Actually, they hanged Jesus, then slew Him, but Peter reverses the order, showing the awful historic link. For the first time, but not for the last, the Jewish nation deliberately put a Gentile king under the curse of God by hanging his body posthumously on a tree. “And the king of Ai he hanged on […]
Sometimes we can’t “fight the good fight” unless we’re willing to first “flee the good flight.” Israel now faces one of their biggest challenges—to head back up to Ai with the memory of their defeat in the Loss column. Gripping their hearts would be the questions: Is the Lord with us this time? Has He […]
Read More… from April 13, 2023 — Victory Through Seeming Defeat
Achan’s formula for spiritual failure: “I saw [them]…I coveted them and took them” (Jos 7:21). Abram had pitched between Bethel (meaning “God’s House”) and Ai (meaning “rubble”) many years before. In a sense, we all pitch our pilgrim tents there, and everything that comes through our hands is either built into God’s house or ends […]
It’s dangerous to presume on the Lord. He doesn’t like being taken for granted any more than we do. It doesn’t sound good when a chapter begins with “But.” “But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan…of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things; so the anger […]
Read More… from April 11, 2023 — What’s Next — Another Victory?
Very often, little lessons, the ones that we tend to miss, can be the most helpful in the long run. As we leave the smouldering ruins of Jericho, there are three brief lessons before we move on. Lesson #1, the curse on Jericho, the city who knew God wanted in and decided to try to […]
Read More… from April 10, 2023 — Life Lessons At The Ash Heap
Would God be so unjust as to send His judgment on Jericho and not on our lands today? Jericho was soon to be in flames, a holocaust, or burnt offering to the Lord. The city was all accursed, except “the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron” (Jos 6:19), which were devoted to […]
The true value of everything in the world is set by what the Lord thinks about it. “Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction, it and all who are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in the house…And you, by all means […]
Did the walls come tumbling down, as the chorus says? Not exactly. It’s more amazing than that! A little history might help here. During a series of excavations from 1930 to 1936, British archeologist John Garstang found a burn layer at Jericho which he identified with the biblical story of Joshua. But in the 1950s, […]