Be Strong and Courageous
Notes
Transcript
The first Sunday of the New Year, I have made it my habit to preach from our Verse of the Year. This year, our Verse of the Year, is Joshua 1:9. To properly understand it and apply it to our lives, we need to read it in context, therefore, let us begin at verse one of that chapter:
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, “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. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 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. 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. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 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 wherever you go. 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. 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.”
The Book of Joshua is interesting in that it both opens and concludes with funerals. In chapter one we just read of the funeral of Moses and if you jump ahead you will note that it ends with mention of the funeral of Joshua, Joseph and Eleazar the son of Aaron, the High Priest. This is not because the author has a morbid interest in death, but because he has a passionate love of life—the Vitality of God’s Promises.
The Vitality of God’s Promises (1:1-4)
The Vitality of God’s Promises (1:1-4)
Consider for a moment when a person needs to be strong and courageous.
Is it not when our life is on the line!
Consider where the Book of Joshua begins—on the verge of the Jordan River. If you are familiar with your Bible, you know that Israel had been here before and at that time they failed to be strong and courageous. Moses had sent out twelve spies and two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, reported that with God’s help, they would surely take the land, but the other ten spies disagreed:
Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
What was the response of the people to this negative report? The next chapter tells us:
Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
So here Israel was, back at the same place they had been forty years before, but this time Moses was dead! Where would they find strength and courage? They would find it in the same place their forefathers should have found it, in the living and abiding promises of God (1 Pet 1:23)!
My friends this is where we must find our courage. I know for many of you it feels as though many of the things you once relied upon has died. Our nation, families, friendship and sadly, even churches are being torn apart by COVID-19. On the verge of this New Year, we must find strength and courage in the promises of God, just as Joshua and Israel did so many years ago.
Isaiah prophesied to a nation and time much like ours; only a tiny remnant of believers remained. To encourage that tiny remnant, God gave them this promise:
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
In this New Year, be strong and courageous, because of the Vitality of the promises of God!
The second reason our text gives for having strength and courage is...
The Encouragement of God’s Presence (1:5, 9)
The Encouragement of God’s Presence (1:5, 9)
“I will be with you” (Joshua 1:5). This was not the first time God spoke these words to a fearful and reluctant leader.
Years earlier, a fearful and reluctant Moses was trying to find any way possible to avoid the mission God had given him. Moses used every excuse in the book and finally God had had enough, and said in Exodus 3:12, “I will be with you.” God then tells Moses His special, covenantal Name, “I AM WHO I AM.” (Exodus 3:14). God’s covenant Name is another way of saying, “I have always been present, I am present and I always will be present!” Moses had died, but Yahweh had not, He was, is and always will be present!
What better reason can we have to be strong and courageous? Listen to how the author of Hebrews uses the presence of God to encourage his readers:
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,
“The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear;
what can man do to me?”
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
Consider the great men and women of God who have gone before, was not their lives testimonies to the truth of God’s abiding presence? Take for example Barbara and Regina Leininger. These two Western Pennsylvania sisters lived just north of here. General Braddock’s and his army had just been defeated and a band of Allegheny warriors, stormed through Buffalo Valley, murdered their family and took the two girls captive. Their story was told in a featured film entitled, “Alone, Yet Not Alone.” The title is a reference to their faith that “God is an ever present help in times of trouble.”
As we go through this New Year together as a church, there is nothing more essential than for us to be continually reminding each other that God is with us and that He will never forsake us.
The third reason we should be strong and courageous is...
The Centrality of God’s Word (1:7-8)
The Centrality of God’s Word (1:7-8)
Perhaps this third point is not a reason for strength and courage, but rather, the way we can have strength and courage. These words are so important; perhaps I should read them again:
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 wherever you go. 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.
In verse seven, God tells Joshua to be careful to do everything He has commanded, then in verse eight He tells Joshua to “meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it”. Constant, careful absorbing of the Word of God leads to obedience to it.
This should not surprise us, were not the first two points dependent upon our knowing the Word of God? How can we know of and believe in God’s promises unless we constantly remind ourselves of them by studying God’s Word? How can we rely upon the character of God, unless we do likewise?
Recall that I said earlier that the Book of Joshua ended in three funerals. Perhaps we should look at that ending:
After these things Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being 110 years old. And they buried him in his own inheritance at Timnath-serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.
Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel.
As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
And Eleazar the son of Aaron died, and they buried him at Gibeah, the town of Phinehas his son, which had been given him in the hill country of Ephraim.
Did not the lives and deaths of these three men testify to the truth of God’s Promises?
If you have read your Bibles you know what happens next:
And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
They didn’t know! They didn’t know because they didn’t know God’s Word.
My brothers and sisters, there is no other way to be strong and courageous than to know and rely upon God’s promises and character as taught to us in Scripture. Let us heed God’s call to courage and strength as Joshua did.