The Grand Sweep - Large Print. J. Ellsworth Kalas
If we will learn from the fortunes and misfortunes and will “return to the LORD . . . , then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes” (30:2-3). Mercy is woven into all the fabric of life, even into those sections that seem at the moment to be ugly.
The lawgiver becomes an evangelist as he nears the end of his speech. “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. . . . Choose life . . . , loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him” (30:15, 19, 20). There could hardly be a more impassioned call to the altar of decision.
But now it is time for the changing of the guard. No matter how often Israel rebelled against Moses’ leadership, they must now have felt very uneasy at the prospect of continuing without him. But they have a grand assurance: “The LORD your God himself will cross over before you. . . . Joshua also will cross over before you” (31:3). They can enjoy the same confidence they knew before, because again God is with them, working through a visible leader. Moses seems for a moment to strike a bitter note (“I know well how rebellious and stubborn you are” [31:27]), but he seems nevertheless to be confident they will learn: “Take to heart all the words that I am giving . . . you today” (32:46). Well, we shall see!
PRAYER: Help me, O Lord, to choose well today, and every day. Amen.
Moses said that the commandment he was giving was not difficult or out of reach. How would you summarize this challenge, as found in Deuteronomy 30:11-20?
| DEUTERONOMY 33–34; PSALMS 52–53 | Week 11, Day 3 |
Like the patriarchs before him, Moses pronounced blessings as he died. In his case, however, he was blessing not simply his own descendants but an entire nation, tribe by tribe.
What a beautiful way to die! But if we are to die with a blessing on our lips, we’ll have to get in practice early. Ordinarily we are, in our old age and in our dying, what we have been in earlier years, only written larger.
One could say that Moses spent the first two thirds of his life preparing to lead Israel—first through formal education in the courts of Egypt and then in a character seminar on the back side of the desert—and the last third of his life providing that leadership. The days of leadership were anything but tranquil, and at times Moses was impatient with the people. But he never ceased to love them and to plead for them. Now, ready to die, he reminds them what a fortunate people they are:
“Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you,
a people saved by the LORD” (33:29).
Moses was not a perfect man. At times he fell into self-pity, and he wasn’t above blaming Israel for his problems. He became impatient to a point that he lost his opportunity to enter the land of promise. Yet there was no one like him. He saw the Lord and did God’s will (34:10).
PRAYER: I’m not expecting to be a Moses, dear Lord, but I want to be true to you in my place, in my time; in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Why would Moses bless the tribes individually instead of simply blessing the nation as a whole?
| JOSHUA 1–3 | Week 11, Day 4 |
Moses is dead; and now Joshua, Moses’ assistant, will carry on. He is assured that God will be with him as with Moses, and he must therefore be “strong and very courageous” and “act in accordance with all the law. . . . Meditate on it day and night” (1:7-8).
Sometimes the Lord surprises us by the people he employs. One would hardly expect a prostitute to be the key human figure in the invasion of Jericho—and one certainly wouldn’t expect her to become part of the lineage of the Messiah (Matthew 1:5) nor heralded as an example of both faith (Hebrews 11:31) and works (James 2:25). But perhaps that’s because we become so absorbed with outward appearances while God looks at the heart. Rahab, plying a rough trade in a pagan city, nevertheless had such a capacity for God that she would put her life on the line for what she was coming to believe.
Forty years earlier, ten of the twelve spies melted in fear before the inhabitants of the land, but now the two-man scouting party reports that “the LORD has given all the land into our hands” (2:24). But first the people must sanctify themselves (3:5) to be ready for the conquest; and before they can see God’s power at the Jordan River, they must step forward in faith (3:15-16).
PRAYER: Give me the grace, I pray, to see the potential you have invested in every human being, including those I might scorn. Amen.
What connection do you see between the miracle of crossing the Jordan River and the crossing, a generation earlier, at the Red Sea?
| JOSHUA 4–6 | Week 11, Day 5 |
We need devices to help our spiritual memory even more surely than we do to assist the everyday secular process. New generations will forget the faithfulness of God to their ancestors unless there is something to help them. So the Israelites built a mound of twelve stones (4:1-9) to recall God’s faithfulness—just as we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion to recall our Lord’s sacrifice (Luke 22:19).
But the memory of the past is not enough; each new generation must have its own commitments. As the saying puts it, God has no grandchildren. So this new generation must be circumcised as evidence that they too are God’s covenant people (5:2-7).
And now, the victory at Jericho. Symbolism is present in the priests leading the way, blowing the rams’ horns before the Lord, with the ark of the covenant following. It is there also in the use of numbers: seven priests because seven is the number of completeness or perfection; then, six days of marching but with the victory on the seventh day, the customary day of rest, as if to say that this triumph is God’s doing, not theirs. And at last a shout, an act of faith.
Some will explain the Jericho story with the data of physics; some will see it as a miracle needing no explanation; still others will interpret it symbolically. But for Israel, it was evidence God was with them.
PRAYER: I have my Jerichos now and then, dear Lord; break their walls before me, I pray; in Jesus’ name. Amen.
What, do you think, is the meaning of Joshua’s encounter with the angelic commander of the Lord’s army?
| JOSHUA 7–9; PSALM 54 | Week 11, Day 6 |
When life goes bad, a first inclination is to give in to despair, perhaps even to the point of thinking all is lost. That’s what Joshua did after the defeat at Ai. But it was no time for wailing. God said, “Stand up! . . . Israel has sinned” (7:10-11). It was a time to think and then to get at the root of their problems.
The remedy was a fierce one. Achan was destroyed, with his family, who were seen as party to his theft. And then on to an even fiercer chapter as Israel wiped out the city of Ai: “For Joshua did not draw back his hand . . . until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai” (8:26).
I will not ask that we agree with all that happens in this often bloody book, but only that we seek to put ourselves into the times and to understand something of the setting. The people Israel must be a holy people, altogether different from the nations around them; so purity is enforced vigorously. As for Jericho, Ai, and the others still to come, they were seen as part of a culture whose