Our passage this morning is Joshua chapter 6, the better part of it if you would stay in for the reading of the Word of God. Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, see, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and its mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city all the men of war going around the city once. Thus you shall do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of Ramshorn before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times and the priest shall blow the trumpets. And when they make a long blast with the Ramshorn and when you hear the sound of the trumpet then all the people shall shout with a great shout and the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people shall go up everyone straight before him. So Joshua the son of none called the priest and said to them, take up the ark of the covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of Ramshorn before the ark of the Lord. And he said to the people, go forward, march around the city, let the armed men pass on before the ark of the Lord. And just as Joshua commanded the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of Ramshorn before the Lord went forward blowing the trumpets with the ark of the covenant of the Lord following them. The armed men were walking before the priest who were blowing the trumpets and the rear guard was walking after the ark while the trumpets blew continually. But Joshua commanded the people, you shall not shout or make your voice heard. Neither shall any word go out of your mouth until the day I tell you to shout, then you shall shout. So we caused the ark of the Lord to circle the city going about it once and they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp. Then Joshua rose early in the morning and the priest took up the ark of the Lord. And the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of Ramshorn before the ark of the Lord walked on and they blew the trumpets continually. And the armed men were walking before them and the rear guard was walking after the ark of the Lord while the trumpets blew continually. And the second day they marched around the city once and returned into the camp. So they did for six days. On the seventh day they rose early at the dawn of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh time when the priest had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction. Lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. But all silver and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord. They shall go into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet the people shouted a great shout and the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into the city every man straight before him and they captured the city. The word of the Lord. You may be seated. Well there's probably not another story episode in the great epic of Joshua more well-known than this one. All the way from the old spiritual Joshua fit the battle of Jericho all the way up to the Veggie tail. Josh and a big wall. We know this story. This is one we've learned from our earliest days in Sunday school. But have we really understood the story. It's miracle. God is in the process of giving the land of Canaan to his people. He has brought them out of Egypt. He's brought them through the desert. He's brought them across the Jordan River. The Barry of the Jordan opened before them and now the barrier of the great wall is going to come down before them. God is fighting for his people. He is going before his people in miracle and sign and wonder. There's no question in the hearts and minds of the people by now that it is the Lord that is bringing them into Canaan. In order to really understand this particular episode we need to kind of look back briefly to the previous chapter. The previous chapter has an interesting and yet probably the most telling passage. And that is as Joshua who was feeling the pressure of leadership who was feeling the angst that naturally comes from knowing that he had to be the man of vision. He had to be the man of method. He had to be the man of operation. He was up. The scripture says in Jericho really quite near to the walled and fortified city, probably contemplating his strategy. How am I going to defeat the king of this city? This is the first one we've crossed the Jordan. It's flowing now behind us. We are in Canaan and yet the first obstacle is this incredible fortified city. A city in fact that archaeologists tell us is maybe one of the oldest cities in civilization. And I don't know what Joshua was thinking. Maybe he was thinking you know what we need to do is get a good core of engineers together and figure out a way to get some catapults or maybe some battering realms or maybe we need to start building a massive ramp or doing those other military things that were used throughout history before and since. I don't know what his strategy was going to be, how he was going to take the city. He knew the Lord had given him the land but he also knew the Lord had commanded him to fight. So Joshua was in right up next to Jericho looking at over doing his recon work. When there was an appearance apparently at some distance of a mighty man of valor with a sword drawn. And Joshua who was fearless we know approached the man. And required of him are you for us or against us. Sometimes decision making comes down to either or black or white true or false. Are you for us or you are against us. Joshua wanted to know if the answer had been I'm for you. I'm sure Joshua would have embraced him in the cause. Maybe even ask his advice. If he found out the warrior was against him Joshua perhaps would have attacked who knows. But the answer was neither. The warrior said I'm neither. Which is extremely telling the Lord God is not a man. This was in the eyes of many a pre incarnate picture of Christ. This appearance was the man of valor was Christ himself. We find several appearances of this angel, this prince, this captain, this leader of the host of the Lord. This one who leads a magnificent victorious army, the host, the armies of the Lord. And he stands for what is right. He stands for what is true. He stands for what is noble. He stands for what is eternal. He stands for what is godly. He is not the member of the army of Israel nor of Israel's enemies. We see the Lord God is above. He is transcendent. He stands above and he is the judge and the captain of all the armies. And he is the one who calls all the shots and he is the one that guides and Israel is subject to him but so are the others. He will defeat Israel's enemies to be sure but he will also command and judge and discipline Israel. That's something we always need to remember. That the Lord God is of course the enemy to our enemies but he can also be an enemy to us. If we disobey him and go the wrong way and follow the wrong orders, he declared his transcendence. He declared that he was divine and because of that Joshua recognizing who this was immediately prostrated himself before the captain of the Lord's host and he took off his shoes because he was holy ground just as holy as that real estate there at the burning bush that Moses had encountered years earlier. Now it is this captain, this prince of the Lord's host that's going to give Joshua the strategy. Joshua never did come up with a good strategy. I don't think. There was no way he could do it. There was no way he could breach this wall. At the prince the king of the kings, the Lord of the Lord's, the king knew the battle strategy. For you see if we don't learn anything else let's learn this. The battle is the Lord's. Joshua was going to go on to say several times the Lord fought for Israel and now at the door of the very first battle what will be a long campaign. It is unmistakably the Lord who is calling the strategy and it's a strange strategy indeed and you know the story. Actually it involves a whole lot more spiritual worship than it does military technique. The goal is to bring the wall down or to somehow breach the wall. It's not enough to attack and burn the gates. It's not enough to find a place where you can get over the wall or a place you can find a crack in the wall. The Lord's going to bring the whole wall down flat. It's not going to fall in on the people. It's not going to fall out away from the people the scripture says twice it's going to fall down flat. In other words the Lord is going to turn this formidable wall around this city into basically just a little mound of crushed rock and stone and mortar that the men of Israel can easily overtop. It's the way the Lord's going to do it and he didn't talk about formation beyond this. There's going to be a formation and in the middle of the formation is going to be the ark of the covenant of the Lord. You see the ark is always in the midst of the people. It was in the midst of the Jordan. It's in the midst of the camp and it's going to stay in the midst of the people. There's going to be an armed contingent before it and there's going to be a rear guard behind it but in the middle will be the ark of the covenant of the Lord born by the priest. The ark of the covenant represents Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. In any endeavor Christ needs to be in the center of it in the middle of it. That's precisely what we have here. We have Christ in the midst of his people. There's no other formula for victory. Then instead of talking about swords and spears and shields and chariots and battering realms and catapults, we hear about trumpets. Trumpets. And not just any old trumpet, a trumpet made of a realms horn. Now some of these realms can after these big horned sheep after a certain period of time can grow a pretty large set of horns. That's what they would do. They would take these very large prize sets of horns who were partially hollow anyway. They would hollow them out all the way down to the tip end. They would put in the mouthpiece for the ombasher and they would create this trumpet. And the Lord used this trumpet for years. It was the thing in Israel that gathered Israel together. It was the shofar. It was the ram's trumpet and it would blow and by the way the sound that it makes is one of the most dissonant obnoxious, ridiculous sounds you've ever heard. There's hardly anything musical about these realms horns. There was no way to fine tune them in any way. These realms horns were made of realms horns. And when they would blow them it would make the most unbelievable sound. If they ever blew them there was never any harmony. It was always discord. It was blast. It was unnerving. And the skilled musicians of the Levitical Order had a contingent of men whose specialty it was to blow these ram horns. And they would blow to bring Israel together. The sound of these horns could be heard over the hills and the valleys. And it was always a time for holy convocation. It was the sound and the blast of this trumpets that the Lord had blowing from Zion when he gave the law. And when God does something spectacular and breaking into human history somehow these horns are blowing. And the scripture says they were to blow them continually. That's got to be unnerving. The strategy was to march around the city for six days, getting up early in the morning, marching around the city in total silence except for the blowing of the horns. And I'm sure that was quite a sight for the men of valor Jericho to get up there that morning and see this band of armed men before and following this arc of the covenant. And how the contingent of seven priests blowing on seven horns. It probably wasn't amusing parade on the first day. And the fact that it didn't take very long. The scholars estimate that probably was about 600 meters was the circumambulatory route of the people around the city. Wouldn't take too long less than a half a mile walk. And then they went back to the camp and they got a good night's sleep. The next day they did it again. The next day they did it again. They did it for six days, six days. It's interesting that the Lord says in the creation order six days, shall thou labor and do all thy work. That was really Israel's work. That's what Israel had to do. It's just to walk around the city. As the trumpet sounded and they were in silence. It's on the seventh day that the Lord will give the victory. He'll do his work on the seventh day. They marched around it seven times. That had to be an interesting observation. To the Sentinels on the wall in Jericho. As the centuries looked down and say, once around and all's well, they're going to go back home now. Wait a minute. They're marching around again. And again, and again, seven times around the city. And then when Joshua gave the command, the people shouted and it had to be a shout of relief. Because for seven for six days and for six additional trips around the wall, they've had to remain absolutely silent. All of the emotion, all of the expectation, all of the adrenaline, pumping, carrying the weapons, ready for war, all of the anxiety that goes into hand-to-hand combat that they knew that was coming up, but they did not know when. Then when Joshua gave the command to shout this blood-curdling scream, this war cry goes up. From the army. And it was accompanied by the sound of a rumble as the walls fell flat. Exposing Israel to the swords and the spears of the men of valor of Jericho, just over that mound of rubble. That's why the Lord told them to go in straight. Because as they had completely compassed the city when the walls fell flat, there was a a rank and file of soldiers, men of valor, all the way already arraigned around the city, absolutely 360 degree front for the skirmish that was to come. And they went in straight. When they went in straight, they completely in one immediate strategic move, topped the rubble and had surrounded the entire camp, the entire city of Jericho. And strategically as they were lined in multiple rows, they're ready to fight. militarily you couldn't get any stronger position than that. And they moved in quickly and the wall fell and the city was theirs. They began to put to the sword. Next week we'll talk a little bit about what they did when they got there. A little bit about this idea of the ban or the devotion to destruction. We need to know a little bit about what happened to Ray Had. Remember who had made a covenant with the spies that when the people, when Israel came in that she would be spared. There's a lot more to this story that we'll pick up with next week. But at least I want you to know one thing from the story so far. And that is this. Jericho is the city of man. God is interested in building the city of God. God is tearing down the most formidable fortress in Canaan by his mighty power. He is going to raise up in about 400 years. He's going to raise up another city that will become a fortress city, the city of Zion, the city of Jerusalem. In within the walls of Jericho were the amourites, the inhabitants of Jericho, an idolatrous, a godless, a pagan, immoral people. God had promised from the days of Abraham to judge them for their sins. This is judgment day for the people of Jericho. You can flip in your Bible over to the New Testament and you can find a description that talks about a trumpet blast and a great shout. And the Lord himself descended in clouds of glory. For some may be some in this room. That will be judgment day.