← ArchiveUNDEFEATEDHistory of FaithfulnessDateMarch 7, 2021SpeakerJared MitchellText—Passages in this sermonJoshua 244:58Genesis 128:13Genesis 339:06Ephesians 116:18Exodus 1421:17Exodus 16:122:551 John 1:925:06Micah 725:232 Corinthians 526:24TranscriptMachine transcribed. Click any line to jump there.0:00We'll be right back. All right, well, good morning, church family.0:30How are we doing today? Hey, it is a great day to be in the house of the Lord. If you don't know who I am, my name is Jared, and I'm the worship pastor here at Bethel. And it is an absolute honor for me to be able to preach the word of God for us this morning. Again, I'm so thankful, as always, to Matt and the band for leading us so faithfully and so well.0:54You know, over the last year, this group of people that stands up here have become such precious friends to me and my family. And how awesome it is to be able to stand down here with you and sing and worship and to be led by them. I'm very thankful. Let me pray for us as we get started today. Let's pray together. Oh, God, we come to you right now.1:24We believe that you are good and we trust you. God, we declare that you are holy, you are righteous, so your people are here in this place. God, your word tells us that better is one day in your presence than a thousand other places. So here we are now in your presence, and we're just asking for you to move. So, God, would you open up our, God, our eyes to see through your word, our ears to hear, our hearts to understand.1:52And, God, we give you all the praise and all the glory, and we pray this in your name. Amen. Amen. Now, if you have your Bible, and I hope that you do, I would invite you to turn with me to the book of Joshua, chapter 24. As you know, we have been making our way through this book over the last several weeks.2:16And this week and next week, we're going to be rounding out our time in Joshua. And I am incredibly thankful for the time that we have had in it. So, quickly, what have we seen over the last several weeks in Joshua? We come to chapter 1, and Joshua takes over as the new Moses, right?2:41The new leader for the people of Israel. We see him lead this nation into the promised land. And then we see him divide up the land that they had inherited, the land that God had given them. And today, we start to come to the end. We start to come to the end of a long book, which details a long life lived, a long journey is ending, and final words from Joshua are about to be spoken.3:05Now, what we're going to see, and what we're going to read in the text today, Joshua is speaking for the Lord, and God is going to come, and he's going to recount the past. He is going to bring up Israel's history.3:33Now, if you can put yourself in the place of the Israelites, this has to be nerve-wracking. Let's just be honest. We don't like it when people bring up the past. We don't appreciate it when someone brings up the past, specifically our past. We're quick to say things like, oh, that's over. Could we just move past it?4:02Or we say, please don't bring that up again. I mean, there is a feeling that we get when we are around the dinner table, and someone says, do you remember when? As many of you know, over the last year, me and my family, we've moved back to the Birmingham area for the first time in a little over 10 years. And even now, there will be times where we will be around the dinner table with my family, and one of my brothers will start the sentence and say, do you remember when Jared?4:27And it's at that moment that I will start to just shrink in my seat, wondering, oh, no, what are they going to bring up? What are they going to bring up about my past? Are they going to bring up something that not even my parents know about? And by the way, they're here, so I promise it wouldn't be anything too bad. So here we are in Joshua 24, and the Lord is bringing up the past.4:58And maybe you're like me, that when we think about the past, we have a tendency to think of negative things. We have a human tendency to think of the things that we did wrong, right? The things that we wish we could have changed. So as Joshua begins to speak, I can just see the people of Israel shrinking and thinking, oh, here we go.5:25This is not going to be good. But if I could put a title on this history that Joshua and the Lord is about to recount, I would title it a history of faithfulness. A history of faithfulness, not a history of wrongdoings, not a history of sin, and certainly not a history to be forgotten.5:52But we will see that this is the history of faithfulness from a merciful, gracious, delivering, good, and faithful God. So when you look back on your story, Christian, when you look back on your past, when you look back on your history, do you see a faithful God?6:17Do you see a God whose promises never fail? Now, back in chapter 23, Joshua is giving another address. And in verse 14, he says this, he says, And you know that with all of your heart and with all of your soul, that none of the good promises that the Lord the God has made has failed.6:43And everything was fulfilled for you, and not one promise has failed. So as we look back on Israel's history today, which is a full history, I hope that we're ready to hear the history of a faithful God. And I don't know about you, but when I look back, I would not want to have it any other way.7:14So as we jump into this text together this morning, I believe that all over these verses, and all over the Old Testament, as we walk through this history, we're going to see God's grace, we're going to see God's deliverance, and we are going to see his faithfulness. So we all come to verse 1 of Joshua chapter 24, and it says this. It says,7:45It says, Now Joshua assembled all of the tribes of Israel at Shechem, and he summoned Israel's elders, leaders, judges, and officers, and they presented themselves before God. Now I want to go ahead, and I want to stop right here, because I believe that there is great significance in this location of meeting. Where are they meeting? They are meeting at Shechem. Now we're going to get into this history a little bit more, but I want to go to Genesis 12 real quick, and you don't have to turn there.8:13We'll have it on the screens. But since we've mentioned Shechem, I want to go and see what Genesis says. Genesis 12 verse 6, it says this. It says, Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem at the Oak of Morah. Now at that time, the Canaanites were in the land. And the Lord appeared to Abram, and he says this.8:42He makes a promise. He says, To your offspring, I will give this land. So Abram goes on to build an altar to God. So in Genesis, we see God call Abraham, and this is where God promises Abraham to give him this land. So Abraham builds an altar. If we go a few chapters over to Genesis 33, we see Jacob, who is a descendant of Abraham, an heir of this promise that God has made,9:06also in Shechem, come and meet with God and build an altar. And then we come to Joshua 24, and Joshua summons the people to Shechem, to this city of refuge. It is this location that Abraham met with God, that Jacob met with God, and now God wants to meet with his people here,9:30the land that he promised them from the land that he promised them from the very beginning. You see, we have to see that the location is the context. It is the foundation. They are literally standing on the promises of God. And as believers, sometimes we just need to look around. We need to look around and see God's faithfulness all around us.9:59I love what we see here in verse 2, that here we are at the end of Joshua's life, and we'll see later that he goes on to pass away at the age of 110. So here Joshua is basically on his deathbed. And for his final words, for his final farewell, he doesn't get personal.10:25He doesn't get sentimental. He doesn't say, here's what I want to leave you with. Here are the final thoughts on my life. He doesn't say, here are my greatest joys, my greatest years, my greatest accomplishments. He doesn't say any of that. Instead, on his deathbed, what does he say? He says, thus says the Lord.10:53On his deathbed, he says, this is what the Lord God says. Now, just last week, if you were here, we talked about legacy. How I pray that one day when I get to the end of my life, and I look at my family, and I look at my children, that I would leave them by saying, this is what God says.11:18I would leave them with the words of Jesus. In our last moments and in our last days, would we point to a faithful God? I believe Joshua would have said, don't remember me, but remember God. Remember what he says. You see, Joshua knew that he had a God worth living for, and a God worth remembering. Oh, would we, would we point to this God all of the days of our lives,11:48all the way until our last breath? Now, before we move on, something that I want us to see, a little bit more context, this chapter, chapter 24, this final chapter in the book of Joshua, it's divided into two sections. So today, in a sense, we are rounding third, and next week, Lord willing, Pastor Josh will bring us home.12:16So chapter 24, two parts, part one, here is what I have done for you. And part two, here is what I want you to do. And that's where we will be next week. But today, verses one through 13, we are in part one. Here is what God has done. So let's continue and read verses two through four as we continue into part one of this final chapter.12:40And we see an incredible picture here of God's grace. Verse two, it says this. It says, Joshua said to all of the people that this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. Long ago, your ancestors, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Naor,13:05lived beyond the Euphrates River. And what did they do? It says that they worshiped other gods. So this is key. That God is taking them back to the very beginning of their history here. He's talking about their earliest ancestors. He mentions, he notes that they worshiped other gods. They worshiped idols.13:33They did not follow Yahweh. He mentions Terah, who happens to be Abraham's father, who also worshiped idols. So what we know is that Abraham came from a family that did not honor God. Abraham came from a family who lived in sinful idolatry. But yet, what does verse three say? Verse three, but I took your father Abraham.14:04I took your father Abraham from the region beyond the Euphrates River. I led him throughout the land of Canaan, and I multiplied his descendants. I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. So in this earliest part of the history, what do we see? What is God showing them? That God's grace was there from the very beginning.14:32They did nothing. Their ancestors did nothing to earn God's grace and forgiveness. But what does idolatry really deserve? It deserves God's justice and his wrath. Yet here, we see God choose Abraham. The Bible says he took Abraham. He called Abraham to himself. And not only does he call Abraham, he blesses Abraham.15:00Genesis 12, 1-3-3, the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house, and to the land that I will show you. I will make you in to a great nation. I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse. I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt.15:28And all of the people on earth will be blessed through you. So here we are in Joshua 24, and God is reminding them, and he's going to remind them over and over again that their salvation comes from God alone. And their deliverance would come from God alone. And their past and their future was in the hands of God alone.15:56That he was at work before they were even born through their father, Abraham. So does this sound familiar? Believer, does this sound familiar? How about Ephesians 1, verse 3? That says, Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,16:23who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, and this is big right here.16:52According to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of his glorious grace. For the believer, just as God took Abraham, God has taken you from the grips of sin and it is not by anything you have done. But why did he do this? Verse 5 of Ephesians 1, By the pleasure, according to the pleasure17:21of his good will to the praise of his glorious grace. Our God is rich in mercy. He is rich in grace and we don't deserve any of it yet. He gives to all, he gives to all who believe in him and put their faith in Jesus Christ. So a question for all of us today. When you look back,17:50do you see God's grace in your life? God saving you, repenting from your sins and turning to him? You see, the greatest miracle that we will see on this side of heaven is someone going from death to life and if that is you, you are a miracle of God's grace. And we should never grow weary of this. Do you see God's grace18:19God's grace in your life? Or, or do you see that you need God's grace in your life? That maybe you've never experienced the grace of God. Maybe you've never even seen your need for the grace of God. And our prayer is that today you would run to Jesus. That you would experience God's grace and that you would never forget it. For Israel here in Shechem in Joshua 24, God is reminding them18:49that God's grace is covering them just as it covered Abraham. and it is all by the pleasure of God's goodwill to the praise of his glorious grace. So we've seen God's grace through Abraham and now as we move on we'll see God's deliverance through Moses. As we move on to verse 5.19:19Verse 5 says this, Jacob and his sons however went down to Egypt so I sent Moses and I sent Aaron and I defeated Egypt by what I did within it and afterward I brought you out. So when God gets to this part of their history they would start to remember quite well. This generation that he's talking to more than likely would have had grandparents that lived through these events.19:48So when they hear these stories they know. The reality is that the exodus is the main event in Israel's history. So God is not reminding them of anything that they don't already know. but I do believe that God wants them to remember it differently. And again we've all been there. That someone starts to remind you of something and you say oh don't remind me. Do you have20:18to bring that up again? You see again we have this human tendency to look back and only see the bad. And when the people of Israel look back on these events there's a lot of bad that they can think about. But I don't think God wants them to remember the bad. Verse 6 God says this he says when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and you reached the Red Sea20:48the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and with horsemen as far as the sea and your ancestors cried out to the Lord so he put darkness between you and the Egyptians it brought the sea over them engulfing them your own eyes saw what I did to Egypt so after that you lived in the wilderness for a long time so real quickly I want to go back I want to look at this story that he's referencing in Exodus 1421:1714 just to give us some context figure out what's going on here again you don't have to turn there we'll have the text on the screen but I want to see Exodus 14 verse 10 it says this it says as Pharaoh approached the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians coming after them the Israelites were terrified and they cried out to the Lord for help and they said to Moses they said is it because there are no graves in Egypt21:47that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness for what have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt isn't this what we told you to leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness so what's happening here the Egyptians are coming the people of Israel are terrified and they don't only complain22:16complain but they begin to lose their faith they begin to lose their trust they begin to sin against God in their hearts and they cry out saying why would you bring us here why wouldn't you just let us die in Egypt why would you bring us here to die when you could have just left us there to die this is major heartache God also mentions their time in the wilderness and what22:46and what do they do in the wilderness after God continues to rescue them a few chapters over Exodus 16 1-3 the Israelite community they grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness and the Israelites said to them if we had only died by the Lord's hand in Egypt I mean that's when we sat by pots of meat and we ate all the bread that we wanted instead you brought23:16brought us into the wilderness to make all of us die of hunger they continue to complain they continue to say God why don't you just kill us already why don't you just put us out of our misery and maybe you've been there maybe you're there today saying God I just want it to end so you have to imagine that here the Israelites are at Shechem and they're thinking23:46thinking why go back over this yes we we sinned against you in Egypt yes we sinned against you in the wilderness yes we replaced our trust with anger we replaced our faith with bitterness don't remind us again but we can't miss this that when God is remembering their history24:16history when he recalls their past he doesn't mention their complaining he doesn't mention their grumbling he doesn't mention their sins he just remembers that they called out he just remembers that they called out to him here we see God is literally remembering their sins no more God's24:44God's focus here is not on their sins God's focus is on his faithfulness and he wants them to look back and see his faithfulness Christian when you look back you have got to stop focusing on your sin what does 1st John say 1st John 1 9 says if if we confess our sins that he is faithful and25:14and he is righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness and I love these words in Micah 7 Micah writes this he says who is a God like you forgiving iniquity passing over rebellion for the remnant of his inheritance for he does not hold on to his anger forever because he delights in faithful love he will again have compassion25:44compassion on us he will vanquish our iniquities you will cast all of our sins and to the depths of the sea you will show loyalty to Jacob and faithful love to Abraham as you swore to our ancestors from days long ago when you look back do you see Jesus when you look at your life now believer do you see Jesus you see Jesus26:14Jesus has made a way for us to be reconciled to God and when we come to God through faith in Christ we become a new creation 2nd Corinthians 5 that the old has passed God is literally remembering our sins no more and how I pray that when I look back that when you look back is that we can say that it was always only Jesus so26:43so as we are beginning to see this history not through the lens of the Israelites but through the lens of the Lord we start to see God's grace we start to see his deliverance and now lastly what we will see is what we've seen over the last several weeks through the entire book of Joshua is God's victory in the battle chapter27:13chapter 24 verse 11 it says this you then crossed the Jordan and you came to Jericho and Jericho citizens they fought against you but I handed them over to you I sent hornets ahead of you and they drove out the two Amorite kings before you and it was not by your sword or bow I gave you a land that you did not labor for and cities that you did not build27:42build though you live in them and you are eating from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plan now this is Israel's most recent history and and God God and God and and as they were fought against time after time God handed over their enemies to them God delivered them it says that God even sent hornets ahead of them now this is interesting28:12interesting because a lot of people look back and they don't believe this was a real thing this hornet thing but after the year 2020 and the rise of murder hornets I fully believe this was a real thing you know there was never a battle that they fought alone and every victory won was through the hands of God and God is wanting them to see that it was never in their own strength it was never in their own might28:42might but because of a promise made long ago through Abraham the victory had already been won and this is a big deal this is why they can physically stand in Shechem before Joshua and the Lord because these battles were a matter of life and death and God fought for them and today we still29:12still fight a battle that is a matter of life and death but not just physical death but we fight a battle in which eternity is hanging in the balance and God fights for us did you know that if you're in Christ even if you face physical death on this earth then you still have not lost the battle that if you're in Christ that even in death you have victory you see God fights for us and he did this by sending29:42sending Jesus to live a life that we can never live and to die a death in our place so that if we repent of our sins and we come to faith in him for us to live is Christ and to die is gain that either way we have victory and like the screen has been saying week after week we are undefeated even in death and to that we say30:11say praise the Lord praise the Lord so I think there's two types of people today in the room and maybe you're a believer but you're scared to truly live your life for God because when you look back you see nothing but your sin things that you wish you could change30:41change things that you wish would have never happened you think oh man if things could have only been different but friend you are different because of Jesus you are different and all I'm saying is that today maybe it's time to shift your focus because God has shifted his because of Jesus God has made you clean God has made you new he remembers your sins no more and maybe maybe31:11maybe you need to just look around here the Israelites are they're standing before Joshua and they're standing before the Lord in Shechem remember and God is saying look around look at where you are standing have I not been faithful have I not been good believer look at your heart look around look at your heart that was once dead in sin and it is now alive in Christ31:40Christ has he not been faithful has he not been good and maybe you're here today and and like the people of Israel you just need to cry out they cried out in the sea they cried out in the wilderness and guess what God heard them maybe today you're here and you are enslaved to your sin you are in a spiritual wilderness and you need32:10need to just cry out did you know that when you cry out in faith you catch the attention of the God of the universe and he is faithful to save first John one nine we've already said it if we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us and here's the result if you cry out in faith second corinthians five therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a32:40a new creation the old has passed and the new has come everything is from God who has reconciled to us himself through Christ you see we receive this thing called reconciliation and this is key because a lot of times we think that when we come to God we must pay a fine or we must pay a price no my friend that's restitution and that price has been paid33:10paid you see through restitution God saw sin and Jesus paid for that in your place but now through reconciliation God sees you through the lens of Jesus and friend you are debt free you are debt free so so then with confidence we can say the words of this hymn that there is a fountain filled with blood and it is drawn33:40drawn from Emmanuel's veins but sinners plunged beneath that flood they lose all of their guilty stains they lose all of their guilty stains they lose all of their guilty stains sinners plunged beneath that flood the blood of Jesus they lose all34:09all of their guilty stains so today if you want to talk if you want to pray me and Pastor Josh are going to be right down here at the front we would love to talk and pray with you but if today if you need to turn to Jesus remember that you are a new creation the old has passed and the new has come God literally remembers your sins no more God has shifted his focus when he looks at you because guess what when he looks at you he sees his son Jesus who34:39who died in 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