Joshua Chapter 5:7-14

Did Joshua know before he crossed the Jordan what was going to happen at Jericho? No. Did Joshua know after he crossed the Jordan what was going to happen at Jericho?

No. Joshua didn't need to know how they were going to take Jericho down. He just needed to be obedient to what God had told him to do. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina.

Obedience should not be dependent on what we know, but who we know. David McGee explains that we can't wait for the whole plan before we are obedient to the Lord, as he continues in the book of Joshua chapter 5. But before we join Pastor David, have you ever experienced a time when you felt spiritually drained? Well, the Bible holds the cure that will bring joy and vitality back into your life. That's why we want to send you a copy of Pastor David McGee's video message, A Checkup from the Neck Up. In this inspiring teaching, you'll find biblical truths that can restore your spiritual health. A Checkup from the Neck Up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life.

So please visit crossthebridge.com to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up. Now here's David McGee with part two of his teaching, Obstacles and Walls. Turn with me to Joshua chapter five verse seven. Then Joshua circumcised their sons whom he raised up in the place for they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way.

So it was when they had finished circumcising all the people that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed. Then the Lord said to Joshua, this day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. Therefore, the name of the place is called Gagal to this day. And we talked about this last week that Gagal is an important place and that Gagal itself means rolled away. And even as it said rolled away the reproach of Egypt, the place was named Gagal.

Now Gagal was an important place to the people of Israel in that it was kind of the gateway into the Promised Land. And I think there's some special significance in the fact that part of our gateway into the Promised Land, Jesus very much had the rolling away of the stone if you remember at the Garden Tomb. Now I've been to the Garden Tomb and these weren't little rocks.

These were huge stones that they put in place. Let me qualify something because I've seen something and people talk about this. And it's one of those things we pick up that it seems nice and warm and fuzzy, but it's probably not very accurate. And that's a... I've seen cartoons and I've seen stuff, you know, where Jesus is in the tomb and the angels come and, you know, they roll away the stone so Jesus can get out. There's kind of a problem with that. Jesus, see, don't get the picture that Jesus is in there in the tomb going, hey, guys, come on, come on, I'm alive, please, roll away the rock so I can get out.

That's not a good picture. Jesus didn't need them to roll away the stone so he could get out. As a matter of fact, Jesus didn't need them to roll away the stone. He didn't need the stone rolled away at all. He could have just left. Why was the stone rolled away?

Stone was rolled away for you and me. So we could know the tomb's empty. The tomb is empty.

Guys, I've been there. You know, you go to Muhammad's tomb, you know what you see? Muhammad's bones. You know, you go to Buddha's tomb, you know what you see? Buddha's bones. You go to Jesus's tomb, you know what you see? Nothing. It was empty.

He ain't there. That is the difference between our religion and every other world religion. So this thing of rolled away and Gagal, again, is important for a lot of reasons. And we talked about it a little bit last week, but let's talk about it a little bit more. We talked about it being a place of remembrance last week. And it was important for them to remember.

And it's important for us to remember our gateway into the promised land. Is it your works? No, no, it's Jesus. It's Jesus. And that's something that we all have in common.

Understand something. If you've asked Jesus to forgive your sins, Jesus has forgiven you of your sins. Doesn't matter how foul, how bad, or how respectable you think they were. Jesus has dealt with them. So we need to always remember that place, if you will, Calvary.

Also, this place is at Gagal. I think Joshua, this is a place Joshua probably had to kind of die to himself in the sense that he had the reminder that God was running the show. It wasn't Joshua. Understand that's something, that's a lesson we all need. God will allow you to run your life if you want to. But if you do that, don't complain to him about the results.

If you allow him to lead you, him to run your life, you'll be amazed at the difference. Now, a lot of us have experienced both sides of that. We need to remember that part of this whole thing in following the Lord is dying to ourselves, is dying to ourselves. Somewhere along the line, that whole concept got swept away from Christianity.

I don't know what happened. It's almost like a Christless, crossless gospel. But we need to die to ourselves. We need to die to our selfish nature and our sinful nature.

And that's what God desires. Now, when we remember that God allowed his son, even placed his son dying on a tree to die for us, then that should cause us to want to die for him and to live for him. This is dying to our desires and living for his desires. This is dying to our plans and living for his plans.

This is the practical working out of your faith. This is when you get offended, that's an opportunity for you to die to yourself. When you get your feelings hurt, that's an opportunity for you to die to yourself. When things don't go the way that you think they should go, that's an opportunity for you to die to yourself. And it's important because that's part of God's best for us, is dying to ourselves. Now, if you're a new believer or maybe you're sitting here tonight and you don't know Jesus, you're sitting here going, what are you talking about? This is the deal.

If you want to run your life, if you're really happy and content with the results you've been getting doing that, then maybe that's still an option for you. But for me and a lot of other people in here now, that didn't work out so well. There were problems. There was all these things going on. There was our sin nature just leading us by the nose.

We were in great bondage and we decided, you know what? I don't want to run my life anymore. God, I want you to run my life. And this is an important concept in ministry too, because if you want a life with God, if you want a life of doing great things with God, you understand the first thing that has to happen?

You have to die to yourself so that God can live in you. John Knox, awesome man in Scotland, was praying for years and years. Lord, give me Scotland or I will die. That was his prayer for years.

Give me Scotland or I will die. The Lord finally answered his prayer. And you know what God said? God said, die and I will give you Scotland.

Die to yourself. Ephesians chapter two, verse five, puts it like this. Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So as we remember, we died to ourselves. We're not left there in the tomb. See, this is the kicker.

This is the amazing thing. When we die to ourselves, we live for Him. It's a transaction, if you will. See, as long as you're willing to live your own life your own way, you're missing out on that transaction. But when you're willing to go to God and say, God, you know what?

I want to make this transaction. I want to die to myself and have you live through me. We make an exchange with the Son of God, our life for His life. So you can sit there and feel weird about dying to self and think, oh, it's just a bummer.

I got to do this and not get my own way. Wait a minute. Let's look at the transaction.

You get to exchange your life for God's life in you. Who comes out on the short end of that stick? It's not us.

It's not us. But God's willing to do that. And that's the amazing thing, that God is willing to do that. Now, this was tied back to the circumcision stuff.

And this is just so important. God just kept speaking in my heart today about this. We decide which will control our life.

Do you understand that? Oh, Jesus desires to control your life. If you've asked Him to forgive you of your sins, He wants to control your life.

But He's a gentleman. And He'll allow you to make the decision. The decision to either be controlled by your flesh and victimized by it or be controlled by the Spirit and be victorious in it. See, if you're letting the flesh rule your life, don't be surprised at some of the stuff that goes wrong because I guarantee you stuff will go wrong.

Horribly wrong sometimes. But if you allow the Spirit of God to work in you and you surrender to that and you die to your flesh, then you will be victorious. And even the battles that you lose, you win because you learn things from those things. And again, this is our decision that we get to make. We get to make it on a daily basis to say, God, I'm with you. And devil, I don't want any part with you.

And if you blow it one day, guess what? You can have a new start. But you need not to give ground away like that and be developing an attitude and a lifestyle of living for the Lord and dying to self.

Had the children of Israel decided to go back to Egypt once they were in the Promised Land, they probably would have gone the same way, past Gogol. And you know what? Between us and our sins stands Calvary. And between us and going back to that life, to the old life, to the world, to the old life, to the world stands a cross. And you need to be reminded of that because Jesus paid a price so that you could die to yourself and live for him.

I can't stress to you how important that is. Verse 10, now the children of Israel camped in Gogol and kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho. Notice they kept the Passover after they were circumcised.

Why? Because you couldn't have Passover if you were uncircumcised. Exodus chapter 12 verse 48 says, and when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised and then let him come near it and keep it, and he shall be as a native of the land.

For no uncircumcised person shall eat it. And again, there's a picture of dying to ourself and living for the Lord and experiencing freedom of Passover. Verse 11, and they ate of the produce of the land after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain on the very same day. Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land. And the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year.

God took good care of them. Whenever they had a need for manna, God was there with manna. But there came a time when they were supposed to eat from the promises of the land. And I think here again, you can see this as a young believer, God will just pour manna out on you as long as, well, while you need it.

But there comes a time when you make the transition from manna to the fruit of the land. You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be back with more powerful insight from God's Word in just a moment. But first, your enemy the devil doesn't want you to experience the life-giving truths of God's Word. He wants to rob you of the full life God wants for you.

But you can overcome his attacks because there is supernatural power in the Word of God. That's why we want to send you Pastor David McGee's video message called A Checkup from the Neck Up. This powerful resource will show you how to revitalize your spiritual health and grow in your faith daily by meditating on God's powerful Word. A Checkup from the Neck Up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life.

So please visit crossthebridge.com now to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up. Now back to today's message. Let's read on verse 13. And it came to pass when Joshua, these are three big verses here, and it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked.

And behold, a man stood opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, are you for us or for our adversary? That's an interesting answer.

Interesting question. Joshua's standing here and get the picture, guys. Joshua's standing here by Jericho, probably looking at the walls. And probably as a good military man, he's trying to figure out what he's going to do.

What kind of ladders it's going to take to scale these walls and how he's going to approach it and what he's going to do. But notice something. Did Joshua know beforehand how he's going to take Jericho? No. Did Joshua know before he crossed the Jordan what was going to happen at Jericho? No. Did Joshua know after he crossed the Jordan what was going to happen at Jericho?

No. You know why? Because as we follow the Lord, we are kept on a need-to-know basis.

It's the old military term, right? A need-to-know basis. Joshua didn't need to know how they were going to take Jericho down. He was just needed to be obedient to what God had told him to do. The next life lesson is obedience should not be dependent on what we know but who we know. Obedience should not be dependent on what we know but who we know. See, if you sit there and you go, okay, God, I want the whole plan, A to Z, what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, how you're going to do it, man, forget that.

That ain't going to happen. And maybe you're sitting there going, well, I can't believe I'm not at Z yet. Well, God's still kind of waiting for you to go from A to B. And then he's going to show you where C is.

But he's not usually going to show you where F is while you're still at B. God will call you to take small steps of obedience. And as you take small steps of obedience, guess what? Your faith gets built.

Your faith is now tested and tried. And you can step out in bigger steps of faith. But I've never gotten the full picture of what God is doing around the corner. He just reveals one step at a time.

And you know the crazy thing? He expects me to take that step one step at a time without revealing the whole plan. And I think maybe it's because if I knew the whole plan, I'd try to help and I'd get in the way, you know, instead of just following the Lord. Verse 14, Joshua says, Are you for us or for our adversaries? So he said, No, but as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant? Now, let me point out something.

And you may not be aware of this. When you see the word Lord in capital letters, and you may have to look close because the New King James, the three O-R-D are actually in their smaller case, but their capitals, you can tell by the R and the D. When it's in capital letters, what that means is that is that's Yahweh in the Hebrew. That is, I am that I am. That is the eternally existent one. Okay. When you see Lord spelled with O-R-D in smaller case letters, that is Adonai. Okay.

When you see Lord God and you see God in G, big O, big D, that's usually Adonai Yahweh. So why is that important? Because whenever you see that word and it's in capitals, it's important to note that. It's important to note that.

And it's certainly important to note here. Now, let me mention, and we're going to get deeper into this as we get deeper into Joshua. Let me mention just a couple of parallels between Joshua and the book of Revelation. Number one, in both books, both lands are lands that belong to God, but have been taken over by pagan idolaters. The earth at the end of the book and in Joshua, the promised land. In both cases, the armies that possess the land in the beginning will be driven off by battles they cannot win. And the armies of God will not lose.

And there's a lot more to it, but there is just three. Both armies of God are led by someone named Yeshua. If you remember, Jesus' Hebrew name was Yeshua.

Joshua, that's a kind of an English version of the Hebrew word Yeshua. And in both cases, guess who wins? The armies of God. Now, that's just a few of the parallels. We'll get more into that later.

We've got some other stuff to dig in here. Joshua fell on his face on the earth and worshiped. And notice this angel receives the worship. That tells us something.

You know why? Because angels don't receive worship. Angels do not receive worship. You may remember in Revelation 22, verse 8 and 9, it says, "'Now I, John, saw and heard these things, and when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. Then he said to me, see that you do not do that, for I am your fellow servant of your brethren the prophets and of those who keep the words of this book, worship God.'" Now, why would angels be sensitive about people worshiping them? Because one-third of the angels got cast down from heaven in the angelic rebellion or the angel wars, if you want to call them that. And so, they're very sensitive about somebody worshiping them.

And yet, this angel receives the worship of Joshua. Now, that tells us something. That tells us something. And it's important for us to know this kind of stuff. It's important for us to know the Bible. I love... There's still a story. I love this story. This pastor wants to go into Sunday school to kind of see how things are going and making sure the kids are, you know, learning the Bible.

And I'm kind of giving away what we're going to do next week too. But he goes in there and he goes, guys, who tore down the walls of Jericho? And they all kind of looked at each other. And then this one little boy said, I didn't do it. So, the pastor's like, oh, this is not good, you know.

So, he waits till after class and all the students are gone. He gets the teacher off to his side and he goes, you know, I can't believe I asked him who tore down the walls of Jericho and that little boy, Johnny, he looked at me and he said he didn't do it. And the teacher said, well, pastor, if Johnny said he didn't do it, I believe him.

He's a good boy. And the pastor's like, oh, this is not good. So, he thinks, well, I'm going to bring it up at the deacon and elder meeting. So, he comes in there and he goes, guys, I'm a little concerned about the church because I went into Sunday school class and I, you know, I asked him who tore, you know, who tore down the walls of Jericho. And this one little kid, Johnny, he said he didn't do it. And one of the elders stood up and said, you know, pastor, I know Johnny's family and if he said he didn't do it, I'll stand for him.

I don't think he did it. And the pastor's getting even more concerned. Then a deacon stands up and he goes, you know what, let's just forget all this talk about who tore the wall down.

Let's just allocate the funds to fix the thing, okay? Need to know the Bible, don't he? So, this angel receives the worship.

That tells us something. And what it tells us is that this is not just an angel, it's Jesus Christ. It's what we call a Christophany. What that means is that it's an appearance of Jesus in the Hebrew scriptures or the Old Testament. And again, we know this because he's receiving the worship of Joshua. Now, there's another key here in that the commander of the army or captain of the host, commander of the army, new King James, captain of the host in the King James. But the Hebrew word is sar, which comes from sarar, which actually is translated a little closer as prince, which is what the amplified version uses.

I like that. Wow, what's a prince? It's the son of a king.

That's probably getting a little closer to being accurate. Now, again, I'm going to tie this up a little bit with chapter 6 next week right now, because what happens is he's there for what? He's there to tear down the walls of Jericho.

Why? They're in the way. They're in the way of what God wants to do in this people group.

Why is that important? Because that's what God wants to do in your life. That's what God wants to do in my life.

That's what God wants to do in this people, this community, this church. We all have our own little walls that we've built between one another. And I understand that you can get to feeling pretty safe behind those walls, but you know what? That's not the way God intended for you to live.

Because you know what? Let's be honest, it gets really lonely behind those walls. And the Lord desires to tear down those walls. But there's also a picture here, and it's an interesting picture, because there's another wall that Scripture speaks of. It's a wall that was spoken of in Ephesians 2, 14.

It says, for he, speaking of Jesus, is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. Understand something, as a non-Jewish person, as a Gentile, if we would have gone to the temple at Jerusalem, we could not have gone in. We could have gone to this place that was called the Court of Gentiles and proceeded no further. And actually, there was a warning sign that archaeologists have discovered. This was up in the temple.

And basically, it says, if you're a Gentile and you go past this place, you'll be executed. Guys, we had no access. We had no access to God. There was a wall between us that needed to be dealt with. Oh, and it was much bigger than just the wall that was on the Temple Mount. It was the wall of our sin, the wall of our unfaithfulness, the wall of everything that we've ever done wrong in between us and God. And we couldn't get around that. There was no way. Oh, some of us tried to tear it down with our good works or, you know, maybe new age stuff or whatever. And it couldn't do it.

Didn't do it. That wall to us seemed insurmountable, but it wasn't to Jesus. And Jesus tore down that wall for you to have access. The amazing thing is that some people, even after the wall has been torn down and access has been given, won't walk in it.

And that's sad. Jesus went through so much trouble to tear this wall down for us to give us access. Jesus had to die for my sins. Jesus had to die for your sins. And we should never take that for granted. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ.

Modern life just keeps getting busier and busier by the day. As a result, a lot of Christians are missing out on the life-giving nourishment of daily time in God's Word. That's why Pastor David McGee wants to help revitalize your spiritual health by sending you his video message titled, A Checkup from the Neck Up. This resource shows you how to meditate daily on God's Word so that His truth can transform your life. A checkup from the neck up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life. So please visit crossthebridge.com now to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up.

You know each day comes with its share of stresses. So what better way to wake up than with an encouraging word from the Lord? Visit crossthebridge.com and sign up now for David McGee's email devotionals. Each devotion includes scripture and a message from the heart of David McGee. It's easy and it's free. Sign up today at crossthebridge.com and be sure to join us next time on Cross the Bridge as we continue in the book of Joshua. We'll see you then.