Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Looking the Church in the Ai

"I HAVE taken two texts from two successive chapters of the book of Joshua. 
 
The first is from Joshua the seventh, at the third verse. The spies
who were sent to Ai returned to Joshua and said to him, "Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai.
This policy led to a disastrous defeat and our other text gives us the Lord's command concerning the new attack. 
You will find it in the eighth of Joshua and the first verse—"The Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be dismayed: take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to Ai; see, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land." 
 
***The two texts may be condensed into—first, the advice of the spies, to employ only a part of the people in the assault upon Ai—"Let not all the people go up." And, secondly, the command of God to let every fighting man go forth to the war"Take all the people of war with you." 
 
Brethren, like Israel, we are called to war and we have a greater than Joshua at our head, in whose name we conquer!
I. Let us consider THE ADVICE OF THE SPIES which led to such a shameful defeat. 
And here we shall have to deal with the error of supposing that
only a part of the Church will be sufficient to perform the work of the whole—that a large proportion may be idle—and that the rest will be quite enough to fight the Lord's battles
. I feel it to be an error which, though not perhaps theoretically held by any of us, is practically to be seen abroad in our Churches and needs to be met and put to an end.
In Joshua's day this error sprang up among the Israelites because, on account of their sins, God was displeased with them. The commencement of the chapter tells us that the Lord God was angry because the children of Israel had committed a trespass in the accursed thing. Because of the sin of Achan, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people. That was the real reason of their defeat before Ai, but out of that secret cause grew the more manifest source of defeat—because God was displeased with them, they were left to themselves and, therefore, they adopted a fatal policy. 
  
II. In the second place, my text contains THE COMMAND THAT ALL ISRAEL SHOULD GO FORTH TO THE FIGHT. "Take all the men of war with you." 
I will mainly address myself to my Brothers in Christ and what I
have to say to them I say humbly, speaking mainly to myself. Brothers, we must have all our Church members go to the war. The baggage of our army is too heavy. The camp followers are too many. We need to turn out the drones and we need an increase of true working bees. 
Q: How is it to be done? 
A: We must be, ourselves, deeply impressed with the evil brought upon idle Christians by their idleness and the evil which they bring upon the rest of the Church."
Charles Spurgeon