I wonder what it feels like to know you are an indestructible man. That’s what Caleb son of Jephunneh was. Not many of us have a guarantee that we will live tomorrow, but Caleb did. The fact is it was impossible for him to die before he received the promise made to him 45 years earlier.

The time was Moses’ time, and the place was the Wilderness of Zin. Twelve men, a leader from each tribe, were sent to spy out the territory for conquest (Numbers 13). Twelve men saw the same lay of the land in Canaan, but 10 came back to camp with a recommendation not to attack; best to wait till a more opportune time; too many contraindications at present. Only Joshua and Caleb said, “Yippee, let’s go!” Just for that, the Lord told the 10 “realists” they would never enter the land. But as for Caleb:

“. . . my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it” (Numbers 14:24).

And today, Joshua 14, is payday. The Israelites have won all the marbles, and Joshua is divvying them up. A delegation from Judah arrives, with Caleb leading it. He takes the initiative and reminds Joshua of the Lord’s promise, reviewing the whole story. How many times, I wonder, has he rehearsed this speech—to his wife and kids, to himself on his bed on sleepless nights.

O Lord, God of vengeance,
O God of vengeance, shine forth!
Rise up, O judge of the earth;
Repay to the proud what they deserve !
O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
How long shall the wicked exult?
They pour out their arrogant words;
All the evildoers boast.
They crush your people, O Lord,
And afflict your heritage
(Psalm 94:1-5)

Caleb is about to find what the Apostles found when they asked Jesus where to make arrangements for the Passover; and Jesus directed them to go into the city, where he told them they would find a man carrying a pitcher; and to follow that man into a house; and in that house they would meet the master of the house and would ask for a guest room:

“And the disciples set out and went to the city, and found it just as he had told them . . .” (Mark 14:16).

Isn’t it delightful when we step out onto God’s promises—when we get out of the boat with Peter—and find that they hold?

“. . . If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3).

And the waiting time between promise and fulfillment, between prayer offered and prayer answered—well, it is no more empty of activity than a drop of water is empty of microbes. It’s in the long stretch of waiting that we learn about ourselves and learn about God. Still, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

As a postscript, I am glad to see Caleb still filled with the Spirit after all these years. (See Joshua 14:6-12). They couldn’t take that away from him, that blessed fanatic.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Enough looking back. Time to move on again. That rearward glance was just to energize you for the next conquest. The people of God are not a backward looking people (Philippians 3:13; Isaiah 65:17), except to draw strength for the present by remembering God’s power and faithfulness. Joshua in chapter 13 lists the real estate yet to be conquered.

We might well do the same in our lives. Like Auntie Em said to Hickory the farmhand when he started rhapsodizing about the statue that the townsfolk would erect for him someday: “Well, don’t start posing for it now.” You got saved, but that wasn’t for sitting on laurels but for walking on water. You conquered the overeating problem, but there’s the condescending attitude that still needs dealing with.

And then there’s the world to conquer, not just your world but the one out beyond your front yard. We are to enforce the victory obtained on Calvary. Pastor Bill Johnson of Redding, Calif., writes:

“It’s time for a revolution in our vision. When prophets tell us, ‘Your vision is too small,’ many of us think the antidote is to increase whatever numbers we’re expecting. For example: if we’re expecting 10 new converts, let’s change it to 100. If we were praying for cities, let’s pray instead for nations. With such responses, we’re missing the sharp edge of the frequently repeated word. Increasing the numbers is not necessarily a sign of a larger vision from God’s perspective. Vision starts with identity and purpose. Through a revolution in our identity, we can think with divine purpose. . . .

“Many, if not most, theologians make the mistake of taking all the good stuff contained in the prophets and sweeping it under that mysterious rug called the Millennium. . . . I do want to deal with our propensity to put off those things that require courage, faith, and action to another period of time. . . .”

I am amused by the way the Lord matter-of-factly ticks off the names of the next regions to be conquered (verses 2-7). When God is with you, you can count the chickens before they hatch. I imagine the Israelites not being as daunted by this list of lands slated for conquest as they were by the list before Jericho. By this stage of the game they have a track record with God, a cognizance of his past faithfulness that gives confidence for the future.

I see the dynamic in miniature in my own little life challenges. Two years ago I could not have envisioned being able to write a blog post a day. When Dr. Olasky offered me this job on a silver platter, I asked for two weeks to think about it (to his bafflement, I expect). But 24 months and 537 posts later, there is a literal paper trail of God’s ability to supply a little bit of oil and meal in the widow’s jars.

Joshua 12 and 13 form an “encouragement sandwich,” as my son Jae would say. The top layer of bread is the recital of God’s faithfulness in the conquests thus far (12:1-24). The meat in the middle is his commands of further conquest (13:1-7). The other slice of bread resumes the recital of God’s faithfulness evidenced in the division of the claimed land.

There is value in writing things down, in keeping lists of concrete answers to prayer. “Vague confession yields vague absolution,” said the Friar to Romeo. Similarly, vague awareness of God’s benefits toward you yields vague gratitude—and negligible encouragement for future battles.

Verse 22 is an embarrassing postscript for Balaam. The once famous man is reduced to a footnote. So it is with all who are wined and dined and flattered for a season. The sought-out prophet was a double-minded man who loved money and the proximity of power. But every man dies alone in the end.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

It is beneficial to stop and take a regular tally of the deeds of God in your life, as we do in this chapter. Living through the drama of the conquest of Ai was exhausting—hopeful at the outset, demoralizing in the middle, exhilarating in the end. The rear-view mirror perspective reveals God’s justice and mercy and brilliance in it, which escaped us when we saw only trees and no forest.

My favorite example of the advantage of compressed time is always the way the 12 tribes of Israel came into existence. There was a decade-long flying of fur and pulling of hair between Leah and Rachel—and when the smoke cleared, 12 sturdy sons stood all in a row.

The Messiah’s two Comings looked like one Coming from the perspective of the Old Testament saints. The prophets themselves were puzzled by their own prophecies, perhaps expecting every prediction of theirs to occur simultaneously in one great finale. A favorite seminary metaphor for explaining this optical illusion is that of two mountains standing one behind the other in your line of vision. As we now know, the valley of millennia separates Christ’s “First Coming” and the “Second Coming” from each other. But from where the ancients stood, it looked like one mountain; they could not spy the farther mountain behind the closer one. In this case, it was they, not we, who saw the time compressed.

The whole Bible record is, of course, time compressed for our edification—thousands of years between two leather covers. It is the closest we come to God’s own control-tower vista, the beginning from the end.

We need to be able to practice the same thing with our lives—find patterns in the tangle of threads behind us. Paul Miller wrote his excellent book on prayer, A Praying Life, in which he rightly observed that a book about prayer is really a book about learning to know God. God is weaving a story in our lives, but while you’re caught in the skein of wool, you don’t always see what he is doing. There is activity in the long waiting periods, when nothing seems to be happening. It is here when our mettle is being tested and we are learning things both about God and ourselves.

Chapter 12 of Joshua is a pause to take stock of where we’ve been and what we’ve done—more importantly, what God has done. The dust has settled from 11 chapters of unrelenting warfare, and at the end of it, Joshua may list the following conquests: Jericho, Ai, Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, Eglon, Gezer, Debir, Geder, Hormah, Arad, Libnah, Adullam, Makkedah, Bethel, Tappua, Hepher, Aphek, Lasharon, Madon, Hazor, Shimron Meron, Achshaph, Taanach, Megiddo, Kedesh, Jokneam, Dor, Gilgal, Tirzah.

Behind each conquest, a whole story. Just like your life.

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It is “chariots” that strike me in my “just one thing” from this chapter of Joshua. The word is not dropped idly here by the Lord. There is a vendetta behind this. God makes a point of noting that when Joshua swept the land clean of God’s enemies, “he hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots with fire” (verse 9).

There is a sense in which the whole Bible is the record of the enmity between God and chariots. The narrative describing Pharaoh’s defeat at the Exodus never misses an opportunity to emphasize the chariots that Pharaoh counted on (Exodus 14:7, 17) and the total annihilation of the same (Exodus 14:18, 23, 25, 26, 28; 15:4, 19).

The Lord knows how impressive and fearful the chariot is, so He addresses the issue in a preemptive way when He sets down his laws for warfare:

“When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you. . . .” (Deuteronomy 20:1).

It begins to dawn on us that the chariot is imbued with symbolic meaning for God, representing all the powers of man that vainly vaunt themselves against Him. This is personal. The contest is on throughout the course of history. To the bitter end, the hellish enemies of God that are coughed out of the bottomless pit carry the sound of chariots (Revelation 9:9).

Later, the Ephraimite tribe’s two lame excuse for not taking possession of their allotted inheritance will be the forests and the chariots: “. . . all the Canaanites who dwell in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Beth-shean and its villages and those in the Valley of Jezreel” (Joshua 17:16). Joshua is supposed to be sympathetic to this, but it leaves him cold:

“Then Joshua said to the house of Joseph, . . . “You are a numerous people and have great power . . . though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron, and though they are strong” (Joshua 17:17-18).

Later, in Judges 1 we are told outright that the tribe of Judah was not able to drive out the inhabitants of the lowlands because they had chariots (verse 19). If we weren’t aware of the shameful background to this comment, we would almost accept it as a legitimate excuse. But we now recognize Israel’s self-defeatism and its inevitable consequences: Because they believe themselves unable to possess the land, they are indeed unable.

Fear of chariots is, of course, a subset of fear of man, whose flip side is confidence in man. These are people who would prefer to take their chances with human help than divine help. Someone endowed with a fascination for the more mathematical features of the Word of God pointed out to me the ultimate thrilling chiastic structure of the Bible—that the very middle verse of the entire book is Psalm 118:8:

“It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”

The delightful surprise, by the time we meet Elijah centuries later, is that the man who forsakes his trust in human chariots, far from forsaking his protection, now enters the exclusive club of those protected by the chariots of God. Elisha gets a glimpse of them as his mentor Elijah is carried off to heaven (2 Kings 2). The sight so captures his imagination that he is unruffled by the sight of Syrian horses and chariots encircling him and Dothan; he sees the outer ring of heavenly chariots ringing those (2 Kings 6:8-19).

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

As we reach chapter 10, I was thinking that the story of Israel’s conquests could have ended abruptly and ignominiously at chapter 7. That was the first battle of Ai, the one they entered jubilant after Jericho and exited dejected after sin was discovered in the camp.

Some children of God might have lost heart and concluded that they could never make much progress in the land because they could never hope to be pure enough. They might even have couched this spiritual defeatism in comforting theological terms, evolving an elaborate theology of limited expectations, teaching in their schools and synagogues that though someday we will conquer all strongholds of evil, at the present time in this earthly dispensation we should not expect more than sporadic and modest conquests because we are still full of sin. In fact, people who imagine that much conquest is possible are fanatics and troublemakers.

If Israel had taken that attitude, the subsequent history of the nation would have looked very different. They would have been forever reminiscing around hearths about Jericho as if it were a big deal, and erecting statues to it. They would perhaps have settled in middling contentment on their little piece of real estate with their little memories of little achievement—never realizing that they had been meant for a much more glorious destiny. They were meant to have much more on this earth—more adventure and more enlarged borders, a la Jabez (1 Chronicles 4:10).

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You may have wondered sometime: Which trumps which? Does the command to annihilate the Gibeonites trump the oath Israel took to protect them? Or does the oath trump the command?

Well, of course, both mandates originate from the Lord—the order to destroy the Canaanites, as well as the order to keep one’s oaths—so the matter is not that simple. But behold how important oath-keeping is to the Lord, that because of an oath, Israel in the quandary described in chapter 9 opted (rightly) to keep their oath to protect the Gibeonites, in spite of the fact that that vow was extracted by deception.

The collateral encouragement in this story (including God’s tacit approval of Israel’s honoring its oath) for us is that God Himself is as zealous for oaths as the Israelites proved to be. And God’s faithfulness to oaths is our hope for salvation. His word would be good enough as it is, of course, but for our sakes He voluntarily reinforces it with an oath:

“So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” (Hebrews 6:17-19).

The troublesome fallout of the ill-advised treaty does not tarry long, as Israel is soon forced to defend Gibeon from a coalition of neighbors irate at their defection (chapter 10). To Israel’s credit, they come to the aid of Gibeon with the same zeal as if defending one of their own. Honorable is the man “who swears to his own hurt and does not change” (Psalm 15:4).

I find something commendable in the Gibeonites, even apart from their obvious cunning (which I think Jesus would commend as he commended the steward of Luke 16). It is not the first time—and won’t be the last—that pagans exhibit more fear of the Lord than the children of God. In the days of the patriarchs, Abimelech hastened to cut a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 21:22-24). Laban noticed that his son-in-law Jacob walked under a blessing (Genesis 30:27-28). Rahab and the Jerichoites trembled at the rumors of Israel’s warrior God (Joshua 2:9-10). The Ninevites were quick to repent when Jonah came to town (Jonah).

Rumors of Israel reaching Gibeon have evidently included not only the might of God but his mercy. The Gibeonites may well have said, as the Syrian courtiers would many years later when they counseled their cornered monarch Benhadad:

“We have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings. Let us put sackcloth around our waists and ropes on our heads and go out to the kings of Israel. Perhaps he will spare your life” (1 Kings 20:31).

The Gibeonites would become woodcutters and water carriers, not full citizens, for Israel. But as for servitude to God, so is servitude to Israel. Better to be a doorkeeper in the house of God (Psalm 84:10) and protected by His shield when the storm of His wrath is unleashed than to take their chances with the collected brawn of the surrounding city-states. As for the latter, as Joshua had said on the other side of the Jordan: “Their protection is removed from them” (Numbers 14:9).

Having said all this, Israel’s “note to self” in the aftermath of the Gibeonite deception was probably: Next time, let’s inquire of the Lord (Joshua 9:14), and not judge matters on appearances.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

When we get to chapter 8, Joshua and Israel are chastened puppies. The residue of the Achan incident is the same as that of the Ananias and Sapphira incident: “Great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11). Any one of you who has known acute fear of the Lord will not abhor it. In fact, I always pray to keep it, for I am never more in my right mind than when I fear God.

So that fear of the Lord will be salubrious and not paralyzing, God now comes speedily with reassurance. He will urge the same practice 1,000 years later in the matter of the man in Corinth who has committed a deviant sex act:

“For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2 Corinthians 2:6-7).

“And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai.” This is not Lucy holding the football in place for Charlie Brown again, only to snatch it from him a second time. Our God is not capricious or mean:

“. . . with the blameless you show yourself blameless . . . with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous” (Psalm 18:25-26).

Israel is back on track. This Achan business has merely been a bump in the relationship, an interruption, nothing more—and all to the long-term good. Something that was unclear has been clarified. Welcome, reality.

I have a friend in prison who tried to hang himself from his cell with a bed sheet in 2001, but was found by a guard making his rounds and then was thrown into solitary confinement for five months, during which time God did a deep work in him. He emerged a new man in Christ, a walking proof that “whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (1 Peter 4:1). I know the man and that he does not regret the chastisement.

Quite amazingly, Israel’s former defeat at Ai now becomes useful as the new shortcut for victory on the second try. (Israel will remember this in Judges 20.) The tactic will be a feint. She will pretend to flee in battle, and it will be believable because she fled before. But this time a hidden garrison will ambush the troops of Ai who are lured out of their city to pursue the decoy.

The way that our past failures and sins are parlayed by God into present and future victories is interesting to contemplate. We must not say, of course, that God worked sin in us in order that we would prosper later. Nor can we draw the conclusion: “Let us do evil, that good may abound.” What we can safely say is that we who have sinned and repented and been restored can now minister out of our scars. The past defeats, in God’s merciful hands, are redeemable and useful.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

It was a party till now. It was a rout. Jericho would be the first of dominos. Israel was “high” on the glory of God—which isn’t a bad high. Then whammo, out of the blue, a major downer, for no apparent reason: ignomy at Ai. Joshua is almost sulking, almost angry at God.

The unexpected and stunning defeat of Israel before Ai reminds me of another party God spoiled, the day His wrath fell on Uzzah in the middle of a parade in God’s honor, on the occasion of the return of the ark from Philistia. David was angry, too.

How often have I impugned God’s justice, all because I didn’t know all the circumstances? The portion of reality we see is always finite; God’s is infinite.

The syllogism seemed air-tight: (1) God promised conquest of the land; (2) Ai is the next up; (3) Ai will be squashed like Jericho. Joshua didn’t even bother sending out many men, for his commanders told him this one would be a piece of cake.

The reader of Joshua 7 knows what Joshua doesn’t. One man in the camp has sinned, hoarded forbidden spoils in his tent. The camp is defiled. The defilement has to be dealt with before we can move forward. It seems severe, unfair.

One is reminded of the incident of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, who are also dispatched unceremoniously for a hidden sin and cover-up. In both cases God is evidently intent on nipping something in the bud from the outset. Today’s lesson: God is to be feared. It is best to get the ground rules straight from the beginning—this is not meanness but kindness. Welcome, reality. God is God and we’re not. He cannot be otherwise. Once we have that clarified we can do business.

Because there is sin in the camp, “therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies” (verse 7). Hidden sin will lead to defeat even if the sin is never discovered or known to a living soul, or even its host. I knew a man who committed adultery, and the affair was buried for 10 years, and the man moved on with his life. But as if the earth itself could hold it in no longer, the immorality was vomited it up in the end. By a series of improbably events, it resurfaced and destroyed him.

There are spiritual laws operating in the universe that we have no idea of. It is the strangest thing.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

I had a dentist who, when he was drilling teeth, used to sing, “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down.”

The old American spiritual is historically accurate as far as it goes, but chapter 6 makes me think it more apropos to sing, “God fit the battle of Jericho.” There was little that the people had to do, seems to me. The incident put me in remembrance of a situation hundreds of years later in which God told King Jehoshaphat, as the Moabites and Ammonites breathed down Israel’s necks:

“You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf. . . . Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you” (2 Chronicles 20:17).

They say “90 percent of success is showing up.” That’s pretty much all that was required of Israel. Although there is one other bit of instructions that I wonder about:

“But Joshua commanded the people, ‘You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth, until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout’” (verse 10).

I always understood that eerie silence of the marchers as a strategy to unnerve the enemy. Just imagine how you would feel as a citizen of Jericho, high up in your fortress that’s suddenly feeling more like a tomb, having heard the rumors of the Red Sea and Jordan crossings, and of what Israel’s God had done to the two Amorite kings Og and Sihon. And now here is this mysterious and unlikely war machine encircling your city—in dead silence. Spooky.

But God does not in fact tell us the purpose of the injunction to silence, and another possibility arises: We recall the reason for Israel’s detainment of 40 years in a desert that should have taken two weeks to walk; it was because of her chronic murmuring, whining, complaining, negativity, faithless talk, and “bad reports” (Numbers 13:32). The tongue is a very consequential organ, leading the whole body either into the paths of victory or defeat in the spiritual realms, releasing the power of God or inviting Satan by agreement. It is as if Joshua, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, said, OK, this time around, let’s not sabotage our venture with loose lips. Let’s keep our mouths zipped so as not to risk breathing a word of unbelief.

Until the blowing of the trumpets! And then shout for all you’re worth!

All blowing of trumpets in the Bible reminds us of the final blowing of trumpets. There are 7 in Revelation, chapters 8-11, these horns to end all horns. And as here on the shores of the Jordan, they announce judgment of God’s enemies, all the Jerichos and Babylons that ever raised their fists against the Almighty.

Then suddenly there is Jesus, the selfsame “Angel of the Lord” who had startled Joshua 5:13-15 when he announced himself as the commander of the armies of God. “And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses” (Revelation 19:14).

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They say that every seven years nearly every cell of your body has died and been replaced. That is more than I can know, but it is fascinating to contemplate, since the new you looks pretty much like the you of seven years ago, and one would not be accused of error to say you were the identical person.

This biological fact provides an interesting example of continuity and discontinuity, of how an entity can be the same entity over time while being composed entirely of different parts from the entity as it was formerly constituted. Similarly, consider the genius of God: He knows how to keep His promise to bring all of Israel into the Promised Land, while at the same time keeping his promise that not a man of the original Israelites (except Joshua and Caleb) will enter the land. Who would have thought of it!

Some parts of the Old Testament are better understood in the New Testament, where we are told plainly the meaning behind the events: “With most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (1 Corinthians 10:5). The cast of characters that opened the book of Exodus have all exited the stage—but without fanfare and below the threshold of your observation, they were picked off one by one. Exodus through Deuteronomy is the story of a slow consuming.

Consider the patience of God: He could very well have killed them all on the spot for their recalcitrant grumbling, but instead He let them die by “natural causes.” It took 40 years for the last of them to have a heart attack or stroke. Let this be a lesson to us that dying of natural causes is not necessarily a sign that a person is right with God. Many have gone gentle into that good night, lulled by modern hogwash about the naturalness of death, only to be rudely awakened on the other side.

In contrast to this gradualness or naturalness in the decimation of rebellious Israel is the un-naturalistic explanation for the sudden cessation of the manna. The same experts with their calculators who gave us reef bridges and fortuitous winds to explain the Red Sea incident will doubtless have meteorological certainties about how the children of Israel came by the manna. Let’s see them wriggle out of the coincidence that, after 40 years, “the manna ceased the day after they ate the produce of the land” (verse 12).

My favorite part of chapter 5 is the end– the appearance of a sword-brandishing angel standing before Joshua, who, seeing that the man is formidable, asks, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” The Angel of the Lord answers “No.” Good answer, too: None of the above. None of your categories. Way beyond what you have conceived: “I am the commander of the army of the Lord” (verse 14).

It is good to be reminded. We sometimes forget that the battle is the Lord’s, and ours, but the humbling privilege is to be in the fight.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.