As we continue now our study in the book of Joshua, let me invite you please to take your Bible in hand and to turn with me in them to the book of Joshua, chapter 8. The book of Joshua, chapter 8. If you’re using a church Bible, it’s on page 183. You may recall the people of Israel are now engaged in the conquest of the land of Canaan. They have won a resounding victory at the city of Jericho back in chapter 6, but then chapter 7, there was a shocking reversal; a humiliating defeat at the next Amorite city as they make their way into the land, the city of Ai, all because of Achan who stole some of the plunder from the city and kept it for himself that the Lord had forbidden them to do. And so chapter 7 ended with the wrath of God being poured out on Achan and his household. Only then, as chapter 7 verse 26 tells us, did the Lord turn from His burning anger.
And now as chapter 8 opens, at least the problem of sin in the camp has been dealt with, but that still leaves the problem of Ai. The Amorite city remains undefeated. Before they can move on, the Israelites will have to go back and try again. And so our passage today sketches out the tactics and the outcomes of the second battle of Ai. The story is told brilliantly in a dramatic, fast-paced action movie sort of way. All of it concluding like some sort of Hollywood Blockbuster epic with a final wide angle shot of the whole nation gathered after the battle near Shechem in the valley between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, solemnly worshiping the Lord and renewing their covenant with Him.
And as we work through this engrossing story, it is tempting to get lost in the details. We can focus too much on Joshua’s brilliant strategy. We can feel some satisfaction that Israel managed to turn things around and beat Ai on their second go. And everyone loves a comeback story, right? And here is Israel snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Isn’t it great? But if we’re not careful, we can miss the central message of the story. We can, rather, miss the forest for our close study of the trees. This chapter is not mainly about Joshua and it is not mainly about Israel. It’s not even mainly about Ai. This is a chapter about God. Joshua 8 teaches us about the character and ways of God. We’re going to notice five things in particular about the character and ways of God here. His generosity. The generosity of God. His rule. The rule of God. His wisdom. The wisdom of God. His judgment. The judgment of God. And finally, His Gospel. The Gospel of God. So those are the themes we are going to consider as they come to us from Joshua chapter 8. Before we do that, we need to pray and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us pray.
O Lord our God, would You now, by Your Spirit, open our eyes that we might behold wonderful things out of Your Law, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Joshua chapter 8, beginning at verse 1:
“And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land. And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves. Lay an ambush against the city, behind it.’
So Joshua and all the fighting men arose to go up to Ai. And Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them out by night. And he commanded them, ‘Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind it. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you remain ready. And I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out against us just as before, we shall flee before them. And they will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the city. For they will say, ‘They are fleeing from us, just as before.’ So we will flee before them. Then you shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city, for the Lord your God will give it into your hand. And as soon as you have taken the city, you shall set the city on fire. You shall do according to the word of the Lord. See, I have commanded you.’ So Joshua sent them out. And they went to the place of ambush and lay between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai, but Joshua spent that night among the people.”
Then verses 10 through 23 recount the action just as Joshua had outlined it for them. We take up the reading again at verse 24:
“When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and struck it down with the edge of the sword. And all who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000, all the people of Ai. But Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction. Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as their plunder, according to the word of the Lord that he commanded Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. And at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the gate of the city and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day.
At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, ‘an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.’ And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. And all Israel, sojourner as well as native born, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel. And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
The Generosity of God
Let’s think first of all about the generosity of God. The generosity of God. You may remember after the first battle of Ai, Joshua cried out in the wake of their defeat in lamentation to God. And in his prayer, he gave voice to his fear that, “The Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear about their defeat and surround them and cut off their name from the earth.” That was Joshua’s prayer in chapter 7. The problem, as far as Joshua could see, not yet knowing about Achan’s sin, the problem was that God had let them down. Admittedly, this was not Joshua’s finest moment. His faith in Israel’s future seems almost entirely to collapse. And so as far as Joshua is concerned, God is entirely to blame.
But look now with me at chapter 8 verse 1 as God speaks once more to Joshua. And don’t you find what He says rather surprising in light of Joshua’s previous, wrong-headed, and frankly accusatory prayer? Look at chapter 8 verse 1. “And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land.” Here’s the first evidence in this passage of the generosity of God. Can you see it? Even though the defects in Joshua’s prayer were considerable, even though he blamed God for the effects of Achan’s sin, even though God would have been just and right to do otherwise, nevertheless, still he answers the central concern of Joshua’s prayer in His great kindness, in His great generosity. And not only does He deal with the specific problem that Joshua complains about in his prayer, the after effects of their defeat at Ai, but God deals with the fear that lurked at the roots of Joshua’s confusion and despair in the first place.
We know, don’t we, that sometimes God refuses to answer our prayers because they are filled with wrong-headed, prideful, self-centered requests. James 4, verses 2 and 3 – “You do not have because you do not ask; you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly that you may spend it on your passions.” So sometimes our prayers are just wrong and they meet with divine silence. That’s often true. It’s been true in our experience, hasn’t it? And yet haven’t you also found that sometimes, despite the defects and the wonky thinking and the twisted praying that goes on in our hearts, God still answers us in His great mercy. And He answers in such a way as to address not just the surface problem – in Joshua’s case it was the undefeated city of Ai – but also the deeper need of our hearts, which of course is not always what we are asking for, but it is always what we really need. And He does it – let’s be clear – because that’s what He’s like. That’s what He’s like. How easy to forget that, to begin to paint a picture of God as hard and cold and reluctant, when the truth is, He is generous to His people, He attends to our hearts and He gives us His grace and He lavishes upon us His kindness despite our undeserving. Isn’t that true? The generosity of God.
There’s another evidence of His generosity here that I want you to be sure not to miss. Look at verse 2. God tells Joshua He has given Ai into their hands and, “You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock” – what? What do you expect to follow the mention of the spoil and the livestock of the city of Ai? Certainly so far in the book of Joshua God had told Israel not even to touch them. They are devoted things, you remember. So they are to either be destroyed or they are to be deposited in the treasury of the Lord in the tabernacle. It was wicked Achan who took some of the spoil for himself, and we know how that turned out. But now look at the directions God gives to Joshua and Israel through Joshua in verse 2. “Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves.” If only Achan had waited! If only he had waited!
You know, a large part of the bitterness of sin is that the satisfaction it promises us in the moment it never, it can never really deliver. But if we only trusted in the provision of the Lord, we would find it, very often, grace supplies freely the reality that sin deceptively promises. Sex and money, the abuse of alcohol, the pool of workaholism, the dangers of affluence and all the varied vices after which our hearts are constantly drawn. All of these promise us satisfaction and relief and joy and a sense of worth and the acceptance of others and a hundred other things besides. But haven’t we found – to our terrible disappointment – that while they may taste sweet in our mouths in the moment, they very soon turn bitter. They simply do not deliver. They do not deliver. But grace is sweeter than sin. Grace is more nourishing, more satisfying, more generous than all the illicit pleasures the world can offer. If only Achan had waited.
Some of us know the feeling. We’ve run after the fleeting pleasures of sin, blinded by its empty promises, only to realize after the fact that if we had only waited on the Lord, we would have found our real heart need abundantly supplied without the bitterness of regret or the tragedy of painful consequences. So listen, when we begin to think as Achan undoubtedly must have thought when he stole from the city of Ai that God is being needlessly restrictive and narrow in His commandments to us, when we allow ourselves to think that way about His holy law, it is then that we start to take matters into our own hands, to go our own way, to seek our own satisfaction on our own terms. And we have lost sight of the generosity of God. If only we could see it, we never would run after these empty pleasures. We’ve come to think of Him and His law as restrictive and harsh, when in fact, if you would but trust Him and walk in His ways, all that your heart really needs He will abundantly supply. Philippians 4:19, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” The generosity of God.
The Rule of God
Then secondly, I want you to think about the rule of God. The rule of God. One of the reasons for the failure of Israel at the first battle at Ai was their presumption. Do you remember that? They did not seek God. They did not wait upon God. They simply assumed that God would be on their team, that God would fight for them, that God would endorse their plan. Well thankfully that is not at all now the pattern we see here at the second battle of Ai, is it? In verses 1 and 2 you’ll notice this time it is God who tells Joshua what to do. Do you see that in verses 1 and 2? The ambush of the Amorite city is all God’s idea. And in verses 3 through 8, Joshua fills out the details for the troops. Israel will draw the enemy out of the city, then another force will attack and conquer the now defenseless city, and when the Amorite army sees the smoke of the city burning behind them, they’ll turn back and Israel will spring their trap and the Amorites will be caught between two elements of the Israelite army moving in a panzer formation. It is a devastating tactic, but the strategy it serves belongs entirely to the Lord. It’s His plan, not Joshua’s plan.
And likewise, you will have noticed in verse 18 the signal for the ambush to begin is not given until God says so. “The Lord said to Joshua,” verse 18, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” Verse 22 and again in verse 25 tells us Joshua did not lower the javelin in his hand until Ai had been completely destroyed. So here’s the point. God sets the plan, God tells Joshua when to fire the starter’s pistol, and they are not to stop until God’s purpose is completely fulfilled. What is the lesson? Isn’t it that if we are to be sure of the power of God we must first be sure we submit to the rule of God. If we are to be sure of the power of God, the blessing of God, the favor of God, we must submit to the rule of God. God is in charge. That’s why when Joshua briefs his troops on the plan in verses 3 through 9, he concludes by saying to them, “You shall do according to the word of the Lord. See, I have commanded you. This is not my plan. This is God’s plan.” The strategy for a successful conquest, for a faithful, fruitful life, must be His and not ours. He gives the marching orders. He is the Commander in Chief, your Commander in Chief. “Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil He doth richly repay. Nor a grief nor a loss, nor a frown nor a cross, but is blessed if” – what? – “if we trust and obey. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” The generosity of God. The rule of God – we must submit to His governance. You are not in charge, not even in your own heart; He is.
The Wisdom of God
The generosity of God. The rule of God. Thirdly, the wisdom of God. And here, I want to make sure you notice that the success of the plan to conquer Ai depends entirely on the fact that Israel’s previous assault failed spectacularly. In chapter 7, as a result of Achan’s sin, the Israelites were routed, weren’t they? They fled before the Amorite soldiers. And now look at chapter 8, verses 5 through 7. Joshua says, “And I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out against us just as before, we shall flee before them. And they will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the city. For they will say, ‘They are fleeing from us, just as before.’ So we will flee before them. Then you shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city, for the Lord your God will give it into your hand.” Here is the wisdom of God at work. The Lord their God will give them the city, give it into their hands. He will do it, however – notice this – by making use of the sin of Achan and all the sorry consequences that followed in its wake. The success of the second battle of Ai depended on the failure of the first battle of Ai. It’s the wisdom of God.
I love that Romans 8:28, one of our most beloved, rightly most beloved promises in Scripture, I love that Romans 8:28 begins, “And we know, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.” I love that Paul puts it that way because the truth is, I often don’t know. Not as I should. I lose sight of it, don’t you? I don’t really believe it often. One of the men who mentored me as a preacher had a habit of saying to his congregation in his sermons, “Now you will know…” and then would follow this ridiculous piece of ancient Mesopotamian arcana that no one could possibly know but him! That is not what Paul is doing in Romans 8:28 when he says, “We know.” There is no irony here. There’s no disconnect. He is really saying to us, “Look, you know this. We know this. So let’s remember it. Let’s bring it to bear now on what is really happening in our lives. You know this! So take a hold of it and bring it to bear on your present circumstances.” “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.” That is how God operates in His great wisdom.
So you mean to say, pastor, that even the sin of Achan and the terrible defeat at Ai, even these things work together for Israel’s good? You mean to say, pastor, that my sin and the crushing shame that I’ve felt and the mess that I’ve made and the terrible consequences that have followed the shipwreck of my life, you mean to say even this belongs in the plan and purposes of God for my everlasting good if I am His child? Yes, Paul says. Yes, Joshua says. That’s exactly what I mean to say. The manifold wisdom of God accomplishes His perfect plan in such a way that there would be no victory at Ai without the previous defeat at Ai. There would be no careful detailed obedience by the people of God now at Ai without the hard lessons that followed on their sin and failure at Ai.
So maybe you’re here today and you’re really broken, really broken over your sin by the convicting work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. You see it, you see it and you hate it, and you are turning from it. But there’s a part of you that wonders if there’s anything good left for you from here on out as you see the wretchedness of your sin. You wonder, “Am I beyond all usefulness now? Am I damaged goods now?” Well let me say to you in the light of the teaching of Joshua chapter 8, dear Christian friend, as you cling to Jesus, there is nothing in your past, nothing, that He can’t use to bring glory to His name and blessing into your life and into the lives of others around you. Nothing. Nothing. Not even your sin. That is the great wisdom of our God. Yesterday’s defeat, He can make an instrument of tomorrow’s victory. There is nothing in your past that can thwart His purpose for your good today or tomorrow. Nothing.
The Judgment of God
The wisdom of God. God’s generosity, His rule, His wisdom. Fourthly and briefly, notice the judgment of God. Look at verses 24 through 29. They summarize the results of the conquest of Ai. In verse 24, all the soldiers of Ai who came out of the city in pursuit of the Israelite decoy force, they are all killed. Then the city itself is destroyed. Twelve thousand people die that day. But notice verse 23 tells us the king of Ai was kept alive and brought to Joshua. Verse 29 explains further that Joshua hanged the king on a tree until evening when the body was taken down and he buried him under a cairn of stones at the ruined gate of the city.
Now the scholars all agree that the king of Ai was killed first and then hanged on the tree, which raises the question, “Why? Why this gruesome spectacle? What’s it all about?” Moses, in Deuteronomy 21:23, speaks about the hanging of someone on a tree for their crimes. When that happens, they are not to be left hanging until the end of the day but the body is to be taken down and appropriately buried. And then Deuteronomy 21:23 tells us what this is meant to be, this grizzly, gruesome spectacle is meant to be all about. What is it meant to tell a spectator looking on? A hanged man, Moses says, is cursed by God. Or as the apostle Paul translates it, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged upon a tree.”
We’ve said this before, we’ll have cause to say it again as we work through the book of Joshua – to contemporary sensibilities, much of this narrative is uncomfortable and disturbing. Isn’t it? But while we wrestle appropriately with the ethics of it all, let’s make sure we do not miss what Joshua 8:29 is intending to teach us. What is really happening here? The destruction of Ai is not an act of ethnic cleansing by a hateful invader driven by jealousy or geographical avarice. It’s not a land grab. The death and the display of the body of the King of Ai alludes to Deuteronomy 21:23 and is meant to remind us, it’s meant to signal to us and to all who saw it that what has happened here is an expression of the wrath and curse of God. This is divine judgment being executed.
Now importantly, the Deuteronomy passage is mentioned three times in the New Testament – Acts 5:30, Acts 10:39, and Galatians 3:13 – in all three places, actually to speak to us about the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross, we are to understand, is a kind of cursed tree on which Jesus was hanged for our sakes. So Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” Now if we are honest with ourselves, we really have no problem with the cursed tree of Calvary. Do we? There, Jesus is hanging in our place. That’s what we deserve and He bears the penalty for us. And still we find our hearts taking issue with the cursed tree of Joshua 8:29 where the wrath and curse of God falls on someone else. But we can’t have it both ways. We really can’t have it both ways. If we are to be thoroughly Biblical Christians, we must come to terms with the fact that our God is the God of absolute judgment. He doesn’t wink at sin. He doesn’t excuse it or turn a blind eye to it or pretend it didn’t happen. Not for the Canaanites, not for the King of Ai, not for you, not for me. The curse of God’s judgment must fall, will fall, either on us as it fell on Ai’s king or it must fall on Jesus, the King of kings, hanged on a cursed tree. The judgment of God.
The Gospel of God
But saying that, brings us, I think, neatly to the last thing to see here. The generosity of God. The rule of God. The wisdom of God. The judgment of God. But now in the fifth place, I want you to see the Gospel of God. The Gospel of God. Notice the closing, climactic scene in this part of the book. In verses 30 through 35, Joshua has now built an altar of uncut stones at Mount Ebal. Across the valley stands Mount Gerizim and the people have assembled between these two mountains in the valley with the ark of the covenant in the very center. This valley is about twenty miles to the north of the city of Ai near Shechem, which means that after the battle of Ai, the Israelites have purposefully marched twenty miles to get to this precise spot in a very intentional way. Now to be sure, Shechem held a special place of significance for the nation of Israel. It was here that God first promised to give the land to Abram in Genesis 12. It was to Shechem that Jacob returned after a long absence from the Promised Land in Genesis 33. But most importantly of all Deuteronomy 11:26-32 has Moses telling Israel when they enter the land they are to go to Mount Ebal and to Mount Gerizim and to conduct this ceremony to remind themselves of the blessings of obedience and the covenant curses that follow upon disobedience.
And so look at Joshua 8 verse 33:
“All Israel, sojourner as well as native born, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel. And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.”
So here’s the great ceremony. Do you have the picture in your mind? The people are all gathered. There’s the two mountains; half of Israel on one side, half on the other side. Blessings sound from Mount Gerizim, curses from Mount Ebal, as the people are reminded of their obligations to obey the Lord and to keep His commandments. By the way, do notice the word “all.” It’s repeated five times over in these three verses. “All” the words of “all” the law was read to “all” the people, young and old, Israelite and sojourner. The whole Word of God for the whole people of God.
I was in a grocery store yesterday and on the shelf I noticed as I passed, pushing my shopping cart, “The Quick Read Bible,” about 100 pages. Obviously, sort of a summary of the big ideas, I hope. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s actually quite a lot of usefulness in a summary of the big ideas, but Joshua 8 reminds us that the whole Word of God is for the whole people of God and it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. We need every part of it. A summary just won’t do. Our neglect and our ignorance of the Word of God, just like Israel’s neglect and ignorance of it, is one of the main reasons that we fall into disobedience in the first place. Isn’t it? There is a vital relationship between faithful obedience to the Word and heartfelt knowledge of the Word. We’ve got to know our Bibles. Do you know your Bible?
Well alright, so here’s the scene. The congregation is gathered, the curses are sounding from Ebal, blessings from Gerizim. It’s an incredibly solemn moment. After all, Israel has tasted firsthand the bitterness of divine judgment for disobedience and the sweetness of divine blessing for their obedience. They know all about blessings and curses. But, lest we find the burden of obedience and the threat of the covenant curse overwhelming, look back at verse 30. Isn’t verse 30 wonderful? Do you see verse 30? Do you see what it’s telling us? Before they read the law, before the curses and the blessings were proclaimed, Joshua built an altar. He built an altar on which mountain? Not on Gerizim, the mountain of blessing, but on Ebal, the mountain of curse, the mountain of judgment, the mountain of God’s wrath. Do you grasp the symbolism? Do you get the message? What is this? It’s the Gospel, bright and clear and beautiful. Yes, God curses the disobedient, but a sacrifice has been provided that satisfies the judgment of the Lord. On the mountain of cursing, a sacrifice has been made, a peace offering. The curses fall on the substitute that all who repent of their sin and seek the mercy of God might not perish but find life. It’s a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t it? The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
This is why He came. Galatians 3:13, remember? “Christ redeems us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. As it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” So as you trust in Jesus, as you repent of your sin, today you can know for sure, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” All the curses have fallen on Him. He has absorbed them. He has drunk to the dregs the cup of wrath without mercy that we might drink the cup of mercy without wrath. There is only now the voice of Mount Gerizim spoken over you, brother or sister in Christ. The blessedness of grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. All the sting of the law you have broken has been drawn by the wounds of Jesus Christ. “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, but He has washed it white as snow.” That is the glorious Gospel of God that offers mercy and pardon, even to you as you rest in Jesus.
The generosity of God. The rule of God. The wisdom of God. Yes, the judgment of God. But praise the Lord for the marvelous Gospel of God that opens the door of mercy to us as we trust in Jesus. Let us pray.
Our Father, we bless You for Christ. We pray now that You would help us to rest on Him, to trust Him, even as we turn together today from our sin and waywardness, we confess and repent. We would find mercy and take Jesus as our peace offering that all the curses might fall on Him and that we might hear the word of blessing, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” from Your mouth spoken over us. Hear our cries, for we pray it all in Jesus’ name. Amen.