Joshua 8:1
The Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid or discouraged. Take all the troops with you and go attack Ai. Look, I have handed over to you the king of Ai, his people, city, and land.”
Joshua 10:8
The Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, for I have handed them over to you. Not one of them will be able to stand against you.”
Joshua 10:9-11
So Joshua caught them by surprise, after marching all night from Gilgal. The Lord threw them into confusion before Israel. He defeated them in a great slaughter at Gibeon… As they fled before Israel, the Lord threw large hailstones on them from the sky…and they died. More of them died from the hail than the Israelites killed with the sword.
Joshua 10:12-13
On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the Lord in the presence of Israel:
“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
And the sun stood still
and the moon stopped
until the nation took vengeance on its enemies.
Isn’t this written in the Book of Jashar?
“So the sun stopped
in the middle of the sky
and delayed its setting
almost a full day.”
Joshua 10:14
There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord listened to a man, because the Lord fought for Israel.
Joshua 11:23
So Joshua took the entire land, in keeping with all that the Lord had told Moses. Joshua then gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. After this, the land had rest from war.
1) The focus was on God’s
, not human violence.
Deuteronomy 9:5
You are not going to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or your integrity. Instead, the Lord your God will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness, in order to fulfill the promise he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
2) The
were different than what they look like on the surface.
“The cities Israel takes out are military strongholds, not civilian population centers… So when Israel ‘utterly destroys’ a city like Jericho or Ai, we should picture a military fort being taken over–not a civilian massacre. God is pulling down the Great Wall of China, not demolishing Beijing. Israel is taking out the Pentagon, not New York City.”
– Joshua Butler
//
was always to be the first option.
Deuteronomy 20:10-12
“When you approach a city to fight against it, make an offer of peace. If it accepts your offer of peace and opens its gates to you, all the people found in it will become forced laborers for you and serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you but wages war against you, lay siege to it…”
Joshua 11:19
No city made peace with the Israelites except the Hivites who inhabited Gibeon; all of them were taken in battle.
// The language God uses is more “
” than “destroying”.
Deuteronomy 9:1
“Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan to enter and drive out nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities fortified to the heavens.”
“Joshua used the rhetorical bravado language of his day, asserting that all the land was captured, all the kings defeated, and all the Canaanites destroyed.”
- Paul Copan
>> How do we find Jesus in the story of Joshua?
1) God’s ultimate goal is to
the world back to Himself.
2) The shedding of
was necessary.
// Jesus suffered
, so that violence might be ended forever.
3) Jesus is the
of
.
Joshua 24:14-15
“Therefore, fear the Lord and worship him in sincerity and truth. Get rid of the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and worship the Lord. But if it doesn’t please you to worship the Lord, choose for yourselves today: Which will you worship—the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living? As for me and my family, we will worship the Lord.”
My Next Step with Jesus: