Sabbath: Recipe for Success
Daily Lesson for Sabbath 27th of September 2025
Image © Pacific Press
Read for This Week’s Study Deuteronomy 18:15-22; Joshua 1:1-18; Hebrews 6:17-18; Ephesians 6:10-18; Psalms 1:1-3; Romans 3:31.
Memory Text: “ ‘Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go’ ” (Joshua 1:7, NKJV).
Benjamin Zander, musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, taught a music interpretation class. He observed the students’ anxiety as they faced the evaluation of their performance. In order to put the students at ease and to open them up to their full potential, he announced on the first day of the class that everybody would get an “A.” This “A” was not an expectation to live up to “but a possibility to live into.” The only requirement was for the students to write a letter within the first two weeks of the semester but dated at the end of the class. The letter explained why they deserved the high grade.
The book of Joshua is about new possibilities. Moses, who had dominated 40 years of Israel’s history, belonged in the past. The Exodus from Egypt and the wanderings in the wilderness, tragically marked by rebellion and stubbornness, had ended. A new generation, willing to obey God, was ready to enter the Promised Land, not as an expectation to live up to but as a possibility to live into.
Let’s study the way God opened up a new chapter in Israel’s life and how He can do the same in ours, as well.
*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, October 4.
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I have told this story before but I think it fits the lesson today. When I came to Avondale College (now Avondale University) as a student in 1963, I was young, and immature. I had left my home country, New Zealand, to come to Australia and study for a Bachelor of Science from London University at Avondale. I thought I knew it all. I had done well in my high school studies in New Zealand and thought this BSc was going to be a pushover. It wasn’t! And to rub salt into the wound, I failed to pass the entrance examination into London University twice. I sat the examinations a third time and then went back home to New Zealand to await the results (No electronic communication in those days) and worked in a concrete pipe factory for the best part of a year.
That time out was my “40 years in the wilderness”. Working in a pipe factory as a “stripper” eleven hours a day gave me plenty of time to think and reminded me of where I should be and what I should be doing. I went back to Australia and Avondale, much wiser and more mature, and I have never failed an examination since.
The Children of Israel came up short on the borders of Canaan and had failed. Forty years later, they were ready to follow the leading of God. It had taken a whole generation to get their act together.
[I have to explain that my job as a stripper was to strip concrete pipes from their molds. I admit that is does raise eyebrows a bit when I write my employment CV.]