“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.”
As far as military plans go, no one could have predicted the capture of Jericho to be so unorthodox. God told Joshua and his army to march around Jericho one time for six days, and then on the seventh day they were to march around the city seven times. When this was done, they blew the trumpet and shouted and the “walls came tumbling down.” David Jeremiah wrote about this: “Let us get this straight. We’re going to walk around Jericho, and the walls are going to fall down.” My title given above is what I think that the people might have said to Joshua when he gave them the plan: “God told us to do what?” We will have to admit that it is a bit unusual, but it did work. Why did it work? It worked because it was God’s plan. What makes no sense to us makes very good sense to God. God knows what He can do, and He knows how He wants to do it. Take for example, His plan of salvation. We would not come up with the plan to send His Son to die on the cross for the sins of mankind. This is what God did in His infinite wisdom. I cannot explain why this had to be, but God knew how He wanted to do it. Being the sovereign God that He is, God knew what needed to be done, whether we could explain it or understand it or not. Another example that I use often when writing or talking about God’s unusual plans is the calling of Saul of Tarsus to witness to gentiles. The Bible had prophesied that the gentiles would be saved, and Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection brought this about. One would think that God would have found a good gentile and sent him to witness to gentiles. What God did was to call the meanest Jew that He could find, convert him, and send him to witness to the gentiles. I can almost hear Saul, who became Paul, the Apostle, say: “God told me to do what?” God’s plan for our lives might not always make sense to us, but we need to remember that it is God’s plan and it will work because God has ordained it. It worked because God wanted Joshua to understand that the battle to take Canaan would not be because of his military prowess, but because of God’s sovereign will and purpose. Joshua had already experienced things like this. He was there when God divided the Red Sea, sent the manna and the quails and made water come out of a rock. Joshua was there when the Jordan River was divided to let the Israelites into Canaan. Like us, Joshua was a human being, and he would need reminders of God’s power. The defeat of Jericho was an act of God, not a result of Joshua’s military prowess. To be sure, Joshua was a military strategist, but no strategy that he could have devised would have made the walls of Jericho fall. When we come to our “Jericho’s” where the victory seems remote, we need to remember that the God who tore down the walls of Jericho can tear down whatever walls that we may face. After all, the God we serve in the name of Jesus is the same God that led Israel to victory at Jericho. It worked because Joshua did not question God’s wisdom in His plan to defeat Jericho. Joshua understood that with God he could do the impossible. Jesus said that “with God all things are possible.” Whatever it is that God wants you to do, what it will take to succeed is to unquestionably obey God, no matter how impossible the task might seem to be. God’s great work is done through obedient servants, who do what He wants. Are you one of those servants? Will you be one of them? Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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