Courage Needed, Pt. 1

There’s a popular mantra trending today that declares: “We can do hard things!” It’s inspirational!  And yet there are times when our courage fails and our fear paralyzes us. Pastor Nick Gatzke reveals where real courage comes from when fear has us frozen in place.

Let’s pray together. Father, we thank you for the blessed assurance that we have through your son, the Lord Jesus. We thank you that when we were still helpless, that Christ died for us. That we could not accomplish relationship with you of our own. We could not accomplish righteousness before you on our own. That we can’t navigate the difficulties of this life on our own, but there you are through your son, Jesus, giving us this assurance of not only life right now, but an eternal destiny with you. Thank you for being reminded of those truths today. And as we turn our attention now to your scripture with a theme that is very much related, we ask Lord that you would continue to shape our thoughts. And as a result, shape our actions. That you do this in conforming us to the likeness of your son. In his name we pray, amen.

In this life, God asks you to believe and to do hard things. And if you’ve never experienced that, dare I say that maybe you haven’t experienced what a robust relationship with God really looks like. Because believe me when I tell you that God asks you to believe hard things. And he asks you to do hard things. They feel hard because our human experience is so tainted with our personal desires, with our limited perspective, with a sin nature that so often leads us down a path that’s opposite to his desires, to his goals.

And at other times in life, we see this dynamic in which God is working right in front of us. We see it, we recognize it, we know it. And yet for some reason, our fears paralyze us from engaging in the way that we want to or the way that we know that we should. I wonder what the hardest thing is that God has ever asked you to do. If we were to pull everybody here in the worship center today, what is the hardest thing? I’m sure that many of you could list a number of things that are exceptionally hard. Today we continue in this series that we’re going through called Rethinking Your Favorite Bible Verse. This is a series in which we’re taking many of the verses that we find to be common to us or encouraging to us. We’re putting them back in our context. We’re enjoying the encouragement from them. We’re applying them. intentionally to our situation today. And it’s not surprising as you go through life and you see the fact that God says or calls us to do hard things and to believe hard  things, that he would also give us encouragement along those same lines. And therefore, it’s not surprising that so many people have a favorite Bible verse, Joshua 1, 9, in which the Lord says to Joshua, be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Joshua, we see that God’s people stood alone. on the precipice of the land that he had promised to them. Or so they thought, they stood alone. They’d come a long way since the days of their slavery in Egypt. They’d seen a lot, they’d suffered a lot. But through it all, they had their leader, Moses. He was always there. He was the one who served as the mediator between God and the people. And he was strong. But now Moses was dead. And the task before them seemed unlike any task that they had experienced before. And you can imagine that as they stood there on the precipice of this promised land that they were paralyzed perhaps by fear. What was about to happen? What would come next?

You can imagine the sense that they must have felt of being completely and utterly alone. At the points of transition in our life, at the point of crisis in our life, and even quite often through the daily grind of living, there are points when every single one of us can relate to being paralyzed by fear or to feeling like we are completely and utterly alone. And in those moments, we have this desperation to hear from God, as did the people of Israel and as did Joshua. So I’m gonna ask you to turn with me to Joshua chapter one, and let’s hear what God said to them. Joshua chapter one, it’s on page 178 of that Pew Bible that you have in front of you. I know a number of you have been turning already. Let’s see what God says to his people and to Joshua. We’ll read verses one to nine.

It starts this way. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all of this people into the land that I’m giving you to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness and to this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.

Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do all that the law of Moses, my servant, commanded to you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous, do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Where is courage found in the crossroads of life when fear is standing before us and even looking at us in the eye? Where can we find courage? The first thing that we see in this text is that when we fear the task ahead, have courage because of God’s promise. Have courage because of God’s promise. You can almost hear the collective groan of Israel as Joshua became their leader. You can almost hear the voice, the expression, boy, boy oh boy, he’s got big shoes to fill.

That expression is one that we use all the time, don’t we? We talk about it in terms of giving approval to the predecessor and skepticism to his successor. Boy, oh boy, he has big shoes to fill. I imagine that’s what people said when Andrew Johnson, on April 15th, 1865, succeeded Abraham Lincoln as the President of the United States. Boy, oh boy, he’s got big shoes to fill. Martin Lloyd -Jones is widely considered to be one of the best preachers in the history of the country of England. He was a pastor of Westminster Chapel for 25 years from 1943 to 1968, and a few years ago I made acquaintance with one of his successors. a man named R.T. Kendall, who went on to pastor Westminster for another 25 years, and standing in the shadow of the great Martyn Lloyd -Jones, as R.T. Kendall took the pulpit on his first Sunday, he could hear the whispers going throughout the chapel. Boy oh boy, he’s got big shoes to fill. Moses was dead. He was the one who stood up to Pharaoh, calling upon God’s power to inflict plagues upon the nation of Egypt. Moses was the one who parted the Red Sea. Moses was the one who waited for God in the tent of meeting, and as God descended upon the tent in a cloud, everyone who saw, took witness to this, stood in awe and respect, and all they could do was worship.

Moses was the one who met the Lord on the mountain, and as he descended from the mountain, his face shone with the glory and the radiance of God. Moses was the one who mediated the covenant between God and his people, and he was the one who brought them from Egypt as slaves through the wilderness for many years to the precipice of this promised land. Moses, their strong leader, was there, but now he’s dead. And as they stood, Joshua, as their new leader with this people of God, knowing what they needed to do, they undoubtedly experienced fear for the task ahead. And we all know that fear can have a paralyzing effect. It’s part of our common human experience. But in the midst of fear, God gives Joshua these encouraging words. He says to him, be strong and courageous.

And he goes on to say, because he, God, will fulfill the work that he has promised to do. Now, so often when we think about this verse, we think about it in terms of applying it to any and every fearful situation that we’re in. However, we’re reminded here that even though some of those general applications might apply, there’s a specific context in which God works out his promises. God works his promises with the people who are engaged with him, and in those promises, we, his people, find great courage. It’s interesting as we look at Joshua chapter one, verses two to five of this, the way that God expresses his promises to Joshua. are the exact words that God uses in Deuteronomy chapter 11, as some many years earlier, he expresses these promises to the great Moses himself. In a very real way, God has a succession plan here, and his promises are extending to his people through time. But if their promise was to receive the land, and that’s not our promise today, does this verse have any relevance for us at all? Well, I think it does. It does, simply in the fact that God makes a number of promises to his people today as well, and we can have courage in this life because of those promises. Let’s think about them together. God makes a lot of promises. He also has a number of things that he doesn’t promise to us, and there is a specific thing that maybe we might consider to be his greatest promise. So let’s look at all three of those categories. What has God promised to you?

Well, he promises that through faith in Christ your sins will be forgiven. He promises that through Jesus, you will be called the child of God and that you have all the benefits of the children of God. God promises that he will be near to you through the indwelling of his Holy Spirit. God promises that he will bear fruit in your work for him. God promises that you will be empowered to stand firm to resist temptation and to resist attacks of the evil one. God promises that in the most difficult instances of our lives that his grace will be sufficient for you, but you don’t need anything or anyone else.

What does God not promise? Well, God doesn’t promise that you will avoid difficulty in this life. God doesn’t promise that you will avoid persecution for your faith or ridicule. God doesn’t promise that your physical or emotional or sexual desires will be fulfilled. And God doesn’t promise that your material desires will be fulfilled. In short, God doesn’t promise that if you have a relationship with Him, that life is gonna be easy. In fact, again and again in the Bible, we see news to the contrary. That even though through a relationship with Christ, you can stand firm in so many ways, that in fact, this life is pretty hard.

But there’s an ultimate promise that God makes. And that ultimate promise can be seen in Matthew chapter 10, verses 28 to 33. This is Jesus speaking. And he’s speaking to his people who stand fearfully before him. And he says this. He says, “Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore, for you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my father who’s in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father who is in heaven.”

Here’s the deal. Through faith in Christ, the greatest fears of our lives can be met with courage because God promises to keep you as His prized possession in eternity. The one who demands your most focused attention as you meet those crossroads, those crisis points, even the daily grind of life, is not the person who’s standing right in front of you. As threatening as they may seem, the one who demands your most focused attention is the person of God himself who stands in eternity and whose judgments are infinitely more severe and whose blessings are infinitely more wonderful.

When you fear the task ahead, have courage because of God’s promise. There’s another aspect of courage here that we see in this text. When you don’t know what to do next, sometimes we get to a place in life, I know I’ve been there plenty of times, and you feel like you just don’t know what to do. You’re underwater, you don’t know which way is up, you’re in the middle of the ocean, you don’t know which way to point to dry land, you’re disoriented and you’re confused. And here we see, when we don’t know what to do next, God tells Joshua to reinforce his courage by obedience. Look with me at verse seven. He’s already told Joshua once to be strong and courageous and now he tells him only be strong and very courageous. Being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success. wherever you go. My friends, there’s great security in obedience to God. I mean, any of you who have children know just how much security is found when kids obey their parents. You see so much more of the picture than they do. You understand the implications more than they do. How much more is this true with God, our heavenly father? I mean, we played this game at my house with our kids where they stand at the edge of the stairs and they kind of get their rock on, they get their leaning, and they jump off. And I catch them. And even our little one year old who can’t even jump knows how to play this game because he trusts in his father. And so he gets up to the edge of the stairs and rather than jumping, he just sort of falls forward and  trusts that I’m gonna be there to grab him. How much more is this true with our heavenly father who knows all and who sees all? I mean, God knows everything.

And he’s all-powerful. I recently heard this great quote from D.A. Carson: “For the one who’s omnipotent, there are no degrees of difficulty.” He can do anything and everything that he wants to do. And you can take courage as you obey him in what he wants you to do. Sometimes we get to the point in this life where we just don’t know what to do. And in this case, we might summarize God’s words to Joshua as in, do the next right thing. Have you ever heard that before? I don’t know what to do. Well, just do the next right thing. And that’s enough. How do you know what the next right thing is? Well, that’s a wonderful aspect of this God, that he tells us what it is, that he reveals to us what it is. And as he revealed it to Joshua in the Old Testament law, he reveals it to us in the Holy Scriptures. in its entirety. He tells Joshua that you’ve had a promise and now you need to act on that promise. And all you have to do along the way is obedience. Christians, you have a lot of promises that God’s given you. Act in obedience along the way and see how God works. You can have great courage in that. I know that sometimes our decisions don’t feel to us to have moral significance. And many times they don’t. But I’ll tell you, the vast majority of our decisions do. That there is a way that God wants us to live and to act and to function in line with his priorities for this life. How do you know what those priorities are?

Well, he tells Joshua as much and he tells us as much, verse 8. He says the book of law shall not depart from your mouth, but you should meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it for then you will make your way prosperous and then you’ll have good success. Look at some of the words there. Be careful to do. He’s supposed to do something with this thing that he’s meditating on. He’s not supposed to just engage part of it, but he’s supposed to engage all of it that’s written. We see another motivation for Christians to read, regularly read their Bible. God doesn’t just nourish you through his word.

But he also prepares you through it. And friends, I hope you’re reading your Bible regularly because God shows himself to you, he feeds you spiritually speaking, but in a very real way, as you become more and more acquainted with his priorities for this world, he’s preparing you for those moments when you are paralyzed by fear. He’s preparing you for the intersections of life where you don’t know if I should go right or left. He’s preparing you even for the decisions for courage and the daily grind that all of us have to make. And if you don’t know where to start, start in the Gospel of John and start reading forward from there and enjoy this preparatory work. Because when we don’t know what to do next, reinforce courage by obedience.

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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.