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"Let's Enter the Promised Land" Joshua 1:1-13
by The Rev. Clancy Nixon
Feb. 5, 2006
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
Moses is dead. Turn to the Book of Joshua, chapter one, verse one. Page 208 of
your blue pew Bibles. Moses, the greatest prophet Israel had known. Moses, the lawgiver.
Moses, their leader who talked with God face to face. Moses, who parted the Red Sea.
Moses, the indispensable leader. Now he was dead.
If you look at Deuteronomy 34, just one page back, it tells us that Moses died on
Mt. Nebo in Moab, where he saw for the first and last time the wide expanse of the
Promised Land, from Naphtali or Galilee in the North to the Negev in the south. But
Moses was unable to enter in. You see, he had disobeyed God back in the Wilderness of
Zin instead of speaking to the rock, Moses struck the rock. Bad move, Mo. Moses was
dead, verse 8, so the people grieved his death in the plains of Moab, on the east side of
the river Jordan. They grieved that he would not see his lifelong dream fulfilled with his
own eyes. Thirty days, Israel mourned and wept as a community. Not only did they
grieve their leader; they grieved their parents, who also died, because they could not enter
in to the Promised Land due to their lack of faith, complaining and disobedience.
Israel back then knew better than we do today about grieving losses. They took
thirty days, all of them together. Many of us expect people to get over their losses in a
few days, then back to work. Stiff upper lip and all that. The truth is that different people
grieve at different rates and at different times. When a father dies, sometimes a son has
been grieving a long time, as soon as the news of cancer first came, but a daughter did not
yet begin to grieve until his death. As a community, some of us will be experiencing grief
for some time over what we will almost certainly do after worship today when we vote.
Others of us are done grieving. I did most of my grieving after Gene Robinson was
confirmed at General convention 2003. I went through the stages of grief. I was in shock,
I wept, I got angry, I prayed, I bargained, I accepted, but only with protest. I moved on
emotionally from ECUSA about 2 years ago. Some of you are not there yet, and we need
to support each other in where we are.
Why grieve now? Moses has died. The older generation has all died. The
Episcopal Church has wandered from her first love, because she has been seduced by the
spirit of the age. We mourn the decline and isolation, both sacramental and theological,
of a once vital denomination. We knew it was coming, it was prophesied, but now the
reality is here. At CHS, we are coming out of the desert, where we had real battles, and
we took real hits in some of those battles. For some, the grief may still be sinking in.
There are sweet memories of awesome shared ministry that are ending; there are longings
for what might have been. As the months pass, there may be new grief as you talk to
people whom you had not yet seen as they take in the news. For us, an era is ending. In
order to embrace the new, we need to grieve the loss of the old, and give thanks as well.
As you speak to others about our call to remain Anglican outside the Episcopal Church, I
encourage you: acknowledge the good that you found in the Episcopal Church. It is a
messy institution, but it has a grand history, and there are many faithful people still in it.
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Don't demonize your opponents; they are broken people, like we are. I think they are
deceived on some fundamental issues of faith. Even if you have no more grief, still for
some other people, the sight of you will bring grief to them. Listen to them, love them;
you don't need to convert them to your way of thinking. God is the one who calls and
convicts.
Every one of the Israelites who were about to enter the land of promise had lost
their parents to the harsh reality of desert life. Every one except the children of Joshua
and Caleb, who 39 years earlier as recorded in Numbers 13:31, page 143, had spied out
the land and brought the minority report that they could certainly take the land. But the
people believed the majority report, which said that there were giants in the land, who are
stronger than we are.
You know, the majority was right about one thing. The Canaanites did have much
better weapons than the Israelites did. The Canaanites had chariots; they had iron
weapons; the Israelites had no horses or chariots, and had much more primitive weapons,
like slings and stones and spears. It would have been like Poland sizing up Germany on
the eve of World War II and deciding to invade. Horse cavalry versus Panzer tanks.
Caleb and Joshua saw with the eyes of faith. Like David sizing up Goliath, Joshua knew
that while the enemy was powerful, his nation had Almighty God on his side. When you
are tempted to think that we or our movement is small, remember Joshua, whose
confident faith in God enabled him to beat the odds. Remember this, too: there are 4
times as many Anglicans in Uganda in church this morning than there are Episcopalians
in church in the USA.
Joshua was a natural leader. He was Moses' apprentice, ever since he was a young
man. Joshua didn't always get it right. In Numbers 11, Joshua had appealed to Moses to
stop the elders from prophesying like Moses did. In verse 29, Moses said, "Are you
jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord
would put his spirit on them!" Amen? He learned well from Moses. Joshua had great
integrity, gifts of faith and administration, and proven skill as a general in battle. Most
important of all, Joshua zealously obeyed the law of Moses. Even so, when Moses was
about to die, he did not just anoint his apprentice. In Numbers 27:15, Moses prays to God
to show him who should follow him. What an example. We need to pray even when the
wisest path seems clear to us. God's ways are not our ways.
Back to Joshua 1, verse 2. Let's read together: "Moses my servant is dead. Now
then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan river into the land I am about
to give them...." The old has gone. The new has come. The King is dead. Long live the
King! It is right to both grieve and celebrate. It is like leaving Egypt for many of us. And
many people will congratulate you for getting off this slippery slope that has become the
Episcopal Church, and standing on the firm ground of the Global South. In verse 2 God
tells Joshua, now that Moses is dead, you can go into the Promised Land. Your real
mission is ahead of you. Wandering in desert waiting for the older generation to die was
not our real mission. Conquest is. Jesus has a Kingdom for us to win. Now is the time to
take the spiritual high ground, in obedience to God's Word, for the salvation of lost souls
in Loudoun County.
Joshua's commissioning in Chapter 1 is a series of commands and promises. The
commands are both spiritual and temporal, and the promises are both spiritual and
temporal. Look at the first command, in verse 2. "Get ready to cross the Jordan River into
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the land I am about to give them...." The commands are get ready, and go take the land!
Joshua knew from his time in the desert listening to Moses' prophesy, that this conquest
would be bloody and difficult. God knew that, too, so he comforted Joshua with promises
and assurances. In verse 2 and 3 are the promises: God speaks of "the land I am about to
give you. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses." Not
only does God promise Joshua that he will do this now, Yahweh reminds him that he had
promised Moses the same thing, and that his word is still good. As far as God is
concerned, this thing is already a done deal! The land already belongs to Israel; they
must now go in boldly and claim it. With the Super Bowl happening later today, Joshua's
bold confidence reminds me of Joe Namath's guarantee of an upset win against the
Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969. There is a fine line between bold faith and
arrogance. The difference is that God had spoken to Joshua he was not relying on his
own strength. Your Realignment Team sought the Lord in prayer, in study, in counsel
and in more prayer over a period of almost two years, and we are confident that God has
spoken to us for a new spiritual covering.
In verse 4, God tells Joshua the extent of the territory he would conquer: from the
Negev to Lebanon, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. The Israelites held this
expanse of land only under King Solomon; at all other times, its dominion was much
smaller. Here God says Joshua will own it all. What is up with that? In verse 8, we learn
that the promise is conditional on the faithfulness of the people to obey the LORD. As we
know from later Biblical history, the Israelites were often disobedient, so they never
again came into that much territory.
Look at the Promise to Joshua in verse 5: "No one will be able to stand up against
you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never
leave you nor forsake you." With the command to take all the land given to him, there
follows the promise that he will not die, and that God would be with Him like he was
with Moses. It's not just that God will be with him. After all, what does that really
mean? After all, people say, "God be with you" all the time. That can mean that you
think about God from time to time, that God is with you. Here God promised Joshua to
be with him like he was with Moses. Whoa! That's something else entirely. This is a
promise of God who is present in electrifying power. The power to part the sea; the
power to speak clearly so he can be understood in detail; the power to win battles against
superior enemies. Now that is the way I'd like God to be with me. How about you? You
can pray for that.
In verse six, we come to a command that is repeated three times in this passage:
"Be strong and courageous!" The Hebrew for courageous is amats, also meaning "alert
and confident." The Hebrew word translated "strong" is "chazaq," and it also means
"tough." God is saying, Joshua, be tough: as a leader, you'll need to be able to take some
hits. I called the football coach of Briar Woods High School on the phone this week to
talk about the possibility of my sons playing for him in the future. I asked about the
chances of someone playing high school football who had never played before. He says,
that depends on their ability to take a hit. Coach Pierce has coached some kids who were
great athletes in other sports, but their ability to succeed in football depended on their
ability to take hits. Sometimes you take hits for obedience. Some of us are going to take
hits for what we do later today, and I don't mean rooting for the wrong team in the Super
bowl! (Seattle fans, I forgive you.) Be tough get hard now, because the blows will
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come this week. Look at verse 7b: "Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave
you..., that you may be successful wherever you go." God is saying to Joshua, you are
going to take hits when you disobey my law. Hits from me, hits from your community
and hits from your family. This is still true. Many of the promises of God are conditional
on our obedience to his commands.
That's why we have the three commands in verse 8: "Do not let the Book of the
Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to
do everything that is written in it." God says to Joshua, his leader, to always have the
name of God and his Scripture on your lips. Before I became an all-out believer for
Christ, I used to worry about talking too much about God. I thought I'd offend people if I
talked about God too much. What happened was that I was so sensitive that I rarely ever
talked about God except to other believers. Listen to this scripture. If you want to be a
leader like Joshua, have the things of God always on your lips. The best evangelists talk
about Jesus a lot. Command number two: Meditate on Torah day and night. Read it,
study it, look at commentaries, chew over its meaning for you. Christian mediation
always involves the mind. It says day and night. This can be a metaphor for always think
of Holy Writ, but we can also read it literally. Many of us read our Bibles in the
morning, but not later in the day. Why is that? Once a day reading is good, but is it
enough? Verse 8, not if you want to be prosperous and succeed like Joshua. Command
number three there in verse 8 follows from the first two parts: obey the law. If you want
to obey God's law, you've got to know it and talk about it before you can live it.
Verse 11: "Tell the people, get your supplies ready." That is my closing
exhortation to you. Get ready. We've been in the desert; and we've been given an
assignment from God. Believe God. He's about to stretch our faith. Be strong and very
courageous. Get your supplies ready. This is a time of preparation. We're leaving the
desert. The time for complaining is over. Prepare by picking up your Bibles, by talking
about Jesus. The best preparation we can make is to be in the Word. It's time to move out
and possess the land. Our Promised Land isn't mostly about real estate; though that is
part of it. Our Promised Land is the Kingdom of God. Let's go in to the Kingdom.
Be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous. Be strong and very
courageous. Amen.
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