As Joshua
was getting ready to lead God’s people into the Promised Land, God gave him
three instructions that would help him do this job well. The first one (which we looked at in last
week’s article) was simply “Go”. In other
words, God told him that “strength and courage” would be found as he went about
doing what God asked him to do. If he
waited until he felt strong or courageous then he would never do anything. A good lesson for us too.
Here is the
second instruction to Joshua: “Be strong
and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you;
do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful
wherever you go. Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth; meditate
on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.
Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:7-8).
Obviously,
for Joshua to be a good and effective leader, he needed to know the mind and
heart of God. To do this, he had to pay
attention to the word of God. In fact,
this passage has some very important words and phrases in it such as “obey”,
“do not turn”, “meditate” and “do everything written in it”. Joshua could not be “God’s leader” without
focusing on “God’s revelation”.
Professor
Scott McKnight underlines the danger of ignoring this instruction. Each year, McKnight gives a test to his
incoming college students. The test
involves 24 questions about what the students think Jesus is like. Is he the “life of the party” or an
introvert? Is he confident or
nervous? Is he moody or even
keeled? Then McKnight gives a second
test, with slightly altered language, in which the students answer questions
about their own personalities. Guess
what the results almost always show:
Everyone thinks that Jesus is just like them! The danger:
If we are not careful and if we are not reading and thinking about the
word of God, we will make Jesus in our image instead of us being shaped into
his image. Without knowing the thoughts
and heart of God as they are revealed in his word, we will never have any
thoughts or any other heart than the one we have right now. We must know his image to be re-made in his
image.
Joshua was
not going to be a successful leader if he just did what he thought was
best. His best chance at success was to
get know the God that could give him the victory.
Do we know
God, or do we just know about God?
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