Living In The Light

Listen to me. It's not so important the burdens that are our hearts. What are the burdens on God's heart?

So glad you've joined us today for Living in the Light with Bible teacher Ann Graham Lutz. Her message today is from the book of Joshua and his last words of encouragement for us to keep walking with the Lord, to keep worshiping the Lord, and to keep working for the Lord. Here's Ann. The last words of famous people can be very interesting. And I looked up on the Internet this week and came across some.

Some are rather humorous, and they shouldn't be, I guess, because they're the last words. But Queen Marie Antoinette, after she accidentally stepped on the foot of her executioner as she went to the guillotine, said, Pardon me, sir. I didn't do it on purpose. J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, said his last words, I can't sleep.

Roman emperor, as he was being murdered by his own soldiers, said, I live. Joan Crawford, this is rather sobering, to a housekeeper who began to pray out loud when she realized that Joan was dying, and I won't quote her because she curses, and then she says, don't you dare ask God to help me. Joseph Henry Green, he checked his own pulse, and he said, it stopped. Alexander the Great, I know you're probably familiar with his words at the age of 33 after he conquered the world, with his boots on, wept and said, there are no more worlds to conquer. Leonardo da Vinci, Italian inventor and artist who died in 1519, said, I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.

Can you imagine? Sir Winston Churchill, I did not know this, said on his deathbed, what a fool I've been. And John Newton, who was the slave trader, who was converted and then he helped with William Wilberforce to abolish slavery and Great Britain and the colonies authored the words to America's hymn Amazing Grace said I am still in the land of the dying I shall be in the land of the living soon and Aldous Huxley in the preface to his book Brave New World said that one should judge all things if they saw them from one's death bed and I think there's something about the end of the life as you look back it gives you a perspective. And I think the last words of a man to people that he has served with, to people that he loves, to people who have his same heart and vision, who fought alongside him, are incredibly meaningful. And so we find in Joshua chapters 22, 23, and 24, the last words of Joshua to his people.

And in chapter 22, he's speaking to two and a half tribes. And in Joshua 23, he's speaking to the leaders. Chapter 24, he's speaking to everybody, and it's interesting, his message is the same in almost every chapter, but I've pulled out some things to give it a little bit of a differentiation. But he basically tells them again and again and again, look back at what God has done in you and through you, and look around. There's still strongholds, and there's still land to be taken, and then look ahead.

Our God is God, and he goes before us. That's repeated in chapter after chapter, multiple times in each chapter. And so basically he says in chapter 22, keep walking with the Lord. Chapter 23, keep worshiping the Lord. Chapter 24, keep working for the Lord.

So open your Bibles to Joshua chapter 22, and let's look at his challenge to his people, two and a half tribes, and he's challenging them to keep walking. Verse 5, but be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave you, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all of your heart and all of your soul. And so he has several commands in there, but I'm just picking up on the one walking, because the other ones we'll touch on in a minute in the other chapters, and the importance of walking with God. And I know you know that, but it was while Noah was walking with God, that God came to him and said, Noah, I'm going to pour out my judgment on the whole world, and I want you to build an ark. While Noah walked with him, and you remember he was the only one in the world that did, nobody else was righteous.

He was the only man holy and blameless in his generation, and Noah walked with God, Genesis chapter 6. And as he walked, God imparted his burden that he was going to judge the whole world, but he didn't want to do it without providing a way of salvation. And so, Noah, I want you to build an ark, and I want you to tell people well, if they'll come into the ark, they can be saved from our judgment that's coming. And Noah did everything exactly the way that God said. He was a man who walked with God, and if he didn't, we wouldn't be here.

The human race, the whole human race was saved through Noah and his family. We know nobody else got on the ark except his family. But through them, God saved the human race. And Abraham, one of my very favorite characters, walking with God, God had just told him, Abraham, you and Sarah are going to have a son this year. I mean, that was the dream of his whole lifetime.

For 25 years, he'd been just chasing after God, wanting desperately the promise of a son of the sin and through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And God had just come to him and created faith in Sarah so that both of them could conceive and have a baby. And no sooner had he said, Abraham, you're going to have a son with Sarah, then God gets up to walk and Abraham leaves Sarah and leaves all of that dream and he begins to walk with God. And it's while he's walking with God that God imparts to Abraham his burden. Judgment is coming to Sodom.

And he puts that burden on Abraham's heart.

So Abraham receives the burden and he starts praying to God, talking to God about the burden that God's just imparted. And listen to me. It's not so important the burdens that are on our hearts. What are the burdens on God's heart?

Have you ever asked God to break your heart with the things that break his? We keep telling him the things that are breaking our hearts.

Well, what about his heart? and so while we walk with him he imparts his burdens to us so that we receive his burdens and I want to know what the burdens are on his heart because God willing I want to come in line with what he doing so that I can help him I mean boy that sounds presumptuous that I can be a part of what he doing He doesn need my help, but that I can come alongside and not waste my life, but be a part of what his aim, his will, his purpose is for this particular time, this particular stage in human history, and for my life. And so Abraham only knew that because he walked with God. Importance of walking. And I've shared with you before, I don't know that I need to do this, but, you know, I walk at home.

I love it. It's therapy for my spirit. I love to get out and walk. And I burned out all my walking parts. And when I walk with somebody, I have two rules, or we don't walk together.

You have to walk at the same pace. And we have to walk in the same direction, or we don't walk together. And to walk with God, I think bottom line means that we have to walk at his pace, which is step-by-step obedience to his word, and I can't do that if I'm not reading it every day. How will I know the next step he's taking if I'm not in the word reading it, listing my facts, drawing the lessons, finding the questions that would apply to my life, that I might fall in step with him?

So it requires Bible reading every day and not just going down the checklist so you can check off that you've read your Bible today, but that you meditate on it. And you're listening so that you can walk step by step and then surrendering your will to him, which I think is that walking in his direction where we don't go off in a direction of our own. That's why I want to be so careful about collecting your thoughts. You know, before I would say what I feel like God has put on my heart, I just don't want to go off in my own direction, you know, and have some bright idea and go after and then find out that wasn't God's direction. And so to look for the confirmation and the counsel to see, are we on the right path and is this something God would have us do together and to walk in his direction?

I told you the other day that my greatest fear, I guess, would be to get to heaven and find out that I'd been busy, busy, busy. But I hadn't fulfilled the potential he had for my life and I hadn't fulfilled his life's purpose for me. You know, I had done lots of good things, but not the things that he had in mind for me. And so in order to know what that is, we have to be very intentional about seeking him.

So I think that means that we get in the word and we walk at his pace. And I think to know the direction he's going in, that means prayer. We have to pray. And Mark 9, this kind comes about only through prayer because some translations leave out the phrase in fasting. And I keep it in because I think fasting is not just going without food, but going without anything.

fasting from your ministry, fasting from housework, fasting from telephone, just in order to draw aside and get alone with the Lord and to walk with God. We have to spend time in his word, meditating on it, not just what it says, what does it mean and what does it mean in my life, and then fasting, which means drawing aside, shutting yourself off in a closet, going alone by yourself, you know, just to make time to pray that we might walk in his direction.

So keep walking. Would you keep walking? It says you walk with him, he'll pour into you. And then you can pour out. And in verse six, then Joshua blessed them and he sent them away and they went to their homes.

End of verse seven, when Joshua sent them home, he blessed them saying, return to your homes with your great wealth. These are the tribes that had helped their brothers to take the promised land.

Now, they're going back on the other side of the Jordan.

So he says, you can go home. You've gotten all this great wealth. And then in the end of verse 8, he says, divide with your brothers the plunder. And I'm just taking that a little bit, you know, stretching a little bit. But I believe what we've just said is that what God has poured into you needs to be poured out.

So when you go home, it needs to be shared. You know, when you share it, you keep it sort of. You know that, you know, when you tell somebody else something, for some reason, it plants in your own mind. but share it with your family or just share it with one other person. But God has given you a lot of blessing, and he's given me a lot of blessing.

And would you share it when you go back home? And ask God to show you who to share it with. I don't need to leave it that way. But be intentional when you go home that this is something that you can share with somebody else.

So as you look ahead, would you make the commitment to keep walking? at his pace, in his direction, reading your Bible every day, surrendering your direction to him through prayer, and then sharing what he imparts to you to somebody else. Joshua challenged these tribes to keep walking, and then in chapter 23, he challenged them to keep worshiping. And at this stage, in chapter 23, it's 20 years since they crossed the Jordan.

So there's quite a gap between 22 and 23, but these are still his final words. And so in 20 years, the people have gone into the promised land, they've settled into Canaan, and they've built their villages, and they've cleared their fields, and they've planted their gardens, and they've got their vineyards now producing grapes, their olive trees are producing olives, and they've got their flocks and their herds. And I think the great old warrior is looking at them and thinking, you know, they're enjoying the beauty, they're enjoying the produce of their labor they're settling down are they getting complacent are they getting a little self-focused it's just me and my family and my church and my city and you know just we get very comfortable don't we in our little routine and where God's planted us and I think he was concerned so he calls them together and in chapter 23 verse 2 he says I'm old and well advanced in years. You yourselves have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake. It was the Lord your God who fought for you.

Remember. In other words, he saying look back Remember what God has done And then he says in verse 5 the Lord your God himself will drive them out of your way He will push them out before you You will take possession of their land as the Lord your God has promised you. Look around. There's still enemy. There's still strongholds.

There's still things that need to be done, still land that needs to be taken. And then he says in verse 6, look ahead, be very strong, be careful to obey all that is written in the book of the law of Moses without turning aside to the right or to the left. And I just want to pick up on the fact that he's saying that you need to be careful to obey. and I believe what Joshua is now describing to these leaders in this particular passage is the necessity of abiding from a New Testament perspective in Christ. And one aspect of abiding, one fundamental critical aspect of abiding is that we obey the Lord our God and in order not to lose our cutting edge, and I think if we could say Joshua was looking at his leaders thinking, are they losing their cutting edge?

Has that ax head gotten blunted? Or is it becoming dull? And so he reminds them they need to abide, and we'll put it New Testament perspective, you abide in Christ by being obedient. And to do that, you have to stay in the word. And he quotes a verse, be careful to obey all that is written in the book of the law of Moses.

And he's, I know he's remembering chapter one, when God called him into service after Moses had died. And in chapter 1, verse 8, and I have to quote it in the King James if I can, but this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate on it therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. Then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. And the book of the law, which is our Bible, is not to depart out of our mouth. And he says morning and evening.

So, you know, I fall short because I have time in the morning with the Lord, and in the evening my lights go out.

so I just can't stay up. But anyway, it was morning and evening. And so I read that this morning. I thought, you know, maybe I need to build in something in the evening where early enough that I could refocus on the Lord before I go to bed. But the book of the law is not to depart out of your mouth.

And there are so many other things, so many other books out there, so many other materials. And if we're not careful, we're going to depart from this book. Don't depart from the book, okay? Would you make that commitment to keep worshiping the Lord by staying in the book? How can you obey it if you don't read it?

So don't forget to obey him and then trust him. In verse 8, he says, But you are to hold fast to the Lord your God as you have until now. And I think that means hold fast. You cling to him in trust and faith. And when he says you hold fast, that conveyed to me energy and like passion, that we're not going to just trust him with a complaining spirit or like, God, where are you?

And why do you let this happen? And the world's melting down and, oh, I'm just so. But you trust him with passion, with energy, so that if a nuclear strike happens and some city melts off the map, if a volcano erupts erupts and places are destroyed, if the rain doesn't come for three years, if the sun doesn't shine for a long time, if disease and pestilence sweeps our globe, if the stock market crashes and everything is lost and there's no money and we're bartering for our food, we will trust the Lord. And it looks like the world is falling apart. It's falling into place and he needs people who We'll trust him.

Never mind what's happening because he has it under control. But you and I may be called upon to live in a time that's dangerous and everybody else is scared to death and everybody's hiding. But you know something? They're looking for answers then, aren't they? I think one reason we haven't had revival is because we're not desperate enough.

That's what my mother told me when I was complaining to her. God, we do all of this and all of this and all of this. And how come we don't have revival? And mother said, and it's because we're not desperate enough.

So maybe if some of these things happen, and God forbid they would, please don't think I want judgment to come on us. But if it does, maybe that's the platform for you and me. We can't get caught up in it. We have to put our faith in God and get out there and tell people about Jesus and that they can have hope for the future, they can have a rock on which to stand, they can put their faith in somebody that doesn't change even though the world melts away.

So there's energy to that kind of faith, energy to that kind of faith. Hold fast to him. And I believe the evil one will be wanting to pry our fingers off, you know, and bring to our minds circumstances and words and things. And if God really loved you, this is where God really blessed you. You know, and just, we can't even entertain those kinds of thoughts.

And we hold fast to the Lord our God. You just trust him. When you don't understand why, you just trust him. When the world's melting down, you just trust him. When your prayers are not answered, you trust him.

When you don't get miracles like Corrie ten Boom, you just trust him. We trust him. We trust him. When we see the things just don't understand, we trust him. You just trust him.

He sees it all. He knows it all. And he has a plan and a purpose. And we just trust him.

So you obey him and you trust him. And thirdly, you love him. Keep loving him. Verse 9. The Lord has driven out before you great and powerful nations.

Look back. To this day, no one has been able to withstand you. One of you routes a thousand because the Lord your God fights for you just as he promised Look around Verse 11 look ahead so be very careful to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your mind, with all your strength, with all your soul. Because you know something, Joshua knew what Jesus, of course, told us. If you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength, everything else falls into place, doesn't it?

That's where the obedience, if you love him, you'll obey him. If you love him, you'll trust him. If you love him, you'll read your word. If you love him, you'll spend time in prayer. If you love him, you'll share the gospel.

If you love him, you'll keep on working. If you love him, you'll keep on walking, right? You'll keep on witnessing. The motivation is love.

So what will you do to make sure you don't lose your first love?

Somebody here lost it. And it happened to me when I started Angel Ministries, and I'd left Bible study fellowship and the last thing I told my leaders was don't serve the Lord without loving him. Don't put the mechanics of the Bible class before the ministry and keep love for Jesus first. And I went right out into the world, did a lot of things, traveling all over, came back, thought I was just tired, jet lag, you know. And when I went to church, I no longer entered into the worship.

My Bible no longer seemed to speak to me. When I prayed, it was like the prayers hit the ceiling and I just gave so many excuses until I read Revelation 2. And I was just doing my three questions. What does it say? What does it mean?

What does it mean to me? And Jesus said, Ann, I know your deeds. Thank you. And I could feel his pleasure. But I have something against you.

You're losing your love for me. And I didn't believe him. And I went to the next verse. And he just kept pulling me back to that until I got on my knees. And I said, all right, God, what do you see in my life that I don't see?

And he said, Ann, it's not tiredness. It's not jet lag. you're losing your love for me. And so the tears began to flow and I said, all right, I will confess that if that's what you see. And I knew in my heart that's exactly what it was.

It's just hard to admit when I go around the world telling other people how to love Jesus. And so he said in that verse, chapter 2, verse 5, he said, repent, be willing to put love for me back first in your life. And repentance is a choice, but how can you choose to have love back when love is an emotion? of, it's a commitment, I know that, but it's the passionate first love. And then he said, return to the first things.

And so I asked him, what first things are you talking about? And he said, come back to the cross. Come back to the first thing. Just come back to the cross and confess your lack of love is the sin that it is. Take a good look at what it cost me to bring you into that love relationship.

And then he told me to go back to what I was doing when I was in love with him that maybe had fallen out of my life, which had caused me to lose my love for him. And I knew exactly what it was, because I was going around giving the same messages again and again, and it was like a little tape recorder, and I wasn't studying the Bible fresh. And so I immediately picked up my legal pad and my pens before I did a computer, and I just started paragraph by paragraph in the book of Revelation, actually, asking what does it say, what does it mean, what does it mean, and listening for God to speak to my heart. And he did. And within a week, the love was back and the joy and the sparkle.

You have to be very intentional to maintain that. And it takes discipline, and there's no substitute for being in the word and in prayer and in his presence.

So keep worshiping him. Maintain your love for Jesus. If you have to come back to the cross and confess that, if you have to put back into your life something that's fallen away maybe it can be something different for all of us it could be regular prayer time or witnessing or sharing the gospel or reading your Bible on a regular basis or maybe it's something that's come into your life that has crowded out that love because I think sin in the camp that's one of the things it does and when one of the dangers was that God said I'll no longer be with you you know you will never lose our salvation but we can think we've lost it If the sin in our hearts is there and it's not confessed and we're toying with it in our attitude or thoughts or memories or habits or actions or wherever the sin is, you know, and what it does is rob us of our love for Jesus.

Now here's Anne with this final word. Are you thinking, well, that sounds fine for you, Anne, but I'm not so sure. Are you hesitating because you're not sure that shutting the gate on the past is possible or that it's worth it? Are you wondering what you'll get out of it? Then let me share what I've gotten out of closing the gate on the past and embracing all God has for me at present and for the future.

God has given me deep joy that doesn't depend on my circumstances, peace that passes all understanding and overcomes all misunderstandings, a release from resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness that can mire me down in a vengeful attitude, freedom to love people who have been unlovely, abusive, or unkind, an anticipation of the blessings God has for me, confident that they will be greater than anything I could have grabbed for myself, an expectancy that the best is yet to come, and the confident hope that one day I will not only shut the gate to the past, but I'll walk through the pearly gates into my heavenly home, gates that have been flung wide open for me by God's Joshua, Jesus, the ultimate Savior and Deliverer. You and I can't go forward by looking in the rearview mirror. It's time to shut the gate on the past, look ahead, and embrace all that God has for you. Be sure to take advantage of all that's available for you at AnneGrahamLotz.org. From Anne's blog, her messages, Bible studies, books, and videos, all will give you a deeper, richer relationship with Jesus through God's Word.

And thanks for joining us today for Living in the Light.