Chapter One

Introduction to Joshua

        The Old Testament book of Joshua starts with the people of Israel standing on the east side of the Jordan River looking into Canaan, a land where their ancestors once lived. It was the land that God promised would be theirs again. How did they get there?

        Well, more than 400 years before this time, ten of the twelve sons of a guy named Jacob (whose God-given nickname is Israel) were jealous of their little brother Joseph. So they decided to sell him into slavery. Jump forward a few years and Joseph ends up in the land of Egypt where, by God’s incredible grace, he finds himself to be the right-hand man to Egypt’s king. Israel (Jacob) and his remaining eleven sons, on the other hand, are back at home in Canaan—smack down in the middle of a nasty drought, looking for relief.

        Israel hears of how Egypt somehow protected itself from the drought by storing up massive amounts of grain (which unbeknownst to him was his lost son Joseph’s idea), and was now selling that grain to those in need. He decides to send a contingency of his sons to Egypt to buy some of that grain and… well, you can go read the story yourself in Genesis (chapters 37-47). But suffice it to say, the whole family of Israel was transplanted from Canaan to Egypt to live with Joseph.

        Jump forward again about 400 years and the descendants of Israel and his twelve sons have grown to number in the millions and are now enslaved in Egypt, longing to be back in the land of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the land of Canaan. Seeing the plight of His chosen people, God sends someone to free them from their bondage.

        The person God chooses for this mission is Moses, who shows up in front of the king and tells him to let the people go. Eventually the king does let the nation of Israel leave (read the details in the book of Exodus; chapters 1-15). Moses leads them toward Canaan where God had promised years earlier that this would be a place of incredible provision, a place where they could find rest and live free. This is where we pick up the story in a little more detail.

An Obstacle or Two

        If you look at a map of North Africa and the area around the current country of Israel, you’ll see a couple of water obstacles that may cause problems for a group of a couple million people traveling in the wilderness from one place to another without access to MapQuest. The Red Sea was the first water obstacle that the nation of Israel ran into as they were traveling from Egypt to Canaan. Why would they run into the Red Sea? Moses was leading them, but wasn’t God was directing Moses? If God created North Africa, then He put the Red Sea where it sits. So even without global positioning satellites you’d think He could find a way to lead them around this rather large and intrusive body of water.

        But He not only didn’t lead them around the water, He led them to the seemingly worse possible spot: in front of them stood a large expanse of water, on each side of them was a mountain, and an army was chasing them from behind. (The king of Egypt changed his mind after releasing them.)

        Why did God do that? Why did He put them in a precarious situation with no apparent way of escape? I believe that it was to show Himself faithful. What happened? You know the story, maybe you saw the movie. The Red Sea parted, the Israelites (led by a young Charlton Heston, aka Moses) passed through on dry ground. The chasing army was destroyed when the parted water “unparted” and they all drowned. What a great story! God did show Himself faithful to the people at that time. But is there an application for us today?

       

So What’s the Point?

        I once was taught a great learning tool for understanding how to apply the stories of the Old Testament to my life: For every New Testament principle, there is an Old Testament story. So what are the New Testament principles that apply here? In this story, Egypt is a picture of the world, the nation of Israel is a picture of you and me, and Moses is a picture of Jesus. The exodus from Egypt is a picture of our salvation, and the Red Sea (the water obstacle)… I’ll get to that a bit later, but let’s define some terms first.  

        The world: Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary defines the world as “the present condition of human affairs in alienation from and opposition to God.” While meditating on that I came to the conclusion that, quite frankly, I’m not smart enough to fully understand Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary. As a matter of fact, I don’t fully know what the word “expository” means, so let’s just define the world by looking at what happened to the Israelite people as it relates to Egypt.

        Remember how the nation of Israel got to Egypt: the father of the nation, Israel and his sons looked at Egypt from a distance and saw a place of relief from the drought they were experiencing in Canaan. But in reality, Egypt eventually became the place of enslavement for their descendants.

        For us today, the world is seductive. We are seduced by money or power or stuff, thinking that attaining these things will bring us some kind of relief from the dryness we sometimes feel in life. But those are the very things that will eventually enslave us. The “world” is the seductive pull that is always trying to drag us away from God; and the world’s king is saten. (Just so you know…I purposely misspell saten’s name and do not capitalize it throughout this book because I don’t believe he deserves a proper name or a proper spelling… It’s a sign of disrespect.)

        You and me: God created us in His own image (Genesis 1:26). When you look at yourself in a mirror, you see an image of yourself. You don’t see the literal you—you see an image of you. God didn’t make us to be Him; He made us to look like Him. He is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are an inferior trinity: body, soul, and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Our body is our flesh made up of our nose, ears, eyes, mouth, skin, etc. When we are thirsty, for example, it is our body that tells us we are thirsty. Our soul is our emotions, our feelings. When we are sad, it is our soul that tells us we are sad. Our spirit is the thing within us that connects us with God. When we hunger for God, it is our spirit that hungers.

        The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equal and one, but they have chosen to have different functions. The Son and the Holy Spirit have chosen to be subservient to the Father and will not do anything without the leading of the Father (John 5:19; 5:30; 8:28; 14:10; 16:13). Our inferior trinity was designed to work the same way. Our body and soul are designed to work best when they are subservient to our spirit, and our spirit is designed to be connected to and led by God (1 Corinthians 9:27; Galatians 5:24).

        In the beginning Adam’s body, soul, and spirit were working perfectly. God would communicate His will to Adam through Adam’s conduit (his spirit), which would direct Adam’s soul to direct his body. God loved Adam and wanted the very best for him, so God’s direction to Adam’s spirit was always the best way for Adam. But when Adam chose to go against what God was telling his spirit to do (when Adam sinned), the conduit broke. The connection between man’s spirit and God was severed… without a reconnection our spirit is inactive and our body and soul (our “flesh”) takes control and enslaves us.  We now seek only to fulfill its desires.

        In our story when Israel and his family decided to transplant to Egypt, the conduit between the head of the family and God was broken. As a result, the Israelite people became enslaved because they were no longer governed by God.

        Salvation: In John chapter three, Jesus tells us that if you want to enter the Kingdom of God you must be born again. There must be a reconnection of our spirit with God if we want to spend eternity with Him. Salvation is that reconnection. But that reconnection can only be made through a redeemer. In other words, someone who already has a connection with God must be involved to become a coupler in the broken conduit. (I’m a construction guy. If you’re not familiar with the terms conduit or coupler, it might help if you go to Home Depot and do some research… It’s also a good excuse for you men to buy some tools under the auspices of “Bible” research.)

        In our story, upon seeing the plight of His people in Egypt, God decided to send Moses to be the coupler that repaired the disconnect between God and the nation of Israel. (God led His people and spoke to them through Moses.) Later, God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to the world so that through belief in Him, we (you and me) can be reconnected with our Creator.

        The Red Sea: (Bear with me; we’ll tie this in to Joshua eventually.) To review: The people of Israel are up against a water obstacle, the Red Sea. With nowhere to go, God parts the water and they walk to the other side in safety. Then God destroys the advancing Egyptian army by unparting the water on top of them.

        What New Testament principle could possibly relate to that event? After we leave the world (by reconnecting to God through Jesus), it is important for us to make a statement to the world that we are no longer under its rule. That statement is made through baptism.

        The Apostle Paul tells us just that in his letter to the Corinthians (chapter ten). He equates the Red Sea in this story to our first baptism, the baptism of repentance. On that day when the sea collapsed on the Egyptian army, a message was sent to the king who once enslaved the nation of Israel: You no longer have the ability to control them.

        When we give our lives to Jesus and begin to follow Him, the king of the world (saten) will send his army out to try and destroy us before we get too far away. Our baptism lets the world know that we are no longer of this world—that Christ is now our king and leader, and saten no longer has the ability to control us.

Moving On

        After that incredible show of God’s faithfulness at the Red Sea, the people of Israel were predictably joyous. But what do they do next? Fortunately, God will never take us out of one place without offering to lead us to a better place. By this time everybody in the group knew about the better place that God was going to lead them to, the Promised Land. They also knew about what a great place this land was, and how God had promised the generations before them that He would give it to them. And who wouldn’t have believed it after being rescued so miraculously from their enslavement?

        So, led by Moses, the nation headed east. A short time later, they found themselves standing at the east side of a second water obstacle, the Jordan River, looking into the land that God had promised them.

        But before the whole nation went into the land, Moses sent in twelve guys to scope it out and report on what they found. When they came back to the people, those twelve were in disagreement. Ten of them saw the fortified cities, huge guys with swords, and the glass half empty. But the other two, Joshua and Caleb, saw a land that was amazing—a land that God had promised they would conquer. The ten said, “Let’s get out of here; we can’t do this,” but the other two said, “Let’s go in; God will do this.”

        The people followed the ten. How quickly they forgot about how big God is. He had promised them this land, yet after all He had shown them, they still didn’t believe that He was big enough to help them conquer the land. Were they idiots or what!?

        Hind sight is 20/20, and I’d like to say I would have been in agreement with Joshua and Caleb. But in reality my life has proven differently. Jesus tells us that He came to this world so that we would have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). We are told about a place where we can find rest; we are promised that we can experience a peace we won’t understand and live a life of freedom—and most of us don’t believe it is attainable. I know, because for years I didn’t believe.

Wandering Hearts

        Israel’s disbelief caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years; our disbelief causes us to wander as well. What does that wandering look like in a Christian’s life? For the people of Israel it looked like a bunch of complainers wandering around in the wilderness, wishing they had never left Egypt. It meant wanting more than manna from Heaven to eat and plain water to drink; wanting a home instead of a tent. Did they actually want to go back into slavery?  Probably not, but that is not what they remembered about Egypt—they remembered the food, the comfort.

        Same with many of today’s Christians. We are saved from the bondage of the world, but for some reason we miss it. We know that the things we used to be enslaved by were no good for us, but for some reason we still want to go back to them.

        I once heard Don McClure, one of my favorite preachers, describe this inner-conflict. He had just gotten saved and was hanging out with his friends when some off-color jokes were told. Something inside told him that it shouldn’t be funny, that laughing would be wrong. But in all honesty, he thought the jokes were funny and he wanted to laugh. That conflict he felt within himself was making him crazy. Why is there this inner-conflict between what we know we should want and what we actually want?

        It’s because of our disbelief. God promised His people a land that was filled with everything they wanted; He promised that He would give it to them. But when the time came to actually take it, their fear caused them to believe that it wasn’t attainable as God had told them it was… so they wandered. And that is why we also wander. It’s not because God won’t give us the things He promised; it’s because we won’t receive them. Because of their disbelief, the nation of Israel wandered until the unbelieving generation died off without ever taking the land. We, too, will wander until the part of us that doesn’t believe withers and dies.

Learning from Joshua

        The book of Joshua starts with the new generation of Israelites standing once again at the east side of the Jordan River, the second water obstacle. The last time they were there they didn’t cross over; this time they will.

        This wonderful book chronicles the conquering of the Promised Land. By studying it we will learn principles of attaining the life God has promised us: a life of peace, rest, and contentment—an abundant life!