GOD CAN MAKE YOU STRONG
Joshua 1:1-9
Series: “What Do I Need to Know for Life?”
Lesson Four (Joshua)
June 27, 2010
Cindy and I have a friend from one of our pastorates who has gone through circumstances in recent months that are beyond my comprehension. Bob was in medical school when he and his wife Christi were in our church in the Cleveland, Ohio area. They were such a great couple and so faithful to the church despite the time demands of med school. They left Cleveland and we left Cleveland, but we still kept track of one another. Maybe three or four years ago now, we got the awful word that Christi had died suddenly after the birth of their second child. We were so saddened for Bob and the kids. By this time, he was a doctor in the U.S. Navy.
We followed on Facebook as Bob got remarried last summer to Jenn. His two little boys were in the wedding and we saw lots of cute pictures of them. Jenn and Bob soon found themselves expecting a honeymoon baby even as Jenn became mom to Bob’s two little guys. We were all happy for Bob—it seemed like a fairytale ending. A couple of months ago now, we followed in Facebook as they approached the delivery date of their little girl—and then with sudden horror we saw Bob’s pleas for us to pray for Jenn, that “it didn’t look good.” And what we soon learned was the Jenn died in childbirth—just as Christi had a few years earlier.
It seemed so surreal! I don’t think I’ve ever known any other women who died in childbirth, and our friend Bob—who is a medical doctor, of all things!—has now lost two wives in childbirth and now finds himself a single parent again, now with two little boys and a baby girl!
What’s been so amazing is to watch, even from afar, Bob’s faith as he deals with this. Oh, he grieves—and you hear it often. But there’s still a strength that seems to come through. I’m sure it’s not something Bob ever dreamed he’d have to go through—not once, and certainly not twice! But I have seen a strength of character in this man that has clearly been the Lord’s healing touch upon Bob. Bob is living out a strength that goes beyond what Bob could ever be apart from the Lord in his life.
So, how would you respond if something like that happened to you? Could you make it through it? What if you got the report of incurable cancer this week? What if you lost your job tomorrow morning? What if your spouse filed for divorce? What if God asked you to go and do something that seemed way off your personal radar screen for the future?
It seems to me that the way of the world is to go one of two directions with such challenges: “give up” or “buck up”! We either give up and resign ourselves to despair, defeat, depression and maybe even suicide, or we buck up by trying to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and forcing ourselves to make our way through it with all our personal human resources. And while the latter seems like the best way, it falls far short when all we’re relying upon is ourselves, because in our humanness, we have limited resources—and unfortunately, our problems and challenges don’t seem to be so finite!
It also seems to me that God has a better way for His people—and that it’s far more effective! God’s way is not for us to give up and wallow in personal defeat and discouragement; neither is God’s way for us to simply buck up by pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and relying purely on our own resources. God’s way is to come alongside us and walk with us through even the darkest and most challenging times in our lives—promising to see us through to the other side.
There’s a man named Joshua in the Old Testament who learned God’s way to approach the most overwhelming challenges in life—and it’s his story that we’re going to consider this morning. We’re in the fourth week of our summer series on life lessons we can learn from heroes of the Bible that I’ve called, “What Do I Need to Know for Life?” We’ve considered Abraham, Joseph, and Moses already. Today we look at the man named Joshua.
The name “Joshua” has come to have special meaning in our family. Over 27 years ago, Cindy and I had determined that if the twins we were expecting were boys, one of them would have been named “Joshua.” I’m guessing that if we’d have ended up with Justin, Joshua and Jared as the names of our three kids, that I’d still be tripping over the names! But our twins were girls, and yet, as the years unfolded, it became apparent that our daughter Kara would marry a young man named Joshua—so we finally had our Joshua after all. Then some of you know the story of how Kara’s twin sister Krista followed us to Idaho and soon fell in love with another Joshua and married him—and it does seem kind of weird that our identical twin daughters are both married to guys with the same name, doesn’t it?!
Well, this is another Joshua. And while we sometimes call our first Josh “the Original Josh,” the Joshua of the Old Testament is, from a biblical perspective, truly “the Original Joshua”! Let me tell you something of his story.
We don’t know anything about Joshua’s upbringing, other than that his father’s name was “Nun”—not n-o-n-e but N-u-n! Joshua was a soldier. The first time the Bible mentions him, he was commanding the Hebrew army which gained the upper hand against their enemy as long as Moses held up his staff. Moses’ brother Aaron, helped support Moses arms as he held up the staff and the army won the battle.
When the Hebrews reached the southern border of the Promised Land of Canaan, Joshua was among the twelve scouts whom Moses sent ahead to evaluate the prospects of conquering the land. Ten recommended against invading, warning of giants and heavily fortified cities. Only Joshua and Caleb urged the people to press on, saying that God would give them victory. The masses chose the majority opinion, and for their lack of faith God sentenced the Israelites to 40 years of wandering in the desert—and Moses was denied the privileged of entered the Promised Land himself.
Of the adults alive at the time, only Joshua and Caleb would live to set foot in the Promised Land. And, after Moses died, God turned to Joshua, the one who had become Moses’ assistant, and told him that he was now to lead the people into the Promised Land. It wasn’t just a matter that they were to move into unoccupied spaces—they would have to go to battle against some powerful enemies in order to gain control of the land the Lord had promised to give them.
That’s where our passage of scripture picks up this morning. Turn with me to the first chapter of the Old Testament book of that bears the name of the man we’re talking about today—Joshua.
[Read Joshua 1:1-9, NIV]
We need to understand that what God was asking of Joshua was no small thing. And to be entrusted with the responsibilities that Moses had carried was likely overwhelming to Joshua. Joshua was very likely intimidated by the greatness of his predecessor Moses and the awesomeness of his own responsibility—which is why the Lord kept speaking to Joshua in this brief passage about courage and strength. Joshua would need them both! Faced with this task, Joshua must have been shaken under a pressing sense of his own inadequacies. He needed to hear the Lord’s words, “Be strong and courageous…as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.”
The truth is that God lays before each of us challenges in life that seem absolutely overwhelming—and he doesn’t allow us to go through such things in order to defeat us, but rather to prove His strength. If you haven’t faced overwhelming challenges yet, brace yourself because they’re coming! They happen to us all in one way or another—and likely in multiple ways! We may try to prepare ourselves for such challenges (and we should what we can), but there are some things you simply can’t prepare for!
I was talking with one of our men just Thursday morning after the men’s prayer time. Richard Grif and his wife Jackie have come to our fellowship several months ago from the Twin Falls area, and Richard is faithful to the men’s prayer time and we often get to share over breakfast afterward. Richard and I got to talking this week about his battle with cancer, and he commented that he never expected to be battling cancer. It’s changed his whole outlook on life. For example, he can’t make plans for something six months away because he never knows how he’ll be feeling and whether or not he’ll be up to it. He talked with me a bit about what it’s like to live with the reality that the cancer will some day return and he knows he’ll not be as likely to defeat it this next time.
Health crises and physical pain, relationship messes and heartaches, and things like financial problems and challenges on the job just happen in life! That’s not to excuse responsibilities we might have for them happening, as is sometimes the case, but still we’re faced with them in the course of real life! I’ve just had to accept across the years that life is messy! We also have to put beside these the challenges we assume when we respond to the Lord’s promptings and willingly walk into what is for us unchartered territory that is often difficult and pushes us outside our comfort zone!
These are the things of life that have the potential of knocking the wind out of our sails! These are the real life scenarios that cause many to give up or to throw away the paddle and just drift with the current!—and it’s understandably so, because such circumstances have a way of altering our lives or our expectations from life and making us feel that life is simply out of control! There are a lot of things we end up facing that we never thought we’d face!
But God’s encouraging word to us today is that we can be strong and courageous as we face overwhelming challenges because the Lord has promised never to leave us or forsake us! Joshua was reminded that the secret of Moses’ success had been God’s presence with him, and it would be the secret of Joshua’s success as well. And, friends, it’s still the secret of success for every follower of the Lord. It is by His presence in our lives that we face otherwise overwhelming challenges with strength and courage—not giving up nor simply bucking up ourselves, but rather learning to lean on the Lord as He wants us to do.
“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you…Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:5, 9)
Some of us in the office the other day got to talking about the blessing of having parents who cheered us on and encouraged us in life—realizing that there are many who never had that. My parents did that well—cheered us boys on, and let us know that they believed in us and that they stood by us! What a blessing!
That’s kind of what was happening in the first chapter of Joshua—the Lord was cheering Joshua on, expressing his confidence in Joshua but also promising to stand by. He was saying to Joshua—
“Strength! Courage! You are going to lead this people to inherit the land that I promised to give their ancestors. Give it everything you have, heart and soul…Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take!” (Joshua 1:6, 7, 9, The Message)
God saw promise in Joshua!
And God does not just look for super-humans who can help Him accomplish what He wants to accomplish. He sees promise in each of us—and He’s in the business of helping us discover and life out a lifestyle of promise. Scripture reveals lots of personal stories of how God worked in the lives of ordinary people to do extraordinary things—and, in it all, God sees promise in us. It’s kind of like God takes on the qualities of a great coach or an insightful teacher who gets all excited about what we can become if we use the gifts He’s given us and realize the full potential of what it means to have the Lord with us wherever we go.
If we’ll hear God’s Word to us today, we’ll understand that we don’t need to wimp out even when faced with the greatest challenges of our lives! Defeat is not a given!—even when the circumstances may spell defeat! The Lord says, “I will be with you. I won’t give up on you; I won’t leave you” (The Message).
So ours is a lifestyle of promise as God wills it to be, but the reality is that many of us live beneath our privilege and blessing. Many of us—even followers of Christ!—back away from the promises and live lives clouded too often by discouragement. Too often we’re defeated by temptation or suffering or circumstances that seem out of our control—and we forget the promise that the Lord is with us and that we can find strength and courage in Him! With the Lord by our side, we can face the challenges of life assured of ultimate victory! We don’t need to be afraid or intimidated!
I was talking with someone this week about the way in which we too often let the bullies in life intimidate us and wound us and leave us figuratively cowering in a corner when God has pronounced upon each of us strength and courage because He is with us! Too many of us are still carrying around our wounds from childhood when others found something to taunt and tease us about—all probably stemming from their own sense of inadequacy! But it did something to us within, didn’t it? And God wants to deliver us from it just as He delivered Joshua from fear and intimidation! God speaks courage and strength into our lives!
And instead of focusing on our fears and the size of our challenges and problems, we need to throw our energies into total devotion and obedience to the Lord. Instead of being consumed with fear and anxieties and discouragement, we need to center our attentions on our full devotion to the Lord and what He wants us to do.
For Joshua, that meant accepting the reality that Moses, their strong leader, was dead and gone—and that God now had a mission for Joshua. It was bigger than Joshua—and Joshua needed to understand from the get-go that he would have to depend upon the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. He would need to be centered in on the Lord and on the way of the Lord.
It’s the same for us. Like Joshua, we need to obey all of the Word of the Lord—
“Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth ; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1:7-8)
We need to incorporate God’s Word into every part of our lives—and we need to obey it and not just rationalize disobedience. We’ve been focusing on the blessing and privilege of God’s Presence in our lives—but it’s important that we recognize the double edge of the Gospel. One side is the edge of promise—the other is the edge of condition. If we’re to enjoy the promise of His Presence and His strength, we must take seriously the condition of total obedience to Him. We need to take God’s Word to us seriously and we need to obey Him in all things!
We need to be wary of any image of Christianity that is geared to us getting what we want to satisfy our own personal pleasures. God is not some kind of genie in a bottle whose sole purpose is to bring us personal pleasure. God, our Heavenly Father, loves us and, as our Creator, knows what is best for us. He has given us choice, but the way of true blessing is the way of humble submission and faithful obedience to Him and to His ways.
This promise of blessing and strength and courage is not all-inclusive. In other words, the person who isn’t a follower of Christ must first confront the fact that he or she is not in vital relationship with the Living God!—even though they can be! That’s the starting point! God asks us to confess our sins and be willing to turn from them. His promise is to forgive us our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness. That’s the basis of our relationship with Him—and it’s foundational in order to experience His countless blessings! But when we come to Him and experience the restoration of relationship with Him, the promises of Joshua chapter 1 are the promises God has for us too!
And the words from this chapter are so powerful, aren’t they?! How often have I found encouragement and strength and courage in God’s words to Joshua—
“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous…Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:5, 9)
Every Christian needs to learn to live by these words! What a great lesson for us all to learn—and re-learn—as we come upon the challenges of life that threaten to utterly knock the wind out of us.
I remember vividly a moment when the Lord spoke words of strength and courage to me as I faced such a challenge in life. The Lord seemed to be pushing me out of my comfort zone and calling me to do something that I feared I was incapable of doing. And in a quiet moment in His Presence, I dared to ask, “What do you think of this, Lord?” And His word to me was almost audible,
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
It was as if He was saying to me, “Let’s just get this straight now—you’re not adequate for this task, but I am. And that is all that matters.”
So was God’s word to Joshua on a day long ago…and God’s Word to you today. Accept the power of His presence in your life and embrace the courage that is yours through Him. Child of God, be strong and courageous! The Lord your God will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you! Do not be terrified! Do not be discouraged! He will be with you wherever you go!
