The Sun Stands Still | Will Hawk + Thomas | 19 October 2025

We trace Joshua 10 from five kings attacking Gibeon to God’s hail and a halted sun, then pivot to why Scripture says the day was unique: God listened to a man. We rethink prayer habits—short, corporate, faith-filled—and ask God to involve us in the answer.

• five kings unite against gibeon
• overnight march and panic in the enemy
• hailstones fall and tip the battle
• sun stands still to complete the victory
• kings trapped, feet on their necks
• gospel thread from joshua to jesus
• prayer as the hinge between god’s work and ours
• corporate prayer as the biblical norm
• faith over fluency, short prayers welcomed
• gratitude as a regular practice in prayer
• asking to be part of the answer, not just the outcome

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Chapters

• 0:00 Reading Joshua 10:9–14
• 4:06 Why Team-Teaching And Today’s Aim
• 9:06 Setting: Five Kings Versus Gibeon
• 15:26 Miracle One: Hail From Heaven
• 21:36 Miracle Two: The Sun Stands Still
• 27:16 The Kings Trapped In A Cave
• 32:56 Feet On Necks And Gospel Thread
• 38:26 The Hinge Of Prayer
• 44:56 What Made That Day Unique

Transcript

Thomas: 0:46

And then we're gonna read.

Liz Toga: 0:51

Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua 10, 9 to 14, which is on page 186 in the pew Bibles, and follow along as I read God's word. So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal, and the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel, who struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and chased them by the way of ascent of Betharon, and struck them as far as Azika and Makadah. And as they fled before Israel while they were going down the ascent of Betharon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azika, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword. At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day, when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Son, stand still at Gibeon, and moon in the valley of Agelon, and the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nations took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. This is the word of the Lord.

Will Hawk: 2:13

Thanks, Liz. All right. You may notice. Did you want the left side?

unknown: 2:18

No.

Will Hawk: 2:19

Okay. Oh, okay. Uh, you may notice things are set up a little bit differently. If you've been coming to Mid Tree for a period of time, this isn't going to be completely foreign to you. Uh we, however, are going to be doing something I've wanted to try for a minute.

Thomas: 2:34

He has wanted to try for a minute.

Will Hawk: 2:35

And we may never do this again. Uh, thank y'all for being a church. That is cool with uh doing things differently and stretching and trying different things from time to time. I think that is sort of one of the personalities of Mid Tree. We grow, we stretch, we don't lean in too much uh to comfort. And so uh what Thomas and I are hoping to do is look at the passage that Liz just read, which by the way, a rainy Sunday is the best Sunday to read this text.

Thomas: 3:03

It's fun.

Will Hawk: 3:03

I know. As soon as soon as I looked at my uh weather app this morning, I had two thoughts. My windshield wipers are not working, and I'm really pumped the text that we're reading with a rainy Sunday and the doors open and maybe being able to hear some of the rain. So uh I'll frame it. You agree? I agree. Awesome. So let me frame it. Thomas and I are going to team teach through this. A couple of things that you are going to want. You're gonna want a Bible. If you do not have a Bible, you are certainly welcome to use your phones at this church. Nobody's gonna look down on you for phones or technology or apps because we uh use them. That being said, if you do not have a Bible, just grab one of the ones in the pew in front of you, make that your own, stick your name in it, keep it forever and ever, and we will replenish it next week. You do need to go ahead and flip to Joshua chapter 10. You are also allowed to use the table of contents here. Completely allowed. Uh so what we're gonna do, uh, maybe teaching you guys one new word. Thomas is going to exposit the text. We believe in exposition, uh, expositional preaching. That's where you make the main theme of the text, the main theme of the sermon. Uh, most people think it means you read verse by verse. That happens to be, I think, the healthiest way to do it.

Thomas: 4:19

Yeah, it literally means to expose what the author meant when he wrote it.

Will Hawk: 4:23

So our goal is not to give you our ideas, but what God would have you to see. And then I'm gonna I'll jump in occasionally while you're exposing. Please, yeah. Yeah. And then uh I am going to apply the text and hopefully we'll save a little bit of time so that when Bennett and the team come up, we're gonna point toward prayer today and maybe some ways that we put an emphasis on prayer that actually isn't biblical. It's just the tradition that you've grown up in. And so whether you've grown up in the church or church is very new to you, I think there's a lot for us this Sunday.

Thomas: 4:54

That's right.

Will Hawk: 4:55

You want me to pray for us? Yeah, please do. You can dive in and I'll get I'll get the uh screen set up. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I am grateful that as your word says in Job, you store up rain, you store up the hail, you are overlooking the battle, and you are the one who wins it. Thank you that we can see it in Job and we can read it in Joshua. And for those of us who are in Christ, we can see it in our own lives. And when we neglect to see it, when we doubt that your victory is going to be obvious, that we can find ourselves in a cloud of witnesses. Thank you for Jeff's testimony, uh, of pointing to what we would quickly call success, that you do not always call capital S success, but rather being faithful, being obedient, trusting in you in the highs and in the lows, being led by your spirit, that is the win. And so, Father, I pray this morning that would be the case. I certainly pray for Thomas and I. I don't want us to trip over one another. I don't want us to get in the way of your spirit, but rather would you utilize this time in a way that causes us to love our Bibles and be led by your spirit and apply them outside of 90 minutes on a Sunday. So would you make us more like Christ? I pray in his name. And all guys, people said, Amen. All right, Thomas, take it away.

Thomas: 6:03

Jeff, are you still in here? Where's Jeff? He went that way. He did. Jeff, are you still in here? He did his part and he's throwing up in the bathroom. Okay, that's fine. I just had a question for him. Okay. Yeah, so basically, the the way that I was thinking about this on the way here is book readers, if you're a nerd like me, um, like my portion's really gonna be um, I think, impactful to you. You say favorite. And if you are a podcast listener or just casual I'm just kidding, no, no, no. I'm just kidding. Yeah, I'm gonna hit the book stuff. Will is gonna hit the heart stuff, and so um and maybe we'll give you a chance to do some hand stuff today. That's right, hopefully so. Um so turn to Joshua chapter 10. Uh on this slide, I've got just the title, Five Point Inclusio. Um, do we have it for back there?

Will Hawk: 6:49

Hang on. Uh oh. It's telling me yes, but it's telling me no. Hang on, Josai's press.

Thomas: 6:54

Hey, there we go. Okay, so yeah, uh, for notes takers in the room. Um, I've just got five points from this text, and it's gonna go through kind of systematically, but I want us to see, because the order of this is important, the order of what happens in the text and where we are in the story, I think will greatly benefit the application and kind of what we do as we leave this room. And so this isn't just gonna be an exercise in um book smarts or knowledge checks, um, but really I think when we kind of are able to get handles on what's going on in these five points of this chapter, um, we're able to see kind of how the Lord works in a unique and unique way. And so I'm gonna give you kind of the outline and then um we'll give you texts and we're gonna go through. I'm gonna be probably about 10 minutes or so, so don't check out. But um I'm literally starting my time. You are says a pastor, I'm gonna be 10 minutes. If you don't know what an inclusio is, it's it's this kind of like poetic type thing where it's like a mirror effect with the main point, kind of the meat being in the middle. And so if you look, A1 and A2 kind of mirror each other, B1 and B2 are both miracles, and we'll talk about what those are. And really, there is a hinge point on C, and we're gonna walk through each of these. And so, if you guys would um look in the text with me, not all of the verses are gonna appear, which is why you need Bibles, but if you guys would look with me in verse 1. As soon as Adonai Zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction, doing to Ai and to its king, as he had done to Jericho and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon made peace with Israel, and they were among them, he feared greatly. If you notice, we did skip one chapter, Joshua chapter 9, and Will's gonna preach on that next week. And it is awesome. It really is awesome, and we we hate that we skipped it, but it kind of worked better for our calendars. And it's I sort of think this teases it a little bit.

Will Hawk: 8:54

It does. The the people that Joshua is going to come to the rescue of. You read this chapter and you're like, well, of course, there's an allegiance made, you honor your word. The people Joshua comes to help out were they're the big dogs. Well, and they were also busters, yeah. Like liars and deceivers. And it would have been so easy for Joshua to have gotten the text and not opened it and just been like, We'll see what happens without me.

Thomas: 9:18

That's right. So, all that we really need to know is that Joshua is in league with this nation called Gibeon. Uh, and they're they're they're these big dogs, and word spreads, and these five kings hear about it the way that maybe Rahab heard about Jericho or heard about what God had done on the other side of the Jordan. Word spreads that this kind of small nation of Israel that's doing these mighty acts has gotten in league with or uh gotten in allegiance with one of our biggest, strongest, mightiest towns, and it says that the kings feared. This is the next section. So Adonai Zedek, king of Jerusalem, sent to Horam, king of Hebron, Piram, king of Jarmouth, and Japhthah the king of Lachish, and to Debir the king of Eglon, saying, Come up to me and help me, and let us strike not Israel, let us strike Gibeon, these people that are in allegiance with Israel. Well, and they would have been allies, they would have been friends.

Will Hawk: 10:12

And so it's like one of their friends of the six left to go partner with Israel. They're upset, they feel deceived by it.

Thomas: 10:20

Yeah. For it is made uh peace with Joshua and with the king of Israel. Then the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmoth, Lakish, Eglon, gathered their forces, and they went up with all of their armies and encamped against Gibeon and made war against it. And so this is uh the slide, these are the first ones are the names of the places, the right side are kind of the names of the kings, and so what we have here is uh this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy, all going up to Gibeon to attack. Where is Joshua in this time, in this place? We're gonna see he's all the way back here in Gilgal. He he has conquered Jericho, he's conquered Ai, and he actually goes backwards, presumably, to tend to not the armies, but the people, presumably to go back to camp and to say, hey, like we're we're doing it, we're we're going through all these nations, like let's celebrate because the Lord is with us. And while he is going backwards to Gilgal, all of these other nations, these five kind of superpower armies, gather at Gibeon at night, and they say, We're gonna attack it while Joshua is not there. The battle of the five armies. I was I was not gonna say it, but yeah, the orcs are there, and the yeah, the elves. And so, what happens? Miracle one. This is Joshua chapter uh 10, verse 9. So Joshua came upon them suddenly. Joshua heard, hey, the uh our ally is about to get attacked. Like Will said, they were a little skeezy. Joshua would have had every kind of moral right to say, I'm all the way back here, I'm not gonna go help them. They deceived me. If you look back at chapter 9, uh the title is The Gibeonite Deception. He would have been well within his rights, again, morally, to just say, you know, they're cooked. I'm not there. I can't do that.

Will Hawk: 12:14

He also never said he would defend them. He just said, We're not gonna come and kill you.

Thomas: 12:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Will Hawk: 12:18

So this is going above and beyond.

Thomas: 12:20

And so in verse 9, Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. He had marched all he heard word, and he picked up his army and he said, We must go and defend them quickly.

Will Hawk: 12:32

Twenty miles is how far they made them.

Thomas: 12:34

Overnight. And the Lord threw them, being the kind of the five armies, into a panic before Israel, who struck them with a great blow at Gibeon, and he chased them by the way of ascent to Betharon and struck them as far as Azekah and Macada. And they fled before Israel, and while they were going down the ascent of Betharon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azica, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword. And so you get this picture of these five armies saying, We're gonna attack stealthily at night, kind of maybe at dusk. Um, no one's gonna know, word hasn't gotten out. And Joshua is the one who actually has the upper hand. Joshua's the one who comes. The Lord, kind of supernaturally, we'd say, throws the nation into a panic, and they flee. And as they're fleeing, Joshua's chasing them, they've got their camels, we'll see later. They've got their horses, they're chasing them, and the Lord decides, miracle one, to throw hailstones down at the people. And I wouldn't imagine golf balls.

Will Hawk: 13:39

No. So we we did a little bit of work in my office earlier this week. The largest recorded hailstone, I think, in the world is 2.2 pounds. Yeah, so not that big. Not that big. In the Bible, it's in Revelation 18, maybe. God throws hailstones down that weigh a hundred pounds. I'm talking at binger pickup in half, kind of thing. So when God decides I'm gonna enter in, this is why Christian read out of Job, by the way, that he stores up the hailstone for the day of battle. Like when God decides I'm gonna step in, it is obvious that God is raining down on these this group of evil people that hasn't repented and has been a thorn in their side.

Thomas: 14:23

That's right. And this generation of Israel has seen many different miracles from the walls of Jericho coming down from just walking around and blowing trumpets to this, like the Lord fighting on their behalf is a consistent theme of these people. Like they've they've won battles kind of with their own swords and whatnot. We see that AI and whatnot, but we also see the Lord fighting for them supernaturally with miracles like this. I don't want to slow you down.

Will Hawk: 14:49

Please. But have you put yourself in the role of the Israelite soldier? Like they are chasing a group of people that are getting mowed down by hail. Yeah. Do you slow your run a bit? Like when you're running and the guy 20 feet in front of you just gets splatted by a hundred pound hail, do you just like drop it to three quarters? Retreat. Yeah. I don't know. And like you're how do you how are you not tripping over this?

Thomas: 15:16

Oh, say the the uh the text I don't think explicitly says, but I read a couple of commentaries. They say they think none of the Israelites got smashed. Yeah, it was just the bad guys. Right.

Will Hawk: 15:25

Yeah. If God is the one since God is the one doing this, this is very accurate. Yeah, yeah, unbelievable. I like that a lot. Simple.

Thomas: 15:32

Pinge point. We're gonna skip it. We see miracle one, something happens kind of in this point. C, the meat of the text, we're gonna close with it, but we see another miracle. It's actually what was read for us. Miracle two is that the sun stands still. As the hailstones are coming down, as the people are uh being chased off, as the army of Israel is victorious, and they're like, let's get this. Presumably, the sun starts to set, and the day would have been over, and you can't really fight at night in this time because you can't see who's from who, who's from who. And the Lord intervenes, the Lord steps in, and in verse 13 it says, And the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. What Israel wanted, what God wanted, was complete and total victory to the point that however you want to slice it, however you want to say it, the sun stayed up about a day longer so that the armies of Israel could see, so that they could kill. They didn't say, Great, the sun's coming down, we can take a breath, we can take a breather. They would have been tired. They would have been they would have been dog tired. Yeah. But the sun stood still and they chased them all the way. And it says, Is this not written in the book of Jashura? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day, and there has been no day like it before or since. And so that gets us to kind of the end point of this inclusio. The kings gather, not for war this time. They gathered in their pride and their arrogance, and they said, We're gonna put a stop to Israel and doing all this. But now we see them gathered together for slaughter. They thought they would be the ones doing the slaughter. They thought they would be the ones holding the swords and the knives, and instead we see this in verse 16 the five kings fled and they hid themselves in the cave of Macada. And it was told to Joshua, the five kings have been found and hidden in the cave of Macadah. And Joshua said, Roll large stones against the mouth.

Will Hawk: 17:36

Such a move.

Thomas: 17:37

I I love this, I've got a thought of this. Uh roll large stones on the cave and set men by it to guard them, but do not stay there yourselves. Pursue your enemies, attack their rear guard, do not let them enter their cities, for the Lord your God has given them into your hand. Um, two really quick points on this. One, uh Joshua here is just quoting scripture. He's quoting the Lord's promises to him, he's quoting it to the people. Like this isn't a new thought, the Lord your God has given them into your hand. Joshua's not just giving a rah-rah speech at halftime saying, you know, if we try hard enough, we can do it. He's saying what he's heard from the Lord to the people. And also, I think about these these five kings of of just uh stature and the prominence cowering in a cave. They roll a stone right in front of the mouth. Sounds so familiar to something else in scripture. I just can't. But they can hear Joshua, I think, um, giving these commands. Just leave them. Leave them, and we're gonna kill their armies. Like, think about being the representative of your nation, hiding in a cave, hearing your enemy talk about their battle plans, and you're helpless. You can't do anything, you're terrified yourself, you know what's coming to yourself, and and you all you can do is sit and listen. This is kind of the conclusion of that. Then Joshua said, so they they go, uh, they go into all the towns, they battle, they win. Um Joshua comes back and it says, Joshua said, Open the mouth of the cave and bring those five kings out to me from the cave. And they did so. And they brought those five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmouth, the king of Latius, and the king of Eglon. And when they brought those kings out to Joshua, Joshua summoned all the men of Israel and said to the chief, the chiefs of the men of war who had gone with him, Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they came near and they put their feet on their necks. And Joshua said to them, again, quoting scripture, do not be afraid or dismayed, but be strong and courageous. I don't think I've got a slide on yeah. Um, after this, we see that the kings are um kind of killed or killed with the sword and then hung on trees. One one I think really maybe odd but cool thing to note about the feet on the necks, like this was a sign of uh disrespect, obviously. Like these kings are still alive, they're cowering, they know they can probably see the gallows, they can probably see guys sharpening swords and whatnot. And Joshua says, come out, come out now, take your sandals off, and I want you guys to line up, and I want you to walk down, and I just want you to put your feet on their necks, showing, demonstrating how much total control we have as an army, how much dominance, how much just they were so arrogant to come up and fight against our people in night, and now we are putting our feet on their necks before we slaughter them and kill them. Um makes me think of uh this is one of my favorite verses, Romans 16, 20. It's kind of a dual thought. The God of peace, the God who loves peace and order, and you know, some would say nonviolence, I don't think that's what it means, but the God of peace will soon crush Satan under whose feet? Your feet. The church. Paul looks at the church that he's writing to in Rome and he says, soon the God of peace is going to have such a total uh rout of your enemy, of your sin, of death, of destruction, of all of these things, that yes, they're gonna be put under God's feet, the heavenly feet, all that kind of stuff. But he looks at the church and he says, soon your feet are gonna go on this kind of disrespectful show of all of the things that have been ailing you, all of the things that um have been just terrorizing you um during your lifetime. You will have such dominance that soon the God of peace is going to allow you, Christian, to participate in that. And so, just kind of one of the one of the gospel threads is um we see these kings gathering in their arrogance, and we see what happens to them. Um, and it's it's because the Lord fights for the people of Israel, the Lord fights for Joshua and all of this stuff. And so we can find ourselves in two camps today to kind of use this language. We can see ourselves aligning with the strongest, the most powerful, the most influential, the most um, however you want to put it, we can do all that we can to make ourselves the most secure and we see where that ends. Humble, humiliated, and not in a good way.

Will Hawk: 22:10

Arrogance keeps losing in Joshua.

Thomas: 22:12

Exactly. Or we can align ourselves with the people of God, the person of God, rest in his finished work, and understand I don't have to fight this battle. I don't have to secure and fortify myself in the way that the world might think, but I I serve a king who's going to do this to my enemies. And so that gets us to kind of this middle hinge point of pause prayer, yeah.

Will Hawk: 22:37

Can we hit a pause? The fact that Joshua and Jesus have the same name, one in Greek, one in Hebrew. The fact that Joshua says, it makes all the sense in the world for Joshua to crush them. He's the impressive one, he's the leader. The fact that Jesus looks and he says, Your feet are going to be on the neck of the enemy. Yeah. The fact that he goes into a cave of death where we deserve to be. People who want to act as though we have it all together, kings of our own world, putting together whatever power, prominence, and prestige we can. And Jesus voluntarily walks into the cave, knowing that it is the only way we would ever. We are the five kings. Exactly. We're not Joshua, we're not Israel. We are the five kings. And as soon as that stone rolls in front, and we hear, let's go and destroy this guy's entire life. You hear the footsteps walk away, and then, son, do you want to stay in there or do you want to come out? Yeah. If you want to come out, I'm gonna have to go in. I'm already on the way. Do you want to come out? Yeah. And what an incredible, beautiful thousands of years before meta-narrative for Christ, for Joshua to say, hey, you can go in the cave or you can come out of the cave. But the only way you come out is if somebody else goes in.

Thomas: 23:53

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times we we as people like the saving aspect of what Jesus does. He saves us from our sins. But sometimes we struggle with just the lordship or the kingship of him. In order for us to come out of that cave, to be with him, we can't be our own kings anymore. We have to set aside our preferences, our desires, our thoughts, and really yield them to the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and say, Not my will but yours be done, which Jesus said before he went in the cave, which is really cool. Um, and so the hinge point here is prayer. We we didn't read it necessarily, but as the hailstones are coming down, as the sun starts to set, Joshua probably looks over the land and he says, The sun's starting to set, and we could we could rally our troops, we could recoup for the night, but I don't want to. I want total and complete victory. I want all of these guys to be destroyed. I don't want thorns in our sides a week from now, a month from now, years from now. I want them decimated because that's what the Lord wants.

Will Hawk: 24:51

And so it feels like the closest thing in scripture to this.

Thomas: 24:55

What is that for?

Will Hawk: 24:56

Third quarter's over. Like, let's end well. Yeah, let's not go into overtime because who knows what could happen there. You could miss a kick or something. You never know.

Thomas: 25:05

Yeah, yeah.

Will Hawk: 25:06

I didn't watch it. Back to the text.

Thomas: 25:07

Josiah told me about it.

Will Hawk: 25:08

I don't know why that's so primed for me right now.

Thomas: 25:12

Um, and in verse 12, at that time Joshua, and and this is actually really subtle because the word prayer isn't even used. As we were reading through this, as we were working through it, I was struggling. I was like, is this a prayer? You guys be the judge. At that time, Joshua spoke to the Lord in that day, when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun stand still at Gibeon and moon in the valley of Agilon. That's the prayer. Kind of this little section is the prayer. And in verse 13 is kind of the response or what happens, and the sun stood still. It doesn't even say the Lord answered the prayer. It doesn't say Joshua spoke and the Lord answered. It just says, Sun stand still, and the sun stood still. And that is kind of what brings us from, I'm gonna, this is kind of my last point, these two little sections, we kind of see God doing all of the work. The Psalms would say that the the that the Lord guides the hearts of kings so that even when they're like doing evil and um conspiring against you, God's in control of that. God is in control of uh the hailstones down to the millimeter, dodging his people and squashing the enemy. God is working, and in these two, it really is Josh. Ooh, uh, I can't spell. That's why I don't do this. I thought my handwriting was bad. You are giving me a gift right now. This is youth group. Um, it's Joshua kind of doing the quote unquote work. It's Joshua who uh goes after the armies. The hellstones are probably over. It says they put them to death with the sword, and Joshua is the one who gathers the kings and says, bring them out. What gets us from God's work to Joshua's work is kind of this hinge point of prayer. That's where the story, in my the way I read it, turns from the Lord kind of working and overseeing to the people of Israel really taking ownership in the fight. And it's when Joshua utters this kind of two-line prayer, Sun stand still in Gibeah. And so that's all I've got on the exposition of it.

Will Hawk: 27:16

That's awesome. Yeah. All right, so now what does that mean for our prayer life? Let me make a couple of notes. Remember, if you have grown up in the church, you have prayed before. But if you have grown up in the church, there may be certain things that you think are normal that should not be normal. And one of the things that Joshua does in this teeny little prayer that is a hinge prayer is I it challenges what I grew up learning in the church for the past 40 years. First, starting with a question. The Bible says this verbatim quote, there has been no day like it. What is it that made that day so unique? What is it that made that day stand out? So this is the text. Uh, we've already read it. I'm not gonna read it to you again, but the sun stops in the midst of heaven, it doesn't hurry to set for a whole day, and then the Bible says, There's been no day like it before or since. Can I tell you what matters so much in this? The comma that follows it. This sentence makes all the sense in the world, and it is how most of us read this passage, if it is a period, but that is not what the Holy Spirit has preserved for us. If we read this with a period, what it's saying is the sun stood still. The God who created all the cosmos looked at the sun, looked at the earth, the solar system, and beyond, looked at the tides that would be affected by this, and he goes, Whoa, whoa, whoa, for just a minute, and they stop. And we read it and we're like, never been a day like that before or since, period, but there's not, there's a comma. What is it that stands out most in scripture is not the sun standing still, it's that the Lord heeded the voice of a man. What stands out in scripture is not that the sun stops, but that God stops to listen to a man. So as we begin thinking about prayer, please keep this in mind. What is most unusual is not cosmic power God is putting on display. Let's be honest, he's been doing this. Yeah, hail just fell from heaven. God doing this kind of thing is sort of what we have been reading all throughout Joshua. But this quiet condescension to listen to the voice of a man, that is what is so unique about this day. That is what scripture wants you to realize. So, where does Joshua get prayer right where our emphasis is often wrong? It's not just a miracle that God speaks, it is a miracle that he listens to you. I know what we all want in our prayers. We want God to speak. And most of us mean literally. Most of us want that moment, we want that confirmation. I will know that I know that I know if God will speak, if he will speak audibly, if he will speak through someone else, if a light will twinkle, if something will be if he did a miracle. Yes, then I will know. Do you realize what scripture says? It's not just amazing that God speaks, it is amazing that he listens. That right now all of you could close your eyes or not, because that's not actually written in scripture about prayer. And you could talk to God, and the one who created all things would listen to you. Unbelievable, supernatural condom. The psalmist would put it this way. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my plea of mercy. Nothing in here about an answer. I love the Lord because he inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I will call on him as long as I There's nothing in this about an answer. There's nothing in this about God speaking. The psalmist says, Do you know what I love about God? He listens to me. Me of all of the things he can spend his time, energy, and attention on. If you do not believe that God wants to hear you, even cherishes listening to you, you are not going to appreciate prayer. And can I tell you what we do with things we do not appreciate? We do not do them. I promise you, look at your to-do list. Right now, some of your beds are made and some of your beds are not. Do you want to know whose beds are made? The people who appreciate it. Do you want to know whose beds are not? The people who do not. Or the ones who have spouses who appreciate it, so you appreciate it on their behalf. Okay? If you appreciate something, you do it. If you don't appreciate something, you do not. And so if you do not appreciate the fact that it is a miracle that God wants to listen to you, prayer is gonna feel like a chore. It's gonna feel like a to-do. It's gonna feel like a must-to instead of a get to. Second thing that I want you to notice about prayer. Joshua said in the sight of Israel, sun stand still at Gibeon and moon in the valley of Azilan. I'm gonna give you the easiest activity of the entire morning, but I want you to actually do this. You don't have to talk, you don't have to look at anybody. I want you to imagine someone praying, and I want you to actually do it. Imagine them praying, think about their environment, think about their posture. Give me a head nod when you've got it. Head nods, head nods, raise your hand if they're alone. Go. Raise your hand if they're alone. Get them up. Don't do the little Baptist one. Like, raise your hand. Okay. Here's what I want you to realize. One of the things, one of the emphasis that we get wrong about prayer, he prays an incredible faith requiring prayer. What happens if I ask God to move in a powerful way and he doesn't? What do we think? People are gonna question my faith. They're gonna question my salvation potentially. They're definitely gonna question my leadership if I pray for this and it doesn't. Do you realize what Joshua is asking? Hey God, would you just sort of pause the sun for a day? I kind of want to finish this thing that you have already begun. Like, could you just hit pause real quick? And he doesn't squirrel, he doesn't run away to some acacia tree. Like that's what I would imagine. And Joshua squirrels away to an acacia tree. And he prays to be alone with his God. Yes, in sackcloth and ash, rending his cloth. No. He's like, hey, Israel, listen to this prayer. Sun, stand still. Moon, don't move. Unashamedly praying a prayer of faith.

Thomas: 33:52

And one of my favorite things about this prayer is that there's no precedent for it in scripture. No. Like he doesn't pray for more hailstones. Remember Genesis. Or a plague or something. He says he just, I don't want to say he just comes up with something, but there's no precedent for it. And he prays in the side of Israel, talking about being not wanting to be embarrassed in front of everyone. Son will you please instill. There's no he just told it.

Will Hawk: 34:15

Super bold. In scripture. Praying alone is the exception, not the norm. If I have to say this 12 times and finish on this point, I am fine with it for a Sunday. In scripture, praying alone is the exception, not the norm. Let me put it in different vernacular. If all you knew about prayer came from a Bible and not your church tradition, you would assume that the majority of the time when you close your eyes to pray, somebody else is there with you. That is what you would assume. The very first time we see prayer, Genesis 4.26, people began to call on the name of the Lord. Yes, we see Hannah and Elijah and Daniel pray, but in the Old Testament, Israel gathers to pray. This is what prayer looked like. It was a group of people and multiple ones praying, and the priests leading in the prayers while the people leaned in. In the Gospels, yes, do we see Jesus go away to desolate places? You better believe we do. But what does he do on the way? Hey, Peter, James, and John, come here. I want you near me, even if you're not exactly with me. I want you praying for me, around me, about me while I am going to the Lord. If you look at the book of Acts, you can't find a solo prayer. When you look at the book of the Bible that talks about the church, universally every prayer is being prayed by a group of people. There are more corporate prayers, that means community prayers, than there are private prayers in all of Scripture. And most of us imagine prayer like this. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. You will see it in Scripture. But you are going to the minority instead of the majority in what it is that God gives us. The third thing. God values your faith, not your fluency, which is a fancy way of saying short prayers are great prayers. I don't like that the church thinks of prayer as an individual's word. And I don't like that the church, generally speaking, thinks of prayer as something that is impressive if it is long with impressive words. You're not do you want to know what you actually see in scripture? Rebuke? The exact opposite. The Pharisee with these big, lavish prayers, Lord, I thank you that I am not a sinner like this man. I fast and I tithe and I do all of these things. And then you've got this other dude that's kneeling, pounding his chest, saying, Lord, forgive me for I'm a sinner. End of prayer. And Jesus looks at and he says, Now that's a prayer. That's a prayer. And here we are. And look, I I'm not saying it happens in adults because if I'm quite honest, I think we graduate out of youth group and assume we're never going to be in an awkward prayer circle again.

Thomas: 37:04

Not true. That's not the way it's supposed to be. I think people who want to give long prayers want to give long prayers until they're next to a guy who wants to give long prayers. And then you're like, hey man, God heard you. God heard you throw me under. No, no, no. You're the community that I'm next to. Like, you want to do it until someone else is doing it, and they're like, wrap it up, man. God heard you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then it's my turn, and then I want to give this big long. You know what?

Will Hawk: 37:28

Every staff meeting, we pray through the prayer requests. If you want to put in a prayer request, they're on the card in front of you. We would love for you to do it. You can drop it in one of the boxes on the way out. What does the staff hate for me to do when we go into prayer time?

Thomas: 37:40

There's so many. Come on. Um we go into prayer time. It's is it when you don't establish an order? Yes. Because God is a God over there.

Will Hawk: 37:50

Everybody wants to go. Okay, where are we beginning and where are we ending? And what is the flow of prayer? And I'm like, guys, we are praying.

Thomas: 37:57

We'll will always say, pray as you feel led, and always everyone feels led in order of where we're sitting.

Will Hawk: 38:04

But one of the reasons I like prayers that are not so perfect and precise and ordered, it forces you to pay attention. Do you want to know uh why you fall asleep when you're praying in the morning? First of all, stand up and walk around. That will help. When you are praying with others, you are not falling asleep. You don't want to look like a fool. You don't want to look like an idiot. You don't want to get left behind. Is it my time? Is it that is a beautiful pressure to feel in prayer. It is an activity, it is not a passive thing. And that is one of the things that we see put on display. My favorite prayer story. Where's John Keller? I saw him walk in. I'm not going to make him say anything. Okay, John. Uh I'm probably 18, you're 22 or something like that at this point. And we're at St. Stephen's and we're praying. And I had just started dating this new girl whose name was Karen Ann. She had become a believer very recently, and the church that we grew up in did the congregational prayers of the people.

Thomas: 39:02

I love it.

Will Hawk: 39:02

Yeah, no microphone. You would just stand up, pray an out loud prayer in front of the whole congregation. And then, and I knew that this girl that I had been dating wanted to pray out loud, but she was a new believer, and it was like gonna be a bit of a stretch. And the Sunday she decided to pray out loud. I'm sitting next to her, John's sitting next to me, and it's silent in the sanctuary. I'm pulling my microphone away from that. And she goes, Dear God, it was the loudest beginning to a prayer. And it's between she'd been no, I don't think you know it would explain a lot, but um no, she had been waiting for weeks to get that prayer out. Yeah, that when it finally happened, both John and I like jump and we like look at each other in prayer and we're like, what was that? What was that? Do you think God heard her? I guarantee you God heard and to this day, it is one of the funniest, but one of the most beautiful prayers because it was this authentic, built-up, in the moment, not polished, not impressive prayers. Why is public prayer a challenge for you if it is? Why do we care what the people next to us think when we are talking to the God of the universe who pulled us out of the cave of death? Can our focus not be upward while we are in community? God values your faith, not your fluency. Small prayers, unimpressively worded prayers are beautiful. Son, stand still at Gibeon and Moon in the valley of Azelon. I've got a question, Thomas. What do you think was Jesus' most meaningful prayer? Um most meaningful, impactful, and don't take forever because I want Bennett to come up here. Not my will but yours be done. Yes, Gethsemane.

Thomas: 41:01

Yeah.

Will Hawk: 41:01

Maybe second place? I'm going Lord's Prayer because he's literally teaching us how to do it.

Thomas: 41:07

I don't want to, I don't know that was a prayer. Okay. It was a model.

Will Hawk: 41:11

Fair enough. It was a model. I didn't pull all of these up, but I just I want to read to you out of a section of Matthew 26. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying alone, but not completely alone because the disciples are near my father. If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. If there's a way for me not to go into the cave of death where the kings, the people deserve to be. I don't deserve to be there. If there's a way, nevertheless, not as I will, but as your will. Verse 42. Again for the second time he went away and prayed. So leading them, he went away and prayed for the third time. Listen to what I'm about to say. I'm reading verbatim for the third time, saying the same words again. Short prayers, repeated prayers that are sincere prayers are excellent prayers. There's nothing wrong with us repeating ourselves to God. Prayer is communication, it is communion with God. And the better you know someone, the fewer words you have to use. The better you know the Lord, the more often you need to simply say, God, you know, you know. I talked to a number of pastors and I asked them, What have you learned about prayer? I'm talking to my congregation about it, and I would have to jump to the end here, and so I will. Whether you begin with it, end with it, or sprinkle it in between, I always include gratitude. Jamie Vizzini said, Will, I took my kids on this vacation and it was a long-needed one. It was my first sabbatical, and we were boogie boarding in the ocean, and to the right, rain was falling, and to the left, rain was falling, and we could see it. In that moment, I realized the God of the universe will hold the weather back if he wants us to enjoy time together and he will let a storm on it if it is time for the storm to fall. I was grateful for that little window. I had another pastor say, Well, most of my prayers look like complaining to God, questioning God, then asking for something. So I have forced myself to be grateful. I said, That's really funny, Kurt, because my prayers are the opposite. I just go for a walk through the woods at night when I'm really angry or frustrated, and I just let it out. And I let it out out loud. And if Larry or his kids are out, they're not gonna be well ministered to that following Sunday because Will doesn't hold back with his complaints to the Lord. God, why? How are you really in control if this is what I'm actually seeing? But there's something that happens on that walk when I bare my heart and my soul to the Lord. All of a sudden, somewhere in the middle, I say, But you are God and I am not. Your ways are high and mine are not. You see the end from the beginning, and you are God and deserve my worship, and my walk back is one of gratitude. So whether you begin with it, end with it, or sprinkle it in between, make sure gratitude is a point. And the last thing that I would say, it's it's point four. Joshua doesn't pray and say, God, that hail is really great. Could you just bring a little bit more of that? He says, I see where you're going and I see what you're doing. I want to be a part of it. Why was Joshua's prayer answered so quickly and so profoundly? He was praying exactly God's will, but he prayed it like this. God, I want your will to be done, but I really want to be a part of it. I'm not asking for you to crush the enemy, I'm I'm asking you to hold the sun up so that we can be a part of it. How often in your prayers to God are you asking that you get to be a part of the answer? Or is your assumption that if the prayer is answered, you aren't involved in the answer? This is what Joshua straightens out, where our emphasis is often wrong. Be a part of the answer. There's a million different places we could go and things that we could do, and Thomas, I've really enjoyed this.

Thomas: 45:07

Yeah, it was fun.

Will Hawk: 45:08

We'll see how the feedback plays out with the elders and beyond. But I'll tell you this: here's what I would like to do. Bennett, you how you feeling on time over there? Yeah? What I oh, that's that's good. Oh, we're doing fun. Here's what I would like. I I feel like I know my people, our people. You like to be stretched, but not too much.

Thomas: 45:31

Not to say not too much. Yeah.

Will Hawk: 45:33

Okay, so here's all that I'm gonna ask of you. Would you be willing to be stretched just a little bit this morning? Would you look at the screen and find an emphasis of prayer that maybe you have been doing a little bit backward or a little bit off? And could the next five minutes, as Bennett plays or sings or whatever it is that he does, could this be an invitation for you? Could we just push past the prayer awkwardness a little bit? And if you want to kneel, kneel. If you want your prayer to be God, it's a miracle that you're just listening to me, and I want to lean into that. You open your Bible and you flip the Psalms, praise God for that. If you have been spending most of your time praying alone, gather your family or somebody in the church that you know that may be sitting next to you and just say, can we just quietly pray while Bennett is playing? Can I lean into the communal reality of what scripture would point to in prayer? Maybe it's you just praying one short prayer over and over and over because it is not your fluency that God is impressed with. Short prayers are great prayers. Maybe you need to commit that you've been waiting for God to do something when you need to lift your hand to help with it. Maybe you just haven't been grateful to God for what he's already done. So, whatever it is, this is your space and God's space and our space. Let's pursue him together biblically in prayer. A minute when you feel led, just move us on into worship. Thomas, you want to take that side and I'll get this one. If you want to come down, if you want to confess or celebrate or pray with one of the pastors, we will be down here, but this is your space. This is your time. Guys in the back, just leave that for, just leave that up so people can be well led. We love you. Let's go into a great time of prayer together.