A Motivational Speech From God

So there they stand. Hundreds of years after God first promised this land to Abraham, the people of Israel are about to enter it.

And God has some final words of encouragement for Joshua. He gives two what I think are very simple yet very profound commands. And remember that in speaking to Joshua, God is also speaking to the whole of Israel.

The two commands are these: Firstly, be strong and courageous; and secondly, be careful to obey all the Law of Moses. They’re the two simple commands: courage and obedience.

Firstly, courage. I began today by referring to the sickly motivational speeches we see in so many movies. The sort of “you can do it” speeches that no reasonable person in a real-life situation could listen to without bursting into gales of laughter. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movie Independence Day. It’s about aliens invading the earth and Bill Pulman plays the president of the United States. Near the end of the film, huge alien spacecraft are hovering over the earth, all the major cities have been destroyed and the Americans have this last ditch effort sending tiny fighter planes against these monolithic ships. And the president gets up and gives this motivational speech to all the pilots ready to take off. He comments that they’re all looking very nervous and what he effectively tells them is to be strong and courageous. And why? Because they can do it. Because they’re fighting for their country, for the whole earth. Because they have the power to change the world. Because we represent humanity and humans are powerful. All people are united in this fight and there is nothing we can’t do! If it was God up there in the movie rather than a bunch of little green men it would be the Tower of Babal all over again.

The motivational speech God gives to Joshua is vastly different to all the speeches we see in movies. And the difference is that God doesn’t say “Joshua, you can do it”, “People of Israel, look inside for the power”. He says, be strong, be courageous, don’t be afraid because I am with you. Just like I was with Moses, so I will always be with you Joshua. It’s a great picture of the power and the grace of God. It reminds us that we can’t do anything for ourselves. We can’t save ourselves, we can’t get ourselves in the land that God has promised us. But we can be completely confident with God on our side. The mistake that the Israelites made back in Numbers 13 and 14 was that they thought that victory was their responsibility. They didn’t trust that God would do it for them.

To underline our reliance on God, it’s interesting to note that in Numbers and Joshua and Judges, Israelite military victories or losses have absolutely nothing to do with strength of arms. Whether God will grant them victory or not doesn’t have anything to do with having the strongest force or the weakest – all that matters is God granting victory. We’re going to see that over the next few weeks as we look at the fall of Jericho and at Joshua 7 where God grants victory to the Amorites because of Israel’s sin. Or perhaps most starkly in Judges 6-7 where God reduces Gideon’s army to a mere 300 men to take on the Midianite army numbering in the tens of thousands. And why? – so that Israel cannot boast in their own strength. It is God who decides the victor.