Sermons from Past Years

Joshua 1 "God at War?" Scott Hoezee

Just before five o'clock on the afternoon of April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's great heart stopped--FDR was the victim of a cerebral hemorrhage. About one hour later the news broke around the world: the man who had been President of the United States for the past twelve years was dead. In Berlin an ecstatic Joseph Goebbels telephoned Adolf Hitler and proclaimed that this piece of good news could be the turning point in the war. Many others around the world worried that such a prediction would be correct.

For suddenly Harry S. Truman was president, but hardly anyone had any idea who he was. Truman had been vice-president for only eighty-two days before FDR's sudden death. All most people knew about Harry Truman was that he was a largely uneducated former haberdasher from Independence, Missouri. He was untried, unknown, untested on the world stage and yet now he was in charge of a full-scale war in the Pacific and in Europe.

As Donald McCullough notes, when he became president, Truman had no experience in foreign relations, did not know Churchill or Stalin, didn't know his own Secretary of State, had never been told a whisper about the development of the nuclear bomb, and above all he was not Franklin Roosevelt--and most Americans could not imagine anyone else occupying the Oval Office. Upon hearing that President Roosevelt was dead, a stunned Harry Truman said to Eleanor Roosevelt, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Mrs. Roosevelt replied, "Is there anything we can do for you, for you are the one in trouble now." And so he was.

Of course, we now have the luxury of looking back and knowing that old Harry Truman did just fine as president. But how scary and uncertain it all was at first. For it was a moment of high human drama. The Nazi menace was still alive; the war with Japan was taking a horribly bloody toll. And so as this unknown man stepped into the White House, the entire world held its breath. What would be next?

The Book of Joshua opens with a similarly tense question. Look at the very first words and let them sink in: "After the death of Moses . . . ." Moses was dead! No one in all Israel had ever known a different leader. Even the parents and grandparents of all the Israelites now living had been led by Moses. Moses had been the mouthpiece of God. Moses had at times been the sole buffer that stood between Israel and God's wrath. Moses had led them out of Egypt, had met personally with God up on Mount Sinai, had kept them safe those forty years of wilderness wandering.

And now he was dead. Would Yahweh still speak to them if Moses were not around? Would anyone promote Israel's cause or shield them from God's wrath now that Moses was dead? Above all, would the covenant move forward, would salvation history advance to its next stage if Moses were not there to superintend the whole thing? These are the questions that must have gripped the Israelites in those dreary days following Moses' death.

Tonight as we begin a series of sermons from Joshua, let's allow this first chapter to set the stage for us. First, let's see how it reassures the Israelites in the midst of their uncertainty following Moses' death. Second, as we turn into the heart of Joshua, let's spend a little time pondering what this book communicated to the people who originally read it. But then finally let's also ponder our own reading of this book, paying attention to especially the more scandalous elements of Joshua, starting with its unsettling portrayal of God at war--of Yahweh sanctioning a total warfare of grim mayhem and carnage.

First, then, let's see how Joshua 1 reassures the Israelites even as it continues the forward movement of salvation history. In swift strokes--and in only four verses--we see that Moses' death has not derailed the train of God's covenant. Already in verse 2 God begins to speak to Joshua just the way he had formerly spoken to Moses. "Moses is dead," Yahweh says in verse 2. Of that fact every man, woman, and child in Israel was already painfully well aware. But God does not linger on this unhappy fact but instead immediately issues an order that shows things are going to keep clicking along just as before.

Moses may be dead but the last thing Moses would want--and obviously the last thing Yahweh wants--is for the people to sit around dining on ashes. "You've got a big river to cross, Joshua," Yahweh says, "so get to it!" Yahweh then makes clear in verse 3 that everything he had promised through Moses was still in effect. Most importantly of all, however, Yahweh says in verse 5 that Joshua is the new Moses--God is going to stick with and work through Joshua the same way he did with Moses. And so in an instant Yahweh wipes away the people's uncertainty.

But while there is a message in that for all Israel, God knows that Joshua is the one who needs re-assurance as much as anyone. For Joshua was the one in trouble now. The people are currently caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Behind them is the vast, chaotic wilderness of death, in front of them is Canaan and its multiple populations of fierce warriors--people who are not about to hand over the deed to the Promised Land without a pretty good fight. So Joshua must have wondered what he was in for.

Thus Yahweh assures Joshua again and again: "Be strong and courageous! Follow my ways, hold fast to the designs for life traced out by Moses, and you will be just fine--I guarantee it." No less than eight times in just four verses God tells Joshua not to worry, to move forward with confidence, and to expect success to crown his every effort.

Small wonder that Joshua gets up off his knees in verse 10 and immediately takes charge with confidence. The Almighty God of the entire universe has just told Joshua that all will be well, and Joshua takes this wonderful good news to heart. By the time Joshua gets done issuing his first set of executive orders, the people respond with a stirring pledge of allegiance--where he goes they will follow; what he says they will obey.

And so the drama of Israel continues, not missing a beat even after the death of the greatest leader of all times. Most scholars believe that Joshua was written sometime during the monarchy period--that is, this book was composed some centuries after the conquest of Canaan was complete. Many believe that it was written at a time when Israel again faced some new trials. In the face of various personal, spiritual, and military challenges, someone wrote Joshua as a way to bolster the faith of some latter-day Israelites.

It is as though the author of this book is saying, "My friends, recall that even when Moses died God did not abandon us. Remember that even in the face of a challenge as unthinkable as conquering Canaan, God was with us, God gave us a new leader like Joshua, and God therefore won the day. So let's not lose heart!"

For the Israelites who first read this book, Joshua served as a kind of pastoral comfort in the face of new sources of anxiety and doubt and fear. John Stek has even gone so far as to say that in some ways the whole book of Joshua is an extended sermon in which God presses his claims upon Israel. Yahweh has indeed promised to be faithful to his people, but the people in turn need to be faithful to Yahweh. If they are, then things can move forward swiftly and well just as they do throughout most of Joshua.

As such, Joshua can be a source of comfort also for us. The refrain, "Be strong and courageous" is one that echoes across the centuries, finding ever-new meaning among persecuted believers. Those words can comfort Christians facing an uncertain future in their careers, can resonate with brothers and sisters with terminal diseases or pending diagnoses, and with a host of similarly frightening circumstances. In this sense the whole sweep of Joshua--and certainly this opening chapter--functions like a proto-Great Commission. "Behold I am with you always, even to the end of the age." That was Jesus' way of saying to us and to all Christians, "Be strong and courageous--I will never leave you!"

The Book of Joshua presents a great piece of holy encouragement--a wonderful reminder that God stands with us in the midst of adversity. Unhappily, however, there are a few other elements in Joshua that cloud the picture a bit. Joshua touches a raw nerve in modern readers because of its brutal violence. More than once in this book God is depicted as authorizing a jihad--a holy war that is total in scope. At times God is shown ordering the Israelites to slaughter every man, woman, child, nursing infant, cow, horse, goat, cat, and dog in Canaan. "Let nothing remain alive!" Yahweh roars on the pages of Joshua. "Woe to the Israelite who spares any person or who keeps back for himself anything from the land!"

I don't know about you, but I find such words something more than just chilling--I find them scandalous to the point of not knowing how to square them with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, how can the God whose eye is on the sparrow sanction the slaughter of innocents and other non-combatants? It would be one thing if, finding herself at war, Israel begged God for guidance and assistance. In that case we could find analogs in our own experience. When fighting the Nazis in World War II, did not Christians everywhere beg God to help them win the war and to do so as swiftly as possible? We may, none of us, much like war, but if it must sometimes come, isn't it proper for believers to bring their war-concerns to God in prayer?

But in Joshua it is not the case that the Israelites merely sought God's help in the war. Instead God is depicted as orchestrating the war, including issuing decrees to slaughter everyone possible. Perhaps we have become so accustomed to this facet of the Old Testament that we pass over it without batting an eye. But just shift the context a bit.

Suppose that sometime this year we end up going to war with Iraq once again. And suppose that early on in that war some high-profile Christian pastor were to go on Larry King Live and proclaim, "God has told me that we are to bomb Baghdad with as many nuclear warheads as it will take to kill every child, every baby, every person, every cockroach, mouse, cat, and goat in the city." Or suppose that years ago, in the wake of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, one of the soldiers who had put bullets through the brains of three-month-olds and blind old women had said that God had told him that when dealing with the enemy, everybody is fair game. Or more realistically, just think of how you react when some Muslim terrorist group--carrying out the dictates of a jihad--happily blows an airliner out of the sky without regard to the innocent people of all ages whose body parts will be rained down upon the earth.

It may be that these are unfair analogies. It may be that one should not compare the holy character of Joshua's war with other wars past or present. It may be that to try to do so is to compare "apples and oranges." Perhaps, but I confess that I am not comfortable with picturing God as ordering anyone to plunge a sword into the heart of an infant nursing at its mother's breast. I agree with the judgment of church history that the teachings of Marcion are heretical. For Marcion declared that the God of the Old Testament is a different God than the One in the New Testament. That's wrong, of course, but when you read certain passages in Joshua, you understand what jolted Marcion enough to make that claim.

Other proposed solutions to relax these tensions abound. Some more liberal commentators say that the God we find in Joshua is just a projection of the author's ideas. Of course God did not sanction the death of children and babies, but since some over-zealous Israelite soldiers did kill such people, this author tried to get those people off the hook by communicating the idea that they were "only following orders."

More orthodox commentators claim that we need to set Joshua in its larger, cosmic frame and that if we do so, then we will realize that in the larger scheme of things--as God was attempting to accomplish a universal salvation of all creation--what happened long ago and far away in Canaan is nothing. If it was for some reason necessary that God's judgment be expressed in this kind of all-out warfare, then so be it. The larger end of global salvation justifies the means.

Alas, some of us may not be real happy with that approach either. And so we may in the end be left with an inscrutable biblical mystery. The text of Joshua here and there attributes something to God that most of us find abhorrent. So what to do?

I think that the best answer to that question is that we do nothing. Instead we recall that the definitive revelation of God came in Christ Jesus--the one who the New Testament claims is the "exact representation" of God, the express image of God par excellence, the Son of God who is his Father all over again. We accept Jesus as the final Word on God. And if we do that, then we see that in the end--whatever we make of Joshua--God has taken the violence, the brutality, the suffering, and especially the death of our world and he has incorporated it into himself. Our God in Christ has snapped the cycles of violence and counter-violence by allowing himself to become a victim of just that.

In the end the first Joshua and the second Joshua--for the name "Jesus" is the Greek form of "Joshua"--remind us that our sin and God's redeeming us out of that sin are gravely serious matters. As John Stek reminded me this week, in these first books of the Bible there is an ongoing tension between the city of God and the city of man. The question that constantly confronts us is "Out of which city will salvation emerge?" The Tower of Babel taught us that human efforts to mount up to heaven, to take back the paradise of Eden by force, will never work.

Instead God himself must do what he promised already to Adam and Eve; namely, he must send his own Messiah who will crush the evil that ruined his creation, but not before that evil has also bruised the Messiah himself. As we remember again this Thursday, Jesus did ultimately ascend back to heaven as the victorious conqueror, but he is a wounded conqueror, a pierced, beat-up, once-dead, hell-singed Savior. Apparently the overcoming of sin is no neat, tidy, easy task--not even for God. As we have noted before, here is a great biblical mystery: it appears that the sheer nothingness of the pre-creation void was easier for God to overcome than the chaos of sin.

Perhaps none of that quite succeeds in overcoming the scandal of Joshua. But perhaps it does remind us that the bloody conflicts of the Old Testament and the ripping agony of Jesus in the New Testament testify to the stubborn tenacity of evil and the mind-boggling effort that even Almighty God had to expend to root sin out of the creation. As such, we are reminded again that salvation must come to us as a sheer gift of grace for if it did not, if we were left to our own devices to fend off evil and return to the Garden of God's shalom, we would be done in for certain.

Joshua begins at a moment of high human drama: the future of the world was at stake and the best leader ever was dead. But the Book of Joshua is not even three verses old before we see that God once again provides what is needed, raising up just the right leader at the right time to move salvation forward. In the long run, of course, that's what the whole Bible is about--it's about God bringing just the right person to this world. "Be strong and courageous," God said to Joshua. "Never will I forsake you," Jesus says to us. Even in the bloody mess of this fallen world, words such as these provide hope in even the darkest of hours. Amen.