SERIES: Joshua: Victory through Faith
Prerequisites for Special Service
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: What’s the difference between great athletes and mediocre athletes? More often than not, it’s not native physical ability, but rather desire, preparation and training. What’s the difference between a great salesman and an ordinary salesperson who just makes a living? Usually, it’s not a matter of personality or intelligence or even a superior product, but rather desire and preparation—a willingness to learn the product and study the market. What’s the difference between a great servant of the Lord and the average Christian who just gets by, helping a little here and a little there? The difference is not Bible knowledge or giftedness, but almost always desire and preparation.
Now curiously, nearly everyone would like to be great at what he or she does. The mediocre athlete would like to be Olympic class; the average salesperson would like to join the Million Dollar Club, and the ordinary Christian would like to be used in some special service for the Lord. But some don’t want it enough to pay the price, and others who may want it badly are unaware that there are certain critical prerequisites to greatness. This morning we want to look at some of those prerequisites in regard to spiritual service as we read the fifth chapter of Joshua:
Now when all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the LORD had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until we had crossed over, their hearts melted and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites.
At that time the LORD said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.” So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites at Gibeath Haaraloth.
Now this is why he did so: All those who came out of Egypt‑‑all the men of military age‑‑died in the desert on the way after leaving Egypt. All the people that came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the desert during the journey from Egypt had not. The Israelites had moved about in the desert forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the LORD. For the LORD had sworn to them that they would not see the land that he had solemnly promised their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. So he raised up their sons in their place, and these were the ones Joshua circumcised. They were still uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. And after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed.
Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.
On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan.
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
In this passage we find Joshua out walking by himself near Jericho, undoubtedly wondering how the Israelites, fresh from their miraculous crossing of the Jordan River, are going to defeat this walled city which stands in the way of their possession of the Promised Land. It’s not hard to visualize him approaching as close as safety will allow and surveying the city from several angles. No divine communication has come to him yet, so he ponders all the options open to him, searching for the right combination of strategy and surprise that might result in the downfall of Jericho.
Joshua desires to be used by God, and he has many of the key qualifications for being used. As we saw several weeks ago, he is a person who knows God, a person of faith, a person of action, a person who has been well-trained, a person of the Book, and a person of courage.
God has appointed him as a leader, and the conquest of Palestine is the special service for which he has been called. But can he handle it? Is he up to the challenge? Well, not quite, or perhaps we should say, not yet. There are a few things Joshua still needs to learn, and so, somewhere in the badlands right outside Jericho, Joshua suddenly meets up with a messenger from the Lord, and a special training session begins.
But before we are introduced to Joshua’s visitor, I want us to consider two significant events that occurred just before Joshua’s lonely walk—the Israelites renewed the covenant of circumcision and they resumed the Feast of Passover. The first prerequisite, then, for special service for the Lord that we find in this story is this:
Broken covenants must be renewed. (1-9)
A few moments ago, we read the story of the circumcision of the Israelite men. Circumcision was a sign of ownership. It marked the Jewish people as God’s special possession, a separated people, a holy nation that was to maintain purity in all their relationships—in marriage, in society, and in worship. Beginning with Abraham and extending for the next 600 years, the covenant of circumcision had been practiced religiously by the Israelites. But for the past 40 years it had not been practiced. Why not?
Some have suggested that once the Israelites left Egypt and became nomads in the wilderness, it was too difficult to carry out the procedure. But I think it more likely that God Himself removed the sign from them when they renounced His leadership and refused to trust Him at Kadesh Barnea 40 years earlier. It wasn’t until that entire adult generation had died out (with the exception of Caleb and Joshua) that God was willing to reinstitute the covenant.
Now God commands Joshua to circumcise the nation. From a military standpoint, however, this is not a very auspicious time to do so. Virtually the whole male population would be rendered helpless for several days, and the army of Israel would be extremely vulnerable to attack by the inhabitants of Jericho. Such an able general as Joshua was certainly aware of this danger, and must have been tempted to inquire, “Why wasn’t this done on the other side of the Jordan, where we were safe and where we camped idly for several days? Now that we’re right outside Jericho and the inhabitants are scared spitless, the intelligent thing to do is to strike immediately. Why put everything on hold in order to carry out this surgical procedure?”
What Joshua needed to learn, and what everyone of us needs to learn, is that God is never in a hurry. One writer has said that we’re always anxious to do something for God, and we forget that the first thing he wants is for us to be something for Him. God’s people have to be spiritually prepared before we can be trusted with victory. Otherwise, there is significant danger that we will assume that our frenetic activity and our ambitious plans are what carried the day. God is going to show them that He will carry the day. This delay, which is at least ten days in length, is to be a time of spiritual conditioning.
So Joshua doesn’t challenge the Lord. He knows in His heart that the Covenant of circumcision must be renewed. The people must once again accept the sign of God’s ownership. The reproach of Egypt must be rolled away (which probably refers to the scorn the Egyptians leveled on the Israelites when they turned away from the very threshold of the Promised Land). So, as we read in verse 8, “After the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed.”
We, too, have covenants with the Lord that we have made. Many of us made public covenants when we dedicated our children. Some of us made covenants when we dedicated our lives to God’s service as a teenager at camp. We made a covenant when we married our spouse. If some of these covenants have been broken, they need to be renewed, for God hates broken promises. Time and again in Scripture we are urged to keep what we have vowed. How can we expect God to use us greatly in His service if we have abandoned our commitments?
By the way, the covenant of circumcision is not irrelevant to us, even today. The Scriptures speak a lot about it, but they make clear that what is more important than physical circumcision is circumcision of the heart. Even in the Old Testament that was true. Listen to Deut. 10:16: “Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff‑necked any longer.” Again in Deut. 30:6 we read, “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” When we come to the New Testament, we find a similar emphasis on spiritual circumcision in Romans 2:28-29: “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.”
One other New Testament passage I would like for us to note is Colossians 2:11-14:
“In Christ you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
The message here is that the guilt, shame, and disgrace of our sinful past is gone! It has been cut off, and it can no longer control us. Its power has been broken.
But there is a second, related prerequisite for special service mentioned beginning in verse 10:
Neglected spiritual exercises must be resumed. (10)
The particular spiritual exercise at issue here in Joshua 5 is the Feast of Passover. You will recall that God instituted this feast in order to commemorate that amazing night when the Angel of the Lord went through the land of Egypt and slew the first-born son in every household except where blood was put on the door posts. The annual feast was designed to remind God’s people of who they are dealing with—a holy and all-powerful God who hates sin and will judge it severely.
But the Feast of Passover had not been celebrated since the giving of the law at Sinai, partly because the law required that men be circumcised to partake of Passover, and this new generation was not circumcised. Now it is important for Israel to re-institute this feast in preparation for their conquest of the Promised Land. It would reinforce their identity as God’s chosen people and remind them that they had been saved out of death and bondage.
The Passover, of course, has its counterpart in the New Testament practice of communion. On the night of Passover Jesus took bread and wine and gave it to His disciples, urging them to remember how He, through His death, was saving them out of eternal death and bondage. But the Lord’s Supper is not the only spiritual exercise that we sometimes neglect to our own detriment. The writer of Hebrews chides his listeners to “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.” I’m amazed sometimes at how many professing Christians think regular worship is optional. Of course, I’m preaching to the choir, so to speak; the people who need to be chided about worship are those who aren’t here.
Baptism is a spiritual exercise that Jesus clearly commanded and even modeled. But there are scores of professing believers in the average evangelical church who have chosen to neglect baptism. I don’t know how they justify it; you don’t find an unbaptized believer in the New Testament. Bible reading and prayer are also spiritual exercises that many neglect. So is witnessing. Friends, if we want to be greatly used by God, must we not renew broken covenants and resume neglected spiritual exercises?
Now in addition to these two prerequisites I see three others in our text today—three things we must discover and digest if we are to make a mark for God.
We must discover that we are not alone.
Joshua, as we previously noted, is walking alone near Jericho, his mind absorbed in thought and his eyes fixed on the ground, when suddenly into his peripheral vision comes a startling sight. Here’s how Josh 5:13 puts it: “Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’” The response is not what we would expect. The man says, “Neither. Your categories aren’t complete, Joshua. The issue is not whose side I’m on, the issue is who I am.” And who he is, is the commander of the army of the Lord. This terminology clearly identifies him as captain of God’s angelic forces.
Now the initial purpose of this encounter seems to be to teach Joshua the very crucial lesson that he is not alone in the battle that lay ahead of him. For creatures bound by just five senses, that is very easy to forget. The fact is we are surrounded by a world of spirits—evil spirits and angelic spirits. When we ignore that fact it allows Satan and His demons to take advantage of us, and it prevents us from enjoying the security and confidence that is available from knowing that God and His angels are present in our lives. Of course, we have the promise that “greater is He that is in us, (i.e., God)than he that is in the world (i.e., Satan).” (1 John 4:4)
Two Sundays ago I told of the experience of the missionary, John G. Paton, who learned of the protection of God’s angels after the fact. Last Sunday Paul told us of a little old lady in the subway in Moscow who, I would suggest, was most likely an angel from God. I believe angels are constantly involved in the lives of believers, and it is interesting how even secular books and TV are jumping on that bandwagon, but with their usual distortions, of course.
The point of the angelic visitor to Joshua is to remind him that he is not alone. He may have left his men behind, and he may feel lonely as he seeks to decide upon a strategy to take Jericho, but God is there. We need to learn this lesson ourselves. Sometimes we feel lonely and discouraged, and our Jerichos seem so formidable—godless friends, apathy in the church, lack of job security, a crumbling home, etc. We feel abandoned and our problems appear insoluble.
What we need above everything else is the realization that we are not alone, that God is still with us. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. The battle is the Lord’s.
Not only must we discover that we are not alone…,
We must discover that we are not in charge.
When the stranger identifies himself as Commander of the Lord’s army, Joshua immediately falls on his face to the earth. Why? Probably because he recognizes this One appearing before him as a theophany; i.e., an appearance of God Himself in human-like form. If it be objected that God is invisible and that no one has seen God at any time, we would respond that God became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, and there is no reason why He could not appear to men in human form in Old Testament times as well.
You notice that the theophany accepts worship and adoration. Even an angel is not allowed to receive such homage, only God. In Rev. 19:10 the Apostle John fell at an angel’s feet to worship him, and here is the angel’s response: “Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!” But the angel who confronts Joshua does not object, leading me to believe he is more than an angel. And furthermore, the ground he stands upon is called “holy ground,” and the only other time such a term is used (Ex. 3:4), it was God Himself speaking to Moses at the burning bush.
Well, what’s the significance of Joshua being confronted here by the Lord God? Notice that His sword is drawn; He is ready for battle; He is ready to lead the people to victory. Joshua is no longer in charge here (actually he never was. It’s just that he didn’t know it).
Such a realization can be both disconcerting and liberating. It can be disconcerting for the man or woman who likes to be in control, who likes to get the credit for whatever is accomplished, and who has an insatiable ego which isn’t satisfied unless all eyes are on him. And there are sadly many such people in the Lord’s service. They have to be at the center of every decision, they love to see their name and picture in print, they are publicity hounds who list all their degrees after their name.
But before God can use us mightily, he often has to take us down a peg or two or even hurt us deeply—to teach us that He is in command. We are, at best, merely God’s lieutenants. This seems to be what Paul is getting at in 2 Cor. 4:7: “But we have this treasure (and the treasure is identified in the previous verse as the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ) in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” God has chosen to use weak humans to accomplish His purposes so that He gets the credit. We are just clay pots; the treasure is God’s work through us.
You know something. When you’re in the hospital, they don’t bring your medicine in a silver chalice—they bring it in a paper cup. It’s the medicine that counts, not the container. And if God is willing to use you or me as His servants in accomplishing His will, it’s His power and His authority that counts, not ours. He’s the one in charge.
On the other hand, this same realization that we are not in charge can be liberating if viewed from another perspective. It can spell relief from the burden of feeling that the success or failure of the work lies on our shoulders. To know that God is in control and that we are at best second-in-command really takes the pressure off.
Years ago when I was going through a rare period of discouragement, my father gave me some excellent advice. He said, “Mike, you don’t own the people to whom you are ministering. They don’t belong to you. They are God’s people and ultimately He is responsible for them.” I needed that because subconsciously I had come to the point that I felt I was in command and the pressure of that was more than I could handle.
By the way, along with realizing we are not in charge comes the need to acknowledge that the One who is in charge is holy and deserves all our worship and devotion. When Joshua asks the angelic messenger, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”, the answer is, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.”
Sometimes even though we realize God is in control, we fail to acknowledge just how great, how holy, how powerful He is. We show this by fretting, by using methods in our ministry that are beneath the dignity of the Gospel, by getting depressed when things don’t go as we planned, and by failing to pray as we should.
It has been said many times, but it bears repeating, that one’s success in the service of the Lord is not nearly so dependent on one’s IQ or personality or drive as it is upon one’s prayer life, one’s devotion, and one’s worship of God. “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord.” (Zech. 4:6) Cleanness rather than cleverness, worship rather than work are the prime conditions for successful service.
The final truth Joshua teaches us is that …
We must discover that the task is not ours to accomplish.
If it is important for us to devote ourselves to worship of the God who is with us and is actually in charge, then it is equally important for us to realize that the work He delegates to us is not ours alone to accomplish. Look at Joshua 6:1-2: “Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the LORD said to Joshua, ‘See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.’”
Notice the tense here: “I have given,” not “I will give.” God has already won the battle of Jericho; all he wants Joshua to do is to enjoy the results. Someone has said that we do not fight for victory but from victory. If God has assigned us a ministry or an area of service, then He will go before us, take care of the obstacles, and accomplish His purposes. In a sense all He asks us to do is to go in and mop up afterwards. By that I don’t mean to imply that our part is unimportant or that we can go at it apathetically. Had the Israelites refused to be obedient and to march around the city as God told them to, God would have postponed their victory or cancelled it altogether. We need to be obedient and diligent, but ultimately the task is not ours but God’s.
Now let’s apply these principles to an area of service that perhaps God is speaking to us about. Perhaps it is teaching a Sunday School class; or being a youth coach; or going to the mission field; maybe it’s witnessing to a neighbor or a fellow employee at work; perhaps you’ve been asked to be a Bible Study Fellowship leader next Fall or the leader of a Promise Keeper’s group. Sensing that God may be leading you in such a direction, how do you prepare yourself?
First, examine your heart to see if there are broken promises and unkept covenants which need to be confessed and renewed. Second, consider whether there are important spiritual disciplines that must be resumed. Third, recognize that God isn’t asking you to take on a ministry by yourself. He has promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Fourth, realize that God hasn’t put you in charge. Rather he has asked you to serve under Him and perhaps under others as well. While this means you won’t get all the credit when things go well, it also relieves you from taking all the blame when things don’t go so well.
And finally, discover that if God has really assigned a task to you, then He will go ahead of you to accomplish it for you. All you need to do is to be faithful and obedient. “It is required in stewards,” Paul writes, “that a person be found faithful.” (1 Cor. 4:2) Not successful, not smart, not rich, not famous, but faithful.
Conclusion: There’s a hymn we used to sing a lot when I was a kid. It is called “Channels Only.” It’s not in our hymnals, so we can’t sing it this morning, but I do want to read some of the words:
“How I praise thee, precious Savior, that thy love laid hold of me;
thou hast saved and cleansed and filled me that I might thy channel be.
Emptied that thou shouldest fill me, a clean vessel in thy hand,
with no power but as thou givest graciously with each command.
Channels only, blessed Master, but with all thy wondrous power
flowing through us, thou canst use us every day and every hour.”
DATE: June 2, 1996
Tags:
Covenant
Angels
Faithfulness