Sermon Title: Faithful in One Thing

Sermon Series: Joshua: Finding Courage through the Challenges of Life

Sermon Text: Joshua 23

April 20, 2008

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TITLE: Faithful in One Thing

TEXT: Joshua 23

I want to welcome those of you with us today live and also those of you joining us now over in Re:new, it is great to be with you and we are grateful to have with us at Church of the Foothills.

Well with Brian gone today I am glad to pinch hit for him. As we continue our journey through Joshua our lessons have been many on being courageous in the face of Life’s struggles…

If you have not been with us in a while, last week we left off with Joshua chapter 8.

God’s faithfulness is on shining display throughout the pages of Joshua. We see God making a lot of promises and we regularly see God follow through on these promises…

If you don’t have a Bible with you please grab one just below the seat in front of you and turn to Joshua 23 with me where we will study together today.

As you turn there let me take this chance to pray once more…

THE PROMISE

JOSHUA 23:1-5

I have been following the build up for the presidential election and as expected there are a lot of speeches and fund raisers…

In one particular speech being given by one of the presidential hopefuls a room of well wishing supporters are quietly listening to the candidate speak as everyone in the audience quietly listens and graciously claps between comments…

OUT OF THE BLUE, a person walks right down the center isle of the room holding a sign in protest to the candidate who is speaking. The protestor is screaming their remarks and hurling insults at the candidate who was by now just stunned and seemed to be totally frozen…

…as a pastor I have had this very nightmare…so please don’t stand up with any signs and tell me how much you hate me…

Anyway, just as the candidate begins to really figit and appear to be losing all poise, the crowd of supporters who were sitting there listening and supporting before all rise to their feet with their own signs and banners and start chanting the candidates name…

I WAS AWE STRUCK…in what looked like total chaos, in a moment when it seemed that one voice of protest would win the day, those in quiet support showed themselves faithful and much more powerful.

You and I need to remember that in the moments of our lives often times God’s faithfulness seems so quiet and distant, but it is right there. In the moments of fear, terror, even dis-trust. And when the world marches down the center isle of our lives to shout out our failures and the failures of our God, He will rise up and overpower their protest. We know he will because he has done it so many times.

REMEMBER you have SEEN God’s FAITHFULNESS vs.3

Joshua 23:3

God had been so faithful to Israel too. They deceided they did not want to forget His faithful ness and so throughout the journey in Joshua we see this constant theme of ROCK PILES.

Look with me at how Israel had consistently used a simple thing that was clearly at their disposal to keep the stories of God’s faithfulness on their lips…

PILES of ROCK

Joshua 4:7, A pile to remember God’s faithfulness to The Ark of the Covenant
Joshua 4:9-23, A pile to remember God’s faithfulness to His people as they crossed the Jordan River
7:26, A pile to cover Achan. A picture of sin being paid and covered. The Lord’s anger was quenched. A reminder of God’s faithfulness to His promise to beat sin.
8:29, A pile to cover the King of Ai. A reminder of God’s fulfilled promise to deliver Ai to Israel.
10:22-27, A pile to keep 5 evil kings at bay. A reminder of God’s faithfulness to win the battles where he promised victory.

As we see in these references they had not only seen God’s faithfulness they had experienced it….

THE INSTRUCTION

Joshua 23:6-11

REMEMBER you have EXPERIENCED God’s FAITHFULNESS
vs. 9

Brian, Phil and I were in Seattle for a couple of days this week at a conference. I don’t know how many of you have ever tried to drive in Seattle, but it is nothing like trying to find your way around the City of Sacramento…

As we were trying to find our hotel we were having the toughest time…

So here I was in the back seat of the car, with my eye on the hotel which was only a few blocks away…

The map we had was not making sense at all. And the streets we were driving on were all one way and very confusing…

What we could see, and what we were experiencing were both confusing us about where we were headed…

After all the years that Joshua had been leading Israel he knew their proneness as people to stray from the faithfulness to God that God had shown them…

<<look with me at Joshua’s words in verse 6…>>

And yet he also knew their desire to stay near to the heart of God …

(Joshua even reminds them that THEY HAVE BEEN faithful up to this point in Verse 8)

Here I was sitting in the back seat of a car on a very uncharacteristically rainy day in Seattle…

…and I did not trust the map anymore so I just kept my eyes on that hotel. As Brian drove and Phil navigated us through some very confusing streets, I had no ability to help guide our journey (though I tried a few times and got us lost on both occasions)… at some point all I could do is focus on the hotel. –Just keeping my eyes fixed there.

SOMETIMES all you and I can do is focus on how God has been faithful. Thinking of navigating our current struggles will be much too daunting, our greatest moments of peace will be found when we just rest in God’s faithfulness, remembering where he has brought us from.

WE HAVE NOT JUST SEEN IT WITH OUR EYES, WE HAVE EXPERIENCED IT WITH OUR LIVES

I think Mother Teresa put it well when she said,

“I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.”

Joshua finishes this discussion with all of Israel with a clear warning…

THE WARNING

Joshua 23:12-16

after all God had done on their behalf to give them every good and perfect gift he had set aside for them in the promised land, Joshua challenges them not to get caught up in the world they lived in.

Not to fall in love with the very sin that God had fought to protect them from.

EXPECT God’s FAITHFULNESS in ALL THINGS vs 14-15

God is equally faithful to BLESS AND DISCIPLINE.

I can only speak for myself, but I am so quick to invite God into my life to shower me with blessing but then when it is time to live out hard truth I live like a practical atheist…all too often…

Oh, that we would walk in step with God that we see him clearly guiding and moving in every aspect of our lives.

Oh that we would constantly be focused on how very faithful God has been to us in our lives….