“Be of Good Courage” Part One

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 917 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! I sure appreciate His presence this morning. Turn, if you will, to Joshua chapter 1. Praise the Lord. I was sitting there reading my Bible last night and I skim read and partly read about all of 1st Corinthians and finally set my Bible down and said, well, that’s nice. A lot of good stuff in there, but nothing really particularly struck me. And then I just kind of put it aside and was just sort of meditating and praying and saying, well Lord, what’s the need here? What are You interested in saying to the people, because that’s what we need and it doesn’t matter whether it’s new or old or we’ve heard it 1000 times or never heard it, we need whatever the Lord’s heart is, because He knows exactly what’s going on.

We come in here and as I said before, we put on our game face, but we have needs and they’re real. And, so I’d like to go ahead and just begin by just reading this and just trust the Lord to put it all together. There’s no sermon here. I’m just sort of trying to be…trying to just yield to the Lord.

Anyway we know what’s happening here. Moses was allowed to lead the people out of Egypt and across the desert and until basically they were ready to cross into the land. But the Lord had said, Moses you can’t go. You dishonored Me in front of the people in such and such a place. There was a time when God had given him a specific command and Moses got aggravated…something we never do of course! And he decided…he acted in anger and dishonored the people and the Lord said you’re gonna take ‘em there, but you’re gonna see the land, but you’re not going in. Joshua is gonna lead the people.

And so, “After the death of Moses…” verse 1, “…the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun…” (NIV). That’s n-u-n…it’s a man named Nun evidently. “…Moses’ aide: Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them--to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates--all the Hittite country--to the Great Sea on the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Now that’s some pretty strong words there. That’s the kind of thing you’d like to hear going into a series of war…it’s not just a battle, but a war. And you would think that that would be enough. And, you know I think a lot of times we think just knowing the right stuff in our heads is enough. But it isn’t, is it? There’s a lot more that we need. And so look at what He goes on and says right on the heels of all this wonderful pronouncement, the wonderful promises that He gave.

He said, “Be strong and courageous…” full of courage, “…because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous.” It says it again. “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. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; 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.” There it is again.

You know, there’s something to this. This is not a small issue, is it? Be strong and courageous! “Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” Now I daresay that virtually everyone in this room today is fighting battles in your life. You’re coping with difficulties. You’re coping with something that’s just part of living in a broken world. And you know, as you serve the Lord, you’re conscious the more you go that you have an enemy and that things are not always easy. In fact, often times they’re very hard.

And sometimes we get weary in the battle and we can kind of begin to go through the motions, but somehow in our minds we begin to get weary and we begin to get defeated. We take on a negative attitude and obviously that’s not a good thing. And you can see the Lord’s compassion, the Lord’s understanding of what it is to be human.

Now you know we’re encouraged by the fact that Jesus came down and became a man and He now sits at the right hand of the Father, as it were, interceding for us and understanding where we’re at because He’s been here. But I tell you, God didn’t need that to understand. He was fully aware of the difficulties of serving God in this world and trusting Him and coming against the…the fact that we have to live in a world that is opposed to us in every possible way.

Everything about us, everything about the world is against what God would set before us. In our battles, in our walk with God, we do get to a point of being weary. And you can come in here, and I guarantee in a crowd this size, there’s not…there’s a lot more than one or two. And on the inside you’re struggling. You’re trying hard to praise God and to sing, but you’re really struggling. And somehow I just sense this in my spirit, as soon as I got quiet and stopped trying to figure something out, it just seemed like the Lord dropped this word…single word in my heart. Courage. I need it. Don’t you?

( congregational amens ).

There’s battles that are going on that I need to have a sense of courage if I’m gonna go at it. Now I’ve never been in the military. I appreciate those who are. Thank you. But just…that’s just the way circumstances worked out. But I know from reading history and listening to the news that psychological warfare is probably as important, if not more so, than the physical side of it. And every time a significant war or a war is fought, there is a great effort, in fact there’s probably a division in the military…I think there’s a division in the military, surely there is…that is devoted to this. How can we undermine the morale of the enemy so that we can gain an advantage and we’ll go in there and their resistance will be feeble?

And, those of you who have read the history, or been aware of the history of World War II, you know that there was a lady dubbed “Tokyo Rose” in Japan. And there was, what was it… “Axis Sally,” I think, in the European theatre? And these were women…I don’t know if it was all one woman, or not, but these were women who would get on the radio and with a very sexy voice, they’d talk to all the American soldiers and try to undermine their morale. You know, this isn’t your war. What are you doing here? This isn’t worth fighting and dying for. Remember your girlfriend back home or your wife. Wouldn’t you rather be back with her?

And did you hear about the great victory and did you hear about the prisoner who just renounced the United States or 1001…that happened in Korea. But you think about 1001 things, whatever they could come up with that they would just try to plant seeds of doubt and to undermine the resolve of the American soldiers. But of course we do the same things, don’t we? You know, they’ll drop leaflets. They’ll do 1001 things to try to convince people to just give up and not fight because that’s the battle.

We know what to do most of the time, don’t we? Is that usually the problem? You know, we know from the Word what we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to live and serve God, but the problem is we get defeated here before we fight. And so we’re just…we’re sort of waving our sword a little bit, but it’s rather feeble. And we have this sense on the inside that—this is not worth it. I can’t…I’m gonna lose, I might as well give in sooner or later. Let’s just put a good show on for a while, but I know the battle’s gonna be lost. I’ve always lost.

Anybody going through that a little bit in your life? You know we’re, as we’ve said so many times, we’re told to expect warfare in our life. We’re told to expect difficulty. In fact, Paul was writing to Timothy and he said, “…Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” (KJV). I’ve had that Word come to me many times recently, and I wonder, my God, have I ever…is this ever gonna get any easier. And just…Lord, I’m so tired, I’m so this, I’m so that. What’s going on here? Isn’t there a place where we can kind of get beyond all that?

And, in a sense, there is. But the problem is when we allow those things to begin to affect us, that’s when the battle gets really hard to fight and that’s when we tend to fall in the mud and lose. But I’ll tell you, God wants to give us a courage this morning and a sense…and put it…change our thinking, change our whole way of looking at things.

Now you know this is a principle, it’s well understood in the world. We’re created in the image of God and I believe even natural men will talk about having courage and standing fast and not giving up and that sort of thing. You know Winston Churchill was famous for his bulldog attitude. Never give up! Never give in! And you can go and hear a lot of motivational speakers and they’ll hammer on this theme. Never give up? Always…and they’ll try to inspire you with examples of people who are facing insurmountable odds and they rose up and they just gave it all they had and suddenly they broke through and they were victorious and now they’re rich and wealthy and all that stuff.

And you know, you can go a lot of places today and that’s how this concept will get applied. It’s to natural things. It’s to earthly goals. It’s…follow your dreams and don’t give up kind of thing as though God’s aim in life is to fulfill our dreams. If only we will adopt the principles we find in this book.

Well I think you know better than that, don’t you? That’s not what it’s about. God isn’t here to fulfill our dreams. He has His own. He has a plan that’s so much better than we could ever devise for ourselves. The start of the battle many times is just surrendering to that fact, and coming to God with the attitude, Lord, I lay my dreams at Your feet. Lord, lead me in the path of Your choosing for me. I want Your path. That’s the only one in which I can succeed. I understand, Lord that there will be enemies. There will be battles to fight. I’m gonna have to go into enemy territory and I’m gonna have to be willing to pick up a sword, but I want to be on Your path, because I know when I’m on Your path, You will be with me. You will never leave me. You will never forsake me.

But you know, as I said, with Joshua it was…the Lord understood that even though He was giving Joshua all these wonderful promises over and over and over and over again, He reinforces the idea…don’t you give up. Don’t you back down, because I’m gonna be with you. You know, I started to say, you have the motivational speakers…but what are they really appealing to? I mean they’re appealing to human desires, I know, but in terms of the resources by which we draw courage, where does that come from?

( congregational inaudible ).

It comes from us. That’s exactly right. And so what that does is basically make a difference between people, because there are people who like Churchill have a natural bulldog attitude. They have a can-do spirit. They’re gonna be able to do everything that you put in front of ‘em. They’re never gonna give up. They’re stubborn. And you have other people who that just…

( sighing ).

You know. They look like targets.

( laughter ).

The deer in headlights. That’s how they look at life. It’s just…there’s nothing I can…it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m gonna lose. But you’ve got a difference in people and you can only inspire people so much. But I’ll tell you, in serving God we are in territory where we cannot succeed with human strength. This is not a natural battle. It is not a natural war. It is a supernatural battle. And many of you could testify…the Lord has a way of putting you in a place where your strength is gone. I mean, how many of you have been there? Yeah. You didn’t have any more strength. It wasn’t a matter of just trying to dig down deep and find a reserve there somewhere. The reserve was gone. And the only thing you could do was to lift up your heart and say, oh God help me. Did he?

( congregational response ).

Yes, He did. See, that’s part of…that is so integral to serving God. But you know it’s something that we need to be reminded of continually because we do suffer under the effects of Satan’s psychological warfare. And it makes all the difference. Look at the battle Joshua was called to fight. God was here building him up, encouraging and saying, I’m with you. And later on he met this angelic being who said, I’m here as Captain of the Lord’s Host. I’m going forward. So he realized that there was a supernatural component to this war. It wasn’t just a bunch of ragtag Israelites against a bunch of giants who were a bunch of skilled swordsman. God was with them.

And you know, God’s the greatest psychological warrior there is. You know, when they went to Jericho, how did the folks from Jericho feel about all this? You know when the spies went and they talked to Rahab, Rahab told ‘em, look we are in dread of you. We have heard of what God did for you and everybody’s heart is just…they’ve already given up. They’re already in defeat in their minds. So far as all practical purposes, the war is over here. And so they were able to go back and realize God was building up their confidence. God was fighting with them and the people on the other side knew it and they were already defeated.

You know, I think we need to understand more than we do, the enemies, particularly the devil that fights against us…he knows he is defeated. He will blow smoke in our faces as long as we will listen to it. That’s a mixed metaphor, but you understand…you get what I’m trying to say. He will whisper the negative things in our ears as long as we will listen to his whisperings.

But God’s Word to me in all the things that I face, God’s Word to you in all the things that you face is to be strong and of a good courage. And God doesn’t throw us into the battle and say, alright you’re strong, you’re this or you’re that, you just go and everything’s gonna be okay. He says, I’m going with you.

Now we said before that if you just try to do this on a human level, you are depending on human strength and people are not all the same. But you know something, God has brought us down to the point where it’s not human strength and you can be the weakest of the weak…this Word is for you. You have just as much right to get up on your hind legs and look the devil in the eye and say, God is with me. It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna win this battle. I’m gonna come out in the end. It doesn’t matter what I experience, what I go through, ‘cause it isn’t me. I have a great God and He has promised never to leave me and never to forsake me.

I mean from one end of the scriptures to the other you have the same theme over and over again where God’s people were put in impossible situations. Think of Jehoshaphat as an example that we so often use. They had an army come against them that just made the whole prospect of a war a joke. They weren’t even really ready for a war. They didn’t have enough people and an army of 2,000,000 people comes ready to conquer them. I mean this wasn’t even…it’s like they were on the defeated end of this equation.

There’s was nothing they could do in the natural except they did the one thing they could do. They got on their faces and they cried out to God, didn’t they? And they just laid their whole case in His hands. They recited His promises. They looked to God and said, God this isn’t just about us, this is about You. Look what You promised. God, see how these people have come to cast us out of the inheritance that You gave us. Oh God, will You not act? Well, did God act?

( congregational response ).

Yeah! He turned certain defeat into glorious victory and not only that, they didn’t even have to fight. I mean that’s just a little indicator of what God can do when we are absolutely in His hands…we put our case in His hands, God is so able to fight our battles that He can turn certain defeat into absolute glorious victory.

So however God chooses to allow the battles in our lives to unfold, we need to never lose sight of the greatness of our God that we just sung about this morning. We serve a God who has never lost a battle. We face a foe that cannot win, because he has set himself against God, and boy, we need to remember that.

And you know, the folks in Jehoshaphat’s day came out of that pretty good, didn’t they? They got a glorious spiritual lesson in the faithfulness of God to His Word and just watched the victory unfold that they had no possibility of winning. But not only that, when the army left…I forget if they were all killed or whether they all ran, but whatever it was, there was a whole lot of….it took ‘em three days to get the stuff that they got out of that. So they came out of it rich. I mean how much of a turn-around could there possibly be in that. God was fighting for His people.

I’ll tell you, God is fighting for you and for me. He has not promised you that you’re not gonna go through some dark nights of the soul. He has not promised you that you’re not gonna have times when it looks like defeat and discouragement are certain, but I’ll tell you we have a God who will tell us this morning, be strong and of a good courage. And the thing is, we don’t need to rely on our own ability to do that, do we? Every one of us needs to realize the strongest to the weakest, regardless, we’re all the same in this battle, that we have the right to come to God and to say, God I am weak. I am struggling here. I need you. I go to church and I put on my game face and I’m just…I smile and I say all the right things and I’m trying to do the right things, but oh God, on the inside I’m dying here. I need help.

Do you really believe God loves you? That He understands where you’re at right now with every battle that you face, every enemy that you face, every difficulty, every struggle…can you look at the cross and say God doesn’t love me? That’s the ultimate demonstration of the love of this God that we serve. That He would send His own Son to take the punishment you and I deserve, unworthy sinners, and demonstrate exactly the qualities that we’re talking about this morning.

I tell you, there’s One right there who didn’t give up, did He? He was willing to cry out…and He didn’t do it in His own strength, did He? He spent hours in the garden wrestling in prayer, crying out to God for the strength. Oh God, I can’t face this. Is there any way? Oh God help Me! And God helped Him and God gave Him strength. And He was willing to stand right through to the very end, even to the laying down of His life. Did it turn out all right?

( congregational response ).

It sure did. There is no way to lose by trusting God, even to the point of death if it comes to that. That’s what Paul said. “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (NIV). In other words, I’ve committed my life into the hands of One where I can’t lose. His plan is going to be worked out and there’s gonna be a day when I’m gonna stand before Him in glory and look back upon this and realize it was nothing compared to what He had given me…what He’s given me, the glory that I’ve entered into and how faithful God was.

How many times that I didn’t even see or feel or sense…I felt like God was a million miles away…didn’t care about me, but He was right there. He was right there carrying me and strengthening me so that I could stand. I’ll tell you we have a great God and God wants us to get the same message that He was so repetitive with, with Joshua. Be strong and very courageous. Don’t let your courage flag!

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