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Jimmy highlights the importance of warmly welcoming and greeting visitors. He mentions the significance of the book of Joshua in understanding the Christian journey and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Additionally, he shares about the allocation of land in Joshua.
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Jimmy highlights the importance of warmly welcoming and greeting visitors. He mentions the significance of the book of Joshua in understanding the Christian journey and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Additionally, he shares about the allocation of land in Joshua.
Listen to Joshua 13 Land Remains to be Possessed by Cross City Church MP3 song. Joshua 13 Land Remains to be Possessed song from Cross City Church is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 47:42. This high-quality MP3 track has 37.906 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 18 Jul 2025. Stream and download Joshua 13 Land Remains to be Possessed by Cross City Church for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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Jimmy discusses his experience visiting two different churches, highlighting the importance of warmly welcoming and greeting visitors. He mentions the significance of the book of Joshua in understanding the Christian journey and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Additionally, he shares about the casting of lots in allocating land in Joshua, emphasizing God's guidance and sovereignty in decision-making. The speaker draws parallels between this process and the distribution of spiritual gifts by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, stressing that all gifts are chosen by God without error. All right, good morning. Good morning. Oh, that's pretty weak. Good morning. Good morning. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. All right. When Carolyn and I finished my two terms as president of Southern Baptist Convention, we took a couple weeks off, and we went to see, down to her hometown, Lake Jackson. We went to two friends' church. Two of my friends have large churches in Houston. I'll not identify them. You can guess. But we went to both of them the same morning. The first one, we went to the church. We couldn't find a parking place. Finally found a parking place. Didn't know exactly which door to enter. But we made our way to the foyer. Nobody met us. Nobody greeted us. There was nobody at the door. We walked in the foyer, bigger foyer, a lot of place for fellowship. People were visiting. Nobody spoke to us. First person that spoke to us was the usher by the door going into the auditorium. And he didn't say anything. He just handed us a bulletin. We visited that church that morning and then went to the other church. Before we got out of a car, there was a man in the parking lot to greet us and tell us how happy he was we were here. He walked us to another man who took us into the building. And we met someone coming into the building and met people along the way. They all made us feel so glad they were there. And we were there for that service. Now, which church do you think we would have joined if we were looking for a church home? The people who greet those who come are some of the most important people in the world. And by the way, I'll give you some money if you're doing that. I'll give you a little unasked for advice. You're not at the door to visit with other greeters. You're at the door to greet visitors. And it's an important task, and I hope that some of you do that. And we're doing better, but we still got a long way to go on that. We need a lot of help. Well, I'm not real sure where we got last week. I'll be real honest with you. I've been real confused this week. Because I found myself, we came through the 12th chapter, and that's halfway through Joshua. So I know we're halfway through Joshua. But I couldn't remember everything we got to or where we stopped. And then when I read what I put in my notes for y'all, I thought, some of this doesn't make any sense. Now, I apologize. I mean, we're in the 13th chapter, and I found myself in the 9th chapter. And then the 11th chapter. So I'm not real sure whether this is going to make any sense at all today. But I think what I was trying to do is we're halfway through the book of Joshua. So we review a little bit of where we've been, and we anticipate a little bit of where we're going. Now, keep that in mind. Otherwise, you're going to call me and say, what on earth were you talking about? And I apologize for that. Well, we are halfway through the book of Joshua. It's a book that you cannot go through verse by verse because it's in narrative form. It's a history. It's a history of Israel's journey to the promised land. It is also a type of the Christian life. For when we came to Christ as believers, then we inherited everything that Jesus had is ours. Everything God has is ours. We're seated in heavenly places with him. And so the same challenges Joshua and Israel had getting to the promised land, and every believer has getting through this life because the Christian life is not difficult. It is impossible. And if we don't have the Holy Spirit, we ain't got a prayer. And so it's kind of a trade because in the Christian life, you're going to have a lot of opposition. You're going to have people tell you weird things and challenge you and all of that. You've got a lot of things to face and to overcome. And Joshua, basically, if you could sum it up in a verse, Joshua simply says that Israel could never conquer the promised land, but God did it for them. And every victory was attributed to God's presence. And every good thing that happens in our lives as believers is because of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. And it reminds us of the challenges that we have. Now, by the way, Jack and Barbara are not here today. Barbara had some kind of MRI or something and found a strain in her shoulder or back and lots of pain. And Jack said, I'm going to stay home with her and try to take care of her today. So you be praying for them. Jack's old, you know. He'd been married, Barbara, 70 years last Monday. Carol Ann and I have been married 69 years tomorrow. So we're just a week apart from them. But he hit the milestone first. We're going to have to wait a year before we can get to be 70 years married. But we've known each other for 70 years. Maybe that helps. That counts. But he said to let you know that he regrets not being here, but he felt like his place was with her. And I agree. That's where he belongs. And as you get older, you just need special help, don't you? And so we'll be praying for them. Now, when we come to, I'm going to try, well, I am going to get through chapter 14 today. Now, the reason for that is very simple. Chapter 14 is basically the story of Caleb receiving his inheritance. It's a short chapter, but the big story is Caleb, when he was asked to come forward and receive his allotment, it's the story of Caleb's inheritance that he had, and we'll look at that. But the final chapters, in fact, many of the chapters we've been going through in the last several weeks are not easy to understand. They're just lists and places and names. And we do not have the time, nor do we have the interest, to really delve into how important all those names and places and all those events were. They're conquering and possessing the land. They're giving allotments to every of the, we start here at chapter 13, every one of the tribes now is going to begin the process of receiving their inheritance that God promised to Moses years before. And so it's pretty tedious. I think of John Bassanio. Any of y'all remember John Bassanio? Okay. John was a pastor at Del City, First Baptist, First Southern Baptist. And Carol Ann and I followed John at Del City, dear friend. But John had a way of dealing with names. If he couldn't pronounce it, he'd be reading along, and then he'd say, hard name, and then he'd go on to the next one. So we've got a lot of hard names in here. And I do have a book that every one of you ought to have. One of our employees at LifeWay wrote a book called That's Easy for You to Say. And he tells you how to pronounce every proper name in the Bible. And it's really helpful, especially if you're reading publicly. So I did give Brother John one here several years ago, and he does a good job pronouncing those names. But anyway, this is a hard time. To fully understand the lists and the names and places is not an easy task. And they're not something that's available to someone who's just casually reading through this. Now, because we're a Sunday school class and we're not going to be a seminary class where we might delve into all of these allotted places and all the things, tell the significance and point them out, we're not going to do that. That would almost be like sitting on your front porch watching the grass grow. It'd be a very tedious thing. So we're not going to do that. But it is a good study. It's interesting that God detailed the exact boundary of all of these allotments, all these inheritances. It went from this place to this place to this place. You look and say, where on earth is that? Well, we're not going to take the time to deal in all of it, but it is an interesting study. Now, one thing comes up, we'll jump to chapter 18 for just a minute. The division of the land was done by the casting of lots. Chapter 18. And when you read that, what comes to your mind? Rolling the dice. Casting lots. Rolling the dice. That's what comes to mind. But I want to read you a couple of things here to tell you why God used this method. Because it was not just the roll of the dice. God was in charge of the whole process. God got exactly what he wanted. Listen to what 18, when the division of land was done by casting lots in chapter 18. In the presence of the Lord our God, I will cast lots. Verse 8, that's verse 6. I will then cast lots for you here at Shiloh in the presence of the Lord. And in verse 10, Joshua cast lots for them at Shiloh in the presence of the Lord where he distributed to the land according to their division. The casting of lots was directed by God, and he sovereignly chose what was best for each of the tribes. It was not just a chance rolling, and you don't know what the answer is going to be. God superintended it, and that was the only way to guarantee the impartiality and the accuracy of where God wanted these boundaries to be. Interesting, casting lots appears 27 times in the Old Testament. 26 of them are in Joshua. The 27th one is in Proverbs 16.33 when it speaks of casting of lots. It says in Proverbs 16.33, the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord. That's a great illustration of it. So we're not talking about a bunch of leaders getting together and rolling the dice and saying, okay, this is what you give, this is what you don't. God superintended the whole process, and even though it may have looked like seeking something of chance, God superintended it all the way because He designed how it would come out, and that's important for us to remember. Now, by the way, in the same way, the Holy Spirit gives gifts to believers. The Holy Spirit administers the spiritual gifts in the New Testament. It's not our choice how we're gifted. Each gift is chosen by God Himself, and make no mistakes. God makes no mistakes in the giving of the gifts to His children. The use of spiritual gifts, now follow me, I'm going to say two or three things here that I want you to remember, especially. You can sleep through the rest of this, but I want you to catch this. The spiritual gift is given solely by the Holy Spirit, the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and not by the manipulation of human efforts. The gifts of the Spirit are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You can't learn how to do something God didn't give you. And you don't have to learn how to use spiritual gifts. You can train and sharpen the gifts you have, but you can't learn how to exercise spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit leads you to do that. That's why when you come to Pentecost, and tongues is first mentioned, the sole purpose of tongues was so people could hear the gospel. The mistake that many people make is they try to duplicate what happened in Corinth instead of what happened at Pentecost. What happened in Corinth was it was a confusing thing. It was not unifying. It didn't bring people together. It wasn't preaching the gospel. It was gibberish, or it was something else, but it was not the same thing as at Pentecost. So don't build a theology of speaking in tongues out of Corinthians. You build that out of Acts. And in Corinthians, it was a problem, and Paul wrote to straighten it out. He wasn't recommending anything about the gifts that's different from Acts. He was trying to tell them, you've been doing it wrong, and you need to handle it this way. So you've got two different things. Now, there are some people who believe that all the gifts have ceased. We call them secessionists. Dr. Bell, one of the things we disagreed on, he believed that the gifts of spirit, tongues, and others ceased after Pentecost. I don't. I don't believe that they did. I don't believe that. But I think I know how I wanted to express it and how it would be expressed today. I've been to Kenya 21 times. I can't speak Swahili. I think if God wanted to give me the gift of speaking in tongues, regardless of how I understood it, I might think I'm talking in English. They might be hearing Swahili. That happens. Carol Ann, I think was in Brazil, was witnessing to... It's kind of interesting. We had interpreters that took us out when we were in Brazil. Carol Ann had three or four interpreters, and none of them spoke English. So imagine how it was. Here she is speaking English. They don't know what she said. The lost people didn't know what she said. Carol Ann said the amazing thing. I would go ahead and just tell them what I thought I needed to tell them, and they'd get saved. Did they hear it in their own language? I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me. God's gifts, though, are not something... I am a little... Most of my... Many of my best friends, my whole ministry, have been in the assembly of God. By the way, they're great people. They love the Lord. When I was at LifeWay, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in Springfield called me one day, and he said, Jimmy, we know how to do worship. We haven't got a clue about discipleship. He said, could I bring my vice presidents and come to you, and you kind of give us some information and talk to us about how to do discipleship? Which I said, of course. And they came and left with a box full of discipleship materials. They're great people. I would not ever hesitate to be a part of, like we did when Billy Graham came to town, when the Pentecostals and the Baptists and everybody all got together. I would do that. I wouldn't do a Bible conference with them, because we disagreed too much on doctrine. I even had a pastor in Arlington who believes in speaking in tongues, but he's Baptist, want me to come and speak on the issue of speaking in tongues at a Bible conference he had. I said, I'm not going to do that. He said, why? I said, because you'd have to correct everything I said. I said, I'm not going to come and create a problem that you've got to correct. No, I'm not going to come and I'm not going to do that. So, you know, there are differences and we have to respect it, but they're great people. And we, Mike Abbott, you all know Mike Abbott. Some of you, he's a seemingly God evangelist. We've been friends now for 40 years. He started church on the move up at the post office. Some of you remember that. And so we were meeting one day and I said, well, I'm glad you're there. I said, I'm going to send all of our folks who want to speak in tongues to you and let you teach them how to speak in tongues. He said, well, I'm going to teach them how and send them back to you. So we have a good time together. But the point is that there are some differences, of course, of opinion. But there are churches who actually have classes how to speak in tongues. Now, why would you do that? Why would God give you gifts you couldn't use? Why would God give you a gift you'd have to be taught how to use? The gifts of the Spirit, we're not going to get into anything. I'm not a rabble rouser and I'm not on any kind of crusade. But listen, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is still alive, his gifts are still alive. I don't understand all I just said, but I accept it and it doesn't bother me. It doesn't seem to have a problem with God, so let's just go on. We'll move ahead and do what we can and disagree where we can, but we'll keep serving the Lord. I personally believe that speaking in tongues primarily is a gift of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. When tongues were spoken in Acts, somebody always got saved and the message was always the message of the gospel. So I'm at peace with that and we'll just go from there. By the way, Sarah Woods, how long has it been since you've been here? A year? Sarah was a teenager at my church in San Antonio in 1962, so I've known her for a long, long time. But anyway, we've missed having you here. It's good to see you again. So anyway, thank you all. Now, let me see where we are. Okay, I was just talking about the gifts of the Spirit. Let's see what's next. I'm anxious to see what I've got next here. Okay, chapter 13, that's where we're going to start there. We're not going to spend much time on it because it basically begins the distribution of the land being allotted to the inheritance for each tribe. And here in this chapter, we see the settlement for the tribe of Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh in Gilead, which is on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Now, we just did chapter 13, just so you'll know where we are. But chapter 14 is one of my favorite chapters because it tells the story of Caleb receiving his inheritance. Now, I've always liked Caleb for a lot of reasons. He and Joshua were the only two adult men who survived the wilderness. All the other men, when they came into the promised land, had been born in the wilderness. And the reason was, when they came the first time, you'll remember, the twelve-member spies that went to spy the land out came back. Ten of them said, it's a great land. It's everything God said. But there are walled cities and there are giants in the land and we can't conquer them. And then Joshua and Caleb said, oh, we disagree. Everything they said, it doesn't matter how big they are or how high the walls are around the cities. God said we can go. We need to go. So God said to them, well, since you've made the decision not to go, none of you that made that decision is going to live through the wilderness. So for 40 years, they lived in the wilderness and died in the wilderness. And when we find them coming now into the promised land, Joshua and Caleb, the only two men still alive that were alive when they made the decision the first time. Now, I love that. I imagine what it is. And it's interesting that Caleb devotes a great deal of this chapter to what he did. But let me just read you a little of it. The descendants of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, said to him, You know what the Lord promised Moses, the man of God at Kadesh Barnea, about you and me. I was 40 years old when Moses the Lord's servant sent me from Kadesh Barnea to scout the land, and I brought back an honest report. My brothers who went with me caused the people to lose heart. But I followed the Lord God completely. On that day Moses swore to me, The land where you have set your foot will be an inheritance for you and your descendants forever, because you have followed the Lord my God completely. You can see the Lord has kept me alive. These 45 years, as he promised, since the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel was journeying in the wilderness, here I am today, 85 years old. I am still strong today as I was in the day of Moses. Oh, no, that loses me right there. The day Moses sent me out, my strength of battle, the daily task is now as it was then. Now, he's fixing to tell them what he wants. They've not even told him what he's going to get. He knows what he's going to get, but they haven't announced it. So here's what he said, Give me this hill country. The Lord promised that to me on the day, because you heard that the Anakim lived there. Those are the giants. The giants lived there, as well as large fortified cities. Perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I'll drive them out as the Lord promised. I can imagine that scene. Here is Caleb, who would be known to everybody. Everybody knows his story. They know his faithfulness. He and Joshua are probably the most recognized two men in the entire million and a half or two million of people that they have. And he is going to receive his inheritance. Now, just imagine, here comes Caleb, probably accompanied by some of his men. They come together to the altar. That question has to go throughout the land. Where is he going to ask to be settled? What land is he going to ask? Will he ask the lush areas where you've got great grasslands where you can take care of your cattle? Will he ask a place where you can have a life of ease and not a lot of challenges? What is he going to ask for? He asked for the hardest job of all, which ought to be good advice for all of us. Listen, when you get old, you're worth more than when you were young. Now, I'll pay for this later. But did you know that the book of Proverbs tells you that you women are worth so much a pound? Carol Ann's worth has greatly increased since I met her. So, I love this. You'll be kicking me under the table for a long time. But the point, I'm not sure what the point is. But here's Caleb. He's 85 years old. And you'd expect him to want to opt for the soft job, the easy job. But instead, he asked for the hardest assignment of all. He lived from age 40 to 85, hanging everything in his life on the faithfulness of God to his promises. He believed God. He and Joshua were like the merging of two mighty rivers. Like the Missouri and the Mississippi River, where they come together at St. Louis. They merge together. And as they flow down toward the Gulf, they increase in size. It's a great merging of things. And that is what we see with Joshua and Caleb, like two great giants coming together. They had great leadership together. And he refused to ask for the lush pastures or the easy spot. In fact, his answering is startling. It really kind of surprises you. He wasn't faced with a choice of freedom from battles. But what he asked for was the hardest one of them all. He wanted the hill country. With its giants, walls, and fortified cities, that was his choice. That's what he wanted at 85. In essence, he said, give it to me. The Lord and I can take care of it. And he still stretched himself, ready for the battles to come. And by the way, faith is always faith in the face of facts. The fact was the Hebrews were an unarmed, pastoral, slave people facing giants. And they needed to conquer those giants. The facts and the truth don't often coincide. When others saw giants, Caleb saw the promise of God. And the goodness of God. And the power of God. He had faith that was faithful in spite of the facts. Facts didn't look good. Many of you have the same thing. You have faith in spite of the facts. The facts may look grim. Some of us may suffer from financial instability in our older age. We may fight chronic diseases. We have faith in spite of the facts. Apostle Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 4. He said, even though our outer person is being destroyed, the inner person is being renewed day by day. So really, as we get older, we can choose not to be bitter and marinate in bitterness, as some do. We can choose to be renewed day by day. Have our life enriched and empowered and encouraged. The inevitability of life is that things change. Your eyes do grow dim. Your ears do lose the capacity to hear. Your steps do falter. And the end is not far away. If life were a football game, most of us would be in a two-minute drill. That's coming. The ancients believed in a mythical bird called the phoenix. Do you remember the phoenix? Well, the phoenix would live to be very old, and then he would be burned to ashes. And out of the ashes, it would rise to fly again. A triumphant old age depends on the promises of God like that. And Caleb is our poster child. He is telling us and showing us how we can grow older without growing old. Everybody grows older. That is inevitable. That is not a choice. You don't have to get old while you're getting older. That's a choice that we can make. We all face declining years. Life is not easy. Growing older is not simple, nor is it uneventful. Mates die. Health breaks. Hearts break. You sit alone at a table and eat your bread in silence. Blow after blow comes. And yet while others marinate in bitterness, you triumph in blessedness under the promises of God. That's God's promise to us. Growing old is not an accident. God didn't forget to plan for it. He said, I'm with you all the way. I love to when I write notes. I don't know why this, but I just always say, you know, God is with us every step of our journey home. Isn't that good news? God is with us all the way. Nothing surprises Him. God never says, oops. He knows. Perfect knowledge. We change and life becomes a challenge. But God's provision for us is that He is with us all the way. People often ask me, and I've said this to you before, what would you change about your life so you could live it over again? Well, the truth is, I wouldn't change anything. But I'd sure want to do it better if I had a chance to do it. But I don't want to do anything. God's been good to us. We've had 69 years of marriage, 70 years of knowing each other. We've got three kids, all of whom are devoted to Christ. One son-in-law is a professor at the seminary. Randy is a lay preacher, chairman of the deacons, and Bailey is a deacon and Sunday school teacher. His kids love the Lord. Several of our grandkids are on staff. Terry's son is a pastor down near Austin. God has blessed us with a wonderful family. I wouldn't change anything. I'd like to be able to love them better and be a better father and grandfather and husband than I've been, but I wouldn't change anything because we've lived on the promises of God. That's what Caleb teaches us. Listen, it's not over. I thought it was over when I got to be 85. Here I am about to start the tenth decade of my life in a few months. It's been a good life. God has blessed it. I wouldn't change anything. Every bump in the road and every success has been valuable. I've learned more from my failures than I have from my successes because you learn more from failure than you do success. In the first place, you probably value success too high. It's probably not as good as you thought it was. I had a great uncle. He was my mother's brother-in-law. He led singing at his church and had a deep voice. Some of you can remember the great Gildersleeve on the radio. He was a friendly undertaker. So Uncle George was our friendly undertaker. He was an undertaker. But he'd always tell me, he'd say, Little Jimmy, I'm not the man I used to be, but then I never was. Let me tell you my story of winning the state title in the 880 dash. Oh, that's not my story. That's what I wish it was. My story is that my mother and dad moved after my sophomore year in college and in high school. They moved to Houston, and I stayed in Jacksonville over here in East Texas until I finished my sophomore year. And my coach, who also was my football coach, basketball coach, and baseball track, wanted to be sure I got a letter jacket. And so he told me, he said, If you will run the district half mile, now this is two weeks before the race, you run the district half mile, and if you place, you don't have to win, but if you place, I'll give you a letter jacket. So I ran it. When I finished, they were pulling the hurdles over for the next race so I had to jump hurdles to get to the finish line. I came in dead last. Did not get a letter jacket. Stories sometimes get blown up is what I'm saying. I'm not a state champion track star. That would be a good story. Just like my foot. I could tell you how I hurt my foot, but you wouldn't believe it because it's so simple and I'm embarrassed. I could make up a story and tell you how I hurt my foot. I could think of some really good details of what happened when I hurt my foot, but it wouldn't be the truth. And I'm not going to tell you the truth. But it did happen in such a way that it's embarrassing. So I won't go any further than that. Nobody could be dumb enough to do what I did but me. But anyway, we've lived our lives to this point. All of us who know the Lord, trusting in the faithfulness of God and the promises of God and he's never failed us. He's always been with us and he's going to be with us to the end. So it doesn't matter how old we are. Let's get with it and go on and get to it. And let's make these later years not years of coasting but fighting the giants in the hill country until he calls us home. That's what we learned from Caleb and that's why I am such a fan of that gentleman. Well, now back up just a little bit. One of the things I wanted to do and that's why I'm being confused all week about what we did last week because I thought I was in the 12th chapter last week and I got to reading my notes and a lot of it was in the 9th chapter and the 7th chapter so I was bouncing all over the place. But back in the 9th chapter, and this is a very important thing, the Gibeonites tricked Joshua into making an alliance with him. Now remember that God had told the Israelites do not make any alliance with any of the people. Don't do it. What part of that you didn't understand? Well, the Gibeonites tricked Joshua. They dressed up, and you can read about it back in earlier chapters, they dressed up in old clothes and dirty faces and backpacks or sacks of ragged shoes that were worn out. It looked like they had come hundreds of miles to get there and pretended to be from a land far away and asked to make an alliance with Joshua. And he knew better. He knew better. Now, Flip Wilson may say the devil made me do it, but he didn't. Every one of us know better than we do, don't we? I mean, we know when we didn't do what we ought to do. Joshua knew. He got cocky. He began to read his press clippings. He began to believe that he had got all the gifts of Moses, and what an honor, what a great thing, what a wonderful man I am. He believed too much, and so he thought he could handle things. Just a note. We can never handle things. We can't do it. God gave us the Ten Commandments, we couldn't keep them. Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, and we couldn't live up to it. We just can't do it. The only way, in fact, they asked me to speak at the pastor's conference a couple of years ago down in New Orleans, and they were using the Beatitudes, and they assigned me the one on self-control. You know, you need to be self-controlled. Well, I stepped to the microphone. They gave me ten whole minutes to talk about it, and I stepped up and said, self-control is an oxymoron. I said, because in our own strength we have no self-control. We can't do it. We couldn't do the Ten Commandments, we couldn't do the Sermon on the Mount. Only the Holy Spirit in us can do it. This is something we can't do. Self-control is not possible in our strength, but it is possible in the strength of the Lord. Everything God can do, the Holy Spirit can do through you. And yet, I hear this all the time. I heard it twice in the last three days. You know, I grow up in a church and we never hear anything about the Holy Spirit. Sad, because the Holy Spirit is God. The Father is God. Jesus is God. We have three distinct Persons, but we have one God, and so what any one of them says, they all say. What any one of them can do, they all can do. So, the Spirit in us is what enables us to be victorious. And Joshua, when we come down to the end of the book of Joshua, we'll be reminded, as he is reminding us all the way through, they could never have won any battles at all had it not been for the power of God fighting for them. I remind you, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, that there is no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man, and he will not allow you to be tempted more than you are able. He will not allow you. You will not decide not to do this. He won't let you, because the Holy Spirit is the only hope we have. And so, he's not some mysterious ghost. He's not some extreme trainer that's going to make you act like an idiot. He's God Himself. He lives in you. And He will guide you through every step of your life. How many times have you said, as I have, when my dad died, when my mother died, I couldn't get through this without the Lord. What do lost people do? I don't know whether you read the statement by the Hunt family in Dallas about the flood, that they lost one of the Hunt grandchildren, great-grandchildren, in Camp Mystic last week. But the wife of the current president of the Kansas City Chiefs, now Lamar Hunt was the chairman originally, but his grandson is now the president of the Kansas City Chiefs. Now, by the way, let me just... We're not getting anywhere, are we? It's almost time to go. Maybe we'll finish this up some other time. I'm not going to get into that. Well, I was just going to say that you never hear anything about the Kansas City Chiefs' owners. You don't see any of them on television. You don't see any of them bragging about how great he is and how wonderful the Chiefs are going to be. They're behind the scenes. They believe in their players. They've hired competent people to be coaches and trainers, and they support their team. They live in Dallas, and their team is in Kansas City. But they're the kind of owners that are always behind the scenes. But we are fortunate. We have Jerry Jones. Everybody knows Jerry Jones. He's like Donald Trump. You never know what he's going to say next. I mean, it may be embarrassing. One thing I know is he's the sorriest general manager in the National Football League, and he has so much power that he won't fire himself. The Hunt family, well, they're chasing rabbits. But they issued a beautiful statement about their faith in God and how we know where our loved one is, and we trust the Lord and we know that He'll see us through all this. Wonderful statement about how nice and decent and good it is to have people well-known and wealthy and prominent who simply talk about the sufficiency of God. And He is. And that's what we find in this book of Joshua. Now, I really am going to quit. I hate that. Well, I do have to tell you one thing. The Gibeonites, the guys that tricked Joshua, let me put it this way. That was like Joshua getting a bunch of lemons. Now, what he could do, he could throw the lemons away or he could make lemonade. Well, he made lemonade because with the counsel of his leadership, when it came time to deal with the Gibeonites, they had made an alliance with them. That's a whole other story. And they cried for help and the army of Israel came and beat up on the enemies on the left and the Gibeonites were saved. But everybody knew and it was common knowledge that Joshua had made a big mistake in making this alliance. And so I'm just going to read you the 9th chapter, verses 9 and 19 and 21 because I think this is really a great story of how to get back at somebody you really don't like. He said, the leaders and Joshua said, We have sworn an oath to the Gibeonites by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we cannot touch them. This is how we will treat them. We will let them live. So no wrath will fall on us because of the oath we swore to them. They also said, let them live. So the Gibeonites became woodcutters and water carriers for the whole community as the leaders had promised them. Now, woodcutters and water bearers are the two products that they needed in the temple. So in essence, they let them live but they made them slaves, as temple slaves to serve the Israelites because of what they had done. In that lemonade out a bunch of lemons. I think Joshua made some interesting statements and did some interesting things, but I thought that was one of the most clever things that he did. Okay, I am going to quickly stop. Chapters 10 and 11 describe the conquered southern and northern cities. John talked about that last time. Half of the assignment for Joshua is over now. The second half is giving the inheritance of the land. In Leviticus 25, God told the Israelites that the land is not to be permanently yours because it belongs to me. You can live in it. You can use it. He is like a landlord letting folks rent his property. And Israel accepted God's offer to live in the land. Now quickly, I am just going to mention some things that all this tells us. First of all, faith is all victorious. God can always be trusted. It was the Lord and Israel's faith in Him that won all the victories in Canaan. Disobedience, number two, always brings consequence. Notice Achan. They lost the battle of Ai because of Achan. Disobedience always brings consequence. Three, believers can never know spiritual victory in their own strength. We can never know spiritual victory in our own strength. Israel couldn't do it, neither can we. Mistakes always follow carelessness and overconfidence. We learned that. Even godly leaders can be deceived. Joshua was deceived. Joshua was an honored, godly leader. He did a good job, but he was deceived with the Gibeonites. The conquest of Canaan was an act of grace from God, but Israel's possession and enjoyment depended upon their covenant with God and their obedience. Number next, God is a covenant-making God. We need to remember that. Number eight, you've already received your inheritance, so don't stop halfway in your walk with the Lord. Go all the way with Him. Hezekiah in 1 Chronicles 28-3 said he served the Lord wholeheartedly. Whatever you do, don't serve God half-heartedly like you're half-asleep. Serve Him wholeheartedly. We never outlive the possibility of new challenges. Caleb teaches us that. Victory comes when by faith we believe God and we trust Him, we obey Him. The book of Joshua is a full history of God's covenant and Israel's rebellion against the covenant, and we thank God that that was restored. But it's also the story of every believer in his relationship with the Lord. This is Israel's story, but it's also our story. Joshua is a great reminder for us. I apologize for wandering all over the world getting through here, but Brother Jack will be back next Sunday, and he doesn't know yet where he's going to have to start. I'm going to have to tell him. He'll teach a couple of weeks, and then Brother John is going to play hooky. The next couple of weeks he's got some assignments, and so I'll teach August 3rd and 10th, and Brother John will come back and teach on the 17th and 24th. So we want to keep you ahead. But Joshua is always a surprise, and I've always said I'm anxious to hear what I have to say because I don't always know what I'll say. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad. But you all are patient, and we love you and appreciate you. We have five minutes for you to get to church if you're going to church, but don't worry, you won't miss much because time is up for you to get down there. We've got a great preacher if you didn't hear him in the first service. Abraham Wright, who I'm preaching again, who's a teaching pastor in Oklahoma City, and Brother John loves Abraham. He's been with us before. But remember to pray for John and Kim as they finish up their sabbatical wherever they are. God bless them. They love to hike and drive motorhomes. I don't like to do either. But I know they're having a good time. But God bless you. Father, thank You for Your love for us. Thank You that we find ourselves in Scripture. There we are looking at ourselves reading the Word of God. And thankfully, You show us where we ought to live, where we ought to go, and how we ought to live. And You encourage us with Your Holy Spirit and lead us and empower us, and enable us to do what You want us to do because You live in us. We're grateful. Thank You. In Jesus' name, amen.
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