1.A New Leader, a Great Task

The book of Joshua opens in a moment of transition. Moses, the great servant of God who had led Israel out of Egypt and through forty years in the wilderness, is now dead; and God raises up Joshua to lead the people across the Jordan River and at last into the Promised Land. The task set before him is an immense one: to enter, and to take possession of, the very land that God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries before. Joshua was well prepared for it, in one sense — he had been Moses' faithful personal servant for many years, and he had been one of only two spies, long before, who had believed God and brought back a faithful report. Now the mantle of leadership passes to him. And the whole book that bears his name tells the story of how God, ever faithful to His ancient promise, at last brings His people into the inheritance He had sworn to give them. And it all opens, fittingly, with God's own charge spoken to the new leader.

2.Be Strong and of Good Courage

Three separate times within this opening chapter, God gives Joshua the very same charge: "Be strong and of good courage." Clearly the task that lay ahead was a daunting one, and Joshua, being a man like us, would surely have been tempted to fear and to shrink back from it. But notice carefully what kind of command this is. It is not a bare call to somehow reach down inside himself and manufacture courage by sheer force of will. Rather, the command to be courageous is firmly grounded, every time, in a promise from God. "As I was with Moses," God tells him, "so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you." And it all builds to that ringing climax which believers have leaned upon ever since: "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." There it is. The true and solid ground of all real courage is not found in ourselves at all — it is found in the presence of the living God, who goes with His people.

3.The Book of the Law

Along with the promise of His presence, God also gives Joshua one great means to carry him through the whole journey ahead: His own word. "This Book of the Law," God says, "shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." This is striking. Joshua's success as a leader and a conqueror was not going to flow, in the end, from military genius, or from clever strategy, or from the strength of his armies. It was going to flow from his meditating upon, and his careful obeying of, the word of God. The man who would go on to conquer the land had first to be, above all else, a man of the Book. And exactly the same holds true for us. The sure road to a fruitful and God-honoring life is a life that is shaped and saturated, day and night, by the word of God.

4.The God Who Keeps His Promise

It is worth pausing to remember that the land Joshua was now to enter had been promised to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, generations upon generations earlier. And now, at long last, God was actually bringing His people in. The whole book of Joshua stands, from beginning to end, as one great demonstration of the faithfulness of God — the plain truth that what God promises, God most certainly performs. All the long years of waiting, all the wandering in the wilderness, all the delays and the failures along the way — not one bit of it had cancelled or weakened the promise. God was now about to keep His word, down to the letter. And there is a deep and steadying encouragement in this for every believer. The God of Joshua is the God who keeps every one of His promises, no matter how long the waiting may stretch on; and He will surely bring His people, at the last, into all that He has promised them.

5.The Greater Joshua

And there is one thing more, and it is perhaps the most wonderful of all. The name "Joshua" means, in Hebrew, "the LORD saves" — and it is, in fact, the very same name that we know, in its later Greek form, as "Jesus." Joshua the son of Nun leads the people of God out of the wilderness and into the earthly land of promise. But in doing so, he stands as a shadow, a picture, and a type of the greater Joshua who was to come — the Lord Jesus, who leads the people of God out of the far deeper wilderness of sin and death, and into the true and eternal inheritance that will never fade away. So as we read on through this book, of Joshua's courage, and his obedience, and his conquest, and finally his rest, we are meant to look beyond him and to see, standing behind him, the Lord Jesus Himself — the true Captain of our salvation, who says to us even now, "be strong and of good courage, for I am with you always, even to the end of the age." So take courage, then — not courage in yourself, but courage in the God who is with you, whose word will surely guide you, whose promises are all sure and certain, and whose Son, the greater Joshua, is leading you all the way home.

6.Taking It to Heart

1.Into the Land

With Joshua now commissioned and the people made ready, the book of Joshua moves swiftly into action. Israel crosses over the Jordan River into the Promised Land at last, and then wins its very first great victory there, at the city of Jericho. These chapters are filled with vivid and unforgettable scenes: the two spies and their rescue by Rahab, the miraculous crossing of the Jordan on dry ground, the setting up of the twelve memorial stones, and the strange and wonderful fall of the walls of Jericho. And running like a bright thread through the whole of it is one clear and steady lesson, which we must not miss: the victory belongs entirely to the LORD, and it comes to His people not by their own strength or cleverness, but by faith and by obedience.

2.Rahab: Grace to an Outsider

Before the crossing, Joshua sends two spies ahead into Jericho, and there they are taken in and hidden by Rahab — a Canaanite woman of that city, and one, we are told plainly, of a doubtful and disreputable past. But Rahab had heard the reports of all that the God of Israel had done — the parting of the Red Sea, the defeat of kings — and, unlike her neighbors, she had come to believe. "The LORD your God," she confesses, "He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath." She hides the spies from the king's men, she asks them for mercy, and in return she is promised that she and all her household will be spared when the city falls — and so they are. And here we see the sheer wonder of the grace of God. Rahab — a Canaanite, an outsider, and by every worldly measure a most unlikely person — is not merely spared from destruction; she is grafted right into the people of God. She appears, astonishingly, in the very genealogy of Jesus Christ Himself, and she is held up in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews as a shining example of living faith. This is worth pondering carefully: the conquest of Canaan was indeed God's judgment upon a deeply wicked people — but the door of mercy stood open the whole time to any single soul who would turn to Him, exactly as Rahab did. The grace of God reaches out to the outsider who believes.

3.Crossing the Jordan

Now the whole nation comes down to the banks of the Jordan — and the river, we are told, is at flood stage, overflowing all its banks. God commands the priests to take up the ark of the covenant and to carry it forward into the water; and the moment the soles of their feet touch the edge of the river, God cuts off the flow of the water far upstream, and the entire nation of Israel crosses over the riverbed on dry ground. It is, unmistakably, a new Exodus. Just as God had once parted the waters of the Red Sea to bring His people out of Egypt, so now He parts the waters of the Jordan to bring them in to the land of promise. And God gives a further command: that twelve stones be lifted out of the middle of the riverbed and set up together as a lasting memorial. The purpose is beautiful and clear: that in the years to come, when the children ask their parents, "What do these stones mean?", the parents will have the occasion to tell them the story of what the LORD did that day. The mighty acts of God are meant to be remembered, and to be handed down carefully from one generation to the next. For the God who once brought them out is the very same God who now brings them in.

4.The Fall of Jericho

Before the first battle is joined, Joshua has a remarkable encounter. He meets a mysterious figure with a drawn sword, who declares Himself to be the Commander of the army of the LORD; and Joshua falls on his face before Him in worship, and is told to remove his sandals, for the ground is holy. It is a needed reminder, right at the outset, that the true Captain of this whole campaign is not Joshua at all, but the LORD Himself. And then comes Jericho — a strongly fortified city, ringed about with great and formidable walls. But the strategy God gives for taking it is utterly unlike any military strategy ever devised: the people are simply to march around the city once each day for six days, and then seven times around on the seventh day, with the priests blowing trumpets and the ark of God carried out before them. And then, at a single great shout from all the people, the mighty walls of Jericho fall down flat, and the city is taken. The lesson could not be plainer. The victory was in no way won by Israel's military might, or by any clever art of siege-craft; it was won entirely by the power of God, received simply through faith and obedience. As the book of Hebrews sums it up: "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were encircled for seven days." When the people of God obey Him — however strange and unlikely His command may seem — God gives the victory.

5.The Victory Is the LORD's

Gather all these chapters up together, and one great truth rises above everything else: the victory belongs to the LORD. Israel simply did not win the land by its own strength. It was God who parted the flooded Jordan; it was God who threw down the walls of Jericho; it was God, from first to last, who gave the victory. Israel's part in it all was only to believe and to obey — to step out into the flooded river at God's word, to march around the towering walls in faith, to trust God's strange and unmilitary instructions. And so it remains in the Christian life to this very day. The real battles that we face — against our sin, against our fears, against the great obstacles that rise up in our path — are never won by our own strength or our own cleverness, but only by the power of God, received through faith and through humble obedience. Like Rahab, we are saved not by any worthiness of our own but by faith in the God who is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Like Israel at the Jordan, we are able to cross over only because God Himself goes on before us. And like Israel at Jericho, we watch the walls come down not by our might, but by the simple trusting and obeying of the Lord. So go and face your own battles, then — not in your own strength at all, but in the strength of the LORD who fights for His people. Remember His mighty acts, and hand them down. And know, with full assurance, that the victory — then, and now — belongs to Him.

6.Taking It to Heart

1.Victory, Defeat, and a Hard Question

After the great and glorious victory at Jericho, the book of Joshua takes a distinctly sober turn. Chapters seven through twelve tell us of a stunning and unexpected defeat, of its cause and its cure, and then of the wider conquest of the land of Canaan. And along the way, we meet three things that the honest reader simply must face and reckon with: the terrible seriousness of sin, seen in the account of a man named Achan; the grace of God that restores His people even after their failure; and the very hardest question that the whole book raises — the conquest itself, and the destruction of the Canaanite cities. We will walk through each of these with care and with honesty, for these chapters have a great deal to teach us about the holiness of God, about His grace, and about His justice.

2.Achan's Sin and the Defeat at Ai

Flush with their victory at Jericho, the armies of Israel go up confidently against the small town of Ai — and, to everyone's shock, they are soundly defeated, routed, and sent fleeing down the hill. Joshua is utterly devastated, and he falls before God and cries out to Him. And God reveals the cause of the disaster: there is sin in the camp. At Jericho, God had commanded that the spoil of the city be wholly devoted to Him and not taken; but one man, Achan, had secretly taken some of it for himself and hidden it in his tent. And because of that one hidden sin, the whole nation had been handed over to defeat. This teaches us two sobering truths that we dare not forget. The first is that sin is serious — it is never the small and private thing we like to imagine, and it can never simply be hidden away from the eyes of God. And the second is that the people of God are bound together as one body — the sin of one man brought real consequences upon them all. Once the sin is uncovered and dealt with, God's favor returns to His people. But the account stands as a solemn and lasting warning: sin, and especially hidden sin, is deadly, and the people of God cannot presume upon His blessing while they secretly harbor it.

3.Grace After Failure

And here, thankfully, comes the great encouragement. Once the sin has been faced and dealt with, God does not cast Israel off or abandon them to their failure. Instead He graciously renews His command, He gives the town of Ai into their hands, and the advance into the land continues. And soon after this, at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, Joshua leads the whole nation in a solemn renewal of the covenant, reading aloud all the words of the law, both the blessings and the curses, before all the people. The grace of God restores His people after their failure. The story does not end in defeat and disgrace, but in renewal and fresh hope. And this, as it happens, is the very pattern of God's dealings with His people all through the pages of Scripture: failure is real, and it must be honestly faced and dealt with — but failure is never the end of the story. The grace of God reaches down to lift up those who have fallen, to restore them, and to set them once more upon the right path. There is real hope after failure for every one who turns back to God.

4.The Hard Question: The Conquest

Now we come at last to the hardest question that the book of Joshua raises. In these chapters, Israel goes on to conquer the land city by city, and we read of the destruction of the Canaanite peoples. To the modern reader this is deeply troubling, and it should never be brushed lightly aside. Several things must be carefully held together, all at once, if we are to face it honestly. First, this was not ethnic cleansing, and it was not racial hatred; it was the righteous judgment of God upon the deep, settled, and long-continued wickedness of the Canaanite nations — whose practices the Bible describes, including the burning of their own children in sacrifice, as abominations so grievous that "the land vomited out its inhabitants." Second, God had been extraordinarily patient. Centuries earlier, He had told Abraham that his descendants would not return to take the land for four hundred years, "for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." God waited four long centuries, giving that people ample time to turn from their evil; the judgment fell only when their wickedness had, in His own words, filled up its full measure. Third, the door of mercy stood open the whole time to any who would turn to God. Rahab and her household were spared; the Gibeonites were spared; the issue was never ethnicity at all, but wickedness and stubborn unrepentance — and mercy was there for all who, like Rahab, turned to the LORD. Fourth, and this is crucial: the conquest was a unique moment in the history of redemption — a specific judgment upon a specific people at a specific time, carried out by the direct and explicit command of God Himself. It is emphatically not a template, and it is not a warrant, for any human violence, war, or conquest whatsoever, in that day or in ours. No nation, no group, and no person may ever appeal to the book of Joshua to justify their own violence. It stands solely as God's own act of judgment, in His own time, for His own holy purposes — never, ever as a model for ours. Held all together, these truths let us face the conquest honestly for what it is: a stark revelation of the terrible seriousness of sin, and of the holiness and justice of a God who will not let great wickedness go forever unpunished — the very same holiness that, at the cross, would fall upon His own beloved Son, so that guilty sinners like us might be spared.

5.Holiness, Grace, and the Cross

Draw all these difficult chapters together, and they hold three great realities steadily before us. The first is the holiness of God: He is holy, sin is a deadly serious thing, and He will not treat it lightly — whether it is the hidden sin of a single man within His own camp, or the settled wickedness of whole nations. The second is the grace of God: He restores His own people after their failure, and He shows mercy to all who turn to Him — even to a Rahab. And the third is that these two great realities meet, finally and fully and forever, at the cross of Jesus Christ. There the holiness of God and the grace of God embrace each other. There the judgment that our sin truly deserves fell not upon us, but upon God's own Son, willingly and lovingly given in our place, so that everyone who turns to Him — Canaanite or Israelite, Jew or Gentile, you or me — might be spared, and forgiven, and brought safely home. The God of Joshua is holy, and He is gracious; and at the cross of Christ we see both of these things at once, and there we find our only sure refuge. So do not ever take sin lightly, for God is holy; and yet do not despair over your sin either, for God is gracious. Only flee to Christ, in whom holiness and grace meet perfectly, and in whom every single sinner who turns to Him finds mercy.

6.Taking It to Heart

1.From Conquest to Inheritance

With the land now largely subdued, the book of Joshua turns from the business of war to the business of inheritance. Chapters thirteen through twenty-two record the dividing of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel — and it is a long section, filled with ancient place-names and boundary lines, which a modern reader might well be tempted simply to skip over. But this would be a real loss, for woven all through these chapters are some of the very richest truths in the whole book: the faithfulness of a God who keeps every single promise, the reward of wholehearted faith in the person of Caleb, the tender provision of mercy in the cities of refuge, and the deep truth that the LORD Himself is the believer's greatest inheritance of all.

2.Not One Word Failed

As the land is carefully divided out, tribe by tribe, the narrator pauses to make one great and sweeping declaration: "Not one word failed of all the good things which the LORD had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass." Stop and weigh that. Every promise that God had made to Abraham, centuries and centuries before, about giving this land to his descendants — every last one of them had now been fully and faithfully kept, right down to the smallest detail. So the long catalog of boundaries and allotments is not dry and tedious bookkeeping at all; it is, in truth, the very receipt of God's faithfulness — the concrete, on-the-ground, measured-out proof that what God promises, God performs. And this is a solid rock beneath the believer's soul. The same God who kept every word He had spoken to Israel will just as surely keep every word He has spoken to us. Not one of His promises will ever fail.

3.Give Me This Mountain

In the very midst of all these allotments, one man stands out from the rest: Caleb. Forty-five years earlier, Caleb had been one of only two spies who believed God, back when the other ten had spread their fear through the whole camp. And now, at the age of eighty-five, he comes to Joshua and asks for his promised portion — and, tellingly, he asks not for some easy and comfortable stretch of lowland, but for the rugged hill country that was still held by giants. "Give me this mountain," he says, "of which the LORD spoke in that day." Caleb's request is the pure request of faith. He does not shrink back from the giants, because he well remembers that the LORD is with him. And the text tells us, over and over again, that Caleb "wholly followed the LORD." Here is a model set before every one of us: a faith that does not fade or grow timid with age, that does not shrink away from difficulty, that simply takes God at His word and boldly asks for the mountain. May we, like Caleb, wholly follow the LORD, right to the very end of our days.

4.Cities of Refuge

Among the allotments, God commands that certain cities be set apart as cities of refuge. If a person should kill another accidentally — truly without intent, and without any prior hatred — he could flee to one of these appointed cities and be kept safe there from the avenger of blood, until a fair and proper trial could be held. The cities of refuge are a beautiful provision of both justice and mercy at once: justice, in that deliberate murder was still to be punished; and mercy, in that the one who had killed unintentionally was protected from raw and hasty vengeance. And Christians down through the ages have long seen in these cities a lovely picture of Christ Himself. Just as the manslayer had to flee to the city of refuge to find his safety, so the guilty sinner flees to Christ and there finds refuge from the judgment he deserves. As the book of Hebrews puts it, we "have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." Christ is our true city of refuge — and all who flee to Him are perfectly safe.

5.The LORD Their Inheritance

There was one tribe alone that received no territory of its own in the division of the land: the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe. Instead of a stretch of land, they were given cities scattered here and there among all the other tribes, and — far more importantly than that — they were given the LORD Himself as their inheritance. "The LORD God of Israel was their inheritance," the text says, "as He had said to them." This is a profound and searching truth. The Levites' portion was not fields and vineyards and flocks; their portion was God Himself. And in this the Levites quietly picture the very deepest truth for every believer who has ever lived. Our greatest inheritance is not, finally, the good gifts that God gives to us — it is God Himself: to know Him, to belong to Him, and to have Him as our own portion forever. "The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance," sings the psalmist. The land was a great and good gift indeed; but the Giver is always greater than the gift. And the believer who has God has, in truth, everything.

6.The Faithful God, and the Better Inheritance

Draw all these chapters together, and they leave us with a settled confidence and a lifted heart. The God of Joshua is faithful — not one of His words has failed, or ever will. He richly rewards wholehearted faith, exactly as He did the faith of Caleb. He provides a sure refuge for the guilty who flee to Him — in the cities of refuge of old, and far more, in Christ Himself. And He gives His own self as the believer's truest and greatest inheritance of all. The earthly land of Canaan was a real gift, and a genuine foretaste; but all along it was pointing beyond itself — on toward the far greater inheritance that God has prepared for His people in Christ, "an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you." So take heart, dear believer. The God who kept every promise to Israel will keep every promise to you. Follow Him wholly, as Caleb did; flee to Him for your refuge, as the manslayer did; and set your heart, above every earthly good thing, upon Him — for God Himself is your inheritance, and the God who has given you His own self has thereby given you everything, forever.

7.Taking It to Heart

1.The End of the Journey

We come now to the close of the book of Joshua, and with it, to the close of Joshua's own long and faithful life. The land has been entered, the enemies have been subdued, the inheritance has been divided out among the tribes. And now, an old man near his death, Joshua gathers the people together one final time — first the leaders and elders of Israel, and then the whole nation assembled at Shechem — in order to give them his farewell charge, and to lead them all in solemnly renewing their covenant with God. His last words to them are among the most memorable and most quoted in all of Scripture, and they press home upon every single generation since the one great and unavoidable question of life: whom will you serve?

2.Joshua's Farewell Charge

First, Joshua gathers together the leaders of Israel and gives them his parting counsel. He reminds them, carefully, of all that God has done for them — how the LORD has fought their battles for them, how He has kept every single promise, how He has given them this good land. And then, on the firm basis of all that goodness, he urges them: hold fast to the LORD your God, love Him with all your heart, keep His law, and do not turn aside to serve the gods of the nations around you. And he warns them plainly and honestly, too: that if they should forsake the LORD and go running after other gods, they will surely lose the good land that God has so freely given them. The whole charge is a charge of grateful loyalty. Precisely because God has been so overwhelmingly faithful to them, they are to cling to Him, to love Him, and to refuse to be drawn away. And that very same charge comes down now to us. In full view of all of God's goodness to you, hold fast to Him, love Him, and do not let the many idols of this world quietly draw your heart away from Him.

3.The Covenant at Shechem

Then Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel together to Shechem, for a great and solemn renewal of the covenant. And there he rehearses for them the whole long history of God's grace — beginning all the way back with the calling of Abraham, and moving on through the Exodus out of Egypt, the years in the wilderness, and the conquest of the land — showing them, at every single step of the way, that it was God who acted, God who saved, God who fought, and God who gave. The entire story, told rightly, is a story of grace from beginning to end: a story of what God has freely done for a people who never deserved it. And it is only then, on the firm foundation of that grace, that Joshua calls the people to make their response — to fear the LORD, to serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and to put away all the other gods they had clung to. Notice the order carefully, for it is the order of the whole Bible: grace comes first, and then the response. God's mighty acts of salvation always come first; and the call to serve Him flows out, afterward, as the glad response of gratitude for all that He has already done.

4.Choose This Day

And then comes the great and famous challenge, the words for which this chapter is forever remembered. Joshua sets the choice plainly and squarely before all the people: "choose you this day whom you will serve." Will they serve the old gods of their fathers from beyond the River? Or the gods of the Amorites in whose land they now dwell? Or will they serve the LORD? And Joshua then declares his own settled resolve, in words that have echoed down through every generation from that day to this: "but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." Here is the one great decision that every single person must, in the end, make for himself. It cannot be dodged, and it cannot be postponed forever. The grace of God does not force itself upon anyone against his will — it calls, rather, for a real response, a genuine choice, a wholehearted turning to serve the LORD. And Joshua's own ringing declaration stands as a model for every believer and every household ever since: whatever anyone else around us may decide to do, we will serve the LORD. The choice is a real one, and it is truly ours to make. And there has never been, and never will be, a better choice than to say, along with Joshua, "as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

5.The Rest That Remains

The book of Joshua is, in one true sense, the whole story of God bringing His people at last into rest — rest from all their long wandering, rest from their enemies round about, rest at home in the land that God had promised them. And yet, as the New Testament goes on to teach us plainly, that earthly rest was never meant to be the final rest. It was itself only a picture, a foreshadowing, of a far greater and truer rest that was still to come. "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God," says the book of Hebrews. For the land of Canaan, with all of its real goodness, could never give the very deepest rest that the human heart most needs — rest from the guilt and power of sin, rest in God Himself, rest that lasts forever. And that rest is found in one place only: in Christ, the greater Joshua. Just as Joshua of old led Israel into the earthly Promised Land, so the Lord Jesus leads all who trust in Him into the true and eternal inheritance — into that rest which still remains for the people of God. "Come to Me," Jesus says, "all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

6.The Greater Joshua Leads Us Home

And so the book of Joshua comes at last to its close, and with it our own journey through it. We have followed Joshua all the way — from his first commissioning, through the crossing of the Jordan and the fall of Jericho, through failure and grace and the hard questions of the conquest, through the dividing of the inheritance, and now to his farewell and the covenant at Shechem. And through the whole of it, one figure has stood quietly behind Joshua, greater by far than he — the Lord Jesus, the true and greater Joshua, whose very name Joshua bore. Joshua the son of Nun led Israel into an earthly land that they would, in time, sadly lose; but Jesus leads His people into an eternal inheritance that can never once be lost. Joshua gave Israel a rest from their earthly enemies; but Jesus gives His people rest for their very souls, and rest forever. So as we now close this book, hear its final question pressed home upon your own heart: "choose you this day whom you will serve." And may your answer be Joshua's answer, and more besides — not only "as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD," but also, "I will follow the greater Joshua, Jesus, who has led me out of the wilderness of my sin, and who will surely bring me home at the last, to the inheritance that never fades and to the rest that remains for the people of God." Be strong, then, and of good courage. Hold fast to the LORD. Choose Him this day, and every day after. For He is faithful — and He will bring you home.

7.Taking It to Heart