ESV Chronological Plan, Day 80 | Joshua 22-24, Judges 2

LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Read Joshua 22:1-24:33 and Judges 2:6-10

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

(A) Collective responsibility in Joshua 22:17-20. In these verses, the people of Israel are concerned that the whole community will be held responsible for the potentially idolatrous actions of a small group within it. So they gather together, knowing that they might have to battle with some of their own countrymen who appear to be violating the terms of the covenant. This same ethic is probably what kept the people of Israel (mostly) faithful all the days of Joshua and of the elders who served with him: we need accountability in the community for every member; things go downhill quickly when a community does not hold its members accountable. Too often we are willing to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to things that, ignored in one generation, result in the breakdown of the community itself in the next. We need what Israel has here: more of an ethic that says we are all responsible to everyone else to make sure that our whole community reaches the goal laid out before us. We are each accountable, and must be willing to be held accountable, to the principles that our community (in the Lord) is founded upon.

(B) Unity around worship of the Lord in Joshua 22:21-34. This section also lays out the kind of unity that we are to build upon. This is a unity around the worship of the Lord. Not around anything else. Not on family ties or how long the various members of the different tribes have known each other. But the unity that counts is unity around the Lord.

(C) Passing on the torch in Joshua 23. (And a lesson about future generations wandering in Judges 2.) Joshua said his last words here, in chapter 23 of the book, knowing that he would die, and that another generation would take his place. He knew that he was fighting for and building up something that someone else was going to enjoy. And he did a good job: Israel served the Lord not only during all of his days, but also during the days of all of the elders who outlived Joshua as well (somewhere around 40 years afterwards--the equivalent of a good leader dying in 1984 and the benefits of his contribution holding the community up all the way up to today). But, Judges 2 tells us, the generation that came after that did not know the Lord. This is a common story. The book Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace, written in the late 1970s, predicted in the wake of the Jesus Revolution in the 1970s that while the current generation would "catch" the Gospel, the next would "assume" the gospel and fall into cheap grace on one end, and legalism and moralism on the other. That would be followed by another generation which would look at the shallow "assumed" Gospel they were raised in, find it uncompelling, and then would "abandon" the Gospel. And that's pretty much what happened. Not unlike the Israelites, we also need a fresh awakening in every generation, because we too are prone to wander away into distortions of the Gospel. We need to be caught by the message of who Jesus is and what he has done all over again.

RESPOND | WHAT IS OUR PART?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? In our actions we can apply this reading in our willingness to be held accountable, as well as to speak ourselves with some gentle but possibly uncomfortable words of correction to other brothers and sisters in Christ when it is needed. We can also promote unity in the Lord (provided that unity is based on following the Lord), overcoming petty differences because what keeps us together is bigger than anything that would pull us apart. And we can work hard to lay a good foundation for those who will come after us, while at the same time not assuming that they need any less winning to Christ than we did. We can also pray for them to encounter Christ anew as we once did (and hope to again).

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS LEAD US TO CONNECT WITH GOD?

Here is a suggested prayer prompt: "God, show yourself through your people. Help us to be a witness to the transforming power of the Gospel. Knock us off our feet, cause us to get out of our man-made sense of comfort, and pull us into a fresh, wild, fulfilling encounter with what you want to do in our own day. Help us to see and confront anything that is holding us back from seeing you do the amazing things today that we used to see you do. And raise up today a generation who has a fresh knowledge and hunger for the things of God. Help us to come alongside them, equip them, encourage them, pray for them, and release them."