No matter which era is it, when people go through a time of major transition, their hearts will be filled with sense of uncertainty, because they don't know what God is going to do and when is He going to do it. When the early church was established, Jesus gathered the disciples and entrusted them with the Great Commission, and then He ascended to heaven. At that time, all disciples just stood there and looked up at the sky; they must have stared up for a long time, otherwise the angels wouldn't have asked them why they just stood there and looked up into the sky. Why were they doing that? Because they felt uncertain, not knowing what the Lord will do with them. Faced with the enormous assignment like the Great Commission, looking at how minuscule they were, they must have been wondering what they could really do.
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When God called Joshua, he must have felt the same, because he was also in a time of transition. Joshua 1:1 says that the servant of the Lord Moses was dead. Why did a book filled with messages of victory begin with such a sad statement? Moses was a great leader among the Israelites and God used His hands to perform many signs and wonders. During the forty years that Moses was the leader, the Israelites became accustomed to following Moses. When the Israelites had to cross Red Sea, Moses pointed his staff and the sea parted. When they were hungry, Moses prayed and manna came down from heaven. When they were thirsty, Moses struck a rock and water came out from it. Now that Moses is dead, it was a tremendously sad thing for the Israelites. Deuteronomy chapter 34 says that the Israelites mourned for the death of Moses for thirty days.
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God, however, said here that the death of His servant Moses was not to remind Israelites of their misery, but to allow them to move on from the shadow of their past. God has already promised the Israelites that they will have a victorious tomorrow. Moses represented the past experience of the Israelites - How God guided them and provided for all their needs. Past experience and methods are all valuable, but they could also become hindrance to growth, preventing us from further experiencing new blessings from God. We always think that the ways of the past were great, as if God can only work on way, and there are no other ways. Actually, the Bible clearly told us that God we believe in is one who does new things. In Joshua chapter 3, when Israelites were about to enter the land of Canaan, God told them that it was a path that they've never taken before. This doesn't just mean that the path ahead of them was new, but the ways that God guided them and provided for them were also new. May the Lord help us, never just stay in the grace we received in our past. May the Spirit of the Lord once again release us from our experience of the past so that we may enter into God's new work!
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