Restoration & Victory | Will Hawk | Oct 12, 2025

We trace Joshua’s return to Ai and the surprising grace of second chances, where God repeats old promises, calls us back to hard places, and turns past failure into future wisdom. Pride falls, generosity reorders the heart, and confession opens the door to mercy.

• second chances rooted in God’s unchanging promise
• returning to the place of loss with humility
• the “only” that reveals seek first then receive
• generosity as a disposition not an amount
• how God leverages failure for future success
• the ambush at Ai as redeemed strategy
• confessing and forsaking instead of hiding
• practical steps to revisit but not live in the past

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Chapters

• 0:00 Scripture Reading: Joshua 8:1–6
• 3:15 Setting The Theme: Second Chances
• 7:56 How Do You Recover From Loss?
• 13:06 God’s Reminder: Do Not Fear
• 17:26 Visiting, Not Living In, The Past
• 23:16 Old Promise, New Obedience
• 28:16 Seek God First, Then Everything Else
• 33:46 Generosity As Disposition, Not Amount
• 41:46 The Ambush: Strategy Redeems Failure

Transcript

Nora Radford: 0:47

Good morning. My name is Nora. Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua 8, 1 through 6, which is on page 183 in the Pew Bibles, and follow along as I read God's Word. Actually, first, I'm going to say again, my name's Nora. If you have ever filled out one of these cards and gotten a text, that's from me. So if you ever have questions, you can fill them out here or you can text me at 812 Midtree, and I'm just letting you know I'm the lady who gets those and responds to you. Okay. Joshua 8. And the Lord said to Joshua, Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and arise. Go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land, and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves, lay an ambush against the city behind it. So Joshua and all the fighting men arose to go up to Ai, and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them out by night. And he commanded them, Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city behind it. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you remain ready, and I and all the people who are with me will approach the city, and when they come out against us just as before, we shall flee before them, and they will come out after us until we have drawn them away from the city, for they will say, They are fleeing from us just as before. So we will flee before them. This is the word of the Lord.

Will Hawk: 2:27

Amen. Thank you, Norm, much appreciated. What's up, guys? Y'all doing well? All right, out of curiosity, hands up. Who was up late last night? All right, hands that oh goodness, I got my word cut out for me. All right, uh, did we run out of coffee or were we good? Did y'all get it? All right. Uh, by show of hands, out of curiosity, how many of you guys got caught in traffic for a hot minute on your way here? And you felt, okay. Do you do you don't have to answer this out loud? I don't even know how you would. Um, but do you navigate like feelings of anxiety if you walk through those doors a few minutes late? Do you feel like I'm a better Christian than this? Don't judge me for this. It wasn't my fault. There was construction. Okay, I'm just wondering how that all pans out. Well, guys, we have an awesome text to look at this morning in Joshua chapter eight. Not only do we get to learn that God is unknowable, and yet we get to know things about him. Not only do we get to know God in a way that I think is profound for people like us, and you will see why in just a moment. Um, but there's also a battle. And as a guy who loves history and military strategy, we get just like a fun little subset of God's people executing military strategy, which I really like. But ladies, don't worry, it isn't all gonna be, I shouldn't say that. Some of y'all might be really into it, and you're like, tell me about how they flanked from the south. I need more. I don't know. I'm leaning into gender stereotypes that may not exist. Okay, so here's uh where we are in Joshua chapter eight. Feel free to flip there. But I do want to start us with one question. By the way, this is gonna be something you're gonna need a partner for, but I'm gonna move quick. So uh, if you came with somebody and makes it easy, just look, pick your partner, let them know you're sitting next to them. You are my partner right now. My question is going to be this I'm gonna give you a list of people. I want you to tell me what they all have in common. Important for me to say there are more people than the ones I'm gonna list who would have this in common in Scripture, but uh we'll just go ahead and do this together. So your first sort of point on the graph is Jonah. Your second is Moses. So start thinking, what do they have in common? What do they have in common? David, you may be thinking Old Testament, you may be thinking they're all men. Well, that just threw some of that out the window. All right, so we're covering Old and New Testament. In come the ladies into this. All right, so let me just finish out the list. I'm gonna get you to eight. What do all of these people have in common? Come up with one or two things, maybe. Is this a hard question out of curiosity? Are y'all like, man, it's early, Will? Okay, I'll give you a huge hint. Huge hint, and there's your huge hint. What do they all have in common? Does anybody want to shout out their best guess? Okay, they all needed Jesus. This is a hundred percent true. Very good. Gold star, I'm done. I'm done. Sermon over. It's already been better preached than I would be able to. Anybody else want to throw something out?

Smart Kid: 5:34

They're all in the Bible.

Will Hawk: 5:36

They are all in the Bible. Very good. All right. See, y'all acted like y'all were gonna be all worn down and tired today. You're just fine. Anybody else want to throw one out? Okay, restoration. That's a good one. All of these people put something on display really, really beautiful, and that is you cannot read the Bible and not find a God of second chances. You can't do it. So whether you want to look at Jonah being God's prophet, Moses, a murderer, David, adultery, Peter's like, I don't know Jesus, I don't know Jesus, I don't know Jesus. Like it, these are sort of the greatest hits of failures from, by the way, let me get your eyes, people you wouldn't have assumed would fail. Like Jonah's the only dude preaching the gospel, right? Uh, when it when it comes to this. And so you're sort of thinking, God's gonna get the best. If you're only gonna pick one, like get the five-star recruit. Don't go and get the two-star who fumbles onto every seventh snap. But that's who God seems to love picking. Don't take this the wrong way. God loves picking losers. And it's probably why, if you're a Christian, he picked you. So if you walk into church feeling like, man, God is lucky that I am on his team, this is gonna be a rough Sunday for you. All right, brothers, because you are fortunate that God, in his sheer grace, loves humans, people, those created a Mago Day in His own image to say, I'm a God who gives second chances. Now, in the event that you haven't been tracking with us through the book of Joshua, let me give you a 10-second recap. It went really well and then it didn't. Okay? And so we are in chapter eight, and it just didn't go well. There was a guy with a funny name who is under a pile of rocks with all of his children and his family, and they are dead as we are progressing through bonus points at the camp store, if you can remember his name and say it half correct. Aiken. And so Aiken, whose name means, ah, I love you guys. Trouble is buried under a pile of rubble because of his sin. And now when we turn to chapter eight, here is the question that I think we must begin asking ourselves. Oh, that isn't it. Ignore that I said that. The question is this how well do you come back from a loss? It is important to me that those of you I hung out with last night know this was in my notes long before I drove past Tumor's Corner with no toilet paper in my hand. All right. And I'm very proud of those of you I saw tailgating that you came to first service. I'm a little concerned about you. Uh, I feel the need to pep it up a bit. But how well do you recover from a loss? Might I make a recommendation for everybody, real quick? If you would pull out your phones while I'm talking and go to your reminders. I don't know how you how to tell you to do it on a droid, but if you have a droid, you know anyway. All right. Um if if you would pull out your phone and just go to your reminders, I want you to set a reminder, go to your calendar, and I just want you to kind of random swipe or random score scroll on the day. Send this out a few days, and I want you to set a reminder on your phone to ask yourself this question. How well do I recover from a loss? I trust completely in the sovereignty of God. I don't believe in circumstance. I don't feel like this is testing the Lord. I think it is proving that the Lord's word is true day in and day out. I just want you to ask yourself randomly in the days ahead, when you're not expecting it, this question: How well do you recover from a loss? And as you're thinking about it, let me give you a couple of steps. How long does it take for you to recover from a loss? I will tell you that for me, 90% of the time, going to bed at night and waking up in the morning clears up most of my anger, frustration, sadness, or anxiety from a loss. Now, when I say loss, please understand I mean the biggies and I mean the littles. Every loss, every failure, every unexpected bump along the road. Question number one, how long does it take? Number two, do you have a process for recovering from loss? Most of us in school were being taught this even though we didn't realize it. There was a teacher or there was a professor that would give you a test, you would get the grade, and then that was it. But then there was another teacher or another professor who would give you a chance to make up some credit for the answers that you got wrong. We really appreciated that. I think most of us did. And in that, we were being taught something about recovering from a loss. And that is, you may have to visit it sometimes more than you want to. What is your process? Do your losses linger with you? If I if going to bed at night and waking up and seeing God's mercy new every day doesn't jar me, can I tell you what does? Hanging out with you guys on a Sunday. Uh Sunday mornings reset my soul in a way that almost nothing else does. So if I could hop into a teaching moment real quick, I would tell you this. If you struggle to recover from losses, but you do not regularly attend church, that would be one of the first things that I would change dramatically in your life. For you to surround yourself with people who are singing things that may be words that are tough for you to say in the moment, but you can say them and or hear them said nonetheless. I would just tell you that has been a gift to me. And then I would say this do some of you move on too quickly? Do some of you just sort of take the God's sovereign bomb and throw it on everything, and you just sort of tut tut and move on instead of allowing yourself to learn from the losing, especially if you didn't commit it. It was just something that happened. What you're gonna see in Joshua chapter eight is this it is difficult to go back to our failures, but sometimes it is absolutely unavoidable. And that's what we see as we turn the page into Joshua chapter eight, verse one. The Lord said to Joshua, do not fear and do not be dismayed. Question, has God said this to Joshua before? Yes, don't forget that. If you guys are wearing one of the Bible memory bracelets, I'm looking at it right now. D N B F. Do not be fearful. He said this to Joshua in chapter one. So is God giving him something new or is he reminding him of something old in this moment? Okay, don't forget that. Don't forget that. The Lord said, Joshua, don't fear. Do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and arise and go up to Ai. I want you to go right back to where you had the problem. I want you to go right back to where the issue was. I have given into your hand the king of AI and his people, his city, his land. You're gonna do to AI and its king just as you did to Jericho and its king, only it spoil its livestock, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. So lay an ambush against the city, go behind it. I want you to see this. God says, you had a failure, you got your rear end kicked, you ran home with your tail between your legs. I want you to turn around. I want you to go right back there. This is what we call walking toward the mess. This is looking at it and deciding, am I gonna turn my back on it and pretend it didn't happen? Am I gonna bulldog my way through this as though it wasn't a real thing and just get past it? Or can I go right back to the thing that was difficult? And God says, I want you to go right back to where you were. There's nothing enjoyable about this. The past can be a terrible place to live, but sometimes we have to go there. Do you guys remember uh when you would be sitting in class the day or two after a test, and the teacher would walk by and just start handing out the tests on the desk. Do y'all remember this practice? I don't know if y'all are good students or bad students, but I will tell you this. I generally expected an A or a B when that paper hit the desk. And every now and I by the way, I also was not the type that had to have an all A's, but I I generally was like, I'm expecting this to go pretty well. And there were probably three or four times in my life where I distinctly remember that like off-white colored desk and the blue molded plastic chair. I remember the paper hitting and me seeing the letter on top in red ink or the number and immediately going and then checking the corner to see if my name was actually the one that I was so confused. I was like, I don't make these, this is not me. I I think in these kind of moments, all we want to do is cram the paper in the back of our backpack and say, bump this, I'm done with this. And some of us get sad, some of us get angry, some of us are anchoring for a fight, some of us want to scream out, well, if I got this, what did everybody else get? I want to know is this fair? Was it not? Maybe it was a playoff game that you lost, and then your coach said, Get ready, we're about to look at the tape. And you knew you were one of the reasons the team lost. Maybe you lost your temper with your kids, and you knew you needed to go back and apologize. But it just felt so humbling for you to get that grade on your soul and then have to go back to that point of loss. Maybe it was careless words that you had to run and track down. Maybe there was shame pouring out of some poor decision. But looking at back on our previous failures is so difficult and painful that many times we elect not to do it at all. And I just don't want you to miss this. God says, go back to your mistake, go back to your loss. And so, yes, it is a terrible place to live, but it is a very necessary place to visit. And all of us will be forced to do it at some time. There, there is not a world where I do not get a phone call from an unknown number and not immediately wonder if it's the hospital and if something has happened to my dad because of his life decisions. I can, it is a terrible place to live, but I do have to visit from time to time. Some of you may have had sin in your life that has been forgiven, but the consequences linger on. And it just feels like it keeps coming up. Maybe someone has sinned against you and you have forgiven them. And you just can't get away from it. I can tell you what's gonna happen in about a month. What's gonna happen is you're gonna hang out with family for Thanksgiving and Christmas that you don't have to see. Kids and time and where they're going to go and who they're going to be with, who's gonna sit at some place in the table. And you can right now start thinking about frustrating, broken things in your family. And you can know, well, it's a terrible place for me to live. I don't want to go there, yes. But Joshua 8 would tell you we serve a God who always gives second chances, and we serve a God who is gonna make it necessary for you to at least visit those places. But there is something that you must understand about Jesus as well. The cross behind me is a symbol of the death of Jesus on the behalf of all of us who needed a second chance. But the shape of a cross never stops shaking me. Because what I often think about when I look at this, I think about what it must have been like for Christ to hang on one. I think about the logistics and I think about the pain. I think about what my sin cost to pierce and crush him. But when I see a cross, I also realize this. My life was going in a direction and it never would have stopped going in that direction if Christ had not interceded and given me a new way. When I look at the horizontal beam on the cross, all uh what I see is my life and what would have happened and where it would have gone. And then God sends his son to intercede to step into that life. And now all of a sudden, there is this upward opportunity that Christ has offered and offered. And where does that come? In the places a lot of times that we don't want to live, but we are often gonna have to visit. So may I teach you a couple of things about the God who gives second chances? The first is this you do not need new promises for your second chance. You do not need a new promise for your second chance. Verse two, you're gonna go and do to Ai and to its king as you did to Jericho. I want you to go and do there what you have already done here. I'm telling you now the very same thing that I had told you then. Joshua and Israel may be in the midst of a second chance, but God does not give them a version two. He basically says, Hey, I'm giving you a second chance to do what I said to do the first time. And as believers, it would be important for us to remember this. I want you to go and realize it's not that you need something new from me. You need to do something new in you in this second chance that I am offering you. In other words, God is not saying I'm giving you a second chance to try something new. He's saying I'm giving you a second chance to do what I said the first time. I don't need to change, God would say. You need to change. I'll put this on display for you out of this really great Psalm, Psalm 102. Speaking of God, it says, Of old, you laid the foundations of the earth. Everything that you see, that you touch, the manner of life that you are in, whether things are good, things are bad, where you are in your timeline, the season of life that you are in, your most recent loss and your upcoming victory, and then reverse it. Your most recent victory and your upcoming loss. God is sovereign over all of it. He laid the foundation, but notice the difference. The heavens are the work of his hands. They, the things of this world, are gonna perish. They are gonna wear out. But God will remain. He is the same, his years have no end. This is one of the one of the greatest things about second chances that God gives. He expects you to wear out, he expects you to make really dumb decisions, decisions that lead to perishing, whether it's the perishing of a dream, perishing of a relationship, perishing of a life. But notice who our God is. He remains, he is the same from the very first day which he created until the last when he calls all believers home and he wraps this up. God does not need to change. We do. And one of the things that I think God would have us notice is if you are paying attention, apologies, I got more marks in school for handwriting and for talking too much than anything else. And y'all can probably appreciate both. Arrogance keeps losing in Joshua. It just keeps losing. Jericho, the people in it. Our walls are gonna hold. No, they're not. Achan, nobody's gonna know if I take a little bit. Yes, they will. Israel, we only need 3,000 people to take this army. No, you don't. AI, the folks that Israel is going against, looking at Israel and the pages ahead. We're gonna defeat them just like we did last time. Well, let's see how that goes for you. Guys, arrogance never wins with the Lord. Arrogance and pride always, always, always lose. So just a little note be on the humble side. This is the Heavenly Father gently but firmly repeating his first instruction, hoping this time that a lesson well learned through pain of defeat and disappointment will yield a different result. Have any of you guys ever coached a kid's team for anything? I've coached soccer, I've coached tennis, I've let me just can I just see who my coaches are? Okay. What do you do when the kids keep making the same mistake? You're offsides. You're always offsides. How do you not know what offsides is yet? Okay. Hey, buddy, you gotta choke up on the bat. Every time you walk in the batter's box, I say the same thing to you. If you're gonna catch a pop-up, you gotta get under it. You can't reach out to find the whole thing. All right. If you want to increase your running time, you can't just run with us after school. You have to wake up in the morning. Eventually, you get to a point where you look at the student, you look at the kid, and you're like, I have nothing new to say to you. I have nothing new to give. All I can do is repeat the same thing I've been telling you. Your kids, oh my goodness. My mm-hmm. My oven doesn't work. My oven doesn't work right now. Do you want to know why? Because somebody turned on the oven, and whenever they turn on the oven, we're like, set a reminder, do the thing, blah, blah, blah. Because our oven is old and it doesn't beep at us and be like, I'm preheated. Doesn't do that. And so one of my kids who shall remain nameless and still dealing with it, left the oven on all night long. I don't even know what the bill's gonna look like. I found it the next day because the element had burned out and charred out the inside of the oven. I so I do you know how many times we have told our kids, don't walk away from the oven if you're used. And how hard is it? Like you put food in there because you were hungry. You came back to get food out. Like you're standing right there. Just turn it off. So now we have a new rule in our house, but that's neither here nor there. My point is if you have been a parent, what does it matter anyway? How many rules do you have? They keep breaking them. This is my point. Why does God keep giving us second chances? We keep making mistakes. But in this, do you realize what God is doing? Parents, you can so relate to this. He's still just saying the same thing. It's the same thing. So if you find yourself in a season of losing and you're like, you know what? I need a new quiet time plan. I need to memorize this different verse. I need this new, no, you don't. Okay? I'm not telling you to not read your Bible, not telling you not to get accountability. What I'm telling you is God didn't need to change, you need to change. You're the kid who is always off sides. You need to be the one who pays attention. This is not on God. And the text goes on. It's my favorite part, by the way. I blocked it out because to me, this is one of the greatest reveals in maybe the Old Testament. And it just lights my soul up, this little thing that I've got covered up at the bottom. Lord said to Joshua, don't fear, don't be dismayed. I've told you this before. I'm telling you again, take all the fighting men with you, not the ones you thought you needed. Take them all, because I'm telling you how to win this thing. Go back to the place that you lost. Don't ignore it, don't circumvent it, don't just push right through it. You go right back to where you lost. Do you see this, son? I've already given it into your hands. Exact same words he said about Jericho. And you shall do to AI and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. You ready for this? Only. This is a great word in the Bible. It's a great word in the Bible. This is God saying, I'm telling you to do the same thing. But if you will do it this time, the result is going to be different. And this is a wonderful gift. Hey, son, daughter, I promise you, if you will just choke up when you step into the box, if you will wake up at six and go running, if you will pay attention to the defense, if you will set a reminder to turn off the oven, I'm telling you, the result is going to change. And boy, does it ever only it's spoil and it's livestock, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. I'm just gonna leave this out. I just want you to look at the words that follow only. Because these are some of my favorite words in the whole book of Joshua. All right, just look at them for a minute. If you don't see it, that's okay. It's my job, right? But some of you may see it. Do you know what Scripture just revealed? Do you have any idea what Scripture just revealed in these 11 or so words? I'm not counting them, I'm shooting from the hip on that. In chapter 6, when they go to Jericho, here is what God says. The city, all that's within it shall be devoted to me. Give it to me. But now, verse uh chapter 8, when they go to I, AI, only take plunder for yourselves. Something dramatic has changed. Do you realize what just happened? We have a dead guy. We have a man with his children under a pile of rocks because he wanted three things. Do you remember what they were? Give me one of them. Gold, silver, and a beautiful quote from Shannor. That's right. That's my job. If Aiken lean in. If Aiken had waited, he would have gotten everything he wanted. He wouldn't be dead right now. Thirty-six men wouldn't be dead. Thirty-six women wouldn't be widowed. Children would not be without a dad. Kids would not be under a pile of rocks. If he would have waited a chapter and a half. Do you see this? God says, I just want you to give to me first. Does God need gold? Does God need He created it? He's like, here's what it's gonna look like. Here's here are gonna be its chemical properties. God doesn't need gold, He doesn't need silver, He doesn't need money, He doesn't need any of those things. So what on earth is happening in Joshua 6 that all of a sudden changes in Joshua 8? God is saying to us, one of the verses many of us memorized as kids. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these things, all these things, gold, silver, beautiful cloaks from the land of Shannar, which makes this feel like an Aladdin sermon, if I'm quite honest. Uh here's a whole new world, if you would have only here. What God's saying is, can you just seek me first? Can I be the first thought when your head comes off the pillow? Can I be the first thing when uh when a dollar hits your account? When you have an extra hour in your schedule, can I just have the first five minutes of it? Because here is the deal. I want to give you everything, but I can't give you anything if all you want is things. It'll only wreck you. But if you would come after me, if you would seek me first, all of a sudden everything would have changed. If Achan would have sought God first, he'd be alive. His kids would be alive, women would have their husbands, children would have their dads, and he still would have had the gold, he still would have had the silver. In fact, there's a chance he would have gotten even more than the paltry things he went after. Seek God first. Many of our failures come because we do not. Many of our losses come because we seek ourselves before we seek the Lord. And tucked into this is also just one very important thing for you to know. Biblically, comfort and security flow from generosity, not the other way around. I have this up on the screen because this is how most of us think about generosity. If I accumulate a little bit of wealth, if I accumulate a little bit of security, then I will be able to be more generous. I'm not going to do this by show of hands. I just know most of us think this way. Most of us think this way because what we want to do is we want to be generous with our money. We want to be generous with our time. We want to be generous with our energy once we hit a period or a point of margin. That's what we want to do. I just need you to understand this is the thought of a human. This is not the thought of God. God's thought would look like this. Generosity leads towards wealth and security, not the other way around. Can I teach you why this is? It's because generosity is a disposition, it isn't an amount. Generosity is a reality of the heart. And we immediately think about money. You don't have to just think about money here. Think about your time, think about your energy, think about your service, think about anything like that. Most of us think about generosity in an amount type thing. How much do I give? How much time do I have? How much energy do I have? Am I a little bit tired? That's the wrong thought. That's why Jesus can walk into the temple and see a widow put in two small copper coins and say, She gave more than anybody else. No, she didn't. No, she didn't. Jesus, did you not just watch all of the wealthy people walk in clank ity clank ity clank? Like they loaded that puppy down. No. Jesus, you're you're missing it. What's going on? But Christ doesn't see generosity as a position. What's in your bank account, what what your uh IRA looks like, or what your crypto wallet is looking like from day to day. That's not generosity is a disposition. Your wealth and security is a position. Your house, where you live, what you have, your asset, your portfolio, whatever you want to be. It's the difference in a position and a disposition. And if you are waiting to be in a financial, emotional, mental, energetic time margin to be generous, you have missed Jesus' teaching completely on generosity. Generosity is about having this disposition that when I work at Subway, this was my first, well, my second job, but it was the real one, like where it had a business name on the top and not just people writing checks for babysitting and stuff like that. When I got my check from Subway at 15 years old, that was when I was like, okay, I have just made $75. What am I gonna do with all this money? Well, $7.50 goes to the church. Now, is it is it was I giving less to the Lord when I was a teenager? Now, I'll be honest with you, I think my disposition was easier. I was just like, this is what God calls me to do, so I'll do it. But why would I point to this? Because it cost a man his life. It makes a difference when we see generosity as a position rather than a disposition. One of the greatest things that will make the greatest change in your life is this simple reality. If we would seek God first, I promise you he will take care of everything else. And it does just make life so much simpler. Now look, uh, we're gonna hop into military strategy in just a minute. But what I want to tell you is in in Joshua chapter 8, if you look at verses 1 through 9 or 10, Joshua is told by God what to do. And then the verses that follow 10 through about 17, he does them. I'm not skipping scripture because I don't want to preach a piece of it. I'm just going to jump ahead to verse 10, where you see what God tells them to do. If you want to hear God tell them to do it, you need to look at verses one through nine. So God says, Hey, I want you to go back to the place of your loss. I want you to lick your wounds. I don't want you to just push right through it. I want you to visit this place. You're not going to live there forever, but I want you to go back to the place where you lost. So Joshua arose early in the morning and he mustered the people and went up. He and the elders of Israel before the people of Ai. Okay, God, you want me to go back and do questions on the test that I failed? I'll do it. You want me to rewrite the essay? I'll do it. You want me to go apologize to the kid that I lost my temper with? I'll do it. You want me to go coach the team by saying the same thing I've said a hundred times? Fine, I'll do it. So they do. He took about 5,000 men and he sent them in an ambush between Bethel and Ai to the west of the city. So they stationed the forces, the main encampment that was north of the city and its rear guard west of the city. But Joshua spent that night in the valley. And as soon as the king of Ai saw this, he and all his people, the men of the city, hurried and they went out early to the appointed place toward the Arabah to meet Israel in the battle. But he did not know that there was an ambush against him from behind the city. I'm going to just pause right there for a minute. Let me give you a visual. Here is AI. City gates are right here. They've already kicked Israel's tail once. So when they see him come back again, they're like, let's go get another W. Let's take some of their stuff. So Israel begins coming up with the vast majority of their force, 25,000 people. They start coming this way, and maybe they're making a ruckus and they're making a lot of noise. And all of a sudden, AI looks out and they're setting up for battle. So they're like, pick it up, guys, grab your stuff. Let's go get another dub. And they walk out of the city this way. What they don't know is that Joshua, through the leading of the Lord, said, I want 5,000 of you to sneak around back, and I want you hiding in the woods in the valley on this side. This is just great military strategy. Make your army look a little bit smaller than it actually is, draw them away and divert them. And so here is what happens next. They look and they see this massive army. So they walk out of the city with their army. Uh non-fighting males, women, everybody else is still in the city. They're standing here. And here's what happens. And Joshua and all Israel, I love this so much, pretended to be beaten before them and fled. How do you coach this? This is what I want to know. How do you tell a bunch of men, all right, guys, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go back and we're gonna act like we're losing. All right. This is very different in a soccer game than it is in a battle. How do you act like you're losing in a battle? Oh no, you cut off my arm. Like, how do you fake this? Like, do you realize the amount of sacrifice that it took for Joshua to say, I want you to go fight, but not that good. Joshua, if we don't fight that good, they're gonna be bodies on the floor. Yeah. Okay. I mean, when we walked around a city, it worked for us, so why don't we do this as well? So they walk, and somehow the whole army, without it looking staged, is like fighting but withdrawing, fighting but taking hits. And what happens is this army begins pushing them and pushing them and pushing them, and they start getting amped. They're like, oh, we're gonna do it again. We're gonna take them out. Verse 16. So all the people who were in the city were called together to pursue them. This would happen frequently. When you have people on the run, you finish them off. You don't let them go and recoup, you don't let them go and make an alliance, you don't let them bandage their wounds and come up with a different military strategy. So the commanders of AI, they look back and they're like, everybody out now. We are finishing this thing off. And so everybody poured 12,000 people lived there, by the way. So all these people pour out and they are running as Israel is feigning a loss. All the people, verse 16, who were in the city were called together to pursue them, and as they pursued Joshua, they were drawn away from the city. Not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. They left this city open and they pursued Israel. Now, before I tell you what happened next, please remember this. Joshua knew what Ai was going to think. He said, if we do this, this is what they are gonna say. They are fleeing from us just as before. All right, now why does that matter? Is it good military strategy? Absolutely. Is it a fun read in the Old Testament? To me, it is. But what does it mean if you live in 2025? What does military strategy from Israel to AI mean in 2025? What it means is this God uses previous failure to leverage future success. And if you do not realize that, your faith is going to be anemic. There is an argument to make that God allowed them to lose. He allowed them the privilege of being a stupid little kid running around making bad decisions because God can not only give them the victory when they're obedient, he can use their disobedience to leverage a future success. And as parents, we have been doing that all the time. You see it as a teachable moment. Hey, I'm not angry. I'm not yelling. That's not true. I am angry, I'm not yelling. That's how it works for me. We have talked about the oven quite a few times here, uh, kids. Dad's gonna have to repair it, and y'all have been breaking other stuff in the midst as well. So I'm a little frustrated about the list that has accumulated. But here's the reality: I'm not about to yell at you. Can I just say this? I don't have something new to give you. But the stuff that I gave you before, it really will work. If you'll remember what I told you when you were 10, now that you're 16, and and dating, if you will remember what I told you when you were nine, when you were 23, if you will remember these same truths that I have told you time and time again, it will only change your life completely. But son, I want you to know this. Daughter, I want you to know this. Every one of your failures, every one of your mistakes, God, if you will allow it, will intervene, and he will not just erase your mistake, he will leverage it for tomorrow's victory. And this is what Joshua knew about God. He didn't see their loss as a loss, he saw their loss as an opportunity. If you generally win at life, I am happy for you, and you will generally be happy, but you will never learn as much as people who lose. If you only take the shots you know you're going to make, and you only see the opportunities in which there is no risk, if you never evangelize because it's too much of a stretch, if you never stretch yourself to girls, I can't, I I love you, I love you, I love you. And if people didn't clap, I was gonna pause like mid-sermon and make sure it happens. The majority of people at our church that are leading in leadership positions started when they were 12, 13, and 14 years old. But do you know what happens when you are 14 and 15 and you try to do big things? You fail all the time. Do you know what happens when you in your 20s, 30s, 40s, try to do something that just feels too big, you fail. Christian, you are in a unique worldview position. Other religions do not have this because they don't know this about God. He wants you to fail, he doesn't want you to sin. He wants you to fail because you will become more like Christ through your failures if you will visit them without living in them, if you will visit them without ignoring them, if you will visit them instead of just bull rushing through them, if you will just occasionally visit your failures, you will grow so much more into the image of Christ. And Joshua is the kind of leader who knew this from the drop. They are going to say this, Proverbs 28. Whoever conceals his transgressions, whoever hides, this is saying, whoever hides his failures will not prosper. If you are new to the church, if you are new to mid tri, if you are new to Christianity, you've got to hear me on this. We talk about our failures all the time. We talk more about our failures than we talk about our successes. Because in our failures, Christ shines through. In your successes, you look really good and you seem really happy. But whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Stokesy, if you want to go ahead and come up, please do. The past is able to inform you without imprisoning you, especially if you'll accept your previous failures and the ones that grace has covered rather than hiding them. This is what Jesus came to address. And in the event that you miss this, we confess once. Jesus, I can't do life. You may be thinking, well, I do that all the time. Yeah, okay, I hope you do. What I'm saying is, there was this one moment, if you were a Christian, where you confessed your transgressions. You stopped hiding them, you realized you were on this kind of a road and you needed Christ to intersect it. We confess and then we forsake them over and over and over and over. Choose this day to allow your failures to shine out. Choose this day to go back to the places of loss. Because some of you guys lost something 10 years ago and you've ignored it, and you have lacked growth as a result of it. Conversation that needs to be had, an apology that needs to be given, forgiveness that needs to be received, or forgiveness that needs to be given. Whoever conceals his failures will not prosper. But the one who confesses, the one who confesses and forsakes them, that is the one who receives mercy. And then do you know what Joshua does? He holds up this javelin at the end of the battle. And all these people rush out, and because they learn from their failure, the guys who are hiding come in, and the city falls just like Jericho. It's a really neat thing that we serve a God who gives the blessings of a first chance win to your second and your third chance try. Some of us have blessings that are just waiting, but you need to go back and visit your failure. So, what would God call us to respond to and reflect on today? I'll put those questions up and Stokes will lead us in worship. If you want to receive prayer, a couple of us will be. Larry, you're gonna get that side. I'm looking at you. Larry, I'll get that side, I'll be on this side. If you want to talk, if you want to pray, if there's anything that we can do to serve you, we want to. But let's be a kind of people who can visit our losses because our God loves to give second chances. It's kind of what he's known for. Let's seek him together.