Brothers and sisters in Messiah Yah'shua (Christ Jesus), we are gathered her today not just to remember an amazing event that happened 3½ millennia ago on this very day, but we are here, on the basis of hope rooted in faith and love, that Yahweh will bring down whatever obstacles have been set in our way - by others who treated us cruelly or by ourselves because of sinning - that He will set us free to love Him and one another more fully in all the various covenants we live under. But for this to happen there are two things we must be absolutely willing to do that we have not yet spoken of these past seven days. And that's where we have to begin today.

The first thing we must do is yield everything that we have, and what opportunistically the world might have to offfer us circumstantially, to Yahweh. We read:

"The town (Jericho) and everything inside it must be set apart (dedicated, consecrated, yielded, submitted, rendered holy) for Yahweh under a ban...But beware of the ban yourselves; do not be covetous (sinfully desire) and take anything that is under the ban; that would lay the whole camp of Israel open to the same ban and bring disaster on it. All the silver and the gold, all the things of bronze and things of iron are consecrated to Yahweh and must be put in His treasury" (Josh.6:17a, 18-29, JB).

Notice that the ban concerned all the precious metals, including those metals which today we would not consider 'precious' like bronze and iron. But they too were precious then because mining and smelting was a long, hard, arduous and expensive process in those days, so all metals were precious. And each time a new metal was discovered and extracted, society rapidly changed. We speak, for example, of an 'iron age' and a 'bronze age'. Yahweh expects from us, all that is precious in terms of economic value (which is why we have the Laws of Tithing and the United Order - the preparatory and fullness, respectively) and that which costs us in terms of effort and time. In other words Yahweh, who has given us His best, expects our best in return. This teaches us gratitude and appreciation for all we have, reminding us of the true source of all blessings. Covetousness, such as smote Achan, has the effect of taking the mind of the one smitten, off Yahweh and onto self that leads to selfishness. So Achan broke the ban and, as we saw yesterday, this breach of communal covenant resulted in the disaster of the Battle of Ai. Achan, in his selfish, covetous action, "[laid] the whole camp of Israel open to the same ban and [brought] disaster upon it" (v.18, JB). When one person sins under a communal covenant, it is as though all sinned and so all must be punished.

The idea of collective responsibility ought not to be new to any of us. In the military in a combat situation, one person disobeying orders can expose the whole unit - platoon, brigade, of whatever unit is affected - to danger and potential disaster. The same in a dancing group - it takes only one person to make a wrong step to spoil the movement of the whole. The same in a marriage relationship. And in a family relationship, one bad apple can cause immense damage to the whole. We all of us, in so many situations, have collective responsibilities. When a bad government removes a protective hedge from the land by overturning a law designed to protect all, and the first person begins sinning without consequences, then, if it's a sexual sin, for instance, the land becomes cursed, and all the citizenry are negativelty impacted. We are now seeing the full effect the curse of liberalism which began with good intentions but caused an unmitigated social disaster. Immorality affects everyone.

Which brings us to the second thing we must be willing to do, contained in half of a verse I deliberately left out in the passage I quoted from Joshua 6. Let me re-inserted it, with the original phrase preceeding it:

"The town (Jericho) and everything inside it must be set apart (dedicated, consecrated, yielded, submitted, rendered holy) for Yahweh under a ban; only the life of Rahab the harlot (Heb. zanab = whore, prostitute) is to be spared, with all who are in her house, since she hid the messengers we sent" (Josh.6:17, JB).

If communal covenants were not a reality, only Rahab would have been saved and all the members of her house or family would have perished along with all the other inhabitants of Jericho. Do you see how wonderful a communal covenant is, how pregnant with grace - undeserved loving-kindnes - it is, and how we're supposed to learn from it, and implement it, and show grace ourselves to others? Now we don't know anything about Rahab's house or family, but you can be sure they were all pagans. They were beholden to Rahab for her income, no doubt. Yahweh loves a repentant sinner and Rahab is a type of the repentant sinner. Yahweh loves harlots who repent, and proved it not only here, in this situation, but when His Son Yah'shua (Jesus) dined with prostitutes and taught them the Besorah (Gospel, Good News) (cp. Mt.21:31-32). Christ did not exclude them as the religious leaders of the day did - He ministered to them, and gave them hope and opportunity to be reintegrated into the life of Yahweh's people again.

You see, Rahab the whore, who risked her life sheltering the two spies, was the recipient of Yah'shua's (Jesus') good news in advance because she also became the Saviour's ancestor. The same two spies whom she saved, led her to safety into the camp of Israel. Yahweh transforms sinner by His unmerited favour. Here, in the midst of the story of a famous battle that has already taught us so many precious truths, is in some way the most wonderful truth of all: how much Yahweh loves sinners who 'change sides', who consciously leave their previous lives behind and start afresh. Never despise a whore or any sinner because you and I once were - and may well still be in some things - sinners and we all desire the grace and the space to be allowed to turn around and start again.

Not only did Rahab dangle a scarlet ribbon, thread or strip cloth out of her window before the Jericho March started so that all Israel would know not to touch or harm her, but that scarlet ribbon became a prophetic symbol of something quite amazing later on in history when Yahweh's Temple was built in Jerusalem. You see, in the days when Yah'shua (Jesus) was alive on the earth - when the malak (angel) who spoke to Joshua had incarnated through Rahab's descendants through Salmon, and one of their children became Boaz who became the husband of Ruth the Moabitess in the ancestry of the Davidic kings - in those days a scarlet ribbon would be tied to the door of the Temple at Yom haKippurim and if Yahweh accepted the sacrifice, the ribbon would be supernaturally turned white...until the Yom haKippurim following Yah'shua's (Jesus') resurrection an d anscension! Then, and forever thereafter until the destructrion of the Temple by Rome, the scarlet ribbon remaioned scarlet. You see, from thence forward only the blood of Yah'shua (Jesus) could save and cleanse.

Indeed, is Rahab not mentioned in the Royal Genalogy of Yah'shua (Jesus) in the Gospel of Matthew? (Ruth 4:20-22; Mt.1:5-6). This is a continuous story about repentance, forgiveness and redemption. It's all the Bible story is about, with glorification at the end of the line of blessings. And it was Paul and James who remind us of Rahab's special position in history, along with the prostitute who bathed Yah'shua's (Jesus') feet in costly ointment, when they said:

"By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days. By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient" (Heb 11:30-31, NIV).

"You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead" (James 2:23-26, NIV).

Jericho is the story that even children remember well because of its high drama where we learn that faith must accompany deeds or works, and deeds or works must be preceded by faith. Jericho is a refutation of the "faith alone" doctrine of Martin Luther and of Protestantism in general, and in particular yesterday, but to remind you - because it is so important - in the past when we were saved, we were saved by faith alone; in the present we continued to be saved by faith alone; but in the future, at the final Day of Salvation at the last Day of Judgment, we will still be saved by our faith but all our works will be taken into account that we ever did, so that finally we will be saved by our faith and our works. Once you have processed that and clearly understood it, all the scriptures on the subject that sometimes seem contradictory will fall neatly into place, and you will see that Paul and James were of one accord - of one mind.

So, yes, Rahab's household was saved for nothing that they actively did but because of what Rahab did, by faith and by works because of the communal covenant but on the final 'Day of Yahweh' even Rahab's household members who were saved by grace alone will be judged by their works along with Rahab. Now this is truly, as the hymn goes, 'amazing grace', in reality 'amazing graces' because Yahweh shows us so much grace and forebearance and expects us to do the same. Those who bring obstacles down, like the walls of Jericho, are such a band of 'gracers', for they are men and women of grace and works. If Rahab hadn't helped the spies, she would not gave been saved and she and her house would not have been admitted into the nation of Israel after a short period of separation outside the camp, separated for the same reasons Miriam was when she rebelled against her brother's authority and Yahweh's Davar (Word) (Num.12). She too remained outside the Camp of Israel for some days until she was cleansed and readmitted again; and from this we learn that hearts have to be changed and one's walk of life has to be changed before a sinner delivered from death - as Rahab and her family members were - can walk with the Redeemed. They weren't marched right into the Israelite camp and accepted without instruction and proper changes being made. So the grace I speak of is not Calvinist 'hyper-grace' (which is a fiction) but what I call 'grace seasoned with good works'. Am I making sense?

And now to the actual 'deed' or 'work' of this the seventh day of the Jericho March. As in the 7th annual festival of Sukkot or Tabernacles which is seven days long, so Israel's army was required to march around the pagan fortress not once, but seven times. In a sense, the first six days' marches were repeated and then a 7th added, in much the same way that the seven days of Sukkot repeat the six previous annual moedim or appointments and then adds the 7th final one. In total, Joshua's men march around Jericho 13 times (6+7) and 13 is not an unlucky number as it is in our culture (because of a superstition about the Knights Templar who were massacred by a Pope on a Gregorian Friday the 13th) but it is a holy number that in the Old Covenant was represented by the 13 bulls of sacrifice of the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles that correspond to the 13 'I AM' sayings of Christ as recorded in John's Gospel.

I make mention of this in passing only because the numerical value of the Hebrew words Moses (351=27x13), Joseph (156=12x13), Isaac (208=16x13), Abraham (104=8x13), Torah (611=47x13), Jacob (182=14x13), Israel (546=42x13), Sinai (130=10x13) and chodesh (month) (312=12x26=12x2x13) are all multiples of 13 because all of these words or names represent unifying principles. The whole point of the 7, whether of the 7 days of the Jericho March, of the 7 days of Chag haMatzah or the 7 days of Sukkot is that Yahweh desires that everyone be integrated or brought to wholeness through the cleansing of sin and demonic strongmen. Yahweh simple wants to restore us, as He restored the prostitute Rahab who represents us all coming out the world system where we have prostituted Yahweh's gifts to us in serve of the Enemy instead of to Him.

Everything - absolutely everything - points to Sukkot and to marriage - the Mystical Marriage of Messiah that is sealed by a Sacred Meal, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev.19:9). Marriage is the picture used because marriage is the unifiying principle of all, a model of how the Universe is constructed, and how everything that has been damaged or lost can be repaired and restored. And it is a uniplural marriage, just as the Elohimhead (Godhead) is unplural - Many-in-One and Three-in-One, respectively. In this amazing event - the 7 day-long Battle of Jericho - we are being asked to enter a story and become partakers like Rahab and her House. This requires faith and an appropriate response to faith in the form of deeds or words that demonstrate that faith - not in and for themselves, but as a testimony of faith-in-love.

And so it is that every part of the story retells the Big Story as a whole, wherever in the story you dip your fingers, because each part is connected to the whole. And the final work of this story, which rounds off the faith of Joshua and his men, is the trmendous SHOUT OF VICTORY declared in advance of the victory itself, Indeed, it is the declaration by shouting that makes the Victory haappen, the faith behind which that drives the shouting, that causes Yahweh to act mightily by means of an earthquake. But man must particiøpate in the miracle - he is not a passive bystander, watching from the distance wearing a pair of metaphorical headphones staring into a metaphorical computer screen. He isn't rôle-playing. He's part of the Story itself that becomes living history like Rahab herself, her family, Joshua, the priests and the armed men...even those in the camp waiting. We're all there. We were all there; indeed, we're in every story that makes up the bigger story. We're in it, and it is in us.

This has personally been the most exhilarating Jericho Walk I have ever been on, and appropriately, from a symbolic point-of-view, it's our 12th. But it's not quite over. So far I have only talked and you have only listened. But I need everyone's unified participation now, not just in thought, but in very deed. All that remains for me to do now is ask Father Yahweh, in Yah'shua's Name, to be present, in our midst, as a covenant-community, in an even more tangible way than He is already present invisibly through the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), and that because of more than 2 or three of us gathering together in His Name, as He has promised (Mt.18:20).

Yahweh be with you all in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen,.