^^Our final photos from Harbour Island^^
This winter I have been going to the Park Community Church Saturday morning women’s Bible study where we have been studying the book of Joshua. This week we reached the end of the study and the beauty of the end of book totally hit me like a sack of bricks.
At the very beginning of the book God speaks to Joshua and says,
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” – Joshua 1:7-9.
God pleads with Joshua to stay focused on God’s law and to obey and follow it closely.
By the very end, Joshua has done everything that God commanded Him to do. He lived faithfully and courageously. He walked with God and led the people as they conquered the promised land. He withstood any temptations he might have faced. He lived nobly and clung to God’s word. He made it to the end and can honestly pat himself on the back because he has lived really well.
Joshua is now an old man and he knows that he does not have much time left. This is it. He only has a few years left on earth and he wants to use every minute that he has left to exhort and encourage the people of Israel.
But instead of commending himself, which would certainly be understandable and probably even appropriate at this point, Joshua desperately pleads with Israel to remember all that God has done for them throughout their quest to inhabit the land God gave them.
Joshua says, “Now behold, today I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that NOT ONE word of all the good words which the LORD your God spoke concerning you has failed; ALL have been fulfilled for you, NOT ONE of them has failed.”- Joshua 23:14
Not one word failed.
Not one. All was fulfilled. Not ONE failed.
“NOT ONE word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; ALL came to pass.” Joshua 21:45
All came to pass.
Can you even imagine what Joshua is feeling in this moment as he stands before the people that he struggled to lead all his adult life, as he looks back at them able to say, “Yes, we made it and God did it all. He did it. We saw Him fulfill EVERY promise. He did not fail us, NOT.EVEN.ONCE.!”
I imagine Joshua empowered, awed, choked up and overwhelmed with emotion in this moment. I imagine him struggling through these words as instances of God’s faithfulness flash across his mind.
He started off on this journey with God as a young man and now he has reached the end of the race, victorious. He had big shoes to fill when he stepped in for Moses. I bet there were moments when Joshua felt overwhelmed, scared by his assignment and God’s ability to follow through on His promises. But here he is now at the end of his life and He saw God do everything He had promised.
What an awe inspiring moment. If Joshua’s life were a movie, this would be the scene where everyone in the audience is bent over bawling.
The wording of these verses is so poignant. NOT ONE promise failed. ALL came to pass. NOT ONE failed.
The totality of these phrases leaves no room for doubt. God made zero mistakes. He showed up every.single.time.
God showed up but Joshua also kept his end of the bargain. He obeyed. He meditated on the law day and night and was careful to do everything he could to keep the law.
Here in these final moments, he pleads with Israel to “be very strong to keep and do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right nor the left. “ Joshua 23: 6. He exhorts them to “cling to the Lord.” Joshua 23:8.
He saw what happened to the people who disobeyed and chose other Gods and here he is now begging Israel to remember how those people were destroyed.
The thing about God’s promises is that there are seasons where clinging to the promise just sucks. Then there are other moments where you experience the awesome victory on the other side of the promise.
If you are in a season where you feel like you are just barely holding on, desperately clinging to a promise of God, keep clinging, do not turn from it to the right or the left. Meditate on the law and stay the course.
When this feels particularly hard, imagine yourself at the end of the movie of your life, ending well like Joshua did. Picture yourself looking back to your people and reminding them how God did everything He had promised. You can remind your people that He did not fail. Not once. Every word was accomplished. Even when you had no idea how it would happen, God did what he said he would.
All. Came. To. Pass.
