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Sword & Trowel 2019: Issue 1


The Hebrew form of courage is the act of holding on to a precious value or duty no matter what threat- ens you. Applied to Christian living today, this might be holding on to a truth or practice when people intimi- date you, trying to shake your stand. They may jeer at your doctrines or your manner of worship, ridiculing you for not running with the tide of fashionable worldliness, but you hold fi rmly to what you believe is scriptural and right. It is precious to you. You stand, not by the heroic suppression of embarrassment or fear, but by focusing on the protec- tion of deeply held convictions. That is the strength of ‘Hebrew’ courage. It protects the principle under attack. Our fi rst resolution must be to


pray for and to exercise tenacity and loyalty in maintaining the standards and instructions God has given us, and never to relax that holy duty all the days of our life. It is a resolution that held Joshua (and Moses before him) through powerful attacks upon truth and conduct, whether from the world around, the fl esh within, or the devil at large. The need of the hour, in times of rapid spiritual


decline, is this kind of tenacious courage.


2 DON’T LOOK The second resolution in Joshua’s


address reads: ‘Turn not aside there- from to the right hand or to the left’ (Joshua 23.6). We may simplify it – ‘Don’t look!’ This is the fi rst of a group of six resolutions about standing clear from the world and worldliness – a necessity in obedience to the Lord, dangerously neglected in our time.


The Israelites were surrounded by


pagan nations and many were still in the land. The great fortress cities of the Canaanites had been defeated but there were smaller cities and pockets of occupation all around. The words ‘turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left’ suppose that the activities of Canaanite communities might prove interesting and attrac- tive to the Israelites. They did many ‘fun’ things. They had eye-catching fashions. They possessed some very intriguing gods. They enjoyed ideas, fables and mythology unknown to that generation of Israelites. Perhaps


Panorama of Shechem where Joshua gathered the people together.





Joshua’s Sixteen Resolutions


page 5


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