Sermon Transcript
A little over a month ago, I was sent an email that told me about the Museum of the Bible that’s going to open this November, 2017 November, in Washington, D.C. This museum is going to be 3 blocks from the Capitol. And so when I got this and I started, you know, looking at this video and a couple other videos and kind of researching it a little bit, I got excited. I thought, well, I’m gonna have to take a trip to Washington, D.C. And obviously there are many museums there, but it would be fun to go through this museum. Some of the information about it is it’s going to contain 40,000 objects regarding the Bible or the Bible story.
There will be artifacts from the time of Abraham, fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical papyri, manuscripts, Torah scrolls, rare printed Bibles. It will provide an opportunity for the guests that come for an interactive, cutting-edge technology experience as we explore the history of the Bible, as we explore the narrative that’s found in the Bible and the impact of the Bible. Now, I’m not telling you this because somebody’s paying me to give a commercial this morning or anything like that. I just think it’s fascinating that now there’s going to be a building in Washington, D.C. that’s going to focus on the Bible and give people an opportunity to learn more about it and to benefit by it. And of course, as I said, part of that is going to be the narrative that you work your way through as you work your way through the entire Bible.
I have to believe that that means that people of great faith are going to be a part of this narrative, people that we’ve been talking about already in this Daring Faith series, people that we’ll be looking at yet such as Abraham and Moses, Noah, you know, David, Joshua. And Joshua is one that we come to this morning as we’ve been working our way through Hebrews chapter 11 and just, you know, pinpointing different individuals of faith, but what a wonderful thing this is going to be where we can just, you know, experience the Bible in a kind of a unique different way. I hope that what we’re doing right now is in some ways that for you, so that as you’re focusing, as we’re focusing together on different individuals and we’re focusing on different matters related to faith, that this is something that’s encouraging your faith and it’s already stretching your faith or growing your faith. Today we’re going to look at Joshua. So if you have your Bible, you might want to open it up with me to Joshua chapter 1.
I’m going to be there in just a minute, but just find Joshua chapter 1. If you didn’t bring along a Bible, pull out the message note sheet. You’ll have some of the scriptures we’re going to look at there. But it’s interesting that there’s an entire book that’s devoted to Joshua and the work that he did. I mean, you know, 66 books in the Bible, so to end up with a book about your work and the things that God led you to do is just, it’s pretty incredible.
The book of Joshua is one of the highlights, if you ask me, in the Bible. I mean, it’s, it’s a book where the people experience success after success after success, and those successes came after years of faithlessness. So after God’s people were faithless, you have a whole new generation of people that step into the picture that are faithful and manifest strong faith in the midst of a circumstance where their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had basically manifest weak faith. If you know the story, you know that ultimately God brought his people to the edge of the Promised Land. After the Exodus in Egypt, he promised that he was going to take them into a land of milk and honey.
And he got them to the edge of this land, and they then checked the land out. They inspected the land, and they came back with a report. The report was very negative. To sum it up, it was simply this: they are too strong for us. That report, those few words, they are too strong for us, was their way of saying that the people that are living in the land, they’re too strong for us.
And if you know What happened there, they had actually sent in 12 different spies, one representative from every tribe of Israel. And these individuals looked at the land for 40 days, and then they came back after their surveillance mission with a report, and it was a negative report. This is part of it, Numbers chapter 13, verses 31 and 32. We can’t attack those people. They are stronger than we are, and they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land that they had explored.
They said, the land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. Now, I want to just say that oftentimes we can have that kind of reaction to circumstances or conditions that we find ourselves in. So we face this certain problem or whatever it might be, And it would be easy to say it’s too big, it’s too strong, it’s too much, it’s too scary, and be filled with terror or worry or hopelessness or helplessness or whatever you want to say. And so when we look at this account today, I hope that this can be an encouragement to you with whether it’s a problem that comes into your life in the future or something that you’re faced with now, or as you reflect back on a problem that you’ve come through.
Because the picture here is that we all need, like they, to have faith in God, to have strong faith in God. In the one who said to Joshua and his people, even, even before they failed God, he said to them, I’m going to lead you into victory. Okay, this was the God that wanted to take them back into the Promised Land, promising them he was going to lead them into victory. He said, I’m going to be with you. But you’re going to need to do everything that I ask you.
You must do all that I want. And he also said to them, but you must also be strong and courageous. Now, after he made those statements to his people, what happened was, is basically they reacted with complete fear, with weak faith, if any faith at all, and they took a vote. Having heard this negative report, they took a vote. And if you didn’t want, you know, a vote to be taken among God’s people, this would be the time.
Because they essentially, the spies, the 12 spies voted, and 10 of them said, we vote we don’t go back. Let’s just go back to Egypt. That’s where we should go. You know, let’s don’t go back into the Promised Land. Let’s just go back to Egypt.
And 2 of them said, no, let’s trust God because God has greater than the giants that we see in the land, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the electrolytes, the termites, the stalagmites, you know, all those -ites. So let’s just trust God. Let’s trust God. And let’s, let’s go back into the land. If you didn’t want majority among God’s people, you know, this would be the time because basically they went with the majority.
They said, okay, 10 are saying don’t go, 2 say go. They went with the majority, and the result was for the next 40 years they wandered in the wilderness until the parents and the grandparents and the great-grandparents and relatives and friends and others died in the wilderness over a 40-year period of time, a 40-year period of time, because they would not trust God and by faith follow his lead back into the Promised Land. Well, after that, after that 40 years, the baton of leadership is passed to Joshua from Moses, and Joshua now is faced with doing that which the parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and others had not done. He’s faced with leading the Israelites, but these are the ones that remain, those that were under the age of 20, because from 20 and above they had all died except for Joshua and Caleb and their families. And so all of those who are under 20 who watched all of these people die, now 40 years later, older obviously, and God gives Joshua the baton of leadership and says, now you need to do what it was that the others did not do.
And he gives them a briefing, and this briefing is found here in Joshua 1. Let me read verse 3 and verses 5 through 9. It says, I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. No one will be able to stand up 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, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give to them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.
Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. 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. Have I not commanded you, verse 9, Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified.
Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Now, if you take that statement, this briefing that God gives to Joshua and the leaders, and ultimately they give to the people, if you look at this statement closely and you compare it to what God said to Moses and to the people 40 years before, Go back to Numbers chapter 14, that context in there. If you compare what it is that God said back then to right now, it’s basically the Lord repeating himself. In fact, at the very beginning he says, as I said to Moses, I’m saying the same thing to you. I will lead you into victory.
You’re gonna have to trust me. I will lead you into victory. I will be with you. I’m not asking you to do something without me. I’m gonna be right there with you.
But you must do all that I want. In fact, in this briefing, God says to Joshua and the people, you must be careful to do all that I’ve commanded. I don’t want any deviation. You gotta do it all. And fourth, you must be strong and courageous.
And you notice there 3 times in that little section of scripture, you might even underline it, he’s telling them be strong and courageous. And why would he tell them 3 times over in just a few short sentences? Well, because the chances were they were gonna fall into the same trap that their parents had fallen into, weak faith, and not exercise strong faith, not exercise courage. And so he says over and over, you’ve got to be strong and courageous. And of course, the question then is, well, how did it turn out?
Many of you know how the story turned out. It’s actually summarized for us in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 30, where it says, by faith The walls of Jericho fell after the people had marched around them for 7 days. This was the first obstacle that they had to face as they came back into the land of milk and honey. They were going to face several obstacles, several groups of people, but this was the first one that they would take on. It would be the city of Jericho.
It was a gigantic obstacle. In fact, in Joshua chapter 6, if you flip over there, you could see because that’s where the, the whole story is told of Jericho. In Joshua chapter 6 and verse 1, it says that Jericho was a tightly shut city. It was tightly shut behind a big thick wall. Actually, this wall was 3 separate walls that came together to be one wall.
According to archaeological findings, there was an outside retaining wall that was probably around 12 to 15 feet high, they say. And then there was an outer wall that was 20 to 26 feet high, they say. And then there was this inner wall that was 20 to 26 feet high. So all of that together is this massive wall that is around this massive fortress. And the reason it was there was to protect the people of the city.
There were about 1,000 to 2,000 residents of Jericho. So they were there behind this wall hopefully going to be protected from an entire invading army. That was the idea. Now, what God does though is just in some ways it’s unimaginable. I mean, it’s unbelievable the plan that God sets in place.
You guys know this, many of you know this, and you can see it detailed in Joshua chapter 6 where he actually lines out for them how they’re going to line up. Kind of like, you know, at school or wherever it was that you had to line up for something. There was an ordered processional that God wanted the people to take around this, this wall. They were first of all to line up as the armed men would be in front. That kind of makes sense.
And then there were to be 7 trumpet-carrying priests that would follow the armed men, and then would come the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant. Some of you like saw Raiders of the Lost Ark way back or on, you know, tape or something, and you saw the Ark, you know, and you think back to that. What’s the Ark all about? Well, the Ark is all about God, and it was a symbol of God’s presence.
And so God was going to be present with them in the Ark of the Covenant. It would be a reminder to them of his work in their midst and his law. In fact, the Ark of the Covenant contained the law of God, 2 tablets of stone. And then behind the Ark of the covenant would come the rear guard and then the rest of the Israelites. And God’s plan was, is that they would line up 6 days in a row and go through this ritual of walking around the city one time, once a day for 6 days.
So this went on for 6 days, once a time. And then on the 7th day, they were to walk around the city 7 times, and then the priests were to blast their trumpets, the people were to shout, and then the walls of the city, the Lord said, would fall and they would take the city. So did it happen that way? Well, if you look at Joshua 6, you can summarize it, verses 14 to 16 and 20, this way. I just did a simple summary of what’s there.
It says, so they marched around the city for 6 days, and on the 7th day they circled the city 7 times. The 7th time around, the priests sounded the trumpet blast, and the sound— and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, The wall collapsed, so every man charged in and they took the city. Did it happen? Yes. How did it happen?
Well, it wasn’t by grenades and, you know, dynamite and bombs or other things. It wasn’t with guns. It was by what? Hebrews 11:30, by faith. By faith.
What happened was not the result of, oh, I think I’m going to figure this out myself. You know, human ingenuity. It wasn’t the result of, you know, human strength. It wasn’t the result of a strategy that they learned at West Point. You know, we’re going to bring that over here.
And that’s not to say that those strategies aren’t good, but in this case, the only way that they were going to get inside this city and to conquer this city was to trust God by faith. Not human ingenuity, not human strength, just to trust God by faith down to the smallest detail.
Now in that, there are 2 lessons for us. All right, just summarize this for us this morning. 2 simple lessons that can help us the next time we face a humanly insurmountable gigantic problem. And some of us right now are faced with a humanly insurmountable, gigantic problem. And if we’re not faced with a humanly insurmountable, gigantic problem today, I promise you, if you’re a person of faith, those kinds of problems are a part of the life that we live.
So how can we benefit from this story? Well, let me just mention 2 matters that I see here, and there’s so much more we’re going to be talking about throughout the week. But first of all, strong faith believes what God says. Strong faith believes what God says. I must believe what God says.
So for them, they needed to believe a lot of things, but let me just, again, just review here what you see in this briefing. They needed to believe that God was with them, that he would never leave them, that he would never forsake them, that he was with them. In fact, the Ark of the Covenant was meant to be a reminder in the lineup. Right? God’s with us right now.
God’s with us right now. And so every day they had that reminder, and when they went around the city 7 times on the 7th day, they had 7 times to be reminded of the fact that God is with us. And the Lord said to Joshua and to the people, I’m gonna be with you every place that you set your foot. I’m gonna be with you. You’re going to enjoy prosperity.
You’re going to enjoy success. I’m gonna be with you. Now just knowing that, what do you think that would do for a person’s spirits? Well, it would probably boost them up, right? If you’re discouraged, it would hopefully encourage you knowing that God is with us.
It could calm our fears, lower our blood pressure, that he’s going to work in the problems that we face to accomplish his plans. Let me ask you this question. When you face hardships, when you face obstacles, pain, suffering, trials, whatever it is, are you reminded of God’s presence? Do you think about that? I mean, what a tremendous thing.
What an important thing for them to hold on to, but what an important thing for us to hold on to. You say, well, can I hold on to the same promise? Yes, we can. In fact, if you— we’re in Hebrews chapter 11. If you go over to Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 6, God says this to people like us, never will I leave you.
Never will I forsake you. Sounds like the same thing, right? Yes. God is never gonna leave us. If you’re one of his children, he’s not gonna leave you.
He’s not gonna ask you to do this alone. He is never going to forsake you. Jesus, in the Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28, you know that 19 and 20 passage, go make disciples. At the end of it, and lo, or I am with you always.
In the modern translation, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. I’m not leaving you. We’re going to do this thing together. And focusing on the presence of God can give us great faith in the midst of trying circumstances that would rob our faith and possibly put us in a situation where we’re doubting God and wondering, you know, Where is God right now anyway? Joe Gibbs is somebody that coached professional football for years and years.
In fact, he coached the Washington Redskins for 16 years. I thought, well, this is a good story to share on Super Bowl Sunday. But Joe Gibbs is a strong Christian, somebody who’s walked with God closely, intimately. As a coach for the Redskins, they Won the Super Bowl 3 times. And as you can imagine, whether a football experience or now his experience as a NASCAR owner, you know, of different cars and stuff like that, this is a man who has experienced innumerable numbers of trials in his lives— in his life, not lives— in his life, and, and gone through so many challenges.
And so recently Decision magazine, which is a magazine connected to the Billy Graham Association, did an interview with Joe Gibbs. And Joe was talking about the challenges that he’s come through, he continues to deal with, and at one point in the interview he said this, and it was recorded in the magazine. He said, so many times we don’t have the answer. Sometimes we go through tough things, we can’t see God at the time, but we know he’s there. He’s always there.
I just think that’s so important if we’re going to be people of great faith, strong faith, that whatever the circumstance is right now, God has not abandoned his children. He’s with us. Richard Helverston, who is a former Senate chaplain, 14 years a Senate chaplain, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. He died 1995 at the age of 79. At the end of his worship services, he would often give this benediction.
He would say to people before they left, when you leave this place, you don’t leave the presence of God. You take the presence of God with you wherever you go. What a great reminder. We must believe what God says. They needed to believe what God said to them if they were going to be people of strong faith.
The second matter, the second lesson for us here that I would encourage you to give some thought to is strong faith does what God wants. I must believe what God says, but I must also do what it is that God wants. And you notice here that there was an emphasis on not doing, you know, a little bit of what God wants, but doing all that God wanted, all that was written in the law and all that came to them through some kind of oral communication, through unwritten communication where God made his will clear to them, maybe through leadership, whatever it was. And God did not want them to ignore the details. Because his will was in the details, so that when he commanded them to walk around the city once a day for 6 days in a row, that was a detail, not a detail to be, you know, changed.
Well, we’ll just kind of— let’s do this for a couple days. What do you say, guys? And then the 3rd day, let’s, you know, like, this will be old, so we’ll just skip Wednesday and then we’ll get back to it on Thursday. No, he wanted them to obey the details, down to the details. In fact, There was some details regarding what they could or could not take once they took the city.
There were some contraband prohibitions. And if you know the story, there was this one particular guy who decided that what was contraband was not contraband to him, that he decided he was going to take it because it looked good, kind of right back to the Garden of Eden. You know, it was delightful to the eyes kind of thing. And he ultimately took it. Do you know what his name was?
You remember anybody? Achan. Okay, Achan. Achan decided he was going to take some things. Nobody knew about it.
He thought that he, you know, was able to do this secretly. But then they came to the next place that God wanted them to conquer, which was Ai, the city of Ai. They were going to conquer the city of Ai. They went and they got started on the city and they lost. It was not a good scene, and ultimately what they found out was that there was sin in the camp.
And so the sin was identified. It was Achan who had sinned against God. He had ignored the details, and I think that’s just so important for us to pay attention to, especially in our culture today where people call into question God’s Word and basically essentially say it really doesn’t matter what the details are. Just do whatever it is that seems right in your eyes. Do what you want to do.
They did not do what they wanted to do. They did what God wanted for them to do. And notice what they ended up doing in the eyes of other people would appear as foolish, as crazy, as stupid. Are you kidding me? We’re gonna what?
Can— what are those people, what are those crazy people doing day after day walking around the wall? What are they, what are they doing? Well, they were doing essentially what Noah did. Noah looked foolish when he built an ark in the middle of the desert, and David looked foolish, no doubt, when he went up against a giant, Goliath, with a little sling and a few rocks. And Benaiah looked foolish when he chased a lion.
I mean, you don’t usually chase lions. And the wise men looked foolish when they chased a star. And Peter no doubt looked foolish when he stepped out of a boat in the middle of a storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Israelites looked foolish 7 days in a row when they paraded around the city and then blew their trumpets.
Strong faith is willing to look foolish.
And it’s very possible that for some of us, the reason that’s holding us back from seeing God’s work in our lives in miraculous way could be connected to the fact that we are unwilling to look foolish. Because oftentimes God does that which he wants to do through that which is unthinkable, through that which is unimaginable, and through that which is unbelievable. And it’s possible that we’re afraid in the eyes of other people to look foolish.
To talk about the Lord, to represent the Lord, to courageously stand up and be counted with the Lord. Mark Batterson talks about this whole matter in his book, and I commend it to you, entitled Chase the Lion. And he says, you know what, the fear of looking foolish is foolish. Think about that. Our unwillingness to look foolish is foolish because looking foolish may be God’s path to success.
And it may be that he’s calling you to do something foolish that just, it just doesn’t make any sense. Jesus looked foolish on the cross.
When he gave his life on the cross, there were people that derided him. I mean, if you’re really God, Come on.
But he did what God wanted him to do. But he did what God wanted him to do. And the people did what God wanted them to do. Don’t miss that. It’s doing what God wants us to do.
If you’re gonna die on a cross, make sure that’s what God wants you to do.
If you’re going to step out of the boat in the middle of a storm, make sure that that’s what God— that’s what God is calling you to do, that he is saying to you, come. Because he may be saying to you, stay there. And for you to get out of the boat might be presumptuous, presumptuous that that’s what God wants you to do. But are you sure? Are you sure that’s what God wants you to do?
How do you know for sure what God wants you to do? Well, for them it began with the Word of God, the Scriptures, the revealed Word of God. You know, sometimes people say, well, this is what God wants me to do, but I’ve heard people say that in times where what they’re talking about doing is in contradiction to the revealed Word of God. God is not going to contradict his revealed will. If you’re trying to figure out what his unrevealed will is, start with this fact: he’s not going to contradict his revealed will.
And if he’s already addressed the subject in his Word, he’s not going to come along and say, well, you know, let’s dismiss that for right now. In fact, somebody said, if you want to get a word from God, get into the Word of God. If you want to get a word from God, get into the Word of God, because it’s the Word of God that’s our primary source of knowing what it is that God wants us to do. And prayer, of course, is a source. If you’ve found yourself praying at times and saying to God, God, show me what you want me to do, God will answer that prayer.
Sometimes he’ll answer it immediately. You’ll get some leadings, you’ll get some promptings, you’ll get a little sense of direction, but you’re opening your hands up to God and you’re saying, God, I want what you want, and whatever it is, would you lead me like Jesus? Not my will, but yours be done. He will make it clear what he wants you to do. He’ll give you these leadings and these promptings.
He may arrange providentially circumstances in such a way that it will be obvious what it is that he wants you to do. He may send some leadership along or some close friends who are walking with the Lord, and they may be able to speak wisdom into your life. But all of that is to say, before we jump out there and start doing what it is that we want to do, we need to do what God wants us to do. We need to be open to doing that. You know, one of the biggest problems we face today is simply this: I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it.
Isn’t that true?
I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. And so much of what we see even happening in America right now isn’t related to the will of God. It’s just related to my— I want to do it. I want, I want, I want, I want. Yeah, that’s what took Satan down.
See, the reason these people saw God work in such miraculous ways in their lives is because they were willing to say, Lord, we’ll do whatever it is that you want to do whenever you want to do it, and I’m going to trust you. You know, last week we, in our studies together, we did this focus on expecting the best. And I think it would be easy to take that focus that we looked at this last week and to interpret it through a human grid where we’re focusing on expecting the best as we interpret the best to be. But behind all of that is the desire that we would expect God’s best, that God has a best. And the expectation would be is that we would live in such a way that we are willing to have God’s best.
Whatever it is that you want, Lord, I expect you to do what’s best. I’m— I open my hands up. I open my hands up and I’m going to expect you to do what’s best according to your plan. Not my will, but thine be done. See, that’s what Jesus— he expected God’s best, not his own best.
I want what it is that you want. So what is strong faith? Strong faith is a willingness to believe what God says, and strong faith is a willingness to do what God wants. It’s a willingness to believe what God says, all of it down to the detail, and a willingness to do what God wants. Let’s pray.
Let’s just ask God to show us where he wants us to apply that this morning. Father, thanks for this time together and for this focus for our lives today, but as we together as a church focus on this through these devotionals and through the discussion groups and through the DVD and other ways of Scripture, may we truly get the message. Lord, may we be people who manifest this kind of faith.
We pray that we, like Joshua, would open our hands up and, and be people who would say, as for me and my house, we’re gonna do the will of the Lord. It’s gonna be all about you, God. And so help us even today see areas in our life where that needs to be the direction that we take. If there’s correction even right now because we’ve been taking a direction that was more in line with our will than yours, then help us make the correction. And I pray for anybody who’s here, Father, that is living basically an independent life.
You’re not a part of their life. Lord, we pray that they would open their hands up to you and to hear what you’ve done for them, and they would receive the gift of life that’s found in your Son Jesus Christ. And Lord, they would begin to experience life from a whole different perspective, not from the perspective of doing what it is that they want to do when they want to do it, but from the perspective of doing life from what you want, whenever you want it, in whatever way. And you know, if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that this morning. Lord, forgive me for living my life as if I’m God.
I pray that I can totally surrender my life to you, live under your leadership, and that you would save me from my sins. God hears prayers like that. And if nothing else, just open up your heart to say to him, Lord, if this is true, then would you show it to me? Would you make it abundantly clear? God, we know that you meet us where we are, and so this morning we ask that you would help us where we are become more of what you want us to be, that it would be to your honor and glory.
We give you thanks together for this day we’ve shared today, in Jesus’ name. And everybody said amen. Well, I hope that if you’re in the Daring Faith study with us, you continue to, you know, benefit by all the different components of it. Get the most out of it. You know, when you read something and you’re not sure of it, that’s great.
Ask questions. You know, get on the phone, call somebody in your discussion group, say, well, I don’t know if I really see it from that perspective. All of that is good because we’re involved in a discussion of trying to understand the scriptures better, and hopefully we’re going to move down the road of being people who are good workmen who handle accurately the word of truth and we’re changed by it. So I just really encourage you to get the most out of this series. This week the focus is primarily on Joshua, obviously.
That’s why we’re talking about Joshua today. You’re gonna— if you’re doing the daily devotionals, you’re gonna see that Some of the devotionals are centered around Joshua. Some of the devotionals are centered around some other Bible characters, but all helping us move in this direction of growing our faith so that it becomes stronger in the Lord. So I hope all that happens for you. Well, let’s stand together.
Let me use this benediction that Richard Halverson used. I think it’s a great way to end the service this morning. When you leave this place, he said, and I think it’s great, When you leave this place, you don’t leave the presence of God, you take the presence of God with you wherever you go. May that be so in your lives this week. Have a wonderful week in the Lord.
