Lessons from Joshua.
Lately, I’ve been going through the Pentateuch and Joshua. The part where the people of Israel were commanded (and they did) to follow the Ark of Lord, carried by the Levitical priests, since the people have never traveled that way before (Joshua 3:3-4) and where Joshua speaks with the Commander of the Lord’s army (Joshua 5:13-15) reminded me of a few sermons I had heard about what it teaches us about living this life. I was drawn to it and how the rest of Joshua (and the preceeding books about the wilderness journey) show us how to live. Because all scripture is useful “for teaching, for correction, for direction and for a course in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16) I’ll go thru what I’ve learned from the book of Joshua, particularly about living in victory.
While I’ve titled this victorious living, which sounds pretty wide and big in scope, it can also apply to the big and small tasks and callings in life. After all Joshua, in the book of Joshua, had a very specific task: lead the people across the Jordan into the promised land and take possession of it.
(You can call these lessons, steps or insights – whatever. These are key points based on key points in the narrative of the book of Joshua)
1. Be sure you are called of God.
Be led of the spirit, that way what you do will be the work of the spirit, not of flesh. Like Galatians 5:17-18 says: Walk by the spirit, so you don’t do what your flesh desires. Joshua was called and led by God. The book of Joshua starts with God telling Joshua what to do. There was no doubt it was God’s will for him to do it.
2. Get ready, prepare.
Train. Get ready for battle. Do what must be done to get ready for the task or battle/s.
After being told what to do, Joshua is commanded to prepare himself (Joshua 1:7-8): obey the laws, meditate on the law. These are things that cannot be done while doing the task or fighting the battle, they need to be done prior. Not only that, but prior to the timeline of the book of Joshua, Joshua was trained in the wilderness. He served the Lord by serving Moses thru the 40 years of wilderness. Think of the training, teaching, and mentoring that happened with Moses. After all that and God’s further commands for preparation, Israel is then told to get ready in Joshua 1:11.
3. Know your enemy enough.
The next part of the book of Joshua is about how the spies went to learn about Jericho. I include the word ‘enough’ because the spies went in to learn about Jericho for purposes of the coming battle. They didn’t have to learn everything or even partake of their sinfulness to ‘learn’ more.
The good thing with preparing for battle thru studying the Word is that we also learn about the enemy. We know that the devil is the adversary, a liar, a thief, tricky with guile and attractiveness – and so on.
4. Follow the Lord for guidance.
Chapter 3 is about the people of Israel crossing the Jordan river. Although the people were lead by a pillar of cloud/fire in the wilderness, that stopped along with manna/quail, and their clothes not wearing out. They had also criss-crossed the desert a few times and must’ve been somewhat familiar with the places they had travelled thru and stayed in. Now, they are asked to “…follow the Lord, since you’ve never travelled this way before…” (Joshua 3:3-4). I remember a sermon about this a year or two ago….
I don’t feel like I need to explain this, but basically follow God thru familiar (like in the wilderness with the pillars) and the unfamiliar. Follow God, let Him guide you.
5. Prepare yourself some more.
This is a spiritual war after all. Joshua 5 starts with all the male people being circumcised. Am sure you know what the spiritual equivalents are of the physical circumcision: a mark/sign of putting away the old, yielding to circumcision, cutting off the flesh (the unnecessary) — of a private part, requires healing afterwards, and so on and on.
Then the people celebrated Passover. They remembered what God had already done for them, what He brought them out of and thru already. What a great preparation for a large task!
6. Question / test all spirits.
Because it is easy to be misled. The end of Joshua 5 is where Joshua is confronted with the Commander of the Lord’s army. He basically asked, “who are you?”
1 John 4:1 – test every spirit. Nuff said.
7. God can do the miraculous.
Chapter 6 is about the fall of Jericho. Miraculous indeed. He doesn’t need to, although all the victories thru Joshua were by the hand of God and were led of the Lord, which makes them in fact miraculous. But not every victory was won with amazing signs and wonders. Let God be God, don’t demand a “signs and wonders” victory when one isn’t needed.
8. Even the smallest giving-in to temptation can be fatal.
Chapter 7 is about Israel’s defeat to Ai and Achan’s sin. I see two sins in this chapter. The obvious one is Achan’s sin. The other sin is that Joshua and the people got ahead of themselves and of God when they first fought with Ai.
Fresh off the victory with Jericho, spies are sent to Ai. The spies’ report has a tone of arrogance and overconfidence: small town, we won’t need a lot of people (Joshua 7:3). They send 3,000 people without seeking the Lord – God is not mentioned in this battle, unlike in the others. They fight with and by their fleshly confidence & courage and – mixed with Achan’s sin – were soundly defeated.
I was going to make a point about the fact that the sin of 1 caused 3,000 to fail — I was going to state how the sin of one man versus Israel’s 1.8 million* (0.00006%!!) led to failure. But I hadn’t seen before how it wasn’t just one man’s sin. It was, at least, the sin of Joshua, the unspecified number of spies, plus the leaders of Israel (am sure they were involved in military decisions**). The sin of the people, in a casual reading of this section of Joshua, is so easy to not notice. It’s so easy to read it and totally miss it, as I have so many times before. But sin is still sin. A small, little difference will add up to a lot, as heading off the right direction by just 1 degree will let you end in a totally different destination than the one planned. The small sins in our lives today that we don’t even stop and take notice of, are very dangerous because of where it can lead and what they can amount to later.
Achan’s sin being fatal is pretty self-explanatory in the scriptures.
9. God will reveal ourselves to ourselves
After Israel’s defeat to Ai and the people cried and humbled themselves, God revealed that there was sin in the camp and asked them to purify themselves. After they had purified themselves, God had Israel go thru a process by which He revealed to them Achan, the man that had committed the sin, who then shared his reasons for sinning. Achan’s sin was dealt with, with his death and the death/loss of all his family and belongings.
In the same way, we need to humble ourselves before God and hear him. He will speak and let us know something is wrong/there is sin. The revealing of that sin may be a process, it won’t be easy for us, but God will reveal it.
I know for me the time between knowing there is sin and me actually recognizing and seeing the root, to where I can specifically “purge” it, has at times taken years.
10. Renew yourself in the Lord.
War is wearisome. After the Achan incident and victory over Ai, the Lord’s covenant was renewed (Joshua 8:30-35). We get tired, we need rest. I think this is pretty self-explanatory.
11. Just because you follow the Lord does not mean everything will fall-together and be easy~peasy.
If it were the case, than all the inhabitants would’ve either killed each other before Israel and/or fled. Israel had to win the victories one battle at a time, over a period of 5 years. They were tempted, they sinned, fell and failed, and they were deceived. It’s a fact.
Temptations won’t go away until I put away this sinful flesh. But we don’t have to give in because Jesus gives us the victory.
12. Your friends, loved ones, & allies will be attacked. We can help.
After the Gibeonites deceived Israel and they made promises to each other, a strong enemy (5 united kingdoms strong!) came against them. Joshua and the army traveled all night and overthrew the enemy.
Scripture doesn’t give an indication that the Gibeonites fought for themselves or fought alongside Israel, it suggests that Israel fought the united 5 kingdoms by itself, even tho the Gibeonites were fully capable as all their men were good warriors (Joshua 10:2). We can do that (fight for others)!
Think about how the paralytic man was saved and healed by Jesus (Mark 2:1-12). The man’s friends did all work: they carried him, opened up the roof, and lowered him to Jesus. Yet it was because of their faith that the man was forgiven and healed. We can do that for people. We can pray and interceed for others!!
13. Victory can and will lead to bigger battles.
14. Even if all kingdoms unite against you, our God is greater!!
These two go together. The next battle after Ai was with the Southern kings, the same 5 that attacked Gibeon.*** After that they consecutively (individually) destroyed the city or army and kings of 4 other kingdoms and the cities of the first 5 united kings.
The Northern kings then united, I think there was 20 of them (the 31 mentioned in Joshua 12:9-24, minus the 5 + 4 kings, minus the kings of Jericho and Ai). There was so many of them, they filled the landscape like sand on the seashore (Joshua 11:4). So numerous, large and looming was the combined enemy but God is stronger. He gave them victory over all of them. (this is kinda more for point 7 above) It was the largest enemy they faced and God didn’t need to do any miracles like make the walls come down or hold the sun and moon in place. Interesting huh. God is greater, stronger, and no weapon formed against us, no matter the size or scope, will succeed!!
15. There is always more to be done.
After all the war, there was still land to be conquered (Joshua 13:1-6). I guess we can never rest on our laurels (achievements). The book of Joshua doesn’t end at chapter 13 – there’s more. The land is divided, 2.5 tribes complete their promise and go home, there’s a dispute between east & west Israelites, Joshua has his final words, the Lord’s covenant is renewed and leaders are buried. More happened and they can all be summed up in one word: more.
That’s why no one doing ministry ever really retires. The good thing is that it’s not the work that we do that saves us, it’s the work that Jesus did that saves us.
Notes and side notes:
* In Israel’s second cencus in the wilderness they counted 601,730 men (Numbers 26:51), which I believe did not include women and children. While there is no counting of the people of Israel in the book of Joshua, I’d have to say that the total count of men could not have gone down or up too signifigantly. Deaths in the wilderness, natural deaths afterward, death from battle, the number of children families had at the time – can’t really say. For the sake of my argument, let’s say that the 600,000 men had 1 woman and 1 child corresponding to them. That would make for what I would say is a conservative estimate of 1.8 million people as the population of Israel.
** The separation of powers in government were first developed in Ancient Greece (according to what I remember in my school days’ history lessons and to wikipedia) and there’s no indication that Joshua and the Israelites practiced this.
*** The image of Joshua’s captains with their feet at the necks of the 5 kings (Joshua 10:24-25) and Joshua saying, “Never be afraid or discouraged, the Lord will do this to all your enemies” (my paraphrase) reminds me of Luke 10:19: we will have “authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.”