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Ceres SDA Church

Anil Kanda

Operation BluePrint

Ladies and gentlemen, God wants us to live a life like Jesus Amen a life of servitude a life of faithfulness a life of obedience and a life of communion and like Joshua Joshua was somebody who did not start off that way Joshua did not start off being called the servant of the Lord.

He was somebody who was simply called the assistant of Moses.

But as he grew in his faithfulness, and as he grew in his communion, God could say at the end of his life, This is my servant.

When God has something for you To do or for something for you to share can he count on you and say you know what I know that person's gonna do it I know they're gonna be obedient to me.

Can you be called the servant of the Lord?

Now the reason why I want you to examine this question is because God wants you to live a life Where you are searching after that type of condition that you are becoming a servant of the Lord and that Takes place each and every day as you give yourself to Jesus and you say to the Lord God make me faithful Today in your service.

I was just doing a lot of office work meeting with various people I had some time off before my next meeting and I was like, you know what I'll do.

I'll just go to Walmart and I was gonna go buy some stuff.

I don't go to Walmart randomly I just thought I'll go there and get some stuff as soon as I you know parked my car I just said to myself I said, you know what?

Maybe God has me here for a witness and I said Lord Whatever your providence wants me what wants to lead me into so be it And as soon as I put the car in park, boom, look to the right, and it was somebody who comes to our church.

And we were talking, and it was just a blessing, and I said, you know what, please come to church this Sabbath, I'd love to see you.

And it was just a powerful conversation We had and I was like praise the Lord and I walked out and I was like maybe God has somebody else boom Right before I was even done talking there was somebody else It was somebody I'd shared that my testimony with who works for 1 of the dry cleaner companies.

And I was like, God is just answering this prayer left and right.

If you want to experience some powerful things, go to Walmart and pray.

Look, you think I'm joking right now, but when you're going into a public place, you ought to be praying, God, I want you to use me as your witness.

You know, I went to Best Buy a few days ago and I ran into somebody who right before I was just praying Lord Please use me as to be your witness.

I was doing sending out a bunch of emails writing a bunch of things that whole day I really didn't feel just like I was a powerful witness for the Lord that day You know and I said, okay God, please use me went to Best Buy and I ran into somebody who I went to school with and I started talking to them and I found out he was interested in the Bible Here's the thing ladies and gentlemen God wants to use you in the work of God Amen, and every day you just have to play a simple prayer.

You don't even have to get on your knees.

When I pulled up to Walmart, I was in my truck.

I pulled in, I wasn't even done driving all the way.

I didn't have the car all the way in park yet.

And I was just like, God, use me today in your province.

God can do the same for you Ladies and gentlemen, God wants you to be his servants Amen, and every day you just pray a simple prayer God use Me today in your service you go to the store say Sunday.

I don't know why I'm here I'm maybe I'm doing my shopping grocery shopping God used me today in your witness You would be surprised how fast God is waiting to answer that prayer And if there ever is a time God is waiting to Answer that prayer and angels are just shaking waiting to use you as a powerful witness It's now at the close of human history.

God is just waiting for this prayer to be answered Can you say amen to that?

So 1 thing we begin to understand about Joshua is that he became the servant of the Lord He didn't start off that way But through various events and the outreach that God called him to do He became the servant of the Lord he didn't start off that way But through various events and the outreach that God called him to do he became the servant of the Lord and God could say Confidently, this is my servant But 1 of the things I want you to also see about the life of Joshua is this After they had conquered much of the land There was a time when they were dividing up the land and they were dividing up the land according to the various tribes And so 1 tribe group would go there 1 tribe group would go there another tribe group would go there another tribe group would go there and Joshua When he was divine done dividing up all these tribes and it took a long time because some of these other pagan tribes refused to get out of the area.

So, Joshua had to give specific instruction.

Other parts of the land needed some more warfare done to just kind of boot out the Canaanites.

And so, while all this long process was taking place, Joshua waited until the end to choose His own inheritance.

But what is so interesting is what He chooses as His own inheritance.

I'm going to show you something powerful.

Take your Bible, go to Joshua, Go to Joshua chapter 19.

What did Joshua choose as His inheritance?

This man who had grown to be the servant of the Lord, what did he choose as His inheritance?

This is powerful stuff here ladies and gentlemen.

Verse 49, chapter 19 verse 49 are we all there?

Verse 49, When they had made an end of dividing the land as in what?

An inheritance according to their borders.

Now watch this the children of Israel gave an inheritance Among them to Joshua the son of Nun and I'm sure they were willing to say look Joshua You blessed us you helped lead us Into this holy land we've walked over 40 years to get to this point We came out of Egypt and here we are we finally arrived and we're finally putting down roots And they say Joshua whatever you want You pick the place that you want and we're gonna make sure you get it you want the best of that land you will get it you want waterfalls which will make it happen and they were so inclined to give Joshua whatever land he wanted because of his hard work I want you to see what he actually chooses verse 50 according to the Word of the Lord they gave him the city which he what asked for Timnath Sarah in the mountains of Ephraim and he built the city and dwelt in it now the reason why this is so interesting This was just a little rugged place.

There was nothing special about this city except for 1 thing I was doing a lot of study on this and I found out what the commentators were really honing in on this when it comes to This particular city and why This city was super important.

It was less than a day's journey from the sanctuary It was less than a day's journey from the sanctuary.

You know why that is so powerful Because what took place in the Sanctuary the presence of God was manifested and so here Joshua says look the people tell him Joshua You can be anywhere you want in the land of Canaan several miles if you want to just retreat all the way Into the woods because you're tired of dealing with us.

Hey sure enough we'll make it happen and you could just hide behind those trees and no 1 will know you're here You can just retire in comfort and in safety and you can just live out your lives as we're real Establishing leadership and you know, what's so interesting is that he chooses another kind of place a place that was so unusual He doesn't choose to live far away from the center of Israel.

He chooses to live very close to the center of Israel, which was the sanctuary.

And Joshua always wanted to be near the presence of God.

And in a time where he could have chose anywhere else to live, he chose to be closest to the place where God was most manifested.

The Bible even talks about Joshua, even Moses earlier on.

Moses often times would go to the sanctuary to commune with God.

And the Bible even tells us, I believe it's in Numbers, that Joshua, after Moses left, Would still be near the sanctuary and he would fall asleep near the sanctuary most critical moments these things fall off You hear what I'm saying?

The reason why this needs to stick to us ladies and gentlemen is because God is calling us to be committed to his work And be committed to his church.

You see we have to not develop this kind of categorized religion Sort of this sort of this thing where it's just yeah, that's my religion over there And this is the rest of my life for the servants of God.

This Was their life and they built around the church They built around the presence of God because to them that was the most important thing Ladies and gentlemen, we need to re-examine These things and we begin to we really need to start praying.

Wait a minute What is God up to and what does he want us to do with our lives?

God will bless you as you seek to honor him.

Amen, but there's another point I want to make And I believe this is 1 of the most powerful points in the book of Joshua And I believe this is what we're honing in on as they're done dividing up the land The Bible tells us something remarkable About the inheritance that God was giving to the various tribes.

After the system was all done, after everything was taking place, Reuben got over there, Judah got over there, Joshua got over there, Caleb got over there, Manasseh got over there, and they're dividing up the tribes, and when they were done, God says, but there is 1 more thing that needs to be instituted with the land Go to the next chapter chapter 20.

It's very powerful The Lord spoke to Joshua saying speak to the children of Israel Saying a point for yourselves cities of what refuge of which I spoke to you through Moses God tells Joshua Joshua what I want you to do before you completely retire I want you to make sure there are places called cities of refuge within the whole encampment of Israel.

That the slayer who kills a person accidentally or unintentionally may flee there and they shall be your refuge from the Avenger of blood and when he flees to 1 of those cities and stands at the entrance of the gate of the city and declares his case in the hearing of the elders of that city They shall take him into the city as 1 of them and give him a place that he may dwell among them Verse 5 that if the Avenger of the blood pursues him they shall not deliver the slayer into his hand Because he struck his neighbor unintentionally and he did not hate him beforehand.

Verse 6, and he shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment, and until the death of the 1 who is the high priest in those days.

Then the slayer may return and come to his own city and his own house to the city from which he fled.

And what begins to take place is they begin to actually institute 6, or I should say, 6 refuge cities, 3 on 1 side of the Jordan and 3 on the other side of Jordan.

And now, the reason why these cities of refuge were super important was because if someone committed probably 1 of the most egregious Crimes he killed somebody took the life of somebody and he did it unintentionally or accidentally in other words It wasn't meditated premeditated that individual in fear of losing his life could run to the city of refuge and as he was in the city of refuge He would just say look everybody.

There's a man trying to kill me and the elders would immediately said Okay, come in and we'll guard you and There were 6 of these that were developed You know back then God was using the system and the system was an eye for an eye And so when God was dealing with this idea of justice He had to make sure that people would essentially get a fair trial and So when someone accidentally killed somebody say they're just swinging an axe That's actually an example the Bible uses and the axe head comes flying off And just chop somebody head off all of a sudden the relatives of that individual said now your head is coming off And so that person would take off running and he would take off running and he knew where the cities of refuge were And as soon as he entered into the cities the elders closed the gate He would tell him what was going on and the elders said you stay here.

We're going to guard you until you get a fair trial 6 of these cities were set up.

God was making sure things were done in a very legitimate way.

And so you can imagine these cities having some special places within Israel.

I found out some interesting facts about the city of refuge number 1 They were established by God before they were needed before they were needed number 2 they were available and accessible to all Israelite and watches the Bible even says in Deuteronomy and the Strangers in other words the foreigners could run there if they accidentally killed an Israelite.

Point number 3, their gates were always open.

Point number 4, they were widely advertised.

They were actually the Torah talks about how they were actually signposts along the way and the signposts Say would say refuge and So when a person is running he's just like where do I go all of a sudden he would see the signpost and it would Say refuge in back I know where to go and he's just following the signpost getting as fast as he could to that city of refuge because he knew As soon as he entered into that city, he was safe Here's another point all the cities of refuge were prominently located at high Elevations so that they could be seen from great distances You're gonna be blown away with I'm gonna share with you in just a bit Everyone was Within a day's journey of them.

That's powerful You see God set up these sort of the these places of mercy That if someone did something and they just look back and they were just like what did I do?

In fact, what's so interesting the word says this it says in Joshua that if someone committed a crime unwittingly or as the translation says Without cunning by the way, who's the first person in Scripture who were told was cunning, Satan.

So here they are, they have these cities of refuge, and you can just imagine someone did something bad, and they would be running, they would go as fast as they could, they see the signpost and say, yes, in that general direction, and they take off.

As soon as they got in there, they were safe.

The cities of refuge were set up by God to be in very important places in the Israelite community God was safeguarding against corruption and he Was making sure the government's understood what fair justice and trials are all and you can take a good look in the news media right now There's a whole lot of talk about sort of these high-profile high-profile killing cases And a lot of people are asking different questions but beside that looking at what the Bible was saying the Bible was saying something so remarkable that if a person did something Like that they could run and find refuge And you're still saying to me.

Are you ready go to chapter 21 you see chapter 21 is about another group who did not get an inheritance.

Operation BluePrint

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