MANCHURCH: Taking the Land

Let me pray, boys, and we'll kick it off. Father, we thank you for this morning, for the chance to gather around as men, gather around your word. Pray that you take your word and enlighten it to our hearts. Touch us. Give us new visions of ourselves and fresh visions for our future. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So, fellas, I thought I'd just give you a couple thoughts, and then we'd have a chat. See what you think. Thanks for coming to Man Church. So Joshua 13:1, if you've got your Bibles. If not, I'll read it to you. Joshua 13:1. So you know the story they've got been through. They come up through Egypt for 400 years, crossed the wilderness, and they're coming into the Promised Land. Now there's a sense historically that we know it's the Promised Land because we're reading the context of our Bible. Now for them, it would have come through to them as oral history. There's something for us out there. There's something new for us. There's something next for this. There's something else that we are, as an entire people, are supposed to inherit. And then that would've also been as families passed down the stories of, okay, these are things that we've, we've got coming our way. So, and is there an echo? You guys okay? Audio okay? Yeah, it's good. Okay, great. So Joshua 13:1. Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the Lord said to him, you are old and advanced in years. When God tells you're old and advanced in years, it's probably a thing. And there remains yet very much land to possess. So I find that interesting. So here's Joshua. How you doing, Corbin? So here's Joshua, and God recognized him that he's old and advanced in years. But there's still much to do. So Joshua was 20 when he left Egypt. He spent 40 years in the wilderness, 7 years at war in conquest, and then spent another 43 years ruling the people. And I think when we look at the life of Joshua and the Book of Joshua, we, we forget that timeline. There's a sense when we read the Book of Joshua and we read about this guy who Moses grew up and trained up and put in place, that he was somehow like in his 30s. It's not the case. Joshua is in his 60s when he took on not leading the people of Israel, but war. Joshua was called to go to war in his 60s. So he spent 20 years in slavery. He wandered around for 40 years, and this is— I find this fascinating. He wandered around the desert for 40 years because of the attitudes and unbeliefs of other people, not because of himself. Joshua did nothing to— for that to be. It wasn't like God came to him and said, Joshua, you're really messed up, mate. What I'm going to do is make you wander around the desert for 40 years so that you can learn your lesson. It was the other way. Joshua is one when given the opportunity of here is a promised land and a possibility, he and Caleb said, "Listen, we can go and take this." It was other people, ten other people that said there are too many giants over there. We are but grasshoppers in their sights. So Joshua ended wandering around in his prime years, as we have been led in the West to believe, in his prime years in the desert, in a futile environment that he could not control. He had no say over. He couldn't even make his own food, build his own trade, build his own career, nothing, because of the disbelief and actions and attitudes of other people. Now, that's a massive thought for us as men, because often we end up in places in life where we feel beholden to other things and other people, and we feel like we're stuck in a place and it's been imposed upon us And how can this be the will of God? It's pretty much, g'day Corbin, it's pretty much the same sort of situation. So let me, let me give you 4 things that I think this flies in the face of, and then another 3 things and we'll have a chat. So here's some things that flies in the face of several misconceptions that I believe we have and we accept it as normalities. Number one, that you have to know what you're gonna spend your life doing by your late 20s, early 30s. So you really have to have it down. And any of us who are beyond our 30s or even out of our 20s look at it and go, nah, you're kidding. No, that's not true. Joshua didn't know there was anything but slavery up until he's 20. He didn't know. That's all he'd experienced. He'd experienced nothing other than being dominated, being ruled over, living in fear of his life. unknowing if he's going to have enough. And if you have a look at the last period of his life when Moses was coming in and out of it, you saw an increase in labor, harshness, an increase in harshness, the death and destruction of the nation and the people. So Joshua grew up in that whole culture. So in his 30s, he was stuck wandering around the desert for another 40 years. It just wasn't like he had a rough 12 months in business. He'd actually come out in his 20s, gone into the desert, and spent 40 years. So he spent twice as much time wandering in desert than he did in slavery. So by the time he's in his 60s, that's all that guy's known his entire life. Now he's seen the provision of God, he's seen the mentorship of God, his mentorship of Moses. Those things, yes, are very much a reality. But remember the circumstance, because often we find ourselves in places of business or in places of opportunity, and when we look at them, It's like, man, I'm just slave here. I'm just stuck in this wilderness. Yeah, but there's something else going on. So number 2 is if you're stuck by life or circumstance or illness or situation, then the fifth, the feeling is that we are wasting those years. While Joshua was marking time stuck wandering the desert, God was preparing him. Now, there, there's a thought I've always had is that we overestimate what we can do in 12 months and underestimate what God can do in 10 years. God has the capacity to take our dreams and desires and fulfill them. And when it starts to happen, it just starts to really happen. And it seems like a long time to get there, but when it starts to go, when he starts to breathe on it, when he says, walk across here, let's go to war, all of a sudden things take off. So number one is you have to know what you're supposed to do in your life by your 20s and 30s. Number 2, when you're stuck wandering around the desert in a dry place that you're just wasting your time. Number three, we think our battles are done in our sixties and the adventures are over. Personally, I know that's not the case. Historically, from scripture, I can also see that's not the case. I see a lot of people my age. I'm sixty-two this year. I see a lot of men who have gotten to a stage in life and they've just given up. I'm in my sixties now. What are you going to do? Grow bat wings and work at Walmart? Go to Home Depot? It's like retirement. It doesn't get it. There's nothing in the Bible that talks about it. It talks about coming into a year, years, and periods of years where your whole life's work actually starts to mean something generationally. And that's what happened with Joshua here. And the 4th misconception is that retirement and sitting around doing nothing is all that we have to look forward to. Joshua spent 50 years conquering and ruling the land. That was longer than he spent wandering around the land. 20 in slavery, 40 wandering, and 50 years, 7 in conquest, 43 between conquest and his death in conquering the land. I mean, most of his life, we look at Joshua and think most of it was in the wilderness. Most of it was either at war or leading his people in a senior role. So let me give you a brief summary of the Book of Joseph, and then we'll have a chat. So for you, when you go back and read the story, it's entering the land, chapters 1 to 4, taking the land, chapters 5 to 12, possessing the land, chapters 13 to 21. So the next 50 years would be spent solidifying and establishing. And my thought is you better be doing something you love because retirement just isn't a reality. So It's easier to maintain— obtain than maintain. Always is. You can have an idea, start a business, but the real test comes over time. You have to learn and be able to pivot in life. Joshua pivots in slavery, not in slavery. It was supposed to take them 3 days to walk from Egypt to the promised land. It took 40 years because of someone else's disobedience. Often in life, when we are on a track, something happens And we get, people get stuck. Okay, I can't move forward down the, you've gotta learn to pivot. Gotta learn to pivot in business. Gotta learn to pivot in life. Gotta learn to pivot in love. Whatever it is, you've gotta learn to pivot. And then can you handle the delay? If it takes time to get to where you're supposed to be, can you handle that 40-year delay? Can you find joy in serving somebody else? Can you reimagine struggle and war As preparation and preparedness, can he do that? Because that's what Joshua did. He went through the desert and came into war, and then realized, so all now I've got to lead these people, and all I've known is slavery, wandering around in a sense of impoverishment because he didn't have ability to build his own trade, get his own career organized. He was just wandering around at the behest of God and Moses, and yet all of a sudden. All of that is preparation for prosperity. All of that is because what's happened is God was working on his character, because your talent can take you places that your character can't sustain you. So here he was, all those years were preparation on character. So when his time come to go to war, he went to war. And when his time came to lead his people, he was able to lead his people. And I think the arc of a man's life is done a great disservice. In our modern cultures where we see that if it's over, not over by our 20s or 30s, we don't understand that there is an arc for life. And it doesn't just go and then just disappear and into obscurity. There is an arc in a man's life that if you'll allow it, his life will continue to rise because it will change from field to field. And your influence will actually be greater, not only in your own children, but in the lives of the people you touch, the children of people around you. Your influence actually spreads. And there's an opportunity, and we don't respect our elders in our current culture. And there's an opportunity for a generation of men to rise up more than ever. It's needed for older men to be discipling the younger men. And that's one of the great lessons I take away from the Book of Joseph is the mentorship that he got from Moses was the mentorship he turned around and for 43, 50 years, 7 at war, a kid who'd never been to war. Never knowing what it was to strap on, just got up and he was running an entire nation. So when you think you are not learning anything, God is achieving different things within you so that when the time comes for you to go to war, in whatever sense that is, you've got an opportunity and you're prepared. There you go. Manchoach thoughts.