Keys to Success - Joshua 1:1-18

I can remember a couple of occasions when our boys were younger, they were still living at home, that I'd walk in the room, they'd be watching something on Netflix, and I would kind of get drawn into it a little bit. I'd sit down, I'd start to watch it, I'd start a little involved, and I'd say, "Hey, what's going on anyway, catch me up. What's happening?" And then I have to pause it, and I'd say, "Okay, Dad, we're in like the middle of season two. This is going to take a little bit." I said, "Yeah, yeah, but this is cool. catch me up." And then I have to go back and review everything I miss in season one, so I can understand what would happen. Another thing that happens a lot in our family is my wife will want to watch something on Netflix that just came out. We'll watch the first season, and then like a year later she'll say, hey, good news. The second season of that show just came out. And I say, babe, I don't remember anything about that. I have no interest in trying to watch this because I have to go find some YouTube video to remind me of everything that I missed all last season to catch up. Now, I say that because we're starting a brand new book of the Bible today. We're going to jump in to a book in the Old Testament called Joshhua, Joshua. It's the sixth book of the Old Testament. It's the beginning of a section of the Old Testament referred to as a historical section. It's on page 178, if you're using the Bible underneath the chair in front of you there. And we'll be dropping to Joshua. It's kind of like we've dropped into season six of the Bible All right? There's been five seasons so far, several episodes, and if you didn't see all those episodes, you're going to be just a little bit lost when we jump into season six here. So I'm going to take just a minute to catch us up. Now, I'm not going to do this justice, because we only have a couple of minutes to kind of fly through this review to be able to get into the heart of Joshua chapter 1 today. If you'd like, you can to go back and read the Old Testament books of Genesis and Exodus, those will catch you up for the most part into a little bit of Deuteronomy. You get caught up a little bit more on what we're talking about today as we drop into Joshua. If you've been reading with us this year on our Read the Bible T Challenge, you'll be in great shape because we just read Joshua just a few weeks ago weeks ago. So you're kind of caught up here. So let's jump in and see what's happening so we can set the stage for what we're going to learn as we jump into the Book of Joshua, we're going to be in here all summer. So let's get a little bit of timeline real quick. Let's go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12 It's where this starts. I'm not going to take all the scriptures here. But in Genesis chapter 12, it's around 2000 B.C. So you've got to go back about 4,000 years on our calendar to the 12th chapter of Genesis, and you'll see there God makes a covenant with a man named Abraham. The time his name was Abram, his name will later be changed to Abraham, and he makes a covenant a promise to Abraham. And you have to understand this promise with Abraham, because all the way through the Old Testament, we're tracing the fulfillment of that covenant that's made in Genesis chapter 12. Here's's how it starts. The Lord said to Abraham, or to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you you, and I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now, that's the very beginning of the covenant. There are going to be other occasions where God shows up to Abraham again and spells out a little bit more more of the details of that covenant. But basically think of the covenant as a set of three promises. Number one, I'm going to cause a great nation to descend from you. Maybe you remember when you were a little kid singing the song Father Abraham, have any sons. That's where this song comes from. I'm going to make a great name nation to send from you. I'm going to give to that great nation a promised land where the nation will one day dwell. And then eventually, out of that nation that's going to dwell on that land, I'm actually going to bless all the families of the earth. That promise is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus coming to us through the line of Abraham. So this promise made in Genes 12, we're going to watch it unfold all through out the Bible. That covenant then gets passed down to the next generation, to Abraham's son Isaac, from Isaac's son Jacob, and down and down, the promise is reiterated over and over again. Jacob has 12 sons. The 12 tribes of Israel will descend from those 12 sons. At one point, several of his sons got together and sold one of his sons into soul slavery. They took his son Joseph and they sold Joseph into slavery. Joseph is taken down to Egypt. and they're in Egypt, he ends up in prison, and through a series of events that unfold, he actually rises very high in the leadership of Pharaoh's kingdom. So he goes from slavery to prison to now in a position of great power in Egypt. There's a famine in the land, and so again, you have to go back and read in the book of Genesis through a series of events. Jacob and all of his family actually ends up down in Egyptgypt, where they've come to look for food. They discover that their long lost brother and long lost son he feared was dead, is actually alive and ruling in Egypt. And he says,Bring the whole family down here. and settle in Egypt. And so Jacob's family goes down to Egypt, and now this nation is growing. The promise is unfolding. A large nation is now multiplying from the descendants of Abraham, but they're far from the land, they're in slavery in Egypt now. Several hundred years has passed, the descendants of Abraham still dwelling in Egypt, growing in numbers, but far from the land God had promised them. That's when God comes to a man named Moses, and he calls Moses to lead the people out of captivity in Egypt. Now, this is in the book of Exodus. You have to go to the second book of the Bible, in the book of Exodus. Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, "Let my people go, and Pharaoh refuses, and God sends a number of plagues upon the people, and we just talked about a lot of this at Passover, the Passover celebration, that we talked about at our communion meals last week on Easter two weeks ago on Easter week. That comes out of those Passover that came out of those plagues. And so God rescues his people from slavery. They cross over the Red Sea, we have the parting of the Red Sea, and they cross over, and the sea collapses on Pharaoh's army, and now they're headed toward the land God had promised them. They get to the edge of the land in about a year, but they don't get to go into the land because they were not faithful, they didn't trust God in stepping into the promises they had for him. Here's what happens. They say, letet's send some spies into the land to see what we're up against. We're about to go into the land. God has promised us. Bad news. Good news is God's given them this land, bad news is people are living in it, all right? We're at to deal with the people that currently inhabit the land. So they send 12 spies into that land. They come back out of spying out the land. Ten of the spies, or shoot me two of the spies, Joshua, who we're going to look at his book here, Joshua, and Caleb come back and say, the land is amazing You should see the size of the grapes in this land. Ten of the guys say, yeah, the grapes are big, but so are the people. There's giants in that land. And the grapes might be big, but so are the walls. The cities are heavily fortified. And so the tin spies say it's's not worth the size of the grapes to fight the size of these men. We're not going to go into this land. So people said, what have you done to us, Moses? You brought us here to be killed by these giants and these fortified cities? We want to turn around and go back to Egypt. They rebel against Moses, and for that reason, God says, I'm going to judge this unfaithful generation. You all are going to die in the wilderness and not be able to enter into the land. So this sets off 40 years of wandering in the wilderness because God is going to wait for an entire generation of unfaithful rebellious people to die out, and then their children and their grand grandchildren, they're going to get to walk into that land God had promised them. So what we have throughout the book of Exodus and get into the Deuteronomy and other books, we have this wandering waiting in the desert for 40 years for everybody to die out so that the next generation could go into the land. It ends, this period of time ends with the death of Moses. If you go to the last part of the B of Deuteronomy, God takes Moses up on Mount Pisah, and he says, Moses, I'm going to let you see the land but I'm not going to let you enter it. He got to lay his eyes on what God had promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but he's not allowed to step into it. At the age of 120 years old, Moses dies, and Joshua assumes the leadership of the people. Joshua's appointed leader. He was Moses' right hand man throughout these 40 years. He's now 90 years old and he is the one that God told Moses to appoint as the leader of the people. And so at this point, the batatan has now been passed. The 40 years of wandering are over, and now we're going to come to this new age, this new era of entering into what God had had for his people That brings us to John Joshua chapter 1, Hope that catches you up a little bit. It reminds you if you' already knew this story, maybe refreshes you a little bit on how we get here. So we have a group of people who have been waiting for 40 years watching every day. Their parents and grandparents die out so that they can enter into the land. Now it's their turn to step into that promise made hundreds of years earlier. Now the year is about 1,400 BC., 1400 BC., and we stand at the edge of the promised land God has for them. This is the story of the people of God acquiring the promise that he had made hundreds of years earlier to Abraham and passed down through generations. But it's more than history. This is God's W. And every time we read the Bible, we want to learn the history that we're learning, but we also want to say, how do we bridge the gap between 1400 B.C and today? What does this say to us today? This is the story of what it took for this group of people to step into the promise God had for them, to obtain success, and what God had called them to obtain, what God was leading them to accomplish what God had in store for them. There's a lesson here How do we have victory in our lives today? How do we have spiritual success in our lives today? How do we see the promises of God unfold before us today? How do we experience the very best of all God has for us? What does it take to see step out in faith and obedience into what God has in store for us. We're going to walk through some of these verses. If time won't allow us to hit in detail all of it. We're going to walk through some of these verses, and then we're going to circle back and say, well, what does it say to us today? God, what is this? What do I do with this? I'm not standing at the edge of the Jordan River, waiting to go into the promised land but God, what do you have for me? And what does it look like for me to step into all that you want me to experience? Verse 1, After they left of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the Son of Nun, Moses sorry, I can you go backwards, guys? I don't know how to go back on my thank you. Sorry about that. I love our team back there. Thank you, guys. After this, Moses, the S of the Lord, said to Joshua the son of a nun, Moses' assistant,Moses, my servant is dead Now, therefore, arise. Go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I I am giving to them to the people of Israel. With these words, the ban is passed, Moses' dead, Joshua, you are in charge. 40 years of wandering is over. The stage is set. It's time for you to get up and cross into the land. It's kind of like a pregame pep talk. We're about to rush on the locker room and take the field This is what you need to know, Joshua. This is what the people need to know. It's kind of like Joshua gets a pep talk from God, and then Joshua gives a pep talk to the people, and then the people are going to give some encouragement back to him, and then we're going to step into the land that God has. Verse three, Every place that the soul of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you just as I promised to Moses, from the wilderness of this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea, toward the going down the sun, shall be your territory. I'm giving this to you. Now, the you in these verses is plural, a little disadvantage with the English language that we don't have a second person plural unless you're in the South,, and you say, y'all. So these are yaws, these aren't used, these are y's. Every place that the soul of y'all's foot will tread, I've given to you, is what he's saying here. It's time for y'all to take the land get to step into the promise that God has prepared for you everywhere you step your foot. It is a land that I have given to you. He doesn't tell him how it's going to unfold. He's give him all the detailsail. He just says, get up, get ready, trust me. Here we go. Verse 5, "No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life, just as I I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. That's a big, bold claim here. There's a lot of giant people in the land, and these guys have been fortifying their walls and stockpiling their weapons. the Israelites Is been wand around in the desert eating manna for 40 years. This is going to be a big task But he says, "Listen, you're going to step into this land to some fortified cities with some well equipped armies, but they're not going to be able to stand before you because I am going to be with you. You see, there's a promise's a bold claim, but it's based on a sure promise You're going to have victory because I'm with you. This isn't just like an empty encouragement. You ever go through something, and somebody says, "This is going to be fine. Is it? I don't know that it is. You're going to be okay. I don't know that I am. You don't have anything to worry about. No, I think I have a lot to worry about. People can just offer sort of like encouraging words with no foundation to them. God isn't saying, hey, don't worry about it, you'll be fine. He says, donon't worry about it, you'll be fine, because I'm going to be with you. I'm not going to leave you. I'm not going to forsake you. I was with Moses, I will be with you. God's divine power for the task is promised to Joshua. Victory is sure because it's founded on and rooted in God's presence in his life. Vesse 6,Be strong and courageous. Now, that's the first of four times this phrase is going to appear in this chapter. Be strong and courageous. for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Be strong and courageous." He says it here, verse 7, verse 9, verse 18, the people are going to say it back to Joshua to encourage him as their leader. Joshua is going to need strength and courage to face this task. This is a monumental task. A couple of things that we need to consider. One is the footsteps he's following. You've just been appointed the leader of the people that have been led by Moses That's big shoes, big sandals to fill here. You have to stop in the footsteps of Moses and these these people. And 40 years ago, when they came back from spying out the land, they got fearful because the people were big and the walls were big. The people have not shrunk in 40 years, and the walls have not shrunk in 40 years. This task is still as overwhelming today as it was 40 years earlier when they did not trust the Lord And so God is saying, do not do what they did 40 years ago. This time, people, be strong, be courageous, and step into this land that I have for you. He says, you are going to verse 6, notice, he says, you're going to cause the people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers. Now let's think about that for a minute. What he's saying here is I have promised the land to them but you got to go take it. You got to step into it. The book of Joshua is about acquiring the land that God had previously promised. Pr promised it to them, but it's going to take action on their part, faith on their part, obedience on their part, to step into what God has for them. We see in these words, and we'll see this throughout the book, the in place between God's sovereign promises and the call on us to be faithful and obedient in light of what he's promised us. Just because he's promised it doesn't mean they get to sit back and do nothing. There's going to be action on their part necessary to step into what God had promised. Estella Grad are you in? You're a junior. So pretty soon you're gonna be aen you're going to start thinking about college. And if your grandma says to you,Estella, I'm going to make a promise to you she's not doing this. Maybe she is, but I don't know about it. I'm going to pay for college, wherever you want to go, I'm going to cover the whole thing, you just pick any college you want to go to, and I'm going to pay for it. And so Estella says, great, I'm going to now have a college degree and not have to do anything to get it. No, Estella, Grandma is going to pay for it. You got to show up to class You have to read the books. You have to write the papers, you have to take the exams. Just because grandma's made the promise to pay for it, some action is going to be required of you when you get there. They give the promise of the land this way. I've given you the land, but you're going to have to step into it. You're going to have to have faith. You're going to have to be obedient. There's going to be a lot of things you're going to have to do, but to fulfill, we think about it, we're fighting a battle. He's already won, so we know he's with us. We know victory is sure, but we're going to have to get up and cross over the river and go into the land. Some action is going to be needed on their part to accomplish what God had promised. God's promise needs to compel them to action. They can't just sit back and say, well, it's promised. We're just going to get it. No, he's promised it. You got to get up in faith and step into it. Verse 7, Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses myself servant commanded you Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. So that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. the second call now to be strong and courageous. It's followed immediately, though, with a call to obedience. Be strong and courageous, but also be obedient. be obedient to what the Word of God is calling you, commanding you to do. Verse 7, it's called the law that my servant Moses commanded you, verse 8 He refers to it as the Book of the law. Specifically, to Joshua, it meant those first five books of the Old Testament. What we would call Genesis through Deuteronomy. For us, I think we could take this principle and apply it to all of the Word of God Be strong and courageous, and in obedience and faith and obedience, step into what God has for you. Follow all of it. Do not veer off track, Don't go to the right, don't go to the left. Stay focused on the Word of God. He says, here, meditate on it day and night. Don't for a minute, let it slip out of your mind, ponder it dwell on it, meditate on it. What is meditation? What do you think of the word meditation? Sometimes in our culture, outside of the Bible, when I hear the word meditation, I picture someone sitting like cross legged on the floor. There's some incense burning. There's like a waterfall in the background, and they're like, What are they doing? They're trying to empty their mind. They're trying to just think, smell the incense and listen to the waterfall and just empty your mind. That's not biblical meditation. Biblical meditation is not emptying your mind. It's filling your mind. Let the Word of God fill your mind and dwell on it, ponder it, think about it The Word in Hebrew comes from the word that means to mutter. You' you're muttering the word of God to yourself. I've heard some define it or illustrate like a cow chewing its cud. A cow will eat the grass and then pull some of it up out of their stomach and chew on it for a little bit and swallow it back down and pull it up again and chew on a little bit. You're doing that with the word of God. We took our kids years ago to Metro North Mall to the JC.Pney's photo studio. Anybody remember those days when you went to JC Penney at the van picture? We swung by the McDonald's on Berry Road, got some dinner, went over to the mall, walked around the mall, waited for our appointment. We're standing there getting ready to take our picture. I looked at Michaelah, and he's like, chewing on something. I said,S, what's in your mouth? He said, a hamburger. s for an hour and a half. He was just working that same piece of meat from that McDonald's hamburger. That's meditating. He's just like, "I'mma chew on it over and over and over. Now, see, I do these when you drive by McDonald's tomorrow, you go, "I need to be meditating on the word of God, okay? You got that memory thing in your head. You say,Gen Archer, think about meditation. I'm going to chew on the word of God And the ultimate goal, though, is not just hearing it, learning it, chewing on it. The ultimate goal is obedience by hearing the word, reading the word, memorizing the word, meditating on the word, now we are ready to for action. And he says in verse 7, Bee careful to do what's written in it. Verse 8, Be careful to do what's written in it. Then verse 8 says, once you meditate on it and do it, then success will come. Then you'll be prosperous, then you'll have good success. You're going to get where you're going when you're obedient to my word is what he's telling him here.. Notice that connection between success and obedience. Success is not guaranteed unconditionally. It was contingent upon their faith and obedience. The ownership of the land was unconditional for the descendants of Abraham. The possession of the land for this group of people for this generation was conditional on their faith and obedience. Will you trust me enough to follow me and step into what I have for you. Vse 9, Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened. Do not be dismayed. For the Lord, your God is with you wherever you go. For a third time Joshua, be strong, be courageous. Why? Because I'm with you. It's linked to that promise. Now, just saying, just go be brave. He's saying, be brave, because I'm with you. Trust me. And through your trust in me, your confidence will be undergirded, and you'll know you're surrounded and led by my presence. So verses 10 through 15 tells the people, get up, get ready, we're taking the land, the time to march into the land. We're going to talk about how that unfolds in the coming weeks. Ver 16, the people affirm Joshua's leadership. All that you've commanded us we will do. Wherever you send us, we will go, just as we obeyed Moses in all things, we will obey you. Only may the Lord, your God be with you as he was with Moses. What they're saying here. Josh, we're not going to follow you. We're going to follow God. If you follow God, we'll follow you. Moses followed God, we followed Moses Joshua, you trust God, you obey God, you listen to God, and we're going to follow you. And then I love this at the very end. They now tell their leader, Joshua, what God has been telling their leader, Joshua, be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous. Now what do we do with that? I'm excited to walk through this book all summer long spring and summer long, but we always want to say, what does it have for me today? I'm not going to cross over a Jordan River into some land that God promised to give me, but we want to see what does it take to have success in our spiritual lives. Now, you hear the word success, please don't hear this as some TED talk on how to be successful in business or money or fitness, or whatever your goals are. We think about success. What' be successful in a lot of ways. I just Googled this week. Keys to success, you get like millions of videos and podcasts and articles on what it takes to be successful in a thousand different ways Maybe success for you is money, maybe success is a degree that you're trying to get, maybe success is some accomplishment, you're striving toward, maybe it's a job you want to land, or a promotion you want to be given. Maybe it's for a family goals that you have to one day be married, or you're married and you want to have kids, maybe it's some fitness goal in your life, maybe it's a financancial goal to get out of debt, and you want to be successful. And I want to say, it might be that God's desire and plan for your life include some of these things So some of your desires are not necessarily bad. They could be things that, in fact, God desires for your life. But what we're talking about here, we talk about these three keys to success, is not how to accomplish these temporary worldly goals, but how do I experience the fullness of all that God has for my life For their lives, God's plan was, you get to go into the land that I promised. You want to experience my promises, you want experience what I have for you, you you want the fullness of all that I want to give to you. This is what it's going to take to see that happen in your life as they stand at the edge of that river. What does it mean for us to experience the fullness of spiritual growth and victory and all the promises that God has for us? What does that look like in our life? Three things. Number one, excuse me. Number one, we want to trust the presence of God. Trust the presence of God. Twice he said, verse 7, verse 8, this is what to be successful. And then you're the command surrounding that. Number one, trust the presence of God. verse 5. I will be with you. I will not leave or verseake you. Verse 9, the Lord, your God is with you. Wherever you go, just as God is with Moses, he'll be with Joshua. And just as he was with Joshua, he'll be with us. God is faithful in every generation. You, you could search that promise. You could Google it, chatgPT, wherever you want to look Tell me every place in the Bible where God promises to always be with us, and you're going to find hundreds of verses that support this idea that God is always with us. Here are just a few Genesis, chapter 28, this is to Jacob. Behold, I'm with you, and I'll keep you wherever you go And I'll bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I've done what I promised you. To Moses, he said these words, Certainly, I will be with you. Moving through history to the time of the prophets, God said to Isaiah, fear not, for I am with you. Do not be dismed., for I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. In the very beginning of the New Testament, the very beginning of the story of Jesus' earthly ministry, we have these words. They shall call His name Emmanuel, which means God with us. The New Testament opens with the promise that Jesus has come so that God could be with us. And the very end of that book, before Jesus ascends back to the Father, following his resurrection, He gives his disciples this promise, I'm with you always, to the end of the age. And as we move through the early years of the church and the Epistles of the New Testament, we find words like this in Hebrews 13,35, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Over and over again, the promise of the presence of God in our life. He's always with you. You will never experience the fullness of all God has for you until we come to fully trust in the presence of God and let the presence of God strengthen our faith and give us courage and give us boldness, to trust him, to step out of. He will never leave you. What are you facing right now? It feels overwhelming, daunting. What are you afraid of? What are you anxious about claim these promises of God, that he goes with you, He's present with you. Stop step out. Be strong and courageous, knowing that he is with you, just to remind yourself of that. Years ago, when I first started pastouring, I was so intimidated by the idea of getting up and and preaching every week and so nervous every week, and it just never went away And it's still from like 8 o'clock on Saturday night till lunch later today, is that weight of getting up and opening up the word of God. And I asked a mentor of mine, how do you do that? I asked him years ago, when does it go away? He said, it won't, never will. I said, how do you handle that? He said, whenhen I get up to come up to preach, I say that these words words, Holy Spirit, I believe in you. Holy Spirit, I believe in you. I just claim that, and I let the Holy Spirit comfort me and encourage me and calm me down and speak through me. And just did claim that this this week, don't we? Holy Spirit, I believe in you. I believe that you dwell within me. And as unsure as I am, as uncertain as I am, as afraid as I am, as anxious as I might be God, I know you're present with me, and I can be strong, and I can be courageous, believing that you're with me. Trust the presence of God in your life this week. Second, believe the promises of God. Believe the promises of God. He says, you guys are going to have victory because I promised it. If you'll trust me, don't be disobedient and faithless like the generation before. You trust me, and you'll see this promise fulfilled in your day, verse 3, I'm giving you the land just as I promised Moses Promised didn't die in the desert with the unfaithful generation. The promise is still in intact. And verse 6, he says, you will inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. This promise I made generations earlier is still standing, and I'll deliver on it. What promises of God's Word do you need to claim today? The Bible's full of his promises. Get into the Word of God and listen to the promises he's given you and claim those in your life today, and know that God is a promise keeping God. You know, I've broken a lot of promises in my life. You have broken a lot of promises to people, I'm sure. And if you've broken a promise, that was one of two reasons you broke that prom promise. One, because your intentions were not good You made a promise, not realizing what you were promising, and you decided later that you didn't really want to follow through on that promise, and you just decided I'm just not going to do it. Sometimes, though, you've probably broken promises because you didn't have the ability to do it. You made a promise that you wanted desperately to keep, but some limitation, some circumstances, prevented you from being able to deliver on the promise that with all your heart you wanted to deliver on. Know that God is not limited by His intentions or his ability. When God makes promises to us, he has every intention of keeping them, and he has every ability to keep them. It's not a promise in God's word that he won't, not a promise in His word, that he can't keep in your life, claim those promises of God, trust His promises that God has the willingness and the ability to keep the promises He makes us. Third, we are successful, we processper in what God has in store for us. Again, it might not be your plan in God's plan may be two different things. I'm not saying this is the secret sauce to you getting everything you want, saying, this is though it takes to walk in what God wants for you, what God has for you. And that third thing is to follow the word of God. Follow the word of God. Look at verse. Three things I want you to notice about verse. He says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. True success spiritual success, victory in God's eyes, God's plan unfolding comes when our thoughts and our actions are guided by the Word of God. You see the progression, meditate, do have success. You want to have success? Maybe you're not seeing what you want to be in your life. You're maybe not experiencing all that God asked for you. It may be that we're not walking in obedience to what God has called us to do, and we might not be walking in obedience to what God calls us to do, because we're not really thinking about what God wants us to do. It starts with our minds as we hear the Word of God, we read the Word of God, it enters into our mind, and then we meditate on it. We chew on it, we think on it, we ponder it. And as we do that, our minds begin to control the actions of our life, and as we begin to live the way God wants us to live, he says, then your way will be prosperous, then you'll have good success. We meditate for the purpose of applying it to our lives. Psalm 1 says this, Blessed is the man who walks not in the Council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord And on his law, he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. So he says,He plans himself by the streams of God's Word. He dwells on it day and night, and then here's how it ends. In all he does, he prospers In all he does he prospers. Victory comes, Su success comes, and our spiritual lives when we meditate on and act upon the Word of God, when it controls our thoughts, and it controls our actions. Sometimes people say to me, I just feel like I'm not growing spirit spiritually right now. I feel like God is very distant from me right now. I feel like I'm not really in the place God wants me to be Someplace, I think all of us have found ourselves. And sometimes I'll say something very simple like this. Well, tell me about your devotion time with God. Are you in the Word of God? What's your time in God's W look like? They'll say, you know what? Honestly, I just haven't read the Bible much lately. Okay, this is not rocket science. Like, here's the problem. You're not in the Word of God, and you're wondering where God is You're not in the Word of God, and you're feeling distant from God. You're not in the Word of God, and you feel like you're not growing spiritually. This is very simple when we meditate on the Word God and act upon the Word of God, we find ourselves daily walking in the will of God. It's not a monumental thing. It's a simple thing of committing to dwelling on the Word of God. The Word of God needs to saturation our lives. What does this look like? It's a simple pattern of having our lives, saturate the word of God. It's, if you made a cup of tea, probably a little cup of tea, and a tea bag here, here's what we do a lot of times. We say, " I'm going to take the word of God, I'm going to do this.oop. And I go, "Man, this tea is really, really weak. Yeah, because you just did that as all you did. You got like one sermon and one little Bible verse you read on Instagram, and you're wondering why your life is so spiritually weak. Your life gets strong when the Word of God meditate on it. We soak in it. It permeates our lives. We dwell on the Word of God, the Word of God.wells in us, and the longer you leave that tea bag in there, the word of God permeates the stronger and stronger that cup of tea gets. We' got to just stop doing this and expecting spiritual strength in our life. We've got to let the word of God dwell in our minds. What are some practical ways we do that. Number one, I would say, listen to preaching and teaching with the goal of meditation and application. Don't just show up here to check a box. What go to live group to check a box? Walk away going, walk in, going, God, what is the one thing you need me to hear today? And walk out going, there's the one thing I know I was supposed to hear today. And I'm going to think about this all week, the thing I heard today. Pick one thing from this message, or one thing from your life group, one thing that you hear and say, I'm going to dwell on that. That's going to be the one thing I think about all week. That's going to be the one thing I'm going to strive to do all week. Same thing with our Bible reading. Read the Bible with the goal of meditation and application You're going to give you a very simple format. Now, right now, we're challenging each other to read through the Bible this year. That's going to take more than one chapter. But if you say, listen, I' never read the Bible much before. Where do I start? Let me give you a very simple format. Just read a chapter of the Bible every day. And when you're reading that chapter, find one verse in that chapter that you think God wanted you to read that day and then underline it, highlight it, memorize it, maybe, or just read it five times, so it gets kind of locked in your brain. And then just meditate on that one thing all day and say, how do I live this out today? If you do that every day, every day of your life, you read a chapter of the Bible, picked one verse of that chapter, and thought all day about that verse, you know what's going to happen? You're going to start growing spiritually. You're going to start seeing spiritual victory and success in your life because you're meditating on and practicing the word of God. Practice the spiritual discipline of scripture memory Work harder at starving your flesh and feeding your spirit. We have so much stuff filling our minds. I control the slides from my phone here. My family group texts blew up at 8 o'clock over where's the best place to buy dance leotards from Marcy when she starts dancing And like, I'm just like, our lives live that way, don't they? It's just like text, text, text. We're doom scrolling Facebook. You're getting mad at people that you hadn't seen in 20 years. You're getting depressed. You're getting anxious. You're worried about Shadur Sanders. And who cares? And you're just letting your brains get filled with all this stuff that you don't need to be caring about. We need to dwell on the Word of God, start starving our flesh and feeding our spirit Maybe we need to shut off the TV in the screens and the phones and get into the Word of God, and let the Word of God control our minds, let the Word of God control our actions, and see how we might prosper as we submit to the Word of God in our lives. So what do you do with this? Do you have confidence? Do they God's with you this week? Can you step into whatever you're going to face this week with being strong and courageous because the Lord is with you? Strength and courage flowow from His presence, from His promises, from a commitment to His Word. We step into this thing, God, I don't know what I'm going to face, but I know I'm going to face it with you. I don't know what's going to happen, but you're going to be right there with me. Second, are you trusting God to keep his promises? Get in His word and be reminded of his promises for your life, be encouraged by his promises for your life, and believe that our God is a promise keeping God, and let his promises compel you to faith and action. And then, third, are you living your life according to God's Word? You will prosper, the Psalmist said, when you plant yourself by the streams of his living water. You will prosper, he told Joshua, when you stay true to this word, not veering to the left or to the right. And then if you're here today, and you don't have a relationship with God, I want to tell you some really good news. This covenant that was made 4,000 years ago actually applies to your life. Because the last part of it was, Abraham, through you, I'm going to bless all the nations of the earth. How did he do that? He blessed all the nations of the earth by through the line of Abraham sending a Savior, Jesus And Jesus Christ died on the cross, and he rose from the dead, the fulfillment, the ultimate fulfillment of that covenant. It wasn't just about a nation in a land. It was was about a savior who would come from that nation, a savior in that land who would shed his blood on a cross and raise victoriously from the dead, so that God could fulfill his promise of eternal life to those who trust in Him. Today, you can know the promise of all the promises of God, the one you need to hear today, is that God is promised to forgive those who turn to Jesus. He promises to give eternal life to those who trust in Jesus. You can trust that promise today. Let's pray together. What do you need to do in response to what what we've seen in God's Word? Maybe you've never put your faith in Jesus. Today could be the day where you call upon him, you put your faith in the one who came through the line of Abraham to bless the nation of the other Jesus, I trust you for my salvation. Jesus, I want to turn to you for forgiveness. Maybe it's a simple thing of God help me to just to look more, to ask people my questions and to examine you more closely. Maybe it's a prayer for the followers of Jesus today to say, Jesus, I want to trust your presence this week. I'm up against something that I'm going to need strength and courage. Remind me of your presence. God, thank you that you keep your promises. And maybe it' it's a prayer of repentance. God forgive me. I veered to the left, I veered to the right of your Word. God, I want to walk in faithith and obedience. Help me to starve my flesh and feed my Spirit, to take in your word and dwell on it and walk in it. Father, for those that are walking through something difficult right now, would you just remind them today that you're with them in it? They're feeling weak and afraid, not strong and courage.ageous. Remind them of the promise you made to Moses and to Joshua and to many others that you make to them today, that you're with them. God, help us to focus this week on your Word, to let it dwell in our minds and our hearts, that we might walk according to it. not not seeking success in the eyes of the world or success as we defined it for our lives, but defining it as obedience to you and experiencing all that you have in store for us. Thank you for your promises to us. Thank you that you're a God who keeps your promises and thank you for Jesus, for fulfilling the promise to be our Savior. We thank you for thised Jesus' name. Amen.