The Pulpit Commentary — Joshua — Section 169

Yer. 20.-The taking of Jericho. The te.king of Jericho is the first great victory of the Israelites over the Ce.ne.anites. It is a type of the victory of the people of God over their adversaries. We lee.rn from it the secret and the method of success in this conflict. I. The first thing demanded of the people of Israel is A GREAT ACT OF FAITH. It was no slight exercise of faith to believe that the sounding of the sacred trumpets would suffice to overthrow those massive walls which rose like impregnable re.mpurts around the city. It was necessary that the besiegers should rise above all the merely material aspects of the situation, and endure, as se.id the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "as seeing him who is invisible," and relying wholly on His word (Heh. xi. 27). II. This faith is not a mere feeling of trust; IT INVOLVES ALSO A POSITIVE AND PERILOUS DEED. The Israelites are not to wait in inaction the working of a miracle on their behalf; they he.ve u direct command to obey. The ark is to be triumphantly borne, sometimes to the stiITing sound of trumpets, around the walls of Jericho, from the top of which the enemy might take deadly aim at the besiegers. Thus, for Israel to believe is to obey ; it is to act in spite of danger. This is the faith of which it is said that it" overcomes the world" (1 John v. 4). III. THIS FAITH FINDS A RESPONSE IN THE MIGHTY GRACE OF GOD. That grace delights in sovereign manifestations. In the exercise of His absolute freedom, God has often chosen " things the.t a.re not to bring to nought things that are," (1 Car. i. 28), thus magnifying His grace by the very disproportion between the results and the apparent means used to effect them. What power is there in the sound of a trumpet to shake the solid foundation of a city wall? Can its shrillest blast make the massive granite tremble to its fall? God will show that the power is His alone; that Israel's confidence must be in no arm of flesh, but in Him only. Undoubtedly He does often make use of those natural means which are of His own appointment, and His grace is not in the ordinary course of things opposed to nature. Religious life is not magic, but those grand manifestatjons of Divine sovereignty which are called miracles bring us into immediate contact with the sovereign power of God from which all blessed influences flow. Let us not forget, moreover, that there is a distinction to be observed between what may be called the creatiYe period of the religion of redemption, and its subsequent stage of pre- servation and de,elopment. The cnn:ent of the new life must first hollow out its channel, before it can pursue its even way between the banks of a defined course. Hence with regard to miracles, there is a great difference between the age which saw the first beginnings of Christianity, and our own day, which is an era of develop- ment only. . . IV. The fall of the walls of Jericho before the blast of the sacred trumpets 1s an apt symbol of THE TRIUMPH OF SPIRIT OVER :MATERIAL FORCE. The sacred trumpets accompanied the songs of Israel, its hymns of worship raised to the true God. It was this glorious truth of the one living and true God which finally su?dned the Canaanitish nations. Mens agitat molem. Mind moves matter; it always triumphs over material obstacles. Force can avail nothing again_st it, because it is itself the power of God. Primitive Christianity saw the citadel of paganism fall before it. All-powerful Rome fell prostrate when the gospel trumpet sent forth its sonorous voice into the midst of a down-trodden and decaying world. Thus, also, in a later age did the fortress of Romish superstition crumble into ruin before Luther's hymn, which embodies the whole spirit of the Reformation. The h}'.IDn on justification by faith was like Israel's trumpets to the Papal Jericho. " Believe only, and thou shalt see the glory of God" (John xi. 20).-E. DE P. ' Ver. 20.-Strongholds. When the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, " By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been compassed about seven days" (Heb. xi. 30), he sets his seal to the supernatural character of this event. Not by any kind of natural force-undermining, storming, or even earth- quake-but by the faith that lays hold on the unseen power of God, was the effect produced. It was a link in the chain of marvellous Divine manifestations by which CH, VI, 1-21.J THE BOOlt OF JOSHUA.