The Pastor's Letter (April 1978)
Dear Friends,
Undoubtedly one of the strangest sets of "Marching Orders" that an army ever received was the one delivered by the Lord to the armies of the children of Israel under the command of their leader, Joshua as they stood outside the walled city of Jericho. "Now Jericho was straitly shut up," it says in the 6th chapter of the Book of Joshua, "... none went out, and none came in." Against that impregnable fortress the Lord has his strategy all mapped out, and that strategy He conveyed to Joshua to pass on to the soldiers of the Israelite people.
They were to observe many and varied details - culminating in this: when they would have carried the Ark of the covenant of the Lord round and round the walls of that city for a whole week, then, they were to "shout with a great shout," and the Lord's assurance was that the walls of that city would then fall down flat. It was a strange strategy, and a strange set of marching orders, surely; and yet, there is hardly a more graphic illustration on the pages of the Old Testament to teach us the truth of Paul's words that "the weapons" of the Church of Christ in all her battles on the face of this earth are not "carnal" weapons, but "spiritual" weapons such as the Lord supplies and such as the Lord sends us forth with into the fray to do His bidding.
The Lord, of course, was very gracious in the giving of that strange means of victory that He gave into the hands of the Israelites that day; for, of course, the Lord is ever gracious in this kind of thing. The very first thing that He does with Joshua is this. He gives him an assurance of the victory in that war for Canaan that now lies before that people. "And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour." What Field Marshall wouldn't like to be able to give an assurance like that before a battle! He might endeavour to speculate on the outcome and give some measure of encouragement or hope that the outcome will be in his army's favour, but that is a different thing from what the Lord here does for Joshua and Israel. "See," says the Lord; that is, "dwell on what I am now telling you;" meditate on it; consider it well. And there is no greater encouragement for us to use only those "spiritual" weapons prescribed by the Lord for our good fight of faith than the ample consideration that it is they that will eventually bring the assured victory that the Lord ever speaks of.
The Lord's words to Joshua there are also to "subdue" those people of old, and to cause them to consider also that the victory is the Lord's" - hence the strange-ness of the orders here given. "See," says the Lord, "I have given into thine hands Jericho ..." and so, with the assurance of victory there goes the call to responsibility to employ the means that the Lord will then prescribe, for His is the warfare as well as the victory at the end - "The battle is the Lord's." And so, you find those Israelites of old, absolutely taking up every apparently strange detail of those strange orders given to them outside that city that was "straitly shut up" against them. They deploy the given number of priests, they take up the required positions, they use the kind of trumpets and horns that the Lord speaks about, and then, after they begin that march - round and round that city's wall, day after day after day, ever looking with anticipation to that last and final day when they are to "shout with a great shout", for, in that way, the Lord has told them, the walls will fall down flat.
The day that we live in is one that doesn't go much on total obedience to the Lord's word. Absolute standards and definitive theology are in short supply in the churches of Christ today. The great touchstone in all these things seems to be the apparent "results" of anything that the church engages in; therefore, the means and methods employed are judged worthy of employment according to that apparent end-result. How well we ought to read the first chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah; as far as an outward success formula goes, Israel had seemingly struck it rich. The shrine at Bethel was crammed with worshippers. The sacrifices were being offered non-stop at the hands of the priests, and the coffers were full. It might seem strange that into that situation the Lord should come and speak one of the most sobering words in the prophecy of Isaiah: "Who hath required this at your hands?" The Lord required the downfall of the city of Jericho, but He required it in His way - the way that would prove His people to be the people that He required them to be.
Arthur Pink has a lovely passage in his Gleanings in Joshua; he visualises the churches of our day being confronted with this city of Jericho and how best to occupy it. They would hold a council of war, he says, and one would propose ladders in order to scale the walls, another would be all for digging a tunnel under the walls, while another would probably suggest at battering ram to hammer the doors to gain an entrance, as though the Lord hadn't already given His marching orders for us and to us.
The soldiers of Israel might have felt exactly the same; for how easy to baulk at such a suggestion as this - to march around the walls of a city without laying one blade of steel upon it! But they did it! That's the great thing; they did it. Those hardened campaigners of Israel's army bowed their brawny necks to what the Lord directed, and they took on a mode of warfare that probably cut their carnal courage and prowess apart. But for that, my friends, the Lord wrote down their names in His everlasting word, for, says Paul to the Hebrews, "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down." "By faith" they did what the Lord told them to do. And surely that is a better word than the Lord saying, "Who asked you to do this!" "Who hath required this at your hands!"
So then, may we take the principles of conduct involved in that battle-scene that day outside those walls of Jericho. This old world against which we battle from day-to-day certainly seems so often to be "straitly shut up" against us, and how tempting it is to look for some form of battering-ram or some apparently glistening war-head in an effort to effect a breach.
By all means, let us search out those things effective to the glory of our God in all this fight, but by no means ought we to ever set aside the great over-ruling principle involved - "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual..." To fight with carnal weapons puts the church in danger of gaining the carnal spoils of what was really a carnal war that she had engaged herself in.