Victory Through Faith & Obedience

All right, well, good morning to all of you. Good to see everyone. And as has already been mentioned, we are ready for Joshua, the Joshua Series, part five. And we will be in chapters, or the end of chapter five and the whole way through chapter six this morning.

And my kind of a semi-title here is Victory Through Faith and Obedience.

And the story that we're going to be covering here this morning is very well known, probably one of the most popular Bible stories about Joshua and Jericho. And I think a lot of us here grew up as children singing songs about that, hearing sermons about it, and just something that's very well known. And hopefully this morning we can dig out a few things that maybe you haven't thought about and breathe some new life into this.

Victory Through Faith and Obedience.

We are in a time of warfare, spiritual warfare. We have an enemy, and we are called to fight the good fight of faith. The church is an army, and we are soldiers in that army. Jesus is our captain and king, and we are fighting along with him to take back what belongs to him. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and our battles will only be won if we follow certain criteria.

And through our lesson today, we will be looking at four keys to victory that the children of Israel and Joshua learned, and hopefully we can learn in our own lives as well and apply them.

Okay, so just a short review of chapter five, which we were on last time. We remember that Joshua circumcised all the men who were born during the Exodus, and on that day, God removed the reproach of Egypt from the people, and now they were ready to start over with a clean slate.

Circumcision was a sign of the old covenant, a sign of separation unto God. And we who are spiritual Jews are circumcised with a circumcision made without hands through baptism, which is a sign of the new covenant, and through which our sins, our reproach of Egypt, are also washed away.

Also, we looked at how the people celebrated the Passover in the promised land for the first time and ate of the unleavened new wheat of the land for the first time in a long time. The manna from heaven that the people had been eating for 40 years stopped, and the people enjoyed the fruit of the land. We also have a feast of celebration and thanksgiving in remembrance of our deliverance.

In our feast, which we celebrate weekly, we partake of the living bread from heaven, the body of Christ, which he gave for the life of the world, the manna from heaven.

All right, so that's just kind of a short review. So Joshua and the people are now prepared. They have gone through circumcision. They have partaken of the land in a new way. They're ready to start conquering and reclaiming the land, and Jericho is first in line.

So we'll just start reading here in Joshua chapter five, verses 13 through 15. Then it came to pass when Joshua was at Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a sword drawn in his hand. So Joshua came near and said to him, "Are you for us or on the side of our adversaries?"

He said to him, "I am now come, the chief captain of the host of the Lord." Then Joshua fell on his face upon the earth and said to him, "Oh master, what do you command your servant?"

The chief captain of the Lord said to Joshua, "Loose the shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy." Key to victory number one, choose to fight on the right side with the right army.

So Joshua is confronted with this man out of kind of the middle of nowhere here. Joshua, we get the picture that Joshua is out there looking at Jericho. He's coming up with a plan of action. He's trying to figure out how are we going to take this city?

How's this all going to work out? As the leader, he had that responsibility, and he's confronted with this man. And this man had a sword drawn in his hand, so we can probably also assume that he was dressed in this military garb.

So you can picture Joshua also reaching for his sword and asking this man, "Whose side he's on?

Are you fighting for us or for our enemies?" And instead of answering the question, the man tells Joshua who he is. He doesn't answer the question.

Instead, he tells Joshua that he is the chief captain of the army of the Lord. And so in a sense, he turns the question around and makes it clear that Joshua is the one who needs to decide which side he's on and who he's fighting, he's going to fight for or against.

And Joshua chooses the right response instead of being like, "Hey, God put me in charge here. He told me this is my battle." He worships and submits to the authority of this man. And from the way that the man responded when Joshua fell on his face and the fact that he told him to take off his sandals would seem to indicate that this was Jesus pre-incarnate. And it seems like most people would say that he was Michael the Archangel, and we don't have that here for sure, but I've never seen an angel allow somebody to worship them and then tell them to take off their shoes because they're on holy ground. So it would seem like this was Jesus himself coming here.

And but we can, I think, only speculate on that. So make sure that you're fighting the right battles on the right side. That's number one, key to victory. We do have battles to fight, but so often we find ourselves fighting on the wrong side or against the wrong people. We don't want to be fighting for the enemy or fighting each other, and we definitely don't want to be fighting against God. Humility also positions us to be able to fight alongside one another. Show me a proud person, and I'll show you someone who does not know how to fight alongside somebody else. We will never get anywhere if we try to fight alone. There is no place in the army of God for lone warriors.

All right, chapter six, let's move on.

Chapter six, verse one, Jericho was enclosed and fortified, and no one went out of it or into it. Then the Lord said to Joshua, "Behold, I will deliver Jericho into your hand. Its king and its army of soldiers who are mighty.

But place your soldiers around it. And it shall come to pass that when you sound with the trumpet, let all the people shout together, and when they shout, the walls of the city shall fall by themselves, and all the people will enter, each rushing throughout the entire area of the city."

So now we find out why the chief captain of the Lord's army showed up. He showed up for a reason. He came to give Joshua the instructions he needed to conquer Jericho. And to conquer a city like Jericho was no small feat.

Here's a few fun facts about Jericho.

Just kind of an artist rendition of what Jericho could have looked like. I doubt it kind of looked this neat and tidy, but it looks nice at least.

Jericho was known as one of the oldest settlements in the world, one of the oldest inhabited cities. The size of the city was about 430,000 square feet, roughly, what archaeologists have figured out. And that's actually not very big compared to what we think of when we think of cities.

This is roughly the same size as the Philippine Arena, which is the largest indoor arena in the world and seats 55,000 people. That's a big arena. That's a big building. And that's the size of Jericho. So in our mind, we probably pictured Jericho as this huge city. Well, it wasn't much bigger than the largest known arena in the world that we have today, but it's still big.

The walls of the city were approximately 12 feet high and 6 feet wide or thick. And there again, you know most of the pictures you see of Jericho, you have these 30-foot high walls, and we tend to think of it as more of a medieval, maybe kind of a castle or city. They weren't that high. 12 feet high, it's high enough to be formidable, but not anything that it wouldn't take too much to try to go over.

And there could have been then some extra walls inside. I'm not sure about that. Population anywhere from like 1,500 to 3,000 people. So there again, we don't know. That's all speculation. So this might not seem super impressive, but we need to remember that Joshua and the children of Israel didn't necessarily have a well-trained army either or any special kind of equipment to breach a wall this size, not to mention fight the mighty army. That's what God calls them the mighty army that was inside and awaited them on the other side.

So Joshua needed a plan of action, and God's messenger, this captain of the Lord's army, had shown up and handed it to him.

And here it is, plan of action. Step one, you're going to win. How's that for a plan of action?

I will deliver Jericho into your hand. Just gives him a promise right off the start. You're going to win. You're going to take this. I am giving it to you.

Plan of action, step two, place your army around the city. Get this thing surrounded. This is still your battle. You're going to get involved. God's not going to do it all for you.

Plan of action, step three, at the sound of the trumpet.

Everyone's not going to grab their swords and rush up to the wall and try to climb over. You're going to shout.

We're all going to work together. Unity is a powerful weapon, and everyone knows how to shout. Everyone may not know how to handle a sword or a spear or shoot an arrow, but everyone can shout. So pretty simple instructions, actually.

Prepare to win, surround the city, and shout.

Simple instructions, but following these instructions required faith, and they required obedience. Like whoever conquered a city like this, whoever heard of walls coming down because of shouting.

And I don't know what would happen here if we all shouted at the top of our lungs. If we all shouted here as loud as we could, I don't know. I don't know if we get some cracks in the walls.

Probably nothing would happen. It would be extremely loud.

But that was the instructions for Joshua and the people.

All right, verse five. So Joshua, the son of Nun, went to the priests, and he spoke to them saying, "Command the people to go around and surround the city and let the men of war pass on armed before the Lord. Let seven priests holding seven holy trumpets likewise pass by before the Lord and let them signal vigorously and let the ark of the covenant of the Lord follow after them." So we have the ark here again.

We just talked a lot about that, but we have the ark in its place at this point. "Let the men of war go in front and let the priests be the rear guard behind the ark of the covenant of the Lord as they proceed and sound the trumpets." Now Joshua gave a command to the people saying, "Do not shout, nor let anyone hear your voice until the day I myself tell you to shout and then shout." So when the ark of the covenant of God went around the city, it immediately returned into the camp and lodged there. Then on the second day, Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the covenant of the Lord.

Seven priests carried seven trumpets and went on before the Lord. The armed men followed after the rest of the multitude behind the ark of the covenant of the Lord. Then the priests sounded the trumpets, and all the rest of the multitude encircled the city from close by. Then again, went back to the camp.

They did this for six days.

So Joshua follows the commands of the captain and gets this whole procession going around the city. We have the armed men of war. We have the seven priests blowing seven trumpets. We have the ark of the covenant, and we have the rest of the multitude, and they're all in their place. They're all told what to do.

It sounds like everyone was involved, and they did this whole thing for six days in a row, just day after day.

Go out, surround the city. I don't know if they walked around it, go back to camp.

Key to victory number two, follow the instructions.

Even though I'm sure this didn't seem like a typical military plan, Joshua followed the instructions that were given to him. He didn't try to argue or redesign the plan in order to try to make it more sense, make more sense, or to make himself look better somehow. He just did exactly what the Lord told him to do.

And a lot of the time when we're having trouble overcoming sin in our personal lives or gaining ground as a church, it comes down to our refusal or negligence to follow the instructions and commands that have been handed out from Christ and the apostles, the faith once delivered.

We try to come up with our own battle plan or adopt a more popular plan, and then we wonder, "Why aren't we succeeding? Why isn't this working? Why am I defeated? Why is the church falling apart? Why are people leaving?

Why isn't the battle being won?"

When Jesus gave the sermon on the mount and he told us how to love our enemies and how to deal with lust and how to lay up treasures in heaven and when we're told to be content and to be thankful and to not complain and not to be anxious and to esteem others better than ourselves and to not neglect getting together, these are not merely suggestions or options for us if we want to be a little more spiritual than everyone else, somehow step up our spiritual game. They are the way to life and success and victory.

They are the only battle plan that works.

Verse 14, on the seventh day, they rose early in the morning and went around the city six times. Then it came to pass that as they marched around the seventh time, the priests blew the trumpets, and Joshua said to the sons of Israel, "Shout, for indeed the Lord has handed over the city to you."

What is significant about the number seven?

Or is it just coincidental that there are seven priests blowing seven trumpets and everyone is told to march around the city seven days, and on the seventh day, they go around Jericho seven times?

It's a lot of sevens. And it's not only in this chapter in Joshua. The number seven is mentioned around 380 times in the Old Testament and another 88 times in the New Testament, with 56 of those being in the book of the Revelation alone. So it's hard to overlook. It's hard to just think, "Well, this is a normal number that coincidentally was used." After all, God finished the work of creation on the seventh day, and then he blessed and sanctified that day as well.

There's a lot that could be said about the number seven and its meanings and the times that it was used, but I've decided not to go there, although it would make an interesting study someday. But one parallel that I will mention is found in the book of Revelation, because I think this is a really neat parallel to what we see going on here with Joshua and the people.

This is Revelation 11, verse 15, "Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, 'The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.'" So in this case, we have the seventh angel blowing the seventh trumpet, and just as it signals that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord, so also when those seven priests blew their seven trumpets on the seventh day, the kingdom of Jericho was handed over to Joshua.

Let's keep reading.

This is still Joshua speaking.

"For the city shall be accursed by the Lord and whatever is in it. However, preserve Rahab the harlot and whatever is in her house. But be very careful to keep yourself from what is accursed, lest you yourself consider to take from it what is accursed. And then you shall make the camp of the children of Israel a curse and destroy us. But all the silver, the gold, the bronze, or the iron shall be holy to the Lord and brought into the treasury of the Lord."

So here, right at the last minute, right as Joshua is telling them to shout, "This is yours. The city is yours." Right here at the last minute, he gives some final instructions. Number one, they are supposed to save Rahab and all that is in her house.

And we would have went over a lot of that story earlier on. And also, they are to keep themselves from what is accursed, which basically refers to the belongings of the people of Jericho. Even the animals, we find out, were part of that. Rahab was saved by Joshua, a type of the Gentile church saved by Jesus and called out of the kingdom of this world. And as Jesus told us, "We are in this world, but not of it."

And as we are engaging and reaching out to the world, we need to be careful that we are keeping ourselves from what belongs to the world, namely its spirit, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and so on.

Key to victory number three, guard yourself from sin. 1 Peter 2:11-12, "Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation."

In our efforts to win the world to Christ and his kingdom, we need to be just as diligent to keep ourselves pure, to keep our conduct or behavior honorable. Discipline, laying aside every weight and sin in order to be able to run well, to fight well. And remember, we're not in this fight alone.

Our sin, our lack of diligence affects the soldiers around us, and that's going to really come out clear in the next chapter. We'll be looking at that later on.

There's this train of thought out there that the world's an evil place. It's a wicked place, and we need to stay as far away of it as we can. And it would be good if we could just kind of build our little community shelters out in the woods somewhere and stay away from it all because it's wicked, and we don't want it to touch us, and we don't want to touch it. And I don't think that's what Jesus had in mind when he sent us out into the world. And he said, "You're going to be like sheep among wolves, and you're going to experience persecution, and you're going to have to fight."

But along with that is that we need to guard ourselves well, be attentive, be cautious, be disciplined, and not join with the thought of the world that's out there.

Verse 19, "So the priests sounded the trumpets. And when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, all the people shouted together with a great and mighty shout. Then the entire wall fell round about, and all the people went into the city."

Experts have tried to come up with a logical scientific explanation as to how the wall fell. And I read a couple of different things that are out there that there was somehow this earthquake that coincided with the shout or that this city was built around these water dams and that one of the dams broke right at that time, and it broke a part of the wall down.

I don't know. There was a whole lot of stuff that they came up with that had to have knocked over this wall. But I've decided that it was the shout. When the people shouted, the wall collapsed, earthquake or no earthquake.

And like I said, I don't know if we would shout if that would happen to these walls or not. But this shout here that we have, when these people shouted, it was a shout of faith. And I think they believed with all their hearts that what they were told was going to happen when they shouted, something supernatural was going to happen.

We're told in Hebrews 11 that by faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. It was by faith. It was that shout of faith. It was that true faith that these people had that took the walls down. If the people would have just had faith and believed that God could give them the city but never obeyed his instructions, Jericho would not have been defeated. If the people would have just obeyed what they were told to do without faith, the shout of faith would have just sounded like this weak cry of fear, and I don't think the walls would have come down then either.

But through faith and obedience, which worked together with God's supernatural power, the city of Jericho didn't stand a chance. These walls didn't stand a chance.

Key to victory number four, very simple, trust and obey.

Most of us know that song. Faith and works are not in opposition to one another. They are a powerful duet to get us to victory. Our obedience proves how much we actually trust our King. Without faith, it is impossible to please him, and without obedience, our faith is dead.

So you just can't have one without the other. You can't choose one and not have the other. Or if you just choose one, it's not going to work.

John tells us that our faith is the victory that overcomes the world, but he also tells us that keeping God's commandments is the way that we validate our faith. It's the way that we know. It's the way that God knows. It's the way that everyone else knows that this faith that we say we have is true. It's real. It works through our obedience.

Verse 20, "Joshua put the city under a curse with the edge of the sword and whatever was in it, from man to woman, from young man to old man, and from calf to donkey." Then Joshua said to the two young men who acted as spies, "Go into the house of the woman and bring her out from there and whatever she has." So the two young men who had spied out the city went into the house of the woman and brought out Rahab the harlot, her father and mother, and her brothers and kindred and all that she possessed.

And remember, she had been told that to have them all in the house, that was crucial. They said, "We can't promise anything outside of what's in your house." And it sounds like she had them all there, and they were saved because of that. They set her outside the camp of Israel, and the city with everyone in it was set on fire, but the silver, the gold, the bronze, and the iron they brought into the treasury of the Lord.

Thus, Joshua kept alive Rahab the harlot and all the house of her father and caused her to dwell in Israel to this very day because she hid the spies Joshua sent out to spy out Jericho. Joshua adjured Israel on that day before the Lord, saying, "Cursed be the man who rebuilds that city. He shall lay its foundation in his firstborn son, and he shall set up its gates with his youngest son."

Thus did Heel from Bethel. He laid its foundation in Abiram, his firstborn son, and he set up its gates with Sagab, his youngest surviving son. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his name was known throughout all the land.

They won the battle through faith and obedience, through following instructions.

So besides Rahab and her family and the silver, gold, bronze, and iron that was kept for the treasury of the Lord, everything was destroyed, and a curse was even pronounced on anyone who tried to rebuild this city.

Rahab was saved because of her faith and her hospitality to the spies, and she was able to save her whole family as well. She would go on to be in the direct lineage of Jesus, our Messiah. But why the utter destruction of everything and everyone else in this city, even the animals?

Come back next time for the answer.