Sermon on the Life of Joshua, When You Get Tapped on the Shoulder to Carry a Big Load

Every generation of believers has the same task, to preach the gospel in such a way that all nations become disciples of Jesus Christ, being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and obeying all that Jesus teaches.

My church family back home has a 117-year history of preaching the gospel.  We’re a mere child compared to you guys here at Fellowship.  We have had faithful people and faithful leaders who have accomplished much over the decades by way of preaching the gospel.  We have also had colossal failures.  We had a minister who gave in to immorality.  We have accidentally birthed two other churches because there was a split in our understanding with one another.  But we are still there and have more territory to conquer.  Being 117 years old does not mean we can sit back and retire.  We’re called to greatness.  And this current generation of believers is responsible for trusting God to see this happen.

Like Israel before us, like the worldwide church before us and like our immediate ancestors before us, we have been commissioned by God to reach the lost in our community and around the world and to disciple the saved, all in the power of Jesus Christ and even in the face of potential resistance.  How are we going to do this?  Why would anybody think that we could do this?  We’re not superheroes.  We’re not the apostles of Jesus Christ.  We’re not even, most of us, effective CEO’s of powerful companies who accomplish amazing things.  We’re just little old us.  Mothers, fathers, workers at home, salesmen and women, office temps, administrative assistants, lawn mowers, landscapers, carpenters, business owners, nurses, builders and people of any number of other ways of contributing to our communities and making a living.  Why would anyone expect us to change the world?

But that is exactly what God expects of us and what He believes we can do.  That is why He keeps sending us these challenges He sends.  He makes us aware of women who are in difficult marriages and need support and help just to survive another day.  He shows us children who seem to have no chance of becoming anything but thugs if their worlds are not rearranged in some miraculous way.  He parades in front of us countless co-workers whose lives seem empty and shallow and pointless but who could find life worth living in Jesus Christ.  He opens our eyes to problems in our society that need solutions and we start to wonder if that solution could actually be us.  Like Popeye in the old cartoons He faces us with something that desperately needs changing until we say, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.”  He makes us consider becoming braveheart William Wallaces who will lead our people to freedom.  He scares us out of our wits by making us wonder if we might really be the ones He wants to use in challenging and perhaps dangerous ways.

Joshua faced all this.  Joshua succeeded Moses in a job that was not quite finished.  Moses was supposed to get them to the promised land and lead them in victory over the Canaanite inhabitants of that land.  But Moses had a moral failure and now it fell to Joshua to finish the job.  And over and over God has to tell Joshua to be strong and courageous because no doubt he would prefer to run and hide.  So why doesn’t he?  What prepared Joshua to take on this challenge and trust God with the results?

As you begin looking at the book of Joshua it will help to know what he went through first to become the one whom God could give this task to and expect it to get done.  Because this is what God will expect of you and me.  The story of Joshua is not here just to make us say, “Wow, what a guy!”  It is here to make us say, “Here am I, Lord, send me.”

The first thing I learn from Joshua’s life about how to take on the big load of the previous generation is…

I. I Have to Be Faithful Over the Smaller Load God Gives Me to Carry First

Exodus 17:8 The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. 9 Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

10 So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. 11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. 12 When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. 13 So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

 14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.”

 15 Moses built an altar and called it The Lord is my Banner. 16 He said, “Because hands were lifted up against the throne of the Lord, the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

So how did Joshua become the go-to guy for Moses when it came to battle?

Joshua had experience. Powerful people in the Lord aren’t beginners, and neither was Joshua. He had faithfully served at Moses side for forty years. He demonstrated responsibility and faithfulness through all that time. This is why the apostles, when faced with a need for leaders to oversee the ministration to the widows in the church, told the church to select seven men who were known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. This is why Paul and Barnabas were set apart by the church of Antioch for the first missionary journey, because they had ministered faithfully and responsibly in the church already.

God wants to use you to make a huge impact on your city and the world.  But you won’t start out being a powerful neighborhood reformer or a mentor of evangelists or a teacher of teachers. Are you a Sunday school teacher, an elder, a pastor, a small group leader, a parent, a student, a sound technician, a friend? Every responsibility you have is a test to see how you will depend on the Lord to do your task with integrity and competency.

You will need to learn from failure. Moses first tried leading his people by trying to settle an argument and by killing an Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew. Because of his failure he refused to lead anymore, fled Egypt, and spent forty years herding sheep for his father-in-law. Failure shouldn’t keep you from trying again. It should arm you with new knowledge and experience to succeed. The training of the apostles was a series of failures, failure to be able to cast out a demon from a boy, failure to understand Jesus’ mission, etc.

I was dealing with someone once who had a lot of demon oppression. I thought I should be able to command the demon in Jesus’ name to leave and he would leave. But instead, he laughed at me. This failure made me go to God and consider why I failed, and taught me that I really have to believe I have Jesus’ authority. When I did, the demons obeyed.

It is not that we seek failure. We seek to do what God calls us to do in His power and wisdom.  It is just that many times it is the failure that makes us realize we are not really depending on God to work in and through us.  We’re depending on ourselves.

Joshua got a lesson in depending on God for success. As long as Moses’ hands were held up, Joshua and the army of Israel were successful. He learned that competence was not enough to win the battle.

Dad, when you experience failure at being a good dad, you have an opportunity to see your responsibility as a God-given one that requires His enablement and follow His lead on getting the training He wants you to get to be the kind of father who leads well. That will be training and preparation for fathering others who need a godly father in their lives, one who depends on the Lord and is equipped with skill and knowledge to help others.

Worker, when you succeed at being the best worker you can be on the job because you work with integrity and wisdom from the Lord, you will be preparing yourself for a larger responsibility in the carrying out of the Great Commission. You become all the more usable for the kingdom’s bigger purposes when you serve the kingdom’s lesser purposes.

I have a friend who wants to be the next Beth Moore or Priscilla Shirer. God is testing her in the realm of marriage and parenting and submitting to authority. If you want to be prepared God will prepare you. If you say, “Well, I think I’ll just sit back and not try to accomplish the goals of reaching my world because I don’t want to be tested and prepared that way.”  I hate to tell you this, but that is a recipe for a boring and purposeless life.

When we quit responding to God’s challenges, we start to become ineffective in whatever we are doing. If you aren’t growing you start withering in your soul, dying in your zeal, shrinking in your effectiveness in every area of your life.  When you aren’t a grower, you are also typically a grouser.  You find complaining comes easily because you’ve become self-centered and lazy.

I know the temptation. But nothing but the kingdom and its purposes really matters, nothing but serving Christ.

 

The second lesson I’ve learned from Joshua is…

II. I Probably Need Someone to Mentor Me in Carrying a Bigger Load

Look at Exodus 24:13,

So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God.

Why does Moses take Joshua with him? He’s mentoring him. In Exodus 32, when God tells Moses to go down from the mountain because the people have cast a golden calf to worship, as they are descending Joshua tells his mentor, “Listen, the sound of war in the camp,” and Moses has to correct him. He then watches as Moses handles this situation with the people. Moses is his mentor.

You and I need mentors. Mentors have allowed themselves to be trained and to become competent to teach us how to be competent in their area of expertise. They have learned what it means to trust God for their competency in this area. They are like molds designed by God into which we may be poured so that we come out the right shape.

Moses had his father-in-law Jethro. Joshua had Moses. The apostles had Jesus. Paul had Barnabas. Timothy had Paul.

You have undoubtedly had mentors in your lives already. I distinctly remember while I was in seminary, I watched all the guys look for mentoring from the faculty, and I remember arrogantly deciding I wasn’t going to run after a faculty member to be a mentor. By my last year in school, I was hungry for mentoring and too late realized I had passed up a tremendous opportunity for growth.

Fortunately, when I got my job at my current church, I found a man on our staff who was willing to mentor me in Christian education. He gave me responsibility and gave me input on how to carry out that responsibility. It was invaluable.

Don’t be proud like me and refuse the good gifts of people God brings into your life. Jesus told his disciples that “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29,30)  He has many fathers and mothers for us to mentor us through life.

Sometimes a mentor will seek you out. Sometimes you need to seek out a mentor. Be bold enough to ask someone to help you learn what you need to learn. Pray for the right person. Look at who God is putting in your path. Barnabas found out about this young man Paul and his amazing conversion and took Paul under his wing. Would you be open to being mentored and to mentoring?

 

The third lesson I’ve learned is…

III. I Have to Spend Time with God to Carry the Heavy Load

Exodus 33 says,

Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses.  Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent.  The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent. Exodus 33:7-11

 If you had the chance, like Joshua did, to stay behind after Moses left the tent of meeting, and experience the God of Israel, would you take it? We all have the chance to “stay behind” and speak to God and meet with Him any time we want to. The problem is we don’t want to very much. I’ve had some wonderful times in fellowship and prayer with the Lord and find myself asking, “Why don’t I do this more often?” We need to spend time with the Lord, as Jesus did, to find strength to carry the heavy load He gives us.

If there is one thing we Christians have discovered through the centuries it is that a daily time in fellowship with God does more to help us live the way He wants us to live and accomplish what He wants us to accomplish than any other spiritual practice. Meeting Him daily around Scripture and talking to Him personally and intimately transforms us.  When God spoke to Joshua about taking on the load Moses was carrying He told him point blank,

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Joshua 1:8)

That was His way of saying that Joshua needed to keep in touch with Him all the time.  And that is no less true of us.

Now this is not the same thing as having a daily Bible reading and prayer.

Not if by that you mean you read some Scripture and you say a prayer. You can do both those things without actually relating intimately with God.  It would be like reading a note from a friend each day and calling that friend on the phone and talking about the weather, and then saying, “I’ve sure been a good friend today.”  If you don’t let God’s “note” to you penetrate to your soul and change you, and if you don’t speak to Him about what is really going on with you, even or especially the bad stuff, you aren’t really furthering your relationship.

If you hope to change the world the way God has commissioned us to change the world, you can’t expect to accomplish that with a shallow relationship to God. You can’t carry that load with such minimal strength training.

Mark Galli of Christianity Today, reporting on the recent Catalyst Conference, said of one speaker’s theme, “Shut Up and Pray,”

As a seasoned veteran of 1960s idealism, I’ve seen what evangelical passion—for evangelism, social justice, the environment, and rebuilding the church —can do to people. I’ve seen a fair amount of burn out and resulting cynicism in my years. If you ground yourself in a desire to make a difference in the world, you dry up pretty quickly. There’s a reason one of the most effective and persevering activists of our era—Mother Teresa—spent hours each day in silence and prayer.

What he’s saying is that desire to change the world isn’t a sufficient ground for what we do.  A desire to change the world won’t carry us through.  The problems are too great.  A relationship with the Lord that is vital and growing is the only sufficient ground for changing the world.  Then Mark Galli wisely adds,

I wonder, however, if many won’t leave the conference motivated to pray primarily because it will make them more effective in their ministries. As a former minister who more times than not prayed because I thought it would lead to effectiveness, I know the temptation firsthand. Sometimes the call to prayer feels like calls to run on the same old treadmill, so that prayer becomes one more thing on the to-do-list for successful ministry.

I suspect that most of us spend much of our lives trying to grasp the radical idea that prayer is valuable whether it makes a difference in ministry or not. It is, in the end, a gift of the Spirit, a means by which we cry “Abba!” to a loving heavenly Father, who accepts the ineffective and loves those who make no difference in the world, even those who have made the world a worse place.

This approach to prayer is certainly what Jesus models in the Garden of Gethsemane. Sometimes prayer does not lead to more ministry effectiveness but only a cross. And yet prayer helped him to move forward that night in courage (“Not my will, but yours be done”), when all he could look forward to was the desertion of his followers and an ignoble death.

The odd thing about praying simply because it is a chance to know the Father, and not as a means to becoming more effective, is that it actually makes you more effective.  Even if such intimate interaction with God only leads to your suffering more in the world, only leads to a cross, that is actually something that makes you more effective.

Conclusion

As a church you all have just recently gone through a celebration of your 170^th birthday.  Do you feel your forebears tapping you on the shoulder?  If you don’t, why don’t you?  Do you not feel the weight of their having continued on this ministry for all that time and that it now falls to you?  Do you see yourselves doing greater things than they did?  God wants you to see it that way.  And God wants to use you to make a difference in your community and the world for Him.

He wants you, like Joshua, to learn to be faithful in the littler things He has immediately given you to do.  Maybe that includes bearing witness where you work, or being true to Him in the face of an immediate temptation you are facing, or learning to be patient and trust Him when you are in frustrating circumstances.

I have a friend whose wife divorced him.  He told me the other day that a co-worker asked him one morning why he asked him about his day every day.  My friend says he just looked at him and said, “Because I actually care that others have days as good as mine.” As you might suspect, my friends’ days aren’t always that good.  But as he has been living faithfully before the Lord, seeking to trust Him even with this terrible change in his life, he has seen that translate into concern for other human beings.  And as a result of this he has been given ministry opportunities, like the one he had that day.

And God wants you, like Joshua, to learn from others how best to do this ministry.  Finding others to mentor you is God’s way of passing down the lore and the expertise we need.  One generation learns from another.  When you learn what it takes to make an impact in your community through an event like trunk-or-treat, you have something valuable to share with those who come after you.  The one mentored must by necessity become the mentor.  Learn so you can teach.

And God wants you, like Joshua, to learn to spend time with Him.  He knows we can’t bear the load of such a big vision as He has for us.  He knows His commission is impossible without Him.  He knows He’s asking us to turn loaves and fishes for a few into enough for 5,000.  He wants us to depend on Him and see Him do amazing things through us.  But that doesn’t happen when we are acting so independently from Him that we don’t think we need time with Him.

I see astounding things coming out of this church as you stay faithful corporately and individually, and as you learn from mentors how to minister, and as you live in Him daily.  You will turn around one day and say, “Look what God has done through us!”