Now, I want to bring in II Corinthians 10 here because I think this will help us to understand what is going on here just a little better in terms of a spiritual application.
Like I said, I think this really helps us to understand what we are getting into here in terms of the miracle at Jericho. I think it makes this commentary, if you will, by Paul, applied to what happened at Jericho, really clarifies things.
Now remember, Christ is represented here by Joshua himself, but also by the ark of the covenant that is being carried around the city and the priests' trumpets blowing announce His presence.
We saw that in Jesus in the Feasts, Part Three, and the Day of Trumpets. What do trumpets signify in terms of the Feast of Trumpets and that is, that God is King, and He is here. He is our present divine King.
Now it is interesting to understand too that the Israelite warriors are there. There is a guard out front, and there is a guard at the back. So the warriors are there, marching, I almost want to call them an honor guard because they are present. They are equipped to fight. But they do not eventually do a whole lot of it because God does most of the work.
So the advance guard is there, the rear guard is there, but they say and do little but march and shout. They march; they follow the ark. They follow the directions. And they shout. What are they shouting? Well, shout of a shofar, shout of praise and honor to their King. They are not doing fighting; they are marching, and they are praising their God and their King.
The whole story, I feel, is designed to impress on a person reading it that God's agency and power in delivering enemy strongholds into our hands is awesome! How much do we have to do? We have to march along following God and praising Him for all His wonderful acts and all the gifts that He gives us and the grace that He gives us, our forgiveness, and all the wonderful things that He does.
And we watch Him work. We do almost nothing but obediently go along for the ride and cheer His presence and His absolute power over the opposition.
You know, we get ourselves into a lot of trouble when we try to interfere with God and the way He is working. How many times do we get out ahead of God and do something that makes it worse because we are not actually overcoming the problem, the obstacle or whatever it is, the temptation the way He wants to?
Usually we take charge, and it is not necessarily an act of faith but an act of desperation. We want out of this problem so badly; we want it solved and behind us. And if we just waited a little bit more, if we had marched a few more steps, if we would had a slight bit more faith in God's ability to do something, then it would have really worked out. But we stick our nose in, and we do something, and we only prolong the problem.
What did God say? March silently. Give thanks and praise to Me. I am your King. I will solve the problem. I will defeat the enemy. Just watch and the answer will become apparent. How did the answer become apparent? The walls fell down flat! The enemy no longer had any defenses. And then the warriors were able to go in and do the job.
This is a human problem because really we are just learning; we are just coming into our journey. We do not know a lot about how things work. But God gives us a clue here that if we just trust Him, He will find us a way of escape, a way to get out of the problem, the way to solve the problem.
Now we need to be obedient. We need to keep going forward and growing, but just wait on God and He will give the victory.
Let us move on a little bit. I really want to emphasize here that God will fight our battles for us.
We sometimes take too much on ourselves. If we really trust God, then we better trust Him to clear out the Canaanites before us. Let Him do His job. He has made those promises. You can ask Him to fulfill those promises for you, but then wait - wait for His answer. It will be very clear if you … . . .
Though we are physical and sin is still with us, we do not have to be at the mercy of corrupt human nature; we don't have to allow Satan an opportunity, and it is right here that our resistance must begin. We have the knowledge, the assurance from God that He is with us, that He's put a hedge around us, so we should be able to go confidently forward through this jungle, through the world, knowing that God is not going to allow us to be tempted or pressured above what we are able.
Our warfare is spiritual, so our weapons must also be those that are bestowed by God's Holy Spirit. Carnal weapons such as cleverness, ingenuity, organizing ability, reliance on charm, psychological manipulation, forcefulness of personality—they don't mean a thing to Satan. He can blow them aside. They don't impress him at all.
These things may give superficial victories, but they don't drive evil out! That's the problem. If we are trying to use things like that we will always be fighting a losing battle. We are trying to fight spiritual evil with human strength, carnal strength. We are overpowered, outmatched, outgunned.
Remember Zechariah 4:6? "Not by power nor by might, but by My Spirit," says the Lord of hosts. The warfare is against invisible and intangible spiritual forces that invade our minds! See II Corinthians 10:5. Casting down imaginations. Those things take place in the mind. Arguments—those things take place in the mind and these are spiritual forces that invade our mind and insinuate devilish thoughts.
How do these thoughts appear in our minds? The verse tells us. They are thoughts that exalt themselves against the knowledge of the truth of God.
Let's think about Adam and Eve. Where did they make their mistake? They allowed what Satan said against God's truth to insinuate itself on their minds and they began to think about it. "Hey, that sounds logical, reasonable." Once they did that, they were hooked.
What we have here are things that we might call opinions, deductions, reasonings, arguments, guesses, assumptions, convictions—but in this context they all have one dominant theme to them and that is they exalt themselves against the knowledge of God.
Let's reflect on something. Do you remember the time Jesus was telling the disciples (in Matthew 16) what was going to happen to Him, and Peter said (out of a good heart, I am sure, when we understand it; there were good intentions in what he said), "Not so Lord, this shall never happen to You!" Jesus shot right back, "Get you behind me Satan," because what Peter said (even though Peter did not understand it) was a thought that exalted itself against what God's Scripture said in the Old Testament about what the Messiah was going to go through.
Jesus immediately nailed Satan to the wall because He recognized where that thought—even though it was well-intentioned by Peter—was against the truth, against the knowledge of God, therefore that couldn't have come from God's Holy Spirit. It came from Satan.
There we have a beautiful, clear biblical illustration of what Paul is talking about here [II Corinthians 10:3-6]. When Adam and Eve sinned, they sinned because they permitted a thought that was against the knowledge of God, against the truth of God, to lodge in their minds until it seemed to them to be reasonable and they acted on it.
Thoughts or arguments mean ideas that germinate in the mind, give rise to desire, and then to action. Wrong ideas of God, man, or even life itself are the roots of sin.
Are you beginning to see what is our main weapon in defeating Satan? It is truth, faith in truth. That's what Adam and Eve did not have. They didn't believe what God said and they sinned.
