Day 176—Commissioned and Covered
When God Speaks Before the River
However you can engage today, we’re here. Read, listen or both.
The written portion gives an overview, with verses broken down into smaller bites, and journaling/prayer prompts for reflection. In the podcast, Steve Traylor reflects on today’s passage with Scripture reading, a deeper pastoral teaching, and prayer (about 15 minutes). Perfect for morning coffee, commutes, or when your eyes need a rest.
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Hard Questions, Honest Answers: Deeper dives on difficult topics that arise along the way
JOSHUA RESOURCE: A map of the Joshua campaigns and a reference outline is available here.
Joshua 1–2
Let God’s word to Joshua land on you today.
Something shifts at Joshua 1. The wilderness is behind us. The legal codes, the census lists, the forty years of circling the same terrain—all of it has led here. A new leader stands at the edge of the Jordan with two million people at his back and a land full of walled cities ahead.
God speaks first.
He doesn’t wait for Joshua to get his bearings or steady his nerves. Before a single foot touches the water, before a single scout crosses the river, God speaks—directly, specifically, repeatedly—to the man who will carry Israel forward.
What God says to Joshua, He says four times in the space of nine verses: be strong and courageous. Not once, the way you say something encouraging. Four times, the way you say something you need someone to keep hearing.
And then, while Joshua is still organizing the camp, a Canaanite woman on the other side of the river makes a confession of faith that puts forty years of Israelite grumbling to shame.
Today we see that God prepares His people for what lies ahead—not by removing the difficulty, but by speaking before they face it, and by working in places they never thought to look.
1. Summoned and Sent
Joshua 1:1-9
Now after the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, Yahweh spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ servant, saying, 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go across this Jordan, you and all these people, to the land which I am giving to them, even to the children of Israel. 3 I have given you every place that the sole of your foot will tread on, as I told Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even to the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your border. 5 No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you nor forsake you.
6 “Be strong and courageous; for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Don’t turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. 9 Haven’t I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be dismayed, for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go.”
The first thing God addresses is the absence.
Moses is dead. There is no transition into the grief, no eulogy. The text has already said its slow goodbye in Deuteronomy. What comes now is not a comfort speech—it is a commission. The work continues. The grief is real, and the call is still real. The decision about when to move belongs to God—not to Joshua.
Four times in nine verses: be strong and courageous (vv. 6, 7, 9, and again through Joshua himself in v. 18). It is not a pep talk. It is a command—and the command never stands alone. Every call to courage is attached to a promise of presence: for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go. The courage God commands is not self-confidence. It is confidence in the God who is present.
God never commands courage without giving Himself alongside it.
Verse 8 is the hinge: meditate on the law day and night, not as a performance standard but as the source of orientation for everything that follows. The success promised here is not a blank check for personal ambition. It is God’s covenant promise that Joshua will prosper in the task God Himself assigned—the conquest of Canaan, the inheritance of the land sworn to Abraham. For those in Christ, the shape of the promise shifts with the covenant, but the principle holds: God equips those He sends, and the word He gives is the source of that equipping.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there something in front of you right now that feels like an uncrossable threshold—something you've been circling instead of crossing?
Notice that God didn’t tell Joshua the crossing would be easy—only that He would be present. The presence of God is not the absence of difficulty. It is the assurance that you will not face it alone. If you belong to Him through Christ, that promise holds for you today.
2. Confirmed and Committed
Joshua 1:10-18
10 Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, 11 “Pass through the middle of the camp, and command the people, saying, ‘Prepare food; for within three days you are to pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land which Yahweh your God gives you to possess.’”
12 Joshua spoke to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, saying, 13 “Remember the word which Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded you, saying, ‘Yahweh your God gives you rest, and will give you this land. 14 Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall live in the land which Moses gave you beyond the Jordan; but you shall pass over before your brothers armed, all the mighty men of valor, and shall help them 15 until Yahweh has given your brothers rest, as he has given you, and they have also possessed the land which Yahweh your God gives them. Then you shall return to the land of your possession and possess it, which Moses the servant of Yahweh gave you beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise.’”
16 They answered Joshua, saying, “All that you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go. 17 Just as we listened to Moses in all things, so will we listen to you. Only may Yahweh your God be with you, as he was with Moses. 18 Whoever rebels against your commandment, and doesn’t listen to your words in all that you command him shall himself be put to death. Only be strong and courageous.”
Joshua moves immediately. He gives orders based on the promise he has received. The people are told to prepare food. Three days. The crossing is coming.
The response of the people is remarkable—particularly from the two and a half tribes who had already settled east of the Jordan and could have stayed behind. Their families, their flocks, their land: all of it is on the east side. And yet: all that you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go. It is the most united moment Israel has had in decades.
There is something worth pausing over in their closing words to Joshua: be strong and courageous. The very phrase God spoke to Joshua, the people speak back. God’s word to the leader has become the word of the community to one another. This is how the spoken word of God travels—it takes root in one person and is repeated in those who heed it.
Journaling/Prayer: When has someone spoken a word to you—from Scripture or from a person walking close to Scripture—that steadied you at a moment when you were afraid?
The community of faith is not a gathering of people who have all figured it out. It is a gathering of people who are telling each other what God has said—passing the word forward. God created us for community that honors His word.
3. Hidden and Heard
Joshua 2:1-14
Joshua the son of Nun secretly sent two men out of Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, including Jericho.” They went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and slept there.
2 The king of Jericho was told, “Behold, men of the children of Israel came in here tonight to spy out the land.”
3 Jericho’s king sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered into your house; for they have come to spy out all the land.”
4 The woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I didn’t know where they came from. 5 About the time of the shutting of the gate, when it was dark, the men went out. Where the men went, I don’t know. Pursue them quickly. You may catch up with them.” 6 But she had brought them up to the roof, and hidden them under the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof. 7 The men pursued them along the way to the fords of the Jordan River. As soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate. 8 Before they had lain down, she came up to them on the roof. 9 She said to the men, “I know that Yahweh has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. 10 For we have heard how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea before you, when you came out of Egypt; and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and to Og, whom you utterly destroyed. 11 As soon as we had heard it, our hearts melted, and there wasn’t any more spirit in any man, because of you: for Yahweh your God, he is God in heaven above, and on earth beneath. 12 Now therefore, please swear to me by Yahweh, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a true sign; 13 and that you will save alive my father, my mother, my brothers, and my sisters, and all that they have, and will deliver our lives from death.”
14 The men said to her, “Our life for yours, if you don’t talk about this business of ours; and it shall be, when Yahweh gives us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you.”
She is the first person named in the land of promise, and she is the last person anyone expected.
A Canaanite. A prostitute. A woman whose address was on the city wall—the kind of location where travelers passed and didn’t stay. And into that house, by what can only be called the providential movement of God, walk two Israelite spies. The king’s men come looking. She hides them. She misdirects the search. And then she speaks.
What Rahab knows is the same information everyone in Jericho knows: the Exodus, the Red Sea, the defeat of Sihon and Og. Every person inside those walls had heard the same reports. But what she does with it is different from everyone else. She draws the only conclusion the evidence supports: Yahweh your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. That is not a formula she learned from Israel. That is faith.
Everyone in Jericho had heard the same reports. Rahab alone believed them.
Her past is not erased—the text names her profession without apology. But the disturbing fact about what she once was simply magnifies the grace that reached her. She had no covenant, no circumcision, no family line in Israel, no teacher. She had a report about a God she’d never met and the faith to act on it. The God who called Abraham out of Ur was already, by His own initiative, drawing a daughter of the nations toward Himself—before the walls came down, before the covenant was formally extended, before anyone in Israel thought to look in her direction.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there something in your own history—something you’ve carried as disqualifying—that makes you read Rahab’s story with a kind of desperate attention?
The writer of Hebrews names her in the great hall of faith: By faith, Rahab the prostitute didn’t perish with those who were disobedient, having received the spies in peace (Hebrews 11:31). James names her faith as demonstrated by works (James 2:25). Matthew names her in the genealogy of Jesus. She is not a footnote. She is a monument to the reach of grace.
4. Covered and Covenanted
Joshua 2:15-24
15 Then she let them down by a cord through the window; for her house was on the side of the wall, and she lived on the wall. 16 She said to them, “Go to the mountain, lest the pursuers find you. Hide yourselves there three days, until the pursuers have returned. Afterward, you may go your way.”
17 The men said to her, “We will be guiltless of this your oath which you’ve made us to swear. 18 Behold, when we come into the land, tie this line of scarlet thread in the window which you used to let us down. Gather to yourself into the house your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household. 19 It shall be that whoever goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood will be on his head, and we will be guiltless. Whoever is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand is on him. 20 But if you talk about this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless of your oath which you’ve made us to swear.”
21 She said, “Let it be as you have said.” She sent them away, and they departed. Then she tied the scarlet line in the window.
22 They went and came to the mountain, and stayed there three days, until the pursuers had returned. The pursuers sought them all along the way, but didn’t find them. 23 Then the two men returned, descended from the mountain, crossed the river, and came to Joshua the son of Nun. They told him all that had happened to them. 24 They said to Joshua, “Truly Yahweh has delivered all the land into our hands. Moreover, all the inhabitants of the land melt away before us.”
She lets them down through the window on a cord. And as they go, they give her a sign: tie this scarlet thread in the same window.
The arrangement is practical. It marks the house. When Israel comes through the city, the household inside the scarlet-marked window will be spared. Anyone inside is covered. Anyone who steps outside cannot be guaranteed.
Many interpreters across church history have seen in the scarlet thread a foreshadowing—a line of color that marks a house where the condemned are kept safe by the shed blood of another, echoing the Passover doorframes and anticipating a fuller covering still to come. The text does not make this connection explicit, and Rahab certainly did not understand it that way. But the pattern is there for those with eyes to read backward and forward through the story God is telling.
The scarlet thread covers an impossible woman in an impossible city—and the covering holds.
What the spies bring back is not military intelligence as much as a theological report: Yahweh has delivered all the land into our hands. The victory is announced as already certain before a single battle is fought.
Journaling/Prayer: What would it mean for you today to believe, before a single wall has fallen, that what God has promised is already certain?
Rahab hung the scarlet thread and waited. She did not know how long. She did not know what the siege would look like. She knew only what she had been told: stay inside, and you will be covered. That is not a different faith than the one asked of us. It is the same faith in the same kind of promise.
Summary
Joshua 1 opens with a commission and a command: be strong and courageous. God says it to Joshua four times before a single step is taken. The courage is not manufactured courage—it is courage rooted in the presence of the One who goes with him.
Joshua 2 places beside that commission something unexpected: a woman in Jericho who already believes what Israel has struggled to believe for forty years. Rahab’s confession—Yahweh your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath—is one of the most complete statements of faith in the entire Old Testament, and it comes from someone with no formal place in the covenant at all.
God does not wait for perfect vessels. He provides refuge in surprising places.
The Joshua unit begins not with the strength of Israel but with the faith of an outsider. That is not an accident. The story God is telling is always bigger than the community already inside it—always reaching, always covering, always at work in places that have not yet been named as holy ground.
Action / Attitude for Today
If there is a crossing in front of you—something you have been circling because the current looks too strong and the other side is too unknown—today’s passage does not promise the crossing will be easy. It promises you will not cross alone.
Be strong and courageous does not mean feel strong and courageous. It means move. It means prepare. It means give the orders, because the One who commissioned you has already spoken.
If you are more Rahab than Joshua today—if you are on the wrong side of everything, outside the covenant by lineage or by history, holding onto a hope you can barely name—then read her story again. She had a report and a cord and a window and faith. That was enough. God covered her household with a length of scarlet thread.
If you cannot reach either of those postures today—if the threshold feels impossibly wide and the obstacles feel impossibly walled and your own house feels like it's already fallen—then take only this:
The coverage was never earned. It was hung in the window. It held.
Say this prayer, as much of it as is true for you today: "Lord, I don't feel strong or courageous. The threshold ahead feels too wide and the obstacles too great. But You spoke before anything moved. You covered Rahab before a single thing changed. Cover me in what You've already done. Let that be enough to take the next step. Amen."
The greater covering to which the scarlet thread points has already been provided.
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