Joshua 5:1-15. Yesterday\u2018s reading ended with a verse telling us the purpose of the miracle God had just done.\u00a0 We had seen that it was to show the people that Joshua was taking Moses\u2019 place as leader but Joshua 4:24 gives us the bigger picture.\u00a0 There were two reasons listed in that verse.\u00a0 First it was so \u201call the people of the earth may know the hand of the LORD (Yahweh, god\u2019s personal name) is mighty.\u00a0 That\u2019s a very fancy way of saying it proves that God is the real God.\u00a0 The Old Testament tells us in several places that the gods of the nations are powerless fakes (Habakkuk 2:18-19, Isaiah 44:14-19,\u00a0 Jeremiah 10:3-5).\u00a0 The second reason was so the Israelites themselves would give proper respect to God forever.\u00a0 The miracle and the monument were so both groups could remember and know.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s reading we find the Israelites assembled on the west side of the Jordan and few miles from Jericho.\u00a0 They are in the promised land.\u00a0 Time to kick some butt right.\u00a0 Wrong.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 9:1-3 we see that it was actually God who was going to drive the inhabitants out of the promised land.\u00a0 It is clear though that the Israelites would have something to do in the whole process, but the real power behind the conquest was God.<\/p>\n
An important side not in all of this is the different way what is going to happen (or was supposed to happen, since a you may remember from Judges, the nations were not completely removed) sometimes we are told they will be driven out, sometimes we are told they will be dispossessed, and other times we are told they will be utterly destroyed, men women, and children.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 9:5 we are told the people are driven out because of their wickedness.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 20:17 the Israelites were told to kill all the people so that the people would not teach them to sin (disobey God).\u00a0 It may seem harsh but the consequences of sin are much more harsh.\u00a0 Not only does disobedience to God have consequences here and now but there are also eternal consequences.\u00a0 Sin separates us from God forever (See though \u201cThe Old Testament Connection\u201d<\/a> for an explanation of God\u2019s solution).\u00a0 The people living in the land when the Israelites took over not only sinned but encouraged other to do the same.\u00a0 In Mark 9:42-43 Jesus warned of how serious it is to lead someone away from God.\u00a0 These people were headed for Hell and dragging others with them.\u00a0 On the other hand In Deuteronomy 9:6-8 we see that the Israelites had been bad too, and had suffered for their sins.\u00a0 But because of His promises to the whole group of Israelites God was working with them giving them ways to temporarily deal with their sins.\u00a0 All of the offerings and other rituals that they were told to do in Deuteronomy were a way of temporarily \u201ccovering\u201d their sins while they waited for God to permanently deal with them.\u00a0 God is pure and holy but He is also loving and patient.\u00a0 And remember Rahab.\u00a0 She will get a pass on the destruction because she was not leading Israelites away from God but she herself had pur her faith in Him too.\u00a0 In the end the fact that God is providing a way to fix things between us and Him shows us that he is loving and more than fair. We may not like the fact that women and children would be destroyed in this take over but we can trust that God values every human life much more that we ever could (Check out the story in Genesis 16:18-33).<\/p>\n So the Israelites were stopped on the west side of the Jordan waiting to move forward but God had something important for them to do first.\u00a0 They needed to renew their commitment to God.\u00a0 In Genesis 17:7-14 God told Abraham that every male in his household, all of his children and all of his servants, had to be circumcised.\u00a0 Circumcision is a surgical procedure that makes a permanent change to a male\u2019s anatomy.\u00a0 This change would be an identifying mark for Abraham\u2019s descendants and would showing that they were serious about their commitment to God.\u00a0 God told Abraham that any male who was not circumcised would not be a part of the promises to him.\u00a0 We see later in the story that the promises were specifically transferred to the 12 sons of Israel, Abraham\u2019s grandson, and to their descendants the Israelites.\u00a0 Circumcision was to happen when a baby was 8 days old.\u00a0 During the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites had neglected to keep up with this practice.\u00a0 Now it was time to renew their commitment to God.\u00a0 Above all else this whole move was supposed to be an example to the nations and it wouldn\u2019t be much of an example if the people did not have a clear commitment to the one true God.\u00a0 So all of the men 40 and under (there would have been men in the 40-60 age range but they would have been circumcised while living in Egypt) were circumcised.\u00a0 The Israelites then celebrated the Passover Memorial feast in memory of their leaving Egypt (See \u201cThe Old Testament Connection\u201d<\/a> for more on this).\u00a0 The very next day the manna (a miraculous food supply that had been provided by God every day (Saturdays had a special provision on Friday) that the Israelites were in the wilderness) stopped being delivered.\u00a0 The Israelites were in the promised land, a land \u201cflowing with milk and honey\u201d (a figure of speech for an abundant food supply), and ate some food from the land.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s reading ends with Joshua checking out the city before him, fortified Jericho.\u00a0 He saw a man with a sword in his hand.\u00a0 He wanted to know if the man was for or against the Israelites.\u00a0\u00a0 The answer, \u201cI\u2019m the captain of God\u2019s army\u201d.\u00a0 Joshua fell down and worshipped the \u201cman\u201d who accepted the worship.\u00a0 In the Bible God\u2019s representatives never accept worship, they direct it back to God.\u00a0 The fact that this person accepted Joshua\u2019s worship indicates that it was God.\u00a0 This is similar to the appearance to Abraham in Genesis 18.\u00a0 That may have been what Jesus was talking about in John 8:56-57.\u00a0 Bodily appearance of God like this in the Old Testament appear to be a sort of temporary appearance of Jesus before he permanently became\u00a0 \u201cGod in a bod\u201d.\u00a0 When he told Joshua to remove his sandals because he was on \u201choly grounds\u201d it reminds me of god telling Moses the same thing when he went up the mountain where he eventually got the commandments from God (Exodus 3:3-5).<\/p>\n It is interesting in this part of the story that we are told twice that all the men of war had died.\u00a0 This is in the middle of verses telling us about circumcising all the people who were uncircumcised.\u00a0 What does circumcision have to do with \u201cmen of war\u201d?\u00a0 And what about that anyway?\u00a0 Here you are in enemy territory a few miles from a fortified city and you go and circumcise all the men 40 and under.\u00a0 Verse 8 says that they remained in camp until they were healed.\u00a0 No doubt.\u00a0 Once in Genesis 34 one of Jacob\u2019s daughters was raped by the son of the king of a city.\u00a0 The girl\u2019s brothers, Simeon and Levi,\u00a0 were hopping mad about it.\u00a0 The king of the city wanted to make peace about the situation and asked Jacob\u2019s sons to allow his son to marry their sister.\u00a0 In fact he wanted his people to intermarry with their people.\u00a0 The brothers agreed on one condition, all the king\u2019s men be circumcised.\u00a0 So all of the men of the city were circumcised.\u00a0 On the third day after the surgery while they were all laying around in pain Simeon and Levi went in and killed all the men of the city and took their sister home.\u00a0 From a human point of view cirumcision didn\u2019t seem like a very good tactical move.\u00a0 Maybe that is why Joshua was out watching Jericho.\u00a0 I can just imagine him praying, \u201cOh God don\u2019t let them catch us like this.\u00a0 Oh God don\u2019t let them catch us like this.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Bible it talks about hearts being circumcised and uncircumcised.\u00a0 It is a metaphor describing seeing or not seeing spiritual realities.\u00a0 While the men were recovering from their physical circumcision Joshua was having his heart circumcised.\u00a0 God opened his eyes to the fact that He was guarding Israel.\u00a0 He was right there outside of Jericho with His sword.\u00a0 I think that is why the author makes the point about the men of war being dead.\u00a0 He wanted to make us look at things from a human point of view and compare that with what was really going on.\u00a0 Last night Cookie and I went to a small group meeting where a \u201cmissionary\u201d was talking.\u00a0 I put quotes around \u201cmissionary\u201d because the guy was a Christian medical doctor from Egypt.\u00a0 But he had been trained by an organization to be a \u201cwitness\u201d to those around him.\u00a0 He was asked about a current situation in Iran where a Christian pastor has been sentenced to death.\u00a0 His response was \u201call Christians are called to be martyrs that is what the word witness means\u201d.\u00a0 Now\u00a0 I don\u2019t at all think he meant that we are all to go strap bombs to our bodies to intimidate people into becoming Christians.\u00a0 What he meant is that living for God has consequences.\u00a0 Jesus told his followers that the fact that he was persecuted meant that they would be too.\u00a0 But our vies should be that our physical life is small compared to eternity.\u00a0 In the words of Jim Elliot, \u201cHe is no fool who give what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose\u201d.\u00a0 Are we willing to give up ourselves to bring others to Jesus?\u00a0 Are we willing to be living sacrifices every day (Romans 12:1-2)?\u00a0 God circumcise my heart.\u00a0 Give me a vision of what you are doing.\u00a0 Let me fall down on my face in amazement.\u00a0\u00a0 Help me put myself on the laine and trust what you are doing around me and through me.\u00a0 Thank you for letting me be a part of your amazing forever family.\u00a0 Let me be a witness everyday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joshua 5:1-15. Yesterday\u2018s reading ended with a verse telling us the purpose of the miracle God had just done.\u00a0 We had seen that it was to show the people that Joshua was taking Moses\u2019 place as leader but Joshua 4:24 gives us the bigger picture.\u00a0 There were two reasons listed in that verse.\u00a0 First it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}