Date: January 22, 2023
Preacher: Matthew Millen
Topic: Joshua 10:1-15 Seeing God on a Sunny Day
Notes:
We’re going to be in Joshua 10:1-15. How many of you remember back in the 1990s those crazy, fractal pictures, Magic Eye? (Some of you weren’t alive back then and you missed the glory days of the 90s.) This image might bring some nostalgia to some of you, or perhaps like me, memories of angst and frustration because I could never see the image that was supposed to be hidden. There is a method to be able to see it. You’re supposed to come in close and hyper-focus until blurry and then move back until the 3D image emerges. It all has to do with vision of angles and depths and it’s called stereopsis. This same concept gives us stereoscopes. You might remember the kids’ toy 3-D viewfinders. These work on the same principle of an off-set image that is changed from 2-D to 3-D.
As I was studying this passage this week, it struck me that there is so much depth that is hidden beneath the surface of what’s going on, that it reminded me of these Magic Eye pictures that you can’t see at a glance. You have to focus and dive into and have the Lord reveal what’s going on. We might think that this text is primarily about Joshua and the Israelites keeping their word and gaining victory through a crazy miracle from the Lord. That’s exactly what happens on the surface, but if we dig a little deeper we’re going to see that this passage is really about how amazing our God is. It’s all about God and how He loves to reveal Himself and show Himself mighty over the things of this world that try to be as mighty as He is. Our outline for this text is coalition, clash, command.
Joshua 10:1-5 – As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, 2 he feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors. 3 So Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent to Hoham king of Hebron, to Piram king of Jarmuth, to Japhia king of Lachish, and to Debir king of Eglon, saying,4 “Come up to me and help me, and let us strike Gibeon. For it has made peace with Joshua and with the people of Israel.” 5 Then the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon, gathered their forces and went up with all their armies and encamped against Gibeon and made war against it.
Gibeon entered into a covenant with the people of Israel through deceptive means. But the Israelites honored the treaty because God takes covenant very seriously. All the city-states around were filled with fear because they know what the Israelites have done to Jericho and Ai. “Devoted” in the Hebrew means to “utterly destroy” but there is a sense that it is destroyed or given up to a specific purpose as an act of worship and giving over to the Lord. We have discussed that these were very wicked people. If you go through history, there is archaeological evidence of child sacrifice, all manner of sexual sin and slavery to the foulest occultic practices. The Lord was bringing judgment upon them for these sins. They were devoted to the Lord’s judgment. The Lord in His just righteousness was bringing to these people what they earned – wrath.
Gibeon makes peace and in the Hebrew, this word in the verb form is “Shalom” which is more than peace. It is wholeness and completeness. Gibeon had been made right (whole) with the people of God (i.e. they became one with the people of God). That’s the power and strength of covenant. Despite the fact that these people were to be devoted to the Lord’s judgment, the people in their fear sought to be made right with God. This is what we studied last time. Praise God for His mercy in our lives! Gibeon was a great city which caused everyone around them to fear. On top of the fact that they were already strong and militarily competent, now they had an even stronger ally with a God who is knocking down walls and parting a river. Now these allies have an important piece of strategic land in the central Promised Land. There’s a plateau where Gibeon sits in central Israel and militarily speaking, whoever has controlled that plateau has controlled Israel. The bottom of that plateau leads right to Jerusalem. It’s no surprise that the king of Jerusalem is leading the charge.
Let’s take our stereoscope, our 3-D viewfinder, and kind of get the first behind-the-scenes image here. If you’re like me and you read through this you may be asking yourself, what can we see about our great God in this scripture? How many of you know when we read scripture, we should be reading with an eye to apply and live out the truth that we are reading, but even more important than the practical application of texts of truth, there is the question of, how does this text help me to know my God more deeply? That is the true glory of scripture. It’s that the God of the universe has given us insight into His very nature through the words of Him and His son and His Spirit. So every time we read scripture we should be looking at how we can view God more deeply and be reminded of who He is.
The first quality we see is that our God is a merciful God. This mercy will be balanced with His righteous judgment. If anyone was counting, this is the seventh and final time in the book of Joshua that we are told that the people in the Promised Land feared the Israelites. This is interesting because of Hebrew numerology – the number 7 is the number of completion or perfection. Here we have the completion of the fear of the inhabitants of the Promised Land, meaning God has given them ample time to hear and to see what he is doing through His people, the judgment that is coming upon them due to their wickedness. In fact, he gave them the example of Egypt 40 years earlier which everyone knew about because it was repeated. Then He parted the Jordan River as He parted the Red Sea. This is the same God who is declaring to all the inhabitants that they had the opportunity to repent. Some of them did. We learned of Rahab, who saw what was happening and she forsook her Cannatite king and God and devoted herself to Yahweh.
In chapter 9, through deceptive mens, the Gibeonites wanted to be on God’s team and they were made servants in the temple. Hundreds of years later after the Babylonian exile and the return of the Israelites, those Gibeonites were among them, coming back to continue to serve in the temple. Praise God that He is merciful. But His mercy is always going to be balanced by His judgment. Numbers 14:18 says, “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ Basically what’s that saying is that there is a cost to sin and God will take it—praise God that Jesus paid that sin debt for us—that any who would call on him would have their debt cleared by Christ. Amen!? That is the power of the cross and the depth of the love of our king. For any who don’t have their ledger cleared by Christ, by his atoning sacrifice on the cross and confirmed by his victorious resurrection. Those without Christ have a debt that they will have to stand and give an account for and the Lord will say, “Guilty.” It is the Lord’s judgment to give. He is righteous and just.
Why didn’t these people repent? Why didn’t they just throw themselves on the mercy of the Israelites? Let’s recognize who the actor was in this play. They were all of them deceived. Let’s click our stereoscope viewfinder again. Our God is a God of the truth. Not a truth – the truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Our God is absolute in His truth, there is no relativity in His truth, He is absolute. Amen? Our enemy is the great counterfeiter, the father of lies. How many of you noted the name of the king of Jerusalem in the opening line of our text? His name is Adonai. Adonai means lord or master and it’s a name that is used over and over again in scripture to describe our Lord. He’s the king of Jerusalem. This is the first time in scripture where the city is referred to by this name; earlier it was called Salem in the book of Genesis. The king and priest of Salem in Genesis 14 was Melchizadek. See what the enemy is doing here? Our king of Jerusalem is now Adonai-Zadek. Here we have an Old Testament example as antichrist. Someone who sets themselves up as being god. The name literally means “lord of righteousness” or “lord of justice.” Isn’t that ironic given what the Lord is doing to the Promised Land?
In scripture and in life there are three types of antichrist that we need to be aware of because we will face them. There are those that Jesus talks about in Matthew 24 – false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 1st and 2nd John talks about these individuals as well. These are folks who hold themselves out to be gods or having some knowledge or special insight of truth, that are against the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are anti-Christ or pretending to be someone great. These folks are all over the place. Many of them are standing in pulpits and seeking to preach the word of God but it’s a false gospel.
There’s a second type of course and this is what the word of God refers to as the antichrist spirit. This is the general pervasive, cultural, norm that is against the truth of God. In 1st John 4:3, John writes “and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.” We contend against this everyday. We go out into the world and we are surrounded by all of the filth and lies of the culture. That is all rooted in the antichrist spirit.
The third antichrist, if you read Revelation literally in regards to the beast, is the actual incarnate antichrist. The person who holds themselves out to be the Messiah. 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 calls this person the man of lawlessness: “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” This man of lawlessness who is referred to as the beast in Revelation, they are one and the same individuals in scripture, this is where the mark of the beast comes from. It’s the mark of antichrist. I can assure you that the mark of the beast has not yet come. The mark of the beast is connected to worship. It is not connected to anything else. It is connected to the worship of the one who holds themselves out to be god and if you do not receive the mark you won’t be able to participate in anything else in the world because he will be the king of the world at that time, ruling and reigning, if you read that literally. Maybe one day we’ll study Revelation and look into all the different ways we can interpret that craziness.
Those are the three ways that antichrist operates in this world and I share that because we need to remember that our God is Truth and our God is Lord. He is the King of Righteousness. We praise God that He gives us discernment. Did you catch how Thessalonians said “if possible for the elect to be deceived”? That means that it’s not possible for those who are children of God, who are the elect of God, as the words say, to be deceived by antichrist. We will see it and we will know. The Spirit within us will give us that discernment. It’s through no wisdom of our own because left to ourselves we would be deceived. In the Spirit of God, He will open our eyes and open our hearts to know and understand the truth.
There’s a little lesson here, church. In particular, there’s a lesson here for new converts. Who did antichrist go after? He didn’t go after Israel, the established people of God who had defeated Ai and Jericho. He went after Gibeon. The new guys who don’t really know what’s going on and made a covenant with the people of God, who basically just swore that they would be people of God. Those of us who are more mature in our faith, we have to be prepared to come to the defense of those who the enemy is going to attack. We have to be discerning to see the attack when it’s there and speak life and encouragement and truth to those who are under attack. It’s okay if you are in the place of Gibeon. Maybe you feel like you’re just getting hit by all these things and the enemy is coming against you as you are coming into your faith, perhaps for the first time. Be aware that that is exactly what the enemy has done throughout history. There is nothing new under the sun. He’s coming against you because you are not established firmly in truth and it is critical that you do what the Gibeonites did. They called for help.
Joshua 10:6-11 – And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. And the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel, who struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon and struck them as far as Azekah and Makkedah. And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword.
Church, if you are in the place of Gibeon and under attack, ask for help and trust that the Lord will bring it, sometimes in a spectacular way. Amen? I want us to understand what’s going on in this text. Israel had just made their new covenant with God in Shechem and they returned to the east of the ruins of Jericho which was to the west of the Jordan River. In this time, the people from Gibeon go to Gilgal and make their covenant. The people return to Gibeon and the news spreads and now there is a coalition of kings, led by Jerusalem. If you recall, Gibeon is of the Hivite tribe from the central Promised Land. All of the cities from the south are from the Amorites and the counterfeit king of righteousness, gets them all to attack all the Hivite cities. They send word to Israel, “We’re under attack!” This is roughly 25 miles from Gibeon to where we think the camp of Gilgal was. That’s like running a marathon. Locally, that’s walking from Liberty High School on paved roads to Bangor High School. The difference is that there’s only about a 150 foot elevation change from Liberty to Bangor. Anyone want to guess what the elevation change from the Jordan River/Dead Sea lowlands of Gilgal to the plateau highlands of Gibeon was? 4,000 feet – that’s a pretty significant elevation change! They didn’t just take their time to get there. They were loaded down with weapons to fight and they hustled through the night, through the dark, 25 miles to get there.
Here we click our stereoscope viewfinder and see the third aspect of God that this text brings out. Our God is sovereign and in control. Amen? If I were in the Israelites shoes, I would be upset. I would feel frustrated, angry, probably a little spiteful, that these people just deceived me and now you want me to fight this battle for you. Now in your pathetic state, you want me to come along, after you just tricked me to come and take on the bully. Gibeon, you made your bed, now you lie in it. Right? That’s a very typical human response in this situation. The Lord affirms the request of Gibeon in verse 8 and He made clear that this was all part of His plan. Dispel with your human way of looking at this and go to fight and not a single one of them is going to stand against you. The Lord is repeating this promise to Joshua from back in the beginning of the book of Joshua. What’s so cool about this, is that instead of Israel having to traipse around and having to conquer each city in the south one by one, what did the Lord do? He brought all of them right up out into the open – all of their fighting men on a plateau – nowhere to hide and He prepared them for judgment. All part of God’s sovereign plan and His design and control for His people to bring judgment to the wicked cities of the Promised Land.
There’s a little lesson here, church. How many of you know that we can’t allow our mistakes to guide our future decisions. Have any of you played sports or participated in any activity that had an opportunity for failure? How’s that for a broad net? How of you actually failed at said activity at some point in time? Life is failure after failure after failure. If you’re honest with yourself then you know this. Life is a series of successes and failures and the Lord in His sovereign design has deigned it fit for you to fail so that you can learn from those mistakes. The purpose of failure is for growth, sometimes humility, and oftentimes so that we can be equipped with the necessary insight and experience so that we have victory the next time we find ourselves in that situation. The Israelites failed to go to the Lord before they attacked Ai and the Lord gave a better battle plan, using their failure to give them a strategy to overcome Ai. Then the Israelites failed to go to the Lord before making a deal with Gibeon. They didn’t learn the first time. Isn’t that comforting in a way – that the Israelites had to have multiple failures of the exact same type for them to begin to get it. I don’t know about you but I feel like that gives me a little bit of comfort because I feel like I make the same mistakes over and over again. Then the Lord plans to give the southern cities on a platter to the Israelites. That’s how God redeems our mistakes. He gives us this opportunity to listen. What did the Israelites do when the Gibeonites asked for help? Joshua goes to the Lord! He’s learning! The Lord confirms that Joshua’s got this because God’s got this. We cannot dwell on our mistakes. We have to go to the Lord as He unfolds the various circumstances and situations even and especially redeeming those failures. Praise God that He is sovereign and in control!
The next quality of God here is that God is a warrior. We do not serve a prissy God. We do not serve a weak, wet noodle, push-over God. We serve the mighty God of the universe, Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of angel armies, who will smite anyone who dares to come against Him. What did He do with the greatest entity in creation apart from him, Satan, angel of light? Kicked him right out of heaven, not even breaking a sweat. One of the most understated, put-you-in-your-place lines in all of Scripture is in Job when Job comes to the throne of God and God asks him where he came from, as if He didn’t know. Satan was forced to answer from walking to and fro on the earth where you put me, not in heaven. God asserts his dominance and authority. He is the best. He is a warrior God who fights for His people and repeated His promise to be there for His people.
How many of you know that as we go through life we don’t need some new advice, we usually just need a reminder of a truth that we’ve already known but weren’t acting on, we allowed to slip by, or be forgotten, or what our mind is focused on. We get distracted and we forget the basics. It’s always about coming back to the basics. He doesn’t tell them anything new. He literally repeats the same words to Joshua. Fear not. Be strong and courageous. Our God is a warrior and He will remind us of the truths that we need to fight the battles and He will fight the battles for us. I love in Exodus 14 when the Egyptians are chasing the Israelites after they have left and the Egyptians said, “Let us flee before Israel for the Lord fights for them.” It was too late and the Red Sea collapsed on them in judgment.
Paul captures this in Romans 8:31 in a verse I’d encourage all of you to memorize: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” This is a truth of perspective that as a maturing believer we must take to heart. That no matter what we face going through life, no matter how difficult life becomes, no matter how much I think I’ve lost, if God is for me then who can be against me? But here’s the cool thing, we have a warrior God who is sovereign and in control but He invites us to be a part of His army. He invites us to use the gifts He’s given us for His kingdom and His glory. This is why in Philippians Paul says to, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” We have a warrior God who gives us victory, but He also gives us responsibility. The command was for Israel to go up and fight Gibeon. Their responsibility was to go and they didn’t wait, they went. We have the privilege and responsibility of fighting for Him on the tasks He sets in front of us. It’s pretty incredible if you think about it. He didn’t even need to send the Israelites. He could have just dropped the hailstones. The hailstones didn’t fall until the Israelites got there. Our God is a warrior who fights with us. As we humble obey Him, He uses us anyway as a catalyst for His own workings. Praise God!
We see our next aspect of God. God brings order from chaos. He is a God of order and form. Not only does the Lord bring hail, He makes it fail only on the armies of the south. The Lord saved the 5 kings, preserving them for specific judgment. There were three main gods of the Cannaanites. The first was Baal-Hadad and he was the god of storms. Just like Yahweh did with the Egyptians, answering each god with a specific plague, He does the same thing here. In the ancient near east, storms always stood for chaos and the ancient people loved to worship the god of chaos to give them power. Our God calms the storm and brings order. Hail is no joke. Throughout history there are some crazy stories about hail. In the late 1800s a whole town in India was basically wiped out when almost 300 people died. In the U.S. in 2010 a hailstone fell in South Dakota that is the largest hailstone on record. It weighed almost 2 pounds and was 18 inches in diameter. That’s a big piece of ice. In the book of Revelation chapter 16, one of the bowls of judgment will release 100 pound hailstones! It’s terrifying, but it’s just, because they will be falling on wicked people who have every opportunity to repent, but they do not. Our God is the creator of all things in control of all things. Storms are His. Time is in His hands. All principalities and powers are subject to him. Colossians 1 says “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Hebrews 1 says, “[Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” Think about that. Our God holds everything together by the power of His word alone. There’s science that says that if you get down to the most basic molecular level of everything in existence, they don’t know why it doesn’t just fly apart. God holds it together! And He will make all things new. If you’re ever feeling down or discouraged, go and read Revelation 21. Our God will wipe away every tear and we will get to be in His presence forever and ever. If we accept that and receive that and live with that in view, it puts everything else in perspective and make everything else pale in comparison to the glory of God that awaits us.
Joshua 10:12-15 – “At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. So Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Gilgal.”
The armies of the south were a vast number and the Israelites need to see them and there were lots of nooks and crannies for people to flee to and hide in. Many people have tried to explain this scientifically and of all of the miracles in the book of Joshua, this is the one the atheists rail against the most. So people have tried to put forth lots of explanations—the earth’s rotation was slowed, the axis was tilted, there was a meteorite reflected, there was a refraction of light off of the clouds, there was an eclipse. In Chinese written records as well as Aztecs and Incas (both of whom worshiped the sun) and in Babylonian and Persian documents, all of those ancient people have records of a day that lasted two days. Herodotus, an ancient historian, found hieroglyphs of a day that lasted twice its natural length.The reality is it doesn’t matter how God did it, he did it!
The other two gods that the Canaanites worshiped were the gods of sun and moon. Agla-baal, Molech-bel were supposed to be twin brothers. I love when we see these little things in scripture because our God is all powerful. There are none who can stand against Him. Psalm 135 says, “For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth.” By God’s grace we need to grow in our view of that God. C.S. Lewis wrote, “The mind that asks for a non-miraculous Christianity is a mind in process from relapsing from Christianity into mere religion.” Our God is a big God. He can do whatever He wants; He is all powerful. It’s not about all of the trappings of a worship service. It’s not about saying the right prayers or reading the Bible. It’s about Him – the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – because of who they are. They are all powerful, ever living and yet they love us and they have engaged with us. Talk about blowing your mind!
Last quality of God and click of the stereoscope viewfinder…God is graciously knowable. The Lord lets you know Him. Joshua spoke to the Lord and then to the sun and the moon and the Lord heeded his words. Now of course it was God’s idea. Joshua had such an intimate relationship with the Lord that he knew that in order to do what the Lord was calling him to do, this had to happen. He had no fear in asking the Lord to do this crazy miracle that had never been done before and never since. Joshua knew Yahweh. He had relationship with Him. Yahweh spoke to him and he heard and he spoke to Yahweh and Yahweh heard. That is the same relationship that the Lord wants with everyone of us. He is graciously knowable. He makes Himself known to us. If we would seek Him, we will learn who He is, how He operates and we will learn to recognize His presence and power in our lives. The more closely we walk with God, the more in awe and thanksgiving we will be. He loves me and knows me and I love Him and know Him. As we mature, we can see His hand at work in so many ways. I hated those Magic Eye pictures growing up because I could never see them. I finally saw that picture as I was preparing for this sermon. And I laughed because I was so happy. That’s how spiritual maturity works. As we go through life, there are truths we are told that might resonate in our minds and then all of a sudden we go through some things and the Lord reinforces it and it clicks and we see it. It is my prayer that as we finish up the book of Joshua in the next several weeks that we would grow in God’s power and presence and walk in His ways all the more.