JOSHUA 11-12 - REMEMBERING GOD’S VICTORIES
Joshua 11-12
Have you ever felt on top of the world? As if everything is going your way? Israel is in the midst of a string of victories. In chapter’s 10 and 11 we see their most impressive victories. Chapter 11 finds 5 kings arising to oppose Israel, and yet as we read in verse 23, Israel was unstoppable.
“So Joshua took the entire land, just as the Lord had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions. Then the land had rest from war.”
There is a danger in victory at times equal to that in defeat. Proverbs 30:8-9 warns us to fear great success as much as poverty. It reads:
“Give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the LORD?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.”
But God does not desire that we should fear success, but rather recognize his hand in our success, give Him the glory and enjoy the remembrance. Joshua 11 reminds us that we are ultimately tools in the hand of God for his purposes and as such our victories are His. Verses 18-20 tells us:
Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.
God told Moses in Deuteronomy 9:5 why the nations needed to be destroyed.
“Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
And so Joshua Chapter 12 is dedicated to remembering the faithfulness of God in delivering the children of Israel and fulfilling his word.
Chapter 12 sits at the center of the book of Joshua, which has 24 chapters. It is also the height of success for the nation of Israel under Joshua as a leader. And as the nation of Israel reaches the pinnacle and as God is preparing to transition Joshua out of leadership, the people of Israel take the time to recall the victories of God and to celebrate His faithfulness.
There is the key to handling success. Remembering that all success ultimately belongs to God.
There was still much work to be done and transitions can always be frightening. But, like the children of Israel, as we face the challenges of tomorrow it is helpful to remember the successes through which God has already delivered us. I don’t know what challenges lie ahead, but I know they will be easier if we stop to remember the victories of the past. And most of all if we remember the most important victory of all. Like the nations of Canaan, God could have destroyed us because of our wickedness. However, he chose instead to sacrifice His own son in our place, to give us the most crucial of all victories, the victory over sin. So like the children of Israel let’s take the time to remember God’s victory in our life and celebrate with Paul the promise that God will see us through everything else.
As Paul writes in Romans 8:31
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
And then he concludes in verse 37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.