Please turn with me in your bibles to the old testament, to the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua, chapter 1.
I’m beginning a new sermon series tonight, and my aim is to work my way through the book of Joshua.
For those unfamiliar, Joshua takes place as the people of God are finishing their wandering in the wilderness. Moses, the greatest of the Old Testament Prophets, was used by God to lead the people of God out of slavery in Egypt. They’ve come through the Exodus, walked on dry ground through the Red Sea, and they’ve spent 40 years wandering in the desert, trying to make their way to the promised land.
That’s where Joshua picks up.
Joshua takes over for Moses, and the people of God cross the Jordan and enter into the land. But as we will soon see, everything doesn’t go exactly as one would expect. This promised land, which was supposed to be flowing with milk and honey, that was supposed to be a place of rest from their enemies, this land, becomes the very place of Israel’s own rebellion and hard heartedness.
But before we get to that, tonight we will begin with the commissioning of Joshua, the new leader of the people of God. Let’s read Joshua, chapter 1, the first 9 verses:
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.
5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.
Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success[a] wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.””
Let me begin by posing a question: “What is it that keeps you up at night?
What makes you anxious?
What are you really afraid of?”
These are crucial questions, questions to which we would be wise to pay attention, for where our fears lie, we can usually discern where our allegiances lie, or we might even say, where our idols lie.
Here in the first half of chapter 1, Joshua is commissioned, and in his commissioning as Moses’s replacement, we see multiple times God tell him to be strong and courageous, and we see multiple times the command to not be afraid.
And we would be wise to examine exactly why God would need to do that.
God had already destroyed the scariest army on the planet, right before their eyes. Why would they be afraid?
They were on the cusp of the promised land, why would they be fearful?
God had promised to go before them, and to clear out the wicked nations. Why would they be afraid?
Let’s walk through this passage and see a few places where they were likely to be afraid, and likewise we too might be tempted to fear, and how we might battle that fear.
First, let’s look at verse 1 and see the timing of Joshua’s commissioning. The timing:
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord,
After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord. Moses was the greatest prophet the people of God had ever known. He spoke with God face to face. He parted the red sea. He received the tablets of the moral law of God, and he later wrote down the full book of the law. He struck the rock and provided water, and he prayed to God and provided quail and manna.
And now he is dead. Our leader is gone. The people, and even Joshua, were undoubtedly tempted to be fearful. Times of leadership transition can be scary.
What if the new guy isn’t as strong as Moses? What if he’s not as good? What if he’s a tyrant and mean? What if the manna doesn’t taste as good? What if I don’t like the food he provides?
Satan can, with great effectiveness, pounce upon leadership transitions and prey upon people’s fears. Think about a leadership transition in the political realm.
How many people are tempted to despair and fear because a different politician gets elected? Think about the news reports, and the blogs, and the videos, and the commentary, all proclaiming that the world is going to end because so and so got elected. Almost all of it is driven by fear.
Even good Christian folk, who ought to know better, can be tempted to despair when someone they don’t like gets elected. Satan will use whatever he can get his hands on to make us fearful.
But that fear isn’t limited to politics outside the church. He can do the same within the church. When there is a transition of leadership, Satan wants to pounce.
Maybe he can use fear to stir up division, like in the Corinthian church. I follow Peter, I follow Apollos. Tribalism can bubble up.
Or he can tempt with despair. Moses is dead! What are we going to do? Joshua will never measure up to Moses. Things will never be the same. All the good old days are behind us. It’s all downhill from here.
Or he can tempt with forgetfulness, tempt us to fail to remember God’s promises. He had already promised them the land and His presence with them in it. If that’s the case, then what had they to fear? Future blessing and presence were promised, and yet Satan wants us to forget God’s promises of God’s future provision.
Satan delights in getting us to forget yesterday’s grace, and to doubt tomorrow’s promise of grace.
Or Satan can tempt us to live by sight, and not by faith: Look at the armies in the land. Look at how big they are; they are like Giants. You remember what the Spies said in their reports. How are we supposed to defeat them and their huge armies? And so rather than trusting in the promise, we trust only what we see.
I don’t see how this is going to work. I don’t see how all the dots connect. And so I won’t believe it. I’d rather sit here and wring my hands, and be fearful and anxious, rather than trusting the promise of God that he will be with us.
Many possible temptations to fear for Joshua and the people of God, and many of those same temptations are still around for us today, even though our exact circumstances might be vastly different. The same sins, because Satan still uses the same old temptations.
Moses, the servant of the Lord, is now dead. That’s the timing.
Now let’s move onto Joshua’s training. Joshua’s training.
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun,Moses’ assistant.
Moses’s assistant, or we might translate it servant or minister. He was Moses’s right-hand man. His go-to guy. And now it’s his turn to step up to the plate.
In fact, nothing in this first chapter is surprising to you if you’ve been reading along in the history of Israel.
In Deuteronomy 31, for example, God has already said everything in this chapter was going to happen. Listen to how similar Deuteronomy 31sounds to our text in Joshua: “The Lord your God himself will go over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, so that you shall dispossess them, and Joshua will go over at your head, as the Lord has spoken.”
Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
7 Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it. 8 It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”
It sounds exactly the same, because the same God has had this plan all along. He knew Moses wasn’t the right man to lead the people into promised land. Remember, Moses had an anger problem, and in Numbers 20 he struck the rock in anger, disobeying the Lord and not treating him as holy, and God told him that he would not lead the people into the land.
God had a plan for another, Joshua, to lead the people. Moses was God’s servant, but his time had passed, and now God’s plan is for another to arise and lead in his place. God will often change leaders, change hands, change servants, so that it may be seen that the power lies in Him, and not in any of his chosen instruments.
He like to change vessels, to show that the power is not in the vessel, but in the Spirit working through it.
Moses was a great man, but God was not bound or beholden to him. He could raise up stones to lead Israel if he wanted to.
And notice too that for Joshua to be ready, to be fit to lead the people, he first had to be Moses’s servant. He had to learn to be a number 2, before he could be ready to be a number 1. That’s a great leadership principle for any area of life.
That’s how the best leaders are made. The best leaders, especially in the house of God, are the kinds of people who are first willing to be servants. To be the greatest in the kingdom, you must be willing to become the least. That’s what Jesus said, and that same logic applied in the Old Testament too.
But people don’t naturally like being servants. They want to rush right to the top. In their pride, they think they have all the best ideas, that they could do it better than whoever is up there now. They can grow impatient, and disdain the leaders ahead of them, or disdain their time in the shadow as a number 2.
Be careful of those kinds of aspiring leaders, whose ambition leads them to buck against their God-ordained leaders. Pride can manifest itself with impatience and rebellion, in a disregard for the 5thcommandment. Ungodly ambition and unrestrained zeal don’t make for fit leaders. First you must learn to be a servant, like Joshua, if you’re going to be effective in a position as leader.
2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.
Let’s move on. We’ve seen the timing of Joshua’s commission, and Joshua’s training as Moses’s servant. Now let’s look at the calling itself. The calling itself. Verse 3:
3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.
The calling was clear: he was to lead the people into the Land of Promise. He was to be God’s instrument of fulfilling the promise that God had himself made all the way back in Genesis 12, when he made a covenant with Abraham.
Genesis 12:1-3 “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation”
The book of Joshua is, in one real sense, simply God declaring to the world that He was faithful to his promise to Abraham, to bring the children of Abraham into the land that he had promised them.
And notice the completeness of the fulfillment: Every place that the sole of your foot will tread, I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses.
From Lebanon, to the Euphrates, from the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea, that is, from the North, the South, the East and the west, I am going to give it to you, just as I promised. I won’t be stingy in fulfilling my promise.
And NO man will be able to stand against you. No army can stop me from fulfilling my promise. Nothing is going to stop you from inheriting what I have vowed to give to you.
The faithfulness of God is on full display. Nobody would be able to look at the book of Joshua and say that God didn’t do what he promised.
Indeed, look at the explicit assurance that he gives too, at the end of verse 5:
Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.
I will be with you, just like he was with Moses. Joshua, you don’t have to be scared you won’t measure up. I will be with you.
And to the people, it’s as if God says, “You don’t have to worry that the new guy won’t be as good as the old guy. I will be with him, just like I was with Moses.”
It’s God’s promise and his presence that provide assurance, and dispel fear. Not the strength of the army. Not the cleverness of the new leader. It’s the presence of the Lord and His faithfulness to His promises that assure success for their mission.
The same is true today. The church of Christ is not dependent upon any particular leader or pastor. The mission is not contingent upon any man. And the promise is not bound to any person. It is God and his faithfulness that provides assurance that the promises will come to pass.
And just like the Israelites on the verge of the promised land, God’s promised us that he will be with us. Jesus concluded the great commission with these words: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” And he elsewhere promised that even the gates of hell would not prevail against his work to build his church. His presence and his promise.
If we have the assurance of victory from Christ himself, the twin assurance of his presence and his promised victory, then what have we to fear?
What future circumstances could force Christ to not fulfill his promise? Nothing.
What unforeseen obstacles will derail Christ’s plan? None.
What enemies or dangers can overcome Christ’s power? None of them.
He’s defeated all the enemies, all the principalities and powers of this age. He’s disarmed them, Paul says, through his atoning work on the cross. He’s even defeated the final enemy, which is death.
Not even the grave can stop his promises from coming to fruition. That’s how Paul can call us more than conquerors through Christ Jesus.
What’s more, we’re given the privilege of being fellow conquerors through our faith in him. We’re promised in Romans 16:20 that: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”
Just like the people of God were promised victory over all their enemies in the promised land, so too are we promised victory over the great enemy himself.
If all this is true, then what have you to fear? If you’re trusting in Christ, the greater Joshua, then you don’t have to be anxious and worried.
His promised presence will be with you, even to the end of the age. He’s never going to abandon you, nor forsake you.
Just as Joshua was to called to lead the people all the way home, so too with the greater Joshua, Jesus Christ, be faithful to lead all of his people home. And if that is the case, we don’t have to worry or be afraid.
In fact, we can grow to be like Joshua, who was commanded 3 times in the remaining verses to be strong and courageous. Look at verse 6:
6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.
7 Only be strong and very courageous,
And again in verse 9: Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.””
What’s the key to strength and courage? What’s the key to not fearing the future? It is remembering the promises of God. The promise of his presence and his blessing. The promise that he will go before us, and take care of us.
That’s the charge of Joshua, and the people, and that’s our charge. Don’t fear. Be strong and courageous. Remembering what God has promised us in Christ.
And that will lead us to a final point: from verses 7&8: the manner of Joshua’s charge. The manner of Joshua’s charge.
Look again at verse 7 and notice that Joshua wasn’t merely to be strong and courageous. He also was to be faithful. He was to be bound to the word of God:
7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success[a] wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
The connection between the first and second part of verse 7 are interesting. Be strong, and stick the word. Be courageous, and conscientious.
To be bold is to be bound by God’s word. In God’s kingdom, might is measured not by muscle, and success is measured not by strength. Simple obedience to the text is the measure of a man.
But we don’t always see that, do we. In our upside-down world, the ones that rebel against the word of God are the ones who are praised as strong and brave. The brave ones are the ones who reject the shackles of traditional sexuality, or gender, or any other category of biblical ethics.
But that’s not the way of God’s kingdom. If you want to be brave, be bound by the word of God.
Joshua’s fate as a leader was to be tied to his performance of the word. Like the blessed man of Psalm 1, Joshua was called to meditate on the word of God day and night.
And God’s command is for complete obedience: you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to ALL that is written in it.
Partial obedience won’t suffice. Half-hearted or occasional obedience isn’t enough. The leader of God’s people must be faithful in all things. And too, the people of God were called to be faithful to the Word as well.
The people of God were bound to the Lord in a covenant, first made through Moses, where they were bound to keep all of the commands of God. And that covenant was to continue when they enterd into the Land and take possession of it.
Turn ahead to chapter 23 and let’s see what is going on at the end of the book:
Joshua 23 contains the final charge of Joshua before he is going to die. He charges the people to remember what God has done, what he has given to them, how he has been faithful to his promises.
And he reminds them of the conditions of their covenant. Over and over he reminds them that God has been faithful, so must you be. God kept his promise, so must you.
Look at Joshua 23, starting in verse 6:
“Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, 7 that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, 8 but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day.
9 For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations. And as for you, no man has been able to stand before you to this day. 10 One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised you. 11 Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.
12 For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, 13 know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.
14 “And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things[a] that the Lord your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed.
15 But just as all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have been fulfilled for you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things, until he has destroyed you from off this good land that the Lord your God has given you, 16 if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them.
Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you.””
So, we see the conditionality of the Mosaic covenant. If the people are faithful, things will go well with them in the land. But if they are unfaithful to the covenant, then they will die and get kicked off the land.
And we know that that is exactly what eventually happens. The people would not remain faithful to their covenant with God, and they get exiled from the Land.
The problem wasn’t with the covenant, and it certainly wasn’t with God being unfaithful to his promises. The problem was their hearts.
And that’s where we see the glory of the new covenant come into focus. The new covenant that God makes with his people is not like the old covenant with Moses.
Whereas before, their faithfulness was required to keep them safe and secure in the land, in the new covenant, Christ’s faithfulness is what keeps us safe and secure. Christ fulfilled the mosaic covenant by being the new Joshua who was faithful to every single verse of the word of God.
He fulfilled every bit of the law of God, and earned for his people a life of prosperity and blessing in the land. But we don’t simply get a little strip of land in Palestine. We get the entirety of a new heaven and a new earth, where moth and rust cannot destroy, where no idols can distract our hearts, where foreign armies can never invade and displace us, and no fear can tempt us to despair.
And even better than all that, we have the promise fulfilled that God will never leave us or forsake us. We can’t be kicked out of that heavenly promised land because we didn’t measure up. IN fact, we aren’t entitled to that inheritance because of our faithfulness at all.
It is simply by faith in Jesus Christ that we have access to the inheritance. He’s the final seed of Abraham to whom all the promises find their fulfillment.
He’s the blessed one through whom all the nations of this earth will be blessed.
He’s the captain of our salvation, the leader of the army of God. He’s the better and greater Joshua. In fact, Jesus’s name is derived from the same name as Joshua himself, and that name is translated as Yahweh saves, or Yahweh is salvation.
Jesus’s very name is the truth of the gospel. Yahweh saves through the work of the faithful Jesus, the final Joshua, the conquering hero that leads his people all the way home.
Trust in this Jesus and you won’t have to be fearful or afraid. You can grow to become stronger and more courageous, as you learn to stand in the power of his might.
You don’t have to fear what your eyes see, when you remember the promise that he will never leave you nor forsake you.
Don’t you want that? To not be tossed around by every little fear, driven by anxiety at every turn?
Trust in Jesus. Remember that his presence will never forsake you, in fact, His very Spirit is promised to reside within you, and he will never abandon you. Wherever you go, he is already there, and his promise is to do you good.
That’s good news, and that good news is what will enable us to trust him all the way home.
