Follow the Promises: God Did It

Not one good promise failed. That’s how Joshua 21 ends, and it’s the line we build the whole message around, because it exposes the real hero of the story: God’s faithfulness. We follow Joshua 21:43–45 phrase by phrase and keep circling one grace-soaked word, “gave.” Land, rest, victory, and fulfillment don’t come as wages for effort; they arrive as gifts tied to a sworn promise that God Himself carries to the finish.

From there, we connect Joshua’s Promised Land to the believer’s everyday fight for peace, joy, and freedom from sin’s dominance. God doesn’t ask us to help Him win battles; He invites us to share in a victory already won, and we step into it by faith. We also name the big crossroads in response to God’s character: we can believe lies about Him, ignore Him, or worship Him with our whole life.

Then we take it straight to the cross and the gospel. When the enemy accuses, doubts, or plants thoughts that sound like our own voice, we answer with what the cross proves: total forgiveness, new life, and permanent union with Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:20 becomes our anchor: all the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Jesus. If you’re tired of living by feelings and want real spiritual rest, this one is for you.

Listen, subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find these promises. What’s one lie you’re ready to answer with the cross?

Transcript

Prayer And Setup In Joshua

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Uh, we are back into our study in Joshua, and we're in chapter 21 today, uh, towards the end. And so let's pray and we'll get dive right in. Father, I thank you so much for your grace, your mercy, and your promises that never leave us. And even when there's voices from heaven, we don't listen to those. Uh, Father, we thank you so much for your um all the people in here, uh, Lord, I pray that you would bless them, and I pray that you would open our our uh minds, open our hearts um to know how much you love us and how much you've been preparing promises that we can walk in then for generations, for centuries, things that we can know and and walk in today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, so in uh Joshua chapter 21, uh we're gonna be kind of picking up right at the very end, right there, where it talks about the promise being fulfilled. But today's sermon is called God Did It, or But God Did It, either one. And um so we've been studying through Joshua, and the the title of the whole study has been Follow the Promises. Follow the promises. When you follow the promises, like we've been studying, you will discover that God always did it. God always took care of it. So what we have right now, you know, in a good movie like Lord of the Rings, you know, you get to the end of the trilogy, you're 45 hours in, and you're really invested in all these characters, and so and then they they have an ending that tells you how Frodo ended, and then another ending that tells you how Sam ended, and then another ending that tells you how, and they just they they give you a really satisfying ending. It's kind of the climax to the story, or actually coming down off the climax of the story. Well, this, what we're gonna study today, is kind of like that. There's actually a little bit more in the book, but we'll get to um soon, but this right here is kind of like a wrapping up the entire story of them coming into the promised land. And remember, this has all been symbolic. Every single bit of the book of Joshua has been symbolic of us coming into our promised land. So we have when we get saved, it's like we're just crossing the Red Sea. And for us to be able to enter into all that God has for us, a a life of peace, a life of joy, a life where sin isn't dominating us, but we're walking in righteousness and holiness, that kind of life, we have to follow Jesus into that life because we've learned that Jesus is the same name as Joshua, and that's symbolic even. We follow our Jesus, our Joshua, into this promised life. We don't we don't try to earn it, we don't try to figure it out. It is truly a gift of his life that he shares with us and he takes us into this promised land that he's promised every single believer, every single one of us. All right, so today we're gonna learn that God was absolutely faithful to provide everything that was needed. Absolutely faithful, even though the people were not faithful all the time, and that should be the biggest celebration party we can imagine that God is faithful even when we are not faithful. That is his character, that's the God that we worship, that's the God we sing to, that is our Jesus. God does not need to help us to win battles in the Promised Land, He simply invites us to share in the victory that He's already won for us, and we do that by what we've learned is faith. That's how we share in His victory. You're not, if you're a believer, you are not a slave of sin anymore. But you're gonna keep acting like a slave of sin until you believe that you're free from sin. That's having faith in the gospel when you believe that you're actually free. That's the faith that what is going on here? Are we good? Okay, all right. I feel like I'm hearing voices. All right. Don't listen to the voices, listen to the word of God. Okay, so let's let's read our text here, Joshua 21, 43. So the Lord gave, underline that word, notice that word. Gave is always the language of grace. Give is the language of grace. If you have to earn it, that's law, that's the Ten Commandments, that's legalism, that's religion, but we don't teach that, we don't believe that. We believe in what Jesus gave us, which was grace. So it's always a gift. So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which he had sworn to give them. What does the word sworn mean? It's a promise, it means promise. Sworn to give their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. And the Lord gave them rest. So he gave them all the land, and he gave them rest all around, according to all that he had sworn to their fathers. Are you noticing a pattern? God gives grace according to a promise that he's already given and fulfills that promise. God did it, right? Not as a man, not, sorry, and not a man of all their enemies stood against them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hands, not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass. All these things that God did in the book of Joshua and at the tail end of Exodus were impossible. We're talking about impossible things. And you're like, yeah, my life is impossible. No, this story was impossible. Let me just give you a taste. Okay, God promised this land to Abraham 670-ish years before this day that Joshua gives it to him. That's gonna drive me bananas. Okay. Do we need to charge up the YOLO? Is it? We're good. Okay. All right. So 670 years ago, God took an old, creakly old man and he said, I'm gonna give you all this land to you and your descendants. He had no kids. He couldn't even have kids because he was like a hundred years old. That's the situation where God began this. Just so everybody knows that when it happens, it's God that did it. Alright? Then, uh, yeah, so he couldn't have kids, but God did it. A worldwide famine, no one could survive, happens. So that while they're down in Egypt, God protects them. What happens? God did it. 400 plus years in slavery in Egypt. No one could endure it, but God did it. There you go. Impossible to escape this murderous Pharaoh with an entire people of over a million or two, but God did it. Now we're at basically 1406 BC, and Joshua leads the people into this promised land where there's giants, there's kings, there's armies, there's walls, there's battles, and there's probably mosquitoes and spiders. It's impossible. But God did it. Why does God do it? Why does God do it? Because he's a faithful God. Bless you. He's a faithful God. He makes promises and keeps his word. That's just who he is. And we can have a few responses. I'm gonna highlight three responses we can have to God just being who he is. First, we can believe lies about him. We can believe lies about him, like a voice from heaven that lies to us. We can believe lies like God doesn't care about you. God is distant from you. God is thoughtless about you. He doesn't think about you at all. He's not concerned or care about God is weak. All of these are just simply lies. God loves you and cares about you so much, He numbers the amount of hairs on your head. Some of you a little more than others. More work than less work, you know. That's why we grow him down here so we can keep up his work. So we can we can believe lies about him. Secondly, we can ignore him. We can, yeah, he's faithful, but it's a waste of my time to study God's word or get to know him. I'll probably be fine without him. My life is like okay. Um let me look at every other alternative before I truly seek him and seek his word and seek a relationship with him. That's how we ignore his faithfulness. Or the third option we have is we can worship him. We can worship him. With my heart, my mind, my body, my strength, I can say, I belong to you. I belong to you. I will praise you with every breath, with every thought, I'll meditate on you and your faithfulness, with every action, I'm gonna pour out love on people instead of self-centeredness. I'm gonna I'm gonna seek your will and lay down everything in me to you alone. That is worship. That's worship. He loves to be worshiped because he made us to worship him. It's us being the pinnacle human, it's being the perfect humans when we worship God. You are who you were supposed to be when you're doing this. This is why God makes promises and keeps them. Okay, so he's a faithful God. You can always trust, even when all seems lost and it seems really, really difficult in front of you, and you're like, this is impossible, he can be trusted. When men let you down, when people you even people you trusted most let you down, God is not like men. He always keeps his word. So let's zoom into our text again and let's just see how this is played out. It says verse 43 again. So the Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give their fathers, and they took possession and dwelt in it. Again, give. Every time you see the word give with God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, I want your brains to trigger, boom, grace. That's a grace thing. It's grace language, it's always a free gift, which is great news because I love getting gifts. Don't you love getting gifts? And I'd hate having to work for things. And that's how God refuses to deal with any human being on the basis of works. He will not be a debtor to any man. You cannot work your way to pleasing God or earning his favor. That's how this works. He set up this whole system called grace in which he says, I want to bless you, I want to give you the victory. You can't think you can go into the promised land on your own without me. So we're gonna make it impossible. We're gonna put giants in there and bad guys, and you're gonna need me. So we're setting up a system called grace where I will give you everything you need, but it's never through works, it's through faith. It's through faith. Now it says that he gives them a land. Well, that's cool. It's a place that they could live their life, it's a place that they could respond to his love with their own love. He could they could love him back. And that's that he cares about your life. He wanted to give them a life, a place they could live and worship him. And then it says that all this was done by his sworn. He swore, he promised, he initiates this grace. Were they going around saying, God, we promised to go into the promised land for you? We promised to kick the giant's butts. No, he said, I'm gonna do this for you. He initiates grace, he comes and finds us when we're slobbering mess. And he says, I love you and I'm here for you, and I initiate this grace. And so, and then it says, They took possession of it and dwelt in it. What is that? That is them actually walking forward in faith. They didn't take possession of it because they were mighty or because they were great, had great guns or great muscles. It's because they had faith. That's the only way they needed to uh walk forward to receive his grace. Uh, they were never perfect and they were never really strong. The requirement was always simply faith. And faith is always how we receive grace as well. It's always like this. It's not about what you can do, but about what promise you're going to believe in. What promise you're gonna step out on, depend on. That's how this all works. So then the next verse, 44, it says, God gave them rest all around, according to all that he had sworn to their fathers. Not a man of all their enemies stood against them, because the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. So here we see a second promise fulfilled, which is he gives them rest all around. Again, it's according to promise. God promised it, so it must happen because he cannot lie. He he won't make a promise that someone else has to fulfill either. So he's not gonna make a promise that you have to do something to make it happen. All we do is believe, and he fulfills it for us. We just take a step of faith to see that happen in our life. He swears it, he performs it, and then it says, No enemy can prevent God's unfailing love in your life. His faithfulness, his fulfilling of his promises cannot be undone by any enemy. I'm gonna reach you, read you, reach you, I'm gonna read you a little poem by Alan Redpath. It's not a poem, it's more prose, but it says this In light of the cross, is it not true that the enemy has no right to dwell in the land? Is it not true that Satan's claim to your life was taken from him at Calvary? Is it not true that sin has no right to a foothold in the life of a child of God? Is it not true that Satan has no power in the presence of omnipotence? Is it not true that by virtue of his blood and his resurrection, Jesus Christ is pledged to destroy the enemy utterly? Is it not true that the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit through that, there is strength for every temptation, grace for every trial, and power to overcome every victory? Amen. It is true. That is the truth. And at every point, as we were reading that, the enemy wanted to wanted to challenge it and say, Is he really faithful? Does he really care about you? Am I really a toothless lion? He's gonna challenge it, but the cross is true. The crosses are evidence that the cross is where every promise of God becomes true for you. So if you have trouble finding promises or believing the promises when you find them, guess where you look. Always look to the cross. It destroys all doubt. Does God love me? Wait a second. He does love me. Is the sacrifice accepted and I am truly forgiven because the price has been paid for me? The enemy will say, No, you suck, no, you're dirty, no, you're vile. And we look at the cross and say, Wait a second. What does his death mean? What does his blood flowing down onto me mean? It means I am forgiven. It silences everything. Verse 45, not a word failed. Of any good thing, you see the words good thing there, which the Lord has spoken to the house of Israel, all came to pass. Not a word failed or ever will fail, friends. Not a word ever will fail. Of his promises, which he calls here good things, which is the same literal words we use for the good news, which is the gospel. These are the good things God promises us, his promises. The gospel is all the promises of God that are fulfilled by Jesus dying and rising from the dead. That's what we call gospel, which literally is good news. That's what the word gospel means. Good news, not a word is gonna fail. Everything the gospel says about you is true and will be true. They will be completely fulfilled in our lives where in him. In him. That's where it's all fulfilled. How do I get all these promises for me? They're in him. So guess what? Where do you need to go? In him. In him. That's where all these promises are found. That's where they're kept safe for you, and that's where you can discover them, unfold them, read them, meditate upon them, receive them, eat them, drink them, live by them. In him. Go to 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20. It says, For all the promises of God, where? In him are yes and in him, amen. To the glory of God through us. What promises? All the promises. In Greek, that word all means all. There's your Greek lesson for the day. Easy. Greek is easy, see? All means all. All the promises of God are yes and amen. What does that mean? It means yes. Is this promise for me? Yes. Well, when do I get it? Amen. When you pray, you say amen, which means so be it. May it be done. It's done. So when do I get the promise? Now. What promise? All of them. Are they good for me? Yes. When do I get them? It's done. The promises are done. He has secured our total forgiveness. We'll start with that promise. You get total forgiveness. That means the moment you believed, the moment you believed on Christ, everything you ever had done, completely forgiven. Everything you're currently doing, forgiven. And everything you would ever do is also forgiven. Not like some false teaching out there that says, no, no, no, no. You have to do all these things after you become a Christian to make sure that you're forgiven. That is not true. According to the Bible, according to the gospel, we have total forgiveness. All your sin is washed clean the moment that you believe. It's true. It's good news. It's celebratory. It is amazing news. So that's number one. The second promise we can just look at is new life. He promises you new life. Your old life was all focused on who? Self. Your new life is all what? Love, which is loving others, being others focused. And that is the new heart he's given you, the new life that you have. The only things that will ever make you happy is not self-centered things, but it's always loving others-centered things now. That is who we are. That's our new life. And then our third really great promise we get in the gospel is a permanent union with God through Jesus Christ. We are you are connected with him, you are in him, and he is in you. And I use this illustration all the time, but it just helps my brain. The a great illustration of that is a sea sponge. Because where do you find sea sponges at? Who said crate and barrel? Bath and body works. No, yes, in the they're in the sea, right? And then if you pull a sponge out and you squeeze it, what comes out of it? The sea, right? So in the sea, the sea is in it. It's a good illustration for us in Christ and Christ in us. Alright. So the enemy, he wants nothing to do with you believing any of these promises. He hates you. He wants you to live on what you can see and what you can what you're experiencing right now and what you feel. So he's gonna do this. He's gonna he's gonna plant thoughts in your mind because he can he can plant thoughts. Thoughts in your mind and he's gonna say a thought like this Am I forgiven? Now what did he do there that was really sneaky and tricky? He used a personal pronoun. He didn't say, Are you forgiven? He didn't do that. He his whole entire deception is he wants you to think these thoughts come from you. Am I forgiven? And what your response is yes and amen. God did it. Do I have a new life? Because it doesn't seem like I do. I don't feel like I do, but do I have a new life? Respond with the gospel, not what you see, not what you feel. Rain on your feelings. Your feelings will follow later. Rain on them. I like that phrase. I think it's what an old man would say with a mustache. Rain on those feelings. Do I have a new life? Yes and amen. God did it. Am I a new creation? I don't feel real new creation like. Yes and amen. God did it. Do I have new desires in my spirit and my heart? Yes and amen. God did it. Do I have a new identity? Am I really a child of God that's accepted and loved and he'll never abandon me and he's never upset with me, but he's always gonna build me up, pick me up, and take me to the next place? Yes, and God did it. How is all this possible? Because you are in him. It has nothing to do with how special you are. It has everything to do with outs with how special he is. How wondrous he is. God was so impressed by Jesus. The Father was so impressed by Jesus. Two times he literally ripped open heaven and said, That's my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. He makes me so happy. I'm so impressed with him. When he was baptized and at the Mount of Transfiguration, twice. He's so excited. And that's how God feels about you when you are in his son. How do we get in his son? By faith. Easy. I am placed in him. I share in his death on the cross, and I share in his resurrection. I share in all those things. His entire life is shared with me. I don't have to make any of this happen on my own through my own effort or my own life. It is all a work of grace that I receive. That's how this new covenant of grace works. When you choose to believe this, these promises, you will also have the rest that they were getting. They had rest from their enemies all around because the enemy was constantly like, this isn't true, this isn't true, we're gonna fight you. You can have rest from that as you believe consistently. Now you're not gonna feel it right away because emotions follow later. Emotions are part of your flesh, they'll they'll come along later. But we live by faith, not by sight, and not by feelings or emotions either. That's how this works. Then we will have true rest from our uh all our attacks, just like Israel did. Um you matter, but the enemy will say, You don't matter, you are worthless, you are evil, you're a failure, you're missing out on all the fun. You don't deserve love, you're forgotten, you're abandoned. Just give up, just check out, just live in pain and doubt and hopelessness. But guys, the cross answers every single one of those attacks and gives you rest. Every flaming dart of the enemy is nothing before the cross. Simply respond with the cross to every attack that the enemy attacks your brain with. You don't matter. Jesus died for me and adopted me and sealed me and lives in me, so my life matters because my life is filled with him and he matters. You're evil. You know what? Jesus' blood has not only forgiven me, but he's cleansed me of all my sin, and I am a pure vessel, and he dwells in me because I'm pure and I'm holy because of what he did for me on the cross. Praise him. You're abandoned. God doesn't think about you. Jesus says, He will never forsake me, and he leaves the 99 when one of his sheep goes astray, and he doesn't get mad at them. He picks them up and loves them. You should just give up, you should just check out, you should just kill yourself. You know what? Jesus calls me to live my life, to pour out my life as a living sacrifice for him. A living sacrifice for him, to offer him every part of my life. That is my calling, that is my mission, that is my identity now, to be a living sacrifice. What are we doing here? We're doing what Romans 12:1 teaches us, which is I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Verse 2 is just as in enlightening it says, and do not be conformed to the world, but be renewed in your mind, right? Renew your mind. To rest in the cross means that we lean on it so hard that we, when we get up, we're we're Jesus is living in us through us. We we become united with him. We share in that cross with him, and then we share in his life, and his resurrection life is shared with us also. We lean so hard into his cross, we look at his cross so much that we crawl right up there on there with him and say, I'm right here with you, Jesus. You should we share it with him. We don't actually have to get up on the cross, which is great news. But we're resting in the cross, in the cross, in Christ. Luke chapter 9, Jesus says this Luke 9, 23 and 24. Then he said to them all, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever's desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. So there's the the death part, there's the cross part. Jesus says, Share my say no to self and death to self. This is not about self. Self has no part of your identity anymore. Nothing in your life is about self, it is about Jesus and Jesus only. I look to him, I identify with him, I'm on the cross with him, but I also share with his life because Galatians 2.20 says, It I have been crucified with Christ, there's the death, but it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So there's resurrection life. We share in his death, we share in his life. Baptism, we go down, we come up. It's all the same thing. Jesus himself is the yes and amen for you. All the promises of God in him are yes and amen. He himself is the yes and amen. I was impossibly lost, but God did it. I was guilty, but God did it. How he shared his death with me, he shared his life with me. I was addicted, but God did it. The promise fulfilled. I was evil, but God did it. God purified me, his death and his life. I was unloved with no hope, but God did it. God did all the good things I could never do, and that's the good news. That's the gospel. Why does he do all this? Because he's a God of love. It's his love. Paul said, and the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I want to ask you this last question as we just wrap it up here. Does his love matter to you? Does his love move you? Does his love quicken you, meaning to bring life to you? I'm not doing an emotional appeal to say you should care about his love more. Let me tell you one easy thing that you can do. You can say, God, move my heart by your love. Show me your love. Reveal to me your love. Tell me in the spirit what you think of me and the love that you have for me. And I want you to sit and wait until God does. He will do that. He will answer that prayer. I stake my name on it. I stake everything I can. He is faithful to that. I want you to pray, and I'm praying myself also this week that God ignites our dry hearts with his love. Because when he sets something afire, it's not burned up. Think of the the uh burning bush that was not consumed. It was on fire with his love. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me because he loved me and gave himself for me. And then once you are confident and secure in that God loves you, then just remember your life is going to be completely set apart to respond to that love. And you can respond in two ways worship him in private, in secret, worship him in public, and then also worship him by loving the other people that he loves. All the people. Even the weird ones. Even all the people from Minnesota. Alright, guys. That's our study for today.