Israel Built upon Jericho

15On the seventh day, they rose early at the dawning of the day, and marched around the city in the same way seven times. Only on this day they marched around the city seven times. 16At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for Yahweh has given you the city! 17The city shall be devoted, even it and all that is in it, to Yahweh. Only Rahab the prostitute shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. 18But as for you, only keep yourselves from what is devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted it, you take of the devoted thing; so you would make the camp of Israel accursed, and trouble it. 19But all the silver, gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are holy to Yahweh. They shall come into Yahweh’s treasury.” 20So the people shouted and the priests blew the trumpets. 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 in front of him, and they took the city. 21They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox, sheep, and donkey, with the edge of the sword. 22Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house, and bring the woman and all that she has out from there, as you swore to her.” 23The young men who were spies went in, and brought out Rahab with her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had. They also brought out all of her relatives, and they set them outside of the camp of Israel. 24They burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only they put the silver, the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron into the treasury of Yahweh’s house.

God asks his people for obedience first, promising that if they obey his word, he will surely help them. Salvation is indeed given to everyone who believes in Jesus, yet we must not forget that God first tells his people the conditions they are to meet.

When children beg for a toy, their parents set a condition: do this first, and you will have what you want. But the children do not listen. Their eyes are fixed on the toy alone, and that is why they go without it. We behave the same way. God tells us that he will bless us if we obey in this, and that he cannot if we do not. Yet we forget the part we must obey and keep clamoring for the blessing alone. If we grasped what comes first, we would find God’s heart easy to understand.

We may think of hardship as a curse and wealth as a blessing, but seen through the eyes of faith, hardship can become a blessing, and wealth can be the curse of one whom God has forsaken. When someone who loves God goes through hardship, it may be God’s training to bring them to maturity, so there is no reason to be ashamed of it. We must therefore learn to weigh everything that happens to us spiritually, with wisdom and understanding. Then we will come to know God’s will, and even in the midst of trials we can rejoice, sing his praise, and give thanks.

To keep his beautiful relationship with Adam forever, God set a condition: he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To Abraham he made a promise: if he left his country, his relatives, and his father’s house and went to the land God would show him, God would make him the source of blessing. Now Adam and Abraham, having heard God’s word, have to choose how they will live. God has given them the right to choose by their own free will, so they would have to think long and hard before they decided.

But because Adam did not fear the word and failed to judge rightly, he listened to Eve, who had given in to Satan’s temptation and eaten the fruit, and he acted on what she said. He never stopped to consider what would happen if he defied God’s word. When humanity could not overcome sin and ate that fruit, Satan would have rejoiced greatly, thinking he had beaten God. Satan tempts people, but God hopes that those who know his will will drive the temptation back. Adam, however, was defeated. Whatever choice people make, then, the choice is theirs.

God gave us free will because he wants his children to overcome sin of their own accord and hold on to their place as his children. People will shape their lives by their choices, from living according to God’s will to walking away from him altogether. But what you are choosing right now may be Satan’s temptation, so I want to ask you to be careful. For when today’s choice goes wrong, it takes a long time to turn back to the good path.

Genesis 17:1-2

1When Abram was ninety-nine years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. Walk before me, and be blameless. 2I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.”

God promised Abram that if he walked before him and was blameless, he would multiply him exceedingly. Read the other way round, it means that although God had made the promise, if Abram did not walk blamelessly, God could not bless him even though he wanted to. Being almighty, God could easily have made someone other than Abram the father of many nations. But he chose Abram, and it was through Abram’s obedience that he wanted to form a nation.

From a human standpoint, leaving one’s country, one’s relatives, and one’s father’s house, the condition God named for the blessing, is never easy. Yet Abram obeyed God’s word to leave them, and he longed for God’s promise to be fulfilled in him. His obedience, his resolve to act as God had spoken, is what caused him to receive the blessing of becoming the father of many nations.

Jesus told us not to worry about what we will eat, what we will drink, or what we will wear, and said that if we seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness, all these things will be given to us as well. He meant that if, instead of compromising with the world to secure food, clothing, and shelter, the things people count most important, we put God’s Kingdom and righteousness first, everything we need for daily life will be supplied.

Yet people forget the conditions God has set and remember only his promise of blessing, and because of that they miss the blessing he has prepared. Those whose prayers go unanswered because they have not lived by God’s will are full of complaint and discontent, which is why their words and deeds turn foolish. But if you first do your utmost to obey, God will bless your life and give you salvation as a gift in return for your obedience.

Joshua 6:2-5

2Yahweh said to Joshua, “Behold, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the mighty men of valor. 3All of your men of war shall march around the city, going around the city once. You shall do this six days. 4Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. 5It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the city wall shall fall down flat, and the people shall go up, every man straight in front of him.”

The condition of obedience was this: they were to march around the city once each day for six days. On the seventh day they were to march around it seven times. Then the priests going in front with the seven trumpets of rams’ horns would make a long blast, and when the people heard it and gave a great shout, the wall would fall at that very moment. Now Israel had only to obey God’s command, and victory was theirs. That a city would collapse because Israel shouted at the sound of the trumpets is truly hard to accept by common sense. But with God himself directing this battle, the miracle was bound to happen.

It was hard enough to understand that shouting would bring Jericho down, but Joshua went further and ordered the people not to say a single word until he told them to shout. Why would he forbid them to speak at all?

You must never forget that among the people there were those like Joshua, who obeyed God’s command, and there were also those like Achan. They were all marching around the city together, but not all of them had an obedient heart. To keep silent for seven days without fully understanding God’s will was certainly hard. Some among them must have grumbled that instead of wasting time like this they ought to be finding a way to attack the city. God knew the hearts of those who could not lay down their own righteousness even when he had given the command, and that is why he shut their mouths.

The work of salvation God has planned is beyond human reasoning. The wise course for his people, then, is to obey in silence and endure. Those who believe that God’s promise will surely be fulfilled and those who are merely swept along by circumstances may look alike from the outside, all of them silent as they circle the city. But once the wall falls, their faith will soon come to light, because when they entered fallen Jericho, there was Joshua, who kept faith to the end, and there was Achan, who defied the word and took what he wanted for himself.

Having just finished its harvest, Jericho was well stocked, while the Israelites were worn out in body and mind. By the world’s measure, then, the two sides were no match at all. Worse still, before a city as massive as Jericho there was nothing they could do themselves, and marching around it with nothing but God’s promise to trust in, they looked small and powerless.

So the very thought of victory might have seemed empty and absurd. To some, circling the city while doing nothing themselves would have felt like blind faith, and marching around it to no apparent purpose would have seemed simply foolish. The Israelites standing before Jericho might well look like sinners full of sin demanding entry into heaven, or like a penniless person insisting on something costly.

Even to you, people who do nothing but walk around a city may look like thoughtless, pitiful fools. The people of Jericho would have been bewildered as they watched them circle those enormous walls with hardly a weapon, the ark of the covenant at their head and trumpets sounding, for Israel, which had won such great victories on its way to Canaan, was marching around a city with no weapons in hand. But Jericho would soon learn that Israel had won its battles so far not by its own strength but by the hand of God at work.

When God commanded Israel to march around the city for seven days, he meant to see the faith of an obedient people, but he also meant to give the people inside Jericho a chance. They had heard of God’s might, and he was giving them the chance to open their doors and come out, as Rahab had. The Israelites were simply obeying the word, while God was hoping that the people of Jericho, seeing that obedience, would be filled with fear.

Our preaching of the gospel in the world today is like Israel’s seven days of marching around Jericho. When we preach the gospel with a heart that obeys the word, it is like the rams’ horn trumpets the priests blew. Those who hear that trumpet and open the door of darkness to come out can live. God shut the Israelites’ mouths for this reason: he wanted the people of Jericho to hear the trumpets and meet him. So when we preach the gospel, we must not mix in our own thoughts, knowledge, or feelings, but proclaim God’s word alone. As a trumpet always sounds the same note, we too must proclaim the same truth and nothing else.

Joshua 6:16-17

16At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for Yahweh has given you the city! 17The city shall be devoted, even it and all that is in it, to Yahweh. Only Rahab the prostitute shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.

Joshua commanded the people that even when they had taken Jericho, they must on no account take anything in the city, and that they must spare Rahab. What saved Rahab was that she had met the condition of salvation God required. What greeted the Israelites as they entered the fallen city were heaps of gold, silver, and treasure, and food in abundance. The first test to come upon Israel was wealth.

God knew that the Israelites, after their long journey, needed food and goods. Why, then, did he tell them not to take any of it? The answer becomes clear when we remember how Satan tempted Jesus, who had fasted forty days, to turn stones into bread.

Satan set Jesus on the pinnacle of the holy temple and tempted him to throw himself down, to see whether the angels would bear up the Son of God. The third time, he took Jesus to a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said he would give him all of it if Jesus would fall down and worship him. These were the worldly blessings people long for. It was Satan who used the riches and glory of the world, the things people hold dearest and most want to possess, to tempt Jesus to forsake God. Jesus rebuked him with the word: man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth, and the Lord your God is not to be tested but worshiped and served. Satan thought that if he offered the earthly blessings people crave, Jesus would betray God. But the world stands in the way of the work of salvation, and for that reason Jesus drove him off without hesitation. Satan, who had expected to win by tempting him with earthly glory, saw that he could not win when Jesus answered with an entirely different word, and he left. If, like Jesus, we hold a faith that acknowledges at its very root that the world’s food and drink, its honor and power, cannot be compared with God, we can stand unshaken by any temptation and judge rightly at all times.

The commander of Yahweh’s army told Joshua to take off his sandals because, before God acts, his people must first have faith. The commander knew that Satan would interfere at the very moment God’s glory was revealed. Even those who have resolved in faith can be tripped by a small temptation from Satan. God knew that even after crossing the Jordan, being circumcised in full view of their enemies, and seeing Jericho fall, the people’s hearts would waver at the sight of food and treasure. So he made them pledge themselves again and again, but in the end they fell.

God sent the commander of Yahweh’s army and made Israel victorious in battle, and he also showed his tender care by protecting Rahab the prostitute. As he had promised, he spared her and everyone who lived with her in her house. For the salvation of his people he wards off the attacks of the world and Satan and brings the schemes of the wicked to nothing. Yet he is also the God who shows a quiet, gentle love, guiding a person’s life in order to save a single soul among his people.

Joshua protected Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers, and all who belonged to her, and he gave them all the property they had. Faith in God is open to anyone, whatever their station. Whoever believes in God and trusts in him as Rahab did will have their soul saved and their possessions kept safe.

Joshua 6:20

20So the people shouted and the priests blew the trumpets. 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 in front of him, and they took the city.

They marched around Jericho for six days, and on the seventh, even as they circled it seven times, the walls did not fall. As they went around a city that would not come down on that seventh day, they must have struggled to hold on to their faith. Many thoughts would have crossed their minds on that final circuit. Some were likely convinced that this city would never fall, while others, on the last lap of the last day, waited with eager hearts to see what miracle would happen.

God’s people must persevere, and persevere until the very moment the miracle comes, because only then can they see God’s work with their own eyes and share in it. If you want to be blessed by God, you must endure without complaining and live by faith. And whenever God tells people the conditions for his answer first, it is because he wants to give them every blessing, of spirit and of body.

Joshua commanded the people to shout aloud when the priests blew the trumpets for the seventh time. Looking at the great city towering before them, the Israelites took God at his word when he told them to shout, and through their obedience they saw the mighty wall collapse. This is God’s grace: things happen that human reason cannot explain. People want fruit they can see at once, but God, who knows that Jericho will fall seven days later, tells them to obey starting now.

But like a child who cannot understand a parent’s aching heart, people judge the Almighty who created heaven and earth by their own limited knowledge and within the frames they have set for themselves, and so they cannot grasp God’s will. Obedience, then, comes before understanding, for the proper stance for those who belong to God is to come to know his will ever more deeply and broadly in the very course of obeying.

If you trust God’s character and obey him first, you may receive and enjoy sooner the blessings he has prepared to give you days or years from now. Yet we do not believe in God to obtain the blessings of this world. This world is like a bathtub we sit in for a while in order to be saved. Bathing is only a process of getting clean. No one lives in the tub forever.

If in this world you receive Christ and are washed clean by his blood, God will lead you to heaven, a place far holier and more precious. Israel obeyed and saw Jericho’s walls fall, and Rahab had faith and was saved. People say they will obey once God’s word makes sense to them, but it is those who obey God’s word first, and in doing so shape themselves into saints, who receive every blessing God has prepared. As you walk the way of Christ in obedience, you will discover how safe, how joyful, and how full of thanksgiving that way is.

May you always look for God’s work and never stray from the path of faith. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.