Courage Needed, Pt. 2

Pastor Nick Gatzke rethinks a popular, uplifting verse––Joshua 1:9, “be strong and courageous!” It’s written on walls, etched on coffee mugs, and recorded in prayer journals to remind us not to be afraid. But courage isn’t just for extraordinary moments––it’s needed for everyday life.

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. Be strong and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9, in which the Lord says to Joshua, 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. 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 and you don’t know which way is up. You’re in the middle of the ocean and 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 word 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 eight, 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.

And let me give you a reminder, we often talk about courage with regard to the extraordinary things of life, don’t we? I mean, the huge crisis opportunities that we have. But it takes a lot of courage to go through daily living in obedience. It takes a lot of courage for some of you stay at home moms, with all the different pressures to move in different directions, to engage your kids in like 55 different sports at the same time, or to have a job outside the home if you don’t want one, because that’s how women are supposed to be fulfilled in our society, or any number of different messages that the culture tells you. It takes courage to say, God, I want to faithfully focus on my children for this season of life and raise them.

It takes courage for some of you guys, whether it’s at work or whether that’s in your entertainment to say these are the options before me and this option looks fun and this is the option that all my buddies are doing but I’m gonna go this way instead. Courage happens in the ordinary, way more than it happens in the extraordinary. Be reminded that you can reinforce that courage through obedience and God will work in that way there’s a third way here though and the third way we see is that when we feel like we stand alone, find courage in God’s presence. We can find courage in God’s promises, we can reinforce courage through obedience and in verse nine we see we can have courage in God’s presence. Look at what he says to Joshua, for the third time now, be strong and courageous.

But there’s an escalation that’s happening, isn’t there? The first time he says, be strong and courageous. The second time he says, only be strong and very courageous. And the third time he says, have I not told you? Be strong and courageous. Then he tells him why, because the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. There’s something incredible about God’s presence that changes the way that we live our lives. And this gives us courage. Five year old Johnny was in the kitchen as his mother made supper and she asked him to go into the pantry and to get out a can of tomato soup. But Johnny didn’t wanna go into the pantry alone. So he looked at his mom and he said, mommy, it’s dark in there and I’m scared.

She paused and she asked him to go again. But he persisted. I don’t want to go in. So finally she said, it’s okay, Johnny, Jesus will be in there with you. And so Johnny hasn’t till he walked over to the pantry and he opened the door and it was dark in There and he peeked around the corner and he began to stammer and he decided that this wasn’t a very good idea So he began to back out When he had a brilliant idea And he took a step forward And he peeked his head back around the corner to the pantry and said Jesus Jesus If you’re in there, will you please pass me the can of tomato soup?

That is so often the way we think about God’s presence when we’re just at the crossroads of fear, maybe he’s there and can help bail me out of the thing that I don’t wanna do. But God’s presence is so much more profound than that. I mean, think about it, that the God of the universe would draw near to you, that he’d accomplish his purposes in you and through you, that he’s made a number of promises to you as Christians. And upon giving his great commission to do his disciples, maybe the most daunting task that was before them, he tells, Jesus tells them, he has all authority and power and they’re supposed to go and make disciples, to evangelize the nations, to baptize people, to teach people. And then he makes this promise, for surely I am with you always. even to the end of the age. We might summarize the dynamics of God’s calling in our response in this way. When the work is God’s, the courage is ours. When the work is God’s, the courage is ours. I know we wanna read the first part of Joshua one and say, yeah, God said wherever I put my foot, therefore I’m gonna be a conqueror, it’s gonna be mine. But no, this happens within the boundaries of God’s promises. It happens under the guise of obedience to him. It happens in concert with his presence. But when the work is God, the courage is ours. And yet we so often fail in our courage.

There’s a lot of different ways that aren’t there. One of the leading ways, of course, for our time and even for our church, that we fail in courage with regard to sharing our faith with other people. Leighton Ford, a number of years ago, during his evangelistic campaigns, asked all kinds of people about the issues that they had in evangelism, and he said that this issue of fear keeps coming up again and again and again. And what makes people hesitate to share their faith, he asks, well, here are some of the fears that they mention. They say, I’m afraid I might do more harm than good. I’m afraid that I won’t know what to say. I may not be able to give a snappy answer to tricky questions. Maybe I seem bigoted. I may invade someone’s privacy. I’m afraid I might fail. I’m afraid I might be a hypocrite. But perhaps the most common fear, Ford writes, is that fear of being rejected.

A survey of those attending a training session for the Billy Graham Crusade in Detroit some years ago, people were asked, what is your greatest hindrance in sharing the gospel? 9 % said they were too busy to remember to do it. 28 % said that they felt like they had a lack of information. Nobody, 0 % said they didn’t care. Everybody cared. 12 % said that their own lives were not speaking as they should. But by far the largest group, 51%, said their biggest problem was fear of how the other person would react.

Because none of us like to be rejected, ridiculed or regarded as the oddball. But God calls you to believe hard things and to do hard things. God calls Old North Church standing on the precipice of the Mahoning Valley to say here’s a bunch of people who don’t know me to engage in ongoing kingdom work. And when the work is God’s the courage is ours. Whether it’s against injustice or whether it’s for the advance of the gospel or whether it’s just in the common things, the daily grind of life. Courage is needed. But when the work is God the courage is ours.

I don’t know about you, but I look back at church history and I think about those who’ve gone before us and how they have sacrificed and the courage that was required in societies that are much more hostile than our own. And sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I look at us and Western Christians and say, man, we are just a bunch of wimps. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us and they have done incredible things under the power of the Lord and exercise great courage. One such man was an 86 year old man in the year 156, shortly after Jesus.

He was brought before a Roman official and asked to renounce his atheism. He was no atheist by our standards today, rather he was a devout Christian bishop named Polycarp. And the Romans thought that he was an atheist because he refused to worship the emperor and the other pantheon of gods in Rome. And Polycarp knew that a denial would mean a painful death, either being thrown into the arena to be devoured by wild animals or to be burned alive on a pyre. And three times he was questioned. Three times he was invited to renounce his atheism. but no renunciation of Christ would he make. Swear and I release. Curse Christ, urged the Roman official, to which Polycarp replied, 86 years I have served him, Christ, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me? Polycarp was not spared. A pyre was built and he was burned alive. But his words echo down through time and through history, and they echo down even to us today. 86 years I have served him. and he has done me no wrong, how then can I blaspheme my King who saved me? In the words of Jesus, echoing down to us today, “Do not fear those who can 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? Not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. But even the hairs on your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also 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.” When the work is God’s, the courage is ours. And we sure need it, don’t we? Let’s pray together. Father, to have courage outside of ourselves in the midst of a world that we only partially see and partially understand. But we take great hope in the words to Joshua and how they apply to us, that our courage is bolstered in your promises, that it’s strengthened in obedience, that we have courage because of your presence. When your work is being done, we can have courage because you care infinitely more for us, your prized possessions, than you do. for anything else in this earth. God, perhaps there are some here today who have not yet acknowledged you, as Jesus says in Matthew chapter 10. My prayer for them is that, in the quietness of their heart, that today would be the day where they recognize and confess their sin, to hold fast to a savior, Jesus, and put their faith in him for forgiveness, that grace and mercy would be bestowed upon them. For those of us here today who have called you father for some time, but need courage for the things that you have us to do, Lord, bolster in us this sense of resolve and a knowledge of your loving kindness and care. We pray these things together in Jesus’ name, amen.

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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.