Derek Grier - A Guy Named Kenny
One of my favorite books in the Bible Joshua 1:1, this is an action book, Joshua makes it happen. They're no longer circling the same mountain, Joshua leads the people into the promise land. In verse one, it says, "After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord..." Now Deuteronomy 34:8 tells us that when Moses died, the children of Israel went out into the plains of Moab and they mourned and they cried and they threw dust in the air. They tore their garments. They went through everything they needed to go through for 30 days because Moses had led them out of slavery with a strong arm. They had 40 years in the desert. I mean, Moses did some great things during that time and the plains of Moab where a wide open space.
Sometimes the best thing you can do with someone that's hurting is give them space and time to process. You see, change is an external event, but transition is the process you go through on the inside in response to the change. And it's so hard sometimes to say goodbye to yesterday. So the whole nation was dealing with its feelings. And "it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses's assistant..." Oh, how we need to hear from God in moments like these. What do you do when you feel like the best days are behind you? What do you do when you feel unsuited for the task in front of you?
If there was any man you did not want to have to come after or follow, it was Moses. Moses talk with God personally, would come down from the mountain with his face shining. Moses called down plagues. He parted the Red Sea. He even caused the ground to open up and swallow men whole and alive. Joshua had extremely, extremely big shoes to fill. So the Lord knew what was going on in the mind of Joshua. So the Lord spoke to Joshua. And sometimes the only thing that holds me together when I feel like I'm losing it is God's voice. The only thing that stays with me when everyone else seems to have walked away is God's Word.
So my prayer today is Word of God speak. Lord Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away but My words will by no means pass away". I've tried him and I've found him to be a God that's an anchor even for the most troubled mind. Say, "Moses, my servant is dead". How many of you know after 30 days a mourning everyone knew that Moses was dead. So why did God need to tell Joshua the obvious? Why did he have to say, Joshua, Moses is dead. Well, I found in my life, maybe you're better than me, but it often takes time for my emotions to catch up to my reality.
Now, sometimes people ask me how you feel? I gotta say, I don't know yet. You see, the adrenaline in a boxer does not allow him to know how his body really feels until the fight is over. You see, Joshua was still in the middle of his internal battle and God had to deal with the numbness that had crept in. The Lord said, "Moses, my servant is dead". So what do you do when your Moses dies? I remember in 2014, my assistant Karen died. She walked the altar when I was a minister at Howard University, a campus minister, and I was just beginning in ministry. She was one of my first converts, if you will. And she had become an assistant.
Actually, she was kind of the CFO before we had a CFO. She was executive since she did just about everything. But Karen had pancreatic cancer and she passed. Then a few months later, my mentor got on an airplane with his youth minister, his assistant pastor. And the plane went down and the great Myles Munroe died. And for a while I felt like a zombie. Sometimes you can feel so much, you start to feel nothing. It's a little bit like, you know, being a sheep, that they had a term for cast, have you've ever seen ladybugs in your windowsill?
If a ladybug flips on her back, she can't flip over. And the same thing with a sheep. If a sheep is chubby enough and close enough to the time of auction, a sheep if it flips on his back, it's unable to roll over. And sometimes in life you will get stuck. The apostle Paul used this language, he said, "cast down, but not forsaken". He was speaking of a sheep that had flipped over on his back and didn't have the strength or the ability to flip back over on its right side. And that's why we need a shepherd. That's why we need the great shepherd that can reach in his staff and flip us back over on our feet.
So here's Joshua, cast down, here's Joshua on his back. But then the Lord spoke to Joshua saying, "Moses, My servant is dead". Now, now, now, I know what happened yesterday. I know what happened 30 days ago, but now Joshua, I've given you time to cry. You see, dwelling on the past too long will rob you of the strength you need for today. Maybe I could say that a little bit better. Every second you spent overly focused on the past is a second mist in your presence. I'm preaching good right here. So God had to show him and said, I recognize what happened. I recognize those are big shoes to fill, but now therefore, snap out of it, my Joshua.
Arise, get up, move on. Go over this Jordan, you first, you lead by going first. Go tell your children to be things you're not. "Go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving them the children of Israel". Now, we covered this a couple weeks ago and God split the Jordan just like God split the Red Sea for Moses. And what God was saying is though we have a different personality, though we are in a different season I am still the same God and I can still do what I do. Verse three. God is speaking to a man in mourning, a man who has tremendous shoes to fill.
Every place that the soul of your foot, I'm not talking about Moses now. Mama may not be here anymore, Daddy may not be here anymore. Thank God for how God spoke to them in their generation. Thank God for the Sunday schools they attended. Thank God for the churches they went to, but it's our time now. Every place that the soul of your feet will tread upon. I have given you, as I said to Moses, in other words, Moses was his mentor and God spoke to Moses. Actually, Moses was saying these things to him before, but only now is it really, really coming the moment where he had to step into them. But I want you to notice here is very important.
The promise here is conditional. Joshua had to put his foot down to receive it. There are things that God has for you, things God has for your family, for your church, for your community. But you gotta put your foot down to receive them. Jesus hung for us, the least we could do is stand for him. You're in the room, I feel you're pulling with me. He said, every place that you big and bad enough that you would have faith enough, fire in your soul to tread upon, I have given you.
Again, it's a conditional promise. Meaning there's a condition. There are certain things God has promised you, but until you fulfill the conditions, you will not step in. God was saying if P then Q, if you do this, I will do that. Ludacris got something right. When I move, you move just like that. That went over some of your head. Now God's love is unconditional, but success in life is tied to our action and our effort. Verse four. Then God gets specific here, "From the wilderness and this Lebanon, as far as the great river," he was referring to the Euphrates, "all the land of the Hittites and the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory".
Want you to notice, God did not promise him victory everywhere. He did not say he would win anywhere. God didn't promise Joshua, Spain. God didn't promise Joshua, Russia. God didn't promise Joshua, Pharaoh's Egypt, China or India. You see, you gotta know your assignment and you gotta learn to stay in your lane. And I have found in life when I'm in my lane, there's no traffic. The Bible talks about meddling in other people's affairs. I know you're saved and sanctified and you know the word better than anyone else. But how about the scripture that says mind your own business? I'm gonna mess with you for a second, this ain't in my notes. In the book of Proverbs, it says, meddling in someone else's affairs is like grabbing a dog by its ears. Meaning God doesn't give you grace for everybody else's life. He gives you grace for your life. Mind your assignment, your affairs.
Then at five, he said, "No man..." if you stay in your lane though, "shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life..." Surely men would try because we read that in the rest of the book. Whole armies would try to stand against Joshua, but at the end of every conflict, Joshua was still standing. You see, God did not promise Joshua, and he doesn't promise you that it will necessarily be easy, but he does promise it will be worth it in the end. Because you will have to sometimes fight through the toughest days to get to your best days. You see the flesh, the devil and this world are cruel.
And they will not let you get out of their clutches without a fight. The devil was not only cruel, he's a bully. He will intimidate you as long as you let him. And bullies will go on and on, and on, and on until you make a decision to put your foot down. At certain times in your life and I'm not advocating violence or anything like that, but in the world I grew up in, and this was a long time ago, a different space at a different time. But sometimes as a young man, I had to make a decision. Well, they gonna keep bullying me and I'm gonna have to live with it or I'm just gonna take a beating and put an end it. I don't advocate violence.
"As I was with Moses, so I will be with you". But it's easy to miss that. Success was not assured because Joshua was a great leader. Success was not assured because Israel was a great nation. Success was assured because the great God Jehovah was with him. Take everything from me. As long as the Lord doesn't leave me, I'm gonna be all right. He said, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you". It's the God with me. It's the God with you that makes all the difference. He said, "I will not leave you nor forsake you".
Your family may walk out on you, friends may turn their back on you, but I discovered God's not like people. God stayed with me when I had nothing and no one. God stayed with me when people were saying good things about me and bad things about me. He was with me when things looked up and when things looked down. Why would God bring us this far just to now leave us? "For to this people you shall divide as an inheritance".
These are imperative statements. These are not statements with question marks. And you gotta stretch that question mark into an exclamation point. And this is what God was doing in the heart of Joshua. And I wanna say that again. You will not be able to possess that which God has for you with that big old question mark in your heart. But what's amazing is here, the Holy Spirit, God himself is ministering to Joshua. And because of this conversation that Joshua has with the Lord, he finds the strength to do everything that's in this book. He said, "Be strong, Joshua". Everything God speaks has strength in it to bring it to pass.
And when God sends his word, he will fulfill it. When you have God's word on it, God has already released his power on behalf of the thing he promised. When I was a skinny 9th grader, I live in Long Island, New York, outside of New York City, actually two counties outside from New York City. It was a blue collar, a working class neighborhood. And it was a tough area. And I hung out with this guy named Kenny. Now, Kenny was no joke. He had some of the biggest hands you've ever seen and he was afraid of no one. And Kenny and I, we're friends.
So because of Kenny, I would sit in the back seat of the bus, which was the gangster seat, to school. But because of Kenny, no matter how crazy things got, if things popped off, I knew somebody had my back. And what God's telling Joshua, I'll be your Kenny. And what God's telling you, you need to discover your Kenny. You see, God's not asking us to square our shoulders. Look people in the eye, stand up for righteousness because we're all that, but because someone far greater than Kenny is with you.