Joshua Chapter 4:1-9

You see, the more you listen, the better you can listen.

The more you ignore it, the harder it is to hear. If you're trying to hear from the Lord on a certain issue or praying about God laying something on your heart, make sure that you're in a place where you're not anxious and the peace of God is ruling in your heart because it makes it easier for the Lord to speak to you. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Develop a life of listening to the Lord and to His Word. Stay tuned to hear more about the importance of these principles as Pastor David continues his study in the book of Joshua chapter 4. But first, have you ever experienced the time when you felt spiritually drained? Well, the Bible holds the cure that will bring joy and vitality back into your life. That's why we want to send you a copy of Pastor David McGee's video message, A Checkup from the Neck Up. In this inspiring teaching, you'll find biblical truths that can restore your spiritual health. A Checkup from the Neck Up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life.

So please visit crossthebridge.com to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up. Now here's David McGee with his teaching, Hearing from the Lord. Turn with me to Joshua chapter 4. Last week, we were talking in Joshua 3 about how we are to get our feet wet.

That saying came from them getting their feet wet into the Jordan and crossing the Jordan that the water didn't pull back until they had actually stepped out in faith. And that was an awesome time in the Word. So let's pray right now. Lord, we just thank you for this time together. We thank you for the gift of your Word. And Lord, we ask that it be and Lord, we ask that it would continue to speak to our hearts and into our lives. Lord, we ask that your Holy Spirit would come and deliver the Word to our hearts, not just to our ears.

Lord, that we would walk out differently than when we came in. Lord, we can't manufacture that, but we know that through the power of your Word and through the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, our lives can be changed. Lord, so we ask that you would open our hearts to your Word and open your Word to our hearts in Jesus' name. And everybody said, Amen. Praise God. So Joshua chapter 4 verse 1, And it came to pass, when all the people had completely crossed over the Jordan, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying, Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from every tribe, and command them, saying, Take for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan from the place where the priests' feet stood firm.

You shall carry them over with you and leave them in the lodging place where you lodged tonight. Now, what we're going to see a lot in the book of Joshua is we're going to see that it says the Lord spoke to Joshua. Now, if you remember, we just finished the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Bible, and we see that the Lord spoke to Moses. Now, we have some examples in there that perhaps it was an audible voice. And if you remember back in around Exodus 20, the people said, You know, make it so we can't hear his voice anywhere and just let him talk to you because they got kind of freaked out. I'm not sure with Joshua it was an audible voice or not. It may have been. It may not have been.

I'm not sure. But what's more important than what I think we want to spend a little bit of time on tonight is how the Lord speaks to you. Because, see, we have this thing in our society and our culture now that's ingrained in the media and the movies and different things. And, you know, we're kind of taught that if somebody is like hearing voices, that something's gone horribly wrong, that they're a bit unbalanced. And we need to understand as believers in God in a supernatural, omnipotent, omnipresent God, that He does indeed speak to us. And we need to actually walk out our lives in such a way that it's not the exception to the rule that when He speaks to us, but actually it's the rule that He speaks to us, that it's the exception when He doesn't speak to us.

Well, how do we do that? Well, I think we develop a lifestyle of listening to the Lord. And let me share with, you know, often you'll hear me say, And the Lord told me to do this, or the Lord told me to do that, or heard the Lord say this. I've never heard an audible voice.

Now I understand some people have, and that's cool and everything. But me personally, I've never heard an audible voice of God. There's a couple key things, I think, in order to hear from the voice of the Lord that we want to talk about that several scriptures speak to us about. One of them, of course, is Romans chapter 12, verses one and two. And it says, And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will accept. When you think of what He has done for you, is this too much to ask? Now, don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is. And that's from the New Living Translation. Now, we've talked before that that word transform is the Greek word metamorphou, where we get our word for metamorphous.

It kind of describes the process of like a caterpillar going into a butterfly. It's also the word that's used on the Mount of Transformation, when Jesus was transformed or transfigured. It says here that we have to submit ourselves to God in order to better know what He wants us to do. See, if you live a life of not listening to God, and all of a sudden you get in a bind, you get in a pinch, and you're desperate to hear from God, it's going to be a little bit harder for you to hear the Lord than somebody who perhaps is walking in faith and has developed kind of a listening ear for the Lord. Another key in this is Colossians 3 15a, the first part of the verse is, let the peace of God rule in your hearts. If you're not at peace, if you're all anxious and worked up and freaked out, then chances are you've placed yourself in a position where it's going to be harder to hear from God again. So the first order of business, if you will, is to let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Now I understand this is sometimes difficult.

You might be in the middle of a really, really hard day and things just going horribly wrong. And then probably the Holy Spirit comes and reminds you about this verse and you go, great, Pastor David had to cross reference that verse so I could come to mind and be convicted. But see, if you'll sit and just quiet down, as a matter of fact, as the verse says, be still and know that I am God, then you can better hear from the Lord. Because oftentimes when we run around in circles and we're all freaked out, God's trying to speak to us, but we can't listen. We can't hear the voice of the Lord. Further confirmed in Philippians chapter four, verse six, the first part of it says, be anxious for nothing.

So now you're sitting there and you may be going, well, okay, okay, be anxious for nothing. Let the peace of God rule in our hearts, submit myself to God. But how do you really hear the voice of the Lord?

Well, let me share a couple of things with you. And again, I've not heard an audible voice, but here's, I tried to write down some things that when I'm hearing from God, that kind of the way that it happens. And this is not, this is not an extensive list that this is the way God's going to speak to everybody. This is more about the way that God speaks to me.

And here's six things. The first thing is an inner voice or an urgent. If you're taking notes, you may want to jot these down. An inner voice or an urging or an exceptionally clear thought. You might be riding down the road doing something that has nothing to do with what you're praying about, but all of a sudden you get a really clear thought of what you should do or what you shouldn't do. Or perhaps you're in a busy place and the next one, your mind quiets and the thought comes to you. Your mind quiets and the thought comes to you.

Or a very distinct intuition. God's a supernatural God. God speaks to us supernaturally. And sometimes you can hear things and you go, yeah, that's not God.

Well, you know, in times, honestly, it may not be God, but in other times it may be the Lord and you need to step out in faith in that. Sometimes you may get a mental picture of something, of you witnessing to somebody or somebody receiving the Lord or something. And then the last one is a dream or a vision. Now see, and I understand dream or vision.

Ooh. But understand God speaks to us through dreams and visions. It's an interesting thing that, and maybe you're sitting there going, yeah, he used to do that in the Old Testament. No, he still does that.

He still does that. Talks about it in the book of Acts, talks about, actually in Matthew, there's like five instances in the first two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew where God spoke to people in dreams. Now, not every dream you have is from God. Okay.

And yeah. And so what you want to do is to consider what the message might be in this dream and then see, check that dream or check the leading or check the voice or the intuition or any of these things and see if it lines up with scripture. If it doesn't line up with scripture, it's not God. It might be your flesh, might be the wisdom of the world, might be worse, might be your enemy. But if it doesn't line up with scripture, then it's not the voice of the Lord.

And I've heard some people come up with some of the craziest stuff. Well, God told me to do this and God told me to do that. And God told me to leave my wife and go marry that other woman and all, you know, just own it. But if it doesn't line up with scripture, that's not the voice of the Lord. The other thing you can do is check with those who are spiritually mature around you, your leaders or your pastor or whatever, and say, hey, I think God's leading me to do this.

And what do you think? And there's a safety net in there. But the life lesson here, the first life lesson of the evening is to develop a life of listening to the Lord and His word. Develop a life of listening to the Lord and His word. You see, the more you listen, the better you can listen.

The more you ignore it, the harder it is to hear. If you're trying to hear from the Lord on a certain issue or praying about God laying something on your heart, make sure that you're in a place where you're not anxious and the peace of God is ruling in your heart because it makes it easier for the Lord to speak to you. Somebody had asked recently about speaking, the Lord speaking to you. So I thought I'd take a couple minutes while Joshua had God speaking to him that we had talked about it.

You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be back with more powerful insight from God's word in just a moment. But first, your enemy, the devil, doesn't want you to experience the life-giving truths of God's word. He wants to rob you of the full life God wants for you.

But you can overcome his attacks because there is supernatural power in the word of God. That's why we want to send you Pastor David McGee's video message called A Checkup from the Neck Up. This powerful resource will show you how to revitalize your spiritual health and grow in your faith daily by meditating on God's powerful word. A Checkup from the Neck Up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life.

So please visit crossthebridge.com now to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up. Now back to today's message. Now verse four. Then Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the children of Israel, one man from every tribe. And Joshua said to them, Cross over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder. According to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come saying, What do these stones mean to you? Then you shall, verse seven, then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off, and these stones shall be a memorial to the children of Israel forever. Now notice that they were very organized by this point, that there was leadership established.

They were making the transformation, if you will, from just kind of a bunch of people that were wandering in the desert to having leadership established so that as they went into the battle, they were prepared. There's kind of two schools of thought in churches about this. And what you have to do is you have to maintain balance. There's one school of thought that says, well, any organization at all is just very unspiritual, that you shouldn't try to organize anything because after all, you never know what God's going to do. The other school of thought is let's organize everything, every moment, every second of the day. And what tends to happen there is you kind of, you can organize, let's be honest, you can organize the life out of your life or out of a church.

So what's important is to maintain some type of balance. There's two types of people in here tonight. One of them are going, oh no, we're going to organize the life right out of the church.

And you're sitting there and freaked out because in love, you probably live on that side. An organization makes you fearful. But then there's another group of people in here, they're going, praise God, he said that, you know, this thing has been like a Ferris wheel that ran off the axle or something.

And I've really been hoping that there'd be some more organization going on. Now it's interesting and we need to understand where they are geographically because this is important. Now we usually don't skip ahead, but I want you to notice in verse 19 and verse 20, and we're going to get, catch back up here, but I want you to understand that this place is in Gagal on the border of Jericho. We have Gagal close to where Bethabara is. Well, what does Bethabara have to do anything?

It's going to have something to do with it in just a minute. Gagal in the Hebrew means to roll away. Bethabara means house of crossing over. Anytime you see the word Beth, it is house of in the Hebrew or the Aramaic. Beth is house of bread. So we have Bethabara and we have Gagal and you're still going, okay, well, you know, I still don't get it. Well, it's kind of interesting when you combine, we've got stones, we've got Gagal meaning to roll away, Bethabara meaning to cross over. So this is a very important place and it continues to be an important place in the New Testament.

I'm going to tie something in for you that maybe you haven't seen before. John 1 verse 28 is speaking about the baptism of John the Baptist, where he was working. It says, these things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan where John was baptizing. Okay, well, what does that have to do with anything? John the Baptist was at Bethabara, which used to be Gagal in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures.

Still don't see the significance. There's a verse, a couple of verses in Matthew chapter three, verse seven. It says, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come into his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance and do not think to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. From what stones? From the stones we're talking about tonight. See, John wasn't just pointing off to some stones in the distance in this passage.

When you understand geographically where he was, he was actually pointing to those 12 stones that were set up as the memorial and saying, you know what? God can raise up children from these stones. Can God do that?

Oh, you betcha. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we forget, I don't know, because maybe we have a sordid past and we don't think God can use us. And then the other side, sometimes we get a little prideful of the fact that God is using us. Never develop pride about the fact that God is using you.

Never do that. Because, well, God will use anybody. God is, I don't know, maybe desperate's too strong of a word, but God will use anybody who's willing to be used. And even God, if God uses you to speak to somebody else, don't begin to develop pride in that.

You know why? Because we have a story in the Hebrew Scriptures where God used a donkey to say something to somebody. And the reality is, I don't think it's a big stretch. The reality is, guess what? God is still speaking through donkeys to people. Praise God.

I'm head donkey here, I guess. And I can't take pride in God speaking through me because, you know, most of you know my testimony. When I was born, I was born a deaf mute, couldn't speak, couldn't hear. But God had a plan. God had a plan. There's such a precious verse in John chapter 1, verse 11 and 12. It says, He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in His name. That's an awesome passage.

To as many as received Him and filled out all the paperwork and qualified, didn't have a checkered past and passed the background check. No, it doesn't say that to those who believe in His name. The second life lesson. God has adopted us as His children, and oh, here's the awesome part, and invited us into the Promised Land. God not only adopted us, but He wants us to come and live in His promises. Now, we've taught before, the Promised Land is not a picture of heaven.

It makes great songwriting material, but it's not a picture of heaven. Wow, because there won't be conflict and conquest and battles and pagan idolatry in heaven. We can be assured of that. And so what the Promised Land is, is the promises of God that we're to be walking into, we're to be walking into. And God, when He adopted us as His children, didn't just say, okay, I'm adopting you as my children. I can raise up children from stone or whatever, but now you're my child. Just stay there. Don't do anything.

Just sit there. And we taught before, that's not biblical Christianity. That may have been the form of Christianity many of us has experienced. As we taught before, you know, you've got unsaved, saved, and disciple. And so much of the church gets stuck in the middle, and they're saved, and they're going to heaven, but man, there's not going to be rewards there for them.

Spiritual rewards because they were doing things that the Lord had laid on their heart. How tragic it will be. There won't be sadness in heaven.

There won't be tears, but I'm not sure about regrets. There may be a few of those as we think of what we could have done for the Lord. The promises that He invited us into that we didn't walk into. Verse 8, and the children of Israel did so just as Joshua commanded and took up 12 stones from the midst of the Jordan as the Lord had spoken to Joshua according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there.

Now that's an interesting way verse 8 starts out. And the children of Israel did so. What did they do? They did what Joshua told them to do.

Don't miss the simplicity of this. If you had been standing there that day, I mean, think about it. Weren't there more pressing matters at hand? Hey, Joshua, you know, there's enemies over here, and you know, and I appreciate your little notion of playing with rocks, but you know, we really got serious stuff to handle here. They didn't go, hey, you know, Joshua, tell you what we did.

We actually took a vote about your little plan with the rocks. It got struck down. We're not into it.

That's not what happened. They didn't come to Joshua and go, Joshua, we thought about this. This plan doesn't make any sense to us.

Then we're not doing it. They trusted Joshua. So Joshua, God's speaking to you. Now, it's interesting because in the beginning it was just raw trust. They were kind of probably hoping this thing was going to work out with Joshua. But what had just happened in the last chapter?

Well, they saw the Jordan stop, and they went over into the other side. So because of those working out of the faith of Joshua, and they said, you know what? This guy's for real. There's stuff going on here that's definitely of God.

We can follow this guy. And then trust and circumstances combined, they said, we're with you. To the fact that when he asked them to do something, they didn't quite understand, they did it.

Why? Because there was trust, and they could see that he was hearing from God. And you know what?

That's the same with any Christian leadership. There's an interesting thing. Why were the people willing to submit to Joshua? Because they had seen something. You remember probably chapters and chapters ago, but there was a battle going on, and Moses was up on the hill. And Moses said he had Aaron, he had her, and then there was good old Joshua. Now Moses said, Aaron and her want you to stay up here. We're going to watch the battle from up here. You know, 52 inch plasma screen.

No, they didn't have that yet. But he turned to Joshua and said, Joshua, I want you to go down. I want you to fight.

And then of course, Joshua turned to him and Joshua said, you know, Mo, I've been thinking about this. I want to stay up here with you guys. That seems like you can see it better from up here. And I'd rather do that than go down there. Did he do that?

No. Notice he didn't send Aaron down there. I've got nothing against Aaron. I mean, Aaron was Aaron. That was Moses' brother. And you probably remember some things didn't go so well in the ministry of Aaron.

If you remember, you know, Moses went up to the hill to get the 10 commandments. Who'd he take with him? Took Joshua who stayed with the group. Aaron, what happened? It didn't go so well.

That's an understatement, isn't it? Moses comes back down and there's like this drunken orgy going on in Aaron's first role as assistant pastor. That's not good. But on that day, Moses didn't send Aaron down there. He sent Joshua and Joshua went. And Joshua was down there fighting while Moses was up there praying for him. You remember Aaron and her held up the hands of Moses and as they did, the battle went well.

What's my point? The people were able to submit to Joshua because they knew that Joshua was a man under submission. He was submitted to God. And because they knew that he was submitted to the Lord, they could follow him wholeheartedly. He bore the fruits of somebody that was following the Lord that is hearing from God and they followed him. They followed him even when they didn't understand it sometimes. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Now God wants you to pray this prayer so much that he died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ.

Modern life just keeps getting busier and busier by the day. As a result, a lot of Christians are missing out on the life giving nourishment of daily time in God's Word. That's why Pastor David McGee wants to help revitalize your spiritual health by sending you his video message titled A Checkup from the Neck Up. This resource shows you how to meditate daily on God's Word so that His truth can transform your life. A Checkup from the Neck Up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life. So please visit crossthebridge.com now to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up.

You know each day comes with its share of stresses. So what better way to wake up than with an encouraging Word from the Lord? Visit crossthebridge.com and sign up now for David McGee's email devotionals. Each devotion includes scripture and a message from the heart of David McGee. It's easy and it's free. Sign up today at crossthebridge.com. And be sure to join us next time on Cross the Bridge as we continue in the book of Joshua. We'll see you then.