Joshua Part 2 - Follow Jesus Seriously

Andrew Grey gives the second in a series of sermons on the book of Joshua. The Bible passage is Joshua 1v10-18.

This talk was given on Sunday 14th Sept 2025.

Transcript

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Uh Sundays this term, we are reading and we are preaching our way through the Old Testament book of Joshua. Today we are in the first chapter of the book. It gives us a story, an ancient story, a true story, dates from many centuries before the coming of Jesus Christ. But it actually gives us the whole Bible story baked down into a few paragraphs. It invites us to put ourselves into the story, and it teaches us today, and this is the big thing that God has got for us today, it teaches us to follow Jesus seriously. So I'm going to pray and then I will read Joshua chapter 1. Let me pray. Lead us to the Lord Jesus, show us how wonderful He is. Help us, we pray, to begin or to continue following Him. And we ask that for His name's sake. Amen. So, Joshua chapter one, I'm going to read the whole chapter. Let's listen then to the word of God. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore, arise. Go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the great sea, toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 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. 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. 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. And Joshua commanded the officers of the people Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, prepare your provisions, for within three days you are to pass over this Jordan, to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. And to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, Joshua said, Remember the word that Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, saying, The Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land. Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land that Moses gave you beyond the Jordan. But all the men of valor among you shall pass over armed before your brothers, and shall help them, until the Lord gives rest to your brothers as he has to you. And they also take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving them. Then you shall return to the land of your possession and shall possess it, the land that Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave you beyond the Jordan, toward the sunrise. And they answered Joshua, All that you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go. 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. Whoever rebels against your commandments and disobeys your words, whatever you command him, shall be put to death. Only be strong and courageous. Thanks be to God for his word to us today. Why follow Jesus seriously? Why follow Jesus seriously? In these verses that I've just read, we meet the Old Testament Church of God, and they took their following of God extremely seriously. For them, it made things like uprooting their lives, risking their lives, fighting their battles, obeying on pain of death. For them, it was not a part-time activity following the one true God. It was all-consuming, it took their whole of their lives. They did not do it on their terms when it was convenient to them. They did it all on God's terms. And it poses this question: why follow Jesus seriously? When a Christian person takes following Jesus seriously, it does sometimes shock other people. Some of us will have experienced that. Some of us will remember looking at serious Christians and finding their lives, finding their decisions to be perhaps both attractive and shocking at the same time. Some of us, we know what it is to have friends or family raise their eyebrows at us for our following of Jesus. Now, this morning, we're going to spend a few minutes looking at just the second part of the chapter, which I just read, verses 10 to 18. We looked at the start of the chapter last Sunday. And we get given here in story form, centuries before the coming of Christ, all of the ingredients of what you could call serious Christianity. We get the why and we get the how of taking Jesus seriously. First of all, the why. And the simple answer is this because God gives his people amazing gifts. That is the why of following Jesus. Because God gives his people amazing gifts. He comes to us and he promises us wonderful things, wonderful things that are freely given. They are gifts. Now in the passage here, we can see that in a nutshell at the end of verse 11. Have a look down in your Bibles. The people are instructed to pass over this Jordan, over the river, to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. So mentally underline those words. The land and the gift. It's given. Now it's a little bit of Bible backstory. The land here, it's the land of Canaan, it's the promised land, characterized as a land flowing with milk and honey. It's a land of your dreams. It's a land that had been longed for by the people of God for centuries. In the Bible, though, that land was actually never the real goal. It was never the real aim. It was never the real target of God's people. But it was meant to be a picture of it. A picture of what we sometimes might call heaven, God's land, God's place, paradise. Not a work of fiction, not a work of imagination, but a real, concrete, perfect, joyful place where all of the things that spoil our existence here are removed and all of it perfected. Everything in just its right place. And best of all, Christian people know this, best of all, with the Lord Jesus Christ at the centre and his people enjoying him and his creation to their fullest extent. Now, just a tiny little side note. And it might be for some of us that thinking about the truthfulness of what we're speaking about today is a very important thing to do, and I'd encourage you to come face to face with the question of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But God comes to his people and he says, I am giving this to you. That's what he says, I'm giving it. And that points us to the deepest reality in the Christian faith, which you can sum up in the one word, grace. So many people assume that we relate to God by way of a ladder. It's a sort of a climb the ladder to God mentality, whereby Christian people do things, good things, religious things to achieve, to earn back, to ascend up to God. Whereas the God of the Bible is the only true God that there is, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is wonderfully a God of grace. That is, he relates to his people by way of gift. He gives. He relates to us, we relate to him, not by way of merit, by what is deserved. And so he comes in grace, in undeserved kindness. He comes to his people and he makes promises. He always has. For those people back then, he he promised the land to the church of Jesus. He promises heaven. Actually, the very centre of his promise is himself. He promises himself. He is the heaven of heavens. And a Christian simply is someone who hears those problems and gladly believes them and receives from God the Father. As the gift is held out, the Christian says, Thank you, I believe you. Let me receive this from you. I believe you are who you say you are, you're my creator. More than that, you are my saviour. That is, you know my sins, my disobedience of your law. You've given Jesus, more than that, you've given Jesus for me to deal with my problem of sin and guilt. And so I gladly receive what you wish to give to me. And then, then, that Christian man or woman, Christian boy or girl, they then give themselves to God in wholehearted service and obedience. And we'll think about that in just a moment, but but do you see where it comes from? You know, the why of following Jesus seriously, this life of trusting and obeying, it flows from thanksgiving. In response to the grace of God, it flows from thanksgiving. And it seeks for joy. This is quite a hard thing to understand from the outside of the Christian life, but Christian people, we know this when we're in our right minds, that when we seek Jesus, when we follow him wholeheartedly, genuinely, that is the joyful and the blessed life. So what we're going to do is look down at these ancient Israelites, verses 10 to 18. Now we are not ancient Israelites, but actually in their lives, in their call, we are shown what following Jesus is about. And as we look at them, I hope we can see and feel the dynamic of being a Christian. It's like God comes and says to us, I will give you life. Now wholeheartedly take hold of it. I will give you life. Now receive from me the blessings of that life. That's the shape and the feel of being a Christian. Thought a little bit about the why, now the how of following Jesus seriously. Got three headings for us here. I've taken three key words from the passage and applied them to being a Christian here and now, which is actually what the New Testament would encourage us to do. Prepare for action, help your brothers, obey your leader. Let's think firstly, prepare for action. So those people back then, they had been waiting for generations for this promise to be fulfilled, the promised land, but when is the promise going to be kept? And now it was time to go. So pack your bags, pack up your life. You're going to cross over the Jordan, cross over the river, and enter the promised land. You see, in verses 10 and 11, there's kind of a chain of command there, isn't there? God commanded Joshua. Joshua simply passed God's word straight on to the offices of the people, and in turn they pass it throughout the camp. And the key thing is this don't just hear the message, obey it. Don't just be a hearer of the word, be a doer. So for them, it was actually quite literally: it is time to pack up your life and go in obedience to the command of God. Prepare for action. And I wonder what they made of that. The total upheaval that it would have meant for everyone. Get to work. And verse 11, it is such a helpful verse to think about. You are going to take possession. You have got work to do in taking what the Lord is giving you to possess. All through the Bible, we see the sovereignty of God. God is wholly in charge. And we see that people are responsible to trust him and to obey him. And that is not an abstract bit of doctrine to puzzle over, it is just a fact. God gives. So here he gives, he gives the land, he gives heaven. It is his work, his gift. It's achieved at the death of his son, the Lord Jesus. Now receive it, possess it. Trust me, obey me, and receive from me. We read in the New Testament things like let us strive to enter this rest. Hebrews 4 and verse 11. So we're saved by grace. It is by grace all the way down the line. We begin by grace, we live by grace. It's the free gift of God. And, and I hope you believe this, the Christians' obedience really matters. It really does. And it is the kind of life that, at obedience to the command of God, is willing to have everything turned upside down. That's what it meant for them back then. Following Jesus seriously, it is an active thing, isn't it? In the gospel story, think of the disciples who Jesus called for them. It meant leaving everything behind to follow him. Whatever it takes to follow Jesus seriously, we're encouraged to hear, trust, and obey. So, Christian people, we are not saved by our works, but a Christian is not saved without their works. And the New Testament would would say that to us in so many ways. Things like put to death the old life, put on the new life, be renewed in your mind, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. And that's what we see here for the Old Testament church, what they were commanded to do. Second heading, that the how of following Jesus seriously, help your brothers. And that's that little bit, verses 12 to 15. Now, they seem a little bit quirky, these verses. You do need to know some Bible stories so that they make sense. But when you know what the Bible says about being a Christian, they really make sense, these verses. The backstory, you find it in Numbers chapter 32. I'll try and sum it up. This promised land that was to resemble heaven on earth, it was the other side of the River Jordan, on the west side. The people of God, the twelve tribes of Israel, they were on the east side, they were on the outside. And some of those tribes, the ones listed there down in verse 12, they liked the look of their surroundings over on the east. And they said, Well, look, this is a brilliant place to set up home. Can we just stay here? And Moses, now he was concerned. We need the whole people of God to take the whole land. It has got some pretty scary bad men in it over the other side of the river. And so those two and a half tribes, they made a promise. And then we come to our passage, verse 13, and Joshua says to them, Remember what God said to you. Remember what he said about the unity of God's people, and remember your promise. It was not a paper promise. It's time to act on it now. It's time to fight alongside your brothers. They need your help. There's going to be war, there's going to be casualties, there will be deaths, there will be horrible things. But these people, those other tribes, they are your brothers. Fight for them and alongside them until the Lord gives them rest, just like he's given you rest in your bit of the land. So this ancient story, it is a picture of the unity of the people of God standing with and fighting alongside others, simply because we are one in Jesus Christ. And that is a core Bible principle. It is a core part of taking Jesus seriously. When we come to the New Testament, we are not told to pick up a literal sword to fight alongside other Christians, but the New Testament does say things to us like strive side by side for the faith of the gospel. Fight, fight for the faith of the gospel. That's Philippians 1:27. So imagine Christian people standing together in battle. And when you become a Christian, you do enter a war. It's a war you never knew existed until you came in Christ. There is a war against sin and the world and the devil. Maybe some of us in different ways have felt that war: an internal war against temptation and sin, an external war against ideas and forces that are opposed to Christ. And standing behind it, yes, uh, the devil. The weapons of the Christian in warfare being the word of God and prayer and worship and fellowship. And Christian people, we are meant to be, we have to be in that war together, serving and sacrificing alongside one another. It cost those two and a half tribes, didn't it? They gave up something to go over and fight with their brethren. The men did go and fight. Later on, they came back to dwell in the land they were granted. Presumably, not everyone came back. So there is a love of the brothers, which means Christian people serve and sacrifice for the good of the whole body. And that's got loads of applications to the Church of Jesus Christ. How we feel about other Christians, there should be a deep loyalty coming out of our hearts, even towards those who are not of our tribe, if I can put it like that. We should have a care for the whole church wherever we find it. Most especially a loyalty to those who we have actually made vows. So if you're in a in a local church which has a formal church membership as we do here, and a church should, then members have actually vowed to, promised to, serve and strengthen one another. And we need that because the Christian life is not a walk in the park, sin within, a hostile world without, and a devil prowling round like a roaring lion seeking to devour Jesus' people. So striving together. Help your brothers. Lastly, and this is verses 16 to 18, obey your leader. Have a look down again just at verse 16. It's a stunning verse. And they answer Joshua, all that you have commanded us, we will do, and wherever you send us, we will go. Now that is an amazing pledge of obedience. All wherever. It's an obedience without limits. It's entirely unconditional. The people they embrace this Joshua, their leader, uh, that God has given to them. They know that their security depends on his faithfulness. Did you see that? They don't just pledge obedience, but they also exhort him may God be with you, only be strong and courageous. They know that their security depends on his faithfulness, their happiness, their success. It all depends on him. He's like their champion who leads and fights for them. Truly, he is their savior. And obviously, this Joshua, he's intended by God to be in picture form centuries ahead of time, like Jesus. And it's no accident that Joshua and Jesus, it is the same name in a different language. It means the Lord saves. So here is here is their Jesus, a picture of the true Jesus. And all of our happiness, success, victory depends upon him. And so, of course, then when the Christian comes to Jesus and says, All, wherever, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Because he's perfectly faithful. Perfectly faithful. And so we come to him and we say, All, whatever you command of me, wherever you want me to go, wherever you don't want me to go, wherever. And that's how the Christian relates to Jesus. It's a fundamental obedience to him and to his word, because that's where he gives us our marching orders as Christian people. There is genuinely no other way to be happy and holy but to trust and obey. Now, obviously, that word that we read there, obey, it is not a popular word right now. It is a deeply unpopular word, but it is the right response to godly authority. That's the right response to godly authority. And this Lord Jesus, if we're Christian people, we know this. We know that He's got all authority, and we know that He's all good. And so to Him, we render an obedience and a submission. It's right at the very heart of being a Christian, a glad, joyful, immediate, unquestioning, total obedience of life. Now, for someone who doesn't know much about this Jesus, let me encourage you to at the end of the morning pick up and read one of these, a gospel, one of the eyewitness accounts of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, where you see his perfect authority and power and his perfect goodness. Here is someone you can trust with your life and your obedience. And we see, too, there how it is he gave himself to save and cleanse people like us. And Christian people, Christian people, just as we finish up, we are called to this, aren't we? We are called to a following of Jesus which is serious and joyful. And in the in God's economy, those things actually go together. Following Jesus, it is serious and it is joyful. I dare say the Lord will have spoken to different ones of us in different ways this morning. Maybe some of us, we know that we are we are wandering and disobedient. And well, maybe maybe we're trying to have one foot with Jesus and one foot somewhere else. Maybe some of us are discouraged in the fight. Maybe some of us are isolated in the fight. You need the brethren as much as the brethren need you. Others of us, well, actually, this is an encouraging word. We are trying to take Jesus seriously and take a stand, and it's a painful thing, but actually I'm encouraged in it. Well, here is the life that trusts and obeys, and it is the very, very best life of all the joyful, serious business of following the Saviour Jesus. Let's bow our heads, I'm going to lead us in prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you, we praise you for your Son, the Lord Jesus. We thank you that perfectly and uniquely he was strong and courageous, he was faithful and obedient even to death on a cross. Thank you that he loves and claims and blesses all who come to him in repentance and faith. We pray for ourselves this morning, maybe some of us for the first time, others for the umpteenth time. Uh show us your Son. Uh, encourage our hearts to walk with him, trusting and obeying, whatever the cost. Grant us the joy of a serious discipleship with him. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.