Jericho

When I lift my voice and shout
Every wall comes crashing down
I have the authority
Jesus has given me.

I was listening to the song Champion¹ for the 50^th time and it struck me that this statement when I lift my voice and shout every wall comes crashing down, is upheld by the Bible. That’s how many times I needed to hear it before it occurred to me that this wasn’t just a motivational song with a metaphor but Biblical testimony.

I dug into scripture and some sermons and here is what I’m learning! When I lift my voice and shout, God will pull the walls down that I’m shouting at. He did it for the Israelites at Jericho and Paul tells us that God has given us weapons specifically for that use in the spiritual world.

³ For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. ⁴ The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (2 Corinthians 10:3-4)

1. The Walls of Jericho

Here’s the setting. God freed Israel from slavery and brought them out of Egypt. He has proven himself to them and the surrounding nations repeatedly through amazing and miraculous acts. There were the 10 plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, drying up the Jordan, the pillar of smoke and of fire, water from the rock, manna, birds for meat that fell from the sky, His presence on Mount Sinai, and His presence in the temple. He has promised them a land and a future, and they are finally ready to go take it. They must take it from the enemy and Jericho is first.

Jericho knows how powerful Israel is, so they hide behind their great walls. They have heard the reports of the nation that walks with God and they have good reason to be afraid.

6 Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.

² Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. ³ March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. ⁴ Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. ⁵ When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”

⁶ So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.” ⁷ And he ordered the army, “Advance! March around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the Lord.”

⁸ When Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets before the Lord went forward, blowing their trumpets, and the ark of the Lord’s covenant followed them. ⁹ The armed guard marched ahead of the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard followed the ark. All this time the trumpets were sounding. ¹⁰ But Joshua had commanded the army, “Do not give a war cry, do not raise your voices, do not say a word until the day I tell you to shout. Then shout!” ¹¹ So he had the ark of the Lord carried around the city, circling it once. Then the army returned to camp and spent the night there.

¹² Joshua got up early the next morning and the priests took up the ark of the Lord. ¹³ The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets went forward, marching before the ark of the Lord and blowing the trumpets. The armed men went ahead of them and the rear guard followed the ark of the Lord, while the trumpets kept sounding. ¹⁴ So on the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. They did this for six days.

¹⁵ On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. ¹⁶ The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! ¹⁷ The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. ¹⁸ But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. ¹⁹ All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.”

²⁰ When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. (Joshua 6:1-20)

They were silent when they were told to be silent. They shouted when they were told to shout. They marched when and how God told them to. They carried the ark, the presence of God, with them. They did exactly what they were told, and God did exactly what He said He would do.

I know the times I have done exactly what God has told me to do and I know the times when I have disobeyed. Impatience and a lack of faith in God can cause a battle to go sideways but God is so good and gives me more chances. Today is a new chance for us to follow Jesus more closely.

When we follow the Holy Spirit’s prompting, He does amazing things. Our obedience is a weapon of Heaven. The walls of Jericho fall. The impossible is done before our eyes. We serve the God of the impossible, and He can do anything, whether you can imagine it or not. The Israelite warriors rush into the city and take it.

2. New Covenant Strongholds       

You probably aren’t facing a physical enemy that is surrounded by a mighty wall. If we continue to read what Paul has to say about strongholds in 2 Corinthians, we see who and what may be sitting on the promised land that God has given us.

⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

The battlefield is in our mind. In 1 Corinthians 2:16 Paul tells us that we have the mind of Christ. How can we allow Satan to build on this property? He’s not trying to fight Christ in our mind since he is so ridiculously inferior to the One who created the universe, he’s fighting against us.

He cannot be allowed to stay.

Bill Johnson says that strongholds in our minds are built one illegitimate thought at a time. Each thought places a stone and as we agree with and meditate on those thoughts, they build a place for the enemy to hide. From this hiding place, we can’t even see Satan.² He continues to trespass from this stronghold whenever he pleases, and we can’t find where he is coming from.

How do we identify these strongholds? First and foremost, don’t miss the opportunity to ask your Father this question directly! “God, where do You want to work? What’s holding me back from serving You well? Where am I so off in my thinking that I can no longer recognize the enemy and his words?”

Another way to start looking comes from Max Lucado. “Strongholds: old, difficult, discouraging challenges.”³ Pride has so many paths it can take. It can look like fear, substance abuse, sexual immorality, violence, and the list goes on. Yours may not even sound that bad to you. That’s how well Satan can hide.

I know where my stronghold is, it’s my weight and body image. If I’m being honest, over the years, this subject has gotten more and more tangled. My motivations to get healthy ebb and flow, my irritation with God spikes, and my self-pity rises again and again. I ask God to free me from this unhealthy body then am unable to obey His directions on how to be healthier. Thankfully, I serve a faithful God and He showed me this scripture recently.

4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in u^]? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
    but shows favor to the humble.”

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

My motives are wrong! I care more about what the world thinks of how I look than what God thinks. I want my own glory, instead of wanting it for Him. I am proud, though it may look like humility, so Scripture says He is opposed to me. Out of this pride and self-consciousness, I am slow to obey, I am confused about the things He says about me. I want to hide. Here’s why this scripture excites me. I’m excited because He is too good to bring all of this to my attention and then leave me this way. He’s working!

Is there a stronghold in your mind? What is it? It can be anything that sets itself up against what we know about God or what He tells us about who we are. If He says we are clean, but we aren’t living clean in a certain area, start looking there. If He gave you an assignment that you refuse to complete for any reason, start looking there.

It’s time for us to get on our faces before God, apologize, and ask for His help. It’s time to use the weapons He gave us. Scripture, prayer, and praise. Grab a fellow believer and go after this stronghold. Don’t hide from God or His people anymore but raise your weapons and shout when God says to shout and watch the walls come crashing down. When they do fall, the enemy will be laid bare, and you can destroy him.

3. Who is Hiding Behind the Walls?

²¹ They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. (Joshua 6:21)

This and many verses in Joshua are painful. I am beyond uncomfortable with the directions God gave to Joshua and the Israelites to kill everyone and everything in the city, but I know that God is good so I have to trust that what He did here is good. Another good thing about God is that He has hidden secrets for those who seek Him in Scripture.

Instead of men, women, and children, we are dealing with the demonic. Our enemy is no longer flesh and blood. Our enemy is Satan and all the powers of hell assigned to steal, kill, and destroy us. In this case, we are talking about the many thoughts that he has thrown at us that would keep us from living the life we are called to.

Without hesitation, I must destroy all thoughts of the enemy as soon as I see them for what they are. It’s my privilege to be commissioned for it. If they have built on the land that God has promised us, then with the help of Jesus, we must pull down their stronghold and we must devote everything we find behind their walls to the Lord. We must destroy it all.

If we look at the words the Bible uses to identify the enemy within the city of Jericho we can start to untangle the web of lies. While the men, women, and children of Jericho were very real people, I believe in the context of 2 Corinthians they symbolize the incorrect thoughts and ideas that built the walls of the stronghold we are facing.

The Men

The men symbolize the full-grown thoughts and ideas that keep the walls of a stronghold in place. These thoughts are the fighting men. These are the brazen and direct thoughts that directly disagree with who we know our God is or who He made us to be. Here are some examples of what these crazy thoughts and lies might be. “God cannot free me from this.” “God is not good.” “I can do this alone.” “I am a slave to sin forever.” “There is no hope.”

These thoughts cannot be allowed to survive. All our thoughts must stand in the presence of God and be found worthy or completely obliterated.

The Old

The old thoughts. The old thoughts may have started well before you can remember. They may be so ingrained in your mind that they don’t seem like a threat anymore but they were the initial builders and as they have remained they grow in authority and credibility as we continue to honor them and give them a safe place to live.

They may sound like this. “I watched a powerful woman of God struggle with this particular sin and God loved her so it must have been ok.” “This is just the way things work, it takes a lifetime to become righteous.” “I remember this one man who loved God and never had any joy his whole life, maybe I won’t either.”

These thoughts must be measured against Scripture. Allow God to straighten them out.

The Women

If you are wondering how the women were a threat, you may have missed a few stories in the Old Testament. Time and time again the men of Israel would fall in love with women of other nations and religions and marry them. And so many times these women would lead their husbands into idolatry and sin. Even Solomon, who was wise and loved God profoundly fell into idolatry because of the influence of his wives.

The incorrect thoughts symbolized by the women of Jericho may sound like this. “I’m so sorry God did not answer your prayer, maybe someone else can help.” “Find comfort here instead of in the presence of God.” “Go to your friend who always agrees with you.” “When you are hurting reach out to your husband first, not God.” “You are a victim and that must be awful.”

The Young

These are the small seemingly harmless thoughts that will someday become full-grown thoughts that want to stand in the way of our understanding and relying on the Great I AM. These thoughts are very slightly off and almost sound like truth but they are sin and when they are fully grown will produce death (James 1:15). Death is not the absence of life; it is active and will continue to break down whatever it touches. If you have ever seen death in the physical world you know just how quickly it changes the once-living thing.

These are harder to distinguish. “I was made for good works so that is where my value must be” can grow into “I am amazing and can do this alone” or “Since I failed at that task my value has diminished.” The thought “The best time of my life was when I was comfortable and well rested,” becomes “God values my comfort and wouldn’t ask me to do this because it’s scary.” “God blessing that person means that He loves them,” now could mean “Why can’t I have that too? I deserve a better house and car. God can prove how He loves me that way.”

It’s a lot to take in and I can assure you I am also daunted by the task of tearing down the strongholds in my mind and scouring the area for the enemy. It will be uncomfortable but I’m positive that it will be fun. Get used to laughing at the enemy’s ridiculous thoughts. They are comical and so so small when held up to truth.

Don’t even think about doing it apart from God. That will be a waste of time and effort. Don’t think about doing it apart from Scripture. You won’t be able to spot the lies. Don’t do it apart from a godly community. Find someone who can pray with you and who you can confide in.

I’m praying for you. Please pray for me.

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1. Bowe, Dante, Bethel Music. “Champion,” Video, 2021, 8:46. https://youtu.be/BOK8F9caDic
2. Johnson, Bill, “Choose Your Stronghold,” Published September 24, 2020, Video, 43:36. https://youtu.be/PmIGJi6bSw8
3. Lucado, Max, “Strongholds,” Max Lucado, September 2015, https://maxlucado.com/strongholds/