How to find the Church
Passage Joshua 8:3-35
Speaker Ben Lucas
Service Evening
Series Joshua: Receive your Inheritance
DownloadAudio
3 So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night 4 with these orders: ‘Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. 5 I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. 6 They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, “They are running away from us as they did before.” So when we flee from them, 7 you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The Lord your God will give it into your hand. 8 When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the Lord has commanded. See to it; you have my orders.’
9 Then Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai – but Joshua spent that night with the people.
10 Early the next morning Joshua mustered his army, and he and the leaders of Israel marched before them to Ai. 11 The entire force that was with him marched up and approached the city and arrived in front of it. They set up camp north of Ai, with the valley between them and the city. 12 Joshua had taken about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. 13 So the soldiers took up their positions – with the main camp to the north of the city and the ambush to the west of it. That night Joshua went into the valley.
14 When the king of Ai saw this, he and all the men of the city hurried out early in the morning to meet Israel in battle at a certain place overlooking the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush had been set against him behind the city. 15 Joshua and all Israel let themselves be driven back before them, and they fled towards the wilderness. 16 All the men of Ai were called to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua and were lured away from the city. 17 Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.
18 Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Hold out towards Ai the javelin that is in your hand, for into your hand I will deliver the city.’ So Joshua held out towards the city the javelin that was in his hand. 19 As soon as he did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire.
20 The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising up into the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any direction; the Israelites who had been fleeing towards the wilderness had turned back against their pursuers. 21 For when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that smoke was going up from the city, they turned round and attacked the men of Ai. 22 Those in the ambush also came out of the city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. 23 But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.
24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day – all the people of Ai. 26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai. 27 But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.
28 So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29 He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.
30 Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, 31 as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses – an altar of uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered to the Lord burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings. 32 There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on stones a copy of the law of Moses. 33 All the Israelites, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Both the foreigners living among them and the native-born were there. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.
34 Afterwards, Joshua read all the words of the law – the blessings and the curses – just as it is written in the Book of the Law. 35 There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children, and the foreigners who lived among them.
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.
Thank you. Please do keep your Bibles open with you. We will want to make reference to those as we think about God's word. Let's pray as we, as we begin. Father God, we thank you for your word.
We do pray that by your spirit this evening we would understand what you would say to us tonight. Though our hearts might be ready soil to receive it, to grow, to be like Christ. Amen. So I want to think this evening from this text about how to find the church. Now what I mean by that is, you know, what is a church?
And I mean, you got to think, first of all, you know, what is a Christian? Have you ever thought about that? What is a Christian? How would you define that? It's kind of an interesting question when you think about it deeply, because there's lots of different ways that you could define a Christian.
If you go to census data, you know, and they say there are X number of Christians in England, how are those Christians decided? It's because someone has written on their census form, I am a Christian, isn't it? Okay, fair enough. Maybe. Maybe that's how we do it.
So the church is just consists of all the people that say they're Christians. Could that be the case? But if you think about that for a second, if we just say, okay, everyone is a Christian who just says they're a Christian, then that means that everything anyone believes who says they're Christian is what Christians believe. Does that make sense? Right.
So you then end up with this sort of like smorgasbord of things of like, as long as you can find somebody who believes something and says they're a Christian, then that's what Christians believe. And the church is just sort of an umbrella organisation that encompasses all of these things. Are you with me? Bit of an issue, I think. Right.
Because we end up with saying anything goes, doesn't it? Anything goes.
I once met somebody, I met him at Bible college and he came to speak to us as a Christian atheist. Yeah. You didn't like, Ms. Put your hearing aid in. I'm telling you that Christian atheist, this guy was ordained, an ordained member of the Church of England.
I mean, that just doesn't make sense, does it? I'm not seeing a lot of outrage on the faces. Maybe get further back on this. How does that make any sense? I mean, if you can be a Christian atheist, then being a Christian really means nothing at all, does it?
So how do we know what a Christian is? There's got to be a line somewhere, hasn't there? There's Got to be someone that decides. So is it the church that decides? You know, the institution.
We get some bishops together and then they say, you know, this is what a Christian is. Well, no, that's not going to work either, because which church institution do you decide? It's all going to get into the same sort of a mess, isn't it? So what is a Christian and who says it? The answer is really, really obvious.
God decides. Right? God decides what a Christian is because being a Christian means following Christ, obviously, doesn't it? So he's simply going to tell us what being a Christian is and by extension, what the church is. Okay?
Because the church is the gathering of Christians. Now, this is all in our passage tonight, which by the end you'll be like, oh, yeah, I see that so clearly. I want to read you out something from. It's called Article 19 from the 39 articles. You may or may not have come across these.
These are the sort of basic statements of what the Church of England believes written 500 years ago or so, but they go back way further than that. And Article 19 says this about the church. The visible church of Christ is a congregation, a gathering of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance. So the church, it says, is the gathering of God's people around two things. Word sacrament.
Now, these may be unfamiliar words to you, sacrament may be an unfamiliar word to you. It just means baptism and the Lord's Supper. And you see in our passage today, this is precisely what we see because Joshua has led the people across the Jordan. They've won this wonderful battle at Jericho. Then they get a bit big for their boots and it all goes wrong at AI.
And then they learn their lesson. And once they've gone back to AI and they've trusted the Lord, they then go up to Mount Ebal and they worship the Lord there. And the church are those people who are gathered around God in God's space with God's scripture and God's sacrifice. So we'll see these three points. So they gather around God in God's space.
Verse 30. If you have your Bibles with me, we're going to do a little bit of geography, as I know you all love doing. And we'll read this verse 30. Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, Mount Ebal. I mean, do you think to yourself, why did he do that?
Was it just that he sort of thought, that looks like quite a Cool place for an altar. Let's build it there. It's nearby. This is where it is. So you can see in the bottom left of the picture, Jericho.
Okay. And then you go east, west to AI. And that is a little bit where they ran away and then went back again. And then they went all the way up to the north to Mount Ebal. And you'll see that opposite Mount Ebal is Mount Gerizim.
And between them is this city called Shechem. Shechem. Okay. Oh, no, don't. Mark.
You've just. That was a spoiler.
If you're just listening, something major just happened. Okay.
Because before we do this, I need to tell you that this is not random. That Joshua, he didn't just think, right. Ebal is a smashing place for a party. You know, God, I'm just going to invite you to Mount. I'm just going to invite everybody to Mount Ebal.
I'm going to start a church, says Joshua. And we're just going to. We're going to party on Mount Ebal. This is not actually what's going on. We need to look in Deuteronomy 27.
Mark. I may have just put it in the wrong order. Can you. Thank you. So Deuteronomy is a really long sermon that Moses gave not long before Joshua, and he did it on the other side of the Jordan.
And here In Deuteronomy chapter 27, he knows he's not going to go into the promised land, but he says this. When you've crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal. Oh, great, that's good news. As I command you today. And coat them with plaster.
Build there an altar to the Lord your God. An altar of stones. Do not use an iron tool on them. Build the altar of the Lord your God with field stones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God. Sacrifice, fellowship, offerings.
There, eating them, and rejoicing in the presence of the Lord your God. And you shall write very clearly all the words of this law on these stones you have set up. Does that passage sound a little bit like something else? That is literally the text we've just had, haven't we? I mean, if you put them together, it's like Moses said, go and do this.
Joshua went and did it. Right. So what Joshua is doing with the people is he's following the express word of God. God had told them exactly what to do, and they've gone and done it. So evil wasn't Joshua thinking that it was just a great place for a Party.
Joshua has this ringing in his ears as he defeats AI and they head all the way far up north. Let's have. Let's have the spoiler, a spoiler picture.
He heads quite far up because remember, Jericho is quite far down. So he heads all the way up there because it's God's way. It's not the nearest place by any stretch. He heads up there because God said to do it. Well, he has the voice of God ring his ears and he did it.
You'll also notice on this map, which has occurred to you immediately as you saw it, is that this location is right bang in the middle of the promised land. Okay, you notice that, right? It's right bang in the middle of the promised land. Dan in the north, Beersheba in the south. In the Bible, if you want to say top to the bottom, head to toe, you say down to Beersheba, the top to the bottom, the whole country of Israel.
Where are you going to worship? Right in the centre. Right in the centre. So that's where we're located, right in the middle. And this is no accident.
This is no accident because the worship of God is central to everything they're doing. They're doing something at God's command, as he said. And it's central to the life in the land. It's not off on the periphery, wherever you fancy it, you do it as God has said in the land. I've actually got a beautiful picture now, haven't we, Mark?
There you go. There is Mount Ebal, I believe, on the left and Gerizim on the right. I think if we're looking the right way, I think that's westwards. And the town in the middle is Shechem.
Again, not an accident, because as soon as back in Genesis chapter 12, God had made the promise to Abraham and said, I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to give you the land. I'm going to bless people through you. And then God said, go into the land. And what we read in Genesis 12 is Abraham heads down into the land and where does he go?
Shechem. And then God says, I'm going to give you this land. So this is like a really key place right in the centre of God's promises and how lush it is. So you can imagine them standing right there.
So the important thing is we can blank the slide now, thank you. The important thing is this, that they gathered round God in God's space according to what he's told them. You know, the ark is in the middle, the ark that represented God's presence, the ark that really to us is Christ's presence. Because the ark is the place that the sacrifices were offered in the temple. And in the New Testament, Christ is described as the covering of the ark, the hillasterion, it says in Greek.
I can't think what it says. Atonement, covering. I think sometimes in English it's called. So Jesus is the one at the centre of the worship and gathered around him. This is the first thing we need to do.
We come gathered around Christ. So the church is something, the place of all people gathered around Christ.
Even the uncut stones speak to this. Actually, Mark, can we have the picture of this? One more picture, One more picture. Just bear with me. It's a nice picture.
This is actually an altar on the top of Mount Ebal of uncut stones. It's almost irresistible to say it's definitely the altar. We don't really know, do we? But I mean, it is an altar of uncut stones on Mount Ebal. And here's the thing, why do you not cut the stones?
You don't cut the stones because God is the one who has described his worship. You don't go like making your own art for it. You don't make your own images on it or shape it in your own image or anything like this. You just take it and you worship him simply as you come. You just put uncut stones.
You don't make it all fancy like all the other nations around. Worship is not something that's invented by the worshippers, it's something given by God. Simple, heartfelt worship. So they're in God's space. Thank you.
We can blank that. And really here are the two things that flow from that. Because we gather around Christ and we do that in word and sacrament with scripture first. So we see this throughout our text. Verse 32.
Read with me.
There in the presence of all the Israelites, Joshua wrote on stones a copy of the law of Moses. Joshua wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses. We know from Deuteronomy 27 how he did that. He plastered it first and then wrote it out. I don't know exactly what he wrote on there.
Probably a pracy of the law, because that would be quite long to write the whole thing. I don't know. But the point is he wrote it in public view so that everybody could see what was being written. It's easy for us to take that for granted. He's writing out on the stone the law of God for everyone.
To read, you know, it's not like he's holding it to himself and saying, I'm going to dictate to you on high. Everything I think God said, it's just written plainly here for all of you.
And I want to stress this point because this is actually an amazing moment of technology. You probably don't often read the Old Testament and think, wow, think of that technology, do you? But you know, it's happening and this is a big moment. I don't know if you remember big moments in technology that you got. I once got a cool device when I was at school.
I was at boarding school. And payphones. If you've maybe never seen a payphone before, you had to have a 20p and you chuck it in. Never had a 20p on me, so I always had to ring my mum, but it never made any sound, so if she got a blank call, she knew it was me. Anyway, one day a great solution to this problem came about.
I got a really new piece of technology I could fit in my pocket, get messages, pager. It was so cool, so cool. I mean, I wish I had that now. Technology makes big differences and here there is a massive technological moment because God uses this point in history for a very specific reason. Because the year is about 1300 BC, something like this.
And writing has existed for a couple of thousand years, A couple of thousand years. At least 1,000 years before. But writing was really, really, really complicated. Essentially, you'd have to have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of signs. You'd have to be a professional reader, a professional writer to see anything, to do anything like this.
But just around the time, as it happens, just around the time that God wanted His law to be written down and for everybody to have it, it just so happens someone invented the Alphabet. Amazing, right? 22 letters. So, okay, instead of learning hundreds of signs, which, if you've ever seen cuneiform, which is like what they used before, which is just squished in with a stick into a piece of clay, really difficult to read. Now you just got 22 signs.
You can learn that in an afternoon and read God's word. It's amazing. It's amazing. So this is a really precious thing and this isn't just a history lesson. The point is that God really, really wants his word to be front and centre.
So much so that he arranges history so that at this point his law happens to be published when it can be read by the people. Isn't that cool? It's amazingly cool that he does that. So anyway, We've got this, the law of Moses plastered on a stone because God's word is key. Now you might be thinking, in the Old Testament period, was it not the case that Israel was just people who were genetically related to Jacob, to Israel?
You might think that, but let's look what this verse says. Verse 33. All the Israelites with the elders, officials and judges were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the Lord facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Okay, so we're thinking, great, all of Israel. We're about to find out who Israel is.
Both the foreigners living among them and the native born were there. So who is Israel? It's the foreigners living among them and the native born, isn't it? It's all of those people who are descended physically from Jacob and all of those foreigners who have joined them. That is what Israel means.
It's never been just the case that it's genetic. Descendants of Jacob Israel are those who are gathered round Christ gathered around God, listening to his Word. That is what it means to be Israel. Always did. Always did.
Everyone stood and continued reading.
Half the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal as Moses the servant commanded them. Verse 34. Afterwards, Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and the curses, all the words of the law. They're standing for quite a long time reading Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. There you are.
Stand up for that lot. Smashing. He's reading it out because it's something for everyone to hear. Because the word of God makes the people of God. Yeah, this is the point to stress.
The people of God are those who hear his Word. The Word makes the church. And also do you notice verse 35, it's an all age service. Did you see that? There was not a word of all that Moses commanded.
Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children and the foreigners who lived among them. It's an old age service right there in scripture. If ever you wanted proof text for that. Everyone's there. Everyone's there.
Now you might think, okay, that's just what they used to do in the ancient world. But if everyone was expecting it, they wouldn't have mentioned it, would they? It is a surprise that everybody is hearing it. You don't just go and tell a bunch of blokes what's going on here. The women and children need to hear it.
Gather round, listen to the word of God because it's for all the people. So here's the point to stress here. The word of God is the thing that constitutes a church. The church doesn't make the word of God. The word of God makes the church.
Okay, now that might sound like a funny distinction to you, but actually this is often not really understood very well because sometimes, sometimes you hear things like, oh, you know, the church decided which books were in and which books were out and this sort of thing. As if a committee somewhere sat down one day and made the Bible. Okay, that's absolute nonsense. That's absolute nonsense. No one has ever decided what the Bible is because no one can decide what the Bible is.
It's not until the 16th century anyone even bothered to say that because it was so obvious. Because we know what God has revealed to be scripture.
And the problem is, if we think that the church made the Bible, then we think that we can remake the Bible. So we say, okay, the Scripture is man's word about God. It's us speaking about God. So we can remake it. We can redo it, can't we?
No, we can't. Because it's the Scripture that constitutes the people of God. If you move away from the word of God, it's not the church anymore. It's not the church of Christ because we're not gathered around Christ anymore.
Really, really important point. No human can decide what is Scripture because God has said it. It's his party, not ours. Well, secondly, it's God's word and sacrament. And really here it's sacrificed.
And the sacrifices are offered here, verse 31. As Moses, the servant of the Lord, who commanded the Israelites, he built it according to what was written in the book of the law, etc. Etc. On it, that is the altar of uncut stones. They offered to the Lord burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings.
Okay? Remember that once again, this is obedience. This is obedience to the Lord. Deuteronomy 27 has said, Go in the land, you know, read out the law and offer these sacrifices, whole burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. So in obedience to this, Joshua does it.
And we can't just. We just, we can't let it just pass about what those two offerings are. These are not two random offerings that are being offered. The first offering is a burnt offering, okay? It's called.
We have it as a burnt offering. This is an offering of atonement. This is an offering made for sin. If you want to read about this the way you do, this is in Leviticus, chapter one. It's all about whole burnt offerings.
And it's and in it, it's all about making atonement for sin. Because in Leviticus 1, what we read is that the way you do this offering is that the worshipper brings an animal before God in his presence, in the tabernacle or in the temple. And before the animal is killed, the worshipper himself or herself puts their hand on top of the animal's head to say, this animal is going to die in my place, because I know I deserve to die. It must be quite a powerful moment, mustn't it, knowing that a cow is going to be worth as much as a car. And you're just saying, I'm going to offer this up to the Lord because of my sin.
Then the cow is slaughtered, whatever animal you can afford, and the whole burnt offering is made to God. So the whole burnt offering is made, because when we hear God's word, we realise that we need forgiveness. We realise that we come before him in need of a sacrifice.
Now, this whole burnt offering is entirely fulfilled in Christ. We don't do anything that represents that today. Communion is not the whole burnt offering. This is not a sacrifice to God. There's no sacrifice being made.
This is why we have a table. There's no altar in this building because we're not offering anything to God. This is wholly fulfilled in Christ. But we know we need Him. We know we need Him.
The second offering is a lovely offering. It's found In Leviticus chapter 3, the fellowship offering, called the peace offering in the old version, because you might know the Hebrew word shalom, which just means like, hello or peace. It kind of means wholeness. And the offering is the shalomim, the peace offering. It's the same sort of.
Same sort of word. And what this offering is about is that I've now made atonement, right? My sins have been atoned for, but I'm going to make an offering to God and we're going to share in a meal, because in this offering, the worshipers eat a little bit as well. It's like having tea with God. So saying, well, you've ushered me into your presence through the whole burnt offering.
Now let's have a fellowship meal. So we're offering up the peace offerings, so they're really, really meaningful, restored relationship with God.
The whole burnt offering, as we say, is completely fulfilled in the cross. But we still have this meal of fellowship with God, as the fellowship offering was about. And this was a key aspect of what it meant to gather round God, to gather around Christ is to hear his word and sacrament. Just means a visible sign, a visible word that you eat. Because it's no use just hearing words.
You don't make the church by standing up here and spouting on in a bunch of words. The church is people who take it in, who chew it, who eat God's word and digest it and it becomes part of them. And this is what's being shown in the sacraments. It's like you're putting on God's promise in baptism and you're eating his promise in the Lord's supper. You are what you eat.
Pretty good news if you are what you eat. Isn't it forgiven? And all of these promises become yours and mine.
So we see in this passage that what it means to be the church is actually, as the 39 articles say, to gather around word and sacrament, to gather around God's word and to receive the sacrament. This is really, really important because going back to our conversation at the beginning, thinking about what is a Christian and where do we find the church? You know, what do we look for in a church? I've been thinking this. I don't know who here has ever been in the.
In the church market? You know, when you. When you're sort of like, oh, I'm looking for a church, you know, and you sort of feel like you wish there was a church estate agent that listed all the features, you know, and you could go, oh, I don't know. But do they expect more giving for that one? It does sound good.
No, I don't know. There could be things can't there where we want to. We go around the church and I don't know what would be on your list of things.
It's not something that I want you to answer out loud, but honestly, when you go around the church, are the things on your list not stuff like, you know, how cool is the music or how delicious is the coffee or how regularly did they have cake or you know, do they have a group to my liking, this sort of thing. These are all good things. I love coffee, love cake. These are all good things. But it's not what makes the church.
The church is. It's where the word of God is faithfully preached and the sacraments are duly administered. These are the things to look for in a church. So if you're ever in the market for a church, this is a passage to bear in mind. What makes a church, word and sacrament.
What to look for is the word of God being preached and the sacraments being administered. These are the key bits. Those other things are Fine, obviously music, I love music, love all these other things. But the thing that makes the church is word and sacrament. This also means, and this is a message that we really, really need to hear as a church more widely is that human beings don't decide.
The church is, the church belongs to Christ. He's the one who says, this is my church. I've given the Word, I've given the sacrament. You don't go to a meeting in some synod somewhere and say, I think the church should be a little bit different or oh, that seems a bit old fashioned, we'll change that. It's not how it works because the church is built on Christ.
And as soon as we don't listen to the Word, we don't duly minister the sacraments. We're no longer gathered round Christ as they were here, as they were in the centre of the promised land. They've drifted. They've drifted. This is the only place the church was gathered.
There's no party elsewhere.
So today let's know that we are his church because we do gather around the word preached and the sacrament administered. And as we, as we take communion in a few minutes, we're to know that this is not, it's not like two separate things, word and sacrament. The sacrament is the word that you can see and taste, right? This is the word that you're going to digest and take it in for you. Because we're not a group of people just hearing ideas here today.
We're people that want to take in God's word and to be changed by it, for it to be this blood in our veins, our flesh made of Christ's flesh. That's a wonderful thing. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for giving us your word and giving us the sacraments. Thank you. That we can be your people, that you've called us to gather around you. And I pray that as we take this communion in a few moments that we would know that you are for us, that these are not words just ringing in our ears, but they're things that go down into our very being, that are digested in us, that make us who we are in you. Amen.