Still Standing, Still Walking It Out • Ps Scott Thornton

And for the next 12 years, Sally turned up to church every Sunday and every morning would pray for Noel's salvation.

They had two kids during that time.

Sally just kept growing her relationship with Jesus.

But if you talk to Sally, on the day of her encountering Jesus for herself, she felt like God say, there will come a day when your husband will be standing next to you in church, lifting your hand in worship, praising the same God that you've just met.

I reckon God left out a little detail intentionally because 12 years between promise and receiving of the promise is a really long time.

How many know that we serve a God who is never, never late, but by gosh, he's never early? He has a broken clock.

Like I wish promises came with a timeline.

Lord, I believe you.

But when is the question.

And today we're gonna look at a story of a group of people known as the Israelites who had a promise But the time between the promise and the receiving, there was a whole journey in between.

And I reckon that's where God does his best work and the enemy is most at work.

Between the promise and the receiving of the promise, God does his best work in me, but the enemy does his greatest attack at me in that phase.

We're going to talk about the children of Israel and the walls of Jericho.

But before we get there, in Joshua chapter 6 is the story of the walls of Jericho coming down.

But let me just preface it with this.

We find that in Joshua chapter 5, Joshua walks across the river Jordan.

He is into the receiving of the promise.

The Lord says, I'm going to cause you to cross the Jordan and to inherit the promised land.

And I'm going to give you the promised land.

And I'm not just going to give it to you, but you're going to divide it amongst people and Joshua gets across the River Jordan and the first thing he encounters is Jericho.

But before he gets to Jericho in chapter five, the Bible says that there is the commander of the Lord's armies standing there with a sword.

And Joshua walks up to him and says, are you for us or are you for our enemies? And the response that the commander of the Lord's armies gives is shocking to Joshua because it's not I'm for you and it's not I'm for your enemies.

He says, I am for neither.

I'm not for you and I'm not for the enemies.

Joshua was expecting the commander of the Lord's armies, which represented God himself to tick a box.