Well, reading from Joshua 10, beginning at verse 9, making our way through this book, hear the word of God. Joshua, therefore, came upon them suddenly, having marched all night from Gilgal. So the Lord routed them before Israel, killed them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, chased them along the road that goes to Beth Horon, and struck them down as far as Ezekiah and Makeda. And it happened, as they fled before Israel and were on the descent of Beth Horon, that the Lord cast down large hailstones from heaven on them as far as Ezekiah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword. Then Joshua spoke 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, son, stand still over Gibeon and moon in the valley of Idolon. So the sun stood still and the moon stopped till the people had revenge upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And there has been no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice of a man for the Lord fought for Israel. Then Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Gilgal. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and it is our desire to continually be conformed to it, and I pray that you would quicken the word to our heart as it is preached. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, it might be thought that a passage dealing with ancient bloody warfare has nothing to do with our day-to-day lives that you and I are going through, but that's actually not the case, because the power that was on display in the miracles in this chapter here have been on display for the last 2,000 years and continues to be on display in our lives today. And by the way, his power goes way beyond miracles. We're going to be looking at the miracles in this passage. But Ephesians 1, 19 through 20 says that the same power that raised up Jesus from the dead continues to be at work in our lives, and he speaks of it as the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, not just in the apostles' lives, but in us who believe. And so I believe this passage is very relevant. It highlights the nature of God's power that he wished on behalf of his people. Now, it does bother me. It makes me sad that there are so many Christians, including Reformed Christians, who deny that miracles continue to happen today. And I think sometimes it's because they've bought into some of the spirit of our age and rationalism or empiricism. But whatever the case, there are a lot of people who deny that. And if you happen to have friends who have a hard time believing that there are any miracles today, I recommend the 1,000-page, two-volume book by Craig S. Keener. It's called Miracles, the Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. It's the first picture. Now, this is meticulously a research book that looks at some of the millions of claimed miracles around the world, and it weeds out the ones that could possibly have any other explanation than the miraculous, and it just focuses on the ones where there really is no explanation other than God's miraculous power. And if your friend or some other skeptic continues to doubt that there are miracles after they've read that book, I think they would have to admit it's because they're just prejudiced against it, prejudiced against the Bible, or they, you know, are contradicting their own fundamental principles, whether it's rationalism or empiricism. If it's empiricism, the experiences of so many case studies around the world. In any case, you guys are not skeptics, so I'm not going to get into that. I'm just going to dive into the passage, but I will reference one or two stories from that book. Verse 9 says, Joshua therefore came upon them suddenly, having marched all night from Gilgal. And let's look at the first part of that verse. Joshua did not wait at home and pray, Lord, would you take care of those people who are coming after Gibeon and just let the Lord take care of it. No, he also went out immediately marching, as soon as he heard this, marching all night, totally surprised the Amorite coalition when he gets there with his army. They were totally not expecting that. They expected him to be dealing with the rest of the coalition that was marching toward Gilgal, but when Joshua knew he had a responsibility to do something, he immediately did it, and he did it with all of his might. And it was as Joshua was obeying God by faith that God blessed him with supernatural provision. And I think in this he is a great example for us. If it is within your power to act, Prayer is not a substitute for action. Okay, that's basically, in a nutshell, what the main lesson of this particular point is. Prayer without action is considered hypocrisy by God, and it actually is treating God as if he is the slave and you are the Lord. Yet how many times do Christians pray that God would bless them on their exam, and they've not studied for their exam, or that God would bless them in their performance, but they've not prepared at all for their performance, right? Proverbs 13.4 says, the soul of a lazy man desires and has nothing. but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich." And so God is going to act, he is going to richly provide, but that verse says he does it as his child is diligent. One commentator on Exodus 13 said this, prayer without action will not remove physical disease, will not improve social position, will not give mental culture, will not strengthen moral character. Men must go forward as well as pray. And I say amen to that. There are literally hundreds of examples in the Bible of this principle. God provides his power, and sometimes it's miraculous, but not always. God provides his power. to those who are responsible and who act, who do what they can, as feeble as that effort might be. And you can think of the story of the little boy, you know, the feeding of the thousands. He only had, you know, some loaves and fishes, not enough to feed the multitude. But when he, by faith, gave it to the Lord, then God came through, and he proved himself to be adequate. He blessed that effort of faith with supernatural provision. And there are plenty of passages where God refuses to act on behalf of those who are lazy. Some people quote Isaiah 40, verse 29 out of context. It says, he gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might, he increases strength. And so, yes, praise God, that is true. But the rest of the passage indicates he gives that strength to those who are willing to serve him so that they will mount up with wings like eagles, so that they will run and not be weary. You know, people reference the power of God on behalf of his people in 1 Corinthians 1. Yes, praise God for that power, but it's on behalf of his saints who are following God's calling. And Keener documents numerous examples of God-blessing Christians who could not do what they believed God was calling them to do, But they did it anyway. They did it trusting him to come through. And I'll just read one example. It's a long one, but I think it's worth reading. Keener says, one well-known account today is from Dr. Chauncey Crandall in Palm Beach, Florida, and some local and national television news outlets reported on this spectacular raising from the dead claim. A renowned cardiologist with world-class credentials, Crandall certainly fits Hume's profile of an ideal witness with much to lose by lying. Indeed, in today's milieu, he is risking his reputation even to claim such matters truthfully. Crandall told me that he did not seek the notoriety. Why risk his established reputation for something so controversial? Yet he could not deny where the evidence led him. And I will just parenthetically add that in the footnotes to the book, he goes through all of the other evidence that the doctors went through to verify that this person was dead. You know, the cyanosis and the eyes. He goes through a lot of evidence. But he summarizes the story saying this. On Friday, October 20, 2006, 53-year-old auto mechanic Jeff Markin checked himself into the hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, and died of a heart attack there. Emergency room personnel labored for nearly 40 minutes to revive him, unsuccessfully shocking the flat-lined man seven times. Grandel was called in to certify the obvious. There was no point in continuing attempts to revive the man. Grandel recounts that Markin was not merely dead, but unusually, obviously dead. His face, toes, and fingers had already turned black. Crandall concurred with the obvious conclusion the patient was declared dead at 8.05 a.m., and after writing up his assessment, Crandall left to return to his scheduled patients. Very quickly, however, he felt an extraordinary compulsion from God's Spirit to return. He initially, but only briefly, resisted this compulsion and then returned. The nurse was disconnecting the IVs and preparing the body for the morgue by sponging it down, yet Crandall suddenly found himself praying over the corpse. Father God, I cry out for the soul of this man. If he does not know you as Lord and Savior, please raise him. from the dead right now at Jesus' name. The nurse glared at him in astonishment, but Crandall instructed the emergency room doctor who had just walked in to shock him with a paddle one more time. For Crandall, prayer and medicine work ideally together. They are not mutually exclusive. Again, illustrating, you do what you can, okay? He goes on, the other doctor protested. They had all recognized that Markin was beyond resuscitation. Nevertheless, out of respect for his colleague, the doctor complied and shocked Markin's corpse. Suddenly, the monitor, which they were all watching, moved from a flat line to a normal heartbeat, which would have been extraordinary even if the heart had stopped only briefly. In my more than 20 years as a cardiologist, he reported, I have never seen a heartbeat restored so completely and suddenly. Markin immediately began breathing unaided, and within minutes, Markin's fingers and toes began moving, and he began speaking. Perhaps recalling Frankenstein's monster, the panicked nurse started screaming, Dr. Crandall, what have you done to this patient? She did not know what they would do with him now. She could have had cause for concern. As already noted, someone dead even for six minutes would have irreparable brain damage. Markin had no brain damage, however. And even his numb, once blackened extremities were ultimately restored. Crandall met with Mark on Monday morning, sitting up, Mark and talked with him, contemplating his second chance on life. Since then, Crandall has grown still bolder in praying for miracles, and some of his patients have testified to the media about these extraordinary cures. Now, I know it's a long story, and I'll be referring back to it to illustrate some other points, but the point I'm wanting to make here is that the doctor did what he could And he prayed that God would come through for what he could not do. When you can help a person financially, don't just pray that God would help that person. It may be that God is calling you. to be a part of that help. Whatever the thing that you're praying for, do what you can do and trust God to come through above and beyond your ability. Okay, moving on. The next phrase shows a related concept, that God's power does not preclude human sacrifice. It says, having marched all night from Gilgal. So they were up all the previous day, all night, and they were now going to be fighting an extra long day that was twice as long as a normal day would be. So that speaks of a loss of time and energy and sleep and convenience. At the end of the day, they would have been dog-tired after all of that fighting, and yet they would have to acknowledge that it was nothing but the power of God that enabled them to have such a spectacular victory. It's not either-or, it is both-and, and God expects us to make sacrifices for His kingdom. And when we do so, he loves to bless us supernaturally above and beyond. I should say that God does on occasion do miracles in our lives where we haven't done anything. He's done that for me, he's done it for some of you. But ordinarily, God blesses those who sacrificially serve his kingdom by anointing their work with supernatural power. Many of the miracles that Craig Keener has documented show this to be true. And I like what A.W. Pink said, He said, if more of the servants and soldiers of Christ were willing to lose a night's sleep in his cause, particularly in efforts to help their distressed brethren, we should oftener behold the Lord bearing his mighty arm, showing himself strong on their behalf. Now, the next point is just building on the previous two points, all dealing with human responsibility. And it says, though God routes, kills, chases, and strikes down, He usually did it through human means. So take a look at verses 10 through 11. So the Lord routed them before Israel. So notice that it's the Lord who routed them, but he routed them before Israel. In other words, as Israel is chasing those soldiers. So God's the one who's doing the routing, but he's using Israel as a tool. The text goes on to say, killed them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, chased them along the road that goes to Beth Horon, and struck them down as far as Ezekiah and Makeda. So the Lord is the subject of each of those three verbs. So God killed, chased, and struck them down. But notice the context in verse 11. And it happened as they fled before Israel. So all of this indicates there is human agency involved. But without God's blessing, the human agency would not have been successful. And I think the same is true of everything that we do. When you start your day at carpentry or sales or, you know, working in the hospital or sewing or farming, whatever it is that you do, Start your day off praying that God would prosper and anoint the work of your hands and prove that this day God himself was working through you. It wasn't just you working, God was working through you and blessing that. I do that every single day that I work, ask God to anoint my work so that his supernatural is seen through it. And I don't just do it in the ministry, I did it in my previous jobs as a janitor, When I worked in the plywood mill, when I worked as a maintenance man, as an orderly, daily, sometimes multiple times throughout the day, I would ask for God's presence and power to be working through me. Even the giving of a cup of cold water, it can be ordinary, or it can have an extraordinary effect as God blesses that. I have seen God bless even administrative work supernaturally, and a lot of times He blesses my attitudes supernaturally when I am working through Him. So Scripture says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. You will find God blessing you the most richly when you obey that admonition. But let's move on to notice the remarkable miracles themselves. This is the part of the chapter that commentators get all bent out of shape about and just try to explain away. First, the unusual hail. Though God brings all rain and he brings all hail, there is a difference between natural hail and rain and supernatural hail and rain. I think this was a miraculous hail. Verse 11. And it happened as they fled before Israel, were on the descent of Beth Horon, that the Lord cast down large hailstones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword. So what makes this a miracle? There are commentaries out there that just kind of try to explain it away. It's not really miraculous at all. After all, there have been a lot of hailstorms down through history that have been deadly. I just looked, you know, for a few random ones. A documented storm in China with a hail where it weighed several pounds. That's pretty gigantic hail. In May of 1888, a hailstorm in Moradad, India killed 250 people. Largest American hailstone on record was 17 inches in diameter. It weighed one and a half pounds So what makes this a miracle? Okay, I would say it's not necessarily the size of the hail Or even the fact that it killed a lot of people because there are normal hail storms that have done that So there are three facts that make me call this a miracle first the hail only killed Amorites despite the fact that Israel and the Amorite soldiers occupied the same ground, right? Israel's chasing after them, fighting with them, killing them, and yet this hail is very selective. It's not killing any of the Israelites. It's systematically killing off these Amorites. They're being deliberately targeted. And second, though Israel killed huge numbers of Amorites with their sword, the text says that the hailstones killed far more Amorites than the Israelites did. Now, there'd only been a few dozen that had been killed. We might chalk it up to some weird coincidence. But the vast number killed, and some people estimate it would have been in the range of tens of thousands, shows that the protection of some and the destruction of others was very planned. Third, it says, the Lord cast down large hailstones from heaven on them as for a Zazekiah. Now, that phrase indicates three things. First of all, the hailstones hit the people, not just randomly hitting the ground. Second, it says the Lord threw them. And then third, the text says that the hailstones pursued them as they fled. Now, some people emphasize one more thing. I could have put it into your bulletins, but they point out that the word for hailstones here is never elsewhere translated as hailstones. It's not the normal word for hailstones, but it is the normal word for rocks. And so they say, this is meteorites that fell out of heaven. And if you look at some of the older artwork, you'll see that a lot of the older artwork has stones falling out of heaven against them. So they would say, that makes this very, very unusual. It's meteorites that are targeting the Amorites. So whatever the stones were, they acted like laser-guided missiles in their unerring accuracy. God was clearly overruling the normal course of nature and was making nature itself turn against his enemies. And Craig Keener documents many stories of God using nature to protect his people and to curse his enemies. I'll just share very quickly three stories, won't go into the depth that he does. But there were some witches very opposed to the brand new Christian work that was there, and they gathered the whole village around the sacred tree, and they were praying curses against the Christian's God. Well, lightning came, struck the sacred tree, burned it, scattering the villagers. And he shows the pictures and some of the testimonies and documentation from the villagers. Likewise, a Tanzanian pastor saw a rampaging lioness attacking and killing people. And he just felt moved to pronounce God's curse upon this lion, asking God, destroy this lion. And instantly, as soon as he said that, a lightning bolt came out of heaven and struck the lion dead. Likewise, the non-charismatic missionaries, Eugene and Sandy Thomas, by the way, there was a lot in this book, a lot of non-charismatics who, whoa, a miracle happened. They weren't expecting any miracles, but anyway, it's an interesting book. The non-charismatic missionaries, Eugene and Sandy Thomas, had a fire destroy the roof that was over the kiln and over all of the bricks that were being prepared to go into the kiln. And he prayed, Lord, would you please protect, because there was rain coming in, would you protect these bricks because they're unfinished? It would set our work back financially, and in terms of schedule, it would completely ruin the bricks. and there was torrential rain that happened, but in this large area, I don't know if it was about the area of this room here, it's like a square block where not one drop of rain fell on the bricks, and people are walking in and out of the rain and into the dry area, and many people testify during the entire time of that storm, it was completely dry in that area. We ourselves as a family have experienced many miracles in Ethiopia where God controlled the laws of nature to protect our family. Now why do I even bring up these stories? It's because liberals object to miracles in the Bible because they say it violates the laws of science. Well, yeah, and that's the very definition of a miracle, right? And what are the laws of science? Laws of science are just a statistical analysis of what God's normal process of upholding all things by the word of power might be. You cannot think of nature as being entirely apart from God. These chairs could not exist if he's upholding every atom of everything by the word of his power. So God is the one who gives statistical laws of nature, and he can change those any time that he wants to, and he has done so numerous times in history. You know, through Elijah, you probably heard about that axe head floating. Well, axe heads don't float according to the laws of physics, but that's the definition of a miracle. God splitting the Red Sea so that the Israelites walk through on dry land. Now back to the application, here's the conclusion that Warren Weirsbe made of nature coming against the Amorites. He said, when God's people are obeying God's will, everything in the universe works for them. When we disobey God's will, everything works against us. Read Jonah 1 for a vivid illustration of this truth. So whether miraculous or not, God's power causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him. To me, this is so encouraging. That means lions and magistrates and mosquitoes and hail are not random accidents that ruined our lives. No, God planned them all. He's in control of them all. And actually, that's another independent point that I probably should have put into your outline, is that commentators point out that God was probably making a huge demonstration against the gods of Canaan, because the gods of the Amorites, according to archaeology, believed that Baal controlled rain, hail, snow, sun, and moon, and God is saying, Baal doesn't control that. We're going to defeat Baal and show that God himself controls all of these things. And when you look into mission stories around the world, many times you will see what a missionary calls, missionaries call power encounters, where God proves that the gods of those pagans are nothing. He loves to do that kind of thing. Okay, moving on, verse 12 shows the miraculous, remarkable faith of Joshua. And yes, I do think that that kind of faith is a miraculous, supernatural faith. It was not presumption. It was God-given. Verse 12 says, Then Joshua spoke 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, sun stands still over Gibeon, and moon in the valley of Ejolon. What on earth would possess Joshua to make a command like that? Because the text says he had never seen that before, nor afterwards, right? So, and interestingly, he doesn't just pray this, you know, in secret, hoping God will come through. No, he prays this boldly in front of all of Israel. And even today, God sometimes instills this supernatural surge of faith to believe him for something impossible. I read you one example in the story of the cardiac doctor in Florida who prayed in faith in front of his colleagues, colleagues who could have gotten him in trouble, who thought he was a nutcase, who were actually upset with what he was doing, and yet he prayed a crazy-sounding prayer that God would raise the dead. He had never done that before. But it was such a strong surge of confidence from God that he needed to do this, that he went ahead and did it. And Keener recounts other stories. By the way, you think that's just a one-off story. There's quite a few stories in that book about people who have been dead twice. 24 hours and more in China and South Korea who have been raised from the dead. Many of those were cases where individuals, sometimes an entire group of people, were given the supernatural confidence God was going to do something here, and God raised them from the dead. Now, people are gonna think I'm a nutcase, even preaching this stuff. But hey, it's real, and the Bible talks about it, and there is absolutely no theological basis for saying miracles cannot continue today. And he's given me this supernatural surge of faith to pray for things impossible in the past. He's given it to some of you. Just as one example, there are many witnesses to God miraculously multiplying the potatoes and meat at Davenport when a large group of people came in that we were not expecting, twice as many people, and we not only had enough for everybody to have firsts and seconds, and some people had thirds, we had leftover for the rest of that week. It was like real multiplication of potatoes and meat. Let's get to the most disputed miracle though. Miracle of the sun standing still. Verse 13 says, so the sun stood still and the moon stopped till the people had revenge upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. Now people who are skeptical of this miracle engage in all kinds of scripture twisting ways of explaining it away. So some people say this was just a solar eclipse. I'm sorry, because it says in verse 12 that the moon and the sun were in different places. There's no way it could be a lunar eclipse. Others claim that it was a refraction of the sun's rays so as to make it seem like the sun and moon were in different positions when they really were not in different positions. Well, there's no amount of twisting of the English or the Hebrew behind it that's going to allow that to be the case. Other people say, it's poetry, and so it didn't happen. Wait a minute, since when does biblical poetry mean that it didn't happen, that it's false? No, that's not true. And by the way, if you look at the rest of verses 12 and 13, he says exactly the same thing in the non-poetic sections as well. Another commentary says that the hailstorm darkened the skies so that the sun didn't appear for quite a while. No, the text says they could see the sun, they could see the moon, right? When verse 14 says that there was not another day like that before or after, we have to believe that this was not something ordinary, this was a miracle. And so among those who believe in miracles, there are three main theories of how this happened. I'm not even going to give the fourth theory. I think it's, yeah, flat earth. I'm not going to deal with that. There's so many objective biblical arguments against it, but just deal with the ones that are somewhat plausible. The first view is the geocentric view. This was the most popular up until the time of Galileo, and there is a growing body of scholars who are returning to this view, some of them feeling forced by, believe it or not, scientific evidence, others saying it's biblical. This view takes the words at face value and says, here it says it's the sun that moves, not the earth. They emphasize the phrases sun, stand still, So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped. And then later it says, so the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And so these people say, the miracle is not with the earth, the miracle is with the sun and the moon moving. And by the way, when I get this sermon up on the web, I'll give all kinds of articles, pro and con, for each one of these three points. You're gonna have to study that on your own. Second view is held to by a lot of sixth-day creationists today, but not all. This view holds to the current cosmology and says that the Earth spins on its axis once every 24 hours, or if you want to be precise, 23 hours and 56 minutes, orbits the Sun once every 365 days. So the miracle for them is that the Earth stopped its spinning or at least slowed down its spin. And by the way, that too would take a miracle of gigantic proportions because if the earth stopped, what happens to everything else that's on the earth? It's gonna go flying off, right? The oceans are gonna come out. But hey, that's not a problem for God. If that's the way he did it, he can stop the oceans and the people and everything at the same time, right? It's the nature of his miracles. Anyway, they explain the language of the sun moving from an earthbound perspective. It rises and it sets relative to our viewpoint. They speak of this as phenomenological language. Okay, so that's the second theory. Third theory is that God caused the earth to temporarily wobble where Canaan became the North Pole for one day. And you probably know up at the North Pole, there's seasons where the sun never goes down. It just goes around in a circle, right? So that's what they say happened there. There's actually a naturalistic explanation of this third view that was developed, I think, by Immanuel Velikovsky and has been popularized by a few other people. And they say it was a more moderate wobble with a longer day, not necessarily 24 hours of sunlight. And some of these advocates claim that there's a lot of scientific evidence of previous pole shifts due to meteorites that have hit the Earth. And they point to the same evidence I talked about earlier, that the word for hail here is actually rocks. So they say meteorites hit not just the Amorites, but hit the Earth with such force that it made a shift in the North and South Poles, explaining why prior to this time Alaska didn't have an ice cap. Supposedly in the time of Joshua, the North Pole was in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Norway, and it moved to where the Hudson Bay is today. And then they say it made another move at the time of Hezekiah. You remember where the dial goes back, a miracle there, and they say it moved from the Hudson Bay area to where the North Pole is today. And that's what they say accounts for, in Siberia, the instant freezing of so many of the mammoths, right? Why would there have been an instant freeze? Now, obviously, in this short amount of time, I'm not going to give you good, adequate explanations of all three of those theories. There's entire books that have been written on that. But honestly, there can be no naturalistic explanation of this miracle. It is, after all, a miracle. By definition, it's not naturalistic. Miracles defy the laws of physics. As one author said, attempts to explain this phenomenon by naturalistic means have all failed because no mechanism known to physics can absorb the Earth's spin energy and momentum. That would be the second view that I gave. or the universe's spin energy and momentum from a geocentric point of view in such a short period of time without causing great upheavals such as the oceans spilling over their continents. So on any theory of how it happened, there had to be many additional miracles that happened at the same time. Hey, our God's a God of miracles. Bottom line is, God said it, we need to believe it, however many stomach cramps that gives to scientists. And by the way, scientists, they're gonna have to do a whole lot more than just say, well, we gotta explain this. They're gonna have to discount a whole lot of other testimonies around the world as well of a long day or a long night, depending on part of the world, that coincided with Joshua's day. Okay, the black marks on the map in your outline, I didn't bring my outline up here, but if you take a look at the black and the white marks that are on that picture, they record, those are records of where we have documented long days or long nights, and they perfectly correlate with the time zones of what should be light and dark at that time. I'll just give you a sampling of some of those ancient testimonies. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about visiting Egypt where the priest showed him a manuscript documenting a day that lasted twice as long as a normal day. In other words, it was 24 hours of sunlight. Now, what's unique about this testimony is the Egyptians used water clocks that were very, very accurate, and they did not rely upon the sun, moon, and stars in any of their motions. And all of their records show incredible accuracy. So this is a very credible testimony. Fernand Crombet translated some Egyptian hieroglyphics, which also tell of Joshua's long day. It doesn't mention Joshua, obviously. I'm not going to read those, but they stand as a fascinating, concurring testimony that I say skeptics have to discount. The skeptics have to discount a lot of ancient testimonies. In 1810, the Reformed Baptist commentator John Gill refers to a now lost Chinese document that he was aware of that speaks of a long day in the reign of the Emperor Yao. Well, Emperor Yao was exactly at Joshua's time. At least five North American Indian tribes speak of an extra long night in ancient history. Various tribes in Central and South America speak of a long night in ancient history. And of course, in terms of time zones, America would be in the dark. at the same time that Canaan would be in the light, right? I'll give you just one more. There's many others, but J.G. Fraser relates a tradition in the Fiji Islands of a day in ancient history when the sun stayed on the horizon for a whole day. So it was almost set, but it didn't go down. It just stayed above the horizon for a whole day, an extra long day. Okay, so do we need those testimonies? No. Even if we had none of those testimonies, we would believe it because God said it, because God's Bible is the truth standard by which all other truths are measured, claims to truth. It's not vice versa. We don't believe or prove anything in the Bible by going to history. Nothing. We just believe it because God says it. We use ancient history to answer a man according to his folly and show that even on their own presuppositions, they cannot object to what the Bible has to say. So, Jesus said to the Father, your word is truth, John 17, 17. Psalm 119, 160 says, the entirety of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever. Let me explain what is so significant about those statements. Saying that God's word is truth is quite different than saying God's word is true. And I'm going to quote from Wayne Grudem. He explains this very well. He says, the difference is significant, for this statement encourages us to think of the Bible not simply as being true in the sense that it conforms to some higher standard of truth, but rather to think of the Bible as itself the final standard of truth. The Bible is God's Word, and God's Word is the ultimate definition of what is true and what is not true. God's Word is itself truth. Thus, we are to think of the Bible as the ultimate standard of truth, the reference point by which every other claim to truthfulness is to be measured. Those assertions that conform with the Scripture are true, while those that do not conform with Scripture are not true. And I would encourage you to have an absolute confidence in everything that the Bible says. You know, repeat to the Father, your word is truth, and claim that, and live by it. I'm not going to comment much on the moon standing still, except to say that it was a separate miracle of God, and the stopping of both was given for a purpose. Verse 13 says, till the people had revenge upon their enemies. So to finish off the Amorites, they needed a longer day. Now, I do think that there is a scientific significance to the fact that Joshua uses two different Hebrew words for the sun stopping and the moon stopping. The moon stopping actually indicates a slowing down, and I won't get into the significance for that. it is significant. But the second part of verse 13 is a corrective to some who have a false humility and believe, you know, you really ought not to talk about miracles. That's prideful. You ought not to publish anything about the miracles that God has done for us. Well, neither Joshua nor Joshua had any such feelings. They believed that God was glorified in recording the truth, and Joshua indicates that it was appropriate for a non-canonical book, the book of Joshua, to record these events as well. It says, is this not written in the book of Joshua? So the son stood still in the midst of heaven, did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. So he's saying this non-canonical book recorded the same things that I've recorded, and he encourages people to read that. And so anybody who wants to get on my case for putting into your bulletin Kiener's book and say, you know, we don't need Kiener's book, we're just going to the Bible. I say, we don't go to Kiener's book to prove anything in the Bible. In fact, there's some problems I have with some of his epistemology. But besides that, we just say the recording of these miracles glorifies God, and Joshua says so. But there's a correction to the opposite extreme in verse 14 as well. Some people think they can boss God around and produce a miracle anytime that they want to. No, God is sovereign in his distribution of miracles. Verse 14 says, and there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. So he's basically saying, guys, Don't expect God to stop the moon or the stars for you. He's probably not going to do that. And for sure, don't be commanding God to do things. It makes the hair stand up on my neck when I see some of these Pentecostal preachers barking commands at God as if God is their slave. But in any case, He's not gonna stop the sun for you. If He did so, even if it did benefit you here, It's probably going to have catastrophic effects on the rest of the world, and God's concerned about more than just you, right? Some people point out that around this period of time, it had effects on other parts of the world. Like Egypt went from being far more, what's the opposite of arid, wet, not wet, but whatever it's called, to being very dry. And then there are other parts that instantly went to being livable to being absolutely frozen. We'll move on. One more miracle that's mentioned in the first part of verse 15. It says, Notice the word all. Lots of lives were killed in earlier battles in Joshua, and there were going to be lots of lives lost in later battles. But in this particular battle, God performed a miracle in allowing this battle to kill tens of thousands of Amorites, and not a single Israelite soldier was killed. And Keener's book narrates absolutely astounding protections that God has given to Christian soldiers, as well as Christians from soldiers who were attacking them. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He continues to be a God of miracles. He can send an angel just as another car is about to crash into your car and just push it out, nudge it out of the way for you. Our God can control all of the things, and He does. But to balance everything out that I have said in this sermon, I've added one more point. Verse 15 speaks of rest from this adrenaline-filled day. It says, then Joshua returned and all Israel with him to the camp at Gilgal. That was their home base. That was where all their tents were at. He will reiterate some earlier history in verses 16 and following, but he ends this particular pericope by indicating they did, after all, have an end to the day. And I believe this earlier mention of the end of the day was to deliberately balance everything out. It's nice to have a rest from work and miracles. God did not design us to operate on a high level of adrenaline without stop. He intends for us to rest. And I'll hasten to say, you're never resting from God because God upholds all things by the word of His power, right? He even says He gives His beloved sleep. So God's power is manifested not just in the miraculous, but it's constantly manifested in the ordinary of life, even sleep. I'm an insomniac, so I just am so thankful to God when He sovereignly gives me the gift of sleep. Right? His power is seen in the spectacular as well as in the ordinary, and it's my hope that this book will move all of us to a constant experience and awareness of His presence and power. Yes, even His presence and power in our sleep. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, thank you for your word and the constant testimony that it is to your power, to your grace, to your faithfulness. We love you. We are so grateful for all of the things that you do in our lives, whether they're miraculous or whether they're ordinary. We just are so grateful to you. And I pray that this, your people, day by day, Develop a constant awareness that you are at work. You are constantly upholding everything. You're the one who gives sickness. You're the one who gives healing. You are the one who prospers our finances and takes away our finances. All of the things that we experience, whether they're deficits or pluses, are things that come from your good hand. And we want to learn to praise you for all things. and in every circumstance. And so we pray that you would bless us with this faith and this confidence in Jesus' name. Amen.