Discipleship According to Joshua

Sam Hamstra | Apr 21, 2010

A bunch of books have been written and sermons preached about discipleship, but Joshua offers a description that may be as good as any other. One day he called out the Reubenites, the Gadites, and but half of the tribe of Manasseh. Once assembled, he encouraged them to follow the Lord with these words: "Love the Lord your God, walk in all his ways, obey his commands, hold fast to him, and serve him with all your heart and all your soul" (Joshua 22:5). 

Seems like the kind of admonition one might expect from a general who had led God's people to military victory and the eventual conquest of the promised land. No mention of the spiritual disciples of solitude, meditation, prayer, fasting, and the like. Of course, we should not argue from silence that they are unimportant, but their absence surely highlights the thrust of Joshua's message. For him, like the Apostle James centuries later, one's status as a child of God shapes that person's life. Faith, in other words, results in actions like obedience to God's will and service in His name. Joshua wouldn't even allow the possibility for a person to claim to be a child of God without such works. 

Nor should we. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith, but the faith that saves works. It loves, walks, obeys, holds fast, and serves.  However, we do have something the Reubenites and the gang didn't have: the Holy Spirit!  Those folk eventually fell away from the Lord, and so would we except for the Holy Spirit.  So, it is by grace through faith we are saved and by grace through faith we are sustained!

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