Joshua 1:6-9 (11/26/2017)

The Word of God as the Foundation for Life

How are y 'all doing? Praise the Lord. We are blessed. Who said blessed? Somebody said blessed. I like that, John. I'm blessed, too. I'm right beside you, brother. Amen. I'm excited to be here. I get to preach in a lot of different places, but this is truly one of my favorite places to preach and bring the Word of God, partly because it's rare to have churches, believe it or not.

There are a lot of churches that are not founded upon the Word of God. They're founded on a preacher's personality. They're founded upon philosophy and ideology, but not founded on the Word of God. And the Word of God is it.

When I say it is it, it is it what? It is it. It is everything. It is the whole deal. It's the whole kit and kibbutz. I don't know what a kit and kibbutz is, so maybe I shouldn't even say that. But it's the whole thing.

It's what it's all about. And to be in love with the Word of God is to truly have life. And I'm going to share with you a very, I won't say it's very unusual. It's probably not as unusual for y 'all as it would be for some people around the world.

But we're going to start with in Joshua chapter 1. And I'm going to preach a message that I think is so essential for our times, as well as for your lives, because we really have a great need in our country and in our churches to make a connection between the Word of God and how we live our lives.

So we're going to read just a couple of verses from Joshua chapter 1. And it says in Joshua chapter 1, starting with verse 6, and we'll read down to verse number 9, it says, be strong and of good courage.

For unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which my servant commanded thee.

Turn not from the right hand nor to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This is the text verse, verse 8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.

For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee, be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. For the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

There's so much in there that there's really, like if I was going to preach a long sermon, this would probably be it, right? Some of you are probably thinking, isn't every sermon you preach? No, I just preach short sermons with long introductions.

If I was going to preach a long sermon, though, this would be it. And I want to talk to you today on this subject, God's success formula that never fails. And I know that even when I say that, like there's probably in some, possibly in some of you, maybe in more than some of you, a little twinge of resistance, like why would you preach that?

Well, because it's in the Bible. And it's in there for a reason. And as all doctrines in the scripture, it is not isolated to one place, but because there are no isolated doctrines in scripture. Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you for the truth of it. And we just pray that you would open our eyes, that we would behold wonderful things out of your word and help us, if we don't already, to just absolutely just fall head over heels in love with your word and to make it be our all-consuming passion, that we would learn more about who you are and grow more and more in love with you.

And we thank you in advance for the work you're gonna do in our lives through your word today in the name of Jesus, amen. All right, so God's success formula that never fails. Why, why would I preach a message in a family?

And I don't even think I saw a girl till I went to school. I didn't even know what one was right now. And, but my parents were hardworking, but they were not well-to-do by any means. We grew up in a house where a lot of things didn't work, so we spent a lot of time fixing things that didn't work.

Anybody can relate to that? Can anybody relate to that? I mean, just grew up fixing a lot of stuff. We would get cars that didn't work, so they worked so we could drive them. I never saw my parents buy a new car in my entire life until all of us had graduated from high school.

Maybe that's why they never bought, because seven boys can eat a lot of food, right? So we'd fix up houses. We became very, very, very, very good at fixing things that were broken. There's a lot of stuff in my life that didn't work.

There was a lot of stuff I saw in the lives of the people I looked around that just didn't work. Now, some people laugh when I tell them this, but I'm not even joking when I say it. I play golf a lot, and a lot of times when you play golf, if you play golf with people who don't know the Lord, they'll ask you, so, you want a drink?

Can I buy you a drink? And I always say, my aunts would always say, no, I quit drinking when I was 11. And people laugh when I say that I quit drinking when I was 11, but I'm not joking. I quit drinking when I was 11.

Like, you say, when did you start? I don't know, I started before I could remember. I remember being a little kid, go get beer out of the refrigerator, just like you get soda. Just wasn't, it wasn't some uncommon thing, right?

And so, that part of my life didn't work. There was so much in my life that didn't work. We had bicycles that didn't work, so what we do, we fix it. And I can remember having this longing in my life for life to work better.

And I received Christ when I was 16 years old. After having gone to church my entire life, I can remember, if you can imagine, young parents with seven little boys, my brother's a year and a half older than me, then there's me, then there's a brother a year younger than me, and one a year younger than him, and one a year younger than him, one a year younger, seven boys, seven and a half, eight and a half, eight years apart, if you can imagine that, right?

And we're all dressed in our little suits. We go to church on Sunday, we go to Sunday school, we go to vacation Bible school, and church was a disconnected part of our lives. We dressed differently when we went to church than we did every other day of the week.

We talked differently at church than we did at home. We sang songs at home, but when we sang songs at church, they weren't the same kind of songs we sang at home. And so the whole church life experience for me was a disconnected part of my life.

It didn't all fit together. It didn't even make any sense. It was just, it was what we did in a religious sense, and here's what I mean when I say a religious sense. We did it in a religious sense because the best understanding that I had of God was that God is all-powerful, all-knowing.

Yes, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so, but he was also, God was all-powerful, and he wasn't really happy with sin, and he wasn't really happy with me, and he wasn't really happy with us.

So you'd go to church on Sunday, and you'd put your two quarters in the plate, and you'd get dressed up, and you'd say your Easter speech in an attempt to appease God. How many of y 'all know, maybe some of y 'all can't relate to that, but it was kind of very different than the stuff we did throughout the week.

But when I received Christ, the guy that led me to Christ was a guy that I went to high school with. He said, now that you've started reading the Bible, that may not be that big of a deal to you, but you gotta understand, I was then, and am now, I was then, and am now, a remedial reader.

So the idea of reading the Bible was not at all remotely exciting to me. When I was out with watches, it's a smart watch. Yeah, right. Okay, so it's smarter than I am, because I have no idea why it just said something to me.

So, okay, so, and so, so I had, you gotta understand, I'm 16 years old, and it was a little bit before my 16th birthday that I received Christ. So I'm 17 years old, this guy says you need to start reading the Bible, and you gotta understand, I had never read a book in my life.

I'm 17 years old, I had never read a book of any kind other than a karate book, because I was really into martial arts, or a comic book, I was really into comic books. Other than that, reading was not something I was interested in, because it wasn't something I was good at.

Is there anybody else? Now, understand what I'm talking about. See, I wasn't good at reading. For me, I don't just talk fast. My mind moves faster than my words come out, okay? And so when I tried to read, it literally seemed like I had chased the words across the page.

Like, okay, if you just sit still, I read you, you know what I mean? Anybody else like that? Nobody knows what I'm talking about. Okay, well, just pray for it, right? Okay, because that's where I was.

And when they said, you need to start reading the Bible, I said, okay, but this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm a Christian. Now, I'm not gonna play Christian. Like, I'm going, I'm either all in or I'm not in, right?

And so I started reading the Bible, and I was shocked. You know why I was shocked? I had gone to church my whole life. We had had Bibles, but I had never read one. I mean, it wasn't something I read. It was just something you took to church with you, so, you know, so you could look the part.

You know what I'm talking about? And so I start reading the Bible, and I'm, I mean, I'm shocked. Like, shocked out of my mind that this Bible, with these little bitty words, two columns, no pictures, mean about my life, about how my life can get better.

I've got six brothers. Hey, when you've got six brothers, you don't get along all the time. You and your brothers get in fights sometimes. Well, me and my older brother got in fights. Me and my younger brother, let's beat them up.

But my older brothers, me and my older brother, we would get in fights. Notice how he didn't beat me up. We got in fights, but my younger brother was like, okay, sorry, y 'all pick up on that. So, so, but it showed me, like, for the first time in my life, how to get along with all of my brothers most of the time.

So I'm gonna try this. Like, it says stuff like, a soft answer turns the way we're at, the greatest word to start a man. I said, okay, I'm gonna stop hollering at my brothers, and when they say something to me kind of irritating, I'm gonna see if a soft answer turns the way we're at.

And sure enough, it turns the way we're at. It was in the Bible. Now, when I was a teenager, it was amazing. My parents, when I was a teenager, my parents didn't know anything. Like, I was blown away how God could give such a brilliant teenager to parents who knew absolutely nothing, right?

Right? All of the parents get that. The kids are saying, yeah, I know what you mean. Okay, here's what I'm here to tell you. And the older I got, the smarter my parents got, it seemed. Or somebody did.

But it showed me how to get along better with my parents. And I noticed, when I started reading the Bible, started applying it to my life, guess what? I stopped getting in trouble with my parents. I stopped arguing with my brothers all the time.

I was like, this is amazing. Why did they make me think this Bible was about religion my whole life? And all of a sudden, I start reading, it's not about religion at all. It's just about how to make your life better.

Why didn't somebody tell me? And so, fast forward. I go to a youth activity. And it was a quiz team. So, back then, we used to go to YFC, Youth for Christ, and they had these, like, four different churches, and the teenagers would have this quiz activity where they would sit on these benches that had cushions that were connected to this light panel.

This was way before the days of apps, y 'all. There weren't no apps, right? They didn't have an app for that. And so, they would, each, they would, the moderator would begin to read a verse or ask a question from a verse in a specific chapter of the Bible, and if one of the kids from one of the teams knew the answer, they would jump up, and their light would go off.

They'd get the answer, and their team would get a point. So, I watched this quiz team thing at YFC, and I was just going, I said, that has got to be the coolest thing I've ever seen. I got real excited about it.

So, I didn't exactly know what they were doing, but I just knew I wanted to be a part of it. So, I went to the youth director after it was over, and I'm gonna pretend Jeff is the youth director. And I said, so, do you think maybe I can be on the quiz team?

I think, well, I'm just gonna say, you know, like you do when you get a job, you gotta fill out applications, interview process. You know, I'm expecting this big, long, convoluted process in order for me to be a part of this quiz team.

And so, I asked him, and he says, sure, really? Okay, great, what do I have to do? Now, you gotta understand, I had never, I'd gone to church my whole life, but I had never been in this whole Bible-believing, practicing Christian experience life thing ever.

So, he said, well, all you have to do is memorize a chapter of the Bible a week. Oh, okay, I didn't know that was a hard thing. Like, I didn't know, like, I thought, okay, so this is something you do when you become a Christian.

So, Christians memorize a chapter of the Bible. Like, literally, I'm just, that's how, right, that's how new I am, I'm a total newbie. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm gonna write a chapter of the Bible a week.

Then I said, how do you do that? I don't know, I've never, like, how do you memorize a chapter of the Bible a week? He said, well, what you do is you write it down a bunch of times, you read it out loud a bunch of times.

Romans chapter 13, fortunately, a chapter that was very short, 13 verses, right? That week, Romans chapter 13, let every soul be subject unto the higher powers for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are in the name of God.

Whosoever therefore resists the powers is in the order of God. They that resist shall receive to themselves damnation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So, we memorize that chapter that week. I'm going somewhere with this story, y 'all, trust me.

I'm not just giving you a history of my own, it's not that interesting. Okay, so, the next week, we go, I'm on the quiz team. I'm so excited, I can't even sleep, because, like, to me, this is my opportunity to be on, like, the Price is Right.

You know, I'm like, I'm on a game show, right? This is my chance to make it big, right? The quiz team at YFC in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Okay, so, the moderator gets up, I am on the edge of my seat. He reads one word, I jump up.

And so, I hadn't finished the verse, and I finished the verse, he said, that's right, and we got a point. I was like, yes, oh, this is it. Now, I'm hooked on Bible memory for the rest of my life, right?

I'm like, that was amazing, right? And so, our team won that week, so I got hooked on Bible memory, and then, next week, remember, I sat in Romans chapter 14, next week, Romans chapter 15, and I was into it, but I didn't know that this was some unique thing.

I just thought, well, this is what Christians do. So, I began to notice that the more I read, the more I began to learn the word of God, and the more I began to implement the things I was learning, the better that particular area of my life got, whether it was with my parents, with my brothers, having a job, having money, whatever it was, whenever I applied the principles in my life, that part of my life got better.

For me, that wasn't something that somebody told me in a sermon, gave me this plan, I didn't go to church and hear somebody preach God's ultimate success story with their family, it's just, I began to put two and two together.

I take the Bible, I apply it to this, this gets better. The more Bible I had to apply to stuff, the more stuff gets better. Well, before I know it, like in the summer, when none of the kids that were my age could find a summer job, I had three jobs that summer, three.

And I was like, came to Christ, my younger brothers came to Christ, and so, my brother, Mike, and I, he's one year younger than I am, we went to our parents and we said, the church that we're going to, they have a Christian school, can we go there?

What do you think my parents said? What do you think they said? They said, no, you can't. It's very similar to this, they didn't have tuition, but they had an ACE school, I know y 'all got some different tuition, curriculum and stuff, but that was an ACE school.

They said, no tuition, just have to pay for your paces. And so we said, well, they don't have tuition, just have to pay for your paces. If we pay for our own paces, can we go to a Christian school? You know, Mike go to a Christian school, not like your little brothers do.

So if me and Mike pay for our brothers to go, and for us to go, can we go to a Christian school? My kids already want something, right? They always say, but what if this, can we do that, right? But what if this happens, can we do that?

Right, so we're overcoming objections with loads of the deal, right? So, so they said, they said, if y 'all pay for it, they said, well, let's think about it a little while later. Okay, y 'all don't pay for it, y 'all don't pay for y 'all, and then y 'all forget.

Later on, they started helping pay for it and stuff. So, but I guess they were just testing to see if we were serious. My parents are cool, that Mike really gets such a blessing. They just did the best they could with what they had.

So this is not, I'm not putting my parents in a crunch. So, so started going to Christian school. Now here's what's amazing. Like I've never gone to Christian school before. Every morning, Christian flag, and you have to read a passage of scripture every morning for a month.

You read the same passage the entire school, read the same passage every morning. The very first month in Christian school, my very first day in Christian school, the very first month, every morning, guess what we read?

Psalms chapter one. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but is delighted in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers and waters, that bringeth forth his fruit this season. His leaf also shall not wither. Watch this, now this is what the Bible says. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

God said, God said, God said, God said, if I will love his word, God said, if I will meditate on his word, God said, if I will apply his word, everything I do will prosper. I said, well, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

And so I began to see there's this learning the word of God, knowing the word of God, meditating on the word of God, talking about the word of God, taking action on the word of God. There's this connection between that and making your life work.

Guess what the passage was the next month? Isaiah chapter 55. I'm gonna get into this story in a minute. I really have to lay the groundwork so you can see, like, if somebody were to say, man, like, why do you do the things you do?

Because if I had one big objective for my life to help people see, it's to see the practical connection of how when you fall in love with the word of God and begin to apply it to your life, every aspect of your life can get exponentially better because when you start doing things God's way, God's way always works.

The Word That Produces Prosperity and Success

Isaiah chapter 55. It would be one thing if Joshua 1 .8, this book of the law, shall not depart out of that mouth, but thou shalt meditate there day and night, that thou mayest observe and do according to all that is written there, and then thou shalt not make thy way prosperous, then thou shalt not have any success.

Now the word success is only mentioned in the Bible one time and that's it. But that concept of applying the word of God to your life and your life getting better, it's thematic. It's throughout the entire canon of scripture.

The word of God was not just something that was given to us so we could sit on a coffee table and make the coffee table look better. But it was given to us, not just so we could have something, quote, at a funeral or at a wedding.

It was given to us so that we could literally begin to apply it to as many areas of our lives as possible and make those areas of our lives get exponentially better so people would look at it and say, how are they living like that?

How is their life so good? It doesn't make sense. It's a practical book that produces supernatural results. It is not a magical book that it does all the work actively while you are passive. Are y 'all thinking I'm gonna let it down?

And so here's what Isaiah chapter 50, verse 5 says. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his foes. And let him return to the Lord.

He will have mercy upon him and to our God. He will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Yet the Lord do not mind which your ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and it watereth the earth and maketh it. Did y 'all hear what he said? It maketh, the rain and the snow make the earth bring forth in blood. Then it giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater.

Okay, let me put it to you like that. Just like the rain and the snow come down and it gives consumption to the consumer and it gives production to the producer, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth and it, that is it my word, will accomplish that which I please and it, my word, shall prosper in the thing whereunto I send it.

Exhausted with people asking me, are you talking about a prosperity gospel? When you say that, this prosperity gospel is not a biblical term. Prosperity is a biblical term. Gospel is a biblical term. I don't find them together in the Bible.

But the fact that you can prosper applying God's principle, that's as good news to somebody who's struggling as any news I've ever heard. Maybe that's why the Bible says that I anointed you to preach the gospel to the poor.

I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that God wants every single solitary one of his children to be rich. I'm saying though, as a whole, God's design for wealth on the earth is for his people.

There's so many scriptures I could show you, but by the way, I'm gonna kind of go here. What we've done is we've advocated our responsibility under the guise of false piety. We've advocated our responsibility to be right, to be above only and not beneath.

We've advocated that under the guise of false piety. What do I mean by that? We have been subconsciously programmed by modern day Christianity, in a lot of ways, by the media, by the government, to believe that somehow poverty is piety and wealth and industry are wickedness and iniquity.

Talk with me again. If you would just be quiet. He stops, amen, in the afternoon, doesn't he? In chapter four, verse five and six, the devil takes Jesus onto a high mountain, shows him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

And what does he say to Jesus? All this power will I give you, for that is delivered unto me, for I will I give you. Wait a minute, Satan said to Jesus, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world, he said all this power.

So the power he was talking about is the power of kingdom, the power to build kingdoms. He said, I'll give this to you, for it was delivered unto me and I give it to you. So here's my question for you this morning, Terry.

Who do you think that Satan has a desire to give the power of kingdom to? To his city or to God's city? Satan wants to give the power of kingdom to his city. Or they, that the power of kingdom belongs to us.

What did Jesus say to Peter in Matthew chapter 16? I give unto you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And he said, and on this rock, the rock of the fact that I am the Christ, the son of the living God, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Okay, he said, I give unto you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What are the keys to the kingdom of heaven? The keys to the kingdom of truth. How do I know that's the keys to the kingdom of heaven? Here's why.

Because Jesus said, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Satan has done two things masterfully throughout history. One, he has empowered his followers and his minions to create wealth.

And he has also convinced God's people that living in mediocrity, living in poverty, not necessarily the same thing, but oftentimes they are, but living in poverty and mediocrity and just being content to go along, to just get along, is enough.

Why? Because he knows that the ones who have the abundance and the wealth and the prosperity can promote the message of their master. The only way Satan can stop a follower of Christ, the only way Satan can stop one of God's children is to get you to believe that doing something, that stopping is a good and godly thing.

Stopping what? Any progression. Here's what I mean by progression. When God made man the garden of Eden, he made man very different than everything else he created. So God created, I think y 'all probably heard me say this before, but when God created everything in Genesis chapter one, he created three categories in creation.

How many categories? Talk to me church, how many categories? Three. He created creation, what's it called? Creation, that's the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, the grass, the water, creation. He created creatures, dogs, cats, giraffes, alligators, bunny rabbits, and the rest of it.

Those are called creatures. What are they called? They're called creatures. And then he created human beings and he created us as creators. God created us to create stuff. He made us to make stuff. David Mitchell didn't set it up that way.

David Mitchell didn't set it up that way. God set it up that way. God made you, like the world wants us to believe that man's a higher form of animal. It's so fascinating. He told children for several decades now that you are an animal.

And then they're surprised when children don't behave with dignity. It's your message, because you didn't want to have a God over you. But I want everybody to understand that there's nobody that doesn't have a God over them.

The people who think they don't have a God over them, they just have a God over them that has their destruction in mind. If Satan deceives us into focusing on lack and mediocrity, the same way he tricked Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden.

How do I know that? Second Corinthians chapter 11, verse three. What does it say? The apostle Paul, writing to the New Testament church, said, I fear, I fear, lest by any means that as the serpent beguiled Eve, that means he tricked Eve, how?

Through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity of Christ. Here's what Paul said. Paul said, the same way Satan tricked Eve is the same way I'm afraid he's gonna trick you.

By subtlety. Brother David and I were talking the other day. I said, you know, Satan don't tell any lies that seem like lies. Most of his lies seem like the truth. So we know that the same subtlety he used on Eve is the same subtlety he used on us.

Just go ahead and throw a little gasoline on the fire. Is that all right? I think that's what I'm saying. That's all right. Genesis chapter two, verse 16 and 17. For God commanded the man to say, by the way, when it says commanded the man, that's the word adonim.

Adonim, adam, man, there it means man and woman. It's ishah ala shinhay. The word for woman is spelled ishah ala shinhay. So two different words for male and female, but the word adonim includes men and women, okay?

Because God called their name Adam. Later, Adam called her Eve, okay? So, the Lord God commanded the man, Adam, to say, of every tree in the garden, thou mayest freely eat. Now, I want you to notice, I want you to notice those two words, Eve.

Every tree, which tree in the top of the church? Every tree, free, how? Free to eat. Every tree, free to eat. Anything I want, just be honest with me. I ain't gonna bite your head off, even though it seems like it.

Are every and freely abundance words or lack words? Talk to me, huh? Abundance. Every and freely is abundant. It don't get any more abundant than every and free. Here, we said that. But of the trees of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for the dead thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

Now, let me ask you a question. The, does that sound like one or more than one? That's one. So, here's the question. I didn't go into like word, mathematical word problems and science questions this morning, but I can't help it.

Here we go. Y 'all ready? Everybody ready? Everybody ready? Here it is. Is the less than every free? Of the tree of knowledge. So, there's one tree they couldn't eat of. One, how many? One tree they couldn't eat of.

So, Satan comes in Genesis chapter three, and says, now I'm certain there's more than any beast of the field which the Lord her God hath made. And he said unto the woman, yea, I want you to notice what happens here.

Have God said, he shall not eat of every. Here's what Satan did. By the way, he's still doing the same thing today. He took, he added a word, and he took out a word. He added the word not, and he took out the word freely.

He shall not eat of every. God said, of every tree of knowledge thou shalt not eat. He's getting her focus off of the abundance she had and getting her focus on the one thing she didn't have. That's what Satan, changing God's word, she changed God's word too.

See, a lot of times, here's what happens. We don't want people to be offended by the language that we speak as peculiar people, as elect strangers upon the earth. We don't want people to be offended. So, what we'll do is we'll use their language so they don't become offended.

Can I get a word? Didn't want, she didn't want to say, well, she said, she didn't say, we may eat freely of every tree of knowledge. She said, look in your Bible, Genesis chapter three. She said, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.

She took out every ant tree. The one, the first thing Satan wants to do in all of our lives is he wants to get us to change the word of God. Why? Because when you change what you say, it changes what you see.

Your words are one of the witnesses through which you see the world. Who cares how much money you make every day? Amen. Amen? We call them ladies of the night. To make it more acceptable. How is this?

The tree that's in the midst of the garden. Where's the tree of knowledge of good people? In the midst of the garden. God said, he shall not eat, but neither shall he touch the trust of God. Well, here's what happened.