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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Oliver Bragg

The Joshua Tree: God’s Purpose in Your Wilderness

So happy to be here with you this morning to be able to share.

People ask, you know, how do you decide what to share on when you get asked to share?

And oftentimes, at least for me personally, when I reflect and I pray about what I should talk about, I think about what I'm currently learning in my experience with God and what I'm currently learning and going through and experiencing and in the past.

And so most of the sermons I speak are personal in the way that it's hard for me not to speak about things that I haven't directly been involved with or directly experienced for myself.

The title of this sermon this morning is called the Joshua Tree Lessons from the Wilderness and in fact last week when I was finishing up some of the sermon, I actually went out early in the morning into Joshua Tree.

And it's an amazing place to go, amazing place to kind of get away from Loma Linda or get away from SoCal, just to get into the stillness and the silence.

The Joshua Tree is named actually after the biblical figure, which that's not a big surprise there, Because Mormon pioneers crossing the Mojave Desert in the mid 19th century believed that the trees outstretched branches resembled the biblical story of Joseph reaching his hands up in the sky in prayer, thus guiding them westward on their journey.

They saw the tree as a symbol of direction and hope in the desert landscape there.

Desert is a symbol kind of of isolation, kind of being alone, kind of of maybe some things that we don't like to experience in this world.

Sharing about the wilderness makes me think a little bit about being a teacher.

I've taught for 7 years now, And a lot of people ask me, are students different today?

You learn a lot of things, and you learn a lot about yourself while you're engaged in teaching and oh, super awesome.

And it's funny, a couple months ago I was, oftentimes I have to settle the class down and 1 particular day I settled them down maybe a little bit too, I don't know, maybe I was just a little bit too rough with them.

And got them settled down, and the next day, realizing what I had done to, you know, I was just maybe a little bit too quick, I apologized to them.

And I said, I'm so sorry, guys, you know, that Mr.

Bragg was a little short with you yesterday.

And 1 of my students looked at me, and her eyes were really big, and she really looked concerned, and she said, Mr.

Bragg, it's OK, you look the same height as you did yesterday.

And she didn't realize I meant like I was short in my temperament and she was feeling bad that I felt like I was short or something to that regard.

But you do learn a lot about people and you do learn a lot about yourself.

And 1 of the best, I think, 1 of the just the greatest opportunities in teaching is that ability to reflect on your own life and your own experience.

And yes, times have changed, things have changed.

Here are some facts about the Joshua Tree that I found very interesting, and this is what we're gonna look at in our story today.

We're actually gonna go through 4 different biblical figures.

I find a lot of hope in reflecting on biblical figures.

You know, the Bible could be really the law and the gospel, but God found it necessary to include the lives and the stories of people like you and me, and I think there's a reason why he does that.

And I've found a lot of comfort over the years by reflecting on individual people and some of their experience that they had in their life.

So we're gonna go over 4 today and we're not gonna spend as much time on every single 1 of them.

So don't worry if we get through like 2 and it's like almost time to go, 3 and 4 will be very brief and very quick.

But the desert is a symbol of desolation, loneliness, barren, a place where things go to die.

And so many of us don't often choose to go into the desert or the wilderness.

But it's often a place that people enjoy to go to to reflect, as well to think.

Do you guys know what some of the greatest fears are?

Well, some of the greatest fears are being alone.

And so the desert has that symbolism of being alone, being desolate.

In fact, in the top 7, being alone, rejection, and the unknown are all in the top 7 of fears in life.

So people would rather die and be alone and be rejected than to be public speaking, which you know is understandable to an extent.

It was actually Adams, 1 of the first maybe core experiences that Adams has of negative emotion when he realizes that Eve sins, he realizes that I'm going to be alone.

And because of that fear he chooses to partake of the fruit as well.

And according to 1st Timothy, Adam was was not deceived.

But that fear of being alone, that fear of being isolated, caused him to sin.

The purpose of this sermon today is to encourage us that if we are called to go into the wilderness, to not be afraid of it.

Because when you're called by God, God goes with you.

And so through the stories of these biblical patriarchs and prophets, we're going to be kind of exploring what their experience was like and the lessons we can learn from them.

We're just gonna pray before we begin any further.

Dear Father in heaven, Lord, again we just wanna take a moment to invite your Holy Spirit to be here with us.

That the message today can reflect your love and what you desire for us as your children.

Here's some of the things that I've learned about being in the wilderness, and particularly the Joshua tree.

But the reason why they called it a Joshua tree was that it reflected how Joshua depended upon God as he lifted up his hands in prayer towards God.

There's a symbiotic relationship between this moss and the Joshua tree.

In fact, they cannot survive without each other, completely dependent upon each other.

Joshua trees live in the arid desert, and oftentimes they have to store up tons of water in order to protect themselves through the periods where they don't get water as well.

And protection status, they cannot be destroyed, they cannot be killed.

And these are the 4 lessons that you'll find in every biblical figure that we're gonna look at today as we look at Abraham, as we look at Jacob, as we look at Moses, and as we look at Joshua, that first of all, they relied upon God completely, they were dependent upon him.

Also that God always provided them water when they were in need.

Also, that they were protected through their experience with him.

If you could turn with me in your Bible to Genesis 12.

You don't have to go, You don't have to be too advanced in your Christian experience to know that success in your life is directly correlated or a direct causal factor, I should say, to your relationship with God.

If you ask anyone who has tons of money, and you ask them if that is the measure of success, they'll tell you no.

If you ask someone with looks, they'll say no.

If you ask someone with great knowledge, I'm reading this book on Albert Einstein, massive book, extremely massive intellect, extremely smart, but his life was a mess.

And so intellect alone does not relate or does not directly correlate with a successful life, but following God's will and God's plan for your life directly correlates with success in your life.

This is a very difficult lesson to learn and oftentimes we learn it like the biblical patriarchs and prophets through going into the wilderness and understanding that our method of how to get things done does not always lead to success in our lives.

Genesis 12, 1, the Lord said unto Abraham, go, get you out of your country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show you.

Hebrews 13 says that Abraham went not knowing where he went.

I mean, Noah had a pretty hard explanation to the people who asked him, you know, why are you building this?

But Abraham also had a very hard explanation to tell his people, people he grew up with, his country, his neighbor, his family, hey, I'm going to a place I have no idea where I'm going.

And he was going out, leaving a place to go into the unknown, to go from a place that was known to go to a place that is unknown.

From order where he thought there was order into this place where he thought possibly there could be chaos, there could be disorder, not knowing where he was going to go.

You see God goes deeper and deeper and deeper with Abraham.

First he says, leave your native country.

You know, whenever I am in Loma Linda and I see a license plate that says New Hampshire, I immediately just want to talk to them.

If you've ever been overseas to another country and you meet someone that's from America, you want to know where, right?

Like there's certain levels of like being alone, you want to connect with people from your own country or from your own place or from your own town or from your own village.

So he starts with telling Abraham, you need to leave your own country.

And then not only that, but you need to leave your own family where you get your identity from.

Your family is kind of the first reflector of who you really are.

And not only are you called to leave the identity of who you are as a citizen, but he calls him to leave his identity, who he is as a person.

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The Joshua Tree: God’s Purpose in Your Wilderness

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