Worship, Trust, Obey, And It'll All Be Okay

Pastor Stan Mons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeRAEniTlmI

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Sermon Transcription:

The title of the message that we’re going to look at together today with all of the kids is this: Worship, trust, obey, and it will all be okay. And I’m going to need all of y’all’s help today to make sure that especially the adults remember this when they get home. So, when I point at you, you’re going to finish the sentence, okay? So: worship, trust, obey, and it will all be okay.

That— you can do that better. Amen. Come on, we’ve practiced this. I know how loud you guys can get. Okay, Esther, you can do it. Here we go: worship, trust, obey, and it will all be—"okay" That’s more like it. Worship, trust, obey, and it will all be okay. The Bible tells all of us that Jesus said, “Let the children come to me.” Now, I want to explain to you why He said that. Because some of the adults that were following Jesus thought Jesus would be a little bit bothered by children, that He didn’t have time for them. And so Jesus shut them down and said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t hinder them.” In other words, Jesus always has time for kids.

That’s really a good message for all of us, but especially for the little ones today. Jesus is never too busy for you to ask Him a question. I was spending time with my oldest daughter just the other day, and she said to me in the car, “Sometimes I feel like you feel, Papa, that I ask too many questions, so then I don’t ask them.” And I had to tell her, “I never get tired of your questions.” And that’s really what Jesus wanted the disciples to understand: I never get tired of the questions of children.  They can come to Me. And this morning, no matter how old you are—from the youngest to the oldest—I believe the Lord wants to teach you three things: to worship, to trust, and obey. Because when we worship, trust, and obey, everything will be "okay"— There we go, you’re getting it. Jesus is always near to every single one of us. If you don’t know Him yet, you have not asked Him into your heart, you have not surrendered your life to Him—that doesn’t mean He’s far away from you.

He is near, still loves you, still seeks to protect you, still seeks to bless you, and He can also do all things. Now, think about that for a moment: Jesus is always near, and He can do all things. So when we get to a place in our lives where there are things we cannot do, and Jesus—who can do all things—is near, He is just one prayer away. And it takes all of us to say, “God, I can’t deal with this. I can’t make up for my sins. I can’t change the way I feel or the way I behave. But if You can help, I would love Your help.” “If You can do it, Jesus, I’m going to begin to trust You.” But a lot of people, when they need a miracle— a miracle is something nobody could have done but God— when people need something done that they cannot do, very, very many times people actually stop doing the worship, the trust, and the obeying. And we already began to learn together that when you worship, trust, and obey, it’s all going to be okay.

So when people get into a position where now actually their life is a little bit in trouble, or they have something incredibly difficult that they are facing or dealing with, a lot of people actually stop worshiping, trusting, and obeying. And then these people get stuck in the situation they were trying to get out of in the first place. It’s as if they forget that Jesus is near and He can do all things. They start behaving as if Jesus is not near or He cannot do all things. And when they do that, they get stuck in their very difficult situation. Now, I don’t know anybody that likes to be stuck, but let’s look at some people who did get stuck. The people of God, by miracles of God, got set free out of slavery in the country of Egypt. And God did miracle after miracle and takes them on this incredible journey. He opens the Red Sea; they go through it dry. They come out at the other end. But did you know that these people of God— 14 times, 14 times— they went against God, and instead they started to complain?

They began complaining so much— and I know one thing about God: He doesn’t like complaining. They began complaining so much that the Bible tells us these people got stuck in the desert. They got stuck in the wilderness. In just a handful of days, as far as the distance goes, they could have gotten into the promised land that God had promised them. Instead, they kind of started going in circles for 40 years in the same place, and most of them died in that desert because they got stuck in their situation. And many people struggle with this. When things get hard, they feel they need to take control.  When things get difficult, they feel they need to understand how it is going to come to pass. And a lot of people sing songs to God because He’s done great things, but that’s not necessarily worship— that’s praise. And these people, 14 times, they complained. And basically, this is the kind of person that says to God, “I don’t get enough out of this life.” And they start to try to take control of life to get more out of it, to make this life here on earth greater and better, and to— if possible at all— live their best life here on earth.

That becomes the goal of people that have a complaining heart. They say in their heart, “I don’t get enough out of this life.” And God responds to it very, very badly. He does not like complaining. And people with a complaining heart, they end up getting stuck. Now, we don’t want to be stuck. Amen? Amen. Acts 7:39 says this: “Acts 7:39— whom our fathers would not obey, but rejected, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt.” This is about the people of God, who God had given a testimony. He had done miracles for them. But the Bible says that in their hearts they turned back to Egypt. What does that mean? Were they daydreaming about how life was in Egypt, while they were slaves and working hard without pay and being punished any time they did something wrong? I don’t think so. But the Bible says in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, and it birthed this life’s attitude of complaining. It was never enough, because they learned something in Egypt while they were under Pharaoh.

Pharaoh was behaving like God. He wasn’t God, but he was behaving as if he was God over the people, and he was telling them what to do. He was putting them in bondage. He was telling them to work harder. He was behaving as if God was not the boss. And the people learned, being under Pharaoh, to not trust leadership. And so, even though God had brought them out of Egypt, all the time they would, in their hearts, return to Egypt and begin to treat God as if He is also a bad leader, just like Pharaoh— “He’s just like Pharaoh.” And so even the people of God, even though they had been set free, they would start to respond in their difficulties to God as if He was a little bit like Pharaoh. And they would complain: “See, I knew He brought us out of Egypt to kill us in the desert. He has ulterior motives. It’s all about Him. See, I knew if I would follow Him, I would have a more empty life. 

He would take things away. I would not be in control. I would not be happy anymore. I couldn’t enjoy things.” And they just have all of these complaints in their heart because they learned something in Egypt that they kept in their mind when they looked at God: Leadership is just bossy and not good for me. Their hearts returned to Egypt, and they would treat God as if He was a little bit like Pharaoh. And they complained. They didn’t trust any lordship anymore unless they saw the miracle, unless they saw that it was good for them right now, right here. They saw the manna come from heaven, and they sang and praised and worshiped. And then they got tired of the manna. Guess what they did? Complain. “This God just gives— I mean, He gave me taste buds for no reason at all. He feeds me the same food every day. Unbelievable. He could have just—” And they would complain and complain, and God gets so frustrated with them.

You know what He said? “Okay, I’ll give you meat until it comes out of your nose.” And there the meat came, and they praised and worshiped— until they got sick and tired of it and complained again. Their heart turned back to Egypt, and they said, “God, You’re just— You’re not as good as You portray Yourself to be. You’re a little bit like Pharaoh.” And it didn’t go well for this generation, because most of them died in that wilderness, in that desert. They got stuck in the problem of their life. And there are a lot of people that have great problems, and they’re not all our own faults.  But there are also people that really get stuck in one and the same problem. I’ve seen it many, many times. And it kind of doesn’t matter what they do— this problem seems to stick to them and follow them around their entire life. You know what all of these people have in common? They complain. It’s always somebody else’s fault, or it shouldn’t have been happening to them, or they already went through so much. “Cannot believe this.” And in their heart they say, “God is actually not very very good to me. I would have given me a little bit of a better life or a better opportunity or a better this or a better that than God has actually given me.” And that complaining takes root in the heart. And here’s what happens.

I’ll read it to you in 1 Corinthians 10:5 from the Bible. Here’s what it says: “But with most of them, that’s the people of God, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.” They died in their problem. Now, a lot of you here are young. You are kids. And I pray that you don’t really have any very big problems at all that you know of yet. I really pray that.

But you can imagine some of the little ones. There’s been times I’ve seen all the courage disappear out of my little Esther’s eyes when I say, “What a mess. You’re not playing until you first clean all of this up.” That can be a huge problem in the eyes of a little one. Now, imagine getting stuck in your room and no matter what you do, the mess does not go away. No matter how long you work, no matter how long you put everything away in your baskets, when you turn around, it’s all back on the floor. That is what it is like when a man or a woman gets stuck in their problem. They may work. They may do some good things. They may be willing to put in some effort. But somehow they always seem to be stuck in the same place, more discouraged than anything, and complaining is very very nearby. Now God has a plan to teach every single one of us something so that getting stuck does not happen to us.

Our rooms, if our life was kind of like our bedrooms, sometimes our lives get a little messy just like our bedrooms. All the toys can be on the floor sometimes, cuz sometimes somebody else did it. And it’s no different in our life. Sometimes somebody else messed something up and we’re stuck with some of the trouble. But it is my prayer and the Lord’s desire that you don’t get stuck in a messy life that just doesn’t get cleaned up. He wants to teach you three things today. Worship, trust, obey, and it will all be okay. Worship, trust, and obey. We’re first going to look at trusting and obeying, because those can be difficult people. Trusting means saying, “You know better than me, so you take care of it.” Now I’m trusting somebody. You’re better than me. You’re smarter than me. You’ve better intentions than me. So this, if it is entrusted to you, ends up better than if I was in control. That’s trusting. And obeying is saying, “Well, I really don’t understand and I really don’t agree, but I’ll do it.”

Obeying is only for the bad days. The rest of the time you agree with God, you don’t really need obedience. It’s when you don’t agree with God or you don’t understand why he’s telling you it or you don’t feel like doing it anymore. That’s where obedience starts. Now I’m doing it because I’m choosing to honor God and to listen to him. Now, the people in the desert, they didn’t know how to do this. Amen. They got stuck. But God wants to teach his people. So let’s look at how God is going to teach his people. The people of God come to the Jordan River, big river, especially at this time of year. And the people had their little kids like Joshy and Michael, and they get to the river and they see this big river and they look at their little ones, no swimming vests. How are we going to do this problem? You could get stuck right there at the river. They have their little lambs and their goats, all of the stuff that they carried— some on their back, some on a donkey— to get where God is taking us. But now it’s all standing right there at the edge of the river, and they can’t go further. And then we read this, Joshua 3. We’re going to read verse 2 to 5. Let’s start with the first three words: after three days. Now, for all the children here, anytime you hear a Bible story, anytime you read your Bible and the Bible says “after 3 days,” you should pay very close attention.

What other thing happened after three days? When Jesus rose from the grave. When Jesus rose from the grave, almost every single time that we read in the Bible, “after three days,” God is about to teach us something about what really Jesus would do for our lives. Here we read, they’re stuck at the Jordan River. They’re willing to begin to learn how to worship, trust, and obey. And this is how it starts. After 3 days, the officers went through the camp, giving orders to people. Now, they had to learn to obey. “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God and the Levitical priests carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it.” They have to obey. They’ve got to do what they’re told. And then verse four: “Then you will know which way to go.” It’s actually for your good, because you don’t know where to go. You can’t cross the water. “Then you’ll know where to go, since you have not been this way before.”

Now you’ve got to trust that God actually knows how to get you through it, because you have not been this way before. You’ve never faced this battle yet. You’ve never faced this difficulty yet. You’re just learning to trust and obey. “But keep a distance of about 2,000 cubits”— that’s about half a mile, about as far as you can comfortably see— “about half a mile between you and the ark. Do not go near it.” Again, direction. Why does He say that? After 3 days, the opportunity for obedience showed up. The opportunity for trust began to arrive. And then it says, “Don’t go near the ark. Stay far away from it. Stay far behind it.” Why does the Word tell us that? Well, there are people that get way too close. I’ve seen people even that go past the ark, so to speak, and people that kind of start to walk ahead of God. They think they know what God wants. They think they understand what He’s doing. And they try to run with it instead of staying far behind it so that they can follow the leading of the Lord. And they end up confused and sometimes really paying the price for not following.

The Word tells us you have to stay behind what God is doing, because you’ve never gone this way. It’s only your first time alive. He knows what He is doing. Don’t go near it. Follow Him. Trust Him and obey Him. And then, incredibly, in verse 5, this is what we read: Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves. Prepare yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.” That’s the promise. You begin to trust and obey. You begin to say, “God, You know better and You are better than me. So I’m going to give You my life. I trust You, and I’m going to do what You tell me, even when I don’t understand or I don’t agree. I’m going to obey You.” “This is the promise. You better prepare yourself, for the Lord is going to do amazing things among you. He’s going to do miracles.” Remember, they’re standing right at the Jordan River. They can’t get through it. They, they don’t have no swimming license. They don’t know how to swim. They got all these little babies and, and, and, and the cute little lambs and goats hobbling along, and, and, and here they stand. To some of us adults, we think, “You know, I think I could have made it across the Jordan. I’m a good swimmer. I could have done that.”

But here you stand with your whole family, with your cart behind a donkey, and all of a sudden, in that situation, it gets pretty, pretty tough. And there comes the word: God will do amazing things. Verse 14 to 16: “So the people broke camp to cross the Jordan. The priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage during the harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zerathan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of Arabia, that’s the Dead Sea, was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho.” The water literally heaps up in a big mountain, stops, all collects up far, far away. They can barely see it, and the river becomes dry. And here come the little children. And here come the animals. And they all cross over dry. And they get to the other side. They had just begun to trust and obey a little in this smaller challenge, Jordan River, and God does an amazing thing. He stops the water from flowing and gets them across. Because God always starts small.

When you say, “God, I want to learn to trust You and obey You, and I want to learn to worship You,” God always starts small. He doesn’t start with Jericho and then the Jordan River. He started with the following. He started with the trusting. He started with the obeying, because worship is a lot harder than trusting and obeying. Worship is not always what we do in church. Sometimes the way you pray to Jesus can be worship. Sometimes the way that you wait on Jesus is worship. Sometimes the way that you shout is worship. Worship always happens ahead of time. Praise happens after God has done something. Worship always happens before He has done it. It is saying, “God, You are great, and I know You’re going to do it,” while you are still standing in an area where you haven’t seen any change, but you believe the Lord, you obey the Lord, and now you are able to begin worshiping Him, even though you don’t have a song of praise yet, because you haven’t seen God do the miracle yet. Worship happens ahead of time.

You haven’t gotten anything yet. Things still look difficult or even unchangeable. But when we worship, trust, and obey, everything will be okay. God wanted His people to learn that so that they wouldn’t get stuck in the wilderness, in their difficulty, in their situation, just like the other people of God before them. So they come through the Jordan River, and all of a sudden they start to see something in the distance. And the closer they get, the bigger it gets. It’s the city of Jericho, where God is about to start teaching these kids and teaching these young ones and these old ones.

He’s going to teach them how to worship— how to worship before they got anything. And the closer they get, the bigger the problem got. The longer they walked towards it, the more majestic, the more imposed, the more big the problem got. The walls of Jericho, from the very bottom to the top, would have been between 40 and 50 feet tall. For our little ones, that is four cars put straight up and then on top of each other. And here they’re standing, looking up at these ginormous walls. They were double walls. They were staggered like this. So the first wall, about 27 ft tall, and then another wall behind it, up on a hill again, around 20 ft tall. So between 40 and 50 feet total height that they’re looking up to, and somewhere inside is that city. And here they stand. And all of a sudden, God says, “Now you continue trusting and obeying.” He gives them directions. He says, “Go walk around this whole city every day, just once, but don’t say anything. Be quiet.” Well, that’s a little— just trust and obey me. “But God, that makes no sense.”

Just trust and obey me, because I’m about to teach you how to worship. And so for six days, they walk one time around the city, quiet as a mouse, all together. And on the seventh day, they walk around it seven times. Some of you love walking or running. To me, this is a problem. This is where I need Jesus. Seven times— I would have had already blisters on my feet from doing it every day for six days. And then the seventh day, seven times they had to walk around. “Why, God?” Have you ever been there, where you have been just doing what you know is the right thing, and for some reason it seems to get harder the longer you do the right thing? And you go, “God, I have been walking around this city seven times. That’s asking a bit much, don’t you think? What’s happening the day after? Do we get a break? Do we— are we gonna take shifts? What are we gonna—” And just trust and obey. And they walk around the city seven times on the seventh day. And here’s where we pick up in verse 16 and 20 in Joshua 6. “The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army”— just like I’ve been doing with you today— Joshua commanded the army, “Shout, for the Lord has given you the city.” That’s what he tells them. “Go and worship now. Let me hear your voices and begin to shout, because the Lord has given you the city.” The walls are still up. They’re as tall as ever. They’ve seen them on every side now many, many times. It didn’t look like the walls were coming down. They were immense walls, over six feet thick.

But they began to worship the Lord as they obeyed Him and as they trusted Him. And then watch what happened when they worshiped, even though the impossible walls were still standing. Verse 20: When the trumpet sounded, the army shouted. And at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed. So everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.The walls just fell apart. And if you’ve known Jesus at all, any time that you have an impossible problem, if you trust Him, you obey Him, and you worship Him, even though you don’t understand and you don’t see the change, He can make all of the problems crumble and fall away— sometimes in just one moment. Amen.  When you worship, trust, and obey, it will all be okay. God does miracles for us. A miracle, remember, that’s a thing that you could have never done. God does the things for us that we could have never done. When we’re talking about getting rid of your sins, the wrong things you have done, when you have done one thing wrong in your life, you cannot be in the same room with God. And God didn’t want you to get stuck away from Him. So, He sent His Son to come very near to you— His Son, who can do all things. And He’s asking you to trust the Son, to obey the Son, to worship the Son. And when we trust Jesus, and we obey Him, and we worship Him, our very own sin problem, as tall as these walls, just comes crumbling down, and He sets us free. Getting rid of the very largest problems.

Maybe you have been forgiven for a long time. But there are certain problems— things that you don’t like about yourself, things in your character, mistakes you keep making, people you keep hurting. It doesn’t matter what the problem is. It doesn’t matter how large it is. If you trust Jesus, and obey Jesus, and worship Him, He causes the walls to come crumbling down. Remember, it all started with this: after three days. This whole story is about what Jesus can do in your life if you will trust Him, obey Him, and worship Him, even when it is a little bit hard. Right here in the story, the walls are down right now. Nobody’s complaining anymore. Nobody’s getting stuck. But I want to pray with every child, every adult in this house that says, “I believe in Jesus. I believe that He is near. I believe He can do all things. But Lord, I feel a little stuck. I feel a little stuck in something difficult, and it doesn’t feel like I can fix it. But I believe You today, Lord, that You do not want me to get stuck and to stay stuck. Lord, I’m going to worship. I’m going to trust. I’m going to obey. I’m going to follow Jesus because I believe You don’t want me to be stuck. You don’t want me to be stuck struggling with thoughts in my mind. You don’t want me to be stuck always getting angry and I can’t get it under control. You don’t want me to get stuck feeling sinful, and feeling unforgiven, and feeling far away from the Father. You don’t want me to get stuck in that place. You’re asking me to trust You. You’re asking me to obey You, and I want to learn to worship You, that some walls may come crumbling down in my life that I cannot bring down myself.”

If that is you in your heart, I want to ask you to pray with me in your seat. While I pray, I’m going to ask you to pray to God and to say, “God, I believe that You don’t want me to stay stuck.” That’s all I’m asking you to pray. “God, I believe that You don’t want me to stay stuck.” If you are willing to pray that in your seat, I’m going to take some time to pray over you and over every person with us that is online. I pray that God is going to bring down the impossible walls in your life— the problems that you don’t know what to do with, the things that are too big for you to fix, and maybe even the sin struggle that has been weighing you down and looks so tall that you don’t know what to do with it. You’ve been walking around it. You know it from every angle, and it’s a problem in your life. It is my prayer that as you pray, “God, I believe You don’t want me to stay stuck,” that God is going to do a work in your heart, and He’s going to cause those walls to come down as we trust, obey, and worship.

-Pastor Stan Mons