Winning Your Spiritual Battles | Joshua 5:13-6:21

How do we win our battles?

So many books have been written to answer that kind of question.

Across all cultures and all times in history, people have been fascinated with the answer of that question.

How do I win a battle?

And there are a few battles that we can think about in the Bible story that might, you know, pique our interest.

Something that comes to our mind.

Justin brought up one just a moment ago.

David and Goliath.

And we can think of others, you know, Moses having to hold his arms up to win a battle.

And we can read through the book of Joshua again and again and just see how God delivers his people.

Even Hezekiah.

Looking out the walls, and then the next morning, the Assyrians are gone.

The Bible's full of battles, and we can look at any number of them, but today we'll be in Joshua chapter 5.

Joshua 5 · chapter mention

We'll be looking at Joshua chapter 5 and 6 and the Battle of Jericho.

Joshua 5 · chapter mention

And there's a lot there, I think, for us.

I love to look at stories of the Bible to see something that maybe we studied a long time ago when we were a child, something that we may have not studied in a long time, and see that there is still so much for us here today that we can benefit from.

And don't worry, we're not going to be, you know, looking at how to get the element of surprise, how to cut off supply lines, or to do a pincer movement, or something like that.

Some of you might love that.

We could talk after.

But uh for tonight, what we're going to be doing is how do we win our spiritual battles?

How to fight the battles of temptation, of sin, of the difficulties of life.

I know it often may feel like we're losing our daily battles.

I'm behind and I can't keep up, and I just keep losing the things that I want to win.

But maybe we can win just a few more.

And maybe we can have a better mindset that helps us to understand our battles so that we come into it expecting victory.

Most of all, I want us to know that we can win our battles with the Lord's guidance, the Lord's leadership, the Lord's help.

God was able to overcome the walls of Jericho.

Before we read the text, I want us to understand just how important this day is in Israel's history.

If you back up about 40 years, they had just come to Jordan.

They had come to the river to cross over and to see the promised land with their own eyes for the first time in 400 years.

It's a long time coming.

But there was some doubt, some fear that had entered into ten of the spies, and Joshua and Caleb are the names we remember.

Joshua will talk about more tonight.

That said, we can do it, we can take over, we can come in.

But the ten spies prevailed upon Israel, and they said, We can't do this.

This battle is too much for us.

And they were not allowed to go into that into the land for that generation, wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

Now it doesn't say it back in Numbers and Deuteronomy, back when, or Numbers, back when they had uh looked across at Kirith Jerem and seen the promised land with their own eyes.

It doesn't say that Jericho was there looming over, but I I know that it was.

That city was there, and you know that they had seen it as part of the spies entering the land and telling you, we can't do that.

We can't win that battle.

The first city that they were going to have to go against was Jericho.

And now you've had 40 years hearing about your failure last time you came to this point, and you are coming against the city that you're gonna have to defeat.

How do you feel?

What are you thinking?

Okay, but a chance to do things differently.

So, what are some of the principles that we can take from this important battle?

Let's start by reading chapter 5, verses 13 through 15.

Let's see, the battle begins in a fascinating and important place.

Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went to him and said, Are you for us or for our adversaries?

He said, No.

Rather, I indeed come now as captain of the Lord uh of the host of the Lord.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and bowed down, and said to him, What has my Lord to say to his servant?

The captain of the Lord's host said to Joshua, Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.

This is the most important point that we're going to get across tonight.

The Lord wins our battles.

Jericho is a clear example of how clearly we can see this, that God wins the battle.

I don't know about you, but you know, you don't have to be a great student of history to know that most battles are not won by people who march around with trumpets, who march in silence, who shout at the end of a week and the walls fall down and they win the battle.

I think we're all together on that.

We can see that that's not a natural uh state of events that typically happens for how battles uh ordinarily would go.

But here the people march around the walls of Jericho, the priests blow a trumpet, the people shout and the walls fall down, and Israel can win the battle.

We don't have to be experts in warfare to know that is the Lord.

Typically, there are siege works, there are huge armies, there are powerful weapons, there are you know strategies and all kinds of detail that would have to go into that.

Here, shouting and trumpets.

God is at work.

Take a look at chapter 6 and verse 16.

At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, Shout, for the Lord has given you the city.

Take a look at verse 27.

In verse 27, so the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land.

When Israel records this history, when we are told the story of how they conquered the land, the Lord is given all the credit so that we don't miss the point at all.

There is nothing here happening by the strength of people, it is all by the strength of the Lord.

And that much is clear by our text that we started by reading.

The commander of the Lord's army appears before Joshua.

Now you may ask me, who is this commander of the Lord's army?

I'll give you my favorite answer.

I don't know.

But it's someone who clearly is representative of God.

I mean, we have some burning bush imagery here.

Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground.

And Joshua worships before him and even accepts worship.

It's all kinds of fascinating uh detail that goes into this.

But the last time that someone was asked to take off their shoes, that they were on holy ground, Moses was being prepared by God that he was about to bring his people out of Egypt.

Again, not by the power of Moses, which we can clearly see and understand.

You know, people can't just rain frogs down on a nation.

But God is about to do a work.

And here again, the clear message is the Lord is about to do something like the Exodus.

He is about to deliver his people and bring them about.

God will win the battle, not Joshua.

And Joshua asks a question that I just love.

And I love maybe the answer more than the question.

Are you for us or against us?

And the commander of the Lord's army says, No.

Neither answer.

I come here serving the Lord.

I come here as captain of the host of the Lord.

Sometimes we think about these things in our in a wrong way.

We can see that change of perspective.

We begin to see that God's will for my battles is the only thing that matters.

He is the only one who can bring about victory, and it matters that I trust him above all else.

And so we need to know, just to start tonight, that it isn't about our own strength that will see us through, and we can really struggle with that sometimes.

I want it to be by my own strength that I conquer my battles and overcome.

I want to be able to say, look at what I have done.

But that's not what we see.

And that's not what the truth is.

I want to pray in a certain way that reflects what I want.

You know, I want to make up my mind for what I want, and I pray that God fills what I want.

But instead, what if we change how we pray?

Where we ask that God take us to his purpose rather than move God to ours.

Not my will, but yours be done.

Our great Lord showed us how to do this best.

And that's something there's something to be said about choosing our battles.

You know, it's not every battle that is in front of us is ours to fight.

Israel's gonna learn this the hard way with AI.

Not artificial intelligence, but the city AI.

They are going to go against this city and just assume the Lord would never allow us to lose a battle.

We won't even ask for his help.

And they go in, they send the smallest force possible, and what happens to them?

They face their first defeat in the promised land.

They attack in chapter 7 without the Lord's command and suffer their first defeat in the land.

We need to remember that sometimes we can find ourselves fighting against the Lord if we're not looking for his will.

Ask for his will.

Carefully examine what God has given us in his word so that we can do our best to model our lives after what he has given us and not try to enforce our will on our lives in front of us.

Don't find yourself fighting against the Lord's army.

Said get in line behind him.

Know what he has said for us in his word and do what we can.

Now, I don't mean by this that we're always going to get our way.

Far from it.

We are going to have things happen in our lives that don't look like victory.

We may even lose some of our battles that we would love to win against temptation.

Just like Israel didn't win all of their battles, we may not win all of ours.

But when it comes to some of our battles, with the difficulties of life especially, we may not get the result that we desire.

God may have a different idea of what victory looks like than we do.

Maybe his idea of victory is that you're going to endure that hardship with faith and come through on the other side, still trusting him.

That someday you're going to look back at your life and say, God brought me through that.

He gave me the strength.

He didn't remove that thorn in the flesh because he knew his grace was sufficient for me.

We need to learn to put our trust in the Lord.

I've often failed in my battles with sin and temptation because I didn't get this.

I wanted to beat sin all on my own.

I wanted to do it by my own strength.

I wanted to be the one leading the charge.

My own self-control, my own strength, my own ability.

You can see all the mice in that and see exactly where we're going wrong.

Even if I did overcome those temptations, even if I did defeat Satan, which I doubt I would be able to do on my own without the Lord's help, Satan's just opened up a back door where pride enters in, and I've lost my next battle before I even begun it.

I need to give the battle over to the Lord.

He is the one that I rely on.

He is the one who has strength.

Any strength that I have, any ability that I have, is only there because the Lord has given it to me.

And the same is true for you.

We have to start trusting our great God to win our battles.

I love that the battle of Jericho starts here.

The most powerful man in Israel who's leading the charge against this great city begins with his face in the dirt.

Trusting in the Lord that he is going to bring us through.

Keep reading with me.

Verses 1 and 2.

I want us to see the victory precedes the battle.

Chapter 6, verse 1.

Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel.

No one went out, and no one came in.

The Lord said to Joshua, See, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and the valiant warriors.

I love that before the battle begins, God has already told Joshua that victory is theirs.

Israel doesn't have a long history of fighting battles.

They've been slaves in Egypt for the last 400 years.

That's not a lot of time spent practicing, you know, warfare.

That's not a lot of time putting together a hardened militia or anything like that.

They have had three battles in the last uh you know generation against the Amorites, against Baitian, and against the Midianites.

Find those on a map for me.

That's kind of a challenge for us, isn't it?

We we we don't know exactly where those people are.

We uh they're small, they're not anything that people write history books about because Israel hasn't won anything worth writing home about at this point, at least for in the eyes of the world.

They didn't have a long history to inspire confidence, and they had every reason to be scared.

They had their own inexperience, their own lack of military prowess, not to mention verse one, the walls were there and the city was shut up tight in front of them.

Every reason to be afraid.

You know, walls are something that we don't think about as much with a city in our world today.

I didn't see any walls around Lubbock when I drove in.

I imagine they're not building any anytime soon.

Warfare has changed to where so much of our fighting now today is done through drones and airplanes and long distances where, you know, it's very different from their world then, where their first and last defense was often we have a wall between us and the armies that want to kill us.

We want to keep people who want to harm us out, and we build the walls as high as we possibly can so that that can happen.

And not even to add to that, you have your lack of military prowess, you have the walls, and then you have the knowledge.

The previous generation failed here.

My parents failed here.

Israel needed everything to be given confidence.

And God tells them up front, you are going to win this battle.

He tells them how they're going to win it and gives them the assurance they need to conquer.

Do you know the irony of this?

When the spies go into Rahab's house in chapter 2, she talks about how the people of Jericho have heard of the victories of Israel going all the way back to the Red Sea, and that they have melted away.

Their hearts have melted away because of their fear that they have of the Israelites coming.

There's all this buildup to the walls of Jericho, and the people inside are terrified.

We often convince ourselves we can't win before we fight a battle against temptation, before we try to endure a hardship.

But the reality is we need to trust the Lord enough that victory is assured from the beginning.

How often have we failed here?

I know that in my life I have had temptations and sins where I have failed before the battle ever began.

That I gave up before trusting the Lord.

The walls were too high, the enemy was too strong, and I'm sure that you've had moments in your life like that too.

We can do better when we think about faith.

We make a mistake sometimes when we start too big.

In Israel's terms, maybe they thought about it like this thinking too big looked like I'm going to conquer the entirety of the promised land tomorrow.

It's not what God asked them to do.

It said, You're gonna go and you're gonna go against Jericho.

And you're gonna fight Jericho, and you're gonna go around that city, and you're gonna march, and you're gonna march, and God will bring you to battle.

Maybe for us, it's I'm never going to sin again in my entire life.

What a great promise to make.

I haven't succeeded in keeping that.

Maybe my promise needs to be smaller.

I'm going to have self-control tomorrow.

Today.

I'm going to devote myself to the Lord, and that battle is going to be won because the Lord has assured me that it can be done.

Start with today.

Start with what that endurance can look like.

The hardest part though is believing that that victory is possible.

And before long, daily victories can turn into weekly ones and into yearly ones.

And then before long, the promised land can be conquered because the Lord has assured us that victory is possible.

We can't stop fighting for the Lord until our last breath is spent.

But just know that before you keep trying to tackle that thing that you've been struggling with, before your next step you need to take, without God, you'll end up back at that same place again and again.

You'll end up at the beginning wondering, How did I get here?

How am I going to win that next battle that I failed at again?

But with God, you've already won.

Victory is assured from the beginning.

From here, there's a few lessons from the march that I'd like us to see.

One is silence is part of the victory.

Read with me in verse six.

So Joshua, the son of Nun, called the priests and said to them, Take up the Ark of the Covenant.

Let seven priests carry seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Ark of the Lord.

Then he said to the people, Go forward and march around the city, and let the armed men go on before the Ark of the Lord.

And it was so.

That when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets and ran of ram's horns before the Lord went forward and blew the trumpets, and the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord followed them.

The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came after the ark, while they continued to blow the trumpets.

But Joshua commanded the people, saying, You shall not shout, nor let your voice be heard, nor let a word proceed out of your mouth until the day I tell you, shout.

Then you shall shout.

So he had taken the Ark of the Lord, uh he had the Ark of the Lord taken around the city, circling it once.

Then they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp.

This is quite a ceremony.

There's a lot of moving parts to this battle.

It's quite amazing, all the procession that happens here.

There are trumpets, there are priests involved, the army is marching, and the ark of the Lord is there.

You know, in an ancient battle, trumpets and marching and even priests can be pretty typical.

That's something that you might find in several uh battles across different cultures.

But verse but the ark of the Lord is there.

The ark of the Lord is in their presence.

Something that is unique and special to the one true God, to one God's true people is there with them.

What confidence that would bring.

But verse 10 stands out to me.

The army was commanded to be silent.

This is a battle, a siege.

This isn't a stealth operation.

This isn't something where uh people are intending to be quiet in order to win the battle by surprise.

They're marching around the city.

So why be quiet?

Why not?

I think maybe a couple of reasons.

Number one, we can easily see a temptation of how someone might want to speak during the event of the battle.

On day one, okay, I'm I'm I'm good to be silent, marching around the city, I'll be okay.

Day three, my feet are starting to hurt.

I haven't even seen a crack begin in the wall.

How long are we going to be doing this again?

Israel has quite the reputation for grumbling, don't they?

There are people who are known for their for their complaining and grumbling during times in the wilderness.

And during this battle would be the time where people are most tempted to grumble, to complain, because the wall has not yet fallen.

Here, they are commanded to be silent.

You know, we need to be learn-learning from that for our own lives.

What we say during difficult times matters.

When we are struggling, we are tempted to voice complaints and grumbling.

When we're in the middle of a vulnerable situation, that's maybe our most important time of what we say, being careful with how we speak.

So how should we speak?

We could start with what the armies of Israel were told to do.

Keep silent when it comes to grumbling and complaining.

We can do a lot of damage with what we say without thinking, especially in times of trouble.

What's the phrase sometimes we hear people say?

Misery loves company.

I'm having a really difficult time, so I'm going to make sure the person next to me has a miserable time right there with me.

That's when our temptations start to get more and more dangerous and they spread and hurt other people and bring them down with us.

If we don't speak carefully, we may spread our difficulties to others in a way that is not helpful.

But let me be clear while I'm here, so I'll make sure I'm not misunderstood here.

My point is not saying keep your difficulties and your hard times to yourself and never ask for help, never share what you need with others.

The importance of confession and helping each other in times of need is very important.

It can't go understated here.

We need to share those things.

But there is a difference between asking for help and grumbling.

There is a difference between confession and complaining.

But on the other hand, there may be another reason Israel was asked to be silent.

One may be keep your grumblings at bay.

The other may be the Lord is doing something, and it is a time of silent reverence before him.

Ultimately, our difficulties can be a time where we are reminded of who God is, used to further our trust in him.

And this is a reminder that the way we speak matters a lot.

Instead of using it for grumbling to think about how hard things are, what if we used our word, our words, our speech to glorify our great God and said, He will bring me through to pray to him, to praise him, to fill our mouth with the faith that God wants us to have.

How we speak has a great part in our struggles.

And so we need to use our words for good.

Keep reading with me in verse 12.

In verse 12, we see consistency b builds faith.

Now Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the Lord.

The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Ark of the Lord went on continually and blew the trumpets, and the armed men went before them, and the rear guard came after the Ark of the Lord while they continued to blow the trumpets.

Thus the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp.

And they did so for six days.

How hard would it be for you to walk around the city walls for six days?

And on the seventh day to walk around it seven times?

You know, I'd be looking up at the walls thinking there hasn't been a single crack in that wall yet.

There's not been an earthquake.

There, you know, the people up on the walls, they're just looking at me.

When is God going to act?

How many days would you march around Jericho without seeing results?

We can relate to that kind of question today, can't we?

How long will I keep praying without my struggle going away?

How long will I keep reading my Bible without finding victory?

How long?

That's a common prayer in the Bible.

Jericho teaches me the need for consistency, even when we don't see the result that we want.

When we feel like we aren't making progress, we need to look at the walls of Jericho and say, prayers need to continue.

Faithfulness needs to continue because the walls will come down.

And we need to keep marching.

Don't look at the progress as much as the process of serving the Lord.

It is what I can do today that leads to what God has promised.

So read your Bible every day.

Read it regularly.

Pray to God regularly.

Make good habits to serve others around you and to look for ways to continually use your discipleship to follow the Lord with all that you have.

And don't give up if you aren't getting the results you want.

I haven't grown like I thought I would.

I haven't progressed like I thought I would, just to keep after it.

And the Lord will bless our progress on his time and his way and his victory.

Because the last thing that we will see today is that we can trust the Lord to bring victory, and with that comes praise.

Verse 15 through 21.

Read with me there.

Chapter 6, verse 15 says, Then on the seventh day they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times.

Only on that day they marched around the city seven times.

And at the seventh time when the priests blew the trumpet, Joshua said to the people, Shout, for the Lord has given you the city.

The city shall be under the ban, and all that is in it belongs to the Lord.

Only Rahab the harlot and all who are with it with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent.

But as for you, you keep yourselves from the things under the ban, so that you do not covet them, and take some of the things under the ban, and make the camp of Israel accursed, and bring trouble on it.

But all the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord, they shall go into the treasury of the Lord.

So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets, and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, they took the city, and they utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, an ox and sheep, and donkey with the edge of the sword.

There are two things here in this text that amaze me about Joshua and the Israelites.

The silence is finally broken, and the people shout but the wall's still standing when they shout.

How loud would you be shouting in their shoes?

By my math, they have walked around the city walls thirteen times.

My shout would be sounding kind of pitiful at that point.

Maybe yours would too.

But they shout with all they have.

They are ready to praise, they are ready to obey the Lord with all that they have, anticipating that the wall is going to come down.

And second, Joshua gives instructions to the people to tell them what to do when the wall comes down.

This is not a plundering battle.

This is not a battle where they are here to get rich looting their conquered enemy.

They're to devote them to destruction, other than the house of Rahab, which is to be spared due to her faith.

You know, this conversation makes people uncomfortable today.

And it's because battles don't look like this as often today.

They still happen and it horrifies us when we hear about it.

But we try to avoid civilians being caught up into battles.

But God has been warning these people for 400 years, going back to more than 400 years.

He's been going back to the days of Abraham.

In Genesis chapter 15, he tells Abraham that your people are going to spend 400 years in Egypt because I want to give time for the people of the promised land to repent.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

Perhaps that time allowed Rahab to have a softened heart, to welcome in the spies, to change how she thought.

And he gave them those 400 years, he gave them the plagues in Egypt, he gave them the Red Sea crossing, he gave them the three victories that Israel had won before, that all the news of this had made it to the walls of Jericho.

God wanted them to know what was coming, that justice would come.

And when the time has come, God does not withhold his hand.

Justice will come, and they are devoted to destruction.

But I want us to see while the walls are still standing, Joshua is telling them, don't plunder.

Here's what you're going to do.

Here's what's going to happen in the battle.

While the wall is still up.

They were trusting in the Lord so much that they knew exactly what was supposed to happen next.

We need to praise God while anticipating victory.

This is where we started.

We know that God provides for us the promise of victory at the end of the battle, at the end of life's battles.

But it's more than just having faith or having hope that God will do it.

It is changing how we speak and how we think, where God is given the glory because we know He will bring us through.

How different would our struggles be if we were already praising God that He was going to bring me through?

That He was going to conquer the thing that I have been overwhelmed with.

How much more faith could we be building if we choose to praise God when we want to give up?

And I pray that our praise can echo the praise of those who have been faithful to God before us.

We can read Psalms like Psalm 20 ones that show such confidence that the Lord is going to bring us through.

And I want us to know that our Jericho, your Jericho, may look imposing today.

But we need to know that nothing can stand against the Lord.

Jesus has shown us how this is done.

He went to the cross knowing that victory was the Lord's.

He went to the cross entrusting himself to God.

He went to the cross silent, wearing the abuse of his mockers.

And he went to the cross in victory with a shout.

It is finished.

The Lord has found victory over sin.

And so today we need to see that Jesus has already won more than our daily battles, our struggles that feel so big to us.

He has won everything for us and brought us through on the other side in victory.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, as it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Know in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

He has provided us the victory, and nothing can change that fact.

And so we can fight for our faith.

Contend for the faith knowing what Jesus has done.

And if you need to respond to this message tonight, that Jesus has won the battle and has secured your soul, today is the day to trust Him.

To begin walking with Him, to submit to Jesus in the victory of baptism, to risen again to a new life.

For you need prayers for your walk.

We're here to help you.

Whatever your need may be, please come to the front as we stand and sing.