Friday: Further Thought – The True Joshua
Daily Lesson for Friday 5th of December 2025
Further Thought:
“Christ’s mission was not understood by the people of His time.
Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com
. . . The traditions, maxims, and enactments of men hid from them the lessons which God intended to convey. These maxims and traditions became an obstacle to their understanding and practice of true religion. And when the Reality came, in the person of Christ, they did not recognize in Him the fulfillment of all their types, the substance of all their shadows. They rejected the antitype, and clung to their types and useless ceremonies. The Son of God had come, but they continued to ask for a sign. The message, ‘Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ they answered by demands for a miracle. . . . The gospel of Christ was a stumbling block to them because they demanded signs instead of a Saviour. They expected the Messiah to prove His claims by mighty deeds of conquest, to establish His empire on the ruins of earthly kingdoms. This expectation Christ answered in the parable of the sower. Not by force of arms, not by violent interpositions, was the kingdom of God to prevail, but by the implanting of a new principle in the hearts of men.”—Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, Pages 34, 35.
“The church needs faithful Calebs and Joshuas, who are ready to accept eternal life on God’s simple condition of obedience. Our churches are suffering for laborers. The world is our field. Missionaries are wanted in cities and villages that are more certainly bound by idolatry than are the pagans of the East, who have never seen the light of truth. The true missionary spirit has deserted the churches that make so exalted a profession; their hearts are no longer aglow with love for souls and a desire to lead them into the fold of Christ. We want earnest workers. Are there none to respond to the cry that goes up from every quarter: ‘Come over . . . and help us’?”—Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 156.
Discussion Questions
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A statement, widely attributed to both Thomas Edison and George Bernard Shaw goes like this:
I’m using this as a preface to the quote from Ellen White used in today’s lesson.
Are we any better than the Jews in Christ’s time? How much do we think about our spiritual experience? How many of us think we are safely saved if we follow all the Seventh-day Adventist lifestyle practices, pay tithe, open Sabbath before sunset of Friday, can quote the right bits about the Godhead and so on – you know the drill. If Jesus turned up today and said, “Follow me!” would we want a supernatural sign?
Seventh-day Adventism began with Christians who thought about what they believed. Ok, they weren’t perfect but they grew their religion. Many of us today are just here because we feel comfortable, and in the words of the quote above, we are in the 95%. Crowd religion does not save.
The thing about the founders of our church is that when they got it wrong (Great Disappointment), they dug deeper. They kept searching. They grew in their understanding of scripture. If we don’t do the same, we won’t be any different than the leaders and people in Jesus day. We will be learning throughout eternity. For us to settle in and think we have got it figured out, is a dangerous way to think.
In our journey of faith, God has never promised that the path would be easy. Like Joshua and Caleb, each of us has mountains to climb, obstacles to overcome, and dreams to realize. Life’s terrain can be rough and unpredictable, yet we are assured that God is with us in every step of the way. No matter how difficult the circumstances, His strength is guaranteed. “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me” (Psalm 28:7).
At times, we may feel inadequate or overwhelmed by the challenges before which is natural. What matters is having the same faith Joshua and Caleb had, the confidence that whatever God promises, He will accomplish. What He desires to do through us and in us, He will empower us to fulfill. His grace is sufficient and His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). God does not abandon His children on the way but is goes with them through the while journey. When everything seems to be going wrong, odds are against us, that is when He stands closest. “Be strong and courageous… for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6).
God has proven His faithfulness throughout history. Just as He parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21–22), brought down the walls of Jericho without a battle (Joshua 6:20), and gave victory at Ai (Joshua 8:1–7), He will continue to strengthen and uphold us today. When difficult times become real, God becomes even more Real. His power will carry us until every promise is fulfilled and we reach our heavenly Canaan.
The world is missing faithful missionaries because people do not want to compromise fully. Am I holding on to something that is blocking me from fully understanding God’s mission for my life? Is what I do enough, and do I not need to get better? Can I be obedient to some of Christ’s principles, not all of them? Even though by ourselves we will never earn salvation, let us give thanks to the Lord, for salvation is possible through Him (only)!
May God give us the strength and the courage to live for Him daily, as did faithful Joshua back in the day!!!
The lesson reminds us that when the Antitype (Christ) came, many clung to the types and missed the Reality standing before them. That danger still exists for us today. As Seventh-day Adventists, we rightly cherish prophecy, doctrine, and spiritual symbols—but we must be careful not to focus so much on the forms of truth that we miss the fulfillment of truth in a living, transforming relationship with Jesus. It is possible to defend the types and still overlook the Antitype if Christ is not daily reigning in the heart.
I agree with today’s lessons. In the biblical sense, I think typology helps to understand how God prefigures His intentions through the prophets in the Old Testament before sending Jesus Christ to fulfill the words of the prophets. God, who orchestrated Jesus Christ’s ministry, declared His intentions to Abraham when He asked him to offer Isaac for sacrifice, knowing that He might someday offer His only begotten son for sacrifice. Because Abraham had the faith to offer Isaac for sacrifice, he passed the test he needed to prove to God that he was obedient, and in return, God delivered a lamb to replace Isaac (Genesis 22). The lamb of God, which I understand to be Jesus Christ, is the lamb Abraham sacrificed to God to redeem Isaac from innocent death.
My understanding of Jesus Christ’s ministry dates back to Abraham, whom God chose to groom a nation to establish His kingdom, and out of that nation, He provided Jesus Christ, who is the lamb Abraham sacrificed to God. John called Jesus Christ the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). God provided a lamb for sacrifice to bless Abraham’s seed and provided Jesus Christ to set up a ministry based on His commandment that whosoever may believe in Him may not perish but have everlasting life.
Obedience without explicit trust will weaken or even fail when confronted by adverse circumstances. Absolute trust in God’s loving Righteousness must come before obedience, then, when engaging both, they build on each other, forming a powerful relationship with our heavenly Father, our Savior Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
I see Caleb and Joshua to have quickly believed whole heartedly in the new God Moses introduced to them; from then on, they were called to lead. As their trust grew – one encounter at a time, toward the end of their sojourn in the wilderness it had grown into a deeply felt conviction making them God’s most valuable tools for promoting Him to all their fellow tribes in the new land.
Being obedient without trusting God first will not serve anyone in accomplishing the tasks which promote God seeking to establish His relationship with mankind. Ellen G. White calls for ‘earnest workers’ having the true missionary spirit. If it is missing in the organized church, one would want to look to the individual believer’s relationship with God first.
All believers have been called to ‘bloom where they are planted’, and some are called to leave home and start God’s Gardens somewhere else. It is so very important to examine our relationship with God to find out if it is truly based on unconditional trust; only then will we be enabled to hear His voice clearly – Prov.3:5-7; Psalm 37:23-24.
Well, as you might guess, I’m glad this week’s lesson is over! I could be wrong about the type/antitype focus, but I still have a lot of questions and I have not been convinced about some of the points.
I do want to make one final comment about question #4 in today’s lesson and the statement that Joshua reflected the character of God to the extent that he foreshadowed the ministry of Christ. It makes it sound like God created Joshua to be a certain way so he could foreshadow Jesus. In every other way, he didn’t reflect Christ’s character.
Now maybe I’m misunderstanding what the statement is trying to say, but I think it’s actually the opposite. Joshua lived a life in harmony with God. He had a relationship with Him and trusted Him, not perfectly, but he had a mature faith which is really what perfection is all about. As he reflected God’s character he could be used by God and so was a sort of type of Christ. The other perspective makes it seem like Joshua was a puppet, going through the motions because God needed a person to be a type of Jesus. And that I am not comfortable with. I also think that there are probably elements of Joshua’s life that have nothing to do with being a type of Christ (as much as we try to make them fit) but they still reflect the character of Christ. Jesus’ character was not just about mission and salvation and so on, as important as it was. In his 27 or so years of ordinary life He reflected love and truth. The same is true of Joshua’s life, at least generally, recognizing he was not perfect as Jesus was.
And that’s all I will say about that. Looking forward to studying new things next week!
I agree with you Christina. We should not forget that the type/antitype thing is an “a posterori” (done after the event) analysis. We find out about types and antitypes in the New Testament. Another way of saying it is that we are informed about these things “in the light of the cross”. There is nothing wrong with that. Jesus himself applied Old Testament prophecies to himself. I don’t think that at the time these prophecies were written anyone would have considered them to be prophetic in that way.
As I implied earlier, we can look back and see God’s footprints in the sands of human interactions – evidence that he is there.