God is With Us — Joshua 1

0:01 Dear heavenly father, Lord, we praise you and exalt you for you are God, you're above all else. And Lord, we wanna recognize you today as our God, the one who goes before us, the one who goes with us. So we magnify you today. We thank you for Jesus. Him we proclaim, him we preach.

0:21 So Lord today, please use me to bring a message before your people that we might glorify you together, we might worship you together. In Jesus name, amen. So today, we will be considering this idea that the Lord our God, he is with us. The Lord himself is with us. The Lord our God goes before us, so abide, abide in him.

0:46 Let's begin in Joshua one. I'm read the first nine verses. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant saying, Moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people to land which I'm giving to them, the children of Israel. Every place of the sole of your foot will tread upon I've given you.

1:25 As I said to Moses, from the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance, the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.

2:00 Only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you be strong and of good courage?

2:33 Do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. So in these verses, see a couple things. We see that God has given a mission, a mission to Joshua. After Moses died, Joshua was brought up by the Lord to carry on this mission to this mission to carry the people of God, the people of Israel into the promised land. So God after Moses died, he's equipping Joshua.

3:02 And these are the words that he uses to encourage him. He gives him the command, be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed. And the comfort that God provides Joshua is nothing else but himself. He offers himself to Joshua.

3:21 He says, for Lord your God is with you wherever you go. So I want us to try to put our minds, try to bring our understanding to the place that Joshua was in. This great man Moses, a servant of the Lord, served the Lord well. He brought the people through the Red Sea by the power of God. And I'd have to imagine that it was a fearful thing.

3:43 There might have been some fear in his heart to take up this mantle and follow in in those... In that same way. But the encouragement that God provided Joshua is his presence. And we remember that we are charged to abide in the Lord ourselves. We are we are to remember that God has given us the promise of his spirit which will be with us.

4:05 What did the disciples say to Jesus when he was going back to the ascendance of the father? He was saying, okay, is the kingdom coming now? Are we done? Can we can we wrap up? Can we go to be in your presence?

4:16 But Jesus said that I will give you a helper. The promise of God, the Holy Spirit is with us. So just as God has comforted Joshua with the... With his own presence, God comforts us with his presence, and he calls us to abide in him. So how does God comfort us in his presence?

4:51 He creates in us a longing to be eternally in the presence of the Lord and abiding with him in his presence. So the first thing that we're gonna look at is that God reminds us who he is, that God reveals himself to us. So we look at the attributes of God and the first thing I want us to consider is the comfort that we receive when we consider the transcendence of God, the maker of heaven and earth. We we remember that as as as as God is speaking to people of Israel through his prophets, it repeats over and over again when it displays God's holiness to them and how they have sinned against him. He reminds them, I'm the maker of heaven and earth, that he is God Almighty.

5:35 There is none else like him. He himself stands as God, and there is no other God. So I want us to consider that God, he is powerful. He is strong in power and greatness. Let's go to Psalms one forty five verses three.

5:51 Just one verse, verse three. This verse says, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. And his greatness is unsearchable. So this verse, it it might seem like a contradiction. How how can we understand God?

6:16 How is God revealing us to himself when he himself is unsearchable? But as we see that God is a loving God, a gracious God, so he reveals himself to us as great. He reveals us... He reveals himself to us as powerful. So we we testify to God's power in our lives.

6:37 And the next thing I want us to consider is the holiness and beauty of God. Isaiah six verses three. That verse says, and one cried to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. In this verse, we're reminded of the holiness of God and that the earth itself testifies of God's holiness and beauty.

7:09 The last attribute I want us to consider is the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of God. So Psalm one fifteen verse three. This verse says, but our God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases. So when we consider the power and greatness of God, the holiness and beauty of God and His sovereignty, how is that a comfort to us?

7:42 That seems like something so beyond our understanding, so beyond our day to day life. How is the power and majesty of God a comfort to us? Let's consider our circumstances. Let's consider the places that we can find ourselves in. We'd be silly to think that we don't see tragedy on earth in our very lives.

8:03 We would be silly to think that we can feel easily overwhelmed in the situations that God has placed us in, but it is the majesty of God that shows us and teaches us that because he is able, he can empower us to endure because he himself is with us. He himself goes before us. He is the one that encourages us and he says, look to me for I am great. I'm your God. So the way that we can walk through on this earth is by looking to him and saying, you are God, and because I trust you, I will keep walking.

8:39 I'll believe in your word. I'll continue. So something I was thinking about as an illustration was astronomy, which I know nothing of. But a question I had was like, okay, why do people even study astronomy? Because it seems like they're they're searching and striving after something they just can't understand.

8:59 They're trying to, like, measure the distance that we are from stars. They're trying to measure how big stars are, and all these things are just so, like, crazy. We can't understand it. It's beyond our understanding. We can't even think what a light year is.

9:13 Does anyone know what a light year is? I'm not gonna... Just look it up later. But why do these people study these things that are so incomprehensible? It's because they're captivated by its beauty.

9:27 So this is why or this is how the greatness of God meets us. In this same way, we must be captivated by the beauty of God. And even though it's so incomprehensible and and it's beyond our understanding, we say we want to know him, we want to search after him, we want to love him because he is God. He he says that his arms span the heavens, and we're trying to understand it. We're trying to, I don't know, we're trying to measure it.

9:58 And and just as astronomers are captivated by the beauty of God to know and to search these things, we ourselves are captivated by the greatness, the power, the holiness, the beauty, the sovereignty of God, knowing that he is in he is in control of our lives, that he knows our steps, that he goes before us, that his presence is with us. We are comforted by this because we are captivated by his beauty. This is how we are comforted by the transcendence of God. And through this understanding, God develops in us a holy fear of him. Let's go to Matthew 10 verses 28.

11:46 Understanding the gospel, we can have a holy fear of him, and that itself removes other fears. And now I want us to consider the nearness of God, how that is a comfort to us. The three attributes I want us to look at is the goodness that God that God is, His love and care, and His faithfulness. Let's go to Psalms 31 verse 19. Psalms 31 verse 19.

12:15 Thank you. I'll just take that. Did I say 19? Yeah. Thirty one nineteen.

12:37 Oh, how great is your goodness, which you have laid upon for those who fear you, which you have prepared for those who trust in you in the presence of the sons of men. So when we consider the goodness of God, the reason why his goodness is so great and so majestic is because he himself is a great God. And we know that his greatness encompasses all of his attributes. So just as God is great and majestic and powerful, he is great and majestic and powerful in his goodness. So why do we have to remember this when we go through the tragedies of life?

13:19 Don't we question the fir... The first thing we question is God's goodness, right? When heartache happens, when parents are sick, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Is God really good? Is he good?

13:33 Is he really good? Is he truly good? Is his word good? Is his promises good? Is our God good?

13:40 When he calls me father, can I trust him? But then remember that his goodness is beyond our understanding. His goodness is beyond our tragedies. His goodness is beyond our comprehension. And he is good in all his works.

13:57 His goodness and mercy covers all of his works. So we are brought back to the truth. We must recognize that God is a good God. That in light of all of these circumstances, light of tragedy, in light of suffering, God remains good. God remains good.

14:15 Can we say that together? God remains good. Let's remember that. Because he is good and that does not change. So when we do encounter just terrible things, Preach to yourself the goodness of God.

14:32 Preach to yourself his goodness. Go to other believers. Be encouraged by them. Tell them to teach you of his goodness because it doesn't change. And his goodness is known to to me and all of us here.

15:15 Therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him for he cares for you. Do we trust the care of God? First, do we know that he cares for us? That he considers everything about us, that he knows our lives, he knows our struggles, he knows our our heartache, He knows what keeps us up at night. He knows what keeps sleep away from us.

15:45 He knows the burdens of our heart. And he says, I will take these burdens and put them on myself because my shoulders can carry it. And I will carry you. I will support you. I care about you.

15:59 Brothers and sisters, God cares about you. He loves you. He he loves you. He really loves you. Let's not just pass over that word.

16:09 The creator of the universe, the one who made you loves you. The one who formed you loves you. He really loves you. And we know that God's love is not just something that he says, which in itself is amazing that he would have the grace to say his love to us, but he has demonstrated his love to us through Christ, through his son, his only son. He sent his son to die on a cross to show his love and his care for us.

16:43 And if he died for us, how much more so can we trust him to carry our burdens now? How much more so can we trust him? If our eternity is in his hands, we can trust him with our lives while we're here on earth. We can trust him with our lives. And now let us go to James one seventeen.

17:11 Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. And I believe that this attribute is probably one of the most important attributes of God. The reason why we can trust God is because he does not change. So we know that when God says that he loves us, that he cares for us, that he is good, that he is powerful, that he is great, that he is holy and beautiful, that he is sovereign, that we are in his hands. The reason why we can trust him is because that never changes.

17:52 That never changes. The reason why we can proclaim his goodness to other people is because we know that it's not gonna change the next day. So we can say God is gonna be good for you tomorrow. God is gonna keep you in his hands tomorrow. God is gonna hold you tomorrow.

18:09 He's gonna protect you tomorrow. He will be with you tomorrow. His presence goes before you tomorrow. His love is with you tomorrow. The reason why we can stand on this truth is because he remains good and he is faithful to his word.

19:03 Also, was delivered out of the mouth of a lion. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for his heavenly kingdom to be glory to him be glory forever and ever. Amen. Something else that we forget when we are in the midst of trial, understandably so, is that God wants to show himself strong to us. God takes us through the struggles of life.

19:33 God put Paul on trial before people that wanted to kill him to show himself good, that the testimony of the Lord might go forth. God put Paul on trial. And what was the result of this trial? He said that many came to know God as a result of this. In Acts, it said that many put their trust in God because of Paul's faithful testimony to the gospel and the goodness of Jesus.

20:02 So we see that God is able to show himself to us in these trials. Not only that he chooses to show himself to us through these trials. He puts us in these places that we might realize that we have nothing else besides him, that we are turned to him and we realize that even our friends and our families, the reason why we have them is because God himself has given them to us. So we turns our eyes to him that we might behold him and see him as the savior of our lives. He's already saved our souls, but we forget.

20:34 Brothers and sisters, we forget that God holds us in our lives itself, that he is with us, that his presence is with us, that the Lord our God is with us, so abide in him. So will you trust God in your trial? Will you trust God in your heartache that he has placed you there for a reason to turn yourself to him that he might teach you about himself and reveal himself as good to you? I don't know if... I'm not sure if I can say this, but I can testify this in my own life that every difficulty that I have gone through up to this point, I can testify to the goodness of God because he has taught me more about himself.

21:19 He's taught me about his goodness, his righteousness, his love through every trial of life. Something that I didn't... I I probably knew but I didn't care about or I didn't look at because I just didn't know God like that. But God, he shows himself good in our trials. He teaches us himself through our trials.

21:40 He is with us in heartache. Now the second thing that God provides us to comfort us is that he reminds us that we belong to him forever. Let's go to Hebrews 12 verses five through seven. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord nor be discouraged when you're rebuked by him.

22:18 For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? If you're without chastening of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, had we have had human fathers who corrected us, we pay them respect, shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live.

22:53 For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seen best to them, but he for our profit that we may be partakers of his holiness. I'm gonna keep going because I think it's important. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees and make straight pads for your feet so that what is lame may not be dislocated, rather be healed.

24:39 So we remind ourselves that we belong to God as a child of his and as righteous before him. Let's go to Galatians four verses four through nine. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who run to the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts crying out, Abba Father. In these verses, we we see that with sonship there comes there comes relationship.

25:22 With sonship, we can have access to the presence of God and say, Lord, I need you. I need you to be a father to me. I need you to lead me. I need you to shepherd me. And God says yes, because he is our Father.

25:35 We can call him father, we can look to him as father. And this is a relationship that we have in Christ. We are united with God in Christ. Christ is the means of our access to the presence of God and in him we share in Christ's righteousness. We are given the righteousness of Christ.

26:01 And this is so important to our identity, to who we are while we're on while we're on earth. Because this identity before God being the righteousness of Christ and being a son before him is immutable. It is eternal and it's based on who God is. It is based on his immutable... Immutability because he does not change his mind.

26:22 So when God calls us a son of his, when God says that we belong to him that we are his, that is immutable, and it's eternal. And I think that that is something that Satan attacks quite a bit. When we fall into sin, when we have when we when we experience struggles in our walk, Satan tries to attack our sonship before God, he tries to attack our righteousness in Christ. But then we remind ourselves that this is a standing we have before God, not because we can do that, but because Christ has done it for us. In him, we stand.

27:04 Another thing that I want us to consider is that since Christ is at the right hand of God, and we are in Christ, we are near to God in Christ. And we know that Christ, he is interceding for us, for all the believers before God continually, that he has sat down, that his work is finished, and he intercedes before God on our behalf. So when we join in prayer, we are joining with the ministry of our savior. We are recognizing him as our access to God and we say we will bring our request before God knowing that because Christ is near to God and we are in Christ, we have that blessing of nearness with God because this is the standing that God has given us in Christ. Yet we do not always feel feel near to God.

27:55 So what keeps us from feeling near to God? And it is when we don't abide in him. So we know that God has created us to have a relationship with him. And we remember from, what we've mentioned before, that God, his presence is with us. The Lord our God is with us, but God tells us to abide in him.

28:18 So what does it mean to abide in him? What does it mean to enter the presence of God? Does it mean that God's presence leaves us and we have to come back to it? Is that what this is? Is that what this is saying?

29:09 So something we need to understand is that even though God has promised his presence to us, we can live in such a way that we are not experiencing, we are not living, we are not recognizing the presence of God in our lives. And this is why Christ tells us to abide in him. He says, to come to him and cast our cares on him. He says, to take our burdens and place it on him and put his yoke on us, knowing that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. So something that might help us understand this, it's like if you're standing in a room, and the lights are on around you, but you you choose to close your eyes.

29:54 Does that mean the lights aren't there? That God's presence isn't with us? It means that we can shut our eyes to his presence. We can think in our pride that the goodness of God isn't important right now. We can forget the presence of God.

30:13 We can forget to acknowledge him by shutting our eyes to him and not abiding in him. So this is why it is important that we must remember the presence of God, that he is before us, that he is with us, and we must abide in him. That is how we experience and know the presence of God. So we know that Laodicea, the church in Revelation, that Christ, what he told to this church is that is that they were not they were lukewarm, that they they thought that they were righteous in themselves that they had everything figured out, and they didn't go to him. So what did Christ say to them?

30:53 He said, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and sup with him and he with me. So we recognize that pride can keep us away from experiencing communion with God. So remember, abide in him. Recognize that the Lord is needed in your life, that you can't live this life without him.

31:19 So we're reminded to come to him in the word that we might hear his voice. We were meant... We remembered to go to him in prayer and recognize that we are going to him in Christ, that Christ is interceding for us, that we have access to the presence of God in prayer. And we have fellowship with believers remembering that we can encourage each other to turn our eyes to God together. And now the last thing I'd like us to consider is that when we experience struggle with sin, when we experience tragedy in our lives, when we experience the pain of sanctification, God is creating in us a longing for eternity.

32:05 He's creating in us a desire to eternally abide with him in his presence. And we are reminded that we have not yet attained perfect communion with God, that we are still looking forward to when we will be in his presence and experience that fullness of joy in him. Reminded that pain still remains. When we experience the pain of living in a broken world and the struggle with sin, we reminded that we have a longing for eternity to be with God eternally. We live in expectancy of eternity.

32:42 So the last verse I'd like to go to is first john three:two. Beloved, now we are children of God and has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when we when he is revealed, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. So in this verse, we we recognize that we are looking forward to being in the presence of God And it is in his presence, that tears, that pain, that sadness, and the presence of sin is removed. Because we will be with God face to face, and his holiness is what provides that perfect sanctification.

33:49 We might encourage that we might build up that desire to be with him eternally. So seek the presence of God in Christ and he will reveal himself to you. The Lord your God is with you so abide in him. Let's pray. Dear heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for your love and for your grace.

34:09 We thank you for your goodness and your kindness towards us, that you are our God and our Father, that we can call out to you Lord, that you will answer. So we pray that help us. Lord, we need you to help us to walk to abide, to love you, Lord. And Lord, as we remember these things, look forward to be eternally with you, in your presence and enjoying your goodness. In Jesus name, amen.