SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to all of you who are watching us online or from one of our other venues.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible or a Bible app, I encourage you to open up to Joshua, the book of Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be speaking out of chapters one, two, five, and six.
SPEAKER_00: So there's no way you're going to be able to flip it along.
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to mark it in your Bible, you can have it there.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures will be on the screen as we get into the word.
SPEAKER_00: In 1980, there was a pastor in Bel Air, Maryland, by the name of Eugene Peterson, and he wrote a book that really changed the way many pastors and churches perceive disciple making in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: And the book is called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
SPEAKER_00: It's a book about following Jesus faithfully in a world where everything else that you receive is instant.
SPEAKER_00: The obedience and the faithfulness that we have we do over life, anticipating that God will fulfill his promises one day, but that even though God is a promise maker, he's not always an instant promise fulfiller.
SPEAKER_00: It's a difficult tension that we face as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're obedient to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We practice our faith on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_00: We walk in the same direction.
SPEAKER_00: And what we find is our faithfulness and our faithful obedience is not always tested in trial.
SPEAKER_00: The last couple weeks I was preaching on trial, but more often, our faithful obedience is tested in endurance.
SPEAKER_00: The long reality of life, where day in and day out, following Jesus doesn't really seem to change anything.
SPEAKER_00: It's good and it's right and we're walking in the right direction, but it seems like nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00: Our life is often pretty much the same.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a difficulty in your life, and you've been following after God, and you're like, Lord, why aren't you removing the difficulty?
SPEAKER_00: And it's just it just hasn't moved yet, but you're still being faithful in your obedience.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're plodding along in faithful obedience to the Lord, and we're waiting one day for Jesus to return.
SPEAKER_00: We're waiting one day for our life to conclude and to enter glory.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes in the waiting of all of that, you can get tired, you can get overwhelmed, and you might find yourself in a doubting situation where you say, Why am I even doing all this?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I living a life trying to be obedient to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Why, like, I know what the Bible teaches, I know what the Holy Spirit's leading me to do, but like, why am I doing this if it doesn't seem to affect any real change?
SPEAKER_00: Friends, obedient faith is proven more often in its endurance, even when it appears that there is no earthly result, because we are not working for an earthly result.
SPEAKER_00: We're not obedient for an earthly transition.
SPEAKER_00: We are following after the Lord because he made you a promise in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that promise is that if you make Jesus your Lord and you believe that he was raised from the dead, you will inherit eternal life, both on the day that you die and enter the presence of God Almighty and on the day of resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That is the promise that God has made to you.
SPEAKER_00: And our obedient faith is lived out in anticipation of that promise, not necessarily in anticipation that God will work in your life today to remove whatever difficulty it is that you have or whatever wall you've come up against.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's many promises in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're going to learn today by the end of the message is that all of God's promises are a yes and amen in Jesus, but requires all of us to endure the daily grind of obedient faith as we patiently wait on our God, who is a promise maker, to be the promise keeper.
SPEAKER_00: And on the day that he is the promise keeper, your soul will know the truth of what you've believed.
SPEAKER_00: This is the situation that we find ourselves in with the nation of Israel in the book of Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: As you look at the nation of Israel, they'd been following Moses for the last 40 years throughout the desert.
SPEAKER_00: They've been faithful to obey the leading of Moses, who is being faithful to obey the leading of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It was not without difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: If you read their story, there were times of great faithfulness, times of some disobedience, but they were walking faithfully with the Lord as they awaited the promise of entering the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: They trusted that one day, after their delivery from Egypt, they would inherit the nation of Israel, the actual geographical land that God had promised them.
SPEAKER_00: Now we pick up the story in Joshua chapter 1, verses 2 through 3, with Moses' death.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Moses, this is God speaking to Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: Moses, my servant, is dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all these people, into the land that I am giving them to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you, just as I promised Moses.
SPEAKER_00: See, Moses was given a promise that one day the nation of Israel would walk into the promised land, that wherever they went, wherever they touched their feet, that land would be handed over to them as their inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: But if you know the story, the nation of Israel sinned during that forty years.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the nation was not allowed to enter the promised land until a new generation grew up.
SPEAKER_00: But now Joshua and this next generation received the same promise that as they enter, God will give them the land and it will be theirs to possess.
SPEAKER_00: That's God's promise to them.
SPEAKER_00: There's only one problem.
SPEAKER_00: As they're getting ready to cross the Jordan and enter into Israel or the future promised land, the land of Canaan, they come across a very strong, fortified city known as Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are a J.R.R.
SPEAKER_00: Tolkien fan and you've read The Lord of the Rings, I want you to imagine your mind helms deep, right?
SPEAKER_00: This very large, formidable, occupied structure that many, many nations have tried to overthrow and have been unsuccessful.
SPEAKER_00: From a pure military standpoint, Israel has no capacity, no training, and no army to actually overthrow this particular city.
SPEAKER_00: In your life as you follow Jesus, what you're going to find is your days of faithful obedience.
SPEAKER_00: And as you're plodding along, being faithful to obey the Lord, walking through this world of life, as you're waiting for the promise that God has given you in the person of Jesus Christ, occasionally you're going to come up against a fortified city with really big walls.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a city or a wall, I'm going to call a life wall.
SPEAKER_00: A life wall is different than a trial.
SPEAKER_00: A trial is something that you enter into because of your sin or somebody else's decisions.
SPEAKER_00: God has permitted it to show you his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: A life wall is something that is just there in life.
SPEAKER_00: It is something that every single person will come across.
SPEAKER_00: It just exists because of the sin in the world, and you're going to run into these things.
SPEAKER_00: And as you run into these life walls, the question is, is God faithful enough to still get you through, around, over, and under these walls on your way to the promise that God has given you?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're got a life wall right now.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of different kinds of walls.
SPEAKER_00: Could be a physical wall, some sort of ailment in the body that is new or challenging that you've come into that you didn't really know you were going to experience, but here you are in life and now you have it.
SPEAKER_00: It could be a relational wall.
SPEAKER_00: Usually those walls happen within family dynamics or people that are like your neighbors or you're very close to.
SPEAKER_00: It could even be a spiritual wall.
SPEAKER_00: There's just a pattern of habitual sin in your life, and it's keeping you from becoming the person you know God wants you to become.
SPEAKER_00: These life walls are real for all of us because of the nature of the broken world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: And when you look at the fortified city of this life wall, it can be enough to make you say, I'm just not sure if God's ever going to get me through this or around this or over this issue.
SPEAKER_00: Because you've been faithful, you've been obedient, you trust in Jesus, you know that one day you will arrive and you'll be in heaven with God Almighty, or that the resurrection day will come and you'll share in the inheritance of the new earth, of the new kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But in this particular life wall, you can feel a little defeated.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just not sure God wants to give me this victory as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we follow after the Lord and we hit these life walls, just like when Israel hit this wall of the city of Jericho, we can feel overwhelmed and defeated.
SPEAKER_00: But what we realize as we look at the story of Israel and Jericho, and as we look at this story in our own lives, the Lord uses these walls, these life walls, to remind us of his promises, but also to grow our endurance of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: I think some of you are athletes, some of you were athletes, anyway.
SPEAKER_00: And you are all aware, if you uh have lived in this world, that it takes a level of repeated work to grow your endurance in any kind of activity.
SPEAKER_00: Your faith has a similar endurance pattern.
SPEAKER_00: There are times in your life where you have to go through intense difficulty to grow the endurance of your obedience, if what God uses to grow your faith.
SPEAKER_00: And when we know that there is a promise given to us, and yet that promise seems far away, and it doesn't matter if it's just heaven or if it's one other earthly promise, when we know there's a promise and our obedient faith requires endurance, when we come against some of these issues, while we wait for God to fulfill his promise, there is a real temptation to accomplish in our strength what only God can provide.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When there's a real life wall, when there's a real challenge, we know that God is promising us over, around it, under, or through it.
SPEAKER_00: When we come against these realities, we can be tempted to take into our own hands the solution, even though God has already promised a solution in that area.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to talk to you about how Joshua did this.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua took over the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He was appointed their new leader, and he knew as a military commander and as one of the leaders of the nation what was facing them in Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: But he also had the promise of God.
SPEAKER_00: He had the promise that anywhere that they tread, God would deliver them the land.
SPEAKER_00: So he knows what the promise is, but he has reality in front of him.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is there's a big old city right there with fortified walls.
SPEAKER_00: And so while he has the promise and he's looking at reality, he descends to have a little bit of temptation.
SPEAKER_00: And we see in Joshua chapter 2 where that temptation leads him to.
SPEAKER_00: And so Joshua, the son of Nun, he sent two men secretly from Shettim as spies, saying, Go view the land, especially what?
SPEAKER_00: Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: You can already see in Joshua 2 that Joshua was having some troubles with Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: He knew what the land was like, but man, Jericho is a different animal altogether.
SPEAKER_00: Go and view the land, especially Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: Now Joshua had the promise.
SPEAKER_00: But unlike Moses, where Moses was led and did as the Lord directed, Joshua had the promise, but he immediately began to make his own plans on how to achieve the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you know the story of Moses, Moses had to learn this lesson the hard way.
SPEAKER_00: Moses himself also had the promise of God one day about getting water out of a rock.
SPEAKER_00: And God said, Go to the water, or go to the rock and command the rock to spew out water, and it will spew out water.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, Moses goes to the rock and he gets all mad at the rock and he gets mad at the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of commanding the rock to spew out water, he takes his staff and he hits the rock, and then the rock pours forth water.
SPEAKER_00: So Moses, even though he had the promise that the rock would bring forth water upon the command, took matters into his own hand to achieve his own end goals, and the end result was that Moses was kept out of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Moses didn't get to enter the promised land, for disobeying God's command on how to receive water from the rock.
SPEAKER_00: So here we have Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: Moses has done this in the Old Testament, he had to learn his lesson.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham and Sarah have done this.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham and Sarah, they were told specifically, I will give you a child.
SPEAKER_00: But after 13 years of waiting for God to deliver the promise, what do they do?
SPEAKER_00: They devised a plan.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you what, Sarah goes to Abraham and says, Why don't you sleep with my servant Hagar?
SPEAKER_00: And that child will be like my child.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how we'll usher in the promise of God.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know the story, that didn't bode well.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't go well for them.
SPEAKER_00: How about the story of Jacob and Rebekah?
SPEAKER_00: Jacob was promised, actually, Rebecca was promised by God that Jacob, her younger son, would one day be over and charge the brother.
SPEAKER_00: And so even though she had the promise, she and her son Jacob devised a plan to usurp the promise.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what they did.
SPEAKER_00: They stole the promise from his brother, they stole the promise from the Father, and they did get the promise, but they got it in their own way.
SPEAKER_00: And the end result is that they had difficulty that followed.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to the New Testament, Jesus' followers, all the followers, the early disciples of Jesus, they knew that Jesus was going to usher in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And as Jesus was getting prepared to bring in the kingdom of heaven, the disciples and one of the disciples' mothers, John's and James, they go up to Jesus and they say, Hey, Jesus, we know that you promised to bring in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: As you bring in the kingdom, would it be okay if my boys had a position of honor in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: She wanted to guarantee that her boys for serving Jesus would have a place of honor inside the kingdom of heaven, even though that they were told they would have a position of honor in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me show you how we do this.
SPEAKER_00: Every single person in this room and watching online, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ and you place your faith in him, you are promised on that day that when you pass from this earth, you will enter the presence of God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: Or sometime before you die, the Lord Himself will return and resurrect the dead and transform you into your eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even though you have the promise of salvation, how many of you have made plans in your mind or have thoughts and ideas about how you can keep God happy to earn and keep your salvation?
SPEAKER_00: I have the promise, but sometimes the promise doesn't feel good enough.
SPEAKER_00: And so I do these things on my own merit to say, Well, like I'm a pretty good person.
SPEAKER_00: See, all the things that I've done, Lord, I'm worthy of your salvation, I'm worthy of your love, I'm worthy of what you have planned for me.
SPEAKER_00: You already have the promise, but you're tempted to use your earthly merits to earn and show God that you're worthy of the promises you've received.
SPEAKER_00: You know, pastors, we also have temptations right now.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're on social media a lot, but pastor reels are pretty popular, okay?
SPEAKER_00: All these like five-second snippets of pastors preaching.
SPEAKER_00: And then maybe you don't have these on your reels.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what your algorithm provides, but mine gets lots of pastors preaching, alright?
SPEAKER_00: And you see all these pastors preaching, you're like, oh man, this guy's got a great five-second clip, that guy's got a great eight-second clip, and then you know, then all of a sudden they got a podcast, and then like, man, all of a sudden their church has like 10,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, I want to introduce you to a promise of God, okay?
SPEAKER_00: This is a promise of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said he would build his church, all right?
SPEAKER_00: That's a promise.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as a pastor, I believe the promise that Jesus said he will build his church, he will build the bride.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes in my flesh, I get tempted to try to build the church with my own plans.
SPEAKER_00: Happens to the best of us.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, maybe we should produce more content.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we should start a podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe we should do all these things that we can to try to produce the plan that Jesus has already promised to build the church.
SPEAKER_00: How about this one?
SPEAKER_00: God has promised that not only will he build his church, but God has also promised that if you're a follower of Jesus, that he will provide for you.
SPEAKER_00: That you don't have to have a worry about the food you're gonna eat, the clothes you're gonna wear.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's a promise that Jesus has given you.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you last week went out and bought a Powerball ticket when it was a billion dollars?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just asking a question.
SPEAKER_00: You have a promise.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We know what it means to have a promise.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even though we have a promise, we kind of also know what it means to give into the temptation to try to fulfill the promise on our own.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Joshua finds himself.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the nation of Israel finds themselves.
SPEAKER_00: When we do this, we are putting ourselves at odds with God's will.
SPEAKER_00: When God wants you to receive a promise, when God wants you to receive the fulfillment of that promise, at the right time and in the right place, he will tell you the strategy of obedience that you need to have, that as you walk out the obedience, he will fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we have happening in Joshua 5, 13 through 15.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua was making his plans.
SPEAKER_00: He was thinking about how he was going to take down Jericho, and as we see him out there still by Jericho, making his plans, he receives a special visitor.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua 5, 13, 15.
SPEAKER_00: When Joshua was by Jericho, again, spying it out, he lifted up his eyes and he looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: And Joshua went up to this man and said, Are you for us or for our adversaries?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, the man, No, but I am the commander of the army of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now I have come.
SPEAKER_00: And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant?
SPEAKER_00: And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.
SPEAKER_00: And Joshua did just so.
SPEAKER_00: Where was Joshua?
SPEAKER_00: Spying out the land of Jericho again.
SPEAKER_00: This ongoing theme in his life.
SPEAKER_00: I have the promise of delivery, yet he's constantly trying to figure out how to make his own plans to achieve the promise.
SPEAKER_00: While he's making his plans and finalizing his plans in front of the city of Jericho, as he was getting ready to enact his own plan to achieve the promise, the Lord shows up and stalls him.
SPEAKER_00: This is an act of mercy and an act of compassion in the life of Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua, you know, the angel of the armies, the Lord, did not show up and stop Moses from striking the rock, did not show up and stop Abraham from creating a sin with uh Hagar and creating a child in that situation.
SPEAKER_00: God allows us to suffer the consequences of our own decisions sometimes when we try to achieve his promises with our own means.
SPEAKER_00: But in this particular case, the Lord is compassionate and showed up in Joshua's life to prevent him from acting in such a way that would enact the promise in an unworthy manner.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to walk you through this conversation that Joshua had with the commander of the angel's armies, because it's telling as to what is happening in this situation.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we see here is that faith is not asking God to bless my plan, it's surrendering my plan to his command.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're going to find out.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua was creating a plan.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to ask the Lord to bless it, but the whole commander says, You need to submit to my plan instead.
SPEAKER_00: When Joshua encounters the man with the sword, the first question he asks him is this Are you for us or are you for our adversaries?
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a commander of an army and you see a man with a drawn sword on a battlefield, that's a reasonable question to ask.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: Are you fighting for me?
SPEAKER_00: Are you fighting for my enemy?
SPEAKER_00: Because based on the answer, it will determine your next step, won't it?
SPEAKER_00: But who is this person?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what was his response?
SPEAKER_00: Are you for me or for my enemy?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I'm not for you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not for your enemy.
SPEAKER_00: I am the commander of the Lord's army.
SPEAKER_00: Who am I for?
SPEAKER_00: I'm for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the angel's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not for you, I'm not for them, I'm for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you want me to be on your side, on your plan, you need to reorient what you're thinking.
SPEAKER_00: It's not your plan that I'm going to bless Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: It's whether or not you're going to come under my plan.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the commander of the angel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the commander of the army of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I love this last part.
SPEAKER_00: So take off your sandals and worship me, for the place where you're standing is holy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that sounds familiar for those of you who know the story of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Moses, when he first encountered God Almighty, encountered him as a burning bush, and the bush spoke and said, Moses, take off your shoes, for the place where you're standing is holy ground.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have a unique thing here where there's a parallel story where Joshua is being told the place where he's standing is holy ground.
SPEAKER_00: You know, many theologians believe that this is what we call a Christophany, an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus was the eternal Son of God the Father, which means he's always eternally existed.
SPEAKER_00: There was a time in Jesus' history where he lived pre-incarnate, before he took on the flesh and blood of mankind, he existed.
SPEAKER_00: And he existed in such a way that he oftentimes appeared throughout the Old Testament talking with his people and these Christophanies.
SPEAKER_00: Moses or Joshua fell down and worshiped this particular angel.
SPEAKER_00: But there's no other angel in all of the Old Testament that allows human beings to worship them, because worship belongs to God and God only.
SPEAKER_00: So if this angel's permitting worship from Joshua, there's only one reasonable explanation as to why that is, because this angel is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is the pre-incarnate Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is showing up and saying, You are either on my side and under my command, because I'm not for you or against them.
SPEAKER_00: I've got my own agenda.
SPEAKER_00: I've got my own plan.
SPEAKER_00: I've got my own promises.
SPEAKER_00: You are coming with me, or you are now against me.
SPEAKER_00: So Joshua surrenders.
SPEAKER_00: He gets down on bended knee.
SPEAKER_00: He worships.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we learn most often about obedient faith is that as we're plodding through life, when we come against these walls, while there's temptation to come up with our own plan and ask God to bless it, real obedient faith says, God, what are you already doing and let me get behind it?
SPEAKER_00: It's God's show.
SPEAKER_00: It's not your show.
SPEAKER_00: It's God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: It's not your plan.
SPEAKER_00: The church belongs to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All of this stuff is about him.
SPEAKER_00: It's never really about you.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you and God cares about you.
SPEAKER_00: He will work inside your life, but to one end, to exalt and glorify himself, because he has a plan in the world and he's very intent on fulfilling it.
SPEAKER_00: And so he invites us to join.
SPEAKER_00: And God will oftentimes give you the strategy you need to overcome that wall after you surrender.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Before God provides the strategy to receive the promise, he demands a surrendered posture.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to be in a place to receive what God wants to give you.
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes when we're trying to come up with a solution on our own, we just want God to bless our own preferred outcome.
SPEAKER_00: So when you come against a life wall, whatever that life wall is, while the temptation is to solve it on your own, I want to give you a different question to ask.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, what promise have you made in the scriptures about bringing down this wall?
SPEAKER_00: Because he makes promises all throughout scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know your Bible, this is a time when it really pays to know your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: God has addressed every life issue you could imagine, from the physical to the emotional to the spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: And he's promised thousands of promises around all these things.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you come against a life wall, you have to say, Lord, what promises have you already made about bringing down this life wall, and what do I need to do to get in line with your plan to see that happen?
SPEAKER_00: That's what Joshua said.
SPEAKER_00: What does the Lord say to my servant?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I am your servant.
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to say to me?
SPEAKER_00: Once the Lord has given you what he wants to give you, then you can be confident that if you're obedient in that plan or in that strategy, the promise will be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we're waiting to receive the promise, as we've surr as we're waiting to receive the strategy to receive the promise, we have to depend on the promise.
SPEAKER_00: So here's your first strategy in life, okay?
SPEAKER_00: When you come against a life wall, the strategy is to depend on the promise first while you are then obedient to the command that you received as you're depending on the promise.
SPEAKER_00: That's how this works.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a real complex process, but it's an enduring process.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what happens in Joshua 6, 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_00: After Joshua surrendered, Joshua is given the plan to overcome Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: It says now Jericho was shut up from the inside and outside because of the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: None went out and none came in.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to Joshua, See, listen, Joshua, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and mighty men of valor.
SPEAKER_00: You shall march around the city, you shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city at once, and thus you shall do for six days.
SPEAKER_00: Seven priests shall bear the seven trumpets of rams, horns before the ark.
SPEAKER_00: On the seventh day you shall match march around the city seven times, and the priest shall blow the trumpets.
SPEAKER_00: And when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, and all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.
SPEAKER_00: So when did Joshua receive the promise or the strategy to accomplish the promise?
SPEAKER_00: After he surrendered.
SPEAKER_00: Once he surrendered, the Lord gave the strategy to deliver the promise.
SPEAKER_00: When I read Joshua 6, 1 through 5, it begins with an interesting note.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with the reminder of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua chapter 1, 2.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what Jesus, uh God said to Joshua, I have given you the land.
SPEAKER_00: Now in Joshua chapter 6, you have the same message.
SPEAKER_00: I have already given you the land.
SPEAKER_00: Because I have given you the land, here is now the strategy.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain it to you this way.
SPEAKER_00: In my house, it is not uncommon for me to leave the house and tell my kids, while I'm gone today, you have some responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: But when I get home, we're going to have ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: I like ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: Ask my children to read a lot of it, but it will it's a very common thing.
SPEAKER_00: While I'm gone today, you have responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: But when I get home, we're going to have ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: Your responsibilities are to clean your room, do the laundry, finish the list that we've created for you.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's a couple different ways of understanding what I just said.
SPEAKER_00: The first way is transactional.
SPEAKER_00: If you perform well enough, dad will reward you with ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: That's how many people interpret that.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not actually what I said.
SPEAKER_00: I said you have responsibilities as a part of this family, and when I get home, we're going to have ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: As the father of my house, ice cream was always a part of the plan.
SPEAKER_00: I want the ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: I want my kids to enjoy the ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: We're having ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But before we have ice cream, we have responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: And so you need to follow your responsibilities, and then when the responsibilities are fulfilled, I will fulfill the promise of having the ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: Now, are my kids going to fulfill all the responsibilities perfectly?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: They're my kids.
SPEAKER_00: We don't do anything perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: But they are faithfully obedient to the responsibility because they love me and because they're part of the family.
SPEAKER_00: They're not obedient because they want to earn my love.
SPEAKER_00: They're not obedient because they're trying to become a part of my family.
SPEAKER_00: They're not obedient because they're trying to get ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: The ice cream's already promised.
SPEAKER_00: They're already part of the family.
SPEAKER_00: All that I have is theirs.
SPEAKER_00: All that they possess is I've given to them.
SPEAKER_00: I want them to be blessed immeasurably, but they have responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: And I want them to fulfill the responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to misunderstand the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you misunderstand them, you will always live a transactional life with God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the promise you made.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Lord, I'll do all of these things to inherit the promise.
SPEAKER_00: That's a transaction.
SPEAKER_00: A promise is a promise.
SPEAKER_00: God will fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a way he wants to fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: That's where obedience comes in.
SPEAKER_00: I've made a promise.
SPEAKER_00: I want to fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the way in which I want to fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: God can fulfill a promise any way he wants, but when he reveals his strategy to fulfill the promise, it's because that's the way he wants to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the promise of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: God promises salvation to all who would believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' incarnation, Jesus' life, Jesus' death on the cross, and Jesus' death's resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That's the strategy that God used to fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: All he's asking you to do is to believe that.
SPEAKER_00: This is how the Lord works.
SPEAKER_00: There's a promise, there's a promise he's going to make, and he has a strategy for how he wants to fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the promise that God made to Joshua and Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I have given you the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Anywhere you march around, anywhere your feet go, I will give it to you.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the plan.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to march around the city seven times.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to blow your horn once a day.
SPEAKER_00: On the seventh day, you march seven times.
SPEAKER_00: You blow your horn, you make a loud shout, you do all these things.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is my plan to fulfill the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Have obedient faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so they begin marching.
SPEAKER_00: They wait.
SPEAKER_00: They march again.
SPEAKER_00: They wait again.
SPEAKER_00: They march some more.
SPEAKER_00: Every day they're marching.
SPEAKER_00: They are enduring in their obedient faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so their obedience to God is being demonstrated, not just in the actions that they had, but they are being obedient because they trust that God will deliver his promise on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what obedient faith looks like in action.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put this light on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: It's obedient faith in action, okay?
SPEAKER_00: God gives the promise.
SPEAKER_00: All throughout scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: God gives the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Your faith, trust the promise giver.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen God deliver promises for Israel all throughout scripture.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen God deliver the promises of salvation through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen God send on the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I've received the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I know what that's like.
SPEAKER_00: So God has made a promise.
SPEAKER_00: God has delivered his promises because of all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: As I look at God's word, I trust the promise giver.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how faith expresses.
SPEAKER_00: We express our faith in the promise giver through obedience.
SPEAKER_00: So Israel marched around Jericho not to convince God to be faithful, but because they already believed he was faithful.
SPEAKER_00: They believed he would do this thing.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have confessed faith in Jesus Christ, if you believe that God has raised him from the dead, I have really good news for you.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 1 verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: For all of the promises of God find their yes in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Every single promise, every hope, every rescue, every single redemption, every single provision, every single healing, it all finds its yes in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have Jesus for salvation and you're trusting Him for your eternal promise, you now have Jesus for the answer to every single promise that God has made.
SPEAKER_00: They're all yes in Jesus Christ, but the fulfillment is in his time, not yours.
SPEAKER_00: And so the day that we live our faithful obedience, we're faithfully obedient day in and day out.
SPEAKER_00: We endure waiting to receive the promises that we have in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, there's gonna come a day.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really wonderful day.
SPEAKER_00: When all of us are going to see day seven of the march of church.
SPEAKER_00: Your commander has told you to march around the wall seven times, once a day.
SPEAKER_00: On day three, nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00: On day four, nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00: On day five, nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00: You're tired of marching at this point.
SPEAKER_00: What is the point of the march?
SPEAKER_00: The march is because the Lord has told you to do so, and on the other side of that, there's a promise that the walls are gonna come down, and so on day six you march, and nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00: It's a long walk in the same direction, literally, around.
SPEAKER_00: Then on day seven, you walk again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
SPEAKER_00: And when you go to blow the horn, are you filled with anticipation or are you filled with doubt?
SPEAKER_00: I bet you every single one of those fears like, alright, we're gonna blow the horn.
SPEAKER_00: See what happens.
SPEAKER_00: In the second that wall began to fall, that's why they shout.
SPEAKER_00: They were commanded to shout, but it was the evidence of the wall falling that elicited the shout.
SPEAKER_00: That is what it looks like to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In Revelation chapter 19, we get this picture that one day the commander, the angel of heaven's armies, Jesus himself, is going to come back.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to ride his white horse right back into eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Revelation 19, 11.
SPEAKER_00: Then I saw heaven open, and behold, was a white horse.
SPEAKER_00: The one sitting on it is called faithful and true.
SPEAKER_00: And the armies of heaven, arrayed in a fine linen, white and pure, were following him on horses, and on his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: And on that day, on that day, you will know exactly what it means.
SPEAKER_00: All the promises.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And amen.
SPEAKER_00: Until that moment, we endure faithful obedience, waiting for the promise.