90 Day Bible Reading Plan Devotional Day 22

Joshua 1:1-2

The call of Joshua!

These sentences are full of suggestion, heaped up, pressed down, running over. They emphasize the fact that no mortal man holds the destiny of earth and time in his hand. The earth does not vanish with his last breath, and time does not stop when death stills his fingers.

The remark applies to the mightiest of men. One might imagine that history would cease with Moses’ death; that since the ages could never match him, God would not permit time to run on and produce inferiors, and prove the declension of time itself and the descent of man. But such reasoning, while natural enough, does not accord with the facts of history. A greater than Moses will arise, a greater than David. God’s greatest servant will be succeeded by God’s only Son, and upon Him men will lay murderous hands, and on Golgotha’s heights He will breathe His last and yield up His spirit; and His stark, stiff body will be borne to the grave, and even then, time will not stop. History will not end. God will not admit defeat and finish with endeavor, but move on, discouraged in nothing, knowing full-well that eternity is at His command; all power in heaven and in earth is not only with Him, but in Him.

History is only another expression of His will, and, though by searching we may not understand His way, it remains as high above our ways as the heavens are above the earth, and it is the way of wisdom.

Admitting, as we must admit, that Moses has no sufficient successor and never will have, we see clearly that God can move on with a second rate man and carry forward His plans by the personality of the same.

“Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise”. It is great to have a God who has a mind, a will and a way; a God who can voice Himself to the ears of men and move their souls to obedience of His will.

One reading this opening verse is foolish to turn from such a God to the “one-celled animal” of the evolutionist, or to a “blind Force” that moves forward with an objective it does not itself know or understand. Give me the God of Moses, who, when His first man is taken away, turns to His strong second and says, “I will now use you. Arise!” Turn to the 10th verse and know Joshua’s response.

“Then Joshua commanded the officers of the People, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it” (Jos_1:10-11).

It would almost seem that the second rate man had learned from the mistakes of God’s first and greatest servant. When Moses was called, he presented all sorts of arguments against his appointment. He demurred from the commission; he did his best to show God how mistaken He was to send him in leadership; voiced an over-estimation of all his deficiencies, incapabilities, incompetence. He illustrated the fact that men who tell God they can’t do the Divine pleasure, in spite of assumed humility of speech, actually seek to inform God and show Him their superior intelligence. One yearns to meet a man whose true humility is not combined with an inordinate egoism; and what else is it but egoism for any man to insist that he cannot and dare not undertake the Divine will? It is a practical assertion that, “I know my powers better than God knows them. I understand my weaknesses better than He understands them. I know that for which I am fitted better than the Heavenly Father knows”. By such excuses men are still refusing to undertake the plainest obligations in the Church of God, declining to accept the most urgent offices, hesitating to step into the place of needful responsibility and letting the work lag. It is good to turn to Joshua and see a man, consciously the inferior of the great fallen leader, rise instantly in response to the Divine command and get ready to go over Jordan.

The crossing of Jordan.

God never calls a man to do “nothing”. All men engaged in that business are self-appointed and self-controlled. Every day men come to me saying they are under the will of the Lord and yet haven’t a thing on earth to do; nothing opens before them and they wonder “Why?” Again and again they are asking, “What does God mean, when I am so perfectly in His will, to provide me nothing”. God very clearly means you are not in His will. God never commissioned a man to do nothing. The voice of the Lord is, “Arise; Go!” “There is something to do, and I want you to do it.” “Go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the Children of Israel”. Go! There is territory to be occupied. “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses?”. Go! There are battles to be fought and there shall not any man be able to stand before thee; and victories to be won. Go, and “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee”.

However, God knows and expects the right sort of response, hence His injunction, “Be strong and of a good courage”, and yet again, “Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses My servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest” (Jos_1:6-7).

God not only has a work for every man, but He has a way for every man and that way is the way of His command, and no man can be excused if he does not know the way, for it is his to meditate day and night that he may observe to do according to all that is written therein, and when he has so done, he has the assurance, “Thou shalt make thy way prosperous”; “Then thou shalt have good success”. The climax of encouragement lies in the circumstance that God who has commanded it, is ready to aid in its accomplishment. To the man who walks in the will of the Lord, the promise comes, “The Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou goest”.

The Jordan seemed an insuperable barrier. Getting a nation of hundreds of thousands of people, including women and children and cattle across it, was a task before which the stoutest heart might have quailed, and concerning which the coward would have said, “Impossible”. That would have been the language of the unbelieving man, but it was not the language of Joshua. The remaining portion of the first chapter is given to his making ready for the passage, and be it said to the honor of his leaders, they answered, “All that thou commandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go” (Jos_1:16).

With such a commander as that, and such leaders under him, nothing is impossible. Of the Jordan, as Napoleon said of the Alps, “There shall be none”. Faith triumphs and the word “impossible” is put out of its dictionary. By faith Columbus conquered the seas; by it the Pilgrim fathers braved these shores; by it Livingstone dared Africa. Truly, as a writer has said, “Faith is a force and those who grasp it lay hold of something that is able to make them mightier than themselves”.

William B. Riley, The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist