In our prayer meeting group last night we were going over Joshua 1, where Joshua is getting ready to take the Israelites into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. Moses has just died and God buried him on top of Mt. Nebo. Now Joshua has been promoted by God to be the Israeli leader. What do you think Joshua was thinking? He had to remember the walled cities in that land along with the GIANTS!! He probably thought of the time – Numbers 30 - he and Caleb were saying to Moses and the people 40 years earlier, “Let’s go in and take possession of it for it truly is a land flowing with Milk and Honey! Trust God! He will go before us and give us victory!” Then, maybe he remembers the other 10 spies who gave such a report of gloom and despair that the children of God removed their focus from Him and thought only of themselves. Now, Joshua has to deal with the voices of the past while living in the present. I just love this because here we see the goodness of God. He comes to Joshua and tells him the following…
Joshua 1:5b-9 As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.
7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 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. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
God, speaking to Joshua! Letting him know that He will be with him wherever he goes, whatever battle he finds himself in and whatever he does. God will never leave him or forsake him, as long as he’s careful to obey Him (God’s law / the Bible), as long as he reads God’s Word and as long as he meditates on God’s Word. Joshua is one of the few people who stayed true to God all along the way as recorded in scripture. Joshua completely trusted God, followed God and lived for God. At the end of his life on this earth he made that great statement with the “Law of God on his lips,” “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Today we find ourselves with a choice, a decision and a life commitment with a great opportunity to have “the Law of God on our Lips” and heart, in the way we respond to the Coronavirus that we see or hear spreading around us. What’s true? What’s hype and hysteria? Will we take God at His Word? Completely trusting Him like Joshua did? Will we recognize that God will not forsake us even in the midst of the current situations we see before us?
What’s different between “the God with Joshua” and “the God with us” is not that God is somehow different. No. It is because He indwells His Children. He has placed Himself in us taking up residence in our bodies. Now, God the Holy Spirit who is in us intercedes on our behalf. What a relief to know that God, who is in us and goes before us, desires us, like Joshua to be “Strong and Courageous.” The battles will come (to what levels we must not fret), but when we are regularly reading God’s Word, studying God’s Word, meditating on God’s Word so we can obey God’s Word, having the Law of God on our lips in reading and speaking being strong and courageous, we can say like Joshua “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” For that reason, we can all live in joy and peace in spite of what is going on, trusting God, the one who has told us, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
I love you all,
Pastor Kelly Ryan
Unity Baptist Church