It seems a dis-service to the narrative to break it up, so here is the whole of the fall of Jericho!
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” 14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”15 The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. 2 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.” 6 So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.” 7 And he ordered the army, “Advance! March around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the Lord.”8 When Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets before the Lord went forward, blowing their trumpets, and the ark of the Lord’s covenant followed them. 9 The armed guard marched ahead of the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard followed the ark. All this time the trumpets were sounding. 10 But Joshua had commanded the army, “Do not give a war cry, do not raise your voices, do not say a word until the day I tell you to shout. Then shout!” 11 So he had the ark of the Lord carried around the city, circling it once. Then the army returned to camp and spent the night there.
12 Joshua got up early the next morning and the priests took up the ark of the Lord. 13 The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets went forward, marching before the ark of the Lord and blowing the trumpets. The armed men went ahead of them and the rear guard followed the ark of the Lord, while the trumpets kept sounding. 14 So on the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. They did this for six days. 15 On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. 16 The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city!17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted[a] to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. 19 All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.” 20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. 22 Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring her out and all who belong to her, in accordance with your oath to her.” 23 So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. 24 Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house.25 But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day. 26 At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath:“ Cursed before the Lord is the one who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho:
“At the cost of his firstborn son
he will lay its foundations;
at the cost of his youngest
he will set up its gates.”
27 So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.
We teach our children to sing about Joshua, you remember, the little song: “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho, Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.”
Two things; first, Joshua really didn’t fight the battle before the walls came tumbling down, and second, after the walls came down, Joshua and his men killed every living thing in the city, but for Rahab and her family. Killed them all just as the Lord had declared.
The Lord appears to his servant Joshua outside of Jericho and gives him the plan…the plan of victory over Jericho. But those instructions are not made up of anything remotely that sounds like military strategy. No trenches are to be dug, no batteries erected, no siege set to the city, no battering rams built, no waves of armed soldiers attacking in precise intervals, no sneak attack at night. Instead, march and the walls will fall down at the command of the Lord. Although it is quite clear that the victory is the Lord’s nevertheless the people were to participate, they were not passive. Two things they were to do:
First, was to engage in a ritual of faith. In other words, they were to trust the Lord’s word and the Lord’s way, as odd as it was, and it was very odd. The presence of God was ritually set forth in the Ark of the covenant which is mentioned 10 times in the chapter and the priests were to lead the way. Usually, the priests were not to go to war but this would be different, they not only would go to war but would lead Israel because the battle is that of faith and of trusting the Lord’s Word and putting the rituals, the sacraments of God in their right place, therefore put the priests in the front.
And then there was the blowing of trumpets which announced to all who heard the Lord’s presence. And then notice the prominence of the number seven in these instructions — seven days, seven priests, seven trumpets, seven times on the seventh day…All of this indicates the completeness of the triumph the Lord will give Israel. [Howard, 169]
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in the book of the Revelation it is not until the 7th trumpet that the end comes. The 7th trumpet announces the final judgment of God in the destruction of the city of man. So, it is not a mere coincidence that we have here the sounding of 7 trumpets and then the destruction of the city of man. Jericho and its destruction at the 7thtrumpet are linked to God’s destruction of mankind at the end of the age.
It is of greatest interest to us that the chapter gives us all this sacramental detail preceding the plans for defeating Jericho and then the details about how to follow God’s plan and only 1.5 verses to the actual triumph itself. Faith is the victory. Knowing God and setting as primary His worship and His means of grace leads to further obedience.
Christians who don’t worship are Christians who do not and will not obey the Lord and therefore will not find the victory that the Lord promises. 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 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…you honestly have no idea why???
This is going to sound odd: 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. 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 am often confused and filled with anxiety. I think most of this is due to the simple truth that I do not know You nor Your ways of doing things. Forgive me for when I read of Your ways and reject them because they are hard on my flesh, they are the kind of things that require sacrifice, devotion and a sight of things unseen and I often do not know what such concepts are to look like in my life. Give me eyes to see, like you did Elisha’s servant, that I may see what is unseen and embrace the unconventional life that You have called me to, in Jesus name, Amen.
Hymn: O Magnum Mysterium
