Joshua 30
Conclusion to Joshua – Chapter 24
Open your Bibles to Joshua 24.
Tonight we finish this book. The
last two chapters of Joshua form a unit, and since we are going to conclude
this book we want to make sure exactly what Joshua is saying to the nation
before he dies. This is his last will
and testament, and we have these two chapters, one addressed to the leaders or
the chiefs, and the other addressed to the Indians or the citizens. Both chapters have to do with the principles
of maintaining independence of a national entity and in specific form the
nation
In chapter 23 we found in verse 3, “You have seen all that the LORD your
God has done unto all these nations because of you,” and Joshua’s appeal in
these verses is that you have a solid base for your national leadership. Remember He is addressing leaders and He is
addressing people who will have to lead this nation by faith. And you cannot lead a nation by faith if you
are an emotional person. You must lead
the nation by faith based upon fact and evidences and principles and to have a
solid national leadership you must have men that are oriented to divine
viewpoint. So he’s reminding them in
verses 3-5 of two basic things that form this solid base of a national
leadership.
The first thing he is saying, actually the second thing but I’m going to
list it as the first one, in verse 5 he says, “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 has promised unto you.” With this he refers to the Abrahamic Covenant
of Gen. 12 and following. He says God
made a promise, those are God’s words, but God also backs His words up with
actions or works and those are listed in verses 3-4. And he says you see, God promised you certain
things, God will do those things that He has promised, a very simple thing but
very hard to apply oftentimes. So here
is an exhortation to the leadership of the nation to trust in the promises of
the Word of God, to stop trusting in all the other phony crutches that national
leaders often trust, trusting for example in the media, trusting in their
vote-getting appeal, so and so parts their hair a certain way so this wins half
of the women’s vote, etc. this kind of thing.
We have people who are trusting in all these things, their voter image,
trusting in various gimmicks, big PR staff, trusting in their public relations,
and yet these leaders of this nation, the most critical nation on earth recall,
because Israel is the priestly nation, they are called here by Joshua to trust
in the Lord and He will give them all these other things.
Then in verse 6 and following he says in order to trust you have to
submit to His Law, God’s Law. And with
this is introduced in this chapter the Word of God in verse 6, “Be ye therefore
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.” This book, the book of Joshua, is the first
book you remember, is the first book in the whole canon of Scripture that tells
you how to handle the canon of Scripture because when the first five books of
your Bible was written, Genesis to Deuteronomy, when these books were written
there were not other books written, and so by just reading these five books you
never tell in what spirit they should be taken.
But beginning in the book of Joshua you being to have something
different because in Joshua’s day he’s looking back to an already completed
section of Scripture and his attitude toward that completed section of
Scripture should be your attitude to the complete canon of Scripture that you
hold in your lap. This is given in verse
6 as absolutely authoritative.
Now obviously one would ask how are these people, who are going to
experience future revelation down through history, how are they going to test
this revelation against the Scriptures?
In other words, you have this problem; you’ve got what we call a Mosaic
base, so that the entire theology of the Old Testament must be Mosaic, and yet
we know that Moses did not give them a complete revelation. This revelation would have to be added
to. How, however, would the citizens of
the nation and their leaders discriminate between false additions to the canon
of Scripture and true additions to the canon of Scripture? They were to use two tests; these two tests
were given them by Moses and this is what is included in verse 6, when Joshua
says “be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in
the book of the Law of Moses,” part of what is written is about that which is
not written, and so when they are to be obedient to the Law of Moses they are
to be obedient, not just to the revelation that was specifically given to them
in Moses, that limited book, they are to be obedient to Moses’ revelation which
will act as a yardstick to measure future revelation.
Now you say well I’m not interested in this. Well, you’d better be because there are about
The second cult that we have today, also the same kind of thing, are the
Mormons. The Mormons believe that the Book of Mormon, plus The
Deut. 13, “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams,
and gives you a sign or a wonder, [2] And the sign or wonder come to pass,”
stop right there, here we have a test applied to miracles. Please notice this. Miracles are done and not
necessarily proof of the activity of the Holy Spirit. The believers are very susceptible to this
attack; the reason is that it’s like a boxer that gets off center; he’s backed
against the ropes and he sees a place to go and he lunges for it, and we as
Christians are being attacked by materialism and anti-supernaturalism, so the
moment somebody comes along with supernaturalism or a miracle the natural
tendency is to lower your guard and say whew, at least we don’t have
naturalism. And then you start moving
toward it until you realize that this isn’t of God. So you don’t leap at somebody who has
miraculous claims. Joseph Smith had
golden plates and then he lost his eye glasses that he used to translate them
with and we go through all of this and this is supposed to be a miracle,
etc. It very well may be a miracle; you
do not have to deny the existence of a miracle in one of these cults to refute
the cult. That’s something that few
people realize; you’re not obligated as a Christian to say that’s not a
miracle, of course it may be a miracle.
The question is what’s the source of the miracle, that’s the issue.
And right here he’s saying a prophet or a dreamed, and the sign or the
wonder does come to pass, so it is a bona
fide miracle; notice that, bona fide
miracle. But this feature would alone,
with the miracle, add teaching, “whereof he spoke unto thee, saying, Let us go
after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them.” Now this does not mean, as I was careful to
say when we went through Deuteronomy this quote, where you see “Let” and it
goes on down to the last word, “them,” that should be in quotation marks. That is not necessarily a direct quote of the
false teacher. This does not mean, for
example, a teacher is going to come in, he does a miracle, he says hey, let’s
go after other gods. It doesn’t mean
that he’s that obvious. And you can check
this out by looking out in your concordance and testing how this vocabulary is
used in the other books of the Old Testament, and you’ll quickly find that’s
not true at all. Many of these false
prophets would come along and they would have a miracle and they would say oh,
we follow Jehovah, we follow Jehovah, we follow Jehovah and Jeremiah said you
don’t follow Jehovah, you’re liars, and many of the prophets would say
this. They claimed to follow Jehovah but
they weren’t following Jehovah. So with
that little statement at the end of verse 2, “Let us go after other gods” means
in effect… in effect! In other words,
maybe not in the actual surface claim but in the effect they would tear one
away from the only God who is there.
And the instructions to believers in that day and the instructions to
you today is found in verse 3. “You
shall not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams;
for the LORD your God tests you, to know whether you love the LORD your God
with all your heart and with all your soul.”
Verse 5, “And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to
death, [because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of
bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to
walk in. So shall thou put the evil away
from the midst of thee.”]
In other words, the test of Deut. 13 is based on the content of the
man’s doctrine. So this becomes a
doctrinal test. But what is the canon to
control the doctrine. If you’re going to
say look, I’m going to make you a doctrine, what are you going to make it with. The answer is you measure it by Moses. Moses, the first five books of the Scripture
form the yardstick for the rest of the entire Old Testament. Everything has to be measured against
Moses. Now this explains why Jesus had
so many arguments with people in His day.
Remember the debates with the Pharisees; what was the debate over? Whether Jesus’ teachings fitted that of Moses
or not, and you recall that Jesus never said oh well, it’s not important. Jesus always said yes, My teachings do fit
that of Moses. And Jesus always answered
any critic, He didn’t go around and say well, just believe in your heart that
I’m the Lord, etc. Jesus always took
them back and defended the fact that His teachings were compatible with
Moses. There was no, in other words,
logical conflict between Moses and Him.
So this is the canon of Scripture test that we apply today to identify
false cults. Does the content of their
teachings match the content of the Bible; that’s it! And not some verses of proof text, but the
overall great system that the Bible lays forth with a Triune God. You master one principle, you don’t have to
take… people often come to me and they say pastor, I can’t possible spend all
the time necessary to study this cult and that cult and 85 other different
cults. That’s true, you can’t; I can’t
either. And I don’t waste my time but do
you know how I spot them? It’s simple,
master one test, the test of the Trinity.
If the cult denies the Trinity they’re apostate; if the cult accepts the
Trinity they may be apostate in some other area but at least they’re close
enough so that I can put them on the back burner for a while. So the Trinity becomes the crucial test and
you will notice, of course, that every one of the cults I mentioned earlier
deny the Trinity; every one of them denies the Trinity.
So this the logical test and Joshua would refer the national leaders to
this test; they have an authority that cannot be logically contradicted. In other words, there is going to be a
logical continuity. Now you have seen
something of this in the past of American history when we used to have respect
for the United States Constitution. We
no longer have, thanks to the various areas of jurisprudence and law practice,
but we used to have the idea that the Constitution was authoritative and as
long as we had that idea we were protected, because the United States Constitution
is built on Biblical principles, one of the few political documents in the
world that is structured on principles drawn from the Old Testament. Nevertheless, we have dumped this and so
we’re walking abound, nobody knows where we’re going. Of course not, there’s no authoritative
backbone on which to measure the course and Joshua is saying to the national
leaders of his day and the parliament of his day don’t let this happen to you;
you’ve got a logical authority, keep it and apply it to everything else. God will guide you, God will give you added
revelation but God will never contradict His past revelation. So you can authoritatively proclaim; it puts
you in a tremendous position because you can authoritatively pronounce this is
anathema, it is cursed because it violates the doctrines of Scripture.
That’s one test they had. And by
the way, this test would go to the modern tongues movement; the modern tongues
movement is false right under the same category. The modern tongues movement is a satanic
counterfeit to the first century tongues movement that was bona fide under the days of the apostles. That tongue movement died out by the time the
epistle to the Hebrews was written, based on the third and fourth verses of
Hebrews 2 and there are no supernatural signs that proceed or follow that
writing of the epistle to the Hebrews which was before 70 AD and these things
phased out gradually as the canon of the New Testament was completed. Today the modern tongues movement is an
emotional ecstatic kind of thing, in many cases it is absolutely satanic in
some areas and in other areas the modern tongues movement is simply a
psychological and a static counterfeit.
One of the tip-offs that it’s phony from the beginning is the fact that
the tongues movement is manifest in all non-Christian religions. You can go to cults and they speak in
tongues, you can go to the various tribes in India and they speak in tongues. If it’s an actual Holy Spirit gift it’s
strange He’s been giving it around to every other religion. We have Protestants by the thousands today
that are swallowing the charismatic movement hook, line and sinker and the
Catholics are too. Now either God has
suddenly lost His omniscience and His logic or somebody is radically
misinterpreting certain phenomenon.
We’re not denying that people are having experiences but that’s their
reaction against the dead orthodoxy and against the ritualism of the early
parts of this century. But just because
it’s a reaction against a bona fide
evil doesn’t mean you have to throw the baby out with the bath water. So be careful of the tongues movement; that
falls under the condemnation of Deut. 13.
Deut. 18 is the second test that would be given to the people of the
nation Israel. Remember again, Joshua’s
commanding the leaders of the nation have discernment. Can’t you just imagine the pressure some of
these leaders would be under, compromising their stand and saying look, you’ve
got to be open-minded, there’s no such thing as an absolute. But in Deut. 18:10-12, warning the leaders to
stay away from spiritism, and of course we have people in Washington DC by the
score who are actively consulting mediums, etc.
Nobody has the guts to call some of these ladies that are running this
country through their medium-ship, etc. witches, but that’s what they are. Deut. 18 tells the nations to steer away
from such spiritist teachers.
But in verse 20, the test is given for a real prophet, “But the prophet,
who shall presume to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to
speak, or who shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall
die.” Now obviously there’s a
question. [21] “And if thou say in thine
heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?” Notice the
negative nature of the test. [22] “When
a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to
pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken, but the prophet has
spoken it presumptuously….” Notice that
both Deut. 13 and 18 are what we call negative tests. Now you be careful of this because you can
apply these things the wrong way; they only work to disprove but they do not
prove.
They only work to disprove, not prove!
Deut. 13, this man may make a miracle and he may be a phony and you
can’t tell he’s a phony until he trips up in this teaching somewhere along the
line and then you know this thing goes with it.
Like the tongues movement, everybody in the tongues movement usually has
some distorted view of spiritual gifts, usually has a wrong priority of 1 Cor.
12-14, people associated with the tongues movement are always emphasizing
post-salvation experience when everything has been given to them at the moment
of salvation, etc. So you see this
constant thing where everywhere you see the modern charismatic movement you see
false doctrine. Well after a while you
begin to [can’t understand word], this can’t be the movement of the Holy Spirit
or there wouldn’t be this continual relationship with false doctrine.
It’s the same thing here in Deut. 18 where we have a prophet make a
prediction and it does not come to pass.
Remember, this prediction could possibly come to pass but that wouldn’t
prove he’s from God yet. But if it
doesn’t come to pass, then you’ve got something to hang on. This hangs Jean Dixon; in her book it says
Jean Dixon’s prophecies are right 95% of the time; well, it’s the 5% that hangs
her because if she had the gift of prophecy she would be right 100% of the
time. God isn’t right 95% of the time;
it’s a smear on God. It’s also a smear
on God to call that woman’s gift the gift of prophecy. It may be a gift of prophecy but that’s
confusing a gift given by the Holy Spirit to believers with a satanic
counterfeit, so it’s blasphemous, even the title of the book. So we have these two tests given to the
national leadership of the nation Israel.
Now let’s go back to Joshua 23.
And notice one other thing about this and this command, and the command
is that you will keep everything that is in the book of Moses. That little expression you see at the end is
a Hebrew idiom which means to follow exactly, “that ye turn not aside therefrom
to the right hand or to the left.” Now
watch this because some people belong to various congregations that are
compromising the doctrine of inerrancy.
We’ve got Christians walking around this country that are re-thinking
the doctrine of inspiration, such as Fuller Seminary, etc. Now you see Christians re-thinking the
doctrine of inspiration you are seeing apostasy developing. One of the greatest papers on inerrancy was
written by Dr. John Warwick Montgomery in which he showed that you have to have
an inerrant inspiration or no inspiration; it’s one or the other. And you can’t have something, this book has
errors in it but it’s inspired errors and all.
It doesn’t work that way. You
only have one kind of inspiration—inerrant, and that means inerrant in all
areas, history, science, and every other area.
When you hear believers or non-Christians begin to question whether
there are errors in the Word, whether perhaps the Bible is authoritative in the
area of religious ideas but not in the area of history or science, you are
listening to an apostate. The only doctrine
that is acceptable in the doctrine of inspiration is an inerrant
inspiration. Remember that because we
have a lot of compromising going on today on this very point.
So to keep from turning “to the right or to the left” follows out the
idea that these writings were absolutely authoritative in all areas. You say how does that prove inerrancy? I’ll show you how it proves inerrancy. In Gen. 10-11 there is a guide to every major
nation. You have all the people
descending from Ham, Shem and Japheth.
Now if God is going to condemn all of the Canaanites, (the Canaanites
are a branch of the Hamites), you have the Canaanite boundaries established for
you in the historical documents of chapters 10-11. Now if those historical documents are errant,
and have errors in them, then how are you going to follow God’s admonition to
wipe out all Canaanites? Where are you
going to tell where the Canaanite’s from?
So you see, you can’t follow out the commands of Scripture until you
have an absolutely inerrant historical text.
A person studying geology or biology is not adhering to the doctrine of
inerrancy when they begin to find evolution in Genesis. We believe there is flexibility up to the
limits of the original language, but you can’t go beyond those limits. But we have many Christians who do, who in
effect in their academics are following an errancy concept of inspiration and,
of course, that is apostasy. And they’re
going to be in trouble in logical grounds once you move in that direction. I think that’s enough to review what Joshua
said to the national leaders.
Now in chapter 24 he deals with the citizens as a whole. This chapter begins in verse 1 where the
congregation has been assembled, not in Gilgal, nor in Shiloh, but in a place
called Shechem. Now this is interesting
because here’s a map of the nation Israel.
Gilgal is located there; it was the military base camp. This pictures our regeneration, when the
nation went across they had to drop stones in the water, they had to pull
stones up, the concept that now they entered the land, this was the boundary,
they have moved across that boundary, they were now in the Promised Land. So they became a new nation and Gilgal means
“to roll” in the Hebrew. And it was
there where the nation was circumcised and God finally removed all visages of
discipline from the 40 years wandering.
So Gilgal then becomes the point of regeneration as far as we are
concerned.
Shiloh, located west of this point, was the place where the ark of God
was. This is where chapter 23 occurred,
at Shiloh, where the presence of God is, which would correspond in the Church
Age to the indwelling Holy Spirit in our souls.
And then Shechem is up here.
Where have we met Shechem before?
Here’s the big question—why is chapter 24 at Shechem and not at Shiloh
where the congregation, the tabernacle was and the nation always used to gather
together. Why at Shechem. We have to go back to the history of Israel
to see why Shechem was chosen. Turn back
to Gen. 12:6-7. While Abraham was
receiving the covenant given in his name, it says he “passed through the land
unto the place of Shechem, unto the plain [oak] of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. [7]
And the LORD appeared unto Abraham, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this
land: and there built he altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.” So Shechem has a tremendous point as far as
the historical memory of the nation Israel because it was here that the
Abrahamic Covenant was given. And it was
that at that exact geographical location that something happened. Now keep in mind we have to have an exact
geographical location for a point we’ll make in a few minutes.
Now turn to Gen. 33:19, “And he bought a portion of a field, where he
had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for
an hundred pieces of money. [2] And he erected there an altar….” Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, buys a
parcel of a field at the place of Shechem.
Actually Shechem here is a man’s name.
And he bought this field, so that in Gen. 34:25 a very interesting
incident occurs. Remember when I dealt
with the different tribes we went into the Simeon-Levi incident, where their
sister was raped by one of these people, so they got kind of irritated at this
and so they went in there and they slaughtered every man that lived in the
village and they said if you’re going to treat our girls this way, that’s the
way we treat you. And that was Levi and
Simeon and we went into the result in history from this particular thing.
But this occurred right at Shechem, and so in chapter 35 beginning at
verse 1, “And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and
make there an altar unto the God….” But
verse 2, before Jacob leaves Shechem he does something. “Then Jacob said unto
his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange [foreign]
gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments. [3] And let us
arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who
answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I
went.” In verse 4, “And they gave unto
Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings
which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.” In other words, this is a sight not only
where the Abrahamic Covenant was made, it was the garbage dump of
idolatry. In other words, when they
wanted to get rid of all their garbage they dumped it at Shechem. Now Joshua is going to ask the nation to do
the same thing and he’s going to fail.
In Joshua 24 Joshua is going to try to get the nation repeat what Jacob
did there. Jacob asked his household,
come on, I know you’ve got foreign gods in your tents, now you bring them out
here and dump them, we’re going to have a good trash burning ceremony and it’s
going to be an idol burning ceremony, we’ll all pile our idols up here and burn
them and bury them, bury the wooden ones, bury the metal ones. And Joshua was going to try this, but we’ll
find out to no success.
Turning back to Joshua 24, Joshua addresses the nation, verses
2-15. Now we make one comment in this
address, we’re not going to go through all the details of the address because
we don’t have time but I want to point out something. I want you to notice what Joshua is doing
here and what is very rarely done in modern evangelism. And yet what Joshua is doing in this address
is what every New Testament believer did in the book of Acts. This is what all the great apostolic sermons
used, the same technique of address that Joshua used and there is a reason for
it. And yet today very, very rarely will
you ever hear evangelism conducted on this level and on this plain. Notice that from verse 2, the last part, all
the way down through verse 13 Joshua is recounting one historical event after
another. To get the flavor of this let’s
read it, beginning at verse 2 thru 13.
[2, “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of
Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the river of old, even Terah,
the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods. [3]
And I took your father, Abraham, from the other side of the river, and led him
throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.
[4] And I gave unto Isaac, Jacob and Esau.
And I gave unto Esau, Mount Seir, to possess it; but Jacob and his child
rend went down into Egypt. [5] I sent Moses also, and Aaron, and I plagued
Egypt, according to that which I did among them; and afterward I brought you
out. [6] And I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and ye came unto the sea, and
the Egyptians pursued after your fathers with chariots and horsemen unto the
Red Sea. [7] And when they cried unto the LORD, he put darkness between you and
the Egyptians, and brought the sea upon them, and covered them, and your eyes
have seen what I have done in Egypt; and ye dwelt in the wilderness a long
season. [8] And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, who dwelt on the
other side of the Jordan, and they fought with you; and I gave them into your
hand, that ye might possess their land; and I destroyed them from before you.
[9] Then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and warred against
Israel, and sent and called Balaam, the son of Beor, to curse you. [10] But I
would not hearken unto Balaam; therefore he blessed you still. So I delivered you out of his hand. [11] And
ye went over the Jordan, and came unto Jericho; and the men of Jericho fought
against you, the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, and the
Hittites, and the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I delivered
them into your hand. [12] And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them
out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; but not with thy sword
nor with thy bow. [13] And I have given you a land for which ye did not labor,
and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and olive
yards which ye planted not do ye eat.
What is the emphasis here? Remember,
this is the man’s final last will and testament; it is going to wind up in a
tremendous evangelistic appeal at the end of this thing but I want you to
notice how he introduces it. He
introduces it by giving them a history lesson; of all of the dry ways of trying
to get someone to commit their lives to Jesus Christ to give them a lesson in
history. Now why do you suppose
this? Let me show you that it’s not
unique with this passage. Turn back to
Deuteronomy. Look at Moses, Deut. 1:6,
“The LORD our God spoke unto us in Horeb, saying, You have dwelt long enough in
this mount;” that’s history. In verse
22, “And you came near unto me, every one of you, and said, We will send men
before us,” that’s a historical incident.
Look at 2:1, “Then we turned and took our journey into the wilderness by
the way of the Red Sea,” that’s history.
Verses 26, “And I sent messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth unto
Sihon, king of Heshbon, with words of peace,” that’s history. Look at 3:1, “Then we turned, and went up the
way to Bashan, and Og, the king of Bashan, came out against us, he and all his
people, to battle,” that’s history.
Verse 18, “And I commanded you at that time, saying, The LORD your God
has given you this land to possess it,” that’s a relation of the historical
narrative, historical incident.
And then in 4:1 what does Moses do?
“Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the
ordinances, which I teach you….” Do you
notice the trend? First a history
lesson, then the admonition.
To see that that’s not just Old Testament but also New Testament turn to
Acts 2:14. The Holy Spirit fell on the
apostles on the day of Pentecost, and only the apostle, this business about the
Holy Spirit came on all believers is refuted right here in verse 14-15, “But
Peter, standing up with the eleven,” who are the eleven? The apostles; and he
“lifted up his voice, and said unto them,” those are the people listening, “Ye
men of Judea, and all that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken
to my words. [15] For these,” who are “these?”
The nearest noun, what’s the antecedent of “these?” The eleven, the apostles; these apostles “are
not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the cay. [16] But
this is that which was spoken through the prophet, Joel.” Only twelve men were filled with the Holy
Spirit on the day of Pentecost and they were to act… obvious all the believers
were filled with the Holy Spirit but this business of the tongues in a
spectacular way was given apparently only to the apostles because the apostles
and the apostles alone were given through the book of Acts the authority to
give the Holy Spirit. Believers did not
pass the Holy Spirit from one to the other by laying on of hands; only apostles
did. Philip, the evangelist, remember
when he went in he witnessed to believers; he couldn’t give them the Holy
Spirit, it had to be the apostles. This
is an apostolic possession, this spectacular gift. These people that are claiming a repeat
Pentecost actually have the gall to impersonate the apostles; this is a pseudo
apostolate type thing that’s operating today.
But nevertheless, Peter stands up with the eleven, and he says these
eleven men, who are speaking in foreign languages “are not drunk, as you suppose,
seeing it is but the third hour of the day.”
See, it shows a little background of Peter. He knew when you could get drunk and when you
couldn’t, don’t think a guy operating in the fish business lived a sheltered
life; Peter knew exactly… and it’s kind of a humorous barb, he says you guys
ought to know better, you’ve familiar enough with liquor, it’s only nine
o’clock in the morning, how are these people going to be stoned already, they
just crawled out of the sack; it’s impossible for them to drink enough liquor
from the time they got out of bed to nine o’clock to be bombed. So he said there’s something wrong, so that
explanation is out.
And then he goes on, verse 17, “And it shall come to pass in the last
days, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh,” he relates a
historical prophecy from Joel, and in verse 22 he gives the history of Jesus of
Nazareth; and in verse 25 he gives a prophecy of David. Then he shows how this is fulfilled in the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Then he concludes in
verse 36, “Therefore, let all the house of Israel know” and he issues his
evangelistic invitation after giving them a history lesson in the life of Jesus
of Nazareth.
Also notice Acts 7, the great address by Stephen. What does the address
of Stephen consist of? Fifty verses of
history and then the evangelistic appeal is given, verse 2, “Men, brethren, and
fathers, hearken: The God of glory appeared unto our father, Abraham, when he
was in Mesopotamia,” in verse 3 he goes on and he describes in detail
Abraham. Verse 8 he starts talking about
Jacob; verse 11 he deals with why they went to Egypt; verse 13 he starts
dealing with Joseph; verse 20 he starts dealing with Moses, verse 22 Moses’
education, he deals in detail with the whole Mosaic incident. And then he goes on and deals with further
things, in verse 45 he deals with David; in verse 46 he deals with Solomon; in
verse 47 the temple, and then in verse 51 he concludes, “You stiff-necked and
uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your
fathers did, so do you.” Then he applies
it, but notice he’s given history, history, history as background and then he
drills them with the sword. But he holds
back that final thrust until he has built history, history, history and then he
makes his thrust.
Notice again in Acts 13:16, here’s Paul; we’ve seen Peter, we’ve seen
Stephen, now we see Paul, Paul does the same thing. “Then Paul stood, and beckoning with his hand
said, Men of Israel, and you that fear God, listen.” Now here is a case in point, Acts 13 is very
important because this chapter shows you how the early Christians evangelized
their generation. Chapter 13 is a report
from on the scene of how evangelism was done, and Paul walked into the
synagogue because it was an open door; he went to the synagogue because he had
a cluster of non-Christian, in order to win non-Christians you have to go to
them. You don’t win non-Christians by
inviting them to church. That is a sick
way of asking someone to trust the Lord, to invite them to church. That’s the last thing any non-Christian wants
to do is to be invited to church. You
don’t win non-Christian by inviting them to church. You win them on their ground and then you
bring them to church. This is why I do
not give an invitation for everybody to trip down the aisle. Evangelism is to be conducted outside the
local church. The witnessing is done by
individual Christians in their spheres of responsibility.
So in Acts 13 Paul goes into a synagogue and then he commands them to
give audience, and in verse 17 what does he start with? History; and in verse 18, forty years; verse
19, seven nations in the land of Canaan; verse 21 he deals with Saul; verse 22
he deals with David; verse 24 John the Baptist and then Jesus, then he gives
his evangelistic invitation. Now do you
get the impression that it is the normative thing to do to build history into
the mentality of the non-Christian first?
Why do you suppose this is so?
Why is it that everywhere we read in Scripture, everywhere we read in
Scripture, where the non-Christian is being addressed he is first given
historical material?
There are several reasons for this; the first one is that faith in the
Bible must always be grounded on objective historical data. In the Framework course, one of the questions
I asked, “What is wrong with the following statement? Jesus Christ lives today and I know it
because He lives in my heart.” Remember
I said that by itself is nothing unless you can give objective historical
material. How do you know it’s Jesus
that lives in your heart and not just a gastric disturbance? How do you know the difference? That’s not a pleasant question, how DO you
know the difference between Jesus living in your heart and something else. How do you know the difference? Unless you know the word [he writes a word on
the board]and you know what that word means and guess what, you can’t know what
that word means if you don’t know the facts of history. Now this is what’s all wrong with
evangelism. Some nut was down on the
Texas beaches last spring and he had the Jesus cheer, Give me a “J”, give me an
“E” and they went through J-E-S-U-S, and who can make you higher than booze,
Jesus; who can make you higher than LSD Jesus, and all the rest and then will
you accept Jesus. That’s ridiculous and
yet one of the leading denominations thought that was the greatest breakthrough
in evangelism in the last ten years. If
you have a kid out here on dope and he comes to me and you say hey, try Jesus,
you’ve tried girls, you’ve tried everything else, try Jesus, He makes you
higher. What’s that going to
communicate? The incarnate Savior? How He died on the cross by substitutionary
atonement for my moral guilt because I’m created in the image of God and I’ve
sinned. Is that what that word
communicates to him? It does not. The only thing giving some Jesus cheer
communicates is I have to have an emotional jag and I’m going to trot down the
aisle and kiss everybody’s feet just to get high
This is the principle and it’s being violated left and right and it’s
going to result in some very tragic things; I’ve already run across some of
these tragic things. I have run across
students who have had this approach on them and you can’t get within 30 feet of
them with the gospel after something like that because they’ve gone through
this thing and they’ve found out it’s phony; now what do you do. Now the word “Jesus” has been brought into
disrepute and now just try and win them to Christ. Now you’ve got people turned off because
they’ve got the complete wrong attitude toward this. So if you want to err on the safe side in
your evangelism and witnessing, give more facts than are necessary, not
less. Never, never, never, never
apologize for taking your time and giving content, content, content, content
and more content. One of the most
successful missionaries in the United States 20 years ago was a man by the name
of Cooper. Dr. Cooper wrote a series of
books that are unparalleled, The
Messianic Series. Dr. Cooper wrote
these to win Jews to Jesus Christ. If
you summed up the number of pages in The
Messianic Series it would amount to some 1500 pages of material, and Dr.
Cooper won many Jews to Jesus Christ because he had them read every one of the
1500 pages before they became Christians.
Now when he had a person won to Christ he had somebody won to Christ and
they knew why they had trusted in Jesus Christ because they had objective
historical data. Sure it took time,
sometimes it took years to win someone to Jesus Christ this way but when that
person was won to Christ you had a solid convert; that person was grounded on
historical facts.
New Testament and Old Testament alike give this always; you can’t assume
somebody knows what you mean because you use the word G-o-d and you use the
word s-i-n, how do you know the person knows what you think by this word. That’s one thing I noticed in the Framework
course, so many of you when I asked a question, immediately you started quoting
Bible verses. There is nothing wrong
with quoting Bible verses, in fact we have to, that’s our reference, but the
point many of you failed to see was that you can’t assume the person to whom
you are talking understands the words.
You at least should make a check and find out what do they mean by
G-o-d,
s-i-n and a few other things, and until you know that, you’re not
communicating. You’ve got to know what
they mean by it. I can tell by the
reaction of the suffering when I teach Rom. 8, people walk out and say for the
first time I understand what grace is, I really understand what grace is, when
I compare suffering and I realize that every member of the human race because
of the fall is entitled on just grounds to all sorts of defects, cataclysms and
everything else as a result of the fall and we don’t get it because of grace,
now I understand what grace is. And yet,
for years and years they’ve sang “grace is greater than our all our sins” and
all the rest of it and never understood what the word “grace” means. This is my argument as to why Christianity is
immobile today in large degrees; it is not due to the lack of gimmicks. We have more gimmicks and PR things today
than any other age in history.
We’re filled with this kind of junk and people don’t come. Do you know why? Because they have no content and your faith
is in direct proportion, remember this bottom circle I’ve drawn, content, your
faith cannot be bigger than the content of truth that you know. That’s it.
You can say I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe
and go through all this emotional stuff, and have the deeper life ecstatic
experience, etc. and walk out and be a failure.
Why? Because your faith cannot be
bigger than the content. You might have
a lot of emotions that overlap and you might feel like you believe, but you do
not have Biblical faith beyond the domain and boundary of your content. Your faith is only out to the boundary of the
content. So this is why in every one of
these messages these men give material.
Let’s go back to Joshua and see some of the material that he gave his
generation before he died. He was not
afraid of giving content. There’s one
thing when we get the Sunday school started there’s going to be some history;
we have to develop a core of historical knowledge. If you notice carefully this is why baptism
and communion are repeated. Did it every
dawn on you why the Lord gave us baptism and communion? Do you ever notice when we have communion we
read 1 Cor. 11 or Matt. 26 or one of the passages, and what does Jesus say, “Do
this in remembrance of Me.” In other words, Jesus is interested in
developing a historical memory. Why?
Because you’ve got to have facts and where are facts found? Facts are only found in history; facts are in
the real world through time and this means all facts are encased in history so
you have to know history and so Joshua is going to give them a history lesson
before he dies.
Verse 2, “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God
of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the River of old, even
Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father or Nahor; and the served other
gods.” We haven’t got time to go through
all the detail of this chapter; I’m just going to bring out some of the
highlights. The first highlight to bring
out is Abraham’s monotheistic revolt.
This happened around the year 2000 BC and represented one of the
greatest intellectual breakthroughs the human race has ever seen, for up until
this time there had never been the concept of monotheism developed in such
rigor as began in the second millennium, with Abraham. No person by that time, after Noah, had held
to a strict monotheistic concept. Of
course, Noah did, but in the ensuing years between the flood and the time of
Abraham the world culture had deteriorated to the point where if you had taken
a survey throughout all the great culture, all the religion and philosophy that
was being developed under the thought of the Hamites, such as in Sumer, such as
in Egypt, etc. you would not have run across any monotheism. You would have run across instead a concept
of thinking that is quite foreign to our western minds but which we call
mythopoeic, or if you want to write it easily, mythical; mythical
thinking.
Mythical thinking is still done by many primitive tribes; mythical
thinking is characteristic of one-third of the human race, the Hamitic
third. And the mythical thinking goes
this way: mythical thinking always has a deification of nature. And you always, somewhere in these nature
myths, always have this kind of picture; the universe is nature and you have
man trapped inside nature; nature become God, so we have nature forces, such as
the air, such as the sun, such as the moon; nature forces or nature objects that
become gods, showing that has happened in mythical thought is the deification
of the natural area of the universe.
This is typical of mythical thought that prevailed up until the time it
was given a tremendous crushing blow in history by the culture of Israel. Israel, this little nation Israel, was
responsible for destroying mythical type of thinking.
Now Israel performed one of the greatest intellectual contributions that
humanity has ever seen because by destroying mythical thought, or at least competing
with it, they gave rise to the early pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece who
developed about the time Israel went into captivity. And when this mythical thought was destroyed,
we had as it were, the lid pulled off the pot and once Israel was able to
destroy mythical thought, then and only then do we have modern thought begin
with the Greeks. The Greeks were totally
dependent on the crushing of mythical type thinking which was performed for 14
centuries by this one little nation through God’s revelation. We remember how Abraham was encased in
probably the Sumerian forms of polytheism; we had four chief gods, we had the
god Nammu who was primeval sea or chaos; we had the god An who was the male god
of heaven; we had the other god, Ki who was the female which was earth and we
had Enlil who was the storm god. These
were the four key gods of the Sumerian pantheon. Abraham undoubtedly was raised as a child in
all of this polytheism or deification of nature and nature forces. There are only two problems with this
mythopoeic thought. First of all you can
never get a sovereign God and second of all, evil is inherent. Only inside the Bible do you have the concept
of evil as acquired in the universe. I
can take you to some of these myths and show you how the gods themselves are
evil, and if the gods are evil what does that mean? Nature forces are evil; if nature forces are
evil what does that mean? Nature is evil; therefore the universe is inherently
evil. So in mythical type thinking we have no solution to the suffering
problem, you have no fall of man and therefore you cannot have any
substitutionary cross to remove it. So
you have all of this as just garbage, human viewpoint garbage that develops.
But keep in mind Abraham as a boy experienced all of this; he was
brainwashed, just like our children are being brainwashed by humanism in the
public school so Abraham was washed by the culture of his day. How did Abraham break out? Verse 2, “And I took your father, Abraham,
from the other side of the flood,” that’s the Euphrates River. I want you to notice something about this;
the only explanation for the monotheistic revolt in history is divine
intervention. We have, unfortunately in
the state of Texas, people who are proposing history books that make Abraham
out be a polytheist; a book by Roselle, World
History, A Cultural Approach. This
was a high school history book that was proposed in Austin. The tax payers were going to buy this book in
massive volumes to be used in the classroom.
And this book by Roselle took the position that Abraham was a polytheist
and that in fact monotheism was a slow gradual development. Aside from the obvious problem how you can
have a slow gradual development from polytheism to monotheism you have the
problem of the Abrahamic Covenant of Gen. 12:1-3.
And we found in the Framework course you have four gods, such as Nammu,
and En, Ki and Enlil and about 2,000 others, you have one very great problem:
how is one of these kind of gods ever going to make a promise like Gen. 12:1-3,
when it says, the Abrahamic Covenant says “I will” do such and such for you
forever. Now where are these gods in
this pantheon, they played musical chairs and they threw the dice in the morning
when they got up and they’d decide who’s going to rule today. So you’d have one ruling for a while and when
that went down then another god would get on the chair, and this is how they
played theological musical chairs. But
one problem with this is you never have your sovereignty located; where is your
sovereignty located and you’ve got to locate your sovereignty somewhere to make
the promise of Gen. 12:1-3. So we have
idiots writing these text books for public schools who are claiming that
Abraham was a polytheist. The three
leading scholars today all hold that Abraham was a monotheist. So not only is the book ridiculous on
Christian grounds, it’s outmoded as far as liberal grounds are concerned.
But in verse 3 this is the explanation the Bible gives, “I took your
father, Abraham, from the other side.”
So Joshua is relating this historical incident. In verse 5 notice he says, he quotes God as
saying “I plagued Egypt,” this is a concrete historical event. By the way, this event is to the Old Testament
what the resurrection is to the New Testament.
In verse 11 he deals with Jericho; in case after case, and verse 11 is a
summary of what happened in the wars of the conquest, notice particular the
things he mentioned. “And you went over
the Jordan, and came unto Jericho; and the men of Jericho fought against you …
and I delivered them into your hands.”
Let me recall three things from this conquest period that Joshua was
undoubtedly trying to get across here.
He says don’t you remember the idiotic ways the Lord had of conquering
those enemies. What did he tell you guys
to do around Jericho? Walk around the
city; that’s a real smart way to knock down a fortress, just take your armies
and march around. Sure, it develops the
staying power of your troops but it doesn’t do too much to the walls. Nevertheless, God said I want you to just
walk around, that’s all, just walk around the walls and the walls came tumbling
down. Again, why? To show that it was God that was doing the
doing and not man. Remember at Ai, what
did Joshua have to do? He had to hold
his staff up; if he put the staff down he lost, held the staff up and he
won. Why that, why that weird
cause/effect operating there? To show
that God is doing the doing and not man.
And you remember him talking to God about stopping the sun, etc. So that’s the point there.
Verse 12, talking about the “hornet,” this is a word which in the later
Hebrew lexicons means mass panic, it’s just an expression for the fact that as
a result of all these miraculous workings you had a massive panic. We saw mass panic at two points in the book
of Joshua: Rahab reported it in chapter 2 and also the Gibeonites in chapter
9. Notice the last part of verse 12,
“not with thy sword, nor with thy bow.”
Now they did use the sword and the bow but the point was that it was not
the sword and the bow that did the final doing, it was God’s grace.
In verse 13, a final point that Joshua is making. He said that when you study your history
carefully you should come to the conclusion that I do in verse 13, and the
conclusion that Joshua draws from this history lesson is grace. Joshua’s closing word is g-r-a-c-e, grace all
the way. Therefore he concludes his
history lesson by saying “I have given you a land for which you did not labor,
and cities which you did not build, and ye dwell in them; vineyards and olive
yards which you planted not and do eat.”
I gave those to you, so the emphasis is on grace.
Then in verses 14 and following he exhorts them to trust the Lord. “Now, therefore, fear the LORD, and serve him
in sincerity and in truth,” notice that, “in truth” that means content and know
something about the God that you serve, “and put away the gods which your
fathers served on the other side of the river, and in
Then he makes this famous statement, and later on he’s going to make the
same statement but notice how he builds up to it, about which one are you going
to serve, as for my house we will serve the Lord, the end of verse 15, “as for
me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua says take your pick, you’ve got volition, you’ve got human
responsibility, I’ve given you the facts and you know and you lived through
most of that history and most of those facts are available to you and the
choice is up to you. [“And if it seem
evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve,
whether the gods which your fathers
served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land ye dwell, but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”]
Verse 16, “And the people answered and said,” notice what he’s asked
them to do, he said in verse 14 “put away the gods” and that means they have
idols at that moment in their tents, and it means he is asking them to do a
check on exactly what Jacob asked his house to do and remember what Jacob did
in his day. They dropped the things and
they buried them, but not here, you don’t see one idol produced and so this is
going to draw forth a little comment half way down this chapter. And the people said, oh, “God forbid that we
should forsake the LORD, [to serve other gods.]” All the pious phony language, oh, we wouldn’t
imagine serving any other god except the Lord, oh, we love the Lord, you know
we love the Lord, and go through all this kind of stuff. And they don’t love the Lord. So in verse 19 Joshua calls their number and
he says, “And Joshua said unto the people, You cannot serve the LORD; for His
is an holy God, His is jealous God, he will not forgive your transgressions nor
your sins.” Now what does he say that
for? Because he knows they’ve got idols
in their tents and he knows what kind of a people it is that he’s talking to,
and he says you know what? You are all religious phonies. You’re phony, and you’re serving a jealous
God and you’re not going to be able to, the word here means you cannot, you do
not have the ability to serve the Lord.
And once again emphasis on grace; emphasis over and over on grace. You cannot serve the Lord, so therefore you
must emphasize grace.
[20, “If ye forsake the LORD, and serve foreign gods, then He will turn
and do you harm, and consume you, after He hath done you good. [21] And the people said unto Joshua, Nay;
but we will serve the LORD. [22] And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are
witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you the LORD, to serve
him. And they said, We are witnesses.
[23] Now, therefore, put away, said he, the foreign gods which are among you, and
incline your heart unto the LORD God of
Later on we read how in verses 29 and 33 both Joshua and the high
priest, Eleazar, died after this is given.
Now this is a fitting end to this book, it ends on a funeral, just as
Deuteronomy ended on a funeral. But this
funeral is a little different because instead of one man dying we have two men,
the team. We have Joshua and we have
Eleazar the high priest. Why do you
suppose they died together? Because
those two were the divinely appointed team that ruled the nation according to
Numbers 27:18 and following. Those two
men were to replace one man, Moses. Now
watch something, Moses is replaced by two men.
Who replaces these two men? Do
you read anywhere in chapter 24 of a successor being picked for Joshua? You don’t.
Do you know why? There isn’t any;
there is no office open after this point in Old Testament history. The next time this office of dictator of the
nation is opened it will be when Jesus Christ returns again. Even the kings did
not have the powers of Moses and Joshua, because Moses and Joshua had access to
God directly, the king did not. So you
do not have an office comparable to that of Moses and Joshua until the next
Joshua comes, and the word “Joshua” is equal to the word “Jesus.”
So when Jesus Christ comes then and only then will you have this office
reopened. And it teaches us a lesson
which we want to apply to the church, to us as believers. Temporary gifts were given to
Now we have one further section in the New Testament, Heb. 2:3, “How
shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first” I
want you to notice this because this
epistle was written late in the early church, and there’s a little remark here
that a lot of people never notice, it’s a very crucial remark. The man who wrote this epistle was a second
generation believer by this remark; “which at the first began to be spoken by
the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard them,” meaning that he
never heard the Lord Jesus Christ. But
he said this message began with Jesus and was confirmed by those who were
eyewitnesses. And that is a past tense,
meaning that the message that had begun with Jesus of Nazareth, was not
thoroughly finished in history; it had been totally confirmed and the work of confirmation
was finished.
Verse 4, “God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders,
and with diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own
will.” Verse 4 is a verse, a participial
phrase that must modify and be controlled by your main verb, which is found in
verse 3, so therefore if verse 3 is past tense, what does that tell you about
everything you read in verse 4? It’s
past tense. The sign gifts and the
confirmatory gifts were given in the apostolic generation and were
discontinued, discontinued, stopped,
there are no more apostolic sign gifts; it’s all over. Why you ask, why isn’t there a renewed
confirmation in every generation. Do you
know why? It’s a legal principle. You hold in your hand the document reported
from the scene, you don’t need to confirm eyewitness documents; you’ve got the
eyewitness documents in your hand. This
is the New Testament, eyewitness material and it doesn’t have to be reconfirmed
because it itself has a legal status as eyewitness historical objective
material. And as Horace Greenleaf, one
of the great lawyers of our nation wrote in his book, The Testimony of the Four Evangelists, this evidence, this
eyewitness material, will stand the laws of evidence in any court system in the
land because it is an eyewitness document and it must therefore obtain primacy
in its weight.
With our heads bowed…..