Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - National Quitter's Day | Historical Books | Joshua 8:30-35

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

What do you do when you've blown it? Have you quit on your commitment to God? How does God respond to your unfaithfulness? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Joshua 8:30-35 reminds us that God never quits on us. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Joshua 8:30-35

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. If you made resolutions for this new year, I hope you're hanging in there and crushing it with your fresh goals. You're probably exercising more, drinking less, and getting to bed just a tad bit earlier. You're wild for that. But if you're in the majority, your resolutions have likely disappeared, evaporated, evaporated, in a thin air. I don't know how or why it happened, but my personal goal of consuming less

coffee this year has already been exposed as a failure. Maybe next time. Several years ago, Strava, the social networking platform for athletes, they conducted some research to find that by the second Friday in January, around 80% of New Year's resolutions are broken. 80% by the second Friday in January, Strava's observation, became so widespread and noticeable that the second Friday in January is now known as Quidders' Day. So if you're in that 80% of people who didn't make it through last Friday, take heart and know that you're not alone. If you're somehow still in that 20% of people who made it through January 10th last week, keep going. The 80% is cheering you on from the sidelines. The phenomenon surrounding Quitters Day

reminds all of us of the frailty of our plans, the fragility of our commitments. And it begs the question, what do you do when you blow it? When you quit on your commitments, what happens next? That question is especially prominent in the life of faith. What happens when we blow it in our relationship with God? What happens when we quit on our commitment to him? These are the kinds of questions that are addressed at the end of Joshua chapter 8, where God's people are reminded of the important theme of commitment and their relationship with Him. Now, as we get ready to approach God's word together, let's pause and ask for His grace, for His love, for His presence to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath in this new day, and thank you

for the gift of your word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety, our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies. God, would you meet us in this space? Jesus help us abide in you, to remain in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in our lives, to move in and through this time in the book of Joshua. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us as we see your commitment to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, let's set up the end of Joshua 8 with a little bit of context. In chapter 7 of Joshua, Israel was defeated by AI because of their careless disobedience to God, their version of quitting on their commitment to their covenant king. In the first half of Joshua 8, Israel turns from their disobedience and follows the

commands of God, leading to their victory against AI by God's grace. And then here at the end of Joshua 8, the dust has settled from that battle as the covenant between God and his people is renewed. We're reading a covenant renewal ceremony. Now, before we keep going, just a quick note on that word covenant. What exactly is a covenant? It'll be important to have clarity on this moving forward because the idea of a covenant is a concept that will keep coming up over and over again in the historical books. What exactly is a covenant? One of my seminary professors, summarize the biblical concept of a covenant in this way. God's covenant with his people is more intimate, more relational than a contract, yet also more powerful, more serious than any average human

relationship. It's a special relationship where there's a mixture of intimacy and power. Thanks for that, Dr. Scalar. The closest human analog we have to this kind of relationship is the covenant of marriage, which, according to Ephesians 5, is meant to be a living picture of the special covenant relationship that God has with his people through Jesus. There's a unique intimacy and power at play in God's relationship with His people. And it's that relationship that they broke back in Joshua 8, as they had over and over again before that. God's people are serial commitment quitters. What about you and your relationship with God? Other ways that you experience that same pattern as the Israelites?

Maybe it's with an obvious public sin that has significantly changed the course of your life. Or it could be a more hidden secret form of quitting on your commitment to God and to other people. Or maybe for you, it's even in the seemingly innocuous kind of quitting that doesn't feel like explicit overt sin, but is still a slow drift away from. God, with your desires, with your disciplines. Maybe for you, you're living in all of those scenarios right now. Maybe even within the span of these early days of the New Year, you're experiencing all of those things. But here's the deal. Unlike the quitter's day statistics calculated by Strava, there is no 20% of human beings who have somehow kept their commitment to God perfectly. sin has corrupted all of us, causing us to quit on the one who made us, on the one who staves us.

We shouldn't look down on the Israelites here in Joshua. We shouldn't look down on them with elitist hubris. We should relate to them and to one another with empathetic humility. Because of sin, all of us have broken that intimate, powerful relationship that we have with our creator king. But of course, that broken relationship, that's not how this portion of Joshua ends. After the covenant failure of the Israelites in Joshua 7, we see a sense of renewal here at the end of chapter 8 in this covenant renewal ceremony. So if you read these verses, you see how Joshua builds an altar to God. He offers burnt and peace offerings to God and writes

a copy of the law of Moses on stones and then reads it aloud for all the people to hear, all in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant, that physical picture of God's presence with his people, Now, we could read about this and maybe be tempted to gloss over it, but to really appreciate the events of this scene here at the end of Joshua 8, we need to see how this historical event points back to two distinct moments in Israel's past. The first moment we need to look back on goes back to chapters 11 and chapters 27 in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses commands this very ceremony, the one that's taking place in Joshua 8, Moses commands for it to take place. So when you read those chapters in Deuteronomy,

chapters 11 and chapters 27, when you read them alongside Joshua 8, you realize that Joshua is carrying out everything that he was told by Moses. It's like God knew that his people were going to struggle with keeping their commitment to him when they got to the promised land. So through Moses, he set up a way for them to renew and remember who they are and, more important, importantly, who he is. In doing so, God makes it possible for the story to keep going, for his people to keep going, even after they blow it. But what's the basis for that story to keep going, for the people to keep going? Well, that foundation is found in the other historical connection we need to see in this renewal ceremony, a connection that reaches back long before the days of Moses. For that connection,

we need to notice where this covenant renewal ceremony takes place. At the end of Joshua 8, the people of God are at Mount Ebel and Mount Garazim, near a city called Shechem. That location of Shechem is important because it takes us back to the origin story of Israel and Genesis 12. So after being called to leave his home and after receiving God's promises to become a great nation and be a blessing to the nations. Abraham builds an altar to God in a very particular place. He builds that altar at Shechem,

the place where the renewal ceremony is taking place. So for the people of God in Joshua 8, that location of Shechem, it's like a geographical hyperlink back to Abraham, back to their father, reminding them that his covenant relationship with God wasn't based on his commitment to God, but on God's commitment to Him.

It's reminding these Israelites that their covenant relationship with God isn't based on how well they can stay committed to God. It's based on his commitment to them. He is the one who's called them into existence. He is the one who will work through them. That's the answer to the big question that we started with. What do you do when you blow it?

When you quit on your commitment to God, what happens next? Well, according to this passage in Joshua, when you quit on your commitment to God, you double down on his commitment to you. The end of Joshua 8 is like the antithesis of quitters day. It's like a recommitment day. It's God's way of saying, here's how I respond to the quitters, to the people who break the relationship with me. I remain steadfast. I remain with them because I love them. This emphasis on God's commitment to his people, it matters a lot for that original audience of Joshua, because this pattern

will continue throughout the rest of the historical books. It's like there's a quitter's day moment on every other page of these books in the Bible. They are repeatedly unfaithful to him. But the emphatic highlight here and through all of those moments is the hope that they have, that we have in the living God, the Creator King, who's committed to us with more intimacy and more power than we could possibly imagine. And in that way, the events of Joshua 8 point us to another sacrifice that displays God's commitment to his people, to the sacrifice of Jesus on a Roman cross, where his intimate, powerful love is shown in its fullness. Joshua 8 is yet another road sign directing our eyes Jesus, who is perfectly committed, perfectly committed to the point of death. Because of him,

no matter how much of a quitter you feel like you are with God, God is not going to quit on you. He's committed to his people, to his promises, to his purposes of making all things new in Jesus. So wherever you are here at the early days of the new year, no matter how you've blown it, or how you will blow it moving forward. Know that the God who made you, who called you, is committed to you and Jesus. He will not quit on you because he loves you. God, as we honestly acknowledge our failure

and our inconsistency with you, help us recommit to you, recommit to your commitment to us. Thank you for not giving up on us. We love you and we need your love to renew us. In Jesus' name, amen.