Great introduction to Joshua, Book of Christ's Conquest. And we're gonna read verses one through nine once again. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now, therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, the land of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage. For to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Amen. Father, we thank you. Thank you for the promise of your presence. And with Moses, we say, if you do not go with us, do not send us forth. We long for your presence with us. We long for your blessing. And even as we come to hear your word, we pray for your blessing to rest upon those who hear and upon me as I preach. Father, that your word would accomplish its good work in us. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this is our third and last Sunday that we're going to spend on the first nine verses, and we're spending this amount of time on that because this is the introduction to the book, and as such it very deliberately includes, at least in implied form, many of the principles that are going to be expanded on later on in the book. And we looked, first of all, at seven inescapable concepts that actually make or break our ability as Christians to capture and transform a culture. Very, very important principles. Then we began to look at how Joshua exemplifies 14 principles of leadership. And since it's been a couple of weeks, I'm going to very, very quickly review the first eight that we covered before. We saw from verse 1 that even after you become a formal leader, you should seek an upward mentor and never stop learning. We saw that even Moses had an upward mentorship relationship with Jethro. But since everyone leads to some degree, even young children, I encouraged everyone to have upward mentors, sideways mentors, even downward mentors. You know, young children can help the even younger ones to grow in their responsibilities. Now second, we saw that the phrase, after the death of Moses, summarized the incredibly long time that Joshua had to wait before he could enter into his life calling, that he longed to enter in, to be able to conquer the land of Canaan. And that wait called for patience for God's timing. And all of us have to wait for some of the things, at least, that God has laid upon our hearts, burdened our hearts for. We saw that David, even though he was called by God himself, anointed to be king, he had to wait 14 years before God enabled him to actually enter into that office. We saw that Moses had to wait 40 years to fulfill his calling to lead Israel out of Egypt. And so patience is often an essential characteristic that leaders have had to have learned. Third, we saw from verse one that a leader should learn to commune with God. And that can be seen both in the specific guidance that came to Joshua as well as in the phrase, it came to pass, which shows a waiting upon God before he got that guidance. Fourth, we saw that a leader's leader should first of all prove himself to be a servant's servant. Service is the gateway to leadership, just as service was the gateway into Christ's kingship. Fifth, we saw from verse 2 that a leader should not be chained to the past, whether that's his past failures or his past successes. And here's the way that Paul worded it for himself in Philippians 3, 13-14. Sixth, we saw that a formal leader should be a person with a God-given vision and purpose, and be able to share that vision with others. Seventh, we saw that a leader must lead by example, be a man of action who helps other people to take action. Eighth, we saw in verse 4 that a leader should have written, measurable goals that stretch his faith. God's goals laid out for Joshua definitely did that. They were huge goals that required God's grace, but they were well-defined. They were measurable goals. And that brings us up to verse five, which shows that a leader must always live in the presence and power of God. And this is yet another thing that distinguishes a spirit-filled leader from an ordinary leader. Verse five says, no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Now I want to emphasize that this is not talking about God's omnipresence. Obviously, God is present with every one believer or unbeliever. Psalm 139 says He's even in hell. He's everywhere. He's throughout the universe. So this is not talking about God's omnipresence that you cannot escape from. This is talking about a kind of presence of God that believers can lose for a time. For example, God told Israel in Exodus 33, verse 3, I will not go with you, because you were a stiff-necked people, and I might destroy you on the way." Now, obviously, God was with them in some sense of that word, but God said, I will not go with you. In some sense, they had lost His presence. And the clue to the kind of presence that we are talking about is in the words, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. How is God with Moses? Well, Exodus 33, 11 tells us, it says, he was with Moses as a friend. Okay? This reflected the same kind of relationship that God had with Abraham, who was three times called the friend of God. As a friend, God protected Moses, communed with Moses, took away his fear, guided him, manifested himself to Moses, and now he is promising to be with Joshua in exactly the same way. Now, it may seem audacious for Hebrews 13 to quote this passage and say that the same promise applies to us, but it does. Amazingly, it does. Hebrews 13, five through six says, let your conduct be without covetousness, be content with such things as you have, for he himself has said, and now comes the quote, I will never leave you nor forsake you, so we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me? Now every once in a while in our corporate readings, we have from Joshua one, that phrase is I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and some people say, Oh, that seems a little bit presumptuous to say that God will be with us the same way that He was with Moses. But Hebrews 13 says exactly that. And let me read you some other verses that give the same promise of God's presence with us. In John 14, Jesus said, He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Now the Greek word for manifest myself is infonizo, and it means to have a tangible experiential presence. And he didn't just promise that to the disciples, he promised it to anyone who loves God and keeps his commandments. Well, this really puzzled Judas, and the very next verse says, Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Wow, the Holy Trinity making their home with us? Yeah, that's exactly what it says. That's the kind of manifestation of his presence that can take place. There is a presence of relationship, friendship, and fellowship. Now, down through history, there have been a lot of intellectuals that have had a real hard time with this idea, and they just dismiss it as mysticism. But it is not. It is not. The Puritans were about as academic as you could get, and yet they reveled in this presence of God in their lives. Many of these Puritans were that way. Thomas Brooks is one of my favorites to read, a little easier to read than John Owen. And I read through his essays, and it makes me long for more and more of God's presence. You could probably not get a more academic person than John Owen, probably one of the chief minds in the Puritan camp, and he wrote a 450-page book with this very typically long Puritan title of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Each Person Distinctly in Love, Grace, and Consolation, or The Saints' Fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Unfolded. They loved these long titles. Now in that book it is just loaded with promises that are very similar to what God gave to Joshua, that this exact same presence of intimacy and friendship can be with any believer. And we need His presence. If we're going to be effective as leaders, we need His presence. Let me read a couple of other Scriptures. Jesus said, I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Now this coming removes a sense of insecurity and orphan spirit and makes us have this sense of belonging. And isn't that exactly what Romans 8 promises to each of us? Verse 15, it says, for you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. And there are literally hundreds of verses that speak of this closeness of relationship with God that sustains us and gives us wisdom and protects us and loves us and directs us. Unlike the worldly leaders who rely on their own wisdom, and make their own way, God is the one who must stand by us and minister through us and give us wisdom for leadership and bless our efforts. Now, I do actually know Reformed elders, sadly, who are elders only because they are successful businessmen or they have a PhD or they've got some other kind of success symbol that the world will give to them. And yet they don't have these kinds of characteristics in their lives. That's not enough. Without God's manifest presence in our lives, our leadership will not produce everlasting dividends. Now, are there conditions for this presence, or is it automatic? It's not automatic. There are conditions. We've already read a couple of those conditions. He said, if you love me, And you keep my commandments," in John chapter 14, that he will manifest himself in this way, that if is a condition. Now granted, God provides that if, that condition by His grace, but it's still a condition. Isaiah 59 verse 2 says, But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. And there are other conditions such as seeking Him, meditating upon Him, things like that. But the bottom line is, it is not an exaggeration for Hebrews 13 to apply the promises given to Joshua to each one of us. We need God's presence just as Joshua did. Joshua was not expected to do anything apart from God's presence and power going with him. Now, I want to make a side note about God's sovereign initiative in making his presence known in the first place. I mentioned there are conditions, loving God, keeping his commandments. But God is the one that, first of all, gives us the capacity to love, the ability to love and keep His commandments. We love Him because He first loved us. And so even these conditions are not a works-righteousness condition. They're all of grace. God's sovereignty is not just involved in our election, in our regeneration, our calling. Calling and the regeneration actually is the order. But it continues on in our sanctification throughout our lives so that we cannot take credit to anything. As Paul said, what do you have that you did not receive? 1 Corinthians 4, 7. I think that's always a good reminder. What do we have that we did not receive? Nothing. God had already hinted at His sovereign grace when He used the word given in verses 2 and 3, so Canaan was a gift of grace. There was nothing that Joshua could do to merit the gift of Canaan, nor was Joshua sufficient to take it on his own. Now, A. W. Pink, in his massive exposition on these verses, he says, yes, there is a concurrence of what we do, what Joshua did, and what Israel had to do to enter into this. But it was, apart from God, they wouldn't have it as a gift. They could not conquer, they could not maintain the land. And the moment they began to forget that God is the one who enables them, when they trusted in their own strength, they lost battles. Just like in chapter seven, verse, well, yeah, chapter seven, the battle against Ai. So if it takes God's presence and power to make Joshua successful, then it was imperative that Joshua learn to always live in God's presence and power. And this is something that academic Phil Kaiser had to be rebuked on a number of times, had to learn in his earlier years of ministry that my academics can count for nothing without God's blessing, nothing. Doesn't matter what my task is, whether counseling, preaching, writing, administration, I try to enter into that by acknowledging to God, without Him, this is not going to be successful. It's not going to bear a lasting fruit. And so the first part of my mission statement, which was solidified in the early 1990s, states this. I want to live out my callings as husband, father, pastor, writer, teacher, and reformer with a constant dependence upon God's authority, presence, and power, and with an eye to pleasing Him rather than man. I want every facet of my ministry to be characterized by the overflow of the Spirit's power. I want to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection in all that I am and do. Have I perfectly lived that out? No. But that's my desire, my constant desire. And so principle nine of leadership is a leader must always live in the presence and power of God. That cannot be emphasized too much. But point 10 is the flip side of principle 9. A leader must always be aware of his weaknesses, which will in turn force him to appropriate God's strength and courage. Now, some people give up when they recognize how weak they are. And I say to them, no, no, no, that's not the approach. In fact, that is the absolutely necessary prerequisite to godly and good leadership. Now granted, we tend to think the opposite. We tend to think that the people God uses are the famous and the eloquent and the brilliant people, And we get discouraged because we think we don't have enough to do the job, and so we don't attempt to do anything that God's calling us to do that is great, because we think we're inadequate. Well, that's beside the point. We're to live by His power, right? His strength. And so God's words to Joshua, we have a tendency to read them. It's like, oh yeah, you've got to be strong. I'm not strong, so this is not relevant for me. Didn't he say, be strong, be of good courage, don't be afraid. That's the kind of, it's a fearless, bold leader. But think about it for a moment. Why did God have to tell Joshua several times in this chapter to be strong? It's because Joshua was so conscious of his inadequacy and weakness. God said, be strong because Joshua felt weak. He said, do not be afraid because Joshua's heart was failing him. He was terrified. Okay, he was frightened. God said, neither be thou dismayed, which means that the man to whom he was speaking was tempted to quit the job, right? Do you ever feel like that? There may be some here who were tempted to throw in the towel and not do what you know God is calling you to do because you are overwhelmed with your own weaknesses. It's when men and women feel like that, that they sense their dependence upon God the most, and God picks them up and he uses them in a powerful way. This is one of the key themes, by the way, of the book that we gave to you, Gentle and Lowly, thank you, Gary. Key theme, it takes our eyes off of ourselves, puts them onto Jesus. And I believe that most of us are too big for God to use. We're too big for God to use. We're too full of our own schemes, our own ways of doing things. We're too self-confident. And God has to humble us and break us and empty us. Scripture says He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Paul said, when I am weak, then I am strong. Okay? So it's good to feel inadequate concerning the task that lies before us if and only if it drives us to depend more and more on the Lord. So Principles 9 and 10 really belong together. The next leadership principle is found in the second part of verse 6. Verse 6 says, Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. So why was he to have good courage? for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them." So Joshua was doing this for the people. His leadership was for the benefit of others. And all true biblical leadership is designed by God to be for the benefit of others. By the way, if you study spiritual gifts in the Bible, you will find this is a rule that's true of all spiritual gifts, all of them. Did you know that leadership, at least formal leadership, is a spiritual gift? Even though everybody's supposed to lead, there are some people who are spiritually gifted with leadership. Well, here's what the Bible says about all spiritual gifts. has received a gift, minister it to one another." 1 Peter 4, verse 10. So gifts were not designed to build you up and make you feel great and make you successful. Gifts were given by God for the benefit of ministering to others. and benefiting others. 1 Corinthians 12, 7 says much the same. And so when leaders begin to use their gifts for their own selves, for building up themselves in their own kingdom, they so easily can drift into a deiotrophies syndrome of abusive leadership. And let me tell you, as I've been reading about church, various denominations, God is exposing abusive leaders all over the United States in denomination after denomination. Again, all of these principles hang together. This hangs together with the principle we saw last time of having a servant's heart. Jesus called the group of 12 disciples, 12 apostles to serve and he gave himself as a model. He said, you're to serve just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. So Joshua was to lead for the benefit of others. Point 12 says that a leader should be anchored in the promises of a God who cannot lie. What kept Joshua going when the going got tough? What kept him energized when his friends turned against him? Say, you know, what kept Him from giving up in the face of impossibilities? It was the promises of God. Verse 6 says that this inheritance was, quote, the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Now, if God swore to give them the land, then His very character and reputation would be at stake if those promises failed. And every leader will at some point begin to be tempted to be cynical. and negative and or a doubting Thomas. Meditating on the promises of God, claiming the promises of God are the cure. And it's critical to success. If leaders act as if God's promises are true, which they are, then the followers will begin to act as if God's promises are true. And out of that is going to begin to flow and develop a culture of faith. And there are various kinds of promises. Eschatology, we talk about that a lot. It's just one category of promises, the promises relating to the future of planet Earth. And Christian leaders across the world must once again be re-energized by a belief that the nations are going to be given to Christ, that the Great Commission is not going to be a failure, that Jesus will build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, that of the increase of His kingdom and of peace there will be no end. There are so many promises like this. They need to be energized by that. And I believe the post-millennial faith has got to be re-embraced. If the whole church would re-embrace that faith that the Puritans had, I think we would be an unstoppable force. But there are other categories of promise besides eschatology. There are hundreds of promises that require personal faith for our sanctification. Some people want to just throw in the towel, give up. I remember many times actually thinking of that just as a teenager. I can't do this. Just wanting to throw in the towel. But we need to rebuke ourselves and begin meditating on those many scriptures that promise that we can have the victory over even the sins and the habits that have developed in our lives, and begin meditating on those promises. There are promises related to the Bible being the perfect foundation for taking dominion of every facet of life. Well, many Christians who have gone to Christian colleges have had those faith and those promises evaporated, because the colleges have said, no, the Bible's not sufficient for other areas of dominion. There are promises related to victory over the demonic hosts that are arrayed against us. Do we take those seriously? See, here's the problem. If we don't believe what God has promised, we're going to end up being like the 10 spies who discouraged the hearts of other Christians and we're not able to conquer. Years ago, my son gave me a very vivid example of the implications of this. He just moved to California. He was looking from church to church, trying to find a church that he could have a home in. And there was a friend of mine who had a Reformed church. I hadn't met him for a long time. And he was so discouraged by the end of the service, because this guy was a radical two-kingdom guy, didn't believe the Bible applied to most of life. He was a pessimilennialist who believed that eventually the church would be completely extinguished. And he just felt like, you know, walking out of that service totally, totally blasted and discouraged. And then five minutes after the service, no wonder, everybody bolted and they were gone. He says, there's nobody to fellowship with. But anyway, it reinforced in his mind that when you don't believe in the promises of God, which are comprehensive to every area of life, it affects your faith. It hugely does. And by the way, this is what it means to pray according to the will of God. Jesus said, if you pray according to the will of God in faith, there's two or three that agree on that, it's going to be answered. What does that mean, to pray according to God's will? Some people think that it means guessing God's secret will, His decretive will. It does not mean that at all. Deuteronomy says, that's none of your business. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may keep all the words of this law. And so praying according to God's will simply means finding promises that we can claim in the Scripture and praying according to God's character and according to His commandments. When you can immerse your prayers in the revealed will of God and you're praying concerning His kingdom, you pray in faith, it's going to be answered. So, again, this whole point is so, so important. Challenge yourselves to be grounded in God's promises. Next principle. Now, we've looked at the general strength and courage in verse 6, but strength and courage is also needed, according to verse 7, to embrace God's law. Why? Because God's law is so out of sync with the way that the world thinks. It may make us seem strange to them, weird to them, or what 1 Peter and the King James words it as, a peculiar people. We are so peculiar, right? Well, we need to be, is what 1 Peter says. Verse 7 says, only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may prosper wherever you go. Leaders need to be courageous and standing strong for truth because there is often pressure to compromise from fellow leaders and also from followers who are thinking like the world. You know, people don't realize the incredibly powerful impact that peer pressure can have upon us and how important it is to fight against that peer pressure. Solomon Asch, I think that's how you pronounce his name, A-S-C-H, he did a scientific study back in the 1950s that showed the dangers of group influence. And by the way, that study has been repeated numerous times since then with exactly the same results. So it's a pretty interesting study. But what he did is he got students to answer a very easy question. And when he administered this question without any outside influence, 95% of them got it right. However, when actors were inserted to very confidently assert the wrong answer, suddenly the answer of these students plummeted from 95% correct to 25% correct. This is the power of peer pressure upon people. What he called, let me see if I can find it here, he called it, evaluation, apprehension. In other words, feeling stupid in front of your peers. This is what makes so many politicians compromise. And I've read the testimonies, and they wonder, why is it that I know what's right, but I just feel this enormous pressure to compromise when I'm talking in Congress? its evaluation, apprehension. King David felt it himself in Psalm 119, but he vowed, I am not going to give in to this. He says, I will not be ashamed of your statutes when I speak before kings. Which meant, wow, when I'm talking with pagan kings, I sure feel the pressure to be ashamed of God's statutes. In other words, his civil laws. But he says, I'm not going to be ashamed of that. So if Joshua needed courage and strength and resolve to not be embarrassed by anything in God's law, we need to be given the same God-given strength and courage. And the modern church has, for the most part, failed in this area. Let me give you some recent examples that are particularly blatant. God's law in Exodus 21 verse 22 calls us to treat abortion as murder and to make it a crime to take part in the murder of babies. Yet somehow this law seems too harsh to pro-life organizations and they oppose any legislation that will treat abortion as murder. They ferociously, and they've been doing this for years and years and years, especially a national right to life. For example, in early May of this year, Louisiana had a great bill that declared, quote, the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all unborn children from the moment of fertilization by protecting them by the same laws protecting other human beings, unquote. Now, what on earth could be wrong with saying that unborn babies are going to be protected with the same laws that they're going to be protected with after they're born? You would think it would be a no-brainer, and yet pro-life organizations all over the states were irate, and they wrote an open letter and lobbied and basically got it pulled. But it was ready to get passed in Louisiana. And so these people were more willing to have abortion continue in Louisiana than to have abortion called as murder and treated as murder. Why? Might be. What is it? Evaluation, apprehension. It might be that. The cynic in me wants to say that National Right to Life and their affiliates would lose their need for existence and their cushy salaries if abortion disappeared. But whatever the reason that is there, they have failed God's test of loyalty to Him before loyalty to others. Now, Jared did share with me that last year, and I looked it up and read it, it's really quite remarkable that there is a bright light there, that the Southern Baptist denomination passed a resolution last year to affirm an abolition, a total abolition of abortions. That's a wonderful thing. They went from affirming abortion publicly in 1972, to apologizing for it in 2015, to last year, apparently, saying, we're going to be pushing for an abolition of abortion. So miracles do happen, praise the Lord. Another example, Genesis 1 is so clear in what it means that even a child can understand it. And certainly Jesus treated Genesis 1 as the literal creation of all things in the spirit of, you know, six literal days, and then creating man on the sixth day. But this is so out of step with our culture's evolutionary thinking that Christian scholars are embarrassed by it, and they've come up with all kinds of theories in which you can insert billions of years into those six days of Genesis 1. It's a classic example of evaluation apprehension, not wanting to look stupid in the eyes of your peers. Now, so far, I've run across 21 different theories of what Genesis 1 means. Theories you would never get to jump out from the text for you. I mean, they just do not jump out of the text of Genesis 1. Another example is the Revoice Movement. It purports to be an attempt to lovingly reach the LGBTQ community, and I do appreciate their desire to evangelize that community. We all need to, right? But in reality, what this movement is doing is it's bringing the LGBTQ thinking and feelings, firming their feelings and their worldview into the church. There are pastors in the PCA, the Evangelical Free Church, and other churches who call themselves gay pastors or trans pastors. Romans 1 is clear that your identity You know, it needs to be in Christ, not in some cultural identity. And even approving of a gay identity is something to be shunned. Now, you would think this was pretty straightforward, but rather than repenting of the gay culture, they affirm it, they celebrate it, they say much of it needs to be brought into the church. And after a couple of years of fighting, the PCA voted on whether to add this qualification for pastors, BCO 16-4. Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk and Christlike in their character. Those who profess an identity such as, but not limited to, gay Christian, same-sex attracted Christian, homosexual Christian, or like terms that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires, such as, but not limited to, same-sex attraction, or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions, are not qualified for ordained office." Now get this, this was simply for pastors. and yet even that vote lost. We see denomination after denomination straying to the right hand and the left hand of God's law. Why? Verse 7 tells us, they lack a spirit-given courage to embrace God's law without embarrassment. What about you? Just evaluate your own hearts. Is there anything in the Bible that you avoid because you don't want to look weird before your peers? to anything that you avoid because of evaluation apprehension. The next principle is given in verse 8. Now, if you take a look at your outlines, the last picture in your outline has a quote from the Puritan writer Thomas Brooks. It says, It is not he who reads most, but he who meditates most who will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian. God told Joshua, Now let's stop and think about that for a minute. Joshua was not a pastor. He was not a seminary professor. He wasn't even a teacher. He was a military man. So why on earth would God require him to meditate on God's word day and night? What in the world does that have to do with military things? A lot. The Bible applies to all of life. The Bible, meditating on the Bible draws us closer to God and toward His blessing. Meditating on God's Word shows loyalty to God's law, and loyalty to God's law shows loyalty to the lawgiver, to God Himself, okay? And that's a key to success in everything we do. Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Now, Psalm 1, 1 through 3, universalizes this promise that is given to Joshua here in this verse. To everyone, universalizes it. And first, I think, 4.15 applies it especially to leaders saying, meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them that your progress may be evident to all. And I personally have found meditation to be one of the most powerful tools in the Scripture for conquering my own besetting sins. It's just been wonderful. It's helped me to overcome anxiety, which is my besetting sin. I still actually have to constantly use meditation and use the Scripture in prayer to suppress the tendency toward anxiety. I used this in the early 20s to conquer the whole area of perverted thinking. And even in my dream life, I found myself resisting with the Scriptures. Meditating is super powerful. So what's involved in meditation? Well, let me give you just one example. There's various techniques for meditating, but select a passage of Scripture, and it can be done topically, you know, related to something you're struggling with at the time, or it can be just going through the Psalms, but select. It'd be better if you memorize it, but for those of you who have a tough time memorizing, just select a Scripture that you're going to ponder on. Second, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you as you meditate on the passage. Third, read the passage a line at a time, and then stop, preferably reading it out loud. Now, interestingly, the word, a Hebrew word for meditate, has built right into it this out loud concept. And that's why some commentators say that verse 8, when it says, this shall not depart from your mouth, he's talking about speaking the words out loud as being involved in that meditation. Now, probably spoken softly, But doing it out loud helps to keep your mind from wandering. So read it, recite it out loud. And by the way, this reinforces that scripture through three styles of learning. You know, three gates of learning. Ear gate, mouth, and the eye gate. Fourth, once you've read the line, paraphrase it and try to understand each word. try to just think about it, ponder about it. What does this line here mean? Fifth, turn that line into a prayer of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, or supplication. This hugely helps with applying the passage, because the Spirit of God will bring to your mind different ways in which this Word can be, as you're praying, He will guide your prayers in different ways that it can be applied to your life. Then, Go to a new line in the passage, repeat it until you've gone through the entire passage. And then once you've gone through the entire passage, ask the Holy Spirit, have I missed anything? And go through the passage again. So that's one way of meditating on the scripture. I read a Puritan who likened meditation to a cow chewing its cud. Just as a cow will sit out under a shade tree and burp up these balls of grass and chew on them, swallow them, burp them up again, chew on. We're to masticate God's Word, just have it go over and over and over again, asking the Holy Spirit to transform us with that Word. It's a power in that Word, and to make that Word be a part and parcel of us. David Howard said, the key to Solomon's success was the same as for Joshua. Then you will have success if you are careful to observe the decrees and laws that the Lord gave Moses for Israel. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged. The vocabulary in this passage echoes that of Joshua 1 in remarkable ways. In both cases, God's chosen leader was to focus on knowing and obeying God's laws. That was the key to their success as leaders. I want to end by giving six more applications of these verses that were not covered yet, and we'll hurry through these. First, leaders should always seek to improve themselves. Joshua had grown an enormous amount during the previous 40 years, but God called him in these nine verses to keep growing, so always seek to improve yourself. Second, for God to treat the first five books of the Bible as already being canon, it implies that canonicity happened the moment the prophet wrote the book. God alone can make the book canonical, not the church. And he made the books canonical through the prophets, not the church, as Roman Catholics like to say. Francis Schaeffer said Joshua knew Moses, the writer of the Pentateuch, personally. Joshua knew his strengths and weaknesses as a man. He knew that Moses was a sinner and that Moses made mistakes, that Moses was just a man. Nonetheless, immediately after Moses' death, Joshua accepted the Pentateuch as more than the writing of Moses. He accepted it as the writing of God. Two or three hundred years were not required for the book to become sacred. As far as Joshua was concerned, the Pentateuch was the canon, and the canon was the Word of God. The biblical view of the growth and acceptance of the canon is as simple as this. When it was given, God's people understood what it was. Right away it had authority. Okay? Third, The day and night part of verse 8 is reflective on Deuteronomy's statement that God's law needed to be applied to all that we do when we're sleeping or waking. The church needs to be restored to a sense of the sufficiency of Scripture for all of life. Pray for biblical blueprints as we seek to stir up a renewed confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture by providing biblical axioms for math, statistics, geometry, hermeneutics, economics, other areas of life. There is literally nothing in day or night, nothing, that the Bible does not speak to. And all that it speaks to, it speaks with authority. Fourth, God doesn't just want an academic understanding of what the Bible says. He called Joshua to observe to do according to all that is written in it. We're called to obey, to live out the Bible. And such obedience makes God willing to prosper all that we do. Fifth, the word written underscores the fact that Christianity is a religion of the word, the written word. You don't have to guess at what God wants us to do. You know, in terms of secret, well, no, that belongs to God. We just read the Bible. It's in black and white for everybody to see. And this is why it's so important that we teach our children to read. And by the way, it's Christianity that spurred literacy all over the world. It really is when you study the history of it. And so we need to read, read, read. Christianity is a religion of the Word. the written Word. Sixth, God wants us to have success. He wants us to prosper. Now, certainly, He might throw tests into our life from time to time, where He takes away some of that prosperity, like He did with Job. But even there, we can be a success in how we respond to that, right? Some people say, oh, this promise, that's only valid for Israel. No, that is false. It's valid for us. Let me just give one example. 3 John 2. It says, Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers. And that was the lead verse for my entire series on the Christian and prosperity. So yes, God loves to prosper and bless those with stewards hearts. And certainly in heaven, wow, we're going to be richly blessed. But I want to once again end by reminding us that all of these leadership principles And maybe I should reverse that and put it in the negative. None of these principles are pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps principles. These are principles that keep driving us to God's wisdom, God's grace, God's help, God's intervention. If we don't approach each of these principles through God's presence and power, we're gonna end up either prideful, if we think we're doing good, or frustrated, if we think we're doing poor. Verses 5 and 9 are at the heart of everything that we have talked about. And those verses indicate we cannot do any of this without God's wisdom and strength. And so, yes, leaders are commanded to do things, to have character, to be bold. But ultimately, we can obey God's commands because God is with us and he has promised to help us. As Augustine worded it, God enables what he commands. Joshua could not have done his calling in his own strength. nor can we. So keep pressing into the Lord daily, and daily receive from Him the strength and the wisdom needed to keep growing as a leader. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word, and we know that we have not even exhausted what verses 1 through 9 can teach us. And so I pray that each one of us as Christians would learn to meditate upon Your Word and suck sweetness from Your Scriptures They are so rich. You have said that they are treasures in Your Word that we need to dig for as for silver and gold. And I pray that this, Your people, would be strengthened as they do so. Bless us by Your power, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.