Sometimes in life we are confronted with challenging circumstances.
One time in Romania I was at a Bible class. The teacher was American and the person translating approached me during the break to inform me that he needed to go somewhere and asked me, being an English speaker, if I would translate after the break. I was reluctant, not having experience and also even in English I didn’t know well all the names of the different Kings and other characters that were being mentioned as we were going through one of the books of Kings in the Old Testament. However, I didn’t really have an alternative solution to suggest. The break finished and we all gathered for the next lesson. The translator began, but after a few minutes his telephone rang. He glanced at it, then got his things together, motioned to me to come forward and then left. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. I had no choice to go forward and begin my career as a translator!
Life often puts us in difficult situations. Difficulties are of course relevant and maybe my predicament above was small fry compared to what some face. Financial hardships, sickness, violence, injustice and much more attack people everyday. One of the great things about the Bible is that it is a very realistic book and presents openly all the difficulties and struggles that different people went through. One person who most certainly was confronted with a challenging situation was Joshua.
We first read about him in the book of Numbers. We find out here that he is very faithful to God, for example in chapter 14 he together with Caleb tries to plead with the people when they want to rebel against God and go back to Egypt instead of entering the promised land. The fact that Joshua was one of the spies who went to check out the land of Canaan also testifies to the fact that he was one of the leaders of Israel. There are also passages where we see that Joshua was the assistant of Moses and chosen to succeed him (Numbers 27:18-21).
By the time we get to Joshua 1, we see that Moses is already gone and now Joshua has to fully take on his mantle. This is in and of itself a tough task. There were well over a million people to lead, enough to keep anyone busy. More than this though, Joshua is told here to lead these people into the promised land of Canaan, which would have been fine, except for the fact that there were some very well developed and aggressive peoples already living there, who weren’t just going to happily lie down and let the Israelites come and take over.
This is why we read a number of words of encouragement in this chapter. Joshua could well have been feeling daunted by what lay before him and so God offers some words of solace. Verses 6, 7 and 9 repeat the idea of being strong and courageous. This is however not just a sort of chin up, everything will be alright encouragement like what we often offer to people today, when we don’t really know what to say. Here we see that there is some real meat to these words.
In verse 5, God says that he will be with Joshua. This is a great promise because it was God’s presence that helped Moses through his tasks and so now Joshua is encouraged that God will be there to help him too. The presence of God is an important theme running throughout the Bible. Adam and Eve lost their place with God in the garden of Eden. Cain then loses God’s presence in Genesis 4:14 as a result of murdering Abel. As the story unfolds, we see though God restoring his presence among people, first of all establishing the tent of meeting and then the temple. In the New Testament he dwells among people in the form of Jesus and finally the Holy Spirit is given so that He now actually dwells within the believer. In any case, it is a great and vital thing to have God’s presence with you.
Joshua is also given an instruction as to how to be successful in his task. We see this in Joshua 1:7 and 8. He is told to obey carefully everything written in the law of Moses and in order to help him do that, it is important for him to meditate on it day and night. In other words, the secret of success is to keep as close as possible to God’s word and to obey it.
Joshua shows his willingness to obey God straight away. He doesn’t hesitate or remonstrate with God, but rather he sends out the officers of the people to tell them to get ready for going into the promised land. They obey on the condition in verse 17 that the Lord will be with Joshua as He was with Moses, and they even threaten with death any who don’t obey Joshua’s word. Thus, we see that Joshua’s initial acceptance of God’s word to him as had a positive result.
I heard an interesting example of a student group in Serbia. They decided that they wanted to organise a mission week. In Serbia it is very popular for people to go to Cafes and spend their time there. So, the group had the idea of hiring out a cafe for their evangelistic meetings. There was a problem though to find a suitable one. Serbian culture is generally closed to evangelical Christians and over four years they tried 10 different cafes, but each time there were problems. Often, they were rejected, but also staff were unfriendly, some were too small or otherwise unsuitable.
One day the group leader was walking past a cafe on the site of the university. He decided to try it. He explained to the manager that they were a Christian group and wanted to organise evangelical meetings. To his surprise, the manager agreed without problem. So surprised was he that he reiterated the situation to make sure the manager had understood. Not only did they want to talk about Jesus, but they also didn’t have much money to pay for the meetings. The manager still agreed!
For this group, it was a challenging task to organise these missions. It took four years and a number of difficult situations, but eventually God led them to an excellent venue, right on campus, and even opened up the way to using it, in spite of potential problems.
Ultimately then, God can and does work for good even in the challenges we and others around us face!