“A Serious Test of Trust!”

Well, a good Friday morning to you on this Good Friday, as we reflect today on the crucifixion of our

Lord. We're not going to do that through the devotional time, but I hope you'll do that through the course of the day.

I'm trying to stay pretty much on track with our Bible reading plan and these devotionals, but don't let that detract you or deter you from reading the gospel accounts of the crucifixion of our

Lord on this Good Friday. Get your mind ready and your heart prepared for Resurrection Sunday.

But today, for our purposes, we're reading in Joshua chapters 5 and 6, John 2, and the 70th

Psalm. I want to focus on this event in Joshua chapter 5, but to be sort of a prelude to what

I want to suggest in this passage. Do you remember the incident back in the book of Genesis with Jacob, his sons, and his daughter

Dinah, related to the Shechemites? Does that ring a bell? Jacob had this daughter,

Dinah, and she was seduced or raped by the son of Shechem, as Jacob and his family are in the area of the

Shechemites. This is back in the land of Canaan, so the Shechemites are Canaanites, they're not part of the covenant people of God.

But Dinah is...again, I'm not sure, the text isn't exactly clear whether she was raped against her will or she was seduced by this guy who really just had an eye for her, but he wanted them to marry her.

He goes to Jacob and says he wants to marry her, and says, whatever the dowry is, tell me what it is, and I'll provide that dowry, but I just love this woman,

I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her. Jacob's sons speak deceitfully to the

Shechemites and say, here's what we want you to do, have all your male members be circumcised, all your men, they have to be circumcised.

For us to have any kind of relationship with you, they have to be circumcised. Remember that circumcision was the sign of the covenant.

Just as a reminder. Shechem and his son, they go back to the rest of the tribe and they say, hey, this is what they told us we need to do, if we're going to be able to intermarry with them.

Let's do it, because we'll be able to take over all their stuff. That's what the Shechemites thought.

So they do it, they go ahead with the plan, and all the men get circumcised. After they're circumcised, while they're still recovering from that medical procedure,

Simeon and Levi, these two sons of Jacob, go to Shechem and slaughter all the men.

They just kill them all. That's a horrid thing to contemplate.

Yet they did. With that in Israel's history, and realizing that this is very early on, after Moses has passed away, and Moses is the one that recorded the events in the book of Genesis, it's very likely that this story would be relatively fresh in the minds of at least some of the people.

Then we come to Joshua chapter 5. The children of Israel have crossed the Jordan River, and they come up on the other side of the river.

Now in chapter 5, they are encamped not far from Jericho, which is going to be the first city that they conquer in the land.

The Lord says, here's what I want you to do. All the men that haven't been circumcised since they came out of Egypt, circumcise them now.

The Lord explains. The men that were in Egypt, they were all circumcised when they were in Egypt, but after the departure from Egypt, nobody was circumcised, and that hasn't happened for 40 years.

You've got a whole generation of men and young men and boys that have never been circumcised.

That, remember, was the sign of the covenant. That was the sign that they were in the covenant family of God.

God gives them that to do. But now? Here?

Now? Why didn't they do that on the other side of the Jordan River? Why here?

Why now? There could be all kinds of explanations for that, but what I want to get at here, what

I want to get at is that this was a big test of faith.

A big test of faith. Because, like the story I just told about Simeon and Levi slaughtering all the

Shechemites when they were recovering from that surgical procedure, now the

Lord tells the Israelite men, fighting men, warriors, all of them, they have to go through that surgical procedure.

It's going to take some time for them to physically recover from that procedure before they'll be ready to go out and fight, do battle.

That leaves them vulnerable. Are they going to do it?

Are they going to follow through? Or will they say, wait a minute now, we're in the land of the enemy. We're in enemy territory.

We do that. They could just come and wipe us out. We won't be able to defend ourselves. We're not going to do that. Is that what they're going to say?

Or are they going to obey? In other words, this command of the

Lord God is the first test of trusting obedience that is placed upon the shoulders of God's people as they come into the land.

It's an important test that they must pass, because there are going to be a whole bunch more tests to come.

The next one is pretty tough, too. You're going to go to the city of Jericho, and you're just going to march around the city once a day for seven days.

Seventh day, you're going to do it seven times. Trust me, when you blow the ram's horns, the walls are going to fall down and you'll be able to go in and conquer them.

Why were they able to trust that God would give them the city of Jericho and conquer it in that way?

Because they learned in their trusting obedience at Gilgal that they could count on this

God to protect them and to do as he says, to do as he promised. One other little idea

I want to point out, and I know it's getting lengthy here, but this odd battle strategy that the

Lord gave to Joshua regarding Jericho, marching around the city and so on,

I wonder if that wasn't a not -so -subtle indication to Joshua that he should always, always, always go to the

Lord to get instructions before beginning a battle. Should he have learned that from the fact that God came to him and gave him a really strange battle strategy for the conquering of this city?

Perhaps he should have, and maybe if he had learned that, some problems to come down the road here wouldn't have come.

We're getting ahead of ourselves. Nonetheless, let's learn from today the lesson of trusting obedience.

We can trust and obey, and thereby find true happiness in Jesus.

Our Father and our God, we do thank you today for the example of trusting obedience, even when things don't seem to make sense to us in our feeble thinking, we can always trust in you.

It will always be the right thing to do. So help us in that, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, listen, have a good rest of your Friday, a wonderful Good Friday, and Lord bless you on Resurrection Sunday.

I pray that that day will be a day of great blessing at Faith Baptist. We're having a sunrise service, we're calling it a sunrise service.

The sun will be up by then, but at 8 o 'clock, and then we're going to have a brunch together at 8 .45,

a regular Sunday school hour at 9 .30, and the morning worship service at 10 .30

on Sunday. Hope you can join us for these things. We'll not be having an evening service because of the sunrise service, but nevertheless, join us on the

Lord's Day, on Resurrection Sunday. Have a good day, good weekend, God bless.