Our only safe place is Jesus. Saving faith is about letting go of all our other backup plans and abandoning ourselves to him, trusting that his death in our place means we are now innocent of all charges before the judge of all the earth.
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Transcript
Dan:
Hi, everyone . And welcome to trainingforliferedeemed. I’m your host, Dan, and as always, I am with my dad, David Jackson, to talk about all things in the Bible. And today we are looking at Joshua. We continue our progress through Joshua. And I think Dad, we said here chapters five and six today. That’s right. That’s right. Excellent. And this is episode 39. So I hope you enjoy today. Dad, we start off with everyone getting circumcised just before they, well, they’ve just crossed over the Jordan, but everyone needs to be circumcised. Why do they need to be circumcised? Didn’t God tell them at Mount Sinai to circumcise their children or Abraham, even outside like Abraham, they were told to circumcise their children on the eighth day. And here we are circumcising everyone because it hasn’t been done for a whole generation.
David:
It says a lot. Doesn’t it? Here we are here. We are 40 years after we get out of Egypt. And there’s a whole generation hasn’t been circumcised because their parents did not commit to Yahweh. They , after all that he did to get them out of Egypt and the Passover and all the miracles and everything else. It’s water off a duck’s back. And so I really feel sorry for those blokes. You’ve got an army of men who are between the ages of 20 and 50, and we’ve just seen Yahweh part the Jordan River and cross. And here we are in our first base camp in the promised land. And the first thing you get told as part of the routine orders for the day is drop your dacks, we’re about to take a slice off. Tactically, this is ridiculous. If you remember , when the king of Shechem’s son spoilt little brat that he was , uh, took Dinah and raped her and used that as a bargaining chip, her brothers went in and negotiated this real con artist deal , with all the men of Shechem, Yeah, you can marry our sister, as long as we get to circumcise every man in town. So they circumcised every man in town then waited three days until the pain really cut in. So these guys are sitting on soft cushions going, oooooh, and in comes these fellows and kills them all. And so the first thing you do when you’re about to invade a foreign country, you cross the border and then you circumcise on your troops. Um, and you’ve got to know, I mean, Jericho’s five clicks down the road. They’ve been staying , you know , you got these little guys out there, they didn’t have binoculars, but they can see, and they’re looking across the gully, hiding behind whatever they hid behind going. What on earth are they doing as these fellas stagger out of the tent with their hands on their crotch going ooooh, but it’s your relationship with God that comes first? Not whether you’re physically fit enough to go to battle because God’s going to do the fighting and God’s not going to fight for you. If you haven’t committed at first, I would have done it the other side of the river, but
Dan:
That’s not the same kind of faith Dad you’ve got to be vulnerable when you do it.
David:
Oh yeah . It sends a message to them . I mean, how confident is an army that does this five clicks from their military objective in plain sight of all these of the people in Jericho. It’s just, God’s making a statement here and it’s a lovely statement. It says, first, get your relationship with the Lord, right, And he’ll take care of everything else. I love that.
Dan:
So they then told to go and attack Jericho. There’s a bit of a meeting between God and Joshua to talk about the tactics, this attack. And the attack is basically just kind of sit back and watch do some laps of the city, which probably is actually isn’t that big really? When I went there , I’m like, yeah , you can do laps of that in a day. Quite quite happily
David:
I just love the juxtaposition here that you’ve got you . You’ve got a bunch of guys who are sitting around feeling sorry for themselves having it , the snip. And you know, I can’t resist the military humor. I mean, you name that your camp he’ll have four skins. Uh , and then you name, the place where everybody’s c amped, Gil gal, u h, God said he was rolling t heir foreskin away. U m, and they n amed the place Rolly, P olly. This is military humor. Y ou k now, it’s the same. When you get one surgical, u m, you go into surgery, there’s no dignity in having surgery. So you make jokes about it. S o that’s, what’s happening there. They’re sort of sitting around, laughing t heir embarrassment away. And Joshua goes out to check the perimeter and bumps into Yahweh and has h is little Moses moment t ake your shoes off. This is holy ground, but I love the language. There. You’re a sentry you’re going out, checking your perimeter, who goes there friend or foe. And God turns around and says, no, mate, I’m the one asking the questions. It’s not about whether I’m on your side. It’s whether you’re on mine, I’m the captain of the army. I’m in charge of this battle. The question is, are you loyal to me? Uh, so God’s made his point. And then it’s off to, it’s interesting. I go straight into doing Passover. I mean, you can’t do passover. If you haven’t been circumcised, They crossed the river on the day, you’re supposed to select your sheep. And then they circumcise them . And by the time Passover night comes around four days later , Joshua was bumped into the Lord and h e’s had conversation like Moses. And we’ve had our feast. W e’re remembering. And now we’re ready to get up in the morning for seven days, a feast of unleavened bread. And for each morning of the feast of unleavened bread, we’re going to g o for, w alk a round Jericho with our little flags.
Dan:
Well , that’s a connection I didn’t make It was the feast of , unleavened bread for seven days with the seven walks.
David:
Yeah, there’s a pattern there because at the end of the seven, so you’ve got seven days of creation. Seven days is your climax, your dying of rest. And then the next day is a new beginning, a new week. So the eighth day is your new creation day. So eighth day Jesus rises from the dead it’s day. Pentecost happens on this day by day eight, Jericho is gone and it’s all over. So I just, I can’t help thinking of, I’m a Monty Python fan. I confess, but if you’ve ever seen life of Brian and they come to the castle and the guys at the top of the castle and going go away, you silly British pig dogs or whatever they call it.
Dan:
It’s the holy grail, Dad with the coconut horses.
David:
The coconut horses. Yeah, go it silly English, whatever. You can just imagine the people of Jericho standing on the battlements like that, watching this army, that they’re waiting for the attack, walking around, waving flags at them and say, hi fellows. We’re coming at the end of six days. You know , there’d be yelling abuse at them and calling them names and day seven. They do it for seven times. It’s a two kilometre walk around Jericho that would take all day seven times it’s a14 K all up seventh day hike. And then everybody does a left turn, face, the middle, blow your trumpets down, come the walls . And you go in and finish them off. the guys on the wall would have been sitting up there having a beer, looking at all this going, I don’t know , the whole thing comes crashing down . You’re sort of beginning to feel safe and then gone. You’re gone . Judgment is sudden. Yeah.
Dan:
Although it’s judgment for everyone, except for Rahab has been promised to be safe and secure or the life of the spies. And then yeah , she survived with her whole family in her little room and they all go in and grab her.
David:
And I sort of think about her family. Okay. So you’ve got if Rahab’s prostitute chances are, she’s at least in her late teens, but the most early twenties and it’s her house. So she’s inviting the rest of the family to come to her place. And she’s saying, if you want to leave, you’ve gotta be in my house. And you know , you look out the window of her house and there’s the Israeli army doing laps. And so she’s spending that week, rounding everybody up, getting them in the house. And she’s got the red cord out the window and you’re trying to explain to the family why we’re in the house and they’re all scared. And then when the walls come down, her house is in the wall and you go, God keeps his promises all the rest of the wall goes down , except my little piece of it.
Dan:
Yeah. And then to , it’s almost like a mini passover because she’s got a red scarf and you’re safe in one house and
David:
Yeah. Yeah. And the red is, I mean, if you’ve got any sensitivity in the Bible for symbolism, you’ve got the Lamb’s blood over the door at Passover . They did that last week. And now this week they didn’t put it over the door they didn’t have doors. They’re in tents But here we are with her, with the red out the window going in that when God’s judgment falls I’m under the blood, you know , somebody died for me. That’s what the red symbolized. So even though she doesn’t have a lot of information, she really is putting a faith in a promise. And that at the end of that p romise i s Jesus. And all of her family g athered i n t here going, okay, whatever you say, love, if this is a safe place, you’ve done the deal w ith, you know, Yahweh we’re here and that’s a marvellous, marvellous picture that says when God’s judgment falls, there’s one safe place and everything else i s g oing down. And my safe place is Jesus.
Dan:
Well, that brings us To the end of this episode of training for life redeemed, if you would. Um , that brings us to the end of training for life redeemed. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it. If would leave us a review and also make sure that you subscribe so that you can come back and visit us next time when we cover the next section, as they start to look into attacking AI and a few other cities around the place. If you want to grab the show notes, watch the video, et cetera, leave us a comment on the website. You can head over to trainingforliferedeemed.com/39, and you can find everything there. Otherwise I hope to see you next week.
