The Sun Stood Still

Are there any sections of the Bible that are so overloaded with notes from sermons and studies that you almost forget what you were looking for when you looked up the verse in the first place? So it is for me with Joshua. What’s really interesting, though, is that most of the notes are relatively fresh. I decided to do a little tally and it turns out I have heard roughly 30 sermons out of the book of Joshua in the span of 3 years.

One pastor did a series through the entire book which made up most of them, but still, that’s a staggering amount of coverage across half a dozen preachers. I have to assume either God is trying to tell me something or all of these pastors listen to the same podcast. Could be both, I suppose. Now, I know the men who delivered these sermons well enough to know for the most part they were taking the pulse of the nation and preaching to the moments they were in. Joshua is the Great Transition book and dips into things that humans struggle with often- Leadership transition, the fear of the unknown, and the need for order. Tell me we haven’t had need of that in the last few years!

Why Joshua Keeps Finding Me

Somewhere between sermon twelve and twenty-nine, I started noticing a theme. Joshua kept showing up precisely when life felt most in flux. The series, in particular, landed for me just as we were picking up and moving to Guthrie, which is also when work was upended by some major leadership changes, which is also when the Pastor left our church after only 5 short years. The interim series being on Joshua was perfect. I learned a lot and feel like I grew exponentially during that time. 

Maybe that’s why Joshua’s character began to stand out to me- not just the fact that he’s in the exclusive “No Recorded Sin” Club, but the man beneath the mantle. Not every leader is the right leader for the mission, but Joshua was. In addition to all of his battlefield victories and superhero moments, the most amazing thing may be that Joshua was the only leader of a unified Israel who didn’t have to deal with a segment of the population trying to overthrow him or return to Egypt. Given the Israelite population is famous for their grumbling, Joshua leading an entire generation to faithful following of the Lord is certainly noteworthy.

So how does a man like that come to be? The text gives us a few glimpses. The first clue to Joshua’s inner wiring shows up long before Jericho ever falls.

A Boy Guarding the Holy

In Numbers 11, the people are being the absolute worst and God tells Moses to gather 70 men so the Spirit could rest upon them (and straighten them out, I presume). They go off with Moses into a tent and the miraculous event takes place. There are two guys who hang back, Eldad and Medad. Well, even though they weren’t in the tent, they were among the selected men, so the Spirit rests on them and they begin to prophesy. Joshua sees that these two men prophesying who were not in the tent and interprets it as a glitch in the system. Something had gone wrong and he wanted Moses to stop them. 

Moses had to rebuke him: "Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets!" Joshua was undoubtedly well-intentioned and was being a good boy, but this shows a young Joshua who was perhaps a bit too rigid, a bit too protective of "the way things are supposed to be." He had to learn that God's Spirit doesn't always follow the organizational chart. It may look messy to us, but God doesn’t need us to police the Spirit.

Yet beneath that earnest rule-following was a young man quietly being shaped by something deeper. There is a beautiful, quiet verse in Exodus 33:11: "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face... Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent." While everyone else was busy with the "rules" of the camp, Joshua was lingering in the Presence. This is likely where his "heart" was formed. He wasn't just learning how to lead; he was learning who he was following. 

Absurd Obedience

I wish there were more of the quiet, intimate moments of the Lord shaping Joshua’s heart because it would offer such great insight into how Joshua became the impressive military leader that he did. By the time we get to the conquest of Canaan, Joshua’s natural inclination toward "following the rules" becomes a superpower—but only when it's directed by God. In the battle of Jericho, the instructions he was given to win the fight were completely absurd - walk around a wall for seven days and shout.  A rigid, legalistic Joshua might have argued that this wasn't "proper military procedure,” but a faithful, heart-led Joshua simply obeyed the Spirit, even when the logic didn't track.

And if Jericho showed us Joshua’s willingness to obey the absurd, then Joshua 10 shows us just how far that formation had taken him. In the heat of battle, when Israel needed more daylight to secure victory, Joshua didn’t hesitate. He asks God to make the sun stand still. It’s such a simple sentence in Scripture, but it reveals a leader who finally understood the heart of God. Moses often hesitated, questioned, or tried to negotiate. Joshua simply asked. Not because he was reckless, but out of a heart so aligned with the Presence that boldness felt like obedience. The young man who once tried to protect the “proper way” of doing things had grown into a leader who understood the wild, unboxed freedom of God.

Joshua’s story exposes a truth that still presses on us today. God wants our hearts, not just our intentions. The reason well-intentioned loyalty like Joshua trying to stop Eldad and Medad can be a problem is that it often turns into idolatry of the method. We fall in love with the way God worked yesterday, like through Moses at the Tabernacle, and we try to force Him to work that same way today. God’s rebuke to Joshua through Moses was essentially saying: "Don't let your loyalty to the leader blind you to the work of the Lord."

Presence Over Procedure

It is the ultimate human struggle: trying to fit an infinite God into a finite box of rules and procedures. Joshua’s rigidity early on wasn't born out of malice; it was born out of a desire to protect what he perceived as holy. The tension between the Letter of the Law and the Spirit of the Law is the central thread that runs from the Tabernacle in the wilderness all the way to the parables of Jesus. The Pharisees may have been well-intentioned keepers of the law and enforcers of the rules, but in doing so they were completely missing the point.

Joshua began as a young man mimicking Moses, guarding the boundaries of what felt holy. But he ended as the leader of a generation who “served the Lord all the days of Joshua,” a man so attuned to God’s heart that he could ask the sun itself to stand still. That’s not the confidence of a strategist; that’s the boldness of someone who has been shaped in the quiet, in the lingering, in the long obedience of Presence. Maybe that’s why Joshua kept appearing in my own season of upheaval. His story whispers that God forms us long before He sends us, that He loosens our grip on the familiar so He can teach us to trust Him in the unknown. Joshua’s greatness wasn’t in his methods — it was in his nearness to the God who led him.