Unlocking The Old Testament

Joshua 2

Looking at the book of Joshua, David Pawson points out that the first two towns the Israelites came to are written about a lot because of their significance. Jericho was a great victory, Ai, a great loss. God told them not to loot Jericho as it was the first fruits. They made 2 errors. One was over-confidence because of their first victory. The second was that one man did loot from Jericho. One man’s sin caused the people of God to fail. Joshua preaches his final sermon. He didn’t appoint a successor like Moses because from now on, one man couldn’t do the job alone. So each tribe had its own elders, a very significant move. It actually failed as the people wanted one-man leadership again and demanded a king. But it wasn’t God’s will. Joshua made the people swear an oath of loyalty to God. Through Joshua, God says, I have done all of this for you. I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities which you did not build, and you live in them, and you eat from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant. Out of gratitude Joshua says, ‘so fear the Lord and be faithful to Him and throw away all other gods. As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.’ As long as Joshua’s generation lived, the people were faithful to God, but then, things went badly wrong. Each generation has to rediscover God for themselves.

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Judges and Ruth 1

David Pawson makes history interesting. Looking at the books of Judges and Ruth, he shows that there are 4 levels of studying history. 1) Important people; 2) Nations, political; 3) Patterns/cycles – rise and fall of civilisations; 4) Purpose/plot. While people often see no purpose in history, David shows that God is moving history to His planned ending. History is HIS-story and He’s writing it. In Judges, people had gone away from God and life became cyclical and things just happened again and again. In Ruth the line becomes the main thing and it ends with a royal line that is fulfilling God’s purpose. Redemption gets you off the roundabout and onto a line that’s going somewhere and you’re part of a purpose that’s being worked out in history. Originally Judges and Ruth were one book and still are in the Hebrew Bible. That’s important because they belong together. Many of the characters in Judges are weak but God uses them. Their weakness was matched by God’s strength. The people in this book weren’t actual Judges. They each saved the nation from a very bad situation. The Judge was God, operating through people. There was no King in Israel in those days. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. Because they didn’t clean wickedness from the land it was a constant problem to them.

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