After Joshua and Caleb passed away, Israel passed away from God. After much of the promised land was conquered through the leading of Joshua and Caleb, the Israelites failed to trust God’s promises to give it to them if they continued fighting. Instead, they settled down. Judges 21:25 gives us the reason for their wayward heart: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” They did not do what was right in God’s eyes, as taught through the example of Joshua and the words of Moses.
The Israelites were defeated because they were not following God and His commandments. In Deuteronomy 28:7, Moses reminded the Israelites what God will do to their enemies if they kept His commandments: “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.” If they kept God’s commandments, they would become bold and courageous against their enemies and drive them away.
They brought the ark out to battle without the Lord telling them to. They trusted the ark itself, not His commandments that were placed in the ark and the God who gave them. So they were defeated. The ark was the place on which God dwelt. With the ark taken away, it became symbolic of how far the Jews had fallen–God was far away from them.
We do the same thing today, doing things as though we had no King Jesus, doing whatever we think is right in our own eyes. We trust in our church to save us; we trust in our lucky rabbit’s foot, whatever shape it takes. As a result, we don’t overcome sin in our lives, although Jesus has already destroyed its power (Romans 6) so that sin should no longer rule. We might do what the Israelites do and trust our cross necklaces as good-luck charms. We may look to angels for help and not to Christ. We might be trusting in our good deeds to make us worthy, and then wonder why God does not keep up His end of the bargain to help us. We are doing what’s right in our eyes instead of seeing how God wants to work in our lives, explained in the Word of God, and living that way.
When we read the Bible and ponder it so we can apply its lessons to our lives, then we too can be like Joshua and Caleb who conquered the promised land. We too will stand against sin and overcome the giants in the land of our souls. The enemies God calls us to overcome are within us.
We have no substitute for the Word of God. We want God to be with us wherever we go. If that is truly your desire, then the Bible will make sense to you. If it is not, the Bible will be a giant question mark. “Why do I read this? It doesn’t seem relevant to my life.” All the laws of Moses and all the commandments and instructions in the New Testament are to this end, to love the Lord supremely and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40). If this is your goal in life, the Bible will serve you well, you will overcome the sins that defeat this purpose, and God will bless your work mightily–because you’ll be working with God instead of against Him.
