Gooding, David: 7 - Details of Jericho and Ai

Like you gentlemen, I too have had a most luxurious dinner or supper, whatever you call it in this part of the world, and have managed to consume such a s- a steak of such proportions as does not normally come my way. I have a great deal, therefore, of fellow sympathy with you and know what you will be feeling as you sit upon your seats for this, the penultimate session of the day. Because of that sympathy, I don't propose to prolong my part of the, uh, evening. Eh, uh, after the part is over, the program says that we are to have questions, time for questions, and then after a fifteen-minute break, we are to have a devotional message by some other good brother here, uh, not, uh, designated. What I have to say in the course, however, of my talk this evening may sound to many of you quite controversial. And so perhaps it is fortunate that I can just outline the ideas that I shall be proposing and let you go to bed tonight and do your best to digest them and come back with your arguments against them tomorrow. Or it could be that they are so self-evidently wrong that you can immediately in the question time, uh, graciously as you normally do, but quite firmly, firmly correct them. Mind you, if you correct what I say, I shall be asking you what is the right interpretation? So we come to deal with the chapters the, uh, that tell us of the destruction first of Jericho and then of Ai. And of course, the stories are linked. And so they occupy the most of three chapters. They are long stories, but they are linked. Let's first think of the destruction of Jericho, and notice the way in which it was achieved. As far as we are told, this method was never used anywhere else again. May have been, we're not so told. It was a very elaborate procedure. As you know, briefly put, they were to encircle the city once every day for six days, the priests in procession with the armed men in front to guard them, and with the priests carrying the ark of the Lord of the whole earth. As they surrounded the city once every day for six days, they were not to make any sound or comment, simply to surround the city, carrying this ark. On the seventh day, they were to surround the c- uh, the city, surround it, go round it seven times. Even so, they were not to shout until Joshua gave them the signal precisely, shout. And with that shout, the walls fell down. Our first task, of course, is to think, if we can, why God on this occasion used that particular strategy. In the course of my long life, I have heard Jericho expounded in the following fashion, that in our Christian life we have what are called besetting sins, and we are to surround them and surround them and surround them, and if they don't immediately give way, yet we are to have the faith to keep on surrounding them, and if at length we do so, the walls of our besetting sin will fall down flat, and we shall have the victory, you see. Well, it hasn't appealed to me as necessarily, uh, uh, the intended interpretation of the passage. It is far more serious than that. This is the execution of the wrath of God. Not a believer struggling with his besetting sins. This was an occasion of the execution of the wrath of God. Already we have seen God's mercy to Rahab upon her conversion, and the assurance given to her in the name and oath of God that when the judgment fell, she would be saved. In the two chapters that talk one about Rahab and two about the destruction of Jericho, if you add the verses together, more verses are given to describing the salvation of Rahab than are given to the destruction of Jericho. It's a proportion that we should notice and bear in mind. But the means by which Jericho was prepared for the judgment are surely significant. The Gentile nations, the nations of Canaan, we are told at the first verse of chapter five, had heard that the Lord had dried up the Jordan before Israel, and Israel were now in the land. That terrified them. Jericho's answer was, of course, to be straightly shut up, prepared for a long siege as their only hope that they would not be destroyed. God's answer to their attempt to fortify the city, to stop his entry in judgment, was to have the priests bear around the ark of the Lord. The spies would have told the king, that is his own spies, that it was the ark of the Lord, taken by the priests till their feet stood in the Jordan, that the Jordan had split and made the way through. This is the ark of the very throne of God, with God enthroned above the cherubim, that had gone down into Jordan and come up the other side. God had the ark paraded round, uh, Jericho. It was silently saying, you can fortify your city how you like, you won't keep God's judgment out of your city. This, of course, is a testimony that we, oh Christians, are called upon to bear and to parade before the world. When Paul addressed the Stoics and Epicureans on, in the Areopagus in Athens, of course he didn't begin by le- by saying, let's turn and read from the prophet Isaiah. That he did in the synagogues, because the synagogues would know about Isaiah and would believe the Old Testament was the word of God. He didn't have to start and prove it, and so he could expound it. It would have been difficult to do it to Stoic and Epicurean philosophers who knew nothing about Isaiah or any part of the Old Testament for that matter. Paul has been accused of preaching philosophy instead of preaching the cross of Christ, and accused of it by Christians who ought really to have known better. He'd been for many days in Athens, preaching and talking and gossiping the gospel in the marketplace. And when the Stoics and Epicureans came to him, they invited him to come to the Areopagus and explain himself a bit better, because they had heard he talked of Jesus and the resurrection. And what on earth was all that about? But if the philosophers had heard that in the marketplace he talked about the resurrection, you may be sure Paul had talked about the death of Christ, yes? You can't have a resurrection without a death. And you can't talk about the resurrection of Christ unless you first told why- how and why he died, of course. Paul had preached that in the a- in in the marketplace. Now he was invited to come to the philosophers to talk to them. The ones mentioned by Luke are two kinds. There were the Stoics, and there were the Epicureans. Philosophically, they stood at opposite poles. The, uh, Epicureans favored the atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus. According to that theory, there's nothing in the universe except matter and And space. space. They did believe in certain forms of gods, but the gods were way off in the interstellar spaces and didn't trouble themselves with Earth. The reason why they believed in it was because of their theory of epistemology, that they thought that when you had dreams, you dreamt of a horse, for instance, it was that atoms of a horse entered your brain while you were asleep, and you dreamed about horses. It's an interesting theory. Eh, and therefore, because in their dreams they saw visions of gods and things, they thought, well, gods possibly exist somewhere, and atoms of them come through the ether and enter our brains while we're asleep or something, so there must be them. But apart from that, the good- the gods that they thought of were good Epicureans. They didn't bother themselves with anything in particular, and certainly not with men. And they were made of atoms as well. There's nothing in the universe they held but matter and space. Everything is by chance. When a man dies, the atoms come adrift. The atoms of a person's mind are made of rather finer atoms than the atoms of his body, but the whole thing comes adrift, and nothing survives. There is therefore no judgment to come, because there are no gods who would be in having a judgment. In later centuries, there was a, a, a poet, a Latin poet by the name of Lucretius. He was so enamored of the atomic theory that he, uh, wrote five books of poetry about it. That's more than some scientists do today. They don't normally write five books of poetry on the atomic theory, but he did. And in his preface to the first book, he tells the world why he thought the theory, the atomic theory, was so wonderful. He says it proves at last that there's not going to be any final judgment after death. But death ends everything, and therefore we need no longer fear a judgment. One suspects that there are more than a few moderns who like to hold a similar theory. There's nothing in the universe but space and, and matter. The naturalists, because it relieves them of any prospect of a final judgment. According to them, then everything was by chance. The Stoics, on the other hand, stood at the opposite extreme in philosophy. They believed that at the heart of the universe there was reason. The universe is rational, right the way down to its very core. Only to them, it wasn't a personal reason and a personal God. This logos, this reason, was part of the stuff of the universe. They were a kind of panentheist. And there is a bit of this reason in every man. So that when you read, uh, that used to be a phrase in my boyhood, there's a spark of the divine in everybody. That is not Christianity, that is stoicism. They held that far from things being by chance, everything is ultimately determined. By this reason. And you have to believe, therefore, that this world is the best of all possible worlds, because everything that is happen- happens, happens according to reason. Therefore, if you saw a little child drowning in a river, it would be a rational thing to do to try and save it. But if in spite of your efforts it drowned, you shouldn't mourn over it, because it was the decree of reason that it should so die. Superficially, it could sound like Christianity, that all things work together for good. But it is miles distant from Christianity. The Bible doesn't pretend that this world as it now is, is the best possible world that could be. It has been ruined by the fall, surely. God then can overall rule all things to good. That is true. Doesn't mean that the present world that is, is the best that could possibly be. It was to Stoics and Epicureans that Paul preached. Forgive that long introduction to these ancient gentlemen, but the modern world holds these same theories still, you know, and for similar reasons. And among the things that Paul preached to them was first the nature of God. We oughtn't to think, he said, that the Godhead is like to stone or sil- uh, or gold or silver or metal. Why shouldn't we think that? Well, he said, some of your own poets have said we are also his offspring. Meaning that we come from God, we are God's cre- creatures. Why shouldn't we think that God is like wood and silver or stone or things like that? Well, for one very good reason. We human beings, am I not true in this that I'm about to say, know ourselves instinctively, we know ourselves superior to mere forces, impersonal matter or impersonal forces. Don't you do so? I do. Without any exaggeration or excess of pride. I realize my brain, small as it is, is more significant than the sun up in the sky, you know. So is your brain too. And the little child I saw in somebody's arm just a moment ago, more significant than the sun up in the sky. The sun, bless its heart, is is only a lot of old gas. Doesn't know anything. Doesn't know I'm here. I know it's there. And thanks to the scientists, I know a little bit about it, how it works. A human mind is more significant than all the matter in the universe, because the human mind is not just matter. We are made in the image of God, of course there comes an implication. We are moral creatures, aren't we? Whatever theory we hold, we are to be found accusing and excusing one another. We show we have moral standards. We know there's such a thing as right and such a thing as wrong. Where does it come from? That moral sense. Yeah, conscience. A law written on the heart, isn't it? Says Romans chapter two. And therefore, to the Stoics and to the Epicureans, Paul preached judgment to come. For the times of this ignorance God overlooked. But now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Why? Seeing he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained, whereof he has given assurance in that he has raised him from the dead. And if you're thinking that I've wandered more than the ark and gone off subject tonight, well, perhaps I have. But here is the connection. The ark paraded round Jericho for six days on end, without a word being spoken. Was the ark that had so recently gone down into Jordan, and the waters had parted, and it had come up the other side. And the God upon that ark was now surrounding Jericho. Its message was, you won't keep that God out of your city. That's a message we preach to the world, isn't it? Like Paul did to the Stoics and Epicureans. Gentlemen, there's coming a judgment. You know what some people think, that preaching the judgment is not user friendly. And you'll lose your congregation if you preach judgment to come. Strikes me as a very curious argument. What kind of person, have you ever met one, that would really prefer the world to go on in all its cruelty, massacres, evil diseases, fraud, lies, violence? Do you know anybody who would love for it to go on forever. There's coming a judgment. Hallelujah, there's coming a judgment. Read the Psalms ninety six and following. Where in one of the Psalms, the psalmist cries, how long, O Lord? How long? Thou to whom vengeance belongeth. How long, O Lord, till the wicked prate against thee and you do nothing about it? The problem is why doesn't God intervene and put down evil? And when the critics are forgetting to be consistent, then they will launch that answer, that question to you. You say there's a God in heaven? Yes. And he cares for justice? Yes. Why doesn't he stop the wicked? Oh, I see. You would like the wicked stopped? The next minute they don't believe in judgment because that's not user friendly. Curious, isn't it? The answer to the psalmist's cry, how long, O Lord, is given in the subsequent psalms. As the psalmist calls upon the whole creation to clap its hands for sheer joy. Why is that? For the Lord cometh. He cometh to judge the world in righteousness. And we add with Paul in his sermon to the Stoics and Epicureans, he comes to judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. Gospel message that there is coming a judgment. Evil is not to go on unchecked forever, and the assurance of it is in the resurrection of Christ. That is the message we carry around this world, is it not? Our responsibility as Christians. Yes, to preach the gospel of our blessed Lord Jesus. But like Paul, to announce that there's coming a judgment. Thank God there is coming a judgment. And as I repeat, the ark going around Jericho. They'd already heard how that God had opened up the way through the Jordan. He was now in Canaan. And he who had sat upon that throne and gone down into Jordan and come up the other side was now around that city. They would not forever keep him out. He would come in and destroy it. And in the very moment of its destruction, as we have already been reminded, he would see to it that believers like Rahab were saved. When When the the city fell, Joshua pronounced a curse, so we are told, on anybody that should rebuild the city. This is chapter six and verse twenty six. Joshua charged them with an oath at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho. With the lot of his firstborn shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the lot of his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land. Two curses, therefore, associated with the destruction of Jericho. First of all, there was the curse put upon the city. The Hebrew word is herem. It means literally to devote something to God, to hand it over to him. But in context like this, to devote a city is not an offering of thanksgiving or devoting somebody's life to God. It is handing over the city to the judgment of God. That is what kerem is. And it comes to mean the total destruction of every living thing within that city. A material that cannot be, uh, killed, such as gold and silver and clothes, were to be given over to God and put in the treasury of the tabernacle. The Israelites were to take nothing for themselves out of Jericho. The Greek for that word harem in the Greek translation of the Old Testament of this chapter is, of course, the well-known word anathema. The city came under God's anathema. That's the one kind of curse. If anybody tried to salvage anything out of that cursed city, he would be involved in the anathema. And until Israel executed self-discipline and judgment and dealt with the man who had thus brought the curse, the anathema, on himself and the whole Isra- of Israel, until Israel exercised self-judgment and got rid of him, the nation as a whole would suffer under that anathema. That is the story of what Achan did. Having been, uh, warned with the rest not to attempt to salvage anything out of that city that was under the curse of Anathama, he coveted this treasure, as he counted it, secretly s- took it and hid it in his tent floor. Now the Israelites have been criticized by well-intentioned commentators that when they went to the city of Ai, it was only a small city, and so they didn't have a prayer meeting before they went. And because it was only a small city, they thought they could beat it with a small number of troops, and this was showing independence of the Lord, and they rightly come unstuck. My dear brethren, that's nothing to do with it whatsoever. Why they came unstuck was because of Achan's sin. That God had warned them, if anyone took of that an-anathematized stuff, the anathema would come on Israel itself, the whole of them. That is precisely what happened. Under God's discipline. Joshua was alarmed indeed that a little city like Ahaz, A- A- Ai could repel and even kill some of his contingent of troops that went against it. It wasn't because they were few in numbers. It was because of Achan's sin. God says so explicitly. He had tried to salvage something from the accursed city. He was brought to confession And and executed. executed. Would you care to notice the terms that Joshua used? Why have you troubled Israel? God shall trouble you. And Israel stoned him. And he died. And they heaped over him a large sto- uh t- uh a lot of stones, to this day, to be a warning, not to others not to do what Achan did. That done, they went against Ai, so the story goes. This time with the whole army, and with a very chastened Joshua, and victory was gained. But notice again, because military, it's an exceedingly interesting technique that he used on this occasion. We're not told he used it on any other occasion. He may have done, we're just not told. What Joshua did the second time was this. He secretly set an ambush behind the city on one side toward the west, so that the people of Ai didn't know it was there. Then the rest of the army came up to attack the city as they had done the first time. But Joshua gave the troops a command that when the king of Ai came out to repulse them, they were to make out they were beaten and they were to free, like they did the first time. And the king of Ai would say, ha ha, they're going to be, we're going to defeat them once more, they're running away, the lot of old cowards. And he would follow them out of the city, but that was the ploy until they were all gone out of the city, and Israel were running away. And at a certain time, Joshua will turn round and raise his javelin as a signal to the ambush. They were to rise up out of their place, invade the city, kill its in- occupants, and set the city on fire. And when they'd done that, they were to run out behind the king of Ai and his troops that were pursuing the Israelites. And at that point, Joshua and his troops would turn round and start to fight the men of Ai. And when the men of Ai looked back, here were the Israelites coming out of the ambush, out of the city behind them, and they were caught in a pincer movement and were destroyed. Victory gained by rehearsing the first defeat. Interesting, that, isn't it? At least I think it is. Victory gained by rehearsing the original defeat. Did you say rehearsing or reversing? Rehearsing, doing it over again. They took the king of Ai, not only executed him, but hanged him. Cursed is everybody, according to Jewish law, that hangs on a tree. Then they took him down and cast him in the gate of his city and put over him a very large lot of stones as a perpetual memorial. You say, what have you gone into, uh, telling us all those details for, you see? Well, you know them, of course, I, I know you know them. But let me now come to the controversial part of my talk. I shall, I shall not bother you longer, much longer this evening. I invite you to consider, that's a bedside occupation, you see. You can go to bed thinking about it and what to make out of it, if anything at all. But you might care to consider the vocabulary common to this section two of Joshua and to the epistle to the Galatians. And I'm contenting myself at the moment simply with that superficial observation, that there is a certain amount of vocabulary common to both the epistle and that story. The term anathema occurs in other epistles. If any man love the Lord, not the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema, is in Corinthians, I think. But twice over in Galatians. Anathema pronounced on anybody who preaches a different gospel from what I preach, says Paul. That's the one kind of curse. The other kind of curse that, uh, Joshua pronounced on any that should rebuild the city of Jericho. Curse, Galatians three thirteen. Christ died hanged upon a tree. It's written, cursed is everybody that hangs on a tree. How can we then be delivered from the curse of the law? Christ doesn't deliver us from the curse of the law by helping to im- us to improve our behavior. He delivered us from the curse of the law by bearing that curse for us in all its severity and exhausted it. Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. I marvel, says Paul, in Galatians chapter one verse seven, that you are so soon moving away from him that called you. Unless it could be that there are some who trouble you. And later in the epistle he says, I would they they would emasculate themselves, those who trouble you. What is he talking about? Who are those that were troubling them? We notice that the objective in this second section of Jo- of Joshua was the establishment of the law on Mount Skoritsim and Ebal, where there were pronounced the curses of the law and the blessings of the law. You will have already noticed the occurrence of those terms, the blessings and the cursings, in Galatians three verses thirteen to fourteen. mhm A curse pronounced by Joshua on anybody that rebuilt Jericho when it was once destroyed. Mark the metaphor that Paul uses with Simon Peter. If I build again those things which once we destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. What was he talking about? What was Peter doing wrongly? Well, to put it briefly, gentlemen, he was trying to salvage something out of the old system of the law. That's what he was doing. In his heart of hearts, he believed what Paul believed, that a man is justified by faith and not by the works of the law. And in Acts chapter fifteen, we have the record of how he manfully stood up in the assembly at Jerusalem. And denounced those that preached that except you be circumcised, the Gentiles be circumcised after the manner of the, of Moses and keep the food laws, they couldn't be saved. Peter denounced it and gave his considered opinion and the opinion of all the apostles. To say that people have to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be saved, if they are Gentiles, contradicts the gospel outright. It is to put upon the necks of the believers a burden, a yoke that we were not able to bear, says, says, says Peter. Why do you tempt God by imposing this yoke on the Gentile believers. It is our belief and conviction, he says, that it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus that we Jews shall be saved, even as those Gentiles are saved. Even we Jews have to be saved not by the law, not by circumcision, but by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we're in the same boat exactly as the Gentiles are when it comes to salvation. That is what Peter believed. Except that he was at a conference down at Antioch once. And in the early days of the conference, he ate, like I have done here in America, with the Gentiles, with some exceptions. Exceptions. But when there came some down from Jerusalem, he withdrew himself. I don't know whether he could say that was his stomach, he had a stomach ache or something, but as he tried to get out of the door, Paul stood in the way and said, no, you don't, Peter. You are play acting, Peter. You are pretending not to believe what you do believe. You believe that the Gentiles are saved simply by faith in Christ, don't you, Peter? Not by the works of the law. What are you doing now saying that you can't have table fellowship even with Gentile believers because they don't keep the law. Are you saying, after all, that faith in Christ is not enough, Peter? For we, Peter, he says, we were not sinners of the Gentiles, were we? We were Orthodox Jews. Yet we saw that the man can't be justified except through Christ. And we have put our faith solely in Christ. But come, Peter. If having put your faith solely in Christ for salvation, you're now beginning to say that to be properly saved, you have to add circumcision and the food laws. You are implying that faith in Christ leaves you still a sinner, and your salvation needing be, needing to be supplemented by the works of the law. Peter, that is a very serious thing. Trying to salvage something. Out of that old system of the law. But all they, he says, who take their stand under on the law are under a curse. Because the law isn't just good advice, I should do this if I were you. You'd find life easier that way. The law is command plus penalty. You do this, I shall curse you, says the law. You don't do that. If you do it, I shall curse you. All they who take their stand on the law are under a curse. How can we be delivered from the curse of the law? We were delivered, says Paul, by Christ bearing that curse for us, as is witnessed by the fact that when he died for us, they hung him on the tree. That's enough to break your heart, my brothers. The King of life and glory hung on a tree, bearing a curse, to set us free. If I were to think I could salvage something from the old system, and I need to to improve upon that salvation. I am insulting the very Christ of God himself. Says Paul to the Galatians, I marvel you're so, so soon, removing from him that called you. Essek there be some that trouble you. The people that were troubling them become apparent in the course of that letter, don't they? Why have you troubled Israel, said Joshua to Achan, by trying to save something out of the city and the system that God has cursed? We build again what we destroyed. We make ourselves transgressors, and we imply that Christ isn't good. And his salvation by itself, without supplementing from the law, would leave us sinners. His salvation would be nothing better than a minister of sin, if you please. It's not, of course, that we are going to live godless lives. The righteous demand of the law shall be fulfilled in us, as he says in Romans. And in Galatians, the secret is given why it is and how it is that the believer is to live a holy life. It is, of course, that we are led, constantly led by the Holy Spirit, and must be allowing him, that gracious Holy Spirit, to lead us in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. So that the demand of the law shall be fulfilled, not in order to obtain salvation, but because we are saved. Those who want you to be circumcised, they do it to glory in your flesh. God forbid, says Paul, that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the means by which I have been crucified to the world, and the world to me. Hmm. There were two cities, weren't there? And Joshua was destroyed. Finished. Obliterated. There was the other city. Where the believers eventu- uh, uh, Joshua and company eventually got victory over it. How did they get the victory? By rehearsing the original defeat. That was a painful experience for the commander in chief. You know, if I had been in Joshua's army, I've done what I could. And when I heard how he was disposing the troops, I would have volunteered to be in the ambush. Don't know about you. So that when all the Aite people had run off, I could come in like a Victoria Cross man and and and uh deal with the city and set it on fire. Marvelous victory. I wouldn't have cared to be in that other lot. Who, when the king of Aite came out had to run away again, would you? In which depat- in which detachment was Joshua? He was in the det- detachment that ran away. Reenacting the defeat. That he then turned into a means of victory. Oh, what a blessed Savior we have, who's turned the apparent defeat of the cross into the secret of a magnificent victory. How shall I be victorious? In what shall I put my confidence and basic hope? What shall I glory in as a secret of a godly life? God forbid that I should glory, says Paul, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the means by which the world was crucified to me, and I to the world. I realize, my brethren, that these ideas may strike you as very eccentric. Well, they are. They might also strike you as being impossible to be true. Well, I should be interested to hear your reasons. Uh, we shall have a time of questions tomorrow, so that I give you time tonight to think about these things. You can manage it before slumber or in the morning, but, uh, in the moment, eh, eh, I would be interested to hear, genuinely interested to hear your interpretations of the, of, uh, Joshua's dealing, first with Jericho and then with Ai. But for the moment, I myself leave it there, but we have a question coming up here. Uh, just 2 comments. One, it strikes me as absolutely true in the genius of scripture. Pardon? It strikes me as absolutely true, what you said, in the genius of God's scripture, the wisdom of God's scripture. Praise the Lord. Number two, you mentioned earlier judgments, and e- even when you said that, you said hallelujah. My mind went to Revelation nineteen, the first hallelujah of scripture. Hallelujah. True and righteous are his judgments. Amen, my sir. Amen. We must not be ashamed of the judgments of God. When, just to emphasize that point you're saying, sir, when the, uh, angels come out with the vials of God's wrath, the final system of seven. Attention is called to their dress. They come out dressed in pure linen, brilliantly white. Their dress is beautiful. When the pagan Greeks tried to imagine the supernatural avengers of men's sin. They likened them to old hags with pus coming out of their eyes and this, that, and other. Not the angels that come out to deliver the final vials of God's wrath. They're beautiful. God's wrath is holiness, is a thing of beauty. It's God's wrath against sin that will keep heaven heaven, gentlemen, and maintain the values of heaven for eternity. Having said that, God make us more like Christ, who's standing outside the city of Jerusalem, wept for the destruction that must come upon them. If I'm right, all I will add, but I'm open, I- I sincerely want your contributions and corrections and your criticisms galore. I've s- just submitted to you these notions. If they're anywhere near true, the first half of Joshua is turning out to be not our efforts to enter our inheritance. It's turning out to be what Joshua did to clear the ground of all the enemies and thus make it possible for Israel eventually to enter their inheritance. He is a veritable savior. His name is the Hebrew for Jesus, of course. And the first section dealt with the crossing of Jordan, which transmutes into a higher scale in the New Testament. He abolished death by dying, him that had the power of death. Or Hebrews chapter two, that through death, you'll see, he might deliver us who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Or Peter saying that by his resurrection we've been begotten again to a living hope and to an inheritance incorruptible. Marvelous side of the gospel. If I'm anywhere near right, the second section dealing with, with Jericho AI and then the establishment of the law is dealing with the gospel as portrayed in epistles like Romans and Galatians, and Galatians in particular. You say, is there any other side of the gospel? Well, you never know, there could be, couldn't there? And if there were another side to the gospel, well, who knows but what? The third section of the first half of the book could be about that side of the gospel. At least there were some Gibeonites who got converted, but they're a very doubtful crowd, and they suffered many things of many expositors, so I shall have to be careful what I say about them tomorrow, because they were a bad lot. They pretended to be afar off when they were near, which will prompt me to ask you, where were you when you got converted? Were you near at hand? You were far off? Oh, so you deserve to be saved, I suppose. Oh, I see. Well, anyway, we'll talk about that tomorrow, God willing. You'll see. It could be that that third part, third section of the first half of Joshua is also illustrating for us at the higher level another aspect of our great salvation. Let the Lord bless his word and give us wisdom and understanding as we ponder it with him. I think we forego our questions now. Yeah. 15 minutes back in. Thank you. I have sad questions.