Joshua Lesson 1
Background and preparation of Joshua
Now we come to the book of Joshua.
We’re starting a new series; we finished Deuteronomy and I hope out of
that series you gained some appreciation for the Old Testament. The whole point in the book of Deuteronomy
was to lay down for you the basis of the Old Testament and knowing the basis of
the Old Testament, then you understand the New Testament. You do not understand the New Testament until
you first understand the Old Testament, which is the secret to the new church,
the first century church. Everybody wants to go back to the first century
church. You are never going to get back
to the first century church. The first
century church dealt with people who all their lives were schooled in the Old
Testament. And when the evangelists
moved into the Jewish ghettos in the Mediterranean area they were encountering
people who already, in their possession had basic Bible doctrine and it was
just simply a case of showing how this historic person, Jesus Christ, fit into
this whole preparation that they had.
When we come to Joshua we are going to get some more background. Turn to Joshua 10 to give you an overview and
deal a little bit with a man, Joshua.
This will serve as the introduction to the entire book. When I begin a book I at least like to touch
some of the problems that you will find in the classroom, or your children in
the classroom where they say the Bible came from various sources. What are the sources for the book of
Joshua? One of the sources is given in
Here in Joshua 10:13, in the middle of that famous case where the sun
stood still, and by the way, don’t try to explain this way, this was an
atmospheric refraction or something, this was a literal standing still of the
sun for 18 hours. You say how could that occur?
Well, we’ll show you how it occurred and I will also show you how and
why it actually did occur in history because to the western hemisphere the
Indians have a tradition of a long night.
So it’s a long night in the western hemisphere and a long day in the
eastern hemisphere, proving that the earth stood still relative to the sun for
this time period. This is a literal
miracle and during this Joshua sang a song.
Verse 12, “Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD
delivered up the Amorites,” and verse 13 is in the form of a poem. It’s a poem, we don’t know whether Joshua prayed
this, whether he sung it, but in the Hebrew it’s a poem. So the sun stood still, and the moon stayed
in her place, Until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.” And
then the compiler of the book of Joshua adds, “Is this not written I the book
of Jashar? And the sun stood still in the middle of heaven, and did not go down
about a while day.” Here we have reference to a source material that was used,
the book of Jashar.
What is the book of Jashar? The
book of Jashar, Yatsar in the Hebrew,
means upright. This book we know little
of except it’s mentioned again in 2 Samuel, and it’s one source, the book of
Jashar seems to be a book of military training for the young men of Israel, as
they were being drafted to go into the army in their day they were prepared by
a series of military sayings in the book of Jashar; it’s explained again in 2
Sam. 1:18. So this was one source of
Joshua. In other words Joshua either
used a song out of the book or he made up the song and it was later recorded in
this book.
Another source of the book of Joshua is in 18:9, this last part of the
book we won’t spend too much time on. I
would advise you who will come regularly that you read the book over once or
twice because this will give you a background and a perspective on it so we can
flow easily through it. In Joshua 18:9 a
real estate survey was made with very important reasons, and you read it and
get kind of bored, so and so measured out so much property for so and so and he
got that, and somebody else got property over here, and somebody else got
property over there and you say how boring.
Actually it’s not boring at all, it’s absolutely necessary for the
Scripture because God literally promised that He was going to give these people
real estate; real estate that would be held for that particular tribe for all
of history. And it’s even being held for
that tribe today and so the stake out’s here in Joshua on this property is very
important.
In Joshua 18:9, so the men went and passed through the land, and
described it by cities into seven divisions in a book; and they came to Joshua
to the camp at
Then another source of the book of Joshua, chapter 24 verse 26, “And
Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a large
stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.” So in verse 26 Joshua himself wrote it and we
might enlarge this to say that some of the source material out of the book are
nothing more than the memoirs of Joshua.
Every good general writes a memoir after his career explaining why it
wasn’t his fault that certain things happen; it was the other general’s
fault. So we have everybody writing
their excuses on what went wrong and why it wasn’t their fault. In this case it wasn’t excusing, Joshua did
not excuse himself, he was a man who simply wrote down an account of his life.
Those are three sources that were used.
If you’re thinking at this point you should say wait a minute, who was
it then that combined all these things and if it was someone other than Joshua
then how do you guard the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture. Turn to Deuteronomy 18. In
In Deut. 18:9 we have the problem the nation would face after
Moses. I’m answering the question, who
is it that writes the Bible and is responsible for the Bible. In Deut. 18:9 we have a problem; we have the
problem that when Moses dies there is going to be crisis and catastrophes that
are going to arise and the nation is going to need direction. How is the nation
So that’s how they ascertained the will of God. By the way, it shows you the cruelty of
religion and it shows you something else; it shows you why Joshua is going to
slaughter people. When we get through Joshua you’re going to be wading in
blood; this is one of the bloodiest books of all of God’s Word. He is commanded to go in and kill men, women
and children, slaughter them by the thousands, over and over, so if some of you
think the Bible doesn’t authorize capital punishment then I’m sorry for you
because Joshua orders capital punishment and Joshua commands that people be
slaughtered and you are going to see why sometimes in history it is necessary
to annihilate and I mean physically destroy a whole group of people for
blessing and why certain people are parasites and must be destroyed in history
and when they are destroyed it’s a blessing to the rest of the human race.
The people that did verses 10-14 as a source of divine guidance were
spiritists and the only solution to their problem was physical death and when
they were eliminated out of this flowed tremendous blessings to us. If Israel and Joshua did not [can’t
understand word] these people and slaughter them, and destroy them and
annihilate them, then we today would not stand here saved individuals. But it accrued to our blessing because these
people were slaughtered.
Now in the rest of chapter 18 he develops what God is going to do. In verse 15, “The LORD your God will raise up
for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall
listen to him.” This is the beginning of
the prophets, or the Naviim, and the prophets throughout the Old Testament were
the men who wrote inspired Scripture.
These are the men that put things together, made the records, etc. If you want to see an example of this turn to
1 Chron. 29:29; you’ll see a case in point, and this tells you very matter of
factly how the Bible was written. Some
of the Bible was written by dictation, other parts of the Bible was not; it was
not some big flash in the pan type operation with fireworks, etc. It was just somebody sitting down writing
records. If you had been there you would
have been writing the Bible just like you’d be writing anything else.
I want you to notice 1 Chron. 29:29, it shows you one of the functions
of the Naviim, “the of King David, from first to last,” there’s an idiom which
means this is a complete set of the acts of David, “are written in the
Chronicles of Samuel the seer, in the Chronicles of Nathan the prophet, and in
the Chronicles of Gad the seer.” These
are prophets and these prophets would keep their diaries and out of these diaries,
later on other prophets would take these diaries and put them together in the
divine viewpoint analysis of history.
Now there’s one simple principle as far as you are concerned as a
Christian; I want you to notice the historical consciousness of Israel. Any
person who is born again, who is concerned in knowing the Lord’s will, must be
history conscious.
God speaks in history, not in a dream. God speaks and He works in
actual, real space time history. And
these prophets would sit there and they would consider history, the whole realm
of history as a revelation from God. And
it’s true these men were inspired so they’d interpret the history perfectly
correctly, and we can’t, we can just look at it and wonder what’s going
on. But the point is that these men were
observers of the times; they were careful students of history and many scholars
have wished that we could get our hands on these books. Think of the jewels that are contained in
them. Just think in verse 29, “the acts
of King David, from the first to last, are written in the Chronicles of
Samuel,” now that’s not talking about the book of Samuel that we have in our
Bibles, that’s talking about another book of Samuel. These are various books
that are written by the prophets. So
here we have these books, everything complete.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic to take the book of Samuel and find out
everything David did? It’d be a
fantastic study.
Well, this is the rich source material that these prophets had.
The application for us is that these prophets wrote a theocratic history
and this is why we have problems with it.
They did not write their history to tell every little cotton-picking
detail that went on; that was not their job.
The job of the prophets was to take from all the details key crucial
events. John, the apostle, does this in
the last part of his Gospel what does he tell you? He says if I sat down and wrote to you
everything that Jesus Christ really did it would turn the world because he uses
an idiom there, he says even the world couldn’t hold all these books, “but
these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.” In other words he’s saying I give you
evidence on which to ground your faith.
I don’t ask you, like the new theologians, to leap into nothing; you
cannot believe until you know something is true. Don’t you buy this line that
Christians have where you can’t show Christianity to be true because if you can
then you can’t believe it. Faith in the
Biblical sense means I place my confidence in that which I already know to be
true.
These passages in the Bible, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, etc. give us
insight into how these Nabiim, or the prophets wrote. These are the men responsible for the book of
Joshua. Now in my office I have a Hebrew
Bible and it’s divided into three parts.
I always had trouble with the order of the books in the Bible and when I
started studying the Hebrew and I found out I had to memorize a new order for
the books of the Bible because there we had a different order, than I got so
used to that and then we start studying the Septuagint which is Greek and that
has a new order, so I gave up on the order of the books of the Bible, I can’t
tell you where one book is or not.
There are three parts to the Bible in the Old Testament. You don’t have this in your King James but
this is the way the Jewish Bible is constructed. The first one is the Torah, or the Law; this
is the foundation of everything. The Torah
is the first five books of your Bible, you call them the Pentateuch; the Jews
call them Torah, the Law. Here is your
constitution, the first five books.
Moses is the author of these books, or at least under his direction they
were compiled from previous records, etc.
But Moses is the man of the Torah.
After Moses died, you’ve got a problem.
The man who founded the nation is dead, now how do we attain our
direction. The next set of books is
called the prophets. The prophets are
divided into the former prophets and the latter prophets. The former prophets are four: in the Jewish
Bible the former prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, those four
books. The latter prophets are Jeremiah,
Isaiah, Ezekiel, and you have the twelve, the twelve are all the Minor
Prophets, they just considered them to be the twelve. So there you have your latter prophets. Now notice something, you should pick this up
right away, do you consider, when you read Joshua, do you consider that
prophecy or history? You consider it
history; this is a history book, why do you call it a prophecy book? Because prophecy and history are the same
thing; what is prophecy but future history.
And what is past history but fulfilled prophecy. So prophetic movement analyzes history and
where it’s moving.
Then we have the last group of writings, it’s called the Writings, the
Kethubim and the Writings are made up of Psalms, Proverbs, etc. and even
Daniel. You say wait a minute, how come
Daniel is one of the Writings? Isn’t Daniel a prophet? The Writings all demonstrate the Hebrew
concept of wisdom and all of the Writings have as their function to help us
live the life today. That’s why you have
Proverbs, Psalms, etc. Psalms was the
hymn book of Israel; they didn’t have the trash that we have to put up with our
hymn books. The hymn book we have is the
best that we have available but it’s still a piece of trash. There is no available Christian hymn book
today that truly reflects what Christian hymnology should be in the 20th
century; none. The reason is that the song
writers, first of all do not know Bible doctrine. Secondly these hymns are written by defeated
Christians, Oh God help me get through another day and all these kind of
things. Israel had a fantastic hymnal,
you have it, it’s the book of Psalms, 150 precious Psalms and you have them
distributed throughout other passages of Scripture. They had a fantastic hymnal.
How did these prophets when they wrote, they claimed to build on the
Torah. Here’s the picture of
history. You have the Torah here, and
the reason I am going through this is because Joshua is the first time it
occurs. Never before have you had a man
who now, after Moses, is now going to build.
The first built that’s built on top of Torah is Joshua, then the book
that’s built on that is Judges, and so you begin to build a Canon of
Scripture. How do the believers of that
generation know that the Scripture is inspired or not? We would similarly have to ask, how do we
know for example the book of Mormon is not inspired, and other competing
Scriptures that claim they are an extension of the New Testament, etc. What is the test that you can have to prove
that Scripture is inspired or not inspired?
Without going into detail there are two tests given in the Old
Testament; one in Deut. 13 which is the logical test. The logical test says do the teachings
logically agree with those that Moses set forth; do they teach logically. The second one is the empirical test of Deut.
18; this test says is the man writing this, is he a man to whom God has truly
spoken, and that you can tell is whether his prophecies ever fail. If his prophecies fail the man is [can’t
understand word] and ridiculed; no prophet of God misses at all. This was how the Canon was built up.
Let’s go over to the book of Joshua and the man. Let’s study first the man; to study the man
turn to Exodus 17. What is the purpose
of the book of Joshua, an examination of Joshua the man? There are three basic purposes in this
book. The three basic purposes, first of
all is God’s great redemptive work is in the past but we live in the
present. How do we maintain the
connecting link between the great work of redemption that God has wrought in
the past and we’re living here in the present?
Joshua had already gone through the Exodus event. We as Christians have
a parallel. Do you know what the
parallel in the book of Joshua is in the New Testament? Ephesians. Both the books are parallel. Ephesians teaches that Jesus Christ has died,
He has raised again from the dead, He is ascended to be with the Father and
from the Father He has dispatched the Holy Spirit to begin the Church at
Pentecost. That’s past, that’s 19
centuries past, but we as believers live now in the present, how do we maintain
the link with the past? We don’t
maintain the link through some mysticism. We have to maintain the link with an
actual historic event. How do we do
it?
Joshua had the same problem, he saw the nation delivered from Egypt at
the Exodus but that’s past, that’s in the other generation, now Joshua has to
live here, after the event; how does he maintain continuity. So the first great principle of the book of
Joshua and the principle that Joshua has to struggle with in his life is the
principle of continuity; how do I maintain continuity with God’s past
acts?
The second great principle is that this is the first book in the Bible
where a believer has written Scripture.
Joshua is a student of the Word of God, he is a Bible student. He is the first man who now looks back to
revelation that has been enscripturated and put down in writing and so the
second great principle of the book of Joshua is that written revelation is now
the authority; written revelation is now the authority! And no matter how many experiences Joshua has
and no matter how many great miracles Joshua will see, none of them can
invalidate the written Word. That goes
today. We have a completed New Testament
and you can go to all the meetings you want to and see people frothing at the
mouth and they see lights, say Jesus spoke to you, etc. Now God literally did
speak to Joshua but whatever the speaking does not invalidate past
revelation. So the second principle is
that God’s written revelation can never be invalidated by some present experience
claiming to be from God.
The third principle of the book of Joshua is one that I’ve recently
rejoiced in; it’s the concept of holy war.
It’s a lost concept, the Puritan Christians of 200-300 years ago, in the
great days following the Reformation and how it developed in England had this
concept, holy war. The Christian is
involved in a holy war and the concept is this: here’s my redemption, phase 1,
the time that I received Jesus Christ as Savior. Now between that point and the time I get my
final rest in phase 3 there lies an in-between series of obstacles which
demands an aggressive mental attitude and demands struggle. And the rest is in phase 3 but not in phase
2; there is a type of rest in phase 2 but this is the period of holy war. In Joshua you will see this enacted before
your eyes physically. I’ll show pictures
of the terrain so you can see what’s happening here as you read it.
But we have holy war and holy war stands, if you are tonight a believer
in Jesus Christ, you have before you get to heaven, before you get to your final
place of rest, you have standing between that place and where you are now a
whole series of obstacles which must be fought and battled with: holy war. In
the New Testament it is outlined in 2 Cor. 10, “Casting down vain imaginations
and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” This means that the New Testament believer is
called upon to erect a divine viewpoint framework; God is the center, Bible
doctrine around and it means all the activity, science, history, philosophy,
music, art, literature, relationship with believers, loved ones, family,
society, your job, sex, possessions, health, all the details of life oriented
around this one central framework. It
takes guts and it take struggle to build this thing up; it doesn’t happen
overnight. And it takes an aggressive determination on the part of you as a
believer to make this come true in your life.
God is not interested in allowing the Jews under Joshua to just kind of
waltz in the land; they had to fight their way into the land; victory was
guaranteed but they had to fight their way in.
And so the Christian, our victory is guaranteed but we have a fight
ahead of us and the fight is to establish this divine viewpoint framework.
So these three concepts, the problem of continuity, the premise of
written revelation and the third principle, holy war, are the three keys to the
book of Joshua and these we’ll stress again and again.
Now let’s look at the man of Joshua.
Joshua, if I can think of one word, the only word that comes to mind
when I think of Joshua is a man who is prepared. Joshua was prepared for 40 years before he
assumed his role. He was a man who went
through, as we are going to study; at least seven crucial points in his life,
seven crises that Joshua faced that illustrate several principles about this
man’s character. We might summarize
Joshua’s character by saying this: first and foremost if we were to meet Joshua
tonight and you could see him and talk to him, we’d have a gathering and you’d
walk away, I’m sure that the three things that you would walk away with in this
man Joshua is first of all that he was zealous for the truth; he was a zealot
when it came to the truth, and by truth I don’t mean just the concept of
intellectual truth, I mean real, living truth, truth as it is known in God’s
Word, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” found in God and God alone.
And Joshua had a zeal to find out truth; he wasn’t some believer that
was going to say yeah, I just accept it by faith, whether it’s true or false. Bologna, Joshua wanted to find out whether it
was true or false and I’m going to show you case after case in his life where
he would not believe until after he discovered and came to a conclusion this
was true, and as he came to a conclusion it was true, then he walked out on it
by faith. You can’t believe something if
you’re not sure it’s true, no way under the sun you can. So the first characteristic of Joshua, he was
a man zealous for the truth.
Then if we were to discuss other things with Joshua I’m sure we would
come out with other impressions of the man.
Another impression we’d have of the man is the most fantastic confidence
in God that you ever saw. Joshua was a
man who had fantastic confidence, but please notice the order in which I’ve given
these to you. What came first? A knowledge of the truth and then after a
knowledge of the truth came confidence.
Joshua as a man, it’s strange, if you read the book of Joshua nothing
comes out spectacular about the man, all you get is his work, his works, his
works, what he does, there’s no notice about him, he almost fades into the
background. And yet you stop and look at
this man and it’s fantastic, he’s just a fantastic man. So the second thing about him that he had
fantastic confidence, coming because first he was a student of the truth.
Thirdly, Joshua was a man who was humble in the real sense of the word.
Again and again in Joshua’s career Joshua had to take second place to
Moses. That’s one of the ironies of history,
that Moses had a higher rank than Joshua and Moses goofed; Joshua had a lower
rank than Moses and there’s not one record of his goofs, unless you want to
take the Gibeonites as an illustration.
So you have the case where Joshua, a man who is lower rank, but even
though he’s lower rank he performs his job for the Lord probably better than
Moses did his, and yet there’s no irritation, no jealousy on Joshua’s part, he
just goes right along. He’s number two
and he knows he’s number two and he doesn’t try to be number one. He’s a number two man but he’s number one in
that slot. He may be playing in the
second level but he’s going to be the top man in the number two slot. So these three things we can say about
Joshua.
Now let’s start the incidents in his life. There are seven incidents that I’m going to
show you in Joshua’s life that I hope will illustrate these three
principles. The first one is found in
Exodus 17:8 and following. This is the
first time we would meet Joshua and here we would characterize this incident,
we meet him here as the battle commander.
Here he is the field commander of the armies of Israel. In verse 8, then came Amalek, and fought with
Israel in Rephidim.” And Amalek, we do
not know too much from the Bible about him.
We know from Jewish legend that Amalek is not just some little simple
Arab Bedouin tribe. Amalek is reputed by
the Jewish [can’t understand word] to be consistent in this point in verse 8 of
400,000 troops. That’s the kind of
battle he has here in verse 8; 400,000 men Joshua has to face. Another thing about Amalek we find from
Numbers 24:20 is that at this time it’s the greatest nation on earth and I’ll
discuss the meaning of this vis a vis
Egypt and the new kingdom and the intermediary state in another course. But Numbers 24:20 we find Amalek is the key
nation; in Numbers 13:29 we find Amalek controlled all of Canaan.
The Arab legends record that Amalek took over Egypt; Amalek went into
Egypt and smashed things; Amalek was cruel; the whole tribe of Amalek would
walk into an area, they’d destroy the men, rape the women, turn over the
buildings, destroy things, burn it down, and they would build nothing in its
place. Everywhere they’d go they’d
destroy, destroy, destroy! They were
known as the destroyers of the ancient east. And they had a neat way of doing
it. They would wait until the crops had
come to harvest, and then they would gather thousands and thousands of their
cattle in front of them and the soldiers would drive the cattle ahead of them
and they’d just stampede over everything, destroying the crops, etc. and of
course the cattle would eat these harvested crops. We read in Judges how they would do this and
how they infiltrate Israel. So here we
face a major battle. This is not a
little settee in the back yard in verse 8; this is a major military
operation.
And out comes Joshua, verse 9, “And Moses said unto Joshua,” no further
adieu, just “Chose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek.” And so in verse 10 immediately you see
humility of the man Joshua—“he did as Moses said.” He knows he’s number 2, the boss gives an
order and he follows it out, no ifs and or buts, he just moves out following
his superior. So here we have humility
and here we have the development of a truly great man.
In verse 11, “And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that
Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.” Now please don’t get the wrong
impression. God is not conducting a
magic show here where he’s just kind of holding up the want and everything is
going to be all right, and holding it down… that’s not the point. The whole point here is that there’s a
careful balance in holy war between God’s sovereign provision and human responsibility. And Joshua recognized this careful
balance. He recognized that it depended
in one way on his military prowess; he was a sound military man. On the other hand he recognized that in spite
of that he could not attain victory without God’s [can’t understand word]. The holding up of the rod was simply a case
that God now was supplying grace.
Holding down the rod meant no grace; up meant grace; grace, no grace,
grace, no grace.
And you can imagine as the battle went on and this must have gone on for
some time because Moses is holding his hand, he gets tired and the battle
see-saws back and forth, you have casualty reports coming in and you can just
see Joshua out in the field and looking over his shoulder back at Moses. And as
the casualties come in he gets pushed back, pushed back and he looks at Moses
and his hands are down. And then he
notices something, when Moses’ hands are up he is able to advance. And no matter what military tactic he uses,
he has to keep looking back at Moses.
Now what do you suppose is the lesson a man is going to learn here? This is going to be an unforgettable lesson
that Joshua is learning about divine grace; that you can try as hard as you
want to but if there’s no grace involved you fall flat on your face. And Joshua is going to learn this, he’s going
to learn it several other times but this is one of the great times in which he
learned it.
And then a strange thing in verse 14, “And the LORD said unto Moses,
Write this for a memorial in a book,” now the strange thing about verse 14 is
every other time you find this in the Old Testament, “write this for a book,”
it always reads like this: “write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it
in the ears of the children of Israel.
But you read in verse 14, “Write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse
it in the ears of Joshua;” this is God saying this in verse 14, Moses isn’t,
the Lord is saying this. So the Lord has
something in line for Joshua, private Bible study. And God has written out His Scripture
portion. God has given Joshua a memory
verse, and He says I want you to repeat it to him and repeat it to him, and
repeat it to him, when he comes down in the morning for coffee, repeat it to
him; when he goes to bed at night, repeat it to him. When he comes down the next morning for
coffee, repeat it to him. And over and
over and over; drum this promise into Joshua’s mind. So the first time we meet Joshua in Exodus 17
he is a battle commander. All ready the
traits of courage are there; already the traits of confidence in God’s grace
are there in his humility.
Now let’s turn to the second time, Exodus 24:13-18, “And Moses rose up,
and his minister, Joshua,” now this is a case where God is going to do
something in the mountains, and he’s going to go up. Now the curious thing about this passage is,
you’ve got to look back in verse 1 to see this.
In verse 1, “And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, you and
Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship afar
off.” In other words, bring up a select
committee. In verse 9 you find the same
committee, “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the
elders of Israel.” Now in verse 13 what
happens? “And Moses rose up, and his
minister, Joshua; and Moses went up into the mount of God.” Notice something here, we’re going to go to
another passage of Scripture, but it seems that Joshua actually has the
interest; these other men are office-holders, and God tells them come on up so
far, but Joshua kind of… you can just see him, he’s curious, wait a minute,
God’s going to do something up in that mountain, I want to see it, and so
Joshua comes up with Moses.
Now if you’ll turn over to Exodus 32:16 you’ll see something more about
what happened in this same incident.
Joshua is coming up with Moses; Moses has gone all the way up the
mountain. Here’s Mt. Sinai, you have
Israel down here, you have the head committee here, you have Joshua standing
here, and Moses is up here. In other
words, Joshua, next to Moses, has gone furthest up the mountain. And Joshua wasn’t commanded to do so; he did
it because he wanted to do this. He is a
man who is thirsty to find out knowledge about God. And he’s a man who is going to take every opportunity
to find it out. So in Exodus 32:16 we
find, “And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of
God, engraved upon the tables.
Verse 17, “And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they
shouted, he said unto Moses,” now they’re coming down, Moses hasn’t got down
here to his committee yet, on the way down Moses, carrying these two things,
these two ten commandments, Ten Commandments on one, Ten Commandments on the
other, they are both copies of each other, and he’s walking down the mountain
with these two copies of the Law, and the first person he meets is who? His
committee or Joshua? Joshua; Joshua has
gone as far as he can, he is a man who is insistent to know God and he is going
to go as close to God as he possibly can.
And when he comes down here, finally in verse 17 they hear a commotion
down in the camp and Joshua as a military man associates it with war,
immediately Joshua suggested, “There is a noise of war in the camp.”
So they walk on a little further and Moses says well, [18] “It’s not the
voice of them who shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them who cry
for being overcome; but the noise of them who sing do I hear,” they’re having a
party Joshua, while we’re up here trying to find out what the Lord wants us to
do. And so Joshua, right here, is shown
in his tremendous zeal for the truth. He
wants to find out the truth and he’s going to get it.
Now there are several other things about this incident I will rapidly
summarize. The other things you will
find if you study these two passages of Exodus 24 and 32 is that Joshua
actually saw tremendous supernatural things of God. But the strange thing is that right along
side of this passage, particularly back in chapter 24, you find this statement,
the men saw God and they sat down to eat.
And you wonder, wait a minute, if I saw God I wouldn’t be sitting down
to eat. But the whole point of God’s
Word is that you can look and view the supernatural will [can’t understand
word] it’s really there and it’s so much a part of actual history that you can
turn away from it and go back to normal history, and back to the supernatural
and back to the natural; it’s not this big concrete wall that modern philosophy
draws between the supernatural and the natural.
That is unknown in Scripture. The
Bible just says they saw God and they ate, one is as natural as the other,
there is nothing supernatural about one, it just doesn’t occur very often but
it’s not more or less supernatural.
The second thing about Joshua is that he learned from this rebellion in
verse 19 and following the tremendous importance of volition. He recognized that these people down here did
not have the desire to know the Lord.
They were people who would come to the 11:00 o’clock service, for example,
and put up with it because their wife or somebody twisted their arm if they
don’t, so they drop by for the 11:00 o’clock and make their appearance. But
when it comes to really seeking the Lord’s will they could care less, they are
down here having a party. Now just think
of this. Maybe you’ve read this so many
times you’re too used to it but put yourself back there and look at the
ridiculousness of this thing.
Here you have one of the most fantastic events in history, God, the
Creator of the universe, is talking up there on the mountain and these people
are too busy having a blast down at the bottom.
That shows you their attitude; they could care less, like a lot of
people could care less about the teaching of the Word of God. The Word of God doesn’t matter whether God
spoke it or not; who cares, we’ll have our parties and go on with our social
life until this nation collapses on our ears and then we’ll look around for
some answers then. Of course then it
will be too late. But we have the same
attitude, lackadaisical attitude, it’s the same thing here and Joshua saw it. Joshua saw the clear difference between
believers who were committed to desire knowledge and information about God and
those who could care less, too busy doing their little social activities down
below. So that was the second time we
see Joshua; he is seen as a curious spectator.
Now let’s go to a third time, Exodus 33:11, and here is the third time
we meet Joshua, he is the intense student.
Here we see the real studios nature of God. Keep in mind, all of this is before he leads
the great armies in conquest. The man is
not in his final place of ministry, this is all preparation. In Exodus 33:11 it says, “And the LORD spoke
unto Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And then he turned again into the camp: but
his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the
tabernacle.” The tabernacle was this
tent shaped structure in the Old Testament and God’s presence was in the back
part of this tent, called the Holy of Holies, and God’s presence was in there
and there’s a door here, and Moses would walk in. This was fascinating to Joshua, you can just
see it; just like the mountain, Joshua you know, Moses is up there in that
mountain, he wants to see what’s going to happen. The same thing, Moses walks in here and God’s
going to talk to him and Joshua doesn’t want to miss it. And so Joshua goes into that tabernacle, he
wants to see. God’s going to talk to you
Moses, I want to see, I want to watch.
Now this is amazing, out of the millions of people in the nation, wouldn’t
you have thought that there would have been some more people that were curious
about this thing? Just think of the
fantastic event that’s happening, Moses goes into the tent and talks to God. Fantastic!
And Joshua has enough curiosity, if God’s going to talk I’m going to be
there, go in and find out what’s going on.
That was Joshua’s attitude.
And the funny part, in verse 11 is Moses got through talking to God,
walked out, and Joshua stayed right in there.
Maybe he thought God was going to speak to him or something but he
stayed right there. And we know from the
tabernacle he could have studied a lot about Jesus Christ looking at the
tabernacle furniture, its arrangement, etc. why there was furniture in certain
places, and so Joshua was an intense student and his preparation consisted of
finding out as much as he could about God.
Every place God revealed [Himself] Joshua was there.
The fourth time we meet Joshua is in Numbers 11:26 where we find him as
a learner of humility. A strange thing
happened. God takes His Spirit and
places it upon various individuals in the camp.
Verse 26, “But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of
the one was Eldad,
And the name of the other Medad: and the Spirit rested upon them; and
they were of them that were written, but went not out unto the tabernacle: and
they prophesied in the camp.” This is a
little unusual. And in verse 27 “And
there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophecy in
the camp. [28] And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his
young men answered and said, My lord, Moses, stop them.”
Now it’s very interesting why Joshua did this. It shows you something about the character of
this man as he’s learning. He was trying
to be loyal, as he knew it, to his man.
He knew Moses was God’s man and he would back Moses to the hilt. And he considered this to be in violation of
Moses’ authority, because the next verse, verse 29, “And Moses said unto him,
Do you envy this for my sake?” And it tends to expect a yes answer. In other words Joshua, don’t be worried about
it, I know you’re concern is that this may in some way violate my authority,
but don’t worry about it Joshua. But
here you see another quality about this man, an intense concern. If God has designated another man to be his
leader, Joshua is willing to go along and be number two. This is true humility; he knows his place in
God’s plan.
So here he finds another thing out about God, he finds here something
about God that is hard to discover at times, and that is that God always has
surprises. And no matter how well you
think you know God and how He’s going to work, He always has His surprises, so
this is another lesson Joshua learned.
The fifth time we meet Joshua is in Numbers 13-14. This was the crisis of his life. Here you are going to see the man really
shine. The fifth time we meet Joshua he
is a man of aggressive confidence. Here
we meet the man and the stability pays off, those years and years of seeking
the knowledge from God, seeking to know God as best as he could know, seizing
every advantage to study the Word of God, seeking every advantage to take
advantage, when God would speak he’d be there, he didn’t want to miss any time. It seems like from that earlier example he
camped in the tabernacle, he’s afraid Moses might sneak in there some night and
something might happen and he may not see it, so Joshua decided to cut that off
at the pass, he’d just take his sleeping bag and he’d put it right out by the
tabernacle and he’s sack out right there.
And if Moses tried to sneak in there and have a secret rendezvous with
God, Joshua was going to know about it.
So this shows his intense determination to find out about God. Now it pays off.
In Numbers 13-14 we have one of the great crises of the nation. Here the men go in; this is the spy attempt
that’s so famous. They’re about to make
a southern penetration. They send a spy
group in, twelve spies, one from each tribe.
Joshua or Caleb, both of them act as the C.O. of this infiltration
team. Their job is to go in and survey
the land, which by the way shows you something.
It shows you God held them responsible to develop military tactics on
their own. So there’s a normal
reconnaissance operation, to go in there and find out what the terrain is, how
many men are over here, what kind of fortifications they’ve got, what kind of
weapons they’ve got, etc. and incidentally, what kind of land it is, to find
out if God has kept His promise.
So in Numbers 13:30 we have these people. Verse 17, “And they told him,” this is the
whole group together, “We came to the land to which you sent us, and surely it
flows with milk and honey.” The
significance of verse 27 is that it concerns God’s promises. I can’t go through and show you the repeated
promises that God says I will bring you, Israel, to a land flowing with milk
and honey; I will bring you to this; I will bring you to this; I will bring you
to this, trust Me, trust Me, trust Me.
And now the event has happened, the infiltration team moves in and they
discover yes, God has kept His promise, the land is just like He said it was,
in perfect condition. This idiom
expressed in verse 27, “flowing with milk and honey” is an agricultural idiom
which means a highly, highly productive land.
In other words, economically this nation is going to be fixed for life,
as it were.
And so they come back, but then they have memory and ten of the group
say that they’ve got the Anakim there, and the Amalekites and the Jebusites and
the Amorites and the Canaanites and so on, and there’s panic. And you have a majority of believers, watch
what happens here, ten to two; Joshua and Caleb versus ten. And they’re God’s people, these aren’t
unbelievers, they are God’s people, and God’s people are in a majority here and
they’re on human viewpoint and Joshua and Caleb have the guts to stand up and
they say you are wrong; we are on divine viewpoint, we believe the Scripture,
this is the way the Scripture has it and I don’t care how many people believe
this other thing, it’s a lie and I’m not going along with it. And so it shows you Joshua’s dogged
determination to sit down on the principles of the Word: ten to two he’s
outvoted.
In verse 30, “And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let
us go up at once,” let’s go right now, no further adieu about this, let’s
go. And the people panicked, and in 14:1
you have one of the all-time crybaby sessions of history. You have crybabies, you could hear people going
through tantrums and multiply that by two million, you can imagine what a
horrible thing this was. Joshua probably
never saw anything like this. He would
be slaughtering Amalekites out there in the desert but he’d never seen anything
like this, one or two million people actually go to pieces. 14:1, “And all the congregation lifted up
their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.” They fall apart.
Now who are these people, what were they doing when Joshua was sneaking
up the mountain to find out about God.
Do you know what they were doing?
They were having a party. That’s
the crowd, and this is always what happens to that crowd. They are believers but they’re very sick and
very sad and very miserable people. When the Word of God is being taught they
are too busy having some social activity to hear it, and so here we have the
same situation. And the pressure comes
in, the catastrophe hits their life and what happens? Fall apart, panic, call for the pastor, maybe
he can get us out of a jam. And they
can’t call any pastor here because their pastor in this case tells them off and
they don’t like it, they pick up stones.
See, being a pastor is not an easy job sometimes.
So here in verses 1-3 they raise Cain and this goes on all night. Have you ever heard somebody scream, really
let go, maybe you’ve been near an accident or in a battle situation, or out in
the funny farm or some other place and you’ve heard people scream, particularly
ladies; men are bad because that kind of shakes you up but when you get four or
five ladies going at the top of their lungs, yelling and boo-hooing and
screaming and falling apart, and this goes on all night, you can imagine what
Joshua… Joshua doesn’t have time to sleep, he’s comfortable, he doesn’t care but
the trouble is he can’t get any sleep.
He has the mental attitude for rest but with one or two million ladies
yelling at the top of their lungs and the men too, where are you going to get
sleep. So Joshua evidently stood up all
night listening to these people fall apart.
And then in the morning he gets to them.
[Verse 6, “And Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb…rent their clothes.”]
In verse 7, “And they spoke unto all the company of the children of
But I want you to notice, you cannot understand this incident in its
totality until you’ve had the other incidents that I’ve given you to lead up to
this. These people back there determine
what they do here, just like you’re going to do; just like some of you are
doing right now. Some of you are setting
yourselves up for the same kind of experience in Numbers 14:1 because you
refuse to get into the Word of God in a systematic, well thought out way. And when it’s taught you tolerate it, and if
you can get out from under it, you try; if you can think of some other excuse
you do. Well, you’re just setting into
process a pattern of response that when the situation bangs down on your head
there’s nothing else you will do except verse 1, yell and scream and weep all
night, because you have built, you have programmed yourself to act this way.
Joshua didn’t get this way just because he had an emotional experience
the night before and God appeared to him on the tent and say Joshua, I am with
you, and Joshua had this fantastic emotion and said why, I had an emotional
experience last night and I’m all fired up to go in there. That’s not the way it works. Joshua had hours and hours and hours and
hours of quiet preparation, and when the catastrophe struck, who is it that
kept his cool? The man with the
preparation and everybody else fell apart.
That’s always the way it is. The
Christian in the eyeball to eyeball confrontation always has his doctrine of
eternal security that he can play for his ace.
So here you have one of the great times of Joshua, and in Numbers 14:28
and 38 he sees God lay down one of the most fantastic programs of spanking
every made in history. In verse 28 God
says, “As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in Mine ears, so
will I do to you. [29] Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness; and all
who were numbered of you, according to your whole number,” now watch this,
“from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against Me,” and I won’t
translate it because the only way to translate “murmur” is a GI word and I
might offend some of you. But those of
you who have been in the service, you understand what I’m talking about,
“murmur.”
Verse 29 is that kind of a word in the Hebrew, it’s a tough word and
these people were doing this toward God, murmuring, murmuring, murmuring, and
so God says oh, you want to murmur do you, and God is so ironic in this
spanking, these people say why God, think of what’s going to happen to our
wives and children, and so God says okay, I’m going to think about it, I’ll
tell you what I’ll do. I’ll kill every
male twenty or above and leave their wives and their children and guess what,
the wives and the children who they are concerned with, they are the ones that
are going to go in the land and all the crybabies are going to die.
And the interesting thing, for the next forty years, you can just see
Joshua sitting there, so and so died today, so and so died today, so and so
died today, every day an obituary, and the Greek in 1 Cor. 10 says their bodies
were strewn all over the desert; all over the desert bodies here, bodies there,
bodies here. Can you imagine, forty
years this would ring in his ears, God’s command I will kill every man over
twenty. And Joshua sees it happen before
his eyes, so and so died today, so and so died today. And then when the last man dies, God goes
into action again as we saw in Deuteronomy.
Think of the fantastic impact that had.
That meant that Joshua learned something about history. God can discriminate. Remember Jesus said the hairs on your head
are numbered. It means that God can
reach down in history and pluck individuals out of the stream. We’re so used to thinking in sociological
terms the great statistical envelopes that control the example, the
population. God doesn’t think that way,
He thinks individually and He reaches down and He plucks individuals;
amazing! And this is a fantastic lesson
Joshua learned.
Now the last two times that we see Joshua is Numbers 27:18, his
ordination. Here’s where he’s graduated
to his military command. Now you will
understand a little verse here, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Take you Joshua,
the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand upon him.” The word “Spirit” in God’s Word, as it is
used in the Old Testament, would be almost analogous to our word
“personality.” So and so had a depressed
spirit, it was their way of speaking about one’s personality. Of course it has to do with the human spirit
and the Holy Spirit, but as far as the observation, they were looking at a
person’s personality. And so Moses was
saying this guy really has got the spirit.
Now you use the word this way so this shouldn’t be foreign to you. For example, you see a football team kind of
half way make it toward the half and then all of a sudden after the halftime they
come out there and charge. What do you
say? That football team is a spirited
team. Well, that’s the same kind of
thing, granted the Holy Spirit and so on, but think of the observed thing that
Moses is thinking about. Here is a man
who’s really got it, and he’s proved it; he has proved it by his mental
attitude: preparation, preparation, preparation. And when the chips were down who was it that
pulled through? So here in verse 15 God
says okay, commission this man.
The last thing, the same part of this commissioning, is in Deut. 34:7-8,
the death of Moses. Here Joshua learns a
vital lesson. “And Moses was an hundred
and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force
abated.” We’ve seen the death, this kind
of a weird funeral that Moses had. Moses
did not die of old age. Moses died
because the Lord killed him and He preserved his body and Moses’ body is
somewhere now preserved for the Tribulation.
Moses’ body is preserved by Archangel Michael as described in the book
of Jude. But Moses had a queer death
along with Elijah for various reasons that will become evident in the
Tribulation.
And in verse 8, “And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains
of Moab thirty days. So the days of
weeping and mourning for Moses were ended. [9] And Joshua, the son of Nun, was
full of the Spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him. And the children of Israel hearkened unto
him, and did as the LORD commanded Moses.”
Here you have Joshua now takes up the slack. The thing to remember here is that Joshua
learned something. First, in this
situation, this sixth situation, his ordination, Joshua learned at least two
things. First he learned the principle
of continuity of leadership. He learned
that the work that God sets up in one generation God will have His men to carry
that work on in the next generation. If
the work truly is of God it will go on from generation to generation guided by
God’s man, that God has raised up for that hour.
The second thing that he learned is that he himself would be unique, for
later on it says, verse 10, “There arose not a prophet since in Israel like
unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,” and here you have the distinction
between Moses and Joshua. He learned
something else that day about continuity; he also learned that God doesn’t
treat us like concrete blocks. It’s not
like God has a wall, He says well, this one’s all through, chip the concrete
block out, replace it with another one and goes on. God doesn’t treat us as concrete blocks.
Every one of us is an individual and unique and Joshua realized he was unique
from Moses.
Now the last brief touch we have with Joshua is at the end of the book
of Joshua, Joshua 24:14-15. Here he is
toward the end of his life, and he tells the people, “Now, therefore, fear the
LORD, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your
fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the
LORD. [15] And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day
whom ye will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the
other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell;
but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
There he is, the final picture you have of Joshua. He still doesn’t care what people think. He still doesn’t care about the party times,
he cares about how much he knows of God, and thereby still has his confidence,
still has his determination to serve the Lord, and if all the nations serve the
gods of the Amorites, he doesn’t care, but he knows one thing, he is going to
serve the Lord. So here you have this
determined character of Joshua, a man who desires for truth, a man who as a
result of this, knowing the truth, he has fantastic confidence, ready for the
hour. And the third thing, this man is
humble. With our heads bowed…