Joshua is a book that is traditionally found within the former Prophets. It is a link between the Pentateuch which is the first five books of the Bible, that is the books of Moses, and the rest. So Joshua is about taking what’s revealed in those first five books and bringing the truths and principles from Moses into action. And what we find in the book of Joshua is that the sons of Israel are having to form themselves pretty much into an army to go into the land of Canaan and to get rid of the tribes that are there, these tribes being regarded as their enemies. For the Lord had promised the land Canaan to the sons of Israel all the way back to prophecy given to Abraham and now this long-awaited promise is coming to a point where it can actually be fulfilled.
But there has been a long period of preparation. The deliverance of the sons of Israel out from under the rule of Pharaoh, the next forty years spent in the wilderness, the giving of the Ten Commandments and various other laws, the instructions as to how to build the tabernacle and all of the rest of the trials and tribulations that they went through in their long journey. And so now there is a point of transition. This is what the book of Joshua is all about. It’s a shift in knowing about spiritual things to looking to how to actually apply them in this battle with the tribes of the land. So we’re going to be looking at this book with regards to its application to our own work in spiritual life.
This is the story of Joshua. It’s the story of the regeneration of the human mind, a story of battles and of riding into the interior land of the mind where the things that oppose the life of heaven can be encountered. This is the Great Commission given to all those who would be the Lord’s disciples.
