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Our journey through a book of the Bible each week lands us in Joshua just now. So let me recommend you at least survey these few verses: Joshua 1: 1-2, 10-11; 2: 1, 23-24; 5:1; 10: 40-42.

Joshua. If you were waiting for the action to really pick up, here’s your book of the Bible. Twenty-four chapters of intrigue, decision-making, seeking God and trying to be faithful. 

Joshua, or yeh-o-shua in the Hebrew. It means “Yahweh is my Salvation.” Guess how you say it in Greek? Iesous. Know how that is pronounced in English? Jesus.

Important for us to understand, Joshua the book is not so much a strict chronological history. It is rather, as one author said, a prophetic interpretation of God’s dealings with the Covenant People, Israel. It is a story of the people’s faithfulness and obedience (finally), and God’s faithfulness to the covenantal promises.   

I’ve noticed something in ministry across a career now. There are, of course, exceptions to what I’m about to say. But so often when someone has served a religious group like a church for a long time, even to mixed reviews, the next person can have a really tough road. 

The next person may be incredibly talented. They might have gifts that differ from their predecessor that even exceed what that person could do. 

But there will always be a layer of the congregation or group who simply won’t give them a fair chance. Decides immediately, for no rational reason, that they just don’t like the new person. Because the big thing the successor is guilty of is simply not being who they replaced. 

As brutal a time as the Children of Israel gave Moses, he went down in Hebrew history as a giant. A hero of a figure, revered as highly as anyone. Biblically speaking, he had led them for forty years. 

But near the end, the natural next leader had emerged. Moses groomed Joshua, Son of Nun. When the time came, and Moses had passed, it was Joshua who would lead them beyond the plains of Moab and across the Jordan River into Canaan. 

They gave Joshua a chance. He took up the mantle and was exactly who they needed, apparently. 

We could get the wrong impression early on that things were easier than they turned out to be. Early in Joshua, everything seems victorious and all wrapped up virtually as they crossed over and arrived. 

But we know better. We know that later, this book and the one that follows will both chronicle decades of battles and skirmishes with the inhabitants who were already IN Canaan. Soon, tribal allotments of specific lands were divided up. 

Adjustments to a new and fuller diet had to be made, and that happens here in Joshua because they are no longer dependent upon manna. Troops are circumcised, an indication that their being eligible even while in battle to observe Jewish customs would be important. 

Joshua’s faithfulness becomes a hallmark. What Joshua becomes faithful to will be the problem for many modern readers. In this book, the New Testament God of love is portrayed as an Old Testament God who fights. 

I gave considerable time to this in my pulpit, a luxury I won’t have here. However, my response is twofold to all the violence we see in Joshua, Judges and the like. Here goes. 

First, as with other cultural differences and socioeconomic or ethnic injustices portrayed in the Bible, the reader has a choice. Although we cannot change the portrayals, we can choose to move on and derive greater spiritual value even from the difficult passages. I would urge the sensitive reader to push past the difficulties. 

Second, my friend Randall Lolley suggests a metaphor for processing the portrayals of God’s orders to utterly destroy and take the Promised Land. On one street in the night, a stranger takes a sharp instrument and slashes open a person’s abdomen. We call that murder. On another street in the same night, the same thing happens. Only this time it’s in a hospital and we call that emergency surgery. 

Perhaps we might understand that God looked across Canaan and saw all the pagan practices and Baal worship. Surgery of a type might have been the only way to create a place of devoted worship and practice of a faith in one God. Yahweh. A self-proclaimed jealous God. 

Our God. Violence in the stories? Yes. A model nation now established? Also yes. All depends on how you view things.

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.