“You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once, this you shall do six days.”
Of all the battle strategies given in the history of mankind, this has to be one of the most unusual. I’m sure that you know the story behind the attack on Jericho, where God told the Jews to go around the city once a day for six days. Then they were to go around the city seven times on the seventh day. After the seventh time around the city, the priest blew the trumpet, the people shouted and the “walls of Jericho tumbled down.” The Jews were then able to go into the city and take it over. There are some lessons in this incident for us. The first lesson is that we need to obey God, no matter how bizarre His plan might seem to us. Like Joshua, we need to remember that He is God and does not really think like we do. God knows what we need to do and how we need to do it, whether we understand it or not. Isaiah 55:8 informs us that according to God: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” God is just not like us and He does not think like we do – thank God. When Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the Apostle, was saved, at first there were Christians who did not want to have anything to do with him. We can’t be too hard on those people, because we probably would have had the same reaction. Why did they doubt? My guess is that they thought that if God wanted someone to witness especially to Gentiles, He would find a good Gentile, save him and call him to the task. It was difficult for them to comprehend that God would find the meanest Jew that He could find, save him, and send him to the Gentiles. Which all goes to prove that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways. Our job is to obey God whether we understand His strategy or not. The second lesson is that there is no wall too thick or too high for God to overthrow. The walls were impenetrable to Joshua and his fellow Jews, but they were not impenetrable to God. There are probably some “walls” in our lives that are impenetrable to us, but we need to remember that they are not impenetrable to God. There might be a habit that we would really like to overcome, but it has become so ingrained in our minds and hearts that, like a thick wall, it just seems impossible to make it come down. We need to remember that we do not have a habit that God cannot help us overcome. There might be a person in our lives who has hurt us a lot, and we are having a difficult time forgiving him or her. I know from experience that forgiveness does not always come easily, particularly if the person really and truly hurt us in some significant way. But Jesus, who was always willing to forgive those who wronged Him, will enable us to forgive as well. It might be that we have doubts about God, the Bible and the church. The only way that doubt is a sin is if we succumb to it and let Satan have his way. John the Baptist evidently had some concerns about whether or not Jesus was truly the Messiah, because he sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus about. Evidently, when Jesus gave His answer and John’s disciples took the answer back to him, John’s doubts were relieved. The wall of doubt can fall as we seek God’s knowledge about the matter. The third lesson is that when God tells us that we can be victorious, we can be victorious. There is a lot of negativism in America today concerning the Christian faith, but that does not mean we are defeated. The world will defeat us if Satan has his way. Jesus told Peter at Caesarea Philippi that “the gates of hell could not prevail against” His church. We are the church and Jesus has given us the victory in spite of our weaknesses and in spite of our failures. God has assured us that our faith in Him is the “victory that has overcome the world." Turn your walls over to God and watch them come tumbling down. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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