Resolve

1 through 9.

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, Moses, my servant, is dead.

Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.

Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea, toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

I will not leave you or forsake you.

Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.

Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouths, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Have I not commanded you?

Be strong and courageous, do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

How's everybody recovering from Christmas?

Pretty well?

Hanging in there?

It's okay.

We've only got one more holiday this week, uh, which is nice.

Um so I never know whether to do this or not, but I feel like I should.

So I'm just gonna go with it.

Um we have an app, and we just developed it, and it it's the idea is that we're gonna be rolling out some practices that we can be doing together as a church through the app.

Also, it hosts all of our media and podcasts and videos so that you can watch all those things.

But for now, we are not listening to a video on an app on our drive somewhere, or hopefully you're not watching the video while you're driving.

Um, but hey, high risk, high reward.

And uh uh now we're all together.

We all happen to be together in the same room.

And if you look around the room, it it's really big.

And so we Americans we uh diffuse.

I was once on a flight from uh I was once actually on this mission trip in Malaysia and was with a bunch of local folks, like great people.

Um, I don't know about all Malaysians, I'm sure there's jerk Malaysians, but the ones I were with were really great.

And they uh we were on this flight back together from uh uh East Malaysia to West Malaysia, and uh it the flight was totally underbooked, it was super small.

And so all of us Americans were like, yes, we each get our own row.

This is the coolest thing ever.

And so I'm like settled in, I'm sitting in my own row.

I have the Lord of the Rings on my phone that I'm reading, and it's like I'm just gonna be alone in Middle Earth for this whole flight, and it's gonna be awesome.

And then the all the Malaysians that we were with were like, alone?

That's terrible.

Let's sit right next to each other.

And I was like, please, can we not?

Can we please not?

We've been with each other for two months straight where we haven't not seen each other.

Can we please not?

Um anyway, it here's what develops in that time together.

We sit next to each other and you hear each other's stories, and you know what you learn.

I'm sitting next to someone that has a real, legitimate prayer request.

Even if they didn't say it, even if they didn't make that explicit to you, if you share enough, if you run into each other, if you rub shoulders with each other, you're going to walk away and you're going to realize, oh, this is a whole person, and they have things in their life that I could be praying for them for.

So here's what I'm gonna ask.

Right now we're in a room that's swallowing us, and we don't rope off enough.

Can we all stand up and move as densely as we possibly could into these this front section?

Yes.

You can vote with your feet.

If you have a baby, I get it.

I get the there's like always 15 people in the back doing the baby dance.

Wow.

That is not messing around.

No way, it's great to see you guys.

Didn't even know you were here.

Wow, cool.

How's married life?

Good?

Six months?

That was six months ago.

Crazy.

I did their wedding.

It was great.

Hundreds saved, thousands blessed, one marriage.

A really good wedding.

Power moves only.

Yeah.

Power moves only from here on out.

All right, now look around.

This is how big we are.

Drink it in.

Don't uh we don't need to hide it anymore by diffusing throughout a 500-seat auditorium.

Praise God we're in here, but I would love some density if you know a guy who wants this auditorium.

Could you please pass his number along to a couple of realtors that are working to move this place?

You're sitting next to people who have prayer requests.

When you stand up, say hi, how are you?

How's it going?

I know it this is we want this to be a safe place for introverts too.

So feel free to say, fine, thanks, and then go get a cup of coffee.

But there's uh there's this reality that when you're together, you're going to bump into each other and you're going to hear and talk and listen to people, and those people will have prayer requests.

So why sit like this?

It's because if we're going to work as a church, we need to be a church that's filled with prayer.

And the way that's going to happen is you sit next to someone and you realize this person really needs prayer.

There's things there, they have a whole life and it's full of a bunch of trials and hardships that they're actually going through.

It's real for them.

You know how real your problems feel to you?

It feels like that to them.

And so we can intercede for each other on each other's behalf.

What a wonderful privilege that is.

This is so much better.

I can it just for me, because I don't have to do this.

And this and my microphone hits my vest, so I have to turn like Batman.

All right.

We are beginning a new series that we're calling Start.

We were gonna call it New Start, but then we realized start doesn't really need a qualifier.

It implies new, so we're just calling it start.

And the uh it's just going to be two weeks.

So it's just today and uh today and a week from today.

And today we're going to be discussing this idea of New Year's resolutions.

And then next week, we're going to have a sermon that's going to really set the tone for the year on what we're going to be focusing on this year, which is the heart.

We're going to be focusing in on how everything we do flows from our hearts.

So, above all else, we need to guard and protect those.

We need to guard and protect our hearts.

And so that's what we're going to be focusing on next week.

Uh, but this week, uh, we're going to be talking about kind of this idea of resolve, this idea of New Year's resolutions.

It's on our heads because New Year's Eve is tomorrow.

Um, so start drinking Gatorade now.

So here's uh uh here's the way I feel about New Year's resolutions.

I love the idea of New Year's resolutions, the idea of New Year's resolutions.

I'm not very good at following through on them.

I only have followed through on one, but it was legitimately life-changing.

The one resolution that I followed through on.

I I uh decided in 2013 that I was going to read my Bible every day and I was going to journal my prayers every day.

Um my mind is really distractable, so I just found that it's it the pen really filters my thinking and can can make me point it in a way I'd like to be in my prayers.

And so this strange thing happened where I really stuck with it.

Uh, you can leaf through that journal, and it's like, oh yeah, that's the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and it just it was every day.

It was incredible.

And and I remember the moment where it actually I started to understand the meaning of that type of consistency.

And it was in a Thursday evening worship service with the campus ministry that I was a part of, and uh, we were just singing, and I remember thinking, I know who I'm singing to.

I really know who I'm singing to, and and you know what?

I've learned his character, and I bet he's hearing this.

And all of a sudden, this normal worship service, something that I attended all throughout college, had this incredible weight of meaning because I had this real time with God.

April 2nd, I wrote in that journal, I went back and I looked it up.

Um, I wrote this sentence, I said, Lord, I feel as though I am developing a closeness with you that I have never experienced before.

And I went on to say, it's in large part because of this time together in the evenings with writing, praying to you in this journal.

It's so simple.

Read the Bible and pray.

Did you guys know that was a part of our faith?

This is this is why this is we're preaching to a packed house.

Insights like this.

My current journal is about to run out of pages.

Uh and that means we'll be buying a new one.

And it's that weird thing when you start a new journal.

It's like starting a new year.

You hold it and it's full of just empty pages, and you can't fill them in beforehand.

We aren't the types of beings that get to write out our futures and know exactly what they will end up like.

We have to go each day, day by day.

That's not the way God is.

In Psalm 139, God says, uh, well, David, praying to God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, you can do the math, says, In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Which means that as we stand at a new year that we're looking out at, we see a bunch of blank pages.

That's not what God sees.

God sees every one of our days.

This is actually the way I start weddings.

You guys know that.

I think I wrestled you for it.

I start weddings by saying that verse, in your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for you, when as yet there was none of them.

And then I say, Now that means that God wrote this day.

So turn and look at everyone who came and enjoy that.

So God looks out and he sees these pages that are really filled in, but we don't get to see it like that.

God has structured the world in such a way where we move through it one minute at a time at a steady rate of one minute per minute, and it gets revealed to us in process that requires us to live by faith because our lives are full of unsteadiness and full of anxiety about what the future might hold, but we know the one who holds the future.

So when we stand and we look out at this year, we don't know what tragedies will befall us.

We don't know that we'll make it to the end.

We don't know what these pages will behold or what glories they might be filled with.

We just don't know.

We really don't know.

And so, what advice does God give to people like us in situations like this who are about to start something and we don't know how it's going to unfold?

That's where we got the series name from.

Joshua, uh God speaks to Joshua when he's in a situation where he's about to begin something that he's never done before.

Moses had just passed away, and he had led the Israelites out of Egypt through the wilderness, established the tabernacle, performed so many miracles, and now this leader that we had walked with, that these people had walked with for so long, was dead.

And his assistant, Joshua, was then commissioned to take his place.

And God speaks directly to Joshua at his commissioning, telling him, look, you don't know what this responsibility will be.

You don't know exactly what it will entail.

But if you do these things, if you stick to these things and hold these things, you're gonna be successful.

You will have lived wisely, and the task that I'm calling you to will work.

So that's what we're going to look at together is God's recommendation for people like us who can't fill in our journals beforehand.

Dear diary, it's me, James, again.

That's the way I start each one.

We don't get to fill those in beforehand.

God has to reveal it to us day by day.

So, what advice does God give to people like us?

Let's look at what he says to Joshua.

In uh Joshua 1, 6 through 7, he says, Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.

Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses, my servant, commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.

So, how is it that God promises that you will have good success?

He tells Joshua it's by adhering to the law that he had given to Moses.

And he immediately calls Joshua to this posture that his life has to be governed by, which is you have to be strong and courageous.

Now, when we understand Joshua's mission, that seems like an obvious thing to call him to.

Joshua was being recruited to be a general.

What he was being called into, his mission was to uh it was to cause them to inherit the land that God had promised them.

Well, that land happened to be full of a lot of people who weren't super keen to give it up.

And so that meant that Joshua would be leading his military in to occupy this land by force, incrementally.

That was the call.

God didn't call them to do it all at once.

Israel is not cut out for world war, but they could move in incrementally, day by day.

And that would take a heart that was courageous and steadfast, one that could keep moving.

But look at how that courage is demonstrated in the text.

It isn't be strong and courageous because the those Canaanites are also really strong and they're excellent military strategists.

And so you're going to need to be that same level of military strategist.

That's not where he calls him to direct his strength and courage.

How will this strength and courage manifest?

It is in being careful to do according to all the law that Moses, my servant, commanded you.

That's where the strength and courage was required.

It took strength and courage not to drive out the Canaanites, but to remain faithful to God, to move into enemy territory where people were constantly saying it's foolish to stay faithful to God.

You should put your hope in your number of chariots, you should put your hope in your number of people.

Moses had said earlier in Deuteronomy, that's so foolish.

Do you think it was because of you that one person was able to drive out a hundred and ten were able to drive out a thousand?

Of course that wasn't because of you.

Your strength and courage needs to be directed towards your obedience to God.

Then you'll be prosperous.

Then you'll have good success.

God continues in his instruction to Moses, and here he gets really practical.

He says, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Tim Ferris uh became famous by promising us all that we could work for four hours a week and still live.

That was a bait and switch.

As it turns out, he was just teaching us how to be more productive workers, kind of a ripoff.

But uh he has some excellent insights that I really like to draw from and that I use so frequently and do make me a more efficient worker.

Uh one of them is this.

He says, when you have a list of tasks ahead of you and you're trying to discern your priorities, what to focus on, you know, consider this in terms of New Year's resolutions.

He says, a helpful filter to use is this.

He says, which of these, if done, will make all the rest easier or irrelevant?

So when you're sorting your priorities, you see, okay, I have all these things to do.

I have this insane to-do list.

Uh, we've got to get the eldership process established, we've got to get the small groups up and running, we've got to get the strategy around the content for those small groups, we've got to figure all these things out.

That was just mine.

Uh, yours is whatever you guys do.

I don't know what you guys do.

Uh Joshua's is all right, so we're gonna have to start over here with Canaan.

I gotta get these people together, we gotta cross the Jordan, then after that, the things really start.

Uh that's way harder.

So if we push through the filter, God's advice, which of these, if done, would make all the rest easier or irrelevant?

If we look at this verse eight, it becomes apparent.

It's exactly the way God is describing this verse, which is look, I've called you for to you for how to be this type of person who's strong and courageous.

And you're going to need that for what you're headed into.

And you're going to need to live in a way that is obedient to the law.

But there's something in this that you can do uh that will make all the rest of that easier.

It will make all the rest of that uh happen.

And that's this book of the law can't depart from your mouth.

You need to meditate on it day and night.

This needs to be worked into your soul so that you'll actually be able to do all these things that I'm calling you to do, and then you'll be prosperous, then you'll be successful.

What is the one thing on the list that can make all the rest easier?

That if you focus on this one thing, you have to live in God's word.

This upcoming year, all your tasks, all your to-do lists, what's the one thing you could focus on if you lived in, if you dwelt in, if you meditated on day and night the word of God?

Like an anchor for your soul.

That's the one thing.

So that's what God calls Joshua to.

You know, God opposes the proud, and he gives grace to the humble.

I think that there may be no more obvious evidence of our arrogance than our lack of time in his word.

When we spend so little time communing with God and in look, he gave us a book.

You probably have one.

If you don't, it's in your phone.

If you don't, download our app.

We can commune with him.

We can know it.

His word.

The word of God.

And yet we say, no, you know what?

I think I can actually figure this out on my own.

The complexities of the world are not so complex to me.

I'm able to resolve these issues.

God opposes the proud.

He gives grace to the humble.

It says to him, You're right.

I'm going to have to live in your word, and this is going to have to work itself into my heart so that I'm the type of person that lives from that.

Then there's hope for my life and for what God is calling me to.

So moving to this next section, which I titled How to Read Your Bible.

I'll read this verse one more time so it's fresh in our heads.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

An alternate translation of good success could have been lived wisely.

Then you would have lived with wisdom.

So let's zero in really practically on what this verse is calling us to do, how it is calling us to engage with God's word.

So I see three things at least.

One is we are called to speak God's word, we are called to soak in God's word, and we are called to submit to God's word.

Three S's so you know it's true.

Speak, soak, and submit.

All right.

So the first thing that God calls them to, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.

Now, oftentimes when we aren't paying attention to the details in scripture, we just skirt over those things and we think, oh, that's just sort of a synecdoche for your brain or your face.

Like you should just be living in this word.

But he's intentional to say the this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, which means this is something that needs to be spoken, said from your lips.

And that means that there's other people who are hearing it.

Now, when we consider it from Joshua's context, that makes perfect sense, right?

Because he was called to be the general of this nation, the leader of a group of people.

That's the role he was stepping into, poor guy.

And what he is then called to do is have all of his speech seasoned by the word of God, because then it would truly be effective.

Then it would actually lead this people.

But we can also gather this other insight, which is that the word of God is not something to be known just within the individual.

Because when it's on your lips, when it's in your mouth, that implies that it's being spoken and it's being heard.

And so that means we need to be able to say it with each other.

There's an incredible benefit to reading the Bible together, to saying the words of scripture together so that we hear it from each other, so that we can analyze it, and it becomes a part of our conversations.

In fact, it doesn't depart from our mouths.

There's never a conversation that we have that isn't seasoned with scripture.

So how do we become a person like that?

Step two, you soak in scripture.

If you notice the connection between the first and second clauses, it says this book of the law, don't you have to crane your neck up front?

Suckers.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.

So if the book of the law departs from your mouth, you know what that's the opposite of?

That's the opposite of you meditating on it day and night.

When it departs from your mouth, that means you haven't meditated on it day and night.

So how do your conversations, do our conversations become seasoned by this word of God that never departs from our mouth?

It happens by us living in it.

You shall meditate on the word of God day and night.

The word of God should be the defining quality of your internal life.

What is the defining quality of your internal life now?

Consider the stressors that your mind always goes back to.

The bitterness or the anger or the things that you're hoping in?

The things that cause you anxiety.

Are you just going for the roller coaster ride of what happens in your internal life, or are you so soaked in Scripture that the defining quality of your internal life is the Word of God?

Consider what that would mean for you.

There are verses that I think I would have stayed in bed forever if I didn't know.

Verses that have been like these gifts to me.

There are times when I felt so estranged from God that if I didn't know, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did.

Sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

For those who walk according to the flesh will die.

For the mindset on the for the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace.

If I didn't have that, if I didn't know that, I don't think I'd have the capacity.

Do not fear, for I am with you.

Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you.

Surely I will help you.

Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Stop calling me Shirley.

God says that to you.

That in your heart.

You want to be strong and courageous without knowing that.

It's impossible.

We have to be soaked in scripture.

Day and night.

That means there's this rhythmic meditation.

It's a part of our everyday.

I'm listening to a series of lectures that Zach gave to me.

Whenever he feels like my preaching is getting weak, he's like, Here you should listen to this.

Sends me a lot of stuff.

I send him a lot of music too.

So when uh and and it's this guy describing uh this guy who who uh did a lot of studies uh with Jewish rabbis currently studying in Israel.

And so he was walking on uh these mountains in Israel, and they're describing the uh fields that David would have been talking about in Psalm 23, which were uh uh the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makes me lie down in green pastures.

And you look out at these fields, and they are just rocky.

But what happens is the humid air from the Mediterranean blows in every night, and it grows these tiny little mossy grass things out from under the rocks each night, and it withers in the sun by day.

And so the point that the rabbi that he was talking to was communicating, he says, the guy asks, he's like, So these are the green pastures?

And the rabbi says, Look, you Americans, when you hear green pastures, you think way steep alfalfa.

You think, oh, I'll have now what I need forever.

You think you could handle what God has in store for you now for just the next 10 minutes?

The green pastures God gives every day.

Lord's loving kindness is indeed never ceases.

Compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

That one also pulls me out of bed.

You know, with this rhythmic daily dependence on God, what we're coming to terms with is the reality of our situation, which is that we need Him to show up.

Because we can't one of us chase away a hundred, we can't ten of us chase away a thousand.

Only God can do that.

And I know that there are things in your life right now that feel like that.

What's the one thing you can do?

You can soak in his word.

Next is we're called to be submitted to his word.

So I'm getting that from this intention that we have when we're reading it and when we're meditating on it, where he says, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Now, if we're submitted to his word, that means when we're reading it and we're meditating on it, and we're working it into our hearts, that means that it will be the thing that has the final say.

Being submitted to it means we aren't reading scripture in order to get helpful platitudes.

We aren't trying to get clever pointers, we aren't trying to get tips or tactics, we aren't looking for soothing promises, we are looking to encounter God.

And that means we read it differently than we read other things.

We don't enter into a debate with it so much as we let it conquer us.

Now, that can be both good news and bad news.

It can be bad news when you realize that the wounds of a friend can are better than the kisses from an enemy, and that means I have to have this hard conversation with a friend.

And so the word of God is just working on you, and it's making it inevitable that you have to say these things that you don't want to say.

But it can also be that's where it's bad news.

That's actually good news, but feels like bad news.

And it can also be just this incredible salve for when you think you'll walk away, that when you're submitted to the word of God.

And he says, all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his promises.

And you can know this is a good God.

And all of a sudden you stay when you otherwise would have left.

We are to speak the word of God.

In order to do that, we have to be soaked in the word of God, and to do that properly, we need to submit to the word of God so that it actually takes place in our life.

One final promise that Joshua, that God relays to Joshua.

Says in Joshua 1.9, have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not be frightened, do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

For the Christian, this is the guiding promise of all that Joshua had been called to, of all that you, we are called to.

And we have to hear it because if we don't hear it, we'll be doing all the rest of it wrong.

Because we aren't reading to get to God.

We're reading because he says he's with us.

We aren't reading so that we can demonstrate our own holiness to him.

We're reading because he's given us his holiness.

My wife and I have an Airbnb in our back room.

I'll send you the link.

It's about 50 bucks a night.

And we when we have a friend in town, uh we just we just cancel the nights and they just stay in it for free, right?

And we make them pay for it in other ways.

And so the uh the difference is that uh look, both are staying with us, right?

Both have stayed with us.

Both are in our house, going in and out, breathing the same air, using the air, same air conditioning, watching the same Netflix.

And what happens is when there's a friend there, the door is not locked.

It's open.

And they're cooking meals with us.

And we're talking about life, and we're sitting down and we're commenting on the injustices of the great British baking show.

And we're staying up late, and we're getting to know them, we're understanding each other.

Both stayed with us, right?

The tenant and the friend.

Who was with us?

You know, look, when God is saying to Joshua, here's the way our minds work.

Or when God says, Joshua, and for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go, you know what many of us will do?

Omnipresence.

God is omnipresent.

Do you think God is saying this to Joshua to remind him of his omnipresence?

That's not what he means.

He's not saying like, I'm with you, but I'm I'm everywhere.

So, really, technically, I'm with everyone.

No, that's not what he means.

He means I'm with you.

Be strong and courageous.

Why?

The Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go.

If the grace of that is not moved into your heart, you're not gonna be strong.

You're not gonna be courageous.

You're not gonna have the boldness it takes to adhere to his word because you haven't fallen fallen in love with the one who promised to be with you and has never left you or forsaken you.

So let's get practical.

We built this app that we're gonna be rolling out practices in.

And the first practice that we're going to be focusing on as a means of working the scripture into our hearts is reading.

Reading it.

Reading it each day.

And so, built into the app, if you click on the bottom, there's a built-in Bible reading plan.

And if you don't want to use the app, we're using just the McShane reading plan.

Uh, Robert Murray McShane was a Scottish minister in the 1800s.

He died when he was 30.

But this incredible legacy of his lives on in this Bible reading plan that he compiled.

And it takes you through the Old Testament once in a year, the New Testament and the Psalms twice in a year.

And so there's an intention behind all of us doing this together.

And that is, when we're reading it together, you know what we can do with each other?

We can speak.

You know, I read this and it's really weird.

Yeah.

A lot of it's really weird.

I don't know if you've read it before.

Or if you just sort of sort of joined this book club without reading the book.

This is our opportunity to do this together.

Look up the reading plan on your own.

You don't have to use the app.

But it's in there for you.

This year, we want to be humbly before God, saying to him constantly, we can't do this without you.

We stand no chance if where we're going you aren't going.

If you aren't the defining quality of our internal lives.

This is one simple thing we can do together to try and make that happen.

Not to get him with us because he promises he is.

Father, thank you for these people, your willingness to stand up and move down, crane their necks.

Father, I pray that you would knit us together by your word.

That friendships would develop because we see such beauty together and we just have to share it with someone.

The defining quality of our internal life would be your word.

What's the one thing we could do that could make all of this easier?

Could make us courageous and strong.

Not afraid, not dismayed.

Could let us know in our heart of hearts that the Lord our God is with us wherever we go.

Lord, let us soak in your word to that end.

Let this be a transformative year that we might look back at the end of this year and say, you know what happened this year?

I learned who I was singing to.

I know him.

He's with me.

Father, I lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.