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Conquest of Canaan: A 4-Week Course

Week 1 · Crossing the Jordan

Joshua 3

After forty years in the wilderness, Israel faced one last obstacle — the Jordan River, swollen with the spring harvest floods (Joshua 3:15). The moment the feet of the priests carrying the ark touched the water, God stopped the river's flow. It echoes the parting of the Red Sea forty years earlier, but this time it is Joshua, not Moses, who leads. The leader has changed, but this event makes it unmistakably clear that the same God still leads Israel.

Discuss together

The priests had to step into the water before it parted. Does our walk of faith sometimes require stepping out first, rather than waiting to see the way made clear?

Quiz and explanations

The Jordan parted the moment whose feet touched the water?

Joshua
The priests carrying the ark of the covenant
The elders of Israel
The spies

Check order

2. As soon as the feet of the priests carrying the ark touched the water's edge, the waters of the Jordan stood still (Joshua 3:15-16).

The Jordan crossing recalls which event from forty years earlier?

The parting of the Red Sea
Receiving the Ten Commandments
The giving of manna
The fiery serpents

Check order

1. The Jordan parting to dry ground directly recalls the parting of the Red Sea at the exodus.

1. Week 1 · Crossing the Jordan

Joshua 3

The priests had to step into the water before it parted. Does our walk of faith sometimes require stepping out first, rather than waiting to see the way made clear?

Jordan River

2. Week 2 · Gilgal and Jericho

Joshua 4-5 · Joshua 6

Having crossed the Jordan, Israel camps at Gilgal and sets up a memorial of twelve stones taken from the riverbed, so future generations will hear this story. There they also circumcise the children of the wilderness generation and keep the Passover — it is striking that, on the eve of war, the first order of business was not a weapons check but reaffirming their identity as a covenant people. At Jericho, Israel is asked not for military strategy but for obedience. The command to march around the city for seven days, blowing trumpets and shouting, looks foolish by human standards — yet at the end of that obedience, the walls fall.

At Jericho, Israel had to obey in a way that made no ordinary sense. Have you had an experience of needing to obey even when it didn't make sense to you?

Gilgal → Jericho

3. Week 3 · Covenant Renewal at Shechem

Joshua 8:30-35 · Joshua 24

Shechem is a place that reappears across generations. It is where Abraham built his first altar, and now it is where Joshua reads the Law aloud between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim (Joshua 8:30-35). Near the end of the conquest, Joshua gathers the people again at Shechem, retraces God's faithfulness through their whole journey, and puts a choice before them — the gods their ancestors served beyond the river, the gods of the land they now live in, or the LORD. The conquest is over, but this scene shows that the real battle — guarding the loyalty of the heart — is only just beginning.

Joshua demanded a choice "this day." How do we live out the truth that faith is not a single decision but something chosen again every day?

Shechem

4. Week 4 · Shiloh, Arriving at Rest

Joshua 18:1 · Joshua 21:43-45

Shiloh is where the tent of meeting was set up after the conquest, and the place where the conquered land was divided among the tribes (Joshua 18:1). It would go on to be Israel's center of worship for a long time afterward. Years after crossing the Jordan, the journey that began in the wilderness comes, for now, to a resting point, as each tribe settles into its own portion of land. At this point the book of Joshua sums it all up: not one of the good promises God had made had failed. This is not a boast of victory, but a humble confession about a faithful God.

Looking back on your own life through the words 'not one good thing failed to come to pass,' what comes to mind?

Shiloh

Rebuild the journey

Choose the places in journey order to reconstruct the route.