Let’s ask for the Lord’s help.
Father, come now. Be our anchor, our hope. Give us just the word we need to hear, be it rebuke or encouragement, that we might have faith to trust and obey. Remind us of things we have forgotten. Teach us things we did not know. We pray that You would give us ears to hear and Your Word would go forth with a clear and distinct sound that we might be saved. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
Turn in your Bibles to the book of Joshua. We left off at the end of Joshua chapter 5, so we will pick up the reading at Joshua chapter 5, verse 13 through the end of chapter 6, reading most of chapter 6. A story that is likely familiar to many of you. Joshua chapter 5, 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.”
“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 shall you do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests 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, everyone straight before him.””
Now the instructions are repeated a couple of more times. It’s a little confusing as it goes back and forth, but the basic instructions are clear enough, that for six days they were to march around the city. It wasn’t a massive city; it had high walls, it had thick walls, but archeologists tell us it was less than a half mile in circumference, so they would march around the city for six days with the army in the front, the priests and the ark in the middle, and then a rear guard behind, and they would be blowing their ram’s horn, likely the whole time that they would march around. They’d do it the first day, the second day, and do it for six days and then on the seventh day they would do it seven times and then a final long blast of the ram’s horn and then finally for the first time then the people would shout.
So we pick up with what happens down in verse 15.
“On the seventh day they rose early, at the dawn of 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 priests 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 two 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 belonged 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 of 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 hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.”
“Joshua laid an oath on them at that time, saying, “Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and 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.”
Let’s see if you can do this with me. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho, Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down. I know. You want to keep going. The choir did it for warmup, Pam’s ready to go, but you’ll just, go look at it later. Okay. She’s ready to fight the battle and do the organ.
You’ve probably sung it, very nicely done. You’ve been in a choir. Elvis sang it. Probably the best version was Mahalia Jackson. You can go watch it on YouTube, that great gospel singer, and we love that old spiritual, “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho and the Walls Came A Tumbling Down.”
The slight problem with the song is that in the story, we don’t see much of Joshua fighting. It’s true they had to go into the city and there were people there and they overran the city and put them to the sword, but the story really doesn’t give us much detail about Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho. It’s really about marching and trumpets and shouting.
We get a lot of details about how the walls came a tumbling down without any fighting because it is, of course, a story not so much about what God’s people can do but what about God can do when we trust and obey.
Now on one level this story, which if you grew up in the church you’ve known forever, and even if you’re new to the church you probably have heard something of this story. It’s easy to detect on one level what this is about. It’s the first battle in the Promised Land, this dramatic victory, that God gave them the city and verse 27, the last verse, gives us the two-part summary. Number one – the Lord was with Joshua, and number two – therefore Joshua’s fame was in all the land.
So on one level that’s what the story is about. The Lord was with Joshua, He gave them the city, and Joshua’s fame spread throughout the land of Canaan.
But I want us to look at the story a little more closely and I want you to see some lessons on more than just the surface. Some you can see, but some maybe you haven’t seen before, and I want you to notice this story in three different layers.
Number one. This is a story about the Lord’s power. We can probably see that.
Number two. You may not have noticed before, this was also a story about re-creation/
Then number three. This is a story about faith.
Number one. This is a story about the Lord’s power. Now look at verse 1 of chapter 6 and we see what they are up against. Jericho was shut up inside and outside, no one went out and none came in. So that’s telling us that all the doors are closed, all the gates are barred shut. Everything is locked up tight. So gone is any opportunity that you might sneak in through some gate. No, everything, verse 1 tells us in repetition, is shut up. Nothing can go inside or outside.
So how are they going to get into Jericho? It’s quite ironic that after that description in verse 1 then the first thing the Lord says to Joshua in verse 2 is, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand.” Oh, I don’t really see it right now. What I see is the city shut up, inside out, no one comes or goes, and then look at verse 2. To make matters even more intimidating, “with its king and mighty men of valor.” So inside Jericho is a kind of Helm’s Deep for the Canaanites, all of their forces are amassed. They have many mighty men of valor. So this is not a city that just has women and children. This has all their fighting men. This is the point of having a garrison, a fortress, like that.
And yet the Lord says, “See. You see it there? You see all those thick, high walls? You see it shut up. You see the king. You see the mighty men of valor. I’m about to give you that city.”
Well, how would it happen? They, in the ancient world, had siege ramps, the new technology, and they could have tried one of those, but they didn’t probably have those implements. They were just coming out from being a slave people and a wandering people, and they don’t have military experience and know how to do that sort of maneuver.
You might say, well, you have a city that’s only a half-mile to walk around it. Just walk right around and go into the Promised Land. That seems nice. Everyone lives to have a happy day. But, of course, if you know military strategy, that’s the last thing you want to do because then you put between your backs, behind you, you have an enemy fortification and at any point as you go through the rest of the Promised Land, you open yourself up to be attacked from the rear with this city.
No, the point of having Jericho there, though it wasn’t a major city, is anticipating that any foreign army that would come across the Jordan and move from east to west, is going to have to deal with Jericho. You just can’t go around it or you open yourself up to attack. You have to destroy the city.
To do what other armies might have done, and that’s just simply wait them out and starve out the people, that would have been a long ordeal. The people were not equipped for that and they don’t know, as they sit there and wait, the name of Israel has gone throughout the land, who know what other sorts of people come and attack them. So they can’t just wait there for months on end and starve out. No, they have to defeat the stronghold.
Well, the Lord would fight for Israel. That’s the point. And that’s why we have this introduction at the end of chapter 5. Usually we just think of the Jericho story in chapter 6, but this last paragraph in chapter 5 is an important prelude to the battle.
So look back up at chapter 5, verse 13. Joshua is by Jericho. All right, we’re to note where he is. He lifts up his eyes and he sees a man with a drawn sword. Now what does that tell you? This is a military man – you don’t have guns, you don’t have planes, you don’t have tanks, you have swords. So a man is there. Not sheathed but unsheathed, a drawn sword. So this is a fighter, this is a warrior, this is a soldier.
Joshua, naturally, if you see a strange man out of nowhere standing before you with a drawn sword, you want to know whose side is he on. Are you for us or for our adversaries? And isn’t it interesting the response that this man gives. We might expect Him to say, knowing what we do that he is the captain of the Lord’s army, you would think that when Joshua says, “Are you on our enemies’ side or our side?” that He would say, “I am on the side of Israel, My people, My chosen nation, My royal priesthood.”
But that’s not what he says. He says, “No.” That wasn’t even exactly the question. Are you on our side or Canaan’s side? No. No. Wrong question.
And it is instructive for us. It’s not as if it’s always wrong to talk about the Lord is our defender, the Lord is our rescue, so to speak about the Lord on the side of His people. But there’s an important lesson here. Don’t think God is on our side so much as we ought to think the Lord will fight His own battles and am I on His side? That’s what the captain says. Nope, it’s not so simple as to say I’m for Israel or I am for the Canaanites. What I am, the man says, is the commander of the army of the Lord.
You see Lord in small capital letters? That means the covenant name Yahweh, Jehovah, and he gives that mysterious statement, “Now I have come.” This is a theophany, a God appearing, and most commentators think it’s probably a Christophany, that is the second person of the trinity showing up, pre-incarnation, here in the appearance of a man, and He answers the question, “Yes, I have a sword and I won’t tell you what side I am on because that’s now the right question, but I will tell you that I am a captain, I’m a general, I’m in charge of the Lord’s army. And the point is not whether I am on your side but whether as I go to do battle you will be on My side.”
It’s instructive for me. I know I can often think about what are my plans or what’s my vision, or what’s the plans or vision for my life, or for the church. And you may think the same, and then we want to ask that the Lord would bless those plans. Well, that’s good to do. But how often do we stop and slow down and try to think, well, “Lord, what are you doing?” It’s hard, it’s imperfect, we don’t always know. His providential ways can be mysterious. Lord, what battles are You fighting? Where are You advancing? Where are you moving forward? What are you wanting to do? Lord, what are Your priorities?
It may be helpful for you to think in your life, just a simple prayer to ask the Lord before you set out what all of your plans and ambitions may be and then say, “Lord, would you come and bless me?” maybe stop and say, “Lord, what are You doing? What do You want to do? Because where You’re going I want to go, what You fight I want to fight, where You don’t fight I don’t want to go. You are the commander of the armies of the Lord and You will win the battle and it is my privilege to but be in the rear guard with You.”
The man, who is really God, says, “Take off your sandals,” verse 15, “for the place you are standing is holy ground.” It’s an obvious allusion to when the Lord met Moses in the burning bush, He gave the same command. This is what tells us that this angel of the Lord is not just an angel but the angel who is the Lord because He accepts Joshua’s worship, He doesn’t rebuke him for that, He accepts the worship and He tells him the place where you are standing is holy ground. You have come face-to-face with God.
And when He says, “I am the commander of the army of the Lord,” I think we are meant to understand, though we don’t often think of these terms, that the Lord has an army of angels at His disposal. It’s true. We don’t, we’re not big into angelology and some people can overdo it and angels are everywhere, but we, I’m sure, under-do it. The Bible has a lot to say about angels. It’s not that the Lord has to do His work by angels, but many, many times He chooses to.
You remember the story in Genesis 32. Jacob there is afraid because he’s about to meet again Esau and he hasn’t seen him since he tricked him, and it says in Genesis 32 that Jacob is met by “the angels of God.” These angels must have been some kind of angelic band or corps or army to strengthen Jacob by their presence.
Or even more dramatically in 2 Kings chapter 6, Israel is battling Assyria, one of their neighbors to the north, and the servant of Elisha awakens one morning and he sees that horses and chariots from the Assyrians have surrounded the city. Elisha is the prophet in that day. The servant says, “Oh, no, look at the Assyrians are all around us. We are absolutely done for.” He’s utterly distressed. Then Elisha says, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And it says that the man’s eyes were opened and the servant of the prophet could now see horses and chariots of fire all around.
The language of chariots of fire, of course, that’s what brought Elijah up into heaven, tells us that what he sees is a heavenly angel army, that he’s allowed, in a moment of supernatural rending of the curtain, to see what may be around us much more than we realize.
Again, it’s not how we usually think. We say in the book of Revelation it talks about angels doing warfare, good angels and evil angels or demons.
It seems to me that what the end of chapter 5 is telling us is that this captain of the Lord’s army has at his disposal a vast army of angels that will come and overrun the city for them. Sorry, I have Lord of the Rings on the brain, but it is sort of like Aragorn with his ghost army. These are not the living dead, but his ghost army who comes with him in Return of the King, it is that sort of supernatural army he has at his disposal.
Adonai Sabaoth, translated usually “Lord of hosts.” Whenever I had my Hebrew class in seminary and we’d have to translate on the spot and the teacher would call on us and I probably can’t do that quite so well as I did when I was in seminary, but it was always a bit of refuge when you got to that familiar refrain, Adonai Sabaoth, which meant the Lord of hosts. Everyone knew that that meant.
You know, in “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” Lord Sabaoth, His name, we often mis-hear that as Lord of the Sabbath. It’s not the word “Sabbath,” it’s a different word, “Sabaoth.” It means hosts, as in army, the Lord of armies.
What the Lord does is encamp, as the psalmist tells us, around those who fear Him and He delivers them. And this opening introduction to Joshua is to tell him by implication, if not explicitly, that this captain of the Lord’s army has at His disposal a whole host of angels so that when the walls fall, yes, it is by the mechanism of the shout, we’ll come back to that in a moment, but I think we’re meant to understand that it wasn’t a supernatural earthquake, it wasn’t a miracle of the stones and the composition of the structure crumbled, but in some supernatural way the angel army tore down the stronghold, tore down the walls of Jerusalem. The Lord was there.
And it is helpful for us, though the Lord may not give to us like He did to Elisha’s servant the eyes to see what’s happening, there are things that happen every Sunday in this room. I’m certain of it. Spiritual things. This may feel like a boring place on some Sundays but it’s not to the host of heaven. There are battles, spiritual battles for the souls of men and women and children that take place every Sunday when the Word is preached from this pulpit.
And to have the eyes of our heart opened, to know as Elisha said, greater are those who are with us than against us, means, beloved, we should not be a fearful people. We should not be a cranky, crotchety people. If we could see spiritual realities, surely our focus would at times be much different and our prayers might be different, and our confidence might be different, and we would be less anxious.
Perhaps that’s what the Lord means in verse 2: “See, I have given Jericho into your hand.” Maybe Joshua was given some sight at that moment, or with the visitation from the captain of the Lord’s army, he had all the sight he needed to know there is a great army and these walls, thick and high, are no match for the host of heaven.
So this is a story about the Lord’s great power, the army at His disposal to accomplish His purposes no matter how impossible it may seem.
There’s a second layer to the story, number two, and this perhaps you have not noticed before. This is a story about re-creation. Did you notice, and as soon as I say the word you probably have the categories coming into your head, did you notice several items in the story to demonstrate this is a kind of new creation day for the people of Israel and the flipside it is a fall, a literal fall, for the Canaanites? Same thing happening. A fall for Canaan and a day of new creation for the people of Israel.
Well, the most obvious allusion is the seven days. They marched for seven days and then on the seventh day you march around for seven times, Passover would have started and the feast of unleavened bread would go for seven days, so this is taking place during that festival. And the seven days are telling Israel that this is a new creation week.
And as they marched around right in the middle of the assembled multitude were the priests carrying the ark of the covenant so that in the literal center of God’s people is the holy presence of the Lord. It is almost like a moving temple circulating around the circumference of the city. It is a kind of holy of holies because once the temple is finally built, that’s where the ark will go, in the holy of holies. And it is, as we saw in Revelation when the new heavens and the new earth come down, it is given that shape of a cube, and the only other cube in the Bible is that in the Old Testament of the holy of holies, that is the place where God dwells. So where the ark dwells is a heavenly reality. And it’s like the garden of Eden come back now, marching around Jericho with the presence of the Lord in their midst.
And, I told you we’d come back to the shouting, how does this work of creation take place? Words. In the beginning God said let there be light and there was light. Creation in Genesis comes about by the Word of God, by His speech. It is always divine speech which creates. What creates new life in the heart of the sinner? It is the power of the Word of God, the Word creates.
So here it is the Word which brings about the fall of Jerusalem, which is a curse for the people of Jericho, or the walls of Jericho, and it is the day of new beginnings, new creation, for the people of Israel. Just as the Word brings about a new creation for Israel, it brings about the fall of Jericho and a curse.
You see in verse 17 the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. The Word is sometimes called the ban, herem, not harem as a group of women but herem, different word, which can be translated accursed. There are things that now become accursed things that are devoted to destruction.
And at the very end, verse 26, Joshua says plainly, “Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and builds this city.” Another allusion to the story of creation.
So just as this is a day of triumph in creation for the people of Israel, it is for those who are outside of God’s covenant community, it is the sign of destruction and a curse. And never again is the city to be built up. Not that there couldn’t be inhabitants there on the spot, but never again is it to be built up to lay its foundation. It’s never to be a city, a fortification again.
It’s not dissimilar from the end of Genesis 3 where there’s an angel and a flaming sword to say you cannot go back. That Eden is gone, it’s fallen, and it’s off limits.
Well, now this Jericho is gone, it’s fallen, and it’s off limits. It’s telling us that the same God who worked in creation is now this God who works in the redemption of His people. Don’t ever think, well, that was a really powerful God back then, now we have some different God. Same God in creation, now at work in redemption.
The hardest element of this story, and really the most difficult in the whole book, is the instruction to devote everything and everyone, the instruction to devote them to destruction. Look at verse 21 – then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, ox and sheep and donkeys with the edge of the sword. This is why many contemporary voices object to Joshua and say this is the Canaanite genocide. What sort of God commands that all the men, women, and children be absolutely wiped out? How are we to understand this here and as it carries forward throughout Joshua?
Well, just a few thoughts. There are a number of good books that deal with this apologetic concern, but a few thoughts.
Number one. This expression, “they put everything to the edge of the sword,” can be understood as a euphemism. Now they did put people to death with the sword, they did kill people, we can’t pretend that that didn’t happen, but it’s like you may say, with a sports team, “We utterly destroyed them, we beat them 35-10. We wiped them out.” So there’s something of a, it’s a military way of speaking. We put everyone, there was not a cricket left to chirp in Jericho.
I don’t know how the crickets get in my house every night. One cricket can be deafeningly loud in our garage.
So they might say, “There’s not a sound left in Jericho,” and it does not mean every single literal person. So that’s one thing. Just gives a little nuance to it.
More importantly, we must remember that this was not some conquest that came about willy-nilly as if there was no reason for the people to be punished. Remember again, it was all the way back in Genesis 15 when the Lord told Abraham that My people, God’s people, would go away for over 400 years in order that the sins of the Amorites might increase. That’s just another name for the people of the land, that the sins might increase. In other words, the Lord had waited, now with the wandering, almost 500 years, 500 years He had waited for these people. These are not peaceful, loving, just wonderful folks who are in here who have never done anything wrong, innocent people living at harmony with the world. These were a warring people, an idolatrous people, and the Lord had waited for five centuries until their sins had so accumulated that He would be just to punish them.
The Lord does not speak to us in the same way that He did then, so I trust that we would not go out and, you know, any nation and exterminate a people because the Lord had commanded us to, this is a special moment in redemptive history. But the Lord had patiently waited. These were a people, who by the Lord’s estimation, were ripe for judgment.
Then Deuteronomy 20 gives the reason for this ban, this devoted to destruction. Deuteronomy 20 says it is so the people and their gods would not be a snare to them. That is, if they were all just left in their place, they would be a bad example, a corrupting influence, a spiritual contagion. And though this is not a military lesson for the Church, it is a spiritual lesson. When you become a Christian, a dramatic change is often necessary, a dramatic change that cannot allow all of the idols in place or any of the idols in place. You can’t say, “Yes, I’m a Christian and I just do pornography a little bit of the time. I’m a Christian now and I just cheat on my taxes every other year.” You’re a Christian and that old life is wiped out lest it become a snare to you.
What we see throughout the Old Testament is that God’s people often did not do as they were told, and the pagans that remained did become a snare to them.
Then the last thing to note, to just understand this harsh language, is to remember once again that there was the possibility of deliverance. Now it was too late, but back in chapter 2, remember? The king and the people of Jericho, they knew there were spies, they knew what God had done for His people in delivering them from Egypt and crossing the Red Sea, and there was one woman and her family who believed.
That was enough to tell us that it did not have to be this way for everyone in Jericho, but there was only one family, only one family who turned to the God of Israel that they might be saved. I think we’re right to see something of a spiritual metaphor here, even if it’s not directly the point of the passage, and that is to realize that you may have walls built up in your heart that you think are impenetrable and you may sort of have a stiff arm to God, you may have a sort of attitude, “God, You better prove yourself to me. You better give me a certain feeling. You better show me a miracle. You better do something.” Or, “I don’t need to deal with this, God, nothing is going to happen to me.” And you think you have thick, high, impenetrable walls around your heart. It’s not difficult for God to come in judgment nor is it difficult for God to tear down those walls.
If we can mix the metaphor just a bit, one of the prayers Sunday after Sunday ought to be that in this place, as the Word is shouted forth, the walls of your heart would come a tumbling down. Fall, ready for God and His Spirit to invade your life. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
It doesn’t have to be this way for You on the day of judgment. There is a way to be saved.
Which brings us to the final point. This is a story about faith.
For one shining moment, God’s people trusted their God to the uttermost. We have the inspired commentary in Hebrews 11:30, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.” Now when Hebrews says “by faith,” it doesn’t mean that faith was some magic potion that affected the walls, but rather that the whole ordeal was an exercise in faith and by their faithful obedience, God then saw fit that He would tear the walls down.
We love this story, but put yourselves in their shoes and it must have seemed like a very strange thing they were asked to do. Maybe day one was excited: “Everybody, we’re in the Promised Land. Feeling better from the circumcision and from the Passover and we’re ready to get at it. All right, Joshua, what do we do?” “Well, I want the army.” “Good.” “Priests.” “Yes.” “Ark.” “Yes.” “Rear guard.” “Yes. Now what? Go? Fight them?” “Well, hold on. I want you to march around.” “Okay, got it. That can be intimidating. They’re going to all look down and see us. Then what?” “I just want the trumpets to blow.” “Yeah, yeah. That makes sense because when do you blow the trumpets? The trumpets were to signal the approaching army was coming. So we’re telling them we are here and the battle is on.”
They do it day one. They come back. What about tomorrow, Joshua? Ready to fight tomorrow? You got siege ramps. We got, I don’t know, something. We’re going to get on shoulders, fire arrows. What are we doing? Set something ablaze? We got fire.
No, let’s do it again.
Okay. They do it day two. Now what? Day three. Again. Day four. Again. Day five.
You have to imagine some of the people are wondering how long this will go on. Is this a plan? When is this going to happen? The people in Jericho, you just imagine perhaps the first day they’re a little intimidated. It’s finally happening. They’re here, they’re blowing the trumpet, but day four and five they might have been wondering if this was ever going to happen. Maybe they expect us to surrender. Maybe they just think we don’t like trumpets. It’s loud and we’ll just all give up, or we’ll come out and negotiate a truce, but we have our mighty men of valor.
Then day seven. I want you to do it seven times. They did it. There’s no record of their unbelief. But they did it then seven times. The trumpet blew and a moment of silence and then the whole crowd shouted.
James Boice points out that this was not only obedience, it was obedience to the very end. Lots of people could have done the right thing on day one, excited. Let’s do it. It gets a little harder on day two and three and four. Really? Are we doing this again? This doesn’t make sense. Nothing’s happening. They get the picture, we got it. We’re good marchers. Joseph’s got all the trumpet players ready to go. But for a whole week? But they did it. Obedience to the end. It’s not how you start, it’s whether you will finish.
It’s a good lesson for our lives. You may have started out absolutely zealous for the Lord. Maybe you really got excited about Jesus when you were in youth group or maybe it happened like it did for a lot of us in college, or maybe it was later and you were converted and you remember those years, you were all in, ready to be obedient. Well, where are you at now? How are you thinking about the Lord now?
Because it’s not really anything to march around the city on day one and two and three. If you’re not willing to march around the city on four, five, six and seven, will you be obedient not just now but to the end. You’re going to run the race through all the way to the finish line.
It reminds me of that famous line from Eric Liddell after he won the 400 meters world record time gold medal at the Paris Olympics in 1924. It is said that someone asked him how did you run the 400 meters so fast, to which he replied, “I ran the first 200 meters as fast as I could, and by God’s grace I ran the second 200 even faster.”
Is that the race you’re running?
Faith and obedience. In the Christian life, they can’t be separated. They wouldn’t have obeyed like they did if they didn’t believe that God had a plan, that this God had given them city and though they may not have understood how it would work, God would work for them. So faith and obedience. It’s a story about the faith of Israel.
But it’s also the story about Rahab’s faith. We come back to this woman that we met back in chapter 2 because the inspired commentary in Hebrews 11 says this is not only an example of the faith of God’s people, but of Rahab. Hebrews 11:31 – By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
She was saved by her faith-filled hospitality, that she believed the reports about Israel’s God. She believed that he had done these things and she believed that there was deliverance that could come from His hand. We remember this story in Joshua chapter 6 as the walls of Jericho came a tumbling down, but there are almost as many verses about Rahab and her family as there are about the destruction of Jericho. 102 words in Hebrew about the destruction of the city and 86 words about the rescue of Rahab.
In fact, the last half of chapter 6 alternates back and forth, very deliberately, curse and deliverance, curse and deliverance, curse and deliverance. It’s the camera cutting back and forth. Here are the people of Jericho, they are being destroyed; here’s Rahab being saved. Here’s Jericho, it’s under a curse not to be rebuilt; here’s Rahab, she’s being delivered. Back and forth between the two. It’s meant to tell us once again judgment is coming, but there is a way to be saved.
Don’t you love verse 25? Look at it. It tells us that Joshua, and maybe some later editor put together some strands of it and it doesn’t undermine the inspiration of this book, but at least most of it was written within, it seems, a generation of these things taking place because verse 25 tells us, “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 hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.”
You wonder what that was like and how many people elbowed each other, “Hey, mom, dad, is that who I think it is?” “Yeah, it’s Rahab.” You imagine all those years, people in Jericho might have done the very same thing for very different reasons. “Mom, dad, is that you know, a prostitute?” “Yeah. Stay away. Yeah, that’s the prostitute who lives in the city. Rahab is her name.”
But now verse 25 says, people of Israel, to this day, it’s written here that the people might say, “Oh, yeah, we’ve seen her, we know her family.” A living, breathing trophy of God’s grace. That’s what some of you are. You say, “Well, I’ve got a past.” Yeah, all of us, if we’re honest with our hearts, have a past. A living, breathing trophy of God’s grace that people might see because of faith and repentance, and not whisper to themselves, “Well, do you know what this person once did? Do you know what she was like? Do you know where he’s been?” But, “Do you know, mom, dad, is that the one? The one that God saved? The one that was rescued.”
Only one family on that day in Jericho and here she is. It was a tourist site that people might go by and see Rahab and her family as a trophy of God’s grace. By faith Rahab did not perish with those who are disobedient.
So this is a story not only about the walls that came a tumbling down, but about the one family that did not fall on that day, to tell us that though judgment is coming, after all, that’s what the trumpet signified, that’s what the preaching of God’s Word is to be to you, a trumpet blast to warn you of the judgment to come, yet there is offered to all of you a way to be safe on the day of judgment, that you might turn to Christ, the commander of the army of the Lord, the same one who comes with angel armies to judge the living and the dead, is now on this day reaching down to extend His hand to say, “You, my friend, can be safe on the day of judgment.”
It is a story ultimately about faith. The faith of God’s people to trust and obey and the faith of Rahab to know that she needed to be saved.
That’s often the sticking point, isn’t it? You can affirm true things about Jesus, you can acknowledge some nice facts about God and the Bible, but Rahab not only welcomed the spies but she said, “Will you remember me when the judgment comes, because I need a deliverer.”
Until you know that you need a deliverer, you will never be safe on the day of judgment. But Rahab was, and so can you, when the walls come a tumbling down.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we give thanks for Your holy, inspired Word. Would You create in us new hearts. Would You cut away the foreskin of our heart that we might trust and obey and be safe, for You have made a way. Hallelujah, praise Jehovah. Amen.