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This is one of those sessions in which, according to the program, uh, no questions are allowed. I have the full authority of... On the other hand, we just have a half an hour for this session. I would like in that half an hour to make one general point and a few detailed points. This is the section that is going to record the wrath of God executed on Jericho and on Ai. That wrath of God that God hinted at when he made the covenant with Abraham, saying that he was to give them the land, but they wouldn't yet have possession of it, for the iniquity of the Amorite was not yet full. God waited for four hundred years. His judgment is his strange work. There came a time when the cup was full, and God had to pour out his wrath upon the Amorites, the Canaanites. I think we should distinguish in our thinking, if we find it helpful so to do, to make a distinction between God's temporal judgments and his eternal judgment. Now, you may hold diverse opinions upon that, and please give me the advantage of your thinking if you do. I would hold myself that the Canaanites who were, uh, killed when Jericho and Ai and the other cities were destroyed will yet be raised at the Great White Throne to undergo the final judgment and its sentence. And that we should distinguish between God's temporal, that is judgments within time, and his eternal judgment. What difference, you say, would that make? Well, I'm not myself persuaded that every little child that was killed when God visited those cities will necessarily be in the lake of fire forever. Do you hold that? They suffered the temporal judgment. Don't think that implies that they necessarily suffer the eternal judgment. Uh, the memory of that temporal judgment, of course, if it gets people's mind thinking about the eternal judgment, then that does a very good thing. For the eternal judgment is much more solemn. So then, here was the temporal judgment of God upon the Canaanites. We are to watch now how God did it, and at this point I'm merely referring to the historical occasion. Doubtless the judgment of Jericho points us on to a coming judgment, which will be far more severe and will be worldwide. But I'm thinking now strictly of this temporal judgment in the time of Joshua. God could have done it like this. He could have said to the Israelites, look now, don't cross Jordan just yet. You stay at Kadesh Barnea, for instance, because it's a nice oasis in the desert, and you'll find grass for your cattle and water for the people, and you stay there. I have to go and judge Canaan and disinfect the whole country. And when I had finished judging Canaan and the Canaanites, and I've disinfected the country, then I'll come and call for you and bring you into, uh, Canaan, all now swept clean. He could have done it like that, couldn't he? He didn't. The fact is that when God executed his judgment on the Canaanite cities, he made Israel the executives of that judgment. Did he not? There were miraculous interventions, like hailstones from heaven and the sun and moon standing still in the later incident. But it was Joshua and the Israelites that had to be executives of God's judgment. And therefore Israel was put under very strict orders, particularly when it came to the first city to be destroyed, that is Jericho. City was put under a total ban, what in Hebrew is called herem. Everything must be destroyed. And what couldn't be destroyed, like the silver and gold, had to be handed over to God to the treasury. Israel must take nothing from it. This was a very serious matter. It was the execution of the wrath of God. Israel could not afford to be seen to profit from it, personally, privately. It was possible for an Israelite to compromise the standards of God's judgment on that occasion, which is precisely what Achan did, and involved the whole nation in the anathema that had been pronounced upon anybody that did that kind of thing. Now, as I say, the temporal judgment points forward to future great judgments. When the Lord comes and the armies in heaven follow him on white horses, executives of his judgment, but then none of those that follow him, none of his servants, shall pervert the course of justice or compromise it. But in this historical occasion, that was possible, and it happened. Now, some people think that the Israelites enjoyed going into Canaan and slitting people's throats. The evidence is they didn't. It was all too desperately easy, and it in fact happened in subsequent years that the Israelites compromised with the Canaanites, intermarried with them, and almost inevitably began to practice the same perversions of idolatry and so forth that the nations practice. Difficult for the third and fourth generation to think that the Canaanite way of life was quite so wicked as Moses had made out and Joshua had made out. For Israel to be faithful to this solemn task meant agreeing with God over God's condemnation and judgment on those cities. And if, like Achan, they didn't agree with God, not completely, it could bring the whole nation into chastisement under God's hand. This, then, is a very solemn part of Holy Scripture. To talk of mere humans, like the Israelites, being executives of God's judgment. But that, as far as I can see, was the fact. Therefore, before you get the account of the destruction of Jericho in chapter six, and then eventually of Ai in chapter seven and eight, you have a chapter of preliminaries, where the people must now be prepared for the solemn duties that lie ahead. And the first thing that Joshua did in verse two following right down to verse nine is to circumcise the people. All those who had initially come out of Egypt under Moses had been circumcised in Egypt. But now we are told that all through the more than forty years that they were in the wilderness, they had not practiced circumcision. The older men had died out under God's sentence of judgment upon them because they had refused to go into the land. And so they had, Israel had to act, live as nomads in the wilderness until that generation had died out. But those who had been born in the wilderness, that evil generation had not bothered to circumcise. Now they were in the land. We should perhaps notice the detail that Moses didn't, uh, Joshua didn't demand that they would be circumcised before they got into the land. It was only after they got into the land and had crossed over into the land that the Lord their God has to give them. They had been through the Jordan, so to speak, and up the other side and into the land, that now they were required to be circumcised. What does the circumcision signify in this context? We can see what it, uh, uh, the failure to circumcise the people meant in the wilderness. We are told, do you see, about the people. Look at verse six, or we'll go back to verse five. For all the people that came out were circumcised, but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, they had not circumcised. For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the nation, even the men of war which came forth out of Egypt, were consumed. Why? Because they hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord, unto whom the Lord sware that he would not them let them see the land which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. It could be easy for us to underestimate the sinfulness of that nation that wandered forty years in the wilderness until they died out. Reading the chapters that concern it in the book of Numbers, and particularly chapter fourteen, God complains at them. They not only refused to go into the land, but they've seen my wonders ten times over and have rejected me and have despised me. And when they got to the borders of the land and the spies brought back their report, ten of them evil. The people spoke of stoning Moses and making themselves a captain and going back to Egypt. They had never been believers. They had despised God. They rejected his redemption and the great promised land he offered them, and proposed to go back to Egypt. And God said, then have it your own way. You won't go in, you shan't go in. They were an apostate nation. Let me read you what Stephen said in his defense before the council in Jerusalem, just to remind you how bad things were in the wilderness. This is Acts chapter seven. We'll start reading in verse thirty seven. This is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren like unto me. This is he, that is Moses, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the Mount Sinai and with our fathers, who received living oracles to give unto us. Now listen, to whom our fathers would not be obedient, but thrust him from them and turned back in their hearts unto Egypt, saying unto Aaron, make us gods which shall go before us, for as for this Moses which led us forth out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him. And they made a calf in those days and brought a sacrifice unto the idol and rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned and gave them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets. Did you offer unto me slain beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You certainly didn't. You took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship them. I will carry you away to Babylon. It was virtually an apostate nation. Apostatizing from the true and the living God. And God said, swear an oath that none of these men shall enter into the Promised Land. And among the signs of their contempt for God and his word, and the distinguishing mark of the covenant that God had made with Israel, they had neglected to circumcise their male children these forty years. What then was the significance, and why did Joshua demand that before they came to execute the wrath of God on Jericho, they must first, the men, be circumcised. Well, it was not an early attempt to say that man is justified by the works of the law, was it? I repeat, they didn't get into Canaan by being circumcised. It wasn't conditioned for an entry. It was a condition for how they behaved after they got in. We have been circumcised, says Colossians, with the circumcision of Christ. We are the true circumcision that have no confidence in the flesh, but worship God in the spirit. Circumcision, the distinguishing mark in those days of the people of God, that distinguished them from the sinfulness of the nations that they were going against. And shall God allow Israelites, in contempt of his own law and the distinguishing mark of their holiness, to come and judge the unholy Canaanite? You will remember a similar story when God commissioned Moses to go to Egypt to deliver the Israelites from Egypt. He was on his way back in his tent when the angel of the Lord met him and sought to kill him. Remember the story? Why? Because he had not circumcised his son. This was number one preparation for acting as executives of the judgment of God. The second was to keep the Passover. The memory of their redemption from Egypt. Their fathers had despised it, and in spite of the Passover, talked openly in the end of making themselves a captive, captain and going back to Egypt. Apparently forgetting why ever they came out of Egypt in the first place. And they were wont to say, we remember the cucumbers. How nice cucumbers are, aren't they, what? Particularly with a few tomatoes added in. Mm-hmm. They forgot the other lot about the taskmasters and the hard penal servitude. Forgot they had come out of Egypt and why they'd come out, and the wonderful story of how by the blood of the Passover lamb and the miracle at the Red Sea. All that forgotten. Proposed to go back to Egypt. Became seriously disorientated in the wilderness. Gentlemen, if we ever forget why we came out of this world, if ever we should forget how and by what means we were delivered from this world with all its wickedness, we would be in peril of going back to it, you know, becoming disorientated in the wilderness. Or as Peter puts it in two Peter, he that lacks these things is shortsighted, having forgotten the forgiveness of his former sins, forgetting what salvation is about. So they had to keep the Passover, and they ate it not with the manna, they ate it, we're told, with unleavened cakes. As far as the symbolism goes, the New Testament will expound it for us, won't it? 1 Corinthians 5. Let us keep the feast of Passover, for Christ is our Passover. Not with the leaven of insincerity and corruption, but with the unleaven of sincerity and truth. In the context of godly discipline in the church. On a man who had so publicly offended as to besmirch the name of Christ and bring the gospel into contempt among the contemporary Greeks. And I tell you that Greeks took, took some shocking when it comes to sexual affairs, did Greeks? Here was a man in a supposed Christian church, guilty of such sexual perversion that even horrified the Greeks of all people. And the church is called upon to exercise government and discipline for the sake of the testimony and the sake of Christ and the preservation of the gospel. Here the people are called to be circumcised, and now to keep the Passover with the unleavened bread. These then, in my suggestion, were the preparations, the preliminaries, preparing the nation for this awesome task. And finally, there was the experience of Joshua at the end of chapter five. uh On Sunday morning, I had the great pleasure of being allowed to sit still in in in the assembly, I mean, and listen to another preacher. You'll say, what a luxury that is. And, uh, the preacher eloquently expounded this passage, amongst others, from the book of Joshua, the appearance of the captain of the Lord's host. I'm sure he won't mind my stealing his sermon, you see. On the eve of the falling of judgment, Joshua and the Israelites being the executives of that judgment, there appeared to Joshua as he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand. Vivid symbol of what he had come to do. And Joshua asked him, are you for us or for our adversaries? He replied, neither. Not a question of being now on your side or on your somebody else's side. This was nothing less than the pre-incarnate Christ. And when it comes to judgment, it's not a question of his being on somebody's side and favoring somebody against somebody else. He is utterly impartial. He it was that was coming, not just to help. He's coming as the captain of the Lord's host. Joshua was told to take off his shoes and knelt to worship the pre-incarnate Christ, come to conduct the judgment of God. With his sword drawn and outstretched. Vivid symbol of what was about to happen. It is a thing to touch one's heart, that before Joshua committed the armies of Israel to the work of executing the judgment of God, he began it that night in the season of worship before the pre-incarnate Christ. And what about us? We are called upon on times to execute discipline in the church. When the Lord comes, it said we shall judge the world. God give us the grace to judge ourselves, and constantly so. Whenever we come to the Lord's Supper, we are to judge ourselves, lest we be chastened of the Lord, and we live inconsistent lives. Perilously easy it is to know the theology and to come short in the practice. So may God bless us and guide us and make us more fit for his service through our studies here this week. Shall we pray? Sovereign Lord, thou who didst dis- dis- thou who didst appear to Joshua on this dramatic occasion, thy sword outdrawn. Captain of the host. Be pleased, Lord, if it could so please thee. This week, as we gather round thy word and through it seek thee. Lord, make thyself known to us. As John, thy servant, saw thee on the Isle of Patmos, with thy sword proceeding from thy mouth, that we might open our hearts to thy gracious discipline and judgment, the better that we shall please thee, and to make us more fit to stand for thee in this wicked world, until thou shalt come, and we join with the millions that come with thee in thy glory. For thy name's sake, amen.