State The Obvious

I was preaching on the topic of missions not long ago and I came across a passage that caused my sermon to take a totally different direction...right in the middle of preaching it. In Joshua 1:2, God came to Joshua and said, "Moses, my servant, is dead." When you think about it, that seems to be a pretty obvious statement: of course Moses is dead. He was 120 years old. He had gone up the mountain and not come back. The people were looking around and looking to Joshua. They were confused. Everyone thought Moses was dead, but no one was certain of it. If their beloved leader was really dead, who would lead the multitude into the Promised Land? Joshua was confused and did not even know what questions to begin asking. God, however, was not willing to let Joshua remain paralyzed and wonder about Moses...about the past...about the future. So, very simply He said..."Moses is dead." Well, that cleared everything up for Joshua...no doubt about it now. He was the leader. If the people were going to enter the Promised Land, it was on Joshua's shoulders to lead them.

I believe the lesson to learn from this obscure verse is that we should remember to state the obvious. In a time of advanced technology and information, it is easy to assume that everyone understands what we are thinking...or saying. As a pastor and teacher, I often forget that people DO NOT KNOW everything I believe they should. To be effective, I must state the obvious and proceed on common ground from there. At the same time, we can't assume that people know how we feel about them. Say "I love you" every once in awhile. If someone does something foolish, make them aware of it (without being pedantic). It lets people know where they stand with you.