Joshua 5:13-15
Amen. Turn in your copy of God’s
word to Joshua chapter five. Tonight we’ll read verses 13,
uh, 14 and 15. Joshua five versus 13 through
15. Remember as we prepare to read
that before they invade their first piece of territory and
take their first piece of the promised land. God has done three
things to prepare them. First, he circumcised that entire
generation of males who had not been circumcised in the wilderness.
Their parents unfaithful and died. Now, these are the faithful
ones. These are the ones that will
enter the promised land. So he circumcised all the males and then they observe
Passover. It’s their first Passover in
the promised land. And now tonight, the third preparation
for war will be the appearance of Christ, the commanding officer
of the armies of almighty God, and he will appear before them.
So hear God’s word with me. Joshua chapter five, beginning
at verse 13. When Joshua was by Jericho, he
lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing
before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went
to him and said to him, are you for us or for our adversaries? And he said, no, but I am the
commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. And Joshua
fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him,
what does my Lord say to his servant? And the commander of
the Lord’s army said to Joshua, take off your sandals from your
feet. for the place where you are standing is holy. And Joshua
did so. Amen. This is the word of the
living God. If you’ve been reading through
your Bible, maybe your Bible reading plan, you’ve been coming
Wednesday nights and Sunday nights and hearing some of the Old Testament
studies in Joshua and maybe Ruth and We did Ruth on Sunday morning
a while ago. We’ve been through a number of
these Old Testament passages. You’re beginning to get the picture
that God makes promises very often. And yes, he does keep
his promises, but sometimes his promises are a long time in their
fulfillment. Just think, for example, of Abraham
and Sarah. You’re gonna have a baby. Well,
on and on life went, and they did not have a baby. On and on
life went, and no baby. They got old, no baby. They got
100. Or he did at least, and guess
what? A baby. Promises in the Bible are sometimes
a long time coming in fulfillment. How about Jacob? Just the other
Wednesday night, we looked at the life of Jacob and how long
did he work for the hand of Rachel? He worked seven years. Think
about Noah. He was 100 years in building
the ark. but he was hammering and nailing and sawing and faithfully
working because God promised rain and a flood, but it was
a long time coming. Or how about for us, the church?
Jesus seems to be tarrying. As we might say in the South,
he’s taking his own sweet time. He continues to tarry and we
wait for his second coming. But we remember the words of
Peter, the Lord is not slow. or slack, as some of us seem
to think, to fulfill his promises. But he is patient, not willing
that anyone should perish. And so we are waiting in the
sense for the fullness of Jesus coming until all the nations
of the earth have heard and received Jesus Christ. We remember Jacob
when he worked seven years for Rachel. It seemed to him as but
a few days because of the love which he had for Rachel. And
maybe we are good Christians, and we we just happily work. And we love Jesus so much that
it seems to be but a few days. We’re patient with his long time
in coming. Well, This place where we are
in the Bible tonight is a long time coming. God had told Abraham,
your offspring will inherit the promised land. The place where
your feet are standing, Abraham, will one day be the place of
the multitudes of your offspring. But he said, there’s gonna be
a couple hundred years, a handful of centuries in between. For
he said, the Judgment against the Amorites
must be built up in order that when you go in and wipe them
out of the promised land, their due will be just. And so the
Amorites have heaped up their judgment, it’s reached to the
heavens, and so God’s A ban on the people of the land, or the
Hebrew word, the harim, is about to take place. You know of this
in the scriptures. It’s one of those terrible doctrines. It’s in the Bible. It’s true.
It did take place. God told Israel, you go in the
promised land and you take care of business. You don’t leave
anyone alive. You don’t make treaties. You
put men, women, and children, You put it all to the sword.
And as we’re going to see in the coming weeks, you don’t take
any spoil. God is dead serious about cleaning
the promised land and making it a, a holy habitation for his
people. Now we’re going to see Israel
struggle with that. Well, we can let these folks live. We
can make treaties with these folks. Well, a little spoil here,
a little plunder there. Oh, it won’t matter. Well, we’re
going to see in a few weeks, it really matters. And it matters
to God that we obey him perfectly. But Joshua and Israel are facing
their first formidable enemy. They’re up against Jericho. And
if you skip ahead a couple of verses into chapter six, it says
the city of Jericho is locked up tight. I mean, they’ve locked
the bolt locks and they’ve hooked up the chain. Any of y’all still
have the chain? You know, where the door opens and chain catches
it, you know, um, They’ve left the spotlights on, the floodlights
that have the little motion detector thing. Hopefully it’s not sensitive
enough for the raccoons in the trash. But they’re locked up
tight. They’re upset that these people
of God, these people of Yahweh, who’ve crossed the Jordan on
dry land, they’ve routed their enemies, the Amalekites and some
of the others. They’re a great enemy to these
people. Well, Israel faces, Joshua faces a formidable enemy too.
These people are nasty. These people are numerous and
they’re holed up in Jericho. Joshua, as it turns out in his
career, will displace 35 cities. That’s a lot like King David,
isn’t it? He was a mighty man, a man of great war and valor.
He’ll displace 35 cities, but here he is on the eve of the
battle of Jericho. And he goes out in the starry
night to probably take one last look at the city to see if there’s
anything he can see. And I’m sure he’s saying his
prayers. And the passage leads us to think
about faith for a moment. Do we believe in God? Do we take
him at his word? Is he trustworthy? Can God do
all that he says he can even against all odds? Now, we don’t
wanna over-spiritualize this. Can God fight the battle of Jericho?
Yes, he can. Now, does that mean immediately
we look and say, can God fight my battles? You know, my personal
ones, my physical ones. I wanna make a little distinction
there. Can God fight your health battles?
Yes, he can and he does. But I want you to see a difference
here. This is the kingdom of God advancing. Right? And that
has to be the most important thing to God. Does God want you
to not have a cold and the sniffles? Of course he doesn’t. He’s a
loving God, right? He didn’t make us to be sick.
He didn’t make us to be cursed and bent by sin. That’s why he’s
going to fix that and make all things new. Does God care about
your health? Of course he does. But so often
our prayers are what we call organ recitals. Dear God, so
and so has a bad heart, a ruptured spleen, a hurting knee, Torn
ankle, smashed big toe. And if that’s the content of
our prayers, will the kingdom ever come? Well, it will, but
shouldn’t our prayers be a little more kingdom-minded? Yeah, of
course. But think for just a moment about faith. Do we believe God?
Take him at his word. Is he trustworthy? Can he do
all things against all odds? Now, I’ve just probably hurt
some of y’all’s feelings in saying God doesn’t care about your health.
That’s not what I said. Right. Y’all got that. OK. Can God build his church in the
face of Jericho? Can God build his church in the
face of 21st century American rotten culture? Yes, he can. And so our faith must be in God
and we must believe him and take it as word and believe that he
is trustworthy and against all odds. He can indeed do his work. Think of Jesus in the temple.
The temple in his day was a massive place. If you go there today,
you can still see pieces of the temple at the Western Wall, the
Wailing Wall. Maybe some of you have been there, and the stones
are massive. A couple of them would fill this
room up. And I don’t know how they got
those stones, how they cut those stones, and how they moved them
from a quarry to Jerusalem, but it was all under the, um, the,
uh, what would you call it? The, the, the, it was all under
the, the, the command of the nations that were occupying Israel. And they wanted to, uh, build
a name for themselves, whether it was the Greeks or the Persians
or the Romans, whoever, uh, they wanted to make a name for themselves.
And one of the ways you had peace in your province was to give
people their religion. Uh, That’s why I say for America,
we want to give everybody a free education. That’s our religion.
Or free cable television for all. Or what was it, 10 years
ago, free telephones for everybody? There’s a certain phone named
after a certain president. So you get peace by giving them
stuff, right? That’s nothing new. That’s not
the American dream. It is, but before us. We think of Jesus
standing there in that temple that had been built by Herod,
it had been built by all kinds of others before Herod the Great. Massive stones, and what does
Jesus say? This thing is gonna be gone in three days, or it’s
gonna be gone, and then I’m gonna rebuild it in three days. He’s
speaking of the coming destruction of the temple, which did happen
in AD 70, but he was also speaking of himself, I am the true temple.
And I am not a temple made with human hands. And you people are
not stones hewn out of rocks, but you are living stones. I
am the cornerstone, the chief stone, and you are the living
stones. They didn’t understand what he said, but what Jesus
was saying is I can build a church any old place at any old time
by my great power. And so you imagine Joshua here
standing out under the stars feeling rather alone, just the
tree frogs croaking and the crickets cricketing and all that. And
he’s thinking to himself, well, tomorrow’s the day. I don’t know
exactly how this is going to go down. He didn’t have the information
yet about marching and blowing the trumpets, that kind of business.
It’s just a ceremony is what it ended up being. But it doesn’t
scoff. He doesn’t say, well, that’s
a fat chance. No, he believes God. He takes
him at his word. Now think about Joshua for a
moment. This faith is nothing new and it’s not faith that’s
just built up because he’s got a big battle tomorrow. Joshua,
40 years ago when he was a younger man, was one of the 12 spies. And remember he was one of the
two of the 12 who came back and said, yes, we can. Okay, that
wasn’t just President Obama’s slogan, right? Joshua and Caleb
came back and said, we can do this. But now 40 years have passed
and it’s time to do this great thing. So Joshua’s faith is on
display before us. And there’s a challenge to our
faith. Can God build his church in the face of Jericho and in
the face of 21st century America? We would be tempted, like Joshua,
to say, you know what, people, let’s just pack up and go home.
Let’s quit. The enemy is too big and the task is too great. And we could even say that today,
our little church, should we even exist? Well, yes, we’re
essential, we’re necessary. Maybe the whole world isn’t coming
through our doors, but at least the people are gathering in the
name of Christ. And so there’s faith. We wanna
think also about submission. You can imagine for Joshua, this
event where he bumps into Christ, the commander of the Lord’s army,
was a rather startling event. He’s out at night and here’s
a man with a sword. Now, if you walk down the street
and you see a man with a gun, usually it’s in his holster,
right? It’s on his hip. It’s usually not drawn. He’s
usually not waving it around. If you see a man on the street
in the night waving a gun around, you usually hide behind a telephone
pole or jump in the bushes or that sort of thing. Well, here’s
a man with his sword drawn. He’s ready for battle. He is
ready to take up a fight. And so this startling event that
Joshua experiences in the night before the great battle of Jericho
is typically seen by most people in understanding of biblical
interpretation as a Christophany. This is an appearance of the
pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Now that Jesus come into existence
at his birth. No, he’s the eternal son of God. He’s eternally begotten. He just
took on human form then, right? So Jesus has always been, you’re
good theologians, are there… very many Christophanies in the
Bible. Not, not many. This may be one
of the very few and not everybody agrees. This is one. Now, are
there Theophanies appearances of God? Yeah, you got the burning
bush. You’ve got God coming to Adam
and Eve and the cool of the garden and walking with them and fellowshipping
with them. You have God almighty coming to Abraham. when he’s
by the Oats of Mamre and other places like that. But this is
a very rare occasion where Christ himself, the pre-incarnate Christ
shows up. Maybe the other place we think
of Christ showing up would be in the fiery furnace. Remember
what does Nebuchadnezzar say? Well, I stuck three in there
and I think I see four. And who was that fourth? It was
none other than Christ, our great savior, the pre-incarnate Christ. Some people say it could be an
angel here. It could be just Yahweh, but we’ll take it as
Christ, the commander of the army of God. And that’s one of
these events where you don’t know what to say. And generally
you say something stupid, right? And what does Joshua say? Are
you for us? or are you against us? He’s getting
in battle mode. It’s go time, right? I wanna
know who’s with me, who’s not with me. This is time for courage.
Are you for or against? And it’s as if Jesus says, Well,
neither. There’s a big no there. There’s
an emphatic no. And I think this shows us how
we ought to believe. You know, we are the people,
maybe not you all, who have the sticker on the back of the car
that says, God is my co-pilot, okay? That’s bad theology, right? You get that. There is no co-piloting
in God’s wheelhouse, okay? He doesn’t do anything as second
mate. Okay? He is not lieutenant. He
is not a major. He is the chief guy, right? He is the commander. So are you
for or against? Well, Jesus here says, I’m here
to help. I’m here to help. I’m the commander of the Lord’s
army. And notice a distinction. He
is not here to take over Joshua. Joshua is the commander of the
people of God. But God, through Jesus, is bringing
the whole host of heaven to fight against Jericho. And we can even
see that in our eyes of faith when we are serving in the church.
Jesus brings the whole host of heaven to build his church on
earth. It’s not, oh, we got these great deacons and these wonderful
elders, and we’ve got this staff, boy, they’re great, and we got
this dynamic preacher who has a good hairdo, Hawaiian shirt,
the whole bit. That’s how we think in America,
isn’t it? What can our strength do? But
here we see a wonderful sign of submission by Joshua. Jesus, the commander of the Lord’s
army says, I am here to help. He in a sense says to Joshua,
you’re here to help. Right? I’m in charge. You’re
the little brother. I’ve come here to fight your
big battle. I am at your service. And what does Joshua do? He falls on his face. And maybe in the words of military
language, he says, sir, yes, sir. This is a great sign of
submission by almighty or by Joshua to almighty God. You think
about how we can do that as a church. Well, we just did it. We spent
some time on our knees. We went to the sovereign and
went in and said, God, we can’t do this, but you can. We need
help. We say this at the outset of
our morning service. Our help is in the name of the
Lord who made heaven and earth. We could not worship. We could
not do anything that we do. apart from Almighty God. And
Joshua recognizes this, and as an act of submission and even
worship, he falls on his face before Jesus, the commander of
the army of angels. Now, think for just a moment
how amazing this is. I hope some of you are continuing
to read through your Bibles through the year, and you get through
the Old Testament, you’ve stumbled through it, but think about Elijah,
or Elisha, I think it was, who was ministering to the King of
Israel when Ben-Hadad, the Syrian commander of the army had surrounded
the people of God, completely surrounded. And what happens
when you’re surrounded? You’re dead, you’re gone. It
won’t be just a matter of days. I think of the princess bride,
you know, there will be no survivors. Remember that? That’s the situation
Israel was in. And Elisha’s servant looked up
and what did he see over the hills? around the city, he saw
the Lord of hosts and his angels and his army. And he said to
Elisha, look, and Elisha said, don’t worry, we’ve got more than
the Assyrians and we can win this battle. And they did. And
that’s what we have to know when we submit to God, all the power
of heaven, all the resources of heaven, everything is at the
disposal of King Jesus. Now you understand a bit why
circumcision was necessary. Now you understand a bit why
Passover was necessary. Jesus is about to show up and
you better be clean, you better be pure, you better be holy,
you better be consecrated, you better be worshiped up, prayed
up and ready to meet with King Jesus. And so here’s a passage
that teaches us about faith and submission, but it also teaches
us about worship. I have friends who say you shouldn’t
call the place where you worship the sanctuary. I got no problem
with that. They call it the worship space
or the meeting room or the big room. Okay, just call it something. What’s wrong with calling it
a sanctuary? Well, only God dwells in a sanctuary. Well, then why
do we have a prayer of invocation asking him to show up and bless
us? I don’t get all those arguments. And you can strain every gnat
through the strainer if you wish. I don’t choose to do that. But
we gather in a place like this and it’s sacred space set apart
for worship. We don’t have a ping pong table
in here, right? We don’t have a Coke machine
in here. We hope that people aren’t bringing coffee and donuts
and putting their feet up, that sort of thing. This is the place
where we show up ready to meet God and to worship him. Why do
we do that? Why do we have a sanctuary? Well,
because God is not a casual experience. Now, during the week, you know,
He’s with us, we pray, we sing, you know, we feel His presence,
the Spirit’s in us, all that. But there’s something about Lord’s
Day Corporate Worship. It ought to be a high and holy
and specialist experience that’s not casual. It ought to be weighty
because we are meeting with the Sovereign One, the Commander
of the Lord’s Army, the Great I Am, God Himself. But we also
take, We take our cues from the Bible. Anytime people met with
God, it wasn’t a, Hey God, what’s up experience or Jesus is my
homeboy experience. There’s another bumper sticker
for you. Um, Moses encountered God multiple times and he was,
he was undone. He was changed. Uh, he couldn’t
speak. He, he glowed. Um, It was quite
an experience. Isaiah, Isaiah’s first response
when he bumped into the vision of almighty God was, I am unclean. I am unfit to be here. You ever
see a person that comes to church a little dirty. Maybe they show
up needing a little help and they’re embarrassed. My clothes
are dirty. My hair’s unkempt. And they realize they’re in a
place special. And what do we do immediately? It’s okay. Come
on in. It’s just fine. There’s occasions
where we, we, we understand that sort of thing. But Isaiah realized
I’m unclean. How about John? The apostle is
an old man in his old age on the Isle of Patmos as a prisoner
for the sake of Christ. He was being persecuted because
as an old man, probably in his nineties, the pastor, at the
church at Ephesus, he got rounded up and shipped off to Patmos.
And on the Lord’s day, he gets a vision of heaven and the things
that will take place. And it says when he met the risen
savior, he fell on his face as though dead. How many people
who claim to be Christians in America show up to church thinking
I am on holy ground? God is in this place. God is
in his holy house. Let all men keep silence. That’s not the way it is these
days. Worship is casual. It’s loud. It’s noisy. It’s banal. It’s repetitive. It’s so many
things these days. And yet here again is a echo
of what we experienced with Moses at the burning bush, Joshua,
bumps into Jesus, he falls on his face to the earth, he worships
and he says, what does my Lord say? And he says, take off your
sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing
is holy. We’re gonna have to do a little
greeter training, right? Hey, you gotta take your shoes
off at the door. This is holy ground. No, we’re not gonna do
that. But shouldn’t we encourage people
to come in and be reverent? Shouldn’t we encourage people
to come in and prepare their hearts and minds to worship?
We have our voluntary for silent prayer after the announcements. And we do that because y’all
are so happy to see each other. This is the big gathering place.
This is the room where we get to see each other for the first
time. And so instead of saying, y’all need to come in here and
hush up, it’s good for y’all to visit. But there’s a time
where it’s time to sit down and hush, right? It’s time to get
ready to worship the living and true God. Now, some have said,
how do you know this is Jesus? Well, if it wasn’t Jesus, it
was just a man, a person, just some commander. What would they
have said? They would have said what we read in Revelation earlier.
Hey, look here, I’m not God. Don’t worship me. You worship
God and God only. And because of the authority
which Jesus speaks with here, and because of the worship that
Joshua gives him, and the sort of the back and forth between
the two, the submission and the worship, and the not stopping
him, we can’t help but say, this is God Almighty. This is the
second person of the Trinity. We also would think of the words
of Jesus when he came on his triumphal entry. If you want
people to hush and not worship me, then the stones, could it
be the stones of the city of Jericho or the stones of the
desert outside Jericho would have worshiped God. So we thought
about faith. We thought about submission.
We thought about worship. I want to think about one last
thing, and this one is very brief, and it’s the word listening.
We ought to listen to God. What does Joshua immediately
say when he realizes this is some special person? He falls
on his face, and from that prostrate position, he says, what does
my Lord say to me? That is a huge, huge question. statement to our culture today,
because this is how we do it in today’s culture. Okay, God,
this is how this is gonna go down. And I just want you to
be sure that we’re on the same page here, God. This is how this
is gonna work. But our real posture, our real
attitude ought to be speak, Lord, your servant is listening. Let’s pray together. Our great
God, we come From a passage like this, and we realize that our
faith is weak, our submission is lacking, our worship is infrequent
and even casual, and our ears are too busy hearing our own
voices talk. So help us to hush and to listen,
to be reverent in worship, still our hearts and submit to
you and to feed our faith to know more and more how great
a God you are, how mighty a warrior you are, and how great a savior
you are to us. Let us know with great joy and
confidence that you can build your church outside the walls
of Jericho and you can indeed build your church in the midst
of our dark and dying world and our crooked and depraved culture
because you Command the army of the legions of angels that
are at your disposal, your messengers. And so we have confidence. Hear
us and help us this night. We pray it all in the name of
Christ. Amen.