Transcription
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Well, we're gonna wrap up the heart of a conker. Hadn't that have been a great, hadn't have been a great series? Just such an awesome, awesome series. And we come to the end of it tonight.
I was just thinking as I was getting ready for the message that yesterday, Debbie and I had celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. So we were talking, we went out to dinner, and as we were talking, we were just talking about how hard it was to believe that 37 years had passed. And I don't, I don't remember everything vividly, but I remember the day we were married very vividly.
We got married in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, so not far from Green Bay. And we were up there because Debbie's parents were associate pastors at a church there. We got married in the church, Fond du Lac Gospel Tabernacle was the church. And so I can remember the afternoon, I can remember the weather, I can remember getting pictures taken. And then especially can remember standing there at the front of this church, not a huge church, but not a tiny church either. And and standing there, and the doors came open, and here came Debbie and her dad coming down the aisle. And she was just as beautiful as could be. And and I just remember, you know, watching her come forward and thinking, wow, that's my wife, gonna be my wife.
So just then going through the service, and and I guess because I'm a preacher, I can remember the sermon. I can remember what he talked about, what he told me to do. He spent most of his time talking to me, of all things, you can imagine that. So he had counseled us, I think he was like, I better give him a little more advice, he's gonna need it along the way. But then making that commitment and saying, "I do."
And you know, I thought about that this afternoon because when you come to Joshua chapter 20, or we look at, or we're hearing Joshua called for a commitment from the people of Israel. It's a commitment that you might not think he would need to ask for. That you might think, given all that God is doing, that the people were in a good place, that the people didn't need to make a commitment. But Joshua understood the power of, in the presence of the Lord, making a commitment.
So let's look at at Joshua chapter 24 in verse 14. "Now fear the Lord." And this is Joshua's farewell address, essentially, to the nation. "Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."
As for me, Joshua says, I'm making the commitment in front of you, and I'm asking you to make a commitment that you and your household are going to serve the Lord. Now, at the beginning of that person, an interesting verse. Bring it back to the front of the verse, if you can. Back. "Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness." That really, in, in the, in the Hebrew, it's two words. What it means is, or what it's translated in the Hebrew is, "within and truth." Serve the Lord with integrity and truth. The New American says, "sincerity and loyalty." The New Living says, "wholeheartedly."
The Hebrew word for integrity is the idea of serve the Lord with wholeness, serve the Lord with blamelessness. You could even, one commentator says, it has to do with serve the Lord with perfection. Joshua is saying, and what he's doing is, he's calling the people to a passionate commitment to God that says, "I'm gonna be completely, entirely, blamelessly, perfectly committed to the Lord with all that's within me. I'm gonna serve God with all that I can."
What I want you to notice here is, Joshua is making this call to the nation of Israel. Is that he uses some very weighty words. You say, "What do you mean?" Look at it. "Now fear the Lord." Then he says, "Serve Him with integrity, truth." "Throw away, jettison, get rid of." He's calling them to a fresh commitment of devotion to the Lord. I found that very, very interesting. And something else I find interesting is we look through it. I'm gonna highlight some things here.
"Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt. Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods our forefathers served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living." What we know is this, that the children of Israel had worshiped pagan gods in Egypt. Fact, we know that because Leviticus 17:7 mentions the goat idols. And in Deuteronomy, after 32, Moses tells them that they had worshiped demons in the wilderness.
So it's not just, "Hey, once God parted the Red Sea, they were all in on God." But no, as as God is working powerfully in their midst. Think about this, he parts the Red Sea, he gives them manna, he sends quail, they have water from the rock, they have a pillar of fire by night and the cloud by their, the presence of the Living God daily guiding them. This is unthinkable. You would think that all of them would be full-on, totally committed. They'd say, "You know what? There's no other God that compares to our God, or to that God, the true God."
But what's interesting is, as they're going through the wilderness, they're worshipping demons. That's interesting. And now, in the land of Canaan, some of them are worshipping the god of the Canaanites or the Amorites, people they're defeating. They're worshipping those gods. You say, "Why would they do that?" Because that, that Canaanite worship was very, very sensual, very sexual, appeal to human flesh and fleshly appetite. And they never really totally rid themselves of false gods.
I say that because it reminds us that it's possible for God's people to have godly leadership. That Moses and his, his face glows with the glory of God. They're conquering new lands, so they're being given victory. They're enjoying the bread of heaven, man, they're seeing miracles, water's coming from the rock. And yet, they have a divided loyalty when it comes to God. It's not that they don't want God, they just want Him and their other gods.
But here's what Joshua knows. If they don't make a choice to exclusively, passionately, wholeheartedly serve the true God, if they don't get rid of their idols, they will eventually serve those idols and those false gods more than they do the true gods. And if that doesn't happen to them, to that generation, it will surely happen to their children. Because listen, what you and I do in moderation, our children will do in excess. You allow a little bit of sinful activity in your life, your kids will allow a lot. You give an inch to the enemy, you say, "Well, you know, we probably shouldn't, but I think it's okay." And your kids will do it all the time.
And Joshua is warning them. He's calling them to a passionate, full-on, 24/7, 365 days a year service of God. I want to ask you, do you serve God that way? Who, who do you serve? And if you're serving God, how are you serving Him? What are the evidences of your service to God? Can I just say that if your service to God and time with God is limited to what you do at church, either on Sunday or Sunday and Wednesday, then you're probably serving God on Sunday and Wednesday and serving idols or other gods on Monday through Saturday.
If the only time you're spending with God is Sunday and, and Wednesday, then what about the other days? What God is filling that time in your life? And could it be that just like the children of Israel, who were experiencing victory as a group, and we're experiencing blessing because of godly leadership, and because in the timing of God, and the presence of God, and the purpose of God, it was time for them to enter the land, but there was a divided heart on their part in their service of God? So they're serving the true God, to be sure, but they're also dabbling in, they're also at times giving attention to the gods of the Amorites.
You know, listen, that's possible. It's possible for Christians. We don't talk a lot about idolatry, but it's possible for Christians to allow other things to occupy a place in their life that only God should occupy. And at that point, that thing has become an idol, a false god. We could understand it this way. We could define idols this way. Idols tend to be, and I mean, not always, not everything's a good thing, but idols can be good things that are turned into God things and become bad things. Something good can become something bad if it becomes God. Or it may just be a bad thing. And usually, what happens to most people is they worship more than one idol. If God is not occupying the totality of their devotion and their affection, other things creep in, and usually in combination.
Some of the good things that can become idols are family. And I, I would say overwhelmingly, we live in a, I think that's in the evangelical church, one of the, one of the biggest false gods there is, is family. "Well, you know, pastor, we're going to be gone this summer. You won't see us much because we just need the family time." So you're going to get rid of God for the, you're going to go down and you're going to reject assembling yourselves together with the church, which is clear in scripture, you're supposed to do. So you can go hang out at the lake. Hey, hang out the lake, get back for church. But no, people say, "You know, that's just our family time." Well, that's because families have become a god.
Or people, people make choices about activity. "Well, this is what we do." That's because that's your God. That's what you're serving. "We like, we like doing that." That's right, that's your God. You like doing that. There's a place for devotion. Or it can be other things. It can be a job, it can be a career, where everything centers around, "If I got to do that for my job, well, I got to do that for me, but for my career, I gotta advance my career. If I don't do this, I don't do that." Well, you know, I can be there, I can do this because of my career. Your career is your God.
Or it's a hobby. "Well, you know, I just, I just feel, you know, honestly, I'm out in the woods or I'm down by the lake and uh, you know, I just feel, I feel God. I worship there." You know, that's what, no, that's your God. Of course, you're worshiping. You're just not worshiping the true God. You're worshiping the fishing pole and the fish on the end of it.
You know, all these things said that when we begin to say, "I'm gonna set aside time with the family of God and the Church of the Living God, which Jesus said, 'I will build my church.'" That's what He builds. And I'm gonna forsake the assembling, the gathering of the saints, which scripture calls us not to do. And especially all the more as you see the day approaching, the closer we get to the end times, we need more church, not less church.
I'm just simply saying, when people start to substitute, and churches is one area where people make the substitution. People can make a God out of their health, where they're just simply consumed with working out. I've seen people who won't miss a workout, but they miss church, they miss their devotions. "I don't got time to read my Bible, but they're at CrossFit five days a week." And I'm not against CrossFit, I'm just simply saying, when, when you put, when you say, "I don't have time to pray, and I don't have time to read my Bible, but I have time to put a grueling workout at the CrossFit gym, and I've got community going on there, I feel close to those people, and I've filled anybody else." Then something's wrong. You're serving another God. Not saying you're not serving this God, I'm just saying you're serving more than one God.
May it can be all kinds of things. It can be money. It can be appearance, so like you're just caught up in and just how you look and all the things that contribute to how you look. We have to be careful. We keep everything in alignment. It can be serving people. What they think it can be. It can be where you spend your time, where you spend the bulk of your time. When somebody says, "I don't have time to spend time with God," but they have time to park themselves in front of the TV for hours. Something's wrong. Some things your God, but it's not the God of the Bible.
I mean, I'm not trying to be legalistic. I'm just trying to to suggest to you some things that I think we have to think about, less we find ourselves in the same situation they're at. They were in here, and we can, we can mistakenly assume that because we're part of a gathering, a company of people where we're seeing God move, where we're sensing God's presence, where we're beholding supernatural work, that somehow our service of God is satisfactory or is enough.
And just as Joshua, as a leader, calls the nation to say, "You, you need to stop and think this through. You're serving Amorite gods, and some of you are serving the gods of Egypt, and some of you are serving the gods, the demons of the wilderness, and that's really got to come to a stop." "As for me and my house, we're gonna serve the Lord." You know what's happening is, he's saying this. He's led them in a conquest of the land, but frankly, the land has not been conquered. What can happen is, you can have it where, as a corporate group, we're conquering the land, but where you have individuals in the group who are not.
I'm simply suggesting to you, could it be that the absence of victory in your life in certain places has less to do with the timing of God or a delay on God's part, than it has to do with your willingness to be dedicated to the Lord and to say, "God, here's all of me"? And so Joshua is calling them to this. And then certainly, there are other idols that we could name. Substances that become idols. Could be alcohol, could be drugs, could be food. I mean, Paul says, "Their god is their stomach." So food can certainly be that. It could be sexual sin, could be pornography. Those kind of things become an idol.
As people worship, really, what idolatry is at its core, is it's worshiping created things. Because everything has been created by God. Everything aside from God has been created. So whatever people worship, either it's a creation of their own hands, or it's a creation of the Lord. And really, the height of God's creation was humanity and a human body. So it's the height of idolatry to worship in terms of pornography or sexual sin.
I mean, here's how you know if something has become an idol. Just ask yourself, what do you treasure? What, what do you fear losing? What can't you let go of? Or maybe, what is it that brings you relief? For example, when we talk about idols being a combination of things. So maybe you worship work, but then you come home and you have to mix in other gods. Could be like drinking, smoking, television, masturbation, to try to give you a release from the stress of your job. I'm just simply saying, we've got to think, where are we? Where, where are we focusing? What are we thinking on? What is occupying the, some of our, of our affection, our desire, our time? And are we giving the Lord? Are we giving Him the time and the affection and the attention that would speak not just to Him, but to us, and those especially closest to us, that we've made the commitment, "We're gonna serve God"?
Joshua 24, verse 14. "Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river." Was at some point, you got to say, "You know what? If I can't, if I can't manage it, I got to get rid of it." You know, if it's, if it's gonna be a God in your life. If Jesus said, "If your hand to Finch, you cut it off. If your eye offends you, gouge it out." I mean, you know, better to endure life, eternal life, maimed, than with both your hands. In other words, whatever it is that is causing you not to love God with that singularity of devotion that He calls for from all of us, not just for preachers, but all of us. Whatever that is, get rid of it.
Is Jesus' counsel says, "Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve." This is, this is, if you want to be a conqueror. And yeah, at some point, you got to choose. You got to say, "What is my life going to be about? And what kind of legacy am I gonna leave? What am I gonna value in life? What, who will I value?"
"Whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river." See, this is what trips a lot of people up. "Well, you know, my parents, and I think I turned out all right." Well, you did, but you're in idolatry. You know, if we don't count that you turned out great. See, a lot of times people want to excuse where they're at because they want to say, "Well, that's how I was raised." Forget it. It doesn't matter. What matters is today. It's your choice. And you determine your legacy. And you determine what kind of, what kind of devotion you're going to live personally, which determines what kind of legacy you're gonna leave for posterity. "In whose land you are living."
"But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." There's such power in making that choice. Because the fact of the matter is, and especially if you're a parent, you bring the people with you along on that journey. As a parent, you're better off if you can, if you hear this as a young parent, to make those decisions now, early on. Because honestly, to, to make a course correction in a hard-nosed way with your children when they're in their teens can be very, very difficult. I think you have to have wisdom in that. But the idea is that you make a choice and you say, "You know, this is how I'm gonna do life, and this is what, this is what our home is gonna stand for." Whether you're a single parent, or whether you have a traditional marriage, this is, this is what, or if you're a single person, it's your home. This, this is what, this is what I'm standing for. You're single, this is my friends. No, this is what I'm standing for. If you have family living with you, my family knows, this is what I'm standing for. I've made a choice. Me and my household, we are going to serve the Lord.
It, when you make that choice, and you, you declare it, and you say, "I've made a decision. I'm throwing the gauntlet down. I'm doing this. This is the way I'm gonna go." There's a power in that that affects not only you, but affects people around you. How do you lead your family in serving the Lord? Let me just give you a couple of scriptures. Deuteronomy chapter 6. "These are the commands and decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you were crossing the Jordan to possess." So this is really what Joshua is calling them to do. "So that you and your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live."
Listen, this is, this is the issue. That if the Lord tarries, the choices we make today echo through the decades that follow. The kind of life you live has an effect and an influence beyond what you can calculate. The people who know you are watching it, but the people who live with you are experiencing it. And, and the way I serve God, the sincerity, the integrity, the faithfulness with which I serve God has a huge impact on my children. And Debbie, in my case, first of all, on my wife, then on my children, and now on my grandchildren. They're watching. They're seeing. They're learning. My kids watched Tim, my grandkids watched them, have heard them pray, have watched them, have sat at their table and heard them talk about the Lord, have heard them talk about the things of God, have heard them share godly wisdom. Every now and then, Tim and Bonnie will cook my, my kids breakfast, tell them there is breakfast, they will be there, and they'll get my kids there around their table, and they will talk to them about the things of God. Grandparents, you can make them breakfast, make sure there's bacon, you're good, they'll be there. They'll never be too busy for bacon.
It's you, your children, and your children after them, that they may fear the Lord your God as long as you live. Listen, the way you serve God determines how they're gonna serve God. And then it goes on and says, "As long as you live, keeping all His decrees and commands that I give you, so that you may enjoy long life." And then he talks about to the parents. Look at this. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." "These commands that I give you today are to be upon your hearts." It starts in the heart. This heart commitment that says, "I'm in." Because once something's in my heart, it will be expressed from my lips. "Right out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." What I'm passionate about on the inside will become obvious on the outside.
Moms and dads, if you want your children to love the Lord with all your heart, then you have to. Honestly, at times, you see parents who drop their kids off at church so they can go get groceries. That makes no sense. That's saying, "You need it, but I don't." And here's what the kids, what they're thinking, "When I'm your age, I won't need it either." You just have to think, your kids have to see you worship. They have to see you love God. They have to hear you pray. But that all comes out of the heart. It's not a calculated thing, it's not a robotic thing. It's a thing that comes from having internalized in your heart this commitment that says, "I love God." That's gotta love you. When it's on your heart, it begins to flow out of your mouth and begins to be lived out in your life.
And here explains that in verses 7 through 9. "Impress them on your children." How do you impress the, the thinking of scripture on your children? First of all, it's got to be in your heart. Because if you tell them, "Do this," but they can tell your heart's not in it, they'll, they'll see you for what you are, a hypocrite, and they'll reject it. I mean, we've all seen people who the parents were essentially hypocrites, and the kids are like, "Who needs that?"
So impress them on your children. "Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up." What, what does that mean? That means all the time. You're talking about the things of the Lord. So like, when our kids, when we'd have dinner, I'd ask him about their day, and we would talk about, they would tell me what different things that were going on in, in friends' lives and different things, and we would talk about it in terms of godly wisdom. "How should we think about that?" Or, "This is what my teacher said." "Well, what do you think? What do you, how do you, what do you think the Bible says about that? How would you process that?" And begin to talk them through. Or if, if the teacher said something, you know, about how to handle emotional things, I would say, "Well, do you think that's true?" "I don't know, I think it is." And I'd say, "You know what the Bible says? The Bible says," and talk about it. And then we talk about that.
"When you lay down at night, pray with your kids. Get down and get down at their level." I'm gonna tell you what my mom did for me out of, out of the six kids. She didn't do for any of the other kids. And it must have been because she knew unless she did it, I was, I was in deep weeds. My mom and my parents were not going to church. But my mom bought a 10-volume set of Bible stories, and she read me a story every night in my early grade school years. Every night. And she, and she did it for any of the other kids. And I never thought about it. I was just like, "Oh, great, she's gonna read to me. That's, that's awesome." Because, you know, you're little kids, you like that. But I mean, and honestly, I was during the time she was doing that, I was on detention half of the school year. I was in the hallway, the principal's office. But she didn't think, "You know, this is not working." She just kept doing it. I'm just saying, when you talk about the things of God, and you find a way to make it, you know, where it's agent with our own kids. There was a time when we had him act out. There was a time when we got, you know, a family devotional that was really geared toward them, because we were, we were trying to find ways to give us a vehicle for constantly talking about, about the Lord. And, and there was a season when Brandon didn't want to go to the kids' program. And I wasn't like, "You have to go, kids program." Me or my son. I was like, "Hey, just sit with me. Sit with me in the church and take notes." "What kind of notes?" "There's a little kid gonna take." Maybe better than you think. But I'd look at his notes, and, and we would talk. And I'm just simply saying, to talk about the things of God.
"Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads." The idea is, in everything you do, and everything you do, you're just trying to, you're trying to think about how, how it applies, or how, when you're thinking, you're binding it on your forehead. You're, you're thinking about the Word of God. You're meditating on it.
"Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." In other words, put the Word of God where you see it. Put it where you see it. We have the big blessing written on the entryway to our home. Many of you have seen it. It's, you know, it's big letters, and it's, it's written there. And I mean, there's just a lot of times you say, "Well, you got it memorized by now. What do you need it? What do you, you know?" It's a reminder. Yes, I've got it in my heart. I've got it memorized. But every now and then, I just said, "Look at it and read it and think about it." It's good. And it says to anybody who enters our home, "This is what we're about. This is what we value. This is what's important to us." Scripture.
So you do that. And then let me just give you one last scripture. Deuteronomy 30. And we'll close. "This is Moses saying, 'For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws. Then you'll live and increase.'" Listen, do you realize when we're talking to show, some people, I realize, as I start talking about idols, some of you are getting your feathers a little bit ruffled, and you're like, "Wow, you know, you know, he's things y'all need to sit around quote scripture all day to one another."
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I'd probably be a good place to start. I mean, that's, that's not bad. You might be surprised with that. Don't knock it till you've tried it, okay?
Now, what I want you to see here is, you do this, and God's gonna do this. "You'll live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you." I mean, you know, God says to Joshua, "If you meditate on this law day and night, then you will be prosperous and have success in everything you do." How many would like that? I mean, that's, that's a great promise. You see, God is, God is not doing this to keep something from us. God is calling for this to give something to us. And there's nothing you and I could hang on to in the way of good things that become bad things because they've become God things. There's nothing we could hang on to that would do more for us than loving God and letting Him bring increase and blessing into our life.
"But if your heart turns away and you're not obedient, and if you're drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you'll certainly be destroyed." Here's the principle of scripture. And you find it in Psalm 115, you find it in Isaiah, I think you'll find it again and later in the Psalms, in Psalm 135, talks about idols. And it says, "Those who make them, or those who worship them, will be like them." What happens is, God is telling us something that's a, that's really a spiritual principle that's very, very true. We become like the object of our worship. It's, it's startling to think. So think about what you're worshiping. You'll become like that.
He says, "You will not live long in the land." He says, "This thing, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you, that I've set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you watch this again, and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life." You know what? When you make that choice, God says, "I'm gonna bless you." And what happens is, your children are blessed, the people around you are blessed, and God becomes your life, brings you life.
Well, at all of the campuses in here, at South, I like us to stand right now. I can't talk about choosing without calling you to make a choice. Maybe you're saying, "Well, John, I've made my choice." But you know what? I found out, I think it's good to reaffirm the choice we've made. It's good for me, for like Debbie and I, to say, "Debbie, if I had the choice, I'd do it all over again. I choose to love you." There's not a wife in the world that doesn't love hearing that. And there's not a husband in the world who shouldn't be saying it. But in our relationship with God, we just sometimes need that wake-up call. And we just, and we also need to make that fresh commitment. And in the presence of the Lord, to do that.
So all the campuses, I'm just saying, husbands and wives, or maybe single parents, or maybe you're just, maybe you're single and you're serving the Lord. And can I just say that's sometimes that's not an easy place to be, but it's not necessarily a bad place to be. But it's good for whatever season we're in, and whatever place we find ourselves, to say, "As for me and my house, as for me, I'm serving the Lord."