My Way or the Highway // It's Time to Take the Promised Land, Part 9

Most of us like to be in control of our lives. But at the same time – we’d like to experience the promises of God. Problem is – those two things don’t always go together.  It turns out that there’s only one way into God’s Promised Land.

I have a confession to make, I used to be very much the "my way or the highway" kind of guy and every now and then the attitude still raises its ugly head. So it was a major thing for me to hand my life over to God. Not just a kind of "believe in Jesus from a distance" but to live my life for Him, to truly call Him the Lord of my life. And there's a big difference.

What I've discovered is that on the one hand you have to give up some things if you want Jesus to be the Lord of your life. But on the other, I can do so much more because instead of having to do everything in my own strength, He shows up and does miracle after miracle in every department of my life. And I look back on the journey and I think, "wow! I could never had done those things."

But our natural instinct is to do it our way, to be in charge and in control. Problem is that job belongs to God, I mean its hard work so what is it? What do we have to do to make Jesus the Lord of my life?

Over these last few weeks we've been looking at taking hold of the promises of God, in particular through the eyes of Joshua. He was the leader of Israel right at the end of those forty years they spent in the desert on the exodus and, and there he was after the forty years and they were just about to cross over into the Promised Land.

The Book of Joshua records the history, the promise of God to Abraham and then to Moses and then to Joshua was that:

Everywhere where your foot will tread I have already given to you.

And Joshua sent some spies across the check out the land and we looked at that yesterday on the program. They did the normal military things you'd expect a commander to do. Now, now comes time to cross over the Jordan River and they're going to have so many battles.

You see there are cities and nations and kings and armies in that Promised Land and they're going to have to take the Promised Land. It would have been so easy for Josh to say 'well I'm in charge here, it's my way or the highway' but what Joshua did next, well there were some pretty amazing things he did, four in all and it tells us who was really in charge.

The first thing, the first thing he did is he sent his officers through the camp to tell his people this:

When you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the priests then you shall set out from your place. Follow it so that you may know the way that you should go for you have not passed this way before.

You can read that in Joshua chapter 3. In other words the Ark of the Covenant was where the presence of God rested. He put God in the lead; he put God in the driver’s seat at the head of the procession.

The second thing he did were, were twelve stones, this is pretty amazing, Joshua chapter 4, verse 4.

Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe and he said to them, ‘Go over before the Ark of the Lord your God in the middle of the Jordan River.

Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you "What do these stones mean?" You'll be able to tell them how the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.’

You see, what happened was, the Jordan obviously had a whole bunch of water in it, and for Israel to cross over from where they were into the Promised Land through the Jordan, God did exactly what He did when they fled out of Egypt into the desert. He stopped the waters from flowing so they could cross through on the dry land.

And Joshua says, "Let’s take these twelve stones and let’s build a memorial, an altar that honours God, a monument that he did this. God did this, He achieved this. Let’s recognise His goodness for generations to come." That's awesome; again you see God is in the front of Joshua's thinking.

The third thing he did, well this was really bizarre. He circumcised the nation. Ooh it makes my eyes water. I mean it seems bizarre to us and even in their context I think it was a pretty big call. Circumcision of the men was a sign of the covenant relationship between God and His people.

What do I mean by covenant? God made a promise, God promised them the Promised Land, He promised them peace, He promised them prosperity if only they would do what God had told them to do. And the way that that happened, way back in Abraham’s time centuries before, was that Abraham went and had all the males in his household circumcised.

It was a sign of the relationship and the promise between God and His people. And while they'd been out in the exodus in the desert all the adults who had left Egypt through the Red Sea died and there's a whole new generation and that generation hadn't been circumcised. The law said that they had to be circumcised because it was a symbol of their relationship with God and God said to Joshua:

Make flint knives and circumcise the lot.

You see here they are, they've been in slavey in Egypt for centuries, they spend forty years in the desert, they're about to cross into the Promised Land, it's almost there in the day, what happens? Joshua says, "Well, just one minute, stop, whoa. All the boys are going to be circumcised, all the men, all the boys. We're going to be circumcised." And so they then had to hang around after this painful thing and wait for them all to heal.

And the fourth thing is they celebrated the Passover. Okay, must be ready to go now, time to, time to go, let’s cross over. No, no its time to celebrate the Passover. Remember how forty years before God had taken them out of Egypt through the Passover miracle, look back and remember God’s goodness.

He sends the Ark of the Covenant out first, he picks up stones as a memorial, he has everybody circumcised, he celebrates the Passover. Not things that you or I would do today but they all said one thing. Sure, we want to take the Promised Land but God comes first.

The Ark of the Covenant: God will go first, we'll follow Him, He takes the lead.

The stones: let’s put a marker here in faith to remember for generations to come the miracle that God performed to bring us into the Promised Land.

Circumcision: let’s get our relationship right with God.

Passover: let’s honour God for all that He's done.

See here's the crunch, Israel had a huge promise ahead of them but they were going to take hold of that promise by honouring God first. Not my way or the highway: God’s way, whatever the circumstances, whatever the outcome – His way.

It's the same for us today. So many people believe in Jesus, they want to lay hold of His promises for their lives but we want to do it our way. We sing songs, 'Jesus is Lord', is He really? Are we really prepared to do it His way? No little compromises, no little shortcuts, no 'I'll forget about Him and not pray today', no 'Oh well I don't have to read His word, the Bible today'.

WAKE UP! God’s promises only happen one way, His way. Jesus said:

I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one will come to the Father except through me.

This radical edgy saviour, wasn't into pampering Himself, He did it His Fathers way. There's only one way to the Promised Land – Jesus.