Joshua Series Pt. 11 - Pastor Greg Addison - July 13, 2025

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Wow, Casey did that just like I modeled for him and taught him to do it.

So thank you, brother.

That was incredible.

What a great day of worship today as we celebrated the person of Jesus.

And, you know, when we come to him as our Savior, as we've been observing with the Lord's Supper, as we've mentioned, we are doing that based on his promise.

And so one of the most fundamental, foundational things that we do as followers of Jesus is we trust in the promises of God.

We look to those promises.

Growing up in church, we used to sing that famous hymn, Standing on the Promises of God, my Savior.

And that's what we do.

And so today I want to talk to you about how to do that.

As you know, we've been looking at this journey of the children of Israel moving into the land of Canaan to receive that inheritance.

Why are they doing that?

Because God promised them that inheritance.

As we look at this journey of receiving their inheritance in Canaan and conquering the land, we look at that as an Old Testament example of the New Testament journey that we have as Christians where we are embracing and learning to appropriate that abundant life in Christ that is a part of what God has promised us and our salvation.

Now, listen, promises, promises kept, are an incredible theme throughout the entirety of Scripture.

In fact, it is really one of the running themes all throughout Scripture.

It is certainly one of the running themes throughout the book of Joshua that they are promised this inheritance.

They are promised victory.

When they step into these battles, they are standing on the promise of God.

And so what I want to do is show you today this theme of promises and really kind of equip you as simply and as clearly as I can how to cling and stand to the promises of God.

Now, let me just give you a verse.

You don't need to turn here yet.

In fact, if you want to turn, turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 10.

Joshua 10 · chapter mention

But I want to share with you one of those promise verses that illustrates for us why this message is so important.

In 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, here's what the Bible says.

2 Peter 1:3

Then he says this by these, by his glory and goodness, God, by the glory of who he is, when we think about that song that Casey in the choir sang, the mightiness of God, it is by his might and power and glory, and it is also by his goodness and mercy, by these traits, he has given us very great and precious promises.

We are saved and can know we'll be saved because God promised through Jesus to save us.

We know that we can find salvation through him in his word because his word is a divine promise that he's given us.

He says that our life, all we need, is wrapped up in these great and precious promises, so that through those promises you may share in his divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.

So the question is through them, how do we do that?

How do we appropriate those promises?

Here's the key truth for today.

We must, we must, we must.

This is a fundamental skill that every believer should have as a discipline in their life.

We must learn to trust and live based on the promises of God.

It is a fundamental discipline of the Christian life to have a promise, to read them in Scripture, to capture them, and to let those things motivate us, strengthen our faith, draw us to Him.

When we make these choices, we should make these choices because we believe God has promised us in that journey.

Now, I want you to see how the book of Joshua, like all of Scripture, is built on the promises of God.

You're there in Joshua chapter 10.

Joshua 10 · chapter mention

We'll get there in a moment, but I want to remind you how this whole journey for Joshua and the children of Israel started.

In Joshua chapter 1, here's what he says.

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

I, God, have given you every place where the sole of your foot treads, just as I promised Moses.

And then he gives the geographic boundaries of the land of Canaan, of the land of Israel, and he describes it.

Not might, not could, will be, because he's promised, from the wilderness in Lebanon to the great Euphrates River, all of the land of the Hittites and west to the Mediterranean Sea.

Now he continues with that promise.

He says, No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live.

If he's going to give them that land that has these evil nations in it, then he also promises to go to battle before them.

No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live.

God says, not only will I be there with you, I will not forsake you or the promises that I've given.

And then he gives this instruction.

Remember, Peter said, through those great and precious promises.

So God then gives this instruction to Joshua, and Joshua will pass it on to the children of Israel throughout the book.

This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth.

You are to recite it day and night, so that you may carefully observe everything written in it, for then you will prosper and will succeed in whatever you do.

He gives them the instruction of meditating, clinging, standing, focusing on, obeying, observing the promises that He's given.

Now, when you pick up the story where we were, we have been in Joshua 10 and 11, what you get now is kind of an overview in the next three chapters, chapter 10, 11, and 12, you get the overview of the victories that God has promised.

So it reads repetitively, but there's a purpose to that.

He comes to a battle, reads the battle, and he says, God fought for Israel.

Gives you the battle, explains the battle.

Here's the victory in the battle, because God has promised to fight for his people.

And so here in these two chapters, three chapters where he's reiterating the battles, what he is really doing is he is explaining he was faithful to the promise that he made to the children of Israel that we just read.

Then you have Joshua chapters 13 through 19, and he breaks out the inheritances there and explains to them, hey, this tribe is going to get this land, this tribe is going to get this land, this tribe is going to get this land, this is how I'm going to do that.

Joshua 13 · chapter mention

And once again, it is a delineation of giving that inheritance to prove God did what he promised to do.

And so you have these chapters right here where God takes in great detail the opportunity to show that he is faithful to his promises.

I want you to just read through chapter 10, skim through some of this with me.

Look in verse 19.

He's telling them how to go to battle against this next group of kings.

And he says in verse 19, Pursue your enemies and attack them from behind.

Don't let them enter their cities, for the Lord has handed them over to you.

Now look in verse 25.

Joshua again reiterates God's promise.

God has done what he promised, and he fought for the children of Israel.

Look in verse 31.

From Limna, Joshua and all Israel crossed with him to Lakesh.

They laid siege to it and attacked it.

The Lord handed Lakesh over to Israel, and Joshua captured it on the second day.

I want you to look down in verse 42.

He encapsulates it again.

Joshua captured all these kings and their land in one campaign because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.

God is always faithful to his promise.

Look over in chapter 11.

He begins this same pattern again.

He says in verse 6, the Lord said to Joshua, Do not be afraid of them, for at this time tomorrow I will cause all them to be killed before Israel.

Verse 8, the Lord handed them over to Israel, and they struck them down, pursuing them as far as the great Sidon.

And so you go on.

If you read through these chapters, which I would encourage you to do, it doesn't take a long time to read through them, but I want you to go home and I want you to read them and see how often the Bible says God fought for Israel, or he provided the inheritance just as he promised.

God is always faithful to his promises.

As we looked at in the Lord's Supper today, every promise written in Scripture is sealed with the blood of Jesus.

God is honorable and faithful and holy and righteous and has integrity, and he will never break a promise that he has made.

So for us as believers, why don't we live in victory more often in life today?

I think one of the major reasons is people have not learned this fundamental discipline of capturing, of meditating, of memorizing, of owning, of trusting the promises of God.

So I want to do is give you just four simple skill sets.

And I've broken these down and made these as simple as I can make them.

These are all biblical behaviors.

It is all built on the process that we see in Joshua that receiving the promises, believing in the promises, meditating on the promises, being careful to observe them.

It's just like the Bible says through Peter in the scripture that we started with.

So here's four skills I want you to do in developing this discipline.

I've tried to break them down just to make it as simple and as clear as possible.

Here's the first one.

Know his promises.

You need to know what the promises of God are.

God is very explicit in providing his promises to Joshua.

And then in teaching Joshua to give the promises to his people, God is saying very clear to him, you have these promises, know them.

Don't walk away from them, cling to them, know them and understand them.

One of the reasons that we talk so often about you spending time in God's Word is as you read through God's word, you should be seeing the promises of God that he makes, and he is speaking to your life and calling to you to trust him and to follow him and to believe in him and to be motivated in your behavior to stand on those promises and behave them out in your life.

You have to be in God's word to know his promises.

You cannot know them by osmosis.

You cannot know them by just dreaming them on your own because you're really smart and you know how to do things and you just figure it out on your own.

That's not how you know the promises of God.

You know the promises of God by coming to the Word of God and meditating on those and reading it and seeing them and letting God seal them to your heart.

Now, let me give you just three simple ways to think through these promises.

There's nothing theologically profound in this.

This is just a Greg outline here, trying to help you to recognize and see those promises.

Again, Peter describes them as great and precious.

And so we should be able to see them and be motivated and cling to them and love them because of their nature.

Three different types here.

I've just sort of categorized them to make it easy.

The first are fundamental promises.

These are the ones that all of our belief is built on.

This is salvation, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him will never perish, but have everlasting life.

These are fundamental promises of God.

Scripture, the Bible says that it is inspired by God.

The Bible says that it is eternal in its nature, and we are birthed by it.

The Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

The Bible says it is God inspired.

Even the Old Testament, the Bible says again, through Peter, he makes it clear that it was written by holy men of God as they were moved and instructed by the Holy Spirit.

You see in the book of Joshua, for example, in the Old Testament, the Lord spoke to Joshua.

And so these are fundamental promises that God makes.

Scripture is a fundamental promise of God.

You can always trust on Scripture to be true because it is a fundamental promise God has made to us.

The fundamental promise of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The Bible teaches us that when you are saved, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit comes and lives in your life and guides you and teaches you and helps you.

In Romans 8, he says that he helps us in our weakness when we don't know how to pray as we ought to.

In 1 John, the Bible tells us that, listen, we have the Holy Spirit and we have the Word of God.

We don't even need a teacher.

He can guide us in all of these promises through his indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit and through the living and powerful Word of God.

Everything you need, again, Peter says, everything that you need for life and godliness is found in these great and precious promises.

These are the fundamental promises of God.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, how do you know that God will save you?

Because it is a fundamental promise of His work and His plan and His character, that He has promised a means of salvation.

He met that promise.

It is a fundamental promise that all of this is built on.

The second type of promise you'll recognize, these are provisional promises.

If you want to think about in the illustration of Joshua, God has given them aheritance and he's made them his people.

Provisional promises are how God provides for us.

For example, he tells Joshua, I will never leave you or forsake you, I will be with you always.

Then he says, No man will be able to stand against you.

I will make you strong, I will fight for you, I will provide the victory for you.

If you think about Scripture gives us all kinds of promises of the provisions of God.

For example, the Bible says, cast your cares on him because he cares for you.

His care is always there for us.

In the book of Romans, the Bible promises his comfort.

In fact, the Bible says that he is the God of all comfort.

And through peace and through love that comes from Jesus, he provides every comfort that we will ever need.

All throughout the book of Psalms, we have repeated to us that God is our strength and a shield and a source of protection and a place that we can turn.

There are so many ways that God provides for us.

Jesus promises answered prayer.

In the book of John, multiple times he says, Whatever you pray in my name, God will do that.

In Luke 11, we have that illustration of the neighbor who's pounding on the door of his neighbor because he's run out of bread and he has a traveler at his house, and he's pounding on the door and he's pleading with him, hey, I've run out of bread.

I need you to bring, I need you to bring some bread.

I've got to feed this traveler.

And Jesus uses that illustration to teach that the neighbor didn't provide bread because they were like neighbors and good guys.

He provided bread because God wouldn't quit beating on his door and asking him to provide.

And Jesus says, Listen, pray.

God will answer your prayers.

Ask and keep asking, knock and keep knocking, seek and keep seeking.

And so we know that God provides in so many ways in our lives.

It is his character to provide for us.

And when you run into those promises of Scripture, it should call to you and speak to you that you can trust in the Lord and that there are conditional promises.

Conditional promises.

These are if-then type things.

We talked about at the Lord's Supper, I quoted from 1 John 1.9, where he says this.

Repentance is an act that you have to do, a matter of trust, where you come and you tell the Lord, Lord, I know I messed this up, and Lord, I sinned, and Lord, this was wrong, and I know it was wrong.

Lord, I want you to forgive me, and I'm sorry that I've done that and teach me how to do this right.

And I come and I ask for forgiveness and I repent because I am trusting in God's character and promise to cleanse that out of our relationships when I repent that.

Giving is a part of that.

For example, in Malachi 3.10, he says, Listen, bring you all the tithes into the storehouse.

Test me in this promise that I've given.

There are not very many times in Scripture that you're allowed to test God, but he literally says, test me now and see as you bring those tithes to me, if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing on you so great you can't receive it.

You see, when he gives us an if-then type of promise, he is trying to promote our character and our growth and our coming to him.

He is not trying to withhold the value of that promise.

He is trying to teach us to trust in that promise.

You find yourself in that spot where you need wisdom.

You need to trust his wisdom.

He's going to give you wisdom, and sometimes he's going to ask you to do something that you may not think that's what you should do.

His wisdom goes against your wisdom in that moment.

And he is trying to teach us to trust him and grow our faith in him.

So he says, You come to me and ask my wisdom, and now I'm going to give you my wisdom.

And now we have been talking and working through this, and you have come to me with this, and I am asking you to trust me, and I am going to bless you when you trust me.

And it creates this relationship, it deepens our relationship.

It's how we know his promises are true.

So the first skill set that you need to know is know his promises.

Second skill set is you need to meditate on them.

And we use this term brew here in our church.

And it's a simple way for you to take a scripture and meditate on it.

Remember, God told Joshua, meditate on these scriptures.

Keep them in your mouth day and night.

Keep them on the forehead of your mind.

And so here's how we teach that here you just take a promise and it works itself.

Especially well with this.

You believe that God has something in that promise.

You trust his promise.

Then you read and repeat that promise over and over and over.

You read and repeat that promise.

Then you slow down and you deal with each word of that promise.

And you listen to him and let him speak, and you you you you squeeze the richness out of each word, and then you write down what God has told you about that.

For example, let's take that conditional promise.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If that tells us that there's a condition.

If I confess my sin, then God is faithful to do that.

If we confess our sins, if I do it, it's my responsibility.

It's not God's responsibility to make me confess of that sin.

So I'm walking with Jesus and I face temptation and I mess it up and I've interrupted our relationship and created this problem.

It is on me to come back and say, Lord, I know that I sinned.

I need to recognize I messed this up.

Confess.

What does the word confess mean?

It means to agree with God what it is.

It's not to gloss over it or say, oh, I'm sorry, but it's to say, God, I know that this was wrong.

I hurt you in this.

Your word says, He it is who loves me and keeps my commandments.

And I did not do that, Lord, and I am sorry.

I agree with you what this is.

I confess it.

If we confess our sins, he now he steps in and acts, he is faithful and just.

How do I know God's gonna forgive me?

Because the promise is built on his character.

He is faithful and just.

He can never break one of his promises.

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

How awesome is that?

All of it.

All of it.

There's nothing you can do.

You cannot outsend the grace of God.

Is that incredible?

And so when you take some minute, a few minutes, and you just brew a promise like that, and you walk through that process and you read it over and over, you take each word and you break it down, it is going to speak to you.

It's going to become real to you.

As you're brewing through, I don't want to give you just a couple of thoughts here that you think through.

Ask these questions when you run into that promise.

How does this reflect the character of God?

We just saw He's faithful, He's gracious, forgives all my sins, cleanses me from them.

He doesn't hold it against me anymore.

What does this say about the character of God?

What is the context of that promise in which it is made?

Is there a conditional choice of faith that I need to make?

Is this a provisional promise?

Is it a fundamental promise that's always mine?

God is affirmed by his character, or is this one of those where he's trying to grow me and he wants me to step out in faith and trust him?

What is the application in my life?

When you're reading the Word of God and you run across one of these promises, man, it should step out and jump in our eyes and grab a hold of our throat and our heart and scream at us, and we should pay attention and then we go, okay, why is this verse jumping off the page and grabbing me?

There's an application here in my life.

There's something that God wants me to do in this.

You know the promise, you meditate or brew on the promise.

Third skill is this.

You pray his promises.

You pray his promises.

How do I do that?

You don't just read it back to him.

That's a part of it.

But when you pray, you praise him for that.

Lord, thank you that you are faithful.

Lord, thank you that your mercy never runs out.

Lord, thank you that you cleanse.

You don't just forgive me and then make me a second-class citizen.

You cleanse me.

You restore our relationship, the mercy and the love in your character that that's what you do, even when I repeatedly mess up in this deal.

That's who you are.

Lord, thank you for who you are.

Thank you for your boundless love.

That you love me so much, you love me beyond all I've messed up and all I will mess up.

It's mind-boggling to me sometimes when I think, I was a nine and a half-year-old boy when I gave my life to Jesus.

And in that moment, when God saved me, he looked down the corridors of my life and he thought, I'm gonna save Greg because he's gonna mess up 472,564,000 times.

And he saved us anyway.

Is that incredible?

And we praise him for that promise, and we praise his character, and what that does is that reminds us how faithful he is.

And in that moment, it makes it easier to stand and to cling on those promises.

You ask him based on those promises.

The Bible says in the book of Philippians that we should not be anxious for anything, but we should let our prayer requests be made known to him, and then the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard our hearts and our minds.

Why does it guard us?

Because I have praised him for who he is, and being a God who answers prayer, his fundamental promise to answer prayer.

And Lord, you have said you will give me wisdom, and so I'm gonna pray for wisdom, and I'm gonna ask you because your word says this.

Let me remind you of what your word says.

James chapter 1.

James 1 · chapter mention

You read it to him, you pray it back to him.

Things that you saw in the brew, you ask him, I saw this, I read this.

Lord, this is what I want you to do.

And then you ask him for the faith to believe it.

Lord, you've told me to go witness it on my neighbor.

You've told me to take a stand at work and do this.

Lord, you've told me to take a stand at school or on my band or football team or cheerleading squad or whatever it is.

God, you've told me to take this stand, you've instructed me on this, and I need you to make me stronger.

Lord, give me the faith in that moment not to back away, but give me the faith to go to battle and stand and watch you work.

Lord, help me be faithful.

You pray his promises in specificity.

Know his promises, you brew his promises, you pray his promises, and then you live his promises.

You live them.

Means you step out on purpose on that promise.

God, you told me to do this, so I'm gonna do it.

I'm doing it based on what you told me.

It's a motivation for us.

Lord, I'm embracing that and I'm going to do this because you've called me to do this, and you promised to be faithful there.

It should direct our actions.

It's an intentional, overt act of trust.

Again, when God spoke to Joshua, no man will ever stand against you.

My presence will always be with you.

And then he told him, You hold it in your mouth, in your mind, and your heart, and then you be careful to observe it and do not step to the right or the left.

Joshua, you are intentionally taking action based on the promise.

In chapter 10 and chapter 11, when they go to battle, Joshua comes back and he reaffirms, Children of Israel, you can do this.

Go and do this the way that God instructed to do it.

God has promised to give us the victory.

Don't do it a different way.

Do it exactly the way God said, and you go do it, and you watch God work and you watch him be faithful to his promise.

That's why he spends three chapters in battle showing that God fought as he promised.

That's why he spends six chapters with the inheritance to say God did what he promised to do in his inheritance.

Now I hope that's a little bit different than sometimes we break down the scripture, but this is such a fundamental skill that I want you to really understand and to know exactly how to do this.

And I want to encourage you this week, as you're in your quiet time, you watch for a promise.

As you're reading through whatever it is you're reading, you're following up in your Sunday school groups, or you're following up for the sermon, or you have a devotion guide that you're doing, or maybe you have a book study that you're doing.

As you're going through that study, I want you to ask the Lord, show me a promise.

I believe, brew, believe, read and repeat each word, write it down.

Believe that God has something to say to you.

He has promised to give us great and precious promises.

He has illustrated in the book of Joshua as we're studying.

You ask God to give you that promise.

When he does that, you write that promise down and then you start to meditate on it.

Learn to know and recognize that promise.

Write it down, engage with it.

Pray it back to him.

Ask him how you're supposed to apply it.

And then you intentionally step out and you live that promise and you watch if God doesn't draw you closer to him than you've ever seen.

If he doesn't reveal himself to you in a way that is amazing.

If you don't see God faithful when you step out, you watch God be faithful to his promise.

I want you to bow your heads as we close this morning.

The first act of trust, the first intentional step of faith is when you come to Jesus and you make him the Lord and Savior of your life.

We have taken the Lord's Supper, we've sung about it in worship, we've seen it illustrated in Scripture.

God promised Jesus as our Savior.

All of us are sinners by birth, by nature, and by choice.

Accepting Christ as your Savior is an intentional act of faith.

You come and you say, Lord, I know I'm a sinner.

I know my sin is going to be punished, and I know there's not one thing I can do about it.

I have offended you as holy God, and I have set my own course instead of yours and been disobedient.

And God, I know that sin must be punished.

But God, I believe that Jesus came and died for my sins.

I believe that he rose again to conquer death and sins.

I believe in your mercy and grace.

God, I trust in your character.

God, I give my life to Jesus and I trust him to be my Savior.

It is your first intentional act of faith.

But God has promised to save you if you'll give your life to him.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I hope this understanding of the promises of God, His character is faithful, that the Holy Spirit will speak to you and draw you to himself.

And if you've never trusted him as your Savior, I'm going to ask you this today to stand on that promise of God.

In a moment, I'm gonna pray.

And then God's people are gonna stand and they're going to sing, and as they sing, it is a testimony of their hearts where they are saying, Thank you for saving me.

It is a testimony that speaks to you that God really does save.

And all these people are giving this testimony that He saved them.

Our ministers will be at the head of our aisles, and we're gonna invite you to come.

If you're watching online or at home or whatever, listen right there where you are.

It's not dependent on where you are, it is in your heart you make an intentional choice of faith to confess your sins and to believe in Jesus as your Savior and give your life to Him and He'll save you wherever you are, whatever you're doing right now, because He is faithful to keep His promise.

Lord, we thank you yet again that you are a faithful promise keeper.

Thank you for the promise of salvation.

And for those who need to be saved, Lord, we pray that you'll encourage them and draw them to you.

Help them to see you and your faithfulness, and give them the freedom to respond to you today.

It is in Jesus' saving, promise-keeping name we pray, and all God's people say.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.