This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winchester Springs, Florida, where Dr. Pete Alunson is our senior pastor. Today's sermon is part 10 in the Offensive Christianity series. This message is titled Continuing the Climb, and it's taken from Joshua, chapter 24, verses 14 through 15. Now here's Pete with today's message. Lord, thank you for worship and the opportunity today to be led by our worship team into your presence. Lord, it's the desire of our hearts that as your people, we would hear your word that you would renew our hearts and the covenant of grace that we've experienced with you. Teach us your word now for we pray in the strong name of our risen Savior Jesus. Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles while our kids are being dismissed for extreme praise, turn to Joshua 24. Joshua 24, we're concluding, no, we're still in the series, Offensive Christianity, but we're concluding the portion of it that is in the book of Joshua. And so if you have your Bibles turned to Joshua 24, as we will look at the last chapter together, and the memory verse for this week, for those of you who are doing that work of memory, I guarantee you, here's the verse, but here, these are the most difficult verses to memorize of this whole block of verses that we're looking at, which is kind of turning into a survey of the Old Testament. Joshua 24 verses 14 through 15. This is God's word, and for those who are not weak at heart to attempt to memorize. Here we go. Now therefore, Joshua says, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth, and put away the gods, which your fathers serve beyond the river, and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods, which your fathers served, which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, and whose land you're living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You just sang that. You've heard that before, that song comes from this text. And as we continue to study an offensive Christianity, for those of you who are joining us, you're wondering, are we trying to turn Christians into more offensive people? No, we do that quite well on our own, as we just stand up for the truth. Some people think that we're quite mean, and we're not trying to be. We're trying to stay on the offensive as God's people, and there's so many issues that can hurt us and the trials. I mean, think of the stuff you've gone through. Think of the stuff you've gone through in the last year. Haven't that been horrible? Some of them, some great stuff. But also, so many difficult things that can keep you, and it can keep me from following the Lord. And it can make us faint of heart. It can be like a switch that makes us want to run away and hide. For some of you, you're going through difficult times. I'm amazed you're even here today. I'm glad you are. But we want to stay alive. We want to stay alive with some of the spit and vinegar that it takes to follow Jesus in the midst of a very difficult life. It's like the little boy, Teddy, who came down the stairs of the two-story house that he lived in. You know, it just always came down the stairs like a typical boy. Bam, bam, bam, bam, slam, bam. This time his dad was waiting for him and he said, man, son, you've got to stop coming down those stairs like that. How many times have I told you you had to come down quietly? Now, march back up there and come down like you ought to come down so he'd turn around and went back. And before he noticed, knew it, his son was right there, quiet, not a cell. He said, that's good. That's exactly how I want you to come down from here on out, just like that. Teddy said, good, I slid down the railing. You know, I love that, alive, alive, and joy, but I tell you, your trials can take you away from the Lord just like they can take me away from the Lord. One guy said, on the outside, I'm living like I'm following Jesus, but on the inside, I'm dying. That could be your experience. And you come here on Sunday and you look good and vibrant and you and I, we can do the talk. We can do the Christian-E's, you know, how you doing great? God is good. Jesus is wonderful. Life is going great. And then you've come across somebody who says, you know, it's not all that good, really. You know, my marriage is a little shaky and my job's even shakier. And my car broke down on the way over here and you go, good, be warm, to be filled, have a great afternoon. God bless you. You know? And wait, didn't you hear what I said? We could play the game with the language, but sometimes we need to be stopped, to be real. That's okay. You can do that here. You can be that here. But some of you, at this point in your life, you look at your heart and you say, I need renewal. I'm tired. I do need to be rededicated. I do need to redraw the line in the sand and say, you know, for me and my house will serve the Lord. Fourth of July, aren't you happy? Some of you, you know, guys, what's fourth of July all about? Food, rest, food, fireworks. And the guys, you know, the guys are going, yeah, I want to blow something up in Jesus' name, you know? And I know who you are. We want to see an explosion. We want to see fire. We want to see the destruction. That's cool. But that's not what it's about, is it? Fourth of July is about the remembrance of the freedom that we have as Christians, as people living in this country. It's a celebration of the freedoms of living in America. And this is a good place to live, isn't it? I'm amazed at people who talk bad about our country, who are Americans. It just blows me, politics aside, okay, and you know I'm to the right of Genghis Khan. So, okay, that's settled. I'm not going to talk about that. Those of you away when people follow, want to follow international law versus American law. I want to spit. And then the law comes first. And then people who criticize America, this is a great place to be. They don't get it. It's like the mother driving down the street with a car full of her kids. And I'm going to have to ask for penance after I tell you the story. And the car in front, it's a convertible, and a lady stands up absolutely with no clothes on at all. And her little boy says, Mom, that lady doesn't have a seat belt on. Some people just don't get it. This is a great place to live, isn't it? Is it a perfect place? No. Is it a perfect country? No. But we can be patriots to America while we are a part of cleaning up the mess, our culture's a mess in many ways. It's a better mess than in other countries, because it's a broken world. Christians often are misunderstood by those people out. There's a lot of people that don't understand you. When Christians stand up for that, which we believe to be biblical and right, don't we get a lot of criticism, you know, we are relentlessly pro-life, right? Yeah, we are. And we get a lot of flak for that. We are tenaciously pro-marriage as God defines it in the Bible, right? And then we stand up and we say it, we use our freedom of speech, and people get ticked off. They don't understand two things about us. They don't understand number one that the reason why we stand up for biblical ethics and morality is because when people follow God's word, it's best for them. God's word, see, we don't stand up and vote the way we vote and talk about what we want just so that because we're mean and nasty and angry, you follow God's word, it'll always be best for you. That's the first reason we stand up for biblical ethics. The second reason we do that is because we've read the Bible. And those who have read the Bible know that the proverb says, righteousness exalts a nation. But Godlessness is a disgrace to any people and God approaches those cultures that are evil. He judges those nations that disregard His laws that are good for His people, so we're saying, we stand up and we say, listen, remember Sodom and Gomorrah, that really happened and nobody can find it today. So we're not mean and nasty. We are actually helpful to our culture, to try and point them to the grace of God so that He brings His grace and not His judgment upon our culture. Christians are often the best citizens in any culture in the world. You guys work hard, don't you, most of the time. And you do so because you're a Christian, because you want your testimony for Jesus to stand up. Who started the hospitals, Christians? Who stayed in the cities during the black plague and helped those people that were dying? Jim Brickerhoff reminded me that it wasn't mosquitoes, as I said. It was rats and fleas, and they were killing people. And it was Christians who stayed in the cities to take care of the dying and the sick. So we're, we help culture. What's 4th of July, celebration of our freedom? Now you say, okay, connect that to the text, good, I will. What's that all about? As we, at the 4th of July, in a sense, are rededicating ourselves to freedom. As we are rededicating ourselves to the principles of this government, Joshua is now rededicating the people, leading the people of Israel to rededicate themselves to God as God's people. Why? Because it's a change of an era, it's a change of an era. Moses and Joshua who are connected together, Joshua is going to die. And now he's going to lead, he's got to set the people up to follow the living God in the future. 3,000 years ago, Joshua says to the people of Israel, we got to rededicate ourselves. We got to renew ourselves. We have got to renew our heart for God. We've conquered the land, we've come so far. If we don't renew ourselves, I'm going to be out of here and who are you going to follow. Joshua, when he writes this, is 110 years of age, 110 years of age. That's doable, by the way. Did you see the commercial? In the second service, I don't think they watched TV around here. Do you see that commercial about the old guy that plays the trumpet that is driving in a car? Some of you have seen it. Thank you. I'm not crazy. I really did watch that on TV and he's 100 years of age and he was driving to one of his trumpet engagements. He plays all the time. I'm just glad it's not here in Orlando, but he's still alive and vigorous. Joshua's 110 uses all of his energy to draw the people together into a re-dedication ceremony and those verses are the central part of this re-dedication service. By the way, it's about 1,400 BC when Joshua says these words, about 1,400 BC and what he does is he flushes out the words of God in a re-dedication ceremony called a suzerain vassal treaty. Have you ever heard those words before? A suzerain vassal treaty. There will be a test at the end of the service on that. And basically, it boils down to this because the kings in the ancient world use the same format that we find here in Joshua 24. The suzerain or the king comes to the people and said, I've conquered you. You're my people. Now in the preamble, that's what he says, I'm your king, I'm your lord, I'm your suzerain, you belong to me. Then he goes to a second phase called the historical prologue in which the king says to the people, think of all I've done for you by conquering you. Think of all the good that I have brought to you by killing some of your most valiant warriors. And the people are supposed to say, yes, you have been gracious to Alexander the Great. Oh, thank you for all that you've done for us. And then the king says, based on all the abundance that I've brought to you, here's your response to me. It's interesting that God uses the same format as the suzerain vassal treaty. In this renewal ceremony, he uses it, starts out with the preamble, here it is, Joshua 24. One. Then Joshua gathered all the elders, the tribes of Israel to check them and called for the elders of Israel and for their heads and their judges and their officers and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, let's say this together because these are the key words, let's say together, ready? Just says the Lord, God of Israel, that's the preamble to this treaty, to this renewal. And it's, he calls for a general assembly, really, of all of the leaders and the people of Israel. And so Joshua is at Shekum and you say, I've heard that name before, if you've read the Old Testament, you've heard the name Shekum because at many times in history past, God has rededicated the people there. And don't you need rededications over and over again, I do. I mean, I get it right, I follow Jesus and then I need to be reded, I need to rededicate myself in. Well, they did too and at Shekum a lot of these things happen and so there's this big group. Joshua's up front, a thousand of people and all of the leaders of Israel, all of the fathers who are heads of the household and he says to them, we meet in God's presence. We are here to renew ourselves to God. He calls the leaders why because the leaders lead the people. I need leadership, don't you? Our kids don't always want it. They often want to reject it, but they lead leadership, don't they? More than they know. As a nation, we need Godly leadership back then to, he calls the leaders because he says leaders, I need you guys to rededicate yourself to the living God. Because if you will rededicate yourself to the living God, then then the rest of the people, he says dads, I need you to rededicate yourself toward leading your family and godliness. Dads, I need you to do that, moms, I need you to lead your family, your children to rededicate yourself toward following the one true God. I had lunch this week with a friend who I've had lunch with once a month for 20 years, 19 years, December will be 20 and at the end of the, we always get together and we hold each other accountable and at the end of this lunch, we look each other in the eye and we say, well, you fly in straight, you follow in Jesus, yeah, you true to your family, yeah, you true to your wife, yeah, you true to your kids, yeah. You do that, we go over and this, this week I just, I, I stopped for a second. I said, man, we've been doing this for almost 20 years. We've gone too far to give up now. I said, you know, if we, if we give up now, we're going to hurt a lot of people. We've gone too far down this road to give up. I need to rededicate myself every month with him, but every day, I told you, I don't wake up happy. I need to rededicate myself every day, don't you? It's hard. Following Jesus, moms and dads never, never, never, never underestimate your power, teachers never underestimate your influence, singles never, never underestimate your influence. I don't matter. You do. The kids are resilient. Hell yeah, they'll limp along if you, you just blow apart a marriage, your leadership's absolutely crucial, absolutely crucial, Israel was leading into a new era. We're going into a new era. I can finally say, I heard Saturday that all of our financing has been accepted by a company, we're good to go. That land is going to start seeing machines and stuff happening. We're entering into new era, it's going to happen. By the way, did I tell you that it was a California company that said, did our financing? It is. It is. Praise God. For those, you know, California's land of fruits and nuts, but they believe in us out here. And so we're entering a new era, as a church, just you going to a new year this fall, it's a new era for you. You don't know what's going to happen to you this fall. So it's so important for us to renew ourselves as we headed, but the key phrase is, thus says the Lord God of Israel, it starts out, I am your God. He says, I'm the one that came after you. I loved you. I made you into the people. And then right after this preamble, he goes right into the historical pre-log, prologue, which is really history, grace, past. He goes into the grace, past in verses 2 through 13, and he goes on and on. God starts, no, I'm not going to read the whole chapter. But Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, from ancient times your father lived beyond the river, namely Tara, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, and they served over other gods. Then I took your father, Abraham, from beyond the river, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. And then after Isaac came, who? Jacob. Jacob came Joseph, and after Joseph came Moses, and he led the people of God. What he says in this, all of these verses is simply this, I'll bottom line it for you. He says, I did four things for you. I called you to become a mighty nation. I sovereignly chose you from all of those other semites out there. All those other dark skinned people living out in the deserts, I chose you. Secondly, he said, when you wandered around in the wilderness because you wouldn't go and take up the land according to Joshua and Caleb, you wouldn't go do it. You wandered around in your aimlessness, I protected. I provided for you. Remember that man you got so tired of? I gave you that. And remember when you came to the river Jordan, and all of those tribes tried to keep you from crossing the Jordan, all the Amorites, I defeated them through you. I got you, who got you forth, who got you across the Jordan, and who got you to take over the land. I was fighting for you. I was fighting your enemies. I was fighting with you, and for you, and God says to us today, just as he says, look at all the grace that I've done for you. These verses, I've been reading through John's gospel slowly and carefully, and these verses continue to stand out to me. All, Jesus said in John 6, all that the Father gives to me shall come to me, and the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. Some of you raised in families where you were the outcast. You were cast out. You've been in a relationship. You've been cast out. You felt what it feels to be the black sheep, no, but God's, Jesus says, the Father has given me a bunch of people, whoever comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I myself will raise Him up on the last day. I will fight for you, and I have fought. There's stuff that God has done for you that you don't even know He did. We get home. We get to heaven. Some people think, and guys, this drives us crazy, doesn't it? This picture of heaven, that heaven is this place of ethereal mist. You know, kind of this fog, and we're all walking around with little cherublite faces, and we're floating, and we're existentially happy, and we play harps, and it's this one worship service after another. Listen, I couldn't get through that. I couldn't get through. If that is sit in worship all that time, no, you're going to have a perfect body. It's going to be a perfect world, the new heavens, the new earth, the perfect body. It's going to be a place where we will learn about God's grace in a deeper way, and we're going to be running into each other, and we're going to be talking to Jesus. We're going to be interacting with the angels, and we're going to be with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit. We're going to all be together, and you know, they're going to be ties. We're going to learn stuff. We're running into Jesus. He says, hey, hey, here's my gift to you for today. Remember when you went through that back then, back in 2006, and we go, yeah, I remember that. He said, I was there, and this is how. Let me tell you what I did, and you thought I wasn't there. I know. I said that a lot. I said, God, where are you? I said, Jesus, if you loved anybody, you ought to love me, and you ought to show your power now. He goes, I was there. This is what I did. Heaven is a place where we're going to discover the grace of God in ways that will keep you rejoicing for eternity. Joshua says to the Israelites, look back on all the grace, and I say to you, remember that you have been called, and I know there are trials, and it's difficult, and sometimes it's hard to understand why God would allow what he has in your life, but he's there, and he will show you. You see, for me to say, as for me in my house, I will serve the Lord, doesn't mean that everything has to be going well. It means that we have to know that his grace is real, that it's been demonstrated, and that it will continue to be demonstrated into the future. Then he comes to the covenant stipulations, our verses. Now therefore, fear the Lord, he says, listen, you don't have to, but because of God's grace, because of God's grace, now therefore the only logical thing to do is fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth. Put away the gods, which your father served beyond the river. Do you think they brought a bunch of gods statues from Egypt, I don't, but I bet they brought some idols in their heart. As inevitably among God's people, our idols remain, don't you, didn't you once commit to Jesus, but don't you have some idols sometimes, I do too. And I come to a point, I say, you know, Lord, I'm kind of worshiping that thing, or I want that thing, and so he says, listen, the only logical thing to do because of God's grace is to put away all the idols and to serve the Lord. And this is, I love this, verse 15, if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, and choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served which were beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in the land you are living, but as for me, my house, we're going to serve the Lord. Calls us as people to recognize that we will serve somebody, Bob Dylan, in his Christian phase, wrote a great song that said, you got to serve somebody, some of you remember that song, it was a great song, biblically based, I don't know what happened to the guy, but it was a tremendous, we will serve somebody because we're made that way. We're made to worship, and in either we will serve the living God who made us, and Jesus who redeemed us, or we will serve ourselves, or some other substitute, some other person or some other idol out there, and Joshua says, okay, based on God's grace, the only logical thing is to serve the Lord, choose, draw the line in the sand, rededicate yourself to him. If you read the rest of the text, they say, we'll do it, we're following you, Joshua. And so here it is for us, as we take, we're going to take communion right now, but as we take the bread, and as the bread has passed, I want to encourage you to do what I've been doing, all three services, all two services, and this third one as well, and that is looking at grace past. What has God done for me? You know, I think of him taking me from a divorced family, pouring into me with godly men in the church, building into my life, he didn't have to do that, but he did, he picked me up, he made me his son, giving me purpose for living. He's done so. His grace in the past, I've messed up a lot. Think of grace past, and then as we take the cup, think of grace present, and grace future and I encourage you, as you take the cup to say, Lord, I'm going to re-denicate myself to you, life isn't perfect, there's some bad stuff, men, as for me in my house, say it to yourself, say it to the Lord, we will serve the Lord. Ladies, it's for me in my house, we're going to serve the Lord. Not when everything's great, but even when it's bad. I invite you to do that today because there is no logical alternative with all of that grace than to give ourselves to him. Remember when Jesus was with the disciples, and he spoke some very harsh, straightforward words to the people, and people said, I don't think so, and they walked away, it says the whole crowd started to melt away, and Jesus looked at his disciples, and he said, you're going to leave too? They said, where should we go? You have the words of eternal life, so where are you going to go? Because Jesus is the only one with the words of eternal life, and that's the kind of re-dedication that makes a difference in the world, where his grace just keeps carrying us through today, after day, after day. You don't know him, we invite you to accept Jesus, who can give you that grace that you need every day. You take it to heart as will I, and let's pray as the elders come forward, Lord Jesus, what a privilege that you went to the cross for us, what a joy it is to know is your sons and daughters, that even when those others were against us, when life didn't work, when we were more broken than we even knew. You came after us and made us your children. Thank you that when we've sinned, and when we've fallen way short of your glory, when we came to the end of our resources, you were still there, and you didn't let us go. Thank you that you went to the cross for us, as we take of this bread now, we pray that you would remind us of the grace of the past, that you would remind us of all of the good things that you have done for us, especially that you bore our sins in your body. We love you more for that, in your holy name we pray.