Introduction:
When it comes to contests of any sort, we like to be on the winning side. If we’re on a ball team or if we have favorite ball team, we don’t like for them to be defeated. But defeats will come from time to time. And I think it’s a great coach who can gather his team around him after a defeat and say, "Listen guys, we didn’t win this one. But we learned something today. And we can take that knowledge and put it to use next time to make us a better team."
This morning we want to take a look at two contests -- not sports contests, but battles. One of them took place in Jericho, and the other one took place in Ai. The first battle ended in victory, while the second battle ended in defeat. But I think there are important lessons to be learned from both of them. And I think that if we’re wise, we can take that knowledge to heart and put it to use in our own lives to bring us a little closer to God.
I. The Battle That Ended in Victory
There’s not an awful lot about the battle of Jericho written in the scriptures. I realize that if CNN had been present, they probably could have given it "round the clock" coverage with Peter Arnette right on the scene. But the Bible describes the battle with just a few verses.
And it seems that there’s a more important issue at stake than how the battle was fought. It’s the question, "Who fought the battle of Jericho?" Joshua was the leader of the Israelites at this time. He was a great military leader. But the emphasis here is not on Joshua. It’s on God.
"And the Lord said to Joshua: ’See! I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor." (Joshua 6:2). Notice what God says here. Not, "I will give it into your hand", but "I have given it." It was as certain as if it was already in his possession.
Prior to this battle, Joshua sent two spies into the city of Jericho. But the job of those two spies was not to go in and figure out a strategy. They weren’t to come back and say, "You know, I think if we march around this thing a few times and blow our horns, that just might work." No, their job was to say, "We looked it over and we believe that God can do it."
Now the Lord gives the plan. "You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go around the city once. This you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. Then it shall come to pass, when they make a long blast with the rams’ horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people shall go up every man straight before him.’" (Joshua 6:3-5).
So, in verse 6, Joshua starts that process. But the strategy is not one you’d learn at West Point. It’s not one you read about in "Famous Battle Plans". It’s not one you’d find suggested by Napoleon or Schwartzkoff or anyone in between.
God’s instructions did not involve any trenches to be dug, no batteries to be erected, no battering rams to be drawn up, nor any military preparations made at all. They were simply to march around the walls once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day, all the while blowing trumpets. Then they were to shout and the walls would collapse which would not only expose the inhabitants but shock them so much that they wouldn’t be able to offer any resistance.
That seems rather unusual. But let me suggest a couple of reasons why I believe God chose to do things that way. First of all, it was to magnify his power, so there would be no doubt that it was God who gave them the victory. Compare this with some battles of our own time; for example, Desert Storm. Ask a military leader why we won Desert Storm and be prepared for an earful. "It was because our men were trained so well. We were able to establish supremacy in the sky by the superior planes we fly and the superior training of our men. We were able to launch smart bombs that could see their way down smokestacks. We had battleships off the coast that bombarded the coast with thousands of tons of explosives. That’s how we did it."
But you have to admit that the battle of Jericho didn’t offer a lot of room for bragging. What would the men brag about when they got back to camp and tried to impress the women? "You should have heard the way we blew those horns. Yessiree, we marched around that city in completely round circles. And shout, you never heard such a shout in all your life. That’s how we did it." It’s just really hard to find something to brag about in this battle. And I think God intended it that way. There was never any question but that God was the one who gave them the victory. He was the one with all the power.
And that’s something that we all need to be reminded of, even in the church today. Paul said, "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Corinthians 15:57). That’s where the victory in our lives comes. It doesn’t come from our power and our ability. It comes from God. To the Philippians, Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13). Paul knew where the power was. Not just, "I can do all things", but "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
There probably was no time in Paul’s life that he was more aware of this than when he struggled with his thorn in the flesh. We don’t know what that thorn was, probably some physical ailment, but God refused to remove it. "And he said to me, ’My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (II Corinthians 12:9-10). What are you saying, Paul? I think he’s saying that as long as we believe that we have the strength in and of ourselves, then we’re going to remain weak. But once we realize how weak we are and how dependent we are upon the strength of God, then we become strong.
And so the battle of Jericho has something to say to us about the sin of self-sufficiency, the sin that believes I can control my own life. And there are times in our lives that we’re made very aware of that fact. Like times of sickness or death of a loved one. We’re reminded of how weak and helpless we are, and how much we need the strength of God.
The battle of Jericho reminds us that when marriages are in trouble, we turn first to prayer. That when we struggle in our responsibilities as parents, we turn first to God. That when we face difficult habits in our lives to break, it is God who gives us the strength to be able to do that. That when we face discouragement and temptation and sin, our first response is not to check out a book on self-help; our first response is to turn to God.
"Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us." (Ephesians 3:16).
The one commanding our lives, the one giving the marching orders, the one providing the power, the one who gets the glory is God. And may we never forget that.
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that discussed who has the power. The cartoon begins with Calvin out watering the flowers. He says to them, "So you want some water, huh? Well, I got a big can of it right here. It’s up to me to decide whether you get water or not. I control your fate. Your very lives are in my hand. Without me you’re as good as dead. Without me, you don’t....." And then he notices that it’s pouring down rain all around him.
The battle of Jericho teaches us that the real source of power for us is God.
But I think there’s a second reason that God did things the way that he did. That was to try the faith and the obedience of his people. To see whether or not they would follow a command which to the human mind seemed to be foolish to obey. To see whether or not they would believe a promise that in human probability seemed impossible to perform.
And God still does the same thing today. Paul said, "The foolishness of God is wiser than men." (I Corinthians 1:25). Not that God is foolish. But there are some things that God has done and some things that God has told us to do that may may make a lot of sense to us. Baptism, for example. Someone may say, "I don’t see what baptism has to do with a person’s salvation. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, and I’m not going to do it."
And the Israelites could have had that attitude with Joshua, "I just don’t see how walking around these walls and blowing trumpets and yelling is going to make the walls fall down. It just doesn’t make any sense to me and I’m not going to do it." But instead their attitude was the saying, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." And because of their faith and their willingness to obey, God gave them the victory.
It’s an important lesson to learn. God is the one who can give us the victory in our own lives, most importantly a victory over sin. But that victory only comes when we have enough faith in God to obey him whether or not we think it makes a lot of sense from a human standpoint. What God says to do may sometimes be a test of our faith just to see if we’re willing to rely on him and not on our own judgment.
Notice one more thing about the battle: "Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction, and all who are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in her house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. And you, by all means keep yourselves from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it. But all the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are consecrated to the Lord; they shall come into the treasury of the Lord." (Joshua 6:17-19).
God says here, "When you capture the city of Jericho, don’t take anything out of it because it all belongs to me." Now it was common in that day that whoever won a battle got the spoils. They could go through the city and take anything they wanted, kinda like southern L.A.
But if we fight the battle of Jericho and we say, "OK, you take that and you take that and I’ll take this", then we can take it back and parade it and say, "Look what we did. Look at the spoils we brought back." But in dedicating all of that to the Lord, it’s a powerful way of saying, "He fought this battle. We blew the trumpets, we marched, we yelled, but God fought this battle."
But there may have been something else involved here as well. In the law of Moses, God introduced the Israelites to the concept of "firstfruits". Whenever they gathered their harvest, they took the first that came in and offered it to God as a firstfruits. Here, with the Israelites beginning to gather the harvest of the land of Canaan, the city of Jericho was the first city that came in and was thus to be offered to God as a firstfruits.
The battle of Jericho that ended in victory teaches us some powerful lessons. It teaches us that our strength comes from God. It teaches us the importance of putting our faith in God and obeying him. But there are more lessons to be learned. And we’re going to learn those lessons from a battle that ended in defeat.
II. The Battle That Ended in Defeat
In chapter 7, after the decisive win over Jericho, the Israelites assumed they could whip up on little Ai. Their military advisors said, "Don’t even bother to take the whole army. We just need two or three thousand men. Let’s go in with them and we can rout the armies of Ai."
And then in verse 7, after 36 of them were killed and the rest fled in fear, "Joshua said, ’Alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all -- to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Oh, that we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name?’" (Joshua 7:7-9).
Joshua says, in essence, "What are the people of the land going to say about us?" And then he adds, "And by the way, Lord, this isn’t going to look too good on your résumé either."
But the writer of Joshua makes it clear here that the issue is not poor military strategy. The problem is not that they were cocky and sent in only two or three thousand. They could have done it with two or three men. The problem is given to us in verse one -- the problem was sin.
You don’t hear people talk much about sin anymore. People might say, "Mistakes were made." We will admit to doing something stupid, something ill-advised. We will admit to poor judgment. We will admit to nearly anything, but we choke when it comes to the word "sin". There was a book published a number of years ago entitled "Whatever Became of Sin?"
Through this account of the defeat in Ai, God wants us to know something about the seriousness of sin. And in discussing the problem here, he deals with a couple of myths that we have regarding sin. The myth that there won’t be any consequences for what we do, and the myth that no one will ever know.
The first myth that we live with is that there won’t be any consequences. That’s what everyone thinks. We all think that we’ll be the exception to the rule. "Other people gets AIDS after committing fornication, but not me. Other girls get pregnant, but not me. Some people die from cocaine use, but not me. Some people get killed driving after a few beers, but not me." Nobody thinks they’ll get caught, nobody thinks there’ll be any consequences to their sin. That’s what Mike Tyson thought. That’s what Pete Rose thought. That’s what Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart thought.
But God wants you to know that if you commit sin there are going to be some incredible consequences in your life because sin is acting contrary to God’s plan. "But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things; for Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things; so the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel." (Joshua 7:1).
One of our fallacies is in thinking that sin involves only me. "It may be a sin, but it’s my life, I casn do what I want." Notice what verse 1 says. "But the children of Israel committed a trespass." What do you mean, Israel committed a trespass? Achan committed the trespass! Don’t say "we"; what you mean "we"?
In verse 11, the Lord said to Joshua, "Israel has sinned, and they [plural] have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their stuff." (Joshua 7:11).
Now wouldn’t that make you a little bit defensive? What if somebody came to this congregation and said, "This church has been committing adultery. They have slept around, they have lied, they have covered up." You’d say, "Wait a minute! It wasn’t me!" But the text is reminding us that Israel is a community. One person cannot sin in isolation.
That’s the big problem in I Corinthians 5. Paul says to the church in Corinth, "Don’t you dare let this go on." Our emphasis on individualism says, "Leave him alone. It’s none of our business." It is our business in the body of Christ! Our actions affect one another.
And we need to be reminded that there are consequences for sinful choices. People are hurt, hearts are broken, children are affected, families are fractured, reputations are destroyed, faith is undermined because sin has effects in your life. There are consequences.
Some of us get too complacent about sin. We fool ourselves into thinking, "Sin is no big deal. We’re a saved people." But when you come down to verse 22 and following, it’s hard to hold on to that argument. Sin does have consequences, sometimes in this life, sometimes in the life to come. But when we read about what happened to Achan and to Achan’s family, we’re reminded that there are consequences. We cannot be complacent about sin.
The second myth is the myth that says, "No one will ever know." One of the first things we try to do when we commit a sin is to hide it, to keep anybody from finding out about us. But we’re acting foolishly if we think we’re hiding anything from God. Solomon said, in closing out his book of Ecclesiastes, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil." (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
You can’t hide your sins from God. Achan found that out the hard way. When the city of Jericho was captured, Achan took some of the loot despite the instructions that God gave. He buried it in the floor of his tent. And I wonder how much he worried about somebody finding out. I wonder if he checked the dirt frequently to make sure it didn’t look like it had been freshly dug. I wonder if he got nervous any time anyone came to visit him in his tent. I wonder if it bothered him when he got the report that the Israelites had been defeated at Ai. Or perhaps he comforted himself all along with the thoughts, "Nobody will ever find out."
But in verse 14 God says to Joshua, "In the morning therefore you shall be brought according to your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes shall come according to families; and the family which the Lord takes shall come by households; and the household which the Lord takes shall come man by man." (Joshua 7:14).
Beginning in verse 16, Joshua did what the Lord told him to do. "So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes, and the tribe of Judah was taken; and he brought the clan of Judah, and he took the family of the Zarhites; and he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man, and Zabdi was taken. Then he brought his household man by man, and Achan the son Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken." (Joshua 7:16-18).
"So Joshua said to Achan, ’My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him, and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me." (Joshua 7:19). You see no matter how hard we work at it, you can’t hide sin. Whether it’s David trying to cover his tracks, making sure that nobody knows, just hoping that everybody thinks this baby is born a little bit early. "Nobody’s going to know." Or whether it’s Ananias and Sapphira saying, "Yes, that’s the full money for the land." "Nobody’s going to know." Or the teenager who tries to get away with as much as he can get away with, trying to cover his tracks and thinking, "Nobody’s going to know."
But God knows. And he gave instructions, "Then it shall be that he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has done a disgraceful thing in Israel." (Joshua 7:15).
Sometimes I can find a million excuses for my sin and why it wasn’t that big a deal. But this text tells us that sin is a violation of the covenant of the Lord. When we decide that we’re going to act in a way that God disapproves of, then we’re slapping him in the face. We’re saying that we’ve found a better way to go than he’s laid out for us. To Achan, it probably seemed like no big deal. Why not pocket a few items? God doesn’t need it. God has the cattle on a thousand hills, why does he need this?
After reading Joshua 7, it’s hard to be complacent about sin. It’s hard to have the attitude, "It’s no big deal." The things we do will be known, by God if no one else. And there are consequences of sin, very serious consequences.
Conclusion:
So, from the winning battle of Jericho, we learn the importance of relying on the power of God, the importance of having a faith that is willing to obey God and do his will.
And from the losing battle of Ai, we learn what happens when we fail to do that, when we allow sin to take control of our life and we try to hide from God.
But, the great message of the gospel is that that sin can be forgiven if we respond to God in obedience to his word.
