Unusual Plans for Life’s Battles
Learning What God Teaches Us About Overcoming Obstacles
Ross Sawyers
Sep 17, 2023 44m
While things in life might look insurmountable, God has unusual pathways for overcoming obstacles. We live in a broken world, and all of us face battles. The question is, how will we handle those battles, and how will we fight in them? Video recorded at Grapevine, Texas.
Daily Devotionals
TranscriptionmessageRegarding Grammar:
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
Ross Sawyers: [00:00:02] God has unusual ways that he has us to fight battles, and that song sums up the unusual way God has us to do it. When we think we're surrounded, the psalmist, all throughout the Psalms, is talking about struggles, enemies, and obstacles. In one of the Psalms, he said, I'm surrounded by songs of deliverance. So the way that we fight battles in God's economy, the way he works, is through praise, through gratitude with his presence.
Ross Sawyers: [00:00:36] If you turn your Bibles to Joshua Chapter 6, we've been working our way through Joshua in these last few weeks, and we'll continue to do so for the remainder of the fall, just going chapter by chapter and seeing what God has for us, anchoring and tethering ourselves to what God says in the scriptures. In Romans, Paul writes in the New Testament and says that when we look at the Old Testament, we're to be encouraged by those stories and to find hope in them. And we also know that all of the Old Testament points us to Jesus, and so we continually look for in the scriptures, in the Old Testament, encouragement from the stories and hope in those stories, and then how they point us to Jesus.
Ross Sawyers: [00:01:23] I'd like to weave us through that in Joshua chapter 6. Just a quick overview if you're newer with us today, and just a quick context check-up and catch-up for all of us in Joshua. It is following a time frame where Israel had been in the wilderness wandering for 40 years. In the beginning of Joshua, there's a leadership change. Joshua takes the place of Moses who dies. Now it's Joshua's turn to step in and lead. God promises him that he'll be the one who takes the people into the land that was promised centuries before. And then we see the unusual ways that God works through Rahab, a prostitute, to make sure that the spies of Israel knew that their hearts had melted, they had courage no more, and that the land was theirs to take. We see the land taken, as Joshua leads the people across the Jordan River, God miraculously fends off and heaps the water into a wall and stops it from flowing for them to cross, and they put reminders down for what God had done. And then in chapter 5, we see transitions happening before they can finally take the land, and in chapter 6, that conquest will begin of the land. In Chapter 5, we see some different kinds of things, we talked about circumcision. If you followed up on that in your life group, my men's life group had a pretty robust conversation around circumcision and the agony of that. We talked about Passover and the fruitfulness of the land.
Ross Sawyers: [00:03:14] And when we get to the end of chapter 5, we find Joshua encountering a divine presence, a divine being, whose sword is drawn. And just like so many of us, when we encounter things that are supernatural and divine, we sometimes ask the wrong question. And Joshua asked, "Are you for us, or are you for our adversaries?" And the answer was, no. The question is, are you for me, and are you going to follow my lead, God says. And I think that's a valid question for us today, will we have the courage to follow God's lead? He's asking us today, are we for him on this day?
Ross Sawyers: [00:04:04] In Chapter 6, what I'd like for us to look at and think about is unusual plans for life's battles. All of us face battles in life, and I believe there are some things that we can draw out of here that anchor us to the historical nature of what's happening in Joshua in ways we can think about today, and how some things in here might apply to us as well. And what I would suggest is that all of us have battles. Today we'll have battles, every one of us, at varying times there of different degrees, the level of what those battles are in life, but there's no doubt in a broken world that all of us face battles. The question is, how will we handle those battles, and how will we fight in them? And what is God's way per battle that he would have us to go against it? I think we'll find good help today in Joshua chapter 6.
Ross Sawyers: [00:05:01] There are two things I'd like to say in thinking about the unusual plans that God has for our battles. And one is that we understand the plan, and the second thing is we execute the plan, that's it. In chapter 6, they understand the plan and they execute the plan. Now, for a number of us in here today, we understand the plan, we understand God's plan. The execution could be the issue, and it doesn't mean it's the issue for everyone, but it might be for some of us today that we understand God's plan, but we're not currently executing the plan. And what we find in Joshua 6, are both of these things happening?
Ross Sawyers: [00:05:39] Let's begin by understanding the plan in chapter 6, verses 1 through 5, Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. Let me give a brief look at Jericho so we can understand what's happening here with Israel. At the bottom of the screen is the Dead Sea, coming up from the Dead Sea, you see a blue line and that's the Jordan River. The children of Israel had been over here wandering, and now they've crossed the river, and up at that town called Adam, the scripture says that's about 20 miles up from where Israel crossed the Jordan River. So we have a picture of where that was, that's where God held the water, and down here near Gilgal is where they crossed the water. Gilgal is the place where they're currently camped as we arrive in Chapter 6 of Joshua. The word Gilgal means to roll away, and it was named that because their disgrace of having been slaves in Egypt had now been rolled away. I think that's a beautiful picture when you look ahead and think about how Jesus on the Cross rolled away our sins, and the disgrace of that sin in our lives and he sets us free.
Ross Sawyers: [00:06:57] So he's brought them into the land which he's promised, and there's Jericho. Jericho is about five miles west of the Jordan River, it's about seven miles north of the Dead Sea, so that gets our geography right. Jericho is the lowest-lying city in the world, it's about 800ft below sea level, and it's one of the oldest ancient cities as well. Someone sent me a Bible expedition video of archeologists talking about Jericho. And for our story today, some things in there that I thought were really helpful. Jericho, different estimates I read in different places, but about six acres is about what Jericho was, and some might have it at ten depending on how you kind of measure it out. But our church building and parking lot are a little over six acres. So just imagine that Jericho is about the size, approximately, of our building and the parking lot, that's how big it was.
Ross Sawyers: [00:08:16] In Jericho, what they found is a tell. And when you studied archeology or history, at some point, you came across that word, a tell is a mound, and what they would do is build cities upon cities. So when a city was destroyed, then another city would be built on top of it. And in this video, I didn't make a layer cake for you, I thought it was a pretty good way to describe it. But a tell is like a layer cake, so just imagine one layer of cake after another, and that's one city after another. And in excavations of Jericho in the early 1900s, they found in one layer of Jericho what they believed would be this time frame. There's some debate around it, but it's somewhere around 1400 would be a reasonable way to think about it. And from Scripture, we know that's about when this happened in 1406 BC. And with that finding of Jericho, what they found is there was a rock retaining wall that held an earthen embankment, and then inside that earthen embankment was a taller wall. So there were actually two walls surrounding the city. On top of that rock retaining wall, was a taller wall made of mud brick that went straight up on top of that rock retaining wall, so that's Jericho, and the population was approximately 2 to 3000 people. Israel has just crossed the Jordan with at least 2 million plus, that would be somewhat intimidating, and no wonder in verse one, they tightly shut the gates and didn't let anybody in or anybody out, their only chance was the fortification of that city wall around them. And so that gets us going in chapter 6, that's what's happening.
Ross Sawyers: [00:10:15] "The LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors." He's reiterating to them again; I told you that this would be your land. This is a gracious gift that God has given them, and all of it will be yours, the king, its valiant warriors, you don't need to worry. The best of the fighting men, they're yours. “You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days." Understand the plan, here's the plan, you're going to walk around the city. And we don't have any idea what that formation was like, but there were 600,000 men that could go to war. Now, think about that for a minute. 600,000 men surrounding this property. And they walked at one time, and then they did that for six days.
Ross Sawyers: [00:11:11] This is the plan; understand he's just giving him the plan. "Seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets." Here's the plan, six days, walk around the city. When you do this, there will also be seven priests with seven ram's horns, and the Ark of the Covenant will be in front of them, they'll be in front of the ark. Seven is the number of completion in the Scriptures. He talks about the trumpet blowing, if we just kind of fast forward, we're reminded of something else that God's going to do one day. When Jesus comes back, the trumpets are going to blow, and he's going to gather up those who are his and he's going to take us into the new heavens and new Earth as the ultimate destination. The Ark of the Covenant is to be at the center of this battle plan. God is the center; this is story is about God. It's not about walls falling down. It's not about Joshua. It's not about the obedience of the people. It is about those things, but it's primarily about God, and God is the center and core of every battle plan. It's unusual what God will do at times, but he's always the center of what it will be.
Ross Sawyers: [00:12:56] Verse 5, “It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.” Here's the plan, Joshua, I'm giving you the plan, I want you to understand the plan. We're not executing the plan yet, but I want you to understand the plan. And the plan is this, one time around the city for six days, the priests, the ark, they'll lead the way. And we find in a minute there will actually be, in the center of everything, a front guard and a rear guard. Now, on the seventh day, you're going to walk around it seven times, the trumpet's going to blow, and the walls are coming down, and then you’ve got to take the city. Now. I don't know what the conversation was like. When Joshua turns around and tells the people, here's the plan. I do know they would at least have in their mind that God had done a number of unusual things along the way, and that he had always been true to his word and always faithful to his promises, and God will continue to be true to his word.
Ross Sawyers: [00:14:18] Now, let's pause a minute and let's launch forward and say, okay, what does that have to do with us today? Well, how do we understand the plan today? Well, one, we need to understand who our enemy is. And our enemy today is not people behind a fortified wall, there are three enemies that are identified in Scripture that each of us face, and not one of us is exempt from these enemies. Satan is the first enemy, he's a deceiver, an attacker, a liar, a schemer, and he's doing everything he can to wipe you out, and he's doing everything he can to wipe me out. And he will not do it in an upfront way, we're not going to know what his tactics are. He is going to scheme and deceive and lie, and did God really say, again, and again, and again. He is our enemy.
Ross Sawyers: [00:15:30] Our second enemy is our own sinful human flesh. The Scripture talks about our sin as being our flesh. When you read that scripture, he's talking about our flesh, our sin nature, we're all born with a sin nature, and we're all inclined to different kinds of sin, and that's a fight day in and day out.
Ross Sawyers: [00:16:00] And there's a third enemy, it's the world. In First John 2:15 it says, "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." And I would suggest today that the world is a formidable enemy no matter where we are, and it certainly is formidable in an affluent culture. When we have a large amount of resources, it takes a large amount of time, and can easily distract at a minimum. We want to be honest about that, that can be an enemy. It can be blessings and good things, but we're told not to love the world, nor the things in the world, that's not to have our affections. Why? God gets our affections, and he's the center, and he actually brings the satisfaction and the joy that we look for in these other things.
Ross Sawyers: [00:17:11] So we all have these enemies, so what's the plan to defeat the enemy? We talked about it for several months back in the spring, lenses, and biblical worldview, and we talked about God's story and a way to communicate his story. And we use this as a way to communicate it, and this is God's plan. It's an unusual plan, t's probably not the plan that you and I would have come up with to fight life's battles, But the plan is, just like with the ark being at the center, that God himself is the center, that's the plan. That he is the center, and he gets all the glory. And when we go up, and in creation, that first part of when God unfolds his plan in Scripture, everything's perfect, there is no chaos, there is no brokenness, it's perfect harmony. Everything is as beautiful and radiant and pure as it could possibly be, and God walked among them. But there is a problem, and in the fall, we get cut off from God. Sin breaks into the world, and it's why we have all the battles and the fights. Have you ever wondered why we have to have any battles at all, it's because of chapter two in the story, and the brokenness and fall of man.
Ross Sawyers: [00:18:33] But there's good news in God's plan, this is the unusual piece of it, redemption through the cross actually connects us back to God. And Jesus Christ on the cross takes on all the sins of the world, every bit of your sin and mine, he takes on himself. And in First John 3, we're told that at the cross he destroyed the works of the devil, and Jesus said, I've come to overcome the world, and at the cross, he overcame the world. So God's plan, the way we fight, is to actually believe something, is to believe what Jesus did for us on that old rugged cross, repent and believe and turn to him full on in surrender. Christ enters into our lives through the Holy Spirit of God.
Ross Sawyers: [00:19:38] In Corinthians, Paul writes, and he says, People are going to look at these one of two ways, this is God's plan. They're going to look at it as foolish or as powerful. So today is God's plan when you understand his plan, is it foolish or is it a power? Once we're in Christ, now we're inside of God's purposes, and inside of the story, God's the center and we're aiming towards the new heavens and the new Earth. The Promised Land that we're aimed at today is when everything will be made new, where there will be no more battles, no more chaos. And heaven, the scripture says at the end of Revelation, will come to Earth. We're not going somewhere else, heaven's coming here, and everything will be made new, starting with us for every person that's in Christ today. That's an understanding of God's plan, and then he's given us a way to walk in his plan once we know him. We wrote a few years ago, and we borrowed from our friends that are persecuted in places all over the world today for their faith, and we adapted a little bit and we call it Here's Eight Ways to Follow Jesus. And this is just the discipline of grace that He's given us to be able to walk in lockstep with him, this is his plan. It's an odd plan because the plan is for you and I to go and make disciples of all the nations, that's the plan. It's on us, there's not a plan B, plan A is you and me to take the message of Jesus. And for people to repent and believe.
Ross Sawyers: [00:21:29] And then there's a real oddity to the plan, and what God is inviting us into is to abide in Him. It's the theme of our men's retreat this year is to advance by retreating. So when there's a battle to fight, an obstacle to overcome, or a problem, what do we do? We retreat. An abiding Christ that means to remain in him, we get alone with him, that's the battle plan. And we pray, scripture says our battle is not against flesh and blood, our fights are not against each other. Our culture and what Satan has done through our culture and deceiving has done everything to fracture and divide people and create factions and enemies against one another. The reality is our fight is in the heavenly places, it's in prayer. I understand the plan. And then we're to serve and to give, and then we remember what Jesus did by taking the Lord's supper with broken bread and juice or wine. Those are unusual things at the end of the day, but that's the plan.
Ross Sawyers: [00:22:55] This week I was with one of our young ladies, a global worker in the Middle East, she understands the plan. And she's among a people group, it's called an unreached people group of 2 to 4 million people, and she's hoping one day they'll understand the plan. But what about executing the plan? We understand the plan, but are we executing the plan?
Ross Sawyers: [00:23:29] Joshua understood the plan, and I'll sum up some of this and share some of the verses in verse 6, So we're executing the plan, "So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them..." And this is the pass-it-on part we talk about when we're together, that whatever God is saying to us, it doesn't end on us, we pass it on. God comes to Joshua, and he says, look, here's the plan. And then Joshua is going to the people and saying, here's the plan, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD." In verses 7 and 8, he reiterates what he had already been told, and he says it to the people. Verse 9, "The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came after the ark, while they continued to blow the trumpets." The ark is at the center, the symbol of the presence of God. There's a rear guard and a front guard, "But Joshua commanded the people, saying, “You shall not shout nor let your voice be heard nor let a word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I tell you, ‘Shout!’ Then you shall shout!” Six days, walking around the city, silent, hundreds of thousands of people just walking in silence. Silence has weight to it; silence oftentimes carries way more weight than our words do. Silence can make us really uncomfortable, it's why we keep putting earbuds in our ears, and turning stuff on in our car, and clicking the remote all over our house because we're really uncomfortable with silence. The psalmist said, "Be still and know that I'm God: and I'll be exalted among the nations." March around the city, quiet. Can you imagine the impact on those inside the city walls?
Ross Sawyers: [00:26:09] In verses 11 through 14, they actually execute the plan, for six days they do exactly what they were told, they're obedient to what God has laid out to Joshua, and they're trusting Joshua as their leader. Verse 15, "Then on the seventh day they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times; only on that day they marched around the city seven times. 16At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city." That word shout can mean one of two things, it can be a war cry or a battle cry. In the Psalms, that same Hebrew word means to praise God for the victory. So they're shouting and it's a battle cry, they'd been silent for six days. And on that seventh day, they cut loose, and it's not just a battle cry, it's a cry of victory because God has already promised this is yours, and God is the one being praised.
Ross Sawyers: [00:27:16] Then in verses 17 and 18, it interjects in here that there's a ban, and things are not to be taken particular things from Jericho when they go into the city. Next week in Chapter 7, we'll take a look at what happens when that flesh sin part of us that can be coveting, the impact that has on one person and on a community. God bans particular things from our lives for a reason, it's for our protection. And when we choose to violate the way God has designed life, there are consequences, oftentimes, heavy consequences for that disobedience. We'll take a look there next week.
Ross Sawyers: [00:28:17] He says in verse 19, "All the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.” So that's the only thing that's to remain once they take the city. Verse 20, "So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city." In Hebrews 11:30, it's called the Hall of Faith, is what people have often termed it. But it says, "By faith, they went in and took the city." So it's faith over fear, faith over failure, it was a faith that God would do what he said he would do.
Ross Sawyers: [00:29:06] Now, in that same video that I was watching with the archeologists, it seemed really legit. But in their archeological finds, the retaining wall of rock holding in an earthen embankment, and then another wall. The wall, some estimate, might have been 40ft. tall and 4.5ft wide. Above the retaining wall, there was a taller mud brick wall. What they found when they excavated the site was that that mud brick wall had fallen on that layer of the cake, and it created a ramp so that they were able to come up and over into the city. See we continue to find, in archeology, finds that again and again validate the fact of the scriptures.
Ross Sawyers: [00:30:21] So just a quick pause on the walls. What are any walls that you and I might have up against God? In Second Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul writes, and he says, look, here's kind of where the spiritual battle is, where the warfare is, and people have put up walls of lofty thinking, pride, but we put up walls against God. What are any for you today? Are there any walls that you've put up? Pride, self-centeredness, idols of health and wealth. What are the walls that really only God can bring down? See, this is such a way that only God gets the glory for it. But are there any walls that you have against God? It's a spiritual warfare, it's an unusual battle plan. The way those walls come down is through prayer. It's not that today I'm going to say I'm not going to be prideful today, today I'm going to be humble. No, it's an unusual plan God has because the way we'll move from pride to humility is by leaning firmly into the cross today as much as we did the day we were saved. In recognizing, apart from him today, that pride is not going down. But the more alone with God, the more I've advanced in that unusual battle plan of abiding with him, the more I'm with him, the more I become like him, and his life starts to flow through my life. And I wake up one day, a year or two from now, and say, it's kind of hard on pride because I'm not as prideful as I once was, well, maybe that means I'm prideful, I don't know. But at least we can mark it and say, I'm at least confident it's different today. Or I'm more patient today, I don't know how that happened, it wasn't because I got up every day and said, God, help me be more patient today. It's because I spent more time with Jesus and the more time I spent with Jesus, the more his character started to shape me, and all of a sudden, I see people in a different light, and I'm more patient than I was a while back. That's the way that God works.
Ross Sawyers: [00:33:23] In verse 21 it says, "They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword." They utterly destroyed the city. This is the kind of stuff that makes people not want to follow God, these are the kind of things people argue against us and say, really, you're following a God who is all about genocide. You're following a God who just ethnically cleansed a city. And that will be a way for them to say, I'm not believing in that God. What do we do with that? It's a good question. When we go back to the character of God, God is a holy God, we've seen that in Joshua. All through Scripture, God's Holy, he's pure, sinless, and radiant. God is also a just God, and he has a firm reaction against sin.
Ross Sawyers: [00:34:51] Now, if we just pause for a moment, you and I have a firm reaction against sin also. Each of us has different levels of what really riles us up, but inside of all of us is a sense of justice. Well, God is perfectly just, and he has no choice as a perfectly just and holy God but to bring judgment and wrath on sin. He's also an incredibly patient God, all the way back in 1516, it says that the Ammonites sin, these are the Ammonites in Jericho, has not been fully completed yet. This group of people had centuries to turn and repent and turn towards God, but they practiced child sacrifice for centuries, all kinds of sexual immorality, and there is a point where God says enough. He does that in Romans 1 as well, when people continue to insist on worshiping the creature rather than the creator and turn to all kinds of sexual immoralities, and the scripture says God gave them over.
Ross Sawyers: [00:36:37] And when we come to the end of the scripture, there will be a final judgment. And things that aren't made right in this day will be made right in the end. And the only way we're spared from that is through the mercy and grace of God at the cross of Jesus Christ, there is a way out to not experience the judgment. So we can cry foul against God here, but wouldn't we instead look and say, you waited centuries before you did that? You gave them every opportunity. Rahab, a prostitute in their midst, took the opportunity and was spared. There was an opportunity to be spared, this is not an ethnic cleansing or genocide, this is a judgment against sin.
Ross Sawyers: [00:37:45] Somebody sent me a lecture that Rosario Butterfield did. Her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, she was a lesbian activist in the 90s and a leader in the movement. And she says today, in grief, she said, I am part of why things are what they are today, she helped set the pace for it. But God reached in and rescued and saved her, and for the last 24 years, she's been following Christ. Those hard walls came down, and she said, I'm passionate about helping people understand this today because I helped lead it. And this is what she said, I'm sure I'll be misunderstood, I'm sure she was. But she said, "I did not need empathy. We've gone so empathetic, there's not room for anyone to repent anymore. She said, “I did not need anyone to be empathetic in my sin, I needed somebody to stand away from it and throw me a rope so that I can be rescued." God's throwing us the rope in Christ, and every person has the opportunity to be delivered and rescued.
Ross Sawyers: [00:39:24] In Deuteronomy 20, verses 17 and 18, God gives Moses instructions about what they're to do. Joshua is following those instructions, “But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God." God is bringing judgment against sin while bringing his people into the promised Land. In First Corinthians 15:33 it says, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” So removing them so that their practices won't become the practices of his own people. Sadly, as it unfolds, they end up doing it anyway. This book, Why Did God Do That? by Matthew Tengblad and Josh McDowell could be a good book if you have those kinds of questions about how could God do things like this. And I've just read the chapter dealing with this, but the rest of them look pretty good as well, so that could be a help for you.
Ross Sawyers: [00:40:35] And then in the execution of the plan, just to sum up, in 22 through 25, Rahab is spared just as she was promised and her family, so there is rescue for her and her family. It says, then they went into the city, and they burned the city and then the city was abandoned for centuries. At the end of Joshua 6, we are told if it ever gets rebuilt there will be a curse before the Lord against the man who rises up and builds the city of Jericho, his firstborn will be lost, and the loss of his youngest son. And in First Kings chapter 16, verse 34, that's fulfilled.
Ross Sawyers: [00:41:21] In that [inaudible] that I described, those layers, the layer that they believe they found in this time period, the city was burned, that layer was burned. Even the wheat in the pots was burned, there was burned wheat that was discovered. Why is that significant? It was harvest season. The Jordan River had flooded, and they had just harvested the wheat, it was burned, and then there's evidence the city was abandoned for centuries, it goes together. Understand the plan.
Ross Sawyers: [00:41:58] Execute the plan. The plan in God's story. Have you executed the plan with belief in him? Are you executing the plan of abiding in him and praying in all the ways that God's designed? The global worker I spoke to you about in the Middle East, they're executing the plan, they're doing it among these 2 to 4 million unreached people, among whom there are four believers that are known. But there's a small team of people that are executing the plan of making disciples of all the nations in some of the hardest parts of the world. They are not too many hours away from Jericho. What about me and you? People are within seconds of us and minutes of us every day in our neighborhoods, where we work, and where we play, do we understand the plan, and are we executing the unusual way that God does his plans? And one of the key ways he does it is through small group community. Could I cheer you on today if you're not part of a life group, to get part of that community because God has called us to do life together against the battles that we will face, and to reassure us in the unusual ways that God might choose to move us?
Ross Sawyers: [00:43:44] Father, thank you for, I just love the power of your word. And God, thank you for the unusual ways that you do things. And I pray, God, that we would not be afraid to walk in the unusual and that for us today it would not be foolishness to us at the cross, but it would be power. And that your ways of abiding, praying, serving, and giving, of making disciples, repenting, God, would you help us to embrace and execute your ways and your plans. Help us where we need help, strengthen us in places where we're already walking. But God, would you cause our love for you to increase, and our trust in you to do the same? So, Father, in every heart today I pray that you would stir and move in the way that you would stir and move and that we would walk in obedience today, God, to what your plans are. I pray in Jesus' name.
Recorded in Grapevine, Texas.
Ross Sawyers: [00:00:36] If you turn your Bibles to Joshua Chapter 6, we've been working our way through Joshua in these last few weeks, and we'll continue to do so for the remainder of the fall, just going chapter by chapter and seeing what God has for us, anchoring and tethering ourselves to what God says in the scriptures. In Romans, Paul writes in the New Testament and says that when we look at the Old Testament, we're to be encouraged by those stories and to find hope in them. And we also know that all of the Old Testament points us to Jesus, and so we continually look for in the scriptures, in the Old Testament, encouragement from the stories and hope in those stories, and then how they point us to Jesus.
Ross Sawyers: [00:01:23] I'd like to weave us through that in Joshua chapter 6. Just a quick overview if you're newer with us today, and just a quick context check-up and catch-up for all of us in Joshua. It is following a time frame where Israel had been in the wilderness wandering for 40 years. In the beginning of Joshua, there's a leadership change. Joshua takes the place of Moses who dies. Now it's Joshua's turn to step in and lead. God promises him that he'll be the one who takes the people into the land that was promised centuries before. And then we see the unusual ways that God works through Rahab, a prostitute, to make sure that the spies of Israel knew that their hearts had melted, they had courage no more, and that the land was theirs to take. We see the land taken, as Joshua leads the people across the Jordan River, God miraculously fends off and heaps the water into a wall and stops it from flowing for them to cross, and they put reminders down for what God had done. And then in chapter 5, we see transitions happening before they can finally take the land, and in chapter 6, that conquest will begin of the land. In Chapter 5, we see some different kinds of things, we talked about circumcision. If you followed up on that in your life group, my men's life group had a pretty robust conversation around circumcision and the agony of that. We talked about Passover and the fruitfulness of the land.
Ross Sawyers: [00:03:14] And when we get to the end of chapter 5, we find Joshua encountering a divine presence, a divine being, whose sword is drawn. And just like so many of us, when we encounter things that are supernatural and divine, we sometimes ask the wrong question. And Joshua asked, "Are you for us, or are you for our adversaries?" And the answer was, no. The question is, are you for me, and are you going to follow my lead, God says. And I think that's a valid question for us today, will we have the courage to follow God's lead? He's asking us today, are we for him on this day?
Ross Sawyers: [00:04:04] In Chapter 6, what I'd like for us to look at and think about is unusual plans for life's battles. All of us face battles in life, and I believe there are some things that we can draw out of here that anchor us to the historical nature of what's happening in Joshua in ways we can think about today, and how some things in here might apply to us as well. And what I would suggest is that all of us have battles. Today we'll have battles, every one of us, at varying times there of different degrees, the level of what those battles are in life, but there's no doubt in a broken world that all of us face battles. The question is, how will we handle those battles, and how will we fight in them? And what is God's way per battle that he would have us to go against it? I think we'll find good help today in Joshua chapter 6.
Ross Sawyers: [00:05:01] There are two things I'd like to say in thinking about the unusual plans that God has for our battles. And one is that we understand the plan, and the second thing is we execute the plan, that's it. In chapter 6, they understand the plan and they execute the plan. Now, for a number of us in here today, we understand the plan, we understand God's plan. The execution could be the issue, and it doesn't mean it's the issue for everyone, but it might be for some of us today that we understand God's plan, but we're not currently executing the plan. And what we find in Joshua 6, are both of these things happening?
Ross Sawyers: [00:05:39] Let's begin by understanding the plan in chapter 6, verses 1 through 5, Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. Let me give a brief look at Jericho so we can understand what's happening here with Israel. At the bottom of the screen is the Dead Sea, coming up from the Dead Sea, you see a blue line and that's the Jordan River. The children of Israel had been over here wandering, and now they've crossed the river, and up at that town called Adam, the scripture says that's about 20 miles up from where Israel crossed the Jordan River. So we have a picture of where that was, that's where God held the water, and down here near Gilgal is where they crossed the water. Gilgal is the place where they're currently camped as we arrive in Chapter 6 of Joshua. The word Gilgal means to roll away, and it was named that because their disgrace of having been slaves in Egypt had now been rolled away. I think that's a beautiful picture when you look ahead and think about how Jesus on the Cross rolled away our sins, and the disgrace of that sin in our lives and he sets us free.
Ross Sawyers: [00:06:57] So he's brought them into the land which he's promised, and there's Jericho. Jericho is about five miles west of the Jordan River, it's about seven miles north of the Dead Sea, so that gets our geography right. Jericho is the lowest-lying city in the world, it's about 800ft below sea level, and it's one of the oldest ancient cities as well. Someone sent me a Bible expedition video of archeologists talking about Jericho. And for our story today, some things in there that I thought were really helpful. Jericho, different estimates I read in different places, but about six acres is about what Jericho was, and some might have it at ten depending on how you kind of measure it out. But our church building and parking lot are a little over six acres. So just imagine that Jericho is about the size, approximately, of our building and the parking lot, that's how big it was.
Ross Sawyers: [00:08:16] In Jericho, what they found is a tell. And when you studied archeology or history, at some point, you came across that word, a tell is a mound, and what they would do is build cities upon cities. So when a city was destroyed, then another city would be built on top of it. And in this video, I didn't make a layer cake for you, I thought it was a pretty good way to describe it. But a tell is like a layer cake, so just imagine one layer of cake after another, and that's one city after another. And in excavations of Jericho in the early 1900s, they found in one layer of Jericho what they believed would be this time frame. There's some debate around it, but it's somewhere around 1400 would be a reasonable way to think about it. And from Scripture, we know that's about when this happened in 1406 BC. And with that finding of Jericho, what they found is there was a rock retaining wall that held an earthen embankment, and then inside that earthen embankment was a taller wall. So there were actually two walls surrounding the city. On top of that rock retaining wall, was a taller wall made of mud brick that went straight up on top of that rock retaining wall, so that's Jericho, and the population was approximately 2 to 3000 people. Israel has just crossed the Jordan with at least 2 million plus, that would be somewhat intimidating, and no wonder in verse one, they tightly shut the gates and didn't let anybody in or anybody out, their only chance was the fortification of that city wall around them. And so that gets us going in chapter 6, that's what's happening.
Ross Sawyers: [00:10:15] "The LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors." He's reiterating to them again; I told you that this would be your land. This is a gracious gift that God has given them, and all of it will be yours, the king, its valiant warriors, you don't need to worry. The best of the fighting men, they're yours. “You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days." Understand the plan, here's the plan, you're going to walk around the city. And we don't have any idea what that formation was like, but there were 600,000 men that could go to war. Now, think about that for a minute. 600,000 men surrounding this property. And they walked at one time, and then they did that for six days.
Ross Sawyers: [00:11:11] This is the plan; understand he's just giving him the plan. "Seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets." Here's the plan, six days, walk around the city. When you do this, there will also be seven priests with seven ram's horns, and the Ark of the Covenant will be in front of them, they'll be in front of the ark. Seven is the number of completion in the Scriptures. He talks about the trumpet blowing, if we just kind of fast forward, we're reminded of something else that God's going to do one day. When Jesus comes back, the trumpets are going to blow, and he's going to gather up those who are his and he's going to take us into the new heavens and new Earth as the ultimate destination. The Ark of the Covenant is to be at the center of this battle plan. God is the center; this is story is about God. It's not about walls falling down. It's not about Joshua. It's not about the obedience of the people. It is about those things, but it's primarily about God, and God is the center and core of every battle plan. It's unusual what God will do at times, but he's always the center of what it will be.
Ross Sawyers: [00:12:56] Verse 5, “It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.” Here's the plan, Joshua, I'm giving you the plan, I want you to understand the plan. We're not executing the plan yet, but I want you to understand the plan. And the plan is this, one time around the city for six days, the priests, the ark, they'll lead the way. And we find in a minute there will actually be, in the center of everything, a front guard and a rear guard. Now, on the seventh day, you're going to walk around it seven times, the trumpet's going to blow, and the walls are coming down, and then you’ve got to take the city. Now. I don't know what the conversation was like. When Joshua turns around and tells the people, here's the plan. I do know they would at least have in their mind that God had done a number of unusual things along the way, and that he had always been true to his word and always faithful to his promises, and God will continue to be true to his word.
Ross Sawyers: [00:14:18] Now, let's pause a minute and let's launch forward and say, okay, what does that have to do with us today? Well, how do we understand the plan today? Well, one, we need to understand who our enemy is. And our enemy today is not people behind a fortified wall, there are three enemies that are identified in Scripture that each of us face, and not one of us is exempt from these enemies. Satan is the first enemy, he's a deceiver, an attacker, a liar, a schemer, and he's doing everything he can to wipe you out, and he's doing everything he can to wipe me out. And he will not do it in an upfront way, we're not going to know what his tactics are. He is going to scheme and deceive and lie, and did God really say, again, and again, and again. He is our enemy.
Ross Sawyers: [00:15:30] Our second enemy is our own sinful human flesh. The Scripture talks about our sin as being our flesh. When you read that scripture, he's talking about our flesh, our sin nature, we're all born with a sin nature, and we're all inclined to different kinds of sin, and that's a fight day in and day out.
Ross Sawyers: [00:16:00] And there's a third enemy, it's the world. In First John 2:15 it says, "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." And I would suggest today that the world is a formidable enemy no matter where we are, and it certainly is formidable in an affluent culture. When we have a large amount of resources, it takes a large amount of time, and can easily distract at a minimum. We want to be honest about that, that can be an enemy. It can be blessings and good things, but we're told not to love the world, nor the things in the world, that's not to have our affections. Why? God gets our affections, and he's the center, and he actually brings the satisfaction and the joy that we look for in these other things.
Ross Sawyers: [00:17:11] So we all have these enemies, so what's the plan to defeat the enemy? We talked about it for several months back in the spring, lenses, and biblical worldview, and we talked about God's story and a way to communicate his story. And we use this as a way to communicate it, and this is God's plan. It's an unusual plan, t's probably not the plan that you and I would have come up with to fight life's battles, But the plan is, just like with the ark being at the center, that God himself is the center, that's the plan. That he is the center, and he gets all the glory. And when we go up, and in creation, that first part of when God unfolds his plan in Scripture, everything's perfect, there is no chaos, there is no brokenness, it's perfect harmony. Everything is as beautiful and radiant and pure as it could possibly be, and God walked among them. But there is a problem, and in the fall, we get cut off from God. Sin breaks into the world, and it's why we have all the battles and the fights. Have you ever wondered why we have to have any battles at all, it's because of chapter two in the story, and the brokenness and fall of man.
Ross Sawyers: [00:18:33] But there's good news in God's plan, this is the unusual piece of it, redemption through the cross actually connects us back to God. And Jesus Christ on the cross takes on all the sins of the world, every bit of your sin and mine, he takes on himself. And in First John 3, we're told that at the cross he destroyed the works of the devil, and Jesus said, I've come to overcome the world, and at the cross, he overcame the world. So God's plan, the way we fight, is to actually believe something, is to believe what Jesus did for us on that old rugged cross, repent and believe and turn to him full on in surrender. Christ enters into our lives through the Holy Spirit of God.
Ross Sawyers: [00:19:38] In Corinthians, Paul writes, and he says, People are going to look at these one of two ways, this is God's plan. They're going to look at it as foolish or as powerful. So today is God's plan when you understand his plan, is it foolish or is it a power? Once we're in Christ, now we're inside of God's purposes, and inside of the story, God's the center and we're aiming towards the new heavens and the new Earth. The Promised Land that we're aimed at today is when everything will be made new, where there will be no more battles, no more chaos. And heaven, the scripture says at the end of Revelation, will come to Earth. We're not going somewhere else, heaven's coming here, and everything will be made new, starting with us for every person that's in Christ today. That's an understanding of God's plan, and then he's given us a way to walk in his plan once we know him. We wrote a few years ago, and we borrowed from our friends that are persecuted in places all over the world today for their faith, and we adapted a little bit and we call it Here's Eight Ways to Follow Jesus. And this is just the discipline of grace that He's given us to be able to walk in lockstep with him, this is his plan. It's an odd plan because the plan is for you and I to go and make disciples of all the nations, that's the plan. It's on us, there's not a plan B, plan A is you and me to take the message of Jesus. And for people to repent and believe.
Ross Sawyers: [00:21:29] And then there's a real oddity to the plan, and what God is inviting us into is to abide in Him. It's the theme of our men's retreat this year is to advance by retreating. So when there's a battle to fight, an obstacle to overcome, or a problem, what do we do? We retreat. An abiding Christ that means to remain in him, we get alone with him, that's the battle plan. And we pray, scripture says our battle is not against flesh and blood, our fights are not against each other. Our culture and what Satan has done through our culture and deceiving has done everything to fracture and divide people and create factions and enemies against one another. The reality is our fight is in the heavenly places, it's in prayer. I understand the plan. And then we're to serve and to give, and then we remember what Jesus did by taking the Lord's supper with broken bread and juice or wine. Those are unusual things at the end of the day, but that's the plan.
Ross Sawyers: [00:22:55] This week I was with one of our young ladies, a global worker in the Middle East, she understands the plan. And she's among a people group, it's called an unreached people group of 2 to 4 million people, and she's hoping one day they'll understand the plan. But what about executing the plan? We understand the plan, but are we executing the plan?
Ross Sawyers: [00:23:29] Joshua understood the plan, and I'll sum up some of this and share some of the verses in verse 6, So we're executing the plan, "So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them..." And this is the pass-it-on part we talk about when we're together, that whatever God is saying to us, it doesn't end on us, we pass it on. God comes to Joshua, and he says, look, here's the plan. And then Joshua is going to the people and saying, here's the plan, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD." In verses 7 and 8, he reiterates what he had already been told, and he says it to the people. Verse 9, "The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came after the ark, while they continued to blow the trumpets." The ark is at the center, the symbol of the presence of God. There's a rear guard and a front guard, "But Joshua commanded the people, saying, “You shall not shout nor let your voice be heard nor let a word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I tell you, ‘Shout!’ Then you shall shout!” Six days, walking around the city, silent, hundreds of thousands of people just walking in silence. Silence has weight to it; silence oftentimes carries way more weight than our words do. Silence can make us really uncomfortable, it's why we keep putting earbuds in our ears, and turning stuff on in our car, and clicking the remote all over our house because we're really uncomfortable with silence. The psalmist said, "Be still and know that I'm God: and I'll be exalted among the nations." March around the city, quiet. Can you imagine the impact on those inside the city walls?
Ross Sawyers: [00:26:09] In verses 11 through 14, they actually execute the plan, for six days they do exactly what they were told, they're obedient to what God has laid out to Joshua, and they're trusting Joshua as their leader. Verse 15, "Then on the seventh day they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times; only on that day they marched around the city seven times. 16At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city." That word shout can mean one of two things, it can be a war cry or a battle cry. In the Psalms, that same Hebrew word means to praise God for the victory. So they're shouting and it's a battle cry, they'd been silent for six days. And on that seventh day, they cut loose, and it's not just a battle cry, it's a cry of victory because God has already promised this is yours, and God is the one being praised.
Ross Sawyers: [00:27:16] Then in verses 17 and 18, it interjects in here that there's a ban, and things are not to be taken particular things from Jericho when they go into the city. Next week in Chapter 7, we'll take a look at what happens when that flesh sin part of us that can be coveting, the impact that has on one person and on a community. God bans particular things from our lives for a reason, it's for our protection. And when we choose to violate the way God has designed life, there are consequences, oftentimes, heavy consequences for that disobedience. We'll take a look there next week.
Ross Sawyers: [00:28:17] He says in verse 19, "All the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.” So that's the only thing that's to remain once they take the city. Verse 20, "So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city." In Hebrews 11:30, it's called the Hall of Faith, is what people have often termed it. But it says, "By faith, they went in and took the city." So it's faith over fear, faith over failure, it was a faith that God would do what he said he would do.
Ross Sawyers: [00:29:06] Now, in that same video that I was watching with the archeologists, it seemed really legit. But in their archeological finds, the retaining wall of rock holding in an earthen embankment, and then another wall. The wall, some estimate, might have been 40ft. tall and 4.5ft wide. Above the retaining wall, there was a taller mud brick wall. What they found when they excavated the site was that that mud brick wall had fallen on that layer of the cake, and it created a ramp so that they were able to come up and over into the city. See we continue to find, in archeology, finds that again and again validate the fact of the scriptures.
Ross Sawyers: [00:30:21] So just a quick pause on the walls. What are any walls that you and I might have up against God? In Second Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul writes, and he says, look, here's kind of where the spiritual battle is, where the warfare is, and people have put up walls of lofty thinking, pride, but we put up walls against God. What are any for you today? Are there any walls that you've put up? Pride, self-centeredness, idols of health and wealth. What are the walls that really only God can bring down? See, this is such a way that only God gets the glory for it. But are there any walls that you have against God? It's a spiritual warfare, it's an unusual battle plan. The way those walls come down is through prayer. It's not that today I'm going to say I'm not going to be prideful today, today I'm going to be humble. No, it's an unusual plan God has because the way we'll move from pride to humility is by leaning firmly into the cross today as much as we did the day we were saved. In recognizing, apart from him today, that pride is not going down. But the more alone with God, the more I've advanced in that unusual battle plan of abiding with him, the more I'm with him, the more I become like him, and his life starts to flow through my life. And I wake up one day, a year or two from now, and say, it's kind of hard on pride because I'm not as prideful as I once was, well, maybe that means I'm prideful, I don't know. But at least we can mark it and say, I'm at least confident it's different today. Or I'm more patient today, I don't know how that happened, it wasn't because I got up every day and said, God, help me be more patient today. It's because I spent more time with Jesus and the more time I spent with Jesus, the more his character started to shape me, and all of a sudden, I see people in a different light, and I'm more patient than I was a while back. That's the way that God works.
Ross Sawyers: [00:33:23] In verse 21 it says, "They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword." They utterly destroyed the city. This is the kind of stuff that makes people not want to follow God, these are the kind of things people argue against us and say, really, you're following a God who is all about genocide. You're following a God who just ethnically cleansed a city. And that will be a way for them to say, I'm not believing in that God. What do we do with that? It's a good question. When we go back to the character of God, God is a holy God, we've seen that in Joshua. All through Scripture, God's Holy, he's pure, sinless, and radiant. God is also a just God, and he has a firm reaction against sin.
Ross Sawyers: [00:34:51] Now, if we just pause for a moment, you and I have a firm reaction against sin also. Each of us has different levels of what really riles us up, but inside of all of us is a sense of justice. Well, God is perfectly just, and he has no choice as a perfectly just and holy God but to bring judgment and wrath on sin. He's also an incredibly patient God, all the way back in 1516, it says that the Ammonites sin, these are the Ammonites in Jericho, has not been fully completed yet. This group of people had centuries to turn and repent and turn towards God, but they practiced child sacrifice for centuries, all kinds of sexual immorality, and there is a point where God says enough. He does that in Romans 1 as well, when people continue to insist on worshiping the creature rather than the creator and turn to all kinds of sexual immoralities, and the scripture says God gave them over.
Ross Sawyers: [00:36:37] And when we come to the end of the scripture, there will be a final judgment. And things that aren't made right in this day will be made right in the end. And the only way we're spared from that is through the mercy and grace of God at the cross of Jesus Christ, there is a way out to not experience the judgment. So we can cry foul against God here, but wouldn't we instead look and say, you waited centuries before you did that? You gave them every opportunity. Rahab, a prostitute in their midst, took the opportunity and was spared. There was an opportunity to be spared, this is not an ethnic cleansing or genocide, this is a judgment against sin.
Ross Sawyers: [00:37:45] Somebody sent me a lecture that Rosario Butterfield did. Her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, she was a lesbian activist in the 90s and a leader in the movement. And she says today, in grief, she said, I am part of why things are what they are today, she helped set the pace for it. But God reached in and rescued and saved her, and for the last 24 years, she's been following Christ. Those hard walls came down, and she said, I'm passionate about helping people understand this today because I helped lead it. And this is what she said, I'm sure I'll be misunderstood, I'm sure she was. But she said, "I did not need empathy. We've gone so empathetic, there's not room for anyone to repent anymore. She said, “I did not need anyone to be empathetic in my sin, I needed somebody to stand away from it and throw me a rope so that I can be rescued." God's throwing us the rope in Christ, and every person has the opportunity to be delivered and rescued.
Ross Sawyers: [00:39:24] In Deuteronomy 20, verses 17 and 18, God gives Moses instructions about what they're to do. Joshua is following those instructions, “But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God." God is bringing judgment against sin while bringing his people into the promised Land. In First Corinthians 15:33 it says, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” So removing them so that their practices won't become the practices of his own people. Sadly, as it unfolds, they end up doing it anyway. This book, Why Did God Do That? by Matthew Tengblad and Josh McDowell could be a good book if you have those kinds of questions about how could God do things like this. And I've just read the chapter dealing with this, but the rest of them look pretty good as well, so that could be a help for you.
Ross Sawyers: [00:40:35] And then in the execution of the plan, just to sum up, in 22 through 25, Rahab is spared just as she was promised and her family, so there is rescue for her and her family. It says, then they went into the city, and they burned the city and then the city was abandoned for centuries. At the end of Joshua 6, we are told if it ever gets rebuilt there will be a curse before the Lord against the man who rises up and builds the city of Jericho, his firstborn will be lost, and the loss of his youngest son. And in First Kings chapter 16, verse 34, that's fulfilled.
Ross Sawyers: [00:41:21] In that [inaudible] that I described, those layers, the layer that they believe they found in this time period, the city was burned, that layer was burned. Even the wheat in the pots was burned, there was burned wheat that was discovered. Why is that significant? It was harvest season. The Jordan River had flooded, and they had just harvested the wheat, it was burned, and then there's evidence the city was abandoned for centuries, it goes together. Understand the plan.
Ross Sawyers: [00:41:58] Execute the plan. The plan in God's story. Have you executed the plan with belief in him? Are you executing the plan of abiding in him and praying in all the ways that God's designed? The global worker I spoke to you about in the Middle East, they're executing the plan, they're doing it among these 2 to 4 million unreached people, among whom there are four believers that are known. But there's a small team of people that are executing the plan of making disciples of all the nations in some of the hardest parts of the world. They are not too many hours away from Jericho. What about me and you? People are within seconds of us and minutes of us every day in our neighborhoods, where we work, and where we play, do we understand the plan, and are we executing the unusual way that God does his plans? And one of the key ways he does it is through small group community. Could I cheer you on today if you're not part of a life group, to get part of that community because God has called us to do life together against the battles that we will face, and to reassure us in the unusual ways that God might choose to move us?
Ross Sawyers: [00:43:44] Father, thank you for, I just love the power of your word. And God, thank you for the unusual ways that you do things. And I pray, God, that we would not be afraid to walk in the unusual and that for us today it would not be foolishness to us at the cross, but it would be power. And that your ways of abiding, praying, serving, and giving, of making disciples, repenting, God, would you help us to embrace and execute your ways and your plans. Help us where we need help, strengthen us in places where we're already walking. But God, would you cause our love for you to increase, and our trust in you to do the same? So, Father, in every heart today I pray that you would stir and move in the way that you would stir and move and that we would walk in obedience today, God, to what your plans are. I pray in Jesus' name.
Recorded in Grapevine, Texas.
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