Only God Gives Success - Joshua 1-5

 Joshua 1:6-7 (ESV)

6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.

Only God Gives Success

The world is consumed with “success.”   The meaning of the word is to “advance forward with a happy ending.”   With that definition we might say, that success is in the eye of the beholder.  We each determine what success looks like.   We often reimagine the facts to make them sound like success.   However, in the above text we read God’s definition of success.   Joshua is now taking Moses’ place as the leader of Israel.  God has hand picked him as Moses’ successor.   He is going to lead the nation of Israel into the promise land to defeat all the Gentile, unbelievers that now possess the land.  This is a large undertaking.  The “outcome” has been defined by God. Note how God defines success for Joshua:

Joshua 1:3-4 (ESV)

3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.

Later, Joshua will define success to the nation in this manner:

Joshua 3:10 (ESV)

10 And Joshua said, “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites.

There were seven nations to be destroyed.  The number seven in the Bible is the number of perfection.  God was not going to accept anything less than perfect success.  This is why the above passage is so meaningful to Joshua.  God is telling hm the success in what God tasks him to do begins with Joshua fully obeying God’s Word.  If he meditates upon it, day and night, God will give him good success.  That is the definition of success to God.  Our obedience to His will, defined by His Word, gives us success.  Not like the world, but success in the eyes of God.  That is God’s definition of success.