The Shout of Faith

"And as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat" (Joshua 6:5).

The shout of a steadfast faith is in direct contrast to the moans of a wavering faith or the wails of a discouraged heart. In the history of Israel, they often indulged in wailing to their own undoing; but on one occasion, they gave a magnificent shout that brought a glorious victory.

This took place after they had crossed the Jordan. God had said to Joshua: "Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you" (Joshua 1:3). They entered the land expecting possession, but were immediately brought face to face with Jericho—a city "great and walled up to heaven." To the eye of sense, there was no possibility of conquering it.

But the Lord said: "See, I have given Jericho into your hand" (Joshua 6:2). He did not say "I will give," but "I have given." It belonged to them already; they were simply called to take possession. God’s plan was strange: after marching and blowing trumpets, "all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat."

It came to pass just as the Lord said. Joshua told the people, "Shout, for the Lord has given you the city" (Joshua 6:16). When they shouted, the walls fell down flat. No one supposes the noise of the shout caused the walls to fall. The secret lay in the fact that it was the shout of a faith which dared, on the authority of God's word alone, to claim a victory while as yet there were no signs of it.

Faith reckoned God's word to be true. Unbelief might have said, "Wait to shout until the walls actually fall, lest we look foolish." But faith laughed at such "prudence" and gave a shout of victory while the walls were still standing. "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days" (Hebrews 11:30).

"Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees And looks at that alone; Laughs at impossibilities, And cries, It shall be done."

Jehoshaphat is another example. A great multitude came against him, and he realized he had "no might" and did not know "what to do." He did not waste time on engines of warfare; he "set his face to seek the Lord" (2 Chronicles 20:3). He stood before the people and prayed: "We are powerless against this great horde... we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you" (2 Chronicles 20:12).

The Lord answered: "Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God's... You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord" (2 Chronicles 20:15, 17).

Without a thought of doubt, Jehoshaphat and the children of Israel believed the word of the Lord and began at once to praise him beforehand for the victory they were sure was coming. The next morning they rose early and went out to meet their enemy. Jehoshaphat, instead of exhorting them to look to their arms and be brave in battle as an ordinary General would have done, simply called upon them to have a courageous faith. "Hear me, Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem!

Believe in the Lord your God, and you will be established; believe his prophets, and you will succeed" (2 Chronicles 20:20).

Jehoshaphat then consulted with the people; and their faith proving equal to his own, they appointed singers to go out before the army to sing praises as they went forward to meet the enemy. And it came to pass that when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set an ambush against the enemy, so that they struck one another down. When the children of Israel came to a watchtower in the wilderness, from which they could see the great multitude that had come up against them, "behold, there were dead bodies lying on the ground; none had escaped" (2 Chronicles 20:24).

By this wonderful method of warfare they were made even "more than conquerors"; for they were "three days in taking away the spoil, for it was so much" (2 Chronicles 20:25).

David’s fight with Goliath is another example of this method of victory. To the eye of sense, David had no chance whatever of conquering the mighty giant who had been defying the armies of Israel. But David, looking with the eye of faith, could see the unseen divine forces fighting on his side. When Saul said to him, "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth," David stood firm in his faith. After recounting his past deliverances, he said calmly, "The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine" (1 Samuel 17:33, 37).

Saul, partly convinced by this strong faith, said, "Go, and the Lord be with you!" He could not, however, quite give up all trust in his own accustomed armour; he armed David with a bronze helmet, a coat of mail, and his own powerful sword. David "tried in vain to go," for he was not used to them. He put them off and took instead the simple weapons the Lord had blessed before: his staff, his sling, and five smooth stones from the brook. Thus equipped, he drew near to the giant.

When the giant saw the youth who had come to fight him, he disdained him and said contemptuously, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field" (1 Samuel 17:44). To the eye of sense, it looked as though this must necessarily be the end of such an unequal battle. But David’s faith triumphed, and he shouted a shout of victory before the battle had even begun. "You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin," he said, "but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand... that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand" (1 Samuel 17:45-47).

In the face of such faith, what could even a giant do? Every word of that triumphant shout of victory was fulfilled, and the mighty enemy was delivered into the hands of the youth he had disdained. And so it will always be. Nothing can withstand the triumphant faith that links itself to omnipotence. For "this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith" (1 John 5:4).

The secret of all successful warfare lies in this shout of faith. It is a secret incomprehensible to those who know nothing of the unseen divine power that waits on the demands of faith; a secret that must always seem the height of folly to those who do not understand it.

We are all called to be "a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:3) and to "fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Timothy 6:12) against worse enemies than those which attacked the Israelites. Our enemies are interior, and the giant that defies us is the strength of our temptations and the powerlessness of our own strength to resist. It is a hard and often discouraging fight.

Many of God's children have sinned, repented, and resolved so often that they see no hope of victory. They hate sin and love righteousness, but "the good I want to do, I do not do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19). In the language of the Apostle, they find a law in their members warring against the law of their mind. They know they ought to conquer, but they do not know how. It is for these people that this chapter is written. If they can discover the secret of this shout of faith, they will know how, for it never fails to bring victory.

In John 16:33, our Lord reveals the ground of this triumphant shout: "Take heart; I have overcome the world." Not "I will overcome," but "I have overcome." It is already done; we only need to enter into the power of it. Joshua did not say, "Shout, for the Lord will give you the city," but "Shout, for the Lord has given you the city" (Joshua 6:16). It must have required all of Joshua's will to make such a statement while the walls of the city were still standing as massive as ever. But God was a reality to Joshua, and he was not afraid to proclaim the victory before it was visible.

There is a great difference between saying "The Lord will give" and "The Lord has given." A victory promised in the future may be hindered by a thousand things, but a victory already accomplished cannot be undone. When our Lord assures us that he has already overcome the world, he gives an assured foundation for a triumphant shout. Henceforward, the forces of sin are a defeated foe. If we believe the words of Christ, we can meet them without fear, since we have been made "more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37).

It is a well-known fact that as long as a defeated army can keep its defeat a secret, it can still show some resistance. But the moment it finds out that its defeat is known, it loses all heart and has no resource left but to retreat. The secret lies in this: we must meet sin not as a foe yet to be conquered, but as one that has already been conquered. When Rahab helped the spies escape, she confessed: "I know that the Lord has given you the land... and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you" (Joshua 2:9). If we had eyes to see the unseen kingdom of evil, I believe we would find that a terror has fallen upon all the forces of that region, and that they see in every person of faith a triumphant conqueror.

A Christian I know, who had been fearfully beset by temptation, was told this secret. It brought conviction at once, and she went forth to a fresh battle with the assurance of an already accomplished victory. She said afterwards it seemed as if she could hear the tempter saying as he slunk away, "Alas! She has found out the secret. She knows that I am an already conquered foe!"

We are told that "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8); and again, "he appeared in order to take away sins" (1 John 3:5); and "he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26).

We must accept it as a fact that sin is for us a conquered foe. If our faith will lay hold of this and "consider yourselves dead to sin" (Romans 6:11), and will dare to raise the shout of victory when temptation comes, we shall find that every wall will fall down flat!

Our enemies are "giants" now just as they were in Israel's day, and cities as great as Jericho confront us. Like the Israelites, we have no human weapons with which to conquer. Our armour must be the "armor of God" (Ephesians 6:11). Our shield is the same invisible shield of faith, and our sword is the "sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6:17). But how different is our usual method of warfare! Instead of a triumphant shout, we meet temptations with feeble resolutions, futile arguments, or despairing prayers. "O Lord, save me!" we cry.

When no deliverance seems to come and we are defeated, we cry out that God has failed us. But what we ought to do is recognise sin as a conquered foe and meet it with a shout of victory.

Where we prayed before that the Lord would save us, we must now make the assertion that he does save us, and that he saves us now. We must add the letter "s" to the word "save" and make it the present tense.

The walls may look as high as ever, and prudence may say it is not safe to shout until the victory is won. But the faith that can shout in the midst of temptation, "Jesus saves me; he saves me now!" is a faith that will win a glorious and speedy victory.

Many of God's children have tried this plan and found it to work far beyond their expectations.

Temptations have come in like a flood—temptations to irritability, wicked thoughts, bitterness of spirit, or a thousand other things. They have seen the danger, and their feelings declared there was no hope of escape.

But their faith laid hold of the grand fact that Christ has conquered. They fixed their gaze on the unseen power of God's salvation and gave their shout of victory: "The Lord saves! He saves me now! I am more than a conqueror through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37). The result is always a glorious victory.

It may sometimes seem so impossible that the Lord can save that the words will not "say themselves" inside. They have to be said aloud, forcing one's lips to utter them over and over, shutting one's eyes and ears against every suggestion of doubt. These declarations of faith often seem "untrue" at first because the reasons for discouragement appear so real. But the unseen facts are truer than the seen. If faith is steadfastly persisted in, these facts never fail to prove themselves. "According to your faith be it done to you" (Matthew 9:29). When we shout the shout of faith, the Lord invariably gives the victory of faith.

I once knew a Christian carman (a driver) who had a naturally violent temper. In his daily work among ungodly companions, he was sorely tempted to give way to it. He struggled valiantly but in vain. One morning, he told his minister in despair, "Can you tell me of any short road to victory—something I can lay hold of at the needed moment?"

"Yes," the minister replied. "When the temptation comes, at once lift up your heart and claim the promised victory. Shout the shout of faith, and the temptation will flee."

The carman understood that sin is an already conquered foe. That day at the station, his fellow- drivers taunted him and jostled him out of his rightful place. The temptation to anger was overwhelming. But, folding his arms, he said inwardly over and over, "Jesus saves me; he saves me now!" At once his heart was filled with peace. Later, a heavy box fell on his foot, causing great pain. Again he folded his arms and repeated his shout of victory, and all was calm. Night found him more than a conqueror, and even his companions were forced to own the reality of a religion that could so triumph over their assaults.

The Psalmist, after telling of the enemies who tried to swallow him up, declared: "Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me" (Psalm 56:9).

Do you know what the Psalmist knew? Do you know that God is for you? If you do, then go out to meet your temptations singing a song of triumph. At the first approach of temptation, begin to give thanks for the victory. Claim that you are more than a conqueror. Shout the shout of faith with Joshua, Jehoshaphat, David, and Paul. When you shout, the Lord will "set ambushments," and your enemies shall fall.