Sunday Sermon: Have a Plan
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Text: Joshua 6:1-7
Series: "Gearing Up for a Fantastic Fall"
One of the interesting trends emerging today is a phenomenon people are calling “planned spontaneity.” If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it really isn’t. It’s more the case that people today are so anxious to seek some sense of balance in their lives that they’re coming up with ways to have just enough structure while at the same time ensuring a sufficient measure of flexibility.
For example, our cell phones now have the capability of serving as a locator, a way to let us know when we’re close to a favorite coffeehouse or a bookstore, or even a special friend, so that if your path happens to come near to any one of the above, even though you weren’t counting on making that connection, you can, if you choose to – “planned spontaneity.”
Maybe it’s just me, but the whole concept of such supposed spontaneity sounds like an effort “to have my cake and eat it, too.” It says, “I don’t want my life to be planned to the minute, but at the same time, I want to be able to know when opportunities are near so that I can make sure that I don’t miss out on anything.”
Well, if there is any good way to create such a thing as “planned spontaneity,” it happens by choosing to submit our lives to a Sovereign God - a God who consistently surprises us and even amazes us by His grace. It happens by connecting to God’s plan for life and yet at the same time, being free to move as the Spirit directs.
We see that truth played out in the story of Joshua’s conquest of the city of Jericho. Jericho was a significant city in the land of Canaan so that the future security and well-being of God’s people in that Promised Land depended heavily on their being able to overcome its inhabitants and secure it for themselves.
Most of us know at least a little of the story. But this morning I want us to visit it again in a bit more detail so that we might gain insight into how we might prepare for God’s future and the “Jericho” challenges we will surely face in the coming days.
For example, notice in the first place how the story teaches us that as we get ready for God’s future, we need a plan that envisions God’s victory.
Vision is a slippery thing, spiritually speaking. We can define it as the ability to see what others have not yet been able to see.
It’s like the story of the two shoe salesmen who were sent overseas to scout for new markets. Their first stop was to a country where everyone was barefoot. The first salesman sent back an email to the home office saying, “Leaving tomorrow; no one wears shoes.” But the second salesman’s email was vastly different: “Incredible market potential; no competition.”
How do we view the challenges that inevitably come upon us? Basically, we have two choices. One, we can see them as insurmountable and allow them to defeat us. Or two, we can look at them as opportunities to experience the surprising and liberating power of God as with His help we come against them.
For people of faith, the latter choice is the only choice.
Look at verse 2: “Then the LORD said to Joshua, ‘See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.” What’s important to notice here is that nothing has yet changed. The city appears as strong as ever. The walls are intact. The inhabitants of Jericho are still on the inside going on with business as usual.
But God is calling Joshua to exercise the vision to embrace the vision that He has promise and to begin ordering his life around the assurance of what God is yet to do.
And the same call is made available to you this morning. God wants even now for you to imagine the difference that His power can make in the face of the challenge that is before you today. God wants you even now to order your life around the victory that God is going to give you over those challenges and start living as if that victory has already been secured, because in some sense through your faith in Him, it already has.
That’s one of the remarkable qualities I see about the faith of Jesus. He saw God’s victory before anyone else ever recognized it. In fact, that’s what frustrated the religious crowd most in Jesus’ day. He kept talking about things that they just couldn’t see, many of which happened in the New Testament city of Jericho – a tax collector by the name of Zacchaeus who could become just as much a son of Abraham as the synagogue priests, a blind man named Bartimaeus who was just a word away from receiving his sight, the possibility of a man traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem, set upon by robbers and helped not by a priest or a Levite, but by of all people a despised Samaritan. Is it any wonder that it was at Jericho that Jesus saw the inevitability of the cross but also the triumph of resurrection? “See,” Jesus said, “we’re going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again” (Luke 18:31-32).
God doesn’t promise that His future will be easy or without sacrifice, but one thing he does promise is that His victory is certain, and our recognizing it today will give us the courage not to give up in the face of the challenges we must confront and overcome before experiencing it in full. This morning, have a plan that envisions God’s victory.
There’s something else we need to have. We need to have a plan that follows God’s direction. In other words, the ultimate realization of God’s victory requires of us our absolute commitment to pursuing God’s instruction.
In Joshua’s case, the instructions were very specific. “March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark, and on the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long last on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”
Notice the number of times the number “seven” occurs in God’s directive. March around the wall for six days, but the seventh day will be the one when things happen. On the seventh day, have seven priests carry the rams’ horns in front of the ark seven times.
Why does God have an obsession with the number “seven?” Because it’s His number. Beginning with the book of Genesis, where God sets the seventh day apart as a day of rest and extending to the book of Revelation, where the Son of Man sits on the throne surrounded by seven golden lampstands, with seven stars in his right hand, the number “seven” represents that which only God can do.
It may be that the reason so many of us don’t experience the power of God more in our lives is because we have yet to submit fully to God’s direction. Too much of the time we question it. Imagine what would have happened if Joshua had said to the people after about the third day of marching around the city six times, “I think that’s enough; let’s not overdo it. You priests go ahead and blow the horns.”
And yet that’s exactly what so many of us tend to do. In our shortcut, “on demand” world, we don’t follow God’s guidance to its final conclusion. We start with good intentions, but we falter along the way. We think we’ve done enough, and yet the walls around us are still standing.
I have heard so many people say things like, “I pray to God for help and direction, but I don’t hear God say anything.” It may just be that God hasn’t seen you put into practice the last word He gave you, and you just need to stay with the last word until you get it right and God honors it.
Think of Job, whose world fell apart. Job kept trying to figure out where he went wrong, until he finally decided just to trust the last promise he received from God and by staying with it, in spite of the counsel of everyone around him, he came to see God in new light and know God’s favor in a new way.
And the same can happen for you, if this morning you will stay with God’s plan and align yours with His direction. His plan is far more perfect than any you could devise.
Have a plan that envisions God’s victory and follows God’s direction. And finally, have a plan for your life that seizes God’s opportunity.
Too many believers have what we might call the “ready, aim, aim” syndrome. In other words, they just can’t pull the trigger on what God calls them to do. They see the victory. They commit to the plan. But when the time comes to exercise a little faith, they freeze up and the opportunity passes them by.
Notice Joshua’s response in verse 7. After having seen the victory and explained the process to the people, in verse 7, “he ordered the people, ‘Advance! March around the city, with the armed guard going ahead of the ark of the LORD.”
I think it was Henry Ford, of Ford Motor Company fame, who made the statement, “You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do.” In other words, it’s not enough just to have a plan or a vision. You have to put that plan into action and bring that vision to reality. And the best time to start is the moment God opens the door.
I’m amazed at how the tone of urgency underlies so much of the Bible, and in particular the gospel. In Mark’s gospel, the word “immediately” occurs some seventeen times, four times in the first chapter! “Immediately the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12). “Immediately (Jesus’) fame spread abroad” (Mark 1:28). “Immediately the leprosy departed from the (sick man)” (Mark 1:42). There’s no time to dally when God is at work!
Why is that the case? Is it because God is hyperactive and impatient? Absolutely not. I think Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who wrote Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians, is closer to the truth when he observes how:
“When God offers the Torah to the children of Israel, they do not say, ‘Let us hear what God wants and then we’ll do it.’ Instead (as Exodus 24:7 tells us), they respond in what seems to be the wrong order: ‘We will do and we will hear.’ Some actions (especially the actions of faith) simply cannot be understood (or heard) until they are performed, or done. By doing, we understand.”
“By doing, we understand.”
Could it be this morning that part of the reason you haven’t experienced the favor of God as much as you’d like is because you’re waiting to understand before you act, when the word of God for you is to “advance?”
You can’t build a faith on either what you understand or even plan to do. You build a faith by constructing a life plan that just like Joshua seizes God’s opportunity.
The real challenge of life is to construct a plan that doesn’t totally take away the element of surprise. But can any plan really do such a thing? I think not. Plans deal with the future, and the future always takes us by surprise. It takes us by surprise, but it doesn’t take God by surprise.
When you make your plans for this fall, make sure you include God, the God who grounds our life while amazing us with His grace in Jesus the Christ. Such a life is the best of both worlds, this world we’re living in now and the world above that is yet to be, which is Heaven, our Promised Land.