Moses is Dead. Arise

Josh. 1:1–2 Moses is Dead. Arise

• To possess something new, something old usually has to be left behind
• You leave one season to enter another. You leave one role to step into another. You leave what was to walk into what is next. When God moves you into a new season, there are things from the old one that cannot come with you. ///
• Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan…Josh. 1:2
• You cannot experience what God is beginning if you refuse to accept what is over.
• We’re beginning our Study of Joshua The overall theme is that God keeps His promises, and His people must courageously walk in faithful obedience to possess what He has given them.
• And the book begins with a death. Before Joshua can move into what God has next, he has to accept that what was before is over.
•  Moses is dead. Now arise. Something ended. But the promise of God did not.

The Promised Land

• • At the beginning of Joshua, Israel is leaving the wilderness and preparing to possess the land God had promised them.
  • The promise- Ex. 3:8 I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey…
  • the promise? God promised them something far better than the wilderness they had known.
  • The Process Ex. 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
  • God not only gave the promise, He also promised to lead them into it.
  • Now as we walk through this sermon today, and as we walk through Joshua we need to make an important distinction: we are not Israel, and we have not been given Israel’s land promise.

• But God has given His people promises in Christ, and we are called to trust Him and walk obediently in what He has spoken.

• 2 Cor. 1:20 For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us
• Our promises are not a piece of land. In Christ, we are promised eternal life, forgiveness of sin, the presence of God, resurrection, and an eternal inheritance.
• God also cares for our needs, restores what He chooses to restore, blesses obedience, and faithfully provides for His people.
• As you walk with God, He will lead you in the relationships, work, ministry, and assignments He has for your life.
• So as we walk through this, ask: What has God actually promised me, and what obedience is He requiring from me?
• Israel had a specific covenant promise of land. We do not inherit that promise. But the same God who kept His word to Israel is the God who keeps every promise He has made to us in Christ.

1. SOME RELATIONSHIPS NEED TO END

• • Picture Moses on Mount Nebo, looking over the land God had promised Israel. He can see it, but he will not enter it. And Moses dies there, never entering the land himself.
  • For 40 years he led Israel through the desert. Worship. Battles. Births. Deaths. Provision. 
  • Moses was the leader- And Joshua was his right hand man- he spent years as Moses’ assistant, servant, and military leader. But then Moses dies and Joshua becomes the leader
  • However strong of a relationship that Moses and Joshua had together. That season was over 
  • It was a God-ordained relationship, but its season had ended. Israel could honor Moses without trying to keep living under Moses. Some people are part of a season, not every season.
  • You can honor what God used yesterday without demanding that He use it tomorrow.
  • Moses is dead. Now arise. And this is not the only place in Scripture where God-given relationships changed
  • Abraham and Lot  Gen. 13traveled together, but eventually the land could not support them both. Abraham separates from him. No hatred, no betrayal. Just a necessary division.
  • Paul and Barnabas Ac 15ministered together, but disagreement over John Mark caused them to separate. Paul took Silas; Barnabas took Mark. relationship changed, but ministry continued.
  • The principle is this: not every relationship will remain the same in every season God leads you through

• Don’t kill relationships God hasn’t ended. But don’t resurrect relationships God has ended.

• • I am not telling you to abandon covenant relationships, and this is certainly not justification for divorce.
  • But There may be unhealthy relationships where wisdom requires distance or boundaries.

• And sometimes God uses someone powerfully in one season without intending that relationship to remain the same forever

• I had a wonderful pastor growing up. HS and college. First to let me preach. Loved me with a fathers love. We had a deep relationship and then it ended. I was conflicted for a long time
• I eventually realized that if I was going to become who God had called me to be, that relationship could not remain what it had been.
• God did not call me to become him. He called me to become who He had made me to be, and that required the relationship to change
• Eccl. 3:1 To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.
• If God has clearly brought a season in a relationship to an end, do not keep trying to resurrect what He has already finished. Let the Holy Spirit lead you.

2. OLD WAYS NEED TO DIE

• • The wilderness required one way of living. The promised land would require another.
  • Crossing the Jordan would bring a massive change in how Israel lived. (we’ll see in Joshua)
  • here’s what I know: we like what we know, even when God is leading us into something new.
  • How Israel lived in the wilderness could not be how they lived in the land
  • Invetiabley- there was and were people who didn’t want to change. Keep the ‘old ways’
  • Food: wilderness: manna arrived daily. Now: plant, harvest, store, and manage food.
  • Movement: follow the cloud and move camp v fixed cities, boundaries, territories
  • Shelter: tents and temp camp v houses, cities, vineyards, wells, and cultivated fields. 
  • Warfare: some battles, but not conquest v warfare central bc they must possess cities etc
  • Leadership: Moses led a wandering nation v Joshua leads a conquering and settling nation. 
  • Provision: provision miraculous and immediate v work, seasons, rain, harvest, and stewardship.
  • What brought them to it could not sustain them through it. The old ways needed to die
  • Its like our Church. We are not who we were 23 years ago. Not even 5 years ago. Wherever God leads us in the future, we can’t hold on to an old way of doing something just bc it worked
  • churches get stuck because people confuse faithfulness to God with faithfulness to a method.
  • Scripture repeatedly shows following God requires leaving things behind and dying to the old
  • Lu 9:62 No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

• You cannot follow Jesus while constantly turning back toward what He called you to leave.

• John 12:24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.
• Sometimes death to the old is the very means God uses to produce new life.
• Is this not the same with our spiritual life? Must the old man die for new life to take root?
• Rom. 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
• Gal. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…
• If God is moving you into a new season, do not cling to an old way simply because it is familiar.
• What was useful in one season may not be useful in the next. Be willing to let God change your methods without changing your convictions.
• Be ruthless about methods, but immovable about truth. Is this still serving the purpose God gave it, or are we keeping it alive simply because it is familiar?
• 1 Cor. 15:36 Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.
• We cannot make a method sacred just because God used it before.

3. THE PAST NEEDS TO BE LET GO

• • Forty years of wilderness history was behind them. An entire generation died in the wilderness. Hundreds of thousands of adults who left Egypt never entered the Promised Land.
  • And they lived real life there- Failure, disappointment, death, wandering.
  • Again, these are humans. They remembered. They knew what they had been through
  • Unbelief, complaining, idolatry, rebellion, and a constant temptation to go backward.
  • Think about some of what Israel went through in the wilderness
  • Complaining about food and provision Ex. 16 what they had left behind in Egypt.
  • The golden calf  Ex. 32 While Moses was on Sinai, they turned to idolatry almost immediately.
  • Rebellion at Kadesh Barnea Num. 13–14 Spies were fearful, didn’t enter the land. 
  • Moses striking the rock Num. 20:7–12 His disobedience kept him from entering the land.
  • Israel knew this. They experienced the pain of the past and the judgment that came from it

• Here’s whats hard about being human- we remember. The good the bad and the ugly

• When we step into something new, old failures have a way of coming back to mind and trying to paralyze us.
• And now they stand on the precipice of victory and those memories still rest in their brains
• What do you do with those thoughts? The past can explain you without controlling you.///
• All of your failures of your life really happened and there’s nothing you can do to fix it
• When you came to Christ, your sins were forgiven and you became a new creation.
• But even AFTER being born again. You might still have sinned or made a bad decision
• Bless God, we serve a God of new beginnings where we can still move forward by faith
• The Bible says we can: forget those things which are behind… and reach forward to those things which are ahead Phil. 3:13–14
• We can lay aside every weight… and run with endurance… and look unto Jesus Heb. 12:1–2
• Israel’s past did not cancel God’s faithfulness, and your past does not cancel what Christ has done for you. The past is real, but it does not have to rule your future.///
• We must let it die. Let it stay where it is- in the past- 
• Isa. 43:18–19 Do not remember the former things… Behold, I will do a new thing
• Here’s a bible help when faced with a new season with an old memory- 
• Eccl. 7:10 Do not say, Why were the former days better than these?
• I’ve mentioned it before- 2019 was a rough year for me and the Church. I wanted to quit and the pains of that season often kept me from forward movement. I had to stop letting that season govern the seasons that came after it.
• God doesn’t tell Joshua to live looking backward. “Arise, go over this Jordan.”

4. SELF NEEDS TO DIE

• • I want you to notice something in this scripture- Josh. 1:1  Joshua is introduced as “Moses’ assistant.” He was just assistant of Moses. Wasn’t even the guy, but he had to change. 
  • That was who Joshua had been, but it could not remain the limits of how he saw himself.
  • The assistant now had to become the leader. He could no longer have an assistant mindset
  • God’s calling required Joshua to stop defining himself by his old role
  • Sometimes what has to die isn’t something around you. It’s the version of you that belonged to the previous season.///
  • Who you were in the last season cannot define who God is calling you to be in the next
  • Joshua was chosen and publicly commissioned as Moses’ successor. Num. 27:18–20 Take Joshua… lay your hand on him… give some of your authority to him
  • God personally confirms Joshua’s assignment and promises to be with him. Deut. 31:23 Be strong and of good courage; for you shall bring the children of Israel into the land
  • So what does he do? He does it. God confirms it v 1:5 As I was with Moses, so I will be with you
  • I’m reminded of when Samuel spoke to Saul in 1 Sam. 10:6 Then the Spirit of the LORD will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.

• God’s call often requires us to become different than we were before

• Jesus took fishermen and made them disciples. He took ordinary men and reshaped their identity around His call.
• This is what happened when you came to Christ- Gal. 2:20 it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me you put off the old man… put on the new man Col. 3:9–10
• And so you must be willing to let God change not only what is sinful in you, but also the habits and disciplines required for what He is calling you into.
• New responsibilities require new disciplines. What God entrusts to you next may require disciplines you have never needed before.
• Embrace it. Be willing to go to God and say: What in me needs to change for me to obey You in this next season?
• The process will not be easy, but the blessings will be immeasurable and worth it. 
• Enter and let the old die Relationships  who you’re connected to. Old ways  how you’ve operated. The past  where you’ve been. Self who you’ve believed yourself to be.
• Moses is dead. Arise. Something ended. But God’s promise didn’t end with it.