Joshua - Just one thing: Chapter 10

As we reach chapter 10, I was thinking that the story of Israel's conquests could have ended abruptly and ignominiously at chapter 7. That was the first battle of Ai, the one they entered jubilant after Jericho and exited dejected after sin was discovered in the camp.

Some children of God might have lost heart and concluded that they could never make much progress in the land because they could never hope to be pure enough. They might even have couched this spiritual defeatism in comforting theological terms, evolving an elaborate theology of limited expectations, teaching in their schools and synagogues that though someday we will conquer all strongholds of evil, at the present time in this earthly dispensation we should not expect more than sporadic and modest conquests because we are still full of sin. In fact, people who imagine that much conquest is possible are fanatics and troublemakers.

If Israel had taken that attitude, the subsequent history of the nation would have looked very different. They would have been forever reminiscing around hearths about Jericho as if it were a big deal, and erecting statues to it. They would perhaps have settled in middling contentment on their little piece of real estate with their little memories of little achievement---never realizing that they had been meant for a much more glorious destiny. They were meant to have much more on this earth---more adventure and more enlarged borders, a la Jabez (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Read the next part in this series.

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