Overcoming Strongholds of Resistance by Faith and Obedience

Text Joshua 6 Time 05 07 20 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church (Zoom)

You may know this African American spiritual. I want you to notice in what way it is a little bit wrong or at least misleading.

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho Jericho, Jericho

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. The walls came tumblin' down, Hallelujah!

You may talk about your men of Gideon, You may talk about your men of Saul

There's none like good old Joshua at the Battle of Jericho.

The problem, of course, is that Joshua did not fight the Battle of Jericho, not in the traditional sense. If you know the story it was quite unlike that.

So what did happen and what can we learn from it? Well, what happened we are told in Joshua 6. Joshua is commanded to have the people march around the city for a week in a certain way then at the right moment they shouted and the walls fell, allowing them to simply walk in and take the city.

And what can we learn from this? In Ephesians 6 Paul talks about the Christian's armour - armour needed to engage in spiritual warfare. In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 he talks of spiritual warfare like this

... though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

So if you are a Christian, you are involved in warfare every bit as much as Joshua was. However, where as Joshua's battle was both physical and spiritual your fight is not a physical one. Once we see that we begin to see how useful this chapter is. Four main things

1. Consider strongholds of resistance to God, shut up but ready to fall

Joshua 6:1 says Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Jericho was on lock down. They knew the Israelites had arrived but they were in a walled city and they hoped to be able to brave it out somehow.

There are many strongholds of resistance to God these days and people within them vary. Some think they cannot be defeated, others are worried they can. What strongholds? I mean strongholds of thought like atheistic evolutionism, secular liberalism, anti-christian Romanism, Islam, Indian Hinduism, the so called Queer movement, etc. Their gates are securely barred to the gospel and no-one, or hardly anyone, comes out or in. Similarly, on a personal level, there are sins and situations that look like they will never change for the better.

But that is not the whole story. Joshua 6 goes on (2-5) Then the LORD said to Joshua, this is the commander of the LORD's army speaking, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. Note that have delivered. Jericho is already defeated. But how?

In such a situation military strategists would say there are five options: get over the wall, under the wall, through the wall with a battering ram, starve them out by siege or come up with a trick like the famous Trojan horse used by the Greeks.

God (who you recall moves in a mysterious way) uses none of those methods.

Rather Joshua is told, all you have to do is this March around the city once with all the armed men and Do this for six days. Have seven priests (seven is God's number the number of completeness) carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, (note again) march around the city seven times (and again), with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in." In other words, all you have to do is have faith in me and do what I say and the city will collapse.

Now I know that it is not exactly the same for us but the principle is the same. How are we going to see the arguments of atheists and false teachers fall? First and foremost we have to rely on the Lord. Trust him. He has it all in hand. We simply need to look to him and obey. This is how animism fell, how communism fell, for example. This is how it is whenever evil is defeated.

2. Think about the surrounding of strongholds of resistance to God

So they do exactly as God says. Joshua calls the priests and tells them to Take up the ark of the covenant of the LORD symbolic of God's presence so necessary to any victory and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it. He then orders the army to advance, to March around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the LORD.

So that is what happens - the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets before the LORD go forward, blowing their trumpets, and the ark of the LORD's covenant followed them. In front of them is this armed guard blowing trumpets with the rear guard follow(ing) the ark. Imagine these people, the trumpets sounding and the people marching round the city. They would do it once a day, returning to the camp after each circuit to spend the night. Verse 10 tells us that Joshua had commanded the army, "Do not give a war cry, do not raise your voices, do not say a word until the day I tell you to shout. Then shout!" We read that They did this for six days. And nothing happened.

It must have been a test of their patience and faith. Perhaps some were tempted to rebel. What's the point? We sometimes feel like that. We feel we are going round in circles and nothing is happening. Now there is the real danger of merely going through the routines but it is important that we remember that faith and obedience have their own power. They force us to look to God.

So I would say to you - let's go on preaching, let's go on praying, let's keep witnessing, Let's continue to love one another, as we are commanded. I know it sometimes seems pointless. Remember Naaman who was told to dip himself in the Jordan seven times. He rebelled against the very idea and it is true that, just as here, the first six times it made no difference. But as we shall see the seventh time is different.

There is a saying sometimes attributed in error to Einstein "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." It rather seems to be rooted in the world of helping alcoholics and drug abusers. This passage shows it to be wrong. Rather, it should be "Insanity is making the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results." As one writer puts it "Like jumping out of a 40-storey building, breaking every bone, spending six months in hospital, going back to the same building, up to the 39th floor, jumping and expecting it to be different. It is NEVER different." What I'm saying is something different. Like the Israelites we must do what we are commanded to do. What will make the difference is the time when God has chosen to act.

3. Expect God to defeat strongholds of resistance by faith and obedience

Then in verse 15 we read that On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. Then (16) The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, "Shout! For the LORD has given you the city!"

The next thing you would expect to read is that the people shouted and the walls fell. But no. The way the writer constructs things is that we next read of Joshua reminding them (17-19) that The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the LORD. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. It was important that they keep away from the devoted things, so that they would not bring about their own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise says Joshua you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the LORD and must go into his treasury."

It is only in verse 20 that we have the dramatic climax When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. Dale Ralph Davis suggests this order is so that the emphasis falls on the call for them to obey rather than on the actual falling of the wall. We have a tendency sometimes to emphasise positive experience over every day obedience. We should not.

We have a miracle here, yes, a strange miracle. Other towns would later be taken in more conventional ways but for this first, significant city, God goes ahead of them, as it were, and he does it in a miraculous way. It underlines who is leading this conquest and to whom the praise should be given. Sometimes God acts in that way.

We don't live in an age of miracles but even today sometimes God acts in a dramatic and sudden way and the situation is transformed. It is hard for those of you who are younger to imagine what it was like during the cold war period when atheistic communism held sway in Russia and Eastern Europe. I became a Christian around 1971. In 1969 and again in 1975 the Communists imprisoned a Baptist leader called Georgi Vins. From early in my Christian life I prayed for that man to be released. Then suddenly in 1979 the Russians expelled him and he went to live in America. I remember being sat at home in Cwmbran and it being announced on the BBC News. What an answer to prayer! Of course, ten years later the news was even more dramatic with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of communism.

I have said to you before how when I was a student we would have visits from Charles Marsh who with his wife Pearl was a missionary in Algeria from the end of the 1920s until their expulsion in 1962. They saw few conversions while they served but today in Algeria there are perhaps as many as 100,000 genuine Christians. Similar things in my life time have happened in Turkey and Spain and other countries.

4. When strongholds of resistance fall devote them to God snatching sinners from the fire

The fourth thing to say concerns the aftermath of the battle. The Israelites do as they are commanded for the most part. An exception will be revealed later but for now let's concentrate on these two things

1. Devoting the spoils of victory to God

So first we read how (21) They devoted the city to the LORD ... This involved destroying with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. They were learning that the firstfruits of any harvest belong to God. It may seem harsh to us but in this situation the Israelites were being used by God to execute his wrath on a depraved people that were way beyond the pale and that deserved to be wiped from the earth.

The Canaanites practised idolatry and witchcraft and engaged in all sorts of depravity in the name of religion, even throwing babies in the fire in the delusion that the gods required it. One writer says

“Canaanite worship was socially destructive. Its religious acts were pornographic and sick, seriously damaging to children, creating early impressions of deities with no interest in moral behaviour. It tried to dignify, through the use of religious labels, depraved acts of bestiality and corruption. It had a low estimate of human life. It suggested that anything was permissible, promiscuity, murder or anything else, in order to guarantee a good crop at harvest. It ignored the highest values of the wider community – love, loyalty, purity, peace and security – and encouraged the view that all these things were inferior to material prosperity, physical satisfaction, and human pleasure. A society where those things matter is most self-destructive.” (R Brown, Deuteronomy)

As Christians we are not under an obligation to kill anyone but we are under an obligation to put sin to death wherever it may raise its head.

It also included (24) burning the whole city and everything in it, although they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the LORD's house.

I'm not sure how we devote to God sinful structures that fall today but that must be the approach. In most cases destruction will be the order of the day but sometimes things can be used for God's glory. There is some evidence that traditional churches in this country are on sites where there were once pagan temples. In more recent years we have head of churches taking over places that were pubs or night clubs. Quite right.

2. Saving those who repent

Of course, there was an exception to this devotion, 22, 23, 25 Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, "Go into the prostitute's house and bring her out and all who belong to her, in accordance with your oath to her." So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. How sad that no more from Jericho had responded as well. Undoubtedly word had gone around Jericho about how to be saved. For days they had watched the Israelites make their circuit - why did they not respond?

Those saved were placed outside the camp at first. They were coming from pagan Jericho. They had to be ritually cleansed first before joining God's people.

25 But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho - and she lives among the Israelites to this day. It was the grace of God that spared Rahab and her family. They were Canaanites too but God was gracious.

In Jude it speaks of the need to watch out for false teachers and to be separate from them keeping ourselves in God's love as we wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring us to eternal life. At the same time Jude says we must (22, 23) Be merciful to those who doubt; sav(ing) others by snatching them from the fire; and to others show(ing) mercy, mixed with fear - hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

We pray for the fall of ungodly structures, strongholds of resistance to God, yet we pray in such a way that some will see their error and be rescued. We are praying for Muslims and Hindus and Roman Catholics and atheists and homosexuals and all sorts of others to be saved. Let's pray for these two things - the fall of sin and sinful structures and the salvation of sinners.

That is the lesson of Joshua 6 then - there were then and there are now strongholds of resistance to God that are closely shut up but that are ready to fall if we only have eyes to see it. We need to surround them with prayer and preaching and everything else that will defeat them by God's grace. Expect God to defeat strongholds of resistance and when they do fall devote them to God and snatch sinners from the fire.

Finally, there are two footnotes here in verses 26 and 27. One regards Joshua's solemn oath "Cursed before the LORD is the one who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho: At the cost of his firstborn son he will lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest he will set up its gates." Amazingly someone did rebuild Jericho (it is a city today) - that happened about 550 years later in the time of Ahab when an attempt was made to revive Canaanite religion. The curse was fulfilled.

The other note is verse 27 So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land. Victory came because God was with Joshua and so with the Israelites. God spread his fame throughout the land. Let's pray that God will be with us through Jesus Christ and spread the name of Jesus everywhere.

We don't know what the people of Jericho thought when they saw the Israelites walking around their city. No doubt, they thought it was foolish. How can it make any difference? When we tell people about Jesus Christ and his death on the cross they certainly wonder why we think it so important. How can a death on a cross thousands of years ago affect me today? It is not obvious but it is real. it seems so weak, so foolish but when you trust in Christ all your sins are forgiven. Let's urge all who we know to do it then.