Death didn’t hold Jesus back and it won’t hold you back from living forever as a Christian.

In Psalm 82 it is apparent that Asaph, the writer, was tired of the oppression of the righteous and the helpless. So he cried out to God.

I’m with Asaph. I’m tired of the thousands, millions of people who are oppressed by cruel governments especially those leaders hostile to Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, along with Asaph, I cry out to the God of the universe, who created it all. All power and authority has been given to His Son, Jesus. Dear God, help my persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ overcome TODAY and bring revival to their countries. I pray that the prosperity in these countries would end up in the hands of all the humble servants of Christ. Heavenly Father, use this prosperity to help them lead their countries and cause the Gospel to spread like wildfire! I know, dear God, that it’s your will that none should perish! And with You, especially, pertaining to the Gospel…Nothing shall be impossible!

Psalm 82 ~

God gave Joshua and the Israeli military the  town of Ai. So, after all the bloody fighting, Joshua made an alter to God and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings. Then he read to all of Israel, in order to remind them to follow God, the blessings and cursings that Moses has told them about previously.

Those blessings and cursings can be found in Deuteronomy 28. Joshua was carefully reminding God’s people to follow Him after they had just completed a great victory in Ai.

When God blesses our lives in a big way and we have exciting victory we must NOT forget God. We must not become arrogant but always humble ourselves before the Almighty, who is our provider in all that we have.

Joshua 8~

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal.³¹ He followed the commands that Moses the Lord’s servant had written in the Book of Instruction: “Make me an altar from stones that are uncut and have not been shaped with iron tools.”^[a] Then on the altar they presented burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord. ³² And as the Israelites watched, Joshua copied onto the stones of the altar^[b] the instructions Moses had given them.

³³ Then all the Israelites—foreigners and native-born alike—along with the elders, officers, and judges, were divided into two groups. One group stood in front of Mount Gerizim, the other in front of Mount Ebal. Each group faced the other, and between them stood the Levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant. This was all done according to the commands that Moses, the servant of the Lord, had previously given for blessing the people of Israel.

³⁴ Joshua then read to them all the blessings and curses Moses had written in the Book of Instruction.³⁵ Every word of every command that Moses had ever given was read to the entire assembly of Israel, including the women and children and the foreigners who lived among them.

Deuteronomy 28~

1 “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. ² You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God:

⁷ “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!

⁸ “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

⁹ “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do.¹⁰ Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.

¹¹ “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. ¹² The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. ¹³ If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. ¹⁴ You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

¹⁵ “But if you refuse to listen to the Lordyour God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:

²⁰ “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. ²¹ The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. ²² The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. ²³ The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. ²⁴ The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.

²⁵ “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.

²⁷ “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. ²⁸ The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. ²⁹ You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.

³⁰ “You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. ³¹ Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you. ³² You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them.³³ A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment. ³⁴ You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you.³⁵ The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.

³⁶ “The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone!³⁷ You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you.

³⁸ “You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops.³⁹ You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. ⁴⁰ You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. ⁴¹ You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity.⁴² Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.

⁴³ “The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker.⁴⁴ They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!

⁴⁵ “If you refuse to listen to the Lordyour God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed. ⁴⁶ These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever. ⁴⁷ If you do not serve the Lordyour God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, ⁴⁸ you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.

⁴⁹ “The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, ⁵⁰ a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young.⁵¹ Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death. ⁵² They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lordyour God has given you.

⁵³ “The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you. ⁵⁴ The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. ⁵⁵ He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. ⁵⁶ The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter.⁵⁷ She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.

⁵⁸ “If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God,⁵⁹ then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick. ⁶⁰ He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. ⁶¹ The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed. ⁶² Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God.

⁶³ “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. ⁶⁴ For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! ⁶⁵ There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lordwill cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. ⁶⁶ Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. ⁶⁸ Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”

Joshua was a mighty military leader. He carefully obeyed orders given to him by God. He put into action and had the mindset to be strong and courageous with God. His men trusted him.

Israel had to attack Ai. Joshua chose 30,000 of his best soldiers and proceeded to take the town of Ai. They did an ambush. They bluffed out the men of Ai by pretending to fearfully run from their army. Meanwhile, Israelite soldiers waited until all the men left the town chasing after the ‘fleeing’ army of Israel and then the Israelites conquered the vulnerable town and burned it. After that, the Israelites went after the Ai men who had just seen their town burning up and attacked them from both sides and killed them all except for the king who they they impaled on a pole outside the town gate.

Joshua was a man’s man who followed God fully. He was a powerful commander for Israel. He was trained by Moses always put God first even when God gave him difficult orders.

Joshua 8 ~

8 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid or discouraged. Take all your fighting men and attack Ai, for I have given you the king of Ai, his people, his town, and his land. ² You will destroy them as you destroyed Jericho and its king. But this time you may keep the plunder and the livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the town.”

³ So Joshua and all the fighting men set out to attack Ai. Joshua chose 30,000 of his best warriors and sent them out at night ⁴ with these orders: “Hide in ambush close behind the town and be ready for action. ⁵ When our main army attacks, the men of Ai will come out to fight as they did before, and we will run away from them. ⁶ We will let them chase us until we have drawn them away from the town. For they will say, ‘The Israelites are running away from us as they did before.’ Then, while we are running from them, ⁷ you will jump up from your ambush and take possession of the town, for the Lord your God will give it to you. ⁸ Set the town on fire, as the Lord has commanded. You have your orders.”

⁹ So they left and went to the place of ambush between Bethel and the west side of Ai. But Joshua remained among the people in the camp that night.¹⁰ Early the next morning Joshua roused his men and started toward Ai, accompanied by the elders of Israel.¹¹ All the fighting men who were with Joshua marched in front of the town and camped on the north side of Ai, with a valley between them and the town. ¹² That night Joshua sent about 5,000 men to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the town. ¹³ So they stationed the main army north of the town and the ambush west of the town. Joshua himself spent that night in the valley.

¹⁴ When the king of Ai saw the Israelites across the valley, he and all his army hurried out early in the morning and attacked the Israelites at a place overlooking the Jordan Valley.^[a] But he didn’t realize there was an ambush behind the town. ¹⁵ Joshua and the Israelite army fled toward the wilderness as though they were badly beaten. ¹⁶ Then all the men in the town were called out to chase after them. In this way, they were lured away from the town. ¹⁷ There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel^[b] who did not chase after the Israelites, and the town was left wide open.

¹⁸ Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Point the spear in your hand toward Ai, for I will hand the town over to you.” Joshua did as he was commanded. ¹⁹ As soon as Joshua gave this signal, all the men in ambush jumped up from their position and poured into the town. They quickly captured it and set it on fire.

²⁰ When the men of Ai looked behind them, smoke from the town was filling the sky, and they had nowhere to go. For the Israelites who had fled in the direction of the wilderness now turned on their pursuers. ²¹ When Joshua and all the other Israelites saw that the ambush had succeeded and that smoke was rising from the town, they turned and attacked the men of Ai.²² Meanwhile, the Israelites who were inside the town came out and attacked the enemy from the rear. So the men of Ai were caught in the middle, with Israelite fighters on both sides. Israel attacked them, and not a single person survived or escaped. ²³ Only the king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.

²⁴ When the Israelite army finished chasing and killing all the men of Ai in the open fields, they went back and finished off everyone inside. ²⁵ So the entire population of Ai, including men and women, was wiped out that day—12,000 in all. ²⁶ For Joshua kept holding out his spear until everyone who had lived in Ai was completely destroyed.^{[c] 27} Only the livestock and the treasures of the town were not destroyed, for the Israelites kept these as plunder for themselves, as the Lordhad commanded Joshua. ²⁸ So Joshua burned the town of Ai,^[d] and it became a permanent mound of ruins, desolate to this very day.

²⁹ Joshua impaled the king of Ai on a sharpened pole and left him there until evening. At sunset the Israelites took down the body, as Joshua commanded, and threw it in front of the town gate. They piled a great heap of stones over him that can still be seen today.

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal.