CONFRONTING OUR JERICHO

Transcription

1 Annual Sermons: Vol. 2 Sermon 16 Bob Marcaurelle: 1988 Joshua 5:12-15 CONFRONTING OUR JERICHO When Israel crossed the Jordan into Canaan at Gilgal there was no hope of retreat. The manna ceased, or as one man put it, the welfare state was over. Their only food and livelihood lay before them in the land of Canaan with its warriors and walled cities. Their choice was simple - they would either conquer the land or die in Gilgal of starvation. Between them and Canaan stood a big obstacle. It was the ancient city of Jericho with its walls of stone, eleven feet high, followed by a thirty-five degree incline reaching up to the main wall, thirty-five feet above the first wall. Jericho had to be taken because it could serve as a base of operations against Israel from the rear once they entered the land. The only way they could conquer Jericho, from a human point of view, was to starve the people into submission, but having no food, they would starve first. In other words, Jericho HAD to be taken, but it looked as through it COULD NOT be taken. We all come up against our Jerichos in the will of God. The impregnable fortresses of entrenched evil stand between us and the blessings God wants us to have. This is true of the individual CHRISTIAN and of the institutional CHURCH. It is true of us as CHRISTIANS. There are three levels of Christian living demonstrated by the Israelites at this era of history. There is the level of the WILDERNESS, the carnal level, the defeat level, the weary level, the level where self rules and failure reigns. Then there is the level of CANAAN, seen later in Joshua and Israel walked through the land, claiming God s blessings and conquering God s enemies. This is the spiritual level, the victory level, the joy and praise level, the level where the Spirit of God rules and growth comes. For many of us there is also the level of GILGAL. We are weary of the wilderness of defeat and hungry for the Canaan of growth. A dog on a close-line doesn t know he is bound until he sees another dog running free. We have seen so many Christians 1

2 set free from carnality and defeat and we want it. We must have it or die. We cannot go back. We will not go back. Our deepest cry is, My heart has no desire to stay / Where doubts arise and fears dismay / Tho some may dwell where these abound My prayer, my aim is higher ground / I want to live above the world/ Tho Satan s darts at me are hurled / For faith has caught the joyful sound/ The song of saints on higher ground Between us and this more abundant life stands Jericho. The last place Satan wants a child of God or a church to live in Canaan. He wants to drive us back into the wilderness of defeat and so he places Jericho in our face. For the CHRISTIAN, Jericho is SELF ENTRENCHED IN THE SOUL. This expresses itself in thousands of ways - the love of ease, indifference, immorality, lack of discipline, disobedience - but all point to one thing, Self is on the throne. This has thousands of dire consequences - worry, inability to pray, fruitlessness, boredom, anger, stress - but all say one thing, I am a defeated Christian. Our biggest Jericho is self love which causes us to refuse to let Jesus Christ have absolute control of our lives. When D. L. Moody said, I have more trouble with D. L. Moody then any man I know, and Paul said, I do the things I hate, (Rom. 7) we all know how powerful this Jericho is. All of this effects the church, because carnal members will produce a carnal church. But the church, with its individual Jerichos in its member s hearts, also faces a huge Jericho without. As a church we want to be powerful. We want to get out of the wilderness of monotony and into Canaan where we do God s work in God s power. But between us and this stands the devil s Jericho. Jericho, for God s church, is SIN ENTRENCHED IN SOCIETY. Before us stand such Jerichos as the indifference of the majority, false systems of belief, the lure of pleasure and prosperity, and the strongholds of crime, violence, pornography, immorality and idolotry. Jericho, the very heart of Canaanite depravity, stood in the midst of a beautiful valley as evils stand today as ugly sores on the face of God s beautiful creation. In the light of impossible odds and impenetrable fortresses I have the GOOD NEWS that Jericho fell and Canaan was taken. We can go forward as Israel, under God, went forward, and we can 2

3 see this same victory. We as children of God and as a church, can see self and sin go down to defeat. Our text shows us how! I. AN IRREVOCABLE COMMITMENT (5:12) The first step is to get in Gilgal. You must get weary of wilderness Christianity and hungry for Canaan Christianity. The Bible says, Blessed are those who HUNGER AND THIRST for righteousness, for they shall be filled (Matt. 5:6). The way up is down! As a church we must get sick of playing church; of being busy doing nothing and most of all of seeing so few people saved. As children of God we must get sick and tired of being sick and tired; of working without results; of committing the same old sins; of having no joy or power and most of all of being little better then the world. The first step to victory in any realm is a burning desire to win. The legendary Knute Rockne said he did not want good losers playing for him. Show me a good loser, he said, and I ll show you a loser. Give me eleven lousy losers and I ll give you a national championship. This burning desire to win was an act of God. The Bible says God stopped the Manna. He left them high and dry. Vance Havner said is the Prodigal had had a bun and a bowl of peas he would have stayed at the hog pen. Hunger drove him home! God brought Israel to the point of desperation and only God can bring us to the point of disgust, desperation and decision. Are you at your wit s end? Praise God! That is your Gilgal! Let it drive you to an irrevocable decision to get out of life the life God wants you to have. If you do, you will find... II. AN IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE (5:13A) At the commitment you encounter the challenge. Beyond the Jordan Joshua looked up and saw Jericho. As a military man he knew there was no way to capture the city. God had given him an impossible assignment. He has done the same with us. There is no way we can find victory. We can study manuals on way, we can send out our troops, we can lay ladders on the walls, but we will never take the city. No amount of wisdom or work will do the job! 3

4 Our biggest mistake, born of pride, is that we underestimate the power of the devil and think we are smart enough and strong enough to tackle him. Paul warns us that our fight is not with flesh and blood but with spiritual agents from the headquarters of hell (Eph. 6:12, Phillips). He says, The weapons we use in our fight are not the world s weapons, but God s powerful weapons, which we use to destroy strongholds (2 Cor. 10:4, TEV). Alan Redpath says the greatest difficulty in the Christian life is to get to the place where one is prepared to admit that the whole thing is too big for him, and that the power of the enemy is too great for him, and if his Jericho is to fall, then, somehow, God must bring it about. He then adds these strange, harsh words, God expects nothing more from us than failure. Indoctrinated as I am on the American gospel of self-sufficiency and hard work, my whole being recoils against this, but after years of fruitless fishing and chopping trees with ax handles, I see he is right. God s work must be done by God through us. Whether it is rearing children, preparing a sermon or lesson, pastoring a church, praying, reading our Bibles, or leading someone to Christ, the way to do it is to humble ourselves and realize it can t be done BY US! We have an impossible challenge for us, but praise God, we also have... III. AN INVINCIBLE COMMANDER (5:13-15) It seems that Joshua, overwhelmed by the task, got off to himself and as he looked up that night, he saw more than the faroff lights of Jericho. He, like Moses, saw the Lord. He saw that he was not alone. He saw that victory did not lay in plans but in a Person. In this marvelous encounter we see first The Warrior - This warrior leader with the drawn sword is probably Jesus Christ, appearing in His Old Testament role as the Angel of the Lord. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush and now He appears to Joshua. The Lord always fits the revelation to the need and since Joshua needed a military victory, the Lord appeared as the captain of heaven s armies. One angel had brought Egypt down, what could an army of angels do to Jericho? When we fight in the Lord s battles the powers of all 4

5 heaven are at our disposal. What you and I need is to SEE GOD IN OUR SITUATION. We spend far too much time looking at Jericho. We can look at our hard, stubborn, weak hearts until all hope of change vanishes. We can look at our sin saturated society until all we want to do is bolt our doors and let the world go to hell. We can look at corrupt politics, at runaway inflation, at Communism gobbling up one nation after another, until we are filled with utter despair. Stop looking at the waves and see Him who rules the waves. Look to the Captain of heaven s armies who never saw a problem He couldn t solve, a burden He couldn t lift or a war He couldn t win. I agree with Spurgeon that the length of this long, bitter battle with evil will only bring more glory to God when He wins. The stronger the Jericho, the greater the victory. God, says Spurgeon, is writing a great poem of human history, the subject is the victory of truth and the destruction of Anti-Christ. This great way between good and evil will either lead you to moan, Alas! or should Alleluia! In Joshua seven, when Ai defeated Israel, Joshua threw in the towel and said, Alas, O Lord God, why have you brought these people over Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would to God we had been content to dwell on the other side of the Jordan (7:7). Have you ever been there? This could be the Alas! of a defeated Christian or a defeated church. We need to turn to the last Book of the Bible and see the outcome of the war. In chapter eighteen, this evil world system, called Harlot Babylon, falls, and the cry of God s people is not Alas!, but Hallelujah! For the Lord of God, the Almighty, reigns. (Rev. 19:5). Christianity was no match for the Roman Empire but in three hundred years the Roman Empire collapsed and Christianity marched on - God was in the situation. Martin Luther was no match for Roman Catholicism, but he broke her stranglehold and gave the world Protestant Christianity - God was in the situation. So no matter what we face, we need to put God in the situation by being on His side, and shout Alleluia! now, anticipating what He is going to do with Jericho. 5

6 2. The Worship - How do we get hold of this God, how do we plus our weakness into His power? The text shows us. It is through prayer. Joshua, encouraged by the vision, was ready to fight. He said, What does my Lord bid his servant? (14) The strange answer was, Take your shoes off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy (15). In other words, I want you to worship Me. I want you to pray. God does not want us to WORK nearly as much as He wants us to WORSHIP. The power of Christian work is found on our knees. The disciples were hand picked and well trained but before then could turn the world upside down they had to tarry in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high (Lk. 24:49), and they did this by devoting themselves to prayer (Acts 1:14). Paul was an intellectual giant and after his conversion tried to preach in Damascus, but God sent him away to pray in the desert (Gal. 1:17-18). Pastors have many duties, but when the load became too heavy for the Apostles, they told the church, We must give ourselves to prayer (Acts 6). Paul, describing our warfare with Satan, listed many pieces of armor, and closed with this, Pray at all times in the Spirit (Eph. 6:18). A church has much to do but Paul said, First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made... (1 Tim. 2:1). When we get involved in God s battle with evil, He wants to get us busy praying. Here is where we fail and why we fail. We find time for everything but earnest prayer. For every one hundred people who will burn themselves out working for God, only one will burn himself out worshiping God. Prayer is strength enough to do it. Prayer blesses God, bothers Satan, bolsters us and wins the victory because it throws the battle into the hands of the invincible Commander. The Jericho walls went down because Joshua went down - prayer won the victory. 6