The conquest of Ai demonstrates that God's victory is achieved through obedience and humility, not military might. After a previous defeat due to disobedience, Joshua is instructed to set an ambush and flee strategically, drawing the enemy out of the city. The sermon emphasizes that true victory comes from trusting God's plan, exemplified by Joshua's humble participation with the fleeing troops rather than the victorious ambush, and by his subsequent obedience in building an altar of whole stones on Mount Ebal, inscribing God's law upon it. This act signifies remembrance of God's commands and the choice between blessing and curse, ultimately pointing to Christ's redemptive work that transforms judgment into a door of hope.
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Joshua chapter eight. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed. Take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai, see I have given it into thy hand, the king of Ai and his people, and his city and his land. Thou shalt do to Ai and her king, as thou didst unto Jericho, and her king, only the spoil thereof and the cattle thereof shall ye take for a prey unto yourself. Lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.
So Joshua arose and all the people of war to go up against the eye. And Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. And he commanded them saying, Behold, You shall lie in wait against the city, even behind the city. Go not very far from the city, but be your ready. And I and all the people that are with me will approach unto the city, and it shall come to pass when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them. For they will come out after us, till we have drawn them from the city, for they will say, They flee before us at the first.
Therefore we will flee before them. Then ye shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city, for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hands. And it shall be when you have taken the city that you shall set the city on fire, according to the commandment of the Lord shall you do. See, I have commanded you. Joshua therefore sent them forth, and they went to lie in ambush and abode between Bethel and Ai on the west side of Ai. But Joshua lodged that night among the people. And Joshua rose up early in the morning and numbered the people and went up he and the elders of Israel before the people to Ai.
And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up. and drew an eye and came before the city and pitched on the north side of Ai. Now there was a valley between them and Ai, and he took about five thousand men and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai on the west side of the city. And where they had set the people, even all the host that was on the north of the city, and their liars in wait on the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley. And it came to pass when the king of Ai saw it that they hasted and rose up early, and men of the city went out against Israel to battle.
He and all his people at the time appointed before the plain, but he wished not that there were liars in ambush against him behind the city. And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them and fled by way of the wilderness and all the people that were in AI were called together to pursue after them and they pursued after Joshua and were drawn away from the city and there was not a man left in AI or Bethel that went not out after Israel and they left the city open and pursued after Israel and the Lord said unto Joshua Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward AI, but I will give it unto thy hand, and Joshua stretched out the spear which he had in his hand toward the city.
Now go to twenty-six, please. For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of AI. verse thirty then Joshua built an altar unto the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel as it is written in the book of the Lord Moses an altar of whole stones over which no man has lift up any iron and they offered their own burnt offerings unto the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the Lord Moses which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel.
Now I'd like you to look just for two or three verses please in the book of Deuteronomy. Verse twenty-nine, Deuteronomy, eleven and twenty-nine. And it shall come to pass when the Lord thy God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Verizon and the curse upon Mount Evo. Are they not, on the other side, Jordan, by the way where the sun goeth down?
in the land of the Canaanites which dwell in the Champagne over against Gilgal beside the plains of Moria. God is very exact in his giving of locations for the children of Israel. I don't know whether you have noticed, particularly in the Old Testament, how that the Lord told them exactly where to go and what their surroundings might be when they were going to obey his word.
Now this morning we thought of the reason for Joshua coming to destroy these people in Jericho and Ai. And we learned that God had told Abraham in this very place where he built an altar that his people would go down into Egypt, be there in bondage, but in the fourth generation they would come back to that same place because, says God to Abraham, the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.
But at this point in time it's fair to say that the iniquity of the Amorites was full, too overflowing. And Joshua was coming in now as a servant of God to avenge the evil that God had seen for so many, many years, and in grace had held back his judgment upon those cities. Now, when we finished this morning, I would have liked to spoken just a little bit about the Valley of Acre. We didn't have time to do it.
But there in the Valley of Acre, we saw the awful judgment of God executed upon one of the princes of Israel. A man whose heart had been in Babylon and not with God's people. A man who had deliberately defied the word of God. A man in whose heart was no respect. for the word of God. And there it was called the Valley of Acorn, where that man was put to death because of his defiance to the word of God and his love for the things of the world instead of the things of God.
The Valley of Acorn, the Valley of Troubles. But now, the prophets look beyond that, and they look beyond the crosswork of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Jeremiah in chapter sixty-five says, I will make the valley of Acre a place for the herds to lie down in. In other words, through the work of the cross, God will take the valley of Acre and make a twenty-third psalm out of it.
And he will see there the sheep lying in plenty beside the still waters and being led by the great shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. God through grace is able to look at the place of judgment in Joshua's time and look after the time when he made and he will make a twenty-third psalm out of the Valley of Acre. Wonderful grace of God that we find in the Word of God as we look into its page.
But then in the book of Hosea, chapter two, the prophet Hosea looks again And he said, I will make out of the valley of Acre a door of hope. So in other words, God, through the work of the cross, will make a John chapter ten out of it. I am the door, a door of hope by me. If any man enter in, he shall be saved. Think of the grace and the glory of God that's able to turn the very judgment that was due to man, that was poured out upon ancient, and that was poured out upon the Christ of God in our stead, and make a door of hope out of it that we might go in and out and find pasture, and Hosea say, They shall sing as in the days of their youth the song of Moses that was sung on the shores of the Red Sea.
These things that come to us in the book of Joshua are hard things. Maybe a little hard to understand, but all the lessons that God would have for us to learn from these pages. God is able to do exceeding abundantly. Above all that we might ask or think. Now as we look into chapter eight, we see victory for the nation of Israel instead of the awful defeat in chapter seven.
Now God is going to turn the whole situation around, but he's going to do it his way. He's going to teach his lessons to Joshua. He's going to lay on the sacred page a lesson that we might learn today and a lesson in the things of God that are so very, very important for those who would be soldiers of Christ and advance in the armies of the Lord. Victory through humiliation. Humiliation is a hard thing, isn't it?
It's hard to endure. We don't like to be humbled, do we? None of us. But all Philippians too says about my Savior, that he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even The death of the cross. Now God's telling Joshua, Be not afraid. I have given the city of A.I. into your hands. And again, the heavenly captain is in control.
You see what happened in the last chapter when his control was not wandered or not sought after. But now in this chapter, the captain of the Lord's host was in control. The Lord was in control. He said, Don't fear, Joshua. I have given the city into your hands and you shall do the same to it as you did to Jericho and as you did and as you're going to do to Aeon. He said you may take the spoil for yourselves from this city.
And now out of this awful defeat now, God was adding a bonus, so to speak. You see, the nation of Israel didn't deserve this. But now God comes and offers them a bonus. They're going to go and take the city of Ai and they're going to be able to keep the spoil for themselves. I have some notes by Leonard Phillips on the judgment seat of Christ at home and he say this, that we will be rewarded far in excess of what we're really worth or what we deserve at the judgment seat of Christ.
What a God we have. What a God to serve. But on the one hand, the heavy hand of judgment. On the other hand, the twenty-third psalm aspect. And the John chapter ten aspect of the open door and for a way of salvation. I want you to notice some of the things in this chapter that really encouraged my heart and really spoke to my heart as I pondered many hours these things that God had laid upon the sacred page. God just said to Joshua, lay an ambush behind it.
That's all. Now Joshua, as a wise commander now, learning from the lessons of the previous chapter, did exactly what God had told him to do. And he did it well. If you read He took ten times the warriors that he sent up in the last chapter. Do you remember? He listened to the men and they said, Oh, send three thousand men, that's enough. It's only a little thing.
It's a heap of ruins you can take it. God said, Joshua, listen, you take all the people. every one of them to AI because God had something for them to witness that comes as we read in the last part of this chapter. And now it says, Joshua sends his ambush. He takes his other five thousand men and he puts them on the west side of the city. and that night it says he lodged with the people not only that he went down into the valley before the city of Ai and I suggest to your heart that Joshua went alone down into the valley in order that he might ponder in order that he might ask his God for the defeat of this little city that he might be able to accomplish these things for him I think of the Savior as he
went down into the valley and up the other side to the Mount of Olives many times. I think of him as he went down into the valley into the Garden of Gethsemane. Cross the cross. But oh, it was a mighty thing that he was going to accomplish. And he went hand in hand with his God as he went calvary. in order that my sins, in order that your sins might be born and forever forgiven and taken away. Now I want you to notice that Joshua didn't go with that ambush. That ambush was to take the city.
They were the men that were going to have victory. Joshua stayed behind with the people that were going to run away. He stayed behind with the people that were going to act as though they were defeated and were going to run in front of the Amorites. Is it a wonderful thing that the man that was commanding the whole expedition took the place of humility and went with the people who would be acting as though they were defeated and left the other men to take the city and to walk in there and set it on fire and obtain a mighty victory.
If there's one thing that Joshua had learned in the preceding chapter, it was a lesson in humility. It's a hard lesson. Don't you think that he would have far rather been with the advanced God that took the city than he would have been with those people that ran away? But ah, now God's man was learning to take the place of humility, one of the hardest lessons that we can learn today. And the speaker is applying these words to himself as he's done many times.
That's what we need when we seek to serve God acceptably in this day and age. A lesson in humility because our blessed Lord humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Now there's a very interesting thing here and I want you to notice it. Josua took a spear in his hand, and he pointed it toward the city of Ai. And he held that spear in position and never moved it until the whole city had been destroyed.
Now I think about Moses. And I think about Aaron and hers, they held up Moses' hand for their victory. And Joshua was leading the people in that day. But now there's a spear in Joshua's hand, about the first time you read about a spear in the Word of God. And it was pointed toward Eeyore. And as far as I am concerned, a spear in the Word of God is indicative of judgment. There's nothing good about it. There's nothing good ever been said about it, as far as I know, in the word of God, except perhaps the mighty men that David had that accomplished great things with a spear.
I want to think about the valley of Elah for a moment, and there was a spear that was challenging the armies of Israel, and David went out against it. the spear of Goliath. It gives you the size of it, gives you the weight of it. It tells you that this man was depending solely upon that spear. That man fell to the ground before the onslaught of a man of God, and the spear didn't mean a thing at all. You know, the spear was very evident in Saul's life. Saul threw it at David more than once to try and fasten him to the wall.
And when David spared Saul's life there in the mountain cave, Saul had a spear at his bolster according to the word of God. And then I think of Abner. And Abner used his spear as an accomplished warrior, didn't want to do it, begged the pursuer Asahel not to come any further, but because he couldn't talk sense into him, he put the spear behind him and Asahel ran on it, laid there dead upon the ground.
Now we could search the word of God and think about these things. And here's Joshua holding the spear, not the sword, the spear, and pointing it towards the city of Ai. It was just the thought of judgment against vile sin and wickedness. The iniquity of the Amorites was boiling over. And here God sees his man with a spear pointing toward the setting that he was going to overcome in judgment that day. In Psalm forty-six, the psalmist looks after the time when David's greater sun is going to rain.
And one thing he's going to do with the spear is going to cut it in thunder according to that psalm. Because I believe that God despises all that stood for. He'll cut it asunder in a coming day. But the most infamous spear of all, the only one mentioned in the New Testament is in John chapter nineteen. when the Roman soldier in his desperation to do what he could against the Son of God took that spear and pierced his side there as he hung dead upon the cross of Calvary.
Oh, Joshua, and your spear, it's judgment, it's vile iniquity, and God was there to punish it. But you know, if you look in Ephesians chapter six of the panoply of faith and and you see the the dress of a Christian soldier from the helmet down to the feet there's no spear no spear at all just one offensive weapon and that is a sword and that is the word of God for which the sword stands there in that particular chapter.
Now God said to Joshua, and he said it way back in Deuteronomy chapter eleven, he said, when you go into the land to possess it, he said, I want you to put the curse upon Mount Eba, and I want you to put the blessing on Mount Gerizim. He said, are they not on the other side, Jordan? By the way, where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites that dwell in the champagne over against Gilgal, beside the plains of Mori? And you know, folk, I often think about that.
We are now on the other side, Jordan. on the other side of the death of Christ. And many of us here, in fact all of us, when we look out and anticipate the judgment that's going to fall upon this world and the near approach of our Lord Jesus Christ, we're in the way where the sun goes down. Not much time left. The end of the day. in the land of the Canaanites, yes. Abraham lived in the land of the Canaanites. The Canaanites were the people of the world.
And that's where we are today in this very position, seeking to maintain a testimony to the people of the world. Over against still Gaul, he said. in the open plains, in the champagne, the open plains over against Gilgal, the place where the reproach had been rolled away. We trust that the reproach is rolled away in the spiritual sense in each one of our lives. And then he says, beside the plains of Mori, Mori was the place of the oak trees. And the oak tree is the king of the forest, and it spoke of the sovereignty of God.
And there you have it. And that's exactly where we are today. In this day and generation that we live, God said, that's where you'll be. And you'll put the curse on Mount Ebal and the blessing on Mount Verizon. What a day it was for me to stand beside Brother Ernest and see those two mountains just as they described in this place. And I looked at them and I couldn't believe the sight. That's exactly the place. where God put the blessing and the cursing and had them to choose either the one or the other. Now Joshua is coming back after victory and he's approaching those two mountains which are not very far away from where the city of Ai was.
What's he going to do now? He's going to build an altar. Why is he going to build it? Because God told him to do that. in Deuteronomy chapter eleven. And God called him to take the stones, whole stones, upon which no man had lifted up any tool. There was no pollution upon those stones from the hand of man. Man's design was not upon them. Man's desire was not upon them. There were whole stones built into an altar. that Joshua was told to build there after his victory through humiliation.
Then God said, You'll plaster those stones with plaster. And you will write on those stones of that altar all the words of the commandments of God. Now do you see why God wanted all the people to go to AI? It was that they might stand and see the Word of God indelibly before their eyes etched in the plaster of the altar. And it was there.
that they read from Mount Ebal the twelve curses the law could only curse the law could only condemn but on the other side where the blessing was the blessings come out of grace now we are not under the law but we're under grace and now the blessings that have been accomplished through the work of Christ are ours today are ours for the taking but when we look at this story and what it has for us we better be careful how we walk we better be careful of our attitude toward the word of God we've got to be careful to exercise humility before him because we are the children of the blessing today we are brought into all the blessings that accrue from the cross of Christ but responsibility comes our way.
Responsibility to the God that has blessed us in the spiritual sense now in the Ephesian letter with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And then they offered offerings on that order. Joshua knew what to do now. First of all, a burnt offering. Secondly, peace offering, in that order. The burnt offering typifies what Christ is to God.
And it's a special offering. As God looked down upon the cross of Calvary, that we thought about so much this morning. God saw a spotless victim die. My surety on the tree, the Lamb of God, the sacrifice, he gave himself for me. But God saw an offering, a sweet savor offering that arose up to heaven. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Yes, he has to punish him for my sin. But he was satisfied with the burnt offering.
First of all, Joshua, you build a burnt offering. You offer a burnt offering to God. You own God first and the value of the sacrifice of Christ and then the peace offering. Or what Christ has done for us. What blessings we have on Mount Verizon that the cross of Christ has attained for us. as we look at those plastered stones with the word of God before the children of Israel written there so that they might not mistake the word of God we go into first John chapter one on his day whosoever keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfected Now we know a lot about the love of God.
We know that we are recipients of his love and of his grace. But all, look with me at those stones for a moment tonight in closing. And remember that whosoever keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfected. We want to perfect that love in our lives? It's the word of God. Let it burn itself down into our hearts and in keeping it and in keeping it in our hearts.
Let's obey it as we are able to do by the grace of God. Shall we pray? Our Father, these are solemn things that we've looked at today and they come up in thy word and it's good for us to look at them and we think of the awful consequences of sin and iniquity and oh our God our minds go back again to Calvary where we see our blessed Lord bear in his body the iniquity of us all God has laid upon him the iniquity of us all.
Oh, helps to understand that our God tonight. Should there be one in the meeting that doesn't fully understand this, that hasn't closed in with God's offer of mercy, speak to that one tonight, our Father, we pray. It might come to know the Lord in a very definite way. We commend the meeting today. All who have listened, we commend those that were not able to come. But, O our God, above all, we seek the glory. and the praise of the lovely man that sits at God's right hand tonight, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.