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JOSHUA
Updated: 13, 2007
Joshua
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- Josh 1:1: "Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses minister, saying,"
- Josh 1:2-3: "Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. In other words, God was saying, "start walking, you already have the inheritance, now claim it by faith. While the Israelites had to fight the inhabitants of the land, they did not do it to conquer new territory., but merely to claim the inheritance that God had already given them.
- Josh 1: 5: No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. God is not in the business of dropping you in the middle of a project He has given you. God is not in the business of deserting people when we get in trouble, if we are honestly endeavoring to do His will. God does close doors. The promise of His power and presence does not preclude occasional disaster and frequent tribulation. Our faith will be tested and we may go through great suffering. Gods power will be with us through the good times and the bad times. His presence will continually sustain us.
- Josh 1: 8: Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Our tendency is to interpret this into narcissistic terms. God is interested in much bigger things than that. God doesn't function in cosmetic terms. He's not in the business of tummy tucks and nose jobs or of making life easy. He's in the business of transforming us into His image. He's in the business of helping us to serve Him, meeting the deepest needs of others who hurt, who are in pain, who need deliverance from sin, who need their bodies healed and their minds restored. This is success and prosperity.
- Josh 2:9: Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. He is not suggesting that you be strong and of good courage...he is commanding it.
- Josh 2:11: And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you, for the Lord your God, he is in heaven above, and in earth beneath What a testimony if the enemies of God are concerned because they know of his power. It is interesting to note that even though they feared him, they did not worship him.
- Josh 4:24: "That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever." Joshua understood that the power of God was to glorify Himself, and not Joshua.
- Josh 7:21: "When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels wieght, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. Covetousness is every attempt to gain by fraud, coercion, or deceit that which belongs to our neighbor, or just doesnt belong to us. In Deuteronomy, the two words are used for the word "covet," the first translated "desire," meaning to delight in, and the second word rendered "covet," which means to lust after. The term in its truest meaning suggests a thought followed by an action. Such action is inevitably destructive to a society. One of the most extreme examples of "covetousness" at work today is through welfarism. The creation of an anti-God society, such as welfarism, communism, or socialism seeks to take from one group and give to another.
- Joshua 23:13
"Know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you".
God is not using this language of scourges in their sides and thorns in their eyes to signify some bodily disorder (as man would assume today) God is using them to illustrate that the people of these other nations will be entanglements for the Lord's people, to trouble them and cause them to fall. In the book of numbers, God uses the same language, but switches the use of the thorn to the side, and scourges to the eyes.
- Josh 24:15: "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 flood, or of the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me an my house, we will serve the Lord." If we fail to be faithful, God will raise up other peoples to carry on His triumphant conquest of the nations. If we are ashamed of our Lord and of the Scriptures, God will be ashamed of us. If the man abdicates his calling as God's covenental representative in the family, he lays the ground for the erosion of church, state, and the wider society. All the clean-up-culture campaigns in the world cannot compensate for a lack of men's covenant government in the family. When men begin to order their own lives and their familes according to the law-word of God, they sow the seeds of ecclesiatical and cultural reconstruction. Changes at the "top" will not occur until there are changes in the family. The only hope any country has begins in the home, with the children. They are the future.
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This page was first created on February 22, 2001.
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