Very much land to be possessed

On the church's 24th anniversary, Pastor Devon Ortiz preached from the book of Joshua. In Joshua 13:1 God tells Joshua, "Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." To possess means to seize or inherit, to stake a claim on what God has given. Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh had received their land in chapters 15 to 17, but chapter 18 says seven tribes still had not received their inheritance. They camped with everyone else and shared the same tabernacle, and rather than rebuke them, Joshua asked a question in verse 3: "How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you?" Nearness to God's people is not the same as possessing God's promise, Pastor Ortiz said. A husband or wife having received something from God does not mean you have. And he put Joshua's question to the church: how long are you going to wait to get what God has promised you?

The land was already given

Turning to Joshua 1, he noted that Moses led a nation of slaves out of the greatest power of the world and through the wilderness, and that Israel won its battles not by its weapons but because it followed a mighty God. In verse 2 God speaks of "the land which I do give to them." The land already belonged to them. In the same way, God has promises for us that are already there, waiting to be claimed. Pastor Ortiz recalled someone who could not understand how God could save a person like them or keep them saved. He asked when Jesus died, and when He saved that person, and pointed out that all of their sins were still future when He did it. He knew exactly what He was saving them from. Hebrews 6:12 tells us not to be slothful but to follow those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. In Joshua 18:4, Joshua sent out three men from each tribe to walk the land and describe it, a small job, he said, and an important one.

Give me this mountain

In Joshua 14, Caleb is 85 years old and says, "As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me." Pastor Ortiz said Caleb was not talking about his back or his knees, and that older believers should own the fact that they are older. But he still had the same fire and the same purpose he had when he fought alongside Moses. Caleb looked up and said, "Now therefore give me this mountain." After seven more years of watching God move, the job was still not done. Pastor Ortiz said 24 years of Victory Baptist Church proves that God still shows up, but 24 years is not a finish line.

What mean these stones?

After Israel crossed the Jordan, Joshua set up twelve stones so that when children asked, "What mean ye by these stones?" their parents could tell them what God had done. Nobody asks who carried them, Pastor Ortiz said. The stones record what God did, not what we did. He hoped the church could be that kind of stone for its children, who should hear why it matters to be part of it. You are not here because your pastor told you to, he said, or because you have to. This is where God has met with us, where He continues to meet with us, and where He has changed our lives. A hundred years from now no one will care who pastored in 2026, but there had better be God on that church.

He told stories of what God has done. The church began in 2002 in an elementary school in Union City and has met in eight different places since. Soon after he took over as pastor, with $37 in the bank and rent and utilities due, a man he did not know came to the door and left an envelope holding $50 more than the church needed. No one knew what was needed, and God did. This past year the church had to leave a building it had thought would be its own, moved again after three weeks, and with only days to spare found a place in Newark. Then God put a Baptist pastor on the same platform as a Pentecostal pastor who has become a dear friend. Pastor Ortiz told the young people that one day it will be their responsibility to explain why the church holds to what it does, because these stones cost someone blood, sweat, tears, and prayer. Every story needs to end with what God did.

The job's not done

God did not congratulate Joshua in chapter 13. He gave him more work. Pastor Ortiz recalled Kobe Bryant, in the middle of a playoff run, being asked if he was happy and answering, "Job's not done." Senior saints may be stricken in years, he said, but the job is not done, and he pointed to a longtime member of the host church who still comes to clean the building with a Caleb spirit. Those 30 and under need to pick up the mantle now and start building memorials of their own. The stones were never a finish line. It is over when we can say with Paul, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

What keeps us out of the land

Being a bystander. Seven tribes, one tabernacle, zero acres. They heard the same messages and attended the same assembly and never made the sacrifice to take what was theirs. Spectating looks like attendance, he said. You can stand in a garage and it does not make you a car. How long will you sit near the promise, and when will you step into it? He asked each person to take one step this month, whether that meant trusting Christ as Savior, being baptized, joining the church, sitting in a class, or serving.

Being too busy. In Luke 14, those invited began to make excuses. One had bought ground, one had bought oxen, and one had married a wife. That is a career, a business, and a family, Pastor Ortiz said, and any of those that pulls you away from God needs new boundaries. Children who watch a calendar built around everything except Christ will discredit the things of God. As one preacher put it, if you are too busy for God, you are too busy. Haggai 1:5-6 says, "Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little." Many of us have done a great deal in life, he said, and done it for ourselves.

Are you living your purpose?

It does not matter how long you have been in church or what position you hold, he said. What matters is whether you are living your purpose, because there is still so much land to possess. He warned that no one is good enough for heaven on their own, since "all have sinned." If you had cancer, he said, you would want your doctor to tell you, and we are all born with the cancer of sin. That is not because God is mean or wants to see anyone go to hell. The goal is not to get people to darken the doors of a church, but to have them accept Jesus Christ as Savior, and he urged anyone unsure of where they would spend eternity to trust Christ that day. In an emotional closing prayer he said he wished he had been a better pastor, father, and husband, and he asked God to do a great work in spite of that. Hands went up across the room, and the altar was opened for those ready to draw a line in the sand and choose whom they would serve.