God keeps his promises (again)

This morning I read Joshua chapter 5.

What’s happened so far in the story is that God has rescued the Israelites from Egypt but then they’ve spent 40 years in the desert. Moses has just died but they’re on the edge of Canaan and ready to invade.

There’s quite a lot of stuff going on in this chapter (some of which makes me want to cross my legs), but what caught my eye was v10-12:

On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate the produce of Canaan.

This is the first time (I think) that they had eaten “the produce of the land”; this was a taster of the blessings to come once they took hold of the land God had promised them. So that in itself is God beginning to fulfil of one of the promises he made to Abraham.

But then notice that this is also the moment God stopped providing manna for them. This seems to be a little reminder of how God has provided for them all the way up until this point. Now that they are in the promised land (“a land flowing with milk and honey” v6), God is continuing to provide in a different way.

Two lessons for me:

• God keeps his promises
• God provides for his people

Neither are new to me but boy do I need to remember them.