What Do You See?
Notes
Transcript
1 Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in.
2 The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors.
What Do You See?
What Do You See?
Ask: What do you see?
The Lord said to Joshua, “See?”
What do you see?
When you look at your circumstance in life, what do you see?
When you remember yesterday, what do you see?
When you think about tomorrow, what do you see?
Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.
-Khalil Gibran
What do you see?
Are you a glass half empty person or a glass half full person?
Or are you the person who is still mad they didn’t pick the glass you wanted, so you haven’t even noticed it has anything in it at all?
What do you see?
I can always pick up on a person’s perspective very quickly based on how they talk…
It is amazing how two people can go through the same experience and come out with polar opposite perspectives on what happened…
One will come out talking about all the good things that happened, while the other will come out only focused on the things that went wrong.
It’s not that they are blind to the other things, but they choose to highlight one side or the other.
Two people can go into the same restaurant, and one comes out saying, “That was so good! I enjoyed the appetizer we split, and I’m so glad they sat us by the window so we could see the city lights after dark....
The other person says, “Yea, well I just wish that server had refilled my glass more. They were so slow. And I thought the dessert was way too sweet, they could’ve cut that sugar in half. And those cars driving by the window kept shining their lights right at us, I could’ve had a seizure if I were epileptic. They should think about that before they set people.
You send the same two people into a church service and it’s two different perspectives:
The one person says, “Oh it was a wonderful service! Two people answered the altar call, and I really felt God doing something in their lives!”
The other person says, “Well I wish they would’ve sang that song I like. I didn’t really like any of the ones they sang today, and why didn’t more people answer the altar call? If God were to really move, they would probably miss it anyway.
What do you see?
Everywhere you go, do you always walk away remembering what was wrong with the experience, or do you highlight the positive things?
What do you see?
Here’s what I now about Joshua… He was one of those people who saw the positive side of things…
I know this because he was one of the 12 spies that had crossed the Jordan to spy out the land 40 years earlier.
They all went out together. They all saw the same lands. They came back with fruit from the land.
Same experience.
2 different perspectives.
10 of the spies came back with a negative report… “Oh it’s bad. We should’ve stayed in Egypt, we were slaves there, but at least we were alive. They worked us to the bone, but at least we could eat. In this land, there are fortified cities, and mighty people, and even giants! We were like grasshoppers in our own sight and surely in theirs as well...”
What do you see?
Joshua and Caleb came back ready to take it! We can surely take the land, God has delivered them unto us, let us go and take what was promised to us!
Two different perspectives… What do you see?
Notice the words of the negative spies… We were like grasshoppers… in our own sight…
What do you see? How do you see your circumstances? How do you see yourself? How do you see God?
Back to the scripture
In my mind’s eye the conversation that begins between God and Joshua in the beginning of this chapter looks like this:
Get a volunteer, take them with you up onto the stage, point as if the city is at the back of the room and say, “See?” “I have given you the city. And the king, and the warriors.” See?
Here’s the thing about this passage of scripture. We are not given much information about Joshua’s response in that moment.
God starts giving him instructions immediately.
I don’t know if Joshua ever saw what God was pointing out, like Elisha’s servant.
The servant woke up one morning and when he looked out there was an army surrounding them. He ran to Elisha and said, “Master, master, what shall we do? The army has surrounded us!”
Elisha’s response was, there are more for us than against us. Elisha was seeing what the servant could not see.
Elisha had one perspective, the servant had the other.
Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes be opened and when the servant looked out again the bible says in 2 Kings 6, he saw horses and chariots of fire all around the army.
I don’t know if Joshua saw like Elisha’s servant, what I do know is he was obedient to what he heard…
God begins giving him instructions that would take them a week to fulfill and Joshua immediately jumps into action…
I don’t know if he saw what God was showing him, but he was obedient to what God was telling him.
He may not have seen it with his physical eyes, but he had perspective on the outcome…
I may not see it yet, but I have faith…
Faith… Faith… Faith is the substance… I can’t see it yet, but it’s got substance because I have faith…
You may not see it, but there substance… It’s the substance of things hoped for…
The evidence… You’re looking to see it but I’ve got evidence… My evidence is my faith… Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen…
I don’t see it, but I’ve got evidence… There’s evidence of it all around me. There’s evidence in this room…
I’ve got the evidence… of things not seen.
What do you see?
1 Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in.
There Joshua stands facing a city with walls so high you can’t see over them, so thick they race chariots on top.
It was the impenetrable city… When they would shut themselves up, they planned on waiting you out. You couldn’t break in, the walls were too strong. You couldn’t climb over, the walls were too high…
They would shut themselves up and you would have no choice but to move on…
Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in....
Here Joshua stand before the impenetrable city… There is no element of surprise, they already know they are there. The defenses are already set.
In the mind of those who relied on the walls, it is only a matter of time before these people move on, because we have tightly shut the city.
And the Lord said to Joshua… See?
2 The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors.
What situation are you looking at that seems impossible to conquer? It seems impenetrable. The walls are too intimidating, the warriors are too fierce, it is too scary, it will cost too much, it is impossible!
See?
3 “You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days.
4 “Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.
5 “It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.”
6 So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the Lord.”
7 Then he said to the people, “Go forward, and march around the city, and let the armed men go on before the ark of the Lord.”
8 And it was so, that when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the Lord went forward and blew the trumpets; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them.
9 The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came after the ark, while they continued to blow the trumpets.
10 But Joshua commanded the people, saying, “You shall not shout nor let your voice be heard nor let a word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I tell you, ‘Shout!’ Then you shall shout!”
So the ark is moving, the trumpets are sounding in short blasts, but Joshua says, don’t say a word until it’s time to shout…
I’m just wondering if Joshua is thinking back to the last time they were almost in this same position and he remembers what the other ten spies said they saw…
Now they have the opportunity to talk again about what they are seeing, but they aren’t seeing what God showed Joshua…
I can imagine if Joshua had allowed them to talk what the conversations would have been like.... I imagine they would sound much like they had for the last 40 years…
Were there not enough graves in Egypt that they brought us out here to die?
Was the manna not good enough? I know we complained about it, but it’s better than walking around this stupid city for no good reason....
What is he expecting to happen anyway? We are walking around this city and not a stone is out of place. Not even a pebble has fallen yet.
How are we going to get through this? There’s no way this is going to work. Maybe Joshua has lost it. You know he is getting older. Him and Caleb have been around the block a time too many, now they are driving us in circles…
I don’t see what he’s even looking at…
I don’t see why we are doing this…
I don’t see… I don’t see…
What do you see?
So Joshua tells them, don’t speak a word until it’s time to shout, then you shall shout…
Walk around blowing the ram’s horn as if doing a Jericho march while reading through the scripture:
11 So he had the ark of the Lord taken around the city, circling it once; then they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp.
Remember, he told them not to speak a word until it was time to shout… So it’s a quiet night at camp this night… and the next night… and the next night… until the seventh day…
15 Then on the seventh day they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times; only on that day they marched around the city seven times.
16 At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city.
Blow the ram’s horn and shout…
20 So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city.
What do you see?
See, I think Joshua could see victory before they started. I think Joshua had a vision for what he wanted. I think Joshua had a dream for the future..
Had Joshua not seen victory, they never would have gotten the victory.
What do you see?
What do you see?
Here’s the key to the whole thing…
I don’t think Joshua’s victory happened for him in the shout…
I think the victory manifested for the people in the shout, but Joshua had a different perspective.
I think Joshua had victory before the shout… I think Joshua had victory before the word from God, telling him, “See? I have given you the city.”
I think the victory came for Joshua a chapter earlier…
In fact, they put three verses at the end of chapter five that I think should have been the beginning of chapter six… Because I don’t think you get the whole story just in the shout…
If you try to just live in the shout, what you end up with is ritual with no power. It’s not just the shout.
In fact, reading in chapter six is kind of confusing because all of a sudden God is talking to Joshua about Jericho, but it’s like tuning in 15 minutes after the show has started.
Look at the last three verses of Joshua 5.
13 Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?”
14 He said, “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?”
15 The captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Joshua didn’t just get a word out of the blue sky from God, He got a word from God because he had an encounter with God.
The captain of the Lord’s host appeared to him… I think this is the moment Joshua saw the victory!
When the Holy One is standing with His sword drawn… He’s ready for battle…
The captain of the Lord’s host is ready to go to battle for you…
This is the place where Joshua first saw victory… It wasn’t on the battle field… It wasn’t when he gave instruction to the people, it was in the presence of the Holy One, the captain of the Lord’s hosts, the one with a name above every other name…
Without Him, there is no victory… Without an encounter with His presence, there is no vision…
He is the giver of vision. He is the weaver of dreams. He is the one who calls those things that are not as though they were…
You will not see it on your own… In order for you to see, you must start in His presence!
Victory doesn’t come as an after thought. You’ve got to get in the presence of the one who already holds victory in his nail scarred hand…
You’ve got to get in a place where he says, take off your shoes because the very place you’re standing is Holy Ground…
What do you see?
What do you see?
What you see will be directly affected by the time you spend with the all seeing one.
If you want to see victory, spend time with the victorious one.
His name is Jesus! He’s the rock of ages, the firm foundation, the ancient of days, the power no man can contain, the Captain of the Lord’s hosts, the commander of angel armies, the one who holds the keys of victory over death, hell, and the grave…
The one to whom all power has been given…
What do you see? Stephen said, I see Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father.
What do you see? Ezekiel said I see a wheel in the middle of a wheel..
What do you see? John said I see One whose eyes are like flames of fire, feet like burnished bronze, whose voice sounds like many waters.
His face shone like the sun in the noon day. One who is coming with the clouds, and when He does, every eye will see Him and every tongue will confess He is Lord…
Tell me friend, What do you see?
Do you see life as bleak and hopeless? Or do you see victory and hope and redemption?
Can I challenge you? Maybe you need to get back into the presence of the One who is victory.
Could it be that the reason you can’t see the victory is because you’ve not been in the presence of the captain of the Lord’s host?
We like to talk about the shout, but the shout is only as good as what He has revealed from His presence…
What do you see?
Do you need to answer the call? Have you been struggling with what you see? Let’s do it together. Let’s get back to His presence…