Episode Transcript
Back in the book of Joshua this morning.
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Morning Danny.
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Probably chapter 3 or 4.
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Let's go to chapter 3.
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We're going to be in several chapters this morning.
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Let's go to chapter 3.
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We're going to be in several chapters this morning.
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Let's start in chapter 3.
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We'll end up a few chapters further than where we are this morning.
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So last week we looked at the spies going to the Harlot Rahab's house that sat on the town wall of Jericho.
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Rahab was a prostitute.
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She's not a godly woman, but you know what?
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She came to the place in her life where she realized that God was right.
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They were wrong. They deserved judgment.
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God was the one true God.
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So she turned her back on her native country so that she could receive and be accepted by the one true God in the country that he ruled.
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And so thank God that even though we may have a terrible past like Rahab,
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God will accept anyone who accepts Him and believes in the promise of the Gospel.
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So we're in chapter 3 this morning and what we've got to do,
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we've got to get Israel into the Promised Land as a nation now.
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And they sent spies over there twice.
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Now they've got to get the whole nation in.
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And so what we're going to do is get them across this Jordan River.
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Here we go. That's a little bigger.
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You can see the Jordan River flows down here and it goes down into the Dead Sea.
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Still does, by the way.
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But they had to cross this Jordan River to get over here into the main area of the Promised Land.
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They're going to conquer Jericho first, okay, and drive them out and destroy them.
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Now to get across that Jordan River is going to be an ordeal because it's the time of year where Jordan's banks are overflowed.
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So it's a strong river current and you can't cross two million people over there.
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That's somebody drowning, cattle being washed away or whatever they've got.
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And so it's going to take a miracle to get these people across.
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And I'm sure that the people on the other side, especially Jericho,
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I'm sure they thought that that river would provide them some type of protection, you know,
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a strong boundary to keep Israel out of their way, at least for the time until it receded later in the year.
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Let's go ahead and look here now, if you would, and go to chapter 3, verse 1.
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"And Joshua rose early in the morning and they removed from Shittim and came to Jordan.
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He and all the children of Israel and lodged there before they passed over."
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So they're on the other side of the Jordan River and they stay there.
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And verse 2, "And it came to pass after three days that the officers went through the host,
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and they commanded the people, saying, 'When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God
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and the priest the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place and go after it.'"
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All right? So they've got to get across, and this is the instruction so far.
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Remember, the ark of the covenant has those poles that they're going to carry like this.
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So they all tell the people, all the leaders tell the people,
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"When you see the Levites put the ark of the covenant, that box with the mercy seat on it,
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when you see them march across and head toward this Jordan River with that mercy seat
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in that ark of the covenant, you get up and you follow them."
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That's the instructions. You're going to follow that ark of the covenant.
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And the reason this is happening is because God's showing them the only way
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that you can get across and you can conquer this land and be victorious is not through your own strength,
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but through the covenant or the promise that I've made you, and through the mercy that I've given you
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through the mercy seat. Not by your work, but by my mercy and grace will you be able to accomplish this.
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God's going to do the work. God's going to win the battle. They're going to enjoy the victory that God wins,
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so they're going to be victorious in him.
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So they're fighting from the point of victory, not fighting for victory.
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They're fighting from the point of victory because God's already promised them victory.
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Now let's go ahead and look here now. Verse 4, "Yet there shall be a space between you and it,
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about two thousand cubits by measure, come not near unto it, that you may know the way by which you must go,
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for you have not passed this way heretofore." So he says, "Now don't get too close to it."
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Remember, no one can even touch it, remember?
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In fact, whenever they carried it, they had to take that veil, that curtain that separated the holy place
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and the most holy place, they had to cover that with the curtain, and nobody could touch it.
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All right? So keep your distance, but follow it. You've got to follow it because you don't know where you're going.
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You've got to follow this ark of the covenant. It kind of reminds us of living life today, doesn't it?
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We're going to have victory through Jesus, and we don't know where we're going in life.
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We don't know what our purpose is apart from following him and his word, right?
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So that's what we see here. That's where victory comes from.
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Let's go ahead and look here now in verse 5.
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"And Joshua said unto the people, 'Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.'
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And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, 'Take up the ark of the covenant and pass over before or in front of the people,
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ahead of the people.' And they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.
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And the Lord said unto Joshua, 'This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know,
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that as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.'"
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What did God do with Moses? Man, he opened that red sea up and let them go across.
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What's God going to do with Joshua? He's about to open that river up and let them go across.
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And they're going to know, hey, God was with Moses, God is with Joshua, and we're going to follow Joshua's words as well.
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Let's look here now in verse 8. "And thou shalt command the priests that bear the ark of the covenant, saying,
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'When you come to the brink of the water of Jordan, or that is the edge of the river, ye shall stand still in Jordan.'
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And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, 'Come hither and hear the words of the Lord your God.'
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And Joshua said, 'Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail.
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He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites
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and the Parazites and the Gergesites and the Amorites and the Jebusites.'"
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Who's going to drive them out? God will. God will. It's God's work.
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Verse 11, "Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth, passeth over before you into Jordan.
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Now therefore take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe of man.
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And it shall come to pass as soon as the souls of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord,
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the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, but the waters of Jordan shall be cut off
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from the waters that come down from above, and they shall stand upon and heap."
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Alright? So here's what's going to happen.
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The priests are going to have the ark of the covenant carrying it with these staves,
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and they're going to be in front of all the people.
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We're talking about a very powerful swollen river at this time, and they're going to step right off into it,
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carrying this ark. And as soon as their feet start going down into that water,
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they're going to go out in the middle of that river, and they're just going to stand there.
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And God says, "When that happens, the water's going to cut off. It's just going to stop.
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It won't be any more flowing past those priests.
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You're going to have dry ground, and the water's going to start stacking up.
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As it comes, it's just going to start stacking up, piling up like a dam,
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until they get over and then it'll all go across. Alright?
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So let's go ahead and look here now.
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Verse 14, "It came to pass when the people removed from their tents to pass over Jordan,
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the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people.
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And as they that bear the ark were come unto Jordan,
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and the feet of the priests that bear the ark were dipped in the brim of the water,
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for Jordan overfloeth all his banks all the time of harvest,
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that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam,
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that is, besides Zertan, and those that came down toward the sea of the plain,
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and even the salt sea, that's what we call the Dead Sea, failed and were cut off.
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And the people passed over right against Jericho."
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Isn't that amazing?
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As soon as they got in there with an ark of the covenant, boom, water's cut off.
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It's amazing. They cut off.
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It says here, if you'll look back in verse 16,
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"that the waters which came down from above and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam."
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I think it's very interesting.
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This is a picture of Adam and his sin and death that's passed down to his descendants.
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Because the river Jordan in Hebrew means a descender, one that descends.
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And so here you've got Adam and you've got a river that means to descend
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and the ark of the covenant dips into that river and cuts off the descendants of Adam, so to speak.
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There's no descending from Adam. It's cut completely off.
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And they're able to go right across because that's the boundary,
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that's the roadblock that keeps us from entering into the Promised Land is our descendancy from Adam.
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There's a city named Adam here, but it just so happened that the way this worked out,
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God used it as an illustration to show that his mercy, the blood that the coming Savior would shed,
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that provided us mercy, illustrated in this mercy seat which dips down into the descending river,
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which by the way descends from Adam and goes to where? The Dead Sea. And Adam all die.
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And so here they go off into that river and boom, it's cut off and they're able to go right across.
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Why? Not because they were good swimmers, but because of the mercy seat that entered into that river
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and they're able to go across. Let's go ahead and look here now if you would.
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Chapter 4. And it came to pass when all the people were clean, passed over Jordan,
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that the Lord spake unto Joshua saying, "Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe of man,
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and command you them, take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priest's feet stood firm,
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twelve stones, and you shall carry them over with you and leave them in the lodging place where you shall lodge this night."
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And so what's going to happen now, they're going to each take twelve stones, one for each tribe,
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they're going to come and they're going to make a stack of these stones that came out of the river.
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Now what are stones from the river doing out on the bank? They're going to become a memorial
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so that in the future when their descendants came and they looked and they saw all these stones next to this river
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in this heap, they'd say, "What are these stones all about? How come these are stacked up like this?
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Oh, let me tell you what happened. Man, when we were coming, or as generations go, when our grandparents were coming
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or what have you, and God opened this river up for them and here they stuck this there to remind us that this is how they got across
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and this is how God loves us. This is how God keeps His promises."
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And so they made that memorial. Now let's go ahead and look here if you would and get into chapter 5.
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Look here if you would in verse 8.
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"And it came to pass when they had done circumcising all the people that they abode in their places in the camp till they were whole.
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And the Lord said unto Joshua, 'This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you,
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wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.'
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And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month
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at even in the plains of Jericho, which is what I want you to see.
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They're living in the enemy's land, which God has given them, but still occupied by enemies.
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Yet here they are celebrating the Passover.
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The Passover is what God allowed them to get out of Egypt.
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The Passover is what allowed them to go through the Red Sea.
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The Passover was the reason, and of course just as there was blood on the mercy seat, there was blood on their door.
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They got out of Egypt through the blood that was shed for them.
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They got across the River Jordan through the blood that was shed for them.
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And now they're about to go to war, but before they do, they're going to celebrate the blood that was shed for them.
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And how are they going to win this battle? Through the blood that was shed for them.
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It's the same way we live victorious as believers in Christ today, through the blood that is shed for us and faith in that.
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Never, ever forget that. The devil is always going to try to get your mind off of what God has done for us in Christ,
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what God will continue to do for us in Christ.
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He'll try to get our mind back on what we can do for ourselves in our failures and how miserable we are.
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All right. Let's go ahead and look here now in verse 11.
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"And they did eat the old corn of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes and parched corn in the selfsame day."
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Watch this in verse 12, very important.
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"And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.
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Neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year."
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We've got a change of location. Now we have a change of diet, a change of diet.
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No more manna. Manna's ended.
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So after they eat the Passover and they get across this river, Jordan, they've now grown in their Christian walk, you see.
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They're no longer these new Christians, so to speak, that just come out of Egypt.
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They're no longer the people struggling through the wilderness.
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They now have graduated and gotten to a place in Canaan where they've got fruit of the land there.
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They're able to eat things that they couldn't eat before because of what God's accomplished for them in their life.
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And they're following him into that land all the way and trusting him.
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And so now the manna stops and God doesn't give them manna anymore.
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They've got a change of diet. Now they're going to be eating grapes. Now they're going to be eating corn.
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Now they're going to be eating wheat and barley and all kinds of good things that that land provides.
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And the manna's over with.
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When we are born, we eat milk, we eat baby food, we eat things that are easy to digest.
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The manna was a picture of the Savior coming down from heaven to give life unto the world.
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We've looked at that before in John chapter 6.
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Jesus explained, "I am that bread that came down from heaven that man eats, he won't die."
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We thank God for that. But you know what I see?
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And the reason this is here in the book of Joshua is there's a lot of people,
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they just have trouble moving away from the baby food.
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They're always wanting to remind themselves, "I'm saved because Jesus died for my sins."
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That's wonderful. And that's always true. We praise God for that.
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But we need to grow as well.
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Not just sit here and remind ourselves over and over again, "Jesus died for me, salvation is by grace through faith."
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There comes a time when you've got to move from that and change your diet.
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And quit just drinking milk and eating baby food all the time.
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Baby food is great if you're a baby, but none of us are going to leave here today and go out to a restaurant
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and order pureed fruit or squash or something like that.
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That's gross. So we want strong meat now.
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We want a steak, we want potatoes, we want whole vegetables that we can chew and enjoy.
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And so this is a picture of that. They're still eating corn, they're still eating all these things.
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Remember when they came to Egypt and they ate corn that Joseph had?
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That was whole food, but it was still a picture of Jesus, you see.
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You never move away from feeding on Jesus, but you've got to learn more about Jesus
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because there's a whole buffet in the doctrines of Christ.
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There's steak in the doctrines of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
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There's meat and potatoes and vegetables in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And we need to learn more about Him and grow in Him and get away from the baby food
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because going to the steak, the meat and potatoes, it never takes away the gospel of Christ,
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but it builds on it. It gives you more nourishment than you had before.
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So instead of just surviving in the gospel, you can build and grow and thrive in the gospel.
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That's what this is a picture of. So let's go ahead and look here now, if you would,
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in chapter 5 verse 13.
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"And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho."
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Now they haven't fought yet. They're preparing for war.
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"He's by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked,
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and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand."
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So here's Joshua. He's out by himself. He's thinking,
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"Man, we're about to go into battle. How are we going to do this? You know?
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How are we going to win this battle? They've got this big wall up here.
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I know God's going to win the victory for us. How are we going to do it?"
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He's out here thinking. He's praying, I'm sure.
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And suddenly he looks up and he's startled.
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There's a man there with a sword in his hand.
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That's a pretty good sword. There's a sword in his hand.
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Joshua's startled. Let's see what Joshua says.
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He says, "And Joshua went unto him."
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Joshua didn't run away. He went over to him and said unto him,
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"Are thou for us or for our adversaries?" He said, "Hey, whose side are you on?
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Are you on our side or are you on our enemy's side?"
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Because Joshua's about to have battle if he's on the enemy's side.
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Because he sees the sword up.
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Let's see what the man tells Joshua. Verse 14, "And he said, 'Nay.'
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He said, 'No, I'm not either. I'm not on your side. I'm not on their side.
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But as captain of the host of the Lord, am I now come?'"
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He said, "Oh, no, no. I'm not on your side. I'm not on their side.
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I'm the captain of the army of God. I am the leader of this army."
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Do you know who this was? Who? It was Jesus. Exactly right.
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Very good, Gabriel. This was, this was, any time you see God manifested in the form of a man,
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it's always the second person in the Godhead. It's always Jesus Christ, okay?
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This is before he's named Jesus, but this is God. Just like any time you see Richard,
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any time you see me, you're seeing my body. That's a given.
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Any time you see, any time God is manifested to man, you're seeing the Son, okay?
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You're seeing the second person in the Godhead.
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And so look what Joshua did. "And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship,
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and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?"
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So here's the captain of the army right here.
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And so Joshua just gets on his face, and he worships.
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"What say my Lord to his service?" In other words, "Captain, watch your orders.
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Watch your orders." And that's what we have to do too. We've got to learn, man,
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the one winning the battle is the Lord Jesus Christ, and here he is ready to win.
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So you know what you see here? This is very interesting.
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Remember, Joshua is the Old Testament name for Jesus.
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So you see the picture of Christ and Christ himself talking to each other.
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Isn't that the coolest thing? It's the coolest thing.
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Let's go ahead and look here now in chapter 6. I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry, verse 15. "And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua,
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Loose thy shoe from all thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy."
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And Joshua did so. The reason I want to read that right there is because
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that's the same thing that Jesus told Moses at Mount Sinai.
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"Take your sandals off your feet, the place you're standing on is holy ground."
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Joshua is talking to the same one that was talking to Moses and the burning bush,
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and it's been Jesus the whole time. Let's go ahead and look here now in chapter 6.
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"Now Jericho was straightly shut up because of the children of Israel.
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None went out, none came in." In other words, they'd unlocked the city down.
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Just like if we have an active shooter, you lock the place down.
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They'd unlocked Jericho down. No one's going out. No one's coming in,
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because we know war is coming from the children of Israel.
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Verse 2, "And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given unto thine hand Jericho,
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and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor.
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And ye shall come pass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once.
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Thus shalt thou do six days." You've got a big wall up here.
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He's saying, "Here's how we're going to conquer it.
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You're going to walk around this city, the whole city, wall and all, one time,
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each day for six days.
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Now don't take a battering ram and try to knock the wall down.
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You're just going to walk around it. All right? Watch now.
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Verse 4, "And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of ram's horns.
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And the seventh day ye shall come pass the city seven times,
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and the priests shall blow over the trumpets."
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You've got priests, seven, which is the perfect number.
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You've got the priesthood taking ram's horns
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and blowing through these ram's horns.
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And on the seventh day instead of walking around the city once,
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they're going to walk around it how many times?
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Yeah. All right? So let's go ahead and look in verse 5.
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"And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn,
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and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout,
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and the wall of the city shall fall down flat,
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and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him."
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That's the strategy.
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You just walk around once a day, "Booooo!"
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The priests blow the victory, "Boooo!"
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And walk around another day, do that six days, seven days, go around seven times.
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And you know these people are up around the city wall thinking,
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"You mean this is their strategy? I mean, we can do this all day, you know?"
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Yeah, these guys are crazy.
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On that seventh day, the priests blow the horns.
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They walk around seven times, which shows a perfect victory through the priesthood of Jesus.
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It's the priests blowing the horns, you see.
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And it's a ram horn.
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A ram is a male lamb.
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The horn of a ram is its power, right?
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They're blowing through the power of the lamb.
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You see what's happening?
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Priests declaring victory through the power of the lamb.
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And when they do, that seventh time,
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as they're blowing through the horn of that lamb,
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all the people start shouting for victory before victory has ever come.
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And when they're shouting for victory,
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it's their way of saying, "Amen. Amen.
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We are victorious through the priesthood of our God."
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And as they come into agreement with that,
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the wall of their enemy falls down.
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That's exactly the way it is with us.
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Sin, Satan, death, this world has built a great,
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what appears to be a formidable wall that we cannot overcome.
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But the truth is we have victory through the power of the lamb of God.
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And when we come into agreement with that,
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and we walk in faith in that,
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that's when the walls begin to fall in our lives.
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And we see them no longer as this great fortress
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that is going to withstand us and we can't overcome,
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but it's one that's already been overcome in Jesus Christ.
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All right, let's go ahead and look here now if you would.
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Verse 6, "And Joshua the son of Nod called the priests
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and said unto them, 'Take up the ark of the covenant,
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and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of ram's horns
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before the ark of the Lord.'"
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You know what's happening?
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The ark of God's going around.
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And the people are following that ark around the city
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just like they follow that ark through the River Jordan.
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And that's what we do in our life.
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We're just following the ark.
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We're following the cross of Christ.
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We're following our great high priest.
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And we're going to follow him through this world
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all the way up to heaven.
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We're going to follow him all the way back to this earth
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when he makes it new.
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And we'll be victorious because the Lamb of God has gone before us
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and won the victory through the blood he shed.
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And we're going to walk in faith in that.
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My goodness, I just feel like getting up, going,
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let's just dismiss, go over there and start preaching some more.
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I tell you what, that's so exciting to me.
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So let's look here.
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We've got some instructions we've got to see here now.
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Verse 11.
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"So the ark of the Lord can pass the city going about it once,
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and they came into the camp and lodged in the camp,
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and Joshua rose early in the morning.
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The priest took up the ark of the Lord,
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and seven priests bearing seven trumpets of ram's horns
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before the ark of the Lord went on continually,
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and blew the trumpets and the armed men went before them.
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But the rearward came after the ark of the Lord.
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The priests going on and blowing with the trumpets,
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and the second day they can pass the city once
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and return into the camp, and so they did six days.
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And it came to pass on the seventh day,"
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that's what we've been looking forward to,
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"that they rose early about the dawning of the day
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and can pass the city after the same men or seven times.
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Only on that day they can pass the city seven times.
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And it came to pass at the seventh time
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when the priests blew the trumpets,
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Joshua said unto the people,
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'Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city.'"
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Let's shout for victory.
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We've got the city. We've overcome it in Jesus.
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Verse 17, "And the city shall be accursed,"
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listen to what he says now.
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He's telling them to shout, but here's the rules.
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"The city's going to be accursed,
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even it and all that are therein, to the Lord.
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Only Rahab the harlot shall live,
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she and all that are with her in the house," right?
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They're going to be behind that red rope.
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"Because she hid the messengers that we sent.
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And ye, and any wise, keep yourselves from the accursed thing
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lest ye make yourselves accursed,
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when you take of the accursed thing
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and make the camp of Israel accursed and troubled it.
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But all the silver and gold and vessels of brass and iron
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are consecrated unto the Lord,
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and they shall come into the treasure of the Lord."
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So here's the thing.
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They're going to go in, they're going to destroy the city.
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Walls are going to fall, they're going to kill the people.
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And all the stuff, the clothes, you know, you're going,
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"Oh man, this would look good on the wife back at the house," you know?
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The gold, the silver, all that stuff, everything's cursed.
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They're not going in to take it and enjoy all the stuff that's in there.
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They're going in to execute God's judgment on it.
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And so everything's cursed.
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Don't take the spoil of war here.
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The metal, the precious metal, it's going to go in the treasure of God
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and it's going to be, it's going to go to the house of God.
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It's not going to be for your keeping. It's all cursed.
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If you take it home with you, then you're taking the curse home with you too.
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Okay?
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And so let's go ahead and, so we're here to beat them.
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We're not here to join them.
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You see, it's basically what is being said.
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All right, so let's go ahead and look here in verse 20.
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"So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets,
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and it came to pass when the people heard the sound of the trumpet,
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and the people shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down flat,
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so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him,
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and they took the city, and they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
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both man and woman, young and old and ox and sheep, and asked with the edge of the sword.
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But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the country,
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Go into the harlot's house and bring out thence the woman and all that she hath,
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as you swear unto her, keep your word.
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And the young men that were spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father
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and her mother and her brother and all that she had,
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and they brought out all her kindred and left them without the camp of Israel.
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They took them on out.
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And they burnt the city with fire and all that was therein,
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on the silver and the gold and the vessels of brass and of iron
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they put into the treasury of the Lord.
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And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive,
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and her father's household and all that she had,
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and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day,"
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that's not today, of course, but when this was written,
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"because she hid the messengers which Joshua sent to spout Jericho."
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Here's what I want you to see, then we're going to close.
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"Joshua saved Rahab and all she had,
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everybody that believed the good news,
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that if they would get in that room,
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believe first that they were guilty, they were deserving of God's judgment,
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but if they'll go get in the room with Rahab and hide behind that red rope,
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then when judgment came they would be saved.
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And Rahab had a lot of family that believed, they said, "We'll take that."
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Now all the people in the Promised Land were doomed for destruction,
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but those that believed God's covenant and accepted as their own,
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Joshua saved them too.
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Even Gentile Harlot and her family,
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and not only did he save them, but where did they end up living?
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Right along with Israelites, they were part of the family of God.
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That tells us, being a picture of Jesus, Joshua's a picture of Jesus,
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that shows us that God's plan is not only to save Jews, but Gentiles as well.
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Not only to save those that are living a good moral life,
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but those that have had the history of living a terrible, sinful life,
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if they'll understand they're wrong, repent, and accept God's promise of salvation
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through the covenant that he's made and the blood that shed.
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And that's why we're here as a church today, as Gentiles,
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because we believe that promise for ourselves,
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and Joshua has saved us through the blood that he shed on the cross.
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And I'm saying Joshua because it's the same name.
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And we're all part of God's family as well.
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It's such a beautiful story, amazing picture of the victory that we have
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in the Lord Jesus Christ, and how nice of him to show up before the battle.
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He said, "I'm captain of the host of the Lord."
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He was the ram's horns being blown.
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He was the priest walking around the building.
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He was the mercy seat going around.
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He was the one that caused the walls to fall down.
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He is our everything.
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All right?
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Well, the Bible says, "In him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells."
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Well, that will go ahead and save us.
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