are, or what we can do. We are relying on
the power of God. That's why Paul said in Romans,
I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, I'm not ashamed to
believe it, and I'm not ashamed to preach it. because it is the
power of God unto salvation. So, to the world, the natural,
visible world, and even to the elements of the spiritual world,
which we would call the evil spiritual world, they see us
engaged in this warfare, and we look so weak and useless. In our weakness, it looks like
we're retreating. And therefore, the enemies of
the cross, in whatever form they may appear, whether it's spiritual
or those who are under, you know, it talks about the God of this
age has blinded people, and so in their blindness, they're actually
working for Him without knowing it. And they see us as weak. And they're right. We are. What they don't know is that Joshua leads this army,
the heavenly Joshua, Jesus Christ. And it's by his power things
will be accomplished, and it will be accomplished at its correct
time. And so it looks as though we're
ambushing people. Even though we're not trying
to ambush them, but when we preach the gospel and God makes it effective,
it is an ambush to them, because they were pursuing something
else. They were not expecting. That work of God called a new
birth, when suddenly they're made spiritually alive, and they
see things as they are, instead of the dark and deceitful way
that Satan has presented it to them for all these years. Saul of Tarsus is a good example. However, now that's talking about
us as we go out there. But you know, this whole idea
of ambush can apply to our Lord Jesus Christ as well. He came
in weakness. You know, that's why the Jews wouldn't
believe He was Messiah. They were looking for a military
commander, a military king who'd come because, see, their eyes
were fixed on this world. Their eyes, they thought that
Messiah was coming to establish an earthly kingdom centered in
that bit of real estate over there. Capital, Jerusalem. They thought that Messiah would
just be a natural man who set up a natural kingdom, which incidentally
would be populated primarily by Jews. and they'd rule the
world. And our Lord, how does He come?
Does He descend from heaven on a white horse? Now, we hear that later in the
book of Revelation. And I saw heaven open, and behold,
a white horse. And He that sat upon Him was
called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge
and make war. And all the armies which were
in heaven followed Him upon white horses, dressed in fine linen,
white and clean. Our Lord will appear that way. But when He first came, He was
born of, I'd say, a no-name woman. We know what her name was, but
were it not that God favored her by allowing her to be the
mother of Messiah, we'd have never known who Mary was. We'd
have never heard of her. She was nothing of any consequence. She becomes pregnant out of wedlock. And were it not that the angel
appeared to Joseph and said, it's okay, it's not what you
think. And were he not willing to suffer the scandal that would
come with taking her as his wife. They lived in a town of Nazareth,
which was a despised city. That's why, was it Nathan, the
disciple named Nathan, when he was approached about the Lord
Jesus and told that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. And
he said, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? And that was
an otherwise decent guy. He didn't even think anything
good would come out of Nazareth. And here's the Lord Jesus, and
it says in Isaiah in prophecy, there is no majesty, no beauty
in him that we would desire him. He did not look like a powerful
person. And they despised him. Said he
was despised and rejected of man. And then at the end of his natural
life, what happens? They crucify him. There could not be a greater
demonstration in that day, a greater demonstration of being a failure
in this world than to be crucified. I mean, it was the kind of thing
that if you were crucified, well, people in the family, they just
never talked about that. You know, if you gave your family
history, you left that guy out. Even though they despised the
Romans, they also knew the great disgrace and shame that went
with being crucified. And our Lord was crucified. Now,
we know the spiritual significance of it. Cursed is everyone who
is hanged on a tree, and God arranged that the manner of our
Lord's death, the manner by which our Lord would be sacrificed
for our sin, was being nailed up to a figurative tree, made
a curse for us to redeem us from the curse of the law. But all
the world could see was somebody that Rome held in great contempt,
someone of so little value they would not stand up to the jealousy
of the religious leaders. And they watched him die. That does not look like a victory,
does it? It looks like a failure. It looks
like a retreat. And a retreat in which everybody
that's running away ends up dead. But it was an ambush. Now, we
know that Satan was involved in the crucifixion. He's the
one that entered Judas' heart to move him to betray the Lord.
And no doubt, he and his minions, so to speak, were working in
the hearts and minds of all those involved in calling for his crucifixion
and the willingness to carry it out. We know all of that. You'd think, as intelligent and
crafty as the devil is in other things, he would realize, after,
you know, minimum 4,000 years of dealing with God, beginning
there in the garden, no matter what he does, in the end, he
ends up being the failure, and it's revealed that what he thought
was going to be a success turned out to be God's success. But he was the agent. stirring up
the hearts and minds of those wicked men to crucify our Lord.
And I have little doubt that as they watched him there, pouring
out his soul unto death, if devils ever smile, I'm sure they were
at that point. We finally got him. I heard a song, I don't know
anything about it, but the little part I'm going to tell you about,
and it was talking about our Lord's death. And it was, you
know, putting forth this image of the devil and the demons,
you know, are just having a great time. And this countdown begins. Ten, nine, eight, seven, seven,
and so forth. Of course, we know what a countdown
is. I doubt they had countdowns as such back then. They didn't
have bombs to blow up, so they didn't need a countdown. But
for us, we understand. And he gets down, he goes, five,
four, three, two, he has one. And when our Lord said, it is
finished, in my mind, and I visualize things. I can just see the devil,
what? Finished? I was the one doing something.
He's acting like he was doing something. It was an ambush. It had been prophesied, the very
first prophecy regarding the Lord Jesus Christ says that the
serpent would strike the heel, of the seed of the woman, but
he would crush the serpent's head in the process. And Satan
struck the heel of our Lord and thought that bite was going to
get him. And he saw our Lord die and didn't
realize that by dying, our Lord crushed his head. My dad used to tell a joke, how
do you kill a snake? You cut off its tail. And that's
because the only thing there is to a snake is a head and a
tail. It's just a backwards way of saying you cut off its head.
Someone wrote a book back when I may have still been in high
school, but at least by the time I was in college. Satan is alive
and well on planet Earth. And it sold lots and lots of
copies. And then I read another book.
Well, I never did read the first one. I just knew about it. But
it was a book on counseling, actually. And the guy was putting
forth a view of the work of Christ and the power of the gospel and
its ability to transform people. And he made this statement. Satan
is certainly alive, but he is not well on planet Earth. You
know, you stomp on a snake, he may writhe and all that for a
while, but it's a mortal wound. And our Lord Jesus Christ, by
a sort of ambush, brought down our enemy. And all that you and
I are doing, just like when David brought down Goliath, We're just pursuing a retreating
army and gathering up the spoils. Our Lord made an ambush, and
I'm glad he did. I'm glad he ambushed our great
enemy, and I'm glad he ambushed us. Because one thing's for sure,
we never would have agreed to come along. It required him to
defeat us completely.