God, sometimes, exalts us. I'll explain on this edition of He-Life. Hello, I'm Mike Kellogg, and this is He-Life. A program designed to tell Christians that God isn't mad at them. Bible teaching to help get you home. Here's Steve. Thanks, Mike. If you had your Bible and you're in a place where you can open it, and by the way, I'd very much appreciate you taking your time. Boy, as busy as we are, anybody who gives their time in this Bible study with me, that's a precious gift. And I want you to know that I take it seriously and thankful for it. What we're doing is we continue with our Old Testament survey as that I'm going into some of the different verses within the book of Joshua. Well, we've done all the spade work. We've done our exegesis, or we've done our introduction to the book of Joshua. And what I'm doing now, because it's a long book, and we don't have time to go into all of it. I want you to go back and live there for a while. I'm just the tour director pointing out some of the houses as we go along. What we're doing now is just picking up some of my favorite verses in the book of Joshua. And I want to share with you some exciting stuff that I found in these verses. You were listening yesterday. We looked at Joshua 410. Now, the priests who carried the ark remained standing in the middle of the Jordan until everything, the Lord. You remember God stopped the Jordan and they went across until everything was done by the people just as Moses had directed Joshua. And here it comes. The people hurried over. Other texts read, the people passed over in haste. You know why they passed over in haste, because they were scared. And so we came to a principle, and the principle was this. It's okay to be afraid to cross the Jordan. It's just not okay not to cross the Jordan. Let me tell you something. And this is really important. Living the Christian faith is almost always acting in a manner contrary to the fear that you know. The Christian faith is almost always acting in a manner contrary to the fear that you know. I'm afraid of being honest in business deal because I could lose it. Be honest anyway. I'm afraid to teach my children certain principles they may not be popular to teach them anyway. I'm afraid of witnessing to my friends. They may not be my friends witness anyway. I'm afraid of tithing. I might not be able to pay my bills tied anyway. I'm afraid to stand up to a pagan philosophy. They know more than I do stand up anyway. I'm afraid to trust God with my life. He might send me to Africa or something. Trust God anyway. Let me tell you something. If I had been amongst those people crossing the Jordan, I would have moved out to. I mean, you would have seen hills and elbows going across that river. But when I'm saying that I would have still crossed over. Because see, I've learned that it's okay to be afraid. It's not just not okay to not cross over the Jordan. Alright, let me give you another one of my favorite verses. I want you to note how God exalts Joshua. Flip over to the 4th chapter of Joshua, verse 14. That day, the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel. And they revered him all the days of his life just as they had revered Moses. I have a dear friend. And Alabama's name is Rusty Anderson. He's a stockbroker. And I'm hurting pray this prayer a number of times. Let me give you the prayer that I'm hurting pray. Lord, exalt me in the eyes of men. And I will exalt you in my life so they can see. Is it okay to pray a prayer like that? Of course it is. But you're going to be careful about this. You got to understand that God knows if he gives you an inch, you'll probably take a mile. I've always wanted to serve a big church. I get to preach in those churches sometimes. I mean, I preach in churches where they have more choir members. Then I had members. Or more staff than I've had members. And I've often thought, Lord, how come I couldn't do that? I mean, I wanted to serve a big church like that. And I would exalt you if I... I mean, if you gave me a big church like a mega church, and I could be the pastor of that church, I would exalt you. I would point to you. I would... I could really lift you up. God said, no, you wouldn't... You stay where you are. Because you can ail something that big. You know, that's when... You remember the disciples were gathering around Jesus. And... And you remember the two brothers, the sons of Thunder, their mother came to them and said, you know, my motorcycle gang members, they've been following you for a long time. And when you get to your kingdom, I want one on the right and one on the left. Jesus said, you will remember, not unkindly, because after all this was a mother and they say things like that. Jesus said, I know your mom, but you run along, that's not my worry. That's not mine to give. And then the other disciples, you know, just like children, aren't we all sometimes? They begin to talk among themselves. Can you believe those turkeys? Can you believe those bozos that they... that they'd have their mother go to Jesus and ask something like that? Then Jesus heard the murmuring and he called the disciples to him. And you remember what he said on that occasion? He said, he said, listen, with the Gentiles and the pagans and the heathen, you know, their leaders awarded over them, but that's not supposed to be the way with you. The smallest will be the greatest, the servant will be the leader. That's what this thing is all about. And I can see Matthew saying, well, that's... Oh, what, I had in mind. I was going to be the president of the first bank of Jerusalem. And I was going to make a lot of money, give a lot of loans, write a lot of mortgages. And then they would make me, maybe the president of the rotary club in Jesus. When they did that, you know what I was going to do? I was going to... I was going to point to you. And then the philosopher Thomas said, well, that's not how I figured it. I was going to go get a PhD. And then I was going to teach at the first Christian University of Jerusalem. I was going to write books, very scholarly books, very, very impressive and big books. And then when they started giving me the all the awards, I was going to say, I give all the credit to Jesus. And you could go right down the line. I know these guys, that's what they would have done because they're human just like you. And so Jesus said, no, you've got it wrong. What you've got to do is you've got to be a servant. You've got to be little. And if you're going to be exalted, you've got to be small. But with all that being said, is it all right sometimes? Yeah, if you can pray that prayer and really mean it. And God knows that you mean it. And He knows that you'll do it, exalt me in the eyes of men. And I will exalt you in my life so that they can see you. There are two things you oughta notice about the exaltation of Joshua. First, God exalted him. Joshua didn't exalt himself. And secondly, he was exalted only after years of being Moses Gover. Fred Smith once told me when I asked him about business consulting. I said, what do you do when you go into a major company? He would go into Fortune 500 companies. And he would find out what was wrong and try to help fix it. And Fred would say, I always look for the ego. Always look for the ego. One of the great dangers of what I do here is that you hear my deep voice and you think I'm really smart. And you think I'm really something. And that makes it very, very dangerous for me. So you pray for me. It's very easy to begin to think that you are the way some of the people who write to you think you are. So you can't do that. But I pray sometimes in my heart, Lord, I want you to lift up key life. And I want you to lift up me as I teach it as I'm faithful to you. And if you do that, I'll point to you and I'll see you. And when I don't do that anymore, Lord, just bring it down in ashes. It's no accident that Jesus was a carpenter. God found a tent maker and a fisherman and a tax collector and exalted them. He decided that they would point to him. So it's important to remember that self-exaltation is not good. But God does Himself sometimes exalt us. Well enough on that. Let me flip over to the fifth chapter in the first verse. I want to show you something about causality. You say, say, what? Well, stay with me and I'll show you. Joshua 5.1. Now, when all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the Seacos, heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until we had crossed over their hearts sank and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites. Now, when the Israelites saw the miracle God had done for them by holding back the Jordan, they must have thought, what a great thing God is doing here. He has allowed us to cross the Jordan so we can get into Canaan to do battle with the Canaanites. What a wonderful God we have! Now, all of that would be true, but let me show you something every believer ought to know. God's actions are often causal in the sense that the reason God does something may not be apparent until later. Sometimes, much later, in this case, God's holding back the Jordan was a present miracle for a present reality, but it also was geared for the future so that fear would be put into the heart of the enemy at the future date when the battle would commence. So, big deal. What does that mean? Just this. Whatever you think God is doing in your life right now, he probably isn't. And if what you think he is doing is what he is actually doing, it's probably just a lucky guess. What you do is, it should be faithful. His ways are secluded and his reasons always have a purpose. And it may be that what you're going through right now, the pain you're suffering, the fear you're feeling, the places that are really difficult for you, that what you're going through right now is for somebody else in another place in another time. And that's God's business. You don't have to worry about that. You just bloom where you're planted. You think about that? I mean. Hey, listen, if you're not a part of our key life faith family, I would love for you to be a part of it. Okay, that works. When you give us a call, 1-800-Key life or your right key life post office bucks, 5,000-Metland Florida, 327-94, key life Canada, post office bucks, 321-50, Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H-5M-3. Are you email us at Steve at keylife.org with your regular mailing address and ask to be a part of key life tapes, we do it for you. And thereafter, you start every few weeks receiving a free tape of places where I teach the Bible. 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