DADDY, PLEASE DON’T REBUILD JERICHO
TEXT: Joshua 6:26
l. INTRODUCTION
-Every child has a builder. That builder may be his mother or father or brother or grandmother or randdaddy or even collectively they can work as a whole in building children.
-Despite what we may even be willing to admit a child is inevitably going to be what his enviroment relegates him to be. That is why the force of the Church has to be committed to the quest of saving our children.
We pray for children,
Who put chocolate fingers everywhere,
Who stomp in puddles and ruin new pants,
Who sneak popsicles before supper,
Who erase holes in math workbooks,
Who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire
Who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
Who never "counted potatoes,"
Who are live in an X-rated world.
We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fist fulls of dandelions,
Who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish,
Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
Who cover themselves with Band-Aids and sing off key,
Who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink,
Who slurp soup and cereal.
We pray for children who never get dessert,
Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who watch their parents watch them die,
Who can’t find any bread to steal,
Who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,
Whose monsters are real.
We pray for children who spend their allowances before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse the tub,
Who get visits from the tooth fairy,
Who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
Who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at,
Whose smiles make us cry.
And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must,
For those who we never give up on,
And for those who never get a second chance,
For those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.
-Children just like that sat in your church last Sunday morning. They came to your Sunday School class last Sunday morning hoping that someone would build something in their lives. Only you, Sunday School Teacher, can answer whether or not that you built something worthwhile or added salt to the hurting wounds.
II. THINGS WORTH BUILDING VS. THINGS WORTH DESTROYING
A. Things Worth Building
-The Bible is an amazing Book and none can equal it’s impact on the lives of men. All through the book we can find records of things that men built. Some men built things that stood the test of it’s generation and shaped character.
Noah built the Ark and saved his family. -- Genesis 8
Abraham built his altars all over the land of Palestine.
Isaac dug his wells.
Moses gave the command in Numbers to build cities for your little ones and to build
sheepfolds for the sheep.
Gideon built an altar and tore down the groves that had come from the effect of idolatry.
David built an altar at Ornan’s threshingfloor.
Solomon built the Temple with the materials that David left for him (What will our children build with the things that we leave for them?)
Ezra rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem.
Nehemiah rebuilt the Jerusalem and her walls.
B. Things Built That Should Not Have Been Built
-Just as there were beneficial things that were built, the Bible also records that sad account of those men who built things that led to the spiritual degradation of man. Their inventions created chaos and distress of the soul.
Nimrod tried to build the Tower that was to reach heaven Aaron built his golden calf.
The Philistines built Dagon, who fell over in front of the Ark of the Covenant (Are you
serving a God that you have to prop up?).
Balaam told Balak to build him seven altars for an improper purpose (I can never afford to build an altar that is motivated by jealousy, envy, bitterness, or anger.)
Solomon allowed himself to be wooed by the gods of his wives and he built altars and
groves to honor Molech and Chemosh.
Ahab formed his images of Baal and constructed the groves for pagan worship
Nebuchadnezzar built his image in the plains of Shinar.
Haman built the wooden gallows that would be his own device of death.
The barn builder of Luke 12 in the processes of tearing down standing barns to build bigger barns never realizing his soul would be required of him.
-For all of their building, it would be to their own detriment.
III. THE CONQUEST OF JERICHO
A. The Events Leading Up to The Walls Coming Down
-Moses is gone. Joshua is now the leader in charge. With the direction and anointing of God, he sets out with a eager determination to capture the Promised Land.
-His spies infiltrate the land and find safe haven at Rahab’s house. She shelters them from the probing eyes of the king. They make a deal with Rahab and agree for a scarlet thread to be the sign that saves her and those in the house. Hurriedly they make their way back and report to Joshua, full of confidence that God can deliver the land for them.
-Joshua prepares himself. He prepares the priesthood. He prepares his armies. He prepares the people and they follow the Ark over the Jordan. Six days of silence and a trip around the city with the great walls, again with the Ark in the lead. On the seventh day, a bit of a change. This time they march around six times in silence and on the final march they begin to shout with the voice of triumph. The walls come down.
-There are things in my life that God has destroyed when worship began to make it’s way toward heaven. How many times have I approached God with the worship that is due him and He gracefully knocked the walls over? They are innumerable, but I doubt that I am alone.
-What I must always remember, is that any time that God destroys a Jericho of carnality, faithlessness, prayerlessness, casualness, spiritual coldness (and on we could go) there will always be a stipulation that God will place upon my life.
-God’s stipulation concerning Jericho came from Joshua:
Joshua 6:26 -- "And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it."
-The man who rebuilds Jericho will do so at the cost of his two boys. What a price to pay for building something!!! Daddy, Please Don’t Rebuild Jericho. Whether Jericho is the promotion you are chasing, or the social status you are trying to accrue, or the career you are trying to build. Take heed whatever your Jericho is, if you are in the process of rebuilding something that God has torn down in your life, you are headed for some sad days.
Galatians 2:18 -- "For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor."
B. Hiel’s Fatal Mistake
-Perhaps the adjuration of Joshua was not passed on every week but no doubt it was carried on by word of mouth to the children of Israel. It was a warning. It was a more than that, it was a plea to a generation who would follow. "If you rebuild Jericho, it will be at the death of your two sons."
-As always there is someone who wants to test and see if what is being preached is really the truth or just a lot of hot air. Such is true with the curse that Joshua left in the dust of the shattered walls of Jericho.
-His warning stood for a year, for a decade, for a century, in fact it stood for a little over five centuries before a man apparently forgot the dividends that come from disobedience.
1 Kings 16:34 KJV -- "In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the Word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun."
1 Kings 16:34 NIV -- "In Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of his firstborn Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, in accordance with the word of the Lord spoken by Joshua son of Nun."
-Jericho was rebuilt in a day when Israel’s God was forgotten, when spiritual life was low, when Baal was the greatest thing going, when the groves and high places were attended more often than the neglected Temple. A forgotten God and a forgotten judgement.
C. Fatal Oversight -- Illustration
On September 1, 1923, the island of Japan was ravaged by the most devastating earthquake in recorded history up until that time. The tragic Canto earthquake began at 11:58 A.M. and continued for more than three and a half hours, creating a casualty list that would stagger the imagination. 143,000 were killed. More than 100,000 lay maimed, wounded, and dying in the streets of Yokohama, alone. Ours is a sympathetic nation and the great heart of America was touched. In a matter of hours an entire convoy of mercy ships was on the high seas headed for the stricken island. We equipped those ships the latest in medical supplies, food and clothing and staffed them with a corp of volunteer workers, doctors and nurses to minister to the needs of the helpless millions. Over ten million dollars in cash was also dispatched to alleviate the distress of the victimized.
As the broken little nation set about to rebuild her empire, in appreciation for such help from abroad, a famous five-word cablegram was received at the White House. It was signed by the Emperor himself. It read simply, "America, we will not forget."
Less than a generation later the whole world was stunned by another cataclysmic and even more disastrous tragedy. It was December 7, 1941. The first light of dawn was just breaking over the peaceful Hawaiian Islands where at anchor lay the vast American fleet, when the drone of fighter planes was heard in the sky. Out of the blue, hurtling at lightning speed on wings of death, came the little men from "The Kingdom of the Rising Sun." They were bent on destruction, annihilation, extermination. Relentlessly they pursued their attack. Battleship after battleship turned belly up and sank. Sailors were strafed as they attempted to swim to safety. Oil soaked victims screamed in a caldron of liquid fire. Two thousand eight hundred of our boys were sent to watery graves in the most savage attack that our nation had every experienced by an aggressor. Just eighteen short years after our mercy ships steamed into Tokyo Bay with American good will, came Pearl Harbor.
Japan had forgotten!!!
-What a price that comes when we forget how far God has brought us and what he has delivered us from?
IV. THE FATALITY OF FORGETFULNESS
A. The Positive Aspect of Being Forgetful
-There are times in life when it is a virtue to forget. Consider the words of Paul:
Philippians 3:13-14 -- "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before," "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
-One of the most detrimental weapons that the devil may use against us is our past. But we have to ask, "Has God forgiven my sin and my past failure?" If the answer is yes, then for us to allow the devil to overcome us with our past is to place him in a position above God.
-But the cry of the royal court prophet, Isaiah, rings right on through even in 1995:
Isaiah 43:25 -- "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."
B. The Negative Aspect of Being Forgetful
-Just as there is a proper time to forget, there is a time that to forget will lead to fatality.
Forgetfulness will become a cardinal sin that both robs and ruins the souls of men.
-Consider Pharaoh who forgot that the rivers turned to blood, the frogs and the lice, the boils, the hail, the locusts, and the firstborn that were slain. His epitaph frightfully reads, "And the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea."
-Consider Belshazzar, king of Babylon, who forgot the plight of Nebuchadnezzar when he was driven to the fields to eat grass as an ox, his body wet with the dew, and his hair as long as eagle’s feathers, and his nails like bird claws. He forget God when he defiled the Temple vessels. The Medes and Persians became his downfall. His epitaph warns, "Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting."
What of Adam who forgot and lost Paradise?
Or of Samson who lost his strength?
Or Saul who lost his kingdom?
David forget and his family paid the price for his sin.
Judas forgot and died at the end of a rope.
Peter forgot and wept bitterly.
-It pays to remember!!!
-But Hiel forgot at the cost of his two sons!!!
C. The Solution -- Abraham and His Actions
-Abraham went to Moriah and built an altar and then placed Isaac on that altar to be offered at the request of God. That concept has to invade us!!! We have to start building some altars and offering our children on some altars that we have built.
V. CONCLUSION -- THE ASPECT OF RESURRECTION
-There are eight instances in the Bible of people being resurrected from the dead.
1. The son of the widow of Zarephath -- l Kings 17:22
2. The son of the Shunnamite woman -- ll Kings 4:35
3. The man whose body touched the bones of Elisha in his tomb -- ll Kings 13:21
4. Jarius’ daughter -- Matthew 9:25; Mark 5:42
5. The son of the widow of Nain -- Luke 17:15
6. Lazarus -- John 11:44
7. The Saints at the events of the Crucifixion/Resurrection -- Matthew 27:52
8. Dorcas -- Acts 9:40
-Of those eight instances, four of them were children who had been raised from the dead. It is clearly a reference point of the emphasis that God places on the lives of children. Regardless of how far that your children may be from God, there is still hope. But there has to be an altar.
January 13, 2009
Philip Harrelson
