Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you that we can go into a different part tonight.
And we pray that as we grapple with the Old Testament and stories from a long time ago,
that you would speak to us in a fresh way by your spirit right now
and grow us in our encouragement and our service of you.
And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
I want to be political tonight.
How's that? Don't do that too often.
Prime ministers of Australia have been coming and going through a revolving door for the last five years.
That's stating the obvious.
And I thought before I finished this sermon that we might even have another one,
but it hasn't happened at this stage.
But it's led to an insecurity and a lack of confidence in decision makers,
and it's not good for our country.
It's not good for our democracy.
If it has become a tyranny of vested interests or selfish people
who just spin that revolving door and keep it spinning.
When a leader changes, we go from the known to the unknown.
We move into a new era with new hopes and also new uncertainties.
So tonight, as you know, we're in Joshua.
We're in the sixth book of the Bible.
It comes immediately after the first five books of the Bible,
which are known as the Torah, the law.
And it's the first of what we call the former prophets.
And there's a huge transition taking place,
which we've already read about in the Bible readings tonight.
A deeply revered leader, Moses, has died,
and a new leader steps onto the stage.
And so there's these new questions, there's new hopes,
and there's new uncertainties.
And Joshua begins with these words.
After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord,
the Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses' aid,
Moses, my servant, is dead.
There's a baton change going on.
The great God anointed and appointed leader of the people of Israel is dead.
Moses was raised in the household of the Egyptian king.
He was a prince of Egypt.
He's probably the foremost leader of the Jews in the whole of the Old Testament.
He was a reluctant leader.
When God first knocked on his door and asked him to lead,
Moses said, please find somebody other than me.
Don't take me, Lord.
And yet he was the man who had confronted the king, Pharaoh,
on numerous occasions with the word and the power of God
until the Egyptian king finally permitted the Israelites to leave Egypt
with the last terrible plague.
Get out of my sight and never come back again.
And Moses led the nation through the Red Sea.
The Egyptian army tried to follow.
God closed the sea over them.
He drowned the army and they were totally destroyed.
The Israelites continued on what was a reasonably short journey of a few weeks.
It only took a few weeks to get to the edge of the promised land.
They arrived there.
They're on the brink of the place that God is bringing them to
and they blew it.
They sent spies into the land.
And the spies returned with a mixed report.
They said, yes, it's a great land.
It's flowing with good things.
It's got milk and honey and all the things that God promised that there would be,
just like God said.
But it's full of giants.
And these guys are so big that we feel like grasshoppers in comparison to them.
I was on holidays before Christmas.
Four days on a houseboat on the beautiful Myo Lakes.
Never been there in my life before.
Pristine beauty.
I was very excited about going.
Warm water.
Unlimited swimming.
You know, all day in and out of the water.
And just before I went, one of my friends very kindly said to me,
he said, oh, watch out for the bull sharks.
No, it wasn't, sorry.
He wouldn't have done such a thing.
And suddenly, four days on a boat and not being able to go into the water
didn't sound very nice at all.
And I said to my friend, I think the bull shark stuff is a lot of bull dust.
And I found out afterwards it was.
There were no bull sharks in Myo Lake.
He was wrong.
But what had happened was his warning had put fear into me.
And uncertainty.
And I was wondering, I was actually wondering why we didn't go on the Hawkesbury River
in the first place.
We wouldn't have had to drive so far.
There are bull sharks and other sharks there.
It's the same with the Israelites.
Ten spies came back.
They're telling giant stories.
And the people become very afraid.
And in their fear, it's almost like they've got amnesia.
They've forgotten what God's just done for them.
They've forgotten the big signs in Egypt.
I mean, how big a miracle does God have to do for people to remember how great he is?
And he does ten of them in Egypt.
And then he brings them through the Red Sea and drowns the army on top of that.
But they forget.
And they stop trusting him.
And they begin to accuse him.
And they say, what have you done bringing us to this place?
We're all going to die.
Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, have a very different perspective.
Don't worry about the giants.
God can take care of them.
And so you've got two groups.
They've gone and seen the same things.
They face the same situation, but each deals with it in a completely different way.
One group is filled with fear and can't get away quick enough.
And the other group have this really big sense of God.
They're confident in God.
They trust his leadership of them, even in the face of giants.
And if we read a whole lot of the Bible, we would see that God punishes the nations for their unbelief,
for the nation for their unbelief.
They wander in the desert like refugees without a home until all the adult men of that generation die for their unfaithfulness.
And so now, 40 years later, there are only two survivors, Joshua and Caleb, and they are both about 80 years old.
Moses is dead.
He's not allowed to enter the land.
That's another big story.
A generation has died out.
God takes one great leader off the scene.
The nation really has lost a colossal leader, and the people are very grieved.
But Joshua begins with a new leader.
And I guess the questions are, what's he going to be like?
Will he take us in?
Will we defeat giants?
Should we trust in him?
Will he prove worthy?
It's funny, you know, for all of us, life is short.
We will all depart the stage of human history.
And as we go, and you see it with older people particularly,
with older people they may have had a pretty substantial life and done a lot of things,
and a lot of things that you probably remember and honour at a funeral service,
but they will go and a family will be left behind.
And some of the questions which become real questions for the people left behind are,
so what's going to happen to us?
And what will our future be like now that this person is no longer part of our life?
And God gives great reassurance to the new leader,
and I think that's what the whole of Joshua chapter 1 is about.
It's God's reassurance to the people at this significant point in their history.
Verse 2.
And what you see there, if you listen very carefully,
is that the Israelites' real leader has always been God.
He's working his purposes.
He's pulling the strings.
He provides the real power and the leadership.
Verse 2.
The land is what I am about to give them.
And verse 3.
I will give you what I promised Moses.
And God promises this vast area of land which stretches all the way from the Mediterranean Sea
right through to modern Iraq and Iran.
And they're not new promises.
These are promises which God has made time and time again in the past.
He's made the promises to Abraham in Genesis 15.
He's made the promises to Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 1.
And in verse 5, God says,
Just like I was with Moses, I will be with you.
I will never leave you or forsake you.
God is present and leading his people.
He is still on mission.
And so he's giving great reassurance to Joshua and also to the people.
Be assured, God is with us.
He continues to lead us.
His promises assure.
His purposes continue.
And Joshua is God's new man.
His Hebrew name means rescuer or saviour.
It's the same name as Jesus in the Greek.
I've changed my verse tonight and I've gone to Luke chapter 2 verse 12
where the angels announce the birth of Jesus and they say,
Christ is a saviour.
Christ is a rescuer.
Joshua will be a rescuer in terms of God's purposes,
bringing God's people into the land.
And then he reassures his people throughout these words
at the beginning of Joshua.
The reassurance is, I am with you.
You're not alone.
It's the same sort of reassurance which is given again and again
throughout the Bible.
In the New Testament, in John's Gospel,
Jesus alarms his disciples when he says, I'm going away.
And they're distressed.
And he reassures them in John 16, 16.
He said, I will ask the Father and he will give you another counsellor
to be with you forever, the spirit of truth.
But you know him for he lives with you and he will be in you.
And I will not leave you as orphans.
I will come to you.
In Matthew 28, Jesus does exactly the same things.
The very last words that he speaks to his disciples
before he goes up into heaven,
I am with you always to the very end of the age.
He promises his presence.
We can feel very frightened and lonely in tough times.
Very uncertain of what's going on around us
and uncertain of what lies ahead.
Sometimes devastated by our own sin,
sometimes devastatingly impacted by the sin of others.
Believers do shed tears
and in some places in the world we even shed blood.
Nowhere in the scriptures are we promised an easy road.
But what we can be sure of
and always confident about
is the personal presence of the Lord Jesus Christ
in every situation that we face.
I thought about this this morning.
You know, when you're older,
one of the things that you know is coming
is declining health and death.
It's going to come sometime.
And when you're younger,
you don't think about it as often,
but when you're older
and you see your friends dropping off around you,
it becomes almost the norm.
Others of you are still in high school
or maybe just out at the end of high school
and so life issues are quite different for you.
You have uncertainty about the future.
You struggle with issues in your family.
You see grief with mothers and fathers and families.
You have big life decisions coming ahead.
You're wondering about what you'll study.
You're wondering about what career that you will do.
You're wondering about whether you'll be married,
whether you'll have a family,
what that will look like.
And somewhere in between,
a few of the rest of us fit
and we've been living long enough
to know that some of the things that we planned for
and we hoped for haven't come
and some of the things that have happened to us
are not things that we've welcomed.
Life can be really difficult sometimes.
Illness or illness in a loved one,
in a child or in a spouse,
experiencing death in close family,
maybe it's walking through times of moral failure
or difficulties in our workplace.
God does not promise to get us out of trouble.
He promises his personal presence
in every circumstance of life.
You see it when we have marriages,
ceremonies here in church.
At the beginning of a marriage,
you know, two people stand here,
hopefully head over heels in love.
That's what it's like most of the time.
Maybe very stressed by the arrangements of a wedding,
but head over heels in love
and absolutely anxious to start to build a life together
and be together.
And at the heart of a service,
the two people will make promises to one another.
They read promises which recognise
the ups and downs of the journey
which is still out there ahead of them.
And they'll say to each other,
I take you for better,
for worse,
for richer,
for poorer,
in sickness and in health.
But you commit yourself as a friend
to one another in that moment
and the point is that you have a friend
which undertakes to enter into the journey of life with you.
A real presence,
a deep comforter
when it works right.
And so Joshua begins with God saying,
I am with you.
You're not alone.
He has a powerful presence with his people
on the journey of life.
His promises
and his purposes
continue.
But a word from God,
a promise from God,
always requires a response
from the people that it's spoken to.
Three times God says to Joshua,
be strong,
be courageous,
don't be afraid.
And in verse 18,
the people respond
by asking their leader
to be strong and courageous as well.
And it's not like grin and bear it
and battle through British
stiff upper lip stoicism.
It's about having the courage
to trust the word of God completely
and to act on it.
To rest in what God asks him to do,
to be faithful to what God says.
God's word says to him,
verse 7,
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 that's written in it
and then you will be prosperous
and successful.
This is not a book of rules
and regulations.
This is the book
by which they relate
in a living way
with the living God.
The scriptures were the law.
This was their Bible.
This is about knowing God.
And God gives Joshua
all that he needs
for the task ahead.
He says,
I'm with you.
Trust me.
Trust my word.
Do what I tell you to do
and don't listen to anything
or anybody else.
They are about to enter
a land of giants.
Fearsome enemies,
tough opponents
and God says,
don't be terrified,
don't be discouraged,
trust what I say completely.
Now when a preacher
says something like that
to a congregation
of God's people,
most people just sit there
and nod their heads
and say,
yeah, yeah, yeah,
we've got to do
what God tells us to do.
Of course we do that.
Pay careful attention
to God's word.
Well, what's that look like?
And it's really interesting
because you jump into
the New Testament,
you go to a passage
like Hebrews 13
and he actually picks up
on Joshua 1
and applies it to God's people
in a Christian setting.
So in Hebrews 13,
he says,
marriage should be honoured
by all
and the marriage bed
kept pure
for God will judge
the adulterer
and all sexually immoral.
Keep your lives free
from the love of money
and be content
with what you have
because God has said,
never will I leave you
or forsake you.
And so we can say
with confidence,
the Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid,
what can people do to me?
See, God's presence with us
should be impacting
our behaviour.
To know Christ
should be changing
the way that we are
and the way that we live
and the people that we are.
Honour marriage,
keep the marriage bed pure.
Keep your lives free
from love of money.
Be content
with what you have.
The reason to honour God
in these things
in matters of relationship
and money
is God's faithfulness
to us
and his presence
with us.
God's given us
his word.
We know what he thinks
about the idols
of sex and money.
Preacher a while back
said,
we live in a sex
sodden society.
He's right,
I saw a movie last night
which I'll tell you
afterwards if you want to know
but it was a movie
that I thought
would have been
a great movie to see
and it was for most of us
if you like seeing people
blown away.
That sort of
light relief for me
sometimes.
Mightn't be good for you.
But something happened
at the end of that movie
that shocked me
and it was like
the pornification
of our culture.
It's like bringing
porn into mainstream.
Some of us
have been burnt
or hurt
by our own
sexual failures
or the failures
of others
against us.
Our society
ridicules
what God teaches
about marriage
and fidelity.
The organised church
wanders like a drunken man
trying to find his way
home over issues
such as gay marriage
and practising
gay ministers.
We've moved
a long way
from God's word.
we are more likely
to say each
to his own
than to hold
to what is clear
teaching in the scriptures.
That's sex
and relationships.
What about possessions?
We're possessed
by them.
If we own homes
we want the Sydney
property market
to boom.
If you don't
own a home
you don't mind
if it crashes a bit.
I tried that
in one of our
church families
this morning
I don't think
they saw the humour
of what I was
trying to say.
I think that was shocking.
But we feel
security in our wealth.
Gives us status.
Reassurance
about who we are.
We feel powerful
because we can travel
business class.
Or we can die
in a five star
nursing home.
How good is that?
We have lots of stuff
but we are restless
and discontent
and never satisfied.
And it's a spiritual problem.
See when we turn
to money
or we misuse sex
I think we're trying
to fill deep
emptiness inside.
More porn
a new sexual partner
great wealth
and the things
that I can do
and buy
and we're trying
to fill this hole
that only Jesus
can truly satisfy.
We had a lovely
experience this week
at church.
Somebody from
one of our church
families
morning church
was serving
in the school
and on the counter.
They were a great
public face
for our church.
and she was telling
the story
of her conversion.
She's come from Iran
and she was converted
in India.
A friend talked
to her about Jesus
and she came
to Christ
and she said
I fell in love
with Jesus.
I fell in love
with Jesus
and boy
he shines
out of her.
The Lord Jesus
richly invites us
into his personal
presence
and into relationship
with him.
He says to us
in Matthew 11
come to me
all you who are
weary and burdened
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke
upon you
and learn from me
for I am gentle
and humble in heart
and you will find
rest for your souls.
The people of Israel
have been brought
to a brand new day.
God has dealt
with the offenses
of their past.
He's given them
the opportunity
to enjoy
new life
with him
in this brand
new land
and yes
there are lots
of things
that they could
be afraid about
but God
speaks to their
situation
and he says
I am with you
I will never
leave you
and never forsake you
and then he calls
them to make
a strong
and trusting
response to him
be strong
be courageous
don't be afraid
the Lord
your God
will be with you
wherever you go
and brothers
and sisters
I have no idea
what giants
you are facing
in your life
right now
and I am sure
amongst us
even a congregation
this size
that some of us
have very large
giants
staring them down
but this passage
says
don't try to
satisfy your own
hearts with things
that cause
greater heartache
make righteous
choices
pursue the Lord
Jesus in love
be strong
be courageous
continue to
cling to the
Lord Jesus
who says
I am with you
always to the
very end of the
age
the Lord
Jesus
who is with us
is greater
than every
giant
that makes us
fear
Amen