Jacob Burson: Good morning, Sam Jones Methodist Church. Good morning. If I haven't met you before, my name is Jacob Berson, community pastor here at the church. So you got a full slate of b team here today, JV. Me and you back up.
So we're the two substitute teachers. You can misbehave all you want to. We're not taking names, today. There you go. It gets a little bit rowdy on this side of the house every once in a while.
Now, really, really grateful that I'm able to share the message that we have for us today. We're continuing in this series, the whole story of going through the Bible in a year. And if you're reading along with us in the daily readings, we have made it through the brutal journey of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Which, if you have I have undiagnosed ADD, it's just, I don't know if it's just really I just don't pay attention to things I don't care about, and so we clinically diagnose it as something. But it's really hard to read the lists for me.
To stay focused and on task through this part of the Old Testament has been difficult. It's more of a weakness for me than it is for for anything else. It's more of of an indictment on on me trying to stay focused. So maybe you found that for yourself this week. But what I really like about the story today is now we're getting into some history.
This story that we're gonna read today from Joshua. I'm gonna read from Joshua chapter one and then I'm gonna jump over and do the bulk of the reading from, chapter six. So this is this is where we're gonna start today. So we're gonna read Joshua, one nine if you want to follow along in your Bible, then we're to jump to chapter six. Got a got a lot of reading to do over there.
So, Joshua one nine says this, have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the lord your god is with you wherever you go. Now, let's jump over to Joshua six verses one through 20. Maybe a story that you're familiar with. Now, Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel.
None went out and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, see, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city. All the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days.
Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark. On the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times and the priest shall blow the trumpets. When they make a long blast with the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout and the wall of the the wall of the city will fall down flat and the people shall go up. Everyone straight before him. So, Joshua, the son of Nun, called the priest and said to them, take up the ark of the covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark of the lord and he said to the people, go forward, march around the city, and let the armed men pass on before the ark of the lord and just as Joshua commanded the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the lord went forward, blowing the trumpets with the ark of the covenant of the lord following them.
The armed men were walking before the priests who were blowing the trumpets and the rear guard was walking after the ark. While the trumpets blew continually. But Joshua commanded the people, you shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth until the day I tell you to shout, then you shall shout. So he calls the ark of the Lord to circle the city going about at once. And they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp.
Then Joshua rose early in the morning and the priest took up the ark of the Lord and the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark of the Lord walked on and they blew the trumpets continually. The armed men were walking before them and the rearguard was walking after the ark of the Lord while the trumpets blew continually. In the second day they marched around the city once and returned into the camp, so they did for six days. On the seventh day, they rose early at the dawn of day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times.
And at that seventh time, when the priest had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, shout for the Lord has given you the city and the cities and all that's within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid messengers from whom we sent. But you keep for your you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction. Lest when you have devoted them, you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. Basically, don't take anything that we're supposed to destroy and keep for yourself.
But all silver and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord and they shall go into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted and the trumpets were blown and as soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout and the wall fell down flat so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him and they captured the city. The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let's pray.
Lord, we're grateful for your presence and Holy Spirit here with us today. Lord, I pray that I'm able to communicate the message that you have for us. It's in your name we pray. Amen. So growing up in, the time era that I grew up in in the like the early, the late 80s, early mid 90s, there was this brand called No Fear.
It was kind of capturing this idea of what was growing at the time of extreme sports, of the X Games, of snowboarding, of BMX, of jumping out of airplanes and bungee jumping. This whole no fear attitude of just kind of this rebellious spirit and so a lot of us in that era and generation had the decal on the back of our car. I think it was like two angry eyes that said no fear in an aggressive NASCAR type font. But not to be outdone. The the southern culture decided to take a twist on that and you could get proliferated in Panama City Beach in Daytona.
That's a side shoot brand called ain't scared, Which you may have seen in this community a little bit more than the No Fear brand. The Ain't Scared was the same thing of we just had to, for some reason we can't go with the vernacular No Fear, we have to change it up a little bit, but it's just this whole idea, this concept of conquering fear, of realizing that you're going to have fear, of second place is the first the first loser. One of the slogans I think I remember them having was like fear is a decision, is a reaction and courage is a decision. And so when you wear that on a shirt and you do something dumb, then you have, you can conquer the thing that you were supposed to be afraid of when you're wearing that t shirt. Even more accomplished if it says ain't scared on the back.
Culturally, we have so many we want to project a fearless attitude because so many of us are walking in some type of fear. We're we're scared of something and there's so many things to be afraid of spiders and bears and snakes and heights and fire and darkness and other neighborhoods. Mean there's so many things to be afraid of. There's some other fears that aren't quite as popular. One of the first ones that you may not have heard of is called anemophobia.
It's the fear of ceiling fans. Maybe some of you can apply. I can't sleep without a ceiling fan, or some type of fan. Another one is a rocky butyrophobia. That is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, which if you've ever eaten a peanut butter only sandwich without anything to drink, it's terrifying.
Spectrophobia is the fear of your own reflection, which some of us may have had that this morning. Ablutophobia is the fear of showering or bathing which if you've raised kids you know exactly that what that is as a clinical diagnosis is a blutophobia and they should seek seek treatment. Chorophobia is the fear of dancing. Also, Southern Baptist is also chorophobia. Don't dance in the fellowship hall.
I grew up in that community. I got friends in that world, it's all in good fun here. Chorophobia, the fear of dancing. Optophobia, the fear of opening one's eyes. If you're raised around kids, you know, like if they close their eyes they think everyone else is invisible too.
And they think you can't see them. Optophobia. Today I hope that none of you are suffering from this one. I'm going to help out with this one as much as I can. It's Amelia Macrophobia which is the fear of long sermons.
So I'll do the best I can to shift us away from that. There's so many things to be afraid of. Fear isn't necessarily a bad thing. Fear is a reaction to some type of danger. It's a it's a feeling that we get that then we respond.
We will either fight or flight. So we have fear and fear is our our body's decision on how to survive said thing. Whatever that thing is, fear is that initial response that we have or initial feeling that we have. It's our bodies, our body wants to win. We want to win what's before us.
We don't want to lose whatever whatever that thing is. And and one of the most common fears that we have is the fear of doing something new. Of doing something different in our life to break the normality of whatever we live in and then to go do something new is a little bit a little bit scary. There's actually a word for that one too, clinical diagnosis of neophobia, the fear of new things. I'm sure a lot of us have have felt that feeling when it's time to start a new job.
You're afraid of that first day of work, of of just not looking like you've got it all together. Like you still, we all, no matter how old we are, our internal seventh graders for the rest of our life. I wish I could project that to kids to go, hey, that voice you've got today is still is still gonna be there. We we set out our clothes before work, that day before, even maybe it's just me. At 48 years old, I do set out, still set out my little uniform before I go and think about that first day if I'm gonna kill it tomorrow.
Starting a new school year, getting married, going from having no kids to having kids and my wife and I are preparing for that life transition to having kids that aren't in the house anymore. And so many different new things that we feel unprepared for. The first time I'd one of the things that I remember of be feeling very unprepared was the first time I drove a manual transmission. So working, growing up at my dad's tire shop in Lawrenceville, we had these deals with these local car car lots where they would bring in their cars for sale and we would change the tires and brakes and oil oil changes and those kind of things and so I took a car from Nash Chevrolet was one of our big clients and so we took one of their cars that we had done an oil change on and then took it back to the dealership, I picked up another car to bring it back to my dad's shop and it was a Mazda RX7 like was late 80s or early 90s, it was sweet and maintenance guy there handed me the keys, said it's that little black RX-seven out there and so I get in the car and I'm like uh-oh, I'm not going to admit that I can't do this thing because then what kind of mechanic am I if I can't drive a manual transmission?
Now to be fair, I did grow up learning a little bit of the importance of a clutch and a brake, driving my granddad's tractor that if you let go of the clutch, the tractor will keep going. They're geared really low and I drove into my granddad's barn. So I understood the importance of clutch brake will stop said thing. The hard part is going up a hill and doing all of those things at the same time and then going to the gas pedal and Nash Chevrolet had a hill going up and out. I don't know if any of them watched me conquer the hill, but I conquered it and the transmission, the clutch did not explode, and I made it.
I learned how to drive a stick that day on that drive in a car that wasn't mine that belonged to a dealership, back to my dad's shop. I mean there's so many different things when we step into something new, so many new tasks. New brings us this feeling of anxiety of us second guessing ourselves, us being afraid that we're going to fail, that we're not going to make it, that we're that we're going to be exposed for being a fraud because we're we're creatures of habit. For decades, we live in the same houses. We listen to the same music.
We live in the same areas, the same community. We go to the same churches. We eat the same meals. I had no idea in my, that my adult life would be spent trying to figure out what we're eating for dinner. It's every, it's every day.
And my rotation of the six meals that I cook at home, people are getting bored with that in my house. And the new terrifying TikTok recipes show up to me in the Instagram recipes. But we get into these cycles of familiarity of this rotation of what's comfortable for us, what's predictable for us, these habits that we build. And maybe it's not a new meal, maybe it's for us, you know, we're stepping outside of that, it's taking steps of faith into where we are, into where God is calling us to be, Of taking that that step of what is comfortable, what what we feel safe in, and then stepping into some type of area of vulnerability to where God is leading us. And I can tell you what we'll see in the story today is that any move of God that I've been involved in, any step of faith I've watched other people take, anything that's worth accomplishing is hard, it's difficult, there's going to be pushback, there's going to be struggle, there's going to be hard days and what we'll learn in this story today with Joshua is the truth of God's presence in all things.
Especially the new things that he's called us to. And God knew Joshua was was battling the same internal fears that we have anxiety. The same things that we feel when we walk into what god is calling us to walk in. And god knew Joshua was was facing the same feelings because we we read Joshua one nine and it's really a pep talk for Joshua. In this time of transition of Joshua taking over for Moses, god leaves Joshua with this locker room speech of, hey, listen, be strong, be courageous.
You've got this. You're good to go. I am with you everywhere you go. I am present there. I'm present with you now and I'm present with you where I'm leading you.
I will be with you wherever you go. And this transition, I mean, is a big one in scripture of taking over for Moses. Moses had led people out of slavery through Egypt. Moses has has just passed away and he's he's got this unbelievable resume. Part of the Red Sea spoke to god.
I mean, he left a massive pair of sandals for Joshua to fill And Joshua had he he probably felt unprepared, which is crazy when you think about his resume. When you think about when you read what what Joshua had also accomplished, that god didn't remind that god decided to encourage him to not be afraid. God decided to encourage him and equip him and say, listen, I've gone before you, but God also knew Joshua's background, but Joshua still had these hesitant and these thoughts of hesitation. He had led Israel in battle against the Amalekites. He basically been a special forces spy in enemy territory.
What we'll see in Joshua three, if you read Joshua three, he he he led Israel across the Jordan River just as a reminder to the people of Israel that as Moses led them through the Red Sea, Joshua's also got this. He'd been Moses's assistant for many years and number 27 Numbers 27, God had told Moses to appoint Joshua. So through all of this, we're always looking for a word of encouragement when we step into something new. And here we have an example in scripture of a story of Joshua that just if anybody had the resume to do it without any words of encouragement, it's Joshua and yet God leads him with words of encouragement. What this story tells us is that victory isn't something that we go and get, victory is something that God's people already have.
We don't walk toward victory, we walk in victory. All that Joshua has seen and done and he is feeling vulnerable. He's in this new territory. In the new in the new, we feel the unknown. That's that's really where the fear comes from.
It's just the unknown of well, what's going to happen? And I think life has taught a lot of us that, you know, it really wasn't that big of a deal after all. It's it's going to work out. But just this fear, we have this fear of the unknown, the unknown gives us a loss of control. A loss of being able to just grab things and white knuckle it and make what I want to happen, happen.
The plan that I set forward is going to unroll and unravel exactly the way that I want it to. That's just not exactly how it works. We'll see the craziness of the plan here in a minute. The unknown causes stress, causes internal resistance within ourselves. We feel that we're not good enough, that we're not qualified.
Have you ever been hired for a job and then like two weeks later into the job, you think that your employer made a huge mistake? You're like, my wife reminds me this, every time that I've made a transition in my professional career, she's like, you say this every time. I'm like, I'm a dummy. They have brought me in. They have no idea that I worked at a tire shop.
They don't know what the hell. I like one hundred and twenty eighth out of no. It's worse than that. We had 228 in my graduating class, like I was whatever what the middle. My my SAT scores were horrendous and they're gonna find out at work and they are going to fire me because they have made a massive mistake.
Maybe that's just me. I try to grab our young engineers in my professional career when they come in within their first few months and say, hey listen, you're going to hear a lot of acronyms and a lot of things that all of us have been doing it for twenty to thirty years that's hard to understand. Know that the pain you're going through is part of the process and struggle to be what you were going to become. That you were exactly where you need to be. We hired you exactly where you are right now because you're the person who has the skills and the gifts to do the job not just today but to grow in that for twenty years down the road.
But a lot of times we lose that vision of how God has called us. That God has called us exactly where we are, who we are, in the neighborhood in which we live in, in the job that which we have, wherever God has called us, he's put us there specifically for a reason and most of the time because we asked for it. Yet we still hesitate with this unknown. Joshua is in this transition and I'm sure he's hearing the naysayers. If you've led anything, you know there are naysayers whether you've led a quilting club, you've been a team mom for a ball team or you've led a $10,000,000,000 project.
There are going to be naysayers when a new leader comes in. In my professional life, we talk about transitions are the most dangerous part of the mission, whether that be from going in the air, going from the ground in the air, or the ground to, from the air, wait, I got that wrong, you want to do that controlled too by the way. You want a controlled transition from the air to the ground. You want a controlled transition from the ground into the air. The warriors that I work with, they talk about that transition, know, they're on the streets in urban battle, streets to inside a building is extremely dangerous and inside a building to the streets is extremely dangerous as well.
Times of transition are extremely volatile, are extremely volatile for us because we are making a move into a new place. Going from middle school to high school, graduating college, going to a job, those types of transitions are difficult. All of us are facing some type of transition right now. All of us are in this moment of taking some type of step, it could be transitioning from what time are we going to eat lunch today to then what time are we having dinner tonight or it could be thinking about what's happening at work or school tomorrow. We're all in some type of transition.
Maybe it's a big transition in life of thinking about relationships that we have that are strained. We're all facing some type of transition. Do you trust that God is already on the other side? Do you believe that God is already there? Let's look at scripture again.
Maybe this is a story that many of you are familiar with. The battle of Jericho, here's Joshua, battle tested leader, and God gives him a wild plan to conquer Jericho. And he is a military man, and this is not a full on assault. I love this story because it don't make no sense of the strategy that God gives Joshua. He's like, Joshua, we're gonna get the army together.
Check. Got it. And then we're gonna get the ark of the covenant and the priest with horns. Check. Got it.
Okay. That's a good formation. We got the army up front and we got the presence of God in the middle of us. Got it? Makes sense?
And then in the rear, we're going to bring up the rear guard. Check. That makes sense. We got we got the frontal assault. We got the rear taken care of and God is in the presence in the middle of all of us.
Lord, this makes complete sense. And then God says, and I want you to march around Jericho for six days blowing your horns. What? Yeah, I want you to march around Jericho once a day for six days. The priests are gonna be blowing the trumpet in the ears of the army guys in front of them.
I'm sure there's a moment of, alright. And Joshua has seen quite a bit. I mean, the formation is solid, very symbolic of god's presence in the middle of all of it, but it still sounds like a crazy plan. What's your what's your plan of attack? The band.
Could you imagine if whoever your favorite football team is, if that coaches coming out of the gate next season is what how we went in the first game? Well, we got this really good plan. The the band's been working really hard and, we're not gonna take the field for the first half. We're just gonna let the band play from the bleachers and we're gonna sit up there with them and encourage the band. And then the band's gonna win at the halftime show.
It's a plan that doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not saying that the band can't accomplish because we have rules in football. The band can't play in the middle of the play, so apparently trumpets do have a lot of power. But it's a plan that's difficult to kinda wrap our heads around of this is the plan that God has laid out. It just seems crazy.
Being obedient to God's call for us, being obedient in our faith will most often stand in opposition to the plan that makes sense in this world. If you are following God's call for your life and it makes sense, it's probably not where God is leading you. Unless the only reason it makes sense is because it's so crazy and you've you've got that no ain't scared attitude. But if it makes a lot of sense and it's very predictable, I'm not sure the dream is big enough. Joshua's story is showing us that sometimes we have to literally walk in our faith on unpredictable paths.
I mean, he's literally walking it out around Jericho. Now the of Jericho is about one mile in circumference, so it's not huge. They walk around it once a day for six days. So you're talking with winded pastors blowing trumpets, probably a thirty minute walk to get around Jericho, and then they go back to camp, and then the naysayers, they start naysaying about what in the world are we doing? Walking in circles around Jericho.
The naysayers. But then we get to this big moment on the seventh day. They wake up at daybreak and they march around the city seven times. So now they've seven mile walk. That's a little bit of a jaunt.
On attack day, they they they get a little winded. Seven miles, seventh day, blows the trumpets on the seventh time around the city. So we got this number of completion, seven. It says on the seventh time when the when the priests sound the trumpets blast, Joshua tells the army to shout, to holler for the Lord has given you the city. And when the trumpet sounded and the army shouted, the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed.
So everyone charged straight in and they took the city. What do you see? What's the what's the dust look like? What what's the expression on the warriors' faces? What's the expression on Joshua's face?
The priest who have been blowing the trumpets, does everything go silent for a second? As they're blowing the ram's horns and they just everything just kinda as the walls come down and before they erupt to take the city, is there can you see it? This moment of what just happened? Talk about transition. They were on the outside.
Now they were on the inside literally by just walking in faith, being obedient to what god had commanded, following a plan that that didn't make any sense. In their faith to follow god's plan, victory came through obedience not through strength. We need to be reminded of stories like this, that God's ways are not our ways. That God's plan and God's process, they they will not match what we may put together, what we may weave together. A lot of time, God's ways involve waiting, and we can't stand waiting.
Know, the chick fil a has put people with 47 iPads around the building to get you in and out quicker because we we can't stand the wait. And the waiting doubt creeps in. Waiting can be messy. We wonder if it's working. Lord, hurry up.
I need I need some type of are you willing to wait six months? Are you willing to wait fifteen years, twenty years? How obedient are we willing to be to see God's plan work out for our life? We get tired of the waiting. We get fatigued.
Opposition from the enemy grows within us, telling us that you're on the wrong path. You need to choose another way, you're going in the wrong direction. That opposition is easy to see. The opposition is difficult. It's good opposition comes in the way of people people of faith from a good place who bring us distractions from our call that we get into spiritual busyness in and now we no longer have any margin to pursue what God has called us to because we're busy with church activities.
We're busy with helping other people in other ways. We well, I tell you what, if we put a list together of ways to look godly in a Christian culture and a little fishbowl that we live in, we can make a million dollar sell on that list. We can do this, this, this. I did the things. I looked busy but are you following what God has called you to?
It may mean hurting some people's feelings. It's not it's not their call that you're following. You need to be following your call, what you've been put together for, what you've been wired to. Holy busyness is not a virtue. It's just one little exercise.
See if I can do it. Colors are limited. This is an easy one. Look at everything that's brown. You can just say it to yourself of the things that you see in the whole room.
You can look around. Somebody's looking at you. It's okay. Look at all the brown things. Alright, now close your eyes.
Name the red things. We spend a lot of our time looking at what other people are called to in all the brown things. We fail to see where God is calling us in all the red things in our life. He's all around us. He's all present.
He's beckoning us and calling us and put you in a position and people and places for a reason. But we see how other people accomplish, other people following their call, and we start to measure that in American success, wins, and victories of, well, I guess I should probably be doing that. If I'm not but and then what happens is, well, I can't do that. So if I can't do that, then obviously, I'm not called. Anybody?
Anybody feel like you don't have a call or a purpose to God's kingdom work? God has placed you exactly where you need to be to see what he's called you to for his plans and purposes. Stick to your walk in faith even when others may not understand. This is between you and God alone. Get that community small.
Jesus had three. The bigger you make that net, the more opinions come in that distract you. Get that group small. People who believe in you, who see the gifts in you, the people who encourage you. Because that's what we need to face our fears because we are going to face fears.
Fears do not disqualify us. Fears remind us that we are walking in the path that God has called us to. Joshua wasn't fearless. He was faithful. Acknowledge the fears that we have.
Remember the promise that we see in scripture today that God is with us and take one small step. Take one small step to what God is calling you to. Follow your call. Small steps of obedience, they lead to big victories, but we have to be willing to walk it out. The story that we see in Jericho today, This is a symbolic work of what Christ had done.
Jesus is the better Joshua. Jericho represents sin and death and this wall represents this separation between a perfect god. Jericho is sin and death and through the work of God the wall falls through the obedience of the people of Israel and the obedience of Joshua. Jesus Christ was obedient on the cross to death and resurrection, tearing down the wall of sin and death that separates us from God. In this story, we we are we're not Joshua in this story.
We're the Israelites walking in faith with God. The difference is is the walls are already down. There is no victory for you to go get. The victory has already been had in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. There is nothing to go and get and accomplish.
We already have the dove. We already have the wind. Walk in the win. God has placed you in a in a specific time and place for a reason. He has wired you to walk in faith, to walk in the victory that God has given us.
Transitions are going to feel dangerous, they are going to feel difficult, there is going to be risks, you may have to go further than you think, you may have to physically move, you may have to quit a job, you may have to start a job, you may have to pick up extra shifts, you may have to start coaching a team, or it may just be literally right across the street. And I know we second guess ourselves. I know that we're gonna face opposition. No one is sure of what's on the other side of right now. What I do know is God is on the other side.
God is already present. God is already there. We just have to be willing to walk in faith. We're not going to have all the answers. We just have to be willing to walk to where God is calling us to go.
We have to have the courage to pop the clutch to go on this journey with God. Take one step of faith. No matter where you feel stuck in this life, I encourage you to walk it out. Let us pray. Lord, I thank you so much for what you have called us to.
I thank you for the community that you've placed us in. I thank you for the people who are around us who who encourage us. And Lord, my prayer is that for those of us who don't have that community around us, I pray that we see it. I pray that we receive it. So many of us are are disconnected.
So many of us are lonely. So many of us are just seeking community. Some of us have found us here in this place in this church. We are just looking for support. I pray that we find it.
I pray that we see that it may not be in the predictable things. It may not be in the things in the ways that we've always done it. Lord, the way that we used to do things is what got us here today. And maybe they'll get us to where you've called us to tomorrow. But Lord, encourage us in the fear that when we step into new things, surround us.
I pray that you surround us with people who are willing to go with us. When we look back on our lives, are so grateful for all the ways that we have seen you pull us through. Pull us through our difficulties, pull us through our addictions, pull us through our struggles, pull us through our doubts, us, pulled us through when we betrayed people and when we've been betrayed. God, you've been present in all of it. We're so thankful that the walls have been torn down.
Remind us in our fear that you are already there. You are already there on the other side and you are walking with us today. Lord, I pray that we walk in your spirit. I pray that we would walk in your love. It's in your name we pray.
Amen.