Now we're gonna look at Joshua
chapter six. That's the chapter that records
the history of Israel conquering Jericho. That was the first place
that they came to after they crossed the Jordan River in order
to take possession of the promised land that God had promised them
400 and some years before through Abraham. and they had to go to
Jericho. But before we get into Joshua
6, I want you to back up to Joshua chapter 5 beginning at verse
13. Now before Joshua led the people
of Israel in their conquest of Jericho, look at what happens
here. This is Joshua 5 and verse 13. It says, and it came to pass
when Joshua was by Jericho. Now they'd already crossed the
Jordan River now. that he lifted up his eyes and
looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his
sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went unto him and
said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries? Now apparently
Joshua didn't recognize who this man was, this appearance was,
immediately, or he wouldn't have asked that question. Are you
for us or are you for our enemies? verse 14 this this man said nay
but as captain or prince of the host of the Lord am I now come
and Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship now
who is this man well this is a this is one of those pre-incarnate
visitations of the Lord Jesus Christ. And just as Christ appeared
to Moses in the burning bush on Mount Sinai, he appeared to
Moses as the lawgiver, he's now appearing in the same way to
Joshua, but as the mighty conqueror, the captain of the host. And he says that, he says, I'm
a captain of the Lord's host. And Joshua recognized that this
was a pre-incarnate visitation of the Messiah, who would later
on come in the flesh. But he's called a man because
that's how he appears. He's God, the second person of
the Trinity, God, but he appears in, I believe the way he appeared
was the way he would appear later on as God manifest in the flesh. And it says, Joshua fell on his
face to the earth and did worshiping and said unto him, what saith
my Lord unto his servants? So Joshua takes his proper place. This is our proper place before
God. Worship as his servant and listening
for his word. That's what we wanna hear. That's
why we're here this morning, to hear God's word. You're not
here to hear my opinions. We're not here to just have a
rap session. When I was in false religion,
that's what we used to do, especially in what we called Sunday school.
Everybody give their opinion. I don't want your opinion and
you don't want mine. What saith my Lord? What does God have to say unto
his servant? And verse 15 says, the captain
of the Lord's host saith unto Joshua, loose thy shoe from off
thy foot. Now you remember what he told
Moses when he appeared to Moses at the burning bush? He said,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy, and Joshua did so. Now what that means is this is
the place that God set apart. That's what that holy means.
Get in your minds when you read the scripture, the words holy
and sanctify and all of that, It doesn't necessarily refer
to what we call moral purity. A holy person, like the Bible
says that all of God's children are holy. Now, do we have moral
purity? Well, no, we're sinners saved
by grace. Now, we are sinlessly perfect in one sense only, and
that's legally, as we stand in Christ, washed in his blood,
and clothed in his righteousness. because God will not charge us
with sin. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? But we're not morally perfect
yet. We're still sinners, sinners saved by grace. Remember we always
say there's only two types of people on earth, sinners lost
in their sins and sinners saved by grace. And until we die or
until the Lord comes back, we'll remain sinners in ourselves. But we're still holy, in what
sense? Holy bread, we're set apart.
by God, God's electing grace, God's justifying grace, God's
adopting grace, God's redeeming grace, God's regenerate, we're
set apart. And what the Lord is saying to
Joshua, this place that you stand has been set apart for a special
purpose. And that special purpose was
that he would deliver this message and give the instructions to
Joshua about how all this is going about. So here's Christ.
Look, it says that he stood there, a man over against him with his
sword drawn in his hand. So he's appearing as the mighty
conqueror, a warrior ready to go to battle. And that's a picture
of Christ, the captain of our salvation. Remember that in Hebrews
chapter two? He's called the captain of our
salvation. He's the prince of our salvation,
our eternal salvation. Just like he was the captain
of Israel as a nation, their physical deliverance, their physical
success and victory, he's the captain of spiritual Israel,
every believer, Jew and Gentile, he's the captain of our eternal
salvation. who went in before us and conquered
all our enemies. He went to war against sin. That's
our enemy. Sin is our enemy. Christ went
to war. He drew his sword, you might
say. When did he do that? He did it when he went to the
cross and died for our sins. He made an end of sin. You see,
he died, but his death was a victory. And he made an end of sin. He
finished the transgression and he brought in everlasting righteousness. That's the captain of our salvation
whereby we as sinful people can stand before God justified by
his grace, forgiven of all our sins and declared righteous before
God. So there's the scene. Now in
Joshua chapter six, look at verses one and two. It says, now Jericho
was straightly shut up. because of the children of Israel.
None went out and none came in. What a great, you know, I thought
about that. That's a great picture of man, natural man in sin. Shut up, shut in, he can't go
in, he can't go. In other words, by nature in
our sins, we cannot conquer sin. We can't, really we can't do
anything about it. I mean, we can try to be religious
and try to be moral and we should be moral. But that won't conquer
our sins, our works. Salvation from sin is by grace,
not by works, not by our power. And we're like those people in
Jericho. We're shut up and shut in and we can't go in, we can't
go out as far as sin. Everything we do as far as our
natural state, as fallen in Adam, born spiritually dead in trespasses
and sins, everything we do in the sight of God falls short. of his glory. That means it's
all sin. Somebody said, well, I can't say that unbelievers,
everything they do is sinful. Well, do you believe Romans 3
23? All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What
that means is no matter in our natural state, no matter how
good we try to be, no matter what successes we have in our
character and conduct, we're still going to fall short of
the perfection of righteousness that can only be found in the
captain of our salvation. the Lord Jesus Christ. So here
they are, verse two it says, and the Lord said unto Joshua,
see, now listen to this, this is how it starts, and this is
amazing. He says, see, I have given into
thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of
valor. They had just crossed the Jordan River, and Jericho
was a fortress, it wasn't a huge place, but it had these walls. You've heard the stories of the
walls of Jericho. Now the people inside were afraid
because they had heard of the mighty acts of Israel's God in
bringing them through the wilderness. They'd heard these things. Remember
Rahab, she said, we've heard of you. Your fame has spread. But they had these huge walls
and Joshua and the children of Israel had not yet lifted a finger. to conquer Jericho, and what
does God say at the beginning? He says, I have given into your
hand Jericho, and that includes the king, and that includes the
best they have, the mighty men of valor. Isn't that the way
that God saves sinners? He doesn't save sinners by saying,
now you come on and help me and cooperate and we'll do our best
to conquer this thing of sin and death. The gospel message
is a message of the freeness of God's grace based on a finished
work. The gospel declares what God
has already given his people. In fact, Paul told Timothy that
in 2 Timothy chapter one and verses nine and 10. He says,
I'm talking to you, Timothy, about a salvation that was given
us in Christ Jesus, when? When you believed? No, before
the world began. Before we start in our personal
battles, the warfare of the flesh and the spirit, God's already
freely given us all things. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who have blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Now how many spiritual
blessings are we blessed with before we begin? All. That's
salvation. And it's all based upon what
our mighty conqueror has already done on Calvary, the prince of
our salvation, the captain of our salvation. And I love that,
that's how it starts. And so in verses three through
11, he gives them the instructions of how he, God gives them, God
gives Joshua the instructions of how he's going to accomplish
this. Look at verse three, he says, you shall compass or surround
the city All ye men of war, and go around about the city once,
thus thou shalt do six days. So in six days they were to go
around the city one time each day for six days. Look at verse
four. And seven priests shall bear
before the ark seven trumpets of rams horns and the seventh
day you shall compass or surround the city seven times and the
priest shall blow with the trumpet. So here's what you've got. You've
got the people surrounding the city and they're marching around
the city one time six days and going before them is seven priests
with the Ark of the Covenant, and you know what the Ark of
the Covenant represents, that's a picture of Christ, and the
salvation, the redemption that he's accomplished, that's the
mercy seed, all of that. The ram's horns, they have the
Ark of the Covenant, and then seven other priests have ram's
horns, like trumpets, that they're gonna blow. Now, why is it a
ram's horn? Well, you've got the Ark of the Covenant, and
then you've got the ram, and to get the ram's horns, what
do you have to do? You gotta kill the ram, don't
you? The death of the ram. Well that ram's horn represents
the sacrifice coming off the altar. And blowing the trumpet
means telling the message. Hearing the sound thereof. So
it's like preaching the gospel. What are we talking about here?
We're talking about a propitiation. You know that word propitiation?
A sin bearing sacrifice who sacrificed himself in our stead on the cross. And died for our sins and we
blast it forth in the preaching of the gospel. So what's the
significance of the numbers? Well, you know the number six
is the number of man. After they march around Jericho
for six days, really nothing happened to the city. What's
that a picture of? Well, it's a picture of we can't
save ourselves. That's what man is. Man is not
a seven by nature, he's a six. That's where that 666 comes from. It falls short of seven. What
is seven? That's the finished work. That's
the completion. That's sin put away. That's righteousness
established, you see. That's what it all pictures.
And so on the seventh day, they marched around seven times, and
then they blow the trumpets, and it says in verse five, look
here, it shall come to pass 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 wall of
the city shall fall down flat." And if you've got a concordance
in your Bible, it says, under it. Some scholars believe that
it almost went into the ground. That's how the destruction was.
In other words, there wasn't anything left. I mean, it was
obliterated. And the people shall ascend up
every man straight before him. Look at verse six. Joshua, the
son of Nun, called the priest and said to them, take up the
Ark of the Covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of
ram's horns before the Ark of the Lord. So they did. Joshua
gave out these instructions. And they did what Joshua commanded
them to do, what the Lord commanded them to do. In verse eight, look
here, it says, and it came to pass when Joshua had spoken unto
the people, and the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of
the ram's horn passed on before the Lord, and blew with the trumpets,
and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them. So everything
is going according to God's plan and God's way. You understand
this? Nowhere in this did the Lord
say, now Joshua, how do you think we ought to do this? Nowhere did he say, Joshua, let's
get your most able, skilled military leaders. And let's see if we
can construct a plan to bring this city down. He didn't say
that. He said, here's the way. And
it's the only way. Israel could not have accomplished
it. I don't care what kind of military strategy they used.
They didn't have the wherewithal. They didn't have the power. So
look at verse nine, he says, and the armed men went before
the priest that blew with the trumpets, and the rearward, that's
what that is, the ones who follow behind, verse nine there, they
came after the ark, the priest going on and blowing with the
trumpets, and Joshua had commanded the people saying, you shall
not shout nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall
any word proceed out of your mouth until the day I bid you
to shout. Then shout ye out. Why did he
say that? Keep quiet until I tell you to
shout. He's telling them, he said, you
don't shout until the work's finished, until we march around
seven times. And that's why we preach the
gospel. If we preach a false gospel of an unfinished work,
salvation conditioned on sinners, what are we doing? We're shouting
before the work's finished. Telling people to finish the
work. That's not what they're going to do. He says, you don't
shout until the work's done. And then you shout. Then you've
got a message to tell. And that's why we preach the
gospel the way we do. It's the preaching of a finished
work. Sin conquered. Not by me, not
by you, not by the church, but by Christ. He said in John 19.30
when he was on that cross, he said, it is finished. And that's when it was finished.
And so we preach the gospel of a finished work. We're not telling
sinners to get busy and conquer sin. We tell sinners to fight
sin. We're fighting sin. But you know
what? Christ has already brought the victory. Remember what Paul
said in Romans chapter seven, verse 24, when he had come down
after describing his warfare with sin within himself? And
he said, oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
this body of death? In verse 25, he says, I thank
my God through Jesus Christ who delivers me from sin. Christ,
you know, Christ told his disciples, he said, In the world, you'll have trouble.
But he said, be of good cheer because I've already overcome
the world. You see that? That's the way it is with the
gospel. It's a finished work. And so, what happens here is
Joshua follows the Lord by God giving faith, the people follow
the Lord. Over in Hebrews chapter 11, I'll just read this to you. You know in the, what we call
the hall of faith, In Hebrews 11 and verse 30, I think it is. I've got it listed in your lesson.
It says in verse 30 of Hebrews 11, by faith, the walls of Jericho
fell down after they were compassed about seven days. The walls of
Jericho fell down. Well, that's what's happening
here. Look back at verse 11. Verse 11, it says, so the ark
of the Lord compassed the city going about it once, and they
came into the camp and lodged in the camp. Verse 12, Joshua
rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of
the Lord, seven priests bearing, and they followed the instructions.
And look down at verse 16. They did so six days. They went
around once each day. And verse 16 says, and it came
to pass at the seventh time when the priest blew the trumpets,
Joshua said unto the people, shout, for the Lord hath given
you the city. That's like preaching the gospel,
isn't it? Shout, God has given to his people salvation. Your
Jericho has been, if you're one of the Lord's own, if you're
one of his sheep, your Jericho has been conquered. And that's
what I'm shouting to you. That's what we're talking about.
That's the trumpets blowing. It's victory. And it's all by
him, not by us. It's not by our power. Now he
used weak, sinful human instruments in this process, just like he
uses weak human instruments in preaching the gospel. We have
this treasure in earthen vessels. But the preacher, the instrument
is very weak. I'm just a sinful man. I'm a
sinful man preaching to sinful men and women. Sinner saved by
grace. But the message, The gospel is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to
the Jew first and the Greek also, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the justified
shall live by faith. That's a powerful message in
the hands of the Holy Spirit. And you know this trumpets that
I thought about this. We can liken this to the call
of the gospel as the free gift of righteousness and eternal
life is based on the finished work of Christ. To Jericho, when
that trumpet was, those trumpets were sounded and the people shouted,
it was a message of death and destruction. To the people of
Israel, it was a message of life and victory. And you know, Paul,
over in 2 Corinthians 2, verses 12 through 17, he talks about
that. He says, we preach the gospel to anybody who'll listen.
Now, Paul was, was ensconced in the grace of God. He said,
by the grace of God, I am what I am. And he knew that God's
grace was sovereign grace. There's no other kind. You know
that? There's only one kind of grace.
And it's directed towards God's people. But he said, I preach
the gospel to anybody who'll listen and God will bring his
sheep in. That's how it works. God will bring his elect to know
Christ. But we'll preach to anybody who'll
listen. And Paul said, to some, it's a savor of death unto death.
Now that's something. That means the preaching of the
gospel is a judgment against those who believe not and live
their lives in unbelief and die in unbelief. It's a savor of
death unto death. But to others, it's the savor
of life unto life. And here's what Paul said there
in 2 Corinthians 2, verses 12 through 17. He said, either way,
when I preach the gospel, to some it's the savor of death
unto death, to others it's the savor of life. We pray it's the
savor of life unto life to everybody here, or everybody here, but
it's not gonna be, because the Bible tells us it's not. But
he said, either way, we're victorious. Why? Because Christ is preached. God is glorified. And that's
the way it is. We're here for the glory of God.
We're not here for the glory of men and women. We're not here
to brag about us. We're here to brag on Christ.
And that's the long and the short of it. We'll look back at Joshua
6. It says in verse 17, the city shall be accursed, that's Jericho,
even it and all that are therein to the Lord, only Rahab the harlot
shall live. We've already talked about Rahab,
a notorious sinner saved by grace. That's what we all are in God's
sight. If we're saved, we're notorious
sinners saved by grace. And she, Rahab the harlot shall
live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she
hid the messengers that we sent. You know what happened when the walls fell flat, Rahab
and her house was spared. She had that scarlet line around
the window, that scarlet line that's a type of the blood of
Christ. Just like the Israelites in Egypt,
you know, they put the blood on the door of the Passover,
and God said, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. Same
with Rahab the harlot, that red line that she let the spies down
on. She was to drape it around her
window. When they saw that cord, they knew it was Rahab. He says
in verse 18, and you and any wise, keep yourselves from the
accursed thing, lest you make yourselves accursed when you
take of the accursed thing and make the camp of Israel a curse
and trouble. What he's telling, well look
at verse 19, but all the silver and gold and vessels of brass
and iron are consecrated unto the Lord and they shall come
into the treasury of the Lord. What he's telling them is when
the walls of Jericho fall down, you're not to go in there and
grab everything you can get for your own personal use. Grab all
the silver and the gold, especially the idols, because there were
idols in Jericho made of silver. He said all that is in there
is to be consecrated to the Lord. It belongs to God. And so if
you take of it, he'll be cursed. Now over in Joshua 7, you'll
read about a man named Achan who disregarded that command
and God cursed him and his house and he died. I think they stoned
him. But God says, what he's saying
here is this. When you're conquering this city,
God gets the spoils. God gets the glory. And that's
the way it is with our salvation. When God saves us, when he's
conquered the Jericho of our sins and our death, we're not
to take credit for that. We're not to take glory for ourselves.
God forbid, Paul said, that I should glory save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Let he that glorieth glory in
the Lord, what the scripture says. So listen, if I'm saved,
I think years ago, I don't know all the context and what all
this fella knew, but he asked a preacher, he said, well, what
did we do in salvation? What is our part? And the preacher
said, well, God did all the saving, I did all the sinning. So that's
about it. We're vessels of mercy, recipients
of God's grace. Right on through, he talks about
how they did all that God said. Verse 20 tells us the wall fell
down flat. Verse 21, they utterly destroyed
all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old,
ox and sheep, and ass with the edge of the sword. That may sound
cruel to us today. And I know, I understand why.
But you ought to understand that this was a city under the curse
of God. And God is punishing Jericho
for their unbelief, just like, I'm going to talk about that
in the main message today, the judgment of God upon the ungodly.
This was a very barbaric time. A lot of times when God told
them to do this, to wipe out a city, it was for survival because
it was very common that if anybody was left, even the children,
they'd grow up and they'd exact revenge. You say, well, I don't
like that. I don't think God should have
done that. Well, you take it up with him. when you have the
opportunity, which you won't, because your mouth will be shut
then. God is God. He's a wise God. He does all
things for his glory. He never makes a mistake. But
this is God's judgment, and we're to take it to heart. And so verse
23 says, and the young men that were spies went in and brought
out Rahab and her father and her mother and her brethren and
all that she had, and they brought out all her kindred and left
them without the camp of Israel. In other words, they went out
of Jericho into Israel. And you know the story of Rahab
as we talked about it, how she married a man named Salmon, and
it goes on down the line. She was the great-great-grandmother
of David, all of that, in the human lineage of Christ. Verse
24, they burnt the city with fire. And all that was therein,
only the silver and the gold and the vessels of brass and
of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. And
verse 25 says, and Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive and her
father's house, so all that she had, and she dwelleth in Israel
even unto this day, the day that Joshua was writing this down.
because she hid the messengers which Joshua sent out to spy. Now notice these last verses.
Verse 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. That's a prophecy. And it was
fulfilled as recorded in 1 Kings chapter 16 and verse 34, and
I've got that written down here, by a man named Hiel the Bethelite. And he set out to rebuild Jericho. And he was cursed for it. Because
Jericho represents everything of which God brings his people
to repent of. The gospel in the power of the
Holy Spirit brings us to faith in Christ and repentance of what?
Dead works. And we're not to go about rebuilding
those dead works in our false religion, our idolatry. And that's what that represents.
We're to walk by faith looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith. Well, lastly, verse 27, this
is a short verse, but it's got some significant things. So the
Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was noised throughout all
the country. Now, who has the preeminence
in all this? Joshua. Well, who is Joshua? He's a type
of Christ. And in this conquering of Jericho,
Joshua had the preeminence. He was the man used of God. Now,
we know it was all of God. We know that Joshua himself took
no credit. But his fame spread, and you
know, as we said, Joshua is the Hebrew name that comes to be
in the Greek, Jesus. And what we're seeing here is,
in this type, is that in our salvation, our Joshua, who is
Jesus the Lord, gets the preeminence. His fame spread, that's what
we want. He's the mighty conqueror, Isaiah
said. He shall save his people from
their sins. His name is Jesus. His name is
Emmanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. We don't have
any power to save. Just like this man Joshua, he
didn't have any power to take down the walls of Jericho. He couldn't do it his way. You
know, that's the thing about this. Everything that happened
here that was successful, it happened by God's way. And that's
the way it is with the gospel. The gospel we preach is God's
way of salvation, not man's way. I mean, who would have ever imagined
that any military genius would think, now this is how we're
gonna conquer Jericho. Let's march around it with ram's
horns. No, they said, let's get our
swords and let's go to town, you know, whatever we have, catapults
or whatever. That's man's way, and it would
have failed. The Bible says in salvation there is a way that
seemeth right unto a man that ways are dead. Christ said, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the
Father but by me. And you know that's why preachers
today won't preach the gospel. You know why? Because God's way
doesn't tickle the fancy of natural man and woman. It doesn't please,
it doesn't scratch the itching ear. Doesn't tell people what
they want to hear, and therefore they can't get big crowds in,
so what do they do? Well, I'll put my way in there
a little bit. And they go man's way. But that's a way of death,
that's the broad road that leads to destruction. But preaching
Christ, that's God's way. That glorifies him, salvation
by his grace, which is always successful, whereunto he appoints
it. Okay.