Dennis Tuuri

Sermon Transcript
Joshua Chapter 10

Sermon scripture is found in Joshua the 10th chapter. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word Joshua chapter 10.

Now it came to pass when Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem had heard how Joshua had taken Ai and had utterly destroyed it as he had done to Jericho and her king. So he had done to Ai and her king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, that they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty.

Wherefore Adoni-Zedek, king of Jerusalem, sent unto Hoham, king of Hebron, and unto Piram, king of Jarmuth, and unto Japhia, king of Lakish, and unto Debir, king of Eglon, saying, Come up unto me, and help me that we may smite Gibeon, for I have made peace with Joshua and with the children of Israel. Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lakish, and the king of Eglon gathered themselves together and went up, they and all their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war against it.

And the men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal, saying, Slack not thy hand from thy servants. Come up to us quickly, and save us, and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell on the mountain are gathered together against us. So Joshua ascended from Gilgal. He and all the people who were with him and all the mighty men of valor. And the Lord said unto Joshua, “Fear them not, for I have delivered them into thine hand. There shall not a man of them stand before thee.”

Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night. And the Lord discomforted them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth to Beth-horon and smoked them to Azekah and unto Makkedah. And it came to pass as they fled from before Israel and were in the going down to Beth-horon that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died. There were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.

Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel. And he said, “In the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.

Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day, and there was no day like that before, or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man. For the Lord fought for Israel.

Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal. But these five kings fled and hid themselves in a cave at Makkedah. And it was told Joshua, saying, “The five kings are found hid in a cave at Makkedah.” And Joshua said, “Roll great stones upon the mouth of the cave, and set men by it for to keep them, and stay ye not, but pursue after your enemies, and smite the hindermost of them. Suffer them not to enter into their cities, for the Lord your God hath delivered them into your hand.”

Then it came to pass, when Joshua and the children of Israel had made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter, till they were consumed that the rest which remained of them entered into fenced cities and all the people returned to the camp to Joshua at Makkedah in peace. None moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel.

Then said Joshua, “Open the mouth of the cave, and bring out those five kings unto me out of the cave,” and they did so, and brought forth those five kings unto him out of the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lakish, and the king of Eglon. And it came to pass they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel and said unto the captains of the men of war which were with him, “Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings.” And they came near and put their feet upon the necks of them.

And Joshua said unto them, “Fear not, nor be dismayed. Be strong and of good courage. For thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom you fight.” And afterwards Joshua smote them and slew them and hung them on five trees, and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening. And it came to pass at the time of the going down of sun that Joshua commanded and they took them down off the trees and cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid and they set great stones in the cave’s mouth which remain until this very day.

And that day Joshua took Makkedah and smote it with the edge of the sword and the king thereof utterly destroyed. He destroyed them and all the souls that were therein. He let none remain. And he did to the king of Makkedah as he did unto the king of Jericho. Then Joshua passed from Makkedah and all Israel with him unto Libnah and fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it also and the king thereof and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein. He let none remain of it, but did unto the king thereof, as he did unto the king of Jericho.

And Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him unto Lakish, and camped against it, and fought against it. And the Lord delivered Lakish into the hand of Israel, which took it on the second day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein according to all that he had done to Libnah. Then Horam, king of Gezer, came up to help Lakish, and Joshua smote him and his people until he had left him none remaining.

And from Lakish Joshua passed into Eglon, and all Israel with him, and they encamped against it, and fought against it, and they took it on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein utterly destroyed that day, according to all that he had done to Lakish. And Joshua went up from Eglon, and all Israel with him, unto Hebron, and they fought against it, and they took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and all the souls that were therein. He left none remaining according to all that he had done to Eglon, but destroyed it utterly, and all the souls that were therein.

And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him unto Debir, and fought against it. And he took it, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and they smote them with the edge of the sword. And utterly he destroyed all the souls that were therein. He left none remaining. As he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the king thereof, as he had done also to Libnah and to her king.

So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs and all their kings. He left none remaining but utterly destroyed all that breathed as the Lord God of Israel commanded. And Joshua smote them from Kadesh Barnea, even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. And Joshua returned and all Israel with him unto the camp to Gilgal.

We thank God for his word and pray now he would illuminate our understandings.

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Okay, we continue now going back to the book of Joshua. We’ve gone through the first nine chapters and for the next four weeks we’ll go through chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13, if God wills in his providence that we do that. That’s the plan that we’ve made so far and we’ll see what God brings to pass.

It’d probably be good just to remind us a little bit of where we’re at in this book. Remember the big picture here is that God is bringing his people back out of Egypt back into the promised land. They spent time in the wilderness, of course, for their sin and unbelief. And now he’s bringing them into the promised land. You remember the big purpose of all this is to exterminate those people whose iniquity had become complete. According to the book of Genesis, the Amorites—God let them in there for a while until their iniquity got complete and then brought Israel back to dispossess them.

Now, it’s important also in the context of all this. I was listening to some tapes by James B. Jordan on the book of Exodus this last week, couple of weeks, and he makes the point that God brought the children of Israel into Egypt originally so that they might not be influenced so much by the Canaanites in the land, the sons of Lot as we just sang in Psalm 83, and how progressively then, prior to the deliverance down out of the famine into Egypt and then their subsequent enslavement there, prior to that, they begin to show signs of Canaanite influences upon them in the land of Canaan.

And so God preserved his people by taking them to Egypt and left them there for a while, and then brought them back when they were ready to dispossess the Canaanites. The iniquity now had become complete. And so this idea of protecting his people from the influences of those who are in rebellion against God is a very important theme in the Exodus and then also into the book of Joshua. And understanding this holy war that we’re now seeing part of—Joshua and the people of Israel participate in the promised land—is very important.

Remember that we said that in chapter nine we heard the story of Gibeon and the covenant with the Gibeonites. And I guess you could say that chapters 9, 10, and 11 are pretty much a unit. Chapter 9 begins with this covenant. Israel does not seek counsel from Yahweh and they make an error and a sin by not consulting him but instead trusting their eyes. And we see the dangers of that in chapter 9.

Chapters 10 and 11 show God’s presence with Israel though, and they’re consulting God and being obedient once more to him, and the resultant victory and blessing of that. Chapter 10 covers the southern campaign and chapter 11, which we’ll deal with next week in the providence of God, deals with the northern campaign. So they’ve now basically driven a wedge through the middle of Canaan. They have taken Jericho and Ai and they met a confederation now at the Gibeonites, and the Gibeonites are part of a tetropolis, five cities that are very important strategically.

So essentially now Israel has gone in under the direction of God and his blessing has cut a great swath through the middle of the land. In chapter 10, what we’re talking about today is the southern campaign. We’ll see as a result of what happens here that they move south and they basically possess or take over once for all the southern area. Now, there’ll be work to be done in the future as the book of Judges points out, but they are given success by God and take it once, as the end of the chapter tells us of chapter 10.

Then next week we’ll move on to the northern campaign where they now move north and take the cities up there. So that’s kind of the context of all of this. We have then in this story that we read today a very exciting brief, very summarized synopsis of a whole southern campaign that probably takes some time. We see then that the pace of the book is now quickening very rapidly. We went through a fairly slow pace in the first few chapters of the book of Joshua and now we have in one chapter the whole southern campaign summarized. And next week the whole northern campaign.

In chapter 12 we have basically a summary statement of all the kings that God had his people execute and bring judgment upon. And then chapter 13 actually begins now, moves away from the warfare scenario, gets into the whole story of the inheritance and the dividing of the land and the possession of Canaan up into the various tribes. So we’re basically almost at the end of the military campaigns of this book which is kind of amazing because it seems we just started it with the story of Jericho and Ai.

Okay. Now, first of all then we want to do—we’ll spend most of our time this morning doing an overview of the text and then make some very fairly short points of application. It is a long chapter as is obvious from the reading. It’ll take us a while just to go through a summation of it.

Okay. First of all then, an overview of Joshua. We’ll begin with and the title I put on your outline is “The Kings Conspiring to Attack the Bride” in the first five verses. This gives the basic setting of what occurs in the providence of God to move the people of Israel into the southern campaign in victory. And the significant thing here of course is that we have Adoni-Zedek, king of Jerusalem, put together a conspiracy as it were, a number of kings come together, five of them to attack Gibeon, the ones who have made the covenant with Joshua.

Now you can look at this different ways I suppose, and I suppose that this particular title I’ve given to this subsection here, the first five verses—”the kings conspired to attack the bride”—may strike you as a little bit unusual. But remember that Gibeon, I think if we understand correctly chapter 9, is a picture of salvation as well as it’s a picture of the error and sin of not consulting God and making covenants. Yet we see throughout the history of the Old Testament that the Gibeonites are fairly blessed by God. They become submissive to the task that God gives them to do. So they’re a picture in a sense of the bride of Jesus Christ. The bride of Joshua—Joshua makes a covenant with them.

Joshua of course is a lesser Joshua here. The greater Joshua being the Lord Jesus Christ, whose name Jesus is also Joshua. So we have here I think, among other things, a reminder that throughout the scriptures we have this common model throughout the scriptures where Satan attacks the bride and he does it by attacking the church. And so we have here, immediately after the covenant with the Gibeonites, the kings confederating together to attack the bride.

Of course it’s an attack on Jesus Christ. It’s an attack on God as well, but it’s done through surrogate forces against what is perceived to be the weaker of the groups or the elements. I suppose too, maybe Adoni-Zedek thought that since the Gibeonites had tricked Israel into the covenant and because they were Canaanites too after all, maybe Israel wouldn’t come and help them. But they were in for quite a surprise if that was what they thought.

Now, Adoni-Zedek is an interesting name because it means literally “Adoni”—we’re familiar with that term—and “Zedek” is righteousness. So it’s like Lord of righteousness or Lord of justice, king of Jerusalem. This is the first time in the scriptures the term Jerusalem is specifically used and of course it means city or foundation, or founded on peace, shalom. And so we have here kind of an interesting contrast to Melchizedek.

You remember back when the nation of Israel was just being formed in the land, Abram got into battle with kings and at the end of the battle in which he rescued Lot from these kings, Melchizedek, king of Jerusalem, priest of God most high, came out and blessed Abraham. And Abraham blessed Melchizedek and gave him a tenth of all that he had taken. And so Melchizedek gives a communion as it were to Abram. Gives him bread and wine. And Abram responds with the giving a tithe of all that he had to Melchizedek. And this is a very interesting contrast in the text that now instead of Melchizedek being king of Salem, we now have, later, many years later, the full influence—the iniquity of the Amorites has become complete as we read in Genesis—and now instead of Melchizedek we have an Adoni-Zedek who, while his name purports to be king of righteousness or rather lord of righteousness, actually is an unrighteous man and attacks the bride.

He’s really a picture here of antichrist or anti-Melchizedek, if you want to look at it that way. And so we have a very marked contrast here between Adoni-Zedek and his confederation, Joshua working with the Lord and the troops of Israel under him. And that’s what we’re going to see throughout this chapter—these guys making war upon each other. Although it’s not going to be a long protracted thing because really, of course, God’s blessing is upon the nation of Israel, and so it doesn’t turn into a long struggle.

But the first five verses Adoni-Zedek puts together this conspiracy as it were. And again there are many places in scripture that talk about this conspiracy of the kings against the Lord, against his anointed. The bride is often attacked. Our children are attacked as well. And of course the attack upon children by Satan is similar to the attack upon the weaker elements of the covenant community.

So the scriptures account for this to happen. Now it’s important in this first five verses that while Adoni-Zedek is operating with full responsibility for his actions, it’s important that we remember—again, later in the next chapter, chapter 11 (verse 20)—we talked about this last time when we talked in Joshua 9, that the scriptures tell us there in another chapter from now that this was all that the Lord was hardening the hearts of the kings of the nations, apart from the Gibeonites. They were the only ones that didn’t come against Israel in battle. And that this is specifically done that God might destroy them utterly.

I’m quoting from Joshua 11:20. That they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them as the Lord commanded Moses. So while we have man acting in his full responsibility here for his sin, we have the Lord God of Israel causing this to occur so that his people might have a great military victory, that his people might be established, that Gibeon—the picture of the bride of Joshua, the church and a picture of those who have been brought to salvation and service to the King of Kings in his temple—might be saved, might be established. But that also the iniquity of the Amorites might have brought them to full damnation from God and curse, that they might be removed from the land, and their evil influence then might not be felt among the people of Israel.

Now, we know that while Joshua paints a very good picture of all this, the book of Judges reminds us that after this once-for-all deliverance, yet there is much sin on the part of the nation of Israel and they do suffer because of their failure to drive out totally the nations of the Canaanites. So this side of the story has to be kept in balance with Judges. And of course all of that points us to the fact that all of this will not happen definitively and completely until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, of which this is a picture.

Okay. So we got Adoni-Zedek coming against the people of the covenant, now the Gibeonites. We have God bringing all this to pass that he might destroy Adoni-Zedek and the five kings because the iniquity of the Amorites has been made full.

Then in the next few verses, we then read of the Gibeonites calling out—the bride of Christ, again as a picture, at least, calling out for salvation to her Lord. The Gibeonites find out about this and they send to Joshua at the camp at Gilgal. They say, “Don’t slack your hand from your servant. Come up quickly and deliver us.” And so they then cry out to their savior, as it were, Joshua, their protector. They’re now in covenant relationship and under his covenant protection and they cry out to him for deliverance.

Now, at this point, we have immediately in the text the faithfulness of Joshua. In verse 7, we read that Joshua ascended from Gilgal. He and all the people of war with him and all the mighty men of valor. So now, as the bride is under attack, she cries out to Joshua. Joshua then in covenant faithfulness moves to affect the deliverance of the Gibeonites.

The bride calls into the savior, then salvation is accomplished. First in this story, then is verse 7, the lesser Joshua ascends to covenant obedience. I say ascend because that’s actually literally what goes on here. It says that Joshua then ascended from Gilgal. Gilgal is the base of operations. It should remind us of circumcision, rolling—rolling away the reproach of Egypt. Should remind us of the memorials that are placed there. Should remind us they had Passover at Gilgal. That’s the religious community essentially. And that religion results in the ascension of Joshua to do the work of God in covenant faithfulness.

Literally, this is true. He had to actually—the march they will go on was involved a rise in elevation of about 4,000 ft. But it’s also a picture of our ascent to God in service to him. That we take the worship that we ascend to God and perform before him during the Lord’s day services of the Sabbath, that we take that then and ascend into the rest of the week as well, worshiping God by doing his work in covenant obedience and faithfulness to his law and delivering those who are held in bondage by those who would oppress the elect community of Jesus Christ.

So Joshua begins—the lesser Joshua is portrayed here as being covenantally obedient, ascending then to deliver those who are oppressed. Now again here, the plea of the Gibeonites is don’t have a slack hand toward us. And the text is written very specifically to tell us that Joshua did not have a slack hand when it came to covenant obedience. I mean he got right on the money and moved immediately to meet the request.

Proverbs 22:29 says that if you see a man diligent in his business, then he shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men. And Joshua indeed is a man diligent in his business for the Lord. And as a result, he will stand on kings and not just before them. So Joshua’s diligence is a picture for us of the diligence to covenant faithfulness and obedience that he requires of us and the results, blessings.

Proverbs 24:11 talks about: if you forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain, if you say, “Well, we didn’t really know about it. It’s not any of our business,” God certainly sees from heaven. Proverbs tell us, “He shall render to every man according to his works.” We have a responsibility to the bride of Christ. We have a responsibility to move to affect deliverance, encouragement, consolation, and victory for those who are oppressed in any way by the devil or by the forces of Satan, the opposition to God.

And so when we sing Psalm 83, for instance, and sing of the judgment to be brought against the men and forces that rebel against God, we must remember the same thing is true of us today. We have our own battles to fight. The opposition to God and to his people is real. People come under attack from Satan, attacking the bride just as in these days. And we must be diligent—the stronger members of the covenant community—to reach out toward and support those who are weaker.

So it has a great deal of significance for us. Now one of the commentators that I’ve been reading draws a correlation between the book of Joshua and the book of Ephesians. I’ve talked about the correlation between Joshua and the book of Acts, and that’s real, and we’ll talk about that in a few months when we get into Acts. But also there is some significant ties between Ephesians and the book of Joshua as well.

Here we’re learning that Israel is strong in the might of the Lord, as Ephesians tells us we’re to be strong in Jesus Christ. Ephesians tells us that we war not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities and forces of evil and demonic forces, as it were, and the result of men who are rebelling against God. So it’s important that we see and take these battles that we see here and recognize that the battles come upon us in various ways.

Some of us may—and probably will this very week—have thoughts of death and the approach of death, have thoughts of collapse of plans that may have been laid for businesses or whatever else we may have. We may be tempted to think that somehow we’re isolated from the covenant community. We may be suffering the just rewards of our sin in some cases, economically or in other ways. And yet, and yet God wants us—as we see people around us in the covenant community who are oppressed in these ways by principalities and powers—he wants us to move quickly when these people call for help and encourage them and exhort them to faithfulness in the Lord Jesus Christ and do battle with the enemy for them.

We have a covenant responsibility that is pictured for us here in Joshua. And we are now in the greater Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have responsibilities to the bride of Christ. Those responsibilities should be carried out speedily and not with a slack hand. Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thine might. For there’s no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave where thou goest.” Ecclesiastes says, “If you’re going to do something, do it right. Be diligent about it. Don’t have a slack hand.” And Joshua’s immediate response to the cry for help from Gibeon is a picture and encouragement to us of that very thing.

We have, however, in the very next verse the sovereignty of God asserted. The greater Joshua now encourages Israel. Or Joshua—in verse 8—the Lord says to Joshua: Fear them not, for I’ve delivered them into thine hand. There shall not a man there stand before thee. We’ve seen this before in the book of Joshua. And Jesus, the greater Joshua, encourages Joshua here in his battle. And God encourages us as we move to covenant faithfulness as well.

Joshua then as a result of the statement of God’s sovereignty, the state of God’s victory, responds with covenantal obedience again and moves with trained hands for war to affect salvation for the bride represented by the Gibeonites in verse 9. The lesser Joshua wars with trained hands in verse 9. Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly and went up from Gilgal all night.

He, what he does here, is he moves a sneak attack upon the forces that are arrayed against Gibeon. He takes his men, marches them probably somewhere around 20 to 25 miles, an ascent of 4,000 ft in elevation, and he does it during the nighttime. He does this that he might come upon the forces that are arrayed against the bride and do battle with them. It’s a sneak attack is what it is here.

Again, the scriptures emphasize to us that God’s sovereignty doesn’t mean number one that we don’t have activity. God’s sovereignty is always placed in the scriptures in the context of our not of abdicating but energizing the people of God. If you correctly understand the sovereignty of God, you don’t sit back. You don’t let go and let God, to use a phrase. You move in obedience to what God has instructed you to do.

If you don’t believe in a sovereign God, then what determines your actions and what determines the outcomes of what you do? Well, it’s hard to say—chance, probability, your environment. In any event, it’s a pretty despairing thing if there’s not a sovereign God who has given man full responsibility for his actions. The very fact that there is a God who is sovereignly determined and brings to pass whatever he ordains is an—it frees us to do the work of responsibility that God calls us to do.

Knowing that the outcome lies in God’s hands, not the hands of our genes, not the hands of our environment, and not the hands of blind chance or probability, lies in the sovereign God who made us. So God’s sovereignty is always placed in the context of encouraging the people of God to move into rapid obedience. And so it’s important to see that’s what Joshua does here. And he moves into obedience in context of having hands that are trained for war.

God has taught Joshua some things here. Remember we talked about that before at Ai, that battle that they actually took—remember that complicated strategy with the ambush etc. Here again Joshua was using strategem against the confederacy by doing a sneak attack at night and so when they didn’t expect it. So we should also see the responsibility to train our hands if we’re going to move to obedience in terms of actions in our culture and society to protect and defend the church of Jesus Christ and to drive out the wickedness of the land that is owned by Jesus Christ and to take out the squatters who refuse to obey him and refuse to bow the knee to him.

We got to understand to do that in terms of covenantal obedience, in terms of diligence, and using our brains that God has given to us. To train us, throughout the scriptures, with very various stratagems of war. Remember we said that one of the big themes here too is that this is part of the maturation of the people of God. They’re being trained to fight. And we see the end of this being when Joshua and the mighty men of valor later on come up and put their feet rather upon the necks of the enemies. God has us increasingly exercise judgment in his place.

Now you know the church today says you’re not supposed to judge and you know delete the judgment for God. He’ll do it. Well that’s a denial of responsibility. Certainly God is sovereign in the affairs of men and we don’t always know nor should we speak to the judgments of God. But as God matures his people he matures them in how to exercise his judgments against people and to declare that judgment upon them.

It’s a denial of responsibility to somehow move away from our evaluation that God calls us to do according to his scriptures. We make judgments every day and those evaluations must be formed by the word of God instead of by the standards of the world. And that’s what’s going on here too. They’re driving out the influences of the world around them and they’re establishing righteousness in their context.

So Joshua wars with trained hand. And we should see that as an encouragement to us to think through carefully the battles that we engage in and to plan them and strategize them. This is very important. Rich and I were talking about evangelism on our trip to Seattle. And yes, it’s important to have lifestyle evangelism and have it a natural part of your life, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t think through strategies of how to reach people.

There’s a very—obviously there’s a lot of correlations between what we’re reading in Joshua and the greater Joshua and Matthew 28 commanding us to go into all the world and preach the gospel and baptize to convert men and nations and to baptize them and instruct them in the faith. And so the correlation means that we are supposed to do that with training, with understanding the principles of God’s word as they apply to warfare and then using that in the context of our battles in terms of evangelism.

The same thing could be said to be true of political action. You know it’s like some people think that when the church of Jesus Christ is successful in political evangelism something must be wrong. They must have compromised somehow—that the people of God his strategies of war in that battlefield. People say, “Well, they’re just not trusting God enough that they’re going to start making battle plans like that.” Well, Joshua says, “No, no, no.

If you trust God, you understand his sovereignty, his call to action, you move, you move diligently without a slack hand in what you do, and you do it understanding that you have a responsibility before God to become trained and matured as a warrior for him.” That’s what Joshua does.

Joshua then goes out to war, and he wars successfully in this battle. And then finally, the greater Joshua wars for Israel and Joshua in verses 10-41, which is the bulk of the chapter. I’m going to read verse 10 again, and just listen to what’s going on here. We’re having this back and forth between Joshua and God going on. And then in verse 10, it says, “Joshua goes up to smite the enemies of Gibeon at night in verse 9. Verse 10: And the Lord discomforted them before Israel, slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, chased them all the way along the way that goeth up to Beth-horon, and smoked them to Azekah and unto Makkedah.

Four very strong action verbs of warfare. And I believe that the person performing these, the subject of all these, is the Lord. Now, it’s Joshua. Joshua and his men are working hard at all this. But ultimately, it’s the Lord himself who is the warrior king who goes out and makes war for his people of Israel. And so, it’s the Lord very emphatically in verse 10, him being placed at the beginning of the verse for emphasis.

Very emphatically is the Lord himself who goes out and does warfare with our enemies and he’s slaying them and he’s running after them and he’s doing these things to them. He’s discomforting them. He’s making them uncomfortable. And throughout the scriptures, God discomforts the enemies of God. Sennacherib was discomforted by the lightnings and by the various phenomena that God would take place. In Egypt, the forces were discomforted and disquieted.

And later the Philistines are discomforted when God brings his judgments upon people. Part of God’s warfare upon the enemies of his is to throw them into disarray and confusion and into despair, as we saw again at the battle for Ai. So God is discomforting his enemies here—not his people, rather the enemies of his people—as he is prone to do throughout the scriptures, and he does this then first of all by the summary statement of him warring for Israel on the battlefield.

The picture here is that they’ve gone to Gibeon. These forces are arrayed against Gibeon. They come up at night. They start beating these guys and whipping them real good. And those guys then break and run. And so God chases after them in the person of his people. But the first battle occurs kind of like in a in a summarized battlefield situation. And then what happens is they’re chased on the way as they start to run away.

And verse 11 shows us that God works miraculously in this warfare as well. “It came to pass as they fled before Israel and were in the going down to Beth-horon that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven.” And these are hailstones. They’re later identified as hailstones. And it says that more died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. God’s sovereignty is asserted, his blessing is asserted by his miracles. Performing more victory—in terms of the counting of casualties—than the slaying of the children of Israel with their swords.

So what’s going on here is it says first of all that God slaughtered them in the going up to Beth-horon. And now in the going down to Beth-horon, it says that God rained down on them hailstones. The physical geography is kind of interesting. Beth-horon—there was an upper Beth-horon and a lower Beth-horon. And when these guys, this host is located west of Gibeon. So Joshua comes to Gibeon. They start running away west to Beth-horon. They go up and there’s like a narrow place, almost like stair steps that they would have to run up and down here with big hills on either side.

And so they’re running up and they’re running down and all the way God is fighting against them. He’s sending his hailstones and probably other phenomena involved as well—usually are in the scriptures, lightnings, etc. And these hailstones come down and kill these people. These are intelligent hailstones. They are guided and directed by an intelligent God who has the rain only upon the enemies of him, of his people.

Now, this reminds us of Egypt. And what we’re seeing here, of course, is the continuance of God’s judgment against unbelievers and the establishment of his people that began back in Egypt. And you remember in Egypt, this is one of the plagues—plague of hailstones—that God sent down from heaven against the Egyptians. And there also all the children in the land of Goshen were not hit with hail. Now, that may be a little—it may not be quite so obvious since that’s a physical geographic location they were in.

They were protected from hailstones that God’s supernatural workers are at work. But here it’s obvious because you got a battlefield situation. Guys are running, Israelites are running after them, and yet the hailstones only kill those who are God’s enemies. So God works miraculously and sovereignly here with these hailstones.

But then secondly, there’s another miracle recorded for us. And I call this in your outline a “dependent miracle”—now it isn’t really dependent upon man. I put it in quotes here. God is always sovereign. But this next miracle Joshua actually prays for.

And there’s some dispute. I don’t want to get into a long discussion of this, but there’s some dispute over what exactly these verses mean. Did the sun actually stay up so that Joshua would have light to kill these people? Or did the sun stay stopped where it was over on the other side of Gibeon so that it would continue to be darkness and they’d be able to fight against them.

There’s good arguments either way. It’s hard—I don’t want to get into a big discussion, but the Hebrew can be read in a couple of different ways here. And the fact that Joshua ran all night against Gibeon and started the attack at night apparently, and the fact that the moon and sun are described—the moon being to their west and the sun being to their east. If this is the sun standing still in the sky or being prolonged in the sky, Joshua prays for this in with a real sense of preparation because it’s in the morning that this prayer or this command of the sun and moon ordained by God is given, cause the sun’s over there in the east in the morning.

So, in any event, God works a miracle here in response to the voice of Joshua, and it’s very emphatic in the text in verse 14 rather. There was no body like it before or after—that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man. For the Lord fought for Israel. And there’s a summary statement. The Lord fights for Israel, but he hearkens—in relationship to the prayers of man. And that’s what’s stressed here is not even the miracle so much. What’s stressed is that God hears the voice of Joshua and answers that prayer with a miracle.

And so it’s very important to us here to understand that God hears prayer and that he acts in relationship to the prayers of his people in terms of the warfare that he has called us to do.

Okay. So these two miracles that occur in the context of these people running away. And then we have the burial of the five kings. Very interesting account. The five kings go away to Makkedah. They hide into a cave there and the people of Israel find out about it. They tell Joshua. He sends men. He says, “Well, we don’t want to stop now and take care of these guys. So just put some big stones in front of the cave. Make their escape hatch essentially now a prison.” He locks them up there, reserved for later judgment.

That’s what he does to the kings—he buries them in a sense in that ground. They fly into the hole of the earth, so to speak. Joshua seals them up in it. And I could go through a lot of references here to these phenomena—the hail, the sun being darkened in judgment. And now there’s a lot of references to how the people when God goes in his judgments are in the earth, people fly to the caves to get away from the judgment of God.

But he says, you know, if you try to escape a lion and Israel is going forth here as a devouring lion and you go—you think you get away from the lion—then a bear is going to get you. Well, bears live in caves. That’s where they sleep. And you go into a dark cave and all of a sudden there’s a bear in there and you’re dead. That’s the picture here is that they try to escape in the caves, the five kings do, but instead they’re just moving to their own burial ground.

So they’re locked up by Joshua. Cave is sealed up and then he goes off and has the children of Israel continue to pursue those who are running away from him so they don’t get back to their fenced and fortified cities and make it tougher for them to beat them. So the children of Israel continue the pursuit. They wipe out most of the people who have been arrayed against them in that pursuit. And then they come back then to the resurrection of the kings.

And now we have a movement toward the—phase two of the war is concluded. The retreating host is pursued in verses 19-21 and pretty much wiped out. And then the kings are resurrected to damnation. What I mean by this is that now Joshua brings them out. They, you know, death is pictured throughout the scriptures in relationship to cave and being buried. And now they’re kind of resurrected as it were, but they’re resurrected now—not to blessing and not to a sense of ease.

They’re being resurrected for damnation. God has these five kings brought up out of the cave. They come out of the cave and then he has his mighty men put their feet upon their necks, and he has all Israel look at it and he says, “Hey, this is what God’s doing to all your enemies.”

It’s an encouragement to the people of Israel. It’s interesting here that, you know, God has informed them intellectually that he is with them and he will cause them to triumph. And now he gives them a picture of that to encourage them in terms of their heart, that they might feel and look at this and have emotions and knowing that God will indeed war for them and will subdue all enemies beneath his feet.

And of course, this is a picture of the greater Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ, who must reign till all enemies are made his footstool—everybody’s underneath his feet. And God throughout the scriptures is portrayed as trampling underfoot the enemies of God. The kings who conspire together against him are trampled under his foot. And then indeed the book of Romans tells us that Satan is trampled under our feet. Revelation tells us that we shall rule the nations with a rod of iron. And like Joshua and his mighty men, we become the mighty men of the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And we’re the ones who are promised victory. And we’re given symbols to remind us of all that as well, which we’ll shortly partake in this morning.

So the five kings are resurrected to damnation from God’s judgment against them. Then they’re hung up on a tree. They’re cursed—as it very demonstrably here. They were hung on a tree; they’re cursed. So they were hung on a tree, I should say. And the five kings then are dealt with. After these five kings then are brought out, subjugated to the people of God, killed, hung on trees, impaled on them apparently, and then brought down at the end of the day so the land isn’t defiled and thrown back to the caves to their final waiting for their resurrection of their bodies in the final judgment to eternal torment and damnation.

After this occurs, then the people begin the full southern campaign. This first phase has been the five kings and their confederation of armies. They’re defeated first, conquered host at night by God and his people. They take off and run. Their five kings are caught in a cave. They’re sealed up. Those people are then dealt with who are running away from Israel and Joshua. They’re wiped out pretty much. They go back and they take the five kings out and bring them to damnation and condemnation.

And now they begin a whole southern campaign that’s summarized in the next verses of this chapter. And here we have a whole series of cities being talked about. They go to one city, they do unto it like they did unto Jericho. In other words, they kill everybody in it. They kill the king thereof. They go to the next city. They do unto that city what they’ve done to the previous city and so on and so on and so on.

So they go through a number of cities here and geographically what’s happening is they’re taking a whole sweep through southern Canaan and they are essentially claiming that land by defeating and killing all the living beings that dwell in these Canaanite cities that oppose them. And so the whole southern campaign is laid out here in a very summary form for us.

And it’s interesting that in this summary form, repeatedly now—earlier in the chapter we’d heard about Joshua and his mighty men. Now, we have the description that all of Israel goes up to Lakish, or goes to Debir, or goes to Hebron, and makes war against it. We could spend a lot of time in the names of these cities. They’re good names. The names of many of the men and kings of these cities, however, shows that there are evil Canaanites in these cities and God is dispossessing them that his people might be established in these cities.

Gilgal and Hebron figure pretty prominently in this story, and that’s important for reasons we’ll talk about in a few minutes. But in any event, this whole campaign is then described for us as God and Israel is warred for by the greater Israel, the greater Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ. Ultimately, the picture of all that is Yahweh warring for his people here.

And phase three of the war, the full southern campaign, is waged in verses 28-39. And then finally in verses 40-42, this victory is then summarized in the following way. Joshua smote all the country of the hills of the south and the vale of the springs and all their kings, and he left none remaining but utterly destroyed all that breathed as the Lord God of Israel commanded.

So here we have a geographic description. We just had a description of the political entities that he has conquered and now we have a description of the geographic region and it’s basically all the south. So Joshua having driven this wedge to the middle now has successfully conquered the southern part of the nation. Joshua smiting from Kadesh Barnea, even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. And all these kings and their land Joshua took at one time. Says the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel.

So ultimately here this picture of the southern campaign is God is a warrior king who fights for Israel, brings judgment upon the evil ones and establishes his people. And the verse says very emphatically that all these kings of the land did Joshua take at one time. I think it means he took once—is what’s going on. There’s a difference between taking an area and actually possessing it, inhabiting it, and occupying it.

And what’s going on here is these cities are all taken. But then the people of Israel don’t occupy at this point. They go back to Gilgal in preparation for the northern campaign. And that’s one of the reasons why in the book of Judges, you got Canaanites back there again. They wiped everybody out, but people can move back in. Some cities weren’t wiped out. Jerusalem, very notably here, is not portrayed as a city that was taken. Even though their king was killed, Jerusalem is not taken. It’s not taken until the time of David.

And so, what’s going on here? That God definitively conquers the land in total. And then later on, the people in the book of Judges, their responsibility is to take it—to do a mopping up campaign the same way that the church has been definitively freed from its enemies by Jesus Christ. And now we’re in the mopping up campaign of the rest of history.

And so the victory is summarized in these last few verses. And then verse 43, Joshua returns and all those with him unto the camp at Gilgal. And I’ve listed a lot of scripture references there in case you want to do more study or show some correlations to the various things that occur here, back to other portions of scripture. And these are common themes. This story of the occupation of Canaan becomes one of the predominant models, of course, as we go into the rest of the history of the Old Testament and then into the New Testament of God’s conquering.

So the prophet Isaiah for instance refers back to these things all the time. Says God’s going to do a mighty thing as he did in the valley of Gibeon. That’s what he did there. That’s what he’s going to do in the future. And so all these things are a model or typologically significant to us for the future battles of God’s people and ultimately to the coming of Jesus Christ and his campaign against those who would be disobedient to him.

Okay. Well, what does this all mean to us? This is a pretty exciting story of warfare. I’m sure that if you want to go home and tell your kids, tickle your sons about this campaign, they’re going to listen to it with baited breath as you explain it to them in more exciting detail than I’ve done today. It’s a neat story. It’s thrilling to us.

What are the implications for us? Well, I think first of all one of the first things that we have to recognize here is the comparative difficulty of our battle. And as I said, Jesus has told us to go into all the world and he’s going to be with us even to the end of the age as God promised to be with Joshua. That’s the essence of what’s happening here. God wars for Joshua and Jesus wars for us and he promises us that. And he tells us that we shall be engaged in warfare ourselves.

And we have, I think, a relatively more difficult task in some ways than this battle even was. Sounds pretty bad. These guys marched all night for hours. They went 20 to 25 miles up 4,000 ft of elevation and then when they got there they had to fight a war. And not only did they fight that war, but then they actually prayed that they could continue to fight the war and that some meteorological event—either whether it’s darkening or lengthening of the day—would occur so they could keep fighting. These guys had a lot of work to do and it sounds pretty difficult.

But if you think of the work that we have to do it may be even more difficult. The reason I say that is that the scriptures tell us that our great danger in terms of the New Testament church is the evil influences of the world in which we live. Remember I said that what they’re doing is they’re wiping out the influences that would hurt God’s people. Well, we’ve been—