5“It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.”
In her sermon, Pastor Joy Matos emphasizes the critical importance of faith and obedience to God’s unconventional instructions, illustrating this concept through the ballad of “Desert Pete”. She recounts the story of a thirsty cowboy who discovers a hand pump in the desert alongside a jar of warm water and a note from Desert Pete, which urges him to use the water to prime the pump instead of drinking it. Because the cowboy acts in faith and obeys the counterintuitive note, he is rewarded with an abundance of cool, refreshing water. Pastor Matos uses this metaphor to explain how God often asks His followers—much like the Israelites marching around Jericho or herself when called to leave her job for seminary—to take steps of faith that defy human logic in order to achieve His divine purposes and blessings.