Good evening. I'd like to speak
to you tonight out of Joshua chapter 6. Joshua chapter 6. I think if you were to give this
particular message a title, it would be, Shout for the Lord
hath given you the city, the promise of God. And I'd like
to speak to you tonight two things that we'll get to in just a minute,
but let me read to you first out of Joshua chapter 6 verses
8 through 16. And it came to pass when Joshua
had spoken unto the people that the seven priests bearing the
seven trumpets of rams horns passed on before the Lord and
blew with the trumpets. And the ark of the covenant of
the Lord followed them. And the armed men went before the priests
that blew with the trumpets And the reward came after the ark,
the priests going on and blowing with the trumpets. And Joshua
had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout nor make any
noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of
your mouth until the day I bid you shout. Then shall you shout. So the ark of the Lord compassed
the city, going about at once, and they came into the camp and
lodged in the camp. And Joshua rose early in the
morning, And the priests took up the ark of the Lord, and the
seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark
of the Lord went on continually and blew with the trumpets. And
the armed men went before them, but the reward came after the
ark of the Lord, the priests going on and blowing with the
trumpets. And the second day they compassed the city once
and returned into the camp, so they did six days. And it came
to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning
of the day and compassed the city after the same manner seven
times. Only on that day they compassed
the city seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh
time when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto
the people, Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city. I drew
to my praying. Father, we ask that You would
give us ears and eyes of understanding in the heart, that we would take
what You have said and we would learn and grow in grace and knowledge
of Christ. Not of the knowledge of man,
not of the knowledge of doctrine or separate systematic theology,
but of the knowledge of Christ. May we see Him this night in
His name. Amen. The title of this message I would
give to you is, Shout for the Lord hath given you the city,
which is a promise of God. Two things I'd like to point
out tonight, if you could see through the scriptures, are not
just the promises of God, but also the doubt of our own nature.
The doubt of ourselves and myself is actually what caused me to
look at this particular message. Before verse six, you look in
Joshua, and God had established Israel as the elected tribe,
and Moses was established as their leader to deliver them
from enslavement from Egypt. And that was done, and then later
in Mount Sinai, he was given a covenant and promised to Canaan
that they would be, I'm sorry, promised to Israel that they
would be delivered to Canaan, the holy land. We get to verse six,
Moses has passed away and Joshua has been established as the new
elected leader of Israel. Now, let me revisit doubt for
just a minute. Doubt is of the sinner. Doubt is not of the Lord. Uncertainty,
doubt is bred by fear in our own self, questioning our own
central beliefs. If we could talk as honest as
possible in reality, I would admit that there are times where
I'm sitting here in this particular building thinking, maybe up the
street they've got something going on. That, is this really
how this is established? Is this really the truth that
everything works the way that this Bible says? You're telling
me they actually parted water, an actual river, and the bed
of the river was dry. You're telling me you saw people
walk on actual water? And we're supposed to believe
that? And that doubt is very human in nature because in reality
there is no doubt in salvation of God. It is about as pure,
it is not about pure, it is the most pure thing that ever existed
is the salvation of Christ's people. And so to be honest with
you, doubt is a common thing in every sinner because it is
our nature to doubt, to fear. And it is by God's grace that
we can escape such a doubt and such a fear. The promise is that
the Lord has given you the city. And metaphorically speaking,
the city is, of course, Heaven, right? That's really what we're
about. Because we weren't at Jericho and we're not promised
Jericho. Jericho, according to history, was actually rebuilt
a different spot. It was fallible again, was knocked down again
by a different nation. And so it's just a city. So,
metaphorically speaking, you know, you could make all sorts
of assertions that that's heaven and so forth. We know when the
Lord reads something like, the city has been given to you in
the Bible, That's eternal salvation. That's what's being promised
to you. So that's our first promise of God that we hear. You know,
I think with Halloween coming up, if you really wanted to scare
somebody and really put doubt in somebody, tell them the truth.
Tell them the truth, because in reality, hell is about as
scary as you can possibly get. I mean, there's nothing else
inside of our own concoction that you can make as evil as
what sin and hell has created. As I'm sitting, probably 13 years
old, in a chair across town on a storefront, I started to just
get whispers of actually hearing what's going on. Now, I wasn't
believing by any stretch of the imagination, but man, it was
pretty scary because according to what my own central belief,
my human beliefs had established was, I better get going because
if I don't figure this out, I'm in trouble. Now, let me say it
again. If I don't get going, If I don't
go and fix this problem, I'm going to have a bigger problem
down the road. I may live to 80, and that'll be great. And
then what? Because the guys that are up
at the front of the room right now are telling me that eternity
is a lot longer than 80 years. And so there goes the first steps
of doubt, the doubt and fear and so forth. And then the Lord,
fortunately, steps in and gets the reality of the truth of salvation
openly in front of you. Let's take a look at a few things
here on the pictures of Christ in this particular passage here. There's a few pictures that we
see where we talked about the city of Jericho is in fact heaven.
It's a permanent safe salvation. It's a place that's been delivered
that everything you've ever wanted by God's design, by God's design,
is promised of you. It's a conquering of what was
happening. See, Jericho was one of the first ever places, the
fortified installments that had to be knocked down in order for
Israel to go and move into a land of Canaan. They technically had
to conquer Canaan, their promised land. So this is the first step
they had, historically speaking. In reality, it was the Lord promising
Canaan to them. These are the things, follow
my instruction, and you will in fact be entered into the Lord's
kingdom. Another picture of Christ, Joshua.
Joshua spoke and his people followed. There was trust in Joshua. There
was an established trust that the Lord fortified in his people. Joshua trusted the Lord's message.
He did, he trusted him. And just like any Drew or any
grace pastor does, he leads his people. In reality, he leads
his people by the trust that's been by that person, that's whoever's
up here, the trust in the Lord. Verse 12, it reads that he rose
early in the morning. He's prepared. He's prepared
to deliver a message of truth to his people that comes from
the trust instilled from the Word to an elected person. Israel trusts Joshua, another
picture. We follow the truth, the true
word through the preaching of the gospel. If someone were to
come up here and falsify the words, I would hope by now that
by the grace of God we know the difference between the truth
and false gospel. But there are points in time where someone
would walk in here. We've had people walk in, sit in the back,
and it's on us if we're not speaking the truth in reality. And so
we trust that whoever is up here is actually leading the congregation.
And we have that, which is yet again another blessing of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Joshua also followed more instruction
as well. Even though he was a leader on
earth, his function was to follow his commandments from God. He's
the pastor. The ultimate job of any pastor
or any believer in the pastor's role is in reality, as we leave
from here, We pastor the word of God to people around us. And it's very easy to fall into
fear and doubt in that situation as well. In my job, it's exceptionally
easy just to shrink away. Anytime someone wants to falsify
God, we even have a club in a public school system. They can meet
and they can pray. They offer donuts. It's very
nice. You go down and one of the teachers leads the prayer
and talks about God and so forth. And they even bring in people
in the community to further their belief in the system and so forth.
That's not following the accurate message of God. Those people
are the feel-goods. They're the ones that come in
and they have a message in their heart, maybe, or they want to
further themselves, in the case of some of them, in the community. And so what better way than to
save souls? It's a real easy way. We've seen it throughout
history. In colonial times, how do you conquer the Native Americans?
You convert them. Because anybody underneath the
same religion, we're brothers in Christ. Don't you agree? In
reality, though, they lie. That is the ultimate lie on God.
The pastor, the preaching of the gospel, should be accurate,
clear, And frankly, be bold. Be bold in its message and the
fact that it is not nice to everybody. The first time you hear it, it
will scare you. It will offend you. It will anger
you. Because it puts you in your reality
of the situation that you are in. We're sinners. Plain and
simple. We have no ability whatsoever
to save ourselves. Not even in the littlest bit.
If you think about some of the scriptures in here, it is always
shocking to me that you can read certain ones and somehow manage
to will yourself into heaven. They are about as clear, some
of them, as anyone could be. Let's take for a minute, you
take, I read the King James Version. Let's get a different version.
It still says the same thing in the majority of them, I should
say. that you have no ability whatsoever to make yourself saved,
to get your soul to heaven, to live in eternal salvation. What you have the ability to
do is find yourself in eternal damnation. That's our nature,
is to automatically find yourself in eternal damnation. But, however, there is a blessing
for us as well. Israel followed instruction.
The congregation marched and remained silent. You look through
these verses here and they compass a city going about it once. In
verse 11, came into camp and lodged the camp. And Joshua rose
early in the morning and the priests took up the ark. They
did it again. They did it seven days. On the seventh day they
threw him a curve ball. They said, we're not going around
it one time, we're going around it seven times. I don't know enough about
the gospel to say I know what seven actually means. But I will
tell you this, the Lord deemed it, it was done, and his message
and his plan was fulfilled. Jericho fell. It fell. This city
was inhabited. We follow instruction, the commandment
and guidance of the gospel. We do so to grow in faith, to
be a better channel to speak the word of God. And yet there
is doubt, isn't there? How is there doubt that the city
is ours? How is there doubt if we're instructed to trust in
the Lord? Our country is one of the most powerful in history. It's still also one of the weakest
because it's led by men. It's led by men and it's a human
version of a kingdom. The only country that will ever
remain established is the establishment of God's nation, His own people. That's sure. Verse 11, so the ark of the Lord
compassed the city. The ark of the covenant followed
Israel. The mercy seat, the top cover
of the ark, the mercy seat was where God would dwell. He said,
there above the cover between the two cherubim that are over
the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give
you all my commandments for the Israelites. That's in Exodus
25, 22. The Lord was with the Israelites
as they compassed Jericho. The Ark of the Covenant traveled
with Israel. Everywhere you go, every situation
that you have and conflict that you have both internally or externally,
the Lord is with you. I hear all the time of people
coming up here Believers and proper pastors talk about those
times when you're by yourself, they're sometimes the most scariest
times. When you're sitting in front of the mirror, it's really
hard to lie to the mirror, isn't it? It is very hard to lie to
your own heart, because you know the truth. And even in that lowest
part there, even when you're at the job and something just
is raining down on you, even if you have something inside
of your marriage, if you have something financial happen, it
seems to me that every single time the Lord is with you. The Lord delivers you. But it's
very easy to doubt. In that point in time, you can
find every inch of doubt flowing all over you, whether it be by
your own designs or even if you get low enough to blame God. How dare you take this person
from me? How dare you do this to me? That's
human nature. Because we can fix things if
we look into it by our own design. It's very easy. Just give me
time. Just give me time. Let me work another job. Make
a little bit more money. Let me talk to this person a
little bit more. Let me get closure on this. But the reality of it
is, is there is no solving our own problems outside of the fact
that the Lord Jesus Christ is with us. And why would you not
turn to those promises that He's promised you over and over and
over again. Drew talks about it all the time.
Mark them in your Bible. Well, if you really probably could
study it long enough and you're a lot smarter than I am, I mean
a lot smarter than I am because numbers and revelations throw
me for a loop, you could probably put a marker by every single
verse in reality because that whole Bible right there is full
of every single promise that the Lord has blessed upon his
people. There's promises left and right of your salvation. There is no way that the members
of the tribe of Israel could walk around Jericho this long
without doubting. No way. Human nature creeps in
seven days, an entire week, and you're walking quietly. Let me rephrase that. Silently,
you're just walking because you were instructed to. I know people
that I work with, they wouldn't be able to handle that past five
minutes. I don't think I would, to be honest. I was told to walk
silently. Why? I want to know why. Because
I'm valid. I want to know my opinion. See,
I'm using sarcasm if you don't know, but the validity of myself
is what I want. I want to know. Why are you telling
me to do this? What does this matter to me?
How is this gonna help me? You're telling me to go over
this wall here, this fortified building, and I'm gonna shout
at it, and it's gonna fall. That's what I was told. They're
gonna shout at it, and the walls will fall, and I get to take
the city. I get to take all of it. No way. No way. The method of their actions,
is in question. The means of their goal, to take
the city, was in question. Joshua's instructions, maybe
he's wrong. Maybe the guy at the pulpit's
wrong. Their own beliefs, questioning again, their own beliefs. I go to a church that by American
standards is not too good. A hundred year old building,
is that right, on the other side? A square room, Very functional. Doesn't have a steeple. Sits
over on the back by subway. There's a nail salon next to
it. Why isn't it up on the big hill? Just move it up there and
let's get some bells and ring. Like, let's make it look good
because that's where salvation is from. Like it says, where
two or more are gathered. We don't even need this building.
the doubt that you have in this building. We didn't need it in
the past. We met in a living room. I believe the pastor was
up in a chair because he had a knee surgery at one point in
time and still preaching the truth. Doubt is everywhere. And
you know what's out everywhere else? The Lord is always there
to deliver. I come in and doubt my own beliefs. How strongly do you believe that
this is really the true gospel? Humility is not of a believer. Verse 2, And the Lord said unto Joshua,
See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof,
and the mighty men of valor. Who gave that to you? The Lord
did. It's not, look at us, It's not,
look at the building. Humility is not of the believer.
We want, in our human nature, to look a certain way, to behave
a certain way, and a pure holiness that's not of us. Humility, though,
does come from Christ, because there is a way that He can knock
that down real quick. Real quick. Anytime you can hold
yourself in a pompous setting or find yourself to believe that
you're in a good setting, the other side of doubt, this total
other level of doubt, the other end of spectrum is this upper
level of, I'm okay, I'm doing great, it's been a good seven
days, I can probably make ten out of it, nothing's really throwing
me a curveball. It'll knock you down too. It'll
knock you down too. There is a balance that comes
with the grace of God because there is one thing that the grace
of God needs you to focus on, or wants you to focus on, that
you should focus on, is the Lord Jesus Christ. You want true humility? You can't save yourself. You
can't do it. I'm a lifeguard. I can pull people
from the water, hopefully. I can't save you. I can't save
you. Hopefully what comes out of my
mouth can save you, but I can't. You can't. That aisle can't.
That building can't. Give to charity. You can't. You can't save yourself. Humanity
creates measurement systems to deem entry into heaven. A measurement
system that is man-made to get into heaven. Go to confirmation
class. They're doing that at the Catholic
Church right now. If you take these tests and you
can recite enough in front of another man, you're in. Good
to go. And then even at that point,
the other measurement system is, well, that wasn't really
good enough, we'll still let you go here, are you donating? Okay,
good. After that point, let's say you
pass away, we'll pray you in heaven, don't worry about it.
Don't even worry about it. We got you covered. There's backup
plans because we don't know what we're doing. We just know that
there's measurement systems that we can get you into heaven. Trust
us. There is no measurement system
except for the judgment of God. That's it. That's it. Black or
white. There is no gray in the salvation
of God. Heaven or hell. Believer or not. Jesus Christ or not. If you were
saved then doubt not. The city is yours. Psalms 107. I got the wrong one down, I think.
Oh, no, I didn't. Okay. Psalms 107 verses 4 through
7. Drew preached on this not too
long ago. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way.
They found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul
fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord
in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses.
and he led them forth by the right way that they might go
to a city of habitation." The city is yours. Habitation means
you get to live in it. That's what inhabit means. You
live in it. You don't die in it. There's
no death in that city. The Lord has promised you the
city of life. It's yours. Shout. The city is
yours. Titus 3. City habitation is yours. While
their soul back in Psalms fainted in them and they cried, the Lord
does something to people they can He can put you right in the
corner. He can screw you to the wall
in your worst place. And then from there, you cry. And you know what he does? He
delivers. He delivers you to the city of habitation. Titus
3, verses 3 to 7. For we ourselves also were sometimes
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lust and pleasures,
living in malice and envy. hateful and hating one another. But, I like that word and I like
however in the Bible, but after that the kindness and love of
God our Savior toward man appeared. Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, not by our design, but according to His
mercies. He saved us by the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. which He shed
on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. And this is
what I want to look at in Titus, that being justified by His grace,
we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
I don't see doubt in those verses. What I see, well, I'll tell you
what, I see doubt in verse three because that's us. That's us. And then in verse four, you see
but Christ. By His grace, we are justified. Christ became sin for His elect.
Christ did this willingly out of love, a love we do not know. We don't understand it. Nathan
preached on this a while back, maybe a couple years ago, according
to my notes. We don't quite even understand
even the good of salvation. We don't get it. We won't get
it until we're there. We don't get how He's serving
us now, how He's delivering us now. We don't understand that
at all. We're not also blindly following
Him as well. By His instruction, by His grace
and His mercy, we know it to be true. We just don't know all
of it. We are made acceptable for salvation
by Christ's sacrifice of love, by His sacrifice of love. And there's a promise in Titus.
There's a promise in Psalms. There's definitely a promise
in Joshua. And yet we doubt. It is of sin which begets pride,
ego, a way to justify our own ambitions. My last point, God
is faithful. You know, if someone in your
life continues to make a mistake that's hurtful, because, let
me get back to that here in a minute, if someone makes a mistake that
is hurtful, you may forgive once, twice maybe, three times. They're so hurtful so often,
you're going to cut them out of your life completely. Like,
you're just going to remove that poison out of your life. God
doesn't do that. Christ never leaves you alone. We poison all the time. We sin
all the time. Daily. Minutely. In reality, it's often that we
sin. And yet the promise was made
of faithfulness, faithful salvation. That the city will be ours. And
yet, we'll still shuck. We will still push. We will still
get angry. We will have fear that, how are
we going to get out of this situation? That's a sin in reality. That
is a sin. Human nature takes over and we
are full of sin and we want to make every excuse known to man
of why it's somebody else's fault or that this situation should
be better. And yet the Lord, after doing all this, after being
angry towards him, is still faithful. We are too weak to be that faithful.
He has no holes in His game whatsoever as far as faithful goes. He is
as faithful as we can even imagine. The promise was made God would
deliver Israel from entrapment to the Promised Land. The promise
was made that the walls of Jericho would fall. They fell. The promise
was made that a believer will be saved from eternal damnation
and be granted eternal salvation. It's going to happen. He is faithful. Has God been faithful to you?
Have you found comfort in His promises? You talk about, Drew
talks about the times where he thought he was having an anxiety
attack and what saved him. His own medication, his own mental
awareness, his own skills. We've all had those incidences,
I'm sure, of some level. Comfort in His promise, the city
is yours. An eternal salvation. That doesn't
help me here tonight. It doesn't? You want this life
to be good, better than the next? You want eternal salvation to
be average and compared to this one? You want to improve this
one so much, you sacrifice the other one? Is that the mentality that we
should have? Do you actually have control
over that? The answer is no, you don't. No, a believer doesn't
believe that at all. They know that the promises of
eternal salvation are far greater than anything we can have on
this earth. Have you found the calm and removal of doubt that
the promises of the Lord's Scripture provides? It's there. It's there. In closing here, There is no
way that over close to a week would a believer, one who actually
knows the truth, one who has been preached to or read the
promises of God, someone who is aware of the salvation by
Christ, the guarantee of permanent salvation, the removal from hell,
the forgiveness of all sins, even our petty thoughts of correct
believing, There is no way the tribe of Israel would follow
a promise command for a week of repetitive instructions without
several moments of doubt. We come to church Wednesday,
we come to church Sunday, we take the Lord's Supper, we rinse
and repeat and walk away. Trust is never in our nature,
so therefore the Lord must deliver. Verse 16, shout for the Lord
hath given you the city. In all of our doubt, yet again,
The Lord saves. The Lord saves His people without
doubt. The Lord saves His people without interference, without
qualm or hesitancy. Walk by His instruction that
leads to mercy. The Lord's instruction leads
to mercy. His word leads to mercy. He is mercy. Doubt not. Shout by His instruction, for
the Lord hath given you the city. Nathan, will you pray? Heavenly
Father, it's very good that we see these pictures. Well, the
reason they exist is because we do fear God. There's no getting around that.
It's the truth. And these passages are here to
tell us and to remind us over and over again, it's good that
they are there for that, that we need to trust and we need
to stop fearing. We need to stop doubting. And Lord, while we can say that,
we still need help. We get these reminders and we'll
need a reminder ten minutes from now or tomorrow or whatever. It is sometimes stunning when
we look back at our, well, shortcomings, and we see how far we are from
you in these, as we are, as we're born. But Lord, you did descend
and condescend to us, for sure, and you have delivered us. There's
no doubt about that, and never should there be in the believer's
hearts, but Lord, Keep us as only You can. Don't let us trust
in the pillars we think we have of our own making, of our own
scheming. They'll fall away. And by Your grace, You'll show
us that we can't trust in those. Lord, bring us back hungry for
more of Your teachings and reminders