Yesterday’s blog was a lesson from the circumcision chapter, Joshua 5. I concluded that faith is greater than ceremony and closed with Paul’s startling declaration:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Galatians 5.6, ESV)

I love to draw lessons from these Old Testament stories.

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10.11, ESV)

But we always have to be careful. I’m reminded of a fantastic novelized commentary on Philippians, A Distant Presence. (I strongly recommend this book, which unfortunately is difficult to find. It’s possible that The Messenger by the same author contains most of the original content.) One of the best chapters describes the fictitious “Simon the Legalist.” I say fictitious although someone like him was certainly in Philippi, prompting Paul to write:

Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh…Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. (Philippians 3.2…19, ESV)

The novel has Simon preaching a sermon on Joshua 5, and his application was that all the Philippian Gentile believers should be circumcised! It would be a reasonable application except that question had already been dealt with.

Before Paul went to Philippi as recorded in Acts 16, there was a meeting in Jerusalem:

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” The apostles and elders met to consider this question. (Acts 15.5, 6, NIV)

And what was the result of this meeting? James wraps it up:

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. (Acts 15.19 – 20, NIV)

“Not make it difficult.” No circumcision! Our fictitious Simon’s application of Joshua 5 would have been flat wrong. So would our reading the warfare stories coming up in Joshua and concluding that we need to violently do away with the enemies of Christianity today. Jesus was clear:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5.43 – 45, ESV)

And so was Paul: people are not the enemy.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6.12, ESV)

We’ve gotten the Israelites across the Jordan River, and all the nations are afraid of them. At this point, God directs Joshua to circumcise the men. This would be a real act of faith in God’s protection since it would be a few days before they’d be ready to fight! (See Genesis 34.24 – 26)

No mention is made of that problem, but there is this surprising explanation:

This is why Joshua conducted the circumcision. All the males who had left Egypt, the soldiers, had died in the wilderness on the journey out of Egypt. All the people who had come out of Egypt, of course, had been circumcised, but all those born in the wilderness along the way since leaving Egypt had not been. The fact is that the People of Israel had walked through that wilderness for forty years until the entire nation died out, all the men of military age who had come out of Egypt but had disobeyed the call of GOD. GOD vowed that these would never lay eyes on the land GOD had solemnly promised their ancestors to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. But their children had replaced them. These are the ones Joshua circumcised. They had never been circumcised; no one had circumcised them along the way. (Joshua 5.4 – 7, MSG)

This is one of those stories I’ve always breezed through, but going through slowly, I see something very instructive:

Faith is more important than circumcision! I know that most of us don’t practice circumcision as a religious rite, but we do pay a lot of attention to a related rite: baptism (see Colossians 2.11, 12). And we argue about whom we baptize, when we baptize, and how we baptize. I think today’s lesson on circumcision applies.

The ceremony of circumcision was important, important enough for God to direct it. However, let’s think about it:

• They had just crossed the Jordan, a miraculous crossing similar to the Red Sea at the Exodus (see Exodus 14).
• Who crossed the Jordan? The uncircumcised!
• Who did not cross the Jordan? The circumcised!
• What was wrong with the circumcised? Disobedience resulting from lack of faith. (Please see this account of the unbelief recorded in Numbers 13.)

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Galatians 5.6, ESV)

We’re at the beginning of Joshua and thinking about Strength! Courage! as we go into the world on mission. Chapters 3 and 4 give us the order of operations.

Joshua instructed the priests, “Take up the Chest of the Covenant and step out before the people….When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the Chest of GOD, Master of all the earth, touch the Jordan’s water, the flow of water will be stopped—the water coming from upstream will pile up in a heap.”

And that’s what happened. The people left their tents to cross the Jordan, led by the priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant. When the priests got to the Jordan and their feet touched the water at the edge (the Jordan overflows its banks throughout the harvest), the flow of water stopped. It piled up in a heap—a long way off—at Adam, which is near Zarethan. The river went dry all the way down to the Arabah Sea (the Salt Sea). And the people crossed, facing Jericho. And there they stood; those priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant stood firmly planted on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground. Finally the whole nation was across the Jordan, and not one wet foot. (Joshua 3.6, 13 – 17, MSG)

Did you see it? Step into the Jordan River and then the flow of water will stop. Not, “Wait until the flow stops and then step in.”

It’s a common mantra for successful salespeople making cold calls:

The fear goes away when you make the call. You don’t wait for the fear to go away before you make the call.

We see the same principle when Jesus healed the ten lepers:

When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. (Luke 17.14, ESV)

“As they went…”

Strength! Courage! You are going to lead this people to inherit the land that I promised to give their ancestors. (Joshua 1.6, MSG)

When I started writing yesterday’s story of the two sets of spies, contrasting one set’s physical report with the other two’s psychological report, I didn’t know it would end up as a call to share the good news with courage.

That message was reinforced by these paragraphs from the December 24 Advent series article from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC.ORG.UK, a ministry I wholeheartedly endorse!):

It’s tough to share our faith in a context where on the one hand, people think they know the bones of it from nativity plays and Christmas cards, and on the other, the highest value is placed on individual choice.

But imagine if no one had told us we could know the God who made us, that we could live forgiven and new lives, and that we could live forever in his loving presence.

Let’s be brave and make sure everyone we know has the chance to accept the gift of a new relationship with God. – Good News Worth Sharing, Jo Swinney, LICC, December 24, 2023, emphasis mine

A good word.

Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night… (Philippians 2.14, 15, MSG)

Strength! Courage! (Joshua 1.6, 9, MSG)

No, not the characters from Mad Magazine that I read when I was a kid. I’m thinking of two sets of spies: the twelve that Moses sent out in Numbers 13 and the two that Joshua sent out in Joshua 2.

Moses’ 12 brought back a physical report:

And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. (Numbers 13.27 – 28, ESV)

A physical report: big fruit, big enemies. The result was that the people “elected” not to go into the land.

Joshua sent out just two spies:

And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there. (Joshua 2.1, ESV)

Unlike Moses’ 12 spies who brought back a physical report, these two actually talked to Rahab and brought back a psychological report:

Before the spies were down for the night, the woman came up to them on the roof and said, “I know that GOD has given you the land. We’re all afraid. Everyone in the country feels hopeless. We heard how GOD dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt, and what he did to the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you put under a holy curse and destroyed. We heard it and our hearts sank. We all had the wind knocked out of us. And all because of you, you and GOD, your God, God of the heavens above and God of the earth below. (Joshua 2.8 – 11, MSG)

And that’s the report the men brought back;

The men headed back. They came down out of the hills, crossed the river, and returned to Joshua son of Nun and reported all their experiences. They told Joshua, “Yes! GOD has given the whole country to us. Everybody there is in a state of panic because of us.” (Joshua 2.23 – 24, MSG)

Looks can be deceiving. Moses’ spies saw only the outside of the “giants.” They didn’t see the inside – that the giants were afraid.

Back to our story of Richard Kagel, the atheist our pastor encouraged to pray. I would have seen an atheist. Why bother to talk to him? Pastor Dave saw a man in great need and encouraged him to pray to the God Richard didn’t believe existed. (If you missed that story, please check it out.)

[Abraham] did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. (Romans 4.20 – 21, NKJV)

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…By an act of faith, Rahab, the Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God. (Hebrews 11.1, NKJV…31, MSG)

Earlier this week, we looked at God’s challenge to Joshua which opens with:

Moses my servant is dead. Get going. Cross this Jordan River, you and all the people. (Joshua 1.2, MSG)

Continuing through verse 9, God challenges Joshua twice to be strong and courageous. And in between, he gives the secret to being strong and courageous, which I don’t want to gloss over:

And don’t for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind. Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. (Joshua 1.8, MSG)

Joshua 1.8 is in practically every scripture memory plan I know of such, as The Navigators’ Topical Memory System, Every Man a Warrior, or the 2:7 Series (which includes the Topical Memory System). Most of us learned it like this:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1.8, NKJV)

It should be obvious that we can’t meditate on the scripture “day and night” unless we’ve memorized it! Here’s a good word about scripture memory and how to make it happen that I wrote back in 2019.

It wouldn’t hurt any of us to add scripture memory to our list of challenges for 2024. I need to be more regular and systematic myself. Last year’s (or last decade’s!) scripture memory is good – after all, verses properly memorized stay with us – but I need to stay with it. From my 2019 blog:

Whenever I’m around the old Navigators, they all say the same thing when asked something like, “Why are you still following Jesus and making disciples in your old age?” They always say, “Quiet time and scripture memory.” In my book Live the Adventure, I tell about Navigators (the late) Skip and Buzzie Gray, then in their late 80s, and Jerry White, then in his late 70s, saying that very thing. Well-known author Dallas Willard wrote that if he were limited to one discipline, it would be scripture memory.

It’s not limited to high-powered people. I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, by all measures “an ordinary guy” who hasn’t had an easy life. Through God’s help he not only gets through it, he thrives. In the middle of our conversation, he said, quoting Psalm 17.15:

“As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.” That’s what keeps me going.

King David knew the secret too:

Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You! (Psalm 119.11, NKJV)

As did Jesus:

But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” (Matthew 4.4, NKJV)

Good morning! It’s January 6th, the 12th day of Christmas, the commemoration of the visit of the wise men, and I’m reprising what I wrote last year…

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” …[after Herod told them to go to Bethlehem as prophesied by Micah], they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. (Matthew 2.1, 2, 9 – 11, ESV)

Here’s a brief summary of what we know and don’t know:

• We don’t know there were three. The text mentions three kinds of gifts. The gifts, by the way, could have been used to fund Mary, Joseph, and Jesus’ trip to Egypt.
• We do know the wise men were NOT at the manger. Jesus is referred to as a “child,” and the place they visited him was a “house.”
• We don’t know exactly what the star was: a comet, a conjunction of planets, or some other phenomenon.
• We can presume that these “wise men” were descendants of men who were contemporaries of Daniel in Babylon. (See, for example, Daniel 2.17, 18)

So many lessons!

• Jesus was visited by shepherds (the uneducated poor) and wise men (the educated wealthy)
• We can say that…
  • The wise men at the beginning of the story were inspired (by the star) but not informed (by scripture)
  • The Jerusalem religious leaders and scholars were informed but not inspired. I have written about this before.
  • Finally, the wise men were informed AND inspired, and they worshiped.

I leave you with the song that nicely captures this beautiful verse – well worth the three minutes. (Update: you may have to poke around to find the song. The link goes to some long ads first.)

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. (Matthew 2.10, NKJV)

P.S. We live in Monument, Colorado, and a smaller town just to our northwest is Palmer Lake. In 1935, the town laid out the Palmer Lake Star on a small mountain as a symbol of hope in the middle of the depression. One can see it from I-25 driving north from Colorado Springs and from many other places, too. Every year it’s on from Saturday after Thanksgiving through December. On Christmas Evening, 2022, we had a glorious sunset. Loralyn Kokes posted this picture on NextDoor:

Today’s post marks the end of five years of daily posting since January 6, 2019. 1,832 blogs in 1,826 days. And the Lord hasn’t yet told me to stop, so I will continue. Thanks for being with me on the journey.

Right after I wrote the blog about my friend whose race is nearly over, I celebrated my 77th birthday. Someone asked what I was most grateful for, and, thinking of my friend, I replied:

I am grateful that I am still here and able to make a contribution.

Write what you see…and send it to the…churches… (Revelation 1.11, ESV)

Yesterday we noticed that God called for Joshua to be strong and courageous as he led the people in a very real military campaign to claim the Promised Land.

It’s one thing for us to think about Strength! Courage! as we fight our metaphorical battles. It’s quite another to think about it as Joshua did OR if you’re a Christ-follower in a war zone.

Christianity Today looked at the top ten verses most “read, shared, and bookmarked” in the YouVersion Bible app in Ukraine:

And look what’s in position #4: our verse! Joshua 1.9

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Or, as it reads in The Message:

Haven’t I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. GOD, your God, is with you every step you take.

One of the four Ukrainian leaders interviewed by Christianity Today offered this observation on the list:

I see three themes in this list of verses. The first is God’s comforting presence in 1 Peter, Romans, Philippians, and especially Isaiah 41:10: “I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Another set provides the remedy against the fear and weakness brought upon us by Russian aggression. Be strong and courageous, we read in Joshua. Timothy contrasts God’s love with timidity. And in Philippians we are reminded that God will give us the strength we need.

But the third group calls us to the church’s role in a broken world. We are to express God’s love (John 3:16), seek his kingdom (Matt. 6:33), and, in the process, guard our hearts (Prov. 4:23)—and by extension the hearts of those around us as well. Our perspective on the world has shifted, and as the church inquires about the theology of mission, it is no longer the dualism of church and state—it now crucially includes society as well. – Valentin Siniy, president of Tavriski Christian Institute, Kherson, emphasis his

“Be strong and courageous” is “the remedy against the fear and weakness brought upon us by Russian aggression.” How’s that for a practical, real-world application of scripture to the challenge of life as it is?

Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you. (Deuteronomy 31.6, NKJV)

I wrote yesterday that the Bible’s History section is a continued record of God’s dealing with his people, and Joshua opens matter-of-factly with

After the death of Moses the servant of GOD, GOD spoke to Joshua, Moses’ assistant… (Joshua 1.1, MSG)

And here’s what God said, parsed out for clarity:

Moses my servant is dead.

• Get going.
• Cross this Jordan River, you and all the people.
• Cross to the country I’m giving to the People of Israel. I’m giving you every square inch of the land you set your foot on—just as I promised Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon east to the Great River, the Euphrates River—all the Hittite country—and then west to the Great Sea.
• It’s all yours.

All your life, no one will be able to hold out against you.

• In the same way I was with Moses, I’ll be with you.
• I won’t give up on you; I won’t leave you.

Strength! Courage!

• You are going to lead this people to inherit the land that I promised to give their ancestors.
• Give it everything you have, heart and soul.
• Make sure you carry out The Revelation that Moses commanded you, every bit of it. Don’t get off track, either left or right, so as to make sure you get to where you’re going.
• And don’t for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind. Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. Haven’t I commanded you?

Strength! Courage!

• Don’t be timid;
• don’t get discouraged.
• GOD, your God, is with you every step you take. (Joshua 1.2 – 9, MSG)

Some good words as we go into a New Year:

• Don’t live in the past. Carry out the mission God has for you. If you don’t know what that is, ask Him!

• God is with you…especially when you’re on mission!

• “Be strong and courageous” (is how it reads in the standard versions). You will succeed. Live by the Word. Meditate on the Word.

• “Be strong and courageous” – don’t be timid or discouraged.

Paul echoes…

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15.58, ESV)

God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. (Ephesians 6.10 – 13, MSG)