I am the Lord...whose ways are not your ways

During this incredibly hot week we had some of you may have gone to enjoy some time in the ocean. One thing you always have to be careful about in the ocean is rip currents. If you aren’t careful a rip current will pull you out into the ocean and away from shore. The mistake many people make in a rip current is to swim against the current, which seems like a reasonable decision. If a current is pulling you out, then you swim in. But as you may know, that is the last thing you want to do, because not only are you not going to defeat the current but you are going to be exhausted after it has pulled you out. No, what you should actually do in a rip current is swim sideways out of it. Don’t fight the current, just swim out of it.

But oftentimes we like the fight. We enjoy the battle and being able to say that we gained victory at the end. But the fight is hard and oftentimes we think we are up for the challenge when really we don’t know what we are getting ourselves into.

In Joshua 6 God is calling His people to follow His ways rather than their own. To forget their own battle plans, forget their idea of how they are to conquer the land of Canaan, and reshape how they view what it means to be God’s people.

God is telling His people that His plans are not their plans, His judgment is not their judgment, and His salvation is not their salvation.

God’s plans are not your plans

God speaks to Joshua and tells him that the entire city, its king, its best soldiers, were all going to fall to Israel. God doesn’t even bother going into detail about who these inhabitants are because to the fighting men they are not of any issue. The number 7 stands out, used 14 different times in this chapter. A number reflecting God's perfect character. It emphasizes the completeness and fullness of the victory God will give His people. And that is exactly what he tells throughout this chapter.

v. 2 God says “Look, I have handed Jericho over to you”, v. 5 He says the city will collapse, and in v. 16 Joshua says “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city”.

As they prepare to march around Jericho Joshua says 3 times in verses 7 and 8 that they are to “Advance!” or “Cross over!” The same word used when they were told to “cross over” the Jordan. Which again, brings us to “crossing over” the Red Sea. Joshua’s command is not “move forward ready to fight” but “trust that God will give us victory just as He has in the past.” They are to move forward without fear or worry, but confident the Lord will give them victory over Jericho.

It isn’t a matter of if, God WILL give them victory. God is telling them that He is pretty much gift-wrapping Jericho to them.

What God desires for the Israelites is not to worry about the battle but to be in a posture of worship. This marching around the city is essentially a celebration of the Lord and Jericho was to be given as an offering in the celebration. God says that Jericho and all the possessions in it are to be “set apart” for the Lord. In other words, they were to be given as an offering to God. They were to trust that they didn’t need any of the cattle or expensive items or more people to be part of their nation, God would provide all that they needed if they would trust Him.

This is why Joshua is careful to repeat God’s instructions to the people exactly. Joshua doesn’t want it to be his own way, he doesn’t want it to be the people’s way, but God’s way.

And as we read, everything happens just as God told them it would happen.

I find it funny that the men who are supposed to be Israel's "mighty men" are commanded just to march. I stated this in week 1, but I believe we see it again here. It is almost as if God takes these warriors to the front of the battle just so they know that God doesn’t need them in order to have victory. Their only requirement is that they are obedient.

There is a funny scene in the move Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones is fighting all these bad guys and trying to escape when all of a sudden this one man with a large sword does all these flashy moves in front of him with the sword and it seems pretty intimidating. You can see on Indiana Jones’ face he is trying to figure out how he is going to go engage this guy in battle…until he remembers he has a gone in his back pocket and shoots the guy.

God is telling the people. “Don’t fight them on their terms, fight them on my terms. Why make it harder when I can do all the work?”

We can also try and fight on the worlds terms. Not physically but spiritually and intellectually. We can even do it with the intention of fighting for God as if He needs defending. We can trying to explain the way that God works in the world with physical evidence. Use science as a tool to prove God’s existence. Show how godly wisdom works in business, and in leadership, or any other field. These are all good disciplines that have their place. But what does 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 and 1 Corinthians 1:30-31 tell us? “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” and “It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption —in order that, as it is written: Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Essentially Paul tells us. Why try to argue with the world on the worlds terms when God’s ways seem like foolishness to the world? Yet even if God could be foolish his foolishness would still be smarter than all human wisdom and God’s weakness would still be stronger than any man.

God calls us to have confidence in Him even when it makes no sense to us. To choose His way over our own way. To know that God has something better for us that we wouldn’t even believe. It can be so hard for us to consider the goodness of trusting in God’s ways oftentimes. But fear can be a powerful motivator telling us “if you aren’t busy enough or you don’t make enough money than that person will look more successful than you” “if you pray in public or start a conversation with someone about the Gospel than someone might look at you differently”, “if you start being honest with God and with others about what you are struggling with and the issues that you face rather than act as if your life and family are perfect than you will look weak.”

But what does Paul say? “Let one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” and in 2 Corinthians Paul says “I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.”

So what are we boasting in? Ourselves? Because boasting in ourselves is exhausting. Keeping up appearances for others, always trying to prove yourself, taking on every task like if you are unable to complete it you are flawed or worthless as a person.

But how freeing to just boast in your weaknesses and say “God, why don’t you do what I can’t”. And to be honest, there is a lot that we can’t do.

What we also see is that boasting in our own strength is often our downfall as we see with Jericho.

God’s judgment is not your judgment

We see that Jericho prepares for Israel to come against them. Jericho knew who was coming, not Israel but Yahweh. In closing their gates Jericho is not just preparing for battle but they are rejecting God and His people. We see this contrasted with Rahab who opens her doors to the spies to save them. We also know in Deuteronomy 20:10-11 that every city that Israel was about to conquer that they were to make an offer of peace first for the nation to serve the Lord and if they reject that offer than they were to conquer it. We know that this offer of peace was made from Joshua 11:19 where it says “No city made peace with the Israelites except the Hivites who inhabited Gibeon; all of them were taken in battle.”

So Jericho is not just a nation that is warring against Israel but a nation who has rejected God and chosen war over peace.

And these Canaanites had been given chances in the past to turn to God. In fact Genesis 15:16 tells us that God allowed for the 400 years of slavery so that the Canaanites had more time to trust in Him but instead they continued on in even more iniquity! Does that not seem gracious?

But these Canaanites were not just your average sinner (even though all sin is deserving of death), they were incredibly wicked. Leviticus 18 tells us that their sins included bestiality, incest, and child sacrifice among many other detestable things.

So they had not just sinned against God, they had doubled down and hardened their hearts to the Lord. Refusing peace and choosing war against the God of Israel.

Many have found issue with the way that God judges the Canaanites here at Jericho and throughout the book of Joshua.

The atheist Richard Dawkins has famously called the God of the OT, especially here in Joshua, as a vindictive, blood-thirsty, angry God. It can be easy for us to not see the same thing and ask questions about God’s judgment. For us not to say “how is this fair? How could God judge a group of people like this?”

Yet we ourselves do not have conflicted ideas of judgment. Wanting one person to be judged one way and another person another way. Or like we don’t flip flop on what discipline is appropriate. As a father I am continually wrestling with this idea. Sometimes I feel like my parental discipline is too strict, while other times it feels like I am going too easy. Even in situations that seem very similar. I can wonder, “Am I being to angry” while the next time saying “am I being too easy because I don’t like to discipline?”

See, what we are supposed to see is not Israel judging Jericho, but God righteously judging sinners.

Because God does not have our problem of being unsure in discipline. Romans 9:14, 19-24 “What should we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! You will say to me, therefore, “Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” On the contrary, who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction? And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory—on us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?”

The point here is that God cannot be unjust, He can’t act wickedly, and are any of us innocent? No, not one! In fact, God has been incredibly patient with this group of people and we all deserve death as Romans 3:23 tells us! In fact, that in any of us are still alive is only a result of the Lord’s grace on our lives. God is no less just in the way these Canaanites died then someone who died in any other war throughout human history, or someone who died from cancer, or any person who has died for any reason. God is the author of life, but death has entered this world. “

This is why God calls His destruction of Jericho a dedication to Him. This was not a holy war where the Israelites were proving themselves against the Canaanites, fighting “on behalf” of their God. This is God setting apart this land for His people so that it may be devoted to Him without contamination from idolatry. This is why, soon we will see, that even disobedient Israelites were given the same judgment as these Canaanites. The disobedience of Achan. And then, as we see at the end of the chapter that whoever rebuilds Jericho will have a heavy toll on his family. This curse would indeed happen in 1 Kings, the mans first born and last born son would do. So why didn’t God want the city to be rebuilt? And why the curse on anyone who did? I we see the city being "offered" to the Lord, then the ruins of this city would serve as a reminder of how God had given this city to His people.

Because God knows just how easy it is for us to backslide. That is why in Deuteronomy 7 God tells them “don’t intermarry with the Canaanites, don’t keep their altars up, don’t show mercy to them and allow them to live with you, otherwise your sons will turn away from me and worship other God’s…destroy it all for you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God.” And as God explains just how careful they should be in destroying their enemies his reminder is that God has been gracious to them, He has redeemed them but “He will not hesitate to pay back directly the one who hates him. So keep the command that I am giving you to follow today.”

If we remember last week in chapter 5 God called them to be holy as He is holy. To prepare their hearts for what is to come because He knew how easy it would be for them to become arrogant and forget God. And we know that as we enter into Judges and into the kings of Israel that they will go back to worship of Canaanite gods, and if that is true, than, as one commentator says “One can only imagine how much more difficult it would have been to maintain with integrity any religion of the worship of Yahweh had the Israelites not been as aggressive as they were under Joshua”

Yet, even as God knows the penalty for sin and knows that we will backslide, He sent His Son to take that penalty for us! He takes the punishment we deserve, the pain and suffering that should have been reserved for us, and the Son of God took that.

Since God gave His son for us and Christ took the cross for us we are also called to surrender our lives to God. To be totally committed to Him because we understand the heavy penalty that sin has on us. Because often we take the soft approach to our sin. We let it hang around, we keep it with us just in case the pressure of our lives is just too much. We don’t want to completely get rid of sin because we enjoy it too much. In fact, this is often why we can rebel against God, we say it is about His judgment, or about His commands, but really it is about our desire to do what we want to do. Because we don’t trust that His way is better and we don’t believe Him when He says the penalty of sin is death. If we think that sin isn’t “that bad” than of course God’s punishment will seem harsh to us. It will seem like the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. But if we understand sin for what it truly is, than we will recognize God’s grace in something as little as being able to wake up this morning.

But it isn’t just God’s judgment that confuses us, but also His salvation.

God’s salvation is not your salvation

See, after all of this destruction that takes place in Jericho we see this family that is saved, of this prostitute and her family. And Rahab is called to be part of the Israelites, and in fact her family doesn’t just live as Israelites but they marry into the Israelites, and they don’t just marry into the Israelites, but her great great grandson will be David, and even farther down the line of this genealogy is Jesus! And we might ask the question. I’m sorry, what? God just judged the rest of this city but not this prostitute? And what about not intermarrying with the foreigners? How is that allowed?

First, as we already mentioned earlier. Peace was offered to every city, so the goal in every city was to bring His people back to Him and for everyone to be saved. But in order for them to have peace they must change their allegiance to the false gods they served to the one, true God.

Rahab chose to change her allegiance and she saved the spies of Israel in Jericho. So now, because her obedience to God, she would be saved from the destruction. In saving these spies Rahab also showed that she had faith that the God of Israel was greater than the gods of Canaan.

In fact, Hebrews 11:30-31 and James 2:24-25 tell us exactly this!

“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after being marched around by the Israelites for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute welcomed the spies in peace and didn’t perish with those who disobeyed.”

“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works in receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route?”

What was it that saved Rahab? Her faith and her action together! She didn’t just believe, but she boldly chose to trust that the God of Israel would defeat the gods of Jericho.

One commentator says about Rahab, “the story of Rahab is the story of the shepherd's search for the one lost sheep. It is the concern of Jesus for the despised of the world. It is the transformation of values to which Christianity calls disciples. Those rejected by the world are precious to God.” How Good is that news.

John 5:24-30 ““Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life. “Truly I tell you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. “I can do nothing on my own. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me.”

Jesus wants all to be saved

He doesn’t just call those who have their lives together, who have always done everything perfectly, who were saved practically at birth because their family went to church. No, Jesus came for the lost sheep.

Salvation is only through faith

Salvation doesn’t come from our own ability, it doesn’t come from having the most toys, it doesn’t come from doing enough good things that God lets us enter in. We have to get rid of our own plans and have faith in God’s plans.

We may think “I have gone to church my whole life therefore I am going to be saved.” But Jesus gives us of the parable of the man who said who was going to do the work in the vineyard and didn’t and the man who said who would not but then later went out to work. The one who was saved was the one who did the work of the master. Who went out in the vineyard.