Wednesday Bible Study: The walk of Joshua II

 

This part is going to start a lot more like "The walk of Chris" than that of Joshua, and it's for a good reason.  The first chapter of Joshua as delineated by four times he was told to "be strong and of good courage" or some variant thereof- three times by God and one by the people. And he did real good for the first six chapters of doing just that.  But in chapter seven, it falls apart.  And I'm going to use my day- some 8 days before you read this- to show you what it means.

First, why four times?  Because each time taught Joshua another reason for being courageous. First time...

Jos 1:6  Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.

He has to be strong and courageous, because he has a job to do, a purpose he is to fulfill.  So do I, and as I started this day of days, my first move was to rake my foot with my factory's employee door.  Surprised I didn't rip my shoe, I limped over to the nearest leaning post, and said something very near to what Joshua said when Israel "stubbed their toe":

Jos 7:7  And Joshua said, "Alas, O Lord GOD, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan!
Jos 7:8  O Lord, what can I say, when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies!
Jos 7:9  For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your great name?"

Unlike Joshua, though, I noticed the similarity and backtracked.  What I didn't do was hear God saying, "Welcome to: The First Part of Joshua, and You."  Instead, after trying my best to listen to God through the challenges of the day early on, I started mailing it in.  Totally ignoring the second message to Joshua:

Jos 1:7  Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.
Jos 1:8  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 make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

No, instead, I fell into grumbling to myself, yelling at myself for not going to God with things, and yet not going to God with things.  Finally, after grumbling internally for hours while telling myself to stop grumbling, each cycle taking me further and further from talking it out with God, something happened that made me have a small eruption to a teammate who totally understood where I was coming from.  Said teammate needed me to re-cut a piece that, were it not for the extremely complicated and somewhat silly way we have to handle this particular customer, would have been sewn and gone a MONTH ago.  So I start to recut the piece.

Attempt #1: We have a standard black fabric, and a thinner black that this customer uses.  Under my rack I have several small rolls of this and that, including both of these, plus a defective standard roll I save for patches and stuff.  I needed 65 inches, no big deal.

I cut it out of the standard black.

Attempt #2: Getting madder, I grabbed the defective roll, cut off the piece, see what I'm doing. I still need to pick that discarded section up from where I tossed it.

Attempt #3: Grab the right stuff, cut the WRONG part.

Attempt #4:  Cut the right thing, teammate brings another part that needs recut, from another cover of the same customer.  This would happen yet one more time.

So about this time I finally get it through my head that "karma" is really God's way to tell me I blew it.  I confessed to the teammate, and then FINALLY get praying about it.  Which is where I take it out of order but back to Joshua:

Jos 1:16  And they answered Joshua, "All that you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go.
Jos 1:17  Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you. Only may the LORD your God be with you, as he was with Moses!
Jos 1:18  Whoever rebels against your commandment and disobeys your words, whatever you command him, shall be put to death. Only be strong and courageous." 

 

So he had the job, he had the word, and he had the people with him.  Funny, God now decides that things can calm down, I can calm down, and tells me, "See, I let you up when you get to the point!  Just like I did Jacob...", referencing this:

Gen 32:24  And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.
Gen 32:25  When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
Gen 32:26  Then he said, "Let me go, for the day has broken." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
Gen 32:27  And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."
Gen 32:28  Then he said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed."
Gen 32:29  Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him.

See, Jacob had to ask the question.  I had to ask the question.  And soon, we'll see that Joshua needed to ask the question.  Now the question I had to ask was, "Lord, please help me!" The exact question I'd been avoiding or asking with half-intentions all day.  The answer was the third time:

Jos 1:9  Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."

God HAD been with me the whole time.  Just waiting for me to ask the RIGHT question- can you help me?

Joshua, however, as you can see above, came with complaints and whining instead, after Israel was beaten at Ai. And what was God's response to whining?

Jos 7:10  The LORD said to Joshua, "Get up! Why have you fallen on your face?

Now, instead of letting him up, like me, or snapping at him to get up, If he had just come to God and said, "What did I do to make this happen?" God would have gently (more gently than He did) said this:

Jos 7:11  Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings.
Jos 7:12  Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction. I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. 

 

 
You, see, Achan (whose name means, 'trouble', no lie!) had tucked some of the booty from Jericho under his robe and buried it under his tent.  This hidden sin, which God revealed, was the real source of Israel's disaster.  Never again does Joshua whine to God about something, and never again does he fail.  But why did he fail this time?

-He wasn't courageous enough to do the job right- he blamed it on God.

-He wasn't courageous enough to meditate on God's Word- the Word that told him why something like this would happen before it did.

-He wasn't courageous enough to look around him and see that he had (unintentionally) wandered away from God. Or maybe it was intentional? I mean, perhaps the fact that everyone was behind him as the "new Moses", that he had already beaten much larger Jericho (oh, HE did?), maybe he thought, "I think I'm getting the hang of this!"

One small step...

-And perhaps it was that he weighed the people's affirmation in more esteem than God's, and God had to teach him- people fail.

We fail. I fail.  That's why God's never far away, waiting for us to ask the question.