# St. John's United Church of Christ — October 18, 2026 **Theme:** Joshua Renews the Covenant **Preacher:** Rev. Caroline E. Saxton **Bulletin cover:** Edd Scheer — a crayon-and-colored-pencil drawing of people gathered in a ring of swirling yellow light; a figure with a long braid reaches out an open hand toward the glowing center. ## Liturgical Context ### Christian Liturgical Calendar - **Season:** Season after Pentecost (Ordinary Time) - **Sunday:** Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost — Proper 24 (29) - **RCL Year:** A (Matthew), running Advent 2025 through Reign of Christ 2026 - **Color:** Green - **Feast day:** St. Luke the Evangelist (October 18) — author of Luke–Acts; some traditions vest in red for the feast. St. John's keeps the Sunday green. - **Local observance:** Pastor Appreciation Day at St. John's (October is Clergy Appreciation Month) - **Narrative Lectionary:** Year 1 (Matthew), NL106 — *Joshua Renews the Covenant*. Final Sunday of the fall "covenant and commandments" run (NL105 Covenant and Commandments, Oct 11 → NL106, Oct 18). Next week: NL107, David and Nathan (2 Samuel 11–12; Psalm 51). ### Jewish Calendar - **Hebrew date:** 7 Cheshvan 5787 - **Shabbat just past (Oct 17, 6 Cheshvan):** Parashat Noach — [[Genesis 6#9]] through [[Genesis 11#32]] - **Next Shabbat (Oct 24, 13 Cheshvan):** Parashat Lech-Lecha — the call of Abram, who first built an altar at Shechem ([[Genesis 12#6]], [[Genesis 12#7]]), the same place Joshua gathers the tribes today - **7 Cheshvan:** In the Land of Israel, the prayer for rain (*v'ten tal u'matar*) begins in the weekday Amidah on this date - **Holidays:** None — Cheshvan has no biblical or major rabbinic festivals; the fall holiday cycle closed with Simchat Torah on Oct 4 ### Ecumenical & Global Observances - **World Food Day** (Oct 16) and **International Day for the Eradication of Poverty** (Oct 17) — both frame today's CROP Hunger Walk - **CROP Hunger Walk** — Church World Service, today at Falling Spring Presbyterian Church - **Clergy Appreciation Month** (October) ### Lectionary Readings (Revised Common Lectionary) #### Proper 24, Year A — Semicontinuous track - Exodus 33:12-23 - Psalm 99 - 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 - Matthew 22:15-22 #### Proper 24, Year A — Complementary track - Isaiah 45:1-7 - Psalm 96:1-9 [10-13] - 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 - Matthew 22:15-22 #### RCL note The RCL reaches Joshua 24 (vv. 1-3a, 14-25) three weeks from now, on Proper 27 (Nov 8, 2026). Today St. John's follows the Narrative Lectionary instead. ### Narrative Lectionary Readings (Year 1 – Matthew) - **Preaching text:** Joshua 24:1-15 [16-26] — St. John's reads the full 1-26 - **Accompanying gospel:** Matthew 4:8-10 — St. John's expands to the whole temptation narrative, Matthew 4:1-11 - **Psalm 34:15-22** — a St. John's addition (not an NL assignment) #### NL Worship Resources (Working Preacher, 2026-27) - **Prayer of the Day** (Kimberly Leetch): addresses the God of deliverance who saved Israel and chose Joshua to lead the people into the land; asks God to choose and equip us for faith and peace - **Suggested hymns:** God, whose almighty word (ELW 673); If you but trust in God to guide you (ELW 769); Forgive our sins as we forgive (ELW 605) - **Suggested choral:** *Pater Noster*, Igor Stravinsky; *Our Father*, Harry T. Burleigh ### Connection to Today's Message - **"Choose this day"** ([[Joshua 24#15]]) is the hinge of the text, and the Call to Worship echoes it directly: "This day, in this place, let service to God be your choice." - **Matthew 4 as Joshua 24 in miniature.** Satan offers "all the kingdoms of the world" ([[Matthew 4#8]]); Jesus answers with Deuteronomy 6:13 — worship God and serve only him ([[Matthew 4#10]]). Joshua demands the same exclusive service at Shechem. - **Deuteronomy runs underneath both readings.** Jesus quotes Deuteronomy three times (8:3, 6:16, 6:13); Joshua 24 reads like Deuteronomy's covenant structure compressed into one chapter. - **Idols of power and wealth.** The Prayer of Confession names "lifeless idols of worldly power and wealth" — a bridge from Joshua's "put away the gods" ([[Joshua 24#14]], [[Joshua 24#23]]) to the kingdoms offered in Matthew 4. - **Grace before demand.** Joshua retells God's acts first (vv. 2-13) and only then calls for a decision. Then comes the jolt: "You cannot serve the LORD" ([[Joshua 24#19]]). Watch how the sermon handles that tension. - **Psalm 34** supplies the Call to Confession's "God is near to the brokenhearted" ([[Psalm 34#18]]); its "God keeps all their bones" ([[Psalm 34#20]]) is the verse John 19:36 applies to Jesus. - **Shechem threads the series.** Abram's first altar (Genesis 12), Jacob's buried idols under the oak (Genesis 35:4), Joseph's bones buried there (Joshua 24:32), and now covenant renewal under the oak (Joshua 24:26). ## Order of Worship *\*Please stand in body or in spirit* ### Gathering #### Gathering Song "This is the Day" - Words and music: Les Garrett, 1967 (© Scripture in Song) — lyrics not reproduced - Text basis: [[Psalm 118#24]] #### Unison Welcome "No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here" #### Connections #### Passing of the Peace - **Leader:** The peace of Christ be with you. - **People:** And also with you. #### Chiming of the Trinity #### Prelude #### Call to Worship\* *written by Nancy C. Townley* **Leader:** We are pulled in many directions. **People:** Many duties and tasks seek to lay claim on our lives. **Leader:** This day, in this place, let service to God be your choice. **People:** This day, in this place, we open our hearts and spirits to God. **Leader:** Blessed be the God of creation who has called us here. **People:** Praise be to God who sustains and nurtures our lives. Amen. #### Hymn #349\* "To God Be the Glory" - **Words:** Fanny J. Crosby, 1875 - **Music:** William H. Doane, 1875 - **Tune:** TO GOD BE THE GLORY — 11.11.11.11 with refrain - **Hymnal section:** The Church at Worship – Praise and Adoration - **Copyright:** Public domain **1.** To God be the glory, great things He hath done; so loved He the world that He gave us His Son, who yielded His life an atonement for sin, and opened the life-gate that all may go in. **Refrain:** Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear His voice! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice! O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son, and give Him the glory, great things He hath done. **2.** O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood, to every believer the promise of God; the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives. *(Refrain)* **3.** Great things He hath taught us, great things He hath done, and great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son; but purer, and higher, and greater will be our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see. *(Refrain)* #### Call to Confession *from Feasting on the Word Worship Companion* Because God is near to the brokenhearted, let us consider how we have lived, confessing our sins and trusting in God's mercy to save. #### Prayer of Confession *from Feasting on the Word Worship Companion* **God of our redemption, we confess that we have not been faithful servants. We have not served you with sincere hearts nor trusted in your salvation. We have forsaken you, the living God, and have chosen to follow the lifeless idols of worldly power and wealth. Forgive us our sin, O God. Lead us to heartfelt repentance that we may honor you with our lips and serve you with our lives; through our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.** #### Kyrie *Hymnal Companion C-4* - Setting not printed in this bulletin — add the C-4 text here #### Assurance of Pardon *from Feasting on the Word Worship Companion* Hear the good news: Nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Believe the gospel! We are forgiven. - Echoes [[Romans 8#38]] and [[Romans 8#39]] #### Glory Be to the Father #704\* *Gloria Patri — traditional doxology, public domain (verify against the hymnal's wording)* Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen. ### Word #### Scripture Reading Matthew 4:1-11 — see [[#Scripture Reading (Gospel)]] #### Responsive Reading Psalm 34:15-22 **Leader:** The eyes of GOD are on the righteous, and God's ears are open to their cry. **People:** The face of GOD is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. **Leader:** When the righteous cry for help, GOD hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. **People:** GOD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. **Leader:** Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but GOD rescues them from them all. **People:** God keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken. **Leader:** Evil brings death to the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. **People:** GOD redeems the life of God's servants; none of those who take refuge in God will be condemned. - Embeds: [[#Responsive Reading (Psalm 34)]] #### Special Music "Open the Eyes of My Heart" — Paul Baloche - © 1997 Integrity's Hosanna! Music — lyrics not reproduced - Text basis: [[Ephesians 1#18]] #### Children's Message Roxanne Davenport *Children's Corner will be offered following the Children's Message* - See [[#Children's Message Notes]] #### Scripture Reading Joshua 24:1-26 — read by Sarah Shiraki (Lector) — see [[#Scripture Reading (Sermon Text)]] #### Sermon Rev. Caroline E. Saxton — see [[#Sermon]] ### Response #### Nicene Creed: An Affirmation of Faith *Hymnal Companion C-10–C-11 (bulletin text, OCR artifacts corrected)* We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried. On the third day He rose again in accordance with the scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. - Text notes: the companion page misspells "Spirit" as "Spirt"; the line "He will come again in glory / to judge" is clipped on the scan. The Apostles' Creed also appears on C-10 but is not used today. - Creed study hook: the *filioque* ("and the Son") is retained here. #### Sharing of Joys and Concerns *For personal prayer use* > [!warning] Verify names > These names come from an auto-transcript and may be misspelled or misheard: Erin/Aaron, Chani ("Chaney"), Rebecca, Allison, the tree-of-appreciation team, and "our brother David" in the pastor prayer. "Rothman's comments" almost certainly means **Roxanne's** children's message. ##### 🙏 Concerns - **Denise Skipper's friend Jen**: PET scan shows the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes, trachea, and liver. - **Denise's husband Sam**: sick and sleeping most of the time. - **Denise and Perry**: grace and strength, especially now. - **Bend, Oregon school shooting** (raised by Erin): grateful that few lives were lost; "thoughts and prayers are appreciated, but they are not enough. We need policy and change." - **Civility and respect** across the country as we approach the election, that all may exercise their rights without fear (Allison). ##### 🎉 Joys - **Erin's nephew Ben and his wife Myrna** are at the hospital awaiting the birth of their baby girl. Prayers for the medical team. - **Pride Fest at Wilson** (last Sunday, in the downpour): a young person thanked St. John's for being there as a church that welcomes all people (Chani). Pastor Caroline said she almost canceled because of the forecast, and the testimony "affirms our decision to sit in the cold and rain and show up." - **Washington, D.C. museums**: a congregant visited the African American and Native American museums and echoed **Roxanne's** children's message on history: "very humbling to look at the evolution… well worth the time." - **St. John's Camp / Troop 99** (Rebecca): Wilderness Survival and Search and Rescue at Greencastle next weekend. Prayers for good weather, good attitudes, and that "everybody survives the wilderness," plus a pending **grant application for St. John's Camp**. - **Back to work after a herniated disc**: a congregant thanked the church for months of prayer and support. They had felt "worthless and useless" and are now back at Shepherdsburg Rehab and Healthcare Center, with a new perspective for their path toward ministry. - **Sue's brother Wayne** turns 85 this week (the congregation sang). - **Sarah's birthday** (sung while she was in the car). ##### 💐 Pastor Appreciation (led by Lisa, with Diana) - Held today at Pastor Caroline's request, instead of the usual second Sunday in October. Pastor Caroline is in her **fifth year**, and this is the congregation's **ninth** Pastor Appreciation celebration. - **Diana's tribute:** thanks for Pastor Caroline's vision for where the congregation can grow, her wisdom in Scripture and in challenging personal growth, her energy for the church's many operations, and her "care and compassion… for each of us as individuals." - **Responsive blessing and prayer for the pastor** were read together from the handout. - **Tree of Appreciation** in the lobby: Allison's idea, built with a team (names unclear on tape). Leaves are still in the basket for notes. After today, Pastor Caroline takes the leaves home. Private messages could be sent separately. > [!note] Liturgy language to watch > The appreciation litany used shepherd and "high calling" language ("the Lord promised to give His people shepherds"; "lead us unto Christ at all times"; "the labor of a pastor is timeless and endless"). It is common in Pastor Appreciation resources, but it describes pastoral work as limitless and borrows authority language from outside UCC polity. Worth comparing with UCC covenantal language about shared ministry. #### Prayers of the People and the Lord's Prayer (Debts) Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. - Note: "lead us not into temptation" sits beside today's temptation gospel ([[Matthew 4#1]]) #### Invitation to Giving #### Offertory #### Offertory Response #706\* "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" - **Words:** Thomas Ken, 1674 — public domain (verify the hymnal's wording; many UCC congregations sing an inclusive-language version) - **Tune:** OLD HUNDREDTH (Louis Bourgeois, 1551) Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise Him, all creatures here below; praise Him above, ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. #### Prayer of Dedication\* *from Feasting on the Word Worship Companion* **Gracious God, receive our gifts, tokens of thanks for your extravagant blessings, signs of trust in your coming reign of justice, peace, and love; in Jesus' name. Amen.** ### Sending #### Hymn #619\* "Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine" - **Words:** Fanny J. Crosby, 1873 - **Music:** Phoebe Palmer Knapp, 1873 - **Tune:** ASSURANCE — 9.10.9.9 with refrain - **Hymnal section:** Testimony - **Copyright:** Public domain **1.** Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His Spirit, washed in His blood. **Refrain:** This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long; this is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. **2.** Perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight; angels descending bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love. *(Refrain)* **3.** Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest, watching and waiting, looking above, filled with His goodness, lost in His love. *(Refrain)* - Bookend: both hymns today are Fanny Crosby texts (1873, 1875) — the service opens and closes in her voice. #### Commission & Benediction\* #### Postlude (seated) *Join us for a time of fellowship following the service!* ## Scripture and Sermon ### Scripture Reading (Gospel) Matthew 4:1-11 ![[Matthew 4#1]] ![[Matthew 4#2]] ![[Matthew 4#3]] ![[Matthew 4#4]] ![[Matthew 4#5]] ![[Matthew 4#6]] ![[Matthew 4#7]] ![[Matthew 4#8]] ![[Matthew 4#9]] ![[Matthew 4#10]] ![[Matthew 4#11]] #### Deuteronomy behind Jesus' answers - [[Deuteronomy 8#3]] — one does not live by bread alone ([[Matthew 4#4]]) - [[Deuteronomy 6#16]] — do not put God to the test ([[Matthew 4#7]]) - [[Deuteronomy 6#13]] — worship and serve God only ([[Matthew 4#10]]) ### Responsive Reading (Psalm 34) Psalm 34:15-22 — responsive text appears inline in the [[#Responsive Reading|Order of Worship]] ![[Psalm 34#15]] ![[Psalm 34#16]] ![[Psalm 34#17]] ![[Psalm 34#18]] ![[Psalm 34#19]] ![[Psalm 34#20]] ![[Psalm 34#21]] ![[Psalm 34#22]] ### Scripture Reading (Sermon Text) Joshua 24:1-26 ![[Joshua 24#1]] ![[Joshua 24#2]] ![[Joshua 24#3]] ![[Joshua 24#4]] ![[Joshua 24#5]] ![[Joshua 24#6]] ![[Joshua 24#7]] ![[Joshua 24#8]] ![[Joshua 24#9]] ![[Joshua 24#10]] ![[Joshua 24#11]] ![[Joshua 24#12]] ![[Joshua 24#13]] ![[Joshua 24#14]] ![[Joshua 24#15]] ![[Joshua 24#16]] ![[Joshua 24#17]] ![[Joshua 24#18]] ![[Joshua 24#19]] ![[Joshua 24#20]] ![[Joshua 24#21]] ![[Joshua 24#22]] ![[Joshua 24#23]] ![[Joshua 24#24]] ![[Joshua 24#25]] ![[Joshua 24#26]] #### Structure of the passage - vv. 1 — Assembly at Shechem "before God" - vv. 2-13 — God's acts recited in the first person (Terah to the land) - vv. 14-15 — The demand: put away the gods; choose whom you will serve - vv. 16-18 — The people's first answer - vv. 19-20 — Joshua's counter: "You cannot serve the LORD" - vv. 21-24 — The people insist; witnesses sworn - vv. 25-26 — Covenant, statutes, book of the law, the stone under the oak ### Additional Scripture - [[Genesis 12#6]], [[Genesis 12#7]] — Abram at Shechem - [[Genesis 35#4]] — Jacob buries foreign gods under the oak at Shechem - [[Deuteronomy 30#19]] — "choose life" - [[Joshua 24#32]] — Joseph's bones buried at Shechem - [[Ruth 1#16]] — a covenant "choice" of a different kind - [[1 Kings 18#21]] — Elijah: how long will you waver between two opinions? - [[John 19#36]] — Psalm 34:20 applied to Jesus ### 📖 Bible Study: Matthew 4:1-11 *Passage embeds are under [[#Scripture Reading (Gospel)]].* #### 🙏 Phase 1: Preliminary Engagement 🕯️ Prayer for insight: _"Lord, grant wisdom and humility to understand Your Word rightly."_ 📚 Reading plan: Read Matthew 4:1-11 in NRSVue, AMPC, NASB1995, CJB, TLV, OJB (4th ed.), NMV, MSG, TPT, First Nations Version, and The Inclusive Bible. 🧰 Study helps: Use [Blue Letter Bible](https://blueletterbible.org/), interlinear, lexicons, and parsing. 🏷️ Working title: **"The Son Who Would Not Cash In"** 🔎 Key verses: [[Matthew 4#4]], [[Matthew 4#7]], [[Matthew 4#10]] ⛪ Liturgical tie-in: Paired with today's sermon text, [[Joshua 24#1]]–[[Joshua 24#26]] (NL106, Joshua Renews the Covenant). Also the RCL and Roman Lectionary Gospel for the First Sunday in Lent, Year A. #### 👀 Phase 2: Observational Analysis 🧭 Main themes: - Sonship tested right after it is declared ([[Matthew 3#17]] → [[Matthew 4#3]]) - Israel's wilderness story replayed and passed - Scripture used rightly and wrongly - Worship and service owed to God alone - Power refused when it comes by the wrong route 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Characters: - **Jesus**: the beloved Son, hungry and alone - **The Spirit**: leads Jesus into the test - **The devil / tempter / Satan**: three names for one tester (*diabolos*, *ho peirazōn*, *Satana*) - **Angels**: present only at the end, on God's terms rather than Satan's 🧨 Events and movements: - Wilderness → holy city/Temple pinnacle → very high mountain → angels serve - Each scene climbs higher: ground, parapet, summit 📜 Commands and promises: - Satan issues three commands: command, throw, fall down and worship - Jesus answers with three Torah citations, all from Deuteronomy: - [[Deuteronomy 8#3]] (v. 4) - [[Deuteronomy 6#16]] (v. 7) - [[Deuteronomy 6#13]] (v. 10) - The only promise in the passage comes from Satan's misuse of [[Psalm 91#11]] and [[Psalm 91#12]] - God's actual provision arrives unannounced in v. 11 🧩 5W1H scan: - **Who:** Jesus, Spirit, devil, angels - **What:** a three-part test of the Son's trust and loyalty - **Where:** the Judean wilderness, the Jerusalem Temple, an unnamed mountain - **When:** right after the baptism ([[Matthew 3#13]]–[[Matthew 3#17]]), before the Galilean ministry ([[Matthew 4#12]]) - **Why:** the Spirit leads him there "to be tested" (purpose infinitive) - **How:** through dialogue in Scripture citation, like a rabbinic disputation #### ✍️ Phase 3: Literary and Contextual Analysis 🧵 Literary devices: - **Triadic structure.** The three tests escalate in setting and stakes. - **Repeated conditional.** "If you are the Son of God" appears twice (vv. 3, 6). The third test drops it, because the mask is off. - **Formula.** Jesus answers each test with "It is written" (*gegraptai*, perfect tense: it stands written). - **Inclusio.** The scene opens with being led by the Spirit and closes with angels serving. - **Irony.** The devil quotes Scripture. 🧱 Genre and implications: - Narrative shaped like haggadic midrash: an exegetical contest dramatized as story (Gerhardsson) - It is not an eyewitness report. Read it as theology in narrative form, not as a travelogue. 🗺️ Historical-cultural context: - Matthew writes to a largely Jewish-Christian community, likely in the 80s CE, after the Temple's destruction. The audience is sorting out its identity against the synagogue and under Roman rule. - The "kingdoms of the world and their glory" would land with readers who live inside Rome's. 🔗 Canonical connections: - **Israel the son:** [[Exodus 4#22]], [[Hosea 11#1]] (quoted at [[Matthew 2#15]]) - **Israel's own wilderness tests:** [[Deuteronomy 8#2]], [[Deuteronomy 8#3]] - **Test 1, bread:** manna, [[Exodus 16#4]] - **Test 2, testing God:** Massah, [[Exodus 17#7]] - **Test 3, other gods:** the golden calf, [[Exodus 32#4]]; the warning against other gods, [[Deuteronomy 6#14]] - **Forty-day fasts:** Moses ([[Exodus 34#28]], [[Deuteronomy 9#9]]); Elijah ([[1 Kings 19#8]]) - **Shown everything from a mountain:** Moses on Nebo, [[Deuteronomy 34#1]]–[[Deuteronomy 34#4]] - **The same taunt at the cross:** [[Matthew 27#40]], [[Matthew 27#43]] - **"Get away, Satan" again, to Peter:** [[Matthew 16#23]] - **The kingdoms question resolved:** a mountain and "all authority," [[Matthew 28#18]] - **Testing and the Son elsewhere:** [[Hebrews 4#15]], [[Hebrews 2#18]] - **The prayer about testing:** [[Matthew 6#13]] 🗣️ Rhetoric and tone: - Spare and controlled. Jesus never argues, explains, or gets emotional. He answers each test with one citation. - The devil's tone moves from suggestion (v. 3), to a proof-texted dare (v. 6), to a naked transaction (v. 9). ##### 🔤 Translation Comparison (key renderings) | Verse | Translation | Rendering | Interpretive effect | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | NRSVue / NASB / CJB | "tested" / "tempted" | Greek *peirazō* covers both senses. The choice decides whether readers hear a trial of loyalty or an enticement to sin. | | 1 | AMPC | "tempted (tested and tried)" | Keeps both senses explicitly. Most faithful to the semantic range. | | 1 | TPT | "ordeal of testing" | Heightens the drama. Reads as a hardship rite of passage. | | 1 | FNV | adds a full Eden-and-serpent explanation into v. 1 | **Interpolation.** It imports the Genesis serpent identity into Matthew's text, while Matthew draws on Deuteronomy rather than Genesis 3. | | 3 | MSG | "Since you are God's Son" | Reads the Greek first-class conditional as *assumed true*. The temptation becomes how to use sonship, not whether to doubt it. | | 3 | TPT | "How can you possibly be the Son of God and go hungry?" | Opposite move. It turns the conditional into a taunt about identity and **adds content absent from the Greek**. | | 3 | Inclusive Bible | "the Only Begotten" | Gender-neutral, but swaps in a Johannine title (*monogenēs* is not here). It **severs the Israel-as-son typology** ([[Exodus 4#22]]) that the whole passage runs on. | | 3 | TLV / OJB | "Ben-Elohim" / "Ben HaElohim" | Restores the Hebrew idiom and keeps the sonship title. | | 5 | Most / CJB | "pinnacle" / "highest point" | Greek *pterygion* ("little wing"). Exact location uncertain. | | 9 | NMV | "bare your head to me" | Idiosyncratic. Greek *proskyneō* means to prostrate or do homage. Flag as unreliable. | | 10 | NRSVue / NASB / TLV | "worship… serve only him" | Tracks Matthew's Greek: *proskynēseis* (worship) + *monō latreuseis* (serve only). | | 10 | OJB | the Lord your God "you shall fear and Him you shall worship" | **Harmonizes to the Hebrew of Deut 6:13** (*tira*, fear). It loses Matthew's deliberate echo between Satan's "worship me" (v. 9) and Jesus' "worship God" (v. 10). | | 10 | Inclusive Bible | "Most High God; God alone will you adore" | Drops "serve" (*latreuō*). **This cuts the direct link to Joshua 24's repeated "serve."** | | 10 | NMV | "I will pray to Yehovah and Him only will you serve" | Person shifts mid-verse; the bracketed "[Messiah Pre-Incarnate]" glosses insert theology into the text. Flag as unreliable. | | 10 | MSG | "absolute single-heartedness" | A paraphrase that echoes the Shema's "all your heart." Interpretively apt. | | 11 | NRSVue / NASB | "waited on" / "minister to" | Greek *diakoneō* (imperfect) often means table service. **After a forty-day fast, the angels likely bring food**, the very bread Jesus refused to conjure. | 🧭 Translation notes for discernment: - **TPT** comes from Brian Simmons / Passion & Fire Ministries. BibleGateway labels it "In Review," and NAR researchers (including Holly Pivec) have critiqued it. In this passage it adds an identity-doubt taunt (v. 3) and inflates v. 17 into kingdom "accessibility" language. - **OJB and NMV** insert messianic titles and bracketed glosses into the narrative. Treat them as commentary, not translation. ##### 🔗 Literary Connections by Verse 🔁 Repetition: vv. 3, 6 ("If you are the Son of God"); vv. 4, 7, 10 ("It is written") ➿ Continuity: [[Matthew 3#17]] → v. 3. The voice from heaven names the Son; the tester probes that name. ⚖️ Contrast: v. 6 vs v. 11. Angels summoned by a dare vs angels sent freely. 🪞 Comparison: vv. 8-9 vs [[Matthew 17#1]] and [[Matthew 28#16]]. Satan's "very high mountain" vs the transfiguration's "high mountain" vs the commissioning mountain. ➡️ Cause → Effect: v. 10 → v. 11. Rebuke → departure → provision. ↩️ Effect → Cause: v. 2 → v. 3. Hunger opens the first line of attack. 🎯 Means → End: v. 1. The Spirit leads *in order to* test (purpose infinitive). 🧠 Logical conclusion: v. 10. "Serve only him" settles all three tests. 🌳 General → Particular: v. 4. The general principle (God's word sustains) frames the particular refusal. 🌿 Particular → General: v. 7. A particular dare exposes a general error, demanding proof from God. ⛰️ Climax: vv. 8-10, the mountain, the worship demand, the rebuke. 🪜 Preparation/Introduction: vv. 1-2 💡 Explanation/Illustration: v. 6. Satan's citation illustrates Scripture weaponized out of context. ❓ Interrogation/Questions: The conditionals in vv. 3 and 6 work as implied questions about identity. #### 🕵️ Phase 4: Interpretive Inquiry 🧠 Guardrails: Ask and answer within textual evidence. Note limits clearly. Readings are grouped by **interpretive system**, not individual voice. ⚠️ marks systems documented for discernment, not endorsement. --- ##### ❓ Question 1: Is this a temptation to sin or a test of loyalty, and why does the Spirit lead him into it? 📌 Textual context: *Peirazō* means both "test" and "tempt." The Spirit is the active agent in v. 1. [[Deuteronomy 8#2]] says God led Israel forty years in the wilderness "testing you, to know what was in your heart." The passage plays out what [[Matthew 6#13]] asks God not to do to *us*. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🏛️ Mainline Protestant / UCC | A loyalty test that forms identity. Jesus clarifies what kind of Messiah he will be before ministry begins. The emphasis falls on vocation, not moral struggle. | | 📜 Reformed / Mercersburg | Christ's *active obedience*: the second Adam and true Israel obey where both failed. Mercersburg's incarnational stress puts real humanity front and center; the test matters because he truly hungers. | | ✝️ Catholic | The Catechism (§§538-540) reads Jesus as new Adam and true Israel. Satan attacks his filial trust in the Father. The text anchors the Lenten discipline. | | ☦️ Orthodox / Patristic | Irenaeus's *recapitulation* (*Against Heresies* 5.21): Christ re-walks Adam's path and reverses it. Gregory the Great maps the three tests onto gluttony, vainglory, and avarice (Homily 16). | | 📖 Evangelical | Jesus faced real temptation without sin ([[Hebrews 4#15]]), so he is a sympathetic high priest. Usually applied as a model: resist temptation with memorized Scripture. | | 💨 Classical Pentecostal | Spirit-led then Spirit-empowered. The wilderness precedes "the power of the Spirit" (explicit in Luke 4:14). It becomes a pattern for Spirit-baptized believers facing spiritual opposition. | | 🧘 Contemplative | The desert as formation. The Desert Fathers and Mothers read it as the founding text of the monastic wilderness. Testing strips the false self. | | 🔬 Critical-historical | Q tradition (shared by Matthew and Luke; Mark 1:12-13 is two verses). No witnesses were present. The scene is theological narrative modeled on Deut 6–8. | | ✡️ Rabbinic | Testing as covenant proof, not entrapment. Abraham's ten trials (*Pirkei Avot* 5:3) and Israel in the wilderness. The satan is the adversary-tester of Job, not an independent evil power. | | ✡️ Modern academic Jewish | Jesus as a faithful Jew reciting Torah under pressure. The scene is intelligible within Second Temple piety and needs no anti-Jewish contrast. | | ⚠️ NAR / Apostolic | Often reads v. 1 as a template: Spirit-filled believers will be "led into" warfare seasons that precede promotion or breakthrough. The test becomes a stage gate on the path to anointing. | | ⚠️ Word of Faith | Testing comes from the devil, never from God (James 1:13 is used to override v. 1). Victory comes through spoken confession of the Word. | 🔎 Discernment note: Watch for **"wilderness season → breakthrough"** promises. Matthew 4 ends in quiet obscurity and ministry among the poor in Galilee (4:12-25), not in elevation or reward. --- ##### ❓ Question 2: What does "If you are the Son of God" assume: doubt, or presumption? 📌 Textual context: Greek *ei huios ei tou theou* is a first-class conditional, which grammatically assumes the premise for argument's sake. The heavenly voice has just declared it ([[Matthew 3#17]]). The identical phrase returns at the cross ([[Matthew 27#40]]). ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical / Greek grammar | The tempter does not ask Jesus to doubt sonship. He asks Jesus to *use* it for self-provision, spectacle, and power. MSG's "since" is closer to the grammar than TPT's "how can you possibly." | | 📜 Reformed | Sonship defined by obedience, not privilege. True sonship is trust in the Father, not exploitation of status. | | ✝️ Catholic / ☦️ Orthodox | Filial trust. Sonship is lived as receptivity; the temptation is to grasp rather than receive (compare [[Philippians 2#6]]). | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Identity is given, not proven. Read pastorally: belovedness doesn't need performance to be real. | | ✊ Liberation | The cross taunt (27:40) shows what refusing the shortcut costs. The Son stays in solidarity with suffering rather than exempting himself. | | 📖 Evangelical | Satan attacks identity. Commonly preached as "the enemy will make you doubt who you are," which fits TPT's rendering better than the Greek. | | ⚠️ Word of Faith | "Know who you are" leads to "exercise your authority." Some teachers extend Jesus' sonship into believers' "little god" status (Copeland, Hagin lineage). The test becomes a lesson in identity-confession. | | ⚠️ NAR / Bethel-type | Jesus resisted *as a man* in right relationship with God, not drawing on divinity (Bill Johnson's claim that Jesus did miracles as a man; verify in *When Heaven Invades Earth*). Believers can therefore operate at the same level. | | ✡️ Rabbinic / Jewish | "Son of God" reads as royal or Israelite sonship ([[Exodus 4#22]], [[Psalm 2#7]]), not ontological divinity. That makes the Israel typology the main key. | | 🌿 Messianic Jewish | Ben-Elohim as messianic title. Yeshua as both faithful Israel and divine Son. | | ☪️ Islamic | Rejects divine sonship (Qur'an 19:35; 112:3). Isa is still uniquely protected from Satan: the hadith that every newborn is touched by Satan except Mary and her son (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Prophets; see also Qur'an [3:36](https://quran.com/3/36)). | 🔎 Discernment note: **Identity-as-authority-to-command** is a key NAR and Word of Faith move. Matthew's Jesus treats sonship as grounds for *refusing* to command. --- ##### ❓ Question 3: Why bread, and is Jesus refusing material need? 📌 Textual context: [[Deuteronomy 8#3]] is about manna. God fed Israel *and* taught dependence. Jesus later feeds thousands ([[Matthew 14#13]]–[[Matthew 14#21]], [[Matthew 15#32]]–[[Matthew 15#39]]) and teaches the prayer for daily bread ([[Matthew 6#11]]). In v. 11, angels "serve" (*diakoneō*, typically table service). ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | ✊ Liberation | The refusal is not against bread. It is against **bread as a tool of control or self-exemption**. Jesus will feed the hungry, but never to seize power or bypass solidarity. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Physical and spiritual are not rivals. The Deut 8:3 context includes manna. Read alongside CROP Walk and First Fruits ministries, feeding the hungry *is* living by God's word. | | 📜 Lutheran | The Word sustains; Luther's "one little word shall fell him." Law and gospel: the Word given, not the miracle grasped. | | ☦️ Orthodox | Fasting as the ascetic baseline. The Lenten fast imitates Christ's forty days. Mastery of appetite is a discipline in becoming like God (theosis). | | 🧘 Contemplative | First of Nouwen's three ministry temptations (*In the Name of Jesus*): to be **relevant**, to fix needs on demand. | | 📚 Literary reception | Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor: give people bread and they will surrender their freedom. **This is the text's classic reading in high-control-systems terms.** | | 📖 Evangelical | Spiritual priority: read Scripture before food. Often drifts into a body/spirit split ("feed your spirit"). | | ⚠️ Prosperity / Word of Faith | Inverts the text. Faith confession *should* turn stones to bread. Jesus' refusal gets narrowed to "not at the devil's suggestion," while believers are taught to declare provision. | | ⚠️ NAR fasting culture | The forty-day fast becomes a formula for spiritual power. Corporate 40-day fasts are promoted through prayer networks; Bill Bright's 40-day fasts became a model widely adopted in charismatic circles. | | ✡️ Rabbinic | Mishnah Berakhot 9:5 on the Shema: "with all your heart" includes both inclinations. Gerhardsson maps this test onto the **heart**, desire governed by love of God. | | ☪️ Islamic | Qur'an [5:112-115](https://quran.com/5/112-115): the disciples ask Isa for a table spread with food from heaven, and God grants it with a warning about ingratitude. Provision is tied to faithfulness, not proof. | 🔎 Discernment note: Two opposite distortions come from the same verse. Prosperity teaching turns faith into a bread-making technique. Super-spiritual teaching dismisses material need. Matthew's own arc (v. 11, ch. 14-15) rejects both. --- ##### ❓ Question 4: What is Satan doing with Psalm 91, and how should "It is written" work? 📌 Textual context: Satan quotes [[Psalm 91#11]] and [[Psalm 91#12]] but omits the clause "to guard you in all your ways." That clause frames protection *on the path of faithful living*, not on a stunt. Jesus answers "Again it is written" (*palin gegraptai*), Scripture interpreting Scripture. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 📜 Reformed | *Scriptura sui interpres*, Scripture interprets Scripture. Jesus models the analogy of faith: one text read by the whole. | | ✝️ Catholic | Scripture read within the living tradition and the community's rule of faith. Private proof-texting is the devil's method. | | 🔬 Critical-historical | A rabbinic-style contest of citations. Satan's citation is formally valid and contextually false. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | "God is still speaking." Faithful reading attends to context and to the God of love, and resists texts turned into weapons. | | 📖 Evangelical | A biblical-literacy model: know Scripture to resist misuse. A strength, though often taught as memorizing verses rather than reading in context. | | ⚠️ Word of Faith | "It is written" becomes **spoken decree**. Scripture is declared aloud like a formula with performative power over the devil, close to magical speech. | | ⚠️ NAR / Apostolic | "Decree and declare." Prophetic declarations drawn from Scripture, often from Psalms and Isaiah, are read as authorizing new spiritual realities. Psalm 91 is a staple of "protection decrees." | | ⚠️ Strategic-level spiritual warfare | Scripture as a weapon against territorial spirits. Jesus' rebukes are read as models for binding regional powers. | | ✡️ Rabbinic | Strong parallel: Genesis Rabbah 56:4. Samael meets Abraham on the road to Moriah and argues him out of obedience, and Abraham counters. Debate with the adversary through Scripture is a known Jewish narrative form. | | 🌿 Messianic | Yeshua as the faithful Torah scholar who answers from Devarim (Deuteronomy). | 🔎 Discernment note: **The devil in this passage commits contextomy**, quoting out of context to strip the protective condition. That makes v. 6 a built-in specimen of the misuse your NAR fallacy taxonomy tracks. "It is written" functions as a *hermeneutic* (cross-reference), not an *incantation* (decree). --- ##### ❓ Question 5: Whose are "all the kingdoms of the world"? 📌 Textual context: Matthew's Satan *shows* the kingdoms and *offers* them (v. 9). Unlike [[Luke 4#6]], Matthew's Satan **never claims they were handed over to him**. Jesus later receives "all authority in heaven and on earth" on a different mountain ([[Matthew 28#18]]), from God, after the cross. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | ✊ Liberation / Empire-critical | Warren Carter (*Matthew and Empire*): the offer is Rome's kind of power, domination secured by worship of something other than God. Jesus refuses imperial means for the reign of God. | | 🕊️ Anabaptist | A foundational text for refusing coercive state power. Christ's kingdom advances by the cross, not the sword or throne. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | A warning against equating God's realm with political dominance. Pairs with the Prayer of Confession's "idols of worldly power and wealth." | | 🗺️ Dispensationalist | Satan is "god of this age" ([[2 Corinthians 4#4]]) and the offer is real. Christ receives the kingdoms at his return and millennial reign, not before. | | 📖 Evangelical | Personal application: don't compromise worship for success. The political dimension is usually under-read. | | ⚠️ Seven Mountains / Dominionism | Kingdom dominion is the goal; Jesus merely refused Satan's *method*. The Church is called to "take back" the culture's spheres (often 7 "mountains"). **Reading v. 8's "mountain" as sphere-of-culture language is anachronistic eisegesis.** | | ⚠️ Strategic-level spiritual warfare | Luke 4:6 is imported to argue that Satan legally holds territorial authority. Believers must evict territorial spirits city by city (Wagner-era spiritual mapping). | | ⚠️ Christian nationalism | Frequently reads the nation as God's instrument. **This text is one of the strongest counter-texts**: the offer to rule all kingdoms *is* the temptation. | | ✡️ Rabbinic / Gerhardsson | The Shema's "with all your might" (*me'od*), read in m. Berakhot 9:5 as "with all your wealth." The test targets possessions and power. | | ☪️ Islamic | Iblis demands prostration here, the inverse of Iblis *refusing* to prostrate to Adam ([2:34](https://quran.com/2/34); [7:11-17](https://quran.com/7/11-17)). Worship belongs to God alone (*tawhid*), a strong point of convergence. | 🔎 Discernment note: The decisive textual control is **Matthew ≠ Luke**. Dominionist and SLSW readings almost always harmonize Luke 4:6 into Matthew 4:9 (harmonization fallacy). Then they treat Jesus' refusal as merely tactical, though the text treats seizing the kingdoms as the sin. --- ##### ❓ Question 6: How does this passage retell Israel's wilderness story, and how does it pair with Joshua 24? 📌 Textual context: Every answer Jesus gives comes from Deut 6–8, Moses' speech on the edge of the land, where the Shema sits ([[Deuteronomy 6#4]]–[[Deuteronomy 6#5]]). Joshua 24 renews that same covenant at Shechem with the repeated verb "serve" (Hebrew *avad*). Jesus' final answer is "serve only him." ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical | The Son–Israel typology runs through Matt 2–4: Egypt (2:15), waters (3:13-17), wilderness (4:1-11), mountain (5:1). The "forty" echoes Israel's forty years. | | ✡️ Rabbinic / Gerhardsson | The three tests correspond to the Shema's **heart** (desire/bread), **soul** (life/pinnacle), and **might** (wealth/kingdoms), following the rabbinic exposition in m. Berakhot 9:5. Jesus loves God with all three. | | 📜 Reformed / UCC heritage | Covenant fidelity. Where Israel promised "we will serve the LORD" ([[Joshua 24#21]]) and could not, as Joshua warned ([[Joshua 24#19]]), the Son serves faithfully on Israel's behalf. Grace precedes and secures the covenant. | | ✝️ Catholic / ☦️ Orthodox | Recapitulation of Israel and Adam. The Church keeps forty days of Lent inside Christ's forty. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | "Choose this day" ([[Joshua 24#15]]) heard through Christ's choice. Our choosing rests on his. | | 📖 Evangelical | Typology acknowledged, but application usually stays individual: be a faithful servant. | | ✡️ Modern academic Jewish | Caution: "Jesus succeeds where Israel failed" can slide into supersessionism. Better framing: Jesus as *faithful Israelite* embodying Israel's own Torah, not replacing Israel. | | 🌿 Messianic | Yeshua as the ideal Israelite who keeps the Shema. Torah remains good and binding. | | ⚠️ NAR | Often skips the typology and reads the passage as a personal warfare manual. Israel's story becomes a backdrop for individual "promised land" breakthrough. | 🔎 Discernment note: Two risks sit in tension. Christian readings that stress "Jesus as true Israel" can become **supersessionist**. Readings that skip Israel entirely end up **individualist**, the gap where NAR "breakthrough" theology settles in. The Joshua pairing helps if it holds both covenant community and Christ's faithfulness together. --- ##### ❓ Question 7: Are the forty-day fast and the ministering angels prescriptive or descriptive? 📌 Textual context: Matthew narrates the fast but never commands it. Jesus' teaching on fasting ([[Matthew 6#16]]–[[Matthew 6#18]]) assumes the practice but stresses secrecy over spectacle. The angels in v. 11 arrive *after* Jesus refuses to summon them (v. 6). ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | ☦️ Orthodox / ✝️ Catholic | Basis for the Lenten forty days. Imitation in a communal, liturgical, moderated form, not a feat. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Descriptive. Fasting is optional discipline. Watch for practices that harm bodies, including disordered-eating risk. | | 🧘 Contemplative | Fasting as emptying and attention. The angels' arrival shows grace given, not earned. | | 🔬 Critical-historical | "Forty" is symbolic of a complete period of testing (Moses, Elijah, Israel). Not offered as a medical or devotional benchmark. | | 📖 Evangelical | Mixed. Some promote extended fasts (Bill Bright's 40-day fasts); others stress moderation and motive. | | ⚠️ NAR / Revivalist | Prescriptive. Corporate and individual 40-day fasts are promoted as a trigger for revival, power, or national change. **Fasting is turned into a transaction**, the very logic v. 6 refuses. | | ⚠️ Word of Faith | Angels "dispatched" by the believer's spoken Word, building on Ps 91 and [[Hebrews 1#14]]. Verse 6, the devil's own proposal, becomes the believer's practice. | | ✡️ Rabbinic | Fasts are communal, calendared, and bounded (Yom Kippur, Tisha B'Av). A fast as a lever on God would be "testing God." | | ☪️ Islamic | Fasting is commanded for a set time (Ramadan) and bounded by mercy. Exemptions protect the sick and travelers, and the fast is never a demand on God. | 🔎 Discernment note: The NAR/WoF use of angels and fasting **reproduces the second temptation**, using a spiritual practice to force God's hand. Flag as an *is-ought fallacy* (descriptive narrative → prescriptive law) and as performative presumption. --- #### 🧮 Central Meaning and Implications 🎯 Author's main point: The beloved Son, led by the Spirit, relives Israel's wilderness testing and stays faithful. He refuses to turn sonship into self-provision, spectacle, or domination, and he answers every test with Israel's own Torah. Worship and service belong to God alone. 👂 Implications for original hearers: - Jesus is Israel's faithful Son and Messiah, shown by Torah obedience - A Messiah who refuses Rome's kind of power, for a community living under it - A pattern for a community tempted to secure itself by compromise 🏙️ Implications for today: - **Personal:** Belovedness needs no proof. Refuse the shortcuts. - **Congregational:** Discern Scripture in context and in community. Guard against spiritual practices used as levers. - **Civic:** Refuse the bargain of power for worship, the core temptation of Christian nationalism. #### 🧩 What These Groups Think (Summary) ✡️ **Jewish traditions:** Testing as covenant proof. Jesus reads as a faithful Jew reciting Deuteronomy and embodying the Shema (heart, soul, might). The satan tests rather than rules. Caution against supersessionist "Israel failed" framings. ✝️ **Christian traditions:** Broad agreement that Jesus recapitulates Adam and Israel, models fidelity, and resists through Scripture. They divide on emphasis: obedience and atonement (Reformed), filial trust (Catholic/Orthodox), personal moral example (Evangelical), anti-imperial vocation (Liberation, Anabaptist). ☪️ **Islamic and other faiths:** No direct temptation narrative in the Qur'an. Strong convergence on worship of God alone and Satan's demand for prostration (the inverse of Iblis's refusal). Isa is uniquely protected from Satan at birth. Later Muslim Jesus literature includes Isa–Iblis encounters (see Khalidi). 🗣️ **Contemporary mainstream systems:** Identity is given, not proven. Bread, spectacle, and power stand as the perennial temptations of leaders and institutions (Nouwen; Dostoevsky). The text critiques empire and domination. ⚠️ **Problematic systems:** - **NAR:** Treats the passage as a warfare manual and promotion pattern, with "decree" Scripture and fasting formulas. - **Word of Faith:** Teaches identity-confession and spoken-Word power, and inverts the bread test. - **Seven Mountains / SLSW:** Imports Luke 4:6 and treats seizing the kingdoms as legitimate if done by the "right" method. - **Christian nationalism:** Ignores that the offer of kingdoms *is* the temptation. All four reproduce the very moves Jesus refuses. #### 🧪 Application Plan 🧘 Meditate on: Where do I try to prove my belovedness through usefulness (bread), being seen (pinnacle), or control (kingdoms)? 🎯 Goal: {{Specific practice goal with metric}} 🗓️ Change plan: By God's help I will {{specific action}} 📍 Logistics: {{When, where, how, with whom}} 🤝 Accountability: {{Name}} will support follow-through 🙏 Promises claimed: [[Deuteronomy 8#3]], [[Hebrews 4#15]], [[Matthew 4#11]] #### 🛠️ Spiritual Disciplines (complete) 🚪 Abstinence: Solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, sacrifice 🎁 Engagement: Study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, submission, guidance, peacemaking 🕯️ Inward: Meditation, Lectio Divina 🏠 Outward: Simplicity, hospitality 📖 Hearing: Scripture memorization 🕊️ Incarnational: Labyrinth walking, pilgrimage, Visio Divina 🎯 Passage-specific fit: - **Secrecy** ([[Matthew 6#18]]) answers the pinnacle's spectacle. - **Simplicity** answers the mountain. - **Lectio Divina on Deut 6:4-16** reads the passage the way Jesus read it. #### 🎨 Visio Divina Prompt 🖌️ Image-prayer seed: Ochre desert stones in long shadow. A tiny Temple parapet against white sky. A mountain summit with faint gilded cities below. A single figure with open, empty hands. At the edge, figures setting out bread. 🧷 DALL·E brief: "Create sacred art reflecting trust, refusal of power, and God's quiet provision from Matthew 4:1-11, in muted earth-tone gouache with gold-leaf accents, centering empty open hands and a loaf of bread." #### 🧷 Phase 6: Concluding Reflection 🕯️ Closing prayer: _"Faithful God, you named Jesus beloved before he did anything at all. Keep us from proving ourselves with bread, spectacle, or power. Teach us to read your word whole, to worship you alone, and to trust that your provision comes in its time. Amen."_ #### 🧠 Logical Fallacy and Bias Audit 🗓️ **Presentism:** Reading "kingdoms of the world" as modern nation-states or culture "mountains." 🎯 **Confirmation bias:** Reading the test as identity doubt because one's tradition preaches "know who you are." TPT's v. 3 rendering bakes this in. 🔄 **Eisegesis vs exegesis:** Seven Mountains reads v. 8's "mountain" as a cultural sphere. Exegesis finds Nebo and Sinai echoes instead. 🧱 **Over-literalism:** Treating "forty days" as a replicable devotional benchmark. 🌈 **Over-allegorization:** Turning each stone, pinnacle, and angel into an individual spiritual-warfare symbol. 🍒 **Cherry picking / contextomy:** **Satan's own move in v. 6**, quoting Psalm 91 minus "to guard you in all your ways." Modern "Psalm 91 protection decrees" repeat it. 📅 **Vaticinium ex eventu:** Reading the cross taunt (27:40) back as the passage's "real" meaning without noting Matthew built the echo deliberately. ⚖️ **False equivalence:** Equating Jesus' citation of Deuteronomy with a believer's "decree" of any verse. 🧬 **Genetic fallacy:** Dismissing the passage as "just Q midrash" and therefore without theological weight. 🎯 **Texas sharpshooter:** Finding a Gregory/1 John 2:16/Genesis 3:6 triad mapping everywhere and forcing the tests to fit. 🧗 **Over-speculation:** Locating the "very high mountain" or the pinnacle precisely. ⚔️ **False dichotomy:** Bread *or* Word, material *or* spiritual. The passage ends with angels serving food. ⌛ **Anachronism:** Reading Nicene two-natures categories, or Bethel's "Jesus as mere man" kenoticism, into Matthew's "Son of God." 🛷 **Slippery slope:** "If you eat when God says fast, you'll lose your anointing." 🐟 **Red herring:** Debating whether Satan is a literal being and missing what the tests target. 🧲 **Motivated reasoning:** Prosperity readers narrowing Jesus' refusal to "not at the devil's suggestion" to preserve faith-for-provision. 🧮 **Base-rate neglect:** Using one narrative of an extraordinary fast to set norms for ordinary disciples. ➕ **Harmonization fallacy:** Importing Luke 4:6 ("it has been given over to me") into Matthew. This is the load-bearing move for SLSW and dominionist readings. ➕ **Is-ought fallacy:** Turning descriptive narrative (fast, angels) into prescriptive law. ➕ **Equivocation:** Sliding between *peirazō* as "test" (God may) and "tempt" (God does not) to support either "God is testing you" manipulation or "it's all the devil" dualism. #### 🧨 How Fallacies Distort Interpretation and Application 🧩 **Theological costs:** - Christ becomes a technique-model ("do what Jesus did to win") instead of the faithful Son - Scripture becomes incantation - Power becomes the goal and the cross a detour 🤝 **Communal costs:** - Fasting cultures that harm bodies - "Wilderness season" language used to keep people compliant through suffering - Leaders who claim Psalm 91 immunity - Political movements baptized as "taking the kingdoms" 🛡️ **Safeguards:** - Read Matthew without Luke first - Check every citation's context, as Jesus did ("again it is written") - Read in community and with the creeds - Test practices against [[Matthew 6#1]]–[[Matthew 6#18]] (secrecy, not spectacle) #### 🌍 Implications and Future Research 🧪 **Balanced hermeneutics:** Synoptic comparison (Matthew/Luke/Mark), LXX vs MT for Deut 6:13 (fear vs worship; Codex Alexandrinus reportedly agrees with Matthew's "worship"; verify), and the Shema framework. 🔬 **Interdisciplinary work:** - Sociology of high-control groups (Grand Inquisitor as model) - Psychology of fasting and disordered eating in religious cultures - Empire studies 🧭 **Reception history:** - Patristic triad - Lenten liturgy - Dostoevsky - Nouwen's leadership reading - Modern "decree" culture and Psalm 91 protection teaching 🧱 **Non-Western voices:** - First Nations Version (trickster framing) - Muslim Jesus traditions - Global South prosperity reception (Nigeria, Brazil, Korea) 📑 **Flags for further research (verify before citing):** - Bill Johnson's "Jesus as man" claim: page reference in *When Heaven Invades Earth* - Codex Alexandrinus reading at LXX Deut 6:13 - Specific Isa–Iblis sayings in Khalidi, *The Muslim Jesus* - Pivec's published critique of TPT #### 📈 Areas for Further Expansion 🧩 **Philosophy and ethics:** Can a being who cannot sin be genuinely tempted (*posse non peccare* vs *non posse peccare*)? 🏺 **Historical-cultural archaeology:** The Temple's southeastern corner and the "pinnacle" tradition; the Mount of Temptation tradition near Jericho. 🕯️ **Liturgical applications:** - First Sunday in Lent, Year A - Hymns: "Forty Days and Forty Nights" (Smyttan, 1856); "Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days" (Hernaman, 1873); "A Mighty Fortress" (Luther) ⚖️ **Contemporary ethical issues:** Christian nationalism, religious leaders' financial and political power, spiritual bypassing of hunger. 🌿 **Gender and intersectionality:** The Inclusive Bible's "Only Begotten" trade-off. Gender-neutral language costs the Israel-as-son typology. 🌱 **Spiritual formation and leadership:** Nouwen's relevance / spectacle / power triad as a leadership audit, including for worship-team leadership. 🕊️ **Conflict resolution:** Jesus' non-escalating, non-explaining responses as a model for engaging manipulative rhetoric. 📚 **Advanced hermeneutics:** Intertextuality (Richard Hays, *Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels*); Gerhardsson's midrash analysis. 🌐 **Global receptions:** Prosperity readings of the bread test in Global South megachurches. #### 🗂️ Bible Study Order for Matthew 4:1-11 (Facilitator Guide) 👋 Welcome and roles: Facilitator, reader, scribe, timekeeper 🕯️ Opening prayer: Ask for wisdom and charity 📖 Public reading: Read Matthew 4:1-11 in NRSVue and The Inclusive Bible. Then read v. 3 aloud in MSG and TPT and compare. 🤫 Silent re-read: Note words, images, and questions 👀 Observations: Share 5W1H, themes, commands, promises 🧵 Literary scan: Name the triad, the repeated "If you are…," the three Deuteronomy citations 🕵️ Inquiry round: Work through Questions 2, 4, and 5 (identity, Scripture misuse, kingdoms) 🌏 Comparative views: Jewish Shema reading; Islamic Iblis/prostration inversion 🗣️ Contemporary systems scan: Liberation/empire reading; Nouwen's three temptations ⚠️ Discernment check: Psalm 91 decrees; Luke 4:6 imported into Matthew 🧪 Bias check: Where did we assume "doubt your identity" instead of "misuse your identity"? 🛠️ Application: Name one change and one practice for the week 🙏 Spiritual discipline lab: Lectio Divina on [[Deuteronomy 6#4]]–[[Deuteronomy 6#5]] for 5–7 minutes 🗣️ Discussion points: 🧠 What surprised you in the text today? 🧭 Where did the context redirect your first take? ⚖️ Which interpretation best fits the immediate context and canon? 🧯 What risks appear if we misread this theme? 🌱 What concrete practice follows from this passage? 🌉 For those with charismatic backgrounds: What familiar language did you recognize, such as "decree," "wilderness season," or "know who you are"? How does broader context inform it? 🤝 Closing prayer: Commit applications and intercessions 📝 After-meet follow-up: Scribe shares notes and references #### 📚 References ##### 🖇️ Translations [NRSVue](https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-Revised-Standard-Version-Updated-Edition-NRSVUE-Bible/), [TLV](https://tlvbible.com/), [CJB](https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/), [MSG](https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Message-MSG-Bible/) Also used: AMPC, NASB1995, OJB (4th ed., 2024), NMV, TPT, First Nations Version (IVP, 2023), *The Inclusive Bible* (Priests for Equality, 2009) ##### 🧰 Study Helps [Blue Letter Bible](https://blueletterbible.org/), [Anchor Yale Bible](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/series/anchor-yale-bible-commentaries/), [Bible Odyssey](https://www.bibleodyssey.org/) ##### 📘 Passage-Specific Sources - Birger Gerhardsson, *The Testing of God's Son (Matt 4:1-11 & Par): An Analysis of Early Christian Midrash* (1966) - W. D. Davies & Dale C. Allison, *Matthew 1–7* (ICC) - Ulrich Luz, *Matthew 1–7* (Hermeneia), especially reception history - Warren Carter, *Matthew and Empire* (2001); *Matthew and the Margins* (2000) - Richard B. Hays, *Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels* (2016) - Irenaeus, *Against Heresies* 5.21 - Gregory the Great, *Homilies on the Gospels* 16 - *Catechism of the Catholic Church* §§538–540 - Mishnah Berakhot 9:5; Genesis Rabbah 56:4; *Pirkei Avot* 5:3 - Fyodor Dostoevsky, *The Brothers Karamazov*, "The Grand Inquisitor" - Henri Nouwen, *In the Name of Jesus* (1989) - Tarif Khalidi, *The Muslim Jesus* (2001) - Bill Johnson, *When Heaven Invades Earth* (2003), primary source for NAR kenotic reading ### 📖 Bible Study: Joshua 24:1-26 *Passage embeds are under [[#Scripture Reading (Sermon Text)]].* #### 🙏 Phase 1: Preliminary Engagement 🕯️ Prayer for insight: _"Lord, grant wisdom and humility to understand Your Word rightly."_ 📚 Reading plan: Read Joshua 24:1-26 in NRSVue, AMP, NASB1995, CJB, OJB (TOJB2011), TPT, MSG, and NLT. Read Deuteronomy 28–29 in *The Inclusive Bible* as covenant background. 🧰 Study helps: Use [Blue Letter Bible](https://blueletterbible.org/), interlinear, lexicons, and parsing. 🏷️ Working title: **"Grace First, Then the Choice"** 🔎 Key verses: [[Joshua 24#13]], [[Joshua 24#15]], [[Joshua 24#19]], [[Joshua 24#23]] ⛪ Liturgical tie-in: Today's sermon text (NL106, Joshua Renews the Covenant), paired with [[Matthew 4#10]]. The RCL assigns vv. 1-3a, 14-25 on Proper 27 (November 8, 2026). #### 👀 Phase 2: Observational Analysis 🧭 Main themes: - God acts first. Thirteen verses of "I took… I gave… I sent… I brought" come before any demand. - Exclusive service. The verb "serve" (Hebrew *avad*) appears 14 times in vv. 14-24 (NRSVue). - Choice made in public, under witness - The gap between promising and keeping ("You cannot serve the LORD") - Covenant made binding in writing, law, and a standing stone 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Characters: - **God**: the speaker of vv. 2-13, entirely in the first person - **Joshua**: covenant mediator, Moses' successor, nearing death ([[Joshua 23#14]]) - **The people / tribes / elders, heads, judges, officers**: the covenant partner, acting as one body - **The ancestors**: Terah, Abraham, Nahor, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Moses, Aaron - **The opponents**: Egyptians, Amorites, Balak, Balaam, the seven nations of v. 11 - **The other gods**: those beyond the River, in Egypt, and of the Amorites 🧨 Events and movements: - Beyond the River → Canaan → Egypt → sea → wilderness → Transjordan → Jericho → the land - Assembly → recital → demand → response → warning → oath → witness → writing → stone 📜 Commands and promises: - **Commands:** - "Revere/fear the LORD" ([[Joshua 24#14]]) - "serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness" (v. 14) - "put away the gods" (vv. 14, 23) - "choose this day" (v. 15) - "incline your hearts" (v. 23) - **Promises:** None are stated outright. The gift of the land (v. 13) works as promise already kept. - **Warning:** "he will turn and do you harm and consume you" ([[Joshua 24#20]]) 🧩 5W1H scan: - **Who:** Joshua and all Israel's tribes - **What:** covenant renewal - **Where:** Shechem, at the oak by the sanctuary. The LXX reads Shiloh in vv. 1 and 25 (verify). - **When:** at the end of Joshua's life, after the land is distributed (chs. 13–21) - **Why:** to bind a new generation, the first born in the land, to the covenant - **How:** treaty-shaped speech, public oath, written record, and a stone witness #### ✍️ Phase 3: Literary and Contextual Analysis 🧵 Literary devices: - **Treaty form.** Mendenhall and Baltzer trace the Hittite/ANE suzerain-vassal pattern: - Preamble (v. 2a) - Historical prologue (vv. 2b-13) - Stipulations (vv. 14-15, 23) - Witnesses (vv. 22, 27) - Deposit in writing (v. 26) - Curse/sanction (v. 20) - **Divine "I."** God narrates; Joshua recedes. - **Inclusio of "serve."** "Your ancestors… served other gods" (v. 2) opens the speech, and "we will serve" (v. 24) closes it. - **Dialogue in three rounds.** The people answer, Joshua objects, and the people insist (vv. 16-24). It is liturgy, not monologue. - **Contrast.** "You did not labor… did not build… did not plant" (v. 13). The land is pure gift. 🧱 Genre and implications: - Covenant liturgy in narrative form. Von Rad placed vv. 2-13 among Israel's "little historical credos," with [[Deuteronomy 26#5]]–[[Deuteronomy 26#9]]. - Read it as liturgy that forms a people, not as a transcript of a single afternoon. 🗺️ Historical-cultural context: - **Deuteronomistic framing.** The final form likely took shape in the Deuteronomistic History, and its exile-era hearers would hear vv. 19-20 as explaining their own loss of the land. - **Shechem.** A Canaanite city with no conquest account in Joshua, which raises the question of who joined Israel there. Noth's tribal-league (amphictyony) theory built on this chapter and is now largely abandoned. - **Archaeology.** The evidence does not support a sweeping 13th-century conquest. Most scholars read the conquest accounts as later theological memory. 🔗 Canonical connections: - **Shechem threads:** - Abram's altar at the oak of Moreh ([[Genesis 12#6]], [[Genesis 12#7]]) - Jacob's "put away the foreign gods" and burial of them under the oak ([[Genesis 35#2]], [[Genesis 35#4]]). Same phrase as [[Joshua 24#23]]. - Covenant ceremony commanded for the Ebal/Gerizim area near Shechem ([[Deuteronomy 27#12]]; [[Joshua 8#30]]–[[Joshua 8#35]]) - Abimelech crowned by "the oak of the pillar at Shechem" ([[Judges 9#6]]) - **Terah's gods:** [[Genesis 11#31]]; Jacob's household idols ([[Genesis 31#19]]) - **Choice language:** [[Deuteronomy 30#19]]; [[1 Kings 18#21]]; [[Ruth 1#16]] - **Can't vs. will:** [[Deuteronomy 29#4]]; [[Deuteronomy 30#6]]; [[Jeremiah 31#33]]; [[Ezekiel 36#26]] - **Covenant sanctions:** [[Deuteronomy 28#15]], [[Deuteronomy 28#47]] - **Standing stones:** forbidden as cult pillars in [[Deuteronomy 16#22]]; a memorial cairn in [[Joshua 4#20]]–[[Joshua 4#24]]; Samuel's Ebenezer in [[1 Samuel 7#12]] - **The aftermath:** a generation "who did not know the LORD" ([[Judges 2#10]]) - **New Testament:** - Jesus' "serve only him" ([[Matthew 4#10]]) - Stephen's recital ([[Acts 7#2]]–[[Acts 7#53]]) - Paul's synagogue recital ([[Acts 13#16]]–[[Acts 13#41]]) - Burial at Shechem ([[Acts 7#16]]) - The Samaritan woman at Sychar near Shechem, on where to worship ([[John 4#5]], [[John 4#20]]) 🗣️ Rhetoric and tone: - Joshua's tone is urgent and unsentimental. He refuses the easy yes, the opposite of an altar call. - The people's answers grow shorter and firmer: a full recital (vv. 16-18), then "No, we will serve" (v. 21), then "We are witnesses" (v. 22). ##### 🔤 Translation Comparison (key renderings) | Verse | Translation | Rendering | Interpretive effect | |---|---|---|---| | 2 | NRSVue / NASB / AMP / CJB / OJB | "served other gods" | Keeps *avad*, which opens the chapter's key-word chain. | | 2 | TPT / MSG | "worshiped other gods" | **Breaks the "serve" chain** at its first link. Service (labor, loyalty, allegiance) narrows to worship. | | 2 | CJB / AMP vs TPT / MSG / NLT | "[Euphrates]" bracketed vs written into the text | Brackets mark the gloss honestly; the others hide that "the River" is the Hebrew. | | 12 | NRSVue | "swarms of hornets" | Hebrew *tsir'ah* is uncertain (hornet? panic? plague?). | | 12 | AMP / NLT | "hornet [that is, the terror of you]" / "terror" | Interprets the image as panic. NLT removes the insect entirely. | | 12 | TPT / MSG | "Your weapons and strength had nothing to do with it!" / "You didn't have to… raise a finger" | Amplifies "not by your sword or bow." Reads well, but adds emphasis absent from the Hebrew. | | 14 | NRSVue | "revere" | Softens *yir'ah* (fear) toward awe. | | 14 | OJB | "batamim (completely) and in emes" | Shows that *tamim* means wholeness or integrity, not only "sincerity." | | 14 | TPT | "worship YAHWEH with holy awe and serve him in authentic love and loyalty" | Expands seven Hebrew words into a devotional sentence. "Love" is not in the text. | | 15 | AMP / OJB | "if it seems evil" / "rah" | Literal: Hebrew *ra'*, "evil in your eyes." | | 15 | NASB / CJB / MSG / TPT | "disagreeable" / "bad" / "bad thing" / "wrong" | Shift from moral judgment toward preference. | | 15 | NRSVue / NLT | "unwilling" / "if you refuse" | Turns the clause into a statement about will, which sets up v. 19. | | 15 | NASB / AMP vs NRSVue / CJB vs NLT / MSG / TPT vs OJB | "house" vs "household" vs "family" vs "bais" | "House" (*bayit*) = an extended household with servants and dependents. "Family" narrows it to the modern nuclear unit, **the hinge for headship readings.** | | 15 | TPT | "I and my family, we will give our lives to worship and serve" | Adds a total-surrender vow not in the text. | | 19 | NRSVue / AMP / CJB | "You cannot serve the LORD" | Literal and blunt. | | 19 | NASB / NLT / OJB / MSG | "will not be able" / "are not able" / "can't do it" | Capacity language. Same force. | | 19 | TPT | "Don't be so quick to say, 'We will worship and serve YAHWEH'" | **Removes the impossibility statement entirely.** It turns a theological crisis into advice about haste and erases the text's sharpest line. | | 19 | OJB | "Elohim Kedoshim… El Kanno" | Preserves the Hebrew plural adjective (*qedoshim*) with *elohim*, an oddity most English hides. | | 19 | TPT | "tolerate no rivals" / "will not forgive the sin of unfaithfulness" | Narrows "transgressions and sins" to one sin. | | 20 | AMP / OJB | "strange gods" / "elohei nekhar" | *Nekhar* = foreign, unfamiliar. Same phrase as Gen 35:2. | | 22 | NLT | "You are a witness to your own decision" | **Individualizes** a plural, communal oath ("you [pl.] are witnesses against yourselves"). | | 23 | NRSVue / NASB / AMP | "incline your hearts" | Literal *hatu levavkhem*: bend the heart. | | 23 | CJB / NLT / TPT / MSG | "turn" / "turn" / "yield… fully" / "Say an unqualified Yes" | MSG makes it verbal assent, the opposite of the slow bending the verb suggests. | | 23 | NLT | "destroy the idols" | Hardens "put away" (*hasiru*) into destruction. | | 24 | NASB / CJB / TPT / NLT | "obey His voice" / "pay attention to what he says" / "listen to his voice" / "obey him alone" | *Shama' beqolo*: hear-and-heed, the Shema's verb. | | 26 | CJB / OJB / NLT / TPT / MSG | "Torah of God" / "Sefer Torah Elohim" / "God's Instructions" / "divine instruction" / "The Revelation of God" | MSG's "Revelation" imports a later doctrinal category. | | 26 | NLT | "terebinth tree beside the Tabernacle" | **Historical problem.** The tabernacle stood at Shiloh ([[Joshua 18#1]]), not Shechem. | | 26 | TPT | "at the tent pole near the holy place" | **The oak disappears**, and with it the Genesis 12/35 and Judges 9 links. | | all | NRSVue/NASB/AMP/NLT · CJB · OJB · TPT · MSG | LORD · Adonai · HASHEM · YAHWEH · GOD | Each encodes a theology of the divine name. TPT's vocalized "YAHWEH" is avoided in Jewish practice. | 🧭 Translation notes for discernment: - **TPT** (Passion & Fire Ministries / Brian Simmons; BibleGateway "In Review") does three things here: - Converts "serve" to "worship" (v. 2) - Adds love language (v. 14) - **Rewrites v. 19 so it no longer says the people cannot serve.** This is the most consequential translation change in the passage. - **NLT and MSG** read for flow, but NLT individualizes v. 22 and puts the Tabernacle in the wrong city in v. 26. - ⚠️ **Inclusive Bible gap:** The screenshots show **Deuteronomy 28:29–29:4**, not Joshua 24. Its Joshua 24 renderings are not compared here. The Deuteronomy pages still help: - "you did not **serve** YHWH, your God, rejoicing gladly" ([[Deuteronomy 28#47]]) names the failure Joshua fears. - "YHWH has not given you the hearts to understand" ([[Deuteronomy 29#4]]) is the Torah's own version of "You cannot serve." - Its consistent "YHWH," "ruler" for king (28:36), and "daughters and sons" (28:32) show its egalitarian method. ##### 🔗 Literary Connections by Verse 🔁 Repetition: "serve" (vv. 2, 14-24); "beyond the River" (vv. 2, 3, 14, 15); "I gave / I brought / I sent" (vv. 3-13) ➿ Continuity: v. 2 → v. 14. The ancestors' gods are still in play two generations later. ⚖️ Contrast: v. 13 vs v. 15. Land given without labor vs a service that must be chosen. 🪞 Comparison: v. 23 vs [[Genesis 35#2]]. Jacob's household at the same place, the same command. ➡️ Cause → Effect: vv. 2-13 → v. 14. "Now, therefore" grounds the demand in the gift. ↩️ Effect → Cause: v. 19 → v. 20. Impossibility explained by God's holiness and jealousy. 🎯 Means → End: v. 26. Writing and the stone make the oath public and durable. 🧠 Logical conclusion: v. 24. "The LORD our God we will serve, and him we will obey." 🌳 General → Particular: v. 14 "put away the gods" → v. 23 "the foreign gods that are among you." The abstract becomes concrete. 🌿 Particular → General: v. 15 Joshua's household → v. 18 "we also will serve." ⛰️ Climax: vv. 19-22, "You cannot" / "No, we will" / "We are witnesses." 🪜 Preparation/Introduction: v. 1 💡 Explanation/Illustration: v. 12, "not by your sword or by your bow." ❓ Interrogation/Questions: v. 15 implies a question: which gods? #### 🕵️ Phase 4: Interpretive Inquiry 🧠 Guardrails: Ask and answer within textual evidence. Note limits clearly. Readings are grouped by **interpretive system**, not individual voice. ⚠️ marks systems documented for discernment, not endorsement. --- ##### ❓ Question 1: Why does the speech spend 13 verses on God's acts before asking anything? 📌 Textual context: vv. 2-13 are in God's first person. The demand starts with "Now, therefore" (*ve'attah*, v. 14). Verse 13 ends the recital with gift language: "a land on which you had not labored." ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical | The treaty form puts the historical prologue first because the suzerain's past benefits ground the vassal's obligation (Mendenhall). Von Rad's "credo" reading makes vv. 2-13 Israel's oldest confession. | | 📜 Reformed / Mercersburg | Grace precedes law: the indicative before the imperative. The Heidelberg Catechism's order (misery, deliverance, gratitude) puts obedience in the third part, as thanks. | | 📜 Lutheran | Gospel (what God has done) before law. The recital is proclamation, not background. | | ✝️ Catholic / ☦️ Orthodox | *Anamnesis*: liturgical remembering that makes past saving acts present. The Eucharistic prayer follows the same shape (recital, then offering). | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Covenant as relationship grounded in God's faithfulness, not a contract earned. It fits the UCC's covenantal polity. | | ✡️ Rabbinic | Parallel to the Decalogue's preface: "I am the LORD your God who brought you out" ([[Exodus 20#2]]) before any command. The Passover Haggadah's recital follows the same logic. | | 📖 Evangelical | Usually skipped to reach v. 15. The recital is read as background, and the application starts at the choice. | | ⚠️ NAR / Apostolic | Recasts vv. 8-13 as a model for **"possessing the land."** The gift becomes a mandate to conquer territory: cities, spheres, nations. | | ⚠️ Prosperity / Word of Faith | v. 13 ("cities you did not build, vineyards you did not plant") becomes a promise of **wealth transfer** to believers. | 🔎 Discernment note: The text makes gift the ground of obligation. NAR and prosperity readings flip it, so the gift becomes something believers seize or decree. Verse 12, "not by your sword or by your bow," stands against both. --- ##### ❓ Question 2: What does "as for me and my household" authorize? 📌 Textual context: *Bayit* = an ancestral household including dependents, servants, and resident outsiders. Joshua speaks as an elder and patriarch near death. The people then commit as a whole nation (v. 18), not household by household. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical | An Iron Age kinship term. The *bet 'av* (father's house) was the basic economic and religious unit, and household gods were common ([[Genesis 31#19]]). Joshua names his own unit first as an example. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Personal witness and leadership by example. It is not a mandate about family authority structures. Households today include chosen family. | | 👩🏾 Feminist / Womanist | Asks who in the *bayit* was not consulted: women, enslaved people, children. Covenant made "for" others by a male head is a pattern to name, not copy. | | 📖 Evangelical | The most popular home-décor verse in American Christianity. Applied to family devotions and parental spiritual leadership. | | 📖 Complementarian | Proof of male headship: the husband decides the household's faith. | | ✡️ Rabbinic / Jewish | Read alongside the household obligation to teach children ([[Deuteronomy 6#7]]). Covenant passes through families but binds each generation anew. | | ⚠️ NAR / Apostolic | "Household" extends to **spiritual families** under an apostle's covering. Loyalty to the "house" (church, network) is tied to blessing. | | ⚠️ Patriarchy / Quiverfull | The father as household priest, whose decision binds wife and children (Vision Forum lineage). | | ⚠️ Christian nationalism | "My house" scales up to "our nation": Joshua as model leader choosing a national religion. | 🔎 Discernment note: The text moves from Joshua's household (v. 15) to the whole people's free answer (vv. 16-24), so v. 15 is example, not authority structure. Flag the "house → family → headship" slide as **lateral transfer risk**. --- ##### ❓ Question 3: "You cannot serve the LORD" — then why ask them to choose? 📌 Textual context: [[Joshua 24#19]] contradicts Joshua's own call in v. 15. Its reason is God's character (holy, jealous, unforgiving of rebellion), not human weakness alone. The people insist anyway (v. 21). Judges 2:10-13 shows the outcome. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 📜 Reformed / Mercersburg | The law exposes inability. Covenant faithfulness finally depends on God (compare Heidelberg Catechism Q1: "not my own, but belong"). **Nevin's *The Anxious Bench* (1843)** criticized revivalism that made salvation hinge on a moment of decision; v. 19 is Joshua's own anti-anxious-bench move. | | 🔥 Wesleyan / Methodist | Prevenient grace makes real choice possible. v. 19 warns against presumption, and v. 15 still calls for a response. | | 📜 Lutheran | Law-gospel tension at its sharpest. Promising cannot secure the promise. | | ✝️ Catholic / ☦️ Orthodox | Human freedom cooperating with grace (synergy). The warning protects against treating covenant as a human achievement. | | ✡️ Rabbinic / Jewish | Often read as a caution against a rash vow: do not promise lightly what you cannot keep (compare [[Ecclesiastes 5#4]], [[Ecclesiastes 5#5]]). Covenant is renewed precisely because it gets broken. | | 🔬 Critical-historical | A Deuteronomistic voice explaining exile in advance. Hearers in Babylon know Joshua was right. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | An honest liturgy: it names human limits and still invites commitment. Commitment rests on God's faithfulness, not ours. | | 📖 Evangelical (revivalist) | Usually omitted. Decision theology (Finney's "new measures," the altar call) rests on v. 15 alone. | | ⚠️ NAR / Word of Faith | v. 19 contradicts the empowerment message, so it is skipped or softened. **TPT's rewrite of v. 19 removes the problem altogether.** | 🔎 Discernment note: Preaching v. 15 without v. 19 turns covenant into willpower and sets people up for shame when they fail. The text itself holds the tension, which is also the point of today's Matthew pairing: the one who does "serve only him" (Matt 4:10) is the Son, not Israel's vow. --- ##### ❓ Question 4: What do we do with the conquest material in vv. 8, 11-13? 📌 Textual context: God "destroyed them before you" (v. 8) and "handed them over" (v. 11). The seven nations are listed. v. 12 says the victory came "not by your sword." v. 13 says the land, cities, and vineyards came from others. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical / archaeological | The record does not support a sweeping conquest. Settlement was gradual, and many "Israelites" were likely Canaanites themselves. The text is later theological memory, shaped by Assyrian-era war rhetoric. | | 🪶 Indigenous / postcolonial | Robert Allen Warrior, "Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians" (1989): Native readers recognize themselves as the Canaanites. The text was used to justify the Doctrine of Discovery. The UCC General Synod repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery (2013; verify). | | ✊ Liberation | Ambivalent. The Exodus frees slaves, but the conquest takes land, so liberation readers must choose which strand governs. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Read with lament and honesty. v. 12 ("not by your sword") and v. 13 (land as gift) undercut triumphalism. | | 📜 Reformed | God's sovereign gift of land and judgment on Canaanite sin ([[Genesis 15#16]]). Particular to that moment in redemptive history, not repeatable. | | 📖 Evangelical | Divine command theory: God's right to judge. Many now stress hyperbolic war rhetoric (Copan, Flannagan). | | ✡️ Jewish | Rabbinic tradition limits and reinterprets the *herem* (ban). The Sages ruled the seven nations no longer identifiable (m. Yadayim 4:4 on Ammonites; verify scope). | | ⚠️ NAR / Dominionist | **"Possess the land"** as present mandate. "Joshua generation" rhetoric casts believers as conquerors of cities and culture's "mountains." | | ⚠️ Christian nationalism | Conquest typology for the nation, such as the 2020 "Jericho March" rallies. Opponents become Canaanites to drive out. | | ⚠️ Christian Zionism | Land promises applied directly to modern political borders. | 🔎 Discernment note: The text's own correctives are "not by your sword" (v. 12) and the land as unearned gift (v. 13). Any reading that equips believers to take something from someone else inverts both. Flag the **typological transfer** from ancient Canaan to modern opponents. --- ##### ❓ Question 5: Why are foreign gods still "among you" after the people say yes? 📌 Textual context: v. 23 assumes physical gods still in their possession after vv. 16-18. Verse 2 traces them back to Terah. Hebrew *elohei hanekhar* echoes Jacob at the same spot ([[Genesis 35#2]]–[[Genesis 35#4]]). ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical | Real syncretism: household figurines are common finds in Israelite homes. The chapter may preserve a ceremony where Canaanite or other groups joined Israel's YHWH covenant at Shechem. | | ✡️ Rabbinic / Midrash | Terah sold idols, and young Abraham smashed them (Genesis Rabbah 38:13). Israel's story begins with leaving the family's gods. | | ☪️ Islamic | Ibrahim confronts his father Azar's idols ([6:74](https://quran.com/6/74)) and breaks the idols ([21:51-70](https://quran.com/21/51-70)). Strong convergence on leaving inherited gods. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Modern idols: wealth, power, nation, security (the Prayer of Confession's "idols of worldly power and wealth"). | | 📜 Reformed | Calvin: the human heart is a perpetual idol factory (*Institutes* 1.11.8). Putting away gods is ongoing repentance. | | 🧘 Contemplative | Attachments that must be released daily. "Incline your hearts" is a slow bending, not a single act. | | 📖 Evangelical | Personal idols to confess and renounce. | | ⚠️ NAR / Deliverance ministry | **"Gods your ancestors served" (vv. 2, 14-15) → generational curses** that must be broken through renunciation prayers, and Deut 28 curses applied to individual believers. Objects and ancestry become entry points for demons, spawning spiritual mapping and "breaking ancestral covenants." | 🔎 Discernment note: The text calls for **putting away** what is held, not for breaking inherited curses. Generational-curse teaching makes ancestry a spiritual threat and keeps people dependent on deliverance ministers. Note that [[Ezekiel 18#20]] directly rejects inherited guilt. --- ##### ❓ Question 6: What is the stone doing, and how does Joshua's covenant pair with Matthew 4? 📌 Textual context: Joshua writes in "the book of the law of God" and sets a large stone under the oak (v. 26). In v. 27, just past today's reading, the stone "has heard" and will testify. [[Deuteronomy 16#22]] forbids cult pillars (*matsevah*), and v. 26 uses "great stone" (*even gedolah*), not *matsevah*. ###### 🧭 How the Systems Read It | System | Reading | |---|---| | 🔬 Critical-historical | ANE treaties invoked witnesses (often gods, mountains, heaven and earth), and here a stone stands in. The oak and stone at Shechem may preserve an older sacred site ([[Judges 9#6]]). | | ✡️ Rabbinic | b. Bava Batra 15a credits Joshua with writing his book (and the Torah's last eight verses). v. 26 is part of the Torah's growth. | | 📜 Reformed / UCC heritage | Covenant made visible: the sacraments as signs and seals. Covenant renewal in every generation fits the UCC's own covenantal identity. | | ✝️ Catholic / ☦️ Orthodox | Material witness to the holy: precursor to relics, altars, and consecrated stones. | | 🏛️ Mainline / UCC | Memory practices: what does a community set up to remember its promises? | | 📖 Evangelical | "Stones of remembrance" journaling (from Josh 4). | | ⚠️ NAR / Bethel-type | "Stones of remembrance" as testimony culture: rehearsing past miracles to "release" new ones. Memory becomes a lever for producing breakthrough. | 🔗 **Pairing with [[Matthew 4#1]]–[[Matthew 4#11]]:** - Joshua asks Israel to "serve" the LORD alone. Jesus answers Satan with "serve only him" ([[Matthew 4#10]], citing [[Deuteronomy 6#13]]). - Satan offers "all the kingdoms" (Matt 4:8). Joshua recounts land given, not taken (Josh 24:12-13). - Israel promises and fails (Josh 24:19; Judg 2:10). Jesus is tested and stays faithful. - **Caution:** frame Jesus as the *faithful Israelite* keeping Israel's own Torah, not as replacing a failed Israel (supersessionism). 🔎 Discernment note: The stone works as accountability, a witness *against* the people (v. 27), not as a charm that calls up blessing. --- #### 🧮 Central Meaning and Implications 🎯 Author's main point: The God who acted first, from Terah to the land, asks a people to put away every other loyalty and serve the LORD alone. Joshua refuses a cheap yes. He names their inability, takes their oath anyway, and binds it with witness, law, writing, and stone. Covenant is renewed in every generation because every generation breaks it. 👂 Implications for original hearers: - Settled tribes and outsiders joining at Shechem: whose god will this people serve? - Exile-era readers: you were warned, and covenant can still be renewed (compare Deut 30). 🏙️ Implications for today: - **Personal:** Commitment rests on God's prior faithfulness, not on willpower. - **Congregational:** Covenant is public, communal, and renewable, which describes the UCC itself. - **Civic:** "Not by your sword" refuses every conquest typology aimed at neighbors. #### 🧩 What These Groups Think (Summary) ✡️ **Jewish traditions:** The recital before command mirrors the Decalogue and the Haggadah. The text cautions against rash vows. Terah's idols explain why Abraham's story begins with leaving. Covenant passes through generations and is renewed by each. ✝️ **Christian traditions:** Agree that grace precedes obligation. They divide on v. 19: - **Reformed / Mercersburg:** inability, dependence on God - **Wesleyan:** prevenient grace enables choice - **Catholic / Orthodox:** synergy, freedom cooperating with grace - **Revivalist:** v. 15 alone, choice as the decisive act They also divide on conquest: lament, divine judgment, or hyperbole. ☪️ **Islamic and other faiths:** Ibrahim's break with Azar's idols parallels v. 2. Qur'an [5:20-26](https://quran.com/5/20-26) tells of entering the holy land: two God-fearing men (traditionally Yusha' and Caleb) urge entry, the people refuse, and forty years of wandering follow. *Tawhid* converges with "serve only the LORD." 🗣️ **Contemporary mainstream systems:** Covenant as relationship, not contract. Postcolonial readers name the conquest's afterlife and ask who the Canaanites are today. ⚠️ **Problematic systems:** - **NAR / Dominionism:** "possess the land" - **Prosperity:** v. 13 as wealth transfer - **Deliverance ministry:** generational curses - **Patriarchy movements:** v. 15 as male household authority - **Christian nationalism:** conquest typology All five turn a gift-and-covenant text into a mandate to take, control, or fear. #### 🧪 Application Plan 🧘 Meditate on: Which "gods my ancestors served," whether inherited loyalties, fears, or systems, am I still carrying (v. 23)? What has God given me that I did not build (v. 13)? 🎯 Goal: {{Specific practice goal with metric}} 🗓️ Change plan: By God's help I will {{specific action}} 📍 Logistics: {{When, where, how, with whom}} 🤝 Accountability: {{Name}} will support follow-through 🙏 Promises claimed: [[Joshua 24#13]], [[Deuteronomy 30#6]], [[Jeremiah 31#33]] #### 🛠️ Spiritual Disciplines (complete) 🚪 Abstinence: Solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, sacrifice 🎁 Engagement: Study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, submission, guidance, peacemaking 🕯️ Inward: Meditation, Lectio Divina 🏠 Outward: Simplicity, hospitality 📖 Hearing: Scripture memorization 🕊️ Incarnational: Labyrinth walking, pilgrimage, Visio Divina 🎯 Passage-specific fit: - **Celebration / remembering:** write your own vv. 2-13 recital, God's "I gave… I brought" in your life. - **Confession:** name what to "put away" (v. 23). - **Covenant renewal:** the UCC Statement of Faith or your baptismal promises, read aloud with others as witnesses (v. 22). #### 🎨 Visio Divina Prompt 🖌️ Image-prayer seed: A broad oak at the edge of a hill town. A rough, unworked stone at its foot. A crowd of mixed households facing an old man with an open scroll. On the ground, a small pile of set-aside clay figurines. Vineyards and olive groves behind, planted by other hands. 🧷 DALL·E brief: "Create sacred art reflecting covenant renewal, gift, and honest commitment from Joshua 24, in muted earth-tone gouache with gold-leaf accents, centering an oak, a standing stone, and a gathered people." #### 🧷 Phase 6: Concluding Reflection 🕯️ Closing prayer: _"Faithful God, you took Abraham from beyond the River and gave us what we did not build. We cannot keep our promises by our own strength, yet we choose you again today. Bend our hearts toward you. Make us witnesses to one another, and keep your covenant when we fail to keep ours. Amen."_ #### 🧠 Logical Fallacy and Bias Audit 🗓️ **Presentism:** Reading *bayit* as a modern nuclear family; reading "the land" as a modern state or culture. 🎯 **Confirmation bias:** Revivalist traditions see a decision verse; patriarchal traditions see headship. 🔄 **Eisegesis vs exegesis:** "Possess the land" as a mandate to take culture's "mountains." 🧱 **Over-literalism:** Treating the conquest summary as an eyewitness military record. 🌈 **Over-allegorization:** The hornet as Holy Spirit; the stone as Christ; each nation as a specific demon. 🍒 **Cherry picking / contextomy:** **v. 15 without v. 19.** It is the most common misuse of this chapter, and TPT's rendering builds it into the translation. 📅 **Vaticinium ex eventu:** The Deuteronomistic warning (v. 20) written with knowledge of exile, then read as simple prediction. ⚖️ **False equivalence:** Equating Israel's Iron Age land grant with modern nations, churches, or ministries. 🧬 **Genetic fallacy:** Dismissing the chapter because the conquest lacks archaeological support, or because the text was misused for colonization. 🎯 **Texas sharpshooter:** Fitting Hittite treaty structure so neatly that every verse gets assigned a slot. 🧗 **Over-speculation:** Locating the exact oak or stone; reconstructing the "real" Shechem ceremony in detail. ⚔️ **False dichotomy:** Grace *or* choice. The text holds both (vv. 13, 15, 19). ⌛ **Anachronism:** Reading "the Tabernacle" (NLT) or "Revelation" (MSG) into v. 26; reading Finney-style decision theology into v. 15. 🛷 **Slippery slope:** "If you keep any 'idol,' generational curses will follow your children." 🐟 **Red herring:** Debating Shechem vs Shiloh (the LXX reading) and missing the covenant's demands. 🧲 **Motivated reasoning:** Softening v. 19 to preserve a theology of human empowerment. 🧮 **Base-rate neglect:** Generalizing from one dramatic covenant ceremony to "every believer must have a Shechem moment." ➕ **Appeal to tradition:** "As for me and my house" signage taken as proof of family authority structure. ➕ **Composition fallacy:** Joshua's household decision (v. 15) treated as binding on its individual members. ➕ **Is-ought fallacy:** "God gave Israel others' land" → "God gives us others' wealth, cities, or institutions." #### 🧨 How Fallacies Distort Interpretation and Application 🧩 **Theological costs:** - Covenant becomes a contract earned by decision - Grace becomes background - God becomes a conquering mascot 🤝 **Communal costs:** - Household authority used to override women's and children's consciences - Generational-curse fear - Shame when promises fail - Neighbors cast as Canaanites 🛡️ **Safeguards:** - Read vv. 2-13 aloud before v. 15 - Never preach v. 15 without v. 19 - Keep "not by your sword" (v. 12) in view - Read with Indigenous and Jewish interpreters #### 🌍 Implications and Future Research 🧪 **Balanced hermeneutics:** LXX vs MT on Shiloh/Shechem (vv. 1, 25) and the LXX's extra ending after 24:33; Deuteronomistic redaction; treaty-form debate (Mendenhall/Baltzer vs McCarthy). 🔬 **Interdisciplinary work:** - Archaeology of Shechem (Tell Balata) and early Israel's emergence - Sociology of covenant groups - Psychology of public commitment and consistency 🧭 **Reception history:** - Puritan covenant theology - New England town covenants (UCC Congregational roots) - Doctrine of Discovery - Revivalism (Finney vs Nevin) - Home-décor piety 🧱 **Non-Western voices:** - Robert Allen Warrior - Palestinian Christian readings (Naim Ateek; Mitri Raheb) - First Nations Version 📑 **Flags for further research (verify before citing):** - UCC General Synod 2013 Doctrine of Discovery resolution - LXX "Shiloh" in vv. 1, 25 - m. Yadayim 4:4 scope - Specific NAR "Joshua generation" sources - Inclusive Bible rendering of Joshua 24, not yet seen #### 📈 Areas for Further Expansion 🧩 **Philosophy and ethics:** Can a promise one cannot keep still be made in good faith? Covenant vs contract (Walter Brueggemann; Michael Sandel's civic covenant). 🏺 **Historical-cultural archaeology:** Shechem's temple and standing stone; Iron I household cult objects. 🕯️ **Liturgical applications:** - Covenant renewal services (Wesley's Covenant Prayer, a Methodist tradition) - Reaffirmation of baptism - UCC church covenants ⚖️ **Contemporary ethical issues:** Land, displacement, and Indigenous sovereignty; Christian nationalism's conquest rhetoric. 🌿 **Gender and intersectionality:** Who is in the *bayit*, and who consents for whom? 🌱 **Spiritual formation and leadership:** Joshua as a leader who refuses easy enthusiasm. Applies to worship-team leadership. 🕊️ **Conflict resolution:** Covenant as a structure for accountability without coercion. 📚 **Advanced hermeneutics:** Intertextuality with Gen 12, 35 and Judg 9 (the Shechem cycle); von Rad's credo thesis today. 🌐 **Global receptions:** Afrikaner covenant theology (the 1838 Day of the Vow) as a warning case; South Korean and African "possess the land" prosperity preaching. #### 🗂️ Bible Study Order for Joshua 24:1-26 (Facilitator Guide) 👋 Welcome and roles: Facilitator, reader, scribe, timekeeper 🕯️ Opening prayer: Ask for wisdom and charity 📖 Public reading: Read Joshua 24:1-26 in NRSVue. Then read v. 19 aloud in NRSVue, MSG, and TPT and compare. 🤫 Silent re-read: Count every "serve," note every "I" spoken by God 👀 Observations: Share 5W1H, themes, commands, promises 🧵 Literary scan: Name the treaty shape, the recital, and the three-round dialogue 🕵️ Inquiry round: Work through Questions 1, 2, and 3 (grace first, household, "you cannot") 🌏 Comparative views: Jewish recital before command; Ibrahim and Azar's idols 🗣️ Contemporary systems scan: Warrior's "Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians"; Nevin vs Finney ⚠️ Discernment check: "Possess the land," generational curses, household headship 🧪 Bias check: Did we hear v. 15 louder than v. 19? 🛠️ Application: Name one thing to "put away" and one gift you did not build 🙏 Spiritual discipline lab: Write a personal vv. 2-13 recital for 5–7 minutes 🗣️ Discussion points: 🧠 What surprised you in the text today? 🧭 Where did the context redirect your first take? ⚖️ Which interpretation best fits the immediate context and canon? 🧯 What risks appear if we misread this theme? 🌱 What concrete practice follows from this passage? 🌉 For those with charismatic backgrounds: What familiar language did you recognize, such as "possess the land," "Joshua generation," or "break generational curses"? How does broader context inform it? 🤝 Closing prayer: Commit applications and intercessions 📝 After-meet follow-up: Scribe shares notes and references #### 📚 References ##### 🖇️ Translations NRSVue, AMP, NASB1995, CJB, OJB (TOJB2011, 4th ed. rev. 2024), TPT, MSG, NLT; *The Inclusive Bible* (Priests for Equality, 2009), Deuteronomy 28–29 only ##### 📘 Passage-Specific Sources - George E. Mendenhall, "Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition," *Biblical Archaeologist* 17 (1954) - Klaus Baltzer, *The Covenant Formulary* (1971) - Gerhard von Rad, "The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch" (1938) - Richard D. Nelson, *Joshua* (Old Testament Library, 1997) - Jerome F. D. Creach, *Joshua* (Interpretation, 2003) - Robert Allen Warrior, "Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians," *Christianity and Crisis* 49 (1989) - John W. Nevin, *The Anxious Bench* (1843) - Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Q1 - John Calvin, *Institutes* 1.11.8 - Genesis Rabbah 38:13; b. Bava Batra 14b–15a - Qur'an 5:20-26; 6:74; 21:51-70 - Paul Copan & Matthew Flannagan, *Did God Really Command Genocide?* (2014) - Working Preacher, Narrative Lectionary commentary on Joshua 24:1-15 [16-26] ### Sermon **Preacher:** Rev. Caroline E. Saxton **Title:** *(not stated on tape; bulletin theme: Joshua Renews the Covenant)* **Recording / transcript:** Auto-transcript, 2026-10-18 (sermon and children's message as separate files) > [!warning] Verify on tape before circulating > - **Transcript ends mid-sentence** ("Choosing a God."). The close, the benediction, and possibly the final call to action are missing. Scores below for Structure, Calls to Action, and Style Effectiveness are **provisional**. > - **Reading translation** looks like the **CEB** ("My family and I will serve the LORD," "Focus your hearts," "God's Instruction scroll"). Confirm. > - **"I gave Mount Sinai to Esau"** (v. 4): the text says **Seir**. Either a transcription error or a misreading. > - **"As Arthur Wright reads"**: name unverified. Possibly a garbled commentator name. > - **"Thank you, Rachel Pelles"**: likely a garbled "Thank you, Rachel…" (Rachel Held Evans). > - **Matthew 4:1-11** was read in the service, but the sermon transcript never mentions it. #### Sermon Notes ##### Introduction - Opens with "Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us" (Daniel Iverson, 1926) and [[Psalm 19#14]] as a prayer for illumination. - Hook: **life verses** on T-shirts, mugs, and car magnets. Pastor Caroline's own shirt reads "Justice: It's a Jesus thing" with [[Matthew 25#31]]–[[Matthew 25#46]]. - The Upper Room class has been posting members' favorite verses on a flip chart. Joshua 24:15 is one of those verses for many. - Pivot: "Yet there is also more at work" explains the **content warning** read before the scripture. ##### Main Points ###### Point 1: Faithfulness means confronting the violence in the text. - "We must be willing to confront the violence that is in the text and to consider its implications." - Doctrine of Discovery: papal bulls granting Christian empires a "right" to conquer lands of "pagans, Saracens, and non-Christians." Those peoples were demonized and dehumanized, and "we continue to live with the consequences." - Sources: Soong-Chan Rah and Mark Charles, *Unsettling Truths* (2019); Rah at the NETwork Ministries banquet two years ago; Pastor Caroline's first CCDA conference (Richmond, October 7–10, 2026). - "We cannot ignore it… cannot gloss over it… We must read it. We must interrogate it." ###### Point 2: The text makes God the agent of conquest and minimizes human responsibility. - Joshua and Judges are "conquest narratives." Joshua "seems to glorify violence in the name of religion." - "Worse still, this passage imagines that God is the one who commits these acts of violence and genocide." - "Human agency is minimized… Yet we know that God does not work alone. God works through us. They and we are not let off the hook." - "This isn't as simple as saying, 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'" - "The God who's described in this passage is not a God that I wish to follow." ###### Point 3: Descriptive, not prescriptive. Choose the God of blessing. - The counter-witness: God calls Abraham "to be a blessing" ([[Genesis 12#2]], [[Genesis 12#3]]), and "Blessed are the peacemakers" ([[Matthew 5#9]]). - "The Bible is an inspired library, not a manual" (credited to Rachel Held Evans). - "The violence… may be descriptive, but it does not have to be prescriptive." - "Recognize violence for the choice that it is, and choose differently." - "May we choose to serve a God who liberates and loves the world… a path of healing rather than violence… [not] afraid to confess and confront the pain of the past." ##### Illustrations/Stories - Life-verse merchandise (T-shirts, dish towels, mugs, magnets) - Pastor Caroline's "Justice: It's a Jesus thing" T-shirt (Matthew 25) - Upper Room class flip chart of favorite verses - NETwork Ministries banquet with Soong-Chan Rah (two years ago) - CCDA 2026 workshop, "The Doctrine of Discovery and the Christian Imagination," with Mark Charles as primary speaker - Missing Rachel Held Evans: "her willingness to sit with the complexities and seeming contradictions of scripture" ##### Scripture Connections - **Read:** [[Joshua 24#1]]–[[Joshua 24#26]] (likely CEB), with content warning - **Cited:** - [[Joshua 24#15]] (NRSVue, quoted separately) - [[Matthew 25#31]]–[[Matthew 25#46]] - [[Genesis 12#2]]–[[Genesis 12#3]] (Abraham as blessing) - [[Matthew 5#9]] - [[Psalm 19#14]] - **Recalled:** the Reed Sea crossing (previous NL reading); Moses' death and Joshua's succession - **Not engaged (in transcript):** - [[Joshua 24#12]] "not by your sword" - [[Joshua 24#19]] "You can't serve the LORD" - [[Joshua 24#23]] "put aside the foreign gods" - [[Matthew 4#10]] "serve only him" ##### Key Quotes - "We must choose carefully whom we serve." *(refrain, three times)* - "We need a fuller imagination—one that tells new stories, because the stories we tell shape the possibilities we can imagine." - "Does this text really affirm something true about God's heart and God's activity in the world?" - "The God who's described in this passage is not a God that I wish to follow." - "Violence is not neutral." - "The Bible is an inspired library, not a manual." - "It may be descriptive, but it does not have to be prescriptive." #### 📊 Sermon Analysis Rubric > [!note] Scoring scope > The skill rubric lists **12 scored sections**, not 13, so the total is out of 60. Tell me the 13th category and I'll add it. Delivery cannot be judged from a transcript; that score is a placeholder. ##### 🎯 Sermon Summary — 4/5 - **Central message:** Faithful covenant reading requires confronting the text's violence. We choose to serve the God of blessing and liberation, not a God of conquest. - **Personal and communal:** both. Personal choice ("whom we serve") plus communal reckoning (Doctrine of Discovery, "we live with the consequences"). - **Liturgical fit:** Strong tie to the NL text and the content warning. Weak tie to the covenant-renewal theme and to Matthew 4, which goes unmentioned. ##### 🗣️ Preaching Style Assessment — 4/5 - **Primary:** Prophetic (justice-oriented) and Topical (violence in scripture) - **Secondary:** Inductive (the open question "Does this text really affirm…?"), Conversational/confessional ("I miss Rachel"; "not a God that I wish to follow") - **Not:** Expository. The sermon reads the text whole, then argues with it rather than walking through it. - **Fit:** Well suited to an Open and Affirming congregation and to a text that requires a content warning. ##### 📖 Storytelling and Illustration — 4/5 - **Diverse voices:** Mark Charles (Navajo/Diné), Soong-Chan Rah (Korean American), Rachel Held Evans (woman, ex-evangelical writer) - **Local texture:** Upper Room class, NETwork Ministries, the T-shirt - **Gap:** No narrative from an Indigenous person or community in their own voice. Charles and Rah are cited for argument, not story. - **Balance:** Illustration outweighs exposition of Joshua 24 itself. ##### 🎙️ Intonation and Delivery — 3/5 *(placeholder)* - Cannot assess tone or pacing from the transcript. The pre-reading content warning and the confessional asides suggest a pastoral, careful register. **Verify on video.** ##### 🧱 Content Structure — 3/5 *(provisional)* - **Intro:** life verses → content warning (clear) - **Body:** Doctrine of Discovery → back to narrative context (Reed Sea, Moses' death) → theological problem → RHE → descriptive/prescriptive - **Transitions:** The jump from CCDA back to "When we last encountered the Israelites" reads as backtracking. The narrative context would have served better before the Doctrine of Discovery. - **Retention:** The repeated refrain "choose carefully whom we serve" holds it together. - **Conclusion:** truncated on tape. ##### 🤝 Engagement and Application — 3/5 - **Inclusion:** Indigenous peoples named as the harmed party; content warning for trauma survivors. - **Participation:** No interactive element. - **Practicality:** Application stays at the level of disposition ("choose differently," "be a blessing"). See Calls to Action. ##### 📜 Scripture Handling — 3/5 - **Text read in full** with a warning. A strong, honest practice. - **Exegesis depth:** Light. No mention of: - The treaty form - The recital-before-demand structure - Hebrew *avad* ("serve," 14 times) - The Deuteronomistic context (exile-era authorship explains the conquest rhetoric) - Archaeology (no sweeping conquest happened), which would have **strengthened** her argument - **Scripture as:** launchpad (theme-driven), with a canon-within-canon key (Genesis 12 blessing, Matthew 5) - **Justice-aware:** Yes. - **Missed resource:** [[Joshua 24#12]] ("It wasn't your sword or bow") can be read *against* triumphalism, not only as erasing human agency. The sermon reads it one way only. ##### 🧠 Logical Reasoning — 3/5 **Strong reasoning:** - **Descriptive ≠ prescriptive.** A sound is-ought distinction that blocks using narrative as warrant for violence. - **Canonical counter-witness.** She answers the text with Genesis 12 (Hebrew Bible) and Matthew 5, which **avoids a Marcionite Old-vs-New Testament split.** - **Cause-effect.** Text → Doctrine of Discovery → present consequences. Historically grounded. **Fallacies and lapses:** - **Equivocation on agency.** - Quote: "this passage imagines that God is the one who commits these acts" vs "God does not work alone. God works through us. They… are not let off the hook." - Problem: The first claim says the violence is a human projection onto God. The second implies God acted *through* the Israelites, so God is involved after all. The sermon holds both without resolving them. - Fix: Say plainly that human authors attributed their conquest to God, and that we reject that attribution because of God's character revealed elsewhere. - **Hasty generalization.** - Quote: "Scholars refer to the books of Joshua and Judges as the conquest narratives." - Problem: Judges is usually classed as settlement and cycle narrative. Only Judges 1 recounts a partial conquest. - Impact: minor. - **Imprecise historical dating.** - Quote: papal bulls "issued in the late fifteenth century" - Problem: *Dum Diversas* (1452) and *Romanus Pontifex* (1455) are mid-century; *Inter Caetera* (1493) is late. - Impact: minor. The conclusion stands. - **Framing risk: "choose to serve a God who…"** - The phrasing echoes v. 15's choice *among gods*, which is rhetorically sharp. A critic could still hear it as **choosing a God by preference**, the selective reading RHE herself warns against ("what you are looking for"). - Fix: Ground the choice in which testimony the canon and the church's confession hold as decisive, not in personal desire. - **Appeal to emotion (mild, legitimate).** "I miss Rachel" supports a tone of humility rather than carrying the argument. ##### 📚 References — 4/5 - Soong-Chan Rah & Mark Charles, *Unsettling Truths* (IVP, 2019) - Doctrine of Discovery papal bulls - CCDA 2026 - Rachel Held Evans (the quotes trace most closely to *A Year of Biblical Womanhood*, 2012, and *Inspired*, 2018; verify) - "Arthur Wright" (**unverified**) - **Diverse:** Indigenous, Asian American, and woman voices - **Missing:** - Jewish interpretation of the conquest texts - Robert Allen Warrior's "Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians" (1989), the classic Indigenous reading of this exact problem - The UCC's own Doctrine of Discovery repudiation (verify 2013) - The 2023 Vatican statement repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery ##### 💬 Quotes and Illustrative Stories — 4/5 - Memorable: "inspired library, not a manual"; "violence is not neutral"; "the stories we tell shape the possibilities we can imagine." - The life-verse hook connects well to the congregation's own practice (the Upper Room flip chart). ##### 📣 Calls to Action — 3/5 *(provisional, transcript truncated)* - **Spoken:** - Recognize violence as a choice and choose differently - Recommit to being a blessing - Confess and confront the pain of the past - **Missing (as far as the tape goes):** a concrete next step, for example: - Reading *Unsettling Truths* - Learning whose land St. John's sits on (Susquehannock/Lenape territory; verify) - Supporting Indigenous-led groups - Connecting to the UCC's repudiation resolution - **Modality:** spoken only. ##### 🎭 Style Effectiveness Analysis — 3/5 *(provisional)* - **Effective:** The prophetic-topical style suits a text the congregation should not hear as triumphal. - **What it loses:** Covenant renewal, the bulletin's theme, almost disappears. **v. 19 ("You can't serve the LORD") was read aloud and never engaged**, though it supports her argument: the text itself admits the people's promises won't hold. - **Alternative styles:** - **Fully expository:** walk the treaty form; show God's first-person recital; read v. 12 two ways; land at v. 19. - **Prophetic (fuller):** name the land St. John's occupies; tie to the UCC repudiation. - **Inductive-contemplative:** sit with the question "what are we looking for?" through silence or a guided reflection. - **Narrative / first person:** speak as a Canaanite at Shechem hearing Joshua's speech. - **Learning styles served:** auditory and intrapersonal. Visual and kinesthetic barely touched; a stone or a set-aside object would have helped. - **Suggested blend:** prophetic + brief exposition (v. 12, v. 19) + one concrete covenant act. ##### 🧮 Scoring Summary | Section | Score | |---|---| | Sermon Summary | 4 | | Preaching Style | 4 | | Storytelling | 4 | | Delivery | 3 *(placeholder)* | | Structure | 3 *(provisional)* | | Engagement | 3 | | Scripture Handling | 3 | | Logical Reasoning | 3 | | References | 4 | | Quotes and Stories | 4 | | Calls to Action | 3 *(provisional)* | | Style Effectiveness | 3 *(provisional)* | | **Total** | **41/60** | ##### ⚖️ Side-by-Side: This Sermon vs. Fully Exegetical Version | Aspect | This Sermon's Style | Fully Exegetical Version | |--------|-------------------|--------------------------| | Primary Style | Prophetic-topical with inductive question | Expository through treaty form (prologue → stipulations → witnesses) | | Stories | Doctrine of Discovery, CCDA, RHE, T-shirt | Shechem's history (Gen 12, 35; Judg 9); the oak and stone | | Scripture Depth | Text read whole, then critiqued; Gen 12 and Matt 5 as counter-key | *Avad* chain; v. 12 read two ways; Deuteronomistic exile context; archaeology showing no sweeping conquest | | Handling of violence | Named, rejected as a portrait of God | Named, explained as later theological memory and treaty rhetoric, then rejected as warrant | | Application | Choose differently; be a blessing | Covenant renewal grounded in God's faithfulness despite our failure (v. 19); a concrete repudiation/repair act | ##### 🧬 Hermeneutical Genealogy (non-scored) - **Indigenous / postcolonial critique:** Robert Allen Warrior (1989) → George "Tink" Tinker → Mark Charles & Soong-Chan Rah (2019). Institutional repudiations followed: the Episcopal Church (2009), the UCC (2013, verify), the Vatican joint note (March 2023). - **"Inspired library, not a manual":** The library image goes back to Jerome's *bibliotheca divina*. Its modern progressive-evangelical form runs through Peter Enns (*The Bible Tells Me So*, 2014) and Rachel Held Evans (*Inspired*, 2018), an **ex-evangelical lineage now at home in mainline pulpits.** - **"Descriptive, not prescriptive":** An **evangelical hermeneutics staple.** Fee & Stuart (*How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth*, 1981) use it to keep Acts from becoming church law. Here it is redeployed against conquest violence: same tool, different target. - **Canon-within-canon (Abrahamic blessing + Beatitudes as key):** Echoes Luther's "what promotes Christ" and liberationist "God's preferential option." The sermon's choice of a Hebrew Bible key (Genesis 12) keeps it out of Marcionism. - **"Spirit of the Living God":** Iverson's 1926 chorus came up through revivalist and Pentecostal song culture and is now ecumenical. Harmless here, but a charismatic-lineage element in a Reformed-heritage liturgy. ##### 🔁 Lateral Transfer Risk Audit (non-scored) - **Method check:** Does the progressive reading keep the old proof-texting method with new verses? **Partly guarded.** She names RHE's warning about "what you are looking for," and she grounds the counter-reading in canon rather than feeling alone. The phrase "a God that I wish to follow" still leans on personal preference. **Low–moderate risk.** - **Certainty transfer:** No. She leaves the central question open ("Does this text really affirm…?"). - **Authority transfer:** Cites scholars and activists as conversation partners, not as apostolic authority. **Low risk.** - **Absent:** No NAR markers ("possess the land," "Joshua generation," generational curses, household headship). ##### 🧭 Referent Check (non-scored) - **Who the text constrains:** Israel's whole assembly, from elders down. The demand is loyalty to God over every other power. - **Who the sermon constrains:** Christian empires, colonizers, and their heirs, meaning "we." **The referent points at the powerful. No inversion.** #### Analysis Watch-List *Prompts for the `/church-notes` rubric pass — answered from transcript* - **Choice vs. grace order:** The choice ("whom we serve") is preached as moral discernment. The grace-first recital (vv. 2-13) is treated as the problem (God as conqueror) rather than the ground. v. 19 was read but not engaged. - **"As for me and my household":** Named only as a popular life verse ("This isn't as simple as…"). **No headship application.** The CEB reading "my family and I" was used. - **Conquest material:** **Named directly**, with a content warning, "genocide," and the Doctrine of Discovery. The strongest part of the sermon. - **Temptation narrative:** **Not mentioned** in the transcript. The Matthew 4 pairing went unused. - **Hymn theology:** Not addressed in the transcript. - **Hermeneutical genealogy:** Postcolonial/Indigenous critique plus ex-evangelical progressive hermeneutics (RHE, Enns). Not Reformed covenant theology or Mercersburg. #### 🧒 Children's Message Notes **Leader:** Roxanne Davenport *(per bulletin; the transcript does not name the speaker)* > [!warning] Verify on tape > - Speaker diarization is unreliable. "Speaker 2" lines mix the leader, children, and at the end Pastor Caroline ("Before I read today's scripture passage…"). > - The leader states the Open and Affirming vote date as **November 15, 2020** and the building date as **1962**. Confirm against church records before citing. ##### Object / Illustration - **The church's Bible**, with a bookmark at Joshua "towards the beginning" - **A St. John's UCC history handout** (from confirmation class) tucked in "the very back" of the Bible, with a handwritten addition: **November 15, 2020, the Open and Affirming vote** - **Opening question:** "Why do we study history?" → "To learn from our past, including the mistakes… and hopefully not repeat those mistakes." ##### Main Idea - Joshua 24 is "a history lesson… reminding the people of what God has done for them." - **"But first, He has to remind them of all the things He's done for them."** Grace before demand, the chapter's real structure, kept intact for children. - The people promise to serve God, "meaning they will not serve any idols." - **Idols** = "anything that we put above God," illustrated with the golden calf, then TV, gaming, and "hanging with our friends rather than serving the Lord." Followed by "those aren't bad things in moderation." - **Our history continues the Bible's history:** "History does not end at the end of the Bible… does not end in 1962… does not end today. God is still speaking." - The Open and Affirming vote is framed as covenant faithfulness: "It reminds us about serving God and others." - **Prayer:** "Ground us back into what you have done for us and what you will continue to do through us. Help us be a part of that history." ##### Referent check (what the children were told God / the text points to) - **God:** the one who acts first and keeps acting ("still speaking," "still working through us"). **Faithful to the text.** - **Covenant:** renewed by remembering, and lived in serving "God and others." Neighbor love is added explicitly. **Faithful, and stronger than the text's own wording.** - **Idols: ⚠️ mild referent inversion.** - In Joshua, the "gods" are inherited allegiances: ancestral, imperial, and the gods of the land's power holders. Today's Prayer of Confession named "**idols of worldly power and wealth**." - The children heard **TV, gaming, and friends**, the leisure and relationships of the least powerful people in the room. - The adult-facing aside named money and time, so **the adult version got power-adjacent idols and the children got play.** - "Friends rather than serving the Lord" sets friendship *against* God, though friendship is itself a formation good for children. - **Golden calf:** imported from [[Exodus 32#4]]. Joshua's gods are "beyond the River," "in Egypt," and "of the Amorites." A small conflation, but it trades Joshua's inherited and systemic loyalties for a single object of worship. - **"God is to be the most important thing":** A **ranking** model (God first, then others) replaces Joshua's **allegiance** model (serve this God, not those). Age-appropriate, though it turns God into the top item on a list rather than the one to whom all else belongs. ##### 📋 Rubric Companion (non-scored) - **Summary:** Clear and well tied to the text. Covenant renewal through remembering. - **Style:** Conversational and dialogical. Honest about kids not liking history ("We're brutally honest here"), which builds rapport. - **Storytelling:** The church-history-in-the-back-of-the-Bible image is **the most memorable moment of the morning**, for adults too. - **Engagement:** Questions to the children; children read the date aloud; the congregation is asked "do you remember why that is important?" - **Scripture:** vv. 1-6 paraphrased; vv. 7-13 skipped ("I'm going to jump"); vv. 14-24 summarized. **The conquest verses and v. 19 are omitted.** - **Logic:** - **False dilemma (mild):** friends *or* serving the Lord - **Inconsistency (mild):** "learn from mistakes" frames history, yet the Joshua recital is presented only as God's successes, never Israel's failures - **Inclusion:** "You're on task, young lady" is gendered address but warm. The Open and Affirming milestone as covenant history is **affirming formation** for LGBTQIA+ children and families. - **Call to action:** "Always put God and serving others first." Clear, though only a disposition, with no concrete practice. ##### 🧬 Hermeneutical Genealogy (non-scored) - **"God is still speaking":** the UCC's 2004 campaign, rooted in John Robinson's 1620 farewell to the Pilgrims ("the Lord has yet more truth and light to break forth out of his holy Word," as reported by Edward Winslow). **Congregationalist and UCC heritage, used accurately.** - **Church history placed "in the back of the Bible":** an implicit theology of the congregation's story continuing the canonical story. Consistent with UCC "testimonies, not tests." - **"Idols = screen time / anything above God":** a staple of **evangelical youth curricula** (holiness and revivalist lineage). Not high-control here, but imported rather than drawn from the text. - **No conversion call:** consistent with **Bushnell's *Christian Nurture* (1847)**, which treats children as already inside the covenant. Correct for UCC anthropology. ##### 🔗 Formation Pipeline (children ↔ adults) - **Children heard:** - God's acts as triumphant recital, with the violence skipped - Idols as play and friends - The congregation's own covenant history, including Open and Affirming - **Adults heard:** - The recital itself as morally troubling ("not a God that I wish to follow") - Idols as Christian empire and conquest - No congregational history - **⚠️ Pipeline mismatch:** - The children were formed in the **triumphal reading** that the adult sermon asked adults to interrogate. The children left for Children's Corner before the content warning and the reading. - The idol referent **inverted downward** for children (play) and **outward/upward** for adults (empire). - This matches the earlier "formation pipeline problem" finding: **children receive the uncorrected vector and are structurally absent for the corrective.** - **✅ Pipeline strength:** - The children's message did what the sermon did not: it **renewed covenant through the congregation's own story**, and it tied covenant faithfulness to the Open and Affirming vote. - The two messages complement each other. Each lacked what the other had. - **Possible bridge (for a future conversation, not a conclusion):** an age-appropriate "God didn't want anyone hurt; people sometimes told the story as if God did" line, plus one adult-facing moment of congregational covenant history. That would connect the two halves. #### Personal Reflections ##### What spoke to me: ##### Questions raised: ##### Challenges/Convictions: ##### Liturgical Context Reflections: #### Applications ##### This week I will: ##### People to pray for: ##### Follow-up study: #### Connections - [[2026-10-11]] — previous Sunday (NL105 Covenant and Commandments) - [[2026-10-25]] — next Sunday (NL107 David and Nathan) ## Worship Leadership ### Worship Participants | Role | Name | |------|------| | Pastor | Rev. Caroline E. Saxton | | Organist | Barbara Motichka | | Choir Director | Gary Crum | | Worship Team | Roxanne Davenport, Diana Kongkeattikul, Swann Kongkeattikul, Barbara Motichka, Courtney Robertson, Chris Willman-Bunge | | Deacon in Charge | Greg St. Clair | | Lector | Sarah Shiraki | | Children's Corner | Melinda Orndorff | | Media Coordinators | Calvin Frantz and Neath Ham | | Bulletin Cover | Edd Scheer | ### Flowers The Flowers at the Foot of the Cross are given in blessing for family Cauzzort by Rick Aguilar. ### Birthdays This Week - 10/20 — Jonathan Miller - 10/25 — Roxanne Davenport ### Worship Resources - Call to Worship written by Nancy C. Townley and posted on the Worship Connection page of Ministry Matters - *Feasting on the Word Worship Companion*, edited by Kimberly Bracken Long ## Church News & Announcements ### Staff & Contacts - **The Rev. Caroline E. Saxton**, Pastor — [email protected] — (641) 260-1868 (cell) - **Tonya Schwartz**, Office Administrator — [email protected] — (717) 263-8593 (office) - **Gary Crum**, Music Director - **Barbara Motichka**, Organist - **Roxanne Davenport**, Director of Children & Youth - **The Rev. Stephen W. Hoffman**, Pastor Emeritus ### Announcements #### Pastor Appreciation Day Today. #### Bible and a Beer An opportunity to talk about faith in public. Third Monday of the month at 6:30 pm. Next gathering: Monday, October 19. - ⚠️ Bulletin conflict: the announcement says **Trojan Diner**; the calendar says **Trojan's Sport Bar** #### Habitat for Humanity Book Sale October 23, 24, and 25. Set-up begins Monday, October 19. Sign-up sheets (set-up and sale) at the Welcome Center and on both bulletin boards. Goal: the most successful book sale yet. #### Monday Afternoon Book Study Barbara Brown Taylor, *Learning to Walk in the Dark*. Monday, October 19, 1:30 pm, Conference Room 111. - ⚠️ Bulletin conflict: the announcement says **the epilogue**; the calendar says **Chapter 10** #### No Tricks, Just Treats Saturday, October 31, 6–8 pm. Candy donations may be dropped off at the church office. #### Sunday Night Bible Study Pastor Caroline, Sunday, October 18, 8 pm via Zoom — 1 Peter, Chapter 1. - Zoom Meeting ID: 836 0593 5961 - Passcode: 277938 - Hyperlink in the weekly e-blast #### DIY Christmas Ornament Bar Craft Night Paint your own Christmas ornament. Sign up by **October 25** at the Welcome Center and indicate which ornament(s) you wish to purchase. Ornaments are $5 each; all materials provided; one free ornament per person. Extra ornaments may be purchased and donated to the Christmas Cookies and Crafts event on December 5. #### Fall Quarter First Fruits August, September, and October support: - Franklin Together–Franklin County Reentry Coalition - Homeless Matters of Franklin County - Fayetteville Fire Department More information on each in the *Spirit*. #### Franklin Together–Franklin County Reentry Coalition Many people served are securing safe housing, reconnecting with loved ones, and taking steps toward stability. Requested: essential household, cleaning, and hygiene items. Item list in the e-blast; donation box at the Welcome Center. #### Mercersburg Association Fall Meeting Sunday, November 15, 3–5 pm, St. Paul's UCC, Mechanicsburg. Hybrid with Zoom option. Contact Pastor Caroline to attend as one of two lay delegates. #### Keystone Conference Fall Budget Meeting Saturday, November 14, via Zoom. Contact Pastor Caroline to participate as a lay delegate. #### November/December Upper Room Devotionals available at the Welcome Center. Suggested donation: $1 small print / $2 large print. Contact the church office to have a copy mailed. ## Vision & Mission ### St. John's Vision We are called to love, to learn, to worship and to witness in Christ as a congregation that welcomes everyone, and seeks service that will advance God's realm on earth. ### St. John's Mission To grow in love of God and neighbor ## Calendar & Upcoming Events ### Sunday, October 18 (Today) — Pastor Appreciation Day - 11:15 am — Chambers' Apothecary Immunization Clinic — Parlor Room 104 - 2:00 pm — CROP Hunger Walk — Falling Spring Presbyterian Church (registration 1:30) - 8:00 pm — Bible Study on 1 Peter Chapter 1 — Zoom (link in Friday's e-blast) ### Monday, October 19 - 1:30 pm — Book Study (*Learning to Walk in the Dark*, Chapter 10) — Conference Room 111 - 6:30 pm — Bible and a Beer — Trojan's Sport Bar ### Tuesday, October 20 - 5:30 pm — Yoga — Room 202 - 6:00 pm — Ladies Bible Study — Zoom - 6:30 pm — Cub Scouts — Fellowship Hall, then smaller groups ### Wednesday, October 21 - 6:30 pm — Council Retreat — Conference Room 111 ### Thursday, October 22 - 11:00 am — NETwork Ministries Meal Prep — Kitchen - 4:00 pm — Finance Meeting — Conference Room 111 - 6:00 pm — Bell Choir Practice — Room 117 - 7:15 pm — Choir Practice — Room 103 ### Friday, October 23 - 2:00 pm — Book Sale — Fellowship Hall and Room 116 ### Saturday, October 24 - 9:00 am — Book Sale — Fellowship Hall and Room 116 ### Sunday, October 25 - 8:45 am — Godly Play Church School (Ages 3–K) — Room 119 - 8:45 am — SPARK! Church School (Grades 1–5) — Room 115 - 8:45 am — Scripture/Contemporary Issues (Grades 6–12) — Room 206 - 8:45 am — Wired Word Adult Church School — Library Room 106 - 8:45 am — Upper Room Adult Church School — Conference Room 111 - 10:00 am — Sunday Worship — Sanctuary - 12:00 pm — Book Sale — Fellowship Hall and Room 116 - 8:00 pm — Bible Study on 1 Peter Chapter 2 — Zoom (link in Friday's e-blast) ### Further Ahead - **Sat, Oct 31, 6–8 pm** — No Tricks, Just Treats - **Sat, Nov 14** — Keystone Conference Fall Budget Meeting (Zoom) - **Sun, Nov 15, 3–5 pm** — Mercersburg Association Fall Meeting, St. Paul's UCC, Mechanicsburg (hybrid) - **Sat, Dec 5** — Christmas Cookies and Crafts