Entering the Promised Land

Previous: Wandering in the Wilderness.

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This is Day 18 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

As Moses had disobeyed God and struck the rock instead of speaking to it, God punished him by refusing to let him enter into the Promised Land. But the Lord did let Moses see it. He took Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah and let Moses look out on the land that the Lord would be giving to the Israelites. Each tribe received their own portion of the land, except for the tribe of Levi (to which Moses and Aaron belonged) as they would be the priests of the Lord.

God chose as Moses' successor a man named Joshua. And Moses laid hands on Joshua and the Holy Spirit entered into him. After Moses died, the Israelites mourned for him for thirty days and he was buried in the land of Moab.

Then Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. The first city they came to was called Jericho. Jericho had enormous, high walls and Joshua sent two men into the city as spies. The two men went to the house of a woman named Rahab and she hid them from the king of Jericho, telling his soldiers that the spies had left. She was helping them because she believed the city would fall to the Israelites as she had heard about how powerful God was and how He fought for them.

After nightfall, she helped the spies sneak out of the city by letting them down from her father's house by a rope. And the spies told her to hang a scarlet cord from the window and when the Israelites came she and her family would be safe.

And when Joshua led the armies of Israel to Jericho he had a vision in the sky of a man with a drawn sword who told Joshua that he was commander of the Lord's armies. And the Lord told Joshua to lead the army around the city of Jericho for six consecutive days while seven priests blew rams horns walking before the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day they were to march around the city seven times and then the priests would blast the rams horns. At that time, all of the people were to yell as loudly as they could and the walls protecting Jericho would collapse.

Joshua did as he was instructed. On the seventh day when the army marched around it for the seventh time, the priests blew their horns and the soldiers shouted and the walls came tumbling down. The Israelite soldiers charged into the city and took it. But Rahab and her family were spared because she had helped the Israelites.

People often ask why the Lord needed the Israelites to march around the city and blow horns and shout? Couldn't He have just brought the walls down without all that? Well yes, of course. But by making the Israelites do that, God taught them faith and obedience. Further, it allowed them to participate in God's glorious miracles and the conquest of the city.

Next: The Judges.

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!