Printer Friendly VersionI’d like to begin by asking you a fairly heavy question:
“What would you identify as the greatest disappointment of your life?”
I’m sure there are as many answers to that question as there are people
here this morning. Though our experiences are very different, I think most
of us have experienced the pain of disappointment at some time in our lives.
Perhaps you would identify your disappointment in terms of your
family of origin. As you look back on it now, you can see that as a child
you just didn’t get the kind of love, or nurture, or discipline you
should have received, and it’s very disappointing to you now.
Or perhaps the family you’re now a part of is, to be totally honest,
your source of disappointment. The marriage just hasn’t panned out the
way you had hoped. Being a parent just was not what you had bargained for.
Or maybe your career has provided the most disappointment. You
had such great plans and dreams at one time, but nothing seems to have worked
the way you dreamed it. You’re getting on okay, but always lingering
in the back of your heart is this dull feeling of disappointment.
You know, it could even be that your spiritual life has proven
to be a disappointment to you. It happens, you know. I find that for quite
a number of people, there is a huge gap between what they expected from their
Christian faith and what they actually experience.
We learn to have high expectations of God. From a steady diet
of books and sermons and testimonies, all promising triumph and success, we
learn to expect dramatic evidence of God’s work in our lives. Then when
we don’t see that evidence the way we thought we would, we are left
disappointed. Disappointment happens when the actual experience of something
falls far short of what we expect or anticipate. It’s not uncommon.
We’ve all been there before.
I think disappointment is the prevailing attitude of the people
we meet when we open up the Book of Joshua. They had very high expectations
of what God’s promise to them would mean. Things didn’t happen
nearly like they had envisioned, and they became frustrated, and cranky, and
terribly disappointed. God’s promise to them had been very, very clear.
He promised a land flowing with milk and honey, a land to call their own,
a land where they would thrive and prosper.
But it was now more than 40 years in coming. That’s a
long time to wait, by just about any standard. Now we need to know that it
didn’t have to be that long. It took 40 years to get there because of
their disobedience. They arrived at the Promised Land after only two years,
but they were so fearful of taking possession of God’s promise that
they ended up languishing in the desert another 38 years.
They were right there, right within reach of God’s promise,
but they would not trust Him and their lack of trust left them in the wilderness.
Joshua was there through all of that.
You may remember he was one of only two people who said back
there 38 years ago, “Let’s go and take what God has promised.
We can do it because God promised.”
But the others said, “No, the barriers are too great,
the risks too deep; we can’t do it; we are afraid. There are giants
in the land and we just aren’t sure God will deliver us.”
Can you imagine Joshua’s frustration? He wanted to go
in 38 years ago. He was ready to cross the Jordan and take possession of what
God promised but instead, for 38 years he had to go plodding around the desert
with these stiff-necked people.
And then, to top it all off, Moses—the leader, the inspiration, the
point man for this whole deal—died. He was gone, and the whole nation
was thrown into mourning. They just sat there, so close to God’s promise
and yet so far.
They were disappointed. Life had not turned out so good for
them. They believed God, they followed God’s anointed leader, and look
where it got them. At one point, some of them even said, “We were better
off as Pharaoh’s slaves than we are out here.”
You know it seems to me this is a pretty fair picture of where
a lot of Christians are today. Have you noticed how many Christian people
just seem to be kind of stuck in their spiritual journey? Maybe you can identify
with that personally. There could be any number reasons for it. Perhaps there
have been hurts or there have been disappointments, and you just can’t
seem to get past them.
Or maybe there have been issues of failure or sin in your life
and the guilt of it still beats you up to this day. Nearly every week, my
heart is made heavy by the story of someone who for one reason or another
find themselves in a spiritual desert. The Promised Land is in sight, they
hear and understand the promises of God for a life of joy and peace, but they
just can’t seem to cross over and take possession of it. Can you relate
to that?
As Christians we have received a life of promise. God’s
promise to us in Christ Jesus is full and abundant. Unfortunately, many of
us have backed off from the promises of God. We have chosen instead to live
lives of discouragement and disappointment; defeated by temptation or suffering
or sometimes even boredom.
I can’t really imagine what it was like for Joshua, but he and his people
must have been dealing with a major case of disappointment. But that’s
when the Lord came and spoke directly to Joshua. Just has He had spoken to
Moses in the past, now He spoke to Joshua.
“Joshua, Moses is dead.” The Lord is very perceptive.
I mean, isn’t that kind of stating the obvious? Of course Moses was
dead, that’s why they were all so depressed! But maybe what the Lord
knows is that sometimes you have to name right out loud what the disappointment
is so you can get past it. “Moses is dead. That’s not going to
change. So there’s no use in sitting around and grieving any longer.
You’ve had your time of grief, now Joshua; it’s time to move on.”
And that’s when the Lord spoke the gospel to Joshua: “Get ready
to cross the Jordan river, you and all these people, into the land I am about
to give to them.” The promise was nothing new. They’d lived with
this promise for 40 years, and more.
But God spoke His promise to them again, in the midst of their
disappointment, and because God renewed the promise, it created limitless
potential 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. His response was to come to them
and to come to their new leader and say, “Alright, enough already, it’s
time to move on! The promise still holds. I don’t care what the disappointments
have been, I don’t care what the defeats have been, I don’t care
if it doesn’t feel very exciting anymore, the promise still holds. Now
get up, dust yourselves off, and get ready because you, after 40 long years,
are about to cross over and enter the Promised Land.”
Oh, you know what? I really believe God would like to say that
to many of us today. I just believe there are several of us here today for
whom God would like to slip in alongside of us and put His arms around us
and say,
“Son, Daughter—I know things haven’t gone
well. I know about your hurts and I know about your disappointments. But child,
my promises to you still hold. But you can’t receive the promise as
long as you hold on to the past.
“Son, Daughter—it’s time to get up and get
ready. It’s time to leave the past behind and cross over into the promise.
It’s time, child, it’s time to learn how live your life with your
back to the past.”
Can I ask you this morning, how long are you going to allow
your future to be defined by your past? How long are you choosing to stay
in your disappointment? It is a choice, you know. Some of you have been stuck
far too long. It’s time to get up and get ready. It’s time to
cross over. It’s time to learn how to live life with your back to the
past.
Well, Joshua heard that message from the Lord and he received
it. He quit his mourning and he quit feeling sorry for himself. He got up
immediately and he began to challenge and organize the people. He told the
leaders, “Go through the camp and tell the people, ‘Get ready,
get ready. We’re going to cross over into the promise of God.’”
You may say, “Pastor, I really want to move on. I really
don’t want to be stuck in my past and I don’t want to be mired
in my disappointment. But I just don’t know how to move on.”
Well, God gave to Joshua and to the people some pretty specific
instruction for how to get ready. First, he told them they must be immersed
in the Word of God. Did you hear that? Verse 8: [read]
But immersion alone is not enough; it must be accompanied by
obedience. Verse 7: [read]. In order to move beyond our past, God requires
total obedience to His truth. This is not a pick and choose religion. God
calls for an absolute and total surrender to His lordship.
That is the only way you will ever move out of what has you
stuck spiritually. Too many Christians have the “Yeah . . . but”
syndrome. They hear the clear promises of God and their response is, “Yeah,
that’s nice, but . . .
—that can’t apply to me.”
—my situation is different.”
—you don’t understand what I’ve been through.”
Well, if I can use a very precise, theological word: baloney!
You have a choice to make. Are you going to keep on allowing your life to
be defined by the past and what others have done to you or what you have done,
or are you finally going to take God at His word, believe what is true about
what He offers you, and move on? It is your choice to make. By His grace God
will enable you to live in the truth, but if you refuse to move on, don’t
you dare blame God for your spiritual sickness.
As we walk through this story of Joshua, we are going to discover
some pretty amazing things God does to bring His people into His promises.
Don’t misunderstand. This is not a “God helps those
who help themselves” kind of deal. That’s not in the Bible. But
God will never force upon us what He offers us in Christ. He calls us to surrender
the past, surrender our own efforts, and move on into the new thing He wants
to do in our lives.
The apostle Paul said it very well. And he said this at a time
in his life when he could have easily languished in disappointment. He was
in jail. Things were not going particularly well for him.
And yet he said, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what
is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called
me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
Loved ones, I say to you what the Lord told Joshua to tell his
people, “Get ready. Get ready to cross over. It’s time to leave
the past and move on into what God has for you.”
That’s true of each of us individually. It’s also
true of us a church. We have a rich history, but we can’t live there
alone. It’s time to move on. It’s time to move forward into all
God has for us.
And it’s our choice to make. We can linger in the past or we can get ready for the future. One is a life of disappointment. The other is a life.
