Faith That Marches to Victory
Faith That Marches To Victory
The account of Joshua facing the fortified walls of Jericho offers profound insights for overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles. When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, they immediately encountered a challenge rather than the expected blessing. This pattern often repeats in our lives—new jobs, marriages, or opportunities frequently present unexpected difficulties before revealing their true value as blessings.God told Joshua, 'I have given Jericho into your hand,' using past tense to indicate the victory was already accomplished from God's perspective. Similarly, our problems are not curses but gifts precisely positioned in our lives to facilitate growth. The Word of God stands as our most precious gift after Jesus and the Holy Spirit. When we engage with Scripture, we're not merely reading text but experiencing God's breath and discovering what He has actually promised.To walk in faith like Joshua, we must follow three key steps: First, accept God's Word as absolutely true regardless of circumstances. Second, develop spiritual sight to see beyond physical reality to God's promises. Finally, take consistent action based on faith, continuing to 'march around our Jericho' even when no immediate results appear. Our breakthrough comes not from our abilities but from God's faithfulness to His Word. By finding applicable promises, seeing through the lens of those promises, and taking obedient action, we position ourselves to receive the blessings God has already prepared.
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Faith That Marches To Victory: Lessons from Joshua at Jericho
Have you ever faced a problem that seemed impossible to overcome? Perhaps you're in that situation right now. The story of Joshua at Jericho offers powerful insights about how God works in our lives, especially when we face seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
When Your Blessing Looks Like a Problem
When Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land, the first thing they encountered wasn't flowing milk and honey—it was the fortified walls of Jericho. This wasn't what they expected. They thought entering the Promised Land meant the end of their problems, but instead, they faced a new challenge.
This teaches us something profound: sometimes your blessings don't look like blessings at first. They look like problems. But if you overcome them in faith, you'll receive the blessing on the other side.
Think about it—that new job seemed like a blessing until you showed up on Monday and faced unexpected challenges. That marriage seemed perfect until the honeymoon revealed differences. That beautiful baby seemed like pure joy until the sleepless nights began.
God's Gift: "I Have Given It to You"
When Joshua stood before Jericho, God told him something remarkable: "See, I have given Jericho into your hand" (Joshua 6:2). Notice the tense—not "I will give" but "I have given." It was already done in God's eyes.
Your problems are not curses—they're gifts. This might be hard to accept, but God doesn't intend for you to be destroyed or defeated. He intends for you to be blessed. The process of blessing often requires growth and development in you.
The word "given" in this passage is the same word used in Genesis 1:17 when God "set" (or gave) the sun and moon in place. Just as the sun and moon are precisely positioned, God has precisely positioned His gifts and promises in your life.
The Word of God: Your Most Precious Gift
Next to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the most precious gift God has given us is His Word. The Bible isn't just a book—it's God-breathed. When you open it, you're not just reading words; you're being breathed on by God.
The Bible is a mirror that reflects who we are. If we find it boring, it's not the Bible that's boring—it's us. If it makes us angry, it's because we're in rebellion against God's truth. If we find it difficult to understand, it's not because the Bible is complicated—it's because we haven't committed to learning.
Many Christians waste time praying for things God never promised to give them. When you read the Bible, you discover what God has actually promised, and then you can pray with confidence for those things.
Three Steps to Walking in Faith Like Joshua
1. Accept God's Word as True
Joshua had to accept God's word that the city was already given to him. Similarly, we must accept what God's Word says about our situations. This means putting our trust completely in God's promises, not in our feelings, thoughts, or what others tell us.
2. See What God Has Given You
God told Joshua to "see" that He had given him the city. We must develop spiritual sight—seeing with the eyes of faith what God has promised, even when our natural eyes see only problems.
Paul encourages us to "fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:18). Are you seeing only your doctor's report, or are you seeing God's promise of healing? Are you seeing only your financial struggles, or are you seeing God's promise to provide?
3. Start Walking
Finally, God told Joshua to march around the city. Faith requires action. As James says, "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:26). There comes a point when we must stop just praying and start acting on God's Word.
The Israelites walked around Jericho for six days with nothing happening. No cracks appeared in the walls. The people on the walls probably laughed at them. But they kept walking in obedience to God's command.
How many times have you been around the same problem, seeing no change? Keep walking. Keep believing. Keep trusting the Word you've been given. Not because of how good you are, but because of how good God is. Eventually, you will break through and find your blessing.
Life Application
This week, I challenge you to take these three steps with whatever problem you're facing:
Find God's promises in His Word that apply to your situation. Accept them as true, regardless of your circumstances.
Begin to see your situation through the lens of God's promises. Visualize the victory God has already given you.
Take action based on God's Word. What step of obedience is God asking you to take? Do it consistently, even when you don't see immediate results.
Ask yourself:
Am I treating God's Word as the living, powerful force it is, or just as another book?
What problem in my life might actually be a blessing in disguise?
What promise from God's Word do I need to start walking out in faith?
Have I been praying for things God never promised, or am I aligning my prayers with His Word?
Remember, your breakthrough isn't coming because of how clever or talented you are, but because of who God is and what He has promised. Keep walking in faith, and you will see His promises fulfilled in your life
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A discussion guide for the sermon can be found here.
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Thank you for the opportunity to be with you again today. I love coming down here. I love your services. It's got such a great sense of God's presence, and there's such a natural worship here. And I just love to see the way that God is moving with you here and what God is doing.
It's quite exciting, actually, to see the way God is using this church to reach out to many other communities in this area of Melbourne and to establish something that I think is very strong and very lasting and honour you, Adrian and Narelle, for all of that that you're doing for God and you as a church, you have faith to do it. Reach out and touch other people, and that's fantastic. So, having said all of that, I would like to now share with you from the word of God. Is that okay? Let's pray.
Father, we just come to you right now around your word, and we ask that you would open your word to us, Lord. We ask that you would speak to us, Lord. May we sense the breath of God upon us today as we open our hearts to your word. For your word is inspired and God breathed. And, Lord, we want to come to your word and submit our hearts and our minds to it.
Give us a mind that is ready to receive your word and a heart that is ready to respond to your word. I pray in Jesus name. Amen. So I want to talk to you about something you already know about. An event in the Bible that is quite familiar, and you have told the stories probably yourself, because I want to talk to you about Joshua and when Joshua arrived at the city of Jericho.
But before we start, because you know the story so well, let me just give you a little bit of background that may have escaped your attention. As you know, just before the children of Israel were to cross over the Jordan river and come into the promised land, just before that was about to happen, Moses came to Joshua and the rest of the leaders of Israel one day and told them that he was told by God to go up to a mountain and that he wouldn't be returning. He was going to God. Now, that's one of the reasons why, when you come to the New Testament, Jesus meets on a mountain, and you remember there's a manifestation on the mountain. And one of those people is Moses.
Because Moses sort of didn't die naturally. He was taken to heaven. The other guy was Elijah, who went up in the chariot. So these two guys come back to Jesus on the mount. So Moses comes and says, I'm going.
God's calling me on. Now, can you imagine what that meant to Joshua? Because Joshua, since he was a young man, had been working with Moses. And Moses was his leader and his mentor, his spiritual father. Everything he knew, Moses taught him.
And now he comes to this point in his life where Moses is saying, I'm leaving. Now, if I was Joshua saying, hell, no, you can't go yet, because we haven't got there. We haven't got to the promised land. There's a lot to be done. I need you to continue to lead us.
But Moses says, I'm done. You're the leader now. So suddenly, this man, Joshua receives the responsibility to lead the entire nation of Israel without anybody there to look up to as a father and a leader to give him advice. He was now on his own. But more than that, when Moses started walking up that mountain, he realized that Moses was taking with him the stick.
The stick. You remember the rod that he held over the rivers of the Nile, and it turned into blood. Do you remember this? The one that he put on the ground turned into a snake. You remember that?
That he held over the Red Sea. And it parted, and then he held it over and it collapsed and destroyed the army of Israel. The one that he used to take water from a stone. Do you remember this stick? Now, if I was Joshua, I'd say, look, okay, all right, all right, all right.
You can go, but leave me the stick. I need the stick. Right? I can't do this without the stick. Right?
But Moses took the stick with him. So, I mean, just think about young Joshua. You say, not only is he going, but he's taking this stick with him, too. Now, this is important, because if you think about all through his life, Joshua was in charge of the army of Israel. And whenever they went out into battle, Joshua knew something.
He knew that somewhere up there on one of those hills, he could look up. And what he would see was Moses sitting on a rock with his arms in the air, holding that stick up to God. And on his right, and Left side, Aaron and were holding up his hands. And he knew when he was in that battle, as long as they kept praying, he was going to win. But now, now he's going into the promised land, where he's been told there are giants in there, where he's been told there are massive places in there.
And these are enemies you've never faced before. These are bigger problems than you've ever had before. But now he has to go and face those not only without Moses, not only without the stick, but now. There was no Moses praying for him on top of that mountain. So for the first time in his life, he was going to go into battle, and he couldn't look around and see Moses praying for him.
Now, add to that the fact that as they crossed the Jordan river, they came against something they'd never seen before. They'd never seen it in Egypt. They'd never seen it in all their wanderings of 40 years in a wilderness. They came to the city of Jericho and they saw the latest, most sophisticated military weapon that had been created to that time. They saw a walled city.
No one had done it before. These people had figured that if we want to protect ourselves, we'll build a wall around our town. Nobody had done that before. They built towers, but not walls around the whole town. So now this man, who was a military expert, by this time, of course, he'd fought lots of battles.
He was a veteran, but he had always fought open battles. But now he's coming up against the city. And you can imagine when they looked at the city, they looked at each other and said, what's this? Have you seen this before? We've never seen this before.
What do we do? I don't know. Have you ever done. No, I've never done this before. So now you've got a guy who's facing a problem he's never seen before, a problem he doesn't know how to solve without the prayer support that he always had, without the advice and counsel that he'd always had, without the stick, he's all on his own.
Now, perhaps that explains to you what happens to him in Joshua chapter five. Because in Joshua chapter five, he's praying about this. And the Bible says, then a man appeared to him. He looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a sword in his hand. And Joshua went up to him and said, are you friend or foe?
Are you with me or against me? Now the man's got a sword in his hand, which means he's ready to fight, right? It's a declaration. It's a challenge. So Joshua responds to the challenge.
Are you with us or you against us? Am I going to have to fight you, or are you going to fight with me? The man replied to him, I'm neither one. I'm neither for you or against you. That's a strange answer, because really, he says, I am.
I am come from the Lord. I am the commander of the Lord's army. What he says to Joshua is this. I'm not with you, and I don't need you to be with me. You can be if you want to be, but I have come to fight, and I have come to fight instead of you.
It's an interesting statement. He said, I have come with the army of the Lord. The army of the Lord has turned up here. Joshua. Don't be afraid.
Why? Because he was afraid. He had never done this before. And then God manifests to him in an amazing way that here is the captain of the Lord's host. And he comes and he says to Joshua, I'm not on your side.
You can be on my side, but I'm going to fight this battle. And you can sit over there if you like, because you don't have to be on my side and I don't have to be on your side. I've already decided which way this battle is going. I'm fighting this battle. Sit down.
Take it easy, son. Don't worry about it. It's all taken care of. Wow. Wow.
That's amazing, isn't it? So let's look at the key statement that I want to read to you. The Lord said to Joshua in chapter six, verse two. See, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and the mighty warriors. Now you shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once.
You shall do this each day for six days notice. He says to him, I have given it to you. See, we're going to see here something that happens with Joshua that can help us all with our faith, because we watch. What we see with Joshua is that he has a faith that doesn't give up. And we need to have that Joshua type of faith in our circumstance.
The first thing he realized, of course, in facing this city was, I thought I was coming into a promised land, and this was going to be a land of blessing, a land of milk and honey. You never told me it was going to have a big city wall that I had to get over. He never told me all these things. He said, it's going to be the end of all my problems, I'm going to be blessed when I enter that land. But the first thing he saw was a problem.
You see, sometimes your blessings don't look like blessings. Sometimes they look like problems. But if you overcome them in faith, then you receive the blessings. But there are many times when we think, oh, yes, I'm going to be blessed. Hallelujah.
I'm going to be blessed this week. But then this week you end up with a problem. And you say, I thought you said you were going to be blessed. God says, yes, it is, but I've wrapped up your blessing in a problem.
How many times have you found your blessing was wrapped in a problem? When you dealt with the problem, when you had faith to believe, when you prayed through it and you got to the other side of the problem, you realize that it was a blessing. But at first, it looks like a problem. And what I want to say to you today is the problem that you are facing right now is not the problem problem. It's a blessing wrapped up to look like a problem.
And if you will trust God and if you will walk with God in this, and if you won't give up in this, then out of that problem comes your blessing.
You see, there's so many times in the scripture that what looked like a problem turned out to be a blessing. And your experience has already taught you this. You know that if you have persisted in faith with certain problems in your life, it's come through the blessing. You had a new job. You thought, wow, this is great, till you turned up on Monday, and then you had a problem.
But if you work at it in faith and belief, it comes through to blessing. Some of you, when you got married, you thought, oh, hallelujah, I have arrived. And then you went on the honeymoon, and you have a problem. But if you work on it and you persist with it, you can have a blessing from it. You get that little baby and you bring it home, and it's all so lovely and sweet and smells so nice and.
And then you can't sleep. It keeps you awake for days on end, wears you down. But if you persist with it, there's a blessing there. It's the way God often works that he gives you a blessing, but it doesn't look like it. And this is what's happening to Joshua.
He's got a blessing, but as far as he's concerned, this is not a blessing. This is a problem. But it's going to be a blessing, a key, a doorway to enter into a land of blessing. But notice the first thing then God says to him as he prepares for him to deal with this, he says, I have given this city to you. I've given it.
One translation says, I have delivered it. The idea is that this is a gift from God. A gift. Your problems are a gift. Wow.
You are not cursed with the problem. You are gifted with it. I know. I find that real hard to you. I find it real hard to look at some of my problems and difficulties that I have experienced and that I am experiencing now and say, thank you, Lord, for this gift.
I don't know, it just goes against human nature, doesn't it? But, you know, we have to see that God does not intend for you to be destroyed or for you to be defeated. He intends for you to be blessed. But the process of blessing must be a process of growth and development in you. And so what happens is we sometimes experience a problem which is a blessing.
But God is saying to us, in order to receive that, in order to have that delivered to you, you're going to have to grow here. But God says, I've given it to you. It's done. It's a gift. It's yours.
You don't have to earn it. You don't have to deserve it, but I've given it to you. And that's what God is saying to him about the city. You don't have to fight for it. You don't have to earn it.
You don't have to deserve it. I've given you this city. It may look like a problem, but I've given it to you. The solution is already done. It's already fixed in heaven.
You are going to succeed. You are going to have victory because I have given it to you. It's been done. It's interesting that the word give in this passage of scripture is first found in the Bible in Genesis, chapter one, verse 17. And in Genesis, chapter one, verse 17, it talks about God has given the sun and the moon.
It uses the phrase set in place. He has set the sun, same word, given and set the sun and the moon in place. And as you know, the moon and the sun are set in place. They are precise, they work like a clock. And you know, on a certain time, in a certain day, exactly what where the moon is going to be and exactly where the sun is going to be.
It's precise. I know we take it for granted. And, you know, we think, well, tomorrow morning the sun is going to rise, and you take it for granted when you get up and it's there now There will be a day when you won't wake up and see the sun rise. Not because the sun's not going to rise, because you won't wake up. And we take it for granted.
We think it's going to happen every single day, but it won't happen every single day. There are a certain number of days in your life whereby the sun will rise for you. That number may be different to my number, but the older you get, the closer you're getting to the end of the number. And everyone is a gift of God. This is the day that the Lord hath made.
I will rejoice and be glad in it. No matter what the problems of your day is today. Just remember, he gifted you this day. He gifted you this day. If he did not gift you this day, you wouldn't be here right now.
But he has gifted it to you because he loved you. He wants to give you something. And he's given you the most precious thing he could give to you. Because wrapped up in this day are all the things you love and all the blessings of God. Wrapped up in the day that he gave you.
When you opened your eyes, when you opened your eyes this morning, it was Christmas once again. You opened your eyes this morning, said, oh, no, not another day.
When you opened your eyes this morning, it was, oh, thank God I'm still here. Thank God everything around me is here. Thank God I can enjoy another day with my family. Thank God I can enjoy another day of my health. Thank God you're going to bless me again, provide for me again, supply for me again.
You have never supplied anything for yourself. You have eaten from the hand of God every day of your life. And today he fed you breakfast. You may have had to cook it, but he fed it to you today he brought you to church in that car of yours or whatever. And he will take you home to that house, that place that you live and that family around about you and support.
All of that is a gift of God. And when you open your eyes, he said to you, have another day. Enjoy all these things that I've given to you. What a blessing. This is the day that the Lord hath made.
I will rejoice and be glad in it. Amen. He's given it to you. It's a gift. That was the idea here.
Same idea to Joshua. I've given the sun, I have given the moon. I have given the days of your life. It's a gift to you. I give it to you right now.
You don't deserve it. You can't earn it, but I'm giving it to you. So the first thing that Joshua was told here, that he's going to win this city not by his own achievements, but by the grace and favor and blessing of God. God is going to give it to him. And what we need to understand is that the Word of God has given us promises.
And these gifts of God that we have in the Word of God are the means by which God is going to give us blessing and victory and success and health and wholeness in our life. Here it is. It's given to you. You didn't deserve it. You didn't earn it.
It was there before you were born, but it was made for you with you in mind. And he has given to us all the precious promises of God. Every promise in Jesus Christ is yes and amen. And they're given to you. They are gifts of God to you.
God has done that so that he can bring your life to the blessing and that he has intended it to. To experience and to know what a wonderful thing to know that God has given it to you. In Psalm 68:11, he says, the Lord gave the Word, and great was the company of those that proclaim it. Second Peter 1:4 says, through the Word by which has been given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature. Through the Word this brings the promise of God to you.
This is the gift of God to you. This is your gift. This is it. This is not a book. Please stop thinking this is a book that you just read.
This is not a book. It looks like a book, feels like a book, not a book.
This is the living word of God.
We are told it is God breathed.
When you open this, you are not reading words. You are being breathed on by God. Now, some people say, well, I can't be right because when I read the Bible, it's boring. No, the Bible, when you open it, becomes a mirror. And you see in the Bible yourself, if you open the Bible and it is boring, it is not the Bible you are seeing that is boring.
It is you.
You do know that, don't you? The book of James is very clear. It's a mirror. So when you. When you say, this is dry and dull, what is dry and dull?
You are dry and dull. When you say, I don't agree with this, this makes me mad. Why? Because you are disobedient and in rebellion against God and it shows these things to you. And when you say, I don't like it, it's because there's something wrong with you, not something wrong with the Bible.
And when you say it's too difficult to understand, it's not the Bible that's complicated. It's you that will not learn.
See, we forget what this is and we just think it's a big book. And we treat it like a big book and we stick it on the shelf somewhere, forget all about it and let it get out of dust. And so you don't know what gifts God has given to you because you're not reading what he said to you.
And sometimes we waste our time praying for things we're never going to have because he never said you could have it. But it's what we want. But see, when you read the Bible, you'll learn what God has promised to give to you. Then when you pray, you can receive what is being promised to you. But if you don't read your Bible, you don't know what has been promised to you.
And you can waste a lot of your energies praying for stuff God never said he would give to you in the first place. And then you blame God because he won't do as he's told. But you don't tell God what to do. That's not your place. So what we need to do, if we want to know what has been given to us, like Joshua knew what was given to him.
We must open our hearts to the Word of God. See, when it says the Bible, is God breathed. You need to understand there are only two things in the Bible that have been breathed by God. One is the word of God. In here is the breath of God.
This is the life of God. It is life to you. Water to you. It is bread to you. It is light to you.
It is strength to you. It is here in the word of God. This is it. This is what God has given to you. There's a second thing that has been breathed by God according to the word of God, and that is you.
You have been breathed by God. God created Adam out of the ground of the earth and he breathed into him and he became a living soul. Understand this. You are not a body with a soul. You are a soul with a body.
You were God breathed you, became a soul with a body. He made a body, took his soul, put it in there by the breath of God. The trouble is, we live our life as if we are a body. And we look to our body. We feed the body, look to the body, comb it, spend time on it, go down to the gym and do and do all the stuff we got to do, spend a fortune on it.
But you are not a body. That body will not go on. You are a soul. And if you spend as much time on your soul as you did on your body, you could walk on water, I reckon.
See, the trouble is, we think that this is just a book. And we can just read a little bit every now and again and we're all right, you know? And that's not true. This is your life. This is your spiritual life.
Your soul is fed by this. Because you who are God breathed, need to have the Word of God, which is breathed, breathe into you. You are made to receive the breath of God. When you read the Word, open the Word, you can receive the from the Word again into your life. It brings the strength you need, the wisdom you need, the help you need.
It puts the pieces together in the puzzles of life, resolves issues for you. It is your source of wisdom and strength. Without it, you are lost. I don't care if you say, I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. So what?
It means nothing. If you will not read His Word, it's meaningless to you. You say, I decided. You decide nothing. Nothing.
You cannot decide to accept Jesus Christ as a savior unless he decided first to die and save you only then. For it is by grace that ye are saved through faith, that not of yourselves. Tis a gift of God. He has gifted you. And we must read this Word.
It must become absolutely essential every day of your life. When you say, give us this daily bread, remember it's also talking about this daily bread. You say, but I pray. Yeah, okay, fair enough. Let me tell you what the Jewish rabbis say.
When I pray, God listens to me.
When I read His Word, I listen to God. And the most important thing is not for God to listen to you. What is that? The most important thing of all is that you ensure you are listening to God. Do you really want to take up all God's time bending his ear?
Or would you rather shut up and let him talk to you? What is going to bring you the biggest benefit, do you reckon? You talking your lips off or shut up and listen. I just asked a question. You know, I reckon most Christians, they talk like machine guns when it comes to God with their big long prayer list.
They give Him a burst of five minutes every day and then forget about it for the rest of the day. It would have been better if they shut up, opened this and read it and listened. Your answers won't come because of what you say. Your answers will come from what you hear and obey, what did God say? Hear, O Israel.
Hear, O Israel. For the Lord thy God is one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And then Jesus went a little bit further and said, and you shall love one another.
You see, when we hear it, we do it. But if you're not hearing it, what's the point of talking? You ever been in a conversation with someone, you know they're not listening to a word you say? They can't wait to get the next word out. They're already figuring out what they're going to say while you're talking.
Isn't it frustrating you feel like saying, I wonder how God feels with us sometimes. See, there's so much he has given to you. If you will let him speak to you. You say, well, I do come past the prophecy over me. You don't need a prophecy.
You need to read the Word.
You have become slavish with prophecies. You know, today I can go online, I can pay a thousand dollars, and some idiot in America who's never seen me before will send me a personal prophecy for my life. And if you fall for that sort of stupidity, it's witchcraft. And I'm telling you, you have fallen away from.
Read the Word.
You don't have to send a thousand dollars to Merrick. You don't have to find a prophet who can lay hands on you and invent something that'll please you. What you can do is you can open your Bible and hear direct from God. You have a direct connection. Am I against prophecy?
No. Come on. I'm a Pentecostal pastor. It has its place. But I tell you what, it's not the place that we've given it.
These days, I encourage you. I urge you, I plead with you, go home. Blow the dust off the Bible. Open it up and let it speak to you. Your answers are here.
It has been given to you. Given to you. It's all day.
Where do you start? Well, start with the gospel. It could start anywhere. When I was saved and they told me to read my Bible, I said, well, it's a book. I'll start at the beginning.
So I started at Genesis. It was a tough journey, but you can start anywhere. It is all. All scripture is given by God and is profitable. All of it.
Every little bit of it. So I want to encourage you to know this, See that the rabbi say, a day spent without Reading the Word is a day wasted that a man who does not study the Bible may as well be dead. Dead because you have killed yourself, but because you haven't read the Word of God. Love it, cherish it, read it, go to it every day.
He's given it to you. What a gift. So Joshua had to first know that God has given him the city. To do that, he had to accept the Word of God as true in his life. He had to believe the word that was given to him.
He had to put his trust in the Word of God. And he had to say, right, you've said it. And I'm going to believe it. Because I received your Word. And the first step towards your miracle and your breakthrough is to take what this Word has said and put your trust in it absolutely, totally, and say, I'm going to trust what the Word of God says.
Not what I think, not what I feel, not what I'm told. I'm going to trust what the Word of God says. This is the foundation of my life. I'm going to trust this and I'm going to step forward with the promises of God and I'm going to believe for that victory and blessing that God has said in his Word belongs to me. That is the first step to walking in faith.
What's the second thing he said? He said, see, see, I have given you this city because now, knowing that you have been given the promise of the Word of God, what we have to do now is see those promises of God. We have to see with the eyes of faith what God is giving to us. We have to open our spiritual eyes and see spiritually, not just look at what's happening in the natural. Not looking at things as they seem to be around about us, but going and saying, God, open my eyes, that I might see not with the natural, but with the supernatural.
For these things are not seen with the natural sight, but they are seen with our supernatural sight. And we need to understand that the things which are invisible, which are promised in the Word of God, we need to see with our spiritual eyes as becoming a reality. So we need to begin to exercise our spiritual sight. Because what God has given to us must first be seen in our spirit as a reality. Joshua had to see it as a fact.
He had to accept it as a reality. Yes, you said, it's given to me. Now I'm going to see it. I'm going to see not a walled, impregnable city. I'm going to see that this is a gift and this is A blessing.
And I'm going to see victory and I'm going to see success. I'm going to see that in my heart. I'm going to see that in my spirit. I'm going to see it. He has given us great and precious promises, but there's no point in them if we don't begin to see it as a reality in our life.
So we fix our eyes, Paul says, not on the things that are seen, but on the things which are unseen. What's the unseen things here? These are the unseen things. Are you going to work seeing the problems you face every day? Or are you seeing the unseen promise of God which promises your salvation and your victory and your blessing?
Are you going to the doctors and seeing only the report that you've been given? Or are you looking at the unseen here in the word of God, the promise of your healing and your wholeness and your blessing and your health. What are you seeing? What are you seeing? It's important you begin to see things through the word of God, through the promises of God.
See it, see it. See what he's done for you. Amen. I'm running out of time. I always run out of time.
There's about six more points after this, but we won't be going there because I want my lunch. Okay?
The third thing he said to them now is, look, I've given it to you. Will you accept what I've given to you? Will you accept my word? Will you put your trust in my word? Will you accept that second thing now?
Can you see what I've given to you? Will you open your eyes and see what I have given to you? Will you see it as a reality? Will you see it as an accomplishment? Then the third thing he says, I didn't think it was that bad.
Oh, they're coming up on stage. I thought they were walking out. Okay, now the third thing he says to them is, march. Get moving, start walking. And it's really important that we understand that as it says, faith must be put into action.
There's no point in believing if you just don't put it into action. It always requires an action. Faith without works is dead. It literally means that if you have faith and you don't put it into action, you are like a dead body. That's what it means, a corpse.
Literally, you are a corpse. And I know a lot of corpses who come to church regularly and they say, yeah, I believe. Are you doing anything about it? Oh, no, I'm waiting for God. I'm waiting for God.
I'm waiting for God. Stop it. I love that statement in the scripture where Moses comes to the children. You know, Moses is praying and everything else. And, you know, he's got the whole lot going.
And God comes to him. And they're before the Red Sea and they've been under the canopy of God's covering all night. And the army of Egypt is there, Red Sea's in front of them. They've been sweating and praying all night long. I wouldn't have slept.
God comes to him in the morning and says, moses, stop praying.
There is a time to stop praying and start acting. You know that, don't you? We have to start acting on the word of God. What do you think would have happened to that man? When Jesus put mud on his eyes and said, go wash in the pool, Siloam, and he says, yes, okay, and didn't move.
Do you think he ever would have been here? He had to actually get up and start doing something. As I said, that's what Jesus means when he says, he that has ears to hear, let him hear. You got an ear hear for that Jewish idea. Hear, O Israel, for the Lord thy God is one God means obey, O Israel, for the Lord thy God is one God.
If you hear, you will obey. Yes. Isn't that what your mother taught you? I told you this the last time I was here. I'm sure of it.
That when your mother says to you, hey, Peter, go and do this, and you don't pay any attention, then she comes to you and she says this, doesn't she? Did you hear what I said? And if you say yes and you do nothing, you could get a clip on the ear. Because that's not what she's asking. She's not asking if your hearing is okay.
She's asking if you did hear her, why didn't you do it? Isn't that right? Clean your room. Yeah, yeah. Clean your room.
Yeah, yeah. Clean your room. Yeah, yeah. The next thing is some discipline's happening. Why?
Can you hear what I'm saying to you? Yeah, yeah. No, you can't hear it because you're not doing it.
The frustration of life. And every wife understands that. Problem ears we have and we hear not. Yeah, it's about doing. Not just I heard it, it's, are you doing it?
God's not asking you, do you hear what he's saying when he asks you, do you hear what he's saying? He's like the parent and said, I've told you this so many times before. Can you hear What I'm saying, yes, that means do it right? And this is what Joshua had to do. He then had to start walking around the city.
Now, your first thing, you've got to realize, of course, that this is a dumb idea, right?
I know they'd never seen a walled city before and they didn't know how to conquer it. But, I mean, surely it doesn't take much intelligence to understand that just doing a circuit of the city is not going to change anything, right? It's stupid, right? It's just not going to work. They did it in obedience.
When you fulfill the word of God, don't try and figure it out in your own head, just do it in obedience. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. But if you are trying to figure out, how does this work? If I do that, how does it that work?
If I do this, how do this work? You can't figure it out. His ways are not your ways. You just obey the word of God. You just put it into practice.
You obey it. Now, they went around the city once, and what happened? Nothing. Next day they get up, they go around the city, and what happened? Nothing.
The same nothing as the day before. Day three, day four, day five, day six, nothing. Nothing. If I was walking around that city, I'd be saying, can you see any cracks in the wall? We've been doing this for six days now.
I can't even see a crack. This isn't working, Joshua. It's not working. But if this was working, we start to see something happening right now, wouldn't we? You'd expect to see a result of our six days of walking around.
There's no cracks in this wall. Nothing's happened. As a matter of fact, the people on the wall are throwing vegetables at us now. They're laughing their heads off because nothing is happening. It's a waste of time.
Have you ever had a waste of time when you're believing for something to happen and nothing is happening?
That's your test of faith. Keep walking. Keep believing. They went around and around and around and around and around and around, the same problem over and over again. How many times have you been around the same problem?
I've been around this so many times, God. We've been around this so many times, God, and nothing seems to be happening. Keep believing. Keep trusting the word that you have been given. Keep on trusting God.
Stay faithful in your and strong in your faith. Keep walking. Keep walking and keep Walking. And if you do, not because of how good you are, but because of how good he is. And not because of how clever you were, but because of his greatness and mighty power.
Not because of your talents and abilities, but because of who he is, you will break through into your problem and find your blessing. And God will do it for you. But you have to be prepared to take that word. Put your trust in that word. You have to then begin to see it.
Begin to say, I can see it. I believe it. It's going to be real. I'm going to achieve it. And then you have to keep on walking.
Keep on walking every day. Keep on walking every day. Keep on walking. Keep on believing. Don't stop.
Don't stop. Because your blessing is coming. Your breakthrough is there. Just keep walking till you receive it. That's how faith works.
It's not complicated. Take this word that God has given to you. Trust it. See it as a reality. Not as a fantasy, not as a wish, but as a reality.
See it as a promise that is going to come true. Then begin to walk it out in your life. Begin to put it into practice. Begin to, every single day, believe for it. Every single day, walk it with God.
And you will break through into blessing. For God has already given you the victory. Amen. And you can walk to it in faith, in God's name. Amen.
At this time, having preached for so long, I need to do something that's required of me by Occupational Health and Services. Can I have proof of life at the back of the room, please? Are you still with me? Are you? Have you gone unconscious on me?
Thank you very much. Tick the box now. I'll see Occupational Health and Safety covered for the morning. Sometimes you lose the back end of the congregation. Sometimes you lose the front end, too.
You all awake down here? You sure? You sure? Fantastic. Would you stand with me?
You know, the most precious thing God has given to you, next to His Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, is this.
Do you love the word of God? If you go to a synagogue or if you watch a Jew pray, what you will find in the synagogue is they will take the scroll out, kiss the scroll, put it down to the page for the day, read it, roll it up, kiss the scroll and put it away. It's alive to them. It's living. They love the word of God.
They never treat it like a book. It's never a book. If the scroll gets torn, they have a special service, singing songs, reciting scripture. And they dedicate it to be repaired when it Comes back from being repaired, they have a special service. Sing songs, have a ceremony, kiss it and return it to its place.
If they cannot be repaired, they have a burial service in every Jewish.
What do you call it?
Where they bury people? Cemetery. That was easy. In every Jewish cemetery there is a grave for the Torah because it's alive. And yet we treat it like some second rate book.
Shove it on a shelf somewhere, stick it on the floor, put your cup on it when you're having your coffee. Be more respectful of this, the Word of God. This is His Word to you. Through this word he created heaven and earth. And by this word he sent his Son, who is the Word of God manifest in the flesh.
And now there's this manifestation of God which is in the Word of God. Go back, open it, love it, cherish it, read it. Never let a day go by that you do not listen to what God is saying. And then take what he says to you. You and believe it with all your heart and put your trust in it and begin to put it into practice in your life and walk it out.
And as you do, your blessings will turn from being problems into breakthroughs, into the answers that you've been seeking. Because it's all there for you right now. Receive it. Amen. See it.
Amen. And start walking in it. That's God's plan for your life of blessing. Now will you close your eyes with me? I just want to do something with you right now, please.
As I've been speaking to you right now, I believe the Holy Spirit has spoken into your heart. I believe he's spoken into you and he has said something to you today. I don't know what it is. It may be what I've said, but it may be something entirely different. But God has spoken into people's lives today.
And it's important we acknowledge that we have shared the word of God, that we feared what he said to us. So I want to ask you right now that if you have heard the Word of God speak to you today, I want you to raise your hand right now. Just raise your hand where you are right now. That's it. That's it.
God has spoken to you. Raise your hand right now. Father, I just pray for every person who hand is raised. We acknowledge that you have spoken to us, Lord. We acknowledge that the Creator of heaven and earth, a wonderful Lord.
Oh, Father, we just thank you that you speak to us, that you are not silent, but you speak. And we thank you, Lord, that this morning you have spoken to us by the Spirit and through the word of God, and we acknowledge that and we say, lord, we hear you. We hear you, Lord. Now, Lord, help us us to obey. Show us your path, Lord.
Lead us in your truth. I pray, Father. Teach us, Lord. Teach us how to apply your word. Teach us, Father, as we approach these problems and difficulties and challenges of life, show us the word of God that promises us success and blessing and victory.
Show us from your word how to walk it out, Father, that we might have the blessings that you planned for us. For you have given us many blessings and we thank you for it. And there are many more, Lord, and we want to receive it right now from your word and walk in it and see it become a reality. So, Father, we just pray right now. Thank you for speaking into our lives.
Thank you for victory and success and blessing and health and healing and wholeness. Thank you for binding up broken hearts here today. Thank you for releasing captives here today, Father. Thank you for doing a new work, a great work. And we give you glory for it, Father, in Jesus mighty name.
And all the people of God said, amen. God bless you. Thank you.
Master Adrian is going to speak to us right now. Thank you, Pastor. Wasn't that amazing? Hey, that was fantastic. Just grab your seats for a sec.
We're about to finish.
And I'm always stirred, you know, as Pastor Allen's preaching, just scriptures come alive and get stirred. And can I encourage you, get your Bible, get your Bible this week and read it. And for those of us you know, we've got. If you need. If you need a Bible, we've got the bookshop open.
You can get one. You've got study Bibles, all the. That if you've never had a Bible and you've given your life to Jesus recently, or you've come back to the Lord and you say, you know what, I don't have a Bible at the moment. We've actually got Bibles specifically for you. And it's very clear.
Pastor Allen put the title on this. I think the Bible, read this is what it says. Read this. And these are great. They're available just on the right of the bookshelf there.
We have these and we just get your details because we want to help you in your walk with God and encourage you if you would like one of these and you don't have a Bible, you've given your life to Jesus. Come back to the Lord. Come and get one. And we'd love to help you and give one of these to you because the word of God is going to change your life. And yeah, it's exciting.
Young people are getting them people. There's a stirring to do that and God's doing good things. We're going to do one last thing, and that is we want to bless Pastor Alan and Joan. And, you know, there's good soil and then there's crazy bad soil. Giving a thousand dollars to some stranger to give you some kind of word is bad soil.
But building into those who've shown over many, many years and have the fruit to show. And we can sense it, can't we, who've brought the word of God. It's good soil. And it's been a privilege and honor to have been built into by Pastor Alan and Joan. And we've get that.
And so if you'd like to say, you know what we want to say, thank you and bless their lives for bringing the Word, then we're going to be able to do that if we can just show the giving up on there. If you do need an envelope, just pop your hand up in the air and we'll get one of those to you quickly. And we're just going to pray and then we're going to give a love offering to Pastor Allen and Joan to bless them. This is a couple that I've watched over many years. They've sowed their entire lives.
You talk about keep going in faith. I've watched them do it. I've watched them go through very difficult things, and that's why I love them and respect them so much, because they've stood strong and have told me to do the same. They've never budged from that. And we want to bless them today.
Lord God, as we thank you for the word that you've given us, Lord God, we thank you, Lord Jesus, and we thank you for the man and woman of God that you've sent to us today, Lord, to bring that word, Lord, I pray that it would go deep into our spirits and our souls, Lord Jesus, and it would carve out Holy Spirit, like, deep into the marrow, into the. Into the sinews of our soul and our spirit, Lord God, that would stay with us this week and for years to come. Lord, we thank you for Pastor Allen and Joan, God, for living that out, Lord God, for the life they've had to live. That sermon didn't come from a week, God. It came from a lifetime of living this out.
And, Lord, we thank you for. For that. And, Lord, as we bless their lives, Lord, we pray, Lord, continue to sow into their lives, continue to let them bear great fruit and let them continue to bring your word to many thousands and thousands of people. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.
Amen. Thank you for your generosity. We'll pass the buckets down and we're gonna give in that love offering. Very good. He's glad they came to church this morning.
We're very conservative here. But we are, aren't we? And we've got morning tea, we've got the cafe open and next week I'm going to be bringing the word before a few weeks off and so I'll be next week and then we've got. Don't forget, sign up to be a connector in our church. We need you.
God needs you and. And we're gonna do great things together. So God bless. Why don't we all stand and the guys are gonna finish with something. Let's go and have a great rest of the day.
God bless you. Don't forget the CPLA lunch for all of our leaders and volunteers. Pastor Ellen will be with us. God bless.
Related Bible Verses
Joshua 6:2–3 (ESV)
“And the LORD said to Joshua, ‘See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days.’”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/59/JOS.6.2-3.ESV
Deuteronomy 6:4–5 (KJV)
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/1/DEU.6.4-5.KJV
Psalm 118:24 (KJV)
“This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/1/PSA.118.24.KJV
Psalm 68:11 (KJV)
“The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/1/PSA.68.11.KJV
2 Peter 1:4 (NKJV)
“by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/114/2PE.1.4.NKJV
2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/111/2TI.3.16.NIV
Proverbs 3:5–6 (NKJV)
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/114/PRO.3.5-6.NKJV
2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV)
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
URL: https://www.bible.com/bible/111/2CO.4.18.NIV