Joshua in a Nutshell
In a Nutshell • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 10 viewsThis sermon is an overview of the Old Testament book of Joshua.
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A Common problem today.
A Common problem today.
Many of us deal with anxiety.
Some of us trudge through it, a sort of “grin and bear it,” mentality.
Others self-medicate in some way- with alcohol or drugs or some other kind of pacifier.
Others seek counseling or take a prescription medication under a doctor’s orders.
The bottom line is that it is common to deal with some form of anxiety; some way of dealing with fear, inhibiting or debilitating.
Author Pierce Taylor Hibbs writes:
“Anxiety is one of the areas in which people feel tossed about in the waves most powerfully. There’s more than a few of us. In fact, there are about 40 million of us in the United States alone, about 18% of the population.”
“And I see nothing that to suggest those figures will go down. Quite the contrary, even before the global pandemic (which hasn’t done much to mitigate panic), the mental health of the United States, and perhaps much of the rest of the world, was not encouraging.” ((Westminster Media - Abiding in Peace Through Anxiety).
Some ask: “Where is God? Where is faith?” Sometimes, anxiety gives way to a crisis of faith.
Joshua was faced with a turning point; a watershed moment. He was just appointed the new leader of God’s people. What did this mean?
How did we get here?
How did we get here?
The time is around 1400 B.C.. Moses has died as well as all of those a part of the generation that refused to obey the Lord and take possession of the land of Canaan.
This point is ironic because this generation had seen God inflict the plagues upon Egypt. They had witnessed the parting of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Egyptians.
But they refused to take possession of the land. They coward when faith was demanded. And they were denied, wandering in the desert for 40 long years.
When the spies returned and reported what they saw, the people failed to have courage. Caleb and Joshua were ready to take possession of the land. Nevertheless, some spies gave a bad report, Numbers 13:31-32
31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” 32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height.
And the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron. They wanted to appoint a different leader and head back to Egypt. They failed to take the land.
Fast forward a few decades and all of the individuals that hesitated and trusted in themselves or their situation, died in the wilderness. They chose to play it safe rather than do what God wanted from them. Now, Joshua was appointed the new leader and he is given direct orders from the Lord to take possession of the land.
But now it was a new day and a new leader. And there would soon be a new home. The major theme in the book of Joshua is Israel’s conquest of the land of Canaan.
We read in verse one:
1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.”
The instructions were simple. Go! Don’t hesitate. Get moving. Similar to the command given to Abraham to leave familiar surroundings and go to a land that God would reveal (Genesis 12:1).
The difference is that Joshua knew where he was going. And this would be the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:7
7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
And God knew that the greatest need among the Israelites would be courage. They had struggled with such things before.
Would they be up for the task?
Would they be up for the task?
But it would not be easy. The foe would not lay down.
The people of Canaan were not organized into strong political units (Sam Schultz, The Old Testament Speaks, 91). Canaan was seen as a buffer territory. When people came in to occupy the land, these city states formed leagues and united in opposing the invader.
Their religion was polytheistic. They had over 70 gods and goddesses. Baal was just one of them.
Baal controlled heaven and earth. He was the god of rain and storm, so he was responsible for vegetation and fertility.
The gods of the Canaanites had no moral character. Therefore there was no moral compass for the people. They participated in child sacrifice, sacred prostitution, snake worship just to name a few. And so their actions were repugnant in the eyes of the Lord. This is why God was obligated to judge them.
You see the seriousness of sin in God’s words in Deuteronomy 20:16-17
16 But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded… .”
As one commentator states:
“The Canaanites were a brutal and wicked culture that frequently engaged in incredibly decadent behavior. Leviticus 18 provides a list of sins that Israel was to avoid at all costs: incest, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality. All these sins were practiced by the people of Canaan: “This is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. . . . All these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled.” (Leviticus 18:24–27) (Why did God command the extermination / genocide of the Canaanites, women and children included? | GotQuestions.org).
The book of Joshua is divided up into three sections:
Entrance into Canaan 1:1-4:24;
Defeat of Israel’s enemies 5:1-12:24;
Allotment of the land: 13:1-24:33.
God’s provisions for the task.
God’s provisions for the task.
Here are a couple of points that I do not want to get lost in the shuffle.
First, God gave the promise of His presence. This was nothing new. As their ancestors made their way through the wilderness wanderings, they were accompanied by God’s presence. The sign of such was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
There was no missing this fact. God would accompany His people as they entered the promised land. Notice Joshua 1:5
5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.
God’s presence would provide the motivation for God’s people. Notice what they could not have, being guaranteed of God’s accompanying them.
Next, God gave His people the power of confidence in Him.
6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.
No less than three times does God promise His presence with His people (Joshua 1:5, 9). And no less than three times does He instruct the Israelites to be brave (Joshua 1:6, 7 and 9).
And this call to courage would be put to the test. There were times that their faith in God was necessitated for the their victory.
For instance, in the people of God were faced with very specific instructions if they were going to see the walls of Jericho fall. They had to march around the city for seven days, give a shout and wait for the walls to fall in Joshua 6.
Or, when the sun stood still in Joshua 10:12-14, ensuring victory for army of Israel. They needed more daylight to complete the job and God miraculously provided.
And when Joshua went up against King Jabin and all of his confederacy in Joshua 11. They were outnumbered. Jabin’s confederacy numbered more than a quarter of a million.
“The first century A.D. Jewish historian Josephus speculated that this northern confederacy numbered at least 300,000 soldiers, 20,000 chariots and 10,000 horsemen (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 5, Chapter 1, Section 18)!”
Time and again, it was because God was mighty that the people defeated their enemies.
Finally, their success was dependent on their obedience to the law.
7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
The people were not allowed to cruise through life and make up their own laws, worship practices and precepts of conduct. They were to submit to God’s written prescription.
The same goes for us and the Bible. We will only survive the test of time if we obey this book. We cannot make up doctrine and ethics as we go.
Some churches try to do that today. They think that God has changed his mind, or that some things are not as important to the Lord any more.
Remember what Malachi 3:6 says.
6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
And
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
The instruction to us: Be strong in the Lord Jesus!
The instruction to us: Be strong in the Lord Jesus!
This situation brings up an important situation in our faith. As Arnold and Beyer state:
“Like Joshua, when we face great challenges, we too can trust the Lord to help us accomplish his purpose.” (Arnold and Beyer, Encountering the Old Testament, 142).
When has God instructed us to be strong and have courage?
The key is the in-filling of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 3:16 says:
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
Take, for instance, in Ephesians 6:10-12
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
The very same thing that the Joshua needed for the conquest is what you and I need on a daily basis as we encounter sin, the temptation to act on our sinful desires, fear, etc.
And Paul prescribed to his young understudy Timothy:
1 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.
Our Comfort (the answer for anxiety) comes from a 16th century catechism.
Our Comfort (the answer for anxiety) comes from a 16th century catechism.
The Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 provides a great answer to what our only comfort is in this life.
1. Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?
A. That I am not my own,[1] but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death,[2] to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.[3] He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil.[5] He also preserves me in such a way[6] that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head;[7] indeed, all things must work together for my salvation.[8] Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life[9] and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him. (The Heidelberg Catechism (1563, 1619) – by Zacharias Ursinus | Reformed Theology at A Puritan's Mind)
