The Conquest
The Story - How the Bible Explains Everything

Transcript

All right. Good morning, church. It’s good to see all of you here this morning. And I'm glad you're here. I know you're awake, right?

It's not like you lost an hour's sleep last night. The first service. I had to get really enthusiastic in my preaching to try to keep everybody awake. Pray for me, that I still have energy to do it again.

But you've got to do your part, so keep those eyes and ears open. I'm praying for you, too. We have a lot of our women missing today. We have around 85 of our women on a women's retreat this weekend. Praise the Lord.

We're thankful for that and we'll be really thankful when they get back home. So I got up extra early this morning and tried to tidy up the house so my wife won't think I'm a slob while she was gone, you know. But I left a few things so she knows that I need her. So when she gets home, I left a few things. I probably put some things where they don't go and she'll feel good about that, too, you know, like, why'd you put these here?

I will say, honey, I can't do without you; I don't know where things go. So I'm sure that that's going to go well today, too. I'm looking forward to the ladies coming back in town and being encouraged. I've got a few things I want to mention to you that we're excited about. We are at that point where we're in a countdown.

We're four weeks out for Easter Sunday. And you might say, well, why are you doing a countdown about Easter Sunday? It's because people are more likely to attend church at Easter and Christmas than any other time of the year. And so it's an opportunity for you to invite people that are far from God, that you've been praying for, that they would be brought near. And Easter Sunday is one of those Sundays that they are more likely to attend.

We are praying that we have 20 first time guests at Rocky Mount Campus and 30 first time guests here. So let's all do our part. You bring your guest, you bring your “One;” that's what we're praying for. And we're trying to give you tools to help remind you to do that. You see in your seats that we have that network evangelism card, where it gives you five categories of people that you already know in different areas of your life.

It’s just a way to prompt your memory to think about who you are praying for; who you are asking to church. And at the end of the service, when we give a time of response for people to come forward, take communion and respond in other ways, we do have our “It's Time” container down front. We have cards down in front of that where we're saying it's time to see people come to Christ. We want to be strong, we want to be courageous, we want to do the work, we want to be fearless.

That's what we're saying. So come down front, write down one of the names or two that you're praying for that would come to know Jesus during this Easter season. And so that's a prompt in your seat. The cards are an expression of your prayer for someone. In a couple of weeks, the next couple of weeks, we're going to give you invitation cards, business-size cards that you can actually give out.

We've already been encouraging you to get one of our yard signs. We have those in the lobby as you walk out to your left. I've been saying this the last couple weeks that this is only for the brave. If you're among the brave, who'd be willing to stick this in your yard.

And now your neighbors will know you go to church. And so then you have to start acting like a Christian. No, I know that you already do, but it is a serious way where it makes it easy for you to have gospel conversations with your neighbors as you walk around your neighborhood praying for your neighbors. Get to know your neighbors. And it's a way to let them know that they're invited to church with us. And we're praying for this time.

It's a time of prayer. It's a time of preparation. It's a time for baptisms. We're having a baptism service on Easter Sunday. Can you think of a better time to get baptized?

If you're a new believer and you've never been baptized, you ought to sign up for that. What a great day to get baptized on Easter Sunday. We're encouraging all of these things; I want to give one more plug - our first Eastgater is this coming Friday night. Sign up on your card or tap the QR code in front of you on the chair. Sign up for Eastgater.

We're going to be there; I'll be there. We're going to provide a wonderful meal. Our staff will be there. We'll have several other members of our church there, just to tell you more about our church. If you've been checking out the church for a season, it's a wonderful opportunity to learn more.

Okay, well, that's enough in the way of announcements, let's dig into our message. Today we're in part six, going through a twelve-week journey through the entire Bible. We're calling this story, this series, “The Story: How The Bible Explains Everything” and we started in Genesis.

In a few weeks, we'll finish in the book of Revelation. And we're going through the major themes of the Bible. And what we're noticing is that the Bible, although it's made up of 66 books written by over 40 human authors over a period of about 1600 years, it's still only one book. That's why it's called the Bible, or in the Greek, the biblios. The word Bible just means the book.

It's one book, it's one story. And we're looking for Jesus on every page because we think when we look closely, we can find him there. Here's where we've been. We started in Genesis chapter one with the creation story. And we found out that God created a good world, a beautiful world, and that he created us in his own image.

But yet because of sin, man's image was warped and fell and God put them out of the garden. But yet God provides a way, even in that story, that he says that in the future a seed will come that he would crush Satan's head. And so we see even in chapter three of the book of Genesis that God was already promising a Savior. Then we get later in the book of Genesis to the catastrophe of the flood. But yet in the midst of that, because of man's sin, God still rescued a remnant through Noah by having him build an ark.

In the following week, we're still in Genesis. We talked about Abraham, whose name started out being Abram. We found out that God made a unilateral covenant with Abram. What I mean by unilateral is he decided that he would support both sides. He would support God's side, but he would also support mankind's side.

And so he put Abram in a deep sleep and walked the bloody path twice, saying that if I don't keep my word, may this happen to me. And if you don't keep your word, I am going to pay for that too. Which is what he did with Christ on the cross. Then we talked about a couple of weeks ago the crossing of the Red Sea and how God rescued the Israelites. This is the book of Exodus.

And how he rescued them from slavery in Egypt and crossed on dry land. And then last week we talked about how God himself gave a covenant with God's people. He saved them first. Grace precedes law. He gave them the commandments literally in the scripture.

We found that he said he gave them 10 words. He gave them the words. And the words sounded a lot like a marriage covenant. And now this week we'll be looking at the conquest. How after 40 years in the wilderness, they've crossed the Red Sea.

They've been 40 years in the wilderness. Now God is ready to bring them into the Promised Land. Now we live today in a world of broken promises, don't we? Leaders fail us. Friends sometimes fail us, sometimes we fail ourselves.

We can't keep our own promises. And we look at the mess in this world, we look at the mess in our lives and we think, where's God? Is God going to keep his promises? And I'm convinced today, as we look at the scripture today, whether we've been in a wilderness of waiting and wondering, maybe waiting on certain things from God.

I believe today that God is faithful and that he wants to show his faithfulness to us. And as we look in the book of Joshua today, as I said, we're moving through the whole Bible. We're moving through quickly. We're looking at the book of Joshua today and how the Lord was faithful to give the people of Israel that which he had promised their forefathers. And now it's their calling to believe God and possess the land.

As we look at the text today, I believe that God demonstrates His faithfulness. And as we look, I think we'll see three demonstrations of God's faithfulness in our text today. Now we have a short reading today. I'm excited about that.

Just three verses, but there's a lot in it. There's a lot in these three verses. Verse 43 is where we start in Joshua, chapter 21,
here. Joshua 21:43-45 (ESV) 43 “Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. 44 And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them,

for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. 45 Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” This is God's word. Amen.

We're looking for three demonstrations of the Lord's faithfulness. Here's the first:

1. The demonstration of a Secured Inheritance.

Verse 43 says, “Thus the LORD gave…” Now that's a key word in this passage. 43 “Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers.” This goes back to Genesis 12 and Genesis 15, where he first calls Abram out of the land of Ur. He calls him into a land he'd never seen before, the land of Canaan. He says, I'm going to give you this whole land.

And Abraham believed God, and God credited that faith as righteousness. Did Abraham inherit the land during his lifetime? No, he didn't. But he believed God and God revealed in that covenant that I was talking about previously. He revealed at that point.

He said, look, here's what's going to happen. He told him what's coming. He said that your offspring are going to be carried into slavery in a foreign land for over 400 years. But after that time, they're going to come back to the land and they'll actually possess the land.

He was very specific. And that's where we are now. Those 400 years have passed. And so he'd given him this covenant, a promised inheritance.

As you look at verse 43, he says, this is Joshua, he's reflecting on this. In fact, some commentaries, if you read about it, biblical scholars say verses 43 through 45 are kind of the “pearl” of the whole book.

It kind of summarizes and describes theologically the whole book. And so here's Joshua towards the end of his life. He's saying that we had to possess it, we had to fight for it, but it was always the Lord who gave it to us. He gave it to us. And it was according to that which he had sworn to our fathers, like Abraham, who had a son named Isaac.

And he told Isaac, God has promised that this land would be ours. And then when Isaac raised his children, he raised Jacob. And he says, God has promised us, Jacob, this is our land, that we will possess it all one day. And so that's the father, in verse 43, that we're hearing Joshua talk about, that they had believed it, but had not yet received it. But now here they come into the promised land.

The promise is being kept. Oh, can you just experience with Joshua for a minute the joy he must have felt? All of my fathers were looking forward to this. All of my mothers, all of our fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers, we finally have come into the promised land. Praise God, he's given it to us.

This is what he's declaring in verse 43. As you look at this, though, I would say to you, as I remember what he told Abraham, and although Joshua was saying that he's given us all the land. Did you see that inverse 43, “all the land.”

As you go into the book of Judges and even in other places in Joshua, you find out they didn't get all the land that God promised. So is the Bible being inaccurate here? No, we just have to think through what the implications are. There is a tension point here because God had promised Abraham that from the great river in Egypt to the Euphrates, if you pull up a map, you'll see that they haven't quite obtained all of that. They haven't possessed all of that.

So what's he talking about? Well, I was reminded of what God told Joshua in chapter one of Joshua, verse three. Here's what he told Joshua. He says, Joshua 1:3 (ESV) “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you…” Every place that you go to possess, it's yours.

And he promised them, but did they go to every place? So, God, past tense, I've given it to you, it's already a done deal. It's a sovereign declaration, but your part is to walk by faith and go possess it. And they didn't. They didn't possess it all.

They ran into some iron chariots over there in Philistia and they turned back. I could go through more stories, but they did not possess it all. Here's the tension point that I think solves the mystery. The land was given, past tense. But it had to be trodden, present tense. It was given, but it wasn't trodden.

And that happens to some of us. God gives us callings, he gives us promises. He puts a calling on our lives to accomplish the dreams that he puts in our heart from the Holy Spirit. And this is just me thinking about how it might be in heaven someday. I hope this is not an experience that I have or that you have, but it could happen.

And that there might be a room in heaven. And you ask God, well, what's in that room? And he goes, that's all the things I gave you, but you didn't possess them because you didn't believe. Man, I hope there's not a room like that waiting for me. You know, I want to take possession of everything that God has promised.

I want to believe his word. I want to walk by faith and take possession. I want to be like this old man that's still alive here in this story. He's in his 80’s.

He's about 85 now. His name is Caleb. There's only two guys who survived the wilderness, and it was Joshua and Caleb. They were the two spies of the twelve that came out with a good report. And Caleb's still alive.

I like what Caleb says when Joshua says, now Moses told me, Caleb, to give you whatever land you're asking for. And Caleb basically said this. My right arm is as strong as it was 40 years ago when I first came into the land. Give me the mountains, give me the giants. I want to be like Caleb.

Caleb's like one of my favorite characters. I'm getting a little older now. I don't know if y' all noticed. Some of y' all have been hanging around here for a little while. The pastor is getting a little older. But I'm still running up the steps. I have new knees; a couple of years ago, I got my knees replaced.

I'm feeling pretty spry. Y' all are stuck with me until the Lord calls me home. I want to be like Caleb. I don't want to slow down. I want to speed up for God.

So, people, if you're getting up in years a little bit, don't let off the gas. Keep living for Jesus. Keep declaring his glory. And as you grow in influence, don't waste the influence God's given you. Come on.

This is what he's saying. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread, I have given to you. So get walking. Keep on claiming what God has promised to you. And recognize as Joshua did, it was the Lord that gave it to us.

It says in Psalms. The psalmist was meditating on this. He said, Psalm 44 (NLT) 1 “O God, we have heard it with our own ears— our ancestors have told us of all you did in their day, in days long ago: 2 You drove out the pagan nations by your power and gave all the land to our ancestors.

You crushed their enemies and set our ancestors free. 3 They did not conquer the land with their swords; it was not their own strong arm that gave them victory. It was your right hand and strong arm and the blinding light from your face that helped them, for you loved them.”

And that's the truth. God is the one who gave them the land that they had to tread upon and take possession of. I'm remembering how they entered into the Promised land. Do you remember that story in Joshua, chapter three? Remember how they got into the wilderness, how they escaped the Egyptians by God leading Moses to lift up his staff, and God parted the Red Sea and it walled up on both sides, and they crossed on dry land?

Well, now God is going to do something similar, and he tells Joshua how to do it. He tells Joshua, I'm going to make the people look to you the way they did to Moses. This is going to be a sign that I'm with you, Joshua. Tell them to do it like this. Tell the priests to pick up the ark.

The Ark of the Covenant was the ark that carried the Ten Commandments. They carried Aaron's staff that had the almond blossom in it. They also carried a little clay jar that had manna from the time God had fed them heavenly bread from the heavens and all that's in the ark. And. He says, I want you to take the priests and have them walk out into the middle of the Jordan.

And by the way, the Bible tells us it was at harvest time, when the Jordan river overflowed its banks. And so it's at that time of the year. Nobody wants to cross the Jordan at that time of the year.

It's just furiously flooding. God says to tell them to go and stand in the middle of the Jordan and they can cross on dry land. And if you read the story about this in Joshua chapter three, I don't know if I had wanted to be the first two priests, because they're on either side of the Ark, they're holding the poles carrying the Ark. And the way it seems to read is the water has not stopped yet. I believe that first two priests might have got their sandals a little bit wet as they were stepping in, but then right as they stepped in the water, the water walled up upstream and they walked across on dry land.

And God told Joshua, tell them, now stay in the center on dry land until all of Israel crosses over. So they stood there with the ark and the waters walled up upstream. And then he says to send twelve of your men, twelve strong men, one from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Send them back. Keep that ark in there.

Now send them back into the center and have them pick up big rocks and carry them on their shoulders and carry them over into The Promised Land. Set them up as stones of witness, so that when your children's children ask, what are those stones bearing witness to you, tell them this is where God brought us into The Promised Land, we crossed over the Jordan on dry land. Because, see these children, they'd been born, many of them, in the wilderness. They didn't see the Red Sea crossing, but they're going to see the Jordan river crossing.

I grew up singing a lot of hymns growing up. I don't know if you've heard some of these hymns, but so many of them were about crossing over muddy Jordan. Oh, man, it's a picture. Crossing over the Red Sea is like coming into salvation. The wilderness journey.

That's kind of what it's like as a Christian living in this world. But then crossing over that muddy Jordan, that's entering into The Promised Land. That's eternity. We see all of these things. You see as you look at this, the story.

the land is just a shadow of the kingdom and Joshua is a shadow of Jesus. They have the same name. Did you know that? Yeshua; it means God's salvation in Hebrew.

And then as it passed into Greek and then into English, it became Jesus. There's no J in Hebrew or Greek. There's a Y sound, but they gave it a J so that we could pronounce it. It's the same name. It means God's salvation.

Every time you say the name Jesus, you're saying God saves. That's what this points to. It says in 1 Peter 1:3-5 (ESV) 3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” You see, as we read this Old Testament story, God was preparing a people to recognize the greater Joshua when he came, so they would recognize the Messiah who would bring them into the true inheritance that God has promised.

God has promised us a secured inheritance kept in heaven for those who believe in him. That leads us to the second demonstration that we see in the scripture.

2. The demonstration of a Sabbath Rest.

It says this, 44 “And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands.” “And the LORD gave them…” There it is again, that's really important in this text. The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He'd promised this. “Not one of all their enemies had withstood them,

for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands.” The word Sabbath, in the Hebrew Shabbat, means rest. When we look at our calendar, when we look at how we've divided up days and weeks and years, we look to the sun to determine our years. We look to the moon to determine our months.

One's based on the solar; one by the lunar. But when we look at a week, seven days, we look to Revelation. God is the one who told us about the week. That's where the idea of seven days comes from; that God created everything in six days.

And on the seventh day he held a Shabbat; he held a day of rest. And as we look here, we see that the Lord gave them a rest on every side. He gave them rest from their enemies and He entrusted those enemies into their hands. Now, when you read the books of Joshua and Judges, it troubles modern sensibilities.

And I often have people who read the Bible with me during the year. Every year we start out and we say, let's read the Bible together. Many of you have done that. But I often have people, when they get to the book of Joshua and Judges, they'll email me, they'll call me and ask, is this the same God? They get worried. God's telling the Israelites to go in and wipe out these Amorites and Canaanites; destroy them.

That bothers our modern sensibilities. But I would say to you to think about a few things from what we've already learned. Remember what he told Abraham back in Genesis 15? Look what he says in verse 16 of chapter 15 he says, Genesis 15:16 (ESV) “And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” He's talking to Abraham in this vision in the fourth generation.

Now here's what he's saying: When I bring your people out of captivity, he's telling Abraham 450 years in advance, when I bring them out of captivity, they're going to possess the land. But part of that is they're going to be my sword of judgment against the Amorites.

But it's not time yet for you to do that because their wickedness has not yet risen to the full. Now what were they doing? What was going on in the land of Canaan? All we have to do is to look to archeology and other history to see how they were worshiping the Baals, how they were worshiping the God of war, Molech. How they were worshiping the goddess of fertility, Ashtaroth, and how they did these things.

One of the most wicked things that we've discovered archaeologically is finding the bones of infants by the thousands gathered in certain places where they would worship by offering their firstborn to the goddess of fertility so that their crops would come in good that year. And so they would offer their firstborn. And this had been a growing thing. And the way they would worship the gods would be a prophetess of Ashtaroth would maybe come to your village and all the husbands would go to her and be intimate with her as an expression of fertility. And this was the way they were worshiping.

So if you look at the culture at that time, instead of thinking, man, what kind of God is that that judges sin so harshly? Maybe if you had been there and seen them when they had built the God Molech, who held his iron arms out like this, and he had a furnace where his belly was, and they would put a newborn infant into his arms, allow that infant to slide down his arms, screaming into the furnace. And how this was something they did as worship, how many babies would you feel like it's time to do something about that? God waited over four centuries.

Sounds like an awfully patient God. So I don't want to be in the place of God. I don't know when it's time to judge and when it's time to be patient. But he seems way more powerful and patient than me, because I don't think it might have taken more than one baby before I would be ready to do something about it. I don't know about you, but let's take another look at the book of Joshua and Judges and recognize that God is patient, he's loving, he's merciful, but he's also holy and he also judges.

And that's what I see in this book. And so be careful with your modern point of view, that these modern sensibilities, that they have not been biblically trained. As we look at the text here, remember what he told them in Deuteronomy 20. He said, Deuteronomy 20:16-18 (ESV) 16 “But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction,

the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God.” So he's doing it because it was time; their sin had risen to the full. But it was also to protect his people so that they weren't infected by this culture. They've crossed on dry land across the Jordan river, and the first city they face is a fortified city.

It's the most impressive city. It's the city of Jericho. And they pull up in there and God gives them a military strategy to overthrow this city. And it's based on the number seven. It's not the kind of strategy that most generals would come up with.

But General God came up with this. He said, here's the strategy. I want you to march around it seven times, and I want you to bring the ark, and I want you to get seven priests blowing seven trumpets. And on the first day, march once and sound the trumpet. On the second day, march once and go back to your camp.

On the third day, march again one time. For six days, march around the city once. Can you see the people inside trembling? They're losing heart completely.

You have 650,000 warriors marching quietly. That's more scary than if they were shouting. They're just marching quietly. And you have these seven trumpets blowing.

And then on the seventh day, he says, I want you to march around it seven times and blow the trumpets and shout. And when you shout, God's going to give you the victory. And you go in there. And so they do it. They're at the point where they're so well trained, they trust God's word so completely, they do exactly what he says.

And the walls come tumbling down, and they go in and they completely wiped this place out, almost, except for one family, because God's merciful. And there's one family, it's a prostitute named Rahab. And she had rescued the spies from Israel that had spied out the land. And she had let them out her window so they could get out safely. And she made them promise.

I know that your God is God, and I know he's going to win the victory. Will you save me and my family? They promised. They told Joshua, we can't kill them; we made a promise.

And so he said, before we go in, on the seventh day, you two guys, you go in as soon as the walls fall and you find Rahab. They told her, now, if you want your family rescued, get them in that house, because the only people that are going to survive are the ones that are in your house, in your ark, right? Only those that are in that house will be saved. And she brought her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and father and mother. She brought her family there.

And the spies go in and they identify her and they are saved. So everybody's wiped out except for her. And if you turn over to the New Testament, Matthew chapter one, you find out that Rahab is in the lineage of Yeshua, the Lord Jesus Christ. She's not an Israelite. She didn't cross the Red Sea, she didn't cross the Jordan River.

But she believed God and repented of her sins. And God saved her. And so she was the mother of Boaz. And Boaz was the father of Obed, and Obed was the father of Jesse. And Jesse was the father of David, who became king.

And David is the forefather of Jesus, who is the true and only king. Isn't that amazing, that a prostitute named Rahab would become a saint in the lineage of Jesus? Well, that's a good story, isn't it? That's a true story.

And this Sabbath rest that we're talking about, Hebrews chapter four picks this up and says, Hebrews 4:8-9 (ESV) 8 “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” So what's he talking about? This Sabbath that Joshua gave was temporary, but the one that Jesus brings, the greater Joshua, is eternal and it's forever. And it's rest for your soul.

Remember the invitation that Jesus gives, Matthew 11:28-29 (NKJV) 28 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” That's the invitation of Jesus. He's the greater Joshua.

He gives your soul rest. And so we've heard about a secured inheritance, a Sabbath rest. And that leads us to the third demonstration that we see in our text today:

3. The demonstration of a Sufficient Word.

“Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.”
Not one word, not one jot or tittle, not one crossed T or dotted I.

Not one word failed to come to pass. Literally in the Hebrew, not one word, it says, fell to the ground. Hebrew is a very colorful language. Not one word fell to the ground.

Whatever word God sent, it hit its target, it accomplished its purpose. It's a word. When a word comes from God, it's sufficient to do exactly what he intended for it to do. I don't have the power to do that. All you have to do is to be a mom or a dad to find out how much power your words don't have.

But the Father's power in his words is sufficient. He has a sufficient word. Not one word will fall. Dr. Dale Davis, in his commentary on Joshua, he entitled it, “Joshua: No Falling Words.” He thought this was the key verse of the whole book of Joshua.

Not one jot or tittle will fall. Numbers 23:19 (ESV) “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”

What God says, he will carry out. Now, his timing is not my timing. My timing is, can I have it now? You know I want it now. That's our generation.

But the Bible says that a thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years with the Lord. I don't know which day he's working on right now, but I know he's faithful and that his word is sufficient to do what he says he will do. The prophet Isaiah prophesies this, speaking on the Lord's behalf, Isaiah 55:11 (NKJV) “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

You know, one of the things that I encourage you to do when you're praying for someone that's far from God and you're talking to them, is to memorize scripture. Have scripture in your heart so that you can speak the word of God to people. Because your words will fall to the ground, but His Word will not return void. In other words, it won't return empty. It will do the thing he wants it to do, that he directed it to do.

And so I think it's important that when I'm preaching on Sunday morning, I don't want to preach my opinion. My opinion will fall to the ground. It will not help you. I want to preach the Word of God. And know this, that if you believe the Word of God, it will not fall.

It will stand. And it will cause you to rise up for Him. So, memorize scripture and plant scripture. When you're talking to people about the Lord, it's His Word that has the power to save. I want to tell you another story.

It’s from the book of Joshua; it’s a demonstration of God's power and his word. It's in Joshua, chapter 10, when God promised Israel victory over the Amorites, the battle seemed impossible, but Joshua prayed: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and moon, over the Valley of Aijalon” (Josh 10:12). And God answered: the sun and moon literally stopped in the sky until Israel finished the battle (Josh 10:13). God had promised Israel victory over the Amorites and the Canaanites and all the people. But there was one little people group that slipped in there and tricked Joshua.

It was the Gibeonites. And they were in the promised land, but he hadn't met up with them yet. But they were hearing about what happened at Jericho. They were hearing what happened in the city of Aijalon. They were hearing some bad news.

These Israelites are serious business. And so they put on old clothes and got some moldy bread, and they acted like they had traveled hundreds of miles. And they pulled up in there. We just want to be part of the Israelites. We'll bow down, we'll be your servants, whatever you want us to do.

We just want to be your vassals, you know, we want you to be over us. Joshua is thinking, well, all right, then, you know, this is easier. And he didn't know that they were in The Promised Land. So they made a covenant with the Gibeonites. And then later they found out that the Gibeonites tricked them.

And they were supposed to be under God's judgment. But God tells Joshua, you have to keep your word now because you represent me, even though they tricked you, you have to keep your word now. Here's what happens next. Five of the major kings among the Canaanites heard what Gibeon had done.

Gibeon is one of the major cities. I can't believe they bent the knee. We need to go wipe those boys out so that no one else bends the knee to the Israelites. And so five kingdoms come, and they attack Gibeon. And Gibeon sends a word to Joshua and says, hey, do you remember that covenant?

Can you rescue us? And so Joshua praised the Lord, and Joshua took his army down there. And I really think God provided that so that those five kingdoms all showed up in one place. But there were so many of them. God says to him, I'm going to give you the land.

I'm going to give you those people. They pulled up in there and they were winning the battle. But the sun looked like it was about to go down. And here's what Joshua prays.

This is the part that's so amazing. This is Joshua, chapter 10. Joshua prayed like this. Now, this is a man that will pray a prayer for the sun to stand still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon. Now that's kind of stretching it there.

What kind of faith is that now when you're asking God not to let the sun go down? Yeah, but there are laws of nature like that, you know. That's troubling. Gary, do you believe that? Well, I do.

I believe that the same God who spoke the world into existence by his very word is a God that can interrupt the laws of nature. Well, Gary, if it says there'd be no gravity, we'd spin into space. Yet, see, you're dealing with the supernatural here. That's what supernatural means. It means against nature, above nature.

That when God interrupts the laws he wrote and performs a miracle. That's what a miracle is every time. It's where he's doing something contrary to the natural order that he wrote. Because here's what happens. And God answered.

And the sun and moon literally stopped in the sky until Israel finished the battle and was victorious. God's word does not return void. Whenever John begins to write his gospel, he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. And all things were made by him.

And without him, nothing was made that was made.

And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. And we've seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten.” We're talking about Jesus. We have the written word, but we also have the living word in Jesus. And he wants to live in us today.

And every miracle and every promise is yes in Jesus. So that Paul writes to the church at Corinth in his second letter. He says, 2 Corinthians 1:20 (NLT) For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory. Every promise of redemption, every promise of forgiveness, restoration, eternal life.

Every promise. And there are thousands of promises in God's word. And be sure of this Christian, he will keep everyone. If only you would trod in that place in your walk and go take possession of the promises that God has given you. That's your pardon by faith to take possession of what he's promised.

And he's promised you Jesus. He sent him to you. Have you said, he's my Savior, he's my Lord. Have you taken possession of the greatest promise of all? And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.

We see three demonstrations here, a secured inheritance, a sabbath rest, and a sufficient word. How do we respond? What does that mean for us today? It means that we are not to rely on our own strength. God wants to give a promise to you that you can walk out and believe today.

He wants to give you an opportunity to respond by trusting, by resting, answering God's invitation and by obeying. Let's live in confidence of the faithfulness of our Lord and our God today. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for your word. Thank you that you are the living word.

And not one word of yours will fall to the ground.

And you have said in your word, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him.” And I'm praying for you, my friend, right now. If you're here and you sense that the Holy Spirit's knocking at your heart's door, the Spirit of Christ is seeking entrance into your life, would you open the door?

What's that look like? Pray with me. It looks like a declaration of faith to speak words to the Lord. Say, Jesus, I believe in you. I'm a sinner, I've fallen short.

But I believe you died on the cross for me and that you were raised from the grave and you live today. I believe that. Lord Jesus, would you come into my life, forgive me of my sins, adopt me into your family as a child of God. I want to follow you all the days of my life. I surrender my life to you. If you're praying that prayer of faith, answer the door.

He's knocking. Others are here. And you've said yes to Jesus. You're a Christ follower. But today you're wandering in the wilderness.

You're struggling. There's something in front of you right now. It's a mountain too big and you don't know how to get around it or over it. You certainly don't know how to go through it. Would you call on the promise making, promise keeping God and recognize that he's faithful?

Would you declare your faith again? Lord Jesus, I believe in you. I trust in you. I rest from my anxiety and my worry in you. For it's in his name we pray.

Amen.