Hey, let's pray together. God, we as a church family come before you and we recognize that this weekend is about those who have paid the ultimate price. God, we know that we live here and enjoy the freedoms that we do in large part because of what has been done before us and the knowledge that freedom always costs blood. It always does. It does in a political sense in terms of our freedom in the wonderful nation we have and it does in a spiritual sense. And that sacrifice was paid by Jesus and so we recognize that those who have given their lives in the service of our nation mirror your sacrifice and what you've done for us. And that's why we we value this so much. And so God, we pray that you be near to those who have lost loved ones and still grieving and still sensing that loss and may you give them comfort in a weekend like this. And may we as Christians continue to steward the blessings that have been given to us in this nation. And may you watch over us and so that these sacrifices can continue to uh to secure our freedom going forward and your name can be known. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, hey, it's great to see you today. Um man, I'm fired up. I hope you're having a great weekend so far. I've been having a great weekend. Uh my daughter's bridal shower was yesterday and I currently have 10 people living in my home and two of them are males. So, you can be praying for me. But they're all fantastic. In fact, a bunch of them are right over here. So, just super excited to have them in town with us and other people as well. And it's just been an absolutely wonderful fun time to hear in our family. So, I hope you're having a great weekend as well. If you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to Joshua chapter 6. And as we do that, we have been going chapter by chapter through this book. And we've been saying in this series that if you want to understand the big picture of your life and what God is up to with you is simply this: to take you on a journey from here to there. From slavery to freedom. From death to life. From sorrow to joy. In other words, God wants to take you somewhere. And that somewhere he wants to take you is good. And our journey our journey parallels the Israelites' journey that we've been reading about in Joshua. So, God rescues Egypt or rescues the Israelites from Egypt by the blood of a lamb. In the same way God rescues us from our sin by the blood of a lamb who's known as Jesus. God takes the Israelites into the promised land, which is a place where he is in charge of their lives and no one and nothing else. And in the same way, he wants to take us to the promised land where he is in charge of our lives and no one or nothing else. And so now for the Israelites, we get to the point where if they are to live in this land, they've got to root out whatever stands in opposition to the authority of God both in them and around them. And that means specifically for them, as we're going to see today, they've got to go to war against the city of Jericho. And why is that? Because the city of Jericho is standing in opposition to the authority of God. But while for the Israelites Jericho was a specific historical city and a historical action took place, for us, for you, your Jericho is whatever stands in opposition to God's authority both in you and around you. And so just as the Israelites are going to declare war on that Jericho, you and I have got to declare war on our Jericho. So before we get into this though, I want to warn you that this is one of the roughest passages in the Bible that we're going to look at. In fact, there are Bible scholars who think that this book shouldn't even be in the Bible. If you've ever heard someone criticize Christianity, they'll often say, "Well, because the Bible's full of violence and destruction and all this kind of stuff." And when they say that, whether they know it or not, they're actually thinking about the passage that we're going to read today. This is what they're talking about when they level that charge. So the city of Jericho though is actually really not that big, only about maybe 2,500 people. But you got to think about it, back then, you didn't have billions of people on the planet and so things were kind of maybe smaller than than we would, you know, think that they are. And so there they are in this area across the Jordan River and the Israelites are going to do this, they're going to attack the city and declare war on it, but they only have one problem. And the problem is that while this they're they're greatly outnumbered by the Israelites, the walls of the city are for all intents and purposes impenetrable. You just can't get past them and they know that. And so the Well, lots of cities at that time, what was their whole defense system was their walls. And people couldn't get get past it. And so, in order for the Israelites to actually conquer this city, they somehow got to deal with the walls. Well, how are they going to do that? Well, we're going to read about it starting in verse one. It says, "Now Jericho was strongly fortified because of the Israelites. No one leaving or entering." The Lord said to Joshua, "Look, I have handed Jericho, its king, and its best soldiers over to you." Now, we'll stop right there for a moment because that's kind of interesting. First of all, it's saying that they the people in Jericho all know the Israelites are coming, so they're like, "Boom, lock the gates, put up the drawbridge, you know, whatever, put all the alligators in the moat." And they're like, "We're surrounding this place, and no one's leaving, and no one's coming in." So, they are freaked out because here come the Israelites. But then the other thing it says, if you notice, is that God says to Joshua, "Look, you're going to fight these guys, but you've already won. You've already won because this is not your battle, it's my battle." And one of the things that we're going to see as we go throughout, that when God asks us to go forward into something, he is the one who is fighting that battle. Now, we're doing it, but he goes before us. We're the one doing it, but he's already secured the victory. And so, it's not going to be because the the Israelites have this brilliant plan, you know, they're like these genius military strategists. In fact, we're going to see what their plan is and what God tells them to do, and you're like, "How is this possibly going to work?" So, this is what it says in verse three. "March around the city with all the men of war, circling the city one time. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry seven rams' horn trumpets in front of the ark. But on the seventh day, march around the city seven times while the priests blow the rams' horns. When there is a prolonged blast of the horn and you hear its sound, have all the troops give a mighty shout. Then the city wall will collapse and the troops will advance each man straight ahead. Okay, this is an interesting military strategy. So, you get these guys together, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take one lap around the city and no one makes a sound. You got to be super quiet except for these guys blowing horns, right? Which in some ways being silent is kind of scary. I don't know about you, but I don't really like silence very much, in case you couldn't tell. Um kind of like a you know, and so when someone's quiet, when they don't talk very much, I'm like, "Damn, what's going on with you?" you know? And so so like you can imagine these guys super quiet and it's almost scarier than them yelling at this point. It's very intimidating except for the little trumpet sounds. So, they do one lap and they go home. And the next day they do another lap and they go home. And this goes on for six days, same kind of thing. And these guys are probably like, "What are these guys doing?" The seventh day they go around seven times, they blow the trumpet and then on cue, like 12-year-old girls at a Bieber concert, they are screaming at the top of their lungs. Right? As loud as they can possibly go and guess what? The walls of the city fall down. Is it because they've got these like opera voices, like, "Oh!" and then you know, like rather No, it is because God causes these walls to collapse. And so when that happens, uh Joshua says there's two things that you guys are going to do. The first thing you're going to do is you're going to go in and you're going to rescue a woman named Rahab. Do you remember Rahab from a few weeks ago? Rahab was a prostitute and she was the one who hid the spies when the spies came in from Israel and I remember I said they weren't very good spies cuz like 5 minutes and everyone's like, "There's spies here." you know? You're not a good spy if they make you in like 5 minutes. So so Rahab has to hide them, but because she hid them and risked her life and she basically said, uh "I think your God is going to you know, bring judgment upon us. Um can you please rescue me?" And they promised to do it. Well, now they're going to fulfill that promise. And so, Joshua said, you're going to get Rahab and all of her family out of this city. That's the first thing that you're going to do. But then after that, you're going to kill everyone. Everyone. And nobody lives in this city. And in one of the most controversial passages in all of the Bible, this is what it says in verse 20. So, the troops shouted and the rams' horns sounded. When they heard the blast of the trumpets, the troops gave a great shout and the walls collapsed. The troops advanced into the city, each man straight ahead, and they captured the city. They completely destroyed everything in the city with the sword. Every man and woman, both young and old, and every ox, sheep, and donkey. And if you are living in this time in the world, in this place in the world, and you are at least semi-reasonable, your question is, why? Why, God? If you are so merciful, if you are so gracious, would you command the Israelites to kill everyone except for Rahab and her family, even the animals? So, in one sense, there's no way to sanitize this. It is what it is, and we play it where it lies. We don't say, well, because it offends our sensibilities, somehow it either isn't true or it doesn't belong in the Bible or whatever, and we try to spin it a certain way. We don't do that. We say, this is what happens. What do we do with this? How could God do such a thing? And that is one of the reasons why a lot of people reject Christianity and the Bible because they go, it's stuff like this that makes me not want to believe. So, before we go any further, I just want to take a couple minutes and help us understand what is going on even with the fact that there may be some tension that remains. So, how do we do that? Well, first of all, we have to remember that it's very easy to level criticism while we sit here many years later in a safe, prosperous nation and we can sit on our patios or our balconies and sip our lattes in safety and happiness for the most part without even really understanding how it is that we even got here. Second of all, we have to acknowledge the fact that the tribes in the land of Canaan were were unimaginably evil. You think, "Oh, these poor people, they're just trying to make a living." Not exactly. In the tribes in Canaan, child sacrifice was routine. Child abuse was routine. There was no sense of the dignity of the individual. Sexual deviancy of any kind was not only practiced, but celebrated. This is a kind of place that you would not be familiar with at all in any of your experience. In fact, God even says to the Israelites at one point, "The reason that you're going to go to war against these tribes is not because you're so good. It's because these guys are so bad." So, don't puff yourself up thinking, "Oh, it's because of our great character and our integrity." He literally says that. It's not that. It's not you guys. You guys are actually got your own problems. I'm sending you in because these guys are just that bad. In fact, one of the reasons that you and I live in the society that we do now with our human rights and even our prosperity is because Israel prevailed and Jericho did not. Had Jericho prevailed, the world would have turned out a lot differently. And we just have to acknowledge that reality. You live where you live, you have the freedoms you have, you have the prosperity that you have, you have the comfort that you have for a reason, and a lot of it was forged out of a much more brutal world than you and I really can understand. But even so, there's still moral tension. I mean, you're talking about children, elderly people, and women. But in a similar sense, when we bring it a little closer to home, and we think about, for example, what happened in World War II when the United States dropped several atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They undoubtedly knew that when they did that, there would be children, there would be disabled people, there would be elderly, who would be victims of those blasts. They would be maimed, and they'd be killed. But there was also a calculation that was made that in the end, more lives would be saved because of it on both sides. You were in a situation that you can't do anything about. And so, while it's horrific in the micro, it was seen as necessary in the macro. Because the truth of the matter is, however we want to Monday morning quarterback those kinds of things, it's very possible that some of you, and maybe even me, or whatever, as people in our families, would not be here today had the war dragged on. And your great-grandfather would have died. And it's very possible that that could have happened. So, we we we look back on things, and we go, "It's it's a it's a brutal and rough and difficult world." And you say, "Well, then why couldn't they have at least just incorporated these citizens of Jericho into their society?" Well, they did, actually, with um Rahab and her family. She was a woman of faith, and her actions impacted her family. Huge principle, by the way. When you when you the way that you and I live don't just impact ourselves, it has an effect around with the people around us. Because of Rahab's faith, her family was saved. But because of the lack of faith of the rest of the city, they were not. And that's just the way that it went. But here's the thing. Let's not lack imagination when it comes to how steeped in evil a person can be. In other words, again, bringing it more into our time, what would you do with the mother of a Hamas terrorist who, as you saw in in on YouTube or whatever else, who was out in the street celebrating when she received pictures that her son sent her of raping and brutalizing Israeli women? What do you do with a woman like that? Do you live next door to her? Do you do you let her babysit your kids? Is she the lunch lady over at Ecker Hill Middle School? You Do you Do you want that? How how is a person like that compatible with our society? How does that supposed to work? And the answer is, it doesn't. And so, it's not that you wouldn't be willing to coexist with her, it's that she wouldn't be willing to coexist with you. And that that's the reality of the situation that they faced. So, when we talk about this, we understand that that there's some some some tension in all this, and I'm not asking us to jump for joy about what happened here, but I am asking us to set aside the naive assumption that, given the circumstances, any one of us would have handled this in a more morally superior way. You would not. And to to think otherwise is What's that word? Um ethnocentrism, right? Where we just kind of allow ourselves to to cast judgment on other societies because they don't do things quite like we think that that should. So, in any case, I I give you all that because even the problem is if we focus just on that, we're actually missing the point of the passage because it's not so much about the destruction as it is about the redemption. Because even in a place of horrific evil, a place that would make you sick if you saw it, God draws the heart of one woman to himself, who is a prostitute. Rahab the prostitute. It's really funny how they always refer to her as Rahab the prostitute. You know, it's like at one point, can I just be Rahab, you know? It's like It's like I saw this Babylon Bee meme with talking about the the Ethiopian eunuch. You know, the Ethiopian eunuch, he's like, "Guys, I have a name, you know? Do I always have to be called the eunuch?" It's I just find that funny. But but in any case, the reason why she even up in the Hebrews in the New Testament, she's called Rahab the prostitute, is because we need to be reminded that God saves people, even unlikely people. And by the way, she ends up becoming the great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus. A prostitute. Nobody is beyond saving. And that's the clear message that's woven throughout the scripture. That's why it's like, they have no problem going, "Yeah, Jesus' great great great mom was a prostitute. Cool. God saves people." Next subject. And by the way, she was the only one who knew or who saw, "You know what? We got a wicked place. And we We're going to get what's coming to us. But I don't want to go down with this." So, when these guys show up, she's like, "Uh can you get me out of here? Cuz uh your God is justly coming in to take care of business, and I don't want to be a part of it." And they go, "Sure. Come on." Come on. And that happens throughout scripture, by the way. People who are grafted in. Oh, by the way, including people who follow Jesus called Christians, grafted in to the promise of Israel. It's kind of a cool thing. But in any case, so what happens? We'll read about it, and it's lengthy, but it's good, cuz it's the word of God, so we'll let it speak for itself. Look at verse 22. It says, "Joshua said to the two men who had scouted the land, 'Go to the prostitute's house, and bring the woman out of there, and all who are with her, just as you swore to here.'" So, fulfilling a promise. So, the young man who had scouted went in and brought out Rahab and her father, mother, brothers, and all who belonged to her. They brought out her whole family and settled them outside the camp of Israel. They burned the city and everything in it. But, they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house. However, Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, her father's family, and all who belonged to her because she hid the messengers Joshua had sent to spy in Jericho, and she still lives in Israel today. Well, not today, but the day that it was written. So, in other words, you can sit there and go, "Oh, you're talking about talking about Rahab?" She was a prostitute, I didn't know that. Yeah, um sorry, but but it's like she You know what I'm saying? You can still go back to She was the She's still there. She's still alive today. At the time it was written. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. How cool is that? So, we look at this whole thing in this destruction of Jericho, and we go, "What do we do with something like this?" Well, as I said in the beginning, if we're going to live in the promised land, the place where God wants us to be, that means rooting out whatever stands in opposition to God's authority both within us and around us. And while the fall of Jericho was a historical event without which the world would not be the same had it not happened, there are things both in and around us that stand in opposition to God's authority as well. And we have been called to fight those things. That is the purpose of our life. Did you know that? That is the purpose of your life. The purpose of your life is to fight the things that don't belong in the world that God owns. Those things exist within you, and those things exist around you. However, our battles now are of a different nature than they were then. Cuz again, God is taking humanity on a journey, and the journey we fight now, the battles we fight now are not so much about the physical as they are about the spiritual. And this is laid out very clearly in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 12. Look what it says. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the evil the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And the idea is that there is a spiritual realm beyond this one. And by the way, that's you know, that's like the easiest thing to say in the world now. I mean, half of America's waiting for the big treasure trove of UFO material to come out to be released soon, right? Here it comes. Some people like, this is really going to threaten Christianity. Like, okay, sure. I'm going to see that that happens, right? I'm not worried about that at all because the reality is if there is weird unexplainable stuff, we already know in scriptures of manifestations of angels, there's manifestations of demons, there is a spiritual world that will at times break into the physical. That is just kind of like a given in the scripture. So, some dude flying a jet at 40,000 ft see something weird, I don't know. You know, whatever it is. But it's probably something spiritual. It's not like your aunt as a ghost flying around or it's probably not some alien from 3 trillion miles away. It's just not. And why do they always go to like random like remote places? Do you ever notice that, too? Like, why would I fly 500 billion miles to go to some like remote place and pull some guy out of a trailer park and do a probe on him? Like, that's weird to me. Like, if you're going to go that far, at least go to some place cool like Paris or Rome. You I mean, no offense to other places, but that Do you Do you see what I'm saying? So, so again, I don't know how By the way, that's a total tangent. That was not in the notes. The dudes back there like, where is this guy going? I'm just saying there is a spiritual realm. And if you want to call it an alien with little green men and little flying saucer, I kind of doubt that, but I do very much believe in the spiritual realm. So, thank you. Again, I don't know where that came from. That was buried somewhere in there. It flew out, man. That's why I really got to keep it tight on the notes. All right. So, the question I have for you, my friends, is how do you conquer Jericho? How do you conquer that thing that is uh in in opposition to God? Let me give you two I've already kind of said it, but we're going to drive it home a little more. Two points and then we're done. Number one is this, you and I have to declare war on the evil inside us. See, the great thing about this is just as just as God said to to to Joshua, "Dude, the battle's already won." Like, you're good. You just got to go do it. We have these today, Jesus, who through his death and his burial and his resurrection and his ascension has conquered sin and death for us. So, you don't have to fear those things anymore and you're not held accountable for your sin anymore because Jesus has paid for that fully and completely. So, the battle's already been won as it regards your soul. However, there there there's still something there that you have the opportunity to go and eradicate out of your life and eradicate out of my life. So, how do we do that? Look what it says in Colossians chapter 3. It's pretty strong language, but it's there right in front of us. It says, "Therefore, put to death totally destroy what belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, God's wrath is coming upon the disobedient and you once walked in these things when you were living in them, but now put away all of the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth." Now, what you sit there and go, "Okay." You might be like, "Okay, fine. Whatever. So, be a good person." No, that's not what he's talking about. Because you know what happens when all of those qualities that he's saying are a part of your life, you wreak havoc on everyone around you. Do you know that? You might be successful in a worldly sense. You might make a few bucks because people like what you produce or whatever else, but you're going to ruin the relationships around you. You're just going to leave behind a trail of destruction. In fact, there is not a person in this room who has not been hurt badly, deeply, by another person who refused to declare war on the evil in their own heart. Do you know that? So, when you sit there and blame God for something someone else did to you, understand that that person made a conscious choice to say, "No, God, I'm not going to listen to you. I will take what I want to take. I will live how I want to live, and I will let these qualities rule me. I will let them be I would I will not go to war against them." And because of that, they lived in a way like a bomb blast went off and and the shrapnel landed on you. That's what happened. And so we sit there and say, "Well, God, I don't understand." And it Yeah, I mean, God obviously could stop that person, but let me ask you a question. When you've wanted to go sin, do you want God stopping you? You know what you want God when you have to take that one last drink that puts you over the edge? And you got to force your hand? You would be screaming out saying, "God, let me do what I want to do." Same thing the other person said to God when they did what they did, whatever it was to you that hurt you and caused you bitterness to this day. We have to understand that we live in a world that belongs to God. It is his property. And we've got to get the stuff out that doesn't belong on his property. You are, as a Christian, property of Jesus. And he wants stuff in and again, the parallel with Jericho. This is the promised land. God's like, "This is my property. You got to get Jericho off my property." Because I cannot do what I intend to do when it's still there. So, what happens is when the other way when when you do these things and you put to death these things in your life and you declare war on them and you say not just like, "Well, you know, everybody makes mistakes." But you go, "No, I'm going after this. I don't want this to be I don't want this to characterize me anymore." What happens is just like springtime in Park City, you have these beautiful blooms that come out and we call them in the Bible, the Bible calls it the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control and I probably left one out. But all of these things are fruit that happens and people go, "That's really beautiful." And you know what you're doing? You're fulfilling the command that Jesus said when he said, "When you pray, I want you to pray Father, uh who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." The old English way. Um your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So, what you're doing is you're bringing heaven to earth. See, we like to say here at Mount Life, we like to say just as Jesus said, "On earth as it is in heaven." We like to say, "In Park City as it is in heaven." We want it to be in Park City as it is in heaven. So, it's not so much a matter of you going, "Man, I hope I go to heaven." That's not your your your job is not to wonder if you're going to heaven. Your job is to bring heaven to earth by how you live. That's what you do. You bring heaven to earth by how you live. Because Jesus is going to come and he's going to rule the earth. He's going to heal the earth. And you should you open up little windows into it by declaring war against the things in your life that don't belong on God's property. All right? Second thing is this. Oh, by the way, I should say if you remember, these kinds of things we're talking about, you know, all the things he lists, lust, pride, um anger, you know, whatever, just fill in the blank. If you don't declare war on those things, just remember they've already declared war on you. They want you dead. They want to sideline you. And those are the tools that Satan used to destroy you. Just know that. You think, well, I don't want to go to war. You It's too late, you're already in a war. There's already a war for your soul. Right? So, just know that. Now, if you're a Christian, you can't lose that. That's why Paul's saying, look, that's not you anymore. You got to put those things to death. Th- This is God's property that that you're on now. Right? So, there's the Jericho thing. Secondly is this, declare war on the evil around you. Now, this is where it gets kind of exciting, if you ask me. Because this is where you can begin to say to God, you know what, God? And this is a bold thing, cuz we Again, what's our goal here? We want to be fearless followers of Jesus. We got little stickers. I've been seeing them on people's cars and I, you know, on their little computers and stuff like that. We want to be fearless followers of Jesus. That's what we're trying to produce here at Mountain Life. So, here's a fearless prayer. Hey God, will you use me to bring your authority to this earth? To to manifest the fact that you are in control, that this is your property. So, for example, and it's not just about Park City, it it expands beyond to the region and then to the globe. So, in July of this year, we're going to have We kind of we've been having next gen month and kind of like hyping that up. In July, we're going to have global impact month. Where we feature all the ministries that um we are a part of around the world it that Mountain Life is is a part of. So, check this out. One of them is called Jericho Ministries. And it's in Honduras. In fact, the guy that leads it was up here. He's one of our vocalists, Ed Caneller, and he is in charge of of this Jericho Ministry in Honduras. And guess what? You know what they do? You say, why is it called Jericho Ministry? Because they rescue young girls out of prostitution. And they rebuild their lives. Huh? Well, why is it called Jer? Because Rahab was rescued out of prostitution and given a new life and a hope and a future. Listen to what their website says about what they do. It says, "All of our women and children experienced extremely traumatic events in their childhoods. Some things too difficult for us to even imagine. And our prayer is that through vocational and formal education, discipleship training, and prayer-filled loving care in a family atmosphere, they will be equipped, healed, and set free to become all that God has in mind for them to be." So, it's about bringing these girls' lives under the authority of God so they can flourish and they can be free from the things that have ruled them and the systems that have destroyed their lives. So, guess what? We're taking a trip in August or late late July, early August down there. And I asked Ed, I said, "Hey, how many can you take?" He said, "Well, we can only take about 10." I'm like, "Great. There should be a a waiting list a mile long at this church then. Because statistically speaking, enough of you should be sitting here going, "I'll go there. I want to be I don't even know what we're supposed to do. I don't even know what we're supposed to do, either. But, whatever it is, it's to help them. I'll go be a part of that. Sign me up. Where do I sign up? Oh, sorry. We only can take 10 people. There's 50 people that want to go. That's the way it should be with everything that we do here. And hopefully we can create more opportunities, but we have ministry after ministry like that around the world. So, here's the thing. You go to something like that, you're going to war against the evil that exists around you. So, yeah, maybe we aren't killing the guys who are doing the prostitution, but we are opposing them. And we are standing in their way. And we are disrupting the system. And we're saying, "You know what? Um excuse me. This is Jesus's world, pal. And in Jesus's world, we don't do that. That's not what happens here. You need to get off his property. You need to stop doing that. And you better figure that out now while you still have time. Do you see what I'm saying? See, this is a big We're not just talking about making the world a better place. We're talking about the authority of Jesus on this earth is breaking through that was secured in the in his resurrection and his ascension into heaven and the fact that he's coming back again and we have been tasked your life's purpose is to proclaim that and to basically go after those Jerichos that aren't appropriately placed on his property. They shouldn't be there. So, here's the thing. Now, it's so cool because like when when Bailey and Pierce got up and they're like, "How many young adults do we have in here?" Like the whole place is like, "You guys are all young adults apparently." This is cool. It was such a great, you know, you're like, "I'm not." No, it's okay. In this service you can be because there's just you're almost outnumbered by the young adults in here, which is wonderful. Hey young adults, here's the deal. If you're looking for a spouse, you need to look for someone who is declaring war on the evil inside themself. Or they're going to be a pretty difficult spouse. Well, he's a nice guy. Not if he hasn't declared war on the stuff going on inside him. And you better And you better find a spouse who's declared war against the evil around them. Like look for that person. Cuz now what you can do Now what you can do is you can become somebody who is actually making a difference in the world. And you're somebody that's actually going to eternally first So, so now you're you as a couple you have a And it doesn't mean you have to go into full-time ministry, but what it does mean, it means that you can even in your your marketplace job or whatever it is, you're actually making things happen and your your your real purpose is subversive. Your real purpose is like, "Hey, I may be a you know, I I may run a company or I may do this other thing, but you know what I'm doing? I'm using all of that to be able to make this world a place that looks like God runs it. And that's what we want to be about. So, we declare war on the things within us, and we declare war on the things around us. And I think one of the greatest cures for meaninglessness is to be able to pick up on something like that. There's a guy named Robert Schuller. Um he had really bad theology, by the way, so I'm not like saying he has great theology. However, he did say something really cool. He said, "Find a need and meet it, and find a hurt and heal it." See, we are made for resistance, not equilibrium. And I I think we have to be careful, guys, cuz I love where we live, and like this is, you know, uh my my future son-in-law um at our at our house, he put up this wonderful hammock um between these two trees, and I got in there for the first time yesterday um cuz I'm not really a hammock guy, but I'm like, "Well, you know, all the like the women were in the house, I'm like, I got to go outside." And so, um I laid in the hammock, I laid in the hammock, and I was like, "Whoa, this is so nice. I could just stay here forever." And it was so nice, and you know what? If we're not careful, that's what this place can become for us. Just a place where we just, man, I'm just here to shut it all out. And I'm begging you, don't do that. This should be a place of refreshment, realignment, reengagement, shoring up resources, shoring up getting a bunch of capable competent people together, and going back out on the attack. That's what this place should be, and that's what this church is going to be, and that's why we're building that building, and that's why we're doing the stuff that we're doing. If you're like, "Oh, this stuff's changing." Oh, you keep clapping. Thank you. I'll stop talking when you clap. You're like, "Keep clapping." Um So, that's my point, guys, is that's what this that's where this church is headed. That's what we're about. And we love this place, and we'll be so happy that we live here, but we are not here to phone it in. We are here to go to war against the things that don't belong on God's property. Okay. I have said enough. But here's what I want to do. I want to invite the worship team to come up right now. Some of us you're looking at things in your life and you're like, "Okay, that's fine, Tim, but the Jericho is pretty big. It's got some pretty big walls around it. I don't know how I'm going to beat this thing." And maybe that thing that's on God's property is pretty big deal. Could be pornography, infidelity, substance abuse, rage, bitterness, "I hate my dad. I hate my mom. I hate Donald Trump. I hate the world." God can't use you when you have those Jerichos on his property. He's just like, "I You guys got to get rid of that stuff. You I can't I I can't What What are you doing?" You got to go to war against all that stuff, whatever it is. You got to declare war on it. But it might be hard. And I want to encourage you, this is your moment. This is your moment to do it. You know, time goes by very fast. I've learned that. You learn that when your little daughter all of a sudden says she wants to get married. You learn that when you look in the mirror and you're like, "Whoa. What happened?" You realize I'm saying, "Don't waste another second. Don't waste another second leaving these things around that shouldn't be there." Some of you need to take up a cause. You need to You need to go fight something. Yeah, keep golfing, keep skiing, keep doing your thing. But you need to create a space where you can put a stake in the ground and say, "No more." I'm not letting this while I'm around. This isn't going to happen cuz this is God's earth. I don't know what that means you, but you can at least ask him. God, will you lead me? Cuz you know what? He led the Israelites and Jericho, the walls of Jericho fell down and they did It can happen again. He'll do it again. He can do it in your life in here and he can do it around you. But you got to surrender to him. And you got to say now is the time. We're done. Time is now. So as we sing this song and reflect on that ask God, God where are the Jerichos that I got to start walking around? What do you need to do in me? And then ask God to say God, will you open my eyes and let me see the pain around me the hurt around me the devastation around me. Will you break my heart for that stuff? I don't want to go through life asleep. Think about that as we sing this song. >>