The Two Joshuas
/The following post is a version of what I had the opportunity to share with the “squirts group” at Valley View Bible Camp this past week. It is a pretty simplified telling of the story of Jericho and the gospel message - it was for children after all - but I enjoyed my opportunity all the same. If you want the real camp feeling yourself, might I recommend cranking your heater up to 35 celsius, shine a sunlike lamp right in your eyes, then when you get to the part of the story where the walls come down, yell at your device as loud as you can until you feel all the energy has left your body. That I think would be a fair representation of the conditions of last week. It was a great time, though!
Today, I want to tell you the stories of the two people named Joshua found in the Bible.
And for the first, I want you to imagine something unbelievable. A wall, that stretches as far as you can see to the left, and right, and to the sky as well. Cut of monumental blocks of stone, each bigger than all the members of your family put together. Imagine those walls. That is Jericho. Imagine those walls. Now, with your eyes still closed, I want you to imagine something else. Imagine a group of people, worn out. Tired. Dirty. Probably a little smelly too because it’s hot where they are, bordering on stifling and these people have been wandering in that heat for a long time. These are the Israelites, and the man leading them is named Joshua. And now imagine a third thing. A land in which the waters are endless and cool; refreshing. A land in which grapes grow in abundance to the point that you can just pick them right off the vine and pop them into your mouth. A land where you can have a cup of milk and a little honey. This land is Israel, and it is the home promised to the Israelites by God. And the people are so close to it now that they can taste it in the air.
Now, picture this. That as the Israelites with Joshua at their head slowly inch toward this home promised to them by God, they see rise out of the distance those massive walls of Jericho, standing between them and the place they have been travelling toward for so long.
This is the setting of the story of the first Joshua you can find in your Bible. And as we picture it in our minds, we have to ask, “what was Joshua, the leader of the Israelites to do in the face of this problem?” The problem of Jericho standing between his people, and their promised home? What could he do? Well, we read that Joshua talks to God, and that God gives him the answer of what to do one night, directly from the mouth of the leader of the angelic hosts himself.
Now, I like to picture that next morning after God tells Joshua what to do. I assume the tired and sore Israelite people that we imagined from the day before woke up to a peculiar sight. Their leader, genuinely excited. In my mind, absolutely bouncing! “I know what to do! God told me what to do!” He keeps repeating, louder and louder. “I know what to do! God told me what to do!” And soon all the people would have been listening. And before they knew it, they would have been following his instructions as well. In a line, they formed and at their head, some priests from among them. “Why are we doing this?” You can imagine the people asking themselves in bewilderment because they don’t know what’s going on. But along with it, they go anyway, because how could you not when Joshua was like this? Then, they hear the order ring out, “march,” and off they trod toward the walls of mighty Jericho.
As they approached the city, I suspect at first the people would have gotten a little anxious. After all, arrows are a thing that soldiers standing on walls love to have on hand for just such situations as this. But then, just as the people got close to the firing range, something odd happened. The leaders of the line turned and set off following the walls as they stretched out into the distance. And on like that they went for hours, step after step, everyone puzzled by what they were doing. And then, finally, after what felt like lifetimes of marching, where do you think they ended up? Plop! Right back where they started! And as they arrived there you can imagine the people would have just stood, befuddled. What just happened? Why did we do that? Just so many questions would have been on their minds as to the purpose of what just happened! Why would God have possibly told Joshua to lead them in a circle!? And the confusion wouldn’t have stopped there, because soon the next day came, and once again the people found themselves doing the same thing. They lined up, and off they marched along the walls. Until again, Plop! Right back to where they started. And then they did the same the next day, and then the next, and the next, and next.
Finally, came the seventh day, which I suspect would have begun with the sound of someone clanging something and shouting. “Time to get a move on!” at the crack of dawn. A time much too early for anyone to even think about being awake. But by this point the Israelite people would have also been old pros at this march, so even while tired, I imagine in record time they lined up, and started to walk. And then, just after the first circuit came to an end, something odd happened. Because just as they had completed their trip around the city, instead of stopping, instead of grinding to a halt and heading back to camp, they kept moving.
This was something new, to which I suspect a ripple of excitement would have gone down the line. This I suspect would have in turn caused the people to pick up their pace just a bit. So another time they travelled around the wall. And another time they went as well! And another, and another! And without even realizing it, I imagine the people would have almost begun to race. In record time they would have made the trip, running as if they were flying, the tiredness in their feet gone, all the while the ground around them would have boomed and echoed with the sound of their steps. There would have been excitement in the air, electricity at what was happening. And a fifth time, and a sixth, and then a seventh they went!
And then, just as they got back to the start, from the leaders at the front of the line there came a blast of noise like trumpets; ear-splitting, earth-shaking. The kind of noise that you can’t help but yell along to, and so the people did, each of them from the pits of their gut crying out with all that they are, screaming at the walls that stood before them; between them and their promised home! For a moment the world would have been nothing but all the sounds possible in creation played at once. Louder than the beats of drums, louder than the echoes of explosions, louder than can even be imagined!
And then… there came… the deafening quiet. All the voices ceasing at once. You would almost be able to hear the hearts of the people beating. Wondering together at what in the world had just happened. Wondering at what God had just called Joshua to do… Then came the rumble, and dust and with it the wondering no more. For the walls came tumbling down. And before the people…. they saw in the distance the shimmering of the waters with vineyards standing, the milk and the honey promised. For God, through Joshua, had brought his people home.
That is the story of the first Joshua in the Bible and here is the second. Did you know that when you say names in different languages, they sound different? My dad’s name is Albert, but if he was to one day find himself in Spain, that wouldn’t be what people would call him. There he would be called Alberto, because that is how you say Albert in Spanish! Now, did you know if you take the name Joshua, and say it in Greek, you get a name I suspect everyone has heard before? That is because you get the name that we in English say is Jesus! That’s right, Jesus is the second Joshua in the Bible. And his story is one that is very similar in a lot of ways to that of the first Joshua.
For Jesus’ story, if you want to tell it from the beginning, starts like this. Long ago, before Jericho was even built, God in some grande amazing way made everything, including us human beings, people like you and me. And when he made us he said that we were good. Then God and the people he made hung out together all the time. You can read all about this right at the beginning of your Bible, in Genesis 1 and 2. And we had great times, together! Great times! God and us people were the best of friends, and he loved us so very much… but sadly this time was not to last.
Because something called sin came into the picture, and it messed that relationship we had with God all up! What was this sin that caused all these problems? Well, it was that someone tried to be God themselves, and because of that, all of the sadness in the world, all of the badness in the world, all the death and every other terrible thing…it got shot through everything. Things became less than what they were made to be. And even today when we sin, this is still what happens. In some little way, we are trying to be God ourselves, and when we do that, things are made worse than they should be for it.
But probably the biggest problem with sin is that it does something on top of even these terrible things; it causes us to be unable to even know where God is anymore. Every once and a while we still catch glimpses of God working here and there, but because of sin we just can’t see him like we once could back at the beginning when we hung out all the time. In a sense, sin has become like a wall between us and God; just like those of Jericho. And also like in the story of Jericho, sin has become a wall that we just cannot get past on our own to see our God on the other side. And because of this, it is a wall that will be the death of us if we don’t figure out a way to move past it.
And while this all might seem overwhelming, here is the really awesome thing. Even though that wall is there, our God never stopped loving us, wanting to hang out with us, to be with us, or even thinking that somewhere in the core of our being there was still the good he put there when he made us in the first place. God knows this wall of sin is in front of us, separating us from him, and so, the God who led Joshua to topple Jericho devised a plan to address this terrible problem, and it is a plan we have seen him fulfill exceptionally well in our story before. God is going to break down that wall of sin himself. Enter Joshua number two. Jesus, who is God’s own son, born to a human mother, Mary, on Christmas day many years ago.
Jesus is wonderful. Not only because Jesus is a human being, just like you and me, meaning we can understand him and can choose to follow as he leads like we would be able to with any human being… but just as importantly, Jesus is also God, which means that he can forgive the sin that blocks our way if we only ask him to and follow him. And it is in doing this, that just like with Jericho, the wall that blocks us from our life with God will come tumbling down. Because when our sins are forgiven by our God, it is as if they are wiped away. The world is set right again, and as it is, the building blocks of this wall of sin, the foundations of it themselves, are simply destroyed, leaving us able to see Jesus as he leads us through to the glorious other side.
Jesus is wonderful, and this is a job that only he can do. But because of sin, it is a job that he actually died doing. But then a miraculous thing happened, for he rose from the dead, showing that even that was not going to be enough to keep this second Joshua, Jesus Christ, God’s son, from tearing down the wall between us and our true home with the God who made us and loves us. Our true home where sin will be no more, the world will be renewed, where badness and sadness will be addressed and done away with, and where we will be able to hang out with our God who thinks we are good again.
All you need to do for God to tear down this wall of sin in your life is to simply acknowledge, ask and follow. Acknowledge that Jesus is who God says he is, his own son. Ask for Jesus, simply pray, to forgive the sin in your life that keeps you from the God who loves you. And then follow Jesus as he teaches us to in scripture; follow him as he leads throughout your life going forward. Acknowledge, ask and follow this second Joshua, Jesus Christ, and the wall in your life separating you from the wonderful beyond will with our God’s help, just like Jericho, come tumbling down.
These are the stories of the two Joshuas in the Bible, both of whom tore down impossible barriers to lead their people to the place God promised. And I pray today that both the stories find you well. If you are curious about anything I have said, I would encourage you to get in touch. I would be happy to talk to you about who Jesus is and what his teachings mean for our lives today. I would also be delighted to help find a group of believers for you to learn more about God with, no matter where you happen to be (to the best of my ability, anyway. I only know so many places). There is so much to be found in a relationship with Jesus Christ, and I pray you will be able to discover the joys of it for yourself.
