Joshua chapter 5 tonight. Joshua chapter 5. When you find your place, please stand. We're going to stand as we read the word here tonight. And I'm serious. I do want you to really dig down and find some discipline within yourself. You're not little children that need to slump over and sleep in the pew. I do believe that every one of you is capable of giving attention to whatever you desire to give attention to. And so tonight, that's this. This is the main thing that we are here for. And so let's give it at least as much attention as we would to any sort of a game or an activity or, yes, a dad joke. Let's pay attention. Amen? Amen. Joshua chapter 5. beginning in verse 13. And 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, are 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 sayeth 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. Does that sound familiar from last night? Continue on. Now Jericho was straightly 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 valor. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. Seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of ram's 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. And that's where we're gonna stop our reading for tonight. You may be seated. Last night, We preached about Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush. how the Lord revealed himself there and that Moses learned about God, that the Lord is a holy God. Well, now we fast forward. A generation has gone by and now the new leader of Israel is Joshua. And here he has his own personal encounter with the Lord, which is kind of interesting that Joshua could not just go on because Moses once had an encounter with God. He needed to encounter God for himself. You can't just keep going on based on someone else's personal relationship with God. You need one. You can't just do it for a while when you're when you're young. It's super important if your parents have a walk with God and you can live on that a while and you can be surrounded in the love and the knowledge of God because of that. But eventually their walk with God isn't going to be enough to sustain you. You need to know God. It's good if your pastor has a walk with God, wouldn't you say? Yes, that's a good thing. All right. Easy question. but his relationship with the Lord is no substitute for you having one. You must have a fresh encounter with God, just as Joshua did. Now, the Lord did not reveal himself to Joshua like a burning bush, as he did with Moses, and we talked about that a little bit last night, but this time he comes as captain of the Lord's host. And just as with Moses, he told him, this is holy ground. Now, what we didn't really get to last night was how that after the Lord revealed himself to Moses, he gave to him his marching orders. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to Pharaoh and you're going to tell him this, and then his heart is going to be hardened. And I'm going to show my wonders and bring my people up out of bondage. Well, now with his encounter with Joshua, the Lord does the same thing. He gives to Joshua the battle plan for how to take Jericho. And that's exactly what Joshua needed. It's probably what he was trying to figure out. We opened up and it says that in verse 13 of chapter five, it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho. He's out there all by himself. He's left the camp at Gilgal. He is by Jericho. He's scoping the thing out. He's looking for a weakness. He's looking for a way in. He's trying to devise a strategy because everybody's coming up to Joshua and saying, okay, we're across the river now, Joshua, what's the plan? Well, obviously Jericho is the plan. Yeah, but that's not really a plan, Joshua. What's the plan for Jericho? Because have you seen the walls? It's not going to be easy. And so here's Joshua probably praying, asking God for some guidance. How are we supposed to do this thing? What is the next step? As he's out there praying and thinking and strategizing, he heard a sound over to his side, and he looked, and there's a man. You couldn't sneak up on Joshua. Joshua's a warrior, and this guy had snuck up on Joshua, and his sword was already out. I mean, it'd be like you turn around, and somebody's got a gun pointed at you. That's what he's facing here. The sword is drawn, and it says here that Joshua, he didn't go run and cower, it says he went to him. In the middle of verse 13, Joshua went unto him, probably his hand on his sword as well, and he said to him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? Because in Joshua's mind, that's all there is. There's our side and it's our enemy's side and you must fit in one of those two categories. Are you with us or are you against us? And what did the captain of the Lord's host say to him? Hello? Nay, otherwise known as no. It wasn't a yes or no question. Are you for us or are you for them, one or the other? No. Because God is not on anybody's side, but his own. The question is not, God, are you on my side? Are you for me? No, the question is this, are you on God's side? That's what Joshua had to come to grips with here. And so he confronts this man, and when he realizes who he's dealing with, verse 14 says, he fell on his face to the earth and did worship and said unto him, what sayeth my Lord unto his servant? Now there were originally no chapter divisions here. So when we read the beginning of chapter six, how that the Lord is speaking to Joshua and giving him the plan for Jericho, the setting has not changed at all. It's not like chapter six introduces a new scenario here. This conversation from chapter five is continuing right along. And as captain of the army, the Lord proceeded to give Joshua the battle plan for conquering the city. Joshua would have never come up with a plan like this on his own. Nobody would. Not in their right mind anyway. In the future, they would fight battles in a much more conventional way. But Jericho was special because it was first. It was the first big battle in Canaan. And so the Lord set it up as an example to show them if you're going to have victory in the promised land, it's going to come by me. You've got to do it my way. The army, you know, the story was to encircle the city, but not attack must have Must have scared the Jericho people at first, right? They're coming, they're coming, they surround the city, and then they just march in a nice little circle and go home. And they do that for six days in a row until it probably became kind of a joke. I'm sure that at first they were standing at attention, standing at the ready, prepared for when the attack would come, and six days in a row now, they've assembled, they've surrounded the entire city, gone in a circle, and back to camp. Jericho, people are saying. I don't think we've got much to worry about with these guys. I don't know what kind of leadership they've got, but they do this for six days. Then on the seventh day, seventh day special, they march around it seven times, and verse four of chapter six tells us that seven priests will carry seven trumpets, and after the seventh time, on the seventh day, they blow the trumpets and shout. Do you think there's something significant about the number seven here? Yeah, all through the Bible, there's something significant about the number seven. It's the number of God's divine perfection and completeness. And that's all through the scriptures. And it's to remind them this is God's battle, not their battle. You do this seven times, seven trumpets, seven priests on the seventh day, you shout and God gives you the victory. It was not a result of their strategies or their genius or their military might. God was going to do this. And so Joshua went and executed this plan exactly as he had received it from the Lord. He told the priest to go prepare the ark to be moved out of the tabernacle. You remember the tabernacle and how they would set that up as a movable structure, a tent, where it would house that Ark of the Covenant and the other pieces of furniture there that were used in the worship of God. And so the priests would go in with a cloth and you know it was no small thing to enter into the holiest place where the Ark of the Covenant was. And so they'd grab that cloth and they'd enter in backwards and wouldn't gaze upon it and they'd cover that. And then they'd take these staves, these long long poles that were gold-plated and they'd slip those into the rings of the ark and then they would hoist it up on their shoulders is the right way for the priest to carry it and they'd carry that ark of the covenant right out the front of the tabernacle and they would they would go and then seven priests were selected to go before these men. And they had these shofars, these ram's horns, and they would blow with the ram's horns. Not loud blasts like for war, it was more like marking cadence or it was so that everybody would know, okay, forward march, you know, that kind of thing, and they'd give a little blast with the trumpet, and then they would go forward. Well, in front of the priests and the Ark of the Covenant, there was the armed soldiers, and then behind them, there's the rearward of the soldiers, and they would march in that sort of formation. And Joshua was very clear in his instructions that the army was to remain quiet while they marched. They weren't singing. They weren't going left, left, left, right, left. There was that going on, right? I don't know, but I've been told. No, that stuff's happening there. They're quiet as they're marching. Verse 10 and Joshua had commanded. commanded the people saying, ye shall not shout nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth until the day I bid you shout, then shall ye shout. Now ever since the Israelites had crossed over the Jordan River, which by the way on dry ground, isn't it amazing how God did that for their fathers before them with the Red Sea when they came out of Egypt? And now He does it again for this next generation. I just love that. And I want, I hope that you catch sight of that, that that's a little bit of what's in my heart that I wanna convey to you is that God wants to do some of the same things in you and for you that he has done for those who came before you. God has a plan for your life and your generation. And so God dried up the Jordan River and he allowed them to go over on dry ground. And they'd been on the other side of Jordan a while. And so Jericho had been making plans. The spring harvest was finished. They had gathered in all of the grain and stockpiles. Walled cities like this were equipped for lengthy sieges. Invading armies would come in and you can't scale the wall. You can't tear down the wall. Even if you got through one wall, they said in Jericho there were two walls. You get past the first one and maybe a few of you would not get poked with an arrow. And then there was this steep plastered surface that you couldn't climb. It was just smoothed out. And then another wall. And I don't know what kind of defenses they had. You can't get through it. So all you could do was wait out these cities. You would besiege them, cut off their supply lines. Well, Jericho's ready. They've had lots of time to prepare for this. They've got grain. They could blast years there in Jericho, much longer than the children of Israel would be able to last without proper supplies on the outside. And the leaders of Jericho, they anticipated this attack was coming, and so the gates were shut. The gates were fortified. Armed guards are posted on the walls 24 hours a day. I've been to this site of ancient Jericho and now it's just a pile of dirt and rubble. It's called Tell el Sultan, Tell el Sultan, and it's located within the current city of Jericho. You got the regular city, and then you got this pile of dirt in the middle that was ancient Jericho. It's not all that big. It's like seven acres or so. And so when they would go there, they could surround the whole thing with Israel's army. It was no problem for them to encircle the entire city. And so when they marched around it, they did that for six days in a row, as we said, in verse 15, And it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning of the day and compass the city after the same manner seven times only on that day, they compass the city seven times. And it came to pass the seventh time when the priests blew at the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, shout for the Lord. I've given you the city verse two. Let's see. Did I lose you? Verse 20. So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets. And it came to pass when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. It's incredible. I mean, this robust city, this double, dual layer walls. And when they stopped their seventh march around and they blew the trumpets and they shouted that the stone wall just crumbled. And like I said, there's this steep portion and stuff. When it fell, it just fell and it created this beautiful ramp so that they could all just, it says, every man went up. Straight before him, right up into the city. You know the only part of the ruins of, they've found this collapsed wall by the way, archaeologists have. The only part of the wall that's not collapsed was just on one little northern side. Can you figure out why that might have been? That part of the wall didn't collapse? Who? Rahab, Rahab's house, she was the one who had helped the spies and had a promise from God, well through them, that they would not be, she would not be destroyed. And so the stone wall collapses, they all go straight up before them, and they did not take any of the spoil from that first battle. Later on, they could take all kinds of stuff, you know, the food, the armor, a weaponry, whatever they could find, but not Jericho. All the precious metals, all the valuables they're taking and putting in the treasury of the Lord's house, everything else was to be destroyed by fire. It was like the entire city. We're talking useful things. We're talking valuable things. All of it was to be torched and burnt like an offering to God, wholly dedicated to Him. Verse 17. Verse 17, and the city shall be accursed, even it and all that are therein to the Lord only, Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house because she hid the messengers that we sent. So they destroyed everyone and everything in that city except for Rahab and her household. Verse 24, It says, and they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein, only the silver and the gold and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. Excavations show that in the same time period as the collapsed wall, there was a thick black burn layer. Isn't that cool? When they dig down, they can find, it's like going back through time, right? Cities are built on top of each other and the ruins from before. And so they would dig down, and they get to this one spot, and throughout the whole city, there's a burn layer where it's just blackened. And in that burn layer, they've excavated pots of grain, and the grain even is charred and burnt still in there. When invaders would come in, and they would light a city on fire, they wouldn't burn the grain. They'd take the grain. They needed those supplies, right? And so it's further evidence that this played out exactly like the Bible says. Don't let anybody ever convince you that these are just mythological stories. It's a historical account. Most archaeologists dispute the accuracy of the Bible record because they're coming at it with the assumption that the Bible is a myth. You know why they do that? Because if it's true, they're accountable to God. It's just like those that propose and advocate for the theory of evolution, even though the more that we learn, the more absurd atheistic evolution becomes. And you ask the questions, and they're willing to believe pretty much any absurd thing, except from the idea that God created the heaven and the earth. They'll say, well, how is it that our universe seems to be so finely tuned for life to exist. You know if the laws of physics were any different than they are, life could not happen. And scientists acknowledge this. And so you say, well, how do you account for that? Well, there are an infinite number of universes. And just by sheer odds, we happen to be in the one that worked out randomly to be able to support life. There is no evidence of that anywhere. It's just a nice handy thought for people that don't want to deal with real questions. You say, well, where did life come from on planet Earth? They can't explain, you know, life from non-life. They can't explain things like the Cambrian explosion and all of that. And so, you know what's becoming more and more popular all the time? Aliens. I'm serious, you're laughing. These are highly credentialed, PhD, I mean, top of the top tier scientists in the world, very credibly trying to pass this idea, alien seeded life here. Because the alternative means that there's a creator. And if there's a creator, we owe him something. We are accountable to that maker. Archaeologists function much the same way. But over and over, we see that when new evidence comes to light, it ultimately proves the Bible was right all along. You can trust this book. You can trust. Now, you can lose your place in Joshua and turn with me to 2 Corinthians 10. If you're taking notes, the title of this, by the way, is Conquering Strongholds. Conquering strongholds. And you're gonna be getting into 2 Corinthians 10 in one of your Bible studies this week. I think it's maybe Thursday. But it's not gonna hurt us a bit to get started on this thought a little bit here tonight. 2 Corinthians chapter 10. Someone once said that when we read the Old Testament, it's the truth, same truth of the New Testament, but it's concealed in story form. And then on the flip side, the New Testament is the same truth as the Old Testament, just revealed in principles. So here in 2 Corinthians 10, we basically have the New Testament principle that carries over from the conquering of Jericho. 2 Corinthians 10, and verse 3, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, the pulling down of strongholds. We think about Joshua and the children of Israel going into the promised land. It's a great picture of us going into the Christian life. Now, some people look at the promised land, sing about it. like it's going into heaven, you know, across chilly Jordan. And when I, when I die, I go into the promised land. Well, I hope heaven's not like that because there's giants and enemies and war waiting for them in the promised land. That's not heaven. That's the Christian life. So what's the crossing of Jordan? Well, the exodus, the pulling of his people out of slavery. That's like when God redeemed us out of the bondage of sin. And then by faith, they stepped into that river. They didn't have to do anything. They crossed over on dry ground. And so you take a step of faith toward God and repentance. He opens up the way through Jesus Christ and allows you to come into this promised land. And now you're free. Now you're free, but you know what else you are? You're a soldier. You're coming into a place of war. That's exactly what the Christian life is. The Lord had promised Joshua and Israel victory, and he had the power to make good on that promise if they would obey him. But victory would not come without battle. Without battle. You are a soldier. And there must be battle. There's all this spiritual territory that lays before us once we get saved. You know, that's what's incredible. You read the book of Joshua and it's like, okay, you're in now go take it. Well, this morning, Brother Sargent preached an awesome message about Jabez's prayer, how that God would enlarge his coasts. And that's what's going on here, is that God has all this territory spiritually for us to go and take, to expand, to grow, to thrive, but we've got to take it. There are battles that have to be fought for the ground that has been held by the enemy in our lives. Now some of those battles are just small skirmishes, and we've got to fight some of those every day. Do you know that? It's not just the big battles, it's the little ones that make a difference. There's the stray sinful thought that gets in and you got to take that captive and you've got to deal with it and get rid of it the Bible way. You've got to learn how to bounce your eyes away from those things that will cause you to lust. You've got to fight not to respond with selfishness or anger, but rather with the fruit of the spirit. make sure that you are vigilant when something comes, that you, that you, when information comes your way, that you don't gossip, that you don't contribute to that, that you don't lie, that you don't respond to your parents with rebellion. These are daily little skirmishes, but the daily little skirmishes make a big difference over the course of a life. But then sometimes there are those pivotal battles that really determine how far you can go in the Christian life. Over the course of time, the devil and the world and the flesh within us have built up strongholds. They are like the fortified city of Jericho. These sinful habits Sinful habits have been built up for so long that they are impossibly strong in your life. And there's so much a part of you that to pull one down basically requires a part of you dies. And the flesh and the self always resists that. We don't like any part of us to die. It's core to who we are. And yet it needs to die. it needs to be pulled down. Now, what if Israel had looked at the Jericho situation, and they look at the map and everything, and they say, you know what? Jericho's probably the toughest battle we're gonna face in Canaan. How about we just leave that one for last? Let's just go in, and we can skirt around the edge here. AI's right there. Gibeon's next to that. Beth, I mean, we've got all these unwalled cities that are just ripe for the picking. How about we just leave the hard one alone for now, and we go and we take, well, what's possible for us to take at this stage in our military credentials and all of that. If you don't deal with the strongholds, you never make forward progress. They would always be looking behind them. Are the people from Jericho going to come out and come from behind? Are they going to surround us? Are they going to take back everything that we've already conquered? No. Jericho had to go. Because if you don't deal with the Jerichos in your life, you're just not going to go very far as a Christian. You'll go a little ways. You'll take some easy battles here and there, but you will always live under the shadow of Jericho. You'll always be looking back over your shoulder, wondering if the enemy will come out and beat you while you're weak and while you're not paying attention. And you might try to take new ground, but if you leave the stronghold there undefeated, you will lose ground you already conquered. But if you take it on and you find the power of God to conquer something that big in your life. Listen to me. All the other battles suddenly become winnable. Does that make sense? If God can help you conquer the biggest stronghold in your life, well, that shows you he can he can help you rid all of them. He can help you win every battle. He can help you with the day-to-day stuff, no problem, because He helped you with the biggest stuff. Does it ever seem like you're doing battle over the same sinful habits all the time? Hopefully, when you come to camp, the Lord gets a hold of your heart a little bit, and you make some good decisions. But I want to ask you, especially those of you who've been coming multiple years to camp, Are those decisions, have they really moved you forward or is it just retaking ground that you already took once upon a time and then lost again to the enemy? Is it just a maintenance effort to where that your spiritual walk really just happens from camp to camp to camp and in between it's just losing ground? That is not a recipe for victory. That's not how God set this thing up to work. Times like revivals and camps and all of that, that should be moving you forward. That should be taking ground that you have never yet conquered. Why is it that we're spinning our tires over all of this, retaking the same ground? Because there's strongholds that still stand. And once they come down, I'm telling you, It opens up a whole world of possibilities of what the Lord can do in you and through you that you never imagined possible. I've seen people who've been saved for years and years and years and never really went forward much for God. And it's possibly because. There's just this one particular stronghold of the flesh standing in their way, and they wouldn't deal with it. On the other hand, I've seen people's lives that sort of kind of plateaued for a long, long, long, long while, and then God gave them a victory. And suddenly, they weren't on a plateau anymore. Now, they're moving forward. Now, they're growing. Like we ought to be because of one key victory, one key act of repentance and surrender to God that opened up the way for them to finally live a victorious life for Christ. And those Jerichos, those strongholds, they can be different for every person. They're not always the same. One individual gets saved and maybe, you know, their pent up anger just kind of melts away and they just, it's replaced by this tenderness that's within them. Whereas for somebody else, it remains a battleground for a long time. Maybe because it was a part, such a part of them for so long, or maybe they were raised in a home where anger was just the response to everything. And so it's core to really who they are and how they grew up and they don't know how to respond any other way. We heard this morning that if you've got a faulty opinion of God, of you, well, that's a stronghold. That's a stumbling block. Because until that changes, until you can start to see yourself not as a victim anymore, not as the loser anymore, Well, then that's going to have you. It's going to have a hold of you. For somebody else, the stronghold tonight, I'm not just talking about other people and other Christians. You understand I'm talking to you tonight? You're the ones who's here. Are you here? Okay, good. Just making sure. And I'm not talking about the person at the other end of the pew or the one next to you. I'm talking to you tonight. Holy Spirit's trying to say something to you. You can fill in the blank perhaps, and probably even right now the Holy Spirit is putting his finger on your strongholds. Maybe it's the entertainment you're allowing into your life. The movies that you watch, the television programs. the music that you're listening to, the video games that you're playing. And in and of themselves, if those things are decent, I have no problem with any of them in moderation, in balance. But if you've got no standards on those things, you understand there's just really no limit to the depths of filth that's contained in them. And you're putting that into your mind and you think, well, that's different. I've got my God compartment over here where my Christian life exists. And then I've got my entertainment compartment over here where I can just take all this stuff in. It doesn't really affect me. Baloney. It affects everything. You might think your life works that way and everything's nice and tidy little boxes. Sin doesn't stay in tidy little boxes. It's like leaven, the Bible says. It grows, it spreads, it infects beyond the borders that you put. It's kind of like some people keep a little pet sin around, you know, keep it in a little kennel over here and come visit it once in a while. But that little pet is going to grow into a monster that will devour your life. You can't control it. It's got you. Well, sometimes young people and the not so young, are spiritually defeated over and over in a particular area of life and they can't get the victory over it. But what they're doing is they're failing to connect the dots that by allowing the flesh to win over here in your life, you're making it stronger in this area too. The flesh is not contained in these ways. You feed the flesh in your entertainment and you're taking in all of the garbage stuff. Well, don't be surprised when it comes to the spiritual battle that you've been dealing with that it knocks you flat on your back again. You say, why can't I get victory here? You're feeding the monster. You're giving it what it wants over in another area of life. Why is it that you struggle so much to get up on Sunday morning and pay attention in church? Could it be because you've been up till 2 a.m. playing video games and watching movies on Saturday night? What did you call it? A duh thought, right? Duh. There's a connection between these things. Why are you struggling with all of these lustful thoughts and sinful fantasies and you can't seem to keep them out of your head? Maybe because that's what you're feeding in. What you're watching has all kinds of immodesty and has all kinds of sinful stuff that you would never approve of, but you watch it anyway. Or you listen to it over the song. No, the songs are, you think it's just neutral. I just like the beat of it. No. The content matters and it's affecting you. Whenever you fail to take down the big stronghold, whenever you got that thing off to the side, you're like, That's gonna be a major one, you know? I think I'll just put that one off, and I'm not ready to give that one up yet. Okay, well, you might make a couple little good moves here and there throughout your Christian life, but over time, those victories you win, they'll just get chipped back away because all the sinful stuff you're feeding over here. And if you try to avoid dealing with the main problem, that stronghold, whenever you try to grow, whenever you try to go forward, Jericho always comes back to bite you. And that kind of back and forth Christianity is downright discouraging. Isn't it? I don't think I'm the only one talking from experience here. On again, off again, up and down. I'm really excited about God and then I'm way lost all that. That's discouraging. It may even make you wonder like, man, how can I even be saved? And I don't know, maybe you need to grapple with that question. But a lot of times, it's just because you're behaving carnally. You're not dealing with the battles the way that God gave you the weaponry to deal with it. Maybe you just kind of quit fighting and you're like, you know what? It is what it is. I guess this is just the kind of Christian that I'll be. I'll never be one of those those preachers or missionaries or or even those those dedicated members. You know, I'll never be one of them. The Lord will just have to be happy with this. Well, I'm here to tell you tonight he's not. He is not happy when we settle for partial victory in our lives. He told Joshua to go in and possess the land. To take it all. He said in Deuteronomy 7, when the Lord thy God shall deliver them from before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Now, that's not how we're supposed to deal with people as the New Testament saints, but it is exactly how we're supposed to do battle with the flesh. Show no mercy. Be serious about it. We are dealing with not just, not wrestling with flesh and blood. Bible says the battles that we're facing, the problems you're going through, it's not other people. That relates to the victimhood mentality. Oh, my biggest problems in life are these people, that person, or this group of people. No, the problem is not people. The problems that we face are principalities and powers, demonic forces that are against us. that are against you going forward for God. That's what these verses are talking about in 2 Corinthians as well, that we're part of a spiritual kingdom and we're fighting spiritual battles. And those battles require spiritual weapons to win the victory. And that's why it's so impossible to try to get victory on your own. Because it's a battle that requires God's power to win it. Verse four here in chapter 10 of 2 Corinthians, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, meaning physical weapons. You can't fight this. You can't take down these strongholds with a sword or a gun or with bigger muscles or with fighter jets. That's not how the spiritual battles work. No, we need weapons that are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Remember all the sevens in our passage? The seven priests, the seven trumpets, the seven days, the seventh time, all of that designed to show that he is going to win this battle. It's gotta be mighty through him. Now they certainly had a part to play, didn't they? They didn't get to just show up in Canaan land and look, the cities are all smoking heaps of rubble and all the people are dead. Goody. No, that's not how it worked. They had to actually strap on a sword and go to war. But if they would step forward the way that God told them to do it and follow his battle plans, he was there to give them the victory. And that's the same thing spiritually. We have a part to play in all of this. There's a real problem that I've sensed among Christians that think that victory just should happen to them. You know, like, well, and again, it kind of goes back to this idea of like, well, if I was really saved, then I'd be victorious. That's not the recipe we find in the Bible. No, salvation certainly must be taken care of first or you'll have no victory, of course. But that doesn't mean that you're automatically just gonna whistle your way through life and everything's gonna be easy. It's a war. You've gotta fight for ground. You've gotta learn how to deny your flesh. To say no to yourself sometimes. That's not natural, but it's something we can learn. It's something that we can be disciplined through the Holy Spirit to learn. You know what a disciple is? A disciplined one. To discipline ourselves to say no to the flesh. to set up some standards in our lives, to be willing to change when God brings us to a point of confrontation with our sin. But all of that's gonna mean nothing if you're not relying upon God's power and doing it His way. Otherwise, it's just like a New Year's resolution. You ever had one of those? Somebody give me your latest New Year's resolution. Is that not a thing anymore? Read more books, okay, in 2022, okay, successful? Come on, man, it's a resolution. Yeah, that's how it usually goes. They say that like gym memberships. January, everybody's there. This is gonna be an awesome year. Next week, nobody, right? Everybody's canceling their free trials and memberships. Why is that? Because we run out of willpower. There's only so much willpower you've got and life gets hard and the battle gets hard. And if all that's sustaining it is your willingness and wanting to change, you're going to fail. Is that discouraging? Kind of if willpower is all you have to depend on, but it's not. That's where the power of God has to come in. That's where faith and doing it God's way. has to come in. You've got to come to the end of your strength and trust His strength. Well, you say, I don't know how to do that. You know, I'm trying to have more faith. How do I actually do that? By trusting His way enough to do it His way. This is a pretty simplistic definition of faith. Don't tell me that you believe God's Word if you're not obeying God's Word. You don't believe it. You don't believe that his way's best, because you're operating as if your way's best. And when you're using your way instead of his way, who thinks that's going to really work in the spiritual battle? It won't. You've got to do it his way. It's like the marching around the city. Who came up with that? That doesn't make any sense. I don't think that's going to work. Just have the faith to do it God's way. and watch him win the battles. Hebrews chapter 11 tells us, by faith, by faith, the walls of Jericho fell down. Not by marching, not by blowing trumpets, not by anything other than they did it God's way. Even though it didn't maybe make sense at the time. They had the faith. to trust and obey, and God honored them by defeating them. And that's how we have to fight strongholds in our lives. That's how we have to fight sin. That's how we live a victorious life, is to determine and trust that my way is not as good as his way, that he's got it figured out. Have any of you ever heard of Dave Ramsey? Okay, kind of a money financial guru guy. He's got a show, video, podcast, I don't know, probably all of it. And I was listening to, I don't listen to it regularly, but I enjoy his little sarcasm sometimes. and good reminders and things. And so I was listening to him one day and multiple callers on this particular episode were calling in and they said, Dave, I really like a lot of what you do and a lot of what you say, but I've got a really unique situation in my life. And so he'd say, so what baby step are you on? Are you familiar with the baby steps? There's no, come on, you're teenagers. Do you know what money is? then you need to know what the baby steps are, okay? So look up Dave Ramsey. It's good stuff. But he said, what baby step are you on? Do you have $1,000 saved up? Are you snowballing your debt? What step are you on? Well, Dave, I've got a really unique situation going on. So I'm not really following that order. I'm doing a different order of the baby steps. I've kind of got this modified plan. And you know what? I've kind of hit a wall here. And I'm not sure exactly. I need a little bit of advice from you, Dave, about what I should do next. And he blasted them, man. It was great. If they were taking his plan piecemeal and like modifying it with their own stuff, that's not his plan at all. Big surprise it's not working. He's kind of got this Southern Tennessee accent, you know. He says, you're not doing the baby steps. You're calling in here for advice, but right out of the gate you say you're not doing this or this or this. Apparently you don't want my advice. You got your own plan. How's that working? That's what we're talking about. that there are some steps in the Christian life. And if you follow them God's way, it leads you to victory. But sometimes we get to thinking that we're smarter than God is. You wouldn't say that, but what you're doing shows that. You don't think you need to. You know, we don't need the seven days of going around the city. That's just wasting time. So it's modified, let's just start blowing the trumpets at the city. If they had modified God's plan like that, would the walls have come down? Would they? No way. It's doing it God's way. Can I give you seven baby steps for Christians? Of course I can, I've got the floor. Would you write them down? Do you have your book? Do you have a pen? A ballpoint? Gotta have it, right? You're like, I can't follow your outlines. Okay, here's one for you, right? Okay, this step is preliminary, but it's not number one. So there's a step before number one. Can anybody guess what it is? These are the baby steps to Christian victory. What's the step before the steps? Get saved. Yeah, because there's no spiritual victory without spiritual life. It's not gonna happen. So if you're here, hey, give me the answers, pastor. I need to know how to conquer all this sin in my life. Are you saved? No. Well, let's start there. That's all you need to be focused on right now is seeking the Lord's. And if you say, well, I'm not, be scared. I'm serious about that. If you're not saved and you know you're not saved and you're not feeling any conviction about not being saved, that's a very scary place to be. So you need to be seeking God earnestly saying, speak to me, convict me. So that's bonus for you there. But let's say you are saved. How you want to move forward in baby steps to God. I'm telling you, these are deep, deep and profound. Be baptized and become a member of a good local church. Yep. That's Bible. Yep. When people get saved, that's a first, we call it step of obedience, isn't it? To be baptized, become a member. Second baby step, you ready? Be faithful to attend church every time the doors are open. Be faithful to attend. Now, for now, you might be coming because your parents make you come, but pretty soon, you're gonna make that choice. And that needs to be settled in your soul right now. If the doors are open, I'm gonna be there. Unless you're sick or something, okay, don't be looking for loopholes. We understand there are situations, but you be faithful. Don't try to modify the plan. Don't try to figure out like, oh, I think I can come just once a week and I'll be sustained. Quit trying to tinker with God's plan for victory. That might make sense to you, but it's not what he said. He said, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together. Amen. He did. It's Bible. So be baptized. That's number one. Join, join the church. Second, be faithful to attend. Third, read your Bible and pray every single day. Read your Bible and pray every single day. Again, You may not ever get to a place in your life where you have reached absolute perfection on this, but it ought to become a consistent habit to where you are faithful in it. It needs to be there. And if you're struggling with sin and you can't figure out why, but you've not learned how to be consistent in your personal devotions, you've skipped baby step number three. No wonder there's no victory in your life. You're not even taking the step to try to have a walk with God, right? Yep. Number four, this assumes that you're gonna start working and making money. Start tithing and put God first. Start tithing and put God first. Number five, Get involved and serve in a weekly church ministry. Weekly, regular, whatever you wanna put in there. Church is not a place where we just come and sit and listen and leave. It's not just a place where we come to see our friends and have some good fellowship, although I enjoy all of that. It is a place where we serve God together. Find a ministry. Yes. Right now, as a teenager, you may not be able to go into every ministry. Some of them may be reserved for adults, depending on what church you're in or whatever. But find something. There's a place where you can take a little piece of ownership of that ministry and say, I'm doing this to God on a regular basis and offer that to him. Because listen, Don't just let the adults, oh, this frustrates me so much when there's something going on, maybe fellowship or dinner or something. I see all of the ladies, like the older ladies and stuff, they're all in the kitchen and they're working and man, they're just laboring. You got these teenage girls over here just sitting around in their little huddle and they're just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, enjoying friend time. Go work. Go serve. Go let those faithful ladies have a break and take on the mantle of servanthood. It's time, teenager. You're not the little kids anymore running around in junior church that don't know anything. You are young adults. You are. You understand that being a teenager, you don't find that in the Bible? There's children and there are adults. Which are you? The teen years are supposed to be what I call an apprenticeship in adulthood. You should be thinking and learning how to act and respond as adults, just with added supervision while you're learning. Oh boy, I got to preaching on that one. Get involved and serve God in regular ministry. Number six, purposefully be a witness. every chance you get. Purposefully be a witness every chance you get, because that's why we're here. That's why our churches exist and why we are in them. We glorify God by sharing the word and the good news of Jesus Christ to those who do not know him. That's why we're here. You know, glorifying God, we could do a lot of that better in heaven than we can here. If it comes to praising God or worshiping God, to having devotional time and to walk with God, I could do that way better in his presence than I can here. So why did God leave me here? Because there are others who do not yet know him. And so be a witness. Some of that is your testimony, just the way you conduct yourself, and then grow in that, knowing that it is your responsibility. Start with inviting somebody to church. Give them a tract. In time, you need to learn, Christian, how to talk to somebody else about the gospel. You say, well, I don't know how. You better find out how. You better learn how. It doesn't take an enormous amount of knowledge to know this. And it is your job, so do something. Every chance you get to be a witness. And then number seven, I think this one just kinda sharpens the saw and it keeps everything else in line. It's a little longer. Whenever God convicts you about anything, surrender it to him right away. Whenever God convicts you about anything, surrender it to Him right away. The idea is learn how to obey God without delay and without a fight. It shouldn't always be a wrestling match for God to get you to do something or God to get you to give up something in your life. It ought to be just a, if it's just a little pinprick of conviction, that you know, I need to do this differently. I need to change. Let it be that easy for the Lord to guide you. Did you get them all? You like those? I don't care if you like them. They're Bible and they work. And you say, well, these aren't very deep. These aren't very profound. Okay, then start doing them. And yes, they may not be profound in the sense that they're very complex and nuanced and all of that, but that doesn't mean they're easy either. And you're going to find that as you try to implement them in your life. You say, well, what's the big deal about these seven? What was the big deal about going around the city? I don't know. Well, why six times then seven times? Well, I have an idea. I have a theory, you know, about some of that, but I don't know. God just said to do it. If you do it this way, I'll give you the victory. And he's laid out in his word as a Christian. If you do these things, you'll find victory in your life. And you know what's going to happen is that little by little, that thing just kind of gets rolling. And little by little you take down a stronghold, maybe a camp or Lord really gets a hold of you. And then you start just applying these things. And it's just a little step at a time. And it's like it just gets spinning in your life and you don't even realize it, but you're picking up spiritual momentum. And going forward, isn't that what you want? Don't you want to be moving forward for God consistently in a way that you know that you're in His will, you know that you're hearing from Him, you're encountering God, you know that you've got a relationship with Him, and you're doing something that matters? But people like to modify the plan. Well, I've got a unique situation. Well, I'm not really a morning person, and so I can't do my Bible reading every day. And so I try to squeeze it in whenever I can. That plan won't work. It won't work. Quit trying to change the plan. Do things God's way. If you got more faith in your plan than God's way, I'm not holding my breath for the walls of Jericho to come crashing down in your life. It's not gonna happen. It's much more likely you're gonna learn how to just live with it and navigate around it and settle, settle, young person, for so much less. than what God has for you. No real forward growth, always on the defense, forever spinning your tires, waiting for the next attack from the enemy. God's word, God's way, it works. But it's not going to work for you unless you've got enough faith to actually do it. You're called by God to go forward into victory. But it's not going to happen until you're willing to take on these strongholds, get serious about following God's battle plan. And sometimes I just wish that God would or could give you just a glimpse, just a little vision of the kinds of victories and indeed adventure that he has in store for you if you'll just follow his will and his way. If you choose to do life like he says and you surrender to him and you just give it all over to him and say, what do you want from me, Lord? I'll do it. I'll do it right now. And if you could just see, if he would lay it all out for you and you could see 10 years down the road and 20 years down the road and 50 years down the road what life could be. gave it all to Him. You'd realize there's nothing better that you could ever plan for your life than what He's already got planned for you. He's already got it ready for you. You say, well, why doesn't He? Why doesn't He show me? Because then I would know and then I would trust Him. There's the key, isn't it? The trust. The faith. What's the Bible say? Faith is the victory that overcometh the world. How are you going to overcome the world and the flesh and the devil in your life? By trusting that God's way will work. And it will. It will work. Let's stand.