Moving Forward, Part 2

Moving Forward Part 2

Joshua 1:5-9

I love Mexican food; therefore, it is no surprise that I have grown very fond of the Mi Ranchito restaurant. When I go I order the same thing 99% of the time, the fajitas mi pablito mixed. Honestly, I don’t order it for the chicken and beef, but for the ingredients they add to the chicken and beef.

They add sautéed onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and they top it with their cheese sauce. But there is one ingredient that sets these fajitas apart from all others: bacon. That’s right, bacon. They add bacon to the fajitas. One day I am tempted to ask them to leave out the chicken and beef and just bring me bacon fajitas mi pablito.

You can imagine the shock and dismay I felt one Sunday when they forgot to add the bacon. You can’t leave out the bacon on fajitas mi pablito. I wish I could tell you that this only happened once, but I can’t. Three times they have left out the bacon. Now when I order I make sure they understand that there needs to be bacon in my fajitas.

God never intended for the Fajitas Mi Pablito to be experienced without bacon. The bacon is the promise land, and anything less is the wilderness.

Many Christians are living their Christian experience without bacon, not literally, but figuratively. They are experiencing less that what God has planned for them in life. Jesus came not just to give us eternal life, but abundant life as well. The abundant life for the Christian is the promise land, and it’s not a place, but a person, Jesus Christ.

This morning we continue to move forward with Joshua and the Israelites into the promise land. The journey of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, into the wilderness, and then possessing the promise land is a picture of the Christian life. We are delivered from the bondage of our sin, lead into the wilderness, and are expected to move forward into the fulness and abundance of our salvation by abiding in Christ.

The theme of our study of the book of Joshua is this: God call you to move forward and possess the fulness and abundance of your salvation in Christ Jesus. It always begins with a call. When God delivers you from the bondage of sin, he always calls you to move forward in your Christian experience.

1. God calls you to move forward in your Christian experienced in spite of changing circumstances on the basis of his unchanging character and purposes.

There are eight commands given to Joshua in the first nine verses. The first two are in verse two, “Arise, go over.” God is calling Joshua to lead the Israelites forward into the abundance of their salvation. He does the same for Christians. He never intends for us to stay in the wilderness for long, but to use the wilderness to prepare us for the abundant life.

2. God prepares you to move forward in your Christian experience.

It’s important to note that Joshua was about 85 years old when God called him to move forward. If that is the case then he was probably about 45 years old when the Lord delivered him along with the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. From the age of 45 to the age of 85 God prepared Joshua for the promise land.

The wilderness is something we can’t avoid, but is the path we take to the abundant life. The wilderness is a place of brokenness. It is a place that forces us to trust God. If we don’t trust God and decide to grumble and complain then we live our life without bacon. We don’t live out God’s plan and purpose for our lives, which can only be realized as we abide in Christ.

The wilderness has a purpose in your life as a believer. It’s designed to reveal the inner bondages of rebellion, unbelief, fear, and anger. The wilderness breaks us so that we can receive all that God has for us in Christ.

What wilderness are you in right now?

Take some time to identify the wilderness God has you in and the inner bondage that he is trying to deliver you from. Once you identify it, then commit your wilderness to God.

Take some time to allow God to break you and teach you everything you need know so that you can experience the abundance of your salvation.

Don’t stop with today. Spend the week praying about your wilderness and ask God to give you a hunger for the promise land of Christ’s presence in your life. God calls and prepares us to move forward in our Christian experience. And when God calls and prepares, he also provides. God provides for you to move forward in your Christian experience.

3. God provides for you to move forward in your Christian experience.

After the Lord commands Joshua to move forward, he then reveals the provisions that he will provide that will enable Joshua and the Israelites to possess the land. All of these provisions come to Joshua first in the form of promises. God provides his promises so that we can move forward on those promises in our Christian experience.

1) Promises

Let’s pick up the story in verse two, ““Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses.” God gives Joshua the promise that he gave to Moses to move forward on.

It’s important that we understand the promises of God. Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary says that the Biblical use of promise reveals the grace of God to man. When God makes a promise he is pledging to perform or grant a specified thing. We can be confident in God fulfilling his promises because of God’s character.

The reason that a promise of God is considered God’s grace revealed to man is the fact that God doesn’t have to make us any promises. He makes promises to sinful man because he is a God of grace, mercy, and faithfulness.

The Lord reminds Joshua twice that he is given the Israelites the land because he made a promise. Notice verses two and three again, ““Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses.”

God promised the land to Moses, and before Moses, to Abraham. That is why the Lord speaks in past tense in verse three, “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, just has I promises Moses.” If God promised it is a done deal.

God promised to give them the land. How much land? Notice verse four, “From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.” Today, this covers modern Israel, all of Jordan, a large part of Saudi Arabia, half of Iraq, all of Lebanon, part of Syria, and all of Kuwait. That’s a lot of land that Israel does not possess, and is believed has never possessed all of it. So what does that mean about God and his promises?

Is God unfaithful to his promises? Not at all. The reason that the promise of the land has never been actualized is not God’s doing, but Israel’s doing. You see God always made the land promise and peace in the land dependent upon covenant faithfulness. It has always been dependent upon the wholehearted obedience of the Israelites to the covenant. God told the Israelites the land was theirs, all they had to do was act in faith and obedience. Instead, they did not experience all that God has for them because the settled for compromise and comfort instead of fullness and abundance.

Of course, now under the New Covenant God offers up a more glorious kingdom, one this world will never match, a kingdom that is found only in Christ.

God provides precious promises for his people to move forward into the fullness and abundance of salvation. God provides promises to move forward on. He also power.

2) Power

Notice the promise of power in the first part of verse five, “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.” God gives Joshua Divine power to move forward with. What may seem impossible with man is possible with God.

This verse is the Romans eight of the Old Testament. If God is for us who can be against us. We may face trial, tribulation, calamities, persecutions, and hardships, but in Christ we are more than conquerers because of the power of God that is given to every believer in Jesus Christ.

Every believer has resurrection power living in him or her. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that we have to move forward in. We have reigning power in us because the power of righteousness reigns in every believer We have released power working in us mightily. God provides promises power so that we can move forward. He also promises to provide his presence.

3) Presence

The last part of verse five, “Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.” This is the greatest promise of all. This is the promise that holds all the other promises in place. God declares that his presence will be with Joshua as he move forward into the promise land.

In the promise land the Lord would be with his people, and as they wholeheartedly obeyed the covenant they would experience peace and abundance in the land so that they could be witnesses to those around the land.

It's interesting that the all to the abundant life with Jesus is a call to wholeheartedly abide in Jesus. But the abundant life does not come without responsibility. Think about this. When Jesus gave us the Great Commission He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19, 20 ESV) The full and abundant life is a life of purpose, a life of going and making disciples for the kingdom of God.

God provides all that we need to move forward; his promises, his power, and his presence. We have God’s promises to stand on, but we need to understand the time element of God’s promises for our lives. If we fail to understand the time element the promises of God may not be actualized in our lives.

Many times God wants us to wait for his promises to be realized in our lives. This means that we can experience what seems to be a delay from our perspective. The danger that we have is to allow unbelief to grow in our seasons of delay. God uses time and waiting as a precious tool to test the condition of our hearts and to bring us into total dependence upon his supernatural power and trust in his ways. Many will not move forward because of God’s delay. Many of the Israelites didn’t move forward because of unbelief. God does act for for those who wait on him.

Let go back to the wilderness that you identified earlier. What’s the inner bondage that God is trying to free you from? Once you identify it, then commit your wilderness to God. Take some time to allow God to break you and teach you everything you need know so that you can experience the abundance of your salvation. Don’t stop with today. Spend the week praying about your wilderness.

Take some time praying about God’s promises for your life. Has God spoken a promise to you, or given you a promise to hold onto? Then remind yourself of that promise. Strengthen yourself with that promise.