Clough Manhood Series Lesson 22

Joshua: Confidence, Curiosity, and Humility

These are feedback cards that have sort of accumulated, mainly because I forget to bring them to the pulpit Sunday night. One involves an engaged couple. A situation is an engaged couple who are both growing Christians and are seeking God’s will; when does the woman start submitting to the man. I have taken the extreme of not submitting at all before marriage and felt guilty. I am engaged now and am submitting for the most part but my parents are highly against it. I am in the middle. What are some principles to follow? All right, the problem there is in the areas of guidance, in the gray areas that just really are, as far as obtaining a principle here and a principle there you’re back to Genesis 2; that’s a situation if where there’s a conflict during the engagement period, it seems to me that some conversation, lengthy conversation ought to take place. It looks like there are two different agendas operating, that one person is going one direction in life and one is going in another direction and I would say that there ought to be some communication to find out just why our agendas are that different. It seems to me that’s one of the problems. I’d often also be interested in know why parents are highly against it. Now that may be legitimate and it may not be, but I think that’s some factors. They apparently are good external observers and they might have some positive points. They might be wrong in some of their conclusions but their observations are worth hearing and worth discussing. So all I can say here is, not knowing anything more than what has been asked is that some deep conversation is needed in the area of agendas. Where are we, as individuals, going.

Another card is similar to this. Some women are very indignant when the husband decides to join an all male group for a weekend trip, or when he occasionally joins some other men at the coffee shop for visitation. If this is a rare occurrence, something that only comes up once in a great while, would the woman be out of line in sulking or griping about this and thus causing mental anguish in the man? So we have interesting questions. Well, that’s a good question because that comes up. And if the woman is sulking and pouting and griping about a once a month affair of some sort like this, I think the question ought to be that there must be something else; I mean, no woman in her right mind is going to gripe about this kind of an infrequent thing. What obviously is happening is that this infrequent thing happens to be the straw that must be breaking the camel’s back about a lot of other things, and it’s simply she sulks about this because that’s brings to surface a whole package of material, a whole package of things that either she feels that she’s not getting the attention she deserves and she ought to be, so the question is answered by you’d better find out why she’s griping. There are other reasons. That’s the problem with women, generally, is that you always have to pry them loose; they keep all this stuff inside and pout and sulk and carry on and it’s just very few times they’ll just be candid with you about things. So you have to play the little game of chasing them all around Robin Hood’s barn to make them tell you what the problem is, and that’s obviously what’s going on here. So good luck chasing.

Another question; this concerns more the third divine institution. Since it is the parents right to expect obedience, how do you get it? What do you do with your kids? [laughter] Those of you don’t have kids, you laugh now; just remember April 24^th you laughed. This is broken down into three sub sections. (a) What do you expect of your kids at different ages. (b) What sins are serious enough to wait for daddy to come home. And(c) what are major sins that should be dealt with and what are some of the more minor sins that can be worked on later, particularly if the children are already spoiled? Well, obviously with this limited data, I mean, you know, you’re asked to explain the universe in just five minutes and just sit down and we’ll have a chat; it’s not quite that simple. So I would suggest one source is Jay Adams Christian Living in the Home, particularly in that there’s a chapter on what he calls the code of conduct, and the gist of the suggestion is that the home must be brought under God’s law. This happens two ways. First of all, the parents have to be under the law of God in the sense that if they cut across what is God’s will that they be willing to acknowledge their mistakes. And the advantage of this is that you don’t threaten your own authority if you let God’s laws do the authority work for you. It takes a vast load off your back if you cast the authority over to the Scripture and say okay, now here’s the standard: mom and dad violate the standard, children violate the standard but at least we’ve got a standard, an ideal to shoot for. And this is the way it’s going to be in this house. And therefore you divert the attention away from the (quote) “inherent authority” of the parents. There is no inherent authority in the parents. The only way the parents can get hold of… other than just beat the kid, you know, hang them up like you do the dog or something, the only way you can get authority is to have the authority a derivative one under the framework of the law of God. And once the law of God is there, then you work within that.

Now those of you who were in the family training program this morning, you saw something about how consistency, just with animals, the consistency of asking something and respecting it, not giving 500 dos and don’ts and following up 1% of them, but giving a few things but then carrying them out. And my experience is and it’s the experience of most people, is that 99% of your energy is devoted to carrying it out. It doesn’t require much energy to lay down laws and rules. So that’s where we all fail as parents is we just get tired of enforcing the law, and it just does get tiresome at times. You’re just fed up and you don’t want to hassle with it. But you have to keep on hassling with it because the moment the child senses that you’re not going to hassle with them, you’ve just taught them a whole wad. You’ve told him that he can get away with it if he just persists long enough. So there’s that duality, in other words, as I see it there’s a duality of authority of the Word of God so that the parent doesn’t become a tyrant in and of himself. It is a derivative authority, so there’s room for grace, there’s room for conformity and nonconformity, without losing the overall framework of the Word. But then there’s always the dogged persistent day in day out rule enforcement. And that’s just got to happen. Children cannot be taught by our example that when we lay a rule down that we don’t mean it, and that we have to yell and scream and carry on for sixteen times before something happens.

So this is something, that again, as I said in the family training this morning, one of the things in training animals and I presume some of you who have trained animals know this very, very well, and those of us who haven’t trained animals before do not know it, and that is how this is the same thing with them. You have to train; that dog that was brought in here this morning weighed close to 100 pounds. And you just don’t dangle him on the end of a leash; he’ll dangle you on the end of a leash but he has to be trained, he has to be choked once in a while, he has to be brought in hard and then he understands that when that leash is on, you tell him to heel, stop, sit, go, that that’s what you mean and you’re not going to give him a command five times, six or seven times; you’re only give it once and he’s going to do it, hundred pounds or no hundred pounds, it’s going to happen. And that’s the kind of expectancy that’s got to happen and it’s just, frankly, a war of endurance; that’s what it is, parents enduring against children. And this is a very unromantic, unglamorous thing. You won’t see it ever stated this way in the nice sweet Christian devotional books but that’s basically what it is: a war of endurance to see whose laws are going to prevail, whether the parent’s laws are going to prevail or the children’s laws are going to prevail.

That’s a good introduction to our man tonight, Joshua. We finished the Law, we finished certain things about the Law, and in our doctrine of manhood we’ve come quite a way in our framework, so let’s look and see where we’ve come, see some lessons that we’ve learned.

We studied the area of creation first. We’ve learned some very interesting things about the male soul, things that even today modern psychology really doesn’t appreciate. Or in some areas is just beginning to appreciate, and that is that man was created to be a dominion man. And this dominion man was to show his dominion in two basic areas, according to Genesis and creation. He was to subdue the earth external to his home, and he was to subdue and lead his family. And so the Scriptures say that the male self-image is at its highest when the man is functioning in those roles, when he is functioning at doing something successfully, and when he is working with his family. The Bible would insist that it is the patriarchal man who is the happiest man because the patriarchal man is raising a home for the future generation, and that therefore it’s not the man who is the President of GM who’s the happiest man. The happiest man is the man who’s the father of children that he’s proud of who can carry on. That makes him happy and that’s because his soul is made to be that way, and he’s not going to be happy if it isn’t that way.

A man is going to be happy in proportion to that in which he is creative and productive. He’s got to know that the works of his hands are significant. This is why some men, frankly, ought to quit some of their jobs, because they may be involved in jobs where they never get any sensation that what they’re doing counts in any real way. And so it may seem eccentric from the world’s point of view, but sometimes the man has to just quit and go into something else and do it to see the results of his handiwork and become convinced of his worthwhile-ness, and then maybe he goes back and keeps on doing what he was doing. Or maybe he takes up a hobby; maybe he has a frustrating assembly line type job, very impersonal, and this doesn’t provide him any fulfillment and so his fulfillment has got to be provided somewhere and therefore his avocation becomes important. And frequently today we see in this discombobulated markets that men’s avocations are providing them more money, financially, than their vocation. Well, this is all information we get from the Genesis picture of man. If man would only go back to the Genesis picture of man they could see that for which they were designed and without which they will never be happy.

Then we came to the fall and we asked questions. We asked questions like where does the man get hit the hardest by the fall. We know where the woman gets hit the hardest; it’s in childrearing, childbearing and childrearing. That’s what hits her and that’s her burden. But where does the man get hit the hardest, and it’s very clear from the Genesis text that the man gets hit the hardest from the job point of view. And this is why the frustration of Adam as Adam no sweats as he subdues the earth, as he tills the garden. And therefore this is why the man will frequently come home upset from a job and why, if his family members do not understand, they won’t understand the fact that this upsetness that occurs is the result of the fall. Maybe he’s handling it Scripturally, maybe he isn’t, but the frustration itself is located mostly, in most men, in that area. Then later on if it’s not dealt with properly then it will affect the home and we have an escalation of the thing. But generally speaking the Scriptures would predict that most men will go astray on the job first. There’ll be something in this area where Satan will clobber them.

We found also in studying the fall and its effect on the male that it drives men to an autonomous ambition; they go the way of Cain and Cain’s job was he was going to build something and he had been, of course, endowed to subdue the earth, but the problem with Cain was he was going to subdue the earth but in an ungodly way. So we have the ambition that comes over from creation but now we have that ambition not killed off but twisted and so we have Cain building a city that defies God: I will build my empire, I’ll be creative, but I will not submit to the law of God. And so we have city-building, and a lot of men are engaged in city-building after Cain; they’re simply repeating Cain’s mistake. And it generally deteriorates into the two forms we saw it in Genesis 4, unjust violence and sexual perversion. These are the two places where with the male it generally winds up.

Then we passed on to the flood, the Noahic flood. We said at this time of the flood and the Noahic Covenant in this area where we have a remarkable demonstration of the leadership of the man in his family; that in one generation the entire population of the earth was condemned, except for one family led by one man. And Noah, therefore, tells the man something else. He tells the Christian man that he can look upon his life as a series of concentric circles; himself, his wife, his family and then the outside world. And so we have Noah and Noah is able to subdue himself and his wife and his family, but he is not able to subdue his own generation, due to their intense sin levels he was simply bounced off; he simply was repelled by his generation. He could not subdue it and so therefore because the godly man could not subdue his generation God had to judge that generation very severely. But there is an example of the family man and once again testifies to the biblical norm and standard of the man, that the happiest man is the patriarchal man; the man who shows his dominion in his home and what he produces.

Then we went to the call of Abraham and there again we saw another family illustration. We saw the rite of circumcision given, a rite that is clearly male only and therefore shows that the male carries the spiritual responsibility. The woman does not; she is given no privilege whatever under the Abrahamic Covenant, other than as a believer, all the leadership functions of that covenant are passed from male to male, never from man to woman, showing again that any case where the woman attains spiritual leadership it is an abnormality in the system. We saw the things with Abraham, we saw that when he neglected the call of God in his life there were two things happened in his relationship to his wife. First, either he would neglect her to the point where she was physically endangered, or he would fawn on her to the point where he was spiritually endangered by her bad advice. And we have the pendulum swinging between those two things. When the man becomes passive toward his wife and lets her run his life without any conscience and judgment and so on, and then the other extreme where he totally neglects her as he did in Egypt, and before some of the Palestinian kings, when Sarah became very endangered.

We went to the Exodus and we studied Moses, and we showed how Moses is the kind of man who felt very insecure in his calling of God. Moses had a forty year struggle before he ever showed confidence to do the job for which God had called him. And that should be an encouragement; that God will face men with this kind of thing. Moses, from the human point of view, had all the assets. He had the brains, he was a hand to hand combat man in the Egyptian army, he was the man who knew everything as far as the skill, the pieces, but Moses lacked the overall framework to tie the pieces together and therefore he was an unconfident man. This is why when God says Moses, you’re going to go down in Egypt. But God, I can’t go down to Egypt, I can’t do that. And that fight all the time, well God, I can’t really do that, I’m not qualified. And God’s answer is if I called you I’ll see that you are qualified. I don’t call unqualified people. So that was a personal struggle with Moses and I find that encouraging. Moses dealt with it, largely through prayerful argument with God. Over and over again we find Moses meeting his frustrations in angry prayer to God. Now you can say well, that wasn’t the most ideal prayer set up on earth. True, but at least it was prayer, and that’s better than nothing. So Moses knew where to take his arguments. He didn’t usually take them to other people; he took them back to God Himself.

Then we studied Sinai, and as I indicated in this question about gaining authority over children, in the Law, Mount Sinai, we have again man rules by means of the Law. If you let God’s Law do the work for you you’re way ahead of the game; it takes the heat off, not to have to stand up before somebody and say my word is this and this is the way it’s going to be. That takes energy, tremendous energy to drive and lead people on your program; more energy, I would say, than most men have. Now some, very spectacular men can do this, can come out with their own autonomous program and lead men with it. I frankly think the reason is because they’re led of Satan to do this. I don’t see how a man can create his own autonomous program and win and lead people to follow that program without help from his friends below. But with Moses and with the men under the Law, they let God’s Law define the program. So that takes a big burden off our shoulders now. Now we don’t at least have to create that. That’s all set for us. Now what we do is we come in with this piece, and this creative piece, but it’s all within the framework. It takes a great burden off our shoulders. We are given a framework.

If you want to say this, illustrate it in say an academic area, think of the non-Christian and the Christian going into a study of history. Here’s the non-Christian man, the poor guy, he sits here with volumes and reams of historic materials and he scratches his head and he says where is history going? I don’t know where history is going, I can’t get outside of history to look down at history to find out where it’s going. And so he struggles with a very elementary question, where’s it all going. And then he’s called upon as an historian to work with this piece, that piece, this piece and that piece, the poor guy, how’s going to work with this piece and that piece if he doesn’t know where it’s all going. You see, he never gets a head start on the whole thing and the result is he gets a little piece here, a little piece there and so on, and that’s non-Christian scholarship. It’s diversity with no plan, no reason, no rhyme.

But the Christian Bible believing man says God’s Word tells me where history is going; I don’t have to guess about it, that question is all solved for me. So I’ll set that question aside and work within that question, knowing that history is going such and such a way, that I’m going to take this with this data, this data, this data, this data and this data. In other words, the law of God does the work for you. And it’s a very relaxing feeling, to know that basic questions are solved. And maybe you don’t know all the details of the Scripture; that’s okay, at least you know that the Scriptures have the answer and someday when you need to dig into it or you have the time you know that someday you can find the answer there. Right now you haven’t got the time but at least there’s confidence the answers are there. That’s more than the non-Christian man can say, he doesn’t know where he’s going and the result is that it stresses him.

We’ve come now out of the Law and we come to the series back again of examples of men in the Scripture and we’ll be on this for some time, working our way through many texts of Scripture, first this man, then that man, then this man, then another man. Tonight we’re going to deal with Joshua. We want to look at these men because they’re all different men. Hopefully if you don’t get anything else out of this series you’ll see the diverse of men; there’s no set pattern or formula for a certain personality guy. It’s just not in the Scripture. Now there are certain theological absolutes, such as responding to God’s grace and authority, yes; but as far as personality type is concerned, there are all types here. None of them are standard and this ought to relax men, to realize that you do not have to mimic someone else’s personality. You have been given your own personality by God, don’t be ashamed of it, use it. And don’t try to live someone else’s personality. You don’t have the equipment and God doesn’t ask you to do that.

Now we’re going to take a series of incidents out of Joshua’s life to show three characteristics of this particular man. Now you can organize this different ways, this is not exhaustive, but it’s a suggestion. The first thing about Joshua that we understand that’s very interesting, because in this he shares a similar characteristic with another man in Scripture, Samuel. And that is both of them were very curious, curious about the truth. You always find Joshua and Samuel the kind of guys, you know, you can see them if they’re a bug in cars, they always want to lift the hood up and find out what’s underneath, how does it go, how many cubic inches has this got, how many barrels in the carburetor, does this have electronic injection or not, what’s going on in this thing. All right, they’re curious, they want to know how it works. Now it’s interesting that two of the great men of the Old Testament had this same curiosity but it was directed toward God and His Scripture. What does God want to do? How does God work? I’m always curious. Every time God was revealing some big new hunk of revelation who was always stationed outside listening? Joshua and Samuel; they were pests, almost, in trying to figure out about God. Anytime God was speaking those guys made it their business to find out what He was saying. They were curious. We’ll call this the characteristic of holy curiosity. Both these men had it.

Now they had something else, and with this I’m not going to parallel any longer with Samuel, but Joshua had a second characteristic, and that was a fantastic confidence. If God told him to march off a cliff and he would ask for directions on the way down. This was the kind of man Joshua was, extremely confident in God’s Word. If God said that was it, Yes Sir, we’ll do it! And we’ll ask questions how to do it later on but we’ll do it. Tremendous model. Then a third characteristic we find over and over again, which is really a derivative of the second one, is a very interesting kind of humility. You’d never think of General Joshua as a humble man yet he was. Like Moses he recognized his rank in the plan of God; he recognized that he had a certain rank; he didn’t go over that rank and he didn’t act under that rank.

See, this is why I suggest to the guys that go to seminary that they go in the military first. Of course, I know they all have reasons why it doesn’t pertain to them personally and why this is just a queer eccentricity of Clough. I have reasons for what I say and one of the reasons is that military life is the quickest place to see rank operate, sometimes under vexing situations. And that’s one of the reasons why I keep telling them this, but I see that most of them don’t listen. I keep telling them this because that is necessary to appreciate how things function in the body of Christ. And we’ve had some seminary boys leave Lubbock Bible Church and go off the deep end and act like they have the rank of General and they are only Sergeants. And they’re not going to be Generals for a long time and the way they’re acting they’re never going to be Generals. Someday they may be but they’re not acting their rank; they don’t have their rank and they have no respect for others in the body of Christ with a certain rank. We had one boy that wrote the snottiest letter I’ve ever seen to a friend of mine who’s a pastor, trying to straighten him out as to… this particular pastor tried to help him for months. Now you just don’t do that; that is pulling rank. If he wanted to discuss a question, and some of it was legitimate, then they could have met together and discussed it but it didn’t have to be that way; that was the wrong way to do it. And we had someone just a little bit too big for their britches. And so we have this problem.

Joshua knew how to handle the situation. Exodus 17:8 is one of these incidents. We’ll just go through some of the incidents and try to get a model. In your mind, as an exercise while we’re going this, try to create a personality profile of Joshua. Try to imagine if we assigned you to write a dramatic reenactment of Joshua’s life, what would you do? You’d have to create incidents that aren’t in the Scriptures to fill it in. How would you make the incidents? Think on those questions as we go through these little snapshots here and there, available in the Scriptures, of Joshua’s life.

“Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim. [9] And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek: tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. [10] So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek: and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. [11] And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. [12] But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, the one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the son. [13] And Joshua discomforted [vanquished] Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. [14] And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a boo, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. [15] And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi: [16] For he said, Because the LORD has sworn that the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” Incidentally, that last verse is an adumbration of the Trinity in case you didn’t notice, with the Father and the Son.

Now this particular incident shows Joshua as battle commander under the command of Moses. The battle is not a small one. In verse 8, by our best historic estimates, according to the Midrash, consisted of 400,000 warriors amassed against some equal amount of Jews. So this was not just a little petty firefight involving a small patrol here and there. This was a major battle in hand to hand combat. According to Numbers 24:20 Amalek was the greatest nation on earth at this time in history. Those of you interested in Velikovsky will notice that Velikovsky builds on this particular fact for his thesis on adjusting chronology.

All right, in this situation notice the setup. Moses, in verse 9 gives the command to Joshua. Moses doesn’t fight; Joshua does. There’s no resentment in verse 9, well Moses, if you’re so great you come out and do it. No, because that’s not Moses’ job at that point in time. It’s Joshua’s job to go out and risk his life, not Moses’ job. And so notice the reason in verse 9 is given to Joshua. “Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” And so you find right here Joshua is willing to commit his life, and more than that, as a battle commander he is willing to take upon his shoulders the responsibility of giving orders to men who will die in battle. One of the things that puts gray hairs on the men who are the officers is the realization that as a result of their personal order young men will go out to die. And this has caused some officers in their life as they’ve grown older, just go crazy because they dream of it at night the young boys that pass before their eyes that are now dead because they carried, they said “Yes, Sir,” and that was the last they ever saw of them because they were shot on the battlefield. It’s a terrific burden of leadership and one who has never been in that, I don’t think those of us who haven’t had that experience can’t really imagine it; we can only read about it and sort of vicariously experience by biography.

I was reading this week about Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel and how they say he’s a very quiet man. Of course, as you know he’s been deposed because of certain financial things and so on. But the point about Rabin is he’s always been a mystery to the Jewish people because he’s always been so quiet. His career began when he was a boy, I think he was 17 years old, in 1947, in the war for independence. Rabin was considered back then as a late teenager a tremendous statistician; he was a man who planned the convoys that used to go between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He would plan the flying of the two planes that the Israelis had to monitor that long winding road up through the mountains when the Arabs would sweep down from the high hills and massacre them as the came up. It was Rabin who was the strategist; always quiet but very perceptive. And over the years, from 1948 on up to the 1967 Six Day War, Rabin ascended in his rank and became the Commander in Chief of the Israeli army.

And there’s a great mystery about Rabin because what happened… they knew that they had to go to battle in 1967, contrary to all the anti-Semitic propaganda you’re getting about the Jews started it and so on, Nasser was already threatening on the radio that within days every Jew in Israel would be fleeing back to Europe where they belonged, said he, over the Arab radio. Well, with a guy like that, massing troops on your border, you don’t sit there and take the first blow. So the Jewish people organized their attack, neatly destroyed the entire Egyptian Air Force on the ground in some 45 minutes, and you know the history of that particular war. But it’s interesting, as the war broke out, for 48 hours Rabin became violently ill and sick, and he had to let another man assume command of the soldiers as he ordered them into battle. And men have often wondered, knowing Rabin’s character, why, and he expressed it privately, his great reluctance to give an order that would cause men to die. And he’s never said this in any of his biographies why he fell sick on those crucial 48 hours as the Six Day War began, but men have suspected this. And so we find this in many men.

And here Joshua is doing the same thing; he’s a man who has to go out and order young men into battle and he’s got to be down there on the battlefield and watching it all happen. And notice, this is the significance of why in verse 9 Moses said Joshua, I’m going to hold the rod of God up. So this relieves the pressure on Joshua; he’s put in a position where he has to do a distasteful thing, a horribly distasteful thing; it must not come natural to most normal men. And he does it because he looks back of him and he sees, well God is with us, I’ll do it for that sake. He looks behind even Moses to the God of Moses, and there you see Joshua’s toughness; a quality in his soul of toughness, his confidence.

Notice in Joshua 17:11-12, as the battle see-saws back and forth, God deliberately designed the battle this way, incidentally, to teach them a lesson on reliance early in the holy wars so that later in the holy wars they wouldn’t have to learn the hard way. This is just kind of a training situation God supernaturally designed to teach them something. Notice in verse 13 Joshua carried out his mission, he killed the enemy, he slaughtered them. It’s not a pleasant thing; violence is never pleasurable but here’s a man who followed just violence and he destroyed the enemy. He would not accept compromise or deterrent, he destroyed the enemy. If the enemy is the kind of person who is coming at you to kill you, the discussion ends until you kill him first. Now you can say that’s non-Biblical and non-Christian, I say it isn’t. I say that’s the price you pay as living in what the Bible calls a fallen universe. There is a time for peace negotiations, but when you are attacked there’s nothing left to discuss. At that point it’s either you or your enemy; one of you is going to die, maybe both but at least one is going to die, so let it be the other person.

Then in verse 14 you notice how Moses cared for Joshua, he wanted to make sure that Joshua had spiritual orientation. And you’ll notice that apparently, we don’t know to whom verse 14 is addressed, presumably it’s to the Levites, they were to create the book, it was on a parchment, they didn’t have bound volumes, and the Levites were to keep the parchment and they were to “rehearse it in the ears of Joshua;” that means to read it to him. So everywhere Joshua went on his staff he would have the Levites constantly reading him the Scriptures, over and over and over and over and over again.

It reminds us in the Civil War General Stonewall Jackson had on his staff one of the great outstanding theologians of the south, a man by the name of Dabney. Dabney was on General Stonewall Jackson’s staff and he formulated a tremendous amount of theology, he taught in Virginia, and during the war Dabney was very influential in the confederate staff of constantly teaching the Word, constantly teaching the Word. And Jackson had him there for no other reason that to constantly teach him the Word. So Christian gentlemen down through history who have been in the military have required this constant bathing and soaking in the Scriptures. Joshua was one of these men.

Now another incident in Joshua’s life that’s revealing is found in Exodus 24:13. The first incident clearly demonstrates his confidence; it clearly shows that his confidence is not an autonomous confidence; it’s a confidence borne of his intimacy with the Scriptures. He used the faith technique to the maximum. In Exodus 24:13, this is a minor little incident and I’m going to compare this to some other verses and I’m going to pull out of this just a little minor point that reveals a great deal of Joshua’s personal character. Let’s go to verse 12, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me to the mountain, and be there; and I will give you tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them. [13] And Moses rose up, and his minister [servant], Joshua; and Moses went up into the mount of God. [14] And he said to the elders, You wait here for us, until we come again unto you: and behold, Aaron and Hur are with you,” and the significance of this is that Aaron was the high priest of the nation. Joshua had no official position other than commander in chief of the army, but spiritually Joshua did not have a high position. But notice who goes up the mountain higher than everyone else except Moses—Joshua. See, he always makes sure he’s there when there’s some neat thing happening that God is going to do. He wants to see God work. See, that’s his holy curiosity operating. [15] “And Moses went up into the mountain, and a cloud covered the mount. [16] And the glory of the LORD abode on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and the seventh day he called Moses out of the midst of the cloud. [17] And Moses went into the midst of the cloud,” and so on.

Now turn to Exodus 32:15 when he comes back down. “And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand….” [16] “The tables were the work of God,” now they’re walking down the mountain and the elders are on the bottom part of the mountain, but between the elders and Moses is Joshua, so as Moses walks down the mountain he meets Joshua so that in verse 17, “And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.” And he identifies it and so on. And the point there is, in this very small incident, is we have his curiosity. God is doing something neat, I want to watch, I’m going to get as close to that cloud as I can. Now there shows you something of Joshua’s character. That is Joshua’s personality, filled by the working by the Spirit but it has a holy sacred curiosity.

Turn to Exodus 33:11, again the same principle. This is what reminds me of Samuel. “And the LORD spoke unto Moses face to face, as a man speak unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, never departed out of the tabernacle.” See, he was always there, watching, listening, learning, what God was saying to Moses. So always notice this feature about Joshua; he is a male believer who is extremely curious about spiritual things.

Turn to Numbers 11:26, here Joshua learns another lesson and he learns it well. Whereas we’ve seen his confidence, we’ve seen his holy curiosity, now we see that third characteristic emerging, his humility. Numbers 11:26, “But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad: and the Spirit rested upon them; and they were of them that were written, but they went not out unto the tabernacle: and they prophesied in the camp. [27] And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp. [28] And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, stop them.” Now it’s interesting to watch Moses’ correction to Joshua. See, Moses is the older man, Joshua is a very young man. The loyalty in verse 28 is to Moses because Joshua recognizes the principle of authority and doesn’t want his leader to be undermined by this episode that’s going on in the camp. See the faithfulness to his overseer, to the man who stands over him.

[29] “But Moses said unto him, Do you envy for my sake? Would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put His Spirit upon them!” So Moses corrects him but the very way Moses corrects him in verse 29 shows you that Joshua is extremely loyal to Moses. Again, notice the line, the chain of command, the respect, the humility.

Let’s come to the most famous of all in Numbers 13:27, the spies. Joshua was one of the two men who came back who was on positive volition and said we can take it. The other clods phased out. But in verse 27, “And they told him, and said, We came unto the land where you sent us, and surely it flows with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.” This refers to the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant. [28] “Nevertheless, the people are strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover, we saw the children of Anak there. [29] The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south [Negev]; and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the edge of the Jordan. [30] And Caleb stilled the people before Moses,” now Joshua was also part of this, so even though Caleb is mentioned we want to understand Joshua is there too. “…Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. [31] But the men that went up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we are. [32] And they brought up an evil report of the land,” and the perception, notice verse 33, remember what we said about selective perception? Here you watch it operating again. “And there we saw giants, the sons of Anak, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so were we in their sight.”

In other words, they’re unsaved, their lack of faith has caused their perception… now there may have been giants there, we’re not debating the fact that the giants were there, but what we are debating is they didn’t bring a balanced report. They didn’t bring the balanced report of who is on their side; isn’t the Lord Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form, isn’t He stronger than the giants. So they brought back a very truncated, narrow report that just was deliberately selective. Now you watch yourself; when you’re out of fellowship you know you have this experience; I have it and I know you have it. And that is you’ll pick up… the sin nature just loves to pick out everything that will discourage you about the Word, discourage you about applying the promises, try to discourage you from continuity with previous obedience and so on. And it seems like you just get rooted right on every discouraging factor there is. Now there might be a hundred factors and four of them discouraging, and guess which four you’re preoccupied with, because the sin nature selectively causes the selective perception to operate. And we’ve got to watch this, and this is a classic case of selective perception operating.

And you have a panic in Numbers 14:1, an absolute panic. [“And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.”] This is what happens where you have discouragement sweep people off their feet and literally they become a mob. Notice the complaint in verse 2, it would have been better to die in Egypt. [“And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!”] And they’re now complaining it’s the Lord’s fault in verse 3, and the Lord is so nasty. Look at the accusation there, the Lord hates us, see, He brought our wives and our children out into the desert so we can die out here. Now that’s casting aspersion at God’s character. [“And wherefore has the LORD brought us out into this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? Where it not better for us to return unto Egypt?”] And it goes on to describe this and so on.

Now Numbers 14:6, here’s Joshua coming into the picture. [“And Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, who were of them that] “rent their clothes, [7] And they spoke unto all the company of the children of Israel,” now look at their mentality; “saying, The land, which we passed through is exceedingly good. [8] If the LORD delight in us, then He will bring us into the land, and give it to us…. [9] Don’t rebel [against the LORD], neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us,” look at that, there’s your confidence, fantastic confidence, they’re just bread, a bread and butter situation, no sweat. That’s what he’s telling them, that’s exactly what he’s saying. If you get your selective perception straightened out, guys, and get your eyes on the Lord so you can trust Him, no sweat. It’s interesting that the very phrase we often use, that’s bread and butter, is used right here in the original languages. And so he goes on, Numbers 14:10, the response of the mob. God, of course, answer to this is okay, every one of you people die except Joshua and Caleb.

So Joshua, at this point in his life, Numbers 10:28, [“Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as you have spoken in my ears, so will I do to you,”] here’s the curse, “Your carcasses shall fall in the wilderness,” you said I brought you out here, okay, you are going to die, not the way you thought, but I’m going to let you people wander around and wander around and wander around and wander around until a generation is passed, and everybody “from twenty years old” notice in verse 29, all men… all men because the women were not numbered here in the census, it was the men who were numbered, the men “twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against Me.” See, these were the draft age guys. These were the men who are responsible collectively for the entire situation; twenty years old and up. Verse 31, “But your little ones, whom ye said shall be a prey, I will bring them in,” I’ll take care of your little ones. So think of this; for thirty-eight years Joshua saw funeral after funeral after funeral after funeral, and every time he saw it… and finally it got to his generation. See, it’s easier to see older people die, well you know, here’s so and so and they’re seventy and they’re eighty, that’s good they die, that’s normal. And then all of a sudden the age starts coming down and people in your generation start dying. That’s a different story. That’s the kind of experience Joshua had, and every time he saw a funeral he had to think, God is destroying this generation in front of my face. I am watching my friends die because they failed to trust the Lord. So Joshua had a very, very severe lesson confirming his aggressive confidence in the Scripture.

Okay, another episode, Numbers 27:18. Here is Joshua’s ordination. Notice the things said about him, God picks the man out for the continuity of leadership. “And the LORD said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay thine hand upon him.” Now don’t think of that “in whom there is the Spirit” as totally passive; God didn’t go uhuhuh like this, and he got the Spirit. The Spirit was in Joshua because of this prolonged training period of thirty-eight years at least, of constant obedience. [20] “And thou shall put some of thine honor,” that means authority, “upon him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient.” See the conveying of authority. That’s one reason why Joshua could not lead earlier. Joshua respected that. A leader has to have a God-given authority or he can’t lead. [21] “And he shall stand before Eleazar, the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim,” notice immediately after his ordination in verse 20, he is put back in verse 21 under the law of God. It is not going to be Joshua doing his own thing. It is going to be Joshua carrying out the will of God, emphasis always on his obedience.

And now what God told him on the eve of coming into the land, Joshua 1. This is one of the most famous passages in Scripture, and those of you who are clued in to the divine viewpoint framework, let’s test you on how to apply this, see if you see how to work this in. We’re coming to Joshua 1, let’s look at the framework. What’s going on in the book of Joshua. Think, just think; we’re coming down here to conquest and settlement. All right, that’s the big picture of Joshua 1, as well as other chapters in Joshua. Now what does that immediately clue you to apply this in your life. What truths are you going to expect from Joshua 1, just looking at the framework, not even reading Joshua 1 you can predict where the doctrine will be and what doctrine it is: doctrine of sanctification. So Joshua 1 is one of the key chapters in the Scripture on the doctrine of sanctification. So now we become oriented to the text, we don’t look for an exposition of salvation in Joshua 1, we don’t look for an exposition of creation for the doctrine of man; we don’t look for prophecy in Joshua 1; we know by our framework to expect sanctification.

All right, let’s look at some of the things. There are three basic features, again characteristics of Joshua; Joshua 1:1-4 kind of link up with his desire of the truth, this holy curiosity. Joshua was always curious of how things fit together. Now isn’t it interesting that the first four verses God shows him how things fit together. “After the death of Moses … the LORD spoke unto Joshua…. [2] Moses, my servant, is dead: now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, [thou and all this people] unto the land I am about to give them, [even to the children of Israel.] [3] Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, I have given you,” now in verse 3 there’s a peculiar construction here that has great force to it. It’s a great, great encouragement. What it is, is he’s saying that Joshua, here you are, you’re going to walk on this land. Now, every place that you step, here you go, you’re stepping along, present tense, every place that you step the ground underneath your foot I have, past tense, already given to you. Now that is, a source, a tremendous encouragement. He knows that his actions in the present are controlled by God’s sovereign decree in the past. And there is the tremendous force this man has.

What verse 3-4 are doing, though we do not have time to prove this tonight to your satisfaction probably, verses 3-4 are a repeat of the provisions of the land of the Abrahamic Covenant. And when I had time to exegete this in detail I showed what was going on here is the legal provisions of the Abrahamic Covenant are being repeated so that Joshua’s confidence is in the sovereign call of God. Joshua’s confidence and his desire for truth, to see how things fit together, link up with the Abrahamic Covenant. Remember, we had three promises in the Abrahamic Covenant: a land, a surviving seed, a worldwide blessing. So what do you suppose you’ve got here? Land. Something else is interesting here. Joshua and Moses, like we saw this morning, are a team of men, encompassing one generation. Typologically both of those men together typify Jesus Christ. Both of those men show, Moses introducing the kingdom, and Joshua conquering and bringing the kingdom in, the role of the Messiah. All right, so we’ve seen the first four verses, Joshua’s continuity, we’ve seen his quest for truth, the truth of God’s continuity, rewarded.

Now Joshua 1:5-6, God encourages him in his toughness, in his confidence, preparing Joshua for this ongoing holy war, never ending, always going on, and would always go on in his day. Notice, “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. [6] Be strong and of good courage; for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swore unto their fathers to give them.” The swearing there is the Abrahamic Covenant; the land is the land promised in the Abrahamic Covenant; the inheritance refers to the Abrahamic Covenant. So all of it’s built on the Abrahamic Covenant. But the point of verses 5-6 is the necessity for holy war, to show Joshua, keep on having confidence, that toughness.

And notice, as in every passage, see verse 6, be tough, that’s what that means, but do you notice the basis for the male being tough? It isn’t his own strength; the basis for the male’s toughness in verse 6 is clearly the sovereign plan of God. And you see this again and again, so this is again a confirmation of our point that we’ve made before in the manhood series, that the man’s toughness is derived not from his personality type, not from his physique, but from his confidence in God’s sovereign plan. Toughness—the ability to take it, day after day after day after day. There’s no way, dripping water wears away rock, and adversity day after day after day after day after day will crush you, no matter how tough you think you are. The only thing that keeps you going is this thread of the sovereign plan of God. That’s the core of the male’s toughness.

All right, it goes on, notice, swearing, “unto their fathers to give them,” is a fulfillment of the promises of the Word of God. Notice Joshua 1:7 again in connection with this toughness. “Only be strong and very courageous,” so verse 6 and the first part of verse 7 emphasize the toughness and the confidence needed for a male leader, but it grounds it, not in the man, but in the sovereign plan of God.

Now, Joshua 1:7-9, the rest of verse 7, 8 and 9, show you Joshua’s humility because Joshua had to submit to the authority of Scripture. Notice this, how it’s stressed here. “Be strong and very tough,” in the Hebrew it reads, “in faithful doing,” now the way it’s translated in the King James it sounds like it’s a purpose clause, “that thou mayest observe to do,” see that. Well, the Hebrew just doesn’t have that force. The point in the Hebrew is that in faithfully carrying out it out, that’s what he’s saying: “be tough in faithfully carrying out My Scriptures.” Now do you see the flavor of the male’s toughness? The flavor of it is the determination to carry out the Word. The woman is never burdened with that command. You don’t find this kind of command directed toward a female in Scripture. There may be some exceptions here and there, but generally speaking the thrust is for the man; it’s the man who is responsible to carry it on no matter who opposes you, where it goes, the Word of God is going to prevail. Women can’t do that, men need to do that. And if Christianity is impotent in our generation it’s because the men haven’t done their job.

So he says, “Be tough in faithfully doing all the Law,” that’s the Torah, the first five gooks of Scripture, “which Moses, my servant, commanded thee.” And now look at this detail here in verse 7; this hangs Joshua, in the sense it pins him down to a particular framework where he’s going to have the confidence. “…turn not from it to the right or to the left,” in other words, you will have freedom to operate, Joshua, in applying it to this situation and that situation but don’t you change the Law itself; you accept what I tell you to do, and work within that framework. “…that you may prosper wherever you go.” The guarantee of success is coupled to a contingent “if.” Success is contingent “if” Joshua will stay within the boundaries of the divine viewpoint framework, within the boundaries of the Word of God.

Now Joshua 1:8, even more detail about what Joshua is supposed to do as a male leader. “This book of the Torah shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prospers, and then thou shalt have good success.” It’s repeated, but now verse 8 adds something. Verse 8 is telling Joshua that he must memorize the Scriptures. When it says “shall not depart out of thy mouth” that’s an idiom for memory, memory work. There has to be some memory work, at least the elementary outline of doctrine and at least some of the verses of Scripture. This is what God wants; it wants it memorized so it can be used. Then, of course, the promise of success.

Now Joshua 1:9, the terminal promises, after verse 7 and 8, after it’s clear that Joshua’s toughness is dependent upon his obedience to Scripture, now God pats him on the back and praises him, and says now Joshua, “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; stop being afraid,” by the way, that also shows you that this didn’t come natural to Joshua. See this, it’ll help a lot of you, that these men didn’t just oh yeah, [can’t understand words] and go right on. None of this came natural to them; they had to struggle with this, and the very form of this negative prohibition is he was already having temerity, he didn’t quite know what the deal was now that he had the mantle on his shoulders. Now you know three million people are dependent on you, the buck stops right there. Three million people are looking at you, huh? Yeah, three million people, every day. And so this tends to undermine your confidence unless it’s in the right place.

So he says “stop being afraid, and don’t be discouraged.” Now the very fact that fear and discouragement are there, if we’re going to be real, it tells you that men in this position are going to fear, they are naturally going to fear because this is the way it is, and they’re naturally going to be discouraged. So therefore when we observe Christian men, even in leadership position, afraid and discouraged, we’re not seeing anything unbiblical, are we? Isn’t that what God’s saying that Joshua is. So when you see this, in your own life and in other’s life, just accept it. Joshua had the same problem. The problem is the same, it’s just simply the solution. God’s solution is, “for the LORD thy Gold is with thee, wherever you go.” That is contingent, however, on verses 6, 7 and 8, staying in the framework.

All right, one last note on Joshua’s life, just to show you the greatness of this man, let’s look at the end of his life. Joshua 24, some men hack it all the way through life; others phase out along the way. Joshua 24 is the last speech in the Scripture that Joshua gives; it’s a hand over chapter like Moses’ last speech. And you’ll notice, verse 14, the closing exhortation. He’s telling the people, this is his last words, “Now, therefore, fear God,” the word “fear” there means to bow to His authority, “serve him in sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river, and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.” See, he’s campaigning against idolatry. [15] “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which were on the other side of the flood [river], or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; for as for me,” and notice, “my family, we will serve the LORD.”

You see that concentric circle idea of Noah operating again here. He can’t really work in a fine tuned way with people outside of his immediate house. As leader, he can lead them only so far and throw out a challenge and says it’s up to you, now you decide, but I’ll tell you where in my private domain it’s going to be done this way, and my private domain is my house. And Joshua clearly states, “my house, we will serve the Lord,” period.

Now this is a very famous verse, often quoted, but hopefully tonight you’ll put it together with the life of this man, and see these characteristics in this great, great man of God. He was a man; he wasn’t known for his artistic talents; Joshua apparently was from the… if we were to write a human biography, apparently a lackluster individual; there’s never any real outstanding physical qualities about him recorded in Scripture. There’s never really anything outstanding about Joshua other than his courage. That’s the only thing. He wasn’t responsible for any program of reform in Israel. When it came to dividing the land he apparently exercised very little authority there. So from the human point of view there wasn’t much about this guy that you might, if you were a humanist, working on all the history of Israel, you would have this general, that general, this general, and General Joshua and General Somebody Else, and you’d just line them all up, you wouldn’t see that much about him. But God sees that this man has some very worthy characteristics.

Again, what were they? His holy curiosity; his desire to be at that tabernacle, if something was going to come from God, boy, he was going to get his cassette recorder right there and get it. The second thing that we’ve noticed about Joshua is his extreme confidence. Jump off a building—Yes Sir, the instructions on the way down. The third thing about Joshua was his humility before the standards of Scripture. He was a tough man but he was always wearing the proper rank for what he was doing.