New Year’s Message
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Rev. Jim Bogle, given January 4, 2008
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In your bulletin this morning you see a painting by
Titian; a Sixteenth Century, Italian painter. The title of the painting is An Allegory of Prudence. Allegory means
an abstract representation of some reality. In the case of Titian’s painting,
the three headed man represents the past, the present and the future. His
painting then represents an allegory of PRUDENCE! Prudence means sensible,
levelheaded, reasonable, rational, wise, and sound!
As we step off into the New Year we can learn a
great deal from this painting. Looking back, hopefully, we can recall times of
great victory in the Lord Jesus; times where we have grown in our confidence
and faith in serving Him! But, as we look back, we can also see times where we
exercised little faith and failed to serve Christ at all.
The prudent man or woman takes the lessons of the
past, and begins to apply that gained knowledge and wisdom as he or she steps
off into the future.
Our daily lives are always before the Lord. We need
to begin every day with Him. No day is less significant than another. God wants
us to trust him day by day; not just in the big issues of life, but in the
small issues as well.
In this light, I call your attention to the life of
Joshua! (Joshua, Chapter 7)
You will remember (in Chapters 5 and 6), as the
Israelites prepared to enter the
They were obedient to His Word.
But then we read in Joshua, Chapter 7.
Joshua 7:1-7
1: But the children of
There is a very important issue here. God
specifically told His people to take nothing for themselves of the spoils of
this accursed city. Yet one Israelite could not contain his lust for material
things and this one man’s sin would touch the lives of so many others; his
family and his countrymen. Our sin always touches others.
Joshua needs to know there’s sin in the camp! How
would he find this out?
2: And Joshua sent men from
This was the same approach Joshua took with
3: And they returned to Joshua, and said unto
him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go
up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour
thither; for they are but few.
How many Israelites labored to gain victory at
We can handle it ourselves…
How many little problems did we seek to handle last
year without any thought of allowing God to direct our path?
Surely when we’re in the hospital facing a serious
surgery, we call out to God.
When the house is on fire,
or we lose control of the steering wheel, we call out to God.
But in
the little small daily affairs of our life, we just as soon do things our own
way. Not realizing that the little things done “our way,” day after day, lead
us further and further away from God’s way.
Joshua, doesn’t realize it yet, but the little city
of
4: So there went up thither of the people
about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai.
5: And the men of Ai smote of them about
thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the
hearts of the people melted, and became as water.
6: And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to
the earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD until the eventide, he and
the elders of
7: And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord GOD,
wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into
the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us?
would to God we had been content, and dwelt on
the other side Jordan!
Joshua, having no understanding of what has happened
to Him, looks back and sees benefit in not crossing the
Joshua is God’s man for the conquering of the
Though God spent a great deal of time preparing
Moses for the mission; the success or failure of the mission didn’t rest on
Moses; but on God! Man is to listen to God first, and then take good care of
his wife and his family!
Joshua is bewildered and confused simply because he
has become self-sufficient! And he even questions God’s motive for bringing him
into the land.
7: …O Lord GOD, wherefore hast thou at all
brought this people over
It seems that Joshua now wants to turn back.
Paul, having faced every kind of disaster;
“Five times he was flogged by the Jew. Three
times he was beaten with rods, three times suffered shipwreck, he spent a night
and a day in the deep (floating adrift at sea); once he was stoned, he was
robbed, in perils by his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in
the city, in perils in the wilderness, He was in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.”
All of these miseries came upon the Apostle Paul,
yet he never thought one time of giving up, turning back, or giving in.
Philippians 3:8-11
8: Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
9: And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
10: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
11: If by any means I might attain unto the
resurrection of the dead.
When Paul committed his life to Christ, he lived
daily to die!!!
Romans 8:35-39
35: Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36: As it is written, For
thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter.
37: Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him that loved us.
38: For I am persuaded, that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come,
39: Nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.
Paul placed everything in the Lord’s hands, the big
issues and the small issues. He left behind a great testimony and example of
faithful service to Christ.
Joshua is concerned about the mission he has been
called to…Is it the right mission, is it the right
time, is it the right way…
Joshua 7:8-11
8: O Lord, what shall I say, when
9: For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants
of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name
from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?
He is on his face before the LORD pleading for
understanding, seeking direction, and concerned about God’s marred reputation
in the land.
Does it matter to you, in your daily walk, how you
represent your Lord and Savior to the world?
The Matthew Henry:
“This should be our concern more than any thing else. On
this we must fix our eye as the end of all our desires, and from this we must fetch our encouragement as the foundation of
all our hopes. We cannot urge a better plea than this, Lord, What wilt thou do
for thy great name? Let God in all be glorified, and then welcome his whole
will.”
10: And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee
up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?
11:
Joshua took the experience of that one day in his
life, and made it a lesson never to be repeated again. As the out-stretched arm
of God, he conquered the land, led the children in the dividing of the land,
and enjoyed the peace of the land until his death.
In this New Year let us be prudent in facing the future. Take the lessons from the past, and the challenges of this day, and faithfully commit the future to Christ.
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