It’s because you first loved us that we can love you in return. And it’s not too burdensome because you’re a good and a gracious God, a good father who cares for his children. I pray that we would trust your wisdom, that we would walk in obedience, that it would be motivated by love for you. I pray that the enemy would be silenced in our lives and our hearts and our minds and that we would hear your voice this morning speaking to us through your Holy Spirit. It’s in the mighty name of Jesus we pray.

Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Good morning. Good to be with each and every one of you this morning.

If you’re wondering about my t-shirt, it is the month for VBS in July. So we are living it out as you can see. Living it out. How can we live like Jesus? So that’s the the big message of the VBS.

And be be thinking of those kids. Pray for the the kids volunteers. They’re doing a great work over there. Taking the step of helping the next generation to get their eyes on Jesus. That’s what we want.

So many ways we can do that. We can help the next generation see the light of Jesus. Today, we’re looking at a very well-known passage, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. Or if you are like me and you grew up watching Veggie Tales, you might know it as Josh in the Big Wall. Yeah, that’s there’s a few of us out there.

Yeah, there’s an old joke that about an overly strict teacher who would discipline and punish his students at the smallest infraction. And one time he was walking through the classroom and he was teaching them on the Bible. And he said, “All right, one of you needs to tell me who brought down the walls of Jericho.” There was a long awkward pause and then a somewhat timid boy raised his hand and said, “Please, sir, it wasn’t me.” Now, that school boy kind of missed the point, but let’s make sure we don’t miss the point.

Joshua fought the battle, but he didn’t bring the walls down. Just as victory without the Lord is impossible, victory without obedience is also impossible. And the Lord calls us to be obedient children of him. That’s the message of Joshua. Now, this is a real event.

This actually happened. When we read the stories of scripture like this, we can often think this is a nice children’s story. I remember hearing this in Sunday school. This is, you know, this is when you stack up all those things and you knock them all down and it’s this great effect that happens. But this really happened.

This actually happened. There were real people involved. And it’s good to remember that that this happened at a specific point in history,400 BC roughly. And God was with them. And the same God who spoke to Joshua and gave him the victory all those many years ago speaks to us through his word.

And he gives us the victory we need. Joshua 6 begins by saying, “The gates of Jericho were securely barred.” By the way, if you are new to the church or new to the Bible, we have a Bible in the basket on the under the seat in front of you. And in that Bible, we are on page 149. That’s where you’ll find Joshua chapter 6.

But it says, “The gates of Jericho were securely barred. No one went in, no one went out.” And it’s interesting, you know, archaeologists have discovered in the ruins of Jericho when they’ve investigated this how fortified this city really was. And they saw that on the inner wall it was a 7 foot thick wall, but then there was also an exterior wall that was 14t thick. So we’re talking about a very wellfortified fortress of a city of Jericho.

We often have battles in our own life where it will feel like we are up against something that is way too big for us and it often is. And that’s why we need the Lord. And this is the the main point, the big idea this morning. You are not alone in that battle. And when you submit to the Lord, he assures you of victory.

And so, if you would for the standing or for the reading of God’s word, would you please stand with me as we read this passage together if you are able? Here’s what God says to us. Joshua chapter 6. I’m going to read the first 14 verses of Joshua chapter 6. Says this.

Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city all the men of war going around the city once. Thus you shall do for six days.

Seven 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. And when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him. So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams horns before the ark of the Lord.” And he said to the people, “Go forward, march around the city, and let the armed men pass on before the ark of the Lord.”

And just as Joshua had commanded the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of ram’s horns before the Lord went forward blowing the trumpets with the ark of the covenant of the Lord following them. The armed men were walking before the priests who were walking before the priests were blowing the trumpets and the rear guard was walking after the ark while the trumpets blew continually. But Joshua commanded the people, “You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.” So he caused the ark of the Lord to circle the city, going about at once.

And they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp. Then Joshua rose early in the morning. And the priests took up the ark of the Lord. And the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams horns before the ark of the Lord walked on. And they blew the trumpets continually.

And the armed men were walking before them. And the rear guard was walking after the ark of the Lord while the trumpets blew continually. And the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. So they did for six days. Thank you.

You may be seated. As I’ve mentioned before in this series, from the first time we meet Joshua, we see that he is a warrior. He’s fighting in Exodus 17. He’s portrayed as a warrior right away fighting against the Amalachites. And all along when you when you see Joshua, he’s always ready to fight.

But now he comes to this point and God says, “I have a battle strategy for you, Joshua. It may not be what you had planned out. It’s probably not anything that you would have cooked up. But this is what I am going to do. And I’m going to show myself to be powerful in the midst of this victory.

Now, sometimes the warfare language bothers some Christians. After all, Bible says we’re called to be peacemakers. If you read the sermon on the mount, it does not say blessed are the wararmongers. It says blessed are the peacemakers. And absolutely, that is the case.

We are called to strive for peace with everyone. As much as it depends on us, we should want to be at peace with others. We’ve got peace with God through Jesus Christ. And so, we want to share that peace with others. But there’s another side, another dimension to the Christian life that we don’t want to gloss over.

And that is that we are called to fight real enemies in the spiritual realm. Like Joshua, we’re called to war. Paul says we’re called to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ and to fight the good fight of the faith. He will even say at one point that we’re called to take down strongholds like Jericho, strongholds or fortresses in the spiritual realm. So we’re not fighting as the world fights with our fists or with bullets, but we are in a real fight.

We’re fighting in the realm of the spirit and the mind. Bible says we’re called to take every thought captive and to destroy ideological stronghold. Anything that stands in the way of the knowledge of God, we are called to do battle against through prayer and through teaching the truth and through obedience. We fight lies with the truth of God’s word. We fight sin with obedience to everything Jesus commands us.

We fight fear with faith in God’s promises. We fight sadness with joyful worship. We fight loneliness with fellowship in the church. We fight despair with hopeful prayer. And we fight Satan and rebellion against God primarily with submission to God.

Submit to God. That’s what we’re called to do. James 4:7 says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God.” In other words, present yourself as an obedient child of the king, saying, “I’m ready to do your will.” Submit to God and then resist the devil.

Resist. That word means to push back against, to stand against, to to fight, to resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Now, that is an incredible promise because the devil, the Bible teaches this. The the devil is a powerful being. He is an evil real powerful spiritual being.

And yet this promise says that he will flee from you if you are first submitted to and obedient to God. See obedience is the key to victory. The early church father John Chrissum said you are but a poor soldier of Christ if you think that you can overcome without fighting and suppose you can have the crown without the conflict. So, let’s make no mistake. We are called to a spiritual battle.

And this is a battle. We’re going to see this. It takes place every day. And the more we ignore the battle or the more we downplay that there is a battle, the more we’re going to actually be taking the wrong side in that battle. Jesus was very clear.

He said, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” He he drew the line in the sand very clearly. You stand with me, you will have victory. You will share in my victory that I won for you at the cross and resurrection. And if you don’t stand with me, you are opposing me.

You are going against my kingdom. You’re on the wrong side. But here’s the good news. We are assured of victory when we are soldiers of Jesus Christ. So in your notes, remember, you fight not just for victory, but from victory.

You fight not just for victory but from victory. That’ll be the next slide. There we go. From victory. Maybe one of the biggest challenges in the Christian life is to be able to admit when we’re up against something that’s far bigger than ourselves.

Our world teaches us that the way to handle those challenges in life, those things that we need to overcome is to to kind of build up the strength within. And we have that very individualistic teaching in our culture that says it’s through self-effort. It’s through self-help. It’s through self-promotion that you will get ahead and you will overcome the challenges in life. But God has to continually remind us that the victory is in him.

It’s only found in him. Apart from him, we are going to face defeat. In Joshua 6:2, God says, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand.” Now, I love this because God is talking about a future event. This hasn’t happened yet.

And yet, he’s speaking as if it’s an absolute certainty, as if it’s already happened. I have given you the victory, Joshua. And note that word see. God is telling Joshua, I want you to see this in your mind’s eye. I want you to focus on this.

See the victory that is coming. It’s not a question of if it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. You are going to win, Joshua. But you need to see it.

You need to put your mind on this fact that the victory is already yours for the taking. God says the same thing with you. The great promises in scripture are there so that we would not just believe the truth of God’s word, absolutely, but it’s so that we would have a lens of hope. And it would be like holding it up to our mind’s eye and seeing that’s what victory looks like. It’s mine.

I have it in Christ. I don’t need to work for it. I don’t need to do something amazing to accomplish this. It’s already mine. I just need to live it out and be obedient.

For example, when God gives us a promise, like 1 John 17, 1 John 17 says, “The blood of Jesus cleanses us of all sin.” We can take that to the bank and know that all my sins have been paid for at the cross. When Jesus said, “It is finished and I am cleansed in God’s holy sight because of the blood of Jesus.” When God says, “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” That’s a promise.

We can believe that. We can live in that confidence that when God and Satan go headtohead, Satan is flattened from the start. When Paul says, “My God will supply all your needs.” That’s a promise. We never have to worry.

Do you know that as a child of God, you never have to worry because God supplies all your needs. Those are promises where we can see the victory when we fix our minds on these promises. And we don’t let the world crowd into our thinking and and sway us otherwise, but we fix our mind on what God has told us and let that be the lens for seeing the victory that is ours. So if you want to make the devil run, you can do that when you go to God’s word and claim these promises. Satan hates it when we stand on God’s promises because he knows he can’t he can’t do anything about that.

He doesn’t have a fight when we stand on God’s promises. God gave Joshua the promise of victory. He didn’t have to wonder how it would all turn out. It’s a little bit like when you sit down and watch one of your favorite movies. You know, you don’t wonder how it’s going to turn out.

You’ve already seen it before. That’s why it’s one of your favorite movies, and you probably still enjoy it, but you’re not wondering the whole time, how’s this going to end? No. See, you already know how it’s going to end. You’ve seen it before.

And in the same way, God’s word tells us how it’s all going to end. He tells us that there is victory in Jesus Christ. He says, “All you need to do, this is what you’re called to do. You obey. You don’t achieve the victory.

I am giving that to you. But you obey and you do what you’re told and you’ll experience that victory even now, even in this life. In the spiritual war on earth, it’s been waging since the beginning. God declared war on Satan way back in the garden. You remember that time when God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent?

That was him declaring war on Satan and promising the victory that would be in Jesus Christ. Now, what I love is in Romans 16, Paul basically takes that metaphor and joins us up with Jesus and it says this, “The God of peace,” he says, “For their obedience, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” So, every time you choose to listen to God’s word and be obedient to what God has said, you can picture God crushing Satan under your feet. Isn’t that awesome? In verse three of Joshua 6, God tells Joshua to have all the men of war march around the city.

Everyone’s going to be included, and it is the warriors. Now, in Joshua’s time, only the men went to war. But ladies, in the spiritual war, you’re included, too. Just as you have equal access, men and women have equal access to Jesus. We are equally involved in this war.

And the command for all the warriors was to march around the city for six days, once a day. And then on the seventh day to march around it seven times. Now, it’s interesting that number seven is mentioned four times in verse four. There’s seven priests, seven trumpets, seven days, and then seven circuits on that seventh day. Seven shows up a lot in scripture.

Israel was commanded to celebrate the seventh day as a Sabbath. Every seventh year was the sabbatical year. And every 49th year, 7* 7 was the year of jubilee. Seven represents completion or perfection. The Hebrew word translated seven is shabba.

And shabba comes from the root that means to be full or to be satisfied. You can think of the time when God created. Remember he created in six days and on the seventh day he looked at all that he had done. It was very good. And he called that seventh day holy.

He was satisfied in what he had done. Seven is a sacred number to Jewish people. Even today it’s a sacred number. It signifies that God always finishes what he starts. God never leaves a job half.

He always completes the work. Even secular people call it the lucky number seven, right? And they don’t even realize often. They don’t realize there’s a biblical basis for the significance of the number seven. But it seems to be this universal understanding.

There’s something about this number. And it’s because it speaks of God’s work. But God says on the seventh time, on the seventh day, those walls are coming down. BSV footnote makes the point that in verse 5, God is literally saying the wall of the city will fall under itself. And what that means is the wall, even as the wall comes down, it will fall in such a way that it looks like it’s falling from incredible pressure coming from above.

So just as when Jesus died, the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom to make a point. God was, “I’m the one tearing the veil.” That’s what God was saying. In the same way, he’s saying that the walls are going to come down in such a way that it’s going to be without question that I am the one who’s bringing them down. It’s not going to blow up from down below where you are.

It’s going to come down because I am literally pressing those walls down. Humanly, this battle plan doesn’t make any sense. You know, who who would say, you know, here’s the idea we want to do. We’re going to march around and we’re going to blow our trumpets until we win. You know, that doesn’t work in the the typical battle plan.

And yet, this is the plan that God gave them. The Israelites had to follow through on each day. Each day, they had to do it. They couldn’t jump to the seventh day when it was the third day. They had to go through each day just as God prescribed.

And that’s a reminder for us that the battle we are engaged in is daily. So, we’re called to surrender each day to the Lord, trusting his timing for victory. Sometimes when we are in a spiritual battle, we will wonder, why is this taking so long? We will wonder, you know, why isn’t this something that I’ve gotten over? Why isn’t this an obstacle I’ve overcome yet?

Why is this something I’m still battling? And we need to trust God’s timing. He knows. He understands the timeline perfectly. He knows what he’s doing.

We’re called to be obedient in the meantime. It’s very easy for us to push this idea of spiritual warfare out into the theoretical realm because it’s a spiritual battle. But I think it helps to remember that this is a spiritual battle that takes place every single day. There is never a time that you are excused from the front lines. You’re always in this battle.

In Psalm 90, Moses says, “Teach us to number our days so that we may get so mean we may get a heart of wisdom.” Well, how do you number your days? I don’t know how many days I have left on this earth. You know, that’s and that’s the point. None of us knows how many tomorrows we have, but we do know this.

We know we have today. And God doesn’t call us to meet with him a month from now or a week from now. He calls us to meet with him today. Today is emphasized over and over in scripture. It would be very easy for those men watch marching around Jericho to think, you know, why are we doing this on the third or fourth, fifth day?

This doesn’t make any sense. Why don’t we just skip to the seventh day where we win? That would be a lot easier. But they were called to submit every day to him. God was teaching them every day belongs to him.

Today comes up in the Bible frequently. Jesus said to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow’s got a ton of trouble of its own. You worry about today.

You focus on what you need today.” When are we to worship God? Today. Because this is the day the Lord has made. So, rejoice and be glad in it.

When are we called to surrender to Jesus? Not tomorrow. Today. Because Paul says, “Today is the day of salvation.” You’re not to put it off.

You’re to do what God calls you to do today. Not only that, but we’re told that the devil in his strategy of accusation. He accuses the brethren day and night. It’s interesting. I thought about this.

Satan doesn’t have to sleep. As spiritual beings, they don’t need to sleep. We need to rest. We have physical bodies. We’re limited in that sense.

We have to rest every every day. But spiritual beings, they can that onslaught can keep happening because they don’t need that rest. But part of our battle is to find rest in the Lord. We don’t need to be anxious when we are resting in the Lord today. There’s a portion of Disneyland that’s called Tomorrowland.

And most of us, what gets us most anxious is living in tomorrow land. Certainly, it’s right to make plans and look ahead on your calendar and and see what’s coming. But again, God wants to meet with us. Not not next week, today. Every day, we should see it as this is the time to meet with the Lord.

We can’t carry the load of tomorrow, but God gives us the strength we need for today. One of the enemy’s tactics is to burden us with the regret of yesterday and the worry of tomorrow. But we’re called to live in God’s presence today. Instead of always fixating on what’s coming and letting that dominate your thoughts and and cause worry to build up, we’re called to give thought to the moment we’re in. And we’re not always very good about hitting the pause button in life.

Sometimes we’re tempted to hit the rewind button and think back through where we’ve been or or we want to hit the fast forward button. We want to get through something or or we’re looking forward to something, but it’s good to hit the pause button in life to just pause right where you’re at and say, “Thank you, Lord, for this day. I’m alive and I have you. So, I have everything I need right now. Help me to treasure this moment with you today.

In the battle to beat addictions, one of the healthiest perspectives is for people to say to themselves, I’m not going to focus on anything except winning today. I’m not going to worry about tomorrow. I’m going to focus on today. And the worst thing you can say is, I’ll kick that habit tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes, right?

You think about and you focus on the day the Lord has given you. So, have you come to the place where you can say, “God, I’m ready. Whatever it is you’re calling me to give up, whatever it is I need to surrender to you, whatever it is I’m battling right now and I need to to give to you and acknowledge that you are my victory. Are you willing to do that right now? Today, those Israelite soldiers had to submit every day to the Lord.”

when they marched around, it was a dayby-day thing. And if Jericho was to fall, only God can do it. This wasn’t a matter of God needing Jer the Israelites or Joshua. He was going to do it in his own way. But he said, “This is what you’re called to do.

You obey. You march around simply because I told you. It’s not because it’s the perfect battle strategy that you would normally use. It’s because I told you to. That’s why you’re to march around.”

And the people of Jericho, I imagine, looked down on them from their highly fortified, massive walls. They probably thought it was a joke. What do these people think? You know, they probably ridiculed them. You think you’re going to bring down this wall just marching around blowing your little trumpets?

But they were called to obey. And the laws, you know, sometimes God does this. I think we see this in the Bible. God will give Israel some interesting commands. Some of the laws, honestly, they’re a little confusing.

Why did God have them do that? But part of obedience isn’t saying, “Okay, God, I will obey as long as I understand fully why.” Or it’s not, “I will obey as long as I already agree with what you’re saying.” Sometimes you come to the Bible and your first reaction is that seems wrong. But guess who’s wrong?

It’s not God. It’s you. The same is true for us today. Just as Israel was called to stand out and be different. They they were to be obedient to the Lord no matter what.

We are called to stand out and be different. We are often going to butt heads with the world. We are going to have a radically different perspective on different things like marriage, sexuality, a whole host of things. And people will look at us funny and say, “What is wrong with you?” That’s what they that’s what the people of Jericho probably said, too.

We’re called to be obedient simply because it’s what God has said. It doesn’t matter if it all makes sense to us in the moment. In our spiritual battle, there’s always a danger that the values of the world will creep into our thinking and start to corrupt our values because we’re so inundated in that mode of thinking that we think that must be right. In many ways, our battle is in the world of ideas. And the question is, what has most captured your mind?

Is it the word or the world? What’s captured your mind right now? Where are you most fixated? The world or the word? By obeying each day the Lord’s command to march around Jericho, the Israelites showed that they were captive to God’s word.

They were going to do it no matter what. They weren’t called to do the impossible. They were called to be obedient and trust God to do the impossible. So, they followed through on each day. And on that last circuit around Jericho on the seventh day, you can just imagine this expectation building up.

Everything was coming to this head. And they started shouting. Jericho. Joshua said, “Now it’s the time to shout. You can shout.”

And so they were belting it out as loud as they could. The trumpets were blaring. And all of a sudden, in this violent moment, you could see the walls come crashing down. Just imagine being there for that moment, that spectacle of God’s power. And the people went in and destroyed everyone and everything.

Verse 16 says, “And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city, and the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers whom we sent. Now, this takes us to the question, it’s a it’s an important question. Why did Jericho need to fall in the first place? See, when God back in Deuteronomy, when God was telling Israel that they were going to go in and take the land, he was very clear.

He said, “I’m not giving you this land because you’re so good.” We know Israel was not so good. It’s because the Canaanites are so bad. The fall of Jericho is really meant to be a preview of what is to come. That the judgment is real.

In your notes, God alone is both judge and savior of the world. Everybody wants to say that God is love. We’re okay. The world’s okay with that one. But when you say God is judge, oh, suddenly you get push back.

Suddenly people say, “No, no, no, no. Not my God. Do we believe that God is judge? I don’t know about you, but it’s easy to forget how real this was. Just thinking about this, thinking about this was a real city.

There were real people, real individuals living in this city. This actually happened to them. It’s not a cartoon. It It’s something that happened in history and that the Israelites were called to do. And so we need to come to terms with what we might call the more disturbing passages of scripture as well as the ones that are comforting.

Verse 21 says, “Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.” Now, many of the so-called new atheists that are out and about today will accuse the God of the Old Testament of ethnic cleansing because of passages like our passage this morning. So, how do we respond? Well, some will say, “Okay, here’s how we respond. We need to tell people, you know, we don’t really take this passage all that seriously.

You know, this is this is just a it’s a story. You know, just take it for what it is. It it probably doesn’t mean what you think it means.” That’s one strategy. And it probably doesn’t surprise you that that’s a strategy I would say is impossible for those who take God’s word seriously to take.

Now, others might say, “Yes, this is historically accurate. This really did happen.” But we need to see this in context. We need to recognize, first of all, God’s goal was to drive out the Canaanites because he was fulfilling his promise to Abraham and his descendants that he would give them the land. So the goal was not extermination.

It was to drive them out to bring in the people of God. And that’s all true. But I would say we still have to deal with the fact that real people were killed here. You can’t avoid it. It’s right there in our Bibles.

We love the word of God and it says the people were killed. The question people will ask is, “How can God be good if he destroys those innocent Canaanites?” The simple fact for starters is that the people of Canaan were anything but innocent. This was a thoroughly wicked nation. The these people practiced things that we would consider unheard of, unbelievable.

They practiced beastiality, incest, adultery. Not only that, but it’s well documented that these people sacrificed their own children by fire to their gods. This was a regular, not a one-time. This was a regular, constantly happening, ongoing practice that they did day after day after day. This was not ethnic cleansing or genocide by God.

This was God’s holy wrath being poured out on incredibly evil people. Now, I know people still struggle with the idea of God’s wrath today. People will say that’s that’s an oldfashioned concept that God would have wrath. But the reality is when people say how can God be good a and have wrath or judge anyone? It comes down to their definition of good.

What do you mean by good? Our definition of goodness is often reduced to being nice, to being gentle, soft, kind. That’s what people often think of when they hear the word good. But goodness according to the Bible is far richer and deeper than that. God is good in the absolute sense.

He is the only one who is truly good. The definition of good is God. Jesus said, “No one is good but God alone.” Every other person or thing that we tend to call good is in reality when set against the goodness of God is just a dim and and poor reflection of the absolute spotless and perfect goodness of God. He’s so good.

God is holy, righteous, and just. He’s so good that he cannot by his own nature because he’s holy and just, he cannot tolerate any form of evil. All sin must be punished. All evil must be vanquished. That’s how good God is.

In fact, God is so good that this sinful world is in very real danger. That’s why Jesus, the son of God, spoke often of a coming day of judgment, a day of reckoning. He said, “It’s coming.” He warned about the reality of hell. He said, “There is a day coming when everyone will have to answer to the living God.”

He called us to repent and trust in his sacrifice as the only way of salvation from judgment. The only way. People say, “Why is Jesus the only way? That it seems so narrow.” No.

What’s so amazing is that God would provide anyway to sinful people. People who deserve his judgment. He says, “I’m offering you grace. I’m giving you mercy. I am offering a way out of the judgment you deserve if you come by the way of the cross.”

This idea of goodness is illustrated in CS Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There’s a moment where the beavers are explaining to the children that Alan, the Christ figure, is actually a lion. And then Lewis writes this, “Then he isn’t safe.” Talking about Alan. Ask Lucy.

Safe, said Mr. Beaver. Who said anything about safe? Of course, he isn’t safe. But he’s good.

He’s the king, I tell you. And see, that should be our perspective. Is God safe? Not really. Not in that sense.

He will judge all sin and evil, but he is good and he’s the king and he’s a merciful king. Praise God that we have a way of salvation offered to us. That should cause us to tremble with joy to know that God is so gracious to offer us a way to escape judgment. Our culture promotes tolerance of sin. And so the the Canaanite invasion is so offensive to people in our culture because we are in our culture tolerating so much sin.

In our own lives, we tolerate sin. God is utterly intolerant of sin. He’s that good. He has a holy hatred for sin. So it’s very simple.

If you turn down the volume of scripture and you turn up the volume of our culture, you will tend to think that sin is not a big deal. But if you turn up the volume of scripture and you listen to the voice of God and you give yourself to this word and let this shape your definition of goodness, you will see things rightly. So one of the takeaways from this passage has to be that we need to hate our own sin first. But before we go out and say, “This world has so many evils and so many corruptions,” we need to take a look inside. God, is there something I need to confess?

Search me and know my heart. Is there any anxious way in me? Is there something I need to bring into the light because I want to be right with you? I don’t want to be living in darkness. I don’t want to be hiding secret sins from you, the allseeing, holy God of the universe.

I want to live in righteousness because you are a God of righteousness. We also need to remember that it’s because of human sin that we all have an appointment with death. It wasn’t just the Canaanites. Hebrews says it’s appointed for everyone to die once and then to face the judgment. The other thing to consider in context of all this is that God had been incredibly patient.

This nation of Canaan, they were so wicked, so evil for what they were doing. But God waited over 400 years before judging them. They had every opportunity to repent. And we know that because of the example of Rahab. You remember what Rahab said?

She said that she knew that Yahweh is the one true God. That she had been worshiping false gods and then she repented. And so we can know by looking at Rahab that there’s a Canaanite who did choose to surrender to the God of Israel and she was spared from judgment. Verse 24 says, “And they burned the city with fire and everything in it. Only the silver and gold and the vessels of bronze and of iron they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.

But Rahab the prostitute and her father’s household and all who belong to her, Joshua saved alive.” The burning city of Jericho reminds us that the judgment is real. The day of judgment is coming. But the salvation of Rahab reminds us that God is merciful. That he has opened the way of salvation.

There’s only one door of salvation. It’s through Jesus Christ. But that door right now is open. Now, one day that door is going to close. It will close and and it will be too late for some people because the door stood open before them and they didn’t walk through.

And so the reminder for us this morning as we look at Jericho and we see how it was burning and everything was devoted to destruction. We need to look at that and say, you know what, I need to walk through. If I have not walked through that door of salvation, if I haven’t come to Jesus Christ, if I haven’t repented of my sin and trusted in Jesus, I need to do that today. I can’t do it tomorrow. I can’t put it off till next week or next year.

It’s going to keep piling up. I need to do it today. I need to get right with my Lord. The chapter ends with this statement. Verse 27.

So the Lord was with Joshua. I love that he wasn’t alone and his fame was in all the land. That’s because when you’re obedient to the Lord, God will lift you up. You see, if you humble yourself, those who humble themselves before the Lord will be exalted. If you exalt yourself, you’ll be humbled.

Those who live in pride and arrogance and say, “I don’t need God. I don’t need Jesus,” they will be humbled one day. But if you humble yourself, you come to the Lord, you walk through that door of salvation, and then you continue to repent because repentance is not a one-time thing, by the way. We continue to repent as God shows us more things that we need to give to him and surrender. But praise God, we have security in Jesus.

The priests blew their trumpets at Jericho. And when Christ returns, the Bible says the trumpet will sound and everybody’s going to hear it. Nobody is going to be deaf to that trumpet. The Bible says that many will think that they are safe in their sin simply because everybody’s doing it. Just as the people of Jericho, they thought they were secure behind those massive walls until the day they came down.

But here’s what First Thessalonians 5, I’ll close with this. 1 Thessalonians 5 says this will happen at Christ’s return for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night when you don’t expect it while people are saying there is peace and security I’m safe then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and they will not escape but here’s the good news for all who trust in Jesus but Since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. I love this. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.

R

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 7,213 words.