Law & Grace - Breaking & entering (conquering Jericho)

Now, I thought about singing that song, you know, as the kids were going out and walking around. It would be a little bit much to orchestrate, but that would have been cool. Good morning. Just to kind of get our place here, this is the historical timeline after 40 years in the desert east of Canaan. I know it may feel like I've been teaching on this for 40 years, but actually not. After 40 years in the desert east of Canaan, east of the Jordan, Israel invaded Canaan, as the Lord intended, under the leadership of Joshua. And the first 11 verses of Joshua introduces that quite well. Now just to kind of get our orientation here, here's Galilee at the north end there. And by the way, Galilee is 700 feet in round numbers below sea level.

And Andrew rode a bicycle around it. I think the people who rented the bicycle to him told him most Americans don't make it around the lake, but he did. The Dead Sea is down here at the other end with the Jordan River between. The Jordan River actually starts below sea level at Galilee and goes even farther below sea level, more than 2,000 feet below sea level, if you're wondering. And then here is Jericho, right just north of the Dead Sea and on the west side of the Jordan River. So that's the location. Here's Canaan, the promised land that they're heading into. And so our focus today will be right here at Jericho, where they first go across the Jordan River and enter into the promised land.

Now at this point in time we've been for some weeks covering things in the life of Moses. Moses is now going to be passing the baton, or has done so, to Joshua. Moses did not enter into the Promised Land. He was allowed to look into it. That is all. So we looked at the writings of Moses so far in this Law and Grace series, and also the life of Moses. These writings gave Moses 613 individual laws, sometimes called ordinances or statutes, in the Law, singular, capital L, in the Law of Moses. Now, if that brings a tear to your eye, don't worry, we'll read the Law of Moses more. Now, as we turn from Deuteronomy into this book of Joshua, and we will quote Deuteronomy even this morning, Moses had passed the leadership of the people of Israel on to Joshua before he had, as the scripture puts it, laid down with his fathers before the Lord had taken his life. Joshua was the one who was then going to lead them into the promised land.

Deuteronomy 20, these are the words of Moses, some of the last words, one through four goes like this, when you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them. Farther on in verse 3, at the end of verse 3, Moses says, have the priests say this, do not be faint-hearted, do not be afraid or panic or tremble before them.

Why? Why shouldn't you be? Will the times outnumber you? Outpower you? Why? Here are the reasons. Back in verse 1, for the Lord your God who has brought you up from the land of Egypt is with you. Or at the very end in verse 4, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you.

They had been miraculously going through these 40 years out in the desert. as we were recounting in the elective just before this service. Here are the Israelites who had been sustained miraculously by forty years, six days each week, forty years of manna. Miraculously by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. Miraculously by not having their shoes and clothing wear out.

Now that they're entering the promised land, There would be a different kind of the Lord's miraculous work, and that was in the fighting, the Lord would be working miraculously to fight for them. The Lord would give them, if you will, an unfair advantage, miraculously. They could depend upon the Lord so much that they'd go into battle and not be afraid. They'd go into what would appear to be a life-threatening situation and not have a ruffled feather at all.

Here is the challenge that Moses gives in Deuteronomy 31, 6 and 7. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Then Moses called to Joshua and said to him, in the sight of all Israel, So, first the instructions to Israel, now to Joshua. Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land which the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall give it to them as an inheritance. The order, be strong and courageous, is one that continues later on in this very same chapter in Deuteronomy 31 verse 23. Joshua himself repeats it in Joshua 1, 6, 7, 9, 18, and then in chapter 10 verse 25.

He says it again and again, Be strong and courageous. What did he say? Strong and courageous. Go in there. It does not matter that they have better weaponry, that they have great defensive technology all in place. Do not be afraid that they outnumber you. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. That's an order. Don't crumble at them. You must not. There is only one problem.

The one problem is that there are other people in the land where God wants them to go. Here we have a picture of the Canaanite city of Megiddo. As a matter of fact, that construction is right from the century right before the Israelites went in. So what you see there is very much like what the Israelites saw when they entered Megiddo. That they found throughout the cities of Canaan. There were cities with walls and gates and fortresses.

God wants them to go and take out and drive out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. What we'll see here in Jericho is a total loss of life. That, however, we're going to find is not the typical situation, as we'll study next week, because the primary command, in many instances, I would say most, is to not take out the life, but drive them off. The idea is that most of the cities of Canaan and the orchards, the vineyards, the waterworks, everything, the Israelites would walk into with the people driven off.

As they cross over the Jordan River into the land that the Lord had promised, the first city that they encounter will be a very well-fortified city, the city of Jericho. As we'll soon see, a double-walled city all around. Israel was under the law of Moses and under a principle of law. We'll see what that means. Let me summarize this way.

They were not only given the 613 laws of Moses, 248 things to do, 365 things not to do, 613 laws, but they also were given specific directions which varied from one city to the next as they attacked. You are to follow the directions explicitly for each city. Not to assume that you can continue on the directions you had. You must do it differently if they are commanded differently.

We say they were under the law of Moses, but they're also under a special principle of law here too. Let me explain what I mean. Here in Joshua 1, 16 through 18, and I'm kind of dropping out the middle part there, they answer Joshua saying, anyone who rebels against your command and does not obey your words and all that you command him shall be put to death. only be strong and courageous. So what happens if you try to wing it? What happens if you try to shoot from the hip? What happens if you just try to do what we did last time? You die.

That's why we say it's not just the 613 laws of Moses, but a principle of law in taking on the promised land. You must do precisely as you were instructed and not assume that it's the same as the last time. You must follow the directions every time to the letter. Failing to follow those specific orders from God through Joshua for the battle, that specific battle, meant defeat for the whole people and the death penalty for the person that erred. Wow, that's heavy. Okay, so you got 613 laws to remember, and remember each time what you were instructed to do. So, let's think about this.

As Joshua goes into Jericho, did Joshua gain the upper hand through a study of military strategy? Did he look very carefully at, ah, here's the most expert of techniques and insights on how to carry out a battle? No, that's not quite what he did. Did Joshua learn how to predict and even cause an earthquake when he came up to Jericho? Not exactly. Not that. Okay. Did Joshua plan to take them out with superior physical strength and firepower? Was that what he did? No, not that either. Not that. Why?

God had them do this instead. And let me tell you something, from a human standpoint, what God had them do makes no sense at all. The people that they were attacking wouldn't be impressed. At best, they would be puzzled. What are these people doing? The people of Israel walked around Jericho just once. Imagine, all these people, they come and walk around the city just once, and then they go away. And the next day, they do it just once, and they go away. And that happens for six days.

You wouldn't think, well, I better get ready to fight. You'd want to say, where's an asylum I can put these people in? These people are nuts. It is not the strategy you would select. They had seven priests, not all the priests. They had lots of priests. Only seven of them got to blow a ram's horn trumpet, kind of looking like this. Just seven.

And they would go about blowing the trumpet. And then they'd walk away. I mean, it was the craziest antics you could imagine from a human standpoint. Then some of the priests would carry this Ark of the Covenant. So there'd be four of them with that, seven with the ram's horn. And imagine the people looking down from Jericho, I mean, boys, people are nuts.

And they keep doing this every day. And they're just blowing ram's horn, not doing anything, carrying this funny looking gold box around. And after they do that once, then they go away. Have a good night's rest. Play for the rest of the day. Right? Just once for six days. But on the seventh day, they walked all around Jericho the same way. Exactly the same. Seven times.

And did something different. And we did it in the psalm. Or at least I did. And shouted. That was the one thing that they hadn't done before. Previously, in their once around, they kept quiet, other than the noise of the priests. Yeah, no shouting, no noise, no, hey, we're going to get you, or all the usual things. And that would be the typical thing, is there would be all the soldiers shouting and yelling and making threats and a lot of noise. Other than the ram's horn, quiet. Don't say a thing.

But this seventh time, going around seven times and then shouting at the end. God had them do this and the walls came down. On the seventh day they walked all around Jericho, seven times shouted, all the walls at the sound of the shout fell outward making a ramp for Israel's soldiers. Let me explain and we'll look at this in more detail. The walls fell outward so that rather than having this vertical retaining wall, the walls which prevented the Israelites from coming into the city now permitted them to go into the city going straight up just as the Bible says.

Very interesting. So the soldiers would just run up the ramp And all the protection walls drop down. Here is a computer model of Jericho at the time of the conquest, about 1406 BC. This is an oblique view that is kind of looking down at an angle at the reconstruction. The reconstruction is based on the description in the Bible and upon the archaeology, which we'll look at shortly. And by the way, the Bible and the archaeology agree very well. And guess where the soldiers would be While the Israelites were walking around, they would be on the outside wall, which was going to collapse.

Isn't that amazing? So how are you going to take care of all the soldiers? There would hardly be any, because they would be caught in all the rubble of the collapsing wall. All the soldiers, with few exceptions, would be gathered on that outside wall. And so the soldiers were taken out, whether along the wall or at some particular bulwark. The soldiers were to destroy everything and everyone in the city, even animals, keeping only the gold, silver, bronze, and iron articles to bring into the temple treasury. That's it. Everything else, destroy it, kill it, burn it. They were to burn the city even with its freshly harvested grain and other crops, and we'll take a look at that in a minute.

But Rahab alone was kept alive because she had helped Israel's spies, which we'll see shortly as well. But what was so special about Rahab? Well, Rahab, amazing, was a harlot. She had sheltered and protected the two Israelite spies who had come to kind of check out the city of Jericho. She sheltered them when the king of Jericho was trying to look for them.

And reminiscent of the Apostle Paul being led out of the wall down the wall in the city of Damascus she lets the two Israelite spies down the city wall as well out her window so Rahab and her father's household were spared that day very interesting the Lord had things break where they needed to break and not where they ought not in order to preserve Rahab So the score is Israelites won, Jericho 0.

But that's all it takes. The Israelites clearly and only by the hand of God had scored a great victory that day. Massive victory. It was the first step in capturing the land God had promised in a way that would not be repeated. Next city, was it captured in the same way?

Nope. Any others? Nope. Jericho was exceptional. Jericho was exceptional. God did not repeat or have the Israelites repeat the process as he did here. We need to explore here four things further about this famous battle of Jericho. As a matter of fact, there's actually five, but I'm going to push it off until next week. The fifth one has to do with what about the morality of going in and wiping out all the people in Jericho except for Rahab and their father's household? What about the morality of going into Canaan and driving them off their land?

We'll look at that next week. That's a big question that people have asked. I think there are some good answers, but we won't have time for that right now. First of all, take a look at the archaeology there at Jericho, which is, by the way, very apparent and well-studied. Rahab's lineage. What's so special about Rahab's lineage or genealogy, if you will? Rahab's fate is another point we'll be looking at, and the fourth one bring it back to law and grace, which is the theme that we've been looking at here. So keeping in mind the timeline, that this is after 40 years in the desert, heading back into the land there, here is the site of Old Testament Jericho looking south. This is an aerial view, kind of obliquely looking off to the south.

You can see that, in fact, much of the original city is still there, although obviously much in the way of buildings is covered up or gone. There has been some trenching in the middle, mostly excavation around the perimeter, and there's good reason for that, as we'll soon see. So this is the site, New Testament Jericho, by the way, that's where Zacchaeus was, as we find in the New Testament accounts. Zacchaeus was in a nearby area, but not this Old Testament Jericho site. Here's some diagrams of the excavation of the outside retaining wall. We'll soon see pictures of it. Here are some pictures, black and white, because they're older pictures of the excavation of the city that was destroyed by Israel's invasion when they went in there. Now, there have been various excavations and archaeological investigations of Jericho over time.

And you may have heard one thing or another. It turns out in recent years, Dr. Bryant G. Wood, who less than a decade ago spoke in this room, Dr. Bryant G. Wood, he has his doctorate degree in Canaanite pottery, used to date the various archaeological finds and remains, has come to say that everything that he has found and examined, and also having looked at prior archaeological excavations, everything matches what the Bible says. Yeah, everything matches what the Bible says. Here's the computer model we've shown previously.

There's the oblique view, and the archaeology matches that with the exception that we'll soon see. Here's another, looking at it from the side, this would have been more like, the exception of the clean appearance, would have been more like what the Israelites would have seen at their level, looking at it horizontally.

If you were relying on the weapons that the Israelites had, this would have been a formidable fortress to attack, right? That outside wall, see that outside wall right there with the bulwarks, kind of protective places along the wall? It would have looked like this in cross-section. There would have been an earthen embankment coming down to a mud brick wall. There would have been a thick wall built up and then a retaining wall at the base. The lower retaining wall and the mud brick wall at Jericho at the time of the conquest, this is a sectional view.

Okay? All right. Now, look at this retaining wall. What happens is the mud brick wall falls below the retaining wall, creating a ramp. That's how the archaeologists found it. Is that what the Bible describes? Yep. That's how the archaeologists found it all the way around, which is one of the reasons why the excavation for that site of ancient Jericho includes taking that mud brick wall out of the way so that you can see the stone retaining wall behind it.

So in Joshua 6 20 it says and the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into the city See instead of coming up to the wall and having to try to break it or anything else They went every man straight ahead and they took the city. They went right up the ramp Okay They went right up the ramp the Lord had made what looked formidable and Scary and how are we going to get past this? into a golden opportunity Just run right up the ramp. It's that simple.

And by the way, the soldiers you were worried about, they're pretty much dead. They've all been caught up in this rubble. Here is that retaining wall. Dr. Bryant is at the top and one of his assistants is at the bottom. The retaining wall, once they took the mud brick collapsed out of the way, is still there all the way around. Here is Dr. Bryant explaining how The soldiers went right up the ramp and then went up into the city, explaining, looking down this retaining wall. Here's more shot of the same retaining wall that's still present all the way around.

Now, the other thing that's interesting, we mentioned that it was right after harvest. They had crossed the Jordan River. It overflows its banks all the days of the harvest. It was right after harvest and so what you would expect is that the archaeologists would find containers full.

Now notice Joshua 6 24 says they burned the city with fire and all that was in it. So containers full of grain that's burnt. That's what you would expect to find. And guess what they find? Containers full of grain that's burnt. Here and here. Again and again. And where you don't have containers of grain, you also find ash layers. Here's a white layer and a dark layer of ash that's all around because it was burnt.

Isn't that what the Bible describes? Amazing. Here's another place where they're looking at a container of burnt grain. The Israelites were told, don't take any of the grain, burn it, along with everything else. And so what do the archaeologists find? Pot after pot after pot after pot of burnt grain. Here is more broken pottery. You can find the pottery all in pieces. Why? Because the Israelites weren't to take anything, they were to destroy it all. And what do you find? Lots of broken pottery.

Dr. Wood was an expert at dating it. He used the pottery to date it to exactly the time the Bible says. That's what his doctorate degree was in, is dating the remains using pottery findings. Nearby, some seals that is used to make marks and wax or clay. were found in the tombs nearby. And guess what? The seals date from around the time that the Bible would indicate is the right time. Very interesting.

Oh, and by the way, you notice, you see that name Thutmos? The N there sounds like Moses, right? The names of the pharaohs had the name Moses included in the name only during that time. and not later and not earlier. And it is likely that Hatshepsut, whose name you see on there, Dr. Bryant Wood believes that this is the case, that Hatshepsut was the ruling lady pharaoh, one of a few women pharaohs, who in her younger years directed to have Moses be brought in and brought up in an Egyptian household.

If you're interested in more, I think your handout has this biblearcheology.org website, and that site also includes references to a couple of books I think you'll find helpful. All right, now let's look at the lineage, Rahab and the lineage of King David and of Christ. There's Matthew 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 16. You can look also at Luke 3, 23-38 as comparison.

It starts off about Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram. And Salmon, that's not Salmon, right? Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab.

That's part of the significance of Rahab, but that's not all. Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth as per the book of Ruth right so you have Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth the Moabitess and Obed the father of Jesse, Jesse was the father of David the king and on to verse 16 Jacob was the father, it's a different Jacob, was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary by whom Jesus was born who was called the Messiah there's the lineage of Rahab oh and also of Ruth Now the faith question, that was our number three.

Jericho, Rahab and faith in Hebrews 11, 30 and 31. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircling for seven days. Well I tell you, when you go walk up to the walls and you just play seven rams horns and you just walk around and don't say anything, that takes some faith. Right? That takes some faith.

By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace. By faith Rahab. Interesting. Was she a harlot? Yeah. Bible says so from beginning to end. Why was she preserved? By faith. Do some of us have a history? Yeah. Me too. How are we preserved? How are we saved? By faith. The Israelites were under some law and some grace.

We'll see that the Israelites were under the law of Moses and under this principle of law. That is, you will do this at Jericho. When you go to Ai, you're going to do it differently. You're going to do it differently when you go one place and then the next. They were under a principle of law as they entered the land. It was like a one-time law death penalty if you fail.

But the Lord was also gracious to the people of Israel. Did the Lord have to do things the way He did? He could have said, hey, work hard, take Jericho, I'm sorry you're going to have a lot of loss of life, but do your best. No. He provided a miraculous means so that they really had very little even fighting to do. The soldiers were taken out by the way the Lord took out the wall, but not the part of the wall where Rahab was.

We in the body of Christ do not live under some mixture of law and grace. God was gracious to the people of Israel and he put them under law. We live under pure, pristine, uncontaminated grace. We breathe the pure air of grace. It's not some mixture of law and grace. God doesn't say, well, I don't have as many laws for you, but just a few, and then I put some grace in there too. It's not a mixture. It's pure, uncontaminated grace. Breathe easy.

In Romans 5, 15, and 17, but the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. For if by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

Towards the end of that chapter, just a few verses later, Romans 5.20 and 21 says this, The law came in so that the transgression would increase. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, even so, grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grace is the reigning principle. Grace would reign. Not just a little bit more grace and a little bit less law. Grace is raining. That's God's intent. God's amazing grace is raining. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at this account, and we call it an account, not a story, as we look at this account of what is described in the book of Joshua, and we look at how you pulled it off, We do thank you for the grace that you've shown. You, by showing grace to that one woman's household, Harlot, though she was, by showing grace, you have used her descendant, Jesus Christ, to show grace to us. Amazing grace, pure, pristine grace. Thank you. In Jesus name. Amen.