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We're not studying this book, we're studying the life of Joshua. We're still in Exodus, we're gonna be looking at Exodus today. But as some of you know, last week we started a series on Joshua, and it's just a warrior's spiritual journey. And as we go through his journey, we'll look at some significant events in Joshua's life, right? We'll see that Joshua was not just a great military leader, right? Or that he was some inspirational leader, but that he was a man of God, and he was a man seeking God. And as I told you before, God commanded Joshua to be strong and courageous. Joshua's strength was not found in his skills with a sword, or his courage in his ability to lead others. But Joshua found his strength and his courage in God. And we're studying Joshua today because the Lord commands the same of His people. Right? The people today, that are living today, that we would be strong and courageous, and that we would find that strength and courage in the Lord. Last week we looked at some of the importance of being faithful in the small things. And we talked about that when we are faithful in the small things, that demonstrates our faith towards God. This week we're going to be looking at Israel's battle with Amalek. And this was Israel's first fight since leaving Egypt, probably about two months after the Exodus. And this is actually the first time that Joshua's name is mentioned in Scripture. Moses tells Joshua to gather some men and go fight the raiding army. Joshua's battle with the Amalekites was preparation for many battles that he would fight when they took over the army. And this battle was a testing time when God would examine Joshua's faith and examine his courage. but he was also teaching Joshua the value of teamwork. And early, early on in boot camp, right, when I was in Marine boot camp, one of the first things that they taught us was teamwork. As they march you in the very first day, they march, and you got a green blanket, and you get these two bed sheets. And they march you next to a rack, which is a bunk bed. It's a metal bunk bed. And they put you on one side, and they put this other guy on the other side, some guy you've never seen before. And they give you this stack, and they put it in your arms, and you stand there. And they say, you have one minute to make your racks. 60. 59. You're like, oh. You're like, I don't know what sheet goes on the bottom. I don't know what sheet goes on top. Some of us have moms making our beds the whole time. We're like, I don't know what to do with this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you hear, zero! And everybody yells back, freeze, recruit, freeze! and you're standing there, and they look around, and the place is a mess. Sheets all over the place, there's blankets all over the place, mattresses are half on and half off beds, because you're trying to climb over the guy next to you to make your bed, and you're doing stuff, and they say, nope, strip the beds, get your blankets, get on the line. So you get on the line. They say, hold him out. And you hold him out, and they say, you got one minute. 60, 59, and you're like, oh! And so now you're going, and you're getting it, you're telling that guy on the other side to get out of your way, because you're trying to make your real fast, and you're doing it. Zero! Freeze, recruit, freeze. And they look around, it's still a mess. It's a disaster. They said, nope, get your sheets and your blankets. So you get up there, and you do this again, and again, and again. You're about 30 minutes into this. You're really mad at that guy next to you, because he keeps getting in your way. And you kind of look over at him, And you get the sheets out there, and all of a sudden they start, 60, 59. So you go, you're doing it. 45 minutes, right? We played this game. 45 minutes later. You're standing out there. Now you really hate the guy next to you. Really hate him. And so you got your sheets, you make an eye contact with him, and it's like your eyes are, you get in my way again, I'm going to beat you down, right? And he's saying the same thing back. Like, get out of my way. You're slowing me down. I'm going to kill you. Right? And you have your hands. And it's like the drill instructor can read our minds. And he changes it up for a little bit. He says, why are you so stupid? And he's like, you guys, you're wasting your time, and you're wasting my time, and you're wasting my country's time. Why are you guys so stupid? And he's like, and he says, why don't you guys? So now you got your blankets out. 60, 59, and you're like, okay, let's make my bed first. No, no, no, we're gonna make my bed first. No, no, my bed. Three, two, one, freeze. And you come back to the line. Not a bed was made. And we're standing out there. We'll make your bed first. Okay, here we go. And we do it. We get one bed made. Zero! Freeze, recruit, freeze! And we come back and like, we got one bed. So we're excited about this, right? So we're gonna start to say, nope, they're all not made. Strip them. Oh my gosh. So you strip them. Get back on line. So you get back on line. Go back. He's like, beds are made and he's not at zero yet. So we got our bows and arrows. Three, we're high five and bam. We go get on the line early. We're going to stand in line because our beds are made. He's like, zero! Freeze! We're going to freeze! And he looks around, probably about 75% of the beds are made. That's not all. Nope. He said all the beds. Strip them. So we play that game for a little bit. Guess what? For the first time, beds are made. All the beds are made. And after all the beds are made, man, the barracks are clean, our shoes are lined up, the floors are swept. In like 40 seconds, we got the bed racks made. They were just cleaning up the place after that, right? That's teamwork. That is teamwork when we're working with each other. We saw that, hey, two of us can make two beds and half the time make one bed each, right? So we learned this teamwork. And what's interesting though is that's the first thing that we learn is when we are teaching and the country is teaching the world's greatest warriors, the very first thing they learn is teamwork. And in this story, in this book in the Bible, Joshua, we see when he's becoming a warrior, the very first thing that Joshua learns is the importance of teamwork. And we see in this passage that Joshua, he's the assistant to Moses, and Moses has been appointed by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. And as soon as they left Egypt, The internal fighting began, right? Moses starts hearing the Israelites grumble, why did we leave Egypt? Being a slave was better than this. Oh, this bread from heaven is boring. I'm hungry, I'm hot. Wait, wait, it's like being in a car for a two hour drive with your kids, right? And Moses did it for 40 years. 40 minutes, I'm done. I've lost my mind. Praise God, Moses was that leader. 40 years, he listens to them. And as Joshua was following Moses, he would have heard Jethro telling Moses that, hey, you need to appoint some elders to help you, to help you judge the people, to build a team that can help you lead these people. And we see in the battle against the Amalekites, the battle belongs to the Lord. The Lord is in control of that battle, but in His sovereignty, He required that Moses remain in a posture of prayer, that his hands were raised and that he maintained this position in order for Israel to be successful. Moses not only needed Joshua to physically fight the battle, to be on the ground and to be mixing it up right there on the battlefield, but he needed others to provide him a stone to sit on. He needed others to help hold his arms and hold his hands up in that position of prayer. And when we look at this, we see that everybody had an extremely, extremely important role to play. And before we go any further, I want to read a description of this battle to you. It's found in Exodus 17. And we begin in verse 8. It says, Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. And so Moses said to Joshua, Use for us men and go out and fight with Amalek. will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.' So Joshua did as Moses told him, and he fought with Amalek. While Moses and Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill, and whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side, His hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. And when we read this passage, how does that text fit this go at it alone, this approach to Christian life that so many people try to live today? It's not biblical to think that, oh, I can do this ministry alone, or that I don't need my church family, or that I don't need a small group fellowship. I don't need anyone. I'm good by myself. And that's a lie straight from the pit. Satan would love for you to believe that you're good by yourself. He would love to get you isolated. If he can get you to believe that, not only will your ministry resemble some messed up bed that will never be made, but you'll quickly end up with a bitter heart towards others. Others that are trying to work towards the same goal as you. Others that are on your team trying to glorify God. But if you remain isolated and think they're all against you, Satan wins. And so to combat this lie, there's a couple things we need to know. The first thing we need to know is that the team needs you. Right? You need to be on the team. The team needs you. If I didn't make my rack, if I didn't help on my side, the entire platoon would suffer. If Moses dropped his arms, the team hurt. If Aaron takes a nap, the team hurts. If Joshua stops fighting, the team hurts. And the Bible says that together we are the body of Christ. And as such, every member of the body is important and necessary for the body to function as it was designed to. When you sit out, the team is not operating at its full capacity. The team hurts. Christianity is not a spectator sport. It's an actively engaged life with you and Christ and with you and others. We are dependent on one another like parts of the body. And throughout scripture there's references to the church, right, to God's people being like the body. And Paul tells the church in Rome, for as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. Don't overlook that last part. It says we are individually members one of another. Right? It doesn't matter if your heart is pumping strong. If the lungs aren't working, you've got a problem. We are members of one another. The body needs you. You need to be a part of that team. Too many times the ministry of the church is limited only because 20% of the body is working. Right? The average for churches in the United States is that 20% of the people that attend give 80% of the budget. That 75, I'm sorry, that those same 20% do 75% of the ministry. Church, we fall into those averages. Man, guys, I love you guys. But that's unacceptable. Those are shameful numbers when we got 80% of the body sitting out. 80% of the body not involved in life of the church. Could we be doing more? Right? Could we have a greater impact for Christ? Could we be making more disciples? Could we be planting more churches? Could we be impacting lives in our community better? Absolutely! Right? Let me give you an example right here of the importance of everybody doing their part. Think about it this way, right? Think about how would your body function if only one of your five major organs worked, right? If only, so you take your five major organs, your brain, your heart, your kidneys, your liver, or your lungs. Pick one of those. We're gonna let it work. The other four, we're just gonna turn off. How is that gonna work out for you, right? Good luck with that. But that's how we're functioning as a local church. Right? We have the breath of Christ in us, in this church, which is the only reason that we're still able to function as a church in this community. Praise God, Calvary Church has been faithful to Him, and to the Scriptures, and that He allows us to continue, operate, to do ministry, and give glory to His name here, this church, in this community. But we could be doing more. We could be doing lots more. We could be having a greater impact for Christ. We could be making more disciples. We could be planting more churches. We could see God be changing more lives. There was a team that went on a mission trip, and this team went to the tribal mountains in the Philippines to share the gospel. And when we look at a team on a small scale, I'm going to show you. If we put this picture up, this is what this team was made up of. It was made up of a retired gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps. She was a logistical genius, right, playing this trip. We split up into two teams, and she was on top of it all. We had an out-of-work businessman from the Philippines, spoke Tagalog, and he had travel connections all over the Philippines as we were moving around the country. We had an older lady who was a gas station attendant in Southern California, but she spoke three languages, and every dialect that we visited in the Philippines, she was able to communicate. We had a college baseball coach, one of the greatest evangelists that I know, that he could share the gospel with anybody. He had a story, and he could tell them about Jesus, and look them in their heart, and God used his We connect to people's hearts. And we had two pastors, right? And they provided encouragement. Pastors are kind of useless sometimes. But they were there, right? And the church of 300 people, right? We had a goal. We said, hey, we need to raise $10,000 to help this mission team go. The church, 300 people raised $15,000 to send this mission team to go and share the news of Jesus to literally the ends of the world. We were like island hopping in the Philippines on top of mountains and sharing the gospel. If any one of these people, maybe an exception of one of the pastors, but we're biblical, we went in groups of two. But if any one of these people were missing, that team would have been so much less effective. Because we had our own internal translators, we had our own internal way to move around the country. We show up and the mission organization that we were supporting said, hey, go do whatever you need to. You guys are free, we don't have to babysit you, go. And we were free because of the way that that team was made up. And as a church, as a local body of believers, we're a ministry team here at this church. We're a ministry team here in Los Angeles, right? And as members of this church, Calvary Church, we're dependent upon you. As the body of Christ, we are dependent on you to help us fulfill the great commission of making disciples of all nations, beginning by making disciples right here in our community. And just as Joshua was dependent on Moses to keep his arms up, and Aaron and her to support his arms, and they were dependent on Joshua to fight the fight, the church body is dependent on you so that we can function more efficiently and effectively here in our community. But guess what? Just like the team needs you, you need the team. You need the members of this body. There's several reasons why you need a team, but we're gonna focus on two, as we've been talking about being strong and courageous and following that command. So we're gonna talk about those. The first reason that you need a team is to strengthen you. The Lord is responsible for working the deliverance through Moses. The battle belongs to the Lord. But even when God's power is present, our weakness, often require some encouragement or some words of strength to help us go. God made us interdependent. He made us to fit together. He made us to support each other. An old saying a couple years ago, it says, we're better together. Listen to this encouragement that Paul sends to the church in Thessalonica. He says this, for God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him, right? Christ has won the war, guys. We're with him. And it says, therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. Guys, let's face it. Life is hard. As we walk through life, man, we're always, it seems like we're always going into a trial, walking through a trial, or leaving a trial. And sometimes when we're on the back end of that trial, you're like, oh no, there's another one's gonna be coming, I know what it is. It seems like we're always going through trials. We have failures that we deal with on a regular basis. We face sorrows and our heart is broken. And we all know that God wins. But sometimes we just need the encouragement of others. Sometimes we just need the words of others to help strengthen us, right? That's where the team comes in. Many times we're sittin' there, we're facin' a trial, and we're ready to throw that towel in. We're ready to give up, sayin', I'm done. And then a team speaks to us, and it's through Jesus that we're more than conquerors. They remind us that the battle is won. And that encouragement helps us through our times of weakness. It's that body of believers, that team that supports us. Also, the team gives us courage. We need that team because they give us courage. As Joshua fought for hours, and we know that his arms were up until the sun went down before they won. hours of hand-to-hand combat. We watch this UFC stuff and it's like three minutes of three rounds of five minutes, right? This is hours hand-to-hand fighting and he was tired and he would look up on the sea Moses hands raised and he would be have the courage to know that they would be victorious. He would stay in that fight and sometimes we just need a little push from our team to maybe step out of our comfort zone, to maybe be a little bit more courageous for Jesus. And if you look back in Samuel, you remember when Jonathan went to the Philistine garrison, right? He takes a sword bearer with him. And they climb over these rocks and go over. And the scripture will be up there. I'm going to paraphrase it in modern day English. And he says like, hey, dude, there they are. Let's go. Right? There's a garrison of Philistines. There's hundreds of these Philistine warriors. And Jonathan looks at his sword bearer and says, hey, God's with us. He can win this. Let's do it. So what do they do? They go, right? Scripture says they kill 20, and the Philistine army gets in disarray, and they leave. We all need a little Jonathan in our life sometimes. Sometimes we're looking at life, and it just seems unbearable, and it seems too much, and we don't have the courage to go forward. We need somebody on our team. We need a Jonathan to say, hey, let's go, man. The Lord's got it. And to give us that courage. The team needs us, and we need the team. The team needs courageous people like Joshua, like warriors who will take the gospel to the hard places. It needs leaders like Moses who will spiritually lead the people. It needs people like Aaron and Hur who will support where needed, holding up hands, providing stones, providing encouragement for the people in the middle of the fight. We need those people to encourage the body, to remain faithful and focused on the will of God in our lives. And while we are dependent on the team, and the team is dependent on us, each of us, both the individual and the team, must be dependent on prayer. Prayer has to be our greatest dependence for both the team and the individual. Christians have always been dependent on praying together and praying in groups and in teams and with one another. If we look at the book of Acts, we see that the first Christians, they prayed together a lot. A lot. We see that they prayed in the upper room until they received the Holy Spirit. We see that they met for prayer at the temple, at the church, they would go and they would meet together, and then we see that they would go to homes, they'd go to individual homes and they would meet and they would pray. We see that the apostles, they devoted themselves to prayer, not simply just private individual prayers where they'd go to a room by themselves, but group prayer, spiritual leaders getting together and praying for the people of God. Why are we so committed to prayer as a team? because when we pray, we're reminded of our daily dependence on Jesus. We are in a battle. Each of us are in a battle. It's like this story of Israel and the Exodus. That's our battle also. They had been redeemed. They were saved from slavery. They were on their way to the promised land. And for those of us that know Jesus, guess what? We're free, right? We've left slavery behind and we're on our way to the promised land. But along the way, they faced enemies, and so will we. And what Moses discovered is that prayer is more powerful than any problems that they will face. It is through Jesus that we experience our spiritual victories. It is through our dependence on Jesus that we have strength and courage. Apart from Jesus' work and his intercession for us, we don't have a hope. We don't stand a chance. And still, knowing that Moses needed to do prayer, just could not persevere in prayer. And sometimes this is our struggle as well. If we're honest, we struggle when it's time to be persistent in prayer. We ask, how many times do I have to pray for this situation? How many times do I have to pray for this person? And sometimes we just get tired of praying. And prayer could be wearisome work. And we often feel that the labor is hard. and that we're tired, and we don't have the juice anymore to do it. Jesus told his disciples that the spirit indeed is willing, but the body is weak. And this points to our need for Jesus Christ, who always lives to make intercession for us, without ever needing anyone to hold up his hands. Jesus doesn't get tired of interceding, doesn't get tired of praying for us. He is always interceding and praying for us as we read through Hebrews. The weakness of Moses serves to just magnify the glory of God. About who God is, it shows that Israel was victorious. Not because Joshua was a military genius or because Moses was a man of prayer. They were successful and they were victorious because God was the captain of their team. The one that was leading them. God was the one that they were following and they were focused on who God was. And so the question for you is, are you on God's team? Are you following God? Have you placed your faith in God? Have you realized that you're a sinner and you need the hope, you need the forgiveness, you need the grace of a savior? And have you repented? Have you stopped from following your ways and saying, hey, I'm a sinner and this ain't cutting it, to follow the ways of Jesus? Right, do you know Jesus as your Lord? Right, that you follow His commands? And as your Savior, that He died for your sins? That He exchanged your sins and your wickedness for His righteousness? And if that's you, have you been baptized? Right, have you made a public profession of your decision to follow Jesus? If you said, hey world, I'm on team Jesus. And some of you say, well, I don't need to do that. That's not important. Well, that's one of the commands that Jesus gives His followers. Right? Jesus says to get baptized. So, if He's our Lord, right, follow His commandments, we should probably do what He says. And the fact that He said it is important enough on why we should get baptized. Right? What about you? Have you made a commitment to this local body of believers? Have you said, I want to be a part of this team? If you're not a visitor, but you're somebody who attends regularly, and you live in the area, and this is what you call your church family, have you committed to be a part of this team? Right? If you are a visitor and you live in the area, we'd love to have you on our team. If you're a visitor and you live in the area, I bet you there's a great church in your area that you could join and be a part of their team. Right? But for those of you who called this your church home, if you committed to this team, if you said, man, hey, hey church, hey Calvary church, you can depend on me. I will be here for you. I am part of this team. I want to help you make disciples all across the nations, beginning here in your community. I want to help you make disciples in this community. You can count on me. Have you done that? Or are you afraid that maybe we'll do something you don't like? Maybe you don't want to fall underneath the authority of the church? Maybe you want to do things your own way? I'm gonna tell you a little secret. All right, when we talk about a team, I was talking with some leaders, and a guy approached me. It may or may not be this church, so stop trying to guess. And he said, hey, hey, Pastor, I feel like you got a problem with the leaders in the church, with the ministries in the church. And I said, well, sometimes I wonder if they know that we're all on the same team, right? That we're all together, we're all on the same team. He said, Pastor, we know we're on the same team. We just like to do things our way. Whoa, whoa. Right? I can't think of a team I was on when I could go to the coach and say, hey coach, great plan, but this is how we're going to do it. Like, I like my way better. I can tell you in the Marines, I wouldn't fly at all. I've tried a couple times. It doesn't work. Right? But when we talk about members of this church, we're on the same team, man. We're going the same direction. We're trying to glorify God. Right? Guys, it's not about me. It's not about the leaders in the church. It's not about your small group leader, right? It's about Jesus and glorifying Jesus. That's our goal is we're gonna glorify Jesus and that's the ultimate goal. And we need to work together as a church to glorify Jesus. And as members of the church, I'm gonna go through this real quick. On the back of your outline, you got the covenant. I'm gonna tell you right now, I had to make some small changes to make it fit on that half sheet. So if you're a lawyer, go see Pete, he can argue with you. I did make a few changes, sorry. The meaning is all the same. I took out and and some other things, but you'll be all right. But you can look that over. Let me just summarize this really quick. As a member of this church, somebody who's a part of this team, we just ask for five hours a week. I guarantee you a majority of you watch TV more than five hours a week. But as a member of this church, somebody committed to Christ, we ask for five hours. We ask for one hour of just corporate worship where it's just you and God and 200 of your closest friends, family members, and we come in here and we praise and we worship God and we connect with God. And there's something powerful about a group of people, about a corporate body coming and worshiping God. There's power in this. And when people gather to worship God, His glory is made. His glory busts through the windows and the doors and people see who God is. To summarize John Piper, he said, we do missions because we don't worship, right? If we worship as God tells us to, if we worship in truth and spirit, people would see His glory and run to their Savior and we would blow the doors off this place. Because when we see people worshiping in truth and spirit and we see God's glory, And people who say, hey, hey, hey, we need to make the gospel sexy, we need to make the gospel attractive, we need to make God modern. They don't know God, and they don't know the gospel. There is nothing more sexy, there is nothing more attractive than the good news of Jesus Christ who died for your sins so you could have a relationship with Him. There's nothing better than that. So we asked, you just do one hour of corporate worship on Sunday. If you're here, great. If you know somebody who's not here, you need to tell them, hey, if you're a member of this church, you need to get to worship. We asked, it was actually funny, I was going over this with Dustin, and he said, well, that's not a good point for people that aren't here. Touche, right? We record this. Two hours of fellowship that you would get into a small group and that you would do life together. And in these small groups, we learn and we practice and we refine the one another's that are found in scripture, right? To love one another, to care for one another. One of my favorites too, patiently tolerate one another. We don't do that in our group, but I'm sure other groups have to deal with that. We're good, right? To carry one another's burdens. See, small groups are a laboratory for life, as we learn to live like Jesus. And you see in Romans 12, after we love one another with brotherly affection, that we outdo one another in showing honor. We deal in small groups, we learn to cooperate with each other, we learn to do life together, we learn to be a family. And then the second thing we do is two hours of service or a ministry, I'm sorry, the third, two hours of service or a ministry that's inside or out of the church. Like if it's inside the church, something like working with children or helping with first impressions or maybe helping with VBS. Tim talked about it. There was a meeting today. You didn't have to sign up for it. They got some good food too. But I was told there's no such thing as a free lunch. So if you eat lunch, you're working at VBS. Okay, so you can go, it's in room 202, it's upstairs, but that's how we serve. There's the good news club that we run two days at the school when it opens back up. There's open arms ministry, there's facilities maintenance. And there's times that I've had some of the deacons come and say, hey pastor, we want you doing A, B, and C and studying the word and praying and praying with people. You don't have time to be painting and fixing light. Guess what? It's gotta get done. Right? So there's all these opportunities out there to get this stuff done. There's helping with visitation. Right? There's people that are in the hospital, members of this family that we owe it to them to go and make sure that they're okay and care for them and love for them. And there's people that aren't a part of this family that are sick and in bed and asking to hear the good news of Jesus. Guess what? We got time for that. Right? We will make time to share the good news and we're looking for people, always looking for people to help with that. If you would like some help, and maybe I didn't mention something you like, there's a connection card. We're gonna be taking off at the end of the service. You can say, hey, I need to serve. I'm not plugged in. And maybe there's something I said that stirred your heart and say, hey, I can help with that. Or maybe you don't know what to do, right? We're a body. There's lots of stuff that needs to be done. So you can write on that connection card something you'd like to do. We could probably find something, right? But you can say, hey, I'm open to what the church needs. You can put that in your connection card. I would love to help you serve. But I want to be clear here, as we're talking about ministry and we're talking about serving, there's nothing in the world that you can do to save you. There's no amount of work or time at the church or no amount of money that you can give. It's by the grace of God alone that we are forgiven. It's by the grace of God alone that we are saved and it's by the grace of God alone that one day we will worship at His throne. But what I'm talking about here is how is God's grace reflected in your life? How are you reflecting God's glory to those around you? Right, to those in your home and your community? How are you showing the grace of God, how it's changed your life? How are you pushing that out to the world? This team, Calvary Church of West Hills, man, we need members of this body to be functioning. We need members of this body to be doing what God has equipped them to do so that we can be a brighter light in our community and we can expand our ministry and our influence for His glory. Again, doesn't have anything to do with Calvary Church. And there's some of these opportunities that we've had, and they said, hey, you can't say you're from Calvary. He said, I don't care if I'm from Calvary. Can I tell them about Jesus? Yeah, and that's what we do. And so how do we expand for His glory? And I love this passage. If you go to 2 Corinthians, and Paul is writing to this church, and he says this. We do not boast beyond limit in the labors of others, but our hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you, without boasting of work already done in another's area of influence. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, for it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. Gosh man, there's a lot of work to be done. And if we're functioning at 20%, that ain't gonna get it done. It'll get done on God's time, right? That's how that works. But there's going to be a time, there's gonna be a time when Christ returns and He yells, zero! And all creation's going to freeze and all of mankind throughout history is going to stop and look at the Savior. And some are gonna be terrified as they're gonna be by themselves, and their relationship with the Savior is gonna be a mess, and their hearts are gonna be filled with hatred towards those that were working against them, right? About those that got in their way. They will be bitter at the church for a variety of reasons. There's a whole bunch of reasons that people get mad at the church. But their things will be messy, and they will be alone. but there'll be another group whose sole purpose was to glorify God, and they will be with others who are glorifying God. Together, they'll be reflecting the glory of God far better than the sum of their individual members. They will have put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, and they will instead be feasting on the word of the Lord, and they'll be growing in their salvation together. They'll be boasting in the Lord, and the gospel will have spread far beyond future lands that they could have even imagined, as the Lord will be using them for His glory. As they look around, they'll be amazed at the glory and how their influence expanded far beyond anything that they could have imagined or planned for. His glory will be full, and that being the goal, they'll be able to boast in the name of Jesus all the more. And where will you be? Will you be by yourself? Or will you be standing with a team that is marveling at God's glory, that is staring at His presence, that is staring there and worshiping the King? And we're gonna continue to worship, and I want you to prayerfully consider where you are. I don't want you to stand up and sing. I want you to sit, and I want you to reflect on your relationship with God. I want you to see where you are in your commitment to who Jesus is, your commitment to Jesus. I want you to think about, am I on Jesus's team? Have I committed my life to Christ? Have I made a public profession of faith? Have I told the world that I'm on team Jesus and I got baptized and I showed the world and I identified with who Christ is? Have you committed to be a member of this local body of believers? Just this year, we've had 11 people say, hey, I want to commit to the body of Christ. I want to commit to this church, to Calvary Church. I'm supposed to show you your pictures. Some of those aren't committed enough to send me a picture. Some are, but I didn't want to highlight anybody. But I want to share one story with you in membership. And this touched my heart. And when we talk about committing to the church, We had two adult ladies that grew up in this church, right? They're helping with our youth right now. See them in here, Beth and Sarah. I know Beth is working with our children right now, right? They grew up in this church. They're members of this church. They've been members of this church since their parents brought them, their whole life. And just recently they said, no, no, no, we're adults. We're gonna make the commitment to this church as adults. And they went to the membership class and said, we wanna be on Team Calvary. We wanna commit to serve and be a part of this body, something they didn't need to do. But as adults, they said, oh, we were kind of grandfathered in by our parents, good job, parents. But they said, hey, as adults, we're gonna make commitment to this church. That's commitment to the church body. That's commitment to this body of believers. They've committed to this church, have you? Some of you need to commit to this church for the first time. I'm not gonna say any names, but some of you look at that commitment, that's in our bylaws, and members have to sign this commitment, this covenant with the church. Some of you need to look that over and say, well, I probably need to recommit. I probably need to sign this, because I haven't been following the standards that the church, the church body you guys voted on. So this is the expectation for our members. This is the expectation for people on our team to make disciples here in our community and in the nations, and these are the things that they need to meet. Some of you might look at that, you've been members for a long time, and say, I'm not doing that. And this is your chance to recommit to the church. As we take some time to reflect on how the Lord is speaking to us now, I want to encourage you to share and mark on your connection card if the Lord has challenged you to join His team. Commit or recommit to this local body of believers. And you can take that connection card, and as we close in song, and as we close in worship, feel free to identify how we could be praying for you, if your commitment either to Christ or to be baptized or to this local body of believers. Lord, we love you. Lord, as we sit here and think of the opportunity that you give us,
Early Battles Where We Learn Team Work
సిరీస్ Joshua
ప్రసంగం ID | 71192237446469 |
వ్యవధి | 38:39 |
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బైబిల్ టెక్స్ట్ | నిర్గమకాండము 17:8-13 |
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