In Joshua 3:10 we read these words, “And Joshua said, ‘By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and ….’”
A couple of things were of interest to me here. The first thing is that the way these people would know that the living God is actually among them is the success of their mission. “He will without fail drive out from before you….” I don’t think this is the same as modern American success-driven methods. What this is is a promise to the people that when God is among you, things happen.
How many people claim to be a Christian and have God in their lives and yet there is not one shred of evidence that He is actually there. There are no victories to be recognized, sin is not defeated, life goes on pretty much normally. Doesn’t God promise that His presence will be revealed by some growth and victory in life?
The other thing that is interesting to me in this incident is that of timing. In Genesis 15:16 God told Abram that his descendents would inherit this land. He told him that it would be four generations in the future because right now the “iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Even though God is above time, He is able to work in time to accomplish His purposes. At the time He was speaking to Abram, the sin of the Amorites had not yet reached its peak. For some reason, God wanted to allow that sin to fully materialize before He took them out.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is similarly timed. It was not just a fluke of history that Christ died when He did. Galatians 4:4 says, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.” Romans 5:6 says it this way, “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
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