Bonnie pointed out, I can't remember
if it was last week or the week before, I said, let's open to
Joshua 8. And we did. And then I never read a single
verse from it during the lesson. So we'll begin. We'll just hopefully
take this one week. And we can handle the entire
story here in Joshua 9. But let's read it together. Now,
when all the kings west of the Jordan heard about these things,
those in the hill country, in the western foothills, and along
the entire coast of the Great Sea as far as Lebanon, the kings
of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites,
they came together to make war against Joshua and Israel. However, when the people of Gibeon
heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they resorted
to a ruse. They went as a delegation, whose
donkeys were loaded with worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked
and mended. The men put worn and patched
sandals on their feet and wore old clothes. All the bread of
their food supply was dry and moldy. They went to Joshua in
the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the men of Israel, we
have come from a distant country, make a treaty with us. Now the
men of Israel said to the Hivites, but perhaps you live near us.
How then can we make a treaty with you? We are your servants,
they said to Joshua. But Joshua asked, who are you
and where do you come from? They answered, your servants
have come from a very distant country because of the fame of
the Lord your God. For we have heard reports of
him, all that he did in Egypt and all that he did to the kings
of the Amorites east of the Jordan. Sihon, king of Heshbon, and Og,
king of Bashan, who reigned in Ashtoreth. And our elders and
all those living in our country said to us, take provisions for
your journey. Go and meet them and say to them,
we are your servants. Make a treaty with us. This bread
of ours was warm when we packed it at home on the day we left
to come to you. But now see how dry and moldy
it is. And these wineskins that we filled
were new, but see how cracked they are. And our clothes and
sandals are worn out by the very long journey. The men of Israel
sampled their provisions, but did not inquire of the Lord. Then Joshua made a treaty of
peace with them to let them live, and the leaders of the assembly
ratified it by oath. Three days after they made the
treaty with the Gibeonites, the Israelites heard that they were
neighbors living near them. So the Israelites set out, and
on the third day came to their cities, Gibeon, Kephira, Baareth,
and Kiriath-Jarim. But the Israelites did not attack
them, because the leaders of the assembly had sworn an oath
to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. The whole assembly
grumbled against the leaders, but all the leaders answered,
we have given them our oath by the Lord, the God of Israel,
and we cannot touch them now. This is what we will do to them.
We will let them live so that wrath will not fall on us for
breaking the oath we swore to them. They continued, let them
live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers for the entire
community. So the leader's promise to them
was kept. Then Joshua summoned the Gibeonites
and said, why did you deceive us by saying we live a long way
from you while actually you live near us? You are now under a
curse. You will never cease to serve
as woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God. They
answered Joshua. Your servants are clearly told,
or were clearly told, how the Lord your God had commanded his
servant Moses to give you the whole land and to wipe out all
its inhabitants from before you. So we feared for our lives because
of you. And that is why we did this. We are now in your hands. Do to us whatever seems good
and right to you. So Joshua saved them from the
Israelites, and they did not kill them. That day he made the
Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the community and
for the altar of the Lord at the place the Lord would choose. And that is what they are to
this day. Now, whenever we read these stories,
and I may have told you this illustration before, but it bears
repeating, we must realize that these are like pictures. In fact, we call them, these
are types and pictures or illustrations. And Brother Don Fortner put it
this way, I thought it was a very good
way to describe how to approach scriptures like this. He says,
I have in my wallet a picture, and in that picture you can see
a house, you can see some trees, you can see a driveway, you can
see lots of things, but you can also see my grandchildren. He says, I never say this is
a picture of their house. No, it's a picture of my grandchildren. Now, when we look at a story
like this, there's lots of details that make up the story, but sometimes
the details, you just got to take it, that's background. You
don't necessarily put any significance on it. You don't try to say,
for example here, the deceptive actions of the people from Gibeon. Now it may be, and I'm going
to propose a way that we can fit that within the gospel, but
even if we could find no way to fit that within a gospel paradigm,
it wouldn't matter. It's just an aspect of a historical
story in which the Gospel, and in particular the two, and there's
only two responses to the Gospel, the two responses that are always
given to the preaching of the Gospel. Now, we have these two responses,
and the first one, it doesn't, I've spent a whole lot of time describing
the first response, and that response was that virtually all
the kings who remained in the promised land, I'll admit, these names, you know, Well,
I don't have a map in my mind where I could, as I read this,
you know, the Hittites, the Amorites, Canaanites, Persians, I don't
know where they were in Israel. But it mentions this, and it
says, all the kings west of the Jordan. Now remember, the Jordan
was the eastern border of the promised land. Now, and also recall that a couple
of the tribes decided to have their allotment to the east of
the Jordan. But they weren't allowed to stay
there, that is, build up their households and all that, until
they had gone with their brothers to the western side of Jordan
and helped them defeat all the enemies there. The promised land
was not east of the Jordan. The promised land was west. And
it says all the kings west of the Jordan. So I assume, and
remember kings in these days did not, don't think of them
as powerful like the kings of medieval period and even up until
now, there's not many kings left that have any power at all, but
if you go back 100, 150 years ago, the kings of most European
nations wielded significant amount of power and covered a lot of
territory. These kings, there were several
of them, a good many of them, just within that little strip
of land. So they were more like leaders
of cities, walled cities, and then the surrounding areas. But
they were called kings because that was, apart from empire builders, there
weren't any countries bigger than that. You had all these
little nations, which were much smaller even than what we call
states in the United States of America. But all of them got
together. Now, they came together to make
war against, and you find this here in verse 2, at the end of
verse 2, or actually all of verse 2, They came together to make
war against, notice this, Joshua and Israel. Now we know Joshua
is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's one of the more
obvious pictures. He has the same name as the Lord
Jesus Christ. For Jesus is merely, you know,
you take Joshua or Yahushua, to pronounce something like that
in Hebrew, and you run that through several different languages,
and each language changes a little bit, we finally get to English,
and it's Jesus. But it's the same name, Joshua. And then Israel, whose name was
given to him, he says, because you have prevailed with men and
with God. That's the picture of the church.
The church has prevailed with God, not prevailed over God in
the sense they defeated God. But if you'll remember, this
name was given to Jacob after he had wrestled with God during
the night. And the way I look at it, all
through the night God was just toying with him. Remember, at
any time, God can bring one of His own to bay. What did Paul
say? When it pleased God to reveal
His Son in me. Now, God could have saved Paul
at any time. He could have saved Saul before
Saul wreaked havoc on the church. It's not like God was up there
saying, oh, what am I going to do about this guy? I've got to
come up with a plan. He's causing trouble. It's not
as though the Lord had made several attempts on Saul to that point. Who knows? He may have heard
some preaching by some faithful men But we have this from the
Old Testament. God says that His Word accomplishes
whatever He intends it to accomplish. He said, it never returns to
me empty, useless, worthless. And so when He would send preachers
that Saul slash Paul heard, whether he heard it or heard of it, The
word had its effect and it had the effect that God wanted it
to have. At first it enraged Saul and
Saul wreaked havoc against the church. But at the appointed
time, right when Saul was at his a fever pitch of hatred and
vengeance against the church. He's on his way to Damascus.
He's got papers. Isn't it something how people
trust in human authority, which means absolutely nothing to God?
He had papers. He had papers from the authorities
that would allow him to go to Damascus, find the Christians
there, bring them back to Jerusalem,
and have them punished, some of them probably with death,
all of them, something severe. And he's traveling with a contingent,
an entourage, and then suddenly, at the appointed time, And you
think about this, this time, whatever, I think it says midday,
but that could be, you know, that's quite a few hours. But
before the world, before God said, let there be light, this
moment was on God's calendar. And it's not as though it took
the Lord that long to catch up to Saul. That was the time that God determined
to get Saul. And He did. But the same thing is with God. He's wrestling with Jacob. And
the time comes then to put an end to the fight. You see, we
are all born at war fighting against the God who made us. And if we belong to Him, there
is a time known to God, not just known to Him, determined by Him,
in which He will intervene and do whatever is necessary to bring
us into submission. Now what God did to Jacob is
that He grabbed him in the hollow of his thigh. I mean, probably
his upper thigh and just grabbed. And that's a very painful thing,
particularly if you can grab with the strength of God. And Jacob, and he said to Jacob,
let me go. Now, it looked to Jacob like
he was winning. He had the Lord, of course, the
Lord was appearing in the form of a man. And if you had been
You know, the referee over the thing. You would have been about
to try to see if the Lord was going to be pinned. But once
again, this is all part of the Lord's plan. And he grabbed Jacob
in the hollow of his thigh, and he said, let me go. Now. The Lord could have picked him
up like a toy and thrown him halfway across the country if
he'd wanted to. But that wasn't what he was getting from Jacob. Jacob responded like this in
that intense pain. And remember, Jacob's an old
man at this point. In that intense pain, he said,
I will not let you go until you bless me. And that is how Jacob
prevailed over God. He did not prevail over God in
the sense of wrestling him to the ground. God let him do that. To bring about that set of circumstances,
He prevailed with God because in the midst of his agony, he
called out for God's mercy, for his blessings. Bartimaeus, by the side of the
road. This scene always gets me, and the Lord is, if you take
the two accounts, one says this happens when the Lord's leaving
Jerusalem, some says it happens as He's approaching Jerusalem.
I read, not Jerusalem, but Jericho. there were two Jerichos, the
old Jericho, which got destroyed by Joshua, and then a new Jericho. And He was in between them. So
depending on which Jericho you are referring to, the Lord was
either leaving it or on His way to it. Nonetheless, He comes
up. He's passing by. People are crowding around Him.
And the disciples, it seems like the disciples are kind of running
interference because the people were so anxious to come to Jesus
and get natural benefit. And he's not doing a healing
service like people that you see on television that claim
they're healing. He's just wading through a crowd,
healing, healing, healing, healing, you know. And Bartimaeus, a blind man,
is over on the side of the road And he says, Jesus, thou son
of David, have mercy on me. And it says, the Lord stopped. That's the only word that stops
the Lord, mercy. Who is a pardoning God like you, who delights in mercy? Isn't that remarkable? So it
says that they had come up against Joshua and the Israelites. Now the point together here,
we're looking at these these wars, the conquest of the land
of Canaan, as a picture of the church going into the world,
preaching the gospel, casting down all imaginations and every
high thing that exalts itself against God. And so they're fighting. It did not say they came out
against Joshua. It did not say they came out
against the Israelites. They came out against Joshua
and the Israelites. So bound together were Joshua
and the people of God. They were not considered separately. And when the world rebels, when
the world, you know, the church goes out and preaches the gospel.
Now, we're preaching the gospel. We can't see our Joshua, but
we know he's here. He said, Lo, I'm with you always,
even to the end of the age. And so we preach, and anytime
we're out there preaching, anytime we are confronting the world
with the truth of God, our Joshua is there, he is leading his Israel. And the world doesn't like it,
and what does the world do? Well, all they see is us. So they come
out against us, but the truth is, when the world comes out
against the church, and I mean the real church. You know, the
last two weeks we preached a two-part message on the church of Jesus
Christ. And it's called, you know, the
Church of the Firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. Ever since Cain killed his brother
Abel, we have testimony that the world hates the church, but it's the church's God that
they really hate. And you can't come out against
Israel without coming out against Joshua. And you can't come out
against Joshua without coming out against His Israel. Now the Lord said to His disciples,
He says, don't be surprised when they hate you, they hated Me
first. Now there are some people who
claim to be Christians. who I understand the world's
concern about them. You have Christians in politics
who, it cannot be denied, they want to impose Christian ethics
on the world. And I'm not going to get into
a big political thing, but what our Lord Jesus Christ calls on
his people to do, you can't impose that on the world. He said, if
any man would follow me, let him deny himself. You're not
going to get the world to do that. Political law and God's
law are two different things, and they serve two different
purposes. But I can understand, in fact,
I don't want... This may sound weird coming from
a preacher. And if anybody's just listening
to this, I'll tell you I'm going to be using some air quotes.
I don't want a Christian government. Why? Because who knows which
form of Christianity it'll be? No, we believers are no danger
in their persons. They are no danger to anybody
in the world. They shouldn't be. And they should
never conduct their ministry in such a way that the world
believes that they are going to be forcibly converted, or
even forced to act like Christians. I remember reading out in, I can't remember what cities
it was, but actually when people from England first started coming
over here, other Europeans, you know, they said, we want religious
freedom, and yeah, they wanted religious freedom for them, because
when they came over here, you had to worship like they worshipped.
You know, and they had, even in England, that's right, I was
reading about in England, during the time of Queen Elizabeth.
Even if you weren't part of the Church of England, you were required
by law to attend. I don't want anything like that,
and the Church doesn't need anything like that. But the world comes out against
our Lord, and in so doing, it comes out against us. And that
is the basic response to the gospel. Now, what is it about
this gospel that the people didn't like? What, shall we say, what
is the gospel of Joshua? Joshua 9. Well, look at verse
1. When all the kings west of the
Jordan heard about these things. What things? About Israel's entry
into the land, the crossing of the Jordan, which was a miraculous
thing. How they had marched around Jericho
and blown trumpets and shouted and walls fell down. They probably
heard of the Israelites' defeat at Ai and maybe thought, well,
Jericho was a fluke. But then a little while later,
they find out, no, it wasn't a fluke. It was a misstep along
the way. They destroyed Ai. What they did was according to
the wisdom of men. I mean, if you've got a conquering
people coming into your land and you see them being successful,
if you're a smart politician, you say to yourselves, I can't
handle these guys alone. I may be the biggest city here
in Canaan, but I'm not big enough for these guys. And you would
make alliances. You'd make treaties with other
kings. All of you band together into
one big army and wipe out this invader once for all. Nothing
that these kings did was contrary to human wisdom, but it certainly
was contrary to God's wisdom. It wasn't contrary
to man's wisdom, contrary to divine wisdom. It says in the Psalms, Kiss the
son, lest he be angry, and you perish in your way. These people, these kings, they
said, in essence, what was in the parable of our Lord, we will
not have this man to rule over us. Now if you ask most professed
Christians, let's say professed evangelicals, as much as I understand
what that word means, it's just like political badges, you know,
it constantly changes in its meaning, but evangelicals, if
you listen to their gospel, It's ABC's type stuff, you know, accept,
believe, confess. Or it's a Roman's road, you know.
It's a plan and it's about accepting Jesus. It's about inviting Jesus
into your life as though you need him as some sort of spiritual
supplement. Something to make you better
than you already are. But you think of the day of Pentecost,
and you know I am a firm believer in what is commonly referred
to as limited atonement. You'll notice that in the first
full-blown gospel message preached by Peter on the day of Pentecost,
there's not a single word about atonement in it. He mentions
Christ being crucified, but he does not describe it as an atonement. He mentions it as proof of the
sinfulness of the people who were gathered there at the temple,
because they had had a part in it. The crucifixion of Christ was
set forward to them not as the means of their redemption, Now
I'm just talking about what was recorded. After words, you know,
it says, and with many other words, He exhorted them, save
yourselves from this untoward generation. But I assume that
when the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to write that, He said,
here's the part of Peter's message I want you to write down, because
this is the essence of the Gospel. What was the essence of Peter's
message? Jesus, A man approved by God
by many wonderful works, you took him and with the help of
Gentile, wicked hands is what he called it, you put him to
death. God raised him from the dead.
So let it be known to all of you that this Jesus, whom you
crucified, God has made to be Lord and Christ. That's the gospel. You say, well, that doesn't sound
like good news to everybody. Well, the Gospel isn't good news
to everybody. Paul says to some it's a savor of death unto death,
and others, a savor of life unto life. It depends on God's grace,
whether He has prepared your heart to hear that message. And so, as Joshua and the Israelites
come into the land, And we're obviously not going to get through
the whole chapter. I don't even know why I ever
say that stuff. They came in. Here is what was
said to them by the providential working of God. This Joshua,
I have set him up as the leader and the captain of my hosts.
and he is coming in. He will be victorious. I've given
this land to my people." And their response was not to
seek mercy at the hand of Joshua. It was to stand up to him. And that's exactly what happened
in the days of our Lord. Yes, on the day of Pentecost,
there were 3,000 added to the church that day. Remarkable,
isn't it? How many do you think were there? And it doesn't take but a couple
of chapters more in Acts, you find out that the leaders of
the Jews were beating and imprisoning this Israel of God. this army
of the Lord's people. Why? God may have made Jesus to be
Lord in Christ, but they were not going to tolerate that. Now
people argue over a doctrine called Lordship Salvation, and
it's unfortunate. People come up with the wrong
names for doctrinal disputes. And they argue about things and
find out that they're not even arguing about the same thing
because they define the religious term differently. But I'll say
this. No one has ever been saved apart
from surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now does that mean from
then on they're going to always obey the Lord Jesus? No. I tell
you this, they want to. And they are happy. They are
happy that God has made him Lord. And their great joy will be on
that day when they see Him, and along with every other knee and
every other tongue in the universe, bow before Him and confess Him
to be Lord. No submission, no salvation,
no surrender. no salvation. Henry used to put
it this way, God will meet you at your point of rebellion, wherever
that is, and he will defeat you there or you will be lost. All right, we'll try to finish
next