Joshua is one of my favorite biblical characters. I love the character that he lived with, how he was always willing to serve, that his leadership was birthed by following Moses into God’s presence and that he didn’t let frustration, disappointment, a lack of experience or even the unwillingness of those that he was leading deter him from seeking God, from hearing from God and from obeying God. Joshua was front and center for some of Israel’s greatest and worst moments. He traveled through the Red Sea on dry land, he drank water from a rock, ate manna from heaven and according to Exodus 24, Joshua was with Moses when God met with him for 40 days on Mt. Sinai. As they came down from the mountain, after God had told Moses that Israel had turned from Him, it was Joshua who said “There is the noise of war in the camp.” Little did he know that it was not war but the worship of an idol that he heard. Joshua went to the tent of meeting with Moses, in fact Exodus 33 tells us that when Moses was finished speaking with God that it Joshua would not leave the tent, even after Moses went back into the camp. He was one of the spies that went into the Promised Land first, he was one of the first 12 men to see the land with his own eyes, to walk out what God had said that He would do. He was one of the first people to eat the food that they would eat, to see the cities they would conquer and to sleep in the land that God said would belong to them and to Him forever. Joshua, along with Caleb, opposed the other 10 spies when they said the land was too much and the enemies too large for them. Joshua and Caleb stood up for the Word and heart of God and declared “The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the LORD delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them.” The time that Joshua had spent in God’s presence while following Moses had convinced him that if God was for them then it would not matter who was against them, but it had also taught him that for God to be for them, they would have to be with God. Sometimes I’m afraid that we want God’s favor without surrendering to God’s character; we want the blessings of God without living with the humility of God; we want to be protected and provided for without having the tables of our hearts turned over; we want to be treated like disciples before we deny ourselves, take hold of the cross or commit ourselves to follow Jesus. In our text today Joshua had received the mantle of leadership from God before the death of Moses, he had lead the nation in mourning for Moses and then he had been the one that had to hear and then repeat the very difficult words of God: “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over the 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.” Let’s think of this for a minute, yes they were being told that God’s promise was about to come to pass but at the same time this meant that they were about to enter into battle and go to war. The giants and walled cities that their parents had feared so much that they voted to back to Egypt 40 years before were still there waiting for them. Sometimes the most difficult thing for us to do is move from promise to reality because it requires that we take steps of trust and faith, that we make ourselves vulnerable and that we face the nagging fear within us and accusations from the enemy that maybe we heard wrong, maybe God won’t be pleased and maybe none of this is ever going to actually happen. We face the need to move on, to get out of our comfort and to walk, again, in complete dependence upon God. In today’s text Joshua had done everything that God had asked of him. He had gathered the nation and had them consecrate themselves, he had led them, following the Levites and the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan River on dry ground. He had circumcised the entire nation, a generation that had not practiced circumcision for 40 years, an entire generation that ate the food of God and followed the presence of God but never willingly marked themselves with the mark of God. He had reinstituted the Passover, for 40 years they had not celebrated and remembered that God had spared them when the angel of death moved through Egypt, Joshua, by God’s leading brought it back to this people. In Joshua 5 all of these steps of obedience had been completed and the outcome of those steps of obedience was that the manna they had eaten for more than 40 years stopped and they began to eat the food of the Promised Land. Today we are going to see an interesting meeting that Joshua had with a “Man” outside of the city of Jericho. Joshua asked the man a question that I think we also need to ask. “Are you for us . . .?” It’s a question that we believe we already know the answer to but I believe we need to hear the answer from Scripture very closely today because it is much larger than we often realize. We are going to see that God is for us when we are with God, that God’s timing is often based upon our obedience and that God’s calling for all of us is always to holiness—before we are given an instruction, a plan or a strategy we are given a call—“be holy as I am holy.”