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This Was Life in JERICHO 3_400 Years Ago _ The City God Erased in a Single Day · truthunedited

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Jericho is the oldest city ever discovered on the face
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  Speaker 1: of the earth. Archaeologists have found evidence of continuous habitation
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  Speaker 1: stretching back more than 10,000 years. Walls six meters thick,
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  Speaker 1: a freshwater spring that has never stopped flowing, trade routes
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  Speaker 1: that made its residents wealthy for millennia. No army in
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  Speaker 1: the ancient world had ever breached its gates. And then
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  Speaker 1: a nation of former slaves marched around it in silence,
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  Speaker 1: for six days, carrying no siege weapons, no battering rams,
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  Speaker 1: no ladders. On the seventh day, they shouted, and the
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  Speaker 1: walls that had stood for thousands of years collapsed in seconds.
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  Speaker 1: God erased the most fortified city in the ancient world
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  Speaker 1: in a single day, and the only person he pulled
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  Speaker 1: from the rubble alive was a prostitute. What was life
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  Speaker 1: really like inside Jericho before the walls came down? How
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  Speaker 1: did silence bring down a fortress that no army could breach?
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  Speaker 1: And 500 years later, when a man tried to rebuild it,
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  Speaker 1: his children paid the price. This is the complete story
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  Speaker 1: of Jericho. Subscribe to Bible Origins. Let us begin. Jericho
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  Speaker 1: exists because of one thing. a perpetual freshwater spring gushing
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  Speaker 1: from the earth in the middle of the Jordan Valley,
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  Speaker 1: one of the hottest, driest regions on the planet. While
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  Speaker 1: the surrounding terrain is barren rock and dead salt, Jericho
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  Speaker 1: is an oasis, date palms, balsam groves, fields irrigated by
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  Speaker 1: channels cut from the spring. Deuteronomy calls it the city
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  Speaker 1: of palm trees. The spring has never stopped flowing. It
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  Speaker 1: flows to this day. People settled here 10,000 years ago
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  Speaker 1: because of that water. Mud brick became stone. Stone became walls.
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  Speaker 1: Walls became a fortified city. Jericho is not just the
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  Speaker 1: oldest city in the Bible, it is the oldest city
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  Speaker 1: ever found by archaeology. Period. Jericho sits at the intersection
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  Speaker 1: of trade routes connecting the Jordan Valley to Egypt, the
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  Speaker 1: hill country, and the Dead Sea. Caravans pass through constantly.
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  Speaker 1: The city taxes them. Merchants trade balsam, the most valuable
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  Speaker 1: medicinal substance in the ancient world, exported as far as Mesopotamia.
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  Speaker 1: Markets inside the walls sell stored grain, pottery, livestock, textiles.
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  Speaker 1: Bronze tools are forged and traded. This is a functioning
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  Speaker 1: Bronze Age economy operating behind a fortified perimeter. and it
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  Speaker 1: has been running for thousands of years. Jericho is a
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  Speaker 1: Canaanite city. The inhabitants worship the gods of the land, El, Baal, Ashtoreth, Molech.
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  Speaker 1: Excavations across Canaanite sites have uncovered altars, standing stones, and
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  Speaker 1: evidence of ritual practices that Moses called detestable. Leviticus 18
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  Speaker 1: provides the catalog and the verdict. and the list is devastating.
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  Speaker 1: God told Israel before they crossed the Jordan that it
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  Speaker 1: is because of these abominations that the land is vomiting
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  Speaker 1: out its inhabitants. Jericho's destruction is not random. It is judicial.
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  Speaker 1: The same God who waited 400 years before acting against
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  Speaker 1: the Amorites, telling Abraham in Genesis 15-16 that their sin
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  Speaker 1: had not yet reached its full measure, has now declared
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  Speaker 1: that the measure is full. The gavel has fallen, Jericho
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  Speaker 1: was thriving, the spring was flowing, the markets were full.
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  Speaker 1: And then a report reached the city that changed everything.
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  Speaker 1: A nation of two million people had crossed a flooded
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  Speaker 1: river on dry ground, and they were heading straight for
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  Speaker 1: the gates. The city sealed its doors. No one went out.
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  Speaker 1: No one came in. And inside those walls, one woman died.
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  Speaker 1: was about to make the most dangerous decision of her life,
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  Speaker 1: Joshua 6.1. Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred
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  Speaker 1: because of the Israelites. No one went out and no
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  Speaker 1: one came in. Total lockdown. The city has heard what
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  Speaker 1: happened at the Red Sea. They have heard what Israel
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  Speaker 1: did to the Amorite kings east of the Jordan River.
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  Speaker 1: They know this army is different, and their response is absolute.
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  Speaker 1: Seal the gates. No one enters. No one leaves. But
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  Speaker 1: lockdown is not panic. Jericho has been under siege before.
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  Speaker 1: The walls have held for thousands of years. The spring
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  Speaker 1: inside provides unlimited fresh water, a critical advantage no besieging
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  Speaker 1: army can match. The grain stores are full. Excavations have
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  Speaker 1: confirmed this. massive quantities of stored grain at the time
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  Speaker 1: of destruction. Jericho can outlast any siege. That is the calculation.
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  Speaker 1: Close the gates. Wait them out. The walls will hold.
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  Speaker 1: The defenses backing that confidence were extraordinary, a double-wall fortification system.
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  Speaker 1: The outer wall, a massive stone retaining wall roughly five
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  Speaker 1: meters high, reinforced with a steep embankment covered in smooth
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  Speaker 1: plaster so attackers could not climb it. Above that, a
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  Speaker 1: mud brick wall rising another four to five meters. Total
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  Speaker 1: height from the base of the embankment to the top,
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  Speaker 1: nearly 12 meters. Four stories of stone, earth, and brick
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  Speaker 1: between the city and anyone trying to get in. Behind
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  Speaker 1: the outer wall, a gap of several meters, then a
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  Speaker 1: second inner wall, equally thick. Houses were built on top
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  Speaker 1: of and between these walls. The poorest residents lived in
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  Speaker 1: the wall space itself. Their homes were literally built into
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  Speaker 1: the fortification. This detail matters enormously, because one of those
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  Speaker 1: houses belonged to a prostitute named Rahab. The walls were thick,
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  Speaker 1: the spring was flowing, The grain was stored, but the
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  Speaker 1: courage had already failed. The inhabitants of Jericho knew through
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  Speaker 1: trade route gossip, through merchant caravan reports, through the stories
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  Speaker 1: that arrived before the gates were sealed, what the God
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  Speaker 1: of Israel had done to Egypt, to the Red Sea,
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  Speaker 1: and to the Amorite kings. Every engineering achievement inside those
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  Speaker 1: walls was designed to hold out an army. None of
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  Speaker 1: it was designed to hold out a god. The gates
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  Speaker 1: were sealed, the walls were twelve meters high, the grain
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  Speaker 1: stores were full, and inside the wall itself, in a
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  Speaker 1: house built into the very fortification that was supposed to
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  Speaker 1: keep the enemy out, a Canaanite prostitute was hiding two
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  Speaker 1: Israelite spies on her roof. The lies she told to
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  Speaker 1: protect them would save her entire family and put her
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  Speaker 1: name in the bloodline of Jesus Christ. Joshua sends two
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  Speaker 1: men secretly to scout the city. They enter Jericho and
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  Speaker 1: go to the house of a prostitute named Rahab. Her
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  Speaker 1: house is in the wall built into the outer fortification
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  Speaker 1: with a window overlooking the outside. A prostitute's house in
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  Speaker 1: the wall would attract visitors without suspicion. Foreign men entering
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  Speaker 1: her door would not raise alarms. Joshua's spies chose the
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  Speaker 1: one location in the city where strangers could arrive unnoticed,
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  Speaker 1: but someone does notice. The king of Jericho receives word.
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  Speaker 1: Israelite spies have entered the city. Soldiers arrive at Rahab's door.
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  Speaker 1: Rahab has already hidden the two men under stalks of flax,
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  Speaker 1: drying on her roof. When the soldiers demand them, she lies. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: The men came to me, but I did not know
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  Speaker 1: where they had come from. At dusk, when it was
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  Speaker 1: time to close the city gate, they left. I do
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  Speaker 1: not know which way they went. Go after them quickly.
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  Speaker 1: The soldiers go chasing shadows into the night. She is
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  Speaker 1: risking everything. If the soldiers search her roof, she dies.
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  Speaker 1: If anyone in the city discovers what she has done,
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  Speaker 1: she dies. She is a Canaanite lying to her own
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  Speaker 1: king to protect Israelite spies. There is no rational reason
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  Speaker 1: for her to do this unless she believes what she
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  Speaker 1: is about to say. She goes up to the roof.
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  Speaker 1: She tells the spies the truth. Joshua 2.9-11 We have
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  Speaker 1: heard how the Lord dried up the water of the
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  Speaker 1: Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt.
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  Speaker 1: and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two
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  Speaker 1: kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you
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  Speaker 1: completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted
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  Speaker 1: in fear, and everyone's courage failed because of you, for
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  Speaker 1: the Lord your God is God in heaven above and
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  Speaker 1: on the earth below. This is a pagan woman, a Canaanite,
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  Speaker 1: a prostitute, making a theological declaration that most of Israel
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  Speaker 1: had failed to make consistently for forty years in the desert.
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  Speaker 1: She has no Torah, no covenant history, no priest or prophet.
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  Speaker 1: She has heard secondhand reports of what God has done. did,
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  Speaker 1: and she has concluded from trade route gossip, from merchant
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  Speaker 1: caravan stories, from rumors carried through the gates before they
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  Speaker 1: were sealed, that this God is the real one. And
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  Speaker 1: she is betting her life on that conclusion. Hebrews 11 31.
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  Speaker 1: By faith, The prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies,
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  Speaker 1: was not killed with those who were disobedient, James 2.25.
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  Speaker 1: Was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what
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  Speaker 1: she did when she gave lodging to the spies? Two
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  Speaker 1: separate New Testament writers hold up a Canaanite prostitute as
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  Speaker 1: a model of faith. Faith is not about your history.
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  Speaker 1: It is about your decision. The spies... Make a deal.
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  Speaker 1: When the attack comes, tie a scarlet cord in your window.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone inside your house will be spared. Everyone outside will
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  Speaker 1: be destroyed. The cord must be visible. She ties the cord.
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  Speaker 1: A single red rope, hanging from a window in the wall.
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  Speaker 1: The entire fortification is about to be demolished, but one
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  Speaker 1: section will be left standing. One house, one family, one cord.
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  Speaker 1: The scarlet cord has echoed through Christian theology for 2,000 years. Red.
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  Speaker 1: The color of blood. The color of covering. The color
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  Speaker 1: of the Passover lamb's blood painted on the doorposts in Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: another mark that distinguished the protected from the destroyed. The
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  Speaker 1: same pattern. The same God. The same color. She lets
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  Speaker 1: them down by a rope through the window because her
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  Speaker 1: house was part of the city wall. The spies escape
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  Speaker 1: into the hills. The cord stays in the window. Rahab
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  Speaker 1: returns to wait behind a wall she knows is coming down,
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  Speaker 1: trusting a cord tied to a promise from a god
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  Speaker 1: she has never seen. Rahab sent the spies into the hills.
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  Speaker 1: The cord hung in her window. The city waited behind
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  Speaker 1: twelve meters of stone. And then, instead of siege towers
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  Speaker 1: and battering rams, Joshua received a battle plan from God
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  Speaker 1: that would have made any military commander in history question
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  Speaker 1: his sanity. Before the battle, Joshua encounters a man standing
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  Speaker 1: with a drawn sword. He asks, Are you for us
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  Speaker 1: or for our enemies? The answer is devastating. Neither. I
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  Speaker 1: have come as commander of the army of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: This is not God joining Joshua's side. This is Joshua
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  Speaker 1: being told whose side he is on. The battle does
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  Speaker 1: not belong to Israel. It belongs to God. The army
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  Speaker 1: is not attacking Jericho. They are witnesses. God gives the instructions.
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  Speaker 1: March around the city once a day for six days.
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  Speaker 1: Seven priests carry trumpets of ram's horns in front of
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  Speaker 1: the ark. The armed guard walks ahead. The rear guard
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  Speaker 1: follows behind. Do not shout. Do not speak, do not
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  Speaker 1: make a sound with your voice until the day I
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  Speaker 1: tell you to shout. On the seventh day, march around
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  Speaker 1: the city seven times. When the trumpets blast, shout, and
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  Speaker 1: the wall will fall down flat. No siege equipment, no
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  Speaker 1: battering rams, no scaling ladders, no fire arrows. Priests, trumpets,
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  Speaker 1: the ark, and footsteps. That is the battle plan for
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  Speaker 1: conquering the most heavily fortified city in the ancient world,
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  Speaker 1: day one. The army forms up at dawn, the armed
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  Speaker 1: men first, then seven priests with ram's horn trumpets, then
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  Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of God, carried
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  Speaker 1: on the shoulders of the Levites. Then the rear guard,
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  Speaker 1: and they walk around the entire perimeter of the city
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  Speaker 1: in total silence. Imagine standing on the wall of Jericho
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  Speaker 1: watching this. No war cries, no threats, no demands for surrender,
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  Speaker 1: no siege equipment, just thousands of men walking in absolute
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  Speaker 1: silence around your city. The only sound is the rhythmic
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  Speaker 1: blast of the ram's horn trumpets, not a melody, not
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  Speaker 1: a war song, just a flat haunting drone that fills
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  Speaker 1: the valley and echoes off the stone. Then they go
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  Speaker 1: back to camp. Day two. The same day three, the
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  Speaker 1: same day four, day five, day six. Six identical circuits,
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  Speaker 1: no attack, no escalation, no communication. Just the silent march
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  Speaker 1: and the sound of the trumpets. The psychological warfare is staggering.
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  Speaker 1: Every military manual in the ancient world operated on the
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  Speaker 1: same principles. Intimidate, besiege, assault. Israel did none of these.
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  Speaker 1: The silence was more terrifying than any war cry because
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  Speaker 1: it was unreadable. The people of Jericho had no framework
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  Speaker 1: for what was happening. The seventh day, the army forms
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  Speaker 1: at dawn. This time they do not stop after one circuit.
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  Speaker 1: They march again and again, seven times around the walls.
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  Speaker 1: By the fifth circuit, the people on the walls understand
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  Speaker 1: something is different. By the sixth, terror. The seventh circuit ends.
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  Speaker 1: Joshua commands, shout, for the Lord has given you the city.
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  Speaker 1: The trumpets blast. The people shout with a single voice.
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  Speaker 1: And the walls of Jericho, the walls that had stood
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  Speaker 1: for thousands of years, the walls that were six meters
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  Speaker 1: thick and 12 meters high, collapse. Joshua 620 says the
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  Speaker 1: wall fell down flat, not breached, not cracked, flat. The
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  Speaker 1: army walks straight in. Over the rubble, every direction at once,
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  Speaker 1: not through a gap, over the wall itself, excavations at
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  Speaker 1: Tellus Sultan, the ancient site of Jericho, have confirmed extraordinary details.
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  Speaker 1: The walls collapsed outward. In a normal siege, battering rams
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  Speaker 1: push walls inward. At Jericho, the mud brick walls fell outward,
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  Speaker 1: down the embankment, creating a ramp of rubble the attackers
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  Speaker 1: could walk up. The text says the army went straight in.
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  Speaker 1: The archaeology shows exactly how that was possible. The grain
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  Speaker 1: stores were full. Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon found massive quantities of
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  Speaker 1: stored grain in the destruction layer. In ancient warfare, a
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  Speaker 1: besieging army's primary strategy is starvation. Full grain stores mean
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  Speaker 1: the city was not taken by prolonged siege. It fell
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  Speaker 1: suddenly while still fully provisioned. The text says seven days.
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  Speaker 1: The grain confirms it. A thick burn layer covers the site.
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  Speaker 1: Joshua 6.24. Then they burned the whole city and everything
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  Speaker 1: in it. Excavations confirm a massive destruction by fire, charred debris,
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  Speaker 1: ash layers, consistent with intentional thorough destruction, exactly what the
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  Speaker 1: text describes. One section of the wall remained standing. Excavations
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  Speaker 1: on the north side of the tell revealed a short
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  Speaker 1: stretch of the lower wall still intact, with houses built
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  Speaker 1: against it, houses that survived when the rest collapsed. Rahab
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  Speaker 1: lived in the wall. The city burned. The ruins lay flat.
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  Speaker 1: The grain that was supposed to outlast any siege turned
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  Speaker 1: to ash. And before the smoke had cleared, Joshua stood
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  Speaker 1: in the rubble and spoke a curse so severe that
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  Speaker 1: it would reach across 500 years and kill two children.
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  Speaker 1: Joshua 6.17-19 Everything in the city is under the ban,
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  Speaker 1: the Hebrew word harem. This is not plunder. This is
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  Speaker 1: consecration to destruction. Every living thing in the city is
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  Speaker 1: to be destroyed. The silver, gold, bronze, and iron go
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  Speaker 1: into the treasury of the Lord. Nothing is to be
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  Speaker 1: taken as personal spoil. The city and everything in it
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  Speaker 1: belongs to God. Only Rahab and everyone in her house
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  Speaker 1: are exempt. The scarlet cord holds. This is judicial justice.
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  Speaker 1: God is executing a sentence on a civilization that has
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  Speaker 1: been under investigation for 400 years since he told Abraham
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  Speaker 1: that the sin of the Amorites had not yet reached
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  Speaker 1: its full measure. That measure is now full. Jericho is
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  Speaker 1: the first case in the docket. And the verdict is total.
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  Speaker 1: Joshua 6.26 After the destruction, Joshua pronounces a curse. cursed
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  Speaker 1: before the Lord as the one who undertakes to rebuild
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  Speaker 1: this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn son,
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  Speaker 1: he will lay its foundations. At the cost of his youngest,
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  Speaker 1: he will set up its gates. The curse is specific,
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  Speaker 1: not vague, not general. Foundations, firstborn dies. Gates, youngest dies.
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  Speaker 1: Anyone who rebuilds this city pays with his children. The
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  Speaker 1: ruins of Jericho lay untouched. The spring still flowed. The
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  Speaker 1: trade routes still passed nearby. The location was strategically valuable,
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  Speaker 1: but no one rebuilt it. For five hundred years, the
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  Speaker 1: rubble sat in the Jordan Valley, and no one dared
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  Speaker 1: touch the stones. Five hundred years pass. Israel has split
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  Speaker 1: into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom has descended into idolatry
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  Speaker 1: under a succession of increasingly wicked kings. Ahab is on
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  Speaker 1: the throne. The king whom 1 Kings 16.30 describes as
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  Speaker 1: doing more evil in the eyes of the Lord than
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  Speaker 1: all the kings before him. Jezebel is his queen. Baal
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  Speaker 1: worship has replaced the worship of the Lord. The nation
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  Speaker 1: has reached a point where the old commandments feel like
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  Speaker 1: ancient history. The old warnings feel irrelevant. The old curses
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  Speaker 1: feel like relics of a different era, and in that
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  Speaker 1: environment of total spiritual rebellion, a man named Heel of
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  Speaker 1: Bethel decides to rebuild Jericho. 1 Kings 16.34 In Ahab's time,
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  Speaker 1: Heel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at
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  Speaker 1: the cost of his firstborn son, Abiram, and he set
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  Speaker 1: up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Segub.
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  Speaker 1: in accordance with the word of the Lord spoken by Joshua,
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  Speaker 1: son of Nun. Read that verse again. The text does
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  Speaker 1: not say, and then bad things happened. It says the
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  Speaker 1: cost was paid exactly as specified. Foundations, firstborn. Gates, youngest.
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  Speaker 1: 500 years between the prophecy and its fulfillment. Not a
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  Speaker 1: single detail altered. Not a word wasted. Heel was not ignorant.
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  Speaker 1: He would have known the curse. Every Israelite would have
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  Speaker 1: known why Jericho was a ruin. He rebuilt it anyway.
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  Speaker 1: In an era when the nation had turned its back
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  Speaker 1: on God, he believed the old warnings no longer applied.
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  Speaker 1: He was wrong, and his children paid for his arrogance.
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  Speaker 1: The walls of Jericho reached across 500 years and claimed
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  Speaker 1: two more lives. Heel rebuilt the walls. His sons died
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  Speaker 1: in the process. The curse was real. But there is
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  Speaker 1: one more detail in this story that almost nobody talks about,
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  Speaker 1: and it changes everything. The prostitute who tied a red
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  Speaker 1: cord in her window and hid two spies on her
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  Speaker 1: roof did not just survive the destruction. She married into Israel.
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  Speaker 1: She had a son. And if you trace that bloodline
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  Speaker 1: forward through the centuries, through the house of David, through
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  Speaker 1: the book of Ruth, You arrive at a manger in Bethlehem.
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  Speaker 1: Rahab the prostitute is in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
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  Speaker 1: Rahab survived. Her family survived. The scarlet cord held. But
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  Speaker 1: the story did not end at the ruins. She married
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  Speaker 1: an Israelite named Salmon from the tribe of Judah. Together
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  Speaker 1: they had a son named Boaz. Boaz. Let that name
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  Speaker 1: sit for a moment. Because Boaz is not a footnote
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  Speaker 1: in Israel's story. Boaz is the man who married Ruth,
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  Speaker 1: the Moabite widow who chose to follow Naomi's God into
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  Speaker 1: a land she had never seen. Another outsider, another woman
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  Speaker 1: from the wrong nation who chose faith over familiarity. Boaz
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  Speaker 1: saw Ruth gleaning in his field and extended protection, provision,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and ultimately marriage. The son of a Canaanite prostitute married
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a Moabite widow. two outsiders joined by faith, producing a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: lineage that would change human history. Boaz and Ruth had
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: a son named Obed. Obed was the father of Jesse.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Jesse was the father of David, King David, the shepherd
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: boy who killed Goliath, the man after God's own heart,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the king from whose throne an eternal kingdom was promised.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And his great-great-grandmother was Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute from Jericho.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Matthew chapter 1 records the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Ancient
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Jewish genealogies almost never named women. Matthew names four, and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: every single one of them is an outsider with a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: scandalous story. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, These are not the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: names a first-century Jewish writer includes to make the Messiah's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: bloodline look impressive. These are the names God chose to
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: include because they prove a point. Grace does not follow
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the expected bloodline. It follows faith. Matthew 1.5 Salmon, the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. There it is,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: written into the permanent genealogical record of the Son of God.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: A Canaanite, a prostitute, a woman who lied to her
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: own king, hid foreign spies, hung a red cord from
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: her window, and bet everything on a god she had
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: only heard about from passing merchants. She is in the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: direct bloodline of the Messiah. Every other person in Jericho
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: had the same information Rahab had. They all heard about
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the Red Sea. They all heard about the Amorite kings.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Their hearts all melted with fear, but only one person
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: responded to the information with faith. The rest responded with
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: thicker walls, sealed gates, and a determination to survive on
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: their own terms. Rahab responded by opening her door. The
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: wall she lived in collapsed, her section held. The walls
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: represented human fortress, stone, Engineering, self-reliance, the accumulated defenses of 10,000
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: years of human effort. The cord represented divine covering, thin, fragile, vulnerable,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: visible to anyone who wanted to cut it, and the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: cord outlasted the wall. The thinnest thing in the story survived,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the thickest thing fell, because the cord was attached to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: a promise, and the wall was attached to pride. A
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: prostitute's faith outlasted the thickest walls in the ancient world.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: And that is the question this entire story has been
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: building toward. Not about Jericho. Not about Joshua. Not about
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: trumpets or archaeology or ancient curses. It is about the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: wall you are hiding behind right now. Every person inside
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: those walls had the same information Rahab had. They all
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: knew what God had done at the Red Sea. They
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: all knew the Amorite kings were destroyed. They all knew
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: this was not a normal army marching around their perimeter,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and they all made the same decision. Stay behind the wall.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Trust the stone. Wait it out. Every person except one.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Rahab did not have better information. She had better faith.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: She heard the same reports and reached a different conclusion.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: She decided that no wall was thick enough to keep
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: out a god who splits oceans. So what wall are
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you hiding behind? Maybe it is the wall of self-sufficiency.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the career, the income, the plan you have built that
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: makes you feel untouchable. It is a good wall. It
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: has held so far, but Jericho's walls held for 10,000 years,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: and they fell in seven days when God decided they
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: were coming down. Maybe it is the wall of certainty,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the belief that you have figured life out and do
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: not need God to intervene. You have the grain stored.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: The spring is flowing. The gates are sealed. You have
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: run the calculation and concluded that you can outlast whatever
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you are facing. That was Jericho's calculation too. Maybe it
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: is the wall of hurt. The one you built after
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: someone betrayed you, after a relationship destroyed you, after the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: people who were supposed to protect you became the people
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: you needed protection from. That wall was not built out
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: of pride. It was built out of pain, and you
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: swore you would never be that vulnerable again. But the
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: wall that protects you from being hurt is the same
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: wall that prevents you from being reached, and God is
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: sending people to your door that you cannot receive while
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the gates are sealed. Whatever the wall is, it will
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: not hold. The question is not whether God can bring
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: it down. He collapsed 12 meters of stone with a shout.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: The question is what you will do before he does.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Will you tie the cord? Will you open the door?
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Will you trust the God you have heard about but
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: never fully surrendered to? Or will you sit behind the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: stone and wait the way every other person in Jericho
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: waited until the trumpets sound and the decision is made
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: for you? Rahab tied the cord before the march began.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Not after. She did not wait for proof. She acted
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: on what she had heard, and it saved everything. Do
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: not wait for the walls to crack before you make
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: your decision.