David Pawson - Joshua [2] - Unlocking the bible

well now after they cross the Jordan they stayed at Gilgal for quite some time they put a cairn of stones they took 12 stones from the bed of the Jordan and made a little can of them at Gilgal as a reminder for future generations of how God dried up the River fallen remembrance is a very important part of Old Testament piety the constant being told to remember what the Lord had done for you of course Christians are the same we take bread and wine to do this in remembrance we need constant reminders of what God has done for us in the past and their favorite way was to erect ken's of stones and especially twelve stones one for each tribe they also did something else this whole new generation had not been circumcised and so all the men of this new generation were now circumcised it meant they had to stay in camp until their bodies recovered and they were in pain they were very vulnerable to attack at that time had the Jericho people realized they could have marched out and really walked over them at that time but they didn't and after a few days they were ready to go the manna stopped as soon as they cross the Jordan and because on the other side it's very fertile if you go to Jericho today it's a whole erase it's the best grapefruit and oranges you'll ever taste are in Jericho I see some of you have been and so as soon as they got over they had fruit and vegetables and food again and they called the place Kilgore which means rolled away because God had rolled away the reproach of Egypt they could forget Egypt now they were in now a rather strange thing happened Joshua decided to have a personal recognizer of the town to walk around it by himself and he went by night he's walking around this term when he came across an armed men and he said whose side are you on the man said no I think that's a lovely answer whose side are you on are you on their side or us no and then the person each went on to say the important thing is whose side you were on Joshua you know God's side and it was the captain of the Lord's host I believe that means a senior angel an archangel I don't believe it was the Son of God but I believe it was a senior Archangel captain of the Lord's host but you're entitled to what you believe what happened was Joshua is being reminded that he is not the highest officer in the Lord's army but he's an under officer it's a gentle little reminder so they set about conquering the land and as I've told you they drove a wedge in the center first and then cleaned up the South and then cleaned up the North brilliant strategy now there's more space given to the first two towns than any others later that's because the first two towns were terribly significant one positively and the other negatively one was a complete victory and the other was a disaster Jericho was the victory now Jericho is still there even ancient Jericho the modern Jericho is a mile down the road now here are some rather poor photographs but this is looking across the Jordan Valley to the hills of Moab beyond the Jordan is running there here's the Oasis of Jericho and in the middle of it is this heap of rubble it towers above everything else it's just a big heap of dust apparently it's what we call a tell now the word tell simply means the ruins of a city or at least of many cities that have been built on top of each other as a city was destroyed so they built another on the top of it so gradually a man-made hill emerges you may have noticed in some old villages in England that they front doors of the cottages are way below the street level that's because the street has been built up and up and up on top of itself and a tell is formed that way and so archaeologists one method is to take one layer off and then the next and then the next but that destroys each layer as they go down another method is to take a slice right out of the middle and see it like a sandwich cake and then notice the particular pottery in each layer and date it and so on that's what they've done with this Mound it's just this long mound here looking down on it from the air this is what you would see here all the fruit trees of the Jericho or ASIS but here is the old Old Testament City nobody's living in it now it's just a heap of rubble and ruin as you can see but they've actually cut a trench right across the middle there and unearthed the oldest building in the world which I'll show you in a moment they have discovered that Jericho is actually the oldest city in the whole world to our knowledge it actually dates from 8,000 BC and in fact there is one building in it which I'll show you now a round tower with a spiral staircase inside it you can't go down they've had to put a grid over it because it was people were wearing the stones away but this round fortification is 8000 BC it's ten thousand years old you're looking at and that is the oldest building in the world and they found that by digging this trench right through the middle they've also found a lot of features of the city and one unusual feature is that it had double walls two walls the outer wall and then a 15-foot gap and then the inner wall the outer wall was six feet thick and made of rock and the inner wall was 12 feets they can made of brick this is the kind of problem that the Israelites faced that's a mighty big fortification but something had happened so let's take those pictures away and look at Jericho that's a very oversimplified cross-section of the TEL and you can see how the different ages of cities have been built on top of each other there's not much of Joshua's city left just a little bit here that's the late bronze City at the time of Joshua the main road that you drive along is here the bus will take you alongside this mound of dirt and the spring which supplies all the water for Jericho is just alongside it lovely fresh water but if you remember in Elijah's day that spring became radioactive and had to be cured with a miracle again but here we have the different cities the Neolithic City the pre pottery age then the early the Neolithic pottery age then the early bronze the late bronze just that little bit Iron Age and finally bits that are later but now it's just a rough dusty thing and they found various bits of war here that's where they found the double-wall now then because of that war Jericho was very limited in size but the population grew so what did they do they decided to build houses over the two walls bridging them actually just to find more space so it was a very crowded little city with houses actually sitting on top of the six-foot wall then the gap and then the 12-foot war the walls were about 30 feet high now bear in mind that it was already on these layers of previous cities can you see that the wars was the extra weight of houses on top of them are not very strong can you see that again I'm not trying to explain the miracle I'm trying to show you the situation as it was a slight earth tremor would bring the dan whether it was an earth tremor that God used to do that or not we don't know it could even have been quite feasible that in fact a loud sustained noise would have done that and it's very interesting that God told them to blow these horns that I've just blown here and it says immediately when the horns brew that the walls came down you know that some singers can bust a lightbulb if they get the right note it may well be that God knew that those walls were already precariously balanced on these slopes and had the extra weight of houses just asking for a collapse whatever I don't know the fact is that God said you match round it seven times once a day in total silence and on the eighth day you blow and they blew these horns which I've been trying to blow all night or whatever and you can imagine all those horns blowing on the same note and the people shouted as loud as they could and after six days silence the thing that was pretty unnerving for the inhabitants anyway but the walls collapsed and the houses on them except for one because you remember the prostitute Rahab her house was on the walls so God saved one bit of wall and the Scarlet thread out of the window saved her life and her family that's how she became the great-great-grandmother sorry the great-great-great grandmother of King David and the great great great great great great great great great great make grandmother of Jesus himself and put in the genealogy in Matthew 1 it's an amazing story well they didn't even have street fighting and they just walked in to the city and took it but God said this city is the firstfruits it's mine you don't touch a thing in it and in that way God told them the victory was mine not yours you don't deserve anything from this city this is my victory you can conquer the other cities and you can loot the other cities but you're not to loot this one and we know that a man did because the next place they went to is a place called a I further up the hill that's all that's left of AI that's the best photograph ever I could get if it's just a heap of ruins but it was a flourishing City and they made two errors two blunders number one overconfidence and Joshua said we don't need many troops for this one it's easy conquering this land how fatal it is to think that because God has blessed you once he's going to do it again or because you've had a success in one sphere that that will be repeated so often when I've been at an occasion where God has really been present and blessed us the immediate reaction of people after us we must do this again and I've said no you must not do this again because you're thinking go out and do it as you did before that's what Samson said I go out as before you can't repeat God and they were overconfident and thought that only a few troops would get AI more than that a man called a cannon had stolen something from Jericho he saw some nice clothes and he thought well they're no used to go but I could make use of them and he saw some gold as well and he took it now when Joshua's troops first attacked AI they were routed and they fled and Joshua came back to God and said God why have you let that happened now the word will go around the whole country we are not invincible we're finished and he blamed God for it and God said Josh sure it could be your fault you know find out who took the forbidden sing in Jericho and that's when they called the tribes together again they used lottery and by lot they settled on this tribe then they got the different clans together and by lot they settled on this clan then they got each family in the clan together and by lot they found the family of mekin now why did lots work in the Old Testament the answer is very simple they believed that God was in control of in every situation and that when just for sake of argument when they tossed a coin God could catch it and turn it the right number of times to tell them what he wanted that's the theory theologically is thoroughly sound if God can pull walls down of Jericho he can certainly determine Lots and they use Lots deliberately so that men had no influence in this situation now we do that as well we toss a coin for who goes in to bat first at a cricket match that's to stop any person choosing but the difference is that when they cast lots they believe it allowed God to choose because he could control a lot and that's why they did it right up to the day of Pentecost after that God's Spirit guided them so we don't need to toss coins now we've got the spirit to guide us but in the Old Testament days that's what they did the priests carried two stones inside his breastplate a black and a white stone and they were called the arimin the tumin and one men yes and one men no and they would go to the priest and say does God want me to marry this girl or not and the priest would close his eyes and pull out a stone if it was a black stone the answer was known if it was a white stone the answer was yes I wish we could have guidance that way now it would be very much simpler and easier just to go to the pastor and say pick a stone for me and then you know what to do actually God wants a more personal relationship with us than that he wants to work it out much more personally but that was the way they did it and we shall see that's how they divided the land later so they cast lots and the lot fell on akin as later the sailors on a ship heading for Spain cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah you find this again and again that God controls the lot he doesn't control the National Lottery in our country but he does control the lot in the Old Testament that's important so AI was a disaster and akin and his family had to die they clearly knew what he'd done and they welcomed it their word lat of the clothes and the gold but one man's sin caused the people of God to fail it's almost frightening isn't it that one member of a church could have the same effect when the sin in the camp you can't send to yourself it can affect everybody else and the people of God well finally they reached Mount Ebal and they obeyed Moses Moses said when you get to the mountain in the center there are two mountains Ebola and Gerizim he said you to stand on both mountains some of you and and on one mountain you shout the blessings and on the other mountain you shout the curses and if you go to those two hills today they're just near Shechem and there's a kind of amphitheater both hills are hollow on the face towards each other so can you imagine a huge two new natural amphitheaters you can hear perfectly right across the valley and there they stood and they shouted the blessings and the curses and the reminder of the Covenant then they went on to the south want to go back to the outline that I don't know what I've done with it yes I do they cleaned up the south and that's when the Sun Stood Still they were attacked by five amirite Kings led by the king of Jerusalem a man who called himself Lord righteous isn't that interesting because Jerusalem was still in enemy hands and he led five kings to attack them in the valley of Ayalon he is a photograph out of a book as you can see of the valley of Ayalon with the Sun that's the place where it happened where the Sun Stood Still now what do we make of that I'm going to read you something written by mr. Harold Hill the president of the Curtiss engine company of the United States a consultant in the American space program I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts in space scientists at Greenbelt Indiana they were checking the position of the Sun Moon and planets out in space where there would be a hundred years and a thousand years from now we have to know this in order that we don't send up a satellite and it collides with something later on on one of its orbits we have to lay out the orbit in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be so that the whole thing will not go wrong they ran the computer measurements backwards and forwards over the centuries and it came to a halt the computer stopped and put up a red signal which meant that there was something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the results as compared with the standards they called in the service department to check it out and they said it's perfect the head of the operation said what's wrong well we found there's a day missing in space in elapsed time they were puzzled and there seemed no answer then one man on the team remembered he'd been told at sunder school of the sun standing still they didn't believe him but has no alternative us was forthcoming they asked him to get a Bible and find it which he did in the book of Joshua chapter 10 the spaceman said there's the missing day well they checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough the elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes not a whole day they read the Bible again and then it said in Joshua about a day these little words in the Bible are important but they were still in trouble because if you can't account for 40 minutes you will be in trouble a hundred years from now 40 minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits then it was this same man remembered somewhere in the Bible it said that the Sun went backwards and the spaceman told him he was out of his mind but they got out the Bible and found how Hezekiah on his deathbed was visited by the Prophet as I who told him that he was not going to die and Hezekiah asked for a sign and Isaiah said this sign shalt thou have of the Lord that the Lord will do the thing that he had spoken and the shadow shall go forward 10 degrees or go back 10 degrees and Hezekiah answered it is a light thing for the shadow to go down 10 degrees nay but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees and as I cried unto the Lord and he brought the shadow 10 degrees backward by which should have gone down on the sundial of Ahaz 10 degrees is exactly 40 minutes so 23 hours and 20 minutes in Joshua plus 40 minutes and 2 Kings make the missing 24 hours which they had to log in the logbook was being a missing day in the universe make of that what you will that's where it happened at this point they began to divide the land and they did it with the National Lottery so that there would be no human influence on the choice and Joshua sent out surveyors and they came back with a complete survey of the land there's a little map here that might show you it's a fascinating little end only the size of Wales it has the only green bit in the Middle East the Arabian desert is this side and the Negev desert south the rain comes the Mediterranean drops on these hills first and then on the hills over the Rift Valley that's all it is that's a promised land but it was divided up surveyed and they gave by lot the portion to the tribes two and a half tribes wanted this part of the land over the other side of the Jordan in Transjordan as we call it today and so Moses had made them promise that they could have that land provided they came and helped their other tribes to conquer this side and if they helped their brethren to get this land they could then go back and settle that way so that's what happened two and a half tribes settled here and the other nine and a half or ten and a half no no no half settled on this side and the land was divided and everybody was happy with the division that occupies quite a few chapters in Joshua there were of course special cities there had to be six cities of refuge three other side of the Jordan where people guilty of manslaughter could flee and not be killed for having murdered and there were also cities for the Levites it's all there in the book of Joshua so we come to the last two chapters the final epilogue where he preaches this magnificent sermon there are just two things I want to say about this he's an old man he's a hundred and twenty called at the same age as Moses eighty but now he knows he's going to die it's amazing how many people in the Bible know when they come to die and even Christian do you know as a way of death as well as a way of life as a man in beckons field wrote to all his relatives when the doctor told him he had reached the end of the road and he said come and stay with me come and see how a Christian dies what a challenge so leave great men of God when their time comes they know they're going and they usually leave behind a message for which they'll be remembered the first thing we notice is the office of leadership Joshua did not appoint a successor Moses did Joshua didn't why not because from now on one man couldn't handle the people were scattered one man would be accessible to many of the tribes from now on each tribe had to have its own elders that's a very significant move it actually failed and the people wanted one-man leadership again and demanded a king but it was not God's will God's will was that elders in each tribe should take over the leadership because that means that people have immediate access to the elders and that's a very important principle once you build a hierarchy with a man at the top he becomes inaccessible and it's very important that the will of God for his people was local elders in immediate contact with the local people but they didn't accept that and it didn't work but that was God's will so he reminded them of the Covenant and he reminded them that God had promised not only to bless but the curse and he promised both and he said God always keeps his promises he brought us into this land but he won't stop dealing with us now interesting that Joshua gave all the credit for getting the land to God took no credit himself though he'd led them he said God brought us in God fought for us God gave us this land God did it and you should be jolly grateful to him so he made them take an oath of loyalty to God and in chapter 24 a unique thing happens he speaks in the first person singular as he does in chapter 23 but in chapter 24 I means God he is now prophesying and his last message was prophecy from beginning to end and though he still says I whereas in chapter 23 i means joshua whereas in chapter 24 i means yahweh always the god of hosts and this is what God says through Joshua he says I have done all this for you and there's just one statement of God's that I love so I gave you a land on which you did not and cities you did not build and you live in them and you eat from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant you didn't but I gave them to you I've given you all this and now out of gratitude Joshua speaks again in his own name so feel the Lord and serve him and be faithful to him and throw away all other gods that's when he makes that magnificent statement as for me and my family we serve the Lord now I said that's the choice you've got the land whose God is going to be your God now now that you've got what you want very significant challenge and they've said we will serve the Lord so is it right I'm gonna put that on a stone here and he set up a stone of witness three times they said we will serve the Lord the last few verses are three burials the burial of Joshua the burial of Joseph's bones you know all the way for 40 years they'd carried a coffin out of Egypt as well as everything else they actually carried a coffin all that way with Joseph's bones in it because his dying wish was bury me in the promised land and now at last they buried Joshua the buried Joseph's bones and they bury Eleazar the son of Aaron so there's a triple funeral that rounds off this book and it says this that as long as Joshua and his generation of leaders lived the people were faithful to God but when the next generation came things went badly wrong one of the biggest problems is passing the faith on to the next generation really is for a second generation of Christians children to be as enthusiastic as their convert their converted parents who first came to the Lord it's not easy and it's a problem that has followed the Christian Church for a long time each generation has to rediscover God for themselves and though they may hear what God did for their parents and grandparents that doesn't make the children go so let's summarize what we learned from Joshua as I read Joshua these are the lessons I learn I can sum it up in two simple sentences without him they couldn't have done it but without them he wouldn't have done it now those are the two very important lessons there's a balance here it's so easy to go overboard and put all the responsibility on God or to put it all on us but there is a biblical balance without God we can't do it but without us he won't do it notice the change of verb it's not without us he can't it's without us he won't and this is the beautiful balance it goes all the way through the Bible with God all things are possible without him he chooses not to work with us he needs us he wants us we are called to be co-workers with God if Joshua and the people of Israel hadn't cooperated with God it wouldn't have happened and yet without him and without his intervention they couldn't possibly have done it now that's the beautiful balance so first of all we see a lot of divine intervention in the book of Joshua we see God's words and we see his deeds he makes his promises and he keeps them he made a solemn covenant which he never broke not for one minute did God go back on his word he had sworn by himself by myself by God I'll stay with you if it means punishing you out punishing you blessing around bless but I'm gonna stay with you it's for better or worse for richer for poorer I'm your God God cannot tell a lie I once made a list of things God can't do because you know when you think of God Almighty you think he can do anything no he can't there are many things God can't do and the first thing I wrote down was God can't tell a lie and I finished up with a list of 31 things that God can't do and with a shock I realized that I could do every one of them does that make me greater than God No thank God there are some things he cannot do tell you one thing he can't do he can't change the past once it's happened even God cannot change it he can change its effect and it's result we can't change the event so God Himself can't undo the cross it's happened God cannot tell a lie he cannot break a promise he just can't it's against his whole nature he couldn't promise you something and then not do it that's God I think the things he can't do as wonderful as the things he can do and he cannot break his word now we've broken our promises I'm sure he can't it's against his whole character he cannot make a promise to Israel and then go back in it thank God for that it says God gave to Israel all the land he promised to their fathers he did it and his deeds he says at the beginning of Joshua I will fight for you and I will drive them out I'll do it that's the meaning of the word Emmanuel now I'm going to give you four possible meanings of that word and I want you to vote on it which you think is right meaning number one God is with us meaning number two God is with us meaning number three God is with us and meaning number four God is with us now it only means one of those four things let's take a quick vote God is with us God is with us God is with us God is with us well that's pretty evenly divided but then the fourth was right the fourth was right Emmanuel means God is on our side the emphasis is he's gonna fight for us not them so the emphasis is on us God is with us and Emmanuel sums up the God who said to Joshua I'll fight for you I'm on your side if you're on my side and so we have the Division of the Jordan River the collapse of Jericho's walls the cessation of the manner another battle which they're won because of an almighty hailstone the lengthening of the day in the valley of Ayalon another time God sent Hornets and even while the enemy were marching towards and these Hornets came now if you can imagine a swarm of Hornets I tell you you don't stay and fight you run and that's how they won one of the biggest battles just threw Hornets see God controls the insect world again and all this was his doing and it was marvelous in their eyes but the other side is equally important God does it through human cooperation he didn't fight by himself they had to be in the battlefield they had to go and God fought for them now this is the balance some people just say oh well leave it to God he'll do it all other people talk as if they can do it all and you find both sorts of Christians but the balance Christians pray as if it all depends on God and work as if it all depends on them there's a kind of beautiful balance in the Bible here without them he wouldn't have done it they had to go in and he said every bit of land you stand on I'll give it to you but you've got to go and stand on it so without them he wouldn't have done it their attitude if their attitude remained one of confidence and their action one of obedience they would win every battle but if their attitude became self-confidence and their action became disobedience they'd lose every battle and that's why though the book of Joshua covers 40 years the two major parts of it are the story of Jericho and the story of AI if you learn the lessons of those two towns then you're set for the conquest of the land interesting isn't it well the Bible as I've said earlier is a very honest book and it says they did make three mistakes only three when they took the land the first was at AI they were defeated by superior troops because they had too much self-confidence the second I haven't mentioned was where one of the tribes already in the land tricked them and they tore their coats and they put on old shoes and they blackened their faces and they came to the Israelites and they said we've come from a distant land because we've heard God is with you look at our clothes look at our shoes we've walked hundreds of miles because we hear about your god they'd only come from around the corner and because they put on this show it says Joshua didn't ask the Lord about them and he was fooled and he made a peace treaty with them a devastating thing to do and only then discovered that they were just living around the corner and this was their way of escaping defeat and they didn't ask out about it so they were tricked and the third time was when the two and a half tribes that were going to live on the far side of the Jordan finally went off to claim their territory and when they cross the Jordan they put up a can of stones and the tribes on this side of the Jordan said hey they've built an altar so they're not going to be part of us and misunderstanding arose among God's people and they said to them we're gonna fight you and they gathered an army to go and defeat the two-and-a-half tribes internal misunderstanding and the two and a half tribe said no no we we've done that to remind our children and our children's children that we came from your side of the Jordan and that we belong with you and the misunderstanding was removed and peace came back so even among the people of God they can be misunderstanding when you don't ask God about things well what's the Christian application of Joshua very simple in the New Testament Joshua is used as an example of faith Rahab the prostitute is an example of faith again and again a kin is used as an example of sin in the people of God and their corresponding event in the New Testament is Ananias and Sapphira which exactly corresponds to the sin of Aitkin in the old people of God you remember the couple and then of course it's used for salvation because in fact Joshua's name means salvation it was originally hacia but Moses changed it to Yahshua which is the same as Jesus and means God saves when my wife and I moved to the village where we live that postmaster was called mr. god save and it was delightful going to visit mister god save the postman but actually in Hebrew he would be mister Yahshua or mister Jesus mister God save and finally what is the Promised Land for the Christian that were to be brought into not heaven when you sang when I tread the verge of Jordan I wonder what you were thinking about we think about death because the promised land for us is not heaven the promised land is holiness because the promised land is rest from battle it's the promised land of victory when you've won the battle and you can enjoy what God has for you and of course whenever you're overcoming temptation you have a little foretaste of the rest don't you you've won the battle and there's arrest from the conk from the conflict there remains of sabbath rests as Hebrews 4 for the people of God Joshua didn't get people into that rest and there remains a Sabbath rest for us to get into and it's to cease from our own works it's to take a holiday from yourself and rest actually most holidays we take ourselves away with us and that's not rest is it but to take a holiday from yourself and cease from your own works is to enter into the promised and of God's rest and enjoy his victorious life the best book on Joshua I've ever read is Adam read Pass little book victorious Christian living do get that book it's how the book of Joshua enables Christians to enter into their promised land of rest from battle you

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Keywords: David Pawson (Person), Book Of Joshua (Religious Text)

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Length: 41min 11sec (2471 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2013