Joshua Chapter 4:8-19

Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the Senior Pastor of the Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Christianity is not a retreating faith. It is an advancing faith. Pastor David teaches on this topic and more today as he continues his study in the book of Joshua, chapter 4. But first, have you ever experienced a 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 Neccah. In this inspiring teaching, you'll find biblical truths that can restore your spiritual health. A Checkup from the Neccah 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 Neccah. Now here's David McGee with part three of his teaching, Hearing from the Lord. Turn with me to Joshua, chapter 4, verse 15. Then the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying, Command the priests who bear the ark of the testimony to come up from the Jordan. Joshua therefore commanded the priests, saying, Come up from the Jordan. And it came to pass when the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord had come from the midst of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests' feet touched the dry land, that the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks as before. Now it's interesting when you look at what God said to Joshua. God told Joshua what to tell the people, and Joshua told the people exactly what God had spoken to him. And then it came to pass.

Why? Because God always does what He says He's going to do. They come through the Jordan, and the water that had been held back all of a sudden comes down, and, oh, isn't that cool? That is so cool. The water that was held back after they got through it, it came down, and that's just, isn't that nice, warm, fuzzy?

That's great, but wait a minute. If they wanted to go back now, how would they go back? It's interesting to me to know God cut their retreat off. They couldn't go backwards. There's a big river there now. God got them where He wanted them to be, and He sealed off their retreat. No turning back. The life lesson here is Christianity is not a retreating faith.

It is an advancing faith. We had a men's meeting a month ago, and we had one last year, and we call them men's attack. Why? Because they're not retreats. I mean, retreat's a nice, fuzzy word, and we may use it at some point, but that whole retreat thing, I don't like it. Why?

Because it's not really biblical. Let's retreat. Let's run away. Oh, the enemy's coming. Retreat, retreat. I mean, you think of white flags and bad things and we've lost, run kind of stuff going on. That's not a notion we're supposed to have.

And I hear some believers. Oh, man. Okay. I'm getting ready. I'm going to warn you. Okay. Fasten your seatbelts.

There's a little turbulence coming. And, you know, I'm getting ready to go from preaching, from pastoring to teaching to just flat out meddling with you. All right. But I'm doing it in love.

This notion of, because sometimes you ask people, hey, how you doing? I'm just holding on. And you know what? Guys, that's not what Jesus died to provide for us that we just hold on. I'm just trying to make it. I hope I make it.

I'm probably not, but I hope I'll make it. Is that biblical Christianity? No, that's slipping into, well, the theological term that I've developed and coined now, that's slipping to Eor-ism. We, you know, you know, Eor, we've, you know, Eor, everything you ran by Eor, hey, Eor, we're going to, it's from Winnie the Pooh. Some of you are going, Eor, who is Eor?

I've never heard of him in the whole Hebrew, in the whole Bible. There's no Eor. There's not, it's Winnie the Pooh. Go with me for just a minute. But every time, every time, you know, every time, you know, Eor, what do you think we're going to do? That'll never work.

That won't happen. And we've had, to be honest, we've had some Eors in the church before. We had a few when we were, we were really tiny home Bible study moving into the 1600 square foot building, really getting charged up and filled with faith. And, you know, and then we go, okay, we're going to add a service. And, you know, oh, nobody will come.

No, no, really. Now we're getting more chairs. Everybody in Kernsville is already here.

Yeah, but there's people from around. They won't make the drop. Don't be an Eor. God paid too high a price for you to be an Eor. I love Tigger. That's who I want. I want to be a Tigger. And if you've got a problem with Disney, just, just, just let it slide for just a minute.

Okay. I want to be a Tigger, you know, Tigger, those bouncing bounce, you know, wonderful thing about Tigger and that whole deal. I actually got a little thing. It says Tata for now, you know, cause that's what Tigger used to say. And you know what this is going to be, it's going to sound really weird, but you know what, when I pass away at my funeral, I want a big son that says Tata for now. They may tell you I'm dead, but that's not, I'll be more alive at that point than I've ever been. So I want to be more of a Tigger.

Why? Because I believe Christians, biblically based Christians should be advancing and not retreating. And you see this here, God cut off his retreat and, and, and Jesus didn't just die for you.

So you could hold on until you die. That he came to give you life and it more abundantly seeing so often we, this is what we portray. We, you know, we act like Eors around unbelievers and we don't know why they don't want to go to church. Why don't you, why don't you come to church with it lasts forever. It's got talks and talks and talks and talks. Hope you're not used to 15 minutes sermons.

Cause it's not like that. Would you like to go? No, I, I think I'm okay.

Thanks for inviting me though. See, he came to give us life and he came that we might offer life to others. And you know what, when, when you do that Eor thing, you're giving up so much, you're giving up our blood ball and God given spiritual heritage and freedom that come to us free, but not cheap. That's what Jesus died to provide for us.

And we should walk in it. Verse 19. Now the people came up from the Jordan on the 10th day of the first month and they camped in Gagal on the East border of Jericho. Now, guys, here, here's another example of really needing to know your Bible. And also not just the new Testament. Now I pray a long time ago about how we wanted to have the teaching done here. And there's a reason that our midweek is centered on the Hebrew scriptures, the old Testament and the Sunday morning is on the new Testament, because we need to know both of them.

It's amazing. When I've talked to some people that go, Hey, you know, Old Testament, it's, it's, it's old. We don't need to look at it to study it. And it's, it's, it's, it's not easy to look at it, to study it. You can't understand the new Testament without understanding the old Testament. You can't really understand the gospel until you understand what it says in Leviticus, that there is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood. And here again, there's something right here about the 10th day of the first month.

What's significant about that? Well, if you've been here long enough, when we were in Exodus chapter 12, verse one, now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, this month shall be your beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you speak to all the congregation of Israel saying on the 10th of this month, every man shall take for himself, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.

This was not accident. Understand something there's there's two calendar. I'm not going to get deep into this right now, but there's two calendars, two Jewish calendars. There's the sacred and the civil.

Okay. The sacred and the seventh month starts the sacred calendar. So the seventh month of the civil calendar begins a sacred calendar.

This, the sacred calendar starts with first month here with Passover first month, 10th day. So here is in advance going back 40 years ago to the day the Lord had them take a lamb into their house. They had the lamb in there for four days. It lived in the house. They fed it. They gave it water.

The kids probably named it. And then after four days, that lamb was sacrificed. And what an amazing thing that on that day, 40 years to the day, they were reminded of the lamb that was received into the house, which was about to be slain. This book's so awesome. You can study and dig from now till the time you go to be with Jesus and then some, and still be seeing stuff like that.

It's an amazing book. And so almost in advance of when they were going to be going into the promised land, first month, 10th day, they're remembering. They're remembering the promises of God. They're remembering the Passover lamb. As a matter of fact, next week we'll get into the next chapter.

They celebrate Passover. Now, and it's important to remember as you go into the promises of God that you remember, that you remember. There's no coincidences in here. Everything that's in here is in here for a reason.

You know, like we tied Bethabara and Gilgal and John the Baptist talking about the stones and now tying the dates with the Passover. And there's, you know what, let me share one other thing about that. I read this verse for a long time and wondered, why is this in here? You know, you've probably read Begetting Stuff and wondered that, haven't you? All this, we get three chapters of people begetting people. What is up with that? Especially as a new believer, you're like, okay, okay.

But you know what? There's always something in those genealogies, always something in those genealogies. I've not seen a genealogy that didn't mean something. Sometimes it took me years and years to see something. Kind of like finding this verse right now. It's taken me years and years, because this is my study bibles.

It kind of is falling apart, so I can't really teach out of it anymore. So give me a moment. Oh, here we go. You don't need to turn there.

I'll read it to you. Genesis chapter eight, verse four. This is according to the civil calendar, because the sacred calendar had not been set up yet. It was set up in the book of Exodus. Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the 17th day of the month on the mountains of Ararat. What's going on here is Noah finally, the ark has finally rested on the Mount Ararat.

And I used to read that verse and I thought, okay, so? Why aren't we told it's resting the seventh month, the 17th day of the month? Well, they took the lamb in their house on the seventh month, on the 10th day, right? Now it's the first month because it's the sacred calendar, so go with me on this.

But on the civil calendar, it's the seventh month. The 10th day, they received the lamb into them. What happened on the 14th? They sacrificed the lamb on the 14th. What other historic event took place on the Passover? Jesus Christ died for our sins. What happened three days after that on the 17th? Jesus was resurrected. Back here in Genesis chapter eight, the day that ark touched the mountain was the anniversary in advance of when Jesus came out from the grave to get a new beginning to us.

Guys, there's nothing in there by coincidence or by chance. It's all connected. And sometimes it takes us a while to see the connections, but man, they're there. And when you uncover stuff like this, God just jazzes you, just builds your faith, builds my faith. See, they were reminded, they were reminded of that day when they took the lamb into their house. They were reminded of the day when they shed the lamb's blood and put it on the doorpost.

They were probably reminded of Rahab's scarlet thread saving their buddies. And see, it's all tied together, guys. It's all tied together. This book is one book. The whole book, if you want to boil it down for you, the whole book is God created man, God loved man, God desired fellowship with man, man rebelled. Now God is searching for us. He paid a price for us to be forgiven, to be in right relationship with him.

And he won't stop until it's over. That's the whole book. That's what happened in the garden is God desired fellowship with man. That's what happened with the tabernacle. God desired fellowship with man.

That's what happened with the temple. God desired fellowship with man. That's what the cross is all about. God desired fellowship with man. And then in the book in Revelation, it's about God fellowshiping with man because it says, and God will dwell with them and they shall be his people and he shall be their God.

That's what the whole book's about. 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. This is Pastor David McGee with Cross the Bridge.

You know, I want to thank you for listening to Cross the Bridge. I also want to tell you about an exciting website. The website is lostlovedones.org and it works very simply like this. You go to the website and you put the first names of up to 10 people that we begin praying that they get saved. Now it takes two things to get saved, presentation and prayer. And what we're offering is prayer and also there's different tools there to help you present the gospel to them. So we're there with you, helping you with the presentation, helping you with the prayer.

There's over 920 people that belong to the prayer team on Lost Loved Ones and you can join the prayer team as well and help us to pray for others who don't yet know Jesus and together we can see a huge revival starting with your lost loved ones. Now back to today's message. Verse 20, and those 12 stones which they took out of the Jordan Joshua set up and could go, why did they set up 12 stones?

Why do that? To remind them, to remind them. What were they going to do? They were going to forget that they ever crossed this river?

Yeah. Well how could they forget something of such great significance? Because that's what we do. We forget. We forget things. We forget things like anniversaries and birthdays. We forget phone numbers, email addresses. We just forget things and we forget things that are really, really important sometimes.

Why? Our final life lesson. Sometimes we forget what we should remember and remember what we should forget. Sometimes we forget what we should remember and we remember what we should forget.

There's things that have happened in your life. You need to forget them. There's pain, damage, heartache and some of you still allow yourself to be held by that bondage and you need to forget that stuff. You need to forget it. There's things that we should forget in our life.

Painful things. Things that may be hard to forget, but things that we should forget and things that we should remember. Guys, do you understand that the greatest event in human history was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Do you understand God knows us so much that He put into place something to remind us? What do you think communion is? Why do you think Jesus told us do this and remember me?