Study 1
“Canaan Re-visited”
Introduction
This evening we begin a new series of studies as we turn our thoughts to the book of Joshua. Why the book of Joshua? – you might ask. And that would be a legitimate question. After all it is an ancient book that gives a grim account of war, slaughter and conquest which took place long ago in a land and culture so far removed from the world of our day that it couldn’t possibly have anything relevant to say to believers today at the commencement of this 21st Century. In answering such a question I would say two things. First of all Joshua is a book of the Bible, as fully inspired as the other 65 books and as such is, as Paul reminds us in 2 Tim 3/16 “profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” In other words God intended this book to be useful to us in our Christian lives. There are doctrines, and principles and practical lessons relating to various aspects of our faith which are set forth in this particular book in a way in which they are not set forth in any of the other books. If This historical record of Israel’s conquest of the land of Canaan were of no doctrinal or practical use to the Church then God would not have preserved the record nor incorporated it within the inspired volume of scripture. But He did and thus we should study it. The other thing I would say is this, the book of Joshua is in fact much more relevant to us as Christians living at the beginning of the 21st Century than perhaps we at first realise especially whenever one considers the fact that the Christian life is often depicted by the N.T. writers, Paul especially in terms of the life of a soldier, in terms of being in a battle, in terms of engaging and overcoming enemy forces, in terms of laying hold of our inheritance in Christ by faith and as well as that there is the whole area of principles of leadership and ‘followership’ which are very prominent in this book and which are of course relevant for God’s people in every age of the Church. So I would say to you that we are studying Joshua because I believe that the particular lessons we learn from this book will be potentially at least, of tremendous help and benefit to us in our Christian lives. Whether the potential benefit becomes an actual, real benefit to you personally, depends of course upon how you respond to the truths and lessons which will be brought before you.
The book of Joshua cannot of course be considered in Isolation from the books that precede it. The fact of the matter is that the theological roots of Joshua are sunk firmly in the soil of the first five books of scripture and were you to trace the tap root of this book you would find that it goes all the way back to Genesis 12. And it is with a view to tracing this tap root and so setting the book in its general context and discovering the dominant theme of the book that I want you to consider with me in the first place this evening -
1) The Fulfilment of God’s Promise:
The story of Joshua must be traced back to Genesis 12 where God called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees and entered into a Covenant with him READ Gen:12 1-3, 7. God here promises to Abram, that first of all he would give him a seed, that is make a great nation out of him, and tracing the theme of the seed back to Genesis 3 we see that what God was doing in Gen 12 was establishing the human family line from which the seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent (i.e. the Messiah) would eventually come. God also promises that through Abram, all the families of the earth would be blessed, something that would be ultimately fulfilled in the coming of Christ who was of course of Abraham’s lineage. But as well as these promises, and this is what I want to particularly bring to your attention from Genesis 12, God also promised to give Abram a land. He himself would not possess it but his children would 12v7 – “to your offspring I will give this land” The promise is repeated in Chapter 13v14,15. READ He is later told that his descendants would be enslaved for four hundred years in a foreign country, but that after four hundred years they would be freed, would be brought out and would take possession of the land of Canaan. 15v15,16,18. And of course what you have in the book of Genesis and Exodus is the record of the historical fulfilment of God’s word in relation to the growth of Abraham’s descendants into a great nation while in Egypt , their subsequent mal-treatment by their hosts turned captors and their eventual deliverance from their captivity by the power of God under the leadership of Moses. However the promise of entering into and taking possession of the land of Canaan was not fulfilled in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s deliverance. It ought to have been but, standing on the brink of entering into the full enjoyment of that which God had promised to give them, the people were filled with fear and unbelief and lacked the faith and trust in God that was necessary in order to actually take possession of the inheritance that was before them. As a consequence God swore that that generation would not set foot in the land of promise, that that generation would not experience the blessings and joys of their inheritance and so for forty years they wandered in the wilderness until every person over twenty years of age, Joshua and Caleb being the only exceptions, had died. And that is where we pick up the story when we come to the book of Joshua. This is Canaan re-visited. The people of God are once again standing on the border of the promised land. They are once again looking at their promised inheritance. The blessings of that land with its rich pastures, with its abundant fruit and so on are before them and are there for the taking and this time, under the leadership of Joshua and stepping out in faith and obedience they will go in and possess the land and enter into these covenant blessings that God had promised to give them and that He wants them to enjoy. So in the book of Joshua we find the historical fulfilment of God’s covenant promise made many years earlier to Abraham.
And one of the lessons God would have us learn as we come to and read through the book of Joshua is that God always fulfils his promises. The promise that Israel would possess the land of Canaan was given many hundreds of years earlier. Several generations came and went who didn’t see the promise fulfilled. Perhaps there were many sceptics among those generations, people who thought that this idea that God was going to give them a large and fruitful land was nothing but pie in the sky thinking that just wasn’t ever going to happen. We know that the generation who were delivered from Egypt and who came to the very border of Canaan had a tremendous opportunity of seeing that promise of God fulfilled in their day, but because of their unbelief, because of their lack of faith, because of their unwillingness to trust God and to go forward in obedience to Him, the fulfilment of the promise wasn’t then realised. But their unbelief did not annul the promise of God, God would remain faithful to His word by bringing it to pass in a subsequent generation, a generation who would not only witness it being fulfilled but would also enter into all the blessings associated with its fulfilment.
Friends God never goes back on his promises. At the end of his life Joshua was able to say “not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled. Not one has failed…”
And you know brethren this is a glorious truth that shines forth from the pages of the book of Joshua. Our God is a promise-keeping God. He does not go back on His promises. He promised to send one who would crush the head of the serpent and bring redemption to sinners and although the promise remained unfulfilled for several millennia, the fact of the matter is that ‘when the fulness of the time was come God sent forth his son born of a woman made under the law to redeem those who were under the law’ God kept his Word of promise. Has he promised salvation to all who trust Christ as saviour, then by faith rest assured in that promise if you have trusted Christ, he will save you. Has he given us a promise to be with us, to uphold us to strengthen us, to guide us, to protect us, to glorify us; Then doubt not that he will be true to His word
Another lesson we learn from this first point is that lack of faith and lack of obedience on the part of God’s children can cause them to loose out on blessings which they could have enjoyed had they been obedient and had they trusted God. Yes this book is about the fulfilment of God’s covenant promise to His people but the fulfilment of the promise in this particular generation was very much tied up with and one could say looked at from the human point of view was dependant upon the faith and obedience of these people. This was where the former generation failed. God held out to them the blessings of Canaan but their unbelief, their lack of faith, their disobedience caused them to forfeit the blessings. This generation through faith and obedience, as we are going to see in our studies, entered into and enjoyed the blessings. And you know friends our lack of faith, our lack of obedience, our unwillingness to trust and to follow the Lord in various situations in life, in our own personal life, in our family life, in our church life, can cause us to loose out on blessings which had we stepped out in faith and obedience to God we might otherwise have enjoyed.
Well having considered The Fulfilment of God’s Promise and set the book in its historical and theological context and discovered that the general theme is that of possessing the promised inheritance by faith, I want us to consider secondly this evening,
2) The Preparation of God’s Servant:
Although the overall theme of the book is about the children of Israel taking possession of the land of Canaan there is no doubt that the central human character of the book is Joshua. He was the man whom God in His infinite wisdom and providence chose to lead the people of God into the enjoyment of their inheritance. The people needed a leader, a good leader, and Joshua was just the right man for the job. And he was the right man for the job because for many years God had been preparing him for this significant and important leadership role. It was important that the people have a leader, but equally important that they have the right leader. And although Joshua didn’t realise it, God in different ways was preparing him for this future role. In what way had God been preparing him?
Well God prepared him by
(i) Nurturing His Faith As A Slave In Egypt
The role Joshua would take up later in life would require an unusual degree of faith, an unusual degree of unwavering trust in God. From his earliest days as a slave in Egypt God nurtured such a faith.
Joshua was born in Egypt, and the era in which he was born was the era when God’s people were being ill-treated by the Egyptians, when the Israelites were slaves. He was born into a godly home, born to parents who had a strong faith in God and in His promise to redeem his people from their bondage. That they had such a faith is seen in the name they gave to this their first born son, names being much more significant in Bible times than they are nowadays, they called him – Hoshea which means “salvation” This was what they were looking forward to in God’s own appointed time which according to the promise God himself had given (after 400 years) was drawing near and ought to take place during their sons lifetime. It was only later that his name was changed from Hoshea to JOSHUA by Moses, the name Joshua meaning GOD IS SALVATION: That Joshua himself had a love for and faith in God is evident from what we read of his spiritual character later in the scriptures both in the book of Joshua itself and also in the account of the wilderness wanderings in Numbers. And it was that faith in God that God nurtured and strengthened in Joshua’s final days as a slave in Egypt for in those days he witnessed first hand, in a way that none of his generation had ever witnessed before, the mighty power of His God at work as one plague after another fell upon the land. He saw the waters of the Nile turning to blood, he saw hailstones the size of boulders falling from the skies, the people covered in Boils, the locusts destroying the crops, a blanket of flies so thick that it was almost impossible to breathe and so on. He saw how impotent God’s enemies were to deal with or to overcome the awesome power of God. And this experience of having witnessed first hand the mighty power of God at work, undoubtedly strengthened Joshua’s faith in God and nurtured within him that unshakeable confidence in God and in God’s ability to bring to pass whatever He so desired, which was so essential for the leadership role to which one day he was going to be called. His faith in and love for God would have been further strengthened by the final plague in Egypt, the death of the first-born, a plague which had a bearing upon him personally being as he was the first born son in his family. All around him the first born children in the Egyptian homes were dying but he had been preserved. Then too after they left Egypt he would have witnessed the power of God in opening a dry path across the Red sea for his people and after they had crossed safely bringing those waters down upon the pursuing Egyptian army. In his experiences as a slave in Egypt God was nurturing Joshua’s faith, that faith which was to prove to be so essential for the leadership role he was one day going to fulfil.
But then too God also prepared his servant by
(ii) Honing His Skills As A Soldier in The Army
The first official recorded act of Joshua in the Bible is found in Exodus 17 where we see him leading the army of the Lord in Battle against the Amalakites. This was the first of many battles which Joshua would have to fight in the name of the Lord and in and through these conflicts God was honing his military and leadership skills, together with his courageous spirit. These he had as it were in embryonic form but they had to grow and develop and the best way to cause them to grow and develop was by exercising them in specific situations. Situations which, relatively speaking were less important and less demanding than that which he was to face later in life when he took full command of the whole company of the Lord’s people. In the lesser situation God was preparing him for the greater. God was also teaching Joshua another important lesson as a soldier on the battlefield and that was that important and necessary as his skills as a soldier were, success ultimately came from the Lord.
(iii) Teaching Him Humility as a Servant To Moses
One of the dangers to which all leaders are exposed is the danger of pride and self-aggrandisement. The danger of seeking to make a name for oneself. With a view to addressing this particular danger God prepared Joshua for leadership not only by making him Moses’ servant. The scriptures tell us that ‘Moses was a very humble man, the most humble on the face of the earth’ For over forty years Joshua lived in the presence and company of this man and he couldn’t help but notice and learn from Moses’ humility. Even though he was the leader of God’s people, even though he occupied such a place of prominence and of importance, even though he exercised such authority and power, even though he alone among all the people spoke with God as a man speaks face to face with a friend, Moses didn’t let such things go to his head and wasn’t overcome with a spirit of pride. And Joshua undoubtedly learned from this. There was one incident in particular in Joshua’s life where the lesson of the need for humility and absence of any kind of self-aggrandisement was powerfully impressed upon him through Moses’ conduct. The incident is recorded in Numbers 11v24-29 the incident where Eldad and Medad received the Spirit of God and went about prophesying in the camp of the Israelites. Learning of this Joshua told Moses to forbid them from doing so since they had not come out and presented themselves before Moses at the tabernacle, in other words these were men who had not yet been officially approved as elders by Moses. Moses reply is both magnificent and magnanimous “Are you jealous for my sake. I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them” Though Moses was undoubtedly a great leader he would not countenance nor tolerate Joshua or anyone else for that matter glorifying Him. Joshua as the servant of Moses held Moses in high esteem. He was jealous for the honour and authority of Moses. But in this incident God was teaching Joshua that whilst such respect for ones leaders is important, no leader should think more highly of himself than he ought. No leader should seek self-aggrandisement.
And then too God was preparing him by
(iv) Proving His Faithfulness As A Spy in Canaan
You are all familiar with the contents of the narrative in Numbers 13- the record of the reconnaissance mission of the twelve men who were sent out from Kadesh-Barnea to spy out the land of Canaan. You will remember how when the spies returned there was a similar report from each of them extolling the goodness of the land but contrasting opinions as to what should be done in view of its many fortified cities and the giant war-like people who occupied it. The majority advised against trying to conquer it, whereas Joshua and Caleb called the people to go forward in faith trusting God to go before them and deal with the, humanly speaking, very great difficulties that lay before them. This was a testing and a learning experience for Joshua. It tested his faithfulness to God, it tested his courage before men. And the faithfulness and courage he demonstrated here were to be important characteristics that he had to bring with him to the leadership role he was to occupy later in life among God’s people. It was also a learning experience, in that he learned the importance of taking a stand for what he knew to be right even when the majority of people were totally against him. He learned that it was important to take a stand for God. But he also learned something else, namely having taken ones stand, one sometimes has to accept defeat and live with the consequences of wrong decisions with which you yourself strongly disagree. He learned that things don’t always go the way you want them to go, or the way you expect them to go, or the way that you know they ought to go. Think of the years of blessing in the Promised land that Joshua missed out on . Think of the long years he had to spend walking around the wilderness, and all through no fault of his own, but simply because of the erroneous decisions of others. How easy it would have been for Joshua to become bitter, how easy to become angry. How easy it would have been for him to feel sorry for himself. But Joshua didn’t. He simply got on with the task of living for and being faithful to God by fulfilling his current role as Moses’ servant in these new circumstances in which he found himself.
For forty years Joshua wandered round that wilderness until one day he found himself standing once again on the borderland of Canaan. This time his role was somewhat different. The last time he was but a servant to the great leader Moses. Now the mantle of leadership had fallen upon him. He was going to prove to be a great leader, but only because God, for years had been suitably preparing him for that role. God wasn’t going to throw Joshua prematurely into a position of responsibility and leadership. The day would come, and come it did when He would call Joshua to such a work. But when God did call him, Joshua was suitably prepared for the task.
The Church today needs leaders. Leaders such as Elders, deacons, ministers, leaders for its various organisations and forms of inreach and outreach ministry. But it needs good leaders. Leaders who are adequately prepared for the tasks that are associated with such a position. Leaders who have the requisite spiritual qualities, the requisite spiritual gifts. Men and women of wisdom, of moral integrity, of fortitude, of faith; humble men and women who are nevertheless courageous. People who have skills in specific spheres, financial skills, organisational skills, people skills, communication skills and so on. And such qualities don’t suddenly appear overnight in a person. They are qualities which very often are nurtured by God in a persons life over many years in different contexts and life situations. And those skills are honed, and strengthened and developed in those situations so that when the time comes they can be put to use in some leadership role in the Church.
In a book I was reading the other day, an American minister made the following comments as he reflected on his ministry. “As I look back some of the greatest mistakes I’ve made were to appoint men to leadership positions who were not adequately prepared. In some instances the results were disastrous in the way the experience impacted their own lives, their marriages and their families and the (Church)…hopefully I have learned to be far more discerning and patient…Joshua’s example has helped me greatly…(His) basic training took many years. … this was par for the course among Biblical leaders. God was never in a hurry to give them positions of heavy responsibility. He was concerned that they be adequately prepared. This often required years…’
Far too often in Church circles this principle is forgotten and people are appointed to positions of leadership and responsibility who are not fitted for such a task with problematic and sometimes disastrous consequences. We need to be careful when it comes to choosing leaders in the work of the Lord.
Then in closing I want you to consider with me
3) The Challenge To God’s People:
When we open the book of Joshua, Israel are standing on the border of the land of Canaan. That land was theirs. God had unconditionally covenanted to give it to them. However whilst their ownership of the land was unconditional, their actual possession of the land was conditional upon faith and obedience. And the challenge which faced the Children of Israel as they stood on the borders of Canaan that day was this – are you prepared to step out in faith, to fight those enemies that stand in the way of you entering into the blessings of the inheritance God has given to you. Are you prepared to do what needs to be done in order to lay hold of the blessings God wants you to enjoy.
And the same challenge faces us today as God’s people. The Christian life is much much more than merely having ones sins forgiven and one day going to heaven, wonderful as such blessings undoubtedly are. It is also about living in the actual personal enjoyment in the here and now of all the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ. But we will only enjoy such blessings as we lay hold of them by faith There is much in this life that hinders us from enjoying the blessings that are ours in Christ, but like the Children of Israel of Old we must be prepared by faith to meet those hindrances head on, to do battle with and conquer them so that we might enter into the actual enjoyment of our spiritual inheritance in Christ.
May God enable us to do so.
