Joshua 3:5 | Episode #1224

June 25, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Joshua 3:5

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for over 25 years. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse-by-verse and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Hope Alive, where we apply God's Word to our daily life. My name is Chad Harrison. I'm first a husband, a father and a grandfather. I'm also the teaching pastor at Lake Community Church in Dadeville, Alabama on beautiful Lake Martin. I've been serving as a pastor for over 30 years. I also serve as the Tallapoosa County District Judge. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse by verse through the Bible and to find his purpose and will for your daily life. If you would like sponsor this podcast, go to the Show Notes where there's a link where you can make a donation. I pray in the name of Jesus that God would open his word to you, allow you to see him and to know him, so that you would know his will and his way for your life, that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today. Word of God, please speak to the hearers of your voice today in the name of Jesus. Amen. We are in Joshua, chapter three and deal with verse five. And you go, you're moving slow, Pastor. I know these things that are being said right here are. You know, they're just so much of a direct correlation between this Old Testament story and the New Testament plan of God for our lives that I don't want you to miss any of it. And so it's really, really intricate and perfect. The way the story's told, the things that God makes sure that he puts in the story as the Holy Spirit's inspiring this writing as you're going through this, it's just powerful. The things that God says now. The thing that in many, many ways we, we miss when we're reading this because we, we struggle with it is difficult is he is going to say what he's going to say to, to the, to the children of Israel. He's going to use a really. A New Testament word. A. And I'm. I'm going to use the Old Testament word. And then in the New King James, it's actually translated the New Testament word. And it's the same idea. However, it would be obviously done. How it operates would be different because consecration in the Old Testament and sanctification in the New Testament. Consecration in the Old Testament would involve God from the outside, preparing them physically on the outside to do one of his works or to do his will. Because obviously the Holy Spirit is not exclusively operating on the inside of a believer in the Old Testament as He is in the New Testament. He literally lives inside of us. Sanctification in the New Testament is God coming in us and sanctifying us, which we call sanctification, or you can use the word, these words are somewhat interchangeable. And when I say somewhat, 90, 95% interchangeable. Sanctification and salvation, one of them speaks to sin more than the other. Salvation means to be saved from death and sin in this world. So you have the word sozo, the idea of being delivered from the death and sin of this world. Sanctification is the cleansing of that death and sin out of my life. So they're the same process. They speak to the same work of God in our lives. But, but they are different in how they point to what is going on. And there's more going on than just one thing when God is doing his work of sanctification or salvation. And so salvation is a work of God, and it is a continual work of God. It's a work that begins even before you even feel the urging of the Holy Spirit. God is sanctifying you and he has to be, because he has to be in some ways renewing your mind so that your mind can actually hear him before you are born again. You cannot hear the Holy Spirit. You do not inside of you even have the mechanism by which to hear the Holy Spirit. Your new human spirit is what hears the Holy Spirit and allows your soul to interact with the Holy Spirit. If you don't have that new Spirit in you, if you don't have the eternal life in you, the spiritual life in you. And remember, the Spirit is the power, the presence, the eternality of God. If I don't have that inside of me, if I don't have something that, that correlates to that inside of me, well, you know, it's like having two operating systems and a computer that, that come from two totally different backgrounds. They're not going to be able to interact with each other because they don't speak the same language. Well, the same same is true with us as far as our relationship with, with God. If we do not have the equipment to hear God, we're not going to be able to hear God. Our soul is not going to be able to hear the voice of God speaking to us. And so God bringing us to a place, our mind and our hearts to a place to where we can hear him is a work of, even though it is the justification of our lives, our souls, our eternity, even though it's justifying us there, it is also beginning the work of salvation or beginning the work of sanctification. Salvation meaning removing the sin from the world, removing Us, saving us from the sin of the world. Sanctification means purifying us and making us prepared to, to, to have the Holy Spirit in His fullness in our lives. And those are two different things. Those are really two, two totally, they're, they're totally different in their perspective, and yet they speak to the same process. And so when we're, when we're coming to this verse, Joshua says to the people, sanctify yourself for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you, meaning tomorrow God is going to reveal his power. So I have to be sanctified in order to have the Spirit filled life. Now, the best way for me to describe it to you is obviously we are vessels to hold the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit's living inside of us, then we're in the New Testament. He says, do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament? You've got the potter's house and the picture of the potter. You've got Jesus saying, I'm the vine, you're the branches. You've got the picture of Jesus turning the water into wine. We're the vessel that holds the presence of God. And so when they put the, in the Old Testament, in Joshua, when they put the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulder, they're carrying God upon them. Now, does God come upon us in the New Testament? Absolutely. He's in us. And then when we work through sanctification and we are filled with his spirit, then he pours out as a artesian well. He told the woman at the well, I'll give you living waters that will well up to eternal life. It's just going to pour out of you. And that's what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. All those thoughts come when you're thinking about how God is operating in your life, how God is working in your life. Those ideas are how God does it. It's how God gets the job done. It's how it happens. And so when those things are happening in your life, when God is doing those things, he's got to get the vessel fixed, which means save me from my sin, because my sin is causing my vessel, my life, my, my life, my body, the physical vessel and, and, and the soul is full of holes. I, I, I need, I need to be, I need the potter's hand to fix the broken vessel. I'm a broken vessel. When he comes to me, I'm unable to hold him at all. And so the potter comes in and begins to fix the vessel. So That I can be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's hard to be filled with the Holy Spirit if I can't hold anything. But as. As the potter is filling me with the Holy Spirit, he's doing two things. He's sanctifying me, meaning setting me apart and making me perfect to hold his presence and then ultimately to know his will. He's also saving me, saving me from the things in the world that are causing me to be broken. So I'm being sanctified, being made to hold God's presence, and I'm being saved, meaning I'm being pushed. God's excluding the things in this world that would cause me to. Well, to not have the ability to hold his presence or speak that. Keep destroying me, okay, Keep breaking me. And so this part of the process, remember the justification, God making it possible that we could actually have this. He does all the work, the glorification. One day when he makes us new glorified bodies, he does all the work, this process here, I actually get to join him, which means. And you go, why does the guy do that? He can do it, right? He can do it really well. Why don't he just do it himself? Because the way I glorify him is I show the universe that a broken vessel can be mended and sanctified and made to hold God and can be saved from the things that break it that cause it to be insecure, that cause it to be not. Well, just put holes in me, if you want to know the truth. I mean, if you think about a jar, if you think about a pitcher, if you think about a cup, if it's got a hole in it, which would be a mooring by the world, well, it doesn't hold the. The liquid. And remember, the Holy Spirit is. Is. Is the in. In. In the in. The Jesus is the physical. The Holy Spirit's the liquid and the Father's the. The gas, if you. If you want to. And I do, because I think God made those things to be pictures of him, Jesus, physical manifestation of God. The Holy Spirit is the oil, the wine, the water of God's presence. And so the oil being the power, the wine being the goodness, the water being the cleansing and refreshing of the Holy Spirit. We're made to hold the Holy Spirit. We're made to hold the Spirit of God and commune with our Spirit. And so if there's a hole in the bottom, well, we leak. We, We. It leaks out. And so in order to have the Spirit filled Christian life, you have to join God in The sanctification process. Now oftentimes we get that, we get that mixed up with justification. You know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta do right or you're going to hell. No, no. Yes, but no. And what I mean by that is I don't do anything to go to heaven, okay? And I'm already enough of evil and sin to go to hell. So it really doesn't have anything to do with what I do whether or not I go to heaven. Hell, it has totally everything to do what God does. Now if I'm going to have the Spirit filled Christian life, I'm going to have the second baptism or whatever phraseology you want to use. And we've been talking about that. I'm not worried about the phraseology. I'm not worried about the way you define it. I'm talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about seeing the manifest will of God in our lives. That process is different from the justification process which is pictured in crossing the Red Sea. It is pictured in the crossing of the Jordan River. And we see that with Jesus's baptism, right? Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River. And God says. The Bible says the Spirit of God, not the presence of the Father, but the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit descended upon him. Cause he was already full of the Holy Spirit. Cause he was conceived by the Holy Spirit came upon him. So it went from being in him to begin active in the world around him. Came upon him like a dove. And God said, this is my beloved Son. An obvious statement. He is the beloved Son of God in whom I am well pleased. Okay. In whom I am well pleased. Well, how do we please God? Well, by faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. With faith we begin to do the works of God. And Jesus was a human being who faith his Father. And what do you what I mean by that? Well, faith means faith, hope, trust, believe well Jesus. The general, just overarching definitional term, faith. He faith his Father. He trusted his Father. He hoped in his Father's plan, which is anxious, anxious expectation of that plan. He anxiously expected God planned to be true. And he believed on his Father. All right, so Jesus faith his Father completely. We don't do that. We have to learn to walk in faith. He did he faith his Father completely. And so that pleased his Father. And you can do the same thing. You can walk in faith and please your Father. In fact, that's the only way to please God is to Walk in faith, because without it, you can't okay with it. Then all the works of faith come after it. I have the faith, so it's possible to please my Father. Then as I walk in my faith, obviously all the things that come with that happen. And I'm being sanctified. I'm being sanctified. I'm being changed, okay? The insides being made new. The insides being made, being made able to hold the power of God. I'm being saved. I'm being saved from the things of the world that would cause me not to hold the power of God. And that is what's going in. That's what going into the promised land's about. That's what having the Spirit filled Christian life's about. That's what having the baptism of the Holy Spirit's about. Call it what you want to. The issue is, do I have the fullness of God's plan in my life such that I am a physical representation of him? I am a physical holder of his power. I'm a physical holder of his eternality. I'm a physical actor on the stage of history. I'm a physical actor propelling forward the kingdom of God. Am I those things? And was I made for those things? Yes, I was made to be mature and made to be perfect before Him. Okay, now, do we get to perfection? Yeah, we do. At the glorification stage, we do definitely get to perfection. Okay, but do we actually get it right now? No, because I'm glorifying God, proving that this sanctification process can work for something that's just so completely broken, which I am completely, utterly, impossibly broken. And yet because of the resurrection power of God, possibly made whole, and that glorifies him. That's. That's why we're here. I would really encourage you to ponder these things. I would really encourage you to think about these things and to allow them to. Well, you know, as the old Indian chief at the reservation where I did a revival at, as he said, ruminate in them means soak in it. Allow God's word to kind of soak on you. And I believe you'll come to a real realization of the great work that God's doing in your life and that you get to, as a gift from God, to join him in it in your very imperfect and broken way so that he can prove he can take the imperfect and broken and do mighty things. Because he does mighty things. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.