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“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 6:20

Entering into the Promised Land wasn’t an easy task for the Israelites.

They had to bury the man who led them out of Egypt and gave them hope for something better.
They took a step of faith and walked through the Jordan River, trusting God would get them through on dry ground.
They took flint knives and had to circumcise every male in their group.
They had to change from being nomads wandering the desert to warriors taking cities.
They had to scope out the land and come up with a plan to drive out the current occupants.

It was a painful, exciting, nerve-wracking experience.

Then they came to the city of Jericho.

Jericho was a formidable city. It was surrounded by an earthen embankment with a stone retaining wall at its base. The retaining wall was roughly 12–15 feet high. On top of that was a mudbrick wall about six feet thick and about 20–26 feet high.* At the top of the embankment was a similar mudbrick wall whose base was roughly 46 feet above the ground level outside the retaining wall.

This was a city that no army was able to defeat. Even to this day, it is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, a feat you don’t accomplish without impeccable defenses.

The Israelites had no hope of defeating Jericho.
That is, until God stepped in.

For six days, the Israelites marched around the city. They didn’t fight. They didn’t threaten. They didn’t try to find weak points in the wall to plan their attack. They simply obeyed God’s commands and marched.

They would have faced jeers from the inhabitants of Jericho.
They would have struggled with doubt.
They would have wondered if their leaders lost their minds and if anything would really happen.

They faced the same doubts and fears we all experience when faced with a seemingly impossible task.

But on the seventh day, after marching around the city and blowing the trumpets, the walls fell, and the Israelites took the city in a way no other army was able to do.

God gave them a promise, and destroyed the walls that held them out.
And He does the same for us.

No matter what promise you’re holding onto, no matter what enemy you are facing, no matter how impenetrable the defenses seem, God is bigger.

He will come through, show us how to knock down the walls, and allow us to walk in and receive the promises He has given us.

So, my brothers and sisters, as you face seemingly insurmountable odds in your life, may you be reminded that we serve a wall-destroying God. May you hear the voice from Heaven and walk in obedience to His commands, no matter how strange they may seem. And may you, as you carry out His will, find the walls that once stood in your way are now a pile a rubble you can easily walk over.

What walls do you need God to break down in your life?

* Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger, Jericho die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen, Osnabrück, Otto Zeller Verlag, p. 58, 1973 (reprint of the 1913 edition). Back (1) Back (2)