6:1 The city of Jericho finds itself walled in. The children of Israel surround their walls but more importantly, so does God. God encircles evil until it is cut off, asphyxiated. We have learned that what happened to the Israelites happened to serve as an example to us in our generation, 1 Corinthians 10:11. Therefore we have learned that God will surround the walls of an evil nation, person, force against us and cut it off. He will cut that evil off and then cause us to inherit the platform evil once thought it ruled from.
The people of Jericho cannot come in or out. They cannot defend themselves. This is how God approaches and confronts evil: comprehensively. God explained to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 9:5 that their inheritance of this land is due to the evil which presently takes place in it. God promises that His children with inherit the earth, Matthew 5:5, (among so much else) and the reason why we inherit the earth is because He is going to evacuate evil from it. He is going to make this planet a home of safety, love and righteousness again.
God's intentions with Jericho are consistent with His plans for the end of this current age. Evil surrounded, blocked in from escaping and yet forced out.
6:2 The Lord exclaims to Joshua: this is yours! As in the children of Israel. As in His children, including you. With power and determination, love and justice in His heart, God strips evil of the reigns and places them directly in your hand. Our generous God shares the glory of the extermination of evil. From the very beginning God has sought and worked and died for a covenant with us, a mutual relationship. Though we are meek and feeble and fallible, God gives us powerful purpose and position and platform to step into. He becomes the strength we need to declare righteousness.
6:3 God's methods are perfect, unlike our own. God's children who work arduously in love, in having compassing and exacting justice, do not have to do the heavy lifting of winning the war. The battles, day to day, God has joined with us in winning. He helps us to restore justice, inspire joy, create love in desolate places and people and ideas. Those are the battles. But the war... the war God wins as The Almighty that He is.
The destruction of Jericho will happen because of the Israelites commitment to faith. Because of their commitment to this philosophy, God's philosophy, which encourages a passionate, compassionate, righteous life. The walls of Jericho, the winning of the war, will be accomplished through the battles the Israelites have lived through. As long as we endeavor toward righteousness in the small moments, the day to day and moment by moment, we claim victory in every war.
In the New Testament, God promises in Matthew 11:30 that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. God does not recruit you as His child, His fellow worker, because He strains under a burden. He recruits you as a fellow worker, His child, because He can see that you strain under your burden. He does not just offer assistance, He absorbs, claims your burden as His own and instead places His light on you.
His burden is light. God does not put weight on our shoulders. What He does place on you is not only light in weight, but is luminosity. He places on you wisdom and patience, joy and hope and love. Those are the kind of "burdens" God doles out.
In this chapter we will see and understand how God causes to win wars without any exertion except for in faith. For faith is a journey and process. Faith is a discipline. Mentioned in the previous chapter, the only military and life training we need is the training God gives us through our steadfast faith. Arduous faith produces a life of God's easy yoke and light burden.
What does arduous faith look like? Arduous faith is moments spent deep in His word. Arduous faith is a life hopeful and trusting in His will. As a human being, we all know how difficult hope and trust can be to retain. Arduous faith looks like love. In every moment. For every person. For Him in every situation. Arduous faith is compassion without reservation. Arduous faith is stepping out of the boat onto the water, trusting that He will hold you up through impossible situations, Matthew 14:29. Arduous faith is expressed by Joshua himself in the previous chapter; arduous faith is waking up everyday with this on your heart: What does my Lord say to His servant?
Arduous faith is servitude. Faith is listening to His voice to learn what to learn. To learn what do to. To learn how to do. Arduous faith is waking up a student of faith and spirituality every morning.
6:4 Arduous faith is marching around the earth in righteousness knowing that God will inevitably cause evil's defenses to crumble. God tells Joshua to have seven priests (holding of the representative covenant) carry trumpets.
Do you carry your trumpet? We have a blessed responsibility in our lives: to proclaim the word and will and love of God. To let our life speak. To let the way we live life and interact with others speak. We corner evil, encircle it, when we live lives in bold and direct opposition to it.
To be an outspoken child of God, out speak evil. Speak louder, longer, and more boldly than evil does. Evil feeds on silence. Trumpet righteousness for all to hear and see. The Israelites will trumpet around the walls of Jericho. Without fear, they will trust in God to compensate for their inabilities and deficiencies. Do not miss the message in that. Without fear, they will continue to walk and trumpet their faith because God will provide, defend, protect, lead, restore, strengthen and encourage.
6:5 Our faith is the shout that breaks the bonds of evil. Our faith causes evil to fall down flat. Because our faith is a substantial, powerful force. Faith enables us to walk forward toward opposition and claim victory. God explains this to Joshua and we learn from his faith because he listens. He trusts. Imagine being Joshua: leading a small, lackluster group of people against a mighty nation. By the world's calculations, Joshua was hopeless. But through and because of God, Joshua chose not just to be hopeful but to believe. Emphatically.
Emphatic trust in God is a multi-step process of listening, trusting, obeying, receiving, and fulfilling.
God does not need to split the sea any longer because He's ready to split new seas. He's ready to split your sea. The old seas have been split. The purposes and intentions there fulfilled. There is now purpose and intention for your life to fulfill. We do not need to loiter desperately in faith waiting for Him to prove to us what He can do... that has already been done. God does not backtrack, He moves forward. He's ready to move forward with you, to order ink for new pages.
God is holding a book after earth in Spirit, Revelation 20:12, and it has all the names of His children written it. Your history and your purpose are inked in as soon as you start living the story.
6:6-11 Joshua makes the exact arrangements God instructed him to make. The people will march around the wall of Jericho with their covenant prominently proclaimed. The people wearing these spiritual armor would lead the group. This is a battle, the Israelites will physically face evil. But their physical effort will not win the battle. Their faith will win the battle. Every time we enter a battle with our spiritual armor, Ephesians 6:10-18, we claim the land and the victor. We declare righteousness over the place God has caused us to inherit.
6:12 Joshua lives a life of fervent and consciousness service. He continues to rise early in the morning, eager to bring about the prophesy of God. Wake up every day in anticipation of, in devotion to, what God is going to accomplish in that day. In this day. Joshua is up early, his physical body rested enough to contain all of the energy his spirit is bursting with.
Everyday find wonder in anticipation of what God is going to do, or teach, or organize. Every day the plan comes closer, further into completion. Every day the pieces of His plan are coming together. Wake up ready to be a part, a participator, in those plans.
6:13-14 The priests (bearers of the ark of the covenant, the physical representation of the bond between God and humanity) and the Israelites march around Jericho. For six straight days. While God arranges everything inside and outside of that city, that region, that continent, this planet, the galaxy and universe into order.... the children of Israel march and wait patiently for His timing.
Because they would not have won on the fifth day. They were not ready on the third. The city was too strong on the second day. Whatever His reasons for causing us to wait and trust and hope, they are necessary. He is bringing things into order, doing the calculations of math we can not yet comprehend.
In the time of our waiting, through our faith, God is building. Inside of us. Outside of us. Near us. Away from us. He is building the conditions under which we can receive and retain our blessings, our dreams, our hopes. He is doing work in you.
As humans, we have difficulty with waiting. With trusting. With hoping. On our figurative six day walk around the thing we pray most to receive, our steps become heavier. Our steps made less bold by hesitation. Our desperation causes our steps to stumble. Our inability to trust Him causes us to doubt our direction... sometimes we even turn backward and regress. But faith puts us right back into order every time.
By the fifth and sixth day we are tired. That's fine, we are humans are very limited by our physical body and emotions. What we must not let get tired is our faith. Our faith needs to be nourished. Our faith needs to be vibrant. So that when our bodies finally, inevitably does walk through the space a wall of waiting once barred, our body can have its rest. But our spirit already lived there, already rested in that space. Faithfully, we already existed in that blessing. We felt it because we knew it was already ours. It was ours before it was in our hands.
Faith understands that during that long, arduous walk, you and God were already decorating the blessing you were walking toward but could not yet see. When your body reaches it, it is a good but unfamiliar place. When you spirit reaches it, it is a good and familiar place. Your spirit steps into that blessings and sighs with joy: I've been here before. Those walls are blue because I painted them blue. There are windows because I asked God to have them installed. Metaphorically. We plan the blessings God inevitably delivers.
So while you are walking around the walls of waiting, use that time to decorate with God. As He builds you and the life you are about to inherit, learn what you would like that life to look like. Learn what you would like your soul and spirit to be like. The brighter the soul, the brighter the blessing. The more building He does in you, the more building is building done ahead of where you are right now.
A short period of building would render you deficient. Unable to maintain grand blessings. For grand blessings come with grand responsibilities. A long, meticulous period of building allows time for meticulous detail in your blessings.
6:15-16 Because the Israelites walk boldly, precisely in faith their journey of walking ends. God does not give us instruction to make us prove that we can be obedient to Him. God gives us instruction to show us that His precious instructions enable us to mathematically walk into precise blessing. He knows the way! He knows every turn you need to take, every step you need to climb. He doesn't say "Jump!" to prove that He's in charge, He says "Jump!" because there's a gap there and He doesn't want us to fall into it.
The shout of faith causes the destruction of the barrier.
The shout of faith causes the destruction of the barrier.
6:16-17 Every ounce of evil is to be evacuated from the city. God remembers Rahab's faith and the Israelites will not harm her or her family. Our God would never harm an innocent or kind person. When these chapters speak of total destruction, they mean total destruction of everything and everyone evil. Like Rahab, we all, past and present, have opportunities to display our heart to God. Whoever has kindness is in it spared from removal.
6:17-19 God gives specific instructions for the Israelites to abstain from evil. From idol worship. From the covetousness of the people who live in Jericho. This city has hosted evil and is therefore filled with its materials. God is consistent in reminding them, and us, to remain from the things that will grab us off of our path of righteousness.
6:20-21 Faith causes the wall to fall flat. You see, the metaphor comes into fulfillment. We only need our spiritual armor and our spiritual discipline to claim to victory over every opposition. Righteousness has an abundant, inevitable inheritance. Be righteousness and you will too.
6:22-25 The promise made to Rahab is fulfilled as all of God's promises are. Become a host for righteousness and God will deliver you into blessing and protection. With you, all that your heart loves. God's blessings abound. Luke 12:32, it is God's good pleasure to bless His children with His kingdom! And everything in it. Everything it stands for.
6:24 The silver, gold, bronze and iron is reserved and given to the House of the Lord. The metaphor in this comes from the foundation set in:
Jericho faces utter destruction but the righteous are reserved for the House of the Lord.
Malachi 3:2-3
2 “But who can endure the day of His coming?
And who can stand when He appears?
For He is like a refiner’s fire
And like launderers’ soap.
3 He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;God does not care about or need actual gold or silver. What He does care about are children who have faith that can stand the heat of fire. Faith as figuratively strong as metals. The people, the ideas, the relationships which are precious and strong and righteous are reserved for the House of the Lord. What is truly precious should not, cannot be consumed by fire.
He will purify the sons of Levi,
And purge them as gold and silver,
That they may offer to the Lord
An offering in righteousness.
Jericho faces utter destruction but the righteous are reserved for the House of the Lord.
6:25 Rahab is mentioned juxtaposed the aforementioned lesson because she is evidence that God reserves the righteous of faith. Everything in Rahab's life might be out of place but her heart is not. Her heart is for God and therefore she is reserved for the House of the Lord.
6:26-27 Joshua charges into Jericho with a declaration. Joshua's declaration is that anyone who opposes God will ultimately contribute to their own downfall. God has given the instructions, the blueprint, because He knows how to build lives. If we do not build a life according to His blueprint, then all we do is tear down.
