Morning.
Turn to the book of Joshua, chapter 1. Joshua, chapter 1, starting with verse 1.
After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying, “Moses, My servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them—the children of Israel.
Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.
No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you, nor forsake you.
Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then You will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Let’s pray.
Lord, we want to thank You for Your Word. We want to thank You for the history that we’re looking at even today—the things of You, how You did things, and who You did them with.
We want to thank You that we can look to those things as an encouragement for what You are wanting to do today. Lord, this is what we are asking: that Your Word would become living to us, that it would speak to us in our time, for this day, for our very lives, and that it would not be merely something of history or something just very religious.
Lord, You give Your Word life. You are the One who interprets it to us by Your Holy Spirit. Lord, we tell You how we need Your Spirit to interpret Your Word to us. Otherwise, this is just dead to us.
So we look to You this morning. We look to You because You love us. We look to You because we know You want to communicate to us. Otherwise, You would not have left us Your Word. You would not have given us the Savior, and You would not have given us Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.
Lord, we want to walk with You, and we are asking that You open up the way to us more clearly so that we can walk together toward You for the rest of our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Guy, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here. You know? Yeah, yeah. Well, that time’s over now.
The next few times I share, I want to share out of the book of Joshua. Joshua is not just about Joshua, okay? It’s not just about one person.
As we look at this, we see that Joshua is going to go into the land of Canaan, the promised land. But is it just Joshua going alone? No. He is going with a whole group of people.
Everything spoken to Joshua is really spoken to this whole people, right? It is not just God talking to Joshua, because all this is meant for all the people going over. All the people are going over.
I gave Jack a title. Okay, and I hate giving titles, but I made a nice little title. See what you think:
The whole thing is, this is a whole generation that is going in. I want to talk about this idea of generation. We could say it is all the tribes and everything like this, but I want to talk about this generation.
When I was about fourteen or fifteen, there was a singing group called The Who. “Who?” Yeah, The Who. That’s right, Who.
Their signature song—does anybody know what their signature song was? “Who Are You?” What? “My Generation.”
If you listen to the song “My Generation,” at that time we were thinking, “Yeah, my generation.” But it was exclusive. It excluded. As a matter of fact, one of the verses was, “I hope I die before I get old.”
Now, two of them are in their seventies or eighties, so they did not make it.
But the whole thing is, it was really excluding. It was saying, “You’re not part of my generation. Therefore, I don’t have to listen to you. I have nothing to do with you. I do not want to be part of you. As a matter of fact, I do not even want to get to where you are.”
“I’ve got my freak flag flying high, and I’m doing it that way.”
But a generation really is inclusive.
In 1 John, the Apostle John gives instruction to little children, fathers, and young men. Now that’s a generation. A generation is inclusive.
When we look at Joshua, I want to get this out: I am not just speaking to young people. I am starting to hate that term—“young people.” I am sure some of you are hating that term too. “I do not want to be grouped with young people.”
You are part of the generation, part of the generation that goes in. You do not have to wait until you are old to go in, and you are not excluded because you are old from being part of a generation going in. That is a big thing. It is inclusive.
Some people straddle generations, right? When we look at generations today, we might say, if we want to be exclusive, “I’m part of the baby boomer generation.” I came after World War II, between 1945 and 1950-something. So I’m part of the baby boomers.
My kids are millennials. That is a whole different generation, right? Then we have Gen X, and I do not even know what today’s generation is. What is it? “Lost.” The lost generation. And that is true.
There was a group after World War I called the Lost Generation—a bunch of disenchanted writers. Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway? They were called the Lost Generation because World War I so disillusioned them about humanity.
But the whole thing is, we are not excluding. There is a generation that is going in.
One of the reasons I chose this hymn is that it starts out, “The sun comes up; it’s a new day dawning.” A new day does not dawn only on babies, does it? The dawn that came up today shone on the young as well as the old. So we are all included in this generation.
Even biblically, we go back to Hebrews, where it talks about Abraham dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob. Abraham lived to be 175 years old, so by the time he died, Jacob was a teenager. Isaac was older than me. But they dwelt together. They were the generation of Abraham.
We even sing a song: “God, let us be a generation that seeks.” Well, who does that exclude? It does not exclude anybody who is alive. Anybody alive is in the generation.
Talking about straddling generations, I was part of what people call the Jesus generation. The Jesus generation was from the late 1960s to about 1980. Some people close it off in the middle of the seventies.
The Jesus generation was a big movement of the Holy Spirit, where many people my age, who were in college or high school, got saved, got renewed, or got baptized with the Holy Spirit. There was a big movement of the Spirit.
Who led that movement? Do not tell me “the Holy Spirit.” Do not tell me “God.” Who were some of the leaders of it? I am not going to ask you for answers, but I will tell you the people in California. One of the big ones was Chuck Smith.
In my generation, there was a saying: “Don’t trust anybody over thirty.” You guys remember that? You guys are my age. Remember that? “Don’t trust anybody over thirty.”
They had a movie—really weird—where they had these leaders of revolutionary movements, and all these kids my age, teens and twenties, were saying, “Oh, yeah, yeah.” They were jailing all the people over thirty. Then the leaders started turning thirty, and they jailed them.
To put that in perspective: those of us who came to the Lord in the 1960s and seventies were teenagers and young college students. Chuck Smith, when the Jesus movement started, was over forty.
How could I relate to somebody over forty, for goodness’ sake? It was the Lord. It was the Lord, because it was a movement of the Lord.
This in Joshua is a new movement of the Lord. It is new because there was a generation—or part of a generation—that died out because of a lack of faith. They wandered in the wilderness.
Now that the remnant of faithlessness was closing out and coming to an end, there was a new day dawning. It was time to move into the land.
Who was going into the land? All these people. Think about it: how old were these people? Anywhere from sixty and under—not counting Joshua and Caleb.
Even this generation moving in, these people coming in after thirty-eight years of wandering in the wilderness, included people from infancy to sixty years old. Fathers, young men, and babes—they were all going in together.
Every command, instruction, encouragement, and admonition coming to Joshua was coming to the whole generation. It was not just spoken to the leadership. It was spoken to the whole generation, because God wanted the whole generation to enter into what He had promised for them.
This generation moving in was not concerned about leaving Egypt. They had already left it. They had left Egypt long ago.
Some of us stay on one experience, and we never move on. The Lord is saying—almost like in Deuteronomy, though this is out of context and does not directly apply here—“You’ve been here long enough. Move out.”
After Moses had given the law and they had the tabernacle and everything, He said, “You’ve been here long enough. Move out.” Then they went to Kadesh-barnea, failed, and began their wandering.
But this is the time when the Lord is saying these people are on the precipice of entering into what God wants for them. They are right there. This is the generation that is going to enter in.
For a lot of these people, they were coming back to the original starting place. They were coming back to the place where they had once been right on the precipice of entering the promised land, and now they were there again.
For some of them—remember, we are going from zero to sixty—this was their starting point. They had not been this way before. They had not made the mistakes of the older people in their generation. They were coming to this place for the first time.
But that is okay. For some, like those my age, coming back to the starting place is a renewing of your call. They are going to enter into what the Lord has promised them.
What has the Lord promised them? We say, “Well, He promised to lead them into Canaan.” What does Canaan represent? We could say it represents everything Christ is.
What is really God’s will for them? We can say, “That all things be summed up in Christ.” That is a very spiritual way of putting it. I am not putting it down. It is spiritual truth; it is spiritual reality. All things are going to be summed up in Christ.
But we might say, “What about the people who are little babes?” Then we say, “That He might have preeminence in all.” Another good word—preeminence. The young men get it.
Let’s put it in terms that we really want to see. Let’s make it naked, so to speak. What is the purpose of God? What is the will of God for this generation?
It is no secret. It is very simple. The will of God for this generation, and for all generations, is this: that Jesus is Lord, and that Jesus is Savior.
That is the will of God: that Jesus is Lord. That is what it means that all things are summed up in Him, because He is the Lord. All is summed up in Him. His preeminence—it is His first place. He is the Lord.
It starts out microscopically: He is Lord of me first. I see Him as Lord. He becomes my Lord as an individual Christian. Jesus is my Lord.
This was one of the things that came out of the Jesus generation: “Jesus is Lord.” Remember doing that? “Jesus is Lord.” Wonderful thing. We even had T-shirts: “Jesus is Lord. One Way.” Jesus is Lord.
But He is not just to be Lord of me. He is Lord of the generation going in. This is what it is all about. He is Lord and Savior of the generation.
When I talk about Savior, I am not just talking about saving from Egypt. I am talking about saving all the way until we are perfect in Him.
Then we start to telescope out beyond this generation. He is Lord of the whole earth. You know something else? He is Lord of the heavens and the earth.
But for us as a generation, it starts first: He is Lord of me.
When they came back to this place, it was like they had forgotten. They had been wandering around, being fed, and their clothes had not worn out.
We get the terminology: we are being fed, we get manna, we are getting something from the Lord. It might be milk, but the whole thing is that we are still fed. Our clothes are not wearing out. In other words, the sacrifice of Christ for me never wears out. It never loses its sheen. It is always the same, always brand new.
That is a wonderful thing when we find it brand new. Even today, for me, I touched it as brand new today. It is wonderful when you realize how new it is to you. It just takes off another layer you did not realize was there.
For this part of the generation—if you are my age—how many of you have a library card? Do you use it? It is a great thing.
Have you ever checked out a book from the library, started reading it, put it down, and then somehow it got swept away in the mess in the kitchen, in your bedroom, or wherever? You lost it. Then one day, you find it: “Oh, here it is,” and it is still marked where you were.
But then your phone says, “Your library thing is due,” and you say, “Oh my gosh, I’m halfway through the book. I cannot read it in another day. What am I going to do?” Renew it.
For some of us in the generation, those who are older, coming to the starting point again is a renewing. It is a renewing of purpose. It is saying, “I forgot. I left it out. I’ve been away, but now I see afresh, and I’m there to renew it.”
Isn’t that a wonderful thing about libraries—that you can renew a book? Bless you.
For others, it is the first time. They have heard that call to come on to something deeper, to come out of the wilderness. The Lord is saying, “I have something I’ve promised for you,” and that promise is that Jesus is Lord.
Jesus being Lord is not just parading around with a slogan: “Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord.” It is going in and finding out. God is saying, “I want to bring you into this place where you begin to see, lay hold of, and make Him Lord in your very life.”
This is where we are heading. “I want you to follow Me into this place. I know there are walled cities, giants, and all those things there. They are still going to be there. But as you find out that He is Lord, you are going to find the giants dealt with. You are going to find the cities scaled.”
Right now, you are seeing the other things. That is okay, because what I am calling you into is to find that Jesus is Lord. I want you to claim that Jesus is Lord for you. I want you to say, “Lord, I want You to be Lord of my life.”
Then He says, “Come on over the river, and let Me show you. I want to show you that He is Lord. I want to show you that this One, who was born of a virgin, who lived a perfect life, who laid down that life, was crucified, buried, and raised again, is Lord.”
He is Lord in this very time for you, to the glory of God and to the satisfaction of God.
We come to Him and say, “I give You all,” and the Lord says, “I’ll take you at your word. Now I’ll take you out and prove it. I’ll prove to you that He is your Lord.”
These things have to be proved. They have to come out of the area of being just a slogan: “Jesus is Lord.” He proves it. Jesus is Lord.
There is a means of getting there, a means of getting into that land and finding that He is Lord. The means God has chosen for us is by faith.
Faith is not merely a belief. It is not simply saying, “I believe that. I believe what this teaching says.” No, no, no.
When we were in Toronto, one of the things I shared about faith was that faith is like a call-and-response song. The slaves used to sing call-and-response songs. Somebody in the field would call something out, and the other slaves would call back in response to what they were saying.
Faith is call and response. God calls; you respond. God calls; you respond. That song would last the whole day.
Look at the Bible: call and response. Abraham—God called, Abraham responded. Moses—God called, Moses responded. David—God called, response. Elisha, Samuel, Peter, Paul—God called, and they responded. John Blanchard—God called, he responded.
It is not just for the apostles. It is not just for the Old Testament patriarchs. It is a call to everybody—everybody who will hear.
The call is a serious thing, because you can miss out by not responding to a call. How many of you missed out on a call to dinner once? Were there consequences? Did your folks ever say, “Missed dinner? We already put it away”?
I missed dinner before. But the whole thing is, you can miss out on something. You can delay. We can have a half-hearted response.
Abraham did not go out all the way. He went out with his dad and did not follow the whole call, but God waited him out. This is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
When you think about the price God has paid for your soul, it is not something He is flippant about, as if to say, “Well, I’ll take it as a loss. I’ll write it out as a loss.” No. “I paid a great price, and I will not be denied what I bought.”
That is God’s mind. That is God’s heart concerning you. “I will never forsake you.” You might forsake Him, but He says, “I will never forsake you. I paid too much to let you just be counted as a loss. I cannot. It would be an affront to My Son for Me to say, ‘I’ll let it go.’”
Even in the hymn “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” His wounds cry out. You cannot turn away from that.
We are called by faith to enter in through this call-and-response relationship. Throughout Joshua, we will see it is a call and response. It is to the whole generation—not just to the leaders and not just to Joshua. It is to every one of us moving into these things.
Having established that this is the generation moving in, that God has said, “You are the ones moving in. I’m not waiting anymore. I’m moving, and I want you to move with Me,” He gives three instructions.
The first instruction is in this little word: arise.
Arise does not mean awakened. It does not mean you need to be woke. That is for the newer part of the generation—I am using your vernacular. “Yeah, I’m woke, man.” I would say, “Far out. I’m glad you’re woke.” It is the two ends of the generation.
Arise does not mean being made aware. They were already aware. They knew they were supposed to enter the promised land. They were camped out with the Jordan River in sight, in plain view. They could see it. They knew they were supposed to go, and they had already traveled so far.
They had a taste of what God was doing. They had already defeated a giant. Remember King Og of Bashan—not Bog, Og. I know you might think I am related, since I am twelve.
Og had a bed about thirteen feet long. I would love one. But they had already experienced victory. They had a taste, a foretaste, of what the Lord was able and willing to do.
The Lord is coming to the place of saying, “You have had a foretaste. Do you like it? Do you want to see what it all tastes like? Do you want to come to the main course? This is just an appetizer. Let’s go.”
What “arise” means is like the army term: “We’re moving out.” It is not merely “get up” or “prepare.” It is saying, “You already know. We’re moving. We’re going. Get up. Put out the campfires. Grab your gear. We’re going. This is it.”
The first instruction is: Arise. We are moving. We are not staying around anymore. We are going ahead into what He has always wanted to bring us into—the place where you know Jesus is Lord personally, as a generation.
The second instruction is: Look forward. There are these futuristic verbs—“will,” “shall,” and things like that. He is saying, “We’re going forward. Look forward. Your future is forward. Your fulfillment is forward.”
There is a time when we look back, and we will get into that in another chapter of Joshua. But at this point in their lives, at this point in their journey, it is: “Look forward. We’re going forward.”
When you look forward, you see what is before you. Some say the book of Joshua is like the book of Ephesians, because in the land you see all the riches of Christ that are yours. That is what Ephesians talks to us about. You look ahead and see all that is yours in Christ. That is wonderful. It makes our mouths water.
Then we see giants, walled cities, chariots of iron, and all that kind of stuff. We see that too. The Lord does not block us from seeing it, because we are walking by faith.
It does not matter what you see as a difficulty, because you are walking by faith. You are walking into the thing where He says, “Every place your foot touches”—what? “I will give to you”? No: “I have given to you.”
I want you to find that out. You are going to have to come through it by experience. You are not going to get it merely through some dream. You might get revelation through the Word or a dream, but revelation is not any good until you have walked on it. You have to walk on it.
Has anybody ever walked on an iced pond? Sometimes you can see if it is thin, right?
The weirdest thing I ever saw was in about 1975, when we were in Minnesota on the Mississippi River. People were ice fishing, but it was not just that they were ice fishing. They had their RVs out on the river. Out on the river, man. Isn’t that dangerous?
But I guess the ice was so thick that these people knew. They had their RVs out on the river, their little things set up, and they were ice fishing. What a trip.
That amazed me—that someone would do that. But that is the whole thing about faith. “I trust. The Lord has shown me this is mine, and now I have to walk out on it.”
It is a wonderful thing when the Lord removes something from your life, or something you think is a giant in your life. That is the beginning. The Lord picks something. Sometimes it is simple, and sometimes the first thing is big.
These people first defeated Sihon, and then they defeated Og. Those were big things. All of a sudden, they were saying, “My gosh, it was not because of us. These guys were giants, and we beat them because the Lord did that.”
Then you have confidence—not in yourself, but in this One you are serving. “If I can go out and do this, and He tells me to do this, what is stopping Him?”
When we look ahead, we never look at ourselves. Once we start looking at ourselves, we can get prideful: “Oh yeah, piece of cake. Look what I did over here, and I’ll do that.” We find this in life all the time.
What does Hebrews 12 say? We have this cloud of witnesses, and then it says, “Looking unto Jesus,” the Author and Finisher of faith. The Author is the One who called you first. He is calling for that response.
He also completes faith. Each step of faith you take, He is right there to help you complete it and bring it into reality. That is why the giant was defeated. When you step out in faith and say, “Okay, Lord, I am looking at You, and this is the way You want me to go,” the Lord says, “Okay, come on out.”
How many of you have done that with your kids when you were teaching them to walk? When the child begins to walk, the first thing he does is look right at you in the eye. Then, when he realizes he is walking, what does he do?
It is a great thing, filled with joy. That is us in these things.
Look forward, and look at Jesus. He is the One calling you. He is never saying, “Go and do this by yourself.” Never. He is always calling you toward Him.
Or, if He is not calling you toward Him, He is sending you out because you have been with Him. Your confidence is in what He has told you to do.
Has it ever freaked you out about those seventy He sent out in Luke? They were not even the apostles. “Go out and do these things.” Would you have done it? “Oh, I’m supposed to go out and heal. I’ll look for someone with a cold, maybe.”
But there were lame people and demoniacs, and He said, “Go out and do it.” Because it is Him behind it, you go out in all your weakness, speak in the name of Jesus, and find out that Jesus is behind these things.
How many of us have experienced being afraid to witness to somebody, but then stepping out because we had that conviction that the Lord wanted us to say something and open a conversation? When you do, the rest is almost as though the Lord comes in and floods behind you.
Even if the person never comes to the Lord, you have been obedient. He did not ask you to convert them. He said, “Go and witness. Go and share Me.” You find that whatever He has told you to do, He stands behind it, because He is Lord.
The last thing He talks about is the Word. I do not want to talk about the Word in general here. He says something specific: “This Book of the Law.”
He is saying, “Joshua, and generation, I want you to bring it in. I want you to bring it in.” It shall not depart from your mouth.
We have a tendency to read the Bible devotionally, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am not saying anything against it. But He is saying, “I want you to do more than that.” He is not even saying, “Study.” He is saying, “Meditate on it.”
That means bringing it in and thinking about it. I do not want us to think that this is a legal thing.
A lot of the younger part of this generation finds the Bible irrelevant because all it is to them is doctrine. We teach out of it, but they do not know anything else.
One wonderful thing about the Jesus movement was that all of a sudden the Word became relevant. The Word is not relevant unless it applies to your life.
These people were going to face giants and circumstances they had never faced before. They would say, “What do I do in this situation? What do I do here?” That is why He says, “I want you to take that Word, and I want you to take it in.”
In it is instruction for you. It might not be instruction for the very day you are in, but somewhere down the line there will be something you have taken in, thought about, and wondered, “How does this apply?” Then all of a sudden, it applies right there. That is why you are supposed to take it in.
We have this idea that prospering means becoming wealthy. No. Prospering means doing what it is supposed to do. That is what prospered means. It did what it was supposed to do.
I have a shovel that prospers. I have a car that prospers. It does what it is supposed to do.
This is what the Lord has given the Word for. It is not just so we get revelation of things. It is so the Lord can say, “In this situation, this is how it applies.”
Psalm 1 says that the one who meditates in the law of the Lord will be like a tree that gives its fruit in its season. When something comes up and it is the season for something to happen, boom—it is there, because you have been in the Word. The Lord has quickened that Word to you and said, “This is what it is for.”
But if you are not in the Word, there is even the sense that you do not hear the voice of the Lord anymore. If we are reading merely for knowledge, our ears get fat. They wax fat, and we do not really hear what the Lord is saying.
We have all these spiritual truths learned this way and that way, and we apply them to other people. But that is the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees and Sadducees had all this teaching, and they knew just how to apply it to you.
The Lord is saying, “I am giving you a Word that is a living Word, and this Word is supposed to apply to your very life as you go into the place where I am taking you to make Jesus Lord, so that you find out that Jesus is Lord.”
Many times, when you look at the Word and say, “Oh, I’ll apply the Word. This is what the Lord says; I’ll do it,” all of a sudden you find out it is the Word of the Lord. You find that He is Lord in this situation and circumstance.
He is saying, “Take the Word in. Take it in deep. Think about it.” You do not have to study it, so to speak, but I want you to think. I do not want you to mindlessly read.
I am not unlike you. How many times have you been reading the Bible and thought, “Oh my gosh, I do not even know what I have read”? But how many of us go back and read it over?
Someone might say, “Well, time’s up. My time’s up.” But some of us go back and painfully say, “Okay, Lord, I forgot. I was daydreaming. I went somewhere else. Bring me back.”
It is a discipline. The Lord told Joshua to do this. He said, “You are going to do this. This is what I want you to do.” The psalmist meditates in the law day and night. It is a discipline.
That does not mean you go home and say, “I did not read the Word today. I got carried off in this.” It is not to bring you under condemnation. Say, “Lord, I missed my opportunity today. Forgive me. When I wake up tomorrow, bring it to my heart so I do not forget it like I did today. Let me go on with You. Cleanse me with Your blood.”
Bring the Word in.
Then He says, “Pack up. These are My instructions. Pack up. We are going forward.”
Now, before I close, I want to bring this up. I do not know how many in here are Christians and how many are not Christians. It is not for me to say. But I do want to say this: it is God’s desire for all of us to know Jesus as Lord.
Philippians 2:10-11 says there is going to be a day when everybody will bow the knee and say, “Jesus is Lord.” For some, it will be a rejoicing day: “He is the Lord.” For others, it will be something they are made to acknowledge because they have not acknowledged it all their lives. They have not acknowledged it once.
For those of us who have found Jesus to be Lord in the way that we first found Him as Savior, that is a wonderful thing. We know Him: “Jesus is my Lord and my Savior.”
But some are not going to know that second part. They are going to know that Jesus is Lord and Judge. That might be a rude awakening.
When I say Judge, people sometimes say, “You mean if I do not believe in Jesus, God is just going to judge me on that?” No, He is not judging you merely for that.
In Revelation 20:11, where it talks about the last judgment, it says:
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened.
And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life.
And the dead were judged according to their works.
According to what you have done in your life—that is what you are going to stand before God for.
It is not like the Egyptians, who believed that your heart was brought before Isis and weighed against a feather. If the feather outweighed the heart, then you went to the good place, or whatever.
Do not be fooled. This judgment is not about good outweighing bad. He is looking at your deeds, and there is a standard for man that you will be held up against. That standard is the Man Jesus Christ. You will be judged against that standard, and that will make you stand or fall.
For those wondering about the little people on islands who nobody knows about, who have never heard of Jesus—you are not going to be judged on that. They stand or fall by their works.
It says again, further down, that the sea gave up its dead, and death and Hades gave up theirs, and each one was judged according to his works.
If there is any here who does not know Jesus as Savior, I implore you: there is One.
We were not meant ever to be separated from God. But we were. Man fell in sin, and we are separated. You can remain separated forever unless you see that God has never wanted you to be separated from Him.
He sent His Son to become man and to be separated for you, just as we were praying about this morning at the table. He has given you a Savior.
If you realize, “I know about Jesus, but I do not know about myself. I do not know where I stand with God. I do not know what I am going to be judged for,” I am telling you now that God has given you a Savior.
You can tell God, “God, I do not know where I stand, but I fear it is not in good standing, and I am afraid. I am afraid of judgment. Oh God, have mercy on me. Give me a Savior.”
Then realize that He has given you a Savior, who has borne all your sin. Say, “Lord, I take the Savior You have given me. I believe on Him. I believe that He died for my sins, that He carried my sins, and that You raised Him from the dead. I want to have that new life. Accept me in Him.”
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You that You have this plan for us to come into the full realization of what You have wanted from the beginning: that You are our God and that we follow You.
We thank You for this One, Jesus Christ, who not only would be our Savior, but whom You have made Lord. Lord, we bow to Him, and we want to bow to Him.
We tell You right now that we are at this place. Some of us want to be renewed and want to come back into this place of going into the will You have for us: that Jesus is Lord. We want to have Him reestablished in our hearts.
For those who are newer, Lord, I pray You would call them out and say, “This is where I want to take you.” Lord, I pray there would be that response that You are seeking.
Thank You, Lord, that this is Your desire for us. We pray in Jesus’ name.