However, in verse 7, the command is repeated.  Only this time it is strengthened.  Joshua is to be “strong and very courageous” in being careful to do according to all the law that Moses has commanded.  In verse 8, this is explained further as the Lord says that Joshua is to “meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

Future enemies, struggles, hardships, and task may require courage, but Joshua is going to need extra strength and courage to take the law and make it permeate all that he is.  Here, God reveals to Joshua the importance of this new way of living spelled out in the law.  Joshua is to make this rule be THE rule. It is to so infiltrate all that he is that he might not turn away at all, but will pursue the rule that the Lord has established in all ways.

This law, this rule, is to become a universal way of life.  It was with Moses and now is with Joshua and is to be for the Hebrew people THE way of conducting one’s own life. No matter where they go, live, or are taken, the law is the law.

Video link – http://www.adland.tv/commercials/gatorade-sport-sport-long-2004-045-usa.   For this new nation, “it’s 90 feet to first no matter where home is.” Regardless of their changing position, God’s way is the way.

The Lord’s call to “very courageous” indeed reminds us of the challenge of allowing His ways to completely transform our way of life and thinking.  Joshua, though a man in command, is to allow himself to be commanded by this way of life.  It will surely require courage.  It is clear that prosperity and success will not be found outside of following the Lord (vs. 8).  Matthew Henry’s commentary reminds us of this as he notes that “Those that make the word of the God their rule, and conscientiously walk by that rule, shall both do well and speed well […] and it will entitle them to the best blessings: God shall give them the desires of their heart.”

So also, may we make the word of God our rule, no matter where we might be.  May it permeate our lives as we “meditate on it day and night,” being careful to what is written.  This will surely require much courage.  To this end, it is even more powerful a promise that God offers in Joshua 1:9 as He says that “the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

When I encounter the laws laid out throughout the book of Exodus, both in the Decalogue (10 commandments) and beyond, I join the average reader in losing interest rapidly. I often find them with little to offer to my own current situations. However, this is far from the truth.

They have, after all, completely influenced not only the way that I live, but the way in which people have acted for centuries. It’s as if God is laying out for the Hebrew people a manner of living, both in relation to God (Commandments 1-4) and in relation to fellow man (6-10), that is to become the way in which they are conditioned. I am realizing that these principles for life, these standards of conduct, these ethical paradigms are largely responsible for the development of a much greater sociological phenomenon. To borrow the language of America’s founding fathers, what is found in the 10 Commandments are no doubt truths that so many of us hold to be self-evident.

God’s revelation of the law, his revealing of these rules, convey to us not only much about His own character but also much about what many Christian’s today take as obvious. Of course, Jesus would extend the scope of these laws in an interpretation which would transform the Christian community, but in the first revelation of these in Exodus the reader finds a foundation, a compass of sorts, for much of what is to come for humanity.

As God’s people, may we be formed, molded, indeed conditioned, by these very principles. But let us not forget the way in which these laws would later be abused. Jesus expands the entire scope of this foundation in Matthew 5. For Jesus, it seems that the Jewish community has lost sight of the true spirit of these ethical standards. Because of this, we find his delineation of these laws and much broader application as an awakening for the people of his time and for us. They had become complacent in their legalistic interpretation of the laws, and Jesus presents a whole new way to understand them. Suddenly, there is an entirely new way of thinking about how to live, act, and think. What they had been told… wasn’t all there was to it. There was better to be had. Jesus makes groundbreaking interpretations of the law, each beginning with “You have heard it said…”

Jesus says, you may have been told a lot of things, but let me tell you how it should be.

Luxury car company, Audi, diminishes it competition while pointing out some parallel truth in this video: