You can open your Bibles to Joshua
chapter, well, 11. Though I cannot, I don't know
that we'll actually be looking at any particular verse there,
we've already taken note that 10 through 12 is an account of the Jews defeating the rest of
the area, the rest of the promised land, defeating the kings. And
that this battle here, in, let's see, the latter part of chapter
11 represents Joshua's last battle, at least the last recorded battle,
the last one that he led. And it represents at least this much. And that's
one of the things, when we're looking at Old Testament scriptures,
And we say, well, now, this represents or illustrates such and such.
That doesn't mean that's the only thing that it represents. I have found that the same story,
stories will bring out different aspects of the gospel. I think
it was the first year that Brother Henry Mahan preached for us,
which would have been in August of 88. But he and I were driving. He asked me about, and this was
Henry's way, instead of just telling you stuff, he'd ask you
questions. And he said, how do you think we should interpret the Old Testament scriptures?
What rules should we follow? And of course, he already understood
that I knew that you use them to preach Christ. And I can't
remember just what answer I gave him, but he said, well, you know,
I'm kind of of the opinion, any use we make of them that does
not deny the gospel is a legitimate use. And on that particular principle,
I found that Old Testament stories can have more than one application.
We can see more than one aspect of them. Especially in this way,
sometimes you can narrow it down like just one verse out of a
story. And with a close-up look like
that, you see one aspect of the gospel. But then if you back
up, You know, kind of like you zoom out, you know, and see a
bigger picture. Well, you see a bigger arc in
the story that shows something else. I remember for a long time,
well, I remember the first time that I heard someone preach on
Ezekiel 16 about the child that was cast out. That was their
form of abortion back then, unfortunately. Girls were not as highly valued
as boys and for nomadic tribes and whatnot. If it was a girl
born and they thought, I don't want to go through the trouble
of raising this girl, simply that she's going to go off and,
you know, not be of any use to the family or they just thought
it was too much of a burden to carry around, whatever reason,
they would, this sounds awful, but just toss them out and leave
them to die. And it's a wonderful story because
the Lord is likening that babe, that little girl, child, who
it said, you know, your cord was not cut, neither were you
clean from your blood and all this. I mean, just born. And
he said, and when I passed by, I said, no, I pitied you. But when I passed by, I said
unto you, live. And that's just a remarkable
story of the Lord's mercy for sinners. And if you just confine
yourself to that part of the story, it's a sweet story like
that. If you read the rest of it, you
continue on after that part, it says, and you grew up, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. And then it starts talking about
Israel's rebellion. And if you look at the whole
story, it doesn't deny what's in the first part of it, but
it certainly puts a different tinge on the story, doesn't it?
Well, here we have Joshua's last battle, and we say it represents
the defeat of death. We read last week of Christ that
God said to him, sit here till I make your enemies a footstool
for your feet. And he shall reign until all
enemies are put under his feet. And then it says, and the last
enemy to be destroyed is death. Now, we realize that all of God's
enemies, and that would mean all of our enemies, have already
been dealt a mortal blow. They have been stabbed, shot,
whatever imagery you want to use. And it will not survive. But even though death, in a sense,
has been put to death, Yet as time goes on, new believers are
brought into the world and they must experience that death of
death. For example, here I am, I'm a
believer, I have eternal life. But death has not yet been killed
in me. Why? Well, sooner or later I'll
die. And in fact, the final triumph
over death will be at the resurrection. So when we say this is a picture
of the last enemy to be destroyed is death, this doesn't mean that
Christ did not destroy death First Timothy says he did. He
destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through
the Gospel. Whenever you're reading the Bible,
you have to keep the context that it's written in, you have
to keep in mind the point that the writer is making, and understand
it within that whole context. On the cross, Christ put death
to death, yet that So far as our experience of it's concerned,
that won't happen until the resurrection when death is utterly destroyed
and we no longer have any connection to sin and the death that comes
by it. Now, one of the reasons that we say
this, The last battle here of Joshua is, pictures the defeat
of death, is that he defeated the Antiquites. And the Antiquites
were the very people in the land of Israel that struck such fear
in the hearts of the generation before And the 10 spies went
in and they saw the Anakites. The Anakites were giants. Now,
it never tells us just how big they were. But Goliath, who was
from the city of Gath, I don't know if it ever identifies him
also as a descendant of Enoch. Nonetheless, depending on how
you define a cubit, he was somewhat over nine feet tall. And we would
assume that these giants were not like the extra tall people
of our day, like the ones that set records. I think that the
last one I heard of a guy was eight foot eleven or something
like that. But he couldn't have been a soldier, the guy could
hardly stand. You know, his giantism was a deformity. There was something
wrong in his genetics that just caused him to grow like crazy.
I would assume that these giants were healthy, proportional, big
people. And with it went, you know, strong
skeletons, strong muscles. There was nothing wrong with
their mind or anything like that. They were fearsome warriors.
And that had struck fear in the hearts of 10 of the spies that
had been sent in to spy out the land, everyone but Joshua and
Caleb. And they went in there, or they
came back with a bad report. They spread the bad report among
the people. And so the people did not go
in. And they refused to go in because of unbelief. Now fear, fear is the child of
unbelief. If you do not believe, that is, when we talk about here
believe, believe what God says, trust his son for salvation,
believe his grace, his promises, things like that. If you don't
believe these things and entrust yourself to God and his grace,
what else is left but fear? The book of Hebrews says if we
sin willfully, having received the word of truth, and he does
not mean there that if you commit a sin on purpose. Because I mean,
do we commit them by accident? We generally speak, we know what
we're doing. He's not talking about just any sin. The old covenant
had a law about willful sin. And that willful sin was essentially
an utter violation and overthrow of the covenant. And so the book
of Hebrews applies that to the new covenant. And when he says,
if we sin willfully after we have received the word of truth,
all that's left is fear. and trembling and judgment. So, fear is the child of unbelief. Now, when we believe, we who
do believe, our faith is generally speaking accompanied with doubts. Now let me show you that both
of them can exist together. That is, faith, real, honest-to-goodness,
God-given faith and doubt can exist together. And that, I was
gonna say, let me show you that, and I looked it up, and in my
absent-mindedness, I did not write it down. But let me see
if I can. Well, it's in Matthew, but you
know the story. Disciples are in a boat. Storm
comes up. They're all afraid. And then
they see the Lord Jesus walking on the water towards them. And
of course, that makes them fear even more. So he says, don't
be afraid. It's me. And Peter said, if it's you,
invite me out there with you. And the Lord said, well, come
on. And Peter stepped out of the boat, and Peter was walking
on the water. But then he began to take note
of the waves, and he began to sink. The Lord helped me. The
Lord reached out, grabbed him by the arm, pulled him up. Isn't
that something? Not only could the Lord walk
on water, he could reach down and pick up, you know, added
weight. and still be walking on the water. And you know what
he said to Peter? He said, oh, you of little faith,
why did you doubt? Now, it was little faith, but
it was faith. He didn't say, well, you doubted,
so it's obvious you didn't believe. No. Faith and doubt go together. And here's the reason faith and
doubt go together in this life. It is the struggle between flesh
and spirit. Those who have been born again
by God, they do believe. They believe from their inner
man, if you want to call it that, they believe from their spirit,
they believe in their heart, whatever words you want to use
to describe that aspect of us that is not made up of this body. But in their flesh, in their
natural selves, well, the flesh can't believe anything that the
flesh can't detect. That's why atheists are so foolish
when they say, well, you're going to have to prove God to me. And
what they mean, you're going to have to use a scientific method
to prove to me. You see, the flesh only recognizes
the scientific method. That is, things that can be observed,
that's what's real, that's what's true. If I can't observe it,
I'm not going to believe it. Well, if that's the attitude
that you have, if that's the thought process that rules your
mind, your entire way of thinking, if that's the way it is, you're
never going to believe God. Why? You can't see Him. You can't observe Him. Why? He's not a part of this universe.
The only thing that we who are of time and space and our natural
selves here, the only thing we'll ever be able to observe with
our natural senses is the things of time and space. And God's
not part of that. So for someone to say, I don't
believe in God. Why? Well, there's no proof of
Him. And I have responded to some
of them saying, anything that you could prove, the way you're
talking about proof, wouldn't be God. Couldn't be God. We may be able
to detect powers greater than us, but we cannot detect anything, anyone. that exists
outside our realm of existence. And that's why it's a matter
of faith. So, faith and doubt go together. And you know, a
lot of preachers aren't, probably think preachers shouldn't admit
this, but I wrestle with it all the time. There is a significant
amount of time when my faith consists primarily of this. If this isn't true, then nothing
is true. Because there are a few things
that reason, even natural reason, can tell me. Number one, I know
with scientific certainty I'm a sinner. And I know, following
thousands, maybe millions of experiments in this, I can't
do anything about my sin. Because I keep trying. I don't want to do it. My sin's bigger than me. So I
know that. I can't fix my sin problem. Therefore, Even my mind, my natural mind
can say, if there is a God, he must punish me for my sin. Or he wouldn't be a God. And if I am to be saved from
that punishment, he's gonna have to be the one
to do it. Because nobody Nobody could undo what a God like that
has done. And if He does anything for me,
then it's going to have to be entirely on the basis of His
free grace. Now, that kind of thinking does
not resolve the issue as to whether or not there is a God. But it
is enough that even my natural mind can say this, if there is
a God, the God described in the Bible is Him. Because the biblical
God is the only God that fits that pattern. A God who must judge, will judge
with absolute justice. and a God who will save, but
saves only upon the grounds of His own... hang on to your pew... free will grace. Now, when I
say free will grace, I don't mean our free will, His free
will. I once wrote an article in the
Bulletin, I said, do I believe that salvation is by free will?
I certainly do, it can't be any other way. And once in a while
I like to write a line like that just to make people think I've,
during the week, you know, gone off the reservation. Said the
issue is not whether salvation's by free will, the issue is whose
will is free in the matter of salvation. Well it's not, our
will isn't free. Our will completely bound up
to sin. Our natural self. And we may be, in the eyes of
the world, Good people. But we're not talking about being
righteous or good in the eyes of the world. The world isn't
our judge. We are sinful. And nothing but
the grace of a God as He is described in the Scriptures would be able
to save us. Now, sometimes When I'm feeling, I don't want to say unbelieving,
doubting, when it seems as though doubt is stronger than faith,
I just fall back on that. I really do. I say, well, if
this isn't the truth, there is no truth. If the God of scriptures
is not God, there is no God. If the gospel of the scriptures
is not the gospel, there is no gospel. If the Bible is not true, listen
to me, and reason can tell you this, if the Bible's not true,
you and I are just the animals that most of the time we're at
the top of the food chain. You know, there's nothing more
to us than the bodies you see. So belief and doubt do exist
together. Faith is exhibited in this. Faith entrusts the soul unto
the care of God. Whether it does so with unwavering
confidence or if it does so with great trembling or somewhere
in between, it doesn't matter. that it doesn't matter to the
safety of the one who has entrusted his soul to Christ. For the essence of the faith,
it says, is that act of entrusting oneself to him, of surrendering to him. Now that's faith. And we hope,
you know, it's our hope as believers that our faith, we could say
that it's strengthened, that's one way to put it, purified. Say, isn't our faith pure? Well,
spiritually it's pure, but once again, we are flesh and spirit,
but flesh and spirit are expressed, though they're two separate natures,
they are expressed through a single consciousness. I mean, it's not as though I'm
going along and say, oh, OK, I'm fleshly Joe now. OK, now
I'm spiritual Joe. It's not like I'm up there with
that multiple personality disorder that at one point I'm one identity
and another point I'm another identity. I'm the same person
all the time. But all the time, both natures are expressing themselves
through a single consciousness. And at any given time, one nature
might be louder than the other. But unbelief, unbelief in the
Bible is always with regard to God, to Christ, and to the gospel
that came by Christ. Because everybody's a believer
in something. So when it talks about unbelief,
it's not talking about people that just don't believe anything,
it's people that don't believe God. Now, unbelief. is the mother of all sins, if
you'll look at Hebrews chapter 3. And I did manage to write
this one down. That's the only reason I can
tell you where it is. Hebrews 3, verse 12. I was just watching a show here
the other day on TV, That was a video on YouTube. But it was talking about a neurological process called
pruning. And, you know, as you have experiences,
you make new neural connections. But neural connections that don't
get used, they get pruned. And you lose the connection.
which is one reason that as you get older, you begin to not remember
things. Because if you haven't accessed
those memories in so long, the brain prunes those connections,
uses them for others. And I feel like I've been pruned
way back, like they do grapevines. And I can't remember where verses
are like I used to. But Hebrews 3.12, see to it,
brothers. Now, he has just reminded them
of the story when the Jews went, you know, first crossed the wilderness,
and it was time for them to go in, and then they didn't. Through
unbelief, they refused to go in, and God said, I swore my
wrath. They will never enter my rest. And so, the writer of
Hebrews says, see to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful,
unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. Unbelief always is an expression
of turning away from the living God. And he says, be sure. You all
say you believe, and Hebrews is saying, I'm not going to put
a question mark on whether or not you believe. But I'm sure
that the writer of Hebrews had seen many who said they believed
and then later proved they didn't. So he exhorts them, see to it
that there's not an evil heart of unbelief in you. Unbelief
is the mother of all sin. Now this sin of unbelief is manifest
in a couple of ways. It reveals itself in a couple
of ways. First of all, it reveals itself
in the belief that a person can make himself suitable to be accepted
by God. Now, this itself shows up in
two ways. First of all, it shows itself
up, or shows up itself, or however that is, in the pharisaical attitude
that one has actually performed the things God requires in order
to be accepted. Pharisees, it's written of them,
you are they who justify yourselves. And they did. They declared themselves
to be righteous. I thank you, God. I'm not like
other men. Now, the man who prayed that
prayer believed there is one God and his name is Jehovah. That man believed that. He was
the kind of man who was willing not only to die for his faith,
he was willing to kill for his faith. He would have been among those
who cried out for the Lord to be crucified. He was of the same
denomination as was Saul of Tarsus, because he is a Pharisee. Now
that's one way that unbelief manifests itself. If you'd ask
this man, do you believe there's one God? He would have said,
yes, I do. And if you don't, you need to
get away from me. I don't want to associate with you. The word
Pharisee means separate. And that's what they did. They
separated themselves from everybody. You know, when folks feel like
they've gotten so religious they can't be around people that don't
have the same kind of religion as them, And if you ever want
to, just point out to them, do you know that's exactly what
a Pharisee was? Their name means separate. Separate. The interesting thing is, our
Lord Jesus Christ, how was he known? A friend of
tax collectors and notable sinners. Now, if the Lord Jesus Christ,
who is a very perfection of righteousness, found no inconsistency at befriending
what was considered the worst of Jewish society, why should
any sinful person think that it is especially spiritual? to cut themselves off from anybody
who does not have the same opinion as they do about religious matters. At any rate, that's one form
of unbelief. It doesn't mean that these people
aren't believing. They believe, all right. They
believe in themselves. They believe there is a God.
But I like what the apostle wrote about that. He says, you say
you believe there is one God. The demons believe that and tremble. I see religious people, well,
I believe God. And they stand tall and think
that that's something to be proud of. If you believe God, you just
believe in what's true. And there is no virtue. in believing
the truth. There's great sin in not believing
it, but virtue, no. And then the other form of unbelief, and this is one
probably that we believers struggle with, a form of doubt that can
have such power in our minds. And that is, that even though we confess that
we have not, to this point, lived as we ought to, we think that, quote, by God's
grace, and you know, we believers, we've been learned to say that
phrase all the time, that by grace we can live as
we ought to. And this shows itself up in us. I say us, me, but I've talked
to others and they talk the same way. I imagine it's universal
among God's people. This remaining unbelief in our
flesh reveals itself that when we are caught in what I call
notable sin. And the reason I call it notable
sin, we sin all the time, don't we? I mean, there's sin mixed
in everything we do, but we're so accustomed to a certain level. It's like background noise. Have
you ever noticed that? If there's a noise that's just
there all the time, eventually your mind just blocks it out. You don't even notice it. And
so we kind of have a level of sin, a background noise of sin
that we're accustomed to, but if we do something that makes
the sound level go way up, all at once we begin to have a sense
of condemnation and the fear that comes by it. Because we
have not lived as we think a Christian should live. I have And this
is even among faithful preachers. And, well, and I've said it. I've used this phrase before.
You look at the exhortations that are given to Christians
by the apostles, and then we say something like, now, now,
believers don't blah, blah, blah. And the older I get, the more
I feel like sometimes, I do. I do. A believer does this. No, I haven't done that, at least
not consistently. Here's a principle I caught onto
somewhere along the line. If a believer were incapable
of something, the apostles would not have wasted pen and ink and
paper, which was quite expensive back then, would not, if they
couldn't do it, they wouldn't have wasted time telling them
not to. Right? I mean, if everybody had a speed
limit in their mind, and nobody would ever go above 55 miles
an hour, they wouldn't have to put the signs out there, would
they? And if it weren't that believers were capable of the
kind of things that we are warned about in scriptures, they never
would have been put there. Every warning of the scripture
involves something we can do. Now, that doesn't mean that we
should say, well, then I don't care if I sin. We certainly should
care. The background noise that we
get used to is bad enough when we, a spike, you know, you take,
for instance, David. I mean, you know, he was a sinner
all the time. He was a violent man all the
time, according to what God said. But that business with Bathsheba
and Uriah, that really turned the volume up. And it had an
effect on him in this life. After that event, you don't read
of any great exploits on the part of David. Our sins do have consequences,
not eternal ones, but they have consequences in this life. But
one thing that we need never do is fear that our sins have
separated us from our God. Why? Because all of them were laid
on Christ and they're gone. And when the flesh accuses within your own mind or argue
with yourself, yeah, here in time and space at this particular
point in time, I did that. But 2,000 years ago, Jehovah
God, who knows all, decrees all, plans all, He knew all about
it. And He laid that sin on Christ
just as much as He laid all the ones before today on Christ. And they have been put away.
And while I see them, He does not. If you are a believer, flesh
and spirit will battle, and the essential battle line between
flesh and spirit is that line that divides grace from works.
And I know it talks about the works of the flesh and it mentions
all kinds of sins. Every one of those sins it mentions
is the result of a legalistic approach to God, the fruit of
the Spirit. And I like it, not the fruits,
the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness. So let us think upon that testimony
that the Spirit of God gives concerning Christ. It says, God's
spirit testifies with our spirits that we are the sons of God,
and if we're sons, then heirs. Heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ Jesus. What is the spirit of God telling
us? Through the gospel. We are sons of God. And again,
it uses sons rather than sons and daughters because it's connecting
it to the inheritance, and in those days, Virtually all inheritance
went to a son. We'll never be able to get the
flesh to shut up. But by grace, by turning our
eyes upon Christ, by thinking upon those things which are good,
you know, the truth which is good, let us increase the volume
of the voice of the Spirit of God within us, testifying to
His grace. All right, you are