A Little Joshua Today

Today I want to look into chapters 7 & 8 of Joshua. I will give just a brief summery here because I do what you to read it as well.
Chapter 7 starts out recognizing the sin of Achan. If you want to know what that sin was before we start dive into Chapter 6 first, but here's the deal. After God lead Joshua in battle against the walled city of Jericho, Joshua was pretty confident that overtaking and defeating the city of Ai was not going to be a problem.
The reason for my writing this is to look at the heart, that is was is emphasized over and over in the scriptures. When they took off to mop up Ai, they didn't know that there was sin in the camp. Just because they didn't know there was sin in the camp didn't prevent them from being run out of town and losing thirty six fighting men in the process.
My point...sin puts us in a position were a victory would be a given with God, but defeat is experience instead.
Back to the event...Joshua realized really quick that they were in deep trouble and that an it was obvious they had to turn to God for the answer, which they did by being extremely sorrowful and waited upon God for the answer.
Have you started reading yet? Hope so...
Now God has them deal with the sin first. It is no different with God today than it was in Joshua's day. When there is an obvious defeat happening in our walk with Christ but we know it is an area of victory in God's plan, we must come to him and wait on him to start the exposing process of the sin.
God tells Joshua how to isolate the sin in the camp and to then go on to victory.
In Chapter 8 something amazing really occurs. Joshua has followed God's instructions for isolating the sin, and getting rid of the sin, but then in the plan for defeating Ai it is noteworthy to see how God uses the past failier as a springboard for the defeating of the city.
When Israel was defeated...Ai had chased them away...sin had taken the heart out of Israel...this time in the defeating of Ai God instructed Joshua to send troups behind the city and wait while they made a direct assult as they had before. This time as the warriors of Ai attacked the assult and were drawn away from the city, because they were full of courage from defeating Israel before, the went all out after them. Once they were clear of the city the flanking troops came in and burned the city and everybody in Ai was killed.
The point...God can take a past defeat and turn it into a victory by following him His way.
You might say...Dave you could have simply started there and skipped all the story stuff. Well then let's put it in today's terms. Please go to the next article