Untitled Sermon (5)

Introduction

When truth grips our heart, when it becomes part of our very experience, when we can speak of things that we know, things that we have proved and felt, then Christian service is no longer overwork but overflow.

from verse 2-13 the divine personal pronoun “I” was used at least 17 times. For inspiration for the future, Joshua brings to the attention of the people their past history. From the very beginning of their history as a nation they owed everything to the intervention and power of almighty God. That’s also what is clearly taught throughout the whole of the NT when it comes to salvation in Jesus Christ.

Revelation, experience, service. Our salvation is all the working of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God took, He sent, and He gave the Lord Jesus Christ. He brought us out of bondage that He might bring us into the land of blessing. He destroyed our enemies, He delivered us out of their hands. Every step of progress in Christian experience has been because of the working of the Holy Spirit. The complete plan of that working in your life and mine is to take each of us out of bondage, through the wilderness, into the land of full salvation where we shall know and experience the power of the indwelling Spirit of God to save us from sin. The crowning purpose of the plan is one day to present each one of us perfect before Christ Jesus: perfect in position, accepted in Jesus Christ; perfect and mature in experience.

It’s possible for a man to have union with Christ, but be an utter stranger to communion with Him. We may have life, but we may know nothing at all about abundant life. We may pardon, but we may be absolutely powerless over sin. We may be justified, but we may not be sanctified. There is a BIG difference between what we are in position by what the Lord did for us on Calvary and what we are in experience by what He can do in us by the Holy Spirit.