Is Your Best Behind You Or Ahead Of You?

I have a question I want to ask you this morning that can apply to you as an individual as well as to you as a church. The question: Do you believe that your best years are behind you, or do you believe that your best years are yet before you? Some people as well as some churches believe that their best years are behind them. Many people as well as churches believe that their future will be less than that which has passed.

If as an individual I believe that my best years are behind me I want be of much good for the future as a matter of fact believing that could lead me to not only be non productive but could lead to me dying.

For us to be effective as people and as churches we must live in the confidence of God’s promise that some of our best years are yet to come. You see, I believe that some of my best years are still ahead of me. I also believe that some of the best years of this church are not behind it but are ahead of it.

In Revelation 21:5 these words are found: “And He who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’” This does not mean that the future will become progressively better and better. Rather, it means that in the midst of the pain, suffering, and tragedies that lie before us in our future, God goes before us to make all things new—inviting us to that future that He has both promised and prepared for us. God is not simply in the past. God is in the present and the future leading and drawing us toward newness of life.

Throughout this message I will be referring back to Numbers 13 which will give us the background for the setting in Joshua 14.

In Numbers 13 we have the report of the spies as they returned back to Moses and the Children of Israel.

None of the 12 that went could deny that the land of Canaan was a very fruitful land; the bunch of grapes they brought back with them was a demonstration of that. God had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, and the evil spies themselves admitted that it was such a land.

The 10 evil spies then began to share how strong and fearful they enemy looked, indicating that they were no match for what was in Canaan. Oh yes they said, the land is all God said it would be but the obstacles are too much.

That sounds like the enemy today, he tells us the future does look bright for you and the church but the obstacles are too much for you to receive what God has said is yours.

When they saw the Nepthalim they said they became like “grasshoppers.” In other words they felt like small insignificant bugs that could be stepped on and destroyed.

Caleb and Joshua stood for God; they knew that if God promised it then it would come to pass. They knew that their God was greater than anything in Canaan.

God’s promise to them is in Exodus 33:2 - "And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.”

Listen: It doesn’t matter what the situation appears to be, it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are; if you have God’s promise, you will be able to do whatever He has said.

They had been delivered from Egypt in the past, what a great victory that was but God was not finished with them. Even though their past was great their future was to be greater. They were to inherit a whole country that God had promised to them.

You see it is God’s word not circumstances or situations that should control our actions.

Part of the problem with the church is that we aren’t trusting God’s Word. You and I can’t defeat the enemy in our own strength, in our own power. But we can defeat him if we stand on the Word. Nothing can stop you; nothing can prevent you from maintaining victory as long as you are standing on the Word.

Now back to the story. You remember God’s people believed the 10 spies and were turned from going in and possessing the land. Instead of relying on the supernatural Word of God, they relied on the natural word of man.

Notice Joshua 14:8, it says: “Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt…”

That word “melt” means to melt, dissolve, and be liquefied

1a1) to melt, cause to dissolve, consume, cause to vanish