Joshua 1:1-9 | Resolved: Strong and Courageous

Speaker 2: So this series is, is all about looking at different men

throughout the old and New Testament to showcase to us what it looks like

to put it all on the line and to be okay with whatever that costs.

So as we look today, this morning, uh, one of the things that we're

gonna look at is the life of a man who shows us what it looks like

to live with strength and courage.

Now, strength and courage are what's necessary to be resolved.

You can't be resolved without having the strength to fortify that

commitment and courage to pursue that.

As I mentioned already, and as Pastor Peter has been talking about on the

weekends, we are constantly bombarded with temptations to abandon our

faith, or at least to lessen it, to quiet it so that others are pacified.

Uh, by our unwillingness to stand for Christ in, in bold and honest ways.

So what I want you to think about is that every aspect of your life,

though every, everything in your life worth having, requires you

to resolve to have that thing.

If you're married, you know that you've resolved before God and before man to

love and honor your spouse for the rest of your life, as far as it depends upon you.

That kind of resolve requires you to be strong in your commitments and

courageous to love this person you're with your spouse, no matter what happens.

And we all know bodies change, life change, all sorts of situations can

change that dynamic, and yet you're committed to that and it's worth having.

You can also think about some of you guys pursuing technical degrees or

advanced degrees, terminal degrees.

Uh, it it's required of you to be resolved to pursue that.

And unless and until you're willing to put down the money and the time to do

that, uh, you're not gonna get the degree, you'll get conferred the degree only after

you put in the resolve to have that thing.

Well, we can understand how marriage and degrees all, all, all require this kind of

resolve, but when we look at our Christian faith, it's really not that different.

Uh, a resolve to your Christian faith means you being willing to say

whatever it costs to get the thing.

I want to put down the effort, the time, the money, the resources, the

physical stamina to get the thing.

And then Christian.

The Christian life, the thing is not salvation per se.

We receive salvation that's conferred upon us by grace through faith, but

what we get is the relationship with God that we were designed for you are

resolved, not necessarily to make a tremendous difference in your world,

although I hope for that you're resolved, not necessarily to have a blossoming

ministry, whatever that might mean to you.

Your commitments and resolve is to the Lord, to know him,

to love him, to live for him.

That's what this series is about, for you to enjoy and to, uh, participate in

all that God has for you in this life.

For you to do that, you have to have strength and courage, and that's

why we're gonna look at Joshua.

In fact, as you open your Bibles to Joshua chapter one, I wanna remind you,

uh, why we're doing what we're doing.

Some people will take issue with us looking at the Bible in this way.

In fact, uh, people that are conservative and love their Lord and love their

bibles will see that what we're doing by looking at the lives of these

men is, is a misuse of scripture.

And let me just explain to you why, uh, they would say, when you do this,

you're taking scriptures that are, uh, about an ancient people and you're,

you're using it to moralize the church.

Um, it's behavioral modification and you're taking what God has written

to these people and you're trying to draw applications out of it.

You shouldn't be doing that.

Now, I just wanna give you a quick defense of that because I know some people can be

a bit, I don't know, uh, upset by this.

Um, let me just give you one text.

First Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Uh, really you're gonna look at verses six through 11, but I'm gonna quote to you,

just verse 11 to give you justification biblically for why we look at the Old

Testament and draw application out of it.

Here's what one Corinthians chapter 10, verse 11 says, Paul's talking

about the Old Testament when he says, now these things happen to

them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction.

He's talking to the Corinthian church.

This is New Testament.

Paul talking to the New Testament Church and saying what we read about in the Old

Testament is written down as an example, and it's written down for our instruction.

And so the Bible gives us permission to read our Old Testaments.

With the eye of saying, how do I make this apply to my life?

Now that requires a bit of carefulness.

We don't wanna take all the scripture and say, copy and paste to my life,

but we do wanna look at the Old Testament and draw application from

it, which is why we do what we do.

So as we look at Joshua chapter one, what we're gonna see is

that strength and courage.

Come from a deep and settled conviction that God's promises

and presence are unwavering.

There's the point of my sermon, if you want to know what this is about.

Strength and courage come from a deep and settled commitments that God's promises

and God's presence are unwavering.

If I could wave a magic wand over your life right now, and I said to the Lord,

Lord, I want you to give these men a firm belief that everything you promised

them, including your your, your presence.

That they believe that 100% without ever doubting it.

Your life would change right now because you would take all of God's word and then

you would put it to work and you would say, well, God promises these things.

I'm gonna tackle that.

I'm gonna do that.

It would require strength and courage, but you would have the necessary tools

to muster the strength and courage to trust God and take the active

steps of faith that he calls you to.

Strength and courage are required to believe these things, but they come from.

Having a deep and settled conviction that God's promises

in his presence are unwavering.

They are always with you, always for you.

And I think Josh was gonna give us a taste of what this looks like.

Okay, Joshua, chapter one.

If you don't have it open yet, please do.

We're gonna take a look at Joshua and, and starting out with verse one.

We're gonna notice a few things.

In fact, lemme just give you a running start here.

Moses has just died.

Now Moses, the man of God, the man for whom God gave Israel the law, the

pentitude, that is he, he's encouraged them through Moses' life, but he's

now off the scene in Deuteronomy 34.

He gives his farewell speech and he leaves Joshua in charge.

Joshua has been training under Moses for decades at this point, and in

fact, we see evidences of Joshua's leadership from the very earliest stages

when he was fighting, uh, the battle.

You remember Moses was holding up his staff.

The man leading the battle down in the valley was Joshua.

So Joshua's been around for a minute, and he's been able to observe Moses'

leadership, and now God is giving Joshua the mantle to take up leadership

for Israel and now help them move into conquering the Promised land.

You remember that Moses was disqualified.

He, along with all of Israel, were dq because they did not believe God.

They didn't trust God.

They grumbled against him.

They, uh, actually did this because they sent 12 spies into the Promised Land.

And you might recall what happened is that 10 spies came back and

brought a scary message to Israel.

Don't do it.

There's too, they're too big.

There're too many.

But only two men were willing to stand against the 10 and say, well, actually.

The land is awesome.

We can do this.

Two of those men, one was Caleb, the other was Joshua, the son of none, the

one that we're gonna study this morning.

And so he, he encourages the people to say, we can do this.

God has given us this land.

We just need to go and take it.

Um, the other 10 spies who are chiefs of the people of Israel

said, no, we shouldn't do this.

Well, God, God judged him severely for that.

Uh, punishing them by saying, well, for the next 40 years, all of you guys

are gonna wander in the wilderness.

Many of you are gonna die.

Most of you in fact, says everybody, minus those people that

I approve of, which would include Joshua, everyone's gonna die.

Uh, Joshua then steps into leadership from having 40 years of wandering in the desert

with Moses, also having the experience of seeing how Israel has dealt with

God's promises in the past, and now God's commissioning him to lead the people.

So this book depicts all, all of Joshua's book, depicts them conquering the

promised Land with Joshua at the lead.

And what we'll see is that all, all the things that you and I face

today are actually, there's a lot of parallels to how Joshua lives.

In fact, Joshua has every reason to be fearful and worrisome and

anxious because we see in the text, Joshua's gonna be told by.

Hey, Joshua.

Don't sweat it.

Be strong and courageous, which all by itself is instructive.

Take a look at Joshua chapter one with me.

I'm gonna read verses one.

Let's read verses one through four together, and then I'll

make a few commentary along the way to help get us started here.

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua,

the son of none, Moses assistant.

Now that's interesting that God would introduce him that way.

This is beginning of Joshua's book, and yet he still called

the assistant of Moses.

God says to Joshua 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.

So God's already reminding them.

The promises are still alive, Moses is dead, but the promises remain, uh, remain

alive and ready for them to take it.

So they're going to cross the Jordan to do this.

Verse three, every place.

Every place to, uh, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon.

I have given to you just as I have promised to Moses from the wilderness

and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all

the land of the hit heights to the Great Sea toward the going down to

the sun shall be your territory.

And just a quick commentary on this, the land that God is promising,

Joshua right here is actually massive.

In fact, the land that God had promised to Israel was far bigger than anything

they ever conquered in real life.

What they did was significant and we'll, we'll talk briefly

about that, but God is promising.

Joshua, I told Moses you guys would have massive territory, and he reiterates it

to Joshua saying, every place you set your foot everywhere, we're talking massive

land territory here promises to Joshua.

Uh, and that's verse four.

All, all the, and, and, and he says, uh, no man shall be able to stand

before you all the days of your life.

So this whole area, God is reminding Joshua what's about to happen.

He made promises to Abraham, which are now carried forward

through Moses and now to Joshua.

And what we're seeing here is Joshua being encouraged by the Lord.

Joshua is being encouraged by the Lord to remember I've made promises to Moses.

And those promises also apply to you, Joshua.

Which already tells me Joshua needs the reminder.

And I think often we need the reminder too.

Joshua's told by God, remember what I told Moses?

And basically God's gonna quote him, uh, quote what he said to Moses, and

he's saying, look, I'm gonna give you this land, but I need you to pursue it.

That's often how the promises work.

By the way, God makes promises to us, but those promises are not static.

They just don't come to us and wash over us like a wave.

It's our job like Joshua to receive the promises of God and then to act upon them.

Okay, all that.

Let's start with point number one here.

Let's claim God's promises.

We're not health, wealth, and prosperity, but there is an appropriate place for us

to say, I'm gonna claim God's promises.

I'm gonna do that.

Uh, this is not Christian, uh, Christian nationalism kind of thing.

This is not name it in claimants.

Uh, this is actually saying, take God's word, believe God's

word, and act upon God's word.

That's essentially what we're trying to get at here.

Uh, recently, I, I was looking at an unclaimed property website.

In fact, I have some unclaimed property in California.

It's like 45 bucks or something.

Uh, but every state has one as far as I, I've, I've learned.

And Texas has one as well.

You can go to Unclaimed Property.

I forget the website, but you can go and see how much money you might have

out there that you haven't touched.

I, I went through looking at different people and looking at different names,

and I, I found my name there and I don't have anything in Texas unclaimed,

but there were some people there.

I found one guy who had $13,870.

I'm just sitting there and I'm thinking, what is this guy doing?

What does he do for a living that he doesn't need?

$13,870?

And there are several people, uh, whose names it doesn't matter.

None of us here, um, several people, several people who have thousands

upon thousands of dollars just sitting out there waiting to be claimed.

And you gotta wonder, okay, what are these people doing that they

can afford not to claim all these tens of thousands of dollars?

Uh, but what really, Christians do this too.

Because we have unclaimed riches in Christ that we have yet to tap into.

It's easy to live in spiritual poverty when you don't know

the riches you have in Christ.

And those riches are in part the promises that God makes to us, the

promises that he gives to us and those promises, I mean, put it simply, I mean,

we could talk really in a challenging way about what promises mean, but

let me just give you my definition.

A promise is God's assurance that he will do what he says.

Because of our union with Christ promises, God's assurance that he will do what he

says because of our union with Christ.

It is our union with Christ that secures the promises that God makes to

us and not our individual worthiness.

Um, and therefore what I need you to understand then is that the God makes

promises that your job is to act upon you, cash in the check, so to speak.

When you act upon the promise and failure to do that leaves you

vulnerable and unwilling to take up the mantle that God has called you to.

So claiming God's promises, then, first of all, knows means

that you know what they are.

You have to know what God's promises are.

Now this is actually a more challenging conversation than what you might realize.

In fact, I was just reading a book that talked about, uh, how one of his favorite

things about graduating college was that everyone gave him a card on it, or

I gave him a card or a placard or some kind of gift that said, for I know the

plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Thoughts to bless you, to prosper you.

Um, and of course if you know Jeremiah 29 11, you, you've, you've heard this

one before, and so he, he recognizes though that one of the challenges

is that that promise wasn't for him.

And that promise wasn't made to him.

Uh, when I was in the Pentecostal Church for a long period of time, I was in there

for the first, I don't know, 10 years of my Christian life, uh, Pentecostal church.

We, we had verses like that all the time too, and I never thought twice about them.

I always claim it was, yeah, that promise is to me.

Um, second Chronicles I think is, I think this is also Chronicles

chapter nine, if my people.

Who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, then I will hear

their prayer and I will heal their land.

Now I remember thinking about that and using that, that verse to pray

for America and to pray that God would heal our land and bring about revival.

That, that, that's the typical context.

But knowing what the promises are are challenging because you

have to be able to distinguish who's the church and who's Israel.

Uh, just a short summary here.

You are the church.

We're not Israel.

We are all the church.

If you're in Christ, you are the church.

Israel is a separate entity in God's sight.

Now I think Israel's gonna be saved in the same way you are, but

Israel here in the Old Testament is national and ethnic Israel.

So the promises that you see in the Old Testament are often toward those people.

Now, could you say, when I look at Jeremiah 29 11, can I say, generally

speaking, that God, uh, shows me kindness and promises to bless me?

I guess you could get there.

But that's not the best text for us to do that.

Uh, the same can be said when we take verses like, uh, Philippians four 13.

I could do all things through him who strengthens me.

Uh, that is a promise.

I would take that as a promise.

But reading that promise actually takes a little more effort than

just saying, well, it says that, so I'm gonna slap it on my, my thigh.

I'm gonna put it on my jersey, and I'm gonna, you know, and the, and

the MMA octagon, I'm gonna punch that guy in the name of Christ.

It's not that, uh, but I could say I could do all things through

Christ who strengthens me.

If that Octagon Fighter means if I lose this, I, okay, I could, I can

lose in the name of Christ, fine.

I can win in the name of Christ.

Uh, if, if you can, if you can do that now I can do all things through

Christ who strengthens me isn't a, a free pass in a blank check to say,

I can get that six figure job, or I can, you know, climb that mountain.

It really is.

I can be content in any circumstance.

So if he means I can be content in loss, I can be content in

bankruptcy, then, then great.

Uh, but, but promises require you to know what they are.

Knowing what they are means knowing how to read your Bible

Well, um, and we'll get to that.

We will get to that again soon.

In fact, my second point, I think we're gonna deal with that third point.

Um, but you gotta know what the promises are and a simple application for you.

Joshua had to be reminded by the Lord.

Think about that.

Joshua needed God to remind him, Hey, Joshua, remember

those promises I gave to Moses?

Let me tell you, and then I'm gonna tell you, Joshua had.

The Lord tell him, here's what the promise is.

You need reminders too.

This is why our church so often prioritizes being in

your Bible every single day.

You have to, you need reminders.

I, I mean, I've, I've read the Bible now several times.

No boast.

I'm just saying this is, this is the reality and I find stuff new all the time.

Has anyone else had this experience?

You read your Bible like, I've never seen that, or I've seen it

and it never clicked what that meant or why that was significant.

You know, the ancients had a, a saying, you never step into the same river twice.

And the reason is because their river floats, right?

The the, the thing changes.

You never read the same book twice, and that's because you're changing.

God's not changing.

But what you see change is because you are different.

And if God is working on you, that's a guarantee.

You'll continue to be different.

So knowing what God's promises are require you to repeatedly

expose yourself to things that you think you might already know.

I constantly think about a student I had in high school.

Oh, I was having a very similar conversation.

I was preaching a message saying, you gotta read your Bible.

And he says, why?

I read it already.

I did it one time.

I got the whole thing done and I said, well, I don't even know what I said.

I probably just like sighed and said, just trust me.

Trust me.

You claim God's promises by knowing what they are, but also,

as I mentioned already, you claim 'em by fighting for them.

I, I want you to notice what God says to Joshua, and in verse three,

he says, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon.

I have given you.

I've given it to you just as I promised to Moses.

Now, pop quiz.

At that point, did Joshua have the land?

No, of course not.

And yet he says to Joshua, I've given you the land.

Verse three every, everywhere you set your foot, I've given it to you.

And yet Joshua actually did not have it.

And what that tells us then is that it was their promise.

Yes.

And God had given it to them.

But it was theirs to claim.

Joshua still had to put in the E, the effort to fight for what

God had promised to give him.

We shouldn't expect anything different.

Our job is to also fight to receive the things that God has given us.

That's how we claim God's promises.

We have to know them and we have to fight for them.

Lemme give you another example, one John one, nine.

Here's a simple New Testament promise that you have to fight for

and it's not a tough fight, but let me just show you what it says.

You might know this one, one John one, nine.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to

cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Did you catch it?

Where's the, where's your fight?

In that, in that passage there, if we confess our sins, you may not be too

impressed by that, but that's actually something that takes effort on your part.

It takes you going to the Lord with some regularity and saying, Lord, forgive me.

I'm sinning in these areas.

I agree with you that this sin is wrong.

So that fight is a relatively small fight, but it's a fight nonetheless

because it requires you examining yourself and being humble enough to say, yes, I

have sinned in these particular areas.

Lord, please forgive me.

But the promise that we see here is if we confess our sins, he's faithful and

he's just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us, forgiveness and cleansing.

Those are the promises that you receive.

When you put the fight into claiming that promise and that fight is confessing

our sins, these things produce trust, and uh, these things produce in us.

Strengthen courage because we trust his promise.

You can live with a clean conscience if you trust one John one, nine.

You might have had several failures behind your name when it comes to loving your

wife and leading your kids and doing a great work at the office, or, and you can,

you can get rid of that by submitting it to the Lord and saying, I'm gonna trust

that you know what you're doing here.

Lord, please forgive me for these sins.

I confess, I agree with you.

Let me deal with these now because I believe God's promises are unwavering.

I will do the uncomfortable work of acting upon them.

Fighting for God's promises means knowing what they are, rather.

Claiming God's promises means knowing what they are and fighting for them.

What this also means, if you're gonna claim God's promises, notice

he makes this promise to Joshua.

He says, uh, I've given these things to you.

Joshua is going to find resistance in the land.

You guys already know this.

Part of the resistance is, uh, the lack of belief that Israel has, but

some of it's also the shenanigans of Aiken taking things that

weren't, that didn't belong to him.

They're gonna have a lot of stumbling blocks along the

way as they conquer the land.

And Joshua's leadership.

His job though was to keep them marching in the same direction,

even though all throughout their march they had all sorts of issues.

So claiming God's promises will mean that you act on the

promise before you see the fruit.

And gentlemen, we have to be okay with the fact that claiming God's

promises means you're not gonna see the fruit of it right away.

So I act on the promise before I see fruit.

I don't quit on the promise until I see fruit.

That was Joshua's job.

He was to keep them making progress in the promised land until

they saw fruit and they weren't finished until they were finished.

And even Joshua's job, although he was finished when he died,

the job was still yet to be done.

That's what the whole book of judges was about.

They struggled to keep the promises that God had given them.

So when I act on the promise before I see fruit, I don't quit on the

promise until I see fruit and I give thanks to God when I see fruit.

So much, so much of your Christian life can be, can be seen here.

Uh, because your tenacity to pursue what God has given you is really

dependent upon whether or not you believe it's worth pursuing.

If you don't think that what God has for you is worth it, you're just gonna say,

well, I'll get to it if I get to it.

There's other things that are more important, more pressing.

I've got stuff at the office that's waiting for me.

I gotta mow the lawn.

I got some stuff at the house that has to get done.

I got a honey do list that my wife has given me.

I gotta follow up with that today.

Your trust in God's promises will give you the tenacity to say, I believe it.

I'm gonna pursue it.

I'm gonna prioritize it until God tells me I'm done.

And for most of our lives, claiming your claiming God's promises will

last the duration of your life.

To be made, like Christ is a lifelong promise that God gives

us, that you can't quit on.

You can't short circuit the process and say, I'm just gonna trust

that God's gonna make me more like Christ and I'm just gonna sit here.

I'll let go and let God mentality.

Claiming God's promises means I act on it before we see fruit.

Um, I'm acting on reading my Bible.

I'm acting on prayer.

I'm acting on leading my family and family devotionals.

I'm acting on evangelizing that neighbor.

Yeah, they're scary.

They, they, they're smarter than I am, but I'm gonna act on it.

I act on the promise that God has people that he set apart for his glory and honor.

And I'm not gonna quit until I see fruit.

This is what it looks like to be strong and courageous.

It means we're willing to set aside our immediate gratification in

order to say God knows what he's doing, claiming God's promises.

We live in a microwave generation and increasingly so we're we.

We enjoy immediate gratification.

Um.

Yeah, that's training you by the way.

We we're, we're, we're crazy not to think that that's training us.

We have to swim against the string to train ourselves to say, I'm gonna

accept my sights on a much longer goal.

Strength and courage come from the conviction that God's promises are

unwavering, but it gets even better.

In fact, lemme take a, take a look here verses five and six with you,

Joshua chapter one verses five and six.

Here.

Here's what he says.

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

And just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

That's amazing.

By the way, in the same way that I was with Moses, I'll be with you.

He's giving Joshua an incredibly, uh, great privilege here.

I mean, think about what Moses' relationship to God

was, but God said about Moses.

I know him face to face.

I speak to him with such an intimacy and such a closeness

that no one can claim that.

Then God's telling Joshua, I'll be with you just like I was with Moses.

That's pretty phenomenal.

He says, after this, I will not leave you or forsake you.

I'm not gonna drop out.

And when the going gets tough, I'm not gonna bounce and

say, this is too much for me.

God says, I, I will be with you through thick and thin.

Joshua verse six, notice what God says to Joshua.

Be strong and courageous.

Joshua, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I

swore to their fathers to give them.

I find it fascinating.

This is much like Paul telling Timothy, don't, don't be fearful.

Um, you know, be strong and courageous.

Essentially, God's telling Joshua, be strong and courageous.

Now that either means a Joshua needed to be reminded what his task was,

or B, maybe Joshua suffered with a little bit of trepidation and

one wouldn't fault him for that.

Joshua stepping into some really big shoes.

No one's gonna be Moses, but Joshua recognizes he's got a job to do, so.

God says he needs some encouragement.

I'm gonna be with you just as with as I was with Moses.

Now what's happening here is God is actually almost quoting

himself verbatim from Deuteronomy chapter 11, verses 24 and 25.

Deuteronomy 11:24

He's telling Joshua what he said to Moses, almost verbatim.

And here's what's fascinating about this particular passage.

I want you to keep your finger here in Joshua chapter one, and if you

have your physical Bible or your electronic, I want you to turn to

Hebrews chapter 13, verse five.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

Hebrews 13, verse five.

I just told you the promises are, it's sometimes tricky to know

how to put the promises to work.

Um, it's, it's challenging.

We can't take, we can't take a one-to-one all the time.

But notice here in, in Hebrews chapter 13, what happens, the, the,

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

the writer of Hebrews, we don't know, could be any number of people.

We call 'em the preacher because what we think Hebrews is, is a long, it's

a letter that was actually a sermon.

And so this letter sermon is written to this, this people,

and here's what he says in verse.

Five.

He says, keep your life free from the love of money and be

content with what you have for.

He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Do you know?

Does that sound familiar?

And if it does sound familiar, it's because you literally just

read it in Joshua chapter one.

Now, let's ask ourselves as good Bible students here.

The author of Hebrews is talking to a diverse group of people here, but

he's applying it directly to them.

He's not making any exegetical jumps here.

I mean, it's, he's, he's just saying, this is what it says and it's for you.

He points it to his current audience in, uh, whatever it is,

you know, 60 a d or what have you.

I will never leave you nor forsake you.

He's quoting and asserting Joshua, chapter one, verse five, which again?

Who's Joshua?

Chapter one, verse five, two.

Who is the original audience?

Well, Israel, but more directly, Joshua.

God is saying, Joshua one five to Joshua.

He's saying it directly to Joshua.

Here the Hebrew preacher is saying, this is for you.

New Testament Church.

Couple words about that.

This gives us permission to look at scripture and to say, okay,

I, I can make direct application.

Um, we can't be as, uh, we can't do it the same way that the Hebrew author does

because we're not writing scripture, but we can look at this and say, we

have permission to use this passage in the same way he makes the jump for us.

And so we could say, okay, Joshua one five is for me.

I can take this and say, God has spoken to me.

I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

In fact, Jesus says something almost very similar in Matthew 28 verse verse 20.

I'm with you always until the end of the age, he says.

And so here in Hebrews 13 verse five, what we have is God saying, take

this promise, put it on your life.

I'll be with you.

If you're in Christ, this is for you.

I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

So when we go back to Joshua chapter one, which you now, which you now can

do, you can now look at Joshua one and say, okay, God spoke to Joshua.

I'll never leave you or forsake you, but this is also from my life.

And so if you believe that God is with you.

He was with you every day, every moment, every night.

He's with you in the nighttime, he's with you in the hospital,

he's with you wherever you are.

If you believe that, that would have some pretty massive impact.

He tells Joshua, I'm with you.

I'm never gonna forsake you.

Those promises are meant to bolster his strength and his courage.

Be strong and courageous.

Joshua, why?

'cause I've given you promises and I've given you the promise of my presence.

Well, you ought to believe that.

Point number two, let's believe God's presence.

This is perhaps his greatest promise, period.

He's with us.

He won't forsake us.

He won't deny us.

He is with us for time and eternity.

In fact, what Joshua experienced is only a, a partial, a fraction

of what you and I experienced.

He had God to lead him to the wilderness.

Yes, he had God on the outside.

We have God on the inside.

The promises God makes to us are phenomenal, but the promise of his

indwelling presence may be best of all.

In fact, the promise of God's presence is not only for Joshua here and now.

It's not only for you and I here and now it's also for eternity.

Revelation 21, the whole purpose of God sending Jesus to live and die in his

places so that we could be his people and we could dwell again with God.

This is the whole mo of God.

He's trying to bring his people back together to let us dwell

in his presence, to be with Him, to love Him, to worship him.

This is, uh, this is it, gentlemen.

There was a book I read years ago called Practicing the Presence of God.

It was by Brother Lawrence.

He was a monk and the whole book was him demonstrating the practice of

being with God throughout the day.

He was writing letters to a friend and that that friend collected

the letters, put it in a book.

Um, I'm not even sure if that's his real name.

Uh, it doesn't matter.

It's an old book.

The point of the book, though was to show how brother Lawrence a

monk, would practice washing the dishes and talking to the Lord.

It was just his thing.

He would go about his whole day interacting with the Lord,

conversing with them because he wanted to practice God's presence.

It was the whole purpose of the book.

As he did this, he noticed that things in his heart began to change.

He would see sin more easily.

He had practiced faith more readily, and, and that, that's

gonna be the same for all of us.

The more we can become mentally engaged with what God is doing in our lives,

interacting with him throughout the day.

And I think this is what Paul means when he says praying without ceasing.

The more we will notice sin, the more readily we'll be able to identify sin,

tackle sin, deal with sin, and the more readily our faith will be stoked.

Think about the kind of comfort you get from knowing that somebody's

watching in a good way, I suppose.

Um, there's a, there's a bad way when someone's watching someone.

You're looking over your shoulder, like, who's looking at me?

When you get an alarm system.

Uh, they're not selling you the equipment per se.

Uh, the equipment is part of the package, but they're selling you the

security of their ongoing presence.

If something goes wrong, you hit the button.

Fire department's there, something goes wrong, you hit the button.

Police department's there, they're giving you, uh, they're, they're selling

you the security of their presence.

They're with you.

They're, they're gonna watch over you.

If you're gone from the house, doesn't matter they're watching your house.

If they, if a smoke detector goes off, don't worry.

They're gonna send the fire department.

They're watching over your house.

They're watching over your interests.

This is why having God's security is, is even better because he says, I'm

not just gonna watch over your house.

I'm with you.

It's one thing to say, I have a police officer showing up to my house.

I have a firefighter showing up to my house.

It's a whole other say, yeah, they live at my house, they're with me.

If anything happens, I got police officer Bob right here,

he's gonna take things down.

Or, or if, if my house catches on fire, I've got firefighter Dave on this side,

he's gonna go and put the fire up that that's a whole different ball game.

God says, I'm not just gonna watch over your interest.

I am with you.

And if you thought about this, found a way to put this in your day and think

about God's nearness, this would change the way that you go about your time.

When someone offends you and someone cuts you off, you're not gonna

be as quick to jump the handle.

You'll go to the Lord and say, Lord, help control my patience here.

Give me patience.

I'm upset.

I'm not happy about that.

But thank you for keeping me safe, Lord.

Give me awareness of what you're doing in my life.

When my kid mouths off to me or when I, I find something at work

that makes me angry, Lord, help me to respond appropriately.

God, give me grace for this guy.

Help me to love my daughter.

Well, help me to be patient with my wife when she's saying things that I know.

Ah, I just don't make you the way she talks about that.

Give me patience with my wife, Lord, or Lord, help me to be bold in this

situation and know you're with me.

Father, give me grace to love this man.

Help me open my mouth to the gospel, Lord.

Pastor Peacha just last night was talking to a, a group of our leaders

saying, look, talking about the gospel is hard, but it doesn't have to be.

In fact, one of the things that he said is that you could be praying as you're

talking to the person, and that's what believing God's presence is all about.

I know that you're with me, Lord, help me to talk to this man and share Christ

openly and without fear, without regret.

Let me just be bold about your business.

This is what it is to practice or to believe rather God's presence

if we believe that he's with us.

If we believe that he's with us.

This gives us such a leg up against fear and that the, the,

the way that he's with us, I want you to think about this with me.

A security system sees the generalities of your life.

In fact, they can gather a lot of data about you, you know, your

comings or goings, all those things.

Um, and, and that's a bit upsetting for some of us.

Some of us are, are well aware that our devices can record us audio.

You know, you got video streaming all over the world now you can, our ring devices

are being used by different groups of the, uh, of, of government organizations

that have three letters in them.

And they could do that without asking us.

They just take it and rings like, go for it.

Have, have all the information.

You can find your dog mail because of your ring cam.

That's unsettling for us.

When people have that kind of access, we, we, we don't like that.

But God has that kind of access and far more.

When God, when I say God's with you, and you ought believe God's presence.

It's not abstractly with you.

He is with you down to the dirty details.

In fact, Jesus says to his disciples, he says, look, I don't want you to fear.

I don't want you to fear because your father knows how

many hairs are on your head.

When a hair falls off of your noggin and male pattern, balding starts God's aware.

He knows how many numbers of hairs you have.

Which is fascinating.

He mentions the hair on the head.

But as we've mentioned before, pastor p and I have talked about

this before, sometimes the, the Bible will use a literary device

where the part refers to the whole.

So he knows the number of hair on, uh, numbers of hair on your head, but he knows

about all the hairs, is the implication.

All of your, all of your body hair, God's aware of.

Which, if you wanna get down to the details and if there's, you know, hundreds

of thousands of hairs on your head, we could just talk about eyelashes and

arm hair and armpit hair and leg hair.

You got toe hair, you got belly hair.

All the hair, God knows about that hair.

Let that wash on you for a second.

Let me just ob obscenely detailed information and it gets even better

because in Psalm 1 39, God talks to David and says, look, I from

your womb, I knit you together.

We now have technology that can observe the, the happenings inside a mother's womb

as that baby's being assembled by God.

And those, those details are down to the minutia.

God knows things about you that you'll never know about yourself.

And God chooses to know these things.

He chooses to know intimately.

This is not a knowing of abstraction.

This is a knowing of relation.

God knows things about you because he cares about you.

This is why we ought to believe his presence and trust

that his presence is good.

It's detailed and it's for us in Christ.

And if I believe in his presence, that will change the way that I pursue

fearful things, uh, sharing the gospel.

It will change how much I pray if I believe God is listening into me.

Even now, I could be praying in my head as I'm talking to you,

and on occasion I do do that.

His presence guarantees that we pursue the right things, that

we have strength and courage.

God is with us.

He's holding our hand.

He's empowering us.

He's not just with us side by side.

He's with us On the inside, God is for you and with you.

And what we see in Joshua's life is that this for him meant everything.

He might remember Moses begging, God, please go with us.

If you won't go with us.

I don't want to go.

And I'm sure Joshua felt much the same way as he stepped into Moses' role.

Joshua's comfort was that God was with him as well.

How long have I been preaching?

A long time.

Okay.

The third point really is my most important point.

Let's go to verses seven through nine.

Notice again, this is still God talking to Joshua.

This is God directly giving revelation to Joshua.

Here's what God says to Joshua.

Notes for the second time.

Only be strong and very courageous.

He needed to hear it demise, being careful to do according to all that

the law of 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'll make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.

Have I not commanded you?

Be strong and courageous.

That's three times.

If you were counting, do not be frightened, which is another way

to say, be strong and courageous.

Do not be dismayed.

Another way to say, be strong and courageous for the Lord, your

God is with you wherever you go.

There's the underlying, again, I'm with you.

There's two, there's another word there that I wanted to highlight to you just

because it's, it's, it's also repeated and it's in the, the middle of verse seven.

Be strong and courageous, being careful.

Verse eight, you'll meditate on this day and night so that you may be careful.

I think that's a really good place for us to be careful.

He mentions it twice.

Let's, let's start with that word here.

Let's front load that to our third point, and let's say it this way,

let's carefully obey God's word.

Carefully obey God's word.

God expected Joshua to obey the word carefully, um, to to do so by

meditation, by speaking it out loud.

He gave him the, the goal of saying, look, dude, you're gonna, you're gonna do well.

When my word is just pouring out of your veins.

When you're thinking about my word, day and night, and you're speaking my word,

day and night, when you're doing that, you're gonna be prosperous and successful.

We have to define those words to be in the context of how God spoke to Joshua.

Prosperous and successful doesn't mean massive bank account.

It meant that he was gonna be successful in what God gave him to

do, the mission that he gave him.

So carefully obeying God's word.

Think about the word careful.

Uh, you could take careful in two different ways.

Uh, think about holding a newborn baby.

Maybe your newborn baby.

You see your, your, your firstborn.

You, you, you hold them gently.

You, it's almost like you're holding something so tender and so vulnerable

that you, you, you hold him or her, uh, with a kind of tenderness that I

think I, I've rarely ever seen in a man.

Besides those times, a, a man's tenderness heightened when he is holding

his newborn or someone else's newborn.

I hope

there's a, a carefulness because of vulnerability.

That little, that little baby is so vulnerable.

Um, you gotta be sure that you're holding him just right.

His neck is held just right so that it doesn't wobble all over the place.

You wanna make sure that when you're nestling him into your arm

that you're not cutting off his air supply, so you make sure you're

holding him tenderly and gently.

That's one kind of carefulness.

Another kind of carefulness is when you're cleaning a gun.

Maybe it's not even your gun.

There's a carefulness there as well.

You're checking the chamber, you're, you're making sure that you're not, you're

not pointing it at somebody or something.

You're, you're holding it with a kind of carefulness that designates respect.

Why?

Well, 'cause there's the carefulness that is required because of danger.

There's carefulness from danger.

There's carefulness from vulnerability.

Which one are we talking about when it comes to the word of God?

I'm gonna say I think both are in view.

There's a carefulness of vulnerability because the word of God is vulnerable

to misinterpretation and misapplication.

That's what most churches do to, to grow their churches.

They're gonna take the word of God and subtly manipulate it to make

it say what they want it to say.

Oh, you wanna be rich.

Well, God wants you to be rich.

Oh, you want, you want to live your own life.

Well, God wants you to live your own life.

Oh, you wanna change, uh, or gender?

Oh, God wants you to change your gender, wants you to be true to yourself.

Those kinds of things.

The Bible is vulnerable to twisting.

Uh, but the Bible is also like a sword or like a gun, dangerous.

If it's pointed the wrong direction, it can mortally wound somebody.

And so we wanna be the kind of people who treat the word of God carefully, and

that means taking time to spend with it.

I've got 1, 2, 3, 3, 3 subpoints, and I'm carefully obey God's with three subpoint.

And I'm gonna be quick because I have more than what I have time for.

Okay.

Carefully obey God's word.

Uh, first of all, we're gonna do that comprehensively.

Uh, notice what he says here to, to, uh, he says to Joshua, he says, I want you to

be careful to do according to all that the law of Moses, my servant commanded you.

All of it.

Careful means comprehensive.

Then we have to be the kind of men who say, I'm not gonna skip

Leviticus 'cause it's a hard book.

I'm not gonna skip numbers because of the census data.

I'm not gonna skip these books that I think are at least

not immediately relevant.

I gotta be comprehensive in my approach.

This is what God commanded Joshua to do.

His faithfulness would depend upon him being comprehensive with the

people that he was charged to lead.

So it's not gonna be different for us.

Two Timothy three 16, all scripture is breathed out by God and it's profitable.

It's good for us.

We gotta be the kind of men who take all of the word of God, the whole Bible.

If you're not reading the Bible with us every year, please let me just encourage

you to do that with us, for your sake.

We're not trying to po uh, trying to pat our podcast numbers.

We're trying to do that to help encourage you to get in the word.

If we can get you in the habit of being in your Bible so much that

it's in your head and your heart and you're speaking it regularly, success.

Comprehensive, carefully obeying God's word will also mean not only

comprehensively, but resolutely.

He tells Joshua, don't turn to the left.

Don't turn to the right.

Stay in the center of my will.

Stay in the center of my word.

No, lefty righty, kind of thing.

And we're not talking about political organizations obviously.

Although you might be able to see some parallels there.

What he's telling Joshua is that he has to stay in a straight line of

obedience rather than zigzagging between competing voices or cultural pressures.

And because he's going into Canaan territory, Canaanite territory,

there's unbelievers, they're all over.

And in fact, one of the dangers for Israel is that they would

intermarry in what would happen?

Well, they would dilute their resoluteness to the Lord.

They would swerve.

Joshua, as he closes out his book, he's gonna say to the people of

Israel, look, you do what you wanna do.

You can serve the gods of the Amorites.

He doesn't want 'em to do that, but he says, but as for me and my house, as for

me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

We will be faithful to Yahweh.

You do what you do, but we're gonna serve the Lord.

Man.

That ought to be your battle cry, gentlemen.

You may not have a family house yet, but you do have a your own house to deal with.

As for me and my house, we're gonna serve the Lord.

And what that means.

We can, we can, we as Christians, we wave that flag proudly, we should, but

it means that we're gonna look at all of scripture and let all of scripture speak

to us submitting to biblical authority.

Which by the way, tangentially biblical authority doesn't always

mean adhering to my interpretation.

It means submitting to what God tells me.

And that sometimes is gonna challenge me as, as a growing up charismatic.

Um.

That was the church I knew.

Uh, female pastor, no problem with that.

Like that does that.

I I was married by a female pastor.

Um, I had no problem with these speaking in tongues prophesying.

I mean, that was just my world.

I was totally okay with that.

It wasn't until I started reading God's word comprehensively that

things began to subtly shift for me.

When God opened my eyes to some of the things that were happening

that I, I think now I'm convinced of, were not a biblical expression.

I began to say, I need to change this.

I can't, I can't be part of this anymore.

I still love all of those people.

I keep in touch with many of them.

Uh, but they know, and I know we're on different pages now.

Part of it is then being resolute to say whatever the word says, I want to,

I wanna go with that, whatever that says, even if it's uncomfortable for me.

And there's lots of things.

If you're reading the Bible with us, we're, we're, we're encountering a lot

of uncomfortable things in the Bible.

I take a little bit of comfort in that because that tells me I'm reading God's

word and I'm not importing me into it.

If my God never agrees with me, it's because I'm the God.

I, I'm reading myself into scripture.

Uh, but if God disagrees with me and tells me how things are supposed

to be, and I think it's supposed to be another way, I know, great.

I'm feeling the pressure to change my perspective because

God is different than I think comprehensively, resolutely finally,

meditatively, uh, carefully obeying God's word means I'm comprehensive.

I'm resolute and I'm meditating upon it.

This is what God tells Joshua.

I want you to meditate on it.

That's how you're gonna be successful, gentlemen.

That's how you're gonna be successful and, and the Christian life.

Meditating on God's word, that means carefully considering thinking,

rolling it over in your head.

You're taking a shower, you're thinking about what you just read that morning.

You're driving on the way to work.

You're taking time to think about what God's word says and what

it means and how to apply it.

Comprehensive, resolute, meditative,

being strong and courageous will come from our ability to our

settled conviction that God is.

God has made promises and he's given us his presence, and those things are

never gonna change when we believe that that gives us the, the temerity to be

resolved and that allows us to grow in our love for him, to serve our families, to

make bold moves for the sake of Christ.

Not reckless moves I should mention, but bold moves, uh, faithfully serving

God, doing what he calls us to do.

My heart for our, our men in the church is that we would be a church

of, of strong men who, who do this.

This is this, don't, don't overcomplicate the sermon.

You're not conquering territory.

I get that.

But you are conquering your own flesh.

And in many respects there's a, that's, that can be a lot more

challenging 'cause you never escape you.

You're with you all the day.

Your strength and courage that needs to be pointed at crucifying

your own sin and living rightly before the Lord, that could mean you

dealing with your anger this year.

Maybe you're a short-tempered man, and, and you, you just kinda let it fly.

You, you justify it because you say, well, you know, people,

do people do the right thing?

I'm just, it's a, it's constructive righteousness.

Maybe, maybe you should ask your family about that and see

how they feel about your anger.

Maybe you've been dealing with lust and this is the year the Lord wants

you to finally, these, kill this thing, confess it to your brothers.

Kill the sin.

It's pernicious and you've been dragging your heels and putting

the accountability software.

'cause it's embarrassing.

I don't want people to know, and I No, you, you gotta kill

this in, expose it to light.

That's gonna take strength and courage that you previously have not exercised.

But if I believe God's promise that he's with me, he's for me, and that this is for

my good, I, I can, I can then take steps of faith that are albeit humiliating, but

humbling in the best sense of the word.

Our strength and our courage comes from our willingness to submit to

God's word, whatever that says.

If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins,

cleanses, small unrighteousness.

That's the kind of strength and courage we're talking about here.

We're not talking about conquering Texas or taking on a new con.

We're not gonna go invade Greenland.

We're, we're gonna, we're gonna invade our own sinful flesh.

We're gonna submit it to the word of God.

Now we're gonna be strong and courageous.

Not only for our own sake, we will benefit from it, but for the sake of the people

that depend upon us, our church family, our obviously our biological families, our

neighbors, our Muslim and Hindu neighbors.

Our cultural Christian neighbors, they need us to step up to the plate.

So I hope that you do, gentlemen, let's pray.

God, we do thank you that you've given us Joshua's life to look at as an example for

us, or there's a, there's a lot of reasons why we, we won't act upon these things.

Some of those are, are fear.

Uh, we're afraid of the consequences.

We're afraid of the cost.

Some of it's laziness.

We, we just don't wanna put the effort in your promises.

Don't motivate us.

Um.

We don't think your promises are that great.

And, and it's, and that's a position of ignorance.

Lord, we, we just don't know.

Help us as men to confront these tendencies and the many more that I'm

not mentioning, and to pursue a new, with a resolution, living for your

glory, which will mean Lord, trusting your promises, trusting your presence,

that you're with us at 1145 at night, even when everyone else is asleep.

You're with us.

And that you're with us at three 30 in the morning when

we're just finishing our shift.

You're with us when we believe that Lord.

And when we believe your promises, you're, you're gonna change us.

Your Lord gives us this guarantee.

So help us Lord, to walk in that truth, to live that out.

And as a church of men who love you, help grow us in these things so that we

might walk in faithfulness, so that we might walk in fruitfulness for the sake

of our families, for the sake of our church, for the sake of our neighbors,

for the sake of the glory of Christ.

We ask all these things in his name.

Amen.