Week Six - Day One: Pause

Good morning and welcome to week six!

If repeated action helps build a habit and habits help build character, then we are on our way toward building our character through these exercises. If you have been able to establish some kind of consistency through these weeks then hopefully you are beginning to feel the rhythm of the Daily Offices and hopefully you are beginning to feel some of the benefits of that rhythm. If you have not been able to be consistent, resist the tendency to feel guilty. You certainly don’t need something else to feel guilty about. And I doubt seriously that God is behind that guilt. Just ask God to help you over the next month as we continue our efforts to “have balanced, nourishing, daily spiritual meals.”

Let’s start this week with some inspiration. Let’s look at how this kind of exercise can be beneficial to us. Let’s look at the first chapter of Joshua. After the text, I’m going to give some notes and then I’ll offer some questions to guide us through a time of reflection on the passage.

Joshua 1:1-9

(1) After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' aide: (2) "Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. (3) I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. (4) Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Great Sea on the west. (5) No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.

(6) "Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. (7) Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. (8) Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (9) Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."

Here are some background notes:

This encounter with God takes place after the death of Moses so the leadership of the “nation” has been transferred to Joshua. I put nation in quotation marks because at this point these people are really a very large bedouin movement. They are connected to one another through common history and language and through the shared experience of hardship. They have spent a generation traveling the desert of the southern Ancient Near East. While they have already experienced warfare and have been very successful, there is nothing like the kind of organization that the word “nation”, if properly used, would suggest.

At the point of this writing they are about to cross the Jordan River into the established, occupied lands of Ancient Palestine, often called Canaan. They are going to move against these established territories militarily. This land was a fertile land populated by various people groups all of whom were more technologically advanced than the bedouin sons of Abraham.

When the phrase “Book of the Law” is used here, it is referring to the first five books of the Old Testament. These are the first sacred writings among the sons of Abraham. They may not have been completely compiled – at least not in the form that we have them today – by the time of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, but clearly most of the material would have been available to them in shorter, unedited, uncompiled forms.

Interestingly, when Joshua is encouraged not to let this book “depart from your mouth” that was probably taken by him quite literally. In the ancient world, it is believed that reading silently was very uncommon. So when the Moses accounts were read or quoted, they would have been read or quoted out loud.

Before You Start Your Day

1. Before you start your day, let’s spend some time unpacking this passage, looking for what God might want to say to us.
   1. Joshua has spent his lifetime serving under Moses’ leadership. How do you think it felt for Joshua to experience God communicating to him in this way?
   2. These people had heard about the land that was promised to them for generations. Think about the various ways that this promise might have been viewed: exciting future, fairy tale, figurative, pipe dream, unrealistic, cause of frustration, cause for hope...
   3. So put yourself in Joshua’s place. What might he have been feeling?
   4. In verse 6, God tells Joshua he “will lead these people to inherit the land.” What is this declaration based on? Why should Joshua believe it?
   5. How is he instructed to handle the Book of the Law?
   6. What will be the result of keeping the Book constantly in front of him?
   7. Haven’t you always heard that God’s love is unconditional? How do you reconcile unconditionality with what seems like a condition placed on being successful here?
2. “Meditate on it day and night” is a consistent refrain heard throughout the Bible and subsequent devotional writing. This is the premise behind our Daily Office Project. Many, many authors (some of whom will be quoted in subsequent weeks) have said this has been the key to their sense of life in God and their spiritual success – as well as success in other arenas of life. Why do you suppose this is so?
3. Pause for a few minutes over this lesson. Ask God what He might be saying to you through this.