Joshua 17 The Sons of Joseph, part 2

The speaker announces that they will be absent on the 24th due to their great-granddaughter's baptism in Fort Worth. They discuss the division of land between Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, detailing the significance of their inheritances. The story of Joseph's rise to power in Egypt and the blessings upon his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, are recounted. King Manasseh, a wicked ruler, later repented and found redemption. The narrative emphasizes the transformative power of God's grace, illustrated by Manasseh's story and the joy of loved ones finding salvation after years of prayer. The speaker reflects on the growth of their church and the importance of understanding the reasons behind people's decisions. Well good morning. Good morning. Good to see you. Good to see you. Amen. Looking good. I need to tell you some things. Carol Ann and I are not going to be here the 24th because our first great-granddaughter is being baptized in Fort Worth that day so we're going to go with Randy and Elizabeth over there to I'm not sure the name of the church somewhere over Fort Worth and we'll leave Brother John with you that day. I'm going to finish up chapter 17 today and John will do chapters 18 and 19 and then Jack will come back between all of his kidney stones that he's fighting. He'll work it in where he can be here the next two Sundays and then I'll pick it up after that. We will probably finish Joshua in the next six or eight weeks and maybe less but it kind of depends on you know it's kind of easy to move through when you've got all these lists. Boring lists you know it's kind of hard to squeeze juice out of a turnip and you wonder what's all this about so we're trying to thank you for hanging in there with us while we try to wade through all the lists and and make some comments. Now we come to chapter 16 we've been we have been dealing we are dealing chapter 16 and 17 so we did last time and now 17 with the allotments given to Joseph's sons Manasseh and Ephraim and we have two chapters devoted to the inheritances of these two sons of Joseph and it's the largest inheritance of the tribes the ones that Manasseh gets and Ephraim is tucked away right in the middle of Manasseh and Benjamin and the little pocket of folks just west of the Sea of Galilee but the inheritance for Ephraim Manasseh has it on both sides on the east side and the west side so for our purposes we're going to be really creative and see it's east Manasseh and west Manasseh so you understand it and the Jordan River is what separates them most of the way and then Ephraim is tucked away right in the middle of west Manasseh and Dan and Benjamin and the eastern border of west Manasseh is the Jordan River and the western boundary is the Mediterranean Sea so it's kind of interesting I think I said this to you maybe last week the Palestinians today are talking about they're going to run the issue from the river to the sea which means you're going to get rid of them that happens to be exactly what God gave them from the river to the sea and so the locations of the of the boundaries of the allotments that are given are very important because we have detailed descriptions about every one of them and every one of them was fulfilling a promise to the tribes that God had given starting through Moses and now on through Joshua and east Manasseh right in the middle of east Manasseh on the border is the Sea of Galilee now east Manasseh goes north of the Sea of Galilee it's south of the Sea of Galilee but the Sea of Galilee is sort of the middle marker of west Manasseh and but the point here is that our focus right now is Joseph. Joseph he was sold into slavery as you remember through the providence of God he ended up as the second most important man in Egypt which ought to be encouraging because God could take mistakes and reverses and disappointments and turn them into something really great and think of all we won't take time to chase that rabbit think of all Joseph went through to get to that place falsely accused time in prison befriended the the cupbearer the the servants in prison and and then one of them got out and he said well remember me and he didn't so he spent more time in prison and it's a interesting journey that we have with with Joseph he was sold into slavery and then through the providence of God he was elevated to the second position in the in all of Egypt he warned Pharaoh that a famine was coming Pharaoh believed him and and in Genesis 39 to 45 we have 39 and 45 in that chapter up to 45th verse we have what Pharaoh told Joseph he said since God has made all this known to you there is no one as discerning and wise as you are you will be over my house and all my people will obey your commands only I as king will be greater than you and just to put the icing on the cake Pharaoh gave Asenoff who is his daughter to Joseph to be his wife and she was the mother of Manasseh and Ephraim it's kind of we don't often take seriously the meaning of all the names we give people but every name in in in Bible times always had some special meaning and Joseph's name literally means making forgetful and he said he chose that name according to Genesis 41 51 because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household he had a new life in a new country with a new family and so it's an amazing thing to follow the how God used him what Joseph and Asenoff had a second son Ephraim in the Bible and that that name literally means doubly fruitful and later when Joseph and Joseph's father Jacob and the other children and families moved to Egypt to escape a famine and Jacob was about to die he uh Joseph brought his sons to to give a patriarchal blessing now remember Manasseh is the oldest Ephraim is the youngest and Joseph wanted wanted Jacob to bless Manasseh but instead Jacob uh chose to give Ephraim the greater blessing over Joseph's objection and then he said in Genesis 48 19 to Jacob said Manasseh too will become a tribe and he too will become great nevertheless his younger brother will be greater than he and his offspring will become a populous nation now those words were actually fulfilled when Moses did a census Manasseh had 32,000 descendants who were age 20 and over and able to go to war but Ephraim had 40,500 so the prediction of the blessing of of Ephraim of Ephraim proved to be an a certainly a true observation of what God was about to do by the way you remember the same same thing happened with Jacob and Esau Esau should have gotten the blessing but through the treachery of Jacob Jacob got the blessing and by the way you know what that word Jacob means it means trickery treachery someone who grabs the heel and causes someone to stumble Jacob was a sneaky guy and that's that was basic to his nature we find it cropping up many times uh in his life oh by the way there are two significant Manassas in the Old Testament one was King Manasseh he was the son of King Hezekiah and Manasseh who was Joseph's first born son now King Manasseh was considered to be the most wicked king in that that the nation ever had now remember that because that is a very important thing but let me tell you how bad he was he came to be king when he was 12 years old and he reigned for 55 years in Jerusalem so his entire life he was the king now here's what here's what the the chronicles 2nd chronicles 33 1 to 6 say about he did evil in the Lord's sight imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites he practiced witchcraft divination and sorcery he consulted mediums and spiritists he did a huge amount of evil in the Lord's sight angering God and he said I will establish my name forever in this temple in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel so Manasseh caused Judah and his inhabitants of Jerusalem to stray so that they did worse evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites he was a bad bad king he was even worse person he was a wicked rebel in his own life and his leadership in Israel was absolutely just unfathomable bad wicked oh but a wonderful thing happened to him he got saved this is this is a good thing to remember because it's a reminder that that nobody's beyond the reach of the grace of God nobody's so big so strong so evil so bad that God can't reach them and and so we read this remarkable restoration in 2nd chronicles 33 12 and 13 when he Manasseh now when he was in distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and earnestly humbled himself before the God of his ancestors he prayed to him and the Lord was receptive to his prayer he granted his request and brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom so Manasseh came to know that the Lord is God is that a great story we we think of him as a wicked king but he had a marvelous transformation and it's just another example of the grace of God they they conquered the land of their life conquered the land because of their faith their stubborn faith in the faithfulness of God they knew God would keep his word and here is the most wicked king of the nation who did every detestable thing you could imagine and he got right with God and came to know the Lord what a great testimony so it's a good reminder to us and some of some of you can remember praying for loved ones or friends for years you thought that never happened but then they got saved i was preaching a little church caroline and i had been married very long we were over pastoring in tyler texas and i was preaching in a little church in south dallas and i don't know what i preached about but i know that when i gave the invitation this this man came forward and to give his heart to the Lord and all of a sudden this woman on the front row started shouting praising God raising her hand and said it is either a son or a husband she'd been praying for for 40 years he got saved that morning she's happy about that it's good when people get saved and one of the things that i that i and i'm not being critical but please one of the things i miss is the opportunity to know why people come forward and make decisions we used to well i'll give you a little rabbit trail they our church grew so fast we came in 1975 we had double-digit growth for over 10 years and so seminary got wind of it that they sent a seminary guy out to to be in one of our services to kind of report on why is all this happening and uh it's interesting what his report was because as a typical of that time we had a number of people came forward bill folks always read those names out those of you who remember he'd read the names out sometimes he and i sort of banter back and forth a little bit and then we kind of carry on the conversation just the two of us then we take care of the people having have Sunday school people come and stand with them and i'd always tell them if you don't get in Sunday school you're not going to like this church you need to be in a Sunday school class i'd have Sunday school leaders or teachers come forward and stand with them and but the professor went back and told me he said the most significant thing about the service was the way they presented the people who got saved or made decisions between the pastor and the minister of education that was the best communication of the whole time didn't say much for my sermon but yeah but anyway uh it uh you know i i missed that we don't have a chance to celebrate and consequently we don't celebrate enough it ought to be a celebration the people get saved because it's amazing hand of god doing a miraculous thing that nobody else could do and possessing the land of egypt they couldn't possess the land of canaan but they did because god fought for them and we we need to celebrate what god has has done and amazing salvation of this evil king and that just reminds us that no one is too wicked for god to save him now in this chapter we meet a new new face um makir who is the uh manassas oldest son and uh in verse one it says that he was the reason he was given a piece of land the hill country because he was a man of war uh well it would take a man of war to conquer the giants and wall cities uh and there it would take someone prone to to that kind of the amorites who lived in the land and sure enough he did take take the allotment that he uh moses in numbers 23 had earlier predicted that makir had been given that land and uh and he did drive out the amorites who were there and he did possess the land and oh by the way another another thing to notice is the grandsons of joseph among the grandsons was a man named heifer h-e-p-h-e-r uh it was at risk he was at risk of losing his inheritance because he didn't have a son he had five daughters but in hebrew life normally the the uh the uh inheritance is passed through the male children they didn't have any and uh and so his five daughters uh realized that they were at risk of losing uh their father's inheritance because they could not receive uh an allotment because they they had no brothers and so they took the in numbers 27 gives us the uh the uh details of this complicated uh issue where moses and eliezer the priest were approached and the five daughters came to them this back in numbers 27 and since their family name would be lost if the inheritance wasn't given they appealed to moses and eliezer to give them the inheritance since there was no male descendant no other descendants and so moses took it to the lord and sure enough god said well he's right they're right they they need to receive that and the lord's response was that it was legitimate and the daughters should receive their father's inheritance since there was no uh legitimate uh male decisions left and so god told moses under these circumstances the daughters would receive the the inheritance that usually went to the sons and so that had already been decided by moses now they come back and and they make the appeal to joshua and joshua has to confirm that so they each receive one portion of land and in that way the inheritance of of their family name was multiplied five times actually the total portion of manassas inheritance was 12 and two of those parcels of land were east of the jordan ten were to the west that's why we have east jordan and west jordan and making 12 portions of land uh in the two in the east and ten in the west making 12 i just it's kind of interesting you take that number 12 john paul's for a minute i wasn't sure where he was going this morning when he talked about the number 12 you know he could have gone on to say there were 12 tribes of israel you know and so on a lot of a lot of use of the word 12 and uh and so manassas and his uh his his uh his tribe received 12 portions of the inheritance to east to west of jordan river the southern boundary of verses 7 through 11 is described uh if aphraim aphraim's northern boundary was the southern boundary of manassas the greatest part of west uh the greatest part of west manassas eastern boundary was formed with the jordan river and in fact another interesting thing is that it's interesting that the uh that manassas cities were actually assigned to other territories two of them uh uh essekar and asher and and that's not limited just to manassas seen in four of judah's cities and several of aphraim's cities usually happens when you've got cities near the border and remember that that back then the cities had kings and so you might have west west manassas east massachusetts a huge hunk of land but all the cities had kings at random uh the land the outlying away from the cities uh had had kings themselves and so it was not unusual for the city to be sort of stand alone so the pattern you see is that many times in the allotment of the of these inheritances to the children of israel a city might be assigned to the to the to the particular inheritance that's in another portion of land and that happened a number of times by the way no reasons given for it i can only assume that it was because of their nearness to the border and uh and so the uh jerusalem and jericho are two illustrations of cities that were actually in another portion than the one that you would expect them to be with also verses 12 and 13 this is the third time in three chapters that we read of failure of a tribe to drive out the inhabitants uh and uh in verse 23 i think it is in 24 let's see here all righty let me get it to 17 12 and 13 uh it tells us the descendants of manassas could not possess these cities because the canaanites were determined to stay in the land however when the israelites grew stronger they imposed forced labor on the canaanites but did not drive them out completely they by not driving them out they created a real problem for themselves that they actually sowed the seeds of their own destruction and god certainly didn't tell them to create for the make the the people slaves forced labor god they didn't ask god about it he didn't condone it didn't command it they just did it on their own and it never did work out very well which is a good reminder to us that that it's always best to obey god because if you don't it's not going to be working out very well you can you can do it your way but you'll pay the consequences and that's very very important lesson that we we see here that the uh the failing to obey god is a one that always comes with with consequences by by failing to obey god and casting out and destroying the the inhabitants of the land they chose peace with evil rather than war with righteousness or for righteousness and they they need to understand i think i reminded you last week god will not tolerate sins in our lives you may think you got away with it but you didn't because god noticed it and sooner or later others will too uh god just won't put up with that he put the holy spirit within us and first corinthians 10 13 reminds us there's no temptation coming that that we can't handle god made a way for us to escape he put the holy spirit in us and we have no excuse when we sin he is our strength that we stand the holy spirit is our strength that we stand every evil that satan uses to try to compromise us verses 14 to 18 this chapter concludes uh the uh two chapters that deal with the inheritance of the tribes of aphirb and manasseh and yet if i at this time they're considered one unit they speak as one they use the first person singular words i and me and joshua addresses them in the second person singular you so by this time the two tribes are viewed as one tribe together and and then then their their true colors emerge the two tribes were very very unhappy with their land they complained to joseph in verses 15 and 16 14 joseph's descendants said to joseph why did you give us only one tribal allotment as an inheritance we have many people because the lord has been blessing us greatly joshua said well you have so many people joshua go up to the hill country up to the forest clear the air for yourselves and land of the parasites and refer him because aphirb hill country is too small for you but the descendants of joseph said the hill country is not big enough for us and all the canaanites who inhabit the valley have iron chariots both at beth shinn with the surrounding villages and in the jezreel valley so joseph verse 17 joseph replied to joshua replied to joseph's family that is aphirb and manasseh you have many people great strength you not have just one allotment because the hill country will be yours also it's the forest clear it and its outlying areas will be yours you can also drive out the canaanites even though they have no have iron chariots that are strong in other words he said if you can go up and take it just go ahead but i'm not going to give it to you but you can have it but you got to go take it uh god's not going to go with you god's not going to fight with you remember ai anytime we engage in a battle that we think we can handle you can be sure we're going to lose christian life is not difficult it's impossible we can't do it god gave the ten commandments nobody could keep them still can't jesus gave us a sermon on the mount supposed to be the constitution of the kingdom of god we can't do that only god can do that and that's why christianity is not just adhering to certain beliefs it's experiencing a relationship with god himself god is is our lord and our savior he he is with each one of us at all times and we can thank you know thank god that he is with us because uh i look back on my life and i think of the many stupid things that i did it had been for god rescuing me and and uh taking care of things in spite of myself uh it would everything would have been different but but he has put the holy spirit in us and the holy spirit is god and so we know we have a way out and uh but but uh manasa and ephraim were cocky guys i mean there's already unrest there because manasa was the firstborn and and and yet if you've got the blessing not manasa so there was a little unhappiness on manasa's part right there and uh after all joshua was of the tribe of manasa and uh surely he'd understand we we all have special treatment you know the best advice my mother gave me she said son do not expect special treatment just because you're the pastor and here's what i learned i learned that you the church would not do anything i wouldn't do so i found found out that if you want to be have a generous church you have to be generous if you want to have soul winning church you have to be a soul winner if you want to have a clean church you got to pick up trash when you see it you can always tell who the servants are because you walk down the aisle and down the passageway from here to the auditorium you see a piece of paper on the floor see who stops and picks it up many folks walk right past it but every once in a while the servant comes along he picks it up and so uh maybe you've seen me picking up pieces of paper on the floor because i figured if i won't do it you won't we we have uh but but manasa and aphraim were cocky brothers and uh they they said not only did did you not give us enough even if we had the hill country wouldn't be enough and the bottom line is we're determined to be unhappy and nothing you can do can make us happy now listen carefully to me nobody can make you happy i can't make you happy your mom and dad can't make you happy your son and daughter can't make you happy your husband your wife can't make you happy you're the only person that can make you happy so you need to be a grateful person every time someone has asked me said what what's the secret to a successful long marriage gratitude gratitude first thing i do when i get in bed at night is thank god for caroline we've been married 69 years i'm amazed she's still with me i thank her every day for putting up with me but i always thank the lord oh and and and i took her out yesterday for lunch you know what she did when we got in the car she said thank you for lunch you got to be a grateful person now nasa and aphram were determined not to be happy and if you're determined not to be happy nobody can make you happy that's why we have to be getting be very careful as we get older you know there are a lot of things i can't do i used to could do i could bound up stairs going to the pulpit two at a time now if i don't have a rail i can't do one at a time can't do what i used to do used to love playing basketball pretty good at it i knew how to make a basket the ball go in the basket didn't know how to do much else but i could shoot it and uh can't do that anymore uh but i'm thankful my mother had polio when she was 10 months old more than a dozen times she rode in her teenage years from malvern arkansas to st louis for surgery by herself on the train one leg was six inches shorter than the other one foot was several sizes smaller than the other but she never complained i was walking i never i was walking across the street with her one day and cars stopped she looked up at me she said i bet they think i'm crippled when when when my cousin betty nell who just passed away here last several weeks asked her one day said hey lois what will you do if you have to go to a rest home she said well i probably won't like it but if i do i'm going to be the happiest person there see you can't make somebody happy either you're happy or you're not a lot of things i can't do i could complain all day about things i'd like to do that i can't do but i'm just thankful that i could do them at some time and that god did do them and that god blessed them and now he's let me live this long and uh i'm still grateful he only promised us 70 years i'll be 90 in less than two months i've been living on grace for a long time every day i live is a grace day and then we ought to be grateful thankful for that aphraim and manasseh were it were spoiled kids they were determined not to be happy they were determined not to get along with everybody else and they determined that nobody did enough for them they were special so they ought to get special treatment well that's not a that's not a good pattern and uh that's that's what occupies much of much of this of this chapter is the complaining of uh of manasseh and and uh aphraim now we god i mean just remind us god's whole spirit dwells within us and and the important we're not saved because we believe the bible is in error we're not saved because we believe jesus is born of a virgin although we believe those things we're saved because god put the holy spirit in us and if you can sin and not not be chastised in your own heart for it then something that says something about your relationship with god do you think that i could mistreat caroline and her not know it well do you think i could expect her to be nice after i treat her badly no and god's not going to let us get away with disrupting the relationship we have with him you never know that god is enough for what you need until god is the only thing you have left to fill your deeds you'll find out that he's enough he's not afraid of questions he doesn't care if you gripe at him complain about him he still loves you when we were san antonio we had the largest private uh kindergarten in san antonio at that time they did not have kindergarten in the public schools so every kindergarten in san antonio back in the 60s were private kindergartens we had the largest in the whole city and we we were san antonio is a catholic town and spanish was then may still be the language of the streets we we our church was just six blocks the church the street our church was on dead end into saint mary's university and just a couple blocks the other direction was a school for the brothers catholic brothers that's a special order of catholic so we're between two catholic institutions often they'd walk back and forth in front of our church from one one place to the other i even they even asked me to come and speak to a class of the brothers on baptism by immersion wow and do you know the professor agreed with me and uh but uh you know so we had we were a little love catholic people spanish people love the spanish culture and uh but we we had one one couple that that came to our church after their child enrolled in kindergarten and they said the reason we came was because they said that they learned in kindergarten that god loves us even when we're bad so we all know that but apparently they they did not know they thought you had to do certain things to please god for him to love us but no god's love does not come at cost we never deserve it never will he still loves us i have a had a dear friend that wrote a poem one time called uh you know i love you and and i i if you don't love me back that's okay because i love you enough for both of us that's what god says he loves us enough for both of us we can't completely love him like we should he just loves him loves himself through us and uh so god god is a but april and manasseh were just cocky young kids and uh they uh and they pretty well uh i wouldn't say they're complaints what caused it but by the end of the of this 17th chapter they they're just one tribe and uh they're spoken of and they speak as i and me they they speak as one and uh but they're they're pictured as being unhappy with their territory and uh these two encounters uh are very negative the spirit of them is very very negative uh in uh in the uh in the text uh joseph's descendants said to joshua why did you give us only one tribal allotment as an inheritance we have many people because the lord has blessed us greatly that that's the joshua said if you have so many people go to the forest clear the area for yourself the land of the parasite the and the reef him reef him because aphraim's hill country is too small for you but the descendants of joseph said the hill country is not enough for us they are determined not to be happy that's why i say again nobody can make you happy you're either happy you're not happy but nobody make you happy and that's the decision we make that's why i often say and i've told you to you many times you'll be afraid we're all going to get older but we don't have to get old while we're getting older getting older is not not a choice that's inevitable we have no choice about that but getting old is a choice when aston april just couldn't get over themselves they thought they were special deserve special treatment now we're not entering to where that's proper for them to think but they they were just pretty cocky about their demands and uh it was not a it was not a sign when you look at how caleb uh received uh his uh allotment in chapter 14 verses 6 to 12 and those five daughters of zelophehad both caleb and the daughters of zelophehad appealed to the promises of god rather than the arrogance of the son of joseph those five girls daughters of the zelophehad appealed to the promises of god manasseh and april didn't they just wanted more land they just said we got too many people we need more land you need to treat us special god never did respond to their prayer or to their their their desire he never sanctioned getting more land and in fact joshua said there's the land if you want to go get it god's not going to go with you if you conquer them you can have it but god's not going to respond to god never sanctioned it and uh he basically said you can you can clear the land and you can do whatever you want to with it build your pens for your cattle you can do whatever you want to uh show how strong you are and you can have that land and their response was that even the hill country is not enough for them they were afraid of the canaanites like the ten spies who came back and said they're wall cities and giants in the land we can't take it they they agreed with their report uh and and uh and they they felt fearful of trying to conquer them just like the the 10 spies i felt like we couldn't couldn't do that uh but but it's interesting that this complaint is never referred to again god never mentions it it's never mentioned in scripture god never sanctioned their complaint joshua gave them an extra portion but it was dependent on their own strength to take it they basically told them if you can possess the land on your own then it belongs to you but don't expect god to fight for you as he previously has done he's not going to do it so again we are back to where we started really all of cana was possessed by the stubborn faith and obedience of the israelites in their promise keeping god same god still is with us today he'll be with us as long as we let him it's interesting revelation 320 you remember that behold i stand at the door knock if you want to open the door i'll come into him and stuff with him and he would be how many times have you heard that used about people getting saved god's knocking at your door you need oh the the door that that was knocked on in revelation 3 was the church which means it's possible to do church without god that's something we all have to wrestle with whether you know it or not you know sundays were my day i love sundays i knew how to do sundays robert wagner and i never planned coordinated service we just pray he'd know what i was going to preach i trusted him he trusted me we get up you'd think it'd been orchestrated but we never never had planned anything but we're going to do what we know how to do sundays we can do that it would be easy for me as the pastor to do sundays without the lord because i know how to do it but what i did every sunday morning when i was pastor this church i was here by 5 30 in the morning on sundays and i walked up and down the aisles in our auditorium i said god please do something within these pews that we didn't expect do something we hadn't planned we know how to do this but don't let our our knowing how to do it get in the way do something we did not expect and for many many years god certainly did more than we possibly could expect amen he'll do that in your life he will whatever you're challenged whatever you're faced you say well i have a pretty serious illness he knows that and the best thing that could happen to your elders would be for god to take you home you won't be sick there there are no battles in heaven there were in cana not in heaven the battles will all be won battles physically emotionally it'll all be over so we i'm not particularly wanting to go to heaven today but i'm happy to if god wants me to and every time i see a cloud first thing carol ann will talk about when we back the car out of the garage she looks to see if there are any clouds in the sky she'll say well last two days they just haven't been any clouds in the sky but if there are clouds you know you want to say lord this would be a really good day for you to come into clouds he's available for every day you say well i don't think i could do that well whatever that is the truth is i've seen friends suffer chronic disease and excruciating pain and i think lord i couldn't do that and when i say that i hear the lord whisper to me no you can't because you don't have to but if you had to you could because i'll be with you if you go through it isn't it comforting to know that we don't go anywhere do anything feel anything experience anything fail at anything that god's not right there with us he's with us every step of our journey home so we don't fear death because we know he's with us and when death comes the good bye on earth would be the hello in heaven he's with us all the way we could trust him my dad long before they wrote the gospel song but when i was a boy my dad used to say you cannot always trace god but you can always trust god now there's a southern gospel song that does that and says that uh but it's true of all of us uh you know i look at you know we've got a wonderful group of widows in our church they're they're great ladies and carol and i both love these ladies and pray for them but you know what god promised to be their husbands god promised them to give them grace do they miss their husbands of course they do if they didn't miss them they'd have to forget them and you don't ever want to forget them so when when a spouse dies you'll never get over it you will get through it because god is with you through every moment of your life every experience in life and we've all faced disappointments we face criticism we have faced pain we we know what it's like to have our best friends in the doctor's office we all we've been there good news is that god's with us every step of the way i i've had a doctor's appointment friday god was there i want to go back tomorrow by the way trying to work on my neuropathy i found the doctor thanks to mary dell that thinks he can cure my neuropathy in my feet if you don't have neuropathy you're really missing something i mean it is amazing and uh one of the questions that was on the questionnaire and the doctor said have you ever been diagnosed with neuropathy and i said no but i know i have it because i can't i can't feel my feet and uh and so sure enough after he did all this little stuff he said you're right you've had neuropathy so now i'm confirmed i have neuropathy but god's there all the way i wouldn't know what it was like to take a step and not feel like i was walking on a thousand needles don't have any idea what it'd be like to sit in my easy chair and watch the news without shooting things going through both sides of my feet all things but you know god's there and every every time i have a pain or hard discomfort i'm just reminding god said it's okay you're going to be all right you're going to make it and that's his promise that we don't realize the extent or the value of the promise of god to never leave us or forsake us he's just not going to do it our military says never leave fellow soldier behind god says i'll never leave you behind i had a refrigerator max locato says my name would be pinned to it god loves us intensely and he's with us each step of our journey and this is the thing we learn you know we we're now coming toward the end and we'll be there pretty soon of the book of joshua it's filled with a lot of stuff a lot of mistakes a lot of failures a lot of victories a lot of blessings uh but one thing for sure is israel possessed canaan because of their stubborn faith and obedience in god and he'll do the same for us i remember a friend of mine was diagnosed with prostate cancer and he said you know he said the first thing i thought was why me why me and then he said i heard the lord whisper to my heart why not you why not you i can't explain why my mother had polio at 10 months old why she was crippled all her life can't explain why my dad died when he was 52 years old a lot of things i can't explain there are things in the bible i can't explain you know what i do i preach the things i do understand and if i ever get around to understanding the things i don't understand i'll preach those too my job is just to preach the word and know that god is with us he's always with us let prayer be the first thing that you go to and not the last thing pray he's always listening his phone is never busy he's always in and he'll never leave us we're learning that in joshua and in our walk with the lord thank you father for your love and grace thank you for your word that teaches so many things that are practical to our lives we love you bless you and thank you in jesus name amen brother john will be on 18 next week