obedience | From the Desk of Valson Abraham

What does it take to defeat an enemy?

The Canaanites were not ordinary enemies. Few peoples in history have matched Canaanite depravity. They comprised a body of various peoples who became so devoted to evil that God decided they must go or they would corrupt the whole human race.

They practiced every kind of twisted sexual immorality, child sacrifice and idolatry. They were proud of it. Their ethic was violence. They were physically large, abnormally strong and lived in fortified cities no one had conquered, not even the Egyptians with their mighty armies. An earlier generation of Israelites saw them and felt like grasshoppers in their sight.

The Canaanites had never been brought to account for their depravity and thought they were stronger than God. Even after they heard how God delivered the Israelites at the Red Sea, they refused to repent. Things were getting worse, not better.

For 400 years, the Canaanites tried God’s patience, but even God’s patience wore thin. He called upon the Israelites to destroy them. For their trust and obedience, the land of the Canaanites would become their own “Promised Land” forever.

By worldly standards, the Israelites were an unlikely people to do this. They were former slaves, nomadic shepherds and wilderness wanderers, not military people. But even the Israelites could conquer the Canaanites and take their “Promised Land” if they fulfilled the following conditions:

They were to be strong and of good courage. They were to be strong and courageous in God, convinced He would do exactly what He promised them because He was stronger than the enemy. They were inadequate in themselves, but they were not to fear the ferocity of the enemy because God would never desert them.
They were to observe all of the Law. They were to remember the covenant God made with Abraham and Moses. They were to obey God in everything He asked of them. They were to learn how to think as God thinks, not follow their own instincts. They were to heed all God told them, even when it did not seem to make sense. They were not to get distracted by other things but always hold the promises of God before them. Faithfulness to obey all of God’s word to them would prevent needless heartaches and setbacks.
They were to know that wherever they went, God was with them to bring success. To stand together in unity and trust God alone and not their own ways was the only sure way to success, even against a fierce and evil enemy like the Canaanites.

God’s word to the Israelites in the face of a vicious foe remain true today as we work together to take the Good News to all of India. We face many foes who defy God and are stronger than we are, with vastly more resources than we. Yet God guarantees victory as we remain strong in Him and think His thoughts. We have His promise that through us, the Great Commission will be fulfilled, and the knowledge of the glory of the God will fill India and the whole earth.

May God’s words to Joshua also encourage and strengthen you in these days as you remember His promises to you in the midst of your own challenges from seemingly unbeatable foes.

The Jericho Principle

Hebrews 11 portrays the miracle of Jericho in Joshua 6 as one of history’s greatest examples of faith.

Perhaps even more miraculous is that this is not just a record of what happened to Israel 3000+ years ago. The miraculous fall of Jericho becomes a template for our own day when we are linked in covenant with Israel’s God through the cross of Jesus Christ. It becomes a timeless model from a timeless God of how we can face our own “Jerichos,” those seemingly impossible foes and insurmountable odds, whatever they may be. Our weapon is our faith in Him.

We all know the story. The Israelites, led by Joshua, approach the walled, fortress-like and hyper-evil city of Jericho. They have no battering rams, catapults, ladders or anything else to break through city gates or scale those high walls.

In obedience to God’s command, the people march in silence around the city once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day. At the sound of the priests’ trumpets, they shout a great shout, and the walls fall flat. The city is taken and all its unspeakably demonic inhabitants are slain.

This great act of faith did not just “happen.” It resulted from the Lord’s preparation of His people beforehand. It resulted from God’s discipline of His people. It involved remembering prior acts of God’s provision and taking account of the evidence. It involved parting with past sins, setting themselves apart for God alone, separating themselves from a victim mentality. We, too, must prepare ourselves ahead of time.

We often say that “God is in control,” but He does not choose to act alone. He did not make those walls crumble until His people got involved in the process. They were not just passive observers of God’s power. Also involved were the angelic armies. But they did not get involved either until God’s people first got themselves right with Him and became willing to obey God. Only then did He and the angelic hosts act.

To have faith meant they had to obey God even when His orders didn’t seem to make sense. Until the miracle at Jericho, no city walls ever fell, or were city gates broken through except with battering rams and other instruments of war. The Israelites could have resisted this seemingly irrational command, but they obeyed. Will we obey God’s sure orders to us when they appear foolish to our families, and even to other church people
and pastors?

In a sermon on Joshua 6, Charles Spurgeon boiled down the essence of faith to three words: work, wait, win. The “Jerichos” that challenge us in life are not the result of men but of our ultimate enemy, Satan. God gives to us weak and flawed people the privilege of joining with Him to defeat that evil one who enslaved us. He wants us to get involved in winning back our own lost “Promised Land.”

In 3000+ years, God has not changed. We are still made in His image. He still requires of us the same kind of faith He required of the Israelites at Jericho. When we prepare ourselves ahead of time as did the Israelites under Joshua, God will, in the words of Paul, “crush Satan under our feet” (Romans 16:20).

From the Desk of Valson Abraham

Tag Archives: obedience

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The Jericho Principle