Leading in Difficult TimesSample

Leading in Difficult Times: Joshua

by David Bibee

If ever there was a hard act to follow, it was leading God’s people after Moses—the greatest prophet of Israel’s history who led the people from captivity. But Joshua also demonstrates essential qualities of leading in difficult times. In particular, Joshua demonstrates the dual importance of being guided by the past, while also having a crystal clear vision for the future.

 

With Moses gone, Joshua was anointed by God to lead his people to conquer the promised land that God had given over to them. Joshua understood that the first priority for him and his people was to be faithful to God’s word spoken through Moses. As God said to Joshua, only in faithfulness was there hope for victory: “Make sure you obey the whole law my servant Moses gave you…then you will have success wherever you go [and] I will be with you everywhere you go” (Joshua 1:7, 9).

 

Remembering God’s faithfulness is, perhaps, the single most important theme of the book of Joshua, not for purposes of holding onto the “glory days,” but because it was the remembrance of God’s faithfulness that enabled Joshua to lead Israel into every victory. Knowing all that God had done, Joshua was confident that the God who was mighty to save them in the past would not abandon them in the future.

 

For this reason, Joshua was able to lead the people through every struggle until he could say to his people before departing this life that “not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed” (Joshua 23:14). The tragedy of God’s people is that their memories were short and they did not heed Joshua’s example. Within one generation they “knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10). But God’s faithfulness remained, despite their forgetfulness and sin, and he would send a greater Joshua to fulfill his promises. 

Standing on the banks of the Jordan, Jesus came into the land and to his forgetful people, so that he might lead a new exodus: not from physical bondage, but from slavery to sin and death itself. While all of us have gone astray, Christ was faithful for us and in our place, taking both our sin and the judgment owed for it upon himself on the Cross. In Christ, God’s faithfulness overcomes our forgetfulness. In Christ, God remembers our sins no more.

 

When you struggle to hold onto hope in the face of every trial, may you look away from yourself to Christ, our greater Joshua. For “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).