Like we’ve said: Joshua is a hugely helpful book about victory; about God’s people coming into the place where the promises come true.
So: what marks God’s people, us included, when they, we, are moving forward into such victory? Joshua’s opening gives us clues to look out for and pray about; we’ve seen four this last two weeks, now the final ones…
V8: `Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night; so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful!` So we’ll be moving forward into the land of the promises when we’ve a passion for God’s Word! There’s something to be thankful for here though – `this book of the Law`, that they were to meditate on day and night, was presumably Genesis through Deuteronomy! Thank you Lord that it’s massively easier for us: we’ve got a whole fascinating Bible instead!
And as we feed prayerfully on it, we’ll see the glory of God. We’ve seen in earlier postings how God equipped Moses and Isaiah for the wonderful destinies He had for them; the key starting point (well, at age 80 in Moses’ case, but his achievements were still to come) was God’s revelation to them of His glory (Ex 3, Isa 6). The primary place where we get that essential revelation today is in His Word. So if we want a future even slightly like Moses and Isaiah, we’ll be focused on the Book, `day & night`… giving it at least as much attention as we do Facebook, Instagram, the newspaper… It’s our choice whether we want the promised land!
And it says, `Meditate on it.` When my church did baby dedications, we used to remind parents of Deuteronomy’s command to talk about God’s Word `when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road.` That is, talk about it lots and get it into our subconscious, our heart; so that the Word is what drops into our head when nothing else does, rather than our worries or something we’ve seen on TV. It can help to start jotting down one verse each day to chew on as we wait for the train, or when the kids give us a moment’s peace…. And as we do, we’ll find God shaping in us a passion, a growing carefulness, to do everything in it. Some of that will be difficult, unfashionable; the community shaped by the Word will be seriously countercultural, seriously different. But if we’re soaked in the Word, then, God promises here, we will be spiritually prosperous, and eternally fruitful!
`Keep this Book always on your lips`, says God here. We could paraphrase: Make it our goal both to take the maximum of the Word in, and give the maximum of the Word out!; like Jesus said, give & it will be given to you! Rico Tice suggests that the most loving thing we can do for anyone is share God’s Word with them. In my church I’d love to see us have more of the habit of gossiping about what we’ve each been reading in the Bible. Maybe we’re too fearful of looking `super-spiritual`! But when the new testament’s book of victory, Acts, describes God’s church’s ongoing progress, it often does so not by saying `the church spread`, but with some variant of `the Word of God spread and multiplied’ (look at Acts 6:7, 12:24, 19:20). God leads a people into victory from whom His Word is flowing out! And if we’re being careful to prioritize and protect our feeding on this Word, letting it shape our subconscious, then when we speak it will empower what we say; it’ll be evident we’ve grasped the glory of God as we’ve seen Him in His Word, and people will start to listen….
As God tells Joshua: `Then you’ll be prosperous & successful.` We long to build things that will last. But then we need to build these roots into our lives for a spirituality that will last through good times & bad. I’m convinced that that sort of steel in our souls (or our youth group) comes, as this verse says, only if we’re soaked in the Word of God. Jesus tells of the wise man who builds his house on rock and survives when the storms come, that he’s someone who bothers to hear the Word and obey it (Matt 7). Psalm 1 likewise says that the person who delights in the Word day & night is like a fruitful tree, not, as is all too possible (v4), like something the wind will blow away. `I write to you, young men’, says apostle John, ` because you are strong, and the Word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one!` (1 John 2:14.) A church has steel in its soul when God’s Word is thoroughly built in on three levels: first, because we’re each reading it each day, each day planning when that will happen, and protecting that time like mad. (The thing is to develop a passion for that habit; it may take time to become a real habit, but never give up, it will!) And then the homegroup, where among other things we chew on God’s Word together, apply it to our lives, and fuelled by that Word pray relevantly for each other. And thirdly sundays where we absorb it in a different way that shapes our imaginations and community, and gives us the sense of God’s strategy and where we’re going together. Keep soaking yourself in God’s Word, says God clearly here; then you’ll be victorious, then you’ll be triumphant…
But lastly, of course – and this is vital – don’t just read it, do it!– it’s not there for our intellectual exercise! `Be careful to obey everything in it… Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go!` (vv7-8). That is: Be radically holy! God’s people move forward when we have serious passion for nothing less than radical obedience: passion for sexual purity, purity on the internet, passion to be free from greedy materialism, passion for honesty; passion for seriousness about every instruction God gave us, passion not to turn aside an inch to the right or the left. In this part of the old testament casualness about such things turns repeatedly to disaster. (It’s going to be a really big issue in Britain this next few years as we have to decide if we’ll face serious unpopularity, probably church splits, maybe legal penalties too, if we obey and preach God’s instructions about sex ethics.) And then, God promises, `you’ll be prosperous and successful!` In this culture, if we really want victory we must ask God prayerfully for this unusual passion to obey His Word no matter what: in how we use time; our money; our Facebook life; our sex lives; our marriage plans; our career plans… But God says, `Then you’ll be prosperous and successful!` Otherwise He has sorrowfully to take us the long, painful way round to heaven, and we’ll look back on earth and see our lives here were wasted. We don’t want that!
So here are some final things that mark the people of God – us! – if and when we’re moving forward into victory! Let’s prayerfully set out to make them our serious passions, and model them to each other. Joshua tells us how God takes seriously unpromising people and gives them massive victory and fulfils His promises; these opening verses show us the way in! Let’s seek, let’s pray, to grow in these things; like Jesus said, let’s be hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and we will be filled!
And then we’ll be Joshua people; we’ll look back from eternity and be overwhelmingly glad that we accomplished things that lasted permanently for His glory…
