No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.

    Joshua 1:5

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,” so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.
What will man do to me?”

Hebrews 13:5-6

During “The Old And The New” Series, we are looking at the correlation between God’s Word found in the Old Testament and The New. But today’s two passages are different in that they are directly connected in that Hebrews actually uses a quote from the book of Joshua. And what do these two passages teach us about? It’s simply that, as Christians, we should be recognizing and enjoying the power of the presence of God in our lives!

Let’s take a look at Joshua. In order to understand this passage, we need a brief look at what led up to this event. The people of Israel had been rescued from captivity by God and led to the threshold of what we often refer to as the Promised Land, for it was the property that God had promised to give to the people. So the people stood at the threshold, waiting to obtain their inheritance. Twelve (12) men (one from each tribe) were sent in to spy out the land and to bring back a report about what they found (Numbers 13-14). They went and they returned. And their report? The land was everything that the Lord had said that it was. But there was one problem. There were other people groups in the land, people groups that would dwarf the people of Israel in size and strength. This caused some of the people to begin to question whether or not it was a good idea to go, even though God had instructed them to do so. Out of the twelve (12) spies, ten (10) of them said that the people in the land were too much for them to overcome. Only Joshua and Caleb stood against this “bad report,” insisting that the people should go in faith, believing in the strength of God over that of these people groups. You can probably guess which report that the people received. That’s right, the “bad report,” filled with fear and unbelief became the overall preference of the people. This cost them the inheritance, at least for that generation (Hebrews 3:16-4:2, Jude 1:5). They were led into the wilderness, where they would wander for forty (40) years. An entire generation would die off before the promise of God, to give them the land, would be fulfilled. 

So, forty (40) years later, Joshua now finds himself the leader of a new generation of Israel, ready to go into the land and acquire the promise of God. But before Joshua was to lead these people into the land, God spoke to Joshua, giving him the necessary encouragement that he would need to face the challenges of entering the land. And that is where we find ourselves when we read Joshua 1. In verse five (5), God tells Joshua, “No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). 

What an amazing piece of encouragement and power that God is speaking into Joshua’s life! “No man will be able to stand before you…all the days of your life.” For the remainder of Joshua’s days, he would see success in his life because God would be with him. No one would able to come against Joshua. God says, “I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.” This had to be encouraging for Joshua and the truth is that it should be encouraging for us as well. As Christians, we are given the same message:

“I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,” so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?”

                Hebrews 13:5b-6

Sounds a lot like what God said to Joshua yet this passage is not from the book of Joshua or the Old Testament at all. These are words from the book of Hebrews in the New Testament…just a reminder that Christians can claim all of the promises of scripture. The first quote is a direct declaration from God found in Joshua 1:5. It says the same thing…that God will never desert us nor forsake us. When we are in Christ, we are secure. Take that to heart! The second quote is actually from Psalm 118:6. It says what God said to Joshua, that because “the Lord is our Helper,” “we need not be afraid.” Then, just as Joshua needed to fear no man all the days of his life (because of God’s presence), we can say with confidence, “What will man do to me?” Amazing! The same encouraging word given to Joshua before leading a people into the land promised by God, is ours and is true for our lives in the 21st century because of God’s presence in our lives! 

But we’re probably not being asked to lead an entire nation into a piece of property filled with other people groups, so what is the context of the Hebrews passage? This is where it gets fun! Consider the statement immediately before the two declarations from the Old Testament:

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have…

Hebrews 13:5a

What? The context of knowing that we can depend on God, enjoying His presence, and knowing that we need not fear what mankind does in this fallen world, has to do with money. The first instruction is ”make sure our character is free from the love of money.” Why? Because God will never leave us, forsake us, or abandon us. Consider this tremendous promise:

But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

    Psalm 34:10b

And this from Jesus:

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

    Matthew 7:11

We can keep our character free from the love of money (which takes so many down) because God’s presence is a guarantee that we will have everything that we need in this life by His provision (Matthew 6:33). And this is for everyone who belongs to Christ, who seeks Him first, and trusts in His provision for their lives. Yet:

For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

      1 Timothy 6:10

This reality is not difficult to affirm for we see it played out all over our world everyday. We should “be content with what we have” for chasing after temporal things is the epitome of wasting our lives. Remember:

Then He (Jesus) said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.”

    Luke 12:15

If your testimony is anything like mine then you can say that God has not only provided what is necessary but has blessed in all sorts of ways, spiritually and materially. But As Christians, we should be free from allowing temporal possessions to consume us and our focus should be on serving God. And we do this by the amazing power of the presence of God in our lives!

And He (Jesus) was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?” 

      Luke 9:23-25