Bottom line up front: Centrality of the Word

Context: Before, during, and after battle (spiritual, physical, emotional, or otherwise), God’s Word is non-negotiably central.

Overview: Currently I’m again reading through the book of Joshua. It is a book replete with conquests, battles, ambushes, skirmishes, routs, defeats, and victories.

And there is a pattern I see again and again in the historical record. The Word of God was central in the lives of God’s people, especially leadership.

Example:

In Joshua 9:30-35, after God had given Ai into Israel’s hands, the text records that Joshua read the Book of the Law in the hearing of the entire assembly. Why? To remind them of who they were, yes, but more importantly, of who God was. The Word was to be central.

Verse 35 is explicit: “There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.”

Catch that? No segregating age demographics or guests or sojourners off in separate places. None of that silliness. The Word was central and primary. Faith came by hearing the Word heralded.

Takeaway: I do not know if we will ever recover from the sub-literate levels to which we have sunk in so much of the West. There seems to be a meme or silly video for everything, but where are the Word-centric people? I know a very few. But for the Christian, he/she is told again and again in Scripture (the Book of all books) that it is the Word that is central (John 15:7-11; Romans 10:17). Let the true church be a people of the Word.