Finding Courage

Good morning, church.

Hey, I'm going to invite you to take your copy of God's Word and turn with me to the book of Joshua.

We're going to be begin walking through this book through the fall.

And I'm just going to go ahead and either warn you or wet your appetite for the fact that this study will continue into the spring.

This is an incredible book with tremendous truths that matter to us very deeply today.

You're going to see that like here in just a few moments, because today we're going to be talking about courage.

And I think there's not a person in this room that would not agree that the one thing that we need in our culture is the one thing that we lack more than anything, and that is courage, specifically amongst God's people.

A study just a few years ago produced by Julia Sass for uh UC Berkeley revealed that only 20% of individuals who seeing a need where they should get involved to help with a moral wrong will actually do so.

That means 80% of people who are out there who are in this room when they are confronted with a moral wrong will take no action.

That's disturbing, especially for us as followers of Christ, because we have important direction to be involved, as well as important resources that can change difficult situations.

We are empowered with the Spirit of God and informed by the Word of God.

And because of those reasons, we should be involved, and that requires a tremendous amount of courage.

In her report, Julia Sass, uh, the article was, by the way, was titled, What Stops People from Standing Up for What's Right?

It's a good question for our culture today.

She may have had different features of our culture in mind than you and I would have, but the question still resonates today.

And what she identified from her study were five barriers.

She referred to them as doorways that people have to walk through to become involved in a moral wrong, to become courageously engaged with changing something around them.

Here they are.

Number one, is noticing the incident, to be aware, to be informed.

Number two, to interpret it as an actual wrongdoing.

Number three, to assume responsibility for it.

Number four, to believe you have the skills to intervene in some way effectively.

And number five, to actually decide to act and take the risk.

Now, at every single one of these levels, we are confronted with fear.

It becomes very clear by the time you get to points, you know, doorways three, four, and five, that there's real obstacles to courage whenever we become aware of the situation, when we assume responsibility, when we believe that we have some skill that can make a difference when we decide actually to intervene.

But we should also remember that even number one comes with its own layer of fear.

Many of us, and I'm guilty of this as well, will simply avoid number one, noticing the incident by burying our heads in the sand, by turning off all the noise that's going on outside.

We don't need to be inundated with it, but neither do we need to be oblivious about what is happening in our culture, about what we're going to be voting on in November, about what we are going to face in 2027 and beyond.

These are all very important issues that we must be aware of and that every level, from the place where we are made aware of these moral wrongs, these situations in our culture, all the way out to the moment where we speak up or take action, we face fear.

And we face fear because of two reasons, typically.

And I want to mention this to you because both of these appear in the text.

In fact, when we open up Joshua chapter one, what we see is God is speaking to Joshua.

He's given Joshua a motivational speech of sorts, but it doesn't really begin so motivational.

It begins by really igniting within Joshua a spirit or the opportunity of fear, or at least the awareness of the danger that he's in.

See, courage is challenged when we are faced with two separate concerns.

Number one, what we've what we lack, what we lack, what that should read, what we lack, what we've lacked in the past, what we've missed.

And number two, what lays ahead.

What we lack and what lays ahead.

Anyone ever witnessed a moral wrong or been involved in a conversation around a conversation that had gotten completely off the rails and full of errors, and yet you you feel like, man, I just I'm just not qualified to speak up.

I mean, I'm not I'm not the one who should be involved.

I'm not qualified to get to get in the dirt with this.

I'm I lack the skills.

There's a fear of the lack of skills.

And then number two, it's fear of what lays ahead.

Once we begin the conversation, once we take action, once we sign up, once we enlist, we know that beyond that obligation, there are some real risks and challenges and things that make us nervous, and they rightly should make us nervous.

Because the truth is, as we are going to discover here in just a few moments, is that the absence of fear is not courage.

Fear is required for courage.

Anyone ever witnessed on 81 a motorcyclist driving beside of you recklessly, like weaving in and out of traffic, leaving only a few inches between the front of your car and the back of some huge semi, popping a wheelie.

Uh, we we were passed the other day by an individual who passed us on the emergency lane on 81.

That person was not courageous.

That person was dumb.

He is he is, and I'm assuming it's a he because, well, y'all know why.

Okay, so he is he's he's not courageous, he is oblivious.

And real courage requires information.

And so God in verse number one is going to give Joshua the information because he wants Joshua to have real courage.

God wants that for you, by the way.

He wants you to be courageous, which means you and I must understand what's at stake.

Look with me, if you will, at verse number one.

We're going to walk through these nine verses together and just see what God lays out for Joshua for his plan for courage and how you and I can pick that up as well.

All right, so here it begins.

After the death of Moses.

Now, the thing that you you can't see in English that becomes very clear in Hebrew is that this phrase is connected to the last statement of Deuteronomy.

In the Old Testament, it's referred to, or Hebrew, it's referred to as a va consecutive.

And all that means is typically when a Hebrew would write, when they would start a new section, they had a particular form of flow for the sentences that would let you know that this is starting a new idea.

And then once that new idea began, they would move to what's referred to as a va consecutive.

We translate it today as and.

God's promises.

God's promises.

You know, God's promises are significant to us, aren't they?

Um but that they're only significant if we're willing to accept them.

Some of you are here this morning, and the promise of God has been repeated to you over and over again and will be repeated again in the sermon that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

That's a promise.

That's your territory.

That's that's that's your all the way to the real.

Euphrates territory that God has promised, every place of the sole of your foot will touch that God has given to you.

The promise is if you will receive him, he will accept you.

That's a huge promise, but you have to accept that.

God involves us in this process in his sovereign will.

He doesn't want automatons who are forced to do things.

He wants people who've chosen the same way you want people to choose the right.

You want people to choose to love you.

You don't want to force their hand.

You want to choose.

And God allows you to choose.

And he makes this promise and then offers you the opportunity to receive it.

I have a check here that came in a couple of days ago that was written out to Kim and I.

We're part of this group that you get reimbursements if you spend money a certain way.

And one of us in our household knows how to spend money really well.

And so we get we get these checks, we get these checks regularly.

And this is mine.

This is my this is Kim's check right here.

It's our check.

It's our check.

It goes into our bank account together.

This is a promise from the retailer, from the individual, that, hey, this is this is your$31.26.

It's mine.

It does me no good if I don't take it to the bank and deposit it.

I mean, if I were to just like rip it in half or something like that, then suddenly it's not good for anything, right?

I deposited a few minutes ago.

Relax, I'm not in trouble.

Some of you are like looking for Kim to charge the stage at this moment.

No, she's seated.

This is okay.

This, this, this has to be cashed.

Some of you, promises have been made to you that you need to cash in God's name.

He wants you to.

It's why he's offered them to you.

He wants you to receive the promise of rest.

When he says, Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, I will give you rest.

He offers to you the promise of security.

When he says, Anyone who comes to me, I am never going to reject.

Never, ever, ever reject.

I don't care what you've done.

It doesn't matter.

God's grace, where sin abounds, grace did much more abound.

That's a promise.

That's a territory that you can claim.

God gives you a promise of growth.

That the work that he began in you, he will be faithful to complete it to the very end.

God sees things through.

God doesn't quit on you.

God offers us the promise of his care through the through through Peter.

Peter says that that you can take your anxieties, your concerns, your fears, those things that stop you from being courageous, and you can cast them on the Lord.

Why?

Because he's obligated?

Because he has to fulfill his promises?

Because he wrote you a check in check and he hopes you don't cash it, but you can?

No.

He fulfills his promise to care to cover you, to receive your anxieties because he cares for you.

Those are the promises of God.

And if we really believe those promises, let me speak for myself.

If I really believe those promises, then I would be much more courageous when it came time to speak or to act or to do the will of God.

The promise of God makes us courageous.

Number two, the presence of God makes us courageous.

This jumps down to verse number nine.

Again, this is the inclusio.

So we're reading the outside of the inclusio first, the way they would have understood it.

And then we're going to jump back to the inside in a moment.

Before Joshua, before God concludes his conversation with Joshua, he says, Hey, you're not going along.

You have my presence.

Look at verse number nine.

Have I not commanded you?

Is this not what I said to you?

This is God's way of emphasizing Joshua.

This is what I'm telling you.

Out of everything that you think you need to do, here's the thing: be strong and courageous.

Don't be frightened.

Don't be frightened and do not be dismayed.

For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Man, you remember whenever you whenever you were a child, those of you who you know who had who had parents who were engaged and and and and were actual parents or aunts or uncles who were parents to you, you you know what it was like whenever you were whenever you were like in the middle of a storm it was thundering outside.

Man, I I remember, I remember when our kids, like you know, back in, you know, where wherever we were, a huge thunderclap would erupt and the kids would come running in to the bedroom.

Remember that?

Why?

Because they they were looking for our presence.

Could I do anything about the lightning or the thunder, the rain, the storm?

No, but but it but but still, they they sought my presence.

How much more should we seek the presence of God who actually can do something about the storm?

Joshua is told, just you don't need to be afraid, Joshua.

I'm going with you.

But the same God that's the same voice that spoke the earth into being, the same power that erupt from erupted from his vocal cords, is making him this promise that I'm going with you, and he is the unconquered God.

God promises to go with us.

In fact, the writer of Hebrews picks up on this verse, talking to a group of people who are dispersed and just engulfed in horrific problems.

He says to them, he says to him, Listen, you don't need to be afraid, don't be anxious, don't be greedy, don't be, don't be so consumed with what you don't have.

Why?

Because you know he cares for you, because the one who has promised says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

And then the very last thing Jesus says to his disciples before he ascends into heaven is the same thing, the same promise.

I'm going to go with you wherever you are.

I'm not going to leave you.

I'm not going to forsake you.

You have God's presence.

You are never alone.

Please hear me on this.

I I wish that I could form an argument that would convince you of this permanently.

I'm still working on trying to inculcate it myself.

We are never alone.

I know I know there are times you feel like it.

There are questions you have that haven't been answered, there are prayers you prayed that haven't been fulfilled, but you are never alone.

We can have courage because of that.

Because we know that God, we we we haven't stepped out somewhere on our own.

If we're following God, we are following God.

He is where we are heading to.

And there's no greater joy that comes in the middle of a storm than knowing you can crawl up in the bed of your father and he will embrace and hold and protect you.

The promises of God, the presence of God, and finally the principles of God.

Now look back with me at verse number six.

This is the center of the inclusio.

Verse number seven.

God says to Joshua, only be strong and courageously courageous, only be very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses, my servant, commanded you.

You know, let me just pause here for a second.

I would imagine somewhere in the middle of this, Joshua would be looking for some blueprint for the civil engineers to have to build a bridge across this river, or some battle strategy that he can pass to his generals to explain how he was going to conquer all these people who were in the land.

But God doesn't do that.

God begins by giving him the truth of the law and says to him, You need to obey this law.

Don't depart from it from the right hand or the left.

And then beyond that, he says, This is because you need to be careful to do all that I've commanded you to do, because that's where you're going to find success.

And we look for success in some weird places these days, assuming that we know it, we're going to know it when we see it because we feel it.

But God gives Joshua this command and says, if you really want to be successful, fulfilled, successful, you need to do what the word of God says, what the law of God says.

Look at verse number eight.

He says, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.

You're going to teach it to people.

So you're not only going to take it in yourself, you're going to teach it to others.

Fathers, this is a tremendous truth for you.

Mother, same for you.

It's not just like if you're going on a spiritual growth journey and you're not taking your spouse or your kids with you, you are not fulfilling God's plan for your life.

Period.

It's crucially important that we teach what we know because the truth is impression without expression leads to depression.

If you are being impressed by the word of God and you're not expressing the word of God, you are going to be miserable and you're going to make the rest of us miserable too.

Teach what you learn.

God continues and says, but you shall, as far as you go, you shall meditate on it.

This is not Eastern kind of philosophy.

You know, this isn't some guru out of Los Angeles teaching you how to how to how to think about nothing but scripture or think about nothing at all.

The word meditate here is the is the idea uh it's it's in other places in the in the old testament, it's translated as growl.

It's the same word that's used to describe a lion growling.

So it's like murmuring.

You should you should murmur, deep, guttural murmuring the law of God, day and night.

Like it's it's part of your battle cry.

So that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

Boy, do you think do you think Joshua thought about Moses at this point and the fact that God had said to Moses, Moses, I want you to speak to the rock.

Moses in anger goes up and strikes the rock.

And in response, God tells Moses, You're not going to enter the land.

You're going to lose your life because of that.

That seems a little heavy to me.

Anybody else?

Like that's pretty precise.

Water still came out.

There's still a rock.

Moses is still there.

I mean, there's so much of that command that he fulfilled, but he didn't do the one thing that he needed to do, which was to show grace.

Instead, he showed anger and the fury of man.

And God said, That's not going to work for me.

You're going to be punished for it.

So Joshua, without a doubt, thought to himself, man, this is obviously very important.

I got to stay focused on God's word, meditate on it day and night.

Don't turn from it for an inch to the right hand or the left.

For then God says again, you shall make your way prosperous.

Then you will have good success.

We want good success.

None of us want to be failures.

The way we find success in the Christian life is following God's plan.

And as we follow God's plan, we find out that He fought so many of our battles.

I was thinking about this the other day.

You know, we all kind of get worried about where the economy is heading and how much bread costs.

We went to the grocery store the other day.

We spent$300 at the grocery store.

And I'm like, where's that check at?

We're going to need that check in a little bit.

We spent$300 at the grocery store.

And I thought, wow, that's incredible.

And then the Spirit of God just impressed on me.

He says, You think I can hang the sun and moon in the sky and I can keep everything spinning in orbit and I can control nations.

I can do all of this, and I can't help you find a good deal on chicken.

I mean, come on, right?

This is God's promise.

We follow his word.

He guides our step.

It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

How many of y'all remember Adrian Rogers?

Big fan of big fan of Adrian Rogers.

When he preached on this text, he took his jacket off, which he never took his jacket off.

I mean, that was a big deal for Rogers to take his jacket.

He took his jacket off and he laid it down.

I thought this was this was sharp.

He said, This is this is my jacket.

This jacket should be obedient.

Now, jacket, get up.

Well, you would have tripped out if it had moved up, wouldn't you?

Carrie, I should have worked with you on this trick here first.

Get up.

Flap your arms, jacket.

The jacket's just laying there.

It's just there.

But whenever the jacket is placed around its owner, when the jacket is stretched into place.

You can tell I didn't rehearse this very well.

Jacket, get where you're supposed to get.

Okay, there it goes.

Yeah, whenever whenever the jacket is put around the owner, when the jacket is is it becomes clothing for the owner, then suddenly the jacket can do what it's supposed to do.

Jacket, raise your arms.

The jacket raises its arms because I've raised my arms.

The jacket um gather around the waist.

Okay, the jacket's not going to do that, but you know, but it will obey because the owner is wearing it.

We we are that for Christ.

Right?

When we when we in the Bible refers to it in the opposite terms, but when we put on Christ, right?

We become obedient.

We're able to move, we're able to operate, we're able to execute commands that we can never operate otherwise.

Be a good husband.

Be patient.

Be calm.

Be courageous.

Those are commands you're never going to be able to follow if you are just a loose garment laying on the floor.

You must be filled with the Spirit, which means being filled with the word that the Spirit has spoken.

Courage does not come from what come from where you place your certainty.

Courage, sorry, courage does not come from an absence of fear.

Courage comes from where you place your certainty.

Let me say that again because I don't want you to miss this.

Courage does not come from an absence of fear or challenges or life being easy.

Courage comes from the place where you put your certainty.

And if you put your certainty in the promises of God, and you put your certainty in the presence of God, and you put your certainty in the principles, the precepts of God, you find out that there's a source of courage that comes from outside of a woman, that comes outside of a man that is completely necessary to do what he or she must do to be a change agent in their family, to be a change agent in their culture.

Courage is required always.

Courage is the secret sauce for life.

You can't do anything without it.

Courage is required for you to make a doctor's appointment whenever you don't know what the results are going to be.

Courage is required for you to apply for a job when everything in your head is telling you that you're not qualified, that you don't have the skills necessary to do it.

Courage is required, husbands, for you to be vulnerable, for us to be vulnerable with our wife.

Courage is required for us to tell our children that we were wrong and that we're sorry.

Courage is required for us to say yes to counseling whenever we know they're going to dig up some stuff that we've buried and don't want to, don't want to bring to light.

Courage is required to share your faith.

To walk up to maybe a total stranger or someone worse, even worse, someone who knows you, and to share your faith with them.

Courage is required.

Courage is required to say yes to Jesus, knowing full well that if this thing is real and it is real, that it's going to change everything and you're no longer going to be able to be complacent about the life that you're currently living.

Courage is required for you to show up to a place like this.

Maybe you don't know, or maybe you're online and it took courage for you just to sit and just watch when other people maybe around the room are listening.

You're just not sure where this is going to go to.

It takes a lot of courage to do all of those things.

And courage is required to be what God wants you to be because He's not going to let you do it on His own.

He's going to insist.

He's going to insist that He gets the glory.

And if He gets the glory, we must trust Him to do the work.

That takes courage.