Well, good morning. It's a privilege and a joy to be with you this morning. And as you turn your Bibles to Joshua chapter 24, this morning, introduce myself a little bit as Dr. Endy and as mentioned, I'm the hometown guy. It is hard to think now that there are many of you in here that are now in school, but were not born when I graduated high school. And I think I hate that concept, because it means I'm getting much older. But I'm a 2003 graduate of Tarry City Christian Academy. And I grew up here. My family moved here when I was 12, so that my dad could attend IBC back in the day. And at that time, I'll tell you a little bit, at that time, IBCS was not what you guys are experiencing today, and not in a bad thing. But it was much more of an old fogey, second career type of college. So guys who were called into ministry late in life, which is fantastic. We love that God calls people into ministry later in life and those opportunities, but it was a lot of older students. So my dad's age of 35 to 40 was kind of the average age of the student at that time. So as a TCA student, I thought who in the world would want to go to IBCS as a part of, you know, for their college career. And yet that's how fitting God saw it to put in my life. and I became a 2009 graduate of IBCS. Actually, I'm a two-time graduate. They let me graduate twice, surprisingly, if you know anything about me. I'm a 2014 MDiv graduate. I got to be a part of the first MDiv class, and the guinea pig for how that program got started, and I praise the Lord for all of those opportunities. I've been on staff since 2011, and I think, again, it's just, I used to talk about my dream job would be, at that time, it was Pastor Mike, he was a senior pastor, know be taking that senior pastoral and then the more I got into my pastoral duties I'm like I don't want that job ever I like I like what I do and I'm actually I feel where the Lord has placed me as the athletic director and vice-principal is truly a dream job for me if it's it's the areas of ministry that I really think the Lord has cut me out to do and as pastor dr. Indian also mentioned I am a chaplain in the Navy Reserve so occasionally you'll see this beautiful beard just get chopped off, and you'll see my baby face for what it is, nice and plump, and that'll be because I'm doing something military-related. So it's occasional and different things like that, and I praise the Lord for, again, just the opportunities that that brings out. You'll find, as you're a part of IBCS, that sometimes you just get trapped in these four walls, if I can put it in that box. And gospel opportunities are hard. You fill out your CSRs every week, And I remember one of those questions on the CSR is, did you get a chance to witness this week? And you're like, I didn't leave campus. We don't really want homeless people on campus, so we try not to keep them on. There's all kinds of opportunities here. So our opportunities are not always extended to us. And I felt this is my chance, my opportunity. Because I do get caught on these four walls a lot of times. This gives me a chance to kind of separate church life and have really intentional gospel opportunities with military personnel and things like that. So I praise the Lord for those things. We're done at 10.55? 10.40, is that about what we need to be in? Okay. Sounds great. Let's look to our text. Joshua chapter 24, probably not a brand new text to any of you in here. All right, maybe you might've even had, you know, your mom and dad probably had some sort of decoration in their house with some of the words that are in this text. That's a common thing, usually placed over the door as you leave the house as a reminder, or even as you got your family pictures up on the wall, you know, somewhere in a decorative frame would be the text here in verse 15 that we're gonna see a common thing. But I want us to look at the text this morning and then ask God's blessing on our time. The word of God says in Joshua chapter 24 verse 14, now therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth. Then you kind of get this ellipses here that'll pause for a second as a reminder and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Isn't that fascinating for just a second? I'm not even in my message, but I'm fascinated by something here for a moment. Israel has conquered a lot of Canaan. They got to the promised land. They're in the midst of where God had promised to take them. And yet Joshua's coming to the end of his life here, and he has to put this reminder in. Put away the gods which your father served. Doesn't that kind of blow your mind away a little bit? That all that God has done for them, all the ways in which God has conquered the land in front of them, and yet Joshua has to remind them, Put away the stupid stuff. This isn't who you're called to be. Let's get back to the text. Put away those gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served, that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, let's say that phrase together, We will serve the Lord. Let's ask God's blessing on our time together. God, I thank you for the opportunity to look at your word this morning. I pray that you would open our hearts to it this morning. I pray that you would help us to look at it accurately so we can apply it appropriately. In Jesus' name, amen. I love sports. Being an athletic director is my favorite thing in the world. I've gotten opportunities to coach any type of capacity of sports. Baseball is probably my number one sport. I love the game of baseball. If you want to talk baseball all day, I could talk your ear off with baseball. Basketball is a close second. And football tonight is a big night because the NFL starts. For those who care, which would be on the right side of your heart, that begins Kansas City. And the Baltimore Ravens kick it off tonight. And I'm pumped about that. I love sports. I've gotten opportunities, as I mentioned, to coach in various roles, sometimes in sports that I don't have a clue as to what they're doing. Diago's a great soccer player, and at times last year, I had to go in for junior high and say, you know, Dalmas Asoro coaches our junior high soccer team, and he's on deputation, and so they're like, hey, we need a guy to coach the soccer team, and I'm like, I know nothing about soccer, and they're like, well, we got nobody else to go, so you're going. Well, that's fun. I just know phrases that we use with our kids like kick the ball that way and spread out. That's like all I know and stay on sides. I have no idea what those things mean except for what I'm observing. Now I've spent the last couple of years sitting on the sideline with Mr. Payne who coaches our varsity program and I've had a lot of fun and a lot of knowledge and I've actually grown to appreciate soccer more. You're welcome, Thiago. The game in which it's played. It's never been my thing. You know, when people talk about watching baseball on TV is boring, I think of the same of soccer. No offense. And like NASCAR. Who does that? Watches NASCAR. 400 laps around the stinking track. Why? Oh, it might get close here. They're going to come up to each other. Okay. I do that when I'm driving. It's not the same on TV. So I get it and I understand. It's apples and tomatoes and all those different things of that nature. But a coach has a significant job to make sure their team is ready to go. Oftentimes, if you've played sports, you know the kind of the grueling process that it is to get prepared for a game. When you're going through practice, there are oftentimes drills that you're going to do that have a purpose to them. They're getting you prepared for what's up ahead. They're teaching you fundamental things to know how to kick the ball, throw the ball, shoot the ball, whatever is the sport that you're playing, so that you can be effective against the opponent by what you're playing. That's a part of it. There's conditioning that happens, and sometimes that's the part that we hate the most, and you're like, why is this important? And then I'm realizing we have 13 boys on our soccer team and 11 play at a time, so we have two subs. They're seeing the value of conditioning. 90-minute games are long. I think somebody estimated the other day that they ran six miles during the course of a soccer game. I think that's probably a little bit more of an overestimation, probably not too far off when you're not being subbed out of a game. That's a long time, right? The value of conditioning. But then there comes the part for a coach at the beginning of the game. You get huddled up. You have your team captains. They're doing their job to get the players huddled up around themselves and get committed and ready to go. And a coach usually comes in with some sort of rousing speech. There's a game plan in which he's trying to go. Not every game is the same. Not every opponent you're playing is the same. So you're planning according to who you're playing. And you want a game plan according to what you think is going to be successful off of the tools that you've already put into practice in your practice time. There's value there. He reminds them of their talent that they've developed. And he charges them to play with confidence of the skill that they have. Play with unity and to play together. But then there's those times when as a team, those charges don't seem to be well received. They get out on the floor, you feel like, you get in the locker room, they're all roused up, they're making a lot of noise, and they're ready to come out, and then the game starts, and it's like, they just woke up. They just got out of bed. They're flat. And you're like, what just happened? That's not been what we just experienced while we were in the locker room. And a coach, as a coach, you're trying to steer the ship. You're trying to get it back on track. You're trying to figure out, hey, what can we do? So you call a timeout, and you really instill the plan, and you try to get them going. And it just doesn't seem to work. And at halftime, you're trying everything possible to get them charged and fired up. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Then you get to the end of the game. You're right there. You can feel that, man, we could just win this game if they would just go with the game plan. And as a coach, you call that final timeout that you have, and you're like, hey guys, remember the game plan. Remember, see, when we worked it and executed it in these moments, it worked for us. We got this one last chance here. If we don't execute the game plan, we have to live with the results, which usually doesn't turn out to be what they want. It goes into a loss. As we take that last timeout, consider the game plan and how the lack of trust in executing the game plan will provide the different results. And I think similarly here, Joshua's in this camp. Joshua's kind of given the game plan. Moses was the one that executed the game plan and as Moses passed off to the scene, Joshua's bringing him into the promised land and he's executing God's game plan for Israel. And he's coming to the end of his life here. And he's seeing the complacency that Israel's beginning to take. We've conquered enough. We've done all that we can. We're comfortable. And Joshua knows that's not what God's plan was for them. And he's trying to get them. It's the last of his, it's the last charge he's gonna be able to give them. He knows his life's about over and his burden that Israel will walk away from the Lord. This reminder of God's game plan for Israel. that he is giving is a good reminder for us this morning that we must remain committed to trusting God's plan in the midst of a distracted world. And I'd like to take some time this morning from Joshua 24, verses 14 and 15, to see that if we're going to be trusting God's plan, we must be committed to God in three different ways. There's three commitments we must make. Look at verse 14 with me to see, number one, being committed to God's plan begins with having the right view of God. If I'm going to trust God's plan, I have to have a right view of Him. And look at what He says. He says, therefore, fear the Lord. He doesn't give us this idea of a fear of the Lord. We could take some time and look at Proverbs 1 and verse 7 and Ecclesiastes 12 and have a whole semester on describing the fear of the Lord. We don't have the time to do that. So let me summarize it in a couple of ways. The way he begins to help them understand that therefore helps us remind, he's gone through the whole history. If you read through the first 14, 13 verses of chapter 24, Joshua's giving Israel their history. Look at what God has done. Look at what God has accomplished. Look at how God has instilled His plan. Look at the ways in which God has conquered. Look at the ways in which God has remained faithful. And he goes all the way back to Abraham. And he walks through Israel's history as a reminder to them. I don't know about you, but I get fascinated. I love that we get the picture of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, to kind of look at how Israel's gone and think, man, I would never be like that. And yet when we're in the day-to-day picture, as the parade walks by, we're just like them. We oftentimes forget about what God has done in our lives. We oftentimes forget about the victories that God has praised or the way in which God has directed our steps. Because we get so fired or we get so confident in our own ability. And the moments that we need God to work, we're grateful and we're excited that God is going to work. And then it's like, as if God, we get to the point where we can handle it for ourselves and say, okay, God, I got it from here. I can handle this. And that's exactly similar where Israel is at the moment. God, we can handle this. The reality is, Joshua has to send him a kind of a stark reminder of, you still have the gods that put you into captivity. You're still serving. You haven't even gotten a clue yet. You're grateful for all that God has done when it's been convenient for your life. And folks, let me challenge you this morning. If that's where your view of God is, you're gonna be sorely disappointed with how God operates in your life. God's working in many different ways, and sometimes it's inconvenient. We gotta let Him touch. We gotta let Him work. There's a destructive fear when He says to fear the Lord. Sometimes that's often where our view is, what God is capable of. We tremble at His displeasure. Sometimes we fear that if I, you know, we get this mindset that if I do this wrong, then this will be the result that God will place down upon my life. I've heard people even say, like, knowing my luck, if I made that choice, this would happen. We kind of sometimes say that as a joke, but oftentimes, really, in the heart of our hearts, is it really a joke? No, it's a telling of what we think of who our God is. He's a tyrant ready to punish when I do wrong. That he'll give blessing when I do right. While there's truth to both sides of that, that overlooks the very character of who our God is. There's a reverential fear here that he's describing to stand in awe, not just of what he's capable of, but exactly who he is. One author wrote it this way, the fear of God is what is left of the storm when you have a safe place to watch right in the middle of it. The thrill of being here in the center of the awful power of God, yet protected by God himself. Safe in his hand. This fear is not meant to be transactional, but a transformation. I cannot fear God because I'm afraid of being disciplined or missing out on a blessing of what he has in my life. I cannot fear God merely because I'm seeking something in return that God, if I scratch your back, you'll give me these things and scratch mine. When I fear the Lord, I begin to think God's thoughts after him. I have to know him. I have to know what pleases him and what displeases him. I have to know what his character is like to begin to model and emulate In person, if my relationship with God is purely transactional, I will lose sight of all that God is doing in my life. I will miss out on blessings He has provided, as I will not be looking for them. In fact, those blessings become rights at times. I deserve this. A good biblical example of this, of understanding the reverence and the fear of the Lord, is to look at the life of Joseph. Go back to Genesis and read Genesis chapter 38 to chapter 50. He had a life that we would consider to be one of great unfairness, would you not? Would you agree with me on that? We get the whole picture, Joseph did it, he had to live it. But what a model of a testimony of saying, I'm gonna trust God's plan, no matter what the circumstances are telling me. When we look at that and we think sometimes to ourselves from man's perspective, we will look at his life and say, how is God really being faithful to Joseph? How is God showing him mercy or grace? How is God demonstrating that he is with him or even that he loves him? When he's been falsely accused, he's been put into slavery for things that are not his fault. He's had to stay in prison for longer than he was free because man forgot the promise that he had given. All of those things are sometimes rational observations that we make, and we think for ourselves, I would have the same hard attitude, and I might wonder, would I have the same commitment to the Lord if I was put in those same circumstances? And I don't doubt that maybe Joseph, we don't have from Scripture to tell us, I wonder if Joseph at times would just sit in his cell at night, God, what is all these dreams for? For what purpose? Did you promise me things only to have me sit in rotten prison the rest of my life? There might've been moments of fear and doubt, but the one thing that remains consistent all the way through the story of Genesis from 38 to chapter 50 is that there's a phrase that continues to go with Joseph that says, God was with him and made all that he had to prosper. You know what that tells us about Joseph's commitment? He was committed to God's plan no matter what his circumstances told him. Because God doesn't make that statement about an individual who's on the fence. God doesn't make that statement about an individual who only serves him when life's convenient. Let me put the caveat in here, just because we serve the Lord doesn't mean life's not fun. But I'll tell you, life's going to have storms. And there will be damage. And how you respond to that damage will be a true reflection of what you think about your God. When I began to understand who God is by how he defines himself, I can begin to see throughout the pages of Genesis just how God is directing Joseph's steps to fulfill the call that God had on his life. Folks, we oftentimes want a transactional God because we can blame him when we don't get what we want. We can control him by bartering with him. And in reality, that just makes him our equal. He doesn't want to be your equal. He wants to transform you. He wants to be transformational in every circumstance. We can't control his timing or his pace. We have to admit in humility that, God, I am not your equal. I'm reliant upon you. We have no right as the clay to say to the potter, why did you make me this way? See, Israel, held on to their pagan deities because they felt like their pagan deities won't act until their appeasement has been made. God says, I have loved you with an everlasting love and have demonstrated that love to the death of my son on the cross. When I have the right view of God, I then must number two, be committed to God's plan by serving him his way. I've already pointed out, serving God's not always in a convenient form. And Joshua gives us here, when he begins here in verse 14, not only to fear the Lord, have the right view of Him, but serve Him His way. How do we serve Him? Look at verse 14, in sincerity and in truth. Two descriptive words here. He says, serve God wholeheartedly. That's the sincerity. There's no plan B. There's no, I'll give God half of this life and then the other half I'll keep to myself. There's no closets by which I'm holding on to anything. There's no room for that. Joshua's implication was that the nation had truly never rid itself of false worship. And he was urging the people in the strongest terms possible to do it and do it now. The word he uses for sincerity connotes the idea of wholeness, without blame, of integrity, and even somewhat of perfection. And thus Joshua's exhortation is a passionate one that the people should be totally devoted and blameless in their worship of their God. The outflowing work of what God is doing in my life should propel me to serve him as he sees fit. You're here at IBCS, a school that is preparing you for a life of ministry. But young person, don't be fooled that just because you're at IBCS means you are committed to ministry. That's a commitment you must make. It propels me, it begins in my personal life by being committed to holiness as God is holy. Having the right view of God means I have to know who He is. Be holy as He is holy, then moves into other areas. Might be the fact later on having a family, seeking that they are discipled in their own walk with the Lord. More appropriately, it's in your own dorm room. That I'm building relationships with the people in my room that are healthy to develop discipleship opportunities? Just because you're studying theology doesn't mean you've mastered discipleship. I'm 40 years old, and you know what I still need? I still need to be discipled. Dr. Endian's 10 years younger than I am. You know what he still needs? To be discipled. There's no graduation point to discipleship. It's a lifestyle of growing in our walk and fellowship with the Lord, and we go along the journey with each other. Do you know God never meant for the Christian life to be lived alone? Your journey is unique to you, but God places people in your life on purpose so that they can help disciple you and you can help disciple them. But we oftentimes look at our roommates of, well, don't judge me. Mind your own business. Maybe it is their business because they're seeing a heart issue in your life and they're trying to help you address it. This idea of sincerity is not so that I can gain something from it, but because my testimony for Christ means so much to me that I want others to see the unexplainable joy that I have because of Christ. It means that serving the Lord may be inconvenient to my personal life at times, but I must be okay to let God use it for my good and his glory. And he says to serve him in truth. One of the dangers of IBCS, not because of our faculty and our staff, but sometimes because of the students, is to take the idea of theology and to pontificate on how good you know theology without it ever touching the word of God. We need the word of God. That's our sole source of faith in Prasic, and you need theology. How do I explain and understand who my God is? But folks, they come and they work together. They're never separate from each other. That's why sometimes I get so annoyed with some of these deep theological discussions, and yet you've never opened the word of God. My question to you is, so what? As an athletic director, I don't have those conversations with people. I'm okay with that. I'm not smart enough. I'm fit for sports. I'm good with that. But so what? They have to align. And your theology doesn't come with you trying to fit scripture into it. Your theology is shaped by your view of scripture. Serve him in truth, serve faithfully. It's a direct response to my view of who God is. It's grounded in the word of God in John 17, verse 17. Sanctify them or set them apart through thy truth because thy word is truth. I'm running out of time here. Your belief about God will always dictate your behavior. When you serve him in truth, you will see that my belief about God will always be shown and demonstrated in my behavior. Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6 describe a man or an individual who is walking and seeing the faithfulness of God. That when I trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding and all of my ways, acknowledge Him, He directs my path. It's not that God lights up your future for you. He says, I've demonstrated all throughout your life when you reflect and see how I've worked in your life that I'm giving you enough light to take the next step because I want you to trust in what I have for you. My plan has not failed you yet and it won't fail you in the future. Seeing God as holy as 1 Peter 1.16 reminds us to be holy as He is holy, reminds me that God will never ask me to do something that I will not, through His Spirit and His power, be able to accomplish. I can't do it on my own. But I am to be who He says I am to be by His strength and through His power. When I begin to have the right view of God, I can see that serving Him His way is actually a natural response because my service to Him is not purely transactional. We're looking to gain something from Him, but it's the transformation of who He is to me. As easy as it seems to live in light of that, we still have distractions around us. Israel is a classic example of that. We aren't any different. That's why we pointed out when we were reading verse 14 that Joshua makes this statement. Put away the gods your father served. So if we're going to be committed to trusting God's plans, means we have to remove the distractions that hinder our commitments. I believe you hear in verses 14 and 15, he gives us a couple of examples here. The gods which our fathers served. There's two ideas that we can pull away from this. Sometimes it's the distraction of family. As a parent, it is of great responsibility to me to raise my children in the way, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. But as a dad, you know, I must be careful of dictating what God's call on my kid's life are. That's not my job. My job as a parent is to disciple my kids, to rejoice when they come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior, to work with them through their sin issues, to work and praise them in areas where God is continuing to work and encourage those moments, and be excited on their journey with them. But I must be careful that I don't instill in them what I think God's plan for their life is. Some of you may be a product of that. As a youth pastor, when I was a youth pastor here for six years, I'd often challenge our parents with raising our kids. The importance of that means at some point, your child, your teenager will have to decide for themselves whether they're going to serve the Lord. And it's a reminder to me that if I'm not modeling a good way of serving the Lord to my family in a proper way, then I can't be disappointed when they walk away from the Lord. That's a challenge, I take that. My hope and my prayer is, my oldest is in eighth grade, it's hard to believe. He's gonna be graduating here shortly, way before I know it. And my heart's prayer is, and again, I remind our students all the time, You're in a Christian environment. It's easy to fake it till you make it. I tell us, being very honest and transparent with you, nobody cares. Try to figure out a caveat to this, because we do. The real you, let me put it this way, the real you always shows itself your freshman year of college. You know that? because you're independent from your parents. That's what tells you, that's usually what tells us whether or not you're buying into what mom and dad were selling of who your God is. Even more so in a dangerous area where you are right now. Be committed to serving God's plan because it's not mom and dad's, it's your God. Let him be your God. Commit to grow in your walk with the Lord in the midst of others around you when you know that they may not. When it may not be convenient to your plan at the moment. The will of God for your life or the call of God for your life might be getting a theological education, but it doesn't take away the value of having a personal walk with Him. Don't lose sight of theology. and the value that that provides, but don't let it be a replacement of your quiet time and your time with the Lord. He gives a second distraction here, and I have to finish quickly. He gives the distraction of baggage on the other side of the river. Yeah. Love that. Good times. It's okay. That's distractions. Sometimes we think, well, how can God use me? I've done so much. I've done so little for him. I've not committed myself to him. I've done so many wrongs. I've done so many different things. And you're right. There are times where sin will hinder our ability to serve the Lord. And there will be times where the consequences of sin may limit our opportunities to serve the Lord. But the reality is this, that God says, I will use you how I see fit. In spite of you. Maybe the fear of being hurt. I've been hurt in the past by standing for what is right. I can't do it again. Or maybe the fear that creeps into bitterness. The baggage that comes with that. The last distraction he gives here is the here and now. It says, whether it's the gods on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites, the land in which you're currently dwelling and taking on. The here and now for you says, I got plenty of opportunity to have moments of ministry, but right now I'm focused on my education. We don't separate, we don't divorce the idea of education and practical ministry here at IBCS. They're all part of your training. Now, one doesn't take precedence over the other in the sense that we value one over the other. They got to both work together. And at the end of the day, you're paying for school, so I get the value. You got to get your grades done. But don't lose sight of, or don't let what you're accomplishing here in the school aspect to be a distraction to what you can be, what God can do in your life in the moment here. As a reference, your CSR is when you have the moment to answer that question. Is that question still on the CSR? Did you have a chance to witness this week? Don't let that question make you panic every week because you're so stuck on school. Sincerely pray, God, would you give me an opportunity to get off campus just for the sole purpose that I would have an opportunity to have a conversation with somebody else? And maybe for some of you extreme introverts, that's a prayer you never wanna pray, I get it. But I'll tell you this, it'll change your life when you pray that prayer and you watch how God opens doors. And you just simply walk through and you say, thank you, Lord. I got to plant the seed today, would you take it and water it? And if you deem it of good mercy and grace, would you allow for me to be able to reap it too? It'll change your life. Not because of anything you are, but because of who he is working in and through you. Is your commitment to God one of transactional works? Or is that of transformational power because of who he is? God doesn't need our abilities. He doesn't need our academics. He doesn't need our family, money, technology for his work to be done. But he does love showing us just how we can use those pieces to further his work as we surrender to fearing him. Imagine with me how much more value you will get out of your education and your ministry experience here at IBCS if you would just filter all of that through God's word and let your fellowship with him transform you and your relationships that you have around. Let's be committed to trusting God's plan. You have plenty of examples through scripture of people who've walked through not knowing what God's plan was gonna look like. but seeing the value of continually trusting Him. We get to see the whole story. That's the value for us. Praise the Lord. And we serve the same God that Joseph served, that Joshua served, that Paul served, and many others who have gone before us. He was trustworthy to them, and I guarantee he's gonna be trustworthy to you, but you have to know him, and you gotta be committed to him. Let's pray together.