Joshua 2
Joshua’s Commission – 1:1-9
Turn again to the book of Joshua; we’ll begin our study on the book
itself. Last week we dealt with the
background of the man and saw a little bit of what Joshua is like. The book of Joshua is pretty easy to outline;
it falls into five main sections. These
five sections most people agree on; this is unlike some of the sections in
Deuteronomy where it’s kind of exegete’s choice. In Joshua there is a well-defined structure
to the book.
The book naturally falls in five parts.
The first part is a very short portion, the first nine verses, dealing
with the commission of Joshua. The
second section goes from
In 13:1 through
In 1:1 we start out with “Now after the death of Moses, the servant of
the LORD, it came to pass that the LORD spoke unto Joshua, the son of Nun,
Moses’ minister, saying,” the thing to remember about this book is that it is
tied in a continuous chain. The word
“now” is the Hebrew “and,” and it’s very interesting to begin a book with
“and.” Usually you wouldn’t expect an
author to begin a big long story with the word “and.” And yet if you’ll look carefully at your
Bible you will find there is one continuous narrative from Deuteronomy to
Joshua, to Judges, to 1 & 2 Samuel to 1 & 2 Kings. You have, actually in the Hebrew, three
books, in the English five books that are all linked together. One stops, the other picks it right up, there’s
no break in the Hebrew from one book to the next.
This means that this is a continual recording of the history of the
nation by those mysterious living prophets who are responsible for the
enscripturation of revelation.
Throughout the
This is why the Old Testament is so fascinating and why in a way the Old
Testament probably is so necessary for our day, because we as Christians have
gotten weak and flabby in several areas.
And these areas of spiritual flab are the cause of a lot of misery and
controversy today. And that is that in
certain portions of our theology we have neglected that what is spoken of in
the Word of God is the absolute truth, and this truth was open to
investigation, it was open to observation.
Nobody took this (quote) “by faith.”
They investigated carefully, came to the conclusion it was true, and
after they came to the conclusion, on their own, not because their pastor told
them, not because a priest told them, not because a prophet told them, after
they became convinced it was the truth then they trusted it. So the Old Testament is crucial in this
regard.
Now in chapter 1, verses 1-9, it turns out that we have in this short
introductory section of the book all three scenes of the entire book stated and
repeated. Last time I mentioned there
are three common themes that run from one end of this book to the other, over
and over and over again. The one theme
was the continuity in God’s program.
Over and over again you get this.
There is a continuity between what Moses did, Abraham did, and what Joshua
is doing. We’ll see how this applies to
us as Christians, there’s a continuity between the Gospels, the other side of
the resurrection and this side of the resurrection; there are certain
principles that are continuous.
The second great principle that is found in this section and also found
throughout the entire book is the necessity for holy war; the necessity for
struggle and conflict. And this is
something that oftentimes in our circles is reduced to a mere struggle over
certain things of the flesh. Now there
is a struggle in the Christian life with sins of the flesh, but that is about
one-third or less of the war. And so
Christians fail to realize, oftentimes, that they are actually in three
different battles that are going on at once and they are only fighting one of
them.
The third principle that is contained in this section and also runs
through the whole book is the canon of Scripture is the supreme authority. In other words, from now on, for the first
time in the Bible, we’ve gotten to a point where the Bible is testifying to
itself. Up to this point, up until you
get to the book of Joshua, you have the Bible being developed. Now, for the first time you have a man who is
going to receive revelation to him personally, but his supreme authority is the
canon, the Scripture that he holds and that he reads and that he thinks
about. So this is what makes it normal
for us, it normalizes it for our situation so we can see how we are supposed to
operate.
Now I’d like to divide this up by these three topics, and the first
topic, the continuity, is found in Joshua 1:1-4. So from verses 1-4 we are going to deal with
one major point that God is trying to get across to Joshua and that is that His
program never changes; it is always continuous and always connected. Notice, for example in verse 2, “Moses My
servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this
people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.” Now it’s interesting, when you read this in
the original languages there’s a strong contrast in the middle of this
verse. This is a contrast that you find
sometimes in the Psalms. When you read
the Psalms in the original the Psalms sometimes are broken linguistically into
a first part and a second part. The
first part of the Psalm in Hebrew oftentimes deals with the analysis of a man’s
problem and it’s very depressing. He
says this is happening to me, this is happening to me, this is happening to me,
and then suddenly in the middle of the Psalm there’s a shift, and the rest of
the Psalm deals, not with his problem any more, but with rejoicing because God
has solved His problem. Now you can’t
find the shift because in the Hebrew there is no comma, there is no explanation
point, there’s no semicolon, how do you find the break?
The break is usually signaled by a word which means “and now,” and that
break is signaled right here in verse 2.
The word “now” that you see translated as such in your King James Bibles
and I presume in the other modern versions, “Moses My servant is dead,” that is
the end of one era, “now” marks a completely new era, “now therefore arise,”
you almost get the impression when you read it that Moses had to drop dead in
order to get them across Jordan, and that’s exactly right. Moses was under divine discipline and God was
gracious to Moses, He did not pull the nation out from under him. God said Moses, you’re never going to go into
that land and as long as Moses was out of the land God would keep the nation
out of the land, out of respect to Moses.
So God left the nation out of the land and when Moses had his funeral in
the previous chapter of Deuteronomy, Deut. 34 that was the signal. Now a new era begins and they will move over
to
But it’s not just a new era here, there’s a theological principle that
comes out. You remember when we studied
Deuteronomy we spoke of something called suzerainty vassal treaty. This was a treaty that was made in the
ancient world between a great power.
You’d have a great power and it would make mutual defense treaties with
smaller nations, and so you’d have, say the King of Tyre, Sidon, and maybe Moab
or something, this is an illustration, and you’d have all of three of these
little nations making treaties with, say the King of the Hittites or
something. And this treaty would be
solidified in a form. This is important
because it turns out when you study the Bible, lo and behold, the entire book
of Deuteronomy is written in a legal format of the second millennium, which
incidentally shows you the liberals were wrong and the fundamentalists were
right in adhering to an early date for the writing of these books.
But this legal format, this legal form, the suzerainty vassal treaty,
tells us something. It had various things
we now know from extra-biblical evidence that happened. When, for example, you’d have king number one
on the throne of, say the Hittite Empire, he would make a treaty with all these
other three kings. As he got down to the
days of his death, and he’d have the crown prince on the throne, before he died
he would make a second form of the treaty, a renewal treaty, which would act,
we would say as kind of a will. And he
would will the empire to the crown prince, and the new will though wouldn’t
take effect until the old man died, then the crown prince would take over. But the will would not go into effect until
death. Death was that which moves from
the first treaty to the renewal treaty.
And so we have it here. For
example, Esar-haddon, Nimrod treaty, this is one particular treaty, and as I
read this line on the preface of the treaty you can see what I’m talking about,
Esar-haddon was the king of Assyria, Esar-haddon had made a treaty with various
nations. And when he was about to die he
had the crown prince, called Ashurbanipal, to replace him. “Now when Esar-haddon, king of
Now we have this outlined in the Bible between Moses and Joshua. These two men stand as a team. Both of them together represent the teamwork
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You first have
Moses expressed in the book of Deuteronomy making the treaty. Then you have Joshua expressed in the book of
Joshua. Connecting these two men is the
death of Moses. Moses died. Moses has made the new treaty; the book of
Deuteronomy is the new treaty. Before
Moses died he exegeted and went carefully through the whole law and he set up
procedures which we will see Joshua carried out to the letter in the eighth
chapter of this book. When Moses
established the new treaty, then, it meant that the new treaty was existent but
not in effect. And it could not come
into effect until its maker died. When
Moses died, bang, new treaty went into effect and Joshua now carries it
out.
The book of Hebrews in the New Testament carries this analog out and you
have the following analog worked out for the New Testament. To the left you have Jesus; to the right you
have Jesus. So you have Jesus taking two
parts; Moses and Joshua both played the role of Jesus. Before Jesus died what did He do? Before He died He transformed the Passover
into what we call communion. And he said
this is the cup, drink this as oft as you do it in remembrance of Me. And what He was saying was that that Passover
and the evening before He was killed, Jesus Christ set up the mechanics of the
New Covenant, just as Moses before he died set up the mechanics for the new
treaty. Jesus Christ died on the cross
so here you have the death of Christ on the cross, and when he rises from the
dead, the new treaty comes into effect now through the resurrected Lord Jesus
Christ. Here Jesus Christ is in His
resurrection body; here Jesus Christ is in natural body. So as you move from the natural body of the
Lord Jesus Christ over to the resurrected body, Christ changes state as it were
and you move from the old covenant to the New Covenant; it’s the exact same
kind of proceeding as we are now seeing here.
That’s why in verse 2, the big point, Moses is dead, so now Joshua, your
turn on stage. And this is as though we
were talking to Jesus Christ, all right Lord, You have died in your natural
body, You are now raised from the dead, now carry on with this new treaty or
the New Covenant. And of course this New
Covenant is very analogous to what is going to happen throughout this book, for
from the time that Jesus Christ rose, He rose, He ascended to be at the
Father’s right hand, at such time the Lord Jesus Christ then sent the Holy
Spirit. He did not send the Holy Spirit
because a few people waited in an upper room.
That’s a misconception and a misinterpretation of certain passages in
Luke. Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit
on schedule as prophesied in the Old Testament.
When He got to the throne room the sending of the Spirit was the
initiation of the Church. Now we have
Jesus Christ in a war; Jesus Christ this moment, today, 1970, is doing in the
spiritual realm what you are going to see Joshua doing in the natural realm.
What the Lord Jesus Christ is doing, He is involved in a holy war that
began at Pentecost, phase one ends with the rapture, that’s the end of the
Church Age. That’s when the Church is
removed instantaneously and miraculously.
So that’s stage one of what I sometimes call operation footstool which
means Christ is bringing all the enemies to bow before the Father. And then you have the Tribulation for seven
years, plus a little time gap there, so you have seven years of the Tribulation
and that’s the second phase of Christ’s holy war. It gets pretty brutal because when you read
in the book of Revelation what it’s going to be like you will change your
conception of the meek and mild and lowly Jesus. He is not that in the book of Revelation, He
is not that which appears in Sunday School material, holding some lamb in His
arm. In the book of Revelation you will
see Him as, actually in Revelation 19 it has Him mounted on a horse with a
white garment and there’s blood stained all over His garment, and that’s how
Jesus Christ appears, and the blood is people that He has slaughtered. Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ has slaughtered
individuals as he will slaughter individuals in this book for Jesus Christ is
going to appear to Joshua. Jesus Christ
is going to appear as the general of the Lord’s host and He is the man who is
actually in command of this army though Joshua is the human commander. That person is the preincarnate Jesus Christ
and He it is who leads in slaughter.
Now the reason why this may touch some of you in sort of a rough way is
because you do not have a balanced picture of God’s holiness. Many of you have been brought up to believe
in a God of love; God loves this, and God loves that, and He’s kind of an old man
with long hair on a rocking chair saying tah tah, everything’s going to be all
right. That is a wrong type of theology
and it leads to theological disaster.
The Lord is a holy righteous person who can, as in Hebrews 12, whip the
believer into shape. The Lord has
standards, an inviolable holiness and this we will see as we go through this
book. Then we have the Second Advent,
the third time when He judges, outlined in Matthew 24-25 and then you have part
four of this holy war, the thousand year millennium and the termination of the
judgment of Satan.
So beginning from the time that the Lord ascended to be at the Father’s
right hand you have Him engaged in holy war.
This means that we are in holy war and it means then that we ought to
pay careful attention to Joshua’s tactics for we too have to use these tactics,
not in a material way but spiritually we are in a holy war. And I want to emphasize this because so often
in Christian devotional literature you get the impression that once you become
a Christian it’s ho-hum from now on until you get to heaven. And that ignores a whole vast area of
doctrine concerning the holy war, the struggle the Christian faces. So these two analogies, Moses and Joshua and
Jesus before resurrection and after resurrection.
In verse 2 it says, “go over this Jordan, you and all this people,”
indicating that it’s imminent, in three days they are going to cross the river
that actually physically is in front of them and for six hundred years this
nation has lived through blood sweat and toil.
This nation has seen genocide attempted on [can’t understand words]
Pharaoh’s problem with the Jews, he wanted to eliminate all the Jewish young
men that were born, etc. This nation has
lived through slavery; this nation has lived through 410 years of Egyptian
darkness; they’ve made the bricks without straw and so on, all of this, hanging
on desperately for one promise for six hundred years that I, God says, “I will
lead you into a land flowing with milk and honey, bounded by certain things,
certain boundaries. And they have looked
forward over and over again… if you want to get a perspective on this subtract
six hundred years from 1970, 1370. In
other words, imagine if you were part of a nation that exited since the end of
the middle ages and from 1370 to 1970, six centuries you had lived, been chased
all over the place, you had been in prison, you’d been trapped and six
centuries ago God promises your forefathers that He would lead you to a
land. Put yourself in their shoes, that
should give you some feeling, you would think that by now they wouldn’t believe
it any more. After six centuries of no
fulfillment, no fulfillment, no fulfillment, no fulfillment, generation after
generation after generation, still no fulfillment, over and over and over
again, and now this Jordan, “now, therefore arise,” and so this verse 2 is a
tremendously emotional verse here. For
six hundred years they waited for this moment and now they’re going
across. And the word “I do give” in the
Hebrew it’s a use of the participle that means I am already in the process of
giving; it’s an imminent thing.
Verse 3, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that
have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. [4] From the wilderness and this
Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of
the Hittites, and unto the Great Sea, toward the going down of the sun, shall
be your boundary.” Back in verse three
you’ll notice the verb is in the past tense, “I have given” it. You say wait a minute, I thought you just got
through saying in verse 2 they hadn’t given it, He had promised it but He
hadn’t given it. Well, verse 3 is a
peculiar use that you’ll find oftentimes in the Hebrew of the Hebrew perfect.
The Hebrew language has two tense forms, basically, a perfect and an
imperfect. The perfect tense form has
the action totally in front of the viewer.
If you use a Hebrew perfect it means you see the action as started and
complete. You see it that way, it
doesn’t mean it has to be but as far as you see it, you see it as
complete. The imperfect tense means its
completion is out of range of your sight, you don’t see all [can’t understand
word] you just see it going on but you don’t see it finalized. Now this is finalized here, which means that
this refers to the surety of God’s promises; it means that God has gone on
record that He is going to give it and if God has gone on record verbally that
He is going to give it it is as good as though He has already given it. And this is a form you will find often times
in the great promises of Scripture. When
God promises you something He places His whole essence behind the promise and
He signs off with a perfect tense, which means if I told you I’m going to do
something you can accept it as already having been done; it’s as good as having
been done.
So in verse 4 we have a specific content to this promise. Notice the boundaries here. You have the Eastern Mediterranean, the Sea
of Galilee, the Dead Sea, the Nile is over further to the west and over here
you have the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.
Now look at the reference here; verse 4, “From the wilderness,” that’s
down here, “north to Lebanon,” that’s way up here, from the wilderness to
Lebanon, from the great river, the river Euphrates, all the way over here. Some of you think Israel is occupying the
land today; they’re not occupying the land, they’re not occupying one tenth of
the land. Here’s the Euphrates River,
way over here; don’t tell any people that live in Iraq and Iran about it but
that’s where the boundary is according to God’s promise. And this boundary extends from here, all the
way through “land of the Hittites, as far as the Great Sea” and that’s the
Mediterranean; running from the Tigris-Euphrates Valley all the way to the
coast; running north from Lebanon, south to the wilderness, a tremendous area
of real estate here. And as we’re going
to see this was never really fully captured except briefly during the time of
David. It will be in prophecy but not in
actuality yet.
Look carefully at those boundaries and hold the place, and turn back to
Gen. 15. This was six hundred years
before, Gen. 15:18; this is 2000 BC, six centuries before. Again to put it in your perspective it would
be like God making a promise to the Anglo-Saxon tribes that were occupying Germany,
the derivatives of them and those in England, etc. that lived toward the end of
the Middle Ages. Here that’s six hundred
years ago in verse 18, “In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram,
saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the River of Egypt unto the
great river, the river Euphrates,” and then he enumerates different
tribes. So you can see that the promise
did not change form for six hundred years.
Now this should have taught the people something; it should have taught
the people that when God literally promises something it’s going to literally
come to pass, regardless of the chaos of history. If you study history you are aware of the
great movements of power and politics, etc. and you are aware of great
migrations and the chaos of wars, etc.
And yet in spite of all of this God is able to literally fulfill His
promise. Application to you today, God
has promised the Church Age is going to come to a screeching halt and some time
unannounced. And it means therefore that
it could come to close tonight, tomorrow; the Church Age could terminate at any
given moment. God has told us this,
that it will literally come to pass.
Now this is an example of how prophecy is fulfilled. If you want an example of how prophecy is fulfilled,
this teaches you how you are to interpret prophecy. If prophecy always comes
literally true, what’s the way to interpret it?
Literally, and yet we have people that look at the Bible, they see all
of this and yet they say well, all this business about Jesus coming again is to
be taken allegorically, Jesus came kind of in the form of a spirit, that’s what
it meant. No, that isn’t what it
meant! This is what it meant, He is
going to come literally and physically, so prophecy is always to be interpreted
by controlling it with past prophecy.
Now on the way back to Joshua stop at Deut. 9:4-5 and you’ll see another
factor, that may surprise some of you, about the knowledge of the Old
Testament. They had a concept of
grace. Some of you may have been told or
you may have read or heard a lecture in which the remark was made that the God
of the Old Testament is a God of wrath; the God of the New Testament is a God
of love. Don’t buy it and here’s proof
that the God of the Old Testament was a God of love as well as of wrath, for in
Deut. 9:4-5 he anticipated a problem with the mental attitude of the believers
of his time. These believers would get
smart, they’d walk into the land and they’d experience victory, etc. and after
while they’d get a little too big for their britches and think that it was due
to their great works, and yet here in Deut. 9:4 God warns them. “Speak not thou in thine heart, after the
LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, [quote] For my
righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land; [end of quote]”
in other words, the believers would walk in there and they’d experience victory
and they’d say why isn’t this great, God just had to beat these people out to
make way for good old me; God’s obligated to give me something. God isn’t obligated to give you
anything. This is grace. And I’m showing this to you so you will
understand that grace is a cardinal doctrine from the Old Testament. Grace is not new with the New Testament;
grace is throughout the Old Testament.
So they had a concept of grace, this land was a gift of grace.
Now we come to Joshua 1:5. The
first four verses dealt with the continuity of the Abrahamic Covenant. In other words, God’s program of history is
going forward. This is kind of hard
sometimes, you wish it would hurry up and go forward, but you have to let God
run history the way He wants to run history.
He has a certain flexibility about running history. Arnold Fruchtenbaum was telling me that after
the Six Day War, it was very interesting, of course everyone likes to ask him
about have they got all the rocks to build the temple, and he was pointing out
that Israel needs rocks like Newcastle needs coal. Israel has plenty of rocks and they don’t
need any rock to build the temple, and the rocks aren’t being made in Indiana
and being shipped to the Middle East and all the other stories you’ve heard
about. First of all, it violates the
Jewish law; the rocks to build the temple have to come from Mount Zion. So the rocks that are involved in the temple
are already there; they got gobs of them, don’t need any rocks. So what is the prerequisite for the temple
then? There is a prerequisite for the
temple and its plans for the temple. And
guess what was found four days after the end of the Six Day War? In the Dead Sea Scrolls a new Dead Sea Scroll
was found and on the scroll was the plan of the second temple. It was the Essenes.
The Essenes are a people who had been driven out, they were the
separatists of their time, they had gotten out of Jerusalem when Herod the
Great came in, he was kind of a real sharp politician and Herod liked to make
friends with the Jews. He was the kind
of guy that realized that this was probable the most troublesome province in
the Roman Empire to control so he felt he could built good political relations
by rebuilding their temple for them, and he did a real good job, he brought
white marble in, etc. and built a fantastic edifice, except it violated the
Jewish law. And so the Essenes, who were the strict people of their day, said
we’re leaving, and they went out to dwell in the caves of the Dead Sea where
they had underground studies, etc. where they copied manuscripts, etc. and
preserved in these manuscripts were the plans of the temple before Herod got
started messing around with it. And so
that was the plan that was found.
Now, after Israel is through with her Six Day War she now has the land, and she
has the rocks and she has the plan. But
notice how it comes to pass; it comes to pass, if you look at you almost can’t
see the prophecy being fulfilled until you put all the pieces together. And standing in 1970 and looking back at 1967
we can see what has gone on in our own generation as far as the ongoing of the
plan of God and it’s amazing, God can work, it’s just like a master chess
player. In other words, no matter how
vicious or how intelligent His enemies are, He always has them make the move
that traps them. And so no matter what
happens in the plan nothing dings it, you just can’t throw sand in the [can’t
understand word], there’s no possible way of doing it. History goes flowing right on and God’s
program along with it and there’s just no stopping it whatever. A Nasser dies and something else happens,
etc. God’s program goes right on. It
just goes right on.
And if you were sitting there as an observer when these events happened
it looks perfectly natural. It looks
perfectly natural that someone happened to be stumbling through the caves and
happened to stumble on this one manuscript in that one cave, etc. So all these things work out and that’s what
is happening here. This is the same kind
of thing. Don’t think in terms of
fireworks all the time, or a miraculous way of God’s doing, it looks, when
you’re right there as an observer that nothing miraculous is happening but
after it’s happened you look back and say wait a minute, this whole thing fits
together here, what’s happened. And you
look back on it and sure enough, it has come to pass. But while you were in the
process it didn’t look like it was, it just looked like this natural
event. God’s prophesies are fulfilled
Now in verses 5-6 we deal with the concept of holy war. And we’ll get into this in more detail later,
but verses 5-6 in Joshua’s commission point out that Joshua himself, as well as
the nation, must be involved in a holy war.
Verse 5, “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the
days of thy life. As I was with Moses,
so I will be with thee; I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Now God is making a tremendous promise to
Joshua, but I want you to notice something that the word “there shall not any
man be able to stand” implies holy war.
This is the verb that means they can’t take up a military position
against you. So it’s obviously talking
about some sort of war and conflict. And
we have to recognize that if you’re going to go on with the Lord at all in your
life you are going to be involved in a spiritual conflict. It means that you are going to have to be in
the middle of the Lord’s battles. And it
means you are going to be engaged in times and places and you are going to be
in conflict with awesome powers at time; you can be in conflict directly with
demonic powers, you can be in conflict indirectly through their ideas; you can
be in conflict through various persons who are energized by satanic agencies
and so on. The believer is in a
continual conflict and it is a corollary to being saved. Peace, in other words, that we are given, is
always a peace and rest in the middle of war.
Turn to the New Testament, Hebrews 4.
This brings the balance out quite clearly in Hebrews 4 for it refers
back to Joshua and the concept of a rest.
It is true that when we receive Christ as Savior, it is true that He
promised us rest and peace. But don’t
misinterpret what kind of rest and what kind of peace that is. That is a peace of mental attitude on the
inside but it does not mean that you will not be engaged in war simultaneously
with the inner peace. And here in Heb.
4:7-8, when the author of Hebrews, a fantastic man, tremendous grasp of the Old
Testament, notice it starts out in verse 1, “Let us therefore, fear lest, a
promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come
short of it.”
And then in verse 7 he says, “Again, He limits a certain day, saying in
David, Today, after so long a time, as it is said, Today if ye will hear His
voice, harden not your hearts. [8] For if Jesus,” and that is the word “Joshua,”
there’s no difference between the name Jesus and Joshua, they’re
interchangeable, but in verse 8 it’s talking about the historic person of
Joshua that we are now studying about.
“If Joshua had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken
of another day.” That should give you
perspective here. Joshua was not able to
lead Israel into rest. Joshua did not
accomplish this goal; Joshua partially accomplished it but it never was accomplished
en toto. Never was all the land occupied. Never was it perfectly conquered and never
was it perfectly ruled. The rest had
never been obtained.
This is the same kind of thing that we face as Christians. I often use terminology, phase one, phase two
and phase three. This is the time you
receive Christ; this is the time of the Christian life, phase two, between the
time of your salvation and the time that you die, and phase three here. If you want the concept of rest, it involves
two concepts. One is a rest that begins
now and goes on and the other is one that begins at death and goes on. There are two kinds of rest and you have to
keep these clear. The first kind of rest
that goes is the rest that comes with a regenerate nature; it involves certain
areas of mental attitude, etc. This
other rest involves when I have the resurrection body and God’s plan of
salvation is complete. But right now we
don’t have total rest.
Now back to Joshua. In Joshua 1:6
he commands Joshua to “be strong and of good courage; for unto this people
shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I have swore unto their
fathers to give them.” And you notice
there again, referring to “their fathers,” the Abrahamic Covenant. I have sworn it, that was accomplished in
Gen. 22:16, so this refers to some historic act six centuries ago; again the
continuity here, you see the same principle operating. God hasn’t forgotten His promises. He may wait six hundred years but that
promise is going to come to pass. God
has promised that He is going to return again and so far we have logged almost
1900 years of waiting, but don’t you ever draw the false conclusion because we
have waited 1900 years means His promises aren’t going to come true. Oh yes they are and they are going to come
true at the most surprising moment, just as this promise came true 600 years
after it was given.
Now the other thing to notice in verse 6 is that Joshua had to be strong
and to be courageous. The word here
would be tenacious, that’s a far better word, it means you latch onto this
thing and you hold on for dear life. You
just get your claws stuck in this thing and keep them stuck there. Hold on to this thing and go with it. Now this means that there are going to be two
competing elements in the holy war. We
face these and they are sovereignty and free will. I want you to see how beautiful the Bible
balances it here. The Bible always keeps
things in balance. Men always keep them
in imbalance. But here you find God’s
sovereignty; God’s sovereignty says I promise you this land. But God does not command us, like sticks and
stones and cement blocks; He doesn’t use us as machines, He respects our
volition. And so therefore we have the
second part and that means that we have to interact with His plan to bring it to
pass.
I usually summarize the relationship between sovereignty and free will
by three statements. The first one is
that sovereignty tells me that God’s plan is 100% certain, that no matter what
happens it is 100% certain, nothing can break it, absolutely nothing. However the second proposition is that since
it is a plan to glorify Him it involves Him judging me for my responsible
choices, and so not only do I have 100% certainty but I have a plan that
involves human responsibility as part of that plan. So human responsibility is included in the
100%. You say how can I be responsible
and free to choose if it’s certain what I’m going to choose. That is not a conflict, that is not an
irrational illogical statement. It
becomes illogical when you invest certain meanings to the word “free,” but
freedom in the Bible means freedom within the sovereignty of God. He holds you responsible. And finally, therefore, you start from the
promise and you go to the fulfillment by a series of chains, links; think of a
chain full of links and every one of your choices are one of those links. So God is going to bring His plan to pass but
the means of it is your choice. Same
here.
Joshua was told, imperative, verse 6, “Be strong and of good courage,”
for you’re going to bring this people in.
So it meant that Joshua had to make decisions. The result of those decisions would be the
certain accomplishment of God’s plan; it would be the certain accomplishment of
the plan so these two factors play together.
Now we as Christians face a battle and we don’t want to go into it
tonight in the details of holy war but one of the passages in the New Testament
that show you what your holy war is, is in 2 Cor. 10:5 where it says, “Casting
down vain imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of
Christ.” That means that you have a
mandate from God to build a divine viewpoint framework in your soul. So you have God, you have Bible doctrine; you
have science, history, philosophy, history, art, music, literature, all these
areas. All these areas are to be
conquered for Christ, not eliminated, conquered! When we are new men in Christ we are still men
and part of man is engaging in these activities of science, history, philosophy,
art, music, literature. If you don’t
think they’re spiritual or something, you’d better go back and reread Gen. 1:28
and following because there’s your mandate for art, literature, science
history, etc. So you’ve got it all there, it’s just that in Genesis 1 most
people don’t see it. So we have our
commands to move into these spheres and do something.
We’ve had a number of young people in this congregation who have done
this. We have had students that are
willing to move into these areas and not feel like just because they haven’t
gone to Bible school or be a missionary or something they can’t be in fulltime
Christian service. Don’t buy that kind
of stuff. We’ve had enough of this
business of compartmentalizing Christianity to the Bible school movement and to
the missionary field. And we’ve paid an
awful price; we have shipped thousands of missionaries overseas, many of them
are untrained people. We could have taken about one tenth of those, trained
them well and sent them overseas, and send about nine out of ten and send them
back home and do a better job. Then with the money that you would have saved
from that you could have invested into areas of penetrating the culture in the
United States.
It is the culture that is poisoning us and yet Christians are doing
nothing about it whatever. We have no Christians actively engaged in guiding,
say in the area of art and music.
Someone comes in and says I’ve become a Christian, what do I do, drop my
music. Here’s a student that becomes a
Christian, they have an active interest in music; if they have a good solid
musical talent what do I do, send them out to sing some of weird music. This becomes a vicious cycle and with the
result that we have excluded ourselves and so Bible doctrine is behind a concrete
wall. And then we have a few Christians
out here, in science or something, and every once in a while they tell me why
I’m all wet in Genesis 1 or something; tell me that the Big Bang theory is
parallel to creation, the Bib Bang theory is nothing more than a depiction of
creation. It’s not a depiction of
creation, it’s pantheism; it has nothing to do with creation. So we have people who are scholars in the
field who are Christians and never once make the connection. And then we have the Christians behind the
cement wall doing nothing about it and do you know what’s happening? The spectrum of our society that the
fundamentalists can reach is rapidly drawing to a close. It doesn’t have to because Paul said in
Romans 1 “I’m not ashamed of the gospel,” it’s for the educated man and the
uneducated man. Yet what are we doing
about it? Nothing. So we’ve got to develop weapons in these areas
or we will be destroyed.
Verses 7-9, here we have the third element in the book of Joshua and
this is the developing canon of Scripture.
This is the authority and this
is utterly unique for the first time.
Now for the first time in our progress through the Old Testament we come
across a generation that already has a written Bible. This written Bible now becomes the supreme
authority. Now watch how it’s handled
here in verses 7 and following: “Only be thou strong,” and watch it, “very
courageous.” Do you see what the command
was back in verse 6, “be strong and of good courage,” now verse 7, “be thou
strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the
law, which Moses, my servant, commanded thee; turn not from it to the right
hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper wherever thou goest. [8] This
book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth….”
Now I want you to notice a little phrase in there, “according to all the Torah,” all the first five books. So
from Genesis through Deuteronomy, that’s the man’s Bible now, remember this is
all the Bible a man has; that’s the Bible that Joshua had. Now he is responsible for those five
books. God says I want you to do
everything that I have told you in those five books. Then he says, however, in order to do this
you have to be courageous. Why do you
have to be courageous? Because it takes
guts to follow the Word of God out to all areas.
Then in verse 8, “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy
mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night,” now the word “mouth” is
put in here because of the way that the Hebrews learned. And this will answer a question that some of
you had, turn back to Deut. 30:11-14 and you’ll see the Hebrew idiom. This business about mouth is important
because of a certain passage in the New Testament. Notice what it says, “For this commandment which
I command thee this day, it is not incomprehensible, nor is it far off. [12] It
is not in heaven, that thou should say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and
bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? [13] Nor is it beyond the
sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it
unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?”
Notice verse 14, “But the word is very near unto thee, in thy mouth, and
in thy heart, that thou mayest do it;” in thy mouth and in thy heart.
Now watch it, here’s your context for defining the idiom. The idiom “heart” and “mouth” in the Old
Testament means you’ve got it, it means that you know it, you’ve come in touch
with it, you’ve interacted with it and you know it, it’s become part of
you. The Hebrew test for knowledge was
can you verbalize it with understanding.
If you want a glimpse of the teaching method that was used, think back
to Luke 2 when the Lord Jesus Christ was twelve years old and He was in the
temple. What was Jesus Christ doing when
He was twelve years old in the temple?
Question and answer, question and answer, and that’s how they
taught. They kept asking questions and
questions and questions until the people got it. And it went back and forth, they just didn’t
give a lecture without questions; they questioned the people afterwards to make
sure they got it. In other words, that they just didn’t take notes and that’s
as far as it got.
Now come over to the New Testament and you’ll see how that’s used and
how very important this is in evangelism. Romans 10:8-9, this is the background
for that verse that is often used to justify everything from signing cards to
coming down an aisle to doing something else.
Verse 9 says, “If you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall
believe in thine heart that God has raised from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
[9] For with the heart man believeth onto righteousness and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation.” This
is parallelism; this isn’t talking about that you have to go out and give a
five minute testimony before you can be saved.
It’s not talking about baptism either; this confession here is not
baptism. This is the same Hebrew idiom
that you find in the Old Testament. What
it means summarized is be sure you know it, and when you know it then you can
believe it and be saved, but you cannot be saved until you know it. You say how do I connect the two? Very simple, what does verse 8 say? Verse 8 is a quotation from Deut. 30:11-14,
that’s the connection, and that shows you how this is supposed to be
interpreted. And it’s the opposite to
what most people like to interpret it as.
And that is that you have to do something to say; what’s this is talking
about is you have to know something to be saved. That’s the point here.
Back to Joshua 1:8, this is a command; now this command ought to be
taken quite seriously because remember Joshua did have access I his day to
direct revelation. Now it wasn’t a face
to face thing like Moses but Joshua could go, if he had to, to the high priest
and the high priest could give him information directly from God. You say with that kind of guidance why bother
to study the Bible? Isn’t it
interesting, Joshua had that kind of guidance and yet look at verse 8. He had to meditate day after day after day
after day after day in the Word. This
was to be his life; he was to live his life in the Word of God, never departing
out of it. Everything else hangs amiss;
you get out of the Word of God and don’t spend day after day in it, eventually
it’ll catch up with you. It may not for
a while but eventually it’s going to catch up to you. So this is the point of Joshua, and I stress
this because this is a man who just wasn’t left like we are, without any other
source of revelation. He had direct
revelation but in spite of the added revelation his initial commitment was to
his Bible, which again was the first five books.
Then it says the result, the promise was that thou shalt have and thou
shalt have good success, success in doing the Lord’s will. It’s a very simple thing, the idea is that
God is the general and these are the orders, carry them out. And if you carry
out God’s orders the way He wants you to carry them out there’s going to be no
problem.
But let’s conclude by putting Joshua in tension. Let’s try to go back to Deuteronomy. 1:28, I
want you to see that field of tension Joshua was in at this point because if I
just give this to you and isolate it from the concrete historical situation
Joshua is in, you’ll just take it as kind of a ho-hum thing, isn’t that
sweet. But let’s go back and see what
kind of a situation Joshua was in; it wasn’t a very nice situation. Joshua had two main problems; the first
problem was his own people. We went
through Numbers 13-14, operation crybaby, when for a whole night people by the
millions were yelling and screaming out there; imagine one million women
yelling at the top of their lungs out in the middle of the desert some where. This was going on and this went on all
night. And Joshua had to stand there and
watch this; not only the women but then the men started in, they fell apart. So here is Joshua and Caleb sitting under
some cactus some place wondering when this is going to get over. And when it gets over in the morning,
everybody is tired, and when it finally gets over what does Joshua do? He’s right there ready to roll; this is God’s
will, let’s roll, today we are going in.
And they don’t want to and they protest, etc.
But I want you to see something, that Joshua knew these people. You can imagine what’s happening here; here
he is standing on the Jordan. In back of
him are a million crybabies; he’s lived through forty years of this kind of
thing, watching these people bellyache and complain and gripe and all the rest
of it. And he’s got to lead these
people, people who have never been involved in a major conflict before; people
who are going to shortly be engaged in one of the greatest military operations
of all time and untested, completely green.
That’s what’s in back of him.
What’s in front of him is in Deut. 1:28, this is the report, the
Anakim.
Now this is a report from the spies and it’s somewhat exaggerated except
these Anakim were tremendous people, about 8 or 9 feet tall; this was a freak
race that occupied central Palestine early in the second millennium. And they will also appear in the Bible under
other names. This is just a freak but
they were giants. Incidentally out of
this race came Goliath and some of his brother.
It wasn’t just Goliath and David; Goliath had four or five brothers that
they had to eliminate also. And these
were all giants of men, and this isn’t just an exaggeration here. And when it’s talking about cities that are
great and walled up, it means they are fortified. Jericho had a double wall, so you could punch
through one wall and there’d still be another wall there, and soldiers would
get you in between the two walls.
They had a neat defense system; they had two walls, so the army breaks
through the first wall and they get hit when they’re in between the two; an
almost impenetrable defense and you had these all over Palestine. This is what he’s got to face. You’ve got to think of this when you think of
the commission that you just thought of, otherwise it’s too easy for you. You just think Joshua was given that, tra-la.
But think of the fact that here is a man who has millions of people behind him
and he has never tested them, he’s not sure what’s going to happen. He’s going to be leading them against this,
and that’s the historical situation that he faces. [Deut. 1:28, “…the people are greater and
taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven; and moreover, we
have seen the sons of the Anakim there.”]
Let’s conclude on one theme found in Exodus 32. It is true that Joshua faces a tremendous
tension and it’s true that now he’s going to have to rely totally on the Lord;
he’s going to have to take the Lord’s word for it in faith. But I want you to see that he had a basis in
truth first. Last time we said that one
of the great characteristics of this man was that for many years Joshua studied
and he studied and he studied and he thought and he thought and he studied. Exodus 32:15-18, when Moses turned and came
down from the mountain with the two tables of testimony in his hand, the tables
were written on both their sides. The
tables were the work of God, and when Joshua heard the noise of the people… in
other words, here’s the picture. Moses
is coming down the mountain and the other men that were commissioned to go up
the mountain are down here, Joshua is here; he picks up Joshua first when he
starts coming down the mountain, and that tells you something about
Joshua. It tells you that he was a man
who was always there seeking for information.
In Exodus 33:11 you find this same characteristic, “And the LORD spoke
unto Moses face to face, as a man speaks unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp; but his
servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the
tabernacle.” The tabernacle was a means
of getting Bible doctrine in his day. So
he stayed there and he studied and he studied and he studied.
Now I want to try to develop for you what must have gone through
Joshua’s mind because I want you to see the mental preparation this man went
through so he could take it when he faced this kind of a situation. This hero wasn’t born in a moment; it took
years of piecing things together until he was prepared to handle this kind of a
problem. And when he handled this kind
of a problem he was a genius. This man
was a fantastic genius in the Bible; he was one of the greatest military men of
all of Scripture. But it didn’t come
overnight and that’s the secret. Don’t
be discouraged if you can’t be a Joshua and you’ve been born again five
minutes. Joshua took years getting into
shape.
Joshua was a man like you and I; he had volition, he had conscience, he
had personal affections and he had mentality.
He had two religious systems to choose in his day. He had one which we’ll refer to Yahwehism,
the scholars say, which is simply the faith of the Old Testament. The other was Baalism or various religions
akin to that. Now let’s look at how he
must have tested this. Remember, Joshua
when he was up on the mountain and he heard God speaking to Moses could have
said it’s just a freak of nature. Don’t
think he couldn’t have. You can prove
the resurrection actually happened literally and I can sit here and operate on
a non-Christian basis and you haven’t moved me an inch because I can just say
it’s a freak occurrence of nature, that’s all.
You can prove the historicity of resurrection; it doesn’t do anything to
unbelief. You just wash it out. This is why you’ve to present the total
overall and fit these things into the overall picture, and Joshua had to do
that or else he could have heard this voice and say well, the wind is blowing
just right on the peak, or something like that, just a freak, just an accident.
Now don’t think that Joshua couldn’t have done that. He could very well have done that. Or worse than that, he could have interpreted
the voice up there on the mountain as a lesser god, one of the nature gods of
the ancient east; he could have done that but he didn’t. I want you to see what Joshua could have done
and see what he did, then you’ll understand his ground was in the truth and
that’s why he had faith.
He looked out and he used his volition and he realized that his volition
needed free choices; and his volition needed not just free choices but
effective choices, that when he decided to do something that was really
significant it would result in something.
Over in Baalism, the competing religion of the Old Testament, all they
had was chaos in history and they believed that out of chaos came order,
exactly opposite to creation. All of the
Old Testament religions that Jehovah fought against had one theme in common;
out of chaos comes order. This is why
they had their great orgies up on the hills; it wasn’t just because they were
involved in sex activities, that wasn’t the point. The point was that they tried to actually
recreate the chaos to bring about order. They felt that if they could tear
things apart out of that which was torn apart would come a new order; very, very
close to a lot of the radical movements today.
But this is the theme here, out of chaos would come order.
But over here in the Bible he found sovereignty and free will. He recognized that God has made a significant
history, and if this Abrahamic Covenant thing was really true, that said
something. It said that history has form
in it; it has a program; it’s not chaotic, it’s not the accident of some gods
playing games in heaven, it’s a whole designed plan. And Joshua said you know, if I believe this Baalism
out here, I couldn’t possibly live as a man consistently with that faith. And you see intimations of this when he goes
down and handles Aaron, the Aaron problem in Exodus 33. Then conscience, he recognizes as a man he
had to have a working moral absolute. He
had to have a standard of justice that would hold, and if he looked out on
Baalism and all these competing religions that Joshua could have followed, as a
young man Joshua was exposed to the religion of the Canaanites, he was exposed
to the religion of the Amalekites; he was exposed probably to the religions of
Egypt. Why did he choose the Bible? Why did he choose this as the truth instead
of those other things? Because here
again conscience, in these ancient religions morality was just a set of
pragmatic rules that even the gods themselves disobeyed when they felt it; sort
of games for the parties, that’s all.
And Joshua said no, as a man I can’t live that way; the Bible must be
true. This thing I hear about the Abrahamic Covenant and the God that’s
revealing Himself to Moses, He must be the God of heaven and earth, because He
has morality and He’s righteous and He’s holy and He justifies. And then Joshua would look at his value, his
personal value, and he’d look at what Jehovah had already promised Moses, Moses
your nation I have numbered, and your nation I have written their names in a
book, Exodus 33. And Joshua must have
sat by and listened to that and he said you know, this is fantastic, this God
that Moses has, he values us so much that he writes our names in a book. And then he’d look over at the other
religions of his day and look what they do to man; man is just a play thing of
the gods, and if the gods don’t like you you have bad fortune; if the gods like
you you have good fortune. That’s what
he had to choose from. And I’m sure that
was a factor in his decision. And
mentality, he’d look at the plan that God had given history and he’d realize
that this God that talks with Moses has reason, He has a mentality, He could
reason things through and it’s not just chaotic interplay of gods playing
around but it’s one God there that has one plan for all of the universe.
So these factors, I suggest, were what went through Joshua’s mind for
forty years. Forty ywars as he sat in
the tabernacle here in Exodus 33:11 and he sat there and he didn’t depart out
of it. Don’t think he wasn’t thinking
these things; this is a man who had other answers available in his generation. He had hundreds of answers available; he had
the religion of the Egyptians, all these other religions, and they were
available and he knew them; Moses knew them.
And yet they didn’t believe that way.
They found out through this system that this as the truth, and having
seen it as the truth they put their faith in it, and thus we come back to
Joshua 1.
That’s why at the end of this section in Joshua 1 you can have this last
statement made, and finally it gets very, very personal to Joshua, when God
Himself says look Joshua, isn’t it I that am commanding you. I’m commanding you, “Be strong and of a good
courage, don’t be afraid and don’t be dismayed.
For the Lord your God is with you whithersoever thou goest.” That’s why that could be made. You see, if Joshua hadn’t got this ironed
out in his mind that promise would be of zero effect; if Joshua hadn’t come to
the conclusion that God is there, if he hadn’t come to the conclusion that this
whole thing fits together perfectly and there’s no other answer, Joshua
couldn’t have believed this; not in the face of a million crybabies in back and
all these walled cities in front. He
would have taken off, forget it, it’s hopeless. But because year after year,
for forty years this man saw the facts and digested them and digested them, and
digested them, and thought and though and thought and it fit together and when
the crisis was on he was ready to go.
And this is why he could operate as he did, a man of fantastic faith.
Don’t try to mimic Joshua if you haven’t got this faith. You can get to Joshua’s status but it’s going
to take you some time and you’re going to have to think and you may have to
take some hard knocks along the way, but when you establish your platform you
too can be a Joshua. There’s no believer in this room that can’t be in his own
area of responsibility before the Lord just as successful as Joshua was. Nobody can do less than this if you really go
out for the Lord; this can be yours, but I want to stress at the same time,
having said that, remember it took Joshua time and you are growing up in a
culture that stresses instantaneousness, do it yourself now, don’t wait, buy it
now and pay later and all the rest of it.
Everything’s pay later, pay later, pay later; well, you’re going to pay
later all right. It won’t be the kind of
payment you want; we’ll all be paying later because of this economy.
But the point is that our generation stresses instantaneous everything
including instantaneous spirituality and friend, it doesn’t fit Scripture. Spirituality is not something that you get
overnight; it’s something that takes years to develop, but you can start. And you can start by thinking and taking in
Bible doctrine.