Wisdom International Devotionals

by Seth Davey

Thursday | July 31 DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH Judges 2:7-8 & 10a And the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the LORD had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of 110 years. … And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. Godly leaders don’t have the power to produce God-honoring communities, but they certainly help in fostering them. Men like Joshua can’t change the hearts of his constituents by the force of his integrity nor even by wise and just policies, but his example sets the tone for everyone else. Yet, how do we begin to eulogize an entire generation of saints who unilaterally sought the face of God in all their achievements? Perhaps in this way: by saying that the jewel Joshua wears for all eternity is a jewel his entire congregation shares in common. That Joshua is as every man and every man is as Joshua—a commonw...

Wednesday | July 30 OF MILK AND HONEY Joshua 24:16-18 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods, for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went. … And the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.” This testament of Joshua’s life and ministry has provided an unprecedented and spectacular vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. To me, it’s greater than the Genesis glimpse of God fashioning Adam and Eve in His image and walking with them in the cool of a garden, because the glory of redemption outweighs the glory of original creation. And greater even than God’s promise to make of Abraham a great nation, because a promise fulfilled outweighs a promise given. And greater still than the marvels ...

Tuesday | July 29 THE BLAND AND THE BEAUTIFUL Joshua 23:1-2a & 14 A long time afterward, when the LORD had given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies, and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and said to them, …“And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed.” Over a decade has passed since the previous episode regarding that altar of witness, yet Joshua decides not to fill us in at all on what life’s been like in a war-free, idolatry-free commonwealth. He gives no story of the Thanksgiving-like feast enjoyed by these pilgrims at their first harvest. No mention of the hymn-singing around campfires on clear, starry nights. Which is strange when we consider how much ink has been s...

Monday | July 28 FOR THE JOY SET BEFORE US Joshua 22:7b-8 And when Joshua sent them away to their homes and blessed them, he said to them, “Go back to your tents with much wealth and with very much livestock, with silver, gold, bronze, and iron, and with much clothing. Divide the spoil of your enemies with your brothers.” In his must-read essay, “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis draws a helpful distinction between the pursuit of mercenary awards and the pursuit of natural rewards. For instance, the natural reward for an athlete’s labor is the joy of triumph rather than the manufactured trophy he receives. The soldier’s prize in war is victory and honor, not a medal of honor. The evangelist’s prize is a converted soul, not a lucrative cross-country tour. But there are mercenaries in every field, aren’t there? Doctors who pursue surgical careers for money rather than an innate desire to heal people. Pastors who wish to get popular rather than teach the truth and lead their congregatio...

Weekend | July 26-27 CURTAIN CALL Joshua 22:1-4a At that time Joshua summoned the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and said to them, “You have kept all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you and have obeyed my voice in all that I have commanded you. You have not forsaken your brothers these many days, down to this day, but have been careful to keep the charge of the LORD your God. And now the LORD God has given rest to your brothers, as he promised them. Therefore turn and go to your tents in the land where your possession lies. …” The events that unfold in Joshua 22 are a vast exegetical terrain, each path a primer for some unique aspect of covenantal life and fellowship among believers. This chapter will illustrate how ministries performed by good intentions can still lead to great fallouts and controversies, how godly leaders can divide and even war over misunderstandings, how communicating motives behind missions is essential to preventing unn...

Friday | July 25 JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH Joshua 20:1-3a & 7a Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there.’” … So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali … My heart leapt within me upon seeing that precious word ‘Galilee’ written across this Old Testament parchment, especially in its symbolic relationship to a city of refuge. A refuge that in the generations immediately following Joshua’s ministry will specifically serve to protect men and women who accidentally kill a fellow man, but that, for us who’ve had the blessing of hindsight, who live in the afterword of Christ’s Passion, serves as an undeniable hint of coming redemption. Now, upon seeing ‘Galilee’ in Joshua 20 today, it struck me as the very first appearance of the name in the Bible, so I turned to my concordance j...

Thursday | July 24 IT IS FINISHED Joshua 19:51 These are the inheritances that Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the people of Israel distributed by lot at Shiloh before the LORD, at the entrance of the tent of meeting. So they finished dividing the land. “It is finished,” gasped our Lord through the shadows of a cosmic anguish subsiding in a final breath of death’s welcome relief. And although that word still reverberates unto eternity, although salvation’s atoning sacrifice is forever complete, our Shepherd still toils to advance His church against the unabating auspices of demons, still joins us day by day in the push-and-pull of a suffering world, still blazes fresh trails in the lives of unreached peoples, still unmasks the plots of wicked elites and opens the eyes of the blind and gives rest to the poor and liberation to the captives and forgiveness to the repentant. Doesn’t that thought breathe wind into the sa...

Wednesday | July 23 WORKING CLASS Joshua 19:49-50 When they had finished distributing the several territories of the land as inheritances, the people of Israel gave an inheritance among them to Joshua the son of Nun. By command of the LORD they gave him the city that he asked, Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim. And he rebuilt the city and settled in it. If you ran into Joshua at your local grocer, do you think he’d be surrounded by an entourage of chauffeurs or would you find him all by himself, reaching for a jug of milk with dirt still caked to his working boots? Think about that for a moment. If he came to your church as a visitor this Sunday, would he arrive by motorcade and make a scene coming in, or would he slip into the back row, shake hands with the deacons, and then slip back out as covertly as he’d arrived? To me, Joshua 19:49-50 is an exclamation point to the character of this leader we’ve been watching all along the way. Notice that while he’s the most highl...

Tuesday | July 22 THE RECEIVING END Joshua 18:2-3 There remained among the people of Israel seven tribes whose inheritance had not yet been apportioned. So Joshua said to the people of Israel, “How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land, which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you?” Sometimes our protestant theology, while steering clear of any hint of self-merited grace, minimizes the condition of our God-given will in the life of faith. The story in Numbers 21, where Moses sets up a bronze serpent on a tree to heal any sick person who simply looks up, is a good picture of faith, yes. As Paul clearly writes in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; … so that no one may boast.” We should write that truth in ink or in blood, on parchment or flame, for salvation is definitionally a gift of God. The ‘but’ isn’t about the nature of the gift, but about the condition of our reception of it. Think...

Monday | July 21 CALEB, THE LIONHEART Joshua 14:6b-7a &10b-11 And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “… I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land. … And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming.” Forty-five years before this inspiring reunion between Joshua and Caleb, God commanded Moses with these words in Numbers 13:2 “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.” As you may recall, Joshua and Caleb were two of the twelve chiefs Moses selected, Joshua from the tribe of Ephraim, and Caleb from the Messianic tribe of Judah. Numbers 13 went on to recount in detail the trouble that started brewing in Israel's ranks when the ot...

Weekend | July 19-20 A EULOGY, IN BRIEF Joshua 13:1 Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.” What a contrast to the biography of Moses that encompassed five entire books of holy Scripture. From the moment Moses was thrust as a newborn baby into a handwoven basket and placed in the Nile River to escape Pharaoh’s death edict in Exodus 1, it was clear to readers that he was a special soul, an anointed soul, a protected soul, which is why his story reads like one mountaintop experience after another. In fact, to read his story from cover to cover is to venture up Theophany’s Mountain alongside him, through all the twists and turns, through all the open vistas and narrow passes, and to come back down to earth as it were with faces aglow. But why has Joshua’s biography been such a blur? He just finished blazing through the five-king coalition that formed against the Gibeonites...

Friday | July 18 POETIC JUSTICE Joshua 11:21-22 And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. … There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain. Back in Numbers 13, before Joshua became the fearless frontman of this pilgrim band, Moses commissioned him and eleven men to spy out the land of Canaan: “See what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds” (v. 18-19). But, of the twelve, only Joshua and Caleb came back from that enterprise with hopeful words. The other ten spies were gutless cowards, having evidently learned nothing from pillars of cloud or Red Sea crossings or Sinai thunderi...

Thursday | July 17 A LESSON ON PRAYER REQUESTS Joshua 10:12 At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the valley of Aijalon.” Aren’t you grateful that God doesn’t fix all of our misconceptions before answering our prayers? There isn’t a confused courier system in heaven, with a box of ‘return to sender’ prayers that pile up because the address line was scribbled illegibly, or the postage wasn’t quite right, or a word was misspelled. God knows precisely what we mean to say. He hears the clear cry of our need long before we attach words to it. And even when our praying doesn’t quite come out right, His answer does. I point that out here because Joshua doesn’t know any better than to assume that the earth is the center of the universe. He’s a man of his time. It’ll be centuries before astronomers are able to better map out the inner workings ...

Wednesday | July 16 GRACE THAT IS GREATER Joshua 10:6-8a And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands.” I haven’t read much scholarship on the Gibeonite controversy that plays a central role in Joshua 9-10, but a pastor recently informed me that some biblical commentators actually accuse Joshua of compromising by not devoting these men to destruction, a suggestion that I believe Joshua 10:6 matter-of-factly overrules. For one, just because God condemned all the people of this land to destruction doesn’t imply that all of them must necessarily be destroyed. That is, God can always offer mercy where...

Tuesday | July 15 HOLY WATER, BOYS Joshua 9:22, 24-27a Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, “Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us?”… They answered Joshua, “Because … the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you. … And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.” So he … delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation.” Take this from the Gibeonites: it’s better to be a water boy in God’s family than a king in the devil’s. Now, we shouldn’t commend the Gibeonites for their deception, even though their deception was based on a desire to live in submission to God rather than die in opposition to Him. And I do believe that had they done the far braver thing, had they j...

Monday | July 14 THE HOLY IN THE COMMON Joshua 8:30-31a, 32 At that time Joshua built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, …“an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.” … And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. There’s a mountain somewhere near the Jordan River, or a knobby hill, or perhaps a spot in the bed of a creek that winds its way through the valley, where the erosive hands of time have buried precious stones that once heralded the very words of God. Perhaps generations of rushing rains and torrents have long washed away the ink. Perhaps earthquakes have swallowed the stones into the hidden vault of earth. Perhaps the forces of changing seasons have chipped away the sediment, erasing their sacred script, eradicating their holy and exalted signatures. Perhaps these ancient rocks are just sands now, scattered all throughout the Canaanite hills, tramp...

Weekend | July 12-13 A FIGHTER LIKE HIS FATHER Joshua 8:1 & 3 And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land.” … So Joshua and all the fighting men arose to go up to Ai. And Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them out by night. The best way to drown out the lingering taste of a crushing defeat isn’t with a bottle of whiskey as country singers propose, but with the rejuvenating plunge of an even greater triumph. Think of it: when a professional boxer gets beat in a title bout, he doesn’t want to hide somewhere for months while the press obliterates him. No, if he’s a genuine competitor, he’ll want to fight again as soon as possible. He’ll hit the gym even harder than before, hoping to change the narrative and give angry fans something to cheer about during the next match. Even deeper, when a woman suff...

Friday | July 11 UP, AND AT ‘EM! Joshua 7:10-12a The LORD said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies.” In one sense, Joshua is doing the right thing here. Perplexed and dismayed by Israel’s shocking defeat at Ai, and grieving the loss of thirty-six good soldiers, he falls at the feet of Almighty God, removing his sandals and covering his face with dust, awaiting some glimpse into the meaning of this unspeakable tragedy, begging Heaven by the contrite motion of his limbs to answer in a whirlwind or in a whisper or in any manner. I get the sense here that Joshua isn’t getting back up again until the same hand that parted those Jordan River waters reaches down again in miraculous fashion to lift him up. And, in that sense...

Thursday | July 10 CAUSE AND EFFECT Joshua 6:27 So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land. Consider how differently this sentence would read if the two adjacent statements of Joshua 6:27 were written in reverse: “And Joshua’s fame was in all the land, so the LORD was with him.” Imagine if God’s nearness to Joshua was predicated on Joshua’s charisma or success or notoriety, as if God looked down from heaven, seeking someone to promote and advance, and found this enterprising man brimming with pedigree and accomplishment and potential. And what about us? What if God waited till we had something worthwhile to offer Him before stamping our lives with the ineffable seal of His favor? Oh but the opposite is true! The LORD has been with Joshua all along the way, hasn’t He? Ever since childhood. Even when Joshua was anonymous and unknown and unimpressive. Joshua’s fame in the land is merely an effect of God’s nearness to Him, not the cause. “Lo, I am with you always, ev...

Wednesday | July 9 SIXES AND SEVENS Joshua 6:2-5a And the LORD said to Joshua, “… You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. And … when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat.” The obvious and most striking aspect to me of the LORD’s battle plan here is His reiteration of those enormously significant symbols in biblical teleology that seem to represent the gospel in numerical terms: six representing the toil and flux of the human struggle, and seven representing the Sabbath rest of divine completion. Yet, because I’m a dunce when it comes to numbers, I can only recognize the shimmering arithmetical strands without being able to unravel them. In other ...

Tuesday | July 8 THE QUESTION OF THE AGES Joshua 5:14-15 And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. It isn’t clear whether this heavenly stranger is a pre-incarnate form of Christ Himself, or whether he’s an archangel from the highest echelons of heavenly authorities, but his words have that same crimson hue to them. Notice how they turn Joshua’s seemingly pointed question on its head, exposing in a single line the potential flaw in Joshua’s understanding of this pilgrimage. And only God can confound human wisdom with a word like this. Remember when those Pharisees tried to corner Jesus with an impossible, lose-lose situation in Mark 12:14, by asking, “Is it lawful to pay tax...

Monday | July 7 FIGHT OR FLIGHT Joshua 5:13 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” The more a saint seeks after the face of God the more he’s able to look his enemies dead in the eye without fear. Joshua doesn’t tell us whether he charged at this stranger with his own sword drawn, expecting to meet steel with steel, assuming this to be the first fray in an impending battle, or whether he walked forward nonchalantly, disregarding the stranger’s threatening stance, unmoved by the flash of steel. But we can still glean from this exchange the fact that Joshua goes immediately on the offensive rather than the defensive. His piercing question to this armed stranger is sharper than any blade forged in the fires of men, and it effectively adds up to the quintessential choice of human existence: “Have you come to...

Weekend | July 5-6 THIS IS GOD’S EARTH Joshua 3: 11 & 13 “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing before you into the Jordan. … And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, … the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap.” Whenever our steps of faith usher us into unknown, uncomfortable, unforeseeable terrain, the thought that God is with us isn’t consolation enough; we need to know that He’s already blazed the trail. In other words, it’s a comforting truth that our Shepherd-King walks beside us through this human travail. But it’s a crucial truth that He ever goes before us. Can’t you feel the unwritten trepidation in the hearts of these thousands of pilgrims as Joshua leads them to the banks of the Jordan? Joshua woke up this morning in earnest, eager to advance; but not everyone shares his courage. Not all men are as manly as Joshua. An...

Friday | July 4 NECESSITIES VERSE NICETIES Joshua 3:7 The LORD said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.” How uplifting to think of Providence sifting through the tribes of earth, with omniscient eyes that unveil every hidden ambition and impure motive, with a voice that calls out in rhetorical test, “Whom shall I send?”, and finding men and women, who, though covering their own eyes in contrite recognition of their wretched condition, nevertheless rise to respond, “Here am I, LORD, send me!” God once asked the devil, “Have you considered my servant, Job, a man blameless in all his ways?”, and I wonder: has He ever said that of us? Christ asked Peter, “Do you love Me? Feed my sheep.” I wonder: did we bring mere words to the feast of faith today or food for others? Remember the proverb: “He who humbles himself will be exalted, but he who exalts himself will be humbled.” And, elsewh...

Thursday | July 3 A HAUNTED COSMOS Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” Of all the legions of devils that lurk in the shadows, that stalk our souls like lions, with gaping jaws full of gnashing, blood-thirsty teeth, drooling with insatiable bloodlust, of all the weapons fashioned against our faith, artfully manufactured to penetrate our weakest and blindest spots, I wonder: which terrifies you most? What ghoulish guise dismays your heart above all others? What shadowy form are you most frightened to meet when you walk out your front door? It strikes me that the spiritual life can often resemble that old haunted train ride at the State Fair: you buckle into a slow-moving boxcar, twist and turn on a squeaky rail in the dark, only to be startled around every bend by a menagerie of villainous faces and flashes of light and peels of ominous laughter. Some people are h...

Wednesday | July 2 A NEW DAWN Joshua 1:1-2 After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.” After—what a perfect way to start off this new chapter of Redemption’s story. Just as there was life after Adam and life after Abraham and life after Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, there’s life after Moses, too. Moses’ timely, unique accomplishment in the world can never be replaced, but it must be advanced. And the tale that our Redeemer-King has been weaving since breathing the cosmos into existence isn’t just about delivering captives from Egypt or crossing Red Seas or inheriting prime real estate in Canaanite hills. If it were, then the Book of Joshua would be a penultimate chapter in the drama. Oh, but this is only the prologue! This is just the space between paragraphs. Just th...

Tuesday | July 1 A GREAT CO-MISSION Deuteronomy 3:27-38 “‘Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he shall go over at the head of this people.’” My missionary grandfather who co-founded the Bible Broadcasting Network and Mission’s To Military and pastored Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia Beach for many years, often said to his grandkids growing up, “You never retire from the LORD’s work.” And he never did. In fact, even in his 90s, a few months before God called him home, Pa was still sharing his testimony from the pulpit of The Shepherd’s Church on a Sunday morning, a message that touched many people. Truth be told, after the death of my grandmother, his mental state began to decline. He’d forget things—even people. He became more senile in ways he’d been jovial before. But in spite of his shor...