Josué 6

Josué 6

Spurgeon - Believing and obeying always run side by side...Faith and obedience are bound up in the same bundle. He that obeys God, trusts God; and he that trusts God, obeys God...(In short) Obedience is the hallmark of faith. Jericho was insurmountable, but that is exactly where faith triumphs. The people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city - Israel obeys and experiences the blessings associated with obedience as God carried out in effect a "divine demolition!" This would have a dual effect - fear factor of Jericho-ites; faith-factor for Israelites. Remember that obstacles to us are opportunities for God to show Himself great and mighty in our life. This same thought is sometimes expressed this way - “We are faced with a series of great opportunities-brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” What disguised opportunities do you face today? How did the wall fall? It certainly was not the reverberating effect of Israel shouting. By all human standards, Jericho was impregnable. This seemed to be a humanly impossible situation. Israel, by this time, had only a limited trained army. They had no machines of war, no artillery to batter down the walls, and no equipment to scale the walls. God did not tell Joshua and the sons of Israel to attack the city with carnal weapons of war, but to obey the commands of a supernatural working God. Clearly it is a manifestation of the power of the LORD. One is reminded of Zechariah 4:6 "Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts." THOUGHT - Liberal scholars try to explain away this supernatural intervention, but faith sees it as a clear indicator of God's mighty power at work on the part of His people. What are the towering walls that seem an insurmountable obstacle? Faith enables us to march around those walls, so that they melt like snow before the noonday sun. The fact that this battle was won not by human might but by spiritual might reminds us that in our Jericho "battles" we need to remember the wise words of Paul that although "we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:3-5+) Mattoon - The walls fell flat and the people went up into the city to attack. The word “flat” is translated from a Hebrew word which means “underneath it.” The walls collapsed from the very foundation. (Treasures from Joshua) The secret to Israel’s strength wasn’t in her people’s military might. It was the presence of the Lord in their midst that made the difference. That’s why it’s interesting to learn that the trumpets the priests blew were the trumpets blown during Israel’s feasts to announce the Lord’s presence. The Israelites would have known the trumpets’ significance. Henry