VICTORY RESTORED AT AI, AND THE LAW PROCLAIMED AT EBAL
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 8:1. Take all the people of war] The total number of men capable of bearing arms, omitting the seventy thousand left on the eastern side of Jordan, amounted to rather more than 531,000. It is not likely that all of these were taken up to make war on Ai. By “all the people of war” we may understand a body of chosen troops made up by selection from the various tribes; or, as the third verse suggests, “all the people of war” were mustered, and then thirty thousand were chosen from the assembled host.
Joshua 8:2. As thou didst unto Jericho and her king] This alludes in general terms to the devoting of the city and its inhabitants, the one by burning, and the other by death. At Jericho the spoil was made cherem; here it was given to the people. The king of Jericho seems to have been slain with the sword; the king of Ai was hanged, although it is likely that he was first put to death in some other way. Lay thee an ambush] “The question put by many with reference to the propriety of employing stratagem in order to deceive an enemy, indicates excessive ignorance. For it is certainly not physical force alone which determines the issue of war, but, on the contrary, those are pronounced the best generals, whose success is due less to force than to skilful manœuvres. Therefore, if war is lawful at all, it is indisputably right to avail oneself of those arts by which victory is usually obtained. It is of course understood that neither must treaties be violated, nor faith broken in any other way.” (Calvin.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 8:1-2
THE RAISING UP OF THE FALLEN
The Bible is the only book from which men have learned to encourage each other to sing, “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.” Men tread down the fallen, and those who have suffered moral disgrace have little to hope from “the tender mercies of the wicked,” which are ever cruel in proportion to the wickedness of those who shew them. It is only from Divine lips that we hear the assurance, “To the poor the Gospel is preached.” For the outcast and the fallen the Pharisees had no good tidings; they made broad their phylacteries, and murmured of Him who came to give hope to such, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them;” and yet these Pharisees were the very men whose fathers had been taught to say, “He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”
Three things may be noticed in these two verses:—
I. The completeness of Divine pardon. No sooner had the people put away their sin than “the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not.” The Divine manifestation of love was as full as though no sin had been committed. The encouragement given here is as free from restraint as the encouragement in chap. Joshua 1:9.
1. No man should postpone repentance on the ground of fear. How differently does God appear in these two Chapter s! in the seventh there was every cause for fear; in this there was every reason for trust. Blake, the painter, in his energetic lines addressed to the tiger, abruptly and with wonder asks the fierce beast,
“Did He that made the lamb make thee?”
The God of the tiger seems one God, and the God of the lamb appears almost as another God. All life shews God passing before us in what seem to us these conflicting manifestations of Himself. The God of spring and plenty and health seems one Being; the God of winter and of famine and of sickness appears as if another. The God of our children’s cradles is one to whom we lift our eyes in thankfulness and love; the God of their coflins, and of our other bereavements, is one to whom, if we are not well taught, we are tempted to look up with fear and dismay, and ask, Who art Thou, Thou Dreadful One, that Thou smitest thus severely? So, to Israel, the Lord must have seemed in the first attack on Ai, and in the subsequent inquisition and judgment, a God greatly to be feared; here, all Israel would have felt again, that He was a God to be adored and delighted in and loved. We misunderstand the Heart that always loves us, in whatever form it manifests itself; and we mistake the time for fear. When a ship is sailing in tropical regions, there will sometimes come over the ocean an unusual calm. The mere passenger might enjoy it, and mistake it for peace. Not so the captain: he hastens to his instruments, marks the rapid fall of the mercury, and turning again promptly to his crew, in tones that mark urgency and coming danger he bids them “Furl all.” In the intense stillness in which a landsman might admire the deep peace of the sea, the sailor beholds the hushed waves listening, as with bated breath, to the tread of the coming tempest, ere the wild cyclone rushes madly across the ocean. Men are at peace when they should fear, and fear when they should be at peace. “The Lord raiseth up all those that be bowed down.” It is not the contrite man, but the unrepentant, who has cause to fear that God will turn against him. The Pharisees may well cower before the indignant looks and words of Christ; the woman in tears at His feet may trust and not be afraid. The conflict of Paul with sin, recorded in the seventh chapter of the Romans, does but make way for the joy and confidence so soon after expressed in the eighth.
2. No man should think that a given amount of formal repentance will necessarily be followed by a given amount of spiritual peace. There seems a kind of intentional irregularity in God’s method of assuring men of the forgiveness of sin; just as, in the outward aspect, there is an intentional irregularity in the Divine method of answering prayer. No intelligent Christian thinks that God answers prayer by machinery which regulates the quantity of answer according to the quantity of utterance; He answers prayer by infinite love, and wisdom, and patience, and therefore with infinite variations. A given amount of prayer from a hungry Christian will not come out a given amount of bread, as though human supplications were so much corn, and the throne of grace were mill and bakehouse in one. If so many prayers resulted regularly in so many loaves, then farewell to honest industry and to the discipline of healthy labour: for men would turn into spiritual vagrants by the million; just as here, in London, the routine charity of foolish and indiscriminate givers, makes hundreds of beggars every year, and spreads an influence of easy indifference to pauperism, till it weakens and contaminates the minds of even the honest and manly poor. God loves us too much and too wisely to turn men into spiritual paupers thus; and therefore He answers prayer, as we call it, “by crosses,” or He keeps us waiting, or He seems not to answer at all. Intelligent Christians have always understood that so many words of prayer could never be equivalent to so many temporal gifts, to so many sins forgiven, or to so much assurance of grace from on high. There is, and for the same reason there must be, a similar irregularity in God’s method of assuring men of forgiveness. A given amount of pain and tears can have no exact and ascertained relation to the time when His sinful children shall hear Him say again, “Fear not, neither be thou dismayed.” If in all the future national sins of Israel the people had said, “The sacrifice of one family in the valley of Achor brought Divine forgiveness, and saved the nation when the nation had sinned then; therefore we will sacrifice another family, and save the nation now; and we will always sacrifice a family for the sake of the nation when we get into similar disfavour with God: if the Israelites had said that, or felt and acted like that, the valley of Achor, instead of being “a door of hope,” would have become a door through which would have entered into the national life and history a horrible system of alternating sin and sacrifices, of selfishness and cruelty. God may keep the penitent waiting ere He speaks the words, “Fear not,” so as to be heard; let it be enough for us to know that all the penitent are forgiven when they come to God in tears for sin, and with faith in the offering of Christ; and that ultimately, if not immediately, those who wait thus on the Lord will enter into the peace of manifest reconciliation.
3. When pardon is pronounced by God, every forgiven man should regard it as perfect, and wanting nothing. After the penitence of Israel, and the punishment of Achan, the way to victory was held to be as open and clear as before Achan had sinned. “As far as the east is from the west,” so far was this transgression put away. God had “cast it behind His back,” and it was no more in view as a reproach to the people, or as a hindrance to their triumph. Many a man has felt the purity of child-life contrasting so painfully with the sin-stained course of his maturer years, that he has responded with all his heart to the feeling of one similarly moved:—
“I could have turned
Into my yesterdays, and wandered back
To distant childhood, and gone out to God
By the gate of birth, not death.”
We cannot but be ashamed of our transgressions, yet we need not mourn that we cannot go forth to God thus; nor need we fear to meet Him in the way which is common unto men, for His forgiveness is complete, and His welcome of every pardoned child will be as though sin had never been committed.
II. The beauty of Divine gentleness. God said to Joshua, and through Joshua to all Israel, “Fear not, neither be thou dismayed.” “As one whom his mother comforteth,” so was Joshua gently assured and comforted by the Lord.
1. Divine gentleness should be considered in relation to Divine power. The gentleness of an infant surprises no one, but that of a strong warrior is imposing. A true representation of tenderness must have power for its background. It is in this aspect that the gentleness of Christ becomes so real and so attractive. It is He who stills the storm with a word, that blesses the little children; it is He who calls men calmly back from the grave, that tenderly concerns Himself lest the unfed thousands faint by the way; in a word, the Lion of the tribe of Judah is also the Lamb of God. Quite in harmony with this, He who says “Fear not” to Joshua, is also He who smote Pharaoh, who made a path through the sea, who sent the manna for forty years, and who gave Israel water from the rocks of the wilderness. The words “Fear not” could have given little comfort from the lips of a feeble child; it was another thing to hear them from Him who had so recently overthrown “famous kings,” divided the Jordan, and given the marvellous triumph at Jericho. It is the God of the sun and stars, and of all the universe, who stands by the cross of Jesus, and says, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;” it is the Lord of all power and might who softly whispers to His troubled disciples through all time, “Fear not, little flock: it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
2. Divine gentleness to sinners should be considered in connection with Divine sensibility to sin. Men are gentle to transgressors from indifference to transgression. The life of Christ is full of incident and utterance, in which stern deeds and words of wrath against sin mingle with gentle assurances to the penitent and fearful. Almost in a breath the Saviour proclaims woe unto Chorazin, to Bethsaida, and to Capernaum, and then adds, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Similarly, Luke tells us, in a single paragraph, how Christ wept over Jerusalem, and then, with the tears hardly dried from His face, how He went into the temple and began to cast out them that sold therein and them that bought. So, in this page of the history of Israel, we see Jehovah, in one chapter, solemnly insisting on the death of Achan, and forth with, in this, tenderly assuring Joshua of coming victory. It is a God so sensitive to sin, and one hating it so severely, who proposes to say to every penitent believer in His Son, “Thy sins, which be many, are all forgiven thee: go in peace.”
III. The fulness of Divine encouragement. All that Joshua just now wanted to know was communicated to him by Jehovah.
1. We see God giving special promises for peculiar discouragement. Divine comfort has about it nothing vague: it does not end in mere generalities. The utterances of Scripture are definite, and meet us in our actual necessities.
2. God’s encouragement is corrective of former errors. “Take all the people of war with thee.” This is set over against the former mistake arising from the counsel of the spies. The words of the Lord deal not only with our need in the future, but with our errors in the past.
3. God’s encouragements have regard to the nature of His people’s dejection. The Israelites are suffered to take at least thirty thousand men to give battle to not more than three or four thousand of their foes. In the time of great weakness, God suffers us, somewhat more than in ordinary life, to take hope from things visible.
4. God’s encouragement is given in the form of a promise already proved. Compare the words, “Fear not, neither be thou dismayed,” with chap. Joshua 1:9 and Deuteronomy 31:6-8. The whole of the Church above has gone before us, proving for our use the words in which God asks us each for a little longer to trust and not be afraid.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 8:1.—FREEDOM FROM FEAR: ITS NECESSITY, GROUNDS, AND ENCOURAGEMENTS.
I. The necessity of freedom from fear and dismay.
1. Confidence is necessary for active warfare.
2. Confidence necessary for successful work.
3. Confidence is necessary for patient endurance.
4. Confidence is necessary for spiritual growth.
II. The ground of freedom from fear and dismay. “I have given into thine hand,” etc.
1. There is no other ground sufficiently philosophical. True wisdom is on the side of trusting God. The human brain unperverted by the allurements of the world, the pride of the heart, and the scorn of men, ever elects to “wait on the Lord.”
2. There is no other ground sufficiently pleasing. Imagination is on the side of trusting God. Music, painting, poetry, and everything which moves and delights the human fancy has found a sufficient theatre nowhere but in the faith of Him. Deity is infinite space in the beautiful, where holy imagination can rove at large, never wearied, and ever delighted.
3. There is no other ground sufficiently precious. Our hearts are on the side of trusting God. If the intellect and the fancy sometimes find a temporary resting place in men or things, the heart never can be satisfied excepting in the Lord. The being who has been made in the Divine image can find no sufficient and ultimate home for his love, saving in the heart of Him who is love.
4. There is no other ground sufficiently proved. History is on the side of trusting God. “Our fathers trusted in Thee, and were not confounded,” can only be said of one Helper. He who goes forth to meet the giant enemies of life with any other weapons than those furnished by the Lord of life, will, sooner or later, fear to meet his foes, and will cry with the shepherd youth of Israel, when dressed in the armour of his king, “I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them.”
III. The encouragements to freedom from fear and dismay.
1. There is error to be vanquished. The Israelites might rejoice in the overthrow of idolatry. They were not to delight in slaying men, but to exult over the fall of error which had brought such multitudes to the saddest form of death. Wellington’s grief at Waterloo.
2. There is honour to be won. In God’s battles, this is no empty thing tacked on from without; no medal, which can be cast in a die; no ribbon, which depends on texture and colour for its brightness. Every real victory in the way of truth brings to each triumphant soldier of Christ a holy sense of exaltation within himself. He may say: By God’s grace I have helped the cause of righteousness; I have removed some temptations; I have helped weak men about me now, and the weak of the ages to come. In the warfare of life, every damaged idol may stand for a delivered man.
3. There is reward to be gathered. The spoil of Ai was to be given to Israel. Spiritual victory has nobler and richer gains both here and hereafter.
“GOD’S RENEWED CALL TO JOSHUA. This is the same word indeed as before, but now of quite a different import, since God by it not only assures Joshua of His support, but also gives him to understand that He is again gracious to Him.”—[Lange.]
“Joshua needed the comforting exhortation after the bitter experiences through which he had just passed. Comp. Acts 18:9-10; Acts 27:23-24.”—[Crosby.]
“Although every victory comes from God, it is still in the order of our own fidelity and bravery.”—[Starke.]
“The fortune of war is changeable, but it turns as the Lord will have.”—[Bib. Tub.]
Joshua 8:2.—God will have the first fruits, in order to teach us whence all fruits come, and to whom they all belong.
God gives His people the subsequent fruits, to shew them that they can win nothing which is essential to Him, and to make manifest His love and care for them.
God thus makes both firstfruits and after-fruits to serve His people’s good.
“The way to have the comfort of what God allows us is to forbear what He forbids us. No man shall lose by his self-denial; let God have His dues first, and then all will be clean to us, and sure, 1 Kings 17:13.”—[Henry.]