Remember the Faithfulness of God

The name of Jesus that we come together and gather together, whether it's in person or online, and so we lift up the name of Jesus.

We believe and trust that He has the answers to every dilemma and every issue that our world is facing, and for every dilemma and every issue that we're facing personally with our own lives and our families, our kids.

And so we ask you, Heavenly Father, that you would work right now, just as you have during this time of worship.

We pray that you would speak to us.

We pray that you would speak into the current circumstances that we find ourselves in in this world, but also just speak into the deep depth of our heart, speak to our soul.

That's what we need this morning.

And so we we do, we pray against fear, we pray against anxiety, and we know that it is the name of Jesus that we can see those things scattered.

And so we ask for you to speak into this situation right now.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Now I want to welcome you this morning.

Maybe you're joining us at 9:15 or 11 o'clock or at 5 o'clock today.

And so I want to welcome you.

You might be part of our social circle campus, you might be part of our Walnut Grove campus, or you may be somebody that's just kind of found us on the internet.

We want to say we're glad that you're with us this Sunday and celebrating the name of Jesus.

So welcome.

My name is Russ.

If I hadn't had a chance to meet you, glad to have you with us this morning.

We're going to dive into some scripture today, hopefully, that will encourage you in these perilous times that we're in.

Recently, I was invited to go with some of my family members to hang out with uh with some of my relatives, people that I hadn't seen probably in years.

And uh one of the interesting things I found was that I was the youngest person in the room.

So everybody there was was old, um, uh, which brings me to Pat, and I'm kidding.

Um and so we uh we we started telling stories, and and I'm gonna be honest with you, when I was invited to go to this little family gathering, I felt like I didn't have time.

I had so much to do, but I am so glad that I went.

And as we started sharing stories from our past, and some of these stories I didn't even remember because it was before um when I was either born or it was when I was really young.

Here's what I found out.

Those stories were soothing to my soul.

And so when we were headed home after that gathering, I just felt this peace because there's something about remembering the past and remembering, you know, as we called it that day, the good old days.

And so I want to dive into some scripture and I want to encourage you with this reality that scripture is something that is given to us to soothe our soul.

It's the stories from the past of God's goodness, God's faithfulness, where God shows up in times of peril like we're in today.

And so we're gonna dive in this morning and look at a specific story that I think that will encourage us.

Here's something I found is that we all have memorials in our life, don't we?

We have memorials.

We're in a house, we're in a house right now celebrating, worshiping together with you guys that are online.

You're in your house, and if you looked around your house, you would find pictures, you would find trinkets, you would find things that are sitting on counters that are memorials.

They're reminders of precious times.

They're reminders of good times with your families.

And so Scripture is filled with memorials that remind us of God's faithful work in our lives.

And here's the reality: God is always at work in me.

And we sang it that just a while ago, whether we feel it or not, God is always at work.

And so we find the people of God in Joshua chapter 3 ready to cross the Jordan River.

Joshua 3 · chapter mention

God had delivered them out of Egypt.

We preached not too long ago about the fact that the spies had gone in.

Some had brought back a bad report, some had brought a good report and said, hey, we should have faith.

But because of their lack of faith, they had spent 40 years in the wilderness.

And so it's now is the time that they're sitting on the edge of the promised land about to go in.

And so I would imagine there had to be a little bit of anxiousness because they they knew from spying out the land that there were challenges, right?

And so they probably felt some anxiousness.

There might have been a little bit of fear.

And so Joshua speaks into this situation.

Joshua is faced with an immeasurable task of leadership.

Joshua chapter 3.

Joshua 3 · chapter mention

Let's just read this, verses 1 through 5.

It says that Joshua rose early in the morning and they set out from Shittim.

That's an interesting name for a place, right?

And they came to the Jordan, he and all the people of Israel, and they lodged there before they passed over.

That end of three days the officers went through the camp and commanded the people as soon as you see the ark of the covenant of your of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priest, then you shall set out from your place and follow it.

Now listen to verse 4.

Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, talking about the ark, about 2,000 cubits in length.

Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go.

Listen to this next line.

For you have not passed this way before.

You feel like we're maybe passing through some circumstances that we haven't passed through before.

You at home, whatever your circumstances, economically, relationally, emotionally, spiritually, you may feel like, man, we're we're treading ground that we've never had to face before.

That's how we feel.

And so he says, he says, consecrate.

So verse 5, did Joshua say to the people, consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

Now, and here's something I wrote in my notes here.

A pure heart is always a prerequisite to walk in the center of God's will.

He says, consecrate yourselves.

And it's the word that means to purify ourselves, to get our hearts right.

You know, there's a New Testament word called sanctification.

And it just means set apart.

It means, hey, examine your heart.

Joshua's saying, listen, we're about to take a journey, and I don't want to take anybody with me that's not right with God and doesn't have a pure heart.

And so God is always doing something new.

I wrote down in my notes here.

Often we may feel as if we are navigating uncharted territory.

Go back to verse 4.

He says, For you have not passed this way before.

Now let me jump.

Joshua 3, verse 8.

Joshua 3:8

He says, As for you, command the priest who bear the Ark of the Covenant.

When you come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.

It's very interesting here.

Joshua said to the people of Israel, Come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God.

And Joshua said, Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you, and that he without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Gergeshites, the Amorites, the Jebusites, and the Coronaites.

I put that in there.

Verse 11 Behold the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and all the earth is passing before you into the Jordan.

Now, therefore, take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, from each tribe a man, and when the soles of the feet of the priest bearing the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan.

The waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing, and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap.

And so what you see here is you see something that sounds familiar.

It sounds like the parting of the Red Sea.

God has the power to stop the water.

Now let me tell you what's interesting about this that you don't know until you study it.

This is happening in the harvest season.

This is April, May in the Middle Eastern culture, and it's the rainy season, and the Jordan River has overflowed its banks.

And so there are places that we know that when the Jordan overflowed, it could be up to half a mile to a mile that the water would have been over the banks.

And so can you imagine the trepidation, the anxiousness as they stepped into the water and God held back the waters?

So Joshua 4, verses 1, he says, When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, so the waters are held back, they cross over, and he says, While the waters are still held back, he says, Take twelve men from the people, from each man a tribe, from each tribe a man, and command them, saying, Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priest's feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.

Joshua 4:1

Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel whom he'd appointed a man from each tribe, and Joshua said to them, Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this stone may be a sign among you.

Remember what I said about memorials.

Here's what God's doing.

God is setting up a memorial.

Listen, when your children ask in time to come, what do those stones mean to you?

Then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.

When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.

So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.

Here's what I wrote.

Signs and memorials are reminders of God's work and faithfulness in our life.

Signs and memorials are reminders of how God is faithful.

Some of you, think about those pictures, think about those trinkets, think about those things in your house, think about the treasures in your heart, the memories in your heart, that are memorials to the goodness and the faithfulness of God.

And so he says, hey, we're going to stack these stones up.

And here we find ourselves, not gathered together as a church in a building.

We find ourselves gathered as families.

In living rooms, around kitchen tables and dens.

And you need to have conversations with your kids about what's going on right now in this world.

And this right here, he's saying, he said, these memorials are going to bring questions from your children.

And these are going to be opportunities for you to tell your children about God's faithfulness.

Now, but he doesn't, we don't stop there.

Verse 8 and 9, he says, And the people of Israel did just as Joshua commanded and took up twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, just as the Lord told Joshua.

They carried them over with them to the place where they lodged, and they laid them down there.

And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan in the place where the feet of the priest bearing the Ark of the Covenant stood, and they are there to this day.

And so here's an interesting aspect that many of us miss out on.

He says, You take these stones and set them up over here at Gilgal where we're going to camp, but while the waters are still parted, you take 12 stones and you set them up in the middle of the Jordan River.

Right in the middle of the riverbed.

Now you know when they step out of the riverbed, you know what's going to happen.

The waters are going to come and cover up the stones.

So you're saying, God, we're going to put a memorial in the middle of the riverbed that we're not even going to have the ability to see?

That's exactly what he's saying.

Here's what he's doing.

Because you know, in the Middle East and all over the world, there are times where there are famine, plagues, droughts, and seasons it doesn't rain.

And so God knew there's going to be droughts.

There's going to be times.

There's going to be times of famine.

There's going to be difficulty.

There are going to be seasons where it doesn't rain for a long time.

And that all these waters are going to recede.

And you aren't going to have any harvest.

You're going to be short on food.

You're going to be short on supplies.

You're going to wonder where your next meal is coming from.

And you need to point to that group of stones that are now visible in the middle of a riverbed because of a drought.

God is good even in the middle of drought.

He's good.

Verses 17 of chapter 4.

So Joshua commanded the priest, come up out of the Jordan.

And when the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord came up out from the midst of the Jordan, and the soles of the priest's feet were lifted up on dry ground, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks as before.

The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they encamped at Gilgal at the east border of Jericho.

And those twelve stones which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal.

And here's what he said to the people of Israel Families at home, when your children ask their fathers in times to come, why do these what do these stones mean?

When there's droughts and the other stones are visible?

And people say, What do those stones mean?

He said, Then you shall let your children know.

Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.

You know what?

God is a miracle worker.

He's a way maker, isn't he?

For the Lord God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until for you until you passed over, as the Lord God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth, listen to this.

Why maybe why are we going through what we're going through?

So all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

Here's some notes I just wrote down just to kind of as we get close to closing here.

Signs and memorials become visual reminders of God's goodness and faithfulness in dry seasons of life.

Now, I picked up this rock over close to our church building.

And you might ask, it probably is much smaller than the stones that those guys put on their shoulders.

I picked up one I could carry, okay?

And so these rocks became memorials.

Memorials become reminders of God's goodness and God's faithfulness.

And so they piled that rock on top of other rocks.

I wrote down this signs and memorials can remind us to discuss and talk about the things that matter most with the people in our lives that matter most to us.

And here's what I'm encouraging you, if you ain't got this yet, families, they're dads, moms, there's no better time than to talk with your kids about the goodness of Jesus and what Jesus came for, and that God is faithful, and that God is good.

And here's there's two memorials that I want to lead us to right now that matter more than any rock or any stone.

That really are the are the most significant memorials in all of history, right?

Anyone want to take a guess at one of them?

The cross.

The cross of Jesus Christ.

The cross.

Let me read John 19, 28 through 30.

I know I didn't warn you beforehand, but after this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, and to fulfill the scripture, I thirst.

Verse 29, a jar full of sour wine stood there.

So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to its mouth to his mouth.

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, Listen, here's the three words.

It is finished.

Say that with me.

Online.

Let's say it together.

One, two, three.

It is finished.

And he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit.

What is Jesus saying?

It's finished.

The work that he came to do to provide for your redemption, to provide for your forgiveness, to provide for you to have hope in times like these.

Jesus in his death took sin upon himself.

Scripture even says, the Apostle Paul says, He became sin.

He who knew no sin became sin so that we might be the righteousness of God.

And so that's what Jesus did at the cross.

The cross is a symbol of God removing any account that we have for the sin in our life.

Justification, forgiveness, sanctifying us, providing hope, providing life.

I put down here John 17, 3, that it says, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

And so one of these memorials that's that's so important is the cross.

It stands at the height of anything that we should be talking about in the middle of this crisis.

But there's one other memorial.

Anybody want to take a guess at what that other memorial is?

An empty tomb.

An empty tomb.

Because after the cross, they took Jesus' lifeless body off.

And they put it in a tomb.

Joseph of Arimathea put it in a tomb.

I've been to Israel, had the fortune, I know Nathan has as well.

And so I've been to the garden tomb.

There's a couple different places where they think that the empty tomb would have been.

I've been there, and it's a memorial.

It's a memorial to God's ability to conquer death and to have victory over the grave.

And so these two memorials stand for us today to give us hope in the middle of uncertainty, to give us joy in the midst of sorrow.

Listen what he said, Matthew, the account of Matthew, now after the Sabbath, Matthew 28, 1 through 7, toward the dawn of the first day of the great, first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb, and behold, there was a stone and sat on it.

There was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came right.

Roll back the stone and sat on it.

His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.

And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men.

But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.

They were seeking a lifeless body.

He is not here.

So the tomb is empty.

And there is another memorial for our hope.

And he tells them, He said, He said, Come and see you the place where he lay.

Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead.

Behold, he is going before you to Galilee.

There you will see him.

See, I have told you.

So what does this mean for us?

What does this mean for us today?

Be encouraged that God is good, God is faithful.

He's provided the opportunity for each one of us to have hope in the midst of crisis.

And that hope is found in eternal life.

I just read about it.

And eternal life is found in Jesus Christ.

Put your faith in Jesus and Jesus alone, and let these two memorials be an encouragement to you.

And be willing to offer encouragement to people around you.

Our faith is in Christ.

And there's no better time for us to have conversations that really matter and have eternal consequences.

And so if you're watching online, maybe you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ, we say here at Church at the Grove, it's as simple as ABC.

Admit that you need a Savior.

Admit that you fall short.

And then believe and trust in what I just read.

Believe and trust in what Jesus provides in his life and his death on the cross and in this empty tomb.

The fact that he rose from the dead.

You believe that.

Trust it.

Confess him as your Savior and Lord.

And the Bible says the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of you.

And it doesn't mean that all of the bad things that we're dealing with is going to go away, but it means that you can sing songs like we sang this morning and sing them with hope.

That's what you see when people are raising their hands and singing out in the midst of a time and a crisis that we're in.

There's still hope.

And so put your faith in Christ.

And maybe if you've already put your faith in Christ, what else are we to do?

Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to keep one ear open to what's going on to the world.

And what that means is, that doesn't mean you get consumed with news.

It just means listen to people that have wisdom.

Let's listen to our leaders.

And let's consider those who are in authority over us.

Let's listen to medical professionals.

Let's practice social distancing.

Let's do what we need to do to get through these circumstances.

But here's the other thing: you need to lean in with your other ear to the Holy Spirit.

And when I say that, I mean I'm talking about listening to the depths of your soul.

To a God that lives within you and in the midst of anxiousness and sorrow has the ability to give you hope.

And that voice, when you listen to the Holy Spirit, that's the one that matters the most.

I wrote down.

I wrote this scripture.

It's a script, probably one of the first scriptures we taught our children when I am afraid, I will trust in him.

Jesus said, I will not leave you nor forsake you.

Those are the things that you that the Holy Spirit will say to you when you listen deep.

Lean heavily into the Holy Spirit's leaning in your life.

Be sensitive to the things going on around you.

Listen, here's practical.

Here's some practical stuff.

Stay in touch with people in your groups.

Check on people in our church.

Let's relationally be active, even though we can't physically be close.

Let's be connected to people and let's check on people.

I love my neighborhood.

We're checking on our senior adults.

Let's make if we can make store runs or we can help people out.

Listen, if you if you've got toilet paper hoardered at your house, shame on you.

And you need to tie that.

Check on people, love people.

I wrote down, I wrote this down.

If you had the ability, would you please continue to give faithfully to Church of the Grove?

And here's why I say that.

If the economy has affected your income, I understand that.

But if you had the ability to give financially, I promise you we are a church that wants to support our community.

There's some people in this room wearing four shirts, four the grove or for the circle.

And we want to be for Walton County.

We want to be for the people in our community.

We're for you.

And so if you are able, give consistently and give faithfully so we can keep doing the ministry that's more important now than ever before.

And then just stay in touch with what's going on at Church at the Grove.

We're going to keep you informed online.

We're going to keep you informed by email.

We're going to keep you informed by texting.

We're available.

The pastors are available to answer phone calls, to come and support you in any way that we can.

And so stay in touch with what's going on at Church at the Grove.

And then listen, when you gather around the table, or you gather together as families, hey, be reminded of God's faithfulness and talk about it.

Share stories, mom and dad's.

You share stories of God's goodness with your kids.

You share them out of Scripture, and then you share them out of your own personal life.

So would you pray with me?

As we close this time.

Heavenly Father, I pray for that person that maybe has never put their faith in Christ that they would do that right now.

And if you, there's not a magical prayer, but if you want to right now, you can call out to the Lord.

God, I admit that I need you.

I'm far from you.

Wherever you live, you might live in another state, you're listening in.

Just simply admit that you need rescuing.

And then you believe that Christ died for you, and you believe and trust that he rose for you.

And you say it out loud to God, I believe.

I trust.

I trust in these memorials, that cross, that ain't empty tomb.

And I confess Jesus is my Lord.

We would love to know if you prayed that prayer.

For the rest of us, Father, I pray that you would help us be the church that you've called us to be.

We pray for every remedy.

We pray for experts.

We pray for medical professionals.

We pray for anybody and everybody that has access to an answer to the coronavirus or the problems that we're dealing with all over the world.

We pray that you'd lead them and guide them.

Give our leaders wisdom that lead our communities, that lead our state, that lead our nation, that lead this world.

More than anything, Father, we pray that you would whisper into the depths of our soul that you are with us and you won't forsake us.

And it's in Christ's name I pray, and everybody in this room is going to say together with you at home, Amen.