Be strong and courageous, do not be fear or be in dread of them for it is the Lord your God who goes with you He will not leave you or forsake you And then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him on the side of all Israel Be strong and courageous for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them And you shall put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you He will be with you. He will not leave you or forsake you Do not fear or be dismayed And now from Joshua chapter one verses one through seven After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord the Lord said to Joshua the son of none Moses assistant Moses my servant is dead now therefore arise go over this Jordan You and all this people into the land that I am giving to them to the people of Israel Every place the soul of your foot will tread upon I have given to you just as I promised to Moses From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river the river you freight is all the land of the hit heights to the great sea Toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life Just as I was with Moses so I will be with you I will not leave you or forsake you be strong and courageous For you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them Only be strong and very courageous being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success wherever you go This is the word of the Lord Thanks be to God Father in heaven we are so very grateful for your grace So thankful for the work that your son Jesus has done on the cross and that he lives it and now to Intercede on our behalf and so thankful holy spirit that you are the one who persuades us of this truth And we ask now father that you would cause that work to continue that we would hear and see and feel and think Rightly and that we would leave with our hands and feet ready to act as you have called us to do but dependent always on your spirit's work God, I thank you for the servant Joshua and Moses and for the words that are recorded here that we might find great hope Give us Lord hope in you and you alone Give us this peace no matter how far we feel distant from you no matter how difficult this waiting seems We pray for your blessing even now in Jesus name a man What is a joy to be with you this morning after a number of weeks of vacation and study leave I report back that we had a rich and full summer I've enjoyed being in the book of Joshua and this morning We're going to kick off a series on Joshua that will later be followed by judges and then Ruth It's an incredible journey through this narrative of God's historical redemption him seeking his people Going after them Calling them his own and it's very rich I have enjoyed so much understanding the person of Joshua in the way in which the God has called him to himself and here Even commissioning him gives him specific words be strong and courageous It's a very simple application, but so hard to do my summer was rich it was full and also full of surprises I report to you this morning of great news that just a few weeks ago my wife came into our bedroom in the morning and said I just took a test and it is positive Yes indeed we are going to have child number five. It is the Lord's will. Thank you. Thank you As you know, I struggled a lot with the number four so even now we're calling this child Sinko day Marko We indeed will need strength and courage But we do have a God and it's so good pray for my wife the first trimester is always hard She's about two months along the babies do March 26th one month before our youngest child now turns to so it's going to be busy For least pray for her brothers and sisters I really believe that every time you enter into this sanctuary You should leave with unbelievable hope and encouragement It's unbelievable because only God can give it to you He is a God who makes promises who is incapable of breaking promises because it's against this character The word teaches us God is not a man that he would lie nor a son of man that he would change his mind Does he speak and then not act does he promise and not fulfill God always fulfills his promise and Here he has given a promise to Joshua it first comes through Moses His Moses commissions him, but it is a promise It's the same promise that he has given the people of Israel that they will possess a land But I want you to hear something between the promise in the possession of that which is promised is an incredible period of waiting and In that period of waiting there is enthusiasm and excitement and expectation but there's also doubt and fear And failure to remember and deception the longer the period of waiting The more those things become a reality Every promise that is ever given has at the end of that promise something that can be possessed If you as a mommy say to your children this week as you drop them off at school for the first time I will take you for ice cream after school. They might say to you. Do you promise? They're very reason they're saying do you promise is probably because at some point you've broken a promise and when you say yes I promise they have something to look forward to indeed something to possess They will later hold an ice cream cone and you will have fulfilled your promise as a young man Drops on one knee and says will you marry me? And he hears I will there's a promise that one day many months from then They will stand in his sanctuary like this making other promises one to another those promises Have a possession A possession that will be realized or not If a child says to his parents, I promise I will clean my room or as they get older I promise I'll stop drinking There's a possession That you're waiting for expectant hopeful But also maybe having doubt and fear and failure to remember and deception God promised Joshua I Will give you this land you will cause this people to take possession of it I promise you you heard it in Deuteronomy and you heard it in Joshua one but between that promise and the possession of it There's waiting and the nation of Israel was excited They couldn't believe that they would finally have their own land a land flowing with milk and honey But as they waited They didn't know what Moses was up to and they begin to grumble and they forgot and They doubted and then they become deceived saying make for us another God that would eventually take us back to where we were The delusion that slavery was better than what we have now That's the people of Israel between The promise and the possession we wait Well God has given us a promise and this promise is that every person who knows him Every person that is known by him that there is a blissful sure and that God's people will be there forever Reflecting back to him the wonder of who he is as the great promise keeper The wonder of who he is as the creator of all things the wonder of who he is with this amazing love that is so wide and deep and long and high that It's beyond our ability to comprehend but between that promise and the possession of it we have to wait and waiting is hard This life is full of so much brokenness and sin and pain that as we wait We're tempted to not take our strength Encourage from the one true source that we're told to seek but to find our strength and our courage and something other than God What are you waiting for this morning? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for the economy? To get better much quicker than it is Are you waiting for a child that is rebelling to return? Are you waiting for your body to feel better? Are you waiting for your marriage to be mended? Yes, you are All of us we're waiting and so often that waiting can be unbearable, but that's the lie The morning what I want to encourage you with as we introduce this book is that just as God promised Joshua this incredible possession He has given it to us as well But he also teaches them how he is to wait and that is where we find the hope It's very simple look with me at verse 8 of chapter 31 of Deuteronomy as Moses is speaking to Joshua This is what he says. This is what my charge is to the elder and deacon candidates today are officers today It's my charge to them because it's simple Their primary responsibility is going to be to wait as God calls us to wait and then to help you wait as God calls you to wait And here's what Moses says verse 8 It is the Lord who goes before you He will be with you He will not leave you or forsake you. Let me say that again It is the Lord who goes before you He will be with you He will not leave you or forsake you Those three truths are why Moses can end that by saying do not fear or be dismayed The positive of that is be strong and courageous You can be strong and courageous Joshua because the Lord is going to lead you just as he's led me You can be strong and courageous Joshua because the Lord is never going to leave you You can be strong and courageous Joshua because he will not forsake you That's the truth of the gospel. Let me unpack those few things The Lord leads his people in this period of waiting between the promise and the possession We have a leader. We will never be without a leader He knows where he's going and he knows how to lead you. I don't want you to miss that The Lord always knows where he's going. He always knows the plan and he knows exactly how you need to be led The most difficult time of waiting I think in my life was my life conceived our very first child Christina had this sense that it wasn't going to be easy for her to get pregnant. She was just afraid That wasn't a reality. I know it is for some of you and it's hurtful and Disappointing and the waiting is great, but for her it wasn't she came in early on just about 14 years ago and said It took a test. It's positive. I'm pregnant. We were a choice just as we did a few weeks ago Praise the Lord and then we went for the first appointment with the doctor and as we were in there They did a sonogram trying to discern how far along she was and as they looked at the screen the doctor suddenly had this Very disconcerting look. He then looked at Christina and me and said, you know Christina here either barely pregnant Or you are having a miscarriage There's no sign of life But it might simply be because it's too early to see it We left the office waiting Two weeks he said would be required before we could do another sonogram to see whether life existed two weeks Every day every hour of the every day certainly Christina knowing that there is a child and they're either alive or One that is dying Every day with her And we went into that office and the sonogram took place and we looked back at the screen. There was a heart flickering This little white mass just going crazy. I didn't know what it was But the doctor pointed with this finger said there's life This is a heart and our little girl Kara that was her Really alive just a few weeks barely But the waiting was excruciating as we wait. Remember he's leading us He knows where he's going sometimes as you drive in the early morning and you come through a deep fog You can't see very far in front of you Sometimes the best thing to do is to pull over and let the fog lift But when we were driving in Kansas years in Kansas years ago We were on roads that didn't have shoulders and the fog was so thick. I could see nothing in front of me Except the tell lights of a semi and though it was dangerous I tucked right in behind him and watch trusting that he could see better than me with brighter lights Well, the Lord is leading you even though it may seem foggy. He knows exactly what it looks like He knows exactly where he's going. He knows exactly where it's going to turn. He knows But it also knows how to lead you If you ever go backpacking and you have a guide the best guides know that they can't guide you alone Especially if you're a large team One is the lead guide. There's usually one in the middle and there's one at the end because as a team follows the guide They begin to spread out some are more in shape than others and as you go the guide who's a good guide is looking Forward ahead of where he's going on the trail But he's also looking backward to see how is the team doing and when one looks as if they're struggling he takes care of their needs Our father Leads us even in the waiting. He knows what you need and he will not let you be taken beyond what you can bear That's where the second point comes in. He not only leads us But Joshua says he is with you. He will always be with you in the moments of great pain in this period of waiting between the promise and the possession Pain feels omnipresent sometime some of you struggle with depression others of you Struggle with other types of issues that cause you to feel like there's no way out of this It could be physical emotional it could be relational and it feels omnipresent like it's all-consuming God's presence is more real than the greatest pain Never forget that. It's more real than the greatest fear. It's more real than the greatest doubt trust him the third thing That encourages Joshua is when Moses says and then God says later in Joshua one. He will never leave you or forsake you Never forget that. Jesus cried out My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me? He cried that out so that you and me would never have to God will never forsake his people He leads you He's with you. He will never forsake you But between the promise and the possession You're not going to believe that's true That's why God does give us men Elders and Deacons and other members of the body of Christ who point us to what's true Who reminds us that he is good that he is present ever present that he will not forsake you even when you feel like the pain is so great The weightings too hard. I can't go another step He's there We preach the truth We ask God to lift our eyes towards heaven that we might not be trapped by that But it's so easy to be trapped It's so easy to lose the encouragement and excitement and to give in to doubt and to fear a failure to remember and deception Brothers and sisters God gave us his son So that we would know He did everything necessary to show us he would never forsake us He who did not spare his own son but gave us gave him up for us all How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? He doesn't promise to take the pain away in the waiting period But he promises to give you himself. Do you see it? I will lead you I will always be with you. I will never forsake you The pain will last this side of that blissful shore, but he is with us period He promises So what do we do Between the promise and the possession You allow these three promises I Will lead you I will be with you I will not forsake you To possess you I believe it no matter how hard how difficult How long I believe it He is leading us. He's with us He will never forsake you I promise Because he promised father I Could never speak that truth if it wasn't true But you not only set it in your holy word throughout the history of redemption You have manifest that true time and time again. I know in this sanctuary even now There's deep hurt and the waiting seems too great Jesus, would you make yourself known even as we sing about you and is closing him the wonder of who you are that you're greater than all things Would you make these words Holy Spirit so true in our soul that though the pain is still there there's a hope There's a strength and there's a courage that we trust in Because your promises are now possessing us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen