Joshua: God is Committed to Your Formation

Good morning.

If you remember back before Easter, before Lent, before even coronavirus, we were actually studying the book of Joshua.

I know that's been a long time ago.

So if you remember that story, let me give you a little bit of a recap.

Maybe you weren't with us back then.

And so this story is in the Old Testament, it's the epic ancient old story about the people of Israel.

They had been in Egypt.

We can read about that story in the book of Exodus.

They had been in the land of Egypt and they've been in slavery.

Then after being in slavery, they're delivered by God out of Egypt and they go into the desert.

And what should take a few weeks to cross this desert to get back to their land in Canaan, a land that was representative of nourishment and safety and restoration, even.

It should have taken a few weeks.

It took 40 years.

And after 40 years of wandering around in this sort of no man's land, God calls Joshua to lead these people over the Jordan River and back into their land.

And so we know these feelings, right?

This is what we were talking about back when we were studying Joshua.

We know these feelings, we know these realities, even, of slavery and wandering and victory of nourishment and safety and restoration.

So 30 years ago, I was a 10-year-old kid.

I was an okay tennis player.

We played a lot of tennis in our neighborhood, and so I was down at the neighborhood tennis courts, and we had four tennis courts in our neighborhood.

I was on court number one.

I remember it so clearly, I was on court number one, 10-year-old, playing tennis with a few friends.

My dad was over in court number four.

He finished his tennis match, he comes over, he sits on the bench on court number one, inside the court over on the side.

And so I'm serving, and I think we're all joking around, we're having a good time.

I think, as a 10-year-old punk kid, boy, wouldn't it be funny?

We're all laughing, we're having a good time.

Wouldn't it be also funny?

Maybe the funniest thing to do in this situation would be instead of throwing that ball up nice and high for that serve, what if I just sort of let it go and I ripped a forehand over at my dad?

I thought, boy, what a fun, funny thing to do.

And so sure enough, I think that's a great idea to do.

We're all laughing.

I'm not gonna hit him, is what I'm thinking.

I'm just gonna hit it near him.

That's gonna be kind of playful, it's gonna be fun, is what I think.

And so, right when I go to throw that up, I drop that ball down and I rip that forehand over, and I know about halfway toward him that it is on target.

And sure enough, he doesn't even have time to move, and that ball hits him in the corner of his right eye.

But he has on eyeglasses, so actually the ball hits the eyeglasses, the eyeglasses hits his face, the eyeglasses fall off his face, his head goes back, eyeglasses fall off his face, fall to the ground, and they break.

And I see all this happen, and I take off, right?

Like I am out of there.

I do not want to know what's about to happen to me or what's gonna happen.

So I need a fence between me and him because certainly I know there's gonna be discipline, right?

Like rightful discipline.

I understand that.

And we were later that afternoon at Lynchcrafter at Gwinnett Place Mall, and I was shelling over my lawn cutting money to pay for new glasses.

So, yes, discipline certainly.

But what I didn't know was how much anger there would be.

Right?

You know this because you've got in trouble with a parent.

Right?

And you know the difference between discipline and anger.

Or maybe you're a parent, you know the difference between discipline, loving discipline, and anger.

You see, discipline is understandable, even formative, and it comes from love, but anger or condemnation toward you is something entirely different.

So now that brings us into Joshua chapter 7.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

Here's Joshua 7, verse 1.

Joshua 7:1

But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things.

We're gonna make sense of that.

For Achan, the son of Carmi, son of Zebdi, son of Zarah of the tribe of Judah, a lot of names I don't know how to pronounce there, took some of the devoted things.

And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.

So the story goes on, and Joshua sends men up from Jericho, because that's what had just happened, right?

If you remember back a couple months ago when we were studying this, they had just won this battle of Jericho, the kind of entry city into their land is kind of the foothills moving up into the hills to take back their land.

So they win this battle of Jericho, and there's another city, a town up in those hills named I, but it's not as big as Jericho.

So Joshua sends some spies up there to check it out first.

Like, how many men need to go up there to take this city?

And the spies come back and say, Oh, it's not as big as Jericho, it's not as big of a deal.

So we just need two to three thousand men to go up there to take this city.

So they send three thousand men up there to take this city.

That's not gonna be a big deal, but what what they didn't plan on happening happened.

They get whooped, they get ran out of there, thirty-six men die.

And then it says this in the text.

And I love this sentence.

The hearts of the people melted and became as water.

And I love that sentence, that emotive language, because I think it is so poetically how we feel so often.

The hearts of the people melted and became as water.

Here's point number one, three points this morning.

Point number one, our lives are filled with both confidence and despair.

Right?

We we fluctuate.

I mean, these people of Israel, they just came off this victory in Jericho, everything's great, we're gonna conquer the next city.

They're so confident, right?

I mean, they and then they have this battle with I, they get whooped and they're in despair to the point of melting.

And we know those feelings.

And you know those feelings of the past month.

Certainly we all do to some degree, some of us much larger than others.

The last month, five, six weeks, some of us have experienced really wonderful things of what a slower life can bring us, and that was surprising.

And we enjoy that, we take that in for what that is.

At the same time, there's been other elements of our lives that have been incredibly disappointing or stressful.

So we know what it means to go into a season with plans and ideas and what we're gonna conquer and what we're gonna do, and we're gonna have victories, we're gonna do this and go there, and then those things get shut down or they become places of stress instead of places that we were thinking was gonna create so much joy for us.

And so we know what it means to go from confidence to despair.

We know this sentence, this poetic language, we've felt it in us over the last month.

At times, the hearts of the people melted and became as water.

So that's just a point to simply say maybe you feel a certain way, and maybe you don't feel it all day, but maybe you felt it at times.

And we all have this range of feelings in life as human beings, even as children of God.

We have this range of confidence at times, and at other times just despair.

So let's keep reading, verses six down through verse nine.

I'm actually gonna read these verses.

Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening.

He and the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads.

So they're in a repentant, sorrowful phase of what's going on, God?

We're so sorry for what's going on.

Help us understand.

Verse 7.

And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all?

To give us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us?

Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan?

So he's saying, we'd rather have just even gone back.

Like, like this is so horrible.

Why'd we even come here?

Why'd you bring us to this point?

Verse 8, O Lord, what can I say when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies?

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth.

And what will you do for your great name?

So he's saying, Everybody's gonna hear about this.

They're gonna come after us, and they are going to crush us.

God, I don't understand this.

Why couldn't we just go back?

Why'd you bring me to this point only to leave me?

And what are you gonna do?

Right?

You can hear all of the confusion and the doubt.

And here's the point, and we're gonna make sense of this.

Point number two is this.

This is a big theological point.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that before I read it, but here's the point, and we gotta understand this.

It's so good for us.

In the cross, we understand both the anger of God and the grace of God.

In the cross, we understand both the anger of God and the grace of God.

And we say that because the anger of God is toward sin and is put upon Jesus.

That's the good news.

That is actually even the grace of God, that that anger toward sin, righteous anger, is put on God Himself.

He takes it.

So we look at this story, and there's two men.

There's Joshua, this military hero.

He's a stud.

People know this guy.

I mean, he's a leader of leader, he's a leader of a nation.

And we get to see behind the scenes where he is just on his knees.

What's going on?

Why'd you bring this here?

I mean, he is full of doubt.

He is full of despair.

I mean, this guy is a range of confidence and despair, a range of strength and weakness.

And here we see him truly doubting God, lacking faith.

He is not who he should be.

God, are you for us?

God, what are you doing?

And then there's this other guy at the beginning of the story, Achan, who took the devoted things.

Now, what we know from the chapter before is this is talking about items won in the battle that were used in Canaanite worship.

And God says, Don't make yourself rich off of those items.

But he decided he was gonna desire personal wealth off those items more than what God had asked him to do.

So he is not who he should be.

Two different men, neither being who they should be, and yet we see God react differently to each of them because Achan is struck down.

And with Joshua, God's patient.

So God works with Joshua but strikes down Achan.

And Achan, we understand the seriousness of sin, the justice of God, so we get that.

That's how important and huge the grace of God is.

That's how serious our sin is.

That God Himself in His grace put it upon the cross.

That's why we talk about the cross, talk about Jesus all the time.

And in Joshua, we understand the graciousness of God.

Now, if this is the only story you have, it's like so many Old Testament stories.

If you're gonna build your life around an Old Testament story like this, you have a manic God.

Because you never know how God's gonna be regarding you or relating to you.

Is he relating to you like he relates to Achan?

And every time you mess up, he strikes you down or is disappointed in you?

Or does he relate to you and regard you like he does Joshua and he is with you and he is walking with you and forming you?

See, if we only have this story, we have a man at God, but we don't only have this story.

This story exists in a larger story of the gospel, the biblical arch.

So we take this story as God is leading us story by story through history to understand the fullness of his character and the importance of the cross.

This story is leading us to the larger story, and that his regard to us is always grace and love, even in discipline.

Listen to Hebrews 12, 7 through 11.

It is for discipline that you have to endure.

God is treating you as sons, or we say children.

God's treating you as children.

For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them.

Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live?

For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

So his discipline is for our good and for our formation.

Verse 11, for the moment of all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.

I love that admission there.

But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Point number three is this in Jesus, we know God is not angry with us, nor does he condemn us.

That's the first part of the point.

In Jesus, we know God is not angry with us, nor does he condemn us.

Second part of this point.

Rather, God lovingly pursues you and forms you.

This word discipline in this passage, here's what this word means.

This word discipline, intense training or formation of your soul to cultivate and bring new life and curb you away from things of darkness and death.

Who doesn't want a loving God who is committed to that inside of us?

God may form you.

He will form you, but he is never belittling you.

And he's not angry with you.

The fathering of the story, the glimpse of the gospel shows up there in verses 10 through 13 as he begins to speak to Joshua.

The Lord tells Joshua to get up.

The people have sinned, get up.

The people have sinned, get rid of the devoted things.

They need to consecrate themselves.

So that word consecrate, other key word in the passage, it means to be set apart unto God.

Now, this is the law of all religions.

Set yourself apart, get yourself good enough, and then I will be with you.

It's even the law of the Old Testament, the law.

But God uses the law to drive us to the grace of God, to Jesus who fulfills the law, so that we can understand the holiness and justice of God, but live in the grace and the love of God that we have in Jesus.

That's the beauty of the biblical art, our big story that we are a part of.

So the question is never, the question is never whether you're suffering, you're losing your job, your salary's being reduced, you get sick, you know somebody who's sick, all sorts of different sufferings or disappointments or sadness and stress, all of that.

The question, all of that is never is God angry with me?

That's not the question.

The question is always, and all of this discomfort and in all this suffering, and all the victory, the question is actually, I think three questions.

Three questions.

Abba Father, how are you lovingly fathering me in this?

That'd be a good question to ask.

How are you lovingly fathering me in this?

How are you, question number two, how are you forming me in this?

That's that discipline, that formation, that intense training of the soul.

How are you forming the inside parts of who I am in this?

Question number three, in your kindness, what are you calling me to surrender?

Last Sunday was the strangest Easter I've ever had.

I don't know about you.

It was just a strange day, right?

I mean, that's a strange Easter.

We pre-recorded Easter early on and we posted it for everybody.

So I woke up like you.

I just woke up to have a Sunday Easter at home with my family.

So I woke up and I went for a walk.

Like this is like a normal person Sunday.

It was kind of amazing in a way.

I went for a walk, came home.

We had breakfast, we did Easter baskets.

So it was amazing in a way that I actually had an Easter Sunday morning.

I mean, for people in ministry and for pastors, they don't get a lot of Easter Sunday mornings that are low stress.

Just got to be with my family.

It's still weird not to be together, though, right?

Like that was the weirdness and the strange part of it.

And then our little family, we sat around and we watched our Redeemer online worship and we watched Sam lead us in worship.

We did not watch the sermon because I think that's odd to make your children watch you preach to them.

So we didn't do that.

We did the children's lesson.

And I was doing yard work by 11 a.m.

What a weird day.

What a weird Easter.

And then that night, Christy and I were watching the NBC News, right?

And that dramatic music, every headline, like the headline's always worse than the data or the news afterward.

The headline's awful with that dramatic news.

I'm just all my anxiousness is building up, and then I calm a little bit down as they kind of break down that news report.

And then the next headline, you know, after the commercial comes up and all that, you know, huge dramatic news.

I'm just growing in sadness over some of this data and some of these stories.

I'm growing in anxiousness.

I'm scared to get out of my recliner.

I'm pretty sure coronavirus is on every doorknob in my house, it's on the remote.

I'm scared to change the volume.

I'm just in my chair getting more and more anxious, right?

Because you've watched the news, you know this legitimate sadness and anxiousness and stress.

And I'm just stuck in that recliner, going, you know, this was supposed to be Easter, and I'm just stuck in all this anxiousness and all this stress.

And then the end of the NBC, national news, at the end of it.

They go to Andre Bacelli's concert in Milan, Italy, in the Duomo Cathedral.

That morning, Easter Sunday morning, he does an online worship.

22 million people watch this concert as he sings to an empty cathedral.

I think at this point, I've just looked, I think 38 million people have watched it on YouTube, but the clips have been cut up and put up.

Hundreds of millions of people have seen different clips of him seeing this empty cathedral on Easter Sunday morning.

And then the last song, he walks outside of the cathedral.

Maybe you saw it.

He walks outside of the cathedral to a lone microphone there in the plaza, and the plaza is empty.

Nobody, and he sings to an empty plaza, but he sings to the entire world, and he only sings one song out there.

And what song does he sing?

And it's the song NBC showed.

They showed it on national television.

He sings amazing grace to the entire world.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

You see, that is our story, and all that anxiety and that stress inside of me.

It didn't totally go away, I'll be honest.

But it did lessen a little bit, and certainly I started to tear up a little bit hearing him sing.

Because that's our story.

That's our story more than circumstances is our story.

Circumstances are a part of our story, but it is not our story that defines us and who we are.

See, one moment our hearts feel like water.

And in another moment, our hearts can be fierce in love and in strength.

And that movement does not come because we become strong all of a sudden.

That movement actually comes because in our weakness we find that we have greater and greater strength in a God who has us in all moments, whether in confidence or despair.

That's the goodness of God, the strength of God, the faithfulness of God that we have.

Not that we are strong, but that He is strong for us.

That's the goodness of the gospel story, the biblical arc, our story.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your graciousness.

Thank you for the biblical story that we have from Genesis to Revelation to understand the fullness of your character, that you are fully just.

And yes, you hold anger toward that which causes destruction in this world, known as sin, even destruction inside of us.

But that that wrath has been put upon yourself, that you are both just and you are fully gracious, and that you're not angry with us as we are imperfect, but you are committed to us for the formation of our souls.

Thank you that you're a loving father in that way.

May we, in any disappointment and sadness and stress, anxiety, suffering, even our mistakes, may we not say, God, are you angry with me?

But would we come into greater repentance, greater surrender, and say, loving Father, how are you wanting to form me in these days of difficulty?

And we thank you for the story that though we are weak, we are made strong in Jesus.

How amazing your grace is to us.

Let this be the story that we rest in while circumstances all around us are fragile.

Help us to rest again more and deeper in the goodness and the work of Jesus for us.

Amen.