Moses is Dead

The start of the Book of Joshua is a moment of transition for the nation of Israel. Moses is gone. The question as to what would happen now had to be on the mind of every person. Moses had led the nation for the last 40 years, and now someone new would be taking the reigns of leadership. Those reigns are about to fall to Joshua. He was Moses’s right-hand man during the entire time the Israelites had been in the wilderness. He had been preparing for this moment for decades, but when the moment came to take over it had to be frightening. Can you imagine what it felt like to have to replace Moses? Those are big shoes to fill. He had been God’s messenger to the people since they had left Egypt. He was stability for the people. No matter what happened the people could turn to Moses knowing he was there and had a direct line to God.

What I really love about Joshua Chapter 1 is how God dealt with this change that was taking place. He told Joshua some very specific things. The first thing I want to look at is found in verse 5, “No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.” Joshua and the people needed to hear this. We need to hear this too. Because just like the nation of Israel was dealing with change so do we. Our circumstances change all the time. Sometimes we view that as a good thing and sometimes we view that as a bad thing, but it is inevitable. Some of that change leaves us in uncomfortable circumstances and we can feel very unsure of how to proceed. It’s easy for us to start questioning where God is and can we depend on Him? God is telling Joshua that He hasn’t changed or gone anywhere. That same thing is true for us. You may feel like God has moved away from you depending on where you are in life, but I promise He hasn’t. I have felt this way. I have felt like God was somewhere else, and I had to tell myself that wasn’t true. I had to take my emotions out of it and grab onto the truth that I knew from Scripture.

God gave Joshua and the Israelites a lot of promises, but He also told them how to access all these promises. The thing we all need to remember is that God wants to do so much with us, but many times we miss what God wants to do through us because we refuse to do what we need to do to be ready to be used. One interesting example of this is when you read in Joshua 1 how large the nation of Israel should have been. It was to stretch from the Negev desert in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north. The real shock is when God said they had the land from the Mediterranean Sea on the west to the Euphrates River on the east. That is a much larger piece of land than Israel ever controlled. Now the question becomes why didn’t they ever control it?

They never had all this land because they were unwilling to be obedient. Joshua 1:7-8 tells the Israelites what to do to have all God wanted for them. They were to be obedient to all the instructions Moses gave them. God through Moses gave them all of the Old Testament Law. They knew how to live, worship, and what was right and wrong because of this. They were told not to deviate from the Law. They couldn’t change it or ignore it. They were then told to meditate on it day and night. If they did all of this they would be successful. The generations that would follow Joshua wouldn’t follow these decrees God had given them so they never got all they should have. They missed God’s best because they wouldn’t do the right thing. We never do the right thing by accident. It takes discipline and dedication to seek after holiness. If you want to follow God that won’t happen with wishful thinking. You have to make the choice to follow Him, and when you do you will find peace and purpose. Joshua grabs onto what God tells Him in these verses. He is successful because of this. Moses was gone, but God was still there. Joshua may have been moving into a new circumstance, but God told him would be with him like He was with Moses. We can take this same promise and apply it to our lives. God won’t abandon us either, and when we strive to live out His Word then we open up all the things He wants to accomplish through us.