Joshua 8:1–8

Now the LORD said to Joshua: “Do not be afraid, nor 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, 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 cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it.”

So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai; and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. And he commanded them, saying: “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city; and it will come about, when they come out against us as at the first, that we shall flee before them. For they will come out after us till we have drawn them from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing before us as at the first.’ Therefore we will flee before them. Then you shall rise from the ambush and seize the city, for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand. And it will be, when you have taken the city, that you shall set the city on fire. According to the commandment of the LORD you shall do. See, I have commanded you.”

Ai’s previous victory over Israel sets up the perfect trap. The king of Ai thinks they can do it again. Joshua will bait him into drawing his whole army out of the city. That’ll overextend them and make them vulnerable.

The city will be vulnerable too.

It’s perfectly ironic that God allows taking spoils from Ai. If Achan had just been patient and obeyed God’s commands, he could now have the very things he got in trouble for having.

This is the lesson on how to be a grown-up that we hammer into our children—jumping the gun does not work. God’s timing isn’t our timing, and when you fail to wait for God to keep His promises, you fail. It’s a failure of faith.

The classic example of this is when Abraham (the father of faith!) failed to wait for God to deliver on His promise of a son. Abraham’s (and Sarah’s) scheme of having a child through Hagar was one of the biggest blunders in history. It caused nothing but trouble in their household and even more trouble later.

But there’s an even larger lesson in this. That failure, which was a failure of faith, did not disqualify Abraham as the father of faith. His belief in God’s promise still stands.

And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. — Genesis 15:6

We all make mistakes—sometimes big ones. That can trouble us, beyond the direct cost of our blunders. We can wonder what our mistakes mean. Aren’t there some mistakes that Christians must never make?

Yes there are, but that’s limited to cases of blasphemy. Don’t worry about the usual goof-ups.

These Monday—Friday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Weekend DEEPs are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe to all the DEEPs click here:

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.