This Week’s Training Notes
[Due to a period of time being short-staffed on our team, we have been unable to produce our weekly leader training podcasts for The Gospel Project for Adults for Spring 2022. We plan to begin making these podcasts available again for Summer 2022. We are sorry for the inconvenience but look forward to providing this assistance again soon. In the meantime, we hope the content below helps for your weekly preparation. We also provide weekly devotional blog posts that reflect on the message of each session. And please take advantage of the Additional Resources for each session, which include links to sermons, articles, and various other items to aid in your planning. Thank you for your patience!]
Continuing in the Spring curriculum of The Gospel Project for Adults, From Conquest to Kingdom, we have been reading through the book of Joshua, seeing how God led His people into the promised land with His power and His presence.
This week, your group will be studying Unit 8, Session 3, Remembering God’s Faithfulness, a session on how Joshua, in his old age, pleads with the Israelites to continue to obey and walk in the ways of the Lord.
So this week, here are your three things to know, read, and do as you prepare for this week’s session:
Something to know
In Joshua 23:1, the Lord had given Israel rest. Although the verse only talks about rest from their enemies, God had also given them rest from their wanderings, rest in their waiting, rest in a homeland, and ultimately, rest with God Himself. As they continued to follow the Lord, they would enjoy that rest. When they didn’t, rest would be taken away. Remind your group of the connection of God giving Israel rest and how Jesus gives us rest. He gives us rest from our enemies, from Satan and his schemes. He gives us rest from our wandering, giving us hope, purpose, and a future. He gives us rest in our waiting, knowing He is sufficient for all our needs. And He assures us of a present and future rest in His kingdom and in His presence as we trust in His salvific work on the cross on our behalf, to assure us of eternity with Him. As Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-29, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Something to read
For something to read, we’ve included a link to an article by David Shrock on Joshua 23 in the Additional Resources entitled Love God, Flee Idols, and Remember That Jesus is with You. Here is an excerpt from the article:
“… while Joshua has given Israel rest (11:23) and God has fulfilled all of his promises (21:43–45), even driving out all the inhabitants of the land (23:4), there remains places in the land that need subjugation. This is not accidental or a sign of God’s weakness, it is the way God works—both in the days of Joshua and in the days of the greater Joshua, Jesus Christ.
In fact, if we look carefully at verses 3–4 we may even get a sense of Jesus’s later Great Commission. In Joshua 23, the lesser Jesus (Joshua son of Nun) says that he has allotted all the land to Israel (v. 4). Then he implores Israel to go possess the land God has given to them. Moreover, he says God will help them do it (v. 5). In many ways, this foreshadows the great pronouncement of Jesus, that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him (Matthew 28:18), hence, he has the right to make disciples of all nations. Like Joshua, Jesus’s authorization precedes his occupation.
Today Christ, by his church, is making disciples and preparing his people for the worldwide inheritance he has been given and will soon give all his disciples. Importantly, this idea of inaugurated eschatology did not originate with Jesus and his apostles. It goes back to Joshua and Israel’s possession of the land.”
Something to do
As the Israelites rested, we could almost read between the lines of Joshua’s speech. It was as if he was warning them against complacency, against enjoying that rest so much that they forgot obedience to God was both active and passive obedience, meaning both obeying the commands in our active actions and obeying God in our passive submission and trust to Him. Obedience, then, is not just lack of disobedience—it is actively seeking to obey the Great Commission as well as the two greatest commandments, to love God and others. Consider having your group individually make a list of ways that this month they can be obedient to God in sharing the gospel or loving others, even if it’s at a cost of their time, money, or resources. Have them write it down somewhere on their phone calendar as a reminder or goal.