This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day four, week five of our look to the book of Joshua. We're heading
toward the last of the book of Joshua, Joshua 24 today, looking at verses 1 to
13. These are verses about how you choose God's challenge in your life.

The promises of God are the challenges of God. God's promises, these verses tell
us, begin with God's choice. They begin with God's choice, not your choice.

Are you choosing his challenge or challenging his choice? The difference
oftentimes is in realizing it begins with his choice. And that simple switch of
thinking makes all the difference between a fulfilled life and a frustrating
life.

The final address of Joshua in these verses, that begins in these verses we're
looking and then we'll finish it tomorrow, helps us to honestly answer that
question. Am I choosing his challenge by recognizing his choice? Here is Joshua
standing on the threshold of death, a full life behind him.

Does he just reminisce about the past? Absolutely not. He challenges the people
of God towards the future.

How do you respond to a challenge? Do you rise to the challenge or do you fall
beneath it? One of the ways to rise to the challenges that God gives in life is
to realize they begin with his choice.

So let me read for you some verses that let us see the opportunities in the
challenge of God's choice in our lives. Beginning in verse 3 and then reading
all the way down through verse 13, this is Joshua recounting for the people what
God had done amidst them. But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond
the river and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants.

I gave him Isaac, and Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country
of Sierre to Esau, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses
and Aaron and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there and I brought you
out.

When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, you came to the sea and the Egyptians
pursued them with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea. But they cried to
the Lord for help and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and he
brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I
did to the Egyptians.

Then you lived in the desert for a long time. I brought you to the land of the
Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them
into your hands.

I destroyed them before you and you took possession of their land. When Baalek
son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel, he sent for
Balaam the son of Baor to put a curse on you. But I would not listen to Balaam.

So he blessed you again and again and I delivered you out of his hand. Then you
crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against
you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites,
Hivites, and Jebusites.

But I gave them into your hand. I sent the hornet ahead of you which drove them
out before you, also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own
sword and bow.

So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build. And
you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.
Joshua is telling them the story and he's telling them God did it.

God has been choosing you from the beginning. Listen to the challenge of God's
choice in your life through how he's worked all down through history. And Joshua
just walked through it with the Lord's direction.

Look at Abraham. God's choice in his life was to move to a different country and
he followed God's choice and look at what happened. Look at Isaac.

God's choice in his life was to build upon his father's foundations and look at
how you're blessed by that today. Look at Jacob. God's choice in his life was to
send him down to Egypt, he and his family eventually.

And through that to change Jacob's heart and character and direction. Look at
Moses. God's choice in his life was to use him to set his people free.

And then he says look at you. We wandered in the desert and now God has brought
you into this land. Through the victories in this land you can see his choice
that he wants you to take full possession of his promise.

God challenges us in our lives in a variety of ways, through a great variety of
directions, but it's been all down through history. We've got to see that this
challenge is not just for others, it is for us. It comes down to you.

It comes down to me. Jesus said, "I've been choosing you from the very
beginning. " In John 15 he says, "You did not choose me, but I chose you.

" His choice challenges us to salvation, to discipleship, to witness, to
mission. I don't want you to miss in this challenge from Joshua the amazing
truth in verses 12 and 13 that we just read. Let me read again those verses.

"I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you, also the two
Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. So I gave you a
land on which you did not toil, and cities you did not build.

And you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not
plant. " God says to the people of Israel, through Joshua in this address, "You
were involved in it, but you did not do it, I did it. You live in it, you live
in the land, but you did not build it, I built it.

You eat of it," he says, "but you did not plant it. " This is an expression of
grace. This is an expression of how God works in my life and your life.

And if you're going to live with a sense of possession of God's promises, they
are God's promises for my life, they're God's promises for my circumstances, for
my situations, then you're going to have to be at home with grace because God's
promises are all about grace. To think that you could deserve God's promises, as
we said earlier this week, is absolutely ridiculous. They come by grace.

Involved in it, yes. God is going to involve you in the fulfillment of His
promise in your life. If it's a promise for a family, He's going to involve you
in what happens in that family.

If it's a promise for a ministry, He involves you in what happens in that
ministry. You work, you work hard many times, but God does it. God does it.

They worked hard to take this land. They came in, they had battles. God says, "I
know you had battles, but I cleared the way for you.

I sent the hornet ahead of you. " We don't know exactly what that means, if
there were bees actually that came in and chased the people out, or if there's
just a picture that God is giving here for them of Him preparing the way. He
prepares the way.

He prepares the way more than you realize, more than I realize in my life. This
is grace. And the moment I start to think it's all about me and what I've done,
the moment I've stopped realizing that it's all about grace, then I start living
by my power, not God's power.

I start living by my plans and not God's promises. If you feel lately that your
life has been just mostly about you, what you could get done, what you could get
accomplished, join the majority of Christians. So many of us live there too much
of the time, but God does not mean for that to happen.

He doesn't mean for just a few superstar Christians to live a different kind of
life. He means for you to live a life that's centered on God's promises. If I'm
going to do that, if you're going to do that, we have to keep coming back to
this place.

God's going to involve me in it, but He's the one who's going to do it. I'm
going to live in this place, but I'm not the one who's going to build it. God
is.

I may eat of these things, even enjoy them, but I didn't plan it. God did. God's
the one who causes the growth.

This is grace. Let's pray together. Jesus forgive me.

Forgive us for those times when we think it's so much about us because you've
allowed us to be involved. Thank you for allowing us to be involved, but instead
of thinking then that it's about us, help us to realize that that too is your
grace. You could have just done it, but you allow us to be a part of it.

Thank you for clearing the way, for sending the hornet ahead of us in ways that
we have seen and not seen, clearing the way for us, protecting us. Lord, all we
can see are the problems that we do have, but we know there are many problems
we've never faced because you've cleared the way. Thank you for driving out the
problems before us so many times, and help us to live in this place of grace.

We're involved in it, but you're doing it. We live in the middle of it, but
you're building it. We even eat of it, but you're the one that planted it.

Help us to live in this place of grace, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow
we're going to finish the book of Joshua. We're going to look at the choice that
we make based on the choice that God has made.