Skip to content The Comeback Kid | Joshua 8:1-29 | Gabriel Guzman May 22 · 40 min ...more
May 22, 2025 · 40 min · Patria Sermons
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Adam Mesa is Lead Pastor of Patria Church and speaks to a congregation of 12,000 about how the gospel of Jesus Christ brings purpose to every life. Patria
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0:01 Amen. What a great generosity moment that was. I don't know who that guy was in the beginning, but he sucked at pickleball. Well, have you guys been enjoying our Joshua series that we've0:13 been going through? I'm gonna go through chapter 8 with you guys tonight, but if you haven't met me before, my name is Gabriel. I'm the associate director of family ministries here at Patria Church, and if you serve in0:25 Patria Kids or Patria Youth, can you raise your hand for us really quick so we can just love on you really quick? We just thank you for all of your service that you do for all the families here at Patriot Church. I also0:36 just wanna honor pastor Adam and pastor Ashley. I don't count it for granted that they asked me to come up here and speak. I always count it in honor and so I always love that they do that for me.0:48 But if you have your journals for Joshua chapter 8, I have 5 journals up here as promised by pastor Herron last week. If you do not have a journal,1:00 you can run up and grab 1 right now. It's a journal of don't run too fast. Don't don't take too okay. Here she goes. Here she goes. Wow. She just went in for 1, 2, 3. He laughed so I had to give him 1. I don't know1:12 why. He laughed as he grabbed 1 so I said, alright. You get 1. You you laughed. You laughed. Well, family. Today, we're gonna be in Joshua chapter 81:24 verses 1 through 29. Now, we're not gonna read it all right now when we stand up. We're only gonna do 2 verses for you, so don't don't freak out when we stand up right now. But you can turn to Joshua chapter 81:36 in your journal or your bible, go on your phone, or if you simply wanna listen. If you do me a favor, we're all gonna stand together for the reading of God's word right now. Joshua chapter 81:48 verse 1 and 2 is how we will start. It says this, and the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting2:00 men with you and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given it into your hand, the king of Ai and his people, his city and his land. And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did2:12 to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves. Lay in ambush against the city behind it. Let's pray.2:23 Lord, we come before you right now and we thank you for your word, God. We thank you for everything we can learn from it. People did not come to hear from a man tonight, they came to hear from you, Lord. And I pray that2:34 as your word goeth forth, it is powerful and it penetrates the hearts and the spirits and the minds of those who hear it. In your name we pray, amen. You can all be seated. Thank you so much. So2:46 today's sermon is titled The Comeback Kid. It's called The Comeback Kid. You know, last week and the weeks before in chapter 7, we talked about how2:57 the Israelites got defeated. They went to a battle and they lost. And there was some sin involved and all of that kind of stuff, but in this chapter, they win. They're victorious and we're gonna see3:09 that they had a comeback. They were comeback kids. And I don't know if you, but I like a good comeback kid story. Some of the most popular movies are comeback kid3:21 stories. I'm thinking of movies like Rocky. Does anybody know the movie Rocky? Some of you. Okay. Great. The Karate Kid. The Karate Kid. Okay. Yes. There's a lot of Karate Kid movies. They're still making3:33 there's 1 coming out next month. That's they keep making them. Why they keep making them? Because it's a comeback story. Everybody likes a comeback story. The Pursuit of Happiness, super popular movie. A story of a of a3:43 father trying to overcome his own his own situation, his own circumstance, not only to provide for himself, but to provide for his son. And he ultimately overcomes those struggles and he has3:55 a comeback. The most popular movie, the highest grossing movie of all time, Avengers Endgame. Now, that's a super oh, big fan of Avengers Endgame. I would assume4:07 that there's some in here because it's the highest grossing movie of all time. You see, that's a movie about superheroes and in the last movie, the movie before it, they lost. They got defeated and then in the4:19 Avengers Endgame, they win. They they have a comeback. They defeat the enemy. And so the Israelites, our story, this story in chapter 8 is a story of a comeback kid, and I wanna4:31 encourage you that that's your story too. Amen. You're a comeback kid. That's good. You're having a comeback. Maybe you got defeated before. Maybe you got defeated today, but your story doesn't end with4:42 failure. Your story doesn't end with defeat. Your story doesn't end with sorrow. It doesn't end with grief. It ends with victory, and that's what we're gonna learn today in Joshua chapter 8. We're gonna learn4:54 about some 3 r's that we can apply in our lives on how to have victory. But before we get into that, let's read this quote really quick from Robert Hess. He says, for the Christian, the story of I illustrates God's5:06 forgiveness toward a repentant people and the manner in which continued obedience is rewarded with victory over the struggles and temptations of5:18 life. I don't want anybody in here to feel like they can't apply something in the Old Testament to their life because it doesn't talk about Christians. It doesn't talk about Jesus. I don't want you to feel like you can't5:29 apply something in the Old Testament, specifically, maybe even in this chapter because it's talking about a battle. It's talking about a warfare. And I don't know if you knew this, but Joshua chapter 8 is the most5:40 detailed battle in the whole book. It's the most detailed battle in the entire book. And we'll talk about some reasons on maybe why that is. But maybe you're thinking to yourself, I'm not in a war. I I don't have a5:52 sword strapped to me. I don't have a gun at my waist ready to go and and I I'm not in a warfare, so I don't know how this could apply to me. But I wanna let you know, if you didn't know, that that's not how the bible6:02 describes the life of a Christian. The bible describes the life of a Christian as a life of war. There's a lot of scriptures we can turn to for this, but I'm only gonna share 3. You can just listen6:14 to them if you'd like to. No need to turn there. Second Corinthians chapter 10 verse 3 and 4 says, for though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of6:25 the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. First Timothy 6 12, fight the good fight of the faith. Romans 7 23, but I see6:37 in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. You see, the bible6:49 describes the life of a Christian as a life in warfare, as a life in battle. And I don't know if there's anybody in here that's felt like that in their life, like they've been in a battle, that they've7:01 been fighting for their lives sometimes in this life as a believer in Christ. And so we're in a war, we're in a battle, and there are enemies in this battle. And notice it's enemies,7:13 plural, because we're very familiar with 1 enemy, which is the devil. Right? We're we're very familiar with it, but there's more than just the devil. The bible describes 3 enemies. 3 enemies. I have a reference7:25 for you guys. You guys could take a picture if you want. You guys can read them. We're not gonna read them together, but the bible describes 3 enemies. That's the flesh. That's gonna be yourself, your own desires.7:38 The world, the world system, how the world operates, and the devil who we're very familiar with. And so those are the enemies. And I don't know if you felt like you've gotten defeated by 1 of these enemies before. Maybe7:50 you got defeated by 1 of these enemies tonight before you got here. But we're gonna see in Joshua chapter 8 how we can have victory in our lives, how we can come back from our defeat8:01 from any of these enemies. There's 3 r's that we're gonna go through. It's gonna be renewal, readiness, and retaliation. Renewal, readiness, and8:13 retaliation. Now, before we get into the chapter itself, I just wanna give a quick recap to where we're at and how we come here in Joshua chapter 8. There's 248:24 chapters in the book, and so we're almost halfway there through the book, but there's not a lot that's happened so far. But the story of Joshua is following the Israelites, which have come out of Egypt with8:36 Moses and that old generation dies and there's a new generation now and they come to a land that God promised them. And now in the book of Joshua, it's their job to capture the land, to defeat the8:48 people that are living in that land because it's theirs. God promised it to them. And so that's what this book is about. And so the first battle they have is the battle of Jericho. And it's funny that it's even described9:00 as a battle because that's the battle where they walk around the walls and the walls crumble and the Lord gives them victory. And so they weren't supposed to take anything from Jericho. Everything was supposed to belong9:11 to the Lord. But there was this guy, Achan, and he saw something that we learned last week. He saw something and he took it for himself and he took it in secret. And9:23 so nobody knew about it and so then they after Jericho's done, everybody's happy that they won and everything's going well and then they go to the next battle, Ai. And so they go and they try to attack Ai and you know,9:34 it's even a little cocky. They only send a little bit of people. Hey, we did it so good last time. We just need a little bit of people. It's a small it's a small city. We're good to go. No need to worry. And they lose.9:43 This is the first time Israelites die in a battle in this new generation. They're defeated. And it's because of the sin of Achan. And so last week, I encourage you to listen to that9:55 sermon from pastor Herron. He did a great job talking about it. But last week, we talked about how they uncovered the sin of Achan and what they did about it. They destroyed Achan, they destroyed his family, they10:07 destroyed any kind of remnants of that sin so that they can ultimately have victory. And so they they atoned for it, they prayed to God, God revealed that sin, and so now we're here in10:19 chapter 8 after that sin was exposed, after that sin was absolved, and so now what do they do? The first point here, renewal on how to have a comeback, how to have a victory10:31 in your life. It's gonna be recommission after recommitment. First verse, and the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear and do not be10:42 dismayed. Now, we're gonna stop there in the first verse. These first 2 verses are really important to the whole chapter of the book and we're not necessarily gonna go verse by verse, but these first few verses we are10:52 gonna stop on. And this first part of this verse is important because this commissioning by the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua wasn't there when they first went to attack The11:03 Lord never told Joshua anything about I, they just went and they did it. And why did that happen? Because there was sin involved from Jericho. And so the Lord didn't commission him. So he is commissioning him now.11:15 And and you notice the phraseology, it says, do not fear and do not be dismayed. That's some similar language that we've already kind of heard in the book of Joshua, specifically Joshua 111:27 9 where the Lord tells them, do not fear and be courageous. We're very familiar with that kind of language and that's from Joshua 1 9. The Lord also speaks like this in Deuteronomy 1 21 and 7 1811:39 and 31 8. It's very familiar language and it's almost like the Lord is now recommissioning the goal, recommissioning what he had the Israelites do which was to conquer the promised11:51 land. Hey, I know that sin happened. We brought that sin before me. We dealt with it. And now you're back on your mission. Now I'm ready to send you out again. Now I'm ready to give you12:03 victory. And that's almost like a a pretext, some some homework that we have to do before we have victory in our own lives, and that's to get rid of some sin that we have, some secret stuff that's going on12:15 with us. And again, I can't recommend it enough to listen to that sermon last week on how to do that and what does that look like and how can we overcome that sin because you need to do that before you have victory. You12:26 need to do that before the Lord is able to recommission you. You need to do that before the Lord's able to recommit you on what he has to do in your life. We can't have sin and we can't have victory together. You have to12:37 pick 1. And it's up to you which 1 you want. Because sometimes the sin feels good, it looks good. You want it sometimes because 1 of those enemies is our12:48 flesh. But we have to pick, do we want victory or do we want sin? First John 1 9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our13:00 sins and to cleanse us for all unrighteousness. I really like this from first John chapter 2 verse 1. He says, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not13:12 sin. But if anyone does sin, like John's admitting that the life of a Christian won't be perfect. The life of a Christian isn't just13:24 sinless all the time. There might be a moment where you sin as a Christian. He goes on, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Christ Jesus the13:35 righteous. And so we need to choose. Is it our sin that we want or is it victory? And if we pick victory, okay, we're gonna have to recommit ourselves to the Lord and we're gonna get recommissioned.13:48 The verse goes on, Joshua chapter 8 verse 1. Take all the fighting men with you and arise, go up to Ai. And so this is different already. This is different14:00 than before. You see, they decided on their own they're only gonna take maybe 3000 people to go take Ai. It's a small it's a small people. It's a small small little camp. We can take it with a little bit of people. No.14:11 We're gonna take everybody now. We're gonna take it everybody now. He goes on, see, I have given into your hand the king of Ai and his people, his city and his land.14:24 And so that's some emphasis there. The king of Ai and his people, his city and his land. You see, these are gonna be the achievements of the Israelites in the reverse order. So they're14:36 first going to enter the land, then they're gonna siege the city, then they're gonna destroy the people and then they're gonna hang the king. And so it's outlining what's gonna happen in this battle and we'll be able to14:47 track it too. We'll be able to track it as we go through. Verse 2 says, and you shall do to I and its king as you did to Jericho and its king,14:58 Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves. This is the first time Israel gets to take some of the plunder from15:10 the battle. This is the first time they get some of the spoils from the war. Why is that? Why why do they get it now when Jericho was all dedicated to the Lord? Well, 1, maybe they they got15:22 forgiven from the sin of Achan and they they absolved that, but 2, the the Israelites have almost been treated like a baby by God. While they're going through the wilderness, they they get treated like a baby because15:33 they act like babies. They say, God, I'm hungry. God, I'm thirsty. And so God gives them food and then God gives them some water. And so he's literally almost holding their hand, leading them through the wilderness. And15:45 now that they're in the promised land, it's like a baby needing to walk, a baby needing to feed themselves now, and that's what's kinda happening here. If you notice earlier in in Joshua, we read that the Lord stopped15:55 giving them manna. And so now they're gonna need some of this plunder, they're gonna need some of this to live on their own and to succeed on their own. This is really important16:07 next what the Lord says. He says, lay in ambush, in verse 2, against the city behind it. This is the main tactic that the Lord gives Joshua16:19 by which they're gonna defeat I and they're gonna win this battle. The tactic is ambush. That's how they do it. And this is a smart tactic in battle. It's16:31 a a cunning tactic. And it reminds me of this verse in Matthew 10 16. Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as16:42 serpents and innocent as doves. Maybe your bible says as cunning as serpents. The s v says, wise as serpents. And so Jesus16:54 gives this, directive to his disciples as they're going out and preaching the gospel, but that's a directive for us. If we want victory in our lives, we need to be cunning. Yes. We don't just need17:06 to know that we have a struggle or know that we have a battle. We need to be smart enough and creative enough to know how do we overcome it. How do we overcome our own flesh? How do we overcome the world? How do we17:17 overcome overcome the devil? How do you do these things? Well, we need to be cunning. We need to be smart. Okay? So there's a renewal. You get recommissioned after17:29 a recommitment to the Lord. Number 2, step 2 in having a comeback, having victory. That's readiness.17:40 Readiness. Preparation with precision. Preparation with precision. Verse 3. So Joshua and all the fighting men arose to go17:52 up to Ai and Joshua chose 30000 mighty men of valor and sent them out by night. And he commanded them, behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city18:04 behind it. And so it's really important how he says that, lie in ambush against the city behind it because he perfectly recaps, perfectly restates what the Lord18:15 told him. Joshua didn't leave it up to his own interpretation of what the Lord said. He didn't leave it up to his own imagination of what the Lord said.18:27 What God says matters. How he says it matters. And the bible tells us, and that's our word. Right? The word of God. That's what we call this. He tells us what we should do a18:39 lot of times. He tells us what not to do a lot of times. And it's not up to us to try to interpret what does God mean by that? When God says not to sin, what does he mean though?18:52 God when God says that I shouldn't I shouldn't get I get drunk a lot, what does that mean? Maybe he means no. Now we're starting to do our own19:04 interpretation. We're starting to give our own imagination. God means what he said. He means what he said. And so Joshua perfectly tells the people what God said. And he's gonna19:16 go on to describe the plan that they have. He goes on, do not go very far from the city but all of you remain ready. Everybody say ready.19:27 Ready. Verse 5. And I and all the people who are with me will approach the city and when they come out against us, just as before, we shall flee before them and they will come out after19:39 us until we have drawn them away from the city for they will say, they are fleeing from us just as before. So we will flee before them. Joshua19:51 is counting on the people of Ai to be cocky. He's he's counting on the people of Ai to be predictable. He doesn't know for sure that they're gonna do that potentially, but it's pretty20:03 predictable. Why? Because that's what happened last time. They went into the battle. They saw that they were losing, so they retreated. And as they retreated, the people ran after them. They said, alright. They're going.20:13 Let's go after them. And that's how some of the Israelites died. And so it's very predictable. And so how we have victory in our lives, we have to know that there's a lot of predictability.20:26 We have to know ourselves. You know you better than anyone. I don't know you better than you. You know you better than you. You know what can get you going. You know what can cause you to20:38 sin. You act pretty predictably. And so if you wanna have victory in your life, plan for the predictability. Plan for the predictabilities in20:50 your life. You can do that. You can know that if you go out with that girl, maybe that'll happen. Maybe this will happen. Right? If you're gonna take 1 sip, you know what's gonna happen. If you're21:02 gonna if you're gonna stay up late with your computer, you know what's gonna happen. You have to plan for the predictability. Verse 7, then you shall rise up from the21:14 ambush and seize the city. You see, now we're gonna start to refer to it as the city in the bible and that's what the Lord said. Right? He's gonna give you the city. Seize the city for the Lord your God will give it into21:25 your hand and as soon as you have taken the city, you shall set the city on fire. You shall do according to the word of the Lord. See, I have commanded you. So Joshua21:37 sent them out, verse 9, and they went to the place of ambush and lay between Bethel and Ai to the west of Ai, but Joshua spent that night among the people. You see, Joshua21:49 tells them the plan. Here is the plan. Let's go on in verse 10. Joshua arose early in the morning and mustered the people and went up. He and the elders of Israel before22:00 the people, verse 11, and all fighting men who are with him went up and drew near before the city and encamped on the north side of Ai with a ravine between them. He took about 500022:12 men and sent them in ambush between Bethel and Ai. You see, Joshua planned. He had it down to a t. There was there there was precision22:24 in his plan. There was detail in his plan. Yes. The Lord gives him the main tactic and now he says that to the entire people of Israel, and that's how we have to be. Matthew22:36 26 41 says, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.22:48 Sometimes we think we're pretty strong but the bible says you're not. The bible says we're not that strong. I can feel really strong sometimes but as soon as these chain of events happen,23:00 as soon as this leads to this leads to this. Okay. Now I'm really weak. Now I'm really weak. Don't be unaware. Prepare with precision. The last r23:12 here, retaliation. Retaliation. Now that we have a renewal and now that we are ready, we have to retaliate. We have to fight back. We have23:24 to fearlessly fight. Fearlessly fight. So I'm gonna do a little transition here actually because we're gonna do this. Do we have any visual? Oh, went home, Javi. I did the wrong thing. Uh-oh. I went I23:36 did this wrong as I could have done it. I went home instead of the next app. Canva. Let's just go here. Is it up? Nope. I opened a new app. There it is. Here we go. I did it. I got back. Somehow I did it. Do we have any23:47 visual learners in the house? Raise your hand if you're a visual learner. I need to visually see how many visual learners we have in here. Okay. Perfect. So we have a map here so that we can take a look at the battle.23:57 Okay? I'm going to summarize these next few verses, we're not going to be reading them all. But we have right here, this is going to be the people of Ai and just so we can kind of see it here,24:09 let's go here, Right here. Oh yeah. Moved that. I moved it. Right here. So this is gonna be I. That's gonna be I. And so we have them. Right? And now we need now we need the Israelites. So we24:21 have 1 base that's gonna be right here. K? So this group is the main group that's gonna be seen. This is the the main group. This is24:33 the ambush group right here. That's the ambush group. And so what happens is they see right here. They see Joshua and24:45 the king sees Joshua and the king only sees what Joshua wants him to see. He only sees what the Lord wants him to see. So he's over here just looking this way. He's just worried about what's happening24:57 there. And so they go over here, but this ambush is waiting to happen. They're ready to go. They're ready to go. And so these they're really just here to distract. They're really just here to distract. And that's kind of25:07 what these verses do right at the beginning. But there's something important here and I'm gonna go back really quick. I'm gonna go back. Something really important here in verse 18,25:19 Super important verse 18. It says, then the Lord said to Joshua, everybody's in their place, everybody's ready to go. Then the Lord said to Joshua, stretch out your javelin that is in your hand toward I25:31 for I have given it into your hand. That phrase, stretch out the javelin that is in your hand is huge. It's huge. And maybe we didn't25:43 notice it, but that's why I'm here to tell you, it's huge. The Lord gives Joshua another command in the middle of this battle. He gave him 1. This is how you're gonna win. This is what I want you to25:55 do. And now he's in the middle of it and he goes, hey, also stretch out your hand now that you're in the middle of it. And so it's up to Joshua to obey that command. Joshua needs to obey in the middle of the26:07 fight, in the middle of this thing happening. And that's important for us. We still need to obey when we're in the fight. We can prepare. We have we've renewed.26:19 We're preparing. And now that we're in the fight, hey, we're ready to go. Well, now it's still up to us to obey. We still have to obey to get there. You see,26:31 Joshua doing this guarantees victory, but it's also reminiscent of another command in the past. 2 commands maybe, both of them in Exodus.26:42 Exodus 17, that's the battle of the Amalekites. I don't know if you remember the story of Moses having to keep his hands up and they win the battle. And more importantly, the parting of the26:54 Red Sea. Why is the parting of the Red Sea important? Because of the phrase. This is what it says in Exodus 14 16, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it27:06 that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. You see, that phrase is what led to a miracle happening, stretching out27:18 Moses' staff and the Red Sea parts. You see this is a theme that's been going on in the book of Joshua. The theme of the the old generation had a God that did all these things.27:30 The new generation has the same God who does the same things. Okay? And so that phrase is now saying, hey, just like the Red Sea was a miracle, you winning this battle is27:41 going to be a miracle. You know, you having victory in your life is a miraculous act of God. It's miraculous. And27:53 it's just as miraculous as anything you'll read in the bible. He's right there with you. And it's miraculous. Because it's hard to do it on our own. But the stretching28:05 out of the hand, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, but that's also showing God's presence is there. It's not just them in the fight. God is with them in the fight. And you're not alone in this fight. God is28:16 with you. He gives you the strength to do it. You can do it because he's with you. He's the 1 that's gonna help you do it. And then it says this, continuing in28:28 Joshua chapter 8. And Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city. He was obedient. He was obedient. The Lord told him to do something right in the middle of it and28:39 that's what he did and that's what he did. And so what ultimately happens is, I'm just gonna summarize it for us for the sake of time,28:51 but the people are drawn out. The people of Ai are drawn out and they see that Israel's there and then they start to retreat. The bible says they pretend to lose and they they run29:02 away and then Joshua stretches out his hand and then the ambush happens because the city's empty. They left the city empty. The ambush goes in. They set the city on fire. The smoke rises up,29:15 and then the people turn around. The people of I turn around, and they go, oh, no. What has happened to us? They give they don't it's the bible says they don't know this way or that. They don't know where to go. This way29:25 or that way. They don't know what to do. And so then the ambush comes out and now they're getting squeezed. They get squeezed because they have Israelites on both sides and ultimately, they win the29:36 battle. They win the battle. Verse 23, but the king of Ai, they took alive and brought him near to Joshua. So they did the land, they did the city,29:48 and now it's the king. Now it's the king because they already did the people too. They destroyed all the people. Now, are the 3 r's but there's a bonus r that I didn't tell you guys about. There's 4. 430:00 r's. 4 r's. You see, you do all these things, there's you renew yourself, you are ready, you make a plan with precision, you retaliate, you30:12 fearlessly fight in this fight and it can be hard. There's a reward. That's the last r, reward. Verse 24, verse30:24 24, you have a reward. When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them and all of them to the very last had fallen30:35 by the edge of the sword. All Israel returned to Ai and struck it down with the edge of the sword. Verse 25, and all who fell that day, both men and women were 12000, all the people of30:47 Ai. You see, Ai was completely destroyed, completely destroyed by Israel. And Joshua obeyed.31:00 Verse 26, but Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of I to destruction. See Joshua could have stopped with the javelin31:12 when he saw that they were winning. He could have stopped because he was getting tired of it. He could have stopped and stepped into the battle to help them. But it seems like from the text, he had his31:24 hand stretched out with the javelin and that's what he was doing. Why? Because that's what the Lord told him to do and because of that, he had total victory. 1 of your rewards31:35 for doing all these things for victory is having victory. You do these things, you will have victory in your life. You'll have victory over your struggles. You'll have victory over the pains and points in your life.31:47 But that's not all. That's not all you're gonna have. Verse 28. We'll skip to verse 28 here. So31:59 Joshua burned Ai and made it forever a heap of ruins as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening and at sunset, Joshua commanded that they32:10 took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the gate of the city and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day.32:23 Now, that happens a lot in the book of Joshua, where there's something there to this day. We talked about that before, especially with these monuments that the Israelites make, but their victory resulted in permanence.32:35 Their victory resulted in a permanence and a reminder to the generation that's reading the book of Joshua. Because they're reading this book and it says it's there to this day, which means they can go over there and32:47 look at it. You know, let's read this by John Chrysostom here, an early church father. He said, the path to the kingdom is not easy but the reward32:59 is beyond compare. Amen. It's not easy. It's not easy. And the reward is heaven. The reward is being with Jesus,33:11 but the reward is even greater too with us today because we can have victory today and we have a testimony. That's that permanence that the people of Israel had. When they say to33:23 this day, that's your testimony. That's something for you. You're leaving something for the next generation. You're leaving something for your kids. You're leaving something for those around you with your victory.33:36 They see you have victory over that, you overcame that. Wow, I feel like I can overcome some stuff now. I feel like I can fight my battles now that I've seen you do that. You have33:48 a testimony and you have victory. That is your reward for being obedient. That is your reward. This detailed battle shows Israel that by their33:59 obedience, the Lord will defeat all their enemies and give them the promised land. That's 1 of the reasons this book, this chapter is so detailed. The Lord takes obedience34:11 seriously and he takes repentance seriously. The victory of Ai is not just a story of what God has done in the past, but it's a reminder of what He can do for us34:22 right now. You wanna see a miraculous event in your life? Does anybody wanna see that? A miraculous event? Where's a miracle I can see?34:36 Experience the victory that the Lord can give you over your own struggles, over your own temptations, especially if you've been defeated by them in the past. That is a miraculous event on the level of34:48 any other miracle in the Bible because the Lord is behind it. The Lord is behind it. You're not by yourself. God is not done with you because of your past failures, but he is ready and35:00 able to give you the greatest victory you've ever seen in your life. He's ready for it. He's ready for it. And that victory will be a testimony to those around you, to your children,35:11 and to their children. It's a testimony that you'll have. That's the reward you're gonna have. And I don't know if there's anybody in here that hasn't experienced the35:23 greatest reward you could ever have. It's it's the reward that that Jesus Christ paid for on the cross. You know, we talked about that that preamble that we need to do, that that that little homework we have to do, which35:35 is getting rid of that sin. That's what Jesus did on the cross. You see, we're all born with this thing called sin, and that's the thing that stops us from spending forever with35:47 Jesus because we are eternal beings. We will live forever and ever and ever. And you either live forever with Jesus or you live forever35:58 without Jesus. Those are the 2 options. Living forever with Jesus is in his presence and eternal happiness and glory. Living without Jesus, the Bible36:10 describes it differently. That's what we would know as hell. That's what we know as the gnashing of teeth. And there's a question right outside this building that says, where will36:22 you spend eternity? Because you're gonna spend it 1 of 2 places. And because of this thing this thing called sin that we have, we're not able to spend it with Jesus36:34 because sin simply means missing the mark of falling short. And God wants us to be with him, and so that requires a payment.36:48 And so he sends his own son to this world to die on a cross as a payment for our sins, And that's how we're able to spend37:00 forever with Jesus, to spend eternity with Jesus. How do you do it? This is what we tell the kids in Patriot Kids. We say it's as easy as ABC. You accept him as your Lord and37:12 Savior. You believe that he died on the cross and rose again for your sins. And C, you confess your sins to him. You confess that you've done some things37:23 wrong, that you've fallen short of a standard. You've fallen short of the mark, and he is faithful to forgive you of your sins. If37:36 you're in this place right now and and you've never done that before, you you you think to yourself, yeah. You know what? This is making sense right now. We're gonna say a prayer together, and this prayer isn't what37:46 saves you. This is like a confirmation prayer. It's a confirmation of something that's already going on in your heart. And so we're gonna say it together right now. Everybody bow your heads and close your eyes and repeat37:58 after me. Say, dear Lord Jesus, accept you as my Lord and Savior. I believe that you died on38:10 the cross for my sins. Thank you, God, for forgiving me, I thank you for being with me38:21 for the rest of my life. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. If you said that prayer family and you meant it from your heart, you're now a part of the38:33 patria of God, the family of God, and we have some next steps for you if you said that prayer. What do you do now that you're a believer? What do you do now that you're saved, that you38:45 believe in Jesus? You're gonna visit this website. It's gonna be at grow dot faith, and you're gonna download a free book by our founding pastor, pastor Diego, and he tells you how do you walk out this life as a38:57 Christian. What do you do now? How do you achieve victory as a Christian? Because it's not gonna be perfect. It's not gonna be perfect. Amen, family? Alright. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed serviceShow more
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