Joshua 4 and 5 have been a great reminder that “God is not in a hurry”.

First of all, lets remember a few of the basics of these last two chapters of Joshua. God brings the Israelites to the edge of the Jordan…in flood stage, the Jordan that they are supposed to cross. Instead of another Red Sea experience (the enemies on their heels and God parting the waters for them as they are running towards it), this time it’s different. They must sit in front of it for three days, with no other option but to look at the impossibility of it. There’s no sense of urgency here on God’s part. He actually doesn’t seem all that interested in parting the waters at all, but more in slowing the Israelites down. They eventually cross, and it’s an amazing experience, but not until they sat there for awhile.

In Chapter 5 we see them on the other side. God had successfully gotten them into the promised land with the warriors armed and ready for battle, the waters closed up behind them, and the river at flood stage once again. There was nowhere to go but forward now. They were 2 miles from the capital of their first point of attack, the enemy knows that they’re there, and Israel is most likely anxious to hear God’s marching orders. Let’s get this show on the road! And then God says, “Circumcise the men.” (verse 2)

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think about a medical procedure being done, one of the first things that comes to mind is how time consuming something like that is. Not just the surgery itself, but the waiting period afterward. And that’s with today’s technology, in a hospital. Israel didn’t have any of those advantages. First, they had to make the knives out of rocks (that had to take a bit of time). Then they had to actually do the procedure…and on how many men? Numbers 26:51 tells us it was exactly 601,730. Not only is that a lot of men, but that’s a lot of time. And just a side thought: if this generation hadn’t done the circumcision thing before (Joshua 5:5), whoever was doing the “surgery” didn’t have a whole lot of experience. It seems to me that the less experience one has, the more time it takes to accomplish the task at hand. We have to also factor in verse 8, which says, “After all the males had been circumcised, they rested in the camp until they were healed.” And how long does that take?!

We know from the story in Genesis 34 that Simeon and Levi killed all the men in the city of Shechem after tricking them into having them all circumcised. While the men were unable to fight properly, they were slaughtered. This could have been the fate of Israel here in Joshua 5. Their whole army was incapacitated for several days, maybe longer. And their enemy knew they were there!

All of these things point to the fact that even after getting them into the Promised Land, God is still not in a hurry. What was He trying to accomplish by making them do all of these seemingly unrelated things? Sit quietly for three days before they could cross the Jordan, circumcise the males while in enemy territory, etc. Wait, wait, wait. All of the other things that seemed so pressing and important to Israel, and even to us the readers (like conquering their enemies), were not the most important to God.

It’s not just that we need to slow down a little bit. God is not in a hurry and that is true. But He wants us to know that the things that we are worried about, the things we think of as the most important, the most pressing matters in our life…those things aren’t what they seem. As a matter of fact, those things aren’t really all that important at all. God has everything covered from top to bottom. He’s in control of the circumstances AND the outcome. When we look at them as just a piece in a much larger puzzle picture, we will see that all of these tiny things are just that…tiny! Remember that God is interested in who we are, not what we do for Him. And He will go to whatever lengths He needs to in order for us to know that, including making us wait.

Before dealing with all of these pressing matters, God wants us to be conquered by Him. He wants to be not just our Savior, but our Lord. He wants to remind us that He is Holy. Yes, He has given us the land. Yes, He is good and faithful and exceedingly gracious. But we cannot forget that He is also awesome, a God to be feared. Just as He dealt with Joshua before allowing him to conquer his enemies, so He deals with us. Will we remove our sandals in reverence (Joshua 5:15), or will we rush in, treading contemptuously on Holy ground?

Being in the Promised Land doesn’t mean that we will never have to do battle. In fact, it means that there will be even more battles to fight. And God knows that the only way to win these battles is by being completely submitted to Him. Before we enter into battle, we must be completely conquered by our Lord and we must ask Him, just as Joshua did, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” (Joshua 5:14)

We can’t wait to see you on Monday for Joshua 6 where the infamous walls of Jericho come a tumbling down! Don’t miss it and don’t let your friends miss it either! Invite, invite, invite! Be sure to let people know that every lesson stands on it’s own and they don’t have to feel like they can’t come if they’ve missed a few.

We love you guys!

Sara