And so we're going to look at Joshua Chapter 1 verse beginning with verse 6, to try to see what this part of the Bible might say to you and to me as we work toward this thing that we call our mission. Joshua Chapter 1 verse 6, this is God now speaking to Joshua after the death of Moses as Joshua is about to take the people into the promised land. And he says these words to him, he says, be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth, meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we want to understand this passage and how it speaks of our work and our project, our mission as Christians today. But you please grant us that grace. We need you to do it because we call no one our teacher but you and so we look to you and hope that you will amen. If there's one thing that's on the news all the time now, I hope it's not going to get crowded out by the death of stars and by presidential candidacies and things like that. The one thing we all know every time you turn on the news, you're expecting to get a report on something. Can you know what that is? The war. That's right, war. And warfare is something that's beginning to become a part of our lives in ways that for most of us in here it never has been for some of us it has but not very many. And if you know much about the Bible, probably the most embarrassing part about the Bible is that it talks a lot about warfare. In fact, when you're talking to people about your faith, I'm sure that you're often hoping hoping hoping they don't know anything about all the wars in the Bible. Because it just sounds so terrible. You know, we don't want to hear about piles of people and babies being killed and things like that. That's just not, you know, that's not the kind of Christianity we want people to think about. And yet at the same time, even the warfare is in some ways for us embarrassing and it makes us wonder, you know, what's this Bible got to do with my life, especially since I'm supposed to be a person of peace. The fact is that the Bible is very much at the center at the Bible is this theme of warfare and it's not just Old Testament, it's New Testament. If you're going to be a Christian and a kind of Christian that is informed by the Bible, you're going to realize something and that is that we are at war. Now I'm not talking about the kind of warfare you see on TV, that's not what I'm talking about. Now in Joshua's day, Joshua was about to go into the Promised Land and that was going to require warfare from him. He had cities to defeat, he had people to defeat on a physical level, but at the same time there's something about these battles in Joshua's day, what these were not just physical wars. These were actually spiritual battles too, because the gods of the people that he was about to attack were actually fighting against the god of Israel. And so what we have is sort of a physical war and a spiritual war. Now the New Testament tells us something that really in some respects helps us a lot in our modern culture. And that is that at this time in history, just at this time though, only at this time, we are engaged in warfare but we're engaged in warfare on just the spiritual plane and not the physical plane. But one day when Jesus comes back, that spiritual battle and that physical battle will be reunited. But until that day, you and I are just involved in what we usually call an our day spiritual warfare. But you know when we think about spiritual warfare, we're usually focused like we might and everything we do is Christians on the spiritual warfare inside of me. Isn't that true? You know we are so amazingly self-absorbed in our culture that we actually think that when we hear a term like spiritual warfare, it has all to do with the struggles I go through. You know the demons you deal with, the problems you have, the things and if you're really spiritual, the problems you have in your family with your children or with your parents or whatever it might be. That's about the limit of what we think spiritual warfare might entail for us, but the reality is that the spiritual warfare that we are dealing with, while it includes our individual lives in our families and things like that, it's something that is actually much larger. It's actually a worldwide conflict of spirits, of rulers, of authorities and powers. And we are engaged in that, believe it or not. One of the biggest problems we have right now as a country is we don't know how to get into a warfare mentality, do we? Is that fair to say? You can nod your head, it's just Sunday school. You can go like that. Even in a Presbyterian Sunday school you can say you can do that. Yeah, I mean we have a hard time, we have a hard time imagining that we really are at war. We see it on television and if you go to the airport in Atlanta you see soldiers passing through all the time in large numbers, but apart from that, unless you have someone actually in Iraq or Afghanistan or someplace like that right now who's in your family, this war seems very distant to you. It seems very foreign, it just seems like sort of a sideline and it's been a long time since Americans have been engaged in a war that is all consuming. And so it's easy for us as Christians to think about our spiritual warfare as something that's sort of a sideline. Just something you hear about occasionally, something that's a part of your life but is very much on the margin of your life is not really at the center of your life and it certainly shouldn't be something that we should all be preoccupied with or something that we're all called to be engaged in and it certainly isn't something you want to sacrifice for. Well Joshua receives a word from God here before he enters into Canaan to fight his physical and spiritual battle and what God says to him here applies to you and me as we enter into these kinds of spiritual battles that we're facing even in the mission of the church because this mission of taking the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth, this mission involves from the beginning to the end warfare. And did you notice in this passage that there's a phrase repeated three times? Be strong in courageous. God says it to Joshua three times, be strong and very courageous, be strong, be courageous. And you might wonder why? Well, it's because I think God knew what was going on inside of Joshua as he stood there thinking about Jericho as he stood there thinking about all the cities that were before them. Remember he was one of the spies that had gone into the land and all the spies came back and said, these guys are like giants, we're like grasshoppers compared to them. Now Joshua was a faithful and he said, God can do it, but at the same time, it's not talk anymore now, it's his action time now. He actually has to walk into the battles and so God knowing Joshua's heart says be strong and courageous three times to him because I had the feeling that Joshua felt fairly weak and impotent at the time and was having a hard time with courage. Now, maybe you don't feel impotent. Maybe you don't feel as if you have little courage for the things in your life. Well, if that's the way you feel, I can tell you why it's because you don't know life very well. If you at this point don't need to hear some words that can give you some courage and strength, then you're just fooling yourself into thinking that everything's okay. Just like our nation is fooling itself into thinking everything's okay. That you as a Christian really are facing massive spiritual battles in your personal life, in your family, in this local church here at Auburn and you're facing an even bigger challenge of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. And frankly, if you have any sense of how difficult that might be, all of those levels, then you're probably at this moment wondering whether you really have the strength and courage to carry through. So I'm hoping that maybe at a time when you're focusing on the mission of the church, you're not just going, yeah, isn't that exciting? Isn't it great? I mean, we're doing all these wonderful things. We're going to go to Honduras. I hope it's not just that attitude, but I hope it's also my goodness. What a job. What a task. Are we up for it? Do I really have the strength to do this? Do I really have the courage to give even more money to this? Do I actually have the courage to become involved in taking the gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth? Now God says this to Joshua three times for a reason. He's not just repeating himself because what he does here is he actually gives three different ways or three different reasons why Joshua can have strength and courage. And it's good for us to take a look at it because the first thing that God says to Joshua in verse six is that he can have strength and courage because God has promised him something. Listen to what he says. He says be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. I think all of us know that part of the world that we call Israel today is also called sometimes the promised land. And that's because it was a land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And now God is saying to Joshua, hey Joshua, this is a land that I promised to your forefathers and I promise to give it to you. You know that if the owner of something gives you a promise and if he's a reliable or she's a reliable owner, trustworthy will keep their word, then you can have some confidence that they're going to say what they're going to do what they say they're going to do. That if they say I'm going to give it to you, well, okay, they're going to give it to you. But there's something that many Christians don't seem to understand these days. When God promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and here Joshua, that little piece of promised land, that was not the whole picture. In the Bible, we learned from the book of Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation that the promised land was actually just Omaha Beach for Israel. What do they mean by that? What do you think I meant by Omaha Beach? You can speak up, it's still Sunday school. I'm not going to ask you to talk in church. You can go to sleep then. What's Omaha Beach? That's right. We're talking about the Normandy invasion. That's right, okay. The invasion of the ally forces in Normandy. The land of Israel was just the beginning point for the people of God. That's why the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 4 that Abraham and his seed were not promised just the inheritance of the promised land. Abraham and his seed were promised the inheritance of the whole world. Because Israel was to go into this place, take it, and then begin to expand their borders. And not just a little bit, not just a foot or two here or a mile or two there, they were to expand their borders and the kingdom of God, therefore, to the ends of the earth. This is actually the beginning point of something much greater than we could possibly imagine unless we really do believe what Jesus says in the Bible. And that is that when he was given all authority in heaven and earth, he wanted his disciples to go out and take the whole earth. You see, the promise that Jesus gives to us is the same promise that he gave to Joshua. Canaan is yours. Yeah, the promise land is yours, but I swore this in a larger picture because I haven't just sworn that you will get this tiny little piece of property, Joshua, I swore that you will inherit the entire world. It's all yours. It all belongs to you. And one day it will be yours. How did Jesus put it? The meek shall inherit the promised land? Yes or no? No, Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth. Do you know that's why Jesus is coming back? Jesus is coming back one day. In fact, he's very eager to come back because this is where he belongs. He's very eager to come back because when he comes back, he's going to make all things new and he's going to reign over the entire earth. But more than that, he is not simply going to reign over the entire earth. You are going to reign over the entire earth. It's all going to be yours too. This is why Revelation chapter 5 praises the Lamb because he gathers for himself of people from every tribe and every nation and every tongue and all the earth and as it closes at the end of that magnificent song, and they will reign with him and they will reign with him on the earth. That's your goal. That's your promise. And so you can understand why it is that Joshua could have strength and courage as he faced the battles for Omaha Beach. But you can also understand how you and I can have courage now that we've gone far beyond Omaha Beach. You see, the kingdom of God today has extended beyond the borders of the Promised Land. We're already moving out beyond where Joshua was focused. We're already seeing the fact that for 2000 years, Christianity has spread throughout the entire world to the point that now is in this pagan place and you, a bunch of Gentile dogs, are actually following the king of Israel, can you believe it? I mean, think about in Joshua's day. This is around 1400 BC. What were your ancestors doing in 1400 BC? Your European pagan dogs, you know what they were doing. Maybe you don't know what they were doing. I can tell you what they were doing. If they were anything like my ancestors, they were eating each other. They were worshipping demons. They were murdering, pillaging, raping, tormenting, torturing as much as they possibly could. That's what your ancestors were doing when Joshua heard these words. But now look at you. You have clothes on. You're sitting in a church and you're worshipping the king of Israel. Is there any reason for courage and strength? I would think so because the warfare has gone far beyond the borders of the Promised Land. It has actually reached the ends of the earth. Can you see it? What we're engaged with right now as we deal with the world as it is in our day is really very small compared to the challenges that Joshua faced as he was just taking the Promised Land and then beginning outwardly. But even beyond that, it's small compared to even what Jesus and the disciples were facing in their day when they had courage and strength beyond measure. Let me imagine yourself living in the Roman Empire and hearing Jesus tell you all authority and heaven and earth has been given to me. Now go you therefore and teach all nations baptizing all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What would you have said to Jesus at that point? You said Jesus, hey there's only about a hundred of us here. How in the world are we ever going to be able to do this? How in the world are we ever going to be able to teach all nations what you have taught us and baptize all nations and spread your kingdom to the ends of the earth? We don't have the strength. We don't have the courage for that Jesus. We're sorry. That's what we would have said. But Jesus gave Holy Spirit to His disciples didn't He? And when He gave Holy Spirit, they received power and they became His witnesses and by the end of the book of Acts, they were right there in the capital city of Rome. There's no reason for you to be discouraged. There's no reason for you to feel impotent. Challenges that we face in our day as great as they are, greater ones have been faced in the past. And the church has succeeded. Jesus has won and he can win again today because he promised you the world. But remember God did not just say to Joshua, be strong and courageous one time. He said it three times. So let's look at the second place. Why isn't that he said it the second time? Well, he said to Joshua, he said, be strong and courageous. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left that you may be successful wherever you go. That's a fascinating thing because God does not say here simply, I gave you a promise. Get some courage and get out there and do what I've commanded you to do. He says to him, Joshua, I've also given you a guide. And I promise you this, if you'll follow the guide, you'll be successful wherever you go. You'll be successful wherever you go in these battles. There are lots of things in the Bible, right? The law of Moses for us represents this whole book now. We as Christians have the Old Testament and the New Testament. And it tells us all kinds of things to do. Aren't you amazed sometimes how many things are to be done? How many commands there are in the Bible? But in Joshua's day, while God is talking about the whole of his revelation at that time through Moses, he really has something in particular in mind that lots of people don't know about the days of Joshua. The law of Moses told Joshua how to fight his holy war. And from a human point of view, it wasn't a very clever way to fight war. In the days of Joshua, most nations, including the Canaanite cities, had rather sophisticated weaponry. They had sophisticated war machines. They had these huge ramparts they could use. They had battering rams. They even had primitive catapults that they could use. And chariots, chariots of iron. That's the kind of thing that the people around Joshua had. But according to the Bible, according to the law of Moses, God told Joshua he couldn't have any of those things. He couldn't use sophisticated weaponry. He could not use cutting edge technology in his battle for the world. He could not use the kinds of things that most people would think you ought to be using. Common sense would tell you that if you're going to take a city, use the most incredible force you can possibly use. And that is of course what nations ought to do, but not the people of God. Do you remember how Veggie Tales illustrated this? They had in Jericho, they had a little Parisian piece up on top of the wall looking down at the Israelites marching around. They said, hey, senior songs. We love your songs. Sing another song for us. And of course Joshua and his people were going, you know, we got to sing again. That's right. I mean, because what God told them to do at Jericho was to sing songs and shout. Well, that was a great strategy, wasn't it? Yeah, let's shout really loud. That'll do it. Blow the trumpets, too. Maybe something will happen. You see the reality is that God told Joshua to fight this war with one hand tied behind his back. All he could have was little swords and some priests preachers, in other words, run around with trumpets and get everybody shout. He could not have iron chariots. He could not have ramparts. He could not have the battering rams or the catapults and things like that. No, the reason for this was because God was going to demonstrate that this battle was going to be won by his power and not by human ingenuity. That's the key. The key is that God tells us to fight our holy war for the earth, not with the kind of sophisticated weaponry you might think would be appropriate. But rather was something that actually from a human point of view seems ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, like helping an orphanage in Honduras. Is there anything more ridiculous than that? To think that by spending money and spending time with a bunch of children that have been rejected, that you can somehow win Honduras for Christ, is there anything sillier than that from a human point of view? Go ahead and say no. We know what we ought to do. We ought to be down there convincing the president of Honduras to change, yes? We ought to be in there giving him lots of money. We ought to send some soldiers down there. That will do it. That will fix it. Yeah, you're learning that really well these days, aren't you? Soldiers can take care of it all. Weapons and bombs and guns and airplanes, we've got them all. Are they changing the world for Christ? The answer is no. Even our president and Tony Blair came very close to saying this back when things were going a little bit better over there in the Middle East. They actually said at one point, do you remember this? We can't change that part of the world with guns. We have to change hearts. Do you remember them saying that? Now their ideal was to change the hearts of the children of the Middle East to become democratic in their views. That somehow democracy is the way to go in this world. I don't know how you feel about that. I don't particularly think that's the way to go, but in any rate, democracy is not what we need people to believe in this world. The Middle East won't change. Honduras won't change by believing in American ideals of one man, one vote, one woman, one vote. That's not what is going to do it. What's going to change the world is when people's hearts are changed by Christ through the gospel. And that's why the instrument of warfare, the primary instrument we are to use, is this simple thing of proclaiming the good news of Jesus. And accompanying that with acts of service and sacrifice and humility that actually illustrate the good news of Jesus, and that's where dealing with an orphanage comes in, where you are incarnating once again the body of Christ in a place of need. You are the body of Christ, aren't you? And did not Jesus love the children? Did not Jesus deal with the weak? The apparently impotent? Did he not choose a way of battling that seemed foolish to everyone around him? And he calls you and me to complete his sufferings as the church. And what does that mean? We are to risk everything to get this simple message of Christ to the world. We are to risk everything to acts of service and comfort to the world. We are to risk everything by using instruments of warfare that seem foolish, like marching around a city. But the hell the singer songs you silly little Christians, it won't bother us, but the walls came down, didn't they? The battle was won, wasn't it? Israel took the Promised Land, didn't she? And Jesus is taking the world, isn't he? I'm often asked because I've been to the Middle East some. I'm often asked, you know, what's wrong with the Middle East? Why is it in such a grip of Islam? Why is it that the world seems to be in such a grip of Satan these days? Why is our country deteriorating? Why is it? Why is that the case? I think the answer is the same in all of those places. The reason that Muhammad reigns so powerfully in the Middle East is because we are not there is really very simple. Do you know you can count the number of PCA missionaries in the Middle East on one hand? Lots of PCA people there, yes? But they're soldiers. But not very many PCA people are there as missionaries. There is one remarkable work in Kurdistan and the northern areas of Iraq where there is a Christian school that's been established by a group out of Nashville from our denomination, which is magnificent and is going well and people are doing magnificent things there. We should praise them and praise the Lord for them. But I remember I had a conference with Sandy Wilson, a second President in Jordan with pastors from Baghdad about a year ago now and I asked one of the pastors and said, what can we do to help you? And you know what he said to me? He said to me, the first thing American Christians need to do is they need to believe we are here. Did you know that there are Christians in Iraq? That there are lots of Christians in places like Jordan and Syria and Lebanon, that there are Christians in Afghanistan, that there are Christians in places even like Saudi Arabia and Yemen and UAE in places like that. It's been mentioned that I have this ministry called Thurmanian Ministries and basically what we do is provide teaching materials for pastors and church leaders. And you might be shocked to know that our materials are actually being used in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, the place where there are not supposed to be any Christians. In Yemen, in the United Arab Emirates, in Iraq, in Iran, you know the reality is we do need to believe they're there and then we need to begin to support them and then we need to be able to encourage them and some of us, some of us should be willing to go there as God calls us. To fight the silly war, the foolish war, but the war that will actually take that part of the world for Jesus. We need to take the battle to them as Christians is true, but we need to take the right battle to them and it's a battle for the heart of the matter and the heart of the matter is the heart of people.
I know that seems foolish, but it doesn't seem any more foolish than what God was asking Joshua to do, but he said to Joshua, I've got this thing, Joshua, it's a guidebook. If you will follow the guidebook, you'll be successful wherever you go. You want this church to grow, it's not going to grow by human ingenuity, by planning, by committee meetings, by programs, by money, it's not going to happen. This church will grow in the way Christ wants this church to grow when this community knows the good news of Jesus and you living that good news of Jesus out in this community in ways it cannot be forgotten. That's when this church will grow, like you want it to grow. But remember, God said to Joshua, I want you to be strong and courageous at three times, remember a third time, look again what he says, beginning in verse 9. Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous, do not be terrified, do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. God is saying to Joshua, you can be strong and courageous in this mission I've given you and you can too because I've promised you things, the whole world, it's yours, is guaranteed. And I've given you a guide, the Bible that tells you how to fight the war with the gospel, not with human ingenuity, but also because I, God, will be with you everywhere you go. Now, I know that in this church, you know all those omnis, omnipotence and omnipresence and omniscience and things like that. We can rattle off the attributes of God, we know that God is everywhere, he's omnipresent, right? And so there's a sense in which you can never get away from him, it doesn't matter where you go, it doesn't matter how rebuild is you are, it doesn't matter how much you ignore him, he's always everywhere you are. That's not what God's talking about here, that's no assurance to anybody that God's everywhere all the time, I mean you can be in rank, rebelling in against him, you can be in the darkest pit of hell and God is still there because he's omnipresent. So what's God talking about when he says you can have courage and you can have strength doing this foolish warfare and believing in my promises, if you remember I am with you. Well, what he's talking about is not just the theory of God's presence but the experience of God's presence. For Joshua, God experienced or God was with Joshua and Joshua experienced that promise of his presence in very dramatic ways. It was through the pillar of smoke and fire that was with them. It was through the ceremonies of the tabernacle. It was by praying and seeing prayers answered. It was something that Joshua just could not escape, that's what I'm trying to say to you. I mean the presence of God was so obvious to him that it actually gave him assurance that no matter what happened, no matter how tall the wall seemed, no matter how difficult it seemed, no matter how invincible the enemy might seem, it didn't matter because the God of heaven and earth was with him. He had very heightened religious experience, spiritual experiences of the presence of God and that's what gave him strength. Do you wonder why you're tired? Do you wonder why you're discouraged? Do you wonder why you find it hard to share your faith with other people and why you would find it hard to even imagine giving up your vacation to do a short-term mission trip? Do you wonder why that's a part of you? Well, let me ask you the question, when was the last time you had a dramatic experience of the presence of God in your life? If it's been a long time, is no wonder you're tired and discouraged. But if the dramatic experience of the presence of God, not the theory, I mean something that's so true and so real for you, you just simply can't deny it unless that's a regular part of your life. You will never have the strength and courage to fight this war. I remember when we lived in Jackson, I took my daughter, I guess she was about eight years old at the time to the YWCA pool. It was one of these big open outdoor pools and there was another girl and her father on the other side of the pool. I don't know exactly what they said, but just by watching I can kind of reconstruct what happened. Basically, this little seven-year-old, eight-year-old girl wanted to jump off the high dive. All the teenagers were doing it and looked like a lot of fun because they were screaming and things like that. So she thought this would be great. So she said, yeah, go ahead and do it. So she stood in line, you can imagine all these tall teenagers and little eight-year-old and tall teenagers. She was the only one like that in line. She stood in line, waited her turn, she got to the bottom of the ladder and of course all the teenagers in line were kind of elbowing each other. Here's this little kid going to go up. There's nothing more important to an eight-year-old than what a teenager thinks about her. That's the truth. She was so energetic and so enthusiastic that she climbed all the way up the steps, got up to the top of the ladder, walked out to the end of the ladder and looked down. Her eyes went from this to that. She couldn't believe it. She didn't realize it was that far up. The water was so far down. She just couldn't believe it. And she was so scared, so scared that she turned around and made the teenagers go down the ladder to let her off. And she endured that gauntlet of laughter and jeering all the way back to her daddy with her hands on her face like that, crying and crying and crying. I don't know what he said to her exactly but it was something like this. They sat there for another maybe 10 minutes or so. And her father said, sweetie, if you really want to do this, go ahead and I'll get in the water and it'll be okay. And she believed him. And so she got in line again. Teenager, teenager, teenager, eight-year-old, teenager, teenager. And she waited her turn and by the time she got to the top of the ladder of course every eye in the whole pool was on her because it was a very dramatic event. The first time they all wanted another chance to laugh at her again. So she got up on top of the ladder. She walked right out to the end of the diving board and she looked down. You could sort of tell it was still a long ways down there. So she looked over her daddy who had just barely gotten off the edge of the pool and she did this like that. And so he moved a little closer like that. He moved a little closer and then finally she did. And so he finally got right there in front of the diving board. I know he probably expected just to sort of jump off but instead she looked there, went through daddy who was there, she walked all the way back to the diving board and jumped off, ran and jumped off and landed right on top of him. They both almost drowned. The life guards are blowing their whistles and they throw them out of the pool because he wants us to do that. Now this is a little girl who was terrified just absolutely terrified at the thought of jumping off the diving board but she did it with zeal and abandoned. Why did she do that? Not because of some theory that her daddy had told her I'll be in the pool. I'll take care of you. It wasn't good enough. She had to see him right there. She had to be aware that he was there experientially. She had to know his presence beyond some kind of theory to the point that he gave her confidence and strength to walk back and fly through the air. You know what those experiences are like if you're a Christian. Maybe it was a long time ago but you can remember when you were facing a difficult time, something that was really hard and you whispered to Christ Jesus, please help me, please be with me. And you felt, yes, Presbyterian I mean felt, you felt his arm around you and it suddenly gave you strength to go ahead and do what you needed to do without any fear and you did it. Can you remember those times? It has been a long time since you've had that kind of prayer life. If it's been a long time since you've had that kind of devotion, if it's been a long time since the presence of Jesus in your life, since the presence of Holy Spirit in your life has been anything more than just a theory, something you kind of know is true maybe. If it's been a long time since you've been able to look down at the water and see your daddy there is no wonder you have no enthusiasm for the mission of the church. But if you can come to the point that you realize that heightened experiences of the presence of God in your life is important and you begin to seek it as individuals and as families and as a church, you can be strong and courageous just like Joshua was and it will trouble you when the church calls you to give money to missions. You'll say, well, of course we can make it through financially. What's the problem? He owns everything, doesn't he? He's with me. I know him. He assures me it's going to be okay. And when the church calls on you to take short-term mission trips, it will be a problem. What? Go to that place. I might get sick. It won't bother you. So what if you get sick? So what if you die? Who cares? He's with you wherever you go. That's the kind of abandon like that eight-year-old had that you and I must have if we are going to win the battle for the earth. You wonder why Christianity is on the decline in this country? It is, you know, has been for over 20 years. You wonder why the growing thriving religion of our nation now, the one that's growing the fastest is Islam and other Christian cults like Mormonism and things like that. You wonder why it seems that we're shriveling up and dying. You wonder why it is that one of the fathers of our denomination preached at General Assembly last year that we had a net growth of 74 adult converts in our whole denomination the previous year. You wonder why those kinds of things happen? Well listen to what God says to Joshua. He says, Joshua, I've promised you the world. Get out there and take it. Joshua, I've told you how to fight. I've given you the guidebook. Get out and do it. And Joshua, I will be with you wherever you go. You have no need to be afraid. You have no need to be impotent. You have no need to be discouraged. You can win until we come to that kind of conviction. We will find ourselves continuing to shrivel up. But when we change and hear what God said to Joshua, this church and you as individuals can be people who conquer the world. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we adore you and we bless you because you have not left us without promises, without guidance, and without your presence. Grant to us Lord, renewed energy for this thing called the mission of the church. And as you do it, we will praise you for it. Amen.