Joshua 5 & 6

Wasilla Bible Church

Joshua 5 & 6

Joshua 5&6

September 18, 2024

There are two different stories that are here that are connected here in the book of Joshua that we will be tackling this week.

Chapter 5

The first one is the account of the second circumcision of the people Hebrew people. The two places in scripture that would be used to further reveal the spiritual and even physical significance of this are Deuteronomy 10:12-22 and Genesis 17:1-14.

In Genesis 17 we have the Abrahamic covenant. Here we see God making a covenant with Abraham that has three distinct places or relevance to this story.

-God promises Abraham, he will greatly multiply him and make nations out of him

-His offspring will take the land of Cannan

-They ought to keep circumcision as a sign of the promise of God

When we get to Joshua 5, we see that Joshua is recognizing that God has kept his end of the Abrahamic Covenant, the number of descendants has become great, and the people are beginning to take the land of Canaan. Therefore, Joshua upholds the righteousness of the people and commands them to fulfill their part by bearing the sign of the covenant given to Abraham. This is why it is important that this passage is here because it shows that the people are aware that their taking of the land of Canaan is fully the works and acts of God alone.

Deuteronomy 10 is also helpful because it shows us the end goal of circumcision being that of the heart and not just a physical event. We see this being further supported in Joshua 5:9 where the end result of the mass circumcision is the removal of reproach of the people.

Take aways form chapter 5

-Are there places where we have seen God be faithful to us despite our disobedience?

-What are step we can take or ways we can live lives that honor the works God has done in our lives?

Chapter 6

As for chapter 6 it is much more straight forward and for the most part can be completely understood within the book of Joshua. There are two things that are taking place; God is giving the people the city of Jericho, but they have to take it in a way that is very unconventional way, and that God is honoring the promise the spies made to Rahab.

Take aways from chapters six would be

-Obedience often results in lives that do not look normal by the worldly standards

-No matter our background or origins we all stand just one commitment away from salvation. God can overcome all sins and situations we might be stuck in no matter how daunting they may be to us. Just as Rahab was saved from destruction, so can we be saved.

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.