Be Strong

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that we can go into a different part tonight.

And we pray that as we grapple with the Old Testament and stories from a long time ago,

that you would speak to us in a fresh way by your spirit right now

and grow us in our encouragement and our service of you.

And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I want to be political tonight.

How's that? Don't do that too often.

Prime ministers of Australia have been coming and going through a revolving door for the last five years.

That's stating the obvious.

And I thought before I finished this sermon that we might even have another one,

but it hasn't happened at this stage.

But it's led to an insecurity and a lack of confidence in decision makers,

and it's not good for our country.

It's not good for our democracy.

If it has become a tyranny of vested interests or selfish people

who just spin that revolving door and keep it spinning.

When a leader changes, we go from the known to the unknown.

We move into a new era with new hopes and also new uncertainties.

So tonight, as you know, we're in Joshua.

We're in the sixth book of the Bible.

It comes immediately after the first five books of the Bible,

which are known as the Torah, the law.

And it's the first of what we call the former prophets.

And there's a huge transition taking place,

which we've already read about in the Bible readings tonight.

A deeply revered leader, Moses, has died,

and a new leader steps onto the stage.

And so there's these new questions, there's new hopes,

and there's new uncertainties.

And Joshua begins with these words.

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord,

the Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses' aid,

Moses, my servant, is dead.

There's a baton change going on.

The great God anointed and appointed leader of the people of Israel is dead.

Moses was raised in the household of the Egyptian king.

He was a prince of Egypt.

He's probably the foremost leader of the Jews in the whole of the Old Testament.

He was a reluctant leader.

When God first knocked on his door and asked him to lead,

Moses said, please find somebody other than me.

Don't take me, Lord.

And yet he was the man who had confronted the king, Pharaoh,

on numerous occasions with the word and the power of God

until the Egyptian king finally permitted the Israelites to leave Egypt

with the last terrible plague.

Get out of my sight and never come back again.

And Moses led the nation through the Red Sea.

The Egyptian army tried to follow.

God closed the sea over them.

He drowned the army and they were totally destroyed.

The Israelites continued on what was a reasonably short journey of a few weeks.

It only took a few weeks to get to the edge of the promised land.

They arrived there.

They're on the brink of the place that God is bringing them to

and they blew it.

They sent spies into the land.

And the spies returned with a mixed report.

They said, yes, it's a great land.

It's flowing with good things.

It's got milk and honey and all the things that God promised that there would be,

just like God said.

But it's full of giants.

And these guys are so big that we feel like grasshoppers in comparison to them.

I was on holidays before Christmas.

Four days on a houseboat on the beautiful Myo Lakes.

Never been there in my life before.

Pristine beauty.

I was very excited about going.

Warm water.

Unlimited swimming.

You know, all day in and out of the water.

And just before I went, one of my friends very kindly said to me,

he said, oh, watch out for the bull sharks.

No, it wasn't, sorry.

He wouldn't have done such a thing.

And suddenly, four days on a boat and not being able to go into the water

didn't sound very nice at all.

And I said to my friend, I think the bull shark stuff is a lot of bull dust.

And I found out afterwards it was.

There were no bull sharks in Myo Lake.

He was wrong.

But what had happened was his warning had put fear into me.

And uncertainty.

And I was wondering, I was actually wondering why we didn't go on the Hawkesbury River

in the first place.

We wouldn't have had to drive so far.

There are bull sharks and other sharks there.

It's the same with the Israelites.

Ten spies came back.

They're telling giant stories.

And the people become very afraid.

And in their fear, it's almost like they've got amnesia.

They've forgotten what God's just done for them.

They've forgotten the big signs in Egypt.

I mean, how big a miracle does God have to do for people to remember how great he is?

And he does ten of them in Egypt.

And then he brings them through the Red Sea and drowns the army on top of that.

But they forget.

And they stop trusting him.

And they begin to accuse him.

And they say, what have you done bringing us to this place?

We're all going to die.

Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, have a very different perspective.

Don't worry about the giants.

God can take care of them.

And so you've got two groups.

They've gone and seen the same things.

They face the same situation, but each deals with it in a completely different way.

One group is filled with fear and can't get away quick enough.

And the other group have this really big sense of God.

They're confident in God.

They trust his leadership of them, even in the face of giants.

And if we read a whole lot of the Bible, we would see that God punishes the nations for their unbelief,

for the nation for their unbelief.

They wander in the desert like refugees without a home until all the adult men of that generation die for their unfaithfulness.

And so now, 40 years later, there are only two survivors, Joshua and Caleb, and they are both about 80 years old.

Moses is dead.

He's not allowed to enter the land.

That's another big story.

A generation has died out.

God takes one great leader off the scene.

The nation really has lost a colossal leader, and the people are very grieved.

But Joshua begins with a new leader.

And I guess the questions are, what's he going to be like?

Will he take us in?

Will we defeat giants?

Should we trust in him?

Will he prove worthy?

It's funny, you know, for all of us, life is short.

We will all depart the stage of human history.

And as we go, and you see it with older people particularly,

with older people they may have had a pretty substantial life and done a lot of things,

and a lot of things that you probably remember and honour at a funeral service,

but they will go and a family will be left behind.

And some of the questions which become real questions for the people left behind are,

so what's going to happen to us?

And what will our future be like now that this person is no longer part of our life?

And God gives great reassurance to the new leader,

and I think that's what the whole of Joshua chapter 1 is about.

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

It's God's reassurance to the people at this significant point in their history.

Verse 2.

And what you see there, if you listen very carefully,

is that the Israelites' real leader has always been God.

He's working his purposes.

He's pulling the strings.

He provides the real power and the leadership.

Verse 2.

The land is what I am about to give them.

And verse 3.

I will give you what I promised Moses.

And God promises this vast area of land which stretches all the way from the Mediterranean Sea

right through to modern Iraq and Iran.

And they're not new promises.

These are promises which God has made time and time again in the past.

He's made the promises to Abraham in Genesis 15.

He's made the promises to Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 1.

Deuteronomy 1 · chapter mention

And in verse 5, God says,

Just like I was with Moses, I will be with you.

I will never leave you or forsake you.

God is present and leading his people.

He is still on mission.

And so he's giving great reassurance to Joshua and also to the people.

Be assured, God is with us.

He continues to lead us.

His promises assure.

His purposes continue.

And Joshua is God's new man.

His Hebrew name means rescuer or saviour.

It's the same name as Jesus in the Greek.

I've changed my verse tonight and I've gone to Luke chapter 2 verse 12

Luke 2:12

where the angels announce the birth of Jesus and they say,

Christ is a saviour.

Christ is a saviour.

Christ is a rescuer.

Joshua will be a rescuer in terms of God's purposes,

bringing God's people into the land.

And then he reassures his people throughout these words

at the beginning of Joshua.

The reassurance is, I am with you.

You're not alone.

It's the same sort of reassurance which is given again and again

throughout the Bible.

In the New Testament, in John's Gospel,

Jesus alarms his disciples when he says, I'm going away.

And they're distressed.

And he reassures them in John 16, 16.

He said, I will ask the Father and he will give you another counsellor

to be with you forever, the spirit of truth.

But you know him for he lives with you and he will be in you.

And I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you.

In Matthew 28, Jesus does exactly the same things.

The very last words that he speaks to his disciples

before he goes up into heaven,

I am with you always to the very end of the age.

He promises his presence.

We can feel very frightened and lonely in tough times.

Very uncertain of what's going on around us

and uncertain of what lies ahead.

Sometimes devastated by our own sin,

sometimes devastatingly impacted by the sin of others.

Believers do shed tears

and in some places in the world we even shed blood.

Nowhere in the scriptures are we promised an easy road.

But what we can be sure of

and always confident about

is the personal presence of the Lord Jesus Christ

in every situation that we face.

I thought about this this morning.

You know, when you're older,

one of the things that you know is coming

is declining health and death.

It's going to come sometime.

And when you're younger,

you don't think about it as often,

but when you're older

and you see your friends dropping off around you,

it becomes almost the norm.

Others of you are still in high school

or maybe just out at the end of high school

and so life issues are quite different for you.

You have uncertainty about the future.

You struggle with issues in your family.

You see grief with mothers and fathers and families.

You have big life decisions coming ahead.

You're wondering about what you'll study.

You're wondering about what career that you will do.

You're wondering about whether you'll be married,

whether you'll have a family,

what that will look like.

And somewhere in between,

a few of the rest of us fit

and we've been living long enough

to know that some of the things that we planned for

and we hoped for haven't come

and some of the things that have happened to us

are not things that we've welcomed.

Life can be really difficult sometimes.

Illness or illness in a loved one,

in a child or in a spouse,

experiencing death in close family,

maybe it's walking through times of moral failure

or difficulties in our workplace.

God does not promise to get us out of trouble.

He promises his personal presence

in every circumstance of life.

You see it when we have marriages,

ceremonies here in church.

At the beginning of a marriage,

you know, two people stand here,

hopefully head over heels in love.

That's what it's like most of the time.

Maybe very stressed by the arrangements of a wedding,

but head over heels in love

and absolutely anxious to start to build a life together

and be together.

And at the heart of a service,

the two people will make promises to one another.

They read promises which recognise

the ups and downs of the journey

which is still out there ahead of them.

And they'll say to each other,

I take you for better,

for worse,

for richer,

for poorer,

in sickness and in health.

But you commit yourself as a friend

to one another in that moment

and the point is that you have a friend

which undertakes to enter into the journey of life with you.

A real presence,

a deep comforter

when it works right.

And so Joshua begins with God saying,

I am with you.

You're not alone.

He has a powerful presence with his people

on the journey of life.

His promises

and his purposes

continue.

But a word from God,

a promise from God,

always requires a response

from the people that it's spoken to.

Three times God says to Joshua,

be strong,

be courageous,

don't be afraid.

And in verse 18,

the people respond

by asking their leader

to be strong and courageous as well.

And it's not like grin and bear it

and battle through British

stiff upper lip stoicism.

It's about having the courage

to trust the word of God completely

and to act on it.

To rest in what God asks him to do,

to be faithful to what God says.

God's word says to him,

verse 7,

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 that's written in it

and then you will be prosperous

and successful.

This is not a book of rules

and regulations.

This is the book

by which they relate

in a living way

with the living God.

The scriptures were the law.

This was their Bible.

This is about knowing God.

And God gives Joshua

all that he needs

for the task ahead.

He says,

I'm with you.

Trust me.

Trust my word.

Do what I tell you to do

and don't listen to anything

or anybody else.

They are about to enter

a land of giants.

Fearsome enemies,

tough opponents

and God says,

don't be terrified,

don't be discouraged,

trust what I say completely.

Now when a preacher

says something like that

to a congregation

of God's people,

most people just sit there

and nod their heads

and say,

yeah, yeah, yeah,

we've got to do

what God tells us to do.

Of course we do that.

Pay careful attention

to God's word.

Well, what's that look like?

And it's really interesting

because you jump into

the New Testament,

you go to a passage

like Hebrews 13

and he actually picks up

on Joshua 1

and applies it to God's people

in a Christian setting.

So in Hebrews 13,

he says,

marriage should be honoured

by all

and the marriage bed

kept pure

for God will judge

the adulterer

and all sexually immoral.

Keep your lives free

from the love of money

and be content

with what you have

because God has said,

never will I leave you

or forsake you.

And so we can say

with confidence,

the Lord is my helper,

I will not be afraid,

what can people do to me?

See, God's presence with us

should be impacting

our behaviour.

To know Christ

should be changing

the way that we are

and the way that we live

and the people that we are.

Honour marriage,

keep the marriage bed pure.

Keep your lives free

from love of money.

Be content

with what you have.

The reason to honour God

in these things

in matters of relationship

and money

is God's faithfulness

to us

and his presence

with us.

God's given us

his word.

We know what he thinks

about the idols

of sex and money.

Preacher a while back

said,

we live in a sex

sodden society.

He's right,

I saw a movie last night

which I'll tell you

afterwards if you want to know

but it was a movie

that I thought

would have been

a great movie to see

and it was for most of us

if you like seeing people

blown away.

That sort of

light relief for me

sometimes.

Mightn't be good for you.

But something happened

at the end of that movie

that shocked me

and it was like

the pornification

of our culture.

It's like bringing

porn into mainstream.

Some of us

have been burnt

or hurt

by our own

sexual failures

or the failures

of others

against us.

Our society

ridicules

what God teaches

about marriage

and fidelity.

The organised church

wanders like a drunken man

trying to find his way

home over issues

such as gay marriage

and practising

gay ministers.

We've moved

a long way

from God's word.

we are more likely

to say each

to his own

than to hold

to what is clear

teaching in the scriptures.

That's sex

and relationships.

What about possessions?

We're possessed

by them.

If we own homes

we want the Sydney

property market

to boom.

If you don't

own a home

you don't mind

if it crashes a bit.

I tried that

in one of our

church families

this morning

I don't think

they saw the humour

of what I was

trying to say.

I think that was shocking.

But we feel

security in our wealth.

Gives us status.

Reassurance

about who we are.

We feel powerful

because we can travel

business class.

Or we can die

in a five star

nursing home.

How good is that?

We have lots of stuff

but we are restless

and discontent

and never satisfied.

And it's a spiritual problem.

See when we turn

to money

or we misuse sex

I think we're trying

to fill deep

emptiness inside.

More porn

a new sexual partner

great wealth

and the things

that I can do

and buy

and we're trying

to fill this hole

that only Jesus

can truly satisfy.

We had a lovely

experience this week

at church.

Somebody from

one of our church

families

morning church

was serving

in the school

and on the counter.

They were a great

public face

for our church.

and she was telling

the story

of her conversion.

She's come from Iran

and she was converted

in India.

A friend talked

to her about Jesus

and she came

to Christ

and she said

I fell in love

with Jesus.

I fell in love

with Jesus

and boy

he shines

out of her.

The Lord Jesus

richly invites us

into his personal

presence

and into relationship

with him.

He says to us

in Matthew 11

come to me

all you who are

weary and burdened

and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke

upon you

and learn from me

for I am gentle

and humble in heart

and you will find

rest for your souls.

The people of Israel

have been brought

to a brand new day.

God has dealt

with the offenses

of their past.

He's given them

the opportunity

to enjoy

new life

with him

in this brand

new land

and yes

there are lots

of things

that they could

be afraid about

but God

speaks to their

situation

and he says

I am with you

I will never

leave you

and never forsake you

and then he calls

them to make

a strong

and trusting

response to him

be strong

be courageous

don't be afraid

the Lord

your God

will be with you

wherever you go

and brothers

and sisters

I have no idea

what giants

you are facing

in your life

right now

and I am sure

amongst us

even a congregation

this size

that some of us

have very large

giants

staring them down

but this passage

says

don't try to

satisfy your own

hearts with things

that cause

greater heartache

make righteous

choices

pursue the Lord

Jesus in love

be strong

be courageous

continue to

cling to the

Lord Jesus

who says

I am with you

always to the

very end of the

age

the Lord

Jesus

who is with us

is greater

than every

giant

that makes us

fear

Amen