Joshua Chapter 24:1-7

We can churn and we can do stuff and we can get caught up in the flesh and God's not going to bless that. But if you're willing to wait on the Lord, God will do it better than you could ever do it. If you want to live a life of blessing, what you need to do is understand God blesses obedience.

Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. We shouldn't expect God to bless things done in the flesh. Today, Pastor David discusses the importance of talking to God and waiting on the answer as he continues his study in the book of Joshua chapter 24. But first, do you ever feel like God is cutting away parts of you like a gardener pruning a tree?

Well, I hope you said yes to this question because it means God is shaping you so that you can bear even more fruit in your life. We want to help you embrace God's pruning in your life by sending you Pastor David McGee's three-part audio series, Abiding in Christ, Keys to a Fruitful Life. It's our way of saying thank you for your gift to help share the truth of scripture with more people around the world through Cross the Bridge. So get your copy of Abiding in Christ when you give today at crossthebridge.com and discover how you can bear more fruit for God's kingdom.

Now here's David McGee with his teaching, Don't Be a Fitsitter. Well, here we are, Joshua chapter 24, final chapter of Joshua. If you would turn there with me, Joshua chapter 24 and verse 1 says, Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to shechem and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God.

I want you to notice something in this verse that you may skip past. Look at the organization that is happening in Israel at this point. It says called for the elders, for their heads, for their judges, for their officers. Now this tells me something, that this group was somewhat organized. If you think about the challenge of moving this many people through the desert and the challenge of moving this many people into battles and wars, it took a lot of organization.

And I think sometimes we look past that and, you know, they weren't just running around, they were highly organized. I can't imagine anybody in this battle, you know, you coming up to somebody and about going, okay, who are you fighting with? Well, I'm not really fighting with any particular group. Well, I mean, who's your leader? Well, I don't really have a leader.

I just kind of visit all the different tribes. Well, who do you fight with? Well, I don't really fight with anybody.

I'm kind of a one man army. See, nobody was doing that. You know why? Because they couldn't really have an effect being like that. Here's where we err. We either err in one of two ways. We either emphasize too much organization or we emphasize too little organization in the life of the church. And I've seen examples of both. I've seen people that just tried to organize the life out of the church and they succeeded. And then I've seen people who had so little organization that it really, it didn't glorify God. And you've probably seen examples of this, you know, too. And we don't want to err on either side.

And I don't, to be honest, I don't think we do. And when you look at the life of Jesus, do you understand his ministry was organized? He had 12 guys that he chose to train. He sent them out two by two. They had a treasure. I mean, there was some organization to it, but it wasn't overly organized.

He didn't organize the life out of it. Verse 2. And Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord God of Israel, your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in old times and they served other gods. Now, what Joshua's getting ready to do for the next few verses is he's kind of doing a review of the history of the nation of Israel. What's really kind of cool as we go through these next few verses is to realize all these things have been taught here. All these things from Genesis on, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, we've gone through. If you've been here for very long, as I go through this list, you'll go, oh yeah, I remember that.

Oh yeah, I remember when he did that and they did this. And there's such a power. And some of you, I've had conversations with some of you go, you know what, I didn't know how much I didn't know until I came here. And some of you have even said, you know, I've wondered why I didn't know more about the Bible. Somebody shared the other night that they had sat and kind of beat themselves up because they didn't know more about the Bible. And then either last Sunday morning or last Thursday night, you know, I mentioned that you can be in church for 50 years and still not know the Bible if it's not being taught. You see, if it's just a verse here and a verse there, you're not really being taught the Bible. You'll never understand what the deal with Joshua is.

You'll never understand about John's gospel and the way that it's really formed and the way it's presented. But there's a beauty and there's a simplicity in going verse by verse, chapter by chapter. And you know what, to know that from Genesis 1, 1, way back when we were just, you know, just my family really in the home study, we were digging and digging and going and going. And as we went, God blessed and God blessed and God blessed to the point that, you know, I love what Paul says in the Acts chapter 20, verse 27. He says, for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. What a neat verse. What a neat verse. And I understand that should the Lord tarry and I get to teach all the way through the book, I'm going to do just that. I'm going to teach all the way through the book.

So at some point, X number of years in the future, you'll be able to say, you know what, I've not only read the whole book, but I've studied the whole book. Verse 3, then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, led him throughout all the land of Canaan and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. Abraham is an interesting study.

And we need to understand something that's very basic, but we often forget. Why did God choose Abraham? Now some people go, well, you know, because he was a Jew. No, he wasn't. He wasn't a Jew when God chose him. As a matter of fact, his father made idols. So Abraham himself was a idol worshipping pagan.

Don't take my word for it. It's in the book. It's what the book says. That's what he was doing when God called him.

See, because we get the mistaken impression sometimes. We think that what God does is God looks out over a crowd and he goes, oh, there's that one that has that spark of innate human goodness. I'll choose him to glorify my name.

That sounds nice and warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? Problem is, it doesn't line up with scripture. Because you know what God says? God says, I choose the foolish things to confound the wise.

Not so many noble, not so many high and mighty, but the foolish things. Praise God. Praise God. Because you know what? I stand up here and God chose me. I don't know why.

And may I never figure out why. A couple of weeks ago, I went to the TCT, the TBN affiliate, and they did an on-air interview, you know. And I walked back into the green room, the dressing room kind of thing. And I walk in there. And there's a guy that I went to school with in high school. And he looked at me and his eyes got real big. And the guy said, this is David McGaig. He said, I know, David. And he looked at me and he said, what are you doing here? I said, praise God. I got a story to tell you, man. Because you know, the last time this guy knew me, I was dealing drugs and all sorts of silly, stupid stuff. See, God chooses to use who he chooses to use.

And sometimes all we can do is sit and shake our heads and go, God, why'd you choose them? That's when he gets the glory. See, if you can look at somebody and go, what's obvious why God chose him? He's a highly educated man. He's well-spoken. He dresses nice. He wears suits and whatnot. And you know, it's obvious to see why God would choose a man of that high standard. But who's getting the glory then?

See, but when you see somebody and you go, what? See, God chooses people who the world might look past. We talked about that with the disciples. The reason they were free to follow Jesus is because no other rabbi had looked to him and said, follow me. So they'd grown up as the outcast with no rabbi to follow. And then Jesus, not just a rabbi, the rabbi, the son of God, the teacher, went to him and said, follow me. See, and that's what happened with Abraham. It wasn't that Abraham was all that good in the beginning. He probably remembered the story. I mean, even after he was chosen, you know, he had some pretty serious uh-ohs or boo-boos or whatever you want to call it. You know, that's my sister. You know, that whole bit was really his wife, which part was part of his half-sister.

But we're not going into that tonight. Hebrews in chapter 11, the Hall of Faith, if you will, tells us, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. See again, Abraham was not a Jew when he was chosen.

He was the son of an idol, worshiping, idol-making pagan. And in some kind of weird way, that encourages me that God doesn't just look across the field and pick the cream of the crop. All occasionally he does, but that's the rare exception. He chooses us. He chooses us. Going back to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6, talking about this faith thing, Abraham, he didn't know where he was going. It was by faith. He says, but without faith, it is impossible to please him. It's impossible to please God without faith. What kind of faith? God will ask you to do things that require faith. If all your life, all your Christian experience, all that you do is always safe, oh man, you're missing out on a whole lot.

Because occasionally the Lord will ask you to do something radical. He'll ask you to step out in a big move of faith, and He's waiting for you to do it. And if you don't do that, you'll miss out.

You'll miss out. 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, what does it mean when God prunes away at parts of your life? Is He angry at you? Have you done something wrong?

Far from it. Jesus teaches in John 15 that God lovingly removes things from your life so that you can grow into the person He created you to be and bear more fruit for Christ. We want to help you do that by sending you Abiding in Christ, Keys to a Fruitful Life, a three-part audio series from Pastor David McGee on what it means to be pruned by God and how you can embrace the process. This encouraging resource is our way of thanking you for your gift to help reach more people with the powerful truth of the gospel through Cross the Bridge. So go to crossthebridge.com today and request your copy of this series.

Now, back to today's message. Now you notice in verse three it says, And gave him Isaac. You know what's interesting? Didn't He give him another son too? Yeah, Ishmael. Well, why doesn't it mention Ishmael here? Because Ishmael was when Abraham acted in the flesh. Ishmael was not the son of promise. Ishmael was what Abraham made happen in an act of disobedience. Isaac was what happened in an act of obedience as Abraham waited on the Lord.

That's important for us to realize. You know why? Because God does not bless acts of the flesh and acts of disobedience. He doesn't do it. He doesn't bless the Ishmael mentality.

He blesses the Isaac mentality. We can churn and we can do stuff and we can get caught up in the flesh and God's not going to bless that. But if you're willing to wait on the Lord, Lord, you do this.

You do this. Lord, I'll wait on you. God will do it better than you could ever do it. And God blessed Isaac because that was accomplished by God, not by the flesh.

The first life lesson is don't expect God to bless things done in the flesh without waiting and talking to Him. Some of you may be involved in something right now that it's not working or it doesn't seem like it's of God. Well, then you might want to take the time to go back and think, okay, when I started doing this, did I really pray about this? When I started doing this, did I really ask God, God, do you want me to do this? And did I hear yes at that moment? Or did I hear silence and kind of interpret that as yes? Or worse yet, did I say, God, here's my plans, bless Him instead of asking Him what I wanted to do?

Now, the beauty is God can even redeem our mistakes and our bad choices. But if you want to live a life of blessing, what you need to do is understand God blesses obedience. And the cool thing is He wants you to ask Him.

Do you understand that? He wants you to ask Him all the stuff you want to do. Lord, where do you want me to live? Lord, where do you want me to work?

He wants to be involved in every detail. Lord, do you want me to buy this car? Do you not want me to buy this car?

Do you want me to do this? And the Lord will answer you because He wants to be Lord of your life. You understand the concept of Lord is that He controls everything. And so often we don't ask Him and then when things don't work out so well, we're ready to blame Him. Well, Lord, this isn't going very well. Well, I'm glad to see you're finally talking to me about it.

Yeah. See, that's what happens. And it goes so much better if you ask the Lord on the front side. Some of you are nodding your heads knowingly. Amen. Done both.

Don't want to do that other thing again. God wants to bless you. God knows everything.

Okay. How much do you know? I mean, compared to God, how much do you know?

I mean, compared to God? I mean, how much of the knowledge, all of the universe, how much of the knowledge in the whole universe do you have? One percent? Three percent?

If you're really arrogant, you might say five percent. God has it all. God understands it all. So do you really want to trust your one, three, five percent? Or do you want to trust God who knows it all? Who wants to bless you?

Who wants the best for your life? You see how it just makes sense to ask God what we should do? And yet sometimes we don't. And notice it was through one man, Abraham.

Isn't that cool? That's what God does. God takes a man like Abraham or takes a man like Joshua, and he blesses other people through that.

You know what? And he wants to do that in your life and wants to do that with you. Look what he's done with a broken earthen vessel like myself, calling me to start this fellowship and seeing what God has done. It's an awesome thing. Some of you came first by yourself, and then you showed up again with your spouse, and now your spouse's sister, and your spouse's sister's kids, and everybody else is coming.

One person. And it's so cool to see that because let me share something with you. The largest segment of people show up here because somebody invited them. Because somebody invited them.

Let me make it a little more personal. Because you invited them. Now think about that on Sunday morning as you look around and look at each person and realize someone invited them.

Someone that out on a limb possibly risking rejection and invite them. God wants to do a work through you. Through you. Are you happy with the way God is using you right now or the way God has used you in the last couple years? Can you say, yes, I've done all I can to serve the Lord.

Can you do that? I know that some of you can, know that some of you can. But some of you may be sitting here tonight going, you know, I can't say that. Now some of you just came to know the Lord recently.

That's understandable. But some of you may have been here for a while and you just haven't got involved. Let me encourage you because things won't change until things change. That's not doublespeak. But if you're sitting here tonight and you can't look back over the last year or the last year and a half and go, yeah, I've been giving it my all and watching God do an awesome work through me, then unless something changes a year from now, a year and a half from now, you'll be sitting there thinking the same exact thing.

Well, yeah, I know they need help in children's ministry in one, maybe one of these days. But see, days turn into months, turn into years. So I'd encourage you.

If you can't look back and say that over the past week, past month, past year, make some changes. Because at some point, you will be looking back and remembering either what you've done or what you didn't do for the Lord. I understand one more thing before we move on. Abraham wasn't looking for God. God was looking for Abraham.

Do you realize that's true with all of us? Some of us get really hyper spiritual. It sounds really nice when we say I found the Lord. God wasn't lost when you found him. Okay, you were the one that was kind of stumbling in darkness and God was looking for you, even chasing you.

Because some of us were running, weren't we? And God was chasing us. He's still looking for us. He still calls out to us. Just like you called out to Adam in the garden years ago, where are you? He's looking for us.

When we wander, when we get away, he calls out to us saying, where are you? Verse four, to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Sierra to possess. But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Also I sent Moses and Aaron and I plagued Egypt according to what I did among them.

And afterward, I brought you out. Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt and you came to the sea. And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. So they cried out to the Lord and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them and covered them. And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt.

Then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time. You know, some of us can't hear that passage without seeing like the Ten Commandments, this mental image, right? Yule Brenner and that whole deal.

Somehow Yule escaped in the movie. I'm not sure that's scriptural. And you know what's interesting? I don't know if you've thought about this. We talked about it before, but God is reminding them of what all he's done. But think of this, God placed them in a position where there was mountains on either side of them and the Red Sea behind them and Pharaoh's army bearing down on them. God put them in that place. God led them to that place.

It was, for all intents and purposes, a trap. I mean, Pharaoh could not have picked a better place to make his enemy more vulnerable. But God put them in that place so he could show himself mighty on their behalf.

Oh, loved ones. You need to remember that when you get in a place where you feel like you're trapped. When you get to a place where you feel like there's mountains on both sides and Pharaoh's army is bearing down on you and the Red Sea is at your back, that's not a bad place to be. Because if you remember what Moses said to the people, he said, stand back. And in the English version, it's kind of interesting, he said, stand back and see the salvation of the Lord. It's pretty cool in English. It's even cooler in the Hebrew. See, because what he says in the Hebrew, I won't go into all the wording, but he says, stand back and see the Yahshua of the Lord. Yahshua, we come to know that Hebrew name here. It's the name for Joshua, Yahshua. Hi, Yahshua, actually.

But we know the Greek form better, the word Jesus. At that trap at the Red Sea, Moses said, stand still and see the Yahshua of the Lord. And that's what some of you need to do when you get in those times where you're trapped.

Stand still. Because we have the tendency when we get in that position to run around and start doing stuff, trying to help God and all this, and God's going, stand still, see the Yahshua. Because what happens? God opens up the Red Sea. It's an amazing story, isn't it? And I've heard the liberal theologians say, well, you know, it's not really a miracle that the Red Sea party. Matter of fact, if the wind was blowing the right way in that little place they're crossing the Red Sea, it's only like a couple inches deep, so there's not really a miracle there. Yeah, well, then I guess the miracle would be how the whole Egyptian army drowned in two inches of water. There's a miracle in there somewhere. But the amazing thing is, Joshua here is reminding the people.

I find that interesting. Why would he be reminding them? Because the tendency is to forget. You mean they would have forgotten about the Red Sea?

Oh, you bet ya. And I wish we could just sit here tonight and go, oh, those silly Israelites, but you know what? That hits close to home. Because we need to be reminded.

Why? Because we forget. What do you think communion's about? It's about reminding us about what Jesus did for us.

The whole thing is a remembrance. That's why we have communion. Why do we come to church? Well, we come to worship, we come to learn, and we come to be reminded. 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. 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. Do you feel like you're bearing fruit for Christ, yet God keeps pruning away at your life and you're not sure why? If so, we'd love to send you Pastor David McGee's series, Abiding in Christ, Keys to a Fruitful Life.

This encouraging resource shares from Jesus' own words as found in John 15, where he teaches that God's pruning is a sign that he is pleased with you and wants to prepare you to bear even more fruit for his kingdom. This series is our way of thanking you for your gift today to help share the gospel with thousands around the world who need to hear God's word in clear, straightforward language. So visit crossthebridge.com today to request your copy of Abiding in Christ when you give. 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.