Lesson two is entitled home at last. We're going to be covering chapters one through four of Joshua here. And this is the moment in which they finally arrive at home. The Promised Man is their home.
40 years have passed since God has delivered them from Egypt and promised them that I'm going to bring you into the land that I sort of give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But a long time has passed. So now finally after the Cross of Jordan River, which is going to be really the climactic point of today's lesson here, they're going to arrive home. So that's why I've entitled it home at last.
So we want to dive straight into chapter one, verse one. There's a lot to talk about here. Let's read this first verse where God is going to commission Joshua. And remember, you have to read this immediately following Deuteronomy.
It comes on the heels of Deuteronomy with Moses' death and the last verses of Deuteronomy. Now we open up to Joshua. And this is going to be our big hinge moment. There's just a couple of verses here referencing Moses, the servants of God.
I want to spend a little bit of time just really quickly a few minutes talking about that because it is such a big hinge moment. As now Joshua who has been commissioned and ordained through Moses with a laying on of hands. We talk about all of this in the biographical points of lesson one, the general introduction to the book of Joshua. You want to catch that for sure.
But now Joshua is going to take the helm of the, the baton has been passed to him. So let's read verse one. After the death of Moses, the servants of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of noon, Moses minister. Moses, my servant is dead.
Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people. We'll stop there. We'll stop right there. Okay.
So this is now the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord. I just really wanted to touch upon this because this whole concept of Moses being the servant of the Lord is really, really important. Right. Moses is kind of like a super prophet and a super priest.
Like he's the one who ordained through God's commands, Aaron, the high priest. So clearly Moses has some sort of superiority even over his brother, the high priest. And so why, why is this? What does it mean to be the servant of the Lord?
So just a few thoughts right here. And the first is that this whole concept, the title of him being called the servant of the Lord is actually found back in Numbers chapter 12. What's going on here in this story is that Moses's brother and sister, Miriam and Aaron, are fallen prey to spiritual envy. They're beginning to rebel against their brother and against God, saying, Oh, well, you don't, you think you're all that in a bag of chips?
Well, we're just as good. Our, you know, has God spoken through us as well. And God has to really correct them. And when he corrects Moses's brother and sister Miriam and Aaron, he says, and this is back in Numbers chapter 12 verse 3.
Well, God's, the scripture say that the man Moses was very meek, more than all the men that were on the face of the earth. And so the Lord goes on to correct Miriam and Aaron, saying in verse 6, Here my words, if there was a prophet among you, I the Lord meet myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses.
He is entrusted with all of my house. With him, I speak mouth to mouth clearly, not in dark speech. And he beholds the form of the Lord. All right.
So this title, the servant, the Lord goes back to Numbers 12. And it's really, really important. So the first thing I want to point out is that the man, it says the man Moses was the meekest and most humble of any men over the cross face of the whole earth. That's a pretty big deal.
And by the way, Moses probably didn't write that. Right. If you're the humblest guy around, you don't raise your hand a bit. Just so everybody knows I'm the humblest guy here, right?
You don't do that. Maybe Joshua wrote it, maybe Samuel wrote it, maybe Ezra wrote it. We don't know who wrote that line. I doubt it was Moses.
But nevertheless, it states that he was the meekest man on the face of the earth. Okay. So that humility is really, really important. That humility is crucial.
And by the way, that also points forward to Jesus, another way in which Moses is the type of Christ. Because if you remember back, if you go actually go forward to Matthew, this is actually really important verse for another reason I'm going to share in about 15 minutes or so. So you want to keep this verse in the back of your brain. But Jesus will say at the end of Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easing my burden is light. That's a beautiful verse, one of my favorite verses. But there's a lot of typology in it.
One number one right now, my point is because he's a new Moses figure, right? So if Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth, Jesus comes into his eye and meek and lowly of hearts, he's a new Moses figure because he will bring about a new deliverance, right? Okay, great. We talk a lot about that in the books of Moses.
But I want you to keep that verse in mind because there's another really important word that I want to draw out of there later on when we're talking about rest in the land. Okay. So in any case, Moses is humble. He is meek.
Humility is key because he is humble. Now he is the servants of God's household. So in Hebrew, the word is al-haba'i, which literally means the over the household, right? He's head of the household.
He's the prime minister. He's the grandpuba. He's the head honcho. He's the man in charge.
So God has placed Moses in charge of all of his cahal. All of his assembly are gathering in Greek, at Klesia, the church, right? So Moses is the chief man who stands in God's place leading over the entire assembly of Israel. So that's what I mean, like he's a super prophet and a super priest.
And by the way, when he says here, he's the meekest man that faced the earth, a little Bible trivia for you. That's the only time there are numbers chapter 12 verse three that that word is used for an individual in the Old Testament. All right. It's pretty significant.
So Moses is a big deal and the humility is key for his role over the whole people of Israel. And the catechism really points this out. I got a quote for you here in catechism 2576, which says Moses converts with God often and at length, climbing them out into here and treat him and coming down to the people to repeat the words of his God for their guidance. Moses is entrusted with all my house.
So it's quoting numbers 12 here with him as the face clearly not in riddles for Moses was very humble more so than anyone else in the face of the earth. All right. So catechism 2576 quotes this whole story. But I've so in this transition phase in this hinge moment as it passes from Moses, the servants of the Lord to Joshua.
This is my point. Joshua's got to learn to be humble and I'm going to share with you here in chapter one. This is going to be I think the call for Moses from God himself be humble, trust in God rely on God in all things. So Joshua's the understudy of Moses is going to learn from this example.
He too will be humble. He will rely on God in all things and that's going to be the source of his victory. Okay. So I just want to share that a little bit.
Let's move on now. Keep reading verse two. I'll read verse two. So right now he is the servant of Moses towards the end of his career.
Now as he takes the people in the promised man, he will be called the servant of God. Right. So it's kind of like, you know, the gospel's talk about how we all want to hear these famous words. Right.
Well, they're famous words. We want to hear them when we get to heaven. Well done. My good and faithful servants even faithful over little.
I will set you over much. Right. That's kind of what's going on with Joshua. He is faithful and now God is rewarding him.
Now he's not the same category or classes. Moses Moses is unique. He's a sweet generation. He's of his own general, but nevertheless, Joshua is going to do very, very well.
All right. Now that verse two. Moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore rise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people into the language.
I'm getting to them to the sons of Israel. Every place that the soul of your foot will tread upon. I have given to you as I promised Moses and he goes on to talk about the territory. It's going to be a vast territory from the wilderness and his Lebanon as far as the great river, the river you frades all the land of the hit types of great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.
All right. So here they are, Moses and sorry, I was on my brain right Joshua and the people of Israel are in campus. This place called Chateem. You have to be very careful.
There's a little swear word hidden in that location. So Chateem is the way you want to pronounce that. So they're on the plains of Mount Moab at Chateem. They're across the Jordan River and this is where God is calling Joshua to pick up that baton and he's saying, I'm going to give you this land as a gift.
And so he promised the patriarchs and I've got some references here in Genesis. We talked about that in the last lesson. He promises Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when he renews these promises and vows and I'm going to give the land to your inheritance. You will be a great multitude and you will have the land.
You will be a great nation. Right. So the land is God's gift and that's really, really important. It is a gift.
It is nothing that they earn. So I got a little short quote for you from one of the sources that I provided in your suggested reading. It says the prolific attention paid in the introductory chapter to the land as a divine gift is not without significance. It suggests that the successful penetration and occupation of kingdom is the result of donation rather than conquest.
And that is really crucial. It is donation. It is gift. In fact, Moses goes into great detail and a great length back in Deuteronomy.
I think chapter seven through nine and thereabouts. He says over and over and over again, God is giving you the land not because you're strong or you're powerful or you're a great nation or because you're good or because you're wealthy. None of those things. In fact, you're the opposite of all those things, right?
But he's giving you the land because he's faithful to your fathers. So that's why I entitled this Bible study. God's promise fulfilled as opposed to the conquest of the land because really the first major theme is the fulfillment of God's promises. God will always keep his promises.
And the conquest really comes through obedience to God, right? And I think that's the proper way to read this book. Okay. Now, all of that is really, really significant as well because as we read the Bible typologically and we see what God is trying to teach us about Jesus and the church and salvation, then we're going to understand a little bit more by reading through typology.
And the big lesson here is that remember that the land is a symbol of heaven. The promise land there in Canaan is a symbol of a heavenly promise land that we will inherit at the end of our lives. So what that means is that salvation in the promise land of heaven is a pure gift. It's a gift of grace.
It's nothing that we can ever earn. It doesn't matter how many rosaries you pray. It doesn't matter how much money you get to the poor. It doesn't matter how much you fast or sacrifice.
It has to do with God's grace. However, we have to cooperate with that grace. God does make this gift available to every single person everywhere. However, very few people actually cooperate with that grace receive it as a gift and live in loving obedience to God.
So that's the whole point here. Yes, God is giving the land to Joshua and to the Israelites, but they're going to have to conquer the land as well. Secondarily by cooperating with God. Same thing is true with us.
If we want to get to heaven, we must lovingly obey the divine will. Okay, that's the typology. There's more to come on that. So as far as the territory is concerned, something really important is reading the book of Joshua is that they don't conquer all of that territory here in Joshua.
Really, there's a couple of verses that give us the indication that the conquest was probably only about seven years under the leadership of Joshua. So of course, they're not going to capture everything in seven years. All right, so this territory will not actually fall under Israel's control until the time of David and Solomon. And so I got a reference here for your notes.
You can check that out if you desire. I just want to point out if the whole land is not conquered under Joshua, but the good portion of it is and they're able to lay a foundation. All right, excellent. Let's move on now and see what God is going to say to Joshua.
I call this the divine pep talk. God is giving Joshua a pep talk encouraging him to move forward, right? And move forward and conquer. So here we go in verse five.
No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life as I was with Moses. So I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and of good courage for you shall cause this people to inherit the language I swear to give to their fathers.
Only be strong and very courageous being careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Turn out from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. And then you shall make your way prosperous and then you shall have good success.
How by not commanded you be strong and of good courage be not frightened neither be dismayed or the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. That is a great that's a great pep talk. Now what's beautiful about this is that it is organized structure these series of verses here from five to nine. It's structured according to a literary chiasm.
Now you're not going to find this in your commentaries. I honestly haven't found this anywhere, but it's so very clearly obvious that this is a literary chiasm structure. And I've got this down here for your notes, but a chiasm or a chyastic structure is when you're going to have a series of statements that follow a pattern, right? So you're going to have a statement A statement B statement C statement D to go on forever.
You know, it could be huge structures or short ones depending on what you're reading, but then it'll go back down the same pattern. So you're going to have C prime and B prime and A prime. So the A's parallel the B's parallel the C's parallel, but right in the middle. This is the thing that is centered up the whole thing centered upon is statement D.
Okay. So that's what the chiasm is. So what is the focus here? What's going on?
Well, you follow the notes that you read it carefully. You'll see that there is a pattern. Think of it as like sandwiches and various layers within sandwiches to kind of like that. So it begins by saying, I will be with you.
God will be with you. I will be with you. So be strong and a good courage. And there's a logic to that as well.
You should be strong. You should have good courage because God is with you. You're not strong and courageous because you've got an incredible, you know, I don't know, military mind and you're able to conquer everyone you face. No, you're strong.
You have good courage because God is with you and therefore point C you will cause the people to inherit the land. There's a lot I could say about the word inherit. That's a very important word. The New Testament uses it as well in terms of us inheriting the land that Christ has redeemed for us.
Okay. Open up for us. But in any case, this is the segue. I'll be with you point A point B be strong and a good courage point C will cause the people to inherit the land.
If then point D is meditate on the book of the law, right meditate on it. Do be faithful to it. Obey it. Do not depart from it from the right hand or the left hand.
That's the center of all of it. Then it comes back down the same path. See you will have good success. B be strong and good courage.
In fact, a God is with you. So you see it as beautiful literary chayads and this great little structure here where God's pet talk to Joshua has a focus on with you. Be strong and good courage. You're going to bring the people into the land.
You're going to have great success. Success. But why? If you meditate on God's law daily be faithful to it completely 100%.
That's the big point. Meditation on the law and fidelity to the law is the path of true wisdom as a big big point for all the wisdom literature and the Old Testament. And of course, the New Testament as well, what true wisdom is of God versus the false wisdom of men and worldly wisdom, but to have true wisdom and to have true success. The source of your success is fidelity to the law and meditation upon it.
That is huge, right? That's huge. And of course, the typology for us is very, very stark, very obvious and very powerful. If we want to go into the land and have good success spiritually speaking, and of course, within the world as well, but if we want to have good success, if we want to go into the land, guess what?
You have to be faithful to God's law and you've got to meditate on it regularly. You just can't study scripture or learn to faith a little bit here, a little bit there. You've got to have a rhythm of life in which daily or weekly you're meditating on God's word. Read it when you wake up or when you go to bed or just kind of have some routine that works well for your plan of life there.
And that's how we're going to have great success to get into the land because God is with us, right? So the typology is huge, huge, huge on that. Meditating on God's law will get us into the promise land of heaven and of course fidelity to it as well.