Fully Following God | Joshua 13-19

Hey, it's good to see you guys today.

If I don't know you, my name is Brandon.

I get to serve as the lead pastor here.

And St. City Chapel is a new church here

in the heart of Tempe. We are about 9 months old and we

have seen God at work here. We are just so ecstatic about

who he is and what he has done. And we have seen him move and

transform many, just even our short nine months.

And we have a vision to see God be at work through his gospel,

to have a movement for the city of Tempe, for the campus of ASU,

and for the fame of none other than Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen.

And while we're going to work toward that end and pray that

that reality would be in our sights, we are on a mission

hoping that we would gather ordinary people to take their

next step with the God who is extraordinary.

He is extraordinary. We just sung so much about why

he's extraordinary. There's thousands upon thousands

of reasons that our hearts could muster up that could confess how

spectacular God is. And each and every Sunday we

gather to worship him. So that you might take steps,

that your friends might take steps, so your neighbors might

take steps with that God. And another way of saying that

is that we are here to help you fully follow God.

Not partially, not a little bit follow God, but like in in

totality that you would be a person who fully follows God.

That's what a disciple of Jesus is.

It's somebody who fully follows God across all spectrums of

their life. This past week, I was getting a

lunch with a friend and we were just catching up about what it's

like to be the parents of young kids, to be husbands young in

our marriage still, and to work and to have friendships and to

be a part of our original home of origin still in some way,

shape or form. We were just navigating this.

And he just confessed to me. He said, hey, man, in this

season, I realized that I have some peace in my life, but not

total peace. That he has a sense of

dissatisfaction, of disruption or disillusionment in his heart

because what he said was I don't feel total peace, but only some

peace because I was only following Jesus in some areas of

my life. That as he was navigating being

a husband or a father or an employee, what he realizes there

was areas that he had pulled God out of the out of the equation.

That he was fully following God, perhaps as a husband but not as

a father. That at times he would change

his attention and his focus to following God as a father.

And then he would not measure up in the workplace.

And this tension I'm sure you feel too, this idea and this

concept of man. There's so much areas of my

life, so much identities that I carry as a friend or as a

student or as a mother or father or grandparent, that fully

following God feels impossible. It feels like that's not

something that can be said of somebody like us.

Thankfully, we do have Jesus that followed God fully and

totally and perfectly, who is our forerunner in the faith, who

is the founder and perfector of it.

We have Jesus as our substitute for us on the cross because we

will not follow him perfectly. But listen to me, Fully

following God is actually an invitation to you and I that

there is a way that on our tombstone or as our reputation

that we can be known as a person who fully follows God.

It one way to think about this is in 16th and 17th century

there was this group of men called the Puritans.

Anybody heard of the Puritans before?

If you've read them, that means you like to read boring stuff

more than likely. And and not that the Puritans in

and of themselves are boring, but they have the reputation as

being boring that when you read them, they, they say big words

and they, they write books that are very dense or it perhaps

even like very thick. And you're like, that's a book

that I won't read just because it's very thick.

No thank you. But these guys, they were men,

regular men, just like us. And they were actually known for

their total devotion, for their full followership of Jesus.

And there's four areas, more spaces before we get into the

text today that I just want to highlight for you that was

present in them. I think you'll be present in US

and fully following Jesus. The first space that you might

be compelled to grow in and fully following God is

considering yourself a thinker. Here's what I mean by that.

I mean that fully following God isn't just in your actions, it's

in your thoughts that there's a way to go about your life,

there's a way to go about your week.

That God is something that you dwell on.

You meditate on him, you think about his words deeply.

And these men set aside time each and every week to focus on,

to fixate upon, to obsess about God.

I think some of us can grow and being a thinker about God this

week, some of us can grow and being a worshiper for from him

and through him and to him are all things.

That there is a God out there who loves you, who died on a

cross for you, who rose over death for you.

And that when you think about who God is, guess what?

It's going to pull worship out of your heart.

It's going to pull affection and worthiness that you feel towards

God. That the worshipper is somebody

who goes about even their Monday morning thinking about how

worthy God is of worship and they want to give him work.

They want to give him value. It's a God who is holy and who

hates sin and judges it. He is a God who rules and

speaks. He is the God who in whom all

reality lives and moves and exists.

He is the God who's incomprehensible love for us

died for us. That while we are still sinners,

that some of us today need to move in worship of God, living

unto him. Some of us need to grow in being

a hopper. Now I don't really feel like

that's an actual word, but it works.

Hopers are people here on planet earth.

Guess what? We live in a fallen world with

suffering, with darkness. We live in a fallen existence

where we feel the weight of Jesus not coming back to make

all things right yet. And one of the ways we can grow

and fully following God this week is being a better hoper in

his return. More on that soon.

Finally, another space to grow in that you can be thinking

about fully following Jesus isn't just in your thoughts,

isn't just your emotions of worship, isn't in just your

dreams and anticipations of hope, but also finally, this one

fourth one is being a warrior that your whole life could be

accounted as warfare against the things God is against, sin,

Satan, death. That some of us, what we're

lacking is a warfare mentality that though we are at peace with

God, we are not on peacetime on earth and we need to bring a

battle mode into our brains. And Joshua helps us see that.

Let me give you this definition of what I mean by fully

following God in these areas. Fully following God means this,

that you stop living halfway and start obeying Him completely.

You stop living halfway. It's not just like going up a

little bit, it's not coming up short, but you're saying, hey,

I'm going to aggressively and totally give God my total

devotion, my complete adoration, my thoughts, my heart, my hands.

I'm giving them unto God because I want to be a person who

doesn't live halfway, but obeys them completely in every

compartment of my life. It is the idea that we forsake

the hell of half heartedness and we embrace the gift of heaven,

of wholesale wholeheartedness. We're not divided in our

attention, not separated in our worship, but we are wholesale

obedient unto God. And I think we're going to

discover in Joshua this huge chunk we're going to walk

through today is this big idea. Let me give it to you in a

sentence. This, these 7 chapters I think

can be summarized like this is that if you want to experience

all God has for you, you have to fully follow him.

You have to fully follow him, not just on Sunday mornings from

10:50, not just on Tuesday night, small group, not just on

your quiet time, but 24/7, 365 in every area of our life are

all about how can I fully follow Jesus in this moment?

Joshua is a book all about conquest.

It's about the people of God, the people of Israel moving from

exile, slavery, from Egypt through the wilderness 40 years

now into moving into this land called Canaan in the Middle

East. They're going from east to West

trying to cross the Jordan River into this land God had promised

them. And we've been marching through

this book chapter by chapter, learning what God has for us on

the other side of it, hundreds and upon hundreds of years

later. Like what does Joshua mean for

us? Because this is an old story,

but it's a relevant story. And I think the relevant truth

that is true for the Israelites here who would have been present

in the story, but also true for us, it would be true for people

across the world today, is that if we want to experience all God

has for us, we have to fully follow him.

So where is it we must fully follow God?

Well, let's look at the text to discover together where we must

fully follow God. We're in Joshua chapter 14, the

Joshua 14 · chapter mention

big bold 14 in your Bible. If you don't have a Bible,

there's one on the seat nearby. You can grab it, look at the

table of contents, find the page for yourself, and you can keep

it if you need it. But it's also on the screens.

Joshua chapter 14 verse one says this.

Joshua 14 · chapter mention

These are the inheritances that the people of Israel received in

the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest and Joshua

the son of Nun and the heads of the father's houses of the

tribes of the people of Israel gave them to inherit.

Their inheritance was by law, just as the Lord had commanded

by the hand of Moses for the 9 1/2 tribes.

Here's what that means for us. Let's just stop there for a

second. Moses had given a couple of

tribes on the east side of the Jordan River.

He gave them their land. And now Joshua's finishing the

job of saying, hey, there's some tribes of Israel.

There's 12 in total that hey, they are still owed their

allotment, their portion of the promised land.

And so Joshua and this priest, over the next 7 chapters are

about to give the people of Israel the land that they were

promised, that the whole book of Joshua is the reality that not

even one of God's promises has ever failed, including the exact

land that these tribes are going to receive.

So Joshua is going to do just as God commanded.

He's going to do this with this priest, and they're going to

give to the people of Israel that which they are owed.

Now jump down to verse 6. Then the people of Judah came to

Joshua, Gilgal, and Caleb the son of Jefuna, and the Kennesite

said to him, You know what the Lord said to Moses, the man of

God, and Kadesh Barnea, concerning you and me.

I was 40 years old when Moses the servant of the Lord, sent me

from the Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land.

And I brought him word again, as it was in my heart.

But my brothers who went up with me, made the heart of the people

melt, underline this phrase. Yet I holy followed the Lord my

God. Let's stop there.

Where? Where is it that we must fully

follow God? First?

It's this. Jot this down if you'd like to

take notes. Fully follow God.

When fear tells you to retreat fully holy follow God like the

example Caleb has given to us. When fear tells you retreat, let

me explain who Caleb is for you. In case you're new to the Bible,

I I know that some of you are have not studied the Old

Testament at length and so you're a little lost right now.

So let me locate us. In the story of Scripture, Caleb

is one of the two spies originally sent by Moses 45

years earlier. Moses was the leader of Israel

out of Egypt through the wilderness.

He was their leader, and before they went to the wilderness,

Moses sent 12 spies to go spy out this land that they're about

to give. Caleb and Joshua, the title

character, and his friend Caleb were two of those 12 spies.

Those spies go into the land and they spy it out and they go,

guess what? We are terrified of the people

that they're giants. They're going to crush us.

Like to them, we're grasshoppers.

We're little. We can't beat them.

Even though God promised it to us.

We are terrified. But Caleb and Joshua were the

only two men who said no, no, no.

If God said it, he's going to do it.

We don't need to be scared of them.

God said we could have the land, therefore we're going to go in

and take it because of the other 10 spies disobedience.

Look back at the Bible with me. It says my brothers who went up

with me made the heart of the people melt.

So Caleb and Joshua are saying, hey, guess what?

No, we should go take this land 45 years ago.

And there's ten other men who are saying no, no, no, we should

be shaking in our boots. And the people of Israel heard

these other ten men, and their hearts melted with fear.

No, God isn't bigger than them. No, we're smaller than them.

Well, we can't beat them. We can't fully follow God and do

as he commanded. Yet I it says I holy follow the

Lord my God. Caleb doesn't just report of

what God has done. Caleb gets to experience the joy

of not only surviving the wilderness but also seeing the

promised land. Moses doesn't get to see this

because he doesn't wholly follow God.

Caleb and Josh were the only two people from that era of Israel

who get to make it into the promised land.

A whole generation dies out over 40 years in the desert.

Now we have 5 years of battle and Caleb is an old man.

He's 85 at this point and he still has God's ear, God's words

ringing in his ears. God says to Moses in Numbers

Numbers 14 · chapter mention

chapter 14. This is where you can read the

story, by the way, if you want to go explore it for yourself.

Numbers 14 is the cross reference.

But God says to Moses about Caleb.

He says this man has a different spirit and he wholly follows me

45 years. He hung on to those words about

who God said he was. He never forgot what God said

about him and that's what helped him fully follow God, even when

fear told him and others to retreat.

There's a documentary out there called 100 Foot Wave.

Any of you've seen it before? Nobody.

OK, so I feel a lot explained to you that's helpful.

It's 100 foot wave, so it's pretty self-explanatory.

There's a spot in Portugal where people go surfing.

It's got the biggest waves in the world.

And these surfers when they are out there, they they have to

commit to a wave that size. They have all kinds of like ski

doos and like motor boats available for them.

Because the wave, it gets literally the size of 100 feet

tall. That is a big building.

You all that's like three of these suckers stacked on top of

each other. But it's a wave of water.

Some people have a death wish, I've heard.

But here's the thing, When you commit to a wave that size, you

cannot hesitate. You cannot even blink for a

moment that you have to go fully into it.

You have to fully commit. Otherwise you are going to be

wrecked. You're going to be tossed and

turned. You're going to be upended,

perhaps even drowning because you didn't commit to it because

fear told you to stop. And in Joshua 13 through 19,

what's going to happen is, is God's going to say over about 60

times actually, like, hey, this tribe received their

inheritance. This tribe received their

inheritance, but he's going to tell Caleb, an individual,

something amazing that he received his inheritance too.

And we meet this man Caleb, and what we learn about him is he

didn't hesitate even when fear told him to retreat.

He wholly followed God. Even everybody around him did

not. He said no, no, no, I don't care

what you say. I know what God has said.

I will not be afraid. I will be courageous, I will be

strong. I will look to the Lord, and I

will trust Him more than I trust your voices.

Everybody else saw giants and pulled back, but Caleb lived

with a conviction. Here's what God said.

We must be a people who fully follow God, who don't live

halfway in our obedience, but who fully follow Him.

Caleb's going to serve as an example for us of what it looks

like to receive the inheritance. He's going to provide for us

what it looks like to fully follow God even when we're

afraid, because there's times where we can be afraid, is there

not? Like in parenting, there's often

this moment of fear where you're like, man, how can I be

faithfully a parent once again this morning?

I don't know how to handle that bickering match.

I don't know how to handle this emotional meltdown.

I don't know how to handle the prodigal kid that is happening.

Listen to me, parent. Listen closely.

Fully follow God, trust him. Discipline your kids, love your

kids, disciple your kids, teach your kids, fully follow Him in

every area. When you're entering into a hard

conversation, has the mat the words of Matthew 18 come in your

ears? Has Jesus Sermon on the Mount

influenced how you go after that hard conversation with a friend

or a family member? Are you fully following God in

conflict resolution? Are you fully following God into

generosity that He's asked of us to be cheerful, generous,

sacrificial givers? Are you fully following God, or

are you partially or halfway following Him?

Are you fully following God into your discipleship roles?

I can imagine many of us feel fear as we step into leadership

or into influence of others as we're on the mission of helping

people take their next steps with God.

But listen to me, St. City, you need not be afraid.

If you've been invited to serve, If you've been invited to lead,

trust us and trust the Lord, that fully following God even

when you're afraid is what it looks like to be obedient.

And some of you today need to hear this, that what's stopping

you from fully following God is the idea of, hey, I don't even

follow him at all. I'm still discovering whether

he's trustworthy enough to be fully followed.

Hear my words this morning. There is no one more worth

following in your life than Jesus Christ.

There's no one more gentle, more loving, more kind, more wise to

the only wise God, to the only good God, to the only one

trustworthy of giving your life to.

It's Jesus, no matter where you are.

And you're on the spectrum this morning following him.

I just invite you into the wholesale, the great life, the

good abounding, abounding life of Christ, that you could fully

follow Him even when fear is hitting your life.

And it wants to tells you retreat.

Guess what, you can be courageous and holy.

Follow Him in obedience no matter where He has you.

We fully follow God even when fear tells us to retreat.

But also the second thing is what we'll see in the text that

we fully follow God when the promise is delayed.

We don't just fully follow who in fear tells us to retreat.

Caleb did that 45 years ago. Now we're in present day and

he's not just acknowledging what happened in his past.

He's like, hey, right now there's there's a little bit

more in my past that I want to think about.

And it's there was a moment for 40 years when I wandered the

desert and the promise was delayed.

And Caleb still followed him even in the desert, even in the

wilderness. He waited 40 years for this

inheritance. That is a long time.

Some of you are like, I'm very aware of how long 40 years is.

And some of you are like, what's 20 years, right?

We're we're, we're all across the age range here.

But I want you to notice something in the text.

Look back at verse 9 and 10 with me.

And Moses swore on that day saying, surely the land on which

your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you, Caleb

and your children forever. Because why?

Look at that phrase again, Because you have wholly followed

the Lord your God. He's going to receive the

inheritance. He's going to receive the the

promise because he gave his life fully and totally unto God.

And verse 10 and now behold, the Lord, Caleb says has kept me

alive. Who kept Caleb alive?

The Lord. Who does he give the credit to

that He experienced the promise? The Lord, Who does he give the

attribution to that He gets the gift of the inheritance?

God, because the Lord kept him alive, just as he said.

These 45 years since the time that the Lord spoke this to

Moses while Israel walked in the wilderness.

And now this day I AM 85 years old, the Lord has kept Caleb

alive through the mana days of the wilderness where food fell

from heaven. And it was just, what is that

like? They didn't even know what it

was. That's why mana means.

It just means, what is that mana and going through rivers and

battles like Caleb has seen a lot.

And the thing he calls upon for his mind to have the courage to

holy follow him is those simple words.

The Lord kept me alive. It's God's sovereignty, it's

God's goodness, it's God's protection, it's God's power.

If you're going to be a person who fully follows God, when

you're awaiting his answer to your prayers, when you're

waiting for the promise to be delivered, listen to me.

You have to have a good grasp on who God is.

He is the one who is keeping you alive.

He is the one who is at work. He is the one moving.

He is the one protecting you. He is the one who is good and

loving. And if He has said no, he's got

something better in mind. God is at work even when you

can't see it. He doesn't see his life as

something he worked his way into.

He realized that God kept him alive for 40 years.

Just to give some of you a grip on what 40 years feels like,

let's just take a trip down memory lane. 1986 was 40 years

ago. That's correct.

And this is how people listen to music back then. 5 bucks to a

college student can call what that is.

I didn't hear a single college student say anything.

OK, that is what we call a cassette tape.

Y'all? That's a cassette tape.

And cars used to have a spot for those to go into.

It didn't used to be touchscreen.

That's where they went. News came from a newspaper.

There was no Internet, no cell phones. 1986 I'm thankful to be

born in 1993. OK, Like I, I, I the 80s were

cool, the music was great, but I, I think it was better. 1991

Things are getting better. Michael Jordan's in the

basketball world now. Things are getting better

everywhere. 1991 This is what your desktop computer looked

like. This is what was called program

manager. Wow, we've gotten better with

this. 1995 You have what's called AOL Mail.

This is what it looked like. I mean, we're not even 40 years

now. We're we're, you know, 30 years

at this point. And this is how far we've come

for e-mail nine. 2001 Now you have obviously the hallmark

moments of 911 in our country, but that is what Google started

to look like. You couldn't Google before this,

but now you can. It's this thing that you go,

wait a second, I have a question.

And you would ask Jeeves or you would ask Google and you would

keep going about your life. 2006 That is what's called a

BlackBerry. Your grandpa might have had one

college students or perhaps your dad, a BlackBerry was an

advisor. Now e-mail was going from what

it looked like to this. This is where you would access

it. And they had this great game

called Brick Breaker on it that I would take my dad's phone and

I would play regularly. 2011 You have, that's what Instagram

first looked like, y'all And it had these things called, it

introduced the idea of filters onto your phone.

And I felt like suddenly, man, I was a photographer like, and

every other photographer in the room was like, yeah, I hated

that. Like the, the, the people

thought they could do stuff and I would take pictures of food

because I want to be artsy, you know?

And I wanted girls to think that I was like, I don't know what I

wanted them to think. That's 2011.

That's Instagram when it started.

I mean, Facebook was just a totally different place that

ain't even bought it yet. 2016, we have this idea of like

streaming that Netflix is like, hey, guess what?

I don't know if you can, you probably can't see, but that

chart on the far right for you guys, the 114% of people hooked

up their computer to the TV to watch in 2016, only 10 years

ago. Like Netflix was just on your

computer. It was a website you logged into

or they mailed you DVDs. My fast time has gone.

That's 2016. 2021 COVID is obviously on the back burner for

all of America in the American mindset.

And you have these things called COVID birthday parties where

people would drive around and honk.

I don't know what states you lived in in 2021, but a lot of

us had different experiences depending on where you lived

during COVID in America 2026. Here we are in the advent of

artificial intelligence. Like so much has changed in 40

years. Life has shifted, technology has

adapted. Kayla went 45 years waiting for

God to fulfill the promise and that He would have this land.

Think of how much our country has changed.

Think of all the things that have happened.

But listen to me. One thing remained the same for

Caleb. He wholly followed God.

Man, I hope that's me. I hope that when I'm 80 years

old, when I'm 85, like Caleb, the thing that is said of me,

the reputation I have in this world is a man who wholly

followed God. And this is a man just like you

and I. He's before Jesus comes, who did

you have the Holy Spirit living inside of him.

He's just a man who says, you know what?

I'm going to listen to God because he knows best that I'm

going to take him at his word. I'm going to do what he says.

I'm going to seek and learn the areas of my life that I need to

grow and following him because I don't even know what to do there

with my money, with my marriage, with my friendships, with my

schooling, whatever the category is for you, listen to me.

God has something to say for you on how to fully follow him there

and I think what can happen over the course of 45 years, I think

some of you already experienced this is this question is ringing

in our ears to God forget about me.

Did he forget that I have been wholly following him because He

hasn't blessed me the way I thought he would?

He hasn't taken care of me the way I thought he should.

Did he forget about me? Waiting can be so hard when the

promise is delayed. But I want you to picture Jesus

a little bit carefully this morning that one of the

experiences you'll have in your life sometimes is for many of us

that is, is, is on your wedding day, you will be awaiting either

the bride will be awaiting to get to her groom or the groom

will be waiting for his bride. And there's I've always thought

of this picture with God, God calls the church his bride.

I thought of it from my perspective as a husband waiting

for his bride on the altar. And you're like waiting to see

her and all of her beauty in the white dress.

And it's, it's just a wonderful day.

You're waiting for it, for all the engagement planning, the

worst season, you're waiting for it, you're waiting for it,

You're waiting for you're at the altar now the day is gone on.

You're just waiting to see her because you haven't seen her all

day. We know something amazing about

Jesus's. Jesus lives every day like it's

his wedding day and his delight in you.

That every day while we live is his wedding day with us.

That the thoughts of communing with us, the thoughts of being

with you and I is His great delight.

He loves you and though we are waiting for whatever promise he

has for us, that there's a there's a peace, there is a rest

that comes to your soul when you realize that Jesus Christ is

waiting for you with a smile, that he is delighted and you and

I, he didn't forget about you. He knows exactly what's up in

front of the days ahead. Caleb and the Israelites waited

for their inheritance in the land.

But we have a better promised land to go toward, a better

promised land that we await. And it's heaven.

That's our great inheritance. It's heaven.

And heaven is a few things. First, know what we get in

heaven, what our inheritance is. It's God himself.

We get God himself that the Levites, one of the 12 tribes of

Israel, that's actually their inheritance, they don't get any

land, they get God himself and that is a picture.

It is a shadow of what we get to experience that heaven, we get

God and we get to enjoy him forever.

Like I can't wait to sit at the table with Jesus for real face

to face. I can't wait to see him.

It's going to be a great day. And heaven is a place for people

who love Jesus. If you don't love Jesus, you're

not going to enjoy heaven and you won't be there.

It's a place for people who love him in our inheritance.

The Bible says it's imperishable, it's undefiled,

it's unfading, kept in heaven for you.

That's first Peter also. It says that we as God's

children, we are heirs, that we are heirs of God and fellow

heirs with Christ. There is a real inheritance

awaiting us in heaven with crowns and with joy and with

splendor that we get God himself in heaven is going to be better

than you can imagine. We have to be better hopers in

that day. It's also a place with

immortality, no sickness, no death, immortality, eternal

life. It's also a place of glory that

you were saved by God and that on that day when you were in

glory with Him, guess what It means the parts of you that you

don't like won't be there anymore.

The sin that plagues you from fully following Jesus will be

gone. I can't wait for that day too.

We're going to fully follow Him. Even when we wait for the

promise, like Caleb. And finally, this third thing,

we fully follow God until the work is finished.

We're trying to wholly follow God and receive the inheritance.

These people, the Israelites, they received land.

We're going to receive heaven, and that's going to be a better

land. It's a better promise.

It's a better inheritance. I can't wait for that day, but

until the work is finished, we are going to fully follow God.

Look at how this chapter closes. It says Caleb says, hey, so give

me Joshua, this Hill Country of which the Lord spoke on that day

45 years ago for you heard on that day how the Anakin were

there with great four to five cities.

It may be that the Lord will be with me.

Listen to his confidence in the battle.

It's not in his old, it's not in his age or his skill set and I

shall drive them out. I actually missed verse 11

there. I think this is one of my

favorite parts. He says I am still as strong

today as I was in the day that Moses sent me.

So he's looking back at his, his 85 year old self is looking at

his 40 year old self. He's like, hey, I ain't as good

as I once was, but I am just as strong as I ever was.

If I'm still as strong 85 as I was at 40 like Caleb or as

confident as Caleb is, I think I'm in a good spot.

He's like, all right, Lord, I want to see this through.

I want to see the promise happen.

The job is not done. I am just as strong then as I

was now, my strength now as my strength and for war and for

going and coming. So give me the country, give me

the hill, and it may be that the Lord will with me.

And then verse 13, Joshua blesses him and he gave Hebron

to Caleb, the son of Jafuna for inherits just like God promised.

Therefore, He even became the inherits of Caleb to this day.

Look at it again. There it is in your Bible again.

Why? Because he wholly followed the

Lord, the God of Israel. He fully followed God.

That chapter 13 is just the recollection of who Moses gave

the land to in 14 and 15, the tribes of Judah get their

inheritance. In 16 and 17, the tribes of

Ephraim and Manasseh which are Joseph's kids and then 18

through 19 is the 7 remaining tribes that all in about 60

times you hear the phrase inheritance and allotment over

this chunk of Joshua. Also, you and I can see that God

keeps His promises until the work is finished.

And our job is to keep following him, keep following him, keep

following him and keep following him and keep following even when

we don't see the promise happen that one day the inheritance

will come. One day God will keep His

promise because there is not a single promise, not even 1 He

has ever made. He will not fulfill.

And then we get to Joshua. At the end of verse 19, we get

our title character once again. It's going to be on the screen

beside me, but it says this, that when Joshua had finished

distributing the several territories of the land as

inheritance, the people of Israel gave an inheritance among

them to Joshua, their leader, the son of Nun.

By command the of the Lord, the people of Israel gave him the

city that he asked Tim Nasira in the Hill Country of Ephraim, and

he rebuilt the city and settled it.

These are the inheritances that the priest and Joshua and the

heads of the father's House of the tribes of Israel distributed

by law at Shiloh before the Lord at the entrance of the tempt of

meeting. So they finished dividing the

land. Joshua and this priest just

follow God up until the work is finished.

Caleb wholly followed God, even through the finish line, whether

it was before the wilderness, in the wilderness, after the

wilderness, these men didn't matter what their age was,

didn't matter to the place. They were the same men who

finished strong, who followed God.

No matter what area, no matter what age, they were men who

followed God. Caleb drives out the remaining

people. In verse 12.

Joshua gives what God has said throughout the chapters.

Why? Because in verse 14 of chapter

14, it gives us our why? Once again, it says in verse 14

of chapter 14 because he wholly followed the Lord.

Their context did not determine their commitment to God.

The job wasn't done so they weren't done following Him yet.

In 2009, the Lakers were playing in the NBA Finals and they went

up two games to none. And Kobe Bryant was interviewed

after the game and they asked him, hey Kobe, why aren't you

smiling? Why aren't you happy?

Because he's got the Mamba mentality.

He's like, what's there to celebrate?

And he said these 3 words. Jobs not done.

I think often times what we'll find in our life is we'll think

the job is done in some area of following Jesus.

That just because we got it to one level that we'll start

neglecting that area of our life because we think it's holy

followed there. Listen to me, we can never let

our foot off the gas pedal of seeking the Lord with everything

we've got until we get to heaven.

Listen to me. There needs to be a human

responsibility underneath the sovereignty of God at work in

US, underneath the power of the Holy Spirit changing us.

There is a responsibility for us to fully follow him because one

of the most tempting things in life is to follow Jesus wholly

in some environments but not in others, that we get content in

some aspect of our spirituality. But I want to call us back to

this morning is holy following God and I'll call you back to

the attention of what we started with that some of you need to

grow and you know, seek God differently this week and this

season of your life as a thinker.

Read deeper books about God. Get into the Bible regularly

study who God is so you can love him more, so you can obey him

more accurately, more precisely, more even joyfully.

There's a joy in obeying God. That's one of the great gifts is

that it's not just duty, it's delight to follow Him as a

thinker, as a worshipper. Some of us need to wholly follow

God as a worshipper. That right now you've reduced

God and worship to right here in this moment that we worship Him

in a service and you're missing out on the total blessing it is

to worship God beyond this service.

You're not worship walking with Him throughout your week.

Listen to me. If you want to experience all

God has for you, you must. You have to fully follow Him.

Do things in your life. Spend time with God in a way

that pulls affection and love for you out of Him.

Worship Him as a hopper. Many of us have settled for the

trinkets of earth instead of the treasures of heaven.

We spend so much time thinking about Earth.

We spend so much time thinking about things that are going to

fade and going to falter and going to fail us.

When there is a hope that is an anchor for the soul, there is a

hope that is real that awaits us, that's going to last for

eternity. Don't get caught up in your bad

test score. Don't get so stuck on that fight

you had. Don't get so caught up in the

promotion you're chasing down at work.

Don't live for the treasures of earth, but lay up for yourselves

Treasures in heaven, hope in heaven.

And finally, Job's not done yet. So we're still warriors.

We have to fight sin. We still have to.

I can't wait for the day where I don't have to.

It's going to be great. We fight sin, we fight for

truth. We're warriors.

If we want to experience all God has for us, we have to fully

follow him. When fear tells us to retreat,

when the promise is delayed until the job is done, until the

work is finished, we must be men.

We must be women, St. City, who fully follow God.

I pray that you're compelled this morning to chase God with

everything you've got, because you will find him inexhaustible.

You will find the treasure of knowing Him unbelievable and you

will find out that's the greatest life there is.

Would you pray with me, Lord?