“I will be with you” (Josh. 1:1-9)

 

Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still Upon Gibeon, by John Martin

The Biblical book of Joshua picks up where Deuteronomy leaves off.  Moses has died, just at the point when the nation of Israel is about to cross the Jordan and enter into combat with nations greater and mightier than they.  This was the great man of God who had brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, who had been God’s instrument to bring ten mighty plagues on that land, who had led them through the Red Sea on dry ground, who had brought them through the wilderness, who had received God’s law from the very finger of God on Mount Sinai, and who had been with the Israelites for eighty years.  This is the setting for the first two verses of this book: “Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.”  

I’ve picked this passage today because it seems to me that in several important ways our situation as a church this morning mirrors the situation of Israel in verses 1-2 of Joshua 1.  Like Moses, Elder Bradley has given many decades of service to the cause of God and truth in general and to this church in particular.  He was the founding pastor, constituting this church in October of 1958, and serving as the senior pastor until 2021, and then still as a pastor until his death a little over a week ago.  That’s almost seven decades just as a pastor of this church.  I wonder if that’s a record.  Certainly very few men in the two-thousand-year-old history of the church can make such a claim.  Elder Bradley made history when he began to pastor at the age of 17.  But even though no magazine ran an article about his historical tenure, I think he must have made history at the end of his ministry too.  Moses had been with the Israelites for 80 years.  Just as many people in the nation of Israel at this point in time in Joshua 1 had known no other leader than Moses, even so I know that some of you have had Elder Bradley as your pastor your whole life.  

And Elder Bradley was, to use the language of Hebrews 3:2, “faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.”  And as the Lord was with Moses, so he was with Elder Bradley all his days.

Losing someone like this can be disorienting and discouraging, as I’m sure it was for Israel when Moses was taken away from them.  But, brothers and sisters, one of the things that Moses did was to prepare Israel for the conquest of Canaan.  His legacy didn’t end with his death.  His legacy was carried on into Canaan with the people of Israel.  In the same way, I would argue that our beloved pastor’s legacy doesn’t end with his departure into heaven.  It now befalls on us to carry out the divinely appointed task of this church, which is the Great Commission.  Our situation is different; our circumstances have changed.  But God has not changed.  The heavenly resources of the church have not diminished.  The promises of God have no expiration date.  

And that means that we still have work to do!  We need to respond to God’s mission armed with God’s promise and directed by God’s word.

Whenever a great man of God is taken from us, as has happened frequently it seems these past few years – R. C. Sproul a few years ago, John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, James Dobson within the past year, and now our own Pastor Bradley – I’ve had cause to reflect often on the words of John Leechman at the death of William Carey with whom he had worked in India for the spread of the gospel there: “And now what shall we do? God has taken up our Elijah to heaven. He has taken our master from our head today. But we must not be discouraged. The God of missions lives forever. His Cause must go on. The gates of death, the removal of the most eminent, will not impede its progress, nor prevent its success. Come: we have something also to do than mourn and be dispirited. With our departed leader all is well. He has finished his course gloriously. But the work now descends on us. Oh, for a double portion of the divine Spirit!”

In the same way, brothers and sisters, we too have work to do.  And I want us to find inspiration for this work in these verses in Joshua 1.  I want us to look at Israel’s Great Commission in the first four verses, which gave them a task.  Then I want us to see God’s expansive promise in verses 5-9, which gave them a reason and motivation to complete that task.  Finally, woven into the passage alongside the promises we also see Joshua’s believing response, as we are shown how to respond to God’s promise and fulfill God’s commission.

I want us to be encouraged by the example of Joshua and Israel here.  Moses had prepared them for the work of conquest.  The children of Israel would not have honored their former leader by just camping out on the Jordan and staying there.  No: the way they honored him was to do what he had prepared them for.  They way they honored him was to cross the Jordan into new territory and do new things for the cause of God in the world.  In the same way, Elder Bradley has pastored and taught us well, not to stay put, not to give up, but to be up and doing for the Lord.  We too like Joshua want to attend to the Church’s commission and then to God’s promises to us so that we respond in a believing and courageous way.  And that is the way this church can truly honor Elder Bradley’s legacy as Israel honored Moses by crossing the Jordan river and getting about the task of conquest.

Israel’s Great Commission (1-4): what to do.

Israel’s Great Commission was to conquer the land of Canaan. Beginning in verse 2, we read, “now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast” (2-4).

God gave them this commission.  It wasn’t something that they figured out themselves.  It was the word of God that gave shape to their mission.  It was the word of God that defined the extent of the land that they were to conquer.  The children of Israel weren’t doing something on the whim of their own desires; it was in obedience to the word of God to them.

In the same way, our Lord has given us a commission.  It’s not something that we are supposed to figure out by ourselves.  He has given it to us in his word.  Our commission and mission is not to conquer a land with physical violence.  Nevertheless, in many ways the commission of the church is a conquest.  It’s just a spiritual conquest.  The apostle Paul put it this way: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

What is the mission of the church?  What work does God have for us?  What are we to arise and do?  Is it not the Great Commission which is for the church to the end of the world?  Let me remind you of it: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Mt. 28:18-20).  I’m going to refer to this multiple times in this message, because it mirrors the situation of the people of God in Joshua 1.  We have a commission to make disciples (seek conversions), to baptize them (make them a part of the visible church), and to instruct them in all that Jesus commanded (growing them into spiritual maturity).  And just as Israel had the extent of their commission laid out for them, so do we have our laid out for us.  It’s just that ours is more expansive!  Israel was to conquer the land of Canaan, but the church is to conquer the world, “all nations.”  

So how do we do this?  How can we be motivated and encouraged to do this?  I think that the Lord’s words to Joshua here in terms of both promise and precept are doubly instructive for us.  

God’s Expansive Promise (5-9): why we can and should fulfill the commission God gives us.

The first thing I want to point out here is God’s promise.  Never go anywhere without it!  There are two parts to the promise of God here.  The first is the promise of God’s presence and the second is the promise of good success.  

The promise of God’s presence bookends verses 5-9.  In verse 5 we read, “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”  Then in verse 9 we read, “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”  This mirrors the promise of our Lord in the Great Commission: “and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  It is a promise that is repeated at the end of the epistle to the Hebrews: “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Heb. 13:5-6).

Why did God give this promise to Joshua, and why did he give it the prominence that he did in these words to Joshua?  And why is this promise important for the church today?

The reason why this promise is so important is that, first of all, the church can do nothing that pleases God apart from the presence of God.  When God promises to be with us, he means that he will be present to bless us.  God is, of course, present everywhere and absent nowhere.  This is what David is getting at when he says, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (Ps. 139:7-10).  Hence, when we have a promise of God that he will be with us, it means that he will be with us in a special sense, and in particular it means for his people that he will be present to bless them.  This comes out in the Aaronic Blessing: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Num. 6:24-26).  This is a blessing that essentially asks the Lord to look upon us, to be present with us, so that he blesses us.  This is the promise here.

You can see this in the way it is stated negatively: “I will not fail (leave) thee, nor forsake thee.”  This is meant to encourage them: God will not leave them in the sense that he will not stop giving them his help, his protection, his direction, his grace, his blessing. He won’t forsake us, so that we can boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what men can do to me.”  The passage from Hebrews is partly a quotation from Psalm 118:6: “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?”  For God to be with us is for God to be on our side so that we need not fear.  

Now this is what is meant by the presence of the Lord with his people.  And we need this.  We not only need it, we must have it to do anything that will be pleasing to the Lord.  Our Lord put it this way, “Without me ye can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5).  It was the failure to appreciate their desperate need of the Lord that made the church of Laodicea utterly obnoxious to the Lord: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).  He was outside the church?  Why?  Because their self-sufficiency had put him out of the church.  

Brothers and sisters, do we feel this?  I think we tend to gravitate between two extremes.  One is to so  feel our weakness and limitations that we fail to appreciate the reality of the promise of God’s help and blessing.  God will be with those who trust in him, even though they are weak.  God will be with those who trust in him even though they are limited in a thousand different ways.  We need to believe the promise, not believe in ourselves. On the other hand, we can also feel as if we are just fine on our own, that we are rich, and increased with goods and have need of nothing (Rev. 3:17).  God will not bless that.  He will not bless the self-sufficient but will spit them out of his mouth. The question is, do we fall into one of these pitfalls?  Are we focused on our weakness so that we fail to trust in God’s blessing, or are we so focused on our talents that we forget our need of God’s presence?  Let us be people whose trust is fully in the Lord.  

We can do nothing without the Lord.  But the other end of this truth is equally true: we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Phil. 4:13).  If God is with us, who can be against us?  When Hezekiah was confronted by the might of the Assyrian empire and threatened by Sennacherib, he calmed the hearts of the fearful by reminding them that they had help in the Lord: “Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles. And the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah king of Judah” (2 Chron. 32:7-8).  Of course, we know the outcome of that event.  God spared the nation of Judah and an angel of the Lord slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers and sent Sennacherib scurrying back to his land where he died.

God loves to do outrageous things through little people with little strength.  Like feed 5,000 people through the lunch of a boy.  Like use a shepherd boy to slay a giant.  Like take 300 soldiers to defeat a numberless army so that God might get all the glory.  When Joshua and the people of Israel eventually do cross the Jordan river and begin the conquest, the situation on the ground in Canaan could not have changed much from what it was when the spies came back and gave their bad report: “We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (Num. 13:31-33).  God didn’t lead the children of Israel in the wilderness for forty years in order to wait for the political and military structures of Canaan to crumble so that all Israel had to do was mop up.  No, things were just as bad in Joshua 1 as they were in Numbers 13.  What changed?  What changed was that the generation that carried out the conquest believed that God could do what they could not.  

Now it might be that many of us in this church feel overwhelmed.  And from a human perspective, we have every reason to feel that way.  But we should not take counsel of our fears.  That doesn’t mean we should do nothing.  It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think carefully how we should conserve well and change wisely.  It doesn’t mean we adopt a fatalistic attitude or become lazy.  But it does mean that we must always take into account in all that we do as well as our future as a church the promise that God is with those who trust in him.  The God who was with Joshua is the same God who is with us.  And that should give us every reason to work together to fulfill the great cause that this church exists to uphold.  

We are told that the army of Israel in 1 Kings “pitched before them [their enemies the Syrians] like two little flocks of kids; but the Syrians filled the country” (1 Kings 20:27).  It’s quite a pathetic picture!  But then we’re told that “there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the Lord, Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the Lord” (28).  And that’s exactly what happened!  “Who is like the Lord our God?”

What can we do?  We can love each other because the Lord is with us.  We can love the lost because the Lord is with us.  We can serve each other and find ways to serve our community because the Lord is with us.  We can set ourselves to fulfill the Great Commission in our city because the Lord is with us.  

But that’s not the only aspect to the promise.  Also you have the promise of success.  Of course, we should expect that, because how in the world could we not be successful when the Lord is with us?  Hence, God says to Joshua, “then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Josh. 1:8).  Do we not have similar promises in the New Covenant?  Yes: Paul tells the Thessalonians, “To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:11-12, ESV).  

Brothers and sisters, I know that we have to lay all our expectations at God’s feet.  God doesn’t always bless us in the ways we might want.  I often think of the final words in Hebrews 11.  We want to experience the blessing of God like those “Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again” (Heb. 11:33-35).  Ah, who would not like to experience God’s blessing and success like that?  But then the author of Hebrews goes on to speak of those who “were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (35-38).  But these were also blessed by God!  These also had the imprimatur of God’s success upon them!  It’s interesting to me that it is of the ones who suffered so much that the Bible says, “of whom the world was not worthy.”  I say this because we must not interpret the promise of “good success” and a prosperous way through the lens of the American Dream.  I’m not saying the American Dream is bad, but what I am saying is that is not what God has in mind when he promises success to this church if we trust in him.

What does it mean to be successful?  It meant in Joshua 1 that the children of Israel would conquer the land.  Did that happen?  Yes, it happened: “And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass” (Josh. 21:43-45).

What does it mean for the church?  It means that when the church trusts in God and obeys his word, God’s purposes will be accomplished through the church.  The Great Commission will be carried out.  Conversions will happen, baptisms will take place, disciples will grow.  Maybe not at the rate we might want.  We have to be willing to persevere when the fruit doesn’t just fall into our hands.  Remember that Adoniram Judson labored for seven years before seeing a single convert in Burma.  I think that Carey labored almost as long in India before he saw gospel fruit to his work.  And the sacrifices that they made!  So God’s promise doesn’t mean that effort is not involved.  It doesn’t mean that sacrifices will not have to be made.  Joshua had God’s promise but that didn’t mean automatic victory.  There was at least one time when he had to make a forced march through the night and then to engage the enemy immediately in the morning and then fight all day, and then pray that the sun and moon stand still so that they could keep at it.  Talk about work!  Nor does it mean that mistakes won’t be made.  Think of Achan and Ai.  But in the end, despite setbacks and challenges and a lot of hard work, God was with Israel.  His promise was true.  He was with them and he gave them good success.  We should have the same expectation of God for us.

Brothers and sisters, let us arise and go into the land.  Let us trust in the Lord and do what we can do in his might to carry out his work.  We still have his promise, do we not?  He is with us, who can be against us?  He has promised that no work done in his name and for his glory will ever be in vain: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).