Joshua 24:29-33 Download audio Download sermon We come this morning to the last paragraph of this great book. It forms an inclusio for the book as a whole. Joshua is mentioned in the first verses of the book and his death and burial in the last. We have made a point of saying many times […]
Joshua 24:14-28 Download audio We said last time that what we have in Joshua 24 is the account of a ceremony of covenant renewal. The chapter bears the marks of the literary form of the ancient near eastern treaties after which God’s covenant with Israel was described, especially in Exodus and Deuteronomy. In vv. 1-13 […]
Joshua 24:1-13 Download audio Chapter 24 contains the second and last of Joshua’s farewell addresses to Israel, the first of which, found in chapter 23, we considered last Lord’s Day morning. This chapter concludes the fourth and final section of Joshua, the key word of which section we said is the Hebrew verb “to serve.” […]
Joshua 23:1-16 Download audio Drawing near to the end of the book of Joshua we come this morning to chapter 23 and we’re reading all sixteen verses of that chapter. Near the end of his life Joshua delivered two farewell addresses to the nation of Israel, to the nation as represented by its leadership: the […]
Joshua 22:1-34 Download audio I draw your attention to Joshua 22, another of these texts that, unless your minister preaches through the Bible paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, you are highly unlikely to ever hear preached. More’s the pity because it has a very important message. With chapter 22, we begin the fourth and […]
Joshua 21:1-45 Download audio Having considered in chapter 20 the establishment of the cities of refuge, an important part of Israel’s criminal justice system, we move now to the much larger number of Levitical cities, only six of which happened to be cities of refuge. We have read several times earlier in the book that […]
Joshua 20:1-9 Download audio As we noticed last time, the material following verse 10 of chapter 18, details the allotment of the seven tribes whose allotment had not been assigned. As we have been making our way through Joshua, we have been thinking most of the time about the pattern of salvation and the Christian’s […]
Joshua 17:14-18:10 Download audio We have said from the beginning of our studies in Joshua and as we are taught elsewhere in the Bible, the history of the conquest provides a pattern or a paradigm of salvation. Israel got Canaan the way sinners get to heaven. Israel’s experiences upon entering the Promised Land were like […]
Joshua 14:1-15 Download audio We have been away from Joshua for three weeks, so let me remind you where we are. With chapter 13 we began the third of the four major sections of the book. This is the section devoted to the distribution or allotment of the land. Israel had conquered Canaan; now it […]
Joshua 13:1-33 Download audio We come to Joshua 13, reading vv. 1-23 and then 32 and 33 at the end of the chapter. Chapter 13 begins the third major section of the book of Joshua. The first section, in which the key word was the Hebrew verb “to cross,” concerned Israel’s crossing of the Jordan […]
The military strength of the Canaanite states, both north and south, had been broken in a long series of battles. Chapter 12 contains a summary of the many defeats that Israel had visited upon her enemies. This chapter completes the second section…
The conquest of southern Canaan having been completed, Joshua looked to the north. But before he could embark on his own invasion, he was threatened by a second coalition of Canaanite kings, this one deploying a much larger army than Israel had ye…
This is the sort of passage in the Word of God that isn’t very often preached by ministers nowadays, but I hope I can show you how wonderfully relevant it is to our daily lives.
The first great battle against the southern states of Canaa…
The reaction of the Canaanite peoples in general to the early victories of Israel, those over Jericho and Ai, had been briefly described in the opening verses of chapter 9. As Chapter 10 opens we have described the reaction of a specific group of …
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v.2
The “this” that they heard of is apparently the early victories of Israel over Jericho and Ai. A number of kings and peoples rose in mass to fight off the invasion. They may have been emboldened by the repo…
Israel had now won two overwhelming victories in Canaan. Perhaps they were aware that a consortium of kings was gathering to attempt to drive them out of the Promised Land, but, whether or not they were aware of those plans, they paused to take ca…
After her crushing victory at Jericho, Israel had suffered a defeat administered by the much smaller town of Ai. That setback was the direct result of sin in the camp. The sinner was identified and removed from the community and Israel was now rea…
Israel had crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land on dry land. She had taken and burned the first city in her path of conquest. The power of the Lord had been exercised on her behalf in the most dramatic and remarkable ways. Nothing could stand…
In the first five verses of chapter 6 we read the instructions the Lord gave Joshua as they stood together. Now we will read that Joshua in turn gave those same instructions to his commanders and the army followed them to the letter.
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At least according to the scholar whose outline of the book I am following and that I used in introducing the book to you some Lord’s Days back, verse 13 of chapter 5 begins the second major section of Joshua. This section extends from 5:13 …
When the bulletin was prepared last Wednesday, I intended to consider vv. 10-12 of chapter 5 separately; a sermon on baptism and a sermon on the Lord’s Supper in other words. But I subsequently decided to combine them. So retitle the sermon …
The first section of the book of Joshua is taken up with Israel’s crossing of the Jordan River into the land of Canaan. But there is more to that history than simply the act of crossing the river. We have already read of preparations made be…
After the account of the spies in Jericho and Rahab’s confession of Yahweh as the living God, we return in chapter 3 to the narrative of Israel’s crossing of the Jordan River, for which preparations were being made in chapter 1. &ldquo…
While, on the eastern bank of the Jordan Israel’s army prepared for the invasion of Canaan, spies were sent to reconnoiter the area into which the Israelite army was about to move and, in particular, the first fortified city that lay in its …
The first nine verses of chapter 1 consist of the Lord’s address to Joshua. The remainder of the chapter consists of Joshua’s address to the leaders of the people and their reply.
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v.11
Joshua told the lea…
We considered the book of Joshua as a whole last Lord’s Day morning as part of our celebration of the first Sunday in Advent. The taking of the Promised Land, we said, was an anticipation of the coming of the Lord, especially his second co…
It has been my plan for some time to begin a morning series of sermons on the book of Joshua upon completion of the series on the Gospel of Luke. But I did not know when I began making those plans that the first of these sermons would fall on the …