They fled before the men of Ai.
The true measure of strength
In every estimate of work to be done by men, or by money, the moral element ought to be taken into account as an important factor. Napoleon’s thought was that “God is on the side of the heaviest battalions.” But Napoleon did not consider the relative weight of battalions by God’s method of weighing them. One man’s strength may be as “the strength of ten, because his heart is pure”; and where two thousand righteous men would be more than sufficient for a work of God, twenty thousand wrong-hearted men may fail. The true measure of the strength of any local Church is in the number and power of its godly men and women, not in the show of its men and women of wealth and intellect and social standing. One good teacher in a Sunday-school has more real power there than a score of unworthy ones. And it is with money as with men. The need of the Church in both the home and the foreign field to-day is not so much mere money, but better gifts. Ten dollars with a blessing will count for more in God’s work than ten thousand dollars without a blessing. It is not true that one man’s money is as good as another’s, nor that money gained by one means is as good as money gained by another. (H. C. Trumbull.)
Joshua’s lesson after the defeat at Ai
Jericho, according to the Divine promise, had fallen before Israel. It was evident that this remarkable event had happened through the direct interposition of the power of God. It is scarcely to be wondered at that such a triumph bred self-confidence. And, flushed with their recent and easily-gained success, the victors were in haste to add to their laurels by the conquest of Ai. Sere was an unlooked-for catastrophe. The Lord’s chosen people discomfited and dispersed in their second battle, a ground of insulting and contemptuous rejoicing given to the idolatrous Canaanites. And thus the Divine purpose stood, apparently, in danger of disgraceful frustration. Such thoughts were evidently jostling each other, like a medley crowd, in the mind of Joshua. And, confused beyond the possibility of calm reflection by their influence, he casts himself in despair before the ark of the Lord. With what wonderful illuminating power must the answer have come to him, “Get thee up; wherefore liest thou upon thy face”! What a call to common-sense action on the lines of faith is here! A little reflection might have shown to Joshua that the fault, whatever it was, could not lie at Jehovah’s door. In place of useless whimpering over the past, vigorous examination was needed to remove the lurking evil. Sanctification, as before Jericho, was urgently required. And as for the honour of the name of the Lord, it was never in danger. This first defeat would give caution to the warriors of Israel, while, under the improved conditions about to be set up, it would act as an unfailing lure to the victors of Ai. Now this leaf out of the life of a good servant of God is well fitted to teach us many useful lessons.
I. A lesson as to the right treatment of a divine mystery. It is easy to conceive of Joshua as emulating the example of a rationalist, had the prototype of that much-belauded school existed in his time. In that case he would have called the leaders of his army together, and subjected them to severe cross-examination. He would have proposed a long list of questions as to the condition of the arms of the people, the manner of their leadership and its blunders, the time and apparent causes of the panic. And having exhausted his critical powers in the vain endeavour to discover some adequate cause for the catastrophe, he would have proceeded to distribute blame all round. At the same time, sapiently shaking his head over the problem, he would decide to “rest and be thankful” without further efforts at the conquest of the country. Or he would set himself to prove conclusively that after all the success at Jericho was due to accident, or purely natural causes, and that the whole scheme of Canaan conquest was based on a mistake. In this he might, not improbably, easily find scientific heads to help him. There would be sages who would invoke the aid of the discoveries of their time to show that the Jordan was divided, and the walls of Jericho fell from the operation of ordinary physical laws. The phenomena were special, but not supernaturally so. Or Joshua might have chosen a third course, and abandoned himself to surly grumbling or useless repining at the hard lot of a popular leader under a so-called “theocracy.” Joshua’s primitive faith--or, as some would say, simplicity--was far wiser and more useful. And just as, turn the compass as yea may, the needle will point to the pole, so, let circumstances be what they might, Joshua’s trust always drew him towards God’s oracle. The man of the world might call it childish, fatalistic credulity. At all events the issue proved it to be the right, the wisest thing to do. In like manner our true wisdom lies in taking our difficulties to God. Second causes, in the shape of natural law, human ignorance or frailty, have their sphere in the economy of the Divine government, but God is supreme over all.
II. It is not always safe to trust our zeal for the divine honour. Doubtless Joshua thought with Elijah in later times, “I have been very zealous for the Lord of hosts,” while he was really only fathering Israel’s sin upon Jehovah. And similar mistakes are not unfrequently made by godly men, and often with the best intentions. There are some facts which exist, and some which are threatened, which seem to reflect upon the nature and government of God. And in order, as it is supposed, to conserve Jehovah’s honour, infinite effort is expended to cast doubt upon the facts or to qualify the declarations. Could we but touch the bottom of such “zeal for God” we might be surprised to discover that after all there is more in it which--unconsciously, it is true--tends to conserve human weakness and sin rather than the glory of our Divine Ruler. A similar remark applies to very much in our own estimate of the success of the gospel. Often we hear, and perhaps oftener are tempted to indulge in our hearts, doubts as to the power of the glorious gospel. Progress is so slow that men are quick to discover that the machinery of evangelical ministry has become obsolete, and its teachings effete. But the lesson ought rather to be earnest inquiry as to our fitness or otherwise for the success we crave. Is the cause in ourselves, or our easily improvable methods? Or does the hidden mischief lie in those with whom we work? There needs but the removal of “the accursed thing” for success to return to us, and our despondent dirge shall then speedily become a song of victory.
III. The narrative, moreover, suggests to us the sight method of regarding afflictions. It is wise here to have a fixed belief in an overruling Providence, but we must not allow this to hinder our full cognisance of second causes. And it will be well for us if in any special trial, while we are ready, with all submission, to bow to the Divine decree, we carefully ask what there is in us of indiscretion or sin which has procured, or been accessory to, our sufferings; and then, in earnest reliance upon Divine grace, let us seek altogether to remove it.
IV. Sanctification for God’s service often involves the searching out and removal of hidden and unsuspected sins. There was only one Achan in the camp, and his offence was known only to himself and God. Nevertheless, no success can rest on the arms of Israel until he is found out and destroyed. Let us not forget the important lesson which this is so well fitted to teach. Sin comes to us in such insidious ways, and uses agents so dear to us, that it succeeds in taking up its abode in our hearts before we are aware of its presence. Have we an Achan in the camp? If so, let us seek to extirpate the evil. (J. Dann.)
Israel defeated at Ai
I. The divine displeasure at human sin. This was not a new lesson to the Israelites. At Sinai, at Kadesh, at Peor, it had been taught them; but, under new temptations, they needed renewed instruction. Sin unrepented and unforsaken provokes God’s changeless displeasure. Such displeasure is a part of eternal justice. We magnify the grace of God, but grace is only a fragment of His character; it co-exists with justice.
II. The many may be punished for the sins of one. God does not deal with men as individuals only. There is a corporate unity of the family, the Church, the State, which He regards; and, as the good deeds of one benefit all, the sins of one bring evil upon all. In this matter, God’s thought is often not as ours. No modern leader, after the sack of a city, would be surprised to find an Achan in every tent. Might not, then, the one have been pardoned for the sake of the self-restraint of the many? At least, might not the guilty one have suffered all the consequences of his crime, without involving his innocent fellows? Such questions we are not competent to decide. Only a far-seeing Wisdom, which can fully fathom motives and forecast all the results of individual sins, can tell when to be gracious and forgiving, and when to punish. The war against the idolatrous races of Palestine was not to degenerate into pillage, a school for covetousness and selfishness for the victors; and so, at the beginning, such a lesson was needed as would make each afraid of private transgression, and also watchful of others.
III. The defeat at ai illustrates the difference between human sagacity and divine guidance. The Israelites were so strangely unteachable that they did not clearly distinguish between the two. The victory at Jericho was clearly not theirs, but God’s. But, in the flush of victory, this was forgotten. Israel rejoiced in her own success. Prosperity brought presumption, out of which grew the ill-advised expedition against Ai. It is easy for the Church to repose confidence in the stability and strength of her own organisation, and in smoothly-running ecclesiastical machinery, to find the sure augury of her success. Then some spiritual Ai must needs recall us to the truth that the victories of the kingdom of heaven are “not by might nor by power,” but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts.
IV. There is great danger in underestimating the power of an adversary. The easy success at Jericho made Israel over-confident. A Southern historian of the rebellion has recorded his opinion that the first battle at Bull Run was a serious misfortune to the Southern cause. It led to mistaken confidence. Great numbers of volunteers left the Southern army and returned home, believing the war ended. Thoughtful writers at the North agree that it helped the Northern cause, for it taught us not to despise the enemy, and set clearly before us the magnitude of the conflict. And this has its parallel in the conflicts of the spiritual life. After Jericho, Ai. There is no commoner mistake than the belief that following some great victory will be peaceful conquest, the rest of Canaan. There is no earthly Canaan.
V. It is folly to trust in past experiences. The three thousand men who went up against Ai were full of confidence which grew out of the successes at the Jordan and at Jericho. They assumed the presence and guidance of God because of His past deliverances. They knew what had happened; from this they formed a doctrine of probabilities of what would happen. They learned the truth of the maxim, “It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.” We cannot measure our present relation to God by the past. The past may give us ground for hope, but there is no science of spiritual probabilities. “There are factors in” the spiritual life which can change,, the face of things to any extent, and which hide from all calculations of the probable. Christian progress is by “forgetting the things that are behind.” Have we a living faith to-day? (Sermons by the Monday Club.)
The diseases that stop England’s mercies
In this chapter you have a treatise concerning Achan’s sin, branching itself into three parts; one concerning the commission of the sin, the second concerning the discovery of it, and the third concerning the punishment thereof. Oh, what unexpected ways and means hath God to bring out men’s sin to light. Three thousand men flee before the men of Ai, and thirty-six men are slain, and this was made the means of discovery of Achan’s sin; who would have thought that there should have been such a discovery as this? The work was hindered by this defeat, and that sets them on work to search out the cause, and shows--
1. That afflictions should set us on work, to search out our sins, and the cause of them.
2. That sins shall not always be pocketed up, but shall be discovered, though never so secret.
3. That God hath strange ways to discover men’s sins. First, where God is in a way of mercy towards His people, there sin does make a stoppage in His proceedings; so here God was in a way of mercy towards His people, carrying of them into the land of Canaan, but in the way they sin, Achan plays the thief; mark what a stoppage this made in the way of mercy; so you have it in Joshua 24:20, Jeremiah 28:9. Sins committed when God is in a way of mercy are a slighting of mercy. Again, those mercies that come unto God’s people come unto them in the way of a promise, and therefore if men do not keep the condition, God takes Himself free, and will turn Himself out of the way of His mercy. You have an expression to this purpose (Numbers 14:34). God never gives His people any mercy, but He gives it them in a way of mercy. He does not think it enough to give them that which is mercy, but He will give it them in a way of mercy. But now if God should be in a way of mercy towards His people, and they sin against Him, and He should go on to give them the mercy, they would be hardened in their sin, and so it would not come unto them in the way of mercy. Therefore, if God be in a way of mercy towards His people, and they sin against Him, He will break off the course of His mercy, and go another way, and there shall be a stoppage made in these proceedings. Why should this be, that so small a sin should turn the great God of heaven out of the way of His mercy? Achan commits but a small sin, and what a mighty stop is made in the way of mercy! For answer three things--
1. There is nothing between God and us. I may boldly say thus much, that men sin a great sin in saying their sin is small.
2. Sometimes what falls short in the greatness of the sin is made up in the number of sins. It may be that the number of your little sins amount to the greatest sin.
3. God will make good His name to the utmost, and His name is, “A jealous God.” But what evil and hurt is in this, if final stoppage be not made? Is it nothing in your ears, and in your hearts, that the Lord should turn out of a way of mercy? If there be a stoppage made in England’s mercy, though but present, there is an obstruction in all your comforts: you arc sensible of the obstructions of your body, will you not be sensible of State obstructions, of Church obstructions? Again, when a man does not rely and live upon God’s all-sufficiency, when God hath appeared in that way. Abusing of God’s instruments which He raiseth up for to do His work by, doth exceedingly provoke and make a stoppage in the mercy of God. Carrying on the work of reformation, and the great affairs of the Church, upon the shoulders of human prudence, will make a stoppage in the way of mercy. As prayer and humiliation do exceedingly further the work of God in the hands of His people, so the falling and slacking of the hands in these two works doth make a stop in mercy, and hath done in our mercy. An unthankful receiving of the mercies that God’ hath given us, and a slight beholding of the great works He hath done before us lately, is another sin that hath made a stoppage in our mercy. The last sin that makes a stop in England’s mercy is a worldly disposition, whereby a man hangs back unto the great work of God, and the glorious reformation that is news-doing. I shall show you it is a hard thing to appease God’s anger when it is gone out. It must be done, and that quickly. I shall show you what you shall do, that you may do it. Therefore it is an exceeding hard thing and very difficult to appease God’s anger. If the sea break over the banks, and there are but few to stop it, it is hard to do; if fire hath taken two or three houses in a street, and but few to quench it, it is hard to do: the fire of God’s anger is broken out, and there are but few to quench it: it is a hard thing, therefore. Again, God seems to be engaged in the way of tits wrath. Oh, it is a hard thing to turn God from His anger! But it must be done, and done quickly. There are six things that Joshua did here, when they fled before the men of Ai.
1. He was very sensible of God’s stroke that was given to them, for he says, Lord, would we had been contented in the wilderness.
2. He was humbled under God’s hand, for it is said, he rent his clothes, and fell down upon the earth.
3. And he prayed, and cried mightily unto God, as you read in the chapter.
4. And he put away the evil of their doings.
5. And he punished Achan, the offender.
6. tie made a holy resignation. And there must be a concurrence of all these six things if we would bring God back into the way of His mercy towards England. (W. Bridge, M. A.)
Sources of weakness
1. Here is a Church with all the outward elements of strength, prosperity, and efficiency. The mass of members are orderly and in good standing. But it has a “name to live while it is dead.” God frowns upon it. And why? There are notoriously unworthy members in it--perhaps rich and influential--and they are tolerated year after year. And there is not spiritual life and conscience enough in the body to cast them out I And so the whole Church is cursed for their sake!
2. Here is a city numbering 800,000 strong, with hundreds of Churches and able pastors, and scores of thousands of respectable members, and education and schools and wealth, and all the elements that should insure social virtue and general thrift, and God’s abundant and abiding blessing. But there is a moral blot upon it. There is an “accursed thing” winked at. A handful of corrupt officials are suffered to rule it and curse it. Gambling, drinking, crime, are suffered to run riot. There is power in the mass, in the Christian element, to put it down, stamp it out. But it is not invoked. And so the whole city has to suffer the shame and ignominy and loss. The pulpit, the Church, virtue, law, are all shorn of their strength. For God will not wink at such things, if His people do; and so “Ichabod” is written on that city.
3. Here is a community in which a horrible crime has been committed--a man shot down in cold blood for his fidelity to truth or virtue or the public welfare. The blood of that man God will require of that entire community, unless they exhaust every resource of law and society to bring the guilty to punishment! We may narrow the circle to the individual, and the principle will still apply. One sin in the heart will neutralise a thousand virtues in the life. One secret offence will make a man a coward in the face of the world. One moral weakness will spoil a whole character. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
Defeat through miscalculation
This old story of the battle at Ai is paralleled in all its essential features in every age and country. Some unrecognised weakness, some unforeseen turn of events, confuses the most careful calculations and neutralises the most elaborate preparations. Probably the splendid military strategy of Napoleon was never more clearly illustrated than in his plan of the battle of Waterloo; and yet a little strip of sunken road, which was overlooked in the preliminary survey of the engineers, threw all his calculations into disarray and lost him the battle and the empire of Europe. Some unnoticed defect in the machinery negatives the skill of the captain and the seamanship of the crew of the Atlantic steamer. It was only an insignificant bubble of air, overlooked in the foundry when the steel was wrought, but it resulted in weakness in the core of the main shaft, and in the supreme hour of trial there is failure and disaster. Some lack of fibre in character, and the time comes when the man who supposed himself sufficient for anything finds himself unequal to the emergency. And these unforeseen interferences and checks are nowhere so common and so potential as in the department of religious life. A low type of piety is not necessarily or probably the result of a resolution to be satisfied with a certain level of spiritual attainment. I believe that at heart the majority of Christian men and women desire and attempt to be and do the best and most possible, but there is some defect of will, some infirmity of temper, some unwillingness to surrender to God what may be considered an unimportant particular, and so long as that hindrance is in the way, our prayers and struggles for better and larger growth are unavailing, and the influence of that obstacle continually makes itself more and more felt for evil. And what is true of the individual Christian life is true also of the life and progress of the Christian Church as a whole. That Church has made great advances and won not a few triumphs at various periods and in certain directions. At the same time it is true that the Church ought to have accomplished greater things, ought to be doing far more than it is to-day. It is God’s Church, and He abides in it, and that of itself is a warrant for imperial greatness. What conquest is too vast to be expected when the Lord of hosts marshals the forces that are enlisted to win it? With such portents and prophecies of triumph, why should there be any discouragement, or half-heartedness, or laggard marches, or unwilling hands, or partial successes? Why was not the promise fulfilled long ago, that “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ”? A great deal is said in our time about the need of a working Church. There is another need quite as great--the need of a Church through which God Can work. It is not the method and spirit of the working of the Church, so much as the way and the extent in which and to which it is wrought upon of the Divine Spirit that determines its efficiency. It is the folly of the Church of this age that it spends so much ingenuity in devising machinery and too little time in preparing the way of the Lord and making His paths straight. No wisdom, nor eloquence, nor marvel of contrivance can make good the lack of a devoted and submissive spirit that waits and waits and still waits with the inquiry: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” Let us have that in the Church, a singleness of union with God, and then, through the membership, the converting energy from on high will flow unhindered, and men be reached and transformed. (E. S. Atwood.)
Hindered by sin
1. As a matter of fact, there are unexplained checks in human progress. We wonder why we do not advance more surely and quickly.
2. Such checks bring Divine providence under criticism and suspicion (Joshua 7:6-9). This is an easy refuge for men. Providence has had to sustain many a slander. It seems the handiest of all things to blame the mysteriousness of the Divine way. Who ever says, “The fault must be within the house itself; let every man in the house be examined; somebody is to blame for this mystery--who is it?” But it is easier to sit down under the supposed comforting doctrine that all this is meant for our good; it is chastisement; it is part of the mysterious process of human education At the same time it must be remembered that the sufferer himself may not be personally guilty. Certainly Joshua was no criminal in this case; yet Joshua suffered more than any other man. Here we may find the mysteriousness of the Divine action. This is not an action of mere virtue, as it is socially understood and limited; it is the very necessity of God: He cannot touch “the accursed thing”; He cannot smile upon fraud. A new light is thus thrown upon sovereignty and God’s elective laws. God elects righteousness, pureness, simplicity, nobleness. He will forsake Israel if Israel forsake Him. The Lord gives the reason why we are stopped. We must go to Heaven to find out why we are not making more money, more progress, more solidity of position. (J. Parker, D. D.)