Joshua
14-22
Objective
Statement: Every person can
learn great life lessons by studying Joshua
14-22.
Life Lessons:
1)
God wants us to have a home!
2)
God keeps his promises
3)
Everyone matters to God!
4)
God wants His people to intersect with their world.
5)
We are the means, not the end.
Open: At Alliance
Fellowship, we have Five Core Values: Prayer, Discipleship, Community, Cultural
Engagement and World Missions
Prayer, is one core value we just modeled.
A great
opportunity to engage upon our core value of discipleship and community (growth
in Christ-likeness) is coming up for our men in
We have a
great opportunity to express our core value of community as we connect over a meal that will be provided following
the worship service. I’d like to remind
you of the brunch and Congregational Meeting to follow. We’ll hear some reports, forecasts for the
New Year and vote on two items.
“Annual
Meeting Sunday” is a good time to be challenged about the focus of the New Year
and I’d like to do that this morning as we look to the book of Joshua in a
message entitled, “The End or the Means?”
In 1275,
Venetian explorer Marco Polo made his way to the lands of the east, coming back
to Italy, reporting many of their wonders, including Xanadu, the summer palace of Kublai Khan, chieftain of the Mongol Empire. So glowing were Marco Polo’s reviews of Xanadu, that it became fabled as a metaphor for
opulence.
The
reported splendor of Xanadu later inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write his great
poem Kubla Khan. Xanadu is remembered today largely
thanks to this poem, which contains the following often quoted lines:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous
rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing
tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Sacred rivers… fertile ground… bright
gardens… blossoming trees… forested hills…
Kind of a… “Promised Land!”
We’ve been making our way through a study and sermon series in the book of
Joshua, where God brought his people to the Promised Land.
That land had originally been promised to Abram
Genesis 12:1-7 Now the LORD said
to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s
house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and
in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
So Abram
went, as the LORD had told him, and
God made a promise to
Abram that he would bless him and that he would give a special land to his
descendants.
We’ve been studying
the book of Joshua, which has at it’s theme: God keeps his promises. The book of Joshua records for us the
fulfillment of a promise that God made to Abram.
After all, where did
Joshua lead God’s people? à To the Promised Land!
Chapters 1-13
of Joshua tell us of the conquest of the Canaanites. The subsequent chapters tell us about the
allotment of the land.
The Promised Land – filled
with milk and honey, AC, HD TV, and cable – so you can watch football, right
Don? J
In chapters 14
& 15, we see bold Caleb asking for the land that had been
promised to him directly.
There are lessons we
can learn in the Promised Land.
The first one comes at
the end of chapter 14.
Joshua
What do
people do when wars get over? They go home!
Lessons from the Promised Land:
God wants us to have
a home!
In the Promised Land,
God was giving his people a home: A
place they could make their own; a place where they could hang their hat; a place where they could belong; a place
where they could rest. (“The land had
rest from war.”)
May God give us all
homes of peace, a place to belong, a place to rest.
And as God’s church,
even though we take our worship service on the road each week, may we be the
kind of people who provide a home-like quality to our presence -- belonging,
rest, safety.
-------------------------------
Chapters 15-21 of Joshua tell us the specifics of the tribal
allotments Ephraim and Manasseh, Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun,
Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan and the inheritance given to Joshua – places
where they could call “home”.
Some of the reading in
this section can seem pretty tedious and boring
<Joshua 16:5-7>
Why are
all these geographical details included?
Lessons from the Promised Land:
God keeps his word!
This past year we saw
God keep His promise “I will provide for all your needs”, as we received more
in our General Fund giving than we had budgeted for.
This past year we also
saw God come through on the promise “I will give you wisdom”, as we had many
different situations where God provided insight.
What
promises did God come through on for you in 2007?
What are
you still waiting on? What promise would
like God to fulfill in 2008?
(Remember Abraham,
Moses, Joshua, Caleb, and read Joshua 16 the next time you get antsy about God
coming through for you!)
I have a promise I’d
like to bring before God:
Psalm 2:8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the
ends of the earth your possession.
We’re a church that
believes in world
missions, its one of our core values. We make an attempt to reach the ends of the
earth. (“Transforming hearts that
transform the world.”)
And we’re working on a
logo that tries to depict that.
<AF Logo>
We had people go to
I’d love for more to
go and more dollars to go!
But what
about our own community?
I’ve had this idea
introduced to me: One Percent. What if God gave us one percent of our
community?
The 2000 census of
God says that if we
ask, he’ll give them to us!
MSU – 12,338 – Nathan, that would be 123 students
What if
we asked God to give us one percent?
Abraham dickered with
God over the number of righteous people in
I’d love for God to
come through on the promise of people addition!
Chapters 20 & 21 in Joshua tell us that certain cities within the
allotted tribal borders were set aside
as places of refuge for someone who had committed an accidental murder – cities of refuge.
Though the Levites,
the priests, would receive no territorial allotment as a tribe, we’re told of
the cities and pasturelands given to the Levites within tribal borders.
You know
what this teaches us?
Lessons from the Promised Land:
Everyone matters to
God!
God made a special
place for everyone who handed out the land.
He took care of the priests, aliens, orphans, widows and even
mischievous boys named Ahaziah and Joe, who might
have accidentally killed someone when the rolled a rock down a mountain!
Do we treat everyone
in
What
about thinking of our community missiologically?
The word “nation” can
be translated “ethne” – “people group”.
How does
God want us to reach the different people groups of
-
Outdoor
enthusiasts: back-country skiers, ice climbers, mountaineers, rock climbers,
hikers, campers, snowmobilers!
-
Athletes:
runners, XC skiers, athletes at MSU and
-
Co-op
People / Triple Tree people / Trailer park people
-
People
of European descent and Latin descent and Natives…
-
International
students!
There are all kinds of
“nations” / people groups in
<Circle of Life>
And that’s why I would
like to have a special emphasis this year on “Connect”.
Do
people in
Do
people in
Do they
know that we want them?
We want to communicate
to MSU to
Will you help us connect?
Why not host a Super
Bowl Party in your home? Open it up to
co-workers, fellow students or your neighbors.
If you want to open it
up to people in the church, let us know at the office and we’ll communicate
that.
Speaking of
connect… there’s
another very important
Lesson from the Promised Land:
God wants His people
to intersect with their world.
<Map of
God called Abram from
What’s
important about that?
God put his people not
in some out-of-the-way backwater, but right on the main thoroughfare of the
ancient world!
Look through the Old
Testament and you will find people from other nations who were added to the
Jewish faith:
-
Caleb,
who was included in the tribe of
-
Ruth,
the Moabite
-
Uriah,
the Hittite
-
Rahab,
the Canaanite
You can see the broad
influence of Jewish faith at the day of Pentecost:
Acts 2:5-11 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every
nation under heaven. Parthians and Medes
and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both
Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in
our own tongues the mighty works of God."
We can see God’s
desire for us to intersect with our world in the teachings of Jesus: he wants his disciples to be light, salt, and
yeast in their culture!
That’s why cultural
engagement is so valuable to us and is a core value.
“Too Christian, Too
Pagan”, by Dick Staub has an intriguing title
with an explanatory sub-title: “How to
love the world without falling for it.”
God wants us to love
our world and connect with it.
Thank God that we can
meet at MSU!
Where
does God want you to connect / intersect with your world?
Maybe God wants you to
do that through your work, school, neighborhood or through your hobbies and
interests.
<Running like a turkey>
God placed His people
strategically in the world so that the world would run into them.
Close:
One last
Lesson from the Promised Land:
We are the means, not
the end.
Why did
God tell Abram that he would be blessed?
Like
Kublai Khan, was God planning to build Abram a pleasure dome in his Xanada summer palace?
God had something else
in mind. God told Abram:
“In you
all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Abram wasn’t the end
of the blessing, he was the beginning.
If we want and ask for
God’s blessing, how do we see ourselves:
perfect hair, no wrinkles, and white teeth (wouldn’t you like to have
Joel Osteen as your pastor? Sorry! You got me!)
God blessed Abram so
that he could be a blessing.
God fulfilled his
promise to Abraham’s descendants so that they would know that God was faithful,
but also so that the nations around them could be blessed by knowing their God!
We should seek God’s
blessing, yes, but let us know full well:
-
We’re
not the summer palace, we’re the weigh station.
-
We
are not the terminal, we’re the track.
-
We
are not the period of the sentence, we’re the opening word.
-
We
are not the garage, we’re the car.
-
We
are not the brakes, we’re the accelerator.
-
We
are not a cul-de-sac, but a boulevard.
-
We
are not the end, but the means.
Closing Prayer – Thank you, Lord for
Lessons from the Promised Land:
-
God wants us to have a home!
-
God keeps his promises
-
Everyone matters to God!
-
God wants His people to intersect with their world.
-
We are the means, not the end.
Prayer for Elders,
General Board and Pastors
Response Song – Make Me a Blessing
Benediction / Prayer
for Brunch!