So we're going to Joshua chapter
6 and reading from verse 1. Now Jericho was straightly shut
up because of the children of Israel. None went out and none
came in. And the Lord said unto Joshua,
See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof,
and the mighty men of Valor. And ye shall compass the city,
all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt
thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear
before the ark seven trumpets of ram's horns. And the seventh
day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests
shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass that
when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye 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 the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.
And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said unto 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. And he said
unto the people, Pass on and compass the city, and let him
that is armed pass on before the ark of the Lord. And it came
to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the people, that the seven
priests bearing the seven trumpets of Ram's horns passed on before
the Lord, and blew with the trumpets, and the ark of the covenant of
the Lord followed them. And the armed men went before
the priests that blew with the trumpets, and the weary word
came after the ark, the priests going on and blowing with the
trumpets. And Joshua had commanded the
people, saying, Ye 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 shout, then shall ye shout. So the ark
of the Lord compassed the city, going about it once, and they
came into the camp and lodged in the camp. And Joshua rose
early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the
Lord. And seven priests bearing seven
trumpets of ram's horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually,
and blew with the trumpets, and the armed men went before them. But the reward came after the
ark of the Lord, the priests going on and blowing with the
trumpets. and the second day they compassed
the city once and returned into the camp. So they did six days. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. The children of Israel, after
they crossed the river Jordan into the land of Canaan, took
time to dedicate themselves to the Lord. And we read about that
last time, and we read how that took place by circumcision. And we also learned that they
ate together a Passover meal. And this reminded them how that
the Lord had delivered the people out of Egypt. Now the task of defeating the
inhabitants of Canaan and possessing the land begins in earnest. But surely this work of defeating
the people happened in a way that no one could have expected. The Lord Jehovah spoke to Joshua. And I want us to notice this
because these instructions as to how the people are to walk
around the city, completely go around the city each day for
six days and then what was to happen on the seventh day, these
instructions come from the same person who previously met Joshua
with a drawn sword. This person had identified himself
as the captain of the Lord's Host and we saw that it was actually
the Lord Jesus Christ. We spent a little bit of time
thinking about that last week as well. So that this proves
the fact that we are told here that it is the Lord Jehovah that
gives these instructions to Joshua. This proves not only was this
person the Lord Jesus Christ, this captain of the hosts was
the Lord Jesus Christ, but he is also here called Jehovah God. The Lord Jesus Christ is Jehovah
God, one with the Father, one with God the Holy Spirit. And
it is God who had come to fight for Israel. And we notice, too,
that the Lord expressly says that he has given Jericho, the
city, its king, and its army, into Joshua's hand. It was as if to say, it is already
done. The Lord intended to perform
this wonderful miracle to honour his glory, to demonstrate his
power and to send no doubt a terrifying message to all the inhabitants
of the land of Canaan This was to be the Lord's work. And the
Lord instructs Joshua what he requires the people to do. All the people we learn from
our reading were to march around the city. First, the men of war,
or the armed men. Then the seven priests blowing
a ram's horns. Then the Ark of the Covenant.
Born by priests, remember how we talked about the design of
the Ark of the Covenant, how it was a box? and it had rings
in it and staves were pushed through and this is how it was
carried on the shoulders of the Levites, here it's the priests
that are carrying it, as they moved throughout their time in
the wilderness. And now they were carrying it
again in this trip, this journey that they made around the city
of Jericho. Then after the priests with the
Ark of the Covenant, we're told that there would be a rearward
or a rear guard. So it seems that the rest of
the people then followed and then there was a rear guard of
the army as well. So these are the people that
make their way around the city of Jericho. and they are to walk
silently. This is emphasised. They are
to walk in a long procession but they are to be silent. Only
the sound of ram's horns would be heard as the priests blew
on these ram's horns. Short blasts. Perhaps they helped
keep the marching people in time and the people that were in Jericho,
the population of the city, they must have looked on in wonder
at the strange scene from their city walls. Excuse me. When all the people had marched
around the city, we are then told that they returned to their
camp in Gilgal, and that was the end of the day's activity. But it was a pattern to be repeated
for six days. Once around the city, silently
following the Ark of the Covenant, listening to the sound of the
trumpets, waiting for that day when the long blast and the word
from Joshua to shout as loud as they could would be heard.
and inside Jericho the people must have wondered what was happening. These short blasts from the ram's
horns marked the beat of the procession and the intensity
of that scene must have terrified the people of the city and far
beyond. Who were these people that had
come up out of the desert? Who were these people and what
were they doing? No one could have imagined what
was about to happen. Now we're going to spend some
time next week thinking about the events of the seventh day. But here's a little spoiler alert. the walls of the city come tumbling
down, just as God had promised. But for today, I want to take
a few little lessons from what we have read together. And the
first one is this, that we can take this as an application. that there is value in quietly
waiting for the Lord and His timing. This was a lesson that
the children of Israel had to learn during this week. They had to quietly wait for
the Lord and His good timing. It's a lesson that we have to
learn, especially as we grow older. We have to learn to be
patient and we have to learn sometimes also to be quiet and
not to say the things that we might think about saying or not
to say the things that we might be tempted to say. Wise Solomon once said, to everything
there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven
and I suspect that the people didn't actually know how long
this walking around the city would continue for. Because we
hear that when Joshua gave the instruction, he said, walk quietly
until the day I bid you shout Then shall ye shout. So they
may have been going out every day thinking, I wonder if Joshua
will shout today. I wonder if today will be the
day that that shout will take place. And day after day they
walked quietly and patiently around the city. And then back
to the camp. But it was more than that. The
silence of the people and their patience was a mark of respect
to the Lord, because the Lord was with them there in the camp. God was about to act. God in whom is all power and
glory and majesty. And let us remember that God
didn't need seven days to make these walls fall down. but he took those seven days.
Most of us want to see things happen at once, but it was appropriate
for the people to wait silently and patiently upon the good pleasure
of God, as if to say, Lord, when you are good and ready, you move
according to your will. And that is a good lesson for
us all to learn. We need to be patient, we need
to be quiet, and we need to wait until God is good and ready to
do his will. And there's another little lesson
that we have here, and that is this. We should also be prepared
for surprises. And I mention this because I
want us to remember that God knows exactly what he is doing
in this world. But we don't. Who could have
imagined crossing the Red Sea on dry land? Or so many people
eating manna for 40 years in the desert? or water flowing
from a stone, from a rock that followed the people during all
that time? Who would have thought that God
would have dried up the Jordan until the children of Israel
walked safely across it? And who could have imagined that
the walls of this fortified city of Jericho would fall down when
the people shouted out? We don't see physical miracles
like this today, but that does not mean that God has stopped
doing surprising things. Nothing stands in the Lord's
way. Not the strongest nations of
this world, not the hardest heart of the strongest rebel. Every time the Lord saves a soul
from hell, that is a miracle of grace and a demonstration
of God's sovereign power. And this brings me to the final
point that I want to leave with you today. God's grace is his
sovereign work. What do I mean by that? When
I use the word sovereign, when I use that word to speak about
the power of God, what do I mean by that? Well, we haven't actually
come to the verses where we're told that the walls of Jericho
fall down. However, when the Holy Spirit
saves a man or a woman or a boy or a girl, He calls it the pulling
down of strongholds. That's what Jericho was. It was a stronghold. It was a
place that had strong walls that held up against enemies so that
the people inside could feel safe and go on with their lives.
It was a stronghold. and yet God brought that stronghold
tumbling down. And just as surely as God pulled
down the walls of Jericho, God is able to miraculously pull
down the strongholds of men and women and boys and girls' rebellious
hearts. Our sinful hearts are like solid
walls. Our natural opposition to God
is like a well defended city, fortified against everything
that is holy and true and pure. And our rebellious nature is
a stronghold of evil. We're proud, we're disobedient,
even violently opposed to God sometimes. We build around ourselves
all manner of human logic, worldly wisdom, emotional arguments and
physical barriers. We try to distance ourselves
as much as we can from the claims of God upon our lives. And God
has to break through all of those things. in order to bring one
of his people to salvation and a knowledge of the truth. And
God alone can do it. The lesson here of Jericho is
to remind us that that great work of salvation is a work that
only God can do. And it takes his sovereign, powerful
strength to do it. In the covenant of grace that
we sometimes speak about, this great eternal plan of salvation
that God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit agreed
upon before the world was even created, that God would save
a people for himself. In that plan of salvation, in
that covenant of grace, God the Father pointed to sinful hearts
like yours and like mine, and said as it were to the Lord Jesus
Christ, I have given into thine hand Jericho, that walled city,
and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor. God delivers
his people into the hands of Christ because the Lord Jesus
Christ gave his life for them. And the finest application that
we can take from this history of the city of Jericho is to
remind ourselves, as Paul tells the church at Corinth, that the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, are not physical, are
not worldly, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Paul goes on to say, I don't
imagine you've ever thought about the fact that you've got a Jericho
in your heart. But we have got strong walls
that we like to reinforce against God. And it takes God's sovereign
power in the gospel to bring such a stronghold down. And that's the picture that we
have in this account. Sometimes the Bible uses trumpets,
like these ram's horns, uses trumpets to symbolise gospel
preaching. And when God the Holy Spirit
is about to work a work in a sinner's heart, he does so quietly, patiently,
even imperceptibly, except for the sound of the gospel. And just as these people that
were going around the city of Jericho were told to be silent
so the priests' trumpets could be heard, sometimes it's good
for us just to stop talking and let the gospel do its work. It's why we believe in the value
and the importance and the power of gospel preaching. In this Gospel we learn that
the Lord Jesus Christ was sacrificed for the sin of his people, that
he was buried and that he was raised again and this is the
power of God unto salvation in the hearts, souls and lives of
God's people. As we read these accounts, these
old accounts of God's dealings with the children of Israel and
his dealings with his people and their enemies as well in
the land of Canaan, let us remember God is working his purposes in
this world. And often it is silent. Often
it can't be detected openly. but he is powerfully gathering
his church, he is building his kingdom, and blow by blow the
gospel brings down the stronghold of man's hard hearts in order
that their souls might be saved. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today.