Septuagesima Sunday
Joshua 1:1-9, 2 Tim. 2:1-13
“A Charge that Does Not Change”
The lessons for today provide us a remarkable opportunity to bserve two very similar situations which happen to be separated from one another by a huge gulf of time, at least as far as we humans experience time. God’s charge to Joshua occurred somewhere around the year 1400 B.C. Paul’s charge to Timothy, occurred somwhere around the year 65 A.D, almost 1500 years after Joshua heard the words we just heard read a short while ago.
However, in spite of this vast distance of time between these men, they were given charges, commissions if you will, which have arresting similarieties. I want to look at those similarities today and to suggest some further parallels between Joshua, Timothy, and ourselves from our vantage point in history. Here we sit at the beginning of the 21st Century after the birth of Christ, in Waxahachie, Texas. We are 2,000 years after Timothy, and 3,400 years after Joshua, and we’re physically located on the opposite side of the world from where they lived their lives. We are separated from both of them in time and space far more than they were separated from each other. But, that only makes the similarities between the two of them and us all the more compelling. Let’s begin by noting how Joshua and Timothy were alike as regards the charge God gave to Joshua, on one hand, and Paul gave to his disciple Timothy on the other hand.
First of all, both Joshua and Timothy are poised at the cutting edge of God’s work of redemption in history. It’s easy to see this, for history, like any river, has many bends in it. If you’re on a boat in that river and you are passing through a bend, it is very easy to see this. And, so it is easy for us to recognize the great bend in this river of God’s redemption in history that appears when Joshua is taking the leadership of the nation Israel at the death of Moses, or when Timothy is getting his marching orders from Paul, as Paul recognizes that his own boat on that river is soon to come to shore, while Timothy’s boat must continue on for many years.
That is the first important similarity between Joshua and Timothy: they are have reached a certain place in that river of history, and they have many, many miles yet to travel. God has something to say to Joshua, and Paul something to say to Timothy, and those things are the same: keep on moving down the river. Don’t’ stop, don’t pull up to the bank and just rock comfortably in the tulees. Get out there in the middle of the current and keep on paddling.
In Joshua’s case, paddling meant to cross the Jordan river and to take possession of the land God had promised to Abraham and his seed after him. In Timothy’s case, paddling meant to take all he had received from Paul and commit it to faithful men, who would themselves pass it on to other faithful men after them. Indeed, both of Paul’s letters to Timothy are heavy with the sense that Paul is passing the torch to the next generation, just as God is taking the torch Moses held and hands it to Joshua and his generation.
Now, with Joshua and Timothy finding themselves at great bends in human history, what do you suppose they are told. I find it noteworthy that both God and Paul, in their respective charges, put heavy emphasis on three things.
First of all, both Joshua and Timothy are exhorted to be courageous and to persevere in their callings. If someone says to you, “Do not be afraid” you can be sure that there is something out there to scare you. Three times God tells Joshua to be courageous. “Be strong and of good courage,” God says in verse 6 of chapter 1; “Only be strong and very courageous,” he says in verse 7. “Have I not commanded you, Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid nor be dismayed,” he tells Joshua in verse 9.
Paul, too, spends quite a bit of time encouraging Timothy with words that unmistakeably suppose that Timothy is going to find hardship and trouble and toil in his future. “You must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” Paul says. “You must follow the rules as an athelet would in competition,” Paul says. This warning makes no sense unless Paul knows that Timothy is going to find plenty of opportunities and inducements to cheat. “The hardworking farmer will be the first to partake of the crops,” Paul says, as an encouragement to keep on working hard, for the spiritual farming Timothy will do will be hard, hard work.
But, neither Joshua nor Timothy are supposed to live a life of Christian stoics, bravely and stubbornly pressing on out of mere and sheer duty. No, each of them gets an assurance of success; both Joshua and Timothy have two assets on which they may rely. Indeed, these two assets are the ones on which they must rely if they are to be courageous in the face of all that will frighten, or discourage, or depress them.
First of all, each of them has God’s word, God’s promises, which each of them has seen fulfilled in spectacular ways. To Joshua, God says, “…observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not trun from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may propsper whever you go. The book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, … for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
In the lesson we heard read, Paul makes only a brief, but telling reference to the same Scriptural heritage that belongs to Timothy, when Paul commissions Timothy to pass along the things he has heard from Paul among many witnesses, and to pass them along to faithful men. Later in this epistle, however, Paul’s comments about the Word of God are much the same as God’s words to Joshua. In the very next chapter of this same letter to Timothy, Paul writes this:
14But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, 15and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
So, Joshua and Timothy are to go forward to play their parts in God’s plans in history. Though they will meet opposition and hardship, they are to be courageous and press on, armed with the truth, wisdom, insight, and encouragment that comes from the word of God which each has received. And, beyond that asset – the strength each man is to take from the Scriptures, they are to rely on God’s own personal faithfulness. For God’s word is not some operating manual or cookbook for spiritual success. Behind it is the very real and very determined reputation of God himself that is on the line, a reputation for faithfulness to his own word and a guarantor of his own promises.
To Joshua, God said, “…as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you….do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” Paul’s words are much to the same effect, though it appears that what Paul says is not so much his own words, but the words of a very early Christian hymn. That is why Paul endorses it as a faithful saying, that is something which faithfully speaks the truth: If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us; If we are faithless, he remains faithful; he cannot deny himself.”
That line in the hymn about denying Christ must be understood in a sense that comports with Jesus’ actions toward the most famous denial of Christ we find in Scripture – Peter’s three-times denial of Christ during Christ’s passion, or on a national scale Israel’s long, long history of denying the one who saved them out of Egypt. It is a disciplinary denial that Paul speaks of here, not an ultimate one. Our hope, after all, does not rest in our own faith or its strengh, but in Christ’s faithfulness. And, so the triumphant final line of this hymn, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful; he cannot deny himself.” Our eternal happiness, like Israel’s, is founded on God’s promises and his faithfulness to fulfill them.
Okay. So what? As I said earlier, here we sit on the other side of the word, 2,000 years from Timothy and 3,400 years from Joshua. I suggest to you that the words addressed to each man are similar because their prospects were similar. Moreoever, their prospects are the same as ours today, right here in little old Waxahachie Texas in the deep of winter in the year 2005.
How so? You ask.
Well, remember the way I compared Joshua’s and Timothy’s place in history to a bend in the river? From our perspective it is clear that they were at the beginning of one of those bends in the flow of history’s current. We are in such a place today.
It’s difficult to speak in these terms without sounding like one of those apocalyptic crackpots who are continually heralding the end of the world. But, the end of the world has happened scores of times, hundreds of times, in the past. If the soothsayers were wrong in calling each of them the end of the world, they were wrong in thinking the bend in the river they could see was the very last bend. But, even though it was not the last bend, it was indeed a bend in the flow of history. The course of history was changing, the current was going to flow in a different direction, and at a different rate of speed. The banks would grow further apart, or maybe closer together. It wasn’t hard to see that the surface of the water was going to get rougher, or perhaps smoother. If there are rocks and rapids ahead, you can see them before you crash into them, and you can hear them even before they come into view.
That’s where we are today. This is not my opinion; it’s the opinion of an increasing number of people who can, as Jesus says, understand the signs of the times. The times, they are a changing. That’s what Bob Dylan made a hit song out of 40 years ago, and the time’s have not only changed in the past 40 years, they’are still changing faster than they were in 1964 when Dylan released that song. Across the board – in art, science, culture, politics, religion, economics – you name it, and nothing is as it was 50 years ago, and – if we’re to judge by the trends anyone today can see if he’ll only look – in another 50 years our parents world will look as far removed as Timothy’s or Joshua’s.
We too, therefore, are at the cutting edge of God’s plan of redemption, which began in the Garden of Eden and will one day culminate in the New Jerusalem. We’re not there yet. There’s a ways to go, and we belong out there in the current. We too, must set ourselves to endure conflict and hardship. We too have our work to do, and it will often be hard work indeed. We, too, will meet opposition if we are to take the torch from faithful Christians in the past and carry it in our generation and pass it along to the next one.
This has always been the lot of Christians in time. The restoration of all things from the Fall and the Curse does not begin with us, nor does it end with us. We have our part to play in that program, just as Joshua and Timothy did, just as every generation of believers have had from Adam and his family down to those who will greet the Lord when he returns to the earth. We need to be brave, very courageous. We must not be afraid, and we must persevere, for it is our opportunity to push things forward to that grand climax of all history.
And, we find ourselves with the same assets that Joshua and Timothy had. Timothy’s resources in the Word of God was much greater than Joshua’s, for it is likely that the only Bible in existence in Joshua’s day were the five books of Moses. Timothy had the entirety of the Old Testament, and probably most of Paul’s letters. We have all that and Peter’s and John’s, and the canonical gospels. And, added to that we have two millennia of faithful Christian teachers and leaders who have lived their lives in reliance on the promises which are still there for us to rely on.
And, finally, we have the faithfulness of Christ himself. When he sent the apostles out into the world, to proclaim the gospel, he said this: 18… "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
The Apostles to whom Jesus spoke these words found Jesus’ words to be true, though did not see the end of the age. Christ was with them all to the time they departed this world, and they now await the end of the age with Christ in heaven.
But, Christ’s promise is still sure, and it is still applies to you and to me, for the same reasons that it applied to Timothy and to Joshua. The work of the gospel – specifically, our part in God’s work of redeeming, recreating, and restoring all things – is here and now. It is ours to take up the heritage of that great cloud of witnesses who have served the Lord before us, to show ourselves worthy of so great a heritage, to depend on the great promises they depended on, and to see Christ’s faithfulness in our lives as he was faithful in theirs.
God grant that we may be courageous as our spiritual forefathers were, and for the same reasons. May the promises and mercies of Christ strengthen us, and may be find him faithful to to those promises in our day.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
