Joshua 8

There are two takeaways here.

The first one is that for us here in the peaceful modern world it is somewhat difficult for us to read about what is happening here. Joshua is just going through and taking out cities of people and it's all within the will of God, but we have some sort of compassion (at least I hope you do) for those who died in the cities. This compassion is a good thing, but it is a convenient and somewhat useless compassion because there we are so far removed from it. I want us to redirect this compassion that we might have for these people who were devoted to destruction in the city of Ai 3000 years ago to those who are living without the Gospel walking around our communities today. We have an opportunity to reach them and change their fate today. If there is a place for useful compassion that is the place.

The second takeaway is that Joshua renews his covenant to the Lord. Throughout the book of Joshua, he often is renewing his covenant with the lord. He has already done basically the same thing here as he did after they passed though the river Jordan and I think it is something that we can use in our lives as well. As we go through life, we ought to have times of reorientation or else we might end up in a completely different place than we had sought out to be. Therefore, we want to ask the students to take an evaluation of not just who and where they are but more importantly who God is and how has he been loving, kind, and faithful to them.