Joshua 2-6 (Rahab's True Fight

When the draft existed in this country, one of the worst things that a person could ever do or could ever be called was a draft dodger.

A draft dodger is someone who, it's a derogatory term, who purposely tries to get out of serving their country.

It's to purposely avoid military conflict because I guess you have better things to do or you're scared or maybe you just didn't want to go.

So, draft dodging though, it has been and it always has been in the history of the world been viewed as a kind of treason and a kind of extreme cowardice.

It's to look at your countrymen that are across from you and to say you're not worth fighting for. This land is not worth saving.

It's to say that your safety, your comfort, your security is more important than someone else's and it is to appear selfish, feckless and cowardly.

In the history of the world, there's a great book by C .S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man and he traces different societies all across human history and one of the conclusions that he comes to is that cowardice is never considered virtuous in any society, at any time and in any place.

Different societies have differed on lots of things and had different opinions on things but one of the unifying things that everyone has agreed upon is that cowardice is not virtuous.

It seems as though as human beings that we instinctively know that when times are tough that we need to band together, care for one another and be called to a higher standard in those moments to serve.

We're so thankful for our two military men that are here today but I can't help but thinking about the hypocrisy in the modern

American church in this particular regard. For far too long the church,

I'm not talking about shepherds, I'm talking about the big C church has forgotten that we're in a war. We've forgotten that there's a battle and for far too long the church has acted like a band of cowards and I don't say that to be mean,

I say that just as an observation. Again I'm not talking about you or I but I'm talking about a church culture that we've inherited who's been scared of the world, scared of the flesh, scared of the devil and has been a church in hiding.

It's been a generation that we've inherited of draft dodging Christians too petrified to gird up their loins for battle because they're too willing to look too palatable to the world.

We've been too afraid to don the breastplate of righteousness, too scared to live a life of holiness that's dedicated to Christ.

We don't want to look like a Susie Duguid or a Holly holier than thou so we've instead tried to fit in with culture and blend in.

We've not shod the shoes of the gospel and been ready to leap into the world, ready to share the good news of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ because we're too afraid of what someone might think or who we might offend.

We've allowed the shield of faith to become rusty in our closets. We've allowed the sword of the spirit to gather dust in our bed stands or nightstands.

There's no army in the history of the world that has ever behaved this way in their country continued to stand.

We know that Christ has sent us out into the world to extend his kingdom, to knock down the strongholds of Satan, to go into all the world and declaring the gospel, the gospel that says that Jesus Christ reigns and Satan has been defeated.

That is a wartime statement. Until the entire earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, until every tribe, tongue, and nation has heard that glorious gospel, we're at war.

And far too many have either contributed nothing to the battle or have went away running from the battle.

We need to realize that we're in a spiritual battle. We need to realize that.

We must realize that God intends this war to be fought. We must realize that God intends to equip us for service.

And we must realize that cowardice and Christianity are antithetical to one another, that we've been called to fight.

As obedient slaves, we must be willing to go wherever our king has told us to go from now until the moment that he returns.

So with that, I want us to look today at the book of Joshua. And I want us to examine the background of this woman named

Rahab. And I want us to look at what happens when God calls Israel to war against the

Canaanites. And I want us to see every little step along the way in that. We're going to cover a couple chapters, which is, you know, normal for this series, but abnormal for this church.

And then we're going to look at how this applies to the gospel. So my hope today is we would see in both

Testaments what it means when God calls his people to war and what that means for us today.

So let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the truths that you have communicated in your word.

Thank you that all of the Bible points to you, Jesus. Everything either explicitly points to you or implicitly points to you through typology or through illusion or through the hope of the passage.

Every word, every jot, every tittle, every grammatical punctuation mark in this

Bible points to you, dear Jesus. You are the center of human history, you are the commander of the

Lord's armies. And Lord, and with all of our hearts, we want to please you.

Lord, let us hear what your word has to say this morning. And Lord, if there's areas of our life that need to be reoriented,

I pray that we would repent. Lord, whether that's through a lack of activity or sinful activity in the opposite direction.

Lord, I pray that we would hear your word and rejoice. And Lord, I pray that you would write it upon our hearts this morning.

In Christ's name, amen. Now, let's begin with who was

Rahab. Rahab was a Canaanite woman who lived in the city of Jericho. And the text tells us that she was a harlot, which is a prostitute at the time.

But before we even get to Rahab, we talked last week about Moses. So how do we get from Moses to Rahab?

We have Moses who grows up, he eventually leads the people of Israel out of Egypt. He takes them through the

Red Sea where it miraculously parts for them to cross. He takes them to Mount Sinai where God makes a covenant between them and him, where they get feasts and laws and everything that they need.

They get a tabernacle where they're going to be able to worship the Lord. And then from that tabernacle moment where the tabernacle was built, they set off.

They set off towards the land of Israel to the border. And their goal was to enter into the promised land, to conquer the

Canaanite people, and to do what Adam was supposed to do by casting out the serpent.

They were to cast out the people who worshiped the serpent and they were to form a land where the knowledge of God redounded to the ends of the earth.

That was their goal. But yet we see in the passage in the Old Testament that that's not what happened.

Every time human beings in their own human strength try to do anything, they fall flat on their face.

And this is exactly what happened time and time again. They fell on their face all the way to the border of Israel or the border of Canaan, and they fell on their face as they entered the land of Canaan.

If you remember, Moses sent out 12 spies. And the 12 spies were supposed to go survey the land and to come bring back a report.

But knowing God and knowing how powerful He is and how He just parted the Red Sea, He just turned the bitter water into drinkable water.

He just rained bread from heaven and quail from heaven when they complained about that. And they saw the 10 plagues of Egypt.

The Canaanites had no chance. And yet they came back with a poor report.

They convinced the people to be afraid. The people, in their fear, said, we're not going to enter into the land.

And God punished that entire generation for thinking too little of Him. And they were forced to wonder for 40 years.

Wonder. Sorry, I'm from North Carolina. We say wonder and wonder the same way. Every person that was under 20 years old was allowed to live.

Every person over 20 years old died in the wilderness because they thought too little of their

God. Moses even died in the wilderness, which meant that a leader, a successor, was going to have to be appointed for him, which was

Joshua. Now Joshua's mission was to take this new generation of Israelites into the land of Canaan and conquer it.

And I find it so fascinating that God does similar things with Joshua to establish him as the leader.

For instance, the first thing that really happens is that they cross over into the land and the water of the

Jordan River parts. That was to show the Israelites that God was with Joshua in the same way that God was with Moses so that they would trust him, follow him, and so that it would establish him as the true leader of Israel.

But unlike the cowardly generation that preceded them, they were supposed to go into the land with courage, conviction, and confidence in God, knowing that the kingdom of God was going to advance.

Jericho was their very first target in that war, and they sent out two spies to survey the land.

The Bible doesn't say this, but I think that Joshua realized that when they sent out 12 spies, the opportunity for a poisoned report to come back and the people to be poisoned by the negativity was so high with 12, so he sent two, which modeled the original two spies that actually were faithful in the original generation.

And they were to go into the land, and they were to survey it, and they were to see and bring back a report.

And they end up interacting with and meeting with this woman named Rahab. So that gets us to Joshua 2, where we interact with Rahab and we meet with Rahab.

I'm going to read large portions of Scripture in this passage, and in a couple chapters, because the context is so important.

So we're going to read all of chapter 2 right now, we're going to dive in, and then we're going to examine what it says.

So chapter 2 of Joshua. But the woman had taken the men and hidden them, and she said,

Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. It came about when it was time to shut the gate at dark that all the men went out.

I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them. But she had brought them up to the roof and hidden them in the stalks of flax, which she had laid on the roof.

So the men pursued them on the road to the Jordan, to the fords, and as soon as those who were pursuing them had gone out, they shut the gate.

Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, and she said to them, I know that the

Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the

Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.

When we heard it, our hearts melted. No courage remained in any man any longer because of you.

For the Lord your God, he is God in the heaven above and on earth beneath. Now therefore, please swear to me by the

Lord, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father's household.

And give me a pledge of truth, and spare my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters with all who belong to them.

And deliver our lives from death. So the men said to her, our lives for yours, if you do not tell the business of ours, and it shall come about when the

Lord gives us the land, that we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let down a rope through her window, for her house was on the city wall, so that she was living on the wall.

And she said to them, go to the hill country, so that the pursuers will not happen upon you, and hide yourself there for three days until the pursuers return.

Then afterward, you may go on your way. The men said to her, we shall be free from this oath to you, which you have made us swear, unless when we come into the land, you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down, and gather to yourself into the house your father and your mother and your brothers and all of your father's household.

It shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be free.

But anyone who is with you in this house, his blood shall be on our head, if a hand is laid on him.

But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be free from the oath which you have made us swear.

She said, according to your words, so be it. So she sent them away and departed, and she tied a scarlet cord in the window.

And they departed and came to the hill country and remained there for three days until the pursuers returned. Now the pursuers had sought them all along the road, but had not found them.

Then the two men returned and came down from the hill country and crossed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun.

And they related to him all that happened. They said to Joshua, Surely the Lord has given all the land into our hands.

Moreover, all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before us. This leads us to our point.

When God calls us to war, there are several things that happen. The first thing that happens when

God calls his people to war is he's going to provide for them. That's the first thing that happens.

The spies end up in the town, and all of a sudden, the king finds out that they're there and they immediately become a threat.

When you back an animal into a corner, especially like an animal with rabies or something like that, it's ready to strike you at a moment's notice.

This city has been backed into a corner, they're ready to strike, and these two people have been found out.

In those days, kings were like mayors. We think about kings today ruling over nations.

In those days, it was city -state empires, so the king had less jurisdiction, which means he had less places to look.

He had power over the entire city, but he was ready at a moment's notice to strike these men down. Now, what

I find so fascinating about this is the humor of God's providence. God calls them to do this, and then he lets them get found.

How many times have we felt like God has called us to do something, and then some situation, some circumstance, something happens, and we're like,

God, why did you do that? And yet it's here that we realize that he allows them to be found on purpose.

It's not an accident. He's not up in heaven saying, why weren't you guys more careful?

Did you have to walk around just stomping around the city? Did you have to talk so loud up on Rahab's roof?

He wasn't doing any of that. God allowed them to be discovered. He allowed them to go through the fear of wondering if they were going to be found.

He allowed them to wonder if this woman who they just met was going to betray them.

He allowed them to go through all of that because he wanted to make them trust him. God does this kind of thing all the time in our lives.

He calls us to do something, and not long after we finally muster up the courage to do it, we get some unexpected thing that happens in our life that causes us to think,

I can't do this anymore. Like for instance, when the

Lord called Shannon and I to ministry, we sold all of the stuff that we could sell. We packed up our truck.

We moved to Massachusetts, and we thought we had plans for everything, but not long after we got here, we were five months behind on rent, and I was asking myself,

God, how are we going to do this? You're the one who called me up here. You're the one who called my family up here. How are we going to actually make it?

And it wasn't long before the Lord totally covered all of our bills and everything was paid off.

But it was a moment where God was teaching me not to rely on my ingenuity, not to rely on my wit, not to rely on my resourcefulness, but to rely on him.

He took me to the place of fear so that he could show me that he's the only one I should ever trust, and I think that's exactly what he did here with these two spies.

He took them to the place that their self -reliance or their self -dependence could not get them any further, and then he shows them that he alone can be trusted.

The second thing that he did, the reason that he did this, is because I think God wants to get the glory in every situation and not us.

He doesn't want the spies running around the town thinking, we're so sneaky, we're so great, we're so secret spy -ish that, that's maybe what they would've said, that they never found us.

We're the wise ones. We're the crafty ones. No. God wants to get the glory in every single situation, and he will get the glory in every single situation.

That's why he allows them to be discovered. The third thing is that God allows these truths to become tangible through pain.

Humans, unfortunately for us, learn through pain. We don't learn through blessings very easily.

So they go into this town, they're found out, and then they get to see God's deliverance. They knew

God was a deliverer. Moses had told them, Joshua had told them. They knew that, but now they got to experience it.

How often in our lives do we know that a fact is true in the Bible, and yet it takes some situation in life kicking us in the teeth before we realize, oh yeah, that's true.

For instance, God is trustworthy. We've read that in the Word. That's true. But until you've actually had to walk through a situation where you have to trust him and where he's the only way that you're going to get through it, you don't know it to the level that you know it after having walked through that.

What about God is righteous? We know God is righteous in the Word, but what about when his righteousness finally infringes upon our will and we realize that we have to repent, that we have to say we're sorry for that remark that we made, or we have to apologize to someone that we've broken?

It's in the ebb and flow of life that God makes his truth real through struggle and through heartache and through pain, and that's what he's doing here.

The point we need to understand is that when God calls his people to war, he is going to provide for them.

He's not going to leave them abandoned. He's not going to forsake them. When he calls them to something, he will be with them even when it comes through the most unexpected means.

Here it comes through a Canaanite prostitute they could have never imagined. When God calls his people to war, he is going to provide for them.

The second point we would see is that when God calls his people to war, the nations will cry out in fear.

The nations will cry out in fear. Verses 8 through 11, Rahab testifies to this fact when she says, Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to them,

I know that the Lord has given you the land, and the terror of you has fallen on us.

And she's not being hyperbolic. And that all of the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the

Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. When we heard it, our hearts melted, and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you.

When God calls his people to war, he will send terror upon the nations.

Perhaps the nations look unbeatable to us, but if God is with us, nothing can stand against us.

We find out a little bit later in Joshua when they try to do this in their own human strength, the smallest little town ends up chasing them away, and they look like fools.

But that's in our human strength. When we rely on the strength and the power of God, the nations are terrified.

And they're not terrified because of us, they're not terrified because of our strength, or because we're so menacing, they're terrified because God and his holiness is that frightening to sinners.

I think the reason that the nations become prideful, the reason that nations try to overreach in their power is because the church has failed to demonstrate and to showcase the glory of a holy and awesome

God. Many in the church today act like the wilderness generation who is just trying to make it for 40 years so that they can finally enter the promised land while doing nothing in serving the

Lord. Too afraid to do what God has said. Many in the church have looked at the world and assumed that they are the dominant power on earth.

That's not true. The world is not dominant. It would be an interesting exercise for us to even ask ourselves, who do we think is in control of the world?

Maybe you would say the Pope, or maybe the President, or maybe you would say some secret family behind some cloak somewhere in Switzerland who's pulling all of the strings, or maybe you would say some tech nerd in Silicon Valley.

I don't know who you would say, but they're not in power, Jesus is. In Matthew 28, he says, all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me.

That means that all authority on earth belongs to him, and any authority that anyone has on this planet is borrowed.

We are called to remember that God is in control, and that when the nations see that, they can do nothing but fear.

We need to stop, as the church, letting culture, celebrities, politicians, and the media push us around and make us afraid.

We need to stop whimpering and cowering because we are the people of God.

We are the people of God. The gates of hell have to fall down when we advance.

That's what Jesus says. The nations will cry out in fear.

Joshua confirms this a little bit later in chapter 4, verses 23 through 24, when he says this, for the

Lord your God, he's talking to the people of Israel, dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the

Lord your God had done to the Red Sea. He's saying he's with you. Don't make the past nostalgic.

He's with you right now, which he dried up before us until we crossed, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the

Lord is mighty, so that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

However, the point Joshua is making is when God moves, the nations are terrified because he is mighty, and he is powerful, and he is infinite in his holiness.

We think about dictators today like President Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Kim Jong -un,

North Korea, even over -ambitious politicians in the American West, exerting all kinds of displays of power.

They are the true enemies of the state because the global state, the earth that we live in belongs to God.

If they wield their power in righteous ways, like Romans 13 says, they will be blessed.

Nations will be blessed. If they wield their power in evil and wicked ways, they will be an enemy of God, and there will come a day where they crumble like Jericho.

I say all this because I do not want you, the people of God, to be afraid. I don't want you to fear anything other than God itself because he is the one who is in control of this world.

The nations will soon remember, and they will tremble. My prayer for America, because that's where we live, is that America would fall down on its face and worship the risen

Christ before it crumbles, and it will if it doesn't. This is exactly what

Joshua says in chapter 5, verse 1 about his country or the country that he's going to be fighting.

Now, it came when all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan in the West and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea heard how the

Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the sons of Israel until they crossed. Their hearts melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the sons of Israel.

They were melted and dried up. That's an interesting phrase. When you're melted, it seems like you'd be more liquidy, but they're melted and dried up.

They're that afraid. Whatever bravado or machismo they formerly had now looks like the dry plains of the

Antarctic Valley. Zero percent humidity, zero inches of rain per year. I didn't know

Antarctica was a desert. It's the world's worst desert. This is how these people are.

God does the unexpected per usual, and He commands them to do unexpected things.

Now, they're getting ready to enter the land. They're getting ready to go in one of the most important battles that they've ever fought, and you're thinking about things that they're probably going to be doing.

They're going to be sharpening their swords. They're going to be preparing their shields. They're going to be doing wartime games.

They're going to be practicing. They're going to be making sure that their helmets fit right, their boots are laced up tight. Make sure they have an extra pair of socks in their pack.

You're thinking all of this stuff that they're going to be doing, and God tells them to do none of that. God tells them to do none of that.

The three things that God tells them to do is the exact opposite things that you would do if you were going to war, which is, again,

God's normal means. He calls us to do things that are completely out of the ordinary so that we will trust in Him, so that we won't trust in our strength and our might.

The first thing that He tells His people to do is to be consecrated. It says in Joshua 5, 2 through 8, at that time, when they had a profound military advantage, those are mine words, the

Lord said to Joshua, make for yourself flint knives, okay, that So Joshua made himself flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gilbereth Har -Relot.

Not everything in the Bible gets a geography name, but this was so traumatizing to the people, they marked it.

Enough said. This is the reason why Joshua circumcised them. All the people who came out to Egypt were all males.

All the men of war died in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt. For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.

For the sons of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness until all the nation, that is, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished because they did not listen to the voice of the

Lord, to whom the Lord had sworn that He would not let them see the land which the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Their children whom He raised up in their place Joshua circumcised, for they were uncircumcised because they had not circumcised them along the way.

Now when they had finished circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed."

This is not normal battle strategy. If you think about it, this is like the exact opposite thing that a commander would want to tell his troops, humanly speaking, to do.

They're in earshot of the city, and they're going to take weapons that are sharpened that could be used against the enemy, and they're going to use it on themselves.

They're going to maim themselves so that they're incapable of fighting for at least a week or two, maybe ten,

I don't know how long that takes. There's nothing stopping the people of Jericho from running out into the plain and abolishing them, completely and utterly destroying them.

And again, we look at the humor of God's providence. He calls them to be weak so that they can see

Him being strong. He calls them to be low so that they can see how high and exalted

He is. They are utterly vulnerable in the middle of this plain after having done this, and they did it because they trusted

God. Now you think about it. God could have asked them to do this at any point.

They had had journeys. These men were like not, they weren't kids. They were old.

They could have done this when they were ten years old. Their parents could have done this, the unfaithful generation that died in the wilderness.

They could have done this. No one did this. So God waits until they're at the edge of the border in order to tell them to consecrate themselves by circumcising themselves.

I find that hilarious, that that's the moment that God would choose to do that, and yet isn't that how

He often does in our life? He lets us walk to the border of something, the edge of something, and then

He tells us that there's a piece of our flesh that needs to be cut away. There's something that we need to repent of.

There's something that's going to cause us to be vulnerable that's not going to allow us to move forward. He does this all the time.

Again, God's purpose in all of this is to, so they will not trust in their military power and their strength, but they'll trust in His.

They won't trust in their weapons. They'll trust in Him. That's the first way that they're consecrated.

Consecrated through circumcision. The second way that they're consecrated is through Passover. It says in Joshua 5, 10, when the sons of Israel camped at Gilgal, this is after they had healed from their wounds, they observed the

Passover on the evening of the 14th day of the month on the desert plains of Jericho. So you can imagine if you're there and you're a military guy, you're a warrior, and you're like, okay,

God, we followed you in this, but can we please do the celebration after we win the battle? And he's like, no, you have to take another week off.

You just took a couple of weeks off to heal, now you're going to take another week off. You're going to sit and you're going to celebrate and you're going to feast.

And you'd think that these men would have been like, oh, okay, we could quietly hide the fact that we were suffering through circumcision here, but you want us to sing songs.

You want us to feast. You want us to drink wine and celebrate your goodness out loud in earshot of the city.

They maybe could have pretended like they were strong and tough to the Jericho people who were looking out their windows and after they'd been circumcised, they're like, no,

I'm good. Like, you know, just trying to make them think that they were strong, but they can't do that now they're sitting down and they're worshiping.

One is stopping Jericho from gathering up all of the little

Canaanite towns and coming out and decimating them. What's stopping them is God and he calls them to do this so that they will trust in him and not them.

Again, he's doing these things on purpose. He doesn't tell them to do military things.

He tells them to do holy things. He tells them to worship because that is the way that we prepare for battle.

That's the way God prepares his people for battle. The final thing that he does is he consecrates his leader through worship,

Joshua. And this is a fascinating passage. It says in chapter 5, verse 13 through 15.

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

And Joshua went to him and said, are you for us or are you adversaries?

It's a pretty reasonable question. He said, no, rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the

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

Lord to say to his servant? The captain, the Lord of hosts said to Joshua, remove your sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing is holy.

And Joshua did so. Now, I wish that we had more time here to go into just this passage because it is fascinating.

But a couple of things I want us to see. God's treating Joshua just like Moses so Joshua will have confidence in God.

He allows the waters of the Red Sea or the waters of the Jordan to part just like Moses. He allows, he has this encounter with God just like Moses did where God says to Moses, take off your sandals because the ground that you're standing on is holy.

And here Joshua has the same encounter. But what I want us to notice is that Joshua is actually interacting with God in the flesh here because there's never a time in the

Bible where you bow down and worship an angel or the angel doesn't rebuke you and say, get up. I'm just an angel.

Don't worship me. Joshua bows down and worships and this man accepts it.

He accepts worship because he's Christ. Scholars believe that this is what we call a Christophany.

A Christophany is an Old Testament appearance of Jesus before he came in the flesh in Bethlehem.

And there's many examples of these that we've looked at. We looked at one a couple weeks ago where the delegation that came to Abraham, the three men, the one who was in the middle, the one who was the leader was

Jesus coming to Abraham to talk to him about the promises of God that were getting ready to happen.

He's guarded by these two angels ready for war. We're going to make war with Sodom and Gomorrah. We see the judge in Eden who is walking and Adam and Eve go and hide.

And he says, why did you hide from me? He's talking to them. He's walking in the garden. This is physical appearance of God in the flesh.

That's Christ. We see the comforter of Hagar who he finds her out in the wilderness and he makes beautiful promises to her.

That's the pre -incarnate Christ. We see the high priest of Jerusalem in Genesis 14 named

Melchizedek who receives worship from Abraham and who accepts a tithe from Abraham. That's the pre -incarnate

Christ. The one who wrestles with Jacob and renames him Israel is the pre -incarnate

Christ. The angel who is standing behind the burning bush of Moses is the pre -incarnate

Christ. Military general who's leading Israel through the waters of the Red Sea is the pre -incarnate

Christ. The man sitting on the throne that Isaiah sees and he falls down on his face because of the glory of Christ.

That's Jesus. And the fourth man in the fiery furnace, that's Jesus. We see Jesus appearing throughout the pages of the

Old Testament to showcase His glory and to prepare

His people for His coming. And this is what He's doing here. He's preparing

Joshua and Israel for the final incarnation coming where He is born in a manger where He will make war with the earth.

This little battle that they're getting ready to fight will type, will image, will foreshadow the battle that Jesus Christ is bringing and we'll look at that in just a moment.

When God calls His people to war, He provides for them. The nations become afraid and He calls

His people to consecrate themselves. That's their weapons. Their weapons are not warfare. Their weapons are not swords and shields and anti -tank piercing missiles or whatever else.

Their weapons are worship. That's the third thing. The fourth thing is when

God calls His people to war, after they have consecrated themselves and worshiped and prepared, then

God Himself will cause pagan societies to crumble. It says in Joshua 6, 12 -17,

Now Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests 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 they blew the trumpets.

And the armed men went before them, and the rear guard came after the ark of the Lord while they continued to blow the trumpets.

Just in case we're missing the point here, a worship team is going to battle a city.

That's what's happening. Thus the second day, they marched around the city once and returned to the camp there for six, and they did so for six days.

Then on the seventh day, they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times.

Only on that day, they marched around the city seven times. At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpet,

Joshua said to the people, Shout, for the Lord has given you the city. The city shall be under the ban.

It and all that is in it belongs to the Lord. Only Rahab the harlot and all who are in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom she sent.

And it says down in verse 20 and 21, 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 to the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city, and they utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.

What Israel was called to see is that the pagan society that they would be tempted to fear was no match for God, and the only reason that it was defeated was because of God.

When God calls His people to war, we should expect that pagan walls, pagan societies, and pagan cultures will eventually come tumbling down.

How do pagan cities respond to the advancing of God? When God goes on the offensive, when

He starts advancing His kingdom, when He starts pushing back the enemy, the walls fall down. It doesn't happen every day, but when

God begins, like when revivals start happening, when God begins advancing

His kingdom, pagan walls and cultures crumble because that is who God is, and He lets

His people walk in like they own the place. For instance, in the New Testament, He chooses 12 ordinary blue -collared men, and He sends them all throughout the

Roman world, and a couple centuries later, the most powerful empire on earth had fallen because of ordinary

Christians, not fighting with swords, fighting with prayer, the Word, and worship.

Western Europe is an example. It was under the stranglehold of a perverted pope who was adulterating the

Bible and truth. So what does God do? God calls a boorish, frumpy

German monk named Martin Luther who declared God's wall -toppling message, and eventually the walls of Western Europe came falling down, and the

Reformation took hold in a way that no one would have ever believed. John Wycliffe.

John Wycliffe is a man who they hated so much they dug up his dead body and then burned him at the stake.

William Tyndale, they strangled him, then they set him on fire. John Hus, or if you want to pronounce it accurately, it's

Jan Hus, was set on fire while singing hymns to his last breath.

We can look at that and we can say that that's a defeat. We can look at that and we can say, oh, the powerful world, they've done it again, they've shut down the gospel, but the ashes of these three men went up and all of Europe was changed because of it.

Not because of them, but because of God. This God calls us to war and there is no defeat in His kingdom.

All the Reformation winds that blew all over Europe are the winds that actually crumbled these pagan strongholds to the ground.

When God calls His people to war, He provides for them. He causes the world to be in abject fear.

He consecrates His people through worship and He crumbles the pagan strongholds. The fifth thing that He does is

He causes lost people to be found. Joshua 6, 22 -25 says, Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land,

Go into the harlot's house and bring the woman and all she had out of there, as you have sworn to her.

So the young men who were spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and her mother and her brothers and all she had.

They also brought out all the relatives and placed them outside the camp of Israel. They burned the city with fire and all that was in it, only silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron that they put into the treasury of the house of the

Lord. However, Rahab the harlot and her father's household and all she had

Joshua spared and she lived in the midst of Israel to this day for she hid the messengers whom

Joshua had sent to spy out Jericho. What I find so fascinating is she had this scarlet cord in her window and when the walls came tumbling down, her house was a part of the wall.

We've already learned that in Joshua 2. Every brick of that wall came falling down except for the few bricks that made up her wall.

Every window in that city shattered except the few windows that she had to look out. Every person in that city died except her family.

When God calls his people to war, he not only consecrates his people but he intends on rescuing lost people too.

God's methodology in war are these things that we've seen, that he calls, that he commissions, the world panics, people are consecrated, nations clap, and lost people are rescued.

That is the way that God does warfare and it's all throughout the Bible and it's all throughout church history.

He always follows this pattern. But what

I love about this story is that he also brings Rahab into his story.

She doesn't just become a minor part in the story that God is telling.

She becomes pretty special and pretty key. She goes from being a pagan to knowing

God. She goes from being a person to a citizen, a lost person to a citizen. She comes from being a prostitute to a wife, a sinner to a saint, from being childless to being a mother, and not just any mother and not just any son.

It's questionable whether it's that she's the mother of or the grandmother of, and there's people on both sides of the debate.

Either way, she was responsible for bringing Boaz into the world. We think of Boaz, the man who redeems

Ruth in the book of Ruth. He had sensitivities for the foreign woman because his mom or grandmother was a foreign woman who experienced the grace of God.

And when he looked at Ruth and he showed her love and tenderness and grace, God by his providence had already primed him for that role.

We see in Matthew 1, 5 through 6, Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab.

Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of King David.

So she not only is responsible for this great man Boaz, she also is the ancestor of King David.

She's royal. She's in the royal line of King David. And we know from Matthew's gospel that that means that she also is in the line of Jesus Christ.

One of the most interesting things about the line that is described in Matthew's gospel is that it's all men.

Heads of households, noble men, godly men. You would expect nothing different, but there's five notable exceptions in that genealogy which point to the heart and the love of God.

And all five of them are women. The first is Tamar. She's a woman who dresses up like a prostitute and convinces her father -in -law to help her get pregnant.

And he's tricked and he's deceived by that, and yet he calls her righteous in the text. She is a part of Jesus' line.

We see Ruth, the Moabite woman who lived in a child -sacrificing society. She becomes a part of Jesus' line.

Bathsheba is a woman who participated with King David in adultery, who worked in her politics within the court to get her son

Solomon on the throne. She's a part of Jesus' line. Mary, who everyone thought had stepped out on Joseph and who had done something that she should not have done, she's a part of Jesus' line.

And the one that I skipped is Rahab. The prostitute from Jericho. These five women are a part of Jesus' line because it showcases

Jesus' heart for us. What Jesus is showing us is that no one is too far gone to be rescued or saved.

No one is beyond the pale of grace. No one is outside of God's ability to forgive them. He takes all of these reputable men and puts them in His lineage, but He also puts the lowest people in their society at their time to show them that He's not just the

Savior of the high and mighty. He's the Savior of those who are downcast and those who are broken and those who are low and those who have sinned and those who have shame and those who have guilt.

If you're in that situation where you feel like that you're carrying things that you've done in your life that seem despicable to you, you're in great company because Jesus' line is littered with that.

When God goes to war, He redeems lost people and He makes them a part of His family and He redeems them and He cleanses them and He makes them pure and white as snow.

That's the kind of God that we serve. And we see that most clearly in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When God goes to war, David Curry has said this. I think this is a wonderful quote. The birth of Jesus is a declaration of war,

God's invasion of a planet and rebellion. The first Christmas was D -Day, with Christ the first soldier to hit the beach.

If Jesus had not come as warrior, He would have never claimed the title Prince of Peace.

If Christ is no soldier, then He is no Savior. Isn't that beautiful? Jesus is

God's true Joshua who came in order to lead the people of God to the promised land, to heaven.

He's the one who came as the warrior king who's going to not just overthrow Jericho, but He's going to overthrow every enemy until all

His enemies are put at His feet. He's the one who came to fight, casting out demons and throwing sicknesses into hell and preaching the gospel of war to those who are in rebellion and preaching the gospel of victory to those who are

His children. He's the one who came and chose 12 people to battle the city of Jerusalem.

This city that you would think is supposed to be the city of God, He comes and chooses 12 disciples to preach the gospel and to fill the city of Jerusalem with the praises of God until the city crumbles.

Isn't that interesting? The Old Testament people fight Jericho until God crumbles it.

The New Testament church goes against Jerusalem until 70 AD. The Romans come in and tear every single stone down brick by brick because Jerusalem was standing in the way of the mission of God.

Their religion and their hyper -legalism was standing in the way and God topples that city that toppled

Him. The one who nailed Him to the cross, the one who beat Him and put a crown of thorns on His head, eventually was the one that was toppled by King Jesus when the gospel was preached in that city.

And it wasn't just that city, it was Judea, it was Samaria, and it was proclaimed all throughout the earth.

God's true church, Israel, the new Israel that Galatians calls us, is a new nation filled with priests, a kingdom full of priests.

It's a nation that is filled with Spirit -indwelled people who are called to not go to one city to worship

Jesus, but to spread out all over the earth and fill the earth with the presence and the knowledge of God. We have been made temples of Christ by the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit. We have been called to God's true war to take this gospel to the ends of the nations.

If you think about this from the vantage point of mission, God declared war on the world and through missions

He's reclaiming it. Through everyday conversations where we tell people about Christ, through open doors on college campuses, through having discussions with a family member who hates

God and who's an atheist, for praying for our friends, for going to Sunday morning worship, for participating in the

Lord's Supper and baptism. Do you realize that we are consecrated not by how loud we are and how many picket signs we hold and joining the religious right.

We are consecrated for the battle by ordinary means of grace, by showing up on Sunday morning, that's an act of war.

By getting baptized, that's a declaration of war. By feasting at the

Lord's table in the plains of Jericho, like they feasted in the plains of Jericho, we're feasting in the plains of Chelmsford, but we are declaring war on this world through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The reason that the world is not afraid today is because they're not in the same scenario as Jericho.

Jericho looked out their windows and saw the armies of Israel formed and waiting to go to war.

Church, we have to stand up and we have to mobilize ourselves to show this world the good news and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I really blame pastors for this. A generation of pastors who've been mush -mouthed and too weak to say the truth.

Steve Lawson says the trouble with pastors today is that nobody wants to kill them anymore. I think that's true.

Leonard Ravenhill said if Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, he would have never been crucified.

We need to repent. We need to beg and plead that God would allow us to showcase the gospel of Christ.

Every single part of this story applies to us. We've been provided for by Christ who gave us the gospel, who rescued us and saved us like Rahab, who saved the spies.

The world is terrified of true Christians who pray and who go to church and who worship because they don't know what to do with us.

What does it mean for us to be at war? It means for us to do what God has told us to do, to participate in the battle on His terms, to go to church, to worship, to pray, to participate in the sacraments, and to stand back and watch

God bring the walls down. I think it's time. I think it's time for us to recommit and be serious about what we've been called to, and not just us.

I pray that for the entire country and I pray that for the entire world until every square inch of this world is blanketed with the knowledge of God, until Christ returns.

How long do we fight? Until Christ returns. How long do we participate in the sacraments?

Until Christ returns. How long do we go to church? Until Christ returns. Or until we die. That is the fight we've been called to.

Lord, thank you so much for your gospel. You came into enemy territory, and you fought so that you could rescue us.

Lord, even being killed on our behalf, we couldn't save ourselves.

We were in Satan's chains. We couldn't rescue ourselves. We were far too gone. We were far worse than Rahab.

And yet, Lord, in your sweet, tender mercy, you came and you showed up, and you let the world do to you what they should have done to us.

Lord, I pray that we would look to you always the author and perfecter of our faith.

Lord, I pray that we would not be afraid, and we would not be cowardly.

Lord, I pray that we would not be like the draft dodgers that we talked about earlier.

Lord, I pray that we would see that the battle is real, and I pray that we would fight with the means of grace that you've given us.

Lord, I pray in times like these that you would invigorate a love for the

Bible among the Shepherds Church. It's not enough to say that we love the

Bible. It's not enough just to preach the Bible. It's not enough just to plaster some stickers on our wall. Lord, I pray that on our

Mondays and on our Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays that we would be people of the word, because that's our warfare.

That's our weapon. Lord, I pray that our knees would be worn from prayer, because that's our weapons.

Lord, I pray that we would love your bride, the church, and that we would come here to be refreshed from the battle, like a medical tent in the middle of a war zone, and that we would leave this place encouraged and strengthened for the battle ahead.

Lord, I pray that we would cling to your truth. Lord, I pray that we would love one another really well. And Lord, I pray that we would do these things faithfully until we die or you return.