SERIES: Joshua: Victory through Faith
Joshua Fit de’ Battle of Jericho
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: When I was a young boy we had a record album by baritone Frank Boggs, and I nearly wore the grooves off it. My favorite song on the album was “Joshua Fit de’ Battle of Jericho.” I used to sing it at the top of my voice while I was filling the hopper with coal and taking the clinkers out of the furnace. That really dates me, doesn’t it? Some of you probably don’t have the foggiest idea what clinkers are. For a long time I couldn’t quite figure out why the song said, “Joshua Fit de’ Battle.” Did that mean he was just the right size for it? Years later I learned that “fit” was the past tense of “fight” in the southern black dialect.
Well, when you get right down to it, the song isn’t any more accurate theologically than it is grammatically, for Joshua didn’t really fight the battle of Jericho—God did. All Joshua and the Israelites did was to walk around the city, blow a few trumpets and yell. Let’s read this account, and since it is quite familiar to most of us, I’m not going to focus a lot of our attention this morning on the historical facts; rather I want us to think carefully about some of the theological issues that arise from this remarkable story. Let’s read Joshua 6.
Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.
Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, 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.”
So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.” And he ordered the army, “Advance! March around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the Lord.”
When Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets before the Lord went forward, blowing their trumpets, and the ark of the Lord’s covenant followed them. The armed guard marched ahead of the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard followed the ark. All this time the trumpets were sounding. But 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!” So he had the ark of the Lord carried around the city, circling it once. Then the army returned to camp and spent the night there.
Joshua got up early the next morning and the priests took up the ark of the Lord. The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets went forward, marching before the ark of the Lord and blowing the trumpets. The armed men went ahead of them and the rear guard followed the ark of the Lord, while the trumpets kept sounding. So on the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. They did this for six days.
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. 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 city and all that is in it are to be devoted[a] 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. But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise 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.”
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. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
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.
Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house. 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.
At that time Joshua pronounced this 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.”
So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.”
Now the first principle I would like to share with you that comes out of this text is this:
The ways of the Lord are often an enigma to His people.
Imagine yourself in Joshua’s shoes. You’re a military man. You were sent by Moses into Canaan as a young man to spy it out, and now you’ve had forty years to think about how to conquer it. You’ve had ten days now since crossing the Jordan to plot a strategy to seize the double-walled city of Jericho that stands between you and your objective of a homeland. (All this while the Israelites are recovering from the mass circumcision described in the last chapter). You’ve thought about how to build ramparts and catapults. You’ve considered a surprise attack at night. You’ve wondered whether there is any way to infiltrate the city and attack from within.
But then God speaks to you and says, in effect, “Just march around the city. Do this for six days. On the seventh day do it seven times. Have the priests blow the trumpets. Everyone shout and the wall of the city will collapse.” Sure, Lord! I think that’s probably what my response would have been.
But there’s no evidence Joshua responded that way. In fact, the very next verse after God’s instructions simply reads, “So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and he ordered the people, ‘Advance! March around the city.’” Was Joshua surprised? Undoubtedly. Was such a commandment from God completely unprecedented? Not really. As a matter of fact, when you look through the Scriptures you find a number of examples in which God solved problems in a way completely contrary to the normal, rational, logical way of doing things. Think about a few of them with me.
Consider David. The Philistines were threatening Israel and their champion was a giant named Goliath. This man-mountain was incredibly intimidating, and he drove fear into the hearts of all the Israelites with his challenge for someone, anyone, to come out and fight him. It was an interesting challenge that if met would save a lot of lives, but it was fraught with great risk. If the Israelite won, the Philistines would become slaves to Israel. If Goliath won, the Israelites would become slaves to the Philistines. God chose David, a shepherd boy, to fight Goliath. And he sent him out without armor and without weapons, except for a little sling. The ways of the Lord are often an enigma to us. But, as you well recall David slew the giant with one of five smooth stones, and Israel was saved. The words he spoke to Goliath are classic: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty.”
Consider Gideon. In the days of the Judges, the Midianites were threatening Israel. Gideon went out to do battle against them, only to have the Lord stop him, “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her, announce now to the people, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave.” Twenty-two thousand went home and 10,000 remained. But the Lord said to Gideon, “There are still too many men.” When the army was finally whittled down to 300, the Lord said, “With these 300 I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands.” The ways of the Lord are often an enigma to us. But Gideon went into battle with 300 men and Israel won.
Consider Elijah. Wicked King Ahab, and his even more wicked wife Jezebel were troubling Israel. Elijah challenged the 850 false prophets of Baal and Asherah who were Ahab’s and Jezebel’s pawns. He challenged them to meet him on Mount Carmel, where those pagan prophets had built an altar to Baal on the very spot where the altar of God had once stood. There he spoke to the people, as recorded in 1 Kings 18:21, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”
Then he called for two bulls to serve as sacrifices. And he said to the false prophets of Baal, “Choose one for yourselves, and cut it into pieces and put in on the wood but don’t set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire—he is the real God.”
You will remember how the pagan prophets of Baal called upon their god. “’O Baal, answer us!’ they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And Elijah began to taunt them, ‘Shout louder!’ he said. ‘Perhaps your god is deep in thought, or maybe he’s going to the bathroom, or traveling. Maybe he is asleep and needs to be awakened.’” All day long they shouted, danced, and cut themselves with swords and spears. “But,” the Scriptures say, “there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.”
Then Elijah rebuilt the altar of the Lord which was in disrepair. He dug a trench around it, arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. And then he said, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.” “Do it again,” he said. “Do it a third time,” he ordered. Water soaked every part of the altar and filled the trench. The ways of the Lord are often an enigma to us.
But here’s what happened. Elijah prayed and called upon the Lord God to bring down fire from Heaven:
“’O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.’ Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!’”
Consider Naaman. He was a commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man, highly regarded and a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. He also had a little slave girl in his household who was an Israelite. She said to Naaman’s wife, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria (i.e., Elisha)! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman got permission from the king to go and seek a miracle cure in Israel, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of clothing, plus a letter of reference from the king. And off he went to Israel.
Elisha refused to meet with Naaman personally, and of course he refused his gifts, but he sent a message telling him to go and wash seven times in the Jordan River, with the promise that his leprosy would be cured. Naaman was angry. He felt snubbed because Elisha would not give him a personal audience. And he was contemptuous of the irrational cure that was offered. “’Are not the rivers of Damascus better than any of the rivers of Israel?’ he asked. But his servants went to him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, “Wash and be cleansed!”’”
The ways of the Lord are often an enigma to us. You know the result of this story. Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him. And his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
We could go on with stories from the Old Testament and the New Testament where God violated all the conventions, removed all the natural explanations, and took away all the possibilities for humans to steal the glory. You know, if there is any way we can steal the glory, we will. We will attribute success to our gifts, our hard work, our intelligence, and we will take credit for anything we can. So sometimes God has to strip us of any basis whatever for self-aggrandizement. And he certainly did that at Jericho.
This does not mean that God always does things in a way that is contrary to human reason. We must remember that these amazing events we have considered this morning from the life of David and Gideon and Elijah and Naaman and Joshua were astounding miracles even in their day. Most of the time God allows and even expects us to use reason and wisdom and planning, along with faith and prayer to accomplish godly goals. But every once in a while, when our pride begins to swell and we begin to think we are pretty hot stuff, God will remove all the props from under us and do something that can be attributed only to His power.
I’ve experienced that a few times in my ministry. One stark example was in 1993. A month after my accident in September of that year I decided I could return to work parttime, so I told Brad that I thought I could preach the third Sunday of October. The days passed and I was getting nowhere. I couldn’t study. I could hardly think, and the wise thing would have probably been to go to the Elders and say, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it.” But it was Thursday and Family Camp was that weekend, and Brad was in charge of Family Camp, so I knew he couldn’t preach. I didn’t think it was fair to the other staff to ask them to step in on such short notice. And I was near panic.
But on Thursday afternoon God gave me a message—in a way He had never done before. In four or five hours I wrote the entire sermon, “This Far and No Farther.” I can’t explain it. It’s never happened to me before or since. I didn’t read any commentaries; I didn’t do three or four rough drafts first, as usual. It was just there. And God has used that sermon in more people’s lives than perhaps any I have ever preached. Now if I did that every week, wasting my time until Thursday or Friday afternoon, and then expecting God to “give” me a sermon, I doubt if you would be edified come Sunday morning.
Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. Impossible situations provide the occasion for us to witness the unadulterated work of God in our behalf. But here’s a second principle that must come into play before we can experience God’s unique displays of power:
The commands of the Lord are always to be obeyed by His people.
Had Joshua and his officers decided that ramparts and catapults and intrigue made more military sense than walking around the city and shouting, they would have missed out on the great victory that God was willing to give them. Their duty was to obey, for they had a clear word from the Lord as to how He was going to solve the problem of Jericho.
The message for us today is this: when God speaks, His people need to listen and obey. We have no right to adjust His clear commands to make them more suitable for today’s society. If we soften his teachings regarding divorce and remarriage, regarding homosexual behavior, regarding the sanctity of human life, regarding the essential doctrines of the faith, regarding our responsibility to minister to the widowed, the orphaned, and those imprisoned for their faith, then we have elevated ourselves over Him and have become a law unto ourselves.
Thankfully, the Israelites did not do that, at least in this case. They did exactly as they were told. Imagine 2 ½ million people marching around the city in total silence except for the seven trumpets of rams’ horns. And after the seventh trip around the city on the seventh day the people shouted, and God Himself tore down the walls and gave them the city. It’s an amazing story, but it’s the kind of thing that is to be expected when the promises of God are accompanied by the obedience of His people.
Friends, what enables obedience is such situations is faith. Hebrews 11:30 says that “by faith the walls of Jericho fell.” In 1 John 5:4 we read, “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” You know, some people have a wrong idea about what faith is. Faith is not believing in spite of the evidence. It is obeying in spite of the consequences.
Now there’s another issue in our text that troubles a lot of people, and that is verse 21: “They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” The animal rights people, of course, would have apoplexy if they read this account, but I don’t think too many of them are serious Bible students. But frankly, many normal people are also bothered by this account. The fact that Jericho’s fighting men were killed is one thing, but the thought of the Israelites killing all the women and the children, and even the animals, is rather chilling.
One might like to excuse this incident on the basis that Joshua and his men got carried away and misread God’s intent, but clearly this action was commanded by God, and God’s approval is clearly stated in verse 27: “So the Lord was with Joshua.” Nor can we excuse it as an isolated incident. In city after city, from Ai in chapter 8 to Makkedah and Libnah and Lachish and Gezer and Eglon and Hebron and Debir in chapter 10, the same thing happened.
Listen to the summary found in 10:40: “So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded.” Then chapters 11 and 12 continue with accounts of the slaughter in the northern half of the country. While estimates are very difficult to arrive at, some scholars suggest that the Israelites killed a half million people or more during the seven years this campaign went on.
Now I believe the first two principles we have observed this morning apply here as well:
The ways of the Lord are often an enigma to His people.
The commands of the Lord are always to be obeyed by His people.
But there’s a third principle I would like to offer you in regard to this difficult issue:
It is not our job to rescue the Lord from ethical dilemmas He may allegedly have created.
I feel no obligation this morning to offer you a completely satisfactory explanation as to why this scorched earth policy was ordered, or to solve all the moral and intellectual problems it may raise in 20th century minds. I will not avoid the issue, and I will give you my best analysis of it, but ultimately you have to decide if you’re going to let God be God or if you’re going to try to be God. You see, I think it is extremely important that we grasp the fact that …
1. There is no external standard of ethics to which God must conform. God does not submit to the U.S. Constitution or the Humanist Manifesto or any other human document as His ethical guidepost. God doesn’t do things because they are right; they are right because He does them. If God ordered the extermination of the Canaanites in Joshua’s day (and I believe He did), then my theology tells me there must have been a good reason for it. That doesn’t mean we have to accept the genocide we have seen in various wars of the 20th century—whether in Germany or Bosnia or Rwanda. In fact, I think a careful reading of the New Testament would lead one to renounce offensive war. But there is no way to escape the fact that God commanded offensive war, and even genocide, at certain times in the OT.
Now this is such a problem to some theologians that they have opted to postulate two gods—one an OT God of wrath and the other a NT God of love. Well, it would be nice if it were that easy, but clearly such a view is not allowing the Bible to speak for itself. God’s love is certainly not absent in the OT, nor is His wrath absent in the NT. This particular heresy just won’t solve our problem.
What may help us, however, is a second factor we need to recognize, and that is simply that …
2. There is much that we do not know, which should lead to a spirit of humility. God doesn’t always explain Himself to us. He doesn’t always give us His rationale, nor is He under obligation to do so. In Isaiah 55 the prophet writes,
“’For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”
The problem here in Joshua 6 and later in chapters 8-12 is not that God’s ways are lower than ours; it’s that His ways are higher than ours, but we don’t see it that way. We have the gall to think that our commitment to democratic ideals, our devotion to the so-called inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our guarantee to every citizen of the right to a fair trial and habeas corpus, our cherished freedom from double jeopardy and from cruel and unusual punishment, make us more civilized and more concerned about justice than God Himself! There are two issues I think we easily forget when we start wrestling with ethical dilemmas like the destruction of Jericho in the OT:
Our hatred of sin is not nearly as great as God’s, and
Our grace and mercy toward the sinner is not nearly as great as His.
3. Our hatred of sin is not nearly as great as God’s. And believe me, the Canaanite people were excessively sinful. You see, one of the fallacies in some people’s thinking is the notion that these little cities in Canaan were filled with innocent, fun-loving men, women and children, peacefully eking out an existence in the rocky hills and lush valleys of Palestine. The fact is they were a war-like people constantly at war with one another and thoroughly wicked. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of almost unbelievable immorality and cruelty. Children were routinely sacrificed to the gods. Sexual perversions were practiced publicly, even in worship. Possibly no culture since that of Sodom and Gomorrah had degenerated into such a reprobate state as the Canaanites.
So God decided to take their land away from them and give it to the Israelites. Does God have that right? Well, the question itself is silly. Of course, He does; He owns it all. And God decided to exterminate the Canaanite people, just as He did the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and before that (in Noah’s day) the entire population of the earth, save eight souls. The reason in each of these cases was gross immorality and unashamed violation of all that God intended for mankind to be.
Six hundred years before the time of Joshua God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and to his descendants forever. But Abraham and his descendants didn’t get it right away. Do you remember why? The reason given in Gen. 15:16 is this: “for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Even in Abraham’s day the Canaanites were evil, but God waited until their sin became so abominable that there could be no legitimate objection whatever to their extermination. God is patient, but He will not tolerate sin forever. The wheels of God’s justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.
There are times when only radical surgery will save the life of a cancer-stricken victim. Canaan had a cancer, and before Israel could safely settle down in this area and set up a monotheistic government ruled by God’s laws, the infection of degenerate idolatry and moral depravity had to be removed.
But, perhaps you object, if the men and women of Canaan were all thoroughly wicked and deserving of extermination, still the infants were too young to have committed any sin. Why didn’t God have His people adopt the infants and rear them as God-fearing members of the Jewish nation? I’m not sure a satisfactory answer can be given to that question. One writer suggests that it could have been a major problem when these children reached adolescence and discovered their natural parents had been killed by their adoptive parents.
But ultimately, friends, the problem of the extermination of the Canaanites is no different than the problem of Hell. Once we establish that man is sinful and that God is infinitely holy, then the concept of Hell has already received all the justification it needs. Heaven is what needs justification.
And once we establish that the Canaanites were thoroughly depraved, then their elimination has its own justification. What we ought to struggle with is this: “Why didn’t God eliminate them sooner, plus lots of others, and why doesn’t He eliminate our own nation today?” C. S. Lewis observed a profound truth. “When we merely say we are bad, God’s wrath seems barbarous; as soon as we perceive our badness (for what it really is), God’s wrath appears inevitable.”
There is one more point I would like to make. Not only is our hatred of sin not nearly as great as God’s. It is equally true that …
4. Our grace and mercy toward the sinner is not nearly as great as His. We like to think of ourselves as enlightened and tolerant and compassionate. After all, that’s why we’re concerned about these poor Canaanites, isn’t it? No! We are moral imposters, friends. Our concern is an intellectual concern; we debate these issues from the pleasant security of our nice homes and our comfortable churches. If we were really concerned about the extermination of the ungodly, we would be taking the Gospel into the prisons and into the bars and into our neighborhoods, come hell or high water. Why? Because our theology tells us that all those who die without Christ are going to suffer torment for all of eternity, which is even worse than what Joshua brought upon the inhabitants of Jericho. We are not nearly as gracious and merciful as we would like to pretend.
Do you recall the prominence of Rahab in the Scripture reading this morning? I preached a whole sermon about her a few weeks ago, and I don’t have time to retell the story, but right in the middle of all this extermination and genocide comes Rahab’s name—In verse 17, in 23 and again in 25. This is God’s way of saying to us that even when His wrath is full and is being poured out on the earth, His ears are open to the faintest cry of a believing heart. He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But some will perish, because they have rejected every overture He has made to them.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah should be instructive to us. When Abraham heard about God’s planned annihilation of those cities, he asked God,
“Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it for you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
And you will recall that God conceded that He would spare the city if even 50 righteous people could be found. I suspect Abraham began thinking about the people in Sodom he knew, and he began to wonder if it might be difficult to find 50, so he comes back to God and says, “what if the number is five less than 50?” And God said he would spare it for 45. Abraham came back and asked, “What about for 40?” And God said, “For 40 I will not destroy it.” Abraham said, “Would you believe 30?” Then 20, then 10. But Abraham was unable to find even ten. The ones he did find—his own relatives—were allowed to escape. God annihilated the rest.
There were a few in Jericho, too. Rahab and her family. Is it not possible that these may have been the only ones in the whole city who had a heart for God? Undoubtedly that’s the case, or God would have spared others.
Conclusion: I would like to go back to the first two principles in our outline one more time. First, “the ways of the Lord are often an enigma to His people.” We have seen that this was true in regard to the walls of Jericho, and we have seen that it was true in regard to the extermination of the Canaanites. It is true as well in regard to the plan of salvation. Where the Jewish people were expecting a conquering Messiah to come and deliver them from their earthly enemies by force, God sent His one and only Son as a helpless baby in Bethlehem, to grow up as a carpenter in Nazareth, to be an itinerant preacher in Galilee, and to lose His life as a common criminal in Jerusalem. This is not the way any of us would have planned for man’s spiritual deliverance. But God did it that way so that no one could take credit and all the glory would go to Him.
Second, “the commands of the Lord are always to be obeyed by his people.” The Israelites were called upon to be obedient in marching around Jericho. They were called upon to be obedient in exterminating the wicked Canaanites. And we are called upon to be obedient in renouncing every pretense of self-sufficiency and to cast ourselves solely upon Jesus Christ, crucified and risen again. When we do so God gives us eternal life and we become members of His eternal family. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” Let’s pray.
DATE: June 9, 1996
Tags:
Humility
Extermination of the heathen
Grace
Mercy