Joshua 1

Wasilla Bible Church

Joshua 1

August 28, 2024 • Joshua 1

One of the interesting things about the life and story of Joshua is that he is someone who experienced the entire freedom narrative of the Hebrew people. He was born into slavery as a child in Egypt, then was present for all the events that took place in exodus story, and then took the people into the promised land. Despite him seeing God work in such great and mighty ways throughout his life he must still be reminded to be faithful to God’s word, brave, and strong. When God is talking to him in chapter 1, we will see him repeat this to him multiple time as he prepares him to take over for Moses. Therefore, the charge to be faithful to God’s word, brave, and strong is even more applicable to our lives as people who have not had the privilege to see such great miracles as he did.

One of the most interesting phrases that we see in the chapter is found in verse 7. Here we see God paradoxically command Joshua to be on the straight and narrow and no to turn from the left or right then followed by, in the same sentence, “that you may have good success in whatever you do”. This paradox is something that is important for all believers, especially young believers who are about to embark on their own journeys to understand. It is very easy for us to over emphasize the importance of our life choices, such as what college or trade should we do after high school, while under emphasizing the importance of our spiritual growth and dependency on the word of God, which is truly most important. One thing to keep in mind though is that this does not mean that we have total free reign in whatever we want to do and as long as we do our morning devotional our life path doesn’t matter. Joshua was given parameters on the land that he could take and was allowed and permitted freedom within those parameters. Likewise, it is the same with us, God has given all of us parameters that we must still function in.

Finally, something to think about this week and throughout this semester is the real consequences for every action or lack of action that takes place in the book of Joshua. When they take the land, they suffer losses of people on their side and there are great losses of the side of those who stand in their way. In the process of claiming the land people died and things that took many years to build are destroyed in a matter of days. We need to know that consequences like these are not outliers when it comes to following God. When we choose to follow God, we need to understand that there might be relationships in our lives that will die, and there will be areas of our lives we have invested in dismantled. This is why we too must look to God to take courage and to be brave just as we see Joshua do.

Questions/Discussion targets

Are we putting our own abilities to plan out our future lives over our relationship with God and devotion to his word?

How can we better prepare ourselves to be brave and strong for when things get tough in our lives?

Joshua 12

November 6, 2024 • Joshua 12, Joshua 13:1–7

In C.S. Lewis book “Out of the Silent Planet” he writes about a man traveling to another world and meeting many different peoples and creatures. All the groups that he meets have very unique cultures that the main character finds very different from those of earth. One of these groups sets an age cut off for some of the enjoyable activities they do and the reason for that is very interesting. They say they stop because that is the only way that they could bring about a completion of the joy of doing the activity itself. They believe that it is necessary to look back on and remember good things for the joy of them to be competed. This in a way is what we see here in this chapter. Joshua is looking back at what God has done and the land that he has given the people over the past few years. Likewise, we ought to look back on the good things that God has done in our lives and the lives of others around us and remember them. It is very easy to get caught up in all of life’s troubles so we must have times of reflection where we take account of the victories God has wrought in our lives. Therefore, please set aside time to go through the word doc attached to this lesson.

Joshua 11

October 30, 2024 • Joshua 11

There are places in scripture that don’t seem as significant to us as it would to have been those it was initially written for. For example, if you were to read through the book of Exodus you will see that there are a few chapters where God is instructing them how to build the tabernacle and make their priestly gowns, then later in the book we see a few chapters where they followed through, and it is almost copy and paste of what we previously read. For a modern and casual reader this might seem redundant and arduous, but there is great significance to those passages being there. They show that the people did follow the exact commands of God and therefore the tabernacle is a legitimate place of worship for all who came their even hundreds of years later. It is very much the same here, except the distance between proclamation and fulfillment is much longer. What we should see is that God always been faithful to his word. Here in the book of Joshua we have seen that God is faithful to the people of Israel and fulfilling promises made in the past. When we went through Genisis last year we saw that there was a promise given to Abraham that his descendants would come into the land of Canaan and make it their home. Now almost 500 years later he is doing exactly what he had promised he would do. The people living out the manifested promise of God is what makes these war stories important to read about. These stories are about God being faithful to his promise and making sure that the people of Israel did come into the land that they were promised. Something to have the students do is to reflect on ways that God might have brought to fruition promises or prayers in their lives.

Joshua 10

October 16, 2024 • Joshua 10

In this chapter we see a gruesome battle and slaughter of the people who went against the people allied with the people of God. The fact that they did not directly attack Israel is a great witness to what we have talked about through this book, that God is willing to provide salvation to all who put their faith in Him. The people of Gibeon were a people group were a people dedicated to destruction but they believed in the one true God and out of their desperation they tricked the people of Israel into sparing them. But now it looks like God has a chance to wipe them out with a people and for them to be destroyed just as they were supposed to be in the beginning but that is not what happens. God honors the little faith that they showed and spares them once again, and the same goes for us. No matter how our lives turn out to be if we devote ourselves to God then we can be assured salvation. One of the biggest and most memorable events that takes place is the sun staying in place for about a whole day. Although the fact that it even happened was very impressive what makes it an even bigger deal is at the time there was somewhat trinity of Gods that the Canaanites had, Baal (god of weather and war), Agibol (the God of the moon), and Yarhibol (the God of the sun). God showed himself to be the lord over all the things that the Canaanite gods claimed to be, and he used the sun, moon, and weather to bring judgment to the Canaanites. We should see God stopping sun and moon and using hail to kill them as a very large declarative statement that the God of Israel is the one true god. Things we want the students to see - God has a long track record of saving those who are putting their faith in him. - That God was, is and will be the not just the lord of our lives but also of the physical world around us.