This weekend I had the privilege of speaking about Joshua [mp3 here]. So much about his life points at Jesus that its amazing. The big theme of Joshua's life [and the biblical book] is found in verse 1.6 - the word inherit. Joshua was called by God to lead the Israelite nation to inherit the promised land. The theme obviously points to Christ and our inheritance of son-ship and Heaven through Him.
To start the series we covered Abraham. God promised that through Abraham he would create a people that belonged to Him. This is the first time in scripture where we see that God will have a people that are set apart for / by Him. The story prepares us to understand that we can be his people.
We continued the series with Joseph where we learn of God's plan. Joseph's life had absurd ups and downs in it. I believe that his story mirrors history and the ups and downs of God's people on their journey to the fulfillment of God's plan of salvation. The key to the story is the fact that despite how cocky and self righteous Joseph is at the beginning and despite his being placed in slavery, jail, etc - God still used Joesph to lead the people of Israel to be in Egypt - the place where they were incubated and protected as they developed into a nation. In history, despite the absurd ups and downs of the Israelite people, God still used them [despite them!] to prepare the way for Jesus.
The third story was Moses of course, who through the Exodus taught us about Freedom, and through the commandments given by God taught about Sin. We understand those two concepts first through Moses life.
The promise of a people, the fulfillment of the plan, and the concept of freedom all come to fruition in the story of Joshua who led the people into the promised land. I had a great time telling the story on Sunday.
[Thanks to YouthSpecialties for the images from their 2007 National Youth Workers Convention which we've used for the backgrounds for the series. Thanks as well to Mark Pearce to created our series intro video.]
