Overview of Joshua
The book of Joshua picks up where right where Deuteronomy ends. The first five books that we have already looked are usual called the Pentateuch. The book of Joshua begins the first of 12 books of history which covers a time period of about 1000 years from about 1450 BC to 400 BC. The first three books Joshua, Judges and Ruth contain the history of the independent tribes. 1Samuel through 2 Chronicles records the history of the kingdom and Ezra, Nehemiah and Ester give an account of their return from captivity. This thousand year period contains great civilizations, great characters, great cities and great conflicts.
The book of Joshua itself covers about a 50 year span and
is a story of conquest and division of
A few comparison can be made between Moses and Joshua. The
great event of Moses life was the crossing of the Red Sea and the great event
of Joshua life was the crossing of the
Key words: Conquest and possess
Key verses:
Joshua 1:5
"No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your
life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you
nor forsake you. 6 "Be
strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an
inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
Joshua 22:5 "But take careful heed to do the
commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to
love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to
hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your
soul."
Key
chapters: 23-24 These
chapters record one of the greatest sermons in the Bible. At the age of 110
Joshua reminds the people of what God did for them and how he keeps his
promises and how they should be more grateful for what God had done.
The author is Joshua for the most part anyways. However, just like the book of
Deuteronomy Joshua could not have penned the last verse of Chapter 24 because
it records his death and what happens next. Jewish tradition says that Eleazar
and his son Phinehas are the ones who wrote these last verses but we can’t be
for sure.
Theme deals with the faithfulness of God. God always
keeps his promises.
Those who teach that
Christ will return and reign upon the earth for a thousand years say that the
Jews never full possessed all of Canaan and so God will in the future fulfill
his promise by having the Jews return to
Joshua 21:43 So the
LORD gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their
fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. 44 The LORD gave them rest all
around, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers. And not a man of
all their enemies stood against them; the LORD delivered all their enemies into
their hand. 45 Not a word
failed of any good thing which the LORD had spoken to the house of
Joshua 23:14 "
Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth. And you know in
all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the
good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass
for you; not one word of them has failed.
15 "Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all the
good things have come upon you which the LORD your God promised you, so the
LORD will bring upon you all harmful things, until He has destroyed you from
this good land which the LORD your God has given you. 16 "When you have
transgressed the covenant of the LORD your God, which He commanded you, and
have gone and served other gods, and bowed down to them, then the anger of the
LORD will burn against you, and you shall perish quickly from the good land
which He has given you."
There can be no doubt
that God did indeed fulfill his promise and not one thing he said failed. These
verse make it clear that those who teach God fulfilling this promise in the
further are dead wrong. It also teaches us that a covenant is only biding as
long a both parties are doing what they are suppose to. Because if the children
of
Great
lessons we learn from the book of
Joshua
The first lesson we learn
from Joshua comes from the Psalm 105. This Psalm summarizes the children of
Psalm 105:38
You
see this great book teaches us that God does indeed keep his promises. In the
book of Joshua God fulfills many of his promises he made to Abraham over 400
years ago. I also love what God tells Joshua in,
Joshua 1:5
"No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your
life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you
nor forsake you.
Don’t
you know this gave Joshua great courage and strength because he was there in
wilderness with Moses and saw with his own eyes over and over again how God
worked through Moses and helped him in his time of need. This being the case we
can know that Joshua would be very happy knowing that God would be on his side
and would never ever forsake him. Just
like Joshua we should take great comfort in knowing that God has made that same
promise to us today.
Hebrews 13:5 Let your
conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For
He Himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." 6 So we may boldly say: "The
LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?"
Since
God has never failed to keep his promise we can rest assured that he will
always be there for us.
Keep Gods word
The
next great lesson we learn is the
importance of keeping Gods law and that it can be understood.
Joshua 1:7
"Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according
to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the
right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. 8 "This Book of the Law shall
not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that
you may observe 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.
Right after God reassures
Joshua that he will be there for him he
now tells him how important it is to live his life according to God’s law.
Notice the analogy he makes. He tells him not to veer off to the left or the
right but to stay right in middle where truth is and tells him how to
accomplish this. He wants him to mediate upon day and night. But you see its
not enough just think about what God’s word says we must also emulate it by
putting into practice every single day of our lives. We can also learn that
Joshua is observe all of the law and not part of it. This is great lesson for
us and especially for those in the
religious world because there are far to many people who call themselves
Christians yet they don’t follow all of God’s word. This is where is
denominations come from. They have left the path of truth and have veered to
the right or to left by making there on
truth in addition to God’s truth. But, I want you notice very carefully the
conditional statement mad in verse 8 . He is telling Joshua that IF you
observe my law Then your way will be prosperous and you will have good success.
Once
again this show the importance of following Gods word to the best of our
ability. This same lesson is taught through out the NT.
Luke
Matthew
John 14:15 15 " If you love Me, keep My
commandments.
James
From
these verses we see a great need for us to follow all commands and not part of
them. We also learn from Joshua that
Gods word can be understood. After all he
tells him mediate on it and
observe all of it. The only way he could observe all of it is if he could
understand it. To many people today say
that they cant understand Gods word but this
simply is not true. Even the NT tells us that we can understand it.
Notice what Paul says in,
Ephesians 3:2 if
indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given
to me for you, 3 how that by
revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written
already, 4 by which, when you
read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
Paul
is telling us that when we read God’s word we can understand and we have access
to the same knowledge that the apostles had. So don’t every say you cant
understand the Bible because you can. Sure there are difficult passages that
are hard to understand but they are not impossible for us understand especially
when we compare those difficult sections to what the rest of the Bible says
about that particular topic.
We also learn a couple
of great lessons from the events a
The
first lesson we learn comes from when Rahab hides the spies and makes a deal
with them so they wont kill her or her family. From this event we learn the
importance of keeping your word and doing exactly what you said you would do.
Because notice the 2 things that Rahab had to do to protect herself and her
family.
Joshua 2:17 So the
men said to her: "We will be blameless of this oath of yours which
you have made us swear, 18
"unless, when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet
cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you bring your
father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father's household to your own
home. 19 "So it shall be
that whoever goes outside the doors of your house into the street, his
blood shall be on his own head, and we will be guiltless.
You
see not only does God want us to keep
our agreements with him he also wants us
to keep our agreements with those around us as long as it doesn’t violate God’s
will. . If Rahab and her had not followed the agreement and did those 2 things
it would have cost them their lives.
So,
from this we learn that we need to be careful in what we agree to do. Don’t let
someone put you on the spot and force you to make a decision right then and
there. Tell them you need some time to think about before you make your
decision. But, once you agree as
Christian you should do your best to fulfill the agreement that you have made.
You
might remember Joshua made the mistake
of making an agreement with one the enemies he was to destroy. Normally he prayed
to God and received instructions from him but when these men rode up and put
their fake act they talked Joshua into making an agreement not to destroy them
and once he made this agreement it was binding and he had to keep his word even
though he made agreement out of haste.
The second lesson we learn from
Joshua 6:2 And the LORD said to Joshua: "See! I have
given
Another great lesson
we learn from Joshua is the God doesn’t want sin in his camp.
We
learn this from the event that takes place at AI. They thought it would be easy
to defeat them because they thought God would help them. But they were easily
defeated by this little city of
Joshua
You see God doesn’t show
partiality. Someone sinned against God and so he wasn’t going to help them defeat their enemy. Of course we
all know that this man was Aken and because of his sin many died that day and
because of his sin he and whole family were
laid to rest because God didn’t want any sin in his camp. The same thing
is true today God hates sin not the sinner but sin and he wants us as
Christians to do our best not to sin in our life. Fortunately for us God does
not strike us dead for us sins today but if we continue in our sins we will be spiritual
dead that is separated from God and I
can promise you that it a far worse to be spiritual separated from God than to
lose your life because if you are spiritual separated from God then you will
spend you eternity in hell with devil
and his angels. We need to understand that God doesn’t show partiality. If you are a Christian and you are living in sin
God will not look the other way because you are abusing his grace and there are
dire consequences of keeping sin in your life.
Victory belongs to God
You
see without God’s help the children of