Followership, Part 1

I want to draw your attention today. I guess the last time I spoke here, I talked about a training program that God has us all in. And when He calls us, He has in mind for us what He wants us to be in His kingdom. And if you remember, I gave you a Greek word, pai... pidea. P-A-I-D-E-I-A. And that Greek word, pai... pidea, comes from the Greek program, actually, where they would find the young people and they would prepare them for excellence in these communities that they were living in. And it was a whole mind, body, and spirit program that they were in, but it was dedicated to excellence. And when God was inspiring the Bible to be written, and He talked about nurturing our children just like God nurtures us, He used that word. The Greeks would have known exactly what that meant to... exactly what that program was. And we need to remember every day what God is preparing us for. Nothing that happens to us happens outside of God's eyes. He knows what we're going through. He knows the trials we go through. He knows where we need to be strengthened, and He knows where we need to be humbled. And He knows what we need in order to be ready for what He wants us to be.

And if we are wise, and if we are led by His Holy Spirit, we will let Him take us through that program. We won't resist. We won't balk. We won't try to take matters into our own hands. We will let Him lead us, and we will follow Him every step of the way. As we read through the book of Deuteronomy, and we read about Moses, we see really from the beginning of Moses' life that he was in training for what God wanted him to do from the beginning of his life.

The first 40 years, he was known as the son of Egypt. And he grew up in that environment, and he grew up just as family members and everyday people, the Pharaohs and the noble people of the world that he would be coming back and being in contact with later in his life. Then he realized who he was. He murdered the Egyptian taskmaster. And then for the next 40 years, he was out in the desert.

Now, Moses needed some humbling, and he needed to learn how to take care of things. And he needed to learn some tenderness in his life and come down from being nobility to just a servant. And for 40 years, he did that. God was preparing him the whole time for what he was going to do with them.

And then the next 40 years, Moses went back to Egypt. Against his will, it wasn't what he wanted to do, but it was God's will for him. And God used him to deliver Israel out of Egypt. It was really God, but Moses was the instrument through which God worked in order to bring the people free from that time. Through that whole time, God knew exactly what Moses was going through.

He knew exactly how he was preparing him, and Moses accomplished his task. Now, when that task and the purpose for his life was done, this physical life, God let him die. There on Mount Niebuh, as he looked over the Promised Land, that he wouldn't be the one to lead Israel into. God let him die because his time on this earth was done.

He had finished the job God had given him to do, and it was time for a new man to take the reigns, if you will. And that man was Joshua. Joshua now, who was a servant of Moses for 40 years, up until that time, now he would be the man to lead Israel across the Jordan and over into the Promised Land. God said some pretty encouraging and some pretty moving words to Joshua, as he was about to do that, and as he was about to lead Israel to cross over into the Promised Land.

There's a lot that we can learn, an awfully lot that we can learn from Joshua. Because, you know, as we stand and where we are in the history of the world today, when we look around us and when we see the biblical prophecies, just like Joshua and the people then, we're people about to cross over into the Land that God has promised.

It could be several years off in the future, it could be right around the corner, only God knows. But we can learn some mighty lessons from Joshua as we begin to read through his book. We're going to read some amazing things that God had done, and those things are great and they get our attention.

But there's something about Joshua, something about Moses that we need to learn and look beyond just the fabulous stories that are there and the miracles that God worked, lessons that we can apply into our lives today. You know, Joshua was a very, very good follower. He turned out to be a very, very good leader. All of us are followers. All of us are leaders in our own way. God has us filling both roles. And as we think about the role of leaders, when we think about the quality of leaders and the qualities needed to be followers, there are some things that we can see. When we look at Joshua, when we look at Moses, and look at some of the other people in the Bible.

I was in college several years ago, and I took some organizational behavior classes, and in some of those they would talk about leadership qualities that you need to develop. And everything then was back, you know, this is what leaders need to develop, this is how you need to become. No one ever talked about being a follower.

And I've noticed in the last decade, and maybe the last two decades, that when you read the business journals, there's a lot more attention given to what it means to be a follower. Because in an organization or any establishment, good followers are just as important as good leaders. Good leaders can't lead an organization if they don't have good followers. Let me read just a couple of quotes.

A couple of quotes come from some business journals here, and from some colleges. The first one is from the Harvard Business Review. Robert Kelly, in his article writes, In many companies, the leadership track is the only road to career success. In almost all companies, leadership is taught and encouraged while followership is not.

Yet effective followership is a prerequisite for organizational success. From the Ivy Business Journal, John McCallum writes, Followership is a straightforward concept. It is the ability to take direction well, to get in line behind the program, to be part of a team, and to deliver on what is expected of you. How well the followers follow is just as important to enterprise success as how well the leaders lead. Michael Hyatt, Vice President of Marketing for Thomas Nelson Companies, says, I contend that if you want to be a great leader, you must first become a great follower.

Although it is rarely discussed, this is where almost all of history's greatest leaders got their start. Though I don't have time to develop it here, I would likewise contend that history's worst leaders never learned to follow. As a result, they became tyrants, making the lives of their followers miserable. Way back in ancient Greece, Aristotle said, He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.

You know, the Bible is full of people who were good followers, right? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ was the follower every day of His human life. Every single day of His human life. He followed God. He followed direction. He said it wasn't His will that He was doing down there. He told us we must be doing God's will. He was a great leader, but He was a very, very, very, and the perfect example of a follower. We think of King David as a great leader. But King David was a very good follower. He didn't have the best leader that he was serving under, but you know what? He followed Him well. And he exhibited all the traits of a good follower so that it was time for him to lead. He became a very good leader. Joshua is the perfect example as well. For 40 years, he followed Moses as Moses followed God. And when it was time, 40 years in the making for Joshua to step up to the plate, he was a very good leader. Every single one of us in this room is a follower. Every single one of us will be a follower for the rest of eternity. No matter what we aspire to, no matter what we accomplish in this life, no matter what God leads us to, we will be followers for the rest of eternity. And you know what? We will be leaders for the rest of eternity as well. Today, every single adult in this room is a leader. You may not be the one up here speaking, giving sermonettes or sermons or giving prayers. You're a leader. You're a leader in your home. You're a leader with your family. To be a good leader, you have to be a good follower. Society needs good leaders. Society needs good followers. The Church of God needs good followers. The Church of God needs good leaders. It's seen plenty of bad followers that turned out to be bad leaders. It needs good followers to follow the biblical concept in order to be the type of leader that God wants us to become. So the question for me today, the question for you today is, how good of a follower are we? How good of a follower are we? As you read through these articles that I quoted from, as you go on the Internet, you just put in characteristics of a good follower. You'll find pages and pages of information on some of the traits of a good follower. It turns out, when you look at them, it's the very same list that you could make for being a good leader. So let's list some traits of a good follower for us today. Let's use Joshua. Let's use Moses. Let's use another man and a few other examples in the Bible. Caleb would be another one of them. But since we're beginning to look at the book of Joshua, let's look a little bit at the history of Joshua. Turn with me, if you will, back to Exodus 17.

Exodus 17. The first time we meet Joshua in the Bible, we find Israel already out of Egypt, and we find him engaged in battle. And it's a very famous battle. You know the story here as we read through it. In verse 9, Moses, it says in Exodus 17, says to Joshua, he's already there, working with Joshua, part of the team, he says, Choose us some men and go out. Fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I'll stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. Joshua was already a trusted assistant to Moses. Moses said, You go out, find some men. We're going to fight with Amalek. I'm going to be on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. Like a good follower, Joshua did, as Moses said to him, and they fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. Well, the story goes on to say Moses' hands or arms became weak, but he had to have someone prop them up. Because in order to win the battle, it was going to be that they followed God's command in that way.

It wasn't Moses' strategy. It wasn't Moses' battle plan that won the battle with Amalek that day. It wasn't Joshua's battle plan or his strategy that won the battle with Amalek that day. They followed what God said. Joshua followed Moses. And Joshua, who was paying attention to Moses, and in that environment where he could see Moses, who followed God closely, he learned a big lesson that day. It wasn't about him. It wasn't about how smart he was. It wasn't about how much time he spent throwing out diagrams and understanding the enemy. All those things might be important in preparation. But he learned that God is the one who fights battles. And over 40 years that Joshua worked with Moses, just think about the number of things that Joshua saw. He was very close with Moses. He watched as he went up. In fact, let's turn it over to Exodus 24. He was there with Moses as he went up to Mount Sinai when Moses was going to receive the tablets with the Ten Commandments on it. Exodus 24, verse 13.

Moses, as it turns out, was up there for 40 days and 40 nights. God gave him the Ten Commandments, but he also talked a lot about the tabernacle of God, the instrumentation that would be in it, how it was going to be developed and implemented. Moses told the people down below, You wait for me for 40 days. You know the story, right? Did they wait for Moses? No? After he was gone a little bit, they thought Moses is perished.

Moses is gone. He's not coming back from the mountain. What they did was they didn't follow Moses' admonition to wait for him, and they didn't follow God either. They turned right back to their old ways. They built the cap and they worshipped it. Not good followers. They didn't pay attention to what Moses had said. On the other hand, Joshua is up there on the mountain with Moses. Joshua, too, might have said after a few days, Wow, I didn't expect that I was going to be up here this long.

What has happened to Moses? He, too, might have taken the same course that the people down below did and said, Oh, he's obviously not coming back. I'm going to need to go back down there with him. No one told him it was going to be 40 days that he was waiting there. But lo and behold, as we find in chapter 32, after all the instructions that God gave Moses, we find Joshua and Moses coming back down the hill. Joshua waited. Joshua followed.

Joshua learned something that day, and he didn't know exactly what was going on. But when we see him again in verse 17 of chapter 32, when Joshua heard the noise of the people down below as they shouted, he said to Moses, There's a noise of war in the camp. Well, God had told Moses what was going on down there. The people that he partnered with, they had gone back to their old ways. They were dancing around in idle back there. But Moses said, It's not the voice of the shout of victory, nor the noise of the cry of defeat, it's the sound of singing I hear.

And then they went down to a scene that Moses had irritated him, and I'm sure stunned Jacob, or Jacob, not Jacob, Joshua. What had these people done? He followed Moses, but he saw that so many of the other people just weren't good followers. And he didn't follow the order that was given to them. Chapter 33, verse 11. The eternal spoke to Moses face to face, it says, as a man speaks to his friend.

And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, didn't depart from the tabernacle. He was there learning. He was there serving. He was there following. He recognized God as the ultimate leader, but he also saw what Moses did. And he learned from Moses, through whom God was working, that he needed to follow him. And Joshua developed the character and the reputation of a very, very good follower. All of us, every single one of us, should have earned a lesson of being a good follower.

God was watching the development of Joshua. He watched what he had done. He saw the patience that he had. He saw some other qualities we'll talk about here. And when it was time for Moses to die, Joshua was the one that God appointed to lead the people over across the Jordan and into the Promised Land. Joshua 1, verse 1. And as you're turning there, I'm going to give you some points on what it means to be, or how to be, a good follower. These work in the church. These work on the job. These work in whatever setting we are in. Number 1, followers are clear on their role.

They understand their role, and they accept it. They're clear on their role, they understand their role, and they accept it. So, as Joshua is succeeding Moses, God says this to him beginning in verse 1. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that God spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore arise.

Go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you, as I said to Moses. So the same vision that was there before under Moses is the same vision that God gave to Joshua. It stayed exactly the same. The same vision that God gives us today, it stays exactly the same until Jesus Christ returns.

God doesn't change, and He's reassuring Joshua. What I told Moses, the vision that you've seen, the man that you followed as He followed me, the same vision you will be giving to the children of Israel.

Verse 4, From the wilderness in this Lebanon, as far as the great river of the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. What a reassuring statement. Joshua had seen that. He saw that no one could stand against Moses when God was with him. He remembered the battle with Amalek. He remembered the battle with Sihon and the other battles that they were there. He knew that as you followed God, no one would be able to stand against you. He also learned that if you depart from God, there's no way you're going to win a battle, no matter how great your strategy, how much you think your strength is. That it was dependent on following God. He learned a great lesson from Moses as he followed him. Follow God. Follow him. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. You saw, Joshua, how I was with Moses. You saw what I worked through him. I will work the same thing through you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. The same thing that Jesus Christ says to us. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the lands which I swore to their fathers to give them. Joshua now understands his role. He's going to lead Israel over into the Promised Land. He will lead them, and he will see that the land is divided among the tribes in the way that God wanted.

He's clear on his role. Follow God. The same vision that Moses had, that God gave Moses, is the same vision you have. Nothing has changed. You follow me, I'll lead you.

You rely on me to fight your battles, I'll fight them for you.

Verse 7, Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded you.

Second time there in verse 7, that God tells Joshua, be strong, be of good courage.

Do you know what Joshua learned while he was following Moses? It wasn't his strength. It wasn't his courage that made the difference. It was the confidence that he had in God, the strength that he derived from relying on God and being loyal to him. It was the courage that God gave him, because if our confidence is in ourselves, if our confidence is in our strategy, if our confidence is what we can do, we will fail.

We learned to follow. Joshua followed Moses and he saw. Moses followed God.

Through some times that were different, if you will, and some things that we'll talk about that may be not just the way we would want them done.

But he says to Joshua, and he would say to us who are standing on the brink about to cross over, be strong, be of good courage.

Because, you know, I think sometime between now and the return of Jesus Christ, we're going to need to be strong.

We're going to need to have courage. And if we rely on ourselves, we will fall.

We have to learn to follow God and our strength comes from Him.

Because what Joshua was about to see was unlike things that he saw with Moses, but he learned some valuable lessons in following so that he could lead Israel into some unknown territory and into some things that didn't happen exactly the way that they may have thought they would happen.

We also read in verse 7 there that God makes an interesting statement when He talks about His law. He said, Be strong, be very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you.

Now that's an interesting statement. Why didn't God say, Observe all the law which I commanded you? It's His law.

It's not Moses' law. It's a law that was made for all of mankind.

But in that statement, He tells us something interesting. I was working through Moses.

Moses is the one I chose to give you the law. You follow it. Because you know what? God is the God of organization.

When Moses led the people out of Egypt, you remember at one point he was overwhelmed by the number of people who were coming to him.

And Jethro, his father-in-law, said, You have too many people talking to you, Moses. You need thousands of hundreds of 50s. Moses listened, and an organization was put in place. Because God works that way.

He works with us that way today, too. Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, established His church. Let's go over to Ephesians 4.

And He set things in order on how people would follow Him, just as He did with the people under Moses and under Joshua and under the succeeding leaders of Israel. In verse 11, familiar verses, God says, Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its job.

Each chair causes growth of the body, for the edifying or the building up of itself in love.

Everyone is important. Every role in the church is important. Every person is a follower. Every person is a leader.

Every person has something that God wants from them because the whole body works together.

Followers working with the leaders, because it takes good followers to make an organization complete. It takes good followers to make a mission complete. It takes good followers for God to accomplish what He wants with you and me.

What He wants here in Orlando, what He wants in Jacksonville, in Ocala, in every congregation, in every place around the world, that He has called people and put them into His training program, if you will.

Every person.

If we go back to Joshua, God is talking to Joshua, but every single person is involved. And He says, Joshua, you be sure that you keep the law that Moses commanded you.

Don't turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.

And as long as the Israel obeyed, they would prosper. But when they departed from the law, when they decided to take matters into their own hands, when they said it's just not important, problems developed. Things fell apart. If your life is falling apart, you might want to look and see, are you doing what God calls you to do?

Are you a good follower of Him? Are you a good follower of what His Church teaches? Are you applying that into your lives? Because a good follower would.

If you're not a good follower, you cannot possibly be a good leader.

And God is watching us today. He's watching us at church. He's watching us on the job. He's watching us at home and determining how do you handle these things.

Do you follow? Are you holy? W-H-O-L-L-Y. Holy following me, as my servant Joshua and Caleb did.

Because He wants good leaders in His Kingdom. He wants good leaders in the Millennium. He wants good leaders for later. He wants good leaders for eternity. And if we're not good followers, we cannot possibly be good leaders.

So it can come with on us. Learn what our role is. Accept it. Embrace it. And do it.

Verse 8, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Heaven I commanded you, and he repeats again, be strong and of good courage. Don't be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. The same words he would say to you and me today, because we're standing in the same situation that Joshua and the people of Israel were back then. I'll be with you. But you better follow me.

You better follow what I have to say if you want me to be with you. Joshua was clear on what his role is. He embraced it. He embraced it when he was following Moses, and he did it very well. And the people of Israel, to their credit in verse 16, they fell right in line. They understood what their role was, and they said they would be good followers as well. Verse 16, chapter 1, they answered Joshua's thing, All that you command us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go.

Just as we heed in Moses and all things we will heed you, only an eternal your God be with you as he was with Moses. Whoever rebels against your command and does not heed your words, and all that you command him shall be put to death. Just be strong and of good courage. So good followers understand their role. They accept their role. They embraced their role. They don't wish they were something else. They don't step out of the lines. They let God lead them. And they let God work with them in whatever situation it is. Because when we take matters into our own hands, and we lean on our own understanding and think, this and that, you know what?

We may just look back to David, who for 15 years followed a king that wasn't so righteous. And Joshua, who for 40 years learned and followed a man who was. And because they patiently waited, and because they embraced their role as who they were, God saw a trait in them that he wants to see in me and in you. Number two. I should mention that these points that I'm giving you come right from the articles that I quoted.

It was amazing how many of them had several of the same points, but I've just kind of taken some of what they said and we are applying it to the Bible. Number two, and this is a quote from, I think this one comes from Harvard, it says, good followers are obedient. It's kind of surprising you would see in a business journal, good followers are obedient. Let me read what they write. Obedience is essential for organizational effectiveness.

No one should be allowed to give orders who can't obey orders. This is how great leaders model to their own followers the standards of acceptable behavior. And in that article they talked about how obedience isn't a politically correct word. No one wants to hear the word obedience, but the simple fact is obedience has to be in the workplace. And we know obedience has to be to God.

There is no alternative. There is no discussion about it. The Bible is clear what God is looking for us to be is obedient. Obedient to Him and obedient through the instruments that He works with, just as the people were to be obedient to Joshua as He was obedient to God. You know, setting a standard, a model, is one of the things that it mentions here. And back in 1 Timothy 4, God says the very same thing to us. In 1 Timothy 4 and verse 12, Paul is writing to a young minister, Timothy, and he's telling him how he is going to have to be as a leader.

In 1 Timothy 4 verse 12, he says, Let no one despise your youth. Timothy was a young man. People might have said, you're too young, you don't understand this and that and whatever. So it's not, no one despise your youth. But be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. It's pretty high demand, isn't it? Be an example to them. Let them see that you are dedicated to the role that you've been put in.

Embrace it. Follow it. Live it. But you know what I would say to you today? I would take this very seriously, but I don't believe God wrote that. Just two ministers. I believe he wrote it to every single adult in the church. Let's read it again. And don't think it was just for Timothy. It's to us who follow him and to follow what he is teaching us through whatever avenue he teaches us. Be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Which one of us are exempt from any of those? None of us. Every single one of us. We're followers, but we're leaders. Leaders in our family. Husbands, leaders in their family. Wives, leaders in their family. And if you're not following what God said, you are letting him down, and you are absolutely, absolutely betraying God's confidence in calling in you. Every single one of us need to be growing in those things. Every single one of us need to be paying attention to those things and be letting God develop in us all of those things, and we have to put effort into it.

He goes on to say, "'Til I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine." Which one of us would be exempt from that? Don't neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the eldership. Every single baptized adult has received the Holy Spirit. It's a gift from God. It gives us strength. It gives us abilities to understand.

It gives us courage, strength, the power to develop agape. Don't neglect it. Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all.

Isn't that an interesting statement, too? That your progress may be evident to all. Because, you know, as we look around and we know each other, our progress is evident to all, isn't it? We can look around and we can say, Wow, so-and-so is really growing in the calling that God gave him. You can see the Holy Spirit. You can see the changes. You can see the understanding. We can see it in each other. And we give glory to God when we see it. On the other hand, if the growth or the progress isn't there but a regression is there, that's evident to all as well. Because God didn't call us to regress. He didn't call us to reach a certain level in our lives and just stay there. He called us to progress and grow and grow and grow. Take heed, he says in verse 16, to yourself and to the doctrine, continue in them. For in doing this you will say both yourself and those who hear you. And so it's true in the church family, but it's true in our families as well. And in our marriages. Every single person is a follower. Every single person is a leader. We have influence over people by the way we behave and the growth that we have. We owe it to our families. We owe it to each other. We owe it to God as we follow Him. You know, Joshua learned obedience to God.

We don't even have to talk about the Ten Commandments. We know that Joshua obeyed and followed them. But we learn about God some other things too. Certainly we have to obey His law, but we learn to obey Him in some detail as well.

Good followers learn some things from their leaders. We learn some things from God. One of them Joshua learned was pay attention to every detail that God gave. Because sometimes what God says and commands us to do isn't what we would just normally or logically do.

Sometimes He tells us to do things that we might scratch our head and say, What? Why would that be important? If we go back to the Battle of Amalek, when God told Moses, As long as you have your hand up, you're going to win the battle. Now what would having your hand up have to do with winning a battle? Would any military strategist on earth say, You know what? Keep your hand up and that will win the battle? No. Joshua might have had a good battle plan. Moses might have given him some good strategy.

It all meant nothing. If they didn't obey God's command, As long as your hand is up, you'll prevail. But if your hand falls, Amalek prevails. They had to learn obedience to God, didn't they? They had to learn detail. They had to obey Him even when it maybe didn't even make sense to follow Him or follow that command. Israel might have thought the same thing. Back on Passover, when the death plague was coming on Egypt, And God said, Take the blood of a Lamb and plainer over there.

Or Moses said, Pay the blood over your doorpost. Israel might have said, What? That doesn't make sense. Just painting some blood on our doorpost is going to save us from death. They learned to obey God, didn't they? They may not have made sense from a logical standpoint, but if they didn't follow Him, Boy, they paid the price, a pretty hefty price.

And they learned from that on out, whatever God says to do, Whether it makes sense to me or whether I want to do it or not, I'd better do it. When God was leading Moses through the wilderness, And Moses knew there was a straight way over to the Promised Land, But he led him to the Red Sea. Moses might have stopped and said, What? Why are we going this way?

There's another way. Why are our backs up against the Red Sea? Thought might have crossed his mind, but he followed God. Even though it may not have made the logical human sense, He learned obedience. Good followers learn to obey. Sometimes your boss at work will tell you to do something you think that doesn't even make sense. There's an easier way to do it, but he insists you do it his way. You know what? You do it his way.

And God's the same way with us. And when their backs were up against the Red Sea, The people of Israel panicked. Moses didn't panic. He was a good follower. He had learned. Whatever God leads us into, He can deliver us from. I don't have to have the plan.

I don't have to have the strategy. He says He's got our back. And we learned the same thing in our lives as well. We learned the same thing in our lives. Sometimes what God asks us to do, we simply do. We don't defer to human logic, because sometimes when we defer to human logic, We end up with exactly what humans do when they lean to their own understanding. We simply learn to obey God. Joshua saw those things as he was following Moses. He saw things happen.

What? Hit that rock and water is going to come out of it? That doesn't make sense. They did it anyway. And they were watered. And as Joshua and Israel marched into the Promised Land, They saw some improbable things that they learned. Just trust God and follow Him. Let's go back to Joshua. Follow Him or obey Him, I should say. One of those situations was back when they conquered the Promised Land. The Promised Land was the city of Jericho. Jericho was a very secure city.

Walls that were unbelievably high didn't seem like there would anyone be able to get through Jericho. Someone gave me a documentary that shows that excavations of Jericho show that what the biblical account of it is is exactly what happened. Exactly what happened here. Let's read in Joshua 6, verse 1. What God said. Here's His battle plan on how to conquer Jericho. Jericho says, "...was securely shut up because of the children of Israel. None went out, none came in.

And the Eternal said to Joshua, See, I have given Jericho into your hand. It is king and the mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city. All you men of war, you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It will come to pass when they make a long blast with the ram's horn.

And when you hear all the people, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up every man straight before him.

What? That's the battle plan we follow to conquer this great city that looks like it's possible to conquer? But what did Joshua and the people do? They obeyed. They obeyed. It didn't make sense. In human reasoning, it's like, you can't just march around the city six times, and on the seventh day, walk around it seven times and watch the walls fall. But God said, do it. They did it. And exactly what God said would happen, happens. Good for them that they obeyed God. Over in verse 9 or 10 of the same chapter, Joshua said, you know, you won't even make a noise.

You won't even make a noise with your mouth. Don't even talk during these six times, these six days. What if the people had said, oh, come on, we can't even talk. The people of Jericho, can't we even whisper? You know what? If they hadn't obeyed God, Jericho wouldn't have been theirs. When God tells us to do something, he expects us to do it exactly the way he said, even if it doesn't make sense.

Even if everyone around us in the world says, that doesn't make sense, we've got to do this. We've got to take advantage of this. Nope. Obey God. Over in chapter 7, after they had a great victory in Jericho, Joshua found out that there was someone who didn't pay attention to the commands of God. When they conquered Jericho, God said, don't take any of the booty from Jericho. Destroy it all. Destroy all the people. Eliminate it. But then they went out to conquer the city of Ai, which was a small, much smaller city.

So Joshua, when he scouted it up, didn't even send enough or send that many people over because it was an insecure city. And he was in for a surprise. Because the men of Ai chased the men of Israel.

And Joshua was dumbfounded. What? We obeyed you. We told you, or we followed what you had said. And in verse 7 of chapter 7, Joshua forces heart out to God. He approaches Him and he says, alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites? Will you bring us here to destroy us? Oh, that we had just been content and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan.

Oh, Lord, what will I say when Israel turns us back before its enemies? The Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear it and surround us and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name? What's going on, God? We obeyed you.

We followed it. You said you would be there for us. You said you would conquer the land. And then we find ourselves running. Joshua wasn't afraid to approach his leader when he didn't understand what was going on, but God knew what was going on just like He knows what's going on with us. Because someone, one someone hadn't obeyed the commands of God that Joshua gave to the people. Verse 10, the eternal said to Joshua, get up. Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned and they have transgressed my covenant which I commanded them.

For they've taken some of the accursed things that have both stolen and deceived and they have put it among their own stuff. Wow. Men of Israel died because of the sin of one person who didn't obey because God was working with that whole group of people. Joshua didn't know they hid it from Him, but they couldn't hide it from God. It's like we can't hide from God. What He's looking for is purity. What He's looking for is obedience. What He's looking for is loyalty.

What He's looking for is to follow Him wholly. W-H-O-L-L-Y. And Israel suffered that day, but then they went through a roll call of the various tribes and they came down to this man Achan and they ended up having to stone Him. He paid dearly for not obeying God's voice. Good followers are obedient and they pay attention to the detail. They're in tune with what the leader says. Good followers who aren't obedient often turn out to be good leaders who aren't obedient either to God and who march off in their own direction. Number three.

Good followers communicate. Good followers communicate. In any relationship, marriage relationship, without communication, the relationship fails. Friends, the relationship fails. Family, the relationship fails. God, the relationship fails if we don't communicate with Him. Between followers and leaders, if there's no communication, the relationship fails, the objective fails, the enterprise fails, the organization fails, they work hand and hand together. Every joint, supplying, and providing for the mission. We read here in Joshua 7 that Joshua when he didn't understand what went on, didn't understand, didn't make sense to him why they had to flee from A.I.

the men of A.I., he went to God. We see similar things with Moses. Remember when Moses pleaded on behalf of Israel? God was irritated with Israel. And He said, I'm going to wipe them off of the face of the earth. Moses, I'm going to raise up a new nation. You're going to be the head of the nation. Remember that incident? What did God learn about Moses from that incident? He learned that Moses understood the mission. He understood the objective.

And He wasn't even going to let God, who was tantalized, or maybe even tested Him, to say, ah, ah, the nation of Moses as opposed to the nation of Israel. After all, it's God who said it, right? And Moses could have said, makes sense to me, I'm just as irritated with His people as you are.

But God, but Moses understood the mission. He was true to it. He embraced what He was following. And He told God, no, you can't do that. He pleaded for the people. This is what you brought the people of Israel out of Egypt for. You can't destroy them. What did God see in Moses? He learned an awfully lot about Moses as a follower that day, didn't He? He learned an awfully good thing about Joshua this day, too. What went on? Let me tell you a couple things that good followers are not.

Good followers are not yes men. That may surprise some people. There are leaders in the world who want yes men. That's all they want. Tell me that everything I'm doing is right. A good leader doesn't want just yes men. He doesn't want yes men. He wants people to challenge Him, to bring ideas to Him. If they don't understand something, ask about it. Just like Joshua asked Moses. Just like Moses. Just like Joshua. We'll talk about that another time next week.

Just like Joshua brought something to Moses that he didn't understand. Good followers ask. Good followers want to understand the mission. They want to understand what is going on. Good followers are not politicians. They don't do things just to see where they may get a promotion or whatever. Good followers follow. Good followers are obedient. Good followers understand the mission that the leader sets out for them, that God sets out for us, and they remain true to it, and they embrace the role they're in, whether they feel they're qualified for something more or not. Good followers communicate. Let's go over to 2 Kings. 2 Kings. As you're turning over to 2 Kings 5, a familiar little story that we can look at here.

Now there were two spies that came back from the Promised Land. They said, the land is good, God can deliver us. One God can deliver it into our hands. One of them was Joshua. He became leader. The other one was Caleb. We read about Caleb in the Bible. You know what? He didn't become the leader of Israel. But he was the leader in Israel by the attitude that he had. He could have said, wait a minute, Joshua? I was there too.

Why don't we have a co-leader situation here? Why aren't I? Joshua is assistant. He was a follower. He accepted the role that God gave him, and he remained in it. He remained a follower of God through it all. He was a leader in that community as people saw him embrace the role he was in. But we're here in 2 Kings. We're here in 2 Kings 5. We find an unlikely follower speaking up to her master, if you will. Let's look at 2 Kings 5, verse 3. This is the story of Naaman. Naaman was the great Syrian commander, and he came down with leprosy, an incurable disease.

In part, in their conquest, they had captured this young girl, you read in verse 2, from the land of Israel. She waited on Naaman's wife. Naaman comes down with leprosy. Now, here's this young girl, snatched from wherever she was snatched from, her parents. She is clearly a follower. She is in no way a leader in this situation. She is subservient to Naaman's wife, who she reports to in Naaman. She might have been, she could have become bitter. She could have said, you know what, I don't want to be here, it's not fair that I'm here. Fine, I will obey.

I'm only going to do what they tell me to do. I'm not going to say anything else. I'll just endure my lot in life. But we see that she kind of embraced the role that she was in. She didn't let bitterness, and she didn't let these other emotions that could have come over her come over her. And when she heard of Naaman's illness, she said in verse 3 to her mistress, If only my master were with the prophet who's in scenario, I would heal him, a leprosy.

She could have just kept her mouth shut. She was a good follower. She was a good servant. She spoke up and said something that they didn't know. And they might have dismissed her and said, but who needs to hear anything from this servant girl? They embraced it. They listened because good leaders listened. And Naaman went on his way to see this prophet of Israel.

Over in verse 9, we find Naaman's reaction. Naaman went with his horses and chariots, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house. Now, Naaman was a great Syrian commander. He expected people to respect him. He went there with an idea in his mind of what was going to happen and how he was going to be received and how he was going to be healed of this disease.

Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and watch the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored to you, and you will be clean. Elisha didn't even come to the door. How would you feel if you were Naaman? I come all the way to see you, and then you just send me a messenger? I don't even meet you? He expected this fanfare.

Don't you know who I am? And Elisha just said, here's what you need to do. Obey it. Good followers. The Naaman of this situation was a follower. See what Naaman's reaction was? He was furious. He was furious. How dare this man stand me up this way? How dare him tell me to go just through something dumb like dipping the Jordan seven times as if that is going to cure me?

Because human logic said there's no way that dipping the Jordan is going to cure the celebrity. If that was the case, everyone would be doing it. Naaman learned quite a lesson. And he learned it from someone who was his follower again. Down at the last sentence of verse 12, Naaman turned and went away in a rage. And his servants, clearly followers, came near and spoke to him and said, my father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, wouldn't you have done it?

How much more then, when he says to you, wash and be clean? Naaman, maybe we shouldn't be speaking up, but wouldn't it be just wise to do what he says? To just obey? Naaman listened. Good leaders listened. Disturbance could have said, I understand why he's there. Naaman, you are right to be mad. You are right to be furious. How dare they treat you that way and make some comment about just dipping in the Jordan?

Naaman listened, and he went down and decided, I will just obey. And he was cleansed. And he was cleansed. Good followers communicate. Good followers are not afraid to speak up. Good followers also accept no. We'll see next time. Joshua was told no. Didn't get mad. He didn't get upset. He just kept going on. Let's end there for today. Some more points we can make about being good followers, and we'll take that up another time.

But as you read through the book of Joshua, be fascinated by what God has performed in that book. But pay attention to Joshua and the people in it. Learn the lessons from them. The leadership? Learn how to be a good follower. Because we have to become good followers if we're going to cross over to the land that God has promised us.