O our Father, we are made solemn
in the contemplation that for multitudes last Lord's Day of
1983 was the last time they would ever meet with your people in
that year, that they would ever again gather in a final Lord's
Day of a calendar year, and they have been summoned home to be
with you others cut off in their sins to stand and give an account
of their sins naked and unclothed in the righteousness of your
Son. And our Father, against the backdrop of that solemn reality
that we know not what a day may bring forth, that none of us
has grounds to boast himself of tomorrow, we pray that you
would speak a particularly fitting word May the word that we study
together come alive, and may the Holy Spirit write it upon
the fleshly tables of our hearts, that it may be a word that will
be our constant companion through whatever portion of this coming
year is allotted to each one of us. Hear us then, O God our
Father, and answer us for the sake of your Son. Amen. Now I would like you to imagine
what your reaction might have been this morning, if you were
here this morning, when I stood to give the announcements, if
in the course of giving out the announcements, or as our English
friends say, giving out the notices, I had said that if you came to
the service tonight, I would stand at the door at the conclusion
of the service and give to every one of you a very special New
Year's present. And that New Year's present would
be in the form of a three-ounce pure gold nugget. Now, if I made such a promise,
and if I were able to fulfill such a promise, those of you
who follow the price of gold know that somewhere along the
line I would have had to realize a windfall. With gold kicking
between $300 and $325 an ounce, that would be a nugget worth
almost $1,000 for every one of you. Now, what do you think your
reaction would have been had I announced, sincerely and honestly,
with the ability to fulfill my promise, that were you to come
tonight, such a gold nugget would be given to you as my own personal
New Year's present to you? Well, after you got over your
astonishment and then all of your debating and discussing
whether or not it was some kind of a joke and debating whether
or not you could really trust my promise, I would hope that
if you really believed that my promise were valid and I were
able to fulfill it, that you would have come with a measure
of expectancy and delight and joy and the kind of eagerness
little kids often have Christmas Eve before they open their presents
on Christmas morning. Well, I'm sorry I couldn't have
made such a promise and have fulfilled it for you, but I have
something tonight which is of infinitely more worth than a
three-ounce solid gold nugget, than a ten-ounce, a thousand-pound
solid gold ball. And I want to give it to you
as a New Year's present. Rather, I should say, I want
to help you to open up. such a gift which God has already
given you in his holy word. And that word is a promise couched
in the passage read in your hearing. And I am not one who is much
given to sermon titles, but as I meditated upon this passage,
I said, perhaps I could indulge a sermon title tonight. And what
I want to give you is a nugget of gold for the new year. And that nugget of gold is this
precious promise found in Deuteronomy 31, verse 6, in which God speaks
and says, Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be affrighted
at them. For the Lord thy God, he it is
that doth go with thee, he will not fail thee, nor forsake The
word of promise is found in the latter part of that verse. For
the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee, he will not
fail thee, nor forsake thee. Let me say at the very outset
that I have no reservations of saying that this is a nugget
for you as one of the people of God. that it is a nugget purchased
for you in the blood of Jesus Christ, one of those promises
that are yea and amen in Christ, and though it was spoken by Moses
to the ancient people of God, according to Hebrews chapter
13 and verse 5, this promise is for you. For we read in Hebrews
13, 5, in a document written to Christians under the new covenant,
Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you
have. For himself hath said, I will
in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee. And that's a direct quotation
from this promise couched in all covenant documents. spoken
to God's ancient people, but in the language of that wonderful
little chorus that we used to sing as kids, every promise in
the book is mine. Every chapter, every verse, every
line, every promise in the book is mine. And so I would submit
to you that this promise, if God by the Spirit will enable
us to lay hold of its truth, can indeed be a nugget that I
trust tucked away in the cupboard of our hearts, will be cherished
not only for the coming year, but throughout all the years
that God may give us, until He gathers us home to that city
which He prepares for those that love His appearing. Notice with
me, first of all, as we look at the promise, the setting in
which the promise came. And this is given to us in verses
1 through 5. Moses has come to the end of
his earthly pilgrimage. God has made plain to him that
his life has come to its terminal point. Because of his own sin
of rashness, he would not be permitted to take the people
of God in, nor witness with them the promised land. He looked
at it from afar, but God had said his foot would not be found
in that land. And so Moses, now standing before
the people of God on the plains of Moab, informs them of these
facts. And then he tells them in verse
three that the Lord is going to go before his people. He's
going to lead them into the land of promise and that Joshua will
be their appointed leader and that under the leadership of
Joshua and by the blessing and presence and power of God, they
will be able to accomplish God's purpose of dispossessing the
nations that now inherit that land. In other words, the setting
of this promise is that of the people of God standing on the
threshold of a whole new epoch of both privilege and responsibility
in the history of redemption. You remember that Israel's history
can be marked out in some of these very broad categories that
had significant transitions after 400 years of slavery in Egypt. God brought them out of Egypt,
over the Red Sea, and constituted them a nation. And then after
forty years of wandering, God is now prepared to bring them
into the land of promise under the leadership of Moses. And so the promise that God gives
to His people is a promise that in a very unique way is suited
to this new threshold, this new epoch of responsibility and privilege
which will come upon the people in the will and purpose of God. Now that very fact in itself
should cause our ears to perk up and to think that perhaps
there's something peculiarly suitable in this promise for
us. For we, like the Israelites on
the plains of Moab, we stand, in a very real sense, on the
threshold of a new epoch of God's dealings with us. The new year
stands before us. with privileges and demands,
with responsibilities and opportunities, both in conjunction with our
association with the people of God in our church life, in our
families, and in our individual spheres of God-appointed responsibility
and opportunity. Furthermore, for us as a church,
this is an epochal year. We had hoped that we would enter
into our new facilities during 1983, but it's evident now that
God decreed otherwise. And we know what he decreed from
what providence has unfolded. Providence is the written transcript
of God's decrees. That's the only place you'll
ever see God's decrees is in the transcript of his providence.
You try to read them anywhere else and you get in trouble.
But we can read his decrees in the transcript of Providence,
and I can stand here tonight without any claims to direct
revelation and say, God decreed that we should not enter our
new facilities in 1983. And how do I know it? Because
we haven't entered them in 1983. And whatever God has decreed,
the purpose of the Lord, it shall stand, and so entering into that
new building with its new opportunities, responsibilities, with its new
temptations, and all of the new things that will come to us,
and all of the unknown new things that God has locked up in his
own secret designs, new battles, new challenges, in a very special
way. This promise, couched in the
setting of the threshold of newness, has particular relevance for
us as the Lord's people. Then in the second place, I would
ask you to note not only the setting in which the promise
came, but the specific recipients of the promise. To whom was this
promise given? Well, according to verse one,
it was first of all given to the entire nation of Israel. And Moses went and spake these
words unto all Israel. So the entire nation is addressed
in the words of this promise. speaking still to the nation
promising that under the leadership of Joshua they will go in and
possess the land God says in verse 6 to the nation he it is
that goes with you he will not fail you nor forsake you but
then we notice that Moses singles out Joshua in verse 7 and Moses
called unto Joshua a member of the nation part of the larger
group, and yet he is now singled out, and in the sight of all
Israel, Moses speaks to him by the word of the Lord and says,
Be strong and of good courage, for you shall go with this people
into the land which the Lord has sworn unto their fathers
to give them. You shall cause them to inherit
it, and the Lord, he it is, that doth go before you. and he will
be with you, and he will not fail you, neither forsake you,
fear not, neither be dismayed." So there is almost a verbatim
repetition of the promise specifically to Joshua himself. So the recipients
of the promise are, first of all, the entire nation. Now think
of who comprises that nation. It was the rank and file of the
ordinary members of the nation. There were those men who were
enrolled over age twenty from whom their soldiers, their army,
was conscripted. There were the priests There
were young women, young men, children, the entire nation in
the vast complexity of whatever makes up a nation of this vast
spectrum of ability and responsibility and high and low profile, limited
gift, great gift, whatever makes up a nation of a multitude of
people was true of that nation and yet God speaks this word
to the entire nation. He throws, as it were, like a
blanket over the entire nation, this gracious word of promise.
Then he singles out Joshua, upon whose shoulders there was now
to rest a tremendous responsibility, to lead that vast army into this
warlike Canaanite area, and there to drive out these nations, under
the blessing of God, the tremendous burdens of that strategic place
of leadership, and yet the amazing thing is this, with all of the
intensified responsibilities, with all of the peculiar temptations
and burdens of that tremendous place of leadership, the promise
given to every ordinary Israelite is exactly the promise God gives
to Joshua. In other words, there's enough
in that promise to meet the need of everyone from the most humble,
gifted, limited in gift, and low-profile Israelite to the
gifted Joshua with his high profile of leadership. There's enough
in that one word of promise to meet the need of a whole bunch
of them. And it's very significant that it is that one word of promise
that comes to the nation at large, and to Joshua in particular. And again, that has special relevance
to us as the Lord's people. We are in very many ways a motley
punch, and any true church will be just that. You beware of any
church that has a peculiar cast to it in terms of either the
gift, the deposit of gift, temperament, and all of these other things
that make us so different each from the other. Because the Lord
Jesus calls his people, God has made up the role of his elect.
from a motley bunch, what Fox called God's five-ranked army
of descending human weakness. You behold your calling, brethren. Not many wise, doesn't say not
any, God sprinkles a wise one in there now and then, but not
many wise. Not many mighty, once in a while a mighty one, but
for the most part we're of no account. He takes the foolish,
and the things that are not, and the weak, and the things
that are despised, and he gathers them together, and he makes them
his dwelling place, and he says, that's the people for whom I
give my son. They are the apple of my eye
with the tremendous diversity of temperament, demand, gift,
responsibility. To us as the people of God, no
matter what we may confront in the coming days in terms of what
is unique to us as individuals, God dares to say, this promise
is adequate for all of your needs. And then he comes to those of
us who have been put through no choice of our own but through
the sovereign design and purpose of God into places of strategic
leadership to whom he has given in his own purpose and in the
exercise of his own sovereign will a higher profile, greater
public responsibility. What does he give to us? He gives
to us exactly the same promise. that he gives to the most obscure,
humble saint of God in this place. There is enough in this promise
for us all. And that's the significance of
the recipients of the promise in its context. Now we come in
the third place to examine the substance of the promise. What
is the real heart? What's the pith? What is the
meat of this promise that God gives to his ancient people and
to the leader of that people as they stand on the threshold
of entering into the land of promise? Well, basically it has
two ingredients. He, first of all, gives the pledge
of his abiding presence. Verse 6, Jehovah thy God, he
it is, that goes with you. That was the promise to the nation.
That's the promise to Joshua, verse 8. He will be with you. There is the pledge of his abiding
presence. The nation was to look at that
word of God and to think in terms of that reality. What will await
us? When we cross the river, when
we go into the land of promise, we've heard the report from our
forefathers that it's a land of hills and valleys filled with
abundant fruitfulness, but with giants in the land. What will
meet us? What demands will be made upon
us? In the midst of all of this, God says, I want you first of
all to know this. Wherever you go, whatever you
encounter, whatever demands are made upon you, I am previous
to you. I am with you. I go before you
and I am with you. He pledges his abiding presence. And then in the second place,
he makes a pledge of his unfailing faithfulness, and he does so
in terms of this statement. He will not fail thee, nor forsake
thee. The end of verse six, and then
the same words at the end of verse eight. He will not fail
thee, nor forsake thee. Now, in trying to get a handle
on the precise meaning of those words, As they are found here
in the Hebrew, and then as we find them in the Greek, in the
New Testament, the sense of them seems to be this. God will not
relax his grip upon you, nor will he abandon you. Now you see, before you can abandon
something that you possess, you must first of all let it go.
God says, I won't let you go, nor will I abandon you. In other
words, he makes a pledge of his unfailing faithfulness. He first of all says, I will
be with you. And in that being with you, he
now states it negatively. I will not fail you nor forsake
you. I will do neither of these things. The writer to Proverbs says in
Proverbs 25, 19, confidence in an unfaithful man in time of
trouble is like a broken tooth and like a foot out of joint.
Now, there's a nice big steak in front of you, and you say,
boy, that'll taste good. And you go to chomp down, and
lo and behold, the tooth that would grind it is broken. Doesn't
do you much good. You've got to gum it. Or there's
something you want, and you've got to get there in a hurry,
and you try to run, and your ankle's out of joint. It does
you little good. Now, God says confidence in an
unfaithful man in time of trouble is like trying to operate with
a broken tooth and like a foot out of joint. Well, may I say
it, I trust, without being irreverent, confidence in an unfaithful God
in time of trouble would be just like that. And what God is saying
to His people is this. As I now announce to you that
the time has come to enter in and possess the land, though
I've assured you that I'm going before you and it's my power
that will dispossess the nations entrenched in that land, and
though I've promised my special help to your leader Joshua, I
know that you're full of fears. I know that you're full of apprehensions,
full of a thousand questions. What will meet us here? How will
we respond to this there? For all my people, hear me! In
every situation, this is my twofold pledge. I will be with you, and
I will not fail you, nor forsake you. And dear child of God, could
we want anything more from God as we stand on the threshold
of a new year? Could we want anything more from
God than the pledge of his abiding presence and the pledge of his
unfailing faithfulness? We face the coming year with
all of its unknowns. We look back upon the past year,
and we think within the very limited experience of interacting
with some 400 or 450 people, and the things that God has brought
to pass in his providence. Some of us look back and say,
if we had known that 1984 would have held that, I don't know
if I could have faced it in any other posture but one of inward
paralysis, of emotional and mental paralysis. I don't know how I
could have faced this, that, or the other. And yet, you sit
here tonight, a monument of God's heathen faithfulness. Why? Because
his abiding presence and his unfailing faithfulness have brought
you to this hour. And so God says to us, Himself
hath said, and that's the emphasis that is introduced and underscored
in the quotation of this promise in Hebrews. Himself has said,
oh yes, Moses spoke these words in Deuteronomy. God speaks them
more directly through Moses in the first person in the reiteration
of the promise in Joshua chapter 1. But it is Himself who has
said. It is God who has said. He has spoken and that word abides
and is there for us as the people of God to feed upon. That as
we face the coming year, rather than trying to outguess God or
trying to project what this or that may come to pass, we should
rather be feeding our souls upon this word of promise. He it is
that has committed himself to go with us He will not fail us
nor forsake us. He will not release us nor abandon
us. He is with us. He will continue
to hold us and to keep us. That's the substance of the promise. And then notice in the fourth
place the specific fruit of that promise. If God's people then
laid hold of it, what would the fruit of that promise be? Well,
God commands the fruit, and then he describes the tree, the promise,
on which that fruit grows. Notice verse 6. Be strong and
of good courage. Do not fear, nor be affrighted
at them, for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee,
He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." In other words, God expected
the fruit of a believing grasp of that promise to be, from the
positive standpoint, the presence of the grace of strength and
courage, and the absence of this spirit of fearfulness. Now notice
how the same emphasis comes to Joshua in Joshua chapter 1. Joshua chapter 1, God gives the
same promise in verse 5b, I will be with you, I will not fail
you nor forsake you, be strong and of good courage. And that's
exactly the principle that the writer to Hebrews extracts. So
when he first of all gives the promise, Hebrews 13 and verse
5, He then quotes from the book
of Psalms to describe the fruit of that promise. I will in no
wise fail you, neither will I in any wise forsake you, Hebrews
13, 6, so that with good courage we say, the Lord is my helper,
I will not fear. What shall man do unto me? So what is the specific fruit
of this promise? It is to be the absence of a
crippling, paralyzing, distracting fear and the presence of a God-centered
courage and confidence to face the future. Now this is not some
kind of humanistic Norman Vincent Peale positive thinking exhortation. God says you are to have this
spirit of courage And this spirit of non-fear and apprehension
rooted not in some kind of con job, some kind of head game you
play with yourself, but embedded in the reinforced concrete of
my pledges given to you in my Word. And my pledge is, I will
be with you, I will not fail you, I will not forsake you. Therefore, There is a solid basis
for the exhortation, be not fearful, be not affrighted, be strong
and of good courage. Whatever you and I face, it is
not bigger than God. Whatever we face, it does not
take God by surprise. Whatever demands His will makes
upon us, God is adequate for that demand that comes to us
in His will. For the people of Israel, it
was the River Jordan swollen to its limits at its flood season. That was the first difficulty.
And God says, I'll take care of that, and He parts the river.
They no sooner get over on the other side is the walled city
of Jericho. God says, I'll take care of that,
just walk around it a few times. What is God saying to his people
on the very outset of the conquest? He's saying, all my people, don't
you get my message? I am with you. And if I'm with
you and I lead you, then whatever you face in communion with me
and in obedience to my will is ultimately not a demand upon
you, but a demand upon me. Now, can you trust me to be God?
and to show that there's no demand I place upon myself for which
I am not adequate. Don't be afraid. Be of good courage. Be not afraid. Be strong, not
by playing head games on yourself, not by trying to pop yourself
up and say, well, I'm this and I'm that. No, but by focusing
on the reality that your great and gracious God is with you,
he will not fail you. So the fruit of the promise then,
believed and laid to heart, is to be that grace of holy boldness,
that grace of an undaunted spirit that has nothing to do with personality. God has taken some of us who
are the most trembling cowards by nature and has put in us a
boldness that has nothing to do with our genes and our inherited
temperament. It is a boldness born of the
confidence that He is with us and He will not fail us. And
if God be for us, who is against us? Well, you say the whole world
may be against us, yes, but put the whole world in the balances
and on the other side put God. And which side of the scale is
going to go up? That's the emphasis of Romans 8. If God be for us,
who is against us? Oh yes, many things and people
may be against us, but what are they compared to the God who
is committed to us? Because in grace he has made
us his people and has purposed to accomplish his own redemptive
designs in us and through us. And so if we would face the coming
here individually, corporately, with that kind of bright, happy,
God glorifying courage. It's not going to come by trying
to whip up the troops into some kind of carnal fervor. It will
come as each one of us alone with God sitting here even now
under the preaching of the word are enabled by the spirit to
take that promise and to assimilate it spiritually and believingly
that when God says, I am with you, I will not fail you, nor
forsake you." He means exactly what he said. And in every situation
then, where I feel like the children of Israel, there is something
before me I cannot pass over. It is a call to remember, yes,
but what is a swollen Jordan to my God? And when I meet that
which in my experience individually and ours corporately is like
a walled city of Jericho and there's no way we don't have
the instruments of war to batter down the walls. We don't have
the manpower to lay siege until we destroy the city by a slow
process. But that is nothing for God.
God can take the most inconsequential tools in this case. It was his
people marching around the wall seven days, and seven times on
the seventh day, and shouting the shout of victory, and God
himself put his hands down and knocked the walls flat. And God
calls upon us to believe that this is our God, and he is our
guide even unto death. But then, finally in the fifth
place, we must say a word. about the expected context of
realizing the blessedness of this promise, the expected context
of realizing the blessedness of this promise. Let me put it
in the form of a question. Was this promise unconditional?
When God says in verse six to the nation at large, he it is
that goes with you, he will not fail you nor forsake you. When
he says to Joshua in particular, he will be with you, verse eight,
he will not fail you nor forsake you. Fear not, neither be dismayed. Was that an unconditional promise?
No matter what they did, they could say in any set of circumstances,
Hallelujah, God's with us. He won't fail us. Well, if you
read over in verse 17, apparently not. Listen to the word of God
in verse 17. Then my anger shall be kindled
against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will
hide my face from them. They shall be devoured, and many
evils and troubles shall come upon them, so that they will
say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us because our
God is not among us? I thought God said, I'll be with
them. I'll not forsake them. And now
God says, I will forsake them and I won't be with them. Well,
is God talking double talk? No. God did not give this promise
as an unconditional promise. It was a promise given upon the
condition that in the way of obedience they would realize
its fulfillment. This is underscored at the very
outset. Just before the promise, notice
verse 5 of chapter 31, the Lord will deliver them up before you.
You shall do unto them according to all the commandment which
I have commanded you. Be strong and of good courage. Fear not the Lord. He is with
you. He will not fail you nor forsake
you. In other words, in the way of
obedience. You will know the fulfillment
of this gracious promise. And God said exactly the same
thing to Joshua when he repeats the promise in Joshua chapter
1. Notice Joshua chapter 1. God is encouraging Joshua in
the undertaking of this great task. Verse 5, there shall not
be any man able to stand before you as I was with Moses. I will
be with you. I will not fail you nor forsake
you. Be strong and of good courage. Verse 7, only be strong and courageous
to observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant,
commanded you. Turn not from it to the right
hand or to the left, that you may have good success withersoever
you go. This book of the law shall not
depart out of your mouth. You shall meditate there on day
and night that you may observe to do according to all that is
written therein for them. You will make your way prosperous,
and then you shall have good success. Have not I commanded
you be strong and of good courage? Do not be affrighted, neither
be dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever
thou goest." Now do you see what a wretched mishandling of the
Word of God it is to simply take the promise and hang it out here
on a sky-boat? God has embedded it in a context
which clearly indicates that to realize the blessedness of
the promise, they as the people and Joshua as the individual
were bound to walk in the path of obedience. Ah, but someone
says that was under a covenant of the Lord. That was in the
period of redemptive history, when the nation as a nation was
not a redeemed people inwardly and spiritually. They were redeemed
typically and redeemed in terms of a national redemption. But
a new principle operates in this age of grace. Is that so? Is
that so? Not if I read my Bible rightly.
It is the King of Grace himself who says, He that hath my commandments,
he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be
loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself
to him." You see, the Lord Jesus has promised his own gracious,
continuous presence and the unveiling of his glory and power to his
people who walk in the path of obedience. Now, I do know that
no child of God once truly grafted into Christ will ever be ungrafted
and lost. I believe that truth with all
of my heart. To believe anything else, to
me, is to bring the highest reproach upon God, the efficacy of the
death of Christ, the intercession of Christ, the nature of the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and a host of other things that
I'll not go into. So lest any misconstrue what
I'm saying, I am not saying. that the true people of God can
fall from grace, but what I am saying is this, it's losing business
to try to suck sweetness from the promises of God in any other
path but the path of obedience. When God is calling you to repentance
for sin, don't try to suck sweetness out of the promises of his nearness
to his people. You suck sweetness from the promise.
If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the
righteous one. Those are the promises to plead
when you've sinned. The promise is to penitent sinners. And you see, that in itself is
an evidence that the principle of obedience is within us. And
so if we as the people of God would know the blessedness of
this promise, This nugget of God's own word to us on the threshold
of a new year with all of its unknowns, with all of its big,
bold question marks, with all of the question marks from which
we fear perhaps there may be jagged lightning, all of the
closets that are yet closed that may hold in them as they open
in divine providence, sites that will shock us and all of the
valleys through which God may bring us, in which we'll know
what it is to pass through valleys of weeping, if we would know
the sweetness of this promise, dear people of God, let us commit
ourselves afresh to this simple principle. We are here to do
the will of God. To say with our Savior, my meat
is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work. to obey Him in those seasons
when our hearts burn within us and obedience is no more a burden
than breathing. I have seen no one while I've
been preaching laboring to breathe. Now, I know what it is to labor
to breathe as a former asthmatic. I know what it's like to sit
up and struggle for the next breath. But if you're free of
those kinds of problems, it's no labor to breathe. And there
are times when obedience is no more a labor than breathing.
Love to Christ burns so brightly, heaven and the promises and holiness
and the delights of a life of communion with Christ are so
precious that a life of obedience is no more a burden than breathing.
There are other times when a life of obedience is like climbing
up a hill, 45 degree angle, covered with ice. And you've got slick
slippers on your feet, and a hundred pound burden on your back, and
people at the top throwing stones at you every time you make a
little progress. Now that's the way the life of obedience is
sometimes. The easiest thing to do is drop your hands and
slide away from God, away from holiness, away from truth, away
from his people. But they're people. What else
is there for us to be but of obedient people? He died to make
us an obedient people. He shed His blood that we might
be bound to Him in cords of principle obedience, not this ephemeral
cord of a feeling-oriented obedience, that when our self-love is strong,
then our obedience will be quick and spontaneous and full and
universal. But when we're robbed of feelings,
then our obedience will be half-hearted and impartial and sporadic. God have mercy upon you if that's
the pattern of your life. As you've been reminded many
times, the peculiar problem of a day that is fed itself upon
feelings. If it feels good, it must be
right. If it feels bad, it must be bad. And the measure of right
and wrong has been our feelings rather than the book of the law,
the word of God. And here God is saying to his
people and to Joshua, their leader, look, here's your task. Here
is the pledge of my promise. Do what I say and you will know
the fulfillment of my gracious word of promise. And I will again
and again manifest that I am God. I am with you. The scripture
says God even put his terror upon the nations. Word got out
that there God is the God who does things that you can never
predict. What a tragedy. Went through disobedience. It
turned to superstitions, that if only we can get the Ark, the
sacred object, then we'll have God with us. And God let their
sacred object end up in a pagan idol temple. And the nations
realized that their God was not in a box. He was with the people
who obeyed them. And you see, whatever we have
known of God's presence in the past, it's not confined to these
walls, nor will it be confined or in any way conditioned upon
the aesthetic beauty of face, too. When God ceases to see in
Trinity Church a body of people determined to do His will at
any cost, then He'll remove His presence from us. And when that
happens, I don't want to be here. You saw what happened to Joshua
when he tried to lead a disobedient people? A.I. Little city! Man, we conquered Jericho! A.I.,
that's just a little pushover town. And they got whipped. They came back with their tails
between their legs. And Joshua fell down before God and said,
Lord, you said you'd be with us. No one could stand before
us. Here we've turned tail before
this little city of Ai. The nations will hear about it.
What will happen to your great name? God said, Joshua, enough
of this business. Stop your praying. Get up off
your face. There's no sense praying. There's disobedience in the camp.
Somebody has done what I said not to do. They've taken some
accursed objects, and they've withheld some things that I said
are to be devoted to me until the sin is dealt with. You can
pray till you're blue in the face and hoarse in the throat.
And Joshua, I will not be with you. You read the whole story
of the conquest. This is the great lesson. When
his people are humbly obedient to God, God, as it were, chomps
at the bit to manifest his power and his glory through a people
willing to obey and trust him. You see, if there's anything
that can be called the secret of any blessing we've known as
a church, ultimately it's grace, but grace that has delighted
to work with a bunch of nobodies who by grace have sought to obey
God. And if we're to know God's blessing
as we enter this new phase of outreach and impact and usefulness
and responsibility, yes, and heartache and burden and demand
upon us as a church and in the leadership, if we're to know
the sweetness of this promise, don't be afraid. Don't quake
before all of these demands and the unknowns that will come with
them. I am with you. I'll not fail
you. I'll not forsake you. Dear people,
we don't need to have a Bible conference on how to have the
blessing of God. It tells us right here. You just
do what God tells you. You just do what God tells you.
Oh yes, in the strength of His Spirit, trusting only in Christ,
for without Him we can do nothing. relying upon him to give us the
grace to do what he demands. Yes, but stopping all this clever
arguing with God and excusing ourselves and saying, well, God
really doesn't mean what he says and all that business. Just cut
it all out and start taking the clear precepts of the word of
God and say, now, Lord, seems to me when you said I'm to do
this. That means this in my life. And
if that's so, then, Lord, this has got to change. And, Lord,
if that's going to change, I'm not up to it. But, Lord, it's
got to change. You're God, and I'm Your servant.
And I want to know the fulfillment of this promise. I want to know
what it is to have You with me. I want to know what it is to
have You not fail me nor forsake me. And, Lord, it's worth it
to me to bend my neck to Your gracious yoke. You give me grace
to do what You say. That doesn't sound very spiritual,
does it? But that's the path of blessing. That's the path
in which the Lord makes real to us this promise. Some of you
perhaps have been wondering, Master, how could you preach
a sermon like that and not quote the New Testament text that is
the counterpart of this? Well, I saved it for the end.
The Lord Jesus gave to his church that great promise in Matthew
28. Lo, I am with you always. even to the consummation of the
age. But what's the context in which
that came? It came in the context of a task laid upon them, an
ethical task. The gospel light had penetrated
into that little part of Palestine, up into the Galilee regions,
occasionally spilled off into the area of Tyre and Sidon. Yes,
a few of the Gentile and border nations had seen a great light.
But now the Lord Jesus says, Go and make disciples of all
the nations." He lays before them something that makes the
walls of Jericho look like play stuff, makes it look like something
made of Lego blocks. This little band of fishermen,
rough, uncultured, untrained men, as the world looked upon
them, and Jesus says, make disciples, kahethne, all of the nations. Out of the nations as you make
disciples, constitute visible groups, baptizing them, and then
you teach them, and as you go, no matter what you face, all
you need to know is this, I'm with you." That's all he gave
him. For that task was the promise of his presence. And he says,
in essence, that's all you need. If you have me, what else do
you need? I'm amazed at that. He doesn't say, and as you go,
I give you this, this, this. All he says is, Lo, I'm with
you. I am with you, I the risen Christ, I whom you saw when you
were with me, saying to those possessed with demons, saying
to the demons, be still, be muzzled, come out, you saw me conquer
the powers of darkness. You saw me when I looked into
that mournful scene of Lazarus grave and weeping ones all about. And you heard me say, Lazarus,
come forth. And you saw him come forth. And
you remember that I commanded you to take the grave cause from
him, that he might be free and make it manifest to all that
indeed he was alive. You saw me when I took sightless
eyes and touched them. You saw me when I spoke a word,
raised the dead, healed the twisted limbs. I, the risen Christ, whom
you saw pour my life out upon the cross, whom you have seen
now for over 40 days as the living one, the resurrected one who
conquered death, I am with you in the plenitude of the grace
and power you have seen in my personal presence now to be with
you by my Spirit. But it is I in the plenitude
of that power and grace who am with you. What else do you need?
and going forth to your task. Oh, child of God, may God help
us to lay hold of that promise. He is with us, and being with
us, he will not fail us, he will not forsake us. And in the way
of obedience, we shall know the blessedness of that promise. But as I close, I want to say
to those of you who have no right to this promise, Whatever else
you have as you enter the new year, may I say it lovingly,
you enter the new year impoverished if you don't have this God as
your God. You see, he does not say this
to all men indiscriminately. The promise we've studied was
spoken to his elect nation, to his chosen people, those who
had been bonded to him by power and by blood in that covenant
which God made with them that constituted them a nation. And
now in this age, that nation is his church. His true people
also bonded to him in a gracious covenant of power and blood.
The Holy Spirit, having changed us and brought us to faith in
Christ, is our only hope of salvation. We, the purchased ones, bound
to him in cords of love and faith. He says to us, Don't be afraid. Don't be dismayed. Be of good
courage. Whatever you face, I am with
you. I'll not fail you nor forsake
you. But my friend, what do you have as you face all the unknowns
of the coming year? What if you're told in this coming
year that you've got six months to live? But there is working
in you a disease that will, by degrees, bring you down to your
grave. What will you say if the doctor
tells you, Mrs. So-and-so, Mr. So-and-so, I'm
grieved to tell you but, and you hear those horrible words,
you have terminal cancer. What do you have with which to
face that possibility? You say, well, I hope to dodge
the bullet. Yes, it's nice to hope, but do you know you will?
What will you say if you hear the tragic news that one dear
and near to your own heart, husband, wife, child, some other loved
one of infinite or of great worth to you is cut off suddenly and
tragically, and you hear the news and there's the shock and
the stunned response? Where will you go if you can't
go to the God who says, I will never leave thee, who's with
you in the crushing hours of grief and pain and anguish? What
will you do if the bottom drops out and your husband loses his
job and all the security you've worked for for years is gone?
Where are you going to go? And pour out your grief and then
affirm your confidence that if the father takes care of sparrows
in the grass of the field, he's committed to take care of his
children. Where are you going to go, my friend? Don't you see
what a horrible thing it is to face all the unknowns of the
coming year? without this God is your God.
Oh, we entreat you. Taste and see that the Lord is
God. Take this God to be your God.
Take Him in the only way you can have Him, as He's offered
to you in Jesus Christ in the Gospel. You must come to that
God through the way of His appointment, which is His only begotten Son,
who died for sinners. My unconverted friend, young
or old, Don't face the coming year without this God, who is
willing to be your God, that you'll have him on his terms,
that in Christ this promise is yours. You can go with this nugget
for New Year's tucked away in your heart, because it's part
of that which God gives to everyone who embraces his son, for in
him all the promises are yes and amen to the glory of God. I will not leave me. I will not
fail me. I will not forsake me. May God
bring that word to our remembrance again and again throughout the
coming year if he is pleased to spare us. May it be to us
a means of grace as we face all that God brings upon us. Let
us pray. We are so thankful that you have
condescended to speak to us in such plain, simple terms. And we thank you for this ancient
promise given to your ancient people in a cultural setting
altogether different from ours. Yet we thank you that it is your
word to us. You yourself have said to us,
I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Oh, enable us to lay hold
of that promise. Bring it to our remembrance when
we most need it in the coming days. And help us by grace to
remain in the way of obedience, that we may know the fulfillment
of that promise in our individual, family, corporate life as a church. Oh, Lord, take us, the weak things,
the despised, the things that are not the foolish. and do with
us that which will make it evident to all men that the exceeding
greatness of the power is not of ourselves but of you, that
no flesh may glory before you. Hear our prayer. Have mercy upon
those who cannot call you their God. Oh, may the entreaties not
fall upon deaf ears, but may some even this night turn from
their sin and embrace you as their God and your Son as their
only Savior. Hear our prayer, and receive
our thanks for this blessed day in your courts. Be with us especially
over the next two days, in all of our time together, in feasting,
in relaxation, times to be with loved ones and relatives. O God,
may we apply the things we considered in the first hour this morning,
that we may come through these days not only able to testify
that we have not regressed spiritually, but that by your grace we have
made progress in our walk with you. Help us and hear us, we
plead, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.