Faith in God's Cosmic Power

Alrighty, so there is school you want to get done, and school you have to get done, and then there's this that we... I know, they ain't very funny. Here, let me fix some of those things for you. So this morning, we are at Joshua chapter 10, Joshua chapter 10, and we're going to do the first third of the chapter, so verses one through 15, and it's all about a cosmic miracle. Well, then give me my glasses back.
All right, so good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. We're gonna talk about this cosmic miracle that God does. It's okay, just leave it. All right, let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Want some coffee? Oh, he's going for it. Oh, you see that? There's a mustache growing. It works almost instantaneously.
All right, let's pray. God, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. Please help us, Lord, to understand it. And Father, we pray that we would submit and we would believe, Lord, that we would understand what's being spoken of here and how we should live it out in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. Chapter 10. versus one through 15. I'll start and you just tell me when you want to jump in.
Now it came to pass when Adonai Zadok, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had taken Ai and had utterly destroyed it, as he had done to Jericho and its king, so he had done to Ai and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, that they feared greatly because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were mighty.
Therefore Adonai Tzadik, a king of Jerusalem, sent to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying, Come up to me and help me, that we may attack Gibeon, for it has made peace with Joshua and with the children of Israel. Therefore, the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon gathered together and went up. They and all their armies encamped before Gibeon and made war against it.
And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp of Gilgal, saying, Do not forsake your servants. Come up to us quickly. Save us and help us. for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the mountains have gathered together against us. So Joshua ascended from Gilgal. He and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the Lord said to Joshua, Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand, that a man of them shall stand before you. Joshua therefore came upon them suddenly, having marched all night from Gilgal.
So the Lord routed them before Israel. killed them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, chased them along the road that goes to Beth Horon, and struck them down as far as Azka and Makeda. And it happened as they fled before Israel, and were on the descent of Beth Horon, that Jehovah cast down large hailstones from heaven on them, as far as Akedah, and they died. There are more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword. Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Ammonites, the children of Israel.
And he said in the sight of Israel, of Israel, sun stands still over Gibeon and moon in the valley of Adgalon. So the sun stood still and the moon stopped. So the people had revenge upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Joshua? So the sun stood still in the midst of the heaven, and did not cease to go down for about a whole day.
And there has been no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord needed the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. Then Joshua returned, and all of Israel with him to camp at Gilgal. all right so we need to ask ourselves a what is about be what's the let's see what are we called to do all right so what's this whole thing about um joshua them taking down the amites Yeah, right, so you have Adonai Thaddek, which is Lord of Righteousness.
That's this king's name. He's the king of Jerusalem. He sees that the people of Gibeon had made this treaty with Joshua, and he's like, oh man, that's a big city, it's a famous city, it's got mighty men, and so he gets together a confederation, an alliance of Amorite-type kings. These are just the Ites, right?
And they're gonna get together and they're gonna fight against Joshua? Gibeon are these people who had tricked Joshua but Joshua and the leader said made a covenant with them saying oh yeah we came from a long way look at our clothes and look at our bread look at our wineskins and then they're only like five miles up the road but they'd already made a covenant so now they gotta live by the covenant who? Joshua and the Israelites tricked Gibeon or Gibeon? Gibeon tricked Israel Yeah, and so now they gotta go, right? Gibeon's getting attacked. And what is, who does Gibeon reach out to?
The Lord. Not the Lord. They go to Joshua. Hey, we're getting attacked. We're getting attacked. I mean, they had just tricked Joshua and the Israelites. What, humanly speaking, what would most of us think? Eh, forget about it. Yeah, forget about it. You guys, you guys are the ones who tricked us, whatever. Is that what happens? Joshua listens because he made a commitment he's going to keep. Yeah, Joshua made a covenant. He made a promise. He's going to keep it.
And they don't delay either, do they? Did you notice when they marched? Marched all night? Yeah, right through the night. Get there right away. Just a few guys? Like, maybe we'll try a little bit. No, they sent all the men of valor. Yeah, all the mighty men of valor, right? So they're all going, they're all going to go fight for Gibeon. And did you pick up who was the one really fighting the battle?
God was. That's right. In verse 8, the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand. Verse 10, so the Lord routed them before Israel. Then verse 11, that the Lord cast down large hailstones from heaven. Right? So it's the Lord doing this, the Lord doing this, the Lord doing this. One of the things that this thing is interesting, right? This king of Jerusalem calls himself Adonai Zadok. The king or the Lord of righteousness. This is a title that God will take for himself, right? Like he is the King of Righteousness. He's the Lord of Righteousness. But, many of these Aitz people worshipped a god named Baal. Baal, right? Baal was... Later off days we'll see how that kind of bit them.
Well, yeah, but do you know one of the things that he was known for? What their mythology about this god was? What? He was the god of the storm. Oh. I love when God does that, when the people have this great God they worship, the God of the sea, the God of the air, and then God uses that exact thing they worship. Yeah, right. He showed the... No, no, it's the God of Israel who's the God of heaven and earth.
And he sends down the hailstone and kills more of them with hailstones than they had died in the war. Now, there's a second miracle here though, right? We can understand hailstones. Now that's just a coincidence, right? A big hailstorm right at the time that they're retreating, that's quite a coincidence.
But at the, did you catch at the end there, verse 12 and 13? That's a real tough one. Joshua looks where and tells what to do what. Looks at the sky and tells the sun, the moon to stop, and God listens to him and stops him. So, hold on, hold on. You notice how this is written though? Does it look like all the rest of it? No, it's in its own place. Oh, so this must just be poetry. So it's like poetic, like Joshua did this and he said this and the day just felt like it was really long. Well, the problem is we have multiple accounts. Well, yeah, okay.
So the book of Jasher, right? We don't have the book of Jasher anymore, but it's talked about here. It's also talked about, I researched this one time, 2 Samuel as well as 1 Kings 8, right? So it's mentioned a couple other times. So he said, look, you can go look at this other book.
You're right. But let's think about the earth is spinning. that's how we get the sun because it's actually the earth spinning the sun is stationary it is moving in the galaxy but anyways it's stationary from our perspective it's the earth is moving so for the sun to stand still what would have to happen to the earth but but but here's the interesting the moon stays still the moon The moon moves on its own axis, too. So there's a double axis. The moon would have to stop, too. Yeah, so let's think about this, Poe. Let's think about just the Earth.
If the Earth, for the sun to stand still, what would have to happen with the Earth? It would have to stop spinning. But the sun is spinning it, so the sun would have to stop spinning. Okay, so what would happen to all the water in the oceans if the Earth just stopped spinning? or the water would go everywhere.
What would happen to people, right? Let's think about inertia. If an object's in motion... We go wee! So, by physics, this can't be the truth. But then maybe there's something outside of physics. Ooh. Yeah, right, this is one of those amazing things. I think this is one of those things of faith, right?
It wasn't another king that told the sun to stop? Well, there's a time in which the sun goes backwards, the shadow moves backwards. That's Hezekiah when he's about to die, right? But the point is here, and Joshua's not a king either, he's just the leader, right? So he's the commander of the army.
But it's here that I think that this is a point that like, I don't have to explain this miracle. Yeah, this would cause all sorts of physics problems. You're right. You know what else causes all sorts of physics problems? The resurrection of the dead. You know what else causes a whole bunch of physics problems? An angel.
Or, you know, like, uh, the Red Sea parting? Or the Jordan River parting? Or any of the other miracles? Well, that's why I was trying with the, like, Red Sea, and he says, like, some translation says, like, wind, but the problem with the wind is, the wind would kind of just, like, push, but it'd still be just enough inertia, so it'd kind of go like this. So it had to be some type of wall. And if you have that much water, moving towards a wall, what happens? What normally happens, it goes everywhere. But the amazing thing is it stops.
Yeah. Yeah. So the point is, right, this is an article of faith. We believe that there is a God who's big enough, strong enough, powerful enough, who created heavens and earth, that he could not only send the hail at the right time and the right place to conquer the right people, But he's also able to stop the earth and sustain somehow all the normal gravitational forces.
I don't know how he did it. I don't have to know how he did it. And I don't think it has to be repeated constantly. This is one of the things of science is that it needs to be predictable and repeatable and verifiable, right? We need to be able to, it needs to be falsifiable, right? Like, okay, this can't happen, this can't happen. The issue with miracles is it's not repeatable. We can't reproduce this. Yeah, we can't, right?
This would be like if every generation wanted to say, prove to me the resurrection, because I want to see the resurrection with my own eyes. then it'd just be a lot of science. Somebody would figure out how to be like, okay, so every 20 years, some stars align, and then this just happens by some gravitational something. No, no, no. Yeah, but the point is, right, Jesus would have to die and rise every generation.
But that's not faith. No, that's not faith at all, right? That's a substance of things hoped for, the hope of those things not yet seen. And so we haven't seen these things, we don't know them, and yet we believe them. But does that mean we have to chuck all science out the window? No. Does that mean I have to tell you, oh, you can't actually trust momentum and inertia and gravity and, you know, heliocentrism and stuff?
It's a good thing. Yeah, good. You can't have a God of chaos. You have to have a God of order and if everything just happened randomly at everybody's whim. It'd just be chaos, but God created stuff with set rules and set powers. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so we trust him, right? No, he's created an orderly universe, but yet he's also able to step into that universe and do remarkable things. So let's go ahead and talk about best first. What do you think is the best first of all this? The chin is kind of like a big portion. Okay, you like first 13? I'm looking at 12 to 13. 12 to 13? I think it's really interesting, 14, right? To our point of the uniqueness of this miracle.
And there has not been a day like that before it or after it, that the Lord listened to the voice of a man. Heeded is how the New King James translates it. Heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel, right? This was an amazing day, a deliverance for God's people. So, I could see any of those going. I might also underline verse 8, possibly, because it's talking about the Lord delivering these people into Joshua's hands.
Okay, let's go ahead and talk about seek calling. What do we call it to do? Okay, you're gonna ask God to so we're gonna go ice skating later and you're gonna when we're in the middle of ice skating and you don't want it to end you're gonna ask God to make the sun stand still so we'll be able to ice skate for a couple more hours. I'd have to tell him to stop it. What's it called?
Bill. stuff that folks are on the nucleus to stop so that time dots don't stop. You're going to have to stop the electron clocks. Yeah. Okay. Uh, well, no, right. We, obviously that's not the case here, but then everything would freeze. Yeah. So what do you call it to do? Have faith. Okay. Even when miracles don't happen, you still need to have faith. Well, miracles I think can still happen today. They can still happen, but If we don't believe a miracle happens, why do we pray for people to get better with cancer? Well, sometimes, what is it called? There's miracles that physics itself stops, but then there's Yeah, so there's primary and secondary means, right? So sometimes God works through secondary means, right?
Through the healing that comes by doctor's wisdom and knowledge and application of their trade. And then there's primary, but I still think that there are primary miracles that the Lord can still do remarkable things. However, I don't think that those are like everyday occurrences. But you're right, have faith. The Lord can do these things. And I think one of the things that we're called to have faith, God is going to do one amazing miracle yet still to come.
We believe that Jesus is going to return again and he's going to raise our bodies and he's going to judge the living and the dead. I don't know how the resurrection is going to happen, but because I trust Jesus' word and I believe the historicity of his resurrection, I have faith that even though I have a hard time understanding it, that he's going to raise me from the dead and that somehow I'm going to live with him forever. So God's conquered his enemies. Jesus defeated people even better than these ites. Yeah. And Jesus is our Adonai Tzaddik. He's our Lord of Righteousness, the King of Jerusalem. It's a devolved formula, A, B, and C to A, B, C, J. What's this about? What's the best for sinners? What's the calling? How does this apply to Jesus?
Well, I talk about C as in calling us to do covenant of grace or Jesus Christ. So sometimes I roll a couple Cs into that last C. So let's go ahead and pray. God, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. What a blessing it is to get to read your word and to spend time together. God, we pray that we would follow after you, trust in you. Lord, please give us faith. Where we doubt, Lord, help our disbelief. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, may God bless you. May you have hope even unto the resurrection of the dead. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.