Be Strong & Courageous—Fixing Our Eyes On Jesus
GNLCC 6/16/13 Joshua 1:1-9 Hebrews 12:1-3
Happy Father’s Day to all of you men and boys who have made a positive difference in the life of another person. . We can say thank you for your love, for your time, for your sacrifices. Thank you for mending bruises, fixing bikes, loving our mothers, paying tuition, going to work, building us up and bringing us to church. We say thank you for being our teachers, our coaches, our friends, our advisors, our protectors, and our dads.
One of the great privileges in life, is that of being a father. Some of you men here today have been incredible fathers. You’ve been there with your child either through birth or inheritance since day one. Your kids immensely even though today they may be adults. Some of you have been okay fathers. You made more than your share of mistakes, but you’re still trying to make up for those mistakes. Some of you know you’re not being the father you ought to be, and you have not made up your mind yet to start doing what you know in your heart is right.
Men what do you think God sees, when God looks at you. I know this, when God looks at men, he sees incredible potential for what could be. You know when even women look at us, they see a whole lot of potential for what could be. That’s why they think, once I get him to change this and that, then he’s going to be alright. Every child enters the world, comes with a built in love for his or her father. What a man does is either going to build on that love or squash that love. When we have a bad image of our earthly father, it makes it a little more difficult to understand our Heavenly Father. For an earthly father to be a truly great father, he needs to be in touch with the Heavenly Father who mends all relationships.
We are continuing in our series “Moving Forward.” Men, since its’ Father’s Day, I’m going to concentrate on us being willing to move forward. No young boy grows up thinking, when I get to be a man, I’m going to go backwards with my life. No, each boy has a dream inside of becoming a successful man moving forward in life. But then we run into this think called life. Life comes with bruises, with scars, with pain, with losses and with setbacks. It’s in the losses that we find out what we really are made of as men.
Joshua had been an assistant to Moses for many years. Now Moses was sort of a larger than life figure. God sent Moses and his brother Aaron to Egypt to demand of the leader of Egypt to let the slaves go free. Can you imagine if God had sent you to President Lincoln demanding that all the slaves in this country be set free, and that they be rewarded for all the work they had done? Can you further imagine having the ability to destroy the crops all over the country with your single word to get President Lincoln to obey you? Can you further imagine striking down the Union army simply by speaking to God?
Can you imagine what it would be like to serve someone who talked to God face to face, and did all kinds of miracles to lead the people of God for 40 years? Can you imagine what it would be like to have that person die, and the people begin looking to you to finish the job that Moses started? Can you imagine feeling I’m not equipped to try to fill Moses’ shoes.
Joshua had never been used to do a miracle. The one speech he gave to motivate the people to rise up and take the land had failed. When the spirit of God had fallen on seventy leaders in the camp, he was not one of the ones chosen. When he needed direction, he could ask Moses what to do next.
But then, one day he suffered the biggest loss in his life, when Moses died. Somewhere around a million people are looking to him for leadership, and he’s not quite sure he’s up to the task. Men, God is always calling us to do something, that we can’t handle properly on our own, but in turning to God, we find that God wants to equip us to get the job done.
Joshua was at the point of trying to figure out, how am I going to go forward. For the first time Joshua has a direct encounter with God. God begins with the words, “Moses my servant is dead, Now then you and all these people get ready to go into the promised land that I have promised you.” Men, sometimes before you can move forward, you have got to let go of the past.
You can’t dwell on who wasn’t there for you, or who isn’t here for you, or who won’t be there for you. You have to deal with who you are in the situation that you are in. You have a choice on how you are going to deal with the rest of your life. God says for us as men to move forward into the promises that he has for us.
It is so important men, for us to move forward, because we affect the entire family with the choices we make, and because we affect the family, we affect the church, and because we affect the church, and we determine the course of the nation. What keeps us from moving forward is fear.
Fear that we are going to miss out on having a good time. So we make poor choices. Fear of what responsibility actually requires of us. So we run away. Fear of the requirements of success. So we look for shortcuts. Fear of whether we can make the tough choices in life. So we shrink from leadership. Fear of what others are going to think of me. So we make compromises.
God’s remedy for our fear is the same as what he told Joshua, in verse 6 be strong and courageous. Then God says in verse 7, be strong and very courageous, and then again in verse 9, be strong and very courageous, do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged, for the Lord you God will be with you wherever you go. Men, whether or not we move forward is dependent on whose promises do we choose to believe. Who have we given our trust over to? Who do we believe actually wants what is best for our lives.
Why do young men join gangs. Because they choose to believe the promises of the gang over the promises of God. Why do men leave their wives? They choose to believe the promises of the other woman over the promises of God. Whatever promises we choose to believe, will determine the course of action that we take.
God had a plan in mind for Joshua that was going to lead down the path of greatness. In addition to telling him to be strong and courageous, God told Joshua you also need some wisdom and guidance, and that will come from your willingness to study and obey my word. Men so often we have a problem with submitting to the word of God. We don’t want people telling us what to do. How many times have your heard, “I’m a grown man, you can’t tell me what to do.”
And because we don’t have all the wisdom we think we have, we go out and we’re strong and courageous over the wrong kinds of things. We take chances with our lives and the lives of others and don’t fully think about the consequences of our actions.
No man can be a great man, until he has conquered the beast that is in him. Until we recognize that there is a beast inside of us all, we will not see our true need for God. That beast is called several names in the Scriptures. It’s call the flesh. It’s called the sinful nature. It’s called sin’s desire. It’s called the old man. No matter what you call it, men we know it as that thing that makes us want to have our own way. That thing causes us to do things that we later regret. We even say, “how could I have been so stupid to have done that or to have allowed that to happen.”
God is telling us, that when we run into this guy, we have got to be strong and courageous and remember His word, otherwise we will be defeated by this beast when he rises up in our hearts. This guy is going to throw every trick in the book at us and he’s even going to pretend to be our friend helping us to move forward in life. He never wants us to see the trail of destruction that we leave behind. He never wants us to dwell on the tremendous blessings God has poured into our lives. He seeks to direct our attention on what we don’t have and what we might be missing out on. Sometimes God has blessed us with wonderful children or wife and all we see is where they fall short of our expectations. The beast in is blinds us to the blessing that is right there in front of us. But if we took on the beast instead of trying to force our desire upon the people, we’d become a better man.
Father’s Day comes in the summer time which is about the time in Cleveland, when all the half naked women start walking the streets. It’s the time when some women come to church dressed in a way that makes it hard to concentrate on worshipping God. The beast in us says, “go ahead and enjoy the view.” It then tells us, we should do more than just enjoy the view, we should pursue the view. If we are not careful we become obsessed with the view and convince ourselves we are deserving of the view and everything that goes along with it. The beast says get it while you can, you don’t know what you might be missing out on. The beast never says, you are being intentionally set up to be robbed of the greatness you have waiting to be developed inside of you.
How do you be strong and courageous in this situation. You become strong by saying sin is not my master. I don’t have to keep looking at whatever Satan drops in front of my eyes. You become courageous by saying, I’ve got to protect those who are depending on me. My love for my wife and my children require me to choose another course of action. I will not go down a path that steals from the greatness God has in store for me.
As I single believer in Christ, you become strong by saying I will not be conquered by this temptation. Sin is not my master. God is. You become courageous by saying, I will protect this woman even though she is not aware that she needs protection. I will not pursue her message and potentially mess up her life as well as my own. I remember the word of God assures me of a blessing in my choosing to obey God. I can’t afford to disrupt my greatness by biting on the line she is throwing out.
Praise God for you men who desire the greatness God has for you, and who have been strong enough and courageous enough to fight for your children and to fight for your families. But let us remember in prayer those men who won’t be there for their children to honor because they are somewhere incarcerated or somewhere strong out on drugs, or somewhere having intentionally chosen to walk away from their kids’ lives.
Men, God knew what He was doing when he said, we should begin our relationships with women by offering them our love and respect, we then move to the stage of marriage and after we’ve made a commitment before him in marriage we move to sex. From the sex we move to having children. God’s plan is still the best plan for your life. I know all the lies we choose to believe and even the ones we come up with on our own. We tell women, if you love me, you will have sex with me. How is someone loving you by offering you the chance to pay child support payments for 18 years for 15 minutes. I don’t know any feeling worth over $150,000 as payments.
Men if you have a child, even if you don’t want the mother, you owe it to be an active father in the child’s life. I’m not talking about picking up the child on a weekend, giving the child to your mother, and then taking off until it’s time for the child to go back home. That’s irresponsibility. A child need his or her father. That means spending some quality time with them. Listening to them, learning from them and giving them a sense of security, knowing they can call on you when they need you.
We choose to believe the lie that the child is alright even if we are not there. That child is in grief whether you want to admit it or not. We throw around divorce so easily when we get upset with each other, yet when kids are involved, we need to yield ourselves to God and work things out.
You may say, but you don’t know my situation and how difficult it is to live with this woman. What’s really difficult isn’t the woman, it’s the beast inside of you that wants to control the woman. As men of God when things get tough we are to fix our eyes on Jesus. No-one was more courageous than Jesus was. No one was stronger than Jesus was. Think about it. If you knew you were about to be arrested tortured and killed, would you have gone to a garden to spend time in prayer when you could have run for your life. What if you knew this was what God was calling you to do? Jesus was strong. We think strong is always having the power to wipe out your enemy and then doing it. But Jesus teaches us that strong is when you have the power to wipe out your enemy, but chooses not to do it, because you want to do the will of God. When the angels came to arrest Jesus, he had 72,000 angels at his disposal to put an end to the action before it even got started. But he chose not to use them because he was strong. He knew that there were men like you and me who were going to need some help in this life and in the life to come, so for out sakes, he told the angels, hang tight fellows, I’ve got to go take care some business.
Strong is putting up resistance when the beast inside of you is saying, just walk away from this situation. You don’t have to put up with this. Think about what’s best for you. Look at that you have done and where did it get you. You’re not appreciated for what you have done. But because you’re stronger than the beast you respond with, “I choose to fix my eyes upon Jesus, who knew what was coming, but stayed anyways because God had a plan in mind.” I choose to move forward. I choose to believe God.
Men often times we will be presented with supposedly shortcuts to obtain success in life. The beast inside of us will tell us to go for it and seize the opportunity. It will cause us to forget that God’s way is still the better way. You need to be strong and courageous to walk away from stealing from your job when it looks as though you can get away with it. You need to be strong and courageous to say no to making money illegally on the street. You need to be strong and courageous to choose your family over a high paying job where you won’t be around much. You need to be strong and courageous to walk away from cheating with steroids when your competition is using them. Success is not determined by what you obtain on the outside. Success can be measured by the character we have on the inside. That’s what’s going to count with God,
Proverbs 28:6 (NIV) 6 Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a rich man whose ways are perverse. Your character counts for a lot. The beast inside does not care about your character. He’s only interested in feeding your desires. Look at yourself men. Can you say that you have been strong and courageous this past week, or did you only live for the moment? Did you fix your eyes on the power available to you in Jesus Christ, or did you let others determine your pathway.
Men we are told that as fathers, We are to bring our children up in the training and knowledge of the Lord. This is something we cannot do, without first acquiring the training and knowledge for ourselves. Our youth are looking to us as fathers and as men as examples. What are they finding as they get a closer and closer look. A father has incredible worth and potential. He is always influencing someone in some direction. Be strong and courageous enough to influence them in the right direction.
No father and no man can be all that he is capable of being without a personal relationship to God. That relationship can only come through knowing Jesus Christ. For every man needs a role model that will never let him down. A role model that has demonstrated what it is to be strong and courageous in the heat of battle. The only one who can fill those shoes is Jesus. Jesus was both a man and God all at the same time. As a man he knows the struggles that you have gone through, as God, he knows the victory he wants you to have in the midst of the struggle and He has the strength to give to you to make it happen.
The price however is not cheap. It will cost you a lifetime of commitment to saying no to your own beast, and yes to God’s plan for your life. Only men who are strong and courageous can accept the cost of the call to follow Christ. Most men are not able to pay the price. They hold on to the wounds from the battles in life. They wear their scars as trophies. Men who are strong and courageous, are able to say, enough is enough. I want a change for myself, for my wife, for my kids, for my community, for my role in the body of Christ. Forget the image thing , forget the world’s promises. I’m going to be a man who is strong and courageous, fixing my eyes on Jesus, to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward.
