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Bible Reading Notes
July 2011
Thursday, July 28th - Joshua 5: 1-5
As this fifth chapter of Joshua opens, we see again how the Lord’s people rightly concern themselves with God before they concern themselves with men. Previously, we were shown how the consecration of the people of Israel took priority over their crossing of the Jordan (compare Josh. 3:5 with Josh. 4:1). Now that God’s people are safely in the Promised Land, the Lord directs them to concern themselves with the need most of the males have to be circumcised, and afterward to concern themselves with their conquest of the Canaanites. This priority of our focus being on the Lord and His kingdom and then on the people and circumstances of our lives is one that carries through to us today (Mt. 6:33).
Friday, July 29th – Joshua 5: 1
This opening verse gives us significant insight into the emotional impact the Israelites’ crossing of the Jordan had upon their enemies in the Promised Land. We are informed that all the kings of the Amorites and all the kings of the Canaanites were filled with dread and depression, if not despair, when they realized that Israel had made their miraculous crossing into Canaan. The Amorites, for the most part, dwelt on the east side of the Jordan. However, some of them had established themselves in the mountains of Canaan on the west side of the river, and, being in the Promised Land proper, they knew they were in the path of Israel’s coming conquest. These Amorites had gained their lands by conquest and held them by warfare. They would be the most difficult for Israel to conquer. However, even they knew that they would be facing no ordinary soldiers in the army of Israel. The Canaanites lived along the coastal plain of the Mediterranean Sea. They lived by trade and commerce and would prove less formidable for Israel to conquer. The entire leadership of Canaan, from strongest to weakest, was reeling from fear, if not from actual defeat, before they even met a single Israelite soldier in battle. The enemies of the Lord’s people always dread those trusting in and obeying their saving God. We should be comforted knowing that in Christ we are more than conquerors over all of our foes.
Saturday, July 30th - Joshua 5: 1
We are told that the dismay of these kings resulted from their having heard of Israel’s crossing of the Jordan. The sinful kings (and they were full of iniquity, cf. Gen. 15:16-21) did not need to see Israel’s crossing or experience it themselves to believe it happened and to be deeply affected by it. The simple testimony of the stupendous truth was powerful enough to reduce those proud rulers to fearful men who were keenly aware of their impotence. The word of our testimony of what God has done in Christ more powerfully affects sinful men and devils than we may realize.
Sunday, July 31st - Joshua 5: 1
We are told with precision what had reduced these kings into cringing cowards. Their cowardice issued from a three-fold cause. The first cause was the miraculous parting of the Jordan. From this observation we learn that all men, even those in high positions, are awed by undeniable works of divine power. It is only due to the Lord’s patience that the wicked are not every moment terrified by the manifested might of God. Such divine patience is designed to lead men to repentance (Rom. 2:4), not to indulge them in their sin. All who abuse God’s patience and refuse to repent will on the final day witness in profound terror not the dividing of a river on earth but the rending of the heavens and the revelation of the wrathful Lamb of God whom they have spurned (Rev. 6:12-17).
Monday, August 1st - Joshua 5: 1
The second thing that reduced the ruling enemies of Israel to impotent cowardice was their realization that the awesome deed of dividing the Jordan had been performed by the hand of the Lord, the God of Israel. Here the kings experienced a profound subduing as they glimpsed the Lord’s legitimate, sovereign, and absolute authority governing the working of His almighty power. Sinful men dread facing the holy Judge and glorious King of heaven and earth.
Tuesday, August 2nd - Joshua 5: 1
The third cause of the fear of the kings in Canaan was that the God of supreme authority and almighty power had overruled the course of nature for the sake of the sons of Israel. Accordingly, they dreaded not only the Lord but also the people whom the Lord had redeemed by His covenant love and for whom He had wrought this great miracle. Those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High God abide in the shadow of an almighty hand (Ps. 91:1). Worldly people sense their impotence and vulnerability when they encounter a people so well protected.
Wednesday, August 3rd - Joshua 5: 1
Forty years prior to this time, it was the sons of Israel (excepting Joshua, Caleb, and Moses) who regarded the inhabitants of Canaan as giants while considering themselves as grasshoppers (Num. 13:32,33). Now the almighty hand of God, having moved to open a miraculous way into Canaan for His people, had exalted the sons of Israel as the majestic ones of the earth (Ps. 16:3), and had reduced the inhabitants of Canaan to a fearful prostration. When the great God of heaven stoops to serve in gracious humility and effectual power the people of His sovereign election, even the wicked are compelled to acknowledge that God exalts His people to be more than conquerors.
Thursday, August 4th - Joshua 5: 1
We are told that the hearts of these kings melted. They would yet seek to put on brave faces (Josh. 10:1-5), but it is the heart out of which flow the issues of life. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. A man is not how he projects himself outwardly to be. Yet, although these kings’ hearts melted, they did not soften toward the Lord. Had they been more like the Canaanite woman, who humbled herself before Jesus (Mt. 15:27), they would have rejoiced in the blessing of the love of the Lord instead of being paralyzed in dread of Him and of His people.
Friday, August 5th - Joshua 5: 1
The Lord treated His people gently when He eased their entrance into Canaan by His having divided the Jordan’s waters for them. That gentle treatment made the sons of Israel great in the eyes of Canaan’s kings (Ps. 18:35). The Lord also treated the kings of the land with a remarkable degree of gentleness. Instead of God rending heaven and coming Himself in His holy wrath and judging glory against these kings, He divided a river and directed His people to enter the land where these kings dwelt. Had the kings followed Rahab’s course, they would have regarded the divided Jordan as an open invitation for them to surrender to the God of grace and to be incorporated into the commonwealth of the Lord’s salvation. It reveals the sinfulness of sin that these kings, knowing they could not stand against this God or His people, refused to bow before Him and to be taken by Him lovingly into His redeemed family.
Saturday, August 6th - Joshua 5: 1, 2
For the people of God, piety should always come before practical endeavors. Accordingly, the Lord directs Joshua to apply circumcision to the sons of Israel before they venture to conquer their enemies. This divine directive may seem untimely and impractical. The people of Israel were in the face of their enemies and God was ordering the men to weaken themselves physically by their submitting to a rite that would make them painfully tender for several days. Yet, the God who had parted the Jordan knew best when His people should cut their foreskins. As it occurs here, the timing was perfect. For while the Israelites were rendered physically weak by their own hands in hearty obedience to God, their enemies were rendered weak in heart by the hand of God having cut the waters of the river for the sake of His people. However foolish and ineffectual may appear the ways and will of our God, His deeds, timing, and ways are perfect. It is our highest wisdom and greatest security to trust in Him with all our hearts and to cut out of our lives all carnal self-reliance (Prov. 3:5,6).
Sunday, August 7th - Joshua 5: 2
Several questions arise in response to the Lord’s directions in this verse. What makes circumcision so important that it is here required by God, even as His people are set in the face of their enemies? Why, if circumcision is so vital, had it not been performed in Israel until this point of time? The answer to the second question is given in vv.4-7. The answer to the first question is found in Gen. 17:1-14, where the Lord gave to Abraham circumcision as the sign of His gracious and saving covenant with His people. While we are actually saved by Christ, the substance of our redemption, we do well to respect most highly the signs and even the shadows of Christ’s saving work. Furthermore, circumcision is one of the two Old Testament Sacraments that not only foreshadow Christ’s saving work but also convey to those rightly partaking of those Sacraments edifying measures of the actual saving grace of the Lord. For believers, vital applications of Christ’s saving work are always more important to them than is their warring against their enemies.
Monday, August 8th - Joshua 5: 3
The Lord speaks and Joshua obeys. The servant of the Lord is not mindlessly obedient, but rather he by faith has come to believe and to know with growing and deepening conviction that the highest good of the Lord’s people is always served when they trust and obey their God in all things, however painful and perplexing some of the things He commands may at first appear to be. Many are our regrets when we hesitate and fail to follow our Good Shepherd fully. Those who do follow Him fully have no regrets but only testify to their having ceaseless cause to praise their wise and loving Lord.
Tuesday, August 9th - Joshua 5: 4-7
The Spiritual importance of circumcision lay in its significance. It was the sign and seal of God’s salvation of His people. This made the application of the rite of circumcision to be of critical importance. The reason why circumcision had to be applied at this time had to do with the fact that it had been suspended in its application for the forty years of Israel’s wilderness sojourning. The perplexing and practical objections to the rite being performed at this point in Israel’s history would have been by far overshadowed by the wonderful resuming of such a vital sacrament that had been long suspended. The timing of the Lord’s giving is always perfect.
Wednesday, August 10th - Joshua 5: 4-7
These verses explain to us what made necessary the circumcision of the men of Israel, all of whom should have been in a regular course of events, circumcised on the eighth day after their birth (Gen. 17:12). We learn in these verses that the whole generation of those sons of Israel born in the course of the nation’s wilderness wandering had not been circumcised. It was not because it would have been inconvenient for the Israelites to perform circumcision on their infant sons in the wilderness. The people had been regular in their application of circumcision throughout the years of their slavery in Egypt. It was rather a matter of the Lord suspending His people from the sacrament due to their sin. We are reminded in v.6 that Israel did not heed the voice of the Lord. Accordingly, God sentenced the heedless adults to death and their children to disciplinary suspension from the sacrament. If we do not heed God’s Word neither we nor our children can be helped by His Sacraments.
Thursday, August 11th - Joshua 5: 4-7
The people of Israel heard God speaking faithfully to them through Moses, yet they repeatedly failed to trust the Lord, to believe His Word, to rely on His provision, and to obey His directives. Their failure to believe God over matters of what He did or did not provide with respect to water and food hardened into a stubborn refusal of the Israelites to trust and obey the Lord at Kadesh-barnea forty years prior to this time (Num. 13). At that critical point, the covenant people determined to make idols of their fears and to reject entirely their God. Therefore, the Lord sentenced them to die in the wilderness, and, although He graciously continued to supply them with manna, He suspended them from His Sacraments of Passover and circumcision until such time as they should walk in repentance from their self-reliance and obey Him accordingly (Num. 14:26-35). That time of repentance had come with the rising generation that had learned to hunger and thirst for the Lord and His provision, rather than to despise it as their parents had done. Without faith we regard divine treasures as trash; with faith we regard divine crumbs as feasts, and divine discipline as blessing.
Friday, August 12th - Joshua 5: 4-7
We are not told explicitly in any book of the Pentateuch that the Lord suspended His people from partaking of His Sacraments while they were in the wilderness. We are told that the faithless parents would die in the wilderness and their children would suffer because of their parents’ unfaithfulness (Num. 14:33). We are also told that the Israelites would know God’s opposition for forty years, according to the forty days their spies had surveyed the Promised Land and the majority of them saw overwhelming curse in it (Num. 14:34). Implicit in these divine declarations is the Lord’s suspending of His people from His Sacraments. As harsh as that may have seemed, it was a mercy to them, for it prohibited them from partaking of greater judgment as they would have been partaking of the Sacraments unworthily and so have brought judgment, not blessing, upon themselves. Our God always tempers His judgments with mercy and applies His discipline to His people with love and for their good.
Saturday, August 13th - Joshua 5: 4-7
The fact that Moses allowed the administration of the Sacraments to cease throughout Israel’s forty-year wilderness sojourn, indicates clearly how well he understood the implications of God’s temporal punishment of His people. Moses had almost been killed by God when, earlier in his life, he had neglected to circumcise his own son (Ex. 4:24,25). Accordingly, Moses would hardly have neglected to have the sons of Israel circumcised, who had been born over a course of forty years, unless he had been certain that the Lord had suspended His people from the Sacraments. One’s personal neglect of the Sacraments is serious but can be stopped at any time. The authoritative suspension of a person or people from the Sacraments is far more serious and can end only when God clearly indicates that the suspension should end.
Sunday, August 14th - Joshua 5: 4-7
The faithless refusal of the Israelites at Kadesh-barnea drove God to refuse them entrance into the Promised Land and to deprive them and their children of the signs and seals of His covenant of saving grace. The faith of the children of that faithless generation was shown in their obedient following of the Lord whom they trusted vitally. The faith of the new generation was blessed when that generation easily entered into the Promised Land and experienced not the opposition but rather the goodness, wisdom, love, and power of the Lord. To such faithful ones the Lord restored the signs and seals of His salvation, so that by His sacramental helps those who had trusted Him in the little matter of providing them with a land, would be encouraged to trust Him in the greater matter of His giving them an eternal home with Him in heaven (Num. 14:31).
Monday, August 15th - Joshua 5: 8
This verse provides a tender and significant touch to the matter of the circumcision of all the males of Israel. They remained in their camp and each male remained in his own place in the camp until all of them had healed. The Lord did not order them to ignore their pain and to go immediately to battle with their enemies. Our God is considerate of all wounding and weakness we incur when we walk in faithful obedience to Him.
Tuesday, August 16th - Joshua 5: 9
In this verse, the Lord makes a declaration of great significance. God declares that He had rolled away the reproach of Egypt from His people. The timing of the Lord having done this helps us understand what is meant by this declaration. The day mentioned by the Lord was after the people of Israel had entered the Promised Land by the power of God and after they had received in the flesh of their males the divine sign and seal of the new nature His people possess through His redeeming salvation applied to them. In other words, the Lord by His word of promise, deeds of power, and seal of salvation had proven Himself to be the loving Savior of His people whom He had liberated from their bondage and degraded slavery in Egypt and brought into the land He had promised to them.
Wednesday, August 17th - Joshua 5: 9
The reproach of Egypt of which the Lord had relieved His people was not only the vaunting oppression of the Egyptians who had reduced the Israelites to shameful slavery. From what Moses had said in his intercessory prayer to God, when he asked the Lord not to blot out His continually sinning people lest the Egyptians mock God as having been unable to save His people (Dt. 9:28), we perceive that the Egyptians were inclined to reproach God as well as His people. The world has always and ever will make the worst of the God of salvation and of those whom He saves (Ps. 2:1-3). By His plans, promises, and provision for His people, the Lord laughs to scorn all who would reproach Him or His people.
Thursday, August 18th - Joshua 5: 9
The Lord uses the figure of His moving a heavy load off of the backs of His people when He declared to them that He had rolled away the reproach of the Egyptians. The image indicates how great and crushing the burden was that God had removed from His people. It had not been a trivial speck flicked away, but rather a considerable and crushing weight rolled away by the exertions of Almighty God. Well did the Israelites call the place where they received this divine declaration Gilgal, a word taken from the Hebrew verb, to roll. Those yoked to the Lord find His yoke to bring them ease, and His burden pleasant because it is His commitment to make their burdens light (Mt. 11:28-30).
Friday, August 19th - Joshua 5: 10
The implication of this notice of the Israelites observing the Passover is that it, too, had been suspended while the Lord’s people were in the wilderness. Now the Lord has graciously restored His people to both of His Sacraments. The sons of Israel bore once again the sign of God’s covenant of grace as the mark of their initiation into the company of those who belong to the Lord. They also partook again of the Passover, which was the Sacrament of sustaining for the people of God, indicating to them that they lived and were nourished by the death of the Lamb of God who takes away their sin. Those who walk by faith in the Lord find manifold, abundant, and potent provision from the God of their salvation. The parents of this blessed generation of faithful Israelites were deprived of this full provision due to their having walked by carnal sight and craven fears.
Saturday, August 20th - Joshua 5: 10, 11
Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that if we seek first the Lord and His kingdom and righteousness, He will add all necessities to us (Mt. 6:33). Here we see that to be the case. When the people sought first to partake of the means of God’s grace, then the Lord provided for them their daily bread for the first time from the produce of the Promised Land. Far from the land devouring them, as their parents had feared (Num. 13:32), it nourished and sustained them from the time of their entrance into it.
Sunday, August 21st - Joshua 5: 12
When the permanent and ordinary provision of the Promised Land began to nourish the people of Israel, the manna that God had miraculously supplied for forty years to sustain His people ceased. God always provides for His people. He does so miraculously if necessary and for as long as necessary; but He is also the One who gives us our daily bread in ordinary ways as Jesus teaches us to ask it from Him. The Word of God is our spiritual manna that our Lord will supply to us throughout our pilgrimage here, but when we reach the celestial city, we shall not feed on the Word by faith but we shall be nourished by the sight of our Redeemer’s face (Rev. 21:22-22:5).
Monday, August 22nd - Joshua 5: 13-15
In v.13, we find Joshua at last turning his attention from his worship of God to his working for God. Scripture has made clear to us thus far how the Lord has led His people to place concerns of piety before practical matters. Yet, those who practice true piety in due course set their minds and hands to engage in practical and necessary matters. Those most heavenly-minded are never of least but are always of most earthly good. However, as we see in these verses, the godly man does not go about his worldly affairs without his being conscious of and dependent upon his God. Therefore, we find that even when Joshua turns his attention to Jericho, he does not do so without having his eyes opened to the fact that he is contemplating his challenge in the company of Jehovah, who is with him and for him so that no one or nothing can stand against him.
Tuesday, August 23rd - Joshua 5: 13
In v.13, we read of Joshua being by Jericho. That preposition could also read in Jericho, indicating that the Lord’s servant was in mind and heart, if not yet in body, focusing on the first object of conquest that had been assigned to him by his Lord. Joshua focused on Jericho by faith, visualizing his triumph over and possession of that great city. We do well to reckon that in Christ we can do all that our God directs us to do.
Wednesday, August 24th - Joshua 5: 13
While the mind of the man of God was in Jericho, the God of this man draws near to help him. The approach of God draws the attention of Joshua. Yet all he sees is a man holding a drawn sword. The Lord appearing as such a martial figure was in keeping with the contested battle about to take place against Jericho. Yet the vision was not so specific as to make it clear to Joshua that he was seeing the Lord appear as his helper. Therefore, Joshua boldly asks this man whether he was a helping friend or an advanced enemy. The nearness of our God may at times appear to us to be questionable as to whether we are facing a good or bad development in our plans, hopes, and lives. We always do well to clarify the matter, for even if we find ourselves standing against an enemy, we can withstand such enemies when we don the full armor of God (Eph. 6:10ff).
Thursday, August 25th - Joshua 5: 13, 14
The significance of what Joshua saw with his eyes was unclear to him. The human guise was misleading because Joshua would likely have expected a manifestation of God or one of His angels to be more glorious than was the sight of this sword-bearing man. It was not until Joshua asked for clarification that he with immediate clarity and profound impact understood that he was facing his God in the likeness of human flesh, his sovereign Lord as a servant who came to work for the triumph of His people, and the King of the Church militant. In a moment, and in answer to his bold challenge to this mysterious figure, Joshua came to see that the Lord was nearer to him and to the people of Israel than he had imagined. The Lord makes this clear to His servants through His Word, even more than through how He appears to us. With the declaration that He had come to Israel as captain of the host of the Lord, Joshua knew that the man’s sword was wielded by an almighty hand for him and for the sons of Israel, and that through such wielding they would be more than conquerors.
Friday, August 26th - Joshua 5: 13, 14
In Joshua 1:5, the Lord promises to be unfailingly with Joshua just as He had been with Moses. When Moses came to Horeb, he was encountered and commissioned by God to accomplish the release of His people from Egypt. There God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and when Moses asked for God’s name, the Lord revealed Himself as I am, the self-existing and self-sufficient God upon whose authority, power, wisdom, and love Moses and the people he was to lead could depend for their liberty from their enslaving oppressors. Now God was appearing to Joshua, the man of His choosing to lead His people into the Promised Land, as Moses had been God’s man to lead His people out of the land of their slavery. According to His people’s needs, so the Lord appears to them, whether as the almighty One to break their bondage, or as the martial Leader to enable them to prevail over all foes and forces that try to prevent their entering into the fullness of the Lord’s blessing for them.
Saturday, August 27th - Joshua 5: 14, 15
Joshua responded rightly to the Lord’s self-disclosure of His person and prevailing purpose. The leader of Israel bows in worship to his Lord, asking only that his God reveal His will to him so that he might do it. The Lord accepts the worship of His servant and reveals His will further to Joshua as the man of God had asked. What the Lord said to His servant was not that he should launch his attack upon Jericho, but rather that he should remain with Him in holy communion and acceptable worship. Far from Joshua protesting that practical necessities would prevent his obedience to this divine directive, the man of God humbled himself and found highest satisfaction in his continued worship of the Lord. Nothing in heaven or earth fits a man better for his work on earth than such vital worship of the King of heaven and Lord of saving grace and power.
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