What You Need to Win Your War

Sermon Transcript

All right. Good morning, everybody. How we doing? You guys having a good day? Welcome to Brave Fired up to be here with you guys today.

Would you do me a favor and join me in welcoming our Westminster, Colorado Springs and online campus that are worshiping with us today? We love you guys. We're so glad to be in community with you, taking the gospel all over Colorado and really through the radio ministry at BRAVE all over the United States, which is just fantastic. Listen, before we get going, I wanted to remind you guys our 21 days of prayer and fasting are kicking off next Sunday. We're going to be passing out these devos next Sunday.

And really what it is, it's a devotional to help you fall more in love with Jesus and help you develop your ability to hear his voice and put into practice what he's showing you through those 21 days. So as a church, we're coming together to pray, listen for the voice of God. So next Sunday, we'll be passing these out on our campuses. I hope to see you guys there. We'll be meeting Monday through Friday from 6:30 to 7:30, on Saturdays from 8 to 9 to pray and seek the face of the Lord together.

It is going to be a wonderful time together. I want to start talking with you guys today a little bit about the spiritual battle that we face as Christians. How many of you guys felt like over the holiday season, like, spiritual temperature was ramped up a little bit, and if you guys feel like a little extra tension, things are a little bit crazier than normal. Like, I. I have issues.

You know what I mean? Like, I was just talking to my brother Mike over here. Sunday, you know, Christmas hits and we're opening presents and I'm enjoying the kids and the laughter until I start to notice all of the wrapping paper and toys on the floor. And how many of you guys do this thing where you're like, okay, Christmas is over. It's not fun anymore.

You know what I mean? Day after Christmas, you're like, get the decorations, burn them. We're done. You know what I mean? It's over.

It's buried. We'll do it again next year, but I can't do any more Christmas right now. Sometimes tension can build up and frustration, and sometimes you can't even put your finger on what it is. How many of you guys feel like first Tuesdays are a little bit more difficult than your average Tuesday? Like there's just some extra war there?

How many of you guys have experienced, like, you know, there's this one guy And I've been trying to share the gospel with them, or I wanted to talk to my neighbor. And it's like that day, my tire is flat, my child throws up in my car. You know what I mean? Like, there's. There's so much opposition to things that matter to the heart of God.

And as Christians, the Bible is telling us not to view these things as arbitrary or random, but to realize that as a Christian, you by faith have been actually born into a war. When you've placed your faith in Christ, the Bible tells us you've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son. And the Bible tells us that you've been given armor and a sword and that you have an enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. And I just want to tell you, brave church, listen to me, you're not crazy. Say to the person next to you, you're not crazy.

Tell them you are opposed. You're opposed. Okay, Some of you might be crazy. Some of you might be. I don't know.

I don't know what to tell you. Here's. Here's what I've realized. Couple years ago, I had this realization. Me and my wife have very different tastes in movies.

Okay? Anybody relate to that? I love war movies. I want something edgy, want really gritty dialogue that are better be explosions in it. And somebody I deeply love in that movie had better die or it is not a good movie.

You know what I'm saying? Anybody got that? All right. And my wife is on the other side of the spectrum where she's like, no, no, no, I better laugh. If I cry, it's because I'm happy.

Okay? Like, it's a wonderful, peaceful experience for all people. I realized, like, why do I love these kinds of movies? Why do I enjoy this? And I've realized as a Christian, it's because some of what I'm seeing in those movies actually points to what I think is going on around me in the spirit realm.

I just can't see it. I'm seeing bombs going off and explosions and difficulty and struggle. And how many of you guys have had a day before where nothing out of the ordinary happened, but you feel like you've walked through hell? Those days happen. You're like, what is going on today?

Why am I carrying away what is going on? And I want you guys to see, today, there is a war going on. If you are a Christian and each of you are uniquely facing different wars, different battles, different struggles that you're having to walk through. And I want you guys today to know this. My desire for you is that you would win your war.

And that's what I want to talk about today as we're transitioning into 2025, we're closing out 2024. I want us to think about what are the things that I need? What are the things that I have to hold on to so that I would see success in the areas that God is uniquely calling me to fight and defend in. So I want to talk to you guys about that today. But before we get there, I think we need to pray and ready our hearts before we read the text.

You pray with me, Father God, I pray today in light of this text and what we're talking about. Lord, I pray that you would silence the voice of the enemy, that your love would crush every lie in this room right now, that you would invite us into your word in a unique way today. Lord Jesus, we cannot help to get anything done apart from your presence doing the work in and through us today. By your word, with your spirit, Lord God, do that. In Jesus, Jesus name, we pray.

And everybody said, amen. Amen. All right, so today we're gonna talk about winning your war. And I wanna take you to Joshua chapter 23 today. Joshua, chapter 23.

Now, this is an awesome text, but it's particularly unique in that Joshua, in this passage, is gathering together all of the leaders, all of the chief officers, all of the elders, and the nation together because he is transitioning out of leadership. He's done. He's toast. He is almost 110 years old. Okay, say that's old.

Very good. Okay, it's old. He is old. And he is literally at a place where he's saying, I can't fight anymore. I spent all of my time and effort, and I've spent my heart trying to lead you guys and show you everything that I can.

And he wants to take this moment and leverage it and share with them. Here's what you're gonna need to finish the fight. Here's what you're gonna need to finish the war to win the war that you're stuck in the middle of. And he's been gracious and God's done a lot, but he can't go forward any farther. And why this is uniquely important for us today is because in the book of Joshua, you have a typological picture, a parable of your own salvation story.

When you read through the Book of Joshua, what you should be seeing is Jesus actually leading his people to a new identity in the promised land where they would receive. Receive the fullness of who they're meant to be. And in that process, he's kicking out the evil and the wicked and the brokenness that needs to get out. Can I get an amen? Anybody have Jesus doing that in their life right now?

Right. He's sanctifying us. And Joshua is this story of what God is doing spiritually in each of every one of us. Every battle matters, every moment matters, Every time we punt on something or don't seek the face of the Lord. You see in the book of Joshua, there's repercussions in reality.

And I want you guys to see this. Always admired CS Lewis for doing such wonderful job showing the reality of the spiritual warfare we face in our books. Anybody read the Screwtape letters? Before, it was like a nightcap right before bed. Something creepy, you know, to put you to sleep.

Oh, yes, the devil, right? Like, I love it. I. I'm into it. Like, it's fantastic.

But he has this quote in Mere Christianity. Here's what he says. I think we need to hear it. Today, good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.

The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or a railway line or a bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible. He was always capturing how the natural was bound up in the supernatural. Nothing happens in the natural without first something happening in the supernatural. There's a spiritual reality that we are running through together, Church.

And we need to pay attention to these things. And Joshua is a gracious leader. And I want you guys to stare into the eyes and listen to the words of a battle hardened, seasoned saint of the Lord Christ, who wants to tell you today how to win your war, how to finish strong, and how to see victory in the areas where you've been in battle as a Christian. So I want to give you guys today 5 keys to help you win your war in this upcoming year. You guys ready for that?

Five keys. I want us to start in verses one through three today. Get into the text. Let's read it together now. It came about after many days when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their enemies on every side.

And Joshua was old and advanced in years, that Joshua called For all of Israel, for their elders and their heads and their judges and their officers, and said to them, I am old and advanced in years. And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you. For the Lord your God is he who has been fighting for you. Okay, the first thing that I want you guys to see today, winning your war requires being humbled by God's provision. Winning your war requires being humbled by God's provision.

He starts talking about everything that God has accomplished up to this point. He wants to explain to them, do you see everything that God has accomplished for you? He wants them to know, hey, I didn't do that. I wasn't the one who succeeded in all those areas. God did that because it's very easy to look at a man and think that he accomplished those things.

And Joshua wants them to know. He wants them to see your tendency is to think you're awesome or that I'm awesome. But the reality is, if you were paying attention to Jericho, we walked around in circles and God brought the wall. I didn't do that. Right?

The battle at AI, when they didn't take advice from God, things went south. It didn't go well for them. I watched this MMA match a couple of years ago, and I remember this fight distinctly because I remember laughing and other people are like, what's your problem? It was. It was funny.

This guy is fighting and he's losing badly, right? Like, he's just getting wailed on. It's not good. Second round, the guy who is wailing on, this guy trips and falls, and then the guy who is losing badly ends up jumping on him and winning the fight. Okay?

And everything I was thinking in my heart was, bro, you didn't win. That guy just lost, right? Like, you didn't. You didn't win that fight. The other guy just lost it.

And we need to know this, like, in our walk with Christ. Look, we're not the one winning. Christ is the one winning, right? He's set against evil and wickedness, and he's the one doing the fighting. It's.

It's not even us. It's like me this week playing board games that I bought for my children for Christmas and me having my thumbs on the scale and helping them win, and then them trash talking me after they win. When I help them win, right? There's some sanctification that's needed, but that's our tendency. We think we're the ones that did it.

And God has had his thumbs on the Scale the entire time helping us succeed. Joshua spent years in battle driving out the land. But Joshua knew exactly why they won. He knew better than to take credit for anything but being faithful to God's plan that he was trying to carry out. Joshua knows something that we need to know.

We should have lost.

None of us deserve to be sitting here enjoying faith in our Lord and having the salvation that we've received. We didn't do that. Look at me. I didn't save me. God saved me.

I don't belong to be. I'm not awesome. Look at me. You're not awesome either. I love you enough to tell you you're not awesome either.

But God is awesome and he takes broken, messed up people and he does amazing things through them. We have to have to be humbled by God's provision in our lives. Look into verse 1 Corinthians 4, verse 7, right here. Who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive?

And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? Okay, Translation Paul, why do you think you're as awesome? Why do you think you're this great when everything that you've been giving, everything you are, every molecule that makes up your body was given to you by God? Take a breath, doubtless from God, you're welcome. Right?

That's the reality that he's pointing to in this picture. And I want you guys to get this. Cause look, the reality is how many of you are like, we made it out of 2020. I didn't think that was gonna happen. But we're here.

We made it through 2024 by the Grace of God. But I wanna get real for a second. How many of you guys have friends who had addictions and habits and problems the same that you did, and they're not here today and you still are. I got friends. I'll be honest with you.

I feel like I got them hooked on habits and things and they're still not out of that hole. And I am. And it's not because I'm special. It's because God is really good. And I just want you guys to grab this today and run with it.

I love it because it's reminding us that Christ ultimately is our victory and our victor in every circumstance. And Joshua needs them to know you will not win your war if you are not seeing God intimately involved in everything that is going on in your life. We need to stop to give God the credit or else we're going to live ungrateful Lives looking down on others instead of leveraging what we have from God to build them up. That's what we gotta do. Israel's great danger was not lacking military strength or prosperity or strong leaders, although they always thought that's what the problem was.

Their greatest challenge was spiritual drift, to stop seeing God working in their life and think that they were somehow in control. Y'all know that's your problem too, right? That's my problem. At some point along the way, I stopped praying for things that I used to pray hard about. I stopped focusing hard on the things that I used to care about deeply with the Lord.

And I start to wonder why everything is not going the way that I want to. And then I fall back at the feet of Jesus and get born again again, which is what happens in every church growing up, right? Like, we have this, oh, my gosh, I gotta get it right. And I just want you guys to. Don't drift.

Don't drift. See what God is doing in your life, think seriously about it, and realize that spiritual drift is your problem. Not seeing God as your problem, not something else that you think. And here's the deal. Humility in this and seeing God's providence is what allows the war that you're fighting, what allows the victory that you will find to go beyond you.

Humility takes us beyond ourselves. Because if it's all about you, your impact will die with you. If you make it about Jesus, there's resurrection power there. And you'll see the same story again and again and again in a victorious God. If it's about you, it will die with you.

This is. Harry Truman had this quote. I love it. We say it a lot on our staff here at Brave. It's amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn't matter who gets the credit.

We need that as a congregation. It's not about any of us. It's about the Lord Christ himself. Amen. We need to be humbled by God's provision.

And Joshua tells them what God has done, not what he did. Here's the next thing that I want you to see. Brave church. Let's look at verses 4 and 5. See, I have appointed to you these nations which remain as an inheritance for your tribes, with all the nations which I have cut off from the Jordan, even to the great sea, toward the setting of the sun, the Lord your God, he will thrust them out from before you and drive them from before you, and you will possess their land, just as the Lord your God has promised you.

Winning your war requires that you champion a legacy. Winning your war requires that you champion a legacy. And I want you guys to see this for a second, okay? Because what he does in this moment, Joshua, is telling everyone, look at all the lands that have been conquered. I want you to see everything that God has done, and he was faithful and he did it all.

And then he looks ahead and he says, that's the work I wasn't able to finish. My life's work to this point has been trying to bring us into the promised land and get rid of the wickedness and get rid of the nonsense. And I'm telling you, he's looking at him and he's saying, the grip is leaving my hand at 110. I cannot swing the sword. I need you to finish the fight.

I need you to not give up. I need you to get in there and do what God has called us to do. And this one, this one wrecks me. Brave church. I need you guys to hear this.

This is one of those portions where I feel it in my guts. Do the people in your life know what your life is about? Well enough that you could point and say, my entire life up to this point has been to set you guys up to continue to take the fight in this direction. Did people at your work know that you're about the kingdom and about Jesus? Do your kids, do your family know that your life has been about this single pursuit of seeing darkness crushed and life in Jesus Christ being born?

Everywhere you go, my father in law has this quote. I love it all the time. He says, listen, if Christianity was illegal, would they be able to find enough evidence to convict you? Would. Would the people in your life know what you are actually about and what you're fighting for?

You see, Joshua spent his entire life fighting for the Lord and against the armies of the enemies of the Lord. And everyone around him knew it. His life and intentions were so clear that he was able to rally an entire nation behind him. And I believe what is killing so much of the church today is ambiguity. With Christians not actually defending or standing up for what they say they believe because they don't know anymore.

There's not a love for the word that's driving them. They don't realize the Great Commission is actually given to them. And Jesus says, go forth, take it. Go lead people. Nothing's gonna hold you back.

I will be with you even to the end of the age. And we can sit back and we can relax and we can act like things aren't a big deal. You need to know this today. As a Christian, if you place your faith in Christ and the spirit of God has come down to live inside of you, you are hardwired to be a weapon in the hand of God against the forces of darkness. God has given you not just his armor and the sword and his own presence inside of you, but his desires and the authority that comes from Christ himself to put to death the deeds of the enemy.

You are uniquely crafted to do damage to the darkness and bring hope and joy to a world that desperately needs it. Brave church. God has given that to us. Amen. I.

I want you guys to know today, if you have lost track of the mission that Christ has called us to, the. The mission of the church, your individual mission as a Christian, instead of being a force for life and progress, you're gonna be a force for. For ambiguity and apathy. So many people are wandering like that today. Not here, not here.

God has given us a sword. Amen. And I wanna tell you right now, here's your sword. And I want you guys to understand how you live your life will tell me whether it's been in a sheath or not. I wanna read you something about that.

I think it's important to tell you about it. I've been reading through this book by Rabin Ibrahim. He's a historian who's talking about the Crusades, and we're talking about battles and war, so it seems appropriate today. And he talked about these nine Crusades and what happened through them and how Christians just slowly lost ground over years and years. We had people like Augustine writing, you know, the, you know, the City of God and these wonderful books for other Christians in areas that were entirely Christian, that now are just.

They're overpopulated, is totally Muslim, there's no Christians there anymore. And he tells this story of faithful men standing up and fighting and defending land and defending families and doing what they were supposed to be doing. But then after these people went away, after they died, no one would stand up to take that place. And the places that people, great saints, had fought to defend for years and years fell. And nobody even defended it.

Nobody came to help. Nobody stepped up to the plate. And he said at the end of his book, he said, what you find at the end of this massive history is that a dented and broken scimitar is still stronger than a sheathed sword. He wanted them to know that even the darkness, as frail as it is against the power of Jesus Christ, still moves forward. If Christians aren't willing to take what God has given them and use it and this is important for us because we can't rely on one man fighting and going to war for the things that matter.

Joshua understood something. I can only take us so far. And it cannot be one person who champions a legacy and a heritage. It has to be every Christian or else we will not see victory. We will not win our war.

There has to be a desire for each and every one of us to take up the fight and the war that God has called us to and finish what Jesus is calling us to.

Brave church. I'm gonna speak to the men for just a second. Many of you gentlemen were at the warrior summit in February this year. Our battle ready Warrior summit. We got another one coming up in February.

Definitely sign up. Pastor Jeff gave out this coin and he gave it with a commission and a challenge to advance the kingdom by being bold and resolute and authentic and virtuous and engaged in the life that we live so that people would know who we were and they would see Jesus in us wherever. And he told us if we're not going to take it seriously, to put the coin back. And I want to encourage you guys today as Joshua is handing off the sword and making sure that there is a legacy for what he fought for, that we are fighting for what matters. Man.

I want to tell you right now, fight for your families, fight for your marriages. Fight for what God has called you to in the workplace. Fight for the salvation of your friends. God has called us to be this kind of person who would step into those wars and see victory. And we owe that because we've stepped up and said we would take up that call and do it.

Amen. I want to remind you guys, do you know what your war is? Are you being clear about what you're fighting for so that other people would know what your war is? Or are you ignoring it? You have a central goal for your life.

Can you communicate it? Do you pass it on? Do you see? Do the people around you see it? It's important that we realize something though, as we're talking about this passage.

It's not enough to win territory from the enemy. You have to defend it once you have it. Let's look at this next passage, verse 6 through 10. Be very firm then to keep and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, so that you may not turn aside from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you will not associate with these nations, these which remain among you, or mention the names of their gods or make anyone swear by them. Or serve them, or bow down to them.

But you were to cling to the Lord your God. You, as you have done to this day. For the Lord has driven out great and strong nations from before you. And as for you, no man has stood before you to this day. One of your men puts to flight a thousand.

For the Lord your God is he who fights for you, just as he promised. Okay. He starts in this text by telling us we need to listen and apply the word of God to our life, ongoing all the time, lest we allow inroads that begin to erode our faith and our convictions and the war that God has called us to. This is the message here. You need to know.

Winning your war requires that you guard your heart. Guard your heart. Don't allow inroads to form. Don't allow things to settle that shouldn't be settling in different places. The Israelites became entirely too comfortable flirting with sin and allowing things that God had told them to get out of their land and out of their life.

They became way too comfortable with them staying inside of the land that God had told them was supposed to be clean. And eventually, these very nations that weren't finished being conquered ended up enslaving the Israelite. People ended up being oppressors to them and creating all kinds of problems in their life. Anybody have that story in your family growing up? Anybody seen that happen in somebody's family?

It was a really good family. Things were going well. There wasn't really a lot of issues or problems. And then slowly things started happening. Eventually, there was like catastrophic fail in that family problems, serious issues, don't happen all at once.

They start with an internal compromise where people aren't taking seriously the repercussions of allowing things to live in the camp that God has said they need to go. All right, you guys ever reached into a bag of apples before where one of those apples went bad and just destroyed the whole bag? It's basically the worst feeling in the world, second only to something else. I have babies right now, and I'm changing a lot of diapers. I won't get into details, but I want you to know, listen, that one apple, it does, it ruins the whole bag.

And oftentimes we got stuff going on in our life that is not supposed to be going on in our life. And we're allowing it to stay. We're flirting with it. We're telling ourselves it's not a big deal. Don't worry about it.

One of my favorite pictures of this, and it's, listen, it's Replete throughout Scripture, this situation is Abraham and Lot. Abraham and Lot are growing. It's working out as a family, so they split. Abraham's nephew is Lot, and Lot takes a piece of land and he decides to set up outside of this land you may have heard before called Sodom. Not a good idea.

And the next time you hear from Lot, he's living inside the city of Sodom. And if you don't know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God literally condemns the cities and sends brimstone and fire and destroys those places. And God sends angels to get Lot out. But I'll tell you right now, not all of his family makes it. And what's sad to me is that so many Christians play this game.

And I'm guilty of it too. In my own life. My kids are guilty of it. We tend to do this thing where we allow the enemy space on our borders that he's not supposed to have. Look at me.

This is really important. You can do something that is not sinful and it can still be really stupid. Amen. You can do something that's not necessarily sin, and it'd still be an idiotic thing to do. And frankly, our condition as humans is to flirt with things and allow things space in our life that they should not have.

This is the same story we see of Adam and Eve, right? They're in a garden. There's lush fruit, vegetation everywhere. And those morons end up around the one tree they're not supposed to hang out with, right? What are you even doing there?

Like, why are you at that tree? There's fruit everywhere. And they're like, I don't know this tree, right? Like, I don't. I don't understand.

But I understand. I understand. This is the same picture that Solomon is telling his sons in Proverbs 7. He wants them to understand, Listen, don't walk down roads you shouldn't go. Don't get close to things you shouldn't get close to.

Brave church. I'm gonna take you there real quick. Proverbs 7 is a great passage. Here's what it says. This is Solomon talking.

He says, for at the window of my house, I looked out through my window, my lattice, and I saw among the naive and discerned, among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing through the street near her corner. And he takes the way to her house in the twilight, in the evening, in the middle of the night, and in the darkness. Stupid. And behold, a woman comes out to him dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart. Imagine that she's boisterous and rebellious.

Her feet do not remain at home. She is now in the streets, now in the square, and lurks around every corner. With her many persuasions, she entices him. With her flattering lips, she seduces him. Suddenly he follows her.

As an ox goes to the slaughter, or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool until an arrow pierces through his liver, as a bird hastens to the snare, so he does not know that it will cost him his life.

This passage, this reality of winning your war, starting with guarding your heart, I want you guys to take more seriously than you are. And as we're walking into 2025, I want you guys to seriously consider, are there things that I'm allowing to sit on the border of my life right now? Are there things in my camp that I'm telling myself are not a big deal, that, if you're being honest, are going to be a problem in your future? Listen to me. If God has told you to get something out of your life, I don't care how good the argument is for you keeping it there.

It needs to go and it needs to go right away. We're going to be taking communion at the end of this service today. And I want to encourage you guys, anything that has been, you've been flirting with, you need to leave here. Leave at the cross of Jesus Christ when you take communion today. And I want you to go into 20, 25 free and clean and ready to walk in the fullness of what God has called you to, defending your heart the way that God has called you to.

Amen. What's cool about this passage, brave, is in verse 10, he even makes it more clear. One of your men puts to flight a thousand for the Lord your God is he who fights for you, just as he promised. What this means is that God is the one who will bring about the victory if you would just be obedient to him. I know some of you guys today, you're struggling with real things.

You got stuff in the camp. You've been trying to kick it for a long time. And I'm telling you right now, on the authority of God's word, if you will guard your heart, if you will fight for what God calls you to fight for, you won't have to win your war because he will win it for you. Amen. He will take care of you.

Unlike righteousness, evil grows best when it's left alone. And we need to be cognizant of that. So he says, the way that we do this is that we know the Bible and we apply the Bible. Don't allow inroads, don't allow margin in your life. You want to wage war against those things so that you would have victory going into this next year.

So Isaiah 54:17 is a verse I would love for you guys to underline in your Bible and take with you because it's been an encouragement to me in times when I feel particularly at war with something. The Bible says in Isaiah 54:17 that no weapon that is formed against you will prosper, and every tongue that accuses you, you will condemn on the last day. Now, a lot of you guys might be Bible nerds and you're like, Pastor Justin, that's for a different dispensation that was for Israel in this particular time. And I would say no. The rest of the verse says, this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication is from me.

What does that mean? If you were a saint and have placed your faith in Jesus, this promise is for you. No weapon that is formed against you will prosper if you continue to walk in the way and the calling that God has called you to brave church. If you will guard your heart, you will see God winning wars for you with whatever it is that you're coming up against. Amen.

Joshua tells them not to become comfortable with sin and not to give up the fight because it is mostly solved. He commissions them to stay the course and bury the sin in your life under the blood of Christ. Okay, the most important part of this text is coming up next. So I want you guys to read 11 through 13 with me. You guys ready?

Says this. So take diligent heed to yourselves to love the Lord your God. For if you ever go back and cling to the rest of these nations and these things which remain among you and intermarry with them so that you associate with them and they with you know with certainty that the Lord your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you. But they will become a snare and a trap to you and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes until you perish from off this good land which the Lord your God has given to you. Winning your war requires a genuine love for God.

This structure, this passage has a chiastic structure, okay? What it means is it's a type of ellipsis. In the center of this passage is that that verse 11 that you're seeing, and both of these structures are actually Both of the rest of the text is pointing to that center verse in the middle. It's the way that the Hebrew language would actually do an exclamation point. It's saying at the center of everything he's commanding them to do is to love God, to diligently continue to pursue a love for God and to fall more in love with him.

Because if you don't have that, you literally have nothing. You win no wars if you don't love Jesus. It doesn't matter what you win if you don't have Jesus. Cause it doesn't mean anything. Because ultimately every victory is Christ's victory.

Amen. So I want us to get this into our bones and understand this portion. And I gotta tell you, brave church, this is the whole reason that we do the 21 days of prayer and fasting. This is the whole reason. I got a secret for you, okay?

You not eating food doesn't change a darn thing in your life, except for maybe the weight that you absorbed over the Christmas season. Okay? All right. Throw that out there. That's for free.

It doesn't solve anything. Falling more in love with Jesus solves everything. If you love the Lord with a full heart and you're pursuing him, everything gets right sided. So what we do as a church is we come together and we wanna say, we wanna put stuff aside and focus exclusively at falling more in love with Jesus. Because if we don't get that right church, nothing is right here.

If Jesus isn't at the center of this place, I don't care what we do, it will not work. And we won't see the darkness push back. Amen. So I want to invite you guys come be a part of that. And I don't want you guys to miss this verse because I think there are a lot of Christians who love the truth that the Christian faith provides for them.

They love the community of the church and they love the war against evil and they even hate the depravity of our culture. And that is not the same as loving Jesus. My concern from being honest is during this last season and, and praise God, I voted and all that, I'm ecstatic about God doing some amazing things in our country. But I'll tell you right now, conservatism is not the same as a love for Jesus. It's just not.

And hating sin is not the same as loving God. And I'm concerned that there's a lot of people who can be coming to church because they don't like what's out there. But they're not in church because they love Jesus. They just don't want to be a part with them. That's not salvation.

There's no victory there. There's only hope in Jesus Christ. And I gotta tell you, as a church, we, first and foremost at the center of everything that we do, have to have a deep, abiding love for Jesus. Amen.

Nothing else matters if your love for Jesus grows cold. And this is exactly what we saw in the church in Ephesus in Revelation, chapter 2. They hated the bad guys. They were doing the religious things. But at some point, just like the Pharisees, they traded the legitimate love for Christ for doing the right thing.

Okay. And I would just tell you that we never really hear from Ephesus again. So it was as if John wrote a letter from the heart of God saying, you've lost your first love. You need to come back to me. And they were like, we got it.

We're fine. Watch your heart, church. Watch your heart, lest you hear these words and think you're fine, but actually inside you're growing cold. Don't go cold. Don't let the fire go out.

Joshua is reminding them above all else to spend their life falling in love with Jesus. Here's the last thing, verse 14 through 16. Let's read it together. And if you got a highlighter or a marker or whatever, man, verse 14 is just an amazing promise I would underline now. Behold, today I'm going the way of all the earth.

And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed. All have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed. It shall come about the justice. All the good words that the Lord your God spoke to you concerning you have come upon you. So the Lord will bring upon you all the threats until he has destroyed you from off this good land which the Lord your God, when you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will perish quickly from off the good land which God has given to you.

Winning your war requires you finding refuge in God's promises. Winning your war requires you finding refuge in God's promises. I want you guys to understand this picture. All throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, there's this massive narrative of judgment and salvation, Judgment and salvation. Judgment for the wicked and salvation for those who would trust God and walk in righteousness.

And I want to paint a picture for you guys the way that the Bible kind of talks about it. It uses this word covenant, and it sets it up like this. It's kind of like a giant umbrella. If you're standing in covenant with God under the blood of Christ, saved, walking in obedience to him, then you are not gonna catch the storm. You're gonna be safe.

Even though it's difficult, God will be with you and you will be covered. But if you step outside of obedience and begin to walk in a manner unworthy of the calling that you've received and start to reject the goodness of God, you will come under the curses that he's pointing out. If you become part of the darkness, you get treated like the darkness in this area. I want you guys to see this. If you step out from underneath that covering, you catch the storm in your life.

Anybody done that before? Anybody stepped out. And we're just stupid for a little bit while. And God was like, get back over here. Okay?

The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12, right, that it's the discipline of the Lord that's supposed to lead us to repentance. He does that because he loves us and cares for us. And he's telling them, listen, if you stop walking, if you start walking the wrong direction, it is the best thing that I can do for you to remove this blessing so that you would not continue to go that direction. God wants to bring you back into covenant with him. And the language here is actually Deuteronomic language.

I want to read you from Deuteronomy, chapter 30 today. I love these verses, and I would encourage you to go here often and study them. He says this, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death and blessing and curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice, and by holding fast to him. Listen, brave church, this is your life and the length of your days that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob to give to them.

He's trying to tell them, I want life for you. I want abundant life for you. I want you to win your war. I want you to succeed. I want to be with you, but you got to stay with me in this.

You have to find refuge in my promises. And if you don't find refuge in my promises, you're going to find yourself in a place that you don't want to go. He's calling them to remember that God will render every account settled in the end. He is faithful to every promise, no exceptions. He will bring judgment to the wicked and he will bring salvation to the righteous.

And at the end of 110 years, Joshua is able to say, as I hope we will be able to say when we get to the end, God was faithful. He never let me down. He never failed. Even when I couldn't see what he was doing, he was there. He was working.

Because we serve a gracious, faithful God and we can take refuge in his promises. Amen.

I want you guys to get this because as Christians, we get to have a very unique courage. Do you know that Galatians 2:20 says, I have been crucified with Christ, and it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. Says, the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. What does this mean, Brave church? If you are under the covering of Christ, your life's already forfeit.

He's got you. Just keep walking in obedience. Just keep going. Keep doing what he's telling you to do. And here's a story.

We were bringing up the Crusades earlier, and we're talking about war and battle. And there's this unique group of knights that I wanted to tell you about in about three centuries. This is their crest. They're called the Knights of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem or the Lazarus. And they were a very unique group, very unique fighting force that would go out into battle and they just fought like madmen.

They would run into stuff that other people wouldn't run into. They would pick fights that other people wouldn't fix. They would run into scenarios that other people say were hopeless. And everybody might be asking, well, why? What made them so courageous?

90% of them were lepers. See, this particular group already understood they were dead. They ran in with courage because they knew that their life was already forfeit and hidden with Christ. And so they could walk into any war and have faith that God was with them no matter what. And once better, is everyone that they came in contact with.

Even if they didn't win, they contracted leprosy. Win, win, right. But isn't that true of you? Even if you lose a battle, people should get Jesus all over them. They should know they've encountered the living God.

Brave church. If you're in Christ, you have been crucified with him. It's no longer you who live, but Christ. Who lives within you, right? And so I want you guys to see this because you get to have courage in any war that you're facing if your life is in Christ.

Why? Because my life is already forfeit and it's in him. Finding refuge in God's promise allows us to find courage in every battle we find ourselves in. God has given us what we need to win our war. You should have a sense of wonder as a Christian encourage when you remember that all things are possible with God, no matter what you're facing.

You don't have to live in fear if you are walking with Him. And so oftentimes I see Christians making decisions based off of fear. I know we live in a crazy world, but some people I talk to, it's like, I bought a bug out pack. I'm hoarding gasoline and guns and food, you know, MREs and whatever else because everything's gonna go south. And.

And I'm laughing because they got, like, coordinates for where they're gonna go if everything hits the fan. And I'm sitting here like, doesn't Jesus usually send people into the problems, not away from them? Aren't Christians the ones that are courageous and supposed to step into the difficult situations and listen to me, enjoy whatever you're collecting and get after it, go nuts. There's some wisdom there, but it shouldn't be based off of fear. It shouldn't be.

All this is going to go hit the fan. I better be ready because everything's going to go south and I'm. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I. I serve a loving God.

I'm under his covering. I'm walking with Him. And no matter what happens, I have my loving father to take care of me. He will be faithful even when we are not. Amen.

God calls us to advance, not retreat. God is calling us to advance his kingdom here at Brave Church. And like, our life is already forfeit because if you're in Christ, it is. It is the ability for this church to move next year to see more salvations and baptisms and people finding out who they are in Christ and reconciliation and marriages and kiddos being raised up the way that they are in Christ. All of that, all of that.

That forward motion is contingent upon the individuals here being faithful to Christ and winning their war. It doesn't work with one person, guys. We only move forward when all of us in faith are stepping out and trusting Christ with what he's given to us. And you need to know this today. You will not win your war without Jesus Christ.

If you are in here today and you do not know Jesus, I need you to know there is no victory outside of Christ because every victory belongs to Christ. Jesus is the greater Joshua. He didn't just save us from Israel. Israel from the Canaanites. He saved us from sin and death.

Jesus didn't just come for external religion. He came to bring you internal righteousness. Jesus didn't just give us 110 years like Joshua, he's given us eternity. And Jesus didn't come for the promised land alone, but for the whole world. And Jesus has invited you and I to take part in it.

Take heart, Christian. When you feel overwhelmed and frustrated, like things are harder than they should be and like doing the right thing is. Is a war. God hasn't just called you to the war. He's also called you to victory.

In the name of Christ Jesus. And as we go into this next year, we walk into 2025, I want us to leave behind the things that we're not supposed to have anymore. The things that we're supposed to let go of and grab hold of the victory that Christ has called us to be humbled by God's provision, champion a legacy, Guard your heart, love the Lord and find refuge in his promises. Amen. And so next thing that we're gonna do together is we're gonna take communion, we're gonna walk into a song, we're gonna do a little bit of worship.

And I'm just begging you, brave church, whatever you've brought into this room, whatever things are in your territory, maybe today you feel like, Justin, I hate sin, but I don't know that I love Jesus. Maybe you realize you've left some things in the land that you need to get rid of. This is a great time to throw yourself on the. On the blood of Christ and say, God, I need you. And I want to enter into 2025 with a clean heart, a pure mind and, and a good conscience before God.

Amen. I mean, let me pray for us. Father God, I pray as we listen to this song today, reminding us that you are more than able that we would remember that you've already given us the victory and we get to sit in the blessing of your promises and just walk in faithfulness, guarding the border and seeing you bringing victory. Lord Jesus, we love you. We thank you for your word today.

We pray, Lord, as we hear these words, that you would get them into our hearts and that they would be deployed in our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. Let's listen to the song together.