Okay, Joshua chapter 23, please. You know, the more I study the
scriptures, the harder it is for me to fathom how anyone could
believe that they could do anything to deserve or merit the least
of God's mercies or favor. The Bible is so clear about who
does the sinning, that's you and I, and the Bible is so clear
about who does the saving. I was thinking today, back years
ago, it was kind of like watching those old 3D movies without 3D
glasses. You didn't do much good if you
didn't have the glasses. You don't have faith seeing sight,
you just won't see the depth of this gospel that we preach.
Joshua 23 verse one, 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 waxed old and stricken in age. And Joshua called for all Israel
and for their elders and for their heads and for their judges
and for their officers. And he said unto them, I am old
and stricken in age, and ye have seen all, you've seen all that
the Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of
you. For the Lord your God is he that
hath fought for you. Then in verse three, we find
that three word term here, that I just read, found four times
in the Bible, and all four occurrences are found in the book of Joshua.
That term is because of you. It's God who saves, we know that. It's the Lord who has fought
for you, we know that. Salvation is of the Lord. We
most definitely know that. Then why would these things be
attributed to us? Why does the Holy Spirit record
here in these verses because of you? Why did God have the
Holy Spirit write that in this book? He had Rahab to say it. He had the Gibeonites to say
it. And now Joshua, he uses to remind Israel that God's mercies,
God's deliverance, God's victories over their enemies was because
of them. Well, I can give you a short
answer, because it is. It's not because of anything
that Israel had done. It was not due to anything that
Israel themselves provided, but it had everything to do with
who provided it for them. And four times this term, because
of you, is recorded in the scripture and all used here in the book
of Joshua. First, Rahab said it. Look back
at Joshua chapter two. You can hold your place here.
We can easily get back to it. But in Joshua chapter two, In
verse nine, and she, Rahab, said unto the
men, the spies, I know that the Lord hath given you the land.
That's what Joshua just said in chapter 23. And that your
terror is fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the
land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord
dried up the water of the Red Sea for you. When you came out
of Egypt and what he did unto the two kings of the Amorites
that were on the other side of Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you
utterly destroyed. We know who did this, your God
did this. and He did it because of you.
And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts did melt,
and neither did there remain any more courage in any man because
of you. For the Lord your God, He is
God in heaven above and in earth beneath. Rahab said, the Lord
had given you the land. Jericho's my city, this is where
I was raised, this is where I live, but it don't belong to me. It
belongs to the Lord and to whosoever He'll give it. God has given it to you. We've
heard. We've heard how the Lord dried
up the Red Sea. We've heard how easily He destroyed
the army of Egypt. We've heard it all, and all the
inhabitants of this land, they faint. and their hearts melt
because of you, because of who you are and who your God is,
most importantly. Because of what the Lord has
done and is doing for you. So it has to be because of you.
Graham said, we've heard about the plagues in Egypt, and as
Gene said Sunday, the Lord sent those flies and those frogs and
those lice. Flies, frogs, and lice, oh my. Rahab said, we know God did it,
and He did it because of you. God utterly destroyed the two
kings on the other side of Jordan because of you. Rahab continues
in verse 11, says, now I see that the Lord your God, He is
God in heaven above, and He's God in earth beneath. He's the
one and only God. He's the only true God. There
is no other God. And this is why that our hearts
melted and our courage failed within us, because of you, because
of who your God is. In Ephesians chapter one, Paul
wrote, God has blessed us, every believing sinner, with all spiritual
blessings and heavenly places in Christ. Paul then went on to say there
in Ephesians 1, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of Him. The eyes of your understanding be
enlightened. It's God who gives light to see
Christ, that you may know what is the hope of His calling. And what is the riches of the
glory of His inheritance in the saints? And what is the exceeding
greatness of His power to us who believe according to the
working of His mighty power? which he wrought in Christ. He
worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him
in his own right hand in the heavenly places. Jesus Christ
is our light in our life. Oh, we say that, let it never
become just cliche. He really is our light in our
life. There is no light. There is no
life apart from him. Jesus Christ is the exceeding
greatness of God's power to us. Jesus Christ is our inheritance. All these things were wrought
and worked in Him. Far above all principality and
power, Paul added, and might and dominion, and every name
that is named, not only in this world, but also in the world
which is to come. And He hath put all things under
His feet. Not our feet. Our feet in Him,
yes. Because of you. And He gave Him
to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body,
the fullness of Him that filleth all and in all. Our union, our
oneness with Christ, who God had put all things under His
feet, being the head over all things, having the fullness of
God and His body fitting all and in all, that is the reason
He became all these things, because of you. What a blessed conjunction, that
word because. It means the reason that. It means the reason for, the
reason of. You know, you ask a child why
they did something, they answer, because. And you say, well, because
why? Well, just because. We do because
of sin, but God does because of love, and that's love for
His people, because of you, that's why. Any hope that we might have
is Christ in you, the hope of glory. The only hope I have is
that Christ is found in me. And in view of the fact, owing
to the fact that God chose the people before they were born,
before they did any good or evil, You know, that's the beautiful
thing about election. It's not just a doctrine that
we like to preach to make people upset. The doctrine of election
is about how God saved sinners. He chose them before the foundation
of the world. He gave them to Christ. Christ
made a covenant with His Father that He would put away every
single sin of theirs by the sacrifice of Himself. And you and I didn't
have a single thing to do with it. We weren't even born yet.
We hadn't done any good or evil. It's not just a doctrine, it's
the truth. It's the teaching of God to sinners. We know who does the saving.
God does. According to His choosing, according
to His determining, God loved some and He gave them to Christ. And on the grounds of doing so,
everything good that God does for you and everything good that
God does for me is because of you. Even though you did nothing,
You're the reason. Now, if we don't have anything
to glory in, and we don't, then we certainly haven't done anything. It'd be like someone giving me
credit for working on and building the Golden Gate Bridge. You know,
David, you really did a good job on Golden Gate Bridge. Well,
I didn't build Golden Gate Bridge. Why are you giving me any glory?
Even more so with the Gospel. Even more so with salvation.
I didn't do anything to deserve or to merit or to earn God's
favor. It was given to me. I didn't
do the work. Jesus Christ finished it in my
place. How can it be said of me to have
done some good work when I didn't do the work at all? And God won't
accept my work because Not perfect, and perfection is all He'll accept.
It's gotta be perfect to what? Be accepted. It's the Lord that did all these
things, but it was because of His people. His elect are the
reason for it. They are never the cause, but always the reason. They belonged
to the Father, and the Father gave them to Christ, and they
became His. He said so when He said, thou
art mine. They became His bride, they became
the very ones that God gave Him, the very ones that Christ presents
to Himself. Ephesians 5 says, is a glorious
church, a glorious bride without holy and without blemish. That's
what you and I are in Him. What a glorious bride and church
Christ presents to Himself. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son. He's our gift. All other spiritual
blessings are in Him, as we've already said. Who did God give
Christ to? Whosoever believeth in Him. He
did so before the foundation of the world and in the fullness
of time, God calls them. He called them and He caused
them to believe in Christ. And it's them who shall not perish,
but have everlasting life. That word you, it's a pronoun
of distinction. In the Bible, the Lord distinguishes,
doesn't He? You better believe He does. There
are you and there are them. God has mercy on whom he wills. God has mercy on whom he chooses. Some he saves, some he leaves
in their sin. Is there unrighteousness with
God for doing so? Paul said, God forbid. It's his
mercy and his grace and his love to do what he wills with. There are them and there are
us, and it's not because of us. We don't make ourselves to differ. It's God who makes the difference.
It's God that does the choosing. The Lord Jesus said, you've not
chosen me, but I've chosen you. Sometimes we are the them. The
Lord said, I pray for them. I pray not for the world. I pray
for them. Them which thou hast given me,
for they are thine. They are distinguished as belonging
to God. They're yours, you gave them
to me. But they didn't choose God, God
chose them. They didn't adopt God, God adopted
them. I hear God presented today as
a poor orphan that needs to be adopted. He loves everybody,
won't you just love him back? That's not God. We don't adopt God, God adopts
us. They don't give God life, God
gave them life, God gives us life. The Lord said, all are
mine are thine and thine are mine and I am glorified in them. The Lord is glorified in the
sinners that he sovereignly saves. Because of you, God is glorified. Doesn't sound right. But it's
true, Christ is glorified in God's goodness to His people.
Why? Because He is their goodness. He died for them. God did all these things for
Israel for Christ's sake. He's teaching us that He's sovereign
in salvation. Christ defeated all their enemies
because of them. And they were not the cause.
Let me say it again. They were the reason. It was
on account of them. It was on the grounds of His
love for them. It was upon the account of Christ's righteousness. That's the only way that a holy
God could love us, is us to have the perfect righteousness of
Christ ourself. And it's not just posted on. We don't wear a little poster
around us that says, I have Christ righteous. No, we really have
it. We really have it. Christ said, I was with them
in the world. I have kept them in thy name.
None of them is lost. I have given them my word. I have sent them in the world.
They're not of this world, even as I am not of this world. The
world hates them because the world hates me. They're one with
me. You can't speak of Him that you're
not speaking of them. Well, I thought God did all this
because of Christ. He did. And because I am in Christ
and you're in Christ, it's because of you. I am them and thou and
me, and that they may be made perfect in one, that the world
may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them, as thou
hast loved me. Rahab knew that Israel was the
cause, the reason, and owing to the fact that he loved them,
there was no reason apart from it pleasing the Lord to make
them His people. God needs no other reason other
than it just pleased Him to do so. Whatever the Lord pleased,
that did He. In heaven and earth and the sea
and all deep places. That means hell too. Now in Joshua
chapter 9, look over here with me. We find the Gibeonites, they
heard and believed and were convinced of the same thing that Rahab
would. Chapter 9, verse 3. And when
the inhabitants of Gibeon, Habites, that's who they were, they were
the enemies of God. heard what Joshua had done unto
Jericho and to Ai. They heard of the greatness of
Israel's Lord God." Look at the last part of verse nine. For
we have heard the fame of Him. Who? Your God. And all that He,
your God, did in Egypt. Verse 10, and all that He, your
Lord, did to the two kings of the Amorites. Not what you did,
what He did for you. If a sinner ever hears from God,
it's gonna be through the preaching of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. For there is none other name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Now
in Joshua chapter 23, our text. We find Joshua is now in his
last days. He's old and stricken in age. That word stricken means come
into days. That's a nice way of saying it,
isn't it? He's coming to his days. We've
come into them really quickly too. I was talking to Brother
Paul the other day and we were talking about how fast those
days have come. Paul will soon be 89 years old.
And we were talking about some things that seemed so recent,
and as we got to calculating in our minds, we realized that
the event that we were discussing had been a decade before. It
had been 10 years. We just couldn't believe it.
We just kind of looked at each other and shaked our heads. Verse
one again, and it came to pass a long time after. Oh, it seems
like a long time sometimes, and it's not that long, and then
sometimes it don't seem like long at all, and it's been a
long time. But it comes to pass, and it always comes to pass according
to His will and purpose. It came to pass that the Lord
had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about,
that Joshua waxed old and stricken in age, and he called for all
Israel. These are the final words of
Joshua, but these words make up the final message, the final
sermon, so to speak, that the servant of the Most High here
preaches. We ought to listen to him. We
ought to listen to what he says. It's the same message that he's
preached all along. They are the words of departure
from a man who's soon to leave this world. Man doesn't change
his message. It's the same message. I suppose
like no other time, one who has come to the end of their days,
they're not prohibited. I've always heard that if you
don't want to know the truth, don't ask a child or an older
person. In both cases, you're sure to
get the truth. And it certainly seems, from
verse 3, that the one thing that stands upon the mind of Joshua
is the great things that God has done for His people. That's
what he's talking about. The great things that God has
done, not the great things that we the church has done, not the
great things that sinners have done for God, but the great things
that God's done for sinners. Joshua doesn't waste any time
boasting on the accomplishments of the Lord because he knows
that Israel's peace and their rest and their happiness is due
entirely to the good pleasure and power of God. Verse three,
and you've seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto
all these nations because of you. There it is again, because
of you. For the Lord your God is He that
has fought for you. Now, the first thing that the
enlightened sinner sees is the salvation of the Lord. We see
this as a gift from God. Not something we do. It's the
Lord your God that had done all this. And He did it all because
of you. It was because of them that the
Lord had fought for them. It pleased the Lord to do so.
Just as it pleased the Lord to put away your sin and to put
away my sin and the sin of all those who trust Christ to do
so by the sacrifice of Himself. That's my hope. I am trusting
that Christ put all my sin away and that I don't have any. And
that's why I can have some boldness to come into His throne of grace.
And that's why I can have some confidence and assurance that
these things are so. Not because I did something.
Oh my, I'd be fearful every minute of every day if my salvation
depended on me and something that I did. How about you? Isn't
that so? Well, you know it is. There's,
oh my. There's nothing that even remotely
suggests that we have anything to do with receiving anything
from God. We're made to differ from others.
What do we have, Paul said, that we did not receive? Nothing. We received it all. And if we
received it, why do we glory in it? We don't and we can't.
In this, Joshua again pictures the Lord Jesus who calls His
elect spiritual Israel together by the preaching of the gospel.
Reminding us that our deliverance and salvation is due to one thing
and one thing alone. And that's the grace and the
mercy of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord your God hath
fought for you. It's because of God's love for
Christ and us and Him that He fights and He defeats all our
enemies. The great foes of sin, self,
Satan, death, the grave, and hell have been defeated on the
account of Christ's mediation for us. The Lord has destroyed
all your enemies, all of them. Not a man stood before them,
not an enemy. Because of you. Because you couldn't. So the Lord Jesus Christ Himself
did it for you. The Lord your God has fought
for you. He provides for Himself, and He does so by providing Himself. He provides the sinner a lamb
for burnt offering, and He Himself is the lamb for our burnt offering
unto the Lord. Let us never graze far from that
green grass. The green grass of God's Word.
It's because of Christ in you. It's because of who died for
you. And it's for God's own great
namesake that He blocks out our sin and remembers Him no more.
Our spiritual manifold is new every morning. So we must gather
and eat of Christ. He is the bread of life. He came
into the world to save sinners. He is our sustenance. He is our
provision. There is no life apart from Him.
We're saved by His grace. We're kept by the power of God.
Christ is the one thing needful. How many things are truly needful?
The Lord said just one. One thing. There's one thing
needful. Just one thing, a former neighbor of Teresa and I had
a grandson three years old, and he took him to Sam's Club one
day. And my neighbor saw it in the distance, so he hurried very
quickly past this shiny red tricycle, hoping his grandson, who was
the apple of his eye, didn't see it. But it was too late. And with tears in his eyes, he
looked at that tricycle and he looked at his Papaw and he said,
Papaw, I need that. I need it. I need it. And I'm sure he got
it. However, like that young toddler, we think we need a lot
of things that we don't. And we know that it's so because
the Lord said, when it all comes down to it, in the end, there's
only one thing needful. And Jesus Christ is that one
thing needful. And may we, by God's grace, like
Mary, choose the good part. Jesus Christ is the good part. Joshua stood and recalled the
great things that God had done for them. That's what we do in
preaching. We stand and recall the great things that God has
done for His people throughout time, through the Old Testament,
through the New Testament, and through today. God's still on
the throne. God's still out to do His people
good. He works all things together
for the good of them that love the Lord, who are thee called
according to His purpose. We can't find one thing within
us that would even suggest that we somehow merited God's favor. It's either by grace or it's
by works. If by grace, then it's no more
works. And if by works, then it's no more grace, because it
can't be both. I didn't straighten up my life.
God gave me a new life. I didn't do heart surgery on myself. God gave me a new heart. God fought all my battles. God
has given me a state of rest in His finished work because
He was victorious in every single fight. And I found it very interesting
that in the last message as God's leader, Joshua admonishes Israel
in verse six here, the very same thing that he did in chapter
one, verse seven. His message has never changed. The message never changes. The
admonishment is always the same. Look at it here, verse six, Joshua
23. Be ye therefore very courageous
to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law
of Moses, that you turn not aside therefrom to the right or to
the left. Keep your eyes on Christ. Look and live. Christ is high
and lifted up. Don't look to the left. Don't
look to the right. Look straight ahead to the Savior. He's Alpha and Omega. He's the
beginning and the end. We look to the end by looking
to Christ. Verse seven, that ye come not
among these nations, these that remain among you, neither make
mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them,
neither serve them nor bow yourselves unto them." Now, we live in a
world of religion where the follower of one God can encourage the
follower of another God by saying, well, you serve your God your
way, and we'll serve God our way, and we'll just all go along
and get along. We just agree to disagree. Go along, get along, but that's
not what God says. God through Joshua said, don't
come among these nations. Don't even mention their God's
names. Don't you swear by them or serve
them. Don't you dare bow down before
them. And our Joshua says the same
to us. We got a lot of men and women
in the name of God going along and getting along. And I'm telling you, if you can
stomach the hearing of a God who in no way resembles the God
of the Bible, you're in trouble. If you can compromise, go along,
get along. If you can turn to the left and
to the right, then you have yet to see the difference that God
makes and the difference that God is. But to those who have,
This they will do. There are some things for us
to do. Well, now, wait a minute, David, you've been telling us
for over 15 years now, 10 years or longer, that there's nothing
for us to do. Not to be saved, there's not.
But there are some things that prove that we are. We must come
and hear the gospel preached. If the Lord uses the means of
preaching the gospel to save them that believe, then we've
got to be there to hear it. And then we've got to, it's where
God meets with His people. It's where God reveals the means
of life eternal. And we must not only come hear
the gospel, but we must believe the gospel. You've got to believe,
trust your soul into the safekeeping of Christ and Him crucified.
Christ doing for you what you cannot do for yourself. You must
believe that Christ is faithful, they promise. Then Joshua gives
us something else that is a must. Verse eight. But cleave. Cleave. Cleave unto the Lord
your God as you have done unto this day. We must cleave to the
Lord our God. No other instruction is needful
or useful. We must lay hold of eternal life. We must cleave, latch on to Christ. To cleave means to hold on continually
and hold onto it for dear life. Christ is our life. Better cleave
to Him. He that hath the Son hath life.
We have every reason to cleave to Him. He's never failed us.
He's defeated every enemy. The accuser of the brethren's
been jailed. Sin's been washed away by His
precious blood. Verse nine, for the Lord hath
driven out from before you great nations and strong, but as for
you, no man hath been able to stand before you unto this day. Because of you. What was the
difference between a man from one of the tribes of Israel and
a man from one of the Canaanite tribes? The answer's simple. The difference that God made.
The only difference between me and a murderer on death row is
the difference that God made. That's all the difference. It's
the only difference. That's why no man, no circumstance,
no trial, no providence is able to stand before us who trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ. First and foremost, because it
was God that sent these obstacles. It was God who sent these circumstances,
these trials and this providence for our good. And it's gonna
be for our good. Eternal good. And the only good
thing about cancer or some other deadly disease is that for the
believer, it's the means to a beginning, not a means to the end. It's a means to a departure.
It's a means to a promotion. It's a means to being forever
with Christ. It's a means to eternal life.
It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. Death is a
good thing for a believer. And no man, no nation, nobody
can stand in the way of you and your Lord. So I want to leave
you with the words of Joshua from verse 11 in our text. Take good heed, therefore, unto
yourselves, that you love the Lord your God. Boy, that's the
best advice that anybody could give anybody. If you be risen
with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ
sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things
above, not on things of the earth. For you're dead and your life
is hid with Christ in God. The only true motivation that
a believer has is love for Christ. Sinners are not kept by rules
and regulations. Church covenants won't do it.
Legalistic threats, open rebukes will never truly motivate a sinner. Only true love for the one who
loved us and gave himself for us will keep the sinner looking
to Christ alone. Just love for him. When I think
about how much God loves me. I don't want to disappoint Him,
do you? Oh, and I do so often fall so short. May God be pleased
to make it so for the glory of God, the good of the believing
sinners, and for the sake of the Lord Jesus, who did love
us and give Himself for us. Everything that God does in history,
His story, He does because of you, His people. What an amazing
thought. What an amazing God. What an
amazing Savior.