Note: Glory Days by Max Lucado was used as a reference for this message.
Title: Running From Victory
Theme: Show how God has already given us the victory, we don’t need to go after it and fight for it, it is ours.
Text: Joshua 1:1 – 6
Prayer Time
Prayer Time – Don’t Just Bow Down
Revelation 19:9 Then he said to me, "Write: 'Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!' " And he said to me, "These are the true sayings of God. 10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, "See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."
Don’t get so distracted by the activities that you miss who we came to worship. It is easy to worship the music or the people or the preaching. How do we know? By that which distracts us or makes us angry. That which affects us.
Offering
Jos 1:1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord,
I wonder how this must have felt to Joshua. Moses had led this nation for 40 years.
Deuteronomy 34:10-12 sums it up, “ But since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, (11) in all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, before Pharaoh, before all his servants, and in all his land, (12) and by all that mighty power and all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”
Joshua was now charged with the task to lead. What was he going to do? Was he going to spend time mourning or being upset?
it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying:
Joshua 1:2 "Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them--the children of Israel.
Reasons that Joshua can say “I can’t”
#1 Moses is dead
# 2 These people that he was to lead in an war torn land was not soldiers
# 3 The Canaanites eat people like breakfast
Joshua never declared defeat not only because of who he was; 12 spies sent in and only 2 said lets take the land Joshua and Caleb. But mostly because who God is.
Listen to these words again, “to the land which I am giving them – the children of Israel”
Joshua was not afraid because he was courageous but because God was bigger.
“Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world”.
I am great when I have God in me.
It was done. This land was a gift from God.
Jos 1:3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
Did you get that word? This is why Joshua could stand firm in the face of the enemy. When things seemed to be impossible. This one word “inheritance”.
Did you know this word appears nearly sixty times in Joshua alone.
Over and over again God commands His children possess the land.
Nothing has changed. IF you are a child of God you have been given an inheritance.
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
In Christ
This may be the best kept secret of Christiandom Some Christians view conversion as just a removal of sin. You go in as a mess full of sin and come out cleansed and that is it. But I am here to tell you that when you became a part of the kingdom Christ gave you power. Freedom. Hope. And inheritance in Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
I quoted this verse the other day to someone. Someone who was struggling with their identity. Someone who needed to understand that Chrsit has made you new.
If I could get this across and get you to leave your past behind and move forward to claim you inheritance in Christ.
2 Peter 1:3 As we know Jesus better, his divine power gives us everything we need for living a godly life. He has called us to receive his own glory and goodness!
“In Canaan you do not fight for victory. You fight from victory. In the wilderness (of sin) you strive. In Canaan you trust. In the wilderness you seek God’s attention. In Canaan you already have God’s favor. In the wilderness you doubt your salvation. In Canaan you know you are saved. You move from wanting to have to believing you aleady do.
Let me see if I can make this clearer
John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
Since you are part of the family you have access to God’s blessings
Ephesians 1:11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,
Let’s get deeper
Romans 8:16-17 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (17) and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
Joinheirs
G4789
- Original: συγκληρονόμος
- Transliteration: Sugkleronomos
- Phonetic: soong-klay-ron-om'-os
- Definition:
1. a fellow heir, a joint heir
2. one who obtains something assigned to himself with others, a joint participant
We have the same inheritance
1 John 4:17 MSG This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day--our standing in the world is identical with Christ's.
We have the same as Christ. If you look at the way He lived. What He let go of the achieve all the God had to fulfill in Him. Hurt. Rejection.
So why do we miss it. Why do we live in an unvictoious state?
I. Nobody told us
Nobody told us of His Eph 1:19 exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power
II. We don’t believe in our inheritance
This is what happened to the Israelites when they first left Egypt. They had a chance to go into the promised land. They were only a few days journey. They could have been there. Yet they did not believe. 12 spies were sent out and 10 came back with fear over faith. The people listened to the 10 and a generation was lost.
Numbers 13:23-33 Then they came to the Valley of Eshcol, and there cut down a branch with one cluster of grapes; they carried it between two of them on a pole. They also brought some of the pomegranates and figs. (24) The place was called the Valley of Eshcol, [16] because of the cluster which the men of Israel cut down there. (25) And they returned from spying out the land after forty days. (26) Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. (27) Then they told him, and said: "We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. (28) Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there. (29) The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan." (30) Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, "Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it." (31) But the men who had gone up with him said, "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we." (32) And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, "The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. (33) There we saw the giants [17](the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight."
God said the land was theirs but they doubted. Are you doubting today? Do you believe.
Faith
Heb 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
God is about to change your territory. Israel was nomads. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob for 400 years they lived like gypsies. They traveled place to place. God said I am about to settle you.
There are some of you here that the Lord would love to change your territory. Many of you have wondered from place to place. Traveling. Yet God wants to chage some things. James “Don’t be tossed by every wind and doctrine”.
