September Sunday School Overview

Dr. John Hill, Editor & CEO

Covenant, Memory, Judgment, and Mercy: Lessons from Joshua

The September 2026 lessons move into the book of Joshua, where Israel stands at a turning point. Moses is dead. A new generation must cross the Jordan, enter the land God promised, and learn that receiving God’s promises still requires faith, obedience, courage, and trust.

Joshua is a book of victories, memorials, difficult battles, and surprising grace. It also raises questions modern readers cannot ignore. What does it mean for God to keep His covenant promises? Why must His people remember? How should Christians understand the warfare of Canaan? And what does Rahab teach us about the reach of God’s mercy?

Lesson One: The Covenant Continues

Joshua 1:1–11

Joshua begins with loss. Moses, Israel’s great leader, is dead. Yet God’s work does not die with him. The covenant continues, and Joshua is called to lead Israel into the land God had promised.

God’s words to Joshua combine promise with responsibility. The Lord assures Joshua of His presence, but Joshua must also be strong, courageous, and obedient. He is to remain anchored in God’s instruction rather than allowing fear or pressure to determine his direction.

This speaks directly to churches facing transition. Leaders change. Generations pass. Familiar voices disappear. Yet the mission of God is larger than any one leader.

Biblical courage is not the absence of uncertainty. It grows from confidence that God remains faithful. The question is not whether Joshua feels capable of replacing Moses, but whether he trusts the God who called him.

Lesson Two: Remember God’s Actions

Joshua 4:14–24

After Israel crossed the Jordan, God commanded the people to establish a memorial of twelve stones. Those stones were intended to provoke questions from future generations: What do these stones mean?

Israel was not allowed to experience God’s deliverance and then forget how they reached the other side.

Memory is a spiritual discipline. Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to remember because forgetfulness leads to pride, fear, and unfaithfulness. When we forget what God has done, we begin to assume our own strength or wisdom brought us where we are.

The stones also reveal one generation’s responsibility to teach another. Faith should not depend upon children accidentally discovering what their parents and grandparents believed. God’s works must be told, explained, and remembered.

Every church has its own “stones”—stories of sacrifice, answered prayer, generosity, courage, and perseverance. The danger comes when we preserve the building but forget the testimony.

Lesson Three: God’s Complicated Promise

 Joshua 11:6–9, 16–23

Joshua 11 confronts readers with one of the Old Testament’s most difficult subjects: Israel’s warfare in Canaan. Teachers should not rush past the moral difficulty or act as though Christians are wrong to ask hard questions.

The conquest must be understood within the larger biblical story of covenant and divine judgment. Scripture portrays the Canaanite societies as deeply corrupt and Israel’s victories as acts of divine judgment—not permission for ordinary nations to wage religious wars.

Israel itself was never morally superior. The same God who judged Canaan later judged Israel when His people embraced idolatry, injustice, and rebellion.

Christians should therefore never use Joshua to justify violence, racial superiority, territorial ambition, or the idea that a modern nation can simply claim Israel’s ancient commands for itself. The church’s mission is not conquest by force but witness through the gospel.

Joshua reminds us that God’s promises cannot be separated from God’s holiness. His mercy is real, but so is His judgment.

Lesson Four: God’s Compassion for Rahab

Joshua 2:8–13; 6:16–17

Rahab provides a striking counterpoint to the warfare surrounding Jericho. She was a Canaanite living inside a city marked for judgment, yet she heard what God had done, believed that Israel’s God was the true God, protected the spies, and asked for mercy.

Her story prevents us from reading Joshua as though God delights in destruction. Even in the midst of judgment, mercy is available to the person who turns toward Him in faith.

Rahab’s past did not disqualify her from God’s future. She was rescued with her family and became part of Israel. Later Scripture remembers her as an example of faith and places her within the family line leading to Jesus.

That should challenge the church. We often decide too quickly who looks respectable, promising, or spiritually reachable. God sees possibilities where we see labels.

Taken together, September’s lessons reveal a God who keeps His covenant, commands His people to remember, judges evil seriously, and extends mercy beyond expected boundaries. Joshua is not always an easy book, but perhaps that is why we need it. It refuses to reduce God to one comfortable characteristic.

The final question for teachers and students is not simply, “What happened when Israel entered Canaan?” It is, “What kind of God do these stories reveal—and how should knowing Him shape the way we live?”