Joshua 5: 9-12

This morning’s text is all about change using Israel as the prime example and calling us to take time to look within to our own need to move on in life.

Our text for this morning makes little sense unless you are fully aware of all the events that took place prior to their gathering at Gilgal.  Thinking back to the beginning of the Hebrew adventure it all started with the call of Abram and Sarai at Ur where God said follow Me and I will make you the father of a great nation. Abram finally settled in Hebron where Isaac and then later Israel were born and from there the nation entered into what later became slavery in Egypt, which led to self enslavement in the Sinai Desert for a period of 40 years. This simple summary is but a brief mention of the struggles that took place over a period of approximately 700 years and lead from the calling of two which developed into a nation of well over one and a half to two million people by the time they crossed the Jordan and moved on to take possession of the promise land.

Our text for this morning finds this great nation standing at Gilgal after having crossed the Jordan preparing themselves to take possession of the Land which God had promised them and the first thing God tells them is that “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.”  Looking up the word reproach, I found it means shame, thus God is saying to Israel, “Today I have taken away the shame of slavery from you and set you free”.

I want us to stop here a moment and ponder this idea of taking away the shame of slavery because there is a parallel here that we can connect to our own lives. 

If you think for a moment about the idea of “reproach or shame” what must it have meant for Israel, a nation called, chosen, protected and lead by God, to have been enslaved by pagans.  This was a powerful nation that had been blessed in all ways and they were reduced to nothing more than common brick making slaves depending totally upon the benevolence of pagans who counted them as nothing.

The connection here is that of sin, sin reduces one’s sense of self worth to the point of uselessness.  If you think back to the original sin of Adam and Eve, when they sinned against God what was the first thing they did?  They hide from Him and pointed the finger of blame towards everyone and everything around them.  In short they were totally ashamed of what they had done and didn’t know what else to do other than hide their faces.

I remember years ago when I worked with adolescents, the first sign that things weren’t going right in their lives was when they began to hide their activities from their family and friends.  If we are not ashamed of what we do then we will do in front of God and everyone but when we become ashamed of our behaviors we begin to do things in secret.

The same thing can be said about some who has an addiction, if the behavior isn’t wrong then you have nothing to hide but the minute you find yourself doing things in secret is the very minute that you need to stop and reconsider what it is that you are doing.

When I was doing private therapy, the one sign that you were getting close to a problem area were tears.  When the tears would begin to form you knew that you had just hit a nerve, but sometimes those with the pain would do anything to hold onto that pain and were so unwilling to let it go that it would dominate their lives and cause all sorts of problems.

I will never forget the lady who hid for 6 months and made three suicide attempts before she finally released her shame and as the result her whole life began to turn around and she finally, after 20 years, found out what personal freedom was all about.

And then there was the lady who came to the office one day and the minute I asked how I could help broke down and sobbed saying how can I be honest with people.  This woman was a very prominent lady in a town not very far from here and she had lived her entire adult life as lie.  She was a leader in her church and in her community but the only way that she could lead a meeting was to load up on liquid courage.  By the time she had built up enough courage to come to see me she was sick and tired of the lie but didn’t know how to change it.

In the case of Israel, God brought them to the edge of the Promised Land and as we read here, He is telling them that He is going to set them free, that He is going to give them a land of their own, and walk with them as they learn to grow and prosper.

In our case our freedom came in the form of Christ, who died on the cross to set us free from the burden of sin, who rose from the grave to give us the hope of the resurrection and ascended into heaven so that He could intercede for us before the throne and opened the path so that we could receive the Holy Spirit to fill us and guide us each and every day.

We, like Israel before us have been given an opportunity to be what God created us to be, His children.  But like Israel before us we also need to reach out and take that which has been offered.

As you read the text here it tells us that once across the Jordon Israel stopped and they celebrated the Passover and then they gleaned the land for food and enjoyed that which God provided for them but what happened next?

Out text for this morning stops at the point of their claiming God’s promise in their lives but we know that as time went on their hearts wandered and they failed to keep the faith which God had demonstrated for them as they gathered at Gilgal.

In the same manner what happens to each of us, we see God’s blessings demonstrated in His word, and we can experience His blessings in our daily lives but then how are we changed?

This year I will celebrate my 30^th Easter in the pulpit and sometimes I wonder if over those 30 years I’ve made a difference in anyone’s life.  I know my life has changed over the years, for the better I hope, but I wonder if anyone else’s has. 

But then I think about God who has been at this for the past, who knows how long, and yet He continues to wait and He continues to hope that His creation will turn its head and heart to Him.  I’m certain that each day brings smiles and tears to His eyes as we do whatever it is that we choose to do but then the question that comes to my mind this morning is how much longer, how much longer will he wait?

If you read biblical prophecy you can make comparisons to what is happening today to many of the end time prophecies but yet none of that really means anything because only God know when it all changes.

The point that we need to deal with is not end times but our times, what are we doing today and are we taking all that God is willing to give and are we allowing Him to bless us in the manner in which He would really like to.

When I think about Israel, they so short changed themselves as they sought to make their own way in the world most of the time leaving God out of what they were doing.  And I fear that many today are doing the same thing.

I would challenge each of you to think about your relationship with Him and allow Him to really set you free today.