Sermon Tone Analysis
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The Great Unknown
In job interviews, frequently they will ask crazy questions.
How many trees are in Colorado?
I don’t know
What would you do? “Hey, Google.
How many trees are in Colorado?”
It isn’t really about the question, it is about seeking the answer.
How do you wrestle with it and try to get an answer.
That reveals how you are thinking and, if you practice that sort of thing, it actually shapes how you think.
The answer is in the question
The answer is in the question
You ever play hide and seek with someone who cheats?
Captain no fun!
You ever play hide and seek with someone who cheats?
Captain no fun!
What’s Wrong with Easy
So… here’s a question to ponder: why can’t God just make it easy?
Or at least easier?
Sometimes life seems to going along perfectly and then something happens, tragedy, or someone does something sinful or stupid, and it all falls apart.
And we can get into the fine details of whether God did it… or whether God allowed it… but the truth is, when you are angry and hurting, there isn’t much difference there!
Everything was fine and it was working, why let it fall apart?
What’s wrong with things going right for a change?
What’s wrong with easy?
When the support falls out
The Life of Joshua
Especially in our relationship with God
God has no interest in “easy”.
The “scary unknown” is an invitation to greater faith and deeper relationship with God.
Ultimately, He is the only known.
The “scary unknown” is an invitation to greater faith and deeper relationship with God.
Ultimately, He is the only known.
God is going to use difficult, dangerous and disastrous circumstances to teach his people.
He isn’t interested in a comfortable status quo.
(I am, He isn’t).
There is a leadership void and this will be the repeating pattern for the next 400+ years.
Why doesn’t God put in place a succession plan or better government?
In the void of leadership there is creative action.
It is a call to action.
From the known to the unknown, so He can make Himself known.
It is God wooing and pursuing His people, rescuing them again and again, re-teaching generation after generation.
Why 110 years old?
Moses got 120?
Caleb outlives Joshua.
Where is the succession plan?
It is messy and it gets ugly… but it is never hopeless.
God is going to use difficult, dangerous and disastrous circumstances to teach his people.
He isn’t interested in a comfortable status quo.
(I am, He isn’t).
There is no leader who is sufficient, no prophet, no judge, no King but God himself.
He gives and takes away and so draws us to Himself.
Our world is full of need.
Our world is mostly void.
It is full of need.
Joshua’s Story
He is a man grown, in his 40s when Moses returns to his people in slavery in Egypt and brings with him the name of the God of their fathers: Yahweh.
He follows Moses out of Egypt, miracle upon miracle, into Sinai.
He is there when God makes the covenant with Israel, and he begins to assist Moses.
He is one of the twelve spies and, with Caleb, Moses and Aaron, they alone believe that God would deliver Canaan into their hands.
He is a man grown, in his 40s when Moses returns to his people in slavery in Egypt and brings with him the name of the God of their fathers: Yahweh.
He follows Moses out of Egypt, miracle upon miracle, into Sinai.
He is there when God makes the covenant with Israel, and he begins to assist Moses.
He is one of the twelve spies and, with Caleb, Moses and Aaron, they alone believe that God would deliver Canaan into their hands.
And so everyone at that point of military age dies.
Joshua assists Moses for 40 years wandering in the desert.
Then, as they cross the Jordan river, he takes on the mantle of authority from Moses and leads the people, all the tribes of Israel into war.
Fight after fight, miracle after miracle, they take cities and they take territory and they take their place in the land.
For 30 years Joshua leads the people of Israel.
And then he calls the people of Israel together.
They renew the covenant first made at Sinai 70 years ago.
He prophetically identifies the area of holiness and faithfulness they are most likely to struggle with: following after other Gods… and urges and commands his people to love God wholly instead.
And then...
Judges 2:6-10
Now imagine you are anyone other than Caleb.
Joshua and Caleb are the only men left alive older than you, and they are older than anyone else by at least 20 years.
For your entire life, it has been Moses and then, for the last three decades, it has been Joshua.
If their was a problem in Israel, who solved it?
Joshua.
If there was something to be heard from God, who heard it?
Joshua.
Joshua is the man, he stands as a unifying figure, judge and leader and prophet, almost a king, really.
There is no one in their country who looms quite as large.
And then he dies.
There is no one in their country who looms quite as large.
There is no talk of anyone inheriting Joshua’s mantle as Joshua inherited Moses’.
What is the succession plan?
Who will lead the people?
It seems unplanned and unprepared, kind of reckless.
And if I am an Israelite, all sense of
The bottom just fell out
And if I am an Israelite, all sense of life-as-I-know-it just radically altered.
There is no unifying leader.
I am going to have to figure this out, my family will work together, my tribe will band together a bit, and hopefully we can still count on our brother tribes… but it’s basically anarchy.
What form of government did God setup here?
It’s a “theocracy”.
God is the king.
That is fantastic.
Seriously though, who is going to be functionally in charge?
Who is the interpreter of God’s will on a daily practical basis?
Is everyone just going to do what is right in their own eyes, seeking to find and discover and follow God’s will.
Yes.
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