White Horse Church Sermon Audio

In Jesus we are strong enough. Strong enough to go where he calls us. Strong enough to go when he calls us. Regardless of whether we feel ready or not. Jesus is with us.

Too often we come to God with a loaded die, tell him what we want and ask him to bless our decisions. But what if we are settling in a paradise in the shadow of the promise? What if that paradise is a place known as hell masquerading as beauty, like sin and destruction so often does? What if the promise looks like a desert? It's probably time to get some water and charge the hill and take hold of all of the life that God has won for you through Jesus!

To live our lives with an eternal perspective, focussed on Jesus. Our hope should be renewed, we should be moved to Joy aaaaaand we should be more urgent in mission, because well, frankly, Jesus is coming back. So, you know.

We’ve seen Joshua engaging in a battle over the throne of canaan, and there is a battle over the throne of my soul and your soul. We are all too aware that our soul is designed to be lead. To be driven, our souls are ruled by whatever king we elect to reign. And there is a battle over the throne of your soul. Satan will continue to introduce you to kings, whose words are like honey and promises too good to refuse. ‘Just tell Jesus to get off the throne for a moment, telling that person what you really think of them will make you feel justified, or how about you binge just one more episode of friends.. .How about you try this, just a little bit…’ There is a battle raging over the throne of our souls. So many temptations, so many directions we’re being pulled in. We feel the tension, we love Jesus, but sometimes the promises of another king, another temptation another idol to worship feel better to us in the moment. The problem is, we think that Jesus is going to share the throne with another.

Jesus knows the tendencies of our flesh to grow numb to spiritual things over time, but becausehe deeply desires for you to be present with him and to have the gospel at the focal point ofyour attention he gave us physical touchpoints of spiritual realities. Tangible moments thatinvolve us in the story of the gospel, to ratify our beliefs in reality. So that we might feel, touch,taste and see the gospel. Jesus gave us Baptism and Communion. To outward rituals that symbolise profound gospel transformation and narrative.The purpose of communion, as we see in our passage from 1 Corinthians 11, is to ‘proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes’. It also serves to remind us, tangibly, that Jesus has given hislife for us, that his body was broken and his blood shed, that you might one day see him face to face welcoming you home. What a profound and beautiful image! If only we could focus on thatall the time!

Even if you go to church, it doesn’t mean that you are being exposed (or exposing others) to the gospel explicitly. Sure, most people talk about Jesus, and about being good and avoiding bad, but the gospel message simply isn’t there—at least not in its specificity and its fullness. Inspired by the needs of both the overchurched and the unchurched, and bolstered by the common neglect of the explicit gospel within Christianity, we would like to invite you to this series, a punchy treatise to remind us what is of first and utmost importance—the gospel. Here is a call to true Christianity, to know the gospel explicitly, and to unite the church on the amazing grounds of the good news of Jesus! This week. How do we make a connection between what Christ has done and how we believe. Its not enought to simply know that Jesus wes Crucified we must be able to make the connection between that act and the idea that God loves us, between that act and God saves us. How is the good news, good news and not simply a good story? Thats the question that we answer this week.

Even if you go to church, it doesn’t mean that you are being exposed (or exposing others) to the gospel explicitly. Sure, most people talk about Jesus, and about being good and avoiding bad, but the gospel message simply isn’t there—at least not in its specificity and its fullness. Inspired by the needs of both the overchurched and the unchurched, and bolstered by the common neglect of the explicit gospel within Christianity, we would like to invite you to this series, a punchy treatise to remind us what is of first and utmost importance—the gospel. Here is a call to true Christianity, to know the gospel explicitly, and to unite the church on the amazing grounds of the good news of Jesus!

Our problem is that we forget the gravity of our sin, so our sin seems not so dark, which makes the beauty of the gospel not so great. This means that we forget that our sin is terrible, his sacrifice incredible and that our forgiveness is absolute. It's not until we see that our sin is great that we will know that the gospel is great and then we will not just know that we are forgiven, but we will feel forgiven. Easter should be the biggest day in the Christian calendar but instead, instead, it plays second fiddle to Christmas. We should be dancing, high fiving and celebrating the heck out of Easter like it was NYE 99'.

Just before this scene, the city of Gibeon had heard how Israel had destroyed Jericho and Ai by God’s power and they freaked out, knowing they were next. So they sent two guys to pretend to be from some far away poor small city and swindle Joshua into making a peace treaty with them. Joshua agreed that they would not attack them, only to later find out that they were from the great city of Gibeon, which was the city they were about to destroy, a huge, powerful city with a great army. So the Gibeonites were now under the care and protection of Israel. Now one of the kings Adoni-Zedek from a nearby city, jerusalem heard about this and freaked out. Because Gibeon was a great city, So Adoni decided to destroy the Gibeonites, so he made a coalition with 4 other kings in the land to destroy Gibeon. Gibeon was in a horrible situation, they weren't about to be attacked by just one neighboring army, but 5! They absolutely didn't stand a chance, so they reached out to Israel for help. Joshua inquires of God and gets a promise that God would win the fight for them and that they shouldn't fear. Joshua and the rest of Israel’s army then go to war against the coalition and win hands down, but not before they run into a problem. The sun is going down. If the sun goes down, they will lose the enemy and consequently the war. So Joshua prays, in audacious faith, an audacious prayer. He pray’s ‘sun stand still’ and it does. God answered the prayer immediately. This teaches us two things: 1: God can do anything 2: Prayer makes a difference see vv14

We are pragmatic people but God wants us to be prayerful people. The problem with our pragmatism is that we aren’t in a pragmatic war but a spiritual one. We need to recognise that we are in a spiritual war, and fight it with spiritual weapons. The first step is realising that we are the Gibeonites, that we like them have to throw ourselves not on our own strength but at the mercy of God. The gospel isn’t just what saved us, it is saving us and will save us. Will we be prayerful as our proactive posture, to fight a war we are in, fighting for the gospel, the name of Jesus and those that don’t yet know him? Where we want to get people to is that we must pray more than we act. Those decisions made swiftly by individuals or in committee with the whole church are meaningless without Christ in the center. And that we aren’t at the centre of a war of ideas but a spiritual war.

When we look at our sin we either realise that we are hopeless or we look at our sin and think "I can totally fix this". When God shows us our sin in the law, straight away he shows us not only that we are sinful but also how we can be made clean. Which mountain will we choose to stand on? You can't stand on both. You will either be on Ebal or Gerizim. It turns out the doorway of hope is a flipping great mountain of hope.