Joshua 6: Don’t Give Up Before the Seventh Lap

Introduction

“A promise from God is not the absence of obstacles. It is the assurance that the obstacle will not have the last word.” Patrice Martorano preaches this message on the second evening of a week of fasting and prayer at Église Momentum. The night before, the church had focused on what had been lost and what needed to be taken back from the enemy’s camp. That evening, he invites us to look in another direction: at what now stands in front of us.

After forty years in the wilderness, Israel finally enters the promised land. And the first thing the people meet is a wall: Jericho, “shut up and barricaded,” where “no one went out, and no one came in.” “Welcome to God’s promise,” says the preacher. What God wants to give you, you are sometimes called to go and conquer. But God is not a man, that he should lie (Numbers 23:19): what he promised you, he will end up giving.

He titled his message “Go One More Lap.” The question that drives it is not “why is there a wall?” but “what am I going to do while this wall is still standing?”

Outline of the Message

1. Before Bringing Down the Wall, God Asks You to Take a Position

• Near Jericho, Joshua sees a man standing in front of him with his sword drawn in his hand, and asks him: “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” He answers: “No; but as commander of Yahweh’s army I have come now” (Joshua 5:13-14).
• Joshua asks the wrong question, and the angel of the Lord turns it around. The real question is not whether God is with you or against you, but “what is your position?”
• Often we make our own plan, then ask: “Lord, bless my plan.” And when it doesn’t work: “Where are you, Lord?” Patrice Martorano reverses the logic: it is not for God to take a position, it is for you to align yourself with his plan, “because when I am in what God blesses, then I know I am going to be blessed.”
• “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place whereon you stand is holy” (Joshua 5:15). The battle is imminent, but God begins with Joshua, not with the wall.

2. You Are Under Construction

• The preacher compares every Christian to a road under construction: each one carries an invisible sign that reads “under construction.”
• We are very interested in what God will do through us: “Make me a preacher, a pastor, a missionary, a singer.” But before doing something through your life, God first wants to do something in you.
• He saw it with David, who received the attitude of a king before the crown, with Joseph, with Moses (“Moses took 80 years”), with Joshua, and with Saul of Tarsus before he became the apostle Paul.
• God sometimes wants to touch your pride, your fears, your worries, your need to control everything, your bitterness. With humor, he recalls someone who once told him, “Me, I am humble”: “You are proud of your humility.”
• Don’t just ask, “Lord, bring down my wall,” but “while I am in front of this wall, transform me.” “Sometimes God uses the Jericho in front of you to shape the Joshua within you.”

3. Walking by Faith and Not by Sight

• “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hand, along with its king” (Joshua 6:2). Joshua looks and sees only a wall: the ramparts are standing, the gates are shut, nothing looks like a victory. Yet God tells him the city has already been delivered.
• “I walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). “The worst enemy of vision is our physical sight.” When God has promised you something, whatever is impossible in your eyes, consider it already yours from now on.
• In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven (Matthew 6:10). “In heaven, Jericho has already fallen.” Prayer consists of bringing to earth what has already been accomplished in heaven.
• Faith is not denial: Joshua does not walk around saying there is no wall. “Faith does not deny what it sees. It simply refuses to give what it sees the last word.” The last word belongs to Jesus.

4. A Crazy Strategy, With God’s Presence at the Center

• God gives Joshua a strategy that makes no military sense. The preacher recalls a message about Moses: God sent him to grow up in the house of Pharaoh, the man who had ordered the little boys to be killed (Exodus 2:1-10). Humanly speaking, it was not a good strategy, and that is where he became a prince of Egypt.
• A war committee would have proposed a battering ram with twenty-five men on each side, ropes, and ladders. God simply says: march, go around the city, and put the ark of the covenant in the middle of the procession.
• The pearl of the message: “Jericho is at the center of their route, but Jericho is not at the center of their procession.” At the center is the ark, the symbol of God’s presence.
• Our problem often becomes the center of our life: we think about it when we get up, in the shower, at bedtime, with our spouse, we talk about nothing else. Patrice Martorano admits he lived this himself this year, to the point of waking up at night thinking about his Jericho.
• “You can walk around a problem without letting that problem become the center of your life.” And again: “I have a Jericho in my life, but my life is not called Jericho.” God is greater than any Jericho, any Goliath.

5. Six Days When Nothing Happens

• First day, one lap, nothing. Second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day: nothing. Not a single stone falling, not a single crack, not a single “wink from God.” They were obeying, and nothing was happening.
• Many know this place: “I pray and I see nothing. I am faithful but nothing moves. I obey but the door is still closed.”
• “The absence of visible change is not necessarily the absence of progress.” When you obey God, even without seeing anything, the answer is “downloading.” Learning to obey without needing to be constantly rewarded with a visible result is a level of maturity.
• Joshua had asked the people to march in silence until the moment to shout (Joshua 6:10). The preacher imagines the microphones open in the ranks: “I don’t see the point,” “Moses would never have asked us this.” They may have grumbled, but they kept marching.
• “Repetition is not always stagnation. Sometimes it is called faithfulness.” Beyond chronos, the time that passes, comes God’s kairos, the moment he has set. “You are praying again, keep praying. You are forgiving, forgive again. You are getting up, get up again.”

6. Don’t Stop at the Sixth Lap

• On the seventh day, the people go around the city seven times. First lap, nothing. Sixth lap, nothing. “The last lap can look exactly like the one before it until the moment it doesn’t look like it at all.”
• The preacher tells how his mother prayed for more than twenty years for his conversion and his brother’s. Every evening, at the foot of her bed, she wept before God. The day he gave his life to the Lord, he came home, took his brother, and the two of them knelt next to her to pray. It took her three or four months to realize that both her sons had given their lives to Jesus.
• He emphasizes the power of a father’s or a mother’s prayer: “No one has your cause at heart as much as you do.”
• In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2-3). Even above your chaos, the Spirit of God is there, and when God says “Let there be light,” the light comes.
• Some have turned their sixth lap into a conclusion about their life: “It will never happen.” “Don’t draw a final conclusion about a season that is not yet over.”
• The shout of the seventh lap was not a technique, as if decibels brought down the walls. What brought them down was the people’s obedience to what God asked, “even when it could seem completely crazy.”

7. Leave in Jericho What Must Stay in Jericho

• During the time of prayer, the preacher recalls the story of Achan, who took things from Jericho, which cost Israel an important battle (Joshua 7).
• In the Jericho you are going through, be careful not to carry into the new season what belongs to the old one. He invites everyone to ask: “Holy Spirit, show me what must stay in Jericho,” to repent if necessary, and to put God’s presence back at the center of their life, their family, their church, their work, and their ministry.

Key Takeaways

• A promise from God is not the absence of obstacles; it is the assurance that the obstacle will not have the last word.
• The question is not which side God is on, but whether you have positioned yourself in his plan.
• Jericho is on your route, but it is God’s presence that must be at the center of your life.
• The absence of visible change is not necessarily the absence of progress: repetition can be called faithfulness.
• Don’t draw a final conclusion about a season that is not yet over: the last lap can change everything.

Personal Application

1. What is the wall standing in front of you right now, even as you seek to obey God?
2. Are you asking God to bless your plan, or are you seeking to position yourself in his?
3. What does God want to transform in you while you are in front of this wall: pride, fear, need for control, bitterness?
4. Has your Jericho become the center of your thoughts and your conversations? How can you put God’s presence back at the center this week?
5. Have you drawn a final conclusion about a situation God has not yet finished? What “extra lap” can you take today?

Verses Cited

• Joshua 5:13-15
• Joshua 6
• Joshua 7
• Numbers 23:19
• 2 Corinthians 5:7
• Matthew 6:10
• Exodus 2:1-10
• Genesis 1:2-3

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does God leave a wall in front of his promise?

For Patrice Martorano, a promise from God is not the absence of obstacles; it is the assurance that the obstacle will not have the last word. Before dealing with the wall, God deals with Joshua: he sometimes uses the Jericho in front of you to shape the Joshua within you.

What does it mean not to stop at the sixth lap?

For six days, Israel walked around Jericho and nothing moved. The preacher points out that the absence of visible change is not necessarily the absence of progress, and that the last lap can look exactly like the one before it until the moment it doesn’t look like it at all. He urges us not to draw a final conclusion about a season that is not yet over.

What made the walls of Jericho fall?

It was not the strength of the shout, which was not a technique. According to Patrice Martorano, it was the people’s obedience to what God asked, even when it seemed completely crazy, with the ark of the covenant, a symbol of God’s presence, at the center of the procession.