Thank you.
Our brother has already applied the indispensable principle, but I would sort of feel undressed if I did not mention it again. As we come to look in God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable.
Praise God for every help and every assistance. I pray that you will not miss the academic side of the Word. Like our Lord Jesus, this Book is human and divine. You have to know what a pronoun is, what a paragraph is, and the laws of human language. You have to study the human side.
But, like our Lord Jesus, He needs to be revealed, and God Himself is the only One who can give the spiritual side. Let me share this passage, and then we will pray together again.
In Daniel 7, Daniel had this wonderful vision. The book of Daniel is filled with many wonderful visions, but this one is unique. When he had this vision of the beasts—the lion, the leopard, and the other beast—there is an expression used eight times in Daniel 7: “I kept looking until.”
“I kept looking until. I kept looking until. I kept looking until.” Then it comes to a climax. In Daniel 7:9, he says, “Until the Ancient of Days took His seat.” Then he says, “I kept looking until I saw One like the Son of Man.”
It does not matter what part of the chapter or the Book you are reading: may I make this suggestion? Keep looking until. You have to get past the beasts, the leopards, and the bears. Keep looking until you see Him on the throne, until your eyes behold the Son of Man.
So let us do that. Let us pray.
Father, again we thank You this evening. Once again, we can come to this Book and know that You have not left us on our own, but You have put a resident Bible Teacher in our hearts: the very life of God, the One who searches the depths of God and reveals Him unto us and lets us know the secrets of Your heart.
So we thank You for Him, and we do wait now and ask You, Lord, to open this portion of Scripture to our hearts. We thank You for these chapters, and we ask You now, Lord, to give an anointing. We pray that You might touch our ears, that we would hear as disciples. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
When I am in Newport, we are separated from studies by at least a week, sometimes more than that, so I am big on review. But this is just after—just before—a pizza, so I do not know how much review you need. By the way, thank you for that meal. I appreciate that.
We are looking at Joshua 6–11. The land is a picture of our Lord Jesus: the land of fullness, plenty, and richness. To enter into the land is to enter into the Lord. Therefore, the principles of entering in are exactly the same, only here you have them in redemptive history.
God has fossilized everlasting principles in this redemptive history of His people, so that we are able forever to receive these wonderful truths and to look again to the Lord.
We have taken the three battles for the land: the battle for central Canaan, the battle for the south, which we will look at this evening, and the battle for the north. Though there were more than thirty-one battles in this seven-year war, the Holy Spirit has been pleased to call attention to these three. That is why we call them strategic battles.
In these battles, He has laid down all the principles of entering into fullness and entering into the land. In one sense, you have all the eggs in one basket when you have Jericho, because what is left? The battle is the Lord’s; it is not yours. Where do you go from there?
God, knowing in advance our hearts, what would come into our lives, and those things that would hinder fullness, anticipated every event. He has given us these three battles. No Christian will ever face anything that is not covered in these three battles.
Tonight we come to the second battle: the southern campaign, Joshua 9–10. We call this the southern campaign, or the Battle of Beth-horon.
You can go up to the average Christian and ask, “What light do you have on the southern campaign?” They probably will not know what you are talking about. Perhaps if you said, “The Battle of Beth-horon,” they still would not know what you were talking about.
Most people recognize these two chapters in a couple of ways. Either they remember the wiles of the Gibeonites, or they connect the chapters with the two great miracles in this section: the miracle of the hailstones in Joshua 10:11, and the miracle of the sun and moon standing still in Joshua 10:12–14.
However you remember this second campaign, I hope that after tonight, after this weekend, you will remember it in terms of the great principle of entering His fullness. I hope that clinches it for you. Then, Lord willing, tomorrow we will look at the final principle of entering His fullness.
Before we consider that principle, let us take the facts of the story. It is a long story, but the facts are simple. Joshua 9 and 10 ought to be studied together. Though there are seventy verses, the story itself is very simple, and the events revolve around the Gibeonites and their deception.
I will begin reading at Joshua 9:3 and read through verse 15.
But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai,
they also did work wilily,
and went and made as if they had been ambassadors,
and took old sacks upon their asses,
and wine-skins, old and rent and bound up,
and old and patched shoes upon their feet,
and old garments upon them;
and all the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy.And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal,
and said unto him, and to the men of Israel,
We are come from a far country:
now therefore make ye a covenant with us.And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites,
Peradventure ye dwell among us;
and how shall we make a covenant with you?And they said unto Joshua, We are thy servants.
And Joshua said unto them, Who are ye?
and from whence come ye?And they said unto him, From a very far country thy servants are come because of the name of the Lord thy God:
for we have heard the fame of Him,
and all that He did in Egypt,
and all that He did to the two kings of the Amorites, that were beyond Jordan,
to Sihon king of Heshbon,
and to Og king of Bashan, who was at Ashtaroth.So our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake to us, saying,
Take victuals in your hand for the journey,
and go to meet them,
and say unto them, We are your servants:
and now make ye a covenant with us.This our bread we took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day we came forth to go unto you;
but now, behold, it is dry, and is become mouldy:
and these wine-skins, which we filled, were new;
and behold, they are rent:
and these our garments and our shoes are become old by reason of the very long journey.And the men took of their provision,
and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord.And Joshua made peace with them,
and made a covenant with them, to let them live:
and the princes of the congregation sware unto them.
All right, so much for the facts. Israel was being sent as God’s executioner into the land of Canaan, to carry out His righteous judgment against sin. It was not that Israel did not deserve the same judgment—they did. That is why they had the Passover just before they went in: to show that only the blood of the Passover lamb made them exempt.
God had commanded them to destroy all the inhabitants of the land. The Gibeonites were part of that “everybody.” They actually lived in the land, just southwest of Jericho, about twenty miles from their encampment at Gilgal. They embraced four cities and were known as the Hivites, with Gibeon as the greatest of those cities.
Listen to Joshua 10:2:
Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities,
and because it was greater than Ai,
and all the men thereof were mighty.
When God listed the nations to destroy, He included the Hivites. Wipe them out—men, women, children, everybody. God gave a very strong warning: make no alliances, no treaties, no vows, no covenants, no deals, and no promises to anybody. Do not have relationship with these heathen; they are under the curse.
On the level of earth, I cannot blame the Gibeonites. They wanted to survive. They knew they were dead meat. They knew they were under the judgment of God and would not escape. So they came up with this elaborate deception: perhaps they could fool Joshua and the elders.
They sent envoys—representatives—pretending that they did not belong to the land. They claimed to be pilgrims from a faraway place. They had heard about God and His fame, and they wanted to be servants. “Please, in your campaign, as you go wiping everybody out, do not wipe us out. We are just passing through. We are pilgrims, and we are not part of that group under the curse of God.”
“If you do not believe us, take a look. Look at our sandals. They are worn out because we came from a far country. Look at these wine-skins. They were new when we set out, but we have been on the road so long that they are old, crumpled, and broken. Look at our clothes and what is left of our bread. We have been on the road a long time. You have to believe that we are just pilgrims.”
“Make a covenant with us. Do not kill us.”
One sign that Joshua was not thinking spiritually is that Israel themselves had been actual pilgrims. They had gone through the wilderness for forty years, and their sandals had not worn out, their clothes had not rotted off, and their bread had not become moldy. The opposite was true.
Remember Nehemiah 9:21:
Yea, forty years didst Thou sustain them in the wilderness,
and they lacked nothing;
their clothes waxed not old,
and their feet swelled not.
But Joshua, for this moment, allowed himself to think like the world. When he began to think carnally, the deception made good sense: old clothes must mean they had been on the road a long time. He was not thinking spiritually, and he began to judge by sight.
Many things happen when you move from faith to sight. The Gibeonites deceived him by sight, and then they brought the Lord into it. Once you bring the Lord in, everything sounds convincing. “Oh, we heard a testimony about your God. He is a great God.” Then they sounded so humble: “We are your servants. We just want to be your servants.”
But it comes to the crisis point in Joshua 9:14:
And the men took of their provision,
and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord.
Joshua made peace with them because they did not seek the Lord’s counsel. There is no excuse for them being deceived. Being deceived is actually disobedient. He said, “Be not deceived.” That is imperative; that is a command. They went by sight, not by faith. They believed a lie, made an unholy alliance with this group, and promised, “We will not raise a sword against you. We will let you live.”
Before continuing with the story, you can probably already see where the Holy Spirit is going with this. How often have God’s children found themselves in a situation because they made a decision without seeking the Lord? They did not seek His counsel, and they got into a situation that God had cursed. Then they were stuck.
If the Canaanites picture the spiritual enemy of the Christian, then you understand the danger of sparing the sword and letting some of them live. We see that all through the record.
Here is what happened. In Joshua 10:1–5, Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard that Joshua had captured Ai and that the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel. He feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, greater than Ai, and all its men were mighty.
Therefore, Adoni-zedek sent word to the kings of Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon, saying, “Come up to me and help me. Let us attack Gibeon, for it has made peace with Joshua and the sons of Israel.”
When Gibeon entered into an alliance with God’s people, the whole south was dismayed. All the kings were filled with dread and anger. “Those turncoats! Did you see what Gibeon did?” In their eyes, Gibeon was a traitor. This was treason.
So they gathered five armies. Joshua may not wipe Gibeon out, but they would. They said, “We are under a curse and we are going down. Before we go, they are going down. Let us get Gibeon.”
These five mighty armies, headed up by Adoni-zedek—which strangely enough means “the Lord our righteousness”—banded together. This man was an imitator. He was not the Lord our righteousness. He was in Jerusalem, but it was not the city of peace. They could not stand the thought that they were under judgment while Gibeon would be spared.
So what did Gibeon do? Joshua 10:6 says that the men of Gibeon sent word to Joshua at Gilgal:
Do not forsake thy servants;
come up to us quickly,
and save us, and help us;
for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell in the hill-country are gathered together against us.
They came to Joshua and said, “You made a promise. Now you are stuck. You have to protect us. They are coming to get us. Save us, protect us, defend us.”
I speak as a fool. I was not there, but if I had been there, I probably would have said, “Listen, I promised I would not kill you. I never promised I would protect you.” I might even have thought, “Boy, look how the Lord is getting me out of this one. Thank You, Lord. Go get them!” On the level of earth, I would have let it happen.
But that is not how Joshua and the elders looked at it. They had made a vow before God. It was against the Lord, but they were stuck, and they had to keep it.
I know that was the right decision because four hundred years later Saul tried to wipe out the Gibeonites, and God sent a curse and a famine because of the promise Joshua had made. So I know they made the right decision. I still do not understand a lot about that. I would have said, “Confess it. It was a bad decision. Put it under the blood and move on.” But that is not what God said.
Israel was in trouble. Let me bring the facts together. God wants us to enter His fullness. In order to enter His fullness, He prepares us with the Man with the sword in His hand. Then He says, “Here is principle number one: the battle is not yours; it is God’s.”
Your danger will be if He ever puts His sword back in His sheath and lets you be on your own. He is going to fight for you. The battle is not yours, the victory is not yours, and the spoil is not yours. The battle is His.
Now God anticipates, in these strategic battles, what happens when we fail to seek the Lord. What happens if I screw up real bad? What happens if I do not seek the counsel of the Lord and get stuck with these Gibeonites? Can I still know God in His fullness?
What happens if, by not seeking the Lord, I end up in a situation whose consequences I must fight for—life or death? You know exactly what I am talking about.
Let me give some illustrations. A young Christian girl does not seek the Lord, gets in trouble, gets pregnant, and has a little baby. She repents and comes back to God, but that baby is not going away. You know what I am saying? The Gibeonites are still there. There is a consequence to a decision you make when you do not seek the Lord.
Or a man or woman becomes unequally yoked and gets married. Then one of them gets right with the Lord, comes back to the Lord, or gets saved. What are they going to say? “I was deceived. Those are Gibeonites. They lied at the altar.” No, you have to live with that. There is a consequence.
What happens, as far as knowing the Lord in fullness, if I have messed up and made a decision because I did not seek the Lord? Perhaps it was fiscal irresponsibility that got me into a financial mess, and now I have to go bankrupt. What am I supposed to do? Can I know God in His fullness if that happens?
I got a letter some time ago. I had been dealing for a long time with a brother in prison, having Bible studies with him. He said, “If I give everything to Jesus, will I get out of prison?” I do not know. Maybe he will; maybe he will not. There are consequences.
What happens if our activities and decisions cause us to ruin our health and blow our minds? There are consequences caused by sin. Can I still know the fullness of the Lord, or am I stuck forever with these Gibeonites?
If I get out of fellowship, go out, get stone drunk, get in a brawl, and lose my arm, then get right with God, my arm is not going to grow back. Will God accept one-armed service from that point on? Those are the kinds of questions people really face.
God anticipated that. He said there is fullness for the Christian—for every Christian. You may have messed up, lost your family, lost your friends, lost your ministry, dishonored the Lord, and hooked up with these Gibeonites. You may think the fullness of God is out the window.
We get the idea that if it is not our fault, then we can expect God to deliver us. If a storm knocks down my house, the economy crashes, I have an accident, someone violently violates me, or I get sick, then I say, “God can help me because I did not have anything to do with that.”
But if it is my fault—if I am in a situation because I did not seek Him, as Joshua did not seek the counsel of the Lord—then the question is, “What can I expect from the Lord?” That is the situation in this second campaign. Joshua did not seek the Lord, and now he has to suffer the consequences of his sin.
I do not know all that is going on in your lives, but it is very possible that someone in this audience is attached to some Gibeonite because you messed up. Your attitude might be, “Well, it is my fault. I have to live with it. You can talk about fullness, victory, and entering into all the goodness of the Lord, but I blew that. That is not for me.”
Well, I have good news for you. My feet are beautiful tonight because I am bringing good news. This is a tremendous, tremendous principle that He lays down here for those who are joined to a curse and stuck with it because of their own decisions.
Those things always take us farther than we planned to go, cost more than we expected to pay, and last longer than we thought they were going to last.
Sometimes it is possible to think that God has abandoned me because of that. “I had one shot at the perfect will of God. At best, I will only get a second-best or third-best from God.” But I will tell you before we go on: God has no second-best. He only has a will.
His will is good, perfect, and acceptable. At any moment in my life, regardless of what has come into my life, I can be in the perfect and acceptable will of God. Every Christian can.
The way God unfolds this, I believe, is the way He always unfolds it to those in this situation. We read these things as if they are merely history in the Bible. They are not. God recorded them because He is showing us how He always works.
May God give us eyes to see this and hearts to believe it. If it does not apply to you, it will apply to somebody you meet, and perhaps you will be able to share it with them.
The first thing God does, and Joshua receives, is an encouraging word. Joshua 10:7–8:
So Joshua went up from Gilgal,
he and all the people of war with him,
and all the mighty men of valor.And the Lord said unto Joshua,
Fear them not:
for I have delivered them into thine hands;
there shall not a man of them stand before thee.
Even though you sinned, did not seek Him, went by sight, used carnal reasoning, messed up, and it is your fault—even though these are your consequences—He says, “I am with you. I am going to fight, and I am still on your side.”
Now, that ought to be enough. But it rarely ever is. If you are in a situation like that, someone gives you a verse and says, “Look, God says it right there: ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’” You say, “Thank you for that.” Then you go home and say, “Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?” The Word ought to be enough. It ought to be enough.
Notice Joshua 10:10. They pursued them by the way of ascent to Beth-horon. I would just change that to uphill. Notice verse 7: Joshua went up from Gilgal. They went up. He ascended. It was a climb.
If you do the geography lesson, you find it was about a four-thousand-foot climb from Gilgal, by the northern end of the Dead Sea, up to the mountain of Gibeon where they would fight. It is estimated to have been a ten- or twelve-hour uphill march.
Joshua 10:9 says that Joshua came upon them suddenly by marching all night from Gilgal. Here is the Lord again, wearing them out like He did at Jericho.
In the light of their sin, I do not know exactly what was going on in their minds, but they might have thought, “God has given me a word. He said, ‘I am going to wipe them out. Not one will stand.’ I have a word from God. Then why is it all uphill? Why is it so dark? Uphill all night?”
Sometimes, because of the consequences of our sin, when God gives the Word it seems so hard. “Why is it so hard if God is with me? If God is serious about helping me, how come it is all uphill and all night long?” Then God lengthened the natural day, so it was longer than long.
There is a temptation to doubt God’s bare promise. He gives a Word, but then you look at your life and say, “I know I have the Word, but things are not going that way. This thing is getting tough. It is all uphill, all night long, and it seems to go on and on and on.”
So God does something else. He gives a confirmation with the Word—a wonderful assurance. Joshua 10:11:
And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel,
while they were at the descent of Beth-horon,
that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah,
and they died:
they were more who died with the hailstones
than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.
That is an amazing miracle. God began to fire down hailstones from heaven. We read this as though it were nothing. It was not like today, when there is a war and you sit on your couch and watch it on television. This was hand-to-hand combat. This was chaos.
They were engaged with swords, fighting each other, and God was throwing hail from heaven. Yet not one stone hit an Israelite. Only the enemy got clobbered. More died with the hail than with the sword.
What would that do to their hearts? God said, “I am going to be with you,” and they said, “Then why is it all uphill?” Then, all of a sudden, God comes in with this wonderful miracle.
Do not answer, but do you know what I am talking about? Have you experienced this? God gives you a word, and you want to believe it. You think you can make it real by believing harder—as if, if you believe it harder, it becomes more true.
It is true whether you believe it or not. You cannot make it more true. I used to try to make Galatians 2:20 true by believing it harder: “I am crucified with Christ. I am crucified with Christ.” The harder I believed, I thought it would become real. It is real. It is true whether you believe it or not.
You cannot stop morning from coming by wringing a rooster’s neck. These things are real. They are true.
God gives you a word, and you say, “I wonder if God is still with me.” Then you go out and there is a mailbox miracle—a confirmation. There is a phone call at just the right time, a word in season, a brother or sister who happens to show up, or a timely deliverance.
You say, “God has forsaken me,” and then you open the Word, and suddenly it becomes alive. God is still speaking. He is still making His Word live in your heart. You have this wonderful confirmation. It might only be a hug from another brother or sister.
I cannot tell you how thrilled their hearts must have been when God gave this confirmation and they saw more people go down with the hail than with the sword. They did not deserve this victory. They blew it. They got into a situation, and God did not have to come through. God did not have to rescue them or show Himself so faithful.
But He was saying, “Look, I want you to know I am still on your side.”
That brings us to the next thing God does. This is not only the most amazing miracle in Joshua; it is one of the most amazing miracles in all the Word of God. Joshua 10:12–14:
Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel;
and he said in the sight of Israel,Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon;
And thou, Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.And the sun stood still,
and the moon stayed,
Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies.Is not this written in the book of Jashar?
And the sun stayed in the midst of heaven,
and hasted not to go down about a whole day.And there was no day like that before it or after it,
that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man:
for the Lord fought for Israel.
What a miracle. Three times in the Bible the sun departs from its created routine. Once, in 2 Kings 20, on the dial of Ahaz for Hezekiah, when he was given extra years. Then, when our Lord Jesus died, from noon until three there was supernatural darkness. Then here in Joshua 10.
I know there is much discussion about this particular miracle, and many people miss the principle. They get so wrapped up in the picture of the miracle that they forget what is being pictured by the miracle.
I am amazed when I read some commentaries. “Was it an actual miracle, or was it just poetry? Was it the bending of light rays? Was it only optical? Did the sun not really stand still?” I say, “Well, why did the moon stand still?” They do not have an answer for that one.
Some say God tipped the earth on its poles. Others say God stopped the earth from rotating on its axis. I do not know what God did. I know He is not a prisoner in His own universe. He created the universe. He can certainly do whatever He wants to do.
They say the earth is spinning at a thousand miles an hour at the equator, and everything would go flying off into space. God can do anything. This bothers the theologians, scientists, critics, and skeptics. It is fun for me. I enjoy it.
The whole point is that there are no physical laws stronger than the Lord. What we know for sure is what we read in verse 13: the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. There was no day like that before it or after it.
Recently, I was at a men’s conference. I always want light from any brother who has light on any truth. I said to the brothers, “I am going to study ‘the sun stood still,’ and I do not have much light. If you have any, send it to me.”
One brother sent me a tape. It was quite humorous. The man’s name was Joe Fox. I Googled him, and he is on the internet—some kind of Calvary Baptist pastor or something; I do not know. But he had a message on it.
He was talking about Joshua being so happy that the sun stood still. Joshua comes home full of joy, unable to wait to share it with his wife. His wife comes stumbling out of the tent and says, “Honey, I am so glad you are home. The kids have been going crazy. I thought this day would never end.”
So I guess it depends on how you look at it.
Anyway, back to serious stuff. What is the spiritual reality behind this wonderful miracle? What was on Joshua’s heart? Why did he pray that? Why did he say, “Sun, stand still,” and, “Moon, in the valley of Aijalon”? Why did he ask the sun and moon to stand still?
Some say he was running out of daylight, did not want the enemy to escape, and knew that they knew the area while he did not. They might run off in the dark, and he wanted a complete victory. That may be part of it.
But I put myself in Joshua’s shoes—not only mentally, but because I too have made alliances with Gibeonites that did not go away. If God had given me a word, and I felt that I did not deserve any of God’s mercies because I had messed up so badly; if God had given me a word, then a confirmation, and began to do miracles and show me that He was still with me, still loved me, still provided for me, still guided me, and still opened His Word to me—I think I know what would be in my heart.
In my heart I would say, “Lord, this is so amazing. I did not deserve this. You provided for me. I messed up so badly. I shamed Your name. I shamed my own testimony, and You did it anyway. You came through. Lord, thank You. Thank You. I do not want this day to end.”
I think that is what was happening. I think he was saying in his heart, “How can this continue? How can this go on? I know myself. I know my heart. Tomorrow I am going to mess up again. Next week I am going to mess up again. Lord, I do not want to mess up anymore.”
“I am tired of sinning. I am tired of falling. I am tired of not seeking the counsel of the Lord. How can this continue? Thank You for Your Word. Thank You for Your confirmation. How can this day continue? Sun, stand still. I do not want the day to end. Moon, stand still. Do not let the day end.”
Then God said, “I will tell you how. I will do it once, and I will never do it again. I will do it one time. Go write down the principle, and I will never repeat it again, so pay attention.”
“You want this day to continue? You do not deserve it, but you want this day to continue? I will tell you how to do it. I do it. I am going to put the brakes on nature. I am going to stop the earth from rotating. I am going to stop everything natural, and I am going to give you a supernatural day.”
“If you live in the supernatural day, your victory will continue.” One time and one time only, God gave them that illustration. We say, “It is not by my works. It is not by works of the flesh.” He says, “I will tell you: it is not by nature. I will stop nature—everything natural—and give you a supernatural day.”
They did not deserve a day they never expected. He said, “If you want this to continue, here is how it will continue.”
One more thing before we wrap up. My heart would also say, “Lord, will the day ever come when these Gibeonites will go away? Am I stuck with them forever?”
Did you read the text? I cannot recall the verses, and I am not going to look at my notes again. But did you notice that God said, “I will give you the principle”? He said they would never go away, but He would make them their servants.
They would gather wood and water. What was the wood and water for? The wood was for the altar, and the water was to cleanse the sacrifice and for the laver. It was for worship.
He said, “I will not let them go away. You made the decision, and you have to live with the consequences. But I will make them serve you. They will take you forward in your worship. They will take you to the cross. They will take you to the altar.”
God said, “I will turn the curse into a blessing.” That thing you messed up, which has come into your life, God says is now going to serve you. It is going to humble you and keep bringing you to the cross. They will be your servants forever. They are not going to go away. You have to live with it, but you do not have to be in bondage to it.
How I love the sovereignty of God and how He turns the curse into a blessing. Are you better off this evening because there is a real Satan, or do you think you would be a better Christian if there were no Satan?
Let me tell you this: God makes Satan sweat to make you a better Christian. You are far better off because there is a real Satan, and you are far better off because there are real enemies. Those real enemies are designed by God to take you to the cross.
Principle number one: you are not going to know fullness without knowing that it is God’s battle, not yours.
Principle number two—now I will state it for you: if you want to know fullness, then you have to know that God is faithful no matter how badly you blow it.
What a truth. What a precious truth. There is only one other strategic battle, number three, that is going to bring everything together. Nobody knows victory unless he knows that the battle is God’s, not his own. Nobody knows victory unless he knows God will be faithful no matter what happens, even if he messes up badly.
God is going to be faithful. He is going to give me a supernatural day to live in, and that victory will continue. That which is the consequence of my own stupidity is going to become my slave, minister to me, and take me to the cross.
One more principle, and we will see that in the morning, Lord willing. Thank you for your attention, and may God write these things in our hearts. Let us pray.
Father, thank You for Your Scriptures and these wonderful truths, these Bible stories. They are more than Sunday school stories, Lord. They are the revelation of Your heart and Your ways with us.
Thank You that You are always faithful. Thank You that You do not have a second-best. Thank You that You are always bringing us into Your fullness. Thank You that You give us a word, and when we are weak, You confirm the word. Then You give us a day of mercy that we do not deserve.
Lord, we bless Your name tonight for what a God You are. We pray that each of us might take forward steps into a heart knowledge of God, and deeper and deeper into Your fullness. We ask in Jesus’ name. Thank You.