Holy Surrender

Holy Surrender

A Sermon on Joshua 3:5 — Cleansing Before Conquering

By A Disciple of Jesus Christ · Pleasant Springs Church · July 12, 2026

Key Texts: Joshua 3:5 • Joshua 5:2–15 • Leviticus 20:26 • Ephesians 2:8–9 • Romans 12:1–2

Israel has been redeemed from Egypt, sustained in the wilderness, and carried across the Jordan. Before they draw a single sword to take the Promised Land, God gives one command: sanctify yourselves. This sermon walks through that call to holiness and surrender — the cleansing that comes before the conquering — and the moment Joshua falls on his face before the Captain of the Lord’s host on holy ground.

A few things to keep before us as we open the text:

God tells the people to sanctify themselves — to make holy, to set apart. This also took place before God gave the Law to Moses on Sinai (Exodus 19:10–11): the people were to consecrate themselves before the Lord came down.

Notice this carefully: Israel was not becoming God’s people — they already were God’s people. Holiness is not how we earn our place in His family; it is how the family He has already claimed learns to live.

In Joshua 5:2–12, God renews the covenant with the people who were born in the wilderness journey — through circumcision, setting them apart and rolling away the reproach of Egypt from the people.

God renews the covenant sign among the new generation, not because the Abrahamic covenant itself expired, but because the covenant sign had simply been neglected during the wilderness years. Before the conquest begins, the mark of belonging is restored.

Holiness and surrender are two sides of one heart. Having renewed the covenant sign, God calls His people not only to be set apart, but to yield — to lay down their own strength and plans before the Lord who goes before them. What follows is the ground of that surrender (grace) and its posture (falling on our faces before the Captain of the host).

We never earn God’s grace by living holy; we live holy in response to God’s grace and goodness.

When Joshua meets the Captain of the Lord’s Army in Joshua 5:13, he asks a profound question — “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” Notice the response:

Consecration and sanctification begin when we stop asking God to bless our plans and begin surrendering to His.

We see obedience displayed in the life of our Savior Jesus Christ as He prayed, “Father, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done!” Jesus presented Himself as a living sacrifice and beckons us to do the same by taking up our cross and following Him.

Remember, all our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), and there is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10) — but we are made whole in and through Christ: “being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

Oftentimes our greatest enemy is not the culture, the governments, or even other people — but our own desires.

The previous generation stood at the border of the Promised Land and rebelled in unbelief. This generation stands at the same border — but the difference is, they humble themselves before God.

To read the book of Joshua well, it helps to know who first received it and the moment it describes. The following background is offered for deeper study — the same Author-and-Audience approach we use across the Discipleship School, with the Septuagint (LXX) and ESV set beside the preached text.

The book takes its name from Joshua son of Nun, the Ephraimite who served as Moses’ assistant from the days of the Exodus and was commissioned as his successor (Numbers 27:18–23; Deuteronomy 34:9). Jewish tradition (the Talmud, Bava Batra 14b–15a) credits Joshua with writing the book, and the narrative itself notes that “Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God” (Joshua 24:26).

His Hebrew name Yehoshua — shortened to Yeshua — means “Yahweh saves,” and it is the very name rendered Iesous in Greek, from which we get Jesus. The man who calls Israel to sanctify themselves and then falls on his face before the Captain of the Lord’s host bears, by name, the Savior he points toward.

The first hearers were the second generation of Israel — the children of the Exodus, born and raised in the wilderness, whose parents had perished there because of unbelief (Numbers 14:26–35). Around 1406 B.C. they stand on the banks of a flooded Jordan at harvest season (Joshua 3:15), about to receive their own crossing. Before the conquest, before a single wall falls, the word to them is not fight but be holy.

LXX word worth keeping: hagnisasthe (Ἁγνίσασθε) — “purify / consecrate yourselves,” the same root behind hagnos, “pure, holy.” The preached text above follows the KJV as delivered (“Sanctify yourselves”); the Greek and ESV are set alongside for study. The command is reflexive: the people are to do the setting-apart, in response to the God who has already claimed them.

The threads in this sermon — sanctification before conquest, surrender to the Captain of the host, the battle that belongs to the Lord, and the heart made holy — each open into a fuller study. Keep growing: