The last Five Minute Bible Study stopped the Old Testament story with the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34. With the unfaithful wilderness generation now deceased, the Sinai covenant freshly renewed and ripe on Israel’s mind, and Joshua, “full of the spirit of wisdom,” (Deut. 34:9) now leading God’s people, the time has come for fulfilling the promise made to Abraham. This Five Minute Bible Study shares what you need to know about the Conquest Period (Joshua 2 – Judges 2).
The Faithfulness of God
Two promises of God should be recalled prior to reading Joshua: the promise to Satan and the promise to Abraham. God promised Satan that his offspring would be crushed by the offspring of Eve (Gen. 3:15). Lesson 1 elaborated on this first promise. God later promised Abraham that He would give his offspring the land of Canaan (Gen. 13:15). Lesson 2 detailed this second promise. Both of these promises come full circle in the Joshua. How? In his comments on the book of Joshua, Boyd Seevers quips the following-
When Christians read Joshua, every victory God secured and every claim of land Israel enjoyed should remind us of God’s faithfulness and be viewed as a pointer to the great victory won by Jesus over the enemies of sin and death, which secured us a lasting inheritance (Col. 2:13-15; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 Peter 1:3-4).
The two promises of God previously mentioned find fulfillment in Joshua’s narrative. While as Israel’s conquering its enemies in the book of Joshua is more of a shadow pointing to the ultimate fulfillment of the Seed Promise on the cross, Israel’s claiming the land is a direct fulfillment of the Land Promise given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Israel (Joshua 21:43-45). By proving that God is faithful in making good on His word to give His people the land, God’s faithfulness to His promise of redeeming the world through a future Seed of Eve and blessing the world through a future seed of Abraham is validated. You might look at the story of Joshua as a down payment on God’s promises yet to be fulfilled. This higher purpose to the book of Joshua is made perfectly clear in 21:43-45, “So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. The Lord gave them rest all around, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers. And not a man of all their enemies stood against them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.“
If the previous examples were not enough proof to God’s faithfulness, the second to last verse in the book of Joshua details the fulfillment of a promise God made all the way back in Genesis 50:25. In that verse, Joseph had sworn that God would visit Israel and bring his bones back to Canaan. This is exactly what is detailed as happening in Joshua 24:32. Can God’s people trust in the promises of God? You can bank your bones on it.
Disclaimers– There are at least two items found within the Conquest Period that cause unrest for some unbelievers and warrant our attention. First, atheists frequently target what they label as genocide in the book, as an argument against the moral nature of God. Second, dispensational premillenialists claim that God’s Land Promise to Abraham was never fulfilled; therefore, it is still to come in the future 1,000 year reign.
1) In Joshua, God’s chosen people crush the offspring of Satan (the Canaanites)- a wicked people with whom God had been patient with for over 400 years (Gen. 15:16). This was no debased act of genocide by a blood hungry god. No, this was overdue, righteous judgment on a culture of people who burned their babies in sacrifice to idol gods (Leviticus 20:1-5, 23). In fact, if God had not brought judgment on the inhabitants of Canaan, God would have been violating His moral quality of being just. God is merciful and just. Perhaps nothing relays this fact more clearly than His dealings with the Canaanites.
2) God did in fact fulfill His Land Promise to Abraham as early as the book of Joshua (21:43-45). Just because Israel did not succeed in driving out all the descendants (Joshua 15:63), this does not mean that God did not give them the opportunity. The land was Israel’s for the taking; yet, they failed to cash in. Instead, they disobeyed the command of God by making a covenant with the Jebusites (Judges 1:21; 2:1-4). The same holds true for all the promises of God. Example– God has offered salvation to all mankind by shedding His blood on the cross. When man rejects His offer and is sentenced to eternal punishment, this does not make God a liar. It just means the promise was conditional, and man failed to meet the conditions. This holds true for the heathen (i.e. Canaanite or non-Christian) and the covenant people (i.e. Israel or Christian) alike.
Resources- What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About by Jason DeRouchie
