Image by Vicki's Pics via Flickr
The book of Joshua presents to us a major event in the life of the people of God. Here we see the children of Israel about to enter the promised land, their inheritance, and we note that it is Joshua and not Moses who leads them in. From this point on it is Joshua, Joshua all the way, and we know that Joshua means Jesus, the Saviour of His people. Let us therefore study the book carefully to ensure we know the meaning and interpretation of it.
We must first interpret the setting of the book. The land into which Joshua leads the people is not heaven, for the instruction to Joshua is to be strong and very courageous, and this because of the enemies who inhabited the land. Now this we know of Jesus, at least, that He comes from the Father and returned again to the Father. He is the Lord from heaven, and all His enemies are upon the earth. Furthermore, we would be confused if we imagined that after we too have gone to heaven to be with the Lord we had endless battles to fight. No, no! The inheritance of the people of God into which Joshua will lead them cannot be taken to represent heaven, however dearly we may hold that interpretation, neither is Jordan the place of bodily death, physical death, whether or not we sing it thus in our hymnbooks. Except we rightly interpret the scene and setting of our book of Joshua we will make nonsense of the scriptures and confuse the people of God. Jordan is not bodily death, and the inheritance is not the heaven of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. What is it then? If we are led by Jesus, our Saviour and Lord, where and when do we enter into this inheritance? The book of Joshua is the final answer and explanation of that question, and any other interpretation must of necessity totally disregard the entire book of Joshua. In Exodus, we have seen our salvation, our release from the bondage and thralldom of Egypt, and how God by Christ Jesus accomplished that miracle. Leviticus is our call to a new way of life, the pathway of holiness. In Numbers, we saw distinctly our wanderings in the wilderness, until by grace our doubts and fears died out eventually, and we were ready at last to enjoy the promise of the land before us. We recall that it was our unbelief that prevented us from reaching this point earlier in our Christian experience. Therefore, the land into which Joshua led the people of God is symbolic of a new sphere of living into which we dared not enter before; it is symbolic of a goal in this life towards which God by His Holy Spirit would lead and direct us. The land is that elevated position of spiritual experience for which our souls have longed all this while. Hitherto our unbelief has kept us out, kept us wandering around in circles in a wilderness of joyless experience, except that we did indeed recognize that God was leading us in the pillar of fire and smoke. Yes we were Christians; yes we were God’s people Israel; yes we were saved, baptized, and we took communion; yes we were led of God; yes our lives tended to holiness; yes we had the tabernacle and yes we had Moses to lead us in his role of mediator; yes we enjoyed the fellowship of the people of God, and yes we had the gospel and many New Testament truths.
Do not misunderstand or misinterpret the matter. We were indeed Christians as our fathers were. We were properly saved, and then baptized, and then in communion. We had the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, we had a measure of the Holy Spirit as all God’s people have, for none can claim Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and we were indeed led of God. Our lives tended to holiness, and if some fell by the wayside it served only to warn us not to follow their evil example. Yet our pathway was in a wilderness, a barren land, for we had turned our backs resolutely on the pleasures of Egypt (we followed Moses, remember) and yet we had not entered into the joy of our inheritance. Our spiritual experience was marked by crisis after crisis, and we hungered, we thirsted, and grew weary of the way at times. It was not till we read Deuteronomy that we understood it all at last, for there God told us, “I have suffered you to hunger and thirst” that He might try us and humble us, and know us. But we followed diligently on in spite of everything, till in time all our doubts were laid to rest and our fears died out of us. We then received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the brooks of Arnon, and we entered into peace and love in what had been the exclusive provinces of the Amorites. We were still this side of Jordan, but we had come a long way. We had not reached full maturity, perhaps, but we were no longer babes in Christ. To many of us it seemed we had arrived, at last, and there was nothing else to strive for. Two and a half tribes chose to settle on the wilderness side of the Jordan, and caused the first division in the people of Israel since we all came out of Egypt.
So what is our inheritance? It is a sphere of Christian living, an elevation spiritual, a realm in this life into which only Jesus can lead us. We have seen Christ as the Passover Lamb whose blood was shed for us to save us from Egyptian death. We have seen Moses portray Christ for us as the Risen Lord who daily maketh intercession for us. We have been content to follow Christ as He interpreted for us the will of a Holy God. But now suddenly we are faced with Joshua, with Jesus as our Leader, Commander and Lord. We could not look closely on Moses because of the shining of his face, and he was veiled from our sight. But Joshua wears no veil. Here we may look, and come to know Jesus intimately. He will be now our Friend, our closest Companion, our elder Brother, our Champion, our intimate Guide, our All in All. We will get to know Jesus without a veil, without a covering over His still shining face. We may boldly look. It is not now the mystical mysterious Christ of our previous experience, but a Person as close as any member of our earthly family, a Brother nearer to us than any of our brethren in Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to direct us to Christ, from the time when in Egypt we saw the wonders of God’s love and the clear picture of Christ our Passover, right through the wilderness journey to the promised land. It was Jesus who said, He shall take of My things and show them unto you. It is the Holy Spirit’s purpose and joy to reveal unto us Jesus. Do not doubt it. It is the revealed will of God for each of us. It is the ultimate goal of Christian experience to know Jesus intimately as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying…..” We have known this Joshua all along, obviously, but he has been overshadowed by the presentation of Moses the servant of the Lord. This too is the will of God. Many who claim intimate and joyous acquaintanceship with Jesus in our day have never learned the great lessons of Christ, which Moses portrayed. Before we enter into a shallow and superficial relationship with the Man from Galilee let us be sure it is the will of God for us. God would have us know Christ as the Man of the Cross, the Man of Sorrows, the Son of Man on earth, the Passover Lamb, God’s first fruit, the great Leader of God’s people, the Exalted One, the One who was called alone to reveal the will of God to the people of God. Moses is called here the servant of the Lord, for Christ is shown as the only One who ever did the whole will of God, and the only One who on Calvary finished the work. Ministers and preachers sometimes speak disparagingly of Noah, because he was drunken, of Jacob because he disguised himself, of Moses because he smote the rock, but let us remember that there were friends of God Himself, and God is no more pleased to hear ill of a friend than you or I would be. Let those who claim such friendship with the Man of Galilee remember that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, and by their holy lives acknowledge that God is a Holy God. We do not step straight out of Egypt into the promised land, beloved, for the book after Exodus is not Joshua but Leviticus.
“Moses my servant is dead.” Before setting us on intimate terms with Jesus, the Holy Spirit will fix our eyes on Calvary. It is not the Risen Christ God reveals first to us, but the Christ who died for us. Except we see that Christ died, except we look long at Calvary, except we fix our minds and hearts on the Cross of Christ, we may not come to know Joshua at all. There are pleasures to be found in Egypt still, but friendship with the world reveals us as false friends of God. True friends of God have left Egypt, have plowed across the wilderness, and have come to their inheritance. These, and these only, are Joshua’s friends. Only a false and spurious gospel presents Jesus as a Friend of all. It was the world that crucified Him. It is the world that denies Him. It is the world that hates Him still. Jesus did not come as a Friend of the world, He came to die for it. “Moses my servant is dead” is the introduction to Joshua.
So let us go on. The Jordan lies before us. This is what Paul meant when he said, “Reckon yourselves dead.” It is not baptism, for that was the Red Sea. It is not physical death, for at the last trump the living are caught up to meet the Lord in the air and if the way into heaven were by physical death the living must be excluded. No, this Jordan is the point in our experience where we are prepared to follow the Lord’s example and die to this world. We are found to be crucified with Christ. We cross spiritually as it were a last barrier into our inheritance in Christ. The whole teaching regarding Jordan is found in Paul’s epistles, and the crossing is a definite step forward in our spiritual experience.
Now Joshua is a man. He is a man called of God both to lead the ancient people Israel into the land Canaan and to portray for us an experience in Christ that Joshua was not even aware of. He is a man. His role is to portray Christ to our hearts, but Joshua is not Christ. He is a man. The word of God to him is to be strong and of a good courage, and this word we can each of us apply to ourselves as though God spoke to us personally. The step we are contemplating is not for the weak-kneed. It is a step taken in courage and faith, a step in response to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is a final step, an irrevocable step, a long step. Our Lord set His face as a flint to go to Jerusalem; He was steadfast, immoveable, fixed in that purpose. It mattered little now that the Samaritans would not receive Him, let us go on to another village, His face is towards Jerusalem and three days and nights in the tomb. The shadow of the Cross suddenly has taken on a third dimension, an ominous looming nearer and nearer that keeps the disciples silent, afraid to ask. There is about the man Jesus a new quality, a brazen steadfastness they had not seen before. It is not stoicism, nor the death wish of a fanatic. It is courage, C-O-U-R-A-G-E, the quality of brass, the ice-cold silent strength of One who has counted all the cost and is going ahead nevertheless, compared to which the bravery of the impetuous Peter is seen as a weak thing. It is at this point more than any other that Christ Jesus stands out clearly head and shoulders about all brave men, for none ever faced before or since what He faced all alone.
Now the word to the people is, Prepare yourselves. “Prepare you victuals,” Joshua commands. Before we take this step let us fully count the cost, let us prepare ourselves, and above all let us prepare our victuals. We should go back to Scripture and read it again. Are we sure of what we do? Can we get the meat we need to sustain us? When faced with scorn or open doubt can we find the answer quickly in the word of God? Are we resolute with the resoluteness of Christ at Jerusalem? Have we set our face as a flint? Will we be steadfast? It is little use to reckon ourselves dead today only to find tomorrow we are still in the wilderness, perhaps still hankering after Egypt in our hearts. There are giants ahead of us, and will we be afraid? There are seven nations greater than we to overcome, and only Joshua to lead us. Will our spirits fail? “Prepare you victuals.” Look well to your meat. We are forging ahead, we are moving on, we are taking the final step in the life of faith. What we will need is courage, the inner resolution and determination of an iron will, the unshakeable fixity of purpose that we saw in our Lord. He went alone, but we are not alone, for the word to our hearts is, “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Christ was forsaken, but we will not be. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, we only die with Him. His was the awful first, ours only to follow after. And this step taken in faith leads to a new and more intimate knowledge of Jesus the original Overcomer, in whom and by whom we may overcome all things. We will find a new appreciation of Him on the other side of Jordan.
“And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manassah, spake Joshua, saying…..” There are those of our brethren who do not desire to go forward into the full inheritance of the people of God. They cause a clear division between the tribes that were once so united, and this division is at Jordan. They have found all they seek for of peace and joy this side Jordan, and they have asked to be allowed to dwell here. The difficulty is that they may discourage others from crossing the Jordan. Therefore the word to them from Joshua is to go with us, in the sense that they that are not against us are with us. They are to encourage, not discourage, their brethren who go over this Jordan. How sad it is to find that when once we have come to the point of taking a step forward in faith and are prepared to meet scorn, doubt and disavowal, it is our own brethren who hold us back, and would discourage us most. They are absolutely wrong to do so. They are expressly taught to go along with us, to fight our battles side by side in full harmony and sympathy with us, even when they themselves have no desire to share our inheritance. This commandment is from our only leader, the Lord Jesus Himself, because He is their Commander as well as ours. For those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord and who share our present peace and joy, to rebuke us when we attempt to go forward into the full inheritance that God has in store for us, is surely “the unkindest cut of all,” and is contrary to the clear teaching of the first chapter of Joshua.
Gems from God's Word 
Joshua Chapter 1
Image by Vicki's Pics via Flickr
The book of Joshua presents to us a major event in the life of the people of God. Here we see the children of Israel about to enter the promised land, their inheritance, and we note that it is Joshua and not Moses who leads them in. From this point on it is Joshua, Joshua all the way, and we know that Joshua means Jesus, the Saviour of His people. Let us therefore study the book carefully to ensure we know the meaning and interpretation of it.
We must first interpret the setting of the book. The land into which Joshua leads the people is not heaven, for the instruction to Joshua is to be strong and very courageous, and this because of the enemies who inhabited the land. Now this we know of Jesus, at least, that He comes from the Father and returned again to the Father. He is the Lord from heaven, and all His enemies are upon the earth. Furthermore, we would be confused if we imagined that after we too have gone to heaven to be with the Lord we had endless battles to fight. No, no! The inheritance of the people of God into which Joshua will lead them cannot be taken to represent heaven, however dearly we may hold that interpretation, neither is Jordan the place of bodily death, physical death, whether or not we sing it thus in our hymnbooks. Except we rightly interpret the scene and setting of our book of Joshua we will make nonsense of the scriptures and confuse the people of God. Jordan is not bodily death, and the inheritance is not the heaven of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. What is it then? If we are led by Jesus, our Saviour and Lord, where and when do we enter into this inheritance? The book of Joshua is the final answer and explanation of that question, and any other interpretation must of necessity totally disregard the entire book of Joshua. In Exodus, we have seen our salvation, our release from the bondage and thralldom of Egypt, and how God by Christ Jesus accomplished that miracle. Leviticus is our call to a new way of life, the pathway of holiness. In Numbers, we saw distinctly our wanderings in the wilderness, until by grace our doubts and fears died out eventually, and we were ready at last to enjoy the promise of the land before us. We recall that it was our unbelief that prevented us from reaching this point earlier in our Christian experience. Therefore, the land into which Joshua led the people of God is symbolic of a new sphere of living into which we dared not enter before; it is symbolic of a goal in this life towards which God by His Holy Spirit would lead and direct us. The land is that elevated position of spiritual experience for which our souls have longed all this while. Hitherto our unbelief has kept us out, kept us wandering around in circles in a wilderness of joyless experience, except that we did indeed recognize that God was leading us in the pillar of fire and smoke. Yes we were Christians; yes we were God’s people Israel; yes we were saved, baptized, and we took communion; yes we were led of God; yes our lives tended to holiness; yes we had the tabernacle and yes we had Moses to lead us in his role of mediator; yes we enjoyed the fellowship of the people of God, and yes we had the gospel and many New Testament truths.
Do not misunderstand or misinterpret the matter. We were indeed Christians as our fathers were. We were properly saved, and then baptized, and then in communion. We had the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, we had a measure of the Holy Spirit as all God’s people have, for none can claim Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and we were indeed led of God. Our lives tended to holiness, and if some fell by the wayside it served only to warn us not to follow their evil example. Yet our pathway was in a wilderness, a barren land, for we had turned our backs resolutely on the pleasures of Egypt (we followed Moses, remember) and yet we had not entered into the joy of our inheritance. Our spiritual experience was marked by crisis after crisis, and we hungered, we thirsted, and grew weary of the way at times. It was not till we read Deuteronomy that we understood it all at last, for there God told us, “I have suffered you to hunger and thirst” that He might try us and humble us, and know us. But we followed diligently on in spite of everything, till in time all our doubts were laid to rest and our fears died out of us. We then received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the brooks of Arnon, and we entered into peace and love in what had been the exclusive provinces of the Amorites. We were still this side of Jordan, but we had come a long way. We had not reached full maturity, perhaps, but we were no longer babes in Christ. To many of us it seemed we had arrived, at last, and there was nothing else to strive for. Two and a half tribes chose to settle on the wilderness side of the Jordan, and caused the first division in the people of Israel since we all came out of Egypt.
So what is our inheritance? It is a sphere of Christian living, an elevation spiritual, a realm in this life into which only Jesus can lead us. We have seen Christ as the Passover Lamb whose blood was shed for us to save us from Egyptian death. We have seen Moses portray Christ for us as the Risen Lord who daily maketh intercession for us. We have been content to follow Christ as He interpreted for us the will of a Holy God. But now suddenly we are faced with Joshua, with Jesus as our Leader, Commander and Lord. We could not look closely on Moses because of the shining of his face, and he was veiled from our sight. But Joshua wears no veil. Here we may look, and come to know Jesus intimately. He will be now our Friend, our closest Companion, our elder Brother, our Champion, our intimate Guide, our All in All. We will get to know Jesus without a veil, without a covering over His still shining face. We may boldly look. It is not now the mystical mysterious Christ of our previous experience, but a Person as close as any member of our earthly family, a Brother nearer to us than any of our brethren in Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to direct us to Christ, from the time when in Egypt we saw the wonders of God’s love and the clear picture of Christ our Passover, right through the wilderness journey to the promised land. It was Jesus who said, He shall take of My things and show them unto you. It is the Holy Spirit’s purpose and joy to reveal unto us Jesus. Do not doubt it. It is the revealed will of God for each of us. It is the ultimate goal of Christian experience to know Jesus intimately as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying…..” We have known this Joshua all along, obviously, but he has been overshadowed by the presentation of Moses the servant of the Lord. This too is the will of God. Many who claim intimate and joyous acquaintanceship with Jesus in our day have never learned the great lessons of Christ, which Moses portrayed. Before we enter into a shallow and superficial relationship with the Man from Galilee let us be sure it is the will of God for us. God would have us know Christ as the Man of the Cross, the Man of Sorrows, the Son of Man on earth, the Passover Lamb, God’s first fruit, the great Leader of God’s people, the Exalted One, the One who was called alone to reveal the will of God to the people of God. Moses is called here the servant of the Lord, for Christ is shown as the only One who ever did the whole will of God, and the only One who on Calvary finished the work. Ministers and preachers sometimes speak disparagingly of Noah, because he was drunken, of Jacob because he disguised himself, of Moses because he smote the rock, but let us remember that there were friends of God Himself, and God is no more pleased to hear ill of a friend than you or I would be. Let those who claim such friendship with the Man of Galilee remember that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, and by their holy lives acknowledge that God is a Holy God. We do not step straight out of Egypt into the promised land, beloved, for the book after Exodus is not Joshua but Leviticus.
“Moses my servant is dead.” Before setting us on intimate terms with Jesus, the Holy Spirit will fix our eyes on Calvary. It is not the Risen Christ God reveals first to us, but the Christ who died for us. Except we see that Christ died, except we look long at Calvary, except we fix our minds and hearts on the Cross of Christ, we may not come to know Joshua at all. There are pleasures to be found in Egypt still, but friendship with the world reveals us as false friends of God. True friends of God have left Egypt, have plowed across the wilderness, and have come to their inheritance. These, and these only, are Joshua’s friends. Only a false and spurious gospel presents Jesus as a Friend of all. It was the world that crucified Him. It is the world that denies Him. It is the world that hates Him still. Jesus did not come as a Friend of the world, He came to die for it. “Moses my servant is dead” is the introduction to Joshua.
So let us go on. The Jordan lies before us. This is what Paul meant when he said, “Reckon yourselves dead.” It is not baptism, for that was the Red Sea. It is not physical death, for at the last trump the living are caught up to meet the Lord in the air and if the way into heaven were by physical death the living must be excluded. No, this Jordan is the point in our experience where we are prepared to follow the Lord’s example and die to this world. We are found to be crucified with Christ. We cross spiritually as it were a last barrier into our inheritance in Christ. The whole teaching regarding Jordan is found in Paul’s epistles, and the crossing is a definite step forward in our spiritual experience.
Now Joshua is a man. He is a man called of God both to lead the ancient people Israel into the land Canaan and to portray for us an experience in Christ that Joshua was not even aware of. He is a man. His role is to portray Christ to our hearts, but Joshua is not Christ. He is a man. The word of God to him is to be strong and of a good courage, and this word we can each of us apply to ourselves as though God spoke to us personally. The step we are contemplating is not for the weak-kneed. It is a step taken in courage and faith, a step in response to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is a final step, an irrevocable step, a long step. Our Lord set His face as a flint to go to Jerusalem; He was steadfast, immoveable, fixed in that purpose. It mattered little now that the Samaritans would not receive Him, let us go on to another village, His face is towards Jerusalem and three days and nights in the tomb. The shadow of the Cross suddenly has taken on a third dimension, an ominous looming nearer and nearer that keeps the disciples silent, afraid to ask. There is about the man Jesus a new quality, a brazen steadfastness they had not seen before. It is not stoicism, nor the death wish of a fanatic. It is courage, C-O-U-R-A-G-E, the quality of brass, the ice-cold silent strength of One who has counted all the cost and is going ahead nevertheless, compared to which the bravery of the impetuous Peter is seen as a weak thing. It is at this point more than any other that Christ Jesus stands out clearly head and shoulders about all brave men, for none ever faced before or since what He faced all alone.
Now the word to the people is, Prepare yourselves. “Prepare you victuals,” Joshua commands. Before we take this step let us fully count the cost, let us prepare ourselves, and above all let us prepare our victuals. We should go back to Scripture and read it again. Are we sure of what we do? Can we get the meat we need to sustain us? When faced with scorn or open doubt can we find the answer quickly in the word of God? Are we resolute with the resoluteness of Christ at Jerusalem? Have we set our face as a flint? Will we be steadfast? It is little use to reckon ourselves dead today only to find tomorrow we are still in the wilderness, perhaps still hankering after Egypt in our hearts. There are giants ahead of us, and will we be afraid? There are seven nations greater than we to overcome, and only Joshua to lead us. Will our spirits fail? “Prepare you victuals.” Look well to your meat. We are forging ahead, we are moving on, we are taking the final step in the life of faith. What we will need is courage, the inner resolution and determination of an iron will, the unshakeable fixity of purpose that we saw in our Lord. He went alone, but we are not alone, for the word to our hearts is, “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Christ was forsaken, but we will not be. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, we only die with Him. His was the awful first, ours only to follow after. And this step taken in faith leads to a new and more intimate knowledge of Jesus the original Overcomer, in whom and by whom we may overcome all things. We will find a new appreciation of Him on the other side of Jordan.
“And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manassah, spake Joshua, saying…..” There are those of our brethren who do not desire to go forward into the full inheritance of the people of God. They cause a clear division between the tribes that were once so united, and this division is at Jordan. They have found all they seek for of peace and joy this side Jordan, and they have asked to be allowed to dwell here. The difficulty is that they may discourage others from crossing the Jordan. Therefore the word to them from Joshua is to go with us, in the sense that they that are not against us are with us. They are to encourage, not discourage, their brethren who go over this Jordan. How sad it is to find that when once we have come to the point of taking a step forward in faith and are prepared to meet scorn, doubt and disavowal, it is our own brethren who hold us back, and would discourage us most. They are absolutely wrong to do so. They are expressly taught to go along with us, to fight our battles side by side in full harmony and sympathy with us, even when they themselves have no desire to share our inheritance. This commandment is from our only leader, the Lord Jesus Himself, because He is their Commander as well as ours. For those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord and who share our present peace and joy, to rebuke us when we attempt to go forward into the full inheritance that God has in store for us, is surely “the unkindest cut of all,” and is contrary to the clear teaching of the first chapter of Joshua.
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About Ron
Missionary and developer of prayer networks.