Week 16
Acts 19-28 and Joshua 1-12
Are you ready for a confession? An embarrassing one? I have never realized until literally just right now that the book of Joshua is about Moses’s aid and successor. 😳
But whoa, hold up! There’s a book in the Bible titled Joshua- but not a book titled Moses? Or Abraham? Jacob- nope? Isaac? Now I’m really anxious to read on to see why!
I’m assuming most of us have heard the story of Jericho (anyone thinking of the popular song Jericho by Andrew Ripp?) but it is still fascinating to me. They march around the city once a day for 6 days then on the 7th day march around it 7 times then the wall just collapses. So Joshua leads the Israelites and their army to taking over these cities and destroying the people one town at a time, as directed by God.
Last time a census was done the Israelites had over 600,000 men- plus their families, livestock, and herds. The town I live in has just over 372,000- so let’s estimate about half the people of what we’re talking about here. Ok so bare with me for just a sec- I work at a school, have I ever told you guys that? My actual job is at a small private school. We have about 30 faculty/ staff and 140 kids. I have been at plenty of assemblies and it is often a struggle to get those 170 people to be quiet and listen. Especially once the COVID mandates had us all spread out. It normally takes a microphone or some sort of speaker to actually reach all 170 people, and even then somebody is going to miss the announcement or the instructions- every time. So here we are talking about ALOT more than 170 people, about twice as many people as live in my entire town but yet somehow even without the technology of microphones, cell phones, walkie talkies, whatever- Joshua is able to talk to the entire assembly; reminding them of Moses’s Law, directing and leading them into battle, and very impressively getting them to march around Jericho once a day for 6 days WITHOUT TALKING!!
God is performing miracles right and left in order to provide for the Israelites but I’m thinking, this is one of the miracles that doesn’t get enough attention. These people are quiet; they are listening; how spread out is this crowd to fit that many people? But yet they all fit, all can hear, no one is missing out on an important detail because they had to potty, were running late that day, got lost, couldn’t find a seat, saw a friend and got distracted?? They all heard Joshua and then followed his instructions?! WOW!! That’s an impressive feat!
What about you? Did you see something new here that maybe you haven’t noticed before?