A Renewed Commitment to God's Word - Joshua 8:30-35

As I was studying our passage this week, I was reminded of something that we do almost on a weekly basis. And that is, agree to some kind of user agreement. Probably this week, you booked a hotel room you downloaded an app, you joined some public Wii in a coffee shop, and that little screen popped up, said, "Do you agree?" And you got to click a little box that says, "I have read and agreed to these terms, "but I'm going to doubt anyone read all of those terms." I was thinking about that this week. Is that the greening Hills Library. I go there to study from there sometimes, and I was sitting there this week, I think it was Friday afternoon, and I got on the Wii, and I've done that a dozen times or more, and the little box popped up. Do you agree to these terms? I always just click it and go on with my work that I'm doing. But I thought, "You know what? I'm thinking about these user agreements. I'm gonna read the library user agreement, and I read it, and I realize I've been in violation of it this entire entire time, because the first thing, or one of the first things they say is, you have to have a midcent public library card, and I don't have a library card. So now the library police are gonna hunt me down, because I've been illegally access accessing the Wi Fi all this time. We click on these things all the time. How many people are on Facebook? Anybody use Facebook I printed off Facebook's user agreement. 13 pages long. I bet almost everybody here, you get on Facebook or Instagram or something, and you didn't read the user agreement. You scrolled all the way down, you clicked yes, and you went on. You didn't take time to read it. Here's what's happening. in our passage today. Joshua, leading the children of Israel, the nation of Israel, into the promised land, is going to remind them of the user agreement that they have with God to access that land. God had promised this land generations earlier, started with a man named Abraham, and that promise got passed down generation after generation for hundreds of years, and now that promise is reached its next level. God has created this nation, descended from this man named Abraham. He's given this nation this land. They've entered into the land, and God has said, there are terms and conditions for you living in this this land They've already seen the consequences of violating God's conditions for living in that land. They went into the land, and they had this thrilling victory in the city of Jerichocho that was followed right after, though, with a tragic defeat at the city called AI. The reason they were victorious at Jericho is because they were obedient to the Lord And the reason they experienced defeat at AI is because they were being disobedient to the Lord. And they learned this lesson, that when we are obedient, God gives us victory, when we're disobedient, we face defeat. And now they have dealt with the sin that caused them defeat at AI. They've now been victorious at AI, and there's a bit of a pause in the battle. We've crossed over the Jordan River, immediately, Jericho, immediately AII. Now there's a ton more work to be done, but they're going to take a little pause in the military campaign, and Joshua wants to remind the people again of the importance of f following the agreement that they have with God. Hearing in this land, dwelling in this land, living in this land is going to be contingent on us being obedient to the God who gave us this land. And so they have a ceremony. You gonna call all the nation together, and they're gonna have a ceremony by which they're gonna recommit their lives to follow God They've just had defeat because of sin, they've repented, and had victory. There's going to be kind of a refocus now. We need a reminder to the people that victory and blessing in this land is contingent upon obedience to God's instructions.. And so we're going to review here, God's people together, we're going to review the terms of the agreement we have for accessing this land that God has given us. And we're going to learn a lot from this. It's shorter passage than we've been in. These passages have been kind of a chapter long every Sunday for the last couple of months when we journeyed through this. A a little shorter passage to the end of chapter 8, we're just going to look today today at chapter 8 30 through 35, this ceremony, this religious ceremony the nation gathers to do to remind themselves of the prominence of God's word, and importance to obedience to God's word. Here's what we're to learn today. Hopefully we will learn as they learned, how God's word deserves a prominent place in our lives, how we ought to put God's word central in our lives, and the connection between putting God's word first in our life and the blessing of God that comes with that. And then we're going to be reminded of the times when we fall short of that the grace of God that he extends to us, when we fall short short of his words. So let's jump in, see what they did at the end of chapter 8, why they did that, and then the lessons we can learn from that, about how we ought to put God's word central in a prominent place in our lives. Verse 30, at the time, Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel on mount Ebbal, just as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of uncut stones upon which no man has wielded an iron tool and they offered on it burnt offerings to the the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings. So they've just had victory at Jericho defeat in victory at AI. There's a lot more to be done in the land, but we're going to pause right here, and we're going to have a ceremonyony. And the first step of that ceremony is to build an altar. We're told here in verse 30 that the altar is built on Mount Ebbal It's just north of the city of Shechem. It's just across the valley from the Mount of Gazim, which we're going to talk about later in this sermon. So you have these two peaks, Ebbal and Gazim. And in the valley of those two mountains, all the people are going to gather for this ceremony. This is an appropriate place for this ceremony. Hundreds of years earlier, God had made a promise to Abraham that he was going to give him this land And so Abraham came to this land, the land of Canaan, and when he got to the land, if you go back to read this later, if you'd like to read the story, it's in Genesis chapter 12. In Genesis chapter 12, Abraham shows up at the land, and it says there that the Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring, I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord, who appeared to him So he kind of stakes this claim,This is the land God's gonna give us. I'm going to build an altar here. We're going to sacrifice from this altar to acknowledge this is the land that God has given us. A couple of a few years later, rather, Jacob, Abraham, the promise to Abraham got passed unto Isaac, then from Isaac to Jacob. Jacob finds himself in the same area, the city of Shechem, in Genesis chapter 33. And in Genesis chapter 33, verse 20, it says, there he erected an altar at the same place. And so the beginning of the covenant, God promises Abraham' going to give you the land. Abraham gets their builds an altar. His grandson, Jacob, builds another altar. And now we're hundreds of years later, this promise passed down generation after generation. We're back in the land again, and Moses has said, when you get in the land, you're going to build an altar, and you're there, you're going to pronounce the cursings and the blessings that are in My Word. And so he tells them, this is in Juderonomy chapter 11, that you're going to go to this place where I'm commanding you, and you're going to go to Mount Gerazam and Mount Ebbal. And they're between these two mountains, you're to have this ceremony, so they're being obedient to what God had instructed them through Moses. They're building this altar out of uncut stone Deuteronomy chapter 27, ver 5. There you shall build an altar to the Lord, your God, an alt altar of stones. You shall wield no iron tool on them. And you shall build an altar to the Lord, your God of uncut stones, and shall offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God. Now, are uncut stones? we say here, is do not take iron tools and craft those stones in any way. Just take them like they are, uncut, stack them up. It's not going to be something you're going to make to be real pretty and real fancy. Why is that? Well, I think the reasons are, he wants to distinguish these this altar from the pagan altars that would have been in that land that would have been very ornate that would have been very elaborate. These are going to be different. The reason is, I don't want this idol, God to say, I don't want this altar to become an idol. You're not going to come to the altar and say, look at the beautyy of this altar that's been created, and the altar somehow become an object of worship. It's going to be very simple, very humble. Why is that? Because what's important is not the beauty of the altar, but the sacrifices that are done on the altar. It's a way of foreshadowing for us as followers of Jesus, that we bring nothing to our salvation We're not saved by something beautiful we create. We're saved by a sacrifice. What the sacrifice to the altar do? Hang on to this. This is going to become important at the last point of the sermon today. The sacrifices on the altar foreshadowed Jesus. A sacrifice was made for the sins of the people. Jesus on the cross is going to become the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the people. And so the point of the altar was not the beauty of the altar that you'd worship the altar, but that on the altar, something could be sacrificediced. One commentator wrote these words.It's not the beauty of man made religion that gives the sinner forgiveness, but the blood of the altar. So you don't make a beautiful altar. It's an altar of uncut stuff stones, because the beautiful thing is the sacrifice of the altar and what it pictures, what it foreshadows. Verse 32. And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses which he had written. So there on the mountain, you have the altar. We're going to sacrifice sacrifice on the altar, and next to it, we're going to take some stones. We the plasticaster them over, and then they engrave or inscribe in that plaster all of the law that God had given Moses. We see this instruction in Deuteronomy 27:1 1. Number, Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people saying, Keep the whole commandment that I command you today And on the day you cross over the Jordan to the land that the Lord, your God has given you, you shall set up large stones, plaster them with plaster, and shall write on them all the words of this law, when you cross over to enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you. So he said, you're going to put these stones there, and you're going to have the altar, where you're going to have sacrifice, you're gonna have the stones. And so you have now more monuments. We've been seeing this throughout Joshua, haven't we? They crossed over the Jordan River, they took the stones out of the river and stacked them up as a memorialorial to God's faithfulness. When the walls of Jericho collapsed, we saw the rubble was left forever as a memorial to what God did there, when Aikin was killed because of his sin, they piled stones over him, and those stones became a memorial. Now we have the memorial. The memorial's saying, "This is the agreement. This is the word of God. These are the laws of God. This is a commandment of God. If we're going to dwell in this land, we need to obey what God has told us to obey." Verse 33 In all Israel, sojourner, as well as native born. Your translation may say, alien or foreignigner, as well as native born or citizen. So we have the native born, Israelites, and you have the people who've joined with them along the way along with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark of the Levitical priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant, half of them on Mount Gerazim, half of them in front of Mount Ebbal, just as Moses, the Sord of the Lord had commanded at first, to bless the people of Israel. So now the community gathers. Really beautiful picture. Everyone's there Down in the verse 35, it says, the women and the little ones were also there. Everyone's there. The resident alienuse me, the citizen, the native born, the nest national born Israelite, and the people who've come along with them. Who were these people? Some of them were people that came out of Egypt. Exodus 1238 says, a mixed multitude also went with them. You see, the Israelite people were following Hahweh and worshiping him, and there were Egyptians who said, "We want to do that too And they joined with them, and they left the land with them. When they were wandering in the desert, other people learned in those 40 years about the God of Israel, and they wanted to worship the God of Israel. When they get in the land, people like Rahab and her family, they want to worship the God of Israel. You see the beauty of this? This is a point where we're going to dwell on, but I think I just want to note this before we move on. The missionary vision of Judaism in those days and how that translates over to Christianity today, that our God is a God who cares about all of the nations. It wasn't exclusively for the Israelites. Others could come and join with them. They're there in this ceremony. The idea of reaching the nations with the gospel doesn't start in Matthew chapter 28, the end of the Great Commission. It's all throughout the Old Testament as well. God wants to see the nations reached with the good news. So you have all these people, you have Native born, and you have the Sojourn.. By the way, this word, sojourner or foreigner. In the Greek version of the Old Testament, this is written in Hebrew, then translated into Greek, the Greek version, that's the word we get our English English word proselyte from. So they're proselytes to Judaism, who joined with that religion, the worship of Yahweh. And they're all there. You've got officers and elders and judges and priests, you got women and little ones Everyone's there. They gathered there to hear the word of the Lord. verse 34A he read all the words of the Lord, the blessings and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law, there was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before the assembly of Israel and the women and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them. At this point, everyone gathered in the valley. God Joshua reads the Word of the Lord to the entire community, all of them. And he read all of it, the blessings and the cursings. Go to Deuteronomy 28. You can read an example of the blessings and the cursings, 27 and 28. And listen to verse chapter 28, Deuteron 28 1. If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord, you' God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, that that the Lord your God is set high above the Lord your God will set you high above all the nation of the earth. And all the blessings shall come upon you to overtake you. If you obey the voice of the Lord, your God, blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds, and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. Now, you jump down to Deuteronomy 2815. but if you do not obey the voice of the Lord, your God, or be careful to do all his commands in his statues that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Curse shall be in the city, and curse shall you be in the field. curse shall shall be the basket and your kneading bowl. curse shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, and the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed, shall you be when you go out? Here's the please making. Israel, here's our agreement with God. He's given us land. And if we want to be victorious and prosperous and blessed and dwell in the land, that's going to be contingent upon our response to His Word. For obedient to H he's going to bless us. If we turn our backs on him, rebel against him, we're going to forfeit his blessing. I think we be saying is, guys, we've already seen it. We obeyed him at Jericho, we were victorious, we disobeyed AI, and we were defeated. We're not going to do another step into this land until everyone gets reminded,Oedience to the word of God, is what's going going to bring us blessing. And so they write it on the stones, and he reads it out loud, and the entire nation comes together to renew their commitment to the Word of God before they take another step into the land of blessing prepared for them. Now, what do we learn from this? What do we We're not trying to live in a land that he gave us and and follow these laws and we' get kicked out of the land? What are the principles here? Four principlesciples I want us to catch today. Four lessons from Shem that we need to learn today. Number one God's Word deserves a prominent place in our lives. God's word deserves a prominent place in our lives. He said,ef before we go another step further in the land, we're going to follow God's Word. I'm going to write it on stones, and we're going to read it out loud, and we're going to make sure the whole nation knows that we are a nation that's going to follow the Word of God. It rem reminds us of the prominent place that God's Word should play in our lives. He read it in the presence of rewrote it in the presence of all the people. He read it in the presence of all the people, and sos are citizen priest, and little ones. Everyone hears the word of the Lord. Deuteronomy 64 says these words, Hero Israel.The Lord, your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. And you shall teach them diligence to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand. You shall They shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. What is he saying? Always, always before you and your family should be the word of the Lord. Let it permeate everything, let it be central to everything. Let it be prominent in all that we do. How do we do this? He's not just talking about just a figurative, ceremonial way My wife has some family members who are Jewish by marriage. was in one of their homes one time, and I noticed on the doorf frame of his front door, a little brass bracket and that brass bracket held a little glass vial, and that little glass vial was a rolled up scroll of paper. You know what was on that paper? It was likely the shma, what we just read here. They wrote this on a piece of paper, nailed it to the door of the house. That's not enough. It's not just say, nail the Bible verse to your house It's it's speaking figuratively of how it needs to be at the forefront of all we do every time we go in and out the doors of our house, this is centially who we are. I don't know, pick on my Jewish relatives. We do the same thing. Some people, I've gone to houses before, where I go to visit, and there there's like the big family Bibleible on the coffee table. And I wonder if it's always there or was just because the pastor was coming. They dug that Bible out. They got the plaque on the walls.s for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. There's the footprints pull them above the toilet in the bathroom. We put these symbols around our house. That's not the point. The point is it puts some symbol in the house. It is, let the word of God be at the heart and soul of all that we do all we talk about, the center of our families, our homes, taught to our children, a prominent place in our lives. We need to make God's word the guiding principle of our life. What evidence is there, in your life, that God God's Word has a prominent place What evidence is there that God's word is a prominent place? Are you in God's word daily? Word of God is a prominent place in our life will be in it daily. We will teach it to our kids routinely. We will want to be in gatherings where the Word of God is taught so we can learn it more. We want to be in Bible studies, where where we can dive in with other Christians and learn it more. We want to be in discipleship groups, where we can be held accountable to how we're living out the Word of God. We're gonna want our kids in children's ministry programs, of our local churches. We're going to want our students, our high school, middle school students, in the student ministries of our churches, where they can be in God's word to be taught God's word regularly. We'll make it a priority in all we do. what keeps us from that, I'll be honest honest, what keeps me from that oftentimes is the excuse of being busy. Does anyone ever used that word? I share this with you all a few months ago, and I've been a principle. I've continued to try to live by that's helped me a lot. It's helpeded me go 5 0 on my Year's resolutions all the way till almost the end of June this year, for the first time in my life, and I'm usually terrible at these things. Let me tell you why. I decided that I would quit using the word "busy. I just wouldn't say the word anymore, because I think it just gets overused. Here's an experiment. Tomorrow, ask the first ten people you see tomorrow how their weekend was. I bet seven of them are going to say "by. It's just a word everyone's busy. Every's always using them we're busy." I just decided I would replace it with the phrase with the word "pority." So say, "I've been too busy, I just make myself say that hasn't been my priority." So if I say to you, "Sandy, have you been reading the Bible this week And Sandy, no, you have, so I can pick on you." And Sandy's going to say, "No, I've been too busy. No, Sandy instead say, "No, I've not made that a priority." Right? You see how it changes our mindset? Are you in a discipleship group? I'd love to be in one, but my life is real busy. No, wait a minute. I'd love to be in one, but it's not something I've prioritized in my busy schedule. Are your kids involved in student ministry of your local church? Not really ' because they're so busy. Not really because of all the things on their calendar, you've not made this the priority. And when I begin to be honest with myself and say, I'm not too busy, I have to evaluate my priorities, it changed the way I looked at things. So let me just give you that challenge, to not say the word "by, but just use the phrasep phrase with the word " priority" in it. And what if we said, "Yeah, we got a lot going on but this has to be a priority. My day is really full, but this needs to be my my priority. My kids' calendars are really packed, but this has to be the priority. We begin to make things priorities that that puts God's word at a prominent central place in our lives. not just about carbon it on a stone and reading it in a valley. It was to say to the people, this is our guiding priority This is what we're going to follow and live by. Secondond, there is a direct correlation between obedience, our obedience and God's blessing. There is a correlation between our obedience and God's blessing. We saw it here. He said, God, if we follow God's word, we're going to be blessed. If we disobey God's word, we're going to forfeit the blessing. It's not enough just to read it, to study it, to hear it taught. The goal is obedience to live by it. And so we're called here to follow God's word. Now, let me say, we see this principle a lot of places in scripture. For example, Psalm 1, Adwell Red Force, earlier, 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 his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Jesus said it this way, Matthew 724. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand, on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall. With Jesus said, you build your house on the rock you're going to be more likely to withstand the storm, you build your house on the sand, and the storm is going to wipe you out. You remember that song your kid, the Wise Men, Built his house upon the rock? Okay, another ringtone for you. What's the point here? The point is that when we obey God's Word, it puts us in a path of God's blessing. Now, let me say this, caveat. There's not a black and white, hard and fast, 100% guarantee, because you can hear that, and you could think, okay, wait a minute, if I live myording to God's word, nothing bad will ever happen to me and the people who disobey God's word will have nothing but trials and calamity and difficulty. Now, has that been your observation in life? No, because sometimes people str strive to live according to God's Word, you feel like I'm striving to live the way God wants to live, and bad things are still happening, right? You can look at your friends who are not trying to honor God with their lives and see good things happening to them. I remember a guy one time saying, he doesn't get it, because went fishing with a couple of my Christian friends. We were really trying to honor the Lord, we were talking about what God was in our lives, weren't catching a single fish in the boat across the lake.. A bunch of drunk guys cussing and carrying on catching one fish after another. Like, God, what are you doing? We're trying to honor you, not catching any fish. Those people are dishonoring you, and their nets are full of fish. That happens, right? Because Jesus said this, Jesus said two things. He said a lot of things, but two contrasting to things. He said, not contrasting, but two things he said.The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. Sometimes the righteous get rain on their crops. And he said, "In this world, you'll have tribulation. Sometimes the righteous face trouble Here's the principle. When we obey God, it puts us on a pathway of his blessing. Now, there'll still be trouble, but you' generally on the pathway bless, let me illustrate it this way. My friend Cen and I went for a run yesterday, and Kate and we ran on the trail back here, Lion Creek trail. If we had been on the road, we did for a while, we were up on the road, right? We came to the end of the trail, we got on the road there. And if I say, I'm going to run on the sidewalk until we come up here, and Caden says, I don't like to run on concrete, I like to run on asphalt, I'm going to run in the middle of the road And so I'm on the sidewalk, and Caden is in the middle of the road. It's impossible. It's possible that a car could go off of the road and hit me on the sidewalk, isn't it? It's possible. It's possible Caden could run three miles down the middle of the road, and every car swerve and avoid him. That's possible But generally, you're safer on the sidewalk than you are in the middle of the road. And this is what the principal says here. Generally, when you obey God's word, it takes you out of the middle of the road, out of the flow of dangerous traffic, and it puts you on the safety of the sidewalk. You read the book of Proverbs. That's the whole B of Proverbs is like, you do this, you're gonna have a better life because you're gonna move out of the danger zone into the safety of where God wants you to live your life.W? It's not because God just says, "I'm gonna come up with a bunch of hard rules, and if you can follow all of my hard rules, then I'll do some good stuff for you. What do he's saying here? Old Testament professor in seminary, he said the Ten Commandments and all of God's law, he said, basically marks the landmines of life God takes the landmines of life, and he puts a little flag there. Don't steal. Don't covet your neighbor's stuff. Don't commit adultery. Don't lie about people. And you see, "Oh, these are landmines. If I do these things, I'm in trouble. God's law marks out the path for you." It's not constricting You say, like, you to have a fish at home? Go home to your fish tank, and say, "That poor fish is stuck inside of this aquarium. I'm going to set him free. Take the fish and throw them in the backyard where he can run and be free." No, the fish thrives in the tank. It's not confining the fish. It's where the fish thrives. We thrive in the confines of God's Word. We're safe when we obey God's word." took my granddaughter, Marcie, to Zonorosi yesterday, and were the water things shoot up out of the ground at the little play area there. And she kept running from the grass and running across her. I said, "Maria,'re going to fall.. Mia, you need to slow down.Marcy, quit running. You're going to get hurt." Well, lo and behold, she came running across there, slipped and fell, she's crying, knees are bleeding. And all of a sudden she needs Gigi. I'm just like, when she's hurt. She's like, "Gee Gee! Okay. So I scoop her up, I take her to Carrie. Carrie says, "Marcy, what happens?" she said, " tears in her eyes, blood on her knee. I didn't listen to Pop. What happened? I didn't listen, and now I'm crying, and now I'm bleeding. What did he was saying? God doesn't give us rules just to make our lives difficult. He gives us rules and guidelines as all to protect us, so we thrive in the pathway of his blessing And so we see that he does this for our own good. Do you see the correlation in your life? Have you seen times where obedience has led to blessing? Disobedience has led you down a path of cursing? Is it possible that the lack of blessing in your life right now, the difference difficulty in your life now could possibly be due to your disregard for God's word? You've decided to do it your way rather than God's way, and you're wondering why God's blessing isn't present. in your life today. Third, we see in this past, is that all scripture is essential. All scripture is essential. They were committed to every word, the blessinging and the curse. He read the blessing, you do this, you'll be blessed, you do this, you'll be curse. All of it matters. We don't get to pick the parts we like. 2 Time 36. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. James 210,Whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point, has been guilty of all of it. We don't get to pick the parts that we like. We live in a day where we get to be very picky about stuff. We can just choose. You don't have to sit. Those of you mind, we had to sit by the radio, just hoping our favorite song would come on. So we could hit play and record at the same time and grab and pull it off of the radio onto a cassette tape. You had to pick any song ever made. Boom, there it is. You make your playlist of the exact songs you want to hear, you don't ever have to hear for the rest of your life a song you don't want to hear. We get to pick the TV shows we want to watch, on demand. We've got all these streaming services, and they even know what you like and don't like. You have these algorithms that are deciding what you don't want to hear, what you don't want to see, and they're furing sure that it doesn't put that in front of you. And we can fast forward and skip the stuff we don't like. It's ruined to me. I'll have conversations with people. I want to tap them on the forehead to see how much time is left. You know, look at a little bar on the screen appears. Sometimes I kind of want to hear them, but a whole lot quicker, I want to hit the two times button, see if we can speed this along. I want to hit the go forward 10 seconds into my life, 'cause I don't like this part of my life I'm sitting in it right in this moment. We don't get to do that with God's Word. You don't get to pick the parts you like and the parts you don't like. We wish we could. We wish we could go through and edit it just a little copy and delete a paste and cut and just kind of delete out the chunks we don't want and leave us with the Bible that's just encouraging and helpful. We don't get to do that. All of it matters, all of it gets read. All of it needs to be followed. We get to claim the blessings and we need to avoid the cursings All of it matters. What parts of God's word are you skipping right now? What parts are you fast forwarding? that you need to slow down and say, all of it, all of it is for me. Now, you say, this sounds heavy. All of it, I need to prioritize it, and I need to to be obedient to all of it. And that's just not, there's gonna be times I'm gonna fail. But what happens when I fail? Here's the beauty of what happens. Go back to that scene in Sheck him. And on the mountain where the curses are read, there's an altar. And next to the engraved copy of God's law, there's an altar. What does the altar do for us as Christians? The altar points us to Jesus The altar says there's a sacrifice for forgiveness when we fail to keep the law. So imagine you're in that v valet and you're hearing the Word of God. You're hearing the law of God, and you're thinking, it's insurmountable I'll certainly fail, but you're smelling the smoke.. You're smelling the smoke of the altar. Here's the beauty of Shechem. As you're hearing the word, you're smelling the smoke. And we're called to obedience to the word of God, but on the altar, burnings a sacrifice for sin. And here's what Jesus did for us because Jesus is the one who could keep the commandments. Jesus is the one who could keep the agreement, the only one who could keep the agreement, because Jesus kept the agreement, when he went to the cross, he took the law with him. This is what the word of God says. Romans 8: 1. Therehere is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christis Jesus The law doesn't condemn us because we put our faith in Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by s his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but by the Spirit. What does all that mean? Yes, we strive to keep his word. Yes, we striveve daily to be in his Word, and apply His word and be obedient to his word, but we fall short of his word. We are not condemned because Jesus Christ took the requirements of the law to the cross. And we walk in the grace and the mercy of Jesus that when we sin, we come to Him for forgiveness Colossians 2:13, listen to this.And you who were dead in your trespasses, and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive with him, having forgiven all our trespasses, all of our sins. What are you saying? Apart from Jesus, you were dead in your sin. You were unable to keep this But because of Jesus, because he died on the cross for us, we can be forgiven and have experienced His grace and His mercy. Listen to Colossian X verse, though. Colossians 24.:14. He canceled the record of the debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He He took the requirements of the law that we could not keep And those requirements of the law were nailed to the cross. And this I couldn't keep. Jesus took to the cross for me. And so every day, I strive, God, I want your word first in my life, and I fail at this, I fail to prioritize it. But I want to be in His Word. I want to be in a community with other believers, studying His Word. I want to learn His Word, I want to live according to His Word. I want to walk, get out of the middle of the road and onto the sidewalk of God's mercy and God's blessing and God's safety as he's lined it out for me. But when I fail, I experience the grace of Jesus. When I hear the law, and I know I've broken it, I smell the smoke of the altar. Have you given your life to Jesus? Have you given been striving to live according to the demands of his law, and you find it impossible, you can know that there is a God who sent his son to die for your sins Jesus, God in the flesh, died on the cross, so that you could have forgiveness when you fail to meet the demands of his agreement. Let's pray together. Would you consider this morning how this might applyly to you? Maybe you would say I've not prioritized God's word in my life. I've not made God's word a prominent, given God's word a prominent place in my busy life. And I do you confess me, your prayer today as a prayer of confession. God forgive me for letting other less important things crowd out your word, in my life and life of my family God, show me how we can put your word at the center of all we do. God, maybe your prayers, God, I've been wondering lately why life's not going well, and honestly it's just because I've been doing things my own way. Decided to go my own way rather than listen to how you want me to live. And a lot of the problems, a lot of trouble, a lot of the turmoil in my life has been causing by my own disobedience and bad decisions, and maybe today your prayer is God. Would you take me out of the dangerous road I'm on and put me on the security and safety of a path that follows you. Well, maybe today, you've never come to Jesus and experienced His mercy. And when you think about following the Bible, all you think about is the frustration of your shortcomings, and that's the purpose of it, The purpose of the law was to show us that we're sinners, show us that we needed a Savior. And so if you've looked at the requirements of God's Word and you're frustrated because you've not kept them, you're in a great place to receive His mercy. It's a prayer like this, God, I know that I've not kept your law. I've not lived according to your word. And every time I read your word, it just reminds me of another way I've failed you. God, I need the mercy of Jesus. I need the forgiveness that he came to provide. Jesus, thank you. for taking my sins to the cross and my shortcoming to the cross. Jesus, I need your forgiveness. Your prayer right now is Jesus, I. I'm turning from my path of rejection and rebellion and disobedience, to trust in you, to put my faith in you, to follow you. Father, we thank you for your word, for the guidance it gives us for the land mines that marks out before us, for the blessing we receive when we obey it. and we pray that we'd give it a prominent place in our life, that we'd experience your blessing as we walk in obedience to you your word. But God, we also thank you for your grace and your mercy. For we fall short of this, we can smell the smoke of the altar, and we can know we have a savior who died so that the requirements of the law and my failure to liveording to them could be wiped out. Nailed to the cross. God, I pray for the those today who don't know you, today would be the day. David, I'm gonna begin following Jesus. I'm gonna trust in Jesus. For those who are trusting you, Jesus, but your word has slipped further down down the list of their priorities. Let them put it back to the topic and help them to do that. And let us experience the blessing of walking in your grace and your mercy and obedience to your word, we pray Jesus' name. Amen.