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"WORSHIP AND REMEMBER"

JOSHUA 8:30-35

How do you know who you are in life? Who are the people, or what are the things that inform your identity? How do you see your place in life?

In America an awful lot of that seems to be based on our occupations. One of the first things we want to know about a new acquaintance is, "What do you do for a living?" Does your job (or lack of a job) tell you who you are?

Is it your family? Does your spouse inform your identity? Is it your place in the church? Is it the neighborhood where you live? If you can really be honest about it, from where do you derive meaning and value in your life?

The passage we've read this morning has to do with those kinds of questions. This is about identity. It's about the people of Israel remembering who they are and where value in life really comes from.

We are in the midst of walking through the story of Israel moving into the promised land. It's a story of conquest. It's a story of battles, of victory, of defeat - a story of struggle for identity.

But something strange happens right in the midst of this story. Suddenly, at the end of chapter eight, we are whisked away from the battlefield and planted in the midst of a worship service.

In verse 29, we were standing at the funeral of Ai's defeated king. Then in the very next verse, we are at the foot of Mt. Ebal (20 miles north of Ai) preparing for the reading of God's word.

It's an abrupt literary shift as well. So much so that many Bible scholars make the case that these verses we read today are out of place in the book of Joshua.

They say this passage was stuck here by a later editor; that they don't really belong here. They say you could pull these verses out of the narrative and nothing would be lost. The story would flow naturally from 8:29 to 9:1. Even if that's true, I believe that these verses appear at this point in the story by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and thus I believe this story is here for very good reason.

In the midst of the conquest, in the midst of the struggle to fulfill their mission in life, Israel stops to worship and remember. They stop to worship the God who gave them this mission and to remind themselves of who they really are in relationship to God.

It's critical that they did this. You see it would have become awfully easy for them to begin to draw their identity from their vocation. To see themselves as great conquerors and lose the sense of their utter dependency on God.

In this simple moment of worship, in hearing the word of God they would realign their lives to the sovereign Lord without whom they would have no life. That's what worship does.

And that's why worship is so critical to our life together. It's why worship is so critical to your own spiritual health. If you are not daily humbling yourself and bowing your life in the presence of the sovereign Lord, you don't know who you are.

If you are not regularly joining with the community of faith as we bring our adoration and praise before the Lord, you do not have, you cannot have a truly Christian identity.

I think Joshua understood this. He knew that the mission would ultimately be lost unless they took time to stop and remember who they were at the throne of God. Joshua also knew that worship is not about developing some new thing all the time. It's going to back to the elemental things. So taking a page once gain from the leadership of Moses, he brings the people to the foot of the mountain and prepares them to hear the word of the Lord.

Folks, do you realize that the most important thing that happens in our worship together is the hearing of the Word? I have been to church services where the Bible was never opened, never read from. It sometimes seems that we want the new and spectacular when we get together.

I really think that's part of why the American church is so confused in it's identity and so powerless at times. We try so many different things, thinking we have to interest people that we sometimes program ourselves right out of the gospel.

Now I'm all for creative and fresh presentations of the gospel, and I'm certainly for excellence, but let's not forget what this is all about. We are here to hear. We are here to be confronted with the word of God and respond to it in obedience.

Joshua brings the people right back to the foundation of who they are by reading to them the laws of God as they were given to Moses so many years before - the fundamentals - the ten commandments.

So in the midst of a very busy life, the people of Israel stop to worship and remember. I don't think it's an accident, I think it's significant that this scene interrupts the story. That's how worship is. Worship is not convenient. It interrupts and intrudes. It interferes with life as we would live it on our own.

Worship makes claims on our lives that are sometimes very uncomfortable. We come together out of a world that sends us all kinds of messages about who are and what life is about.

Our worship of the sovereign Lord should pull us (sometimes kicking and screaming) from the conquests of life back to the covenant which really makes life possible in the first place.

We need to hear the same thing these people were hearing. "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."

Now given that truth, there's another critical truth that we need to understand. We see that worship is crucial to our identity. Worship is at the very center of our life together, but worship is not the sum total of our mission.

We sometimes act like the only business we have as a church is to gather for worship. We sometimes act like worship is our total mission. We sometimes act like this Sunday morning hour is our total reason for being.

But it's not. Worship is central and crucial to who we are and we have no life without it, but we must move from worship into our mission of telling the world about Jesus, then back to worship again.

Our mission is to "Go into all the world and make disciples." The only way we can do that is if we have a firm grasp on god and on who we are that comes in worship.

May I say to you this morning, that if you are a believer in Jesus and yet all you do in the kingdom is come to worship, you are not truly following Jesus?

We cannot just show up here on Sunday morning, think we have done our weekly duty and then go on our merry way with our own agendas. In Matthew 25 Jesus talks to us about taking the heart of the gospel to the most marginalized peoples of the world.

And in that context he says to us, "On the final day many will come to me saying 'Lord, Lord.' and I will say to them, "Away from me, I never knew you." Our calling is to be engaged in the work of the kingdom - helping people to know Jesus.

We can't do that unless we are engaged in worship, but if we worship and never become involved in the mission, our worship is empty.

You see, worship holds two important elements for us: celebration and sanctuary. We come together here to celebrate God's power through us to a broken world. We come to celebrate the ways in which God is transforming the lives of people. That's why so important that we tell each other what God is doing.

We also come for sanctuary. Life in a fallen world can be rough on us. We sometimes feel battered and weary, so we come here for renewal. But what's assumed in all of that is that we need sanctuary because we've been on the front lines of the kingdom.

What's assumed in that is that we have something to celebrate because we've been engaged in the mission. Without that focus, worship gets turned inward and we begin to worship worship. We want the emotion or the experience.

Listen, if worship has become dull and boring to you, if worship has become rather meaningless and routine to you I can tell you why. It's because you are not engaging the mission. You're taking in but not giving out.

It's like the Dead Sea where these people were. If the water only flows in and nothing flows out, it becomes nothing but a lifeless stench. But these folks were keenly aware of their vulnerability in the world. They had been living on the ragged edge of their God-given mission.

And Joshua knew that over the long-haul, the only way they could stay faithful to that mission was if they regularly stepped aside to come before the Lord and not only adore him and praise him, but also to hear what he would say to them. For there our identity is formed and life is given meaning and purpose.

I ask you again: Who are you? Where is your identity formed? What gives meaning and purpose to your life?

The word of God as it comes to us today in the story of Joshua, calls us to find our meaning in the worship of a sovereign Lord, where we realign our lives with his vision for us.

We worship and we remember. We remember and we go into the world. Our worship together here is crucial, don't ever forget that.

But also don't forget that your work begins when the benediction is given and we move out from this place of sanctuary into a world of need to bear witness to the saving power of Christ.

That's who we are. That's our identity and purpose. May God help us to be faithful.