Los Lunas Cornerstone

    Today’s passage is probably one that many of you are familiar with. It’s always been one of my favorite passages in the Bible, and it’s certainly one of the most recognizable stories in the Bible. Today, we’re going to talk about the fall of Jericho in Joshua 6.
    Last week we talked about waiting for God, and what we should do while we’re waiting on His timing. The Israelites prayed and they dedicated themselves to God while they waited for God’s timing to conquer Jericho. In times of waiting, we should do the same, we should pray and we should dedicate ourselves to God. We should grow closer with Him during the waiting.
    As I said, this morning we’re going to look at the fall of Jericho in Joshua 6. Look at the first two verses of Joshua 6, “Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors.”
    The waiting time was over, finally. After forty years of wandering in the desert, it’s time for the Israelites to head into the Promised Land. God told Joshua that He had given Jericho into his hands. He then goes on to give Joshua specific instructions for how they are to conquer the city, and the instructions are…incredibly odd.
    Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever read through the instructions God gave to Joshua for conquering Jericho? The instructions are just crazy! Let’s look at them:
    They’re supposed to march around the city for six days, just once, each day. During that march, seven priests are supposed to carry seven rams horn trumpets before the ark. Then, on the seventh day, they’re supposed to march around the city seven times, then the priests were supposed to blow the trumpets, and the people were supposed to give a great shout, and then the walls would fall down.
    Now, maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that Jericho was situated in such a place, and the walls were built in such a way, and the rams horns were blown as such a frequency and intensity that when combined with the people’s shouts and all the other circumstances, that it created the perfect acoustic combination for crumbling city walls…but I doubt it.
    Given the details of the instructions that God gave them, it’s much more likely that it wasn’t the perfect combination of circumstances that led to Jericho’s fall, but rather divine intervention working through a group of people who had spent 40 years waiting in the desert and had finally, if only for a moment, learned to have faith in the Lord.
    Let’s look at all the details of the fall of Jericho that help us see this as divine intervention. They marched around the city for seven days. Seven priests had seven rams horns. On the seventh day they were meant to march around the city seven times. Anyone else notice that’s a fair amount of sevens?
    We won’t go too much into this, because the numbers are magical numbers and they don’t make anything special happen. But, the numbers do help us understand that the power behind the Israelite’s conquering of Jericho was the Lord.
    There are certain numbers throughout the Bible that represent ideas or people. Seven represents God’s perfection, or something that is complete because of Him. When we see these sevens in this passage, we’re meant to understand that it is the perfection of God that is bringing about the victory over Jericho. We’re meant to understand that He is the one who is making the conquest over Jericho complete. We’re meant to understand that they cannot be victorious over Jericho without God’s perfect plan working in them.
    Another clue we have in the passage that God is the one working here, and not just a series of coincidences, is the presence of the ark of the covenant. I pointed out last week that the ark went before the people as they were about to cross the Jordan River, and that the ark represented God’s presence among the people, going before the people and preparing the way before them. We talked about praying that God’s presence goes before us when we are in times of waiting, asking for God to go before us and prepare whatever is ahead of us when the waiting is done.
    Verse 8 tells us this, “And it was so, that when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the Lord went forward and blew the trumpets; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them.” God’s presence was with them. He was with them as He worked in the people to be victorious over Jericho.
    The third clue that we have that God was the one at work, is the great shout that the people gave. This is what verse 20 says, “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 into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city.”
    It was a great shout that shook the walls and made the walls fall. A great shout. Does anyone else have a hard time with this? I wonder what the people thought when Joshua told them to yell and it would make the city walls fall. I wonder if they had a hard time seeing how a shout would bring the city down. But the mere fact that it was with a great shout that the walls fell down, tells us that God must have been the one at work, because otherwise, the impossible could not have been accomplished by just a great shout. God is the only one who can take a great shout and turn it into a force mighty enough to cause two layers of city walls crumble entirely and fall.
    God was definitely the one at work here. But the people had a role in this as well. Their role was faith. What God was asking them to do was just about the most nonsensical thing He could ask of them. March and blow trumpets and shout, and that will make the walls fall down. Without absolute faith in God, they wouldn’t have been successful. It was essential that they have faith that God would do what He said He was going to do, and that if their success meant they had to march around the city and blow trumpets and give a great shout, then that’s what they were going to do.
    The fall of Jericho is miraculous, and we of course want to strive to have the faith of the Israelites in this moment, that when God told them to do something that didn’t make much sense to them, they did it because of their faith. They wouldn’t have been successful without their faith.
    I want to look at the end of Joshua 5, and see what came just before the people marched around Jericho and it fell. Look at Joshua 5:14-15.
    “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 bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?” The captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.”
    Before the battle, before God asked the Israelites to muster up their faith and do the things that seemed like they would be insufficient to have victory over Jericho, Joshua has this moment with an angel of the Lord. Not just an angel, the captain of the Lord’s heavenly host!
    He appeared to Joshua and Joshua says, “Are you for us, or are you for our enemy?” The verses I just read were the angel’s answer.
    Does this remind you of any other story? I hope it does, but if it doesn’t I want to turn your attention to Exodus 3:4-5, “When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
    In just the same way that God spoke to Moses, He spoke to Joshua. Part of that was to give Joshua the plans for taking Jericho and being victorious. But the other aspect of that meeting was so Joshua was in the presence of the Lord. He was with His Holy Presence.
    How do you suppose we would do this today? We have no burning bush, we have no captain of the Lord’s armies before us. How do we be in the Presence of God?
    I’ve used this quote before, but I’ll use it again, from Beth Moore. "There are parts of our calling, works of the Holy Spirit, and defeats of the darkness that will come no other way than through furious, fervent, faith-filled, unceasing prayer.”
    We come into the presence of the Almighty through prayer. We spend time with Him on Holy ground through prayer.
    In the waiting, as we talked about last week, we pray and we dedicate ourselves to a deeper commitment to God. When He asks us to go and fight the battle, we do so through prayer and through faith. But the connecting thread here, is prayer. There’s faith and dedication too, but without prayer to hold it all together it falls apart. Prayer is the key to our battles. Prayer is the key to our waiting.
    We were going to do a skit once, some time ago, about some contestants on a game show, featuring a woman who would give Jesus’ name as the answer to all the questions. For a while during the game show, the host and the other contestants would make fun of her, but finally, she was vindicated when all the answers to the questions was Jesus and she ended up winning the game. The point was that Jesus is always the answer. I would say, Jesus and prayer, are always the answers.
    Paul says in every situation we are to pray. We are to pray without ceasing. When we wait, we pray. When we fight, we pray. When we rest, we pray. When we are on the mountaintop, we pray. When we are in the valley low, we pray. Prayer is always the answer.