I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. No-one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.
Joshua 1:3-6 NIVUK
I still remember it well. I was in Romania, in one of those grey apartment blocks not far from Pitesti train station. Our team leader, Lucian, was about to leave to get married. He was a great guy and very popular.
The next team leader had to be a man (sorry girls!). There were two men in the team: a Korean who had not long finished his military service, and me, a skinny guy from Scotland who had never considered himself a leader at anything and could barely manage himself, let alone other people.
But there was one huge variable which swung things unexpectedly in my favour. I had arrived in Pitesti with a reputation for preaching and was in the pulpit from my first Sunday there (which I shouldn't have been - I should have been concentrating on learning Romanian). I was also highly focused and driven - I don't think I've ever been so highly focused and driven about anything else in my life - to learn their language. I was already the main preacher in the team. I had to learn Romanian and learn it fast.
For my Korean ex-military colleague, however, things were a little tougher. He couldn't find any books to help him learn Romanian directly from Korean, so he had to use an English book. His English was good, but not good enough for him to learn a third language through it. So he had to translate everything from Romanian to English to Korean and back again.
Meanwhile, I'd figured out that the language was similar to French due to its Latin roots. I had been good at French when I was at school. French is way harder. So I was flying with Romanian. I was even using a Romanian Bible to prepare my sermons. So I was way more fluent than my Korean friend.
What happened? The organisation leader needed someone who could communicate with both him (he was from New Zealand) and the local church leaders well. So he chose me over my colleague.
To be honest, I was surprised. The only part of me that got picked for anything on a regular basis was my nose. I was a little bewildered by it all - like a skinny, almost bilingual rabbit with confidence issues caught in the headlights.
But I did it. I led the team. A team made up of eight different nationalities from three different continents. A team with stong characters and opinionated people. Not to mention a very disgruntled flatmate who never coped well with the decision to not make him team leader.
It wasn't easy. And it certainly wasn't perfect. I made a lot of mistakes. But I got there, with God's help.
Joshua wasn't being asked to be a leader. No, he was being appointed as leader. This wasn't a recruitment drive and he certainly doesn't seem to be given a choice. Look at verse 6: "...because you will lead these people..." Joshua is being given a choice neither on the role he will fulfil or the people he will fulfil it for.
And yet there is reassurance in these words. There is certainty. God is saying that it will happen. Even against all the odds and balances of probability.
But how?
These verses tell us.
Firstly, persistence:
I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.
Joshua 1:3-4 NIVUK
That's a lot of land, by any stretch of the imagination. And, bearing in mind that the Israelites would be mostly on foot, it meant a lot of walking. But God's reassurance was that wherever they stepped, the land would be theirs.
So the one thing they would have to do each day would be to keep stepping, keep moving forward, keep pressing on. There would be problems. There would be those who didn't 'get it'. There would be those who flat out disobeyed. There would be those who were in it only for their own personal gain. There would be obstacles. There would be giants. There would be battles. But as long as they kept stepping forward and didn't settle for what they had, the land would be theirs.
The second quality is power. Every leader needs power. Otherwise how can they lead? But the power in these verses is a different power:
No-one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life.
Joshua 1:5 NIVUK
How much would we love this kind of power - the power that always prevails!
You see, the Christian perspective on power is completely different to that of the world. The world believes in absolute power - it believes that there is a small group of people who control everything. Hence the lunatic, paranoid conspiracy theories circulating on the internet. They are not Christian. They are not Biblical. They have nothing to do with the truth and must be set aside.
The Christian perspective on power is much better. We only believe in one absolute power - God. And no-one else. We believe that any power human beings have has been delegated to them by God and they are ultimately responsible to Him for how they use it.
So if we are followers, we must submit to our leaders and not make their life more difficult (Romans 13:1-7; Titus 3:1-2). If we are leaders then we must submit to the one who has authority over us - God - and humbly recognise that we are accountable to Him (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1). We must recognise that just as God has placed us in a position of power, He can just as easily remove it from us, no matter who we are (Daniel 4).
This model of power leads to respectul followers and humble leaders, which is the way it should be.
God is saying that He has not only placed Joshua in the lofty position as leader of the people, but that He will give him the power and authority to carry it out. This helps us to realise that God not only gives us power, but He gives us it with a purpose: to use it for His glory. It is not to exalt ourselves. It is not to make us feel good. It is not for us to take advantage of or abuse. It is to give Him the glory.
But we don't just see persistence and power. We also see presence:
As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Joshua 1:5 NIVUK
God's presence was vital for Moses - indeed, for all the people of Israel. It was the thing that marked them out as distinctive and special. But much more that: the pillar of fire and cloud which symbolised God's presence both guided them through the desert and shielded them from the might of the Egyptian army before they crossed the Red Sea (Exodus 14:19-20).
So the worst threat, other than total destruction, after the Israelites bowed down to the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai was the removal of God's presence among them (Exodus 33:3, 12-17).
God telling Joshua that He would never leave him nor forsake him is really quite something - and critically important for the success of Joshua's mission.
But there is something we must understand here. Throughout the whole of Joshua, we don't see a pillar of cloud or fire. God does not manifest His presence in the same way because God does not need to do so. The pillar of cloud and fire was designed to lead an obstinate, disobedient people on a pathway through the desert where they had never been before. Joshua had been to the Promised Land already. He was one of the twelve men who spied it out (Numbers 13:1-16).
This teaches us a very important principle, and one we must take seriously. God's presence is not manifested the same way from one nation to another or from one generation to another. He always reserves the right to do things differently, to defy convention and express His will in a different way:
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19 NIVUK
Jesus also told His disciples that His presence would be with them always as they carried out His mission:
Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’
Matthew 28:18-20 NIVUK
We understand this presence as being expressed in the presence of His Holy Spirit. Yet we are not touched by tongues of fire every Sunday and I've never seen anyone run out of church to tell someone they've never met in a language they've never spoken how they can be saved.
Same presence. Different expression. And there is nothing wrong with that.
So to focus on leading, we need to have persistence - to keep moving forward whatever the obstacle in our way. We also need power - power from God to perform our role, but not so much that it goes to our head and intoxicates us. And we need God's presence. So we cultivate an awareness of this each day, but we need to be aware that God may not manifest it in the same way He did before.
But maybe you're looking at these words and saying, 'I am not a leader. How do these words apply to me?'
A new word has been coined in recent years that unfortunately has attracted some negative connotations. It's the word 'influencer'. We think of influences as young, pretty, vapid people who, absent of any discernable practical skills, flounce around the world pouting in front of a camera for their followers like poorly trained monkeys and demand free stuff so they can flog it to the gullible and stupid.
But that's not all there is to it. Influencers are so-called because people follow them and these influences influence their decisions. In the days long before social media was even a thing, and when news feeds took the form of parchment scrolls (well, at least they weren't full of ads for stuff you don't need), Paul wrote these words:
Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.
Philippians 3:17 NIVUK
Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1 NIVUK
These are pretty bold things to say. Paul is telling the Philippians and Corinthians to follow him. But not in a divisive sort of way, the way many Christian leaders today do it. You know, 'Follow me, don't follow him'? Paul was absolutely against that (1 Corinthians 1:10-17). Paul was not setting himself up as the absolute measure of right and wrong. Far from it! To do so would be blasphemy.
No, he wanted them to follow him, to be influenced by him, to follow Christ.
And do you know something? This ought to be our number one goal for 2022 - our most important New Year's resolution: to be an influence on others so that they follow Christ. We should seek persistence, power and an awareness of God's presence to lead, yes, but to lead others to the feet of Jesus Christ. There is our Promised Land. This is our purpose. This our goal.
And with God on our side, we can succeed.
So yes, all of us without exception should focus on leading in 2022. But we should also FOCUS ON FOLLOWING.
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