As we see in the Book of Hebrews and other places in the Bible, many things in Scripture are a prophetic type of other, greater things. The Promised Land of Israel was to be a prophetic type of the establishing of the kingdom of God on earth. Joshua is the Hebrew name for Jesus, the Messiah who will return to set up His kingdom on the earth. If we are to understand this rightly, we must begin by understanding that no prophetic type is a perfect model of what is to come, but is a "shadow." The shadow is...

The next few chapters of Joshua are the history of how Israel defeated and possessed all of the cities and fortresses in their Promised Land. They were commanded to utterly destroy the inhabitants because they had been given over to forms of idolatry and perversion. If they were not completely destroyed, they would cause Israel to stumble in the future.

Israel was called to be a light to the nations, a nation that was of a different spirit, governed by law and justice, and free from the perversion of soul that was a cancer destroying the nations. Radical...

Amazingly, right after Israel absorbed the lessons from Achan's sin and their initial defeat at Ai, the next main event in the conquest of the Promised Land was their deception by the Gibeonites. This, too, was the result of presumption on the part of Israel's leaders. Indeed, presumption is a difficult habit to break.

As we read in Joshua 9, when the Gibeonites saw what Israel had done to Ai, they decided to act craftily and deceive Israel in order to spare themselves. They sent envoys to Joshua to make a covenant with Israel. They took old wineskins...

Through Achan’s sin, Israel had learned some valuable lessons about both greed and rebellion. Sin results in defeat. Rebellion results in defeat. To take the Promised Land, or to possess our promises, we need faith, courage, wisdom, and a resolute heart to obey the Lord.

Throughout Israel’s history, we see a pattern that some of their most devastating defeats came right after some of their most spectacular victories. The history of the church is also filled with this same pattern. Why is this? The answer is in Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goes before...

After the incredible and miraculous victory over Jericho, Achan's sin had caused a defeat for the entire nation of Israel before the tiny little village of Ai. Without question, this shook their confidence. If any pride had entered the camp after Jericho, it was dispelled at Ai. They were again made aware of the total dependence on the Lord for victory and their total obedience to His instructions. They would not win by their own might and power, but by His Spirit. There were other similar lessons about this that they would learn during their conquest of the land....