Never Give Up

Read Joshua 1:1-9 ‘“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goeth”’ (Josh. 1:9, KJV). ‘“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go”’ (Josh. 1:9, NASB). When I was growing up people often used proverbs to make a point. One of the proverbs that I remember hearing people say was, “The race isn’t given to the swift, nor is it given to the strong, but to those that endure to the end.” This folk proverb was likely an adaptation from Ecclesiastes 9:11. The point is that in order to win the race one must complete the race regardless of the difficulties encountered in the race. One example that I remember was the story of a race between a rabbit and a turtle. The rabbit is a much faster animal than the turtle, but the turtle won the race. In the story, the rabbit takes off and gets far ahead of the turtle. The rabbit decides that he has enough time to stop and rest and take a nap. While the rabbit sleeps the turtle slowly crawls along and makes it to the finish line. The rabbit wakes up and hurriedly runs to the finish line. To his great surprise the turtle had been declared the winner. What had happened? The rabbit was a swift runner, but he had not endured to the end. He got tired, stopped to rest and sleep. We can say that in a race one should never give up. In our lesson passage of scripture God tells Joshua to never give up. He is to be strong and courageous and the Lord will be with him. Let us examine this story and see if we can find any applications for our lives today. In the story Moses the servant of God is dead. God speaks to Joshua to give him instructions. He is to lead the people to take possession of the Promised Land. Moses has taken the people on his portion of the journey from slavery in Egypt to this place and time. Moses has led the people across the Red Sea and through forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Moses has given the people the Law of God, and he has commissioned Joshua to lead the people after his time is up. Now, it is Joshua’s time to lead the people. God speaks to Joshua Israel’s new leader. Joshua was one of the twelve spies that had spied out the land. He has seen the fruit of the land. He has seen the people of the land. Giants live in the land. The towns are fortified and ten of the spies have expressed doubt and unbelief. These ten have given up any hope of the Israelites taking possession of the land (Num. 13:25). God knows that Joshua will experience some difficult days as he leads the armies of Israel in battle against the more experienced and better equipped warriors of the land. So here it is. Joshua is now Israel’s leader. He has authority and the responsibility to complete the mission that God gives to the Israelites. God is not asking Israel if she wants the land. God is commanding the people to take possession of the land. The words “strong” and “courageous” are to be taken together. Joshua is to be steadfast and consistent. He is to have a mindset to continue in the campaign regardless of the circumstances. The word “courage” means that one has a reason to be afraid, but they do what they need to do anyway. As we have seen from Numbers 13 there are reasons that Joshua might become afraid, but he is to continue the battle. He is never to give up the fight. How can Joshua be courageous? Joshua can be courageous because He knows that the Lord has brought the Israelites to this place by His power and might. God tells the Israelites He is their God and none of the gods of the land are able to defeat Him. God says that when the people are tempted to be afraid they are to remember all the things that He has done to Pharaoh and all Egypt including the signs and wonders and His mighty hand and outstretched arm by which the Lord delivered them (Deut. 7:1719). In the same manner God will be with them now, and He will deliver the kings of the land into their hands. God will defeat all the gods of the land *Deut. 7:20-26). Joshua can be courageous because God has given them His instruction manual, the Law. God’s commandments are not a set of arbitrary rules to control people. Rather, they are the laws that God has designed for the people to be successful. Everything in the universe operates under laws. When we obey God’s commandments we are putting God above all other gods. This is the reason that we are not to worship any other god. Idolatry is following after gods that have no life. They have no system to operate successfully. They have no power. When we bow down to other gods we are forsaking our relationship to God, and His laws that lead to success. God is calling Joshua to be a successful leader. As we read further into the book we see that Joshua enjoys amazing success at Jericho, a highly fortified city (Josh. 6). He suffers alarming defeat at Ai, a small town, because of the disobedience Achan who had taken things from the battle of Jericho that God had forbidden them to take (Josh. 7). So, when God tells Joshua to never give up God knows the difficulties that Joshua will face. How does this command that God gives to Joshua apply to my life and your life? Let us look at our passage again. The first thing that we see is that God speaks to Joshua and gives him a mission to accomplish. We must ask ourselves what is the mission that we are trying to accomplish? What are my dreams? What are my goals? Did these dreams and goals come from God? It is unfortunate that many people never consult God about their life goals. Some people think that they can decide what they want to do and God is obligated to help them to be successful. Nothing can be further from the truth. One only has to read how God called the prophets in the Old Testament. God not only calls them, he also prepares them and makes provisions for their success. The call of Jeremiah sounds similar to God’s call to Joshua. (Jer. 1:4-10). God says to Joshua, “Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go” (Josh. 1:7, NASB). This means that we are not to deviate from the course that God has designed for us. We are not to listen to other voices. The other voices that we hear do not have our best interest at heart. What they say might sound logical, but these other voices do not know God’s plan for our lives. As was the case with Joshua at Jericho and Ai we too will experience amazing success and alarming defeats. We will experience dark days, but the darkest hour is just before sunrise. We will go through dark tunnels, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. “Weeping may endure for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5b, NASB). There are times in our lives when God seems to be silent and absent in our lives. We may feel defeated. However, God knows us. He knows where we are. He knows our situation. Yes, like Joshua we experience good days and bad days. We must remember what God has done for us. If we have strayed from the path that God has set before us, we can pray and God will get us back to the road that we must travel. The Israelites were just a few miles from the Promised Land when Moses sent out the spies. The Israelites followed the advice of the ten unbelieving spies. They grumbled against Moses and refused to take the land. Israel had to wander in the wilderness for forty years, but God gets Israel to the place that God has given to them. A new generation has risen in Israel and they are set to enter the Promised Land. As the people wander in the wilderness God is with them. This tells us that God is with His people wherever they go. God will get us to the place that He is giving us. We only have to be strong and courageous. We can make it if we never give up.