Worship-Warning

Good morning. As we look at our passage and we've heard the last words of Joshua, I want to challenge you with a simple question, that is, what would you like your final testimony to be? How do you want to end the race and let your final words be heard? It's important to ask this after Mike's testimony, which I'm very thankful for, for how you shared that. And then oftentimes we think, you know, I'm going to wait to start running that race. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to take a break from running that race, or I'm just going to quit running that race. And that race is, is being sincere and faithful in worshiping God. We think we can wait. We think we can take breaks and we We get tired and we quit. Well, as we look to scripture, we see a man, Joshua, who ran the race with sincerity and faithfulness. We hear of his funeral and Joseph's. So I just want to take a quick moment and give you as a church two encouraging things to think about regarding funerals. I want to take the opportunity to think about this right now because we don't talk about funerals enough. The first is this. If you're a member of this church, and another member passes away, I want to encourage you to prioritize attending that funeral. I realize you may not know the person who's passed away, because many of those who passed away, they're homebound right now, or those who will soon. But I want you to think about and prioritize attending the funeral, because you're not just coming to honor the person who's passed away. You're coming to remember life is fleeting. Death is waiting for us all. Death is going to happen, and you need to prepare yourself to rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's a reminder that you may not know that person, have personal memories, but what you have in common with that other member should be a hope in the resurrection. It's a great learning tool. It's a great instrument. One of the things we talked about at the elders' meeting is we praise God we're a diverse church. We have births and we have deaths. And sadly, that's fairly unique for churches today. And we need to remember that life is precious. It's a miracle from God and life is fleeting. It ends. And I want to encourage you, if you're a member, and there's a funeral for another member, I want you to prioritize attending so that you are reminded of the resurrection. Secondly, I want us all to think about what our funeral should look like. You should be thinking and planning your funeral. Oftentimes, as I'm sitting with the children of a member, they want to plan a celebration of life. No, we want to have a funeral. We want to mourn your loss, the loss of you. We'll celebrate you while you're alive. We're going to mourn that you're no longer with us, and we're going to mourn with hope that Jesus Christ is risen, and now you have new life in Him. And so I encourage you, talk to Sam or myself. We would love to come by and talk about what it means to plan your funeral service, the songs, the messages, the scripture reading, the memorials. It was a bit of a soapbox, I realize, but it was one I just wanted to do. As we look to Joshua, our passage really does break up into two sections. We've talked about 29-33, the funeral arrangements and the end of Joshua, a man who lived a long life of faithful service. What I want to do is look at this in two parts because it does hinge on verse 14. Our passage this morning is about God's people responding to God's call with faithfulness. God has been gracious. That's verses 1 through 13. God calls us to be faithful in worship as a response. That's 14 through 28. And so we're going to see what God has done. Verses 1 through 13. And then what we are called to do. That's 14 through 28. What God has done and what we are called to do. It's a very simple message from Joshua. It's a very simple message for us. morning. And as Nate alluded to before the scripture reading of 1 Corinthians 10, we actually see something very important for us in verses 1 to 5. I want you to hear it again. Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to shechem and summon the elders, the heads, the judges, the officers of Israel. They presented themselves before God, and Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. He's speaking on behalf of God. Hear what God has to say. Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates. Terah. The father of Abraham, the first man to come to faith in the explicit promises of God in Genesis 12. Terah, the father of Aram and of Nahor. And they served other gods. God came and called Abraham while Abraham was doing what? Serving other gods. God didn't look around and find the most faithful and righteous man to say, I'm going to call you to myself because you seem to be doing everything right. No, he called Abraham while he was serving other gods. And God said, I want you to come and serve me, the one true God. This is important for us to remember. We so easily lose sight that we are completely dependent upon God's grace and His calling. He is a gracious God that calls us out of darkness that we're walking in so that we can walk in His light. You don't have to clean yourself up to become a Christian. The actual way you become a Christian is you look and you recognize, I need cleaning. And no matter how much I scrub, I can't clean off all the sin. I need help. And that's when we look to Jesus Christ and we see He is actually able to clean all of your sin. He is able to take the penalty for your sin. He, in His blood, is able to wash you white as snow. You don't get cleaned up to come to Christ. You come to Christ so that He can wash you and forgive you and give you a right standing before God. If you're a Christian this morning, you don't make yourself better. You simply see your need for forgiveness. And you look to Jesus Christ who died to give you forgiveness for ignoring God, to rejecting God, for doing everything but loving God. If you believe in Jesus Christ, that he died on your behalf of your sin, and he rose again to give you new life, you are forgiven. You must believe this. If you're not convinced yet about what God does for us first, look at all the language of I did this. Let's keep going in the text. Verse 3, I took your father Abraham. I gave him Isaac. Verse 4, I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country. In verse 5, and I sent Muthus and Aaron. And I plagued Egypt. And I afterward brought you out of Egypt myself. In verse 6, I brought your fathers out of Egypt. And then verse 7, your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. In verse 8, I brought you to the land of the Amorites. And then in verse 8 again, I gave them into your hand. In verse 10, I would not listen to Balaam, so I delivered you out of his hand. In verse 12, I sent the hornet before you. In verse 13, I gave you a land on which you have not labored, and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat fruit from vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant. I, God says, did all this for you. I called you out of paganism. I called you into a foreign land. I delivered you when they enslaved you. I defeated all of your enemies. I've now given you this land. And look, you're eating grapes you didn't plant the orchard of. You're enjoying every possible blessing. Why? Because of all I, your God, have done for you. He didn't even plant the things. I've given you everything. And this is just a little brief summary of the history of Israel. There's so many things God has done. Not to mention the patience He had with these very obstinate people. His mercy overflows. He's gracious. And they always lack gratitude. We as Christians need to remember all the things God has done. But before we get into the obedience, we have to realize, we have to remember what God has done. And He's done something greater for us than He did in any of these passages. The Father sent His Son, who was perfectly righteous, to die for all of our sin and wickedness and evil. There is nothing that is greater than this. No greater love that a man has than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. God has sent his son to die for us. That's something we have to always remember. It's something we always have to remind one another of. It's something we really need to be thinking about always, because if we really wanted to focus on the cross, you could fill an entire notebook or notebooks in all the things we receive as benefits of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. For instance, when we look to the cross of Christ, the cross alone, we know we're loved. It's the greatest demonstration of love we could possibly have from God. We know we're loved. We know we're free from the power of sin. We know we're forgiven. We know we're delivered. We know we're declared righteous. We know we're reconciled. We know we're members of the family of God. We're adopted. We're converted. We have new life. We have new power. We have hope. We know that God uses suffering for good. We know that we have peace with God. And that's just scratching the surface. These are all the things we must remember God has done for us. Church, we need to be a people who are constantly reminding one another of all God has done for us, which means we need to be talking about Christ and what He's done for us on the cross and what He's done for us in the resurrection and what He does for us through scripture. Remember these things. It's so easy in this world to get tunnel vision or just nearsighted. Right? The problems of the day just seem so overwhelming. All we can think about is the problem right before us without realizing that all of these things are so small in light of what God has been doing since the beginning of time. Planning an amazing plan of salvation for the people who hated Him and rejected Him. Remember these things. Speak to one another about these things. Write down, put in your own words what you can remember and see in Scripture. These are the things God has done for me so that you never lose sight of all He's done for you. So that you're always grateful and giving thanks to God. We're going to move to the second half. What God has done has been great for Israel. Taken out of pagan idolatry, now taken into a promised land where they get to worship the one true God. Verse 4, the hinge is very, very clear. Now, therefore. There's not an if. If you feel like it, you should worship me. I have done more than you could ever ask. Now, therefore, the only option in light of what God has done is, we're going to camp out on these simple declarations right here for quite some time. Now, therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Those four clear declarations, fear, serve, insincerity, and faithfulness. All this needs to come together. We're going to have to take it apart for a little while. What does it mean to fear the Lord? What does it mean to serve Him? What does it mean to do so in sincerity? And what does it mean to do so in faithfulness? Fear, and serve the Lord, and sincerity, and faithfulness. Fear and serve, these two are related. But let's first look, what does it mean to fear? We usually associate the word fear with terror, being scared. Scripturally, it clearly has a stronger connotation of reverence, but I just want to use the word fear. We usually think of fear when we think of a scary figure in a movie. Someone who delights in wickedness. We are afraid of somebody who delights in wickedness because we are afraid they're going to delight in doing wicked to us. We should fear God not because He delights in wickedness. We should fear God because He delights in righteousness. We should fear God because He desires holiness, and perfection, and goodness, and holiness, and love, and righteousness. This is why we should fear God, because if we look at God and we see what He loves, which is justice, we'll quickly see how unjust we are. When we see that He delights in righteousness, we quickly see how sinful we are, and that brings about a fear, because there should be a terror Song we sing, how sweet and awful is the place. There should be a fear that recognizes he is perfectly righteous and I have no righteousness. It puts us under him in a proper way that has reverence and then we realize that righteous God and we're so unrighteous, he has sent his son so that we can be declared righteous. My hope is found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We're just saying that. That fear is real, but we also have a peace with that fear because we know that the one righteous God, he's invited us back to worship him. He's invited us back to know him. He's invited us to see how unrighteous we are so that we can trust him and once again love him. You see, fear is a reverence that has to begin there because we have to recognize how unworthy we are to go before a holy God and not be consumed. And that's why we rejoice in Jesus Christ. He allows us to have a proper reverence that says, I am completely dependent upon you, God, to know you and to worship you. Real reverence starts when we see how much bigger God is than us. and how much more holy and righteous than he is than us. And yet he still invites us only because of Jesus Christ. So fear is a reverence for a God who is righteous. And secondly, let's look at the word serve. We're supposed to have reverence for him and then we're supposed to serve him. Serve is really just another word for worship. Reverence leads to service. That is a necessary cause and effect or a necessary relationship. We all have reverence for something. Whatever we fear, we serve. Whatever we revere, we serve. We commit our energy to it, emotional, physical, volitional. Here, Joshua's saying, serve God. Worship's not a feeling you get. It's not merely a feeling that you get. Worship is action. It's a commitment. It's a covenant. It's a promise. It takes the energy that we have. Whatever your commitments are, that's what you revere. If you want to know what you fear, I want you to think about, all right, what are the commitments that I make? What are the commitments that I keep? We do what we love. It's worth self-inspection here, because God says to worship Him, to fear Him, to serve Him. And we should be asking ourselves, what do I serve? How do I serve God? Now, we're in a worship service. Better yet, this is where Christians gather to worship as a church. Worship didn't just happen during the singing. Worship should have been happening as the scripture is read, as the testimony is being told, as the prayers are being prayed. These are all parts of worship. And worship should be happening right now as you're hearing and saying, God, can you change me? And worship needs to happen when we're done, because you're not going to just worship here. We serve God at all times and all places. Worship isn't something we take a break from life to do. Worship is what we're supposed to always be doing. It's intentionally setting forth our energy to say, I will give my life, my attention, my desires, my thoughts, my words, my actions to God. It usually means we have to do something fairly uncomfortable. It usually means we have to have relationships that we would not otherwise have. It means that we're supposed to love those who are not like us, but Christ has died for them, bought them with his precious blood. We're supposed to love them. Serving usually has a component to it that says you're supposed to serve God by serving others. And we typically want to serve those who are like us in status of life, in position of life. But Scripture tells you something fairly awkward at times. We're supposed to love the stranger. We're supposed to love one who looks different, sounds different, but has the same Jesus Christ, the same Savior. We're supposed to love those who are unlike us in the sense that we have the one thing in common, Jesus Christ. There's a fear of God. There's a serving God. It's an action. Now, let's look at these two other qualifiers. fear and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. To be sincere is simply to have a single-hearted devotion, a single-minded commitment. We've all experienced insincerity, lip service and hypocrisy, people who are double-minded or when we're double-minded. One of the things I want to challenge you with is we all have twisted hearts. If you're waiting to worship until you can sincerely worship Him with everything you have all the time, you're never going to start. Worship is something we practice and we grow more sincere in. The call here is to grow in your sincerity. The assumption is that sincerity is difficult. We're all twisted in our motives. As we were just saying, our hearts are poisoned. There's a treason in our love. And we're supposed to be putting into practice the fear and the service so that our worship becomes more sincere. The second word faithful. This is simply saying, be committed. Ask yourself, are you dependable? Do you start things you don't finish? Are you someone who perseveres in a commitment? How quickly do you, do you stop because you're either tempted or there's tribulation and trial? There's a faithfulness that says, this is the most important thing, Jesus Christ. Everything else must come after. Now, that's the clear four basic words, fear, serve, sincerity, faithfulness. But I want to see here that the main focus is idolatry. Put away the gods that your father served, beyond the river, and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you will dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." This is one of the more memorable lines of Joshua. It's very plaque-worthy. There's a lot of homes that has this in their home. And it's good to have a reminder that we're going to serve the Lord in this home. But we need to remember or recognize what Joshua is doing here. Joshua is calling them to serve the Lord. He's calling the entire nation as a corporate group, come and serve the Lord. And he's setting himself out first as an example. I will serve the Lord. It's an invitation. Serve the Lord. I will serve the Lord. Will you serve with me? It's a call to action and he's putting himself out there as a leader of Israel. I am going to commit to serving the Lord. He's simply calling Israel to the same task. Now I mention that because I fear this passage is sometimes misapplied. It's easy for us especially to Think about this passage in a sectarian way. I've heard people emphasize it this way. I am going to leave my house, me and my house, we're gonna serve the Lord. We're gonna lock the door, build a moat, construct a wall. We're going to sectarianize into the house, and it's just me and my house, and we're gonna serve the Lord, because everything out there is bad. My family will be safe. My assembly will become the church. My family will become the kingdom. This is overprotective. It oftentimes becomes judgmental. And so I want to warn us not to think of this as something isolated. It's just me and my house. No, Joshua's saying, as a nation, we're all supposed to be called together. Me and my house. You and your house. We need to serve the Lord together because He's worthy to serve. Remember, just a few chapters before, chapter 22, Because the Eastern tribes have built an altar, the Western tribes are going to have to go to battle with them because they realized there was a solidarity. If one house isn't serving the Lord, God's judgment's going to come on the whole nation. We go back to Deuteronomy 6, when Moses says, write these things down on your forehead. Put them everywhere, on the doorposts, so that whenever you and your children are walking around, there's a reminder everywhere throughout the community. The whole community is serving the Lord. This isn't a sectarian passage. This is hunker down and be a family isolated. No, this is a call for all the families. Be focused on the one goal. Make much of Christ. So what does this mean for you and your house? How do we translate this? Because we're not the nation of Israel. We're not a nation where every neighbor is supposed to be committed to Christ. We're a church where every member is supposed to be committed to Christ. And I think one of the best ways to think about what this passage means is to say, wherever I have a significant influence, in every sphere of life where I can have an influence, I am going to be faithful. to serving the Lord there, and in helping to promote the other Christians to serve the Lord there, and to help other non-Christians to see that they should be serving the Lord there. So let's just walk through some of these other spheres of life. One, if you're a spouse, one of your primary goals is to make your marriage reflect the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is clear in Ephesians 5. Make much of Christ in your marriage, which means you're confessing your sin, you're seeking reconciliation, you're seeking to use your energies to be united in a way that glorifies Christ. As a parent, make much of Christ in the way you train up your children. One of the ways to do this is to share with them your own failings. to actually apologize to them, to show them, yes, we're sinners and we all need forgiveness and we all need to look to Jesus Christ. A parent should be seeking to lead and to serve Christ by the way they teach their children. Children, seek to serve Christ by honoring and obeying your parents. That is your first and foremost responsibility in worship. If you want to honor God, you will do so by honoring and obeying your parents. If you're a widow or a widower, you can make much of Christ by the way you long for his return. The way you long for the perfect bridegroom to come and give you the perfect love. If you're single, you can make much of Christ with the way you commit to him and serve him. This promise to worship Christ with His people. You're really making the commitment. You're going to worship Christ with the people you're closest to. Now we all have spheres of influence. We all have different people that we're spending time with. There's home. There's work. There's church. There's neighborhood. There's the community soccer team. And we too often all have an imbalance. I believe as we think about this passage, what we're supposed to do is what Paul tells us to do in Ephesians 4. Walk worthy of the calling. Commit yourself to the God who has called you. Walk worthy of that calling, which means you're going to prioritize all of your life commitments accordingly. Because let's just face it, every possible sphere of life has an idol. At work, you may have an idol of wanting promotion and prestige. At church, you may have an idol of a cultural preference that you like to quarrel about. At home, you may have laziness or a demanding rule. And I want to be very clear that we do need to think about the home because those we're closest to, we're going to sin against the most. Those we're spending the most time with regularly are the people who are going to see how sinful we are and what we really worship. And we need to make sure that our worship commitments are most clarified with those we spend the most time with. Let me just make something very clear. If you're a young, single professional, if you're a college student, let me say something very clear. Not having a family a husband or wife or children does not mean you can worship any less faithfully. It doesn't take a family to be faithful in worship. It simply takes hearing Christ and hearing His commands and saying, I'm going to commit my life to do so. I believe Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians. It means you have less responsibility with a spouse or with children to commit to serving God. and sincerity and faithfulness. You can worship faithfully where you are. If you're married or married with kids, I want to warn you, it is really easy to be so consumed with the burdens of marriage and the burdens of children. It's a great blessing, but it's also a great responsibility. My sin has ever been so revealed that in my marriage and in my parenting, It causes us to be self-inspective and it's just easy to be consumed and not realize what the greater kingdom looks like. One of the things I pray that I'm able to do as a parent is to make sure that my children will be more like Christ than I am. One of the things I want to make sure is that my children get to learn about Jesus Christ from all different kinds of Christians. You see, if I'm the only person who disciples my children, I'm the ceiling of my child's discipleship. If I'm the only person who disciples my child, they're only going to become as Christ-like as me, and they're probably going to adopt all my vices. Whereas if we have a church where children are coming and they're being discipled and they're learning about Jesus Christ from all different kinds of Christians who have all different ways of knowing Christ and much more mature in areas than I am, my child will actually be a more faithful disciple than I am. I'm afraid of my child being too much like me if I am their only discipler. I want to challenge us to think about what that looks like as a church. We just heard a statistic, there was 70 some children in this church building on Sunday morning. 70 some children. We want to make sure that as they watch us communicate, as they hear us, as they're learning, they are learning more of Christ from all of us together. Because that's how God designed the church. I also want to talk to husbands and fathers because Joshua does call out the heads of the homes. So if you're a head of a household, I want to speak to you for a moment. He speaks to the men who had the responsibility to protect their families, to lead them and to guide them according to Christ's word. As the head of your home, you're the one who was ultimately responsible for your family's discipleship and well-being. Let me say something else. As the head of your home, you're not always right. Being the head of your home doesn't mean you're always right. It simply means you're responsible. And let's just go back to Genesis. God gave you a helper. Why? You needed help. So as you think about what this charge is, it's not me, I'm going to take control, I'm going to start giving orders, I'm going to be sectarian, I'm going to keep people away, I'm going to lead with a great charge, and I love the zeal, but it needs to have the wisdom of all scripture. We need our wives who can submit and respectfully say that you need to reconsider this. We need to be able to listen to our wives, as those who God has given us, to give us proper warnings, and even proper corrections, and know that the decisions we make we're ultimately responsible for, but that doesn't mean we're always right. If you're an older member, or an empty nester, I praise God again that we have a diversity of age, and I want to encourage you, invest in us younger folks. Let us learn from your mistakes. Let us learn from your victories. Let us hear how you cared for your family and cared for your church and lived a life at work that glorified Christ. We need wisdom. Now let's turn to the response of Israel in this passage, verse 16. They've been given the charge, serve the Lord, and then they hear the charge, or they hear the claim of Joshua. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people, they answer the way you expect Joshua would want them to. Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did these great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord drove up before us all the peoples, the Amorites, who lived in the land. Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God. That sounds great. Let's sign the document. Let's move on. It sounds like Joshua's pep talk has caused him to realize, yes, we should serve the Lord. And Joshua, it seems like he would move on from there and say, rejoice. But look what he says. You're not able to serve the Lord. Now, that's pretty much the worst pep talk ever. That's like halftime. Guys, we've got to play harder, we've got to fight harder, we've got to run faster, we've got to play with more intensity. The team says, yeah, we're going to do it. Ah, you can't do it. Like, what is Joshua doing here? Well, this is a game. He wants to realize. You're going to have to have fear. You're going to have to have sincerity. You're going to have to be faithful. Because the God you're approaching is a holy God. Look, you're not able to serve the Lord. He's holy. He's jealous. He will not forgive your transgression of your sin. If you forsake the Lord your God and serve other gods, then He will turn and do harm and become sumi and have, having done you good. And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. Joshua said, all right, you're witnesses. And that odd declaration of verse 19 makes sense when we look at verse 23, and he said, put away the foreign gods that are among you. That's present tense. Joshua's been with these people for many years. He's 110 years old. He saw what they did while God was on Mount Sinai with Moses. He's seen all the different ways they've grumbled and complained and forsaken God, and he knows right now they even have the foreign gods in their midst. That's why he said, you are not able. He's a holy God. He's a jealous God. He desires all of your heart. They should give us pause. We didn't realize who we're being called to serve. It's the holy and righteous God. Jealous! He's created us for His worship alone, and He's jealous for that worship. So this last thing, verse 23. Put away the foreign gods and incline your heart to the Lord. Incline your heart. We need to realize here, their hearts in this passage are not inclined to the Lord. They're serving other gods. Their hearts, like all of us, they're natural-born idolaters. Their hearts, they were designed to be bent up to God to worship Him and to make much of Him, to be single-mindedly focused on Him. But in our sin, our hearts are twisted. They're knotted. They're corrupted. Our hearts are so bent in on ourselves that we only think of ourselves as God. There's an incline in your hearts. Persevere in pursuing the grace of Jesus Christ that not only forgives you for having a heart that's bent in on yourself, but the heart that can be bent back up to God. Begin having more reverence, more service, more faithfulness. It recognizes how twisted and knotted the heart is and how we need help getting those knots untied so that we can have a heart that's inclined to God. My first thing to realize, I have a lot of inclinations that are not towards God and what I desire. Which we will recognize and pray for God to see and reveal more where my heart is not inclined to worship Him, the Lord who is holy and jealous. And pray that He would bend my heart away from those things. I have to put them away from myself. So that I, in response to all He's done, can now therefore Fear the Lord. Serve Him. Grow in sincerity and Lord-willing faithfulness. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you, you saw us worshiping other gods and worshiping ourselves. You did not leave us alone, but you sent your Son to die for us, to rescue us. to take us out of that darkness and to put us in your light, to take us out of the wrath and put us in your love. We thank you for that great transformation and now I pray that we would know how to order our homes, order our church, order all of our lives so that it would reflect you and your glory and we would make much of Christ. In Jesus name we pray, amen.