“See! I have given Jericho into your hand.”—Joshua 6:2
I had the thrill one year of going to the Rose Bowl, which seats 100,000 people. The sound of cheering during that game was like sitting in front of a jet plane, deafening to the core of your body.
It reminded me of the story of Joshua and Jericho, and what worship can accomplish.
As Joshua prayed and prepared to enter the Promised Land, he looked up to see a man with a sword who identified himself as “Commander of the army of the Lord." When Joshua “fell on his face and worshiped” the man did not stop him, but told him to take off his sandals “for you are on holy ground” (Joshua 5:13-15).
A clear parallel to Moses entering the presence of God in the burning bush.
Then the Lord told Joshua the outcome of this battle before it started. The victory was promised!
The Lord didn’t give Joshua a military strategy for conquering a city. He told Joshua and his men to march in silence around the city for six days with priests carrying seven ram’s horn trumpets. On day seven, they were to march around seven times, blow the trumpets and shout!
That marching in silence for seven days must have unnerved Jericho’s residents. They could feel the ground trembling, hearing only the steady beat of footsteps. That final seven times around built the suspense, followed by the loudest shout you can imagine —louder that the Rose Bowl!
The Hebrew word for shout is ruwa, meaning to break, to split the ears (with sound), shout for alarm or joy.
Imagine two million people shouting, splitting the atmosphere, and unleashing the supernatural into the natural world. The army of mighty angels and God’s presence were unleashed by shouts of faith, an ultimate act of worship.
No siege, no weapons. But a promise from God: “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you” (Joshua 1:3).
The promises of God remain theoretical until we appropriate them and take those steps of faith to walk the ground He put before us.
Joshua obeyed God’s order as an act of worship.
Worship shifts the atmosphere and releases the manifest presence of God.
Jericho was not a town of nice, normal people. It was host to a demonic realm of evil and suffering, human sacrifice, and torture.
Jericho represents the strongholds in our lives that hurt us and keep us from God’s blessings. Joshua’s act of worship and shout of triumph shattered the strongholds.
When we worship, we too will see strongholds broken and walls brought down.
“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down” (Hebrews 11:30).
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