Around and Around We Go | Sunday, April 16, 2023

Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel; none went out, and none came in. And the LORD said to Joshua: "See! I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city... once. This you shall do for six days... But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets... and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up every man straight before him." ... So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets... and the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. (Joshua 6)

When the evidence validates the impossible, the only question left is whether you'll consider what it means.

A Question of Evidence

This last week, if you followed any of the news or social media trends, you may have seen the exchange between a BBC journalist and Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and the new owner of Twitter. The interview was meant to be recorded for video, but right before it started, Musk asked to live-stream it on Twitter Spaces. Within a short time, nearly a million people were listening in—which meant the BBC couldn't edit it afterward.

In the course of the interview, you could tell the journalist had a bias against Musk's management of Twitter. At one point he asserted there had been an overwhelming amount of hate speech on the platform. Musk pushed back: "Can you cite some specific examples?" The interviewer hemmed and hawed and couldn't name even one. At the height of it, Musk said, "I say, sir, you don't know what you're talking about. You lied."

What was happening there is that Musk was asking an important question—a question that may have crossed your mind when you look at things in the Scriptures. Is there some evidence? I need actual evidence. The interviewer came with an ideological, institutional, and political bias that informed his questions, and Musk simply asked him to show the proof.

Coming to the Bible With That Question

Perhaps you have come to the Bible that way. Maybe not you this morning, since you're here on a Sunday and may already believe many of these things. But I guarantee some of you have friends, co-workers, or family members who say, "I want to know—is there evidence to support the things you're saying?" Or maybe, like the BBC interviewer, someone comes to the Bible with an institutional bias because of things done in the name of Jesus or the church.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that Christians and the church have not always been the best example of the teachings of Christ. We should admit that. But we're going to interact with people who say, "I know you believe these things, but I need actual evidence." That is a valid question. It's an honest thing to ask.

The passage we're looking at today, Joshua 6, is one of those texts that prompts exactly that question. I'll acknowledge before we even begin that this is one of those fanciful, seemingly fictional passages that is hard for many to believe. Critics and skeptical historians look at it and raise doubts. One such scholar is Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar but not a believer. If you have kids in university today, they've probably read his books. He looks at passages like this and says, with a somewhat mocking tone, "I need some actual evidence that this took place. It did not happen."

I'll be honest: I have a bias toward these things, as long as my critic acknowledges he has a bias in the opposite direction. If I came to a text like this and were not a Christian, I might be antagonistic toward it too and ask, "Did this really happen?"

An Extraordinary Claim

Look at the text. Joshua 6 opens with Jericho securely shut up, and the LORD telling Joshua to march around the city once a day for six days, with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark. On the seventh day they were to march around seven times, blow the trumpets, and at a long blast the people would shout—and the wall of Jericho would fall down flat.

And it ends exactly that way in verse 20: the people shouted, the priests blew the trumpets, the wall fell down flat, and the people went up and took the city.

Looking at this as a skeptic, I think it's right to say, "Really? This is what you're saying?" As I shared last Sunday, great claims require significant proofs. Here we have a phenomenal, extraordinary claim, and the church has not always been the best ambassador of these things. Over the last two hundred years of modern Western history, critical scholars have blown holes in passages like this, and it puts Christians on their heels when a neighbor asks, "You really believe this?"

So here is point number one: the Bible contains extraordinary and outstanding happenings which must be validated to be believed. If that's your view, I think it's mostly right. We live in a culture that wants tangible evidence. People are wondering: are there valid arguments for the existence of God? Are there historical proofs, textual proofs, archaeological evidences? Those are good, even right, questions.

What Is Apologetics?

If you're engaged in asking those questions, you're in an area of study called apologetics. That term derives from Scripture—1 Peter 3, where Peter writes:

Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.

The word "defense" is the Greek apologia. You need to be able to offer an answer, kindly and gently, to the person who asks, "You really believe these things?"

For the better part of my last 25 years, I've given a lot of my time to apologetics. Even my recent trip to Jordan and Saudi Arabia—with David Guzik, Lance Ralston, and Chuck Musselwhite—was to look at the evidence for the passages we've been studying through the Pentateuch. My doctoral studies right now are all in this area. Why do I give so much energy to this? Because at a personality level, I'm a skeptic. I'm one of those people who wants answers, and I live in a culture of critical skeptics. From the youngest ages, Americans are taught to be skeptical and to examine the evidence. I don't think that's bad.

From Saul the Skeptic to Paul the Proclaimer

Two thousand years ago, at the beginning of the church, there was a skeptic named Saul who was skeptical about the greatest claim of all—the one we celebrated this Easter season: that Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, laid dead in a tomb, and on Sunday morning rose alive and appeared to His followers. That is the foundation of the Christian church.

Saul was skeptical to the point that he persecuted Christians and tried to destroy them. Then Saul moved from being one of the greatest skeptics of Christianity to arguably its greatest proclaimer. The shift came when he had a personal encounter with the risen Jesus. From that day, he proclaimed, "I have seen Jesus of Nazareth alive after He was crucified." It radically transformed his life.

Paul himself acknowledges in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection is the hinge of the Christian faith:

For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty... And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins... If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

So point number two: the whole of the Christian faith rises or falls on the proof of the resurrection. I focused on that last week. This week we look at another extraordinary happening—the walls of Jericho.

The Whole Picture of Jericho

I read the entire chapter for two reasons. First, I wanted you to get the whole picture of what happened—the picture a skeptic will look at and say, "You really believe this?" The children of Israel came to Jericho and marched around the city thirteen times over seven days, shouting, and the walls fell flat, and they came and destroyed the city.

The second reason is that there are important details here worth highlighting. If you're going to follow Christ and the Scriptures, then you believe these are inspired Scripture, and that these things actually happened. So when a neighbor asks, "Do you have any evidence these things really took place?" that is a valid question.

The Only Written Record—and the Archaeology

Here's a fascinating thing: the only written historical evidence that there was ever a city called Jericho is the book you hold in your hands. Back in the 1940s, a young Bedouin shepherd near the Dead Sea threw a stone into a cave and heard clay pots break. Inside he found jars containing what became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Over the following years, multiple caves near Qumran yielded many scrolls of Scripture—including the scroll of Joshua, where we read of Jericho. There are no other writings in antiquity that mention it.

So the Bible tells us there was a city near the Dead Sea called Jericho, and that the city had a wall that fell flat and was destroyed and burned with fire. The question is: is there archaeological evidence to support this? The amazing thing is that both critical and believing scholars agree on what was found.

Eight miles northwest of the Dead Sea, on the west side of the Jordan River—just as the Bible said—are ruins that have been excavated at least three times in the last century: a German team in 1907–1909, John Garstang in 1930–1936, and Kathleen Kenyon in 1952–1958. Three different teams found evidence that this was Jericho.

Checking the Receipts

Here's what they found. Around 1400 BC, the city experienced a massive, cataclysmic destruction. The city had two kinds of walls. The first was a stacked-stone retaining wall—uncut stones filled in with dirt and rubble. On top of that retaining wall sat a second wall of mud brick. At some point about 3,400 years ago, that mud-brick wall fell down flat and created a ramp up into the city.

As they excavated layer by layer, they found a burn layer—not long after the wall fell, the city was burned with fire. And the grain storage in the city was completely full. The invaders did not take the grain; they burned it. The full wheat stores indicate it was early spring, the time of the wheat harvest, right around Passover. Pottery in the area helped date the destruction again to roughly 1400 BC. All of this aligns with the Scriptures.

You don't have to take my word for it—I want you to fact-check me. Go to pastormiles.com/jericho and watch about a 35-minute video on the excavations to see what researchers found. The amazing thing is that the evidence supports the narrative of the Bible.

Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I completely agree. And so often, when researchers investigate the historic accounts of the Bible scientifically through archaeology and other methods, point number three holds true: the evidence of history and archaeology consistently validates the testimony of the Bible. Are the claims of the Bible far out? Yes. Extraordinary and remarkable? Absolutely. But the evidence keeps validating them.

From Cosmic Coincidence to Divine Providence

What should we take away from this? Two things. First, I do not argue that validated evidence should instantly turn a skeptic into a believer. I'm not saying that. But it should challenge the skeptic to consider the evidence and see where it leads—to a plausible conclusion that the narrative of Scripture is true.

Second, if the research validates the events as portrayed, we must ask what that implies. It implies that extraordinary things have happened in times past. And if phenomenal things have happened, we must ask whether there were phenomenal causes. What could possibly cause the walls of Jericho to fall flat at just the right time? You either conclude it was a cosmic coincidence—which it could have been—or you ask whether it could have been divine providence.

Moving from cosmic coincidence to divine providence is a big step. But point number four: if the testimonies of the Bible are validly proved, then supernatural causes are the only acceptable explanations. Here is the challenge: we live in a naturalistic culture that does not believe in the supernatural. We've been told this world is all there is, so it's hard for us to make the leap to a supernatural cause, because presuppositionally we have a bias.

Yet here's the amazing thing: well over 80 percent of people in our culture believe miracles are real—events that seem to belie the natural laws of physics, which they or others they trust have experienced. And still many say, "I have to come up with another explanation, because I don't believe in the supernatural." But if the evidence indicates that something supernatural happened, you have to consider with an open mind that your worldview may have a real problem. So my only question to my skeptical friend is: Have you considered the evidence?

Your Jericho

Finally, let me make a point of application—not on the historic validity but the historic significance of this. If Jericho took place as the Bible claims and as the archaeological evidence at least plausibly supports, what does that mean for you and me?

At the very least, this: every single one of you will at some point encounter something like the city of Jericho—too big, too great, too awesome to overcome in your own strength, ingenuity, or strategy. It may not happen this week or this year, but at some point you'll come up against a stronghold you cannot defeat.

Here's the amazing thing. God told Israel to walk around the city thirteen times. I can't speculate about all that God was thinking, but I can speculate about this: by the thirteenth circuit, I don't think a single person among Israel had any hope of defeating Jericho. From the oldest to the youngest, they had all concluded, "We're toast. The city is way too big. There's nothing we can do."

If you've ever watched VeggieTales, the peas on the wall sang, "What makes you think by walking you will be knocking down our wall?" By the end of the thirteenth lap, I guarantee not one Israelite thought, "We can take this down." If anything, God made them walk around thirteen times to make them all skeptical of their own strength and strategy. Then Joshua said, "Shout!"—and according to the Scriptures, the walls fell flat.

What is the historic significance? It reminds us of what the Scriptures teach: greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world; no weapon formed against us shall prosper; the weapons of our warfare are mighty in God for the tearing down of strongholds like Jericho; in Christ we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. The significance of a story like this is that God subdues what we cannot overcome in our own strength. And that is good news.

Communion

We're going to close by partaking of communion, and I think it's fitting today. Communion reminds us of Jesus's body broken for us and His blood shed for us to accomplish what we could never accomplish by our own strength, strategy, or religious effort. There is no possible way you or I could deal with the problem of our own fallenness and sin before a perfect and holy God. So what did God do? He overcame the Jericho that you and I could never overcome through Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection.

As we partake, remember that God in Christ Jesus overcame the stronghold of our sin that we could never overcome, giving us a new right standing with a holy God—and assuring us that in Him we are more than conquerors.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we thank You for Your grace and goodness, as evidenced by the awesome and great things You have done—most notably what You did for us on the cross.

Jesus, on the night before He was crucified, had a meal with His followers. He took bread, broke it, blessed it, and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." Let's partake together, remembering His body broken for us. In the same manner, after they had eaten, He took the cup and said, "This is My blood, the blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the removal of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." Let's partake together.

Lord, we thank You for Your body and blood. There is no way that by our own power or strength we could overcome the guilt and shame of our sin to pay the debt. But Jesus, on the cross You said, "It is finished"—paid in full. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, but You, the perfect spotless Lamb, gave Your life for us. You took our sin to give us Your righteousness. We praise and thank You today for Your grace.

God, I pray we would have that confidence in You today. As we encounter challenges, difficulties, and unworkable situations—which every one of us will—it's easy to go around and around them, surveying them from every angle. That is worry, and it produces anxiety. But You desire that we bring our cares to You. You said, "Cast your cares upon Me, for I care for you," and, "Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Lord, I pray we would find in You that rest, that peace, that joy. We praise You.

And now may the Lord bless and keep you; may He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.