Joshua

Covers Joshua 1

Joshua's intimacy with God — ascending Sinai and lingering at the tent of meeting — was learned at the feet of Moses, making the case that we relate to the Lord best by standing on the shoulders of those who know Him more deeply.

Covers Joshua 2 · Luke 15

Rahab the prostitute and the tax collectors and sinners of Luke 15 show that the unlikely people we might write off are often the most receptive to God — a caution against deciding for others whether they want the gospel.

Covers Joshua 3

Beyond validating Joshua and easing Israel's crossing, the parting of the Jordan may have most importantly assured a people who had repeatedly provoked Yahweh that He would not abandon them now that Moses, their intercessor, was gone.

Covers Joshua 5

The commander of the Lord's army accepts Joshua's worship, marking one of the Old Testament glimpses of two Yahwehs that predates the Trinity — and his answer of neither for nor against reveals God's heart for all nations, not just Israel.

Covers Joshua 7

Why Achan's family sharing his punishment may be just — reading it against Korah's spared sons in Numbers 16, the treasure buried in their tent suggests they were complicit, not innocent, and reflecting on God's unique right over life.

Covers Joshua 8

Achan forfeited everything for plunder from Jericho when the spoil of Ai was just days away — a lesson that God rewards faithfulness without always telling us how, calling us to trust His instruction over our own desires.

Covers Joshua 9

Wondering whether God allowed the Gibeonites' deception to succeed because, like Rahab, they were rightly recognizing Yahweh and seeking to align with Him — their servant role at the altar reading almost as a pseudo-Levitical place in Israel's worship.

Covers Joshua 10 · Luke 23

Two responses to the works of God — the Gibeonites and the criminal on the cross soften toward the evidence while the surrounding kings and the crowds before Pilate harden their hearts — with practical reflection on sharing the gospel with the unwilling.

Covers Joshua 11

On God hardening the Canaanite kings' hearts to come against Israel — arguing the Hebrew means to strengthen, not to make unresponsive, so God reinforces their existing resolve to fight rather than turning away genuinely seeking hearts like Gibeon's.

Covers Joshua 14

Caleb waited 45 years for God's promised land and then five more, seeking Israel's good before his own — a rebuke to our impatience and a call to seek first the kingdom and trust God's timing over our own.

Covers Joshua 15 · Acts 4

Why Joshua's tedious city lists matter — they are the tangible fulfillment of God's land promise to Abraham, and a reminder the Bible is not about us; paired with the hardened hearts of the leaders in Acts 4 who admit the miracle yet refuse to believe.

Covers Joshua 17

Tony Evans' allegorical reading of Joshua 17 — Joseph's tribes had enough land but needed to clear the forests (amoral influences) and drive out the Canaanites (immoral ones), a picture of how we steward time, offered with honest hesitation about whether the text warrants it.

Covers Joshua 18

The seven tribes who lingered in their tents rather than claim their inheritance picture the Christian who settles into comfortable complacency after coming to faith — a call to take the risk of moving into the fuller life God has promised.

Covers Joshua 21

Why Moses' family receives no special inheritance or role among the tribal allotments — they fall in with the Kohathite clan, alongside the Jewish rabbinical tradition that, unlike Aaron's line, Moses' sons were not set apart.

Covers Joshua 23

Joshua's warning that God keeps both His promised blessings and His promised judgments — you do not get one without the other — confronting the desire to claim God's blessings while ignoring His call on how we live, without making faithfulness transactional.