As we read of the battles Israel must face as they take possession of the land promised to them from generations past; it is not uncommon to wonder why God ordered all the inhabitants of these cities to be destroyed and completely wiped out.  Some of you, who have been reading with me, have commented with judgement against God for his battle strategies. One person wrote; “Why would a so-called loving God tell his people to kill other people just so they can have the land for themselves?” 

Of course, we would rather have peace, but peace while denying the evil that is hurting others is not peace for them.  We would rather ignore the evil that is going on around us, close our ranks, to just live and let live.  “You do you and I’ll do me” is one of our popular mantras for our days on earth by most humans.  But God wants more for us and from us.  I glad you asked your questions and thankful you are reading with me!  Thank you!

It is not God’s desire that anyone He has created to perish; but evil most be removed from a place God wants to make holy.  Unholy cultures resided in Canaan.  People of this people worshiped manmade idols of all kinds, offered their own babies in sacrifice to their many gods, participated in sexual orgies that lead to sacrificing virgins—young women abused for recreation to their gods of choice, with the added sport of abuse and maiming of anyone weaker merely for amusement, all while drunk on fermented wines.  These are just a few of the behaviors that stripped humanity of all that is holy and good for them.  Ancient remains have been unearthed of tiny skeletons of infants found in the rubble by archeologists!

God’s Chosen were given the promised land with an order—remove all that is unholy—before taking up residence there.  This order to kill all of course seems harsh to us who live in this country of relative peace with only pockets of devastating evil; but if we truly study what is going on in other parts of the world; our thinking might be altered.  What if it were your daughter captured and sold to the highest bidder to be used as a tool to satisfy the sexual desires of her “owner” or “owners”?  What if it were your infant son taken from you to be put in a jar and sacrificed in a fire to idols? Holy wars against all that is unholy is not our desire but sometimes must be accomplished to end the widespread abusive, detestable, degrading behaviors that destroy the lives of human beings.  I am also still trying to wrap my mind around this evil.

God loved his people too much for them to come into a land he knew was filled with evil—dark evil left unchecked resulting in cruel, barbaric living for generations.  God led Joshua to put an end to it all so it would not affect or infect His people with the diseases of sin that destroyed humans.

Joshua 8

Ai Destroyed

Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. ² You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”

³ So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night ⁴ with these orders: “Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. ⁵ I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. ⁶ They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are running away from us as they did before.’ So when we flee from them, ⁷ you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The Lord your God will give it into your hand. ⁸ When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the Lord has commanded. See to it; you have my orders.”

⁹ Then Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai—but Joshua spent that night with the people.

¹⁰ Early the next morning Joshua mustered his army, and he and the leaders of Israel marched before them to Ai. ¹¹ The entire force that was with him marched up and approached the city and arrived in front of it. They set up camp north of Ai, with the valley between them and the city. ¹² Joshua had taken about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. ¹³ So the soldiers took up their positions—with the main camp to the north of the city and the ambush to the west of it. That night Joshua went into the valley.

¹⁴ When the king of Ai saw this, he and all the men of the city hurried out early in the morning to meet Israel in battle at a certain place overlooking the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush had been set against him behind the city. ¹⁵ Joshua and all Israel let themselves be driven back before them, and they fled toward the wilderness. ¹⁶ All the men of Ai were called to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua and were lured away from the city. ¹⁷ Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.

¹⁸ Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Hold out toward Ai the javelin that is in your hand, for into your hand I will deliver the city.” So Joshua held out toward the city the javelin that was in his hand. ¹⁹ As soon as he did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire.

²⁰ The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising up into the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any direction; the Israelites who had been fleeing toward the wilderness had turned back against their pursuers. ²¹ For when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that smoke was going up from it, they turned around and attacked the men of Ai. ²² Those in the ambush also came out of the city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. ²³ But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.

²⁴ When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. ²⁵ Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. ²⁶ For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai. ²⁷ But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.

²⁸ So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. ²⁹ He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

The Covenant Renewed at Mount Ebal

³⁰ Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, ³¹ as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses—an altar of uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered to the Lord burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings. ³² There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on stones a copy of the law of Moses. ³³ All the Israelites, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Both the foreigners living among them and the native-born were there. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.

³⁴ Afterward, Joshua read all the words of the law—the blessings and the curses—just as it is written in the Book of the Law. ³⁵ There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children, and the foreigners who lived among them.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

OUR FIRST RESPONSES:

• If you believe who Jesus is and what He did to redeem us from sins—shout hallelujah and thank you, Lord, because Jesus did what we could not do for ourselves!  Live gratefully, prayerfully, and expectantly; knowing Jesus is coming back again to claim His own.
• Tell others the Redemption story of Jesus with how you were saved by grace.
• Hold your family members close to you while thanking God for them.  Encourage and build each other up, says Paul to the church—believers in Jesus and His ways to live.  Cease habits of abuse as we use people to get what we want; instead treat them as you would Jesus as if He were standing in their place. 
• We are made in the image of God—to degrade, humiliate, sarcastically or brutally bully another person made in the image of God is the same as tearing down God, Himself. 
• We must think before we speak, hold our tongue when slander is slung in our direction, gain knowledge of the Word of God for responses that heal as one of many ways to combat the real enemy, the Enemy of God, the fallen angel Satan who God kicked out of heaven for his detestable behaviors.  God and evil cannot occupy the same space.  Guess who needs to move? (Answer:  Evil)

After the battle, the Law of God was read out loud to the people of Israel by Joshua their leader—ALL of it.  I don’t know about you, but this touched my heart and brought me back to who God is and what He wants most from us—for us to love Him back—as passionately and as faithfully as He first love us.

We don’t know what tools were used by the fighting men led by Joshua, they weren’t mentioned, except for the spear held high by Joshua to signal his troops.  We don’t know because the emphasis is not on a physical battle but a spiritual one. The real conflict wasn’t with Canaanites or Amorites; it was with Satan and his demons.

Love God.  Love Each Other.  Even when loving is hard…When tempted to say or do anything unholy, not of God, remember God’s Words to us.  His Word is Life.  Jesus was the Word who walked around earth demonstrating fully what the Word said and meant. 

Jesus battled Satan’s temptations with knowing and proclaiming the Word at the right time, in the right way that frustrated the enemy.  Satan finally left him.  Satan flees from us when we fall on our knees, declaring our trust in Jesus, while asking for His help. God answers that prayer with resurrection power to help us overcome all temptations!

CONSIDER THESE THOUGHTS…

“God set this property apart for his people and his people apart to be a blessing for the world. The Hebrews were the couriers of God’s covenant to a galaxy of people. Israel was the parchment on which God’s redemption story would be written. The city of Jerusalem. The town of Bethlehem. The sacrifices of the temple. The prophecies of the prophets. All on this land.

The Redeemer would be born here, walk here, and live his life here. He would soak this dirt with his blood and shake this ground with his resurrection. The book of Joshua isn’t about claiming real estate for a dislocated nation. It is about preserving a stage for God’s redemption plan.

Satan’s counterstrategy was clear: contaminate the promised land and preempt the promised Child. Destroy God’s people and destroy God’s work.

Joshua’s battle, then, was a spiritual one.

So is ours. 

Position yourself for victory by asking God how you can obey him more fully. Then get on your knees and defeat your enemies by declaring Biblical truths over the battlefields you’re facing.” –Max Lucado, The Encouraging Word Bible

Lord,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In Jesus Name, Amen