By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish
with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
As we begin this morning, I would remind you of what we find in Joshua chapter 5, namely, that before they were to fight, the adult men were circumcised and then all the people
celebrated the Passover…and THEN, the Lord appeared to Joshua with the command, to know the Lord and honor the Lord as Holy, know Me as the Holy One.
God, not us. His ways, not ours. Faith filled actions, not decisions according to the seen. It is because of these things: Worship, sacraments, and in bowing and embracing the
holiness of the Lord, that obedience to God is encouraged and enhanced.
It is through these things that our faith then is ready to do whatever the Lord asks of us. I am not kidding you when I say that I have had the following discussion too many
times to count:
Pastor, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I am not walking faithfully with the Lord. I don’t feel the Lord’s presence. The church folks don’t seem to care about me, they
never call and I don’t know what is going on at church, anyway. Why are you and God failing me?
Well brother, are you in a small group? No. Do you come to Wednesday prayer meetings so that you can share your concerns and pray for the needs of others? No. I haven’t
seen you at Sunday School, there is some really good Bible teaching going on there. Yea, I don’t go to Sunday school. You don’t worship with us Sunday evenings. No, I don’t. And you miss a lot of Sunday morning worship as well. Yea, sometimes
I am too tired or something comes up.
And you can’t figure out what is wrong? You have no idea why your Christian life is flat and why you don’t know what is going on in your church? And you feel you don’t really
know God…and you honestly have no idea why?
This is going to sound odd, so listen carefully: The reason the church today knows so little about obedience to God, the reason our spiritual lives are lackluster and unimpressive,
the reason Christians by the scores make unwise and even ungodly decisions in the way they live and seem so confused, depressed, unfaithful, defeated and look, sound, and live no different than those who do not name the Lord Jesus….
…Is because God is not a reality but a concept, they don’t really know Him, and therefore they do not worship God correctly, they do not celebrate baptism and therefore believe
the promise of God is for us and for our children, and they do not take the Lord’s Supper regularly by faith, they do not hear Jesus speak through the reading and preaching of the Word.
In fact, far too many act as though Sunday worship is recommended but not required and have no inclination to make the church the center of their lives. And, oftentimes will
decide to ridicule and slander those who do.
Eugene Peterson wrote: “Any approach to salvation and Christianity that does not eventually become worship and the sooner the better, distorts and reduces salvation to a
concept or a technique that we can master and therefore control.” I think that is an apt description of our day.
How do you think the typical 21st century evangelical would have responded to Joshua when the leader revealed the plan for taking Jericho?
Now to be realistic, our fictional 21st century evangelical would have hidden himself during the circumcision, that does not sound like something he would have desired
to do and after all the physical doesn’t matter just what is in your heart. He probably missed the Passover celebration because he got tickets to the play and plans on catching the sacrament next time around. As a member of the fighting force he listens to
the plans…marching around the city…ok, 7 days, and then 7 times, ok…that’s it…and the ministers are going to go first, the preachers…You have got to be kidding me. That is not the way you conquer, I was trained, I know this, and you are remembering it wrong.
But if Israel, if the church, if the people of God, if you and I want God’s blessing, if we want to inherit the promise then we must do things God’s way and God’s way is about
faith, it is about trusting in what HE has said…trust that has feet, trust that lives.
It is not too much to say, and I hope you see it, that the most characteristic thing in the Bible’s teaching about salvation and the Christian life is that it is totally
unconventional, it always confounds ordinary expectations and sounds odd to natural man.
This is how God is going to conquer the world in and through the unconventional.
He is going to be born in poverty and humility. He is going to grow up in obscurity. He is going to come to mankind and he is going to love them, serve them, wash them, and
die for them. And, he is going to tell all of His followers, sinful, broken men and women, unimpressive as most of us are, he is going to say, live the way I lived, believe me and My ways and you will defeat sin and Satan in my name.
If you want to gain life…give your life away. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You will find your joy in the daily denial of self and in taking up your
cross. You will focus your sight on what can’t be seen, and count it all joy when you encounter trials. You will defeat the world, the flesh and the devil the same way I did, by love, humility, forgiveness, mercy and servanthood.
It sounds as absurd as marching around a city and blowing on trumpets.
Prayer: Father, I pray that you would keep me from repentance that is not genuine; keep me from flattering myself with words that do not bear themselves out in
my living. Give me a true and humble heart to see clearly and to bow with my face to the ground when encountering Your love and grace which seem to be an ocean that has not bottom. May my words be true and my life a living illustration of Your kindness, through
Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Chant: Open to Me the Doors of Repentance