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131: The Battle Begins
33 Plays6 days ago
The past few weeks of our journey through "The Story" has brought us to some pivotal moments in our faith history. We see the Israelites escape slavery, witness an awe-inspiring miracle at the Red Sea, and create a covenant with God. Then they wander in a desert for 40 years.
The grumbling and complaining got too much for God. This week, they finally get the chance to claim the land that was promised to them, and it's going to take a whole lot of courage and trust in God. That's something we're all in need of. Listen as Pastor Jim Mueller explains how the battle begins. The Israelites will be claiming victories and learning that faith and obedience play a big part in securing their triumphs. There's a big lesson in there for you.
If you’d like to dig deeper, check out these discussion questions. You can complete them on your own, with your Community Group, or with family and friends.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Normal Goes a Long Way'
00:00:00
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The following podcast is a Jill dev Divine Media production.
00:00:20
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I'm Jill Devine, your host for Normal Goes
The Battle Begins: Joshua's Leadership
00:00:22
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a Long Way. And in this week's episode, we will cover chapter seven of the story by Randy Frazee, The Battle Begins.
00:00:32
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ah Today we are looking at The Battle Begins, chapter seven. This is the story of Joshua. And I want to start with his names because one of the neat things when you learn Hebrew is you you find these unique ah qualities to names. I don't know what each of your names maybe means, but I know what the name Joshua means.
00:00:50
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It's pronounced ah Yeshua or Yeshua, and it means God's Savior. So Joshua, who took over for Moses, is God's Savior. In fact, that's Jesus' name in Hebrew. So if you named your kid Joshua,
00:01:05
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It's as if you named your kid Jesus. His disciples, his friends, they would have called him Yeshua, Joshua. that's Jesus'
Fear and Faith: Spies and Giants in Jericho
00:01:14
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name. um Joshua is the one who's gonna bring the people into the promised land.
00:01:20
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Moses led them out of Egypt and up to the promised land, but Moses was not gonna be able to lead the people into the promised land. That's Joshua. And he has the same name as the one who's gonna lead all of us into the eternal promised land ah heaven it's also one of the name it's also the name of one of the best albums in history an album by you too if you were here with us last spring we talked about it has anybody here ever been to joshua tree national park anybody okay just a couple people um not enough hippies in the room um
00:01:58
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The Mormon settlers, they crossed the Mojave Desert in the 19th century, and they named a yucca tree there, ah the Joshua tree, because it reminded them of Joshua raising his hands to God in prayer.
00:02:11
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and Now, Ryan last week, he left us um in the biblical story with the Jewish people wandering in the desert, wandering in the desert for 40 years. They were just on the cusp of the promised land.
00:02:23
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And so Moses starts by sending spies into Jericho to check it out and to report Bibles. Back to him. And Ryan shared this, these couple verses with us. And I want to share them with you again, just so we start in that context. It says, they gave Moses this account. We went into the land to which you sent us.
00:02:43
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And it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.
00:02:56
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We saw the Nephilim there. The descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.
00:03:09
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We'll pause the story for a moment. The spies are focused on the size of Jericho's walls and the size of Jericho's soldiers.
00:03:22
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And so they're so focused on the size of these giants that they take their focus away from the size of their God. The size of the giants instead of focusing on the size of their God.
00:03:37
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And I think as people, this is the greatest mistake we make. As Christians, this is one of the greatest mistakes we make in life.
00:03:47
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We focus on the size of our debt today. We focus on the size of our problem, the size of our grief. We focus on our own abilities or lack thereof.
00:04:00
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And so our faith crumbles. And every day you have a choice. You can focus on the size of your problem or you can focus on the size of God.
00:04:13
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You can focus on your burdens or you can remember the power of God.
Comparing Faith: King Saul vs. David
00:04:17
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And the choice you make every day Where you're going to put your focus, it is going to determine the path of your life, the way you live your life, the kind of life that you're going to live, and the kind of faith that you're going to have.
00:04:33
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There was a difference between King Saul and David the shepherd. One focused on the size of Goliath. The other focused on the promises of God.
00:04:45
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And that one dropped the giant with a small stone. And from that moment on everybody knew who the real king was. It wasn't the guy with the crown anymore.
00:04:58
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It was the guy with the sling. was the guy who knew how to pray. Now, all this talk about biblical giants can immediately make normal people like really uncomfortable.
00:05:10
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So let me just offer you a little historical evidence. So when I talk about Goliath, and I so i talk so historically about Goliath, this is some of the reasons why. Let me introduce you to the giants of Castanel.
00:05:25
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This is a and news article in 1892. The New York Times ran a snippet titled, Race of Giants in Old Gaul. And this is what the New York Times article said. It says, some human bones of enormous size double the ordinary in fact.
00:05:41
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The bones you see here would have come from a giant 10 to 11 feet tall.
00:05:47
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This is not a hoax. This is not made up.
00:05:53
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The tallest man that we have known ever historically named Robert ludlow ah Wadlow was just a shade under nine feet tall. ah He died at 22 of an infection, but if he hadn't died of an infection, he would have kept growing.
00:06:10
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Eight foot 11. When his body was returned to his hometown, it was buried in a 1,000 pound casket. It was carried by a dozen pallbearers and eight assistants.
00:06:24
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A life-size statue honoring him still stands in Alton, Illinois, just across the river. By the way, at birth, ladies, he was eight and a half pounds, kind of normal size.
00:06:35
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To show another picture, this is a picture of Major Might of the Ringling Brothers, and he's comparing his size four shoes with Wadlow's size 36 shoes.
00:06:48
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This is an actual photo. It's just the color's been added to it. But a size 36 shoe, he would make Shaquille O'Neal look small.
00:07:00
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And let me go to archaeology a little bit. Archaeologists have been digging digging at the purported biblical home of Goliath, and they have unearthed a shard of pottery that bears the inscription of the Philistines' name, a find that they claimed lends historical credence to the Bible's tale of David's battle with the giant.
00:07:20
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This piece of pottery dates to 950 BC, right about the time the Bible says it should have happened. And it makes it the oldest Philistine inscription ever found.
00:07:31
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So apparently Goliath was famous, and he lived at that time. And this is what non-Christian archaeologists are telling us.
Joshua's Leadership Affirmed by God
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Now in our story, the spies, they certainly believe in giants.
00:07:47
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In fact, so much so that they got the people to rebel against Moses and Aaron, and they convinced the people, we should go back to Egypt. we We don't want this land. We can't win this land.
00:08:00
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Let's go back to Egypt. But two of the spies disagreed with them. In fact, Joshua and Caleb, they tore their clothes in front of everybody.
00:08:12
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And they accused those spies of having a lack of faith. And that everybody needed to trust in God. And they couldn't believe that the people would turn on God.
00:08:25
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And not believe in his promises. After everything that they had been through to that point. And this is what they said in Numbers chapter 14. They said, if the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us.
00:08:42
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Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the land, the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us.
00:08:55
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Do not be afraid. ah them See, Joshua and Caleb are trying to turn the people's focus back on God and away from the size of the giants.
00:09:08
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And their only rule is don't rebel against God.
00:09:14
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Because if the Lord is with us, we're going to win. And if the Lord is with us, there's nothing to fear. Which again, if that's the only thing you take away from this message today,
00:09:28
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then you learned a lot. Where's your focus? Is it on your problem or is it on the size of your God? And that lesson, again, will change the way you live your life.
00:09:41
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Joshua chapter one starts with these words. I love these words. It says, after the death of Moses. Can you imagine taking over for the parting the Red Sea guy?
00:09:56
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Can you imagine taking over for the Ten Commandments guy? The one that prayed that manna would come from heaven guy? God's like, hey, you're replacing him. The thing is, God knows Joshua needs a confirmation in front of the people.
00:10:12
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If the people are going to follow him the way that they followed Moses, Joshua is going to need a little street cred. And so this is what it says in Joshua 3. It says, And the Lord said to Joshua, Today i will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel so that they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses.
00:10:30
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And so Joshua's leadership starts off with the parting of the waters of the Jordan River. Moses parted the Red Sea, so Joshua needed to part something, and he parted the Jordan River, and the people passed through. And again, this gave him some street cred in front of the people.
00:10:47
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A lot of you didn't know the Bible has moments of street cred. It does. Now, a little pastor honesty time. At my last church, I took over a ministry where they had 60 years of history,
00:11:03
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They had planted five churches and ministries overseas. Their last senior pastor was there for 38 years and was beloved.
00:11:15
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And at seminary, nobody told me how to do that, how to take over for somebody like that, how to lead a ministry like that. Like there were no classes on how to do that. And and part of me was like, God, if I do this, like, could you do me a solid?
00:11:33
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like maybe part some seas or something like that. And the truth is he didn't even part a swimming pool. I had to had to earn everything. But my prayer the whole time was that this church was gonna flourish because of God, not because of me, not because of the rest of our staff.
00:11:54
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I would do my best to be faithful, but God was the key. So I never thought of it like I was the leader or I don't think Joshua thought he was the leader either, by the way.
00:12:08
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He was the first follower at best, which is all any pastor tries to do is to be a good follower of God.
Strength and Courage: Personal Reflections
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And so my role here, our role here as pastors is to be first followers, like to worship with you, to say the confession prayer with you, to repent of our sins too.
00:12:33
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And that's the thing we all need to realize. If you want to be a great leader, you have to first be a great follower because great leaders follow somebody else better.
00:12:44
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It's the servant who follows well who's going to be asked to lead.
00:12:50
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And this is what God told Joshua to do. These are some more famous words. This is chapter one, verses five through six. God tells him, no one's gonna be able to stand against you in the days of your life.
00:13:01
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As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.
00:13:17
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Now, in these verses, he actually tells Joshua to be strong and courageous three times. Three times in four verses. The second time he says, be strong and very courageous.
00:13:35
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I guess it's probably because Joshua needed to hear it. Like us, he had to be reminded to be strong, to be courageous. We're the same way.
00:13:47
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i mean, I can imagine this is a scene. All right, Joshua, ah this is a big deal, but I'm going to be with you. So be strong and courageous. And Joshua was like, okay. God's like, no, seriously, Joshua, you're going to get to the river and the waters are going to be rushing, but you're going to part them. So be strong and courageous. We will separate them together. You're going to be okay.
00:14:09
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Joshua was like, and okay, I'll try. God's like, seriously, Joshua, I got you. I don't care how big the walls are. I don't care how tall their warriors are. Be strong and courageous because I've got you right where I want you and you can do it.
00:14:28
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Do you have those moments in life where you know God's like, hey, go get them, tiger.
00:14:34
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And you're like, okay. God believes in you more than you believe in yourself.
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And you're like, I guess, I think sometimes God's just like an old school coach who's like, put your head down and just run the ball as hard as you can.
00:14:55
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I'm with you. i think that's the way we need to see God. If it's his plan, it's gonna work. If it's not, it won't. And we won't get anywhere unless we're strong and courageous when God calls us into action.
00:15:10
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And there is no greater place we see this than the story of the cross. Jesus at the cross is called to do the ultimate and courageous faith.
00:15:20
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He's told that he has to lose, die, in order to win. He has to die, So we can live.
00:15:32
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As Christians, we do not follow a prophet. We follow Christ crucified.
00:15:40
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When I was growing up, my church, we had these these old hymnals that were in the pews. And I always found it interesting, some of the names of the hymns in Christian hymnals. Like hymns like nothing but the blood.
00:15:53
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Covered by the blood. The old rugged cross. And another one, are you washed in the blood? Seriously, somebody could opened the hymnal in the church I grew up in and think, man, these Christians are really into some gory stuff.
00:16:10
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And they'd be right. Because we don't follow some good ideas. We followed the one who spilled his blood for us. It's gross.
00:16:22
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That's kind of the point. It was a sacrifice. But it's the greatest thing. act of courageous sacrifice in history.
Rahab's Faith and the Fall of Jericho
00:16:32
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When we confess, when we say God died to my sin and God has risen from the dead for my salvation, that costs something.
00:16:41
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And the theological word is called atonement. Your sin is atoned for. Somebody else takes it on and pays the price. And that's why i follow Jesus.
00:16:54
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And Joshua has the same kind of courageous faith as he leads the people into the promised land. Now, just like Moses, Joshua also sends spies into the city. He sends two spies into Jericho to scope it out.
00:17:10
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They end up hiding out in the home of a prostitute named Rahab, who believes God will help the Jewish people conquer Jericho. She actually believes in their God, has faith in their God. And she even helps them escape when the king of Jericho gets word that they are hiding out in her place.
00:17:28
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And so these spies, they promise to protect her and to protect her family when the war starts. And Jericho, it does fall.
00:17:40
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Back to archaeology. Jericho is one of the top three archaeological discoveries of biblical times. One of the great discoveries there was the grain supply.
00:17:52
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The team found many, many jars, more than 3,000 years old, which were all full of burned grain. Why is that significant?
00:18:05
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Well, the military strategy of the day was siege. An army would surround a city, cut off the food, cut off the water supply, and they would wait for the people to starve.
00:18:18
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A besieged city contains no food at the time of destruction. But these jars were still sealed and full. Now, excavations there have shown us that its fortifications featured a wall that was 11 feet high, 14 feet wide. At its top was a smooth stone slope that angled upwards at 35 degrees for 35 feet. And it was joined together by a massive stone that towered even higher. Here's the point.
00:18:48
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It was impenetrable. There was no way in. Normally, this is the type of walled city where you would have to starve them out.
00:19:00
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But God says, we're going to take it in six days. That's the plan. And each day, the priests of the Lord, they would carry the Ark of the Covenant in a liturgical procession, a worship procession around the walls of the city of Jericho.
00:19:20
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And seven additional priests would go before the ark and they would blow the trumpets made from ram's horns. And before those priests, Israel's armies would march in respectful silence.
00:19:32
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And on the seventh day, apparently the Sabbath day, they would march around the city seven times. When they completed that last circuit, the priests were to blow a loud blast on the trumpets and the people were to shout all at once.
00:19:48
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And both the trumpet blast and the shout were acts of worship. And the Bible says the walls came a-tumbling down.
Inclusivity and Redemption in Jesus' Lineage
00:19:59
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The warriors did not lead the charge.
00:20:05
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The chariots and the cavalry did not lead the charge. The best weapons they had did not lead the charge. The Ark of the Covenant led the charge.
00:20:19
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The priests led the charge. And the worship instruments, the worship music led the charge.
00:20:31
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They conquered that city with worship.
00:20:37
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Do not miss that point. When you read through the story, look at how they actually won. It's a profound point throughout all of Scripture on how you win with God.
00:20:52
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And all of Scripture together, if you go through the entire story, one of the lessons you're going to learn as you go through it is the Bible says, worship scares the devil the most.
00:21:03
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Worship drives evil back better than anything else. They didn't knock those walls down with battering rams. They knocked it down with hymns.
00:21:16
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And that's how the Hebrew people found their promised land. And it's the same way that we have to fight the spiritual fight we have as we await our eternal promised land.
00:21:29
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Second major point. God is willing to invite anyone along for the ride who is willing to leave their past and trust in his promises. And no amount of baggage can get in the way.
00:21:40
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And you need to tell that to all your Christian friends, all your judgmental Christian friends. You need to tell them this, that no amount of baggage will keep God away from loving that person.
00:21:55
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Take, for example, Rahab the prostitute. This is what it says in the New Testament in James chapter 2. It's remembering the history of the Jewish people. It says, in the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous?
00:22:15
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Righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction. One of the things that Christians get wrong all the time is assuming that church is for good people.
00:22:30
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No, it's not. Church is for people that need forgiveness, including the pastors. Church is for people who need a second chance. Church is for people who need a God of mercy. That is what the Christian church is all about. It's not for good people, whomever they happen to be.
00:22:49
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haven't met one yet. The worst kind of church is one that was built for self-righteous people.
00:23:00
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The worst kind of church is the kind of church where they're willing to carry around signs that condemn certain sins, but they won't carry signs that point out their own sins.
00:23:17
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Trust me. The sins of hypocrisy and slander and gossip and selfishness, they are just as damaging to humanity as the juicy ones that people like to put on picket signs.
00:23:31
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That is not Christians being faithful. That's Christians being jerks.
00:23:38
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And when people struggle, when people hurt, when when people are brought down and tied down by sin, it's the mercy of God that they need.
00:23:49
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And God's called us to be that person. Yeah, Rahab had baggage too. The same kind of juicy stuff that we like to put on picket signs. Being a prostitute in her culture has the same stigma as it does today.
00:24:06
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But she believed God was doing something in Jericho, that God was behind the Hebrew people. And so she helped them. Not only that, she joined them. Not only that, if you take a beginning...
00:24:18
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Take a look at the beginning of the first gospel, the life of Jesus Christ. Matthew actually starts with the genealogy, and he starts to list all the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of Jesus, but he even mentions some women too.
00:24:32
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So the first line says, this is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David. I skipped ahead a little bit. There's Salmon, the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.
00:24:43
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Boaz, the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed, the father of Jesse. And Jesse, the father of King David. Which is to say that Rahab is the great-great-grandmother of King David.
00:24:58
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And that also makes her a great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of Jesus on his mother's side. Because his dad is God. guys get it, right? Okay.
00:25:10
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right. Pastor joke.
00:25:14
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We don't want to overlook the significance of this text. A Gentile prostitute is included in the lineage of Jesus, the son of God.
00:25:27
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And apparently God's not even embarrassed to tell you that.
00:25:32
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There's only five women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy. The rest is a list of all the grandfathers and great-grandfathers. But Matthew takes the time to mention five women by name, and one of them is a Gentile prostitute. That should tell you everything you need to know about God, that God doesn't give up on people just because of their baggage.
Unique Spirit of Faith: Joshua and Caleb's Legacy
00:25:54
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Last point. It took people like Joshua and Caleb to get the people to finally do it.
00:26:04
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It took people like Joshua and Caleb. Someone had to tear off their clothes in disgust. Someone had to get mad. Someone had to be strong and courageous when the people weren't strong and courageous.
00:26:19
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And Numbers 14 says this about Caleb. We know a lot more about Joshua, but it says, but because my servant Caleb has a different spirit, And he follows me wholeheartedly. I will bring him into the land he went he went to.
00:26:34
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And his descendants will inherit it. Of that first generation, the previous generation, only Joshua and Caleb are allowed to enter the promised land.
00:26:46
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They have a different spirit.
00:26:49
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You can see the same thing as everyone else, but how your spirit frames it makes all the difference. The same evidence, the same facts, you can see the same things.
00:27:03
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But the kind of spirit you have is how you're going to frame it. And over the past 25 plus years in ministry, I've said goodbye to a lot of my faith heroes. Just like Joshua and Caleb said goodbye to Moses, I've said goodbye to a lot of my faith heroes.
00:27:19
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My grandfather was a pastor. He was also a professor at Concordia in Nebraska. He died in 1999, the year before I get married, which is to say my wife didn't quite get to meet him.
00:27:34
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i remember talking to her when I was over at their house visiting them, but she never got to meet my grandfather because we had just started dating. And then I found out he passed away and I was invited to speak at his funeral. And I did.
00:27:51
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The pastor that officiated our wedding, He was my campus pastor at the University of Texas. He was the one that encouraged me the most in my faith.
00:28:03
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And he is the one who encouraged me the most to go into ministry. He saw it when I refused to see it. So if you don't like me as a pastor, blame him.
00:28:14
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And he's in heaven too. Another faith hero that I've had to say goodbye to. He died just this last year. And back in 2018, I heard that Billy Graham, the best evangelist since St. Paul, in my opinion, had passed away.
00:28:31
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Billy Graham was 99. He had two simple caskets made for Ruth, his wife, and for himself. They cost $200. They were made of plywood. And they were built by inmates at the Angola prison in Louisiana.
00:28:46
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One of the most brutal, one of the most racially divided prisons in America, which is exactly why Billy picked them to do it.
Faith Heroes: Parallels with Joshua and Caleb
00:28:54
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And the warden there said it gave the prisoners the most profound opportunity to celebrate whatever faith they had.
00:29:03
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To be honored to build the caskets for the Grams. And I want to close with some of Billy's words. This is what he wrote.
00:29:15
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Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don't you believe a word of it.
00:29:23
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I shall be more alive than I am now. i will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God. I have read the last page of the Bible.
00:29:37
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It's all going to turn out all right.
00:29:41
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Billy Graham had a different spirit. Pastor no my grandfather, they had a different spirit. They were like Joshua and Caleb.
00:29:51
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Billy fought with different weapons. He fought with worship and prayer. There's only one question you need to answer. What kind of spirit is in you? What kind of spirit are you willing to have in you?
00:30:04
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If it's God's, be strong and courageous. It's gonna be a bumpy ride. But don't worry, i have read the last page of the story as well, and it's all gonna turn out.
Conclusion and Invitation to Chapter Eight
00:30:18
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I hope you'll join us again next week for chapter eight. But in the meantime, if you'd like to dig a little bit deeper, head to normalgoesalongway.com. We have some questions that will help you do that.
00:30:30
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And then don't forget, Thursday, Ms. Hannah and Ms. April will be here for you. They will present chapter seven, The Battle Begins, but for the kids in the kid version of Normal Goes a Long Way.
00:30:44
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Thanks for listening.