Joshua 6
Hear the word of the living God,
Joshua chapter six, verses one through 27. It says, now Jericho
was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel.
None went out and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua,
see, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and mighty
men of valor. You shall march around the city,
all the men of war going around the city once. Thus you shall
do for six days. Seven priests shall bear the
seven trumpets of ram’s horns before the ark. On the seventh
day you shall march around the city seven times and the priest
shall blow the trumpets. And when they make a long blast
with the ram’s horn, When you hear the sound of the trumpet,
then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall
of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up every
one straight before him. So Joshua, the son of Nun, called
the priest and said to them, take up the Ark of the Covenant
and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of ram’s horns before
the Ark of the Lord. And he said to the people, go
forward, march around the city and let the armed men pass on
before the Ark of the Lord. And just as Joshua had commanded
the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of
ram’s horns before the Lord went forward, blowing the trumpets
with the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord following them. The
armed men were walking before the priests who were blowing
the trumpets and the rear guard was walking after the Ark while
the trumpets blew continually. But Joshua commanded the people,
you shall not shout or make your voice heard. Neither shall any
word go out of your mouth until the day I tell you to shout.
Then you shall shout. So he caused the ark of the Lord
to circle the city, going about at once. And they came into the
camp and spent the night in the camp. Then Joshua rose early
in the morning and the priest took up the ark of the Lord and
the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of ram’s horns
before the ark of the Lord walked on and they blew the trumpets
continually. And the armed men were walking
before them and the rear guard was walking after the Ark of
the Lord while the trumpets blew continually. And the second day
they marched around the city once and returned into the camp.
So they did for six days. On the seventh day, they rose
early at the dawn of the day and marched around the city in
the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that
they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh
time, when the priest had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to
the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. And the
city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord
for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and
all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the
messengers whom we sent. But you, Keep yourselves from
the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them,
you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a
thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. But all silver
and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to the
Lord. They shall go into the treasury of the Lord. So the
people shouted and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people
heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout
and the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into
the city, every man straight before him, and they captured
the city. Then they devoted all in the
city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen,
sheep, and donkeys with the edge of the sword. But to the men
who had spied out the land, Joshua said, go into the prostitute’s
house and bring out from there the woman and all who belong
to her as you swore to her. So the young men who had been
spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and mother
and brothers and all who belong to her. And they brought all
her relatives and put them outside the camp of Israel. And they
burned the city with fire and everything in it. Only the silver
and gold and the vessels of bronze and iron they put into the treasury
of the house of the Lord. But Rahab, the prostitute, and
her father’s household, and all who belonged to her, Joshua,
saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to
this day because she had the messengers whom Joshua sent to
spy out Jericho. Joshua laid an oath on them,
saying, Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds
the city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn
shall he lay its foundation. At the cost of his youngest son
shall he set up its gates. So the Lord was with Joshua and
his fame was in all the land. Amen. This is the word of God
for us. Being a guy, my favorite television
shows are police and military, right? You’re supposed to watch
shoot them up stuff. So, I’ve watched Blue Bloods,
and these are not endorsements. I’ve watched the SWAT team. And
then, of course, there’s Andy Griffith with Barney Fife. Now, that doesn’t count. In the
last couple years, though, I’ve watched the little show called
Seal Team, until they took it off TV. Make you pay for it now. But in all these type shows,
they have an operation. They have a battle. They have
an assignment. They have a mission. And they take all the intelligence
they can get, they plan, and they execute the mission. Now
they have unknowns, they have things they don’t know that they
will encounter, and it could make the mission go this way
or that way. They never know the outcome. They have a desired
outcome, and generally, because they’re good, they can achieve
that outcome, but not always. We wish we had an exciting shoot-em-up
here at the Battle of Jericho, but that’s not the way this battle
goes. In fact, several of the commentaries
I read on this chapter of Genesis, they call it the battle that
wasn’t. Or they call it Joshua did not fight the Battle of Jericho.
Now this was not really a battle, it was more of a ceremony. This
was a religious ceremony where the thing which is most holy
to the people of God, the Ark of the Covenant, was paraded
around the perimeter of the city day by day by day until on the
last day, the seven times they circled the city. Why? Why did Joshua not fight the
battle of Jericho? Well, because God did, because
Yahweh did. The Ark symbolizes the presence
of God And the walls came tumbling down, not because of might or
siege works or wrecking balls, but the walls came down because
of supernatural warfare. Now, ordinarily, we understand
God works through ordinary means. If you get sick, you go to the
doctor. You don’t just trust and pray.
I mean, you do that, right? But God has raised up men and
women who have knowledge of the human body. They can look at
you, they can diagnose, and they can offer a remedy. And generally
speaking in this world, we can get better through the help of
image bearers who God has giving gifts, who he’s giving gifts
to to make us better. When we travel, we don’t stand
out in front of the house with our suitcases and say, OK, God,
we’re ready. Take us. No, we get in the car,
we fill it with gas and we go. If we want income, we work. If
we want to eat, we go to the store or plant a garden. And
in our salvation, we understand God works through means. You
go to church, you sit under the word, you attend the meetings
of the church, you receive the sacraments, you do your devotions,
but not here. This is a strange example where
God does not use the ordinary means. He doesn’t use Joshua’s
military might. He doesn’t use the millions of
people in his army with their swords and their knowledge of
battle to win this war. No, God’s might is simply what
wins this battle. It is God’s might through his
presence. And one of the things we have to understand is There
are times when God says, don’t trust in chariots, don’t trust
in horses, don’t trust in anything but the name of the Lord. God’s
might via his presence through the Ark of the Covenant will
overthrow a mighty Ark, I’m sorry, a mighty city with its walls
and its doors and gates locked up tight. We read simply in the
book of Hebrews, by faith, the walls of Jericho fell. after the people had marched
around them for seven days. Yes, it was that simple. It was
that simple. So we want to think about this
story and some of the lessons it has for us. First, Jericho. Jericho was blocking Israel’s
entrance into the promised land. They had come in a certain way
and they had to get past Jericho to continue their march into
the promised land. Now, When I look at my enemies,
and right now my enemies are weeds in the yard and other things. I might go out in the yard and
say, well, I’m going to tackle these enemies today and I’ll tackle
these enemies next week and these enemies the next week. And meanwhile,
they just keep growing and getting messier and messier. Well, Israel
can’t do that. They have to take care of Jericho.
Jericho blocks an entrance into the promised land. And so you
could say, well, they could just kind of sneak around by night
and go on into the promised land and leave those people alone.
Well, what happens when they come up behind you? They win,
they have element of surprise. And so this mighty military fortress
protecting a significant region of the promised land must be
dealt with. And the typical way to defeat
a city like Jericho that’s locked up tight, cut off its water supply,
cut off its food supply, starve them, build ramps up to the top
of the wall so that you can go over the wall and into the city
and people in a weakened condition can be easily defeated. Jesus,
the commander of the Lord’s army says, do differently. No, we’re
going to march. We’re going to carry the ark. We’re going to
blow trumpets and we’re going to shout to the last day and
the walls will fall down. And did you notice you’ll be
able to walk in straight? Usually you walk over rubble
and around things. This is gonna be such an utter
destruction that they’ll be able to walk as if on flat ground. And so Jesus’ command is followed. But notice how the passage begins.
It says of the city of Jericho, Jericho was shut up inside and
outside because of the people of Israel. These people had not
forgotten the Red Sea 40 years ago. They had not forgotten the
death of Pharaoh’s charioteers and army in the bottom of the
sea. They had not forgotten that Israel
defeated Og, the king of Bashan, and Sihon, the mighty king of
the Amorites in the wilderness. They had not forgotten that Israel
had just crossed over the Jordan at flood stage at springtime
on dry land. And so they were shut up inside
and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out and
none came in. And so there’s Jericho, a formidable
enemy, but not for God. And I think we have to think
through here. We don’t want to allegorize and we don’t want
to say, well, okay, everybody has a Jericho. That’s terrible
Bible exegesis, right? But we do have enemies. We do
have strongholds in our lives and God can overcome every one
of them. Every single thing that you face, God can overcome. The second thing we wanna think
about is the march. The march around the city of
Jericho. This was a symbol of obedience. And it was a symbol of sustained
obedience for a long period of time. Seven days is a good little
bit. In the South, when we don’t understand
something, we say, do what? Right, you hear people say that?
That we don’t say pardon or say again or whatever. Other regions
of the world, we say, do what? This is a do what? You want me
to do what? Trust me on this one, God says.
You’re just going to march for six days, one lap. Well, one
lap won’t burn enough calories. One lap is not going to do anything
to these mighty people and their mighty city and their thick walls. But nevertheless, God says, trust
me on this one. You’re going to take the fighting
men of Israel and seven priests with seven horns, the Levites
will carry the ark, and you’re gonna march around the city one
lap a day, and you’re gonna say nothing. You’re not gonna whisper.
Doesn’t this sound ridiculous? Doesn’t this sound foolish? Doesn’t
this sound like the worst plan ever concocted? Now, when we
were children, we heard about Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.
We’ve all heard the Veggie Tales, sang the little ditty. And again,
like the flood story, Like some of these little Bible stories
we kiddify, this is no child’s game. This is an evil, wicked
city. This is quite a formidable enemy. And God says, obey me in this
and I’ll show you victory. Do nothing, let God, let God
in this strange ceremony do the work. And so their obedience
is something I think to take note of. They have a mighty enemy,
but a mighty God. Think of, Was it Naaman, the
king from a foreign land who had leprosy? And he came to Israel
for help, dipping the Jordan seven times. Well, I’ve got a
nice river back at home. Could I just dip in it? No, you
need to dip in the Jordan and you need to dip seven times.
He dipped six times, not better yet. Oh, remember the prophet
said dip seven times. We do things the way God says.
Now, I’m maybe a little grumpy these days with culture and people’s
lack of willingness to walk with the Lord in a faithful way. I
know I’m saying this to the Sunday night crowd, but what’s so hard
about trusting Jesus? What’s so hard about coming to
church? What’s so hard about living a simple life and ordering
things in your way to just follow the Lord? I know that’s easier
said than done, but we have our 19th trip to the mountains and
our 17th trip to the beach. And then we get our kids grown
and we wonder why they don’t walk with the Lord. Well, because
you didn’t and you didn’t show them. And so we need, we need
to look at what the Lord calls obedience. And it’s often in
the simple things of life, especially worship. It’s an exact obedience. It’s a sustained obedience. And he works out his salvation
in the midst of these things. So there’s Jericho, this formidable
enemy. There’s this march around the city. The third thing we
want to think about is the madness, the madness of God’s way here.
In the 1950s, churches in America decided they knew better and
they shut down their Wednesday prayer meetings. Churches in
the 1950s just decided they knew better. And, you know, children
got busy with this, that, and the other, and not as busy as
they are today with all their weekend sports travel, but just
busy with Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and whatever. And so we
said, well, people are too busy for an evening service. And then
we began to see family life disintegrate. We began to see catechism and
instruction fall by the wayside. And we wonder, we wonder why
we’ve lost the Christian faith in America. We’re very quickly
becoming a post-Christian America. Just look at Europe, look at
their empty cathedrals turning into bars and nightclubs and
being converted into housing. Look at how many churches in
America are for sale, how many churches are closing. And we
think we know better than God, but sometimes His ways seem madness
to us. But prayer meetings are the weapon
God has given the church. Prayer meetings are the way God
has seen fit to gather his people in dependence on him. Morning
and evening services are the way God communicates his grace.
I’m a little shocked. I know it’s Father’s Day and
I can desecrate Father’s Day more than I can Mother’s Day.
But isn’t it amazing how an American holiday, and yes, fathers are
great. Yes, mothers are wonderful. And yes, we should honor and
respect them, but we can do that six other days. But have you
noticed how churches are empty on Sunday? Well, the kids came
in. Well, show them your God. Show them your worship. You know,
it’s very interesting where we have ended up these days. We’ve
lost trust in the way God communicates his grace. And so we think it
a madness, but there’s always a method to the madness, right?
Well, that leads us to the fourth thing we want to see from the
passage. Jericho is a formidable enemy. God commands them to march
around the city. It seems madness to them, but
it’s the way. Think about the enemies. Now,
we don’t get the perspective of the Jerichoites, but, you
know, they do have little windows they can peek out. They’re watching
this madness. What are these people doing?
They were mighty and beat Og. King of Bashan and Sihon, the
king of the Amorites. They walked across the Jordan
on dry land. They walked across the Red Sea
on dry land. The ocean fell in upon the Israelites. These people
are mighty and we’re supposed to be scared of them and they’re
having a little parade. You can imagine the anger and
the wrath and the cursing inside the city. You can imagine the
anxiety. They’re locked up, they’re paranoid.
These people are marching around our big bad city. But they remember,
and you can imagine they’re sitting tight. This God they have seen
in action and have heard of is at work in the world. And so
these are their enemies, sitting in the city, watching this strange
sight. So here you all are on a Sunday night. People are driving
by our church. They’re going down Shadow Brook and Saddle
Club, and they’re saying, oh, look at that, isn’t that nice?
There’s people still at church, how quaint. But they’re wasting
their time. That’s what they think of you.
That’s what they think of your prayers, your Bible reading,
your worship, your sacraments. But thank the Lord, we have our
faith. We trust in these strange things. And so there are enemies
all around us. They’re building their fortified cities. They’re
railing against God. They think that this is all madness,
but we know better. How about destruction? That’s a fifth thing we ought
to see from this passage, and it ought to warn us of what God
does to the disobedient. We think that it’s wonderful
that the walls came falling down, but have you read the pages or
the verses afterwards? They devoted everything, men
and women, young and old, beast to destruction. The only thing
saved. or the gold and the silver and the bronze, that went into
the temple treasury. Those would be the things used
one day when they built the tabernacle. Those would be the things, or
when they built the temple, the treasury of the enemies of the
world enters into the temple of Almighty God. God always uses
the plunder of the Egyptians and the plunder of His enemies
to build His glory on the earth. Now we sing the little song,
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and what’s the climax? And the
walls came tumbling down. Look, that wasn’t in our Trinity
Psalter hymnal, so I couldn’t pick it for tonight. But this
is not a kiddie story, is it? It’s an awful story. It’s an
awful story of the destruction of God’s people, and I’m reminded
of the promise God made to Abraham. He promised that, Abraham, you’ll
have a people, you’ll have an offspring, outnumber the sand
on the seashore, they’ll outnumber the stars of the heaven. I’m
going to give you this land, this promised land as an inheritance,
but first for about 400 years, your people will be slaves in
Egypt, but I’m going to hear their cries. I’m going to rescue
them by a redeemer and I’m going to bring them into the promised
land. Now, does God give the Israelites the promised land
because they earned it and they deserved it? No, he gives them
the promised land because his wrath has risen because of the
sins of the Canaanites. The only reason they’re getting
the land is God is sick and tired of these wicked people. And so
he’s gonna wipe them out. He’s gonna use Israel to do it.
And he’s gonna put Israel into the promised land. But as we
all know, that’s gonna come to an end because they do the same
thing. Their wrath mounts up to the
heavens and God wipes them out of the land. First by exile through
the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. And they never really return.
The kingdom is never really established. There’s a few remnant that return
and rebuild the temple and patch up the walls of Jerusalem, but
the glory is never there. And it’s never intended to be
there because God’s glory will come to this earth through the
person of Jesus Christ. But this is an awful story of
what we call in Old Testament theology of the harem or the
ban. God tells his people, you devote
every enemy to destruction. The edge of the sword shall wipe
away every enemy of the people of God from the face of the earth.
They’re supposed to clear out the promised land. Don’t make treaties,
don’t make pinky swears, don’t do anything except wipe them
off the face of the earth. Now, when we go into a junk pile,
our eyes get really big. We see things that we don’t have,
things that we don’t need, and we all of a sudden think we should
have it because it’s free, right? It’s trash day. And so you see
the little car riding around picking up your junk, you know,
their metal, and they go recycle it. But we say, oh, look at that
TV. I think I should have it. We call it dumpster diving, don’t
we? We even have a posh little euphemism for it. We see junk
piles in garage sales and flea markets and think, oh, we should
stop. We should make good on that little adage, another man’s
junk is another man’s treasure. Well, in this case, you don’t
take anything. I know y’all know the rest of
the story. We’ll get to that next week. And what Achan did,
sneaking a little of the spoil and hiding it under his rug,
it brings great trouble to Israel. In fact, God commands, he says
in our passage, do not, do not take anything. It will bring
destruction and it will bring trouble. This is verse 18 on
the house of Israel. So they’re supposed to put everything
to the edge of the sword and only plunder the riches for the
plunder. for the good of the temple. Now,
think about this destruction here for a moment. A lot of people
take a passage like this and say, okay, this is the role of
the church. We’ve got all these Jericho’s around us and we’re
supposed to tear down strongholds. We’re supposed to reclaim every
enemy territory for Jesus Christ. That’s actually not the case.
Uh, we’re supposed to rest in the means of grace. Jesus is
continuing to fight. The commander of the Lord’s army
is contending to fight. And yes, we do make inroads,
uh, in this earth. Uh, yes, we, we see kingdom principles
and values come to fruition, but remember God is going to
destroy this earth and he’s going to make it new again. And so
our job is not to have some, um, Oh, what do we call it? Post-millennial
dream and make this place. A wonderful Christian enclave
again. I mean, it is, yes, our job to
be salt and light and to be influence and not to give into the culture,
all that. But God is going to make all things new and he’s
not going to do it through this strange kingdom advancement of
tearing down strongholds. No, Christians are called just
to be faithful, just to be simple minded folks living and resting
in God. The judgment of this world will
come. the transformation of this world will come. Jesus Christ
will not only avenge all his wrath on his enemies, but he
will make all things new. Our job is to preach and proclaim
Jesus, that unless you repent, you’ll become like Jericho. Unless
you repent, you’ll be like Sodom and Gomorrah. Unless you repent,
you too will follow in the paths of destruction of these great
cities. Well, let me think of a happy
thing here, and that’s salvation. We can’t forget the scarlet cord. In the midst of the hell of destruction
of a city, in the midst of the death of men and women and boys
and girls, in the midst of the death of all the beast and the
oxen, and in the midst of all the destruction by fire of a
city, except for its riches, which would enter the treasury
of almighty God, we have to remember grace. And there is a scarlet
cord hanging from a window in the wall of the city, God will
preserve and protect those who have faith in him. And so we
remember Rahab. Now your mind is probably going,
how did the scarlet cord stay hanging? How did somebody not
get to Rahab and her family and kill them first? Well, I have
a theory. I would imagine, I would guess,
this is just sanctified guessing, her part of the wall stood her
house built into the wall with its scarlet cord remained. And maybe, and this is really
sanctified thinking here, and don’t take this to the bank or
put your faith in this, but can’t you imagine that part of the
wall standing with the cord hanging and all the destruction below?
And these two spies rescuing the family one by one, maybe
like a fireman from an apartment fire or something, bringing them
down and bringing them out of the city. The only thing, the
only people spared because of their faith. And just as the
Israelites put the blood over the doorpost, they put the scarlet
cord in the window. Well, if you are not in Christ
Jesus, you are not safe. If you don’t have faith in him,
you are not under the blood. And if you’re not under the blood,
you will face destruction. And so one of the great challenges
I think that comes from this passage, not only do we need
to have faith in God and his strange and maddening means,
but we need to have faith in the precious blood of the Lord
Jesus, which has paid for our sins. Destruction came on Jesus
so that you escape it just as Rahab and her family. Let’s go
to God in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for
this story and the scriptures that reminds us of how great
is your wrath when disobedience rises up to the heavenly places.
We thank you that the wrath that was due to us for our sin was
placed on Christ at the cross, that he became sin for us in
order that we might become his righteousness. We live in a world
that says work and do and earn and achieve, but you simply call
us to rest. in your victory and in your salvation.
So we pray that we trust you more because of these things.
We ask your blessing now in the name of Christ. Amen.