Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Do You Love? | Historical Books | Joshua 23

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Do you see the vision beyond the commands? How has God provided for you in the past? What do you love? In today's episode, Jensen shares how Joshua 23 reminds us to be careful about loving the Lord above all else. 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 23

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. The late French writer Antoine Descent-Azouperi once said, If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. It's not that you don't need to gather wood or come up with a good plan and have a good leader to give orders and order. To build a ship, you certainly do need those things to eventually put together a ship. His point is not that these things are unnecessary, but that they aren't where you should begin.

You should begin by giving the men a vision for what they are building towards. Begin by stirring their heart to love and to long for the sea. You see, because when you have a group of men who love the sea, the gathering of the wood, the division of the work, the following orders all comes together naturally out of an outpouring of their desire to get to what they love. It's a fair point, and the wisdom behind it is steeped in biblical thought. In today's passage from Joshua 23, as Joshua is nearing the end of his life, he gathers together all of Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and it gives him a speech, a warning of sorts. before he goes the way of all the earth as he says in his own words before he dies he wishes to impart on them

the importance of remaining a distinct people faithful to their god now he does so in a few different ways throughout his message one way is through giving them instruction on things that they should do verse five the lord your god himself will push them the foreigners out for your sake He will drive them out before you, and you will take possession of their land as the Lord your God promised you. So take possession of their land. Verse six. Be very strong. Be careful to obey all that is written in the book of the law of Moses without turning aside to the right or to the left.

And verse 8, you are to hold fast to the Lord your God as you have until now. He also gives them instructions on what not to do. Verse 7. Do not associate with these nations that remain among them. you do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them you must not serve them or bow down to them and finally he leaves them with warnings of what will happen if they do not obey verses 12 and 13 but if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them then you may be sure that the lord your god will no longer

drive out these nations before you instead they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns and your eyes until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you. And verse 16, if you violate the covenant of the Lord's your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord's anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you. Now, we could take this speech from Joshua and assume that he is not taking the advice of the late French writer, he's gathered his men. His goal is not for them to build a ship, but to remain a distinct and faithful nation to God, and he seems to give them the instruction of what to do and what not to do.

Don't do this and you'll get to your goal. Do this and you'll fail and face the consequences. But you'll find sprinkled throughout his message other important reminders that these do's and don'ts are built around. First, he reminds them. of the ways that God has been faithful in the past. Versus three and four, you yourselves have seen everything, the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake. It was the Lord your God who fought for you.

Remember how I have allotted as an inheritance for your tribes, all the land of the nations that remain, the nations I conquered, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea and the West. In verses 9 and 10, the Lord has driven out before you, great and powerful nations. To this day, no one has been able to withstand you. One of you routes a thousand because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised. See, Joshua is intentionally bringing the people back into an understanding

of who it is they are being told to remain faithful to. A powerful God, who has provided, who has not failed them, who fights for them, who keeps. his promises. And right before he finishes with his final warning of what will come if they break their covenant, he says this in verse 14. You know, with all your heart and soul, that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled. Not one has failed. Can you hear the emotion behind his words? These aren't abstract ideas. But visible realities to these ancient Israelites, they tangibly saw and felt the protection and provision of God against very real enemies.

They lived under his care, the fulfillment of his promises. They've tasted his blessing. And right in the middle of this passage, he says this in verse 11. So, be very careful to love the Lord your God. be very careful to love God. He doesn't just want the people to be strong and follow the law and fight their enemies and remain distinct and faithful because God says so, but because they have a deep longing to remain in a holy covenant with their God whom they love. He warns them against intermarrying with those who follow different religions, not because he's prejudiced against them,

but because he knows the dangers of loving someone and wanting to please someone and being near to someone who loves another God. Be very careful to love the Lord your God, not their God. In his book, You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith makes this powerful point. Jesus is a teacher who doesn't just inform our intellect, but forms are very loves. He isn't content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind. He's after nothing less than you are once, your loves, your longings. See, when God became human in the person of Jesus and established his ministry on earth, when he began to explain the ways of his coming kingdom, the kingdom that would be made up of his chosen people, like the Israelites in their time, he employs the same

wisdom. Your God has never wanted an army of people enslaved to build him boats, to remain faithful to him out of necessity or tradition or obligation. He wants to develop a people of God who are bound to him out of an outpouring of their deep devotion, their love for their God. A people who are devoted to Scripture, who remain distinct, who stand firm against the offerings of the world, who live under the covenant he's made with them because it is the natural outpouring of the deep love that they have for him. They want to remain close, to become like him, to follow his ways. It makes them joyful, filled, content. They know that their greatest good is found in knowing that they are deeply loved, cared for, protected by a good God whom they love. See, Jesus doesn't

just want you to know about his love, but to experience it, to give yourself over to it. He doesn't just want you to know about his way of life, but to love living it, to long to be nearer to him, to be more like him. All the way back in Joshua 23, God's people are implored to follow him, to remain faithful to him out of a deep love for their God. Your call is the same. This call to love God, to long for him is not just because it makes it easier to follow the do's and the don'ts, but because without a love for God you will not, you cannot remain faithful. You will always love something most, your comfort, your money, your kids, your identity, your travel, your job, yourself.

Our neighbors may not be offering us a chance to worship at the feet of an idol or sacrifice on an altar, but our phones, our algorithms, our friends, our bosses, our teachers, our politicians, they're all asking us to give them our love. To long for our political party to reign, to delight in the praise of the comment section, to love the applause and recognition of our CEOs, to dream of a better body, better clothing, clear skin, higher achieving children. You're being asked to give your love away each and every day. But Joshua's words ring true for us as well. Be very careful to love the Lord your God.

James K.A. Smith was right. You are what you love. What you love will guide your actions, your thoughts, your habits. You will build a life guided towards and built on what you love. What do you love? If I'm honest with myself, oftentimes I'm not very careful. I'm not very careful to love God. I see my life trajectory aimed towards my love of materialism, beauty and shopping. My loves pushed me to pick up my phone, to meditate on my next purchase, to take in all the ways I could be spending my money on social media rather than to open the pages of scripture, rather than to give my time in serving, to give my money to those who really need it. And that's just one example of the many loves fighting for first place in my life.

my heart. But I can see so clearly how I have not been very careful to love the Lord, my God. Have you? Maybe today we start with a prayer together, a prayer asking God to give us the will, the strength, the wisdom to remain attentive to and nurture our love for Him, so that through the outpouring of our love for Him, our lives would emulate the one whom we love, that we would bask in the wonder and beauty of loving and being loved by a kind, compassionate, caring, and powerful God. Let's pray together. God, today we humbly come before you and confess the ways that our love has been captured by lesser things. Things that pull us away from you, we name those to you now, God. Things that pull us away from your care, your protection and provision. God, give us eyes to see the beauty and goodness of

who you are. Deepen our love for you, God. Remind us of your faithfulness. Remind us of all you have done for us, the ways that you have held us close, protected us, provided for us like a father who dearly loves and is devoted to his children. God, help us to long for you, for your embrace, for your love, teach us to yearn for you so that as an outpouring of our love, we would long to live lives following in your ways, building your kingdom, and pushing the boundary of your gospel to the ends of the earth. We love you, Lord. May that love always be the guiding love of our lives. Amen.