Joshua 29
In Joshua 23 we come to this last section of the book, and every time we
come to a section it’s my policy to back up and give an overview of where we
have been so that we can get sort of a perspective on this section. The book of Joshua we have divided into five
parts; from 1:1-1:9 Joshua’s commission; from 1:10-5:12 the entrance into
Canaan, and this deals wholly with the crossing of the Jordan River, the
physical miracles that accompanied that and the various details that were taken
care of in divine guidance, the securing of the only believer in the city of
Jericho, Rahab, who was a prostitute and therefore a symbol of God’s grace that
this woman who would be a prostitute and most religious people would overlook
her, condemn her, and yet this woman becomes one of the great-great-great-great
grandmothers of Jesus Christ, again showing God’s grace.
Then
And then from chapter 13:1 to the end of chapter 22 we dealt with the
inheritance and we have said over and over in working through this book that
there are three basic themes that characterize the book of Joshua. The first theme is that there is a continuity
in God’s historical program and this may sound abstract until we tie it down to
something, and that is that God’s historical program is always logically and
rationally consistent. God doesn’t make
His program go up and down, false start, turn right, turn left; it’s always a
rationally consistent program. Now that
does not mean there aren’t going to be surprises in it for we have both form
and freedom in prophecy. God has a form
in which He stays but there is enough freedom inside to show us surprises at
time. This is why you should never draw
a complete chart of prophecy. In other
words, you can’t tie all the prophetic details… for example, I’ll show you one
detail. Many people will draw a
prophetic chart with the rapture of the church here, and they’ll immediately
start the tribulation here; the tribulation begins at the rapture and ends at
the Second Advent of Jesus Christ.
Technically that isn’t so because the tribulation begins with the making
of the covenant of Daniel and the rapture doesn’t have to occur for a while, so
you could have the rapture like this, and an interim period and then the
tribulation starts. The rapture begins
before the tribulation but there is a questionable gap here, this is just one
point in God’s prophetic program where there’s flexibility and He can induce,
you might say, last minute surprises.
The reason for this is that we always are dealing with a living God of
history. This is not an IBM machine that
has programmed everything to work and the lights flash and it just
happens. God is a personal God and He
has to be dealt with on a personal lever, so therefore this is why we have this
form and freedom in prophecy. But form
and freedom in prophecy means that we can protect ourselves against the development
of cults. In the 19th century
we had a series of tremendous breakdowns; actually it was a satanic
counterattack against the great revivals in the early part of the 1800s. You had millions of people simultaneously
trust in Jesus Christ. Now this century
has never seen anything like this and we have Christian organizations, etc.
that have done a marvelous work in certain areas, but they have never brought
about a revival as this country experienced it in the 1800s. And this was a sovereign moving of the Spirit
of God where you had thousands and thousands and thousands of people in every
imaginable sphere of life trust in Christ in all sorts of ways. If you’re interested in reading on this
Timothy White, Revivalism and Social
Reform in which he shows how this vitally influenced the life of
However, right after this we had a satanic counterattack and from this
we had a great denial of the Trinity.
See, Christian hangs on the Trinity and you had a satanic assault against
the Trinity, and out of this you have such things as Jehovah’s Witnesses, such
things as the Mormons and a few other cults that started in this area, started
by denying the very center of Christianity, the deity of Jesus Christ in the
Triune God Father Son relationship.
Logically what does this lead to?
It leads to a denial of a personal God.
You remember that because the tendency of many believer’s is to excuse
the Trinity and say well I’m sorry, I have not time for the Trinity, it’s a
theological abstraction, we don’t bother with it. Let me tell you something, if you don’t
bother with the Trinity you can forget all concepts of a personal God because
an attribute of personality is love and love has to have both subject and
object and if you have a lone solitary God He cannot love; it’s as simple as
that. And the only solution you’ve got
if you’ve got a lone solitary God is that He has to create to get an object for
His love but then you still haven’t solved the problem because if He’s God He’s
got infinite love, infinite love needs an infinite object, and if He’s created
to fulfill an object for His love it’s a finite object, so you’ve still got a
dilemma. So apart from the Trinity you
cannot have a personal God, you have kind of a warped personal God but you
don’t have a full personality because there is no such thing as one solitary
person existing by themselves.
This is why we have women; Adam was created alone, and God said it is
not good for this man to be alone and so He made woman. Therefore we have [can’t understand word] in
Scripture, this is always the norm in Scripture. You have to have more than one personality;
you always must have more than one personality.
So this is a point to remember.
Now how do we protect ourselves against this with this principle of
continuity? Remember the test that we
learned from Deut. 13 and 18. Deut. 13,
does the doctrine fit? Now look, this is
how this thing works, you have a general perspective here, maybe it isn’t
filled in. Let’s take the Trinity, for
example; in the Old Testament we have Elohim, we have this God appearing in
three persons in the Old Testament. We
have Him appear as Jehovah, we have Him appear as the angel of Jehovah, and we
have the Spirit of Jehovah. You have the
Trinity in the Old Testament. But it
isn’t clear, it isn’t very finished, it doesn’t have the finesse of the New
Testament. So along comes Jesus Christ
and Jesus Christ is the angel of Jehovah incarnate and so now we have the angel
of Jehovah, we have the incarnate Christ, there’s an identity and now all of a
sudden the Trinity means something and it becomes clear.
But I want you to notice that the early Christians could never be
accused of introducing a novelty; the early Christians followed logically out
from the categories the Old Testament had.
So you have the Old Testament setting up the categories and the early
Christians moving right out. There’s a
logical continuity between the Old and the New.
You can prove the multiplicity of God in the Old Testament; you do not
need the New Testament at all. So
there’s a logical continuity here, and that’s the thing that we use to protect
ourselves, that there is always these two tests. Deut. 13, no matter how many miracles a
religion starts off with; always check its doctrine, does the doctrine
fit? And the second test of Deut. 18 is
does it check out in experience. So you
have the two tests, the logical and the empirical test. So that’s the first theme of the book of
Joshua, there’s a logical continuity to God’s plan of salvation, God’s program
in history.
The second major theme of this book is the fact that there is a
necessity for holy war; there is no neutrality, you have divine viewpoint and
you have human viewpoint and there’s negative volition and positive volition,
divine viewpoint, human viewpoint and there isn’t anything in between. So the book of Joshua should make clear in a
very physical way the fact that there’s never neutrality, there’s always
conflict, either believers win or believers lose but they don’t stay in the
same place; no time at no place. And
this goes for your Christian life, either you grow or you actually get
retarded. Do you know there can be
spiritually retarded believers? There
can be because believers who are out of it for any prolonged period of time
become disciplined and as a result they actually fall backwards, they grow
backwards. And this is taught in the
epistle to the Hebrews where you have a group of believers who were dull of hearing
and they actually had at one time become mature and then they faded out and
came back. So you can have spiritual
retardation. So it goes up and down,
there’s no neutrality.
The second principle or theme of Joshua then is the necessity for a holy
war. In the Old Testament it was a physical
holy war; in the New Testament it’s an ideological holy war. And this is a holy war in every area; as we
have said over and over again, this is something that fundamentalism has not
learned in the 20th century yet and if we don’t learn it fast we’re
going to be dead. And that is that you
have God, you have Bible doctrine and this Bible doctrine must go into ALL
areas, including philosophy, history, art, music, science, etc. etc. etc. And the reason we don’t have, for example,
all the patriotic hymns, how many of those were written in the 20th
century? Look at the great hymns, hymns
that have been sung down through church history, do you know that none of those
hymns, the great ones, are products of the 20th century. And it’s not just because people like 19th
century music, it’s because the 20th century has collapsed; there’s
no good Christian music being done today, absolutely none! The Christians that are working are trying
desperately to adapt the contemporary music forms of Christianity but you don’t
have anything say of the stature of Bach or anybody like that today.
So the problem then is that you have Bible doctrine not flowing, it’s
clogged, so it isn’t going into the field of art, art deteriorates; it’s not
going in the area of science, science deteriorates; this is something for some
of you who have people come up to you and say oh, there’s a conflict between
the Bible and science… listen, if the Bible was never in western man’s thoughts
modern science could never have started because modern science grounds itself
on the fact that the universe is immutable, that it has certain immutable
framework behind it, and this of course is explained in the Bible as the
immutability of God standing behind His creation, always insuring that it’s
going to be there tomorrow. You need
this if you’re a scientist and you can’t have it unless you’re a
Christian. The only place you get this
is in the Bible. This is why it’s absurd
to go to the college campus today, walk around the campus and see these so-called
scientists wearing statutes of Buddha around their neck, absolutely stupid, the
Orient could have never, never, never come up with any philosophy that would
ever produce modern science. They might
as well just walk around with skull and crossbones because that’s actually what
they’re saying, I kill modern science, when they give up Christianity in the
framework.
The third great theme of this book of Joshua besides the continuity of
God’s program, the necessity for holy war, is something that is found from this
book forward but not found in any of the other five books before it. What do
you suppose it is? It’s the fact that
this is the first book in God’s Word to show us how to use the Bible. None of the other books before it teach this,
and if you’re thinking right now you should understand why, because the other
five books were written as a unit. There
wasn’t any Bible when those five books were being written. Now in Joshua’s day the five books are
written and they automatically become inerrantly authoritative for Joshua’s
generation, and notice that, because Joshua’s generation is in a day when you
had miracles going on, you had the Holy Spirit working in ways He doesn’t work
today. And yet nevertheless, that
generation was in bondage(?), if you want to use the word with a question mark
after it, that generation was in bondage? to the existing written canon of
Scripture over and above all possible miracles.
The canon of Scripture was normative to that generation, regardless of
the miracles, and this is what’s fatally wrong with a lot of the
neo-Pentecostalism in this century, particularly in this area; people are
basing over and over and over again… in my talks with these people I have
insisted that you’re making yore statements about the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, about tongues, about everything else, you’re making all of this flow
out of your experience. You cannot build
doctrine from experience, it just doesn’t work.
So the book of Joshua teaches you that the Word of God, the written canon
of Scripture is over experience.
Now in Joshua 23-24 we come to the last two dialogues of Joshua. This is one section but it’s divided in
half. Chapter 23 is Joshua’s address to
the national parliament. Actually there
wasn’t a formal parliament but use of this word will conjure up in your mind
something of the situation that he faced.
And Joshua 24 was a full national meeting when you had every citizen
participate. They had patriotism in
their day. So you have two chapters,
chapter 23 Joshua is addressing his farewell address to the parliament. In chapter 24 is his farewell address to the
people. And in these farewell addresses
you are going to notice certain very valuable principles, sort of summaries of
everything we’ve been doing here both in the book of Deuteronomy and the book
of Joshua.
You’ll notice that the principle of the farewell address is very
common. For example, one can think of
Jesus Christ farewell address and we’ll close on that tonight, John 13-16 when
Jesus Christ, before He died, gave a farewell address to the disciples. Before Paul had his head chopped off in Rome
he gave a farewell address to pastors of local churches in Acts 20 in which you
have him explain the job and the duty of a pastor. You have farewell address of the secular
area: George Washington gave one of the most fantastic speeches that has ever
been given in this country, the George Washington farewell address, and he gave
principles in there that paralleled Joshua’s farewell address and we’ll see
some of those tonight.
Joshua 23:1, “And it came to pass a long time after that the LORD had
given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about, that Joshua grew old
and stricken in age.” Now these are one
of the points in Scripture that I kind of always like to stop and give a little
footnote. These precious little
footnotes in the text, that if you read fast you miss these things, but
frankly, in thinking back through my experience, one of the things that brought
me to Jesus Christ, I put more weight on this factor than any other factor in
my own personal life, was that the man who led me to Jesus Christ showed me the
fact that the Bible is a unit and I’ve never forgotten this. He took me from Genesis to Revelation the
first time he met me after I had trusted in Christ and showed me how Genesis,
all the way down through Revelation, not verse by verse but a section here and
a passage here and a passage there, showing the thread of prophecy and how
Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of this.
Now the astounding thing that struck me was that isn’t this interesting,
here you have a book written in at leas three different languages with parts of
the fourth language, you have at least
Hebrew, Aramaic, Koine Greek, and you have in the Psalms part of the Canaanite
Ugaritic text, so you’ve got at least three languages and pieces and words from
other languages, written over a span of fifteen centuries by men who probably
differed, lived in different geographical areas with completely different
backgrounds, everybody from an educated PhD level such as Moses and Paul all
the way on down to what we would call an uneducated man such as Peter. I don’t mean Peter was stupid, I just mean
that he did not have the formal education of a Paul. And you have all these men from all these
fantastic backgrounds and yet how come when they put all the books together
they fit.
Now this to me is a startling objective empirical evidence; there’s
something here that you just explain away quickly. So when I look at these little footnotes
these mean something to me and I think this one is a very interesting one, how
Joshua, it says, “waxed old and stricken in age.” This may seem a little unusual but if you’ve
been paying attention in the Joshua series and you’ve been thinking about who is
the other man that’s always associated with Joshua—Caleb. Turn back to Joshua 14:6. In the morning service we’ve been dealing
with suffering; I’m going to show you a peculiar form of suffering and how
believers who are called by the Lord into various areas of service suffer
intensely such that their body actually disintegrates through their
ministry. This is going to be one
illustration of this.
In Joshua 14:6-11, “Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in
Gilgal; and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, said unto him, Thou
knowest the thing that the LORD said unto Moses…. [7] Forty years old was I
when Moses, the servant of the LORD sent me out…. [8] Nevertheless my brethren
who went up with me…” etc. Verse 9, “And
Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have
trodden,” there’s the promise that Moses had given him; verse 10, “And now,
behold, the LORD has kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years,”
this man now is 85 years old, “even since the LORD spoke this word unto Moses,
… and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old,” and verse 11, “And
yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; as my
strength was then, even so it is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and
to come in.” That’s an amazing statement
of the physical endurance of Caleb. This
man had a tremendous physical body.
Now we know from certain hints in the text, and we haven’t got time to
develop this, that Caleb was actually older than Joshua because when the spy
mission was sent out Caleb was put in command, not Joshua. This means that Caleb had seniority over
Joshua. And it means therefore that
Joshua is not as old as Caleb and yet this passage before us in Joshua 23
suggests that Joshua at this point is exhausted; physically he’s a wreck. Why is the difference, between Caleb who is
an older man and Joshua who is actually younger, but his body is
deteriorated. I would suggest that here
we have something I’m going to show you at two other points in the Bible, and
that is that believers who have an unusual ministry of the Lord actually age
prematurely because of the pressures that are brought into their life by their
service for God.
Let me take you to a little understood passage in the New Testament,
John 2:18, a little notice, a hint as to what Jesus Christ looked like. [19] “Jesus answered, and said unto them,
Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. [20] Then said the
Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and will thou raise it
up in three days? [21] But He spoke of the temple of His body.”] Now I want to couple this, this Herod’s
temple they are speaking of here, and what they’re doing is suggesting that
Jesus wasn’t around when this temple first began to be built. Now couple this with another hint in John
8:56 when He’s in the middle of the dialogue with the Jews. Jesus said, “Your father, Abraham, rejoiced
to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad.”
And immediately the Jews became mad and [57] “Then said the Jews unto
Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?”
Now the suggestion here is interesting because Jesus wasn’t anywhere
near 50 at this point. The fact that
they used 50 years coupled with this other reference suggests that Jesus was
looking, probably 20 years older than He actually was. Jesus was a young man of 30 at this time, 33,
and yet they say “you’re not yet 50,” implying that He looked a lot older than
He was. Why? Again I would suggest because of the pressures
of the ministry. This was that category
two suffering we spoke of this morning, where God will place burdens upon a
believer and it will actually show. This
is not the burden of sin, I mentioned this morning how people can show
physiological effects of a bad mental attitude and that will tear their body
apart, but here we have the bodies being prematurely aged by the pressure of
the ministry.
Now there’s one further notice and that is in Acts 7:58, this is Paul,
this is the stoning of Stephen. And Luke
in a very eloquent literary way introduces the whole next section of the book
of Acts by just noting as this man is being beaten to death by these rocks, and
verse 58 says they threw “him out of the city, and stoned him; and the
witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was
Saul.” Now there he is called a young
man. Now less than 30 years later, turn
to Philemon, this is only about 30 years later, keep in mind; this word “young
man” would suggest he’s a young man in his 20’s, now about 30 years later
here’s how Paul is known in verse 9, “And yet for love’s sake I rather beseech
thee, being such an one as Paul, the aged,” and that was evidently a title that
he was known by among the believers, “Paul, the aged,” and we know from
extra-biblical testimony a little bit about what Paul was like. They say he was balding, he had gray hair…
gray hair mind you, balding, stooped, and he sometimes had a cane. And this was the picture of the man who was
to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the dynamic Greeks, the most unlikely
character from the outside that you ever could pick to do the job that Paul did
but man, what a job he did.
But I want you to see here just a little footnote as to how these great
believers put everything they had into their ministry and it took its toll in
their life and it showed them as they prematurely aged. Let’s go back and see what Joshua had to say
just before he left to go to be with the Lord.
Joshua 23, remember this is directed not toward the people but toward
the leaders of the people. This again is
a principle that Christians have to recall again and again because in our day,
since we have rebellion in general against all authority, it carries over in
the Christian life to rebellion against authority in the local church. We have people that don’t like the way a
local church is run so they just pick up their marbles and go somewhere
else. That’s fine, usually if the pastor
is smart he’ll clap hands because if that kind of a person leaves that means
you don’t have any more trouble with them but some pastors who don’t have too
much smarts get all upset when this happens and they have to run all over town
and find out why it happened and why this happened, etc. and get a full report
and they feel so badly because someone got offended and went off. Well, actually it doesn’t me and it shouldn’t
bother any other pastor who’s living according to the Word of God. Genuine criticism, be open to it, yes but
this business of somebody getting hacked and walking off somewhere, that’s
their problem.
But we have a general running down and maligning of the authority of
pastors and I’ve noticed this, and it unconsciously flows out. I know how it comes, because I can remember
my non-Christian days, kind of a to-heck-with-it attitude toward authority, and
it’s something that all of us just pick up from the environment and when we
become Christians that’s one of the rehabilitation areas in our mental attitude
we have to do, we have to rework our attitude toward authority.
So notice please, chapter 23 comes before chapter 24; the leaders are
addressed before the people. Verse 2,
“And Joshua called for all Israel, and for their elders,” now “all Israel” does
not mean the people. In the Hebrew this
is in apposition, “he called for all Israel, that is, their elders, and for
their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers,” so he assembles
parliament, “[and said unto them, I am old and stricken in age,] [3] And ye
have seen all that the LORD your God has cone unto all these nations because of
you,” etc. notice the word “seen,” this is going to be something that is a
theme throughout the Old Testament, that only a few generations are privileged
to actually see the miracles of God, and therefore you have to have teachers to
convey to the generations who can’t see empirically what happens.
This is why we have communion. I
read Matthew 26 but I could have read 1 Cor. 11 or in Luke, but remember what
Jesus said in that service? He said I’m
going to drink this cup with you again; do you know what that really
means? We’re going to have a physical
resurrected body; souls outside the body don’t go around drinking grape juice
or wine; by the way, it’s real wine, we don’t use wine here because we might
offend some of you but in the Bible it’s actual wine, not grape juice. But this ceremony is a historical
memory. And you know when I read in 1
Cor. 11 it says “do this in remembrance of Me.”
And in Matt. 26 it said I will not drink of this until I come to be with
you again, and the picture is that Jesus is withholding joy because wine is the
symbol of relaxation and enjoyment, in the Old Testament particularly. And by the way, just so you don’t walk out of
here and say I’m for alcoholism let me qualify it and say this, that the wine
in the Old Testament had a lower alcoholic content than hard liquor, it wasn’t
anywhere near American hard liquor so the Bible is not giving you the green
light to go out and get plastered. But
the point is that this ceremony is to recall an actual incident that you
haven’t seen; I haven’t seen, but we have to go over and over and over and over
and over this ritual, again and again and again and again and again and
again. Why? Because only few generations are every
privileged to actually see, and Joshua is saying in verse 3, he says you have
been one of the great privileged generations in God’s history because you
actually have seen what God has done.
Now the responsibility he places over them. He says, “And ye have seen all that the LORD
your God has done unto all these nations because of you,” and here we have the
sovereignty of God working in history.
God is sovereign over both nature and man. Can you recall some incidents that we’ve seen
in Joshua to fit under this to show that this book, if you had been there, if
you had been one of this privileged generation, can you mentally recall some
incidents that would show that God has done this, that God is sovereign, and
that even though human agents were involved basically it was God that was doing
the doing? Let’s think of some instances
that would prove that God is sovereign over nature, just from the book of
Joshua. One incident would be the
stopping of the Jordan River as they crossed.
So you have one miracle there, an obvious miracle, it was in flood
season. Now I’ve heard it explained that
the Jordan River was dried up and it was a dry season, and you had everything
dry up and the Jews just kind of trotted across in the mud. But if you read your Bible carefully, this
happened in the springtime at the time when it was flooding, so you have a
miracle there very similar to the miracle in the Dead Sea.
You can think of another one, Jericho, the walls fell and you remember
how God had them do, it looked like a very stupid thing, walk around the wall,
instead of a frontal assault just walk around, just trot around the walls and
they’ll fall down. Can you imagine
giving an army instructions like that, okay men just walk around and it’s going
to fall apart just because you’re walking around? Now God had them to these kind of idiotic
things to make it very plain that He was the one that was doing the doing, not
the army. Another incident was the hail
and the sun of Joshua 10, remember how the hail stones came down from heaven
and they aimed perfectly so that the Canaanites were hit and the Jewish
soldiers were not hit, perfect artillery.
You had flares by night, the sun just stopped. Joshua needed some light so he asked God,
stop the sun; God stopped the sun. And
of course he gets the all-time miracle for answered prayer. How would you like that one, pray that the
sun stands still and it stands still? So
Joshua had a fantastic answer to prayer.
We could go on with that but that just shows you that God is sovereign
over nature.
What about this, can we show certain instances in the book of Joshua to
prove that God is sovereign over men? Of
course we can; what about Rahab? How
does it happen that those men when they went on the spy mission just happened
to come to her house? Don’t come up with
the fact that she was the only prostitute in Jericho, that was not the case,
there were many prostitutes in Jericho.
They just happened to show up at her place because of the sovereign plan
of God, that woman had believed in Jesus Christ, as made known in that age, at
that day, and so God wanted her protected, and so God saw that here was a woman
who had trusted in Him and had defied the whole order of the day, who had
turned her back against the rule, probably if the king had ever found out she
would be slaughtered, and here was this lone woman believer, no male help, no
fellowship whatever, isolated in a hostile city, standing before the judgment
of God and God works it out so the men come to her house at just the right
time. The Gibeonites would be another
illustration; God is sovereign in the affairs of men. It doesn’t mean He turns them into robots but
it means that He works in and through them so that His plans are accomplished.
So in verse 3 the Lord your God has done the doing, He is
sovereign. Now in verse 4 we have a new
concept. There are two new phrases used
in chapter 23 that are going to spell the section for the whole book of
Judges. There are two terms that are
introduced here and this sets us up for the next book. In verse 4 Joshua uses a new word that is
never used before, “Behold, I [Joshua] have divided unto you by lot these
nations that remain, to be an inheritance for your tribes, from the Jordan,
with all the nations that I have cut off, even unto the Great Sea in the
west.” And the phrase there is “nations
that remain.” This is the same word
later used by Isaiah in a reverse sense, the remnant. But here you have an unsaved remnant. Now what is this? These unsaved remaining nations refer to
these zones on the map. Remember Joshua
allocated the land and there were three main zones where you still had
occupation forces of the enemy. The
first one, zone one, Philistia, the pentapolis; zone two the Phoenicians, all
up and down the coast, and zone three, the Syrians, up north around
Damascus. Those are three large areas
plus you have Jerusalem, plus you have the fact that you have a large Canaanite
colony just southwest of the Sea of Galilee.
And they actually control all this valley across here; so you have a lot
of unoccupied area. Joshua conquered all
this area, but he left these pockets of occupied areas; that is what is meant
in verse 4 by “nations that remain.”
Now why is this something new?
Because in this passage, as we go on we’re going to see for the first
time in God’s Word as you read it through historically the fact that there
might be the possibility that the conquest of this whole book is not the real
conquest. Now up until this point the
believers have honestly thought that God is giving them all the promises of the
Abrahamic Covenant right here right now, this is the real thing, and we are
actually going to bring in the Kingdom of God, we’re actually going to start
the millennium. You see, in the Old
Testament they had a very collapsed view; theoretically they could have gone
into the millennium here at this point, at least as far as they saw the
picture. And so they honestly thought
that this was the real conquest, but you begin to get suspicious as you read
through this that Joshua is finally realizing it’s going to take something else
than just mere man to accomplish that promise of the Abrahamic Covenant. And so he says “the nations that remain,” and
I’ll show you some of these other terms as we go on.
Verse 5, “And the LORD your God, He shall expel them from before you,
and drive them from out of your sight; and you shall possess their land, as the
LORD your God hath promised unto you.”
Notice verse 6, “Be ye therefore very courageous,” the condition of
obedience to the revealed will of God, “Be very courageous to keep and to do
all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside
therefrom to the right hand or to the left.”
Do you see why Joshua is so important?
It is the first book in the Bible that looks back on the Bible. And this book starts to develop the
normative; the believer’s normative attitude toward Scripture and here is
absolute authority.
Verse 7, “That you come not among these nations, these that remain among
you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause them to swear by
them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves down to them.” Now this is put in here because of treaties. What Joshua is really saying here if you want
to put in a cultural context is don’t make deals with non-Christian’s. Now this is in their terminology; don’t make
a treaty with these Canaanites because when you make a treaty in that day you
had to swear by the god of the other party.
So at this point they are absolutely forbidden any treaty contact and
they couldn’t come and make this sad-sack excuse, we have to have a mutual aid,
we don’t have enough military to protect ourselves, God isn’t sufficient to we
have to rely on Pharaoh and Isaiah clobbered them with this problem. So they are always running to somebody to
have a mutual aid pack or treaty or something, and this is an expression of
lack of faith in God. So verse 7 is a
warning actually against getting involved in treaties.
And it goes on down, verse 8, “But cleave unto the LORD your God, as ye
have done unto this day.” And in verse
10 is a promise, “One man of you shall chase a thousand; for the LORD your God,
He it is who fights for you, as He has promised.” And here we have the reason why there’s no
treaties necessary. In other words, if
this nation is having trouble keeping their political independence it is not
due to lack of resources; it is due to the spiritual decadence of the
population; it has become spiritually low class and spiritually low class
nations always get it. And the way a
nation loses its independence is to have a majority of its citizenry
spiritually low class. That means they
are non-Christians or believers who are out of it. And that’s the fastest way to tear apart a
nation and so what he is saying here is that you need never have to worry about
military power, God will handle it. Now
it didn’t mean they were disarming, it just meant the fact that they couldn’t
place their trust completely in just having a superior military operation. Their trust had to be that spiritually they
were self-sustaining believers and then God would work with them militarily and
the results would be as promised in verse 10.
Now we don’t have time to develop it tonight but I suggest you look at
Lev. 26 and Deut. 28. Those two chapters
will give you the norm of the national life and how the nation could oscillate
between independence and servitude based on the principle of obedience to the
Word of God. This is nations now, not an
individual believer. Nationally Israel
could have freedom and independence by obedience to the Lord. And Deut. 28, if you have the tape when we
went through that I showed how it’s a chiastic structure, that whole chapter
and how there are actually three spheres; Deut. 28 is looking at three points,
the first one: which is the Lord of the nation, is it going to be an idol or is
it going to be the Lord. And then
working out from that I visualize it as three concentric circles; the center circle
being what is the Lord of the nation, Jehovah or His opposite. The second circle out would be the domestic
policies and you can read through both of those chapters and you will see how
the domestic state of the nation will go either prosperity economically or go
into a depression and it grounded on the fact of believers and how they are
reacting, whether they are obeying or rebelling against the Lord. Then there’s a third concentric circle, it’s
international relations or foreign policy and there their success in
international circles will depend totally upon their attitude of obedience or
rebellion against the Lord.
So these are the dynamics of independence on the nation Israel and
Joshua in verse 10 is reminding them of this; he’s saying to them look, your
freedom and independence is grounded on what God has given you, not on what you
have secured yourselves; you didn’t secure this yourself, you got it as a gift,
it was grace all the way that gave you independence in the first place so don’t
think you can keep your independence by works.
Independence is kept by grace and the only way independence can be kept
by grace is to keep the channels of grace open which means maximum number of
believers trusting the Lord and letting Him use them in their lives. That’s how independence of any nation is
kept, and here you have the epitome in Israel.
Verse 11, “Take good heed, therefore, unto yourselves, that you love the
LORD your God.” And we’ve been through l-o-v-e enough times in the Old
Testament so you should by now know that in the Old Testament l-o-v-e means
political loyalty. It was used in the
international treaties of Pharaoh and others; that’s the context of the word
l-o-v-e when used in the Old Testament. It
means political loyalty to the king or the great king, and here it would be the
Great King Jehovah, “that you love” Him, and this means love inside, mental
attitude, Deut. 5-12 and later on love outside, details of life, Deut.
13-26. So you have two areas of love,
internally, mental attitude wise and externally in every area of life.
Now he gives a threat and in verse 13 and 14 is the other thing that’s
new in this chapter. Remember I said one
thing was new in verse 4, “the nations that remain,” and now a threat is given
and I’m going to call attention to this but I’m not going to develop because
when we get to the book of Judges you’re going to see a very interesting thing;
this threat becomes a fulfilled prophecy.
And from that point on through the rest of the Old Testament the conquest
is never, never mentioned again. All the
promises that were given Joshua, it’s just like they forgot they ever had it in
the Bible. You never find Jeremiah, you
never find Isaiah, you never find Ezekiel once ever speak of Joshua’s conquest
in a promissory way and saying okay believers, let’s finish up the job that
Joshua left. That’s gone. By the end of the book of Judges this whole
thing just passes off the scene as though it was never there and it starts
right here in verse 13.
“Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any
of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you,
and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off
this good land which the LORD your God has given you.” Now this does not mean that God is going to
violate the Abrahamic Covenant. The
Abrahamic Covenant promised sovereignly the land, but what this verse is saying
is that the conquest in 1400 BC may not secure the land, which means that the
Abrahamic Covenant will be postponed in its fulfillment. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be dumped; it
doesn’t mean that at all, it just simply means the Abrahamic Covenant is going
to wait until another day. And of
course, now looking back on it in history we have to say yes, we see part of
the Abrahamic Covenant being fulfilled in 1948 with the nation Israel coming
into the land; whether this is ultimately the fulfillment or not we don’t know
but at least it’s a prelude, it’s a preliminary movement in history. And once this nation is established then you
have the return of Messiah and when Messiah rules they will have the boundaries
of the real estate, all the way on out to the promise of Gen. 15, with all due
apologies to the United Nations.
Now in verse 14, “And, behold, this day I am going the way of all the
earth; and ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing
has failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you;
all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing has failed thereof.” There again Joshua looks back and he says God
is faithful, “great is Thy faithfulness” he is saying, and he says if you fail
believers, it’s your fault not God’s, because up to this point God has honored
every promise literally that we have used.
In verse 15-16 he looks forward to a time of national discipline. [Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all
good things are come upon you, which the LORD your God promised you, so shall
the LORD bring upon you all evil things, until he have destroyed you from off
this good land which the LORD your God has given you. [16] When ye have
transgressed the covenant of the LORD your God, which He commanded you, and
have gone and served other gods, and bowed yourselves to them; then shall the
anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and ye shall perish quickly from off
the good land which He has given you.”]
Now we want to apply these principles to two areas. We want to apply this principle of keeping
independence that he’s mentioning here through obedience, he’s given us some
principles that we can apply to ourselves as a nation, and he’s also giving us
principles that show how Jesus amplified them and used them in John 13-16 for
each one of us independently as believers.
But by way of application we can say that our nation has some of the
parallels, NOT all of them, because we’re not locked into a treaty agreement
with Jehovah like Israel was. But
nevertheless, the broad overall mechanics still work out and when you see, in
verse 7, for example, that He had warned Israel about getting entangled in
other nations, one of the great losses that we have had in America is that we
have made treaties with practical every nation, whether existent or nonexistent
in the world. We have a treaty with
practically every country. Now there’s
nothing wrong with certain commercial treaties but when you start promising aid
to another nation and you moreover make that, because by law in our country any
time we make a treaty, whether you know it or not, it becomes a supreme law of
the land; it becomes on par with the Constitution. So when we make a treaty look what we’re
saying: we’re promising that our children’s children will fight for you.
Now let me show you how ridiculous it is to ever make a promise like
this. Suppose we had made a treaty with
the little nation by the name of Tibet.
Suppose, we didn’t, thank God, but suppose we had said to Tibet look, if
the Chinese communists ever come into Tibet we’ll give you aid, all the aid you
ever need. So because of Tibetan’s anticommunist
stand we’d say they must be our friends and we’ll make a treaty with them. Now later on you recall the Chinese moved
into Tibet in the latter part of the 40s and 50s and took it over and everybody
cried tears because here was an anticommunist nation that went down. Actually Tibet was a center of demonism; up
until this time missionaries report it was impossible to get the gospel into
that nation. They had the famous
red-hooded monks of Tibet who had such demonic powers that you could stand in
the room and the furniture would fly across the room. This was the kind of phenomena the demonism
that these people… tremendous power of these famous red-hooded monks of Tibet
and they had this whole thing, Dali Lama included, just sewed up with the whole
demonic operation and if you ask me, I think it was a blessing that the
communists went in there. Here’s why:
the communist being materialists moved in and clobbered them, they wiped out
these monks and in their place they put radio sets so that they could get the
hot word from Beijing. But unfortunately
one thing they overlooked was the fact that the American missionaries also have
radio transmitters that operate on the same frequency of the radio receivers,
and now guess what? The gospel goes into
Tibet by radio like it has never before.
Now suppose we had gotten involved in that thing for this demonic
government and we sided with the demonic government against the
communists. I don’t know, that’s like
having Satan on one side and Judas Iscariot on the other and you’re supposed to
fight for one against the other. That’s
the kind of ridiculous position you can get into by making treaties with every
kind of nitwit nation and once you’ve locked into the thing you can’t get out
of it. This is why we’re in such a mess
in Vietnam. That whole area, South
Vietnam is pagan; the only people in South Vietnam that know anything are the
Montenyards and that’s because they have a maximum number of believers and they
are good people and they are fighters and they are the ones, by the way, doing
the fighting.
So you have this whole problem of treaties. Now let me read you a section of a very
famous speech. Here is one of George
Washington’s farewell speeches. And
there are several paragraphs in this that I want you to listen to carefully
because in paralleling this with Joshua you can see Washington had some of the
same principles you see in verse 7. I’m
just going to read you some excerpts from it.
Avenues to foreign influence: As avenues to foreign influence in
innumerable ways, such attachments” he’s talking about these entangling
alliances, “are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent
patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic
factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to
influence or awe the public councils…. Against the insidious wiles of foreign
influence” then he puts a parenthesis, “(I conjure you to believe me,
fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake,”
I’ll read that again, “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence the
jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and
experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of
republican government.”
Then another section: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to
foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as
little political connection as possible.” In your business fine, but
have “as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements,
let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith but here let us stop,”
period. And that was Washington’s advice
which was not followed and of course you see the dire consequences in the 20th
century.
Now I want to read another statement by a man who lived in the same
general era of our history as a nation, President Monroe. Many of you have heard of the Monroe Doctrine
but you probably never heard the other side of the Monroe Doctrine. Many of you heard of the Monroe Doctrine as
looked as the United States becomes the lord-protector of the western
hemisphere; that is true, that was part of the Monroe Doctrine but have you
ever heard the other part of the Monroe Doctrine. Here it is: “As long as the other nations of
the world respect our area of influence in the western hemisphere we
acknowledge that we have no moral right to interfere with the extensions of
power by other nations in the other areas of the world,” period.
Now if we had followed the Monroe Doctrine we’d have been out of
practically every war of the 20th century. I’ll read you that last sentence, “we
acknowledge that we have no moral right to interfere with the extensions of
power by other nations in the other areas of the world,” conditioned upon the
fact they don’t bother us. So what do we
have? We’re over in Vietnam and the communists are in Cuba. That’s a complete reverse of the Monroe
Doctrine. If you followed the Monroe
Doctrine you’d invade Cuba and get the communists out and you’d let Vietnam go
and that would be the Monroe Doctrine applied to the 20th
century. But you see, these men, why did
they say these things? It wasn’t because
they were obscurants; those men had lived for and died through a war brought on
by foreign influence. Their forefathers,
their grandparents had left the cesspool called Europe because they didn’t want
anything to do with it; they wanted to come over here, stop bugging me, I want
my freedom. And they didn’t want to get
entangled again and so they had a very excellent perspective but we have lost
that perspective.
That is the same perspective that Joshua echoes in 23:7 with Israel,
don’t get involved in foreign alliances.
Now one illustration of how this happens and how we can get so easily
involved, suppose we have an alliance… now this is just on incident but I want
to show you why many of these alliances are just asking for trouble. We have an alliance made with various
nations; obviously we have to get involved somewhere, but the point is let’s
minimize. So we get involved with some
nation. Now there are behind the scenes
powers that want the United States to climb in; I’m thinking now primarily of
the era from 1910-1915, Europe was going to pot and various powers maneuvering
to bring the United States into the war.
President Wilson had become elected on the basis that we will keep the
nation out of war. So you had the
sinking of the Lusitania, the Lusitania had been sunk and this was used to
bring America but it’s very interesting, the Lusitania was sunk two years
before America entered the war. It was
an old incident, a very old incident, that was cleverly used by the media of
the day to whip up America enthusiasm to go to Europe. The second ship that was sunk to bring
America in was the Suffix, but we now find out after it’s all over the
following, written in a book called The
Makers of War, by Frances Neilson who was a member of the British
Parliament at that time. Wilson,
desperate to find a pretext to enter the war, found it at last in the story of
the sinking of the Suffix in mid-channel.
Someone had invented the yarn that American lives had been lost and with
this excuse he went to Congress for a Declaration of War. Afterwards the Navy found that the Suffix had
not been sunk and no American lives were lost.
So you can see what a dangerous thing it is to work your way into a
treaty and then find incidents like this.
Now we’re not debating the righteousness of the war or not, I’m just
showing you the principle that the more agreements you enter to, the more
unsafe your position as a nation becomes.
So much to apply this as our independence as a nation.
Let’s turn to John 13 and we’ll show you some principles in Jesus
farewell address to believers, to us. We’ve applied it on a nation basis in one
area paralleling Joshua and now very quickly a few concluding principles, just
summary statements out of this farewell address of Jesus. Remember the incident in verse 4, Jesus “rose
from supper, and laid aside His garments, and took a towel, and girded
himself. [5] After that he poured water
into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the
towel with which he was girded. [6] Then
he comes to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my
feet? [7] Jesus answered, and said unto him, What I do you do not know now, but
you shalt know hereafter. [8] Peter said unto him, Thou shall never wash my
feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash you
not, then you have no part with me. [9] Simon Peter said unto Him, Lord, not my
feet only, but also my hands and my head. [10] Jesus said unto him,” and this
is where the Greek, knowledge of the Greek, helps you, “He that has bathed need
not save to wash his feet,” and the point that Jesus is making as believers,
one of the mechanics is confession of sin and the point here is saying that
you’ve been bathed, that secures you, but day to day we have to confess our
sins, the dirt that we pick up, and so that was one of the closing graphic illustrations. Can you think of a better way of graphically
portraying this out in front of people that are looking, to walk around the
room and start washing feet? And this to
be the Rabbi, the teacher of the group, to get down and to do this. Why?
Because in His farewell speech to believers Jesus wanted one thing
clear, that there must be continual confession of sin.
In chapter 14 another thing that Jesus wants us to remember in His
farewell address, verses 1-3 often used at funerals but really should be used
for the whole believer’s life: “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in
God, believe also in Me. [2] In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were
not so, I would have told you. I go to
prepare a place for you. [3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be
also.” That’s the tremendous promise,
that fact that as a son of God we each one of us who has received Christ has a
destiny and a future in one of the mansions, and that Jesus in this delay
that’s so aggravating at times is saying just remember that every moment the
clock ticks and every moment you say why Lord, why Lord, why Lord don’t You
come back, Jesus says in that moment, when the clock is ticking and you feel
that way that right while that clock is ticking I am right then preparing a
place for you.
A third principle we find from this last farewell address to believers
is chapter 15, the fruit-bearing vine.
And Jesus points out that the person who is truly born again will abide
in Him. We know this from the way this
word “abide” is used in 1 John. He’s
saying in verse 15, “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knows
not what his lord does: but I have called you friends; for all things that I
have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.” Notice this, isn’t this something fantastic;
don’t read this fast, slow down and look at it, look what He’s saying. He is saying to us that in His humanity He
has not left off telling us one thing.
This includes, by the way, the added revelation of the New
Testament. Jesus is saying as a man, in
My humanity, I’m going to let you in on as much as I know and that’s the
revelation of the New Testament. So next
time you think the New Testament is a little deep, just remember it’s the whole
content of the mind of Jesus Christ. And
next time you hear this little slogan about oh, so and so loves the Lord, just
ask yourself, do they love His Word, because the Word is the content of His
mind and you can’t love someone unless you know how they think and therefore
this whole New Testament gives it. And
He says “you are My friends.”
And then He says, [16] “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you,
and ordained you,” and notice what He says, “that you should go and bring forth
fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever ye shall ask of the
Father in My name,” etc. There’s the
purpose of the vine, to bear an empirical witness in space/time history. This fruit, by the way, includes the good
works and it also includes the result of the good works which are other
believers who come to know Christ through the testimony of these
believers. “And that your fruit should
remain,” the security of those whom you win to Jesus Christ. So you have this, a combination here; there’s
a big fight whether the “fruit” here means the believers, I don’t see the
conflict, I think the fruit is the empirical outward display of the work of the
Holy Spirit in the life and part of that will naturally result in people coming
to Christ because of the witness of the life.
Another principle, John 16:7-14, in His farewell address to believers He
has us anticipate the coming of the Holy Spirit. In verse 7 He says the Holy Spirit will come
and He will do certain things for the non-Christian, verses 8, 9, 10 and 11,
and then He says in verses 12-13, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but
ye cannot bear them now. [13] However, when He, the Spirit of truth, is come,
He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself, but
whatever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will glorify Me.” So in His farewell speech He asks each one of
us as believers to rely upon the Holy Spirit because He is the One that will
comfort us.
One closing principle, John 16:33, at the end of His farewell address to
believers Jesus says, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might
have peace. In the world ye shall have
tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” By this He is speaking of the tribulation
that we will have necessarily because we are God’s sons living in Satan’s
world; it will always result in tribulation.
If you have the feeling that you’ve become a Christian, I’ve had several
people tell me this, they became a Christian and they say you know, this
Christian business is great in some ways but you know, ever since I’ve become a
Christian I feel like a square peg in a round hole. And if you have that feeling join the club
because this is exactly the point that Jesus is saying; “in the world ye shall
have tribulation,” in other words, the believer’s are made so they don’t fit,
they’re out of joint with what is, except “in Me.” They have fellowship to a certain degree in
the local church, in Christ, and they have eternal fellowship with Him as a
believer in eternity. With our heads
bowed.