16: Joshua & the Victorious Christian Life

[00:00] Stephanie: Season 2, episode 16. Today in our lessons from the wilderness series, we are looking at Joshua as a model for the victorious Christian life.

Hello, Father.

[00:11] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:13] Stephanie: Good to be with you.

[00:14] Marcus: Yes. Here we are once again. Book of Joshua today.

[00:17] Stephanie: Joshua! So today’s icebreaker first. Would you rather only listen to music for a month or only listen to talk radio?

[00:31] Marcus: That’s an excellent question.

[00:35] Stephanie: As in, when you go to turn on the radio. Obviously you can take breaks.

[00:38] Marcus: Yeah. I’d probably go with music, but it’s close.

[00:46] Stephanie: I wasn’t sure which direction you would take it. Mmm. Yes, I would definitely go with music. Unless we’re counting that talk radio also includes audiobooks. I would still probably just choose music for a month, just to you know, not cram audiobooks into my head.

[01:02] Marcus: Yeah, I will say I rarely turn my radio to music. That almost never happens. I turn my radio to information or sports or something like that.

[01:13] Stephanie: Yeah. All right. So last episode, we talked about the transition of leadership from Moses to Joshua and the SLOW model. I feel like we finally made it. Is the wilderness over?

[01:32] Marcus: Yes, we can definitively say when you get to the book of Joshua, that’s actually one of the main points. The wilderness is over. In fact, there is this clear break because no more manna. If there was any question, is the wilderness over? It was clearly over when there was no manna the next day. Okay, this is literally the only way we have been fed our entire lives. And this is a new adventure, new chapter. Everything is new here. So, yeah, the wilderness is over.

[02:03] Stephanie: Huzzah! We’re getting so close to the end of this series. We’re getting to fun stuff. So what is going on in the book of Joshua?

[02:14] Marcus: So in the book of Joshua, you can divide the book into two parts. I call it the book the War and Peace. So the war chapters are the ones we’re the most familiar with because all the stories we get told are about the battles. It’s kind of a boring sermon to say, “and Gad gets this region of the land.” It doesn’t preach as nearly as effectively as, “they’re attacking enemies.” So there are four core battles that are highlighted in the book of Joshua, and you can remember them with the word JOSH.

[02:48] Stephanie: We’re going to go over that next episode.

[02:50] Marcus: Shockingly, JOSH. I’ll introduce it here because I brought it up. JOSH, is Jericho, Overtime at AI, Sun stands still at Gibeon, and Hot sword. So those are the four main battles. Now, what’s happening in the book of Joshua is that God has basically in chapter one, laid out a formula for success. He tells them if you are about to go in, you gotta have all these battles to fight. But don’t worry, there is a formula for success. Trust me, obey me, and watch what I do. Or to put it in SLOW terms, seek me, listen, obey, and you’ll get to watch the victory that follows.

[03:28] Stephanie: SLOW is kind of the “how.”

[03:30] Marcus: SLOW is the how. But the formula here is the classic boot camp message. Trust and obey, and you’ll see victory.

[03:39] Stephanie: Mm hmm. So dig into that a little bit more. What are we hoping for? As we are transitioning from wilderness into promised land territory, what are we expecting?

[03:57] Marcus: So we are expecting battles. They know they’re going to war. They are entering into a land full of enemies and each one of those enemies is stronger than them. And so collectively they’re overwhelmingly stronger. But each one, one at a time, is stronger than them. And so they have a couple things going for them right off the bat that they didn’t have before. Number one, they’ve already beaten Sihon and Og. And because they’ve defeated Sihon and Og, the people of Canaan know a couple things. One, giants don’t mean they’re gonna win. These were enemies every bit as powerful as they are. And so they know that, okay, we’re in trouble on that front.

And secondly, God fought for Israel. They may call on their gods to help them with things. No one has ever seen a god show up and fight for their people, the way that Israel’s God shows up and fights for them. This is a new thing. And their only excellent answer to it as pagans is, well, let’s be men. Let’s fight. Because even if we die fighting a god, well then we’re men who died fighting a god. So that’s kind of where their mindset is at that.

[05:12] Stephanie: Or they’ve already, you know, melted in fear and run away.

[05:15] Marcus: Yeah. So you get both. What’s happening is they are melting in fear. So the message they’re giving to themselves to get out of their fear is, let’s be men and fight. Because it’s kind of that Valhalla idea. If you die on the battlefield and you die in glory against the god, then you get a better afterlife. There’s a lot of that going on.

[05:36] Stephanie: All right, so lesson one is trust plus obey equals victory. That is our formula. And would you unpack the obedience side of things here a little bit more and maybe in the biblical context of wisdom?

[05:53] Marcus: Sure. Okay, so we’ve said before, the New Testament idea of walking in the Spirit and the Old Testament idea of wisdom are basically the same thing. Because the Holy Spirit is the source of wisdom. And so what we see Joshua modeling for us is walking in the Spirit. Just as we saw Moses modeling walking in the spirit. In fact, both of them clearly are anointed with the spirit. They have the Spirit.

The prayer of Moses was, I long for the day where everybody has the Holy Spirit on them. And that’s really what’s new about the New Testament. Everybody who is in Christ has the Holy Spirit and therefore, everybody has the opportunity for this kind of relationship with God that Moses sort of uniquely enjoyed. And there’s a fascinating story, actually. The spirit is placed on seventy elders and some of them are in the camp. And the spirit comes on them and they start prophesying.

And the people at first are like, wait, this is only for Moses. And Moses is like, what, are you jealous for me? I wish all God’s people had the spirit. It isn’t that nobody had ever had the Holy Spirit before Pentecost. It’s that now this is the normal experience for every believer. And so the connection between wisdom in the Old Testament and the Holy Spirit, and the New Testament are directly connected ideas.

And so when we talk about obedience we are putting it into the context of a relational connection with God. If you take obedience out of that relational context, it becomes legalism. If you keep it in the relational context, then it is the natural outflow of faith.

[07:33] Stephanie: That’s really good. Do you happen to have Joshua 1:8 right there?

[07:37] Marcus: I do. So, Joshua 1:8. It says, “This book of instruction, literally, this book of the Torah. Must not depart from your mouth. You are to meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do.” So you kind of get the formula laid out here. Meditate on God’s law, on the Torah that I gave to Moses. Why? So you’re careful to do it. That’s the obedience part. And what happens then? You will see success.

Then you will see things turn out the way that I’ve promised that they would. And so that model I present in a couple of different ways. I picture it this way, there’s this treasure chest that’s locked up. The key that opens that treasure is obedience. So God says, do this my way and I promise I will unlock this treasure. In this case, the treasure is the land. I will give it to you, just obey me.

And then meditation on the Torah is like the lanyard or the necklace that I wear, and I hold the key in front of it. Like, sometimes you might see somebody have a lanyard and a key there. And so the idea is that by meditating on God’s word day and night, it reminds me to use this key of obedience. That’s what’s going to open the treasure that’s in front of us.

[08:54] Stephanie: Yes, yes. And that’s also going to help tune your lenses, if you will, of your worldview so that you can hear God, and be confident in your hearing of God more as well. That’s awesome. All right, we’ve already had the Red Sea crossing which is a fulfillment of a promise of rescue from slavery. And then to get into the promised land we see them cross the Jordan. Which is a fulfillment of the promise that God is bringing them into the land that he promised their fathers.

And we’re also seeing on the trust side of this equation, we’re seeing significant big rocks and little rocks of trust of, look what I have done. Look what I am doing, these promises are fulfilled. I’m taking care of you. And so we have reasons to trust. We have things to obey leading into victory.

Do you want to talk any more about faith? I know we’ve talked about faith and presumption a little bit before. Sometimes when we talk about crossing the Jordan you are like, look, they didn’t come up to the Jordan and say, hey,God, part of the Red Sea. So let’s just go step into the Jordan and surely he’ll do it. He actually told them this is what you should do.

[10:22] Marcus: Well, that’s kind of interesting. The parting of the Red Sea story takes up two chapters. You think about how many battles are just one verse,…and this battle happened. Or how many stories we get in two or three verses. And he took two chapters to tell us about the crossing of the Jordan river. So you’re like, okay, God, there’s something he wants us to pay attention to here. And I think a big lesson that comes across in this Jordan river crossing is that it is establishing Joshua as the new Moses. Just as God did what he did with Moses and parting the Red Sea, so he can do the same thing with Joshua.

Everything that you knew you could trust to happen under Moses you can trust to happen under Joshua, because it’s the same God. Now specifically on this presumption versus faith thing, you kind of explained it a little there. The difference between presumption and faith is faith is about obedience. Faith is about God told me something and now I have to live as if that’s true. Presumption is trying to force God’s hand. I want God to do x, therefore, I am going to do something to try to force him to do it. Now, that’s presumption.

So that is, I really want God to heal this child, therefore, I am not going to take them to any doctors, and not do anything for this child. Forcing God to heal, that’s presumption, that is not faith. Faith is God has told me he wants to heal this child, he’s told me to pray. That would be obedience. But unless he tells you directly that’s not how it works. And it’s important for people to understand the difference here.

[12:14] Stephanie: Just because you believe something is possible, because you believe, oh, God can do this, doesn’t mean that I’m going to now believe that he can do it. And so he will do it because you’re not forcing him into it.

[12:28] Marcus: Yeah. There’s a difference between knowing that God can do something and knowing that it’s his will. And we can go through story after story after story in the Bible. I mean, there’s a lot of people who speculate, for example, that Judas was trying to force Jesus’s hand to claim the kingship and defeat the Romans. I don’t know if that’s what his actual motivation was, but that’s a common theory. But that’s the height of presumption.

Well, when Peter told Jesus, “Oh, you’re never going to be crucified.” You could say, on the one hand, well, isn’t that great faith? I know you’re going to be king. I know it’s going to end up this way and I’m claiming that. We get caught up in this and that’s one of the problems with the name and claim it theology. It can become presumption very quickly. Because what I’m saying is, I really, really want this to happen therefore, I’m going to trust God to make what I want happen. And that’s not faith. Faith is responding to what God is leading us to do and being obedient to what God is telling us to do.

[13:32] Stephanie: Even when he says, go walk through that river, it’s going to part. Or go take that land of giants, I’ll be with you. That’s where you say, okay, that does look not possible, but I trust you because you’re saying to do it.

[13:47] Marcus: And there’s another kind of faith which we see with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, where they had no choice but to go into that fire. And they’re like, well, we trust that God can get us out of here, but even if he does not we aren’t going to bow. So faith looks different in different situations. In this particular context, faith showed itself by the fact that they were willing to do this. And then he asked them another one. As soon as they get across the river and the river has now closed up behind them in flood mode, he says, okay, now circumcise all of the soldiers. That is not?

[14:25] Stephanie: We’re ready to fight.

[14:26] Marcus: We’ve already seen this in the book of Genesis where the people of Shechem were tricked into circumcising all their soldiers. And two guys killed them all because they were so incapacitated by the circumcision. Now we get into Joshua, same thing. It’s like, okay, it’s time to circumcise all the soldiers. They’re like, couldn’t we have done that on the other side of the river? But no, God wants them to trust him and obey. Now, the trust and obey here is to have enough faith to do what I’ve asked you to do. I also think this applies to the idea of faith, like a grain of mustard seed. I often say, I may not really think this is going to work, but I’ve got enough faith to do it. And that’s faith like a grain of mustard seed, I’ll still obey.

[15:11] Stephanie: So then lesson two. So we’ve got trust, obey, and victory. Lesson two, victory implies battle right? And so just because there is victory it doesn’t mean everything gets easier, though there can be some truth to it. Do you want to unpack that a little?

[15:26] Marcus: Yeah. So a victorious Christian life, the promise of victory, does imply that there are going to be battles to fight. And Jesus told us very clearly, in this world,you will have trouble. There’s going to be problems. So that is a given. There are also families who have walked with God a long time and often have kind of this hedge of protection around them, and this generational blessing within them. And what we’re talking about is, they are not bringing unnecessary battles on themselves.

So by having obedient children, by having a joyful family, by having God’s blessing on certain things, what happens is we often spare ourselves the extra and unnecessary battles. And so because of that there  can be a greater peace. And that is part of the blessing that God gives for obedience that becomes generational. But that doesn’t mean that those families aren’t going to have battles. It just means they don’t have those extra battles that come that are created by sin. And we can’t always control it.

So as a parent, I have no control over you and Ben. If you guys do things that create problems, we now have to face those battles. In the same way that I can do things. There are things that I could do that could create horrible battles for you. If I were to go off and do something really bad, then you guys would bear the consequences of that. Suddenly you’d have to deal with battles that weren’t your fault or your responsibility, and probably not the battles God intended for you to have to face. So that’s what we’re looking at, there will always be battles in life. We just want to avoid the extra battles that are caused by sin.

[17:19] Stephanie: So then lesson three, God’s sovereignty. This idea that everything that happens is God’s will.. We wanted to come after that just a little bit here.

[17:32] Marcus: Yeah. This is not an anti-reformed theology statement. I have a lot of reformed theology friends. This is an anti-excessive reformed theology idea. This is an excessive sovereignty thing. There are people out there who say if it happens, it is God’s will. Well, that’s just not biblical. That’s fatalism. That isn’t sovereignty. So fatalism says that everything that happens is God’s will. The Bible says, it teaches us to pray, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, if I am asking God for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, what does that tell me immediately?

[18:14] Stephanie: It’s not.

[18:15] Marcus: It’s not being done on earth as it is in heaven.

[18:18] Stephanie: Well it’s kind of like, we shouldn’t have fellowship with demons. But the issue was, Paul’s bringing that up because it’s happening. And he’s saying, stop it.

[18:30] Marcus: There’s a difference between saying something shouldn’t happen and saying that it doesn’t happen. And so what happens is these people who drift into this fatalistic view of sovereignty end up saying some really damaging things to people. Like,  it was God’s will that you got raped. And I’m like, no, no, no. That’s not how that works. We need to understand that God’s sovereignty means he is big enough, he is wise enough, he is above all things enough that he can work with whatever happens. He pre knows what’s going to happen. He’s got a plan for what happens. And so his plan is not bringing the bad things to you. Though there are times when God brings bad things, it does say that he brings curses.

And he brings bad things. But there were the Pharisees who took this to that logical extreme. They said, well, if you’re born blind someone must have sinned. This has to be a curse for sin. This is too big of a topic to unpack completely. I just wanted to make sure that people who may have been damaged or wounded by people telling them that if something bad happened, it was God’s will. The Bible doesn’t teach that, that every bad thing that happens to us was God’s will. I’ve talked to people before who’ve asked the question, why was I chosen to be in a family like this? Why was I chosen to be abused like this? And we’re like, well, you were actually chosen to be part of God’s family. It was satan who chose to do this stuff to you. And so we do need to understand that the sovereignty of God means that he’s bigger than the things that happen. He’s got a plan for it, not that he determines everything that happens.

[20:18] Stephanie: This segues continues into implications for the healing journey. Whether extreme, or just common everyday maturity increasing, and healing. They’re so intertwined. Most lessons that wounded people need to master, what everyone needs to master, because we’re all wounded. So we need to not let fear and despair narratives get in our way. We need to not let the doubts that keep us from trusting God and obeying God get in our way. Can you give us some practical next steps for somebody who is on a healing journey and looking for victory?

[21:04] Marcus: So one of the things we do is start with Biblical meditation, pursuing God and pursuing a connection with God. It’s hard to give universal advice on these things. But one of the things I found a lot is people who just want to feel better, and so they’ll do whatever is going to help them feel better. And if you as the counselor are the one making them feel better, then they latch on to you.

If it’s their addiction making them feel better, they latch onto the addiction. If God helps now and then, they’re perfectly happy to turn to God as long as he is making them feel better.But what happens is they don’t actually trust God. He just becomes one of the resources in life that they use to try to feel better. And so it may start there, cause you gotta start somewhere. But we need to begin moving into a direction of trust. So you’re like, well, trust is exactly the thing that got broken by the woundedness. So what do I need to do?

And part of it is, I need to work with somebody to help un booby trap the Bible. That’s a whole big topic in and of itself. But what I mean by un booby trapping the Bible is that there are a lot of wounded people who get triggered by verses in the Bible. And so they can’t just read it for themselves and get out of it what other people would get out of it. It doesn’t mean the same thing to them because they’re reading it through a filter. And so for some people they need to be reading the Bible and studying the Bible.

But they actually need some help because as they go through this, the filter of their woundedness keeps them from seeing what’s really going on there. And this is important because too many of us are like, well, just read the Bible and you’ll get better. They don’t understand how booby trapped the Bible can be. Just one obvious example, like Jesus said, many of you who call and say, lord, lord, will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

And I will say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. And you’re like, wait. And so that’s what I mean by a booby trap. Like, somebody stumbles across a verse like that and they’re like, wait a second. How do I know I’m not one of those people? And you just encourage them, well, read the words of Jesus for encouragement. They come across something like this and they don’t know what to do with it. Because they don’t understand that he’s talking largely here to hypocrites who are invoking the name of Jesus but following the devil by the way that they’re actually living life. It’s a very big topic. It’s a big topic, but it’s an example of how the Bible can be booby trapped.

[24:04] Stephanie: Thank you for bringing it up. It’s good. I’m gonna pause for a quick announcement. And that is just, I want to remind everyone there is still a little time to register for our Deeper Walk summer intensives at the Joy Center in Hobart, Indiana. This summer there are wonderful opportunities. Spiritual warfare training tools, a prayer event for our children, a school of ministry graduation reunion, and also some training in complex trauma. So if you are interested in that, there’s still time to register. dwisom.org. will get you more information.

All right, Father, last thoughts. And then can you believe it? We have two episodes left of this series.

[24:53] Marcus: All right, thanks. We are getting there. So the lessons of boot camp are all coming to fruition in Joshua. We finally get a generation that gets it, and the children whose parents were worried they would be destroyed if they invaded. They watched, they saw and they learned. This is kind of interesting because they saw what their parents didn’t do, and they’re like, I don’t want to do that. We want to get this right. It’s just a very rare thing. But this generation stepped up in a big way.

And I keep praying for a Joshua generation. God, we need a Joshua generation. You know, a whole generation of people who are like, we are not going to shrink back from the battles. We are not going to shrink back from the battles God has called us to face. Even understanding that not everybody is going to like you for fighting those battles. In fact, in our day and age, a lot of the fire is friendly fire. And because people don’t think you ought to be fighting these battles. But you gotta fight the ones that God is asking you to fight, not just the ones that you want to fight. because your flesh gets really angry about it.

[26:04] Stephanie: That’s a really good word.

[26:05] Marcus: Yeah. Which battle is God actually asking me to step and fight? Because I get angry about a lot of things. That doesn’t mean that God is saying, okay, you can go do something about that now. In this case, what we’re really looking after is a generation that trusts God, seeks God, and is in step with him. And as a result, they’re seeing some really great things happen.

[26:29] Stephanie: Huzzah! Very good. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend. Do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk trailblazer. Thanks again.

We’ll see you back on the trail next week.