Day 84: Joshua 9-11

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's March the 25th, and we'll be looking at Joshua 1 through 9.

Now, today's reading brings Israel deeper into the land and deeper into the tension between victory and vigilance.

The battles are being won, the promise is unfolding, and yet right in the middle of newfound success, something subtle goes wrong.

Joshua 9 through 11 shows us a pattern that we often recognize immediately in our own lives. God gives victory, but we must also remain dependent upon Him.

And progress does not remove the need for prayer, in fact, it often increases it.

The more success you have, the more your need for prayer increases.

Now, Joshua 9 begins not with a battle, but with a deception. The Gibeonites, who are one of the

Canaanite tribes who are living in the land, they're terrified by Israel's advance. They've conquered Jericho, now they've conquered

Ai, and what do they do? But they craft a very clever lie. They disguise themselves as distant travelers from a far, remote land, bringing worn -out clothes and stale provisions to make their story believable.

Israel examines the evidence, and it sounds good to them. They listen to their words, and then they make a covenant with them.

We're here to attack the Canaanites, not people from far, distant corners of the world. So they make a covenant.

But one detail changes everything about this event. They do not seek the counsel of Yahweh.

And when the truth is uncovered, the mistake can't be undone because they've made a covenant. The covenant stands, and the

Gibeonites are spared and brought into Israel, not as a conquered people, but as servants, and what seemed like a small oversight will eventually become a long -term thorn in their side.

That decision flows directly into Joshua 10, when the Amorite kings hear that Gibeah has aligned with Israel, and they attack.

And now Israel must defend the very people that they mistakenly protected.

So Joshua marches overnight, and the Lord fights for Israel in unmistakable ways, and the enemy is thrown into confusion.

Hailstones even fall down from heaven, and in one of the most remarkable moments in Scripture, the sun stands still in the sky so that their victory can be completed before the sun goes down and the southern kings fall one after another, and the region is subdued.

Then Joshua 11 expands the scene even further. A massive northern coalition of kings, stronger and more organized than anything

Israel had ever faced before, band together in order to attack Israel, and yet the outcome is the same.

The Lord delivers them. The armies are defeated, their power is broken, and the land begins to come fully under Israelite control.

And the chapter closes with a very simple but powerful statement. Joshua takes the land according to all that the

Lord had spoken, and the promise is no longer distant, but it is becoming a reality.

Now as you read today, I want you to ask the following question. What happens when success leads us to rely on ourself instead of seeking the

Lord? Joshua 9 -11 shows us that victory does not remove the need for our dependence on God.

It exposes how much we need it. When Israel is not depending on God, they make mistakes and they fail, and they eventually end up in dire consequences.

But when Israel repents of that, like in Joshua 10 -11, they have success in their conquest and they are pleasing to God.

And in that way, the central pattern in these chapters is this. Divine victory is always accompanied alongside of human obedience and oversight.

On the one hand, God is unmistakably at work, and the armies are falling and the kings are being defeated, and creation itself is responding to His command, so the progress is undeniable.

But yet on the other hand, Israel stumbles in a much quieter way. Not through rebellion outright, but through assumption.

They see and they evaluate and they decide and they make decisions and they move forward, but they do it without asking

God. And that's the tension. And it speaks directly into our life as well, because failure doesn't often come through obvious acts of egregious sin.

Sometimes it comes through subtle acts of independence, where we are making the decisions.

We are evaluating things. We are doing it in our own strength, and we are moving forward with the wisdom that we have.

And when things are going well, we begin to trust our instincts instead of relying upon the voice of God. And the danger is not only in the crisis moments of our life, but it's in the confidence that no longer remembers to ask

God or to pray to God or to lean on and trust in God. Crisis isn't always our biggest enemy.

It's confidence that leads us not to seek the Lord. And Joshua 9 reminds us that even one decision made without dependence upon the

Lord can introduce consequences that last far longer than the moment itself.

And in that way, these chapters also point clearly to Jesus Christ, because the victories in Joshua anticipate a greater conquest.

Israel defeats earthly kings, but Christ is going to defeat deeper enemies that stand behind them.

Satan, sin, death, and the powers of darkness. And in Jesus's kingdom, he will have his church, his people, his

Israel of God advance to the ends of the earth and to the ends of the world, spreading his kingdom, literally putting down kings and nations and peoples who stand in his way, but bringing in the

Rahabs and the Calibs and all those who are far off who will bow their knee to him.

And at the same time, the story of the Gibeonites introduces a surprising note of grace.

Outsiders who seek mercy from God are brought near even through imperfect and even sinful circumstances.

And that thread runs forward all the way to the gospel, because where people from every single nation, tribe, and tongue are welcomed into God's covenant through faith, they're not welcomed in through perfection.

They're not welcomed in through an honest even coming to God. We all come as sinners to him, and its salvation is always by grace.

We are just like the Gibeonites. And then where Israel occasionally acts without seeking the

Lord, Jesus stands in perfect contrast because he never moves independently from the

Father. Every word, every action, every step that Jesus takes in his life is in complete obedience to the

Father. He says, I don't even speak unless the Father tells me to speak. I don't do unless the Father tells me to do.

His victory, therefore, is not only powerful, but it's a flawless example of having great power and yet having great dependence.

So as you read Joshua 9 through 11 today, I want you to notice how victory and vulnerability exist side by side.

God advances his purposes, yet his people are still learning dependence.

Tomorrow we're going to see how the land is summarized and the story begins to shift from conquest to inheritance as the promise moves from being taken to being distributed.

And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully, and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.