Israel: Faith to Conquer Jericho (Hebrews 11:30)

Kootenai Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Can we turn now please to Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews chapter 11.

00:14

We're going to read together verse 30 and verse 31 and then we'll open our time of prayer.

00:19

Hebrews chapter 11 verse 30. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.

00:25

By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace.

00:32

Let's pray together. Our Father we come to your word now and it is our desire that we may be attentive to your word that you would grant us open eyes and open hearts to see in your word truth regarding you and your working in history and the connections with us today.

00:47

We pray that your Holy Spirit would be our teacher and our guide and that we may understand your word so that we may give to you obedient hearts and lives that are honoring and glorifying to you in all that we do.

00:59

We pray this blessing upon our time here in Christ's name. Amen. Well we are returning to Hebrews chapter 11 today.

01:06

We have two more examples to go in our Hebrews hall of faith of people who are listed of their faith along with some incident in their lives.

01:16

We're getting close to the point in the passage, you can see it in verse 32 where the author confesses that he's running out of time and so he says, what more can

01:24

I say for time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. So we list people there without any direct reference to what they did in faith and then beginning in verse, what is it, 33, he lists a bunch of things that were done in faith without any connection to anybody in particular.

01:42

So he lists the people and then he lists the examples of faith and he's just sort of running through a history of Old Testament persons and incidences there and what else do you do when you're running out of time other than just dump everything you can on people as fast as you can before you're done.

01:58

At least that's why I think this was a message and not necessarily a written work at first. It was probably something that was preached because if he were writing, he wouldn't say time would fail me, would he?

02:08

He would just say, look, pick up volume two and let's go on with the rest of the Old Testament examples. But we have two more,

02:14

Joshua and Rahab. These two are the last two in our list where their name is connected with something that is done in faith.

02:22

We read of Joshua in verse 30 and of Rahab in verse 31, and if you're quick and astute, you'll say, but hold on a second,

02:29

I don't see Joshua's name mentioned in verse 30. Did you notice that? In fact, did you notice that not only is

02:35

Joshua's name not mentioned, nobody is mentioned in verse 30. Did you notice that? It says that by faith the walls came down after they had been encircled, but it doesn't tell us who encircled it.

02:45

We know who encircled the walls, and it doesn't tell us who was at the head of that. We know that it was Joshua and that he's anything but just incidental in the events that are being referred to here, but it is somewhat out of keeping with the pattern of the author who up to this point has given us a name and then tied that to some example of faith in the life of that person that he has named.

03:05

So, you get to verse 30 and you want to read about Joshua, but Joshua's not mentioned, and so then that makes you wonder, well, whose faith is being described then in verse 30?

03:14

Who's the key player there, or the key players in verse 30? We'll get to that a little bit later on.

03:20

Chronologically, you'll notice that the author is keeping with this chronological order that he has had all the way through the book of… through Hebrews chapter 11 thus far, and we've noticed that there's no divergence from this chronology.

03:32

You may say, well, the spies came to Rahab and she kept the spies before the walls fell down, so that seems a bit out of chronological order, but the author is really describing the overlapping experience and time of two people,

03:47

Joshua and Rahab here, and yes, she kept the spies or received the spies, but the wall falling down and her preservation of it really is the emphasis of verse 31 by faith,

03:57

Rahab the harlot did not perish along with the disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace.

04:04

So, Rahab is mentioned, and what she did, she did not perish, and it was by faith that she did not perish, and she did welcome the spies.

04:10

So, there's a little bit of overlap here between Joshua and Rahab, and we're going to get to Rahab more next week.

04:16

So, really it is two players here, one event, and that is the destruction of the walls of Jericho and the walls of Jericho falling down.

04:23

So, now we need to go back and take a look at this incident back in the book of Joshua.

04:28

So, turn now back to Joshua chapter 6. Hebrews chapter 11 is providing us the opportunity to jump back into the

04:37

Old Testament and tackle some big passages of Scripture, some lengthy passages of Scripture. Actually, turn back to the book of Joshua chapter 1.

04:45

The incident of Jericho is in chapter 6, and we're going to do a flyby of the first five chapters. Time does not permit me to go through everything in the first five chapters of Joshua.

04:58

So, we get to the beginning of the book of Joshua, the event surrounding Jericho and the falling of the walls of Jericho, then come crashing down.

05:07

You may not, if you're not really familiar with Old Testament chronology, I know there may be a few people who are like this, you may not know exactly where it is that that falls in the series of events as it's unfolded.

05:17

You may have been familiar with that story because you've heard it told in Sunday school or someone has preached on it, but you may not know exactly where to put that in the history of the nation of Israel and how it relates to Moses.

05:27

Well, when we last left off in the book of Hebrews chapter 11 verse 29, Pharaoh's army was being immersed in the

05:33

Red Sea. You remember that? And after they were immersed in the Red Sea, just you can go ahead and chuckle, it was a little tie back to last week's message.

05:40

After they were immersed in the Red Sea, then the children of Israel had been delivered from Pharaoh and his army, and they went into the wilderness, and they ended up wandering around there for 40 years because of the disobedience of that very same generation that came out of Egypt.

05:55

When Moses sent the spies up to spy out the land, they came back, 12 of them, and you remember, 12 men went to spy on Canaan and 10 were bad and two were good?

06:04

Remember, what did they see when they spied on Canaan? You remember 10 were bad and two were good. Am I the only one here that knows that song?

06:09

Me and my children know that song. Right, 10 bad and two were good. So because of those 10 bad spies who came back and gave a bad report to Moses, the nation of Israel came under the curse of God for 40 years, and God's judgment upon them was that they would wander around in the wilderness, and that generation who had responded with a lack of faith would not enter into the promised land, but the next generation would enter into the promised land.

06:34

So now we pick it up at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, at the beginning of the book of Joshua, and only roughly 40 years has passed since Moses led the children of Israel through the

06:43

Red Sea and out into the wilderness. Now, 40 years has gone by. All of those who came out in that generation who were 40 years or younger, they have died off.

06:51

Joshua was one of the faithful spies who had come back with a good report and said, look, it is as dire and as horrible and as daunting as these men say it is, but our

07:00

God's fighting with us, so we've got this. We can do this if we let our God fight for us. That was a great expression of faith.

07:06

So we're already familiar with Joshua's faith. So now as we enter into the book of Joshua, Joshua has taken over from Moses, and since we spent so much time talking about Moses and his faith, it seems appropriate to look at his death.

07:18

So if you just turn back one page in your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter 34, follow with me the account of the last days of Moses.

07:26

Now Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the

07:32

Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan and all Nephthul in the land of Ephraim and Manasseh and all the land of Judah as far as the western sea and the

07:39

Negev and the plain in the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees as far as Zohar. Then the Lord said to him, this is the land which

07:45

I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.

07:54

So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor, but no man knows his burial place to this day.

08:04

Although Moses was 120 years old when he died, his eye was not dim, nor his vigor abated.

08:10

So the sons of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab 30 days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end.

08:16

Now Joshua, the son of Nun, was filled with the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him, and the sons of Israel listened to him and did as the

08:24

Lord had commanded Moses. So Moses, the leadership that was given to Moses is now bestowed upon Joshua in the sight of all the people.

08:32

We know of Joshua's faith. The nation of Israel knows of Joshua's faith. He's only one of two men, Joshua and Caleb, who were part of that previous generation who had come out of Egypt and now was ready to enter into the land of Canaan.

08:45

Everybody else had died off. So Joshua is alive, and now the leadership has been given to him.

08:51

He has been something of a disciple, a disciple of Moses, as Moses has trained him.

08:57

He's probably been on the radar for a period of time that Joshua was going to take over for Moses.

09:03

Now let's finish off Moses, the story of Moses, verse 10. Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the

09:10

Lord knew face to face. For all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants and all his land.

09:18

And for all the mighty power and for all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all

09:24

Israel. So Moses is renowned. He is singularly unique in the history of Israel, something that we would expect for a man who served as a prophet and in some sense as a priest and in some sense as a king.

09:36

He had all three of those functions in the nation of Israel, establishing the theocracy, bringing them out of bondage, and the children of Israel revered him to a degree that is difficult for us probably even to imagine, which is why the

09:48

Lord buried him in a place himself where they didn't know where Moses was buried.

09:54

Why did the Lord do that? So that the children of Israel didn't do what it is the natural inclination of all men to do, and that is to worship at the grave of somebody who is buried there.

10:05

Why didn't they carry the bones of Moses into the promised land like they did Joseph's?

10:10

Remember they're carrying Joseph's bones with them. Why wouldn't they do that with Moses' bones? Because Moses' bones were not bones yet.

10:16

Moses' bones was a corpse at this point. You don't carry one of those around in the desert for months while you're looking or you're conquering cities.

10:23

And if you do, you certainly don't want to be the guy tasked with carrying that around with you in your caravan. So instead the

10:30

Lord buried him off in the land of Moab and that is where Moses will be resurrected. And you say, it's really horrible that Moses didn't get to enter into the promised land.

10:38

He will someday. Just be patient. He will. In a resurrected body, Moses gets to enter into that land with you and I in resurrected bodies and worship the

10:45

King of Kings. Now notice Joshua's, God's promise to Joshua. Joshua chapter 1. We're just going to continue right into the next book because the story continues that way.

10:54

And we are going to get to Joshua chapter 6, but there's some essential background information, a bit of a table that we have to set here in Joshua chapter 1, beginning of verse 1.

11:02

Now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, now take note of what

11:09

Joshua has promised. Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which

11:17

I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads,

11:23

I have given it to you just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river

11:30

Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun, will be your territory.

11:36

Now here is the promised land before him, just on the other side of the Jordan River. And the Lord is now reiterating the promise that He gave to Abraham, and then repeated to Isaac, and then repeated again to Jacob, and then

11:50

He has given this promise to Moses. So now you have this long lineage of godly men who have been promised that the land is still there in spite of the rejection of an entire generation of unfaithful

12:01

Jews, they still get to inherit the land. God is still going to fulfill His promise. And Joshua now understands that their possession of this land rests not on anyone except for God's willingness and ability to fulfill

12:16

His promise. Four hundred years have passed since that promise was last given to any of Abraham's descendants.

12:25

And now they are absolutely confident that they will receive exactly what they were promised, because God Himself has promised it, and God will fulfill

12:33

His promise. Verse 2, sorry, verse 5. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

12:40

Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which

12:49

I swore to their fathers to give them. Notice the repetition of the fact that God has sworn to do this. They are getting a land not because they are a strong and mighty people, certainly not because they are morally worthy of receiving these promises, but they are getting a land for one reason and one reason only, and that is

13:05

God has promised it to Abraham. And because God has promised it to Abraham, God will always fulfill His promise.

13:11

So now they're going to come into part of the possession that God has sworn to them. Notice the phrase in verse 6, be strong and courageous.

13:18

That is repeated. You're going to see it two more times. It's spoken three times in this passage.

13:25

Verse 7, only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you.

13:31

Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

13:47

What is the book of the law that he is describing there? It is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

13:54

By this point, that much divine revelation had been given, and probably a couple of Psalms. We know that Moses wrote one of the

14:00

Psalms, and if my suspicion is correct, they would have had the book of Job by this point, Job being a very ancient record and the very first book of the

14:08

Bible written. So that is the book of the law that they have. Specifically, he's talking about the law given to Israel at Mount Sinai that regulated their national life, regulated their religious life, regulated all the ceremonies, and now

14:20

Joshua is being commanded to obey that, and as long as he obeys that, God has promised that he will do exactly what it is that he is promising to do.

14:28

He will fulfill it. Verse nine, have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not tremble or be dismayed, for the

14:34

Lord your God is with you wherever you go. That is clear revelation to Joshua that he is God's man, that he is the one who is going to bring the nation into this land and give them possession of the land just as God has promised to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob.

14:48

Now, chapter two, the spies enter into the land ahead of their crossing the Jordan, and Rahab hides them, and she's promised deliverance for her faith.

14:55

We'll look at that next week. Chapter three, Israel crosses the Jordan River, God parted the waters for them. This would have happened just north of the

15:02

Dead Sea. If you remember in your mind a picture of the land of Israel, you have the Dead Sea at the bottom end of that, of the nation of Israel, you have the

15:09

Jordan River that flows from the north up at the top is the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea is at the very bottom end of that, the

15:15

Dead Sea is the Salt Sea, and they would have been on the east side of the Dead Sea, just above the Dead Sea, ready to cross the

15:21

Jordan River, that's chapter three. Jericho was just inside the boundary of that, just on the other side of the

15:28

Jordan River, a couple of miles from the Jordan River. In chapter five, Israel is circumcised because those who were born in the wilderness had not been circumcised, so the entire nation, all the males of the nation were circumcised there, and it took some time,

15:42

Joshua 5 verse 8 says, for them to be healed, and then they celebrated the Passover. So that gives you an idea in your mind of what time of the year this was.

15:51

The Passover celebration would have been March -April of our time of the year, and this would have been, of course, the beginning of the year for them.

15:57

Do you remember when we looked at the Passover, that the Passover celebration was to begin the calendar year for the nation of Israel?

16:03

And also in chapter five, then the Lord begins to dry up the supply of manna, the supernatural supply of sustenance in the wilderness, because now they have, now they're about to enter it, that they've crossed the

16:13

Jordan River, they're in the land, and now they can begin to eat from the fruit of the land. Chapter five, verse 13, this is a game changer.

16:20

Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand.

16:31

And Joshua went to him and said to him, are you for us or for our adversaries? He said, no, rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the

16:41

Lord. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and bowed down and said to him, what has my Lord to say to his servant?

16:48

The captain of the Lord's host said to Joshua, remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.

16:54

And Joshua did so. Who is this? Is this an angel? Michael?

17:01

Gabriel? No, those would be the hosts, right, the Lord's hosts. This is the captain of the

17:08

Lord's host. Who is the captain of the Lord's host? I'll give you a hint. He is called Yahweh down in chapter 6, verse 2.

17:15

This is an Old Testament appearance of God. It is a theophany. And if our understanding of the

17:22

Trinity, if we are to interpret this in light of our understanding of the persons of the Trinity and their role within the

17:27

Godhead, this is a pre -incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. He shows up before Joshua dressed as a soldier, we can only assume, with a sword in his hand.

17:38

And Joshua says, whose side are you on? And the angel of the Lord says, I didn't come to take sides, I came to take over.

17:44

I'm the captain of the Lord's host, and now everything that you are going to do, you are going to do at my command. And then in chapter 6, he begins to give him some of those commands.

17:53

So this is Yahweh in the second person, the divine Son, who is now appearing to Joshua to give him instructions on what he is to do at the city of Jericho.

18:03

So this is the same one who was the destroyer 40 years earlier, who went through the streets of Egypt and killed all the firstborn of Egypt.

18:10

This is that one. This is the one who appeared in the pillar of fire in the cloud in the Red Sea, and it says that Yahweh looked down through the pillar of fire and smoke, and then smote the

18:21

Egyptians and drowned them in the Red Sea. This is the same one. This is the one who has promised victory to Joshua.

18:27

This is Yahweh who is appearing to Joshua. So now, and you kind of get the sense of that when he says to Joshua, take off your sandals because the feet on which you stand is holy.

18:36

When was the last time that was said? In Exodus chapter 3, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush, and he looked and behold the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.

18:46

Then he, that is the angel of the Lord, said, do not come near here. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

18:54

So Joshua now gets exactly what's going on. This is Yahweh. Verse 1 of chapter 6.

19:01

Now we finally get to it. That's right. Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel.

19:06

No one went out and no one came in. Yahweh said to Joshua, see I've given

19:12

Jericho into your hand with its king and the valiant warriors. See in verse 2, this one who is speaking to him, same one back in chapter 5, and I know you're tempted to think, wait a second, that was chapter 5, this is chapter 6.

19:22

Ignore the chapter division because those are irrelevant. This is Yahweh who is speaking to him in the appearance of the angel of the

19:27

Lord. He's going to give to him all of the instructions now to take Jericho. Jericho, it says, was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel.

19:34

No one went out and no one came in. Jericho, of course, would have known that Israel was on its way. They knew of the spies who had come into the land, had come into the city, had stayed with Rahab.

19:43

They knew of that. They knew of the children of Israel. Rahab had already confessed to the spies who had come in. The hearts of all the people are melting because of you.

19:50

And when that massive nation came across the Jordan River into that land and camped for a couple of weeks right next to the

19:57

Jordan River on the western side of it, and they had the circumcision and the celebration of the Passover and the healing and they're all mustered there, they would have seen that nation and they would have had every reason to be fearful and they would have locked the gates and shut the windows and bar the door,

20:11

Katie, because they're coming and they were ready and no one went out and no one came in to the entire city.

20:19

Jericho was not a large city, but it was a fortified city. It's north of the

20:25

Dead Sea. It is west of the Jordan River, a couple miles from the Jordan. It was what was referred to or what we would call a frontier town.

20:34

It was on the edge of Canaanite civilization and it would have been a well -fortified city. So, it wasn't enormous.

20:40

It's obviously not enormous because an entire army marches around it seven times in one day. So, don't think of it as something the size of this room, but don't think it is something the size of Coeur d 'Alene either.

20:50

It's somewhere in between. It's not a massive city. In fact, the significance of Jordan has nothing to do with its location or with its size.

20:58

It was the fact that it was well -fortified. And so, Israel's first city that they have to take is a well -fortified frontier city.

21:08

Everybody is shut up inside. No one is going in. No one is coming out. And it was obviously the intention of all the inhabitants of Jordan to simply wait out this nation.

21:17

And eventually, these people who cannot scale the walls, they cannot knock over the walls. It's a well -fortified city.

21:23

Eventually, they would give up and just go home. Of course, they have no home, right? Guess what? This is their new home. So, this is where they're going.

21:29

They're going to Jericho. And Israel was ill -equipped for this because they had no machines of war. This is an ex -slave nation who spent 40 years wandering around in the desert.

21:38

So, they don't have the typical high -tech weapons of war that would have been part of an army in those days.

21:43

They couldn't topple the walls. And Jericho's significance is not again its size and not again its location, but the fact that it was well -fortified and the fact that it was the first city.

21:56

So, God is going to do something at Jericho to set the tone for the next several years. He's going to do something to demonstrate that He is the one by His power who would give this to them.

22:06

Verse 3, you shall march around the city. Here are the instructions. Again, that the angel of the Lord is giving to Joshua.

22:12

You shall march around the city, all the men of war, circling the city once. You shall do so for six days.

22:18

Also, seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark. Then on the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.

22:27

It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up, every man straight ahead.

22:40

So, the angel of the Lord has given them the arrangement of the army, that the ark is to be out there, the priests are to be out there, they're to blow the trumpets, they're to march for six days, one lap on each of those six days around the city, and then go back to camp.

22:54

And then on the seventh day, they were to march seven times. All the time, they were to have the seven priests with the seven horns, and you say, what is with all the number seven?

23:04

Did you notice it when we're reading through it? That's a lot of sevens, isn't it? Is there a significance to the sevens? We'll return to that in just a moment.

23:11

Verse six, so Joshua, the son of Nun, called the priests and said to them, take up the ark of the covenant. Now, Joshua was just giving exactly what the angel of the

23:17

Lord has given to him. Take up the ark of the covenant, let seven priests carry seven trumpets of ram's horn before the ark of the

23:22

Lord. Then he said to the people, go forward and march around the city, and let the armed men go on before the ark of the Lord. And it was so that when

23:29

Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Lord went forward and blew the trumpets, and the ark of the covenant of the

23:36

Lord followed them. The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came up after the ark while they continued to blow the trumpets.

23:43

But Joshua commanded the people saying, you shall not shout, nor let your voice be heard, nor let a word proceed out of your mouth until the day

23:50

I tell you. Shout, then you shall shout. So he had the ark of the Lord taken around the city, circling at once.

23:56

Then they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp. So the people now are obeying exactly what Joshua has told them to do.

24:01

And they're silent. They uttered not a word at any point during this. Verse 12, now Joshua rose early in the morning.

24:07

The priest took up the ark of the Lord, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew the trumpets, and the armed men went before them, and the rear guard came after the ark of the

24:17

Lord while they continued to blow the trumpets. Thus the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp, and they did so for six days.

24:26

They do exactly what they're instructed to do. Now we're going to fast forward to the end of the story in verse 15, but before we do,

24:32

I want you to imagine the picture of this, not from the perspective of the Israelites who are marching around the city, or Joshua or the commanders of the priests, or anybody else in Israel.

24:40

I want you to imagine the perspective of this, what it would look like to have seen this if you're one of the inhabitants of Jericho. You're held up inside of a well -fortified city.

24:48

Your expectation is that you can simply wait it out, and Israel finally comes up, and they finally start to gather out in front of the city gate, and if you're one of the inhabitants of Jericho, you might be up on top of the well -fortified wall kind of looking down on them, thinking to yourself, this is a curious battle formation.

25:02

They're all kind of lined up in a line right here, and they got some big shiny metal golden thing, a box of some sort out there in the middle of that, and priests, those are not warriors, and ram's horns, we're not sure what benefit that's going to be.

25:15

And then as they start marching around the city, you'd be thinking, okay, now what's going to happen? What are they, where are they going? Where are they going?

25:21

They're going, oh, they're just going over this side of the city, and you follow them all the way around the city. The whole time, it's a very curious thing.

25:27

You've never seen a battle tactic like this before in your life. You're wondering what it is that they're possibly going to hope to accomplish, and they come all the way around, full circle, and they get back to the front, and you'd be thinking to yourself, okay, it was a reconnaissance mission.

25:39

They want to find out, did we leave any doors open in the city somewhere on the backside? Is there a window open, a ladder up there that somebody forgot to take down?

25:47

Just a reconnaissance. Okay, now they're getting ready to attack. Oh, no, they disband and go back to their camp this evening, and they're going to wait it out.

25:56

That was weird. Wasn't that weird? They've said nothing. They're not shouting back at you.

26:01

They're not saying, we're coming to get you. Yeah, you're coming down. None of the, no taunting, nothing. They're silent.

26:08

So then you can imagine the king of Jericho would gather together as joint chiefs of staff into the room. You'd have all the

26:14

Jericho generals there in the room, and you start to say, let's assess what happened here. Jericho general sounds like a basketball team, doesn't it?

26:20

Like the ones who always lose into the Harlem Globetrotters. You have all the Jericho generals gathered together around the table, and you say, let's assess what happened here.

26:27

Are they going to come back? That was a very curious thing. Maybe they're going to leave. Let's wait it out. So the next day, early in the morning, it happens again, and you watch them do this the second time, and the third day, the third time, and then all of the

26:36

Jericho generals get together. After every day, they gather up, and they say, what is going on? Are they just, is this their game plan?

26:41

They're just going to walk around the city looking for an opening, and they're going to do this until we all starve? On day five and day six, you begin to think this is really ridiculous, and you might even just leave your weapons at home.

26:55

Go up on the wall with your bucket of popcorn. You're just going to watch these fools walk around this city today, just like they did the day previous.

27:03

It's just entertaining at this point. They might even have heaped, hurled accusations and slander upon them, thinking how silly this is.

27:10

They don't teach this kind of stuff at West Point. These people, this is no military strategy. I mean, they're a puny army to begin with.

27:18

They're a nation of people, but they're not well armed. They're nothing against our walls, and so far, their battle tactic is simply to walk around the city looking for an open door every day, but then on the seventh day, something else happens.

27:30

They do it once, and they keep going, and they think now they've really lost their minds. They're going to do this two times. Nope. Three.

27:36

No. Four. Five. Six. These crazy people are on their seventh trip around the city.

27:45

You've never seen anything like this. You can't imagine anything like this, and in your mind, you're thinking this is truly the most ridiculous army

27:52

I have ever seen in my life. These people are out marching around our city with a golden box in their midst, and they've gotten nothing, and this has been going on for a week.

28:04

Verse 15, then on the seventh day, they arose early in the morning at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times.

28:11

Only on that day they marched around the city seven times. It's Joshua's way of saying they didn't do this on any of the previous days.

28:17

They followed the Lord's command. It is only on the seventh day that they marched around the city seven times. Verse 16, at the seventh time when the priest blew the trumpet,

28:25

Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. The city shall be under the ban and it and all that it belongs to the

28:32

Lord. Only Rahab the harlot and all who are in her house shall live because she hid the messengers whom we sent.

28:38

But as for you, only keep yourselves from things under the ban so that you do not covet them and take some of the things under the ban and make the camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it.

28:47

But all the silver and the gold and the articles of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord. They shall go into the treasury of the

28:52

Lord. So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets, and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city.

29:06

They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both men and women, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey with the edge of the sword.

29:12

That was the victory. Now, there's some obvious lessons to be learned from this. First of all, the event seems custom designed to demonstrate that God was the one who was giving them the land and that there's no way that anybody in Israel or Joshua or anybody associated with marching could take credit for this.

29:29

All of the instructions are intentionally given by God for the express purpose of showing that when victory came, it would be

29:36

God who would give them the victory. All they were to do was to obey. The angel of the Lord would go before them, and God, through an earthquake or just through the collapse of the wall, however it is that God worked that out, at the timing of that shout, those walls came down.

29:49

Now, of course, there are ridiculous people who say that it really wasn't a miracle. It was the shout of all of those people that caused such a cacophony of sound that it shook, and the walls of that city came down simply because of the sound waves.

30:02

People do this all the time to try and remove from Scripture its supernatural elements. Nothing like that is happening.

30:08

It is God Himself who has brought these walls down. And this is intended to show them that if they trust

30:14

Him and they keep His Word and they are obedient to Him, that God will fight for them. They learned the lesson in a negative way at the very next city because the things that God said, you shall not take any of these things, one man amongst them,

30:29

Achan, took some of them, and so they suffered defeat at the next city. So at Jericho, they learned that obedience is essential because they see victory.

30:37

At Ai, they learned that obedience is essential because they tasted defeat. So they get both of these back -to -back.

30:43

Second lesson, faith is seen in the obedience of the Israelites. They did not add to or subtract from anything that God said for them to do.

30:51

They did exactly what He commanded them to do. They followed the instructions to the letter. And there's not a word of grumbling or doubt or complaint amongst all of the

30:59

Israelites that's recorded in Joshua. And I think this is significant because Scripture never hesitates to tell us when it was the children of Israel were grumbling and complaining about something.

31:09

When they grumbled and complained about something or lacked faith, Scripture is honest about it. But this generation of Israelites seemed to have learned something that the previous generation did not learn, and they suffered for it.

31:18

They learned that they could be obedient. Third, notice that their faith and what they did in faith did not seem at all to be the thing that would affect the outcome that happens here.

31:30

There's no connection between walking around a city one time for six days and then seven times on the seventh day.

31:35

There's no connection between that military strategy and the walls falling down, nothing at all. There's no reason that one thing should lead on to the other thing.

31:44

And so, what God had commanded them seems completely contrary to the end that He has in mind for them to accomplish by doing what it is that He called them to do.

31:52

And similarly, you and I may not understand why it is that God has called us to do certain things, little expressions of our obedience and our faith, and yet the end that is connected with those little things that we do doesn't necessarily seem like one would lead to the other.

32:08

You may not understand the significance of small acts of Bible reading and prayer and participation in the ordinances of the

32:14

Lord and fighting sin and disciplining yourself and giving of your finances and serving one another and fellowshipping with one another.

32:20

These are small acts of obedience that we do each and every day, sometimes hour by hour, and yet those small acts of obedience accomplish great things in our lives and in the lives of other people.

32:30

And we might not even be able to connect one to the other necessarily and see the line that takes us from one to the other, but God is always faithful having ordained the ends as well as the means.

32:40

God is always faithful to use the means when we are obedient to accomplish the end that He has ordained to accomplish through us.

32:47

And so, the lesson is that you and I are simply to be faithful. And notice the courage that is on display amongst the nation of Israel.

32:53

It's a nation of ex -slaves with no military -grade weapons. They're wandering around the desert for 40 years.

32:58

They've never known war. They've never fought a battle. This generation has never faced a military enemy before, and now they're standing before a well -fortified city.

33:08

This would take courage for them to stand there, and then once the walls fall down, to go in and charge the city to take everything from them.

33:17

What they were doing looked utterly ridiculous because faith always looks ridiculous to the world. We've seen that, haven't we, as we've gone through the book of Hebrews and the examples that we've seen here in Hebrews chapter 11?

33:27

Faith to the world always looks ridiculous. The world looks at your acts of obedience, and they don't understand why it is that you do them.

33:34

They don't understand why you would give of your finances to honor the Lord. They don't understand why it is that you would give up a day of your week to come here and gather with a bunch of hyper -religious people and sing songs and listen to me.

33:44

They don't understand that. They don't understand why it is that we would give up sin and mortify sin and say no to the lust of the flesh.

33:51

In fact, Peter says that worldlings, when they see you turning away from sin, they begin to mock that because they think that they want you to join with them in the dissipation, and they think that your mortifying of sin and living a holy and pure life to honor

34:04

God, they think that that is ridiculous. They think that your honoring of the Word of God is nothing more than a misguided love and affection for a

34:11

Bronze Age book filled with fairy tales and fables. That's the view of the world. It's all ridiculous to them, just as the children of Israel marching around the wall would be ridiculous to those in Jericho.

34:23

But the Lord uses ridiculous things. The Lord uses what is foolish in the eyes of the world to accomplish what is honoring and glorifying to Him.

34:31

Now, let's answer these last two questions that we have. First of all, by whose faith? Remember, I pointed out at the beginning, nobody's mentioned in Hebrews 11, verse 30, by faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.

34:43

It just says the walls of Jericho fell down. It doesn't say whose faith is active. Why is that? Because I don't think that in this instance, it is just Joshua's faith that is in view.

34:52

In Hebrews 11, verse 30, when it talks of the walls of Jericho, it is referring to the fact that it is the entire nation of Israel.

35:00

Not to say that every single individual in the nation at the time was a God -honoring worshiper of Yahweh.

35:05

That's not to say that. But it is to say that it was not just Joshua's faith, and it was not just the priest's faith, it was not just the army's faith, that as a whole we could say that this nation was at that moment trusting

35:17

God to do something through the ordained means to accomplish the end that He had ordained. So, it is a collective thing.

35:23

It is the entire nation that is in view here. A group effort, not the obedience of any one person.

35:29

So now, probably the part you're all wondering about, what about the sevens? There's a lot of sevens there, right?

35:35

There were seven priests, seven horns, seven days, and seven trips around the city.

35:42

That's a lot of sevens. And it catches the eye because it is repeated several times throughout the passage, and it catches the eye because it is an instruction from the

35:51

Lord to do this with seven. Now, if the Lord had just said, look, send a bunch of guys, go out and march, take some horns with you, and it had turned out that Joshua found only seven guys able to blow horns, and only seven horns amongst them, and where do you get horns in the desert?

36:02

So, they had seven, and it just happened to be seven, then we might not notice that. But when God says it is to do this, and He lays out the sevens for you, then it kind of catches your eye, and you say, why seven?

36:13

Why not six? Why not eight? Why not five? I think five is a good number. Five is easy to work with in almost every place.

36:21

You divide by five, you multiply by five. Five is one of my favorite numbers. Ten's a good number. We're used to thinking in tens.

36:29

We count in tens, we factor in tens. Our money divides up into tens quite naturally. Why seven?

36:34

Why not twelve? Why not once for every tribe in the nation of Israel? Twelve trips would be good. Why not stretch it out over twelve days?

36:41

Why seven, and why so many sevens? Here's what we don't do with the number seven.

36:49

First, we don't practice numerology. We don't say, okay, there are four sevens in the passage.

36:55

You have seven ram's horns, you have seven priests, you have seven days, and then you have seven trips around the city.

37:02

So, if you take the seven, and you multiply it by four, you get 28. If you take the eight and the two, you join them, add them together, you come up with ten, which is one number short of the number of disciples minus Judas.

37:14

So, once the Lord had got all the unbelievers out of the crowd of the disciples, which is symbolic of the first generation that died off in the wilderness, then you had nothing but believers left.

37:24

That's the eleven, and then ten is one less than that.

37:30

So, when you subtract ten from the eleven, you come up with one, one God, and one

37:35

God is the one who does all of this work, and that's numerology. Now, I could come up with all kinds of fanciful interpretations.

37:41

That's not how we interpret Scripture. A second thing we do not do is take…this is an example of how you and I get victory in our lives.

37:51

I've heard this done from pulpits. What's your Jericho? What are the walls that you need to see come down in your life?

37:57

Well, what you need to do is you need to pray about that seven times, and then after you've prayed about that seven times for seven days, you need to shout the victory and claim the victory for yourself, and the walls in your life will come crumbling down.

38:08

You'll have your own personal victory at Jericho. Amen? Let's pray. That's how… Third thing you don't do is say, look, if you just give $777, this is the key.

38:20

This is the…you chuckle, but you know that there are prosperity hacks who do that to Scripture all the time. You give $777, this is the key to victory in your life, and the walls of your

38:30

Jericho will come crushing down. You'll walk into your promised land. You'll take possession of all the blessings that God has for you, and if you want to add grace to that, you add 77 cents, so $777 .77,

38:41

and that's the key to victory in your life. That's not what we do. What does the seven days remind you of?

38:48

It's a week. What is our week based off of? It's based off creation. Well, what happened on the seventh day of creation?

38:55

We have six literal 24 -hour days where God creates. He does this for six days.

39:01

On the seventh day, He what? He rested. The seventh day is different than the first six days, is it not?

39:10

Yeah, for six days something happened. On the seventh day, God rested, and on the seventh day, it's different than the first six days.

39:20

If that were all we had in Scripture was just that little connection that I made in my head right there, I don't think we could make anything of that.

39:26

That would be just as fanciful as the four times seven gives you 28. You add those together, you get 10 minus out of 11, you have one left over.

39:32

It would be just as fanciful if I did that. But Scripture connects the promised land to rest, doesn't it, in Scripture?

39:40

We read that in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4. Scripture connects the entering into the promised land, the children of Israel doing that, with us entering into God's rest.

39:50

In fact, that land of promise is called the land of God's rest in Scripture. Psalm 132 verse 8, arise,

39:57

O Lord, to your resting place, you and the ark of your strength. Psalm 132 verse 14, this is my resting place forever.

40:03

Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. So Scripture calls that land the place of God's rest, and when they entered into that land, it is likened in Scripture to the children of Israel entering into the rest that God had promised for them.

40:17

Psalm 95, which the passage that I read at the beginning in Hebrews 3 and 4 quotes from Psalm 95 verses 9 through 11.

40:24

When your fathers tested me, they tried me, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said, they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know my ways.

40:33

Therefore I swore in my anger, truly they shall not enter into my land, no, my rest. See, entering into the land is likened to rest in Scripture.

40:42

Hebrews 4, 3 and 4, for we who have believed enter that rest, just as He said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.

40:51

For He has said somewhere concerning the Sabbath day, and God rested on the seventh day from all His works, and again in this passage, they shall not enter my rest.

40:59

So the entering into the promised land is connected to the idea of resting, and resting in God, and God giving rest to His people.

41:06

So as Joshua is bringing the nation of Israel into what Scripture refers to as the land of rest,

41:12

He does so in such a way as to demonstrate that they would do something for six days. The seventh day would be different.

41:18

On the seventh day, they would officially, as it were, enter into the land by taking victory of the first city. And they would do this not by their own efforts, not by their own works.

41:27

They would take possession of this land simply by trusting in God and doing in faith what it is that God had commanded them to do.

41:34

So I think that that is the connection with the sevens. This whole thing, twice in the passage, it says, and on the seventh day.

41:41

That phraseology is intended to connect in our minds a couple of things. They do this, and this, and repeats for six days.

41:48

On the seventh day is something different. On the seventh day, they enter into the place that God's Word said is their rest.

41:53

This becomes a picture for you and I. The seventh day is the day of rest, and entering the land was a symbol of that.

42:00

It was a portrait of that. That is fulfilled for us in an even deeper and more profound way in the person of Christ.

42:06

Because you and I spend our lives laboring in our sin and toiling in our attempts at being righteous, in our attempts of gaining righteousness.

42:13

We labor away in that for all of this time. And then finally, when by faith we do what God commands us to do, repent and believe, we can enter into His rest.

42:22

The rest, the fulfillment of the idea of rest, is in the person of Jesus Christ. Israel entered the rest by trusting and obeying what the

42:30

Lord said to do. You and I enter God's rest, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, by trusting in Christ and obeying what

42:37

God says to do, that is to repent of our sin and believe upon Christ. When we come to the

42:43

Lord's table, we are remembering and recognizing what it is that the Lord has done to provide rest for us. You see, our salvation does not rest upon what we have done.

42:52

It does not rest upon our merits. We don't earn our salvation. We don't earn God's forgiveness.

42:57

We don't earn His righteousness. We can't do any of those things. Instead, we are, in many ways, like the children of Israel, we must just simply come empty -handed, unable to conquer any of the law and our own sin and our own flesh and our own iniquity and the justice of God.

43:12

We have to lay down before all of that and say, the Lord must do something on our behalf so that I can enter into the rest of salvation.

43:19

And God has done that in the person of Christ. Our sins were more than we could bear. Our iniquities were more than we could endure the judgment for.

43:27

All of our sins added up together are more than we could tolerate, more than we could…we would be crushed under the weight of them.

43:33

As Scripture says, if God were to mark sins, who could stand? Who could stand before the Lord? If God were to count all of your iniquities, if God were to count all of my sins, and He were to deal with us according to our sins, we would get what

43:44

Scripture says, that is the just judgment of God in fire, in hell, for all of eternity. That's what our sins warrant.

43:51

Well, who can earn righteousness under the weight of all of that sin? We cannot. Trying to earn righteousness is like the walls of Jericho.

43:59

You're never going to scale that. You're never going to make yourself acceptable to God. God must do something for us to atone for our sins, to remove our iniquity, and to take away

44:09

His wrath from us so that He can be generous and gracious and give us eternal life. This was done in the person of Christ.

44:16

When Yahweh, revealed in the Old Testament, the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, came into this world, took upon Himself flesh,

44:24

He lived a perfect life. He never sinned in thought, word, or deed, so that He then, with all of that righteousness, could die in the place of sinners, and God could put all of the sin that you and I deserve, pour it out upon Him, and He could bear the punishment and take the wrath for that sin.

44:40

And then God, by faith, could give us the righteousness that He earned through His perfect life. This is the good news of the gospel.

44:47

This is salvation. This is what we celebrate when we observe the Lord's Table together, the fact that God has done all of this for us on our behalf.

44:55

So, we're going to partake of the elements here after we have a moment of quiet and silent prayer. I want to encourage you with two things.

45:02

If you are a Christian and you are here, and you are living in sin, unrepentant, you will partake of the

45:08

Lord's Supper in what Scripture calls an unworthy manner if you do not confess that sin to the Lord, and if you are not willing to mortify that sin and turn from it.

45:17

This is a prayer of repentance where we admit and confess our guilt and our sin before the Lord, and then we partake of the elements to recognize what it is, the cost, the shed blood, the broken body of the

45:27

Lord Jesus Christ that has atoned and paid for the price for our sin. Second word of warning, if you are an unbeliever here and you have never trusted

45:34

Christ for salvation, you've never repented of your sin and been born again, do not partake of the communion.

45:40

This is not for you. It's for those who are in Christ. If you partake of communion as an unbeliever, I will warn you, you're eating and drinking judgment to yourself because you are blaspheming

45:49

God's name by saying, I participate in this, when you will not come to the Savior and cling to Him for righteousness. This is only for believers, and if you have sin issues that you need to deal with as a believer, then let the elements pass.

46:00

Nobody will judge you for that. All right, let's bow our heads and have a time of confession, and then I'll lead us in prayer. Our great

46:31

God, you are a holy God, righteous, just. Because of your righteousness and because of your justice, you must and will punish sin, and if you were to deal with us according to our iniquities, no one here could stand before you.

46:44

We would be undone in ourselves, but we thank you that another has come to bear the wrath that we deserve, that is the

46:52

Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that He has died on the cross in our place, taking our judgment so that we could have eternal life, so that as your children, we can stand before you righteous and forgiven, but only because of what

47:07

Christ has done. So, we confess our sin, our iniquity. We confess our transgressions against your law.

47:13

We do not do those things that you demand of us, and we fail to do them, and sometimes we fail to do them because we're not even aware of them, and yet we are culpable for those sins nonetheless.

47:23

And Father, sometimes we do the very things that you command us not to do. So, we confess our iniquity and our sin, and we know that we deserve judgment.

47:31

We know that that is the just punishment for sin, but we thank you that we have a lamb who is sacrificed in our place to take our wrath, to shed the blood that we were required to shed, and we thank you,

47:42

Father, that He is righteous, and we thank you for the righteousness that He provides to all who are yours. And now we know that we can stand before you without any condemnation because of what

47:51

Christ has done, freely forgiven and fully forgiven, only and solely by your grace. Thank you for doing for us what we can never do for ourselves.