Like we said last week: Joshua is a magnificent, joyful book about victory, about God’s people coming into the promised land, the land where the promises came true. We want victory in our own lives! So, what marks God’s people when they’re moving forward into victory, what will mark us when we’re in a place where God can lead us into the promised land?
The openings of Bible books are often key for getting their message; so what do Joshua 1:1-9 tell us about this? We saw the starting–point last week, faith and realism: faith that looks our inadequacy in the face, then nonetheless steps forward, trusting in God’s supernatural aid. Like Paul in 2 Cor 12: `I will boast about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses! For when I am weak, then I am strong!`
But there are five things more in this immensely helpful passage, that help us see what will mark us in a time of victory. We’ll split them over two weeks, so we can absorb each one and pray them in…
Vv3-4 present a key one: choosing vision!– looking out always for God’s next step forward. Look at all the geography here: `I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.` When I was editing the IFES magazine IN TOUCH I would have edited that sentence out; who knows or cares where these places are? But here’s the interesting thing. Like we said last week, Joshua has a parallel book, Judges; & Judges is about what marks God’s people when they’re decaying and being defeated. And the first chapter of Judges also has geography: a huge long list of places in 1:27-35 – and in my days as an editor I’d have cut that out too. But if something’s in the Bible, it’s there for a reason. In Judges, the book of decay, that geography is a list of all the places the people should have marched into with God & didn’t. And that stopping dead where they were, that failure to push God’s kingdom forward, is a keynote of this terrible book of defeat.
So back here in Joshua 1:4 God’s saying, Lebanon, the Euphrates, the Hittite country – look out for my next steps forward! God loves to take us forward into more than we can ask or imagine (Eph 3:20); He calls us to be adventurous! (`It’s always been my dream to share the gospel where Christ was not known`, says Paul!) All of us have such a piece of the kingdom’s frontier, or more than one, with our name on it: our street; the workplace where we’re the only believer, where Christ is indeed not known: this one’s ours! It may need persistence; ahead of Joshua there was one battle after another, and a city he’d have to march around 7 times. But this sense of forward vision is where it starts. You’ll be my witnesses, said Jesus, in Jerusalem – and, in Judaea too – and, then in Samaria – and, to the ends of the earth! We move forward as we keep looking for where the next step in His destiny for us might be, our next gospel frontier. My mum was a godly woman, but she lived a life marked by frustration, in good measure because she’d never been taught to seek the next frontiers God wanted her to move into, the next people God wanted her to carry His love and truth to. We’re all called to be people who seek God’s big, adventurous vision, & trust it, & pass it on to each other; dreaming big dreams and helping others catch them!
And there’s something else here, mark #2 of God’s people heading into victory: this sense of ever-growing vision is also a sense of international vision. V4 is actually a bit odd: `Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.` Where, what?- surely Joshua had never visited these places, nor seen films of them. Maybe during his years in the desert he’d heard merchants tell of these faraway regions, but for him they could only have been names from travellers‘ tales. Yet now God says: these unknown places you know nothing about – go for them, and they’re yours! Again it reminds us of `the ends of the earth` that Christ calls us to make our horizon in Acts 1:8; and of the next chapter, Pentecost, the starting point of the NT book of victories, where the 3000 people who get saved come from every nation under heaven!
Practically, a key factor for victory locally is if we always somehow have the whole lost world in view. Joshua’s people never reached the Euphrates, but because they had that huge, God-like vision shaping their minds, the local struggle was in good shape too. When God’s loving outreach to the whole world is part of our everyday prayerful agenda, we’re reflecting His nature (see John 3:16 on the `world` as well as Acts 1:8!); and if we’re reflecting God’s nature, things will go right locally too. Wherever we physically end up, if those needs & that big picture of God’s huge love for the lost world are shaping our approach to life, how we pray, how we use our money, our choice of partner, our career dreams: then lots of other things will shape up the right way too! They did here!
(By the way: The majority of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists have never met a real Christian, and as things stand they won’t. That needs to stay in our heads, as we
pray, as we use our money, as we think about our futures!)
One last thing today: I’m struck how God emphasises His presence in v5: `No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous!` That awareness of God’s presence leads to strength and victory! Israel had lost the resource it had when Moses was alive (v1) – but God’s saying, No, you have something invisible but far better, I myself will be with you!
So: how do we cultivate that sense of God’s presence that is vital for victory, that sense of God WITH us? Surely, above all by prayer; that whatever we do, we focus our minds on the genuine presence of God, we pray! I was so struck when I visited parts of Africa where the churches were growing much faster than in England, that they also prayed far more than we do. There’s a wise saying, `If you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy!`; if some other priority drives God’s presence out of our schedule, that’s idolatry. If we do things that way in our marriage it will lead us toward divorce! We don’t want our church to be a church that only organizes, rather than a church that prays. Each of us is called to model this centring on God’s presence in all we do; to be the person who says, `But first let’s pray!`
So here are three more big things that mark the people of God – us! – if and when we’re moving forward into victory. Can I suggest we choose two and pray, God help me not to forget about these, help me determine by Your power to keep them as the shape of my existence?
(And next week the remainder!)
