During the last chapel service for the spring semester at the University of Mobile on April 1, students heard from one of their own — Tim Adams, who serves as the vice president of student development and collegiate athletics.
In a message based on Joshua 24, Adams illustrated the importance of using the Old Testament to emphasize the gospel. He reminded students they were made to be in relationship with God and in need of a Savior.
Check out more stories on recent chapel speakers at the University of Mobile.
“It is incredible to me the ways that God displays Himself throughout the Old Testament, the way He loves His people, the ways He is committed to His people and His redemptive heart for His people,” Adams said. “We are familiar with a lot of the amazing stories of the Old Testament … [and] probably confused by a lot of the harder stories of the Old Testament.
Falling short
“People fall short, and people are evil. People misuse God’s provisions,” Adams said. “It’s kind of like, ‘What do we do with this?’ What I love about the Old Testament is that God is constantly showing Himself as a redeemer by raising up a leader and restoring His people and His commitment to the Israelite nation.
“In a lot of ways, I see our story within the Old Testament,” he noted. “There’s a lot of places that we can relate to what’s going on in our world today to things that happened back then.”
Adams reminded students that Joshua became the leader after Moses and brought the Israelites into the promised land. Recognizing that his reign was nearing an end, Joshua gathered all the people of Israel, charged them with some concerns and called them to bring those issues to the Lord.
‘Remember’
“Joshua challenges the Israelites and tells them if they’re going to be a people who remain faithful to God after his death, they have to remember the acts of salvation and what He’s already done for them,” Adams said. “The same is true for you and I today. We cannot remain faithful to the Lord for long if we forget what He’s done to save us from our sins. These final two chapters in Joshua are a commissioning of God’s people to remember what He’s done and to live accordingly.”
The Israelites’ problem of idolatry is our problem too, Adams said.
“Idolatry can take the form of a lot of things,”he said. “Certainly, it’s the worship of anything other than God, reverence or focus on some other person. Excessive devotion in our lives wreaks havoc for us, and it impacts our motives and priorities.”
Adams asked, “What are the chief desires of your eyes and your hearts today? … We live in a world where we either crave the things we don’t have, such as money, material things, possessions, power or status,” Adams said. “If we don’t have these things, we desire or crave them. We will do almost anything to get those things. On the other hand, if we do have those things, we can be really prideful about displaying it to everyone.”
“Tim Keller warned that idolatry is essentially turning a good thing into the ultimate thing. It can be anything that stands in the way of our worship of God. It can be a good thing that distracts us from the main thing. The simple truth is that we were made for relationships and made to worship God. Idolatry stands in the way of a meaningful relationship with Him.”
‘Fear the Lord and worship Him’
Adams noted an illustration from the New Testament and asked students if they have ever been so desperate to get close to Jesus as when Peter jumped out of the boat to swim to Jesus following the Resurrection in John 21.
“Joshua was begging the Israelites to remember to fear the Lord and worship Him in sincerity in truth,” Adams said. “Joshua was reminding them that the only thing that matters is to be as close as possible to the Lord as you can. Then, and only then, will we worship in sincerity and truth.”
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