Joshua chapter 1. Heavenly Father, bless our study
this morning. May it do more than fill our minds with knowledge.
May it fill our hearts with love and with joy and with peace.
and all those other aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, as we
see in what is written here, the glory of the gospel that
you have put in place through giving your Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And it's in that name we pray,
amen. Now last week we It began an introduction to this
book, didn't get finished with these first two verses. There is a transition spoken
of right at the beginning of this book. It says, after the death of Moses,
the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun,
Moses' aide, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you and all
these people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land
I am about to give them, to the Israelites. Now, we noted last
week there is hardly a more important transition revealed in all the
scriptures than this transition here. the transition from Moses, or
the leadership of Moses, to the leadership of Joshua. Now, what
this pictures for us is the going from Old Covenant to New Covenant. And I put it in terms of Old
Covenant and New Covenant, I could just as well say law and gospel. But the problem with using the
word law is the scriptures mean different things by the word
law in different places. Sometimes when the word law is
used, all that is had in mind is the Ten Commandments. At other
times, it has in view the entire Old Covenant given to the Israelites
on Mount Sinai. Sometimes it refers to the first
five books of the Bible, and sometimes it refers to all of
what we call the Old Testament. Now, usually the context makes
it rather clear what it's speaking of. But I just want to be clear
that if I use the word law, here this morning, what I'm talking
about is that covenant of Sinai, the entirety of it, which would
include the Ten Commandments, all the social and civil laws,
and all the religious laws, because the scriptures never do treat
them as though those are different laws. It is all part and parcel
of the same covenant that God made with the Jews. Now, at this point in the history
of God's revelation of his gospel, and maybe that'd be a good point
to make here, when we read the Bible, what we're reading is
not a history of the world as such. I don't mean that it's
not historical, but fulfilling our historical curiosity, is
not what the Bible is about. Rather, it is a history of God's
revelation of his grace in Christ. And so when we're reading that,
we need to keep that in mind, because God didn't tell everything
at once. Adam and Eve sinned, he came
into the garden, he made them clothes out of the skins of animals,
which, as far as we know, would have been the first case of conscious
death, that beings that are aware of themselves and have a natural
fear of death, that'd be the first ones to ever die. And of
course, that pictured Christ, but when God made promise at
that point, it was a very general and unspecific promise, saying
that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.
And that was God's first revelation of how the salvation of His elect
would come to pass. But you don't get a lot from
that, do you? We can look back and we can see a lot in it, but
that's only because we've got the rest of the Bible to interpret
what the Lord meant by that. Hebrews says this, in times past
and in various ways, there were various times and various ways,
God spoke to the people through the prophets. But in these last
days, he has spoken to us in his son. And that, the coming
of Christ and what he said and did and accomplished, that's
God's final revelation. That finished God's process of revealing how
he would save his people from their sins. So now at this point
in this ongoing what in Bible school they refer to us as a
progressive revelation and that's what it is. From Genesis on it's
revealing more and more bit by bit until finally complete in
Christ. At this point what has happened is Moses has led the
people out of Egypt. They went across. If I remember
my chronology right, it took about two years for them to get
the law and do this, that, and the other. But about two years
after they left Egypt, they end up there at the Jordan River.
And it's time to go in. The Lord's promised to them.
They sent in 12 spies, I suppose one from each of the tribes.
Ten of those came back, and they said, yes, the land is just like
the Lord said it was, flowing with milk and honey, and they
had examples of the fruit of the land, and it was wonderful,
wonderful, and all that. All positive, and they said, but
there are giants in that land, and we're like grasshoppers in
their sight. We dare not go in. Ten out of the 12 said that.
Of those 12, only Joshua and Caleb said, no, the Lord promised
this to us. It doesn't matter that there's
giants in the land. He said he's gonna give it to
us, let's go in and take it. But the people listened to the
10. And they said, oh, we dare not go in. And so God swore in
his wrath, it says, they will by no means, they will not enter
my rest. And for the next 38 years, People
said they wandered in the wilderness. Well, they didn't wander, they
were following God's token presence there, the cloudy pillar and
the fiery pillar at night. They followed it around, and
when it stopped, they stopped. So they weren't just wandering
around aimlessly. Nonetheless, over that time period,
everyone who was age 20 and up at the rebellion at the River
Jordan, every one of them died. Not a one of them ever entered
God's rest. Now, of course, we're speaking
typically here. I'm not saying that out of all of those people
20 and over, there weren't any believers. Because, you know,
believers in God's grace, such as we are, they do some terribly
unbelieving things and have some terribly unbelieving thoughts.
That doesn't mean that all of those perished and went to hell.
They never were able to enter that promised land, which was
a picture of the eternal rest that we have in Christ. So it
serves as an illustration for us, but they never entered it.
Well, they're all dead now, and also Moses is dead. Now, Moses did not rebel there
at the River Jordan. Nonetheless, he's dead. And there's
an important lesson to be learned in that. And it's this transition
from the leadership of Moses to that of Joshua. Now remember,
the name Joshua is the same name that we find in the New Testament
as Jesus. So Joshua is obviously a picture
of our Lord Jesus. And what is being illustrated
here in these verses, and actually even beyond, but this transition
from Moses to the leadership of Joshua illustrates the fact
that believers in Christ, those who
are in Christ, are no longer under the jurisdiction of that
old covenant made at Sinai, that that old covenant at Sinai could
never lead them into the promised land. Can lead them to it, it'll
never lead them into it. Rather, only Joshua, Jesus, can
bring us in to that promised land. Now, it's important to
note that when these people balked at the promised land, you know,
a couple of years after they left Egypt, they lost their privilege
to go in, not because they had transgressed God's law, because
they had done that many times. And you know, our sin does not
keep us from entering God's promised rest. That's not the issue. It says in the book of Hebrews,
they entered not in because of unbelief. Unbelief. That's what kept them out. So we're talking here not about
this idea that it was sin or transgression of the law or the
old covenant that kept them out of the land of promise. It was
unbelief, and that is what has always barred people from entry
into the blessings of God. You say, Adam and Eve, well they
sinned and then they're kicked out of the garden. Yeah, but
why did they sin? Because they believed Satan instead of God,
that's why. Unbelief is at the root of all
sin. The book of Hebrews, which remember
that the book of Hebrews was written to Jews, written to Hebrews,
who were being tempted to go back to old covenant practices
in order to be relieved of the persecution they were suffering.
And what does he say to them? Be careful that there is not
in you an evil heart of what? Transgressions? No. We all got
that. An evil heart of unbelief. And then he defines unbelief,
or certainly what it results in, unbelief in departing from
the living God. You see, unbelief isn't just
a failure. to do what you should. Unbelief
is an outright departure from God. Now, we don't become unbelievers. We're born that way. But by the grace of God and through
the work of the Spirit of God, God's elect are made into believers. But it's unbelief that kept them
out. God's law of Sinai could only
get them to Jordan. It couldn't take them through
Jordan and into rest. They refused to enter. Now, why is it they could not
enter? Well, like we said, it's because
of unbelief. Also, there's something being
illustrated for us here, and that is, under the leadership
of Moses, they could not enter. You see, the first time they
got to Jordan, Moses was alive. Moses was in charge. And they couldn't go. Because Moses is representative
of the Old Covenant. He's the one to whom the Old
Covenant was given. The Old Covenant was mediated
to the people through him. And the Old Covenant can never
bring you into rest. The Old Covenant is not about
promises. It's about an agreement, a contract. If you do this, you will get
that. The Apostle Paul summarized the
covenant of the law of Sinai as do this, and live. And it says in the New Testament
that the law is not of faith. It's of works. And of course
it is, because again, it's a contract. The covenant of grace is a covenant
of promise, not agreements. You know, there are some, and
they put it this way, they say that there's a covenant of works
and a covenant of grace, and both the law and the gospel,
they're just different administrations of the covenant of grace. That's
not true. The covenant of the law, the
covenant of Sinai, is a covenant of works. And a covenant of works
can never bring you anything having to do with a simple promise.
You see, the promise predated Sinai. The promise, as it was,
at least as it's revealed in terms of the Jewish nation, the
promise was made to Abraham and to his seed. And Paul says in
Galatians, the law of Sinai, which came later, cannot change
what the promise says. And that's why we don't add law
to the gospel. We don't try to make a marriage,
as it were, or some kind of hybrid message out of the covenant
of Sinai and the covenant of Calvary. They're two different
covenants. founded on two different principles.
And the purpose of the Old Covenant is given to us, again in the
book of Revelation, excuse me, the book of Galatians, where
it says that the law was a schoolmaster, the King James puts it, but it
refers to someone within a household who is given the duty of taking
care of children. And part of it was giving them
instruction, part of that was just, you know, getting their,
you know, this is a wealthy household. In other words, this is a servant.
And you'll notice it says, after the death of Moses, the servant
of the Lord. The law, the Old Covenant was a servant charged
with instruction and taking care of the Jews, it says, unto Christ. In the Greek, that's technically
what it says. Nearly every translation will say it's a schoolmaster
to lead us to Christ. The word lead is not there. It's
the schoolmaster unto Christ, meaning it was the schoolmaster,
the caretaker, until Christ should appear. That's what it means.
And once Christ came and did what he did, The new covenant
was put in place, the book of Hebrews says, that now that something
new has come, that which is old is fading away and obsolete. and the concept of Christ's appearance,
and this is found again in the book of Galatians and again in
the book of Hebrews, in a household, the job of the pedagogue, and
that's actually what the Greek word is there, the job of the
pedagogue was done when they reached maturity. And maturity
is a picture of the full understanding of God's grace as revealed in
Christ. Once that's there, the job of the pedagogue is done. And when your job's done, you
quit. Now, this transition from the leadership
of Moses to that of Joshua, in this transition, we have a picture
of the truth that one cannot be under law and under grace
at the same time. Now, and this is true in virtually
every version of Christianity out there. There are many who try to say
that it's the law that keeps believers
from sinning, teaches them what sin is, and when they're talking
law, they're talking the Ten Commandments. But Paul said this. regarding the dominion of sin. He said, sin shall not have dominion
over you because you are not under law, you're under grace. So long as you are under the
law, sin does have dominion. Now understand, dominion does
not mean power. The Greek word there, well there's
different words for authority and power in Greek. Yes, the
sin in our flesh, it has a lot of power over us, doesn't it?
Makes us do things we really didn't want to do. So we're not
saying that sin does not have power. Sin no longer has authority
over us. In particular, sin no longer
has the authority to condemn us, to kill us, to bring us under
the wrath of God. It can't do it anymore. It's
lost that authority because it's the law that gives sin that authority. And now we're not under that
law. We're under grace. And so it says now that Moses
is dead, God speaks to Joshua. Note that God did not speak to
the people of Israel. He did not open the heavens and
say to them, Moses is dead, enter the land. Everything God has
to say to his people, he says to them through Jesus Christ. Now think on that a minute, because
it's true. Everything God has to say to us, he says to us through
our Joshua, Jesus Christ. I know that he spoke to the fathers
through the prophets, and yet when you Carefully read
the scriptures, you'll find out that when God spoke to the fathers
through the prophets, who was that speaking to the prophets?
It was the eternal word of God who later became flesh and dwelt
among us in the person of Christ. Even then, it was Jesus Christ
speaking to the prophets who spoke to the people. Only one
time do we ever read in the Bible of the Father speaking in an
all-audible fashion, I say two times, and once at his baptism
and once at his transfiguration. And he said the same thing both
times, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. That's
the whole message of the Father that he personally, as it were,
gave to the world. Everything else has come to us
through Jesus Christ. God spoke to Joshua. and told
him, said, Moses, my servant is dead. Now then you and all
these people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land
I am about to give them. Now the Lord told Joshua to get
ready to cross the Jordan. Now notice I mentioned just Joshua. He did say to Joshua, you and
all these people get ready to cross. But as I pointed out,
he only said that to Joshua. The reason being that he said
it only to Joshua is that it would be Joshua who prepared
the people to cross the Jordan. He would prepare himself for
it and then he would prepare the people. the Jordan is a picture of death. The Jordan River, you know, to
this day, we'll say, you know, we might say when someone dies,
well, he's crossed the Jordan. And that's true, because the
Jordan River is used in the scripture as a picture of death. And crossing
the Jordan is passing from death, the death of this natural existence,
and to the eternal life of the gospel blessings. Salvation, now, listen to this
little phrase, and then we'll explain it. Salvation is accomplished
by death. You know, it's interesting how
people will present the gospel, try to sell people on the gospel
if that's the right word. Well, sell, yeah, because a lot
of times they're presenting the gospel as though it's a product and
they're trying to get people to pay for it. And their attempts
at evangelism sound very much like a sales pitch. But they'll say things like,
this is a faith to live by. This is a faith to die by. In
the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, after talking about all these
people who had lived by faith, that is, in their lives, they
had believed, yet it says, these all died in faith. You see, the
flesh is concerned with this life. It doesn't know any other
life. Consequently, if you want to
attract people to your religion, say things to them that would
be attractive to the flesh. Death is not attractive to the
flesh, period. And if you describe salvation
in terms of death, it's just not going to appeal to them.
Look over at Colossians chapter 3, though. Now, when I say that salvation
is accomplished by death, I mean kind of two things. First of
all, it's the death of our Lord Jesus Christ that brought it
into being. But I also mean this, that God's
work of salvation is a work of killing us as we are. In chapter three, verse three
of Colossians, for you died. and your life is
now hidden with Christ in God. Yeah, you know, when a believer
dies, we often comfort ourselves with words like this, well, I'm
missing, but he's with the Lord. You know what Paul is saying?
For all intents and purposes, it's already done. We haven't
experienced yet, but it's an accomplishment from the perspective
of God. We died, and our life is where? It's hidden. We don't see it. We're not experiencing that life
we have in Christ. That is certainly not the fullness.
It's hidden with Christ in God. We're already with Him, and He's
with us. so far as God's perspective of
things is concerned. And therefore, we have died. Now, what does that mean? That
means all that pertains to our natural existence is dead in
the sight of God. Now, in the book of Romans, chapter
8, it says, I believe it's chapter 8, but it says, he that is dead
is freed from sin. Now, that word translated freed
in virtually every English translation, I think they must have done that
in order to show the outcome of what the word there really
is. The word translated freed at
that point is actually the word that's translated justified everywhere
else. He that is dead is justified
from all things. He's justified from sin. Why is that? Quick illustration. Man commits murder, gets convicted
of it, condemned to death for it. They put him to death. They bury him. He's justified from his sin.
They can't dig him up and kill him again. You may look at a historical
record about his life before he died and find in that that
he was a murderer, but he's not a murderer anymore. He's dead. Now imagine this. Three days
after they bury him. And I mean he's good and dead. You know it. There's no chance
that this guy's alive. The guy who keeps the cemetery
goes out there. And that grave's open. And there
standing at the head of that grave is the man they buried
three days previous. Can they take him back in there
and kill him again? No. And I'll show you why. Turn
to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Verse 17, therefore, 2 Corinthians
5, verse 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has
come. That scripture is normally taught
to mean that if you're a believer, then all your old desires are
gone. and that all your ways of thinking
are gone. If that's true, I don't know
anybody who's a believer. And I would certainly not be
one. You know, what I experienced, all the stuff that was ever there,
it's still there. They're not gone. Now some new
things have come, there's no question. But Paul is not talking
about something that happens to us in this present life, that
happens to us, that changes us. He's talking, they would say,
it's a construct. What he's saying is, if you're
in Christ, so far as God's concerned, you are not that person you were
before you were in Christ. You're a different person, and
all the things that applied to that person doesn't apply to
you. All that you were in Adam is
gone. All that's left is what you are
in Christ. Now you think of that a minute.
You say, that's not what I'm experiencing. That's irrelevant
to the point. There's a part of us still in
Adam. natural selves and it still acts like our father Adam did
but that whole man in Adam the old man he was put to death on
the cross because we died with Christ and the new man who has
been newly made because of the work of Christ what I am by grace
what I am in Christ. That's all that remains. I once
read a judge's, and I think it was, may have been a Supreme
Court justice writing an opinion, but it was to the nature of pardons
and what it means to be pardoned. If a person is pardoned of their
sins, and he went on and he said, if a man is pardoned, That for
which he has been pardoned is gone, as though it had never
been done. And he is given new capacities
by which that judgment liberties. I mean, he'd been in jail, now
he's set free. You know, before he couldn't, there were a lot
of things he couldn't do. Now he can, because he's been
pardoned. New capacities, new this, new that. And in the end
he said, it is as though for all intents and purposes, he
is a new man. He's not the man that the law
saw before the pardon. And you cannot bring upon this
pardoned man that which applied to him before the pardon. We
have died in Christ. We are pardoned. All that pertains
to our life in Adam is gone. All that's left is our life in
Christ, what we are in Christ. All old things have passed away. All things have become new. Under Moses, we're the old man. We can't be anything else, because
the law is a continual reminder of sin in Christ. We're brand new people. Even
though we look the same, act a whole lot the same, feel the
same, we're not that person anymore. Not in the sight of the law,
not in the sight of God, the judge of all. We are what we
are in Christ and we're nothing else. All right, we'll pick up
there next week.