Divine Strategy and Glorious Conquest!
We are studying from the book of Joshua and learning from the experiences of the children of Israel. This book is filled with principles that we can use in our own pilgrimage to a place of Spirit-filled life! Last Sunday we talked about Crossing Over, Making the choices to ‘own’ the promises of God.
1. FOLLOW! Focus on where God, by the Spirit, is leading you.
2. CONSECRATE your life, renewing your commitment to Him, listening carefully for Him.
3. MOVE OUT! Don’t go just half-way toward the challenge and give in to the temptation to quit.
4. MEMORIALIZE! Remember the victories and build your faith in the God who is at work in you today.
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Do you ever read the Bible and say, “But that’s just impossible!” I’m not talking about the miracle stories, either. I mean, the instructions from the Word for daily life choices. As you read the passages of the Scripture, principles emerge and so does the contrast between how you are living today and how God wants you to live. What then? That’s the question that shapes this message–
Will we take God’s way and discover a path to victory or choose our own way and go down to defeat?
Proverbs states the challenge simply-
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." (Proverbs 16:25, NIV)
PRAYER
This morning we will be looking at the 6th chapter of Joshua. I encourage to follow along in your Bible. In the interest of conserving time, I will only be reading selected verses that tell most of the story.
TEXT: Joshua 6: 1-5, 8-11, 14-21, 24-27 Pew Bible page 337
This a story of legendary proportions! To many people it is only a legend, a story of a likely real event that has been embellished during the telling over time. But I do not believe for a moment that to be true! The Biblical record is sound, factual, and reports history as it happened. Archaelogical digs at the site of the ancient city of Jericho, shows that the mound was inhabited for thousands of years. There is evidence that points to a collapse of the city’s walls and a complete burning of the city around 1400 B.C. Can we be sure that evidence points to the Joshua story? No, but we know that the city surely existed.
What is more important is that we understand the lessons of this chapter and allow those to encourage US to believe God for His will and way in destroying sin’s strongholds in our lives! From time to time you, too, will come up to do battle with some tremendous strongholds in your life that will require divine strategy and great faith to overcome.
As we consider the lessons of this chapter of history, ask God to give you a heart to believe his word and to make you an overcomer!
The Difficulties of the Situation.
Verse 1 of this chapter tells us that Jericho was tightly shut up! This little city- only about 1200’ by 400’ in an oblong shape- was built on a hill-top. It was more like a fortress than a city as we might imagine it. It was well-defended by rather substantial walls. It could be easily defended against invaders. It had plenty of time to prepare for a siege, laying in supplies of water and food. Tho’ the people were terrorized by the invaders, they most assuredly were prepared as best they could be.
How like the difficulties that you and I have with sin from time to time, isn’t it?
Old habits in our lives are often like a walled fortress!
Such things as lust, laziness, apathy, and hatred stand in the path of our Christian growth.
Philosophies of the age, assumptions we make about life, even our family traditions are like well defended fortresses in our minds. We find it nearly impossible to trust God with a situation because we hear our favorite professor’s voice, or our mother’s voice repeating something we assume to be unchallengeable !
People can stand in the way of God’s will, too. Many times we come up against someone else, a spouse or family member particularly, who is tightly shut up to our faith and who resists all efforts that we make to engage interest in the things of God. This being the case, we have something to learn from Joshua and the story today.
The Promise of God regarding the Situation. [ see v. 2 ]
Isn’t that a remarkable thing? The battle has not even been fought yet and God assures Joshua of the outcome!
Note the exact tenses of the wording - "I have delivered...." not "I will deliver...."
The prophet Isaiah wrote of the pronouncements of the Lord in this way-"I, even I have spoken!" Isaiah 48:15
Joshua could take this promise to the bank! He could lead the people with certainty into this all-important battle. This battle will be a morale-booster. It would set the stage for future victory and further demoralize the defenders of the cities that lay ahead in the invader’s path.
When you and I face fortresses that block our progress in faith, we need to hear from God!
In the pages of the Word, we find his promises. As the Spirit makes the Bible live to us, those written words become spoken words of promise on which we can stake the future. Have you heard God speak to your heart lately? Have words of promise found in the Bible burned their way into your heart?
The willingness to obey exemplified in the life of Joshua!
The strategy of the Lord was laid out for the people and it must have seemed totally ridiculous. 7 priests blowing trumpets, the ark of the covenant on the shoulders of the holy men, and the troops of Israel marched all around the city in silence, except for the trumpet sounding, one time each day for six straight days. They did this early in the morning the Bible says. By the third day, I can imagine that the residents of Jericho beginning to think that these people were either crazed or cowardly!
Can’t you hear the jeering shouts from the top of the wall?
Can’t you imagine how foolish these fully armed troops felt on parade day after day?
Then comes the seventh day. Around the walls they go: one time, two times, three times, seven times in all. The seventh time, the troops were commanded to break silence and shout a war cry when they heard the trumpet blast sounded by the priests! What a scene it must have been as they shouted: felt the earth tremble with God’s power; and watched those mighty walls come tumbling straight toward them!
The people of Israel had to be ready to be obedient even to the extent of looking foolish, so that God could do what He purposed to do with Jericho. And they were obedient to the maximum!
God’s strategy for your situation will involve obedience, too! Even at the risk of sometimes looking quite foolish, we must be prepared to be obedient!
The most foolish strategy is the one most significant to us all - salvation through Christ Jesus, by means of the Cross! Reasonable ways to gain God’s favor would be work hard at being good, to do penance for our failures and sins, to try to make up for our offenses, wouldn’t you think? Of course, that is what religion is all about. But the Word tells us that we find favor with God by faith alone; faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In case you’re offended that I called the Cross ‘foolish,’ listen to what Paul writes,
"For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:17-20, NIV)
* ill- Is your husband unconcerned about spiritual matters, unwilling to share your joy in knowing Christ?
God has a strategy that he sets down in his Word for reaching that man. It is a strategy that calls for tough obedience. He says, "Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty." (1 Peter 3:1-2, The Message)
You object perhaps? “But, Lord, I have just the words to really zing him with the truth! I have just got to say something to him, to challenge him, to drag him to church.”
That might be your strategy, but God has already given one that will work! It’s tougher for you, wife than
preaching that sermon you have prepared, for it involves your life and attitudes!
*ill.- Do you have a boss who constantly criticizes you, who never recognizes your contribution?
The Bible says to serve him, not just when he looking, but always going beyond the call of duty! “Don’t
just do what you have to do to get by, but work heartily, as Christ’s servants doing what God wants you
to do. And work with a smile on your face, always keeping in mind that no matter who happens to be giving
the orders, you’re really serving God.” Eph. 6.6 The Message
*ill.- Are your finances in a bind?
God has a strategy for financial responsibility that begins with tithing! “ But, Jerry, I can’t pay my bills now!
How can 90% go further than 100%?” Try God’s math!
He said, “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says
the Lord Almighty, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t
have enough room to take it in! Try it! Let me prove it to you!” - Malachi 3.10 NLT
Will you follow God’s strategy, putting him first in your finances? I believe that he will show you the way
to financial responsibility if you will obey the basic principle!
These few things that I have mentioned call for us to risk looking foolish, but if they are God’s strategy, and I think they are, then they are right and they are the road to overcoming a stronghold in your life.
The Patience that was Required for God to Accomplish His Purpose and Plan.
I am sure that many in the camp of Israel were sure that there was a more efficient and speedy way to be about this business of invading than just marching around for days on end! Some of the young and eager soldiers probably wanted to get on with building some battering rams to attack the city gates. Even some of the leading elders must have felt their patience being tried as Joshua summoned the whole parade to repeat the pointless exercise of marching around the city. But they were patient and Joshua kept them focused on the Lord who already had given them the city in promise and whose promise was yet to be fulfilled!
This is sometimes the hardest part of conquering the strongholds in your own life! We want answers now. We want God to solve the problem immediately. We want deliverance from the habit the moment we pray, healing for our body instantaneously, and relief from oppressors in the instant that we rebuke them. But often God has a process that he requires us to go through for his own purposes. We do not understand many times the why and when, but we must wait patiently.
Listen to the counsel of Psalm 37: 1-2, 7
Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away... Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.
"Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." P
s. 46: 10
Joshua honored the vows that had been made.
Two requirements were made of Israel on the day of their victory, both of which seem strange, even offenseive to us.
1. Rahab and her household were granted citizenship in Israel! Rahab had provided shelter and safety to the Israeli spies that went into Jericho in the weeks prior to the campaign. The saga is recounted in chapter 2 Because she was both willing to protect them and to follow through with an act of faith, tying a scarlet cord in a window of her home, she was spared destruction!
In v. 18, there is another vow referred to. In the KJV the reference is to "the accursed thing." In the NIV you will note the translation refers to "the devoted thing." The people of Israel were not to take a single thing from the city! They were not to be looters, enriching themselves on the goods and foods of the city. The entire city was devoted to God and to given to him as a kind of sacrifice! No tools were taken, no slaves seized, no gold personally acquired. This invasion was not to be like other invasions. This was a mission of God and his people, and the purity of the the nation was to be preserved at great cost. It is hard to reconcile our sensibilities about fairness and justice with the complete destruction of a city and all its inhabitants! It is even more difficult to accept Joshua’s assertion that God told him to destroy everything and kill everybody! I don’t have time today to explore those issues with you. Perhaps we will in coming weeks.
Today, the thing I want to focus on is that when God asks us to live in covenant with Him, when He establishes the terms, it is our obligation to obey, to keep our vows for His sake.
Joshua kept the people to the vow to offer up the whole city to God as a sacrifice!
It must have been hard to turn away from so much food in storage when you had a million hungry people to feed.
It must have been hard to turn away from tools of agriculture, weapons, and the rest when you had nothing after being a refugee for 40 years, but God wanted it all devoted to him. What did not burn, was to be taken for the national treasury, not into the pockets of the soldiers.
My friend, this part of the lesson spoke powerfully to me! We make vows to God that must be kept! If you promise God your life, give him your life. If you make a pledge of money or service, honor that pledge. If you make a commitment to serve him, keep the commitment. God does not hold guiltless the person who does not honor his vows!
Next time that I speak to you, we will examine this truth more in depth as we take a look at the story of Achan and the ripple effect that his choices on this day of conquest had for the nation.
Close-
Are you moving into the place of abundant blessing in the presence of God, taking your promised land?
Then you are facing some strongholds that will need to be pulled down!
Here are the principles in review....
Realistically assess the difficulties of the situation.
Take hold of the promise of God regarding the situation.
Commit yourself to a total willingness to obey God’s directives.
Exercise the patience that is required for God to accomplish his purpose and plan.
Honor the vows and commitments that you have made even when the battle is over and done!
Amen
