40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Joshua 1:1-18 (Episode 182)

Episode Date: September 14, 2019

Chad and Daniel begin the book of Joshua in this episode. Moses is dead, and Joshua is about to lead the people into the promised land. How should we view Joshua? Is he a prophet, a general, a king? What does God mean when He says to be "strong and courageous"? And how is meditation different for the people of Israel? Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conference Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast, network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. check out all the other podcasts we got going on over there you guys today is a special day it's episode 182 now we've done a couple more episodes than that because we've done some live episodes that weren't numbered and some christmas specials that weren't numbered but officially episode 182 and it is on episode 182 that we will be go out we'll be leaving the torah into the book of Joshua.

So hopefully, you know, we have some new listeners. People are probably waiting. They're waiting to get in. You know, maybe they heard about this podcast. They're like, well, I don't want to jump in the middle of Deuteronomy. Now that we're in Joshua, I'm good to go. So if you're new, welcome aboard. Chad, are you psyched to be into some narrative again?

I am psyched. I've been waiting for this. I mean, I love, of course, anybody who's been listening knows I love the Torah. But, you know, when you see the finish line and you're so close and just then you're a little bit closer and you finally get there it's like yes we made it yeah and not just a new book but you're like a whole new section of the old testament so yeah i'm i'm psyched ready to go all right joshua well how about how about we just jump right into it then all right let's do it where to begin i was i was thinking about uh maybe just kind of giving

people a very broad idea as to how to think of joshua just kind of structurally within the whole within the whole biblical story. And I don't know if I came up with this or if I was taught this years ago, but this is, this is the way that for many years I've thought of Joshua. And I think it's, I've shared this with a few other people and I think it might be helpful for our listeners as well to kind of think of it this way. So think of Joshua in the same way that you, in relationship to the Torah, in the same way that you think of the book of Acts in relationship to the gospels. so just like the gospels of course tell us of the life and ministry of christ all the way up to his his resurrection and depending on the gospel account his ascension but you've got the whole

you've got the whole basically foundation the mood of the new testament there this is the work of christ on our behalf and then when you get to the book of acts the the very opening verse says This is, of course, the second volume of Luke's writing. And Luke says that in his first account, which is the gospel of Luke, he says that he wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach, which is very significant. He doesn't say, I wrote about everything that Jesus did and taught. I wrote about all that he began to do and to teach. In other words, the book of Acts, according to Luke, is going to be a continuation of Jesus' ongoing activity in the life of his people. Only in this case, it's going to be working, of course, through his apostles.

so if you think about that relationship between the gospels and the book of acts where the gospels tell the life ministry of christ and the book of acts tells how he how christ continues to carry on that ministry through his apostles as he expands the kingdom of god among many more people and many more places. So that's kind of what the book of Joshua is about. So you have the foundation laid in the Torah, the first five books. And then when you get to Joshua, you hear about all that God continues to do and to teach and to give to his people. So this is the expansion of the work that you have in the Torah, expanding into the actual geographical promise that God had given to the Israelites, to this land of rest which he had promised them. So structurally, in the whole

biblical canon, Joshua is the parallel to the book of Acts. You've got the Torah, and then Joshua, you have the book of the Gospels, and then you have the book of Acts. So anyway, I think I wanted to begin with that this is kind of a way of maybe getting folks to think about what god is doing when he gives us the book of book of joshua so that's one of the one of the uh the first things i want to put out there the second thing is that it's just as far as structure goes that we're now entering into what it's called a couple couple different names uh the typical christian designation for Joshua and the books that follow it is that this is history. So of course you have Joshua, you have Judges, you've got Samuel, you've got Kings, you've got Chronicles. So if you open

up your English Bible, that's kind of the way it's set up. You have the Pentateuch, the first five books, and then you have the history next. Then of course you have the prophets and you've got the wisdom literature, the poetry, all of that. So that's the typical structure of the Old Testament in English Bibles. And they get that from the structure of the Greek translation. So that is where we get our structure in our English Bibles. Now, the Hebrew structure is different. You may have heard what we as Christians call the Old Testament. You may have heard Jews refer to as the Tanakh. Tanakh is a word formed from three different letters, which are the designations for the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible. So the T stands for Torah, which is, of course, the first

five books. The N in Tanakh stands for Nevi'im, which is the Hebrew word for prophets. And the prophet, the prophetic section contains what we also refer to as the books of history, at least most of them. So in the Hebrew division of the Old Testament, the Nevi'im, the prophets, begin with Joshua, which is significant. I'm going to come back to that in just a minute, but let me finish this out. So the K in Tanakh stands for the Katavim, which is the Hebrew word for the writings. And the writings are what we would classify as like Psalms and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, books of that nature. So that's a threefold division according to the Hebrew Bible itself, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. So let me go back to why I think it's

actually a good way to think about Joshua as classifying it among the prophets. Of course, Joshua in the Old Testament was never referred to as a prophet. However, if you look at the way that the story is told in Joshua and in Judges and in Samuel and in Kings, the way it's told is not simply as a chronicle. It's not just a narrative. This isn't just kind of a semi-objective retelling of the story. This isn't just history in the way that we think about history. This is very much of a salvation history, and it is a very biased history, biased in the sense of this is the way that God wants the story to be told. This is the way in which he wants both the good and the bad and the ugly of the story to be told. And so it's prophetic in the sense

that the history itself is the way in which God declares. This is his way of presenting both the law and the sins of the peoples, as well as the promises and God's fulfillment of these promises. So it's prophetic history in the sense that in this history itself, in these stories themselves, we're not just kind of being told bare facts or some sort of objective chronicle, but instead the history itself has God's voice in it, just like, of course, when the prophets preached there, proclaimed the Word of God, so this history proclaims the Word of God in all of its various aspects, both good as well as bad. So anyway, I say all that because I just want to give you an idea as to where Joshua fits in to at least the divisions in the Hebrew Bible, that it's in the

prophetic part of that midsection of the of the old testament so when we're reading joshua we're reading a really we're reading prophetic literature in the sense that this is history which is written from a very prophetic and divine perspective and not from some sort of seemingly objective perspective yeah i think i think usually when people think of joshua they think of i certainly don't think of a prophet they think of like a military leader or something like that almost like like a king before a king that's how you think of joshua like well he's the guy in charge and he's also the guy making all the just strategic military decisions yeah the way that joshua is by and large represented and we'll see this already in the opening chapter is really as

a second moses and we've seen this uh other times in the torah where you already have in the old testament this uh growing well what what came to be called typology it's just it's patterning basically where you'll have an early figure who is replicated in a later figure so when we talked about genesis those early chapters we talked about how noah is described as a second adam so he he he and his family and the animals after the flood emerge into sort of a of a new creation and god gives same kind of commands that he gave back in the opening chapters of genesis where he says be fruitful and multiply so he says to noah and to his family be fruitful and multiply and then there's reference to god giving them food to eat so adam and then you have noah who's kind of

second Adam. So this kind of patterning between one individual who lives earlier and an individual who lives later is something we're going to see throughout the Old Testament. So you have Joshua, I mean, you have Moses, and now you have Joshua. And Joshua's ministry, his service, is going to be patterned after that of Moses. And we're going to see several examples of that. So even though Joshua was not called a prophet, certainly what he has most in common is with the prophet Moses. So he doesn't do as much preaching, if you will, like Moses did, but he certainly leads the people, and he's the one who provides them finally with the fulfillment of God's promise of rest that he spoke earlier. All right, so I think that's enough to say basically

about just as far as introduction goes. We're going to jump right in so that we can at least get through chapter one and maybe get a little bit into chapter two as well. So here's the way we start. I'm going to read just the first few verses here. Now, it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now, therefore, arise across this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun, will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you.

Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the Torah which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. The book of the Torah shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Now, if you've been with us this whole time,

a lot of the, that's the opening nine verses, a lot of these language in these opening nine verses is going to be very familiar to you, because this is the same language we heard in those closing chapters of Deuteronomy. We have this repetition by God, both to Moses, as through Moses, as well as directly to Joshua, to be strong and courageous. Because, of course, God knows exactly what Joshua is going to be facing. It's not as if Israel is going to be able to march into the promised land, and everybody who's living there is just going to run away or fall over dead. They are going to have to fight battles. And many of the battles that they are going to fight are going to be against superior forces, superior both in numbers as well as in military might.

For instance, the Israelites, they don't have horses and chariots, but many of the Canaanite armies did have horses and chariots. And you can kind of imagine if you kind of put yourself back as a soldier in that time, if you're on foot and the other guys have horses and chariots, you already know that they have a far superior advantage to you you know it's kind of like uh if you're if you're in it if you're in a jeep and you see a tank coming at you well you're you're definitely not in a good situation there so it's kind of like that with the israelites they're on foot these other guys have horses and they have uh and they have chariots so the reason i say that is because joshua needs to be encouraged and he's encouraged constantly by

God to have strength, to be strong, and to fight bravely, to have this courage. And the thing about this is, the thing about these words from God is that what's unique about the divine words is that they have the power to convey that which they speak. So God isn't just, as it were, patting Joshua on the back telling him, you'll do okay. Just, you know, just be strong. Just give it all you got. This isn't just sort of an encouragement, but the divine words themselves convey that which they speak. And so when God says be strong and courageous, he's conveying strength and he's conveying courage. So this isn't just some sort of kind of a typical encouraging word to someone. These are words from God which actually convey the very bravery, the very courage, the very strength of which they speak.

And that's why God repeats them often. Yeah, I think when people hear be strong and courageous, they think like, all right, be like, you know, let's just go in there. You know, the odds are going to look terrible, but, you know, be brave. It's like Braveheart giving a speech before, like, you know, you go run into battle. but what what happens in in this case is that the courageous thing is to believe god right i mean it's it's be careful to listen to to all the words uh of the law of moses right like listen to all those things hear all those things you'll be tempted to do other things but what you really want to do is listen to me and then everything's gonna be all right it's not like god's telling

him to muster up something within himself to go to go conquer something in his own strength he's saying be brave enough to listen to my words and to trust me yeah it's it's a very different definition of what success and prosperity are going to look like so and verse seven it says be strong and courageous but then it goes on to say like you're saying dan be careful to do according to all the torah which moses my servant commanded you and then the next verse says to meditate upon that Torah day and night. Don't let it depart from your mouth. And so the success that God is talking about here to Joshua is very different than the way that we ordinarily think about it. So for Joshua to be successful, for him to actually do what God wants him to do is not

really a matter of following a certain military plan, or as you say, some mustering up some kind encouraged within himself, true success is going to be found in just basically doing that which God says to do, to immerse himself in these words of God, to let them be in his mouth and in his heart day and night, not to depart from the Torah, which God has given to him. So basically, this is God's way of saying that what I want you to do is to continue in the footsteps of my servant Moses to heed his word, which I have given to him. And if you do that, then everything's going to be fine. You'll be doing my will. You'll be accomplishing exactly that for which I've sent you. So I was thinking about this in connection with the life of the church today.

You know, if we think about ourselves as the Israel of God, as those who are expanding his kingdom wherever we go, doing basically the same thing that Israel was doing in the sense of crossing the Jordan and entering into the promised land. So we are crossing this place and that place. And through us, through the preaching of the word, God is still moving his kingdom into other places. So what task have we been given? Well, basically the same task that God gave to Joshua. We are to remain faithful to what God has given us to do and what he's given us to preach. This is basically what Jesus tells his apostles in the last chapter of Matthew, right? So he wants them to go, not, don't just like go across the Jordan, but go into all the places,

go into all the earth and to make disciples, to make those who are going to be members of the kingdom of God, followers of me. And how are you going to do this? So what, as you, like Israel, move forward, what are you moving forward with? What are you supposed to be doing? Well, it makes it quite simple, right? By teaching everything that I've commanded you and by baptizing, by washing people with water and the word to make them members of my kingdom. So that's really what the success of the church is marked by. You can't determine the success of the church by numbers or programs or whatever it might be, but by fidelity to the words that God has given to us to teach and to preach and the gifts that he's given us to give to the people

in things like baptism. So there's a real strong parallel between what God is telling Joshua and what he continues to speak to the church today as we stand at the brink of our own Jordan, whatever that might be, wherever we're going, whatever we're doing, to let this fidelity to God's word be the mark of true success and nothing else. Well, I think it's interesting, too, that he uses the word inherit the land not take the land or conquer the land uh that he says inherit which to inherit you don't do anything to inherit something uh did you there's no action that you do that makes you inherit something from someone else by definition to inherit something is to have it passed down to you right um and so he says that yeah you're gonna this you're gonna

cause people to inherit the land how are you gonna cause a people to inherit something oh well you're gonna do that with fidelity to my words not it's not even through like some courageous action other than believing uh what i have said yeah yeah which tells you that faith is the thing that makes you a child of god right right right yeah that's the that's the gift gift nature of faith in fact that the word giving occurs quite frequently in this opening chapter such as verse 2 cross the jordan you and all the people to the land which i am giving to them we've heard this repeatedly in the torah that the land is going to be a gift uh it's it remains the possession of the lord and so it always is that's why they call it the holy land as god's land

in the old testament and so it's always under his ownership and the israelites are are given it as a gift, an inheritance to live there, but it remains nothing which they have somehow earned or acquired through their own effort, but instead it's what God is giving to them as his children, just like parents still give gifts to their children today. They pass it on an inheritance. So, especially in Deuteronomy, we heard this, that it's not because you're many in number or because you're more righteous, or anything else that's based upon who you are, that I'm giving all these things to you. Instead, I'm giving it to you because I've already made that promise, because I loved your fathers. And on the basis of that love, and on the basis of that promise

of a gift, I'm giving the land to you. So it's never going to be something which you can consider your own by some sort of superiority. It's never something which you have somehow acquired through your own effort, but instead it's always going to be God's gift to Israel. Yeah. All right. One more thing I want to mention here, just by way of kind of helping to expand on our knowledge a little bit about what kind of the intricacies of some of what is being said here. If you look at verse eight, we have the very first occurrence, I believe it's the first occurrence in the Hebrew Bible of the word for meditate. So verse 8 says, this book of the law, literally this book of the Torah, shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. So the Hebrew

verb for meditate is haggah. And what's fascinating about this word is that it's not simply, usually when we think about meditating, we think about something having to do with a silent interior reflection upon something. Well, that might be part of meditation. But in the Hebrew mindset, to meditate is always to actually to verbalize something. In fact, this verb, haggah, is used in the book of isaiah i think twice to refer to the sound that a dove makes so the cooing that a dove makes or sometimes it's translated in isaiah as the the mourning of a dove so it's it's a certain noise that this animal makes it's also used to translate it's often translated as growl because there's a reference i believe again in isaiah to the the the growling of a lion or a

young lion. So it's this, it's this, this verb, it's a, it's a noise that one makes. It's a, it's whether it's an animal like a dove or a lion, or whether it's a sound that a person makes. So in the, in the Hebrew mind to meditate is not to, to sit there in silence and to reflect on the inside, but it's actually to use your mouth. That's how you meditate. And so when, when God says, don't let the words of these Torah depart from your mouth, but you shall haggah, you shall meditate on it day and night. Well, the reason that he says, don't let it depart from your mouth is because you're going to use your mouth to meditate. You see the connection there. So when the word of God is in your mouth, you're meditating. You're speaking these words. You're

letting these words that God spoke into your ear proceed out of your mouth in order that you might speak of him. So in the Hebrew way of meditation, it's always a verbalization. It's speaking. And this is the same language. You might recognize this language from the first Psalm, right? About the blessed man. Blessed is a man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked, sit and see the scoffers, all of that. But what does he do? Well, he meditates upon the Torah of God day and night. So same kind of language is used in Psalm one that we have in Joshua chapter one. So that's this immersion in and speaking of God's word. That is the way in which we meditate. And I was telling my wife this the other day, I don't know why it came up, just crossed my mind during

conversation that we had, that none of us have to be taught how to meditate. Actually, all of us do that quite well, because meditation, just kind of broadly speaking here, I'm not speaking the Hebrew sense anymore, but just meditation in general is something that we are all deeply skilled at. This happens probably to all of us, probably multiple times a day. Maybe we're driving, maybe at work, maybe we're watching TV, wherever we are, our mind will go somewhere. and it's a different place than where we are i mean you know maybe we're driving to work and you know we're just our mind is all wrapped up in this problem we have or this situation we're thinking about or this person we're thinking about and this has happened to all of us all of a sudden

we arrive at the place we've been driving to we don't even remember driving there maybe it was a 15 minute drive maybe it was a an hour long drive but we were so in rapture we were so we were dwelling so intensely upon something in our minds that we really weren't paying attention to what was happening around us. That is basically meditation. Meditation is this intense focus upon one thing. Now it can be bad, it can be good, but we all do that quite naturally. That's my point. So if you take that natural human propensity for meditation, and then you marry that to the hebrew idea meditation upon verbalizing the words of god then you've got a good you've got a good combination because to intensely focus upon that which is coming out of your mouth a mouth which

is filled with the word of god is the true old testament idea of of meditation so it's not just kind of dwelling on your own thoughts but it's dwelling upon the thoughts and the words of words of god and that's what joshua is being called to here in uh in the eighth verse let's move on verse 10 and 11 is a small unit joshua commands the leaders of the people the office of the people to basically get ready so he says pass to the midst of the camp command the people saying to get their provisions ready because within three days we're going to cross the jordan to go in and possess the land which the lord our god is giving to us so basically he's saying all right uh moses Moses is dead. We've had a 30-day period of mourning for him, and now our time has come.

So get ready, because within three days, we're going to leave our camp on the eastern side of the Jordan, in the Transjordan, and we're going to cross over to the land, finally, that we've been waiting to cross over for all these years. Pass the word, get everybody ready. And then he has a a specific word he wants to address to two and a half of the other tribes so in verse 12 he addresses the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh so these are the tribes as you'll remember from from the Torah which had opted and were given permission for this option not to permanently settle in the promised land but instead they wanted to live east of the Jordan They had found an area that was suitable for their livestock, good grazing ground, and so they wanted to settle there.

So they approached Moses about that. And if you remember, first of all, there was a kind of a scandalous request on the part of these two and a half tribes. But it was a request that was given to them with one caveat. God said, yes, you can do that. You can remain in that land. But first of all, you have to help your brothers. You have to cross over with them and help them to drive out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. And the two and a half tribes, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, they agreed to that.

This is going to be Joshua's way of reminding them of that promise that they made. So he says, verse 13, remember the word which Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, saying, the Lord your God gives you rest and will give you this land. your wives your little ones and your cattle shall remain in the land which moses gave you beyond the jordan but you talking to the men here the the men who are going to serve as soldiers but you shall cross before your brothers in battle array we come back to that word in a minute all your valiant warriors and shall help them until the lord gives your brothers rest as he gives you and they also possess the land which the lord your god is giving them then you shall return to your own land and possess that which Moses, a servant of the Lord, gave you beyond the Jordan toward

the sunrise. Let me wrap that up. There's only three verses left. And so this is what Joshua says to these two and a half tribes, and this is how he answers them. This is how they answer him. They say, all that has been commanded us, we will do. And wherever you send us, we will go. Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you. Only may the Lord your God be with you, as he was with Moses. Anyone who rebels against your command and does not obey your words and all that you command him shall be put to death. Only be strong and courageous. So this is Joshua's way of reminding them of that which they've sworn to, which they agreed to with Moses. And what's going to happen is their families and their possessions are going to stay in the Transjordan

in that land which they're eventually going to settle in but they're going to go over in what's referred to here as battle array the hebrew verb there hebrew word there is is hamashim which is it's it's derived from the word for five it's like it can be translated different ways it's translated here as battle array it's basically passover in 50s or in some units of five and scholars debate exactly what is meant by this does it mean they're going to be in groups of 50 each all lined up for ward is it is it a reference to a certain sort of military formation we have like a a vanguard in front and then the rear guard and the main body and two wings on each side and that's that's the group of five sort of an ancient military formation we're not sure uh but whatever

it is these are going to be kind of the the the vanguard if you will they're going to be at the head of the rest of the tribes crossing over and we're going to see this again i think in chapter four of joshua where again they're in battle array they're in these groups of five or fifty or some sort of formation passing over the jordan so this is kind of the you know this sort of the agreement that they have all right if you want to stay in the transjordan fine but you are going to be at the at the forefront of the fighting this is this is the trade-off you want to live in the transjordan fine but you're going to be at the head of your brothers to lead them so that they can conquer the land which god has sworn to give to them and then once that's all done then you can

cross back over and settle with your families and they agree to this and they and they they say at the end of the of the chapter just like we obeyed moses in all things which is kind of funny because they didn't obey moses in all things but so they say we will obey you it's kind of like a it's sort of a forgetfulness of their own history. We hope actually they obey Joshua better than they obeyed Moses. This is the least comforting thing ever.

You're like a leader and you just had people that rebelled so hard against the other leader that something that should have taken not very long at all took 40 years. They're like, don't worry, we're going to treat you just like we treated that other guy. I'm sure Joshua's like, great. Thanks to the warning.

You do have this weird ending though where they we do say like whoever rebels against your command that disobeys your words you know that we're gonna put him to death yeah anybody who acts like we acted we're gonna kill him yeah and i suppose that that's probably specific for this military action if you go if you go through with this you might die if you don't go through with this you're definitely gonna die definitely gonna die yeah and this is i mean this is not uncommon in military history where i'm kind of thinking of someone who runs from the fight right yeah someone who out of cowardice is fleeing from the battle well it's not uncommon in military history for those people to be shot

so basically you risk your own life and going into battle and do your duties as a soldier but if you decide to be a coward and run from the fight well you're for sure going to die because we're going to take you down so this is it's kind of a kind of a harsh harsh truth that uh to keep the men in battle sometimes that kind of threat had to be made so i think yeah this is specifically in reference to what they've sworn to do for joshua in this upcoming these upcoming battles i mean you gotta think this is a crazy thing i mean they have been like gearing up at least mentally for for this for a long time i mean it has to it has to almost seem like it was never ever going to happen right yeah i mean if i gear up for something for like a month and it doesn't

happen i'm like that's probably not happening yeah yeah well that's kind of the way uh i think most of us modern people are uh we it's hard for us to think in terms of decades but that's where these people are and of course they're varying ages of course some of them might have been born right after they uh right after they left egypt some of them might have been born you know maybe they're 16 17 18 years old so they were born sort of halfway between when they left egypt and when they were finally entering into the promised land so we have varying ages here between uh between the warriors but at least everyone who's old enough to fight yeah they've been waiting for this for a long time yeah i mean gearing up for a long time yeah i mean i'm i'm 39 so feasibly there

could be people around my age i'm a year older than me two years older than me that have their entire life heard oh you just wait like it's coming like we've just been where it's coming like you're a whole can you imagine i mean that would be crazy it would be crazy yeah and then eventually and then like then the day the day comes and they're like we're doing it today that thing that thing you have heard about that we've been gearing up to do the land that we've been the the home that awaits us like we're that's what we're doing we're doing that today i mean i can't imagine hearing something you know you know what you know what it is you know what i've heard of my whole life that like you just wait is heaven it's the only thing i've only like land that we

i will possess a thing that is coming that i've heard of as long as i can remember is that well the day is coming when you will you know you will you will be with god you'll be you're gonna go you're gonna go to heaven when you die this kind of thing it's got to be similar like where they're like is this place even real yeah i expect it over time that was kind of a doubt that maybe crept into people's mind is this ever going to happen or is this is this a real place or this sort of sort of you know uh mythical mythical hope that we have but here they are and uh whether whatever they thought it's about to become about to come fact about to come real they've been waiting uh waiting this whole time and and we've been waiting along with them so we're about to

enter into uh about to enter into the land of rest yeah it's a sort of a we're not going to get into chapter two because we're almost out of time uh but sort of a segue into the next chapter the next chapter is about Rahab and uh and the spies and we're sent to uh sent to not to her but to the city of Jericho which is a great story which is a great story so you definitely want to come back come back next week for that story but you know I uh as sort of a a uh a taste of what we're going to talk about next time those two guys that went to went into the city of Jericho I mean, they presumably had never been into a city. Right.

They had never actually been inside a city. At least we don't have any evidence in the Torah. They were pretty much just out in the desert. And I'm sure they had interactions with various other non-Israelite tribes here and there. But there's no evidence that I'm aware of that they had any contact or any opportunity to enter into a city. So these two guys that are sent into a city, they're probably like, well, what's a city like? what what's going to be like when we actually when you go there and be around these people so the two spies are going to have uh it's kind of like i often compare it to uh two country hicks

who go to vegas for the first time yeah it's like they they are unprepared for what they're uh for about to experience so anyway that's what's going to happen in the in the next chapter uh when we get into the into the story of rahab but it's this opening chapter is is i think helpful for kind of bridging the gap because we have a lot of Deuteronomy language in it, such as strong and courageous and dwelling upon the words of God and meditating

upon them. And we have reference with the two and a half tribes back to the promise that they made to Moses. So Joshua 1 really does serve as a good literary bridge between the Torah and what we're going to see in the rest of the

book. So tune in. We're just getting started. We'll jump into the story of Rahab next week. Indeed. All right. Well, guys, if you find the podcast helpful, you enjoy it, you can support it by going over to 1517.org, going over

to the donate page, and becoming a contributor. It is a bunch of people like you doing that that makes it all possible, so thank you to those who do that. We will be back next week for Joshua chapter 2. Chad, I will see you then. All right. See ya.

We'll be right back.