The Gospel Goes On
Text – 1 Kings 16:29-34
Reading: Joshua 6
Suggested Songs BOW 118:1,2,4; 454:1,6,7,8; 157:1,2,5,6, Ps Hy 353; BOW 72b:1&4.
(The writer acknowledges MB Vant Veer’s book My God Is Yahweh as being particularly helpful in the preparation of this sermon.)
In this part of the Bible we go back about 2,900 years, or about 900 years before Christ when Ahab became king over Israel. Ahab was the son of Omri a former commander of the Israelite army who deposed and killed the Israelite king Zimri.
Before that Zimri had murdered King Baasha who himself became king by murdering Nadab son of Jeroboam first king of the Northern part of the now divided kingdom of Israel.
Furthermore with each of these northern kings from Jeroboam onwards we find without exception that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord by promoting idolatry throughout the land. When Ahab, son of Omri became king, we find that he did even more evil than his predecessors. Ahab considered it trivial to commit the sins of the former ungodly kings and then sinned further by marrying Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal, priest-king of Tyre and Sidon. This was a political arrangement through which Ahab was able to create an alliance between Israel and Phoenicia.
Instead of trusting the Lord for protection and victory over his enemies he trusted in his own arrangements and his political savvy. Ahab even built a Baal temple in Samaria for his wife Jezebel in which they both worshipped Baal, and so further provoking the Lord to anger.
So, at this point in salvation history we find Israel in a severe state of apostasy. (Apostasy means to abandon one’s religion or faith.) Idol worship was entrenched and the king was leading the way.
However,… it is still salvation history!
Though there was gross sin and turning away from God by the majority in Israel, the Lord was still working out his plan of salvation.
Though Israel failed to be a light to the nations at that point, a remnant of Israel would be preserved and become the people from whom the Saviour of the world would come. God’s word of grace always finds a pathway through apostasy.
Our text tells us how that that happened. Well look at it in three parts.
First we see a demolition site as a gift of God’s grace
Secondly an attempt to erase God’s grace
Thirdly, the victory of grace.
Verse 34 says, “In Ahab’s time Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his first-born Abiram and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub in accordance with the word of the Lord spoken by Joshua son of Nun.”
That takes us back to the days when the Israelites were about to enter the new land God gave them after liberating them from slavery in Egypt.
At the time that land was not vacant, but occupied by Canaanites who had several fortified cities, one of them being Jericho. As the Israelite army approached Jericho they must have wondered how they could possibly defeat it since it was so well fortified. Joshua 6 tells us there was no need at all for any of their engineering skill or military equipment because God was with them. He would give the city of Jericho into their hands. All they needed to do was march around the city, blow their trumpets and down came the walls of Jericho.
That’s exactly what happened. Jericho was a remarkable gift of God’s grace to His people.
Ever since then the pile of rubble which was once a mighty city remained untouched and was for the Israelites a powerful reminder of God’s justice and God’s grace.
Justice because the Canaanites were a terribly corrupt people and Jericho’s ruins spoke of God’s judgment against their sin including the sins of homosexuality, (consider Sodom and Gomorrah), child sacrifice and idolatry. The ruins of Jericho also spoke of God’s holy laughter against man’s supposed strength for which unregenerate man is inclined to praise himself to the skies. No doubt the Canaanites were proud of what they thought were impregnable fortresses. But from the days of Joshua onwards those weathered ruins which were the walls of Jericho told passers by of God’s disdain of those who love to worship themselves.
God’s justice was seen in the ruins of Jericho.
They also spoke of God’s grace to his people who were given victory over the city as a gracious gift from God.
Every time an Israelite walked past the pile of rubble which was once Jericho, he would remember what the Lord had done. He would remember that it was the Lord who broke down the gates and smashed the walls. It was by faith alone that the Israelites received that gift, not through their engineering skill or military might.
So, although a demolition site may seem an odd thing to remember God’s grace by, this one at least was to the Israelites, to those who were being saved the power of God unto salvation.
In fact, in the pile of rubble that once was Jericho we find a truth for all times, a truth for today, and that is that God’s people receive all things from God by grace and through faith.
Ephesians 2:8&9 reminds us of that where it says…. for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, it is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God so that no-one can boast. The greatest gift of grace that we have is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Like that pile of rubble that was once Jericho, there are those who despise the cross as foolishness but to us who are being saved it is the power of God unto salvation.
For on the cross our greatest enemy, Satan was defeated, his power of accusation against us no more.
On the cross our sin which otherwise would condemn us, was paid for.
Christ became sin for us on the cross so that we might receive His righteousness.
Therefore, like that pile of rubble on the plain of Jericho, the cross on which Christ was crucified is to us God’s word of grace which we receive through faith.
However, and this is the second point, the faithless can’t see God’s grace and even try to erase God’s grace and replace it with their own wisdom and their own strength. Ahab was one of those. With the help of Hiel he erased the evidence of God’s grace by rebuilding the walls of Jericho.
Like his late father Omri, Ahab was concerned about strengthening his country against the possibility of enemy attack. Omri had already built Samaria as a fortress. His successor Ahab reasoned that the border cities as well as the capital of his country needed to be fortified and so Jericho which was a border city with no walls drew his attention. If there was to be an attack on Israel by another nation, Ahab feared that the wall-less city of Jericho would fall all too easily. So he ordered the walls to be rebuilt and commissioned Hiel to draw up the plans and start the work.
This decision of Ahab tells us how faithless he had become. All previous kings left the ruins as they were, remembering Joshua’s warning “cursed before the Lord is the man who undertakes to rebuild this city.” Because of the hardening of unbelief Ahab ignored that warning. He had become blind to the message which lay in those ruins. He no longer saw the grace of God in them, that it was God who had given Israel all her victories. Instead he put all of his trust in his own strength, his army, his weapons and his fortified cities, his queen Jezebel’s advice and her idols.
Thus with the help of this man Hiel, Ahab rebuilt the walls of Jericho thus erasing the evidence of God’s grace to all who passed by. The rubble was seen no more, the evidence of God’s power and grace was covered up. After Jericho was rebuilt people would pass by and admire power of Ahab and the expertise of Hiel the self appointed protectors and preservers of Israel. Man once again praising himself to the skies finding glory in his own skill and strength rather than glorifying God.
It reminds us of the constant tension between sin and grace where sinful man wants to be his own god and master and control his own destiny.
And so in Genesis 3 Satan, who hates God persuades Eve to do for herself when he says to her, “you will be like God”.
In Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel was another attempt to by men to make a name for themselves.
In Christ’s day it was seen among the religious in Herod’s magnificent temple which housed a corrupt religion.
In Revelation this is described as Babylon which symbolizes a city opposed to God.
All of these are examples of man under Satan’s power and dominion, who thinks he has no need of God who wants to glorify Himself and who wants to erase all evidence of God’s power and grace.
In our own time the theory of evolution is one such attempt. For years now it has been taught in classrooms at every level of education in a futile attempt to totally erase not just grace but the very existence of God out of the classroom.
Then there are those who say; “modern medicine keeps us healthy, our salaries provide us with every material comfort. The secular psychologists now say there is no such thing as sin and they and their sugar coated words have become our comfort in life and in death. Meanwhile the state takes care of everything else. Who needs God, who needs grace?”
And then there are the Herod’s temple of today; cathedrals which house liberal Christians who deny the inspiration of Scripture, the virgin birth and divinity of Christ along with His resurrection. Liberal theology robs the word of God of its power and makes null and void Christ’s death on the cross as atonement for our sins.
Oh yes, the spirit of Ahab is alive and well today too.
However just as liberal churches are dying churches, no sooner does man built a monument to himself, God knocks it down.
The kingdom of God always triumphs over evil. Grace will have the victory in the end.
Although Ahab and Hiel tried to bury the gospel under the solid new walls of Jericho, it was Hiel’s fate that a pathway for the gospel would be made by his own actions. The text says “he laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son.” In the death of Hiel’s sons we find the fulfillment of the curse given through Joshua to anyone who undertook to cover up the grace of God by rebuilding Jericho’s ruins
As Hiel foolishly ignored the curse and began building the new walls, God’s judgment hit him exactly as Joshua predicted. He lost his sons, and lost his place among God’s covenant people.
Why? because that pile of rubble was the gospel for the Israelites! It spoke of God’s deliverance. To deny or cover up the gospel is a sin deserving of judgment! Hiel suffered that judgment through the loss of his sons.
Similarly for us the cross of Christ is God’s deliverance for us!
To deny that and turn one’s back on that, to try and cover it up or bury it under human wisdom and achievements is equally deserving of God’s judgment. For…
Hebrews 10: 29 says, “how much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant.”
In the death of Hiel’s sons we see God’s judgment against those who know of God’s grace, but reject it and attempt to cover it up so others can’t see it.
But can it be covered up and buried? Could Satan get Job to deny his faith? Could the unbelieving Jews snuff out the church in its infancy? In Acts 5 we see that Gamaliel was proved right when he said “if (the church) is of God you will not be able to stop (it)”. Could a corrupt church hierarchy in the 16th century prevent the reformation of the church and the great era of world missions that followed?
Can evolution, liberalism, humanism or any other ‘ism’ hinder the flow of salvation history?
All Ahab and Hiel acheived in their efforts to cover the gospel was to make it speak even louder than before!
The curse that Joshua pronounced and that Hiel felt in the death of his sons simply confirmed the word of God down to the very last letter!
This reassures us that neither Ahab nor the most determined opposition around can ever do anything but confirm the powerful living Word of God!
The message that was written above the rebuilt city of Jericho from Ahab’s time on was, cursed is the one who lives by his own strength. But blessed is the one who lives by faith who whose God is Yahweh!
Well, where to we see that blessing today? We see it right here brothers and sisters, in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and churches everywhere the world over. We see it wherever the gospel of our Lord Jesus is preached and wherever the sacraments are faithfully administered and discipline is faithfully exercised.
We see it around the Lord’s table among those who are not trusting in their own strength to be saved but who put their trust in God alone and in the sacrifice of Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of sins alone.
Amen.