TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: August 21, 2026. Lesson 165-2026. Title: When God’s Strategy Makes No Sense

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

In this Faith Friday edition of Morning Manna, Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart continue the Obedient Faith series with Israel’s march around Jericho. God deliberately chose a strategy that left no room for human strength, ingenuity, or military skill to claim the victory. For six days Israel marched in silence; on the seventh, they obeyed the command to shout—and the wall fell. This lesson reveals why obedient faith sometimes requires restraint, precise timing, and trusting God when His instructions appear inadequate by human standards. When God designs the victory, the glory belongs to Him alone. Lesson 165-2026 Teachers: Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart You can partner with us by visiting MannaNation.com, calling 1-888-519-4935, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961 MEGA FIRE reveals the ancient recurring cycles of war and economic collapse that have shaped history for 600 years. These patterns predict America is now entering its most dangerous period since World War II. Get your copy today! www.megafire.world Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves! www.AmericanReserves.com It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today! www.Amazon.com/Final-Day Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books! www.books.apple.com/final-day Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today. www.Sacrificingliberty.com

Welcome to Morning Manor. Welcome to Morning Manor. Your teachers, Reckwiles and Dr. Burkla. Get your Bible and get ready to hear as you've never heard it before. Welcome to Morning Manor. It's Faith Friday. And what does that mean? Well, every Friday we focus on the topic of faith.

and we approach it by asking questions, what is faith? Where does it come from? How do we use it? How can we lose it? What do we do with it? How do we increase our faith? And so if you come back every Friday, we're going to be talking about faith. Now, today's lesson is part two of a three-part series titled, Obedient Faith,

Our morning manna theme today is the wall fell down flat. And so we're going to be talking about marching around Jericho. What are the faith principles that we can learn in that great Bible story? As always, we begin Faith Friday with the Lord's Prayer and Holy Communion, and we invite you to participate with us, Dr. Raymond Burckhardt and myself, and tens of thousands of Christian saints all over the world in a worldwide virtual communion service. So you will need bread and your choice of grape juice or red wine,

and you will need faith. Why do you need faith? Because you must approach the Lord's table with the faith that we are feasting on the body and blood of the crucified Savior. and that he is truly present in this meal. How he's present, I can't explain it. It's a mystery.

I just know the Lord is present, and I believe it by faith. So let's begin our communion service and our lesson by saying together the Lord's prayer. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. thy kingdom come thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors father and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen amen well let's go to the lord in prayer as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's table. Almighty God, in your tent of mercy, you gave your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.

He offered himself and made once for all time a perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. He instituted this remembrance of his passion and death, which he commanded us to continue until he comes again. Father, we ask you to bless and sanctify with your Word and Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and that we may partake

if the most blessed body and blood. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed once for all upon the cross. Therefore, let us keep the feast. Alleluia. On the night that he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks,

he broke it. And he gave it to his disciples, saying, take eat. This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserve your body and soul to everlasting life.

This is the bread of heaven, take and eat in remembrance that Christ died for you. After supper, Jesus took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink us all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. God.

The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for you, preserved your body and soul to everlasting life. Drink the cup of salvation and remembrance as Christ's blood was shed for you and be thankful. Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes way the sins of the world. And blessed are those who are invited to the married supper of the Lamb. This sacrament is the gift of God for the people of God. Feed on Him by faith with Thanksgiving that Christ died for you.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food. of the most precious body and blood, Jesus Christ, your son, and our Savior. And for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the body of Christ and heirs of your eternal kingdom. And now, Father, to you, to Jesus Christ, our Lord, and to the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory now and forever.

Amen. Amen. Praise God. So glad to have you here on this Faith Friday edition of Morning Manna. And what a privilege it is to share the Lord's table with so many people around the world. Rick, I've received messages from people in the past that said that this celebration of the Lord's table is they're not able to get out to church in it. They're not able to make their way. And so for them, this is such a privilege and such an honor for them to be able to participate with believers around the world and celebrate.

the Lord's blessing in communion. And so we don't take what we do lightly. We take it very seriously. And we are blessed to be able to do this on a regular basis. But let's get into our lesson today. As Rick mentioned, week one of this series examined the patient endurance of obedient faith through Noah's decades of building an ark

that no one believed that he would actually need. Now, week two turns to a command of an entire different character, not slow endurance, but strict, precise, deliberately humiliating military obedience. Our primary text is going to be found in Joshua Chapter 6 and various verses that we're going to be reading today. Joshua 6 records the single most militarily absurd siege instruction in recorded history. Now, in ancient warfare, any army with a walled city before it, fully capable of the conventional tactics of siege warfare, battering ramps, scaling ladder, sustained assault, starvation by blockade. Instead, they're commanded to walk around the city

in silence for six days, and then on the seventh day, walk around it seven times, blow trumpets, and shout. You won't find that in any military handbook. No siege engine is mentioned, no breach is dug, no conventional tactic of ancient warfare occurs anywhere in God's instructions to Joshua. The entire strategy from any military textbook standard is nonsense and it's nonsense by design. The governing question of this week's lesson is precisely that design. Why would God command a method so obviously inadequate to the task when the walls of Jericho, according to the archaeological and textual record, were formidable, and when Israel possessed men of war entirely capable of conventional assault.

And so the answer is the theological center of this entire lesson today. God structured the victory so that no human tactic, no human strength, and no human ingenuity could receive credit for the walls collapse. The obedience commanded here was not merely strange. engineered specifically to remove every possible explanation for the outcome except for one. The Lord did it. Now, I'm going to read several different passages out of Joshua chapter 6. So if you've got your Bibles, follow along with me, starting off with verses 2 through 5.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, see, I've given unto thine hand Jericho and the king thereof and the mighty men of valor. And ye shall compass the city all you meant for and go around about. the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams horns, and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven

times, and the priest shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the rams horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of city shall fall down flat.

Moving down a few verses, Joshua had commanded the people saying you shall not shout or make any noise with your voice. Neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth until the day I bid you shout. Then shall you shout. And then further on in the chapter, so the people shouted when the priest blew with the truncles. And it came to pass when the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted with a great shout. That the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into the city. Every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Rick Wiles starts off our lesson in obedient faith today with the first passage of scripture today. Rick? Thank you, Doc. You know, Doc, I think the probably first thing we should deal with is, do you believe this story? There are a lot of churches, modern churches, Doc, they would say, yes, we believe. that God inserted the story in the Holy Scriptures, but it didn't really happen. This is something we teach children on Sunday school.

Is that what you believe? Do you believe it's just a great, inspiring story of faith? Well, do you believe it really happened? See, I believe it happened. It truly happened. And if it did happen, the way the Bible says, which I believe, and it's the most amazing thing you can ever imagine happening. A city protected by massive stone walls.

The walls collapsed, not because of cannonballs, not because of any kind of military assault, but because of the power of God, responding to the faith and obedience of his people. See, I have given into thine hands. And Jericho, God's saying, I have given you. I've put Jericho in your hand. It's yours.

You can take it, but you've got to do it my way. So the command begins with the outcome already declared as an accomplished fact. Doc, I've learned that God begins at the end and works his way back. Amen. It's a good principle there. Okay. See, we can't think like that. We have to begin at the beginning and wonder how we're going to get to the end. And God says, no, I start at the end and work my way back. I already know what's going to happen. I've already declared it. I've spoken it. It's going to happen. And what God is saying to you and me is you need to come in agreement with what I have already decreed.

God had decreed Jericho is going to fall. All the Israelites had to do was agree with God. They didn't have to figure it out. They just needed to agree with God. It was an accomplished fact. God said it's done. It's already done. You don't see it physically yet in the natural world,

but in my world, it's already done. It was done before the first Israelite took a step around the city. That's right. There's a Hebrew word natati, I have given. It is a perfect tense verb describing a completed action. Even though the walking, the trumpets, and the shout have not yet occurred, in God's world, it had already happened. The victory is settled in God's declaration.

before it is visible in Israel's experience. How does this apply to you today? What situation are you dealing with? You don't know the solution, but there is a declaration, there is a promise in the Holy Bible by God that pertains to your situation. God has already declared the outcome of your life.

And it's victory. It is secure. It is healing. He's already declared it. All you have to do is come in an agreement with what he's already declared to be done. See, if you come from a denomination that rejects that kind of faith, then you're rejecting this very story in the Bible and Joshua. You can't reject what I just said and say that you believe Joshua 6. What follows in this story is an instruction. with no military logic whatsoever. As Doc said, hey, they don't, they don't teach this at West Point. Ye shall accomplish the city, all ye men of war, and go around about the city one. Thus shall thou do for six days.

Say what? We're going to make a circle around the city, and you're going to march around it six days. And then what? You get six days of circling a fortified city. Can you imagine the soldiers on the wall looking down, say, what are you idiots doing? You people are out of your mind. The soldiers are on top of the wall in full battle array. They've got their spears. They've got their swords. They're living at these Israelites. The instruction was, remain silent. He shall not shout nor make any noise with your voice. Neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth. Why did God tell them to shut up? I have my own opinion about it all.

He's like, if I let you people talk for six days, you're going to do nothing but talk negativity. That's right. Complain. Here we go again. You're going to gripe and complain and doubt and have unbelief and if you do that, this miracle is not going to happen.

See, you can talk your way out of God's miracle. God has decreed something to happen in your life, and you can talk it out of happening with your negativity, your criticism, your unbelief. So, well, if God's decreed is going to have it yet, but you've got to play your part. Jesus could do few miracles in his hometown of Nazareth, because of their unbelief.

It didn't mean he lost the power to do miracles. It was like, they're not cooperating. The people here are not cooperating, they're not showing faith. They're not displaying faith. Therefore, I can't do many miracles here. He healed a few sick people. That's it.

Because the people were not cooperating. In this case, God tells the Israelites, shut your mouth. I know how you gripe and complain. heard it in the wilderness for 40 years. I know how you people behave. Nothing but complaining and complaining and griping. There's no griping in heaven.

There's no complaining in heaven. There's no negativity in heaven. There's no unbelief in heaven. You'd have a better chance cursing and swearing in heaven than talking at trash talk. of unbelief. It just, unbelief and doubt sounds like cussing to God. Never thought of it that way. Do you understand your unbelief, your doubt, you're complaining, your griping sounds like cussing in God's ears? It's foreign. They don't want to hear it in

heaven. How many times do you, does your angel have to turn his head and cover his ears? Like, I can't listen to this. Can't listen to this griping and complaining, this negativity, this unbelief. That's why God said, keep your mouth shut for six days. I'll tell you when to speak, and I'll tell you what to say.

It required discipline. You tell anybody to keep your mouth shut for six days, that requires discipline. But, Doc, you know, also, I think God was playing he was playing some mind games on the people with Jericho he was doing some psychological warfare on them too not only were they amused by the Israelites

walking around the city but they were befuddled by their silence you know the soldiers up on the wall were yelling obscenities to them and the Israelites said nothing Now that, that bothered them. That bothered them more than them walking around the city, the fact that they wouldn't respond. So silent marching around a besieged city for six consecutive days

required the entire army's sustained self-control. No jury at the defenders on the wall. No war cries to intimidate them. None of the psychological tactics that are ordinarily employed to demoralize a besieged population. The Israelites were not looking up saying, we're going to come in there and get you. And we're saying anything. So that every natural instinct of a soldier that's facing a fortified city, fortified enemy, is to be suppressed.

day after day for purpose Joshua's own men could not have fully understood as they marched. Nobody knew where God was going with this. God didn't tell them the walls are going to fall down on the seventh day. He just said, when I tell you a shout, shout.

Keep your mouth shut until I tell you the shout. So again, you consider what this look like from inside the walls of Jericho. The defenders of the city, watching for six full days. An armed force circle their city in complete silence. Day after day, no attack, no siege works, instructed, no visible preparation for an assault.

The people in Jericho were like, what are these Israelis up to? What is their plan? How are they going to get inside our city? And they're not talking. They've got some, they're really confident about their plan. I mean, if anything, the silent, repetitive marching would have been bizarre, that would have invited mockery. But on the seventh day, the seventh day, the strangeness escalated rather than declined. Seven full circuits of the city, priests blowing the trumpets,

And then at the appointed moment, a single great shout. And what happened? The wall fell down. Not only did it fall down, it fell down flat. Yes. It fell down flat. Why was that important? Because the troops had to go over it.

No battering ram touched it. No mining beneath its foundation. And no explosives. No siege. power, the ladders. The collapse came at the sound of a shout, a shout to Almighty God. Matthew Henry observed that God frequently chooses methods that appear by every worldly standard disproportionate to their task, not because he lacks better options, but because a victory achieved by conventional means invites credit to conventional means.

Right. Well, a victory achieved by walking and shouting leads no explanation. There is no possible explanation except the power of Almighty God who commanded it. God gets the glory. Amen. And that's the reason for it. That's right. Nancy should get the glory.

So the theological principle beneath this entire narrative here is stated elsewhere in Scripture as well. In the New Testament, we read in 1 Corinthians 1.27, God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. Perfect verse for that. The Jericho campaign is a vivid Old Testament enactment of exactly this principle. Had Israel breached the walls through conventional siege tactics, however skillfully executed the victory, could plausibly have been attributed, at least in part, to Israelite military competence, engineering skill, or superior numbers. God's chosen method eliminated every one of those possible explanations in advance.

They couldn't fall back on anything. Now, this is not God somehow being arbitrary or capricious with his people. safety. It is God being deliberately, strategically, protective. Not only of his people, but of his own glory as well. Isaiah 42.8 says, I am the Lord, and that is my name and my glory will not give to another. That stands behind every instance in Scripture where God chooses a method that guarantees the outcome that cannot be misattributed to human cause. And that applies to our day as well. So the silence commanded throughout those initial six days of marching. I think we need to think about that a little bit.

This was not merely tactical, but also formative. Think about this minute. A silent army marching obediently around a city could not conquer by its own strength. And it was being trained in real time in the specific discipline that this whole series of obedient faith is examining. obedience does not require understanding that submits to a method that it cannot evaluate that trusts the command more than it trusts its own assessment of what should logically work

and so the connection to the wider biblical pattern of strange glory-protecting methods is extensive the Bible contains other examples of God's strange glory-protected methods too. For instance, you recall the story of Gideon. Gideon's 300 men, deliberately reduced from an army of thousands specifically. And the reason why is mentioned in Scripture in Judges 7th, it says, Lest Israel vaunt themselves against me and say, mine own hand have saved us. God took away Israel's glory because he won't share his glory with anyone else. David, facing Goliath, was a sloth rather than armor so that in 1 Samuel 1746 all the earth may know that there is a god in

Israel think about that so the feeding of the 5,000 in the new testament from the five loaves and two fishes a supply so obviously inadequate that no one present could credit the sufficiency to careful provisioning and then jericho belongs to the same family of divine strategy. Victories engineered by their very method to belong to God and God alone, Rick. Amen. Doc, I've been a Christian now 48 years in nearly half a century. And, you know, at various times, I've been in churches. I've seen other churches do a Jericho march.

Right. Okay, everybody in the church marches around a building or something like that, and they shout and command something to fall down. Okay, I'm not criticizing it. This is my observation. Unless God told you what he told the Israelites, then you reenacting the Jericho march isn't going to do anything. Okay.

And technically, and technically they should do it silently, right? Yes, right. And that's hard for, especially if it's a Pentecostal church. It's really hard. That's right. It's just worse. And be quiet. So what I've learned over these decades is that, first of all, God rarely,

rarely does the same thing twice. He's a God of origination. He's a God of origination. creativity. He did that Jericho thing thousands of years ago. He's moved on. He's got other way to do things. It's old stuff. That's old. He did that way back then. What do you mean? If there's a fortified wall, whether that's a physical wall or a spiritual wall or a financial wall or a political wall that God desires to be brought down, He'll give you a new original instruction. Why?

Well, he's already done that Jericho thing. He's going to test your faith today. If he gave you the Jericho method, you're going to say, well, we know what's going to happen. On the seventh day, we're going to shout, and the walls going to fall down. That's too easy because you already know it. He's going to give you something new that challenges your faith.

Just like that instruction challenged the Israelites. They didn't have something. They could look back and go, okay, this is called the Jericho march. Now, they didn't know. They had no idea what he was going to do in Seventh day. Same way in our lives. He's not going to give us an instruction that we've seen in the past. We're going to give us a new instruction and that will test them.

That's right. Amen. Okay. Now, let's talk about the shout and the victory. The shout belonged to the people. The victory belonged to God. The shout came from the mouth of the people. The victory came from the mouth of God. Both shouted.

God shouted too. You know what I think he shouted, Doc? I think he shouted. You believed. Yes. You believed. You obeyed. Yes.

I don't think God didn't go out of me. it got wall fall down. It had already fallen down in his mind. He'd started at the end and he's working his way back. He was waiting to see if the Israelites would obey him and do it in faith. And that's what he's waiting for today, for you and me. Will you believe them and will you do it by faith? I haven't known anything but faith in my wall.

Every time I'm like, God, is there another way to do this? No, by faith, Rick. He gives me things to do in his name for ministry. And he says, and I go, Lord, I don't have the money to do this. But it's already done, Rick. Right. What do I do?

Start moving in that direction. But Lord, can you give us the funds so that we can go? Just go and I'll give you the funds. When you get there, the funds will be waiting on it. you. Doc, I'll be honest, I don't like it. But it's his way. And I've a long time ago, stop complaining about it because it wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to change. It's his way. You know, Doc, I've learned our father is set in his ways. Amen. Our Heavenly Father is set in his ways. You're not going to change him.

You are eventually going to do it his way. And Joshua, had commanded the people saying, He 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 to shout. Then shall ye shout. So the people shouted when the priest blew the trumpets. And it came to pass. When the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted with a great shout

that the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. The one active audible contribution the entire army of Israel made to the collapse of Jericho's walls was a shout. A single coordinated cry released at the precise moment that Joshua commanded it After seven silent circuits on the seventh day. By the way, Joshua, he had Jesus' name. Okay?

Joshua and Jesus are the same. Same name. This detail really requires our careful attention. The people were given exactly one moment of active participation in the entire operation. In other words, you remain silent. I'll tell you when your part comes and you speak your one line. You got one line in this play. And it's a shout.

It's not even a word. It's a shout. And until you get that command, you don't say a word. It was not military skill. It was not strategic insight. It wasn't physical exertion against the wall. It was simple obedience and faith to a timing that they did not control. They didn't understand it and they did not control it.

And it was executed in a manner that involved no weapon, no tool, no technique beyond the human voice raised together at the appointed moment, which was God's appointed moment. the structure of the command, until the day I bid you to shout, then shall ye shout. That places the timing entirely in Joshua's hands. And Joshua's timing was in turn entirely governed by what God instructed to him. So the people's obedience required them to surrender not only the method of victory, but even the timing of their participation in the victory. Yes.

that people did not bring about the victory. God did. Their only participation was to do what God said when he said to do it. They waited six full days in silence. It was only on the seventh day that they were permitted to do the one thing that they were allowed to do. They've got one line to read in this play.

And it's a glorious shout-down. That's right. Two things to note here. There was one instruction and one perfect time. So consider that in this as well. So the structure of this teaches something essential about that nature of obedient faiths that the arc building that we dealt with last faith Friday did not fully flesh out and illustrate. Sometimes obedience requires not sustained labor over years, but disciplined restraint. over days. Think about that. Not to be doing something other than walking. Don't raise up a spear, don't do rocks,

don't say dirty words about the folks behind the wall. Sometimes obedience requires not that sustained labor, but discipline restraint. That's a much harder discipline, in my opinion. for many temperaments of doing nothing because every instinct screams to act and then acting only at the precise moment

in the precise manner commanded no sooner and no differently than the instruction given. So the men of Israel who had trained for war who carried weapons capable of conventional assault who possessed every physical capacity to storm or breach had one been made These same men were required to march in silence for six days

and then contribute nothing to the actual collapse the wall beyond a shout. We know this, Rick, because they conquered other cities that had walls. And so this was a specific instruction with perfect timing. And so their military training, their physical strength, their tactical instincts, none of it was the instrument that God used in this case. obedience was the instrument and obedience alone. Our friend Charles Spurgeon observed that the shot of Jericho cost the Israelites nothing in strength, nothing in skill,

and that this was precisely God's point. The victory needed to be so obviously disproportionate to the human contribution that no soldier marching home afterward could tell its children, man, we took that city and everything, know when they went home. They were talking about the glory of God. They couldn't boast about their own courage,

but they had to boast about God bringing down that wall. None of them got medals, did they, dog? No. There were not even a participation from Rick, really, other than the shout at the right time. None of the men could go home, and the kids said, Daddy, what did you do in the Battle of Jericho? I didn't do anything.

I just walked. What do you mean you walked? You didn't fight? No, I just walked. See, God took away any opportunity for fleshly pride to claim credit for the victory. You've got to get that principle. So many times we stumble over this, this weakness in us as humans that we, you know, we desire to get the credit for the victory. So many of God's faithful. servants are in the background. Nobody ever sees them. Nobody really knows their name, knows their contribution. But they win victories on their knees. And they're shouting victory as they're praying. So you got this worship and warfare. See, worship and spiritual warfare is a combination. The instrument in the voice, the instrument, the trumpet,

both raised in obedience. And it brings a victory that belongs unmistakably to God so that he gets all the glory. He doesn't want to, he's not going to share any of the glory with humans. None. You can't get 10% of it. I mean, Doc, how many, how many humans are like,

well, Lord, can it just have 5% of the glory? No, none. He says, Jeva's God, he gets it all. He gets all the praise. He gets all in glory. And if you don't like it, well, don't live with him. Because that's what goes on every day. That's perpetual existence in heaven.

He gets all the praise and glory. It's here on earth that he doesn't get it. So the seven priests carrying seven trumpets of rants of randshorns before the Ark of the Covenant throughout the seven-day operation, that in itself is significant, because the Ark of the Covenant, which represents God's presence among his people, the Ark led the circuit around the city each day.

What does the Ark represent? The presence of God among his people. Doc, every day I pray for you. for the classmates of Morning Manor, for the people who stand with this ministry, who pray for us, who donate generously to keep us going. And I pray that they would come that day,

every single day, and I prayed it this morning, that they would come into the presence of God. I can't think of a greater blessing. Doc, I prayed for you and Mia. This is what I pray. Lord, bring Doc and Mia into your presence today. I can't think of a greater blessing. Why pray minor blessings?

I'm going for the big stuff. Amen. I'm reaching for the highest blessing to be on you, Doc. I'm reaching for the highest blessing to be on every classmate in Morning Manor that you would be in the presence of you, of the Almighty God. He doesn't come to you. You go to Him. We are to be in Christ. We are to be in His presence. So the Ark of the Covenant represented at that time the presence of Almighty God among His people. Today we have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present in us. The trumpet and the ark

together meant that Israel's procession around Jericho was closer to an act of worship rather than a military maneuver. Amen. You really could see it as a seven-day liturgical act, preceding what would be recognized when the wall fell as an unmistakable divine act rather than a human military achievement. Second Chronicles, verse 20, it gives us a striking illustration of the same principle. Judah facing an overwhelming coalition of enemy armies was instructed by the prophet. You shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord. And the army responds, not with weapons.

But with singers, they set the singers out onto the battlefield, raising them. And Second Chronicle says, And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Amman, Moab, and Mount Sear. So the pattern of Jericho, worship and obedience. substituting for conventional human military action. This recurs throughout Israel's history, it's ancient history. Whenever God intended the victory to be unmistakably his own.

That's right. Now, in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 30, so you got the chapter of faith there, it places Jericho squarely within the category of faith. So that's why it's in our lesson this week. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they were compassed about seven days. So the author of Hebrews does not credit the shout, the trumpets, or the marching itself as the operative cause. He credits faith, meaning the sustained obedient trust that carried the.

the entire company through six days of apparently pointless activity circling before the seventh day's culmination. And speaking about Hebrews 1130, Baptist pastor John Gill noted that faith was credited with the walls collapsed rather than the mechanics of the trumpets or the shouts. So it's the faithfulness, the obedience that matters. Gill observed that the entire operation from the first silent circuit to the final cry, was a single sustained act of obedience and obedient trust rather than a sequence of separately affected military tactics. And so, Rick, the question is then, how does this chapter of obedient faith apply to our morning manna classmates?

Well, the application extends to every circumstance where God's people are tempted to reach for their own conventional methods, Rick. let's say financial leverage. People rely on that. Political maneuvering, personal ingenuity, sheer force of will, when God may intend to resolve matters through obedience, through worship, and disciplined trust instead. So the wall that falls to a shout

rather than to a battering ramp teaches every generation of believers that God's methods are not always the world's methods and that faithful, precise obedience to what looks like an inadequate strategy may be exactly the method that God has chosen to display his own unmistakable hand. Praise God. He always gets the glory. And if you understand this principle, he will give you many opportunities

because he likes getting the glory. He likes it. He likes getting the glory. And he likes his sons and daughters to. believe him and trust him and obey him so that he can perform great things to the amazement of unbelievers. We as believers should not be amazed. We should say this is what our God does. This is what our father does. This is his normal stuff. The miracles are meant to amaze the unbelievers so that they become believers. And that's why he will give

us these situations where there's no way out. There's no way to do this. And he's what the other is. It's already done, but this is what you need to do. And you're like, that doesn't make any sense. You're right. It doesn't. Just do it. Believe me. Trust me. Obey me. And I am responsible for the outcome. Where can you apply these principles in your life today? What's situation? What's Are you dealing with that you need a miracle? You need something to happen. God will do it. God will do it.

I've seen him do things in my life. There just was no way. No way. Okay. Doc, I remember a long, I mean, decades, many decades ago, Susan I were buying a house. And we had a house. deadline you know you know you got you got to do closing within so many days right and at uh there

was a there was a document that the lender needed us to provide them from from from the past okay and we said sure we'll get it but we kept requesting you doc and the other financial company wouldn't send it not out of it wasn't out of like spite it was just They weren't doing it. You know, and so a week goes by and a second week and a third week, we only have 30 days. And we get down to like the day before closing. And the mortgager told us we never got that document.

We can't release these funds until that other printed company gives us this document. And I'm thinking, we've lost. We're not going to go to closing tomorrow. This is over, okay? Doc, I remember crying out to God. Lord, please, had this person at this other company send that document. I don't know why they're withholding it.

And I was almost out of hope, Doc. And I remember this dilly. I walked out of my house, and I'm out in the front yard, and I looked at my house, and on the roof were three duffs, equally spaced. It was like they had measured a distance between them. There was one on each end of the roof and one in the middle.

Like the Holy Spirit's got this covered, son, don't worry about it. And I don't remember the exact time, maybe an hour or two later. I got a phone call from the mortgage company, and they said, hey, we just, this is back when they had fax machines. They said, we just got a fax. That company finally sent that document. We're okay for closing tomorrow. Take care.

Do I? I needed a miracle. I needed a miracle. And there was nothing I could do except trust God. And I'm just telling me the story like this because there are people right now. You are in a situation. You have no way of getting the victory except God acts. And he gets all the glory.

He gets all the praise. He gets the shouts. And here I am, 40 years later, telling that story, because it has never gone away. I still remember today how God delivered me when I had no hope. But I had enough faith. I didn't have any hope in myself. I didn't know what to do.

But I still had faith. and when I saw the doves on my roof, I knew the Holy Spirit is showing me this house is covered. You will go to closing. And praise God. So we were, and I say, why were in a house? We were leasing it and we were buying it. We had entered the house on lease,

and then we were scheduled to go to close. So God is good. Trust him. His ways may confound you. most likely they will. His timing. Oh, I don't like his timing at all. He doesn't wear what.

What I don't like, well, I like the act of the fact, but what I don't like it was God instructs you to do something that's so crazy that, you know, it can't work in the natural. You have to rely on God. Like driving 150 miles on empty to get home. Have you done that? In the natural, that just doesn't work. In fact, you get home and your car is so empty that you have to borrow a gas can for gas the next morning to start the car.

Does that happen to you? That happened to me. So that's happened. Or how I got stuck in the airport. This was my first year working for you. Coming back from the Philippines, I'd gone to visit Mia, take care of some visa situation to bring her over. And on the way back, I was flying on a buddy pass. A friend of mine had a buddy pass with Delta.

Going there, no issues at all. Coming back, there was a weather delay in Honolulu. And so the flight actually left before I got to Hawaii because they wanted to beat the storm. And because I was on a buddy pass, that meant I was on standby. And so I'm like, okay, well, sure, there'll be another flight coming out. There was not another flight. Not that day. Not the next day.

And I couldn't leave the airport. I couldn't leave the airport. There was no place to go. I had to be there because I could get called up on standby. So at first day, it was total frustration. And then you got to the second day. I'd spent the night in the airport and had started to spend the second night there

and I took a little nap about 11 o'clock that's that second yeah that end of that first night you know then they'd said there was no flights going out until like 12 noon the next day and I was like oh Lord

you know I'm so tired I just want to get home and everything and I took a little nap and he woke me up and he said go to the China Eastern ticket count or the China Eastern gate and so I said okay I'll go I don't know whether it's so loopy from lack of sleep or what it was I took my carry-on bag and walked over to China Eastern and I said told them what happened and everything and the lady she was the nicest lady in the world and said, well, we have a flight leaving in 30 minutes.

Would you like to be on it? I said, I have no money. I don't have a way to, no, no, no. We're a partner with Delta. I'm surprised they didn't tell you. And within 30 minutes after I had finally said, Lord, it's all yours. He put me on a flight back to the U.S.

And, yeah, I can tell stories like this over and over again about how I got stuck in Akra Ghana for a week. And just all these other things, God were actually dealing. But the miracle came after God told me to do something absolutely, you know, unnatural, really. And he often challenges us to do that. He'll challenge us to do something so radical, you know, give all the money out of your wallet. And that morning you had just gotten a whole bunch of money. and putting in your wallet.

And, you know, he's saying, Lord, I just got this money. He said, get it, get rid of it, get rid of it. And that miracles that have happened as a result of that. I mean, it really is. So in this obedient faith, Rick, there's oftentimes a strange instruction that accompanies the deliverance. I say strange, only in the term that it's out of the ordinary,

that in the natural, it shouldn't make any sense at all. And yet, when God's economy, it makes perfect sense, does it? That's right. Amen. That's what we desire our classmates to gain out of this lesson. Strange things that God asks us to do. And he does it for your benefit, but he does it for his glory. You get the benefit.

He gets the glory. It's the glory. All right. I'm okay with that. You get the benefit. He gets the glory. that's the way it's done and once you get you know it

you get into flow and you're like you'll just start going with it and you'll know okay this is another one of those God things he's about to do something that's going to be a little on the strange side but he's going to get the glory out of it okay thank you so much God bless you

we'll be back here on Monday with another lesson from the Book of Proverbs God bless you thank you for watching Morning Manor We hope your soul has been nourished today. We welcome and appreciate your prayers and financial support for our international Bible teaching ministry. Visit manor nation.com and kindly send a gift of appreciation and encouragement for our work for Christ and His kingdom, manoration.com, where souls are nourished.

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