Now, last week, we spent the
entire lesson simply talking about war in general. And the reason I did that was,
Well, part of it was prompted by the present warfare going
on over in the Middle East right now and, you know, how it's being
interpreted both politically and, unfortunately, religiously
because I, of course, I have a lot of Facebook friends who
I really don't even know who they are. They found out about
me and wanted to be my friend. So I said, OK. I don't have anything
on there that I'm afraid for them to see. But they evidently
have the same view of prophecy that the church of my youth did.
And so, you know, they're saying things like, oh, the Lord's going
to come back just any time now. You know, it's obvious. You know,
there's no way that Israel can be defeated, and they have this
attitude, it doesn't matter what the nation of Israel does, it's
to be applauded, because Israel did it, and the Bible says if
you're against Israel, God will destroy you. And they say this, Well, they don't understand the
scriptures that they're looking at, and they have not learned
the principle of how to deal with the Old Testament and what
it says about the nation Israel. They don't understand what place
Israel holds in the economy of God. All this has some effect on how
we look at these wars of Israel as they went in to conquer the
land. Now those who are opposed to the message of scripture will
often bring up some of the, well, we can't call them anything but
horrible events that are recorded in the Old Testament. Things
which the nation of Israel did, things which individual Jews
did. The wars they conducted were,
by modern sensibilities, barbaric. They had no moderation in war. They conducted war. Well, of
course, they were told by God what to do. But then again, the
Muslims would say the same thing. But God did tell them to go in,
destroy the city, kill everyone in it, man, woman, and child.
But if you are not a believer, and you simply read what happened,
there's no way to justify the actions that Joshua and the army
of Israel took. Because it was a war of conquest,
humanly speaking. And I'm saying, you know, forget
about what God told them and the promise to Abraham and all
that, just set that aside for a minute. If you just look at
that as any other human being would, you have an army that
went into a land filled with people who had done them no wrong
and essentially wiped them out and took the land. And there
will be people opposed to the truth who will use things like
that and other events that you find recorded in the Old Testament
and say, well, what kind of God is that? Now these will be mostly,
there's a, well there was a, what they call new atheists,
and I refer to them as evangelical atheists because they're trying
to make atheists out of everybody. And then you have a subset of
that group, those who were brought up in some conservative version
of Christianity, found the inconsistencies within that, and so they rejected
the whole thing. And this is the kind of stuff
they'll bring up. And the best way to handle that, and this
is what I was trying to get, the point I was trying to make
last week, I don't know if I made it well, but how do you handle
it when people bring up stories such as these battles that were
conducted, the warfare conducted by Israel as they conquered the
land, Just looking at it with natural eyes. It looks horrible. How can we justify what went
on? Well, the first thing is, I don't
try to justify it. That is, I don't try to justify
the Jews. Now, they did what they were
told to do. But that does not mean their
hearts were right when they did it. You know, when Nebuchadnezzar
and his army came down and destroyed Jerusalem. They did so because
God sent them. Now, it's not like God spoke
to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was an empire
builder. And God, you know, it says the heart of the king is
in the hand of the Lord and He turns it wherever He wants to.
And so, He turned Nebuchadnezzar's heart to destroy Jerusalem. And that's what Nebuchadnezzar
did. He did it as the arm of God's judgment. And then God
turned around and judged Nebuchadnezzar for doing it. Why? Well, Nebuchadnezzar was not
carrying out those battles against Israel because he had a zeal
for God or anything like that. And I would imagine that most
of the Israeli army here under Joshua They weren't really believers. I mean, that's always been true
of Israel, just as it's true of what we might call the visible
church. I read there's over two billion people that claim to
be Christians. Well, when you consider that among all those
people, there are beliefs that are mutually exclusive. It can't
be that everybody who's saying they're a Christian really is.
And the same thing applied to these Jews. Many of them did not believe
God. They went through the form of
their religion. But that was it. And when they
went in, all they could see is, I mean, they may have thought
that they were doing the right thing, that they were following
God. They said, yeah, God said he's going to give us this land.
Man, it is a great land. Let's go in and take it. And
all they could see in the whole thing was what they would come
to possess for themselves. And so they did not go into the
battle with what we would call good hearts or good motivations.
But it's not necessary that they did. Because you see, this, while
from the fleshly viewpoint of it, from just looking at it naturally,
these are the wars of Israel, they aren't. This is the war
of God against the people in that land. Now, while we could
find fault with the motivations and some of the actions of the
Jews as they carried out this battle of conquest, we can't
find any fault with what God did. Now, there are people who would
find fault with God. One celebrity, a fellow named Stephen Fry, comedian,
actor, whatnot, from Britain. But he's one of these atheists
and one of these bitter ones. And he has rejected God because
he said something to the effect, childhood cancer, what's with
that? As though the fact that childhood cancer exists proves
that God doesn't exist, or if he does exist, he's not worthy
of our worship. But you know, none of us deserve
to be alive. None of us deserve to exist.
Anything we experience short of eternal condemnation is better
than we deserve. So when you consider how God
sent the Jews in there, and he talked about, you know, that,
if you remember, 38 years before this, the Jews had refused to
go into the land through unbelief, but the reason was, I mean, their
unbelief kept them from going to the land. Nonetheless, God
said, but the sin, or the cup of the Amalekite sin is not full
yet. And his point was, They're sinning,
they're sinning bad, but they have not yet gotten to the point
where I'm going to destroy them. And so while the Lord dealt with
the unbelief of the Jews, and everybody 20 and older dropped
dead in the desert, During that roughly 40 years, the cup of
the Amalekites got full. Then God sent the Israeli army
in there as the army of His justice against their sin. And while,
you know, it's almost embarrassing to read the kind of things that
went on. I said we just don't like to think in terms of that
kind of slaughter. that a person would lose this
life is nothing compared to what God does in eternity to those
who are in rebellion against him. And while this is one of those
things that you can't dogmatically assert from the scriptures, but
it is my opinion, that those that die in infancy, they die
in the Lord. And if you say, why do you believe
that? Well, I've got a few scriptures that tend that way, but I admit,
the scriptures do not address that situation in a way that
anybody can say, oh, this is the way it is. But that's the
way I believe it is, nonetheless. And therefore, when the Lord
went in and destroyed the Amalekites because the cup of sin was full,
yet there were thousands who received mercy from Him, for
He took them in their infancy and spared them from growing
up like that, and spared them from the eternal destruction
that would await them had He allowed them to grow up and be
committed in their rebellion. Now, let's get to this battle
of Ai. If you'll remember, they destroyed,
went in and destroyed Jericho. Then they tried to take Ai, and
they lost. And it was discovered that one
man named Achan, one of the soldiers, he had taken some of the things
that God had told them not to keep, but they were to turn over
to the treasury of the Lord. Consequently, they had been defeated
by AI, which was a relatively small city. And once that was
discovered, they destroyed Aiken's entire household. He, all the
people in his household, everything he had. And that dealt with the
issue of the sin. And then the Lord came to Joshua
and said, now it's time to take up the battle again. The issue's
been settled. I'm with you. I've turned over
Ai to you. Now, the first time they went
against Ai and were defeated, they only took 3,000 soldiers. And they probably did that because,
after all, they had taken down the big city, Jericho. A little
one won't take all the soldiers we have. Well, the fact is, the
Israeli army did not take the city of Jericho. God did. All they did was march around
it, blow their trumpets and shout. Now, once the walls came down,
yes, they went in and they killed everyone in there. But the point
was, it wasn't really a battle. They didn't win the battle. And
what a lesson to us, no matter how numerous we are. as believers
in our Lord Jesus Christ, as we go out and preach the gospel. And that's what this is all a
picture of. These wars are pictures of believers in this world coming
against the people of this world with the gospel. But as we go
out there, it doesn't matter how many of us there are. It
doesn't matter how talented the preacher may be. It doesn't matter
how good the worship band is or whatever. All of that stuff
that can be seen has no effect on the outcome of the battle. And just as the second time they
went to AI, they took the whole army with them. I mean, you know,
they thought, well, we're going to give it everything we have.
We should give everything we have to the propagation of the
truth. Exercise every ability we have
in prayer, in preaching, in testifying, whatever we can do. But here's
the point, and Paul put it this way, I planted Apollos watered,
but God gave the increase. You know, Paul could have planted
twice as much, and Apollos could have watered twice as much. It
would have made the same increase. Because it was not their planting
and watering that brought the increase. Now, that doesn't mean
we're not going to do what God sent us to do, which is to preach
the gospel. And we know that that is the method by which He
normally brings to pass the salvation of His elect. Nonetheless, it's
not going to be how much I exert myself, It is simply, we preach
the gospel, and you know, in the book of Isaiah, it says,
talks about the word that goes out of God's mouth. He says,
it will not return to me void, empty, useless, unfruitful. It will accomplish the purpose
for which I sent it. Now, you know, when I preach,
my purpose is always this. This is what I want. This is
what I hope happens when I preach. People hear it. Their hearts
are made alive through the preaching. They believe what they hear.
They call upon the name of the Lord. They rejoice. All of that.
That's what I'm hoping for. But God did not make any promise
that my purpose would be fulfilled in the preaching of His Word.
He said His purpose would. And so we keep on preaching.
And when I say preach, understand, I don't just mean pulpiteering
like I do. When you just talk with someone
about the things of God, that's preaching. The word preach simply
means to declare, to herald. And you don't have to be up here
behind a pulpit to do that. Well, first they took a little group,
now they're taking the whole group. Now, we're looking at
verses 2 through 29, and rather than taking all the time to read
it, basically their method, and God told Joshua, here's how you
do it, set an ambush. And so there were going to be
about 30,000 of them go. And when you read through it,
just because of the way they tell stories, it can kind of
get tangled up. But evidently of this 30,000,
5,000 were chosen to go and hide and prepare an ambush. The other 25,000, along with
Joshua, would approach the city from the front and draw the fighting
men out of the city. And then, once the fighting men
got out there and the battle was about to be engaged, then
Joshua and the 25,000 feigned a retreat. And I'm sure that to the men
of Ai, They say, these Jews, they're never going to learn,
are they? They can't beat us. And so with full confidence,
they come charging out of the city, and they're chasing the
Israelites away. And it looks to them like the
Israelites are fleeing, just as in the former attempt. But at some point, Joshua, had
been instructed to raise his javelin, his spear. And that
would signal the ones in ambush to attack the city. And they
were to go in the city and put the city to the sword, everybody
that was in it, set the city on fire. And that's what they
did. And so now here's the Jews running
away, and that is 25,000 of them, and the men of Ai, and as I understand
it, this battle happened in the area between Ai and the city
of Bethel, and the people of Bethel, the men of Bethel came
out and helped. But they were chasing the Israelites, and they
think they've got them, and then they see the city and the smoke
going up. And once the city had been set
fire, Those 5,000 that had ambushed, they came out of the city, they
joined the battle, and the men of the city of Ai were squeezed
in between Joshua and his 25,000 and the other 5,000. In other words, they got ambushed. And their confidence is suddenly
turned to disaster. and they crumble before the Jewish
army. All the soldiers are killed,
and the king of Ai is captured. Remember, they called it a king.
Each of these little cities had their own leader, and city-states,
they were called. But he was hanged, and that's
the way the Bible puts it. Now, that does not mean that
he was hanged in the way we think of it. You know, you put a noose
around someone's neck and kill them by that method. Now, that
could have been what they did, but normally what was meant by
this was he was put to death and then his body was hung up
before the Lord. And the law says cursed is the
one that's hanged from a tree. And that was just an indication
that he and the city he represented had been utterly destroyed, having
been cursed by God. And then, according to the law,
they didn't leave his body up overnight. They took it down.
I don't know what they did with it. Well, that's right. They
took it over there to the city of Ai and put it right at the,
well, where the gate of the city of Ai used to be, and piled rocks
over top of it. And so there AI was just a big
heap. The king was under a heap of
stones. All the people were dead. And
those stones were a continual reminder. of the victory of the
Lord over those people. Now, we don't look at something
like this and think that we are to go out with similar violence. There have been versions of Christianity
in the past, and I'm sure that if they thought they could get
away with it, they try it now, who think that the way to spread
Christianity is with battles, with wars, the Crusades. That's
what a lot of that was about. And I can't remember which battle
this was. I can't even remember just where
it happened. But there was one battle that went on under the
flag of the Roman church, I believe. And anyway, they conquered a
group. And so what did they do? They
forced them to march through a river. And that baptized all
of them. Evangelism by the sword. Our battle is not in the flesh. Ever. We are not here as believers
in our Lord Jesus Christ. He did not send us here to change
the world. He did not send us here to, for
a while, this phrase was used, impact the culture. Now, what
we were sent to do will make changes, and it will impact the
culture. That's not our goal, though.
That's not the job we were sent to do. We were sent to preach
the gospel. The sword we use is not, certainly
not a metal sword, nor anything that a metal sword would represent. And what's that? Natural power
and authority. You know, kings and religious
leaders have always known that if you can join religious power
with governmental power, you've got a nearly unstoppable power
in this world. Because the one has people's
bodies in their hand, and the other one has people's souls
in their hand, at least that's what the people think. And you
get those two going together. And you know in the book of Revelation
it talks about the beast that rises out of the sea, and then
the beast which rises out of the earth, and that second beast
is later called the false prophet. What is the beast that rises
out of the sea? It's essentially political powers
and such as they are arrayed against God. And those two join
forces. And along with Babylon, which just represents
the world with all its attractions, all of its tempting
power. But those three together, working
in concert as agents of the enemy of the church, the devil. they
turn on the church. But it's an incredible power
when those three get together. And in fact, the only power that
can overcome those three powers joined together is God Himself,
which is what the book of Revelation is about. It's interesting people
read the book of Revelation. I remember one time I was going
to go to bed and I thought, well, I'm going to read Revelation
13 because that's about the beast coming out of the sea and that's
kind of scary, you know. I don't know why I wanted to read something
scary just before I was going to go to bed, but it seemed like
a smart thing that night. The book of Revelation is not about
the beast, it's about the one who conquered the beast and the
other beast. and Babylon, and he continues
to do so. At any rate, this ambush, what
does it picture for us? Well, when we preach the gospel,
we are going out and God uses that both in judgment and in
mercy. Now we never think of preaching
the gospel as being an act of judgment, but the message of
the gospel contains both messages. In the preaching of the gospel,
we are not insurance salesmen trying to get people to sign
up for eternal life insurance. The preaching of the Gospel is
a declaration of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It's a declaration of who Christ
is, what He has done, the significance of what He has done, and the
call is to repent and believe. And this repentance, remember
the first time that was used in His first full-blown Gospel
since was on the day of Pentecost, and Peter had just preached to
them that they, with wicked hands, had killed the one God sent as
Messiah. And their response is, what are
we going to do? And I think it was not a question
that they believed was going to have an answer. Maybe they
did. But I think it was just kind
of a rhetorical, despairing thing. What are we going to do? We have rejected the One God
sent us. There's no coming back from that,
you know. And you can imagine then how
wonderful it was when Peter says, repent and be baptized every
one of you for the remission of sins. Now, baptism didn't
bring the remission of sins the way it's worded. It says, you
could translate that, repent and then be baptized because
your sins have been forgiven. But repentance was the proper
response. Repent means to change your mind.
Change your mind about what? Most people think repent means
quit sinning. If I could quit sinning, I wouldn't
need a Savior now, would I? And while it may involve changing
your mind about sinning, the essence of all sin is in this,
rebellion against God, and in particular, rebellion as it is
expressed in rejecting Christ. And so what he told them to do,
and remember, the people he was speaking to, Peter wasn't preaching in the
bar. He wasn't preaching in a brothel. He wasn't preaching in any of
the pagan shrines that had been set up throughout Israel. He
was on the temple grounds talking to people who were there fulfilling
their obligations under the law. So what do those people got to
repent of? Ah, there's a good lesson of what sin really is. These people were all gathered
doing what they had been told to do. And Peter said to them,
repent. Why? Because their essential
sin was in rejecting Christ. To repent meant not to accept
him as though he's up for your approval. It meant bow to him. He said, this Jesus whom you
have crucified, God has made to be Lord and Christ, Lord and
Savior. Now, in, for lack of a better way
to put it, evangelical circles, there's a debate on what's called
lordship salvation, and just as with every Man-made term. Different people
define it different ways. I often see the folks whom I
do know, with whom I've been walking according to the same
gospel with them for many years, but they reject it. Oh, Lordship
salvation is works salvation. Well, I'm sure that there are
some people who believe that lordship salvation is works salvation. Because they'll define lordship
as you must achieve a certain level of obedience to Christ. That's not what it's about. There
is nothing in the Bible to indicate that saving faith is simply believing
a set of facts concerning the life, death, and resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then, as it were, signing on
the dotted line, you know, quote, letting Him save you. God's salvation
is not just a matter of being saved from hell. It involves
that. It's about being saved from sin,
and once again, our essential sin. is our rebellious heart
against him. And all the time, as the gospel
is preached, it is about bowing to the Lord. In the Psalms,
it says, kiss the sun. lest he be angry, and you perish
in the way." You see, the Lord Jesus Christ is not some doormat. He's the King. And you bow to
Him. Now, as we're going to see in
the morning sermon, we're never in perfect submission to Him,
are we? I mean, we sin regularly. We sin more than we know we sin.
That's not the issue. The matter is, where's your heart?
What do you think of the Lord Jesus Christ? Now, Joshua, whose
name is the same name as Jesus, he's the captain of the host.
Do you think that these Canaanite peoples were going to bow to
him? Were they going to recognize
Joshua as the new king of the land? No. That's why their armies
came out to fight. Not a one of them came out looking
for mercy. I shouldn't say that. One did,
didn't she? Remember Rahab in Jericho? She
said, I know who your God is, and I know what he does for you. I'm changing sides. And she was preserved. Why? That was repentance. She no longer
threw her lot with Jericho and its walls. She threw her lot
with Joshua and the people of God under his command. So we
go out and preach the gospel. We're not calling on people to
ask Jesus in their heart. We're calling on them to bow.
with the understanding, if you don't, if you don't, there's
nothing but eternal wrath left for you. And yet, what mercy? Because this is not a king that
I have not already offended. and he's just coming in to take
over the territory, I have occupied territory that belonged to him.
He's coming and defending, as it were, his territory. I've already been the offender,
and yet he gives me such gracious terms of peace. Acknowledge who I am. Throw your
lot with me. Trust me. And what better situation, what greater
grace could we ask from God than this? That he says, join me and your
soul shall live. And so when we go out preaching,
it is a warfare. But it's one in which we're just
not going out and slaughtering people. We're not doing anything
in the flesh. We're not using hateful means.
We're not using fleshly manipulations. We're not calling on the government
to help us. No, we go out with nothing but
the sword of the Spirit, says Paul, which is the Word of God. And we've learned that when the
Bible says Word of God, it's talking about the Gospel. And
it is the power of God unto salvation. We don't need anything else.
We, in all of our weakness and all our inabilities, we go out
and we tell people the gospel. And then God comes in and He
works miracles where He is pleased to do so. He enters the hearts
of men without their permission. He comes in, as it were, an ambush. They weren't expecting it. They
thought they were carefully guarded against it. Think of Saul of
Tarsus on his way to Damascus, going to grab some more Christians,
take them back to Jerusalem, get them tried, put to death.
And he was there on his horse or donkey or whatever he was
riding. And he's high and mighty. This is Saul of Tarsus, Pharisee
of Pharisees. Big shot. And he got ambushed. He was not expecting to meet
the Lord Jesus on his way to Damascus. And when we preach
the gospel, we're ambushing people with the Lord Jesus Christ. And sometimes the ambush results
in their death. We didn't kill them. It's just
that's the way it worked out under God's providence. Sometimes
it's an ambush unto life. And that's certainly what we're
looking for, isn't it? May the Lord be pleased to let us ambush
a few of his people unto life.