The overwhelming challenge of leading God’s people into the Promised Land did not begin on the east bank of the Jordan River. General Joshua’s training began years before, when the Lord began to show Himself strong and faithful.

First things

I would contend that few leaders are born that way, that most are made, and when God sets out to make a leader – a leader is simply one who influences others in a change-worthy sort of way -- God takes that person through His own school. Some have said that in God’s school, you take the exam first and learn the lesson later. I think there’s some truth to that.

Joshua did not appear out of nowhere to take Moses’ place and lead those throngs of Israelites across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Joshua appeared on the scene in training long, long before. Joshua was called upon to be a man of great courage. That comes through several times in the first chapter of Joshua. He’s the leader, and he’s the one that God has chosen to lead the Israelites and take possession of the Promised Land.

What I find interesting about Joshua is that before he was able to be courageous, he first had to be humble. Humility only comes through hard school. Humility – that state of mind where we know what we’re not and where we trust God to make up the difference.

Let’s pick up where Joshua begins. His first introduction to us in Scripture is in Exodus 17. These events took place right after the crossing of the Red Sea. The children of Israel were headed roughly in an easterly direction, then southeast, finding themselves in need of food, finding themselves in need of water, and then finding themselves in need of protection.

Beginning in Exodus 17 verse 8:

"Then Amalek came and fought against Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, ‘Choose men for us, and go out, fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will station myself on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.’

And Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought against Amalek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. So it came about when Moses held his hand up, that Israel prevailed, and when he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were heavy.

Then they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other. Thus his hands were steady until the sun set.

So Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this in a book as a memorial, and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’

Moses built an alter, and named it The LORD is My Banner; and he said, ‘The LORD has sworn; the LORD will have war against Amalek from generation to generation.’"

And they moved on.

We need to begin filling in a few gaps of background. Here we have the children of Israel, estimates taking their numbers beyond what our imaginations may conceive, into the 2 to 3 million range. The Bible says 600,000 warriors plus families. A huge number of people taking a tremendous bite out the economy of Egypt at the time the reining empires in the world were struggling economically. There were other empires threatening to overwhelm Egypt. Egypt needed all the help it could get militarily, as well as economically, and now all these people wanted to leave.

Moses, with his staff in his hand, and the blessing of God, miraculously led the children of Israel out of Egypt, after those ten plagues against Pharaoh. God miraculously divided the Red Sea. Moses and company walked through on dry ground, and the sea collapsed on the armies of the Pharaoh. God provided a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day in order to lead His people, but how do you take care of a massive amount of people like that in the middle of the desolate wilderness?

God did this. God provided them with manna, and with water from a rock, and met their needs. It’s important, though, before we get too far into the actual blow by blow story, to remember in a broad sense what God is doing, because this makes all the difference in the world to what Joshua will do, and certainly makes all the difference in the world to you and me even today.

God had made a promise, the most monumental promise in all of the Bible, in the first three verses of Genesis chapter 12. He promised Abraham that He would make him a great nation. He promised Abraham that He would provide him with a land, literal geography, real estate, in which to live. He promised Abraham that Abraham would have descendants, as many as the sand of the seashore, and He promised Abraham that through Abraham’s seed, Abraham’s offspring, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

I believe that the rest of the Bible, beginning in Genesis 12:4, through the end of the Book of Revelation, is all about those first three verses of Genesis 12. That is the foundational promise in all of Scripture.

The reason you and I are sitting here today, professing to be believers in Jesus Christ, is because God has kept His promise; that through the seed of Abraham, all the nations of the world, whom we represent, would be blessed, touched by the grace of God. You’re touched by the grace of God if you’re a Christian. God keeps His promises; that was the first big one.

In Genesis 15, Abraham realized that God had made these promises, but Abraham thought, "Here I am without descendants." Abraham and his wife were old and childless. A tremendous lesson was learned in Genesis 15, when God told Abraham that He would fulfill His word. God would do this, God alone.

Abraham is promised a son, and in Genesis 15:5, God takes him outside and tells him to count all the stars, and of course he can’t. God said "Those will be your descendants." Verse 6 says that Abraham believed in the Lord and God pronounced him righteous.

The most significant lesson of faith is given to us there. How do you become a believer? How do you get right with God? By being born into God’s family? By being a Jew? By being a good person? By being a nice Gentile? No; the only way to be right with God, to be considered righteous with God, is simply to trust in Him. Abraham believed that, and Joshua later believed that as well. That was critical.

The second thing that was learned in Genesis 15, is what God told Abraham in verse 13 about what was coming to the people. This was about 2000 B.C. (We can do our Bible chronology fairly simply: 2000 B.C. is Abraham, 1000 B.C. is David, so we can figure between the two, and of course at 0 we know what happened.)

Genesis 15:13-16:

"…Know for certain that your descendants" (this nation I’m promising to create by miracle from you) "will be strangers in a land that is not theirs" [that is, Egypt], "where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years." [That’s nearly twice as long as the United States of American has been.]

"But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve; and afterward they will come out with many possessions. And for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete."

"From you, Abraham. You have no children and you and your wife, Sarah ,are old, 90 and 100. I’m going to create; I’m going to give you a child. It will be a miracle. That child’s name will be Isaac, and through Isaac I’m going to create a nation that just gets huge. That nation is going to spend some time in bondage in Egypt. During that four hundred year period of time, I’m going to be growing that nation, but I’m also going to be withholding My wrath from a bunch of very ungodly folks in a land that I will give to you.

"And when the time is right, Abraham, I will lead My nation out. I will take them to this new land and they will be My instruments of judgment against those folks who live there and I will give your people the land."

It’s all about God’s promise, and God said, "I will do this. I will see to it. I will take responsibility for its being done." We sometimes chafe at that a little bit. We like it to be God 95%, plus me, maybe 5%. In this case, God says, "Abraham, trust Me; you can’t do this. Only I can do it." And God saw to it that it was done.

Historically speaking, what we have in Exodus, is God fulfilling that promise after four hundred years of enslavement, leading the people out, and bringing them to the Promised Land. Moses was the key player there, and in the entire Old Testament. He was the prophet of all time. He was the high water mark of prophets for all of the prophets of the Old Testament day. He was the leader; Joshua was his understudy, his servant, his helper, his right-hand man. That’s how he fit in.

What about Joshua? We need to think in terms of Joshua as a person, as an individual, and the Bible gives us plenty to go on. First, all of this history, all of this heritage, the promises of God, what had to happen, what God would do, all of this, was well known to Joshua.

He had been a servant of Moses since his youth. He was privy to God’s prophet. If anyone understood the big picture, it would be Moses, and it would be Joshua. He would understand why they were going, where they were going, and all that could be known about how they were going to get there.

Joshua was Moses’ disciple for years and years, Numbers 11:28 tells us, so he knew a lot. This stature of individual didn’t just happen; he was being groomed. Furthermore, according to Numbers 27:18, it says that Joshua had the Spirit of God, so we know that Joshua was a believer. That’s very, very important.

The Bible, in this particular era of time, doesn’t record a lot of names of people who truly, personally, knew the Lord. In our day we would say they were born again people, they were saved people, they had trusted the Lord. Indeed, Joshua was one of those. He had the Spirit of God. As Paul points out in Romans 8, if you don’t have the Spirit of God, you’re not His.

They who have the Spirit of God are Christ’s. Joshua was a believer. He would need to be; the level of trust Joshua would have to have would exceed that of the rank and file. There were few believers.

It’s important for us to know too, that we know very little about Joshua’s personal family background. The Bible described him as Joshua, the son of Nun. That’s all we know. There is no way that Joshua could claim a position among the people, before God, by virtue of his lineage. He had none. He didn’t come from a family of distinction. He wasn’t in the line of the priesthood.

He was who he was because God made him that. I think today there are far too many of us Christians thinking that we’re somebody, perhaps because of our family, perhaps because of our connections, perhaps because of our parents. The Bible says that a relationship with God is an individual issue, and being born into and raised in a Christian home, doesn’t make a person a Christian any more than being in a garage makes a person a car.

It’s an individual surrender, choice of faith, placing all one’s trust in Jesus only. Joshua understood that. He was who he was, and he attains tremendous stature. He gets lots of accolades in Scripture, not because he was wonderful, but because God had groomed him, God had worked in him, God had changed him. His trust was solely in the Lord.

Fighting the battle

Let’s look at the 17^th chapter of Exodus and talk about the scrap with the Amalekites. This event in Exodus probably occurred only 3 weeks after the Red Sea. After they would come out from the Red Sea, how would all those people be fed? In some places there’s hardly a blade of grass to be seen. How to feed them? Where is it going to come from? That’s where the manna from Heaven came in.

That’s where God took personal responsibility. "I called these people out. I’m going to take them on this wilderness wandering. I’m going to lead them to the Promised Land. I’m going to meet their needs." So right away the Bible talks about how the manna would appear on the land like dew and the people were to go out and gather it up every day except Saturday. They were to gather sufficient for the day, the food that God had provided, and that’s how they were fed.

How were they given water? In a dry and thirsty land, God also on more than one occasion provided water for them miraculously. There were times they would reach a point of oasis or be alongside fresh water. God saw to it that they had water.

Across the Red Sea from Egypt is the Sinai Peninsula, and if you’ve been there, you realize this is not a paradise of greenery. For the most part, it’s desolate and wherever you do see green, if you’re not seeing a mirage, you have what we call an oasis, a special spot. Just as it would be true for people or animals down through all time, water and green stuff draws folks from a distance when you’re in desolate country. Truly that was the case here.

Approaching the Sinai Peninsula from the north, the Israelites came upon a broad, open valley that was recognized as a point of oasis. The grass is a little bit higher elevation, and there was water, making the grass stay greener there a bit longer. That explains why they were opposed by a group of folks who came in on them, called the Amalekites. They were in the valley of the Rephidim.

The Amalekites were an interesting bunch of folks. They were among the many ‘ites’ that the children of Israel would have to deal with during the course of their wanderings, and especially during the time they had to fight to occupy the land. The Amalekites were descendants of Esau, Esau being a brother of Jacob, who was the wanderer who traveled to countries to the east of the Jordan River. The Amalekites were the nomadic, Bedouin-type folks of the day and yet they were ornery. They roamed and wandered and put themselves in the very unique position of claiming that any land they really wanted to use for the moment, belonged to them.

When they saw the hoards of Israelites descending upon the Valley of the Rephidim, we can understand why they got a little bit irritated and set about to attack them. There’s an interesting expression in Deuteronomy 25 where there’s a discussion of the Amalekites and this very incident, this attack, this battle that took place.

In Deuteronomy 25, beginning in verse 17, Moses is told this:

"Remember what Amalek did to you along the way when you came out from Egypt, how he met you along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were faint and weary..."

Interesting reminder about what we might expect from bands of nomadic, warlike people in this particular land. How are they going to take on this whole company? They would take them by going after the stragglers, the ones who were weary; the end of the line, so to speak. Their method of attack totally was opportunistic and very appropriate to the circumstances. They came in from the rear and attacked the stragglers.

By the way, Amalekites ended up being a cursed bunch of folks who eventually were exterminated. They surface several times in Scripture. At one point they are among the number cursed by Baalam, the prophet who was hired to curse the Israelites. He actually cursed the Amalekites, saying they will come to an end; they are cursed; they are condemned.

King Saul, interestingly, got into a great deal of trouble with God because he did not honor God’s curse against the Amalekites. He was supposed to destroy them utterly, to wipe them out. Instead, he saved some of their animals and their king. Saul disobeyed God. God had a curse levied against these folks that God took very seriously and God’s people were to take seriously as well.

Going back to Exodus 17, verse 8 simply says, "Then Amalek came and fought against Israel at Rephidim." We know they came from behind and attacked the weak and weary stragglers at the rear, and so Moses turns to Joshua and gives him responsibility.

Here’s the first mention of Joshua’s name in Scripture. We find out later that he had been Moses’ companion for years, but here he is.

"So Moses said to Joshua, ‘Choose men for us and go out, fight against Amalek.’ Joshua, here it is. Choose men for us, enlist a force, a force appropriate to the challenge." It doesn’t say how many men, and it doesn’t say how many Amalekites there were.

I find it interesting that just out of the blue, here we have Joshua being told to put a force together and go out and fight. I don’t think it occurred that way. Remember, Joshua was aware that there would be battles to be fought in possessing the land. That was from back in Genesis 15.

Joshua was aware of that when they left Egypt memories were still very fresh in his mind of coming out of Egypt, the Red Sea parting, and seeing on the horizon the swarms of Pharaoh’s chariots. And they meant business. Joshua realized early on that there would be battles to fight.

Moses gave Joshua the responsibility of organizing and the charge to train men. He only had a few weeks, but one can imagine that Joshua would be anticipating the problems that would come, and in the course of their travels, he would be raising up the troops, picking out militia, doing some training, doing some strategizing, doing some thinking, planning, putting considerable thought and effort into this because he knows there’s going to be battles.

People are not just going to roll over for the children of Israel and get out of their way so they can come waltzing through and take whatever they want. Not at all. Joshua knew that, and he was Moses’ choice for their leader. When the time came for them to fight, Joshua was ready. He knew the men he wanted; he had selected them, he had trained them, he organized them, and he deployed them to go out and fight. This was not a small battle. This was not what would be considered a skirmish. It lasted all day long.

How many were there? Hundreds? Thousands? We don’t know, but the strategy that God laid down was interesting. It’s one thing for Joshua to do the planning, the orchestrating, to give the orders, to make the selections, but perhaps the most significant lesson he learned in this whole day-long battle was Who’s responsible for the victory. Joshua learned it was God who was responsible for the victory.

Let’s just look at the battle as it panned out. Moses said, "Joshua, you choose the men and you go out and fight. This is what I’ll do. I will station myself on the top of the hill."

In the geography of that land, on the north edge of the valley of the Rephidim, there’s a huge rock outcropping, several hundred feet in the air and historians are quite certain this is probably where Moses went. He went up with Aaron and Hur and the staff of God. The most significant piece of military armament was the staff of God. Joshua had seen it in operation before. The staff of God was nothing more than a shepherd’s crook that Moses had carried in the wilderness when he was in that location and God had taken it. God had taken what was an ordinary tool of the trade for Moses, and turned it into a miracle-working dynamo.

For the staff of God, the power of God, was concentrated. The staff of God was visible; the presence of God was obvious. Moses had the staff with him, he had it in his hand. It came about that when Moses held his hand up with the staff in it, the Israelites prevailed and the Amalekites were on the defensive. Can you see them out there in your mind’s eye? You’ve got your swordsmen and your spearmen and you’ve got some folks with bows and arrows. This is a hot battle.

The staff of God is in the air and everybody can see Moses. That’s the point: visibility. In other words, the power of God is being invoked and when the power of God is drawn on, we win. But it’s a heavy staff and Moses is made of flesh, like the rest of us.

Here’s Moses holding the staff of God and he says, "My arms are getting tired." You can imagine Aaron and Hur saying, "Well, take a break." When he does, the Israelites start losing. His arms are tired so they sit him down and Aaron and Hur are on either side, each holding an arm. Whatever it takes to keep the power of God obvious and the presence of God clearly in everybody’s sight, that’s what they do, and as long as that was the case, the Israelites carried the day.

"So Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." That’s a loaded verse. Did Joshua overwhelm them? Well, by all outward appearances, Joshua did. He was the general, he was the leader, he had picked and trained them, he had sent them out, orchestrated them, and used them strategically. Had he won the victory? Technically no, the victory was the Lord’s. If it hadn’t been for the staff of God and the presence of God in front of everybody’s face, there would have been no victory.

The Israelites would have gone down in defeat and it would have been a terrible way to begin a session of wandering in the wilderness. But they prevailed and Moses said, "This is a great place for an alter," so he built one and he said, "The Lord is my banner"; -- that visible representation of who we are. The staff had done that. Now the alter would do that, and for generations to come, they would remember that.

Follow-up

Here’s how it wraps up. A few principles surface and I’ll relate them as I see them from Scripture. For one, the promise of the Sovereign God is very serious business. God was not experimenting nor dabbling nor playing nor trying something by bringing these people out of Egypt and heading for the Promised Land. He fully intended, and indeed did, to accomplish what He set out to do.

Part of that would involve the judgment of pagan resident nations. He is dead serious about keeping His promise. He will keep it. The lives of people for whole generations are affected. But God will keep His promise. It will be done.

The promise to lead people out and get them into the Promised Land? Yes. The promise to save? How serious is God about, "For God so loved the world that He gave His Son."? He is serious about keeping His promises. He intends to save you by the blood of His Son. He gives the Son, by design, by an act of His will.

This business of kingdom building is serious stuff. His promise to save is serious; His promise to deliver and to change lives is serious too. "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined…He also called…He also justified…He also glorified." (Romans 8:29 & 30) What He says, He will do. "Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." (I Thes.5:24) "I will (in no way) ever leave you, nor (in no way) ever forsake you." (Heb.13:5b) He’s serious about that to the "nth" degree!

Joshua and company fleshed it out. They learned something about the promise and the presence of God, and when the day was done, there were bodies on the ground because God is serious about doing what He says He will do.

Secondly, the Amalekites learned this. Deuteronomy 25:18 is talking about Amalek and what he did to the Israelites on their way out from Egypt.

"…He met you along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were faint and weary…"

And the verse ends:

"And He did not fear God."

Amalek did not fear God. He should have. To oppose God’s people, you see, is to oppose God Himself. The Apostle Paul learned that lesson the hard way on the road to Damascus before his conversion. That blinding light from heaven knocked him to the ground. He’s on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians, to harm God’s people, and the voice says, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" Saul was shaken to the core and said, "Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.’"

He didn’t know he was persecuting Jesus, he just knew he was going after these Christians. The Risen Savior said, "I take it personally. If you oppose My people, you oppose Me."

Think about this the next time you’re tempted to malign or judge one of God’s people. We best have lily-white, pristine, pure motives, because if it’s in our heart to harm one of God’s people even from our hearts, Jesus, the risen Savior, takes it very personally. And we’ll be held accountable for that. To oppose God’s people, is to oppose God Himself.

The third and final follow-up principle, is found in Exodus 17. It’s interesting that verse 14 says,

"Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this in a book as a memorial, and recite it to Joshua...’"

Why? Why Joshua? There are a lot of other people. Why should Joshua need this stuff written -- in a book? Until Moses, all of the Bible was transmitted word of mouth, orally. In Moses’ day, the written language was still quite new. All stories were repeated as they were told and the traditions of early Bible history were transferred that way from generation to generation. Everything was spoken, memorized, understood by rote, and so writing things down at this juncture was fairly new, within a few generations.

Few people could read. In any event, it’s momentous that this was to be written down for Joshua. Moses didn’t know at this point that Joshua would need the Book because Moses wasn’t going into the Promised Land, but Moses didn’t know that yet. God knew.

So God said, "Joshua is going to need this truth, he’s going to need it in written form so that he can refer to it objectively whenever he needs it. Joshua is getting his first lesson in the significance of the written word. Moses would be gone. The one who has taught him all his adult life will not be there. What will Joshua have? Only the written Word.

I think that’s one of the reasons Joshua accompanied Moses up Mount Sinai. A few others did; Joshua went further than they. Joshua was the nearest one to Moses when God literally wrote in stone with His finger. Joshua was there for that. He saw those tablets of stone with the writing of God on them and it’s not by accident that in the very first chapter of Joshua, the eighth verse, as Joshua is being pumped before leading the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land, he is told, "This Book of the Law, Joshua, shall never leave you, but you meditate on it day and night. You do what it says and God will prosper you. God will make you successful." That’s what Joshua learned first here. He does what he’s commissioned to do as the servant, as the right hand man of Moses. "You go out there and fight, Joshua, but God will win the battle."

Lesson one in a series of many in which Joshua would learn: God is very serious about keeping His promise and God will always do what He says He will do.

© Jim Carlson 2003, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA