Joshua 8:1-17. So the Israelites learned that they needed to be obedient.\u00a0 Disobedience has consequences.\u00a0 In this case a whole family was destroyed and 36 men besides lost their lives.\u00a0 And the Israelites (and their God) looked stupid to the Canaanites in Ai.\u00a0 In today\u2019s reading the Israelites had to go back to Ai.\u00a0 This time notice that God is giving the orders.\u00a0 And all the troops need to go.\u00a0 Why though, in verses 1 God said He was going to cause the Israelites to win?\u00a0 Notice thought that He said that he would give the city of Ai \u201cinto their hands\u201d.\u00a0 And look at how it happened.\u00a0 There were tactics, an ambush.\u00a0 30,000 men were sent to the west of Ai at night and waited.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny when I read sometimes I can almost hear the voices of the people talking.\u00a0 As I read this I imagined Joshua whispering, I don\u2019t know why, it\u2019s not like they were right next to Ai.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t know how you get 30,000 guys with swords and stuff to be quiet.\u00a0 By the way, that\u2019s 10 times the number of guys that Joshua sent against Ai the first time.\u00a0 And these guys were going to go up against a city that most of the men of war had left, to chase the Israelites.<\/p>\n
Did you notice in the very first verse that God told Joshua not to worry, that He would take care of this battle.\u00a0 Remember back in Joshua 1 that God told Joshua 3 times in the first 9 verses to be strong and courageous.\u00a0 It seems like Joshua was one to worry (Remember after the first defeat Joshua response to God? Joshua 7:7).\u00a0 But he was also faithful so in verse 7 Joshua told the guys that God would take care of this battle.\u00a0 Johsha spent the night among the troops.\u00a0 I wonder if he spent the night telling them all it would be OK, and worrying.\u00a0 In verse 8 we see the elders of the people going out with Joshua.\u00a0 I get the picture of a lot of reluctant people who need a lot of leadership.\u00a0 If you read through Judges with us this is not like the Gideon story where all the people are like \u201cGideon, oo-rah!\u201d<\/p>\n
So the men were ready and daylight came.\u00a0 The rest of the Israelite troops stormed the front gate.\u00a0 You know I wonder what happened to the bodies of the 36 guys that died a couple of days before.\u00a0 It was very common in those days for the heads of victims to be cut off and displayed by the gates of cities.\u00a0 Sort of a warning of how fierce the occupants could be if you crossed them.\u00a0 The men of Ai came out to battle and the Israelites ran away.\u00a0 So the king of Ai sent everyone after them.\u00a0 \u201cI can imagine him thinking, \u201cso much for their god.\u201d\u00a0 No one was left in the city to guard it.\u00a0 The plan was working. And that is where our action stops today.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow we will see the outcome of this battle.\u00a0 But we should notice a few things.\u00a0 I\u2019ve already mentioned a few.\u00a0 Joshua seems prone to worry.\u00a0 But God was able to use him.\u00a0 It\u2019s not by our power that we win the battles that God gives us it is with His help (Zechariah 4:1-7, Hebrews 11:34).\u00a0 But god uses people.\u00a0 We don\u2019t usually just sit on the sidelines and watch the game.\u00a0 We need to act and we need to do it as a matter of faith (Look at the verses around Hebrews 11:34).\u00a0 Finally I want to point out that this was a battle like Jericho (v. 2) with one exception, this time they would get to take the stuff and only were to destroy the people and the city.\u00a0 Later they will get to keep some of the cities.\u00a0 (If I remember right the 2 \u00bd tribes on the east of the river got to keep some cities over there already).\u00a0 So it\u2019s not like God didn\u2019t want the people taken care of, it was just that they needed to get their priorities right.\u00a0 They needed to keep God first in their lives.\u00a0 We need to do the same thing.\u00a0 Once Jesus was talking to a large crowd and he told them that worry would not accomplish any thing.\u00a0 He told them to follow god and their needs would be met (Matthew 6:25-34.\u00a0 The message he is giving starts at Matthew 5:1).\u00a0 Lord help me not worry.\u00a0 Help me trust you.\u00a0 Let me remember the victories you have already given me.\u00a0 Let me keep you first.\u00a0 Help me know what matters to you and care about the same things.\u00a0 Thank you for taking care of me.\u00a0 Give me faith and thank you for your patience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joshua 8:1-17. So the Israelites learned that they needed to be obedient.\u00a0 Disobedience has consequences.\u00a0 In this case a whole family was destroyed and 36 men besides lost their lives.\u00a0 And the Israelites (and their God) looked stupid to the Canaanites in Ai.\u00a0 In today\u2019s reading the Israelites had to go back to Ai.\u00a0 This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}