Study the Word

Pastor Thom Keller: What God says to Joshua is also for you. I will go ahead of you. He doesn't say I will go with you. We know God will go with him. But what's beautiful is God says, "I will go ahead of you." And you know, that's what God will do for you. He wants to go ahead of you and prepare the way.

The battle has already been won. He wants you to follow in after him as he goes. God wants us to be responsible for the execution and the obedience to that. He takes on the responsibility for the outcome.

Guest (Male): How reassuring to know that God will go before us and prepare the way. We need only to follow him in faith and obedience. We'll be looking at that on today's "Study the Word." Our teacher Thom Keller is taking us through the historical Old Testament book of Joshua.

But there's nothing dry about this history. It's the fall of the extremely wicked city of Jericho. We pick up in Joshua chapter six. The children of Israel, in obedience to God's word, are marching around the walls, and they're drawing a crowd. Let's join Pastor Thom.

Pastor Thom Keller: They're all out on the wall. Wouldn't you imagine it being like that? Six days of the same thing. Curiosity killed the cat; it's going to cause some problems there. And so they're all up on the wall. I think they're all up on that outer wall. By this time, they've got their coffee mugs up there, they're eating Little Debbies, and they're having a good old time.

"What's going on?" you know? "This is getting funny." Maybe they even laughed. Maybe they even started jeering at the Israelites. "This is all you guys can do? Walk around the city, blow your horn?" You can hear the jokes already. They walk around the city, and so that's what takes place. Imagine the drama building on this wall.

There are short blasts on the trumpets. On the seventh day, there's this one long blast. I wonder, as they marched around the city playing their trumpets those first six days, I wonder what they played. Do you think everybody was up on that wall? I think everybody in the city was up on that wall. I think they're all standing up there. And then suddenly, [trumpet sound effect plays].

Oh, I was hoping you'd jump like crazy. Chairs would fall over. That was disappointing. I'll tell you, you are way too calm. You are way too calm this morning. We should have walked around here seven times. I bet that would have made the difference.

So suddenly, these ram horns—on the seventh day, they walk around seven times, they blow the horn, and here's the key: Joshua said when you hear the long horn blow, everybody shout. Now you've got five million people around that wall. You've got the fighting men stopped. They've been silent for seven days. These guys up on the wall, their ears are tuned into every little sound because they haven't heard anything. And now five million people scream.

What do you think happens? Well, did they wave their arms? Did God say wave your arms? Did he say make an ugly face? Did he say start throwing rocks at them? Did he say take one step toward them and go, "Boo!" just to scare them? No, he just says shout.

So these people are in their nine square feet—because that's where I said they are—they're all standing in their nine square feet of space and they shout, they scream. All the people are up on the wall. They're up on top of this wall.

Now, have you ever seen a film—don't answer this because I don't want to trap you—did you ever see a film of men during war marching over a suspension bridge? You will never see a film of men walking over a suspension bridge during time of war because it'll take the bridge down. They have them break rank. Because of the stepping together in unison, it starts the bridge swaying, and it'll take the bridge down. That's the power of that many people walking across a bridge.

Now, what do you think happens when you put everybody in the city on top of this wall? This is proportional. You put everybody on top of the wall, and they're standing here looking out. They're all on that wall, and when the trumpet blows and the people scream, what do you think they do? Do you think they pull out another Little Debbie and start eating it? No, they run.

What do you think happens to a six-foot thick, thirty-foot high, five-foot thick, thirty-foot high wall when everybody on this side pushes off this way? The wall's going to go down. Now, I heard it said in what I read that what they surmise, think maybe happened, was it was an earthquake. Could have been. God could time an earthquake in the same way.

But there's something interesting that when they did the excavations of this, what they found, again Dr. Garstang said that they found that the walls fell straight down and out. Not down and in and out, straight down and out. Why would an earthquake cause the walls to fall out? Now, it may be an earthquake, but you know, don't you think God would have a lot of fun thinking of ways to do this?

And why? In chapter three, verse seven, it says this: "The Lord said to Joshua, 'Today I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all the Israelites.'" You know, the people seeing this, they would have seen the genius in the strategy. I mean, it's just pure genius. They didn't have to lift a finger to get into the wall.

When they typically took a city, they would take battering rams and hit them. If you were going to try to take a city, you wouldn't go and start pulling rubble down on you, would you? That's not too smart. So they would typically when cities were taken, the walls were pushed in. That's not how this happened.

Let's go on to verse 22. Then Joshua said to the two spies, "Keep your promise. Go to the prostitute's house and bring her out along with all of her family." Again, if you weren't here that Sunday, there was a prostitute by the name of Rahab who hid the spies, two spies that went in the city. And she asked them to promise because of her kindness to them and sparing them, saving their lives, if the spies would assure her that she and her family would be delivered. Her mother, her father, her brothers, her sisters—she had no husband. And the spies did.

And again we made the point of how God's concern is even to rescue one who has a heart for God. Then Joshua said to the two spies, "Keep your promise. Go to the prostitute's house and bring her out along with all her family." How did they know where her house was? That's right, a red cord, a red rope was hanging from her window.

They went in and brought out Rahab, her father, mother, brothers, and all of her other relatives who were with her. They moved her whole family to a safe place near the camp of Israel. Then the Israelites burned the city and everything in it. Only the things made from silver, gold, bronze, or iron were kept for the treasury of the Lord's house.

So Joshua—really God—so Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute and her relatives who were with her in the house because she had hidden the spies Joshua sent to Jericho. And she lives among the Israelites to this day. And we made this point before, but she's actually in the lineage of Christ.

Now it says that they were to destroy everything, right? They weren't to keep anything except the metals because they could be melted down to be used in the temple. In the fifties, British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon describes what she found. She said that the destruction of Jericho was complete.

She said the destruction walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire. God told them to burn the city, everything. She says the walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, household utensils. In most rooms, the fallen debris was heavily burned. In fact, another article that I read said that there were three feet of debris in the city, three feet that had fallen in as a result of that fire.

The excavations uncovered many large jars full of charred grain. And they said this is a very rare find because of its value; grain is normally plundered, it's taken. Garstang found that under the ashes and fallen walls, there were storehouses with an abundance of food: wheat, barley, dates, lentils, etc., all turned to charcoal by the intense heat of the fire. Untouched, uneaten. It's evidence that the conquerors did what God said: don't take anything, leave everything. They didn't take a thing. They went into the city, they conquered it, they killed the people, then they burned it, but they did not take any of the items before they left.

You know, we ask why was this city and its people destroyed. We think it was to make room for the Israelites, that God wanted them to have this land, and so they were in the way. It's kind of our first thinking maybe that they needed the room, and so God is clearing these people out. If you have your Bibles, you want to turn to Deuteronomy chapter nine, verse four. Again, this is God speaking to Moses before this ever takes place and he says, "After the Lord your God has done this for you, after you go in and take the land, don't say to yourselves, 'The Lord has given us this land because we are so righteous.'

No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he is doing it. It is not at all because you are such righteous, upright people that you are about to occupy the land." And again, even God is saying here they're not an obedient people. "The Lord your God will drive these nations out ahead of you only because of their wickedness and to fulfill the oath he had sworn to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I say it again, the Lord your God is not giving you this good land because you are righteous, for you are not. You are a stubborn people."

So the reason that God is doing this is really primarily because of the wickedness of the nations. The people of this area, the Canaanites, worshipped the god Baal. And his wife really would have been the goddess Ashtoreth. They found a temple—to give you a picture what this looked like—about 100 feet by 120 feet with pillars in it and an open sky, no roof on it. And that's where they would go to practice their worship of Baal.

And under the debris of this temple, this high place, Macalister, who is the excavator archaeologist, found a number of jars containing the remains of children who had been sacrificed to Baal. The whole area, in fact, proved to be a cemetery for newborn babies. They practiced child sacrifice at wholesale levels.

Another horrible practice which they practiced, they practiced was called foundation sacrifices. When a house was to be built, a child would be sacrificed and its body was built into the wall. And the idea was to bring good luck to the rest of the family. These are the practices that the people of this land were doing that God was sick of.

Baal was their principal god, Ashtoreth was Baal's wife and their principal goddess. She was a personification of the reproductive principle in nature. Temples of Baal and Ashtoreth were normally together. Priestesses were temple prostitutes, sodomites were male temple prostitutes. The worship of Baal, Ashtoreth, and the other Canaanite gods consisted in the most extravagant orgies. Their temples were the centers of vice. So is it any surprise why God wanted to destroy these people? And is it any surprise why they would have been a huge trap to the Israelites?

Going on to verse 26, chapter six, it says that at that time, Joshua invoked this curse. You can almost picture this as they watch the charred ruins of the city burning. Joshua says, "May the curse of God fall on anyone who tries to rebuild the city of Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn son, he will lay its foundations. At the cost of his youngest son, he will set up its gates."

So the Lord was with Joshua, and his name became famous throughout the land. About five or six hundred years later, we read this in 1 Kings 16. It's talking about Ahab the king. It says this: "Ahab, he later married Jezebel," and you know what a problem she was. "He first built a temple and an altar for Baal in Samaria." So the very god that we're talking about here, King Ahab builds a temple to her in Samaria.

Then he set up an Asherah pole. He did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than any other kings of Israel before him. It was during his reign that Hiel, a man from Bethel, rebuilt Jericho. This is five or six hundred years later, after Joshua prophesied that. It was during his reign that Hiel, a man from Bethel, rebuilt Jericho.

When he laid the foundations, his oldest son, Abiram, died. And when he finally completed it by setting up the gates, his youngest son, Segub, died. This all happened according to the message from the Lord concerning Jericho spoken by Joshua, the son of Nun. So exactly what God said would happen, happened.

There's a little astronomer who came to Christ as a result of studying the Bible. And a part of what he talks about are the prophecies that he looked into the Bible that came true hundreds of years after the prophecy was written. Specifically even that it named—the prophecies would name kings that would one day come to power under other lands. I mean, things that nobody could know but God. And again, this is one of them, that exactly what God said would happen, happened.

There's a little aside that's interesting. In verse 4:13, chapter 4:13, it tells us that Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had about 40,000 fighting men that led the troops. You with me? Remember when they came up to the promised land, those three tribes said, "Look, we like it on this side of the Jordan. We'd like to settle here. We don't want to go into the promised land. This is great for our sheep, we like the land, let us stay here."

Moses gets incensed. He says, "What cowards! You are going to make us go in and fight, take this land all by ourselves? What a dastardly thing to say!" And they say, "Oh no, no, no, we'll go in with you. We'll go in and fight, we'll go in and take the land, but then when we're done, we want to come back."

So as a result of that, they lead the troops. These three tribes are the first three tribes going in. And it says in chapter 4:13 that about 40,000 fighting men from those three tribes went in. What's interesting is in Numbers 26, it tells us that Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had 136,000 fighting men. Only 40 went in.

Now, I started thinking about that, and I thought why would that be? Do you know what the difference is? The reason is because back in Deuteronomy, God told Moses, "When you go in the fighting land, when you go in to fight, first ask your men this: Has anybody built a new house? Go home and enjoy it. Has anybody married? Go home and enjoy your wife. Has anybody engaged? Go home and be married. Is anyone afraid? Go home."

So you ever want to know how many men were engaged, built a new house, had a vineyard, and were afraid? About 100,000. Because 40,000 went in out of 137,000. It's interesting. There may be other reasons for that, but how would you get out of service when you were called one of the fighting men?

What I wanted to talk about, just kind of to bring this to real life for us, is this whole issue of striving instead of resting. You know, God called the children of Israel to come to that city and stand there and watch. They obeyed what he said. They came in obedience, they did everything that he said. This was not on par for the children of Israel to this point, but they did. And they didn't have to lift a finger. God had the victory. God struck terror in the hearts of the people from Jericho, this whole land. They didn't have to strive.

You know, there's a phrase that we're going to hear over and over when God speaks to Joshua. He says, "I will go ahead of you." He doesn't say "I will go with you." We know God will go with him. But what's beautiful is God says, "I will go ahead of you." And you know, that's what God will do for you. He wants to go ahead of you and prepare the way.

The battle has already been won. He wants you to follow in after him as he goes. God wants us to be responsible for the execution and the obedience to that. He takes on the responsibility for being responsible for the outcome. God wants to be responsible for the outcome of what you undertake.

He wants you to be faithful and me to be faithful in the execution, that what we do in our life we do in obedience to God. But he wants to take the responsibility for the outcome. It's the difference between resting in God or striving, striving in the flesh or resting in the spirit. How do you know if you're striving? It's very simple. If you're striving, you have anxiety. That's the test.

How do I know if I'm striving? Am I anxious about something? If you're anxious, what you're really saying is, "I'm responsible for the outcome and I'm anxious about it because I'm responsible." You're not responsible for the outcome. God's responsible for the outcome. You're responsible to be obedient to him and let him take care of the outcome. He wants to be responsible for the outcome.

You know, Sue was saying yesterday about the clothing outreach. She said everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, really, prior to it. And she said before the clothing outreach started, she said, "If this comes together, it'll be a miracle," because was it the night before? "It'll be a miracle because nothing happened right." I mean, this didn't get done, that one was wrong. She said, "I don't know, maybe nobody even shows up."

And it was probably the best clothing outreach—it was a very good clothing outreach, let's put it that way. But it's the same thing. And that's what Sue said. She said, "You know, this is up to God. And we did all our work, we did everything we could, and God brought about the results." And he gets the honor and the glory because of that.

See, that's one of the reasons he wants to do this is he doesn't want us to be confused as to who did what. Who's going to win the battles? Did you ever talk to somebody and they told you about something they did, and you could tell pretty quick that they felt they were the one that did it all? They were the reason that it went well, they were the success behind it.

See, God doesn't want us to be confused as to who's responsible for the victory. And if we look at him as being the one that's responsible for the outcome, it helps keep that clearer. Deuteronomy 8, Moses said this of God: "He did all this for you so that you would never say to yourself, 'I have achieved this wealth by my own strength and energy.' Remember the Lord your God; he is the one who gives you the power to be successful."

When we are successful, when something goes right, he does not want us to say, "I have achieved this on my own," not ever. Jesus said, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly." God wants us to have an abundant life. The actual word there means super-abundant. That God wants us to have the super-abundant life.

I remember I was in a Bible study years ago here in Lebanon and we read that where Jesus said that, and I said that it means super-abundant life, and a woman said, "When does that begin? When does that begin?" And you know, the way it begins really is as we walk obediently day after day, month after month. As we obey God, God brings that life into our life.

And please, when I say super-abundant life, please don't think I'm talking material possessions. That is not the abundant life. You want to know some of the most miserable people you're going to find? People that have all of that and none of God.

Why do people want material possessions? They want money. Money isn't a means to an end. Why do guys want to collect twenty-dollar bills so they can stuff them in their tomb when they die? Money has no utilitarian value of itself; it's just to buy stuff. So it isn't the money we want, it's the stuff we get from the money. And why do we want the stuff? Because we think the stuff will make us happy. Right?

So we make money, or we get money, or we steal money, we do something to get it to buy things to make us happy. Well, God wants to give us super-abundant life. He can skip the first two steps. What do you get—do you make a lot of money so you can buy a lot of things so you can be miserable? Is that why you do all that? No, because you think it's going to make you happy.

God can skip steps one and two. He can take you right to happy. You say, "Well, there's some things I'd like." Well, why? "Well, they'd make me happy." Forget them. He can make you happy, right?

And so if we rest in God, if we don't strive, he wants to give you the super-abundant life, a life of joy and fulfillment. Doesn't mean things won't go wrong. It doesn't mean you won't have problems; you will. It's been said that peace is not the absence of problems; it's the presence of Christ.

Are you ready to stop striving? Are there things that you're anxious about? Is there something you came here today with that you're anxious about? You're nervous about, you're worried about? Is there something you're striving over? You know, you don't need to do that.

God'll let you take the responsibility for that. He'll let you. And he'll let you be responsible for the outcome. And the reason is so that when the outcome comes out, you say, "You know what? There must be a better way than that." And he's saying when you say that, he says, "I hope they let me do this the next time."

Why not let this be the time? The issue that you're striving over, why not just rest in the sufficiency of God? Give it to him. Do all that you can. Be faithful. It doesn't mean to be passive. It means you continue to do what you can, be obedient, but don't get anxious over it.

Be anxious for nothing. Let God be responsible for the outcome and see what he can do. Because if you do that, on the other side of that, you will only ever say the same thing: "That was not me. That was God. I did not do that. I'm telling you, I did not do that. It was something I didn't do. I got right to the wall maybe and I stood there, but he did everything else."

Guest (Male): Be encouraged to cease from striving, looking to God to do what only he can do. This is "Study the Word" with Pastor Thom Keller of Calvary Chapel Lebanon. We're studying the book of Joshua right now. To hear this message again, simply go to ccleb.com and look under Resources. That's ccleb.com. If you'd rather have a CD copy, call 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862.

For those that give to the ministry this month, we'll say thanks by sending you Pastor Thom's entire study of Daniel. There are 22 messages in this helpful series and we've put them onto a flash drive. Get the entire study of Daniel for a gift of any amount by calling 717-507-7862 or write "Study the Word," 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046.

And if you live close by or will be visiting the area soon, drop on by. For our service times and more information about Calvary Chapel Lebanon, turn to ccleb.com. And download our free Android app; search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play Store. We'll get back into Joshua next time on "Study the Word" with Pastor Thom Keller. And may God richly bless you as you study the Word and apply it to your life.