Thank you, Pastor Don. We are in Joshua tonight, Joshua 1, 1 through 9. Well, Pastor Don said it, I'm in school again in about 15 years. You can teach an old dog new tricks. I'm in a biblical hermeneutics class, so I'm learning to study and interpret the Bible. I'm blessed in the fact that since May, Pastor Don has been teaching me how to study and interpret the Bible. So the course has been very easy to me. God has kind of smoothed the path for me, and I'm grateful for that. So Joshua 1, 1 through 9. 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 the people, to the land which I am giving to them, the children 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. The 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. It's quite a bit there. I thought we would start with a kind of broad overview of where we are in the context of history and then kind of narrow our focus in as we go verse to verse and kind of examine what's here. And then at the end we'll try to apply it. In doing that I really want to take a look at the life of Joshua because there are some amazing things in it. Some amazing similarities between his life and Moses' life. And I found it very, very interesting to really, really delve deeply into these passages. And I hope that by the end of this, we'll all be awake. Before we get to that, let's ask the Lord for help. Let's pray. Father God, we pray tonight that our prayers are not rote or something that we just do to do, but that it is what you want it to be, a conversation with you, Father. We want our prayers to be pleasing to you. We want this message tonight to be your message, Father. Open our hearts to what you have to say to us this evening. Let it be clear to us. Let it show what you want it to show, Father. We love you. We praise you. We give all the honor and glory to you. In Jesus' name, Amen. I haven't been in college since about 2002. That's when I graduated from film school. But when I was an undergrad at Michigan State, they would assign the reading, and it was always so much reading. They'd say, what you need to do is take a highlighter, have your highlighter in one hand, your book in the other hand, and as you're going through the material, highlight the sections that are important so that when you go back to review what you've read, you can go right to the important parts. So I tried that for the first test, and I went through and I read all the material that had been given to me, and I highlighted what I thought was important, But I found when I went back, everything that I highlighted, my brain said, you've already covered this, you don't need to look at it again, and I'd skip right over it. So what I ended up doing, because I have to be honest, I struggle with anything. Anything that I have to read and remember, I've got to read it at least three or four times for it to stick. So what I ended up doing is I would buy used books, and I would look at what others had highlighted. I would read through the material once, and then I would go back and I would look at what they had highlighted, and I'd say to myself, did this person know what they were doing, or were they completely insane? Did they highlight what was really important, or did they just highlight everything, or not enough? What were they trying to get out of the text? Now many of us are familiar with scripture. We've read the stories or we've been taught the stories. We know how the stories end. We've got to be careful because it's such familiar territory to us. We've got to, each time that we read the scripture, not do what I did after I'd highlighted and just say, you know what? I know what this story is. I know what God's telling me in it. Let's just skip over it. Because when you go back and you really read the scripture, I don't know if it's the same for everybody else, but I always get something new from it. God always shows me something new in the scripture. We have to guard against just glossing over, just flying over the passages that we know and really read what God has written for us. We have to try to see the scripture as if we're looking at it for the first time. Now, when we're reading a historical account like this one is, it is important to have a broad view of what we're looking at, to understand where this fits, not only within the scripture, but within history. These are real events. These are true events that happened. And we have to have a broad overview to try to understand what God is showing us at this particular time. So our passage in Joshua falls right after the five books of Moses. Now we all know the story of Moses. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, out of slavery, and through the desert. Moses never got to set foot in the promised land, the land that had been promised to Abraham, because as we all know, he had sinned against God. God had told him to speak to the rock and the rock would produce water. But Moses was so frustrated with the Israelites that instead of speaking to the rock, he struck it not once, but twice. I always read that and thought, you know, yeah, I could see myself doing that. We get so frustrated sometimes and so angry that rather than doing what God has asked us to do, we go our own way. We let anger take over. So Moses never got to set foot in the Promised Land. He got to see it. God took him up to Mount Nebo and showed him the Promised Land, and then he died. I've completely left my notes in the dust, so let me try to get back to where I'm supposed to be. With a historical narrative like this one, There's a danger of viewing the narrative as just a story with characters that are mere figments of somebody's imagination. A number of the commentaries that I read would say something like this, and I'm quoting, The title of the book of Joshua has the same name as the main human character, Joshua. Now with my background, when I think of character, I'm thinking of film characters or book characters. But Joshua was a real person. Joshua was a real man. Now if you look at history, and I do, George Washington was a real person. But if you've ever read any historical accounts of George Washington, they never describe George Washington as a character. He was a man, just like Joshua was. Now, when we talk about character, we can talk about a narrative character, or we can talk about the character of a man, but we're focusing on the character as a person. Now, you can say, I've known many people in my life who were real characters, but that's not what we're talking about here. So we've got to get in our minds that Joshua was not a character. Bugs Bunny is a character. Joshua is not. We also need to remind ourselves that these events really happened, and the outcome to the people involved was unknown to them. Joshua didn't know when he led the Israelites across the Jordan into the Promised Land that he wouldn't be wiped out and killed. He had faith in God. And that is what we need to focus on, the amazing faith, because they had sent spies into the land, and you've got to understand that at this time the Israelites were nomads. They were wandering from place to place. The spies reported that not only was the land inhabited by giants, but there were fortified cities they would be going up against. It took a lot of faith for Joshua to be able to rise up and lead those people across the Jordan. So where are we? Verse one kind of establishes where we are. 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, So in this first verse, we know where we're at. We know who we're dealing with, and we know the relationship between them. Moses was a servant of God. Joshua was his assistant. Now, Joshua had been Moses' assistant since his youth. We're going to go through a quick overview of Joshua's life. He was born into slavery in Egypt. He was 40 years old, roughly, when the Exodus took place. And now, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, he is 80 years old. I have to say I hope that I'm up in spry like Joshua is when I'm 80, but I doubt it. So we know that Moses has died after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, just before the Israelites are led into Canaan by Joshua. The verse states that Moses was a servant of the Lord. There was a relationship between Moses and God. God spoke to Moses. Now the word for servant in Hebrew, and I'm going to butcher this, is ephed, which is servant or slave. But I think that slave would be a better word than servant here. And you can agree to disagree with me if you'd like. But when God called Moses, Moses didn't want to go. Moses didn't want to step out of his comfort zone. He listed all of the reasons why he couldn't go. But he went. Now Joshua, the son of Nun, was Moses' assistant. And as I said before, had been his assistant since youth. He had seen the miracles that Moses had performed in front of Pharaoh. He had seen the parting of the Red Sea. He had seen how God had worked in Moses' life. If we look at Numbers 11-28, we kind of see this relationship between Joshua and Moses. So Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, one of his choice men, answered. So Joshua was the son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim, was originally named Hosea. His name was changed to Yahshua, which is printed in our Bibles in the contracted form, Joshua. Now Moses, before he had sent Joshua into the land to spy it out with Caleb, this is just after they had left Egypt, he gave him a new name. Joshua means Jehovah is salvation. In verse one, Moses is called the servant of the Lord. He was called this often in the Old Testament. In the royal terminology of the ancient Near East, a king's servant was a trusted envoy or minister. Joshua is the trusted envoy minister of Moses, and Moses is the envoy of God. If we flip ahead to Joshua 24, 29, we see Joshua called the servant of the Lord. Now it came to pass after these things that Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died being 110 years old. Joshua 24, 29. So in the scripture, it was not until the end of his life that Joshua had earned the title and position of servant of the Lord, even though he had been serving the Lord for most of his life. Now we first encounter Joshua as Moses is instructing him to gather men to battle against the Amalekites. We all know the story of how Moses raised his staff above his head. And when he was raising his staff, the Israelites were winning. And when he had lowered his staff, they would start to lose. Joshua was in the thick of that fight. Now there are some interesting parallels in the life of Moses and in the life of Joshua. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Joshua led them into Canaan. Moses leads the Israelites miraculously through the Red Sea on dry land. Joshua leads them miraculously across the Jordan into Israel, also on dry land. Moses sends out spies into the promised land. Joshua sends out spies to Jericho. Moses allocates land on the east side of the Jordan. Joshua allocates land on the west side of the Jordan. And finally, Moses gave a prolonged address before dying, and Joshua does the same. This farewell address at the end of the book brings the parallelism between the two leaders full circle. Now Joshua and Moses both enjoyed the presence of God. God made them great in the eyes of Israel. They experienced the appearances of God's messenger. They faced people with hardened hearts. and they were both referred to as a servant of the Lord. Verse 2 and 3, God states that Moses is dead and Joshua will arise and lead the Israelites over the Jordan and into the promised land. 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 children of Israel, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you, as I said to Moses." So here we see If we look back at Joshua's life, the entire time God had been preparing him for this moment, this was when he was going to arise as leader of God's chosen people and lead them into the Promised Land, a promise that God had made to Abraham all those years ago. This is the land, the same land that God had promised to Abraham. If we look at Genesis 17, 8, We see the account. Also, I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession. And I will be their God. Now. The Israelites have to cross the Jordan. Wherever they walk, God has given it to them. God has given them the land, but they have to take it. It's not like God's just opening the gates and saying, go on in and take it. They're going to have to fight for it. But in doing so. They're honoring and glorifying their God. They're doing what they're supposed to and having faith that God is going to take them the rest of the way. They still have to put forth effort. Absolutely. They still have to fight and slaughter. Absolutely. But they have God with them. They will have to fight for the land under God's direction and divide up the land according to God's guidance. Page two, just kidding. God is sovereign over everything. Nothing is ever a surprise to him, yet we still have to do our part. Verse four, from the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites and the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. God spelling out the land that he has given to them. He outlines the territory that he has promised to the Israelites from the time of Abraham. The land God promised in his covenant with Abraham and often reaffirmed to the Israelites. North to south from the Nile, up through the wilderness, all the way to Lebanon. East to west from the Euphrates River to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. That was all theirs because God had promised it and God keeps his promises. Verse five, 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. This is the promise from God of divine power for the task that Joshua has before him. Now, Joshua was a soldier. He was in the government of the people of Israel. He was in Moses' inner circle, but he could not do it by himself. God had to be with him, and God promised to be with him. Joshua had been with Moses from the time he was young and now he's in his 80s and has seen what God did for Moses. The plagues in Egypt, the provisions in the wilderness. He knew that if God said he was going to do something, God would do it. God is letting Joshua know that just like with Moses, he's going to be there for Joshua the whole way. No one is going to be able to stand in their way. In verse six he 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 after encouraging Joshua, God is telling him to be strong and of good courage, to be ready, because it is Joshua who will be dividing the land among the Israelites, the land which God had promised not only to Abraham, but also to Isaac and to Jacob. Now for us, this should serve as an encouragement. We know that God keeps his promises. We sometimes have a tendency to gloss over a passage like this and say, okay, God told Joshua to be strong, cross over, and divide land. That's great. Stop for a minute and really think about what happened here. God had promised this land to Abraham's descendants, to the Israelites. Forever will it be their possession. God had promised this to the Israelites. The Israelites, ever since that promise had been made, had been going teeth against the wall to do everything against God, it seems. You think about their disobedience, you think about their blasphemy, you think about the idols that they created in the desert. I mean, this was in the presence of God. They saw the fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day. They ate the manna that was all provided by God and yet they still went against Him. God keeps His promises. Did that surprise God at all? Not at all. Not even a little bit. God knew that they were going to do that. But He made that promise anyways. God does not lie. He gave us the Bible that is filled with His truth, and He always keeps His promises. I will never leave you nor forsake you. This is God's Word to us, and it is the truth. If you put your trust and your faith in God through His Son, Jesus Christ, He will never leave you nor forsake you. Will it always be easy? Certainly not. Will life just become a warm, fuzzy place filled with happy endings and unicorns? Certainly not. But you will never be alone. God will always be with you. Once I gave my life over to Christ, life didn't suddenly become rainbows and sunshine, I can tell you. But God brought me a sense of comfort and a sense of peace that transcends whatever it is I'm going through. It has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with Him. I am not this high and mighty spiritual person. I am no different than any other sinner. But Jesus saved me. His comfort, His grace is in me through the Holy Spirit. Now I have faced things in life as we all have. Things that seemed impossible. Darkness that seemed endless. God has never once let me down. Not once. We have this tendency to see our problems as so big, and God as so small. But the reality is, and always have been, our problems are small, and our God is beyond big. We can't begin to wrap our minds around the concept of how big God is. Just like the song says, He is able, more than able, to handle anything, anything that comes my way. Verse seven, 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. The strength and courage of the warriors of Israel would come from their confidence that their God was with them and would not forsake them. If we look at Deuteronomy 31, 6 through 8, it says, Be strong and of good courage. Do not fear nor be afraid of them. For the Lord your God, He is the one who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you. Then Moses called Joshua and said to him, in the sight of all Israel, be strong and of good courage, for you must go with this people to the land which God has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, he is the one who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you. Do not fear nor be dismayed. Moses repeated the substance of this exhortation addressing Joshua in the presence of all the people to encourage Joshua and to remind the people that Joshua's leadership was being assumed with the full approval of God. This principle of faith and confidence is repeated throughout scripture. Verse eight, 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. Then you will have good success. Now for a nomadic people, They relied on God for everything. They didn't have the comforts of a city. They didn't have the protection of city walls around them. They didn't have provisions set aside where they could store food up. Everything that they had came from God. And you better believe that every single moment they were talking to God. God is telling Joshua to spend time in the Word, specifically because it was all they had, Genesis through Deuteronomy, which was written by God through His mentor Moses, which was the only scripture at the time. He was to read it with thoughtfulness, to linger over God's Word. The scripture has always been and will always be the spiritual food of those who worship Him. Capital H, him. Joshua was not to let it leave his mouth or his thoughts. Night and day it was to be on his mind and on his tongue. He was to follow all that was written in it. Not part, not some, not just the warm fuzzy, but all of it. He was not to stray from the word. The promise of God's blessing on the great responsibility that God had given to Joshua. We need a deep understanding of God's word. And we need to be able to apply it to our lives at all times. In verse 9, God asks a rhetorical question. 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." God is reiterating the command of Joshua to be strong and of good courage. He is not to be afraid nor dismayed. God is with him wherever he goes. This is an assurance that God gives to his servants. If we look at Genesis 15, 1 with Abraham, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. to Isaiah in Isaiah 41.10. Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. In Hebrews 13, 5, he offers assurances to us. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Everybody still awake out there? We're getting to the end. We have that assurance from God. However, just like the Israelites going into the promised land, we still have to do our part. God wants us to be faithful, not only to him, but to his word. What we see in these passages is the fulfillment of the plan that God had for the life of Joshua. God has a plan for all of our lives. We do not always see it. In this passage, well, let me back up. We may occasionally catch a glimpse of God's plan for our lives, or we may see God working in the lives of others. Whether we see it or not, it is there. Some people go through their entire lives without ever seeing God's plan, without ever seeing God. As shown in these passages, we must be faithful to God. We must pray to Him and be ready for what He has planned for our lives. So how do we apply this? Well, first we have to study God's Word. It is essential to gaining a thorough knowledge of God's Word. It's something we have to do. Meditation resembles study. Just as a student who wants a good grade in a hard course must sacrifice large portions of his time to poring over the notes and the textbook, so a Christian must constantly read and ponder the Bible if he wishes to know it well. Otherwise, his or her knowledge of it will consist of snatches, imperfectly remembered, and perhaps tainted with distortions. When we cannot quite recall what the Bible says, we try to reconstruct it in our own words. We come up with our own version of the Bible. But God does not need an editor. We need to know exactly what God has said. If you are saved, never, ever forget that God is always with us. Always. We could say that we know that, but do we live that? Do we live like one of God's chosen? Do we live a life that shows to others that we have God's assurance? That we not only know that God is with us, but that we understand exactly what that means? It is a wonderful assurance. We can live confidently knowing that God is with us. Whatever the world throws at us is not bigger than our Lord. It's not even a surprise to our God. God has a plan for each and every one of us. We find out what that plan is by studying God's word and by talking to God and by listening to what God has to say. I'm going to pray and then Pastor Don will lead us in the closing hymn. Father God, thank you for the opportunity to gather here tonight. Thank you for the message that you've prepared for us. Help us to open our hearts to it. Help us to open our hearts to you, God, who loved us when we were so unlovable. who sent his son to die for our sins, not because we deserve it, but because you love us. By your grace, which we cannot even begin to fathom or understand, we love you and we praise you. We give all the honor and glory to you. In Jesus' name, amen.