The Book of Joshua illustrates God's faithfulness in fulfilling His promises to His people, emphasizing the necessity of both divine intervention and human cooperation, obedience, and faith for victory and entering into His promised rest.
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it's the story of how God was seeking a
bride for his son each book is different
from every other book I'm trying to give
you the keys for you to unlock it for [Music]
yourself well now after they crossed the
Jordan they stayed at gilgore for quite
some time they put a can 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 for them Rememberance is a very
important part of Old Testament piety
you 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 cans of stones
and especially 12 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 and they were very vulnerable to
attack at that time had the Jericho
people realized they could have marched
out and really uh walked over them at
that time but they didn't and after a
few days they were ready to go the Mana
stopped as soon as they crossed the
Jordan and because on the other side
it's very fertile if you go to Jericho
today it's a whole Oasis 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 gilgal
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
reconter of the uh town to walk around
it by himself and he went by night he's
walking around this town when he came
across an armed
man and he said uh whose side are you on
the said
answer whose side are you on are you on
no and then the personage went on to say
the important thing is whose side you on
Joshua you on 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 was being reminded
that he is not the highest
officer in the Lord's
army that he's an under officer it's a
gentle little reminder so they set about
conquering the
land and uh 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
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 uh
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 the 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 Potter in each laay 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 are
all the fruit trees of the Jericho Oasis
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 uh 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 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 8,000 BC it's 10,000
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 15t gap and then the inner wall the
outer wall was 6 feet thick and made of
rock and the inner wall was 12 ft thick
and made of brick now this is the kind
of problem that the Israelites faced
that's a mighty big
so let's uh take those pictures
Jericho that's a very oversimplified
cross-section of uh the tell and you can
see how the different ages of cities
have been built on top of each other
there's not much of Joshua City left
just a little bit here
that's the late bronze City 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
Elisha'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 potery 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 wall here that's where they found the double
double
wall um now then because of that
wall 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
6ot wall then the Gap and then the 12T
wall the walls were about 30 ft
high now bear in mind that it was
already on these layers of previous
cities can you see that the walls with
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 whole lot
down 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 blew the walls came down
you know that some singers can bust a
light bulb 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 march around it seven times
once a day in total
silence and on the eth day you
blow and they blew these horns which
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 6 days silence I should think 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
rahav 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 s the great great great
grandmother of King
David and the great great great great
great great great great great great
great 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 into the
City and took it but God said this city
is the first
fruits it's mine you don't touch a thing in
in
it and 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 was a place
called AI further up the
hill that's all that's left of AI That's
the best photograph I could get of AI
it's just a heap of ruins
but it was a flourishing
City and they made two errors two
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 Afters we must do this again and
I've said no you must not do this
again because you think you can go out
and do it as you did before that's what
Samson said I'll I'll 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
akan had stolen something from Jericho
he saw some nice clothes and he thought
well they're no use to
God 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 happen
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 Joshua it could be your
fault you
know find out who took the Forbidden
thing 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 the clan
together and by lot they found the
family of
akchan now why did lot's work in the Old
Testament the answer is very simple they
believed that that God was in control of
any 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
what he wanted that's the theory
theologically it's thoroughly sound if
God can pull walls down of Jericho he can
can
certainly determine lots and they used
Lots deliberately so that men had no
influence in this situation now we do
that as well we toss a coin for who goes
into bat first at a cricket match that's
to stop any person choosing but the
difference is that when they cast slots
they believe it allowed God to choose
because he could control the 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 priest carried two
stones inside his breastplate a black
and a white stone and they were called
the araman the tumin and one meant 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 I and pull out a stone if it was a
black stone the answer was no and if it
was a white stone the answer was yes I
wish we could have guidance that way now
it 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 aen 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 aan
and his family had to die they clearly
knew what he'd done and they welcomed it
they would L to 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 there's sin in the camp you
can't sin to yourself it can affect everybody
everybody
else and the people of God well finally
they reached Mount ebol and they obeyed
Moses Moses said when you get to the
mountain in the center there are two
mountains ebol and gazim he said you
just 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 sheim 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 a reminder of the Covenant
then they went on to the
South want to go back to the outline 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 Amorite
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
ion here's a photograph out of a book as
you can see of the valley of ion with
the sun where the sun Stood Still that's
happened at this point they began to div
the land and they did it with a 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
um there's a little map here that might
uh just show you it's a fascinating
little land only the size of
Wales uh it has it's the only green bit
in the Middle East the Arabian Desert is
this side and the Nega desert South uh
the rain comes the Mediterranean and
drops on these Hills first and then on
the Hills over the rift valley that's
all it is that's the 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 trans Jordan as we call it
today and so Moses had made them promise
that they could have that land provided
they came 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 9
and a half or 10 and a half No 9 and a
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 either side of the Jordan
where people guilty of manslaughter
could flee and not
be uh 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 120 called at the same age
as Moses 80 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 Christianity you know is a way of
death as well as a way of life there as
a man in beckfield wrote to all his
relatives when the doctor told him he'd
reach the end of the road and he said
come and stay with me come and see how a Christian
