Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 29 – Aug 1985
Jericho: The Victory Of Faith
Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Hebrews 11:30
Scripture Readings: Josh.5:13 – 6:7; 1Cor. 1:18-25
Songs: Ps. H. 327; 227:1,2,3; 467:4; 466:1,2,3; 466:4; 467:1,2,3
You all know the negro-spiritual of course:
“Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho…
and the walls came a-tummelin’ down!”
But that’s not right, is it?
That wasn’t Joshua, was it, who “fit the battle of Jericho”?
Who else but the Lord God could have done this thing? What could little people, even if they be ever so bold begin against walls so thick that houses like Rahab’s stood built right on top of them?
What can little people, like you and me, do against a world that wants to turn away from God, or that wants to keep Him OUT at all costs?
The cleverest statesmen England has are trying now already for months to talk the gun-toting guerrillas of Rhodesia into some peace agreement, but they’re not getting very far, are they? If the evil devil wants to keep the show for himself then what can little people like you and me do to change things; how can they root out corruption and selfishness; the service of the cruel false gods of money and lust and power, naked power?
How do the walls fall?
Yes let’s look at it: How did they?
Our text says it: BY FAITH!
And then you may think: Ooh! Faith!
So that’s something very spectacular, something awfully heroic!?
Well, really, after all the other examples of faith we found here in Hebrews 11 we should have learned better than that! Take now Abraham! Nice believer! When he got into a fix because some king wanted his beautiful wife he was willing to sacrifice that wife to save his own skin: “Say you’re only my sister, dear!”
Nothing heroic or spectacular about Abraham’s faith or Moses’ for that matter.
So what is that: by faith the walls of Jericho fell?
Well, let’s go and have a look there in that Israeli camp just on that West-bank of Jordan, near Gilgal.
He was a common Israeli man, some 40 years of age, his name was Paltiel, now camped with his wife and seven kids near Gilgal, all his life he has trekked through the desert, but now they’re in the Promised Land. Yes, but some 5 kilometres to the West, right on their path he can see the towering fortress of Jericho blocking their progress. Oh sure: not so long before there was the obstacle of the river Jordan, and God had told them to march right on and – like their fathers through the Red Sea He had led them through the swollen waters of that river: Paltiel only has to look back at it and see the cairn of stones rising up from the swirling waters right in the middle of that river: The cairn they built when the river bed was dry and they had marched on in awe past the priests with the shining ark of God’s covenant there in the middle of that Jordan.
But that was just a force of nature.
Jericho is different: not only are the walls thick, but also the people in it are fierce and desperate and cruel. How will they ever get in? An army of shepherds!
Oh sure, they had sent spies!
And these spies have come back to General Joshua telling how that woman, Rahab, who had hid them, had told how afraid they were in Jericho of Israel and its God!
How they all knew there of the victories God had given them!
Yet… the city had closed the gates and armed to the teeth it stood there: an obstacle impossible to take for Israel’s army of foot sloggers.
But then there is the command from General Joshua.
“Forward … March!”
March… but not INTO… just ROUND ABOUT Jericho!
No storm ladders, no siege artillery!
Just the glittering box with the law inside and the two angels on top: the Ark of God’s covenant.
Priests with trumpets before and after it, but don’t blow those trumpets… not just yet!
And soldiers in front and behind it.
But don’t do a thing, just walk around the city, out of range of the bows and arrows, without a word: not a peep out of them.
Now, strange! But all right then… here goes!
Early next morning: Forward… March!
Meanwhile the watchmen on Jericho’s walls have spotted the activity! WATCH IT! HERE THEY COME…!!
The Jericho troops run up the wall and brace themselves.
They shudder: and think of all the Kings that have fallen before this strange army…!
Right down from the might and power of Egypt now 40 years ago. What will we avail against this people and their God?
There comes that strange army with that weird glittering object carried in their midst, that object before which the waters of Jordan had split!
There they march… round the city… once!
And there – would you believe it? – they GO again… back home to their camp!
Phew! – that was close!
What happened? Did they get cold feet after one peep at their big, big city wall?
Meanwhile in Israel, Paltiel comes back in his family tent.
Mrs. Paltiel asks him: ‘What happened?’
‘Dad,’ ask the kids, ‘what did you do?’
Yeah, what must poor Paltiel say?
‘Really, we did… nothing. We walked around the place and came home again.’
Next day… same story.
Now the people in Jericho are getting a bit bolder. More of them are now standing on the walls and looking. Strange procession! Here and there one or two begin to laugh nervously. Some girls snigger loudly: Those Israeli men maybe got scared or something?
The laughter gets louder when that silent army turns away again… back to camp.
Back to take another holiday. Some way to take a city!
And thus it goes, a second, third, fourth and fifth day. Yes, even a sixth!
Now the walls of Jericho are black with people who come out day after day for this marvellous show! What looked like a threat at first now is beaut entertainment: Come let’s have a good laugh!
“Come on boys, here they are again!”
And you can bet your lunch that this wasn’t much fun for Paltiel and his mates any longer. To be laughed at and jeered at like that!
And then to hear the voice of doubt in your own heart!
Faith now has fully become folly!
A silly thing to do! Is that a way to capture cities?
Come on now!
I can see the temptation must have been strong for Paltiel and his mates to stay home for a while maybe stay home on SABBATH DAY (also one of those seven days!) then you could stay home and even back it up with a bible text!
To start something in faith is one thing.
But to keep going when you see no results, that is quite another!
And so the seventh day dawns.
Here they come again.
Now the fun on Jericho’s walls has become a riot of mirth.
Look at them down there!
Look how they slog on,
and now they KEEP slogging, like a nut with a broken thread,
round and round and round, but nothing happens… nothing!
And that’s what we had been so scared of! Scared of that silly lot!
It becomes mid-day, the sun shines hot on the city
and the weary marchers around it.
But at last when seven times they have marched around, Israel’s leader Joshua commands “HALT!”
And then through the hot afternoon there sounds his cry like a clarion call:
“Blow the trumpets!”
And you my people, shout!
Shout for the LORD NOW give you Jericho!
Then the seven trumpets blare and the people shout!
While they laugh on Jericho’s walls Israel’s tired and worn-out men shout!
Paltiel shouts, too!
And the sound of that shout rolls over the plain that separates them from the city
and bounces against those walls which tower massively above them!
And then something terrible happens.
Then those walls begin to totter and tear
as if made of reeds under the force of a cyclone.
Then as those who despised God cry in terror and deadly fear
the walls tumble down with the dull thunder of an earthquake
and the people of Israel, still shouting now in wild excitement,
march, nay STORM AND RUN, into the city to take it.
God did this.
And yet… in his word, he says it was done BY FAITH.
That means that if Israel, if little men like Paltiel,
would not have believed, would not have trusted God
and would not have obeyed therefore his strange command,
Jericho would have stood there, as it stood, till this day perhaps.
John says it in his first letter:
“This is the victory that overcomes the world: our FAITH!”
But the self-same John has stood on the hill Calvary
and there he heard the Son of God, our Lord Jesus,
cry HIS cry of victory: “IT IS FINISHED”
And so John knows as all the apostles teach indeed! – that it is not we who conquer the world. We cannot do that with our goodness, our braveness, we cannot do that with our programs, our justice, we cannot do that, not with all our resources.
It is the same John who has heard Jesus say it:
“Fear not, I have overcome the world!”
The Christian faith is no do-it-yourself religion.
We can neither get into heaven under our own steam,
nor can we change the world that way…
we cannot even change ourselves that way.
We are called to believe, to trust, that GOD can do it.
That in fact He has done it already!
Just like Paltiel and his mates walked after the ark of God’s covenant, we walk after the banner of the cross, and the cross tells us of God’s Son who all alone overcame the enemy, who all by himself made peace with God for little men – even little children – and therefore we dare give them the sign of it in the sacrament of baptism. Paul would say it, too, in Romans 8:
In Christ Jesus, who died for us and rose gain,
WE ARE MORE ΤHΑΝ CONQUERORS,
we’re better off than people who win a battle themselves.
We may shout because God did it!
God GAVE the victory!
More than conquerors, people like you and me,
little people often with a lot of doubt in the heart,
little people who cannot stand being laughed at,
but who do not dare call God a liar,
there you have it, that is faith: to say:
“HE MUST know best!
Darling, I am going around at city again;
it will get right when God’s time comes!
He got us through all that desert already,
and only just now He got us through that Jordan,
whom else can we trust than Him?”
Oh sure, we will find obstacles on our path, the devil will see to that!
The worst of these obstacles we carry around right inside us,
inside our own treacherous hearts.
To go God’s way, to row against the stream, we can only do that by faith
and faith says:
I KNOW WHO LORD IS,
I KNOW WHAT HE HAS DONE BEFORE,
how dare I NOT trust Him?
God did so much, whom else can I trust?
And then it becomes a matter of hanging on.
Hanging on to the Lord and what you know of Him.
That is faith, and then God makes it happen again.
In his good time – which may be after 7 days or 7 months or 7 years:
– then the walls come down and you can get on!
That’s how it happens in the personal life of God’s people,
also in the life of their nation, their church.
When we trust Him again,
instead of our own cleverness
or the power of our own institutions.
Not that the falling of the walls means:
now you got there and faith can stop!
Someone would steal from Jericho and endanger God’s people (Achan).
Much later someone would despise God
and build Jericho’s walls up again.
(But the prediction of God’s word would come true:
it would cost that man his eldest and youngest son.)
But, even all Israel, one day through disobedience and unbelief
would lose the very land of promise itself!
Yet, where people once again arise
to walk God’s way again in faith –
Faith that looks such foolishness, (the foolishness of the cross!)
there obstacles would fall away once more even when it would take time.
In faith small people…
‘Fit the battle of Jericho
and the walls came tummelin’ down”
As tumble down again they will.
Amen.