God's Message To Joshua Series

God’s message to Joshua Joshua 1:1-9

A man dies and appears before Peter at the pearly gates. "Have you ever done anything of particular merit?" Peter asked. "Well, I can think of one thing," the man said, "Once, I came upon a gang of bikers, who were threatening a young woman. I told them to leave her alone, but they wouldn’t listen. So, I approached the largest and most heavily tattooed biker and smacked him on the head, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring, and threw it on the ground. I yelled, ’Now, back off!! Or you’ll answer to me!’" Peter was impressed and he said, "When did this happen?" And the man answered, "Just a couple minutes ago."

You know the whole world is one, when an English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, it was driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whiskey, followed by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and then treated by French doctors, using Brazilian medicines!

And just think, you heard this from a Canadian who found it on a Chinese computer with Taiwanese-made chips, and a Korean-made monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant.

“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass, that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

So as I said last day, Joshua had started his life off in slavery and then he experienced the delivering power of God as both he and the other two million people were led to freedom. And while he was still in captivity God had used Moses to warn the Pharaoh by performing certain miracles and the last one was the death of the firstborn and just prior to the arrival of the angel of death the Jewish people were commanded to observe the Passover which was where they would all sacrifice a lamb put the blood on their doorposts.

Joshua would have personally been conscious of the fact that God had spared his life and this would have given him a sense that God had a purpose for his being alive.

And when we think of the Passover as Christians we tend to view this as something God did for the Jews and what we tend to forget is that everything that happened to them is a picture of what happens to us.

I mean, think about this religious observance called the Passover. All the people would be in their houses praying while the head of the home and this could be the father or a representative put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and many assume it was done in the shape of a cross, whether or not it was it doesn’t really matter. And after that the Spirit of God went through the area and killed everyone who wasn’t obedient to this command and basically the Jews would step through the doorway or walk through the blood into life. And that describes what happens to all of us Christians. All of us are saved through the blood and there is no other way.