Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Paying Attention to God | Historical Books | Joshua 6:1-21

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

How do you spend your attention? Are you able to notice God's presence in every moment? Who are you becoming? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Joshua 6:1-21 encourages us to fix our eyes upon God's faithfulness. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Joshua 6:1-21

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. People have been paying a lot of attention to the idea of paying attention. Self-help gurus, columnists, authors, all of them are trying to help us see the value of where we direct our attention. Jordan Peterson, the popular author, wrote this in his book, Beyond Order. We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically. No currency has a value that exceeds it. That's a big claim.

Oliver Berkman adds to that sense of value with our attention, writing this in his fantastic book, 4,000 weeks. Again, this is a big claim. Here's what Berkman says. What you pay attention to will define for you what reality is. Let's synthesize those thoughts for a moment. Your attention is a currency and there's a competition for it, a competition that informs the rest of your life. How you spend your attention overflows into how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you spend your physical presence with other people. It determines what your reality is.

This competition for the currency of attention is hardly a current event. Yes, it has some unique challenges in the modern landscape, yet it's a battle reaching back into ancient times. In fact, the battle for our attention is displayed in another well-known conflict in the history of the Bible, the events surrounding the fall of Jericho's walls in Joshua, Chapter 6. But as we encounter this passage in the historical books, we come to find that the battle is far different than the one we'd expect to read about, challenging us to reconsider big picture questions like where we're spending our attention and how it's shaping our reality. As we approach God's word together, let's slow down and ask for His grace, for His presence, to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath in this day, and thank you for the gift of your word. We bring before you in this time our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars, and our contingencies.

God, would you meet us in this space, in this time? Jesus, help us abide and remain in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in Joshua's time. 6. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us in our relationship with you. In Jesus name, amen. Now, a quick note on the historical events of Joshua 6. As we'll see in a moment, this scene is a different kind of battle than the battle we'd expect to see, but it is one that includes elements of violence, especially at the end. And those elements can be difficult for us to absorb. They really should be. Our team here at 10-minute Bible Talks really wants to give you

some solid perspectives on the dynamics of violence at play within the historical books. So, be on the lookout for an episode specifically about that when Patrick covers the first half of Chapter 8 in Joshua. Many people are familiar with the scene unfolding here in the first 21 verses of Joshua, chapter 6. Joshua leads the people of God around the walls. of Jericho for seven days, and on the seventh day, they walk around the walls seven times. They play trumpets, they shout out loud, and the walls come tumbling down. But we have a hard time applying these verses to our lives. Are we supposed to somehow mimic the events of this scene by identifying the metaphorical walls in our lives and metaphorically marching around them

seven times before playing a trumpet and shouting out loud? I mean, what difference does this historical event actually make in our lives today? Well, let's start by remembering that these historical books of the Old Testament are usually trying to show us more than they tell us. They're showing us something that's true about God, about who we are, and about how we're meant to live with the grain of his coming kingdom. Now, if that's the case, what are the events surrounding the walls of Jericho, trying to show us. Let's start by noticing what gets emphasized in God's commandment to Joshua in verses 2 through 5. So pay attention here to what the text is trying to draw our attention to. Let's pick up in verse 2. Then the Lord said to Joshua, see, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king

and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men, do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of ram's horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout. Then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in. All right, when we look back at that passage, verse two really sets the tone for the rest of this entire passage, this entire moment. It says, I have delivered Jericho into your hands. The Lord is trying to help Joshua and help his people pay attention to his act of deliverance.

That point gets emphasized by the mention of the Ark of the Covenant in verse 4, that Ark being a tangible symbol of God's presence with His people. And there's also a sense of completeness with that presence of God with his people. We see that completeness through the repeated reference to the number seven. And that repeated reference to seven would remind those ancient Israelites of the completeness of God's work and presence in the creation count, going back to Genesis 1 and 2. So the God who made all things, the God who called them into existence, who saved them, that God whose power creates new life is with them as they walk around the walls of Jericho as they walk into the promised land. In these verses, God is trying to show his people

where their attention should be. And it's directed somewhere that's different than what we'd expect for a battle scene. So in a typical battle scene, we would expect the people to pay attention to the walls, to the enemy defenses, to their own weapons and the weapons of their enemy. But here, God subverts their expectations and ours as well. And instead of having them spend their attention on a military strategy, he invites them to spend their attention on his divine dwelling. If their attention is a currency, he wants them to go all in on his presence with them. Thinking about this passage, many people grew up singing the popular tune, Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho. And while we can absolutely appreciate the heart and the history of that song,

it does seem to miss the heart of this passage. Yes, Josh, Joshua was involved in the Battle of Jericho, but his discipline is rooted in an absolute dependence on the one who truly fought and won the Battle of Jericho. This chapter of Joshua 6, it's trying to peel our attention away from the walls, away from the Israelites, away from Joshua, away from ourselves. See, we all tend to leave this story, mostly amazed that the walls came tumbling down. But maybe that's not what we should be most amazed by. Lisa Ray Beale is a commentator on Joshua who masterfully summarizes how we should spend our attention and our amazement here.

She writes this, the miracle is not that the walls of immense height fell, but that they fell on at God's command and by his power. That's a really good summary. So let's have that be an occasion to circle back to where we started. Your attention is a currency. And there's a competition for it, a competition that informs how you spend your time, your money, and your physical presence. It determines what your reality is. So if you could honestly assess your life right now, whatever you're doing right now, if you're in the car, gardening, getting ready for bed, think about your life. How are you spending the currency of your attention day in and day out? what's consuming your thought life

where are you spending the most emotional energy now those questions aren't meant to suggest that you have to spend every ounce of your attention in your Bible or praying or contemplating the finer details of theology those are all great things but that's not really the point of the question the point of the question is to create some curiosity about how God the living God of creation and recreation how that God is present with you wherever you are, whatever you're doing, even in this moment now.

Do you realize that every time you walk into the office, God goes with you? That every time you endure the stress of family relationships or strife and a friendship, do you realize that in those moments the God of creation and recreation goes before you? In every beautiful moment, in every hard conflict, and every unexpected diagnosis, the God that made you and saves you is with you. Pay attention to him. There's a short line in John Mark Comer's popular book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry,

that puts a helpful capstone on the concept of attention here. He writes this in his book, What you give your attention to is the person you become. That's short but really good. What you give your attention to is the person you become. That is a key truth for us to chew on here in Joshua chapter 6, something that this passage is trying to reinforce. Our attention is a currency that shapes our reality and who we're becoming. That's a foundational issue that's at stake in the rest of the historical books and also for the rest of our lives.

This story in Joshua 6 is really about God himself, not about the walls. Not about the trumpets. Not about us walking around in circles together. This story is about his presence, his faithfulness. It's pointing to the ultimate expression of attention and love displayed through the death and resurrection of Jesus. At the end of the day, this story is calling us to pay attention to the God who pays attention to us. God, help us see your presence and your peace. that goes with us wherever we go. Help us pay our deepest attention to you as your kingdom moves

and shapes who we're becoming. In Jesus' name, amen.