Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 22nd, 2015 | Route 66 - Joshua

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February 22nd, 2015 | Route 66 - Joshua · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: If uh you're just visiting today, or it's your first time, we are taking a road trip through the Bible uh with a brief stop at each of the 66 books, which is why we're calling it.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, good job.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been to church very long in your life, very often over the years, and I can see looking at some of you, you're you just have those lines in your face.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have been coming to church a long time.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know that the typical pattern, the general uh thing that works is that you come and then the pastor takes a verse or five or ten verses, something like that, and then you get a magnifying lens, and you look really closely at those.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great way to do it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we're doing this series, it is different.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're backing off, taking a bird's eye view instead of a worm's eye view, and we're doing the uh wide angle lens uh of each of the books of the Bible, briefly, one Sunday each, and to try to discover the central message of each book of the Bible, what it is that God would say to us in each book.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've come to the sixth book along our Route 66 through the Bible.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: That would be the book of Joshua.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, um grab that sheet that's in your bulletin.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: On the front of the sheet is a simple Bible survey, which some of you have in your Bible.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have something like this if you have one of those study Bibles.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh mine, uh, I've chosen the key verses 1-9, have not I commanded you, be strong and courageous, and so forth.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: The key word is possessions, choose 16 times in this book, I think.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: The related word inheritance, used 42 times.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's some other key verses.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard of some of them, like, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have that on a little sign in your house.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Great chapters, Rahab hides the spies, the fall of Jericho, Sun and the Moon stand still.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then you find here the uh sort of story of the book.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: The book of Joshua, I read, tells of the entry of the Israelites into the promised land, Canaan.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the story that started in Genesis when Israel was chosen and was promised the land.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: In Exodus, Israel was redeemed, remember, out of Egypt.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Leviticus, it was taught holiness, or we could say it was taught how to worship God.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: In Numbers, it was led through the wilderness.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: In Deuteronomy, last week, it was renewed spiritually.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the two?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Love and ob thank you very much.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Love and obey.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's time to enter the land that God has given them, to take it and to live in it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: A verse at the hinge of the book summarizes the two halves.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Joshua took the entire land as the Lord had directed Moses.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: He gave his inheritance to Israel according to tribal divisions.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: The problem, Israel was slow to possess her possession.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The outline shows that the book falls into two equal halves, chapters one through twelve.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you, by the way, and I really compliment you're trying to keep up with me, actually reading through the whole book, or trying to do that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I admire you that you're joining me in that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've done that this last week, you would say, well, the first half of the week was fun, chapters one through twelve, all about war and lopping off of heads and sort of, you know, uh the American sniper type stuff.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then you got chapters 13 through 24, which is sort of like, you know, CPA lists and you know, stuff like that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, mmm, that's the allotment and distribution of the land.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hang in there.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's the sort of survey of the book, flip it over, and now we'll get to the message.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let me start with a word of prayer.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, uh I uh I ask for the folks who are listening to me, whatever venue it is, I I pray, Lord, that you would move upon them to quiet their hearts, that their ears would listen carefully, they would catch a sense of the excitement, not just the excitement I have about the unique message of this book, but the excitement clearly that you have about the message of this book, because it is uh just so in your faith, so helpful, so encouraging, so blunt.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I pray for all of us as we listen here that uh that you would galvanize us to put on our fatigues and get out there and conquer the land in Jesus' name.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, it was a hundred years ago that British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, you can tell by that name, that he was Jewish, happened to be a Christian Jew, a Jew for Jesus, we would call him today, said, the greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's my goal this morning.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's my aim, is to reveal to you the riches that you have.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that idea may surprise you, but it probably surprises you even more to know that that idea is going to come to us from the Old Testament book of Joshua.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of Joshua.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, that's right where it should come from.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to imagine for just a minute that you are one of the 70 random people in Lisbon, that's the capital of Portugal, 70 people who got a phone call eight years ago this month, telling them that they had been chosen out of a phone book by a millionaire Portuguese aristocrat 10 years before, and he had just died, and he was leaving those 70 random people all of his wealth.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be remarkable?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if any of you heard about this on the news.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Luis Carlos da Camera.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: No wife, no children, lifelong bachelor, and he and a lawyer and a couple of witnesses had, and a phone book, had gotten together about 20 years ago, and he had put his finger down, and 70 names had written down the names, hadn't informed anyone, and then he died eight years ago.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so in 2007, those 70 people got a phone call letting them know that after they sold his houses and his chalets and so forth and and his Euros and everything, that they were going to get wouldn't that be a nice surprise.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be great?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh I'm here to tell you that I have similar happy news for you today.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, you say you're lying to me.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, well, you're no stranger, and this is not a random thing, but the fact of the matter is that I'm going to share with you today that uh that that you have this incredible inheritance, and this news comes to us of all places from the Old Testament book of Joshua, where I think the theme, the message is God gave it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now take it.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the little background of the book, uh, Israel is over on the right hand side, uh, it's on the east side of the Jordan River, and it's about to cross over.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Moses just died.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: An angel of the Lord, could be Jesus Christ, a pre-incarnate Christ, comes to Joshua, says it's time, and now Joshua is going to cross over, and as you can tell, he's got a lot of opposition that he's gonna have to overcome.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: He could be pretty scared, and it's clear that he was pretty scared.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's got to overcome the Amalekites and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Hivites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Meteorites and whoever else.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of really dangerous people, and so that's what he's going to do, and then he's gonna do it.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: In chapters 1 through 12, the war part, the victory part, the fighting part, first comes the central campaign.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's in crossover.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You you remember the story of the Joshua fit the battle of?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: There you go, and the walls came tumbling down.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And after that happens, he goes to a little town that in English we usually call AI, which just makes it easy to spell.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do you spell AI?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Very good.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Except that it's really pronounced I, uh, you know, if you're Israeli.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it's an interesting place.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us in this room have gone digging the archaeology a couple times the last few years.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Very important site, by the way, for the apologetics of the Bible.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: 400 years ago, the at that time greatest archaeologist in the world, William Foxwell Albright, was going around the land and he was saying, that's this place, that's this place.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't dug or anything, and he's mostly always right.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he pointed at that hill and said, That's, I think that's AI.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what happened is archaeologists then dug at that site, and they didn't find any ruins from the time of Joshua.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So as a result, all of the Old Testament professors at secular universities have now been saying it's been illustration number one in their books that the Old Testament's inaccurate, that these conquering never happened, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, another archaeologist who happens to be a Christian, the foremost Christian archaeologist in the world, uh, was over there and he said, uh, why shouldn't it be right over on that hill, a mile away?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and Israel uh Department of Antiquity said, Well, go ahead, you raise them.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you raise the money, it's a lot of money, you can do a dig.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so he did, and a couple of us have gone over, and my first day on the dig, I uncovered of all things uh the door of the gate of the city, which revolves on a big limestone.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I uncovered that limestone base of the door of the city, and it dated from Joshua's day.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just remarkable the things that have been found, and I kept digging because in the Bible it says that they killed the king of Ai right there at the entrance and left his body there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I was hunting around for the skull or his money or anything, didn't find that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: But but but we've, you know, that's a remarkable place.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that this, these are the stories in the book of Joshua.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And after the central campaign, Joshua went down south, conquered the south, then finally went up to the north to the greatest city of Alhatzor, the head of five kingdoms, and he burned that to the deck to the ground.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can see that even today.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the story of Joshua 1 through 12.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I want you to do is to open your Bible to Joshua chapter 1, verses 1 through 9, because this has really the major ideas of the book in it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Will you join me here for just a few minutes?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua 1, 1 through 9.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have the verses on the screen in case you can't lean down and grab one of those Bibles.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Joshua 1, 1 and 2.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: After the death of Moses, the Lord's servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua, son of None.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great, by the way, answer to the trivia question who in the Bible, other than Adam and Eve, had no parents?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Answer, Joshua, son of none.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can use that.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's helpful.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's free.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that's worth worth about that much.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But Joshua, son of none, who had served Moses.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, Moses, my servant, is dead.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, isn't that interesting?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Twice in one verse.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be nice to know that in heaven as God turns to the person next to him or whatever, he goes, he goes, you know, Joe, my servant, Susan, my servant, Jim, my servant.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be nice for him to call you that?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be cool.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: He does it twice in one verse.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, my servant, is dead.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you and all the people prepare to cross over the Jordan to the land I am giving the Israelites.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Key theme of the book here.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving this land to the Israelites.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fulfillment of the promise to Abraham back in Genesis 12 and 15 and 17.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And can you imagine a better gift than you could give anyone than a beautiful country of Israel?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: This people needed a land.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's only about 150 miles along, north to south, at the most, 50 miles east to west.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the beauty, there's always a snow-capped Mount Hermon at the top, the only snow-capped peak.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And as you come down, there's the hills of the Galilee and the Lake Kinneret, called the Sea of Galilee, but not a sea.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you have, you know, some fertile plains, and you have Jordan River down south going to the lowest spot on earth, Dead Sea.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then farther down you have that arm of the Red Sea.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the beautiful deserts, and you have the mountain peaks, and you have the Mediterranean Sea.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was God's gift, by the way.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've put these on to sort of wet your appetite.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been with me over to Israel, and it was wonderful, wasn't it?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Best vacation in your life?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good, thank you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I heard that.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh someday I hope you'll get to go with me to Israel.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really a beautiful country, but of course, important as well.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So God's now going to give them this amazing gift of the land.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this will then sort of be the fulfillment of God's promise to make Israel a great nation.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are three things, by the way, that it takes to be a nation.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a people, you have to have a common people, and you have to have a common constitution, you have to have a common homeland.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It takes three things to be a nation.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, for instance, uh, and they don't all happen in the same order.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes, you know, the land comes first, and then here come the you know, people start to develop, and then finally they have a constitution.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: In America, actually, the people came first.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Remember?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: They were the pilgrims, that mix, remember Puritans and separatists who came over on a ship called the Mayflower in 1620.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had a people, and then they got the land, and then 150 years later, they developed the U.S.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Constitution, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: 1787.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now in Israel, the land came last, which is really weird, really rare.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: See, first of all, they developed the people in Genesis, ended Genesis with 70 people, multiplied into two million over 430 years.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's they have the people in Exodus, and then they come out of Egypt, they come to Mount Sinai, where they get their constitution, Exodus chapter 20, and finally now they come and they are going to get their homeland.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so God's going to fulfill these three requirements.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's all verses 1 and 2.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 3 through 5 have sort of the three major themes of the book in these three verses.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I have given you every place where the sole of your foot treads, just as I promised Moses.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Theme number one is this theme of the possession or the inheritance, this gift of God.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've given you every place with the soul of the foot tread.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Second theme is this is a fulfillment of God's promises over the years.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Your territory will be from the wilderness, that's the south, and Lebanon, that's in the north, to the great Euphrates River, that's in the east, all the land of the Hittites and west to the Mediterranean Sea.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: I will be with you.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Theme number three, the Emmanuel, I will be with you theme.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just as I was with Moses, I won't leave you or forsake you.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 6 and 7, be strong and courageous.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the strongest, perhaps boldness, courage passage in the whole Bible.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Be strong and courageous, for you will distribute the land I swore to their fathers to give them as an inheritance.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: The distribution of the land, that happens in chapters 13 through 24.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Above all, be strong and very courageous to carefully observe the whole instruction.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: My servant Moses commanded you, don't turn from right or left, so that you'll have success wherever you go.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you have courage point followed by the sort of the Bible, the observe the instructions, that's where success comes from.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in 8 and 9, he uh he uh he turns around and he says the same two things in reverse order.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth, you'll decide it day and night, so you may carefully observe everything written in it, for then you'll have, you'll prosper and succeed in whatever you do.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now back to the courage theme.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Haven't I commanded you be strong and courageous?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Theme verse of the book for me don't be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the these these verses, just wonderful, and they promise to Israel and to Joshua that God is giving them the land.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me move right now to the message that I think God wants us to have from this book.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the the issue with this message is it comes to us out of one of the great contradictions in the Bible?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of apparent contradictions in the Bible.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest apparent contradictions in the Bible happens in the book of Joshua as the answer to this question.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Was God's promise actually fulfilled in this book?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Did Israel actually take the promised land?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or no.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem is that this book answers that question with a resounding yes and with a resounding no.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that those who are higher critics of the Bible say that though the Bible is a brilliant book, they always say, someone really stupid merged together two totally different points of view in this book, not noticing that they contradicted each other.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the first point, the yes point, is actually wrong.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: That writer got it wrong, and the no writer got it correct, but this is just proof we can't trust this book.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And my response is, whoa, whoa, back off a little bit.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the brilliant message of this book is hidden, is re is is unveiled by this apparent contradiction.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at how bluntly, how resoundingly this book answers the question yes, God's promise was fulfilled.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Israel took the promised land.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: At the hinge of the book, chapter 11, 23, we read, so Joshua took the entire land in keeping with all the Lord had told Moses.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua then gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: After this, the land had rest for more.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: A resounding yes, God gave it, they took it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 21, 43.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the Lord gave Israel all the land he'd sworn to give their fathers, and they took possession of it and settled there.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord gave them rest on every side according to all he'd sworn to their fathers.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: None of their enemies were able to stand against them.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: For the Lord handed over all their enemies to them.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: None of the good promises the Lord made to the house of Israel failed.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was fulfilled.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: One more, chapter 23.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua dying says, I'm now going the way of all the earth, and you know with all your heart and all your soul that none of the good promises the Lord your God made to you has failed.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was fulfilled for you.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not one promise has failed.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty clear, isn't it?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: God fulfilled all his promises.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Israel took the land, Shazam.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Period at the end of the sentence.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, mixed in with those verses, you find a resounding no, even more commonly.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 13, verse 1.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua getting old in years, and the Lord said to him, You've become old, you're getting on in years.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua said, Thanks for letting me know that, God.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's really pretty obvious.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: But a great deal of the land remains to be possessed.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: God said that.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is the land that remains, all the districts of the Philistines and the Gesherites, Gaza, Gaza.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever heard of Gaza?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have that one possessed.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's a little bit of a problem still, isn't it?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Akron.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 13, verse 13.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites did not drive out the Gesherites and Makithites.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So Geshermekah live in Israel to this day.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 15, 63, the descendants of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, oh yeah, David drove them out, but that was 300 years later.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the Jebusites live in Jerusalem among the sinners of Judah to this day.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, chapter 16, they didn't drive out the Canaanites in Gezer.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 17, descendants of Manasseh given all these towns, and they couldn't possess those cities because the Canaanites were determined to stay in the land.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 18, the entire Israelite community assembles at Shiloh, where the tent of meeting is.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the land had been subdued by them or had it.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because Joshua then says to them, How long will you delay going out to take possession of the land that the Lord the God of your fathers gave you?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: You see this nagging contradiction, why some people would say, brilliant book, the Bible, but somebody really stupid didn't notice this contradiction.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Better in what I consider to be the best commentary in this book, recent commentary by a guy named Hess who teaches at Biola, there is a continuous tension in this book.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, God has given the land to Israel in its entirety.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: On the other, they must occupy it.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even John Calvin, 400 years ago, noticed this difficulty.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Distinguish well, he said, between the clear, unwavering, and certain faithfulness of God in the fulfillment of his promises and the weakness and laziness of the people which caused the blessings of God to slip from their hands.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Back to Hess.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he draws it to application.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to spend the rest of my time.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: This combination of challenge and opportunity is the way in which God works with believers.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to this.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: For Christians, the promise of victory over sin has been accomplished through Christ.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Have you gotten victory?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have we gotten through Christ?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Has He given us victory over sin, Satan, death?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Say yes.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: He has.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: However, as Hess says, this must, sorry to coach you on that.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: However, this must be claimed through a life of faith and faithfulness.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, Joshua provides a model for the Christian life.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if that's true, we should be able to find this same resolution of tension in the New Testament, this same, you know, already got it but not yet have it thing.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is yes, it is.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Take a look at Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, where first he says, it's all yours, everything is yours, everything is yours, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God, 1 Corinthians 3.22.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, he also says later in that famous 1 Corinthians 10, 13, no temptation has taken you, but so you come remember.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: God will make it so that you can conquer it, all right?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You get victory.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then you also have this 1 Corinthians 5, 7.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, he says, purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm unleavened, why do I need to purge out the old leaven?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's because while God's given you this, you still have to make it here.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing in Ephesians chapter 1 and 4.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have it.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Praise God, who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Go to chapter 4.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received and access these spiritual blessings.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: He lists them of unity and love and peace and joy that you have received, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And same in the first chapter of 2 Peter, God's given it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: His divine power has given to us, meaning believers, everything required for life and godliness.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's given us very great and precious promises.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the next verse, though, he says, Well, there's very reason you need to make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Add to your faith goodness and virtue and self-discipline.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, God has given it, but you still need to take it.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: See, now that's a remarkable message that you and I need to hear.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've put on the back of your study sheet a way for you to read the book of Joshua and apply it to your heart.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just two points, chapters 1 through 12.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have a military assignment.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: To steal a common uh nauseating phrase from American Idol, you're in it to win it.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Take what God has given you.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Go get it.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard of uh Billy Sunday?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Billy Sunday, great American revivalist preceding Billy Graham.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Billy Sunday had been uh had been an all-star Chicago White Sox ballplayer, and he he attacked, they said, you know, he would constantly, it was like he was fighting a swarm of bees, they would say, when he preached.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just all over the Pope.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Detroit Free Press had pictures of him, they call it fighting the devil.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Billy Sunday captured this Joshua 1 through 12 thing so well when in a famous sermon of his, he said, I'm against sin.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, and I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'll butt it as long as I've got a head.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll bite it so long as I have a tooth.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when I'm old and listless and footless and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to glory and it goes home to hell.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a preacher right there.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's this whole idea.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have battles that we can fight and God is with us, and we'll win.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I had an old professor this before seminary who would always ask us, are you standing on the promises or are you sitting on the premises?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't use the picture of the horse, but but you get the idea.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, are you active?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going out?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are you taking your military assignment to win it?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then chapters 13 through 24 practically would be your administrative assignment to live in it.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Live in the land and possess what God has given you.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: One final word from uh from Hess: Israel's failure to conquer the land fully anticipates the Christian inability to enjoy the full favor of God's blessing in this life.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: You wonder why sometimes you feel as though you're not experiencing all of God's blessing.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me play this out with three conclusions that this book gives us.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, God has given his people the title deed to property they have not possessed and are not enjoying.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: It would be as if you, let's say your parents passed away, and after the lawyer did his thing and everything was split up, you got the message that every one of the kids, you and the other kids are each gonna get$100,000.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, about a month later in the mail, you got this beautiful certified check from this bank, and it was a special-looking check.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and it$100,000, and you were blown away.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, talk about cool.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so you immediately, immediately went down to the frame shop on Watamake, and you got yourself a good looking frame for that check.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you went back and you hung that baby inside the front door in the hallway, where every time somebody came to your house, you know, you could show it to them.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: You could look at that, look at my inheritance, look at that check, look how cool that looks.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, one day your best friend takes you aside, he says, you know, that is really a bad microwave you've got.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll cost you a couple hundred, but why don't you cash that check in the hallway and buy it?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we live in such a way sometimes that we have a title deed to property that we are not possessing and we're not enjoying.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, of course, that's because that's because we're ignorant.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm talking to you about it this morning.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're ignorant that you have all of this property.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God sometimes for ignorance.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I uh about some years back, I finished a sermon up to my office and found that a theft had occurred.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what had happened is that my dad, sensing we had a couple kids, aged and mark, and we, and he had he had suddenly, you know, realized, you know, probably that we were living hand to mouth, which is basically what we were.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so he sent me a couple bear bonds.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen bear bonds before, each one for a thousand dollars, you know, so whoever was holding on to them had it, but I'd never seen those before.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, I just knew.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I brought them to work and I slipped them in my office drawer.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of it, I had a I had a my bowl of change that I'd drop pennies, nickels, quarters, whatever in.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I go up to my office after I'm after I preach, and I open my drawer and I go, oh my goodness, somebody, some kid or kids had come in and they'd stolen all my change.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Had to be at least buck 75 there.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then I laugh out loud because we've got those two bear bonds right underneath it, a couple thousand dollars.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God for ignorance sometimes, but but the fact of the matter is that Christians sometimes are living on pennies and nickels and dimes when God's saying, listen, you have no idea what all I have given you.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: You just you're not enjoying all of the privileges and all of the inheritance that I have given you.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the spirit is inside you, therefore it is your possession.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Love is and joy and peace, yes, and even patience and self-discipline.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's your property, you possess that.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And do you understand that I have already given you the right to have personal friendship with me, that you can come to me every single day and talk to me like a friend?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you understand that?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And do you understand that you can know the deep things of God?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've given you a book and it has my deep stuff in it.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And all you have to do is access that, possess that land.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you can have these spiritual experiences, you can have these spiritual victories.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've already laid those out for you, victories, honestly, over all of those things like, you know, lust and greed and self-centeredness and negativity and fear and worry and so forth.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why aren't you accessing those?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you living on such chump change rather than and sometimes, by the way, it's it's it's it's not, unfortunately, it's not just ignorance.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's actual neglect, careless neglect.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a few years ago, a year ago, maybe two, uh, a guy sent me some money uh online.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if anybody's ever done that to you, but uh, it's the first time sort of that it happened, and a bank he sends you an email and you have to go to this and tell them where you want the money to go in your bank and so forth, and it has this little thing you push this button, and then that money, those it was several hundred dollars, you know, gets sent to your bank.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, I finally get that thing, and you know, it's ready to punch the thing, and I'm still a little nervous about it, and so I get a phone call.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and then I had to leave the office, and so I and I shut the whole thing down and took it home, and I forgot about it.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I forgot about it for two weeks.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a deadline on those things, so when I went back, I remembered it finally, and I go back in, I raised that up, but it was no longer there.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just as just a case of careless neglect.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to make the phone call.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, you know, that money.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she gave me kids.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's a hassle.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Could you go back through your bank again and get all that got all that done?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't look at me that way.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not the only, you know, careless.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: But but you see how that works?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we can just simply neglect things or procrastinate and go, well, you know, sometime later in my life, I'll attack that, I'll go for that ground that God I think wants me to handle with that with that relationship, you know, where I need, you know, to do the forgiveness thing.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, though we are billionaires, we often live like bums.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's true, it's true.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and in fact, uh the interesting story happened a few years ago.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: A woman named Mary lived down on Third and Western.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: She had been a school teacher down in Council Grove for a number of years and invested her money really well.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now she's 78 years old.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: She lived at Third and Western, and she didn't like how high the KPL bills were.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: So she called them, she told them to shut it off.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Her sister Minnie, who came up to visit her every three weeks, said, Mary, it's freezing cold in here.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's January.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they're wearing coats.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: She said, No, yeah, but I got the burner on, you know, got the oven on, and so forth.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot cheaper, and that's a crazy high bill.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she said, at least would you turn on a couple more burners?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, it'll cost too much.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Mary, you've got the money.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Look at that stack over there in the corner.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care, it costs too much.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And finally they had uh had to come get Mary.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: She died of hypothermia because of the water pipe.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: It burst in the basement.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: The basement's filled with water and it ruined the furnace, and and she she didn't want to turn the stove on any higher because it would use too much electricity.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: It took the Topeka Police Department over three hours to count all the thousand dollar bonds and certificates of deposit that she had in her house.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Associated Press picked up the story.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Topeka Kansas.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: How dumb are they?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is that so many Christians are the same way.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: That we have, we've received this incredible check from God.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't cash that check, we stash it instead.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't realize God desperately wants us to take advantage of that.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we live like bumps, we live like spiritual paupers instead of living in the land that God has set apart for us.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, we have battles to fight and battles to win.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And God is saying in this book, you need to put on your fatigues, you need to pick up your rifle, you're a Christian.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you're not, if you're not sure that you're a child of God, let me say to you, that's the most important thing.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's no land there for you if you're not one of the children of Israel, you're not one of the children of God.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't looked at Jesus Christ on the cross, said, I accept his death for me in my place.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Heavenly Father.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, You're my child.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Twila Paris sang a song.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: The warrior is a child, by the way, sang a song about this, basically, that I fought these battles and so forth, and people don't realize how hard that is, and sometimes I just get so tired, I go home, lay down my sword, and cry, and so forth.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And God would say, Yeah, every warrior is a child at heart, but the fact of the matter is every child of mine is also a warrior, and you need to pick up your sword, and you need to go into the land, and you need to trust me, knowing that I am there with you.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am by your side, I'm fighting for you, for there is a plot of ground out there ahead of you that I want to give you and you need to fight the battle.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a promise in this book.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to recite it with me, this terrific promise that says that God will help you do that.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Will you say these words with me?
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: He will put oh just a I'm sorry.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Stop right there.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I want you to do first?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I want you to do.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to get specific with yourself and with God.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think of a piece of ground out there ahead of you, something that you've wanted to conquer, some issue, something in your life.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's envy, maybe it's greed, maybe it's jealousy, maybe it's unforgiveness, maybe there's something out there that God wants you to do.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, did you pick one word this year?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I picked one word this year.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you did too.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those one words, that's ground that God wants you to claim this year.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: My word happens to be.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I picked it before knowing Joshua.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: My word is defy, D-E-F-Y, which is a perfect word for this.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, defying the powers of sin, the powers of Satan, all those whispers that say, you can't take this land.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't taken this land for decades.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: How would you think you could take this land now?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever your word is, that's land that God is offering to you to possess, and you need to step out, step up, and claim that land.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And listen to this promise.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a promise that Joshua gives us from God.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, thinking of what God wants you to possess, read this with me.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Together, he will push them out before you, and you will take possession of their land as the Lord your God promised you.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, the the British, uh great British revivalist Alan Redpath said, why should we live in spiritual poverty?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: When we are old, when the story is written and the battles are finished, when this life is ended and this brief experience is over, why should we have to stand and face our Lord and confess that we have not possessed anything like what he intended us to have?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why indeed?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: I need to confess sin this morning.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me as I read this final prayer to close this service, a confession, a resolution before God.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Will you read this with me right now quietly?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I confess to you that I have been guilty of ignorance and fear, careless neglect and procrastination.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to the amazing, generous gifts you have given to me, your child, I have neglected them and lived like a pauper instead of like a child of the king.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your guarantee that as I rise now to march into the land you have given me, you will fight for me and alongside me and bring me to the place of promise and rest.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I pray for these dear folks who like me would really like to possess our possessions.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: We would like, we know it would make you happy since you have won this land for us and given it to us.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: It would make you so happy if we would take this gift from you and if we would live in this gift from you.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for uh folks who have identified a spot out ahead of them that they know is the place that you want them to conquer.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Would you give them the grace to rise up, claim that land, and move into it?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Would you fight for them?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, you're dismissed.