Joshua 10:1-15 – Giving It Over
I found a little poem by an anonymous author that sounds so familiar, it’s as if I could have written it. It says: “Lord, I’m so discouraged, I don’t know what to do; I have so many burdens, And I gave them all to you. But you didn’t take them, Jesus, will you tell me why that’s so? The answer’s simply, ‘Little one, because you won’t let go.’ ”
As I was studying this week’s passage, I found a number of things that I could speak on. This week, I chose to speak on the need to give our problems to God. Let’s read Joshua 10:1-15 and look at how Joshua handed over his difficulties to God. READ.
So you see the scenario. In the previous chapter, Joshua made an alliance with the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites came from the city of Gibeon, about 15 miles away from Gilgal, where Israel camped after it crossed the Jordan River. It was a city bigger than Ai, which had a population of 12,000. The men from Gibeon were also mighty warriors, but they were afraid of the army of Israel. Gibeon was part of a people called the Hivites, whom God commanded the Israelites to destroy.
So the Gibeonites made a peace treaty with Israel. They said they were from a distant country, and their clothes, food and wineskins made it look as if they were. So, Israel, according to God’s own laws in Deuteronomy 20, said they would not attack Gibeon.
This ended up as egg on their face when they found out that the Gibeonites were not from a distant country but were actually close neighbors. But, since they had made this treaty, they did not break it, even after the truth tumbled into view, and the Gibeonites were made to be woodcutters and water carriers – servants of the Israelite nation.
Well, this move did not sit well with Gibeon’s neighbors. Adoni-Zedek, the king of Jerusalem, which was not a Jewish city yet, rallied other kings around him to go to war against Gibeon. They figured they would teach a lesson for being traitors, and sidling up with the enemy.
This move prompted Joshua to action. If even the alliance between the Gibeonites and the Israelites had been created by lies, still, they had made an alliance, and Joshua would protect them from their previous friends, their new enemies. Joshua would go to war to defend the Gibeonites.
Joshua’s actions tell me 2 things. 1) Sometimes the troubles we face come from making foolish decisions. Joshua should not have made a peace treaty with the Gibeonites in the 1st place, and now he was going to war because of it.
You likely have never heard of Jeff Foran, who lives in Foreman, Arkansas. Apparently Mr. Foran, aged 38, was drunk – very drunk, it looks like – one night in May and went out for a drive. Well, as he was driving, his cigarette fell out of his fingers and out the window. Not to waste a good cigarette, Mr. Foran jumped out of his moving car to get the smoke back. The car was traveling at 100km/h.
State Trooper Jamie Gravies said that Foran suffered extreme trauma to his nose, eyes and chin and was lucky to be alive. It was the preacher Billy Sunday who said "Sin can be forgiven, but stupid is forever."
Now, we can see that Mr. Foran made some bad decisions. To start drinking and smoking in the 1st place. I’m not sure that they are as sinful as we have always thought them to be, but they aren’t really wise behaviors, either, especially when they mix together as Mr. Foran shows us.
His troubles came from making foolish decisions. Sometimes, so do ours. We can’t always blame our troubles on others. Sometimes, they are ours, and ours alone.
But the 2nd thing I see from Joshua’s actions, and this is all the more annoying, is that: 2) Sometimes the troubles we face come from doing the right thing. Joshua had made an oath with Gibeon, and he was honoring it. He was being a man of his word. He was living out Psalm 15:4 that says a holy person will honor his oath, even when it hurts.
We hate the fact that even if we do the right thing, sometimes we get “punished” for it. We resent the fact that doing the right thing will sometimes get us into trouble. But it’s true, anyway. Obedience sometimes has a high cost attached to it.
So we find Joshua at war with these other kings, perhaps sooner than he had meant to. But you can see some amazing things happen in the chapter. God fought for the Israelites that day, and interceded with miracles. Let’s look at them.
1st was panic and confusion – v10. He threw the enemy into a state of chaos. I don’t know how. An extreme sense of fear, people talking and others not understanding… whatever, it worked. The 2nd was a hailstorm – v11 – with hailstones so dangerous that more men died because of the hail than the sword. And the 3rd was the extended day, when the sun stopped moving in the sky long enough for Joshua to win his fight. I’m assuming the earth stopped rotating for those hours, although there’s no way of saying exactly what scientific occurrences happened. All I know is, I believe it happened, even if there’s no logical reason for it. God fought for the Israelites that day.
Now, I don’t mean to presume that God will do those things for our problems. It would be nice, mind you. And I’m not saying that God can’t do it. But realistically, we don’t want an exact response. We don’t want a hailstorm. We don’t want longer days. The point of this chapter is not that God sends hail. The point is that God responds to prayers – v14. The point is that Joshua had a problem, and he took it to God, and God did something about it.
Now, this is probably something all of you know to do. Probably you all know that you should pray when you have troubles. I don’t think giving our problems to God is the hard part. The hard part is leaving them there. We lay our burdens at His feet in prayer, and then when we are done, we pick them right back up.
I’m not sure why we do this. I’m not sure why we are so inclined to pick up our problems again. Maybe it’s hard to sustain the faith that it takes to believe that God has seen and heard and will do something. Maybe it’s easier to believe once than it is to believe continually.
Fred Craddock, a professor of preaching, once spoke to pastors about this truth. He said, “We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $1,000 bill and laying it on the table - ’Here’s my life, Lord. I’m giving it all.’ But the reality for most of us is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $1,000 for quarters.
“We go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there. Listen to the neighbor kid’s troubles instead of saying, ’Get lost.’ Go to a committee meeting instead of doing what we want to do. Giving a cup of water to a shaky old man in a nursing home instead of hanging out with our friends. Usually giving our life to Christ isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at a time. It would be easy to go out in a flash of glory; it’s harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long haul."
I think prayer is like this. It’s not a one-time deal. It’s a continual giving over of our problems to an all-powerful, all-knowing God. As I chewed on what this meant, I thought of the verse in 1 Peter 5:7, which says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” It’s what Joshua did. God listened to his prayers because Joshua gave his battle to the Lord for Him to deal with.
Now, there are a couple of things I’d like to share about this verse, as we start to wrap up. First, about the verb tense. The way that the verb “cast” is used is a “once-for-all” thing. That is, what we do is meant to have lasting consequences. It happens in an instant, but the effects continue on afterwards.
Which shows us that when we do cast our burdens and problems on the Lord, it works. We do them in an instant prayer, but the consequences carry over afterward. I don’t think it means that we do it only once, however. And I’ll tell you why.
The Greek word for “cast” is used only one other time in the NT. It’s in Luke 19:35, when it says that the disciples “cast” or “threw” their garments on the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. They laid their personal items on the burden-carrier. And they didn’t actually just throw their belongings around haphazardly. They obviously layered their garments one after another on the donkey. Layer after layer they placed their things.
I think that’s good. How many of you, after you gave your burdens to the Lord, never got any others? You cast your cares, and you never picked up any other ones afterward? That’s a silly question. That’s why you have to layer your burdens. You cast your cares on Him. And when another care comes, you lay on Him. And when yet another trouble pops up, you lay it on Him. Over and over and over. No matter what the problem is. Just keep layering.
This is not the same as picking up all your problems again. This is the awareness that when the anxiety comes around again, you lay it down again. Problem after problem becomes layer after layer. This is the continual giving over of our hassles. This is the growth the Lord wants for us. You lay that problem down, and when the nervousness flares up again, you remember that you already gave it to God, and you know that these are just your feelings kicking in. It’s not that God needs to be reminded that you have problems; you need to be reminded that God already knows. Then you give the problems and the emotions back to Him, and say, “Here I am, again, giving you all this.” That’s casting your cares. That’s giving God your problems. That’s Joshua.
George Mueller was a great man of faith of the 1800’s. He built many orphanages in England. He didn’t have a personal salary. He relied only on God to supply the money and food needed to support the hundreds of homeless children he considered himself responsible for because he was a Christian. He kept a motto on his desk for many years that brought comfort, strength, and uplifting confidence to his heart. It read, “It matters to Him about you.” Mr. Mueller believed that those words captured the meaning of 1 Peter 5:7, and he rested his claim for divine help on that truth. He testified at the end of his life that the Lord had never failed to supply all his needs. Folks, I’d encourage you to give your burdens to God, and know that because He cares for you, He will respond to your needs.
