Joshua - Just one thing: Chapter 8

When we get to chapter 8, Joshua and Israel are chastened puppies. The residue of the Achan incident is the same as that of the Ananias and Sapphira incident: "Great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things" (Acts 5:11). Any one of you who has known acute fear of the Lord will not abhor it. In fact, I always pray to keep it, for I am never more in my right mind than when I fear God.

So that fear of the Lord will be salubrious and not paralyzing, God now comes speedily with reassurance. He will urge the same practice 1,000 years later in the matter of the man in Corinth who has committed a deviant sex act:

"For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow" (2 Corinthians 2:6-7).

"And the Lord said to Joshua, 'Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai." This is not Lucy holding the football in place for Charlie Brown again, only to snatch it from him a second time. Our God is not capricious or mean:

". . . with the blameless you show yourself blameless . . . with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous" (Psalm 18:25-26).

Israel is back on track. This Achan business has merely been a bump in the relationship, an interruption, nothing more---and all to the long-term good. Something that was unclear has been clarified. Welcome, reality.

I have a friend in prison who tried to hang himself from his cell with a bed sheet in 2001, but was found by a guard making his rounds and then was thrown into solitary confinement for five months, during which time God did a deep work in him. He emerged a new man in Christ, a walking proof that "whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin" (1 Peter 4:1). I know the man and that he does not regret the chastisement.

Quite amazingly, Israel's former defeat at Ai now becomes useful as the new shortcut for victory on the second try. (Israel will remember this in Judges 20.) The tactic will be a feint. She will pretend to flee in battle, and it will be believable because she fled before. But this time a hidden garrison will ambush the troops of Ai who are lured out of their city to pursue the decoy.

The way that our past failures and sins are parlayed by God into present and future victories is interesting to contemplate. We must not say, of course, that God worked sin in us in order that we would prosper later. Nor can we draw the conclusion: "Let us do evil, that good may abound." What we can safely say is that we who have sinned and repented and been restored can now minister out of our scars. The past defeats, in God's merciful hands, are redeemable and useful.

Read the next part in this series.

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