Word of Salvation – Vol. 47 No.18 – May 2002

 

Rising Up From Defeat

 

Sermon by Rev A Esselbrugge

on Joshua 7:10

Scripture Readings: Philippians 3:7-16; Joshua 7:1-13

Suggested Hymns: BoW: 337; 108:1-4, 7; 464; 418

 

Brothers and sisters, young people, boys and girls.

How do you handle setbacks in your life?  There are some people who have incredible determination and inner strength.  Whenever something or some circumstance in life defeats them and knocks them down, they shrug their shoulders, grit their teeth and get up and go right back to what they were doing before.  To look at them you’d never know a feather had even dusted them.

Then there are also other people who only have to have a feather fall out of the sky and land on their shoulder, and their world just disintegrates into a mess of emotional trauma.  They rush off to the doctor, call in the minister and gather their friends around them to sit with them while they think they are dying.

And there are some people who try to hide every trial they experience and again others who bare their souls to the world.  Some have real trials and burdens and others only think they have.  The majority of us will find ourselves somewhere in between these extremes.

The situation we find in our text today is where the Israelites had just had a stunning victory.  Glance back across Chapter 6, and you will see there how the people of God had finally come out of their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.  Some forty odd years before the people had been released from slavery to the Egyptians and they had come to the Promised Land.  Spies were sent out to determine the strength of the enemy, how fortified their cities were and what the land would offer them when they went in to take it.

Twelve men had gone out, and Joshua and Caleb were among them.  When they returned from their mission loaded down with the fruit of the land, all but Joshua and Caleb advised that the land and the people were too strong for them.  Joshua and Caleb were the only two men who were confident of the ability of the Israelites under God to take possession of the Promised Land.  But the negative reports of the other ten men persuaded the people not to go.  Instead the people wanted to return to Egypt and they tried to stone Joshua and Caleb.  It was only by the special intervention of God that Joshua and Caleb were spared and the ten spies were killed instead.

Israel’s tragic lack of trust in God resulted in the people being condemned to a forty-year exile in the wilderness.  But here in our chapters of Joshua, the forty years are over.  Moses had died and gone to be with the Lord.  Joshua, who was born a slave in Egypt, was now leader of a mighty nation.  God had set him apart for this.  Under Joshua’s precise directions the people of the Lord had crossed the Jordan after God had parted the waters as He’d done at the Red sea forty years before.  The people then had marched around the mighty city of Jericho once a day for six days, and on the seventh day they’d marched around the city seven times.

Try to imagine what that must have been like.  For six days some 600,000 armed men marched around the fortified walls of that city in silence.  Then on the seventh day, after marching around seven times, all the people of Israel, more than 1,500,000 voices, raised up a mighty shout.  The people in Jericho must have been absolutely terrified.  But without a single arrow being fired, or a single act of aggression except for a shout, God made the walls of the city to fall, and the people charged in and took that city.  And in chapter 6:21 we read they devoted the city to the Lord.

Again, imagine what you would have felt at the end of that day.  The people must have been absolutely elated.  What a victory!  Nothing could possibly stand in their way now.  The land lay before them like a ripe fruit ready for the picking.

Another city lay nearby – Ai – and it was a small weak little place.  It would be another easy victory for them.  2000, maybe 3000 men at the most, would be all that’s needed to continue the sweet taste of victory.

Well – we read it before – the Israelites suffered a humiliating defeat in something that should have been so simple and easy, and the hearts of the people plummeted.  From elation and being invincible, the people were suddenly struck down with fear.  And we read also that Joshua fell down before the Lord.  In despair he tore his clothes.  He went into mourning and the elders joined him there before the Lord.  In anger, frustration and distress they remained there before the Ark of the Lord until the evening.  Joshua argued with the Lord, reverently to be sure, but nevertheless he argued his case (read vss.7-9).

The Lord’s response was to order Joshua up, “Stand up!  What are you doing down on your face?  Get up!”  But how was he to do that?  There’s the question we began with.  How do you handle set backs in your life?  How should we set about addressing those times and areas of defeat in our lives?

Let’s see if we can learn something from Joshua here and how the Lord led him.  Look back to verse 7.  Something went wrong, and what did Joshua do?  He went and blamed God.  It was faith that sent him to the Lord.  It was his deep conviction that God was sovereign that sent him to prayer, but he still had to blame God.  “Sovereign Lord,” he prayed.  At least he went to the mighty One, the Lord of all, but then he immediately had to point the finger, “Sovereign Lord, why did you…?”

If Joshua was to obey the command of God, get up from the ground and from defeat, then he had better stop questioning the character of God.

People do that all the time, don’t they?  Something goes wrong and they say, “If God is such a loving God, how could He let this happen?”  They question the character of God.  “If God is so good, why does He let evil go on in this world?”

Instead, Joshua needed to stop and think back to all the things God had done.  God had sent Moses to Egypt to lead the people out.  God let Moses be born at a time when all male babies were being killed, and then had him adopted into the royal family of Egypt.  God led the people out of slavery after performing those miracles to convince Pharaoh and the Egyptians that He is God.

God led the people through the Red Sea and He opened the way for them to walk on dry land.  Joshua had been there and walked between the walls of water.  God had sent them manna, food was left each morning for all those hundreds of thousands of people to gather and feed themselves.  For forty years it had been that way, and they had never once been short of food or water.  God so preserved His people that for forty years their sandals didn’t wear out on the rough and rocky plains of the wilderness.  God had led the people across the flooded Jordan and He’d been the One who had conquered mighty Jericho.

Think about it congregation, what has God done in your life?  Sure, we think we’ve achieved grand things, but who really made it possible?  Who was it that brought you safe through all these years and kept you as you are now?  But Joshua – just one defeat, and he blamed God.

Congregation, never question the character of God.  Think of all that He has done for you.  He has loved us with a love that reaches beyond and deeper than anything we have ever known in ourselves.  The Father gave His Son to die so that you and I might live.  The Father sent His Son to do what we cannot do, earn our peace with God and to cleanse us from all our sin.  And when we, by faith, receive Him, He welcomes us into the family of the saved, to live forever in glory with Him.  How can we blame God for defeats?  So, stand up!

But Joshua wasn’t finished.  If he were to stand up he would also have to stop focussing on this one defeat.  See him there in verse 8?  Whatever way he turned he couldn’t get himself out of the hole.  No other thought could overcome this defeat.  It dominated his thinking.

Have you ever been there?  You have to keep busy, keep planning something new, and keep active or else it all comes rushing back at you.  “What can I do?  What can I say, now that Israel has been routed by its enemies?” And so you lie down at night to sleep, your body worn out with fatigue, and yet your eyes spring open the moment the light clicks off, and your mind, like a moth to a bright and hot light, is drawn to that trial, that defeat.  How do we stand up from that?  How do we go on from that?

Think again of all the blessings God has already given, but don’t just stop at the past blessings.  Too many Christians are defeated when it comes to living for tomorrow.  Someone will say how can you live for tomorrow?  Today is hard enough, let alone tomorrow – and besides, doesn’t the Lord tell us not to think of tomorrow because there’s enough trouble today for us to be getting on with, without planning more?

But congregation, there is still a strong sense in which we must all be living for tomorrow.  The Lord hasn’t just placed us here to fill the time of day.  The Lord Jesus Christ did not merely come to save us from this day, but came and died and rose again so that you and I might live tomorrow and forever.  God’s promises to His people in Christ Jesus touch us in the here and now, but they carry on into deep, richer, more glorious things than we can possibly imagine.

Joshua ought to have looked back to the past blessings, in order to call to mind the promises God gave for the future.  It was to Abraham, back in Genesis 12:2-3, that God promised, “Go to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation, and will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Joshua should have remembered that promise, a promise that still applies to God’s people today.  Do you realise this, congregation?  If you are a believer, if you believe in Jesus Christ and that your sins are forgiven through Him who is both God and man, then you are among the people of God.  God will bless you and bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, and all the people of the earth will be blessed through you.

Joshua ought also to have remembered the more specific promise of God to him and the people as they entered the Promised Land.  These people had God’s promise to Moses back in Exodus 3:7-10, that He would rescue the people from oppression; that He would bring them up out of the land of slavery into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  This was a promise God confirmed and repeated to Joshua himself at the start of this book that carries his name.

But Joshua became problem conscious instead of power conscious.  He focussed on people and their weakness, on what he saw around himself instead of focussing on the Lord and the Lord’s will and the Lord’s power.

How often do we do that very same thing?  We focus on the clumsiness of the people around us.  People always let you down.  They always make such horrible mistakes, and we become suspicious that they might have it in for us, and how can they possibly be Christians if they behave like that?

It’s such a hard lesson to learn when we gather together like this, all of us sinners, sinners in the hands of a gracious, loving, merciful God.  And it’s Him who we ought to focus on and see.  Be power conscious, not problem conscious.

In spite of all the blessings he had and all the rich promises, Joshua at that moment still focussed on one single defeat.  Instead, like the apostle Paul, we must forget what is behind and press on and strain on toward what is ahead, toward the goal of winning the prize for which God has called us heavenward, and expect victory.

There is one other thing Joshua had to learn in order to be able to go forward again.  In verse nine here, he’s all concerned about what the Canaanites might think.  We have to stop worrying about public opinion.  God will take care of His own reputation.  We look at the modern church and we cringe as to how weak and defeated she appears in the world.  And we have the likes of John Spong going about calling out and claiming to be some modern day reformational leader who thinks he can save the church.  All the time the fellow is a greater servant of the devil than anyone else.  God will look after His reputation in His own all wise and sovereign way.  God will lift His people up when they are down.  God will lead His people home to the blessed glory of His kingdom.

There, congregation, is how to handle defeat and go on in the Name of the Lord.  He commands His people to stop lying in the dust and to stand up.  It’s time to be up and going.  The Lord is God.  He is sovereign.  Never question His character.  Don’t focus on any defeats or trials.  Recall God’s blessings, blessings past and blessings still to come.  Recall His precious promises in Christ Jesus.  And never ever give a thought to public opinion.  Serve the Lord, and Him only.

Well, Joshua did rise up, and he led his people to victory.  You, too, can rise up.  We have a resurrected, victorious Saviour, who sits at the right hand of God the Father, judging the nations.  His victory is ours, so rise up, and serve Him.

Amen.