Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon scripture is found in the book of Joshua. Joshua the 6th chapter. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word. Joshua 6. 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 unto 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 around 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 you shall compass the city seven times, and the priest 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 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 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 rams horns before the ark of the Lord. And he or they 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 priest that blew with the trumpets and the rearward came after the ark the priest 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 at 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 rams horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew with the trumpets. And the armed men went before them. But the rearward 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 unto the camp.

So they did six days. And it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning of the day and compassed the city after the same manner seven times. Only on that day they compassed the city seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, “Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city, and the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein to the Lord.

Only Rahab the harlot shall live. She and all that are with her in her house, because he hid the messengers that we sent. And ye in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed when you take of these things and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it. But all the silver and gold and vessels of brass and iron are consecrated unto the Lord. They shall come unto the treasury of the Lord.

So the people shouted when the priest blew at the trumpets. And it came to pass, and the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. So that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass with the edge of the sword.

But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the country, “Go into the harlot’s house, and bring out then the woman, and all that she hath as you swore unto her.” 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. And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein, only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.

And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and all that she had. And she dwelleth in Israel, even unto this day, because she hid the messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. 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.

For the Lord is with Joshua, and his fame was noised throughout all the country. Please be seated. We thank God for his holy word and pray that he would illuminate to our understanding. At this time, the younger children may dismiss to go to their Sabbath schools. Their parents desire that for them.

Well, it’s Memorial Day weekend and people’s minds in the past—at least when Memorial Day was first celebrated in this country, being around the time of the Civil War—came a time to remember the people that engaged in war of different types, those that died in wars.

And today we have in the providence of God been brought to a story of warfare. And it is a memorial I suppose, although none of God’s people seem to die in this conflict, which is a good lesson to us. While it is a good thing to give your life for the sake of God and country and in that order appropriately and never reversed, it is of course our responsibility before God to try to live and not to try to be martyred.

I always think of what Patton said and I won’t use his specific language but George C. Scott playing him in the movie Patton when he said that in his speech to the soldiers of the army said your job is not to lay down your life for the country. Ultimately, your job is to get the other poor dumb fella—wasn’t the term he used—to lay down his life for his country. And here in the story of Joshua and Jericho, probably one of the better known of all the Bible stories, of course, we have the other fellas laying down their lives and the lives of the cattle and the children, the women, and everything else for God’s purposes.

So it’s a memorial of that. It’s in a very real sense a metaphor for the entire book of Joshua. Really a summation of it here and it is as well really a summation of the Christian faith. I was thinking on the way over here that well I hadn’t planned it out this way. I told my wife it’s kind of interesting how every time we go through one of these stories we seem to be hitting the main themes which are the essentials of Christian reconstruction or biblical transformation or Christian orthodoxy, whatever you want to call it.

What the church has historically taught for the bulk of the last 2,000 years. The emphasis on God’s sovereignty, his law and its victory always is founded all these stories and it’s certainly here in this one and I was thinking also of the five-part covenantal model and how while it can be overdone and I think some have overdone it somewhat still that structure the way the book of Deuteronomy is written in the five-part covenantal model really fits the book of Joshua and this story as well as well as most of the scriptures and that is the first part of the five-part covenantal model is God declaring who he is his transcendence his sovereignty and then secondly identifying his people then as those who have been brought out of bondage to sin or in the case of Egypt the manifestation of sin in terms of the slavery to the Egyptians with the people we’re dealing with today.

Those people who are brought out then are vassals of the Lord of Yahweh, the Lord of the covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the third part of the covenant is God gives them a law to live by then and the law is central to this text as we’ll see in a couple of minutes. And then he tells them on the fourth part of the covenant model that some have staked out in the book of Deuteronomy, the blessings and cursings to fall upon those who live by the law and those who do not and then the fifth part is the sanctions that follow in history as those blessings and curses play out in the history of God’s people.

Now I’ll say right at the outset that I think one of the strengths of the book of Joshua and particularly this story is that it is written in such a way that the literary structure itself emphasizes particular aspects of the story and stresses particular things at particular points in the story. If he was to give the whole narrative of what Joshua commanded the people and then simply recite the obedience, he couldn’t stress certain things the way he stressed it.

For instance, toward the end of the chapter, he puts together the consecration of the things that were metal, brass and iron and gold and silver to the treasury of God. He links that real tightly with Rahab verse to verse, back to back toward the end of the chapter. And see, these literary structures are complex and so they emphasize particular things. And by way of passing, I might just say that when we’re going to image God, if there are those of us who write or who speak, sometimes it’s good to write or speak straightforwardly, but sometimes it’s good to make it more convoluted so you can emphasize particular things at particular points.

One of the things, of course, you probably recognize as I read the story of Joshua at Jericho was the emphasis upon the term seven. And the way it’s written out for you there, it comes up over and over and over and over again. If we just would have had a simple recitation of the fact, “Go around the city seven times,” and then they said, “Well, they went around the city seven times,” it wouldn’t have been stressed as much.

But peppered throughout the text is a reference to seven, a very important reference, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. So we have a complex literary style used. I want to first of all then give an overview of the chapter to help us sort of understand how these things fit together. First of all, as I said, we have the difficulty of the task pronounced in verse one. The city was bolted and barred.

And this reemphasizes the fact that the difficulty of the task they’re going to engage in here. Secondly, then we have the assurance of military success given to Joshua by God in verse two where he says to him again, “I’ve given into your hand Jericho and the king thereof and the mighty men of valor,” indication there might be warfare to be had here, but God is assuring them of victory throughout these first six chapters.

We’ve seen that, right? That it’s important that in the preaching of the church, the blowing of the trumpets of the proclamation of the church’s preaching to encourage their people, this constant theme of God’s victory and God’s assurance of victory to his people is sounded on a regular note as it is throughout the book of Joshua. So he does that again. He assures them of his presence and his victory. And then third, God gives the strategy to Joshua in verses four and five, he tells him what to do and he says he sent. And you know the story real well.

Of course, he chose to walk around the city with the priests blowing trumpets before it. Do that for six days. Once around the city each of the sixth day and the seventh day walk around it seven times. And then the people shout and the walls fall down. Now it’s interesting there by the way that the walls are—the word fall down here means they actually fall down flat. They don’t fall over or fall back.

They go and it’s as a result of that the people are encouraged in verse five to go straight ahead as that wall goes down flat. It doesn’t fall down hither or yon. It falls down like that. And as a result, the people go straight forward into victory. And so you have this literary element where again it’s stressed that we go straight forward as God destroys the enemies of his people before them. We march straight forward ahead.

Now, I asked my girls on the way to church this morning if they knew what note the trumpet played there where the walls were supposed to fall down and they said they didn’t. It was a Victor who told me yesterday it was a B flat. Well, the walls were flat after it was over. Okay.

Fourth, then after the strategy is given by divine revelation to Joshua from the Lord, the strategy is then commanded to the people and priests by Joshua. And here on your outline, you’ll notice that I’ve got various verses listed—6 and 7, 10, 17-19, and 22—that giving of the command of Joshua to the people is scattered throughout the story for literary emphasis but it’s all summarized there and really the summation of it is given in verses 6 and 7 and you might have noticed as I was reading the text in verse 7 where I said that “they” said unto the people “pass on and compass the city,” the word literally is “they” even though your translation might have “he” the New American Standard has a note off to the side and in verse 7 it’s “they said to the people,” indicating the plural here—again that the normal method we’ve seen again up to the first five chapters is used here. Joshua tells the chorus of officers who turn around and instruct the people then and so “they” includes Joshua and the men that he then uses in the providence of God and the chain of command that’s given to him to instruct the people so again we have this transmission of the order of God through a hierarchy of leadership that God has ordained within his church within his army within both the state and the church as we see throughout the rest of the scriptures.

So this command is then the strategy is then summarized and commanded and the command is given to the people by Joshua and by the officers. And so we find out some more details if we put all these accounts together of what’s going on. We find out that for instance the order of march is first you have some armed men at the front of the column and then you’ve got the priests, seven priests blowing seven rams horns or trumpets and then you’ve got the ark of God and then you’ve got another set of armed men behind that and then you have the people behind that and I won’t point out to you how you put all it together but through those you basically have five different groups moving around and right in the very center is the ark of God compassing the city.

It’s interesting by the way that in verse 8 in this account of how it actually worked out we read that “it came to pass when Joshua had spoken unto the people that the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams horns passed on before the Lord and blew with the trumpets and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them.” So the importance there is that at one point in this story in verse 8, the ark of the covenant, which we’ve seen referred to as the ark of testimony, the ark of the covenant, the ark of the Lord in the first six chapters, it actually is spoken of as the Lord himself in verse 8.

The priests pass on before the Lord. See, there’s that kind of identification of the ark of the covenant with God himself. It’s as if God himself is walking around that city. Okay, perambulating around in terms of that ark. Oh, he was literally he was actually carried. But the picture is that he himself is walking around that city and he’s at the center of his people and he’s the one who affects the destruction of the city.

So the people get the command from Joshua through the officers and then the strategy is actually carried out in verses 8 and 9 and 11-16. And again we’ve seen that repeatedly throughout the book of Joshua. Now command is given to Joshua. He turns around and does what he’s supposed to do. He commands the people and he takes his place in whatever the role is and they then immediately obey and we have this instant obedience again here pointed out for us and again it could have said God could have put both those accounts together—”this is what he commanded them this is what they did”—but he doesn’t and he separates them to show and emphasize to us again the response of the people in exact obedience to the word of God as ministered through the hierarchical structure of the community and then of course the destruction of Jericho occurs and in verses 20 and 21 as they carry out this strategy and as they do what they’re supposed to do indeed on the seventh day when the trumpet blows loud at the command of Joshua at the seventh circuit of the city the trumpet gives out a loud burst the people then recognize that and they who have been absolutely silent for all 13 circuits of the city and you don’t see that in the original verses but as you see it worked out you see the people are actually silent they’re not to utter a word as they go around that city.

They at the end of that week and at the end of that day, they then shout with a loud shout and the walls do indeed fall down. The people rush straight forward and the city is taken. And then the next element that we can recount here is the Lord’s booty is taken in verses 23-25. And I’ve already told you that essentially you have two kinds of booty that come out of Jericho. You have everything is devoted to destruction except for the items of metal, the articles of silver, gold, brass, and iron, which are taken into the treasure of the Lord.

There’s his booty. And the other thing that comes out, of course, is Rahab and her family. And that’s the other element of God’s booty, so to speak, his people that he’s redeemed from out of this, consecrated to destruction. And so we see grace in the midst of this story of triumph and God’s law at work, cursing people, and the operatives being used by God, his people to carry out that curse upon the people.

We see in the midst of all that the grace of the salvation of Rahab being taken out of that city. And that really I think that God intentionally puts those things together. They’re both to be seen as booty. And we’re the booty of God. We’ve been brought to salvation through Jesus Christ, the proclaiming of the gospel, the blowing of the gospel trumpet, so to speak. And we are living sacrifices.

At the end of the story, we have two kinds of sacrifices. We have living sacrifices exemplified by Rahab and of course the people themselves who had just been circumcised previously to this account. They are ritualistically cutting themselves off and sacrificing themselves on the eighth day symbolically the infants on the eighth day. The day sacrifices are appointed for they do it with knives emblematic of the altar of God. Well, in any event, there are living sacrifices and Rahab’s a living sacrifice and her family is.

And the other sacrifices you have at the end of the story are the dead sacrifices of those who are in rebellion to God. You only have sacrifices at the end, dead ones or living ones. And so God’s booty is taken in verses 23-25.

And then finally we have the warning against refortification. Joshua says, “Whoever rebuilds or refortifies the city again will be cursed.” Now, he doesn’t mean there to live there. He doesn’t mean that it’s a cursing to live there at Jericho. That’s not what the words intend to mean. The words very specifically, the word for build the walls and then the two words for the construction of those walls and refortification indicate that it is refortifying Jericho as a military city that is being spoken of in Joshua’s curse upon anybody who would do this. He enters into a solemn covenant with them here.

He adjures them by the living God. We’ve talked about that before—a strengthened form of oath. And he says that if you refortify the city or anybody does in the future, God’s going to curse them. And indeed, we see that curse fulfilled later in First Kings, the time of Ahab when a man actually did refortify the city of Jericho. And he really did lose his two sons in that effort in fulfillment of this curse that Joshua announces upon those who would do such.

And so the scriptures themselves in First Kings say that this was according to the curse that Joshua put upon those who would do such a thing. But then finally the conclusion of this matter is that Joshua is magnified or noised—as the archaic language of the King James version says—Joshua’s fame spreads throughout all the land. And so we’ve got the sovereignty of God here. We’ve got him then commanding people to victory, giving them a strategy that doesn’t seem like a good or wise strategy to us.

They follow it. The city falls. The booty is taken. Dead sacrifices and the living sacrifice of Rahab and the elements of brass brought into the service of the Lord and his treasury. And that’s to indicate, I think, as well that as we’re brought as living sacrifices to God, we are placed into his greater temple, into the Lord Jesus Christ, and into Christ’s body of the church. And we are seen as brought into the treasury of God.

We come together here every Lord’s day and we constitute the temple and we remind ourselves that’s really what we are. First and foremost, we are temple vessels first and foremost. We’re a religious worshiping community and on the basis of that religious worship and what God has called us to do in terms of being a temple together. As we disembark from this place then and go out into the week, we do so still as vessels of the sanctuary affecting political reconstruction, social reconstruction, etc.

But on the basis of the religious worship that we’ve celebrated together. And so in a way and obviously too that’s what’s all that is being pictured here in this story. We just sang that song “Arm of the Lord Awake.” And they each verse of that song you can look at it later perhaps take the bulletin or word order of worship home with you. Each of those verses really is very emblematic of what’s happening in this story of Jericho.

And as I said by way of metaphor in the entire book of Joshua and really through the entire salvation history that God sketches out for us throughout the scriptures.

Okay. Now, let’s look at some specific applications that I thought would be good to stress from this from these accounts. First of all, lessons from the chapter. Then, first of all, God’s sovereignty and conquest. That is obviously the big lesson going on here.

That God points out to his people at the very beginning of conquest. Now, we said last week that with Joshua 5 and with the eating of the produce of the land that the fruitfulness of the land has been given into the hand of God’s people. All the earth now bring into the New Testament times belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ and he gives it as a grant to his church. Everything here on this world is the ownership of Jesus Christ and is given to us.

It is by legal title now ours. And that is one of the great things we remind ourselves of on a weekly basis at worship that everything in the created order is created for the purpose of Jesus and his church. It belongs to us. And when we go down to Salem and we look at the capital down there, I like to tell my kids this is our capital and one of these days we’re going to change this the church of God will so that we’ll have religious we’ll have scriptural sayings from the scriptures relative to civil order that’ll be on the walls here of this place instead of some of the secular things that are written when that happens I tell them not if it happens because the grant of the land has been given to the people and now the story of the taking of Jericho is the beginning process of the conquest of the land politically okay they’ve been they’ve achieved everything they’ve been saved and given the grant to everything once for all Paul in Joshua 5.

And now we see the beginning of the restructuring the political structure to fit the reality of what has happened as God brings his people into the land to chase out evildoers and to supplant them with a good seed of gospel people. And so it’s the same thing with us today. We have been saved definitively, but that’s not the end of the story. That’s up to Joshua 5. We got a whole number of 20 chapters or so in front of us still.

And by way of metaphor in our lives, we’ve got a long the chapters ahead of the church of Jesus Christ in Oregon, for instance, working out politically, culturally, and socially the implications of what has occurred for us through the once-for-all salvation of Jesus Christ meant as metaphorically spoken of with the ark of the covenant that stays the curse of Adam and brings his people into victory. And so these things are very applicable to us and the strategies that are used are very important.

And the first lesson we want to learn as we engage into political affairs, for instance, social and cultural affairs, the first thing we want to be reminded of is the sovereignty of God in victory. That it is his victory, his war. Ultimately, it’s not for our sake. God is not on our side. We’re on his side. Remember, like we talked about last week, when the commander of the host appeared to Joshua, God’s sovereignty in conquest is emphasized here.

As I said, this is a metaphor for the whole book. The hopelessness of the situation, as I said, is emphasized in the first verse. So that we might know that the arm of flesh cannot take the walls of Jericho. This is the most fortified. This is the strongest city of all the land. And this is a land that was spoken of as being highly fortified by the spies that didn’t want to go back in. Now Joshua and Caleb 38 years prior didn’t deny the fact it was heavily fortified and that there were giants in the land.

But they knew that God could win. They knew the sovereignty of God in conquest that he would bring them into victory if he commanded them to go forward. But they didn’t come they didn’t argue the fact that it was a heavily fortified city in Deuteronomy 1:28 where account is given in that book of the evil spies report they said that the cities were well fortified and they were walled up to heaven is the way it was expressed in Deuteronomy 1 and I’m sure that one of the the one that is most highly walled is Jericho itself here it is the preeminent city the preeminent fortified city it is the key in a very real sense to the conquest of the whole land so God at the very first battle claims all the land for himself health.

He takes down this first fortified city, heavily walled city, so his people know that he’s going to remove all the fortifications of the enemies of God and his people. And he does that by way of first fruits then. And that’s why things are brought under the ban here. God’s sovereignty is expressed in his victory in a military situation that his own people could not have won. And that certainly is emphasized.

But his sovereignty is also stressed in the putting under the ban of every living thing in that city for the metal vessels and Rahab and her household. And you know this offends people who are humanists, but God had his people explicitly kill men, not too bad. Women, still adults, children. He didn’t even stop there. He went down to the cattle and the oxen and whatever else. All the animals there too were killed.

Why? They were totally consecrated in a very visible form. Put total destruction. Consecrated to God for his purposes. They’re the first fruits of the land. and are the first fruits of an evil land. They are totally devoted to destruction. So God brings them in with a mighty hand, declares his sovereignty, shows them immediately that he is doing this for his honor and glory. Now, we got to point out right away, of course, that this is a specific command given to God’s people.

We will not get this kind of command in the future. We do not receive revelation of this type anymore. We will not be told to go and kill everybody in a city. Our charge today, however, is just as broad, but it’s a different charge. At the end of the we read Matthew 28, the great commission. And he says to go into all the world, discipling nations, men, women, children, and yes, even the horses themselves, the book of Zechariah tells us, will have written upon them “Holy to the Lord,” not converted, is born again, but consecrated for God’s purpose.

Well, here though, he emphasizes his sovereignty in these very first verses by doing what the arm of flesh cannot do, the arm of God does do. And he claims all things for himself. Now, it’s an important lesson that God taught us in 1985 and I repeat it I repeat it a number of times in the last six or seven years because it’s an important thing to remember that when we began understanding as we did the implications of God’s word for not just salvation but salvation brought on into the culture as well and we began the political reorganization of the state of Oregon okay back in ’85 through the introduction of a home school bill very sovereignly in a great display of his arm of strength got that bill passed and got incredibly good rules written over which we had no really political power to do anything.

And I at that time I wanted to. I didn’t have the time. Maybe someday I will. I don’t know. Probably not. But if I was going to write a story of what happened in the legislature in Salem and Oregon in 1985, it would be the story of God’s sovereignty in the political arena. Now, that’s good. And that’s an important thing for us to remember as we continue to work. We’ve become more sophisticated now in our political affairs.

And that’s a good thing, too. We’ll see that in a couple of weeks we’ll see the need to mature as Christian warriors into strategic things that God teaches us. He trains our hands to war. That includes politically as well in the political reorganization of the land that we’ll see in the book of Joshua and includes that for us today, too. But at the beginning, God very deliberately and supernaturally declares himself to be the only way we’re going to affect political reorganization, social reorganization, the reorganization of your family, whatever.

All these things are declared to be God’s battle and his victory ultimately happened here and it happened to us as well. And it’s an important lesson to learn because man’s great sin is thinking that somehow we caused these things to happen in and of ourselves apart from God’s sovereignty and that just isn’t where it’s at. Okay. So God’s sovereignty is conquest is the big picture of the fall of Jericho.

But there are some other things as well. Secondly, the centrality of the law in conquest. And here again the emphasis upon the ark is repeated throughout this chapter as it has been up to now. Ellett in his commentary on Joshua 6 says at the center of the procession is the written law of God. The ark is the vessel that contains it. The armed men that precede it are its executioners. The priests who blow its trumpets are its heralds.

It was the law that had brought Israel over Jordan. This law that was henceforth to be established in Canaan. This law that was about to take vengeance on the transgressors. The whole law of Moses is about the expansion of the Decalogue and the Pentateuch contains the ample statement of the transgressions that had brought the inhabitants of Canaan under the demand—under the ban rather—of the divine law.

So in a very real sense the ark of the covenant containing as it did the testimony of God’s covenant, the law at the center of this story. It is the law that is the center of the thing. The trumpets herald the coming of the law, the curses of the law against those who were in violation of transgression of that law as recounted throughout the Pentateuch that the Canaanites were indeed lawbreakers and of a very vile sort that their iniquities had become fulfilled had come to a completion and God was going to wipe them out on the basis of his law and the men who go forward in the front of the law are the executioners of that law against the city of Jericho.

So God’s law is central to conquest as well. As I said this is really emphasizing the fact that it’s God himself who is enthroned upon the ark that is compassing the city and will bring about what occurs. And as God’s the manifestation or the representation of God’s character is of course his law and so as we move forward to reorder things politically, culturally, socially in our families, our workplaces, the political state, etc.

The law must be central and our thinking as well. The presence of God means the presence of his law speaking forth judgments, blessings, and cursings into the land. I thought about this last week when the big controversy came about with Murphy Brown and that whole Dan Quayle thing. It is amazing to me that the word “illegitimate” is even a word anymore in the English language and I think that’s at the heart of the protest against Quayle.

They use the term illegitimate to refer to the birth of a child out of wedlock. Well, you know, probably the majority—well, at least the majority of people in inner cities, I think, are born out of wedlock. Illegitimate. But what’s the law? What’s the standard against which the illegitimacy is being measured? It’s just the standard of men. That’s not worth much but indeed it is the law standard of God’s word that has formed the basis for our laws against children being born out of wedlock and the penalties to adultery and incest etc.

So the illegitimacy question reminds us of the need for a standard of God’s law as the standard for our social setting as well. But the thing I really was thinking of with Quayle is that he came under a lot of hits and his speech I think needed to be read in its entirety and it was a very good one. But it is true and I’m not saying this about Dan Quayle because he did for I think he is a believer and I think he did use biblical quotations in his story.

But it is true that cultural conservatives, okay, who look at the problems of the inner cities and say the solution to the problem is pulling people up by their own bootstraps, just make them more responsible. If that’s the end of the story, it’s not the full story. Because while the law is central and it’s encompassing of bringing judgment upon Jericho, remember that it resides in the context of the mercy seat.

The propitiation where the blood was applied and the cover of that ark of the covenant. God’s grace and law are always brought together in scripture. And if we’re going to speak about the curses of God’s law against impenitent people, that’s good. But we also must at the same time talk of the grace of the salvation of Rahab in this story for instance. And we must say that yes, people in whatever calling of life must walk in obedience to God’s law.

But we must say that the only way to receive blessing in the context of that is not in and of our own efforts, but through the blessing of God on those who seek to honor him in their lives. So it’s not pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It’s walking in obedience as much as in you lie to the command of God and relying upon and teaching people the necessity of knowing the grace of God that he mercifully brings blessing into our lives as a result ultimately not of our labors, but of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Cultural conservatives tend toward phariseism and legalism because they don’t—I’m not talking about cultural conservatives, non-Christian conservatives, Christians, non-Christians—understand the need to present both the centrality of the law and the gospel of the grace of God in the context of that law in all that we do and say. Okay. So we have the centrality of the sovereignty of God and the centrality of the law.

Then third, God’s testing of his people. One of the purposes, the central purpose obviously in the fall of Jericho is to manifest his strength and his sovereignty. But I think there is the idea of test and evaluation quite obviously going on here. After all, this wasn’t exactly the correct military strategy that people would have been taught or thought was a good thing to do. How are we going to take this big city?

Well, you might have thought of siege ramps. You might have thought about just fast holding out and seeing if you could starve out the people inside the walled cities. They were a very good defense, these big high walls. And God tested Joshua and he tested the officers, the choreim, and he also tested the people through these commands to circle it about. Now, the text is written so that we don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like they knew the whole plan.

It seems like every day they got the orders from the choreim. “Okay, we’re going to go out and circle the city today and you’re not going to say anything and the priests are going to blow the trumpets. We’ll circle it once we’re going to come back here.” Okay? And I can imagine that was a great test upon people in terms of whether or not they’re going to believe that’s going to be efficacious for the taking of this city.

And this is a very important lesson for us as well. Now, it was efficacious. It was the right thing to do and Joshua and the officers and the people passed the test with flying colors. But don’t think that the testing is over there. The testing continues in our day and age. Are we going to rely upon our own mind, common sense, cultural conservatism, or anything else, cultural liberalism to determine actions?

Or are we going to rely upon the word of God as it’s ministered to us by the church? And the scriptures say we’ve got to listen to the word of God. It is foolishness. And at the center of the Christian faith is the foolishness of the preaching of the gospel. Foolishness, Paul says, to those who are without and are going to perish. These people walked around this city and they were probably jeered, booed, hissed.

“You idiots, what are you doing? The walls aren’t going to fall down if you just walk around.” We don’t know that. They were pretty scared inside there, but you can imagine it. And if you go preach the foolishness of the gospel, you’re going to do so and encounter ridicule and shame. And you’re going to be tested and evaluated whether or not you’re going to obey the word of God or rely upon your own intelligence.

Now I can imagine that you know in a different situation with a different group of people. This is the preeminent example of the people in the Old Testament who were obedient. But with a different group of people you can imagine him saying “Did you hear what that choreim told us to do today?” as they’re talking after the guy’s gone out gone through and told him what to do and he’s left. “We can’t do that.

That’s ridiculous to walk around the city. That’s not going to do any good. I’m getting me a siege ramp. I’m going to start making a siege ramp.” Something like that. Well, the same thing’s true today. You can imagine people saying, “Did you hear what the foreman at work just told me to do? Gosh, it’s such a—why am I doing this? Putting this stuff here, moving it over here, moving it back here tomorrow. What a stupid thing to do.” And we do those kind of things on a regular basis.

God wants us to submit to the chains of command that he establishes. That doesn’t mean they’re against the word of God. We’re to presume that they know a little more than we do. If God has in his providence put them in a position of leadership over us, they’re to presume that the choreim knew more than they did. That Joshua knew more than they did because Joshua was in touch with God. And God certainly knows more than we do.

Well, the same thing’s true in our businesses today and in our families and in our churches and in the state. God establishes order and we’re to presume the effectiveness of the leadership that he’s put in place, particularly in the context of the Christian community, particularly in the context of the New Testament equivalent, the deacons. You can imagine church members saying, “You hear what those deacons want us to do now?

That is the stupidest thing.” See, that’s test. Are you going to follow obediently the commands that God gives through his institutional church today or are you not even at a more basic level the family structure? I’ve talked a lot emphasized a lot the need for husbands to see their wives as full partners in the running of the household. I’m going to do some stuff at family camp where we I’m going to try to help give some practical applications to how to accomplish that.

But it’s very important as much as all that’s true and to look at your wife as a four-star general, you’re a five-star general and to listen to her an awful lot. As much as that’s true, never forget the lesson here that wives must submit to their husbands. The way that these people submitted to the orders they received, great test for a wife, particularly a wife who’s intelligent and her husband is not as smart as her.

That happens a lot, you know, in marriages. There’s no guarantee that your husband’s going to be smarter. Probably most wives, I don’t know, we could get in trouble there. But anyway, great test to the wife who thinks she knows a lot more about the word of God or whatever than her husband to submit to him. But that’s the test. God says, “Are you going to obey the ones that I have placed over you?” Now, obviously, if they’re going to command you to do something against the word of God, you can’t do it.

And there’s a way to make a proper appeal to authority. But usually, that’s not the case. Usually, you’re rebelling because you think you know better and you don’t believe the one that God has placed over you. But see, God’s blessing is not on the basis ultimately of works. It’s ultimately the basis of grace. That his blessing comes to us. It’s not our own works again that pull us up by our own bootstraps.

It’s we do what God tells us to do and he blesses us and as a result we’re enriched and we receive blessing. And he’s not going to bless you if you don’t submit to your husband. And children, he’s not going to bless children that don’t submit to their parents who are always questioning everything the parent says. Children must submit with quick and rapid obedience. Apparently Dawson Trotman, who was the founder of the Navigators had a little routine with his kids that him and his wife would do.

They’d have them all line up and he would say, “Uh, what do I—how many things do I ask you to do?” Is that what you Yeah. what do you know? I guess the question would be “What does your mother and—what do your mother and I ask you to do?” And the response of the children was supposed to be and they start at the youngest one “to do only one thing. One thing, sir.” “How many things?” “Enter one thing.” The eldest child was then ask “what is that one thing” and the one thing they’re required to do was to do everything their parents told them to do.

Well, that’s the way it should be in our households as well. We only ask one thing ultimately of our children. That’s to obey. Now, it means to obey in an awful lot of things, but the test and evaluation is always the same. Will you obey the parent? Will you obey the husband? Will you submit to the authorities in church and state? And in our day and age, the answer is almost always no, I won’t submit. No. No.

“I’m a individual. I’m going to be president of the United States one day. I can be anything I want to be. And so why should I submit to you when you’re so dumb or you don’t know as much as I do or whatever it is?” Tests and evaluations are part of the life of the army of God. And they happen at the time of Jericho. They happen to us and almost always central to the test is the obedience to the simple instructions of God.

Now it’s interesting that we stress the number seven throughout all this. That’s based I think upon the creation pattern where you have six days and the seventh day of rest. You think, “Well, now wait a minute. How is this seventh day of conquest like the seventh day of rest?” Well, the seventh day of rest isn’t, you know, just a day to goof off. The Lord’s day, the eighth day in the New Testament, our seventh day today, so to speak, is a day of evaluation first and foremost.

It’s a day when God comes. Remember, we’ve talked about this. And when he comes, you may not like it. And when he came, the people of Jericho didn’t like it. And when he came the people who had obeyed completely the word of God. They did like it. They were blessed with God’s presence. The seventh day is a day of evaluation, a day of sifting out the hearts of men. And as you come here today, you should come having prepared the night before by looking at yourself and how well you met the tests of that past week.

Evaluate yourselves. Judge yourselves, the scriptures say, then you wouldn’t have to be judged here when you take communion. The day of preparation is absolutely necessary. And the preparation for the conquest of Jericho and the day of evaluation that ushered in the morning of God’s victory was a series of obedient obedience to the commands of God and his people and his order that is his instructions.

Okay. So testing evaluation is part of life. Fourth, man’s responsibility is absolutely affirmed throughout the account. Even though God’s sovereignty is stressed, man’s responsibility is affirmed. Actually this was good military strategy. There is an element to that. you know, if you’re going to here we had in this particular land, you have a central ridge of mountains separating north from south in Canaan.

And Jericho was at the top was beginning of that central ridge of mountains and Ai was next. So what God was doing in his in his sovereignty was having a march to the highlands, the top of the mountains, cutting off north and south and dividing the nation and also then taking the strongest stronghold, Jericho, first. So by three different ways, he was using good military strategy. And in following that strategy, we learn then our responsibility to act in obedience to God.

And we do actually learn then things about political conquest as well. And we’ll talk about that more when we get to the story of Ai. But in any event, we said before that the beginning of this whole series of chapters on conquest was at the end of chapter 5 when the commander of God’s host appeared to him. Remember we said it’s very important to learn that lesson that Joshua learned when He said, “Are you for us or are you for the enemy of go enemy of Israel?” And he said, “Neither.” The Lord says, “Neither.” And here, if people fall into thinking it’s us versus them and God is for us and he’s not for them, they’re missing the whole point because in the middle of this or toward the middle of this account, Joshua tells the people, “Do not take the thing for your own purposes. This city is totally given over to God.” And we got take some things out and put them in the storehouse of God. The other things we got to burn and that’s it. Otherwise, if you take the accursed thing, you’re responsible before God and you bring curse into the nation of Israel, into the camp itself, and you will be rooted out.

You will then be totally consecrated to destruction.