He's like, "I just want to sleep." Oh, I love it.
Well, so we get to dedicate Killian today, and I'm so excited for you guys. It's been a minute since you've had a baby, and so I know that it's been a season where you guys are learning. You guys are learning how to be big brothers, which is awesome. I have no doubt that you'll do an amazing job of caring for this sweet little one.
But ultimately, in a baby dedication, what our heart and our desire is, is that we are making a commitment that we're going to do our very, very best to live out the gospel to Killian so that he comes to know Jesus one day. That's what this is, where we as a church, all the people here, all the beautiful, smiley faces, and you guys together are committing to this.
Because baby dedication means that this child, this sweet one, we are saying right now, declaring right now, that he is set apart. He is set apart for the glory of God. And that you're going to play a part of that. You're going to help lead him to Jesus. You're going to help show him who Jesus is to you.
And so as his family, as his mom and dad, Kristen and Billy, you guys are committing in this moment that you are going to live out the gospel in front of him, in front of these beautiful children, so that one day they would know that God wants a relationship with them. Not that they are to follow a religion. Not that they are to do three steps. Not that they are to do three steps to a better you. But that they are to fall in love with Jesus.
And that only happens when you two continually more and more fall in love with Jesus. So right now, do you commit to loving Jesus with your whole heart and living out the gospel in front of your children so that they may come to know Jesus?
Amen.
Amen.
Church family, you're doing the same thing. We as a church family, we use that language specifically because that's the language that the Bible uses. We are a family of God. And our hope is that to the best of our abilities, that we would live out the gospel in front of this family in such a way that they would have repeated opportunities to see, to hear, and to respond to the gospel.
So church family, do you commit to doing your very best to disciple these children to Jesus?
Amen.
Amen.
And the last thing we do in child dedication is that we're receiving a picture of the newness in life that we get to have in Christ. So I'm guessing Killian doesn't do a whole lot. He doesn't do a whole lot for you guys, right? Probably not.
Sleep? Does he do that for you? Does he sleep for you? Does he eat for you?
No. Does he like get you breakfast in the morning?
No. Pretty much does nothing, right? Babies are kind of useless. But until he grows up.
Same thing with our lives is that we are useless without Christ. And so the Bible actually tells us to become like little infants, little babies, so that we can fully depend and surrender our lives to Jesus.
And so right now in this moment, we're receiving a picture of the newness of life. In John 3, Jesus actually says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." To be fully dependent on Jesus and Jesus alone in our lives.
So right now we're gonna dedicate Killian, believing he was formed in his mother's womb for a purpose to glorify God and enjoy him together.
Amen.
He is God's workmanship created in Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that he should walk in relationship with him.
So let's pray. If you would, if you're comfortable with it, if you just reach out your hand, pray with me.
Father, thank you for this sweet family. Thank you for how they do live out the gospel in front of their children. We pray for this sweet little one, Lord. We pray that he would come to know you and that he would do amazing things for your name and your kingdom. We love you. It's in your name we pray.
Amen.
Amen.
Let me give this to him.
Hey, would you turn your attention to the screen? We're going into our giving moment and the ushers are gonna come forward.
Right, all right, man, I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit out of breath after singing some of those songs, but man, praise God for the blessing that was just sung over us and that we got to sing over one another, that he is for you.
If you leave with nothing else today, my prayer is that you would know that God is for you and he's with you.
And so we're going to jump on in this morning. In college, back in the day, I got to play lacrosse at Palm Beach Atlantic University. So my freshman year, I actually got recruited to play baseball, but I ended up starting the lacrosse team with a couple of buddies of mine.
And by my senior year, I had the honor of being the team captain. And so we had a bunch of rivals all throughout the state, and we were playing one of our games. And I was just having one of those days where it was just a bad day. You ever have one of those? You ever just like, you're just off? You're not, either if you're an athlete, you're not playing well. You're maybe dealing with something in your life and it's just, it's just, everything's going bad.
And so I was messing up. I wasn't playing well. I was very timid because of that. So I wasn't shooting. I wasn't playing at my best. And so it was a couple of minutes left. It was a tie game. And so the coach called everybody in, and I remember this clear as day.
And so we all get into this huddle. We all surround the coach. He's like, "Vecchio, what are you doing?" I'm like, "He's like, come on, man, you're messing up. We need you. Team, get Bill the ball and you better shoot."
And I was like, "Oh my goodness. All right, like I'll try," you know? And so we get back out there and then we're playing. And finally, I get the ball and like the clock's winding down and I wind up as hard as I can. And I shoot and...
No, I'm just kidding. I scored and the crowd went wild. There was like five or six people there cheering on. And I remember scoring. I just remember the feeling of what it was like to be given another chance.
I know it's a silly example, but in life, I think we can all remember a time where we were given another chance. Like we messed up, we failed. We weren't doing well. Maybe it was even a sin that we were in or that we did against somebody and we were given another chance.
That's where we're actually going to find ourselves today in the book of Joshua. So if you have a Bible, Joshua chapter eight, and I want to give us some context to what we're talking about here because this is the story that we're walking into today.
And so in Joshua chapter eight, they're about to go back into battle, into a battle they had just lost. Now, why did they lose? Well, if we start to rewind the tape a little bit over the last couple of weeks, this is what we saw. God just did amazing things for the people of Israel all the way to, he stopped water flowing in a massive river so that the people of God could cross this river.
I mean, God was with the people. Yahweh was with his people. And they find themselves up against the walls of Jericho and with just their voices and a couple of Rams horns and the power of the almighty Yahweh God, they shout, they blow the horns and God tears down the walls at Jericho.
Why? Because he is with them. He is for them, right? He told them that this is what they were to do. They listened, and now they take the city.
Here were the instructions that God gave them in Joshua 6 and 7. He says, "I want you to go into the city and destroy everything. Destroy it all." See, this land was filled with idol worship. The land was filled with pagan gods and pagan worship, and so the Israelites were going to cleanse the land. That's what God's purpose was for the Israelites, and so he cleanses the land, and they destroy everything, but he says, "Do this. Take the gold, take the silver, and take these devoted things and put them in the house of the Lord. Put them in the treasury of the Lord. These are to be dedicated unto the Lord."
But one of the guys, his name was Achan, he took some gold, he took some silver, took a robe, he bundled it up, he brought it back to his tent. Now, if you can imagine, they're in still kind of a temporary housing situation, and so people would have seen him carrying gold and silver and this robe. He walks back, he digs a hole underneath his tent, stores the gold and the silver and the robe, and covers it with his tent, and disobeys God and lies about taking these things, and so there were consequences.
So in their next battle, the battle of Ai, the people of Israel go up, but they don't take the whole army because it's a small little city. I mean, they used their whole army for Jericho, but for the city of Ai, it was this tiny little city, and they think, "Oh, we're just going to send up some of our army. It'll be an easy win." They're like the last place team in the league. We're the first place team. We're just going to send them on in, and we'll take them out easily and then keep going on with our business, and they lose.
They lose the battle at Ai. Joshua tears his robes. He's like, "What just happened, God? Don't you know now? Now, this word is going to spread that we've lost this power that you have been giving us." And God says, "You have sinned. You have sinned against me, and you've disobeyed, and so there are consequences to these sins."
Last week, we saw the ripple effect of sin. That's what we talked about, this ripple effect of sin and how our sin affects everybody around us, but God is going to give them another chance, and this is the beauty of the word of God because it's not just in this story, but all throughout Scripture.
Here's what we see. The people of God fail. They fall. They cry out to God. God forgives them, restores them, blesses them, and what do they do? They fail. They fall. They cry out to God. He restores them. He blesses them. They fail. They fall. They cry out to God. He restores them.
Another chance. Another chance. If you're coming in here today, and you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you know that it's true that God gives another chance, and so that's what we're going to see today because now they're going to go back to Ai. They're going to go back to the city that they just lost at with the power of God behind them because they've cleansed the sin out from their camp.
And so I want to pray over us, and I want to see the beauty of receiving these other chances. Let's pray.
Father, wherever we walk into this place today, however we're sitting here, and as the enemy even tries to flood our minds with why we're not good enough, why we should doubt our salvation, why we should doubt your love, God, I pray that today we would see that you are for us, you are with us, that you go before us, that you are with us, and God, I pray that we would know that you are a God of another chance.
Through the power of Jesus, Lord, that you have given us the freedom and the family that we can find in his life, death, and resurrection, and so God, I just want to lift up right now, Ride Nature, who is our ministry partner. They are about to take off and head to South Africa, Lord, on a missions trip. I pray you do go before them. I pray you do bless them and give them the opportunity to proclaim your good news to everybody that they come in contact with.
And I think of Unit E, the trampolines that were here a few weeks ago at the Fall Fest, that they are now in the middle of the world, and they're going to be there for you. The Ukraine, Lord, and they're on the front lines bringing the gospel to such a difficult community of loss and pain. I pray through all of them that they would remind everybody that they encounter that you are the God of second chances, you are the God of another chance, that you are a God that is for us, is with us, and it's not about religion, but it's about a relationship with you that we can find in Jesus.
And so God, I pray as we look at this story that we would fall more and more in love with you. It's in your name that we pray.
Amen.
So the story starts with confronting past failures.
So what we see as we're journeying into Joshua chapter 8 is that all of us in some way need to confront our past failures. See, in Joshua 6 and 7, God gives these clear commands, yet the Israelites were defeated because of the sin that they had in their lives.
Israel had to confront the sin issue before moving forward. And I think that sometimes we think that we can just move forward in our lives after receiving the gospel without dealing with and confronting the sin that is in our past. But God does not ignore sin.
But he also doesn't abandon his children when they sin. He is with them. But he also wants us to confront our past sin.
And I think the problem is that we know that in the moment, right now, walking into this place, that there are things that we all deal with. There are sins that we all commit. And so whether it is addiction or anger or malice or bitterness or resentment, that right now we all sit here with something.
And if for some reason you're sitting here and you're like, "No, I can't think of anything that I'm currently struggling with," I would recommend looking at pride and arrogance. Those may be something that you might want to think about.
Because we all deal with current sin. But also, also, there are past sin and past failures that we've dealt with in our lives, that we've experienced in our lives, that we didn't actually find healing from back then.
And so if you've ever gotten a cut and then you didn't deal with it and it got like infected and then you had to like go through antibiotics and all that, like our past can often be like that. We just kind of scab over it.
We just kind of scab over it. We just kind of scab over it. We just kind of scab over it. We just kind of scab over it. We just kind of scab over it.
Or it scars over, but we've never really dealt with the problem. And so this story, as we're walking into the story of Ai, we're seeing that you have to deal with your past failures. You have to deal with your past sin in order to find healing to move forward.
And so God will always do what is necessary to help his children grow.
Now, I love plants. I love gardening. I wouldn't say I'm good at it, but it's something that I actually really enjoy. I love gardening. I love planting stuff and seeing God grow these things.
And in one of our first Easter services, I went to Home Depot for an analogy and I bought a citrus melody tree. That's a tree that has lemons, limes, and tangelos all in one. It's pretty cool. And I was talking about how you're grafted into the vine of God, right? And it was a good analogy, but then I had this plant.
So then I planted it in my yard. For a while, it did well because you know, when you get a plant from the store, it has all the little green balls in it and it has all the fertilizer and all the good soil and stuff that they pack in there.
Well, I planted it and had that, but I didn't know where I planted it that the soil was bad. I also didn't know that it wasn't going to get the right sunlight and the right water. And so after a while, this tree died. All the leaves fell and it wasn't doing well.
So as the gardener, I had to do the hard work to dig up these roots and to move it to a better place. I planted it and I watered it and I cared for it. But what I didn't realize is that that also was not the best place in the world.
So it lost its leaves again. I picked it up and then I moved it again. And now it's thriving and it's doing super well and it's giving us all these limes and it's just so great. But it took hard work to get that plant to be where it was meant to be, into the good soil.
In our lives, often we're not willing to confront the problems that we've faced in the roots. Therefore, we can't thrive in the fruit. All of it's a work of the spirit. God is the gardener. But we often resist God moving us to the place where we need to be in order to find that healing.
So we have to confront past failures, learn, and change moving forward. And then once we confront and admit past failures, we can learn, here's the second thing, to trust God's grace. Trust God's grace.
Look at verse one. And the Lord said to Joshua, this is his grace upon the people of Israel after they repented of their sins and confronted their failures.
"Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and arise. Go up to Ai. See, I have given it into your hand. I have given it into your hand. I have given it into your hand. The king of Ai and his people and his city and his land.
And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves. So now there's blessing in their obedience. Lay an ambush against the city behind it.
Once we confront our past failures, then we need to trust God's grace and how he calls us, invites us to move forward. See, in verses 1 and 2, God gives Israel another opportunity to claim the victory that he had already promised them.
This chance, it's not a result of Israel's goodness, but of God's grace. Confronting past failures, it isn't easy. But we must trust in God's grace to do so and to find healing.
If you've ever experienced this for yourself or maybe a family member, if you've been diagnosed with some kind of a terminal condition or a terminal illness that requires support, surgery, that's not something that you want to hear, but it's also the grace of God that it has been found out so that you can deal with the problem.
Now, leading up to the surgery, there's anxiety and there's fear and there's all the emotions going into whatever it is to go into the surgery. Then the surgery takes place and then there's the recovery. There's pain in that. It's not easy. You have to go through all of the steps that the doctor says to go through, but it's a grace that whatever the problem was, that it's found out.
We have a young man, 29 years old, got diagnosed with colon cancer in our last service. He just happened to go to the doctor, happened to get a colonoscopy at 29 years old, and then the doctor finds colon cancer because he had a history of it in his family.
He ends up getting right into surgery, and then they find that it was like millimeters away from his bladder. God's grace. Now, did he want to go through the surgery? No. Like, did he want to go through the recovery process? No. But man, he was so thankful that God allowed that to take place.
And so, we have to trust in God's grace in these things. It's not easy. It's not fun, but we have to trust God in the process.
God's process for healing from failures begins and ends with God's grace. But grace always isn't comfortable. See, discipline, and we're now talking about our sin again, the discipline of the Lord brings both alleviation and agitation.
Here's what I mean by that. As a dad, I was kind of first learning how to discipline my kids, and so we would walk them through different scriptures. One of them is, "Children, honor and obey your parents as unto the Lord, for this is right. And if you do so, you will live long and live well."
And so, we would sit with them, and we would talk to them about how they need to listen. And so, I remember this time with one of my daughters. She was about four or five, and taking her into the room and sitting her down. She wasn't listening and saying, "You cannot continue to go on. This isn't safe for you to not listen to your parents."
And the Lord says, "If you honor and obey, there will be blessing in these things." And I really felt in that moment as her dad that she was understanding what she did wrong.
She was understanding that she was not going to do what she did wrong. And she was understanding that she has to listen to her mom and dad. And so, what I said to her at the end of that was, "I'm going to give you grace. I'm going to give you grace, and I'm not going to give you a consequence right now. And I want you to go and continue to live out obedience for mom and dad."
I remember this so clearly. Well, as all kids do, as we do, minutes later probably, but hours later, whatever, she's disobeying again. So, what do I do? I pull her back into the room, and I start explaining to her that children honor and obey your parents.
And she's like, "I don't know what to do. I'm going to give you grace." And then I said, "So I'm going to give you a consequence." She goes, "No, no, no, give me grace."
And then it was in that moment that the Lord actually spoke to my heart. And he was like, "Actually giving you a consequence right now, this is grace."
Because it's maybe not giving her a consequence because she's understanding, but then it's also giving her a consequence so that she will understand. Both of these things are grace.
It might be alleviating her from the consequence, or it might be agitating her with the consequence. But both of these things are good for her, for her benefit. And so, as a parent, you've got to wrestle through that. You've got to wrestle through what these things look like.
But God, sometimes we don't receive a consequence, or we don't feel like there's a big consequence to our actions. But then other times, we feel like there is a big one. Either one of those things is God's grace.
We have to trust his process. We have to trust his grace in those moments. And that leads us then to how we have to trust God. We have to trust God. We have to trust God. We have to trust God. We have to trust God. We have to trust God. We have to trust God.
God displays his grace to trust in God's plan. Joshua follows God's strategy exactly. And the Israelites trusted God's plan.
And so, this second battle leads them to victory. Look at verse 18.
Then the Lord said to Joshua, "Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand towards Ai, for I will give it into your hand." Again, "I will give it into your hand." This is God speaking.
And Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand towards the city, and the men in the ambush rose quickly out of their place. This is the plan that God gave them, and as soon as he stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and captured it, and they hurried and set the city on fire.
And when the men of Ai looked back, the smoke of the city went up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that, for the people who fled into the wilderness turned back against the pursuers.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city went up, then they turned back and struck down the men of Ai.
And the others came out from the city against them so that they were in the midst of Israel on this side and some on that side, and Israel struck them down until there was none left that had survived or escaped.
God gave them the victory, and so they had to not only trust in God's grace, but they had to trust in God's plan for us to experience victory in the chances God gives. We must trust the plan and step out in obedience.
We have to obey his word and his commands because God's plan always includes redemption and restoration. That's why he gave us Jesus.
See, Jesus came to live a life that you and I could live, and he was sacrificed for you and I so that we can receive redemption for our sins. He paid the penalty for you. You deserve to be put on the stand because you are guilty of sin, but instead of you going on the stand and you receiving the greatest consequence, which is an eternal separation from God, God placed Jesus in your stead for you on your behalf.
So there was no consequence, but that consequence fell on Jesus so that you and I may have a relationship with God through Jesus. Restoration and relationship, redemption. That's why he gave us Jesus.
And the victory was won because of God's intervention. It was his power and his plan that brought them success.
So when the victory came, we gather to celebrate as his family together. We celebrate in God's community.
So in verses 30 through 35, after they win this battle, Joshua gathers the people of Israel, and they all worship God. That's what we do here. That's why we gather. That's why we have community groups. That's why we have Bible studies. That's why we have discipleship nights.
Why are we doing all of these things? So that we can gather and share of the testimony of the Lord. And so in those groups, there are times where we're sharing what God is doing in our life. We share how God is changing us and transforming us.
We're sharing how God is showing up in our lives in a changeable way. And then as a community, we are celebrating the faithfulness of the Lord. Even a baby dedication is celebrating the faithfulness of the Lord.
And so that's what we do when we gather. Why do we do baptisms here? So that we as a community can gather and celebrate what God is doing in their lives.
So this is what the community of God does. We gather to celebrate the goodness of the Lord. We celebrate as a community.
When we walk through failures, we trust God's grace. We trust his plan. And then the whole family celebrates.
So I want to connect with you. I want to connect with you. I want to connect with you.
And I'd like this for a moment to another chance that we as a church can give to people in our world that need another chance.
See, when God gives us his grace, what does he invite us to do? Share that with everyone around us. Now we can do so by sharing the goodness of the gospel, by sharing our testimony.
We can share the gospel with our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our family. That's what God calls us to do. Live missionally in the world.
We also can do that by caring for vulnerable children.
So today is actually a holiday that's called Orphan Sunday, and I don't know why it's a holiday, but it's a remembering moment where we as the church across the United States and the world gather together to remember the plight of the orphan, to care for vulnerable children specifically, so that we as a church can remember that God says to us in his word that pure religion, James, is this, that we care for orphans in their distress.
Now we have been given a second chance. In fact, in scripture, you know what the language is that God uses for us as his children? Adoption.
In James, I'm sorry, in John, Jesus says, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you."
In Ephesians 1:5, it says, "In love, he, Jesus, predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ."
Like, we have been adopted into the family of God. We have been adopted, and so because we have been adopted, we are now called to care for those that are vulnerable, that don't have families.
And so we gather to remember that we are here as a church to care for the vulnerable, to tangibly live out the gospel for coming alongside families and children within our community.
And I want to celebrate the fact that Amendment 4 did not pass. That preserved the lives of thousands and thousands of babies that are in the womb, but now we as a church have to step up.
We have to step up because now there's going to be more children in foster care, more families to wrap around, more kids that need to be adopted. And so the church needs to now step up because these children's lives have been preserved.
And so we do so through adoption. We do so through foster care. We do so through wrapping around families that adopt and have foster care, and we have tons of ways to do this.
We have an Every Child initiative that cares for the vulnerable, and in fact, right now, we don't have a leader for our Every Child initiative. So if there's something tugging at your heart right now that says, "Hey, I want to actually help our church better serve vulnerable children in our community," please come talk to me.
Because we need people to coordinate our efforts in our community to care for vulnerable children in this community specifically. We have a ton of partners.
So we have Four Kids and Better Together and One More Child that are caring for the vulnerable children in our community. And we need more adoptive families. We need more foster families.
And we need as a church to continue to wrap our arms around the families that are struggling in this life. Why? So that we can give them repeated opportunities to see, hear, and respond to the gospel.
That they will know the adoption that we knew by God for their lives. And so that's why my wife and I are foster parents. That's why we've adopted in our lives.
Because there are so many kids. I mean, right now, I think there's only a third of the amount of homes that are in the foster system. So there's about three times as many foster kids as homes in the foster system in our local community.
So we need families to step up. And for you, you may say like, "Hey, I can't take a kid in my home right now." But you can wrap around other families that are. And so there's ways for you to do that.
And we want to connect and plug you into those things. But here's what we're going to do right now. We're talking about the practical ways that we're going to serve our community.
We're going to end service right now. You know how normally we do some songs at the end and a benediction? We're going to end right now. It's early. You still have plenty of time to go get lunch.
But we're all going to go to Winn-Dixie on the corner of 41 and Cypress Lake. So if you don't know where that is, you know where Costco is. I know the demographic here.
So instead of making that dreaded right into the Costco parking lot, you're going to make the left. All right. You're going to not go into that craziness. You're going to make a left. You're going to go into the Winn-Dixie Plaza right there.
And the address is on the screen. Our local food pantries need food for the holidays because they are serving the vulnerable children in our area through getting all of these organizations food for those families.
And so we're partnering with Harry Chapin, and we're going to fill their food pantry. They've given us a list. I think it's about 12 items or so that they are low on right now.
And we've set up a partnership with Winn-Dixie where they have set up all these things around the store so we can go and wipe their store clean of all the stuff so that we can fill up the local food pantry.
And so that we can care as a church practically for, as a reminder to this community that it's all about food. And so we're going to do that.
It's our desire that we would be missed if we ceased as a church within this community. So my invitation to you is join us. Join us at Winn-Dixie.
On the way out, there's some sheets. A lot of people forgot those last time. So there's some sheets on your way out that you can grab that have the items. We also have some at the Winn-Dixie.
There's a big tent in the middle of a parking lot with music playing. Mark and Seth and them are over there. They're already set up ready to receive.
When you walk in, there's a few aisles that you can go down, and it gets very congested. There's also some big square pallets that they have moved right kind of in front of customer service that you can just clear out those shelves right there.
They put them there specifically for us, and they're BOGOs I think and on sale, which is doubles the amount of money that we, stuff that we can give.
And so we're going to go there together. We're going to serve our community, fill the local food pantry because all of these families need another chance. They need another chance to see, hear, and respond to the gospel.
And we get to be the light of the gospel in a practical, real way right now. Tangibly in this community.
So please, would you join us as we leave right now? Go over there and serve our community.
I was told to remind you to come on Wednesday night. Wednesday night's our last kickoff. If you've never been, that's fine. Come. Men, specifically, come on Wednesday night.
Last time the girls, I think they had 90-something women show up, and we had like 40 guys show up. So men, we need to step it up, number one. Number two, Charlie is an amazing friend, and he is going to shepherd our hearts in a way that we need it on Wednesday.
So come and hear Charlie and be encouraged by fellowship together. Sound good?
Can I pray for us?
All right. Father, thank you for your love, mercy, and grace in giving us another chance, and I pray, Lord, that we would serve your community for your name and your glory.
God, we're thankful for all the churches in our area that we partner together with and all the organizations that you have put around us. I pray that we would care for vulnerable children in our community and that we would give repeated opportunities to every man, woman, and child all throughout Southwest Florida and beyond for your name and glory.
We love you. It's in your name we pray.
Amen.
Join us. So head out. Oh, grab your kids first, by the way. Get your kids before you leave, and then grab those flyers. And we'll meet you over at Winn-Dixie. I'll be over there as well. See you there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
on Nov 10, 2024
