The Choice Is Yours, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. It's amazing to stand in front of people and they're standing there and they want a Christ-centered wedding. They want to stand there and make a vow before God and everyone, till death do us part. Or one of us is unhappy. We break vows. We break them all the time. We're not good for our word. We find that assurances are often ignored. But God said something here. What God is saying to us is, look, I understand all that. I'm not you. I'm not like you. When I tell you something, I mean it.

You need to believe that. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world. I'd like you to open your Bibles to Joshua 21, verse 43. This will be the final message on lessons that we learned from the great book of Joshua.

Twenty one forty three. The first lesson we learned was that God wants all of his children to live in the promised land. He wants us to have what is the New Testament calls the faith rest life or the victorious Christian life. That's his desire for each and every one of us. But the first lesson we learned was you have to take what is yours. And if you don't, you'll end up just wandering in the wilderness as Israel had for 40 years. Secondly, I said it's OK if you're not OK. Rahab was such a great story in the lineage of Christ, honored in Hebrews Chapter 11.

And she is a prostitute. Thirdly, there's something we never should never forget. And that is, if we're going to go into the promised land, never forget that it's God who goes before us. We should never forget what God has done in our past up till now. And maybe most importantly, we should never forget whose we are.

We are children of God. And then I said, if we're going to bring down fortresses like Jericho, then we have to remember that God is the one who fights. But we have to follow his directions completely. And so often we get in trouble because we really don't follow his directions and we never get the victory. And then I said, sin is serious.

It's really serious. Not only did it cause the Son of God to be crucified on the cross, but sin is serious in our lives because it keeps us from a relationship with God. Sin in our lives is not something to wink at, not something to belittle, not something to think it's just a small thing. It's a very important thing if we're going to have victorious Christian living. And then last week, I said that failure, which we all have, should never be fatal. What we should do is get up and get going and forget the past. That's what we've learned. And this lesson that we're learning here really is the lesson of the entire Book of Joshua.

And if you didn't listen to anything I said the first six weeks, this is the most important one for you if you're going to apply it to your life. Verse 43, So the Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give their fathers, and they possessed it and they lived in it. And the Lord gave them rest on every side, according to all that he had sworn to their fathers. And no one of all their enemies stood before them. And the Lord gave all their enemies into their hand. Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed. All came to pass.

Wow. That's how I started the book. Remember, before they ever won the promised land, the Lord said, I'm giving it all. I've given it to you all past tense, not you got to go get it. I've given it to you.

And so now you have him saying exactly the same thing, except now it's after the fact. The question is, when did God promise this? When did he promise to give him the land? Go with me now to Genesis chapter 12. No excuse for not finding Genesis. Genesis chapter 12. In verse seven. And this is very early on, you'll notice in the verse that Abraham's name is still Abram.

He hasn't even his name changed yet. And this is what God says to him. Says the Lord appeared to Abram and he said to your descendants. I'll give you this land.

Wow. Look at chapter 13, verse 14 of Genesis. The Lord said to Abram after a lot had separated from them. Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are.

Northward and southward, eastward and westward for all the land which you see. I'll give it to you and your descendants forever. That's 600 years before Joshua. 600 years earlier, God made a promise. He said, I'm going to give you the land. 600 years later, they get the land.

But that's just like God. Now, they could have had the land 40 years earlier. They could have had it.

Remember that? And they said spies into the land and 10 came back and were just terrified of the Canaanites and Caleb and Joshua came back and said, let's go get him. So they missed out on it.

Why? Because they made a choice. They chose not to believe the promise of God. They made that choice. They chose the fear of the Canaanites.

Rather than to show faith in the promise of God. They took the test here and they failed. They made the same mistake that you make all the time.

And so do I. They made the mistake. Facing an obstacle, facing a difficulty, facing a trial. They chose not to believe the promise of God. They decided to be fixated by the circumstances in which they find themselves.

And boy, they paid. Gary Ingrid, in his book, True North, says this. Life is like that. A Christ follower doesn't face stress test sitting in a church service on Sunday morning, surrounded by like minded people affirming great and certain truths. Nor is a stress test usually found within the insight filled classroom or the fellowship of a small group. But Christ followers are called to a real world faith, lived out in the open ocean of daily life. Facing difficult choices, intense pressures, deep suffering, unfair treatment, enticing temptations.

It is then that we encounter the ultimate stress test when we sail determinedly on or we break and we sink under the strain. If you want to live the victorious life. If you want to live what Jesus called the abundant life, if you want to live in the promised land or the faith rest life. You have to choose.

To believe the promises of God. And I know that's hard. I know that that's a difficult circumstance.

Life's tough enough. But we're surrounded by a whole world of broken promises. I was watching the History Channel and they were talking about presidents in the United States and just a couple of things that they said in October of 1940. Franklin Roosevelt told the American people, I have said this before, but I'm going to say it again. Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign war. LBJ said in October of 1964. We're not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Now, we've got to jaundice eye on this. What does it mean to be a politician? It means to be a promise breaker, right? Isn't that what politicians do? You make promises to get elected, then you break them all. That's the way it works.

And it's nice to be sort of the blame that sort of class of the American people. But what about us? Pledges are retracted. Vows become empty.

It's amazing to stand in front of people and they're standing there and they want a Christ centered wedding. And they want to stand there and make a vow before God and everyone till death do us part. Or one of us is unhappy. We break vows. We break them all the time. We're not good for our word. We find that assurances are often ignored. But God said something here. What God is saying to us is, look, I understand all that. I'm not you. I'm not like you. When I tell you something, I mean it.

You need to believe that. Go with me to Psalm 12. Psalm 12. A psalm of David. I just want to see what David says in verse six and in verse seven. David writes this in the psalm. He said the words of the Lord are pure words. You'll notice the word Lord there.

Capital well, then smaller case. Adonai means he's it's not really his name. That's his job description.

He's Adonai. He's the covenant keeper. Which means he tells the truth. That's why he keeps covenants. He says the words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in the furnace on the earth, refined seven times. You, O Lord, will keep them.

You will preserve him from this generation forever. I kind of love what the living Bible paraphrase says there. The Lord's promise is sure.

He never speaks a careless word. That's what he's trying to tell Joshua all the way through the book. Look, I made a promise.

That's why he's trying to tell us. Not just in Joshua, all through the Bible, he keeps trying to tell us, look, I made promises. To you. You have to understand that and you have a choice. You can believe them.

Or not. Go with me to Second Corinthians, chapter one, verse 20, Second Corinthians, chapter one, verse 20. It's a great verse because it's the New Testament way of God saying, look, I keep my promises.

But he does it in a different manner here, and I think it's kind of intriguing. Second Corinthians, 120, Paul's writing this. And he says, For as many are the promises of God.

By the way, there's just hundreds and hundreds of these. For as many are the promises of God in him. That's Christ.

In Christ. They are. Yes. I love that.

Of all the promises of God in Christ, there. Yes. He said, That's my proof. Watch. He said they are. Yes. Therefore, also through him is our amen to the glory of God.

What does that mean? In him, amen means this is true. So be it. It takes faith to say that he said everything I ever promised in Christ has come true. Amen. So be it.

That's true. In Genesis, he said the seed of the woman is going to be the one who redeems mankind and destroys the serpent. That's Christ. Starts in Genesis, making these promises. He said he's coming. He's going to be Jewish. He's going to be a son of Abraham, not just any any tribe, though, he's going to be the tribe of Judah. Oh, he's going to be in the house of David. He's going to be a messianic king when it comes 500 years before he comes.

He said, let me tell you something. I'll tell you where he's going to be born. Bethlehem. And so Micah, the prophet writes where he's going to be born. Isaiah, the prophet says he'll be born of a virgin.

These are amazing promises. And then he was born. He said he won't be like you guys. He'll be without sin. He'll live a whole life without sin.

He won't be like anybody else. And he wasn't. And he said, and then what we'll do is we'll mock him, scourge him, and then we'll nail him to a cross and he'll die there.

For us. And he did. And then he said they're going to bury him and they did. He said, and then I'm going to resurrect him from the dead.

And he did. And then he ascended to heaven just like he promised. He said, look, if you want to know if I keep my word, just look at Jesus Christ and keep my word. When I make a promise, I make a promise to you to keep my word. This is the most important thing in your life.

Because it's going to make a difference in every aspect of your life. Go with me now to Second Peter, Second Peter, chapter one, verse three. This is the kind of verse, by the way, we read and then forget, and that's regrettable. Some verses are so overwhelming in the thought process and in the depth in which they're written that it should astound you.

You should be overwhelmed by what you read. Peter writes this in verse three, seeing that his divine power. Has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. What is he granted to us? Everything. To what?

To life. Well, what's included in life? Everything. Everything.

He said his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. The question here, what is it you lack? What do you lack?

See, we often get all confused with this. We keep saying, you know, if I only had, if they only did, if that only happened, if I only got that diagnosed, if he would only say this to me, if this would only happen. The Bible says you don't lack anything. You have everything and notice the guarantee of it. He said, seeing that his divine power. That's the that's what backs this up, his divine power.

How much power does he have? He has everything, he said, Yeah, I've given you everything according to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him. So you have to know Christ to know this.

You have to know the word of God even to know what God's given you. For some of us, we know Christ died on the cross. We know he's our savior and we say that's good.

It's like fire insurance. I put my faith in him and when I die, I hope I go to heaven. But that's not the true knowledge of him. You have to know him. See, that's an important thing, he said, if you want to appropriate this in your life, he said through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and his own excellence. The basis of all this is his power, his glory and his excellence. How does he do this?

How does this work? Verse four, for by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent what? Promises. What a great way to describe this. He has given us his precious and magnificent promises.

So this is the key to life. I've given you my promises, but you have a choice. You see, precious, the word means valuable and costly, magnificent, megastas.

It means superlative, the greatest. He says, look, I've given you these huge promises. They should make all the difference to you in your life. But you have to choose whether you believe it or not. He has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises so that by them we become partakers of the divine nature.

Having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. He said, there's your choice. You see, when it comes down to your belief system and the promises of God, it comes down to when I believe that I become a partaker of the divine nature. Once I'm a partaker of the divine nature, I can face what I have to face just as Christ did. That's what the promises of God has promised me.

Think of all the promises. Jesus said this. He said, he that believes in me has life.

This is what he said. Who says that? Jesus does. He that believes in me has life. You want eternal life?

Believe in me. Jesus said that even after you have eternal life, I've come to give you life and to give it to you abundantly. That's his promise to you. I want to give you an abundant life, not just any life. I want to give you an abundant life that's filled with joy and hope and peace.

Not anxiety and worry and turmoil and conflict. He said, I want to give you this life. He's promised us life. He's promised us blessings. He's promised us the heavenlies.

He's promised us abundant grace upon grace. He's promised us joy. He's promised us strength. He's promised us guidance. He's promised us help. He's promised us instruction. He's promised us wisdom. He's promised us his Holy Spirit. He's promised us heaven. He's promised us eternal rewards. It's all yours.

He said, I promise all this to you. But you have a choice. You can make your own mind up. You see, you can allow the kinds of things that sneak into your life and give you insecurity and fear.

You see, you can just fill your life with worry and tension. Or you can believe the promises of God. I love what Peter says, these are precious. These promises are magnificent. And yet so many of us sort of just ignore them.

I think some of us even trivialize them or some of us minimize them. Oh, they're just words in the Bible. These are promises of God.

Promises of the Lord Jesus Christ. You ever feel lonely? Ever? You shouldn't. He said in Hebrews, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. I'll never will. He promised you that, but I feel so lonely.

Oh, and then it's worse. We say, I feel so lonely. I don't feel like I'm close to the Lord anymore.

I can't seem to find him. Listen, he never moved. You moved. You moved in your own doubt. You see, these circumstances make me feel lonely.

He said, I got that. I'll never leave you nor forsake you. This person, my spouse was so disappointing to me and condemning to me. I'll never leave you or forsake you. I'm right here.

I mean, that's why he said, look, I'm the husband of the widow. I'm the father of the orphan. I'm right here. I'm worried about what might happen. Genesis 15, I am your shield. I am your shield. I know I'm really worried about what could happen.

It's a crazy world out there. He said, I know. I'm your shield. In Isaiah 41, he said, I will strengthen you and I will help you. His power and his provision, I'll strengthen you. I know when you're weak.

I'll help you. Jesus said in John 10, he's the shepherd and we're the sheep. He said, I'll always go before you. Let me lead.

Jesus never said, hey, God in the world and try it on your own. What do you always say to everyone he met? Follow me.

Just follow me. I've got this. How often do you lack rest? Peace.

Do you remember Jesus said, come unto me, all you that are heavy laden. And what? I'll give you rest. Yeah, but you don't know what I'm going through.

He does. He knows exactly what you're going through. He said, you come to me, I'll give you rest.

That's his promise to us. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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