In our story last time we met the children of Israel experienced their first and only defeat in the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. What could be better? What an exciting thing, but as soon as they get in the land, after Jericho, comes another little city called Ai, which has a small population of only about 12,000 at that time. And this mighty arm of Yahweh, of God, is defeated before the people of Ai, which caused them to reassess this whole "God called me to this place" stuff. "If God called us here, why are we experiencing defeat? All the promises he said we would encounter, where are they?" Very difficult soul-searching time for the children of Israel.

Defeat in the land of promise---that's what they experienced. Nobody likes defeat. We all like to win. We like victory. If there's a battle to be fought, nobody wants to come out the loser. In a college locker room where the sports teams would get dressed for their sports, on the wall was the plaque that said, "Defeat is worse than death because you have to live with it." And so they come back from Ai, tail between their legs, living with defeat. Why did they experience defeat? Number one, self-confidence. Remember they said, "Hey, let's not take the whole army with us. The people of Ai are only just a few." Those are words of presumption. "Ah, this is easy. If we could take Jericho . . . ."

Remember, they just were flush with the victory of Jericho and they thought, "Man, if we can defeat those people in Jericho, Ai is so much smaller, there's only a few. Let the armies stay at home, kick back, enjoy some R & R. We'll just get a few of the elite guard and we'll just do the light work." And that was presumptive, because they came back defeated, and some of their own ranks were killed at the battle of Ai. Self-confidence was the first step to their defeat. Sometimes we underestimate our battles, and we forget. If we've ever won any battles, we're doing really good in our spiritual life, we sometimes have a tendency to think, "I'm the one who's doing well. I'm the growing. I'm mature. Look what God has accomplished with me, and in me, and through me."

That's dangerous, because if you look back to Jericho, what did the children of Israel really do? They blew horns. Wow! Big deal. They didn't fight. They blew horns, trusted God by faith, the walls fell down, but God gave them the victory. They had no reason to be self-confident, but they were. "The people of Ai are but a few." Second mistake they made---this is all in review---they failed to wait on God as they had done for Jericho. Now, we remember Joshua had a meeting in chapter 5 with the Captain of the Lord's army, this theophany, this appearance of Christ in the Old Testament who said he was the guy in charge. And Joshua bowed down and worshiped at his feet. We read of none of that happening before the battle at Ai.

There's no prayer. There's no seeking God. There's no getting aligned with the will of God or getting directions from God. They just go out on their own without prayer, failure to wait on God, and they were defeated. So, we must always be in contact with God, or we get beaten up by life. That's why we suggest that Christians have daily "quiet time" we call it, where you read your Bible, you pray. Now, I don't know if you ever get up in the morning and think, "It's late. Eh, who cares if I pray or not. I mean, what difference does it make?" That kind of thinking is dangerous. It is self-confidence that leads to lack of dependence. "I don't need to wait on God." Third step that caused their defeat was blatant disobedience.

There was somebody in the camp named Achan. His name means "trouble." And, boy, was he a heap of trouble, because in going into Jericho he took some of the spoil that God said, "Don't touch it. Dedicate it completely to the work of the Lord." And he kept it for himself: a beautiful garment and some silver and gold. God deals with him in chapter 7. We read through that last time. But the point of all this is that this was their first defeat, right? And they were not defeated by a large number of people on the outside. The reason they were defeated, according to God, was because the problem was on the inside. Achan was the problem. And because of sin in the camp, it affected the rest of the camp, and God held the entire children of Israel responsible for one man's sin.

If only Joshua would have taken the time to pray and wait on God, he would have heard God's voice, no doubt, and God would have told, "Don't go. You've got sin in the camp. Deal with the sin in the camp first and then march, otherwise you're going to be defeated. He would have the spiritual perception. But he went ahead. There was disobedience in the camp. The problem was the inside, sin inside. And there's a lesson in that, because Ai really does represent the flesh. You know, sometimes Christians are out bad-mouthing the devil. Don't get me wrong, I don't like him either. But I think a lot of us say, "It's the devil, the devil made me do it," when, in fact, the worst enemy is you yourself, me myself. It is the flesh.

The worst enemy are the habits of the flesh, the deception that goes on in our flesh. And you can't make a league with the flesh, it has to be utterly wiped out. But it was on inside job. I think of the story of Troy, remember for ten long years they were able to keep the Greeks out? So, finally, the Greeks sailed away, they thought, in their ships and left only this large wooden horse in front of the city of Troy. And Trojans saw the Greeks sailing off into the sunset, thinking, "Finally, after ten years we've gotten rid of them." But they saw this strange wooden horse and they open the gates and let this horse inside, and all those soldiers were inside the Trojan horse, the wooden horse.

And they all came out and defeated the city once they got on the inside. The problem was on the inside. The problem we often face in defeat---"Well, I know there's a devil. I know he's powerful. I know there's the world system with all of its allurements." But the devil and the world wouldn't do a thing to us if it weren't for our flesh, our old nature. And so the devil with take the worldly allurements and it appeals to the old nature. Those three work in harmony together to trip you up: the devil, using the allurements of the world to appeal to your flesh, the fallen nature. So, the big enemy on the inside, and some of our greatest struggles in the Christian life is with our own flesh, right?

Those habits, those ways of thinking, those ways of dealing and doing things are on the inside. People talk about Alexander the Great. I've done a lot of reading on Alexander the Great, find out he's not so great. Oh, he was a great soldier, don't get me wrong. He conquered the known world by the---before he was thirty-five years old. But he died at an early age, in his early thirties from a drunken stupor in Babylon. Being able to conquer the enemies on the outside, unable to conquer the problems on the inside brought his defeat, as it does with Ai, as it so often does in the life of the Christian. Okay, they've experienced defeat; now the story turns.

Verse 1, "Then the Lord said"---ah, that's good news, God is speaking to these people---"said to Joshua, 'Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed; take all the people of war with you and arise, and go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city, his land. And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it.' " Did you hear what God told them? "This time you can keep the stuff. Take it home for yourself." Remember Achan who lusted after the Babylonian garment and the gold and instead of obeying God and dedicating all the stuff to the Lord, he kept it for himself.

If only he would have trusted and waited and obeyed. God wanted to bless him all along. And so often what messes us up is we don't believe that God has the highest for us. "I mean, God's cheating me. Why did God let me in this position? He's cheating me, so I'm going to go find fulfillment on my own." Not knowing that it's God's heart to bless you in his time. So God says, "Keep it." And I love what he says to Joshua, words of encouragement. He doesn't say, "You dumb leader, why didn't you pray? [laughter] What's wrong with you, man? I'm rejecting you." He says, "Don't be afraid, nor be dismayed," beautiful words. Those are the words Moses spoke at Kadesh.

Those are the words that Moses told Joshua when the leadership of Israel turned from Joshua's hands---or from Moses' hands into Joshua's hands. And now, once again, beautiful words of encouragement: "Don't be afraid, nor be dismayed." And then he says, " 'Lay an ambush,' " verse 2, the end of it, " 'for the city behind it.' So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai; and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. And he commanded them, saying: 'Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city; and it will come about, 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 are fleeing before us as at the first." Therefore we will flee from before them. Then you shall rise from the ambush and seize the city, for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand. And it will be, when you have taken the city, that you shall set the city on fire. According to the commandment of the Lord you shall do. See, I have commanded you.' " Now we notice a very different strategy in taking the city of Ai from the strategy that God used at Jericho. What did they do at Jericho? They walked around it, blew the trumpets, yelled, the walls fell down. This time they're actually deploying armies to go to battle in a normal wartime operation.

Now, you might look at that and say, "Well, that's very unspiritual. I mean, they're actually going to fight. They're actually going to work. They're actually going to do something. Why don't they just walk around this city and blow the trumpet?" I don't know. God could have done it that way. God should have surely said, you know, "Just stand on the mountain and blow your trumpet in every direction and all the walls of the country will fall down." But he doesn't do that. That was Jericho, and this is Ai. And you know what? God has the right to do what he wants, when he wants to, to deploy different strategies for different things. So this is God's method as well, normal wartime operation: "Bring the troops out. You'll get the city. I'll deliver it into your hands, but go to war."

Hebrews, chapter 1, the writer begins by saying, "God, who in various times in different ways spoke to our fathers through the prophets." God is a God of variety. God doesn't have a canned approach, always a biblical approach, of course, but there's not one way to skin a cat. There's not one way to take a city. So be open to the variety of God. And you see a change in your life---"Well, God didn't do that last time." So what? That's what's so God about God. He may change a method. He may change a leader like he did with Joshua and Moses. Moses is dead now. Now it's Joshua. I'm sure there were some nostalgic people already who said, "I remember Jericho, man. That was such a godly time we had in Jericho. We just march around the city and the walls fell down. The power of God was so present. Now we're marching to war."

I'm sure that Joshua had to put up with some of that. But this is God's strategy for the city of Ai. Now we're not going to read all of it. We sort of read the beginning of it, and it does say in verse 2, "Lay an ambush for the city behind it." There are three contingents that go out. And the chapter, I'll kind of bring it to summary for you, three different groups of people. One is a group that will camp to the west of the city at night and get ready. They're hiding in ambush. Next group, group number two, is the main army that is Joshua and the fighting men. And they're going to go up and seemingly as a decoy force attack the city. While they draw the people from city---it's all a decoy.

Ai's going to go, "Man, these people are running from us just like before. We're going to beat them again." And this decoy force will drive them way out into the fields, away from the city. While they do the people who are on the west will rush into the city, set it afire. The third force was a group of 5,000 men who are deployed to cut off any fortification troops from the city of Bethel, which is very close to Ai. They might see what's happening, and just to divert the troops that might come in from the other side of the valley, they're ready. So this is the plan. And if you go down to verse 15, "And Joshua and all of Israel made as if they were beaten before them and fled by the way of the wilderness. So all the people who were in Ai were called together to pursue them.

"And they pursued Joshua and were drawn away from the city. There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. So they left the city open and pursued Israel." Down in verse 19, "So those in ambush arose quickly out of their place; they ran as soon as he had stretch out his hand," that's Joshua giving the signal with his hand up, "and they entered the city and took it, and hastened to set the city on fire. And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and behold, the smoke of city ascended to heaven. So they had no power to flee this way or that way, and the people who had fled to the wilderness turned back on the pursuers." Ai, I see, is a city that represents the flesh.

And I'm going to kind of close tonight's study in a little bit with that---that there's three enemies they face so far: there was Jericho, which represents the world; there is Ai, which represents the flesh; and, finally, there is Gibeon, which represents the devil. And you'll see why in a minute. The world, Jericho, is conquered as a march of faith. Jesus said, "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." How did they defeat Jericho? By faith, they marched around the city, Hebrews, chapter 12. Then there's the flesh, a more formidable enemy than they thought. They thought, "Ah, no problem. I got it under control." They didn't have it under control. It's a very, very powerful enemy.

And we have to realize that when it comes to our flesh, we have to use every God-given resource at your disposal: the Word of God, the people of God, the Holy Spirit living within us, the will that God has given us to turn, every available resource, "every spiritual blessing" we have to deploy. Pull out all the stops. And then in chapter 9 we'll get to Gibeon, which represents the world. I draw your attention now to verse 30, because basically what I just told you about, the ambush, is what the rest of the story is about up till verse 29. But in verse 30, this is after the episode, they defeat the city, goes up in flames, they sack it, they keep the loot.

"Now Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: 'An altar of whose stones over which no man wielded any iron tool.' And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence of the children of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. Then all Israel, with their elders and officers and judges, stood on either side of the ark before the priests, the Levites, who bore the ark of covenant of the Lord, the stranger as well as he who was born among them. Half of them were in front of Mount Gerizim and half in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel."

This is all found in our previous studies in Deuteronomy. "And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, the little ones, the strangers who were living among them." The scene in this verse, verse 30, changes from war to worship. They were on the battlefield burning a city, defeating the inhabitants of Ai, and suddenly they're on Mount Ebal and Gerizim, a time of dedication, consecration, a time of worship. A very different scene as Moses commanded them to do once they get into the land.

Sort of what we're experiencing here in verse 30 is a national bar mitzvah. I don't know what you know about Judaism, but a child, when he reaches thirteen, a boy, goes through a bar mitzvah. He becomes a "son of the law." He is able to read the Torah scroll, the Scriptures, in certain cases make comment on them. But he is accountable as an adult member of the synagogue community to keep the law for himself. It's not really his parents' responsibility anymore; it's his responsibly to obey God. He's called into public account. The children of Israel, for the first time in the land, make a public proclamation: "This is God's law. We make a covenant with God. We affirm the covenant God made with Moses. And we hold ourselves accountable to God before everyone, even in view of God's judgment, to keep the laws of God."

Quite a proclamation, just like when we call people forward to make a commitment of faith in Christ. They made a public commitment of their faith in the God of Israel, and they did it here at Mount Ebal and at Mount Gerizim. Now, this is the area of Shechem. This is the area that Abraham came to when he was called out of his homeland of Ur the Chaldees, the place that God first spoke to Abram and said, "I'm going to make of you a great nation and your offspring will inhabit this land." This is the place where they're at. This is the place that Jacob came and dug a well. And to this day if you visit Shechem, you can visit Jacob's well. This is the place that later on Jesus goes and meets a woman of Samaria who had five husbands. She was a very loose and immoral woman.

But it was a place that the Jews would avoid. They would never go through Samaria on their way up north. They would avoid it by going through Perea. But Jesus had to go to Samaria to meet this woman. So, it's a place rich in history and a place that would be rich because Christ would come to this very spot. The valley that they're in, the Valley of Shechem, if you visit, you will notice the two mountains that are mentioned. The valley is only a couple of miles. It's a very shallow valley, and on one side is Mount Ebal, the other side is Mount Gerizim. You could stand on a mountain, and I could stand on the other mountain, and we could talk back and forth to each other. It's like a natural theater environment. You could hear the voices from one side to the other.

And so this is where they were to come. They have sort of cut a swath of land. They cut a path. They came in from the Jordan River, moved westward to Jericho, and then about thirty miles along the central ridge of mountains, through Ai, Bethel, and now up to Shechem. So they're cutting their way through the land. They'll go back down south. They'll go up north. But they're making this proclamation before the inhabitants of the land: "We worship one God. We will not worship your gods." And they read the blessings and the cursings that Moses commanded them to read. And also notice that there's a pile of stones and they would put mortar on the stones and write the law. This is a memorial. This is the fourth pile of stones, by the way, that we've read about in the book of Joshua.

First one is when they cross the Jordan River, put stone there as a memorial. The second one was in the Valley of Achor, because Achan was killed. They put stones over him, and here's a memorial of guy who disobeyed God. The third one was found in verse 29, the entrance to the city of Ai. And the fourth one here is at Mount Ebal. All of these piles of stones are altars of remembrance: "This is a lesson we learned here. Look at these stones, children of Israel. Look what this represents. Look what happened here. Learn from this and move on." And so the fourth pile of stones at Mount Ebal, the Law was written on it. Now, some think it was just the Ten Commandments that was written; others think he wrote all of Deuteronomy, chapter 5 through 29, 28-something.

And you say, "Well, that's a lot of writing." That's not uncommon. In archaeology they have found pillars, or as the archaeologists call them, "stela/stelae," of inscriptions that are quite lengthy. One Iranian inscription on a single pillar is three times the length of the entire book of Deuteronomy inscribed on stone. So it could be that they spent a long time working on this thing to put the law in written form on this altar. We don't know, but it served as a reminder. And it says, "There was not a word," verse 35, "of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them." That was quite a Bible study. That was quite a lengthy Bible study.

We're talking about reading the Law, the Pentateuch, the law of Moses, which we've gone through. It's taken a long time, but he read this in a setting. The women were there. The kids were there. There wasn't Sunday school for the kids with little Veggie Tales activities for the kids of Israel. They were all together listening to this long Bible study outside in a valley, setting the priorities from the beginning. I draw your attention, before we move into chapter 9, to Mount Gerizim, which is mentioned in verse 33. You should know about Mount Gerizim. You may know about it without really knowing this was the mountain---do you remember in John's gospel when Jesus meets the woman at the well of Samaria?

And they're having this conversation and the woman says, "Hey, our fathers worshiped in this mountain, but you Jews say Jerusalem is the place to worship." "This mountain" she was referring to is Mount Gerizim. At the time of Jesus a rival temple, a rival religious system had been built on this mountain by a group known as the Samaritans that rivaled the worship system down in Jerusalem. And I want to tell you how it came to pass. It was a church split, you might say, years ago in ancient times of Israel. The kingdom had been split: two tribes down south, ten tribes to the north; the ten northern tribes know as Israel, the two southern tribes known as Judah.

In 722 BC the Assyrians came in and captured the northern kingdom taking the ten tribes in exile, took them away. In fact, they took about 27,290 I think was the amount of people they took captive from the area of the ten northern tribes or the area of Samaria. Then what the Assyrians did is put all sorts of other people groups, Babylonians, people from different portions that the Assyrians had conquered, and put all of those mixed people groups in the area known as Samaria. Those foreign people intermarried the remnant that was living around Samaria, Shechem, the area of northern Israel, intermarried so you have a mixed breed, a mixed race, and they brought in all of their foreign gods and goddesses. They became known as Samaritans.

The purebred Jews in Jerusalem had a rift, a tiff going on with them, so much so that when the Babylonians captured the southern kingdom, Daniel and the rest of it, took them to Babylon for seventy years, when they come back to rebuild the Jerusalem temple with Ezra and Nehemiah, and some of the people in Samaria want to help, Nehemiah says, "No way. This is God's pure worship system. You can't help us rebuild." So that creates a further division, a polarization. After that time, the people built a temple on Mount Gerizim and called it "the navel of the world. And they made up a myth, they said, "Adam came here one time and sacrificed on this mountain, and this is the true system of worship."

So that by the time of Jesus Christ any God-fearing Jew would not dare go through Samaria directly, but just go around it, avoid it altogether. You don't want to get cooties from these Samaritans, this false worship system, and so let's just avoid them altogether. Whereas Jesus, you remember, has a heart of love and compassion, wants to reach them. And so he comes to Samaria, shares the gospel with this woman, shares himself, the Water of Life, with this woman. And she makes a commitment to Christ, as do many of the Samaritans. Later on Phillip goes to Samaria. In the book of Acts a revival breaks out, and the commission was that the gospel should go from Jerusalem through Judea, into Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Jesus was saying, "Don't neglect those people that others of you would avoid altogether, those hidden people, those people that you don't love all that much because they're not like you. Love them. Share the gospel with them." Well, that all happened on Mount Gerizim. That's the background of that portion of the gospel of John. So there they are on these two mountains, Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim, the Law is read, the covenant is given. "And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, in the hills and in the lowland and in all the coast of the Great Sea," that's the Mediterranean, "toward Lebanon---the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, the Jebusite---heard of it," all these "ites" "gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord."

Now it's sort of interesting, from what we know about ancient history, these "ite" groups, Hivites, Perizzites, etcetera, were in cities like Jericho and Ai; that is, they were city-states, settlements built close together with walls around them, and each city had its own king. And so the king of Ai and the king of Jericho and the king of Bethel and Hazor, etcetera, most of these kings didn't get along with each other. They hated each other, except at this point. Now there is a common enemy. Now there is this group of a couple million Israelites who have miraculously crossed through the Red Sea, been preserved through the wilderness, have crossed over the Jordan, and are out to take all the land.

So it's interesting how enemies and rivals can suddenly get together when they want to stamp out God's people. Now they're suddenly on the same team, and they want to fight the children of Israel. Well, they don't succeed. The alliance doesn't work. And, presumably, this is why one of the towns called Gibeon defects from the coalition and comes up with a whole different way to defeat the children of Israel. Now remember I said that Jericho represents the world; Ai represents the flesh; Gibeon, the Gibeonites represents the devil. And as we mentioned Sunday, one of the strategies of the devil is: "If you can't beat them, join them, join them." And so the Gibeonites aren't going to say, "Come on, man, take out your sword. Let's fight."

They're going to lie. They're going to be very crafty. They're going to come in stealth and appear to be wanting to worship the God of Israel and be a part of them and make a league with them, deceive the children of Israel. "They gather together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily," Just like the devil, isn't it? The old King James says, "They did work wilily," great, old word. "And went and pretended to be ambassadors. They took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves; and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy.

"They came to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to them, to all the men of Israel, 'We have come from a far country"---lie---"and therefore, make a covenant with us.' But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, 'Well, perhaps you dwell among us; how can we make a covenant with you?' " Let me tell you what this means: God made provision under Moses that once they get into this land, they could make a covenant with people outside the land from a far country, outside the borders of Canaan. But those inside Canaan, they had to get rid of, and they had to assume control of the whole country. That's why they asked this question. "But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, 'Perhaps you dwell among us; how can we make a covenant with you?'

"And they said to Joshua, 'We are your servants.' And Joshua said to them, 'Who are you, and where do you come from?' So they said: 'From a very far country.' " Now they only came from a few miles. Gibeon is very close. It's a little northwest of Jerusalem. You could walk to it today. It's---not from here, but from Jerusalem---about seven miles north-northwest of Ai where they just defeated. But not knowing the land, they just came into this area, they wouldn't know it. " 'Oh, we came from a far country your servants have come, because of the name of the Lord your God; and we have heard of his fame, and all that he did in Egypt.' " Satan is a liar. Satan wears disguises, as Paul warns us. Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.

It's no big deal, therefore, if his messengers disguise themselves as angels of light. They'll knock on your doors. They'll smile. They'll have magazines that seem benign with good names like Awake and Watchtower. And they'll use the same names you use: Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, the Bible. And so you'll think, "They're one of us. They really are true believers." And then they'll say, "Well, now, your church, what church do you go to?" You say, "Well, I go to Calvary." "Oh, yes. [laughter] You've probably been taught the Trinity and Jesus being God and all of these other false teachings." They'll say that. And they'll come across as "God's watchmen" in the end times and, "We're here the restore the faith," and it sounds very enticing.

And because they use the same terms that you use, you're going to be confused. That's why it's always important to stop and ask those from a far country who are dressed like Gibeonites, ask them to define their terms. When they say, "Oh, yes, we believe in Jesus," ask them to define "Jesus." You'll find that the Jesus they talk about is very different from the Jesus the New Testament speaks about that you believe in. In other words, they take the term, but they pour a different meaning into the same term. And Christians are unsuspecting unless they have a vocabulary check: "Define your terms. Define God. Define Jesus. Define heaven. Define salvation. Define the Bible. Define revelation." It's important that you do that. Satan comes in many disguises.

In verse 9 it seems like they're sounding very spiritual, but appealing to their pride. "Oh yeah, we've heard all that God has done in Egypt . . ." and all that stuff. And, you know, children of Israel could be very inflated and flattered by this kind of an approach. You see, folks, Satan doesn't always come in as "a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." That's what Peter called him. Sometimes he comes in like a crafty serpent. That's what Paul called him. Second Corinthians 11, he says, "I fear that some of you can be deceived as Eve was deceived by the crafty serpent. And some might come and preach another Jesus to you." So sometimes he comes in very, very craftily.

In verse 10 they go on. " 'We've heard all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who are beyond Jordan---Sihon the king of Heshbon, Og the king of Bashan, who is at Ashtaroth. Therefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us, saying, "Take provisions and go with you for the journey, go to meet them, and say to them, 'We are your servants; now therefore, make a covenant with us.' " This bread of ours we took hot from our provision' "---that's a lie, it's moldy bread---" 'from our houses on the day we departed to come to you. But now look, it's dry and moldy. And these wineskins which we filled were new, and see, they are torn; and these our garments and our sandals have become old because of the very long journey.' "

So, you see, this is all a ploy. "Look, man, we're all beat up. Our clothes are beat up. Our food is dried out. It proves that we've come from a long journey, we're from a far country ." Looked good, right? I mean, this is very---if you just go by the evidence, just the facts, and you went by your own logic and you didn't talk to God about it, you can say, "Okay, great. Well, it's so obvious, let's make this decision to make a covenant with them." That was their problem. Read on. "Then the men of Israel took out some of their provisions; but they did not ask counsel of the Lord." Goodness, you'd think they would have learned from Ai. [laughter] But, again, "Why pray? This is so obvious."

Have you ever been tempted with that thought? "Why should I pray about this? I can handle it. I don't need to talk to God about this. I'm mature now. I have a little more sense than some of these other Christians." You are setting yourself up for a fall. God wants you to depend on him for everything, every day. "They didn't ask counsel of the Lord"---what a statement. "So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live; and the rulers of the congregation swore to them"; that is, they made this official pact. "And it happened at the end of three days, after they made a covenant with them, that they heard that they were their neighbors who dwelt near them. And the children of Israel journeyed and came to their cities on the third day.

"Their cities were Gibeon," and all these other places. [laughter] But the children of Israel did not attack them, because the rulers of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel. And all the congregation murmured against the rulers. And the rulers said to all the congregation, 'We have sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel; now therefore, we may not touch them. This we will do to them: We will do to them, we will let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them.' " Clever Gibeonites, liars. Again, Satan, Jesus said in John 8, is the father of lies, was a liar from the beginning. They come with lies.

They made a statement or they made a covenant without checking it out, without praying about it, and it got them into trouble. And it is human nature, by the way, to not only lie, but to listen to lies. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "A lie can make its way halfway around the world while truth is still lacing up its boots." People love to hear a rumor, go, "Yeah, I believe that, man. These guy said it, it's gotta be true." They didn't check it out with God. They didn't do their homework all the way, thus they were deceived. Proverbs 3 speaks to my heart about this: "Trust in the Lord with . . . lean not to your . . . ah, but in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths." If you don't know that in Proverbs 3, and most of you do, I could tell by the response.

If you don't know that, look it up when you go home and memorize that scripture verse. "Trust in the Lord with all heart, lean not to your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths." You know, God wants to direct you. God wants you to see, in looking at your life, wants you to avoid those ruts and some of those mistakes that could be avoided if you'd trust him, if you'd talk to him, if you'd call on him, if you'd let him guide you. You know, God wants to guide you personally. It was Francois Fenelon who said, "The winds of God are always blowing, but we must hoist our sails." God is leading, God is directing, but we have to hoist the sail. What's the sail? The sail of trust. I trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not to your own understanding.

They leaned to their own understanding, didn't they? "This is an obvious no-brainer. These guys are from a foreign country. They got the look. They've got the bread. They got to disguise." Don't trust your own understanding. That doesn't mean don't think. That doesn't mean don't seek the counsel of others. But don't rely on the wisdom of man and the wisdom of the flesh above the wisdom of God. Pray about things. Before you enter a business partnership with somebody, pray, seek God. Before you before you enter into a covenant of marriage or dating, have you prayed? Do you continue to pray and seek God all the way through? Very, very important decisions. Sometimes we trust our own feelings. We call it our "heart." Have you ever heard this, "Well, I just feel in my heart . . . ," whatever?

Now I'm not trying to poke fun at you if that's the way you think, but I'm trying to caution you, because the Bible says "the heart is deceitful above everything else." And if you go by your own heart that can change like a fish can flop from side to side, you can be deceived. What do you have to trust? The principles of Scriptures, the Word of God, the Holy Spirit within you. You got to wait sometimes, pray, wait a little bit longer. Seek the counsel of others. Find out what the Word of God has to say. Don't lean to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him. I love that verse in scripture that tells us, "The steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord." Did you get that? "The steps," not the square blocks, not the city miles, one step at a time.

Do you ask God to guide you one day at a time, one step at a time, turning things over all the time? "Lord, what do you want? I'm seeking your face. I want your will on this." Very, very important. "In all your ways acknowledge him"---and the promise---"he will direct your paths." It's a promise from God that he will direct you. Would to God that they would have called upon him sooner. Why is it that we get into situations exactly like these guys? I mean, it's like, "Man, why didn't I pray?" Because we see prayer like an emergency room. "I don't need to right now. When it's really bad, when I'm backed up against a corner, when I've got no other option, no other hope . . . ." In other words, "I've tried myself to fix it, I've tried to get others to fix it, and it's impossible; I guess I'll pray."

Do you really believe what Jesus said, "Without me you can do nothing," that dependence upon him for everything? There's a great Jewish proverb that says, "It's better to ask the way ten times than to take the wrong road once. Better to ask the way ten times than to take the wrong road once." "Lord, what do you want?" God doesn't get bummed out. "You already asked me that ten times." [laughter] He loves it. He wants you to depend on him. In fact, I wonder if sometimes God doesn't let us get backed into a corner, because it is our nature not to pray until we're backed into a corner. And so there we are, backed into the corner, "Oh God, help!" And it's almost as if God would say, "Man, good to hear from you." [laughter] Finally called him. "I haven't heard from you in a long time."

So if they would have learned the lesson from Ai, but they didn't, they're there again. However, God is so gracious it's going to turn around for their good. So, verse 20, " 'This we will do to them: We will let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them.' And the rulers said to them, 'Let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers for all the congregation, as the rulers promised them.' Joshua called for them and he spoke to them, saying, 'Why have you deceived us, saying, "We are very far from you," when you dwell near? Now therefore, you are cursed, and none of you shall be freed from being slaves---woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.'

"So they answered Joshua and said, 'Because it was certainly told your servants that the Lord your God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from you; therefore we were very much afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing. And now, here we are, in your hands; do with us as seems good and right to you, do to us.' So he did to them, delivered them out of hand of the children of Israel, so that they did not kill them. And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers from the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, in the place which he would choose, even to this day." Now you got to respect these leaders. They made a promise, even when they found out, "Okay, we've been taken. We've been deceived," their word was their bond.

They were men of integrity. "We made a promise. Okay, you deceived us. You won. But we also know that a deal is a deal, a covenant is a covenant. We made a covenant with you, and we can't break it, lest the wrath of God come upon us." I tell you, if I would have been in the congregation of Israel that day, instead of saying, "Joshua, you idiot," like some of them said, "Why didn't you---why didn't you pray?" I would have said to Joshua and the leaders, "I respect you that as a leader you made a covenant, you made a deal, and your word is your bond." I respect leaders that tell the truth and God knows in this day and age most people do not trust leaders. Leaders---not just talking political leaders here.

I read a poll called "The Day America Told the Truth," of what America thinks about leaders: Christian leaders, Jewish leaders, political leaders, government leaders, leaders of corporations. Don't place much stock in leadership, because there's not much integrity, where a person's word is his bond. You know, it used to be that even presidents of corporations would make deals simply by word of mouth. No need to bring lawyers in and sign papers and "I swear, I swear, I swear. Give me a stack of Bibles," just, "I said it, I'll do it." Those days are gone and there's just this inbred lack of trust. And I'm afraid to say with the turn of events recently, it could only get worse. So I admire these people. "Hey, we made a deal, fine."

And so Joshua went through with it, "delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel, so that they did not kill them. And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, in the place which he would choose, even to this day." Jericho represents the world. How do you overcome the world? By faith. How did they overcome Jericho? Walking around and trusting God; the walls fell down when they blew the horns. Ai represents the flesh, grossly underestimated in its power, often we try to overcome it by ourselves. "I'll never did this again, man. I'll never do it again. I got the power." And we never rely on the resources of God, the Word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and we get defeated.

Then we have Gibeon that represents the devil. How do you overcome the devil? James said "Submit to God" first. That's what she should have done. "Lord, I submit you. What do you want us to do at this moment? We have these people coming in, seemingly from a far country, is this so?" But they didn't do that. "Submit yourself to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Okay, they're not killed; they're spared. But isn't it interesting that these idolaters from Gibeon are made to serve in the place of worship for the one true God? I think that's cool. It's like, "You know what? We're in this land, we're going worship God in this land, and you're going to live. But you know where you're going to work? The place where we worship. You're going to come to church and work.

"And you're going to be around all these Scriptures that are read by the priests and the high priest. And you're going to observe our worship of the true God." And, no doubt, this influenced them greatly. Great strategy and great grace, because they did need a lot of supply of water and wood for the sacrifices in the tabernacle later on in the temple. And if you look at the history of Gibeon, Gibeon is where the tabernacle gets pitched for a while eventually. Gibeon becomes one of the towns of the Levites. The priests will live in Gibeon. And so, hey, if you make a mistake, admit it and then let your mistake work for you. Don't say, "Man, I failed. It's a mistake."

"Hey, we made a mistake. We blew it. This is how we're going to correct it. We're going to let our make work for us. You're going to work in the tabernacle, you're going to carry our water, you're going to cut our wood, and in that be influenced by the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." So, mistake was turned around. Eventually, it worked out for the children of Israel in this regard that God was able to turn a curse even into a blessing.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.