REFORMED CHURCH BELLVILLE SUNDAY 19 JULY 2015 EVENING SERVICE. (Scriptural quotes from the New KING JAMES Version unless indicated otherwise) Sing beforehand: Psalm 91: 1+2. I lift up mine eyes to the hills from where shall my help come? My help is from the LORD who made heaven and earth. Grace and peace to you from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Song of praise: Psalm 95:1+2+3. Prayer Doxology: Worship: Confession: Supplication (for pardon of sins): Thanksgiving: Intercession (for the need of the congregation, the church, authorities, sinful world and appeal to the promises of God) General supplication: Illumination of the Holy Spirit (necessary for the ministry of the Word): Psalm 8:1+2. Scripture reading: Hebrews 11:1-31: Scripture text: Hebrews 11:30-31. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace. Theme: By faith conquered and by faith saved. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, when by the preaching of the gospel the Holy Spirit instils faith in someone's heart, we may rest assured that this faith is true faith. It is a faith that accepts the Word of God as the whole truth. And it is a faith that trusts that not only other people, but you and I too, were redeemed from all our sinful debt by Jesus Christ's sacrifice. When you begin to believe, your faith is immature. The true faith that the Holy Spirit planted in your heart has to grow into a mature faith. The Lord disposes that sometimes in your life you find yourself in situations that can be dealt with only in faith. Mostly we consider these situations to be problems. In truth they are opportunities the Lord disposes to grow in your faith because it is only in faith that you can handle the situation. It means that you must put your trust completely in the Lord and His Word. The LORD disposed the walled city of Jericho to be the first city in the way of Israel after they had crossed the river Jordan. Joshua and the people have the LORD's promise that Canaan is to be 1
theirs and must conquer it. Now this fortified city lies before them the first of many they are to meet. How are they to take possession of the promised land? Inside Jericho the prostitute Rahab resided. The news of the Israelites invasion had reached the city. They had heard how the Lord had taken his people on dry land through the Red Sea. It was known that Israel had beaten two kings of the Amorites Sihon and Og who were on the other side of the Jordan and their cities utterly destroyed. Rahab knew that Jericho would be the next city to fall before the Israelites and that she and her family would then perish. How could their lives be saved? The LORD disposed that Joshua and the people of Israel be confronted with a big problem. And the LORD disposed that Rahab would see a great difficulty approaching her. The LORD disposed it so that all of them would learn how to live by faith. By faith the LORD conquers Israel's powerful enemy and by faith God saves a hopeless sinner. Brothers, sisters and children, at a previous occasion we said that faith is not a magic wand that makes your problems disappear like mist before the sun. True faith is the bond that binds us to the invisible God and He founded all of creation by speaking a word. Faith is the channel by which God bestows His blessing onto His children. When Joshua arrived at Jericho he did not have to think about how they would take the city. The LORD had made His plan of conquest known to Joshua. All the men of war were to walk around the city in silence followed by seven priests blowing on the ram's horns with the ark of the covenant behind them. For six days they were to go around the city once in this way. On the seventh day they must go around the city seven times. At Joshua's command the ram's horns were to be sounded and simultaneously all the people had to shout a great shout. The walls of Jerich would then fall down and the men had to enter the city. The salvation that the Lord accomplishes for His children does not keep them away from difficulties and strong enemies.. On the contrary, faith in God causes the enemies to step forward more powerfully. The pagans living in the promised land did not run away from the Israelites when Joshua led them through the river Jordan. Jericho remained steadfast and strong before them. And Israel knew that there would be opposition. Before you were redeemed by the Lord Jesus matters such as selfishness, pride, avarice, envy and jealousy did not trouble you. You accepted them as part of your personality and people accepted this. But the moment a sinner is reborn by the Holy Spirit, he realises how terrible these sins are. They lie like fortified cities with solid foundations in his heart. Each of us who truly believes in Christ, has such enemies within him that must be overcome. But the enemy is not only within us. People who used to be friends now become unfriendly. Your belief in Jesus Christ makes them feel uncomfortable in your presence because they know that you no longer approve of their cursing and dirty jokes. They who used to be your friends now avoid you because you no longer party with them. Some will laugh at you and belittle you. Faith in God makes the enemies within yourself and in other people reveal themselves. Joshua and Israel stood before this fortified city. They knew that a battle was to come because the Lord had promised them the land but it is occupied by pagans. If Joshua were to have sat down with the leaders of the people to plan the conquest of Jericho, there would have been various options. They could have risked a direct assault. Or they could besiege the city and wait for famine to force the inhabitants to surrender. Nobody would have thought of God's plan of conquest. Marching around the city for seven days and sounding the ram's horns does not look like an effective way of taking a city. Many Israelites would have wondered how this would work. The inhabitants of Jericho would laugh at them from the walls. 2
Why did the Lord choose such a strange way? Whatever the Lord does, He does to magnify Himself. From the start the Lord made it plain that it was He who delivered His people from Egypt. The Lord does everything from start to finish to deliver His people and to establish them in the land He has promised them. Here, on the threshold of the promised land, Israel must know that by their own power they cannot overcome the enemy. They can achieve victory only when they put their trust completely in the Lord. The greatest difficulty believers have when confronted with enmity is not that they are too weak, but that they think that they are strong enough to fight the battle by themselves. By nature man is arrogant. He wants to do it himself. If the Lord wants to lend a hand, that is fine, as long as in the end man receives some acknowledgement. With this way of capturing Jericho the Lord teaches the believers to forget their arrogance, to humble themselves and to acknowledge that whatever they do and achieve is possible only by the power of the Lord. In themselves they are too weak to fight the enemy. We should not think that only we, ordinary believers, want to fight the battle with our own strength only. Paul also struggled with this obstinacy. He prayed the Lord time and again to remove the thorn from his flesh. But the Lord assured him that His grace was sufficient for him. The Lord's power is revealed by his weakness. The victory over whatever enemy is the Lord's victory and not that of the believer. Persevering faith in the Lord will make strong enemies appear against you and persevering faith leads you to placing your trust in the Lord and His power alone. Hence a true persevering faith is coupled to obedience to the Word of God. Faith and obedience go hand in hand, just as unbelief and disobedience go together. Some Israelites could say, Yes, Joshua, that would be an interesting way of taking Jericho, but let us rather do it the conventional way that we know can work. A conventional assault on Jericho would have been unbelief and disobedience and a certain defeat for Israel. In order to obey the Lord in faith, one must know what is the will of the Lord. Joshua clearly heard the will of the Lord from the Lord Himself. March around the city for seven days, sound the ram's horns and let the people shout and the walls will fall down. We so often wish that the Lord would speak so directly to us to tell us what to do. Although the Lord can today still speak directly to us, He prefers to speak through His Son and it is so written in the Bible. Sometimes it is difficult to know how the Word of the Lord is to be applied in a given situation. One must therefore continuously pray the Holy Spirit for insight so that one can comprehend the will of the Lord. It is a pity that we believers often fail to obey the clear commands of the Lord set out in His Word. Then we have the audacity to wonder why the Lord does not bless us. Knowledge of the will of God should result in obedience to the will of the Lord with the true believer. Even if the will of the Lord runs counter to your human knowledge and experience, as in the case of Joshua, one must obey the Lord. That Christ is the Son of God who became man and who bore the just punishment of sinners in their stead, is incomprehensible to many people of the 21 st century. With all kinds of scientific arguments they try make Christ's death and resurrection appear foolish nonsense. But from the Word it is clear that one can be saved only by faith in Christ. But obedience in faith to the Lord does not mean that everything the Lord promised will immediately happen. The Lord could have made the walls of Jericho fall on the first day already. But it was His command that they were to march around the city for seven days. Believers must learn to wait on the Lord patiently in faith. This is not a despondent waiting of, Oh. When will the Lord do something?! When one in faith waits patiently on the Lord, you do so with the expectation that the Lord will act. 3
We do not know whether Israel knew what would happen if they did as the Lord had commanded them through Joshua. But when Joshua commanded them to shout they shouted, expecting something to happen. And it did the walls of Jericho fell down. The believer who perseveres in faith is prepared for the hostility of the enemy. Because this is a hostility directed at the Lord in particular, the true believer relies on the power of the Lord alone, because only He can overcome the enemy. Persevering faith is typified by enduring obedience to the Lord, even if the Lord's command conflicts with everything you know and have experienced on earth. In addition the true believer waits patiently until the Lord in His time does that in which He magnifies Himself. In the week that the men of war each day marched around Jericho, within the city some people anxiously awaited events. Rahab, the prostitute, her parents and brothers were in her house. They anxiously wondered what would happen, for she knew that Jericho would fall before the Israelites. Would she and her family be spared when the Lord gives the city into the hands of the Israelites? In this one verse in which Rahab is mentioned we see God's grace contrasted with the judgement that is to strike the rest of the inhabitants. Rahab is not really a person anyone of us would select as a candidate for God's mercy. Israel even less likely to do so she was a woman, a pagan and a prostitute. But here we see again how the Lord executes His eternal decree concerning people. The spies sent into Jericho by Joshua knew that they would find a safe place to hide in the house of a prostitute such as Rahab. Nobody would question the fact that men went into her house at night. Rahab would also receive them without questions asked. But in eternity the Lord took a decision concerning Rahab and by the spies He would execute His decision. The spies knew nothing of the Lord's decision. They simply went about their spying. God's command was that all that lived in Jericho was to be put to death. The Lord had cursed the city. People will now be quick to say, You see? Your God is cruel in wanting to destroy all that lived within Jericho! But is the Lord really cruel and unjust in His judgement? Remember that the Lord granted the Canaanites 400 years to complete their sins. It is not that in those 400 years they were ignorant of the Lord. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had lived there and testified of the Lord. Melchizedek, a priest of the Most High, was king in Salem. And during the past 40 years they had heard of the Lord's delivering His people from Egypt and leading them through the Red Sea. In the recent past they had heard of the victories the Lord had given His people across the Jordan. Seven days the Israelites had marched around Jericho. And what did the people of Jericho do? They did not repent but laughed at them although they trembled. Of all the people in Jericho it was only Rahab who, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and her knowledge of God's work over the past 40 years, repented. She confessed to the spies that the God of Israel is indeed God in heaven above and on earth beneath (Joshua 2:11) The inhabitants feared the Israelites but continued to mock. Rahab also was afraid, but her fear made her repent and put her trust in the God of heaven and earth for her deliverance. Although Rahab did not know all the Lord's commandments and did not know much about the Lord, she knew enough to rely on the Lord alone for her safety. Who Rahab was and her life before did not qualify her for the Lord's mercy. But it pleases God to save people like Rahab to magnify Himself. Although Rahab's faith was only in its infancy when she professed her faith to the spies, we know that it was a true justifying faith. The Holy Spirit tells us in James 2:25 that her faith in the Lord made her hide the spies although it endangered her life. She preferred to seek her refuge in God to be saved, rather than deviate from what the spies had told her. The Holy Spirit guided Rahab in her trust in the Lord so that her faith could grow into a persevering faith. 4
In this act of obedience in faith to put her trust in God and hide the spies, the Holy Spirit also guided her and made her part of God's people of the covenant. Subsequently she married the Israelite Salmon and had a son, Boaz. Boaz married Ruth and had a son, Obed. Obed was the father of Jesse, the father of David. And our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the progeny of David. See how the Lord magnifies Himself when He executes His eternal decree concerning someone. Without faith Rahab's life was doomed to perdition perdition in this life and eternally. By the faith that the Holy Spirit instilled in her and her obedient response her life was made fruitful fruitful in this life and filled with joy and happiness in the Lord in eternity. Beloved, when the Lord disposes in your and my life that we are faced with hostility as Joshua was before Jericho, it is an opportunity the Lord gives us to do in complete trust in Him what He teaches us. By faith we shall overcome that enemy in the strength of the Spirit because the Lord accomplishes the victory. When the Lord disposes that you clearly see and hear that the Lord's judgement is imminent, as Rahab saw it, there is only one way of being saved by faith. We know that the Lord will judge this world because of mankind's sin. He warns us time and again of this. The only way of being saved from God's just judgement is by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Amen! Closing prayer Closing song: Psalm 91: 7+8. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Rev. Coenraad Vrey Reformed Church Bellville Date: 19 July 2015. Translator: Willem de Haan 5