Commanded to be Strong

The following is another talk which I was asked to make at a sheltered housing complex this week.  The passage it was on is Joshua 1, at one time my favourite chapter in the whole Bible, and certainly still a contender.

            Joshua is a significant book in many ways.  It can be read as a coda to the Pentateuch; God demonstrating his faithfulness by fulfilling the promises he made to the patriarchs: leading the Israelites into the Promised Land despite all of their unfaithfulness.  This is a particularly helpful way of looking at the book as a whole when we then choose to narrow it down to chapter one, because the beginning of any story is always an uncertain place, it’s the part where events are set up, plans are made and we don’t know how they are going to turn out, even if we already do because we’ve read the story a thousand times before. 

            And that, surely, is how the Israelites felt at this point.  They had faced much to reach the Jordan: forty years of wandering, the loss of an entire generation, the battles against Sihon and Og, the death of Moses.  They were finally on the threshold of the Promised Land, but there was much still to do and all the things which had made them turn away at Kadesh forty years before were still true.  I’m not sure how I’d have felt if I were one of them - a mixture of emotions, most likely - but I imagine that chief amongst them would have been anxiety, a fear of the unknown.

            God knew this.  He knew that despite all that the Israelites had witnessed, despite the miraculous interventions time and again, his people would need a pep talk before they faced the land of Canaan.  I know that I would have.  Despite the numerous times that God has proven himself faithful in our lives, don’t we find, from time to time, that we need to be reminded?

When I first became a Christian I was not a strong person at all.  I was a shy, scared eleven year old who didn’t have much in common with the other boys at school and who was pathologically afraid of drawing too much attention to myself.  I was prone to worry about everything and would panic easily.  I was not, in short, the ideal candidate for sharing the gospel.

            There were two things I prayed for more than anything else in my teenage years: for more faith, that I would believe and act accordingly in all situations and for courage, that I would be able to live and work like a normal human being and serve God faithfully along the way.  In the midst of such prayer, I first discovered Joshua chapter one and it quickly became my favourite passage in the whole Bible: a reminder that God is always with me;  an encouragement to be strong and courageous!  It was exactly what I was looking for.

            Eighteen years later and I am still sometimes shy, often scared, still easily worried and I can stress for Britain if given half a chance.  I still pray regularly for more faith and I still ask God for the courage and confidence to meet everyday tasks, let alone the big stuff.  Does this mean God has failed?  Has he answered all my prayers with a hollow ‘No’?  I don’t think so, after all, here I am standing up and talking about the word of God to you fine people.

            In fact, God has called me often to step outside of my comfort zone and to do something I would never think of doing myself.  He delights in making me stand up in front of people to sing, to talk, to act, to give testimony and even, on one occasion, to dance.  These things which would have terrified me in other situations have enabled me to grow and develop as a human being, pushing my boundaries and helping me to pass on learned skills into other areas of my life -  a blessing in and of itself - but, more than that, they have enabled me to serve in the Kingdom of God despite all my weaknesses.  It’s just that I keep needing God’s pep talks, those little reminders of all the times I’ve stepped forward before at his urging and found that, yes, God is faithful.

So, it’s interesting, then, that God doesn’t merely remind Joshua of all of his past deeds and say, ‘see, you can trust me!’  He is much more direct.  Joshua isn’t simply reminded here, he’s commanded.

            ‘Be strong and courageous’, God says in verse 6 and again in verse 7, ‘be strong and very courageous’.  Indeed, God gives Joshua this command four times in this chapter and it is not until the third time in verse 9 that he adds those famous words of encouragement and consolation, ‘Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go’, and even that was prefaced with ‘Have I not commanded you?’

‘Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.’

What does this tell us about God?

Yes, it tells us that he is a God of comfort and consolation; yes, it tells us he knows when we need to be encouraged and spurred on; yes, it tells us he really is with us always, through all circumstances, but there is more to this than that.  God isn’t simply being comforting, he is commanding!  This is the almighty God, creator and sustainer of heaven and earth, commander of armies of angels, the one to whom the vastness of the universe is as a speck of dust – This is  that God, meeting with the leader of his people, giving the necessary orders for battle.  The first order he gives? ‘Be strong and courageous’ and by adding ‘Have I not commanded you?’ later he’s making it clear that the command alone really ought to have been enough - of course it should be, it’s coming from God – but despite this he adds the consolation anyway, because he knows his creatures better than we know ourselves.

So,  God commands us to be bold.  He commands us to have confidence in ourselves and in him when we are doing his work and the command itself should be enough.  God knows we are weak, so the consolation will always be there, but the command comes first.  We must be strong and courageous for God!

I always read this passage as a comfort for socially awkward me, a word God whispered in the back of my mind when I needed a little lift, when the pressures of peers, school, work, life were getting me down.  Now I realise that the emphasis here is very different from what I had thought and the result is, astonishingly, all the more glorious.  Rather than God comforting me to help me achieve my goals, which may or may not happen to line up with his, this is God commanding me to be bold so that I might achieve his goals, which are better for me than anything I might want for myself anyway!

Is this still encouraging?  Is this still a boost to faith and confidence for those struggling?  Of course it is!  God is reminding us here that we should have faith and confidence simply because he is!  God does not just give us consolation and encouragement, he is our consolation and our encouragement.  He does not just give us strength but he is our strength. Isn’t that so much better than a mere quiet word at a tough time?

But we must remember the context, the eve of invasion.  As well as being a comfort, it’s also a call to arms to meet God’s mission head on.

For Joshua that mission was to see the fulfilment of God’s promises to the Israelites and we can see throughout the rest of the book of Joshua just how that works out and how God continues to be faithful at every step of the way – often in surprising ways!

For us that mission it is to see the fulfilment of God’s promises to the whole world, through Christ’s work on the cross and the commission he gave us to spread the word.  There are many ways we can do that, as I have found in my relatively short Christian life, and indeed there are many ways we are each working towards that goal in our everyday lives. If we’re struggling, however, if the command to go forth and tell seems a hard one, then remember the God who gave the command, who is with us wherever we go and who will strengthen us as and when we need it.   And remember that it is a command from the Lord of Hosts and that before he told us to go forth he first commanded:

‘Be strong and courageous!’