All right, you can open your
Bibles. Do you have, oh, there we go,
that microphone on, yeah. Got a new wire for this wireless
mic. That doesn't make a lot of sense,
but. So hopefully it won't cut out on us now. And. I went to Sermon Audio and to
YouTube for last week's service, and it's really odd. Sermon Audio
has the song service, and that's it. And YouTube has everything
after that. So I don't know what happened. That's one reason we record the
actual preaching and teaching as a backup, just in case something
doesn't work on that. Alright, let's open to Joshua
13. Joshua 13. Heavenly Father, bless this gathering
this morning and make the savor of Christ to waft up from this place and
be a sweet-smelling savor unto you. And may our hearts be blessed
and lifted up. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Joshua 13. Now we're going to
take special note of only two verses. in this chapter regarding
the inheritance for the Levites. But we'll take note of what else
went on in the chapter in a general way. It is the record of Joshua,
who is now well advanced in years and no longer able to wield the
sword. And it confirms Confirming the
words of Moses in granting the inheritance on the wilderness
side of Jordan to the two and one-half tribes
of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. Now the tribe of Manasseh was
split, that is, its inheritance was split, part of it on the
west side of Jordan, part of it on the east. Now, there are
a couple of things that are to be noted in the fact that Joshua
grew old, declined in strength, and eventually died, in the granting of the inheritance
of all the tribes. The first is that God always
keeps His promises. It says in the book of 2 Corinthians,
No matter how many promises God has made, they are yes, and by
Him we give the amen to the glory of God. In other words, none
of God's promises fail. But as Paul expressed it there in
1 Corinthians, it's not just that they don't fail, They don't
fail because of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, the promises
are yes. Anyone who tries to claim the
promises of God, apart from reliance upon Christ, apart from a trust
in Christ, he is chasing after the wind. All of God's blessings are in
Christ. Therefore, it's only reasonable
that the promise of those blessings is fulfilled in Christ. He is the one who has, by his
labors, purchased the promises, paid the price for those blessings,
and it's to him that we go in order to receive them. Now, the
possession of the lands, the various portions of the land.
Maybe you need to turn this one on as well,
Bonnie, just as kind of a backup in case this one around my ear
fails. All right. The tribal allotments and the
possession of them by the Israelites. pictures the inheritance of believers. These lands were given to them
as a promise, given to the heirs of Abraham, and set forth the
glories of the covenant of promise, or as some have called it, the
covenant of grace. What a child of God receives,
whatever he receives, it is a gift bought paid for and conquered
by our Lord Jesus, the man of war. The believer does nothing
to take possession of, gain or keep any of these gifts, any
of his inheritance. It was freely ordained by God
freely given by the grace of God to those who by the blood
of Christ were made fit to be partakers of this inheritance. And by faith, and we're going to
see this in the morning message, as we grow in faith, as our faith
is strengthened, we are able to enjoy this promised inheritance
more and more. Now, it doesn't become anymore
ours. The inheritance is ours. But
as we grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ, we come to better understand, appreciate, and enjoy those things
God has given us in Christ. Here's another thing to learn
now. The warrior who led the battle for the possession of
the land of promise is now old and unable to engage in war any
longer. Now this is the end of all the
descendants of Adam. It is. The only ones who will
not experience, well, I guess everybody experiences
the weakness and frailty of the flesh, but the only ones who
won't experience the end game, the death of the body, will be
those few like Enoch and Elijah, who never died, and then those
believers who remain until the coming of the Lord. They'll never
experience death. But from what I've read, for
the first 25 years of a person's life, and of course this is just
generalization, but about 25 years, you grow up. Then you
spend the rest of your life growing old. And most of us can probably
look back and say, yeah, that was probably my mid-20s, something
like that, was probably the height of my strength and vigor. Hopefully,
it wasn't the height of your wisdom. Hopefully, you've continued
to gain in that. But when it comes to matters
of the body, after about age 25, there's a decline. And I'm
noticing the curve gets steeper and steeper. But that's the way
of all natural man. Now, this shows us the glory of the reality as compared
to the illustration. What do I mean by that? Well,
Joshua is simply the illustration or the shadow of our Lord Jesus
Christ. There are things about Joshua,
for example, his name, which foreshadows our Lord Jesus Christ
and teaches us things about the Lord Jesus Christ. But sometimes
we learn in these various types and shadows of Christ, we learn
things about Christ not because of how the shadow and the substance
are the same, but how they are different. The natural Joshua. Most of what we read about him
is in the vigor of his life. But that vigor was eventually
gone. And I have no idea where Joshua
is buried, but he was buried somewhere. But our Lord Jesus Christ, he,
as the captain of the host of God, never ages. He is the same yesterday, today,
and forever. He died unto sin once, but he
lives unto God, says Paul. And he and all those who are
with him, none of them any longer experience decay, frailty, weakness,
or death. Our Lord is as strong to the
battle now as He ever was. And whatever battles we may face
in this life, He is fully capable of engaging the battle and winning
the battle in our behalf. That's why Paul could write,
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory. through Jesus Christ. It doesn't
say he makes us victorious in Christ. He gives us the victory. Christ is the victorious one. And it's as though he won the
gold medal and then turns around and hands it to us. And we are
given it. Look over at Hebrews chapter
7, verse We'll begin reading verse 23,
Hebrews chapter 7. Now, someone once said the theme
of the book of Hebrews is better, because constantly in this book
you'll find that word being used. A better covenant, a better surety
of the covenant, a better hope better blessings under the New
Covenant. But here in speaking of the high
priest of the New Covenant, it says, there have been many of
those priests, that is the old covenant priests, since death
prevented them from continuing in office. But because Jesus
lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, He is
able to save completely those who come to God through him because
he always lives to intercede for them. So our Lord does not
experience what Joshua did and he is always in the position
of being our savior and is always able to do what we need done.
Now if you look back in Joshua chapter 12, verse 22, we also see, and speaking of some of the battles
that had been fought, it says, in addition to those slain in
battle, the Israelites had put to the sword Balaam, son of Beor,
who practiced divination. Now this Balaam fellow, I believe
it's in the book of Numbers you read about him, but he was hired
by some of the people, I believe to the east of Jordan there,
they were concerned about the Israelites. And a king hired
him and said, curse those people for me. And Balaam went and tried
to curse the people of God, but every time he'd go to curse them,
the Lord would intervene. And finally he said, I can't
curse them because the Lord has blessed them. But what he did
do was advise the king how he could bring the people of God,
that is that national people of God, how he could bring them
under a curse by enticing them with a mixture of true religion
and false religion. Now, I believe that the visible
Church of Christ, that is, all those who profess to be believers,
that is the most difficult temptation they face in this life. That you not mix. You know, in
the law, you weren't allowed to make fabric out of two different
kinds of I don't know what you call it. Well, you can't make
one out of, like, you can't make a fabric made out of linen and
wool. I think the British called that
Lindsay Woolsey. You weren't allowed to make that.
You couldn't plow a piece of ground by yoking two different
animals together. You couldn't yoke a donkey and
an ox together. You say, those are kind of weird
rules. Why did God have that? Why does
he care what kind of fabric? clothes are made of, or how a
man plows his field. Well, God doesn't. It means nothing
to Him. It was designed to picture something,
and that is that the Gospel is not made of two things. It is not made of a mixture of
grace and works. Our favor with God is not based
partly on what Christ has done and partly on what we have done. And that's illustrated in those
two laws. You cannot make yourself a robe
of righteousness with threads of Christ, pure white linen garment
of righteousness going in one direction and then try with woolen
thread to make the other way. You can't go out and plow your
field. You can't live in this world.
You can't produce anything living in the spiritual world by trying
to, as it were, farm and plow with some of your works along
with Christ's works. You can't do it. We often say we preach Christ,
and we do. Paul said that. That's a good
way to state it, but that's not just a slogan. Nor is it a badge
of honor to us. Do you know why we preach only
Christ? If we start preaching anything else, we'll start to
add that to Christ. That's why. Christ is all there
is. Christ is the soul, is the singular
object of the faith of God's people. Therefore, we don't introduce
other things. Because we know how fickle we
are, don't we? We know that if we're fed a diet
of some Christ and then some other stuff, we will try to join
the other stuff to Christ, and we'll keep trying, and this is
where it always ends up, to where it's all other stuff. The name of Christ might show
up in a sermon once in a while, but not Christ Himself. And so, this putting to death
of this false prophet named Balaam, it shows how that we, as believers
in our Lord Jesus Christ, must not tolerate the preaching of
anything other than Christ and Him crucified. I don't want to
say don't tolerate it. Paul pointed out that all these
kinds of instructions are for within the assembly. We have
nothing to say about what other religions or even other churches
do. If they ask us our opinion, we
can give it. But when I say we don't tolerate
it, as long as we live in this world, we're going to have to
tolerate all kinds of stuff in the world. But here, by the grace
of God, and we've always got to kind of issue that disclaimer,
because we know that we're not going to do anything right in
our own strength. But by the grace of God, so long
as we're here worshiping together like this, we will not tolerate
the introduction of anything in addition to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, what following generations
do? We're not responsible for that. You know, I've often described
the ministry as like a marathon race, you know. And in a sense,
our Lord started the race, but He handed the baton off to His
apostles. And they ran their course. Paul
says, I've finished my course. And that's the thing about, I
said marathon. Relay races is what I'm talking
about. Relay races, you know, where you've got several runners. Each of them run a part of it.
But the apostles, they ran it and when they were done, they
handed it off to the next guy. Paul handed it off as it were
to Timothy. Timothy to somebody else. It goes on and on and on
like that. And here I am, you know. I show up in this world
in 1955, and graduated from college in 77, and then got some good
education, you know, sitting at 13th Street Baptist Church,
and then I'd done some preaching, and then I, you know, pastored
for a little while there in western Kentucky, in Owensboro, and God
sent me here. And I've been here now for 36,
about 36 and a half years, something like that. I'm running, got the
baton in my hand. Now, what's my job? My job is
not to put my mark on the baton. It's not my job to, while I'm
running, write, Joe was here. You know, like people like to
put graffiti on sites that you go see, carve their initials
in trees. No, not my name, nothing. Just carry it. Carry it faithfully. until my course is done and then
hand it off to the next guy. Now, what he does with it is
his responsibility. I certainly hope and pray, you
know, that whoever follows me in this pastoral ministry here
is faithful for the whole time that he's here. There's no guarantee
of anything, is there? We rely for every step upon the
grace of God. If I were to die right now or
were on my deathbed, I think I could say, And I'd certainly
say it without pride, it would just be a matter of fact, because
I'm rather amazed at this fact, but like Paul says, I have finished
my course, I have kept the faith. And that's simply an objective
truth, because I know what I preached when I got here, and I'm preaching
the same thing now. If I haven't kept the faith,
then I didn't even have it when I got here, because I'm preaching
the same thing. But I know this, however long
it is between now and my departure from this pulpit, all that is as dependent upon
the grace of God as the, well actually I've been preaching
for about 40 years, the 40 years of preaching behind me. I'm not
less dependent on God, it's not as though these experiences,
I can say, alright Lord, I got her from here. Thanks for the
help, but now I've grown strong. No, I feel it within me. But we stay with that single
message and will not allow anything else. I say, and I'm sure all the brethren
in the ministry that I know would say this right along with me,
I would rather die than corrupt the pure gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I would rather the Lord seal
my lips than allow them to tell a lie about him. So we see here, and I'm not going
to try to get into the next of it because I wouldn't be able
to finish it. So this may be, you may want
to write this down on your calendar. We got out a few minutes early. And write it down because it
ain't going to happen often. Our Joshua never grows old. the
Joshua of this book did, and he could no longer lead the people
of God. But our Joshua, he never grows
old, he never grows weak, he's never not up to the task of completely
saving those who come to God by him. And secondly, let us
commit ourselves by the grace of God that we will never become
a Balaam and never listen to one, that we will never allow
anyone to drag us in to a corrupted gospel in which we hear the name
of Jesus in words like grace and faith, but they've all been
corrupted by the addition of what comes by man. All right,
you are dismissed.