Saints, I thought I would share some of my personal meditations here on SI. I've written them for myself, during quiet times, and that's why there's not much book, chapter and verse numbering cross-references imbeded in them. Many of you should be able to track the inferences anyhow. I pray you'll be blessed. I plan on entering much of these into my Xanga blog for convenient archiving, and the link for this page is found on my SermonIndex profile.
Meditations on Joshua 10:16
"During the battle the five kings escaped and hid in a cave at Makkedah" (Joshua 10:16).
During heated battles and strivings against temptations, the very foes we face will be seen to retreat and hide once the upper hand is gained by the believer through faith. We know they hide themselves, and are never destroyed completely, because of their daily opportunistic nature in battle. A dead enemy does not continue to ambush from day to day. We are trained to wear the full armour of God, every day and until the end of our lives. This simple fact alone tells us there is a very real and present danger, a shrewd and invisible enemy that when not fully engaged on the battlefield, is in hiding, regrouping forces, strategies, tactics, and waiting and lurking for the next opportune time to pounce. As the roaring lion has a den, so wicked temptations also have caves of hiding.
There is a battle every true Christian believer fights, and if he is to build a strong, prosperous tower in Christ, he wil most assuredly encounter the full wrath and meddlesome threats and tactics of a Sanballat. If Sanballat cannot convince a reprieve, there are other ways to distract construction. One way is to incite the flesh, to stir up lusts and assault the conscience. As King Adonizedek incited the five Amorite kings to make war on newly-covenanted Gibeon, so the enemy will incite temptational rulers to arise and attack the consciences of believers who have been ingrafted into the good olive tree by virtue of the New Covenant.
The conscience must be kept pure and abstain from the fleshly lusts once enjoyed during the former, wild days of ignorance. The five kings of carnality can run the gamut of various and insidious lusts that beseige the believer's conscience daily. For many men, one such king is lust, another may be the love of money. We need to understand that uncovenanted Gibeon was, in itself, a great city. The conscience was put in man by God to bear testimony to the law. But, as an uncovenanted wild olive tree, it was also subject to searing and perversion. When King Adonizedek saw that Gibeon covenanted with Joshua, he immediately alerted the kings of Canaan to combine as one force and attack.
But it wasn't long before the five kings caught wind of their impending defeat! We read in the scriptures that God sent a hailstorm from heaven that destroyed more troops than the Israelites could with a sword. Fearing for their lives, the five kings abandoned their troops and hid themselves in a cave at Mekkedah. When God grants us dominion over sin and the strength to abstain from fleshly lusts, we will often experience times of deep peace, but during these times we need to beware, for the kings are not dead; they are merely hidden in recess! They've only escaped; they are not destroyed.
The cave where these kings hid was called Mekkedah, or "The Place of Shepherds" in the Hebrew. Joshua rolled great stones before the mouth of the cave to keep these kings shut out of the land, and as believers, we are to guard our hearts and minds from such kings with the Rock of Offense, Jesus Christ. The kings musn't be allowed to escape and inflct wounds upon the covenanted Gibeonite of our conscience, for such wounds will impede our walks and prayer lives with God. Makkedah is the place of the Shepherd, the place where Christ the Good Shepherd must reign, and it is in His strength that rocks roll and the kings of the world come and go, live and die. The cave of Mekkedah was eventually assigned to the tribe of Judah (Joshua 15), the tribe from which the True Scepter of Righteousness and King of kings arose in the New Testament. The day will come when King Jesus Christ will roll away the stones of time, and as He put His foot on the neck of the Enemy at Calvary, all the kings that have once perverted and surmized and conspired against the holiness of God, and all foes that have purposefully designed to wound and defile the purified conscience of covenanted man will be forcefully driven from their cowardly caves of darkness and into the fearsome light for judgment and execution.
Brother Paul