This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Evening folks. Great to see you particular welcome if you're new here to All Saints. My name's Chris, I'm one of the ministers here. We're really glad you are with us and before we dive in, let's, let's pray. So, dear Lord Jesus, we thank you that you were with Joshua and we thank you that you are with us now.

We pray that you just open our hearts and minds to teach us what it means, Lord, to walk in your ways, Lord, to teach us what it means to join with your mission and what you are doing in this world, Lord, empower us and give us courage. We pray tonight by your spirit. Amen.

Thank you. Well, as we've already said, we're in a series looking at Joshua. If you sort of missed out so far, the book of Joshua lands at a particular place in the Old Testament. Journey of God's people. In the Exodus, God leads them out from slavery, from 400 years of slavery under the Egyptians, and he promises them a land.

But as they approach the land, they don't believe that God is strong enough to fulfil his promise. And so they end up wandering the desert for 40 years. And here we sort of come back to their second round where they're on the cusp of this promised land under Joshua, whom God has chosen to lead them into the promised land. It's a very exciting time for the people of Israel. And we've seen how that Joshua, that name means Jesus and how Joshua is a prototype Jesus.

And how God's people today we can understand something of God's promises for us through the story and journey of Joshua. And thus far we looked at how Joshua sort of sent men to spy out the land to see what was there. We've seen how some men met Rahab, a Canaanite living in this city that was going to get destroyed and how she had the promise of being saved because of her faith in helping out the spies. We looked last week at how God prepared his people for their life in this new promised land. Not preparing them and giving them sort of battle lessons, you know, sword fighting lessons, but prepared their character, prepared them through their identity, helped remind them of their calling as to who they were going to be.

It's this different vision of humanity, this different vision of community, how they were going to be different from the nations around them. And tonight we come to the battle of Jericho. The battle or not, because you may have noticed we didn't actually read the whole of chapter six, which is where the battle takes place. We kind of read the end of chapter five, and then a little bit of the beginning of chapter six. And you might well flick ahead to chapter six to see how they took Jericho.

But of course, we had the answer through this character, through this strange person, the commander of the Lord's armies, as to how they were going to do that. We read in chapter six how the Israelites marched around the city for six days with the Ark of the Covenant and the trumpets blowing, and how on the seventh day, they marched around the city seven times and the seven trumpets blew a sound, the whole army shouted and the walls came down. And in terms of the fighting scene, there's about one or two verses given to it. Right. They just took the city.

And perhaps, as any filmmaker will tell you, sort of, you know, big, epic fight scenes are great fun to make a movie, but the movie cannot ride on those fight scenes. We have to immediately be invested in the character, we have to be invested in the community. We have to be invested in the cause for which they're fighting.

Excuse me. You know, what do you remember from Braveheart and Lord of the Rings and Gladiator, some great fight scenes, but you remember why the characters were fighting, what they were fighting for. And so tonight we're actually going to look at what I think is the more interesting part, which is Joshua's encounter with this strange character, the commander of the Lord's armies. And these sorts of encounters, they happen in the Old Testament where the characters storylines are converging. There's something about the character storyline with this much larger.

This much larger plan that is going on, and that's what's going on here. And so we kind of. Kind of just unwrap all the storylines, from Joshua to the people of Israel to God's master plan for the world and what it means for us today. And so let's just remind ourselves before we dig into that, what has happened to sort of the prequel to the book of Joshua. Let's go back to the Book of Numbers and remind ourselves, because Joshua, Joshua's been in this place before.

Joshua has been on the edge of Canaan, on the edge of the promised land. And in Numbers 13, we read that God tells Moses to choose 12 men, one from each of the tribes of Israel, to go and spy out canaan. And the 12 men, they go, and they come out back with this report. This is from numbers 13. We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey.

Here is its fruits. But the people who live there are very powerful, and the Cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. All the people we saw were great size. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.

10 out of those 12 men came back from that trip saying, we cannot possibly attack this city. We're just slaves. We're slaves that have been brought out of Egypt. We're not an advanced civilization. And here is this impossible city to take.

We cannot possibly attack it. We would be absolutely crazy. Ten out of the 12 men said that. But two of them, Caleb and Joshua, said, no, God has given us this land and we should go and we should take it. And in numbers 14, the next chapter, Caleb and Joshua and Aaron and Moses, they're pleading with the people to trust God, to be obedient to God.

And they plead with the people. They say, do not rebel against the Lord. Do not rebel against the Lord. In other words, cowardice. Their fear in this case is rebellion.

Their cowardice is rebellion. Let's. Let's pause there and talk about fear, because last week we touched a little bit on it. We saw that there was a fear of God that, that people are called to have, that Christians are called to have. There's not only a rightful fear of God as the creator of the universe, but a rightful fear of the God of redemption who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

And there's this rightful fear of God that presses into this blessing, that says, when we meditate on how much God has blessed us in Jesus Christ, when we look at that, how dare we rebel against it? Why would we? Why would we? It wouldn't even be in our own interests. But tonight we have a different sort of fear, and a fear that is framed as rebellion against God.

One commentator pointed out that if you go to Revelation and you have this list of folks that are. That are thrown into the lake of fire, you know, you have things you'd expect. The idolaters, the immoral, the greedy, so forth. But that list begins with the cowardly. As a Christian, you start to get a bit scared.

You go, what about all those times I didn't speak up for Jesus? What about all those times I should have been bolder? And it's like, that's not what this is about. That's not what this is about. This isn't about Christians who just stumble one too many times.

The cowardly in this instance has particular contours. It's about a fear of obedience to God that causes us to entirely reframe the goodness of God. It's about a cowardice that would rather slander God and curse God than repent and come to him for blessing. It's a cowardice that says, not simply, I don't believe this is true, but if this is true, I don't think this is good news. God is not good.

And one writer, Michael Reeves, has written a book about, about the fear of God called Fear and Trembling. I referenced it last week. And he goes to. He sort of references the new atheist movement that was very popular about 20 years ago. And the new atheist movement was marked by saying, well, we're not only people that don't believe in God, but we believe that even if God did exist as the Bible says it was, this wouldn't be good news.

He's not a good God.

It's a fear of God which reinterprets God's blessing, an invitation to the gospel as a curse or malevolence. I remember one pastor who said when he sometimes they sometimes send young people off to university who are, you know, generally strong in their faith. And occasionally sort of after about a year or so, they'll come back and go, oh, I've got questions. Oh, I'm deconstructing. Oh, I'm not really sure whether it's true anymore.

And he says often his first question is, okay, who have you started sleeping with? Because actually, sometimes those questions that have to convince ourselves that God isn't really good is actually a cowardice of not wanting to fight a war. Either a war out there or a war in here. And it's what we read in numbers 14. If you go back to it, the people aren't just afraid, but their fear slanders the previous acts of God.

They been saved from 400 years of slavery, miraculously bought out of Egypt through the Red Sea. And the people, on hearing this report, say, we should have stayed in Egypt. If only we died in Egypt or in this wilderness, why is God bringing us back to this land? And they said to each other, we should choose a leader and go back to Egypt. Ten of those 12 scouts, they wound up the people to say, yeah, we need to do something here.

Let's ignore Moses and Aaron, those people that God has given us. But 10 of those, those 10, they all died. None of them saw the Promised land. Only Caleb and Joshua saw the Promised land. And if we were to endure as Christians, and indeed if you're to become Christians, maybe if you're not a Christian here tonight, we need to find an antidote to cowardice, an antidote to this sort of cowardice.

And the antidote we find is in this passage, which Atch read for us from 5, 13 to 6 5. The commentators say that it's read as sort of one kind of coherent passage. There's a little line in verse one that talks about the city being closed up. That's just kind of this bit in brackets that's saying, by the way, this is an impossible city by the side of it. This is an impossible city to take.

But what carries on in chapter six is kind of carry on with that conversation. And if we were to skim read the passage and kind of subscribe to a very superficial meaning of it, we might conclude, you know, well, it looks like God sent an angel to help his favourite team win their battles. But actually this character, when we delve into it, there's a lot more going on, not only from now to Joshua's life, but for what God is doing in our lives as well. And we need to, we're going to see. We need to understand three things.

Firstly, that Joshua is meeting Jesus in this passage. Secondly, that we need to understand the terms of the relationship that Jesus offers. And thirdly, we need to understand the mission that Jesus calls us to. Let's have a look at those things. First, firstly, understand that Joshua is meeting Jesus here in Joshua chapter 5.

Or as one commentator puts it, Jesus is meeting Jesus, the prototype. Jesus is coming face to face with Jesus. And why do we say this? Well, the biggest clue is that angels generally, or men, they don't receive worship in scripture. In Revelation 22, John, the writer of Revelation, he sees an angel and he bows down in worship.

And the angel says, don't worship me, do not worship me, worship only God. Angels that are just angels don't receive worship. And sometimes we see heavenly beings being described as an angel of the Lord. But other times, especially in the Old Testament, we see the angel of the Lord. One of those times was Exodus chapter three, which is Moses in the burning bush, where you have another one of God's people at a crossroads.

Yet again, we have a surprise encounter. And just like our reading tonight, the angel tells a person to take off their shoes because the ground they're standing on is holy. And here in Joshua 5, that is this man's response when Joshua falls down on his face and worship. The man accepts the worship. This is God.

He accepts the worship is due to God alone. And so this identity of the commander of the army of the Lord, it is the pre incarnate Jesus. It is Jesus coming among humanity as he did when he wrestled with Jacob, when he appeared in the burning bush, when he appeared in the fire furnace with Daniel's friends, Jesus didn't suddenly emerge onto the scene, being born of Mary for the first time. Now, the Bible tells us that Jesus was there from the beginning, but we see Jesus popping up, manifesting itself among God's people to do his work and do his saving works. All through the Old Testament, Jesus appears throughout history, the one for whom everything is made.

Everything was made by him and for him. And as it says in Hebrews, he holds the universe by his hand. He is utterly other, which is why Jesus commands Joshua to take his shoes off, because he is on holy ground. So the identity of his character is Jesus. But of course, Joshua doesn't know this when he meets him.

And so we have this little exchange. It says now, when Joshua was Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hands. Joshua went up to him and asked, are you for us or for our enemies? Neither, he replied. But now, as commander of the army of the Lord, I have come.

Are you for us or our enemies? The old translations, they don't have the word neither. They just have no, you know, Joshua comes up and says, right, you know, are you a friend who going to help us to fight, or are we going to fight right now? And the man goes, no, neither of those things. And the angel's answer shows us two things.

Firstly, it's another clue to this thread that we've been trying to show you all through this series, that the war that the God of the Bible is fighting is not a tribal war. He's not on the side of the Israelites because they're the Israelites, but he's using them for a much bigger and more glorious agenda. And secondly, it resets our expectations of what it means to meet with Jesus. Maybe you're here thinking tonight, you know, I sort of am intrigued by this idea of Jesus, but before I commit to him, I need to make sure he's really on my side.

But of course, if Jesus really is who he says he is, that question doesn't make sense. Jesus, are you on my side? The question is not, is Jesus on my side? The question is, am I on Jesus side? And that's the question we need to be asking if we're coming to Jesus as who he really says he is.

You know, you don't. If Jesus is the God of the whole universe that holds everything by the palm of his hand, you don't sort of trust in him to make him your assistant. Right. And so what is the deal with this totally other holy God of the universe? Let's move on and think about the terms of the relationship that Jesus offers to Joshua and to us.

Am I on Jesus side? Is probably the most important question anyone. It is the most important question anyone can ask and especially important when he's holding a sword. And where have we seen a sword before in scripture? Where's the first time we saw a sword in scripture?

Some may know the answer. It's all the way back in the third chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter three when Adam and Eve are cast out from God's presence and God places a sword in the garden flashing back and forth. Adam and Eve fall from the holiness that God requires. Adam and Eve are cast out from God's presence and what is the thing that stops them coming back into God's presence? It's a sword flashing back and forth.

And so if you meet God carrying a sword, if you meet Jesus carrying a sword, it ought not go well for you because we under the same curse of Adam and Eve. And all through the Old Testament so far the message has been God is so holy that no one can see God and live. And so we can ask well how do we come and a relationship with God, how come Joshua is in this relationship? He's approaching God himself and not dying by the sword. How was Joshua able to come into the presence of Jesus and not die?

And is Joshua and those who are about to fight the battle of Jericho favoured by God because they're better than the others? What's the basis of their relationship with God? Well this is Deuteronomy chapter 9 and we go back here because God is reminding his people the basis on which they are doing what he's asking. It says after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself the Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness. No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.

It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going to take possession of this land. But on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand then it's not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess for you are a stiff necked people. There are two reasons the battle of Jericho is going to take place, firstly, because of the wickedness of the nations. And we've gone through this before that.

So the Canaanites weren't just the people that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They're people who God is actively judging through the Israelites. But secondly, that God is doing what he's doing because of a promise and a promise that he first made to Abraham and then his sons Isaac and Jacob. And we can remind ourselves of the promise which is given back in first in Genesis 12. But then the covenant that promises is sealed in Genesis 15.

And in Genesis chapter 15, God does a very peculiar thing. He tells Abraham to chop up a bunch of meat. He says, chop up a bunch of meat and put one half on this side and one half on this side. And then at night, God appears as a smoking fire pot and a blazing torch and passes through the pieces and covenants. Back in those ancient days, they were made by acting out what is going to happen if I don't make this promise, if I don't fulfil this promise.

And so God promises, Abraham, one day I am going to give this land to your people. And what he does when he passes through the pieces of these dead animals, he's saying, may I be cut up? May I be cut up if I do not fulfil this promise. The language literally in that passage is, on that day, the Lord cut a covenant with Abraham. And so here in Joshua, chapter five, where we are, God is about to fill that covenant through the power of his drawn sword, through the power of Jesus.

But there is a much more powerful covenant that Jesus would one day fulfil. But this time, he wouldn't just fulfil his side of the covenant. He would come to fulfil our side of the covenant as well. You cannot meet a holy God unless you are holy. You cannot live in relationship with a holy God without first going through the sword.

That sword that flashed back and forth at the Garden of Eden, that same sword that they sewed onto the curtains in the temple barring the way to the most holy place where you can meet with God. But for us on the cross, Jesus went under the sword. Jesus, this commander of the Lord's army, who is here holding the sword, is pierced for our transgressions. He is crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that we deserve is laid upon him.

And so the question of how can Joshua meet with this holy God is that one day this man holding the sword, this Jesus, will go to the cross for him. That's the true and better Joshua. And so why do the Israelites win the battle of Jericho? Why do the Israelites win the battle of Jericho? It's because they're better fighters.

No, it's on the basis of their relationship with God. It is because of God's purposes and his grace and his blessing upon their lives. They win for no other reason than their relationship with God, this covenant and this vow. And the same is true of us that those of us who come before the throne of grace of God. We come not because we're better, but because God himself has cut a covenant through the Lord Jesus on the cross.

And he calls us now, if we belong to him, to come on a mission. What is this mission that Jesus calls us to? What is the mission, of course, that he calls his people to? Here in Joshua 6. Let's read again.

The Lord said to Joshua, see, I've delivered Jericho into your hands. Along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests, carry trumpets of rams horns in front of the Ark.

On the seventh day, march around the city seven times with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them, sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout. Then the wall of city will collapse and the army will go up. Everyone straight in. And if you read on to chapter six, that is exactly how it happens.

Did you notice the numbers? Did you notice the sevens? There are seven priests, there are seven trumpets seven times on the seventh days. And did you notice the six plus one? The six days of going once round and then the seventh day.

Where else do you see the six days and the plus one? The six plus one, where do you see? You see it right at the beginning of scripture. The six days of creation and the one day of rest. And what God is taking them back to is this six days of creation.

What is happening at the battle of Jericho is recreation. It is a model of God's plan to make the world new again, both by punishment of the wicked and to make way for a new community whom God has chosen by grace on the basis of his goodness and his promise. And again Revelation tells us finally that recreation will take place once and for all, necessarily by cleansing of the wicked and saving those who did nothing more than believe upon the goodness of God in the light of his grace shown to them on the cross. And the saving of the Israelites is the same way that we are saved today. And he calls his church to do the same today, to take part in this recreation of the world.

But not by sword. Why? Because Jesus has died for his people by going under that sword. But now we recreate through works of grace, through prayer, through preaching, through advocacy, through mercy missions, through worship, through living as God's community, to being that new signpost community, as the church. What is the antidote to fear?

That fear that drives us away from God, that fear that makes us doubt God's goodness. It is pressing into that goodness of God which takes these spiritual blessings and manifests them through his church as earthly blessings. It's beholding the one who holds the double edged sword, who himself went under the sword, who has already beaten death, who's already beaten sin, who's already beaten sickness, who has beaten the power of nature, who has fought the battle of Jericho for his people and has fought the battle to win your soul for eternity. And if this is your God, there is nothing left to fear.

There are some folks here tonight. Maybe there are battles that feel too big for you right now. And they may be battles that are out there, but they may also be battles in here, things that you're going, I just want to run away from God because of some battle you're losing. In terms of your character, in terms of who you are. You don't believe that God is really working in you anymore.

Press into the goodness of God. Press into his promises fulfilled for you on the cross. Press into his holiness, press into his greatness, press into his blessings until you have nothing left to fear. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are our captain, that you are the commander of the Lord's armies. And Lord, you could have commanded a thousand angels to come and take you down from the cross. But Lord, you went to the cross for us anyway. To fulfil a much greater promise, Lord, that not one of yours would be lost. We thank you that for those that are in you, you hold us in the palm of your hand.

And Lord, I want to pray for people in here tonight that need to be reminded of your blessings or those people that maybe had their eyes open to your blessings for the very first time. Lord, we thank you for what you are doing from beginning to end. Lord, we thank you for the privilege of being a small part of that story. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are on a mission for recreation. And Lord Jesus, may you use us.

May we be your bold people as we march out and minister in the shape of your cross, the shape of your sacrifice, Lord, that we might honour you and bring more to know and love you. For your glory's sake. Amen.