A Nation at last!

40,000 people crossed the Jordan on that fateful day. In the wilderness they were a group of loosely organised tribes, when the stepped on the land on the other side they were a nation. The text uses the Hebrew word “goy” instead of “am”. The difference is not always clear but it seems that “am” refers to the blood relationships of a people while “goy” describes the political unity. As they crossed over the ceased to be a wandering band and became a landed people who would have to be dealt with as a political entity-a nation at last. In the next book, the book of Judges we get a very different picture where we read that “every man did what was right, in his own eyes”-this describes a time of disunity and the fractures of a community in need of help-that would describe the Protestant community in North Belfast if not the whole of Northern Ireland.

We are deeply divided-we have so many different denominations and congregations within the same denominations, we have so many political and community divisions. Ever since the Reformation as with the introduction of divorce, it would seem that the line of least resistance automatically leads to break up- if I don’t agree with the way you are doing it I will set up my own church or my own party or group. On the face of it I can understand how that would be the much easier approach but I fail to see how God is glorified by it. I fail to see how relationships can be mended if that is the attitude.

Only a king, like David, was able to bring Israel together as they had been in Joshua’s day. Only David could give them vision and common purpose-here in Joshua’s day you could say that he acted like the king even though he was not the king-that was a position that only God could fill-but as God told Joshua so he told the people. What the protestant, loyalist, unionist communities need today is a sense of vision and common purpose instead of the parochial, tunnel vision that we have. Only a realisation of our spiritual need will turn the clock and make the difference and unite us all-and that would unite more than just the unionist family it would have radical implications and effects on the whole community.

The Hebrews had a keen sense of unity and the big reason was that at this time in their history they were following Yahweh. Their leader was in tune with God and they were in tune also. Time and again the story speaks of ALL ISRAEL-

3:1,”...all the Israelites set out...”

v7 ...”Today i will begin to exalt you in the eyes of ALL ISRAEL...”

v 17 “The priests who carried the ark....stood firm .....while all Israel passed by....;

4:14 “That day the Lord exalted Joshua in the eyes of ALL ISRAEL; they revered him

What we notice here in this story is a keen sense of UNITY. Those who know about revival in tor prerequisites of revival down the years is a spirit of Christian unity-this is not a forced unity but a unity based upon a common cause-here it is crossing the river to take the land.

Something else we notice about this crossing of the river Jordan is that they have a keen sense of history or a common memory.

When a member of the family dies memory becomes very important. When someone gets married past memories become important. The closer the family ties the deeper the memories and the closer the ties. Memory is essential to who we are-the person who losses their memory losses the sense of who they are. Without qa common memory there can be no community. The crossing of the Jordan plays a key part in this new community because it is a shared, meaningful memory but these events are more than mere history-they explain why these people are as they are-

As they remember the exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea-with the sea being cast aside to allow the people to go through so this is repeated in the Jordan River- as the priests take the Ark of the Covenant into the middle of the river so the dry land appeared God honoured their faith in doing exactly what he told them.

The reason was a that they might always fear the Lord your God”

The purpose was for them to see the POWER of the Lord-later in John’s Gospel we are told

“Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and by believing you may have life in his name”

These are not mere wonders of the world, they are signs of the Lord, signs that remind us that he is still all powerful, still living and still the Lord.

If we took a quick look at the key points in the history of Ireland we might learn something about who we are. Would we be able to see the hand of god in it?

There are a lot of people who live on this island who know little more than “Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne” when it comes to our shared history. Or, on the other side more than the Boyne, Doll’s Brae and Bloody Sunday.

It is very educational to take a swift look at the key dates

Going back to the days of the kings of Ireland we find that after Brian Baru the island is divided and fighting among itself, even then. When the potential contenders for power fled to England they sought the help of the Normans and with their arrival in the 11^th century everything changes. With the arrival of the earl of Pembrooke the French become the landlords-he became better known as Strongbow.

- In 1170 King John was rewarded for his loyalty to the Pope by being given both England and Ireland as his Fiefdom

- In 1315 Edward the Bruce became king, he was the brother of Robert The Bruce

- Then in the 16^th century there is the battle of the Boyne which changed the face of Europe and Britain found herself allied with the pope in defiance of King Louis of France who supported James.

- In 1798 there was rebellion

- 1803 Rebellion

- 1845 the Great Famine

- 1864 the first rioting in Belfast

- 12^th July 1867 was the first Orange parade baned

- 1872 more rioting in Belfast

- 1850 saw the fall of Charles Stuart Parnell

- 1903 the foundation of the Independent Orange Order

- 1905 Sein Fein founded

- 1913 UVF started

- 1914-18 the First World War when Irish men fought side by side in the trenches

- 1919-21 Anglo Irish War-Independence

- 1921 Truce

- Violence at the 12^th parade with 23 killed and 200 homes destroyed

- 1922 violence in northern Ireland with 232 killed and 1000 injured

- Special powers passed

- Civil war in 26 counties

- 923 End of Civil War

- 1933 Special powers passed

- 1935 rioting in Belfast 23 killed

- 1936 Public Order Act

- 1949 Free State becomes the Republic of Ireland

- 1956-62 IRA campaign in Northern Ireland

- 1965 Sean Lemass, Irish Prime Minister] visits Belfast-welcomed by Terrence O’Neil and opposed by Rev Ian Paisley[founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and the Democratic Unionist Party]

- 1967 NI Civil Rights Association formed

- 1972 Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday

- 1971-75 Internment Powers

- 1973 Sunningdale Agreement

- 1974 Ulster Workers’ Strike

- 1981 Republican Hunger strike [these Republican prisoners were demanding political status]

- 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement

- 1987 Enniskillen bomb[placed by the IRA on Remembrance Sunday]

- 1993 Frizell’s Fish Shop bombed [a Republican bomber walked into this fish shop and left a bomb]

- 1998 Omagh Bomb [this was the biggest single atrocity in the troubles with 31 people killed, including two unborn babies]

There are many other key events in our history which have contributed to who we are- It is a history which is immersed in violence and manipulation, by attempts at reconciliation which failed , followed by more attempts, they are events which have knocked this community and many others unto the back foot so that most of the time we re-act rather than act. Thousands lie dead and injured and relationships and trust have been shattered, some beyond repair and it will take many years to get us back to some degree of normality BUT this is who we are and God has not left us, he is still here and our task is to follow Him and to build a better history that our children and grand children can look back on with more satisfaction.

As Christians we have another story and another history which is just as valid- this one is also violent and is also about treachery and disappointment but in this story we see God’s hand at work directly and decisively-he has made a new future possible and so we too have our stones as memorials-we have the breaking of bread which reminds us of the pain and suffering of Christ but also tells of His resurrection and return. “do this in remembrance of me” Do this until I return

We too have baptism which tells the story of washing and of sealing and of immersion as the one who died and rose to eternal life.

We have our personal memories of the day we first gave our lives to Christ and of those dates when we surrendered ourselves to service of Christ and His kingdom.

Can you tell the story of how God has worked in your life?

Then we have the exaltation of Joshua-it was promised in chapter 3 and now it has happened in chapter 4.:14

Why is this important? As Joshua is exalted before all the people so the people are exalted. They needed a leader and God gave them this one.

Paul says at the end of Ephesians 6 “pray lastly for me....”

L:eadership can be a lonely place to be-Jesus tells us that the leader who does not exalt himself will be exalted-Joshua was not one to parade his position-he took the position with true humility and so God exalted him-as I have said before a good leader has to learn to be a good follower-so the best army leaders are those who were in the ranks, taking the orders. A good leader is not afraid of getting his hands dirty. A good leader takes orders and that is what Joshua did,

Joshua was revered all his life just as Moses was-in the ordination service we are told to respect the minister “for the sake of his work”

Joshua was a kind of prophetic figure who took the word and passed it on to the people- today the preacher is given the same task-to present the word in a prophetic way which means he needs to show his people how it is relevant today

To do this he needs the prayerful support of the congregation-

· to prepare he needs time to think and pray-a sermon cannot be prepared on the back of an envelope and it takes time to seek how it applies today

· To be bold in presenting Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection

· He needs to read and to be stimulated by others

· He will need to help his congregation to understand how to study the word for themselves

Joshua's Commission

God told Joshua- You are the man to lead my people to take possession of the Promised Land. Standing on the brink of greatness God speaks to Joshua. He builds up his confidence by talking to him - one thing we notice about this story as opposed to the stories of other nations is that the central figure here is not Joshua but God, the stories that are told are told so that the people will be built up in their faith in Yahweh and Joshua’s task is to lead them to trust God, he can’t do that for them but he can point in the right direction-that is the task of the church today and the task of every minister of Christ-as we meet today we seek to help one another to trust God in the week ahead.

-words can be very effective when in the hands of the master craftsman- not always for good-Hitler was a man who knew how to incite people to a hatred which resulted in violence and eventually the attempted annihilation of 6 million Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. In John 1 we have the words of John as he tells the story of redemption, calling Jesus the word or Logos, the way that God communicates to humanity. Joshua took the commission of God and used it to communicate to the people the vision of the future. If a nation or a people are going to be all that they can be they need a vision and their leaders need vision. Joshua was such a man of vision. Like his friend Caleb he was not going to be deterred from crossing the Jordan just because they people already there were bigger than they were, just because they were stronger and better armed. He was undeterred because he really believed that the God of Moses was faithful to His promises and able to keep them.

A leader needs to be a person of vision-that is not to say that he never has any doubts-he does but when he leads the people he leads them inspite of those doubts. He reminds them that even when circumstances look bad he is still going to trust him and follow him and lead the people he leads to follow him.

The man of vision will help his people to see these adverse circumstances through the lens of CHALLENGES to be achieved rather than a problem to defeat him. He never understates the situation, never pretends that all will be well when that is not true but what he does is he makes sure that the people have the faith to continue and overcome the problems and rise to the challenges. The challenge presented by Joshua is to start on a new destiny, Egypt is behind-it was about bondage and slavery-as they prepare to cross the river they prepare for this new life of freedom BUT they have to take up the challenge and move forward knowing that the battle will be great but VICTORY is secure and assured.

There have been times in the history of Britain when the situation looked bleak and God has raised up the right person for the time- most people will say that in 1941 Winston Churchill was one such man-not that he was a man of faith, apart from in himself , but he was able to mobilise the nation in fighting against the tyranny of Hitler-because he saw him as the great threat to democracy he led the nation to put all other concerns and differences of opinion behind them to oppose the COMMON enemy. The nature of his speeches were not to understate the problem but to emphasise the strength of the British people to hold the fort til the Americans changed their minds and joined the struggle and eventually overcame the enemy.

Joshua was such a man of destiny and Israel was about to receive her destiny. Today we are living in a time when the enemy really wants us to give up and go home-to surrender the territory that belongs to our king. Over the years since the end of world war two we have seen an increasing tendency for the nation to become more secular and our city of Belfast and this community is at the sharp end of the struggle.

If we look at ourselves we can understand the problem-

· We have little money in the bank BUT we are not poor

· We have buildings which are too big for our purposes- they were build at a time when the community was much bigger-so when we meet together we sit all over the place and remain distant from each other and appear to be happy with that

· Because of legislation we have property which needs renovation-not just repairs to the buildings but renovations which bring them up to standard in terms of disability access, health and safety and fire regulations not to mention protection against burglary and vandalism.

· And on top of all that we are over serviced by Presbyterian churches not to mention the other denominations in the area-currently we have 8 Presbyterian churches and many other churches and missions.

Like in Joshua’s day there are some who have lost the stomach for the fight and are ready to hoist the white flag-they are too big for us, there are giants in the land.

It is noticeable that Churchill made the problems of wartime Britain a virtue and a strength-he did not under state them or ignore them, he told the nation that the British bulldog spirit would win the day

He promised them “blood, toil, tears and sweat” . He told the House of Commons

“we have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind, we have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. THAT is our policy.”

Before a leader can inspire he needs to be inspired himself and while Churchill was not a man of great faith he was inspired by the horror of possible defeat and God used him as the man for the moment-Joshua, on the other hand had the hand of God on his shoulder and had faith in God, such that he could call the people to join with him in crossing the river. He had personal experience of this God Yahweh:

· He had been with Moses at Mount Sinai when Moses was give the 10 commandments

· He witnessed God’s presence going ahead of the nation in the cloud

· He had watched God lead them out of Egypt and provided for them in the wilderness.

As we read the story we can be encouraged by the action of God leading His people to take the land promised to them we too can claim the promise of eternal life. In the first few verses of chapter one we have the

COMISSION of God to Joshua

God calls him and commission him- in the army officers are commissioned to lead and to ensure that the orders of the General Staff are carried out-they need to be people who can lead and who are equipped to make sure that the strategy and orders become a reality as they fight the enemy. His commission was to lead the people across the river . When a soldier is commissioned he is given the authority to act and he is given the means to ensure that it happens-so a soldier is given his rank but also the men under his control-so when he gives orders it is as if the CO were giving them as far as the foot soldier is concerned.

When Jesus commissions the disciples he says “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples....”

So when I tell another person about the gospel I am doing what God has commanded-Jesus cam with this authority and he has given it to us. WE have no need to overstate the case, no need to make the big sell by exaggerating or even lying, all we need to do is to tell the truth-“the truth will set you free” Sometimes Christians feel the need to overstate the case by telling interested people that if they become a believer they will never have another problem and life will be great-we are never promised any such thing-when we do this we are behaving like people who don’t really have faith or believe our message-that has been the problem for modern China-as she has felt the need to open up to the world and as Marxist Leninist principles have declined in the lives of people they have felt the need to put the best foot forward and always show modern China to be the best-in the process we have the situation of the Olympics were one little girl was told she had d a good singing voice but was not pretty enough so another would mine before the thousands and the cameras while the other girl sang the words-there is no need for us to do such things. Our responsibility is to preach the word in season and out of season an we do that with words and with our actions

In telling them, repeatedly to be strong and courageous Joshua is telling a disheartened and battered people that they can be encouraged and strong because God is with them and will never leave them. The people of Joshua’s day were discouraged because the sin of their fathers had caused God to keep them in the wilderness until a new generation came along and the readers of the written history, possibly during the return from exile were also discouraged by their exile which was also because of sin-sin is sometimes very attractive in the short term but there is always a heavy cost long term. WE too are discouraged because of falling numbers and low income so we need to hear again that God has already given us the victory-we are not victims we are victors

In commissioning them he also gives Joshua his COMMANDS

Deut 7:7-12

He wants them to know that it is best for them to obey God-Moses gave them the Decalogue and Joshua tells them to follow it-never to forget the words and to keep it at the forefront of their minds and actions.

We too are called to do the same-but as we obey God we have another Joshua before us- we have the second Adam, Jesus Christ who makes the commands more than a mere list of

do not-he makes the commands chiselled in stone into a covenant of flesh-

Are you ready to cross the Jordan? Ready to fight the good fight? Are you ready to give your tears and your sweat and your blood-we do no one any favours by making the challenge small-its a big challenge to go and take the enemy on-our struggle is greater than in 1941- its not a mere physical fight but its against the spiritual forces of evil. Joshua used the fighting men to lead the way and forge a way in the land. Today it does not matter how old you are or how young you are, it does not matter how strong you are- we begin by recognising the enemy and all his power and there are still giants in the land but are you ready to take on these forces? God promises to be with us and to give us the victory-the alternative? Give in, go away, surrender the battler and loose the land, this land to the devil-what do you want to do?

TOMORROW

Our house has always been buzzing with people. For over 30 years we have had people coming in and out. With four children there have always been friends and colleagues and visitors. Over the last 5 years we have had a lot of people-with the three boys living at or near enough to be here most days, added to that their friends and girlfriends and added to that the influx of Americans that has amounted to a lot of people. This year my second son has gone to Africa for 15 months working with Children of the Nations. Our first son got engaged to a lovely American girl and returned there within a few days. Our daughter had already left for Dublin where she is married and working happily. Despite the trauma that this caused our house is still fairly packed as we have our youngest son's friend lodging with us and our nephew and sometimes his girlfriend and sometimes other girlfriends so we are not exactly alone.

We do enjoy sharing our house like this and we do have fun sometimes when we sit around the table and chat-those who are left wondered what life would be like without Mark to "debate " with me! I do miss him a lot and I do miss Peter and Ruth but that is how life goes-our job has always been to raise our children, as best we could , in the fear of the Lord helping them to be mature, confident adults and then release them to the wild [makes them sound like birds].

This weekend the boys are off to Dublin to see the new Batman movie and Gillian, my wife is off for the long weekend with one of her sisters and so, for some of this time its just the dogs, Sox and Fox and me in this big house. I have work to do-a sermon to preach and a service to lead on Sunday morning and there are other pieces of work that I could be doing and yet, when everything changes it can be hard to settle and to get motivated [at least I find that but then I am not as disciplined as I should be]

Some people find silence a great source of comfort-I do not, I have always been surrounded my noise, so I turn the radio on or the TV or some music, even though I need silence to think and to pray but today the house seems very silent! The Psalmist says "Be still and know that I am God"
The thought of being alone is scary, the thought of being left behind is frightening. Yet God says "You are not alone". The Orthodox Christians of the east say that the Christian is never alone, God is always with them and we are always surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses-that can be another scary thought-that people are watching everything you do, EVERYTHING!!!!!
Not only does God see what I am doing, even when i know I should not be doing it but other people who may have had certain ideas about me and the level of my Christianity, can also see me.

There are times when i find it difficult just to live in the moment. That means I am always thinking about the next stage, the next person I have to visit or will never get round to visiting, I am thinking of what is off in the horizon. When I was a boy I was always transporting my thoughts to the future- when i was 6 or 7 I remember lying on my bed looking up at the sky and thinking "In the 2000 I will be 50 years old" and for a moment I felt what, i thought, it was like to be 50! That is like really thinking your life away, a waste of the precious time we have. I need to learn to live in the moment otherwise I will always live life in a state of panic. I need to embrace the now and let tomorrow look after itself, or rather God will look after all my tomorrows.

A new way?

Here is a thought-in a society which is changing is it not time that we, who want to pass on, indeed who have been mandated to pass on the eternal, unchanging gospel, thought about our paterns of doing church and whether or not they should be changed?

Here is one example that has occurred to me , more than once in the last few years: our society patterns have changed to a point that they are unrecognisible from what they were when I was young. Whebn I was going out with my wife, when we were in our late teens, her parents expected her to be home by 11pm. If we were not home by that time or if we spent too much time in the care outside the house she would bring the milk bottles out! Today our young people are not going out until 11pm and they are returning in the wee small hours. When thuis happens on a Saturday night/morning they spend the next morning catching up on sleep while we gather for worship. Sunday jhas become a day for shopping or for relaxing at home or for washing the car and doing those things that did not get done during the working week or they are working: the chances of them coming to church, no matter how dynamic the services are are pretty remote.

One of the key times of the year are the summer months, when the children are not attending school and their parents are desperate for something to relieve the boredom after the first few days of the holidays and what do we do? We shut up for the smmer until September when the children are back at their desks. Why do we not turn everything on its head? Would it not make sense for us to make the summer more of a priority in terms of outreach and evangelism? Not just for a week or two but for the whole summer. Yes everyone needs a rest but why not have that rest in the heart of the winter when nature tells us to rest and the nights are cold and dark? That's what the animals do and thats what happens to the flowers and the trees why would we not do that also. Would this not be more strategic as well as more benificial for the workers who always feel exhausted by Christmas. Would it not make sense to prioritise the holidays like this?

A Father's Thoughts

It’s just a week now since we said goodbye to Mark, our second son and third child. This week we will be saying goodbye to his elder brother, Peter. Sometimes it seems like life will never be the same again, that our family will never be together again. Sometimes I think that it would have been better for my sons and my daughter to have gone to work at 16 and found work at home. Sometimes I feel like God has taken them away from me but then I know that this is not so, I know that they were only ever given to us on loan. They never "belonged" to us and in doing what God wants them to do they will experience life in all its fullness. Sometimes I have this fear of ending up alone, like some of the elderly people I have visited over the years whose sons and daughters are in various parts of the world so that they have no family near them to look after them in their declining years.

A very long time ago I was out with my mum. It was in the days when the buses had no doors and the driver was at the opposite end of the bus. She placed me on the platform, while she got ready to get on herself only to be horrified at he sight of the b us moving before she had a foot on the platform. All I had for companionship was my panic. Thankfully this lasted only a moment as the conductor realized there was a problem and rang the bell to tell the driver to stop. I do not want to be in that position ever again!

In my more lucid moments I know that God will never leave us and He has blessed us with four great children, who are no longer children. Then I remember that God gave us His only Son, to die that we might live. In the last few weeks I have been given just a glimpse of what losing a son must be like, what giving a child for the benefit of others feels like. I have had the sorrow of burying the children of parents who never imagined, for a second, that they would outlive their children. We read the story in the Old Testament, of the sacrifice of Isaac wondering how he could do such a thing. The God we worship is a giving God who tells us that he will "love you with an everlasting love". I have been telling the congregation that this is God's default position and we should take great encouragement from that. We are told in the book of Hebrews that Abraham believed that God was going to raise his son from the dead as. God loves me and He loves you, the reader of this piece, with an everlasting love. Does that not warm your soul? You are loved! Now, I dare you, ignore Him, tell Him He can stick His love. On the other hand you could thank Him and ask Him to be your God for ever.

A Movement?

When will the institutional church wake up and smell the coffee? If it doesn't happen soon it will be too late. The benefits of being part of a major denomination should be great and being part of a denomination which has accountability built into its structures should be, not only good, but completely Biblical. The reality in those denominations which have become institutionalised is that they are so concerned with the welfare of their existence that those outside the gates have been forgotten. The problem with that is that those outside the gate will not come inside unless we reach them with the truth, with sincerity and with integrity.

When will the institutional denominations give considered attention to Urban Mission in this country? How can a congregation in a financially deprived community reach ouyt to its community without the resources to do so? While the richer congregations get richer the poorer get poorer. Why, in a denomination built upon the principal of the richer helper the poorer, do the richer stand by and watch the end of urban congregations because of a lack of resources? When I say resources I mean money and people. When the harvest is plentiful and the urban church is surrounded by people does the church refuse to be mission-minded?