<image courtesy of graylight>

Over the course of the last few Joshua posts, some ideas have been shared about where victory for the Israelites wasn’t found as they fought in the somewhat well-known battle for Jericho and their less familiar defeat at Ai.  As counterintuitive as it may seem, we discovered that the key to their victory wasn’t in a flashy move of God, attempting to conquer, or self-confident.

The key to their victory—and the key for us to find victory and freedom in what we face—is simple:

Joshua 7:10-13 (TNIV)—

¹⁰ The LORD said to Joshua, “Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? ¹¹ Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions. ¹² That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.

¹³ “Go, consecrate the people. Tell them, ‘Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow; for this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: There are devoted things among you, Israel. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them.

In seeking God for understanding about the source of their defeat, the Israelites discovered the source of their victory: Obedience.  Their victory wasn’t theirs at all but came about as a direct result of their obedience to God’s direction.

The instructions to Israel about how to fight the battle for Jericho had been clear: march around the city day after day (even though it probably looked and felt ridiculous) and then when the city was invaded the people were to dedicate certain objects to God.  The source of Israel’s defeat at Ai was their  disobedience at Jericho: they had only followed PART of the instructions.  Even ‘worse,’ only part of Israel followed part of the instructions—for the most part, everyone seems to have very carefully followed God’s direction and acted within the parameters which had been set for them.

But there was one man who didn’t.  One.  A man named Achan took hold of some the very things God said belonged only to Him and claimed ownership of them for himself.  As a result all of Israel was defeated; one man’s disobedience meant the suffering of an entire people.

Our personal disobedience never effects only us.  Our personal sin is never personal.  Our individual issues reach far beyond our personal experience.  This is one reason the Church is called to judge herself and we are reminded of our existence as a single Body not a group of individual people.

Victory for us, our churches, our families, our communities is found in our  obedience to the Lordship of God’s Spirit.  This may be simple, but it is not easy—the incredible thing is that through Jesus Christ, we have access to the desire to obey and through Christ we have the ability to find obedience (and, therefore, victory).

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In our final discussion of what victory isn’t based on chapters 6 & 7 of Joshua, we find the Israelites engaged in a post-Jericho battle with the people of a little town called Ai:

Joshua 7

² Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth Aven to the east of Bethel, and told them, “Go up and spy out the region.” So the men went up and spied out Ai.

³ When they returned to Joshua, they said, “Not all the army will have to go up against Ai. Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary the whole army, for only a few people live there.” ⁴ So about three thousand went up; but they were routed by the men of Ai, ⁵ who killed about thirty-six of them. They chased the Israelites from the city gate as far as the stone quarries and struck them down on the slopes. At this the hearts of the people melted in fear and became like water.

Israel had experienced victory in the midst of impossible odds; but in the face of a seemingly insignificant enemy at an insignificant town they were soundly defeated.  The Israelites were confident.  Brash.  Full of themselves.  But they didn’t look at the obstacle before them with spiritual eyes, and it cost them.  Huge.  There were problems within their own camp that had to be dealt with, but those issues were indiscernible to eyes which were focused simply on the physical realities of battle conquest.

True to form, the Scripture here teaches us something:

Those who serve as our superiors, mentors, trainers, and trusted advisors often seem to indicate that the more confident we are, the more successful we will be.  I definitely think there is some truth to that, but we run the risk of talking ourselves into frenzied activity where we forget we are wholly dependent on God, and that, as great as we think we are, when we become full of ourselves, we destine ourselves for failure.

The battles we’re fighting and obstacles we find ourselves facing must be viewed through spiritual eyes (we forget that the spiritual is far more real than we may be tempted to believe).

The first time I ever went snorkeling, I was amazed to discover a whole different world— just as real as what I had been experiencing on land— thriving under the surface of the water.  Sometimes, even from the land there were some indications of this ‘other’ world: kelp leaves discernable at the surface, tide pools evidencing various treasures, and ‘flying fish’ jumping from the water.  But when we peered under the water, with masks properly secured, a new understanding of ‘ocean life’ came to be mine.  For someone from the desert of Arizona, ‘ocean life’ had always been more an untested theory than a real concept until I experienced it firsthand.

For those of us living in the desert of this present world, the reality of the spiritual may be lost on us because it is sometimes seen only in brief, somewhat confusing glimpses.  But when we view what is occurring with spiritual eyes, we are amazed at what seems to be a whole other world full of vibrant reality.

We must view the battles we are fighting with spiritual eyes, no longer focused only on the obvious or our personal confidence.  We must see our battles as ones with spiritual consequences and even spiritual roots; as the kind of fights which can only be truly won if we are on the side of God, full of his Spirit and transformed by his Word.  Walking by faith rather than what we see isn’t always easy, but it’s particularly important that we battle by faith rather than our confidence in what is seen.