FRIDAY 23rd
Joshua 1
NIV (v9) – ‘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.’
ESV (v9) – ‘Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.’
The book of Joshua starts off with the LORD coming and speaking to Joshua and giving to him instructions to cross the Jordan with the people of Israel and to enter the land that had been promised them. The LORD says to Joshua to ‘Be strong and courageous for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.’ (v6) Most of the generation who had left Egypt had now died, Joshua was leading the next generation and they were about to receive the promised inheritance.
I wonder how many times we have taken hold of this promise of God to Joshua and used it for ourselves? When we are stepping into the unknown, when the future seems so uncertain, when we are about to embark into something new and maybe daunting. Or we have used it to share with someone else to fit in with their circumstances.
Joshua had been one of the twelve spies sent to spy out the land, and he along with Caleb were the only two that came back with confidence that they could take the land, now in this chapter he has already been appointed as the leader, he had some big shoes to fill, following on from Moses, it is no wonder he needed a confidence boost! And he gets it from the lips of the LORD God himself.
It doesn’t matter how long we have been on our Christian pilgrimage, we may be considered older in the faith or as just babes in Christ, but we all need a confidence boost once in a while, that little something that encourages us, builds us up and spurs us on, and Joshua was getting this in chapter one, to spur him on, motivate him to get the people to leave the wilderness and to take possession of the land. And he commanded the officers, ‘Get ready, we are going to pass over this Jordan and possess the land’
Let us be encouraged today that the LORD our God is with us, whatever we need to possess or take, he will give to us as we put our confidence and trust in him.
One final note, in Joshua one, the LORD says ‘Have I not commanded you’ (v9) this tells us that Joshua had been given the promise before, and we see this back in Deuteronomy 31 when Moses commissioned Joshua. Sometimes we just need a timely reminder that the LORD God is with us, we know it already, but a fresh reminder spurs us on.