Pastor Bill Vecchio, Jr.
Fort Myers Community Church Podcast
Joshua 8 - "Second Chances"
(upbeat music) - You're listening to Fort Myers Community Church. Together, let's grow in faith, hope, and love as we pursue God's purpose for our lives. - All right, all right. Man, I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit out of breath after singing some of those songs. But man, praise God for the blessing that was just sung over us and that we got to sing over one another. He is for you. If you leave with nothing else today, my prayer is that you would know that God is for you. And he's with you. And so we're gonna jump on in this morning, in college back in the day, I got to play lacrosse at Palm Beach Atlantic University. So my freshman year, I actually got recruited to play baseball, but I ended up starting the lacrosse team with a couple of buddies of mine. And by my senior year, I had the honor of being the team captain. And so we had a bunch of rivals all throughout the state and we were playing one of our games. And I was just having one of those days where it was just a bad day. You ever have one of those? You ever just like, you're just off. You're not, either if you're an athlete, you're not playing well, you're maybe you're dealing with something in your life and it's just, everything's going bad. And so I was messing up, I wasn't playing well. I was very timid because of that. So I wasn't shooting. I wasn't playing at my best. And so it was a couple of minutes left. It was a tie game. And so the coach called everybody in and I remember this clear as day. And so we all get into this huddle. We all surround the coach. He's like, "Vecchio, what are you doing?" I'm like, he's like, "Come on, man, you're messing up." He's like, "We need you." He's like, "Team, get build a ball and you better shoot." And I was like, "Oh my goodness." I'm like, "All right." Like, "I'll try," you know. And so we get back out there and then we're playing. And finally, I get the ball and the clock's winding down and I wind up as hard as I can and I shoot and miss. No, I'm just kidding, I scored. And the crowd went wild. There was like five or six people there cheering on. And I remember scoring. I just remember the feeling of what it was like to be given another chance. I know it's a silly example, but in life, I think we can all remember a time where we were giving another chance. Like, we messed up, we failed, we weren't doing well. Maybe it was even a sin that we were in or that we did against somebody and we were given another chance. That's where we're actually gonna find ourselves today in the book of Joshua. So if you have a Bible, Joshua chapter eight. And I wanna give us some context to what we're talking about here. Because this is the story that we're walking into this morning. And so in Joshua chapter eight, they're about to go back into battle into a battle they had just lost. Now, why did they lose? Well, if we start to rewind the tape a little bit over the last couple of weeks, this is what we saw. God just did amazing things for the people of Israel. All the way to He stopped water flowing in a massive river so that the people of God could cross this river. I mean, God was with the people. Yahweh was with His people. And they find themselves up against the walls of Jericho. And with just their voices and a couple of ram's horns and the power of the Almighty Yahweh, God. They shout, they blow the horns, and God tears down the walls at Jericho. Why? Because He is with them. He told them that this is what they were to do. They listened, and now they take the city. Here were the instructions that God gave them in Joshua six and seven. He says, "I want you to go into the city "and destroy everything." Destroy it all. See, this land was filled with idol worship. The land was filled with pagan gods and pagan worship. And so the Israelites were going to cleanse the land. That's what God's purpose was for the Israelites. And so he cleanses the land and they destroy everything. But he says, "Do this." Take the gold, take the silver, and take these devoted things and put them in the house of the Lord. Put them in the treasury of the Lord. These are to be dedicated unto the Lord. But one of the guys, his name was Aikon. He took some gold, he took some silver, took a robe, he bundled it up, he brought it back to his tent. Now, if you can imagine they're in still kind of a temporary housing situation. And so people would have seen him carrying gold and silver and this robe. He walks back, he digs a hole underneath his tent, stores the gold and the silver and the robe, and covers it with his tent. And disobeys God and lies about taking these things. And so there were consequences. So in their next battle, the Battle of I, God, the people of Israel go up, but they don't take the whole army 'cause it's a small little city. I mean, they use their whole army for Jericho, but for the city of I, it was this like tiny little city and they think, "Oh, we're just gonna send up "some of our army, it'll be an easy win." They're like, you know, the last place team in the league, we're the first place team, we're just gonna send them on in and we'll take them out easily and then keep going on with our business. And they lose. They lose the battle at I. Joshua tears his robes, he's like, "What just happened, God? "Like, don't you know now this word is gonna spread "that we've lost this power that you have been giving us?" And God says, "You have sinned. "You have sinned against me and you've disobeyed." And so there are consequences to these sins. And last week we saw the ripple effect of sin. That's what we talk about, this ripple effect of sin and how our sin affects everybody around us. But God is gonna give them another chance. And this is the beauty of the word of God 'cause it's not just in this story, but all throughout Scripture. Here's what we see. The people of God fail. They fall. They cry out to God, God forgives them, restores them, blesses them, and what do they do? They fail, they fall, they cry out to God. He restores them, he blesses them. They fail, they fall, they cry out to God. He restores them, he bless another chance, another chance. If you're coming in here today and you believe in Jesus as your Lord and savior, you know that it's true that God gives another chance. And so that's what we're gonna see today because now they're gonna go back to I. They're gonna go back to the city that they just lost at with the power of God behind them because they've cleansed the sin out from their camp. And so I wanna pray over us and I wanna see the beauty of receiving these other chances. Let's pray, Father. Wherever we walk into this place today, however we're sitting here and as the enemy even tries to flood our minds with why we're not good enough, why we should doubt our salvation, why we should doubt your love. God, I pray that today we would see that you are for us. You are with us, that you go before us, that you are with us. And God, I pray that we would know that you are a God of another chance through the power of Jesus, Lord, that you have given us the freedom and the family that we can find in his life, death, and resurrection. And so God, I just wanna lift up right now, right in nature who is our ministry partner. They are about to take off and head to South Africa, Lord, on a missions trip. I pray you do go before them. I pray you do bless them and give them the opportunity to proclaim your good news to everybody that they come in contact with. And I think of unit E, the trampolines that were here a few weeks ago at the fall fest, that they are now in the Ukraine, Lord, and they're on the front lines bringing the gospel to such a difficult community of loss and pain. I pray through all of them that they would remind everybody that they encounter, that you are the God of second chances, you are the God of another chance, that you are a God that is for us, is with us. And it's not about religion, but it's about a relationship with you that we can find in Jesus. And so God, I pray as we look at this story that we would fall more in love with you. It's in your name that we pray, amen. So the story starts with confronting past failures. So what we see as we're journeying into Joshua chapter eight is that all of us in some way need to confront our past failures. See in Joshua six and seven, God gives these clear commands, yet the Israelites were defeated because of the sin that they had in their lives. Israel had to confront the sin issue before moving forward. And I think that sometimes we think that we can just move forward in our lives after receiving the gospel without dealing with and confronting the sin that is in our past. But God does not ignore sin. But he also doesn't abandon his children when they sin. He is with them. But he also wants us to confront our past sin. And I think the problem is, is that we know that in the moment right now walking into this place, that there are things that we all deal with. There are sins that we all commit. And so whether it is addiction or anger or malice or bitterness or resentment that right now we all sit here with something. And if for some reason you're sitting here and you're like, no, I can't think of anything that I'm currently struggling with, I would recommend looking at pride and arrogance. Those may be something that you might wanna think about. 'Cause we all deal with current sin. But also, also. There are past sin and past failures that we've dealt with in our lives, that we've experienced in our lives, that we didn't actually find healing from back then. And so if you've ever gotten the cut and then you didn't deal with it and it got like infected and then you had to like go through like antibiotics like our past can often be like that. We just kind of scab over it or it scars over but we've never really dealt with the problem. And so this story, as we're walking into the story of I, we're seeing that you have to deal with your past failures. You have to deal with your past sin in order to find healing to move forward. And so God will always do what is necessary to help his children grow. Now I love plants, I love gardening. I wouldn't say I'm good at it, but it's something that I actually really enjoy. I love planting stuff and seeing God grow these things. And in one of our first Easter services, I went to Home Depot for an analogy and I bought a citrus melody tree. That's a tree that has lemons, limes and tangelos all in one. It was pretty cool. And I was talking about how you're grafted into the vine of God, right? And it was a good analogy. But then I had this plant, so then I planted it in my yard. For a while it did well, because you know when you get a plant from the store, it has all the little green balls in it, and it has all the fertilizer and all the good soil and stuff that they pack in there. Well, I planted it and had that, but I didn't know where I planted it that the soil was bad. I also didn't know that it wasn't gonna get the right sunlight and the right water. And so after a while, this tree died. All the leaves fell and it wasn't doing well. So as the gardener, I had to do the hard work to dig up these roots and to move it to a better place. I planted it and I watered it and I cared for it. But what I didn't realize is that that also was not the best place in the world. So it lost its leaves again. I picked it up and then I moved it again and now it's thriving and it's doing super well and it's giving us all these limes and it's just so great. But it took hard work to get that plant to be where it was meant to be into the good soil. In our lives, often we're not willing to confront the problems that we've faced in the roots. Therefore, we can't thrive in the fruit. All of it's a work of the spirit. God is the gardener. But we often resist God moving us to the place where we need to be in order to find that healing. So we have to confront past failures, learn and change moving forward. And once we confront and admit past failures, we can learn, here's the second thing, to trust God's grace. Trust God's grace. Look at verse one and the Lord said to Joshua, this is his grace upon the people of Israel after they repented of their sins and confronted their failures. Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and arise. Go up to I. See, I have given it into your hand. I have given it into your hand. I have given it into your hand. The king of I and his people and his city and his land. And you shall do to I and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. So now there's blessing in their obedience. Lay an ambush against the city behind it. Once we confront our past failures, then we need to trust God's grace and how he calls us and invite us to move forward. See in verses one and two, God gives Israel another opportunity to claim the victory that he had already promised in. This chance, it's not a result of Israel's goodness, but of God's grace. Confronting past failures, it isn't easy. But we must trust in God's grace to do so and to find healing. If you've ever experienced this for yourself or maybe a family member, if you've been diagnosed with some kind of a terminal condition or a terminal illness that requires surgery, that's not something that you wanna hear, but it's also the grace of God that has been found out so that you can deal with the problem. Now leading up to the surgery, there's anxiety and there's fear and there's all the emotions going into whatever it is to go into the surgery. Then the surgery takes place and then there's the recovery. There's pain in that, it's not easy. You have to go through all of the steps that the doctor says to go through, but it's a grace that whatever the problem was that it's found out. We have a young man, 29 years old, got diagnosed with colon cancer in our last service. And so he just happened to go to the doctor, happened to get a colonoscopy at 29 years old and then the doctor finds colon cancer 'cause he had a history of it in his family. So he ends up getting right into surgery and then they find that it was like millimeters away from his bladder. God's grace. Now, did he wanna go through the surgery? No. Like did he wanna go through the recovery process? No, but man, he was so thankful that God allowed that to take place. And so we have to trust in God's grace in these things. It's not easy, it's not fun, but we have to trust God in the process. God's process for healing from failures begins and ends with God's grace. But grace always is uncomfortable. It's a discipline. And we're now talking about our sin again. The discipline of the Lord brings both alleviation and agitation. Here's what I mean by that. As a dad, I was kind of first learning how to discipline my kids. And so we would walk them through different scriptures. One of them is a children honor and obey your parents. Is unto the Lord, for this is right. And if you do so, you will live long and live well. And so we would sit with them and we would talk to them about how they need to listen. And so I remember this time with one of my daughters, she was about four or five and taking her into the room and sitting her down. She wasn't listening and saying, you cannot continue to go on. This isn't safe for you to not listen to your parents. And the Lord says, if you honor and obey, there will be blessing in these things. And I really felt in that moment as her dad that she was understanding what she did wrong. She was understanding that she has to listen to her mom and dad. And so what I said to her at the end of that was, I'm gonna give you grace. I'm gonna give you grace and I'm not gonna give you a consequence right now. And I want you to go and continue to live out obedience for mom and dad. I remember this so clearly. Well, as all kids do, as we do, minutes later, probably. But hours later, whatever, she's disobeying again. And so what do I do? I pull her back into the room and I start explaining to her that children honor and obey her parents. And then I said, so I'm gonna give you a consequence. She goes, no, no, no, no, give me grace. (congregation laughing) And then it was in that moment that the Lord actually spoke to my heart. And he was like, actually, giving you a consequence right now. This is grace because it's maybe not giving her a consequence 'cause she's understanding, but then it's also giving her a consequence so that she will understand. Both of these things are grace. Might be alleviating her from the consequence or it might be agitating her with the consequence, but both of these things are good for her, for her benefit. And so as a parent, you gotta wrestle through that. You gotta wrestle through what these things look like. But God, sometimes we don't receive a consequence or we don't feel like there's a big consequence to our actions, but then other times we feel like there is a big one. Either one of those things is God's grace. We have to trust His process. We have to trust His grace in those moments. And that leads us then to however God displays His grace to trust in God's plan. Joshua follows God's strategy exactly. And the Israelites trusted God's plan. And so this second battle leads them to victory. Look at verse 18. Then the Lord said to Joshua, stretch out the javelin that is in your hand towards I, for I will give it into your hand. Again, I will give it into your hand. This is God speaking. And Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand towards the city. And the men in the ambush rose quickly out of their place. This is the plan that God gave them. And as soon as he stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and captured it. And they hurried and set the city on fire. And when the men of I looked back, the smoke of the city went up to heaven and they had no power to flee this way or that, for the people who fled into the wilderness turned back against the pursuers. And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city went up, then they turned back and struck down the men of I. And the others came out from the city against them so that they were in the midst of Israel on this side and some on that side. And Israel struck them down until there was none left that had survived or escaped. God gave them the victory. And so they had to not only trust in God's grace, but they had to trust in God's plan. For us to experience victory in the chances God gives, we must trust the plan and step out in obedience. We have to obey his word and his commands because God's plan always includes redemption and restoration. That's why he gave us Jesus. See, Jesus came to live a life that you and I could live. It's the life of perfection. And he was sacrificed for you and I so that we can receive redemption for our sins. He paid the penalty for you. You deserve to be put on the stand because you are guilty of sin, but instead of you going on the stand and you receiving the greatest consequence, which is an eternal separation from God, God placed Jesus in your stead. For you on your behalf. So there was consequence, but that consequence fell on Jesus so that you and I may have a relationship with God through Jesus, restoration and relationship, redemption, that's why he gave us Jesus. And the victory that I was won because of God's intervention. It was his power and his plan that brought them success. So when then the victory comes because God promises us the victory, when the victory comes, we gather to celebrate as his family together. We celebrate in God's community. So in verses 30 through 35, after they win this battle, Joshua gathers the people of Israel and they all worship God. That's what we do here. That's why we gather. That's why we have community groups. That's why we have Bible studies. That's why we have discipleship nights. Why are we doing all of these things so that we can gather and share of the testimony of the Lord? And so in those groups, there are times where we're sharing what God is doing in our life. We share how God is changing us and transforming us. We're sharing how God is showing up in our lives on a changeable way. And then as a community, we are celebrating the faithfulness of the Lord. Even a baby dedication is celebrating the faithfulness of the Lord. And so that's what we do when we gather. Why do we do baptisms here? So that we as a community to gather and celebrate what God is doing in their lives. So this is what the community of God does. We gather to celebrate the goodness of the Lord. We celebrate as a community. When we walk through failures, we trust God's grace. We trust His plan. And then the whole family celebrates. So I want to connect this for a moment to another chance that we as a church can give to people in our world that need another chance. See, when God gives us His grace, what does He invite us to do? Share that with everyone around us. Now we can do so by sharing the goodness of the gospel, by sharing our testimony. We can share the gospel with our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our family. That's what God calls us to do. Live missionally in the world. We also can do that by caring for vulnerable children. So today is actually a holiday that's called Orphan Sunday. And I don't know why it's a holiday, but it's a remembering moment where we as the church, across the United States and the world, gather together to remember the plight of the orphan, to care for vulnerable children specifically, so that we as a church can remember that God says to us in His word, that as a community-- - That purity-- - Religion, we are James, is this, that we care for orphans in their distress. Now we have been given a second chance. In fact, in scripture, you know what the language is that God uses for us as His children? Adoption. In James, I'm sorry, in John, Jesus says, "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you." In Ephesians 1, 5, it says, "In love, He, Jesus predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ." Like we have been adopted into the family of God. We have been adopted, and so because we have been adopted, we are now called to care for those that are vulnerable, that don't have families. And so we gather to remember that we are here as a church to care for the vulnerable, to tangibly live out the gospel for coming alongside families and children within our community. And I wanna celebrate the fact that Amendment 4 did not pass. That preserved the lives of thousands and thousands of babies that are in the womb. But now we as a church have to step up. We have to step up because now there's gonna be more children in foster care, more families to wrap around, more kids that need to be adopted. And so the church needs to now step up because these children's lives have been preserved. And so we do so through adoption. We do so through foster care. We do so through wrapping around families that adopt and have foster care. And we have tons of ways to do this. We have an every child initiative that cares for the vulnerable. And in fact, right now, we don't have a leader for our every child initiative. So if there's something tugging at your heart right now that says, hey, I wanna actually help our church better serve vulnerable children in our community, please come talk to me. 'Cause we need people to coordinate our efforts in our community, care for vulnerable children in this community specifically. We have a ton of partners. So we have four kids and better together and one more child that are caring for the vulnerable children in our community. And we need more adoptive families. We need more foster families. And we need as a church to continue to wrap our arms around the families that are struggling in this life. Why? So that we can give them repeated opportunities to see here and respond to the gospel. That they will know the adoption that we knew by God for their lives. And so that's why my wife and I are foster parents. That's why we've adopted in our lives because there are so many kids. I mean, right now I think there's only a third of the amount of homes that are in the foster system. So there's about three times as many foster kids as homes in the foster system in our local community. So we need families to step up. And for you, you may say like, hey, I can't take a kid in my home right now, but you can wrap around other families that are. And so there's ways for you to do that and we wanna connect and plug you into those things. But here's what we're gonna do right now. We're talking about the practical ways that we're gonna serve our community. We're gonna end service right now. You know how normally we do some songs at the end of benediction. We're gonna end right now, it's early. You still have plenty of time to go get lunch. We're all gonna go to Windixie on the corner of 41 and Cypress Lake. So if you don't know where that is, you know where Costco is. I know the demographic here. So instead of making that dreaded right into the Costco parking lot, you're gonna make the left, all right? You're gonna not go into that craziness. You're gonna make a left and you're gonna go into the Windixie Plaza right there and the address is on the screen. Our local food pantries need food for the holidays because they are serving the vulnerable children in our area through getting all of these organizations' food for those families. And so we're partnering with Harry Chapin and we're gonna fill their food pantry. They've given us a list. I think it's about 12 items or so that they are low on right now. And we've set up a partnership with Windixie where they have set up all these things around the store so we can go and wipe their store clean of all the stuff so that we can fill up the local food pantry. And so that we can care as a church practically four as a reminder to this community that it's our desire that we would be missed if we ceased as a church within this community. So my invitation to you is join us. Join us at Windixie on the way out. There's some sheets. A lot of people forgot those last time. So there's some sheets on your way out that you can grab that have the items. We also have some at Windixie. There's a big tent in the middle of a parking lot with music playing. Mark and Seth and them are over there. They're already set up ready to receive. When you walk in, there's a few aisles that you can go down and it gets very congested. There's also some big square pallets that they have moved right kind of in front of customer service that you can just clear out those shelves right there. They put them there specifically for us and their bogo's I think and on sale which doubles the amount of money that we, stuff that we can give. And so we're gonna go there together. We're gonna serve our community, fill the local food pantry because all of these families need another chance. They need another chance to see here and respond to the gospel. And we get to be the light of the gospel in a practical, real way right now. Tangibly in this community. So please, would you join us as we leave right now, go over there and serve our community. I was told to remind you to come on Wednesday night. Wednesday nights are our last kickoff. If you've never been, that's fine. Come men specifically come on Wednesday night. Last time the girls, I think they had 90 something women show up and we had like 40 guys show up. So men, we need to step it up number one. Number two, Charlie is an amazing friend and he is going to shepherd our hearts in a way that we need it on Wednesday. So come and hear Charlie and be encouraged by fellowship together. Sound good? Can I pray for us? All right, Father, thank you for your love, mercy, grace and giving us another chance. And I pray, Lord, that we would serve your community for your name and your glory. God, we're thankful for all the churches in our area that we partnered together with and all the organizations that you have put around us. I pray that we would care for vulnerable children in our community and that we would give repeated opportunities to every man, woman, and child, all throughout Southwest Florida and beyond for your name and glory. We love you. It's in your name, we pray. [BLANK_AUDIO]