Guest Speaker, Trent Griffith
Fort Myers Community Church Podcast
Joshua 3:1-6 "An Onward Orientation"
You are listening to sermon audio from Fort Myers Community Church. For more information about how to get involved in the life of this church family, please visit www.fmcc.life. Good morning. Open your Bible to Joshua chapter 3. The reason you're opening to Joshua chapter 3 is when Bill invites me to preach every six months or so. He tells me what I'm going to preach, and he told me, "Hey, we're marching verse by verse through the book of Joshua." So you get Joshua 3, 1 through 6 this morning, and I'm like, "Oh, great. What's in there? I had to go check." So I'm excited to bring God's word to you. As you find your place there, let me just say what a privilege it is for me to be here. I am the president of the Fort Myers Community Church Fan Club that is based in Orlando, Florida. And I am cheering you on every now and again. I get to come back and I see another 100 or so people showing up. I'm so glad I get to preach the final Sunday where you only have one service and next Sunday. I apparently Bill needed to get ready for that. And so he's on a beach somewhere, I guess, catching his breath to get ready for two services. And what a privilege it is to be in a place where God is moving his people onward, not content with where you've been or how far you've come or how far you've grown. You are moving onward, which is very much the theme of the book of Joshua. Now, I know some of you are here today and you're new, you're like me, and maybe you're looking around checking out to see if this is a place where you want to go. Let me just say this. For anyone here today who feels disoriented and in need of some direction, for anyone who is here today and you feel directionless and need a leader who's already been where you need to go, for anyone here today who feels stuck in sin or shame or religious exercises that are unfulfilling and you need to know that God is not finished with you. And there is more territory for you to conquer Jesus welcomes you today with an invitation to follow him into new places of spiritual victory. That's what the book of Joshua is all about. So can we read the first six verses of Joshua chapter three this morning? If you're in, say I'm in. Follow along. This is what it says. Joshua rose early in the morning and they set out from Chitim and they came to Jordan. He and all the people of Israel and they lodged there, underline those two words, lodged there. Those are important words. They lodged there before they passed over. At the end of three days, the officers went through the camp and commanded the people. As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priest, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. Verse four, yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 qubits. That's about a half a mile for those of you that don't understand a qubit. About a half a mile in length, do not come near it in order that you may know the way you shall go for you have not passed this way before. When Joshua said to the people, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. All in favor of seeing God do wonders? Yes. All in favor of God doing wonders, we are that people. Look at verse six, and Joshua said to the priest, "Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people." So they took up the ark of the covenant and they went before the people. Here's the big idea of the message here this morning. The direction of the Christian life is onward. The direction of the Christian life is onward. My question to you this morning is this, do you, if you claim to be a follower of Jesus, if you claim to be a Christian, do you have an onward orientation? Let me tell you what I mean by that. I went to school at a little college in southwest Oklahoma called Cameron University. As I was nearing the end of my degree, there were a few elective courses I need to fill in the schedule and they offered me a few options, bowling, racquetball, and one of the options was really interesting to me. It was called orienteering. In southwest Oklahoma, there is a mountain range, believe it or not, in southwest Oklahoma. It's actually the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Range. Our college wanted you not to die in the wildlife refuge, so they offered a course on how to survive the wilderness. It was called orienting or orientation, and essentially they dropped you out there over a weekend. If you made it back, you passed the class and you got to graduate. This was 1989, no Google Maps, no GPS. I think they had a compass, but as we read these verses, do you realize the people that were making their way through the wilderness didn't even have a compass? Do you, as a Christian, know your way out of the wilderness? Do you know how to follow Jesus so closely you don't get stuck and die in a place that God did not design you to be stuck in? So we're going to look at what an orientation toward God or an onward orientation actually looks like here this morning. Here's the first thing, an onward orientation is a posture that propels forward movement and resists stagnation. Now again, I hope you've been following along each week as Bill and others have been taking you through this book, but it's all about a journey. Do you know how much onward movement there is in the Bible? The story of the Bible is the story of God moving his people onward. And I hope that your story, your orientation is a story of God moving you onward. Hopefully you're not in the same place you were when you were 12 years old, unless you're 12 years old. Hopefully you've made some progress, but the truth of the matter is some of us have gotten stuck in our growth and our spiritual maturity. Some of us have this sense of disorientation because of the season of life that you're in, quite honestly, the season of life that I'm in right now has been rather disoriented. If you asked me, Trent, how's the last three years of your life gone? I think the word that I would pick would be disorienting. Bill mentioned we planted and pastored this church that did really well. We moved to Orlando to step into another leadership position and then we stepped out of that and we stepped into another leadership position and we don't feel like we're quite where we should be right now. We're just rather disoriented. But there's a sense in which that restlessness is a sign of spiritual health. I am not where I'm supposed to be. I am not where I want to go. I am ready to move onward. I hope you have that kind of posture. Now remember, in the scripture, what we're seeing here, I pulled up a Google map of the people of Israel in the land that they were in right now, here it is right now, rather crude maps, not a Google map. If you'll notice, this is a picture of the landscape of this story that we're reading right now. The blue is water. The Mediterranean Sea there, it kind of looks like a little bit of the coast of Florida there. You've got water off to the west there. But then you'll notice these bodies of water, these rivers. You've got Egypt over there, and of course, for 400 years, God's people were enslaved in Egypt. God rescued them, and they had to cross over the Red Sea to escape slavery in Egypt, and then they landed in the wilderness. Now what was supposed to have taken them about two weeks to get to the promised land ended up being a 40-year journey. And they got stuck in the wilderness. They didn't have this onward orientation. They got caught up in grumbling and idolatry, and they were stubborn and hard-hearted, and they wanted to go back to Egypt. And really, God wanted them out of the wilderness and into this promised land. Do you remember the land that was promised back in Genesis chapter 12? God came to a man named Abram, listened to the orientation that he wanted him to have. Genesis chapter 12 verse 1. How the Lord said to Abram, "Go, move, move from where you are to another place." He said, "Go from the country that I, from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." That was the promised land. And I will make with you, I will make a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. This was the promise. But it was 400 years before the people, Abraham's family, were able to enter into this promised land. And the only way they could do it is by crossing the Jordan River. That's that river at the top there by the promised land. You notice they were coming in from the wrong direction, they were coming in from the east. They had to cross to the west to get to the promised land there. And the story that we're reading here is them now lodged on the west bank, sound familiar, on the east side of the Jordan River, they needed to cross over and they were stuck there. And they didn't want to go so much so that that generation of people were not allowed to go into the promised land. As a matter of fact, read what God says here in Deuteronomy chapter 1 about this group of people. He says this, "Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give your fathers." Why? Because they didn't have an onward orientation and they were committing idolatry and grumbling and God says, "Fine, you're not going to get to enter into that land." But look at verse 36, except one man, Caleb, one of the spies that went into to see the land, he shall see it into him and to his children. I will give this land on which he has trodden because he has wholly followed the Lord. And then in verse 38, there was another man, Joshua, the son of none who stands before you. He shall enter, encourage him, and he shall cause Israel to enter it. So here we are in the book of Joshua, seeing the fulfillment of what God promised to his people, but only Caleb and Joshua and their descendants were able to go in. Now can you imagine being Joshua and Caleb, camped on the east side of the Jordan River, knowing the promise that not one of the generation previously could go in? So Joshua and Caleb were probably going around doing health checks on the oldest members of that generation, wondering, "Are you still alive?" I mean, because we can't go in until you're gone. And so God, could you hurry up on this one? And sure enough, as soon as that was gone, now that generation could go in. And so there was this anticipation, there was this posture of moving into the land God had promised them. The human heart, my human heart, is prone to stagnation. It is prone to find comfort in safe places. It is not prone to risk. It is not prone to take steps of faith. These people didn't know what was on the other side of that Jordan River. They had to make a choice. Are we going to obey God by faith and move into the land God has promised? Are we going to stay here where we feel safe and comfortable and content? I would ask you that question. Are you safe and comfortable and content with where God has you and unwilling to take the next steps of obedience and faith individually as a family, as a church community to reach this generation? Maybe you're somebody who's actually not even in the wilderness. Maybe you're still stuck in Egypt. You're still enslaved. You don't just need to get into the promised land. You need to be set free from the slavery to sin. You need to be rescued by the blood of Christ and step into a new relationship with Jesus so that you can then step into the promised land. A lot of people see this story as stepping into the promised land as a finish line. They see the Jordan River as a finish line. It's not a finish line. It's the starting line of all that God has for you in this life of faith. I told you I live in Orlando and I've got adult children now and the greatest thing about living in Orlando is your adult children will come and visit you when they live in the Midwest. When my kids come down, they always want to go to one of the theme parks. Our favorite theme park is the universal theme park there. My favorite ride in all the rides in Orlando is this thing called the Velociraptor. Are you familiar with this thing? How many of you that are my generation and older remember the old-fashioned roller coasters where you had to go up the hill before you went down the hill and somehow you got hooked to this chain where it's like are we ever going to get there and then you peek and you go down the rest of the ride, essentially you're just kind of losing momentum hoping you make it to the end. That's the old-fashioned way. You know what the new way is? Magnetic propulsion where they just kind of stick you on a launch pad and then somebody flips the button and through science you are propelled up a hill, down a hill, around a corner, upside down and about the time you're about to lose momentum, you know what? You hit another spot and they propel you forward again. A lot of Christians are like the old-fashioned roller coasters. As a teenager, maybe in college, and somebody showed you, man, it's really fun up here and they sent you on a journey but the reality is here now 20 and 30 years later, you've lost momentum. You've slowed down. Some of you say, "Well, I'm old. I'm in my 80s." Yeah, that excuse is not going to work. Do you know how old Joshua and Caleb were in their 80s? They have a posture of moving forward and resisting stagnation. As a Christian, I invite you into this onward orientation. Here is the second thing we're going to see about an onward orientation. It is a forward-facing perspective. No matter how long I've wandered or how far I've already come, there's two types of people I'm thinking about here. First of all, there's people here that you remember what it was like to live a life of faith. Remember what it was like to take risk and follow and have intimacy with Jesus. And yet the truth is, it's been a long time since you've felt that kind of closeness. Maybe you've gotten disoriented. Maybe you've started following the ways of the world and other influences and it's got you stuck back in a wilderness. Maybe some of you are like the people of Israel. You've learned the fine art of grumbling and complaining about all the things that are wrong in the church and all these so-called Christians and Christian leaders that have disappointed you. Maybe you're remembering what it was like before you were married or before you had kids or before you stepped into full-time ministry or before you moved to Florida. When you think about the good old days back there, when you had some things that you miss now and you're wandering this morning, is God finished with me? Would God welcome me back? Maybe you think God wouldn't be interested in somebody like you. The truth of the matter is, no matter how far you've wandered, Jesus welcomes you back if you will have a forward-facing posture sometimes when I drive my wife's screams. And that's because she's not impressed with my driving and sometimes she will see something out the front of the car that I didn't see because I was looking in the rear view mirror at what was behind me. It is dangerous to move forward while you are looking behind you. It's not only dangerous for you, it's dangerous for those you're responsible for. So no matter where you've been, no matter how far you've wandered, if you're in a wilderness of sin or shame or guilt or fear or addiction, Jesus welcomes you. Put your mind and your eyes off of what is in your past and look forward to all that God is calling you to in front of you. He's been so gracious like he is to these people. He's a promise keeping God in spite of their idolatry, in spite of their grumbling and their complaining. Here they are, just one step away from enjoying this promised land of milk and honey and grace and goodness, if you'll take the next step, he'll be faithful to meet you there. There's another group of people here that I'm thinking about and it's the people that have traveled quite far. You're mature, you know Bible, you've impacted the lives of others, you've been successful, you've raised a good family, you're a contributing member of this church. As a matter of fact, when you compare yourself to the people that are sitting around you, you're like, I think I'm a little further down the road than they are. Matter of fact, I may have traveled the farthest, I may know more, I may have done more. And the temptation for all of us is to think, I can stop moving now, I've come far enough. I'm not as bad as I once was and I'm better than most people I know. Listen, stop congratulating yourself. Jesus is calling you onward and if you will move forward, you'll be shocked at how God will use your leadership and your influence like he did with Joshua and Caleb to lead others into new areas of territory. So no matter how far you've wandered, no matter how far you've come, God is calling us onward. Whenever a Christian, a church, a marriage, an individual, stops moving onward, do you know what happens? That individual or that church begins to die. If you stop moving, you start dying, God always has something else in front of us. So I would ask you, what is God calling you into? What is the next step of faith God is calling you to take? Here's the third thing about an onward orientation. It is a renewed dedication and anticipation of a wonderful work of God. Look at verse 5 again, then Joshua said to the people, "Consecrate yourselves. For tomorrow, the Lord will do wonders among you." What does that word consecrate mean? It's an interesting word, we don't use that word much anymore. It means to make a decisive act to move from compromise and complacency to holiness. It's a decisive act to move from a place of compromise and complacency to holiness. Notice it's a decisive act. You don't move onward with God passively. You decide to take a step of faith in response to the call of God. He initiates you follow, but you decide what you're going to do based on what God has done. Understand this, moving away from God happens in small, imperceptible drifts. Moving onward with God happens in big, decisive shifts. I was so encouraged to hear Pastor Bill this morning throw down the gauntlet to his church. Did you hear what he called you to in October? To be honest, I heard a little chuckle go through the congregation. Get off social media, turn off the TV. What would I do? Follow God? Maybe read a Christian book, maybe serve in a way that you currently don't have time. Did you know what he called you to? He called you to consecrate yourselves. He said, "What would that look like?" It means cutting off access to influences that would lead me into a life of complacency and compromise. He called you to make a big, decisive shift. Here's what most preachers do. Let me tell you to try to do a little better. Watch a little less TV. Just don't scroll as much. Set a limit of three hours instead of four on your social media thing on your phone. Your pastor just called you to consecrate yourself. What's involved in that? Three things. Number one, purification. God was calling his people to purify themselves of the influences that they had been under and experience. It means examining your life, confessing your sin. Before you can take a step forward, you have to acknowledge actually where you are. God, I'm not where I once was. I am not where I'm supposed to be. I've drifted from you through small, imperceptible shifts while I was doom-scrolling, while I was watching that TV, that mindset got somehow in my mind and I just kind of started thinking in the default way of the world. That happens in small, imperceptible drifts until you find, "I am far from the promised land and I'm back in the wilderness." There's got to be moments of purification where we come back. To examine our life, we confess our sins. We eliminate those influences that compete for God's attention. Listen, sin will prevent you from entering into the promised rest that God has for us. And until you repent, you will never experience the life of rest in the promised land. That was the experience in Joshua. So consecration means, number one, purification, number two, it means alignment. It means setting yourself apart for God's purposes, committing yourself to follow Him wherever He leads. So purification, alignment, and then finally, surrender. It means to yield control of your life to God, trusting His guidance and His provision. Even though you may not be able to see the next steps down the road, just take the next step, purify yourself, consecrate yourself, align yourself, surrender yourself to God. And do you know what will happen if you consecrate yourself? What does it say in verse five? The Lord will do wonders among you. Do you want to see wonders of God among you? Are you bored with God right now because you're not seeing a whole lot of wonder? Has God in your mind lost a sense of being a wonderful, full of wonder? If you want to see wonders, if you want God to be wonderful in your life, you must consecrate yourself. Now notice here, be very careful the way you read the Bible so many times we misread the Bible. Do you notice it doesn't say God will do wonders for you? It says He will do wonders among you. So often we read the Bible as if God exists to make my life more wonderful. God does not exist to make me more wonderful. I exist to make God more wonderful. As people look at my life and the steps of faith that I take and the repentance and the consecration and the alignment and they see how God is at work in my life, they're to look at my life and say, not Trent is wonderful, God is wonderful. He's doing wonderful things among you. God's most wonderful work changes my orientation. I'm sure at the beginning of the week there were some prayers prayed as tropical storm warnings and flood warnings and hurricane warnings began to alert us. Anybody here be honest enough to say I prayed that God would send that thing to somebody else and come on, be honest enough, like God would just turn in the direction of that thing toward those poor people up in the panhandle. God, please protect those people up in the panhandle as they experience the wind and the rain and the flooding and some of you experience the same things here and I don't want to make a lot of that but listen, God's greatest work is not reorienting a hurricane. God's greatest work is reorienting a human heart in response to wind and rain and water that's unexpected and unwanted in my life but so often the way that we pray reflects that we want God to make our lives more wonderful. God just send more money, take away all the disease and all the pain from my life and prevent the flooding, make my life more wonderful. Rather than God in spite of what I have faced today, God do wonders in the midst of my heart and my children and my family and give me an opportunity to see what you're doing in the world. You find the way that we think about wonder. How often should you consecrate yourself? These people were getting ready to go into a promised land. It was a season where it was a big, decisive shift. Listen, the reality is every day I wake up, I wake up with a disoriented heart and unless I make a big, decisive shift in that moment. I know how my day is going to go. I'm going to follow my own pursuits, I'm going to feed my own appetites and I am going to wander back into the wilderness. So do you know what I have to do every day? Before I face my day and before I face anybody else, Trent needs to see the face of God. I need to examine my life, align everything on my calendar to follow the orientation onward with God. And I would invite you to do the same. Before you check your social media, before you check your email, you might want to check what God has in store for you for that day and align yourself, surrender yourself to follow Him, commit each activity of your life to the Lord. Only those who consecrate themselves every day will be aware of the wonders of God among them every day. If you want to see the wonders of God among you, orient yourself toward God. Concentrate and consecrate yourself toward Him. And here's the last thing. An onward orientation is a settled rest secured by Jesus, our high priest who has gone before us and lives in us, packed a lot in that statement. So let's break it down a little bit here. It is a settled rest. Remember, everything that God wanted His people to enjoy was not a piece of property on the western, on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea. That promise that God made to Abraham, it was not just that they would have a physical piece of property. It was that they would enjoy a calm assurance in the presence of God and that their hearts would be at rest. It was a promised rest as much as it was a promised land. We know that because have you been watching the news? Does anybody know what's been going on in this particular piece of property on the planet? Does it remind you of a place of rest at the current moment? No, it's the most restless piece of property on the planet. And yet, the writer of Hebrews at the end of our Bible writes a commentary on what we've just read in Joshua chapter 3. Notice what he says. He says this, in Hebrews 4 verse 8, "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on, so then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from His works as God did from His. Let us," who's he talking to? Is he talking to the people of Israel 4,000 years ago? He's talking to us, those of us who follow Christ, let us, therefore, strive to enter that rest. Interesting concept, striving for rest, working for rest, strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. We look at these Israelites in the Old Testament like, "Why are y'all knuckleheads wandering around in a wilderness for 40 years when you could be in the land of rest and promise?" And I think those Israelites, if they could get in the DeLorean and look forward in the future, like, "Why are you people in the 21st century wandering around, scrolling, doom-scrolling on social media, when God has so much He wants to do through you and for you and among you, if you would just take the step of faith and enter into that rest." There is a rest that we can enjoy. The question is, how do we get there? For them, it was physically stepping into the water and trusting God's going to part to see and He's going to do that, they'll tell you about that next week. For us, it's not just a physical step, it's a spiritual step, and it means that we follow Jesus. Did you notice there's a piece of furniture in this story that we haven't talked about here? Something called the Ark of the Covenant. We actually, I'll note some picture of the Ark of the Covenant, and we found it here, and here's what it is. It's just a big box, it has some poles on it, it has some gold plated angels on top of it, and it was very specifically something that God told them to design, and it was to be carried only by Levitical priests, and God told the people, about a million of them, "Follow it." Follow it. Now, how do we apply that today for us? Are we supposed to get a piece of furniture, maybe that big box right there and put some poles on it? Just follow that around Fort Myers this week, and obedience to God. All in favor of not that plan, yeah. Is there a better plan? There is a better plan, because there is a better covenant, and there is a better Ark. That Ark represented the personal presence of God. Today, we don't have to follow a piece of furniture, do you know why? The spirit of Jesus lives in us. He is the better Ark of the better covenant. Not only that, Jesus is the better priest. He's the better high priest. He said you're supposed to follow these priests. What's a priest? A priest is a person who stands in between holy God and sinful man, and he mediates between them. It was the only way that the people of God would not be incinerated in the presence of the holiness of God. God appointed a priest to be the mediator, and so there were some temporary placeholder priests that were reading about here in Joshua, but there was finally and fully the ultimate high priest who came, and what was his name? Jesus was our high priest. Do you know why that we know that? Because again, in Hebrews, chapter 4, if we keep reading, this is what we find in verse 14, "Since then, we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens." Who is that? Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Notice, it says Jesus passed through. He passed through the heavens on his way to earth, and he passed through the heavens on his way back to the heavens. He passed through. Does that remind you of anything in Joshua? They were being called to pass through the Jordan River. In the Old Testament, water represented judgment. In order to escape Egypt, they had to pass through the Red Sea, and God held the waters back on each side so they could pass through on dry ground. Here they are 40 years later, and they got to pass through the Jordan River, and what you're going to find out the rest of the chapter is, God's going to part the waters again. They're going to go through. It represented judgment. You know what Jesus did when he was on the cross? He passed through. Holding back the judgment of God, Jesus was drowned in the rivers of God's judgment so that you and I could pass through safely and be treated as if we were as holy as our high priest Jesus. That is the life that Jesus has invited us into, and we are to follow him by faith in doing that. Jesus is the true and better covenant. He is the better ark. He is the better high priest. Jesus is the better Joshua. You know that the name Joshua and the name Jesus essentially is the same name? He is the one that leads us into this place of promised rest and invites us to move with him and to follow him and to have this onward orientation. Do you have it? Are you content with where you're at? Are you ready to move as an individual follower of Christ as a church? I trust you have an onward orientation. I want to invite you to stand right now and bow your heads with me. I could ask you just to draw a circle around yourself right now. And can we take just a moment of consecrating ourselves to the Lord? This is a moment in church that quite frankly we diminish so much. We've heard a lot of truth today. God has spoken. We've read scripture. We've sung songs. We've prayed prayers. But this is a moment to respond to what God has said. So with heads bowed, eyes closed. Can I ask you? What step of faith is God calling you to take this morning? See, if the truth was known, you're really still kind of enslaved in Egypt and you need to take your very first step out of slavery into salvation. At the end of this service, there'll be pastors and people around. They'd love to greet you. They'd love to tell you how you can step out of slavery into salvation to know that the waters of judgment, God's judgment, have been held back by the mercy of Jesus. And if you will by faith receive Him as Savior, you can pass through into a place of promise rest for now in eternity. But it takes a big, decisive shift to do that. For most of us here, you could probably share a testimony about how you did that. Thirty years ago, twelve years ago, twelve weeks ago, my question is this, have you gotten stuck in the wilderness? Have you stagnated? Like that roller coaster, you've just kind of run out of momentum and you're just kind of coasting your way to the end? I want to invite you back into an onward orientation. Get up every morning, consecrate yourself, commit your day to the Lord, align yourself, cut off influences that are leading you to grumbling and complaining and idolatry. And if you'll do that, I have no doubt, God will do wonders among us. Lord Jesus, thank you for being our High Priest, our Joshua that leads us forward. God I pray that in every seat, in every corner of this worship center right now, by your spirit, you would be calling people to take their next step of faith. I pray that you would dislodge us from being content, complacent, living outside of the promise rest that you so long to give us. Lord, we just proclaim how wonderful you are that you have done a wonderful work in rescuing us from our slavery to sin. And yet, God, we ask you to do it again. We ask you to show us wonders by transforming and reorienting our hearts from sin to service, from grumbling to gratitude. God, do that in my heart, and we consecrate ourselves to you as your people. Lead us onward. Give us faith. Thank you for being our leader. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]