Now how does Joshua go about putting all this into action? He has received his mandate from his Moses. He has received the blueprint from him. He does not now take his pen and eraser and start to modify the blueprint.

Don't mess with it. But you have two very important preparations that you will have to implement and go through before this job can be completed.

Discipline and Change

Firstly you have just got in this new batch of laborers who know precious little about building. It is good old cheap labor, sweat shop style. You have to take this rabble and make them into a working force.

It is like the sergeant in the Army who gets the new batch of recruits straight out of civilian life. He has to now try and make soldiers out of them, but they have never had a day of discipline in their life.

You have to get them into order. You have to slap them together and make them into a fighting force. You need to get some discipline, order and structure into them.

Above all, you will have to bring the 'c' word - change, to them. The first announcement you make to this batch of people is,

"We're going to change. We're going to do things differently to the way it was done before."

And you will get a whole lot of moans coming forth.

"Oh no."

"Oh yes!"

It is change.

Circumcision

So how does Joshua go about changing the people? He does it with difficulty. The very first thing God said to Joshua is,

"We're going to have a circumcision."

Do you know what a circumcision is? It is where you apply pain to a very private part of you. It is not a pleasant experience, so they say. I would not like to experience it. And those who have experienced it, usually did so way back when they couldn't remember, like when they were a few days old.

In the case of the Israelites usually it was on the eighth day, and it wasn't that bad because you were still a baby. I don't know what the medical scenario is, but I suppose the nerves are not as sensitive. Whatever it was back then, it was painful but it was over.

Could you imagine now as a grown man having to face the pain of circumcision? Some of us are such babies we can't face the thought of the slightest bit of surgery.

It is painful just to have a boil lanced or something. It causes pain. Can you imagine now having to face the prospect of circumcision?

You say, "Well I suppose I could handle it. They would put me out and they would operate, and I wouldn't feel a thing."

However we are talking Joshua in the Wilderness here. We are talking Joshua without anesthetics and pain killers. I don't know if they had pain killers in those days, but they could not have been too sophisticated. They certainly couldn't have put you out while they did the job.

Circumcision is a painful experience. It addresses very private and personal issues. It exposes the things that are usually hidden away that nobody sees. They have to be brought out into the open now.

You know what I am talking about. It is the prospect of pain, and the prospect of exposing to the world and to somebody else something I don't normally show. What am I talking about? God said to Joshua,

"I want you to make some sharp knives."

Today in modern terms, God would have said to Joshua,

"Joshua I want you to find all the doctors that there are in camp, particularly those that have a Post-Graduate in Surgical Procedures. I want you to get these guys to come in and do this surgical procedure that needs to get done."

Here was a guy who was a fighter; a general. He was pretty deft with a knife, usually when it was making somebody's guts spill out though. He was hardly a surgeon, and this guy is going to do me?

God said to Joshua,

"You sharpen the knives and you become a surgeon. Sharpen your knife Joshua, and start to use it."

Conviction and Cutting Deep

What are we talking about here? We are talking about the convictional anointing. We are talking about when you stand up and you sharpen the anointing of the Word of God that goes out of your mouth, so that it goes out as a sharp two-edged sword.

When you speak and say, "Thus says the Lord," it goes 'pow' and hits them in the heart. That is the Joshua anointing.

This is the first thing that Joshua has to do even before he can begin to exercise his ministry. He is going to have to preach conviction. He will have to cut deep at the issues. You will have to become a spiritual surgeon to be a Joshua.

You are probably beginning to think,

"So that's why I always find myself speaking to people in such a way that I am always cutting deep with the words that I speak."

Hello Joshua!

You say, "I'm not the kind of person who likes to upset people. I don't like to speak and preach against sin and practical things; to really get down to where people live and get to some of those private issues that are hidden away in their lives."

If God has called you to be a Joshua I have bad news for you. Start sharpening your knife. You will become a surgeon. It is part of the call. In fact it will be the start of your call. The convictional anointing is going to be the very beginning of your ministry.

But you have to go a little bit further than just speaking when you do the convictional anointing. Joshua didn't just sharpen the knives and flash them before the people to scare them.

"Here I am guys. You see this knife? Do you know what I'm doing to do with this knife?"

Some preachers love to do that. They love to flash the knife a bit and show how good and strong they are. They show how spiritual they are by ramming the poor people into the ground and terrifying them with the fear and the wrath of God.

That is not the kind of preaching I am talking about. I am talking about the kind of preaching that hits home and cuts. It destroys and removes from peoples' lives, the things which stand in the way of them moving into the blessing and anointing of God.

Time to Die

Joshua did more than talk. He did some cutting. Joshua cut a lot of foreskins on that day. It must have been a mess with lots of blood. I don't even want to think about it.

I daresay if they ever made a movie they would leave that scene out. It would be a difficult one to depict.

Joshua had to call the people to death. Your first task as a Joshua apostle will be to call the people to death.

You say, "So that's why I've been so pre-occupied with preaching death."

Welcome Joshua apostle. That is the Joshua role. It is the beginning and the main thrust of your ministry before you even start. God cannot use the people until they have been made ready. And they cannot be made ready until that which stands in the way is cut off from them.

It was the Covenant of God. God had given the Covenant way back to Abraham, and the Israelites in Egypt had kept to that Covenant and were circumcised. However, when they were wandering around in the desert, I guess it was inconvenient to circumcise children so none of them had been circumcised.

Here was this whole nation of people and none of them had been circumcised. These guys had all grown up into adults already, and now the job had to get done.

Moses failed to circumcise them. Yes he had implemented it in the Law, but for some reason during their time of wandering it had not been done. Joshua had to bring the people to order before they could enter the Promised Land and take it.

A Time of Healing

Then after Joshua had called them to death he left them in the grave for a while to heal.

You say, "But that's a real waste of time. Here they are standing on the brink of entering into the inheritance of this Promised Land. Jericho is in front of them. The whole land awaits them, but they are sitting wasting time cutting off foreskins."

I don't know how long it would take to heal, particularly without modern medical practice. But they were left to heal and to regain their strength before they could move on.

There always has to be a time in the grave. We cannot hurry the training and the preparation of the people.

What kind of death are we talking about? We haven't even come to Joshua's death yet. We are dealing with how you must minister to the people.

You must minister to them in those intimate areas of their lives that have probably never been addressed before. But they have to be exposed and they have to be dealt with before you can move on and at the risk of having everybody turn against you.

Put yourself in the place of Joshua. You are going up to these guys and saying,

"Come here, I'm going to do your foreskin."

"Don't you dare touch me!"

You get a couple of hundred thousand guys all mobbing up and saying, "You aren't touching me," and you are in trouble.

It took a lot of courage for Joshua to stand up there and tell them what he was going to do. And sometimes it takes a lot of courage to stand up and address issues in peoples' lives that have been hidden away and that they don't want exposed. They don't want you to touch on it because it is painful.

If you want to be a Joshua however, you will need to have the courage to stand up boldly and strong; to sharpen your knife and apply it where it needs to be applied.

You need to apply the Word of God practically to peoples' lives. You need to burn out of them those things that are in their lives that are preventing them from inheriting the blessing of God.

Then leave them to die, because they will die. Just leave them for a while, and don't give up on them if they seem to just slink off and disappear after you have applied your cutting.

Sometimes it happens. You have preached a firm and strong message and it seems like everybody disappears. They are not coming to church anymore. They are staying home. They don't like the kind of way you are preaching.

Don't worry about them. Let them go and die. They will come back once they have healed. Once they have healed and they come back and are ready, then you can begin to move on into the job that God has given you to do.