The Battle of Jericho

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome.

We’ve been talking about Joshua, and the thing he is most famous for is having ‘fit the battle of Jericho’ as it were, so let’s talk about Jericho. What was Jericho?

Clearly it was a spiritual manifestation of humanity’s greater social consciousness of evil that had to be conquered before mankind is able to conquer the rest of the world with goodness, right? That’s what I’ve learned from German higher criticism.

I don’t think so.

[laughing] I’m surprised you said German higher criticism, because I could mention some more relevant immediate stories, but we won’t go there right now. We’d get a lot of nasty emails.

You can send those nasty emails to [email protected].

We are about 40-some years after the exodus. Moses is dead and Joshua has assumed command. They’ve crossed over the Jordan, which God parted for them miraculously so that he could baptize the new generation, and as soon as they crossed, Joshua arranged for the circumcision of the males of that generation because it hadn’t been done in the wilderness. We’re not told exactly why not.

We can probably draw some inferences though, based on the general unfaithfulness of the previous generation.

Yeah, that would be the obvious direction to go with that. The timing is significant because it’s the 10th of Abib or Nisan, the first month, the month where Passover is just around the corner. The 10th day is the day when Passover lambs are chosen for inspection.

They come across and, as the waters are parted, they set up memorial stones from the shore in the bottom of the river, and take rocks from the bottom of the river and put them up on shore, so that when the water is running low you can look down and say, “Wow, how did rocks get stacked on the bottom?” and at other times, “How did these river rocks, which have obviously been worn smooth by a river, end up stacked here?” so that when children were to ask their fathers in times to come, “What mean ye by these stones?” there would be an immediate remembrance of the great things that God had done for his people.

So this happened and they’re across. They’re on this plain called Gilgal, which means ‘rolling’ because God is going to roll the shame and the reproach of Egypt away from them, beginning with circumcision. And beyond that is the pass that leads up through the mountains toward Jerusalem and into the heart of the Promised Land. But stationed on the corner of that road is the city of Jericho. It’s been there a long time, a very ancient city. It’s an obvious place to build a city, as it’s guarding the pass that leads from here to everywhere.

The children of Israel had to take this city if they were going to take the Promised Land, because if they just park here they’re on a plain with the river at their back. That’s suicide. There’s really no way to do a siege. They’ve interrupted the harvest. They have some food, but it’s going to run out fast.

Interestingly enough, the archeological digs in Jericho discovered pots of seeds, which is unusual because usually when an invading army takes a city they grab all the foodstuffs for themselves, but God had told Israel not to. So to this day there’s still evidence that Israel left the foodstuffs alone.

They can’t simply go by the city and go on their merry way into the heart of the Promised Land because then Jericho with its soldiers would be right behind them at their tail, so this has to happen.

Aside from standing on a high hill, the city was oblong. It covered nine acres. Its compound outer wall was six times the height of a man – compound, that is it had a lower retaining wall and then a wall built on top of that. Then from there the banks sloped up toward yet another wall, an inner wall. Its massive inner wall stood further up on an inclined earth embankment covered with plaster.

I’ve only seen one or two references to the plaster, and that may still be a matter of debate, but taken at face value it sounds like, at least in some places, if you could somehow scale the retaining wall and the wall on top of that, and jump over, you would still be going up an embankment, but it would be like trying to climb the cement underpinnings of a freeway overpass. You’re trying to run up concrete without any footholds or anything else, while people above you, looking over yet another wall, can shoot things at you, throw things at you – there’s no way this is good. The city was, for all practical purposes, impregnable. There was no way to take the city by human standards, and yet they had to. It’s the first fruits of the battle.

Joshua goes out one night to look it over while everybody else is recovering from radical surgery that incapacitates normal human males. And as he does this, this is what the text says –

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

Joshua was a warrior. He’s been a warrior for a long time, 40 years or more, so he’s looking at the city and it’s looking very defensed. Probably he’s looking very discouraged like, “How are we supposed to do this?” and then he sees somebody. He sees a soldier, a man in armor, with a sword drawn. Joshua does not simply jump on him, but he comes up probably with his own armor on, and says, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” and the figure says, “No.”

There is this fallacy in logic called false dilemma. We see it used all the time in arguments – Republican, Democrat, “Better Red than dead,” McDonald’s or Burger King, Kirk or Picard – but sometimes when you back away and postulate a third choice, that third choice can throw everything into stark relief. You see that it’s not at all what you thought. “How about Burger King or McDonald’s or grease-free fat-free food unprocessed?”

“Wait, you’re not supposed to talk about such things. That changes everything.”

“Yes.”

The armed figure goes on –

And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.

The captain of the Lord’s host – we run into this person a number of times. God is called the God of armies or Lord of Hosts, and here’s the captain.

So host is not the person who’s having the dinner party at their house.

No, the host is a military force – in this case a force of angels numbering in the millions or billions – and this is the King of the angels, the leader, the war captain.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith 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.

In case we missed it at first glance, the angel pretty well just told us who he was, because he’s giving the same instructions that God gave to Moses at the burning bush. “Take off your shoes. The ground is holy.” That is, it’s holy and been sanctified by the One standing there. Joshua bows in worship.

In the next chapter we’re told “And the Lord said unto Joshua,” so this is the second person of the Trinity. This is our Lord Jesus appearing in pre-incarnate form as the angel of the covenant. The angel of the Lord is Michael, the commander of the Lord’s hosts. He’s the real leader.

Joshua is not the military leader here. The angel of the Lord, Jesus, is the real military leader, and that means that this is more than a war of occupation, a war of conquest, a war of territorial acquisition. It’s more than a just war, it’s a holy war. It’s part of God’s own war against sin, his war for redemption.

To this point – and this would be an interesting topic in itself, although I’m not really planning on going there – we could talk about the whole idea of holy war. To this point God’s people have not had to fight much, as we think of fighting. That is, rarely has God put a sword in their hand and said, “Go kill somebody.”

There was the episode with Lot.

Yeah, Abraham rescued Lot, and you could argue whether or not that was part of the holy war or simply a just war to rescue a relative, because it didn’t do a whole lot for the kingdom of God, when you think about it. Abraham was not operating under divine orders at that point, but you do come to Joshua’s own first battle against Amalek. And right toward the end of the 40 years of wandering they had fought with Midian and with a couple of the neighboring Canaanite tribes – Sihon and Og and all of those people.

Midian is very confusing to me because Moses’ father-in-law was apparently a godly man, right?

There are Midianites and then there are Midianites. It wasn’t a homogenous nation. It was a loose organization of tribes, apparently, some of whom were godly and some of whom were decidedly not, so it’s kind of a weird thing. “Okay, we’re related. Are we enemies or not? Do you worship our God or don’t you?”

It sounds like a Thanksgiving dinner. “Okay, everyone here is family. How many of us are Christians? How many of you who aren’t really hate those of us who are and would slit our throats or hand us over to the authorities? Okay, just checking. Let’s have Thanksgiving dinner now.”

Just because they’re family doesn’t mean they’re all on the same side. But the point is, to this moment in history God has not had his people kill very many people in this war against evil. Mostly they’ve stood back and watched while God, say, destroyed the world in a flood, or devasted Egypt, or wiped out an entire army in the Red Sea.

But we’re beginning a phase now for a short time – about 300+ years, 400 if you take in the early monarchy, I guess – where God’s people will be fighting wars of the Lord with steel or iron swords and bows and arrows and things like that.

So here at the beginning of this new phase, more or less – at least certainly with a new captain and with this new project right in front of them, the conquest of Canaan – Jesus shows up and makes it very clear that this is his battle. Although yes, there’s going to be some traditional warfare going on, it’s never going to be the traditional warfare that wins the day, and Joshua should remember this.

Back in his first battle he learned that Israel would only win as long as Israel depended upon the Lord. There was the whole thing of Aaron and Hur holding up Moses’ arms holding up the staff, and as long as they did so, expressing their dependence on Yahweh, God’s people would win. When they dropped, they started losing.

Joshua has been through Holy War 1A. Now he’s about to do 1B where he’s going to see it all happen again, so perhaps he is not as confused as some people would be when the angel of the Lord says, “Here’s the battle plan.”

“And I left my parchment and quills in the camp!”

“You’ll have to rely on your memory, Joshua. Here goes.”

See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

So we’re starting with conclusion. That’s comforting. We’re going to win and win big.

And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once.

“And then what? What happens?”

Thus shalt thou do six days.

“Wait. Let me find that parchment. So for six days we go around the city, okay. So we’ve got the army going.

And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns.

“Not the silver trumpets. We use ram horns. Okay, we’ll get some rams and…okay. So we’ve got priests on a battlefield. Okay, that’s kind of new. All right. So we’re going to go around six times.”

And the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times.

“Okay. I think we’re getting up early that morning. That’s a lot.”

And the priests shall blow with the trumpets.

“Got it, blow 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.

“Does it matter what we say?”

“Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon.”

“Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga.”

“This is worship. We’ll pick something.”

And the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

“Oh, it’s a miracle thing. Got it! Okay. I didn’t see that coming. I should have, I guess. So it’s a long process, and the first six days basically nothing happens except us walking around the city. That’s going to be great. They’re going to laugh at this one. Then the seventh day we’re going around seven times. That’s going to be even funnier. Then we’re going to blow trumpets and shout, and you’re going to make the walls fall down, and then we’re just going to go in and kill people and take their stuff.”

“You’re not going to take their stuff, Joshua.”

And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the Lord. And he said unto the people, Pass on and compass the city, and let him that is armed pass on before the ark of the Lord.

And it came to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the people, that the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams' horns passed on before the Lord and blew with the trumpets: and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them.

So we’ve got the priests and we’ve got the soldiers and we’ve got the ark and they’re going around, and the priests are blowing. We’re not told what they blew – a single note maybe or a familiar medley of old favorites. It doesn’t matter. They knew what they were going to do.

And the armed men went before the priests that blew with the trumpets, and the rereward came after the ark, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets. And Joshua had 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.

So the ark of the Lord compassed the city, going about it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the camp.

You can imagine the people on the walls – “This is it! Here they come, here they come, here they….there they go.”

“What? Okay, that was weird. Maybe they’re just scoping us out.”

“I guess. Psychological warfare? I don’t know. Well, keep an eye open. Maybe they’ll be back.”

Well, they’re not back that day. The next day, “All right, they’re coming. This is going to be it. Here they come. They’re playing that – what is that note they’re sounding? It’s really annoying.”

Like waking up to a car alarm.

It’s like Groundhog’s Day.

It’s very much like Groundhog’s Day because they keep repeating it and, like Groundhog’s Day, eventually you get really annoyed with the sameness of the thing and you start doing things to entertain yourself and to break the tension. You start eventually mocking them. Certain lines from Holy Grail come to mind here.

“Keep walking.”

And so for six days. At this point probably the people in Jericho, knowing standard human nature, are just mocking them and laughing and saying, “If you’re trying to drive us crazy it’s kind of working, but it’s not going to help because we’re in here and we’ve got food. You can’t touch us and you know it and we know it. All this Ring Around the Rosie is getting you nowhere. Come back. We must taunt you again.”

Then on the Sabbath morning they do it again, and they don’t go away, they do it again.

“All right, this is it. This is really it now finally.”

And they do it again, and again, and again…seven times they go around. The people in Jericho are probably just scratching their heads and saying, “What is this idiocy? What is going on here?”

Then we’re told –

And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.

And so they shout and the city collapses. The walls collapse. What happens is that the upper walls fall outward and cascade down the bank, down the lower walls and over the walls, creating this nice little…

“A path! A path!”

A climbable pile to get across.

A climbable pile of rock and rubble so that they can simply go straight up into the now-defenseless city and kill everybody in their way. However, Joshua does insert at some point – and we haven’t even talked about the whole Rahab thing, have we?

I don’t think so.

I think that’s probably next time. Rahab mixes into this, but we won’t worry about her right now. But they are told that anything that’s gold or silver or brass or iron is to pass through the fire and come into the treasury of the Lord. The city is put under the ban. It’s devoted to the Lord.

The Hebrew word is “herem” which can mean ‘given to destruction’ or ‘given to God,’ depending on how you’re looking at it. It’s normally given to God by destruction or passing through fire or judgment of some sort so as to become God’s, but it does most certainly mean that no one else gets it.

Jericho is to become a heap. The precious treasures that will survive the fire are going to go into the tabernacle, God’s temple, and be kept there and be used. Everything else is to be let alone except, well, torched. The whole city is to go up in flames because this is first fruits. God claims this one absolutely.

From here on out, whatever the children of Israel conquer they get to keep. They can become spoils of war. But to make things very clear right up front, this is God that gave them the city. They did not do this by their might, by the strength of their arm, by their intelligence or resources. They did not come up with this strategy and these tactics and, even if they had, it wouldn’t have worked because this was a miracle. God had to do this, so they are to keep their hands off. Joshua even places a curse upon the city.

Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho.

That actually happens much, much later on, but again that’s probably for a different time.

What the children of Israel learned, or what they ought to have learned, is that when it comes to the battles of the Lord, God fights them. We don’t win by ourselves – not by our strength, not by our wisdom, not because we have some cool plan or some cool technology. The battle is the Lord’s.

In this case there was real bloodshed. Under the new covenant we don’t go out and kill people or threaten to kill people in order to make them Christians. We have different weapons and the sword of the Spirit takes the place of a sword of iron, but there is something we do see here that’s really important, and that’s that every step of the way preparing for this battle has been worship.

We started with baptism, circumcision, the Passover. We have priests on the battlefield blowing trumpets. We have the ark itself going into battle, one of the few times it actually does, with God’s sanction – Indiana Jones to the contrary. And it is when they shout and blow the trumpets, both acts of worship, that God steps in and throws down the walls. Then finally they get to the hacking and slaying and all that.

None of that would mean anything if they hadn’t thrown themselves wholly on God and his mercies and trusted his promises. God responded as Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth by throwing down walls that should not be throwable.

As we look at this and we consider its application to us, I’ve heard weird applications. I remember one young man saying that the way he got his wife – they were at some kind of marriage seminar or something, and the pastor said that if you want to win the heart of a young lady, you need to go march around her 7 times and shout and the walls of her heart will fall down, and the young man said, “And that’s how I got married!”

I was going to say, “Let me know how that goes,” but apparently it did actually.

It did happen. I think John McArthur may have mentioned that in one of his books on the Charismatic movement and on finding God’s leading, but that’s not the kind of application we’re looking for. In fact, the Bible does itself apply this right at the end of everything in Revelation 11. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this yet, and I think we come back to it more than once.

What happens here is we’re running through the trumpet judgments on Babylon, and we come to the seventh trumpet and we’re told this starting in verse 15 –

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their face, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

We have talked about this. We talked about this in the context of Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Day, because the Day of Trumpets begins the seventh month of the liturgical calendar, so each month to that point, all six of them, had been marked by the blowing of a trumpet. Each new moon (month) was announced by the blowing of a trumpet, so Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Day, is announced by the blowing of the seventh trumpet.

In the story of Jericho we have seven trumpets all together, and just as there they were the honor guard that led into the ark of the covenant, so here, after the blowing of the seven trumpets, we see the ark of God, the ceremonial heart of the covenant, but it’s no longer on earth. It’s no longer an earthly temple. It’s no longer in the Holy of Holies. It’s in heaven itself. In other words, that’s where Jesus is. The heart of the covenant is now in heaven in Christ himself.

But this city which has persecuted the saints – and we see more of this as we go through the book of Revelation – it collapses in the midst of all this. Looking back at verse 13 –

And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

Later on we see this city burn with fire, so there are echoes here.

One of the many things that Revelation is telling us, a major theme of the book, is that the wars of the Lord under the new covenant are not fought with swords. They’re not fought with guns. They’re not fought with nuclear missiles or drones or nuclear submarines or strategic defense initiative weapons – Star Wars beams. They’re fought with the gospel. They’re fought with prayer. They’re fought with faith and confidence in God’s promises. They’re fought with worship, and that’s where we have to begin.

It is so easy to jump immediately to political action or to go pouring out into the streets and saying, “Love demands that we burn down this city.” No, it doesn’t. It never really does that. Certainly there’s a time for a nation to defend itself militarily, or a man to protect his home using guns or whatever, but that’s not how the gospel progresses. That’s not how the kingdom of God progresses. There’s a time and place for such things, but that’s not how we win this. It’s not how God’s kingdom comes.

We have to keep reorienting ourselves. We keep wanting to think that the newest piece of technology, the newest innovation on the internet, the newest form of social media – this is the key that’s going to unlock the future of the kingdom of God and that’s going to change everything.

While God may use many of these things in his time, like he used the printing press, the printing press did not save the world. Radio didn’t not save the world. TV sure didn’t save the world. Cell phones – I’m not sure what they’re doing right now. Social media – that’s another story altogether.

Particularly we in America at the beginning of the 21st century are such a generation of people who think that the latest thing that we’ve got in our hands is going to be “the thing” that ushers in Utopia, that brings in the millennium.

The iPhone 13 will bring world peace.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if they advertised that. I also wouldn’t be surprised if an awful lot of people believed it, and accuse those of us who don’t buy one of being hostile to world peace.

That’s one heck of a marketing campaign.

I can see it already.

I would like to think it would take a heck of a marketing campaign, but I’m not so sure. I think just a few careful tweets and such would probably set the whole world aflame because we are naïve and stupid.

Our sinful nature, the flesh, constantly is looking for some ‘thing’ we can do that will restore Paradise, that will bring in the City of God, but it’s really the city of man in disguise, that will restore unity and community and freedom and love and all that’s happy and sweet – total acceptance, plenty of food for everybody, freedom from want and fear, and whatever all those other freedoms were.

“There is a ‘thing’ we can do, and once I find out what the ‘thing’ is, I will do it, especially if it’s really easy. I will do it, and then I will look at you and see that you are not doing it, and I will laugh you to scorn and call you names on social media because you are not doing it. You obviously do not love the way I love. You are not grounded the way I’m grounded. You do not understand the big picture. You’re either an idiot or you hate Grandma.”

Sorry if this sounds familiar. I’m getting a little passionate because this is our world right now. I don’t know what the next thing is going to be, but considering what really stupid things we’ve been told to do in the last several years to save the world, it can’t get much stupider, you would think.

Don’t issue that challenge.

This is so.

Perhaps the most ironic thing in all of this with the pandemic is how easily Christians gave up true biblical worship and went looking for other solutions to the problems. Now, we all understand that sometimes in emergencies a church can’t meet. “There’s 10’ of snow outside. All right, we’re not going anywhere.”

It’s called providentially hindered.

Yes. It’s a category. It’s a thing. “My ass fell in a ditch. I can get him out and skip church today.”

“The Germans are bombing London. Can St. Paul’s please not have its lights on tonight?”

We know about that. There’s nothing new in theology there. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. But having said that, to assume that in our wisdom and knowledge and scientific expertise and political programming we can come up with better solutions than God has, starting with ignoring his worship – there’s something fundamentally wrong with us.

Speaking now as an elder of a church, it was far too easy, and it still is, for people to have walked out and not come back, sometimes because they were masked and sometimes because there weren’t enough masks. That’s really odd, when the same thing can generate opposite reactions from people who are yelling and screaming at each other on social media but they end up doing the same unbiblical thing, walking away from the worship of the Lord, which suggests that there is something Satanic behind all of this.

This is a side note. Have you ever noticed that Satan is not very creative? He doesn’t have to come up with really convoluted intricate schemes to throw us off. He comes up with real simple stupid stuff and it works way too often.

There’s that line about why it’s hard to create the bearproof trash can at National Parks that is also able to be used by the average person. It’s because there’s a significant overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist.

[laughing] That was good.

Here insert the entire book of Galatians and its discussion of walking in the flesh. We are so moved to look for that one filthy rag we can hold up to God and say, “Here’s the power of the Spirit. I’ve learned this, I know this, I have chosen this, I’ve done this, I have felt this.”

Depending on our denominational backgrounds we pick one of those and it’s supposed to save the world and change the world and everything will be better, if the world is even savable, but it will be the thing at least that we need right now for whoever we are and whatever we want.

If you do believe in some kind of optimistic eschatology, whether it be a pagan Utopia or whether it be the growth of the kingdom of God along evangelical lines, this attempt to jump ahead of God, leave worship behind as a sort of “Well, we did that. Now let’s get to the important stuff. Yeah, I go to church on Sunday, but now let’s go out and change the world” – you can’t change the world if you don’t bow in worship, and worship means on God’s terms, not stuff we create.

I’ve heard some people – and they could just be crazy fringe people online, but you never know these days…

I heard “French people.” You said “fringe,” right?

I said fringe, although they could be crazy French people as well, who knows. But they basically say, “Well, the beatitudes are not a permanent thing in the Christian life. You don’t have to follow that when the world is Christian. You can go persecute everyone that isn’t a Christian when the world is fully Christian.”

What?

Oh yeah, it’s Twitter. It’s probably fringe crazy people, but that’s not how the system works. You don’t get to say, “Well, now that we’re in charge we don’t have to be nice anymore. We don’t have to have the fruit of the Spirit.”

I was watching a TV show recently, Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon. The guy is explaining Twitter to someone who’s never heard of Twitter, and he says, “Twitter is where leftist people go to say increasingly leftist things to other leftist people.” It was just the most accurate summary I’ve ever heard. That conformed exactly to my experience.

I was about to say what’s wrong with that description?

I feel like there’s also a healthy contingent where it’s increasingly right-wing people showing up to say evermore right-wing things to right-wing people for right-wing kudos points.

But they’re only saying it because the leftists are there, and they have to stand in contradistinction to the leftists.

That’s also true, and I feel like the leftists are doing the same thing, except that they’re not interacting with the right-wing people on there. They’re just like, “I heard that right-wing people do this, and I’m going to say the opposite!”

I was going to go for the third class apparently, which is the naïve stupid people who think that reality is now being defined before their very eyes, and all they have to do is pick a choice and it’s as if God had spoken from Sinai. Oh, wait. He did.

“The man with the blue checkmark said it. It must be true.”

So anyway, that’s the fall of Jericho, and it’s not surprising that it resonates throughout our history, down to the black spiritual that Emily started us with, because you know what? The black slaves in the antebellum South were not fomenting slave rebellion. They weren’t out to murder their masters. They weren’t out for a military solution.

They did want real freedom on an economic, financial, and personal level, but they wanted God to save them. These were prayers to God. God did this, and as they worked in the fields they prayed to God that there would be deliverance, so there is something to be learned there.

The first black spiritual I ever learned was that. It came on a record with some other things. I think it was done by George Beverly Shea, who used to sing with Billy Graham. He had a magnificent voice, truly not a black church choir, which would have been even better, but it stayed with me and I still remember it from there. It is a good thing to sing about if we understand what happened. Joshua fought the battle, but yet, as the song goes on to say, it’s God who says “The battle is in your hand. I’m giving it to you.”

As with so many things, in many ways this is the theme of the New Testament. Will you trust Jesus Christ to be your Savior from everything – from all of your sins and all of your guilt and all the consequences of sin – or are you going to come up with something else that you can add to the mix? Something a little bit better than God’s plan, and then try to win everyone to your side and laugh at everybody as old-fashioned and too conservative and retro because they’re not on board with you and your marvelous plan to save the world. Are you going to believe the gospel?

It just seems so naïve sometimes to say, “Look, the solution here is the gospel.”

“Well, how can that help anything?”

How can dead men throwing stones help anything? We’ve got to get past that. Until we have living people, nothing’s happening here. One thing that we will continue to pursue on this podcast, as long as God allows us to go on, is the hope of the gospel. God saves people, and certainly that has consequences in all areas of life. This is Halting Toward Zion, which is a city, a civilization, a culture, but we halt. The power is God’s. We limp. God gets us there.

All right, shall we wrap up with some recommendations?

Let’s do it. I feel like mine is whimsical enough that it should go first. I mean it’s not whimsical based upon my lived personal experience, but it is more whimsical probably than either of yours. I’m going to recommend antihistamines, because the past few weeks have been torture and Allegra has saved my life. We are not sponsored by Allegra, but I will gladly plug them.

Good stuff. I will go next. I was going to recommend the TV show, Clarkson’s Farm, because I watched it recently when I was under the weather and it brought me much joy. It is rated the equivalent of R for language. That’s the only thing about it. Also there are farm animals, and they do farm animal things. If that bothers you, I guess don’t watch it.

I guess I’m taking two recommendations because I can’t not mention my next thing, which is the book A Fiery Gospel by Richard Gamble. Speaking of righteous war, this is a history of the Battle Hymn of the Republic and it is really excellent. It’s not too long. I think it’s maybe 200 pages-ish.

One of the things I appreciate so much about Richard Gamble is that he never forgets that his subjects are people. They’re human beings and they were sincere, so he has a very charitable style, but he doesn’t pull any punches, either.

Emily, most Christians know the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Well, first of all, they don’t know that’s what it’s called. They just know the chorus – “Glory, glory, hallelujah.” They have no idea that it is, in some ways, shall we say controversial.

Oh, it’s controversial. It’s very controversial, yes.

Two versions of it?

There’s a couple, at least, and that doesn’t count the original prototype that went before it. The first pastor of our church was from the South. You did not play that song in his presence.

I don’t think any Christian should be forced to sing this song.

Since this is about Jericho and blowing trumpets and things, can you give our listeners a little idea of why it’s such a thing?

Why it’s objectionable, in my view?

Yeah.

First of all, it is theologically bankrupt, as the contemporary era of the author recognized. It only took about a generation or two for people to say, “Ah yes, this is totally unobjectionable,” and that was for the reason that it had no theological content. They said, “Yes, this is not specific to any particular religious sect, so all Americans should be able to sing it.”

It says things about Christ that are not true and are not found anywhere in scripture, and yet it’s soaked in the rhetorical likeness of scripture because Julia Ward Howe was the author and very familiar with scripture. She was a Unitarian, by the way, and very close with the Transcendentalists.

So its origins are not the greatest, and when you look at how it’s been used in history – and it has been used, not just sung – you see that it’s been used to further all sorts of causes that have nothing to do with the cause of Christ. So you have this entangling of civil religion and religious nationalism with actual religion, and these two things cannot actually occupy the same space, so part of Dr. Gamble’s work in this book is to try and work at disentangling those two things.

Now I want to read it. What’s the name of the book again?

The name of the book is A Fiery Gospel.

That reminds me, I need to update my Good Reads. I’ve read at least eight books since I last updated it.

Wow. I’m glad I’m not on Good Reads. I’d be embarrassed. I’ve read like two Perry Mason murders and some PD James. It’s summer, okay?

It’s fine. We’re not going to judge you for taking a break from your job.

I was watching TV last week instead of reading, all week, so I have no room to judge. But do you have a recommendation for us?

Yeah. I’m going to go for something kind of soft, but kind of not. As we got near the end of the school year, in American History we were passing through World War 1 and I was trying to communicate to my class Woodrow Wilson’s conception of himself as a messianic figure out to save the world and bring in a new world order.

To do this, I went online and found that the television series, Young Indiana Jones, is available for free. The episode when young Indy at 20-something is serving the American diplomatic corps in Paris during the session that ends in the Treaty of Versailles is absolutely marvelous and depressing and realistic – not that they follow the actual historical events, but the mood, the setting, the way the characters are operating.

All young Indy does is basically hand people pens and have arguments with Lawrence of Arabia, who himself was a young man at the time, about the basic principles. Young Indy is the typical true believer. “Wilson’s a great man! He’s out to save the world! I trust him,” and Lawrence is saying, “You maybe can trust him, but look at all these other people. This is not going to be what you think it’s going to be.”

We see the German envoys arrive and how horribly they’re treated, and in the background there’s this young man trying to get a word in with the conference, and young Indy eventually arranges it for him. He’s a waiter at the time in a hotel in Paris, but he’s from Vietnam. I believe his name is Ho Chi Minh.

So there’s a little bit of everything, and for people who like Indiana Jones – first of all, the series is really great. Young Indy has his romantic flings here and there, and you have to watch out for that, but George Lucas originally created the series to give his kids something to watch on TV that wasn’t complete garbage and that might educate them a little bit, so in every episode young Indy runs into famous characters who lived between 1910 and 1930, and it at least gives you some reference of, “Oh, dad! Was that the character we saw?”

“Yes, it was!”

“Oh. This character keeps talking about history going around in circles. Did the real man really say that?”

“Yes, Arthur Schlesinger really said those things.”

So that’s Young Indiana Jones, particularly the one that’s set in Paris during the Treaty of Versailles. That’s my recommendation.

Awesome. Thank you, guys, so much. This has been a pleasure.

Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thanks to our financial supporters. We appreciate you keeping the show rolling. Thank you to all of our listeners for listening.

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