Pastor Bill Vecchio, Jr.
Fort Myers Community Church Podcast
Joshua 5:1-15 "Shadows Fulfilled"
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. All right, all right, good morning. All the first service was so much better than you. Good morning. No, they still were better. Oh, man, thank you so much for joining us. I'm excited about this morning. Let me, let us start us off with a question. Have any of you ever been lost when you were a child? Like in the supermarket, maybe at a fair, did any of you ever get lost? Raise your hand. Raise your hand. All right. So we're all in good company. I wanted to start the morning stirring up some childhood trauma for you. So I wanted to just bring that back to your, all right, parents, this is a moment of honesty. This is a safe place for you. Have you ever lost a child? Raise your hand. Yeah. Okay. So I'm also in good company. It's a moment that our family went on vacation one year, and my kids were all very little, and there was four of them, and we went to this resort, and I remember there was a moment where we were getting on an elevator going up to our rooms from the pool, and we pushed the button, the door opened, Salah, I think she was around six-ish, gets on the elevator, but nobody else moved. And so the stroller was there, and the two other girls were there, and it kind of just, we just stopped for a reason, and then the door immediately just shut. And the fear and the anxiety just overwhelmed us, and we start pushing the button, and we're trying to pry the doors open, nothing. And so she's got, and then you're trying to think like, what do I do in this situation like this? Like do I start running up the stairs and checking every floor? I don't even know how many floors there are. I'm not fast runner. You know, like I'm about good at stairs. And so we're trying to just figure all this out, and I remember after a little while the door's opening back up, and beginning to see the shadow of Salah on that elevator, just seeing her silhouette, and the relief that that brought to us. And I'm sure if you flip the story the other way around, the fear and anxiety that that would have brought onto a six-year-old child, who's probably still dealing with that trauma, seeing the shadow of her parents coming out of the elevator. You know what we both didn't do in that moment? We didn't hug each other's shadows. We didn't kiss each other's shadows. We embraced each other because the shadow was only the beginning part of the joy and excitement and relief that we found. But the substance was what we really were after. I wanted to be with her. She wanted to be with me. And I remember her jumping into my arms and a sweeping and sobbing and all the relief and all of that fear just melting away knowing that she now was safe. And the reason why I share that story is because this morning we're going to look at a bunch of shadows. What the cool part is, is as we take this journey together, is that we are going to see these shadows fulfilled. And so what we're going to do this morning is we're going to jump into Joshua chapter 5. So if you have a Bible, grab it. I'd love for you to open up to Joshua chapter 5. And I want to give you some context because here's really where we find ourselves. Have you ever been reading the Bible and then you get to a section of Scripture that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you? And so either you read it really quickly and move on and get to the next part or you just skip it all together. Anybody do that? Come on. This is confession time. Yeah, like there are parts that, like the genealogies, they're hard to get through. You're like reading them and you're just like, what's going on here? I don't really know what's going on. And so you just move on to the next good story. Joshua chapter 5 is kind of like that. So we just had this epic adventure where the Israelites who were freed out of Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. God is doing all these cool miracles where he's providing water from a rock and dropping manna in the wilderness. And he's parting the Red Sea and then now he's about to part the Jordan River. And all these things are happening because that's where we've been over the last three weeks is they were camping on one side of the river. They had this onward orientation, they were keeping their eyes fixed and focused on the promised land that correlates to us fixing our eyes on being with Jesus for all of eternity. And so we're seeing these things and then along the journey, the journey was an easy, the journey didn't make a whole lot of sense, but God is going to part the sea or part the river and they're going to walk over on dry land and then God encourages them to pick up stones from the Jordan River to create a memorial, these legacy stones that when generation after generation after generation looks back at these stones, they will say, why are those stones there? And they could talk about the faithfulness of the Lord, that God is with us wherever we go. And now we're about to get to the battle of Jericho. You know the battle? Like the epic stories that make the felt board, you know what I'm talking about? Like if it's important enough to make the felt board, then we're going to read it, right? So all of a sudden we're like really excited, but Joshua chapter five comes between them settling and building this memorial, this Ebenezer, and then Jericho. And so we read it and it's like, huh? And here's what I want us to take away from this morning, all of these things, there's three specific events we're going to look at. All of these things are a shadow of what is to come. So can I pray for us? Father, your word is so good. God there's no wasted words in the Bible. You are so intentional with how you bring to us the good news of Jesus. God, as we take this journey together and we look at Joshua chapter five, I pray that you would illuminate in our hearts and minds your word and give us a passion and an excitement about who you are and what you have done for us. God, I want to lift up all the churches in our area that stand firm on your gospel. Thank you so much, Lord, for Santa Bell Community Church coming and meeting here last week because they couldn't go to their facility, but that they were able to worship and enjoy their time together as a family. God, I thank you for the trampolines and them coming into town, that ministry, Lord, that you have built for them, not only around their music, which is amazing, but also how they are rescuing boys and girls out of human trafficking, Lord. I pray you continue to use them and guide them and direct them, give them strength and power as they are in the trenches, as they are on the front lines. God, we thank you for all that you are doing in our community. God, we do pray over the fall fest that's coming up this week. It's not just merely an event, Lord. Our hope is not just to get as many people as possible on this campus to just have fun. We want to start the process of giving them a repeated opportunity to see here and respond to your gospel. For many of these people, this is the first time they will ever step foot onto a church campus. So I pray that we as your church will be equipped and empowered to meet people at the fall fest and share the good news of Jesus. Kind of quippin' empower us to make disciples in your name for your glory. We love you. It's in your name that we pray, amen. So Joshua, chapter 5, I'm going to start in verse 2. So what we're going to see here at first is the shadow of circumcision. So what is circumcision, why was it required, what did it accomplish? So Joshua 5, verse 2. At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, "Make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time." Okay, wait, what? All right, I don't know if you know anything about flint knives, but flint is a rock and they would pound a rock till it became somewhat sharp and they would make arrows out of it or some kind of cutlery. This wasn't a bow and knife. This wasn't something that you're using in your kitchen today. So this is pretty rough. And just to give some clarity here a second time, this isn't that they were getting twice circumcised. What would have happened was, is while they were right before wandering the wilderness, there would have been this moment where God said, "Circumcise your people." And so they would have done that 40 years prior and then they wandered the wilderness for a while. The people that were circumcised at that time would have been dead. And so there were a few leftovers, so that would have been Joshua and Caleb and some of the older patriarchs. But most of the people that were with the Israelites coming across the Jordan were new. They were just born. They were in their 20s and 30s and 40s. And so for them, this never would have taken place. So he was saying, as a people group, you need to do this. So what are we doing here? So look at verse 3. So Joshua made Flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibbius Haraloth. So we want to go all the way back to Genesis chapter 17. So in Genesis 17, we see a man named Abraham. Actually at that time, his name was Abram. And Abram, God made a promise and a covenant with Abram that he was going to make a people, God's people through Abraham's lineage, through his people. And so what God does is he says to Abraham, I'm going to let you have a child. He was very old and he said, I'm going to allow you to have a child and that child's going to have children. And then you're going to create a people group called the Israelites. And those are going to be my people, Yahweh's people. So back then, this is what would have happened. In the culture of that day, people were slaves to other peoples. People groups were slaves to other people groups. And often slaves were marked. And so they were either marked with an earring or marked with a branding, like a physical mark on them like you would cattle, showing that they belonged to this people. Another way, if they didn't go that far as an earring or a physical branding, is that they would change the people's name. And that would also show ownership over those people. So a good case in point if you've been around the church for a while, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. That was their new name. We know them by their new names. But they had different Hebrew names before they came into King Nebuchadnezzar's people. But then he renamed them, showing that they were now a part of their people. And so God was setting aside a people for himself. How does he do that? Well, he changes Abram's name to Abraham. And then he puts a mark on him. This is the mark of circumcision. So that, why, Genesis 17, that all nations, all generations, to come, all their offspring would know that he and his people belonged to Yahweh. That's what circumcision meant, that they were God's people. They belonged to Yahweh. So all of that is just a shadow. The shadow of circumcision represents covenant and identity. Now when God was changing Abram's name from Abram to Abraham, and he went him go through this ritual of circumcision, there was a covenant that God made with Abraham. Now when you go into a covenant, like for Lauren and I, when we stood up at our wedding day, we both said I do. We both made that covenant, right? She said I do. I do. If you buy a house and a house transaction, you sign papers, they sign papers. Well, in the covenant that God made with Abraham, God walked both sides of the covenant, symbolizing that it's through his power, his authority, his calling that this covenant was going to be made. And he seals that with circumcision and a new name. So the shadow of circumcision represents covenant and identity. But here's the problem that we face because our enemy is constantly spewing lies into our ears. In our minds, in our hearts, the enemy, the devil is constantly trying to distract us from what God has for us. I mean, even right now, for some of you are like looking at me and you're like, I don't really like your shoes, right? You're like, oh, it's so cold in here and you're right. The enemy is constantly trying to distract us from what God has for us. And here, what we see is that the enemy is spewing lies to all of God's people. God is not for you. You do not belong to God. Right? What is he doing? He's trying to strip that identity and that covenant from the people of Israel. So that's why when the prophet Jeremiah is looking back on this story, he begins to connect this idea of circumcision to a coming Messiah. He says, there's a new covenant through a Messiah that will come. That's why the Apostle Paul will write in Colossians 2, 11, "In Jesus you were circumcised without hands." Not a physical circumcision, but by Christ. So once the people of Israel trusted God and passed over the Jordan, God required them to be circumcised. This was a reminder of the covenant that God made with them and it affirmed their identity of belonging to him. But for us, circumcision, hear me on this, was just a shadow of God's covenant and identity of belonging to him. So for us, like a little lost child that first sees their parents for the first time, we're going to look past the shadow with joy to find our identity and our hope in Jesus. So that's the first shadow that we see here in verses 1 through 9. Now here's the second event that takes place in Joshua 5. Let's look at verse 10. This is the shadow of the Passover. So while the people of Israel were encamped and Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month and the evening on the plains of Jericho. So what is Passover? What are they doing here? Well over 40 years before this moment, we talked about this, they were enslaved in Egypt. So 40 years prior, they're enslaved in Egypt and God is going to send them someone to lead them out of slavery into the promised land. So he sends a man named Moses. Moses goes to the pharaoh and he says, "Let my people go." Does anybody remember that song? You sing it growing up. Does anybody want to sing it? No. Okay. So he says, "Let my people go over and over again." And does pharaoh listen? No. And so what does God do? And his power and his authority, he sends plagues onto the Egyptians in that land. And so there's frogs and the river turns into blood and there's locusts and there's all sorts of stuff that happens. The last plague was an angel of death. Now what this angel of death was going to do is going to pass through the city, the Egyptian city, and it was going to kill all of the firstborn sons of every family. Unless, as God told the Israelites, that you sacrificed a baby lamb, took its blood, dipped a hyssop branch into that blood, and put it on the doorposts, the blood of the lamb. Therefore the angel of death would know that you belong to Yahweh and he would pass over your home. And so what happens? The angel of death comes through, all the Egyptian firstborns die, and the Israelites children were safe, showing the power and the authority and the might of God. So year after year, after they went through the Red Sea, they celebrated something called Passover. But what we have to remember is that Passover is just a shadow of something to come. See for them Passover represented Yahweh's deliverance and salvation for people who felt lost and helpless. So I want you to think about this. Have you ever felt lost, helpless, hopeless? Theologians call this the dark night of the soul, the pit of despair. There's a movie that some of you have seen, it's called Castaway. One of the legends, Tom Hanks, gets deserted on a desert island all by himself. And he begins to go crazy because there's nobody around and he doesn't know when salvation is going to come. He doesn't know when someone's going to come rescue him. No one knew where he was. And so he makes friends with this little volleyball named Wilson, because it said, "Well, there's a Wilson volleyball." And so he like becomes friends with him. And so this is like the feeling that we have sometimes. We feel alone, we feel isolated, we feel like nobody understands us, maybe we feel like we're under attack. And that's truly what the dark night of the soul is where we feel like there is no hope for us. And that's how the Israelites would have felt while they were in Egypt. And so this Passover represents their deliverance and their salvation, waiting for hope. Only for us, the bad news is that we are stranded in our sin. We are on a desert island of sin and shame and guilt. And every time that there's this boat of hope that comes by, maybe it's a new job or maybe it's a person or maybe it's something that we see these shadows of hope and then we look out at them and they keep on going by. When we continue to put our faith in our hope in the things of this world, we will always be let down. There is a shadow of hope that we can look for that is a true salvation, a true Savior. And his name is Jesus. Now, now why is this a shadow of who Jesus is? Well, we'll look at what the Passover foreshadows because John the Baptist in John 1 makes a proclamation. He sees Jesus walking towards him as he's baptizing people in the river. And what is John the Baptist saying? He says in John 1.29, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." Just like the Passover Lamb that saved them from death, the Lamb of God has now come. The ultimate sacrifice has come. What else Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5, 7, "For Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed." The Passover is a mere shadow of deliverance and salvation that we now find in Jesus. So like a lost child that is waiting their father or their mother's arms, we look past the shadow of Passover to Jesus and we find our deliverance and salvation in him and him alone. So here's the next event. And this next event is probably one of the most fun ones, a little cryptic thing going on here. John into verse 13. This is the shadow of the commander. So when Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said, "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" And he said, "No." Have you ever, any of you like been around little kids before and you ask them like this or that question and like, what's the response? No. It's like that's not an option here. There's no C. It's A or B. Are you for us or are you for our adversaries? No. Hmm. But I am who? The commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. And what does Joshua do? Joshua falls on his face to the earth and worshiped him and said to him, "What does my Lord say to his servant?" And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, "Take off your sandals from your feet for the place where your standing is holy." And Joshua did so. So who is this being? Merely an angel? No. This is what we call an theology in doctrine, a Christophany. An appearance of God in the Old Testament before Jesus incarnate came down to earth. Now, why would I say that? Because often in the Old Testament we see angels. There are certain angels that show up in different stories. Why is this different? Well, in Revelation 22, there's a passage where John is receiving the word of the Lord. And we see in Revelation 2 and 3 that Jesus appears to John and he gives him these commands and these letters to give to the seven churches. And what does John do? He falls on his face as though dead and worships. But in Revelation 22, an angel appears to John. And what's John's response? He falls down on his face and begins to worship. And the angel rebukes him and says, "Don't do that, get up. Do not worship me." And he points them back to the Messiah, Jesus. Because the only one worthy of our worship is God. So in this moment when this being is allowing Joshua to fall on his face to the earth and worship him, he doesn't get rebuked. But what does the being say? The being says, "You are standing on holy ground." A foreshadowing of Jesus, who is to come? The ultimate Messiah, and what is the question that he's really getting at? Joshua's going, "Are you for me or are you for our adversaries?" He's saying, "No." And this is what we talked about in our teaching team this week. He said, "Are you for me? Are you with me?" Because I am going to lead my people into the Promised Land. God is the one leading the people into the Promised Land. Jesus is the one who leads us into eternity. We cannot be our own saviors. Our spouses cannot be our saviors. Jesus is our Savior. Are you for me or are you for them? No, no, no. I'm for me. Are you with me? And so we bow down and we worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, because he is the commander of the Lord's Army. When we look at Revelation, we see this beautiful picture of Jesus coming again for us. That's what we're waiting for, by the way. Like if you're praying for anything, pray that Jesus returns, right? So we're waiting for the commander of the Lord's Army, Jesus, to come back and usher in God So this here for us is a foreshadowing of the beauty that we have in Jesus. This represents God's presence and power in our lives. So the appearance of the commander for us is the shadow of God's presence and power that we find in Jesus. So like a lost child who looks past the shadow of their parent, but with joy, they run into the arms of their father. We look past this shadow to the one and only King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus. Amen? Amen. Amen. So I'm going to invite Krishna to come back on up. And here's the challenge for today. We as a people, we as followers of Jesus, we do not seek shadows. We do not put our faith and our hope and our trust in shadows, but we pursue a relationship with Jesus. That's what we're invited into because if we keep chasing shadows, we will forget that Jesus actually truly is real and he is for us and he is with us and his power and his presence and his deliverance and his salvation is with us. But if we're just chasing shadows, then we're going to miss who Jesus is and what he's done because a hardened heart is going to see something very different in this passage of Scripture. A hardened heart is going to see circumcision as meaningless religion that just hinders their life. Right? I can't do these things, the things that I want to do, the things that make me happy. Right? It's just this meaningless thing. It's just this religion that I have to follow. That's not what God has invited you into. He's not invited you into religion. He's invited you into a relationship with him. And then the celebration of Passover, which is a beautiful thing, a hardened heart will look at that and just see that as meaningless tradition. Maybe you're coming in here today and you haven't been to church in years and maybe you, you know, your grandma used to bring you to church and you just see it as the thing I do in Christmas and Easter. Maybe it's just something that like you have is a sprinkle in your life that every time you kind of feel down, you just kind of sprinkle a little church in there or a little God in there. Maybe you open up your Bible every now and again and blow the dust off and it's just a thing that you go to as a tradition. God has not invited you into a religion. He has not invited you into a tradition. He has invited you into a relationship. And a hardened heart will look at a shadow of the commander and he may see this as just quirky confusion or maybe this merely just an angelic presence that is not really going to provide them with any benefit. And so church for you has just become this kind of abstract angels and demons and that you know it's kind of there but not really. It's kind of all over the place and you don't really understand it so you just don't even give it a, you don't even give it a thought. You know, it's just, there's no, there's no real power in God. There's no real presence in God. He's just out there somewhere. We're doing our own thing. He's doing his own thing. And maybe one day we'll see him again if we're a good person. That is not the gospel. All of these things point us to a person. And that's why when we talk about reading the Bible, it's so important because you cannot be in a relationship with someone you do not know. The entirety of the Bible is about one thing. It's about Jesus. The Old Testament points to Jesus. The New Testament points to Jesus. This isn't a story of fables. This is a biography of God. He wrote it about himself. So what is that? An autobiography. Right? So God, it's about him. It's about Jesus. And I think often we just think it's something that is going to help us get through the day or something that's just going to give us a couple of to do is that we got to make ourselves better. No, no, no, no. This is about the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and he wants you to know him. That's why when we talk about prayer, it's not just this abstract thing that you say a couple of hair marries and then you move on your way. No, no. It's about you having a personal, intimate conversation with God. Like if my wife and I never spoke, we would not have a very good marriage, correct? How do we think that we can have a great relationship and an intimate relationship with the King of Kings if we never speak to him? If we never talk to him, if we never stop the rigmarole of everyday life and all the shut off the TV and stop scrolling and stop and pause and get into silence with him? The good news for us is that God invites us into this relationship through his word, through prayer. He invites us into this through biblical community. Not community that are just going to fuel our fire that makes us feel like, oh, we're everybody's against us. No, a community that's going to point you back to Jesus, a community that's going to help you understand the grace of the goodness and the love of a father who sent his son to die for you. That's the beauty of the gospel, that you are seen, that you are known, that you are loved, that God gave up his life for you so that you can live for eternity with him. So we need to stop chasing shadows and fix our eyes on Jesus. We run into loving embrace of God. Can I pray over us? Father, thank you. Thank you for these three events that point us ultimately to you. Thank you for making a covenant with us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Thank you for giving us an identity in Jesus as your sons, as your daughters. God, I thank you for Passover. I thank you for resembling what it looks like to have deliverance and salvation in you. And given us this example, this visual of you showing up for Joshua to remind him of your presence and your power, that as they are going into battle, as they are going into war, that you are leading them, that you are guiding them. God, we are in a battle. The enemy is hard after us. And God, the enemy wants nothing more than to break up this church, the enemy wants nothing more than to break up marriages, than to break up families, than to break up communities. But you appear before us, Lord, as the king of kings, and you declare, I am for me, are you with me? So God, I pray that our resounding word would be that we are with you, that you are our king, and we are going to follow you into the battle knowing that you have already won the war. You have already won the victory on our behalf, Lord. So I pray, Lord, that we would find freedom and family in you, that all of our sadness and all of our depression and anxiety and fear would melt away as we run into your arms and find your loving embrace. Now, if there's anybody here that doesn't have a personal, intimate, interactive relationship with you, I pray that today would be their day of salvation. I pray that they would submit themselves to you like Joshua did and fall on their face and worship. We love you, we lift this up in the beautiful, precious, amazing name of Jesus, amen. (gentle music)