God Gives the Victory

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Introduction

Last week we saw the first victory of the Israelites in the conquest of Canaan. God had promised the land to Abraham’s descendants, but there was another goal in mind.

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  Who can recall what God told the men who conquered Jericho to avoid doing? They were not to take anything from the city that was devoted to destruction. Only the gold, silver, and metal vessels were to be kept and put into the treasury of the Lord. Read Joshua 6:17–19.

  Today, we are going to look at what happened following the great victory at Jericho. God had done another mighty miracle for his people in bringing down the walls of the city, but there was still trouble in the camp. That trouble was brought through disobedience, but God provided a remedy. He would not let his promises go unfulfilled because of the sin of one person. Today’s passage provides an opportunity to demonstrate the destructive consequences of sin and the fruitful rewards of obedience.

Sin in the Camp

As the battle for Jericho was complete, the attention turned to the nearby city of Ai.

Let’s read Joshua 7 together. Divide the passage for class members to read aloud (possibly divide at verses 9 and 16).

• Who “broke faith” with God? The people of Israel.
• Who took the items? Achan.
• How does Achan represent the people of Israel? They were all brought under the judgment of God because of one man’s sin. The people were to be united to one another, so Achan represented sin within the camp. 6:18 makes it clear that there would be trouble for the whole camp if there was any violation of God’s command.
• What did the spies report about Ai? They said that a small force of 2–3,000 could take the city.
• How did the battle turn out? The Israelites were defeated and 36 men were killed.
• What phrases describe how the Israelite soldiers responded? They “fled before the men of Ai” and their hearts “melted and became as water.” Both of these are descriptive phrases of the fear and defeat the Israelites faced.
• Why is this defeat surprising? The men expected a victory as God had promised. They did not know of Achan’s sin.
• How did Joshua and the elders respond to the news of the defeat? They tore their clothes and put dust on their heads as they fell to the ground before the ark. Think back to the discussion of Job and this cultural symbol of mourning. This is an example of where knowing the cultural practices can help us understand the text more fully.
• What is the significance of Joshua doing this in front of the ark of the covenant? The ark represented the presence of God, so Joshua was bringing his lament to God.
• What was Joshua’s concern? As he cried out, he seemed to be ultimately concerned with God’s name if the Israelites were to get wiped out by the Canaanites.
• What did God identify as the source of the defeat in battle? The people could not “stand before their enemies” because they sinned and took the devoted things. He specifically said they had “stolen and lied” in verse 11.
• Who did God identify as breaking the covenant? God spoke of Israel, the people, having sinned and used plural pronouns in verses 10–13.
• What did God prescribe as the remedy? Unless the people destroyed the devoted things, as they should have, he would no longer be with them.
• Did the rest of the Israelites know about Achan’s sin before the consecration? When Joshua announced the consecration to them, it seems they would have revealed Achan as the perpetrator, but no one did.
• Had any of the other tens of thousands of men violated God’s command not to take the devoted things? They must not have since God only pointed out Achan. The other men were obedient to God.
• What method did God use to reveal the one sinner among the people (v. 14)? The tribes were all brought before Joshua and lots were cast to expose the person responsible for the trouble in the camp. The progression is described in verses 16–19. Consider reading Proverbs 16:33, and discuss how God can control even “chance” occurrences.
• In verse 15, how did Joshua explain the judgment? Because the sin was an “outrageous thing in Israel,” the punishment was for the man to be burned along with all his belongings.
• When Joshua confronted Achan, what did he call Achan to do (v. 19)? Joshua told him to give glory to God and to confess his sins before the people.

  To “give glory to God” means to tell the truth about a matter.

• How did Achan respond? He confessed his sins to God and the people, telling what he had done and where the items were hidden.
• How did Achan explain his sin? He described a progression of seeing the beautiful cloak and the silver and gold, coveting them, and taking them (vv. 20–21).
• When they found the stolen items, what does verse 22 say they did with them? They “laid them down before the Lord” as evidence against Achan.
• Who took Achan to the place of punishment? Joshua and “all Israel” took him.
• Where did they take him? They took him to the Valley of Achor.
• What does achor mean in Hebrew? Many students may have a footnote that explains this word means “trouble.” This is a play on words for Achan (whose name sounds like Achor) bringing trouble into the camp as 6:18 and 7:18 talk about and as Joshua reiterates in 7:25.
• What punishment did Achan face? He was stoned and burned along with his possessions.
• Who else was punished? His sons and daughters were also punished. While the text does not explain why, they could have been involved in covering up his sin. Deuteronomy 24:16 says that children should not be punished for the sins of their father, so they must have sinned as well. Note, though, that his wife is not mentioned. This is also similar to what happened with Korah in Numbers 16, the household coming under judgment.
• Who carried out the punishment? “All Israel” stoned and burned Achan.
• How should we understand “all Israel” in the context of this passage? It is likely a figure of speech that includes at least representatives of all of the tribes, or possibly the elders from the tribes mentioned in verse 6. Just as God spoke of the people sinning, so the people have carried out the judgment. The idea of being connected to the whole community of Israel is an important aspect of this chapter.
• What marked this judgment for the future? A heap of stones was placed over the place. The fact that it “remains to this day” as the writer recorded this event identifies it as a sort of memorial to mark this significant event. Just as the stones at Gilgal could be seen as a memorial of God’s faithfulness and provision, this would be a reminder of God’s judgment of sin. The same thing is described in 8:29 to bury the king of Ai and 10:27 to bury the five kings of Canaan.
• How many people did Achan’s sin bring trouble to? Discuss the extent of the sin’s influence, looking back to the families of the 36 men who died, the whole camp being troubled, and Achan’s sons and daughters.

Discover the Truth

Wow! If you don’t think God takes sin seriously, I don’t know what could make it clearer. And we can’t fail to recognize that the sin of one always affects many.

• How does the way Achan describes his sinful action compare to what Eve did in the garden about 2,500 years prior? Consider reading Genesis 3:6; 1 John 2:15–17. We see a similar progression: Eve saw that the fruit was delightful to the eyes, she coveted the fruit to make her wise, and she took it to eat of it. Similarly, this idea is expressed in 1 John 2:15–17. Discuss the idea that our tendency to sin is a common experience throughout humanity’s history.

  This account should be one that we understand well and seek to apply. God’s character and his hatred of sin is no different today since his character does not change. While we don’t carry out judgment through stoning today, we must remember the seriousness of the consequences of sin. And we must remember that our sin always has consequences that affect others around us.

The Sun Stands Still

Chapter 8 describes how God gave a battle plan to conquer Ai. This time the battle was blessed by God and the people obeyed his instructions. Chapter 9 introduces us to the Gibeonites who tricked the Israelites into making a treaty with them. They said that they were from a distant land and had come to serve the mighty God that brought the Israelites out of Egypt. They were really one of the Canaanite tribes that Israel was to destroy. Because of the oath, Joshua subjugated the Gibeonites, making them servants to chop wood and carry water for the Israelites. Hearing of the treaty and wanting to ally against Israel, five kings of the Amorites gathered together against the Gibeonites.

Let’s read about that battle and how God accomplished his plans. Have someone read the passage aloud.

• Who instigated this battle? The five kings of the Amorites initiated the war against Gibeon.
• Did the Gibeonites think they could defend themselves? No, so they sent to Joshua for help.
• How did Joshua respond? He took the army with him to their defense.
• How much of the army went with Joshua to Gibeon? All the people of war (the standard troops) and all of the mighty men of valor (the special forces). Everyone was engaged in the battle.
• What was God’s instruction to Joshua before the battle? He was told by God not to fear the Amorites and that he would give them complete victory.
• What words describe the extent of the victory God promised (v. 8)? Not a man of them shall stand before you.
• What were the circumstances of the Israelites arriving at Gilgal? They had marched through the night and took the Amorite armies by surprise (“came upon them suddenly”).
• How did the Amorite armies respond? They panicked.
• What caused their panic? Rather than surprise, the text says the Lord caused their panic; he “threw them into a panic.”
• How did the battle progress? The Israelites struck them with a great blow and caused a retreat. The Israelites pursued them and continued to kill many of the Amorites.
• How did God participate in the battle? By causing the panic and sending hailstones.
• What was the nature of the hailstones? They were clearly miraculous as the Lord “threw down” the stones. They only hit the Amorites, they came as the army was in a specific spot (a narrow corridor at the descent of a mountain), and they were large enough to kill the men.
• What did Joshua do as he saw the Amorites fleeing? He commanded the sun and moon to stand still.
• What literary form is found in verses 12 and 13? This is a poetic interlude. Note the sun and moon parallels in the verses.
• Where does this quote come from? It is identified as coming from the Book of Jashar/Jasher. The identity of this book is a bit obscure, but most understand it to be a lost book of songs commemorating significant events. No copies exist today, though there is a faked version from the eighteenth century. Some translations will refer to it as the Book of the Upright, translating jashar rather than transliterating it. It is also referenced in 2 Samuel 1:18 and possibly in 1 Kings 8:12–13.
• How long did the sun “stand still”? For about a whole day.
• How many hours would this have been? The context does not distinguish between day as daylight or 24 hours, so it could be either 12 or 24 hours.
• Why did Joshua ask for the sun to stop? The text does not say. We can infer that in order to accomplish the task, Joshua thought he would need more than the remaining time in the day.
• What does Joshua’s request tell us about him? He trusted that God was directing him in battle and that God could indeed stop the sun at his request. It seems to be a demonstration of his faith in God.
• Does the victory belong to God or the Israelite soldiers? By faith, Joshua called to God for help, and God responded. He sent the panic. He threw down the hailstones. He stopped the sun. Verse 14 tells us that “the Lord fought for Israel.”

Discover the Truth

Even though the Israelites had made a bad treaty, God used it to bring about the destruction of many of the Amorite tribes. And he did it in a way that demonstrated his attributes.

• What attributes of God do we see present in this account? His omnipotence in sending the panic and the hailstones and causing the sun to stand still; his faithfulness in keeping the promise to give the Amorite armies into Israel’s hand; his kindness in revealing to Joshua that he was with him and the army; his justice in judgment of the pagan armies.

  The task God had set before Joshua and the army was being accomplished bit by bit. But it was not just the army who was acting. God was acting in mighty signs, showing his power to the Israelites and their enemies. There was no doubt that Yahweh was God over all the earth. More than the territorial gods who were believed to govern small areas and the kings of cities who ruled these areas, God had shown himself powerful wherever his people went. They were conquering in his name and taking hold of the promise that he had made.

That Didn’t Happen Activity

Connect to the Truth

Let’s think about the following scenarios that might be brought as challenges.

Challenges to the sun standing still:

As we interact with any of these questions, we want to be framing our answers to point to our trust in the God we know and love. While our answers can help expose inconsistent thinking or just remove unfounded doubts, we know that the gospel is the power of God to salvation (Romans 1:16–17).

We can tell the skeptic that we know it sounds miraculous (or crazy to a naturalist) because it is. God is not limited by our ability to understand him or what he does. He has revealed himself in the Bible, and we can study nature to understand his created order, but we choose to trust his Word. Not only do we trust the explanations of the history, but also we see ourselves in the Bible. We are sinners in need of the Savior. And here we can call them to examine their own hearts, confess their sins, and look to Christ for forgiveness and a richer understanding of the world we live in.

But there is another claim about this passage that comes from believers. We need to be aware of it and respond properly.

• The sun can’t stand still; the earth would have to stop rotating and the moon stop revolving. This is a true statement, but the text is using phenomenological language to describe how it appeared to those on the earth. The sun appeared to stand still as the earth stopped rotating. If the passage is rejected on these grounds, then they must also reject the weatherman’s forecast when he tells them the timing of the sunrise tomorrow.
• If the earth suddenly stopped rotating, the oceans would have swept over the continents. This is also a true statement. If the earth stopped suddenly, the inertial energy of the water in the oceans would cause them to flood on the west coasts. You can demonstrate this by sliding a glass of water across a table and suddenly stopping the glass. The water will continue moving as the glass stops. There are two possible answers to this objection. God could have gradually slowed the rotation of the earth to avoid this issue. If God has the power to stop the earth from rotating, he also has the power to stop the waters simultaneously. The text gives no indication of how fast the sun stopped moving in the sky. Both are made of the matter he created, and he is the master of both. Either way, there is a biblical explanation.
• It was just a solar eclipse that made it cooler for them to fight and finish the battle. While there may be several ways to respond, the first is that the text doesn’t say it got darker; it says the sun stood still in the sky. You can’t just make something up to explain what you consider to be an error. Also, eclipses last no more than a few hours, so it cannot explain how the sun stood still for a whole day, whether that means 12 or 24 hours.
• It is just a myth in a book about Bronze Age goat herders. This explanation has problems on several levels. It commits the genetic fallacy—the source of a statement does not make a statement false. It also shows chronological snobbery, assuming that we are so much smarter than those in the past who would believe anything they heard. It is also just a dismissal of the claim of a miracle, not a real argument. It doesn’t provide an explanation of why it is false.
• Miracles like that can’t be proven by science, so I don’t believe them. This response exposes the bias of the skeptic but does not really counter the claim. Science isn’t the arbiter of all truth claims. In honesty, the skeptic must admit that the scientific method cannot really test the claims of many miracles. And even if it did, the skeptic would likely claim there is a natural explanation that just hasn’t been discovered yet.
• How many of you have ever heard, received an email, or read on social media that NASA computers have proven Joshua’s long day by running computer simulations? Allow answers.

  It seems this idea pops up every few months and gets circulated as proof that the Bible is true. I trust you would agree that we should not try to use sketchy evidence to support our faith. And this claim is an example of an argument that we should not use to support the Bible. If time allows, read portions of the article “Have NASA Computers Proved Joshua’s Long Day?” Encourage students to make time to read the article during the week.

  While it would be nice if we could point to this idea as a support for the Bible, there is no legitimate way that this could happen. The claim, found in several forms, is that NASA scientists were running computer simulations to model the location of the planets and other bodies. As they ran the program back in time, there was a glitch. One of the scientists suggested this lined up with Joshua 10 and 2 Kings 20 (the shadow moving back on Hezekiah’s sundial). When they corrected for Joshua’s long day and Hezekiah’s 40 minutes, everything worked out.

  But for this to be true, you would actually have to know the positions of the sun and planets, with great precision, before Joshua’s command was given so that the computer could compare the positions to find the discrepancy. That is the very thing you are trying to model so it becomes a circular argument. This is a false argument and should not be used. An informed skeptic who hears you make a claim like this is just going to think you are incompetent and following the Bible in a blind way.

  So, the next time you hear this argument from a fellow Christian, you can help them understand why it is not true and not helpful in our apologetic efforts. We serve a God of truth, and we want to represent him in truth, not error.

Application

As we think about the passages we have looked at today, we can see how God was continuing to accomplish his plan of giving a land to his people. But he wanted them to recognize that he was serious about obedience. The defeat at Ai and the punishment of Achan conveyed that message clearly. And as God gave the battle plan for Ai’s conquest, the people knew again that he was leading them to victory.

Joshua’s continued faithfulness was evident to all those around him, and Israel knew that God was the one leading their leader. God provided more miracles to establish his people in the land he had promised.

And just as God had promised a land with rest for his people, we can see a clear parallel in the rest that we have in Christ. The writer of Hebrews made this connection in Hebrews 4. Listen to that connection in Hebrews 4:8–16. Read the passage.

Some disbelieved and fell in the wilderness. Achan disbelieved and sought his own benefit. There was no intercession for these, but the same is not true for us. Christ has provided a perfect sacrifice, offering himself as the high priest once for all. Christ has gone before us, defeating the enemies of sin and death, so that we can enter the land of ultimate rest from all of our works and fears. As we read of the conquest of Canaan, let us not lose sight of that connection.

Let us make sure that we think of how we can apply these ideas as we leave and go out into the world we live in. We want to make sure that we are not merely hearing the Word, but seeking to be doers of what we read in it.

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  What was a key idea or helpful point you discovered or were reminded of as we read these passages today? Discuss various answers.
• Stop and think for a moment about how much power would be required for you to stop a car or a train. Now think about stopping the entire earth from spinning. How does this help you understand your God more fully? While these types of feats are often portrayed in superhero movies, we know there is no way we have the power to do anything like that. This should remind us of the distinction between us as creatures and God as Creator. He alone is omnipotent and able to stop the earth from rotating.
• What challenges do you face when you are presented with skeptical questions about the Bible’s miracles? Do you get confused, nervous, impatient, etc.? Discuss various answers and offer encouragements to the students to grow in areas where they are deficient and to not be hard on themselves for past failings, but to look forward to God empowering them to do better next time.
• The prayer of Joshua is often used by teachers, especially of the prosperity gospel, to encourage Christians to pray for bold and audacious things. Some say that God only answers audacious prayers. Is this prayer of Joshua an example of a descriptive passage or a prescriptive passage? This is a descriptive passage that tells us what happened, not a prescriptive passage that tells us what we should do. There are other passages where we are instructed on what to pray and how to pray (e.g., Matthew 21:18–22), but the point is that we should pray in faith, trusting that God can do those things if it is in accord with his will, not our own selfish desires.
• How does knowing this is a descriptive passage inform our application of this principle? Rather than teaching that God only answers audacious prayers, we can see Joshua’s example of faith in asking God to perform a miracle to accomplish a task he had set before Joshua and the Israelites. We could apply this principle in evangelism as we pray for God to work the miracle of giving a new heart/second birth to someone even as we share the gospel.
• Joshua’s other prayer was one of lament and recognizing sin. Why do we tend to focus on the sun-stand-still prayer rather than the admission of sin and seeking God in that trouble? Discuss various answers, pointing to our tendency to want to see miraculous power displayed rather than exposing our own sin and seeking forgiveness.

Group Prayer

Be sure to pray with your class before you dismiss them.

• Praise God for his awesome power shown in the miracles recorded for us.
• Ask God for wisdom to share the gospel with skeptics.
• Thank God for giving us rest in Christ.