Pack Your Bags for the Invasion Text: Joshua 1:10-11
Introduction: Faith is Not Passivity
We live in an age that has a profoundly distorted understanding of faith. To the unbelieving world, faith is a blind, irrational leap in the dark, a form of wishful thinking. But even within the church, we have developed our own set of pious-sounding corruptions. One of the most prevalent is the idea that faith is a state of utter passivity. We are told to "let go and let God," as though the Christian life were a matter of spiritual coasting. The assumption is that if God has promised something, our only job is to sit back and wait for it to be delivered to our doorstep, perhaps by an angelic courier.
This is a profound and dangerous misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches. Biblical faith is not passive; it is active. It is not stationary; it is a march. It is not sitting; it is possessing. God's sovereign decree and our responsible action are not enemies. They are not in competition. Rather, God's sovereignty is the very thing that enables and empowers our obedience. He doesn't work instead of us; He works through us.
Nowhere is this principle more clearly illustrated than here, on the banks of the Jordan River. For forty years, Israel has wandered in the wilderness. An entire generation that refused to believe God has perished. Now, a new generation stands at the threshold of the Promised Land. God has just given Joshua a series of glorious, unshakeable promises. He has promised to be with him, to never forsake him, and to give him every place the sole of his foot treads upon. The land is a gift. The victory is assured. God has declared it.
So what is the first thing that happens after this magnificent, divine monologue? Does God tell them to take a nap while He clears out the Canaanites? Does He instruct them to form a prayer circle and wait for the deed to the land to fall from heaven? No. The very first thing Joshua does, in obedience to God, is command the people to pack their bags and get ready for an invasion. God promises the land, and in the very next breath, Joshua says, "Prepare provisions." This is the intersection of divine promise and human duty. This is where the rubber of our theology meets the road of our obedience. And if we get this wrong, we get the entire Christian life wrong.
The Text
Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, "Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, saying, ‘Prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you are to cross this Jordan, to go in to possess the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, to possess it.’"
(Joshua 1:10-11 LSB)
Delegated Authority (v. 10)
The action begins immediately after God's charge to Joshua.
"Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying," (Joshua 1:10)
Joshua has just received his commission directly from God. He is the new leader. But notice how he exercises that leadership. He does not act as a lone autocrat, riding through the camp shouting orders himself. He operates through an established, ordained structure of authority. He commands the officers, and the officers command the people. This is God's way. God is a God of order, not of chaos. He establishes chains of authority in the family, in the church, and in the civil realm. A rejection of this delegated authority is ultimately a rejection of the God who delegated it.
Joshua's authority is not rooted in his personal charisma, his military genius, or the consent of the governed. His authority is rooted in the fact that he is speaking for God. He is a mediator of the divine command. This is the foundation of all legitimate authority. Our postmodern world despises this concept. It believes authority is either oppressive (and must be torn down) or it arises from the autonomous will of the individual ("you're not the boss of me"). But the Bible teaches that all authority is derived from God and is to be exercised under God. Joshua is not on a personal power trip; he is on a divine mission. And the first step in that mission is to set the machinery of a well-ordered society into motion.
The Practicality of Obedience (v. 11a)
The command itself is passed down, and it is strikingly practical.
"Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, saying, ‘Prepare provisions for yourselves...’" (Joshua 1:11a)
God is about to perform one of the great miracles of the Old Testament. He is going to stop a river at flood stage, piling its waters into a heap so that two million people can walk across on dry ground. This is a task far beyond any human capacity. Yet, what is the human responsibility in this moment? "Pack a lunch."
This is a beautiful illustration of our role in the work of God. We are called to do the possible, and to trust God with the impossible. The Israelites could not part the Jordan, but they could prepare their food. They could not defeat the giants in Canaan, but they could sharpen their swords. Faith does not absolve us from responsibility; it fuels our responsible action. The man who says, "I will trust God to provide for my family," and then refuses to get a job, is not a man of faith. He is a lazy fool who is tempting God.
This command to prepare provisions also tells us something about the nature of the task ahead. This is not going to be a quick, magical affair. They are embarking on a long, strenuous military campaign. They will need supplies. God's miracles do not negate the ordinary laws of cause and effect. He provides manna in the wilderness, but when they enter the land and can grow their own food, the manna ceases (Joshua 5:12). God expects us to use the ordinary means He has provided. We pray for our daily bread, and then we go to work. We pray for victory over sin, and then we practice the spiritual disciplines. We are to prepare our provisions.
The Divine Timetable (v. 11b)
The command comes with a specific and imminent deadline.
"...for within three days you are to cross this Jordan..." (Joshua 1:11b)
The waiting is over. Forty years of aimless wandering are about to end. The period of judgment and probation is complete. Now is the time for action. The "three days" serves as a potent motivator. This is not a vague, "someday" promise. It is a concrete, scheduled event. This deadline forces the people to take the command seriously and to act immediately. Procrastination is the enemy of obedience.
There is also a typological significance to this three-day period. It is a time of preparation leading to a great deliverance. Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days before being delivered to preach repentance. And most significantly, our Lord Jesus, the greater Joshua, lay in the tomb for three days before His glorious resurrection, which secured our passage from the wilderness of sin and death into the promised land of eternal life. This three-day waiting period is pregnant with redemptive-historical meaning. It is the pause before the mighty act of God.
The Theology of Possession (v. 11c)
Finally, we come to the ultimate purpose of this command. This is the theological heart of the matter.
"...to go in to possess the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, to possess it." (Joshua 1:11c)
Notice the glorious tension in this phrase. The land is something that Yahweh their God is "giving" them. It is a gift. It is an act of sheer grace, promised to Abraham centuries before. They have not earned it. They do not deserve it. It is given.
And yet, in the same breath, it is a land they must "go in to possess." The Hebrew word for possess, yarash, carries the idea of seizing, conquering, and taking as an inheritance. It is a gift that must be taken by force. It is grace, but it is warfare grace. The deed is theirs by divine grant, but they must evict the squatters. This is not a contradiction; it is a covenantal paradox. God gives the victory, but He gives it through the means of His people fighting.
The repetition hammers the point home: "...which Yahweh your God is giving you, to possess it." God does not give His gifts to be admired on a shelf. He gives them to be used, to be fought for, to be possessed. This is the model for the entire Christian life. God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). He has given us the victory over sin and death. He has given us a glorious inheritance. But we must possess it. We must, by faith, lay hold of what has been freely given. We must mortify the sin that remains in our members. We must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We must advance the kingdom of our Lord into every corner of a rebellious world.
Conclusion: The Greater Joshua and the Greater Conquest
This entire scene on the banks of the Jordan is a living parable, a type that points to a far greater reality. The name Joshua is the Hebrew form of the name Jesus. And just as Joshua led the people of God across the waters into the promised land, so our Lord Jesus leads His people from the wilderness of this world into the true promised land of salvation.
The Jordan River, at flood stage, is a picture of death. It is the great, impassable barrier that stands between us and our inheritance. No man can cross it by his own strength. But Jesus, our Joshua, has gone into the waters of death before us. He bore the flood of God's wrath against our sin on the cross. And on the third day, He emerged victorious on the other side, securing a dry-shod path for all who follow Him.
Because of His victory, we have been given a command that echoes Joshua's. We are commanded to prepare provisions. We are to arm ourselves with faith and the Word of God. We are to be ready. And we are commanded to go in and possess the inheritance He has won for us. This is the Great Commission. The whole world has been given to our Lord Jesus Christ (Psalm 2). He holds the deed. But He has commissioned us, His church, to be His army, to go into all the world and disciple the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything He has commanded.
Our task is not to sit passively by, hoping for the culture to improve. Our task is to possess it. We are to take what Christ has given us. This means building faithful families, establishing faithful churches, creating distinctly Christian culture, and challenging the idols of our age at every turn. God is giving us the land. Let us, therefore, prepare our provisions, and go in to possess it.