Joshua chapter 23, and we're
going to read the first part of the chapter down to verse
11. Joshua chapter 23, verses 1 to
11. And it came to pass a long time
after that the Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their
enemies round about, that Joshua waxed old and stricken in age. And Joshua called for all Israel,
and for their elders, and for their heads, and for their judges,
and for their officers, and said unto them, I am old and stricken
in age. And ye have seen all that the
Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of
you. For the Lord your God is he that hath fought for you. Behold, I have divided unto you
by lot these nations that remain, to be an inheritance for your
tribes, from Jordan with all the nations that I have cut off,
even unto the great sea westward. And the Lord your God, he shall
expel them from before you, and drive them from out of your sight,
and ye shall possess their land, as the Lord your God hath promised
unto you. Be ye therefore very courageous
to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law
of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or
to the left, that ye come not among these nations, these that
remain among you, neither make mention of the name of their
gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves
unto them. But cleave unto the Lord your
God, as ye have done unto this day. For the Lord hath driven
out from before you great nations and strong. But as for you, no
man hath been able to stand before you unto this day. One man of
you shall chase a thousand, for the Lord your God, he it is that
fighteth for you, as he hath promised you. Take good heed,
therefore, unto yourselves, that ye love the Lord your God. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Joshua gives a quick summary
account of God's faithfulness in supplying rest to the children
of Israel in the land of Canaan. Joshua is now old, perhaps near
the end of his life, and he calls the people, the leaders, the
elders, the captains of Israel, to remind them of God's goodness
and to encourage them to remain faithful to God's word. And perhaps the first thing to
notice in this little passage today is how Joshua gives all
praise to the Lord for the victories that Israel has had over the
nations of Canaan. Joshua tells us that the Lord
God fought for the children of Israel. Joshua, of course, was
the general, but he took no credit himself. Perhaps he remembered
how it was that the captain of the Lord's Host met him before
the Battle of Jericho. Do you remember that, how the
captain of the Lord's Host came and spoke to Joshua? Joshua asked,
are you for us or are you for our enemies? and then Joshua
worshipped the captain of the Lord's hosts and we thought at
the time that that was probably a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ
and it may well be that this is what Joshua has in mind here. He remembered that the captain
of the Lord's hosts, the Lord himself, had fought for the children
of Israel in battle. and how that the Lord had promised
Joshua success against their enemies. And it may well be,
actually, as we think about this chapter, that the little reference
that we had there in verse 10 to the one man that chased a
thousand is the man that Joshua was thinking about, the captain
of the Lord's hosts. Either way, Joshua attributed
all success to the Lord. Joshua tells us that he had divided
the land to the children of Israel. That wasn't to say that all the
land was now possessed by the children of Israel, but they
had divisions and each tribe had more of the Canaanites yet
to push out. The Lord had told them that this
would be a gradual occupation of the land because he would
keep some of the Canaanites in the land to look after the land,
to keep it tilled, to keep crops growing, to look after it and
stop wild animals. entering into it if they had
all fled at once until the children of Israel could take possession
of it. So there was still land to be
possessed. But Joshua had told the children
of Israel in these words and in the passages that he wrote and the
words that he spoke that they were to take care not to become
enmeshed and entangled with the Canaanites that were still in
the land. Joshua knew that these Canaanites
that were still in parts of the land that the nations had not
yet fully occupied would be a temptation to the children of Israel. They
would tempt them both in the way that they lived the wickedness
that they exercised and also in the way that they
worshipped so that the children of Israel would be tempted to
marry into their families and have them marry into the children
of Israel's families and they would learn their ways. Joshua
knew that idolatry was a real risk and that these men and women
would attract the children of Israel and tempt them to follow
in the way of their false gods and their sinful actions. So
this is like a sermon that Joshua preached to the children of Israel.
He was nearly coming to the end of his life. He was an old man
and yet here he had a burden to give to this new generation
that was coming up. These younger men and women and
their families that he wanted to leave with them. So he calls
the people to be courageous, he calls them to keep and do
the Lord's will, and he calls them to cleave to the Lord, not
to turn to their idols. and he calls them to love the
Lord. And kind of like a three-point
sermon, really. To be courageous, to cleave,
and to love the Lord. Cleave's not a word that we use
very much these days, but actually I think it's connected with the
word clay, and it has to do with stickiness. You cleave to the
Lord, it means you stick to the Lord, you stay with him, you
don't turn away, you don't go to the right or to the left like
when you're walking through a muddy field and the clay sticks to
your boots. He was telling the children of
Israel to stick to the Lord just like that. So these are his three
points. Be courageous, cleave to the
Lord and love the Lord. Joshua told the people that if
they did not choose to follow the Lord then the Lord would
leave them to suffer the effects and consequences of mixing with
the evil nations around about and he would not drive out the
remaining Canaanites and their continuing presence would quickly
bring the children of Israel under the same judgment of sin
that they had experienced. And actually that's what happened,
but that's a story for another day. But we discover later in
scripture that at the time of the Babylonians and then again
in the Romans that the children of Israel did indeed lose this
land because of their disobedience. But I want to just touch on the
three points, the three things that Joshua mentions here, about
being courageous, about cleaving to the Lord, and about loving
the Lord. In verse six he said, be very
courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book,
or all that is written in the scriptures. And courage and strength
and determination are qualities required by the Lord's people
when they face temptations and threats. Joshua knew this, so
he advised the children of Israel. And we, as well, can choose to
go along with the world, what the world wants us to do, or
we can stand up for the Lord and maintain the honour of His
word. And Joshua wanted the people
to be courageous and to stand up for the honour of the Lord. You know, people will say things
to us like, Oh, it doesn't matter. Go ahead and do it. It'll be
okay. No one will know. But Joshua
says, stand firm, be strong. Don't give in to the temptation
of the world. You know, it isn't easy to stand
apart from the evil trends of this life. And it's all the harder
because we discover in our hearts that what we are tempted to do
looks good. And it's attractive. And it appears
exciting. And we think that we would really
enjoy doing it. And yet the Bible tells us that
while there is pleasure in sin, it is only for a little while
until its effects and consequences take hold and bring sadness and
hurt and pain. Finally, in the end, sin will
always bring judgment from God and we need courage if we're
going to stand for the truth and we're going to stand for
what is right and we're going to stand for the testimony of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And we don't have that courage
naturally in ourselves. We don't have that strength.
We don't have that determination. We need God's grace. We need
grace from the Lord. We need the Lord to give us boldness
to face the temptations that we face. If the children of Israel
had said to Joshua, where are we going to get that courage?
he would have told them to go to the Lord, to pray to the Lord,
and the Lord would supply all their need. And the next thing
that Joshua tells them is that they are to cleave to the Lord. That means they are to stick
to him, stick with him. Don't go wandering off from the
Lord. This is particularly pertinent
perhaps when we are young, but it affects older people as well. Don't get mixed up with the evil
values and the ways and the activities that are around about us. Don't
turn aside to the right hand or to the left. Don't wander
off the path of truth and get entangled in the thorn bushes
and the swampy ground that is on the side, stay with the Lord,
with the things that are honest, with the things that are good,
with the things that are true. How is it that we stick with
the Lord? Well, there are practical things that we can do like reading
our Bible and praying to the Lord, listening to good sermons,
keeping good company, be careful what we read, what we look at,
what we listen to. But in truth, we need to ask
the Lord to hold us close to Himself. The bottom line is that
we are neither good enough, smart enough, strong enough to cleave
to the Lord or to stay with Him. We need Him to hold us. We need Him to keep us and to
join us to Himself. That doesn't mean that we don't
keep doing the practical stuff because those are the means that
the Lord uses to keep us close to himself. Our Lord Jesus said,
my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. That
is, they stick close to me, they cleave to me. And I give unto
them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall any
man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me
is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of
my Father's hand. Let us ask the Lord to keep us
close to him and to protect us and preserve us from all the
troubles in the world and those who would like to drive us from
him. And finally, Joshua told the
people to love the Lord. How do you do that? How do we
love the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, again, there are some practical
things. You can't love someone that you
don't know. So get to know the Lord through
reading and praying and learning. But again, know this, that all
our best efforts will be weak We first need to feel His love
for us. The Lord's love is strong. It
is strong to save, it is strong to keep, it is strong to persevere
to the end. John says in his little epistle,
we love him because he first loved us. And Paul tells us that
God commendeth, that is he shows or he reveals his love to us
in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So it is
as we know what the Lord Jesus Christ has done on the cross,
as we consider, as we trust, as we believe these things to
be true, that we find and experience the Lord's love for us and we
discover that we have a love for him. It is as the Lord shows
us what he has done for us to save us from sin and death and
hell that we learn to love him more. Let me mention just one
more thing to close here. Joshua told the people in verse
14 that This day, he says, behold, this
day I am going the way of all the earth. That meant that he
was going to die. He was getting ready for the
end of his life. Maybe it wasn't that exact day,
there's a little bit more to the book of Joshua yet, but it
was soon and he knew it. And all flesh must die. but our
souls do not die. The souls of believers have God's
spiritual life in them and we shall live eternally with the
Lord Jesus Christ and with other believers who trust in Christ.
We all have an appointed day to die. Moses had died, Aaron
had died, soon Joshua would die too. unless the Lord returns
before that, we will all die. And we can die at any age and
at any time. Joshua was not nearly as old
as some who had gone before him, but Joshua trusted the Lord,
and that meant he knew that when he died, he was going to be with
the Lord in heaven. It meant he wanted to leave these
words of encouragement and advice to those that he left behind,
the words of help that Joshua preached in his sermon. To be
courageous and follow the Lord, to cleave to him and stick to
him and trust him and learn to love the Lord. Jesus said, thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. Let us pray to the Lord that
he will give us grace to follow, to stick to, and to love the
Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.