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Tara Leigh Cobble
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. The Israelites have just set foot in the Promised Land as a nation for the first time. This is the partial fulfillment of something God promised them approximately 750 years earlier when he first called Abraham in Genesis 12. More fulfillment will come when they take the land. But at this point, their enemies, the Canaanites, still live there. The first city they plan to take is Jericho, a town near the eastern border of the Promised Land. But before they do that, God wants them to be fully prepared. In God's economy, preparing for battle has very little to do with sharpening your weapons. It has everything to do with preparing your heart. He wants to make sure their hearts are surrendered to him and aligned with his own heart. Before they go face the enemy, the first thing they have to do is circumcise all the Israelite males, then allow them time to recover. After every male is circumcised, they celebrate Passover. The timing of this is beautiful. It's kind of a second exodus. Exactly 40 years after the first one. Their hearts need to celebrate Passover because it will reinforce their faith. It serves as a reminder to them that God has protected and provided for them through the years. Then in 5:12, we get a little sentence that speaks volumes. It says, the manna ceased on the day after they ate the produce of the land. What? This is incredible. This is God's precise provision on display. He gave them miracle food six days a week for 40 years, and the manna even follows them into the Promised Land. But then it stops on the day after they have access to the local food. There are no gaps in God's provision. Next, Joshua has a strange encounter with a man holding a sword. Obviously, this could be super scary, given the fact that they're in enemy territory. So Joshua wants to know if this man is an Israelite that he just doesn't happen to recognize, or if he's a Canaanite. And the man basically says, guess again, I'm God. How do we know he's God? First of all, he receives Joshua's worship. God's elect angels don't allow people to worship them. They reject it because they know they don't deserve it. Second, the angel of Yahweh also tells Joshua to take off his shoes, just like God had told Moses to do when he appeared in the burning bush because he was standing on holy ground. The presence of angels doesn't make things holy. Only God can do that. In this conversation. Many people suggest that God is refusing to take sides in the battle, since God doesn't give Joshua a straight answer. But we know from the surrounding text that God has aligned himself with the Israelites. So what's going on here? God's reply to Joshua suggests more that Israel is on his side than that he is on Israel's side. Meanwhile, Jericho is shook. They probably know what's coming. This terrifying army is camped outside their city, so they hole up in their houses. God tells Joshua that Jericho is theirs for the taking because he's giving it to them. But he has some super weird instructions on how to accomplish this. They'll march around it, carrying the ark once a day for six days while seven priests blow trumpets. Then on the seventh day, they'll march around seven times. And on that seventh trip, all the people will shout. And then the walls will fall and they'll have an opening to go inside and devote everything to destruction. Everything except for Rahab and her family. Joshua tells the two spies who met her that they're in charge of saving her. And it all happens just like God commanded. They defeated Jericho with exactly zero military strategy. Just by trusting and obeying God's weird commands, Joshua pronounced a curse on anyone who rebuilds Jericho. So heads up, it's been rebuilt. We'll get to that later. But just remember this curse. Another thing Joshua emphasized before they took the land was that the Israelite soldiers aren't allowed to take any plunder for themselves. Any plunder they take is supposed to be set apart and devoted to God. Kind of like a first fruits offering from their first conquest in the promised land. So, bad news. A guy named Achan secretly took some stuff for himself. Some commentators estimate the value of this stuff to be approximately the amount a worker would earn in his entire life. Meanwhile, Joshua makes a classic leadership mistake. He's probably overconfident from their defeat of Jericho, forgetting that they won because they walked in obedience to God's commands. So he sends his people to go take over another city, but without consulting God first. So the Israelites go to take over the city of AI. And not only did the Israelites lose, but about 36 men died in the process. Joshua is overcome with grief, and he begins to doubt God, thinking God had betrayed them. He appeals to God in much the same way Moses used to when they were in trouble. But God points the finger back at the Israelites, all of them. Since God views the Israelites as a unit, one man's sin has impacted the whole. Achan is personally responsible for his spiritual adultery. But the whole community is affected. God is angry at them all, and he tells Joshua how to deal with the guilty party. And since Achan's sin represents spiritual adultery against God, not just theft, it requires the death penalty. The next morning, God supernaturally identifies Achan from the tribe of Judah as the man who has committed the sin. Even though Achan is from the most esteemed tribe, he's rejected from the people of Israel because his heart isn't devoted to God. This is important. We're already seeing through the rescue of Rahab the Canaanite and the rejection of Achan the Israelite that being a part of God's people, the Israelites has nothing to do with race or genes and everything to do with your heart. Those whose hearts are devoted to Yahweh are welcomed into his family, even if they're strangers and foreigners. And those whose hearts reject Yahweh, even if they're Israelites by birth, are not counted among his people. God's family is made up of people with new hearts, not similar DNA. Achan and his family are stoned for his adultery. And because Deuteronomy 24:16 tells us that children aren't to be put to death for their father's sins, it seems to indicate that his family may have played a role in his sin or in concealing it. God takes this stuff seriously. After all this happens, God commands them to try again at defeating AI because this time they'll win. And this time, he says, they can take the plunder. How ironic is that for Achan? If only he had waited. Using a clever military strategy, they defeat the city, keep its livestock and plunder for themselves, then set it on fire. And again, it's important for us to remember that when they destroy these cities, it's serving the purpose of God's judgment on its inhabitants for their wickedness, as well as providing the promised land for the Israelites. After the battle, Joshua builds an altar to God and follows the instructions God gave them back in Deuteronomy 11, speaking the curses from Mount Ebal and the blessings from Mount Gerizim. Then Joshua renews the covenant with the people by reading it to them aloud. We covered a lot of ground today. So where did you see your God shot? Mine was as they were taking their first six trips around the city of Jericho. They'd get up, make their circle. A few of them would blow some trumpets, then they'd go back to their camp and do it all over again the next day. All this walking around seems like such a waste of time. If I were in that army, I would probably be like, what is the point of this? We're accomplishing nothing. Maybe if we're honest. We feel like that some days in our reading plan, or in prayer, or in Sabbath, or fill in the blank. But God's doing something. Sometimes what God does in our hearts through obedience is beyond our capacity to understand. Sometimes he's teaching us to trust him for the outcome instead of trying to achieve it on our own. He is at work even on the so called nothing days when obedience feels like we're just walking in circles. You've probably already seen evidence that your obedience to him is him at work in your life, drawing you nearer to Him. It's the best place to be even when we don't fully understand, because he's where the joy is. We know lots of you are fans of the Chosen, so if that's you, we have great news. We have a sneak peek of Season 5, which premieres in theaters on March 28. This scene depicts a tense moment among the religious leaders of Jesus Day. We'll link to the full clip in our show Notes.
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Religious Leader
We have a common problem. Jesus the Nazarene operates entirely outside our jurisdiction. Dismissive of tradition and precedent, he pushes the people's attitudes towards an uncharted realm of thought alien to both our interpretations of Torah.
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Tara Leigh Cobble
No matter how long you've been tbring, chances are you'll have some questions at some point. Things like how do I find the show notes? Or how do you choose which episodes to post a content warning on for Little Ears? Or does she go by Tara or Tara Lee? We've done our best to answer all these and more on the Help page of our website. Check it out at thebiblerecap.com help or click the link in the Show Notes. And by the way, it's Tara Lee, one of those Southern double names that makes everything so complicated. But if it helps, most of my friends call me by my initials, tlc. And you can too.