Tenacious in Tension

I want to talk to you about the theme of this sermon that I am going to title "Tough on tension", we are going to read in Joshua 3:14 until chapter 4 verse 7. Something that I am always encouraging young people to do in the service that What we have on the other side is never allow the sermon to be like a monologue in which God speaks to you passively, it has to be a dialogue in which you take notes and interact with the Spirit of the Lord, because that way you will to remember the things that God put in your heart when we were listening to him, so are you ready? Let's do it, go ahead.

Thank you for the fellowship of the saints God, we pledge to hear from You, we ask that you open our eyes to see You more clearly today, hearts and minds to be sensitive to You, we want to honor You as Father first, and we want to honor also the fathers that are in the midst of us Lord, in Your Name we pray Lord, amen, amen.

I want to tell you: I came to Boston to get into law school, law school was a dream of mine, I wanted to have done that a long time ago, so when I got accepted to North Eastern University I had great expectations, I I knew I had to come from Florida to Boston.

My first semester in law school was terribly challenging and difficult, one of the things about law school is that it puts you in a very intensive learning program because they have to teach you a lot and teach you a lot so that you can study really hard. so my first semester of law school i was doing amazingly well i was working hard on all my classes but there was one class i just couldn't understand it was called civil proceedings and civil proceedings is about how to bring a legal claim against to a court, and for some reason that I don't understand, that subject of civil proceedings simply did not enter my head.

And the teacher kept telling me don't worry, when the time comes for the exam at the end of the course everything will be fine, and there I am sitting in front of the computer ready to press the button that says okay the exam starts, and I'm saying to him: Lord I can't understand anything yet, help me to understand! so i opened the test and i started to read the narrative of the story that the test was about and i tried to identify the themes and the questions that were the crux of the test, and four hours after i started the test i don't know what i did I said, what I wrote but finished, I had my suitcase there in a corner of the room to go back to my house in Florida because I wanted to get out of all that.

One of the things about that North Eastern University is that they don't give grades it's just a way for them to look really cool, really modern in their educational way, but instead of giving you a grade, they give you like a paragraph where the professor says how did you do in the exam, which is excellent when you do well, but if you have not done well in the exam, that idea is not so attractive and since it is a narrative that the teacher has to write, he takes time to add the notes .

So it was around the middle of February when I finally got my test scores, and I'll never forget it, I was standing there on the corner of Harrison Avenue and Rich Street, it was a Friday night and I was coming to work with the middle schoolers on the I Wanna program, and here I am getting a text from a friend saying the grades finally arrived so I went online on my phone trying to figure out what happened, I saw all my notes and all the narratives: excellent, good, good analysis, good work, except the blessed class of civil procedures, and I had just received, they had just passed me there scraping which is the equivalent of a D! I had never in my life received even a D, not even a C, which is more or less happening there a little better, they called me insufficient in that text, they called me inadequate my performance.

I immediately started crying because here I am, I had no family in Boston, I've been here for six months and I felt like an orphan, I wanted to go to the safety of my home in Florida, I wanted to drop out of law school, forget about my dreams so what did i do I called my dad, because who do you call in a situation like this? And I was saying to my dad: Dad they just called me marginal, inadequate, insufficient and my dad didn't even understand what I was saying.

And my parents always have this habit that when I talk to them they always put me on the audible telephone, right? on the speaker phone, and then my mom recently told me their side of the story, and she tells me that while he was listening to me on the phone he said to her softly: we have to say something to her!

So I will never forget at that moment that my dad tells me: you are definitely not going to drop out of law school, you are not coming to Florida, to the house and in fact you have an assignment there in the Church that you have to attend to, isn't it the time you are there in the Church? "What are you doing daddy" (laughs), I couldn't believe my dad was saying such a thing to me.

But here's what I have to tell you, that when we are at those points of tension and the reality is that we are always going to find ourselves in some kind of tension in our life between the promises of God and the fulfillment of those promises, God has declared many things about your life, about the life of your family but it does not necessarily mean that you are going to receive those things in the next 30 minutes.

But here is the idea that I want to explain and expose with you: the invitation is not an invitation to live tense all the time, it is an invitation to be tenacious, persistent, stay there in the fight and when you are tenacious what you do is who stays in the ring, stays in the fight. You will not then let the tension defeat you, but in that case what you do is that the tension strengthens you, affirms you, disciplines you.

In the story that we read I find at least three principles that I want to talk about with you, the interesting thing I find about this story in particular is that we found the Israelites on the very edge of the Jordan River, they have been wandering in the desert for forty years, they were like that servant of whom we sang there in that previous song, and here they were finally in front of the Jordan River, Moses had told them that they were the people of God and God was sending them to possess the land.

Now what strikes me about the word possess in the original language, in the Greek, is that that word involves two things: to dispossess in order to possess, what I find here is that in order to possess the things of God we have to dispossess ourselves of something that requires first getting rid of it and that means that for them to be able to take possession of the land, the first thing they had to do in some way is to get rid of that river that stood something like an obstacle in front of them, and Here is the first principle that I wanted to talk to you about: stand firm when you find yourself in tension.

And I want to talk to parents for a moment, I want to talk to you about your role as parents. The story at the beginning we see this, the priests who carried the ark and who were there in front of the people of God. And so in our family structures normally parents are supposed to play that priestly role, they play that role of establishing stability, of establishing the theme, the theme, the direction of the home, there was a reason, a logic behind the fact that that at that moment when I was in that moment of crisis I called my dad, not necessarily my mom, I needed to hear that voice of my priest, so what we see here in this story, right? is that we see the priests carrying the ark of the covenant before the people, that ark as we know had the ten commandments inside it, it had Aaron's rod that had flourished in the desert, it was a reminder for them not only of the Presence of God who walked with them but from the Power of God who dwelt in their midst.

And as parents you play that role, you carry the ark of the covenant of God, and not only that, but you carry it and in a sense hold the Presence of God in the center, in the middle of your family, and that's okay. . Now not only do you play that leadership role, but this involves certain responsibilities and here it says in the text that the feet, the soles of the feet of the priests touched the surface of the river water for a moment and I love that image because it is the feet of our parents that guide us, guide us.

And I see there as a parenthesis in verse 15 if you can put it, it says that the banks of the Jordan River overflow during the spring, during the harvest time. That parenthesis isn't there just as a secondary secular thought because in the spring the Jordan River swells a hell of a lot more or less than 3 to 10 feet it should be, and then it gets like 90 to 100 feet wide, much more than normal. , behold, you and your family are on the verge of fulfilling and fulfilling your promises, but in front of you you see a border, a barrier that is insurmountable in one sense.

But here we see what the role of the priest is, the priest almost puts his toes in the water, steps on the water and when it seemed impossible for something to happen, this makes me imagine all the inaccessible insurmountable rivers that you have to continually to be stepping to solve a problem. For example, you have to go to that investigation before your son enters to study in that school, you have to investigate the soccer team in which your son is going to play to make sure that it is a good experience and a good place for him, you have two children each in a different school to take them from here to there, Arnold God bless you, you are a beautiful father and an example of that.

One always has to be treading the river and doing impossible things for them, and that is part of your responsibility as a father, it is part of that honor that we celebrate today as parents. So not only did these priests have the responsibility of treading the surface of the water of the Jordan River with their feet, but look and see, let's observe the reaction they had.

It says that the priests carrying the ark stood firmly in the middle of the river which was now divided, they were on dry ground, now how was that possible? that is what the faith of a father is all about, the faith of a father who sees that things seem impossible but who also knows that through Jesus Christ all things are possible.

So there I see you standing in the very middle of the Jordan River and that was my father when I called him in the middle of that moment of crisis, no you are not coming home, you are staying in Boston, go and it serves! that is the faith of a father, that is the type of reaction that we want our parents to always exemplify, that you stand firm in favor of us and today we are honoring the thousand ways in which you have stood firm throughout of his paternity.

In fact, there is also another group of people that we want to honor this afternoon. We want to honor graduates who have graduated from different courses. Do you know? Graduation is something that is truly something like family because it is not only you who are graduating but also your parents who have contributed to that graduation, your brothers, your sister who had to put up with you in that process, and we are in that time of graduations everywhere, you know? It was due to the fact that your parents remained there in that tension that you were able to pass into the promised land.

So the second principle that we see expounded in this story, in the first we see that, right? to stand there in the steady tension, but we also have to pull that tension, so in Joshua chapter 4 verse 3 it says, “Take twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River which is now dry.” What I love, the beauty of this image is that we can observe the roles, the different roles that the people play in this situation.

The priests were firm in their position, now what the other leaders did was they extracted those stones from the river itself, from the bottom of the river, and I want to tell you, graduates, those who graduate, that this is what they have done in this season of graduations. A graduation is a symbolic moment in your life, it is a moment in which you pass to the other side in the sense that it is a new era, a new era that you are entering.

And when they say your name and you walk, you get there to the platform and they give you that diploma, literally what you have done is that you have crossed over to the other shore and then that potential that is within you now has been unleashed, it is a fresh start but you know It is also a new beginning that will come with new responsibilities, so Joshua tells them: take those stones out of the river, pile them up and make a kind of column with the stones, and you know that these columns in our lives come from those places where our parents have stood still.

We must never lose sight of that fact. When one passes to the other side, the Bible tells you to take something with you so that you remember what you went through, extract, remove something from that tension where you lived.

I think that many times we allow those moments of tension to break us, to separate us from ourselves because that stretches us too much, stresses us out, makes us feel anxious and conflicted, but here Joshua reminds us: don't let The tension kind of breaks you in two, right? separates you in yourself but rather pulls some of the tension itself for your benefit.

And we see that in verse 6 we are asked a very powerful question, it says that when your children ask you in the future, what do these stones mean to you? I think that's a very powerful question because when we see ourselves walking through these stressful and challenging moments in life, when we experience those moments when victory seems impossible, when I was young I hated geometry, I thought I'd never I was going to pass it but I did. Today I can't tell you anything about those parallelograms and those things that I studied but passed, I won, when you're in a mess you think it's impossible to get out of it.

So when you take those stones from the middle of the river that will give you the opportunity to share with others what that stone reminds you of the process you just went through. What spiritual meaning does that moment you lived have now that you are on the other side?

And this brings us to the last and third principle that I want to share with you: set reminders, set reminders. We are forgetful, that's why on the iPhone you have a little thing called reminders so you don't forget things, and those people were like that at that time, they also needed reminders.

So he tells them in Joshua 4:19, it says they came to Jordan on the 10th of the first month and camped at Gilgal, Gilgal is a very interesting name because it's like a pun, and it comes from the word Galal. You know that very well, which means that you are rolling, rolling something of yourself to put it on another person. So when the Lord takes you out of the Jordan River He wants you to remember that I rolled you out of that river where you were, all your fears, anxieties, you trusted Me so for that reason I rolled you out to the other side, amen, praise the Lord, so that word Gilgal literally means compromise.

So we see in Psalm 37 verse 5 trust your path to the Lord and He will do it, it's a reminder of God's commitment to them and their commitment to their God, and this is exactly what has happened with our family as a result of the The fact that our fathers have held on tight, it is about a father who has committed his path to the Lord, and as he has committed his path to the Lord, as he rolled with his burdens and cast aside his fears about of the impossible, that means: that you could, father, go to the other side.

And now I am referring to the graduates, likewise that is what has happened to you too, you have also had, in a sense, to surrender your burdens to the Lord to go to the other side. Perhaps one day you also thought: hey, I'm not going to be able to graduate but you did and it's because of that dependence on the Lord, that commitment to God.

And there it says in verse 24 in chapter 4 the Lord says: I want you to establish these pillars so that all peoples will know the hand of the Lord as powerful and so that they will fear the hand of Jehovah every day.

I believe that the beauty, the beauty of maintaining ourselves in tension, being tenacious in tension is that as we walk according to the ways of the Lord, His Hand has protected us throughout the entire trajectory, so in that tension that we experience between the promises of God and its realization we must be tenacious, hold on, we have to cling to God's ways and we have to remember the victories we have already had when we have held on tight, so today we honor those parents who have stood firm .

And it doesn't matter what your family situation is, it doesn't matter that perhaps you haven't had a strong image of a father in your life but it doesn't matter, it was the priests who have stood firm and we have a priest, high priest who has been standing firm before God and He will stand firm as you go through the stress.

So while in our life we move from one place to another place, to another place there is always going to be tension but we have to hold firm to that tension, we have to pull things out of that tension and then we have to set reminders, memorials of what It was that tension. The tension is not that you stay tense, stressed, but that you are tenacious, firm, stay in tension.

So if you have graduated from something, it doesn't matter what it is, high school, university, some technical program, a home economics class, whatever, beauty, I want to invite you to come with your family, come forward here, If you have graduated from something, if you have had a victory in these last days of something from which you have graduated, we invite you to come forward.

Something we want to do for you this week, we have a little memorial stone for each of the graduates (applause), and there's something I want to remind you about those memorial stones: God has put you through this experience for something greater, something great. . There were people who stood in the gap for you, the Lord stood for you and He brought you to the other side, and He did that only to unlock a new level of potentiality in you, so through that stone I I want you to remember that God crossed you, God took you out of there and the promised land is before you.

Let's stand up, let's pray for our brothers, amen? I believe that we have received a good nourishing Word and we bless these brothers, amen, amen, we are going to extend our hands to these graduates as well, Father we thank you for this Father's Day Lord, we honor you as our God, our Father, we honor you Jesus as our high priest and we thank you for standing firm on our behalf, thank you for standing there in the midst of the tension, Lord bless each of these graduates, thank you for the victory we celebrate which is in Christ and only in Him, and we celebrate the fact that that promised land is before us.

Thank you Lord for Your faithfulness, we bless every parent in this house this morning, we honor them for the way they have stood firm, a double portion of Your strength, of Your wisdom in their lives, we thank You for all these things Lord and we pray in Your Name, amen, amen, glory to God, amen, thank you.