Get Ready
Joshua 1:10-15
I. Topic:
1. Get Ready!
II. Faith Proposition:
A. Proposition 1:
3. God prepares us for the inheritance he has promise in Christ Jesus, and make plain the establish season for us to claim it.
III. Introduction:
A. Thesis:
So often when we read the Bible or hear sermons preach from the Bible in which we think the people and events are so far distant from us today, that they seem so unreal. But the puzzling complex world situation back then is not so different from the puzzling complex situation of our modern world of today. Dreams are deferred, hopeful and promising prospects about the future plunder by foolishness. We may spend the best years of our lives trying to be loyal to a job that promise to reward us for our loyalty by providing for our future needs when we can no longer work. When we enter that season when medical bills and life sustaining needs must rest on a promise. Yes, the complexities of our day are not unlike what characterize all disappointments regardless of where they are on the scales of time. We all look for that affirmation of human worth, value and dignity while trying to hold on to the promise of community. And yet whether its tyrants who ascend to the throne or hanging chads that shatter our prospect for the promise of genuine community, it still has the trapping and all the stuff of a broken promise.
B. Antithesis:
* In Genesis we saw God choose Abraham and give him a covenant promises (Gen. 12; 15; 17). The Abrahamic Covenant was God’s announcement of His purposes in our world. Abraham would have a host of descendants, some of whom would be formed into a special people (the Jews) through whom God would work out His plan. God promised Abraham He would set aside a land of Promise for this people. Through this people God promised, looking forward to the Messiah (Christ), that “all the peoples of the earth” would be blessed.
* Genesis goes on to tell the story of the line through which the promises would be fulfilled through "Isaac, Abraham's son, and Jacob (later renamed Israel), Abraham's grandson. Genesis also tells how God providentially sent Joseph, 1 of Israel's 12 sons, down into Egypt to prepare that land for a coming famine, and to prepare a place for the family of Israel to stay and multiply.
* As we trace the history of the Israelites beyond the Book of Genesis, we see that the chosen people were in Egypt for more than 400 years. After a time they were enslaved and for decades experienced great hardship. Finally God sent a specially prepared leader, Moses, to bring Israel out of servitude and lead them to the land promised to Abraham.
* Deliverance from Egypt was accomplished only by direct and miraculous divine intervention. God brought a series of plagues on Egypt in judgment. Finally Pharaoh, ruler of Egypt, did release Israel--only to change his mind and pursue them with an army. The army was destroyed in the Red, Sea, which opened to permit the Israelites to cross, and then rushed together to drown the Egyptians. The now-freed slaves moved rejoicing out into the wilderness.
* But centuries of servitude had weakened the fiber of the people. They consistently resisted and rejected God and Moses' leadership. As an aid to discipline, and to reveal God’s moral character and expectations for His people, the Israelites were led to Mount Sinai. There the Law was given. The people were promised that while disobedience would bring discipline and disappointment, obedience would lead to blessing. Israel willingly accepted God's standards and promised to obey.
* But Israel's promise was made too lightly. In fact, disobedience continued to distinguish the generation that came out of Egypt with Moses. Their rebellion reached a climax when the nation, poised on the border of the Promised Land, was commanded to go in. Moses sent 12 spies into the land to survey and to report. Ten of them returned, terrified by the strength of the fortified cities and by the stature of the inhabitants. Only 2, Joshua and Caleb, came back enthusiastic, confident that God would give them the land. Characteristically, the people of Israel listened to the 10 and doubted God. All the urging of Moses and Aaron and the insistence of Joshua and Caleb that they were well able to take the land went for nothing. The people would not obey.
* Israel had made a basic choice. Because this people would not trust God or obey Him, that generation could not enter the Promised Land. God forced them back out into the wilderness. There the people of Israel wandered for 38 years, until the generation of adults who had refused to trust God died in the wilderness; all but Joshua and Caleb. These two men of faith survived, and over the years the old generation was replaced by a new one.
* The new generation grew up with a greater trust in God. Tested in battle, they obeyed. Finally, as the Book of Deuteronomy describes, the new generation was once again camped outside the Promised Land, awaiting God's command to cross over the Jordan and to take their inheritance. In his last act as leader, Moses reviewed the love of God for His people and urged the new generation to keep His Law. This generation also stood, and made a personal commitment by accepting God’s Law as their standard, and promising to obey the Lord. This time the promise was not made lightly. The discipline of the previous years had produced a committed band.
* With the death of Moses and the appointment of Joshua to lead God's people on to victory, the adventure recorded in the Book of Joshua begins. And the Amarna letters (clay tablets first found in 1887, totaling 540 tells of events surrounding Canaan in the 14th and 15th century BC.). They tell us that God had quietly been at work, preparing the stage for Israel's Conquest.
* During much of the 400 years that Israel was in Egypt, Palestine served as a land bridge between Egypt and a succession of world powers to the north. It had also been their battleground. The people of Israel, who multiplied from 70 people to more than 2 million in Egypt, could never have increased to such numbers if God had left them in the Promised Land. Then, just at the time when Israel was ready to enter that land, Egypt's power waned in Palestine. In the power vacuum which existed “into a land divided into petty kingdoms” God’s people moved, ready to overcome peoples more numerous than themselves, but divided.
* How real it all is! Just as real, just as living, as today’s current events.
* But what took place then has a unique timelessness. Events occurring in Washington today affect us and our future. But so do the events of Scripture. In the people and events described in God’s Word, we discover timeless truths about ourselves and our relationships with God. The Bible’s word of history becomes, by the activity of the Holy Spirit, God’s voice guiding us today. As we listen, learn, and respond to the One who speaks to us through the heritage of our sacred past, you and I can see our own years of darkness fade away, and welcome the days of glory that God intends to unfold for us.
* Opening God’s Word to Joshua is both to revisit a living history, and to open up our own lives to our loving God.
IV. Transition (Relevant Question):
A. Question 1:
V. Body (Synthesis):
A. Point 1:
God commands and presence is enough.
1. God announces to all, but make know his will to his people.
2. God's presence and hand is always at work in our midst whether we see it or not.
B. Point 2:
Consciousness of God's presence compel us to be serious about God's business.
1. First item of business was to command the officer to command the people to make provisions.
2. Second item of business was to remind.
VI. Conclusion:
God has promise his people rest.
A. Exhortation:
1. We Have A Promise Inheritance
2. If you are in your promise inheritance you still have an obligation to help your brethren who have not come into the promise of their God inheritance
B. Celebration:
1. Illustration (Story): Get Ready
The Butterfly and the Caterpillar
I read once of a dashing knight who longed to rescue his princess, who was imprisoned by a cruel enemy in the palace tower. He devised a plan and recruited two small friends to send her a message. First there was Claude Caterpillar, who was a hard-working fellow but crusty and sour. He started inching his way up the wall toward the distant window, but it was hard work. He grumbled that the sun was hot, causing him to sweat. Then the sun withdrew behind a cloud, it started to rain, and he complained even louder about the raindrops. Finally he heaved himself onto the window ledge, looked at the fair maiden, and said, “Hey, you, come over here. Are you the lady in distress?” She nodded. Claude gave her the once-over and said, “You’re kidding. You mean I climbed all the way up here for the likes of you? Well, the knight says to get ready, he’s coming for you at 5 P.M. sharp. Think you can remember that, or should I repeat it?” And off he went.
Next, the knight sent Barney Butterfly. Barney, too, battled the rain and the contrary winds. He had almost made it to the window when a bird came by and nearly ate him alive. But finally he fluttered in, landing softly on the lady’s finger. “Lovely and favored maiden,” he said, “the white knight loves you dearly, and tonight he is coming to rescue you. He asks only that you be ready at 5 P.M.”
The princess smiled and replied, “Thank you very much, Mr. Butterfly. You are very sweet, and I will be ready tonight when he comes. Claude Caterpillar already brought me the message, but tell me, why was he so disagreeable? He brought me the same news, but after he left, I felt worse than before he came.”
The butterfly replied, “Oh, you mean Claude? Well, don’t mind Claude. That’s just the way he is. I used to be that way, too, until I was transformed.”*
----
* Parables, Inc., January 1985, 6.