All right, if you would open
your Bibles to the book of Joshua, we're going to begin a series
in this book. We finished up our series on Song of Solomon
two weeks ago. Last week, we didn't have an
adult Bible class, so we'll begin with this series today. Let's seek the Lord's blessing.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for those
you have brought out this morning, those who are watching via our
live stream. We pray, Lord, that you would
bless all whose desire is to hear from Christ, hear about
Christ, to come to know him better. Enable me to preach with clarity,
And may the Spirit of God take the spoken words and make them
living words in our heart. In Christ's name we pray it,
amen. First two verses. After the death
of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua,
son of Nun, Moses' aide, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then,
you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River
into the land I am about to give to them, to the Israelites. Now there is hardly a more important
transition in all of Old Testament history. than the transition
from the leadership of Moses to the leadership of Joshua. It teaches us so much about the
gospel, the nature of it, teaches us about the relationship between
the law of Sinai and the gospel. Now, When we read this, it doesn't
seem like much. It just says, after the death
of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua. But this transition and the time
when it happened and what was accomplished by transferring the leadership
of the children of Israel from Moses to Joshua is probably as
important a lesson as we can learn in distinguishing the gospel
of God's grace from any form of salvation by works. though it specifically deals
with the law of Sinai and the commandments given there from
Mount Sinai to the people of Israel, yet that law is often
used as symbolic of all the various systems of finding favor with
God by your own works. In Abraham, If we go all the
way back to Abraham, we see a promise made, a one-way covenant in which
God made a promise to Abraham and his descendants. Now, both
God and Abraham were sort of involved in this covenant. But look back here at Genesis
15, and you'll see what I mean when I say it's a one-way covenant. It's a covenant of promise. It's
not a contractual covenant. There's different kinds of covenants.
There are covenants that are just like a contract, a business
contract. I used to do contracting. Somebody
called me up and said, I want my kitchen remodeled. And so
I would go there and look, see what they wanted done. And I
would say, OK, I'll do what you want for x number of dollars.
That was a contract. Wasn't a promise. It was a contract.
And if I fulfilled my end of the contract, they were obligated
to fulfill their end of the contract. But a promise. is a one-way contract. It's just someone saying, I'll
do this for you. Now, God entered into a covenant
with Abraham. And he says here in Genesis 15, verse 5, God took him outside
and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed
you can count them. Then he said, so shall your offspring
be. And it says, Abraham believed
the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. Now, notice this. It doesn't
say Abraham performed some moral duties or some religious observances,
and God imputed righteousness to him. It said he believed.
For the proper response to a promise is not works, it's faith. And then we go on. And he went
on to promise him the land. And Abraham said, oh, sovereign
Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it? And the
Lord tells him to bring some animals for sacrifice. And they
cut the animals in half. In fact, in the Old Testament,
they often refer to making a covenant as cutting a covenant. So this
would be a covenant between God and Abraham, but the pieces of
the sacrificial animals are laid in place and it says in verse
12, as the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep and a
thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Now Abraham's there,
but he's asleep. Abraham's present as a party
to the covenant but God sees to it he's asleep so that nothing
that he does has anything to do with the fulfillment of this
promise type covenant and then verse 13 it says then the Lord
said to him no for certain that your descendants will be strangers
in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated
400 years. But I will punish the nation
they serve as slaves, and afterward, they will come out with great
possessions. You, however, will go to your
fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth
generation, your descendants will come back here, for the
sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. When
the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot
and a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. Now that smoking fire pot and
blazing torch was a token of the Lord's presence. So now we
have this covenant between God and Abraham being made. Abraham's
asleep, inactive, a participant but uninvolved. if you understand
what I mean by that. The only one aware of what's
going on and the only one doing anything is God. And it says,
verse 18, on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and
said, to your descendants I will give this land from the river
of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the
Kenites, Kenozites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. Now, this was
a promise. made to Abraham in the form of
a covenant, but we know it's a one-way covenant because Abraham
wasn't even awake when the covenant was made. There was nothing of
Abraham in the covenant. There was nothing said by God
to him about what he must do in order to ensure the fulfillment
of the covenant. He said, while Abraham was asleep,
surely, surely your people will be in a country for 400 years. But I'm going to give you this
land. And earlier, he had mentioned that this people of Abraham would
not come through that servant Eliezer that he had put forward,
because Abraham had said, you've promised me a seed, descendants,
but I have none. And shall my inheritance then
go to this Eleazar, which, by the way, is the same name as
Lazarus. But shall I, shall Lazarus get this? And the Lord said,
no, not Lazarus, someone from your own loins. Of course, we
realized later in, I don't know if it was unbelief
and doubt on Abraham's part, or he simply consented to what
his wife suggested. But after a few years, there's
nothing forthcoming between them. And so he takes his wife's servant,
Hagar. And this was a common practice
back then. They didn't consider it adultery.
God did. Understand, God tolerated a lot
out of his people. Just because God allowed his
people to do some things, and just because blessings came from
that, doesn't mean God approved of what they did. Nonetheless,
a child was born of Hagar, the Egyptian servant girl of Sarah. And the idea was, okay, he'll
be the heir, because he is indeed from Abraham's loins. And God
comes again and says, Abraham, you're not listening real clear.
It'll not only be from your loins, it will be from your wife's body. This child of promise is going
to be a miracle child. Because you see, everything God
gives us, comes to us contrary to natural expectations. By the time Isaac came along,
Abram was nearly 100 years old. And it says of Sarah, she was
already past, I think some say, the time of women. What I was
saying, she'd already experienced menopause. She wasn't going to
have any children. Yes, she was. Why? Because God said so. And so Isaac
was born, and from that one Isaac came this seed to whom the promises
had been made, or concerning whom the promises had been made.
Well, once they had spent their 400
years in Egypt, God brought them out. Brought them out under the leadership
of Moses. And once they got past the Red
Sea, God entered into a secondary covenant with the nation. Now, until this point, there
was no nation of Israel. There were descendants of Israel. Remember, Israel is Jacob's name
of grace. Jacob is the name of his nature,
cheater, scoundrel, good for nothing. But God said, no longer shall
you be called Jacob. Your name is Israel, one who
prevails with God. And so These sons of Israel existed. They were somewhat banded together
in Egypt because they had been assigned a particular place where
they could live. Evidently Egyptians despised
shepherds and that's what Jacob's sons were. So they said, OK,
you go up there. And because you're Joseph's people,
we're willing for you to dwell in Egypt, but kind of keep to
yourselves up there, would you? Well, eventually they got so
big that they made Egypt scared. And therefore, Egypt put them
in bondage. But God sent Moses. And Moses was used by God to
deliver those people from their bondage to Egypt. And when they
got past the Red Sea, it was not long they came upon Mount
Sinai, and God entered into a covenant with them and made them a nation
through that covenant. They were no longer a loose coalition
of 12 tribes, each one descending from one of the sons of Jacob. You know, just like in our own
country, we had 13 colonies of England. And they more or less
got along with one another. But there was no nation until
after the Revolution and the Constitution was written. And
then there was a nation in addition to the 13 states. Well, at Sinai,
these 12 tribes were made into a nation and God entered into
covenant with them. But the book of Galatians makes
clear that this covenant of Sinai was not an addendum to the promise
made to Abraham. Now, this is important to know.
in understanding what is one of the more hotly debated topics
in Protestant Christianity, won't even go so far as to say conservative
Protestant Christianity. What is the relationship between
the law of Sinai and the gospel? Most of all, what relationship
do believers bear to the law slash covenant of Sinai. And there have been a lot of
words written about it. But the scriptures, New Testament
scriptures in particular, and of that, the book of Galatians
and the book of Hebrews in particular, deals with it, I believe, rather
clearly. Though, as I've you know, gone
through the years of dealing with this myself, I do notice
that people are not real clear as they're trying to debate this
issue. And they go to polar ends, and they say things that, you
know, I cringe when I hear them. I know what they mean by them,
but their words, if you strictly take what they say, their words
aren't true. But we'll try to do our best to show exactly what
the scriptures say. about this particular issue.
But the important thing is, according to the book of Galatians, and
we'll look there in a minute, according to the book of Galatians,
the law was not an addendum to the promise. The promise covenant
made with Abraham is unaffected by the Sinaitic, as they call
it. It almost sounds like you've
got you know, lower back problems. A Sinaitic covenant. But the
Sinaitic covenant, the covenant of Mount Sinai, it did not alter
the promises made to Abraham. They were not an addendum to
them, attached to them, in some kind of inseparable union. Rather, they were given to govern
the people of Israel, this new nation established by this covenant
relationship, the law of Sinai was given to them and not anybody
else. And it was given to govern them
until a particular time. Now let's look over at Galatians
chapter 3. We'll look at verse 21. Is the law therefore opposed
to the promises of God? Absolutely not. Now, we can say
that or Paul could say that on this very basic principle. God does not say one thing and
then later say something else that denies what he previously
said. Whatever the law is designed to do, it does not nullify the
promise of God to Abraham. If a law had been given that
could have that could impart life, then righteousness would
certainly have come by the law. Now there's an important thing. See, what's happening in the
Church of Galatia is that some people, Paul says, they snuck
in secretly Judaizers, they were some Jews that claimed to be
Christians, but they were Christians only in their mouth, not in their
heart. For they had never given up on the idea that there was
special privilege extended to the Jew, that they were already,
as it were, halfway to heaven. And they still believe that Gentiles,
in order to participate in the gospel, must first become Jews
in the sense that the men among them must be circumcised. And
then from that position, they could go on to faith in Jesus
Christ. That's actually what they were
saying. They were saying, if you want to be a Christian, so
to speak, this is what these Judaizing Christians were saying.
If you want to be a Christian, you've sort of got to be a Jew
first. And if your birth doesn't make you a Jew, OK, we can deal
with that. We can understand that. But you're
going to become a Jew in the flesh by circumcision. You must be circumcised to be
saved. That's what they were saying. And circumcision, while it was
a right originally given to Abraham, by the way, it was given to him
after the promises. And once again, even that circumcision
had no effect on the promise. But the circumcision of the Jews,
which, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why God chose
that particular thing for a sign, but he did. Nonetheless, it was
to indicate that they had been set apart by God as His people. Therefore, the Jews would speak
of the uncircumcised Gentile nations around them with particular
disgust. They were unclean because they
were uncircumcised. Consequently, if any Gentile
wanted to participate in the worship of Jews, worshiping their
God, they were required to undergo circumcision. And Paul said, once the gospel
comes along, if ye be circumcised, This is Galatians 5, 2, I think.
If you be circumcised, Christ is of no use to you. And what
he means is, if you be circumcised, thinking that you've gained points
with God by that, then Christ is nothing to you. You see, in
this business of salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ sings a solo.
There's no duet, no trio, and certainly no church choir. It
is all Christ or no Christ. It's all Christ or all you. And while On the one hand, circumcision
may seem like a significant act, as much as the pain it would
cause and things like that in those days. Nonetheless, in the
great scheme of things, it really wasn't a big deal. It's not as
though you've been asked to scale Mount Sinai or been to go lock
yourself in a monastery and give up all your life. In a few days,
you'll heal up and go on as before. But that small thing, that small
act, those Judaizing Christians wanted to bring it in. And Paul
didn't say, look, you're going astray a little here. He said,
and this is what he says in Galatians 1, this is not a different version
of the gospel that can be accepted. In the King James Version, it
talks about another gospel, which is not another. And the reason,
it sounds kind of funny, it's two Greek words. You can have,
for instance, you bring in a German shepherd, you say, there's a
dog. Then you bring in a Chihuahua and you say, there's another
dog. Well, that's one kind of use of the word another. Because even though the Chihuahua
is not like the German Shepherd, they're still both dogs. But
now you bring in a cat, that's not another dog. I don't care
how you dress it up. I don't care that it has four
legs like a dog and a tail and all that. It's a cat. It's not
a dog. So when Paul says that this Judaizing
Christianity, he said, which is another gospel, but not really
another gospel. It's something altogether different.
And he goes on, and this is how important the issue was. And
remember, these words are coming from a man who had been a Pharisee,
who had gone way beyond his peers in advancement in Judaism. And he's saying this. If anyone
brings you a gospel other than the gospel I brought you, let him be accursed. Now friends, I don't like pronouncing
curses. Some people do because there's
a real sense of power in that, isn't it? You know, it's, it's
why people like to give the impression they can cast out demons because
it makes them look like they're powerful. And if you can go out
and deliver curses, I kind of get tickled that you've got prophets
like Elijah. And Elijah kind of stands as
representative of all the prophets, because he was the one that went
into northern Israel. And his essential message was,
Jehovah is God. His name means, my God is Jehovah. And the most notable thing that
went on his ministry was that fight with the prophets of Baal
on Mount Carmel. You remember that story I suppose?
And I know preachers think every time they get in the pulpit it's
Mount Carmel. That happened once. But there are times when his
brother Henry Mahan used to say, you got to stand up on your hind
legs. and make it very clear what is truth and what is not.
And we do this not because we think we're better than those
whose religion we may denounce. We do not do this because we
want to make our ministry to be nothing more than the denouncement
of this and that religion. We do this for two reasons. we
are confronted with false religion, then the honor of God is at stake. I don't mean the essential honor
of God, but how he is perceived in this world. When men try to
bring in the works of righteousness, which men do, They think it's
works of righteousness. When someone brings them in,
when it's anything from works of righteousness or ceremonies
or even just an exercise of what they call free will, and I don't
have time to get into what theological free willism is, but anytime
they bring in something that a natural person can and must
do in order to initiate salvation, or perfect salvation, or keep
himself saved, or whatever it is. Anytime they do that, they
have stricken right at the very heart of the glory of God. God says, I am God. and beside
me there is no other, and I will not share my glory with anyone
else. I am a just God and a Savior,
and there's none other beside me." And so God glorifies himself
most of all in this world, it would seem. This is the message
of the scriptures. The way in which he glorifies
himself most is being a just God even as he saves sinners. And the only way God can be just
and save sinners is for him to do all the work of salvation
through Jesus Christ. We need righteousness to be accepted
by God. Jesus Christ is our righteousness. We need a sacrifice to pay for
our sins. Christ is our sacrifice. We need
a priest to offer that sacrifice. Christ is our great high priest
who offered himself without spot to God. We need a mediator between
us and God. Even in our present state of,
you know, we say we have been saved, we still need a mediator.
And there's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus. There's only one seated at the
right hand of the Father, only one who is accepted, only one
whom the Father will listen to, only one that the Spirit of God
will appoint people to. The honor of God's at stake in
this. But here's another thing. The salvation of sinners is at
stake too. If we were to compromise on this
matter and begin tolerating within our assembly those who believe
that natural man contributes something to their salvation, and they begin to circulate it
among the people, Maybe they go out and claim to be members
of this church and yet are preaching that false gospel to their neighbors
and stuff. What's happening? They are withholding
the word of life, the word that brings life, and they are preaching
a message of death. And they're doing that in the
name of Christ. And if they're within our assembly,
they're doing it in the name of the church. And I realize
the church itself is not the vital issue. But a church, even
a church building such as we have, it stands as a symbol of
something. And therefore, we're very protective
of the message that's associated with this church for the glory
of God, for the identity of this church, and then for the salvation
of sinners. Once again, Brother Henry Mahan,
I remember him saying at least on one occasion, if men will
not be saved by the preaching of the truth, it is certain they
cannot be saved by the preaching of lies. You can fill pulpits
with lies. You can get church members with
lies. You can preach a false gospel and build a huge denomination
that spans the globe. But you cannot win sinners with
a lie. So you see, our insistence on
what the gospel is does not arise from some self-righteousness
on our part in which we are saying we are right. That's not the
issue. What we're saying is God is right. And God has revealed himself
and his way of salvation in this book. And we dare not, dare not,
preach anything else. Paul said, woe is unto me if
I preach not the gospel. He didn't just say, woe is me
if I don't preach. He said, woe is me if I do not
preach the gospel. And it says here, I never really
got to the point I wanted to make in Galatians 3, so let me
make it briefly and we'll pick up here next week. Beginning
in verse 23, before this faith came, We were held prisoners
by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law
was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified
by faith. Now that faith has come, we are
no longer under the supervision of the law. Now the we he is
speaking of is Jews. Because he makes distinctions
between Jews and Gentiles in this book. Because remember,
in the book of Galatians, there were some Jews thinking the Gentiles
more or less had to become Jews before they could be saved. And
so he's telling these Jewish brethren of his what the law
was about. And here's what he's saying.
Before this faith came, that is before the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ was fully revealed, we were held prisoners by the
law. Now whether you want to call that a prisoner is like
holding a criminal. What it is is they were just,
he actually compares it to being like children. And you know children
are in a sense prisoners in their own home. They're not allowed
to go and do what they want. it says, so the law was put in
charge to lead us to Christ. The King James says the law was
our schoolmaster. It's a little bit hard for people
to translate the Greek word that's there. We get our word pedagogue
from it. I'm not certain whether the PED
part speaks about walking, because that was a common way of teaching
back then. The teacher would be walking
along, and his disciples would be around him, he'd be speaking.
Or is the PED referring to the word for child? But I do know
the agog, I know what that part's about, and that means to lead.
And there's a key thing that nearly every translation gets
wrong. You notice it says here that
the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ. What it says is the law is our
governor or governess. If you wanted to remember how
in rich families, generally the job of raising the children was
turned over to servants in the household. that's what it's saying
the law was a servant in this household to care for the children
now it wasn't as though the law was given to lead each one of
God's elect to Christ what it exactly says is the law was our
guardian unto Christ In other words, until Christ
came, the law was imposed upon the Jews to keep them in check
until the seed to whom all the promises had really been made
would come. And once he came and fulfilled
all that was required of him, and by his blood established
the new covenant, What becomes of that old covenant
at Sinai? Guardians were put over the children
until they reached a certain age. And you know what? When
they reached a certain age, that's when, at least the sons, would
receive the adoption. Adoption in the Bible doesn't
necessarily mean you weren't born in the family, but they
brought you into the family. It means that someone is recognized
as a full grown adult and an heir. That's the essence of adoption. So these Jews, they're in their
childlike state under the old covenant. But the time came for
maturity. Time came for the adoption. Now,
we know that many of the Jews were not the spiritual elect
of God. And they didn't believe. Some of them did. There's always
a remnant according to the election of grace. But the point was,
once Christ came, the job of the guardian was done. And the law. And we have no problem
with the law. We don't call it bad or anything.
The work of the law was finished. Now, we've gone through all of
that, and we still haven't finished up this little introduction to
Joshua. But what's it saying here? Moses,
representative of the law, is dead. Joshua, whose name in the
New Testament is Jesus, Moses was the guardian unto Joshua. And when it came time to go into
the land of promise, Moses is not about promise. Moses is about
law. Moses is about obedience. Entering the promised land takes
faith. And that's why when the first time they got there and
the people balked at it, God swore on his oath, on an oath,
they would never enter his rest. Why? Because they'd broken the
law? No, they'd been doing that all the way across the wilderness.
Because when they got to the land of promise, they didn't
believe. But now, the time appointed by
God has come, and Joshua is present. They're Jesus, and Moses dies,
and Joshua picture of Christ is the only one who can lead
God's people into a land of promise, received not by works, not by
efforts, but by faith. And we'll leave off there, because
it's actually time to start the regular service.