Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October thirty-first. Big things, little things, it doesn't matter. Today we'll discover just how important it is to faithfully follow all of God's commands. To obey God is always the right thing to do, the wisest thing to do, but not always the easiest thing to do.
And when you think about your life and what God requires of us, we all have to admit that sometimes it's not the easiest. Sometimes we think, for example, our way's a better way. Our way is an easier way. It's a less expensive way.
There's less pain. And sometimes if you and I obey God, there'll be pain, there could be suffering, there could be rejection, there could be loss. You say, well, why in the world do I want to obey God if all that could happen to me? Here's the reason, because He says whatever the circumstance, listen, our God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and to those who are called according to His purpose. So, God is in the business of blessing and guiding His children. But He's also in the business of encouraging us to be obedient to Him. Because He knows that's the wisest thing we can do, the best thing we can do.
The smartest thing we can possibly do is be obedient to the principles of the Word of God. So, I want you to listen carefully. Wherever you are, wherever you're listening, you'll want to take some notes today.
Because whatever you're facing in life, you're going to come to those times when you need courage to face them, whether it's with your family, your job, whatever it might be. So, listen carefully and remember this. Because the illustration happened several thousand years ago, it is just as true today as it was then because God never changes.
Principles don't change. So, if you'll turn to the Old Testament, to the book of Joshua. And this very first chapter, I want us to read these first nine verses of this chapter together. You may want to mark up your Bible a little bit. If, you know, if you don't mark it up, you miss some things. Maybe once in a while somebody will come up when I'm greeting guests and they have a brand new Bible and they're quick to say, now this is a brand new Bible, I'll read my Bible.
Because once in a while somebody will show me one they've had about twenty years and then got but three or four marks in it and looks like almost brand new. And so, I'll say, well, what you been doing with this? I hate to embarrass people too much, but sometimes they need it. Now, if you will turn to the first chapter and let's begin in verse one, a very important chapter. Now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all the people, to the land which I am given to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you just as I spoke to Moses.
From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I've been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you.
Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will," listen to this, "'For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Heaven I commanded you, be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.'" Now, while this was God's message to Joshua, listen carefully. It is a message to us in the twenty-first century just as much. Because the key to having a courageous, bold life of faith and prosperity, the right kind of prosperity and success, is found in this passage of Scripture. If you'll listen carefully and believe what you hear, God will change some things in your life that need to be changed that you probably thought couldn't be changed. And as I look at this, I want to give you, first of all, a definition of courage.
And I've given you a different definition every single, one of these previous messages. This is what courage is. The quality of mind or spirit enabling us to meet danger, opposition, or the challenges of life, we'll meet whatever they are, how?
With fearlessness, calmness, and firmness. It doesn't mean that we'll never be afraid. It doesn't mean that we'll never have those times when we are trembling and thinking, God, what's going to happen next? But with courage, we can face them with fearlessness, calmness, and firmness.
And the truth is, that's the way all of us want to face the issues in life that are difficult and there will always be those times. So, let's take a few moments to look at the background of what's going on in Joshua's life at this point. Moses brought the children of Israel to the brink of the Promised Land forty years before. They had a problem. They had a faith failure.
They sent twelve spies to look at the land. They came back and only two, Joshua and Caleb, were the ones who said, we can take it. The rest of them said, oh, no, because they have walled cities and all the other excuses they gave. So now, forty years later, after wandering in the wilderness for forty long years, and remember now, the people that we're talking about now grew up in the wilderness, fighting to some degree and all kinds of rumblings that were going on and all the strife they had with Moses, very, very bad time, forty years. Most of them grew up in that.
Some of them were born before that. Now, here is Joshua at the same place with the same proposition before him, how do you lead all these people into a Promised Land that God had given them and where there are seven nations that they will have to fight in order to accomplish God's purpose for them here. Now, think about it. All of a sudden, God is saying to him, Joshua, I want you to take Moses' place.
What an awesome responsibility. It'd be like taking God's place. Now, He wasn't God naturally, but He had been their leader. It was through Him that the Ten Commandments came and the law of Moses came and the law of God came.
And so, that's one issue here that challenged Him. A second was this, to lead those people into the Promised Land, which God had given them, and knowing there were walled cities, their cities were like fortresses. They were skilled in warfare and the Israelites had done very little of that.
They weren't very experienced in it. The nations that they were to fight had chariots. Israel didn't have chariots.
They had better weapons than the nation of Israel had. And as we said, their cities were walled and like Jericho. There were giants in the land. And their warriors were fierce warriors. And they had the problems of food and water and moving that many people into that land. It was seemingly an impossible task. But it wasn't impossible because God said to him, take courage because you will lead them into the Promised Land. But I just want you to see, these are all the things that could have caused Him to be fearful. And He could have said, well, not only that, Lord, this crowd, this bunch has murmured against Moses, Your servant for the last forty years.
Nothing seems to please them. And you remember all the things that they had to go through. And yet, in spite of that, God said, I want you to take these people to the Promised Land. No man will be able to stand against you all the days of your life, which meant no one would be able to stand against him successfully.
He would have his enemies, but not successfully. So, it's interesting what he did. Look in this first chapter of Joshua now in verse ten. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, saying, Prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you are to cross the Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess it.
So, here is Joshua really young compared to Moses. And he has this, what would appear to be an unbelievable task. This is the reason God said to him three times, Be strong and courageous. Strong and courageous. And he said one time, Be strong and very courageous. Because he knew what he was going to be facing. The challenges he would face, the idea of training those people to fight.
The idea of showing them how to take care of themselves, food and water and clothing and all the things. That many people, maybe somewhere around a couple of million people thereabouts, maybe less than that by now. Many of them died off in the wilderness. But they had children.
And so, it would be like moving this huge mob of people into enemy territory. And compared to the enemy, they were really rather unprepared. Except they were doing the will of God. And of course, God was encouraging because He knew He would face some situations that would be very difficult.
It didn't mean that He would be successful at every single solitary thing He would do because of fear. But if you read the book of Joshua, He made a couple of mistakes. They went to Jericho. They did exactly what God told them to do.
And of course, you remember the wall came down and they walked in, took it over. So, and the second fight they had was Ai, which was a much smaller place. And so, he listened to the counsel of some of his warriors who said, there are not many people there.
And besides that, it won't take but a few of us, you don't need to send everybody up, we can handle this. And they came running back defeated for two reasons. One of them is because he was not listening to God at that moment.
In other words, watch this, when you have a victory in your life, be careful. They had a victory at Jericho and then they listened to, he listened to counsel that was not very wise. Plus the fact, he had commanded them, you don't take the gold and silver, if you do, it's going to cost you your life. And you remember Achan, he did it. They killed him, his whole family. And of course, Israel lost some soldiers in that, but he learned a lesson.
So, what happens? God knew that there would be discouraging times, but He said to him three times, be strong and of a good courage. Now listen carefully. If you're praying or reading the Word of God and God says something to you and you know that He's speaking to you, when you come back to Him again and He says the same thing, or you're reading the same passage or another passage and He says the same thing to you, watch this carefully. God doesn't repeat Himself because He's forgotten anything. He repeats Himself for our protection, for our wisdom, for our guidance. And so, He said to him three times, be courageous, be very careful, because He knew what He would face. So, when I look at that and I think about the challenges we face today, for example, I think about the firemen who walked into the flaming building in 9-11 and lost their lives.
I think about how many police officers meet people armed who are robbing someone or some assassin. I think about, for example, pastors who pastor churches where people don't really want to know the truth. And so, they get upset when they hear the truth. And so, the pastor's challenged whether he's going to be truthful to the Word of God or he's going to listen to somebody's opinion and so forth. It takes courage, and I think oftentimes we forget the fact that there are people around us who have responsibilities that every day it takes courage. I think about people, for example, who climb high upon buildings, twenty, thirty, forty stories high, and more than that, and walking on steel, courage. It takes courage to do many things in life.
But it also takes courage to be obedient to God. And I think about, for example, one of those things would be when you confront a friend. You see one of your friends living in sin. You know what it's doing to him or to her or to their family. And to confront them and say, This is what I know is going on in your life. It takes courage. But it's better to take courage and do it than let them wreck and ruin their lives because you're afraid to confront them. It takes courage for you and your job. When you know that your boss has asked you to do something that you know is morally wrong and you refuse to do it, knowing that he could fire you and you'd have little to stand on. You just said no.
He could lie about it, but you know what's going to happen. You say no. If you're sitting in a classroom, it takes courage to disagree with a professor when he's teaching evolution or teaching that there is no God or many other things that they teach. And I think about situations where you belong to a group of people and you see them or they're getting ready to do something that you know you don't want to participate in.
It takes courage to say to the group, I'm sorry, I can't do that no matter what. I can remember as if it were yesterday, I was meeting seven of my friends. I had a good bunch of friends as a kid growing up. And they were going to meet me at what you used to call the drugstore in those days. And I didn't know exactly what we were going to do.
I was sixteen years old at that point. And I didn't know what they were going to do, but I was with them. I'd been with them lots of times. And when I got there, I found out they were going to this pool hall. It was full of drinking and carousing. And they were going to shoot pool.
And I remember my mother had pressed a pair of trousers me so I looked my best. And I said, I don't think so. Oh, come on, Stan, you don't have to drink, we don't have to. No, I said, no, I can't go. Now, it was a little difficult for me to walk away from my six other buddies and, because I knew they were going to have fun, this, that and the other. But I'm going to tell you what happened to me that I'll never forget. I was walking up the street by myself.
I even, I remember tearing out just a little bit because I was a little disappointed. I know exactly where I was because I'd delivered newspapers on that street. I knew everybody's name. 715 North Main Street was Mr. Rogers. That was his house number. That's where he lived. He owned the cleaners.
I knew all about them. It was in the front of his house that I was walking when God said to me, you will never regret this decision of obeying me. And I never have. And sometimes, you know, somebody says, well, you wouldn't have necessarily had to do anything wrong.
That's true, but the issue was not that. The issue was, was I willing to obey God when all of my friends wanted to do something else. So, sometimes we get into situations and I think about people today who date, for example, and somebody wants to commit immorality. Are you this? Are you that? Are you the other? I'm the other.
Are you the other? It's not an easy thing to do. It's not an easy thing to do. It's not a easy thing to do. It's not an easy thing to do. It's not an easy thing to do. It's not a easy thing to do. So, it's not Godly. And that should be your answer.
You shouldn't participate in, watch this, you shouldn't participate in anything that's going to cost you in ways that you could never begin to imagine. And that's exactly what happens. Now, but God has given us promises to live by. And when I think about that our courage is strengthened by the promises of God. And this is why I say, you know, people who go to church, if your pastor's wise enough to preach in a way that you have notes to take that make a difference in your life, you should take notes.
Why? Because the principles of God are just as true today and just as applicable today as they were in Joshua's day. And so, the difficulty that he faced, we face difficulties. And I want to encourage you to see what God said to him specifically because I want you to look at all the promises, all the promises God gave Joshua. Now, why wouldn't He say this one time, Joshua, be strong and of a good courage, period. Three times He said it. One time He said, be careful to do according to what I tell you to do.
Why did He say it? Because He knew that Joshua was human like anyone else, that he would be tempted, he'd be tried, and God was assuring him that He was with him. Does that mean that I've got to read this whole Scripture and say, should I do this, should I do that?
No. You read the passages of Scripture that God lays upon your heart. Listen, the Holy Spirit who indwells every single believer, who is the one who guided the writing of the Scripture, He will interpret those verses, those words that suit your particular situation, circumstances. God knows exactly who you are and what you need to hear. Thank you for listening to The Courage to Obey. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
