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"Joshua said to all the people, 'This stone has heard everything the Lord said to us. It will be a witness to testify against you if you go back on your word to God.'"
(Joshua 24:27, CSB)
Our passage today is Joshua's last recorded quote in the book of Joshua. At this point, he had successfully brought the nation of Israel into the Promised Land and successfully partitioned out the land to the twelve tribes of Israel. He had settled into his plot of land, and now he is finally addressing the people of Israel. He summoned all the tribes of Israel to Shechem to give them one final encouragement, rebuke and challenge. If you are following along with the Joshua challenge, you will read the whole chapter today, and you will see his challenge, encouragement, and rebuke.
But for the sake of this devotional, I want to focus on one particular aspect of Joshua's life: he finished well. He was a leader with a lot of expectations. He was a leader who followed a tremendous leader. He was a man used by God for a tough, arduous, and physically demanding task: war. He was given unique tasks to accomplish (e.g. Jericho) and at many times, given encouraging words from God to keep him going and to give him confidence in his work. Joshua's book recorded in the scriptures does not have many defeats in it, nor are there any mentions of Joshua having a sin failure of any major or exceptional sort. Joshua is known through his book as being a God-fearer and an obedient servant to God.
What a legacy he leaves, and what a legacy we should want to emulate. Was Joshua perfect? Absolutely not, but he was a man who did what God asked him to do and did it to the best of his ability. Let that be our aim and goal, that at the end of our lives, we can say that we were faithful to do what God had asked us to do and that we were servants of the most High God!
Joshua Challenge: Read Joshua 19-24
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