Joshua: The God Who Fights for Us

Today on Summit Life, an important perspective shift from Pastor J.D.

Greer. What is it that you keep hidden in your tent because you feel like you can't trust God with it? Because lordship is one of those words that's got to be total if it has any meaning at all. In order for Jesus to be Lord at all in your life, he's got to be Lord of all.

He doesn't come to be a part of your life. He comes to take the whole thing over. Welcome to Friday here on Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. So let's talk military strategy for a minute. I want to be very clear up front. Surrendering is a bad thing when you're looking to win a battle. It means that you've failed or given up and the fight is over.

You're the losing side. But let's talk in spiritual terms now. Surrender is actually the best decision you'll ever make.

You actually win. Today, Pastor J.D. describes what it means to submit yourself completely to God's will and direction. We're learning how to give up control as we look at the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. Pastor J.D.

titled this message, The God Who Fights for Us, and it's part of our series called The Whole Story. So let's dive right in. One of my favorite 1980s movies is Hoosiers. For what it is worth, I think that when we get to heaven, we will see that Western culture reached its pinnacle in the late 1980s. Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Run DMC, Whitney Houston, Chuck Norris, Bon Jovi 1.0, Top Gun, The Empire Strikes Back, The Indiana Jones Trilogy. Come on, y'all. I know that not everyone agrees with me in that assessment, but that's just because you're not fully filled with the spirit yet.

These things are spiritually discerned. Hoosiers came out in 1986. I was in eighth grade. We watched Hoosiers literally every year before my basketball team went into the tournament. In the movie, which is based on a true story, you have this little backwoods high school basketball team in Indiana that overcomes incredible odds and makes it all the way to the Indiana State Championship, where they play this school that is like 10 times bigger than they are in this humongous auditorium, Indiana University's auditorium, which is like 100 times bigger than anything they've ever played in before. Gene Hackman, who plays the coach, walks the team into the arena the day before the game, and he can just sense how overwhelmed these little country boys are at how big this arena is.

And so sensing their fear, he gets out a tape measure, and he measures for them the distance between the rim and the floor, 10 feet, distance between the rim and the foul shot line, 15 feet. And his point is it's the same. It's the same as our little gym back in wherever we came from. He said, look, the basics are the same. The arena is different, but the basics are the same. And the way that you're going to win this game is not by changing. It's just going to be doing the basics the way that you've always done them. That is the exact same point that is being made in the opening scenes of the book of Joshua. God's people are about to go into an entirely new arena, but the basics of what it means to walk with God never change.

They didn't change in that day, and they haven't changed in our day either. In your life, you're going to go through multiple seasons, new seasons. For some of you, you just entered one now. Maybe you just became a student, or maybe for some of you, it's getting married or having kids. For others of you, it's building a career.

The arena's changed, but none of the basics ever do. And sometimes when you go into a new arena, you feel like the fear and the pressure is going to swallow you up, and you start saying, God, do I have what it takes to succeed in this? God, am I really going to be able to make it in this season? And God, in a sense, takes out the tape measure, and he says, all right, you see this?

The distance between the rim and the floor are the same. It's just the basics of what brought you here is what's going to take you onward. The book of Joshua opens up like this. Joshua chapter one, verse one. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of Nun, which doesn't mean that he didn't have any parents.

It just meant that his dad's name was Nun. He said to him, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I'm giving to them, to the people of Israel. Joshua had been one of the 12 spies that 40 years prior to this had been sent in to spy out the land. Of those 12 spies, two of them came back and said, man, the giants in this place are big, but God is bigger. The other 10 came back and said, the giants are big, and they would crush us, and there's no way we can do this. The two spies who gave the courageous report were Joshua and Caleb that we remember. The other 10 spies, we don't remember them at all. Joshua and Caleb, we do remember because of their courage. Verse three, so God tells Joshua, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I've given to you just like I promised to Moses. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Why?

Because you're awesome. No, just because just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. You want to know where confidence comes from your life, it's not navel gazing within, it's looking at the God who walks with you everywhere that he sends you. All right, so verse seven, you're going to be strong and courageous and be careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success. Wherever you go, you got to obey because I'm the one that's fighting this battle. And so your job is to walk with me in obedience hand in hand. So know your Bible. Joshua 5, flip over there, four chapters there to your right. Joshua 5, end of that chapter, verse 13. Joshua's first major challenge in taking the land is Jericho. It's not an easy challenge because Jericho is the most fortified city in the world at the time.

Its walls, historians say, were so thick you could ride two chariots or cross them side by side, which meant it was like a double lane highway. The scene here in Joshua 5 takes place on the eve of the battle of Jericho. Now, as you can imagine, Joshua's pretty nervous.

War is imminent. And this is Joshua's first true moment of leadership. So understandably, Joshua's having a little trouble sleeping.

So he goes out late at night to take a walk to calm his nerves. Verse 13, when Joshua was by Jericho. Now, the way that that's written in Hebrew indicates that Joshua had snuck right up to the walls of Jericho because it literally says in Hebrew, when he was at Jericho, when he was at Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, are you for us?

Are you for our adversaries? Now, first, can we acknowledge Joshua is a man's man? I mean, he is right by the enemy wall in the middle of the night by himself. And he encounters a strange man in the dark with his sword drawn. A lesser man like me would have hightailed it out of there, but not Joshua.

Joshua goes right over to him and challenges the guy to a fight. Come on now. And this strange man said, no, no. No? Did Joshua even ask him a yes, no question? No means you're asking the wrong question. No, but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. In other words, the question is not Joshua, am I on your side?

The question is, are you on my side? I'm not coming as the lieutenant. I'm coming as the general. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, what does my Lord then say to his servant? And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, take off your sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing is holy. And Joshua did so. Now real quick, who is it exactly that Joshua is standing in front of? You might say, well, maybe it's an angel, but it can't be an angel because it says that Joshua worshiped this man and whoever it was didn't stop him. Any other time in scripture that somebody tries to worship an angel like Revelation chapter 22, the apostle John falls on his face and is worshiping an angel and the angel's like, whoa, Jack, you better get up because God's going to be mad at both of us. If you do that, worship God alone. This guy doesn't stop Joshua.

He's not like, whoa, don't do that. He says, thank you for worshiping me. And the place where you're standing is holy. And there's only one person who can make ground holy. This is God himself. It's what theologians call a Christophany.

Christophany is just a fancy word that means a pre-nativity appearance of Jesus Christ before he was born in a manger. And what he demanded then is what he demands now. And that is complete and total surrender because he's telling them, listen, this is not a battle that you're going to fight for me with my help. This is a battle that I'm going to fight for you.

You got to make sure you get the order right. Chapter six, verse one. Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out.

None came in. The Lord said to Joshua, see, look at that. I've given Jericho into your hand with its king and its mighty men of valor. Then God proceeds to give Joshua instructions on how to take Jericho, but the instructions are really odd.

And God tells him, I don't want you to fight. I want you to put the arc of the covenant, which houses my presence in front of you. And I want you to march around the city in silence one time each day for six days. And then on the seventh day, I want you to march around seven times in silence.

And on the seventh time you then shout and I'll take care of the rest. Do not lose sight of how bizarre this is. These are real people, right?

They're not different than you and me. They're all amped up for a fight. Joshua's itching to prove himself. Imagine if this happened in a football game.

You've got a football team and the coach says, on offense, I don't want you to run a play. You're going to hold hands and sing away in a manger or don't go chasing waterfalls or something ridiculous like that. How hard must this have been for Joshua? He wants to prove himself, but God says, no fighting.

I'll do the fighting. Then God says, verse 18, but you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, all silver and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron. They're holy to the Lord.

They shall go back into the treasury of the Lord. Now that's an important detail, which we'll come back to later. Well, they do as instructed, verse 20, and as soon as the people on the seventh day, after they circled seven times had heard the sound of the trumpet, they shouted a great shout and the wall fell down flat. And then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys with the edge of the sword. Now, real quick, one thing I want to deal with before we move on, this is not the main point of the message. It's a little tangential, but I know that a lot of you have this question or you've been asked this question.

So let me take just a moment to deal with it. People read this and they say, was this a divinely ordered genocide? How can we say this is God's word when it says stuff like this? Richard Dawkins, the cranky British atheist, because of passages like this one says, and I quote, the God of the Old Testament is a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. If nothing else, that sentence proves that Richard Dawkins owns a thesaurus, which is how he wrote that sentence.

A few things to consider when you approach this question. The first one is the word authority. The rightness or wrongness of certain actions is based solely on whose authority stands behind them. For example, if you start writing checks on behalf of your company, that can be wrong or right based on whether or not you have the authority, right?

There's one way you can do it where it's perfectly fine. If you don't have the authority, then you go to jail. When it comes to issues of life and death, no one on earth has that kind of authority, but God does.

And no one can take that authority to themselves. God gave it for a special season to Israel with very clear instructions, never again to be repeated. In fact, after this period of the conquest, Israel is directly forbidden to ever do this again in Deuteronomy four, two through nine.

Israel was not even allowed to keep a standing army like the other nations did. Also in these stories, you're going to notice that God does most of the fighting. He's the one that knocks the walls over. He's the one that sends hellstones from heaven and a few chapters to wipe out another enemy.

Why? Because he doesn't want this sitting on the shoulders of Israel. This is his work, not theirs. The second word to remember, first one was authority. Second word is judgment. This was about judgment on Canaan. God had said very clearly that the Canaanites were being judged because of their evil. Both scripture and history tell us that the Canaanites were some of the cruelest, most oppressive societies ever to walk the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 12 tells us that it was common for families to sacrifice one of their children up to two years old in the flames as a way of getting prosperity for themselves.

And I know these people seem really far removed from us, but would you feel differently if this was done, for example, to ISIS or if this were done to the Nazi party in the 1940s? This was all about judgment. In fact, in one place, God told Israel that there was a certain part of the land that they couldn't have yet because the people who lived there weren't wicked enough yet. It wasn't about genocide. It was about judgment.

Thirdly, this has got nothing to do with race. There's two ways that we know that. First way is that God spared Rahab, whose story we don't have time to get into. She's a Jericho woman just because she repents and believes. And the implication is that he would have spared anybody in Jericho who repented and believed. Everybody in Jericho knew who Israel was and knew about Israel's God.

She was the only one that responded that way. Here's the other reason we know it's not about race. God told Israel repeatedly in Deuteronomy that these exact same things and worse would happen to them if they committed the idolatry and wickedness of the Canaanites. Now, lastly, you say, well, what about the innocent people? If nobody else, the kids could not have been that much at fault. I've explained before that we all recognize even today that there is a communal dimension to our sin. In other words, if a man cheats on his wife, his kids end up suffering for that decision, even though they weren't directly involved. God says he will never ultimately hold the innocent accountable for the sins of the guilty. It's just that from his perspective, eternity will more than make up for whatever suffering any of us go through here on earth. All people eventually die. So in a sense, when the innocent get caught up in things like this, it's like God is just collecting them early and any suffering or deprivation they experience here will more than be made up for in eternity because what happens here in these 70 or 80 years that we live is just a drop in the bucket compared to what's going on up there. So see, that's how you approach a question like that. Now, there's a lot of you that are like, oh, when do we tell the funny stories again?

All right, you can come right back in. Here we go. Chapter 7, verse 1. But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things for Achan of the tribe of Judah took some of the devoted things. Remember, God had told him not to touch those things, but he took them and hid them in his tent. And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel. Now, Joshua has no knowledge of this. And Joshua sent out spies from Jericho to the next city, Ai, which is just the city over. And they returned and said to him, this is such a little town. I mean, compared to Jericho, it's nothing. But it's just like, you know, it's like, this is nothing. I mean, we just let two or 3,000 people go up there and attack Ai for the people.

There are few. So 3,000 men went up, but they fled before the men of Ai. And then the hearts of the people melted and became his water. And so the people are distraught.

They're like, what happened? Why is the power of God left us? So Joshua gets on his face before God, and God reveals to him what Achan had done and that they got to get out that sin before God's presence and his power will come back on them. Notice how God describes what Achan did.

It's really important to understand everything that's going on in the story. Chapter 7, verse 1 says that Achan broke faith in God. In other words, he violated Israel's posture of trust or faith in God. Now think about that for a minute, because it looks to me like Achan just got a little greedy.

Like he just, you know, went a little bit bigger piece of the pie and that's what happened. But God says that what Achan did literally is broke his faith relationship to God in doing so. In other words, Achan quit depending on God to fight the battle and meet his needs personally and to fill his life with meaning and happiness. So in this one little area, he took things back into his own control. He says, I don't trust God to give me enough.

I don't trust God to provide for me. So in this one little area, I'm going to take matters back into my hands and I'm going to to hide these things in my tent. From these stories, I want us to focus on three postures that God had the people reassume as they went into this new arena in the promised land. Y'all, these are so foundational. Each one is literally a matter of life or death for you.

For you to succeed with God in any area of your life. These three postures you must reassume in every arena. Here is number one, surrender.

Number one, surrender. The man who appears to Joshua in chapter five makes clear that he comes not as the lieutenant to assist Joshua. He comes as the general to command Joshua.

Here's my question for you. How do you see God in your life? How do you relate to God in your life? That's a point that I make a lot because most of us tend to relate to God like he is our faithful lieutenant.

Somebody who can influence us, guide us when we call on him, comfort us, take care of us, help us through tough times. Most of all, escort us to a safe place after death so that we don't have to be afraid. Recently I walked through a graveyard. It wasn't a religious graveyard.

It was just a regular graveyard. I noticed how every single tombstone, every single one has something on it about a Bible verse, about God, or about the angels. I'm like every single person assumed that God was on their side when they died.

Now I know statistically all these people did not live for God. So it's just that they assume that God's a lieutenant that, hey, when I die he's going to rush to my side and take care of everything. Listen, God wants to do all those things in your life. He wants to bless you. He wants to take care of you, but he comes into your life first as the Lord. That's the first name we call him.

He's the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't have the Jesus part of him or the Christ part of him if you don't take him as Lord. If you invited me over to your house for dinner and I knock on the door and you open the door and you see it's me and you're like, come in JD, stay out Greer. I wouldn't even know what to do, right?

I'm like, well, I'm all JD and I'm all Greer. You can't, if you were like, well, I want loving Jesus. I want helpful Jesus.

I want save me and take me to heaven Jesus. I don't want Lord Jesus. I don't want commanding Jesus. I don't want holy Jesus. If that's you, then you're not going to get any of Jesus.

You can't divide him up like he's a salad bar, taking the part you want, leaving the part you don't. Now listen, the greatest threat, the greatest threat to true authentic faith in your life, if you live in the South, you need to hear this. The greatest threat to true authentic faith in your life is religion.

And religion is always characterized by partial obedience. That's what you see with Achan. It's not like Achan switched sides. It's not like he started working for the Canaanites or he quit believing in God. He just broke his faith in God, feeling like in that one little area, he needed to take back control from God to guarantee his happiness and security. And I'm sure, I'm sure he said, well, what's this really hurting anybody? We were just going to destroy all this stuff anyway. I didn't hurt anybody.

Right? Achan's actions were evil, not because of what they did directly to other people. They were evil because of what they revealed about his confidence in God. How many times do you use that same line of reasoning to justify some area of disobedience in your life?

It wasn't really hurting anybody. Well, maybe it's got nothing to do with other people. Maybe it's got to do with the statement it makes about your relationship to God. So let me ask you this. What does this Achan kind of compromise look like in your life? Here's another way to ask it.

In what areas do you feel like you can't fully trust God's ways? And so you take back matters into your own hands. Maybe it's a certain habit. You feel like you just can't be without that habit and be happy and fulfilled.

You're like, it's not really hurting anybody. So it just stays secret. It stays hidden in your tent, but you won't really deal with giving it up. You won't deal with giving it up because you feel like you need it. Or maybe it shows up in how you approach relationships. Y'all for many people, I see this spring up all around how they approach dating and marriage. That is the one area, the one area where they won't let God have his way. I know people who cannot surrender their sexuality to God or cannot do things on God's timetable. I see it with people who say, God, I will not submit to you about whether or not I should get divorced because I need to be happy in this situation. And I know best.

You might as well say, call me Achan. Maybe it shows up in how you think about your children. I know many people for whom this is the one area that they will not let God have free reign in. Maybe it's your future plans. God, I want you as a part of my life.

I see high school college students do this all the time. I want you to be a part of my life. I want you to bless me. I want you to take care of me. I want you to show me your will. As long as your will is going the direction I want it to go. And I want you to bless me.

I want you to go with me, but this is where I'm going in the future because this is what I need. For many people, it's what they do with their money. Y'all, I know so many people that this is what they hide in their tent.

It's not that they're stingy. They just don't feel like they can trust God enough with that part of their life, their finances to fully turn it over to Him and just obey Him. What is it that you keep hidden in your tent because you feel like you can't trust God with it? Because Lordship is one of those words that's got to be total if it has any meaning at all. In order for Jesus to be Lord at all in your life, He's got to be Lord of all.

He doesn't come to be a part of your life. He comes to take the whole thing over. And the good news, Joshua, the good news, Joshua, is He's got plans far beyond what you ever dreamed.

C.S. Lewis said that coming to Jesus was like living in this old rickety house. It's just totally falling apart.

You know it's falling apart. Pipes are leaking and the toilet makes weird noises and roofs caving in and the carpet's moldy or whatever. And so Jesus comes in and immediately Jesus goes to work on fixing up the house. And you're so excited about it because He's you know patching the roof and He's taking the mold out of the walls and He's you know fixing the pipes. But then all of a sudden Jesus tears out a wall and you're like why did you tear out that wall? But then you notice there's shiplap behind the wall and you're like oh that's cool. And then He rips up a carpet and you're like oh that under the shag carpet there was this like hardwood floor and you're getting a little excited. But then He just totally knocks out an entire section of the house. Lewis said you're like what's happening? What is going on?

Let me quote C.S. Lewis. The explanation is that He's building quite a different house than the one you were expecting. So He launches out on a new wing over here. He puts on an extra floor up there. He starts running up towers. He starts making courtyards.

You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace and He intends to come and live in that palace Himself. God had a better plan for Joshua but it started with surrender. God's got a better plan for you and it starts with total surrender on your part as well. What are the areas of your life that you struggle to trust God with? Where do you fail to surrender to Him? Total surrender. That's the challenge today from Pastor J.D.

Greer. You're listening to Summit Life. We're committed to bringing you gospel-centered Bible teaching without finances getting in the way but that's only possible when we all work together to keep this ministry funded. When you give we'll say thanks by sending you a new book by Pastor J.D.

titled Just Ask. The book unpacks common questions about prayer and it'll give you confidence in how you spend time with God. It comes with our thanks when you donate today at the suggested level of $25 or more. Request Just Ask when you call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or it might be easier to give and request the resources online. Our website is jdgreer.com and if you don't yet receive our e-newsletter be sure to stop by the website to sign up. You'll get ministry updates, sneak peeks of our new resources and Pastor J.D.

's latest blog post delivered straight to your email. Sign up today at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovich. Hope you have a great weekend celebrating with your church family and we'll see you next week on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.