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You Just Can’t Lose: Five facts about a winning faith. This morning I am starting a series that will take us through the Sundays of summer. It will be based on some of the stories found mentioned in Hebrews chapter eleven. This chapter has been referred to as the faith chapter and for good reason. Everyone mentioned in it did something based on their level of faith. This is not a series on faith but more of a series on all of the things that faith effects in our lives. We will start out the series by looking at the fact that we win by faith.

Everyone needs a win.

There are many things that people want to have victory over in their lives. It could be sin or even some part of themselves that they would like to change. It could even be the achievement of a consistent life. They long for a life and faith that will win more than it looses.

Winning is important you know. I have always felt sorry for the person who invented non-competitive sports. You know that’s where we let our children play a sport but don’t keep score. That way there is not such thing as a winner or looser and no one get their feelings hurt. Sounds like a really neat perfect little world. Your going to tell me that gets aren’t keeping track of points in their heads during those kind of games? Of course they are if they are old enough to count. No one is going to memorialize the person who tried to devalue or neutralize winning. We don’t want to lose!

The people of Israel knew about defeat. They spent forty years wandering around in the wilderness because of disobedience. God led them through Moses to leave the land of their captivity. They were delivered and led by one miracle after another yet they had the hardest time obeying what God told them to do. The fact is they often made it much harder then it was.

They discovered that victorious or winning faith was possible. To enter the promise land they had to go through the city of Jericho which was a walled city that seemed impossible to conquer. By the time of the story found in Joshua 6, Joshua has become their leader and God has given him clear directions to follow that will allow them to win the battle of Jericho.

Hebrews 11:30 “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days.”

Our study today is found in story form in the sixth chapter of Joshua. I will be using selected verses as we go along.

Here are five facts they found out about faith based on this story:

1. Faith is often much simpler than we attempt to make it.

It is easy to imagine that faith is a mysterious or difficult thing. Often the problem that we are trying to conquer is very difficult and overwhelming and so we think that our faith must also be complicated to match the scale of our problem. Faith revolves around God’s power not how we view the problem.

In this story Jericho was to be captured. It was a walled city, and it would be impossible, even with a gigantic army, to overthrow the walls of the city. That is exactly what the “Children of Israel” were supposed to do, not with an army but with faith. They were to simply trust God to do it for them.

There is a verse of scripture in Exodus that reflects the simplicity of faith when you rely on God.

“Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” Exodus 14:13

Standing still, waiting on God, relying on God and allowing God to work are all included in the simplicity of faith.

It’s not about you, it’s about God.
It’s not about how hard the problem is, it’s about God.
It’s not about how much money you have or how you are going to solve it, it about how God is going to solve it.

Our resources are limited and often inadequate. God’s resources are not limited and are never inadequate. We must learn to simply trust Him for the win.

I Cor. 15:57, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

II Cor. 3:4-5, “And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God . . .”

The Israelites needed to let God fight this battle of Jericho. They learned to simply trust God.

2. Sometimes faith will stretch you because it seems foolish.

Here was a great walled city and God told them to march around the city once a day for six days straight. Don’t talk or make any noise just march.

Have you ever thought how foolish they must have felt? Can you imagine if the American troops completing that great and historical march to Baghdad only to march around the city for a few days. They wouldn’t fire a shot. They wouldn’t even look like soldiers. How foolish it would seem. Some of us would have a hard time.

Can you imagine the whole city of Jericho coming out to view this unusual group of people marching around the city. It very easily could have been a million Israelites marching around. The first day it might have been somewhat interesting but by the fifth or sixth day it would have been amusing. Can you imagine the insults being hurled down from the walls? They weren’t even allowed to trash talk the people of Jericho. They had to just remain silent and trust that God knew what He was doing.

We read these stories and we think how wonderful they are but put yourselves in this place and see how easy it would be to obey this order from God.

I am enlisting the help of some talking vegetables to help me illustrate this point.

Insert video clip from Veggie Tales:

3. Winning faith means that we will walk in sincere obedience to what God says.

If you read this story closely you will see that Joshua carried out God’s instructions to the letter. He didn’t make it up as he went along. Joshua, the priest and the people all did what God told them to do.

This is critical if you want to have a winning faith.

This kind of faith separates the genuine from the imitation.

How often we are slow to obey what God wants us to do. We may even set out with good intentions but then a storm of trouble comes along or a challenge that we don’t understand and it becomes very easy to look back to where we used to be. The children of Israel did this on a regular basis and in fact some of them died because of it.

They were always murmuring and complaining.

God led them out of Egypt.
God opened up the Red Sea and allowed them to cross on dry ground.
He gave them fresh water from a rock.
He gave them manna to eat every day.
He guided them with a cloud by day and fire by night and yet they still had a hard time obeying what He told them to do.

There is not doubt that God called me to this church and community. I can see His hand of preparation in my life over the last three or four years and every thing I was doing seems to have been preparing me for here. It felt really good to finally say yes to coming. Everything seemed to be in order. It didn’t take a lot of faith to sit in front of the great board of this church and say I want to be your leader.

As some of you know and can remember, there were times when I thought this would have been much easier if I would have just stayed put and not put my kids through a change of schools, the selling of a house and all the other little things that didn’t just fall into place. The one thing that kept me going was the fact that I believed that this was God’s will and that I was walking in obedience. I must admit it didn’t feel right when the house didn’t sell for eight months. God and I had a lot of one-sided conversations. I still don’t understand it but I know that this was the right thing to do.

You have situations that God is calling you to do and all you have to do is obey what God is telling you to do. You may be worried about what others are going to say about you or what they are going to think but if God is calling you and guiding you then you’re going to be okay if you simply obey.

No fear.
No reservations.
No questioning.
No doubting.

Just obey.

4. Faith is often strengthened by testing.

Testing for Joshua would have come in the form of the time involved. Why seven days? Why seven times on the last day?

Do you realize how tired they must have been after marching around this city for seven days and now seven times in one day? Do you realize how hard it would have been to keep you mouth shut for seven days and not complained about how tired your feet were and how this was ridiculous.

Their strength was very weak. They were exhausted and their human resources had to be almost gone. And that is when God like to show up. He loves to come in and give you a win.

It’s not that you may always feel like you won the earthly battle you are facing because sometimes things happen on earth that are a natural result of life in general. The good news is that God can turn those defeats into a win by his will being done and our acceptance of that will.

They waited and waiting is often the test.

“Waiting time is never wasted time.” Tell yourself that the next time your waiting in line some where. The reason the backseat of my car often looks like a library is that I don’t want to get caught somewhere with nothing to do. I spend a fair amount of time waiting in my life. Try to always have something to read or write with.

In life waiting time doesn’t have to be wasted time either. When we wait on God, He will draw us closer to Him. He will reveal Himself and His nature in ways that we would never see or experience if we weren’t waiting.

It is easy to become very impulsive and sometimes try to take matters into our own hands when all God wants us to do is wait on Him.

The owner of a manufacturing plant decided to make a surprise tour of the shop. While he was walking through the warehouse he noticed a young man lazily leaning against a packing crate. "Just how much are you being paid a week?" asked the owner angrily. "Three hundred dollars," the young man said. The owner pulled out a money clip and peeled off three hundred dollar bills. "Here's a week's pay," he shouted. "Now get out and don't come back!" Without a word the young man took the money and left the warehouse. The angry owner turned to the manager and said, "Tell me, how long has that guy worked for us?" The manager shook his head. "He doesn't work here. He was just delivering a package."

We need to learn to slow down and wait on God even through the testing.

Waiting time is never wasted time when faith is operating and when it is God’s will that we are waiting for.

Don’t let the testing get you down. Just keep on keeping on.

Mike Kollin, former linebacker of the Miami Dolphins, was asked by his coach to do some recruiting. Mike said, "Sure, coach. What kind of player are you looking for?" The coach replied, "Well, Mike, you know there's that fellow who gets knocked down and just stays down?" Mike said, "We don't want him, do we?" The coach answered, "No, we don't want him. Then there's that fellow that gets knocked down and gets up and then gets knocked down and stays down." Mike said, "We don't want him either, do we?" The coach responded, "No, and then there's the fellow who gets knocked down, gets back up, gets knocked down, and gets back up again and again." Mike said, "That's the guy we want, right?" Then the coach said, "No, we don't want him either. I want you to find that guy who's knocking everybody down. That's the guy we want!"

You and I don’t have the ability to knock anything or anyone down but with God all things are possible.

We can keep knocking down life’s challenges with God’s power and strength.

5. Faith will lead to satisfying results.

After more than a year as Barbara Bush's press secretary, Anna Perez marveled at the wonders of her position, and for good reason. There was a time when Perez had dreamed not of having a White House office, but simply of having a roof over her head. Perez was in the fifth grade when she came home from school and found her mother, two brothers, and two sisters sitting on the street. They had been evicted. "Mom had to split up the family," Perez remembers. "I lived with my fifth-grade teacher for a while. But no matter how bad things got, my mother made it clear that we were not defined by our financial situation. We were defined by our ability to overcome it."

All of us face challenging circumstances that come into our lives. All of us have something the causes us to question how in the world we will win or ever experience victory.

“On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city!” Joshua 6:15-16

Joshua and the children of Israel followed God’s plan and gained an incredible win on this day.

In verse 20 we read, “When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every men charged straight in, and they took the city.”

God gave them the victory.

Video Clip from Veggie Tale movie.

Comedian David Brenner came from a poor but close family. When he graduated from high school, however, he was given an unforgettable gift. "Some of my friends got new clothes and a few rich kids even got new cars," he remembers. "My father reached into his pocket and took something out. I extended my hand, palm up, and he let my present drop into it-a nickel! Dad said to me, 'Buy a newspaper with that. Read every word of it. Then turn to the classified section and get yourself a job. Get into the world. It's all yours now.' I always thought that was a great joke my father had played on me, until a few years later when I was in the Army, sitting in a foxhole and thinking about my family and my life. It was then I realized that my friends had only gotten new cars and clothes. My father had given me the whole world. What greater gift!"

God has given you the whole world and the ability to conquer it. With Him all things are possible.

2003/06/08