Scripture Daily

Context No. 1369 of 4322 · Joshua

Context · Reflection

Joshua 23:12-16: in context

12“But if you do at all go back, and hold fast to the remnant of these nations, even these who remain among you, and make marriages with them, and go in to them, and they to you; 13know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no longer drive these nations from out of your sight; but they shall be a snare and a trap to you, a scourge in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which the LORD your God has given you. 14“Behold, today I am going the way of all the earth. You know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you. All have happened to you. Not one thing has failed of it. 15It shall happen that as all the good things have come on you of which the LORD your God spoke to you, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil things, until he has destroyed you from off this good land which the LORD your God has given you, 16when you disobey the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods, and bow down yourselves to them. Then the LORD’s anger will be kindled against you, and you will perish quickly from off the good land which he has given to you.”

Joshua, near the end of his life, gathers Israel for a final charge. He warns them plainly: if you turn back and cling to the remaining nations, intermarrying and mingling with them, they will become a snare and a trap to you, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land. And he grounds the warning in what they have already seen: today I go the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts that not one word has failed of all the good things the LORD promised you; all have come to pass. And just as every good word came true, so, he says, the warnings will also prove true if they forsake the covenant.

The hinge of Joshua's charge is the appeal to God's proven track record: not one word has failed of all the good things the LORD promised; all have come to pass. Israel could look back over the whole conquest and see that every promise God had made, the land, the victories, the inheritance, had come true down to the last word; God's reliability was not a matter of hope but of demonstrated fact. And Joshua uses that established faithfulness to press home a sobering point: the same God whose good promises all came true has also spoken warnings, and those are exactly as reliable as the promises. We tend to treat God's word selectively, gladly trusting the promises of blessing while quietly assuming the warnings are not quite serious, that God will not really do what he has said about the consequences of turning from him. Joshua will not allow the split. The word of God is one word, and its reliability cuts both ways: the God who kept every good promise will also keep his warnings, because he is faithful to all of it, not just the parts we like. To trust that not one of God's good words has failed is also to reckon honestly with the warnings, and to take them as seriously as we take the promises.

Do I trust God's promises gladly while quietly assuming his warnings are not quite serious, or do I reckon, as Joshua urges, that the God whose every good word came true is exactly as reliable in what he warns as in what he promises?

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