Leadership Lessons Learned By A Legend Series

Leadership lessons learned by a Legend

Every great leader has a back story -here’s some famous leaders back stories...

Ever heard of Oprah Winfrey- before she made her media empire and 3B$ fortune, her first job was at a corner grocery store next to her father’s barber shop in Nashville.

How about Michael Dell before he made Dell computers, he had a job washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant at the age 12 – so that he could put away money for his stamp collection. Obama worked at Baskin Rob, Trump collected empty pop bottles

Joshua the great leader who took God’s people into the promise land and later had a book of the Bible named after him also has a back story, but we must go to 2 other books of the bible to find it. So we will do a little bit of jumping around in your Bibles today but I believe it’s worth it.

The journey we will go on with Joshua into the promise land is an amazing feat of courage and conviction-but courage and conviction doesn’t grow on trees-it grows like trees-over time, through the high winds, floods and droughts of life the roots of a person’s character grow deep and their destiny can grow high. But what were these for Joshua? Today I would have us consider 4 critical episodes in his life that grew him into the towering hero God, and His People needed him to be when the moment of conquest came.

I believe in these 4 episodes we can gain insight for our own journeys of preparation for the next great adventure God will take us on. These are primarily leadership lessons and for those who will tune out and say “I’m not a leader-I say yes you are.” If you are a parent, have younger sibs, a grandparent, teacher in any form of class room, manager of any number of people, or really have influence over someone else you are a leader. Then a few years back at a willow creek leadership summit I heard the phrase “self-leadership” and it was explained that most major leadership blunders are from a lack of self-leadership. Everyone in this room has a self-so why not learn to lead yourself better! This is the simple point of our sermon: look at your neighbor and say it with me…

? Joshua had to learn to lead and so do I! Now please take your Bibles out…

Exodus 17:8-13

8The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.

9Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands."

10So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill.

11As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.

12When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up-one on one side, one on the other-so that his hands remained steady till sunset.

13So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

?No one leads for long alone.

This is such a rich story and could be a stand-alone sermon in it’s self and may be will be some day, but for now lets just focus on our hero and the lesson learned-say the subpoint together! I can imagine Josh getting the call from Moses to fight-as far as we know this was his first command and it would be in eye shot of Moses. The pressure was on as the battle raged-but there was some thing more to this. There was a supernatural element Josh no doubt noticed. The strength of his army was directly tied to God’s man Moses. V.11 tell us as long as Mo’s hands were up all was good-but when they went down-look out!

I bet Josh prayed “Lord help that man hold up his hands-or I’m dead!” and then out of the corner of his eye he saw the tripod form-v.12 Aaron and Hur steadied his hands until sunset and the battle was won. I believe Josh took our point to heart-say it!

Josh saw with his own eyes the powerful connection Moses had with God and how it literally could shift the battle for God’s people. But wait, here’s a twist, this powerful connection didn’t translate into super human strength? Ah but it does-the super human strength to let others HELP YOU! Even Jesus told his disciples the spirit is willing-that is the soul filling holy spirit that can lead direct and energize us-BUT -always watch out when Jesus says but! But what? Say it-The flesh is what? WEAK!