Good morning. Wait a minute.
You hear that, Brett? Good morning.
Now there you go. OK, we're here now.
It's great to y'all have have y'all here this.
Morning. It's a great day to be in the
House of the Lord. We have a few announcements to
make. We had men's breakfast elders
meeting this morning and it's a board meeting.
Following church service. Today, back in the back, also on
Wednesday, I think we have. A outing, don't we, Brad?
Beau reminded me that instead of the van leaving at 10:30.
It's going to leave at 10:00. I think that's right.
So. Instead of 10/30.
Be here at 10. Be ready to go.
Youth activity got youth. Activity this week, Brad?
Yes. Sir, enquire.
Youth Enquire this week. I think that's all.
Yes. Oh yeah.
I didn't know this morning till I got.
Here, the church that we're celebrating Lee Herron's 100th
birthday today. So.
If y'all would like to wish Lee a happy 100th birthday, I'm sure
he'll be happy to hear it. And I noticed that breakfast
this morning. What anything wrong with his
eating? For sure, he's still got a good
appetite, so he's probably good for a few more years, but had to
pick it, Lee, a little bit. We have to have a little fun,
you know, but men's breakfast is a good it's a good deal.
We have a good time at men's breakfast and do a lot of
picking and going on. But anyway, we do, we do wish
you a happy birthday, Lee. Congratulations.
All the other announcements, anybody?
All right, ladies. Sophie has something to say.
I know God passed away, but he but he did it for us.
Please stand, turn to #148 He keeps me singing.
We'll do the first, second, and fifth verse.
You may be seated. The call to worship this morning
comes from John. Chapter 8.
Verse 12. Again, Jesus spoke to them,
saying, I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have
the light of life. Then the Pharisees said to him,
You're testifying on your own behalf.
Your testimony is not valid, Jesus answered.
Even even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid
because I know where I have come from and where I am going.
But you do not know where I come from or where I'm going.
You judge by human standards. I judge no one.
Yet even if I do judge, my judgement is valid.
For it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent
me. The strength of a man consists
in finding out the way God is going and going that way.
Will you bow our heads? I Heavenly Father, we thank you
so much for being here today. We hope, Father, that we're
going the right way, the way you're going.
And if we're not? We pray to you that.
You will help us get on the right track and care our lives
the way You have us to do. We know that we make mistakes,
but we know that You're there for us when we do, Lord, and we
ask that You continue to strengthen and bless us as we
go. We ask these things in the name
of the one who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father who art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our debts,
as we give our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil. For thine is a Kingdom and power
and a glory forever. Amen.
Oh. Yeah, your own.
Service. We have a children's service
this morning I think. Now, thank you.
All right, good morning. So I want, I want to tell you
all the Bible verse that we're going to talk about, OK?
It's Genesis 12/1. The Lord had said to April,
leave your country, your people, your father's household, and go
to the land. I will show you.
All right, So when we do something for the first time,
it's kind of scary, isn't it? When you when you do something
with that you cried, was it scary?
But now it's not so bad, is it? Because you've been a week, so
it's good, right? Yeah, she does play in the
playground, and the playground's still fun.
It has something. You run on OK and you cry.
God love her teacher. What about like when you rode a
bike for the first time? Was that scary?
Wait, have you read the? Bike.
Is it, was it scary the first time you did it?
No. Well.
That's how you want things. Scared of the rider's bike with
no. Yeah, I fall off when they do
that. I know.
That's scary, right? Hurt.
My. Arm, I know you did it.
That was her first stitches. Thank God that didn't happen in
our house. It happened to the parents
house. All right.
What about going swimming for the first time?
Was that scary? Were you scared to get the water
so. That was fun.
I just swim now. I.
Can't. I swim before with you.
I know you did. I'm a.
Great swimmer now. The first time you know.
You. Were scared, I remember it.
You were scared. All right, so I'm.
I'm going to do some. Hey, hey, hey, Attention.
All right, I'm going to do something.
Boy, I need you. I need you to help me do
something, OK? I want you to come stand up.
All right, Come stand right here.
You sit down. I don't have one for you, so you
sit down. There it goes all.
Right all. Right.
Pay attention. What?
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to blindfold you, and I'm
going to get you to walk and get that handle right there, OK?
And we'll get you. All right, Let me go on and hold
you. All right?
So should I let you just walk by yourself and let you stumble and
possibly fall and because you don't know where you're going,
start walking? Are you scared you're going to
run into something? OK, come on.
Well, that's cheap. I'm going to make it wild on her
so we can. She can't cheat.
Spin her around twice. Yeah.
All right. So if you can find the book.
See Memorizing what happened. To.
That So what y'all did walking blinds like that except those
that cheated? I did not.
Well boy cheated, but we won't call him out for that anyway.
So just like just like y'all did, y'all were blindfolded up.
Abraham and Sarah experienced the same thing in today's Bible
letter. God told Abraham to leave
everything and move to a country.
He didn't even tell them which country they were going to.
They didn't know where they were going, what they would find when
they got there. It was like they were we're in
the blindfold. But they trusted God, just like
y'all sort of trusted me to get you to the book to get the book.
Every day we face new things and and they're always going to be a
little bit scary, but there's there's one thing that we can
always remember, but one thing that we can always remember is
to trust in God, right, because he's always there for.
So anytime you get a little bit scared about doing something
new, then you just trust in God and talk to him.
Yes, ma'am, I want to tell everybody quick.
Do you? Know why I have this heart faced
with it reminds me of God because it reminds me that God's
always. Good for us.
That's right, she a little hyper.
All right, let us pray. OK, be quiet and let's pray.
All right, now your head's down. All right.
Dear Father, sometimes we're afraid to go where we've not
gone before. Help us to remember that you're
always with us wherever we go. And remind us always to look to
you for the guidance we need in every situation.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
All right, here, take your shoes, take your foot away.
Y'all work on these and they're in the nursery.
Yeah, go to. The.
Nursery. I'm sorry I forgot to make one
announcement. I think I did, I can't remember
so if I repeated it'd be OK. Baptist Church is having a
revival Sunday night through Wednesday night.
It's 6:00. So if you'd like to attend you.
You're more than welcome to be there Sunday through Wednesday.
Sunday through Wednesday night. It's 6:00.
At the Baptist. Church.
Yes, All righty. I'm through baby.
We got room. If you're not, please stand.
Turns to #229 Are you washed in the blood?
We'll do the 1st and 4th 1st. Would you pray with me, Heavenly
Father? We do give thanks this morning,
Lord, for your love for us, Lord, for Your grace and your
mercy that you bestow upon us, which we have not deserved, we
have not earned, but You give it to us anyway.
Well, we pray this morning that as we come to look into your
Word, that our hearts and our minds would be in a tune with
Yours, Lord, that we would lay aside the things of this world
that distract us and that we would focus totally upon what
you have for us here today. Lord, we thank You for Your Word
written so many thousands of years ago, but it's still
powerful and effective and given to us to use each and every day.
Or we pray that we will listen, Lord, we pray that we will apply
it to our lives and that Lord, we will leave here changed and
becoming more and more like your son Jesus Christ each and every
day since. Jesus name I pray, Amen.
We give with joy, faith and love.
In your holy name we pray. Amen.
Our Communion hymn is number 405.
In remembrance, of course, first and second verse.
This morning as we come to the table, I want to ask you, do you
feel invited by Christ to come to this table?
Do you feel worthy? Do you feel honored to come to
this table? Do you feel accepted?
We look back over this past week of our lives and I'm sure we can
think of things where we have fallen short, where we have
failed, where we have said, God, I don't even deserve to be here.
And yet he says, come. There are things that have
happened within our lives that lead us to the place where I I
just don't feel like I can come. And he says, come, come and
remember the sacrifice that was made for you, the willingness
that I had to give of myself on that cross for your sins.
The invitation is always there for my Lord every single day, no
matter how much we have failed, no matter how unworthy we feel,
He always says, come back to me, let's pray.
Father, we come with that table today.
Thank you for our many blessings and thanking you for the
ultimate sacrifice, Lord, that you made for each one of us and
we protected this Lord, Let us do so in a way that will be
pleasing unto you. Lord, we come before you humbly
this morning acknowledging that we have fallen short.
We do not follow exactly as Jesus would have us to be for
living our lives. We come asking forgiveness.
We come knowing that you are a forgiving, merciful God that we
serve. Bless us now as we protect of
the emerald of the blood. Remind us that Jesus loved us so
much he was willing to sacrifice his life for us as we could come
to take this love cub. We're reminded that it was this
sacrifice that we're taking in Jesus name.
My prayer. Amen.
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.
We had given thanks. He broke it and said, this is my
body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, This cup
is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in
remembrance of me, or whenever you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
This morning as we get started, I want to I want to say two
things before I go to the scripture.
This first one is this last week as I was preaching, I had
someone say that they felt like that I was being a little hard
on on marriage and that was not my intent.
But what I wanted you to get from what I was saying was this.
Our Scripture was Psalm 27 and verse 14, and it says wait for
the Lord. I talked about that.
We waited for things in life. We waited to get married and we
waited for all these things. We thought they were going to
happen with marriage. And this is what I wanted you to
get, which it didn't seem to come across.
When done right, marriage is absolutely glorious, but we have
to start out with Christ in the center.
If we put all our hope and all our trust and we're waiting on
that other person to fill us and make us and to give us
everything that we need, we're missing out.
We got to wait for the Lord. And when we are in the
relationship with him that we need to be, then the
relationship with with between the husband and wife will be
what what it should be and can be and with our children and
with those that we come in contact with.
So if I LED you to think I'm against marriage, that's 100%
wrong. All right, here it is for today.
We're in Joshua and we're going to start in chapter 1.
And I want to give you a little bit of a little bit of
background before I start reading.
Joshua, if you will remember, was Moses's eight, his kind of
right hand man. Joshua had been with Moses when
they left Egypt. As they headed out, Moses was in
charge. Problems came up.
It always stop the buck, stop with Moses.
If you remember, Moses has a an issue with something that God
tells him. He didn't really like it.
He got angry, he struck the rock.
God said that's not what I commanded you to do, and you
will pay a price for that. There will be consequences.
He will not get to go into and lead the people into the
Promised Land as He had planned for 40 years.
The people wandered in the desert.
It's now time for them to get ready to go into the Promised
Land. And God gives this word to
Joshua after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, The
Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses his aide.
Moses, my servant is dead. Now then you and all these
people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land that
I'm about to give to them to the Israelites.
I will give you every place where you set your foot.
As I promised Moses, your territory will extend from the
desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates, all
the Hittite country to the Mediterranean Sea in the West.
No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your
life. As I was with Moses, so I will
be with you. I will never leave you nor
forsake you. Be strong and courageous because
you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to
their ancestors to give them. Be strong and very courageous.
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you.
Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be
successful wherever you go. Keep this book of the Law always
on your lips and meditated on it day and night, so that you may
be careful to do everything written in it.
Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your
God will be with you wherever you go.
I want you to imagine if you are Joshua for just a moment and you
have been following Moses and Moses has been leading, and you
knew that everyone looked to Moses as the one to, to fix the
problems, to answer the questions, to, to, to take care
of your doubts and your fears. And Moses has passed away.
Moses is no longer the one that everybody counted on, is dead,
and everyone is now looking to you.
How would you feel? Would you feel up to the task?
Would you feel ready? Would you feel excited about it
or would you be apprehensive? Would you think it would be
things going through your mind like I'm not Moses, I'm I'm not
the one that everybody trust? I'm going to fail, I'm not going
to do, I'm not going to be able to fill Moses's shoes.
Let me put it to you like this. You've been on the Chicago Bulls
and you've played with Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan has
LED you to 6 championships. You've won the NBA championship
6 times with Michael Jordan and all of a sudden Michael Jordan
says I'm done. Scottie Pippen, it is now your
time to shine. This is your team now you got to
take it over. Who wants to fill in for Michael
Jordan? Not me.
But this is what Joshua? This is the exact place that he
is. The man is gone and he now has
to step up and fill in the shoes of Moses, the greatest leader
that they have had up until this point.
And God says to him, be strong and be courageous.
This morning I want to ask you how strong and how courageous
are we as we go forward in our lives each and every day?
When we have to face new things, when trials come into our lives,
when we have doubts, when we have fears, when we're wondering
how we're going to pay this next bill, how we're going to get
through a situation, how we're going to deal with it.
God says to you and me, be strong and be courageous.
Why? What does he say?
Let me go back and give it to you.
I will give you every place where you set your foot.
As I promised Moses, your territory expand from the desert
to Lebanon, from the great river, the Euphrates, all the
Hittite country to the Mediterranean Sea in the West.
No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your
life. As I was with Moses, so I will
be with you. Listen to this I will never
leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous because
you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to
their ancestors to give them. This is the promise that he made
to Joshua, and that very same promise that he made to Joshua,
he makes to us. And he says to us, be strong and
be courageous. And he says, I will never leave
you or forsake you. We're not going through this
life alone. It is not all placed on us.
It is not all our responsibility.
Notice that he said to Joshua, he said I'm going to give you
all of these places. Every place that you set your
foot, I'm going to give you. That's what God says to him.
I am going to give this to my people.
You are going to lead, but it is me that's going to be doing the
work. It is not on you, it's on me.
That's what God says to you and to me each and every day.
The one thing that he asked or commands for Joshua to do,
besides be strong and very courageous, He says, be careful
to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you.
Do not turn from it to the right or the left, that you may be
successful wherever you go. Keep this book of the Law always
on your lips. Meditate on it day and night, so
that you may be careful to do everything written in it.
Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged, for the
Lord your God will be with you wherever you go this morning.
I want to give you another passage of Scripture that goes
along with that. For me.
We go to first John in chapter 5.
And no, we're not trying to lead a people out of Egypt.
We're not trying to finish the job that Moses has started and
going into the promised land. But we have all of this
responsibility upon us each and every day.
We have a life that we have to live.
It's our responsibility to get up out of the bed and to take
care of the things that we have to take care of.
Sometimes we don't feel like it. Sometimes we don't want to.
Sometimes we don't want to be strong and courageous.
In first John chapter 5 verse one, it says everyone who
believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and
everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well.
This is how we know that we love the children of God by by loving
God and carrying out his commands.
In fact, this is love for God to keep his commands and his
commands are not burdensome for everyone born of God will
overcome the world. This is the victory that has
overcome the world, even our faith.
Who is it that overcomes the world?
Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
This morning I want you to consider for yourself.
Each day that you wake up, each day that you go forth into this
world, are you strong and courageous?
Do you believe that God is going with you?
Do you believe that He will never leave you, that He will
never forsake you? Do you believe that He desires
good for you? That He wants you to accomplish
His will? Do we sometimes look at the word
of God? And I'm going to go back to this
in just a moment, but but sometimes do we look at the word
of God and we think that it's a burden?
Do we think that it's hard to follow?
Do we think that it is putting restraints upon us that it is
that it is causing us to to feel weighed down?
Or do we feel like when we look into the word of God that we
find life, that we find hope, that we find truth, that we find
the very thing that we need to encourage us to move us forward?
Do we desire to carry out God's plan for our life or we still
want to do about do it ourselves?
She'd have been very easy for Joshua to just say I can't do
this. I'm not the one, I don't have
what it takes, I'm not Moses. It's very easy for us to go into
first John chapter 5 and look at it and what it says.
And it says to us that it is our responsibility if we love the
Father is to keep his commands. And we simply say, I can't do
that. It's too much for me.
It's it's putting a weight upon me that I cannot bear.
God says to you and to me, if you love me, what?
Keep my commands. And then he tells us here
they're not burdensome. How many times have you ever
noticed that as you're walking with the Lord that the things
that you once thought we're going to be difficult, The
things that you thought we're going to be hard, that we're
going to to absolutely terrify you, But when you're walking
with the Lord, you realize I can do this.
It is not a burden for me to keep God's word.
It is a pleasure for me to keep God's Word.
Sometimes we wake up on Sunday mornings and we think I am so
tired. I've had such a terrible week.
I cannot get up and go to church today.
I can't do it. And we lay in the bed, and we
try to go back to sleep, and we toss and we turn, and some of
you may go back to sleep. And you don't go to church that
day. And Monday morning rolls around.
In another week, work week is starting.
You haven't been recharged. You haven't been in the House of
the Lord. You haven't heard God's word.
You haven't been with God's people.
You haven't been rejuvenated and that work week is going to be
worse than the one that you had before.
But Satan is telling you and me, just lay in the bed, you're
tired, you deserve a day off. You work 6 days straight, take
the day off. God says to you and me as we
wake up on Sunday morning. Come to my house, come and hear
my word, come and be with my people.
Come and experience my Holy Spirit.
Come and realize that everything that you need will be found in
this book. This morning and Sunday school.
We, I say we, I'm going to, I got off into chasing a whole lot
of things that didn't go along technically with our lesson.
Now, I thought that they were really good things for us to
discuss, but they didn't go along with our lesson.
And my Sunday school class was willing to go with me and to
listen and to discuss and to consider what I was saying and,
and what their opinion was. And we had this great
discussion. Now we'll tell you that if I, if
I was to ask them in Sunday school right now, what was our
scripture that we talked about this morning in Sunday school,
I'm going to bet you that almost every one of them says, I'm not
really sure. But I will tell you that if I
ask you what we discussed, I can guarantee you a lot of them are
going to say a whole lot of things that we did discuss.
My point is this, we may go or come with the intent of
receiving something and we may leave with something totally
different than what we ever expected.
We were going to get God's word for you.
As I read this passage of Scripture and as I preach this
to you, you may get something totally different than what I
get. It's the amazing thing about
God's Word. It meets us where we are for
those of us who are walking with the Lord, and we are, we are in
a good place and we are, we are right where we feel like that we
should be and we are, we are walking in step with the Spirit.
It's good. Sometimes I come into this
pulpit and I'm standing here and I'm reading this passage of
these passage of Scripture and I realized, my my Lord and my God,
I have failed you and I have failed you miserably this past
week. Forgive me.
Sometimes we have to simply acknowledge God.
I have failed you. I have not lived the way that
you desired for me to live. I have not done the things that
you have desired for me to do. And as we talked about at the
table, he simply says to you and to me, Come, confess those sins
to me. Confess those shortcomings to
me, and I will take care. I will forgive.
I will make you whole again. I will bring you back to the
place where you feel that you are walking with the Spirit.
It is not a burden to love the Lord.
It is a joy. But Satan is always trying to
pull us into that opposite direction of saying God's word
is too burdensome. God's word is too hard to live
by. He doesn't let you have any
freedom. He keeps you from doing the
things that you want to do. God says this is love for God to
keep his commands and his commands are not burdensome for
everyone born of God overcomes the world.
This morning I want to ask you, do you want to overcome the
world? Do you want to come to the place
in your life where you realize that all of the chaos around
you, it's not for you, It's not where you want to be.
Keeping up with what everybody else has, wondering what they're
doing, where they're going, how much money they have in their
bank account, how successful they are.
Trying to explain to our children why we don't have a
boat and why we don't have jet skis and why we don't take 4
vacations a year and why we don't do this and that and that.
Will these other children do? Well, we're not them and don't
compare yourselves to them. Our life is not based upon what
we have, what we can consume in this world.
Our life is based upon what Christ has done for us and that
He desires to live through US and with us.
Remember what God said to Joshua?
He said I'm going to be with you.
Every place that you set your foot, I'm going to give to you.
I am going to give you that land.
You can't conquer it in and of yourself, but with me you will
be strong and be courageous. Put your faith in me.
Put your love and your focus in this life in me.
Who is it that overcomes the world?
Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
The world we live in today tells us that the Bible is archaic,
that it was a great story a long time ago, but it's really not
relevant for today. There are those who will say
that Jesus was not really the Son of God.
He was simply a good man. He was a good teacher.
He did some good things while he was here.
He didn't die on the cross for to pay the price for your sins.
He didn't. He was not raised from the dead
because no one has been raised from the dead.
If you're dead, you're dead, but not with God.
God says to you and to me that we are dead in our trespasses
and our sins, and we are. But with Christ we have hope.
We have a future. We have the expectation of a
place that he is prepared for us, where there is no more death
or mourning or crying or pain. There is no more sin, there is
no more temptation. There is no more worry about the
things that this world offers. We've talked before about the
the need that we have when we when we see things on
television, when we see things on social media that that other
people have, the other things that they are doing and we want
a part of that we won't in on that.
We strive to do the things that we can so that we can attain
those things, that we can have those things, but they all fall
short. The only thing that satisfies,
the only thing that gives us what we are looking for is that
relationship with the Lord. Do you have a relationship with
the Lord this morning? When's the last time that you
spent some time communing with Him?
When is the last time that you spent some time in prayer?
When is the last time that you have simply said to him, God I,
I am falling apart right now. I need you.
He will never leave you. He will never forsake you.
He is there waiting to answer that call.
I. Want to close with this?
He concludes the last part of this chapter with these words.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son
of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
This is the confidence we have in approaching God, in
approaching God that if we ask anything according to His will,
He hears us and we know that He hears us.
Whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked for from
Him. When's the last time you spent
some time in prayer? When's the last time that you
asked the Lord to hear you? To answer you, to draw near to
you, God never forces himself upon us.
God never makes us love him. We were discussing this morning
the Sunday school and I know I'm off on another one, but I'm I'm
going to wrap it up quick. We were discussing the fact of
the sovereignty of God, that nothing happens outside of God's
will, of God's control. We, we cannot usurp God, but yet
also God gives us free will. It is our choice to make whether
we accept or reject him. It is our choice to decide
whether Christ died for me. He will not force me to accept
that. God's Word says that God's
desire is for all men to be saved.
But he doesn't force us because that's not love.
Loving God is a response to what He has done for us.
We hear that God, that Christ died on the cross for us.
We know that God paid the price for our sins through his Son
Jesus, and he simply calls to you and to me, will you love me?
Will you accept this free gift that Ioffer to you through my
Son Jesus Christ? And when we do, we show that
love by following his commands, by doing the things that he
desires for us to to do. Are you walking with the Lord?
Are you in need of simply just saying, God, I need you?
I've fallen short. And he says, come, let's go.
Lord in prayer, Heavenly Father, we give thanks to you for how
you love us, the compassion that you have for us, the desire that
you have a relationship with each and every one of us
individually. The Creator of the universe
looks down at his creation and wants to commune with me with
all of my shortcomings, with all of my sinfulness because of His
Son, Jesus Christ. I'm not seen that way.
I'm seen as righteous because of Christ.
Heavenly Father, I simply pray this morning, if there's one
here that needs to answer the call that you have offered your
love to them, that they will answer that call today, that
they will accept it. For those of us who've been
Christians for a long time, Lord, I pray that we will renew
our relationship with you, that we will realize that each and
every day you have new things to show us, new things for us to
experience, if we will call upon your name.
Lord, we thank you that you're a loving God, a forgiving God, a
patient God. Lord, we also thank you that you
are a holy God and that we have the opportunity to come together
this morning and to worship you through everything that we say,
through everything that we do, we give you glory and we give
you honor. In Jesus name I pray.
Amen. Please stand.
Turn to number 505. Bow the knee.
We'll sing it through twice. Questions if we need answers or
I pray with you about the need that we will call upon you and
if you will answer, if you will give us comfort, if you will
give us peace, that you will give us hope.
There's nothing else in this world and we thank you for that.
Jesus name I pray.