24. I printed my notes out and left
them behind. Figured it was too late to ask
Eric if he wanted to fill in for me. Great song selection, by the
way. Eric had asked me, any songs
you want? I'm like, I'm mowing the lawn.
I don't know. Pick something. But as I think about this chapter,
the thing that comes to mind to me is, at least in the human
realm, if you want somebody to be annoyed with you, tell them
they can't do something. Especially if it's something
they think they're good at. You know, I don't know everyone's
occupational background. I mean, I know some of them.
Can you imagine somebody coming to you and telling you something,
maybe something you think you've done well your entire life. Nope, sorry, you're wrong. You can't even do the basics
here. You basically are incapable of
doing anything. Or even maybe there's a project
that you completed at work or at home, and imagine somebody
saying, that wasn't you. I mean, try not to bring up stories about
myself. I know that's a cardinal sin
in the pulpit, but I had a boss who like to take credit for things,
maybe you've had a similar thing, things that he didn't do, and
his boss basically said, you didn't do it, and said it in
front of a lot of people, and that didn't go over well. In
a lot of ways, this chapter reminds me of that, especially when you
think about religious people. There are a lot of people today
meeting this morning and what they're gonna get from the pulpit,
if the Bible is taught at all, they're gonna get a motivational
speech and maybe an attaboy for some of the things that they
have done. Well, that's not really good news. So to kind of bring
you back up to speed, a couple of weeks ago, we went through
the first part of Joshua. And in the first 13 verses, there
were a number of things covered, but it was God himself speaking. And what God had told through
Joshua, the people that had happened in the history of Israel is Abraham
was delivered by me out of idolatry. Moses and Aaron were sent to
deliver your fathers out of their slavery. And Joshua, my servant,
was sent to you to deliver you and bring you into the promised
land. And lest they get the idea, and
you should remember this from the reading, but lest they get
the idea that it was them who had done it. In verse 12, it
says explicitly, you did not do it with your own sword and
bow. Well, they fought. I mean, we
know there were battles that went on, but what God was telling
them was, That didn't even factor into it. You were there. I didn't
need you. I was the one who delivered you.
It was a done deal as soon as I had promised it back to your
forefathers that you would have this land of rest. Well, after
that background of the sovereign salvation of God, Joshua calls
them to worship, verse 14. Now fear the Lord and serve him
with all faithfulness. There are many people today who
would say, yeah, there is nothing that I did to get myself justified
before God. There was nothing in my life
that merited God's favor, but now that I'm saved, I can help
out. I can contribute. I can participate
in my sanctification. I can do things that will make
God more pleased with me. And those are the ones that when
I read their commentaries and we came to verse 19, where Joshua
says to the people, you are not able to serve the Lord. There's
some pretty strong words that are spoken. One commentator,
very famous man, I'm not gonna use his name, said, Joshua is
acting altogether absurdly and crushing the zeal of the people. Another one says, Joshua's answer
is perhaps the most shocking statement in the Old Testament.
To which I say, have you read the Old Testament? I can think
of some more shocking ones than that. Another man said, Joshua's
statement that Israel was not capable of serving the Lord introduces
a deep paradox. And then later on the same man
says, well the real purpose was to purge the Israelites of any
false notions of cheap grace. As you can imagine, this statement
that they are not able to, is divorced from, it's almost like
the first 13 verses weren't there, or at least they didn't understand
them, or perhaps these commentators think, well, that doesn't really
apply. What do we do with it? I know
the so-called, and I say so-called because, In a lot of ways, the
early church leaders in history were probably better termed church
children. They had less light than we do
at this point. But one of the early church fathers,
Augustine, or Augustine, wrote a prayer in his confessions. And his prayer was pretty simple,
and his prayer was, to God, give what you command and command
what you will. That prayer got him in a lot
of hot water because the people who read it who had a problem
with it said, Augustine, you're saying God can do what he wants
and there's nothing we can do about it if he doesn't give us
the ability to obey. And that was Augustine's answer,
100%, is, you're right, unless God gives me the ability to obey,
I will not obey. These people would say, God would
never command, God's not fair, God's a gentleman, he would never
ask us to do something we cannot do, and yet, There's a number
of other places we could go in scripture, but this is a passage
we have in front of us. We have Joshua. a type of Jesus
here, and I think functioning in that way in this passage yet
again, although there's some contrasts that we'll want to
bring up. But Joshua here is telling the
people to fear God, that is, to reverence him, and to serve
him, and it could be translated worship. In fact, if you go back
to verse 11, What is that? Two, where it says
that Abraham and Nahor worshipped other gods. It's the same Hebrew
word. So, now, reverence God and worship
him, serve him with all faithfulness, without any insincerity. And there are people who say,
no problem, I can do that. I submit to you it's they don't
understand what pure and acceptable worship of God is that allows
them to make a comment like that. But why would God command something
that they can't do? Well, I think it's to force us
to rely on him, to understand that he is the one that must
be glorified and magnified. So, verse 14, we're called to
fear the Lord and serve him, to worship him, and we're to
give up the gods of our forefathers. Now, I can't speak to anybody
else. My background and the background of my wife is we were raised
in Roman Catholicism, and every time we drive down to Iowa, I
get to go by the billboard just north of Belle Plaine that says,
Pray the Rosary. come to Jesus through Mary. I pray that God helps me to continue
to throw away those false idols. Mary was a wonderful woman, but
she had no pull with Jesus. So one time it seemed like, and
they make a big deal about her having pull with Jesus, he says,
what do I have to do with you, woman? It's not time yet. No, our religious upbringing
to the extent that it was false is something we need to throw
away and we're utterly unable to do it in and of ourselves
and we fail miserably at it from time to time. We like to believe
in our heart of hearts that I'm a little bit better than that
other guy or that other woman or that other person because
I did this or I didn't do that. Well, in the first 13 verses
of Joshua 24, you didn't do it. Any obedience that God has given
to you was purely an act of sovereign grace. And the same is true for
worshiping God. Your desire to be here this morning,
I pray that everyone who is here and who comes in the weeks to
follow by the grace of God are coming because this is the message
they wanna hear, that of God's sovereign grace. So in that sense,
as Joshua says, Choose who you will serve. I remember a couple
of times, Joe probably said it a hundred times, it's like, if
you have something better to do on Sunday morning, please
go do that instead. But if you love this gospel and
this is what you want to hear, then you should be here. Choose
for yourselves this day who you will serve. Verse 15, Our translation, I would say,
kind of softens it here a little bit. In Joshua's call for them
to worship the true God and to give up idolatry, he says and
adds, if serving the Lord seems undesirable, is what our translation,
the NIV, reads, but it's literally evil. It's literally evil. There are people, and for the
life of me, I don't understand people like this, but there are
people who, they don't agree that God is sovereign. They think
that it makes him some sort of monster if he's
the one who determines who's saved and who's not. It somehow is beneath him. But
for some reason, for a time, they will either consider themselves
a part of a church like this or be offended if somebody suggests
that we believe a different gospel than they do. Well, if serving
the God revealed in Joshua 24 and Romans 9 and Ephesians 1
and elsewhere, if that is evil to you, pick someone else. Whether it's the God of your
forefathers or the God of the Armenians or whoever, if that
God is more desirable to you, serve him. Don't muddy the waters
by saying or being offended by the idea that we believe in the
sovereign grace of God. Now, as far as the picture of
Christ here, it's true, and we had a little bit of a discussion
about this in our home, is like, well, Joshua served God. Well,
he's a type of Christ. Of course he served God, and
those who belong to his household are able to serve God by the
grace of God. But listen to the protest here
in verse 16. And this begins kind of an interaction. My parents were both from the
Midwest, and I was born in California, but at this point in my life,
I've lived in the Midwest more. But kind of my joke about people
from the Midwest is if they say no to something or yes to something,
you have to ask them a couple more times. You can't go based
on the first answer. Minnesota, nice, but I'm in Iowa.
Maybe Iowa doesn't have that problem where it's like, hey,
would you like another soda, or would you like another piece
of, no, no, couldn't have it. Well, you gotta ask them two
more times, right, before you can do that, and this interaction
seems like that. Because Joshua tells them, you
can't do it. And they protest in verse 16,
far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods.
Here's the thing. Joshua's just told them they
need to throw away the gods their forefathers worshipped and later
on He reminds them again. They need to do it. They were
already Harboring those idols in their equipment they in their
household belongings they had a these idols. And while we may not fall under
that same situation, we, too, bring our own idols there, and
we, too, protest. Maybe like Peter, Lord, I love
you. Don't you know I love you? That
sort of thing. Here, they're saying multiple
times, far be it from us to serve other gods. And when Joshua brings up in
verse 19 that they're unable to do it, and he brings up the
terms of the old covenant, that if they rebel that God would
punish them, nope, we're gonna do it. And to me, the oddest
thing, especially in light of where I picked up in teaching
in Joshua, If you remember back in, I believe it was the end
of 22, we had that altar of witness. Here we have an altar of witness
to this fact that they said, you agree that God can destroy
you, that you stipulate to the terms of the old covenant if
you disobey. And they say yes, and he literally
writes it in stone. and has a large stone erected
to testify against that. That is the extent that false
religion will go to protest its own ability to serve
God. Now, some of the people here
had to be thinking in their mind, and I don't know, I can't read
their minds. Some of the people here had to
be thinking in their mind, I can't do this. But the majority of
people hold out this possibility of, yeah, we can do this. And you
know, the household idols, they don't really mean anything to
us. Well, why is it that they're unable
to serve God? Well, their own inability is
there, but part of it, and this is the other thing that people
do in order to make it so they can claim obedience to God. And in fact, some of the commentators
I read said this. Well, you know, they weren't
perfect in their obedience. I mean, God doesn't expect perfection,
does he? Well, it says right here, he's
a holy God, and he's a jealous God. He will not forgive your
rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve
foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make
an end of you after he has been good to you. And I'd say that's
true of anyone. who does not trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ for their salvation. Anyone who's relying on anything
else other than the finished work of Christ, they're putting
themselves under the works of the law. But even beyond our
belief in Christ, even in the Christian life, there is this
inability to do things. in and of ourselves. If you want
to, you can turn over to Romans chapter 7. And there's a handful
of verses that I will talk to people about if I want to know
what their theological orientation is. I think the older I get,
the more I agree with those who say that the term Calvinism can
be kind of a fighting words, kind of a red blanket held out
to a bull where you're not really making your point that you need
to make. But when I look at Romans 7,
especially beginning with verse 7 onward, I ask people, who is Paul speaking
about? And I'm gonna read through this,
and we'll make a few comments as we go along. Actually, I'll
back up a little bit here. So, verse four, so my brothers,
you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might
belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in
order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we are controlled
by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were
at work in our bodies so that we bore fruit for death. But
now by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from
the law so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not
in the old way of the written code. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. Indeed, I would have not known
what sin was except through the law. I would not have known what
coveting really was if the law had not said, do not covet. But sin, seizing the opportunity
afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of
covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is
dead. Once I came alive apart from
the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and
I died. I found the very commandment
that was intended to bring life actually brought death. And I'm
just gonna interject here. I see that in Joshua 24. So skipping down to verse 14,
we know the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as
a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do,
for what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want
to do, I agree the law is good. As it is, no longer I myself
who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing
good lives in me that is in my sinful nature, and anywhere the
NIV uses sinful nature, it's literally flesh. For I have the
desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what
I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want
to do, this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want
to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in
me that does it. So I find this law at work when
I want to do good, evil is right there with me, for in my inner
being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work
in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind
and making me a prisoner of the law at work within my members.
What a wretched man I am. Now thinking back in Joshua 24,
especially when you read the terms as given by Joshua here,
He says, warning them, you're not able to serve the Lord. And
it's true, in our flesh we're completely unable to serve God. Those who are not redeemed have
no ability to even see, much less comprehend what it is they
need to do to serve God. He's a holy God, and he's a jealous
God. And for If you forsake the Lord,
verse 20, he will turn and bring disaster on you. And that's true
here. If we end the Christian life
with Romans 7, where we're at, many people would say, well,
Paul was speaking as an unbeliever. There's one reason why I know
that's not, well, there's more than one, but one main reason
why I know that's not true. In my inner being, I delight
in God's law or God's word. No unbeliever delights in God's
word. No unbeliever knows God's word
as something that he or she wants to follow after. So what then? We have this insistence
on the part of Israel. No, we're gonna do it. Joshua's
like, you're a witness against yourself. Yep, we agree. We've
heard the terms. All we have to do is worship
God. The one true God, the holy God
who accepts no sin in worship. The one who put to death somebody
for putting his hand out to steady the arc of the covenant. No, we can't serve that God. but Joshua can, the true Joshua
can and did. He served God, he perfectly fulfilled
the law. Who will rescue me back in Romans
7 from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Because Christ came and lived
a perfect life, because the true Joshua came and suffered and
died for the sins of his people, living a perfect life, dying
a perfect death, atoning for our sins, we have the ability
to be seen as obedient to God, not through our own imperfect,
halting, stumbling, lisping obedience, but because through the Spirit
of God, God looks on us and sees Christ's perfect obedience. God looks upon us and sees his
son and says, you are my beloved. God looks on us and says, because Christ died to deliver
you, I accept you in him. That's how Paul can say there's
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Joshua says,
if you don't do this, if you don't follow these terms of the
old covenant, God will hold you to account. It's written down,
there's a stone, a witness, marker that's there. If you don't perfectly
obey God, you will suffer loss. And if you read on in Joshua
24, we see the passing of Joshua and Joshua knew his death was
upon him, and Joshua knew of the prophecies that had been
made that were recorded in Deuteronomy and elsewhere, that there would
be a time where the people of God would turn away from the
God of Israel. And we read that during the lifetime
of Joshua and the elders who outlived him, they served God. there was something about the
presence of Joshua that inspired them at least outwardly to obedience. But if you're looking at your
Bible in Joshua 24, right after Joshua is Judges. And if there's
one phrase that symbolizes the book of Judges, it's that everyone
did what was right in their own eyes. All the sin, the wickedness
of the people of the land that God had cast out, those people,
the descendants of the nation, they ended up doing the same
or worse. God kept his promises, and the
earthly Joshua, the type of Christ, and every type is imperfect,
the type of Christ during his lifetime God enabled him to lead
his people into rest. But the rest that Joshua, the old covenant Joshua brought
them to was a temporary rest. But our Joshua, our Jesus brings
us to an eternal rest. This Joshua here called the people
to a covenant that was conditional on their obedience. The new covenant,
Joshua, fulfills a covenant that's unconditional, it's based on
his obedience. As you may remember from the,
and I didn't write it down so I'm forgetting the name, the
man who set aside gold and material that was under the ban. That
Joshua made those people pay for their sins. He said, give
glory to God. Did you take these things that
are under the ban? Yep, okay, you're gonna have
to die. But the new covenant Joshua,
Jesus, he pays for the sins of the people. The Old Covenant
Joshua put people under the law. And the New Covenant Joshua,
as we read, fulfills the law and gives grace. And then lastly,
as we read here, the death of the Old Covenant Joshua was the
beginning of new problems for the nation Israel. but the death of the new covenant
Joshua was the beginning of hope for all of God's people. While you are not able, and my
prayer for myself selfishly and for everyone here is you understand
that you're not able to worship God acceptably except for through
Christ. And I pray that you and I and
everyone who hears these words comes to trust in Christ alone
for their salvation.