JOSHUA 11
Read Joshua 11
We now come to quite a detailed account of the conquest of the Northern part of the Promised Land. And it is reasonable to wonder why there is so much detail in this chapter, all these cities defeated, all this geographical detail, the massing of the opponents, their armaments etc. But what is being stressed here is that it was no simple task to defeat God’s enemies. It took time (v18 says that Joshua waged war against these kings for a long time).The massed ranks of God’s enemies vastly outnumbered his people, as indeed they do today. Yet God told Joshua, and he tells us, not to be afraid (v6). Why is Joshua not to be afraid? Because of the sovereignty of God. It is God who hands the enemy over to Israel, their success is not because of what they can achieve, it is through the power of God and his grace in defeating the enemy. And we can reflect that our own success in reaching the Promised Land of eternal life is not through anything we have done but through God’s grace in the cross of Christ defeating sin and death.
One difficult aspect of this passage is the Lord’s command to destroy the enemy completely (vv10-14). This seems distasteful, even abhorrent to us. Opponents of the Bible speak of God commanding genocide. What are we to make of this – and admittedly it is not easy. Again, it would help to go back to Deuteronomy and Chapter 9. There the Lord makes it clear to Israel that they are not being given the Promised Land because of their righteousness, it is not because they have been particularly good. Verse 5 tells us that it is because of the wickedness of the nations that are already there. Deuteronomy 12:29-31 explains this further that this wickedness includes child sacrifice. The fear is that if Israel does not completely eradicate the Canaanites then they will be tempted to worship their gods and indulge in their sinful practices, and as we read through the Old Testament we see that is exactly what happened. Despite the efforts of the prophets to turn them back to worshipping the one true God, time and time again they turn their backs on God and worshipped false gods, idols.
What this passage highlights is the holiness of God and what that means. It means absolute devotion to God and him alone and also absolute obedience to God – that is what Joshua and all Israel are called to, even to do something that seems instinctively wrong to us, and Joshua is commended in v15 of Chapter 11 for his obedience. This is all very Old Testament and leaves us a little uncomfortable, but the principle is carried over into the New Testament. 1 John 2:3 says, ‘we know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands’. The one who says “I know him” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. That is the standard to which God’s servants are held, complete obedience to the word of God.
Finally, in v23 we are told that Joshua took the entire land – his obedience was rewarded. The Lord gave the land as an inheritance to Israel, and the importance of that word will become clear when we look at the later chapters of the Book of Joshua.
And the last line of the chapter says that the land had rest from war. The encouragement for us is that the Lord is sovereign and the Lord is victorious. He does defeat the enemy, he will defeat the enemy, and we can look forward to eternal rest with him in heaven.