It’s only taken a month but we’re finally on to the next book exposé!
In my last blog I shared how I’ve been struggling to ‘see’ Jesus since we left the books of Moses. That remained true for a while, but s/o the internet for guiding me out of my mental rut.
The first point to note is that Joshua is a type* of Jesus. If you’ve been following this series long enough you’d know that I’m slightly obsessed with Hebrew, Judaism and Biblical history in general. Though I’m not sure when exactly, along the way I picked up the fact that Yeshua and Joshua are the same Hebrew name meaning ‘Yahweh saves’ or ‘Yahweh is salvation’. ‘Jesus’ is its Greek form. So, the name ‘Joshua’ already directs us to Jesus.
But even beyond that, the role of Joshua points us to Christ as well. He led the Israelites into Canaan to take hold of the Promised Land which God had given them. Likewise, Jesus leads believers into the eternal life which He promised. He leads us into God’s rest.
You see, towards the end of the book of Joshua we are told that the LORD “gave them rest on every side, just as He had sworn to their forefathers” (21:44). It’s such a hallelujah moment after all the battles the Israelites went through. Yet, in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, we are told that this rest was not all-encompassing (Heb. 4). It was physical rest from war and a nomadic lifestyle, but it was not permanent and in fact it fell apart in the following book of Judges.
I suppose their rest in the book of Joshua isn’t permanent because it was never meant to be. It was a placeholder for – a pointer towards – the eternal rest they could have in the Messiah Jesus. When He came, He offered rest that wasn’t based on extraneous circumstances, unlike the rest of the Israelites in Canaan:
“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
The rest of Jesus – a Sabbath-rest which Hebrews 4 speaks about – is based on Him and Him alone. I believe it is both the peace we experience as His followers here on earth, and the heavenly rest we will experience in our next lives.
And while the entire story of Joshua displays our need as humans for rest that only God can give, there is a particular event in the book which specifically shadows the saving work of Jesus on the cross. I’ll give you a hint: a scarlet cord.
The scarlet cord appears in Joshua 2, the famous story of Rahab and the spies. At a time when God’s covenant was only with the Jews, this Gentile prostitute was allowed to join God’s family because she had faith that He was “God in heaven above and on the earth below” (2:11), and she acted accordingly. (This faith was so noteworthy that Rahab is one of the examples in the Hebrews 11 Faith Hall of Fame). As a sign of her protection from the destruction of Jericho, Rahab was instructed to hang a scarlet cord from her window. Any family member of hers would be saved by virtue of being inside the house from which the scarlet cord hung.
Did a light just go off in your head? Because it did in mine.
The scarlet blood is a symbol of Jesus’ blood. Like we discussed in the blog on Exodus, Jesus’ blood protects us from destruction and from the wrath of God. Like the scarlet thread, the blood of Christ is not concerned with where the people inside the house come from or what they’ve done or who they used to be. The scarlet cord didn’t work based on who was inside the house. At the time when they made the covenant, the Hebrew spies didn’t even know which of Rahab’s relatives would be there! No, the cord worked because of the covenant that was made between Rahab and the spies. The same is true for Christians. When we enter into the new covenant with God through His Son Jesus Christ, its power to cover our sins and save us has nothing to do with who we are or where we’re coming from, and everything to do with His atoning work** on the cross.
Finally, Rahab’s engrafting into the Jewish people is a shadow of our engrafting. I expect that most people reading this are not Jews, which means you probably were not born into a covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I wasn’t either loool. But by satisfying all the demands of the Law, Jesus made a way for those of us who were once far away from God to draw near. In his epistle to the church in Ephesus, Paul tells us Gentiles to
“remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law and its commandments and regulations.”
I’ve often heard the saying “The New Testament is in the Old concealed, and the Old Testament is in the New revealed.” Well, the Gospel concealed in Joshua is that we have a Saviour whose blood covers not only the Jew but the Gentile as well. In that Saviour we can find rest and the Way to eternal life.
Joshua was great, but I’d take Jesus over him any day. Wouldn’t you agree?
* a type is a person, event, institution, or object in the Bible which points to something greater than itself – Jesus.
** to see this explained in greater detail click here