Along The Road Of Life... Series

February 12, 2006

Joshua 5:1-12

“Along the road of life…”

• Intro.

o I figured out what happened in the super bowl.

 Show Ref. slide.

o I want you guys to look at a few confusing things that you might see along the road of life…

 Show road signs.

o We have been walking through the book of Joshua; we have seen Joshua take over command of Israel. We saw God use Rahab… a prostitute, for God’s purpose. Just last week we saw Israel… finally after 40 years in the wilderness, cross over into the land that was promised to them.

o For the purposes today, however, I think we need to look all the way back to the beginning at God’s deliverance of His people Israel.

 Israel is oppressed in Egypt

 God promises to deliver them by way of Moses

 God sends plagues throughout Egypt to overthrow Pharaoh.

 In Exodus 12 God intercedes for Israel by passing over their houses during a plague.

 He delivers Israel from Egypt

 Israel crosses the Red Sea.

 Israel starts to worship Idols

 God tells Israel that they will not see Promised Land, because of their rebellion.

 Moses dies

 Joshua takes over

 God brings Israel to the Promised Land.

o Along our road of life we have a lot of ups and downs too…

 List a few

• You believe

• Someone in the family dies

• A son or daughter gets married.

• Someone close to you gets cancer.

• You bring a friend to Christ.

o I will summarize these events in this way… Along the road of life… Things Happen.

 Profound statement

• Who gave this guy the microphone?

• I promise I will expand throughout our time.

o We see on this road for Israel, things happening, and usually our response to what Israel does is, “They are so stupid… how could they do that… I would never do that…”

 Well… I am here today to tell you that Israel has finally done something for us to model.

 In Joshua 5 we see Israel doing 3 essential actions that are prescriptive for us today.

• Explain descriptive and prescriptive.

o In Genesis: we see Abraham have two wives… descriptive passage.

o In Acts: we see the disciples of Jesus continuing on even though they are being persecuted… prescriptive.

o Pray

o Read verses 1-9

• The first of these actions that we are going to look at is Trust.

o There is an old story of a father who took his young son out and stood him on the railing of the back porch. He then went down, stood on the lawn, and encouraged the little fellow to jump into his arms. "I’ll catch you," the father said confidently. After a lot of coaxing, the little boy finally made the leap. When he did, the father stepped back and let the child fall to the ground. He then picked his son up, dusted him off, and dried his tears.

"Let that be a lesson," he said sternly. "Don’t ever trust anyone."

o We hear this story and kind of chuckle, but the real funny thing is that today in this world… this is the attitude.

o How many of you watched the beginning of the winter Olympics on Friday night?

o As incredible as the athletes are in the Winter Olympics, I heard about a television special that was on just before the start of the 1988 Winter Olympics that I found to be even more incredible.

o This television special featured blind skiers being trained for slalom skiing, impossible as that sounds. Paired with sighted skiers, the blind skiers were taught on the flats how to make right and left turns. When that was mastered, they were taken to the slalom slope, where their sighted partners skied beside them shouting, "Left!" and "Right!" As they obeyed the commands, they were able to negotiate the course and cross the finish line, depending solely on the sighted skiers’ word. It was either complete trust or catastrophe.

 This is the Christian model of Trust.

• Completely blind as to what the future holds, relying on God to direct the way.

 In these first 9 verses of Joshua 5 we see an amazing trust on the part of Joshua and on the part of Israel for that matter.

 Lets review what has just happened to Israel:

• They have just crossed the Jordan into the promise land, in which they are going to have to fight for.

 This has got to be the worst military strategy in the history of the world.

• We are in the most hostile territory now, with people wanting to fight us for this land, and we are going to circumcise our men now.