Gods Sabbath

S UCCESS AND F AILURES

137

must ever remember that until we have handed the problem completely over to Him, God cannot even begin to provide the so lution to it, even though He is ready and waiting to do so. The plan which came from God did not coincide with that made by the two spies which Joshua and the people had accept ed. God’s plan called not for three thousand troops, but the en tire army. It involved an ambush set behind the city while the main force drew out the inhabitants, thus leaving the fortress vulnerable to attack. This time, by believing in God’s power and by following a plan in which there was not one thread of human devising, Israel was entirely successful. (See Joshua 8:1–29.) Once more, Joshua was given a telling lesson on the formula for success or failure. We might therefore expect from that time on ward, he would be secure from any further reversions. Amazingly, this was not so. Only a very short time was to elapse before the next incident in which Israel once more depended on its own wisdom for guidance and consequently again suffered miserable failure. Soon after the fall of Ai, the Gibeonites arrived with the false account of their origin. They tendered worn-out clothing and moldy bread as evidence of the distance they had traveled in or der to enter into league with Israel. (See Joshua 9.) At this request, Joshua and the elders found themselves faced with another problem that needed solving: Was the Gibeonites’ account true or was it a lie? The correct procedure would have been to give the matter in to the great Problem Solver’s hands and await His answer. Aft er all the experiences through which Israel had passed and the consequent lessons they should have learned, we would expect them to have carefully avoided any displacement of God as their Problem Solver. But it was as if they had learned nothing from the past. They promptly reverted to human ways again as the scriptures tell us: “The men of Israel sampled their provisions but did not in quire of the L ORD .” Joshua 9:14. Repeated Failure