Printer Friendly VersionHow 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 based on our occupations.
One of the first things we want to know about a new acquaintance is what they
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 8, 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; 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 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 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 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 again from the leadership of Moses, he brought the people to the foot
of the mountain and prepared them to hear the Word of the Lord.
Folks, do you realize 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
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 her 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 brought the people right back to the foundation of who
they were, 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 stopped
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 that
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 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, 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, thinking 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 it’s 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 we need sanctuary because we’ve
been on the front lines of the Kingdom.
What’s assumed in that is 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 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, not only to 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 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.
