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We have been studying the book of Joshua on Sunday evenings at 5:00. There have been a lot of discoveries from this book of Holy Scripture.

As we have looked at this book, we discovered something about the writer(s) of this book of the Bible. The writer(s) were writing after the events had already taken place. In fact, they were telling this story many years after the fact when the people were now suffering, having been taken into exile, conquered by other nations.

The people had experienced the mighty acts of God and had received the land that had been promised. The promise had been fulfilled! God had been faithful! But something, or more properly, many things happened along the way and now they were in exile, a defeated people, without power, in despair, displaced from their home.

So they began to remember the past, the history, the acts of God, the miracles that took place as they inhabited the land – the land that had been given them, not that they had taken in their own power. Joshua, chapter 1, verses 2-3 state it explicitly as God speaks to Joshua: ‘My servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses. So as this exiled people remembered, the events must have played in their minds like an epic movie, and perhaps they wondered what went wrong, what happened, how did we end up here, where did we miss the mark. There are plenty of possible answers to these questions, but what mattered was that they had come to the realization – by the grace of God – that they had not fulfilled what God meant for them to be or do. They had “hit bottom.”

That is not a pleasurable experience. How would fallen nations, and their people, have said was their “Achilles heel” that caused them to be defeated, conquered, no longer a nation? Again many possible reasons can be given. But I don’t think this is a question for nations alone. I think when a person “hits bottom” that question comes again and again: how did this happen, how did I end up in this mess. Then by the grace of God, the answer is made plain to that person and they realize how it all happened.

I believe the book of Joshua is about how people needed to remember how they messed up and now need to resolve, by God’s grace and with God’s help, to not go that way again. As the New Testament echoes in 1 Peter:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10, NIV)

God offers nations, people, communities, churches, individuals who have lost their way to come and take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and enjoy the life we were meant to live.

Lord, help us to remember Your plan for our lives when we “hit bottom,” to accept Your gracious forgiveness, and keep walking with You. In Jesus’ strong name, Amen.

                Pastor David