CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 1:11. Prepare you victuals] Herein speaks both the prophet and the soldier. As God’s prophet, Joshua anticipates the cessation of the manna, and prepares the people for the new phase of life on which they must soon enter (chap. Joshua 5:12). As a soldier, he looks with his keen military forecast to the busy hours of the march, and to that closer massing of the people, which would be unfavourable for gathering their usual food. Within three days] Perhaps the best solution is indicated by Knobel, “The three days mentioned in chap. Joshua 3:2, are identical with the three days here in Joshua 1:11.” The march from Shittim to Jordan would, in this case, have been made during the absence of the spies, the events of chap. 2, on the one hand, and of chap. Joshua 3:1, on the other, being concurrent. Thus taken, the spies would rejoin the host, not at Shittim, from whence they went out, but immediately before Jordan.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 1:10-11
THE GIFTS OF GOD
Some gifts we possess already, as the Israelites did the manna; how are they to influence us? Some gifts are as yet only promised, as the land of Canaan was to Israel; how are we to regard them? Some gifts are not promised at all, excepting by implication, as strength and help to cross the Jordan in the face of a warlike foe. How far may we go onward, depending on promises which are not written, but merely implied? In a word, what influence are the gifts of God which we do possess, the gifts which through promise we hope to possess, and the gifts which though not specified in any promise we absolutely require, to exert on us in our daily life? How far may we relax personal efforts, and rest in mercies which we have, because we have them? How far may we look on promised mercies, and go on in the strength of them, as though they were in hand already? Yet again, in what measure may we reckon that our very necessities guarantee to us the help of our heavenly Father, even where no actual promise defines some visible emergency before us? These are some aspects of a great question, about which, and through Joshua, God is here seen impressing His mind on the early and plastic life of this young nation. The principles of the teaching are deep, and important, and wide-reaching.
I. The gifts of God are to be held with a wise regard to the surroundings of our life. “Prepare you victuals.” But the manna was yet falling (chap. Joshua 5:12): probably the people had gathered of it that very morning. Here they are told to prepare other food, perhaps of the corn and cattle already taken as spoil in the border-land. Would not the manna do for the next three days? No. Joshua the soldier looks on, and sees that in the marching and closer massing of the people, their enemies moreover being near at hand, there will be no opportunity and no time for this usual occupation. Joshua the prophet may know that the manna is soon to cease, and be preparing the people for their new form of life. Joshua the godly man sees that other supplies can be obtained now, and seems to be emphatically saying, “Do not depend idly on food from heaven, now that you are where your own arms can serve you in gathering the supplies of earth. In the wilderness your own toil could do nothing; here it can. ‘Prepare you victuals.’ “Prepare, for you must, on account of the marching order necessary in front of your foes; prepare, for you can, as you have spoil by you; prepare, for you ought to, God’s gifts being never bestowed to supersede your own efforts.
1. When we rest on God’s help, we should know for what times and for what places in our life that help has been promised. Even God has no manna for fat lands. Some food and some kinds of help are only for life in the desert. Christian people sometimes try their faith by praying for things and by expecting things that God will probably never give them, (a) Sometimes men stand in fertile places, and plead promises which were meant only for help in a wilderness. Think of a man free from trial pleading Isaiah 41:10; Isaiah 41:13; Isaiah 41:17-18, and saying, “I want to feel that, to hear God’s voice thus, and to see such wonders of His love and power.” Men pray in fruitful lands for help which is good only for the desert, and then, when prayer is unanswered, think the promises are vague. It is we who are vague. The martyrs, the reformers, the very poor, the terribly tempted, may ask and get help that would curse other Christians. Our expectation of God’s gifts should be appropriate. (b) Sometimes earnest men cry out for visible interpositions of God. They want some unmistakable manifestation, and “they seek after a sign.” So long as their outcry is after God, they think it must be scriptural. But God gives visions only in the night-time; the old prophets had them, but think of the terrible times in which they lived. The man who cries, “I only am left,” may have an angel to speak with him in his despair; probably none will ever come to us, pray earnestly and long as we may. The cessation of miracles and signs must not be taken as an arbitrary arrangement which can no longer happen because prophets are gone and apostles are no more; the visible signs are gone because of increased light, and not because of extinct apostles. What we can bear, it is best we should bear. It is to Mary Magdalene in her simple, ardent, absorbing love, and her unquestioning faith, that the Saviour says, “Touch me not.” The other women in the same hour may hold Him by the feet, and worship Him; to the timid ten Christ will say, the same evening, “Handle me and see;” to the doubter the same pitying compassion will say, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands,” etc.; to Mary, whose greater love is as greater light, Christ virtually says, “Future contact with me is to be spiritual, and you can best bear to first learn this hard lesson.” It is as our day is that we may look for our strength to be. Thus we should “Rejoice in the Lord always,” whether the signs of His presence with us are great or not. Suppose Israel had said in the days of Gideon, “God cannot be with us as He was with our fathers; manna does not fall for us as it did for them;” the answer would have been, “You are not in the wilderness.” It does not follow that God is not with us, because we cannot see so much of Him as some one else has seen, or does see. Spurgeon, and Müller, the heavily bereaved, and the very poor, need a measure of help which might hinder many.
2. True piety will consider how far God’s promises and gifts are practicable. The manna was a very elastic gift. It was always sufficient for necessity, would not bear accumulation in the week, and yet kept wholesome over the Sabbath. But even the manna was unsuitable for a march in front of an enemy. Do not Christians sometimes plead for gifts which in the very nature of things, they could not have?
3. Then the question of need comes up in this other light—How far CAN we do to-morrow without the things which we really need to-day? It will curse us to possess as a gift what we can get from our own labour. Manna in Canaan would have tended to make a fertile land not only as the wilderness, but worse. Think of decaying vegetation. In the miracles of the Saviour, Divine power never undertakes to do what human hands could accomplish. Men can fill the six waterpots with water; gather the loaves and fishes already in possession of some in the multitude; roll away the stone from the grave of Lazarus. That which men can do, Christ will not do for them. Superhuman help only begins where human power fails.
II. The gifts which God’s people have had should assure them concerning all other gifts which they really need, whether these are promised or not. “In three days ye shall pass over this Jordan.” It does not appear that at this time Joshua had received any specific promise of help for the passage. That came later; chap. Joshua 3:7-8. How, then, was this mighty host to cross a deep and rapid river? They knew nothing of pontoon bridges, and had no engineers. How were they to cross if their warlike enemies should dispute the passage? Who could say that the Canaanites would not defend this watery pass? If they would fight anywhere, surely here, where “the swellings of Jordan” would help them. Spartans fight desperately at Thermopylæ; and Britons off Dover go even into the sea to get vantage blows at the bearers of Cæsar’s eagles. There seems to have been no promise yet about the passage of the Jordan. Faith reads enough of help in the very necessity, and says with unwavering words, “Ye shall pass over.”
1. All our actual need is to be referred to the heart and character of God. God’s heart and arm have each a history; the one, of gracious kindness, the other of invincible power. It is because of what God is, and because of being in the way of God’s commandments, that Joshua is able to speak so confidently of making the other shore in so short a time.
2. To the godly man, not only the letter of the law, but the letter of the promises also, is ever superseded by the spirit. There seems to be no declaration that the manna shall cease, and yet Joshua says, “Prepare ye victuals.” We read of no promise which certifies a passage within three days, nevertheless he says, “Ye shall pass over.”
3. Our sweetest readings of God’s love and of the Scriptures are often the outcome of our greatest emergencies. But for our wildernesses and rivers and enemies, our lives would have been without many a rich strain which we could have learned nowhere else. The Jews in Babylon cried, “How shall we sing the Lord’s songs in a strange land? “They might not be able to do that, but they learned many a new one there which made sweet music for them and for others after their return home. Some one has said of our poets—
“They learn in suffering what they teach in song,”
and it is much the same with the Church of God. But for the wilderness, and the Jordan, and the Canaanites, we had never had this rich reading of trust and holy fear. Here is fear thinking of hunger, and saying, “Prepare you victuals; for although the manna falls now, you must not depend on God for food when you can get it yourselves;” and here, too, is faith, which says, “Though the river be wide and deep, and the enemy may be fierce and numerous, and no actual promise bridges the difficulty, within three days ye shall pass over.” Let these God-taught men of the old world teach us. Let them cheer us with their unquestioning and yet suspicious trust.
“Mortal! they softly say,
Peace to thy heart.
We too, yes, mortal,
Have been as thou art:
Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,
Seeing in part;
Tried, troubled, tempted,
Sustained as thou art.”
III. All our temporal gifts from God belong to us, at most, for this life only. The manna was not even for a lifetime, and the land was only given to them for as long as they could “possess it.” When death took away the power of possessing this gift of God, it could be theirs no longer. That is the tenure of all our earthly holdings. Men try to hold and control their earthly estates for generations after they are gone. The law of entail and primogeniture; curious wills; trust deeds for charitable and religious purposes. The “pious founder” of the past is perpetually hampering the action of pious men in the present. Some trust-restrictions may be and must be made; but surely it is hardly right to tie down a future generation to matters of detail suggested to us by our probably poorer light. If a Christian man is subject to the accident of wealth during his life, is he therefore at liberty to provide a detailed creed for thousands for the next ten or twenty generations? In any case, our earthly holdings must soon be laid down. They are only ours while we can possess them. Are we holding them wisely, and for God? Have we any possession in Christ Jesus, who came into the world to save sinners? That inheritance only can we hold for ever.