over whatever that was. Now if you'll open your Bibles
to the book of Joshua, Joshua chapter one. Let's seek the Lord's blessing
on our study this morning. Our Heavenly Father, your name
is above all names and to be held in absolute reverence. And this morning we've gathered
in the name of your son, the Lord Jesus, to worship him and
to worship you. And we pray that you will send
your spirit among us that we may enter into that which is
truly spiritual worship, for it is written that you desire
those who worship in spirit and in truth. So open our eyes, open our ears
and our hearts to understand and believe the
things that you have recorded for us. And it's in the name
of the Lord Jesus that we pray, amen. Now, we'll begin with verse five this
morning, but since we have been gone for a couple of weeks, we'll
do just a little bit of review. As you know, the name Joshua
is simply the Hebrew version of the name Jesus. And so as
we read this book and study this book, we are not doing so simply
to become familiar with the historical events of the conquest of the
land of promise. In fact, there is nothing told
to us in the scriptures whose purpose is simply to satisfy
our historical curiosity. or to fill us with facts that
we can tell someone else. To know the history of the conquest
of the promised land has no value in and of itself. It would not
have for us any more value than understanding the conquest of
the Roman Empire, unless we take our Lord's instruction as to
how we view the Old Testament scriptures. He said to the Pharisees,
you search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal
life, but these are the scriptures that testify of me, but you will
not come to me that you might have life. And so he gives us
what, in theological circles, they would call the hermeneutic
principle that we are supposed to apply to all the scriptures.
And that is simply this, that all of them are designed to reveal
the Lord Jesus Christ in some way and to fix our thoughts,
our worship, and our confidence in Him and in Him alone. That's
their design. And if we miss that point, we've
missed the very purpose for which the scriptures were given to
us. Now, that's quite easy to see in the book of Joshua. After
all, it has the same name. You know, it bears the name of
our Savior in it. But Joshua is quite the figure
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, there are many illustrations,
pictures, and types of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.
Joshua is one of the most remarkable and, what we might say, fullest
illustrations of the Lord Jesus Christ. I imagine that only David,
King David, would be a clearer illustration of the Lord Jesus
Christ. So here, as we enter the book of Joshua, it says,
after the death of Moses, this is verse one, the servant of
the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, so there's been a change now,
a change of leadership, a change from Moses, the lawgiver, to
Joshua, the savior. You see, that's what the name
Joshua means. Yah, or Jehovah, is salvation. Do you remember
when the angels, who was talking, I believe it was to Joseph, and
he says, you will give him the name Jesus, or Joshua, because
he will save his people from their sins. Now the people could
not go into the land of promise, under Moses, because Moses stands
for the law. Now promises are received by
faith. Is that not true? Promises are
not given on the basis of works. Consequently, that one, and we
find no fault with Moses here, I mean that was the ministry
given to him. But Moses can't lead them in because this is
the land of promise, and the land of promise must be entered
not by works, but by faith. In fact, that's exactly the point
in which the Jews, when they first came to the promised land,
some 38 years previous to this, the very fault they had was that
they didn't believe. They could not enter God's rest
because of unbelief. They were guilty of many transgressions
against the Lord. None of that would have prevented
them from entering the land. They had complained, they had
broken His law, they had set up idols, they'd done all manner
of wickedness as they crossed that wilderness. None of that
would have prevented them from entering What prevented them
from entering was unbelief. And as the scriptures teach us,
as Paul says, the law is not of faith. Well, there is an illustration
for us there. When they first came to the promised
land, they were under the leadership of Moses. Thus, that picture
is they were under the law and the law is not of faith. And
they acted just like those who tried to approach God and gain
His blessing through obedience to the law. They were not people
of faith, and they balked at the promise. So it was not until
Moses died, and now it's Joshua, Joshua the Savior, and under
him they can enter the promised land. Now, God's been speaking
to Joshua, and it's interesting that in the original Hebrew,
there's some things that the Lord exhorts him to in the singular
and some in the plural. And one of the things we learn
from this if we use the Lord Jesus, I mean, excuse me, use
Joshua as a picture of the Lord Jesus, and therefore the Jews
of that day as illustrating the church of the Lord Jesus, much
of what God says to the Lord Jesus is said to the entire church
through him. And yet while it's said to him,
It is not as though we must fulfill the charges that He gives to
our Lord Jesus Christ. The benefits that are declared
to Joshua accrue to us, we get them, and that's why there can
be this back and forth between singular and plural. When it comes to what must be
done, it reverts to the singular. Because for the church of the
Lord Jesus, and let me say this, by church, I mean everyone from
at least as far back as able until the last of God's elect
is gathered in. All of them make up what I mean
when I say the church. And I know that the church was
not fully revealed until the day of Pentecost. But you know,
there are a lot of things in the scriptures that always existed
but were not completely revealed until later on. So when I say
that the church of the Lord Jesus, all of their blessings come to
them through the blessings given to the Lord Jesus Christ and
they come to those blessings come to the church because all
the responsibilities have been laid upon Jesus Christ for him
to fulfill. Now He's made some promises that
their territory, verse four, your territory will extend, and
he gives the outer boundaries of the promised land. And in
verse five, it says, no one will be able to stand up against you,
now that's in the plural, all the days of your life. And that's
the plural too, that is the word your. But it's kind of interesting
that you have the plural your, but the singular life. And so what's being said here,
again, we're seeing this union between Jesus Christ and His
church because it says, no one will be able to stand against
you, plural, all the days of your, plural, life, one. Paul says, Christ, who is your
life. And so what's being said here
to these people, for then, so long as Joshua is alive, no one
shall be able to resist them. No one shall be able to stand
against them. And to the church of the Lord
Jesus, what's the promise to us? So long as Christ lives,
all the days of His life, which is our life, no one shall be
able to stand against us." Isn't that a blessed thought? I think
it is, because I know that I don't feel that way. That is, I preach. I've been preaching for 40 years.
And there's a lot about me that I think withstands any success
in preaching. And there are those in the world
who don't like what I preach, and they would resist me. And
I don't feel as though I am adequate to stand up against that. But you know what? It's irrelevant. My strength, my power, my ability,
my obedience is irrelevant. in this matter, of possessing
the promises of God. So long as Christ is alive, I cannot be barred from God's
promised land, from God's rest. An old gentleman, a man I knew,
Actually, I'm older than he was at this time, but he had a bad
heart, so in his late 50s, he was near death. And he was asked,
is your soul safe? And he said, is Christ on the
throne? And the preacher asked him that. He said, yes. He said,
well, then I'm safe. I'm safe. As I was with Moses, the Lord
said to Joshua, so I will be with you. I will never leave
you nor forsake you. The father promises to be with
Christ. The Lord Jesus said this in John
chapter 16 verse 32, a time is coming and in fact has come when
you will be scattered each to your own home. You will leave
me all alone, yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. Now nearly every English translation
says, I will never leave you. However, the word translated
leave actually means to fail. And of course, if God were to
leave us, that would be for him to fail us. because he has made
promise to us. So both words do work. Fail would include leaving, but
it's a broader thing. God cannot fail to do anything
he desires. He will never fail due to a lack
of power. It is written in Jeremiah 32,
verse 27, I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything
too hard for me? Now, as we experience life, there's
things we call easy and things we call difficult. And things
can get too difficult for us. In fact, they often do. Much
of what we desire to do, we are unable to do. We simply don't
have the power to get it done. We may rise in the morning full
of vigor with plans in our mind about what we will accomplish
in that day, but as the day comes, you know, works itself out, we
find out the day isn't like we thought it was going to be, and
that we're really not equal to what we had planned. And so we
come to the end of the day, we're wore out, and we've still not
accomplished what we had hoped to. But it's never that way with
God. In fact, when it says, I am the
Lord, the God of all mankind, He was speaking, of course, to
the Jews, and they should have understood He's the God of all
mankind, but then they lived in a time and in an area where
most of the nations thought that gods, you know, were over certain
peoples. There were gods of weather, there
were gods of fertility, there were gods of this and that. There
was no such thing as a god that was god over everything. Consequently,
their gods could fail, because they might meet a god with different
purposes who proved stronger that day. But here, God says,
I'm the Lord, the God of all mankind. I'm the only one there
is. There is no god beside me, he says through the prophet Isaiah.
So who's going to come against me? Will there be anything too
hard for me? In my time here as pastor of
this congregation, We've seen situations where the children of members either
show no interest in the gospel or at one time showed an interest
in it and then seemed not to, and of course this grieves the
parents. But I've always given them this hope, no one,
No matter where he is, what he does, no one is outside the reach
of God. You know, we think, it's natural
for us to think that it would be harder for God to save a murderer
than someone who tells white lies. Friend, sin is sin. There's nobody more lost than
another person. until Christ, or until God in
His sovereign mercy and grace gives life to those who are dead
in trespasses and sin? Well, what are they? They're
dead, and there's no degrees of death. It's no harder, you know, our
Lord called into Lazarus' tomb, who'd been dead four days. Okay,
if Lazarus had been dead four years, or 400 years, it would
have been no more difficult for our Lord to raise him from the
dead then. Because dead's dead. So there's nothing too hard for
the Lord. And even if the land of promise
is filled with giants and enemies way beyond us, don't worry. We're not the ones that's going
to do the fighting. God goes before us. And after
he defeats our enemy, all we do is come in kind of as a clean-up
force and gather the spoils. He will never fail due to lack
of power. He'll never fail due to lack
of wisdom. I imagine that everyone who has
been a parent for very long has come to the realization, as much
as he wants to do right by his children at all times, She simply
doesn't know what's right all the time. We're not that wise,
are we? But God is. He's never wrong. He's never presented with a set
of circumstances that He cannot unravel. And He will never fail
due to lack of integrity. Don't you hate it when somebody
tells you they'll do something and they were just lying to you
to get something else out of you and they don't come through?
Our God, shall he promise and not do it? God's not that way. And he said, I'll never forsake
you. Yes, Christ did cry out, my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Now this may seem impossible
to reconcile with what God says to Joshua here when he says,
I'll never forsake you. But I think if we look over,
you know, and I say that because that's exactly what our Lord
cried from the cross, why have you forsaken me? But look over
here at Acts, Acts chapter 2. And Peter is preaching, this
is the day of Pentecost, the first time that the full-blown
gospel is preached. Up to this point, God had spoken
to the fathers through the prophets, a little here, a little there,
and they had a very shadowy understanding of God's way of salvation. But now, God has spoken through
his son, and Peter and the other apostles, they are messengers
sent out to say, to spread the word of what God has said through
his son. And of course, when God has spoken
through his son, he's spoken the full message. That's why
we don't believe there's gonna be any more revelation from God.
Because once the Son has spoken, there's nothing more to say.
And so here we have this full-blown revelation of the Gospel. And
it says in verse 25, Peter begins to quote one of the Psalms. David
said about him, I saw the Lord always before me because he is
at my right hand. I will not be shaken, therefore
my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will live
in hope because you will not abandon me. And this is the same,
that word abandon there is the same word, the same Greek word
that's translated forsake when our Lord said, why have you forsaken
me? It says because you will not, forsake me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known
to me the paths of life. You will fill me with joy in
your presence. Brothers, I can tell you confidently
that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb
is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew
that God had promised him on oath that he would place one
of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke
of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned, forsaken
to the grave, nor did his body see decay. So when he says to Joshua, I
will never forsake you, that is fulfilled in Christ in his
resurrection from the dead. Yes, for a time, God forsook
our Lord Jesus, because our Lord must do that work alone. If he's to be the Savior, he's
got to do all of it. And therefore, as he suffered
the wrath of God, the judge of all, As He bore our sins in His body
on the tree, and you can only imagine what kind of weight that
must be. I can barely stand the knowledge of my sins. And I'm
sinful. Imagine what it's like to be
absolutely spotless. And yet before the God of all
creation, you are held responsible for all the sins of a multitude
no man can number. What a weight, but he must bear
it alone. And so God, as it were, God,
his father, in his relationship as a father, no longer sustains
him. And certainly as judge, he did
not hold back. the least in punishing the Lord
Jesus Christ. Saying something like, well this
is my son, I'll go easy on him. No. All that an infinite God
can do against sin, God did to the Lord Jesus Christ. And he
bore it absolutely alone. But having borne it, and his
body dying, and put in the grave, God did not forsake him there.
Why? Well, the grave is for the sinful. And having borne our sin in such
a way that he could come to the end of suffering and say, it
is finished. Now he, the Bible says, he that
has suffered for sin is free. So our Lord had come to the full
end of the suffering for sin. They put his body in the grave.
Three days later, God said, you know, you don't belong there.
The sin you bore is gone. There's no sin on you. Come out. In fact, according to what he
said to that thief on the cross, our Lord Jesus at least as pertains
to his spirit, was in paradise the very day he died. Why? He'd
come to the end of suffering. Those in hell never do get to
the end of it. They never do fulfill the suffering due unto
their sin. But Christ did fulfill the suffering
required by the sin that he bore in the presence of God. Consequently,
there's no more sin on him. and God raised him from the dead,
did not just abandon him there. Well, I can see the clock well
enough to know we're out of time.