Obedience Without Logic

“Obedience Without Logic”

By Zach Wood

Joshua 6:2-5

Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.  March around the city once with all the armed men.  Do this for six days.  Have seven priest carry trumpets or rams’ horns in front of the ark.  On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets.  When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”

Every time I read the story of Joshua and the wall of Jericho, I’m amazed at the fact that this wall came tumbling down from a set of instructions that had nothing to do with wall at all.  This story completely focuses on, not a wall, but on being obedient to God.  God wanted to see if the Israelites would be obedient to Him as He gave Joshua orders for them to march around the city. 

Doesn’t this seem crazy?  Why in the world would you march around a city for six days and then on the seventh day follow another strange set of orders that still had nothing to do with physically bringing down the wall?  God simply wanted them to obey Him.  He didn’t ask them to understand the logic.  He didn’t ask them to consider how crazy the idea was.  He simply commanded them to carry through with the orders.

For those of you who remember Veggie Tales and this story illustrated, I think of the silly song the French peas sang while the men were marching around the city.  “Keep walking, but you won’t knock down our wall.  Keep walking, but she isn’t gonna fall.  It’s plain to see that your brains are very small, to think walking will be knocking down our wall.”  While that’s funny, it really does show an important message in that God’s orders a lot of times make no sense to us at the time. 

How often have you found yourself shaking your head at what God asks you to do?  Not so much that you disagree with Him, but just the fact that what He’s asking you to do seems so far from being logical and you just laugh and say, “Yeah right, God!”  However, He wants us to be obedient just as He expected the Israelites to be.  God’s ways are usually never our ways and His thoughts are far beyond ours.  God commands us to be obedient even when we don’t understand what He’s doing.