AUDACIOUS FAITH
Josh. 10:5-13
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: THE GREAT PHYSICIAN
1. A doctor died and went to heaven, where he found a long line at St. Peter’s gate. As was his custom, the doctor rushed to the front, but St. Peter told him to wait in line like everyone else. Muttering and looking at his watch, the doctor stood at the end of the line.
2. Moments later a white-haired man wearing a white coat and carrying a stethoscope and medical bag rushed up to the front of the line, waved to St. Peter, and was immediately admitted through the Pearly Gates.
3. "Hey!" the doctor shouted. "How come you let him through?" "Oh," said St. Peter, "that was God. Sometimes he likes to play doctor." AREN’T YOU GLAD HE DOES!?
B. TEXT
9:14 The Israelites sampled their provisions [old wine-skins, moldy bread, worn-out clothes] but did not inquire of the Lord. 15 Then Joshua made a treaty of peace with [Gibeah] to let them live, and the leaders of the assembly ratified it by oath. 10:5 Then the five kings of the Amorites—the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon—joined forces....against Gibeon and attacked it. 9 After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise. 10 The Lord threw them into confusion before Israel, so Joshua and the Israelites defeated them completely at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah. 11 As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them, and more of them died from the hail than were killed by the swords of the Israelites. 12 Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” 13 So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies
C. THESIS
1. Today we’re looking at audacious faith. God challenges us to enlarge our concepts about what is possible with God. If we follow his lead we’ll believe God for bigger things!
2. Momentum was developing with Israel taking the land. 5 kings banded together to fight against Gibeah because they had entered a covenant with the Jews. God used this incident to allow Joshua to demonstrate “Audacious Faith.”
I. WHEN ISRAEL MESSED-UP
A. TRUSTING TO OUR REASON, ALONE
1. The first thing that Israel did was that they depended on their own intelligence for making decisions and didn’t inquire of the Lord. Millions of people take the wrong paths in life because they don’t seek God’s direction first.
2. “Trust in the Lord with all your hearts and lean not upon your own understanding! In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths” Prv. 3:5 NKJV. We don’t abandon our reason; we submit our intelligence to the greater intelligence of God!
3. Now what Gibeah did was really a smart move! They knew they couldn’t defeat Israel, so they made up their minds to make a treaty with them. They were actually following Jesus’ advice; “A king...about to go to war against another king [but can’t win, should]...send a delegation...and ask for terms of peace” Lk. 14:31-32. Like Gibeah, we are all under judgment. Have YOU made peace with God through His Son Jesus?
B. OUR MISTAKES & GOD’S GRACE
1. After Israel found out that Gibeah was one of the evil nations God had commanded them to destroy, the Israel leaders probably said, “Oh, no! We made a mistake! We blew it!” But we serve an AWESOME GOD who’s able to take our messes and turn them into miracles! God’s big enough that our mess ups don’t throw God’s plans for us off the rails!
2. God used their mistake to bring 5 nations together (outside of their walled cities) so Israel could defeat all 5 in one battle! God turned their mistakes into marvels!
3. Some of you have made mistakes; you kick yourself over the mistake. But we don’t serve a Karma-God who says, “You got yourself into this, so you have to live with it!” No, we serve a Grace-God, who says, “I’m going to take your mistake and make it into a multiplication!”
4. There’s the promise and the payoff. In between is the process. Don’t give up during the process. The enemy wants you to quit before your payoff. You may have a crazy 5-fold attack on you, but you also have a 5-fold powerful God who’s got your back and is going to power-slam your problem!
II. FOUR MIRACLES OF THIS BATTLE
A. SUPERNATURAL ENDURANCE
1. The men of Israel had been up a full 12-hour day when they were mustered to march all night (another 12 hours) the 27 miles to Gibeah. Immediately on arriving, without sleeping or eating, they entered a battle that lasted at least the next 24 hours, then they had to set up camp, cook their dinners, etc.
2. It’s amazing the stamina God gave them to march carrying heavy helmets, shields, swords, etc. all night over rough terrain and then fight such a sustained, lengthy battle for two full 12-hour days! It couldn’t have been done except by supernatural aid!
B. GOD CONFUSED THEIR ENEMIES
1. This was a true miracle. “The Lord threw them into confusion,” Verse 10. God did this to the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites (Ex. 14:24).
2. Fear comes where there’s confusion (Ex. 23:27). Confusion is one of the stages of God overthrowing an evil people (Dt. 7:23). When this happens, the otherwise level-headed generals make bad decisions, and the troops, instead of confidently facing their opponents, think they’re going to die and run!
C. GOD HURLED GREAT HAILSTONES
1. 10:11 says, “As they fled...the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them, and more of them died from the hail than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.”
2. Have you ever seen hail in July? Yet that’s what this was! It was large hail. In 2010, 8-inch hailstones fell in Vivian, South Dakota. That’s the size of a volleyball! They left impact pits 14 inches deep in the ground! This hail was like that.
3. Think of it: the giant hailstones only fell on the enemy. Now imagine this - the battle is constantly moving and the battle lines fluctuating, so each hailstone must have been supernaturally directed (laser-guided) in order not to hit any of the Israelites, but only to fall on their enemies. The hail is forming as frozen droplets at say, 20,000 feet and falling, gradually gaining more moister and mass. Imagine the precision of God and fore-knowledge, to guide the falling hail to impact at the right place & time. Amazing!
D. GOD STOPPED THE SUN & MOON
Skeptics would say this never happened, or give some reason to explain it away. But accounts from civilizations all over the world prove this was a true global-event.
1. A DOUBLE-DAYTIME RECORDED BY...
a. CHINESE in history of Yao, their king. The sun stood so long above the horizon that it was feared the world would have been set on fire.(year of the world 2554).
b. LATIN POET OVID. Phaeton, a Canaanite prince, told of the sun holding still a full day.
c. In the ORPHIC HYMNS, Bacchus, a god-man, arrested the course of the sun and the moon.
d. INDIA. Their legend tells how the sun stood still to hear the pious ejaculations of Arjouan after the death of Crishna.
e. BABYLONIAN/ PERSIAN LEGENDS tell of it.
f. HERODOTUS reported that the priests of Egypt showed him a strange account of a day that was 2X the natural length.
2. LONG SUNRISE LEGEND – recorded in West Africa
3. NORTH & SOUTH AMERICA LONG NIGHT LEGENDS
a. Five Native American tribes tell of a long night - The Ojibways, Wyandots, Dogrib Indians of the N.W., the Omahas, and the Bungee Indians from the Lake Winnipeg area of Canada all relate the same event.
b. The Aztecs and the Quiché Mayans of Guatemala both described their fear when it happened. In Peru, according to Montesinos, the sun was hidden for 20 hours (1400 B.C.).
4. LONG SUNSET LEGENDS: Eastern Fiji Islands and New Zealand Maori people said the sun sat on the horizon a full day.
5. SUMMARY: So the extra 12-hour period has been independently verified by widespread legends around the world, which correspond according to their geographic location as to whether it was night, day, sunset, or sunrise. The dates of record are about the time of Joshua’s invasion. For details, see:
http://www.geocentricity.com/astronomy_of_bible/jld/
III. AUDACIOUS FAITH
A. JOSHUA’S BOLD MOVE
1. THE NEED. The hailstones killed more than the Israelites did. Yet many were still escaping. The ability to finish the battle would be compromised if there wasn’t more time – so Joshua undertook the amazing step he did.
2. AUDACIOUS is defined as “intrepidly daring, adventurous, reckless & bold; contemptuous of the odds or normal outcomes; marked by originality or out-of-the-box thinking.” This is a great definition of faith too, because faith acts boldly on what can’t be seen or quantified (see Heb. 11:1, AMPC)
3. Faith provokes action. If there’s no risk, then there’s no skin in the game. Will we pray for someone’s healing only from a distance? A guy went over to pray for a crippled grandmother. He prayed. Nothing happened. He prayed again. Then he asked her to take a step and she was healed. That was audacious faith!
4. Joshua thought, “A God who will aid us with hailstones wants us to finish our mission! This is a time to step out in faith and ask BIG.” So he asked God to freeze time for a few minutes until they finished their battle.
5. Jesus said, “You haven’t asked anything yet. Ask and your joy will be full.” Ask for the outrageous! The greatest miracles are yet to come! It was a moon-stop moment.
6. “God, You would stop the universe to keep your Word.” For some of you, God wants to put darkness in check. Our asking has been too small. The context is removal of roadblocks.
7. What would Jesus do if He were in the room? We want to close the gap between what Jesus would do and what we would do.
B. PERSPECTIVE
1. If your problems are looking big, and your God is looking small, then you're looking at God through the wrong end of the binoculars. When you use a magnifying glass, it doesn't change the size of what you look at. It changes your perception.
2. Divine power slumbers in God’s Word. What awakens that power is when we believe the promises and act on them in faith. Don’t be afraid you have insufficient faith; Jesus still answered the father’s insufficient faith for his son (Mt. 17:18).
3. Your faith need not be the same size as your problem. Mustard-seed faith can move mountains because it’s not OUR faith that moves them, but the GOD we have faith in!
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: A Modern-Day Elijah
1. On one of the islands of Indonesia, in a mountain village called Buru, there lived a boy named Bapa Timmy. He worshiped after the fashion of his ancestors, and did his best to please the evil spirits he believed were in rocks, trees, and other objects.
2. One day, tragedy struck Bapa’s family. Ten of his brothers and sisters died. In his sorrow, Bapa turned from his animism and began to search for the unknown God he believed must exist somewhere.
3. As an adult, Bapa Timmy met an Assemblies of God believer who explained the Bible to him. Bapa couldn’t read or write, but he accepted Jesus and was born again. He returned to his village and won many people in the area to Christ.
4. Not everyone was happy about Bapa’s decision to reject the religion of his village. 30 men came out of the mountains and attacked Bapa. They nearly beat him to death. Within a week, however, Bapa had recovered, yet all but six of his attackers had died.
5. Those 6 who lived were afflicted with various illnesses. Believing they were being punished for their evil deed, they returned to Bapa and joined him in following the true God—Jesus Christ!
6. One day, the village witch doctors gathered around Bapa Timmy’s house. “We want to know if your God is real,” they said. “Pray and see if He will send us rain.” They did this because for 9 months no rain had fallen and all the crops had withered. A forest fire had left the land charred and barren.
7. The witch doctors had prayed to their false gods, but nothing happened. Desperate, they challenged Bapa Timmy to pray to his God too. Bapa accepted the challenge and prayed for rain. He told the witch doctors exactly what day and time the rains would come.
8. On the morning of the appointed day, the sky was bright and clear with no rain in sight. The people of the village questioned whether Bapa Timmy’s God was the true God after all. Everyone was in suspense.
9. As the hour Bapa had announced drew near, the sky grew dark. All the villagers and witch doctors gathered outside to see what was happening. At the very time, rain poured down! The people of the village were amazed; Bapa Timmy’s God WAS the true God!
10. When Bapa Timmy later visited a different village to share Christ, more than 100 people were waiting for him. They had heard of the miracle God had done. When Bapa began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell. All of those present began to speak in other tongues. Bapa Timmy lived another 35 years. He died in 1988 at age 91. 13 churches that were started through the man who was a modern-day Elijah! [Whosoever Magazine, 1991; Assemblies of God World Missions]
B. THE CALL
1. How many of you have made a mistake and would like to see God turn it into a miracle? Raise your hands. I declare release from self-condemnation for past mistakes. We don’t serve a Karma-God, but a Grace-God!
2. How many have roadblocks you need God to move?
3. How many of you have a challenging situation you need greater faith for? We’re going to pray for increase in faith.
4. GOD IS ON YOUR SIDE! GOD IS WORKING FOR YOUR GOOD! How many need encouragement today? Raise your hands. All who raised hands come forward. PRAYER.
[This is a rewrite of a message by Sean Smith]
