God's Land Established: Joshua

Preached by Josh McCoy on 10/20/24

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We're startup church. We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together. And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more. You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that. We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today. So today I know exactly why Darren asked me to do the lesson a hundred percent. And the reason is this. Hey, speak about this guy. That's a great name. I don't know about you guys, that's a great name. Joshua? That's a strong name right there. Right? I would be lying to you if I said I wasn't like a little happy. I was like, yes. Like, let's go. I'm so happy I get to speak about this. Not biased. Not biased at all. No, I'm going to talk about my bias. I don't know if it's just me, but like growing up, like knowing, like I grew up in, you know, biblical based family, like it was, everything was part of my life. And so knowing who Joshua was, I just felt so connected to the story of Joshua. It's the only book I cared to read in the Bible until I met Jesus. I was like, I don't care about the other stuff. Joshua, I need to know everything about this man. Like he's obviously the coolest person. Like in my mind, like right, just like vulnerable moment. I thought Joshua was definitely better than Jesus for like a good part of like my younger years. I read, I was like, okay, that's not true. Joshua was human. He messed up a ton. But right, I just felt so connected. I don't know if anyone out there, you know, if you also have like a biblical name and grew up with that, like it is. It's just, you just feel connected to it for some reason. But today we're going to look, we're going to continue with Thread. We're going to continue with this story with God's land established. And Joshua is truly one of the most key parts of what it truly took to make God, God's land established. And to establish a nation, a land, a people, one of the most important things that you have to set is currency. Most common currency is the one that we know is financial. We think of financial and currency almost like the same thing. Like we don't, we can't really separate them often. You know, having a universal system for money and exchange of goods is super important to establishing a nation. Right? Frankly, I miss the barter system. Was I alive when the barter system was not around? Of course not. But man, something about like if Alec and I, like hey, if Alec had a donkey and I needed that donkey and I had a year's full of, you know, bushel of wheat and we could have that trade? Simple, right? That's a set of currency, right? Like we could figure things out that way. You know, the idea of currency is supposed to set a standard for what to expect and to be universally used as a nation and as a people. Currency isn't just a term, though, for financial standards. There are multiple forms of currency that we use on a day-to-day basis that we often don't think about in our day. Think about a currency of trust. How many times have you heard or used the term trust is earned, not given? Think of hope. Hope is like a currency. We place our hope in things and we hope to not be bankrupted by disappointment. We hope to not be robbed when we put our hope into something. We also refer to rest as a currency. You know, whether it's going to be tomorrow or Monday or on Friday, it'll probably be Monday for me. A work week can have you spent. It can drain you. And then when we want those rest days, it's like, I say this, I've earned it, right? I've earned this rest day. I need it, you know, to be given to me because I'm spent from work. Currency can come in all different forms. And today we are going to look at a key phrase that became the currency in the book of Joshua that you've probably heard preached many, many times. But before we go into taking a deep dive into that, that word, we're going to dig deeper into the culture of Joshua, but not just Joshua. What happens after Joshua? We're looking at Judges. We're going to be looking at 1 Samuel, Chronicles, the story of Israel, but it's all set because of the story of Joshua. And the word in the set of currency is courage. Joshua, the currency of courage. All right. So we're going to be digging into this. What does it mean that courage was the currency of this time, right? You know, these chapters and scriptures described that we're going to look at are describing famous heroes and antiheroes of the Bible. We're going to be looking at all of these amazing men and women of God that had this leadership for God. But what did that come from? Courage. We're going to marvel at some of these powerful people like Joshua, Caleb, Deborah, Jale, Gideon, Abimelech, and Samson. There are going to be some weird words in here. I'm going to roll through them. I think I have them down, but just be like, all right, two thumbs up, right? And they're great. A lot of us, if you grew up religious or you studied it, we know these stories well. And we also know that their lives weren't perfect, but they started with this key thing. That key thing was courage. The importance of these people's courage and exploits wasn't just valued in this time. It was necessary for the survival and the success of the Israelite people. Wow. A commitment to courage makes sense when we think about what Israel was tasked in doing. They weren't just going to walk out of the desert and into the promised land and pitch their tents and kick their feet up, right? We know this. We just went through why they had to spend 40 years in the desert. It was because of their fear. It was because of their doubt in God, because there was no courage. Yeah. Right? Yeah. This was no longer the time of Abraham, where he could just go in and make it his own. Going into the land of Canaan, the land that God promised, there were over 31 small kings and warlords that had taken over this land. And they needed to carve it out for the Lord, for God. That's what God had given to them. Okay. So, without further ado, let us take a look at some of the stories in the Bible that created a culture of courage in reestablishing God's land. Now, note, as we go through these verses, there's quite a few, right? And the stories we'll be going into, we'll be going to at some point, but we're not going to be going into extreme depth. So I want you guys, I encourage you to take notes, to take pictures, to write these things down so that you can go in and dig deeper into some of these stories and what the whole context of the stories look like. Amen? Amen. All right. So, examples of a courage culture. We're going to start with one in Judges 4, 9. Killing an enemy leader. Right? This is a cool story. I love this story. This is Deborah. This is when Deborah is trying to take over, right back to the land of Israel. And this woman's family, Jael, her family had made a truce with the king of Canaanites. And instead of complying in fear with this alliance that they had, she said, no. I know who the true king is. I know who God's people are. And with courage, as this king is hiding in their tent, she takes one of the tent poles and kills the king. Also know that most of these stories are a little gruesome. Right? We're part of this land that is about a battle. It's about fighting. It's about war. So just have that in mind as we keep going through this. Right? But this woman, this woman who was supposed to be a servant, she was supposed to just say yes. Go under the rule of the Canaanite king. She said no. She stood up. She stood up. She had courage to kill the enemy leader. Right? Number two, slaying a beast. We know this one quite well if you know anything about Samson. Right? Samson defeats a lion with his bare hands. Judges 14, 5 through 6. It's a famous story. Right? Filled with the spirit of the Lord, Samson rips apart a lion, it says. Tears him apart as if he was tearing apart a young goat. I'll be honest. Many men read this story and were like, that's so cool. The fact that you can fight a lion with his own hands. It's all about that. Maybe it's just like, oh my goodness, that's so cool. But yeah, the courage to have that. To see something. I wish I had that courage. To be honest, I don't. I would see that and be like, high ground. High ground, run away. We have high end technology. Where's my gun? What can I do to protect myself? No, Samson, filled with the spirit, took on the lion head first with courage of God. Looking at David's mighty men. Like I said, we're spanning. Not just Joshua. We're going all the way. 1 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, the story of Israel. David's mighty men were full of courage. Ben-Aniah. Ben-Aniah is one of the coolest human beings I've ever read about in the entire Bible. Ben-Aniah, or David, isn't the only person who slew a giant. Ben-Aniah came across this large Egyptian, it says. It was right around 7'6", 7'7". If you know basketball, Yao Ming. Yao Ming size, and it's like, wow. You'd be scared. No, he wasn't scared. The Egyptian giant had this massive scepter spear that he was known for slaying all his enemies with. What did Ben-Aniah do? He took the spear right out of his hands and slayed him with it. He didn't just fight him with some cool weapon. He took the own weapon that the Egyptian giant was famous for and he took that and slayed him with his own weapon. There we go. And then it says, the funniest part about some of the Bible is some of these exploits. It's like, whoa. And then on the side it's like, oh yeah, they did this as well. And you're like, hold on, they did what? Ben-Aniah also took down two of Moab's greatest soldiers. And Moab was a high-end military kingdom and small nation at that time. Ben-Aniah took down two of their mightiest warriors. And then on the side he kills a lion in the snow. Whoop-dee-doo. That's the only sentence we have about that happenstance. OK, that's pretty cool, Ben-Aniah. Ben-Aniah is the only one we're going to talk about. Abishai, De-Shavomim. I said that right? They woke on separate circumstances. They didn't do this at the same time. Abishai killed over 300 Philistines with a spear. And once again, we live in a world where we don't have a great common sense of how hard that is. Spears are heavy. They're long. I'm doing land surveying as my job. And a hammer is heavy. If I'm doing that for more than two hours, I'm like, ow, everything hurts. I don't want to do it anymore. And he's doing this however long. It's not a short time to kill 300 people. This was a very long, painful thing that had to be happening. And he did it. They both continued to do this with a spear. It took courage. It took fight. It took determination to fight the Philistines. And then we also have one of my favorite stories in all the Bible. Three of David's mighty chiefs. We look at David's mighty warriors. There's so many stories about them. This one is also in 1 Chronicles 11. Three of David's mighty chiefs. They heard David saying, I'm so thirsty I could die of the thirst I have. So what did they do? They saw that the Philistines on the other side of the line, that they had water. So what did they three do? They single-handedly broke the line of the Philistines, ran into their camp, got water, and brought it back to David just because he was thirsty. Right? That's wild. The courage, just the loyalty to be like, I'm going to do that. That's my goal. My team is thirsty. We don't care what's going to be on the front of that line. We're going to break through. We're going to get them water. And then the funny part, David's like, I can't drink this water. It's tainted. And it's like, what? No. We risked our lives to get this water for you. What? But it didn't matter. The outcome did not matter. It's the fact that they went through and they had the courage to break the line just for water. And then lastly, for David's mighty men here in 2 Samuel 23, 9-10, Eleazar fights alone until his hand froze to the sword. Once again, your body, if you put your body to limits, you'll know if you've done something and you've held something long enough and it seizes up. I've had it happen a few times in my life, but probably never this seriously. And you get it and you're like, how is this happening? The tenseness that you have from holding something so strong. Eleazar fought and fought and fought. Had the courage to fight so hard for so long that he couldn't get his hand off his sword. The courage to fight through anything. These were David's mighty men. These were men of courage. And then we got one. I love this. I love the fact that one is alongside fighting solo, Shamgar. Judges 3-31. Once again, one of the coolest stories. And it's not even a verse. It's half a verse. Shamgar gets half a verse in the Bible and just casually states that he killed 600 Philistines with an ox goat. It was a cattle poker. Once again, if you don't have that view, it is not a great, stealthy weapon. It is not supposed to be. You are not walking in giving fear with the weapon you have. It is not the Egyptian's spear. It doesn't strike fear. But Shamgar did. Shamgar himself struck fear because of the courage he had to slay God's enemies. And then jump into that. Use of inferior weapons. Think about Jael again. The tent peg. Once again, you're not thinking. She didn't have anything that was readily available as it comes to a sword. Anything you think of, that's a weapon. No, she used what was there to protect the people and to strike down God's enemies. Yeah. Think of Samson with the jawbone of a donkey. This is Judges 15. This is a path line. Also, his hands are kind of inferior, but Samson's hands were probably not inferior. Those were the dangerous hands of the time. I would not want to have fought those. But the jawbone of a donkey. Once again, you're not thinking. Dangerous weapon. Right? You're probably like, don't touch that. That's disgusting. Diseases. Whatever. No, he saw it and he goes, this is my weapon. I'm going to defend the Lord's people. I'm going to attack against God's enemies with this weapon. And then the most famous story that we know about weapons, David. David rejected the highest end of military warfare in Israel with Saul's armor and his sword. He said, no. I know exactly how to get a lot of it. He runs to the battle line with a sling and a rod. Continuing on. Fighting with lesser numbers of resources. There's nothing more scary, more nerve wracking, and on the other hand, more courageous than going up against something that you know you are outnumbered in. I felt this in sports a lot. This is like my only connection to the idea of battle. There's times when, especially in basketball, right? We all see me. I'm 6'1", white guy. When it comes to playing good basketball, I am inferior in every way athletically. We are going up against 6'5", 6'6", athletic, jumping out of the gym, and I'm like, there's no way we're going to win this game. We are about to get whooped. That's my mindset, especially when we're going and it feels so inferior. But to do that, you have to be planned. You have to be well regarded. You have to be disciplined. You have to have courage. Think about Gideon. The story of Gideon. I love the story of Gideon because it shows how much God's power, how God works through our timidness. In all honesty, dig into Gideon. He was not courageous. Gideon is the farthest thing from courage that we will ever talk about. But the cool thing, we're talking about courage in Gideon because God used him to be courageous in all the moments that he wasn't. God takes an army. The Israeli army was almost around 30,000, a little more, to start to fight against the Midianites. And God was like, too many of you here. Tell them, whoever is fearful, run. Get out. Just leave. You are not welcome. And then we go down to the water and we're testing how we're drinking, which is just one of the weirdest stories. Why does it matter if they drink like a dog or a cub? Okay, that's a weird way to test loyalty, God. But also, we are human. We do not understand your ways. And he gets it down to 300. An army that started with tens of thousands, he got down to 300 to then beat the Midianites. It doesn't make sense. In our brains, if you take a moment to think about it, it does not make sense. But God knew. God knew what it meant to be courageous. Then Jonathan and his arm bearer, they're coming in and they want to take over the Philistine army. And at that point in time in their battle with the Philistine, they didn't have a bunch of swords. Like it was, I mean, a lot of these armies were just fighting with whatever they had on them. They had arm tools and whatever it was, wood, rocks, whatever it was. But Jonathan and his arm bearer in 1 Samuel 13, verse 14, I know it says 13, 14. 1 Samuel chapter 13, verse 14. And Jonathan's like, we're going to take it over. And his arm bearer's like, I'm with you. Let's just go. Let's go and get that. Courage. They were like the mighty men. There was no reason for them to do that. There was no smarts in it. Like we think about it like, yeah, that's not smart. That was a pretty dumb move. But with God, it's not. There's courage in that. And then lastly here, they were often inspired by God himself to be courageous. This goes back to the idea of Gideon. Gideon was fearful. Think about so much of the Israelite. Our lives were so fearful. It's with God that we can do this. Think of what Caleb says in Joshua 14, 12. With God's help, I will drive them out. Caleb, well known as one of the most bold and courageous men in the Bible, the reason he got to see the promised land, it was because of his courage. And he said, it's not me. I'm not the reason that I can drive them out. It's because my God is with me. I can drive them out. Othniel, Jephthah, and Samson were also regarded because of their great acts of courage, not because of anything they did, but because the spirit of the Lord came through them, and then they had courage. The spirit of the Lord came through them, and they had courage. So we look at this. We look at all these really awesome stories. Once again, take time, dig into them on your own time this week. Courage is awesome. But we know a lot of these stories also aren't perfect. There's a lot of human nature in these. And you think about it, all right, if courage is the thing that we want to be, well, what's the opposite? The opposite of courage is panic. And panic is deadly. Wow. God aided Israel in causing panic for and against Israel on multiple circumstances. Joshua 7, 5, Joshua 10, 10, Judges 4, 15. Some of these circumstances you think of. We'll dig into it, but AI is one of them. The example of AI is against Israel because they weren't with God. They thought they could do it by themselves. It goes back to where the courage comes from. The courage came from God. It didn't come from their own power or their own good. So God struck fear into the Israelites at that moment. Think of panic and confusion. We are, this is so, you know, impactful to today. You could see in any circumstance, like herd mentality, how we just run from things. Or if somebody starts doing one thing, we kind of all start doing that same thing. Amen? There's something about fear. There's something about when somebody's rattled or if there's a group of rattled, we all get rattled. Right? 1 Samuel 5, 9 through 11 is when the Philistines took over the Ark of the Covenant. Right? This was the holiest of holy artifacts that was put in the temple for the time for us to be most reverent towards God. The Philistines took it. It was the greatest thing that you could take from a nation. Yeah. And to tout it around their camps and be like, look, we stole this from the Israelites. Look, look how great we are. They bring it to their camp. A lot of them start dying. A lot of them start getting sick. Right? Could be a coincidence, right? No. The Philistines knew it. The Philistines knew, like, we brought this in. Here's what's happening. Created sheer panic throughout the Philistine camp. They said multiple times, get it out. Send it back. How many things would you steal from the enemy and then just give it back out of fear? No, you'd throw it. Like, you know, warfare, military warfare, like the idea is to put fear on the other side. If you steal something, you're going to taunt it. You're going to be like, look what we have and we took from you. They gave it back. They're like, please, we don't want anything to do with this artifact, with this. This is your God and we know it and it scares us. Wow. 1 Samuel 17, 51. This is the story of David and Goliath. When David killed Goliath, and once again, warfare is a little gruesome, so hang with me. When he cuts the head of Goliath off and he holds it up and he shows the Philistines, kind of the opposite, right, of what the Philistines were doing with the Ark. He goes, this is your God. I have him. He's defeated. My God helped me through it. What did they do? They all ran. Wow. Out of fear. One guy. One guy. The Philistine army was bigger. They could have easily just gone in out of anger and attacked Israel, but it had the opposite effect. Yeah. Because the Philistines did not have courage. They had fear. They had panic. Yeah. It was deadly. And then, we'll get to that in a second. This last part, sometimes the idea of panic would set in and have that friendly fire. The fact that it was so scary that you didn't know what you were doing. This is the story of Gideon once again. We talked about how it was 300. All right, well, 300. What does that mean? Those 300 were the greatest soldiers of all time, and it was like every last one of them was the matrix, and they just were able to dodge everything. No. God, in his wisdom, knew how to get it. They circled the camp. They used trumpets. They blew their trumpets as loud as they could. And the Midianites panicked. In their herd mentality, what'd they do? They started fighting each other. They killed each other sword by sword, and the Israelites did not have to do a thing other than have really good lungs to blow some horns. Wow. Once again, we're looking at war. To make God's land established, that's what it took. And it's something, and we'll get to this, but it's not something that we're well versed in in our time in England. God bless. A lot of us here have never had to understand the cruelty of war, had to understand what it took. But for a land of people where there was no love for God, for it to be God's people, this is what it took. It took war. It took conquering. And in Deuteronomy 20, Moses is one of the last things Moses is doing. He gives what's called the war oracle to the Israelite people. This is what's going to need for you to take over God's land. To make God's land established, this is the fight. This is what we're going to speak on. This is what we're going to preach before we go to war. So I'm going to read that for you guys here. I want you guys to think it's Deuteronomy 20 verses 1 through 8. I'm going to read it. I'm going to try to read it as if we are lining up to take over God's land. Deuteronomy 20 verse 1, it says, When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and armies greater than yours, do not be afraid of them, because the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt will be with you. When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. He shall say, hear Israel. Today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid. Do not panic or be terrified by them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory. The officer shall say to the army, has anyone built a new house and not yet begun to live in it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else may begin to live in it. Has anyone planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy it? Let him go home, or he may die and someone else may enjoy it. Has anyone become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else may marry her. And the officer shall add, is anyone afraid or fainthearted? Let him go home, so that his fellow soldiers will not become disheartened too. Wow. Now that we have talked about the currency that was used to begin Israel's time as a nation and seen examples from this time, we can now see the values that were lived out in this speech. God from the beginning was fighting for them, even if they faced enemies that were larger, men that were bigger, weapons that were more advanced, more powerful. God was fighting for the Israelites. And in this oracle, the most important thing, it takes up half of the speech, is that they would not panic or flee. And you may think, Nore, why didn't you talk about marriage and a house and your vineyard? Because it was better for any of the men that were fighting, that if they had any reservations, if they thought of anything that would hold them back from giving their all to having full on courage for God, it was better for them to stay home and not fight at all. Wow. The dedication to be like, no, God, I need your full, I need everything from God's people if we're going to win. Yeah. We couldn't be stuck on, oh man, my girl's at home and I can't do it. Well, then you're going to be dead because you're thinking about that in the middle of war. It was better for them to not fight at all and be half-hearted and not thinking about giving all to God's courage. Wow. To give into fear was to potentially lose your family, your home. To be courageous was the most honorable thing you could do. Before entering the promised land, we are given God's oracle to Joshua as Israel is about to cross into the land and face these 31 states. Deuteronomy 20, it is Moses' but God also gives Joshua a rousing statement. You've heard this one before. This is kind of where we get into the idea of Joshua. And this is Joshua 1, 1 through 9. And we're going to read that as well. This is God's call. This is God's charge. This is God's war oracle to Joshua. This is a verse we know quite well. To the point I read this quite a lot growing up. This is one I was like, I know this one. So, Joshua 1, 1 through 9. Have the ideas of courage. Courage of courage when we read this. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses' aid, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you and all these people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I'm about to give them to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the great river, the Euphrates, all the Hittite country to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous because you will need these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night that you may be careful to do all that was written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Courtesy was courage. Nothing mattered more. This is God's call for not just Joshua, not for the success of Joshua's conquest. This was the call for success when it came to the judges. When they were sitting, who came out? It was the men and the women who were courageous. When there was a time when Saul and the king, when we had kings in Israel, Saul was not courageous. He was a fool. So who did God find? God found David because David was courageous. The currency has always been courage for God's people. There was only one way to make God's name known in a land full of sin and hate and destruction. It was to be courageous for the Lord. It was not just for one person. It was not just for Joshua. It was not just for the land of their people. It was for them. More importantly, as we're going to look at, it is for us in our everyday life. The place of courage. We live in a very different time and place. We do not have to conquer many nations to make Jesus' name known. Jesus did that. Jesus died on the cross. He was the ultimate sacrifice. We do not need to shed blood in his name because he did it for us already. While there are surely brothers and sisters in this world, especially if we look at the places in the Middle East, look at Ukraine, there are brothers and sisters that are having to understand what war looks like. We live, especially in America, in a world where the currency is comfort. Courage is a stranger. Yeah. So what can this theme in Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 2 Chronicles teach us? How can we apply God's great command in Joshua 1, 1-9 to be strong and courageous? Let us take some time. Let us ask ourselves these important questions in light of the brief history lesson that we got this morning. Number one, think about this. What are honorable or courageous acts in God's eyes today? They may not be as different as we think. Think about Shamgar. He fought alone. How many of you have had the chance to share your faith alone? You haven't. Wow. How many times, especially I think of our church very much for this next question. We do not have pansy-like situations. We're figuring out live streams five minutes before church is happening. We don't have all this money and resources, but are we still trying to find every way to scrap and claw and make an impact for God no matter what has been given to us from a worldly perspective? Think about the idea of conquering a giant or a beast in your life with the help of God, with His Word and His Spirit. This could be anything for us. This could be purity. This could be anger. This could be your finances as we've been talking about. That's a giant that we never talk about often in the Western Christian culture. It's like, ooh, don't talk about that. It's a giant. We must face it. We get often scared. We want to hide in these corners from everything. We want to hide in the corners from the hard conversations we need to have. Talking about biblical truth. Hey, you're not living like a disciple. That's a hard thing. That's a giant conversation to have. You've got to be courageous and have it. And the second part, kind of just coming in with that, what do we need courage for today? Or another way of asking it, what causes us to panic? That's a great question. We need courage to have those tough talks with the brothers and sisters. They're not fun. They're not fun for the person who's going to have it and the person receiving it. Nobody's sitting there skipping down the yellow brick road for it. It's going to be tough when it's needed. We need courage to share our faith with people, especially when the Spirit puts it on our hearts. I share this often. I feel so passionate about it. We all have instincts. You know who you should be sharing with. That person that walks by, you can feel it in your gut. You're like, ah, that person. I should have been sharing with that person. Courageous. It takes this weird thing in our minds where we've got to be like, no, I don't care what I think. I don't care about all these options of, oh, well, this and that. One thought should be through our minds. We need to have courage. Courage for God, for God's people. We need courage to confess and be real when we sin. I get right back to those hard conversations. No one here loves it. I think of what Paul says. I don't do the good that I want to do, and the stuff I don't want to do, I do. Like, why? It's humbling. We don't come here being like, oh, yeah, I sin, yada, yada. It is what it is. It takes courage to sit there and tell someone that you fell short of the glory of God. It's a very humbling thing. It takes every prideful thing. It takes you down. It makes you stoop to this point because we just mentally, we want to feel shame. That's not what God wants us to feel. God wants us to feel lightened. He wants us to take this burden off ourselves. The only way that we can do that is we must throw up the courage and understanding that we need to share. We need to be in the light. We need to just be people who are connected to God's word and not to the lies that Satan tells us. And perhaps most of all, we need to avoid panic when it seems like the enemy has broken through our lines. Yeah. Through discouragement, disappointment, and disorientation. I think this is important. I don't know everyone's story here. I don't know what everyone's going through. I can't read your minds. But I can probably guess at some point if it's now or if it's in the future or if it's in the past, there's things that are going to push us to our breaking limits with our faith with God. That's a part of our lives. It could be serious stuff, right? It could be deaths in families. It can be finances. It can be just a whole range of things. It could be our sin. It could be our spouse's sin. It could be anything. In those moments, we want to panic. We want to go to what the world has told us. Comfort, right? That's the world we live in. What's going to comfort me? What's going to make me feel comfort in this moment? Let me retreat. Let me run back behind the line of God's army. Let me hide. We can't do that. Yeah. We can't do that. We must stand. We must stand in the gap of whatever that fear is, whatever that panic is. But most importantly, it's not because of our strength, right? It's because of God's strength in us. And kind of placing an end to this story, an end to this lesson, is this idea coming back to courtesy. Courage is great. It means nothing if you don't cash it in. Wow. It means nothing if you don't spend the investment in God to know what it is. But then it means nothing if you don't cash it in. So as we're going out throughout our days, throughout our weeks, think of the story of Joshua. Think of what it took to start a land that God wanted to establish. It took courage. It took something that a lot of us, we don't want to instinctively have. But when it happened, all these stories, all these great men and women of God, they made impacts. They fought for God's army, and God was blessed to let us do that. With that, I'm going to pray, and then we're going to do this in it. Amen? Amen. Dear God, I'm so thankful. I'm so thankful for courage. I'm so thankful that it comes from you, and it doesn't come from our own strength. Because we know, and we see our lives, and we see the Bible, we see the stories. So often when we don't rely on you, God, that's when we fail. That's when we panic. That's when we lose sense of hope. So God, as we go out through our days, let us not just be inspired and think of the cool stories of the Bible. Let us make them an impact on what we're doing today. Think about how we need to conquer giants, how we can be fighting alone, but honestly, we're not fighting alone because we have you, God. We have everything we need. And let us just be men and women who stand up and are courageous for you, and we stand against Satan and his army. In your name I pray. Amen. All right. Go get your kids. That is lesson. You guys are dismissed. Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast. If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected. Please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on. In any case, you'll be hearing from us next week.