Victory comes by faith in God and obedience to His word, not military power or numerical superiority. Faithful obedience is the victory. This truth is communicated through the lives of the people you will meet in this book, such as Joshua, Caleb, Rahab, Achan, the Canaanites, the Gibeonites, the Anakim, Eleazer, and Phinehas. The Israelities, led by Joshua, are victorious over their enemies against all odds. They conquer and divide the Promised Land which demonstrates the faithfulness of God toward His people by keeping His promises.

Let's pray. Father, I praise you for showing us how your ways of victory work, how you reveal to us how it might go well with us through these different testimonies of your glory. And I pray that you would help us to understand this book, especially as we read it, that it would come and minister to us in the place of our need now. Amen. The book of Joshua is an extremely useful book, and you'll see how useful it is as we go on here in this discussion.

The main message of this book is that victory comes by faith in God and obedience to his word. It doesn't come by military power, it doesn't come by numerical superiority, it doesn't become by your great strategy. It comes because God has designed it. And God has designed victory for the obedient, and he has designed destruction to the disobedient. And that's really, really important to understand here.

This book is about faithful obedience as victory. Victory, confidence in God, overcoming enemies, courage to obey the word of God is critical in this book. And what you find is a command that's repeated a number of times in the book, and it's this, be strong and courageous. You'll bump into that command, be strong and courageous. The book opens with it, and you'll bump into that command.

So that's the main message of the book. The genre of this book I think needs to be considered. This is the first of the 12 historical books. We've just finished the Pentateuch. You know, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Now we're, we've entered into another section of Holy Scripture, the historical section. And there are 12 historical books after Deuteronomy, and this is the first one. And they describe the conditions that existed in occupying the promised land. There are three different kinds of these historical books. The first are the theocratic books.

That would be Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. These books encompass the timeframe of 1405 to 1043 BC, and they show the conquest of Canaan and the dark time of the judges. These are the theocratic books. Then there are the monarchial books, which speak of the kings of Israel. These historical books include Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, and they compose the timeframe of 1043 BC to 585 BC.

Those are the monarchial books about the kings of Israel. We're in one of those right now, Isaiah. We're in that time frame, about 700 B.C. Then there are the restoration books, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. These compose the time frame of 536 BC to 420 BC.

You have these various time frames of the historical books. The conquest of the land and the terrible time of the judges, the time of the kings, and then the time after the Babylonian captivity where the people return to the land. These are the various histories. And if you can keep those sorted out in your mind, you can understand this whole section of the Old Testament and get the timeline right. It's really critical that you get the timeline right so that you can see where these books fit.

But what these books all say is the same thing. God is moving history to a glorious end. He has designed the end and He's taking everything to that glorious end. God will get you there. There's this highway that God has prepared for his people, and he's gonna get you to the end of the highway.

We find that same thing in Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, these three that speak of the time of the conquest and the time of the judges. Those three books are the ones that we've just launched into now. They're all historical books. Now the key verse, it's indisputably Joshua 1, 8, and 9. So if you could look at that, Joshua 1, 8 and 9, this is the key verse that really explains the whole book.

This verse is worthy of memorizing and meditating on because it really does contain a secret of usefulness, a secret of courage, a secret of being able to see life rightly. Verse eight, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage.

Do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. This is such a critical passage of scripture for everything in your life, and it really does give you the secret of life. And the secret of life is that you have the book of the law in your mouth. That is what is in your mind and your heart and therefore in your mouth. And when that is true, you will know something.

It's the most important thing in the world that the Lord your God is with you, wherever you go. You know, in every conversation and every deed that you do and every activity, every project, if you can think about this matter here, that the most important thing for that moment is that the book of the law should not depart from your mouth. You'll find the key to life. And when you find yourself there, it will be fulfilled that the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. In that sense, life is really simple.

We overcomplicate life so much and we long for things that aren't really important, but the most important thing is that the book of the law is in your mouth, And that's why this is really the key verse in this book. This book is about conquering and dividing the promised land. It demonstrates the faithfulness of God and keeping his promises toward his people because the very conquering of the land is a fulfillment of a promise that God made to his people. You can look back and say, God kept his promises there, he'll keep his promises to me. And you can see this pattern in every book of the Bible.

Here's another pattern that you see in this book that you see in many of the books of the Bible, and that is God's fulfilling His promises is against all odds. You don't see how it can work out, but God makes it work out. And the fulfillment of God's promises in your life are going to happen against all odds. Faith has to do with just believing that what God has said is true. Those who are conquering the land, They're going to be going against fortified cities.

They're going to be going against giants. They're going to go against armies that are way, way better outfitted than they are. And yet God has appointed them to have victory. The author is Joshua. We learn that in Joshua 24 26 and it's implied in chapter 5 verse 6.

Joshua's name means salvation. It means Yahweh saves And Joshua is a remarkable man. Joshua was a spy. Joshua was a farmer. Joshua was a military man.

Joshua was a dad. He wore a lot of hats. And it's interesting, you know, when you read the narratives in this historical book, it becomes very clear that his victories have nothing to do with his brilliance. It has to do with God's strength and God's sovereign hand. That's one thing that everybody needs to get resolved in their own mind as they go on in life is that the victories are of the Lord and God is in control.

And you know the race isn't to the swift as Solomon says and God provides the unfair advantage in your life. You trust in God, you look to Him, you can have confidence you have the unfair advantage in this life. There are so many illustrations of this man Joshua and the kind of leader that he was. I'm just gonna fast forward for a minute to chapter 24, because in chapter 24 you see so many compelling marks of Joshua the man. And, you know, first of all, Joshua was a leader of men and he gathered them together to serve God.

In chapter 24 verse 1 you see this, Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem and he called the elders of Israel for their heads, for their judges, for their officers and they presented themselves before God. Joshua called men to come before God. The very best men in this world call men to come before God. Not to come to do silly things, but to come before Almighty God, be that kind of man. Be a kind of man when you're with your brothers, you're calling them to God, and you'll find yourself like Joshua.

Secondly, he had a very keen sense of the sovereignty of God. You see this in chapter four, verses two through eight. Joshua didn't view history as some kind of impersonal process. He viewed that God was glorifying himself, you know, through his acts and history. And you see this in his language in chapter 4, 24 verses 2 through 8, where he speaks of what happened in Egypt.

He makes it very clear that he knows that God did it all. God was the one that did everything to release the captives from Egypt. He also had a vision of victory. Joshua believed that no enemy was too great for God. And you see that in verses 9 through 13 in chapter 24.

God was greater than the odds. And to be outnumbered, to be outclassed meant nothing to Joshua. I think that's really important to remember. He shows us what it means to trust in God. A fourth thing about Joshua is that he called men to follow God from the heart.

And you see that in verses 14 through 15 in chapter 24. He placed a high priority on genuineness over outward expression. He knew that a heart full of affection for God was what was beautiful in the world. And so he called men to worship Him in sincerity and in truth. He says, now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord. He called people to do two things. First of all, to do the outward act of conformity and reject the gods of this world, but not just as an outward act, to do it in sincerity and in truth. Those two things wedded together, you find there in Joshua. Fifth, Joshua wouldn't follow the crowd.

And you see that in verses 16 through 18. And this is where Joshua's family comes in. Joshua knew that the devil wants to scatter the souls of your family all over the place and destroy them. So he says to the people that he gathered, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And in doing so he was declaring that that He wasn't going to be following the corrupt people in Israel.

He was going to follow the Lord. He wouldn't follow the crowd. Sixth, he really had a sense of the holiness of God. You see that in verse 19 in chapter 24. But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord for he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. He had a sense of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of sin. And He recognized evil in the people. He didn't have rose-colored glasses, but he understood how vulnerable people were to sin.

Seventh, he had a sense of the judgment of God in verses 20 through 22, where he says, If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, God is going to consume you. You know, Joshua wasn't one of those guys to put pillows around the judgment of God. He wanted to say it as it really was. And so he's helpful and a valuable leader. Eighth, he identified idolatry and he denounced it.

You get this in verses 22 through 25. It always takes courage to put away the idols. Joshua had courage to put away his idols. Often we want to coddle our idols and cuddle them rather than to throw them. But Joshua wasn't afraid to throw his idols and to encourage everybody to do the same.

Ninth, he made memorials to commemorate devotion to God. You see this in verses 26 through 28. He took a large stone and he set it up under an oak tree by the sanctuary of the Lord. And then Joshua said to all the people, Behold this stone shall be a witness to us for it has heard all the words of the Lord, which he spoke to us." Joshua gathered people together to commemorate the ways of God and the things that God had done. Tenth, he finished strong.

This is perhaps one of the most encouraging things about Joshua. You know you find in the Bible some of the men don't finish that strong Like Solomon, so surprising that he wouldn't finish strong Not Joshua. He did finish strong. He was 110 years old And he was buried He loved the Lord to the end of his life. He followed God.

He never fell away at the end of his life. He was also a godly influence in his generation. Verse 31 says this, that Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had known the works of the Lord which he had done for Israel. As long as Joshua was alive, the people followed God, but guess what? When he died, the people fell into apostasy.

And we'll find the same pattern when we get into the book of Judges. God gives a judge to rescue the people, he dies, and they slip back into apostasy. He gives them another judge, they're rescued, he dies, the people return to their apostasy. You know what? It matters.

Leaders matter, actually. I think that's one of the lessons here. You know, the Puritans, some of the Puritan writers believe that the death of a godly man was a judgment against the people, because it's a blessing to have leaders who lead the way Joshua did. And then the last thing, Joshua was qualified to lead. He followed the Lord fully in his own life.

You read that in Numbers 32, verse 12. He possessed spiritual wisdom. You read that in Deuteronomy 34, 9. He was indwelt by the Spirit. You read that in Numbers 27, 18.

He was qualified to lead. He was a man who had given his whole heart to God So he really is just one of these marvelous leaders in Scripture to help us understand what it means to be a man and what it means to be a leader. Let's talk about some key people in the book of Joshua. Of course, You have Joshua, you have Rahab, you have Caleb, you have Achan. Those are some of the big names in the book.

There are more. You run into lots of tribes. We'll talk about that a little bit later. It's always interesting to me to think about who you meet, who you meet in these different books of the Bible. Because when you meet someone in the book of the Bible, you're also at the same time meeting someone in your life, someone in your world.

You might be meeting yourself. In many of the characters in the Bible, you're actually meeting up with yourself. But as you read through these various characters that appear in the historical narrative, think about, who am I? Am I anything like that? Or is there anybody around me like that?

You know, you're going to run into some fascinating characters and peoples in this book. Okay, let's kind of walk through the book. Just in terms of understanding the outline of the book, it's a really simple outline. Chapters 1 through 12 are about the conquest of Canaan, and that takes seven years. Chapters 13 through 24 are all about the settlement of Canaan and dividing up the land between the tribes, and that takes 18 years.

So we're talking about a 25-year time span that we see in this book here. Let's begin here in this first section. In chapter 1 through 5 there's this whole change of leadership and preparation for conquest to invade these Canaanite cities. In chapter 1 verse 1 here's what we read, after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun Moses assistant saying Moses my servant is dead now therefore arise go over this Jordan you and all this people to the land which I am giving to them the children of Israel every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you as I said to Moses. So that's the beginning of this whole matter of conquest And then you find this reconnaissance mission in chapter two, this famous scene where Joshua and Caleb go in to survey the land.

And they go out through the land of Canaan and as a result, you know, people are terrified. They come back with a report they say hey there are giants in this land and the 12 spies brought back this report and the people were afraid and would not go into the land and it was a tragedy and that's what you find in chapter 2 they did not believe the Lord you remember what we just read in chapter 1 every place where the soul of your foot will tread I have given you And this was the second time they'd heard that. They didn't believe it. They just didn't believe. And it just illustrates how tragic it is not to believe the Lord.

He makes a promise. You can rest your whole life on that promise, but they couldn't do it, so they wouldn't go into the land. They crossed over the Jordan River, and the water stopped as they passed on dry ground in chapter 3. And when they crossed the Jordan, what did Joshua lead them to do? Joshua led them to do what you find every godly man in the Old Testament doing.

He sets up an altar. Like if you study Abraham and Lot, it occurs to you that Abraham is always setting up altars. Abraham is always worshiping God wherever he goes, not Lot. You never see him setting up an altar. He's a man on his own.

He's figuring his life out all by himself. But here you have Joshua. He sets up an altar of stones that they gathered from the bottom of the Jordan River. You can read about that in chapter 4. And why did they do that?

They did it to remind them of what God did in parting the Jordan River. Now the Jordan River was probably a river they could have built a bridge over pretty easily, wasn't that big, but it was a river that God stopped up and they wanted to commemorate this miracle of God. It was God encouraging them, you know, telling them, yes, I am going to keep my promises. I'll even part this water. So they set up stones on the other side after they had crossed the Jordan.

And then after they crossed the Jordan, when you get into chapter 5, something really interesting happens. Joshua takes out flint knives and he circumcises them all. He circumcises the men who are under 40, who crossed over the Jordan. So what is that all about? I thought God, through Abraham, called for circumcision.

Why did all these men have to be circumcised? Well, for one thing, it's pretty clear that they weren't practicing circumcision while they were in the wilderness. They were disobeying God and you'll find this, you'll find this in the various historical narratives where the people of God are not doing something. Like, you know, the Babylonian captivity. One of the reasons for the Babylonian captivity is the people quit celebrating the Sabbath.

And God judged them for not celebrating the Sabbath and he put them into captivity because of that They weren't practicing what God had commanded a long time ago. They were just living their lives their own way and so here every man under 40 years old who crossed the Jordan is now getting circumcised with a flint knife. You can find that in chapter five, verses two through six. At that same time, Joshua has an encounter with the commander of the army of the Lord. And who is that?

Well whoever it is told him to take off his sandals because it was holy ground in the same way that God told Moses to take off his sandals because it was holy ground. You see this in chapter 5 verses 13 through 15. Joshua is confronted with the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is in the book of Joshua. So there are all these things happening in chapter 5.

Here's another thing. The manna ceased. 40 years in the wilderness, manna. They're fed from heaven. Now they're going to the Promised Land.

It's a land full of milk and honey. They're living off the land now. They're living in a completely different environment. They're out of the desert now. They're in a land of fruitfulness.

And so everything has changed as they move into this land. Okay, so that's what you find in chapters 1 through 5. Now, In chapters 6 through 12 is the conquest of the land. These first five chapters really are about preparation for invasion, the circumcision, you know, the commander of the armies of the Lord appears to Joshua. Joshua commands the people and tells them, not this book of the law, to part from your mouth.

He's giving them the basic instructions for going in. And then in the conquest is recorded in chapters 6 through 12, the first conquest that we bump into is the conquest of Jericho. It almost seems ridiculous to think about how Jericho was conquered. It definitely was not conquered by military might. It wasn't conquered by some military strategy.

How is it conquered? Well, it was conquered as a result of men who were listening to God, and God told them to do some of the most ridiculous things. At least they seem ridiculous to me. At dawn, walk around the city seven times. On the seventh day walk around seven times and blow trumpets and shout.

Is that any way to take over a city? Well, I think one of the messages here is that God will do His will His own way. If you obey Him, He'll fulfill His promises. You know, the walls of the city fall down and they're commanded to destroy everything. Everything in the city is to be, quote, devoted, meaning everything is going to die in the city.

And God didn't always ask his people to do that in every place. But in the places that he does, it really is a picture of divine judgment. It's a parable. It's a type to help you, to help us realize that God will absolutely, vanquishingly destroy all evil. Then in chapter seven, you find the sin of Achan.

He coveted and took what was forbidden to be taken. There was silver and gold in a Babylonian garment, and he took them and he hid them under the ground, in the ground under his tent. And Achan took the accursed things, the things that should have been destroyed. He thought, who's going to know? What does it really matter?

And he took those things and he becomes an illustration for all of us of how devastating it is to you, your family, and your whole nation when you cover up sin. You, your family, and your nation when you cover up sin. Now, a time would fail me to explain how many times I've seen this happen in real life today. When people cover up their sin, the dramatic effect on them personally and their family and on the nation is in play. And that's what you see here.

Covering up sin destroys churches. It causes enormous amount of harm and that's why in the New Testament you have, you know, rules for the disciplining of elders and other various kinds of sins that need to be dealt with in the church. You know, Ananias and Sapphira are sort of a New Testament example of what happened with Achan. They lied. They tried to cover up the truth.

And as a result, they were killed by God. Chapter 7 verse 13 gives us the principle about sin and repentance. I'll quote it, you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from your midst. Sin weakens. Sin will cause you not to be able to have victory over your enemies.

And what you find is that with Achan, you know, what happened to Achan? He was stoned along with his whole household. Here's a reality. Whatever the head of the household does has a pretty dramatic effect on the rest of the family. You've seen it.

You've seen it. You've seen a father fall into egregious sin. It has just a remarkable effect on the whole family. It's always been that way and it will always be that way. Here though the family dies with him.

So then after the battle of Ai, Joshua reviews the covenant by reading the law of Moses. He gathers the children of Israel according to the command of God through Moses to meet at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. Mount Ebal is the mountain of cursing, Mount Gerizim, the mountain of blessing. And the children of Israel were to go up in those mountains and to shout back and forth the blessings and the curses of the law, just to affirm that God blesses those who obey him and he curses those who disobey him. And it's really a very interesting scene on Mount Ebal.

You really you have these peaks and mountains and they really are formed, you know, in a concave way. And you can't even the way I understand it, you can hear a long distance even now. So they're reading the law of God there. Chapter eight, verse thirty four reads like this. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded, which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them.

So he affirms the covenant there and reads the law of God. And all the children are there and everybody's there. It must have taken quite a while, but it was just a very dramatic scene. And then in chapter 9, the law is read and the blessings and the curses. And then You find this in this chapter, the deception of the Gibeonites.

Now, Joshua was under orders not to make a covenant with anybody, with none of these nations. And the Gibeonites showed up to deceive them. They showed up in tattered clothes, rotten bread, wine that was stinking. And they were acting like they'd come from a long country. Oh, we've come from such a long way.

They came from next door. They were a bunch of actors. They didn't want to be killed. So they came in and Joshua made a covenant with them. He shouldn't have done it.

And they did not seek the Lord. That's how it happened. And so, when it was found out, they made slaves out of them. They made them woodcutters and water carriers. They made slaves out of them.

They were thinking pragmatically. God told them to destroy them. But instead, they said, hey, here's an opportunity. We have some workers here. So they turned them into workers.

And it was a disaster. In chapter 10, there's a defeat of five kings. The son stands still. One of the great miracles of the Bible. It says there in chapter 10 what it says when Moses was standing at the banks of the Red Sea and the Egyptian army was pounding down to kill them.

The Lord will fight for you. So that brings us to chapter 12. So you have the conquest of the land in chapters one through 12. Now let's just click through some of the scenes on chapters 13 to 24. This is the settlement of Canaan dividing up to the land.

Well, the last part of this took seven years. Now this next part takes 18 years to just sort things out in the land. And so you find these various settlements that are taking place. You know, there's the settlement of the east of the Jordan in chapter 13, the west of the Jordan chapter 14, the settling of the religious community in chapter 20 and 21. There are provisions and resources given to the Levites.

In this section, you still have a remarkable testimony of dealing with the kings. Now, I want to just go back to the first section. In chapter 11, 23, I'm just going to read a little bit of this. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There is not a city that he made peace with, that made peace with the children of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon, all the others, they took in battle.

So the Hivites and the Gibeonites, they didn't exterminate them. The rest of them they engaged in battle, But what we learn is that they didn't utterly destroy all the other nations and cultures that were there, and that proved to be a real disaster. You know, in the midst of all these battles, there's something that is said about them that it bears witness to this whole matter of the Lord fought for Israel. And it says in chapter 23 verse 9, One man among you shall chase a thousand. Chapter 23, verse 14, not one word of Joshua failed.

Not one word. It was a time of victory. It was a time when the power of God came upon the armies of Israel and they moved through and they conquered. And there it is, you have this man, Joshua, you know, saying, as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. That was the key to Joshua's whole life.

As for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. In that statement, you find a number of really critical things. First of all, he's making a very personal statement about his own life and his own heart, as for me. He's setting himself apart for God. And then he says, as for me and my house, He understood that his household belonged to him, that he was the head of his house.

He understood that he was responsible. He understood that it was his job to lead his house. And then he says, we, we will serve the Lord. He understood that his family was a unit. They weren't just a bunch of individuals going off in their own direction, but that they were a unified we, not an individualistic me.

Every father needs to understand this. When he has a family, he brings his family together, and it's we now. We are going to work together. We are going to live together. We're going to go, you know, cut our way through life together.

Every father needs to understand that. You young men, when you finally get married and have children, just recognize One of your great responsibilities is to ensure that your family is not a story of the individualistic me, but it's about a unified we. Understanding that is really critical. God has it that fathers would gather their families together. Joshua says for what?

We will serve the Lord. The word serve there in Joshua 24 has to do with worship. Your spiritual service of worship in Romans chapter 12 When Joshua said we will serve the Lord That was a word that was primarily used for worship. We will worship the Lord So Joshua was declaring that His family was going to be a family that worshipped God. That God was going to be the center of everything for them.

And so he was declaring all these things about himself, about his family, about the unity of his household, and also the whole focus of their life together, and that was to worship God. It is for men to lead their families in worship. It's that responsibility that he has given. So Joshua dies when he is a hundred and ten years old. Joshua 24, you know, tells the story of it.

It's such a remarkable, you know, ending of the story. Joshua 24, 12 through 29. You know, you'll read it when you go through it, but it's, it really gives you a sense of Joshua's whole life there in the last chapter of the book. Just a couple more things to cover. Item number six on your outline, troubling situation, Total extermination.

This is one of the things that troubles people when they read the Bible that God would actually command Joshua to exterminate every everybody Men women and children, you know admittedly it's a hard pill to swallow for anybody But God did call for the total extermination of the Canaanites. This is the sharram in Hebrew, the total destruction that was required. And here are a few things that we can say about that. First of all, it was designed to remove evil from the land, separating the people of God from the defilements of paganism. Now, remember who these people were.

They were a decadent, corrupt people. They were killing their children. They were sacrificing their children on altars. They were burning their babies. I mean, the moral corruption of the Canaanites was astonishing.

If you walked into there, you would be absolutely stunned at the evil that was running rampant in that society. God desired to take that society down, to end it, to end the killing of the children, to end the worship of Baal, to end the corrupt practices and the defiling things that were going on. If you look at the Canaanite gods and what they were all about, You'll get an idea of how absolutely destructive they were to everything. How they were complete unravelings of all sense of morality, all sense of goodness. The Canaanite gods were just absolutely despicable.

Their high places were places of sexual immorality. They were places of the killing of children. Why did God want to exterminate these people? Because they were so destructive to the people of God, and God didn't want his people to be polluted by them. Secondly, God's judgment against the Canaanites is a foreshadowing of his judgment of the world that rejects him.

Ultimately, the total destruction was a foreshadowing of the final judgment. And third, it's reflective of the grace of God to offer a means of escape. God has mercy on the house of Rahab, and Rahab is incorporated into the family of God. The destruction was mercy for a Gentile harlot by the name of Rahab who ends up in the line of Christ. So the destruction was also a picture of mercy.

Let me give you a couple of other verses to help you understand this whole doctrine of total destruction. If you go to Jeremiah 27, verse 5, What you learn is that God declares that He has the right to give the earth to anyone He pleases. And in Jeremiah 27, 5, He says, I have made the earth the man and the beast that are on the ground, and by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it to whom it seemed proper to me. And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and the beasts of the field. I have also given him to serve him So God in Jeremiah 27 declares that he has the exclusive right to give the land to whomever he wants and the second Thing is that in Deuteronomy 9 1 God makes it very clear that the people of God are gonna take the land away from the Canaanites.

And in Deuteronomy 9-1 we read, Here O Israel, you are to cross over the Jordan today and to go in and dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know and whom you have heard it said, who can stand before the descendants of Anak. Therefore understand today that the Lord your God is He who goes before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you. So you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has said to you. Do not think in your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying, because of my righteousness, the Lord has brought me into to possess this land.

But it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out from before you that's one of the critical keys for understanding why the why the total extermination God was driving wickedness out of that land, and that's why He did it. And then in verse five, in chapter nine of Deuteronomy, He continues, it is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go and possess their land. But because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out before you, and that he may fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your fathers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So why is all this happening? To drive out wickedness in a land, to cleanse it, and to fulfill the promises of Abraham.

To demonstrate again that God will preserve a people. He will care for his people. He will see them through. Finally here are two more points, Christ and Joshua. Joshua is a type of Christ.

Joshua is referred to in Acts 7, 45, Hebrews 4, verse 8, and Hebrews 2, 9 through 10. There we learn that Joshua is a type of Christ. Also, Joshua was met by Christ, by the commander of the Lord's army, in chapter 5, verses 13-15. Another image of Christ in Joshua is Rahab's scarlet cord in chapter 2, verse 21, portraying the blood of Christ. You see that explained in Hebrews 9 19 through 22.

So Christ is in Joshua And it's a picture of how Christ conquers evil out of the land. Christ comes into your life and he begins to conquer the darkness in your life. He goes from one room to another. A long time ago there's a book written called My Heart, Christ's Home. And the book speaks about, you know, Christ going into the parlor, cleaning up the parlor, going into the bedroom, going into the game room and cleaning up the game room.

Christ goes from one room of your house to another and he cleans it up. He makes it beautiful and brings his presence there. That's One of the critical images that we find in Joshua is that God is going into the land, he's cleansing the evil out of the land. And all of these pictures of Christ are interwoven in this story. Some key doctrines.

Obedience, Joshua 1.8, the Word of God, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. The ark, the presence of God and the earth. That's in chapter 3 verse 13. The perseverance of God with his people. In chapter 1, verse 5, you read, I will not fail thee or forsake thee.

You also see the sovereignty of God. You see that the Lord's battles are fought the Lord's ways. In chapter 6, verse 3, You see the whole doctrine of holiness and God's desire to cleanse everything that contradicts His beauty and its holiness. You know when you get to Achan you learn this, be sure your sins will find you out. Oh, you think you've hidden them?

You hid them in the ground under the tent. No one will know. Think again. Be sure your sins will find you out. Repent early.

Don't wait. Don't let somebody find out. Repent. Go to the Lord and go to those who you sinned against. And then finally, rest.

At the end of Joshua and chapter 24, 29 through 30, we learn that the bones of Joshua are resting in the Promised Land. And Joshua is a picture of the rest of God. You go into the Promised Land, you conquer the evil that's there, and you rest. The Promised Land is figurative of heaven. It's a picture of heaven and the rest that's there.

It's a picture of how God cleans up the filthiness of your life, and he gives you rest. And you learn that God keeps his promises, and that you can trust God, and you can believe him when he says, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." And that happens as a result of having the Word of God dwelling richly in your heart. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but seek to obey it, and you'll see God have victory in your life. So that's the message of Joshua. There's victory in obedience.

In fact, obedience is the victory.