Joshua: Jericho Falls
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
How do We Understand the Story of Jericho
How do We Understand the Story of Jericho
When I was young I had a fairly simple understanding of the book of Joshua.
I found the story of Israel taking the land as an exciting story of heros, villans, battles and darring acts of bravery. Of people’s failures but the strength of God to fullfill his promises despite human weakness.
However as i got older I was more troubled by the fate of the cannanites who were concured by israel, particularily at the site of Jericho.
This was such a total victory. Even the archelogical evidence from the site of Jericho show the fact that the city was completely destroyed and burnt to the ground.
I have read some even call this total victory a genocide. The new athiests like Dawkins have labeled God a homisidale murderer.
However as I spent more time on this story I returned to my foundation understandings about God, that he is good and that he is a God who judges sin, injustice and evil and he saves sinners who repent of their sin.
Then I realsied that this story is part of the story of God’s plan to save the nations. When we see this we see that this is not a simple story of battles, where one side wins and the others side is crushed.
This is a dramatic story of Gods judgement on evil and injustice and his saving power to forgive sinners.
We need to read this story in the context of God’s saving work for all human kind. And of Course in the light of Jesus
This is how we understand the dramatic events that unfold in chapter 5 and 6.
God Always Fullfills His Promises
God Always Fullfills His Promises
Let’s understand this moment in context of what God himself said he is doing.
Promises to Abraham
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
In regard to the Land
God promised Abraham in Gen 15
18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
People: Israel. Covenant. I will be your God and you will be my people.
Land: Promised land, a new community showing what God is like
Blessing: The result is that the people of th eland and the world will see the Goodness of God and repent of sin and turn to join the people of Israel and become God’s people
So God chose Abraham, he was promised people land and blessing. Abraham’s family grew which was the first promise but they still did not have land.
Today we will see how God will fullfill the promise to Abraham that he will become a great nation and they will have a land to live in.
We rejoin the story as Josuha sends spies into the landSpies into the land. Here is a chance for repentance and mercy before the coming Judgement
And as the spies go into the land some of the people repent and believe. Let’s go back to chapter 3 and look again at the story of Rahab and her family.
Rahab
Rahab
What is the Promise to Those Who Repent? Rahab In chapter 2?
Spies go into the land
1 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.
They are protected by Rahab when the king of Jericho looks for them.
6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.)
8 Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof 9 and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 10 We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. 11 When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
12 “Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign
she let them go out her window to escape.
on the window she tied a red cord.
The spies promise if she keeps the cord and they stay in the house they will be saved.
She recognised the power of the Lord and put her trust in the Lord
Matt 1:5 she is listed as a decendant of Jesus. She is a cananite who is saved
Jericho
Jericho
The spies return and the people cross the Jordon river in ch 3-4.
and enter the Land God had promised Abraham, the second promise.
ch 5 The people recommit to the covenant
through circumsission that marks them physically as God’s people and they celebrat the first passover in the land to remember that it is God who saved them from Pharo.
In Ch 5 Joshua encounters a warrior, angle
13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
15 The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Look at verse 14. God is not on anyones side. He is on His side.
This is not Israel versus the Cannanites, this is God’s Battle and the Israelites are going to be the supporters. Just like God defeated the Egyptians so he will defeat the Cannanites.
The Cannanites are in danger because of their rebellion and sin.
Back when God promised the land to Abraham he waited
16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
During this time the Cannanites we sinning greatly
They regulalring sacrificed their children to their gods
(Lev. 20:2; Deut. 12:31; 2 Ki. 16:3; 17:31; 23:10; Jer. 7:30-32; 19:3-5; Ezek. 16:20-21).
31 You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
The conquest is a judgement from God on their sin
1 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
Bible scholars call this ḥerem warfare. The Hebrew word means “to devote something to total destruction.”
very troubling. One of the most given reasons why people do not want to be christians today
Some Christians have responded by diff between Old Testament and the New, claiming that Jesus’s ethics improved upon the brutal practices of ancient Israel. But this sort of response does not fit with Jesus’s own view of the Old Testament. After all, he spoke approvingly of the destruction of Sodom, a pagan city that also included men, women, and children (Luke 17:28-29).
To answer these questions, we must understand the place of the ḥerem laws in the history of redemption. Israel had a unique calling as God’s chosen covenant people. Their task was to prepare the way for the arrival of the Messiah. Therefore, Israel’s own mission foreshadowed Jesus’s mission in a number of ways. Their purity laws pointed to the holiness demanded by God. Their sacrificial laws pointed to our need for atonement. And their laws concerning ḥerem warfare pointed to God’s just judgment against sin. In all of these respects, Israel’s laws were signposts to the spiritual realities behind Christ’s redemptive work for us.
OT scholar Tremper Longman summarizes this point well:
We must point out that the Bible does not understand the destruction of the men, women, and children of these cities as a slaughter of innocents. Not even the children are considered innocent. They are all part of an inherently wicked culture that, if allowed to live, would morally and theologically pollute the people of Israel.[1]
the punishment for all sin is death (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23), and ultimately every unrepentant sinner will have to face God’s judgment.
sometimes we get snapshots of God’s final judgment “intruding” into the flow of history, foreshadowing the reality to come. The ḥerem laws of the OT were an example of this intrusion.
WE are warned by the cannanites.
Herem is the wrath of God agains sin.
But there is mercy and Justice in this story of Herem
Mercy On Offer Before Judgement
Mercy On Offer Before Judgement
Sin of Cannanites:
In Deuteronomy 20:18, God gave Israel an explicit reason why it was necessary to wipe out the Canaanites: “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God.”
They were given time to repent
RAHAB
It was merciful for God to allow individual Canaanites to repent and join the people of God. The classic example is Rahab, the prostitute who helped the Israelite spies in Jericho and swore allegiance to the Lord (Jos. 2). Rahab was later held up as an example of faithful obedience in the New Testament (Heb. 11:31; Jas. 2:25) and even included in the genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:5).
Now that Christ has come, the way in which we understand and apply the ḥerem laws has radically transformed. The judgment that they foreshadowed was demonstrated decisively on the cross of Christ, who received the full measure of God’s wrath for the sins of his people. Thanks to his obedience unto death, our own sins are forgiven, and we can now stand in God’s favor by faith alone.
This is the setting for Battle of Jericho.
The Battle of Jericho the People of Israel are not to engage the City.
1 Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.
2 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.
The people are given marching instructions
3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”
So they did
6 So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.” 7 And he ordered the army, “Advance! March around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the Lord.”
As the Lord commanded they marched around the city for 6 days and on the 7th day
15 On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. 16 The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! 17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. 19 All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.”
20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
That is very confrounting. Here we see the wrath of God against sin. This makes clear the need for the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
Sin needs to be paid for.
The Climax of Herem
The Climax of Herem
Longman writes:
The war against the Canaanites was simply an earlier phase of the battle that comes to its climax on the cross and its completion at the final judgment. The object of warfare moves from the Canaanites, who are the object of God’s wrath for their sin, to the spiritual powers and principalities, and then finally to the utter destruction of all evil, human and spiritual.[2]
The war against the Canaanites was simply an earlier phase of the battle that comes to its climax on the cross and its completion at the final judgment. The object of warfare moves from the Canaanites, who are the object of God’s wrath for their sin, to the spiritual powers and principalities, and then finally to the utter destruction of all evil, human and spiritual.[2]
Chance for repentance at the same time as Rahab,
5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
But the hope is Jesus has paid the price. turned away God’s wrath in what is called propitiation.
2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So as you here the trumpts what will you do?
Can be translated PROPITIATION