All right, so a couple weeks ago, while you're going to Joshua chapter eight, a couple weeks ago, in Derek's message, he mentioned, he referenced a sermon that I preached 12 years ago and jogged my memory. So since I don't type mine out and save them, I had to go find it in paper form. But I did locate it, and I was pretty excited because I had a week or so to go over it. And as I'm going over it, things have changed in 12 years, growth-wise. So I rewrote that sermon. But I had some good points to go off of. But it was neat going back and reading that, and then like, OK, I wonder why I went this way instead of that way and all that good stuff. So it's really neat to see your growth in 12 years of time. But I'm going to give it a shot. So we're going to be in Joshua chapter 8. And we're going to start in 18. But I want to give you a little bit of background. before we get there. So, if you'll remember, it's neat too, I want to say that Josh asked me what I was, what text I was preaching and I told him and he said, I read that this morning. So, it must be meant to be. So if you are familiar with this book, remember that Israel has once before been defeated by the little town of Ai. It's pronounced Ai or Ai. I just, I can't say Ai, so we're going with Ai. This was when Achen, you guys remember Achen? He had stolen the garment and the silver and the gold from Jericho and then hid it under his tent. You remember that? Remember the story of Achen? The reason I have to give you this back story because there's about five different sermons if I don't skip through some of that. We gotta get to the sermon for tonight, so we'll go a little bit more into Achan here in just a little bit, but basically God withdrew his blessing from the Israelites, and when they went to attack Ai the first time, they were defeated, right? In fact, Joshua cried out to God in complete anguish. I mean, you could imagine God had given him all these tools and all these plans, and he abided by these plans. And then for this particular battle, he went on, kind of went rogue a little bit, and they got beat, and they were defeated. And he was in anguish, tearing his clothes. I mean, he was questioning God. The Lord told him that there was sin in the camp and revealed to him what had happened there with the family of Achan and how Achan had stolen those items and buried them under his tent. Achan and his family, we know, were put to death for that sin. So it was then time to go back to Ai. And this was a very different battle for Joshua than we know about Jericho. Isn't it crazy how we grew up, we know about the Battle of Jericho, don't we? You've known about the Battle of Jericho. You're probably, if you've been in church since you were a little kid, you know the Battle of Jericho. I still remember the VeggieTales floating around in my head of the Battle of Jericho, right? But they didn't make VeggieTales about the Battle of Ai. right, which is all connected. And we'll get to probably the reason why here in just a moment. But this was a very different battle for Joshua than it was at Jericho. At Jericho, God had made miraculously, he delivered them. Their strategy, if you remember, was to march around the city once a day for six days, and then on the seventh day, they were to march around the city seven times. there would be silence for just a moment, and then there would be a blow of the trumpets, and the sound of the trumpets, the walls would come tumbling down, and Jericho would fall. Just a miraculous event. So God told Joshua, this time, send part of the army for a full frontal assault on Ai. But another part of the army, the largest portion of the army, was to hide behind the city. So when the men of Ai came out to fight the Israelites that were before the front gates, those Israelites would then turn and run and flee. The king of Ai and his men would chase after them and once they got out of the city, believing that once again they had victory over the Israelites, The Israelites would then, the ones that were behind the city hidden, would invade the city from behind. And they were instructed to burn it and kill everyone in it. So it was more, it was a military strategy that God himself gives to Joshua. And this is where we pick up in verse 18. Joshua 8, verse 18. Then he always said to Joshua, stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it unto your hand. So Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city. Then the man in ambush rose quickly from their place, and when he had stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and captured it, and they quickly set the city on fire. Then the man of Ai turned back and looked, and behold, the smoke of the city ascended to the sky, and they had no place to flee this way or that, for the people who had been fleeing to the wilderness turned against the pursuers. But Joshua and all Israel saw that the men in ambush had captured the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, so they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. And the others came out from the city to meet them, so that they were trapped in the midst of Israel, some on this side and some on that side, and they struck them down until there was no one remaining for him who survived or escaped. but they seized the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua. Now it happened, verse 24, that when Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness where they pursued them, and all of them fell by the edge of the sword until they were completely destroyed, then all Israel turned back to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword. So all who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000. all the people of Ai, which to give you an idea, that's prior, right? That's probably even a little bit more than the city of prior. For Joshua did not withdraw his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted to destruction all the inhabitants of Ai. Joshua, I'm sorry, verse 27, Israel took only the cattle and the spoil of that city as plunder for themselves according to the word of Yahweh which He had commanded Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever, a desolation until this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. And at sunset, Joshua gave a command, and they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the city gate and raised over it a great heap of stones that stands to this day. Let's pray. Father, as we dive into your word this evening, Lord, I ask that you'd help us understand, help give us clarity, Lord, and that your Holy Spirit would work in us and through us, in Christ's name, amen. Church, I think sometimes we approach texts and Scripture with almost like an embarrassment to passages, especially like this one. Passages that just don't fit in a modern mentality that we have today. In fact, that's why, grace to you, what's it say at the very beginning of the podcast It says, why are we so ashamed of the gospel, right? John MacArthur. What is this passage describing but basically genocide? God commanding the Israelites to go wipe out an entire city, 12,000 men, women, and children, and we worship this God? We claim we believe in an inherent Bible. We claim that it's all inspired. We claim that it's all profitable. But it's not often we turn to passages like the one we just read. Again, very quick to know about the Battle of Jericho, aren't we? But the Battle of Ai is very rarely spoke upon. So I know I'm gonna date myself a little bit, and I know, thankfully I only got a couple kids here, because they make fun of me for this. Be praying for Tom, he's got strep throat. He's been very, very, very ill today. So him and Sam's at the house. I know this is ancient technology now, but does anyone still use the music app Pandora? Good, see, there's four or five of you. Well, there's, according to everybody else, and especially my children, there are better things out there now that you don't have to listen to commercials and all this other stuff, right? Well, I still use Pandora. So those that don't know, those that say, what is Pandora? So before Pandora, there was the radio, right? And you had to listen to whatever was on the radio. That was part of it. In fact, do you guys, some of you guys remember, I remember when they first came out with the cassette tape, and I would have a cassette tape preloaded in my radio. That way I could go over there, and when I heard a song that I finally liked, I would run as fast as I could and record it. And I'd make my own mixtape like that, right? Takes skill, and you never got the whole song. because you would have to be really fast. So before Pandora, that's what you had. But now Pandora. You put in different singers, bands, or songs that you like, and they use this algorithm and it analyzes it for you. It's the best way, sorry Cody, it's the best way I can explain it. But here's the best part. By each song that is played, Pandora puts a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So, whenever you start your Pandora adventure, they'll play a song, and if you don't like it, you press thumbs down, right? And they'll never play that song again. But on the songs that you like, you press, hey, thumbs up. And then they start picking songs that they think you're going to like. So this is the story. 20 years later, I have a great playlist that they know what I like. So I'm not changing to some iMusic or iTunes. It's not happening. It's taken a long time for Pandora to figure out what I want to listen to. But we, with all joking aside now, in an age, church, where customization of lifestyle and belief has become the norm, this is often the way we approach scripture and the Bible. So thumbs up, I like the way 1 Corinthians 13 talks about love, right? Thumbs down, I don't like 1 Corinthians 11 about women. I like, thumbs up, the book of Joshua about God bringing the Israelites into the promised land. I don't like the parts of Joshua slaughtering cities. men, women, and children. I like Jesus, the baby in the manger. I don't like Jesus who calls a woman a dog. I like the Beatitudes. I don't like him when he talks about plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand. So church, we customize our view of scripture. Ultimately, it's our view of God, right? Oh, I accept this part. I'll preach this part. This part is, you know, it's useful in the modern day that we're in. But this other part, yeah, it's embarrassing. This part, it's shameful. But let's look at the context of judgment here. When you look at this text, you've got to look behind it. at the context of it. How did the Israelites get where they are? So the first thing was overconfidence. So you might remember prior to this chapter after the great victory there at Jericho, Joshua didn't send much of his army to Ai the first time. He only sent about 3,000 men. He assumed he didn't need to send the whole army, never consulted God, Basically, he told his men, God has given us the victory at Jericho, so why don't you guys go up to the little village of Ai and take it as well? But when they got there, God withdrew his hand of blessing, and the Israelites were slaughtered. They died because they went up to Ai, overconfident and trusting in their flesh. Now understand, God had told them to conquer the land. They didn't mess that part up. Joshua didn't mess that part up. It's not that what they were doing was out of the will of God, but the folly was not consulting with God. So, church, it's possible for us to have spiritual objectives, but to go about them in the strength of our own flesh, if you're following me there. To fall prey to our own overconfidence, like we see the Israelites do the first time they went to Ai. So we see that they're overconfident, but we also see next the Israelites were also guilty of overindulgence. What was Achan's great sin? He indulged the flesh. When they went into Jericho, God wanted the Israelites to learn something about himself. Although God allowed them to keep spoil from other cities in Canaan, cities they conquered before Jericho, actually, he first wanted to teach the Israelites what was most important. God didn't want them to think that conquering the land was about acquiring wealth and possessions. So he said, this first city, Jericho, is completely devoted to me. It all belongs to me. In fact, you can't touch a thing. You know, and as I was writing this out, we see this all throughout scripture, don't we? We see that our first things belong, should belong to God. The first minutes of our day, the first day of the week, the first tenth of our income. Offering God these fruits, what it does, it acknowledges his lordship over everything. Jericho was the first fruits, so God said, don't touch it. Yet we have Achan, don't we? Achan saw that Babylonian robe, he saw the gold and the silver jewelry, and couldn't help himself. And before we jump on old Achan, If you think about the position that this soldier's in, he indulged the flesh. And how often do we indulge our flesh, right? But the unavoidable truth about sin, whenever you know God, you just can't enjoy it, can you? Aden didn't put that garment on. and strut around down the street with it, he couldn't. Everybody would know where he got it, right? All he could do was bury it under his tent. He couldn't give his wife the gold and silver jewelry. He had to bury it with the garment under his tent in the dirt. Isn't it an awful thing to try and steal a few moments of pleasure that you really can't even enjoy? You just feel the guilt of conviction. I try to think of Aiken lying there at night with that possession under his head, right? you just feel that deep conviction about it. You've done something against the will of God, and there is no delight. There's no joy at all. You can't enjoy sin whenever you belong to Christ. A lost man can. A lost man or woman, they can indulge in their flesh, and in fact, have a great time doing so. You know, in counseling, several young men throughout the years, one of the main counseling questions is, how do I know if I'm saved? And this is always brought up. What is your thoughts on your sin? Do you pleasure? Do you still enjoy sin? Do you still enjoy living in your sin? Do you love the things of God? You see, a child of God has this conflict, right? So conviction sets in and Achan just can't enjoy his sin. And Israel, because of it, can't win a victory, right? But we see that before God judges Ai, what does he do? He judges Achan. What a point to be made here. Judgment has to begin with the house of God. He deals with his people first. And we know that not only Achan, but his wife, his children, his livestock, anything with his name on it was put to death. Nothing left, removed from the pages of history except this, right? So now comes, and again, man, that is a great sermon on just aching, but we have to move on. Now comes the second time going into AI. And this isn't a pretty story at all, church. It's very difficult for the modern Christian. Of course, Christ has come, so we don't have a physical army. We don't carry literal physical weapons. The war that we fight now is a spiritual battle, right? We no longer wrestle against flesh and blood. But in Joshua's day, that was different. God had commanded the Israelites to go into the promised land. He commanded them to wipe out the Canaanites. Joshua and his army killed every man, every woman, every boy, every girl in Ai. Like I said a while ago, it's like the city of Pryor, 12,000 people. And let's just be blunt. They beat, stabbed, burned, hacked to death. And there's no way to put a shine on that. So we have liberal Christians, if you want to call it that, simply run and retreat from these truths. They say things like, well, how many times have you heard this, right? The God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New Testament. I heard that growing up. I don't know how many times. Well, now I would direct them to the book of Revelation, right? When Jesus comes again, according to the book of Revelation, what you've seen here in the Old Testament is small potatoes compared to what Christ is gonna do in His reign, amen? We have others that say, how could a God of love command to kill babies and little children and their mothers and their fathers. It's just not possible, right? You see, Church, all of these people are responding to God's Word with a like and a dislike. They're setting up their own algorithm, establishing their own standards on God's behavior. They're asking God to conform to their own understanding of what justice and His righteousness is. See, they're trying to civilize God. But an honest reading of Scripture simply says that God is not civilized. We can't limit him. We can't humanize him or make him fit our idea of how he ought to behave because he is God. So a few things are worth noting First, God has been amazingly patient with AI up to this point. Let's look a little bit, just a little bit, who these people are. You don't have to turn there, but in Genesis 15, When God promised to give Abraham the land of Canaan, he surveys the land with Abraham and he tells Abraham, in the fourth generation, your descendants are going to return here because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. So in other words, the cup of the Amorites' iniquity had been steadily filling with their sin and unrighteousness. for generations. In fact, listen to this, 400 years. 400 years. God has been amazingly patient with these people. You know, they had heard what God had done to the Egyptians when the Israelites came out of Egypt. They had seen the witness of Sodom and Gomorrah, right? They had seen the miracle at Jericho that took place. Church, they knew that God was bringing the Israelites into the land. They could have aligned themselves with the Israelites. They could have come up to them and said, we want to worship this God, your God. We want you to have mercy on us. But they did not do so. They did not repent, even though God had given them 400 years to do so. As I'm reading, studying this, I'm not gonna get ahead of myself, but church, we're not in a very good state ourselves. So not only did they not repent, But do you know what the religious practices there were like? Do you know the laws and commands that we have in Deuteronomy? Like, why did God tell his people not to commit bestiality? Why did God command his people not only to refrain from committing adultery, but also incest? Why did God tell his people not to commit sexual acts with children? and not to pass their children through the fire. Sacrifice. Because all those people outside of Israel were doing every bit of this stuff. God wanted them to see what holiness was like, and God had been very gracious. God allowed them time and space to repent. Just like the days of Noah, right? And what happens? They do not. Is history completely repeating itself? So the day came when God said, it's time. Here's real quick, here's four truths that we have to realize, we must realize. Number one, God is greater than us. And it's because he created us. And it's because he has absolute right over us. We cannot compare God's actions towards humanity to our actions towards one another. I mean, they're not even in the same category. He's greater than us. Two, God's glory is greater than anything. Church, do we realize what God desires more than anything is His glory? More than anything. Number three, that God has the right and the ability to judge, doesn't He? which comes to four, we have neither the right nor the ability to judge God. Yet when we look at a passage like this, we want to judge him, don't we? How could God do that? How could God be so violent with these people at AI? Church's passage is, it's brutal. If you study this book, it's rough. But you know, there's a clue in the text that's worth noticing. There's one person in AI who was singled out. Did you see it? Look at verse 29. and he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. The king of Ai is kept alive for a unique and special punishment. You see, Joshua had been with Moses when the law was given. Joshua, he was well aware of the command in Deuteronomy 21, where God said, if you really want to curse someone, you hang them on a tree. It was a sign of ultimate disgrace to expose the body like that. In fact, we know it says, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So Joshua knew that this king represented his people, right? All their wickedness, all their bestiality, all their pagan worship, all their sacrifices of children, this king represented all of the sins of all those people. And Joshua puts him to death, drags him out of the city, and hangs him on a tree. He leaves him hanging there in disgrace. But there's no punishment too great, right? There's no curse too awful for a king like that. He bears the mark of the sins of his people, and it's a nasty, awful picture. But listen here. If you judge God for that act, you're gonna have a real problem with something that happens 1,300 years later. Because there's another king, and his people are every bit as wicked as the people of Ai, if not worse. This king's people are guilty of all kinds of sins, atrocities, His people deserve the same death the people of Ai received. Their cup of iniquity is also full. Church, this king's name is Christ, Jesus Christ. And he represents all the sins of his people. And one day, he's taken outside the city walls And he bears the sins of all those he represents. And there he's hung on a cross. And God's judgment is poured out on him. And he bears God's wrath. The same curse Joshua inflicted on the king of Ai is afflicted and applied to Jesus. But churches, this king is much different. Because unlike the king of Ai, this king, though he represents all his people, though he bears all their sin, this king has himself not once sinned. And this king is perfect. This king is holy. Yet he takes their guilt, and receives their punishment. God's judgment, folks, is poured out upon him. But his people are allowed to live. I find it much more difficult to understand why God allows the people of King Jesus to live than I do to understand why God allowed the people of AI to die. If you have a problem with the God of this Old Testament, then I assure you, you eviscerate the gospel, right? because the same God who judges the people of Ai judges his own son for the sins of his people. Do we see that a gospel with no wrath is no gospel at all? You cannot understand what mercy is. You cannot understand what grace is until you first understand What you deserve is death. Church, we don't need Christ to be our buddy, right? Or our best friend. or our travel companion in this life, we need him to be our savior. And we need to be, he needs to be our king. As Derek has been proclaiming for weeks, if not months now, and as we go through this time when our world's upside down and nations are at war and we've got nut jobs running for presidents, you know, and we don't put our hope in them, as Derek proclaimed, right? What I wanted us to see tonight, is what makes us any different than the people of AI. And what makes us different is the king that we serve. Our king is what makes us different. We all deserve the death and penalty just as the people of AI did. Guys, men, you deserve to die. Your wives deserve to die. your children deserve to die, just as they did in AI. But God. But God. But just like with the people of AI, he's patient with us, isn't he? If we're here today and we don't know Christ, He is patient with you. Years and years of iniquity has been stacked up upon your head, and God's patience with you is overwhelming. There will be a day where God will say it's enough. and either Christ, as we stand before Him, as we stand before our Father, He will see Christ and the work on the cross, or you yourself will see the almighty wrath of God for eternity. Let's pray. Father, we're humbled. Lord, what's shameful is how often that we need reminded of this glorious gospel. How often we need reminded that we deserve the punishment of death. Lord, help remind us daily of the gift of Christ. Lord, we're thankful and we praise you for the patience that you've given to not only us, but Lord, our lost family members, our lost loved ones, friends, Lord, even strangers. Help us remember the urgency, Lord, that one day your patience will be gone. Lord, the gift that you have given us through salvation, how can we not share that and watch people perish under the wrath of you? Just continue to help bring that to our mind, Lord, as every day, as we get distracted, whether from work or activities, the things that perish, Lord, the things that distract us, Lord, help us, guide us. Lord, we thank you for being our king. In Christ's name, amen.