I was told long ago something that stuck with me for many years. It was a very simple saying, but it comes to mind often. And this man said to me that God hits home runs with crooked sticks. And he was talking about Christians. If he didn't, hit home runs with crooked sticks. There would be no home runs among Christians because all of us really are, at the end of the day, crooked sticks at our best. It's an interesting thing. God takes very ordinary people and does the extraordinary. Some Christians live out the extraordinary. They live out a life that's beyond themselves. Others do not. What is the difference between the two? What is the difference between the Christians who at some point will settle for mediocrity and those who want the extraordinary life lived out through them as very ordinary people? We're going to see that in the life of Joshua. He was such a man, and we're going to see it exemplified in the entire nation Israel in Joshua chapter 10. I think a little context helps to see where we're at in Joshua. In chapter 9, Something interesting had happened. There was a sort of coalition of various people groups that were going to fight against Israel, but one of them stood out. It was a segment of the Hivites called the Gibeonites. They were from a city called Gibeon, and they decided they would fool the people into making a treaty with them. Somehow they caught hold of what God had said in the book of Deuteronomy. He said, the people in the land, you can't have a treaty with them. The people outside the land, you can have a treaty with them, a treaty of peace. And so they come to Joshua and to the people with some old bread, it's described as moldy bread, some old clothes that are torn, some worn out shoes, and they say, we're from a far off land, we've come here to make a peace treaty. And they do it. And we see the mistake. We can see it coming because the narrator suggests to us that something's going to happen like this. And then in chapter 9, verse 14, we get the basic reason for it. And it's really a very simple reason. They made this treaty, but look what he says in chapter 9, verse 14. The men took of their victuals and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord. That becomes their mistake. and they cut a treaty with this people group, and we'll talk more about that treaty, but in essence the treaty is not really one of peace, but one of protection. They are the superior group, Israel, and they now have subjects, and the subjects require protection, and they're going to call on that in chapter 10. But that is the background passage. Chapter 10 is a sort of second chance for Israel in some ways. And it's a chapter where we might expect God to say, see, I told you so. Now look what's happened. You've done exactly what I told you not to do. But you don't see that. You don't see that at all. But we do see a new coalition. that is coming about, and it's in chapter 10 verses 1 to 5, and I want you to see this coalition and then let's see what God does with it, how he shows us what it is to live beyond yourself, what it is to have extraordinary living and not settle for second, not settle for mediocrity. Chapter 10 verse 1, now it came to pass when Adonai Zedek, king of Jerusalem, had heard how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it, as he had done to Jericho and her king, so he had done to Ai and her king, and how that the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel, and were among them, that they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty. You see the problem, we'll be told here in a moment that this king and the others are Amorites. These Amorite kings are upset that Gibeon broke away from the group instead of joining with the group and so they're going to get him back. Gibeon wasn't some small city and in a way what will happen is even though they should not have made the peace treaty, God's will is not interrupted, and He will bring to pass what He wanted to bring to pass, even through the mistakes. The treaty they've made is with one of the very mighty cities, and the Gibeonites will in fact fight with Israel. This group of Amorites want to get the Gibeonites first. Let's get them back. They should not have broke ranks. They should not have joined up with Israel. And so that's their plan. In verse three, wherefore Adonai Zedek, king of Jerusalem, sent unto Hohem, king of Hebron, Anna de Piram, king of Jarmuth, Anna de Japhia, king of Lachish, Anna de Debir, king of Eglon, all these kings, he sends unto them, saying, Come up unto me, and help me that we would smite Gibeon. For it hath made peace with Joshua, and with the children of Israel. Therefore the five kings of the Amorites," that's who tells us who they are, the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gather themselves together and went up, they and all their hosts," meaning their armies, and they encamped before Gibeon and made war against it. That's the setting for the whole chapter. And then what happens next in verse six, the men of Gibeon make a plea to Joshua to honor the treaty. They make a plea. The men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal. Remember, Gilgal was that first camping spot When they crossed the River Jordan, they were near Jericho, they set up a camp at Gilgal, and it'll be a place they would return to frequently. And so this message is sent to Gilgal saying, slack not thy hand from thy servants, come up to us quickly and save us. That come up to us means literally to come up, to ascend, to walk up. We'll see that play prominently in this chapter. Come up to us quickly. Why? Because they're fixing to die. They're overwhelmed, they're outnumbered, and they're not people with the faith of Joshua who can just look to God to deliver them because they're God's people or something. They fear they're going to die soon. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered together against us. This will be the backdrop for what's going to happen. The treaty is what in the ancient world was called a suzerain treaty. You had a suzerain or a sovereign, usually a nation or a king, who would make a treaty and you would have subjects or vassals who would devote their money, their lives, their person, And of course, their honor and their loyalty to the sovereign. But in return, one of the things they obtained is a sovereign promise protection. And apparently, that has happened. We don't know that from explicit statements in the text, but from the fact that they would call on Joshua, who they tricked into doing the treaty in the first place, and say, now you need to come and save our bacon. So it's this suzerain treaty that is, in fact, in play here. And in verse 7, it says, So Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. This is no small thing. To go from Gilgal to Gibeon is about a 25 mile march, and it's 4,000 foot up. So when he says they ascended, they're going to go up. And as we're going to see it unfold, It's like the moment Joshua gets the letter, or the messenger, he rouses the troops together very quickly for an all-night journey, not daytime, nighttime. In a single night, you're going to take all your troops, walk 25 miles, not in hiking boots, but in sandals, over a rocky terrain, uphill the whole direction, so you can fight in the morning. Sound like a plan? This is an incredible thing that he would do this, but he does it. Why? He took a promise. Joshua said he would do it, and he said, even though I got tricked into it, shame on me, but he's a man of honor, and he's in fact going to do it. And it's key here through this whole passage that they had to ascend up. This isn't easy. When you start thinking about the life of extraordinary living, the life that does not settle for mediocrity, the first thing you see is it's not easy. If it were all easy, everybody would be extraordinary. And understand what I'm saying here. God makes these opportunities, these paths for us, and we'll see that some more in some other stuff we'll look at here in a moment. But that doesn't mean they're easy. You know, God could have just solved the whole problem for them. We're going to see God intervene, but why doesn't he just fix it from the get-go and deal with it? He doesn't. They have to walk all night long. It's not convenient. It's inconvenient. It's going to be tiring. And it seems like the odds are long. You're going to show up for battle in arm-to-arm combat. There's no weapons in the sense of firearms or something of that nature. And you're going to show up exhausted to fight the biggest army you've ever fought, the biggest one. That's what they're going to do. That's the plan. But look at verse 8, because this is the key to the whole thing. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear them not. Fear them not. It would be a natural thing to have fear. You're not only going into battle against a huge army, you're going tired. You're going exhausted. He says, Fear them not, for I have delivered them into thine hand, and there shall not a man of them stand before thee. We need to think about that. We start with basic grammar. We read the text. What tense is it? He doesn't say, I'm going to deliver them into your hand. He doesn't say, you're going to have a victory tomorrow. He says, I've already done it. I have delivered them into your hand. That's key because Joshua believes it. You know, Joshua says, we may be exhausted when we get there, but God already said we've won the battle. Isn't that an interesting thing? To live on the basis of a promise. God has a lot of past tense promises in the scripture, a whole lot of them. We'll look at some of them in a moment, some of them in the New Testament. But we need to understand that it's a past tense promise. And I ask the question, what can interrupt God's promise and make it not so? There must be something in this universe big enough to interrupt God's promises and make them not so. You know, in the book of Genesis chapter 12, God made promises to Abraham, made a promise to give him a children, made him a promise to make a great nation out of him, made a promise to give him a large chunk of real estate, which the book of Joshua is largely focused on. And yet in that same chapter, chapter 12 and verse 10, it says, there came or there was a famine in the land. And Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in the land." As Genesis unfolds between chapter 12, where a famine draws him to Egypt, and chapter 22, where he tells a group of men, me and the boy are going up on the mountain to worship, and we, both of us, will be back later. You know, he knew what he was going to do. but how much he had grown in the decades in between. He becomes this tremendous man of faith, and he is a man of faith in chapter 12, but there's a lot of growing in between. That famine comes along, and he leaves the land and goes to Egypt, and the question is, what in the universe is big enough and strong enough to make the promises of God to Abraham not so? Could he have died in the land through famine? God said, I'm gonna build a nation out of you, you're gonna have a bunch of children. Do you think he could have possibly died of famine? See, we'll see later when God brings them out of Egypt, he gets them to the desert where there's no food, there's no Taco Bell, there's nothing. And what does he do? He feeds them manna and feeds them water from a rock. God has the ability to feed Abraham. Abraham has a faith failing in the moment. He'll grow through that later. God will work in his life. But I'm just saying we need to grasp that question. What could make it fail? The answer, of course, is nothing could make it fail. Indeed, if there had been bandits in the land. If the people already in the land, the Jebusites and the Amorites and all these people Joshua has to fight with, they're already in the land when Abraham goes. If they pulled their armies together to kill Abraham, could they do it? No, they didn't have a chance. Why? Because God said, you're going to have a bunch of kids. they're going to have a nation. See, nothing can come against the will of God. In Judges chapter 6, I love the book of Judges because you have a lot of crooked sticks who become judges, which means saviors. They become deliverers of Israel. And in Judges 5, you meet a man named Gideon. In Judges 6, you deal with Gideon and it says in Judges 6, 16, the Lord said unto him, speaking to Gideon through an angel, surely I will be with thee and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. Judges takes place after the book of Joshua, after Joshua is passed off the scene and is deceased, and when they're in the land, various people groups will come and attack them, and one is the Midianites. God uses judges or deliverers to save them, and one of those is when the Midianites attack, and he uses Gideon, and he tells Gideon, I'm going to be with you and you're going to win. That's pretty good. He hadn't gone to the fight yet. I'm going to be, in fact, he needs him to understand the gravity of the promise. So he mounts an army together of men to fight against the Midianites and God cuts it down, cuts it down further and gets them down to mere 300 men. And God says, you know, I don't want the odds to be unfair, as it were. What he really says is, when they show up and fight just 300 men, everyone who says the 300 men whipped the thousands of people on the other side is going to say, and God did it. Not one person's going to be able to say, wow, Gideon's the best leader we've ever had. Without Gideon, we would have never won. The reality is, without Gideon, he would have raised up someone else with 300 men, and they would have taken the army. But here's the thing, could Gideon lose? He doesn't even arm Gideon. You read that in the next chapter, what's he give him? He gives him like a torch and a jug to make a loud noise. They have no weapons. They don't have automatic firearms, the kind of thing we'd want before we go into this fight. All I'm telling you is, God made a promise to Gideon that he was gonna win the battle before the battle ever occurred, and there's no way it could be interrupted. What an extraordinary thing. One more, I think, because it's, to put it in a New Testament context, imagine they're in Matthew 2. You meet a very bad man named Herod. Some people call him Herod the Great. There were other Herods, particularly his children. Herod lived, in the B.C. time, there for a few decades, and of course died around 4 to 5 B.C., and he knew that someone had been born in Bethlehem. What's he do? He was a paranoid man. Anytime he thought there might be any opposition to himself, including from his own children, he killed them. It says in Matthew 2, verse 16, then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, Remember, the wise men were supposed to give him some intel, and they didn't do it. After they visited Jesus, they went out of the country a different direction. When he felt that he was mocked with the wise men, he was exceeding wrath and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem and all the coast thereof from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. There was baby Jesus there in Bethlehem. He had to be born there. It said that in the book of Micah. centuries earlier. He'll be born there. You would think it'd be easy to kill a baby just there with his mom's just given birth. She's probably 16 years old, maybe. Joseph's probably fairly young. They got no money. They don't have an automobile to get to make a secret getaway. Shouldn't it be easy? Could all the forces of Rome have come to Bethlehem at that moment, at the instance of Satan, to kill little baby Jesus in the manger? I tell you, no. They couldn't even take Jesus before the moment in Gethsemane when he said, after pushing down a group of centurion soldiers by the power of his breath, now I'll let you take me. God would have us know that. See, I'm just saying God makes these promises and you're not going to interrupt them. And yet, As Christians, we can get the promise and not take God up on it. What a sad thing that is to then in that moment choose mediocrity over being extraordinary by the power of His grace. And I want you to see in Joshua how it is he picks being extraordinary. So look in at Joshua chapter 10 again in verse 9. Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly. He went up from Gilgal all night. This is an all-night march. Now, I've thought a lot about that, and I've had some times when I've walked four or five miles. You talk about walking 25 miles uphill. This isn't easy. He's got an extraordinary group of men with him, but by any standard, this is a difficult, difficult march. Verse 10 says, and the Lord, in the King James, discomfited them before Israel. That is, He confused them before Israel, and He slew them with a great slaughter at Gideon. And He chased them along the way that goeth up to Beth Horon, and He smote them to Azekah and unto Makedah. verse 11, ìAnd it came to pass as they fled before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth Horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Ezekiel, and they died. They were more which died with the hell stones than they whom the children of God slew with the sword.î This is the first of two grand miracles in this passage. They didn't just ascend all night 4,000 feet on a 25-mile march at night. They then had a tremendous battle that involved chasing these people all over the countryside all day. And the pattern that we see emerge here is really a simple one, but it's one throughout the Bible, and it is this. The pattern is that when we do the part we can, God does the parts we can't. And if we never do the parts that we can do, we will not see God do the part that only he can do. And that becomes the defining feature between those who would choose mediocrity and those who would say, God, I want you to take this crooked stick and hit a home run, to allow me to somehow live beyond myself by your power. It's what you see here. They did the part they could, and it didn't look easy, the march, the nighttime aspect, uphill, and then chasing these people around the countryside when they should already be exhausted. God says, you do every bit of it you can do, and I'll do the part you can't. You know what happened? Some of them were going to get away. God said, no, not on my watch. You're not getting away. He did something that we hadn't seen since the book of Exodus, one of the plagues there, where God drops big stones from the sky. And you have to ask one important question. How many believers got hit by the rocks? Zero. It's a pattern throughout the scripture. Not one faithful believer is mentioned as getting hit by the rocks here. In fact, he's very clear to say that more people got taken out by the rocks than by the sword itself. What an interesting thing that is. You know, God does that throughout the scripture. That is, He says, do the part you can do, and I'm going to do the part you can't. Think about Noah. What is fascinating about Noah is that the man is, he's old by any standard. He's several centuries old, 600 years old, and God says, I want you to build this ship. He can't go down to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy the timber, the nails, the hammer, or try to pick up some extra day laborers to help with him. He's got his family, as far as we know no one else. He's going to have to make the wood in order to make a ship no one's ever built before that size. And yet he does it. What a man of faith. It's a man that the Bible says walks with God, but the point is he did it. God could have made the ship for him. We would like God to do that. God, you could have dropped those rocks and we wouldn't have even had to make the 25 mile march uphill. God said no. You're going to do the parts you can do, and I'm going to do the parts you can't. They make the ship. They spend a century doing that. God brings the animals, closes the door, makes the flood, later unmakes the flood, keeps the ship safe the whole time, and then brings them off. They do what they can. God does what only He can. In the book of Zechariah, and this one's a little more obscure, but it's another example of this, just to see how prominent this is in the scripture. You'll find it in every book that has some history recorded. You'll find it throughout the book of Acts. You'll find it in the Gospels. But in the little book of Zechariah in chapter 2, Our prophet Zechariah sees a series of visions. It takes place in the first six chapters of the book. But what's fascinating is the context and the time. They have gone into captivity in Babylon for 70 years like God had promised through Jeremiah. So approximately the time from about 609 BC to 539 BC. After 539 B.C., they can start to come home. They don't come home in droves, but some of them start to return to Jerusalem. In around 520 B.C., you have a prophet named Haggai and another named Zechariah. They preach around the same time, and their basic message is, we need to build the temple of God, because it had been destroyed years earlier, and we need to rebuild the city. But imagine you're the family who you're hearing the prophet say, y'all need to get back to this city and start work on it. What you're seeing is a city that's been completely sieged and ruined by Nebuchadnezzar, the temple destroyed, and it has no fence. It has no gate around it, no wall around it. In the ancient world, you're a sitting duck. No one builds a city with no walls because it's easy for the invaders to take it. So how is it that you'll bring your family into the city with no walls? But God said to do it. What do we do with that? Look what he says in chapter two of Zechariah in verse one. I'm just gonna read a few verses to get you the sense of it. Because God continues to say through this prophet, you do the part you can do and I'll do the part you can't. I lifted up mine eyes again and I looked and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand. Zechariah sees a vision and he sees a man with a measuring line. He's measuring for construction purposes. Then said I, whither goest thou? Talking to the man with the measuring line. And he said unto me, to measure Jerusalem, to measure the city, the city that lie in ruins, to measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof and what is the length thereof. And behold, the angel that talked with me, this is a different person, not the one measuring the city, but he has a man standing beside him throughout these visions, an angel that helps him understand. He says, behold, the angel that talked with me went forth And another angel went out to meet him. So he sees a guy measuring, you see some angels talking. This is not a typical kind of thing for anyone to see, but they have a very clear message for him. He said unto him, after they have their angelic huddle, run, speak to this young man, speak to Zechariah, and say to Zechariah the following, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein." God's in the rebuilding business and He's going to do it. And when He makes the clarion call to the people that have been in captivity to return, they look Through eyes of flesh, much as we might have looked over the River Jordan in the book of Joshua and saw the river, God says, quit looking at the ruins. I'm telling you, I'm going to rebuild it. And it's going to be beyond the size it ever was in the past. It's going to be better. And you can look at it, the circumstances say, but there's no walls. There's nothing to keep us safe. What's going to guarantee the bandits don't come in and kill us? Later in history, Nehemiah will deal with that, the threat of bandits coming in to kill them. Listen to God's response. Verse 5 of Zechariah chapter 2, For I say, if the Lord will be unto her a wall of fire round about her, and will be the glory in the midst of her. You don't need a wall because if anybody comes to take you out while you're building this thing, I'm personally going to deal with them. That's what God says. I will be a wall of fire around about you. You know, they can't do it all at once. They can't start building the city and then the wall needs to be done, the temple needs to be done, and there need to be armed guards standing by. They can't do it all. God says, you get in that city and get to work. I'll be the wall around you. It's just something you see play out over and over and over again in the scriptures. And in the New Testament context, and this is so pertinent for us today as we see a time in which perhaps more and more persecution looms on the horizon for Christians. In the book of Acts, chapter one and verse eight, when Jesus ascended, he said something just before he went up into the clouds. He said in chapter 1 verse 8, you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in Judea and all Samaria and then under the uttermost part of the earth. You shall be witnesses. He's got a specific group of people in mind, not just future generations but the men standing before him, the women standing before him and he says that. But it's not long before you get to Acts chapter 5 and they're told you can't preach this gospel. We don't want to hear it. If you do it, we'll put you in jail." And they did. The apostles preached, they got put in jail, but what happens? Acts chapter 5 verse 17, the high priest rose up and all they that were with him, which is the sect of the Sadducees, and they were filled with indignation. And then in Acts 5 verse 18, they laid their hands on the apostles, put them in the common prison, but God moves. See, God said, you're going to be witnesses here, and there, and there, and these men said, no, you're not. That still happens today. They've been saying that in China for years. China has, you know, they've got over 150 million Christians. Our population in this country is about 320 million. That's a lot of Christians, and they've been saying there for years, no, you can't preach that gospel. All that does is make it spread faster. That's what they told these apostles. You can't do that. But what does it say in verse 19? But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth. Now they can't break out of prison. Now we're dealing with something only God can do. They can stand up and preach Jesus. God can break people out of prison, get them safe, and he does. And he brought them forth, and listen to what he says. Go stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life. See what happened? Satan spoke through men and said, you can't preach the gospel and locked them up. God spoke through an angel and said, you get back there and you start teaching again. See, but they have to do their part. What if they had said back in Acts chapter one, we're not going to do it. The next chapter five would never have occurred. The gospel would not have spread. They wouldn't have got locked in jail, freed by the angel. They have to do it. They have to start their part. And that's what we see here in Joshua. We see him inviting, God inviting Joshua, do the part you can do, even though it seems like it's gonna be so difficult. Such a long journey uphill, all that stuff. Someone may say, well, I've never seen God do any supernatural thing in my life. But we have to be careful with that. What would God say of your effort? Would He say you've done all the part that you could do? And that's where we have to be real careful. If we're doing the part we can do, we're going to meet God there and we're going to see Him work. We continue through, we see another miracle back in Joshua chapter 10 and verse 12. It says, Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel. And he said in the sight of Israel, listen to what he says, Stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Agilon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted not to go down about a whole day. This is the second miracle. And I think behind the resurrection, this is the most challenged of miracles in the entire scripture. People just have a fundamental problem with this miracle. Even a lot of Christians, a lot of those who may somewhere else in some other place be preaching from this very text this day will say the sun did not stand still and the moon did not stand still. We need to think about that. God is doing the part only God can do. Some of them were going to get away. He dropped stones on their heads. They did not get away. But the day wasn't long enough, because the battle was so large, the army so big, the fighting so tremendous, the day just wasn't long enough. It was going to get dark again, and you wouldn't be able to catch them. They'd make their ways back to their walled cities. And so, at the mere instance of a man who prays, God, would you stop the sun and the moon, God does it. God does it. It takes monumental faith, I think, to explain away, to explain away these miracles in the scripture. It's a fascinating thing to me of the resurrection, which of course is the most challenge of all miracles, because if Jesus was raised again, he has the right to tell you what to do. Right? Because it just follows that he is, in fact, who he claimed to be, the very son of God. And yet, in the first century, not everyone believed it. I think most people did. It's the reason Christianity spread like wildfire. You can't explain it any other way. It would say in 1 Corinthians 15 that there were some 500 witnesses to the resurrection. If it were done in a corner and in secret, Christianity would not have blossomed so quickly. throughout Judea in the first century, so that within a couple of centuries, most of the then known world, certainly of what we would call Europe and North Africa, had been reached with the Gospels. It was because no one could doubt, no one could criticize this teaching of the resurrection. But in Matthew, you read the earliest polemic of the resurrection. They said, the Jewish persecutors, that the body was stolen by the disciples and taken away. And yet it was the Roman government that sealed the tomb and left troops out there to guard it. What an amazing thing it is. You know, if they get away, the Roman troops stand to die to get the same punishment that the one who got away had received. It's a ridiculous thing to say he got away, and it's a more ridiculous thing for Paul to write to a group of people who were alive at the time of the resurrection and say, there's 500 witnesses, go talk to them if you're not believing this. He says, go ask them, they'll tell you. No one would say that if it weren't so. Yet in modern times, we have what has been popularized as a so-called swoon theory to explain away the resurrection. What do they say? They say, well, Jesus stood up there on the cross, the nails in his wrist and in his feet, and he swooned. He pretended to writhe in pain. They snuck him off the cross later that afternoon, put him in the tomb for three days so he could rest up and heal, and then walk out of there. Back some years ago, I used to play basketball just for recreation at the Texas A&M University with some friends and professors and stuff. And one day I was running in for a layup, and I landed and the foot went backwards. And for six months, I couldn't hardly walk on that leg. I was hobbling around, too much of a man to use a crutch, but I clearly needed one. I probably made myself, I could have been healed up in three or four weeks, but I made it last six months because I didn't want to use a crutch and I needed one. That was just from twisting my ankle. How long could I not have walked if someone had driven a big spike through both of my feet at the ankle? How is it this man gets a nail driven through his feet and three days later walks out of there having swooned for three days? That's not realistic. Anyone who's ever just jammed their toe knows that you hurt your feet. The ability to just get up and walk No. It's a theory that takes more faith than merely believing in the resurrection. But we get to Joshua, and they say, well, Joshua didn't really mean that the sun stood still. He meant that it was an extraordinarily long day, the way it is sometimes when you're at school on a Friday and it just seems like the day won't end because you just want to go home and the clock seems like it's moving backwards. No, that's not what he said. There's so much of an emphasis on trying to explain this thing away. Some would say, well, it's not very scientific, right? Because the sun doesn't move. We know that. Everybody learns in grade school that the earth is rotating on its axis. It gives the appearance of the sun moving, but in fact, the sun doesn't move. And you see that? Joshua's not very scientific. If Joshua had said, because God had given him the words, and he had prayed and said, God, please let the earth stop rotating on its axis. People would have been like, what? The fact of the matter is, even very scientific people and people with PhDs use the words sunset and sunrise, but the sun is never really set nor risen. It's the words of phenomenal language, the words of observation. We look at the sun, we describe it as setting. Very educated people who study astronomy would say the same thing. There's nothing here to be scientific. He speaks in the common language of what he sees and says, God, we're not going to catch them all today unless today lasts a lot longer. Now, you may say, well, how did the day last longer? I have no clue. We need to be okay with that. Did God stop the universe? That's kind of what I favor. I think it just like froze in time in a sense. Maybe it didn't. He doesn't give all the details. Maybe God gave an extraordinary lengthy day in the sense in which in some parts of the world their daylight time lasts 24 hours a day. He could have done that. He could have refracted the light in such a way that it stayed lit. What I do know is he's very clear that he had a long day, the longest in history, and he'll even go on to say there's never been one like it. And that's what he says here. The sun stood still and the moon stayed. And he says in verse 14, there was no day like that before it or after it. How much more does he have to say to say, you know what, Joshua's not being poetic here. This was an extraordinary event. Joshua had done everything they possibly could. They were just running out of time. Do you think the God of the universe can stop the universe for a moment and give you extra time? The Bible says he can, and he did. That the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. What a miracle. Joshua had done everything he could. God did his part. I would say this about faith. We need to be very, very careful, and there's such a pressure, I think, now to try to Maybe write some things off and say, well, this didn't really happen like that. Take it at face value. I may stand before God one day and find out I was wrong about one of these things, but I don't think that I'm going to be accused because I simply took it at face value. George Mueller, a famous preacher in the 1800s who ran a lot of orphanages, you know, he would often find one of his five orphanages short of food. There was nothing else they could do. There was no money, there was no food, and they would pray. And there's numerous stories about the times that would happen. They'd gather together at night and pray, Lord, these kids don't have any money, they don't have any food, and we need food. And the next morning, sure enough, the bread truck would break down right in front of the orphanage. Unable to deliver the bread, they would donate it. Happened all the time. I've seen that happen in this century with real missionaries on the field. That same sort of thing. And Weller wrote this. He said, many people are willing to believe regarding those things that seem probable to them. Faith has nothing to do with probabilities. The providence of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail. Appearances are not to be taken into account. The question is whether God has spoken it in His Word. That's what we do with the book of Joshua. Did the sun and the moon stop? From the point of observation of Joshua, they certainly did. The daylight hours lasted longer. I don't know exactly how God did that, but they did. Just like I don't know exactly how the River Jordan disappeared while they walked through it, but it did. And the fact is, it happened and Joshua and the people of Israel had a great victory. In verse 16, through the rest of the chapter really, there's going to be a number of additional battles that will fall on the hills of this great battle and the great victory over the Amorites. First, there's these five kings in a cave in verse 16. through 19, five kings in a cave. It says, but these five kings fled and hid themselves in a cave at Makeda, so outside one of the cities. It was told Joshua, saying the five kings are found hidden in a cave at Makeda. These are the kings that made the initial coalition. The troops have gotten a great defeat at the hands of Israel, but the kings went and hid themselves, hoping to save their own skins, and they hid in a cave. That was not smart. Joshua knows where they're at. Look what he does. He's just gonna pile up a bunch of rocks in front of the cave and keep them in there a while. Joshua said, roll great stones upon the mouth of the cave and set men by it for to keep them. And stay ye not, but pursue after your enemies and smite the hindmost of them. Suffer them not to enter into their cities, for the Lord your God hath delivered them into your hand. So he says, we'll deal with the kings later. I mean, that's five men. They probably got some guards. Let's finish the battle. So they stack the rocks up. They hold them in there. and they proceed with the battle at hand because there's still troops that are fleeing. We revisit the kings in verse 24, they're still hidden in the cave, it says in verse 24, that it came to pass when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel. And he said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings." And they came near and they put their feet upon the necks of them. So you imagine the scene. This was a common ancient world scene. When you see the ancient warfare in the form of art, and we have a lot of that that's out there. For example, the folks who lived in Nineveh would carve into the rocks their battles, the scenes of their battles, even their battles in Israel that they would later do several centuries after this. They're in the British Museum in London, for example. You can see these ancient battles and what you see often is the victor with his foot up on top of the head or the neck of his enemy, of the king. He has them in subjugation. Joshua does this because he needs a teaching moment. They've just come through a great victory. They did everything they could. God did his part with the hell stones and with extending the day. The fighting is not over. And he has them to see their commanders. The troops see the commanders, put their feet on the necks of the enemies. And Joshua would say this to them in verse 25. He says to them, fear not, nor be dismayed, be strong and of good courage, for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom you fight." These aren't unique words that Joshua made up. These are the words that God told Joshua. He told it to him in chapter one. He told it to him in this chapter. He's passing on that message. It was very clear earlier in the chapter, God said unto Joshua, Be strong, be of good courage. Now Joshua tells the troops, and he wants them to see it. They see the victory demonstrated visually with these commanders having their foot on the necks of the enemy's kings. And they also see it because they knew what had happened with the hellstones and the long day. And it becomes this sort of object lesson. He says, God's promised you that the fighting ahead of you for the rest of what we're going to do, you've got the victory already. And I won't read all these victories, but I want you just to see what happens here. In verse 28, for example, it says, Joshua took Makeda. That was one of the cities where the kings came from. Joshua, now that he's essentially defeated the armies, he's killed the kings, he now takes the cities. And Joshua takes Makeda. In verse 29, Joshua takes Libna. Verse 31, he takes Lachish. Lachish is very close to Jerusalem, about 28 miles from Jerusalem. So he's very close to the city of Jerusalem. Then in verse 33, he takes Gezer. In verse 34, he takes Eglon. All these kings, you gotta see the hand of God in this, all these kings said, let's gather together and let's take Gibeon. But what we're seeing behind the pages is God says, I'm going to gather all these kings together for you, Joshua, so you don't have to go take an army at a time. Let's just have one big battle and be done with it. See, God's the one doing the gathering. And he does that a lot in the Bible. He'll do it in the future at what we call Armageddon. But God's gathering them. Now all that's left is the pretty much unprotected cities and a handful of troops that may have escaped to them. So he takes Eglon in verse 34, he takes Hebron in verse 36, Debir in verse 38. There's something else to see though in all these battles, just not to miss it. For example, in verse 29, Joshua passed from Makeda and all Israel with him unto Libna and fought against Libna. verse 30, and the Lord delivered it. We saw that several chapters ago where Joshua came to learn that the captain of God's host, the captain of God's armies, was actually leading out in front of the battle. That it wasn't really these men, these troops of Israel that win the victory, it was always God that wins the victory. They saw it that day when God sent the Hellstones in the long day. But even here, even in the subsequent battles, they understand that God's the one that's actually giving them the city. Verse 31 says, Joshua passed from Libya and all Israel with them unto Lachish. But verse 32 says, and the Lord delivered Lachish. That's the pattern. They're doing the part they can do, but God's the one actually giving the deliverance here throughout the whole passage. And so they in essence finish taking the whole region that they're fighting against. All started with protecting the Gibeonites under their treaty. So we see the nation of Israel living, victoriously living the extraordinary life. And we get to verse 40 and it all gets summed up. He pulls together the whole passage, all the victories, in verse 40, so Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the valley, and of the springs, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded. Joshua smote them from Kadesh Barnea, even unto Gaza, that's we hear today, the Gaza Strip, and that's what they're talking about, they're on the coast. And all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon, and all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. So he took it at one time. That's what happened. They thought, wow, we're gonna build the biggest army ever. And God's saying, look, I'm the ones putting you guys together. This isn't gonna work out good for you. They had a choice. They had the Rahab opportunity, but they didn't take it. They said, we're not leaving. We're not gonna start worshiping your God. we're going to form a coalition to take you out." But it didn't work. All the kings and their land did Joshua take at one time. In verse 43, Joshua returned and all Israel with him under the camp at Gilgal. They left Gilgal to rescue the Gibeonites. They become victors over that entire countryside, that entire region, and then they return. I would say to you then, what is our command from God? I want to get a New Testament verse where we can kind of bring all this together. This is Ephesians 2, and it's verse 4. If the message of Joshua 10 is, do the parts you can, all of it faithfully, let God do the part that only He can do. Do we have a New Testament counterpart? Is God still in that business? And I would say He is, God's never changed. In Ephesians chapter 2, and I'll start in verse 4, I just want to read a few verses, it's a familiar passage I think for most of us, but look and see what God is doing here. Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 4, but God, But God, this is what changes the whole situation. God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us. So how great was his love for us? Paul would contemplate that elsewhere. You can't measure it. You can't figure how big it is. But to understand it is to know God better. God for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together, quicken means to make us alive again, when we were dead in sins he made us alive again, together with Christ, by grace you're saved. He's saying we were raised with Christ and it was by grace. Grace means that you were saved without regard to what you might have deserved and he hath raised us up together. That's past tense. You see that? He half raised us up together. We think of so much of this being future. In the future, there'll be a resurrection and there will. But God's talking about that promise in the past tense. He looks back and says, I've raised you up. He looks back and says, I've already defeated. the coalition attacking the Gibeonites. Past tense promises to present believers. And God says, now what are you going to do with it? That's what he's saying in Ephesians chapter 2. It's just like what happened in Joshua 10. It's a little new context, but the idea is the same. They have a mission before them. God has this plan that most of the world would say is a crazy plan. It can't possibly work. We're going to build a church and it's going to reach the whole globe. with a gospel message. That's the plan. Jesus says, you want to be a part of it? And that promise, God says, I have raised you up already. For what, though? Why is it we've already been resurrected? Well, for one thing, just as an aside, this assures you that you can never lose, throw away, forfeit your salvation in Christ Jesus, because your resurrection, from God's perspective, already happened. and you can't undo it. He made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We learn elsewhere in the New Testament that Jesus is now at the right hand of the Father on high, having finished His priestly work, having put His own blood in the heavenly tabernacle on the mercy seat. He sits at the right hand of the Father, awaiting the time when God makes all His enemies His footstool. The same imagery from Joshua chapter 10. And Jesus is there, but we've been raised up past tense together with Him. that God views us as being in and with Christ even now at the right hand of God. What a privileged position that is to make us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That in the ages to come, He might show us the exceeding riches of His grace and kindness towards us through Christ Jesus. For by grace you're saved through faith, and I would add, plus nothing. It's so important for us because it's so easy to try to inject something where we deserved at least a little bit. And that's not there. He says, it's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works as any man should boast. And this is the part I want you to see clearly. Not only is your resurrection past tense, but in some sense, your mission is. It's an accomplished thing before you. You need merely to take hold of it. He says, we're his workmanship. His workmanship, God's workmanship in Christ Jesus unto good works. Mediocrity is not contemplated for the believer. God will not make you do it. He will not make you do it, but mediocrity was never the plan. It was always extraordinary living, always through the power of God, because we're his workmanship. I wonder how much time he spent on that. Well, He paid a dear price to make us His workmanship. His own Son had to die for our sins. Were His workmanship in Christ Jesus? How good of a work is it? Well, how good is Christ Jesus? See, it's all about where you are. But it's not enough to be there. You have to reckon that that's where you are. To reckon that you have the victory, because He told you you did, past tense, to reckon that you're in Christ Jesus, that you're at the right hand of the Father, in a place of privileged position, in a place of blessing, unto good works which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them. The works are past tense too, but we have to do them. That we should walk in them, that's His will. And this is the part where God says, now, you go do your part, and I'll do mine. It's the pattern throughout the book of Acts. It's the pattern of Christ building. He says, I will build my church. And then he says, but you go, and I'll be with you. You see the way it works? It's always a participation thing. It's always both. And I would tell you, let's make it real personal to us. We're a church and a community that needs Jesus Christ. There's no doubt about it. God has given us our mission. He's got the good works that have been ordained before time for us, for us to do them, and to do them here. We can't do it all. What we can do is our very best to get the message out. We can do our very best, first of all, in fervent prayer. We have to be a praying people. Remember what happened in chapter 9? They got off track in Joshua 9 because they didn't go seek the Lord's face, so we need to pray. You could spend a lot of time throwing a seed down, think of the parable of the soils, but you have to have the soil prepared for the seed, and that's a time of prayer. There's not a person here that can't fervently pray over the broken heart for this community. We also have to tell people. We actually have to be a cheerleader for the gospel, a cheerleader for this church, a cheerleader for everything that we're trying to do, and even a little thing like the trunk retreat. That is an opportunity. I don't know how many people God may bring here. I know that if we do our very best to tell people, and he brings anybody, I will see it as God brought them. And then we'll do the part we can do. The bringing is God's part. If we tell somebody about the gospel, the saving, the convincing is God's part. But our part's the telling, the making ourselves available, our time, our talent, our energy, a few dollars to buy some candy or some time to cook some hot dogs. But you see what I'm saying? And this plays out over and over. This is God's crazy plan for how he'll reach people. But it works because he does his part. And when he does his part, if he has to make the day last longer to reach one extra person, the day lasts longer. That's just how it is. You always have to look at these messages in Joshua. Ancient truths and ancient books for modern people and say well, how do I make it real now? And that's the answer you you'd be a person of fervent prayer who says God now show me what I'll do The parts I can do I'll do it and then You actually do some things you actually tell some people you'd be a cheerleader We preach and we teach but God does the work and in the heart. Well, we're gonna have a little time of invitation here and This is really a message for believers, but sometimes we can look at our own lives and say, you know what, I think I've gotten a little bit of a circling pattern around the airport or whatever, a little bit of a rut, and I don't want mediocrity. I want the extraordinary living. And if that's you, then this is the time to be in prayer for that. If you want to pray up here with me, that would be fine. But we need to want earnestly God to do the extraordinary with us, and He'll do it. He'll honor that.