MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 1:6-9
THE CHARACTER AND SPHERE OF COURAGE
These words are principally about courage. Joshua would both need it, and need to shew it, in leading the Israelites into the land of their inheritance. God graciously braces men where they are most liable to fail. It was in this matter of courage that the people had given way already. (Numbers 13:26-33; Numbers 14:1-10.) So Jehovah mercifully strengthens them in their weak place. It is thus that our Father deals with us all through the Bible. He does not fortify us where we are strong, but on the side where our strength is small. Thus Christ dealt with Peter. An earthly parent warns his child of what he knows to be dangers. So God speaks to us. Wherever we come, then, to a warning in the Scriptures, let us remember that it indicates a weakness. It is no mere spiritual talk. Danger lies there. The warning comes from Him whose eye sees farther down the line of our life than we can; and to go heedlessly on means collision, disaster, wounding, and possibly death. God has regard to the bearing of men personally. Napoleon’s oversight of men in battle is said to have been remarkable. It is with the infinite discernment of omniscience that the King of kings watches His people, and says to them individually, “I will be with thee.” God specially marks the leaders of His people. No officer must fail. Faint-heartedness in them would be doubly a sin.
I. God would have courage to occupy a large place in our characters and lives. It is to cover all the ground, whithersoever we go.
1. Courage is to lead us up to all conflicts that are duties. Joshua is to go against Jericho, whose people have shut themselves within their walls, in fear; against the five confederate kings, to rescue the Gibeonites; against each of the remaining kings. But courage is not to run to foolhardiness; it is to march only in the path of duty. It had nothing to do with revenging itself on old foes in Egypt, or in anticipating future enemies on the other side of the Euphrates.
“A valiant man
Ought not to undergo or tempt a danger,
But worthily, and by selected ways.”—B. Jonson.
It is folly that braves the field to which duty makes no call. True courage—courage that said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished,” said also, “When ye pray, say.… Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Yet courage never falters before work which ought to be done. Hougomont or Alma, Abyssinia or Ashantee, it matters not which. 2. Courage is to help us to endure when reverses and suffering come. When, through Achan’s sin, the Israelites were driven back at Ai, “the hearts of the people melted, and became as water.” There are many places in life where soldiers of the cross must be tried by defeat as well as by difficulties. The struggle for maintenance. Family and social reverses. The moral conflict, in which we are to be found “striving against sin.” The spiritual warfare, in which, in holy communion, we are to seek to win our way into the presence and mind of Christ.
II. God would see us courageous, because no courage is the same thing as no faith, and “without faith it is impossible to please Him.” Almost all who profess religion have the faith of a creed. They believe in certain doctrines. They have, more or less fully outlined, a theological idea of the way to heaven. It is well; but all this is a very small part of what God requires when He asks for our faith. The faith which He seeks is faith in Himself, as always being with His servants to help them; it is faith in His watchfulness, His presence, His love, His purpose, His power; it is faith in victory everywhere through Himself. That is the faith which Jehovah asks, as He sends the Israelites forward to inherit. Probably many will be surprised by-and-by to discern how little God cares for the faith which strives after some particular definition of a creed, rather than after what an apostle calls “the faith of Him.” It is against poor trust, not against bad definitions, that the Bible is full of such urgent remonstrance. Does not the Lord allow as much room for definitions as for dispositions? Caleb and Joshua might differ in their understanding of the Passover, or the exact meaning of the service on the Great Day of Atonement; I do not think God would much mind, providing the creed of neither shewed distrust of Him. The Holy Spirit inspires Paul, and also James. No man would care much if, when his child grew up, she differed from him in his views of gardening or poetry; but it would be real pain to him should she doubt his word. There are some creeds which must dishonour God. The denial of the Saviour’s divinity shews distrust of God simply on a point of difficulty in comprehension. Praying to images, or to dead Christians through them, is as though a child were to fear failure if it should ask a favour of its parent in person, and were to get a servant to make the entreaty instead. It is the distrust which wounds. There are places where creeds may become fatal, yet not fatal as a matter of discernment and definition, but fatal in their utter want of trust in the Lord. They present the most astounding of all paradoxes—doubt of God formulated into a religion, and then offered as worship. “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” When we are tempted to do wrong by the promise of great gain, can we remember God and dare to be true? When temptation promises present pleasure, can we remember our Father’s warnings and better promises, and be firm to deny ourselves? When called to lose our best-loved friends or children, can we look into the awful darkness, and rest in His words about their happiness and our own profit? When bidden to teach, or preach, or live the Gospel in the face of bitter enemies who far outnumber us, can we hear Him say, “Lo, I am with you alway,” and dare to go on as in the company of that overwhelming majority into which His presence ever multiplies even our solitude? That is the kind of creed about which God so incessantly enquires in the Scriptures. He says almost nothing—perhaps nothing at all—about definitions which touch the judgment without necessarily involving the heart. Instead of always translating “trust” into “faith,” as we go forward to inherit, it may be well if we sometimes render it in this old thought of “courage.” “Have courage in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “Repent ye, and have courage in the gospel.” “Lord, increase our courage.” “Have courage in God.”
III. Though God desires courage in us all, fear has its proper sphere, and often does holy work.
“The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational;
But he whose noble soul its fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from,
As for your youth whom blood and blows delight,
Away with them! there is not in their crew
One valiant spirit.”—Joanna Baillie.
God never intended that we should feel no fear. We are to fear and distrust ourselves. We are to fear danger as something beyond our own strength. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And we are to “work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.” But all fear, as we look within, is to be stayed in courage as we look up to God. The sin is in giving way when we have omnipotence and infinite love for a defence. No man, then, should say, “I fear,” and let that drive him to fear which is yet deeper.
IV. Courage, to bring honour to God, must always be courage for the right and the true.
1. Men admire courage in the abstract. Prize-fighting has drawn multitudes. The mere soldier is sometimes not distinguished from the lofty patriot. Thus, perhaps, the mistake concerning Milton’s Satan, in “Paradise Lost.” Some critics have complained that Satan is the hero of the work. That is to forget that courage, in itself, is not truly worthy of admiration. Fowls, sheep, bulls, wild beasts, also have courage, and fight unto death.
2. God loves courage only when it is prompted by truth and righteousness. Such courage He always has honoured, and will honour: Daniel; the apostles before the Sanhedrim; Paul. It is said that the King of France summoned the Prince de Conde before him, giving him his choice of three things: “Go to mass, die, or be imprisoned for life.” Said the Prince, “With regard to the first, I am fully determined never to go to mass; as to the other two, I am so perfectly indifferent that I leave the choice to your Majesty.” We are not called to martyrdom, nor even to imprisonment for the truth’s sake; possibly if our apprehension of sin were always what it should be, we should find that whatever courage death might need, life requires even more.
Instead of discoursing on the topic of the passage, the verses may be taken as shewing—
THE HONOUR, THE INFLUENCE, AND THE SOURCE OF TRUE COURAGE
I. The honour which is put upon courage by God.
1. He makes the servant who has courage in Himself His own constant companion. “The Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.”
2. He makes the servant who has courage the subject of His peculiar teaching. The entire passage is a special instruction to the man who has already so valiantly, before his fellows, shewn himself afraid to distrust God. Thus “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.”
3. He makes the servant who has courage the instrument of fulfilling His covenant. “The land which I sware unto their fathers, thou shalt divide.”
4. He makes the servant who has courage a blessing and a joy to his fellows. Joshua should lead them into the land: instrumentally, their homes and future possessions should come to them from his bravery and his fidelity to God.
II. The influence which is conceded to courage by men. All men own its power.
1. Courage loses no favourable opportunity to begin warfare; fear would miss many an opening.
2. Courage appals its foes before it smites them: it thus needs only half the strength of timidity. The arm which resists it is already feeble by reason of fear.
3. Courage seizes all advantages which are offered in the conflict. Fear is blind, and, till too late, overlooks them.
4. Courage gives no opportunity to the defeated foe to rally. Fear happens to win the day, and sits down surprised and contented, talking of valour. The conflict has to be fought over afresh, and it may be that the battle is then lost.
5. Courage is imperial in itself, and must reign However it may be with the Graces of the ancient classics, the Scripture graces were all “born in purple.” Love conquers everywhere. Patience presently wins the day. Humility may seem of lowlier mien, but “The meek shall inherit the earth,” and “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Hope, always aspiring, enters already “within the veil.” As to courage, “To him that believeth, all things are possible.”
III. The strength which courage draws from the Scriptures.
1. To neglect the Bible is to prepare the way for fear and trembling. (a) There can be no sufficient courage without light, and the Bible is “a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path.” The awe which comes from darkness. (b) There can be no sufficient courage without confidence of being right, and the Bible assures the just man. The hesitation which comes from uncertainty. (c) There can be no sufficient courage without love, and our love is born of knowing the love of God. (d) There can be no sufficient courage without hope, and he who neglects the Bible can have no satisfactory ground of hope.
2. It is not enough to have the Bible, it must be used. (a) The courage that comes from speaking the truth to others: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth.” (b) The courage that comes from meditation in the truth: “Thou shalt meditate therein day and night.” (c.) The courage that comes from doing the truth: “That thou mayest observe to do all that is written therein.”
THE THREEFOLD ALLIANCE;—GOD, LAW, MAN.—Joshua 1:8 only
I. The law of the Scriptures is one with physical law, and he who obeys the Scriptures has physical law for an ally. All life is against that man who is against the Bible; all life is for the man who is obedient to the Bible. Suppose the laws which touch our health worked just the other way; what a curse law would be! Think of drunkenness, lust, crime, and all manner of debauchery as contributing to physical health and gladness; what a world this would become! But law is on the side of godliness, and he who walks with the Bible may sing with Paul, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.”
II. The law of the Scriptures is in harmony with the law of conscience, and he who obeys the Scriptures, in that proportion maintains his self-respect, and ultimately wins the regard of men.
1. The relation of conscious integrity to individual bearing. (a) No man can respect himself, who is continually giving the lie to his own sense of right. (b) No man can lose his conscious integrity without proportionately suffering in moral dignity. By so much as he is dishonest to the distinctive feature of his manhood, by so much does he become a mere animal. He cannot stand in the same moral dignity before his fellows. He feels his humiliation.
2. The relation of an honest life to individual influence. Not only does the man who is dishonest to himself feel less before his fellows, but they see him for what he is. The weakness may be too successfully concealed by artifice or habit to awaken reflection, but the measure of every man’s moral worth is more or less accurately comprehended by his companions. They may not reason on it; they must apprehend it. Moral life is so much moral light, and the heart of our neighbour feels whether or not it is illuminated in our presence. The earth never mistakes the moon for the sun by shewing daylight at night-time. If the light in us be darkness or merely artifice, our fellow-men cannot be much or long deceived by the imposition. Thus, human sin notwithstanding, the world has ever owned her worthiest sons most proudly. The Pope may do as he will; the world, in her general conscience, and in her history, seldom canonises any but her saints. It is the good man who has “good success.” He may not be placed in the Calendar till after his death, but society seldom fails ultimately to correct her temporary errors. Socrates may live thinking that he has only earned hemlock, he may write never a chapter to perpetuate his name, men will be true to his manhood for all that.
Conscience, however, needs the light and encouragement of God’s law to keep it in activity. Scripture is the only fireproof in which conscience can enwrap itself to prevent being seared into unfeeling callousness by the burnings of surrounding and inward sin. Thus law and conscience, together, make way for good success in the inheritance which is moral and social.
III. The law of the Scriptures is the mind of God, and he who keeps ever with the law is always where God stoops to whisper, “I am with thee.” When God established His commandments in the earth, He bade law, both in the physical and moral worlds, be on the side of goodness. From that day to this, law has never sided with the sinner. But though much of God’s help of His children is through law, this is by no means His only method. He adds His direct blessings, and gives His direct help to the obedient. Nothing is written more emphatically in Scripture than this. The deliverance from Egypt, the miracles of the wilderness, the walls of Jericho falling without any cause in ordinary law; the histories given by Samuel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and other prophets, are full of incidents of Jehovah’s direct interposition. The Psalms tell us of the angels that encamp about them that fear the Lord, and both the Old and New Testaments often shew them coming to the guidance, or comfort, or help of the godly. The cross, most emphatically of all, tells of help other than by the automatic method of law, to which modern scientists would tie us. True discipleship not only finds Christ, and cries with Nathanael, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God;” it hears Christ reply of the earthly future, “Hereafter thou shalt see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” The eyes of the obedient see an open heaven even while yet on earth, and life everywhere becomes all but sentient with God. “If God” so “be for us, who can be against us?” Thus does our Father guarantee “good success.”
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 1:6. God never tells us to be strong without helping us to be strong. To encourage His servant to begin this vast work and dreadful war, God shews him how all should end. “Thou shalt divide the land.”
Joshua 1:7. No man’s dignity, however great, frees him in any measure from absolute obedience to the Scriptures. Joshua must obey in all things, turning neither “to the right hand nor to the left.” Error and sin do not lie merely on one side of the way of truth, but on both: the path of holy obedience is the via media.
“As the soldier of an earthly leader is to act in all things according to certain rules laid down in a code drawn up for the purpose, so the Christian soldier has his code drawn up for him by God Himself, and revealed to him in the oracles of truth. This code he is to study with diligence, that he may conform himself to it in every particular. This will require all the courage that any man can possess.”
Joshua 1:8. “Thou shalt have thy heart so constantly imbued with the letter and spirit of the law, that thy mouth shall, as it were, overflow with its rich contents, as ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ The same phrase occurs but once elsewhere in the Scriptures.”
“The Heb. term for ‘meditate’ implies that mental kind of rumination which is apt to vent itself in an audible sound of voice.” [Bush.]
Joshua 1:9. The interrogative form of the first clause, so far from suggesting doubt, is expressive of the strongest possible emphasis.
Our Lord continually assured Himself that He had kept the word and followed the will of the Father (cf. John 5:30; John 6:38). He may even be said to encourage Himself in the thought of His obedience to the will of God. The prayer in John 17 seems full of the comfort of conscious obedience. If the Saviour found this thought grateful and refreshing to Him, how needful is it that we in our weakness shall never stand where we cannot strengthen ourselves by saying, “Has not God commanded me in this thing? Is not the Father with me in His will, as well as by His presence?”
“The Lord never demands anything of men without giving them a promise in return.” [Keil.]