Next: Promise & Provision

Introduction

Sin leaves us stuck, but faith leads to confidence for the future. Max Lucado illustrates this in a story about a man named Timothy Cipriani. His idea was simple. He would lower himself into a pizza restaurant from the ventilation duct. Rob the cash register. Then climb back out. But his plan backfired. Either he had eaten too much pizza, or the ventilation duct was too narrow because he got stuck. But not simply stuck, his legs hung out of the ceiling as he screamed for help. You see, his legs were not simply dangling out of the ceiling, they were dangling over top a deep fryer. Not to worry though. The police came to his rescue, even though it took them thirty minutes to free him. Timothy Cipriani, now inmate Cipriani, got stuck in a way no one had seen before.

Then there’s the eighteen people who rode a roller coaster in Anhui, China. Inclement weather at the amusement park brought the ride to a halt at the top of the loop, and eighteen passengers were suspended upside down for half an hour! All were rescued, but six had to go to the hospital. And then there’s plumbing for service. A man in China dropped his cell phone into a toilet. Rescuers found him crouched over the toilet, his arm submerged up to his shoulder. Workers had to break the porcelain bowl to get him out. Hopefully the phone call was worth it. Odds are you’ve never been caught in a ventilation duct, trapped on a roller coaster, or had your arm caught in a toilet, but you have been stuck. We tend to get stuck. Not stuck physically, but stuck in sin and stuck in our comfort zone. We get stuck in nostalgia and what used to be. And stuck is right where the people in our story could have easily ended up, yet again.

Today begins a new series in the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is a book of triumph. It’s also a book of moving forward as God’s People look to what is next for them. They have just spent the last 40 years wandering in the Wilderness. This is a story of transition. A geographical transition from the Wilderness into the Promised Land. A leadership transition as Moses, has died and now God has appointed their new leader, Joshua. There’s a transition from being a wandering people to a people with a land of their own, at least, for a while. As we dive into our new book, here’s a map to held us get our bearings. When Joshua begins, Joshua and the Israelites are where the black circle is. They had marched up east of the Dead Sea where they sit until Joshua takes command.

Here in chapter 1, God encourages and commands Joshua about what is next for them. This passage could be summed up as, be strong because of the promise of the Lord, and you will conquer the land because of the provision of the Lord. As we learn from this passage, there’s a lot that we can learn from God’s encouragement and command for Joshua. We see that the promises of Christ must lead to action. But what does God promise, and how does he provide? I believe that God has given his People a series of promises through this passage. As he does, he provides what they need. Just as God makes promises to us, and he provides what we need. And as we learn this, we implement this in our own lives and in the life of our church.

God promises success when we follow the Provision of His word

God tells Joshua in verse 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.” This phrase, “Book of the Law” can be confusing to us. When we think of law, we might think of all those pages and pages of tax law that we have to figure out each tax season or we think of why we get a speeding ticket when we’re driving too fast. The word law is capitalized here, and it comes from the Hebrew word, Torah. The Torah is the five five books of the Old Testament; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And now, in the sixth book of the Bible, God is telling Joshua, to learn, to live, and to love the Word he has given him. We can carry this forward today as we now have 66 books of the Bible. But, there’s something deeper that we are called to, and we learn it from the Great Commission. Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The Great Commission can be viewed as the call to go evangelize, as we think about going, making disciples, and baptizing new believers. But then Jesus tells them to teach new believers. But not to just teach them. Specifically he says to observe, which other translations interpret it as, to obey everything that Christ has commanded. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for listen or hear is “shema”. Meanwhile, the Hebrew word for obey is, well, also shema. To them, there was no difference between listening, hearing, and obeying. In English, we split those ideas up into three different words.

A pastor who recently retired was reflecting on ministry and said, “My generation turned discipleship into becoming a biblical encyclopedia.” Do we ever do that? Can our discipleship, our Christlike-ness, simply become a data download? A less technological form of getting a document off the Internet? When we get stuck in our faith, when we accept the comfortable place we are in now, we cut off the transformation that God has for us. Taking this from the level of individual to the standpoint of the whole church, Bob Stauffer, who is an EPC pastor and church revitalization leader says, “We have discipled people beyond their level of obedience.” To put it differently, if we continue learning more when we aren’t living what we already know, what are we doing? As God says to Joshua, “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.” God’s Promises “good success” when we follow the Provision of His word.

God calls us to strength and courage in light of his gift of faith.

This handing of the torch along from Moses to Joshua must have given Joshua a flurry of thoughts and emotions. The man who led them out of Egypt and out of slavery before leading them for 40 years in the Wilderness is gone, and the mantle of leadership has now been passed along to him. We can imagine the emotions he would be feeling. There’s the excitement of leading God’s People into a new phase of their journey. There’s anxiety over the military battles that he will lead Israel through. There’s concern for the families of the soldiers who will die in the days ahead. In the midst of these thoughts and emotions, God has a message for him. And in this message, as in any time we are studying scripture, it’s important to look at what repeats. The words and phrases that repeat are emphasized because of their importance. It’s as though the author is saying, DON’T MISS THIS! This is important! In this first section of Joshua, we get one phrase repeated three different times. This is after the phrase getting repeated at the end of Deuteronomy, which the book right before Joshua. Joshua 1:6 says, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.” Then verse 7 says, “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.” Finally, in verse 9 God says, “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.” Be strong and courageous.

For all of the calls for believers to be strong and courageous, too often we become like the little boy who came running into the kitchen and hurriedly asked his mother if he could watch a wildlife special on the public television station. “Hurry, Mom! It’s got lions and tigers and snakes and all kinds of wild animals. Please, Mom, can I watch it?” “Well, sure, son,” his mother answered. “You know it’s all right to watch that station. And that sounds like a wonderful show for a brave little guy like you to watch.” “Will you come watch it with me?” the little boy asked. “I’m sorry, but Mommy is kind of busy right now.” “But Mom, you’ve got to watch it with me–I’m too scared to watch it by myself.” Fortunately, in the Christian life, we know that we do not have to live the adventure of life alone.

One of the reasons that we choose comfort over adventure is that we confuse timidity and humility. Humility is viewing ourselves in light of God. Listening well, but being confident in who we are in light of who God is. Timidity is viewing ourselves as unworthy and insufficient rather than what God says about us as his “very good” creation and his beloved children. in verse 9 God says, “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.” Do you humbly live life with the strength and courage God commands? Or, do you put your own view of yourself before God’s view of you? There is an account of two skeletons in the corner of a closet who were grumbling about the heat, the dust, and the boredom. “What are we staying here for anyhow?” one asked. “I don’t know,” the second skeleton answered. “I’d leave here in a minute if I had any guts.” Our courage and strength is not only from the Lord, it is commanded by the Lord. God calls us to strength and courage in light of his gift of faith and our adoption as his children.

Since God promises to never leave us, cross the Jordan.

God tells Joshua in verse 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.” As God says it, he says it to people who have been here before. A few books before Joshua, in Numbers chapter 13, Moses sent spies into the Promised Land. They were preparing to move into it, Moses wanted to know what they were up against. Two reports came back, one saying that “the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large.” In other words, we can’t take them. The other report was, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” Perspective changes how we view what is next for us. Do we focus on the challenge before us, or on the God who is with us? Earlier on, they focused on the size and power of the Canaanites. They waited and camped in the wilderness. To put it differently, they stayed stuck. They stayed just outside of the Promised Land that God had given. They stayed on this side of the Jordan. The Promised Land that was right there, right next to them! But finally, in Joshua, the call is to focus on the promise of God and how God has gifted them, over and above the challenge before them.

Why do we so often fail to obey God’s commands? It’s because we do not really believe his promises. The challenge before us feels more powerful, stronger than the God who is with us. But the promises of God and obedience to God always go together. Faith leads to obedience. Here’s a great, albeit somewhat long quote from Anne Lamott. “If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfortable and safe, we die there. . . . If you want to know only what you already know, you’re dying. . . .When nothing new can get in, that’s death. When oxygen can’t find a way in, you die. But new is scary, and new can be disappointing, and confusing—we had this all figured out, and now we don’t.” Throughout scripture, we see examples of God’s People stuck. Moses leads God’s People out of slavery in Egypt, and then they almost instantly want to go back to slavery instead of believing in God’s promise. In the book of Acts, the early Church is hunkered down in Jerusalem enjoying fellowship together, growing in their knowledge of the scripture, but failing in God’s mission, failing in the Great Commission. And then persecution comes, and the church scatters across the world. Comfort is interrupted by problem, which leads to godly success.

The same thing happens in our own lives as well as in the life of our church. Our comfortable, individual spiritual life is comfortable. Then tragedy strikes and God works through it to take us to a new level of faith. First, we were Israel camping out right next to the Jordan, and God calls us to cross the Jordan. Or, as a church. We can get comfortable. We enjoy worship we like, the Sunday-morning Christianity we like without the hassles of having to learn new technology or to step out in faith to share the Gospel. In so doing, we camp out right next to the Jordan. right next to the Promised Land that God has given us. The Promised Land that God has told us to move into. The Promised Land in which God promises to never leave us nor forsake us. The Great Commission that Christ has told us to fulfill is right there. Instead, we stay comfortable. We avoid that technology that we don’t understand. We stay in what we know, what we like, and what we want, but God calls us to something greater. Something greater for our church. Something greater for the unbeliever next door who desperately needs Christ. As we learn from Joshua, we learn what it means to move into what is next. We learn what it means to finally cross the Jordan individually and as a church. After all, it’s easy to stray stuck. But God calls us to cross the Jordan.

Conclusion

God promises good success when we follow the provision of His Word. God calls us to strength and courage in light of his gift of faith. God promises to never leave us nor forsake us as he tells us cross the Jordan. Phillip Yancey reminds us that in the early days of the Alaska Highway, tractor-trailer trucks would make deep ruts in the gravel as they carried construction equipment to boom towns up north. Someone posted this sign at the beginning of the road: CHOOSE YOUR RUT CAREFULLY, YOU’LL BE IN IT FOR THE NEXT 200 MILES. Sin leaves us stuck. Sin leaves us in a rut. Faith leads to confidence for the future. Therefore, I leave you with a simple question. Which side of the Jordan River are you on today? Being stuck is easy and comfortable, but God has so much more for us.