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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 4th Quarter 2025: Lessons of Faith from Joshua

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 Recipe for Success

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

And folks, We are now on the fourth quarter of 2025, starting off a new series of studies, this 1 called Lessons of Faith from Joshua.

And that would be Joshua the book and the Bible and the man who is the central character in the book of Joshua.

Right, is this on the book of Josh or the man, Joshua?

Now, I was commenting earlier, there's an interesting segue.

Usually you go from an Old Testament book to a doctrinal theme or topic or some of our New Testament.

But we're going really from almost a clean baton pass from Moses in the first 5 books that you know and because we were studying the book of Exodus last time and now we're going to the guy who followed Moses which is Joshua, his successor.

So I'm really looking forward to this study and you put our talking points together so maybe you can kind of give us a kind of a lay of the land of the whole lesson and then walk us through what we're looking for this week.

All right, well as you mentioned this week's lesson Studies begins a study, a new quarter study on the book and life of Joshua the servant of the Lord.

I thought it was interesting in studying the lesson, and I don't bring this out as much in the Talking Points, so I'll bring it up now, that Joshua is called the servant of the Lord, but not until Joshua 24, 29 when he died.

So he starts out, it starts out and introduces him as Joshua, Moses' assistant in Joshua 1, 1.

And then it says, you know, Moses, the servant of the Lord and Joshua, and all through the book of Joshua, Moses, the servant of the Lord.

But Joshua is never called the servant of the Lord until the end.

So it's almost like this, the growth of Joshua into this Great leader who now, you know, I mean Moses had his growth experience too.

All right, well you put the talk points together.

As I said, let me have word of prayer and then you can go and walk us through what we're looking at this week.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for another opportunity to study your word.

Thank you for this beginning of a new study in the book of Joshua and the lessons of faith we can draw from it.

Bless us now as we understand what this lesson involves and how it can be taught and built on effectively every local Sabbath school class.

Okay, so our talking points this week are 3, as you might expect in most cases, right?

I've drawn that primarily from Sunday and Monday.

Point number 2, God's plan that he has requires our effort.

God's plan requires our effort Monday through Wednesday.

So Joshua's not gonna talk about letting go and letting God.

And we're gonna see how biblically that works.

Tug of War number 3, God alone can bring true success.

And that is from Thursday's lesson primarily.

So, and all of this is based on Joshua chapter 1, pretty much.

Seems to be another chronological study of the Old Testament book here.

Okay, well, let's go back to talk point number 1.

So I'm gonna have you start by reading Joshua 1, 1 through 5.

Okay, I should have had that open already, but here we go.

After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying, Moses my servant is dead.

Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, the children of Israel.

Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the great sea, Toward the going down of the Sun shall be your territory No, man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life as I was with Moses So I will be with you.

I will not leave you nor forsake you Okay, so it's interesting to me that you know, we just finished the study of the book of Exodus, but this the Exodus doesn't conclude Until the end of Joshua in other words the Exodus is the experience of them going into Canaan, where they're not in Canaan yet.

Like, this is where they finally come in and they take possession.

I always think of the Hexes as getting out of Egypt, but the goal wasn't just to get out of Egypt, it was to get into Canaan.

And so they're all milling around in the wilderness, okay.

Yeah, so Moses got the Exodus experience, but it's Joshua who goes into Canaan.

His plan was not to leave them in the wilderness.

And we see this delineated here that he is going to give them this land and we'll see more of that as we go.

So 1 of the things the lesson brings out, and in fact it even asks the question, and I found this a little bit curious, on the first question there on Monday's lesson says, why is it significant that the book of Joshua starts by echoing a promise related to what would happen after the death of Moses, and then it refers to Deuteronomy 18 where it says God says, I'll raise up a prophet like you unto your brethren.

And Scholars and commentators across the board have seen that as messianic, as Third Aprophecy puts it.

Well, the lesson alludes to the idea of a almost like a, well, there's the messianic, but there's also the literal and the local, and how that could apply to Joshua.

I didn't see it as much so and so I'm not making a point of that in here and if I were teaching the lesson honestly I probably wouldn't be I might make the point that I am now.

What I did see and I thought was maybe more relevant is that Joshua is obviously taking the baton from Moses.

Moses was not allowed to lead the children of Israel into the land and so God gives that work to Joshua.

What really struck me in that is how God is...

And so a change in leadership does not change the effectiveness of the plan.

And I think that especially now people get really attached to pastors.

02 Surprised by Grace

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is a special Talking Points filmed in front of a live studio audience here at Michigan Conference Camp Meeting.

I wanted to say it's a Halloween Talking Points because we were just having this conversation here which it's it's not it's a high contrast this is the high contrast talking point.

Yeah don't don't this is why we had the comment section off.

But we realize it's going to air in October.

But anyway, we are in a classroom at Great Lakes Adventist Academy and we've got some good friends with us in the room who are here to share this experience with us and...

Yeah, it's not a Halloween Talking Points.

We don't want conspiracy theories starting.

That's all it took to clear up a conspiracy theory.

But anyway, we are still studying now, continuing our study of lessons of faith from Joshua.

Of course Last quarter we were in the book of Exodus.

This time we moved right on to Moses' next up leader, Israel's next leader after Moses, of course, Joshua, and the experiences from that beautiful book.

Right, and as we learned in the last lesson, he's the servant of the Lord, but not until the end of the book.

Moses is the servant of the Lord all the way through.

That's an interesting, yes, we can ask about that in the New Earth.

Well either way, I put their talking points together this week and so we're gonna go through the lesson.

I did lift a little intro from Sabbath afternoon paragraph 4 where it simply says, this week we'll explore 2 of the most fascinating stories of the book of Joshua and discover their relevance to our faith today.

Those stories, of course, are of Rahab and of the encounter with the Gibeonites.

Pastor Howard, could you lead us off with a word of prayer?

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for your Word.

We thank you for the privilege and opportunity we have of studying together and coming together as churches around this world.

We pray for all of our Sabbath school teachers and classes, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would guide them in their understanding and teach them practical lessons, teach us all practical lessons that we can take away that will help us in our walk with you, and to reach others and be ready when Jesus comes.

We ask these things in his name amen amen okay well as is our custom we have 3 talking points this week talking point number 1 God always seeks to save the lost This comes primarily from Sunday and Tuesday but this is clearly a theme that goes through the whole week and I wanted to be clear that as we look at these Old Testament stories the seeking and saving the lost was not a New Testament thing that just Jesus did when his incarnation.

It's the same Jesus with the same objective all the way through scripture.

Talk point number 2 God is merciful beyond what we deserve and all God's people said amen.

Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday this really is the biggest chunk of the lesson is this theme that God is dealing whether it's with the Rahab or the Geminides or even the Israelites beyond what they deserve his mercy extends So that's an important lesson for us today.

And finally, I mean maybe it's the most important talking point of all, that's number 3, that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brethren.

That he identifies with us and we have an Emmanuel God with us.

But all right, let's dive into it Number 1 God always seeks to save the lost Now I put the notes here the experiences of Rahab in the Gibeonites reveal that God's ultimate motive is redemption Now sometimes I think we could look at the Old Testament stories of the conquest of Canaan and the, you know, the deliverance out of Egypt and how he fully decimated the gods and the armies of Egypt to free his people.

Then you get into the Canaanites, he's going to move all the Hibbites and the Jebusites and all the ites out of the way.

And that God basically has 1 people he's picked and all the other ones are bad and they're out, right?

If you recall in our previous study that when God promised long ago to Abraham that he would make of him a great nation, he was going to delay that process for 400 years because, not because his people weren't ready, but because he was giving mercy to other people groups, right?

God didn't just come in and start with plague number 10 and just wipe out all the first 1.

He gave them time and time and time to think through it and to, if at all possible, repent, change their ways.

And we know that a mixed multitude came out with the Israelites when they were delivered.

And here with both Rahab and the Gibeonites, you have peoples who are in the path of God's promised people.

They are inhabitants of the land that God was going to clear out and move from them, both practicing wickedness and yet God doesn't destroy them.

I believe he has something bigger than just moving these people and setting up this 1 people, he has this picture of global redemption.

Well to your point, I mean the plan to Abraham, you know the Jewish nation thought that him becoming a father of a great nation meant just the genealogical family tree, right?

But Paul expounds on the idea in Romans 11, and just briefly in Romans 11, 25, and 26, he says, "'For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in into Israel, and so all Israel shall be saved." Mercy.

So the idea of Abraham being a father of many, many nations is what he would...

That Abraham and his descendants were to share the gospel with these nations around them not be exclusive and of course by the time you come to the time of Christ they had gotten that idea right it's just totally mixed up but yeah the idea that Israel is going to be a promised people was so they're bringing in of others So that there be would would would there would be 1 final Kingdom, which is God's ultimate Kingdom, right?

Would you would have anyone who chose to be part of it?

Beautiful point and it made me think of like as we look at because it's easy to go through Rahab She's a practicing harlot.

She's in condemned Jericho She even practices deception to try to save herself and her friends here.

Same thing with the Gibeonites, they're liars, they're deceptive, and yet God treats them.

And you could think, how could he be so merciful to those people?

In fact, how many times now, just from this point in their history, why were they even roaming around in the wilderness for 40 years?

It's from outright lack of faith and even open rebellion had the golden calf incident you have all the grumbling complaining murmuring against the Hesitation at the borders of Canaan God's like you know what 40 more years you go And so it's not like The Israelites are the good ones and everybody else are the bad ones.

There's a shared fall in humanity here that God is trying to work with globally, not just locally in this 1 group, people group.

So that's an important list we can take away.

And isn't it not possible that we can have that same mindset?

That, oh, those people, the world, I can't believe the kind of things they do.

I've heard that among church members sometimes, and I'm sure I've said it myself.

I can't believe they do that kind of—and then you got to hit the pause button and say, wait a minute, it wasn't long ago that I was right there.

Something that I thought about when we were going through this is in the book Steps to Christ Ellen White makes a statement in the Repentance chapter, this is page 26, that Christ is the source of every right impulse.

She continues to say, every desire for truth and purity, Every conviction of our own sinfulness is an evidence that his spirit is moving upon our hearts.

And then a little further ahead, now listen to this, it says, It is true that men sometimes become ashamed of their sinful ways and give up some of their evil habits before they are conscious they're being drawn to Christ.

But whenever they make an effort to reform from a sincere desire to do right, it is the power of Christ that is drawing them.

There are a lot of people in the world who don't even know the name of Christ aren't practicing religion, but we're told here that if they are sincerely wanting to make a change to become better people, that is an evidence of Christ working in their lives, and we see that in Rahab.

And the offer to salvation is for them too.

That's exactly right, and so despite all of what Rahab had going wrong, there were evidences of things that were going right and when we encounter our fellow human beings we need to have an eye for those things that they're wanting to move in the right direction as looking for those evidences that they are open to Christ leading.

And I'm thinking of Romans chapter 3 to this point too, where he's speaking to Hebrew people, but he says, What then?

For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin as it is written there is none righteous no not 1 so the whole world is under this condemnation but praise God we're all that we're better off it's just that we know the solution exactly right we're supposed to share it and there's the solution what I find fascinating is how did the Lord go about saving the household of Rahab?

If you have time in your Sabbath school classes you can look it up and read through it but I'll just recap the story here.

As she brings in the spies there's this deal struck between them that their household would be saved but it was conditioned upon some sort of evidence of faith.

It's not just like carte blanche, sure whatever.

Well she had to first of all tell other people, bring them in her household and let down a scarlet cord out of the window so that when they're marching around they would see that and recognize the evidence of faith and say, aha, there's a demonstration of faith that we can know is genuine.

And through that, anyone in the house would be safe.

You get the picture, the whole wall and her house is built in the wall.

And as the song go, the walls came tumbling down.

03 Memorials of Grace

We're continuing right through our study of Lessons of Faith from Joshua.

And this week, Pastor Howard, we are in Lesson Number 3, Memorials of Grace.

I'm not exactly— Memorials of Grace, commonly it's a pile of rocks, you know, but there's bigger lessons drawn.

We're talking about the memorial stones that were set up after the crossing of the Jordan.

So we're looking at that crossing of the Jordan experience and the significance of setting up the memorial stones as the, yeah, the importance of remembering things.

And again, obviously not just a history lesson, but it's applicable to us today, obviously.

Well, you put the talking points together this week, so let me have a word of prayer as we get started, and I'll pass it back to you.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the stories of the Bible.

Thank you for the experience of faith that we can learn from the ancient Israelites under the leadership of Joshua and the Lord.

And Lord, help us to remember that we're still being led by you today and help us to remember those important lessons as we look to have more faith in you as we, by your grace, see you come soon.

Well, as you might expect, we have 3 talking points going on from this week's lesson.

The first talking point is, man's necessity is God's opportunity.

And that is drawn from Sunday and Monday primarily.

And it's a direct quote from the Spirit of Prophecy.

Okay, talking point number 2, Jesus succeeded where Israel failed.

That is drawn primarily from Thursday's lesson.

And then finally, talking point number 3, we must fear to forget.

And that is the bulk of the lesson Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday's lesson.

Well, let's go back to that talking point number 1.

Well, the lesson goes into the preparation that God requires of the people prior to the crossing of the Jordan.

So what we're going to do is we're going to read Joshua 3, 1 through 5, I think.

Then Joshua rose early in the morning, and they set out from Acacia Grove and came to the Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they crossed over.

So it was after 3 days that the officers went through the camp, Starting with the verse 1, when you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God and the priests the Levites bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it.

Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about 2, 000 cubits by measure.

Do not come near it, that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before." Okay, so so far we're just basically getting some instruction.

You're gonna go, you're gonna follow the ark, you're not gonna come.

In this case, it's interesting, the reason given for not coming near it is not because of its sacredness or whatever.

You need to be at a distance so you can see where it's going because you've not yeah you don't want to get caught up in the crowd we need a clear leader right and and then you get into a couple points of preparation where the lesson starts to 0 in all right 5 and 6 says and Joshua said to the people sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you." Then Joshua spoke to the priests saying, take up the ark of the covenant and cross over before the people.

So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.

Okay, so interestingly, of course, the Lord is going to lead them across the Jordan.

It's interesting in verse 5 that he says, and we're going to break down these things, the lesson breaks them down, sanctify yourselves for, and another word for that is because, tomorrow the Lord is going to work wonders for you or do wonders among you.

So in order for the Lord to do wonders among you, you've got to start out by sanctifying yourself.

And the lesson goes into this idea of this prescribed preparation, if you will.

And when we look at that, sanctify yourself, the English Standard Version says consecrate yourself, at least for me, I think back to Sinai.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to flip, but you can go ahead.

But that's the story that obviously jumps in your mind, probably everybody else's, but just before they get to the 10 Commandments from God, he says, well, wait, and he sets up...

It says here, then the Lord said to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow and let them wash their clothes and let them be ready for the third day.

For on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai and the sight of the people." And he goes on to talk about how they make those preparations.

And these are always interesting passages in light of especially modern Christianity, it's a conundrum for some people because it's like, wait a minute, like we rightfully say we can't do anything to earn our salvation away.

An argument today in any other context besides God saying it?

Can you imagine a pastor getting up to the congregation saying, now you need to sanctify yourselves, you're gonna meet with the Lord.

So, yet here's God, through Joshua, saying, both...

Well, through Moses in Exodus 19, and then Joshua here, you need to sanctify yourself so the Lord can work for you.

Yeah, obviously in the modern interpretation, sanctify, like that's only the work that God can do, so you can't do any.

So even putting any effort into that process is seen as heretical oftentimes.

Like what is your effort doing And are you saying you're causing your salvation?

I've always loved the distinction between cause and condition.

Like, it's not because if you get clean enough, then the waters will part through your good works.

Obviously, no matter what consecration you do, it's never going to make the miracle happen.

But there is a condition that God puts on it.

If I'm going to work for you, you need to demonstrate faith in me.

That it's not Israel's causing the miracle, but they are complying with the conditions that the Lord put forth.

That's what we want to get into a little bit, and the lesson gets into a little bit, but it's, we just came through the quarter on Exodus, and we had highlighted that when we went through that Exodus 19, like the Lord basically says, sanctify yourself today and tomorrow on the third day, like how dirty are you when you're like take a bath today, no, you need to take baths for 3 days and then don't come near the mountain you're gonna be pierced through.

Like to me when I read that, the Lord is saying I want you to do all you can to sanctify yourself, that conveys to you the mindset that I am of a different level than you in holiness.

And yet all your 3 days of sanctifying isn't gonna make you any more fit to come near to it.

At least for me, when I read that, it's like, there are things that make it clear that you're never going to clean yourself enough.

And the lesson, my summary of it, is that God prescribed these preparations to remind His people of their absolute need of Him.

That they needed to see a difference, they needed to realize that they weren't going to do it just on their own.

That the sanctifying was making sure That they were again the new the ESV says to consecrate that they were fully committed to the Lord Not trusting in themselves so that God could work for them.

04 The Conflict Behind All Conflicts

I'm Cameron DeBasia and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

Continuing our study on the book of Joshua titled Lessons of Faith from Joshua.

Again, not Joshua, just the man himself, but the book of Joshua, which of course includes him.

But it's really about Israel and their faith or sometimes lack of faith in God and his leading in their inhabitation of the promised land and a lot of exciting things.

This week this is lesson 4 titled the conflict behind all conflicts.

Well we've seen a little insight on that that the fact that it's not a strict walk-through chronology because we'd noticed a missing story in this week's and then said, oh, they picked up later.

This is an example of 1 of those more thematic approaches even though it's generally chronological.

But I actually put the talk voice together for this week's study and we do have 3 as is our custom.

So before we dive into those, why don't you give us a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we're thankful for your Word.

We're thankful for the book of Joshua and the experience of the amazing experiences Leading your people into the promised land and the parallels that we can find and draw from that today We pray the Spirit of God would guide us In our presentation here and in our Sabbath schools Lord across this world as we're studying this lesson may we be strengthened and benefit from it, and may our confidence in you as our leader grow through all this experience we ask in Jesus' name.

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Talking Points 4th Quarter 2025: Lessons of Faith from Joshua

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Sabbath School 4th Quarter 2025: Lessons of Faith from Joshua