We come to chapter 6, and Jericho. Finally, it’s time for Jericho [see on map]. Time to get busy. Time to do what we came to do, right? Conquest. Dispossessing the Canaanites. Time to get down to the business of claiming this promise of God to us. [Jericho] is the first step, and IT is “tightly shut”. The Hebrew says, shutting and being shut. It’s doubly shut. The natives aren’t restless - they’re terrified. Cuz of the Jewish people and their god. Scared out of their wits.
So let’s say you’re Joshua. You know the mission - we need to take (back) our land - conquer it, AND everyone in it. For all intents and purposes we’re talking about a military campaign. And your first objective is this city - it’s not huge, but it IS heavily fortified. You need weapons - swords and spears, maybe ramps, catapults. You need resources - food and supplies and all the funding and logistics that go with that. And you need a strategy. Usually. Altho, maybe not if you’re talking about these kinds of numbers: [600k vs 2k?]…?
But God flips the entire venture on its head here. First He lays out the true nature of the mission for Joshua and the people (and us) - we looked at this last time. Moving into and living into God’s land of promise is NOT a military maneuver. It’s not us vs them. It’s NOT fundamentally about overcoming obstacles of brick and mortar or enemies or resources or rivers. It’s about the glory of God. This is a spiritual journey - for Joshua, for Israel, and for each one of us. Living in God’s land of promise is about overcoming ourselves - and our tendency to shortchange the Lord. We shortchange Him on what He deserves. We underestimate His glory. We unbelieve.
And make no mistake, it ALL belongs to the Lord. And this battle belongs to the Lord. He’s got this. Whatever giants we’re facing, the giant obstacles and challenges and questions and setbacks and enemies - these are always, simply, opportunities to trust the Lord. Jericho is not just about tearing down giant walls in the lives of unbelievers. It’s about overcoming our own giant self-reliance.
That is precisely what we see at Jericho. So the Lord meets with Joshua, and rolls out the battle plan. What do you think is going thru Joshua’s soldier-mind as the Lord unveils the strategy for the conquest of mighty fortified Jericho? Joshua is expecting, what? Some kind of a siege, then storm the walls with your superior numbers? To his credit, Joshua doesn’t appear to even question what God tells him. But then how about when Joshua briefs his generals, the leaders of his army? Those guys - and the rest of the people - they’ve got to wonder if perhaps Joshua has lost his ever-loving mind. Say what? We’re going to do what? Walk around the city? And do what? Nothing? No swords? No flaming arrows? Half-a-million soldiers, suited up and ready for battle (it SHOULD be 600k, but remember the Reuben Gad Manites stinged and 100k of their soldiers stayed back in Gilead). But all you want our massive army to do is take a few quiet laps around the city? Just trumpets, and priests and the Ark? OK, the Ark I get - even tho it’s just a piece of wood. And priests - well, that IS sort of a package deal. But just one lap a day, for six days, and then 7 laps on the 7th day, and we blast the trumpets, and shout, and that’s all? That's it? What kind of a battle plan is that? This is not the first - nor the last time - that the Lord is showing His people that the battle belongs to Him. He’s got this - and He is awesome.
But to the untrained eye, to the casual unbeliever, this is foolishness. This plan, this is utter nonsense. Walking around? And trumpets? This is just a waste of time. No earthly way this is going to work. Highly unlikely. That’s precisely the point. Remember, God traffics in the unlikely. 1Cor. 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 1Cor 1.25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1Cor. 1:18-19 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE.” The promise of foolishness.
One way this plays out for us is in the ministry of prayer. The soldier in us says we need strategies and resources and we just need to get down to business (busy-ness), when God says, we really/first need to get down on our knees. We need to look to Him. Psa. 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Prayer isn’t preparation for work; it IS work. God says, hurry up and wait on Me. Look to Me, turn to Me. Because this is not about us - it’s about our great God and Savior. And the church of Jesus Christ advances on its knees. That’s the promise of foolishness. God’s ways, God’s plans can look foolish, God’s Word can sound foolish. God’s plan to provide eternal life through death, the death of His Son on the Cross, forgiveness thru trusting in what His Son did and not thru what I do - that sounds crazy. But that [tomb] is empty, still empty. Jesus, Yeshua. God saves. The promise of God. The promise of foolishness.
[7-10] And so we have 500,000 soldiers marching around the city. How long do you think this is going to take? 500 Lobo H.S. seniors getting seated took about 20 minutes. Again, not a huge city, but this could take an hour or two. [Line after line] of soldiers, marching around your city, deafening silence [10] (except for those [rams horns blowing]), and right in the middle is that infamous [Ark: TAOTCOTLOATE]. That awe-inspiring mountain-leveling piece of wood, all covered in gold. And those hearts in Jericho, already doubly melted, no doubt dissolve into total despair. [I recall an awe-inspiring sight at the castle Edinburgh when the massed pipe&drum corps of those former fearsome Scots warriors rolled out on parade - truly an intimidating force - imagine a half-million encircling your city like a huge human anaconda!].
Did you notice the use of the number [seven] here? Seven priests. Seven trumpets. Seven days. Seven times on the seventh day. Lucky 7 isn’t [lucky] - but it is clearly one of God’s [favorite numbers]. Seven appears more times in Scripture than any other number (> 2). It has special prominence in the life of God’s people - and it has from the very beginning. Seven represents completeness. Gen. 2:1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
From the very beginning, God set apart the 7th day as a day to rest and focus on Him. We NEED this, time to rest and focus on the Lord, because we need HIM. Rest COMPLETES our lives. It’s good for our bodies AND our souls. We are wise-NOT-foolish to take time in the day, every day, to take a lap around Jericho, a [quiet time], to focus on the Lord, to commune with Him, remind ourselves that apart from Him there is nothing we can do. And one day a week we take seven laps! [and maybe even shout?] We focus our lives away from that which concerns us to that which concerns Him. It completes our week. It completes our life [Phil. 1:6 ...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.]
It should come as no surprise that a world desperate to remove God from the equation chafes at the idea of setting any time apart for God, much less an entire day? A lap around Jericho? Resting, focusing on God, trusting Him in all our battles? Unnecessary. A waste of time. Foolishness. 1Cor. 1:27 God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. The promise of foolishness. Thus our Epilogue [20,25,27]. The lesson of Jericho is that this battle - and all our battles - belong to the Lord. God’s got this. The promise of God.
Interesting tidbits on the number 7:
In the "book of symbols", Revelation, we see enumerated seven (e˚pta¿) stars, seven lampstands, seven angels, and seven churches, seven seal judgments, seven trumpet judgments, seven bowls of wrath, seven thunders...
I found one quote which suggests that there exists “…an ancient traditional respect for the number seven, the original basis of which is a matter of conjecture and debate”. Really? By skeptics, perhaps?
Week
A period of seven days, a unit of time artificially devised with no astronomical basis. The week’s origin is generally associated with the ancient Jews and the biblical account of the Creation, according to which God laboured for six days and rested on the seventh. Evidence indicates, however, that the Jews may have borrowed the idea of the week from Mesopotamia, for the Sumerians and the Babylonians divided the year into weeks of seven days each, one of which they designated a day of recreation. (from brittanica.com)
This author takes issue with these assertions. There is nothing "artificial" about a number taking its significance from a divine mandate (unless of course one would dispute the origin of said mandate). And even if there is some evidence to a claim that the number appears to have come into vogue via the Sumerians ("MAY have borrowed), the broader truth would be that both the Jewish and Sumerian/Babylonian peoples descended from Noah, who would have received the original 7-day week/pattern (and mandate to rest) from his dad, Lamech, who very likely knew Adam personally for 56 years. Simply because there may be older evidence of Sumerians using a 7-day week than there is extra-biblical evidence that the Jews also used a 7-day week, this in no way requires one to conclude that the Jews "borrowed" the idea from the Sumerians. Again, both peoples probably grew up with the idea coming from their shared ancestor:
Adam
|
Noah
/ \
Jews <— Sumerians, Babylonians
Is there not more credence to the following assertion?
Romans 1:22 Professing to be wise, THEY became fools.
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