Read Joshua 1:1-9

 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: ² “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. ³ I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. ⁴ Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. ⁵ No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. ⁶ Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.

⁷ “Be strong and very courageous. 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. ⁸ Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; 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. ⁹ Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Let’s Pray.

Man, I do not envy Joshua, do y’all? He’s stepping into some major shoes to fill. He’s not just being called to lead an entire nation, but he’s being called to do it after the best to ever do it – and that’s looking both backward and forward amongst the Israelite people with his only rivals being David and, maybe, Elijah. But Moses is considered, hands down, to be the most important figure in Israelite history, and Joshua is now being called to step into his shoes. You want to talk about a moment of feeling exposed?!

Moses was the man that God called to lead the Israelites from slavery. Moses is the one who sat and communed with God alone on a mountain for 40 days while God gave him the Torah, the Law. Moses is the man who led them across the wilderness. He was the man who called upon God to deliver mana into the wilderness, who brought forth water from a rock, who parted a sea with a staff, and was such a man of God that God himself buried Moses upon a hill. Those are the shoes that Joshua is being asked to fill, and he wasn’t asked to fill them by a coach. He wasn’t asked to fill them by his people. He was called upon by none other than God himself in no unclear manner. It was up to him to carry the torch and lead God’s people into the Promised Land.

And I really only have one question for y’all today and that is: How in the world are you supposed to step up to a moment like that?! How do you live up to that???? Because God may be putting you there, but you know every eye of the nation is now upon you with a stick, a level that you are going to be measured against to live up to. So, how do you do it?

Well, you really have two choices. The first is that one that the enemy wants us to listen to and probably wanted Joshua to listen to and that is: hide! Run, hide, get away because you can’t handle this. Be afraid.

The second one is that we hear the words of God, the most common commandment in the Bible: Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid because I am the Lord your God and if I am with you, then who can be against you?

But there’s more to it than that though, right? First of all, how do we hear all of this in the first place because Joshua’s call is pretty clear. God specifically calls Joshua and specifically tells him that he’s going to be successful as long as God is with him, but I’ve never heard anything like that in my own life? Heck, I’ve never actually “heard” the voice of God at all. I’ve felt compelled by him, I’ve seen his work in my life countless times after He’s been there and done it, but I’ve never felt so sure and reassured by God in a specifically individual and person to person manner.

Second, what about my own expectations of myself? What about my own pride and level of competence or willingness or capability to accomplish the task that’s been put in my lap? I mean, it’s all well and good to talk about Bible stories with ancient heroes who had God at their side in very clear ways, but what about me in my daily battles?

And the hard thing about these kinds of stories is, you’re right. It can be hard for us to see a story like this and understand how we make it relatable to our own life, but we’ve all been in these similar experiences and moments right? Maybe we haven’t been asked to lead a nation of people or even step into the shoes of a Tom Brady or a Troy Aikman, but we’ve found ourself in that moment of being told, “Now its on you” and been terrified of whether or not we’re going to live up to the task. Heck, I remember thinking about that the first time I had to change a diaper and swaddle my child. One I got pretty good at, the other I could never master. But I remember the first time I had to do both and I was afraid of the incredible mess I was going to make with the diaper and that I was going to swaddle my child so tight that Cullen wouldn’t be able to breathe or something like that.

I remember that first time at my first job when the person training me finished and said, “here you go. Your turn, you’ve got this.” And thinking to myself “No I don’t!” Your fight or flight takes over and really, what God is saying here, is that he has called you into something and it’s time to fight.

Some of you may have heard the voice of God before in your mind or in real life, but however you experience God, I know that the Holy Spirit is walking with us as an extension of God with us. I know that the Holy Spirit is constantly calling me forward in life and that God offers me an opportunity in each and every decision I make to engage with His will or not. So, in a sense, every situation I find myself in, he has called me there and is calling me forward in following him just like he did with Joshua.

So, we can learn from the story of Joshua. We can relate to being called forward by God into some scary situations. And we can hear God telling us I’m going to go with you and walk with you, so what else can we learn from what God tells Joshua and what message he may be calling into our own hearts this morning as well.

Because, like we talked about a few weeks ago with Gideon, we have all been called by God to be leaders and ministers in his Kingdom. All who have been called have been called to submit and to serve, so how has God called us to go about our work?

Well first of all, we can be comforted because we know that He knows our hearts intimately. He knows what makes us tick and he knows what terrifies us. Almost every time that God, and Angel, or Jesus makes the statement, “Do not be afraid.” It is preceded by and prompted by nothing at all. Not a startle or a fright, not statement of “I’m afraid!”. He knows our heart and he knows when we’re scared and his response is “Do not be afraid.” But in this story he takes that a little bit further and he does it three times. In verses 6,7, and 9 he tells Joshua to “Be strong and courageous”. And that goes a long way. When we feel week and afraid we tend to act weak and afraid or defensive. When we feel strong and courageous, we tend to be decisive. To take that scary first step towards something because we feel compelled by our own courage, and so God tells us to do the same thing for Him. To be strong and courageous for God. To be reminded again and again that God sees you and calls you a Lion. He calls you to be strong and courageous the same way his son was strong and courageous.

But we have to pair this strength and courage with something else. Something that gives us strength and reminds us where our strength comes from so we don’t forget who called us into these positions in our lives to begin with. In verse 8 God tells Joshua and all of us that we need to obey the Law, to know it so well that is always upon our lips so that we may never look to the left or the right. Y’all, if we want to be people of God, we have to immerse ourselves in who he is and I don’t know a better way to do that than to spend time with him in the Word, Worship, and Prayer. If we can keep one of those three on our lips not only will it bring us comfort, but it’ll keep us from looking to the left or the right. I know that I am going to have a good day when I have a worship song running through my head all morning when I wake up. I know I’m going to be focused in on God’s work for me and even when I get discouraged and think towards sin, I am reminded that I shouldn’t because I can’t start complaining and forget my calling when I have a word of praise on my heart. It’s that beacon that calls us back to him when we really want to stray. And that is exactly what God was telling Joshua. Do these things because I am not sending you forward by yourself with an instruction manual or a treasure map on how to build the Promised Land – I am going with you. If you keep my law ever upon your lips, if you keep a song of praise in your head, or a word of scripture on your heart then you’re going to feel me next to you. You’re going to feel me walk with you as a partner. Let’s serve together!

And if we do this together then you will be prosperous and successful. Man… that part may be the hardest part of this scripture for me to get on board with because I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve followed God many times where I did not find myself prosperous or successful. I found myself beaten down, alone, or with little to nothing to show for my efforts but some hurt and pain in my heart. So why does God tell Joshua – why does He tell us this kind of thing again and again in scripture throughout the Bible? In fact, it pops up so much that entire church and theological models have been built out of it called the “prophet Gospel”.

“If you do what God asks of you and you tithe and you follow God’s word then you’ll be a success, you’ll make good money, you’ll have a happy family, you’ll have that American Dream that was founded on much of this exact same thinking.”

But, what if we define “prosperous” and “successful” incorrectly? Remember, this is God telling Joshua this, not another human being. Maybe the issue is that we measure prospering and success by human standards that equate the American Dream. And if we take a little bit deeper dive into this verse in the Hebrew we see just that.

I know not everybody is interested by ancient dead languages, but humor me for a second! If we look at the Hebrew words we translate to “prosper” and “success” pull in a different way from our materialized understanding. The greatest success you could have in the ancient world was to be considered Wise and, in fact, the word success translates to “make wise”. The word for prosper means “to make, to build”. So what God is promising Joshua here, what he promises us that if we can remind ourselves to be strong and courageous, if we can root ourselves in God as our partner in life, we’re going to find ourselves growing in the wisdom of God and helping build the Kingdom of God. And, really, at the end of the day and at the end of the world that is all there is going to be so we might as well try and as be as successful in gaining the wisdom of God and prosperous in developing the Kingdom as we possibly can. And, if we’re engaging with God, whether we are succeeding or failing by the world’s standards, we are give an guarantee by God that the promised land is going to be delivered to us in our own lives.

We are promised it right at the beginning of verse 3. Verse three says, “I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.” Again, in Hebrew, this same statement is not in a future tense but a past tense. It read “I have given you” every place you will set you foot. God is telling Joshua, “I promised you this, it’s already done. It’s a done deal, all you have to do now is be strong and stand courageously by my side. Don’t listen to that fear in your heart that I feel coming over you. Don’t listen to the expectations that you’re putting on yourself or the expectations that the world puts on you. My expectation is that you will be my partner and my promise is that you are going to take place in a work that is already promised to be completed. Jesus has already secured the victory. Jesus has already overcome our fears and our deficiencies.

So I don’t know about y’all but I say “Yes!” I say yes to God’s call to Joshua and His call to us to stand strong and brave with him in the face of the work he has put in front of me. I say “yes” to the request that I keep him forever on my lips and in my heart and I relish in knowing that he promises me partnership when I do. And, finally, I do all of this with the knowledge that it is no the world’s version of success that I seek. Sure, my flesh and my understanding of life will keep me looking to it, but I know in my heart that it is not by these measures that my success or prosperity will be judged when the end of the world is near. It will only matter that we chose his son as our Lord, his Spirit as our partner, and that we did our best to walk in step with them and the work they have put before us. Because we’re on the side that wins in the end and every step we take alongside God in this world is another step in the victory parade to come.

Let’s Pray.