Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1214
“I will not fail you, nor forsake you.” Joshua 1:5.
NO doubt God had spoken to Joshua before. He had been a man of faith for many years and his faith enabled him to distinguish himself by such simple truthfulness of character and thoroughly faithful obedience to the Lord’s will, that he and another were the only two left of the whole generation that came up out of Egypt. “Faithful among the faithless found,” he survived where all else died. Standing erect in full vigor, he might have been compared to a lone tree which spreads its verdant branches untouched by the axe which has leveled its fellows with the ground.
But now Joshua was about to enter upon a new work—he had become king in Jeshurun instead of Moses! From a servant, he had risen to be a ruler, and it now fell to his lot to lead the people across the Jordan and marshal their forces for the conquest of the Promised Land. On the threshold of this high enterprise the Lord appears to His servant and says, “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you: I will not fail you, nor forsake you.” When God’s people come into fresh positions, they shall have fresh revelations of His love! New dangers will bring new protections. New difficulties, new helps. New discouragements, new comforts, so that we may rejoice in tribulations, also, because they are so many newly-opened doors of God’s mercy to us!
We will be glad of our extremities because they are Divine opportunities. What the Lord said to Joshua was particularly encouraging and it came precisely when he needed it. Great was his peril and great was the promise—“Be not afraid, neither be you dismayed: for the Lord your God is with you where ever you go.” We will waste no time in preface, but at once consider the Divine promise. “I will not fail you, nor forsake you.”
I. Observe here, first, THE SUITABILITY OF THE CONSOLATION WHICH THESE WORDS GAVE TO JOSHUA. “I will not fail you, nor forsake you.” This must have been very cheering to him in reference to himself. He knew Moses and he must have had a very high esteem of him. He was a great man, one of a thousand—scarcely among all that have been born of woman has there arisen a greater than Moses. Joshua had been his servant and, no doubt, considered himself to be very inferior to that great Lawgiver.
A sense of his own weakness comes over a man all the more from being associated with a grander mind. If you mingle with your inferiors you are apt to grow vain—but closely associated with superior minds there is a far greater probability that you will become depressed and may think even less of yourself than humility might require—for humility is, after all, only a right estimate of our own powers. Joshua, therefore, may possibly have been somewhat despondent under a very pressing sense of his own deficiencies, and this cheering assurance would meet his case—“I will not fail you: though you are less wise, or meek, or courageous than Moses, I will not fail you, nor forsake you.”
If God is with our weakness it waxes strong. If He is with our folly it rises into wisdom. If He is with our timidity it gathers courage. It matters not how conscious a man may be of being nothing at all in himself, when he is conscious of the Divine Presence he even rejoices in his infirmity because the power of God rests upon him. If the Lord says unto the weakest man or woman here, “I will not fail you, nor forsake you,” no cowardly thought will cross that ennobled spirit! That word will nerve the trembler with a lion-like courage which no adversary will be able to daunt.
The consolation given to Joshua would be exceedingly suitable in the presence of his enemies. He had spied out the land and he knew it to be inhabited by giant races, men famous both for stature and strength. The sons of Anak were there and, other tribes, described as “great, and many, and tall.” He knew that they were a warlike people and expert in the use of destructive implements of war, such as brought terror upon men, for they had chariots of iron. He knew, too, that their cities were of colossal dimensions—fortresses whose stones at this very day surprise the traveler, so that he asks what wondrous skill could have lifted those masses of rock into their places.
The other spies had said that these Canaanites dwelt in cities that were walled up to Heaven and, though Joshua did not endorse that exaggeration, he was very well aware that the cities to be captured were fortresses of great strength. And he knew the people to be exterminated were men of ferocious courage and great physical energy. Therefore the Lord said, “I will not fail you, nor forsake you.” What more was needed? Surely, in the Presence of God, Anakim become dwarfs, strongholds become as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers and chariots of iron are as thistle-down upon the hillside driven before the blast!