Some of my most significant preaching experiences with a local
congregation have come in the context of an extended series of sermons. Series
preaching can offer the congregation an opportunity to “soak”
in a Biblical text or in the story of a Bible character and learn some deep
lessons. When a congregation is focusing together on this over time, things
begin to happen that go far beyond the sermon itself.
Here is a series possibility on the life of Joshua. This is
a wonderful and colorful story that begins in Genesis with God’s amazing
promises to the people who would eventually be called Israel. In Joshua, the
promises of God are ripe, just ready to be harvested. But it won’t be
automatic. What is still called for is the obedient response of God’s
people. So this series might be called, “God’s Promise and Our
Potential.” Or simply, “Crossing Over” in reference to the
mission of Joshua to take the nation into the Promised Land.
This series can be effective in helping to call a congregation
to a time of transition and change that involves risk. It asks the question,
“What will it take for us to ‘cross over’ into the future
God has planned for us?”
(For the full manuscript of these sermons go to www.preachersmagazine.org and click on “Sermons”)
This first sermon needs to “set the stage” by telling
the story of what has happened to the people up to this point. In the pursuit
of the Promised Land they got close, but could not enter. Because of disobedience,
they only saw from a distance. Moses died, and the people languished and mourned
on the edge of God’s promise. After 40 long years, the people sat down
on the wrong side of the river Jordan and seemed content to accept what was.
These were disappointed and disillusioned people. They were in a place similar
to what many of our people are experiencing. The Promised Land was in sight,
they heard and understood the promises of God for a life of joy and peace,
but they just couldn’t seem to cross over and take possession of it.
But that’s when the gospel word came. The Lord spoke to
Joshua and in essence said, “Moses is dead. That’s not going to
change. So there’s no use in sitting around and grieving any longer.
Joshua, it’s time to move on.” And that’s when the Lord
renewed His promise to Joshua, “You and all these people, get ready
to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them.”
(v. 2). God’s fresh word created a new possibility in the lives of these
defeated people. If ever a group of folks were stuck in the mud it was these
folks. But God did not leave them there. He came to them and to their new
leader and said, “Alright, enough already, it’s time to move on!”
This is a penetrating word for our people. Many of them are
stuck spiritually, emotionally—chained by the past. They need to hear
God saying, “Okay, it’s time to move on now.” An important
question for them is, “How long will you allow your future to be defined
by your past?”
This sermon works off the phrase that first appears in verse
9 and is repeated in verses 11 and 24. The phrase is “melting in fear.”
The people of Israel knew about “melting in fear.” When they first
spied out the Promised Land they “melted in fear” because the
land was occupied by giants. Now here they were again. Joshua again sent spies
into the land. The surprise is that they found out the Canaanites were afraid
of them! Israel thought she was weak and unable to cross over into what God
had promised. But the people of Canaan understood that Israel was awesome
and powerful, not by themselves but because of Yahweh.
Fear is also what often keeps us from moving over into all that
God has planned. We need to hear the same message these people under Joshua’s
leadership needed: “Be strong and courageous.” For the Lord your
God is with you.
Now we come to chapter 3 and the people were finally ready to
cross over. It was time to go. But there was still a problem. Joshua and his
officials defined the problem very clearly and concisely in verse 4: “You
have never been this way before.” In other words, “You don’t
have adequate directions. And it’s not good enough to think that somehow
you can just figure it out on your own. You can’t make it on your own;
you need help.”
It’s another mirror of our spiritual lives. Perhaps one
of the reasons some of us have never really crossed over into God’s
new land of promise is that we’ve tried it before, but gotten lost.
Once we started the journey, we tried to go our own way, tried to follow Jesus
on our own terms, and we got lost. We hear God’s call to go deeper in
our spiritual lives and immediately we think, “Okay I can do that. I
know the way.”
The problem is that when God calls us to something new and deeper
in our life with Him, we can’t just strike out on our own. We don’t
know the way. We’ve never been this way before.
There are three things in this text the people must do in order
to cross over successfully. They must follow Yahweh without reservation. They
must consecrate themselves for the journey ahead. They must follow the leader,
Joshua.
This sermon comes out of the same text as last week, but with
a different angle. It deals with the need we humans have to be convinced.
We want evidence, proof, assurance.
The nation of Israel always needed signs. And they got them—powerful
signs of God’s power and presence. Now, as they prepared to cross over
into the Promised Land, they again wanted a sign.
So, the Lord was going to demonstrate His power to them once
again by stopping the flow of the Jordan River and allowing them to cross
on dry land. That’s amazing, but what is really important here is the
reason the Lord was going to do this miraculous thing in their midst. The
reason is given in two different ways. First the Lord told Joshua He would
perform these amazing signs “so they may know that I am with you as
I was with Moses” (v. 7).
And then Joshua told the people the Lord was going to do this
so “you will know that the living God is among you” (v. 9). God
was going to be gracious to give them a miraculous sign in order to convince
them that He could be trusted to give the land they were afraid to claim.
We too have been blessed with amazing signs of God’s power
and presence. But in truth, signs and wonders can be overrated. Israel had
them all. They had plagues and parting seas. They had manna and pillars of
smoke by day and pillars of fire by night. Yet they still struggled to believe
God. Which reminds us that ultimately it comes down to my decision to place
my trust in a God who says, “Step into the river. Cross over and you
will see my power.”
This is the simple and wonderful story of the people of God
building an altar of remembrance out of 12 stones picked from the Jordan as
they crossed over. “Remembering” is a significant part of our
discipleship. There are times when we need to stop and look back. We need
to remember and celebrate what God has done for us. We need to build an “altar
of remembrance” that we can look back on.
I used this sermon as an opportunity to celebrate the past seven
years in the life of our congregation. I had 12 persons to represent 12 significant
markers of God’s power and presence among us. As I spoke of each “marker”
the person came and placed their rock on a special table at the front. When
it was complete, we had built an altar that remained in the sanctuary for
a year, reminding us of God’s great work.
The 12 “markers” I chose were:
• God’s healing power among us.
• God’s faithful provision and our stewardship.
• Our commitment to and involvement in world missions.
• New Christians and spiritual growth.
• A revival of prayer.
• A renewal in worship.
• The vitality of our teenagers.
• The blessing of our children.
• Those sent out from us to minister in other places.
• The deepening of lay ministry.
• A renewed vision for the future.
• Hope for those who haven’t yet crossed over.
Now it’s 40 years later, they were on the other side of
the river, and great possibility was ahead, but the core issue is not different.
Obedience to the Lord is still the very heart of being His people.
God marked them again with the covenant sign, but He knew it
wasn’t enough. He stopped the manna and gave the fruit of the land,
but He knew it wasn’t enough. Obedience is still required.
In this simple story that almost seems out of place in the narrative,
there is an air of warning to us. One can have all the marks of a child of
God but lack the response of a child of God. One can receive the sacraments
but have no faith. Paul was right in 1 Corinthians: one can experience the
exodus, eat the manna, drink water from the rock, and still remain in unbelief.
The point of application can be a poignant question placed before
your congregation: “You may have all the external marks of a Christian,
but do you have the true mark of obedience? Do you have a real, vital, personal
relationship with the living Christ?”
Does God take sides? With athletic teams? With nations? With
individuals? The story of the conquest is usually hard for contemporary people
to “get” because it seems like God is capriciously taking sides
with Israel, to wipe out people who really were there first anyway!
Truth is, the conquest of Canaan is not a bunch of land-hungry
barbarians wiping out hundreds of innocent folks. In the biblical view, the
God of the Bible uses Israel as the instrument of His judgment on a people
who had persistently reveled in their sin.
Joshua wanted to know, “‘Are you for us or for our
enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander
of the army of the Lord I have now come’” (vv.13-14). And Joshua
fell on his face, realizing he was in the presence of the Lord. And in the
presence of Holy God, Joshua’s question changed. No longer was it, “Whose
side are you on?” but now, “What do you want to show me? What
do you want to say to me?”
Do you know what the Lord wanted to say to Joshua? It’s
in verse 2 of chapter 6: “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands.”
It’s a done deal because this is what the sovereign Lord decreed. It’s
as if God was saying, “Joshua, you are going to have victory but it’s
not because I like you best. It’s not because I’m taking your
side against another. It’s because this is what I have planned to accomplish
my purpose.”
We need to understand this because in the daily course of our
lives we sometimes become far more interested in the help than in the Helper.
We just want God to be responsive to our needs. “God, whose side are
you on here? Are you going to come to our aid? Are you going to help us?”
Too often our last question is, “God, what do you want
here? What are your plans and your desires? What are you seeing that I cannot
see?”
“It’s nobody’s business but mine.” That
is the doctrine of our time. The pervading belief of our culture seems to
be that one’s actions have consequences only for that individual. We
have lost much of our sense of community responsibility.
This message deals with that issue. Things were going so well
for Joshua and Israel, until Achan went directly against the command of the
Lord and took for himself what he was supposed to leave alone. As a result,
the battle of Ai became a disastrous failure. Now Joshua had to get to the
bottom of what happened.
The specifics of dealing with this kind of sin have certainly
changed under the new covenant made possible through Christ, thanks be to
God! But the principle here remains: the Lord makes it clear in His word that
none of us is an island. There is no such thing as “my private business.”
The choices I make and the way I live my life do matter and do impact those
around me.
When we are members of the kingdom of God we must live with
the understanding that we are integrally connected to one another, and our
lives do affect our brothers and sisters in Christ. In the kingdom of God,
we never act as a private citizen. We belong to each other. Paul says in Romans,
“each member belongs to all the others” (12:5).
(The print version has November 1, 2006.)
The second remarkable feature of this text is the way Joshua
and Israel reacted when defeat came. At the end of chapter 6 they were on
top of the world. The walls of Jericho came crashing down and they easily
took over the city. They were feeling very good about this whole conquest
thing.
In fact, they were feeling so good that when it came time to
spy out the next city, the spies came back and said, “Nothing to worry
about, we could do this with one arm tied behind our backs.” So Israel
went sauntering up to Ai and promptly got beaten back. They were driven into
almost immediate retreat and lost 36 men in the process.
Suddenly, they weren’t so confident. In fact, they fell
into awful despair. They tore their clothes and poured dust on their heads
and began to cry out to God, “Oh, what have you done to us? You’ve
left us alone, life is awful. Oh woe is us. We should have just stayed on
the other side of the Jordan.”
Now is it just me, or does that sound kind of familiar? I mean,
doesn’t that sound a bit like us whenever the going gets a little tough?
When that happens, we need to move beyond the cries of “Oh woe is me”
and “God why have you left me?” We need to come to the question
Joshua asked in faith: “Lord, what are you going to do for your great
name? What is this really about? What do we need to learn? How can we become
better as a result of this setback?”
When in the most difficult experiences of our lives we can make
the shift from “woe is me” to “what about your Kingdom?”—that’s
when God can begin to teach us the deepest lessons of what it means to live
as His children.
(The print version has November 8, 2006.)
This passage has to do with identity. It’s about the people
of Israel remembering who they are and where value in life really comes from.
Suddenly, at the end of chapter 8, we shift from the battlefield
to a worship service. In the midst of the conquest Israel stopped to worship
and remember. They stopped to worship the God who gave them this mission and
to remind themselves of who they really were in relationship to God.
It’s critical that they did this. It would have become
awfully easy for them to begin to draw their identity from their vocation,
to see themselves as great conquerors, and to lose the sense of their utter
dependency on God. In this simple moment of worship they realigned their lives
to the sovereign Lord without whom they would have no life. That’s what
worship does.
We need to hear this lesson. “Stop the war and listen
to God. Put everything else aside, this is now the most urgent matter. It’s
time to remember who you are.” This text calls us to worship and we
remember. And as we remember, we go into the world.
(The print version has November 15, 2006.)
—Joshua 9:1-15
Common sense is important to us. We can’t get along very
well without it. However, there are times when functioning by common sense
alone can get you in trouble. Sometimes conventional wisdom isn’t wisdom
at all.
That’s the lesson Joshua and the people of Israel learned
in this story. The people of God were confronted with a critical decision.
They made that decision on the basis of common sense, and suddenly found themselves
in a compromised situation.
The people of Gibeon came to them pretending to be the people
of a far-off land in order to save themselves. If they were found out to be
close neighbors, Joshua and his army would destroy them. So they came with
ragged clothes, stale food, and a story of their long journey that seemed
to “make sense.” So Joshua entered into a treaty with them, only
to discover that they were close neighbors and God had really ordered them
conquered.
The narrator of this story does not want us to miss what really
happened here. So he spells it out for us clearly in verse 14: “The
men of Israel sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the Lord.”
In other words, they traded God’s divine wisdom for a little bit of
common sense and it got them in serious trouble. This story means to impress
us with how Israel suffered not from a lack of common sense, but from a lack
of the wisdom of God.
How many times have we made decisions in our lives, important
decisions, on the basis of common sense? And yet we have discovered we needed
more than common sense; we needed a word from the Lord. How often could it
be said of us, “They did not inquire of the Lord”? How often do
we make important decisions in our lives without really coming before the
Lord to plead for His wisdom?
(The print version has November 22, 2006.)
Have you ever been asked this question: “Pastor, does
it really do any good to pray?” Perhaps you’ve even wondered yourself
at times. “Does it really matter if I pray? Does God ever truly act
in response to my prayers? Can I really believe the God of the universe listens
to me?” Hasn’t that question troubled the mind of every one of
us at some point?
In this text, Israel engaged in a fierce battle with the Amorites.
It was during this battle that one of the most amazing things in the Bible
happened as a result of Joshua’s prayer. Joshua had learned the lesson
well that when God gives you a mission you’d better see it through.
So in order to finish their job of driving back the Amorites, Joshua prayed
an incredible prayer. He prayed to the Lord in the presence of all Israel
that the sun and moon would stand still in the sky until the nation had taken
care of her enemies. And the writer of Joshua says with his mouth hanging
open, “It actually happened! The sun stopped in the middle of the sky
and delayed going down about a full day.”
What amazes him is not the fact that the sun stood still (or
from our modern perspective that the earth stood still). What amazes the writer
of our story is that God, the sovereign God of the universe, listened to the
prayer of a man! How the sun stood still is not the point of this story. God’s
intervention is the point of this story.
This prayer was deeply rooted in the sacred promises God had
made to Israel and Israel had made to God. This is the consistent witness
of Scripture. God takes us very seriously. God listens to us. And sometimes
God even changes His mind as a result of our prayers. This story means to
impress us with the miracle of prayer.
The miracle of prayer is rooted in the promises God has already
made. Joshua knew what God had promised. Joshua knew clearly what God was
committed to do. And it was out of that understanding of and submission to
God’s plan and will that he made this unbelievable request. Joshua saw
a direct answer to his prayer, in part because he prayed squarely within the
bounds of God’s revealed will. Therein is the lesson for us. God will
not answer amazing prayers rooted in our selfish desires. But He will even
miraculously answer incredible prayers rooted in His will and plan.
(The print version has November 29, 2006.)
Bob Dylan is probably an unlikely theologian, but he had it
right when he sang, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but
you’re gonna serve somebody.” That’s really the point of
this text. You are going to serve somebody. Who will it be?
This is really a simple episode. Joshua reminded the people
of their story, reminded them of what God had done, and on that basis, called
them really to cross the line of faith and serve God exclusively and totally.
This text is a call to make that kind of decision. The amazing
story we have been tracking these weeks finally calls for just this decision:
“Who are you going to serve?” On the basis of remembering their
story, Joshua called these people to cross the line of faith, reject other
gods, and give themselves without reservation to Yahweh.
We have a story like these people. It’s a story we rehearse
every time we gather for worship. A story of what God has done out of His
great love for us. It’s a story that’s beautifully summarized
in the confession of faith we sometimes recite together, the Apostles’
Creed. But there is a sense in which you can believe everything in the creed
and still go to hell. It’s more than agreeing in your mind that there
is a God or even that Jesus really did die and rise again. What is called
for here is a commitment of your heart, mind, soul, and body. What is called
for here is a definite response to what God has already done for you.
*This series first appeared in the Pentecost 2001 issue of Preacher’s
Magazine.
