Not a lot of real estate out
here. So we'll see how this works.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 23. Well, I said 23, Joshua chapter
24. And initially when I decided
to take this up to finish off what Joe had started, I thought
I'd do a chapter at a time and be lucky to make it halfway through
this chapter. So I'm only going to read the
first 15 verses of Joshua 24. Then Joshua assembled all the
tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders,
judges, and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves
before God. Joshua said to all the people,
this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. Long ago, your
forefathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham, and Nahor
lived beyond the river and worshiped other gods. But I took your father
Abraham from the land beyond the river, and led him throughout
Canaan, and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac
I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of
Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron,
and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought
you out. When I brought your fathers out
of Egypt, you came to the sea and the Egyptians pursued them
with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea. But they cried to the Lord. They cried to the Lord for help
and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians. He brought
the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes
what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the desert
for a long time. I brought you to the land of
the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against
you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed them from
before you, and you took possession of their land. When Balak, the
son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel,
he sent for Balaam, son of Beor, to put a curse on you. but I
would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again,
and I delivered you out of his hand. Then you crossed the Jordan
and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought
against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites,
Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites, and Jebusites, but I gave them
into your hands. I sent the hornet ahead of you,
which drove them out before you, also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own
sword and bow, so I gave you a land on which you did not toil,
and cities you did not build. And you live in them and eat
from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant. Now fear
the Lord and serve him, with all faithfulness. Throw away
the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt
and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems
undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom
you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond
the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are
living. But as for me, and my household,
we will serve the Lord." Now I know that last verse is often
a wall hanging and hopefully if you have one of those, don't
take offense to what I'm going to say now. I think oftentimes
it's taken well out of context. It's not really expressing what
is going on in the passage. I would suggest to you, and we
don't read, we didn't read the rest of the chapter, but I would
suggest to you in this chapter, we have the extended sermon of
Joshua to the people of God. And first of all, what he does
is what I think every good preacher should do. And that is to remind
the people of God, what God has done, what God has saved his
people from. And you always will do that before
you talk about any of the responsibilities of the Christian life. So, first
of all, if you look here in chapter 24 and these first 13 verses
as we read them, I hope that you see the emphasis placed here
upon what God has done. In fact, I would say in these
first few verses, you have a coming before God and a hearing from
God about what God has done. So, if you're wondering what
the emphasis needs to be, God makes it clear. And while we
talk about all Scripture being from God, be clear here, Joshua
said this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. This is
God's direct admonition, and not everything in Scripture is
direct in the sense that this is. But in God's direct admonition
to us about His work, just scan down through this passage as
I read these phrases. The Lord says, I took, I gave,
I assigned, I sent, I afflicted, I did, I brought, He put, He
brought, I did, I brought, I gave, I destroyed, I would not, I delivered,
I gave, I sent, I gave. Now your translation, depending
on what you're using, might look a little bit different than this,
but clearly 20 times in 13 verses, God talks about He is the sovereign
Lord who has accomplished this. And as Joshua is coming to the
end of his life and realizing that he is going to die, and
no longer be there to lead the people of God. He wants to leave
them with a message of the sovereign grace of God. And by the grace
of God, God gives him the words and the history to relate. Now, I enjoyed a lot of conversations
with Joe about history, not just biblical history, but history
in general. So I know It's easy. It was easy for me and it was
easy for him to be a little bit of a geek and get into all the
details. So I'm restraining myself. But
what I will tell you, if you want to study this passage on
your own, you will be amazed at all the references here and
all the allusions here to multiple places in scripture. We'll bring
out a few of them in the exposition today. as it relates to what
I think the main message is. But for every one I bring up,
I'm passing by at least nine or 10 here, because I think to
make our point, we need to do this in a timely fashion. But first of all, look here at
this history lesson and understand this is often the way that God
works. He wants to show us through his
faithfulness throughout time, what he's done for his people.
And he gives us four examples here that we will talk about
of his sovereign work to deliver a people for himself out of idolatry,
out of slavery, out of cursing and out of conflict and into
abundant provision in life. So as a preamble, here we read,
Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. Now, if
you hear that, it should seem a little bit odd to you. And
here's one of my history geek deviations here. that I think
has a point because it lends to the background of the passage.
But why Shechem? If you were to turn back all
the way back to even chapter 19 and in through chapters 21
and 22 and 23, we read about the presence of the Lord at Shiloh
and the fact that there was this war council that met at Shiloh
before the tabernacle. But this time we have Joshua
assembling the tribes at Shechem. And we know the ark was there.
It was portable, not iPhone portable, or Android if that's your phone
of choice, but it was portable. They were able to move the tabernacle. So this was an official meeting
before the presence of God in a place that before this time
was not at least in Joshua in the latter chapters, was not
the place where they were meeting. And it wasn't Jerusalem because
the Jebusites, the people who were in Jerusalem, had not fully
been eradicated there. The temple would not be set up
there for a while. But they assembled at Shechem.
Why? Why Shechem? Well, without going
back and rereading through all of Genesis, There are two references,
one we'll look at a little bit in Genesis chapter 12 here in
a minute or so. But in Genesis 12, it says, Abram
traveled the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh
at Shechem. And then it says that the Lord
appeared to Abram there and said, to your offspring, I will give
this land. So he built an altar there to
the Lord who had appeared to them. So I would say it's very
possible, and you'll see this a lot, like I said, if you were
to take this passage and study it out, look at the cross references,
that even the very place where God meets with them has significance,
because he's gonna talk about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in
a minute, And he wants to remind them before he talks about rescuing
Abraham from idolatry is that is a place where God had met
with them and God had given promises to Abraham and God had remind
and Abraham in response built an altar to the Lord there. We
read later in Genesis 35, and again, I'm not gonna turn there,
but in response to God's deliverance of Jacob, Jacob was getting ready
to build an altar, and in preparation for building that altar, he said,
we need to take all of our idols, and guess what they did? They
gave to Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in
their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. I don't know why that place had
such a significance, why God led Abraham there. Before we started, Eric and I
were talking about some things, and he asked how things were
going, and I said, well, here's how they're going. I don't know
why, but that's how they're going. And I don't know why Abraham
was brought to Shechem, but the significance that the people
of God would see in a place Even though the place itself wasn't
sacred, or even the ultimate place that they would be to meet,
God brought them there. God brought us here for some
reason. Why inward, I could ask. I don't
know. But God brought us here. So whatever
the reason, like I said, there are four examples here given
by God on how God saves his people. Let's take a look at this first
one, how he rescues us from idolatry. Joshua said to all the people,
this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, long ago, your
forefathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor
lived beyond the river and worshiped other gods. But I took your father
Abraham from the land beyond the river, and led him throughout
Canaan, and gave him many descendants. And I gave him Isaac, and to
Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau." So oftentimes when I think about
Abraham, we tend to think, and in contemplation of the Lord's
Supper, my spoiler I guess here, I do want to say a few words
about one of the highlights of Abraham's life, and that is when
he takes Isaac to offer him to God, and God provides a lamb. We tend to think of Abraham as
a great man of faith. In fact, we're not wrong in doing
so because the writer of Hebrews does the same thing. But we tend
to forget this part of Abraham's life. Maybe we remember his sins,
saying that his wife was his sister, which was partly true.
We're really good at partial truths, aren't we? But in this
case, Abraham was a full-blown idol worshiper. This in spite
of the fact that he was of the line of Shem. And if you remember
after the flood, the line of Sham was the blessed line, the
line that God was going to use. And yet here, only a few generations
after the flood, you have these families, the family of Tara
that were living in idolatry. It doesn't tell us what type
of idolatry Abraham and his family was participating in, but it's
believed that the word Terah has a reference to a word for
moons. And we know from places like
Acts 7 and elsewhere that the Jews in that day had participated
in idolatrous worship of heavenly bodies. So we have here Abraham
as an idol worshiper. And maybe, and this is a kind
of a point of trivia, Abraham was a Gentile at this point,
not a Jew. There was no such thing as Jews
as of yet. There was a line of Shem, but
as far as the promise, it didn't happen until later. So we have
Abraham of the promise line participating in idol worship and In this passage, it's interesting,
there's some stress that's laid here. This is what the Lord,
Yahweh, or Jehovah, the Elohim, the God of Israel, says. Now, God here makes reference
to other gods, small g, those false idols that other people
had worshiped. And Joshua says, this is what
Yahweh says to you. I went and took your idol-worshipping
ancestor, and I snatched him out. I seized him. I fetched
him from there. The force of the Word is not,
he wanted to go. In fact, if you read the account
in Genesis 11 and 12, there's some hesitation. God asked him
to leave his family, and he doesn't leave right away. rescues him
from idolatry. Genesis 12, which I referenced
earlier, gives the account. The Lord says to Abram, leave
your country, your people, and your father's household. Well,
he didn't leave the country right away. He didn't leave all of
his people and his father's household right away, but he does eventually. and go to the land, I will show
you, I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, I will
make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless
those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and
all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.
So we have here a rescue of an idol-worshiping man, being fetched by God. See again
in Genesis 12, the emphasis on God being the one who does the
action. And we see that Abraham is removed
from there. But it's not only, and this is
something that in these four examples, this is the first of
four, but in these four examples, I want you to see, God not only
talks about the negative here being fetched from idolatry,
but there's a promise attached. Go back to the text and take
a look at it here again. I took your father from the land
and I gave him many descendants. Now, it's a bit unfortunate that
the NIV decides to translate it that way. because literally
it is the word seed. And we know that that word has
significance that we'll talk about in a moment. But it's true
in the near fulfillment of what God was doing. God provided children
to Abraham not only Isaac but Jacob and Esau and all their
descendants. He gave him many descendants,
and he gave him the seed. Genesis 13 talks about this as
well. All the land that you see, I
will give to you and your seed forever. In Genesis 15, the word
of the Lord came to him, this man, his servant will not be
your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. And he says, look up at the heavens
and count the stars If indeed you can count them, then he said
to them, so shall your seed be." Now, a lot of people get caught
up in what I would consider a different sort of idolatry, almost an idolatry
about the nation Israel. In fact, I listened just briefly
to a pastor, actually somebody I know, I won't mention his name,
And he suggested that what needs to happen in systematic theology
works is, if you're not familiar with systematic theologies, there's
usually a discussion on the theology of God, and then the theology
of Christ, and the theology of man, and the theology of salvation,
and the theology of the church, and then the theology of end
times. He said, they need to add another
section just for Israel. Well, I can say without fear
of contradiction that the point that God had didn't end with
the promise being fulfilled in the physical descendants who
would later become Israel. I think that's a form of idolatry. Galatians 3 16 says the promises
were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The scripture does
not say, and to seeds, meaning many people, again, I think the
NIV really misses it here, but and to your seed, meaning one
person who is Christ. Christ is the focus of this passage,
even though Joshua may not have fully understood it, God was
in expositing this passage and in encouraging these people to
follow Him and to serve Him and to give up their idolatry, reminds
them that God not only rescues us from idolatry, He provides
us with the promise. And this promise is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it is only through Christ
that we can have deliverance It is only through Christ that
we can be fetched or seized out of idolatry. That, I believe,
is the message that we would have from this first section. God rescued your idol-worshiping
ancestor, Abraham, and just as he did that, I submit to you,
all of you who are God's children here today, that he will do the
same for you. continually deliver you from
your idolatry, and he will, through the provision of the Lord Jesus
Christ, provide for what you need in that deliverance. Well,
as you read through the history of Israel, we read that I assigned
Mount Seir to Esau, But Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. And we know there's a lot of
history there. If we were to read the book of
Genesis, what is that about? 20 chapters of Genesis talking
about the going down to Egypt. And we know the reason. And actually,
Jacob and his sons weren't the first ones to go down. Abraham
went down to Egypt for a time as well. But like so many things,
the outward maneuver, and it was of God. The decision was
man's, but the sovereign hand of God was behind this. They
went down to escape from famine, from their own financial and
physical well-being. They went to Egypt, and they
ended up in enslavement. And in Scripture, without getting
into all the places we could talk about it, Egypt is a type
of the world. And it's so often the case that
we, to try to escape from physical ruin, end up in enslavement. But notice, God sent Moses and
Aaron, but it doesn't say through the law that he delivered them. It says God himself afflicted
the Egyptians and brought Israel out. And if you're familiar with
the account, it wasn't just that they brought him out. God is
abbreviating the account here a bit. There were some plagues
involved. And then in the process of being
brought out, the Egyptians pursued them and they cried out to God
who delivered them by drowning the Egyptian army in the seas. And some even of them probably
Joshua among others saw this with their own eyes. And I find
this telling in the passage, then you lived in the desert
a long time. That's actually a very gracious
way to talk about what they did. Why were they in the desert for
40 years? Sometimes God is more gracious,
well not sometimes, God is always more gracious than we deserve.
But even in the description here, you were in the desert for a
long time. God preserved and put up with
a nation for the sake of his elect so that he could rescue
and deliver them. Acts 13, verse 17, the God of
the people of Israel chose our fathers. He made the people prosper
during their stay in Egypt. and with mighty power he led
them out of that country. He endured their conduct for
about 40 years in the desert." And then it goes on to say, from
this man's descendant, God has brought to Israel the Savior
Jesus as he promised. Not to go back to my previous
point too much, but the fulfillment of the promise is not the nation
Israel. but the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the one who delivers us. He is the one who rescues us
from idolatry. He is the one who takes us out
of enslavement in and through His completed work. And I have
to be mindful of the time. And I have no idea, that clock
is probably not right, but there's a clock right over there that
I can look at. So, I'm going through here a little bit faster
than I want to. But I hope you see it even in
these first couple of examples here. God rescues them. God delivers
them. And then in verse 9 and 10, we
have Balak, the son of Zippor. If we had time, we'd turn back
to Numbers and you can read the account. And there's some Some
interesting, fun things in there. Can a donkey speak? Well, apparently
one did. But Balak, the king of Moab,
wanted to defeat the people of Israel. And he sent for a false prophet. Keep that in mind. He sent for Balaam. a man who
professed to be a follower of God, and he asked this man to
put a curse on you. Now, there was a time, and it
seems like it's passing, where it was fashionable to be a Calvinist,
right? You know, all the trendy cigar-smoking
people, that was their thing. Now the fashion seems to have
swung in a different direction. And there are many people who
would put a curse on us. Don't you want to preach social
justice? What about all the poor people
in the world? Why do you have to have such
a narrow focus on God's sovereignty, on the gospel of Christ? There
are those who would even curse us. They would say, I wish churches like yours would
cease to exist. The world would be better off
without people like you saying that the only way you can be
saved is through the gospel of Christ. Well, I don't know everything
about Balaam, but he was definitely a prophet for hire. And there
are plenty examples of those in our day and age of prophets
for hire. And notice he was willing to
entertain the idea of putting a curse on God's chosen people. What God says, how he relates
it here is, I would not listen to Balaam. So apparently it was
very desirable for Balaam to do this. He wanted so badly to
go along with what this powerful official, you know, between experts
and powerful officials, there's a lot of room for people to compromise
on the word of God. But God said, I wouldn't listen
to Balaam. So he blessed you again and again. And I would say from this account,
as well as what we can read back in Numbers, it's clear that Balaam
did not do what he wanted to do. He did it against his will. Will God make people do things
against their will? Absolutely. I read about it multiple
times in scripture. And what's interesting here,
again, back on my other hobby horse here for a little bit,
we don't need a chapter or a section in systematic theologies on Israel. We probably need larger sections
on the gospel of Christ and on what true saving faith looks
like. Because if we go back, Genesis
15, I will make you into a great
nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing. Well, that was true of Abraham.
But who is it more true of than the Lord Jesus Christ? All peoples
on earth will be blessed. Certainly, God works through
Abraham and through the nation of Israel. But the blessing that
we have is through Christ. Again, in Galatians 3, Christ
redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us. For
it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. Our blessing,
our deliverance from the curse is not solely due to our actions. In fact, it has
oftentimes nothing to do with our actions. We're saved in spite
of what we do. God delivers us from probably
curses that we deserve in many cases. But in Christ, God will
not even listen to the curses of the law and the enemies of
our soul. But instead, he blesses us over
and over and over again. That's what he says. That's what
he wants to remind his covenant people, his elect people here,
as he's speaking directly through Joshua. Lastly, we read this,
and I struggled with how to characterize this in a short phrase, but God
turns conflict into abundant and undeserved provision. Verse 11, you crossed the Jordan
and you came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought
against you, as did also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the
Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites, and Jebusites. But I
gave them into your hands. I sent a hornet ahead of you.
And there's a little bit of discussion here whether or not It's a literal hornet. And again, this is in
fulfillment of promises made in Deuteronomy. Or if it's just
fear that fell upon the people, which we read about when in multiple
cases before this, including with the Egyptians, that darkness
came over them. It literally is fear. You did
not do it. God says, with your own sword
and bow, I gave you a land on which you did not toil, and cities
which you did not build, and you live in them and eat from
vineyards and olive groves that you did not plan. So God wanted
to remind them in the time of conflict, in the time of trial,
in the time of insecurity, in the time of fear, in the time
of want and need, that he was their provision. And not only
did he provide just enough to get them out, he brought them
into a place of abundant provision. And this point is actually stressed
multiple times in Joshua, and I believe I had made reference
to this in an earlier message. In Psalm 44 verse 3, the psalmist
says, it was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did
their arm bring them victory. It was your right hand, your
arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them. So here we
read and we have the emphasis that God did it. He provided
for them, and he did it because he loved his people. Do you believe that? Do I believe
that? I know there are times I struggle
with that. It's like, why does this trial
have to happen now? I had plans. I could see exactly
where I thought the rest of my life was going to go. And God
has brought a number of things into my life personally, as well
as our life corporately that have completely changed what
that looks like. Can I believe that God is doing
that? God is bringing that conflict
in for victory. Or in a song that often came
to mind in the last couple of weeks, can I believe that these
trials are meant to turn to gold, a great Keith Green song. My only caution with Keith Green
was he was a young man when he wrote things and some of the
things that he wrote weren't the greatest, but overall I would
highly recommend his words. But do I believe the trials of
this life, the conflict that I'm now facing, do I believe
that these things are God's work in me so that he can bless me
with things that I don't deserve. Because God uses conflict. Now,
there are some, I would call them sanctification legalists
who say, well, if trial is good, you should be praying for more
trials. No, I'm good. I'll take just the minimum, please,
God. whatever is the minimum needed.
But it's true. In these trials, we need to see
the work of God. Now, Spurgeon did an entire sermon
on just this verse here that talks about land which you did
not toil and cities you did not build. But I'm going to condense
down to just a few words here what he had to say. He says,
first as the Israelites ate the fruit of the tree, which they
had not planted, we have many similar blessings. We had nothing
to do with our own election unto eternal life. He who chose us,
chose us according to his own good pleasure. Then as to the
blessed redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, We have been
washed in a fountain that we never fill. And we are this day
clothed in a righteousness that we did not weave. Nay, we did
not even arrange one thread of that spotless road. The blood
and righteousness of Christ become ours purely by an act of his
grace. This good olive tree is one that
we did not plant. This vine is of the Lord's own
right hand planting, and the oil and the wine that flow from
them are gifts of God's grace. What I have said about election
and redemption equally applies to adoption, sanctification,
and all the other blessings. These are fruits from the text
that we did not plant, God has given them to us freely of his
grace. What a freeing thought that is.
When you're in conflict and you think, why is it that God's doing
this? I need to fix this. Well, maybe
you do. I'm not gonna say, if you're
hitting your thumb with a hammer, keep hitting it and God will
miraculously move the hammer. Stop hitting your thumb with
a hammer, please. But so often we get caught in
this performance trap where we think the conflict is entirely
of our doing and we forget the fact that we serve a sovereign
God who's brought us to this place for a reason. And then
as God begins to take us out of the trial, so often we And
I say this to my shame, congratulate ourselves for our astuteness
in seeing what we needed to do next, instead of being amazed
by the fact that God directed our thoughts and our minds and
our intentions and our actions in such a way that we would stop
clinging to our idols and that we would stop trying to win the
battle in our own might and instead put our trust in God. What God
did for his people in the past, he does for his people today. Through Christ and his gospel,
we are being continually rescued from our idols. We're continually
being delivered from our self-imposed slavery. Curses, some of them
well-deserved by us, are being turned to blessings. And that
which often terrifies us is being driven away by the terror of
God. And God, whether we see it or
not, always as clearly as we should, God is providing for
us abundantly so that we can rest in Christ and in his finished
work. Eric? Lead us. Oliver, you want to hand out
the bread? While Oliver does that, we can turn to number eight,
course books.