Joshua 1:1-9--God Commissions Joshua

Joshua 1:1-9
English Standard Version
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God Commissions Joshua
1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

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Today, we start our journey through the books of History of the Old Testament.  Most are written in the form of Historical Narrative just like the book of Genesis and most of the book of Exodus and the book of Numbers were, and like how the book of Acts was that we just studied together.  Joshua follows immediately after the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament and the story in Joshua is meant to pick up where Deuteronomy left off.  In fact, most people suppose that Joshua wrote the final chapters of the book of Deuteronomy, since Moses could not write of his own death and burial.

The opening line of the book of Joshua is the LORD speaking to Joshua in the same kind of candid, face-to-face way that he spoke with Moses, "Moses my servant is dead."  The people cannot camp out and mourn the loss of Moses forever.  He was a great leader, but God intends for the people to claim the promises that He had had given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.  He renews His covenant with them for the Land--and much more land than we normally think of when we think of the land that has been given to the people of Israel.  Look carefully.  A picture is worth a thousand words here and it's debatable whether or not Israel ever owned all this land, even when the kingdom was its largest under King Solomon.  The image below can be found at https://www.fromtpm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Greater-Israel.jpg.  It correctly includes all the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates River, all the land of the Hittites (what we now call Turkey) and has all of the Mediterranean Sea as its Western/Northwestern border.​

God promises that if they are obedient to Him that no one will be able to stand against them all the days of their lives, because the battle belongs to the LORD and He would fight for them.  Then the LORD tells Joshua to be strong and courageous several times because the LORD is going to use Joshua to cause these promises that He has made to the people to be fulfilled, but he must be careful to do all that the LORD has commanded in the book of the Law (the book of Deuteronomy) and not turn from it to the right or the left so that the LORD will be able to bless the people and will not have to have the curses of that covenant come upon His people.  If they were able to completely and totally obey that conditional covenant (which they cannot), then the LORD promises that they would experience success, blessing and prosperity wherever they would go.

How is it even feasible for Joshua to keep all of the words of the covenant renewed in the book of Deuteronomy?  God tells Joshua to constantly keep the Law before himself and to be speaking it to himself and to the others all day, every day.  Saying to not let it depart from his mouth is equivalent to saying that it should always be on his lips.  The words will always be in his mouth because he'll always be praying them, speaking them and singing them so that they are always before himself and the people.  God tells Joshua in addition to speaking and praying and singing the words out loud to meditate on the words of the Law day and night so that they would transform his heart and mind.  Then, and only then, once his heart and mind have been transformed will he be able to carefully do everything written in the Law.  But we know that even this is an impossible task and it is why we needed Jesus to come and fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law for us, for none of us that have fallen through the Original Sin of Adam and have been born with a sin nature will ever fully keep the Law of the LORD until we are born again and we are one day saved from the very power and presence of sin when God makes all things new and puts everything under the authority and dominion of His Christ, that is Jesus, the Son of God.

This passage ends with one of the verses that we love to quote, but notice it is a command.  The LORD knows that Joshua is afraid to lead these people and that he could never fully step into the void left by Moses, even though God and Moses have been preparing Joshua for this for quite some time.  Joshua has seen how stubborn and stiff-necked these people can be, and the LORD is telling Joshua that he must choose for himself to be strong and courageous and to cling to the Law of the LORD no matter what anyone else does.  When they are afraid, he is not to be afraid, because his trust and hope are in the LORD--just like when he was one of the two spies that gave a good report after spying out the land of Canaan.  So it is now that the LORD will require him to show the people how they should respond in faith in the face of what seems like an impossible task, because the battle belongs to the LORD.  With man this would be impossible, but with God, all things are possible.