10th May II Choose this Day II Pip Mclean

Hi, I'm Pip, it's nice to see you all and if you've been with

us over the last few weeks, you'll know that we've been

looking at the book of Joshua and his life.

And today we come to the final chapters of the story, if you

like. It's been a journey from

Jordan's Edge through to like Jericho, walls falling down

through victory and defeat, and the people have entered the land

that they were promised. Battles have been won and lost,

and the land has been kind of given to the different families.

And now we come to this scene right at the end of Joshua's

life. He's an old man, and he's

standing before the people, and he's looking back on all that

God has done, and he's reminding the people of what has happened.

So Joshua stands before the people with one last plea.

And often if you think about people's last words, if you know

they're going to be your last words, they're often really

important. They're things that you really

want other people to know. So as we look at what Joshua

said, we're just going to pull out a few things this morning.

So if you've got a Bible, can you turn to Joshua chapter 24?

Joshua 24 · chapter mention

And that's the kind of chapter we're going to be looking at a

little bit this morning. If you if you've not got 1, you

can grab one from out there or look on the screen.

It should be on this. So we're just going to read the

first few verses of Joshua 24. OK, so then Joshua assembled all

the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders,

judges and officials, officials of Israel, and they presented

themselves before God. Joshua said to all the people,

this is what the Lord the God of Israel says.

Long ago, your ancestors, including Terror, the father of

Abraham and Nehor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and

worshipped other gods. But I took your father Abraham

from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout

Canaan and gave him many descendants.

We're going to leave it there just for a minute.

So God says this is what people were doing beforehand.

But I took your father Abraham, and this is the way that we

went. I brought you out of Egypt.

I brought you into this land. And as Joshua speaks, what

follows is this whole kind of looking back at all that God had

done, the age-old story of his hand on the people and of his

faithfulness to them. So as we look at this story, we

have this invitation, if you like, for us to look back and

remember to remember what God has done.

Remember that I have been with you, He says.

Remember that I have done these things for you.

None of it has been on your own hand.

I've brought you out. You're called to hire things.

You've been saved. You're saved people for whom I

have plans and a purpose. And I don't know about you, but

when we look back over our own lives and over maybe the lives

of those who've gone before or those that are around us, maybe

we see the faithfulness of God and we can't help but be

thankful that He's been with us through the hard things and

through the good things and gratitude.

When we're thankful, it grows trust.

It grows obedience in us. It's like our very souls breathe

a huge sigh of relief as we remember who God is.

God, I have known you to be true in my life and in the lives of

those around me. You have always been who you say

you are. That's what happens when we

remember and it causes us to believe again and trust again.

And when we take time, just just sit with God.

Sometimes what I do is I write and just like jot notes down or

jot thoughts down about, you know, what I'm thinking, what

I'm feeling, what God's saying to me about those things and

what he's showing me about himself and about me.

And so I write in these like little books, like blank, like

little journal things. And I've done this for like

years and years. I would, I would not want anyone

else to look in my journals like I am proper raw in my journals

like. And so, yeah, that's like from

from my eyes only if I look back on them, I see time and time

again the faithfulness of gods. Like I used to be someone.

And for those of you who don't know me very well, I used to be

someone who was really, really full of fear.

Like that is the place that I've come from.

Like I didn't even know that I was fearful until God started

saying, should we take a look at this?

And as I've experienced God's love for me more and more over

the years, Jesus has changed and is changing me.

And I am much less fearful than I was as I've gotten to know

this steady love of Jesus and walking with him.

And there's a theologian called NT, right?

And he says you don't know where you're going until you

understand where you've come from.

Like I have come from a place of fear.

I absolutely know that to be part of my story, but Jesus is

changing me as I'm walking with him.

And maybe you've got, if you've been a Christian a while or

reading the Bible a while, a while, maybe you've got

significant dates or scribbles in the margins of your Bible.

I know that even as I say that there's someone in here that is

absolutely like on edge because they just can't bear to write in

a book. But you know, there we go,

Caroline. But for those of us that do just

scribble in our margins and write things about, you know,

maybe like God as God, you've really met me as I've read this

verse and it was about this and On this date, that's a way of

looking back and remembering of looking back.

Jesus, you're with me then. Or, or maybe it's a massive

question around a verse, But then you can get to to look back

at it. And often what you experience in

that moment is like, Oh God, I know you to be true.

I know you're faithful. So I wanted to suggest to you

this morning to find a way to look back and trace your

journey. Find a way and look back over

your story and remember God's kindness and goodness, as well

as kind of maybe looking back at things we've written or things

that we remember. That way we can also tell our

story. We tell it individually and we

tell it collectively as a family.

That's what we're going to be doing next week as we celebrate

our 15th birthday as a church. We it's going to be like a

remembering A celebrating and also looking forward.

There's something really powerful about telling our

story, telling someone else almost in the telling of it.

It's like, this is really, really true as I say this to

you, this is where I've come from.

This is who I was. This is what my life looked like

before I encountered Jesus. This is what God has done for

me. This is what Jesus means to me.

This is who I am becoming. This is how I'm changing.

This is how I am letting Him shape me.

This is what I'm leaning into. This is what I'm wanting more

of. This is what God is doing in my

life. This is where I've seen His hand

upon me. These have been His words to me.

These things I know to be undeniably true in my life.

I've seen the goodness of God and I want to step into the

plans that He has for me. As we tell our stories, all of

those things happen. Even if our stories include

really hard things. When I look back often the words

that then rise up in me, oh, words of the song that we

sometimes sing here, and I'm not going to sing it to you, don't

worry. But the words go like this.

All my life you have been faithful.

All my life you have been so, so good.

With every breath that I'm able, I will sing of the goodness of

God. I know that there are people in

this room and ourselves included as a family where we've walked

through really, really hard times.

And also I know that I can still say I have seen the goodness of

God in our lives. So we remember, tell your

family, tell your children, tell your friends, tell your

neighbors, tell those you meet, remember the God that we follow.

And then Joshua says this. He says choose.

So it's remember. And then he says choose.

So we're going to flip a few verses forwards to verses 14 and

15. So we're still in chapter 24, so

we're going to start reading from verse 14.

OK, now fear the Lord, says Joshua, and serve him with all

faithfulness. Throw away the gods your

ancestors worshipped beyond the Euphrates 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 ancestors serve beyond the

Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are

living. So there's this choice before

us. You must choose.

This is what I must do with what I now know, that remembering has

helped me to remember again, to know the God that I follow.

And I must then do something with that knowing, with who I

now know you to be God. I want to choose you like we

have to decide who will we serve?

Joshua says Now fear the Lord and serve him with all

faithfulness. Throw away the gods your

ancestors worshipped and serve the Lord.

There's a choice that's before each of us.

And Rich Nathan, who's a pastor in the state, says this.

He says faith isn't inherited, it's chosen.

Every generation has to decide for itself.

So the question for us is, are we going to look to God or are

we going to look to the things that are around us and the

things that everyone else is doing, the things that everyone

else is looking to, the things that just feel like the norm,

the things that are all around us in this land that we're

living in. We've got to choose, Joshua

says. This is who I'm choosing me and

my house. We're going to serve God.

We're going to follow him and give our lives to him.

Now, my hunch is that there's probably not many of us in this

room who've got like a full fat statue or idol in our living

room that we bow down to. Idols are things that we look

to, things that we worship, things that we Revere, things

that become an object of extreme devotion.

They're things that we turn to and put our trust or our hope

in. They're things that capture our

hearts, things that we maybe call on to try to appease what

some people might call the hand of fate.

Maybe they're things we're not even aware of.

Or maybe we are, but we find ourselves kind of going along

with them anyway. But there's no messing with

Joshua's words. He's straight to the point.

He says. Don't mess with other goods.

Don't put your trust in anything else he says in anyone except

God. Don't bow down to anything else.

Nothing else is going to satisfy you.

So maybe some of that language feels a little bit strange.

Maybe we can just put it in a bit more down to earth language.

Like what am I giving myself to? What holds my attention?

What am I distracted by? What or who do I turn to 1st?

What do I focus on? What drives me?

Those kind of things? What do I turn to 1st?

And what might some of those things look like for us?

Because even if we follow Jesus, if we take a real good, deep,

close look at ourselves, we might also find that deep down

there's some other things knocking around as well.

So maybe what about success? Maybe that's our God.

Maybe to win, to look good, to get better, to be better, to

have more, whether that's stuff or money or security or, I don't

know, social standing. To have a small group that

everyone wants to go to, to be a church that's growing and it's

full of the latest God's stories.

To have a building of our own, like, is that a measure of

success? Are we driven by any of that?

What about comfort? Maybe deep down that's a real

big deal to us and we'll try to avoid discomfort at all costs.

Maybe we try to distract ourselves from the noise or the

discomfort that's within us and the noise or the discomfort that

is around us by looking to other things.

Maybe we major on our health, on our own health, and maybe we

just spend hours scrolling or, you know, look at the next

Netflix series. Anything that will distract us

from a sense of discomfort that we feel inside.

Anything that we look to for something for like any kind of

semblance of peace. Maybe that's knocking around.

Maybe our goal is control and and like even if we confess

Jesus as Lord, when it comes to some things, we still really

want to say, I just want to do it my way.

I don't like your way, I want to do it my way.

And the idea of surrendering control to anyone else, even the

God who loves us so much, sometimes feels really hard.

Maybe when it all comes down to it, we trust other things or

people more when it comes to seeking help or finding our way

through. Maybe what dominates our

thinking and being is actually just our own selves looking

maybe for approval, seeking the affirmation of others.

I just want to be noticed. Someone just see me.

Maybe we're less willing to take Kingdom, Kingdom of God risks

because of what we think others might think of us.

Like if any of that stuff's knocking around, probably got

some stuff for our own self, kind of like that's a bit of

focus. So, so who, what are we really

serving? Like I'm not standing up here

saying I've got this all sorted at all, but that it, it helped.

It pays for us to really ask like God, what's going on?

What, what, what does my heart really look like?

Is this stuff in here that you're like, should we take a

little look at this? So what are we giving our

attention and our hearts and our minds to?

And if you look at ourselves closely, closely, we might

sometimes see some of these things.

But these things are not good. They're lesser things.

And they really do not satisfy. And one of the groups that I

follow on social media are some like, creative writers.

And, you know, they write bits of writing, I suppose, creative

writers. That's what they do, that they

OK, or poems and things like that.

They call themselves the psalmists, and one of their

recent posts said this every morning we are called to lay, to

rest our attachments to the temporary and the trivial,

clinging instead to the promise of the gospel.

All things made you, all things restore.

And what I love about those words are the things that really

kind of jumped out at me were those words about our

attachments to the temporary and the trivial.

Like, how often do we do that? Maybe, maybe without him

realising, Like we're finding our security in that rather than

looking to God. Why come to Jesus?

Why turn to Jesus? Why turn to Jesus first?

John Tyson, who's a pastor at the Church of the City in New

York, he says this. He says our deepest longing, our

desire for forgiveness and rest are only found in Jesus.

You know we can find ourselves searching in all the wrong

places for these things. Why turn to Him when we're

weary, when we're tired, when we're sad, when we're angry,

when we're lonely, disappointed, anxious, fearful, frustrated,

hurting, hoping, crying or laughing?

Turn to Him first, because He loves us, and it's only in Him

that our souls find rest, that we find what we've been looking

for. There's a U2U2 song there, isn't

there? Oh, no.

Somewhere anyway. OK.

It's only him that satisfies. Everything else is just an image

of God. It's just an idol.

It's a hollow pretence. It's a lesser representation.

It's counterfeit. It's a false promise.

It's only in his, in his presence, that we are held and

filled. It's only in the presence of God

that he holds us. And that holding is the thing

that gives us security. The person who wrote Psalm 84 in

verse 10 says this. Better is one day in your courts

than 1000 elsewhere. Better is one day in your

courts, like better is one day with you God, than 1000 anywhere

else. And that is the truth of it.

I've got people nodding at me. I know, I know.

That's what you've experienced, isn't it?

Yeah. If you've not yet tasted the

sweetness of being in the presence of Gods, knowing his

love for you, and you'd like to, we would love to introduce you

to him this morning. So the let's not settle for

less. Let's not settle for lesser

things. And John Tyson says do not give

your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.

And he says, Jesus doesn't shame us for our desires, but he wants

to save us from the lesser loves that we've been chasing.

We chase lesser things, things that have no substance to them.

And Joshua's kind of words to the people are turn to God, like

do away with these other things, these other gods, they're lesser

things, They're lesser loves. And what I'm coming to realise

is that anything other than choosing God is, if I really

drill down, is actually choosing me instead of choosing him.

It's choosing my way of handling things, my way of soothing

things, my way of trusting things, my ideas of what's going

to make something better. And if I'm choosing me and not

God in that moment, I'm not choosing him in that moment.

But God's grace is endless. He knows that we can't do this

on our own. He knows that we fall short

again and again. And that's why he gave us Jesus

to cover over and to do away with our sin.

We mess up and then we suddenly wake up to the fact of what we

do when we come to this place of coming back.

God, I am nothing without you. I have got to be in your

presence. Literally nothing else will do.

Everything else falls short. That is my whole heart's cry.

I want that more than anything, to choose Jesus in every moment.

And so I'm like, Holy Spirit, would you help me to lay aside

my agenda and to follow you? So Joshua says, choose God.

And if you kind of Fast forward, Jesus's words are the same.

Choose me, he says. Come to me.

Just as you are come to me if you want to flick right the way

through to the the New Testament, the first book in the

New Testament, Matthew Chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

So like whip right the way through kind of like good chunk

3/4 of the Bible. Matthew chapter 1128 to 30.

This is what Jesus says. He says, are you tired?

Are you worn out, burns out on religion?

Come to me. He says get away with me and

you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real

rest. Walk with me and work with me.

Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of

grace. I won't lay anything heavy or

I'll fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll

learn to live freely and lightly.

When we choose Jesus in any moment, we are choosing to be

with him, to walk with him. You know, we, I don't know if

you've ever kind of walked with someone that you love and you're

really present to each other as you're walking along.

It's a really sweet thing. Walking with Someone Like You

don't even have to say anything. Just being present to each other

in that moment is a really sweet thing.

And being in Jesus presence is like that.

Walking with him is like that. It's the sweetest thing.

My cup overflows with blessing knowing that you're by my side.

That's what and the psalmist writes in Psalm 23, It's like my

the cup just brims over when I'm with you.

Jesus choosing God is an invitation to life and to be

forever close to him with him. OK, So Joshua says, remember, he

says choose. And then on the back of that he

says, like, it's going to count. Like be all in on this verse 14.

We've read it already. He says now fear the Lord and

serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your

ancestors worship beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt and

serve the Lord. Half heartedness like isn't

enough is going it goes. Let's get all in with this.

Let's be wholehearted. Let's do away with everything

else. And if you listened, if you were

here last Sunday, Ben was talking about how sin disrupted

the relationship that sustained the people of God.

And when God stopped being at the centre, everything fell

apart for them. And what we centre our lives on

will always shape us and what we see in this passage, Joshua's

plea to the people to stay rooted to God, to be

wholehearted in their pursuit of him, to look to no one else.

And Joshua says, you know, this choices you make is a big deal.

Don't do it lightly. Don't say yes lightly.

Count the cost because sometimes following God is going to feel

hard. Choosing God will mean a

lifetime of life and adventure, yes, absolutely.

But also a lifetime of surrender, A lifetime of saying

yes to him, which often means no to me.

A lifetime of saying God, I trust you.

Would you have your way in me? We can say yes to God on Sunday

whilst we're here. And if we're honest, maybe

sometimes even a little bit later we find ourselves

conflicted. Even on a Sunday afternoon we

find ourselves wanting to follow something else.

Like by the time the afternoon comes when I'm angry with

someone and Jesus goes, oh, should we do something about

that? And I'm like, can I just hold on

to that a little bit longer please?

If we follow Jesus, we are called to do it wholeheartedly,

to choose Him again and again, to follow His lead, to listen

and to respond to His voice, to allow Him to shape us and form

us. It's like an ongoing, daily,

moment by moment choosing that we're invited to do a moment by

moment surrender and are quickly coming back to Him when we fall

short. There's nothing half hearted

about it. It involves our whole being.

There's a song that we sometimes sing here called Tend.

It's a dangerous song. Some of the words go like this.

Be the gardener of my soul, Tend the soil of my soul.

Break up the fallow ground, cut back the overgrown.

And I won't shy away. I will let the branches fall so

that what you want can stay and what you love can grow.

We sang it a few weeks ago and God took me at my word and he

has been showing me some stuff these last few weeks that like

stuff that's just become overgrown in my heart, some

heart stuff. And he's just been saying, why

don't we cut this back like this isn't that good?

This isn't healthy. And when we say yes to God and

we say, Lord, would you give me, I, I give you free rein in my

life. He invites us to step into that

change that he offers, but we have to also do that.

Sometimes that feels easy and sometimes that feels really hard

because it involves us trusting Him and His way of doing things.

And truth is, sometimes we don't want to give up on our own way.

We want to do it our own way. Joshua says.

Throw away the stuff that you've been used to doing.

Throw away the way that you've always been used to do things

and follow God and serve Him with all faithfulness.

When we get it wrong, we quickly come back and as we go on this

journey with God, he is so, so kind.

He's so gracious with us. Simon Ponsonby, who is a teacher

in in Oxford, teacher preacher in Oxford, he says we're saved

by grace, but grace empowers us to follow wholeheartedly.

When we get it wrong, we experience the grace of God and

that equips us to follow him again.

So when we experience his grace, he changes us and it it's like

it kind of compels us to follow him.

It reminds us of who God is again.

So Holy Spirit, my prayer is Holy Spirit, would you come?

Like, I really mean this, would you come and have access to

every area of my life? It is a really dangerous prayer

to pray, but I really do want that because I know that it is

what's best for me and best for those around me.

It's it gives, it will give me life.

Anything less than that is is not living.

So Joshua says, remember, choose, be all in.

And then he says when you choose, choose this day.

I don't know if any of you are good at making a list.

I'm a big list person, you know, things that I need to do today,

things that I need to do this week.

I'm also really good at carrying things over to the next day

because I've kind of not got through my list.

In fact, there's I was joking about that with someone at

Growbaby this week, because for a few weeks now we have photos

of all the team up on on the wall and we've had a newish

couple of newish members of team and for one reason or another,

I've not quite got around to putting some of their photos up

on the wall at each week. I'm like, I still haven't done

it, done it. And one of them came up to me

this week and it's like, where's my photo?

And I was like, I showed her my phone.

I showed her my list. I said, look, it's on my list.

I'm really sorry, I've not done it yet.

Choose this day, choose this moment that says Joshua, don't

put it off. A choosing means doing something

with the choice that we make. We can't choose for yesterday

that's been and gone. We can.

We can't choose for anyone else, but we can choose for ourselves.

This day. It's not about choosing once

we've got our act together or when life comes down or when

we're not quite so busy. You know that most of our life

actually happens in the in between times, right?

You know, like I'll choose this when this happens, but actually

all of life happens before this thing happens.

Choose this day, says Joshua. Choose this moment and then this

moment, and then choose this moment and then choose this

moment to follow Jesus. It's like this ongoing yielding

of our hearts to God. So going back to what I said

about that dangerous song and like, and what God's doing with

me and that he said to me, you know, I let's cut back this

thing that's gotten overgrown. And I really, really want to do

that. But then I have a choice with

that in each moment, I have a choice that whenever that thing

comes up, do I choose this day? Do I choose this moment even if

it feels really hard or uncomfortable?

Do I choose to trust God in this moment, or do I do what I've

always been doing, which is why this thing has grown?

Yeah. We have a choice in this moment,

and it's an invitation to a better way of living.

I can promise you that. The way of God is a better way

of living than our own ways. Jay Pathak.

He's a been your pastor in the States.

He says spiritual formation begins with a choice.

God won't force you into depth. You have to say yes.

It's so this choosing is like a moment by moment.

OK, Yes to you, God, no to me, yes to you.

So do I choose in this moment to forgive?

Do I choose in this moment to surrender, to serve, to take

what feels like a big risk, a risk of faith?

Do I choose you, Lord, in this moment to let you lead me and

shape me and change my heart and love me?

Do I choose you instead of me? Do I trust you instead of me?

Do I hold fast to you instead of me?

Do I turn my attention to you in this moment?

That's what choosing this day is.

It's choosing in a series of ongoing moments to step into the

life that God has for us, His plans, His purposes.

Because nothing else is going to satisfy to choose this day, to

choose Jesus again and again. And as we do that, it impacts

our families. It impacts those around us and

we can say, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

That's how that's what Joshua says at the end.

So we remember, we choose. It's all in.

And this day, we're going to respond in a minute by having

communion. And in case this is new to you,

I just want to tell you a little bit about what that looks like.

I'm waiting for the youth are going to come back.

Some of the youth are going to serve.

So I'm really hoping they come back soon, but let me just tell

you a little bit about what Communion looks like for those

of you who might not know even what it is.

So God sent his Son Jesus to die for us on the cross, to pay the

price for all the mess that is in our lives and all the mess

that is in this world, so that we can forever be his friends.

And to remember this, what we do is we we remember that dying on

the cross. We take a piece of bread and we

drink some juice that looks like wine.

So the bread reminds us of Jesus body and the wine, but actually

we do juice and reminds us of his blood poured out.

So I'm hoping I can see the youth coming in.

Ben, Ben, could you just give it?

Just say, Are you ready? It just looks like having a

chat. OK, so in a minute, the youth

are going to come. Oh, brilliant.

Are they coming? Oh, let's not do that then.

Abby, can you help? OK, you step in.

So, OK, Abby, let's just say the first two youth or Abby and

Jake's, It's going to end up a youth and a youth leader.

Abby, be if you hold, if you pick up the wine and someone

else is going to hold the bread in a minute.

Brilliant. But before we do that, yeah,

let's just think a little bit about what happened when Jesus

took the last, did the Last Supper with his friends.

So he took some bread and he broke it and he said, this is

what's going to happen to my body.

Like this is my body broken for you because I love you.

And he said, when you eat the bread, remember, remember that I

love you. Remember that I do this.

And in the same way then he took the cup and he said, this is my

blood poured out for you. And I don't know if you think

about it like this, but like when you go to someone's house

and they start to pour you a glass.

That's polite, yeah, But when they keep pouring, they want you

to stay. And when it overflows, they

never want you to leave. It's messy when you're in the

presence of the king, your cup overflows and he doesn't want

you to leave. That's what it's about, the

cross. He doesn't want you to leave.

He always wants us to be in his presence.

So as we take the bread and drink the cup, we're going to

remember the price that he paid so that we never have to leave.

It might be that this is the first time you've seen

communion. It might be that you feel far

away from God. But if you're walking towards

Jesus, we would invite you to come and join in with this.

If you're walking towards Jesus, no matter how far away that you

think you are, this is a moment for you.

And what we're going to do is we're just going to play a

little bit of music maybe. Yeah, James is going to put a

song on and just as and when you're ready, just calm and take

a piece of the bread. There's a gluten free option

that's on the table if you'd prefer that.

And calm and grab a glass of wine, stroke juice and take it

back with you. And just spend that time quiet

with Jesus as the song plays. And then after the song is

finished, then we're just going to see what else God might want

to do and pray for each other.