Don't Fall Away

Introduction
Do you ever stop to review all God has done for you?  I have lived long enough now that it is quite easy to forget all the wonderful things Jesus has done for me.  It's not that I'm not grateful.  It's that there is just so much my brain is not big enough to consciously contain it all--unless I intentionally sit down and try to recall it.  As I do, I think of how Jesus saved me from a broken, abusive home and from poverty.  I remember how Jesus led me to the woman who would become my wife.  I recall how Jesus inspired me and my wife to get a college education, even though it was very difficult and we didn't have a lot of financial support from our families.  Then, Jesus called me to leave a promising career in engineering to enter the ministry, which was another great unknown and tremendously difficult.  Furthermore, Jesus somehow gave us the wisdom and energy to raise 3 brilliant kids, despite moving around from place to place and living on very little income.  I could go on and on about God's blessings to me and my family.  

How about you? What has God done for you? Some of you have survived strokes, heart attacks, and other devastating injuries.  I know someone who conquered cancer and gone on to be very active in my church.  Others have overcome, with God's help, substance abuse or other terribly difficult problems.  Some of survived losing a child or a spouse or someone else you love deeply, picked yourself back up after a divorce, or coped with mental illness.  We’ve all made it through COVID (so far); do you remember when the world shut down?  Here we are.  We are still alive and living, with God's help!  Let us give thanks for God is good!

This is the last blog in our series about conquering your fears. Through faith in Christ we can overcome our fears because God fights for us and we are not alone.  God is with us and the heroes of the Bible and even our loved ones who’ve died and gone to heaven cheer us on when we have faith in Christ.

We’ve been studying how the Israelites had to conquer their fears in order to enter the Promised Land.  The Israelites started out as slaves in Egypt.  God sent 10 plagues to force the Egyptians to let the Israelites go free.  Unfortunately, the Israelites were too afraid to enter the Pormised Land, so they were stuck wandering in the wilderness for forty years until Moses and all the original generation died (except for Joshua and Caleb).  Then Joshua became the new leader who led a new generation to conquer Jericho and the rest of Canaan.  

Now, as we come to our story for today, Joshua is an old man.  God has done all the major fighting for Israel.  Most of the unbelievers have been driven out of Canaan.  A few remain as a test of Israel’s faithfulness—to see if they will complete the work of driving out all the worshipers of false gods (or if they will be unfaithful to Yahweh, the God of Israel).  And now, Joshua is coming to the end of his life and he has some parting advice for his people. 

Joshua 23:6-13
⁶ “So be very careful to follow everything Moses wrote in the Book of Instruction. Do not deviate from it, turning either to the right or to the left. ⁷ Make sure you do not associate with the other people still remaining in the land. Do not even mention the names of their gods, much less swear by them or serve them or worship them. ⁸ Rather, cling tightly to the Lord your God as you have done until now.

⁹ “For the Lord has driven out great and powerful nations for you, and no one has yet been able to defeat you. ¹⁰ Each one of you will put to flight a thousand of the enemy, for the Lord your God fights for you, just as he has promised. ¹¹ So be very careful to love the Lord your God.

12 “But if you turn away from him and cling to the customs of the survivors of these nations remaining among you, and if you intermarry with them, ¹³ then know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive them out of your land. Instead, they will be a snare and a trap to you, a whip for your backs and thorny brambles in your eyes, and you will vanish from this good land the Lord your God has given you.

Joshua’s 4 Pieces of Advice
Joshua gives the Israelites four pieces of advice:  1.     Be Obedient.  2.     Be Faithful.  3.     Continue the Mission.  And 4.     Love the Lord your God.

 

Be Obedient

God wanted the Israelites to be obedient.  It’s important to point out that God’s grace came before His call to obedience.  In Exodus 1, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt.  Then God does amazing, miraculous things to deliver the Israelites:

He sent ten plagues on the Egyptians to force them to let the Israelites go.  Then God parting the Red Sea so Israel could cross the sea safely on dry ground.  Next God fed the Hebrews in the wilderness with mana from heaven and quail for meat and water in the desert.  

Now notice, all this happens before God gives Israel the Law.  Exodus chapters 1-19 is all about what God does for the Israelites.  It is not until Exodus 20 that God gives Israel the ten commandments and the rest of the Law.  You see, God’s grace and deliverance precedes the requirements He gives, even in the Old Testament.

 

The same is true for you.  God’s grace pursues you, woos you, encourages you, and invites you before you even spend a single second thinking about Him.  Then, when you realize you need God and you turn from your sin and turn to God through Jesus, God saves you and adopts you as His very own child.  Now, you are part of His family forever.  It is only after God has done all this that you don't deserve that God asks you to be faithful and obedient and act as a member of His royal family.

 

Be Faithful

God enabled Joshua and the Israelites to drive out the unbelieving Canaanites from the Holy Land, because the Canaanites had rejected the One True God for generations (for at least 400 years).  So now, God gave the land to the Israelites.  They were to be God’s royal priesthood who would represent God to the whole world.  They were to help all the nations return to God.  They had a special purpose. 

A few Canaanite settlements remained in the land.  They were there to test Israel’s faithfulness.  Would Israel be faithful to God?  Would they become bored with their devotion to God and become intrigued by the exotic foreign gods of the Canaanites who remained in the land?  Would they decide to hedge their bets?  (You know, let’s worship the God of Israel so He will be good to us, but let’s also worship the gods of the Canaanites just in case?)  God wanted Israel to be faithful to Him alone.

Unfortunately, Joshua 23:12 has been used to say God forbids intermarriage between different races or nations because it says, "if you turn away from him and cling to the customs of the survivors of these nations remaining among you, and if you intermarry with them, then know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive them out of your land."  God doesn't have a problem with intermarriage between people of different races.  It is intermarriage between believers and unbelievers that God discourages.  We know this is true because the clues are right there in the Scripture.  Caleb was the only other Israelite (besides Joshua) who left Egypt who was also honored to enter the Promised Land.  Caleb was not an ethnic Israelite. He was a Kenizzite (which were a Canaanites), yet Caleb married and had descendents who were accepted as Israelites who received allotments in the Holy Land.  Furthermore, Rahab was a Canaanite from Jericho. God saved her when she converted and worshiped the God of the Israelites.  Rehab married an Israelite named Salmon.  She became the great great grandmother mother of King David and one of the direct ancestors of Jesus. Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, is listed in the New Testament as one of the great heroes of the Christian faith (Hebrews 11:31).  Intermarriage of different races wasn't the problem. Marrying people who worshipped false gods was the problem.  The person you marry is the person who has the greatest influence in your life.  Therefore, we should chose someone who shares our most important core values, which should be our devotion to God through Christ.

In this life, there are many things that will entice you away from God.  Be very, very careful that you remain faithful to God.  He is the only one worthy of your worship.  He must be the first priority of your life.  Do not turn away from Him for riches, for family, for power, for influence, for nation, for politics, for entertainment, for anything.

 

Continue the Mission

God chose the Israelites for a purpose.  He blessed them so that they could be a blessing.  God had already done the hard work of driving out most of the Canaanites.  All that was left was to mop up the few remaining groups.  This was certainly doable for the Israelites who now had a majority and who occupied the fortified cities of Canaan.  Unfortunately, they lost their focus on being the royal priests of God.  They turned their attention to their own personal pursuits—their families, income, and pleasure.  They forgot the mission of God.  Before long, this led to complacency and unfaithfulness.

 

Christians have a mission too.  We are to go into all the world and make disciples of Christ.  We are to teach people about the love and salvation of Christ and invite people to follow Him as Lord.  We are to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  When we get distracted, we worry about all the other things in life.  The main mission of Christ becomes an after thought or no thought at all.  Our lives are about what makes us happy and soon we don’t even care about God at all, except that maybe He can be useful to give us what we want or help keep us from losing what we love.  Where are we then?  We've become like the Canaanites.  We are right back where we started—full of fear, feeling lost and alone.  

We must stay focused on the mission of God or we get lost once and consumed by our selfishness, fear, and depravity.

 

Love the Lord Your God

Joshua told the Israelites to love the Lord their God.  Jesus said the same thing.  He said the most important commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  And the second was like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  

Love is powerful.  Fear of punishment only goes so far.  It’s an immature and incomplete way of living.  God doesn’t want us to obey Him out of fear.  He wants us to obey because of love.  

 

How is it with your friends, your children, your spouse?  Do you want them to be faithful only because they’re afraid of what will happen or how you will react if they betray you?  No!  We want the people we love to be kind and faithful because they love us. Right?

God is the same way.  God has already loved you with the greatest love of all.  Romans 5:8 – “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”  God wants us to be obedient and faithful—not out of fear, but—out of love.  When you love someone, you try to the best of your ability to do what they want.  Most importantly, you do what they need (even if it's not what they want).  That's love.  

What Christ asks of us is not so difficult.  It is an easy burden to bear and one He helps us carry.  It is love.  Love God with all you are love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Is that so hard?  We are not asked to take up a sword and drive out Canaanite armies.  In America, thanks be to God, we are not even in danger of being tortured or killed for our faith as many other Christians are around the world. So can’t we be obedient and faithful and love?

Closing
As I close, I want to invite you to decide who you will follow.  Have you ever decided to follow Jesus as a Christian? If not, please do that today.  Ask God to forgive you for the ways you've turned your back on Him up until today.  Now make a commitment to follow Christ and ask Jesus to help you keep your commitment.  From this day on, seek to be obedient and faithful to God through Christ.  

Perhaps you are already a Christian.  Maybe you even became a Christian a long time ago.  Have you been faithful or have you drifted from the faith or from your commitment? If so, please chose to recommit your life to Jesus today.  God will forgive you for getting off track.  He will help you to make a fresh start if you ask Him.  So ask Him today.

You Are Not Alone

Introduction
Kids are scary.  Once, when my daughter was maybe two years old, I was sleeping peacefully when I was startled from my sleep in the middle of the night.  There, in the dark, just inches from my face, I saw two big blue eyes staring at me!  After just a moment of shock, it registered that this was the face of my blonde-haired, blue eyed daughter.  She'd woken from a dream and was scared in the dark, so she silently wandered into her parents' room for comfort.  We welcomed her into our bed, where she immediately curled up and fell back asleep.

For some reason, we often don’t want to be alone when we’re afraid.  When we’re afraid as kids, we run to our parents or someone strong who can protect us.  When we’re afraid because we’re facing uncertainty, we want the company of those who have faced our situation before.  Sometimes, we just want someone to be with us so we’re not alone.  

Today, I want to reassure you:  you are not alone in your fear.

Hebrews 11:1
Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see

It Starts with Faith
Faith is the key to so much in life because we can’t see what the future holds.  We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, let alone what will happen next week or next year.  We hope for something good and the Bible says God has good plans for us, but we can’t see the good that will come or the God who promises to give it to us.  

That’s where faith is the key.  Faith shows us the reality of what we hope for.  We hope that God is good, that God loves us, that God has the power to do good for us. That is our hope.  Faith shows us it is true.  Faith is the evidence.  

Through the lens of faith, we can see the love and power of God through all the events of life.  Where others who lack faith see nothing, we see the power and goodness of God.  Where others, who lack faith, see terror and tragedy and disappointment, we see God helping us, healing us, and even using bad things that He didn't want to happen for our good.  Faith in the lens that enables us to interpret events as the work of  good God.

The 11^th chapter of Hebrews gives a long list of people whose faith helped them do amazing things.  Noah built the Ark and saved the animals and his family from the flood so the world could have a fresh start.  Abraham left his homeland and went to the Promised Land where God gave him so many descendants we can't even count them all.  His wife, Sarah, was able to have a child even though she was barren and too old.  By faith, Moses was saved from the Nile River and raised by Pharaoh's daughter.  Later, by faith, Moses delivered the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.  By faith, Joshua led the Israelites to conquer Jericho and all of Canaan.  By faith, Rahab, who was a Canaanite, was saved from destruction and became one of God’s chosen people—and ancestor of King David and later Jesus the Christ.  By faith, all these people did amazing things because they trusted God and He helped them.

But there are others mentioned too—people whose life story did not have a happy ending—at least, not by the world’s standards and not in this life.  Some were scorned, some were abused, tortured, or even murdered because of their faith in God.  But by faith, they understood they were not defeated because God vindicated them in the afterlife.  These faithful martyrs from the past faced persecution and death willingly because their faith helped them see it was better to honor God than keep their life.  They believed in God’s goodness and trusted Him even to the point of death.  As Hebrews 11:35 says, “They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.”  And so, now they have it.  We need not feel sorry for them.  We can even envy their eternal reward because they where special crown in eternity that honors their faithful witness in death.

Through faith, we can see that God didn’t abandon the world, even though our sin was terrible.  “For," John 3:16 says, "God loved the world so much, He sent His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life.”

Faith is the key to so much in life.

Have Faith in Yourself
You have to have faith in yourself.  You have to believe you can succeed.  Of course you have to put in the effort to train and prepare for success.  But even if you full prepare for success and don't believe in yourself, you will fail.  You have to prepare and have faith that you will succeed or you have already defeated yourself.  So you have to believe you can do it or you can't.

 

Have Faith in Others
The truth is we can't fully succeed in life on our own.  We need other people.  That's the life works.  You need to be able to have faith in other people.  You need others to succeed.  That's why it's so important that you surround yourself with people you can count on--people who will tell you the truth, people who will help and encourage you, people who will help you be your best.  Otherwise, if you can't have faith in the people around you, they will pull you down.  (It's also important to say you should be the kind of person others can have faith in too.  They need you to help them also.)

Have Faith is God
We also need to have faith in something bigger than ourselves.  If we only having faith in ourselves and others, we will be very limited in what we can accomplish.  We may accomplish some good things, but greatness will elude us because we will be limited by our human abilities.  God has big plans for you, bigger than what you can do on your own (or even with the help of others).  If David (from the Bible) only trusted in his ability (or even the ability of the army of Israel), he never would have stepped forward to fight the giant, Goliath.  He was just a skinny kid who couldn't even wear armor or pick up a sword.  David trusted God was able to give him the victory and he went to battle based on his faith in God.  When we trust God, He enables us to do great things--greater than we can do on our own.  So we must have faith in God.

One of the great things God does for us is save us from our sin, through Christ, for eternal life.  Do you trust God?  Do you have faith in Him?  Will you let Christ be your Lord?

You Are Not Alone
In the Old Testament, God spoke to reassure His people in their time of distress in Isaiah 41:10, “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”

You are not alone!  In the New Testament, Jesus reassured His followers in Matthew 28:20, “Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end

of the age.”  I'm sure the Twelve Disciples were afraid and overwhelmed by the prospect of going out into the whole world to make disciples for Jesus.  The "whole world" is a big, scary place!  So Jesus said they could be sure He was always with them.  And Jesus said He would be with His disciples to the end of the age.  "The Age" hasn't ended yet and we are Jesus' disciples if we call Him Lord.  So that means Jesus is with us too!  And it means we have a big job to do--to make disciples of all nations.

So we see that God is with us in the midst of everything we face in life.  Hebrews 12:1 gives even more encouragement to those who have faith.  You are not alone!  Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

You are not alone in your fear or in any of life’s struggles or victories.  All the famous heroes of the Bible are cheering you own!  Abraham, Moses, David, the Twelve Disciples are cheering for you!  Not only that, your friends and love ones who trusted Jesus and have died and gone to be with Him, they are cheering you on too!  You can think of many of the names of your Christian loved ones who have gone to be with the Lord.  They are cheering for you!  You are surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses to the life of faith who are rooting for you!

So, DO NOT BE AFRAID!  God is with you!  His faithful people are with you too!

Closing Meditation
Imagine a great cloud of witnesses surrounding you.  Among them are Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah and the prophets, and the Twelve Disciples.  Among them are the many Christian martyrs who gave their lives for the faith over the last 2,000 years.  Among them also are so many of the people you've loved who have died and gone to be with Jesus in Heaven.  

They are so proud of you.  They are cheering for you, encouraging you, rooting for you to succeed.  They understand the difficulties you face, because they faced them too and they made it through.  The know you are scared or overwhelmed, but they know you can make it through.  They are rooting for you!

I also want you to know that God, in Jesus, is with you too. He is not angry.  He is not disappointed.  He loves you.  He loves you so much He died for you.  Imagine Jesus calling out to you.  He says, “Come to me, you who are weary and carrying a heavy burden. Give it to me. I offer rest for your weary soul.  I have something better for you.  It isn’t hard to carry.  And you don’t have to carry it alone.  I will walk with you and help you.  And all these saints around you will be there too, cheering you on.  And there will be many Christians in this world who will help you too.  For in my Church, we are family—brothers and sisters in Christ.  You are not alone.  Don’t be afraid.  I am with you."

Let the reality of this scene wash over you.  You cannot see it with your physical eyes.  See it with the eyes of faith and believe,  Amen.

Fear is and Opportunity

Introduction
Halloween is just around the corner.  It’s a holiday full of monsters and frightening characters.  Scary movies are shown on TV and in movies.  It's not meant to glorify or celebrate fear or evil.  Halloween is a chance to have a little fun with our fears.  Making light and laughing at our fear and the monsters who scare us is a way for people to cope with real fear. 

The scary monster jumps out on the movie screen, everyone screams, and popcorn flies through the air, but then we laugh.  “They got me!”  We’re relieved and endorphins flood through our body and we laugh, because it’s entertainment.  We know the monster isn’t real and, subconsciously, we’re happy that monsters aren’t real and we don’t really have to be afraid.

However, there are also real fear in life.  What are you afraid of?  When did you first notice your fear?  Was it triggered by something?  Does your fear keep you from doing something you want to of need to do?

Today, we will see that fear is an opportunity.  The Apostle James wrote in the New Testament to encourage a small group of Christians living in a scary, hostile world who faced ridicule, persecution, arrest, exile, and even death simply because they believed Jesus was the Son of God who rose from the dead.  Listen to what he said. 

James 1:2-4
² Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Fear is an Opportunity
Fear is an opportunity, because fear tests your faith.  When God asks you to do something, it is often scary because it challenges you to step out of our comfort zones and do something beyond our natural ability.   

God called me to preach and pastor, but it’s not natural to me (well, at least it wasn’t natural to me in beginning).  I’m shy.  I’m nervous around large crowds of people.  I don’t even like to go to Walmart if it’s particularly crowded.  Standing up in front of a group people to speak is not normal for me.  If you'd told me I was going to be a preacher when I was 18, I would have said you were crazy.  That's not me.  I even remember one time freezing up at a youth Sunday event trying to give the announcements when I was only 22.   

Still, God called me to preach when I was 23.  It was an “opportunity”.  I was afraid to do it.  When I finally got up the courage to say yes, I found out my wife was afraid  too.  At first, she said "no", point blank.  She said she was not cut out to be a preacher's wife.  She felt she didn't have the bubbly personality of the stereotypical preacher's wife.  However, God made my me and our wife the way He did for a reason and then He called us into the ministry.  He chose us for His own reasons. Eventually, our faith overcame our fear and we said yes to God's plan and we’ve ministered now for 21 fruitful years in 4 churches.  

God promised to give the Israelites the Promised Land—a land flowing with milk and honey.  But in order to realize the Promise, they had to trust God despite their fears.  Last week, we learned how their lack of faith (because there were giants and fortified cities in the Promised Land) led to their wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.  Finally, when a new and more faithful generation arose, God led the Israelites to finally enter the Promised Land.  But they still needed faith and courage.  The Lord appointed Joshua as the new leader of His people.  And he said:

Joshua 1:5-9
⁵ No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.

⁶ “Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. ⁷ Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do. ⁸ Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. ⁹ This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Why Must We Face Fear?
Have you ever wondered why God didn’t just give the Israelites the Promised Land?  I mean, If He’s an all-powerful God, why didn’t God just hand the Land to the Israelites?  Why did they even need to be “strong and courageous” and fight to win the Promised Land?

The Israelites had to test their faith in God by facing their fear and overcome trials and hardships through the conquest of the Promised Land.  Yes, God could have just given the Land to the Israelites (He had the right and power to do it), but it would have robbed the Israelites of an critical opportunity.

Looking back at James 1:2-4.  Simply giving the Land to the Israelites would have robbed them of the opportunity “for great joy.”  It would denied them the chance to grow their endurance and to be perfect and complete, needing nothing. 

When you face your own fears, it is an opportunity for great joy.  For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow!  For when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.  When we face our fears, we grow stronger, learn more about ourselves, and draw closer to God.[i]  We learn to depend upon God and we find out God is bigger than any of our fears.  In Christ we see that even death itself cannot defeat God.  Therefore, death cannot defeat us because we belong to God in Christ. 

What is Your Promised Land?
What is your Promised Land?  For the Israelites who descended from slaves who lived in Egypt and then wandering nomads in the dessert, their Promised Land was a place to truly call their home—an abundant land where they could settle down and build homes and grow their own food and live at peace with their children and worship their God.  That was their Promised Land, but what’s yours?

You need a reason overcome your fear.  There are a lot of different fears that can plague a person’s life.  Some are scared of snakes or spiders or flying and maybe you don’t have to face all of your fears.  If your fear of snakes or spiders or flying doesn’t keep you from entering your “Promised Land”, then it may not really be a big deal.  In other words, if your fear of “whatever” doesn’t keep you from living a full life and doing the things God wants you to do, then maybe it doesn’t really matter.  If you're afraid of spiders, but your husband or wife will can kill them for you, then why do you need to overcome your fear.  (So, I’m saying you don’t necessarily have to face ALL your fears.) 

I want you to focus on those fears that are keeping you from being all and doing all that God wants you to do.  So if you’re afraid of flying, just don’t fly.  Simple.  But what if God is calling you to go visit your son who lives so far away that driving there isn’t a practical option.  Well see, now you’ve got to face your fear.  If your fear of standing up in front of people to preach is stopping you from saying “Yes” to God when He says, “I want you to be a preacher,” then you’ve got to face your fear. 

If you can’t live at peace with God and with each other because some “fear” stands between you and your “Promised Land”, then you’ve got to trust God to help you conquer your fear.  Otherwise, you will be stuck "wandering in the wilderness" the rest of your life. 

Is Jesus Your Lord
The biggest fear of all (something that I pray will keep you up at night until you finally make peace with it) is whether or not Jesus is truly Lord of your life.  The Truth is, Jesus is Lord of all.  “He existed in the beginning with God.  God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.” (John 1:2-3)

Unfortunately, not everyone accepts Jesus as Lord.  They may say Jesus is Lord with their lips, but they do not obey Jesus as Lord.  Their allegiance is not to Him above all else.  Some reject Christ all together.  Others pay lip services, claiming Jesus is Lord, but they try to control what parts of their life they give to Jesus and what parts they keep for themselves.  “But to all who believe in him and accepted him, he gives the right to become children of God.” (adapted from John 1:12) 

If Jesus is truly your Lord, you have nothing to fear.  Even when death comes (for it comes for us all), we still have nothing to fear because we have eternal life.  For those who reject Jesus as Lord, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  You won’t be able to excuse yourself by saying, “I never rejected the Lord!”  If you never intentionally gave your life to Jesus and chose to obey Him as Lord, you may hear Him say to you as He said in Matthew 7:23, “I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws."  Or you may hear as in Matthew 25:30, “Throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It doesn’t have to be that way.  You can face the biggest fear today.  Chose  to serve Jesus as Lord.  Chose to let Him be your only Lord and Lord of your whole life.  Don’t try to hold back different parts from Him.  Let Jesus be Lord of all.  Choose to obey Him, 100%.  Go where He leads you.  Do what He asks.  Let His mission be your mission—even if it scares you.  Trust Him to see you through—all the way into eternity.  Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  “Love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.” (1 John 4:18) 

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[i] https://hebrews12endurance.com/face-your-fears/#How_to_Face_Your_Fears_Head-on

The Year of Jubilee - Nothing to Prove

Introduction
Today’s message is for anyone who ever felt they didn’t measure up or prove themselves.  If you’ve ever felt criticized, misunderstood, underappreciated, or devalued, Jesus has Good News for you today.  Jesus also has Good News for people who are puffed up with pride—thinking they are better than other people.  It may be a hard word—one that takes you down a notch—but it’s a good word because it can help you stop measuring yourself according to the false standards of the world and see yourself the way Jesus sees you—the way you really are. 

To help us hear God’s Word today, we continue our study of the Year of Jubilee.  In ancient Israel in the Bible, every 50 years the priest would blow a sacrificial ram’s horn on the day of atonement and proclaim a Year of Jubilee.  The Year of Jubilee was an incredibly special year.  There was no agricultural work during the Jubilee year.  Everyone was given a year off to celebrate and worship the Lord.  Slaves were also set free.  Listen to Leviticus 25:39-41. 

Leviticus 25:39-41
³⁹ “If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell himself to you, do not treat him as a slave. ⁴⁰ Treat him instead as a hired worker or as a temporary resident who lives with you, and he will serve you only until the Year of Jubilee. ⁴¹ At that time he and his children will no longer be obligated to you, and they will return to their clans and go back to the land originally allotted to their ancestors. 

Slavery and Freedom
Life was precarious in ancient Israel.  If you had a bad year or made some bad decisions, if a drought or a swarm of locusts or some other pest destroyed your crop, or maybe foreign invaders raided your land and stole your harvest, you could lose it all. There were so many ways to fall on hard times and there were no government run welfare programs, disability checks, social security, or unemployment benefits.  If you found yourself destitute, one of the few ways to survive might be to sell your land.  Then you had no way to grow food to eat.  So you probably had to sell a family member (or even yourself) into slavery to survive.  It was degrading, but it could happen to anyone and at least slavery was a way to survive because you would be fed and sheltered and protected by your master. 

Slavery is not God’s will for His people.  We only have one Master—the Lord God.  He is a good Master who is fair and truly cares about our wellbeing.  Our Master in Heaven never uses or abuses us, but always makes sure we have what we need when we are faithful. 

Unfortunately, slavery is a fact life.  It was a literal fact of life in ancient Israel.  However, lest we think too highly of ourselves in our modern times, recognize that a kind of slavery is alive and well in America.  The average American adult today is over $58,000 in debt. 

Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”  By this standard, the average American is deeply enslaved to debt.

Debt and slavery were stark and literal realities in ancient Israel, but  everyone’s debts were forgiven and every slave was released on the Year of Jubilee.  People returned to their own family’s land.  All of life was reset to normal and everything was made right again.  Everyone could make a fresh start.

This was wonderful, but also required some adjustments to people’s attitudes toward each other.  You might have grown accustomed to having and thinking of your neighbor as your slave.  Maybe they'd been your slave for decades.  Then after the ram’s horn announced the Year of Jubilee, your neighbor was set free.  They moved back to their family land and were free and equal to you in every way—both in status and in possessions.  Can you imagine how awkward that could be--especially if you’d been misused or degraded or abused you slave unfairly.  

Or perhaps you had been a slave to your neighbor for many years—always dependent on them, always having to serve their wants and needs, always accustomed to treating and seeing them as your superior.  Now the year of Jubilee comes and you are free.  You have spent years in humiliation and shame, but now you are your neighbor’s equal again.  You need to look each other in the eyes with no pride or humiliation. I’m sure it was quite an adjustment.

No one likes to be humbled.  No one wants to be thought of as “less than”.  We want to have pride about our life and our family.  We want others to be proud of us and maybe we even admire us.  It feels good. 

Two Great Lies
There are two great lies the world tells.  The first lie is “You measure up!”  We like to hear that lie.  It feels good.  We want to be cool, popular, liked, admired.  When people affirm us, we feel valued and appreciated.  We feel like we matter.  It’s a good feeling.  It's a lie because the world's measurements are based on a faulty ruler.  Tey measure us by worldly criteria.

The second lie the world tells is “You don’t measure up.”  This lie is the other side of the coin from the first lie.  If you don’t meet the world’s false criteria, you are unimportant, unwanted, unvalued, and dismissed.  Many people spend a lot of their time trying to establish and maintain the image that they measure up to society's standards.  In fact, much of the debt we see in our society—debt that enslaves us—is acquired as we try to measure up to the world’s arbitrary standards of who does and does not matter.

Do you wear the right clothes?  Do you have a nice car?  Do you live in a proper house? Do you have the right education?  If not, there is always a credit card company, a lender, a mortgage company, or a student loan available to “help” you acquire the “things” the world says you need in order to be important and respected in our society.  And so people trade their freedom for debt (and slavery) so that they can feel like they matter. 

Jesus’ disciples were certainly ambitious for greatness.  They wanted to measure up.  They jockeyed for power and position, even as they walked with their humble master because they each wanted to be the greatest disciple.  

Mark 9:33-35
³³ After they arrived at Capernaum and settled in a house, Jesus asked his disciples, “What were you discussing out on the road?” ³⁴ But they didn’t answer, because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. ³⁵ He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.”

Measured by the Cross
Jesus’ truth is that greatness is not measured by the world’s standards.  We are measured by the cross.  Jesus says, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”  And then he proved this truth by His own actions.  He washed His stubborn, prideful disciples feet.  This is the is the true measure of a person's greatness.

We are not measured by the world’s false standards, which change with the whims of fashion and people’s fickle imaginations.  We are measured by God’s eternal standard of Jesus Christ--who left the glory of Heaven, took the humble position of a slave, and even died a criminal's death on the cross (not for His own sins but for ours). 

That means two important things for us.  First, it means we don’t measure up. Romans’ 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glorious standard of God.”  We all fall short.  We’ve failed.  No matter how much the world tells us or we tell ourselves, “We are good.  We measure up,” the truth is we don’t.  That may sound depressing, but there is more to the story.  This bad news makes God's Good News so good. 

Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”  That means, Christ makes up the difference for us when we put our faith in Him.

An Invitation
In the Year of Jubilee in ancient Israel, everyone who was a slave was set free.  And everyone who was a slave master was also set free—set free from the burden of thinking themselves better than anyone else.  The Jubilee restored everyone to a right relationship with each other and with God, the true Lord. 

Jesus is the Great Jubilee.  He is the Lamb of God and the ram's horn that came to proclaim the time of the Lord’s favor has come.  Jesus proclaims that everyone is free from all kinds of enslavement—whether it be enslavement to sin or debt or to chasing the world’s fantasy about what it means to be important.

When we are blind, Jesus helps us see that we are not better than we think we are nor are we worse than we think are.  Jesus helps us see who we really are.  We are God’s precious children.  He loved us so much that Jesus died on the cross so we could be set free.

Jesus sets us free from the feeling that we’ve got to prove ourselves to anyone.  Jesus has already proven us.  He made you the way you are.  He loves you as you are.  He invites you to repent of you sin and trust in Him to save you and give you eternal value.  Jesus invites you to follow Him and to serve as He served.

Won’t you accept His call to repent and be set free today?  I hope you will.  You can.  Pray something like this and then find a group of Christians to help mentor you as you walk with Christ daily.  Pray:

Lord come in and take control of my life.  Fill me up full of your wonderful grace.  Cleanse my heart and my wretched old soul.  I choose You as Lord today.  Save me and help me to walk with You and be a servant like you, every day. Amen.