September 23, 2018 “Courage” – Joshua 1

Joshua 1, Kingdoms pp. 3-4
“Courage”
September 23, 2018 – Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

“I remember when…” comes out of my mouth more often these days. I could be talking about 45 RPM single-song records or milk in glass bottles or a car engine that I could take apart and repair completely by myself and did. We get older and imagine that the good old days were better… and they were, in many ways.

Recently a friend on Facebook, which certainly did not exist in the good old days, posted a meme about a childhood back when we did not seem to be so afraid. We played and roamed up and down our streets for blocks with no worries. We went trick-or-treating without an adult along. We laid down and slept without seatbelts in the back seat while our parents drove across country. It felt like we didn’t have much to fear.

One of the events that began to change all that was the assassination of a president, John F. Kennedy. I remember hearing the news in the playground from another student in 1963. “No,” I said, “that can’t happen. Nobody can hurt the president.” But someone could, and it seemed to suggest to a nation of young people that they too could be hurt, that they might need to be afraid. It changed things.

My generation began to feel all sorts of fears, especially when we became parents. We bought car seats and taught our children to buckle up from day one of their lives. We worried about what was in those hot dogs we used to eat as kids. We added deadbolts to our doors and alarm systems to our cars and cell phones for emergencies to our purses and pockets. We grew up into a whole new era chock full of fears. We were in need of courage.

As the book of Joshua opens, God’s people, the Israelites, stood on the brink of a new era, facing the unknown, in need of courage. Forty years after their miraculous Exodus from Egypt, they were preparing to enter the land God had given them through their ancestor Abraham. Those who were adults when they left Egypt were almost entirely gone. And like America in 1963, the highest leadership of the nation had died. The book of Joshua begins, “After the death of Moses…”

Whatever your opinion of Kennedy’s presidency might be, he was missed by many people. He symbolized something, a spirit, a courage that seemed like it was being lost in this country. His book, Profiles in Courage, celebrated people who had stood against their political parties and popular opinion to do what was right. That kind of courage still feels sorely needed today.

The children of Israel sorely missed Moses. The last three verses of the previous book of Scripture, Deuteronomy, reflect their opinion of him. “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt… For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”

Think what that meant to Joshua as he took the reins of leadership. It was already a given that he would never fill Moses’ shoes. He would never be the wonder-working prophet and leader that his mentor had been. He would never know God the way Moses had. He would always be, forever in the eyes of his people, a second-rate, second fiddle to the Great Man.

After the death of Caesar Augustus, Tiberius who ruled Rome in Jesus’ time was a reluctant and ineffective emperor. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became one of the worst presidents America ever had, opposing many of the freedoms the Civil War won for African Americans. Joshua could have ended up like them, the second Roman emperor or the seventeenth president. He might have accepted his new role hesitantly and carried it out dismally. Yet that was not God’s plan for him. Here in our text, God tells Joshua “be strong and courageous” no less than three times. At the end of the chapter, at the top of page 4, the people themselves tell him the same thing, “be strong and courageous.”

The whole book of Joshua carries out that theme of courage. Over in chapter 10 verse 25, page 16 in Kingdoms, Joshua shows the people five great kings they have defeated and repeats back it back to Israel, “be strong and courageous.” Through Joshua people heard God’s call to courage and called each other to be courageous in the face of many things to fear, from huge walled cities full of hostile forces to internal conflicts in their own nation. And God didn’t just tell them courage was needed, He told them how to have it.

Our house smelled wonderful one day last month. Susan our daughter was home and she made cinnamon rolls. She loves to cook and bake, but where they live in an apartment in a big city their kitchen is small, the oven is tiny and she doesn’t have much opportunity to create the great things she’s capable of. So she got out her recipes and made cinnamon rolls, sausage-and-spinach phyllo pastries, and some sort of soup which Beth liked anyway.

We probably won’t, but we could follow those recipes for ourselves. Instead of just remembering the great food Susan made, we could get turn on the oven, get out the baking sheets and make some ourselves. That’s what God wanted Joshua and the Israelites to do. Instead of just looking backward at what their courageous leader Moses had done, He wanted them to go forward and stir up courage for themselves.

The first ingredient in God’s recipe for Joshua’s courage was the recognition that his success did not depend on himself. Joshua’s mission took up where Moses left off, leading the Israelites into Canaan, conquering it to be a homeland for them. But Joshua was not the one giving his people their land. As God speaks at the top of page 3, He tells Joshua to lead the people “into the land I am giving them.” That land was God’s gift to His people.

Notice that as God goes on He says, “Wherever you set your foot you will be on land that I have given you.” Because God was the one doing it, it was as good as done, already accomplished. Joshua and the people merely received a gift, claiming what God had already given them. They could be courageous because God had guaranteed the outcome.

Joshua’s very name is a reminder to us that God is the one at work, both in the blessing of the promised land and in our own salvation. Yeshua in Hebrew is what Moses named him as a young man. It’s one of the first names in Scripture to incorporate the special, holy name “Yahweh” for God as told to Moses. Yeshua means “God saves.” In Greek it’s Iesous “Jesus.” Our Lord was named after this second leader of Israel to remind us of just that. It is God who saves us and not ourselves. It’s a Gift.

As you and I live in this age of fears, from catastrophic weather to earthquakes to economic disaster to our own smaller but still agonizing fears and worries, remember that God had already given Joshua the land. Remember the Gift we come here to celebrate. God gave us His Son Jesus. God saves. We don’t produce peace and salvation by our own efforts. God saves. It’s a Gift.

That gift of God’s salvation to us is the first ingredient. God stirred up Joshua’s courage, beginning with His saving grace. Then further down He directed Joshua to pour in something else. God told Joshua “For I will be with you, as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.” It’s then, after God said He would be with Joshua, at the top of the second paragraph, that He first tells him, “Be strong and courageous.” They could go forward with courage for just that reason. God would be with them.

So God’s Presence is the next ingredient in the mix of our courage. God said He would be with Joshua. In Jesus, God said He would be with us. That name of Jesus we remember especially at Christmas, “Immanuel,” means “God with us.” God’s Gift of His Son was not temporary, not finished even with His life, death and resurrection. Jesus told us in Matthew 28:20 that He would be always be with us. Like Israel facing the Canaanites, nothing we fear will overcome us, because in Christ God is with us. We have His Presence.

The third ingredient in the recipe for Joshua’s courage seems strange. The Israelites were poised on the eastern bank of the Jordan. They were about to cross the river into enemy territory. They had long years and many battles ahead of them. Yet there in the middle of page 3, the call to courage doesn’t focus on military preparation. God doesn’t direct them to go sharpen their spears and polish their shields. God says, “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you… Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night, so that you will be sure to obey everything written in it.”

Into the batch with God’s Gift and God’s Presence, goes the seemingly odd ingredient of Instruction. Remembering and keeping God’s Word will produce courage. They were to be courageous about doing what God had commanded. When they followed God’s Instruction given them in the Law of Moses, “Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.” The Hebrew words translated “prosper” and “succeed” don’t so much mean physical wealth and goods as they imply spiritual well-being. It’s when people live by God’s Instruction that they have good lives.

Let you and I remember to add Instruction to our own lives. As much as we are glad to have the Gift of Christ and the Presence of God with us, we are not always so faithful to regularly and carefully blend in a good measure of His Instruction. Yet Instruction is the one ingredient that brings courage together and gives it a richness and depth it would otherwise lack. That’s why we are doing this Immerse thing again, reading together God’s Instruction to us, meditating on it, talking about it, working together to obey it and put it into practice in our lives. That fourth and last question for discussion on your bookmark may be the most important, “How might this change the way we live?”

In a wonderful film about Julia Child, “Julie and Julia,” one little theme is the glory of butter. Susan put lots and lots of butter in those cinnamon rolls she made for us. Reflecting on how much butter Julia Child put in her recipes, Julie Powell said, “any time you taste something that’s delicious beyond imagining and you say ‘What’s in this?’ the answer is always going to be butter.” Likewise, whenever you see a strong Christian who is truly courageous, and you wonder what’s the ingredient that makes her that way, it’s always going to be Instruction, study and meditation on God’s Word.

So there’s the recipe for courage: God’s Gift, God’s Presence and God’s Instruction. At the bottom of that first page, Joshua got ready to put that stirred up batter in the oven, the oven of war, as he prepared the tribes of Israel to cross over the Jordan River and face the Canaanites.

Yet there was one last ingredient that came into play in cooking up courage for Joshua and Israel. Joshua made a point to address the two and a half tribes, Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, who had already claimed territory east of the river. Those tribes might easily have settled down, stayed home, and let their cousins do all the hard work of fighting for land on the west side. Yet Joshua reminded those three tribes at the top of page 4 that they could only go home and settle down when “the Lord gives them [the other tribes] rest, as he has given you rest.”

This idea of rest became a key theme in Scripture. In chapter 11 of Joshua, over near the top of page 19, we read, “So the land finally had rest from war.” That was the goal, the aim of all those battles, not glory and power, but rest.

In Hebrews 4 and 5 rest is a way of talking about the hope we look forward to in Christ. In fact, the writer to the Hebrews points out that the work of Joshua did not lead to a final and complete rest. God’s people have continued to have to struggle and labor ever since. Yet Hebrews 4:9 and 10 say, “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work.”

Rest is the last ingredient in the recipe for courage. Rest is the icing, the sugar coating, the gravy, the spice, however you want to say it. How could we brave the days ahead of us, if we thought that life was just one endless struggle and battle after another? But when we trust in Jesus Christ and base our courage in His Gift, His Presence, His Instruction, then we have before us the hope and promise of His Rest, just as the tribes of Israel had before them a hope and promise and finally the fulfillment of resting in the land God gave them.

What ultimately makes us brave in Christ, is the promise that we won’t always have to be brave. When He gives us Himself, when we find Him beside us and with us, when we live in His word and teaching, then we march forward toward better days, better times when we can simply rest in Him, and leave the battles behind. The great and wonderful promise is that in Christ we are entering into a place unlike ancient Canaan where God’s people had to fight for every inch of territory. No, we look toward a Kingdom where there will be joy and rest forever.

May Joshua give you a recipe for courage. May you receive the Gift of God in Jesus Christ as your own Savior. May you feel His Presence with you through His people around you today. May you hear and listen to His Instruction as it’s been offered to you in Scripture and preaching and song. And may the promise of blessed and peaceful Rest fill you with courage for whatever you will face tomorrow and in the years to come.

Amen.