Tag: Joshua

Fortitude

I am writing this on June 5, 2025, a day before the 81st anniversary of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. Soon, I will actually be standing on the beaches and bluffs of France’s Normandy coast. I will follow the actions of 101st Airborne’s Easy Company on a Band of Brothers tour. I will get to stand in the tree line of a Brecourt Manor pasture that housed the massive 105mm (~4″) artillery guns that fired on the landing beaches over a mile (1.6 km) away – guns disabled by Easy Company.

Ever since reading  The Longest Day as a high school junior, I’ve been captivated by the Normandy Invasion, known as Operation Overlord. It gripped my imagination. I was struck by the sheer scale and grim intensity of the Normandy landings, as 156,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches. With over two years of preparation, Operation Overlord was a massive undertaking involving close to three million armed forces personnel, not to mention the support of millions of civilians. The sheer scale of preparation to liberate France – and eventually all of Europe – from the grip of a God-disregarding Nazi regime completely astounded me, and still does.

The reality that many of the landing troops were near my age was not lost on me as I read The Longest Day. I could not fathom the courage it must have taken for the troops to step off their Higgins Boats. I was pretty sure I didn’t have the courage required. Nor I suspect, did they. But they did it anyway.

Courage!

After God rescued his people from Egyptian slavery, they spent 40 years in preparation to enter the land that He had set aside for them to occupy and live. Preparation? Yes – the people were learning how to be people of the King, the one true God. They were discovering his sovereignty and character. They were discovering how to live together as a kingdom of people under His Kingship. They were living out the commandments. Preparation indeed.

The land was to be the beachhead from which they would restart their mission as God’s people chosen with the task of being a blessing to the nations around them, a kingdom of priests. But the land was inhabited by a morally corrupt people who disregarded Yahweh’s sovereignty. How corrupt? One example: Sacrificing children to the god Molech was a common feature of their cultic religion.

After the 40 years of preparation, Moses had died, and the leadership baton was passed on to Joshua. He was tasked with leading the millions of Israelites into Canaan to replace the evildoers. God had judged the Canaanites and found them wanting, so they were about to be displaced. And it was Joshua’s responsibility to lead the people into the land.

I often ponder the conversation between God and Joshua as He prepared Joshua to lead the people of Israel across the Jordon River to inherit the “promised land…”

God to Joshua: “Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.  Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.  Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.  Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:6-9, also Deuteronomy 31)

Three times, God connected strength and courage in his instructions to Joshua.  In Hebrew poetic tradition, anything stated three times demands attention. So, being a dabbler in Hebrew, I poked around a bit to see what I could discover.  Strong and courageous are linked because they are related words.1  The Hebrew word for courage is amats, which means: To be determined, to make oneself alert, to strengthen oneself.   Courage is about an internal resolve and fortitude.2

Interesting!  Courage in Hebrew thought seems to have nothing to do with acts of bravery, which is what usually comes to mind when we think of courage.  It seems to have more to do with internal resolve. I immediately think of the Apostle Paul’s statement of resolve in his letter to the Philippian Christians:

[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness].  (Philippians 3:10, Amplified)

The determined purpose, the internal resolve, of the young men who stormed the Normandy beaches was to reach the shore and establish a beachhead from which they could liberate the land. Joshua’s determined purpose was to lead Yahweh’s kingdom people into a land from which they could become a blessing to the world around them. As Christ-followers, as Kingdom people, I suspect a fair question to ask ourselves, both individually and corporately, might be…

What might you say is your determined purpose?

1Addendum July 2025. The correct term for the linking of two terms like strong and courageous is hendiadys: the expression of a single idea by two words connected with “and,” e.g., nice and warm, when one could be used to modify the other, as in nicely warm.

2Interestingly, Operation Overlord included a massive deception operation designed to mislead the Nazi High Command into believing an invasion would take place in either Norway or Pas de Calais, France. The deception plan was called Operation Fortitude.

Surprise!

I like surprises. I suspect we all do. Actually, truth be told, I like surprises that aren’t too surprising. I suspect I’m not alone in that, either. One surprise I remember occurred about 25-30 years ago, when I discovered that I had been spelling surprise incorrectly the first half of my life. The spell-check in WordPerfect pointed that out to me. To my horror, I had been spelling it suprise, neglecting the first “r.” That means many letters, memos, and presentations contained my creative spelling of surprise. To this day, I cannot get my fingers to type surprise correctly, so I’ve had to set up an auto-correct option in the various apps on my computer.

When our children were young, we would read to them from the book, Theirs is the Kingdom. It is a wonderfully written story of Jesus and the early church. It is not a children’s bible, per se, especially related to the life of Jesus. It is more of an aggregate narrative of all the gospel writings. The title of one of the sections of the book particularly captured my attention: The Surprise of the Kingdom. I remember thinking the title was apropos of God’s character displayed through the centuries and especially through Jesus. Everything Jesus did and said was a complete surprise to all witnesses. Thus the statement, “Get used to different?“

A surprising story in the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, can be found in Joshua 5:13-15. The context of the story was Joshua’s preparation of the Israelites to enter the land God had promised them centuries before. It wasn’t to be an easy task because others had occupied the land and weren’t about to give it up without a fight. The fortified city of Jericho was a major obstacle to their entrance. As the story begins:

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

The first thing that catches our attention is that fact that Joshua engaged in a conversation with a guy who had his sword drawn. Earlier God told Joshua to be strong and courageous, but I don’t recall that God told him to be strong and reckless. The surprise, however, was the guy’s response to Joshua’s question, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

Neither? That answer certainly must have surprised Joshua! I suspect he was anticipating one of only two possible responses – our side or their side. For either of those two anticipated responses, I suspect Joshua knew how to react. But “Neither?” Not what Joshua anticipated. God’s messenger surprised Joshua with a response that was completely outside the scope of possibilities, likely shattering Joshua’s expectations and even his self-confidence. God does that ALL the time! Any reading of the scriptures reveals such, thus “The Surprise of the Kingdom.” God continually surprises us with outcome different than we anticipate.

I am reminded of a statement by David Hubbard (Fuller Seminary) in the introduction of his book, The Communicators Commentary: Proverbs:

“Another limit of Proverbs is even more important:  the mystery of Yahweh’s sovereignty... Our fear of the Lord ought to place major restrictions on our self-confidence.  We cannot use Proverbs like subway tokens to open the turnstile every time.  They are guidelines, not mechanical formulas.  They are procedures to follow, not promises we claim.  We heed them the best we can, try to gain the wisdom that experience can teach, and then leave large amounts of room for God to surprise us with outcomes different from what our plans prescribe.”  (My emphasis)

Joshua, when confronted with an outcome outside the scope of his thinking, responded rather appropriately. Recognizing God’s sovereignty, he hit the dirt:

Then Joshua fell face-down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

As we discover how to follow Jesus, may we learn from him, gain wisdom along the way from our experiences with him, and then leave large amounts of room for God to surprise us with outcomes different from what our plans prescribe. After all, he is sovereign!