Through Many Dangers (Part 2 of 2)

When God told Joshua and his men to silently march around the city of Jericho day after day, it had to seem absurd to them. So, why did they obey? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains that stepping out in faith in response to God's instruction often defies worldly wisdom. We're picking up in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 29.

Verse 3. March around the city once with all the armed men. Okay? Do this for six days.

Okay, got it. Make seven priests carry trumpets of ram's horns in front of the ark. Seven priests, in front of the ark, trumpets. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times with the priests blowing the trumpets. Seventh day, seven times, blowing the trumpets.

Okay? When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, make all the people give a loud shout, then the wall of the city will collapse, the people will go up, and every man strayed in. The guys are going, Well, that was it? Tomorrow they go home, they say to one another, Well, maybe we're just sort of practicing a reconnaissance mission. Tomorrow we'll hot it up. They come back the next morning, says, Okay, guys, same as yesterday. Once around the walls. Off they go.

All the way around. The people are watching. Maybe today will be the day. These people are accomplishing nothing.

Okay, fellas, thanks a lot. It's been a great day. See you tomorrow, bright and early, same time, same place.

Third day. These people are accomplishing nothing. The people who are marching haven't a clue what's going on. The guys in the city haven't a clue what's going on. But God knows what's going on!

See? When the world looks at the people of God, it concludes all the time there's nothing going on. But there's stuff going on, because God is working his purpose out. Goodness gracious, as we prayed at our staff meeting a day this week, and we prayed that God would bring people to himself and bring unlikely people to himself. Within an hour and a half, there's a young man wandering in the hallway like a lost soul. And I said, What do you want? He says, I want to see the pastor, the youth pastor.

Well, fine, I give him to Dave. He leads him to faith in Christ. He was wandering the halls. Didn't know what he was looking for. Didn't know that God was looking for him.

He met him. But the world looks up and says, There's nothing happening in there. Now, there is also something that we need to see very, very clearly here. That the people absent the Word of God or absent a belief in the Word of God would never have done what they did. They would have been tempted to do everything else if you had put the people together and said, Now, we're going to take the city of Jericho, and I want you to get a group together and sort of work up a strategy for it. What do you think they would have done? They would have done what the church is doing today.

They would have decided on political intrigue. They would have decided that they wouldn't march in silence, but they would shout up on the walls, and they would terrorize the people. They would have put together battering rams so that they could bring the wall down, because after all, you can't bring walls down except the way walls come down. And walls come down as a result of a dramatic force hitting them from the outside or from underneath and bringing them down. Therefore, this is the only possible way we can go. God says, I don't want you to go that way.

I want you to walk in total silence around here. And the walls are coming down. One of the reasons that we do not see fortresses fall, one of the reasons that we do not see the gates of hell unhinged and laid in the dirt, one of the reasons that we do not see the crumbling of pagan philosophy and New Age mysticism and the rampages of so much that is heinous in our world, is because we are unprepared to be men and women of faith. You see, the one thing that these Hebrew believers had to go on was the Word of God. They were being buffeted from the pagans. They were being buffeted by the Jews. They were confronted by superstition.

There was all kinds of worldly wisdom. They were being sawn in half. They were being beaten.

They were being pummeled. And what did they have to do? All they had to do was to stand up and proclaim the message of a Galilean carpenter. In the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is forgiveness of sins. In the prayers of God's people, there is power.

In the living of the Christian life, in the persevering under trial, God says, I'll bring the walls down. But I'm not sure we believe that. Are we sending missionaries into the Islamic world?

Largely no. Do you know that in Iran, today, pastors are dragged from their homes? Their families never see them again. They're killed today.

What are we doing? At Stanford University, they did a survey asking the question, What is Christianity? And the overwhelming response of the Stanford students was, It is a political organization. That is Christianity. Now, why would they ever conclude that? Because in large measure, it is.

It's a bunch of rabid, right-wing, fanatical, political crazies with agendas, rather than a bunch of radical crazies who are prepared to proclaim the message of a Galilean carpenter to a world that thinks it's absolutely nuts. The only time you'll do that is by faith. Do you believe that the answer lies in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe in the absolute power and sufficiency of the Bible? Or do you think it's just a good start, and you add a little bit of human wisdom to it? Do you believe that in the death of Jesus Christ is the only answer for the sins of men and women? Do you believe that there is only one way to heaven in the person of Christ? Do you believe that Allah, do you believe that Muhammad and Krishna and Buddha and Gaius, they will all bow before Christ and declare him Lord to the glory of God the Father? Do you believe that? Then we must proclaim it. Are you prepared to lose yourself? Let's talk to me.

Forget anybody else. There isn't a closed country in the world to the message of the gospel. The only thing that makes it closed is the door out.

You can get in any country if you want. Are you prepared to bury yourself in obscurity for the rest of your life, believing that in the message of a Galilean carpenter, who is the very Messiah God, there is the answer to the deep needs of men and women? Are you prepared to march round the walls in silence and let the world say they're crazy? Are you prepared to sell out for the cause of the gospel?

Are we gonna be prepared to do that in northeastern Ohio, or are we just gonna play at church? That's the question. You see, the world is not put off when we use their methodology.

They expect that. That's why Paul says in Corinthians, he says, we don't wage war the way the world wages war. No, he says, we have divine power that brings down strongholds. What is the divine power? It is the power of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the power of the prayers of God's people. It is the power of your life lived before your friends and neighbors. It is the power of perseverance under trial. And all of that hinges on the Word of Jesus. Lo, I'm with you always to the very end of the age.

Well, that's more than enough on that. Let's go to this other picture in verse 31, for the last one. You can read about this in Joshua chapter 2. This picture has no people in it. It's simply the site of a house. It's a wall, a gable end.

It has a window, and from the window there is hanging a scarlet cord. This is the window of the home of Rahab the prostitute. Because dramatically we discover that when the spies were sent out by Joshua to check out the enemy territory, and particularly to check out Jericho, they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab, and they stayed there.

That in itself is quite remarkable, is it not? You say to yourself, of all the places that they might have stayed, why did they choose to stay in the house of somebody like this? Well, we don't know the answer to that, except it's possible that since there'd be a lot of guys hanging out there, and they wondered if they were spies—you're not supposed to go around with a baseball hat on that says, I am a spy, from Israel—so you would go somewhere that you would be least expected. So they would least expect the Israelites, who served the living God, to be in a house of disrepute. And that's exactly where they were.

Now, don't let's just miss this in passing. How in the world did Rahab get in this list? And when we go through the list, we go, Well, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Noah… He says, So far, so good. Then he goes, Rahab, the prostitute. That's embarrassing.

No, it's not as fantastic. How did you get your name on the list? Huh? Because you were such a righteous person? You think God looked down and said, No, there's a beauty.

I'd like him on the team. Wow! There's a fine girl. Come on, honey. Just the kind I'm looking for? No, he looked down and found mean, wretched, rebellious scumbags. And you see, the reason that some of us are never gonna get our names on the team is because we're not prepared to admit that we are mean, wretched scumbags. And if you don't like the name scumbag, I apologize.

Why don't I change it to Bag of Dirt? Because the fact of the matter is, the very agenda that reinforces how wonderful I am and how I am this and I am that is the very thing that stands against me discovering the wonder of God having made me in his image. And Rahab the harlot is there. Goodness gracious, if you read Matthew chapter 1, you'll find out that she was an ancestress of Jesus Christ. If you read the genealogy, Rahab—you go through his granny and his great-grandmother and so on, and you come to Rahab!

God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. Oh, we need some Rahabs in here. Maybe we have some. And if so, may I be the first to welcome you. And may I be the first to tell you that God delights to grant forgiveness to the likes of us.

Just a wall, just a window, just a scarlet cord, just a sign that when the invasion came, her house would be saved. Many of the commentators say, Here is a wonderful anticipation of that blood-red cord which is provided for us in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. And certainly that is true. Whether it is here in Joshua is a matter of debate. But there's no explanation for what Rahab did, except that she believed in God, she believed his Word was true, and then she was prepared to run the risk of going against her family and her friends and her kindred and her nation for the sake of Jesus Christ.

And the reason he writes to the Hebrews is because that's exactly what they needed to do. He said, You're gonna have to live on the edge. You're gonna have to hazard it for the gospel. The people are all around you. They're gonna try and put you down to death.

Unless you're prepared to be like Rahab who did this, unless you're prepared to be like the people who crossed the sea, unless you will live in your weakness and discover this strength, then you're not gonna make it. And that's why he then says in verse 32 and following—and I've got a big, long list—he says, And I don't have time to tell you about them. Some of the kids are sitting out there saying, I hope that's exactly how Pastor Beg feels. Well, I got good news for you.

It is. I don't have time to tell you about them. But if you want a Bible study for the summer, you take verses 32 to 38, and then you go with a concordance and look up all these names and fill in all the historical background, and you will unleash great vistas on the story of God's redemptive purposes throughout all of the Bible. Fabulous stories about David and Goliath, Gideon and his armies, Daniel in the lion's den, and so on.

Great, great stuff. People who were stoned, sawn in two, put to death by the sword, went about in sheepskins, goatskins, destituted, persecuted, ill-treated. Doesn't sound like Parkside Church, does it?

The only sheepskins we've got are to make the seat a little more comfortable and to stop the leather from going on fire in the summer, you know. But in Scotland, this happened, for the cause of the gospel. That's the story of Richard Cameron, imprisoned in the Tallbooth prison. I tell that inmate for his pleasure.

Remember the story? His father is imprisoned, Richard Cameron is captured in the Ayrshire hills as a covenanter for the truth of the gospel. They order him to recant. He won't recant of his faith in Jesus Christ. They chop off his head. They chop off his hands. They take his head and his hands on a broadsword and two daggers, and on their way to put them on the railings down by Holyrood Palace, some bright spark from the arm, he says, why don't we take this in and show it to his dad? And so, with his father in the jail for his faith in Christ, the door clangs open, and in come these soldiers carrying his son's head and his son's hands on the end of daggers.

Why? Because he named the name of Jesus Christ. And today we worship here in freedom, because those in an earlier generation were prepared to make that sacrifice. Who knows what another generation will bring for us? The erosion of the church in America is faster every day.

The intrusion of the state is more dramatic at every turn. It is not inconceivable that in the twenty-first century things could have changed so dramatically that we move from observing Hebrews chapter 11 to, in some of its most dastardly dimensions, living it. Who will stand in that day?

I don't know. The world, it says, was not worthy of them. They weren't getting their name in who's who, but they had their name in who's who of eternity. They were commanded for their faith, but they didn't see it all completed.

Why? Because they were waiting for a completion that was yet to come. They lived in faith, and they died in faith. That's what we do. We live in faith, and we die in faith. We take God as his Word. He says that he will forgive us. We take him at his Word. He says that he will take us to heaven. We take him at his Word.

And one day, soon—maybe very soon—we'll be united with all these saints who from their labors rest. And Paul says, I has not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him. Do you love him? If you love him, you'll please him. And you can't please him without faith. Are you a man or a woman of faith? I don't mean faith which is simply an assent to facts, an intellectualism that says, Well, I believe there was a Jesus of Nazareth. That's good, it's a start, but it's not biblical faith. I don't even believe that what we're encountering there is the notion that says, Not only do I assent to the existence of this truth, but I believe that he is the very person that he claimed to be.

That's not biblical faith either. That's a bit like seeing a girl and looking at her and saying, You know, she's lovely. She's kind. She's the kind of person that I think would be fabulous spending your life with. I actually believe that it would be terrific to spend the rest of my life with her. You can live all the rest of your days as a single young man, because assent plus belief stops short of I do. Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance and the holy estate of marriage? Will you love her, honor her, keep her in sickness and health, and forsaking all other, keep yourself only unto her?

I do! Fine. It's a whole new deal from this point on. Some of you are here, and I want to speak to you with passion, with kindness, and with clarity, and these are my concluding words of the morning. Listen. You wonder why it is that you do not have a desire in your heart to witness. It's because you have nothing to witness to. You wonder why it is that you have no sense of the forgiveness of your sins. It is because your sins are not forgiven.

You wonder why it is that when others sing and enjoy it, you have no real interest in it. It is because there has not been brought about a change within your heart. You're at the level of assent or believing, but you've never come and cast yourself wholly upon God and discovered that he gave to you wholly his Son. And that is the decisive act which then leads to the sustained attitude. Some of us are trying to sustain an attitude.

But we never had a decisive act. What about you? Are you a man of faith? A boy of faith? A girl of faith?

And if not, why not today? God calls each one of us to surrender ourselves to him, to cast ourselves entirely on the Lord. That's what all of us need to do. That's from today's message on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Please keep listening.

Alistair will be right back to close with prayer. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more about what it means to become a child of God, we want to invite you to visit truthforlife.org slash the story. There you'll find a video that explains how you can make this faith your own. As we think back on the messages we've heard this week, you'll recall that we've been learning about people who demonstrate faith by believing God's promises and obeying his commands.

Their example sets a high bar for us. And for many of us, there are days when we just don't feel up to the task. That's why we've been recommending a book titled God Does His Best Work with Empty to go along with this study. In this book, author Nancy Guthrie writes to assure us that God never sees us as useless, even when we feel like we've got nothing left to give. In fact, he sees our emptiness as a great opportunity to renew our strength through the power of his Spirit. Each chapter of God Does His Best Work with Empty provides biblical examples that illustrate how God addresses our emptiness. We learn that he fills us with his provision when we need it most and with his presence when we are lonely. Perhaps best of all, he gives us purpose when we find life meaningless. You'll be encouraged as you discover why emptiness has never been and never will be a problem for God. So be sure to request your copy of the book today when you support the Bible teaching you hear on this program.

You'll find the book on our mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate, or call 888-588-7884. Now, let's join Alistair as he closes today in prayer. Oh God, thank you for these people that we have read about. Thank you for the clarity of their lives, for the wonder of your love. Thank you for the reminder that although we're made in your image and therefore possess a dignity as your creation, that that image has been marred by our sin, by our dirtiness, by our rebellion, by our indifference, by our unbelief.

And there is no beauty in us that you would desire us, you wouldn't pick us up, because we're peculiarly attractive. But you would pick us up out of the miry clay and set our feet upon a rock and establish our going and give us a song on our lips, because you are the God who loves the unlovely. Your grace extends to the sinner. Your mercies are new every morning. Come, then, to our waiting hearts, we pray, and grant that we might cry out to you for mercy and for grace. So grant that we will not allow the seed, as it were, to be snatched away at our very feet, but that we will find our lives like the good soil that receives the Word and puts it into practice and brings forth fruit. And may the grace and mercy and peace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be the portion of all who believe, today and forevermore. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapeen. Hope you have a great weekend. Hope you're able to worship with your local church this weekend. And then join us again Monday as we discover how sometimes even a good thing can hinder our spiritual progress. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.