Jericho: When God's Strategy Doesn't Make Sense
"You shall march around the city... thus shall you do for six days... And when they make a long blast with the ram's horn... all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat." — Joshua 6:3-5
Icebreaker
Ask the group: "Have you ever done something that, at the time, made absolutely no sense to anyone watching — but deep down you knew it was the right thing to do? What was it like to deal with the looks you got?"
Teaching
Jericho was the first city to be conquered in Canaan. It was "shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, and none came in" (v. 1). And God gives Joshua a plan that no military manual would ever endorse: march in silence around the walls, once a day, for six days. On the seventh day, seven laps, blow the trumpets, and shout.
1. God declares the victory before He gives the instructions
Notice the order in which God speaks: "See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor" (v. 2). The verb is in the perfect tense — I have given. The victory is announced as a done deal before the people take a single step.
This changes the very nature of obedience. Israel didn't march in order to win the victory; they marched because the victory had already been given to them. We obey from the promise — not to earn it.
2. The instruction reveals who actually trusts
A logical plan doesn't test anyone's trust. If God had told them to build battering rams and scale the walls, every soldier would have obeyed without a second thought — because it would have made sense. It was precisely the apparent absurdity of the plan that revealed who was trusting in God and who was trusting in their own assessment.
Imagine the people of Jericho on the first day, watching that army silently circle the city and walk away. Imagine the second day. The third. Israel had to endure six days of what looked like sheer foolishness before seeing any result whatsoever.
3. The silence was part of the command
Joshua orders: "You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth, until the day I tell you to shout" (v. 10). For six days, commentary was forbidden.
There is tremendous wisdom in this. If the people had been allowed to talk during the march, grumbling would have destroyed their obedience before the seventh day ever arrived. Sometimes the greatest enemy of a journey of faith isn't the difficulty itself — it's our own words spoken halfway through.
4. What seems absurd may be the very path of obedience
The central lesson here isn't that God has a fondness for strange plans. It's that human logic is not the final measure for evaluating a divine instruction. The wall fell — but it didn't fall because of the laps, or the trumpets, or the shout. It fell because God brought it down, and the laps were simply the way faith became visible.
An important balance worth noting: this is not an invitation to act recklessly and call it faith. The Jericho instructions came from God, were clear, were confirmed, and contradicted nothing He had already revealed. Obedience is following what God says — it is not doing strange things and waiting for God to bless them.
Discussion Questions
Practical Challenge for the Week
Identify a process of obedience you're in the middle of, with no visible results yet. This week, commit to not complaining about it — not in conversation, not on social media, not even in your own head. Every time you catch yourself grumbling, replace the complaint with a statement about who God is. Bring what you noticed back to the group.