Ex 33:14, And He said, "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest." 
As we began our deliberation of this passage, we looked at it in terms of the rest that is ours as we know that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on earth below. He is the One Who created all and by Whom all things operate according to His plan and purposes. Therefore, we can find our rest in Him as He shows us His heart in action all around us.
We also considered the fact that, as He rested on the seventh day of creation, He is our perfect example and model of resting after a long week of our creative working energy being expended. Since He commanded us to have a day of rest, and showed us the value of our day of rest in Him, so are we to do the same. We read, throughout scripture, that the day was to be used to acknowledge and to celebrate and to rejoice in His goodness and His grace and His mercy in the fact of His provision and His salvation as our life on this earth.
We now continue with the truth that we touched upon in the reality that we can have rest in the midst of every fiery trial and tribulation and storm because the Lord is the One Who is fighting our battles. He is the One Who calms all the storms and He is our peace, through and in every situation and earthly upheaval. Joshua, as recorded in Josh 23:1-13, if you would please turn to it, encouraged the people with this fact as he was coming to the end of his days as their leader. 
Josh 23:1-13, Now it came about after many days, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their enemies on every side, and Joshua was old, advanced in years, that Joshua called for all Israel, for their elders and their heads and their judges and their officers, and said to them, "I am old, advanced in years. And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you, for the Lord your God is He who has been fighting for you. See, I have apportioned to you these nations which remain as an inheritance for your tribes, with all the nations which I have cut off, from the Jordan even to the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun. And the Lord your God, He shall thrust them out from before you and drive them from before you; and you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you. Be very firm, then, to keep and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, so that you may not turn aside from it to the right hand or to the left, in order that you may not associate with these nations, these which remain among you, or mention the name of their gods, or make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them. But you are to cling to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day. For the Lord has driven out great and strong nations from before you; and as for you, no man has stood before you to this day. One of your men puts to flight a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you, just as He promised you. So take diligent heed to yourselves to love the Lord your God. For if you ever go back and cling to the rest of these nations, these which remain among you, and intermarry with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, know with certainty that the Lord your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you; but they shall be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which the Lord your God has given you. 
    	There is very much for us to reflect on in this passage, and we need to highlight some of the tremendous realities that should serve to give us rest and peace as we go forth on this earth. These are some great truths that need to become embedded into our beings with regard to how we look at this life that God has given us in Jesus Christ. 
	The first element that we need to take to heart is the proclamation declared in the fact that Joshua encouraged the people, and us in the wonderful certainty …you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you, for the Lord your God is He who has been fighting for you. 
The people had seen the results of the Lord fighting for them. They had been the recipients of the fruit of the Lord’s victorious conquests of the nations surrounding them. They were to remember this and remind themselves of this truth presented in the manifested goodness of the Lord on their behalf.
	As they were to acknowledge the vast and glorious victories of God fighting for them, so are we to stop and deliberate on all that God has done in His victories, day by day, in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones. We have all come through many struggles and trials in the course of our walk on this earth. We have each faced the terror of the night and the storms of adversity and the crushing blows of this hostile environment. The Lord has kept us and brought us forward in His victorious and glorious power and healing strength and comforting grace and mercy. We need to remind ourselves of His majestic deliverance and triumphant might over and over and over again. This is the means of our seeking to not give up at any time, but to always know that He is fighting the battles. Ours is to faithfully honor Him in the midst of the fray of the fiery and battering struggles, knowing that He will always and forever be triumphant. He is our peace and He is our rest! It is because we know that He is always victorious that we can find our respite in His abiding presence. As He told Moses in our morning’s scripture, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest." 
	This brings us to the second reality of Joshua’s declaration that we need to take to heart. But you are to cling to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day. Because God is the One Who is fighting the battles for us, because we are only victorious in Him, because He is the source of our rest and He is our peace in the midst of the fiercest assaults, we need to cling to Him. We need to know Him as the focal point of our lives, moment-by-moment. It is not enough to just call ourselves Christians and to espouse a set of doctrines as the goal for living our lives. We need to know Jesus Christ in the depth of a living and personal relationship that means life itself. 
	This is what the Apostle Paul emphasizes, in Phil 3:7-11, if you would now open in your Bibles to it. We are to seek to know Jesus Christ in the very depth of His power and fellowship, with no regard to what it will cost us or the loss of anything of this realm. To know Jesus is everything. 
Phil 3:7-11, But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. 
	When we truly look at the struggles and the battles that surround and engage us in this realm, a careful and deliberate inspection of the core focus of those strains and stressful circumstances and dilemmas will reveal that the struggle is often centered in a fight to keep something that we value of this earth. A true evaluation will reveal that self, and selfish desires, and jealousy, and a comparison to others and what they have, will more often than not, be shown at the basic depth of what needs to be dealt with in our hearts and our minds and our attitudes. Thank the Lord that He wants to relieve us of those elements which bring division and separation and disharmony. He is working to give us the peace and the rest which finds complete satisfaction in Him, no matter what it costs us in terms of this world.
	The Apostle John, in 1 John 2:3-6, as well, reiterates the need for us to grow into the greater reality of our life in Jesus Christ, clinging to Him as the course of our obedient walk on this earth. 1 John 2:3-6. And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. 
	It is in the course of our desire to know Jesus Christ that we will find the focus of our struggles, more and more, defined by our obedience to the manner in which He teaches us, through the working of the Holy Spirit, fully in line with His Word, to live our lives as will please God. We will see the endeavors of this age for what they truly are, the smokescreens and the devious plotting to try to remove our eyes from the very source of our victory and our peace and our rest in Christ, Alone. 
Our freedom and our peace are found in the every time that we obey the Holy Spirit’s prompting to choose to please God rather than to please ourselves. In that reverent surrender, we will not only find our peace, but our gratitude to God, our thanksgiving for the life of Our Lord and Savior, Our fellowship one with another, all of it will come together in the glorious and abiding manifestation of Gal 2:20. Gal 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. 
This, then finds its manifestation in the last segment of Joshua’s encouragement to the people of God. One of your men puts to flight a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you, just as He promised you. The power of the life that we live is by the power of God, Himself. He is the One Who puts to flight all the adversaries arrayed against us. He is the One Who has promised to do so and faithfully honors that promise in the course of our lives on this earth and for all the eternal ages to come. The promises of God are sure and just and righteous altogether. He can be completely and utterly trusted to do all that He tells He will do in His Word. 
King Solomon made this known in 1 Kings 8:56-58, in the prayer that he offered at the dedication of the temple built for the Lord. He recounted for all the people, that the Lord had been faithful and will always be faithful to His Word in every aspect and detail. 1 Kings 8:56-58, "Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised; not one word has failed of all His good promise, which He promised through Moses His servant. May the Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us or forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances, which He commanded our fathers. 
    	As Solomon detailed, not only had the Lord given His people rest, but that rest was found in the reality that God was faithful to complete all that He promised. As the Lord promised to Moses in our morning’s passage …”My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest." So had God fulfilled that promise and continued it for His people. Therefore the people were to rejoice in the truthfulness and the goodness of the Lord God Almighty and walk in accordance with all His ways and commandments. 
	We finish, this morning, with the encouragement of the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:2-8, as he details the effects of the promises of God for the Christian in Jesus Christ. Pease read this passage with me, 2 Peter 1:2-8. At the center of those promises is the knowledge that we have peace with God in His Beloved Son. 
2 Peter 1:2-8, Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
	Everything that we need in this life has been promised to us in Jesus Christ. In accordance with that promise, we know that we have escaped the judgment that will definitely be meted out to those who are at enmity with God, corrupted by the lusts and desires of this age. As God has given us all in His Son, we are to live accordingly in this world, characterized by the life of Jesus Christ, as partially detailed in this passage. The greater our knowledge of Christ, the more our lives will be reflective of Him to the glory and the honor and the majesty of God. Our life will be the life that He lives forth unto others and unto Our Heavenly Father. That is His promise to us and we can fully rest in it. So be it. 
And He said, "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest." Amen. 

This morning’s benediction is Deut 32:2-4. "Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As the droplets on the fresh grass And as the showers on the herb. "For I proclaim the name of the Lord; Ascribe greatness to our God! "The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He. Amen.