Passing the Baton (Joshua, Steve Lyons)

and Wednesdays after class, and then again for four hours on Saturday morning, meeting together seven, seven and a half hours a week, discipling these young men, preparing them to be bivocational church planners.

At the end of their two years at teacher's training college, they would take a government exam, and if they pass the exam, the government hires them to be primary school teachers, and sends them all across the country of Tanzania.

And so, here we have church planners on the government payroll. It's an incredible, incredible thing.

In addition to that, we had the privilege this last term for two and a half years to lead what's called a

TIMO team, T -I -M -O, Training and Ministry Outreach. It's a program that African Admissions started to take people who feel

God's call as missionaries to Africa, and train them, not in the states, but on the field, so that when they're reading their books and they step out their door every day, it's not theory, it's they're right in the middle of it.

It's like a two and a half year boot camp, okay? Everyone that's been through a TIMO team says,

I really learned a lot, and I benefited from it, but I never want to do it again. It's tough.

They read 32 books, write book reports on all those, have a team day every week, last the whole day, one -on -one every week with a team leader, very intense on language, and I'm happy to say that all seven adults on our team made it through without quitting, and all of them have signed up as career missionaries.

Two units to North Africa, one left the eighth of this month, and they are there starting to learn

Arabic. The other unit that's going to North Africa leaves in January, as do the other two units who are returning to Tanzania.

And finally, God put a wonderful Tanzanian man in my path who has a great vision to reach his country.

He already gives leadership to 60 house church planners that are self -supporting all across the country, and he has agreed to follow up on the 54 teachers that we trained as they are now scattered out in villages.

And on top of that, technology has come to Tanzania as well, and so I can sit here in the

States, and because each one of the five teams that we trained are all members of a

WhatsApp group, and then we have a global WhatsApp group for all five of them, so I can sit here, plug things into that, and have those teachers respond.

So I still have a finger in the soup, so to speak, and it's incredible.

It's like God just tied a nice bow on the package as we left, and so God has enabled us to pass the baton, so to speak.

And if it's really his work, he'll sustain it. Now, in the process,

God also allowed us other missions like this model that we were doing, and a team came to us, we trained them, we helped them get into another college where they're practicing it.

Another team came to us, we trained them, and they have moved in behind us into that same college,

Ebonite Teachers Training College, and so that's how things are continuing on.

Passing the baton is not a new idea. We see numerous examples of it in scripture.

You look at Elijah and Elisha. You look at Barnabas and Paul, Paul and Timothy, but I would like us to look together in another

Old Testament pair, an example of Moses and Joshua.

As you remember, Moses grew up in Pharaoh's court. He got to the age of 40, saw one of his countrymen being mistreated by an

Egyptian, and he murdered that Egyptian and had to flee for his life. He went into the wilderness, and for 40 years, he took care of goats and sheep.

And when he was 80 years old, God appeared to him in a burning bush at Mount Sinai. God said,

I want you to go back to Egypt, and I want you to bring the people out. They've been there for 400 or so years, and I want you to take them back into the promised land as I promised

Abraham that I would do some 500 years earlier. Wow.

And so Moses did that. He was a bit reluctant at first. Five times he tried to dodge, but finally he agreed, believed

God, and trusted God to do it, and you know what happened is he led them out, and they crossed the

Red Sea, and they got out into the wilderness.

And that was a pretty big task. A man leading probably three million people.

This isn't a little campsite, okay? This is a big, big bunch of people. And it was a little tough.

And so he appointed 70 elders to help him in the administration task of leading those people, and it's at that time we first hear of this man

Joshua. Although then he was called Yoshua, and this is what scripture says about him, that he was

Moses' assistant from his youth. Well, the best

I can figure is that that relationship probably started during Moses' first 40 years when he was still in Egypt.

Because 45 days after they crossed the Red Sea, we see Joshua leading the

Israelite army against their enemies. And so, but we don't know that for sure.

But we see Joshua staying very close to Moses. When Moses went up on Mount Sinai for 40 days and got the stone tablets,

Joshua goes with him, stays at the base of the mountain because only Moses was called to climb it and to meet with God.

But he waits there faithfully for Moses until he comes down.

And then we see him as one of the leaders of the tribe of Ephraim.

The Israelites have come to Kadesh, Barnea, and a nice place where there's water, and they've camped there.

And God says to Moses, choose leaders, one from each of the 12 tribes, and send them in to spy out the land, to find out what the people are like.

Are they strong, are they weak? Do they live in encampments or in fortified cities?

Are there trees there in the land? How rich is the soil?

What does it produce? Bring back some fruit if you can, but bring back a report.

And so these 12 men went into the land and they spied it out for 40 days.

And then they came back and gave their report.

So Moses and Aaron, all the people gather around to hear them. And the term they used to describe the land was it's a land flowing with milk and honey.

In other words, this land really produces well. But 10 of the 12 men said, there's a problem though, because there are giants in the land.

And when we looked at those giants and then we looked at each other, we looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes.

And we even looked like grasshoppers in the eyes of those giants. And so we can't go into the land.

And the people began to moan and to complain. God's word says that they cried all night.

But Joshua and Caleb said, no, we can go into the land. God has given it to us, let's go.

The people didn't listen. So the next morning, the people said, you know, let's appoint another leader who will take us back to Egypt.

You know, we might as well have died in Egypt or in the wilderness. And now our wives and our children are gonna be taken captive and we're gonna be killed.

Let's pick another leader who will take us back to Egypt. And Joshua and Caleb stood up in front of all the people and said, no, don't do that.

Don't rebel against God. God is with us. He wants to take us into the land.

Those people will be like bread to us. You know what you do with bread, you consume it. You know, God has taken away their protection.

But the people would listen. In fact, they started looking around, picking up stones so they could stone

Joshua and Caleb to death. And God's glory appeared over the tabernacle that was right in the middle of the camp.

And they started letting those stones go. And Moses and Aaron went and prostrated themselves in front of the tabernacle.

And God said, I've had it with these people. I've had it with these people. I'm gonna wipe them all out.

And then Moses, I'm gonna raise up a whole new generation from you. Imagine Moses thinking, hmm, children of Israel, children of Moses, that sounds pretty good, you know?

But this was the second time God had tested Moses. And Moses said, no, Lord, the people in Egypt that you delivered these people from will hear about this.

And what will they say? You could lead them out, but you couldn't get them into the land? And how about the people in the land that have already heard about your greatness?

What would they say? What would that do to your name? And so God said, okay, but here's what's gonna happen.

All the people that left Egypt that were 20 years old and older, they have tested me these 10 times.

They have seen my miracles. And they won't believe me. They will not go into the land.

And so these people will wander in the wilderness one year for every day the spies were in the land.

40 years, they'll wander in the wilderness until their corpses fall down to the ground.

And that new generation, if they believe me, they'll go into the land. Except, except Joshua and Caleb.

Why? Because God's word says they had a different spirit within them. 40 years later,

Moses is now 120 years old. Joshua has faithfully followed his leader all these years.

And Moses tells Joshua, calls him and he said, I'm not going into the land because of my disobedience to God.

You're gonna be the new leader. And God told Moses to take Joshua, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand on him and commission him in the sight of all the people as the new leader.

And so that's what Moses did. It's an amazing narrative. And I love to narrate

God's word. But time prohibits us for getting into a lot of the details.

But I want us to look at some of the things that we see here in this narrative of Joshua and Moses and Joshua.

First, what can we learn from Moses? We see a humble man here. A humble man.

In fact, God's word says there wasn't anyone in Israel as humble as Moses was.

He believed God and he acted in faith time after time after time.

He was an example to Joshua. He was honest and open, admitting his sin to this person that he was training, raising up to take his place.

We look at Joshua, we see him serving Moses. He stepped up to the plate when called on.

You know, I don't know how much training he had in leading an army. The Israelites were not a warring people, but he was asked to lead the army and they fought against the

Amalekites. In that first battle, if you recollect, Moses stood up on a hill with two of the elders of Israel.

And as long as Moses had his hands up, the Israelites prevailed. And when Moses' hands got tired and he put them down, the

Amalekites prevailed. So they found a stone and they set Moses down on the stone and those two other elders from Israel held up Moses' arms until Joshua and the

Israelite army defeated the Amalekites. So he stepped to the plate.

He was a godly man. He had a different spirit within him, different than most of the other men who were his age and older.

And even though at times when he was overwhelmed, he put his trust in God.

And so we have one man passing the baton and another taking the baton. They're both running the race as it were.

So I'd like to ask you, sitting in this audience this morning, what are you doing to pass the baton to the next generation?

What are you doing to pass the baton to the next generation? What would prevent you from choosing a younger person in the congregation and mentoring them?

Doesn't have to be a big, fancy, elaborate program, but meeting once a week, meeting every two weeks perhaps, and just getting, helping that person get into a rhythm of feeding themselves spiritually, having a time before the

Lord. And you know, when people meditate on God's word, we'll look again at the passage in a minute, but there are promises for meditating on God's word.

So you help this individual meditate on God's word, and God begins through his spirit to work in their lives, and all kinds of things can happen.

And enabling them to see clearly God's plan for the nations. Now God hasn't called everyone overseas, but he's called all of us to go and share the good news with other people.

And so the person that he wants you to share the good news with may be a neighbor, it may be a co -worker, and we need to be faithful at doing that.

And then if you're a younger person, you need to be reaching out for that baton from an older person.

And so look around the congregation and choose a man that you feel you would be comfortable having input into your life.

Someone that you could trust, that you could meet with, and learn from, and enable you to grow in your spiritual walk with the

Lord. And this isn't just men. You know, Titus 2 very clearly says that the women have a role in this.

The older women training the younger women. So it's really for everyone.

In fact, the best relationship is to be reaching forward from a baton, someone older than you, and to hand off a baton to someone younger than you.

And so there's a multi -generational thing here. You continue to get input, and you continue to give input to someone else.

Everyone needs to be either passing a baton, or taking a baton, or actually doing both.

Now, you know, this model that God enabled us to be a part of in Tanzania is really quite an incredible model.

And this is what it would take. It would take someone getting qualified as a

ESL teacher. English as a second language, ESL.

Probably the best course to take is the Cambridge course. And if you put together a team, two couples, or a couple in a single, and God put it on your heart to go to probably any number of countries in Sub -Saharan

Africa, you could land there, learn the language, spend two years just concentrating on the language, and then the team that we left at Ebonite has agreed to let you come to the college, and orient you to what is there, and how to do it.

And then I would come out, and help you get into another college to do this.

You see, every college studies the same English.

And so Carol's already put together all the English lessons that we teach at the college. All the discipling material,

Carol, by the way, is the writer of the material, and I present it. It's a real great relationship.

She has the gift of writing, and I have the gift of speaking, I think. And so all this material's already been developed.

And so you just plunk. You'd be given that material. And I would go, and I would help you get into a college, which should be pretty easy, because I've been at a college.

I've already helped another team get into another college. And I can point to 54 teachers that we have trained who are in very difficult places, schools where many teachers get there, see what the situation is, and run.

They don't wanna be any part of it. But our guys stick. And so that gives some credibility.

And I would help get you all set up in that college. And if we spread teams in Tanzania for the next 10 to 15 years, and you were producing teams year after year after year, in 15 years, we could have that country flooded with Christian teachers, and put them in the vanguard of Islam as it's trying to move in and take over that country.

Just a thought. But that's something that you can pray about. And because I look across the faces here and see that, yeah, some of you could do that.

Some of you could take early retirement even and do that. You don't have to be in your 20s to do this, okay?

We've been doing it in our 70s. So, you know, there are all kinds of open possibilities.

So think about that. But be a part of passing the baton.

Passing the baton right here in this community. I just took a brief look at your map out there on the wall, and I saw the church located in the middle in a circle around it.

And I'd love to hear more about what, you know, we were coming here on the morning, and I said to Carol, as we saw other churches here, and I said, how would you get into this community?

You know, I haven't lived here, I have any idea. And the thought struck as we drove in, and I said to her, I said, maybe if you had a youth work in the schools and affect the kids, and then through the kids get to their parents.

Because, you know, how do you go up to a door and knock on it or, you know, every community has its situation and its way of getting in to be effective for the gospel.

And I'd have to live here for a while to find out what it is. You probably already have it figured out. But I saw that circle,

I thought, yes, yes, they've got a vision to reach this area with the gospel.

Praise the Lord. So keep that baton going, and keep praying for those 54 teachers and new ones that will be coming online here as these two teams continue to prepare bivocational church planners that the government pays.

I just can't get over that. Well, the Lord bless you. Let me pray for you if I can. And then,

Pastor Jeff, I want to thank you for trusting me with your pulpit. You've never met me before, and you turned the morning over to me.

That's getting more rare in churches. Very hard to get into the pulpit. But we came from a missions conference last

Sunday and a big church up in Hawthorne, New Jersey. And it was the first time that I was ever invited into the pulpit.

I preached three sermons back to back. And I'm happy I don't have to do that every

Sunday because the voice is still suffering from it. But thank you for trusting me with this responsibility and bless you and your ministry here and these dear people.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, I just thank you for your goodness. And I thank you for these dear people who have been faithful all these 36 years in praying for us and supporting us.

Lord, bless them. Abundantly bless them. Lord, continue to expand their vision, not only for their own community, but around the world.

And Lord, I pray that if there's anyone here who would respond to taking this message overseas, would you confirm that in their heart and draw them to that and cause them to, enable them to come and talk to the church leadership and see how you would work that out in their lives.

Lord, we bless your holy name and we thank you. We thank you that you have promised us that if we abide in your word, that you will make us a blessing, that you will bring success to us, not in the financial world, but success in life as you see it in what you want us to do.

And so we just commit ourselves to you, Lord, and give you praise and thanksgiving. In Jesus' name, amen.