We're gonna be in Joshua chapter number eight. Our Wednesday night Bible studies have been where the saints have trod. A series on top of things. Oh, I said her name, now she'll say something else. Electronic wizardry is amazing. Joshua chapter 8 and verse number 30. You remember where we were last time? There was a victory at Jericho but then it was followed by a defeat because of the sin at Jericho. It was followed by a defeat at Ai, the next little town. And this happens where we are tonight, where we're gonna read, happens immediately after they finally achieve a victory in battle at Ai. And so we pick up reading in chapter eight, verse, excuse me, verse number 30. Then Joshua built an altar under the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal. As Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the Law of Moses, an altar of whole stones over which no man hath lift up any iron, and they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings. And he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the Law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel. and their elders and officers, and their judges stood on this side, the ark, and on that side before the priests, the Levites, which bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and as well as the stranger, as he was born among them, half of them over against Mount Gerizim, and half of them over against Mount Ebal, as Moses, the servant of the Lord had commanded before. that they should bless the people of Israel. And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings according to all that is written in the book of the law. And there was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel with the women and the little ones and the strangers that were conversant among them. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you'd bless us, empower us by the Spirit of God to present the truths of the Word of God. And I pray that you'd just help us to go away from this place tonight, knowing more than we knew before. And Lord, that our hearts would be more dedicated to you than before, and that our service would be more effective than ever before. Bless us to that end, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Jericho, they had a victory, but unbeknownst to the children of Israel, they had sin in the camp. and Achan had stolen some things and they were commanded not to take anything out of Jericho and Achan sinned and so he and his family were punished and so then after they got rid of the sin out of the camp, they did go back up to Ai. They fought another battle after losing the first one and because they had cleansed themselves of the sin that beset them, this time they had a victory at Ai. They finish up with the battle of Ai, and they, instead of going back to their camp at Gilgal, they take a 35-mile hike right into the heart of enemy territory, and they have a worship service. Can you imagine that? I mean, why didn't they go back to Gilgal? They'd captured part of the south of the country already. Why didn't they go down there, finish capturing the south where it was safe, but rather they went up into the midst of the Canaanites and held a worship service. At Mount Ebal, Moses had prescribed back in the book of Deuteronomy that when they got into the land, when the children of Israel got into the land of Canaan, they were to have a time where they gather on two mountains across from each other and they yell at each other across the valley. And one of them pronounces blessings and one gives the cursings if obedience is not And so as we look at a couple of pictures here, we can kind of see where we are geographically. Here is, if you notice the circle up there, the red circle is Shechem, the Dead Sea being down at the bottom of the screen. Shechem is up towards the top. And if you'll notice in the black print, just to the left of that red circle, you'll see Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. These are two big mountains that kind of taper in towards each other, and right up in the place where they almost come together in touch makes a natural amphitheater where a speaker could be heard on both sides of the mountain. And the mountains were eroded, especially Ebal was eroded, and there were shelf-like rocks going up the side of the mountain where it'd be kind of like sitting in bleachers. Don't you thank God for these padded pews. Isn't that great? They're sitting on rocks. If we go over to the left side, you can see Shechem in contrast to the whole country. And then on the right side is a zoomed in portion. And then when they get there, we've got another picture, I think, don't we? One more that's showing there. This is kind of what it would look like today, that green valley with Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim in the background. This green valley up the center and then the two mountains almost come together. So the children of Israel are walking up that valley as Joshua leads them to come to this place where they're gonna have a big church service. They're gonna have a worship service. They're gonna build an altar. There's a place there on Mount Ebal now that can be viewed. It's built out of stones, and they call it Joshua's Altar. Now, whether that's the one he built or not, I don't know. The tourist guides probably say it was, because they keep you coming. I don't know if it's the exact same one, but it would be very similar to the one that was built by Joshua on that day. And have we got one more? Is there one more? That's it. All right. Here's what we're going to talk about tonight. There are several camps of people in Christianity today. Some are sold on the grace of God, the blessings of God, the love of God, all to the exclusion of not mentioning the judgments or the cursings of God. And then you got another group that, man, they're all about judgment and they're all about the cursings and all they want to do is rail on the people they minister to and just try to beat them into submission and no mention of the grace of God, not much to do with the love of God. And so, as I've said so many times, you can run into the ditch on either side of the road. So here in this valley, the children of Israel are kind of between the two mountains more in the middle of the road, and they're going to hear the blessings and the cursings. See, some people, they're all in favor of sitting in a church service and hearing all the good things that God's done and He's going to do. And He did do a lot of good things, and He is going to do a lot of good things. God's a wonderful God. God is a loving God. God is a God of blessing. but also we don't want to exclude the fact that because of disobedience, there comes judgment and cursings. And so we see both of them at this time. We're going to focus first on the priority of worship. Number one, the priority of worship. They've just come out of that A.I. campaign. Remember there was sin in Jericho? They found out about it. Man, this was a tragic time. A man and his family had to die because of it. And then they went up to fight the next battle at A.I. and they took a licking. I mean, they took a licking bad. And they had to leave A.I. with their tail tucked between their legs because of the sin that had been committed at Jericho. After they took care of that, they went back and won it. So with that thought in the background, Joshua leads them to Mount Ebal, across from Mount Gerizim, and fresh on their mind is, boy, we disobeyed God back yonder, just a few days ago. And God wailed the tar out of us, daylights out of us, because we disobeyed. And then when we obeyed, then he blessed us. So with that fresh on their mind, now they're gonna be up on those two mountains. It'd be like if we took this congregation, split it right down the middle and say, this half go over and stand against the wall, and this half go and stand against that wall, and y'all yell out the blessings if you obey God, and y'all yell out the blessings back across if God has disobeyed. That's kind of what took place that day. And so with all this on their mind, man, they go to worship. They're going to worship the Lord. The first thing we notice about the worship there is the priority that it demonstrates. Sometimes our Christianity can be all about one or the other. Some people are excited about worship, some are not. but here in the middle of the campaign, I mean, they're just now starting their war to capture, to overtake all of Canaan land. And so, instead of going on with the war, they take time out to worship. Does that mean anything to you? I mean, they've got a job to do. They're in the middle of enemy territory, but they took time out to worship. Yep, I wonder how many times. We're too busy. I'm talking about America and maybe all around the world. People are just too busy to worship God. Too many things to do. Well, this was a surprise that they went to worship right in the middle of what could have been a tragedy. I mean, it must have been going through some of them's minds. Man, we're in the middle of enemy territory. This is a strange place to worship. That's when we need to worship. And you're in the middle of enemy territory. Not right now, this moment in this room, but in this world, you're in enemy territory. Then they had some things to follow through on. This worship service that they carry out was commanded by Moses back in Deuteronomy. And if you were to read in Deuteronomy 11 and 27, you'd find out that They're following through because of what Moses had commanded them from the Lord. They said, man, we messed up back there at Jericho. We've got a battle to fight, but we're going to take time out and obey God. God said we're supposed to do this. God told Moses that when we get into the land, the first thing we need to do is build an altar. and we need to get right with God. And so before we go out and try to win any more battles and get defeated like we did in Ai, we better make sure we're right with God and take time to worship. And this worship would be something that would sanctify them. I don't know about you, but when I go to church, I feel like I need to stay cleaner. than when I'm out in the world. I mean, there's no excuse to be dirty in the world for a Christian. But there's something about going to church and hearing the Word of God and being with God's people and talking about the Lord together, singing the praises of the Lord. There's something about a worship service that just makes you feel a little cleaner and like you want to stay a little cleaner. You ever mow the yard in a hot summertime like we need to do tomorrow here at the church? You mow the yard and the dust and the grass clippings get down your shirt collar and some of it leaks down your t-shirt and ends up around your belt line and starts irritating you and you've got to scratch a while and mow a while and you finally get back to the house and take a nice clean shower. Feels good, doesn't it? I think a worship service is that way spiritually. makes you feel cleaner and makes you want to stay clean. Aaron and I cut some brush while the winds had blown down some brush along his front yard. We cleaned it up a couple of days ago, and after we got through, it was pretty hot and humid. We got through cutting on that and using a chainsaw and sawdust flying around. When we got through, Aaron said, man, I feel like I need to take my second bath today now. Sissy. Real men just stay nasty. Right, little brother Lloyd? Yeah, we like that grime and grip around our neck. Going to a worship service makes you feel cleaner and makes you want to stay cleaner. Not only the priority that we see here in our Bible study, the priority of the worship. People of God wanted to worship and their leader took them to the place of worship and that's where we are now, the place of worship. Mount Ebal, It was where Joshua built the altar, and straight across from it was Mount Gerizim. I remember the woman at the well, when Jesus met the woman at the well in the New Testament, and she's trying to change the subject on him, and she said, well, our people think you ought to worship on Mount Gerizim, and you Jews think you're supposed to worship at Jerusalem. What do you say? Well, that's the same Mount Gerizim. that she was talking about there. This was in the heart of what would be New Testament Samaria. But the place where Joshua... You know, some practical lessons. You can get a lot of practical lessons out of the Bible. When he led them to this place... Why do you think they went to that specific place besides it being commanded? Why do you think God wanted them to be in that specific place? Remember, there's two mountains coming together. they're kind of tapering in towards each other, and it'd make like a natural amphitheater. Well, they didn't have sound systems back then, and a man who's going to be speaking needs to be able to get his voice to carry, and they had a bunch of people there. They had men and women and children, and there was a bunch of those folks. How many? A couple of million maybe? I don't know. Several thousand at least. Bigger crowd than we got tonight. And so, you're going to speak to all those people. I know a lot of preachers strain their voice, especially before the time of sound systems, there was a lot of preachers who would strain their voice and the vocal cords would go out and they couldn't preach anymore because they were preaching loud enough to reach the Baptists on the back row. I think one of the reasons God led them there would probably be so they'd have good acoustics. Isn't that a practical lesson? Good acoustics. I mean, it is said that you can stand on Mount Ebal and you can talk to somebody over on Mount Gerizim. And this valley between, we can't see it now, that green valley that was between them, that valley would have been maybe I think as F.B. Meyer said it was probably 500 yards maybe. So it would be a length of five football fields between those two mountains at that point. And can you imagine trying to speak the length of two football, I mean five football fields and be heard at the other end? They were able to do that. All the people could hear. This was a place conducive to worship. I'm glad God's given us a good place here. I mean, I wish we had a bigger facility. That way y'all could lay down while I'm preaching. It'd be good to have a bigger fellowship hall. It'd be good to have maybe more classrooms, things like that. But we've got a good building. We put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in on it, didn't we? And so we're glad that God gave us this. We're trying to get it eventually paid off. I think we're making some good progress. I'll give you a couple of figures at the end of the service. But we got a good place, got plenty of land. We could build more if we needed to. We could have a softball field. We could build a bigger building. We could have a bigger parking lot. And God's given us a great facility here. I mean, it's not elaborate, but it's comfortable. Air conditioner's working. Those seats are pretty comfortable. And so, God gives us a place to worship. I am old enough to remember, and there's still, I guess, a few of them scattered around from time to time over the nation. I'm old enough to remember when there were quite a few brush arbors. At this time of year, the leaves on the trees are all fluffed out. They'd put up four poles, maybe half as wide as this auditorium, put a pole on each corner, maybe one or two in the middle, and then they'd put some poles across them from one side to the other, and then they'd cut boughs off of the trees that were loaded with leaves, and they'd lay those limbs up on top of the brush arbor, and they made a nice shady place where they could hold church service revival meetings and such. And you know what they had for seats? There wasn't these. They had old logs. Some of them maybe sawed in half with the flat side up. Many times they didn't have a backrest. But people sat there for a long time because those old preachers back then didn't preach real short sermons like I do. We're glad that we have a place. And I'm glad that the Israelites had a place where God put them for worship and they had acoustics built into the mountains. You know, acoustics are important here. I think our guys do a tremendous job on the acoustics here. I listen sometimes to church services at other places and sometimes their sound system is is kind of where you have to really strain yourself to listen and try to make out the words. Maybe there's a lot of echo and things like that. And we've got a really good sound system. Now, it could be, I suppose, upgraded and spend some more money on it and get something really, really nice. But for what we've got, it's better, I think, than probably 90% of the things you hear on YouTube, the sound quality. And that way we're able to get the gospel out and we do to different countries around the world. In all 50 of the states, people have heard our church services and our messages because we have a good sound system and good technicians who run it. They're ugly, but they do a good job running it. Number three, there's protection given at this worship. Protection. Even though they're led into the middle of enemy territory, God keeps them safe. I think Brother Paul said a little while ago about how many times he'd heard that you're better off to be in the center of God's will even if it looks unsafe. You're safer there than you are in a safer looking place out of God's will. That's what it was for these people right here. They're in the middle of enemy territory but that's where God told them to go and that's where God told them to be through Moses and Deuteronomy and so they're there. And guess what? I was kept safe. That's one of the things when you see those people yelling across the valley, the blessings and the cursings of God. If we're obedient to God, you can expect blessings. Disobedience? The opposite. The Bible says, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. Sometimes God tests us. by seeing if we'll do what we're supposed to do. The book of Hebrews tells us, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is and so much more as you see the day approaching. And yet there's untold thousands of Christians probably that are not in church tonight because they've gone to a little league game or a basketball game or they've you know found something else to do and maybe they weren't wise in choosing the job that they chose and it keeps them out of church and sometimes there's some of those things you might not avoid but if we have a choice I think we'll choose to be in the house of the Lord. Then there's a price to this worship number four. It says Joshua in verse number 30 and 31 it says that Joshua built an altar unto the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal. And then they did what? They offered their own burnt offerings unto the Lord and sacrificed peace. There is a price to worship. It costs you to worship. It costs you. It costs you to play golf. It costs you to go fishing. It costs you to have honeybees. It costs you to roast coffee, and it costs you to worship. It'll cost you, not just monetarily, to support the cost of having a place and the surroundings of worship, but it also costs you time, costs you energy, right? Costs you energy. I was out back today, and at this end of the auditorium, we've got a couple pieces of trim that blew off the gable end of the building. They're bent up a little bit. I think we can straighten them and put them back without having to hire a siding company to come out and do that. These are not kinked real badly. They're kind of gentle bends in them, and I think we can lay them on a flat surface, take a board and lay on top of it and just hammer it back down flat and then all we need is some brave soul who'll climb the ladder to the top of the peak of the cable end and nail it back up. Well, try to save a little money that way, but it costs money. I mean, it costs money to worship. It costs us, as a church, it costs us money to have insurance. It costs us money to have utilities and phones. It costs us money to buy the chairs to sit in. Everything costs. there is a price to pay. And then lastly, the proclamation in worship. You know, it involved a pretty good deal of time there. Look at verse number 32 in our text. It says, and he, Joshua, wrote Thereupon the stones, a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel. It says they had to plaster those stones so that they could be written on. Now I guess they used something maybe like chisels to chisel the words into the stone. Do you know how, some of you think it takes too long for the preacher to read through the text for the sermon. Imagine how long it took Joshua to chisel, or even if he had such a thing as an ink pen, which they didn't, but if he had just written it all down, the whole law of Moses, we're talking about one worship service, and he wrote the whole law of Moses in front of the congregation as they watched, and it says he didn't leave out one word. He wrote it all down. You see, there's a proclamation that took some time there, and their efforts were pretty extensive. I mean, those people were sitting out there in the hot sun, I'm sure. They didn't have time to build a canopy or a brush altar or arbor. So they're sitting out there in the sun while the preacher writes down the whole law of Moses and reads it to them. If I started reading a couple of chapters, just a couple of chapters on Sunday morning, a lot of people wouldn't come back anymore. That's taking too long. Well, things do. The restaurant's going to be crowded in a little while. People went to a lot of trouble to go to this worship service. And Joshua, I mean, he's printing all the Word of God out on a plastered stone. and reading it to the people. They took their worship seriously. They took it seriously. I mean, he's reading the whole thing. I mean, if I announced I'm gonna read the whole Bible in church next Sunday, there wouldn't nobody show up. No, we can't do that. But that's what Joshua did. They were really serious about this. You know, one thing it does make me glad about is that with, With today's writing material, we don't have to plaster stones and chisel the words into the stone. We got paper and ink and printers that we can print it straight from your laptop. And besides all that, we got electronic gadgets that makes it so much easier, like an iPad. I had a woman challenge me, this was several years ago, when I first started using this, I don't know, it's probably been 10 years ago, I guess, I started using it to put my sermon notes on. Well, I guess she thought that I was just using it for a Bible, and I've got a real Bible, see, but she called me over, it was before church one Sunday, she was sitting right back here, and she said, Preacher, I've got to ask you something, and she said, She pointed to that iPad. She said, do you think that thing's a Bible? I said, well, it's a laptop. It's got some Bible on it. I mean, it's not a laptop. It's an iPad. It's got some Bible on it. It's got some Bible software programs. She said, well, that's not the same thing as a Bible. I said, well, do you know that back when the preachers that were reading about in the Bible, back when they were preaching, they didn't have one of these newfangled leather things. Well, they have. They probably had some tables of stone, and maybe a few scrolls, and some sheep hide that they wrote on, and papyrus at the very best later on. They would have thought maybe, some of them might have thought, well, this is an Antichrist having a leather-bound Bible. The Word of God, let me emphasize something. The Word of God, whether it's on this printed page, that we've had since the Gutenberg press, which are a few hundred years ago, not in the time of Jesus. Whether the printed word is on this paper, whether it appears on a screen, or whether you're driving down the highway and somebody put John 3 16 up on a billboard, when you read it, it's the word of God. It doesn't matter what form it's in. Now, I still like my old preaching Bible. This is one Marcus, Brother Marcus gave me this, Al, and I love my leather-bound Bible, and I carry it with me, and I still like to use it. But that doesn't mean it's sacrilegious to have the Bible in software or on a screen or up here. It's still the Word of God. See, the Word of God doesn't consist of material things. The Word of God was complete in heaven before it ever reached earth. And so whatever you see it displayed on, I mean you could take a magic marker and write a verse on the wall. It's still the Word of God. That part didn't change. The material it's written on has no bearing on whether it's the Word of God and how true it is. But we've got a lot of We've got a lot of electronic wizardry that helps us to get the gospel out now that they didn't have back then. Isn't it wonderful that tonight's message may be heard in Pakistan? Maybe somebody in Egypt hears it. Maybe somebody in Washington State. Maybe Alaska, Canada, Mexico. Africa, it can be in a matter of seconds they can be looking at and listening to what we've just had here. And all of that makes me feel so blessed because Joshua didn't have that privilege. He had to chisel it out in a rock and then had to read it. I guess he had to know Hebrew too, didn't he? Well, and there's a plainness in this writing. It says, if you were to go back to Deuteronomy chapter 27, it says that Joshua, these words were supposed to be read, and Joshua did read it, but he also had the help of the Levites. I mean, can you imagine him doing all that reading just on his own? He was passing it off. He'd get him a drink of water maybe and pass it off and let the Levite read some. He'd read for a while, maybe another Levite would read and Joshua would come back and he'd read some more and it says that there was not a word of all of the Word of God that was left out. I think that speaks to the fact that a ministry needs to preach the whole counsel of God, all of it, complete. It also speaks to the fact that people down in the Amazon Basin and other places have the Word of God in Portuguese in Spanish? Because everybody in the world doesn't speak and read English. Now I think English, in my opinion, maybe I'm biased, but in my opinion I think English may be the best language in the world. It seems to be almost a universal type language that every country uses. It's got some weird things, every language I guess does, but English has some weird things. I see misspellings on Facebook every once in a while. What rules are they going by? But English, I'm glad we got the Word of God in English, but I'm glad that Portuguese speaking people get the Word of God in their language as well. And I think that's taught here that the plainness needs to be plainly spoken, plainly written, and plainly declared to every person. Well, they're speaking to each other across this valley. The blessings of God if you obey. You obey, you're blessed. And over here they say, but if you don't obey, this is what happens. Both needs to be preached. I don't want to be the kind of preacher that just rants and raves and beats people over the head with the Bible. I want people to know that God loves them and He'll save them and He'll bless them when they obey. But I also don't want to be the one who just preaches on the love of God and everybody's fine and there's no such thing as sin and no need to repent of anything. I don't want to be part of that crowd either. I want to be balanced as they were in this valley between Ebal and Mount Gerizim. Blessings and the cursings. Do right and be blessed. Do wrong, for whatsoever a man soweth, That shall he also reap. Thank God for his blessings. There's a lot of blessings that we can have from God. Let's reach out for the taking. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you'd bless us tonight. I pray you'd bless our church, bless our families. Lord, help us to trust that when you say you'll bless us, Lord, help us to believe that. Lord, help us to be concerned about obedience to you because we don't want to have to reap the things that was sown in unbelief. I pray that you'd bless us. Lord, help us to be strong in the word, strong in the faith. Help us to be loving and yet, as we are gentle, help us to be firm in our convictions that God means what he says. Bless us, Lord, and help us to love you with all of our heart. Our heads are bowed and eyes