Joshua Chapter 5:1-9

See, a lot of times in our lives and ministry and serving the Lord, we come up with the reasons we can't serve the Lord. Well, I can't serve the Lord because of this. I can't serve the Lord because of that. But what we should do is present to the Lord, Lord, this is what's in the way. And I ask you to remove it. And you know what God will do?

He's faithful to remove it. Do you understand there is no obstacle in your life that God can't remove? Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. God takes pleasure in removing obstacles for His children. Stay tuned as Pastor David discusses this today in his teaching from the Book of Joshua, Chapter 5. But before we join Pastor David, 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 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, Obstacles and Walls. Turn with me to Joshua, Chapter 5. We're continuing on in our chapter by chapter study of God's Word. Last week we saw the Israelites crossing into Jordan.

A lot of exciting stuff there. And it continues. The Book of Joshua was just an incredible book. And so we saw last week that step of faith, that step of obedience.

And we kind of recognize that those two things go hand in hand. And so now we jump on in here in Chapter 5 of Joshua, Verse 1. So it was when all the kings of the Amorites who were on the west side of the Jordan, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel until we had crossed over, that their heart melted and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the children of Israel.

Now, this is interesting for a lot of different reasons. Number one, understand the Amorites and the Canaanites kind of thought of the Jordan as a natural boundary where armies couldn't usually go through the river. They had to go around the river, which gave them time, of course, to plan accordingly and set up their military strategy. So first thing that happens is they're kind of caught off guard. And the other thing, notice that it says that they were filled with fear.

Their hearts melted and they were softened. Now, understand something that when people who don't know the Lord hear what the Lord is doing, their hearts are melted and sometimes it causes fear. I think this is the thing that you see a lot of times with atheists because there's a fear there.

I mean, they're living their lives according to the fact and they're hoping and banking on the fact that God is not real and God does not exist. And there's a fear there. There's a fear that they may be wrong because if they are wrong, they've lost everything. And I think a lot of times that's out of that fear are some of the things that they say. I watch this atheist guy on television sometimes and you got to be careful.

You want to keep soft things around you if you're watching somebody like that because they don't hurt the TV when you throw them at them. But a lot of what he is responding to and speaking out of is fear, I think. It's fear that he's going to be wrong. If we're wrong, and of course we're not, but if we were wrong, what would we lose?

We don't have anything to lose. But an atheist, if he's wrong, loses everything. It's interesting and I've had this conversation with people who said, there is no God. And I say, really?

Yeah, there is no God. And I say, okay, how can you be sure? Well, I'm just sure.

Okay. And then I ask him, what percent of the wisdom of the universe do you think that you have? 3%, 5%? If they're really arrogant, they'll say 5%. Nobody ever says 100%. If they say 100%, they can quit looking for God.

They must be him. But anyway, so they say, okay, 5%. And I said, okay, so you are willing to wager on 95% of what you don't know that there is no God.

Those are just, those are not good odds for somebody to wager their life, their eternal life, their eternal existence on 95% of what they don't know. So their hearts are softened. This is an opportunity for them to respond to the Lord.

We kind of know what happens later and they don't respond to the Lord, but it is an opportunity for them to respond to the Lord. And I like what Alfred Edersheim says. He says, the same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.

The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. What's meant by that? Situations and circumstances come about in our lives. And it's amazing to me because something devastating can happen to somebody, perhaps the loss of a child. And one couple or one family will be drawn closer to the Lord from that. And yet the same instance, another couple, another family, other individuals will harden their hearts to God because of those circumstances. So anyway, the Amorites and the Canaanites, they were counting on this River Jordan kind of being a border against the Israelites and it ended up not to be a border.

Why? Because God removed the obstacle. God said, that Jordan's in the way, not a big deal.

Here, let me hold it back for a little bit. Not a big deal to God. And you know why? Because God takes pleasure in removing obstacles for his children. That's the first life lesson. God takes pleasure in removing obstacles for his children. See, a lot of times in our lives and ministry and serving the Lord, we come up with the reasons we can't serve the Lord. Well, I can't serve the Lord because of this. I can't serve the Lord because of that. But what we should do is present to the Lord, Lord, this is what's in the way. And I ask you to remove it. And you know what God will do?

He's faithful to remove it. Do you understand there is no obstacle in your life that God can't remove? Nothing.

Nothing. God can remove any obstacle from your life. Verse 2. At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, make Flintstones for yourselves and circumcise the sons of Israel again the second time. Now, if I'm Joshua, at this point, God has kind of lost me. You know, I'm sitting here. You've crossed the Jordan. You're in the promised land. You're getting ready for a battle.

And you're wondering, okay, what am I going to do? And God says, I want you to make some knives and circumcise all your males. Now, as military strategies go, that's not really a good one. If you remember, there's a story back in Genesis where they actually, you know, they got some other guys to circumcise themselves. And while they still couldn't walk, they went in there and they just wiped them out. So I'm thinking Joshua was probably remembering that little story, you know, and he's going, uh-oh. But you know what's interesting? Verse 1, it says they're afraid.

Totally freaked out, right? So military strategy would suggest what? Go in and just go ahead and wipe them out. But sometimes, now not all the time, but sometimes God's wisdom is at odds with the wisdom of the world. And God has them what? God has them wait here at Gagal for a little while.

I find that really interesting. And you know what? We need to realize God's not in a hurry. Do you realize God's not in a hurry? Now, I'll be honest, it's kind of hard for me to identify with that because I tend to get, you know, kind of excited and doing this and doing that, doing this and doing that.

Imagine that if you will. And so, but to know that God's not in a hurry, God's not sitting there while you're working through issues going, come on already. Aren't you through with this? He's very patiently working in our lives. And at this time, very patiently, he's setting this whole thing up.

Why is that? Because Joshua's got an encounter that's going to happen in a minute or in a few verses. And we're going to see who that encounter is with. It's not with an angel, by the way. And I'm going to show you why it's not just an angel. Joshua is about to have an encounter with Jesus.

And see, this is the thing, guys. We think life is about the Jericho's. Life is not about the Jericho's.

The Jericho's are always going to be there. Life's about Jesus. And if the enemy can get you thinking life's about the Jericho's, you're halfway defeated already. It's not about the next battle. It's about Jesus.

And there'll be times when you need to just sit still and be reminded of that one simple thing. It's about Jesus. Let's read on verse three. So Joshua argued with God.

No, that's not what it is. So Joshua made flint knives for himself and circumcised the sons of Israel at the hill of the Vorskans. It's a great geographical name there. Verse four, and this is, can you imagine trying to sell a house? It's on the hill of the Vorskans.

It's uh, anyway, sorry. And this is the reason it's in the Bible. Verse four, and this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them.

All the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war had died in the wilderness on the way after they'd come out of Egypt for all the people who came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness on the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised. This is a real matter of faith because here they are probably within sight of Jericho. And God gives Joshua directions that seem to really be kind of at odds with the mission. But notice Joshua follows through.

He does exactly as he's been told. Now, if you remember circumcision happens on the eighth day and no longer happens on the eighth day, unless you're Jewish, it happens, you know, within a day or two of you being born. But it's interesting because what they found is that for a newborn infant on the eighth day is when vitamin K, which is a clotting agent is at the peak of your entire life in a ratio sense.

Isn't that amazing? Now we didn't discover that until just a few years ago, but God knew and God said on the eighth day is when you want to circumcise your infant. And for younger people, if you're wondering what circumcision means, parents, I'm going to let you be parents on this one. Okay. You can explain later.

All right. So, but understand when we talk about circumcision, circumcised is mentioned 22 times in the New Testament and 27 times in the Old Testament. But when you get to the second word, the word circumcision, you find that once in the Old Testament and 33 times in the New Testament.

Now that intrigues me. So we need to stop and really look at what circumcision represents in the New Testament sense. Now understand it was a beautiful picture of God's covenant relationship, going back to Genesis with the people of Israel.

But what happens years from this is they begin to kind of, well, this is kind of the dividing line, if you will. There's those of the circumcision and there are those who are uncircumcised and the uncircumcised tends to paint a picture of somebody that's outside the love and the care of God is what ended up happening. Now, before you get too carried away with throwing stones at the Jewish people, understand, you see that a lot here in the church in America. Now we, you know, we treat people like uncircumcised Gentile, heathen dogs and that, you know, instead of presenting the love of God to them and understanding that the thing that stands between them and us, the difference is, is Jesus. The difference is a short, simple prayer and a changed life. And somebody cared for us. Somebody cared for me. Even while I was acting like a Gentile heathen dog, somebody loved me enough to say, you know what, there's a better way.

You don't have to live like that. I'm so glad they did because now the church kind of throws down dividing lines. Oh, we even do it within ourselves, don't we? Well, what do you believe about this?

Well, what do you believe about that? What can we argue about? Again, if we can agree on Jesus and how we're born again, that should work through the majority of the arguments. We talk about how lost people, people that don't know Jesus are important to us. And we should talk about important, how they're important to us.

But you know what? If we only do that in here, we're kind of missing the point. What we need to do, what you need to do, what I need to do is tell people that don't know Jesus, how important they are to you and how much you love them. Because if we only talk about it amongst ourselves, that's, that's a little bogus because they're out there waiting to hear that they're important to God, that they're important to you, that God loves them and God has a plan for their life. 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. Back to the circumcision. Remember, Jesus himself was circumcised in Luke chapter 2 verse 21. It says, And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

So this is something that Jesus did and it's a role model for us. Now, let's look at the next verse and then we'll talk about circumcision some more. For the children of Israel walked 40 years in the wilderness till all the people who were men of war who came out of Egypt were consumed because they did not obey the voice of the Lord to whom the Lord swore that he would not show them the land which the Lord had sworn to their fathers that he would give us a land flowing with milk and honey.

So they hadn't all the time they're wandering through the wilderness. They hadn't been circumcised. Those who were circumcised died in the desert. So the ones who came into the promised land were still not circumcised. Now, I think there might be a picture there and I'm not going to draw absolutes, but so many of the circumcision of the Jewish people never made the belief in Messiah into the promises of God.

But mainly it's Gentiles, the uncircumcision that have been allowed to go into the promises of God. Now we certainly see in the book of Revelation, we see a Jewish revival, if you will. And then I'm just taking the book of Revelation literally. Now, understand too, to understand the book of Revelation, you got to understand the book of Joshua. Now we're going to talk about some parallels tonight, but there's over 800 Old Testament references in the book of Revelation. What is circumcision?

What is that? What spiritual concept does that have to us? Well, there's many New Testament references. I just want to mention one, Colossians chapter two, verse 10 says, and you are complete through your union with Christ.

He is the Lord over every ruler and authority in the universe. When you came to Christ, you were circumcised, but not by a physical procedure. It was a spiritual procedure, the cutting away of your sinful nature, the new King James and the King James say a circumcision without hands.

Now here's the thing. If somebody is approaching you to circumcise you and they, they do it in the hospitals and they do it like at a day or two old, you know, if somebody had come to me when John David or Benjamin was a baby and said, Hey, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to circumcise your child. I I've never done it before, but I, you know, I, I read a manual. I don't think it's that hard.

It'll be okay. I would feel more than a little nervous, but if a surgeon came to me and said, you know what? I do this a lot.

This is actually what I do. And I know how to do it. There's been a lot of experience and, and you know what? I really, I really care for people. This is part of how I care for people. Then I'm going to feel good about that.

What's my point. The Lord desires to cut away our fleshly nature, to circumcise it. If you will, he desires to cut away that old nature and you know what? You can trust him.

He's a very skilled surgeon. If you will, he wants to love you. And part of loving you is changing you. And part of changing you is putting away this old nature. And I know this can be scary, but you know, what's even scarier is the alternative.

The alternative is to cling to the old nature, which means for your death and destruction. It's better to embrace the newness of life and allow the trusted surgeon to have the operation in our lives. This is a very personal thing. Just like circumcision. It's a very personal thing. It's a very personal thing.

I can't make the decision for you. I can encourage you to make the decision to go through the process of dying to yourself and living for God. But friend, that's something you have to do. And you have to do it alone with God, no other friend, no other family, no other person there, but you and the Lord. But again, you can trust God.

You can trust God. Also notice this verse says you are complete through your union with Christ. You are complete through your union with Christ. You know what that means? That you are complete through your union with that you, all you need is Jesus.

All you need is Jesus. Oh, that's an oversimplification, pastor David. No, it's not.

No, it's not. I like what Corrie Ten Boom said. She said, she said, you don't know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you got. You don't know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you got. And then you discover that, you know what? Things in your life can go away. Maybe things that are valuable to you, things that are important to you. But at that point you will realize that the primary thing of primary importance is Jesus.

And that's really all you need. Verse seven, then Joshua circumcised their sons whom he raised up in the place for they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. So it was when they had finished circumcising all the people that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed. Then the Lord said to Joshua, this day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. Therefore, the name of the place is called Gagal to this day. And we talked about this last week, that Gagal is an important place and that Gagal itself means rolled away. And even as it said, rolled away the reproach of Egypt, the place was named Gagal.

Now Gagal was an important place to the people of Israel in that it was kind of the gateway into the promised land. And I think there's some special significance in the fact that part of our gateway into the promised land Jesus very much had the rolling away of the stone every member of the garden tomb. Now I've been to the garden tomb and these weren't little rocks.

These were huge stones that they put in place. Let me qualify something because I've seen something and people talk about this. And it's one of those things we pick up that it seems nice and warm and fuzzy, but it's probably not very accurate. And that's if I've seen cartoons and I've seen stuff, you know, where Jesus is in the tomb and the angels come and, you know, they roll away the stone so Jesus can get out. There's kind of a problem with that. Jesus, see, don't get the picture that Jesus is in there in the tomb going, hey, God, come on, come on. I'm alive. Please roll away the rock so I can get out.

That's not a good picture. Jesus didn't need them to roll away the roll away the stone so he could get out. As a matter of fact, Jesus didn't need them to roll away the stone. He didn't need the stone rolled away at all. He could have just left. Why was the stone rolled away?

Stone was rolled away for you and me. So we could know the tomb's empty. The tomb is empty.

Guys, I've been there. You know, it's, you go to Muhammad's tomb, you know what you see? Muhammad's bones, you know, you go to Buddha's tomb, you know what you see? Buddha's bones. You go to Jesus's tomb, you know what you see? Nothing. It's empty.

He ain't there. That is the difference between our religion and every other world religion. So this thing of rolled away and Gagau, again, is important for a lot of reasons. And we talked about it a little bit last week, but let's talk about it a little bit more. We talked about it being a place of remembrance last week, and it was important for them to remember. And it's important for us to remember our gateway into the promised land. Is it your works? No, no, it's Jesus. It's Jesus. And that's something that we all have in common.

Understand something. If you've asked Jesus to forgive your sins, Jesus has forgiven you of your sins. It doesn't matter how foul, how bad, or how respectable you think they were. Jesus has dealt with them. So we need to always remember that place, if you will, Calvary.

Also this place is at Gagau. I think Joshua, this is a place Joshua probably had to kind of die to himself in the sense that he had the reminder that God was running the show. It wasn't Joshua. Understand that's something that's a lesson we all need. God will allow you to run your life if you want to, but if you do that, don't complain to Him about the results. If you allow Him to lead you, Him to run your life, you'll be amazed at the difference. Now, a lot of us have experienced both sides of that. 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.

Jesus said He would not turn anybody away who comes to Him, and He came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. 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.