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Joshua 8:1-35 Calvary Baptist Church Sunday, January 14, 2018 Pastor Ben Marshall

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Joshua 8:1-35 Calvary Baptist Church Sunday, January 14, 2018 Pastor Ben Marshall Joshua: All In Passage: Joshua 8:1-35 Calvary Baptist Church Sunday, January 14, 2018 Pastor Ben Marshall Key Goals: (Know) We know that God desires us to be all in for Him. (Feel) We feel a compelling desire to go all in for God. (Do) We will go all in for God. Welcome Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, but you were slightly distracted? For whatever reason, you were not fully invested in the conversation—you had your phone out, or happened to be checking your email or Facebook status, or the TV was on next to you, or you were in a hurry, or you just didn’t really want to be part of the conversation. But then, all of a sudden, there is this awkward silence and you realize the person you were talking to is waiting on a response… Yeah, I’ve never been there either. Just kidding. It happens probably too often to me. It seems to take a lot for us to be all in for something. We have to actually want something, or want what it can give us. We tend to be all in for things like our favorite football team, favorite coffee shop, favorite brand of technology (obviously Apple is the best), and things like that. We become great evangelists and preachers for what we are passionate about. There’s something different when it comes to how we approach spiritual matters. We feel awkward talking about them, almost ashamed that we read the Bible and learned something or went to church and heard something that transformed our lives. We often don’t share these things with people. Yet that’s exactly what God wants! God truly desires for us to be all in for Him. He wants us to fully know Him and fully pursue Him with all of ourselves. Matthew 6:21 reminds us that Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be and 6:33 says Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need (NLT). God wants our all-in delight to be in Him, so we keep our priorities in the right place. Anything else is idolatry: putting something in the rightful place of God. Relationships are damaged when we aren’t all in. The relationship you have with the person you weren’t all in with in conversation was damaged because you weren’t fully there. The same happens in our relationship with God. When we aren’t all in, we aren’t going to experience the fullness of God and all His promises. If we aren’t all in, we are going to miss pieces of who He is. We will know the cultural understanding of God, but not the biblical truth of the attributes, character, and nature of God. Our purpose today is that we would all feel an overwhelming, compelling desire to go all in for God, to pursue Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Give God all of yourself, not just the pieces you are willing to let go of. Word As we approach Joshua 8 today, we are going to see all of the Israelites were all in. They believed God, trusted His command, and followed Him fully. Let that be true of us as well. RENEWED PERSPECTIVE Things are different now, as we leave Joshua 7 and begin chapter 8. Last week we saw the holiness and righteousness of God demanding that sin be dealt with. God takes sin seriously, so should we. Joshua 8:1–21 begins with a transition: 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. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land. 2 And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you 1 All Scripture quotations from ESV unless otherwise noted. shall take as plunder for yourselves. Lay an ambush against the city, behind it.” The sin of Achan had been dealt with and God reminded the Israelites they did not need to be afraid or dismayed. There is something familiar here… “do not fear and do not be dismayed…” God told Joshua this in 1:9. He had been commanded to be strong and courageous so he should not be frightened or dismayed. Why? For the LORD your God is with you wherever you go. Israel must have been afraid, because God focused first on dispelling their fear as He gave them the battle plan for Ai. God’s counsel and battle strategy for Ai wasn’t asked for in Joshua 7, but here God gave His strategy. The thing is, Israel should not have had any problem with Ai. They defeated Jericho with its massive walls and here was little Ai. If this were simply a historical account of a battle, Israel should not have had a problem with Ai. The reason they were defeated is because the story was not about Israel and their military prowess or might. This was all about God, His holiness, and His plan. The whole Bible is all about God, His glory, and how He interacts with His creation—extending more mercy and grace than we can even fathom! The Israelites followed their own strategy at the beginning of chapter 7 instead of seeking God’s plan. Here, though, we see God commanded them and had already given Ai into their hands. Notice, too, as they prepared for battle, they didn’t just send a contingent of soldiers, but all of Israel. There is repetition throughout this chapter, and really the entire book, of “all.” God told them to take all the fighting men with you, and God had already won the battle. He gave them specific instructions to follow and a specific battle plan that would be successful here. The Israelites approached Jericho with one “battle” strategy and Ai with a different strategy. The similarity was God: without Him they would be unsuccessful, but if they followed His Word and depended on Him for the battle, they would be victorious. Sometimes the battle strategy and approach need to be different, but the one uncompromising reality in our daily spiritual battles is all-in dependence on God and all-in submission to the Bible, the Word of God. We need to stop trying to win the battle on our own. Whatever your struggle, temptation, or battle— alcohol, adultery, lust, addiction, broken relationships, a wayward child, loneliness, depression, anxiety, or anything else—stop trying to be victorious on your own. You cannot be victorious without Christ. He doesn’t just deal with a symptom, but goes to the root cause. He heals you, restores you, forgives you, brings mercy and grace and truth into every situation, and makes you into a new creation. He transforms your heart and mind. He changes your identity from what you do to Whose you are. You are not labeled as addict, alcoholic, abused, adulterer, unwanted; you are a son or daughter of the Risen Savior, the King of kings and Lord of lords. You are a co-heir with Jesus Christ, inheriting all of the goodness and greatness of our Heavenly Father. The battle is won by and through Jesus Christ in whom we must find our identity if we are going to live in victory. Remember, disciples of Jesus Christ don’t fight for victory, but, instead, fight from victory. THE BATTLE PLAN Joshua 8:3–9 So Joshua and all the fighting men arose to go up to Ai. And Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them out by night. 4 And he commanded them, “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind it. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you remain ready. 5 And I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out against us just as before, we shall flee before them. 6 And they will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the city. For they will say, ‘They are fleeing from us, just as before.’ So we will flee before them. 7 Then you shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city, for the Lord your God will give it into your hand. 8 And as soon as you have taken the city, you shall set the city on fire. You shall do according to the word of the Lord. See, I have commanded you.” 9 So Joshua sent them out. And they went to the place of ambush and lay between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai, but Joshua spent that night among the people. God told them to lay an ambush and that this time the spoil will be theirs to take. Joshua and ALL the fighting men began to prepare for the battle. Joshua went into more detail about the ambush and how they would draw the men of Ai out of the city. They approached and fought like they had the first time, but this time they would flee as part of the plan. Then the ambush would happen and the Israelites would take the city and God would get the glory. All through the description of this battle plan is the repeated focus on God’s plan and God’s Word.
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