‘BUT!’
- Aug 22, 2025
- 5 min read
In Joshua 1:7, Joshua is told by God, “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.”
To be bold and courageous, and be ready to do things in a different way.
God wasn’t kidding!
We’ve discovered in the past few weeks some of the important ways of going about God’s work in God’s way. For instance, being a people that are consecrated, being set apart for the purpose that God has for us! Being ready to move at a moment’s notice, and being sure to follow all His commands.
Then in Joshua 6 we read how the people walked the city 13 times and secured victory God's way. Amazing!
What a start to their encountering the ‘Promised Land.’ How glorious to go into the next chapter of your life, which will undoubtedly be the best years of your life because you are finally receiving what was promised!
Not to mention your reputation. Look back at Joshua 6:27, "So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land."
For six chapters we’ve heard and indeed seen that God was with Joshua and the children of Israel. What reassurance, ‘I am with you’, how wonderful.
However, in Joshua 7 the whole lot comes crashing down.
Reading: Joshua 7:1 - “But the Israelites were unfaithful in regard to the devoted things.”
Now go to Joshua 7:12. Listen to what God says to Joshua: “I will not be with you anymore.”
You get the idea that something's really wrong. Just with the first word of Joshua 7 - ‘BUT.’
What’s happened? How has defeat come from what was the seeming jaws of victory?
Have you heard of Bob the Tomato or Larry the Cucumber and the rest of the Veggitales? Created by Phil Vischer. Vischer in his book, “Me, Myself, and Bob”, tells the story of the meteoric rise of Veggitales and then having to sell it due to bankruptcy. Vischer believes the loss was due to his lost focus. He was “very successful”, but he started following his own plan rather than the Lord’s. His dream died! He had to ignore “You deserve it.” He then formed a new company called “Jellyfish Labs.” Why the name? “Because jellyfish cannot choose their own course, they are driven instead by the current.”
Vischer now wants to be led by the Spirit of God.
Even though great things were happening to the people of Israel, we come to chapter 7, and it begins with this word ‘BUT.’ It must be one of the most disappointing words in all of Scripture. This word contrasts this chapter with those preceding it.
There has been the thrill of victory, but now there’s the agony of defeat.
Never are we as believers in greater danger of a fall than after a victory.
Andrew Bonar said, “Let us be as watchful after the victory as before the battle.”
We are so prone to drop our guard and begin trusting in ourselves, or in our past victories, rather than the Lord. One victory never guarantees the next. The basis of victory is the Lord Himself and our faith and dependence on Him alone.
But, no failure is fatal!! Do you believe that?
Max Lucado once said, “Failures are only fatal if we fail to learn from them.”
Are you struggling with the consequences of poor choices? Do you identify with the guilt and shame of regret over mistakes, past and present?
John Bunyan wrote: “I never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and mercy, as I saw after this temptation: great sins draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty.”
God wants to use our failures and defeats as we bring them to Him. He alone redeems, heals and gives victory over the sin and failure of our lives.
BUT (v1)! This denotes a moment where overcomers have been overcome.
Joshua 7 is about sin and consequences. You never sin alone; it always has a consequence.
The thing is, we will learn that the defeat comes from the inside.
Israel had been promised wonderful things in Joshua 1:3: "I will give you every place where you set your foot", along with other great promises. But we cannot fail to notice that with God's gifts, come conditions.
See Joshua 1:7 for some of those conditions. They had to be courageous, and careful in obeying God, not detouring to the right or left!
The ‘BUT’ of chapter 7:1 brought a change!
After Joshua 6:27, you’d expect Joshua 7 to begin by saying, “So Joshua and his people went from victory to victory!” Not so!
Make no mistake … God takes sin very seriously. Sin forfeits the entire blessing and the fullness of the presence of God.
No matter how we try and work it out, individual sin affects YOU, the health of a church, and community.
Israel was God’s own possession, so when one person sinned, it brought reproach on the entire nation as well as the individual.
"For just as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ" (1 Cor 12:12).
"For just as we have many parts in one body and all the body’s parts do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually parts of one another" (Rom 12:4-5).
What one member of the body does affects the whole body. If your foot hurts, then you feel bad all over. The other members of the body experience the pain as well. That is one reason why God says, “the Israelites were unfaithful in regard to the devoted things” in verse 1.
The sin of the one affected the many.
In the movie 'The Last Emperor,' the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a life of luxury with 1,000 servants at his command. “What happens when you do wrong?” his brother asks. “When I do wrong, someone else is punished,” the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten.
In Christianity, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost. This is the message of the cross. It’s the message of redemption; the message of grace.
Christ came to make us holy… “becoming a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph 5:25-27).
Stop and ponder for a while.
Warren Wiersbe writes, “When you walk by faith, you will claim all that God has for you, but unbelief is always content to settle for something less than God’s best.”
Joshua 7:1 begins with the word “BUT”.
Prayerfully meditate on these other “BUT” verses.
Romans 5:20: “BUT where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:27: "BUT God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."
1 John 1:7: “BUT if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Philip Yancey says, “I need God, more than anything I might get from God.”
So take me as You find me
ALL MY FEARS AND FAILURES
FILL MY LIFE AGAIN
I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in
Now I surrender …
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