Christ in Joshua

Christ Connection - Joshua the Type of Jesus

Joshua’s name in Hebrew (Yeshua) is identical to Jesus in Greek (Iésous). Hebrews 4:8 makes the connection explicit: "For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day." Joshua led the physical people into the physical land. Jesus leads the spiritual people into the spiritual rest - the inheritance that lasts forever. The call to Joshua to rise and lead the people across is a foreshadow of the Savior who would lead all His people home.

Christ Connection - The Scarlet Cord

The scarlet cord that marks Rahab’s house echoes the blood on the doorposts at Passover - a mark of salvation, a sign that the firstborn inside is safe. By Matthew 1:5, Rahab has married Boaz and entered the lineage of David. She is in the genealogy of Christ. The cord that saved her from death becomes the thread that ties her to Jesus Himself. The blood that marks our houses today is His own.

Christ Connection - The Ark as God’s Throne

The ark holds the law; it is the footstool of God’s throne. Paul writes that Christ is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), and "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). What the ark was in the wilderness - the visible, accessible place where God’s presence could be encountered - Christ is in the age of grace. He goes before His people into the deepest waters. Where He is, God Himself is present.

Joshua 4 is a chapter about memory commanded by God. Israel has crossed the Jordan on dry ground, and before the people move on, the LORD orders a monument: twelve stones, one for each tribe, taken from the very place the priests’ feet stood firm in the midst of the river, carried over and set up at Gilgal. Their purpose is spelled out twice - that this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?…

Joshua 5 sets three thresholds before the conquest, and a Person stands at the last of them. First the reproach of Egypt is rolled away by circumcision (v. 9) - the covenant sign cut into the flesh of a new generation, which the New Testament reads as the shadow of a deeper cutting: In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands… by the circumcision of Christ (Col. 2:11), for circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit (Rom. 2:29). The…

Christ Connection - Faith and the Walls

Hebrews 11:30 cuts straight to the theology: “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.” The walls did not fall to a battering ram or a clever siege; they fell because Israel believed God’s word and obeyed it. The same letter names Jesus as “the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2), the one who walks ahead of His people and brings down what stands against them. The barriers we cannot breach come down when God’s people tru…

Christ Connection - The Pattern Broken at the Cross

The pattern "I saw, I coveted, I took, I hid" appears three times in Scripture: first in Eden (Genesis 3:6), second with Achan, third with David and Bathsheba. It is the pattern of human sin across every age. But at the cross, Christ reverses it: He took nothing that was not given. He hid nothing. He desired nothing for Himself. His final act was to speak everything into light, to bear the judgment, and to break the power of that ancient pattern. "If we confess our sins, h…

Christ Connection - The King on the Tree, Taken Down Before Evening

The law stipulates that no body shall remain on a tree overnight - it is a curse to hang. The king of Ai hangs until evening and is then taken down. When Jesus hung on the cross, John records: "The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away" (John 19:31). Jesus, unlike the king o…

Joshua 9 turns on a single sentence: the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD (v. 14). The Gibeonites come with old sacks, rent wineskins, clouted shoes, and mouldy bread, claiming to be from a very far country (v. 6); the evidence fits, the story is plausible, and Israel binds itself by oath without once inquiring of God. It is the very thing wisdom warns against - Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own un…

Christ Connection - God Fights for His Covenant People

The hailstones are God’s sign that He is active in the conquest, fighting for the people He has bound Himself to. Paul carries that same assurance into the gospel: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31). The God who armed the heavens for Joshua is the God who, in Christ, has declared Himself for His people. He does not abandon them to their enemies.

Joshua 11 sets the largest army in the book against a single word from God, and the contrast is the heart of the chapter. Jabin of Hazor gathers the northern kings into a host even as the sand that is upon the sea shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many (v. 4) - the kind of strength no mortal army could meet in its own power. Over against it the LORD says, Be not afraid because of them: for to morrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Is…

Joshua 12 reads like a ledger and stands like a monument: the roll-call of every king Israel overcame, two great kings east of Jordan under Moses - Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan (vv. 2, 4) - and then thirty-one west of Jordan under Joshua, each named, each numbered with the same flat, unanswerable word, one (vv. 9-24), until the sum is struck: all the kings thirty and one (v. 24). The chapter is the proof of a promise. What God swore to the fathers He pe…

Joshua 13 opens at the far edge of a long life’s work, and the word spoken there has fed the believer’s hope ever since: Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed (v. 1). Much is won; much is still promised and unentered - and to that the LORD adds His pledge, them will I drive out from before the children of Israel (v. 6). This is the very shape of the New Testament’s “already and not yet.” The believer is told to lay hold…

Joshua 14 sets one man against the crowd and against the years. Forty-five years before, Caleb had stood among twelve spies; ten made the heart of the people melt (v. 8), but of Caleb the refrain of the chapter is sounded three times - I wholly followed the LORD my God (vv. 8, 9, 14). Now, at fourscore and five years old (v. 10), he does not ask for the soft lowland. He asks for the very hill country where the giants still held their great fenced cities: Now therefore give…

Joshua 15 sets two bright scenes inside the long survey of Judah’s land, and both open straight onto the Gospel. The first is Caleb, of whom it had just been said that he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel (14:14), now taking the mountain promised him and driving out the three sons of Anak - the very giants that had made a whole generation melt with fear (vv. 13-14). His wholehearted faith, which took God at His word where giants stood, is a portrait of the reward held…

Joshua 16 sets two truths side by side. The first is grace: the inheritance of the children of Joseph is assigned by the lot - the lot of the children of Joseph fell from Jordan by Jericho (v. 1) - God’s own hand measuring out to each tribe its place. It is the very picture the Psalmist reaches for: The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance… the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage (Ps. 16:5-6); and the New Testament lifts it…

Joshua 17 hands its inheritance to two kinds of people, and the Gospel is in both. First it gives a portion to those the world would overlook. Zelophehad had no sons, but daughters (v. 3), and in the reckoning of the age that meant a name and a line about to vanish - yet five sisters come before Eleazar and Joshua and the princes with one quiet, confident claim: The LORD commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren (v. 4). And the word holds: they receive t…

Joshua 18 turns on a question and a place, and the Gospel is in both. The land is subdued , the tabernacle is set up at Shiloh, and yet seven tribes had not yet received their inheritance (v. 2) - so Joshua asks the searching question that the whole chapter hangs on: How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the LORD God of your fathers hath given you? (v. 3). The land was a gift, freely given; but a gift left unentered is no possession, and the rebuke falls o…

Christ Connection - Light of the Gentiles

Matthew quotes Isaiah directly when Jesus begins His ministry in Zebulun: "The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in darkness saw great light" (Matthew 4:13-16, quoting Isaiah 9:1-2). The land division in Joshua 19 was preparation. God gave Zebulun its borders so that centuries later, when the Light of the world arrived, He would have a stage prepared. The land itself was already…

Joshua 20 sets apart six cities of refuge - a place for the slayer that killeth any person unawares and unwittingly to flee, that they shall be your refuge from the avenger of blood (vv. 2-3). The picture is taken up by name in the New Testament: we are those who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us (Heb. 6:18), and the LORD Himself is named as my refuge and my fortress… a very present help in trouble (Ps. 18:2; 46:1). The fugitive runs to a…

Joshua 21 closes the long division of the land by providing at last for the one tribe that was given no land at all. The Levites had been told plainly, the LORD God of Israel was their inheritance (Josh. 13:33; cf. Num. 18:20, I am thy part and thine inheritance ) - and so, when every other tribe has its territory, the heads of the Levites come to Eleazar and Joshua at Shiloh and ask for the cities God had promised them by the hand of Moses. By lot, out of the inheritances…

Christ Connection - One Body Across Every Jordan

The eastern tribes build their witness altar because they refuse to accept that the Jordan will sever them from God’s people. Paul gives the people of God a fuller picture of the same instinct: those who belong to Christ are one body, so that "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26). What the river could not divide in Israel, distance cannot divide in Christ. The altar at J…

Joshua 23 is the testimony of a man at the end of his life, and the word he leaves is a word about God’s faithfulness. Ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof (v. 14). That confession runs straight on through Scripture. Solomon will say the same at the dedication of the temple - there hath not fai…

Christ Connection - The Volitional Choice

In the New Testament, faith is not passive - it is a decision made and remade: "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17). Jesus Himself presents the choice with stark clarity: "No man can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24). And to His disciples, facing rejection and persecution: "Will ye also go away?" (John 6:67). Peter’s answer echoes Joshua’s: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). Faith requires a day, a mo…