Gregory Dickow - Grace for Your Breakthrough
Judges chapter one, verse one, remember, it says, "After the death of Joshua, the children of Israel said, 'Who shall go up first for us into the Canaanite land to fight against them?'" Now that Joshua is dead, what do we do next? What's the first thing we're supposed to do once Joshua has died? Now, here, remember, Joshua is an Old Testament picture of Jesus. The Jesus of the New Testament is illustrated through Joshua in the Old Testament. Now, remember, Joshua came after Moses Moses brought the law or the Ten Commandments. And the Bible says that the Bible says that Moses threw it through Moses. The law came, but through Jesus Christ, Grace came. And this is illustrated through Moses and Joshua Moses. And Joshua represents the law versus grace.
So Moses tries to take the people into the promised land, through the commandments. But the commandments cannot get you into the promised land. So Moses dies and passes the baton to Joshua and God says, I'm going to use Joshua to get my people into the promised land. And Joshua dies. Now, this represents Jesus. Now understand that nothing good can happen in our lives until Jesus dies. So the children of Israel could not go up into the land of promise until Joshua died. They could not go up and take possession of all the land until Joshua died. And for us, in the same way, we cannot enjoy the victorious, abundant life that God has for us until Jesus died. But he did die two thousand years ago. And when he died, he opened the door for us to go and take the land that God has for us. The land of salvation, the land of healing, the land of peace, the land of joy, the land of abundance.
We can only go into the land of promise through Jesus Christ. And what he did for us when he died on the cross and rose from the dead. Can anybody say amen? So now watch what happens. Joshua represents Jesus and the children of Israel represent us. And after Jesus dies, the children of Israel say, what are we supposed to do next? What's the first thing we're supposed to do now that Joshua is dead? And we should ask the same question. Now that Jesus has died for our sins, what's the first thing we should do with our lives? Well, first, to answer the question, when God responds and says and the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand that the word Judah, the name Judah, represents and is translated as praise. We get the word. We get the word praise from Judas name Judah means praise or to be praised.
And so what he's telling us here is Jesus has already died to provide everything you'll ever need in this life and in the life to come. Jesus has died to pay the price for us. So what is the next thing we're supposed to do? Once we realize Jesus has died, we're to send forth praise up to heaven. God sends Jesus down and we send praise up. God's part was to send Jesus to this earth, to die for our sins. And our part is to send praise up for what Jesus has already done for us. You see, when you discover that this is the life that God has called you, too, this is the purpose for which you were created. To give God praise, you will find satisfaction in joy and peace of mind when you begin to praise God.
The Bible says God inhabits the praises of his people. His presence is activated through the praise of his people. Creative power and creative energy is activated through the praise of his people. And I don't mean to speak to you in mysteries and in parables. I hope you can. I hope it's easy to understand what became easy for me to understand when I saw these verses. Jesus Joshua Dies, which represents Jesus. And then they ask, what are we supposed to do now? And the number one question that you should ask in your life is, now that Jesus is paid for my sins, what's my part?
You know what your part is? Send up Judah. Send up praise, give God praise. Give him thanks. Give him glory. Thank him every day. Thank him every minute of every day. You were created to give God glory. You were created to give him praise. The Bible says let everything that has breath praise the Lord. So if you're breathing, you need to realize if you're breathing. The reason you have breath is to give praise to God with your breath. It's to give God glory with your breath. It's to worship him and to adore him because he sent Jesus down. Now we send praises up.
Now, there have been songs that have been sung and they're really good songs. They really catchy songs. But they're sometimes not. They're not. And they're not accurate songs because we've heard songs like "When the praises go up, the blessings come down". But we see that's where we have to renew our mind and change the way we think. What the song says, when the praise is go up, the blessing comes down. But the Bible says the blessing has come down through Jesus Christ. So let's make sure the praise now goes up. The blessing has already come down through Jesus. Now the praise is supposed to go up. Too many Christians have been praising God to try to get him to do something. But praise is not used as a manipulative tool to get God to do something. Praise is a heart of gratitude in discovering what God has already done.
Romans one twenty one because they although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but became feudal in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Now, notice what he says there. He says, even though we know God, if we're not living a life, that is that if we're not glorifying him as God, like, look, life happens, man, stuff happens in life, negative things happen in our lives. When negative things happen, we need to remember, wait a minute, God is still God. So I'm going to glorify him, not because of the negative thing that happened in my life. I'm going to glorify him because he is still God. He is still on the throne, he is still my savior and still my lord, and somehow some way he has this all figured out. My job is to trust him in the meantime and to give him glory. That's how you handle life when you glorify God, knowing that he is God, although they knew they they knew God, they did not glorify him, nor were they thankful.
Notice they didn't give him glory and they weren't thankful. And what was the byproduct? What happened as a result of that? They became feudal in their thoughts. So you have a life of futility and their foolish hearts were darkened, a life of foolishness, bad decisions, a fool makes bad decisions. A wise man or a wise woman makes good decisions. The opposite of that is a fool, which means you make bad decisions, really. Simply a foolish person makes bad decisions, a wise person makes good decisions. And what will empower you to be wise is when you do the wisest thing you can do, give God praise for what he's already done. Give God glory for what he's already done. That's the wisest thing you can do in your life.
So what am I going to do in the meantime, I'm going to get in rapture position and what is rapture position? Pick me up Father, pick me up, Jesus, pick me up. And while you're at it, while you're doing it, I'm praising you. In the meantime, I'm praising you. In the meantime, I'm praising you. In the meantime, you see your hands lifted up. Is the rapture position like, hey, when a child when your little kid comes running up to you, your little grandkid comes running up to you, what do they do? They got their arms out and they're ready to jump into your arms and they're ready for you to pick them up. And I'm telling you, that's how we need to be with God, just like a little kid with our arms lifted, praising him, ready for him to pick us up, ready for him to grab us, ready for him to hold us and embrace us and to take us and sweep us into his arms.
This is the Christian life that we're supposed to live. This is a life of joy. This isn't a life of of full of of of of negativity and and fear and anxiety and complaining. Now, that's how a lot of Christians live. But that's not how God created us to live. That's not how God intended for us to live. So what do we do? So go back to judge chapter one, verse one. After the death of Joshua, which represents Jesus, the Old Testament symbol of Jesus, they both both mean the same word. Both words mean the same thing. Joshua and Jesus both mean salvation. So Joshua represents the savior here. And only through his death can our sins be forgiven. Only through his death are we our sins wiped away only through his death and his blood being shed has the price now been paid.
Now, what's left for us to do? Give God praise. What are we supposed to do now that Jesus died? We're supposed to send up the praise, send up the praise, send up the praise verse to who's supposed to go up first. Praise is supposed to go up first. If you will live your life where praise goes up first before you have the answer, praise goes up before you have it figured out. Praise goes up. Before you lift a finger, praise goes up. Before you try to figure out how to solve your problem. Send up the praise first before your day begins. Send up the praise first before your week begins. Send the praise up first. Before your marriage begins. Send up the praise before. Before your you have your first child. Send up the praise before you meet a husband or meet the right man of Meet Me, Mr. Right or Mrs. Right. Send up the praise first. Give God praise for what he's already done.
Stop waiting for something good to happen before you can start praising God and start your life praising God for what he's already done. Start your day praising God for what he's already done. Start your week praising God for what he's already done and what do we do after that. So Judah goes up first. So the first thing we need to do with our lives, once we're saved, once we're born again, is to live a life of praise. What's the next thing we're supposed to do? Ah, I'm glad you asked verse three. Or maybe you didn't ask, but you were thinking it. I know you were thinking it. Verse three. So Judas says to Simeon, his brother. Now notice he doesn't ask his other brothers. He asks Simeon and says, Come up with me to my allotted territory. Come up with me to take the land that God has already promised me that we may fight against the Canaanites and I will go with you to your allotted territory. And Simeon went with him.
Now, a closer study of the name Judah means praise. So since since Judah asks Simeon to come with him, then we need to take a closer look at what the name Symeon means. So if you study the name Simeon, it means this. It means to hear and to accept, to hear and to accept, to hear and to accept. So if we put these two things together, the first two things we need to do as believers, once Jesus died for our sins, once were born again, we need to give God praise for what he's already done. And then we need to hear and accept the word that he's already spoken. We need to praise him for what he's already done and we need to accept what he's already said.
Now, the problem is many Christians have it backwards. As soon as they as soon as they agree with it, they accept God's word. But we have to accept God's word even when it doesn't make sense. We have to accept God's word, even when it goes against the grain of our flesh. We have to accept God's word. You see, this is how to live. The life of victory is we send the praise up for what Jesus has already done and we accept God's word of what he's already said. That's why we have a Bible. We have the Bible because this is God's word. And God's word is something that you don't want to get in an argument with God about. You don't want to get in a fight with God about we got to we got to ditch the stubbornness, ditch our own opinions. We got to die to self. That doesn't mean that you've got to always sacrifice everything good.
Dying to self means you've got to give up your opinion when it contradicts God's opinion, you've got to give up. Your point of view, when it goes against God's point of view, to accept God's word means, look, I grew up all my life thinking I was a loser. I grew up all in my life losing it. Everything I did, whether it was in sports, whether it was in whether it was in relationships, whether it was with girls, I grew up all my life losing. I was a loser. Now, you don't need to feel sorry for me because I'm not anymore, and the reason I'm not anymore, the reason I win now in life and granted it's not granted, I stumble. I make mistakes. Not every day is not every day is not a perfect day for me.
How about you? But the reason, but the thing is, as I grew up thinking I was a loser and I grew up thinking that I was going to fail. I grew up thinking I was telling somebody the other day when I was in college, my major in college was English because I was afraid to talk in public. I thought if I could just write things, I'll be fine. And and so when I got to my English major my junior year, you declare your major at least then at that time we declared our major in our junior year. So I declared my major. I'm going to be a mate. I'm going to major in English. So I get to my four classes in English in my junior year. And every one of the professors stands up the first day and says, at the end of this class, every student has to stand up and give a speech about what they learned in this class.
You know what I did? I panicked and I dropped all four of those classes that day. I was afraid to speak in front of people. I was afraid of my own shadow because that's I had that spirit of rejection, that spirit of fear in my life. That's how I grew up. That's nobody's fault. That's just what the devil did in me. That's the land mines the devil set up in my life. But as I got when I got saved, I started reading the Bible and started realizing, wait a minute, I'm not a loser. I'm a winner. I'm the head and not the tail. I'm above and beneath. And even though everything in me said, you're afraid, you're rejected, you're a failure, you'll never make it. That's what everything in me was saying. But when I looked in the Bible, everything in the Bible was saying, you're a winner, you're a champion, you're more than a conqueror, you're the head and not the tail.
And you know what I had to do? I had to choose. Am I going to accept my past as the definition of my life or am I going to accept God's word as the definition of my life? And from that moment forward, I said, you know what? I'm going to accept what God says about me. I'm going to believe what God says about me, and I'm going to stop identifying with what I used to be and start identifying with what God says I am. And that's when everything changed in my life. My feelings didn't weren't telling me I'm a winner, but God's word was telling me I was a winner. And so I accepted God's word. And you know what that's called.
I know that you might not think of it this way, but that's called humility. Humility is not to beat myself up and say, oh, I'm such a loser, I'm so low. Humility is to accept God's word as the final say in my life. In James, chapter one, verse twenty one, look at what it says in James, chapter one, verse twenty one. It says, In humility, in humility, we are to receive the word implanted. We're to receive with meekness or with humility, the implanted word which is able to save our souls. He's saying, how do we receive, how are we to receive God's word? We're to receive God's word with meekness or with humility. So to accept God's word for what it says, that's humility.
To believe my own opinion and to stay stuck. There is pride. To believe about myself, what God says about me, that's humility, and you know what that means? That I'm going to believe what God says about you, too. I'm going to believe what God says about you. Somebody else might come along and say, you know what I heard about Pedro? You know what I heard about Tony? You know what I heard about Gina? You know what I heard about Joy? That other people might say that about you, but I'm not going to accept what other people say about you. That's pride. I'm going to accept what God says about you. That's humility. And you'll be smart to only accept what God says about you. And only accept what God says about me.
And I don't want my opinion of myself on what I feel about myself, because sometimes I feel depressed, sometimes I feel discouraged, sometimes I feel lonely, sometimes I feel afraid. Sometimes I feel angry. Sometimes I feel worried. Is anybody with me on that? But I can't base my choices on what I feel about myself. I have to base my choices on what God says about me in the Bible. And I accept I reject any opinion about myself that doesn't line up with God's word. And I accept only what God says about me. And you know what happens when you accept what God says. Remember, Simeon, the name Symeon means to hear it and to accept it. Look at Mark, chapter four, verse 20, mark chapter four, verse 20. To hear and to accept. To hear and to accept. But these are those who are sown. The seed is sown on good ground.
What are those who see the sun on the ground, those who hear the word and accept it, and then guess what happens next? And they bear fruit 30 fold, 60 fold and one hundred fold, do you see this? He said, humility is to hear God's word and to accept it. And if you hear God's word and accept it, you will bear fruit 30 fold, 60 fold in one hundred fold. You know why a lot of people aren't bearing much fruit in their life is because there's a lack of humility in their hearts. And when there's a lack of humility, then good seeds cannot get planted in a hard heart. Good seeds can only get planted in a soft heart. I accept what man does to me. But I expect God to outdo what man did I accept?
See, I can accept what people do to me. They walk on me sometimes they talk about me sometimes again, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, so please don't feel sorry for me either, because you're the same way people talk about you, people walk on you. But if you fight back all the time, you no longer become the patch of earth. That becomes the path that people can walk on. When you fight people all the time and you're stubborn and argumentative and you always want to fight for your rights, then you end up being a person of pride. But a person of humility is like, you know what? I accept what you did to me, but I expect God to undo what you did to me. Whatever you do, God can undo.
So this is what Genesis 50, verse 20 means when when Joseph says that to his brothers, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. In other words, what you did to me, God undid God. Did God fixed what you broke. You broke me, but God fixed me. You threw me down in a pit, but God raised me up to a palace. In other words, I can accept what you did to me without retaliating. See, I don't have to get back at you for what you did to me because God's going to take care of me. God's going to avenge me.
That's humility no matter what you do to me. God's going to outdo what you did, no matter what somebody did to you. God's going to outdo what they did. That's humility. That's trust. Expecting God to outdo whatever somebody did, that humility and God gives grace to the humble, God gives grace to the simians that hear God's word, and they accept it, they hear God's word and they accept it. They hear we have to listen. We have to listen to God. We've been listening to so many other people's opinions. We listen to the news too much. We listen to the world. We listen to other people. Let's listen to God.