Commentary Compass

Joshua is one of those biblical books that can generate sermons very quickly and faithful sermons rather slowly. Its famous scenes almost preach themselves: “Be strong and courageous,” Rahab and the spies, the Jordan crossing, Jericho, Achan, the sun standing still, Caleb asking for his mountain, and Joshua’s declaration that “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” The danger is that these passages can become detached illustrations of courage, leadership, overcoming obstacles, taking risks, spiritual warfare or family commitment before the preacher has asked what they are doing in the book of Joshua itself.

The problem becomes even more serious with conquest. If Canaan simply becomes a metaphor for the Christian’s personal goals, then Jericho becomes whatever obstacle stands between me and success, and Israel’s warfare can be unconsciously spiritualized in ways that preserve the logic of conquest while changing only the object. At the opposite extreme, the preacher may be so troubled by ḥerem and the destruction of the Canaanites that almost the entire sermon becomes an apologetic discussion of violence and the positive theology of the passage disappears. Neither approach does justice to Joshua as a whole.

The most responsible route is therefore text → whole book → biblical canon → Christ → congregation. First establish what the passage actually says and how its narrative works. Then ask what role it plays in Joshua’s developing theology of promise, Torah, land, leadership, holiness, covenant fidelity, inheritance and rest. Only after that should the preacher trace those themes through the rest of Scripture and ask how they reach their fulfillment and transformation in Christ. Contemporary application comes last, not because it is unimportant, but because Joshua is precisely the sort of book in which premature application can become seriously misleading.

First Principle: Joshua Is Primarily About Yahweh’s Faithfulness, Not Joshua’s Heroism

One of the healthiest corrections for preaching Joshua is to move Joshua himself out of the theological centre without making him irrelevant. Dale Ralph Davis captures this extremely well in the title No Falling Words. The dominant theological reality is that Yahweh keeps his promises. The land promised to the ancestors becomes inheritance, Israel crosses where it could not cross by its own power, enemies cannot finally frustrate Yahweh’s purpose, and Joshua 21 can declare that not one of Yahweh’s good promises has failed.

This does not make Joshua an insignificant character. Sarah Lebhar Hall’s recently added Conquering Character makes that much clearer. Joshua is not a cardboard hero who merely receives instructions, nor should every act of initiative be reinterpreted as self-reliance. He is a genuinely developed leader who receives broad divine commissions and then must exercise judgment, strategy, initiative and responsibility in carrying them out. At Ai, for example, human planning and divine sovereignty are not rival explanations of victory. Joshua’s strategic action is one of the means through which the divine commission is implemented.

That distinction is important for preaching leadership passages. Joshua 1 should not become “seven qualities of successful leaders,” but neither should the preacher flatten Joshua into an automaton. Biblical leadership here is subordinate agency: Joshua possesses real responsibility precisely because he stands under Yahweh and Torah. The sermon can therefore speak meaningfully about human initiative while keeping promise, presence and revelation ahead of personality.

Second Principle: “Be Strong and Courageous” Means Torah-Shaped Courage

Joshua 1:6–9 is probably the most frequently detached passage in the book. David Firth is particularly helpful here because he shows that Joshua’s courage is explicitly defined by obedience to Torah. The command does not principally mean that Joshua should suppress fear, become psychologically confident or develop military boldness. He must be strong enough to order his leadership around Yahweh’s instruction, refusing to turn from it to the right or left and continually meditating upon it.

That gives the preacher a much richer route to contemporary application. Christian courage is not generic daring with a Bible verse attached to it. Joshua’s courage means trusting God’s promise enough to submit action to God’s word, even where obedience is more difficult than simply doing whatever appears efficient or pragmatic. The book will subsequently demonstrate how difficult that can become, especially when Israel encounters Rahab, Achan, the Gibeonites and the unresolved realities of life in the land.

Hall reinforces the point because Joshua’s initiative consistently operates within this larger pattern of submission. He plans, commands, acts and solves problems, but his legitimacy derives from being Yahweh’s servant and Moses’ successor under Torah. For preaching, this gives a much safer leadership theology than either triumphalist “visionary leadership” or passive pietism. The faithful leader acts decisively, but action remains accountable to revelation.

Third Principle: Joshua 1–5 Completes the Exodus Before the Conquest Begins

Hall’s treatment of Joshua 5 is one of the most useful new additions for preaching the book. Circumcision, Passover and the cessation of manna are often treated as spiritual preparations for Jericho, which is true only partially. Their larger narrative function is retrospective: the wilderness era is finally ending. Israel began its journey out of Egypt with Passover, lived by manna through the wilderness and now celebrates Passover again in the promised land as the manna ceases.

The sermon therefore needs a larger Exodus horizon. Israel does not merely cross one more river before starting the real story. The Jordan crossing deliberately recalls the Red Sea, Joshua succeeds Moses, the reproach of the wilderness generation is removed, Passover reconnects the people to their foundational act of deliverance, and ordinary produce replaces wilderness provision. The movement out of Egypt reaches its narrative destination only when Israel enters the land Yahweh promised.

This also changes how the preacher handles the Jordan. The crossing is not primarily a metaphor for “crossing your Jordan” into some personal ambition. It is an act in the history of redemption that demonstrates Yahweh completing what he began. Any Christian typology must arise later through the canonical development of Exodus, inheritance and rest rather than by immediately translating Canaan into a personal life goal.

Fourth Principle: Rahab and Achan Destroy a Simplistic Insider/Outsider Sermon

Hubbard, Hawk and several other commentators have long recognized the extraordinary reversal between Rahab and Achan, but Rachel Billings’s newly added study strengthens the theological point. Rahab appears to be the ultimate outsider: Canaanite, female, prostitute and resident of the first city marked for destruction. Yet she acknowledges Yahweh’s deeds, allies herself with his purposes and comes to live within Israel. Achan appears to possess every visible mark of insider status, yet through disobedience he takes upon himself the fate associated with Jericho.

That means a preacher should be very cautious about presenting Joshua as though ethnic Israel and Canaan form morally transparent categories. The narratives themselves destabilize that assumption. Covenant identity is related to response to Yahweh, not merely to birth, while religious privilege provides no protection against covenant rebellion. Rahab can move inward and Achan can move outward.

This is a very fruitful biblical-theological bridge because the New Testament repeatedly develops the same theological pattern without requiring the preacher to allegorize the details of Joshua. The question becomes one of belonging to God’s people through faithful response to God’s revelation rather than trusting inherited status. The gospel intensifies rather than erases the warning: proximity to covenant privilege is not itself saving, while those previously regarded as outsiders can be incorporated through faith.

Fifth Principle: The Gibeonites Teach Faithfulness After Failure

Joshua 9 is often preached almost exclusively as a warning against making decisions without prayer because Israel “did not ask counsel from the LORD.” That is legitimate but incomplete. Billings’s treatment makes the second half of the story much more important. Once Israel discovers that it has been deceived, it cannot travel backward in time and make the original decision again. The oath sworn in Yahweh’s name now exists, and the people must ask what faithfulness looks like within the consequences of their own mistake.

The leaders choose to honour the oath. Billings argues that this is not simply weakness or capitulation but a faithful judgment about competing covenant obligations. Israel’s failure to inquire of Yahweh created the predicament, yet the solution is not to erase the consequences through another act of wrongdoing. The Gibeonites are preserved, and Israel subsequently fights to defend them while Yahweh acts decisively on Israel’s behalf.

That provides an unusually mature pastoral bridge. Many sermons implicitly teach that obedience means always making the correct first decision. Real Christian life frequently involves asking what faithfulness looks like after a foolish decision, broken plan or irreversible commitment has already altered the situation. Joshua 9 can therefore move beyond “pray before making decisions” toward the harder question of how covenant integrity operates within a world shaped partly by our earlier failures.

Sixth Principle: Do Not Skip Joshua 13–21—Inheritance Is the Goal of Conquest

A preaching series that spends ten weeks on Joshua 1–12 and one sermon on chapters 13–21 has probably allowed modern narrative preferences to determine the theology of the book. The boundary descriptions and allotment lists are difficult to preach, but they are not an interruption of the story. The battles were never the final objective. Land is given so that Israel may inhabit an inheritance and live before Yahweh.

Davis is particularly good at turning what he calls “promise geography” into theology, while Firth, Nelson and others show how land functions within the book’s larger structure. A boundary may look dull until we remember what it represents: Abraham’s descendants are receiving actual places within the gift Yahweh promised generations earlier. Promise has become geography, and abstract assurance has become inheritance.

The preacher should therefore resist both extremes. There is no need to deliver a geographical lecture reproducing every boundary marker, but neither should these chapters disappear. A well-designed sermon can explain what the lists as lists accomplish. They distribute the gift throughout Israel, establish concrete belonging and move the narrative from warfare toward settlement and rest. Biblical theology can then trace inheritance beyond possession of Canaan without pretending that the original land promise never mattered.

Seventh Principle: Complete Fulfillment and Incomplete Possession Must Be Preached Together

Joshua contains some of the strongest fulfillment statements in the Old Testament. Yahweh gives Israel the land, gives rest, hands over enemies and fulfills every good promise. Yet the same book names areas that remain unconquered, peoples who remain in the land and tribes that struggle to possess their inheritance. The preacher should not solve the tension by quoting only one side.

This is where Firth, Nelson, Hawk, McConville and Reimer are especially useful. Joshua can celebrate genuine fulfillment without claiming that every dimension of the promise has reached exhaustive completion. Divine gift and human appropriation remain distinguishable. Israel truly receives the land while still facing responsibility, opposition and unfinished possession. Later biblical history will reveal even more dramatically that possessing the gift and remaining faithfully within it are different things.

For Christian preaching this provides a responsible bridge toward inaugurated eschatology without forcing New Testament categories mechanically back into Joshua. God’s promises can be genuinely realized while their ultimate fullness still lies ahead. The Christian preacher can therefore connect Joshua’s fulfillment-and-expectation pattern with the New Testament’s broader movement toward inheritance, rest and new creation, while still allowing Joshua’s original land theology to speak first on its own terms.

Eighth Principle: Joshua 22 Is About Holiness, Suspicion, Listening and Communal Unity

Joshua 22 is one of the best pastoral narratives in the book and one of the least frequently preached. The western tribes learn that the eastern tribes have erected a massive altar and immediately fear apostasy. Their concern is not foolish: Israel’s corporate history has already shown that one community’s sin can bring consequences for everyone, and a rival sacrificial altar appears to threaten covenant worship. They prepare for war.

The crucial development is that they investigate before attacking. Billings makes this particularly important by placing Joshua 22 after the Gibeonite episode: Israel has already experienced the consequences of acting without adequate inquiry, and here the community behaves differently. A delegation listens to the eastern tribes, discovers their professed intention and allows explanation to interrupt violence. The outcome is reconciliation rather than civil war.

Hawk adds another valuable dimension. The narrator initially withholds the eastern tribes’ motive, meaning the reader shares some of the western tribes’ uncertainty. We too must wait before deciding what the altar means. That narrative strategy provides a remarkable preaching bridge into communal discernment: zeal for holiness can itself become destructive when interpretation hardens into certainty before the accused have spoken.

The sermon should not collapse the passage into “always hear both sides,” although that is certainly a legitimate pastoral implication. More deeply, Joshua 22 asks how God’s people preserve holiness and unity simultaneously. Faithfulness cannot mean indifference to apostasy, but neither can zeal excuse careless accusation or premature coercion. The chapter offers a theology of communal judgment shaped by seriousness, investigation, explanation and restraint.

Ninth Principle: “Israel Served the Lord” Includes Repentance, Correction and Mercy

Billings’s central thesis deserves an important place in a preaching theology of Joshua. Joshua 24:31 gives an astonishingly positive verdict: Israel served Yahweh throughout Joshua’s generation. That statement can seem difficult to reconcile with Achan, the Gibeonite mistake, incomplete occupation and the crisis in Joshua 22. Billings argues that rather than dismissing the verse as idealization, we should allow it to redefine what covenant faithfulness looks like among fallible people.

The result is pastorally significant. Israel’s faithfulness is not equivalent to never failing. Achan’s sin is taken with deadly seriousness, yet the community responds to Yahweh’s diagnosis rather than persisting in rebellion. The Gibeonite mistake cannot be undone, but Israel finds a faithful way forward by honouring the oath. The altar crisis produces vigilance without bloodshed because suspicion is investigated rather than immediately converted into punishment.

This does not turn grace into permissiveness. Joshua remains an exceptionally serious book about holiness, obedience and judgment. What Billings contributes is a theology in which genuine covenant fidelity can include repentance, correction, careful deliberation and the mercy by which Yahweh allows his people to continue in relationship with him. That is a much more pastorally mature message than either perfectionism or moral laxity.

Tenth Principle: Conquest Must Reach the Christian Pulpit Through Canonical Transformation, Not Direct Transfer

This is the most important safeguard in preaching Joshua. Whatever conclusions the preacher reaches about the historical conquest, the moral status of ḥerem or ancient Near Eastern warfare conventions, Israel’s command to take Canaan cannot simply become a mandate for the church. The church does not possess a divinely assigned territory from which human enemies must be removed, and the kingdom of Christ does not expand through military conquest.

Firth provides one of the most responsible evangelical routes here because he places Joshua within redemptive history. McConville and Stephen Williams devote even more explicit theological attention to land, genocide, covenant, idolatry and the character of God, refusing to pretend that the ethical questions disappear through a clever apologetic formula. Their work is especially useful after the passage-level exegesis has been established because it forces the preacher to ask what actually changes between ancient Israel and the church.

Douglas Earl’s newly added Reading Joshua as Christian Scripture adds another provocative and useful layer. His retrieval of patristic interpretation reminds us that Christian tradition often transformed Joshua’s battles rather than transferring them. Enemies become sins, passions and spiritual powers rather than neighbouring human populations, while Christian identity toward outsiders becomes fundamentally missionary rather than territorial. Earl’s method is more dependent on the category of myth than some evangelical readers will accept, but his hermeneutical warning is extremely important: Christian appropriation must account for the transformation produced by Christ.

This means a sermon should avoid language that casually recreates Canaanites in contemporary life. Political opponents, secular neighbours, other religions, difficult colleagues and cultural groups are not “Canaanites” whom Christians are commissioned to defeat. The New Testament redirects conflict toward sin, Satanic powers and the cruciform struggle of discipleship, while directing the church toward human outsiders through witness, love and mission.

Eleventh Principle: The Goal Is Rest, Not War

Earl is particularly useful in reminding us that warfare is narratively prominent without being Joshua’s final good. The book repeatedly moves toward rest: settled life in Yahweh’s gift, security from enemies and covenant life before God. Joshua 21–23 emphasizes precisely this transition. The battles are not the destination; they belong to a story whose desired end is life with Yahweh in the land.

This observation makes the canonical bridge considerably stronger. The Bible itself develops the language of rest beyond Joshua, most notably when later Scripture recognizes that the rest achieved under Joshua was not the ultimate rest of God’s people. The preacher can therefore follow a genuine biblical trajectory rather than inventing a spiritual analogy. Land, inheritance and rest develop through Scripture toward realities greater than territorial possession.

The christological move consequently becomes more compelling. Jesus should not appear merely because his Greek name is the same as Joshua’s, nor because both are called deliverers. The larger canonical pattern matters: Joshua brings Israel into a genuine but incomplete inheritance and rest; subsequent history demonstrates that neither land possession nor human leadership cures covenant unfaithfulness; the New Testament then presents the fuller inheritance and rest of God’s people in relation to Christ and the coming new creation. The route to Christ is therefore historical, theological and canonical rather than a collection of verbal similarities.

How Should Joshua Lead to Christ?

The preacher should resist both christological minimalism and uncontrolled typology. Joshua certainly has typological potential, and the identity of the names Joshua and Jesus in Greek helped generate a rich Christian interpretive tradition. But a sermon does not become Christ-centred merely by noticing that Joshua resembles Jesus or by turning every battle into an allegory of salvation.

A stronger route begins with the book’s unresolved theological needs. Joshua demonstrates Yahweh’s faithfulness and gives Israel real inheritance and rest, yet the book already contains unfinished possession, warnings about future apostasy and the continuing necessity of Torah-shaped fidelity. Judges will immediately demonstrate how fragile the achievement is. Kingship will later fail to secure permanent covenant faithfulness. Exile will reveal that possession of the land can be lost.

Christ therefore enters not as an arbitrary second Joshua pasted onto every passage but as the culmination of a long canonical development. He embodies faithful obedience, inaugurates a kingdom not bounded by Canaan, forms a people from insiders and outsiders, deals with the deeper enemy of sin, and leads God’s people toward an inheritance that cannot finally be lost. The better the preacher understands Joshua on its own terms, the more substantial rather than less substantial the christological bridge becomes.

A Practical Commentary Workflow for Preaching Joshua

I would begin every sermon with the biblical text rather than a commentary. Read the whole literary unit repeatedly, note changes of speaker and scene, repeated words, divine evaluations, narrative delays, reversals, connections with Torah and connections with earlier episodes in Joshua. Narrative preaching becomes much more reliable when the sermon follows what the narrator emphasizes rather than whatever detail seems most immediately applicable.

I would then use David Firth as the main exegetical-theological backbone. His strength is precisely the movement this series is concerned with: close narrative reading does not remain isolated from biblical theology. His thematic essays on obedience, identity, land, leadership, rest, promise and Joshua and Jesus provide a framework for connecting passages to the whole book, while his discussion of violence prevents the preacher from delaying the ethical question until the final five minutes of the sermon.

After Firth, I would use different resources according to the passage rather than treating every commentary as interchangeable. Hall becomes particularly important for Joshua 1–11 when leadership, initiative, Joshua’s relationship to Moses, corporate memory or the completion of the Exodus is central. Billings is especially valuable for Rahab, Achan, Gibeon, Joshua 22, incomplete possession and Joshua 24:31. McConville and Williams should be brought in whenever land, violence, covenant, idolatry or the theological character of conquest becomes central. Earl becomes most useful when asking how the passage may responsibly function as Christian Scripture after the exegetical work is already secure.

Only then would I move explicitly toward the pulpit with Davis, Hubbard, Reimer and Jackman. Their value lies not primarily in deciding difficult textual questions but in showing how exegetical conclusions acquire theological and homiletical shape. Using them late protects the preacher from merely borrowing an attractive sermonic move before determining whether it adequately reflects the passage.

The Commentary Stack: What Each Resource Does Best

David G. Firth —

Joshua

(EBTC): The Main Bridge from Exegesis to Biblical Theology

If I were preaching through Joshua and could choose only one substantial commentary for the whole process, Firth would be my first choice. His particular strength is integration. Narrative analysis, historical questions, theological themes and canonical interpretation remain distinct enough to be handled responsibly but close enough to inform one another. The extensive theological introduction means that the preacher can repeatedly move from a passage to themes such as promise, rest, land or identity without having to invent the whole biblical-theological framework independently.

Firth is particularly useful for keeping application historically controlled. Israel’s land and military vocation cannot simply be reproduced in the church, and his treatment of violence acknowledges the difficulty rather than reducing it to one reassuring argument. At the same time, he refuses the opposite move of quarantining Joshua as ethically obsolete. The book continues to speak within the canon through its theology of promise, obedience, divine presence, identity, inheritance and rest.

For actual sermon preparation, Firth should therefore sit near the beginning of the workflow. Use him after your own observation of the passage to test the literary structure and exegetical decisions, then use his biblical-theological material to identify legitimate canonical trajectories. His greatest contribution is not a collection of sermon illustrations but the intellectual bridge that prevents exegesis and proclamation from becoming disconnected tasks.

Sarah Lebhar Hall —

Conquering Character

: The Best New Control on How We Preach Joshua Himself

Hall is the most important newly added resource when the passage foregrounds Joshua as a leader. Popular preaching is very prone either to idealizing him into a leadership template or to extracting isolated principles from his behaviour. Hall’s sequential study of Joshua 1–11 provides a much better portrait: Joshua is Moses’ legitimate successor and normally a reliable leader, but he possesses real individuality, initiative and occasional weakness rather than functioning as a flawless stereotype.

Her work is particularly useful for distinguishing initiative from unbelief. Joshua’s strategic planning, use of spies and detailed implementation of divine commands need not be interpreted as moments when he ceases depending on God. Biblical divine sovereignty operates through responsible human action. That makes Hall valuable not only exegetically but pastorally, because sermons on Christian responsibility often oscillate between self-reliant activism and a passivity mistakenly described as faith.

Hall also contributes significantly to the larger structure of a preaching series. Her reading of Joshua 5 as the closure of the wilderness journey means that the first five chapters should be preached as the culmination of Exodus, not merely as preliminaries to Jericho. Her observations about memorial stones and corporate memory likewise open a rich route into the responsibility of communities to preserve testimony across generations. These insights make Hall more than a specialist on characterization; she substantially improves the preacher’s map of Joshua 1–11.

Rachel M. Billings —

“Israel Served the Lord”

: The Best New Resource for Faithfulness Amid Failure

Billings is the newly attached book that most strongly affects whole-book preaching. Her proposal that Joshua 24:31 functions as a hermeneutical key allows several difficult episodes to be interpreted together rather than as unrelated exceptions to Israel’s faithfulness. The book’s positive verdict does not require pretending that Israel never fails; instead, Billings asks how the narratives themselves portray faithful response after sin, deception, uncertainty or potential conflict.

This is especially helpful pastorally because congregations already know that Christian faithfulness does not unfold through a sequence of perfect decisions. Achan shows the seriousness of covenant violation, but Israel’s response demonstrates the necessity of confronting sin rather than normalizing it. Gibeon shows that faithfulness may require honouring obligations created through an earlier error. Joshua 22 shows that vigilance for holiness must be combined with investigation and listening so that zeal does not generate another transgression.

Billings therefore helps the preacher move beyond a moralistic model of Joshua in which every passage yields either a hero to imitate or a mistake to avoid. Covenant faithfulness becomes dynamic: obedience, repentance, correction, discernment, oath-keeping, mercy and continued dependence upon Yahweh all belong within it. I would use Billings especially in the latter half of sermon preparation, after establishing the passage’s exegetical shape but before formulating its pastoral theology.

J. Gordon McConville and Stephen N. Williams —

Joshua

(Two Horizons): The Theological Deep-Dive

McConville and Williams are especially important where ordinary commentary reaches the edge of what passage-level exegesis can accomplish. The structure of the volume makes that explicit: McConville interprets Joshua and then both authors move into extended theological reflection on land, genocide, idolatry, covenant, miracle, history and biblical theology. That is exactly the middle territory between commentary and sermon that preachers often have to construct for themselves.

The treatment of land helps prevent two opposite errors. The preacher should not simply equate Canaan with heaven or Christian blessing, but neither should land be regarded as an obsolete geographical concern irrelevant once the New Testament arrives. The biblical trajectory must be traced through Israel’s actual inheritance, later possession and loss, prophetic hope and the New Testament’s transformed horizon. Williams’s treatment of violence likewise refuses easy closure and makes the preacher grapple with what claims about divine command imply for Christian speech about God.

This volume is not the best first commentary for establishing every exegetical detail, and its historical reconstruction will not convince every conservative reader. I would therefore put it after Firth or another primary commentary. Once the textual work is secure, however, McConville and Williams become particularly valuable for making sure that the sermon does not leap from ancient narrative to Christian application without passing through serious theology.

Douglas S. Earl —

Reading Joshua as Christian Scripture

: The New Hermeneutical Control on Conquest

Earl should be used later than Hall or Billings because his primary question is not simply what Joshua meant but how it can function as Christian Scripture. His engagement with cultural memory, myth, testimony, symbol and reception history will be more theoretical than most pastors need every week, and readers who hold a stronger historical-referential account of Joshua will disagree with significant elements of his method. Nevertheless, his challenge to direct appropriation is exceptionally valuable.

His retrieval of patristic interpretation is especially fruitful. Christians historically recognized that Joshua’s warfare could not simply be reproduced as Christian warfare against human outsiders, and readers such as Origen redirected the imagery toward the struggle against sin and disordered desire. Earl also emphasizes that the church’s relationship to outsiders is transformed by mission: the final Christian posture cannot be territorial exclusion or violence but the hope that outsiders themselves may be transformed and incorporated.

The language of rest gives Earl’s proposal further theological depth. Warfare is not Joshua’s final telos; life with Yahweh is. For Christian preaching this means that the narrative’s deepest movement can be preserved while its military form is transformed within the gospel. Earl should not be treated as the final word on Joshua’s ethics, but he is an excellent guardrail against sermons that reproduce conquest logic under spiritualized vocabulary.

Robert L. Hubbard Jr. —

Joshua

(NIVAC): The Deliberate Bridge to Contemporary Life

Hubbard is perhaps the most explicitly useful commentary when the preacher reaches the stage of asking how the passage crosses from ancient Israel to the contemporary congregation. The NIV Application Commentary format forces each section through “Original Meaning,” “Bridging Contexts” and “Contemporary Significance,” which is exactly the movement that Joshua requires. Direct translation of ancient circumstances into modern practice is repeatedly shown to be inadequate.

His treatment of Rahab and Achan is particularly effective because the literary reversal becomes a theological statement about covenant identity before it becomes an application. The outsider’s submission to Yahweh matters more than her ethnic location outside Israel, while the insider’s rebellion overwhelms his inherited status. The contemporary move is consequently not “be brave like Rahab” but a much deeper challenge concerning privilege, allegiance, sin and the surprising reach of grace.

Hubbard also does important work in acknowledging the violence problem while identifying the book’s surprising openness toward non-Israelites. That prevents the preacher from treating every surviving Canaanite as evidence of failure or every outsider as an enemy. I would use Hubbard after the primary exegetical work, precisely where the sermon needs to move across the cultural and canonical gap without pretending the gap is not there.

Dale Ralph Davis —

Joshua: No Falling Words

: The Strongest Model of Theological Exposition

Davis remains the resource I most readily open when I know what the text means but am not yet sure what the sermon sounds like. His great strength is theological concentration. He identifies the centre of gravity in a narrative and then keeps exposition moving toward Yahweh’s character, promise and covenant rather than allowing the human characters to dominate.

His treatment of the land material is especially instructive for preachers. Chapters that appear nearly impossible to preach become “promise geography”: not because every place name conceals an allegory, but because the very existence of these inheritances demonstrates that Yahweh’s word has taken concrete form. At the end of the book, Shechem recalls the ancestral promise and becomes the location of covenant renewal, allowing the whole story to curve back toward Genesis and display the theological force of “no falling words.”

Davis should still be checked against more technical resources, especially in disputed passages, and his rhetorical confidence can sometimes make an interpretation sound more certain than the exegetical evidence warrants. Yet as a model of turning narrative exegesis into God-centred proclamation, he remains outstanding. He is the bridge from “I understand this passage” to “I can now imagine how this theological truth might actually be heard.”

David Reimer —

Joshua

(ESV Expository Commentary): A Concise Canonical and Christ-Centred Guide

Reimer is particularly useful when preparation has become overloaded. His commentary cannot match Firth or Butler for detailed scholarly discussion, but it keeps the narrative arc, biblical theology and christological horizon clearly visible. The tables comparing Rahab and the Gibeonites, identifying the narrative arc and tracing correspondences between Joshua 1 and Joshua 23 help the preacher see how the book’s later material returns to themes established at the beginning.

The commentary’s broadly Reformed and Christ-centred orientation gives it a clear destination, but the most useful aspect is the attempt to reach Christ through biblical theology rather than merely by imaginative analogy. For a book where typology can become uncontrolled very quickly, this is important. Reimer helps the preacher remember that Joshua belongs within one redemptive story without implying that every feature of Israel’s conquest must possess a direct Christian equivalent.

I would therefore use Reimer late in the process as a concise synthesis check. After detailed work, ask whether the sermon still reflects the narrative arc of Joshua and whether its move toward Christ belongs to the canon rather than merely to the preacher’s ingenuity. Reimer cannot perform every stage, but he is useful precisely because he keeps the endpoint visible.

David Jackman —

Joshua: People of God’s Purpose

: Closest to the Pulpit

Jackman is explicitly a preacher’s resource, and that makes him most valuable near the end rather than the beginning of preparation. His gift is identifying the principal burden of a passage and shaping it into proclamation without filling the sermon with all the exegetical scaffolding required to reach that conclusion. For a preacher who has already done the textual work, Jackman helps reveal what can be left behind in the study.

He is particularly good at guarding against sermons that become merely lectures. Joshua raises complicated questions about history, violence, geography and covenant, but the congregation still needs to hear what God is saying through the passage rather than receive an annotated bibliography of interpretive positions. Jackman’s experience as a preacher and trainer of preachers consistently shows in his ability to preserve theological clarity and pastoral movement.

Precisely for that reason I would not allow Jackman to determine a contested interpretation on his own. The theological road to the pulpit should pass through Firth, Hall, Billings, McConville–Williams or another serious exegetical resource first. Once that work has been done, Jackman is one of the best conversation partners for turning responsible interpretation into a coherent sermon.

Three Possible Sermon-Series Routes

A whole-book series could follow Joshua’s own major movement: entering the land, taking the land, receiving the inheritance and retaining covenant fidelity. This has the advantage of forcing the church to encounter chapters 13–21 rather than living entirely among the famous conquest stories. Promise and fulfillment can then develop across the series, while the final chapters reveal that receiving Yahweh’s gift creates the continuing question of how God’s people will live within it.

A theological series could organize the book around promise, presence, Torah, identity, holiness, inheritance and rest. Such a series would allow the preacher to bring together passages that illuminate one another—for example, Rahab with Achan on insider and outsider identity, Joshua 9 with Joshua 22 on discernment and faithfulness after error, or Joshua 1 with Joshua 23–24 on Torah-shaped covenant perseverance. The risk is that rearranging the book thematically can obscure narrative development, so the preacher should still explain where each passage belongs within Joshua’s movement.

A shorter Christ-and-canon series could focus on five movements: Yahweh keeps his promise; Yahweh brings his people through the waters; Yahweh gives inheritance; God’s people remain dependent upon faithful covenant response; and Joshua’s genuine but incomplete rest opens toward the greater rest and inheritance ultimately disclosed in Christ. This is better than a sequence of direct “Joshua equals Jesus” parallels because the christological bridge develops through the unresolved theology of the book itself.

Common Preaching Mistakes to Avoid

The first mistake is character moralism: Joshua becomes courageous leadership, Rahab becomes courage, Achan becomes greed, Caleb becomes persistence and the Gibeonites become bad decision-making. Those applications may contain truth, but if they can be preached equally well from a secular leadership manual, they have not yet reached Joshua’s theology.

The second mistake is personalized conquest. Jericho is not your promotion, new house, business objective or difficult colleague, and Canaan is not a symbol for whatever personal ambition you want God to help you achieve. The preacher should be especially careful with phrases such as “claim your promised land,” because they erase the historical specificity of Israel’s inheritance and can convert divine promise into religiousized ambition.

The third mistake is Christianizing Israel’s enemies. The people whom Christians disagree with culturally, politically or religiously are not contemporary Canaanites. The canonical transformation produced by Christ means the church’s mission toward human outsiders is fundamentally evangelistic and reconciling rather than territorial or eliminative. Spiritual warfare language belongs to the New Testament’s struggle against sin and spiritual powers, not permission to recategorize neighbours as sacred enemies.

The fourth mistake is avoiding the violence altogether. Congregations already know that Jericho and ḥerem are difficult. If the preacher refuses to acknowledge that, the sermon may appear evasive precisely where thoughtful hearers most need theological leadership. Yet the entire sermon should not be swallowed by the issue either. The ethical difficulty needs responsible treatment inside the passage’s larger theology of judgment, promise, holiness and redemptive history.

The fifth mistake is skipping the allotments. Joshua 13–21 is not failed pacing by an ancient editor. The land distribution explains what the conquest was for. A series that never preaches inheritance and rest risks communicating that Joshua is fundamentally about winning battles when the narrative is fundamentally moving toward life within Yahweh’s gift.

The sixth mistake is rushing to Jesus before hearing Joshua. Christ-centred preaching is strengthened rather than threatened by careful Old Testament exegesis. The more clearly we understand promise, land, rest, holiness, covenant fidelity, outsiders and incomplete fulfillment in Joshua, the more substantial the canonical movement toward Christ becomes. Shortcut typology usually produces thinner christology, not richer christology.

My Updated Preaching Stack for Joshua

For a serious series, I would use Firth as the backbone, because he best integrates exegesis, narrative and biblical theology across the whole book. I would add Hall particularly in Joshua 1–11 to sharpen characterization, divine-human agency, Exodus completion and memory, and Billings wherever questions of Israel’s faithfulness, failure, mercy, Gibeon or Joshua 22 become central. McConville and Williams would then provide the major theological conversation about land, violence and covenant, while Earl would serve as an important Christian-hermeneutical control against directly transferring conquest into ecclesial life.

Closer to sermon construction I would move to Hubbard for the disciplined bridge into contemporary significance, Davis for theological concentration and memorable exposition, Reimer for concise canonical synthesis, and Jackman for the final homiletical shape. Different books are therefore doing different jobs. Asking one commentary to solve every stage is less effective than deliberately building a chain from text to theology to proclamation.

The newly added volumes improve this stack because they fill genuine gaps rather than merely duplicating existing resources. Hall prevents Joshua himself from being preached superficially; Billings makes Israel’s faithfulness more nuanced and pastorally realistic; and Earl forces the Christian preacher to explain not merely what conquest meant then but what transformation must occur before Joshua can be proclaimed faithfully now.

Final Recommendation

The governing sermon question for Joshua should not be, “How can we become courageous conquerors like Joshua?” A better question is, “What does this passage reveal about the God who faithfully gives what he promises, the kind of people who can live faithfully within his gift, and the way that promise, inheritance, holiness and rest unfold within the larger biblical story?” That question is broad enough to encompass the battles but does not allow the battles to define the whole book.

Joshua begins with a dead Moses and a divine promise, proceeds through waters, warfare, failure, mercy and inheritance, and ends with a covenant-renewing people being called once again to serve the God who has already acted for them. The book’s centre of gravity is therefore neither human courage nor territorial aggression. It is Yahweh’s fidelity and the demanding question of how his people respond to grace once the promise begins to become reality.

Preaching Joshua well means allowing that movement to reach the pulpit intact. Exegesis establishes what the narrative is doing; whole-book reading identifies its theology; biblical theology follows promise, land, inheritance and rest through the canon; Christ transforms and fulfills those trajectories; and only then does application address the congregation. That route is slower than extracting leadership lessons from famous stories, but it produces sermons that sound much more like Joshua and much less like us.