I’ve enjoyed being with you during these days and sharing together in the Lord. We dare not be defeated, because our Lord has gone before us. And He says to us, “Because I have overcome, you shall overcome.”
I like the spirit of that song, “I Dare Not Be Defeated,” because, frankly, the Word of God teaches us that God has called us into victory and called us into sonship. When it comes to falling short of these things, although we are warned about what happens if we fall short, the warnings remain rather vague. We know our Lord is merciful to us; we do not know what is in store for us.
But our only path, really—I think our only option, really—is to press on. Do not try to figure out the cost, or what you can get away with and still make it, or any of that kind of thing. The only way forward is to be one hundred percent.
If you do not have first love for the Lord Jesus Christ, then repent and come back to that first love. If you have been put aside in your service of the Lord, then repent of it and serve the Lord with all your heart. There is only one way forward, and that is full out for the Lord. We want to be full of the Lord. The alternatives, we need not bother examining.
In this matter of overcoming, which is so prominent in the Scriptures as far as warning goes, many people want to know who the overcomers are, who is going to make it, and who is not going to make it. All such speculation—even speculating about it—shows that you are already trying to get out of something.
You just say, “Lord Jesus, You overcame. I am hopping onto You. I am clutching onto You. I am taking Your life and Your grace so that I can overcome too.” That is what we ought to decide to do—not who is going out in the first busload, who is going out in the second, and all of that sort of thing.
Now tonight we are finishing up this little series on Joshua, and we are looking at this matter of spiritual warfare. But we are looking at spiritual warfare as that which brings us into fullness. Of course, this was true for the children of Israel, and it is true for us.
We are going to read three sections of Scripture. The first is found in Joshua. Please turn to Joshua 5. We will begin in verse 13, right after they had crossed the Jordan, been circumcised at Gilgal, observed the Passover, and found that the Lord was ready to supply them in the promised land—not any longer with manna, but now from the fruit of the land.
But as soon as they crossed over the Jordan, standing in Gilgal and looking straight ahead, they saw this huge, monolithic, walled city before them—namely, Jericho. That is where we pick up the story.
Now it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?
And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant?
And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.
—Joshua 5:13-15
Thank God Joshua learned that lesson as the servant of the Servant. To stand in Christ is a holy thing.
Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in. And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.
And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.
And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.
—Joshua 6:1-5
Now, in the New Testament, let us look at 2 Corinthians 10:3-6.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,
for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds;
casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God,
and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;
and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be made full.—2 Corinthians 10:3-6
Then Ephesians 6:10-17.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
—Ephesians 6:10-17
Father, we thank You so much for this privilege of coming around Your table tonight and remembering Your Son and all that He has done for us. Surely, Lord, because of His great victory, we dare not be defeated.
We come, Lord, to learn of You: how to come and be perfected by the work of Your Spirit; how to be gathered together as an army in Your land; and how to be brought unto fullness through Jesus Christ our Lord.
For all these great and spiritual matters, we need Thy Holy Spirit to reveal to us—to reveal to our hearts—these glorious and wonderful truths. Open our eyes. Help us to see. Touch and renew our hearts, that we might go faithfully and be the fullness that You long for and desire.
Lord, we commit this final time of sharing into Your hands. Seal things in our hearts that will make a difference when we get back home. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
It is especially in the book of Ephesians that we see God’s purpose of fullness for the church. Of course, as individual Christians, He wants to fill us unto all the fullness of God. It is exactly through this filling process in our individual lives, as we gather together, that the Lord brings us corporately into fullness.
We attain unto a measure of fullness. There is a continual growing into fullness. We see this pictured for us in the book of Joshua and revealed to us in the letter to the Ephesians.
When we talk about fullness, the first and primary understanding we need to have is this: coming unto fullness means coming into a fullness where we are full of Jesus.
But these Scriptures also reveal, in Ephesians 1, that we are His fullness. Even as He fills all things, He is looking for that completion in His life. He fills us, and He looks for that response: brothers and sisters gathered together saying, “Lord, whatever You want, we will do. Whatever You say, we will obey.”
“Lord, we love You. We are Your virgin, waiting to be Your bride. Lord, we love You. We will do anything You want.” This would fulfill the Lord’s heart.
Thank the Lord, there are many brothers and sisters individually who are at that place. Through God’s grace and mercy, they have realized that they have been captured. Where else can you go?
Well, when you realize you have been captured, you are halfway home. Then all you need is the afterburner—to start to run after the Lord. It is not enough just to say, “Well, I am captured. Oh, here I am.” Oh, no, no, no.
Man was created in the image of God, which partly means a free will. Sin bound your will from freedom. Now, as a Christian, you are free, and Jesus our Lord wants you to freely run after Him. So He cannot force you into that, even if He paints you into a corner where you say, “Where else can I go? I am captured.”
But if you are captured, that means you have been arrested. Now you go arrest Jesus. That is what Paul says: “I am reaching out, if I might arrest Him who arrested me,” back on the road to Damascus.
The Lord delights to have His saints running after Him, saying, “Lord, I want to know more about You. I want to discover more of You.” You do not come to that right away, but how do you come to that? By praying to Him, serving Him, and especially, in corporate terms, gathering together.
In twos or threes, sometimes in a little group for prayer, sometimes in a worship meeting—but really in our church life together—we are pursuing the Lord. All the stuff we do is an excuse to understand and pursue the Lord. He is the fullness that we are looking for.
The church is to be this corporate vessel: those who are filled with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places; full of His headship, saying, “Whatever He says, we are going to do”; and full of a vision of the great future we have—the hope of our calling, the preciousness of the saints, and the incredible power of His resurrection life.
We are to be saints full of the Holy Spirit, coming up to a stature, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ together.
Everything about the church should be full. We should have a full time every time we gather. Sometimes we have a time that is pretty meager—a couple of drops of water. Unfortunately, I am sure I have spoken messages where the saints were trying to get a drop.
But what God desires for His church is fullness: fullness in ministry, fullness of service, and fullness of love. I suppose I am out on the crazy edge of the crazyometer, but I just do not understand how people can have such love for Jesus really burning in their hearts and not say anything. I do not understand.
I am hoping that someday, at some point, there in New York, as we gather with those saints and worship, somebody will have to get up and say, “Okay, shut your mouths. We have been worshiping for nine hours already. We have to stop.”
Because people are so filled with the Lord Jesus. Praise God. What does it mean to be full? Of course, what do we do but look at Jesus?
When He came to earth, John says, we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. What he is saying is, “We saw Jesus full of the Father”—especially the Father’s grace and especially the Father’s truth.
Follow Jesus’ life and you will see that He was always full of the Father. He could even say to Philip, “You mean you have been with Me so long, and you do not know Me yet? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. Do you not know that all of that stuff that you saw coming out of Me is the Father? I am full of the Father.”
What does fullness mean? It means to be fully in love with the Father in heaven, as Jesus was in love with Him. It means to serve with the fullness with which Jesus served, to speak with the fullness with which Jesus spoke, and to live in the fullness that Jesus lived.
Jesus had such fullness that He did not need money and provisions. It was not necessary. Imagine that kind of fullness. It was supplied.
So that is what fullness is. The church is supposed to be like that. Really, this is God’s thought. This is God’s purpose—not God’s dream. We are going to be full like that.
And so there is a lot of work to do, huh? As I said, sometimes in our fellowship life, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. You talk to the individual saints, and every one of them is precious. They love the Lord, read the Word, pray, witness—who knows what?
Then they all come together, and suddenly something comes on in the inner conflicts. This brother is not talking to that brother; this sister had a fight with that sister. There is a lot of flesh, a lot of self in the room, and somehow the freedom is not there and the fullness is not there. All these people love the Lord, but they come together all jammed up.
Now something has got to die. It is the old, “I must decrease; He must increase.” That needs to be said corporately as well.
I am sorry that men are like we are, but men are really full of themselves. When they get into leadership, they get full of themselves. I do not know what we think—we think we have attained something, moved beyond being an attendant of the Servant, or that we are somebody now.
A worker, a leader, an elder, a responsible brother—we can get awfully full of ourselves. By being full of ourselves, we bring such limitation into the meeting that you can actually see the saints squirming around, wishing they could just be free. But they are held down because of something in there that has got to go.
Last night we shared about the Jordan River as the great transition into fullness. Why? Because there at the Jordan you see two piles of stones that forever mark the testimony of moving into fullness.
There is a pile of stones at the bottom of the river because the old man is dead. There is a pile of stones up in the promised land, where there is resurrection life, where people are living, “Not I, but Christ living in me.” Ah, this is the way to fullness.
Of course, individually this is what happens, but as a fellowship we have to somehow go through that Jordan. The Lord has His delightful and sovereign ways of making the whole less than the sum of the parts until we really take seriously that something in the whole has to die.
I keep pointing at the men because I happen to be one. But I have heard there is a fellowship somewhere—I forget where—where the sisters fight sometimes. I am sure it is not here. It is probably an East Coast phenomenon.
When the young people have cliques, there are limitations. One brother came up to me afterward and said, “I think maybe our problem in our fellowship is that we think we are already full.” Well, that guarantees limitation in any group that thinks it is already full.
On the other occasion, we looked at Joshua as the example of sonship, because sonship is a man who has come into fullness. The Lord Jesus was the Son of His Father—you can see it. We come to sonship, but we looked at the background of Joshua’s life and saw that his sonship was developed over many years of waiting, dying, suffering, and long-suffering love.
There he was in the wilderness, under Moses, with the ability to go into the promised land because of his faith, yet having to wait thirty-eight years because the rest could not go.
Through all that pressure, dying, and long-suffering love, he became a son. When the book of Joshua opens, we see him stepping onto the ground and taking his place as a mature son—somebody with living faith in a living God, obedient to that God.
He is not full of himself, but he is full of faith in the Lord. He has seen God work. He has touched His holiness. He has fellowshiped with Him. There has been a capacity developed into him that we call maturity or sonship. That is what the Lord is looking for among His people.
Now tonight we come to this matter where Paul says, “Finally,” and so I say, “Finally.” Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God.
I think we probably all know this, but our tendency is to think, when we go through times of conflict and warfare, that it should not be like this. We still have a few flower children among us who think all should be peace and harmony—no conflict.
But the fact of the matter is that the Lord brings us to maturity through spiritual conflict. If the children of Israel walked into the promised land as a bunch of softies, and nobody could take possession of the land unless it was handed to them, they would not be mature sons. They really could not take anything.
That is why the Lord provided the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the parasites, and all those other -ites—so that the brothers and sisters would have to learn how to fight for what was rightfully theirs. Mind you, whenever they stood the ground, they got it.
There is some growing up, you know. That is why some people bemoan the fact that they have done away with the draft. Most kids who are eighteen years old are total losers. I could cite myself as a prime example when I was eighteen, but I will pass on.
Back in the old days, they just chucked them into the army for a couple of years, and they came out saying, “Okay, I am ready to work. I am ready to go to school—anything but that.”
There are a lot of Christians who love the Lord, but they are awfully soft. The Lord has a plan for us that has to do with this matter of spiritual warfare. We have so much to learn.
When Paul writes to Timothy, Timothy was not a young man as we would think of an eighteen-year-old. He had already been with Paul for a while and was probably in his thirties or something like that. But as you read between the lines in those letters, Timothy seems to have been a little bit of a pacifist.
He would have liked to sit under the cork tree with that old bull who did not like to fight—Ferdinand. You know that old children’s story, Ferdinand the Bull, who sat under the cork tree all day long and did not want to fight. That is the way Timothy was. He would rather read.
But Paul says to Timothy more than anybody else, “Fight. Fight the good fight. Fight the good fight of faith. Keep faith and a good conscience. You have got to fight the fight of faith. Take hold of eternal life.” Then in 2 Timothy, he says, “Be strong in the grace, and be a good soldier. Be willing to sacrifice, Timothy.”
Actually, we know Timothy obeyed, and he was a faithful servant and soldier of the Lord. So we all have so much to learn.
When you fight together, you learn an awful lot. Instead of fighting with each other, let us say Jerry and I used to fight with each other all the time because he plays golf better than me. But if we had to fight together against the common spiritual foe, we would learn so much about each other, and I would be drawn closer to my brother.
When you fight together, you see what happens. You saw that on D-Day this year. Some of those men went back over to France, standing together in an old regiment from the Second World War, and they still love each other more than brothers.
The Lord has a provision for us in this matter of spiritual warfare. There are many things we have to learn and things we do not understand. When the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, they engaged in defensive battles and won victories. But now they had to go on offensive campaigns, and they were not at all skilled in that. They did not know what to do.
When we enter into fighting, this is where it is good to have young troops. I see tonight that we have young troops here, and we are going to draft you all into the army—God’s spiritual army. Then we are going to tell you to get into the back of the ranks because young people, unfortunately, always want to do the wrong thing.
You know that famous book by Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand. This is all part of the warfare. Just at the time when young people want to fight immediately, they are ready right now. They are never ready at seven in the morning, but around eight-thirty at night, they are ready to fight.
But the Lord says, “No, no. It is time to sit right now.” Then the next day they are ready to run, usually around three o’clock when everybody is trying to take a nap. Now they are ready to run. The Lord says, “No, not run—walk.”
Then they get into a real battle and realize how tough the battle is, and they want to retreat. The Lord says, “No, stand.” That is very typical of all of us. When we first begin to do warfare, we usually do it the wrong way. The Lord has to train us in this matter of warfare.
The children of Israel came into the land, and they had to learn and discover. What did they discover? Let us go back to the book of Joshua and pick up a few simple lessons.
We have to go through the land and take these possessions. Christ is not just given to us on a silver platter. We are given Christ by grace, but to really make Him ours, some time is needed on the knees, some time is needed in the Word, and some time is needed in obedience. As we go and possess the land, we are strengthened.
In Joshua 3, Joshua pulls the children together before the battles begin and says:
Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord your God.
Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Hivite, and the Perizzite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Jebusite.—Joshua 3:9-10
Every time they defeated another one of these tribes, what did they learn? Here it is: the living God is among you.
We all know that Jesus lives in us and we live in Him. We live in Christ; Christ lives in us. Thank God for His wonderful grace. But the more you fight, the more you obey the Lord, what do you discover? “Hey, I really am in Him. He really is in me.”
The difference between faith and faith-knowing is that a person with faith-knowing has gone through experiences where they know that God is there. You learn that by battle. You learn that by the conflicts where He wins.
Sometimes, while you are hiding like this, you suddenly get up and the victory is won. Everybody says, “How did you get that victory?” You say, “Well, I did this.” No, the Lord did it.
People say, “Oh, stop using that spiritual mumbo-jumbo. ‘The Lord did it.’ No, no—how did you really get the victory in that situation?” But it really was all the Lord. You were hiding, so the Lord threw down some hailstones and killed the opponent.
When you are fighting with the Lord, the main lesson is the living God. A lot of people talk God-talk, but if we are engaged together in this walk unto maturity and fullness—through the Jordan, through the obedience of sonship, and through spiritual warfare—what we discover is the living God by experience.
Tonight I have three simple lessons I would like us to glean from the book of Joshua regarding spiritual warfare. The first lesson is this: God has a sovereign strategy for possessing the land.
Joshua had just crossed the Jordan and come into the land. He had no strategy. Do you think Joshua had a strategy? Well, maybe he did, but it was irrelevant, because God had a sovereign strategy for how He was going to possess His land.
Joshua and the brothers and sisters had to learn it by experience, by stepping through the land and by each confrontation. Probably only when they looked back did they see this tremendous strategy God had in possessing the land.
Here we are, gathered as an assembly. Do you have any idea how to go about this matter of engaging in the good fight? God has a sovereign strategy for you as well. His sovereign strategy, as you probably know, took place in three campaigns.
There were three general campaigns in the conquest of the land, and each one has a simple lesson to teach us. First, God strikes at the strongest stronghold first.
That would not be our choice. If we were Joshua, using our own wits, we would say, “Let us go to Shechem and fight them because they have a small walled city.” But God says, “Okay, first battle: the biggest city in the territory.”
Jericho was the city in Canaan. It was the big city. Jerusalem was nothing; it was a flea-bitten town at that time. The towns that later became big by Jesus’ time were small then, but Jericho was the center of trade and culture in the whole Canaanite area. It was a huge walled city.
Joshua gets over the other side of the river, looks up at the wall—it is like me going downtown in New York City and looking up at some of those buildings. Wow, it is something. God says, “Okay, let us go get that one.”
Joshua learned that God strikes at the stronghold first.
We get some understanding of that from 2 Corinthians 10. Paul says that the real stronghold is the mind. That is the first thing that needs to be attacked if there is going to be fullness in the assembly.
Our minds are full of woolly ideas—promises, vows: “I am not going to get too involved. I am going to keep my independence. Nobody is going to tell me what to do. I am smarter than that stupid preacher.”
Our minds are full of all kinds of warfare, and it is a stronghold. What does Paul say it is a stronghold against? The knowledge of God. It is not just knowledge; it is real knowledge. It is experiential knowledge.
It is the experiential knowledge of Christ that brings us into true fullness. The first thing we find in the assembly is, “Oh, we have a mental stronghold here. We are holding out.”
So often it is doctrines and things; it is all kinds of stuff. Last night I mentioned one of those exhortations in Hebrews about coming out of the camp, and it caused a lot of questions and distress among the campers this week.
This matter of coming out of the camp is a bit more complicated than you might think. There are some groups that are, quote, outside the camp, which are actually more the camp than some groups that are in the camp.
It is not just the title on the group’s name, or whether it has under twelve people, or some such nonsense. The thing of the camp is this: who or what is the pattern of this group? Is it Christ, as our brothers have been sharing? Or is it some kind of institution?
In the end, the camp is an institutional setup. It can have any name or no name. It can be big or small. Sometimes you can have a little house meeting of seven people with a little Napoleon leading things, and you have a campsite there.
Sometimes you have a larger thing that still has a name on it—even a denominational name—but there is more of Christ’s fullness there because the people really love the Lord, really want the Lord, really are serving the Lord, and really are studying His Word.
So it is not quite so simple. The simple formula is, “If it has a brand name on it, I have got to leave and go over here.” No, not necessarily. What you need to do is obey the Lord.
If you have a heart for fullness, you say, “Lord, I want fullness.” Then you be full of Christ right where you are. If you get so full that they cannot take your fullness anymore, then they will tell you to go down the street and find something that is empty.
John Wesley did not leave the Anglican Church. He was just too full for the Anglican Church to take, and they asked him to leave. Yes, he was preaching too full. They could not take it.
This matter of fullness means that there is a great conflict against fullness.
Let me say something to assemblies that really desire to have Christ, that have Christ as their pattern, and desire to see the fullness of Christ in the assembly: we really need to learn how to stand together, pray for one another, and do spiritual warfare.
Here are the facts of life: if you gather with some saints and they are really sincere, the enemy hates that gathering more than anything else. It is always amazing to me when I see little assemblies, almost anonymous, come under such vitriolic attack from the enemy.
Every Christian is going to experience tribulation to enter into the kingdom of God. It does not matter where they are going or where they are meeting. But if brothers and sisters come together and say, “We want the simplicity of Christ among us. Lord, take away everything that is not of You. We want all of You, all of You,” then they had better set their hearts for spiritual warfare.
In the last few years, I have seen a number of assemblies of God’s people come under such attack that you knew it was from the enemy. It was terrible. It was costly. People suffered so much, because the enemy hates the fullness of Christ.
If we gather in some innocuous and limited way, I will not say the enemy will leave us alone. He will just send his imps around to bother us a little bit. But you put your name on the spiritual map as people who know how to gather in prayer and really take hold of the throne of God, and you are in for spiritual conflict.
If you gather together and learn how to worship the Lord in fullness, if people’s hearts are released and they share the love of God together around the Lord’s table, the enemy is going to come and try to do something about that.
If you really love the Lord, you need to know spiritual warfare. Fortunately for us, the Lord alone knows what He is doing, and when He decides to attack, He decides to hit the stronghold first.
The first attack went in and took Jericho, then the surrounding towns. It was the first stab right through the middle, as it were.
What was the second campaign? They went down south and possessed the heart of the land. Once the mind has been struck a blow, the Lord goes to the heart to fill the heart.
There, in the second campaign, they took Jerusalem, as well as some other cities where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had once lived. This is the heart of what God wants. He has to grab hold of the heart of the assembly—to touch, fill, and break the hearts of God’s people in order to fill them with Himself.
Meanwhile, the enemy is very busy trying to distract our hearts. If he can sow weeds that choke out our lives and distract our hearts from loving the Lord, he has got us.
Brothers and sisters, I hope you have come to the place where you realize that in these end times, two things are going to happen. People are going to be pursuing riches and, in the end, be frustrated. Other people are going to say, “The Lord is going to take care of them for sure,” but they are going to be pursuing the Lord. They are going to have fullness, even in the end times.
That is your option. Many Christians who are pursuing riches will not only be frustrated in the end, but they will have lost their heart along the way.
We need to fight that battle together. Do not let your brothers and sisters work eighty hours a week just so they can be proud that they are making a lot of money. Better that they serve the Lord, work a good job, have enough, be content, and serve the Lord.
This is the calling of God in the last days. It takes overcoming to do that, because the world says, “Hey, I will ratchet you up twenty-five thousand dollars.” People just travel all the time, and if we are not careful, we will lose that battle.
Many saints are already lost to the world—completely lost to the world. Precious brothers and sisters, where are they?
After the second attack to the south came the third attack into the north. The kings from the north, basically from Galilee and that area, came down to attack Joshua and his forces. So Joshua went right up into Galilee and won the victory there as well.
Galilee was the fruit basket of Israel. It is an interesting place, like an inverted valley. When you go there, it is almost jungle-like in climate. You go to the rest of Israel, like Nazareth, and everything has high ground. But around the Lake of Galilee there is a sudden drop-off, and it is very lush there.
They raise bananas there. It is very tropical and very rich. That is where Israel got its olives, grapes, and wheat. Galilee is the area, even today, of the highest productivity in these things.
So first the Lord goes in and hits the mind. Then He goes in and hits the heart. Then there is that wonderful fruitfulness of soul—if you want to say, fatness of soul—in the third campaign.
But it is the Lord’s sovereign priority. The Lord led them sovereignly. It was not like Joshua said, “You know what? I think we will go north now.” No, it was through various attacks and circumstances that he had to deal with these things.
Joshua 12 lists the kings defeated in this campaign. Thirty-one kings were defeated—thirty-one kings. It all happened sovereignly by God’s leading: leading to here, leading to there, leading to another place. The dominoes of those different kingdoms fell one on top of another as the children of Israel went through the land.
The first lesson is this: God has a sovereign plan. We do not just go charging in. We will know by circumstances where the first stronghold is, the first opposition that we need to face.
Lesson number two is of vital importance. If we are to do spiritual warfare, we have to follow the Angel of the Lord—the Captain of the host of the Lord. This was the key to spiritual warfare in the book of Joshua.
Once the children of Israel had crossed the Jordan River, they came to Gilgal. The interesting thing was that throughout their campaigns, after taking cities in the south and cities in the north, they always came back to Gilgal. They set out from Gilgal, and they came back to Gilgal.
You see this in Joshua 10:7:
So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he, and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valour.
—Joshua 10:7
Then in Joshua 10:15:
And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal.
—Joshua 10:15
And again at the end of the southern campaign:
And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal.
—Joshua 10:43
They went out from Gilgal, and they came back to Gilgal. Why Gilgal? Three reasons. Two of them we saw last night.
First, at Gilgal they started out with no flesh. Second, at Gilgal they started out on resurrection ground. Spiritual warfare has to start out on this kind of ground.
We cannot fight spiritual warfare if there is flesh in the way. If there are fleshly things in the way—if there is conflict and it is flesh against flesh, or our flesh is involved—the Captain of the Lord’s host does not come in to help in the warfare.
We are not wrestling against flesh and blood. So there cannot be any flesh. We have to go back to Gilgal, where everybody was circumcised, and stand there: “Lord, we want no flesh.” When there is conflict, sometimes we need to see if that is the problem.
The second thing is resurrection ground. We can only fight from resurrection ground. That is why Gilgal is the starting point.
But the third reason, and the most important reason, is that this is where the Captain of the Lord’s host comes from. When Joshua was in Gilgal, he looked up at Jericho, and he also looked up and saw this Captain of the Lord’s host.
The Captain said, “I will be with you,” and stayed with them—not only at Jericho, but throughout the campaign.
In Judges 2:1, we see:
And the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break My covenant with you.
—Judges 2:1
The angel comes up from Gilgal. Now the children of Israel are all over the land, and they have taken their inheritance, but the Captain of the host of the armies of the Lord is still there at Gilgal. He comes up and exhorts them because they have been unfaithful.
There are two pictures we should have before us. First, the battle Joshua engaged in the whole time he was conquering the land was spiritual warfare.
What is this host of the Lord? We sang tonight, I think, “Lord Sabaoth.” This Hebrew word, Sabaoth, means host. I am going to cut right through the chase. There is a lot of discussion and argumentation about it, but I will tell you what I think, and that is good enough for the short time we have.
The host of the Lord’s army is the Lord’s heavenly angelic army. It is an unseen army. This was the Captain of this unseen army. Basically, this Captain said, “I will go with you and help you defeat Jericho.”
He kept going, and as we saw in Judges, He went through the whole land. He continually fought with them. Joshua would try to fight the fight here, but the angels were helping out more than the human beings were helping out. This is why they won victory after victory.
I do not know how those angels crunched down the wall of Jericho. I do not think it was because the children of Israel could yell so loud. It was not the trumpet blast. Somebody said, “Well, a B-flat resonated at nine thousand decibels”—a scientist trying to figure it out.
I will tell you what it was: it was angels’ boots, just knocking the fool out of those walls, and they came tumbling down flat. The children really yelled, so they got a little glory for it. They yelled, “Wow, look at that.” They decided not to yell at their wives anymore. It was very powerful.
But it was the Angel. It was the Angel of the Lord whom they followed all the way through the land, and He got the victory—victory after victory after victory.
Listen to Joshua’s testimony regarding how the land was conquered. In Joshua 10:8-12:
And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear them not: for I have delivered them into thine hands; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.
Joshua therefore came upon them suddenly; for he went up from Gilgal all the night.
And the Lord discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah.
And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, while they were at the descent of Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.
—Joshua 10:8-11
It is clear who is winning the battles. It is clear who is fighting. It is this wonderful host of the Lord.
And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.
—Joshua 10:42
At the end of Joshua’s life, he says:
And ye have seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of you; for the Lord your God, He it is that hath fought for you.
—Joshua 23:3
Here are these sons, the children of Israel. We see victory after victory after victory, and after they know, and know, and know, they know that the living God is fighting for them.
What wonderful spiritual confidence and strength come to brothers and sisters who gather together and do spiritual warfare in the name of the Lord, when the Lord is actually fighting. There is no flesh involved. It is a spiritual battle, and the Lord is fighting. There is victory in that.
Meanwhile, the world also knew it and feared the Lord. This is a wonderful point. When the church—when an assembly—is experiencing the real enthroned presence of the Lord, they experience such a reality that there is fear of the Lord on the part of outsiders.
In Joshua 2, Rahab confessed that everybody in Jericho was scared to death, and their hearts had melted. Why? Because they heard that God opened up the Red Sea.
At the end of Joshua 4, because God had opened up not only the Red Sea but also the Jordan, the testimony is given again: all the people in Jericho feared and trembled. Their hearts had melted within them because God opened up the Jordan and let Israel through. “We do not have a chance.”
So the world fears the Lord. Brothers and sisters, that in itself is worth fighting the good fight and gathering together in fullness. Oh, for that respect for the Lord in His people, because we stand together.
When we pray, there is a shaking. Things happen. There is fear, and people are drawn to the Lord because they see He is real in the assembly. Would that not be wonderful where you live, in your assembly? People knew the Lord is real there.
Actually, they probably know already. I fellowship in Queens, and there are people who do not go to that place, but whenever they really get into trouble or need help, they always call somebody there and say, “Could you please pray for us?”
Thank God for that testimony. That means people say, “Well, I do not understand those people, but I know they pray and things happen. So please, could you pray for my aunt?” That is the kind of testimony we should have.
The third lesson we learn is by quickly looking at Jericho. You all know the story. You have sung the little children’s song about Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down. But there is an important lesson to learn.
This battle we are talking about—this spiritual warfare, the Lord’s battle—is done through prayer. I think we see a picture of it even in this matter of Jericho. We learn in prayer how to battle for the Lord.
In Joshua 5, Joshua is standing there looking at the walls of Jericho. They were shut tight. He must have thought, “Boy, this is impregnable. There is just no way of getting there.”
But then he saw this vision: the Captain of the Lord’s host standing before him. Immediately he construed it wrongly. He said, “Are You for us, or are You for our enemies?”
Here is the first lesson we learn: we have to wait until we find out what the Lord’s side is before we pray. The Captain of the Lord’s host said, in effect, “I am not for you or the enemy. I am for the Lord. Are you willing to stand with Me?”
Joshua knelt down and said, “Yes. What do You want me to do?”
Sometimes that is the first problem with our spiritual wrestling. We think there is “we” and “they.” We misinterpret the sides. I am sorry, but in many prayer meetings, I get the feeling that God is a registered Republican.
When issues are taken up, they are taken up externally: “We have got them, and we have got us. We have got the good guys and the bad guys. We are the good guys. God, fight for us.” But we have not gotten to first ground yet.
What is the Lord standing for? Righteousness, holiness, love, no compromise. Where is the Lord’s battle here? It is not just, “We want to win, Lord. We know You are going to stand with us.”
Joshua did not say, “Fall behind me. I am trying to take Jericho. Will You help us?” No, he bowed before this Angel and said, “What do You want us to do?”
The majority of the time, our initial reasons for conflict are wrong because we are reacting flesh to flesh. We are reacting to the outer situation. That is why many times we pray about things but do not really touch the matter.
If we just observe these things, write them down on a list, and do not realize there is an unseen conflict going on behind them, then we have missed it. The first thing we need to do is fall down on our knees before the Captain and say, “Captain, where do You stand on that?”
To me, that is the secret of all intercession. When you look at Abraham interceding, Moses interceding, and Nehemiah interceding, they never took a side. They did not stand with Israel; they stood with the Lord.
They interceded on behalf of the Lord’s interests. They said, “Lord, I know that we are an unfaithful people. Lord, Your testimony—remember what You promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” They knew the ground to pray on.
It was for the Lord’s name, the Lord’s sake, and the Lord’s testimony that they interceded—not, “Oh, give them another chance. They are not really so bad.” It was none of that kind of intercession.
It was an understanding, in the first place, of where the Lord was standing; then a falling before Him and saying, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
Then the Angel said, in Joshua 6:2:
And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.
—Joshua 6:2
He said, “See.” Joshua looked up and saw a big walled city. He did not see the warriors. He did not see the kings. But the Angel said, “Ah, look again.”
“You see that city? It is all walled up. It is not walled up because it is impregnable. It is walled up because they are tottering, afraid to death, completely paralyzed, because their hearts have melted. See, I am giving you the city.”
When you see something according to the Word of God, it changes. You hear the Lord say, “I have given you the city.” The city is yours.
So here is the second point: we need to wait for that word, that word from the Lord. This is why the prayer meeting is so important to this matter of coming into fullness.
I love it when we are praying and asking the Lord about something, and somebody says, “I have got this Scripture,” and reads that Scripture. Boom—that is it. It interprets. It gives us understanding. That is exactly what is going on.
It is not just, “Lord, be with the Republican convention,” or, “Lord, take care of the evil guys in Iraq,” with no Scripture that leads us specifically into what we are wanting to pray for.
How we need to wait on that word that helps us see by faith. Joshua saw that Jericho was takeable. He had no idea how to do it, but there was some seeing. That is faith—the conviction of things unseen—and it comes by the Word of God.
The third lesson is found in Joshua 6:3-5, when God gave Joshua instructions for how Jericho would be defeated. Ladies and gentlemen, God’s ways of defeating strongholds are higher than our ways.
This business of walking around once a day for six days, then seven times on the seventh day, is not the usual human strategy. But everything there has points for us to learn.
If we find a real conflict, and as an assembly we come into something together, then we need to say, “Lord, how are You going to do this?” We need to wait and follow the instructions the Lord gives us.
First of all: follow the ark. Follow the enthroned presence. Follow His will. Follow Him as He opens the way. The ark is mentioned eleven times in Joshua 6, the story of the taking of Jericho. It is full of letting the ark lead the way.
The second thing we see is that we need to walk around together in one accord. Historically, most revivals of the church have actually been repentance and reconciliation that brought the saints into one accord. Then God could gain some victories.
If we are going to take something and find the Lord’s way in spiritual warfare, we have got to learn how to stand in one accord. The day of Pentecost came after ten days of saints staying together and praying together in one accord.
Here the picture is saints walking around together in one accord. The enemy is always looking for some division in the assembly so that he can attack somebody. Division causes an uncovering in our assemblies.
When there is division, the enemy can have a field day. He can pick people off. You know what I mean. You have been around long enough. You have seen people get picked off because we are all at odds with each other.
May we find the grace and mercy of God to keep short accounts with one another, to be sure we are one, walking around together. The Lord can do mighty things to accompany such one accord.
The third thing we notice during those six days is what I am going to call the testimony of silence. Here is the wall begging us to fight, and the Lord says, “No, no. Just walk around silently. Just walk around silently.”
It seems to me that the Lord Jesus Himself, when confronted by His antagonists, sometimes took the route of the testimony of silence. There is something unnerving about one who can wait confidently in silence, wait on the Lord to speak, and not speak precipitately.
I have spent many years among charismaniacs. When there is something to be done, they jump on the bandwagon in a nanosecond. They are right there: “In Jesus’ name, we rebuke the spirits. Out you go. Hey, hey, amen. Okay, it is all done.”
One thing you will never find is the testimony of silence. But sometimes the Lord is working on some things. He is arranging some things. He is getting all the angels in place with their feet on the wall.
There is His testimony of silence while He arranges things. It is a sign of confidence, a sign of faith, and a sign of waiting on the Lord for the moment when there is the declaration.
Finally, after that seventh time on the seventh day, they blew the ram’s horns and they all shouted. They made a declaration. It is interesting what the declaration was: it was, “It is already finished.”
And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.
—Joshua 6:16
Done. So they shouted.
So the people shouted, and the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat.
—Joshua 6:20
I love that picture. The angels kicked the wall, and the wall came down. The people shouted a great shout, but they shouted in the aorist tense: “The Lord has given us the city. It is ours. We have got it,” before they ever had it.
It is quite a claim. Then the walls came tumbling down, and everybody went straight in to take the city.
These are the lessons we learn by watching the defeat of Jericho. The Lord wants us to be people of faith, to see in the unseen. This is a picture of spiritual warfare. Even in Joshua, we sense that this war was on a higher level—in the heavenlies.
It takes faith to see. It takes an understanding of the Lord’s position. It takes waiting for His word. It takes confidence in silence, and then it takes that declaration. But the Lord has done the work.
The Lord wants to make us strong. The Lord wants to teach us His fullness even through this matter of spiritual warfare.
You and I know that in the last days, according to the Word of God, the enemy gets more and more audacious in his attacks. Part of the suffering, part of the fullness that we experience, is the fullness of sufferings together.
As we come into sonship and learn the Lord together, we not only learn His power—the power of His resurrection, the power for victory—but we also learn that fullness that comes through suffering.
I think of the early church in the book of Acts. When they were first persecuted, even when Peter and John were thrown in jail, they prayed and were released. There was that period of time when they saw victories and the power of God working on their behalf—sending angels, opening doors, and all this.
But there came the day when Stephen was martyred and nobody stopped them. Then James, John’s brother, was martyred, and nobody stopped him. Even in those times of suffering, they found themselves built together in maturity. They trusted in the Lord.
This is real spiritual warfare. Some of you could testify in the life of the fellowship where you attend of warfare that you have gone through. Let us not be ignorant of the enemy’s schemes.
What we need to do is come before the Lord and say, “Lord, we are men of peace and not of war. But in order to attain the land, Lord, we want to learn how to put on the full armor of God.”
What is the full armor of God? It is to put on Christ Himself. That is our full armor. It is no good merely delineating the pieces. It is instructional and helpful, but basically it is to be strong in the strength of the Lord and in the power of His might. It is putting on the Lord Jesus. He is the full armor. Is that not wonderful?
There have been a few moments in my ministry when I have gone to dangerous places. One time, during one of my visits to Russia, I got into a dangerous situation. It is strange, the word that came to me when I was in that place, but here it is: “Abide in Christ.”
As soon as that word was living to me, I just walked right through that tricky situation, and I felt quite safe. The Lord kept me safe. He is very merciful.
What I am trying to say is that it is the Lord who is our protection. It is His precious blood that is our shield. When we are hidden in Christ, it is amazing the things the Lord preserves us from.
When we fight the fight, He tells us, “Trust in Me. Put Me on. Hide in Me. Let Me do the fight.”
There was a church up on Long Island where I used to live. The deacons used to walk around with these big badges that said, “Demon Chasers,” because the church was emphasizing casting out demons and everything.
One time they invited the most famous man who spoke on demonic deliverance, Derek Prince, who has recently gone on to be with the Lord. When Derek Prince got there and saw what was going on, the first thing he did when he got up in the pulpit was say, “Every one of you men, take that thing off.”
He said, “Every morning, you get down on your knees and repent. Do you think we are playing with an enemy that can be played with? Do you realize that enemy could take any one of you and snuff you out just like that? That kind of audacity and presumption is only going to get you into defeat, not victory.”
Since that time, that church has blown up. The enemy is a very powerful enemy. But hidden in Christ, we are more than conquerors.
We need to learn spiritual warfare and be brought together into that fullness. Having fought together, we can rejoice together that the Lord is merciful and leads us in His way.
We need to fight together because the enemy is trying to make inroads right now into your life personally, into your fellowship, and into your assembly. He is trying to get in, find an open spot, find an uncovering, find a division, and find people out of sorts with each other, just so he can get in right there.
If we are covered in Christ and living in His fullness, the enemy has a hard time finding a place to attack. But if we are careless, he will find a spot. We will sense the loss and have to learn how to discover and gain the victory in the midst of seeming defeat.
May the Lord help us. The Lord wants us to live in fullness, and that involves spiritual warfare too. But He is the Overcomer. He is the One who can lead us in this.
Lord, I suppose when we are young, we are a bit rambunctious and willing to fight. When we get older, we realize how much energy it takes and how the cost can mount.
But we know that You have a plan for us as we gather together unto You—a plan that involves sonship, fullness, blessing, life, measure, holiness, obedience, and warfare.
Oh Lord, we want to be discerning of these things. We want to place our own life together in Your sovereign hands. You know where the battle needs to be fought.
We want to learn how to stand together in prayer when these battles and attacks come. We want to learn how to see with Your seeing the issues that are involved in the warfare.
We want to stand by faith upon Your Word as You give us Your living rhema together. We want to wait for You in silence until we speak the word and find the victory.
O Lord, through it all, we would testify like Joshua: the battles that we have seen and the victories that have been won have been because You have won the fight. You have been our Captain. You have been our Lord.
Lord, we look for You to gain the victory, even where there are fights and skirmishes and problems going on in our lives together, even in this day.
Oh Lord, we are humbled by how much territory we have allowed the enemy to usurp from us. Lord, it is Your land—every brother, every sister, every teenager. It is Your land. It is Your property.
Lord, give us the grace to fight the good fight, to bring to fullness, to snatch out of the enemy’s hands those things that he has usurped, to learn how to stand together in oneness and one accord, and to see You do mighty things in the cities in which we live.
Lord, we give all of this ministry, truth, and measure to You, and pray that we could be full of Christ in our expressions, in our local assemblies, in our house groups, and in the places where we meet.
Oh, give us to learn the wisdom of Your fullness. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.