Hey there, thanks for listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast, a ministry supported by Harvest Partners. I'm Greg Laurie, encouraging you, if you want to find out more about Harvest Ministries and learn more about how to become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org.
Well, we are continuing in Jesus in YouTube. That is our series. And my message title today is Preparing for Victory. Preparing for Victory. As we talk about Jesus and you, we did a series that covered really all of the encounters Jesus had with people in the New Testament.
Every conversation that Jesus had with somebody was different. The woman at the well, with Nicodemus, with Zacchaeus, with Pontius Pilate, with the religious leaders, everybody was different. He met them right where they were at, and he said exactly what they needed.
Sometimes the meetings were really harsh, and you wouldn't want to be on the other end of Jesus calling you out, right? You whitewashed wall full of dead men's bones. Yeah, no thanks for that. But he called people out, he offered grace, he offered compassion, and he met people right where they were. And when we came to the end of that series, we were kind of bummed out, and then we thought, hey, you know what?
There's more to this. There's also the Old Testament where Jesus appears. Yeah, that's right. The pre-incarnate Jesus, before Bethlehem, before the cross, before walking on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus made actual, physical, literal appearances in the Old Testament. We call them Christophanes.
Christophanes. It was Jesus before he was born. And we are looking at a really interesting encounter found in the book of Joshua, chapter 5. Let me set the stage for you as we look at our text today. Joshua chapter 5.
Just before this. Forty years earlier, God had freed his people from slavery in Egypt. You remember that? Moses went to Pharaoh. The Lord commanded him to go and tell Pharaoh, let my people go.
And Pharaoh resisted. And so God sent plagues. Finally, Pharaoh released the Hebrew people. Allowed them to leave, he released them from slavery, and they went into the wilderness. And God's goal.
By bringing the people into the wilderness, it was really to teach them dependence on him. And so he met every need they had. In the wilderness, he provided during the day a pillar of smoke to lead them. At night, he led them by a pillar of fire. This was God's very presence leading them through the wilderness, guiding them which direction to go.
When they needed food, Food, he provided manna from heaven. When they needed water, he provided water from a rock. When they got tired of the food God was giving them, they got tired of manna, he gave them quail from the sky. But each and every time that they needed something, The Israelites complained. They doubted God's ability to provide for them, so much so that they actually began to long to go back to Egypt.
Oh, back in Egypt. Things weren't so bad there. You know, they were only murdering our children and forcing us into slavery. But they had leeks and onions and garlic and pots of meat. Wow.
Talk about being driven by the wrong passions, by being driven by the wrong appetites, right? Despite all of these miracles, despite how God provided for them in the wilderness, the Israelites doubted God time and time again. Ultimately, their unbelief, their doubt, turned what should have been an 11-day journey. From Egypt to the Jordan River should take about 11 days on foot. It took 40 years.
Forty years. It was because of their doubt. It was because of their doubt. God needed to bring that doubt out of them. He needed to take their dependence off of themselves, and he was.
Teaching them in the wilderness to place their dependence and their trust in him. That generation died in the wilderness. And they left behind a leaving behind a new one. Leaving behind a new generation who had seen both God's faithfulness and his judgment.
Now That generation has all died. Moses is gone, and a new leader has emerged, and it's Joshua. Under Joshua's leadership, they stand at the edge of the promised land, the land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, which they have heard about for decades, longing to go and be in there. And now the opportunity is here. The only thing that was between them was the Jordan River, a mighty rushing river.
And they had probably around scholars estimate between 1 million to 2 million men, women, children that needed to cross this river.
So they had a huge group of people that had to cross a very Wild river that they had to make its way through, make their way through to get into the promised land. And so as they step up. Up to the river, they're not running from an enemy now. They're stepping forward in faith. Things are different from the Red Sea.
Remember, God parted the Red Sea for them, and they're able to walk right into it. God doesn't part the waters before they move now. They actually have to step foot into the Jordan River, almost demonstrating that, yes, we have faith in God, we have dependence in you, Lord. And they step foot in the Jordan River, and He opens it up. Sure enough.
The Jordan parts, and all the Israelites set foot in the promised land, led by their leader Joshua. But before they put their feet up and take it easy, there's work to do. in the land, the promised land that they are going to now inherit. There are enemies. There are the Amorites, the Hittites, the Amalekites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites.
Really? The Perizzites? Yeah, that's in the Bible. The Perizzites. The parasites.
They must remove these enemy strongholds before they can live freely in the land that God has promised them. The time in the wilderness was preparation. You've heard my dad share before, everything is preparation for something, and we should view it that way. Dependence on God was the key then, and it's the key to conquering their enemies now in the land of Canaan, and it's the key for us today. Dependence.
On God. I've titled this message, Preparing for Victory.
So let's read Joshua chapter 5, starting in verse 1 together. I'm reading from the New Living Translation. When all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings who lived along the Mediterranean coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan River so the people of Israel could cross. They lost heart. You should underline that.
They lost heart and were paralyzed with fear because of them. At that time, the LORD told Joshua, Make flint knives and circumcise the second generation of Israelites.
So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the entire male population of Israel at Gibbeath Heraloth. Skip down to verse 5. Those who left Egypt had all been circumcised, but none of those born after the Exodus during the years in the wilderness had been circumcised. Skip down to verse 8. After all the males had been circumcised, they rested in the camp until they were healed.
Then the LORD said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the shame of your slavery in Egypt.
So that place has been called Gilgal to this day. Verse 10: While the Israelites were camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, they celebrated Passover on the evening of the 14th day of the first month. The very next day, they began to eat unleavened bread and roasted grain harvested from the land. No manna appeared on the day they first ate from the crops of the land, and it was never seen again. For 40 years, they ate manna, and now it has just stopped, symbolizing something new was taking place.
So, from that time on, the Israelites ate from the crops of Canaan. When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up. And he saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Here's our Christophany. Jesus went up to him and demanded: Are you friend or foe?
Neither one, he said. I am the commander of the Lord's armies. At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. I am at your command. What do you want your servant to do?
Excellent question. The commander of the Lord's armies replied, Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy. And Joshua did what he was told. Kind of a flashback there to what happened with Moses. You remember when God spoke to Moses through the burning bush and he said, take off your sandals, for the ground on which you were standing is holy.
We kind of see that right here: Joshua's very own encounter with God. And these last three verses is the reason we are looking at this encounter. This is what we call a Christophany, an Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ. We know this because every time in Scripture, When an angel appears. Uh one of two things usually happens.
Number one, they're usually terrified. They're terrified to death of what they're seeing. And secondly, they fall down and worship this divine being, and they want to worship it and give it praise. And the angel always tells them: don't worship me, worship God. Don't worship me, worship God.
But we see here that this angel of the Lord accepts Joshua's worship and he tells him he is standing on holy ground. That's what separates this from a normal experience with an angel. But I love that Joshua asks the angel of the Lord: Are you for us or against us? Are you friend or are you foe? And the angel is like, Nah, man, nah.
I'm with God, okay? And the real question here is: are you with me, are you against me, right? A lot of times we want to say, God is on our side. He's part of my political party, he's part of my sports team, he's on my side. Friend, the only thing that matters is: are you on God's side?
That's what matters most of all. Are you on God's side? Jesus asked the question: Are you for me or against me? To be undecided is to be decided. Jesus said, I'm with God.
The real question is, are you? with us. And so, point number one, we see their pathway to victory was that they put God first. They put God first. Look back at verse 1.
When all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan And all the Canaanite kings who lived across the Mediterranean coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan River so the people of Israel could cross, they lost heart. and were paralyzed with fear because of them. At that time, the Lord told Joshua, Make flint knives and circumcise the second generation of Israelites.
So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the entire male population of Israel at Gibiath. parallel off.
Now there's a really interesting Like Shift that happens between verses one and two. You've got the enemies on their heels. You've got them terrified. They've lost heart. They're expecting defeat.
They heard how God dried up the Jordan River in the wet season. It was flooded. They heard how God dried up the Jordan River and they came across.
Now, likely they had heard what happened all those years ago in Egypt when they left and God parted the Red Sea. They probably thought those were some just desert fairy tale that took place a long time ago. Those were just fables, tall tales. But now they're hearing with eyewitness accounts that it just happened again. And the land in which they are being promised is the land where your kingdoms are.
They were terrified. But instead of Going in conquering these great cities, these fortified cities. And waging war in that moment, which seems like the logical thing to do. Instead of saying, kurhe, right, for God and Moses, the Israelites didn't go in charge. No, they obeyed the Lord.
And what do they do? They circumcise themselves. They circumcise themselves. In chapter 4, We read in verse 13: these armed men, about 40,000 strong, were ready for battle, and the Lord was with them as they crossed over to the plains of Jericho.
So, what you have here is a formidable army, ready to go, fresh off a spiritual victory. They crossed the Jordan River, morale was high, they had the enemy in their sight, and they saw that the pagan kings were afraid because they heard how God was with the Hebrews.
Now, you don't expect to read in verse 3 that they invaded Jericho and conquered the city, for Joshua knew that the Lord was with them, but we don't read that. We don't read that. The Lord says in Isaiah 55, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. What we read here makes no logical sense.
No person in their right mind would think to do this after what we just read. Warren Rearsby said, God's people must be prepared before they can be trusted with victory. God's people must be prepared before they can be trusted with God's victory. The conquering. Of the occupying kingdoms was going to be God.
God's victory, not Joshua's. That's what we see here. It is going to be God's victory, not Israel's and not Joshua's. Joshua was a tactful and excellent military commander. He had great gifting.
He was leading God's people. He was doing a wonderful job. And very easily, all of the glory could have gone to him. The Canaanite kings, they were in full panic mode, right? They had heard about what happened, they had seen the Jordan River, and they saw millions of people marching across like they now owned the place.
And now they just set up. Camp on Jericho's front lot in their backyard, basically, and they're roasting manna s'mores, right? Let's just say they probably slept. with the lights on that night. The decision by Joshua to circumcise his army.
And the entire male population May seem like clutching defeat from the jaws of victory. You've heard that before, right? Clutching victory from the jaws of defeat. Your sports team is down and they somehow make it happen.
Well, this may seem like they were clutching victory, or rather, clutching defeat from the jaws of victory. They had the great opportunity to go and win and be successful, and they go and decide to circumcise themselves. Joshua, there's a time and place for that, right? We gotta strike while the iron is hot. Let's take him by surprise.
Let's invade him overnight. Joshua knew the most important thing he could do as a leader was to be obedient to the Lord, who called him to circumcise all the men and invite him into their battle. Circumcising your army is a wild thought, right? But that cutting. That cutting of the flesh was a symbol of the covenant agreement that God set up with the Israelites so much earlier between the Hebrew people and their God.
It was a reminder that their bodies belonged to the Lord and not were to, or were not used for sinful purposes. It was a symbol of a spiritual operation on the heart, similar to like how we have baptism and communion today, right? These are symbols of our commitment to the Lord, symbols of what God has done in our lives. The cutting away of the flesh is a key to a relationship with God. We too must cut away.
Cut our flesh. We need to cut our sinful nature out. That's what this was symbolic of. Paul said in Romans chapter 2: true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law, rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.
To put God first, we must cut our flesh. Our sinful nature, our ideas, our passions need to take a back seat. This goes against everything the world, the flesh, and the devil tell us today, right? the world, the flesh, the devil, everybody. Everybody, including the church, tells us we need to pursue victory, success, recognition, respect.
Conquest, and these are the things that are to be valued at any cost. Do whatever you can to achieve these things.
Now, as believers, we can and we should seek to accomplish these things as well. But even above those things is how Yeah. How we accomplish them. To God, the how matters as much as or more than the end result. For you, it might be that everyone in your class is cheating on their final exam.
And you've got an opportunity to do it. And nobody's going to know. Teacher won't know. And it's a guaranteed amen, that's tempting, isn't it? It could be that all your friends are trashing somebody and gossiping about someone, saying something that you know isn't true, and you've got an opportunity to set the record straight.
It could be you've got an opportunity to add thousands to your bottom line by cutting corners on a job, by ripping off the customer. And you've got a decision to make. As a believer, you need to choose the right thing to honor God, to take the hit, to make the stand, to do the hard thing. Church, when we do that, it brings the light of Jesus into a dark world. And not only that, it prepares you for the kind of personal and professional success that only God can bless you with.
When you do the right thing, when you make the right choices, when you decide to go the extra mile, to not cut that corner, to stand up and set the record straight, God recognizes that and He will bless you for that in a way that the world never can. And so we need to make sure we put Dodd first. Joshua understood this, and he made a stand, and he did something that was counterintuitive to all the people of Israel. And he decided to obey the Lord and circumcise all the men of Of Israel, and ultimately his obedience and his dependence on God was the very key to their success. Joshua was not preparing for battle, he was preparing for victory.
He was preparing for victory.
So, number one, they put God first. Number two, they remembered the Lord's faithfulness. Let's look at verse 10. While the people of Israel were encamped at Gilgal, They kept the Passover on the 14th day. of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho.
And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land, and there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. And so they remembered the Lord's faithfulness. This would be the first of many Passover celebrations in the new promised land. What a blessing that was.
How excited they must have been to celebrate how God brought them out of Egypt. Of course, Passover is when everybody remembers, all the Jewish people remember what God did for them back in Egypt, how He sent The destroyer to go and take the lives of the firstborn sons. And the only way that they would be able to be spared is if they took a lamb without blemish, they would slaughter it and take its blood and put it over the doorpost on the head, on the sides. And ultimately, that is a picture of the cross because Jesus is the fulfillment of that. He is the Passover lamb.
And so, today, or not today, then they were celebrating Passover. They were remembering the Lord's faithfulness. What a blessing. They were now in the land of promise. It's a full circle moment, really.
The feast that marked their deliverance from Egypt now marks their arrival in the land God promised. The same God who delivered us from Egypt is with us here. That's what they were saying by observing Passover. God keeps his promises. He is victorious.
A fun Bible study for you to do would be to look at the attributes of God as you read the scriptures. What are some attributes of God, right? He is good, he is faithful, he is true, he is wise, he is loving. There are a lot of verses that you can look at there, but one of God's attributes is that he is victorious. Not that he has been victorious.
He himself is victory. Like he never loses. He's 10 billion and zero, right? He has won. He has a flawless record.
He is victorious. Throughout the Bible, we see this. Many verses: Deuteronomy 20, for the Lord your God. Is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you? Romans 8:37.
Yet, in all these things, we are more than conquerors. Through him who loved us. God is victory. All victory belongs to him. Like he embodies victory more than Tom Brady, more than Tiger Woods, more than George Washington, more than Napoleon or Michael Jordan or any person who has ever lived.
He is victorious. And it's important that we remember that when we need victory in our lives, Amen. When we need victory in our lives, we go to the one who holds all victory. When we need help in an area, when we need help overcoming a stronghold that the enemy may have in our lives, a certain pattern of sin or something that we're going through, a sickness, an opportunity that we need the Lord to open up for us, we go to Him. He holds all victory.
When my kids were young and they wanted something to eat, they would come to me or to my wife.
Now they come to me as a cash register, basically. That's a different story. But when they came to me when they were little, They came to me because they wanted food. When they wanted something to eat, they come to me if they wanted food. They didn't have to go to In-N-Out.
They didn't have to download whatever app on their phone and figure out how to place their order or go to the grocery store and get their food prepared. For their nutrition, for their protection, for their growth, for their entertainment, they came to me. And they come to me still in a different way as their bank account. But in the same way, we need to go to the Lord when we need that victory in our area, in an area of our lives, that stronghold of sin, a battle with our health, an issue with our finances, a relationship breakdown, and we need victory. We must come to our God that has already won these victories.
And for the Israelites. Remembering what God had done so many times in the past, it took the pressure off of them. And it put it on to the Lord to accomplish this victory. It took the dependence off of them by remembering his faithfulness. By reaffirming this covenant that they had with God, that they would be his special possession, they would be his people, by cutting their flesh, circumcising themselves.
They were reaffirming that covenant. By doing that, they were placing their dependence on the Lord for victory. That's what was happening right here. It placed their dependence on the Lord. It took the burden off of them to manufacture a victory, to strive for conquest, and they depended on the Lord.
Now, some of you may be thinking, well, Jonathan, does this just mean that We depend on the Lord and we lay down on our couch all day and kick our feet up and we don't have to do anything. God's going to carry you. Don't worry. You can rest and take it easy. No, that is not what I'm saying.
Look at Joshua here. Is this a lazy guy? No. This is a military conqueror. This is a guy who is ready for battle.
It is not so much you depending on yourself is what the point is. It's not saying that dependence is a failure to act. That's not what this is saying. It's saying the way you operate, the way you move is with a dependence on the Lord to help you make it happen and not on yourself. Not you completely depending, oh, I can make this happen.
I don't even need to include the Lord in my plans. That's what we want to avoid. Include the Lord's blessing in your plans and ask for his involvement. Ask for his guidance and for his wisdom. Depend on him.
Wait on him and see that he will not open the doors for you. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Okay, good. For the Israelites, they knew they needed to depend on the Lord.
God's primary goal for them wasn't just to get them out of Egypt and into Canaan during that time in the desert. It was to teach them to depend on him every step of the way. The pillar of smoke, the pillar of fire, the manna, the quail, the water, his law, the Ten Commandments. He wasn't just trying to move them geographically, he was trying to move them spiritually. You can say that It was pretty evident during their time in Israel that you could, or their time in Egypt, you can take the Israelites out of Egypt, but you can't take the Egypt out of the Israelites.
This is the issue they struggled with. They longed to go back. God was trying to break them of that. Joshua was determined to not make the same mistakes. And so he renewed the covenant.
He remembered the Lord's faithfulness. And that brings us to point number three now: the Christophany. Joshua meets Jesus. Subtitle. The deliverer meets the deliverer.
Let's look back at verse 13. When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up. And he saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, Are you friend or foe? Neither one, he replied.
I am commander of the Lord's army. At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. I am at your command, Joshua said. What do you want me to do? The commander of the Lord's army replied, Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.
And Joshua did as he was told. Joshua had read In the book of the law, what Moses had said to the Lord after Israel had made the golden calf. Moses said, If your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. Joshua was dependent on the Lord's presence. Joshua's name.
Means Yahweh saves. Pretty cool. Pretty cool name. Yahweh saves, Yahweh delivers. Did you know that Jesus' name is the same?
It's the same name. It means Yahweh saves. It means God saves. It means God delivers. And so you've got Joshua meaning Jesus.
Jesus is basically a different language as Joshua. It's the same name, different language, same meaning, same message. And right here, the man whose name means the Lord saves is standing face to face with. The Lord who saves. Pretty cool.
The lesser Joshua is now bowing before the greater Joshua. The deliverer of the world is meeting with the deliverer of Israel. And God Himself, Jesus Himself, shows up with the plan. Because Joshua Paul. Put the Lord first because he remembered the Lord's faithfulness, because he was waiting on the Lord, he shows up.
And he gives him this plan. We read this in Joshua 6, verses 1 to 3.
Now, the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. No one was allowed to go out or in. But the Lord said to Joshua, I have given you Jericho, its king, and all its strong warriors. You and your fighting men should march around the town once a day for six days. You know the rest of the story, right?
They walked around the city, they marched, they blew trumpets, and the walls came crumbling down. They never had to pull the swords from their sheaths. The Lord brought the victory. This is what Joshua was expecting, this is what he was anticipating. He knew that God was going to be moving on their behalf.
All they had to do was depend on Him and be obedient to what He had called them to do. You today. You might be standing before your own Jericho. You see the walls. It's impenetrable.
It's impossible. You can't do this on your own. A wall that looks too high, too thick, too impossible. It could be a sin you struggle with. It could be a relationship with your wife, a financial issue, an addiction of some kind.
The pathway to success is not by scaling the walls of it and life-hacking your way through them or depending on your own strength, it's by dependence on the Lord. Many times, before the Lord will tear down the walls around you, He wants to bring down the walls within you. You may have walls inside of you of pride that starts ultimately tearing those walls down by confessing to the Lord. I and I alone have sinned. You own it.
You don't make excuses for the stuff that you do, the wrongs that you commit when you read scripture. And it convicts you. You don't say, oh, this isn't for me. Oh, it's okay. I've got a good reason.
The Lord knows my heart, right? It's okay that I'm living with my girlfriend. It's okay that we're having sex outside of wedlock. It's okay that I'm on my third baby daddy's friend. It is not okay.
It is not okay. As you continue to make these decisions and you are convicted, that is God telling you, stop. You're going to hurt yourself. You're going to hurt the people you love more. I and I alone have sinned.
Come to Him, repent to Him, and see that He will not forgive you and bless you and make these things work out. It's submitting to God's plan ahead of your own. Submitting to God's plan ahead of your own, putting His will for your life ahead of your own. That shortcut, that opportunity to hook up with that girl, or cheating your way to financial success. No.
Submit your plans to God. Submit your plans to Him. Forgiveness is another one. A lot of times, that wall inside of our heart that needs to be torn down is a wall of unforgiveness. It keeps a lot of us from intimacy with God.
When you forgive, you're not saying what they did was right, you're saying you refuse to be their prisoner anymore. A lot of times, when we harbor unforgiveness, that person is living rent-free inside of your mind. They did that wrong thing to you. Guess what? They forgot about you 10 years ago.
You're still thinking about it. Release them of that. Release them of that debt. Forgive them as you have been forgiven. Ephesians 4 tells us: be kind to each other, tender-hearted, forgiving one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
That may be a wall in your heart. Another way you can depend on the Lord is by Being obedient to what he has put in front of you, knowing what is right and wrong, what's spiritually healthy and spiritually destructive. You do this by knowing God's word, by spending time in small groups, by listening to worship music, by being in good spiritual community. Before God tears down the walls around you, He wants to tear down the walls within you: the walls of pride, control, bitterness, disobedience, distance even. Because as you break down the inner walls that are within your control, God brings down the outer walls that only He can.
So maybe for you today. You've been trying to hold it all together. You've been trying to do this on your own. You've been trying to conquer these victories in your life, and you've had some success. You know, you're disciplined.
You've done a good job. Jonathan, I wake up early. I go to work. I come home from work. I spend time with my family.
You know what? I make a strong effort to make a difference in my life. I don't want to be lazy. I don't want to be one of these slacker guys or one of these slacker girls. Hey, God bless you for doing that.
But what you're going to find is, you are going to come to the end of yourself. You don't have the strength to do this and to make a big enough difference in your family, a big enough difference in your own life, and that's where the dependence on God comes in. You may have been trying to hold it together, to fix yourself, to better yourself, trying to find peace, and there's been a fight going on inside. You don't need another strategy, you don't need a stronger sword, you need a savior. Just like Joshua, you need to come face to face with Jesus, the commander, the conqueror.
The deliverer. The same Jesus who stood before Joshua stands before you right now. He's not holding out a sword against you. He is stretching out his hands for you. for you.
He loves you. He has a plan for your life. He wants you to put your trust in him so he can save you from the thing that you can't save yourself from, and that is your own sin. We've all sinned. We've all fallen short.
We're all guilty of things that God has called us not to do. And did you know just one sin is enough to keep us out of heaven? I think most of us here have committed more than one sin, or even ten sins, or a hundred sins, or a thousand sins. I think we're guilty of. Many, many sins.
Many sins, and that is why Jesus came. That is why He died on the cross for us. He shed His blood like the Hebrew people were celebrating Passover, remembering that ultimately that blood of the Lamb spared them from God's judgment, spared their firstborn children. The blood of the Lamb also. Spares us today from the judgment of God, from the ultimate destination of hell.
That is what Jesus came to do for us. Those hands were pierced for your sin, nailed to a cross, so that the wall between you and God could be torn down once and for all. And three days later, he rose again from the dead, victorious over sin, death, and hell. And he offers you that same victory today. Would you like to put your faith in him?
Would you like to know that you're going to heaven when you die? Would you like to know that you can have that burden of guilt and shame removed? You can today. You can be a brand new creation. All things have passed away, all things have become new.
God can do that for you today. Would you like that? Would you like to know that you can have that hope? He can do it for you. You don't have to be young to come to Christ.
You don't have to be old to come to Christ. You don't have to be coming here for years and understand all of the theology to come to Christ. You just have to see that you have a need and God has the answer. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the sacrifice that you made on our behalf.
We thank you that you tear down walls in our lives. We thank you, most of all, that you tore down a wall that we. definitely could not have done on our own. Yeah, we can better ourselves. We can become more disciplined.
We can do things that help us grow and be successful and get the accolades of men, but ultimately, none of it means anything if we don't have eternity with you. Lord, we want to be with you. We want to experience that pleasures forevermore that you tell us we will have in Scripture when we see you face to face. We want to see our loved ones that have gone before us. We want to have that hope.
And we thank you as believers that we can have it. But Lord, I know that there are some here today who have not yet put their faith in you. Would you speak to them? Would you convict them in this moment and help them to see you are the answer? Lord, only you can.
It's not my words. It's not the music. It's not the lights or the sound or whatever it might be. It's your words. It's your Holy Spirit.
So convict them, Lord. Help them to see their need for you.
Well, our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed and we're praying. If that is you. And you would like to put your faith in Jesus Christ today, wherever you're watching, whatever campus you might be at, here at Harvest Riverside, Harvest Orange County, or Harvest on the Island of Maui, just stand up and I want to lead you in a prayer. You heard me right. Stand up and I want to lead you in a prayer of repentance, asking God to come into your life.
putting your faith in him, declaring your dependence on him. If you would like to do that, just stand up right now. Stand up. And we'll pray together. God bless you.
God bless you right here. God bless you. Anybody else stand up? And we'll pray together. God bless you.
Again, if you're watching from Harvest Orange County or Harvest Riverside or Harvest on the island of Maui, I can't see you, but the Lord sees you. And really, that's all that matters because this is between you and God. Jesus said, If you acknowledge me before people, I will acknowledge you before the Father and the angels in heaven. Make a stand today. Make us stand.
Stand up, and we'll pray together. God bless you. Anyone else? God bless you. Awesome.
For those of you that are standing, I want to lead you in this prayer. This is a prayer to God. You're not talking to me or the person next to you, you're talking to your Father in heaven, declaring your dependence on Him. He loves you. He wants to hear from you.
So pray this to him now. Say this, Dear God. I know I'm a sinner. But I know Jesus is the Savior. Who died on the cross for my sin.
And I place my trust in him. I place my dependence on him. to save me. Would you fill me with your Holy Spirit now? and make me a new creation.
from this moment forward. I put you first in my life. I make you my Saviour. And I make you my Lord. In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries, follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to harvest.org. And to find out how to know God personally, go to harvest.org and click on Know God.
Mm-hmm.
