Joshua 1:10-18 - Follow the Leader

Join us at Recast Church in Matalon as Don brings us a sermon series entitled

Joshua, Land of Promise. Good morning, how's everybody doing?

All right, good. Glad that you're here. I want to just take a moment to welcome all of you, and for those of you who maybe this is your first time here,

I'll just say we're grateful that you've taken the time to come and join us here. I wanted to take a moment. I don't think, how many of you know where the name

Recast comes from? Maybe better yet, how many of you know, it's kind of sketchy in your mind where the name

Recast comes from? Kind of like, what's that all about? What's it mean? Well, I wanted to just share real quickly in introduction of my message a little bit about what the name

Recast comes from. It's actually an acronym for our core values. So it actually spells out our core values.

The first being, and they're actually spelled out on the back wall, so Community, Authenticity, Simplicity, Truth. We left the first one out, and we didn't put that on the back wall just because it could be easily misunderstood.

It's reproducing. So we don't want people to think that we're just a church that wants you to have lots of babies or something like that.

Let me explain what these mean. Reproducing means that within the core values of our church, what our hearts desire is that as God blesses us, as we grow, as we grow deeper in Him, and as we grow with numbers, our desire is not to become a megachurch, to have a multi -million dollar facility and just grow and grow and grow.

But the idea of reproducing is going out and starting other churches. So that as we get to a certain size,

I don't know what that is, that doesn't mean that we don't eventually plan to maybe build a building if the Lord would lead us in that direction or whatever, but we want it hardwired in the church, that we want to be a church that starts other churches.

Does that make sense? Reproducing. The second word is community. You see those on the back wall.

Community being that we want to be a church that actually blesses the area around us where we serve them, where we care for people.

Regardless of whether they make a decision to follow Christ or not, we want to be a service and a genuine blessing to everyone around us.

That means that... How many of you have had this where you've driven past a church for years and eventually they close their doors and somebody is like, hey, did you hear that church closed its doors?

And it's like, oh wait, yeah, you're right, there's a church there. Have you ever had that experience or something like that?

We don't want to be that church. We want to be a church that if God closed our doors, people would be disappointed to see us go.

Does that make sense? So that's what is meant by community. The third one is authenticity. That is that we want to forge genuine, real relationships.

We don't want people to feel obligated to wear a mask when they walk in and act like their life is all together because...

How many of you recognize that if anybody is even a little bit like you, they don't have it all together?

Would you be willing to raise your hand on that one? All right. Okay, thank you. It's not just me. So authenticity also implies though that nobody, and I'll say this many, many times, that nobody suffers alone.

We want to be a place that mourns with those who are mourning but also rejoices with those who rejoice.

So that if you're going through hard times, that you find somebody who will commiserate with you and will bring God's word to bear in your life in the area of sorrow and difficulty and vice versa.

If there's something great going on, that you can feel free to share that and that that's a time for us to celebrate together.

The fourth thing is simplicity. How many of you know that things can get pretty complicated in the church pretty quick?

That's not what that means. It doesn't mean that things don't have the potential to get complicated. Any time we have a room full of people, things get pretty complex pretty quickly.

The idea of simplicity is how we make our decisions. It's a core value of the church. So what kind of programming do we do?

You'll notice that we don't have an evening service. We don't have a Wednesday service. I've often asked, is that just because you're a young church and eventually you'll grow into some of those types of programs?

It's actually with intention that we have a pared -down program here, that people get a chance to engage the community, get to know their neighbors, get involved.

Does that make sense? So everything is intended to be streamlined towards three primary things that we're asking of everybody here at Recast.

That's part of the simplicity. Three main things. Growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

We grow in faith through our Sunday morning services, coming together, hearing God's word, going out and applying that. We grow in community through our small group ministry where you can forge those authentic relationships, and then growing in service.

And if you are looking for an opportunity to serve and apply that third part of growing in service in the way that God has given you to the church, and I believe that that's what

God does. Everyone is a gift that is in this room. Everyone has been, in essence, given to this church.

You've been given gifts, you've been given abilities, and therefore you are here and you have something unique that you have to offer.

So if you would be interested in talking with me about what that position might be, but growing in service as well.

The last but not least thing. I'm glad that it's last because it ties everything else together. It's truth.

It's that here at Recast, one of our core values is that we open God's word, we listen to God's word, and we follow God's word.

That's what we mean when we say truth. So that's where the name Recast comes from. It's an acronym. It's a constant reminder to me.

Every time I say the name Recast, it's a reminder. That's our core values. That's what we stand for. That's how we make decisions here is based on those five things.

But with that said, God's word is the central guide for our decisions.

It's the source of our teaching here. That's why we open the Bible every single week. And with that said,

I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles to Joshua chapter 1. We're going to be looking at verses 10 through 18, which is found on page 153.

The Bible is in the seat back in front of you. Again, if you want to follow along in the same version that I am reading from, that's in the seat back in front of you, the

English Standard Version. While you're turning there, I want to set this up a little bit. Last week we saw that Joshua, this leader of the nation of Israel, he was given his marching orders by God.

Now whether God actually physically appeared to him or whether he appeared in a dream or whether he just heard a voice, whatever it was,

Joshua knew that he had encountered God and that God had met with him and said some things to him, some amazing things, that he was going to bless him, that he was going to be with him.

He told Joshua, commanded him three times to be strong and courageous. We saw that last week.

God said, you are going to succeed in leading the people into this land and by the way

Joshua, I'm not going to leave you. How many of you would like to have had that conversation with God where he was just telling you, it's going to work out, you're going to be successful and I'm going to be with you to the end of your days.

Wouldn't that be kind of cool? I mentioned that last week that that would be a really neat conversation. So Joshua immediately takes encouragement from this and we're going to see him lead the people here in this text.

He's going to put the plans in motion to obey God to cross the river into the land and that's where we come to our text this morning.

Follow along. And Joshua commanded the officers of the people, pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, prepare your provisions for within three days you are to pass over this

Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. And to the

Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half -tribe of Manasseh, Joshua said, remember the word that Moses, the servant of the

Lord, commanded you saying, the Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land.

Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land that Moses gave you beyond the Jordan, but all the men of valor among you shall pass over armed before your brothers and shall help them until the

Lord gives rest to your brothers as he has to you. And they also take possession of the land that the

Lord your God is giving them. Then you shall return to the land of your possession and shall possess it, the land that Moses, the servant of the

Lord, gave you beyond the Jordan towards the sunrise. And they answered Joshua, all that you have commanded us we will do and wherever you send us we will go.

Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you. Only may the

Lord your God be with you as he was with Moses. Whoever rebels against your commandment and disobeys your words, whatever you command him shall be put to death.

Only be strong and courageous. Let's pray. Fathers, we come to this text, as I mentioned in my previous prayer, an ancient text talking about an ancient people crossing a river and thinking forward to conquest and battle.

A father thinking about unity this morning and leadership. Father, it has implications for our lives, for Recast Church here in 2010.

So I ask that you would open our eyes to this text as we unfold it and we talk through it and we work through it.

Father, you would change us here, now, because we've encountered this text. This text where your servant is following your command and is doing what you have asked him to do.

I ask that you would bless this time in your word, in Jesus' name. Amen. So immediately after being confirmed as the leader of Israel by God, Joshua issues a command to the officers of the people.

You see that right away there in verse 10. Joshua commanded the officers of the people and he's going to tell them to do something.

Now, who are these officers? They were likely people that were in administrative duties. I don't think military officers, the word there is primarily an administrative role.

They're probably centered on communication. Now, there is a huge group camped here. How big?

Some estimates have been up to 600 ,000 people camped on the east side of this river, a huge camp.

How do you communicate with 600 ,000 people? Email? You know,

Twitter? Your Facebook? I don't know how many friends you have on Facebook, but I think it would take some other form of communication.

So he's sending out these administrators, these communicators, to go out throughout the group. And they are here told to cross the camp and tell the people it's time to break camp.

Get your provisions ready. Get your tents up. It's time. We are going to be breaking this camp because you are soon going to go over and possess the land of promise.

Get ready. Joshua strategically has the officers remind the people that they are to take possession of the land, but it is

God who is giving it to them. This is a central, it's a theme, it's like a gong that's going to be rung multiple times in the book of Joshua.

You're just going to hear this resounding thought. They are being commanded to do something, but God is the one who is ultimately in control of it.

Look at the words here in verse 11. Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, prepare your provisions for within three days.

You are to pass over this Jordan, to go in to take, a pretty strong verb, to take possession of the land that the

Lord your God is giving. You're to take it, but ultimately we're going to find that it is

God who is giving it. You see, Israel is called to war, but God is going to win the battle.

The people are called to obey, but God will give the fruit. And let's bring that down to where we live today.

We're called to pray, but it is God who gives the answer. We are called to proclaim the gospel, to talk to others about our faith, but God is the one who saves people.

We're called to obey, but God gives the heart change that allows obedience to occur.

Have you been there? Is that place in your life where you're trying to overcome something in your own strength and you're depending on yourself and you're trying and you're striving?

Maybe there's an addiction in your life or maybe there's something that you just mentally can't get out of there or you're addicted to gossip or slander or whatever it might be and you're trying so hard.

What must change for us to overcome that? Our hearts.

We have to be renewed in our minds, our thinking, our will has to be impacted. Before we're ever going to overcome habitual sin or problems in our lives, there's something that has to change in us, isn't there?

Have you ever tried to just work on the externals of your life, to try to just make yourself look better? Uphill battle all the way, but it's coming humbly before God and asking

Him to change us so that we find that ultimately obedience itself even comes from God.

I would suggest that we never entertain the notion that we do great things for God.

Rather, I would word it this way, God does things through us. He uses us like tools and I mentioned that last week in a similar portion earlier on.

I think alongside of this, we can tend to think of ourselves as indispensable to God. He really needs me to get this done.

Have you ever maybe found that root of pride in your own heart or in your own life? Maybe I am pretty valuable to God.

Maybe I am a linchpin in His plan. That's pride and it is not true.

It's actually a lie. We are not indispensable. Does He love us? Does He care for us?

Does He use us? Is He concerned with putting us in the right place at the right time to be tools used for Him?

Absolutely. I'm not trying to downgrade how much He loves you or cares for you, but what I'm saying is an attitude of pride in light of that.

God is the one who is doing what He wills through Joshua. So we don't entertain the notion that we do great things for God, but equally we should never entertain the notion that we can sit back with laziness and say,

Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. Just let it ride.

I'll just sit back here and play video games and watch TV until the Lord returns or until I die.

You see that God is calling us all equally to, I want you to write this down if you're a note taker,

He is calling us equally to action and utter dependence upon Him.

He wants us to act, to go out and do something. He wants us to do the right things, and obviously we turn to God's Word to figure out what those right things are.

He wants us to act and thoroughly depend upon Him. Is that confusing anybody?

Does that make sense? He's calling us to do things, to go out and tell others about our faith, to just even, first and foremost, to obey

His Word, to live in the way that brings honor and glory to Him. But when

I experience victory, maybe you're at a place in your life where you find that it's becoming easier to confess sin.

God is putting a finger in your life, and things are going fairly well for you spiritually.

Where does the glory in that go? It should go to God. Not as if a pat on the back,

I am doing so good, look at me everybody, but pointing a finger. We should live our lives as though, not just in the end zone when you've made the touchdown, okay, well now

I'll point to God. But playing the entire game with a finger pointed to God.

It is all of Him. Now, one little side note on that is that when

I mess up, I own that. That's me. That's me getting in the way, that's me doing my thing, because that's what

I'm best at, is messing things up. You understand what I'm saying? So, I don't point to God when

I mess up, when I sin and go, oh, no, that's down here. It's the victories that I give over to God and say, that's because you are putting the pieces of the mirror back together.

Do you remember I used the illustration of a broken mirror, that we are all like broken mirrors, not reflecting Him correctly, but every once in a while,

God picks up a piece and puts a piece of the puzzle back together in my life, and I reflect Him just a little bit better.

So, we give glory to God in that. Joshua commands the people to pull up their tent pegs, and now that these two verses of introduction are out of the way, some pretty meaty, in -depth things in that introduction,

Joshua is going to center, the book of Joshua is going to center on the two main points that I'm going to focus on in this message, unity and the people following his leadership, or leadership in general.

Do you see those two dovetailing? Think about experiences in your life. Have you seen unity of a group of people and how leadership can impact that unity?

Have you experienced that, maybe in your workplace or wherever, in churches that you've been a part of?

Unity has a major impact, or leadership has a major impact on unity and vice versa. In verses 12 through 15,

Joshua singles out two and a half tribes for specific instruction, and these instructions have implications for the unity of the entire nation of Israel, but he's only going to be talking to two and a half tribes.

He's going to be speaking to Reuben. Now, all of these names of these tribes, and we're going to get into them here throughout the book of Joshua, they're all actual people's names, but you've got to remember that we're talking about, when we use their name,

Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, these were actual sons of a man named Jacob, and now all of the lineage from those sons, for generations, we're talking hundreds of years, they have grown into tribes.

So they're a large, large body of people, and they're still called by the name of their ancestor.

Is that making sense? So when you talk about Reuben or the Reubenites, Gad, the Gadites, Manasseh, the

Manassites, I've never heard that said before, I just made that up, the people of Manasseh. And we're also going to see that we're calling them the half -tribe of Manasseh throughout this message, the text calls them that, because they inherited a different portion of the land, east of the

Jordan, west of the Jordan, and I'm going to show you a couple of maps here, if I can, if this thing's going to work. There we go.

What we're looking at here is we're looking at the Exodus. So we're at Egypt over here, Sinai Peninsula, Red Sea here, and then up in the top right is

Israel. I don't expect you to read anything on there except to follow the line. This is the route of the Exodus.

So this is the way that the people of Israel left Egypt under Moses' leadership, wandered their way down, the crossing of the

Red Sea would have been somewhere right in here, and where the water table stood at that point, we really don't know, but they crossed somewhere up in here.

Down here is Mount Sinai, where the giving of the law happened, so they wound their way down through here. They had a battle against the

Amorites somewhere in here. Then they eventually, after getting the law, they wander up to this place called

Kadesh Barnea, right on the southern edge of the land of promise, Israel, Canaan.

They send some spies up, and that's where they rebel. Then you see this green line, wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

Obviously, they didn't keep good records, and they didn't have a GPS with them, so we don't know exactly where they wandered, but we know a couple of places that they stopped off, so that's why you see this here, as we know that they stopped at Timna, Izzi, and Geber, all these places.

Under Moses' leadership, an entire generation dies off because they were rebellious against God. Moses leads the remainder of them, including

Joshua and Caleb, up to this place here, and then we're going to see what happens as they're getting ready to take the land.

Coming back up on the east side of the Dead Sea, they encounter two tribes of people that occupy this area.

They say, can we just pass through? We're trying to get here. We want to get here. We want to get here.

Calling all military commanders. We want to get here, and we're coming up through here, but there's this guy that's in the way.

His name is Sihon. He's a king that's centered here in Heshbon, but he's the king over this entire area down here.

He says, no, you can't come through my property. You can't have water, and they're like, we won't touch anything.

We won't touch anything. We just want passage, and he says, I'll tell you what kind of passage you're going to get, and he rallies his troops and brings war to them down here in Jahaz, and the

Israelites whip up on Sihon and conquer this entire area. Okay, so they take care of that.

Then they get up here, and then there's another guy, Og. Now, how'd you like the name Og? Anybody got caveman in their mind with the leopard skin and stuff with a big club?

Well, apparently Og was a pretty big guy according to the Bible. He was super tall, they mentioned that he had an iron bed and all this business.

Og, well, what does it do if you know that one of his territories up here is called Argab? Og, the king over Argab.

I think that probably he was part goblin or orc from the Lord of the Rings. I don't know. But anyways, he's up here, and they conquer him as well.

So now they've got east of the Jordan. Here's the Jordan River right here. East of the Jordan, they now possess all of this territory.

They conquered it. And that area ends up being given to, by the way, this is found in Deuteronomy.

I'm not making this up. This is found in Deuteronomy 2, 26 through 3, 22. You could write that down if you wanted to read it.

It's a pretty interesting account. Zooming in, somewhere east. And this is where they settled.

Reuben down here, Gad in the middle, east Manasseh. And this land is given to those two and a half tribes when they conquer it.

So the reason why I'm giving all this detail is because it's setting the stage for this text that we're seeing here.

So we've got Sihon, Og are conquered on the east side. And in Deuteronomy 3, 12 through 17, we see

Moses gives this land to, and it's Moses giving it, not Joshua. So it's

Moses. While he's still alive, these people actually get an opportunity to settle. Now what would that have been like? Imagine you've been wandering the desert your entire life.

Now this generation were children at the time that they left Egypt. They've been wandering around 40 years in the desert.

They've never known what it's like to have pastures, to have fields. They've been

Bedouins out in the desert their entire life, and now they have settlements. They have a place to live.

Pretty significant. So ultimately Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh already have their possession.

They already have their rest, their land. But in Deuteronomy 3, 18 through 20, we come across this command from Moses, a command that Joshua is going to repeat in our text, and I'm going to read it for you.

And I commanded you at that time, this is Moses recounting history to the people before he dies.

That's basically, Deuteronomy means second law, or the second giving of the law, or the law again.

It's basically Moses repeating the law to the people before he dies. And he says, I commanded you at that time, saying, the

Lord your God has given you this land to possess. All your men of valor shall cross over, armed before your brothers, the people of Israel, only your wives, your little ones, and your livestock, and he adds this,

I know that you have much livestock, shall remain in the cities that I have given you until the Lord gives rest to your brothers as to you, and they also occupy the land that the

Lord your God gives them beyond the Jordan. Then each of you may return to his possession that I have given to you.

So I'm laboring to kind of set this up, because it's important that we understand that as Israel is about to cross over the

Jordan into the land of Canaan, 20 % of the nation already has land.

They already have villages. They already have fields. They have a place for their sheep to graze.

They've already been given this. And that's going to speak something for unity here in a second.

Because they could easily snub their noses at the rest of the Israelites. At this point, the other nine and a half tribes, they could snub their nose and say, well, good luck.

We'll be there to applaud as you cross the river. Great. We'll be kind of on this side watching. And by the way, we'd be willing to pray for you.

We'll pray for you while you're over there conquering the other half of the land. Can you imagine the pull that might have been in that direction for those two and a half tribes that already have property?

They're in the process of building homes and becoming established, and yet they're going to go in and continue to conquer.

This is like that guy. I think every one of us knows this guy. Some of us might even be the same guy.

It's that guy who you helped to move five times.

How many of you have moved a handful of times in your life? You've asked for people to help you to move, and then when it's time for you to move, he doesn't show up.

Do you guys know the guy that I'm talking about? Some of you are chuckling, and I think that's yes.

What God is saying to Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh, he's saying, don't be that guy. They helped you move into your territory.

They helped you conquer. Now you go reciprocate. You go return the favor and be united together.

The need for unity runs deeper than a moving party with the pizza and all that business.

It runs a little bit deeper than that because we're talking about Israel. God's people is to be a display of His glory.

They were set up as a nation to reflect the image and the glory of God. That is the purpose of Israel.

When you look at the Old Testament, they were to be God's nation. Now if anybody were to come to you and say, there is now a national identity in God, that somehow there's a political entity somewhere in this world, that is not true.

God is no longer in the nation business. He's in the individual, the souls of people, bringing them into the church, and the church is how

God works now. He is not working through nations. He worked that way in the

Old Testament. I wouldn't go so far as to say a failed attempt. It was just a complete case study to show us who we are as people.

And as nations, it just does not work. And He demonstrated that to us through Israel. But without unity, they cannot be the people

God has called them to be. So Joshua's command to Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, there in verse 13, look at verse 13 with me.

What's the first word you see in the text? Remember. A command to them to remember.

Remember what Moses commanded you to do, he says. Don't just take my word for it.

I wonder sometimes if Joshua at this point in the text is still wondering, okay, God has said He's going to be with me.

God has said He's going to give us this land. But are the people going to be with me?

Can you imagine that that's kind of on his heart and on his mind? Are these people genuinely going to follow me?

So he's even appealing back to Moses. Remember Moses, that guy who brought you out of Egypt, all the miracles that he did?

He said to you that you needed to do this thing. He said, now your wives, your children, they're allowed to hang back in the land that you have already been given.

But I want all of the men of valor, that is military -aged men, and I don't want them just to join in and mix among the soldiers.

I want them to be the ones who lead into battle, that they lead across armed to demonstrate their ultimate investment in Israel's future.

I want them to be the ones leading. Joshua calls them brothers to remind them of the family type of unity that is expressed here right at the end of verse 14.

You shall pass over armed before your brothers and shall help them.

Important. And then in verse 15, he says you're allowed to return to your families on the other side of the

Jordan after the other nine and a half tribes have victory and have conquered the land.

Now God calls his Old Testament people to unity. He's calling the nation of Israel to unity. But equally we are called to unity in the

New Testament as well. It's important for us to have unity. That's why we strive for authentic relationships here at Recast, why we have the small group ministry to work to produce unity here.

We believe that love is to be central, that unity is key in the church, not just coming together and hearing a lecture and singing some songs on Sunday morning, but that the church is about relationship.

The people of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had already attained a level of rest. Their people had settled down into towns and villages.

They began the process of building a new life for themselves. And the truth is that some here at Recast, you're here and you've been well established in your faith.

You grew up and maybe the first Sunday after you were born, your parents had you in church and you've been there your entire life.

And some of you here can't even look back at a time in history and go, well, there's a blank spot where I didn't attend church.

Some of you just always have been in the church. I praise God for people like that. That's amazing.

That's an amazing history and an amazing place to come from. But what can often happen is that people who settle in can become so set in their ways that they lose the flexibility to understand that there are those who have still a lot of area to conquer in their life.

You know what I'm talking about? Where you can get so settled in your ways that there's an inflexibility that builds in where you're kind of like,

I expect everybody to be at this level and quick. Where we cease to be forgiving, where we cease to be generous and gracious to others.

Because we don't think, it's taken me 35 years to get here.

We expect other people to get there maybe in two or three months. You know what I'm talking about? So there needs to be a grace that is extended in the church that will help to produce this unity.

But my call to recast is two directional here. It's to those who maybe have been around the church longer.

And then a second thing to those who haven't been around the church very long and are trying to figure things out.

Those of you who would be advanced in your faith, and be careful of pride when I'm talking because you might be thinking this is you, but you've got to take an accurate assessment of yourself.

You might have been in church all your life and still not be growing. So I don't mean to say that being in church is the end all.

But those of you who are establishing your faith, who are growing in God, be ready and willing to step up and help those who are just embarking on their journey of faith.

Be willing to engage and to help your brothers and sisters. And those who are here that are, maybe they haven't crossed the line and decided to follow

Christ, but be willing to step in and offer assistance and help and answer questions. Be an assistant to those, be a help.

Pass over their obstacles with them. Help your brothers and sisters with understanding and show them with honesty and integrity that you are a real person with your own struggles and your own sins that need to be confessed.

I think one of the worst things that can happen in the church is when we paint a veneer. Those of us who have been in the church and grown in the church and were raised in the church, paint this veneer that we are perfect.

We have it all together. And nothing can be more detrimental to those who are growing in their faith than to encounter someone who has their act together, but really deep down is full of crud and mess in their life under the surface.

I'm convinced that so many people view Christians as hypocrites because we have not lived with enough honest biblical humility.

We haven't really taken an accurate assessment of ourselves. But instead we try to put up a facade of perfection and act like we're the models of that perfection.

So of course people are going to see us as hypocrites when they really get to know us because guess what?

We all do have sin. We all do fail. So if we set up the standard that we're perfect and you should act just like us.

Is there a standard that we're striving for? I don't mean to say that we just come to church and let it all hang out and, boy,

I cuss just because I cuss and that's who I am and blah, blah, blah. Do you know what I'm saying? There is a time and a place and room for God's work in our lives to root out the things that are unnecessary and not beneficial and to root out real sin because we have that.

So I'm not saying we just... Yes, we want to be a church that's come as you are and be willing to grow.

Do you see how that second part is important? Come as you are but come willing to grow and to learn and to let

God do surgery in your heart to take some of the junk out that is there.

So it's both. But I'd encourage those who have been in the church for a while to be willing to come alongside of somebody else, be open to hearing their story and engaging in their story with them.

But on the flip side, those of you that are new to the faith, you're new to understanding who Jesus is, you're working through that, you're walking through that.

Right now, you've got questions. Be willing to learn from others. Be willing to listen to what other people are saying and to ask your questions.

See, I think unity in the church must be maintained and it's not something that just happens.

It has to be worked at. And now we're going to look at another perspective on this unity and that's this idea of leadership.

Verses 16 and 17 deal with leadership and Joshua's leadership in particular. And check this out. When I read chapter 1 of Joshua, you just read the whole thing, it's like Joshua in this first chapter is having a birthday, a

Christmas, he gets a raise, he gets a promotion, and he's won free bacon for a year.

It's like everything that's good that could have happened to him is happening to him here in verse 1. Listen to this. God shows up and says, you're going to be successful.

You will conquer the land I am giving to you. Nobody will be able to stand against you. Your goalie will never fumble a ball that's kicked in his direction.

Okay, he doesn't say that, but I just added that in after yesterday. Go USA. Whatever it takes to get a goal.

Some of you don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? There's this little thing called the World Cup going on. It's this little soccer match thing, you know, and it's amazing.

One month out of every four years I get to watch soccer. So he says all these great things.

Nobody's going to be able to stand against you. Joshua, God speaking, I am with you, I won't leave you.

And now, to add the icing on top of the cake, the people are going to respond to Joshua's leadership here.

He asks them to do something. And they respond. You've got to understand who this is that's responding.

This is that younger generation. They were children, physically children when they came out of Egypt.

When they walked through the Red Sea, they were toddlers. Some of them were carried in their parents' arms through the

Red Sea. And they watched their parents rebel against God and whine and complain and beg for food and beg for water and say, why can't you just send us back to Egypt?

Oh, this is horrible. So they saw this rebellion. And these are the people who are going to respond and take the land.

And they respond with three pledges. They say, first of all, Joshua, whatever you command us to do, it is done.

You command it, it's done. Wherever you tell us to go, we're already there.

We will be there in a heartbeat. And last of all, by the way, we will obey you,

Joshua, as if you were Moses himself. Wow, Joshua is getting their loyalty to the nth degree.

And where the end of verse 17 in our text is easily misunderstood because of one little word, only, it's a hard translation and it's a hard phrase to translate.

But it's not, only may the Lord God be with you, as if that's an exception. Do you see how that looks?

In English, am I the only one who thinks that looks like an exception? Like, we'll follow you wherever you go, this, that, and the other. Only do this.

It's not meant to be read as an exception in Hebrew. It's actually a prayer request. It's actually an emphatic request saying, may

God be with you like he was with Moses. They're actually making that request for their new leader.

They're literally saying, may Yahweh be with Joshua just like he was with Moses.

And verse 18 shows how willing they are to follow. For what is said is an oath that they themselves are binding themselves to.

If you read verse 18, whoever rebels against your commands and disobeys your word, whatever you command him shall be put to death. Anybody struggling with that?

Anybody not ready to sign on for that kind of leadership? I expected to see more hands.

Really? You guys are in on that? No way. I'm not excited about that.

It hits me a little strange to say, whoever isn't going to follow you, isn't going to obey your commands.

That sounds like a dictatorship to me. Doesn't it? At face value? Some people are saying no.

Some people are saying yes. It's not for a couple of reasons. There's a couple little things that I think help a little in our understanding of what's happening here.

First is the idea that they are offering this even for themselves.

They are not the elite leadership saying, it's one thing for me to say,

I'll kill you if you don't agree with my friend over here. It's another thing for me to say, if all of us, if any of us, including myself, are in breach of this commitment, we'll submit to the death penalty.

Do you see the loyalty that's being offered there? It's like a superlative way of emphasizing, how in are we with you,

Joshua? We're so in that if anyone, including me, disobeys your command, we're done.

Do you understand what's happening in the text in that light? It's pretty significant.

The idea that this word here in the text means breach, it's the idea of a breach of commitment to God and to his authority.

It's used many times for a breaking of the covenant. That's the picture that's going on here. Another thing that factors in here is that this type of oath giving ceremony was common in that time for any change of leadership, that the people would gather together and make an oath to their new leader and it would often be a formula similar to what we see here in the text, a pledging of wherever you send us we will go, whatever you ask us to do we will obey, and even to the point of death.

So it's not that this is just unique here in this text, but it happened in other cultures as well.

And it also shows that this is not just some blind, dumb following, some blind, dumb loyalty to them, to Joshua, because they even feel free, the people feel free to give a charge, a challenge to their leader, and what do they say to him?

What do they ask of him? Here, be strong and courageous.

How many times did God tell Joshua to be strong and courageous? Three times.

You can count my fingers. Three times. And then now the people have asked him to be strong and courageous. And I can't help but think that if I was

Joshua, I might be tempted to retort, enough already with the be strong and courageous bit, okay?

I get it. I have led you guys into battle. We have conquered people, and I am not a pansy.

Okay? I get it. Strong, courageous, I'm going there. I'll be there. Enough of this.

Would anybody else be tempted to think of it that way? I don't know. I'm just showing a little bit of my heart here.

So the application is follow me as your pastor and pledge me your loyalty.

Oh, good. You got it that it was a joke. Good. I was trying to slide that past you.

I don't know. But honestly, as we talk about unity, we talk about leadership, so much division can enter the church through its leadership in two different directions, a complete disregard for leadership and those who are placed in leadership, and from the flip side, an abuse of leadership by those in authority.

You see how those two can bring down a church? I'm guessing that some of you have been through a church split, just the size of this group.

Most likely someone here has been through that heart -rending situation. If the people of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had chose to go their own way and do their own thing and just settle in the land, then it would have been division for the nation of Israel, maybe even war.

I want to paint two pictures of two different types of churches regarding leadership. I was just sitting at a coffee shop locally, struck up a conversation with a lady, and she shared with me the heartache that she's been through in the last few years.

There's a local church here that was ripped in two not too long ago, and its guts were spilled out on the ground.

It's so utterly torn apart that the picture that Paul gives us in the New Testament of a church is a body, right?

He talks about a body, like, and some people are the hands, and some people are the eyes, and some people are the feet, and we work together for the honor and glory of Christ.

That's the point of the church. But it's like the torso was just ripped off the legs.

That's the picture of a church split. And now we've got, like, a circulatory system out trying to do its own thing and a digestive system trying to do its own thing, and they're missing each other.

This is a picture of a torn church. It's a body that is mutilated and torn in two.

I want us to have that picture in our mind. That's what it is like when a church splits. And so often it is not even about sin.

I mean, it is sin, but it's not about sin. It's like what color the carpet is or something that's just really a just innocuous decision.

Has that been your experience? Often that is the case of a church split. And it all started in this local congregation.

Hopefully I'm not being so specific that anybody knows exactly what church I'm talking about. And I hadn't known any of this.

But it started when people in the congregation decided that the church wasn't growing fast enough. That's what this issue was about.

The church wasn't growing fast enough, and this leader, this pastor, was not going to take them to the next level.

And so they wanted to bring the associate pastor. They had two pastors. They wanted to bring the associate over the senior pastor and push the senior pastor out.

And that's what caused the split. And so the church grew from 450 to 200 in a short amount of time, and then 90 of those people went out to start their own church.

True story. Now the truth is there's a reality to human sin, to human depravity.

There's a time and a place and a correct way to disagree with those. I don't know the ins and outs. I am not judging that situation.

And if you're here and you're privy to that information, I'm not judging what happened there. I don't know. Maybe the senior pastor was in sin.

I don't know all of the details, but it's heart -rending to hear a church being broken like that. But there is a place, a time, a correct way to disagree with those who

God has set as leaders over us. And I pray for myself that I'm always approachable to you, that you don't ever feel like you need to go behind my back and stir up dissent or frustration with somebody else, that you can come straight to me.

If there's decisions that are made on the leadership part here that you disagree with, by all means, come and talk with me.

I am a fallible person. I don't... Thank you, Zach.

Zach's like, yeah. Like, yeah. Like, really fallible. Yes. Yes.

I get that. I don't always make perfect decisions, and I have to own that.

That's what it is. In leadership, that's the way that it is. You won't always agree, you hopefully won't always disagree, with every decision that the pastors here at Recast make.

And Scripture doesn't call for a blind loyalty, but it does call for loyalty to follow those placed in authority.

And that makes this an awkward message for me. We see in this first part people attacking authority, but then there's another aspect that can be divisive in the church regarding leadership and unity, and that is authority attacking the people.

And that happens probably as equally as the other way around. There's another kind of church that is equally troubling, not where the people are attacking the authority and trying to remove him, but where the authority in the individual is attacking the people.

And this is the church where the pastor is not allowed to be questioned. There are churches out there that are like that. He is considered to be infallible.

He doesn't make mistakes. His word is the final word and the final authority. All questions are squashed and silenced.

There will always be people in authority because we are people. There will always be people in authority who are in authority because they love authority.

Everybody knows somebody like that, where they are there for the very sole purpose of the power that is possessed in the title, and that's what they are in it for, and that is a dangerous place to be.

In a church situation, this has the potential to get so out of hand that people are forced to ask church leadership. I've mentioned this before, and I mention it because it's just so far out there for me.

The first time I heard of it, I just couldn't conceive of it. I didn't believe it was true, and then other sources are sharing with me.

There are churches out there where, literally as a member of the church, if Rob and Carrie Knoll wanted to buy a refrigerator, they would have to come to the leadership of the church and ask permission.

That's how authoritative churches can get. I was stunned and shocked, and I heard that back when

I was in college, some man sharing a story about a church like that, and I was like, no, no, and then it started to come out, and I've heard of it more and more.

That boggles my mind, to be honest. The leadership in places like that place heavy -handed rules and regulations on the members, and then those rules are enforced with an iron fist.

People are kicked out left and right if they don't comply. The truth is, all authority is given by God, but the recipients of that authority, the ones in whom that authority is vested, are broken mirrors.

They are all broken mirrors, needing correction, needing healing, needing those pieces put more and more back together.

I believe it's only to the degree that a leader humbly submits to God and lets Him put those pieces of his life back together, only to that degree can a leader reflect

God's authority, and how was God's authority here on this earth reflected?

We have one perfect mirror. Do you know there was a perfect mirror who completely imaged

God, who completely showed what it's like for a human to be put back together, for a human to be correct in their outlook, and he's shown compassion, love, and service.

The three things that Christ showed, this is what authority looks like from God.

Serving people, loving them, demonstrating compassion, and spending your life for others.

That's true leadership. Is there a time to disagree with leadership? Please say yes.

Thank you. But there is a right and a wrong way to go about it. It's never appropriate to stir up dissension at a church.

Is it? Stirring up dissension is not ever going to be beneficial.

We are always called to go to the source of the dispute and work that out in private. I hope this doesn't come across as a self -serving point in this message, because I hope that anybody who's gotten to know me very well has seen that I'm not a man that's clamoring for authority and control.

I hope you see that in me. If you don't, come talk with me.

Call that out in me. But I am most concerned on this point for the health and well -being of Recast Church.

Right now, we are blessed. It's not like I'm preaching this message. I'm so grateful that I'm not preaching this message because there is disunity.

That's not where this stems from. So I'm grateful to be able to preach this message stemming off the future.

Because is Recast Church immune to dissension? Not at all.

So I hope that this message serves as a reminder on down the road as you do disagree with leadership to come to us and talk with us about it, to work through it together, because there will be disagreements that come.

So we see that this passage in Joshua highlights two very important points for Recast Church. That is maintaining unity through care and concern for one another, not just getting our spiritual rest, not just coming together and getting our tank full every week, but being sure to help others along in the process.

And that challenge can be summarized in one word, relationship. Relating to one another, encouraging one another, and living life together with each other.

There are those who have been growing in Christ for years. I encourage you to stick your neck out and invite somebody to join you in the journey.

And those of you who are new in the faith, I'd encourage you to open up your life to them and be willing to join them in the journey as well.

And when it comes to leadership, I'd encourage all of us to strike a balance. Not a blind loyalty, but a loyalty nonetheless.

There's a church that I come from most recently where I was an associate pastor before called

Berean Baptist Church. Everybody on the phone gets it wrong. You know when a salesman's calling because they say Berean or something else.

Berean Baptist Church over in Portage. That title, the name Berean, comes from a passage of scripture,

Acts 17, when the church was being formed. Paul was this traveling evangelist and he's going from city to city, and there's a city in Greece called

Berea. And it says of the Bereans, Paul got up in front of them in the synagogue, opened the scriptures, and it says, they checked the scripture to make sure that the things that Paul was saying were accurate.

So I've always said this. If the Bereans were willing to check Paul, remember he wrote most of the

New Testament, if they were willing to check him against the Old Testament and make sure that he was right, I'm no

Paul. You better check me. I'm not above that.

So not a blind loyalty, but working together. Now I want to say I've got your back, and I mean that even if you don't have mine.

I haven't experienced that. But it would make the job of pastor even more joyful if you would guard the reputation of your pastors by committing to going to the source of issues instead of spreading discontent.

I think that if we grasp that as a church, if we went to the source of frustration, that is so countercultural.

What does our culture do? What's the first thing you do when somebody's wronged you in our culture? Hopefully you don't do it, but we probably do.

Gossip, complain, talk to a co -worker, tell somebody, you're never going to believe what so and so did, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just get the rumor mill spinning.

Post it on Facebook. Perfect, yes. Okay, thank you for that illustration. Yeah, that's not so good if it's on Facebook.

No, that's not good. That's what our culture does. Let's be countercultural in this.

It's revolutionary in our thinking to be a place where people can trust that you're not spreading rumors about each other, but that you're really genuinely concerned for one another, enough to go and say, hey,

I heard that you said this, or what you did say offended me, and I took it this way.

Is that what you meant by it? And then try to work through that. It takes a lot of guts, doesn't it? But that's what we're called to do.

That's going to produce and maintain unity. The unity that we experience in the church is ultimately an amazing unity that's brought about by the death of Christ, and that's where we come to communion.

I want to read a short passage in the New Testament about this unity that we have through Christ. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.

And he came and preached peace to those who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him we both have access in one spirit to the

Father. Paul in that text is speaking to Jews and Gentiles and how they've been united in Christ, that the death of Christ has brought even all of us together.

People that here in this community, if we saw each other at the gas station, at the grocery store, we might have under normal circumstances have maybe waved, maybe smiled, but most likely not and just went our merry way, but God has brought us together so that when you run into each other at the grocery store, you have something in common and it's

Christ. People that you might not have even wanted to hang around with before, but now he's brought us together.

And that's one of the things that we remember is that his death has brought that unity. And so when we come to communion, that's part of what this is about, is all of us taking this together who are in Christ.

We remember the death of Christ, his blood that was shed for our sins, his body that was broken for us, and I want us all to consider this unity that his death has brought for us.

Let's follow the leader, for Christ is the one who has led us into unity together.