Joshua's Wisdom: Purify, Listen, and Apply

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Well, Kyle, here we are right, we're the Bible Guys. I'm Jeff, he's Kyle. Chris is out of town today, and we are wrapping up this week's episodes with a really dynamic story. There's some big choices, the big decisions that the people are gonna have to make here because they've been at this moment before, yes, and they made the wrong choice. So this time they're gonna have to make a big choice. But before we jump into that, speaking of choices, big choices, big choices, Speaking of choices, I thought I would take you on a journey of would you rather? Chris, and I always like these, So would you rather do this? And so you have to take these as like, would you rather have it always be this way or always that's what we're doing? Okay, right here we go. Would you rather have to always speak in rhymes or always speak in riddles? Oh? Would you rather have everything always rhyme? Or would you always have to rather I always have to speak in riddles? I think it'd be fun to always be able to speak in rhymes, you'd be. Like a rapper exactly. Then maybe my, my, my, my wrap can finally flourish. I've been waiting for that to finally take off. But yeah, I'm gonna go with the rhymes. I like that one better. Okay, Okay, that's good. Would you rather have spaghetti for hair or maple syrup for sweat? Oh, spaghetti for hair, Spaghetti for hair or maybe for sweat? Dude? Oh, I like my hair. It's gray a lot, but my hair is still pretty deep. I'm gonna keep my hair and I'll take the maple syrup for sweat. Okay, So I just before you make that choice, Okay, what about those hot nights okay, right where you just kind of or when you're sick and you get a fever, right, you just be all sticky? Yeah, and I do play hockey, which is weird because when it's a weird sports play because when you sweat and then it gets cold, so it's a weird thing. So maybe just be like sticky inside of your hockey. I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with maple syrup. So you'd rather still went out? Okay, nothing about spaghetta would you rather always smell like cheese or always smell like onions? Oh my gosh, it's terrible. That is terrible. What's the worst of two evils here? Smell like cheese or smell like onions? I gotta so. Do you think onions smell bad? Personally old onions? Yes? I think when the onions are chopped up, like when they're fresh like they oh, man, smell like onions versusmell like cheese. I don't know, Man, this is tough. I'm gonna go with smelling like. Wait, before you have that question, always which which is your wife repulsed most by? Yeah? I know that's a tough one. So she does not like cooked onions. I'm thinking like, can I say chopped onions like fresh? Yeah? I'd like to smell like. Fresh, fresh chopped onions over smell like cheese. Okay, okay, although I'm not excited about that. Okay, here's here's one that I've never I promise you I have never contemplated this. Okay, I bet would you rather have fingers as long as your legs or legs as short as your fingers? This is terrible. This is a great visual though, fingers as long as your legs, fingers as long as your legs or legs as long as your fingers. Oh my gosh, wow. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go the first one. Imagine how sweet i'd be like dunk in a basketball super long fingers. Yeah, I think it's as long as your legs. Yeah, how heavy? Would your hands be very heavy? But dude, imagine yeah boo picking up a basketball. I think I could you find some usefulness in that we're having finger length feet. Yeah? Okay, I'm also kind of impaid, like to move quickly. You know, we like to go place as quickly, and so I couldn't imagine that'd be a tough one. Okay, let me see. Would you rather only be able to whisper or be able to shout everything you say? Oh? Man? I know people who are quiet talkers, yeah, and I know people who are loud, which wanted to annoy you more. The ones that make me mad are the loud. I was just gonna say, I think i'd rather, if I had to give get the option, I'd say I'd rather always whisper be the person that's yeah, because it's sometimes when there someone's just like not reading the room and I can be that person's But I know people like that where they're just so loud. They're on one hundred all the time, and you're like, come on, turn it down. Where's the whisperers? You know, sometimes whispers they kind of like draw you in. My wife and I were on a train from Vienna to Venice. So it's like a seven and a half hour train ride, and you come up along the edge of the Dolomites. It's beautifully beautiful mountains, all this stuff, and we were we were in first class, but this guy comes in. These two guys come in. I think they boarded with us, and the one guy talked so loudly for seven he fell us sleep from like maybe about thank you, but for five hours of the seven hours he talked so loudly. I have noise canceling headphones. And I wasn't feeling well, so I was feeling a little sick on that On that that train ride, I'd gotten an infection, so I had a little bit of a fever. I wasn't feeling well, and I'm thinking, I want to sleep so first class, I can leave my seat way back all that kind of stuff. So I have noise canceling headphones. I put those on. I can still hear this guy talking, right, and you've got the of the train. It should just put you to sleep. It's great, right, Nope, this guy talking so loudly and so the you couldn't miss anything you said, and it was all inane, like none of it mattered. It felt like you talked five hours of nothing, right, and so it's just so I put on my noise canceling headphones. I can still hear. It's the only thing I can hear. It is so nauseating when you're like trying to block a thing out you cannot. So I got up and I got my ear plugs out of my my thing out of my backpack, and I put foam you're plugs in, and then my noise kind of sending headphones on over top, and then I couldn't hear him. Finally I was able to go to sleep. So finally, after like an hour and a half, you know, I took this little nap, I wake up. I take it off, and he still so loud, and that his companion was kind of like this where I'm talking, talking, talking, and you just keep going. Yeah. Yeah, that was his companion for seven hours was like uh huh, yeah, dude, think. About how his companion felt though you were just ready for him to shut up, but the companion actually had to act engage in the conversation. So hey, this is going to be a bonus segment for our listeners because this is what made Jeff mad this week. Right, So Chris always has a way so on behalf of all of the people in the world. I get mad about loud talker. Loud talkers in places where they should have a little bit more of a filter aware the fact that this is a quiet space, not a loud space. So i'ld like to add on to that. You want to pile on so you have a what made Kyle mad this week so is because it just reminded me. I think the loud talkers where it's a little bit of like low self awareness because I have a louder voice. I think something, but like you know, you kind of read the room once in a while and wife goes yeah. But it's like an airplane as an example, either the airplane or when you're waiting to get on the plane and people will be watching like YouTube videos on full blast or Instagram reels or TikTok or whatever, and it's full blast, and you're like, I was so tempted. And then you know, there's moments where you just kind of feel like a jerk when you're on public and you're like, but this person was I wanted so badly to offer him my free uh headphones that they give you on the airplane, and because I had one that I'd gotten on a previous fight and it was still package. I want to so badly to a guy who was just for an hour or two straight, We're sitting there waiting playing you know a lot of them inappropriate My kids are sitting there very inappropriate videos. I wanted so bad to be like, you might need these more than I do. Oh my gosh, Yes, it's frustrating. Come okay, well, hey there we go. We got two We got two segments in there. Yeah, well I said two. Fair. I'm all fired up though, yeah, sweat. Well, as I mentioned before, we jumped in to this, there's a big decision to be made because the people of Israel have found themselves at this situation before, and that's what this hole would you rather thing was about. So in Joshua chapter What's the passage for reading Joshua Chapter three one. Here's what it says. The Israelites are up at the River Jordan. At this point they've already spied out the land again. The report is, hey, we can take them. Everybody's terrified of us. And so early the next morning, Joshua and all the Israelites left to Kesha Grove and arrived at the banks of the Jordan River, where they camped before crossing. Three days later. The Israelite officers went through the camp, saying, give these instructions to the people. When you see the levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, move out from your positions and follow them. Since you've never traveled this way before, they will guide you. Stay about a half mile behind them, keeping a clear distance between you and the ark. Make sure you've not come any closer. Then, Joshua told the people, fire yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do great wonders among you. In the morning, Joshua said to the priests, lift up the Ark of the Covenant and lead the people across the river. And so they started out and went ahead of the people. The Lord told Joshua today, I will begin to make you a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites. They will know that I am with you, just as I am with Moses. Give this command of the priests who carry the Ark of the Covenant. When you reach the banks of the river Jordan River, take a few steps into the river and stop there. So Joshua told the Israelites, come and listen to what the Lord your God says. Today. You will know that the Living God is among you. He will surely drive out the Canaanites, the Hittites, the high Bites, the Parizites, the Gurgashites, the Amorites, and Jebusites. Ahead of you, look, the Ark of the Covenant, which belongs to the Lord of the whole Earth, will lead you across the Jordan River. Now, choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. The priests will carry the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the Earth. As soon as their feet touched the water, the flow of water will because off upstream, and the river will stand up like a wall. So the people left their camp to cross the Jordan and the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of them. It was the harvest season and the Jordan was overflowing its banks. But as soon as the feet of the priests who were carrying the arc touched the water at the river's edge, the water above that point began backing up a great distance away at a town called Adam, which is near Zarathan, and the water below that point float on to the dead sea until the riverbed was dry. Then all the people crossed over near the town of Jericho. Meanwhile, the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Lord's Covenant stood on the dry ground in the middle of the river bed as the people passed by. They waited there until the whole nation of Israel had crossed the Jordan on dry ground. Yeah that's good. Yeah, that's a wild story. That's a crazy story. And then we talked about this before, but you said that anywhere between one and three million people you know, going through this, So think about that, like, because I think, you know, when you don't take that into context, the amount of people, you just think, oh, they just you. Know, crossed over real quick. Like how long would that have I mean, that would have taken a very long time to hours, Yeah, to get you know, one point five whatever, two million people across that is, that's that's wild. Yeah, So it was how many miles north? Did it start to back up in that near that town called Adam? Did it say how many miles? It was twelve minute? Uh big? The arc of the Covenant began backing up a great distance at the town called Adam, yep, which is near Zarathan. So they're in a kasha grove. Do we have a map, Yeah, there's a map here in the in the thing. It looks like it was about twenty miles north. Yeah, you see that, yep. So as you if you ever get a chance, this is one of the things, man, you should get yourself a good study Bible. I love that life application study Bible. I know a lot of times we talk about this chronological life application study Bible. It's useful for what we're doing where we're trying to go in the order of things. For practical Bible study. Just get a regular life application study Bible with a new living translation. That's what you use, right, isn't that same way? So? But in it there's a map here, and then it gives you scale, right, it shows you where the city where the Acacia Grove was, and where the plains of Moab are and then where Adam is about twenty miles north, give or take. So it starts to back up there, the water starts to stand up. Then the water runs past down into the sea, the Dead Sea, and then everything is dry. So they had miles and miles and miles across. It wasn't like you had three million people getting in line and we're going, you know, three hundred people wide across the river. It was miles. God backed up so much of the river and it's during flood season. This miracle, quite honestly, some some archaeologists, some historians would say this was a bigger miracle than God making the Red Sea, dividing the Red Sea and drying that because of the flowing water during flood stage of the Jordan River and the amount of people. I think the different to be with the Red Sea would just be the adversary like with having faro. Oh that probably sure, Yeah, yeah yeah. When you read this, you's like, hold the what just happened? Like this? Just say I'm talking about the sheer amount of water. This is more water move incredible. Yes, One of the things that stood out that I think you know when you read over it. You know Joshua telling the people purify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do great wonders among you. Just to read this note on here it says before entering the Promised Land, the Israelites were to perform a purification ceremony. This was done, Uh, this is often done before making a sacrifice, or is in this case before witnessing a great act of God. And said a person could become unclean for many reasons, which we. Know about that, right, we see that. But but here it says God used these various outwards signs of uncleanliness to illustrate a person's inward uncleanliness that comes as a result of sin. So this purification ceremony pictured the importance of approaching God with a pure heart. So like the Israelites, we need God forgiveness before we approach him. Wow. So it's important right that that was step one purification. This is a part of the communion act that we should have you know in the in First Gritians chapter eleven. Listen, you should go and read First Corinthians chapter eleven again. One you have to remember communion in their day, the Lord's supper was a meal. It was the Passover meal, right, and so it was like Thanksgiving dinner, and everybody'd rush in. It was a huge party. You drink all the wine, you gobble up all the food, you eat until you can't hardly move. That was the idea. It wasn't supposed to be that way, but that's what it had become. And especially among the gentiles who didn't understand the passover, so they just come in and just eat, you know, And so Paul is having to remind them, Hey, the Lord gave me this, you know, don't do that. And then he talks about, as a matter of fact, you should check yourself. You should consider whether or not in this moment, you're worthy of receiving communion. Right. It's because some people are sick, some people even die because of the fact that they're receiving communion unworthily. And not that you and I are ever totally worthy, but Jesus makes us worthy. But the idea here is that we should consider where are we at with God. It's almost a purification moment. It's a moment of confessing sin, purging this sin, of saying, God, I recognize that I've allowed these things to creep back in my life. I'm asking you to forgive me, purify me, make me worthy to receive this moment of communion where I'm remembering Jesus' death right, his sacrifice, the punishment he took in his body, and the payment that he paid with his blood. And so even in modern Christianity, we should still have this purification moment, this moment of re engaging with God in a serious way before we just run off and take the thing we want. Yes, because what they want is the Promised Land. Yes, we've been wandering around for a generation, and now we're going to get it. Let's just run across the river and go and celebrate. Joshua goes hey, calm down, purify. Well, that's all I was going to say. I think you've already mentioned a couple of times. But the fact that they've been here before, right, But is this. What they did before? No? No, So it's so interesting that they actually took a different The story changed and the outcome, the result changed when they did it God's way. Right before you enter. Here's we're we're going to go through this cleanliness ceremony and remember you know what God has done or and and and pure or sorry pure fa purification ceremony. And I think it's really awesome to see that, Like literally before Josh was ready to do that. He said, Hey, we're gonna we're starting new here, and this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna, you know, purify ourselves before the Lord. I think it's really you haven't been here before. He literally says that you haven't been here before. Anytime you come up to a new thing, a new moment, it's worth recognizing, Hey, this is a holy moment. I haven't been here before. God. You're getting ready to be a new parent, you're getting ready to go into you know, you're getting ready to get married. You're getting ready to be a new parent, You're you're you're raising teenagers. Suddenly you've never done this before. You have an opportunity for a new job or a new career. Those are all holy moments. Right. You didn't you didn't create that, God gave you that. This is a this is a new season of life that God has giving you. Now you're you're an empty nester for the first time. What do I do with retirement in the future? Right, these are all holy moments. Holy seasons, and you haven't been here before. When you get to a moment where you say, okay, I haven't been here before. Pause, cleanse yourself, surrender to God again. And then do you know what else he did? And I was going to comment on the other side of this. In verse nine, Joshua tells the Israelites come and listen to what the Lord your God says, and he sits down. They want to rush across the river, and he goes, hey, hey, before we run, let's not get out ahead of ourselves. Let's remember again what God said. This isn't what we want to do. This is what God is telling us to do. And so the note here, which I just love in life, have kiss said Bibes says. Just before crossing over into the Promised Land, Joshua gathered the people to hear the words of the Lord. Remember, they just purified themselves. They confess their sin, they get clean, they get right with God, and then they sit down with God's word. That's what they're doing back to back before they go rushing in. And it says no doubt their excitement was high. They wanted to rush on, but Joshua made them stop and listen. We live in a fast paced age where everyone rushes just to keep up. It's easy to get caught up in our task asks, becoming too busy for what God says is most important. Listening to his words before making your schedule. Take time to focus on what God wants from all of your activities. Knowing what God has said before you rush into your day can help you avoid foolish mistake preaching. Right, isn't this fantastic? Good? Yeah? And so I want to commend our listeners and our viewers. Right, this is what you're doing. You're taking twenty minutes many of you. I know, based on the fact that I look at all the demographics and the metrics behind the scenes on YouTube and on Spotify and all those things. Most of our listeners listen before noon. Yeah, right, that's how they're starting their day, or they're ending their day this way. They're coming in just before they go to sleep at night. Then there's another big russia people who listen in the evenings at nighttime before the go to bed. But there's something about that saying, Hey, I'm going to bracket my day with God's word. I'm going to hear what God has to say, you know. So, for if you're a morning person, you get up an extra thirty minutes early and listen to Chris and Jeff for Kyle and Jeff talking about the Bible. That's what you're doing, is you're taking God's words and you're getting some of God God's thoughts in your head. Not that my words or your words are God's thoughts, but we're using God's word yep, right, yep ye, And so you're experiencing those things. Or if you're not a morning person, finishing your day before you go to sleep, your brain tends to work through the last few things you put in your head. Most people are putting politics and Facebook in their head right right before they go to sleep, and wonder why they're miserable on that word. Maybe if they'd spend more time taking God's word into their minds and in there they sleep better too. But then what happens is you tend to wake up with whatever you were thinking last is the beginning of has an effect on your day the next day. So there's something to that, you know. I think the best thing my mom and dad did for me and my three brothers was every morning and every evening we had devotions in the morning, my dad would leave whatever he was reading in the Bible because he'd always leave for work at four thirty in the morning, so he would leave a note, Hey, read this passage and here's a big idea every day for us. And so at breakfast we're all, you know, shoving raising brand in our mouth. Well, my mom reads the verse and then we all have to kind of give an idea. What do we think that passage means? So my mom and dad were not content to read a verse. They always wanted us to sort out what does it mean? Right? So what does this mean to us? What do you think your dad was trying to tell us by reading this verse today? Whatever? And then in the evening I would say, six out of seven nights, from the time I was twelve years old to the time well eight years old, probably until the time I was I graduated high school, six out of eight nights a week, or six out of seven nights a week, we would read whatever the current proverb was. So today is what's the day? Today the twenty eight four fourth, No, today's the seventeenth, today's the twenty fifth, Yeah, twenty July twenty fifth, Yeah, July twenty fifth. So we would read Proverbs twenty five cool, and then my dad would always make we couldn't finish devotions until we go all the way are on the room and everybody, Mom, dad, me, my brothers. We would have to share. This verse jumped off the page. And this is what I think it means in how to ply my life. So Proverbs is just a book of wisdom. Yeah, right, So I think there's a level of wisdom you get on how to live life just by spending every single day taking in God. Say, this is how life works. Live this way, right, So those two elements doctrinally in the morning wisdom. At night, we meditated on the word of God to the point that there's an advantage I think that God gave me through my parents that I've got fifteen hundred verses that I memorized in my lifetime. This that meditating on God's word. And I think if you have it in you and then you pause to think about it, then you're going to be well. You might go, I don't have fifteen Bible verse fifteen hundred Bible verses, memorize, Okay, learn five right, spend spend thirty minutes in God's word today, and all you're looking for is guidance today. So in this moment, he says, you haven't been here before. Get right with God, spend some time in his word, then we'll go in. But don't just go rushing. A lot of people rush into new careers, rush into relationships, rush into new families, rush into whatever without purifying themselves spending time with God getting holy again, and then spend a time in his word and getting direction. Yeah, I think it's a proverbats that says that man makes his plans, but the Lord establishes his step steps. And I look at that and I think that in this day and age and even myself sometimes it's like oftentimes it's like Kyle makes his plans and then Kyle makes creates the steps right, and the Bible is that like following God is the opposite what we see Joshua doing here with all these people as the opposite that it's like no, no, no, Before we even step forward, we consult him, We go to him for id like you're saying, meditate on him. And then even your the fifteen hundred verses, I'm close to you, very close, probably like but it's something I try to work on because even when I talk to my kids even about this, and we try, we do daily devotionals and all that, and I'm like, you know what you want is you know, the Bible talks about having the Word written on your heart, and it's the sight of it just being like it's a part of who you are. And the cool thing is about the fact that the Bible is alive, it's God breathed. It works. So a verse that may may have been written on my heart and spoke to me in a certain way years ago is different today. And it's not that the verse. It's not that the God's Word has changed at all. It's just that it's alive and it's active, and all of a sudden, I see things right, And I'm sure you're the same way. Without fifteen hundred verses, there's probably certain verses now that you're like, oh my gosh, it's it shows you how alive it is. It's a living organism that's changing the way you process it. So yeah, I think that there's in not just listening to the word or just hearing the word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Bible says that there's a great value in listening. But a lot of the power that my mom and dad had behind that family devotion was making us contemplate. So how does that apply being the doer? Not just reading the word, but what should I do as a result of it? And so let's say that you don't have a family. You know, you're not sitting down having devotions with a whole group of people right now, You're just having faith. So I have a friend that he says he has the exact same discipline in his life, but it's through journaling. So every day he reads, he writes out at the top of his page in the little journal I'm reading, you know, Joshua, chapter two or chapter three, one through seventeen, and then he'll write down three or four of these little nuggets like we just talked about that we saw and say, I think God is saying this today to me. That's good, right, this is what it means to me and what I should do about it? It's the so what, Yeah, that's what you say? Why to God? Have me read this today? And I think this might be it? And then all throughout the whole world to the Timothy initiative, we train all of our young Timothy's to have this. When you're done reading the word of God, articulate because of this I will. That's good. That's it. And that's what my mom and dad used to push us to do too. Not just read these words and say this is what it must mean, but this is what I will do because of it. So if you're going to be disciplined like him, like Joshua, God had said, listen, be strong and courageous, meditate on my word, Obey everything I have to say, and I will make you wildly successful. So this is exactly what he's saying. This is exactly what he's leading people do. Get right with God. We're going to go hear from him. Then we're going to go do what he tells us to do. And they were wildly successful. Yeah, right in this, in this moment. So having this I will moment is the most important thing. When you go into a church service, walk out and go, Okay, because of what I heard today, I'm going to do this. Yeah, let's every time, and then execute on that and you begin applying God's word, not just knowing God's word. When you apply God's word, that's where the success comes from. And I would also remember reading something a few years ago where it said that it was it was some sociologists was saying that you can only really apply one lesson like life less at a time, which is interesting. I don't know how how long that lasts for a but people, every single person, you know, we think we can just learn a bunch of lessons and apply them. But I like your idea there, or your friend's idea of taking the journaling and saying today, I'll do this because we think about how so often we start our day right with news and constant consumption of media and thoughts and opinions or whatever, but then really we don't apply any of it. We don't just it's just information overload or whatever. So to go to scripture, to go to the truth and actually say here's the thing I'm going to do with that, I think that changes everything. And I remember that lesson throughout the day. It's so good. Yeah, So for this lesson today, maybe your I will is because of what I read today, I'm going to remember every time I come up to a new big opportunity, I'm going to have a purification moment where I confess my sin, I get right with God and then I'm going to lean into what his words say. That's where I go running into the odds. Great. Yeah, that's great that I will. Yeah, that's great. So anyways, Hey, this is a good conversation man. Thanks for joining me this week, but I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Tons of fun and we look forward to seeing you again in the next time on the Bible. Guys, see you