Javelin
“Then the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Hold out toward Ai the javelin that is in your hand, for into your hand I will deliver the city.’ So Joshua held out toward the city the javelin that was in his hand. 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.”
Today’s Text: Joshua 8:10-23 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
There is an important distinction between what God desires to happen and what God knows will happen. From the beginning of time, God desired and ordained that humanity would live in perfect fellowship with Him, yet He knew that our fellowship with Him would be broken and corrupted by disobedience.
The things that God knows will happen is not always what God desires and ordains. If everything happened exactly as God desired it to happen, we would all be nothing more than flesh-and-blood AI bots doing the will of the Master Designer (ala, “Matrix”).
I do not believe that it was God’s “desire” to kill the people of Ai (no pun intended), but God ordained Ai to be destroyed, as part of His plan to give the promised land to the Israelites—which itself was a part of His plan to fulfill His covenant promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3), which itself was a part of His plan of salvation for the world in Jesus Christ (John 3:16), which itself is a part His ultimate plan to fill the earth with His glory in Jesus’s name, through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families, the church (Genesis 1:1 - Revelation 22:21).
As always, none of us, including myself, are in any position or have any right to make excuses for God’s conduct. But as always, for the sake of witness, it is worth pointing out that the populations of Canaan had become so corrupt that they were beyond redemption (Genesis 15:16).
God did not desire or ordain for them to get to that state, either. That was their choice.
But when I point out that the people of Canaan had become corrupt beyond redemption, that statement is God’s determination, not mine or anyone else’s. And God’s determination is always true.
No human being can make a determination that anyone else, let alone an entire people group, is beyond redemption. Nor can any human being make the determination that any human being is “fixable”—that is, redeemable. The point is, only God knows, and so we are in no position to judge God.
But God’s desire for us (what He has ordained for us) is that we should share the message of redemption in Jesus Christ as an act of His grace upon sinful humanity. We are the messengers, and God alone is the judge.
That javelin in the hand of Joshua is the message of the gospel that is in our hands. Because that javelin is not only a message of salvation, but also a message of God’s judgment.
Any number of people in Ai, or Canaan, could have given their allegiance to God, as Rahab did, and they would have been saved. No one in Ai did.
Is it fair that only God gets to be the judge of His plan of redemption for the world?
Father, Your grace is everything to me and to us. Where would I be if You did not offer to me a message of redemption through a messenger of the gospel—and not just once but again and again. I consider myself blessed and fortunate that I finally got it and believed. Use me as a messenger now. I know there are others out there like me in the past. In Jesus’s name.
