_JOSHUA'S ENCOURAGEMENT._
JOSHUA i. 6-9.
God has promised to be with Joshua, but Joshua must strive to act like
one in partnership with God. And that He may do so, God has just two
things to press on him: in the first place, to be strong and of a good
courage; and in the second place, to make the book of the law his
continual study and guide. In this way he shall be able to achieve the
specific purpose to which he is called, to divide the land for an
inheritance to the people, as God hath sworn to their fathers; and
likewise, more generally, to fulfil the conditions of a successful
life--"then shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt
have good success."
First, Joshua must be strong and very courageous. But are strength and
courage really within our own power? Is strength not absolutely a
Divine gift, and as dependent on God in its ordinary degrees as it was
in the case of Samson in its highest degree? No doubt in a sense it is
so; and yet the amount even of our bodily strength is not wholly
beyond our own control. As bodily strength is undoubtedly weakened by
careless living, by excess of eating and drinking, by all irregular
habits, by the breathing of foul air, by indolence and self-indulgence
of every kind, so undoubtedly it is increased and promoted by
attention to the simple laws of health, by activity and exercise, by
sleep and sabbatic rest, by the moderate use of wholesome food, as
well as by abstinence from hurtful drinks and drugs. And surely the
duty of being strong, in so far as such things can give strength, is
of far more importance than many think; for if we can thus maintain
and increase our strength we shall be able to serve both God and man
much better and longer than we could otherwise have done. On the other
hand, the feebleness and fitfulness and querulousness often due to
preventible illness must increase the trouble which we give to others,
and lessen the beneficent activity and the brightening influence of
our own lives.
But in Joshua's case is was no doubt strength and courage of soul that
was mainly meant. Even that is not wholly independent of the ordinary
conditions of the body. On the other hand, there are no doubt
memorable cases where the elasticity and power of the spirit have been
in the very inverse ratio to the strength of the body. By cheerful
views of life and duty, natural depression has been counteracted, and
the soul filled with hope and joy. "The joy of the Lord," said
Nehemiah, "is the strength of His people." Fellowship with God, as our
reconciled God and Father in Christ, is a source of perpetual
strength. Who does not know the strengthening and animating influence
of the presence even of a friend, when we find his fresh and joyous
temperament playing on us in some season of depression? The radiance
of his face, the cheeriness of his voice, the elasticity of his
movements seem to infuse new hope and courage into the jaded soul.
When he is gone, we try to shake off the despondent feeling that has
seized us, and gird ourselves anew for the battle of life. And if such
an effect can be produced by fellowship with a fellow-creature, how
much more by fellowship with the infinite God!--especially when it is
His work we are trying to do, and when we have all His promises of
help to rest on. "God is near thee, therefore cheer thee" is a
perpetual solace and stimulus to the Christian soul.
But even men who are full of Christian courage need props and bulwarks
in the hour of trial. Ezra and Nehemiah were bold, but they had ways
of stimulating their courage, which they sometimes needed to fall back
on, and they could find allies in unlikely quarters. Ezra could draw
courage even from his shame, and Nehemiah from his very pride. "I was
ashamed," said Ezra, "to require of the king a band of soldiers and
horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way;" therefore he
determined to face the danger with no help but the unseen help of God.
And when Nehemiah's life was in danger from the cunning devices of the
enemy, and his friends advised him to hide himself, he repelled the
advice with high-minded scorn--"Should such a man as I flee?"
But there is no source of courage like that which flows from the
consciousness of serving God, and the consequent assurance that He
will sustain and help His servants. Brief ejaculatory prayers,
constantly dropping from their lips, often bring the courage which is
needed. "Now, therefore, O God, strengthen my hands," was Nehemiah's
habitual exclamation when faintness of heart came over him. No doubt
it was Joshua's too, as it has always been of the best of God's
servants. Again and again, amid the murderous threats of cannibals in
the New Hebrides, the missionary Paton must have sunk into despair but
for his firm belief in the protection of God.
The other counsel to Joshua was to follow in all things the
instructions of Moses, and for this end, not to let "the book of the
law depart out of his mouth, but to meditate on it day and night, that
he might observe to do all that was written therein."
For Joshua was called to be the executor of Moses, as it were, not to
start on an independent career of his own; and that particular call he
most humbly and cheerfully accepted. Instead of breaking with the
past, he was delighted to build on it as his foundation, and carry it
out to its predestined issues. It was no part of his work to improve
on what Moses had done; he was simply to accept it and carry it out.
He had his brief, he had his instructions, and these it was his one
business to fulfil. No puritan ever accepted God's revelation with
more profound and unquestioning reverence than Joshua accepted the law
of Moses. No Oliver Cromwell or General Gordon ever recognised more
absolutely his duty to carry out the plan of another, and, undisturbed
himself, leave the issue in His hands. He was to be a very incarnation
of Moses, and was so to meditate on his law day and night that his
mind should be saturated with its contents.
This, indeed, was a necessity for Joshua, because he required to have
a clear perception of the great purpose of God regarding Israel. Why
had God taken the unusual course of entering into covenant with a
single family out of the mass of mankind? A purpose deliberately
formed and clung to for more than four hundred years must be a grand
object in the Divine mind. It was Joshua's part to keep the people in
mind of the solemnity and grandeur of their mission and to call them
to a corresponding mode of life. What can more effectually give
dignity and self-respect to men than to find that they have a part in
the grand purposes of God? To find that God is not asleep; that He has
neither given up the world to chance nor bound it with a chain of
irreversible law, but that He calls us to be fellow-workers with Him
in a great plan which shall in the end tend gloriously to advance the
highest welfare of man?
This habit of meditation on the law which Joshua was instructed to
practise was of great value to one who was to lead a busy life. No
mere cursory perusal of a book of law can secure the ends for which it
is given. The memory is treacherous, the heart is careless, and the
power of worldly objects to withdraw attention is proverbial. We must
be continually in contact with the Book of God. The practice enjoined
on Joshua has kept its ground among a limited class during all the
intervening generations. In every age of the Church it has been
impressed on all devout and earnest hearts that there can be no
spiritual prosperity and progress without daily meditation on the Word
of God. It would be hard to believe in the genuine Christianity of any
one who did not make a practice morning and evening of bringing his
soul into contact with some portion of that Word. And wherever an
eminent degree of piety has been reached, we shall find that an
eminently close study of the Word has been practised. Where the habit
is perfunctory, the tendency is to omit the meditation and to be
content with the reading. Even in pious families there is a risk that
the reading of the Scriptures morning and evening may push the duty of
meditation aside, though even then we are not to despise the benefit
that arises from the familiarity gained with their contents.
But, on the other hand, the instances are numberless of men attaining
to great intimacy with the Divine will and to a large conformity to
it, through meditation on the Scriptures. To many the daily portion
comes fresh as the manna gathered each morning at the door of Israel's
camp. Think of men like George Müller of Bristol reading the Bible
from beginning to end as many as a hundred times, and finding it more
fresh and interesting at each successive perusal. Think of Livingstone
reading it right on four times when detained at Manyuema, and Stanley
three times during his Emin expedition. What resources must be in it,
what hidden freshness, what power to feed and revive the soul! The sad
thing is that the practice is so rare. Listen to the prophet-like
rebuke of Edward Irving to the generation of his time: "Who feels the
sublime dignity there is in a fresh saying descended from the porch of
heaven? Who feels the awful weight there is in the least iota that
hath dropped from the lips of God? Who feels the thrilling fear or
trembling hope there is in words whereon the eternal destinies of
himself do hang? Who feels the swelling tide of gratitude within his
breast for redemption and salvation, instead of flat despair and
everlasting retribution?... This book, the offspring of the Divine
mind and the perfection of heavenly wisdom is permitted to lie from
day to day, perhaps from week to week, unheeded and unperused; never
welcome to our happy, healthy, and energetic moods; admitted, if
admitted at all, in seasons of weakness, feeblemindedness, and
disabling sorrow.... Oh, if books had but tongues to speak their
wrongs, then might this book exclaim, Hear, O heavens, and give ear,
O earth! I came from the love and embrace of God, and mute nature, to
whom I brought no boon, did me rightful homage.... I set open to you
the gates of salvation and the way of eternal life, heretofore
unknown.... But ye requited me with no welcome, ye held no festivity
on my arrival; ye sequester me from happiness and heroism, closeting
me with sickness and infirmity; ye make not of me, nor use me as your
guide to wisdom and prudence, but press me into your list of duties,
and withdraw me to a mere corner of your time, and most of you set me
at nought and utterly disregard me.... If you had entertained me, I
should have possessed you of the peace which I had with God when I was
with Him and was daily His delight rejoicing always before Him....
Because I have called and ye refused.... I also will laugh at your
calamity and mock when your fear cometh."[5]
[5] "For the Oracles of God: four Orations." Pp. 3-6.
It is no excuse for neglecting this habitual reading of the Book of
God that He places us now more under the action of principles than the
discipline of details. For the glory of principles is that they have a
bearing on every detail of our life. "Whatsoever ye do in word or in
deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks unto God and
the Father by Him." What could be more comprehensive than this
principle of action--a principle that extends to "whatsoever we do"?
There is not a moment of our waking life, not an action great or small
we ever perform where the influence of this wide precept ought not to
be felt. And how can it become thus pervasive unless we make it a
subject of continual meditation?
In the case of Joshua, all the strenuous exhortations to him to be
strong and of a good courage, and to meditate on the Divine law as
given by Moses by day and by night, were designed to qualify him for
his great work--"to divide the land for an inheritance to the people
as God had sworn to their fathers." First of all, the land had to be
conquered; and there is no difficulty in seeing how necessary it was
for one who had this task on hand to be strong and of a good courage,
and to meditate on God's law. Then the land had to be divided, and the
people settled in their new life, and Joshua had to initiate them, as
it were, in that life; he had to bind on their consciences the
conditions on which the land was to be enjoyed, and start them in the
performance of the duties, moral, social and religious, which the
Divine constitution required. Here lay the most difficult part of his
task. To conquer the country required but the talent of a military
commander; to divide the country was pretty much an affair of
trigonometry; but to settle them in a higher sense, to create a moral
affinity between them and their God, to turn their hearts to the
covenant of their fathers, to wean them from their old idolatries and
establish them in such habits of obedience and trust that the doing of
God's will would become to them a second nature,--here was the
difficulty for Joshua. They had not only to be planted physically in
groups over the country, but they had to be married to it morally,
otherwise they had no security of tenure, but were liable to summary
eviction. It was no land of rest for idolaters; all depended on the
character they attained; loyalty to God was the one condition of a
happy settlement; let them begin to trifle with the claims of Jehovah,
punishment and suffering, to be followed finally by dispersion and
captivity, was the inevitable result.
It was thus that Joshua had to justify his name,--to show that he was
worthy to be called by the name of Jesus. The work of Jesus may be
said to have been symbolized both by that of Moses and that of Joshua.
Moses symbolized the Redeemer in rescuing the people from Egypt and
their miserable bondage there; as "Christ hath redeemed us from the
curse of the law." Joshua symbolized Him as He renews our hearts and
makes us "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in
light." For there are conditions moral and spiritual essential to our
dwelling in the heavenly Canaan. "Lord, who shall abide in Thy
tabernacle? and who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? He that hath clean
hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity,
nor sworn deceitfully." The atmosphere of heaven is too pure to be
breathed by the unregenerate and unsanctified. There must be an
adaptation between the character of the inhabitant and the place of
his habitation. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
Thus we see the connection between Joshua's devotion to the book of
the law, and success in the great work of his life--"then thou shalt
make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." No
doubt he would have the appearance of success if he simply cleared out
the inhabitants who were so degraded by sin that God was compelled to
sweep them off, and settled His people in their room. But that, after
all, was but a small matter unless accompanied by something more. It
would not secure the people from at last sharing the fate of the old
inhabitants; so far at least that though they should not be
exterminated, yet they would be scattered over the face of the globe.
How could Joshua get rid of these ominous words in the song of Moses
to which they had so lately listened?--"They provoked Him to jealousy
with strange gods, with abominations provoked they Him to anger. They
sacrificed to devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new
gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.... And He said,
I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for
they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith." But
even if in the end of the day it should come to this, nevertheless
Joshua might so move and impress the people for the time being, that
in the immediate future all would be well, and the dreaded
consummation would be put off to a distant day.
And so at all times, in dealing with human beings, we can obtain no
adequate and satisfying success unless their hearts are turned to God.
Your children may be great scholars, or successful merchants, or
distinguished authors, or brilliant artists, or even statesmen; what
does it come to if they are dead to God, and have no living fellowship
with Jesus Christ? Your congregation may be large and influential, and
wealthy, and liberal; what if they are worldly, proud, and
contentious? We must aim at far deeper effects, effects not to be
found without the Spirit of God. The more we labour in this spirit,
the more shall our way be made prosperous, the better shall be our
success. "For them that honour Me I will honour; but they that despise
Me shall be lightly esteemed."