We Will Serve the Lord

This morning we've come to the last week of our Bible study, so I have so enjoyed this Bible study. I have really enjoyed being here with you, the discussions, working through it myself every week. I just want to say congratulations to you for finishing the book of Joshua. Israel has gone from being wilderness wanderers to land conquerors. Congratulations to them for that accomplishment. The book of Joshua has narrated for us a really important transition in God's unfolding plan of redemption. That transition is that never before in the history of mankind have God's people been united with God's place for God's purpose, and God's purpose is to bring his Messiah, to bring his Son to show mankind who he is and what he is like. And so we've taken another step forward in that. Of course, Jesus will be born from Bethlehem in Judah, and the stage is set a little bit more for that. From the time that we first studied this Bible study, or first opened this Bible study, about 20 plus years have passed, and Israel has learned many lessons. They have fought many battles. They have fought their battles from within. They have fought their battles from without. They have even learned about the battles that develop between them. And their battles aren't finished yet, but Joshua is finished. Joshua has come to the end of his life. And I love it in Scripture when God often gives his workers an opportunity to give their story, to pass on their legacy, to give warnings. God's work continues even when he buries his workers. God buries his workers, but his work continues. Nobody is so important that the work of God just stops. It continues on. And we saw this in Genesis with Jacob. Jacob had an opportunity to bless each one of his sons individually, personally, and his two grandsons from Joseph. And that's recorded in Genesis. And then when Moses was leaving the scene, Moses had an opportunity to share all the things he wanted Israel to know, and to encourage them to love the Lord, and to follow the Lord, to obey, and to serve God. Now it's Joshua's turn. In many ways, this is Joshua's swan song. I always like to say Joshua is one in a million. And the math holds up, because there was about two million that came out of Egypt. Caleb and Joshua are left, two out of two million, one out of a one million. So Joshua is one in a million. So we should listen to his words, right? So let's get started. Joshua 23, verse one says,

Now it seems like this speech is given to the leaders, and that is the key right there. First of all, it's a good idea to gather your leaders, because if you can inspire leaders in any group, you've just multiplied your efforts. But that phrase right there that we ended on is such a key. It is the Lord your God who has fought for you. What a good opening line. How did the Lord fight for them? Well, many ways, but one of the ways was Joshua himself, who represents the greater Joshua, who allowed them to enter into the land and gain their inheritance. And then he goes on to set up four things that he wants to tell them, and I'm going to put them on the screen for you here so that you can kind of see these in bullet point form. He's going to tell them to keep God's word, don't mix up with the pagans, cling to God alone and love God. And so I'm going to read what that sounds like, starting in verse six. Joshua is telling the leaders,

And in verse 11, finally, be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. These are intentional and responsive actions. Look at that. Keep the commands, don't mix with pagans, cling to the Lord, love the Lord. This advice has no expiration date. This advice is just as good for us in this room as it was for those leaders. We might say it a little bit differently. We might say we need to obey God's word. We need to not compromise with unbelievers or we can even use pagan ideas. We need to stay close to the Lord. We need to love and serve God. No expiration date on that. And then Joshua went on to be really clear and warn what would happen if they didn't pay careful attention to the covenant they had made with Yahweh, if they became careless in their associations. And he said in verse 12,

Verse 16,

Now let's remember they were in a covenant with the Lord God, with Yahweh, like a marriage. It is a covenant. It is an agreement between two. And so Joshua was warning them, don't take the goodness and the grace of God for granted. Be careful with this. This also has no expiration date. When we come to Jesus, when we accept salvation, we have formed a covenant with him. He comes and lives inside of us. We have formed an agreement too. And the apostle Paul said something very similar in Ephesians. He says, talks about not becoming partners with sons of disobedience. And so this chapter is just a really good closing to the leaders. And I don't want to spend any more time on it because I want to get into 24. So let's turn right to the next chapter. And verse one starts this way.

Now I just want to remind you about Shechem. That was the location between Mount Gerizim, Mount Ebal, that after the battle of Ai, they went there to renew the covenant, the renewal of the covenant in the first place, probably about 20 years ago. And here at the end of his life, Joshua calls him back to that place. I think that was intentional, probably a good idea right there. And this is in a way, an additional renewal of that covenant. So they went to Shechem. He summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, so I think that this was as much of Israel as possibly could gather, all the people that gathered there. And then he begins to talk. And what follows here is a classic example of Jewish storytelling in the Bible. We see this multiple times in the Bible. Moses did this, David did this, even Peter and Stephen did it in the book of Acts. And Jewish storytelling goes like this, let's go back and start at the beginning and bring us forward all the way to the present time. And then let's give a call to action. Remember last week, we talked about when not to bring up the past. This is how to bring up the past. This is a positive way of bringing up the past. And I want to read all of this. I would just want to say I think that this is so positive because there's something that human beings yearn for and that is a sense of belonging, a sense of meaning, and a sense of purpose. I believe it's one of the reasons we have such high anxiety and emotional issues is because our fuel tank is so low on a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning and a sense of belonging. But as Christians we can fuel ourselves with this by reviewing this kind of history and this is what Josh was doing. He's saying he's gonna tell them that God exists and God chose you and he he picked you up and he led you and he brought you to this place that you're at and there was an exercise in your study guide that caused you to do the same thing. But let's start reading this in verse 2.

Isn't that precious passage? God by his choice and by his power had done all the work to give them their current inheritance. He did it because he loved them and he wanted to give them a hope and a future. He did it because he wanted to reveal what he was like to them. He'd already made a covenant with them and now they belonged to him. So here comes Joshua's conclusion verse 14,

And the people answered far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. Now that was a very wise answer that was the answer Joshua wanted to hear because they were in a covenant with Yahweh and they knew that he was a holy God. They knew that he was a jealous God. They knew that he would not tolerate rivals to their affections and they wanted to serve him. So they recited back to Joshua a little abbreviated version of what he said verse 17,

They said just what he wanted to hear. So why this surprising rebuke in the next verse? Joshua says you're not able to serve the Lord. He's a holy God. He's a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods then he will turn and do harm and consume you after having done you good. That's unexpected. That's harsh. What is that doing there? They just said what he wanted to hear. I wonder if Joshua thought that in time to come they would forget their covenant. I wonder if Joshua thought that in time to come they would change their minds. Remember Joshua was at the base of Mount Sinai all those years ago when God brought them out of Egypt and Moses was on the mountain receiving the law of God and in a minute there was a golden calf standing next to them. He knew his people. He knew human nature and I think the sternness of his words here were meant to dissolve their self-confidence and to cause them to look honestly at their own hearts. Twice Israel swore in this passage that they would serve the Lord in verse 18 and 21. So now Joshua called their hand and he is pointing out the elephant in the room at this point. Let's say the idols in the room. Verse 23 he says to them,

If you're serious about what you said two times then let me tell you what, put away the foreign gods that are among you. That's like in present tense. What in the world? He's calling them out. He says if that's what you want to do then put away. Take action. Joshua had the same perspective as Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount and I want to put his words on the screen here from Matthew 6 24.

In this moment no one of Israel seemed to be grieved and cut to the core and said let me run back to my tent and go get that and bring it here. Let's all gather them up. Let's destroy this. Nobody seemed really repentant. I don't know you guys this is just what I see in here but it's a good warning. It is good for us to see it this way I think. And instead they seemed to be sure that they could keep, that they could keep what they wanted to keep. But they would serve the Lord. It's like Joshua knew they had foreign gods among them. We're sure we can keep that under control. We will serve the Lord just like you said you would. We will do that too. So Joshua's done. He's like well I called you out. I'm done with this. So verse 25 he made a covenant with the people that day. Verse 26 took a large stone set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the Lord and Joshua said to all the people behold the stone shall be a witness against us for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us. And that's a little ominous. And of course history reveals to us that they didn't. didn't keep the foreign gods under control. They did mix with the pagans around them and even intermarry with them. They didn't obey the Lord. And the next chapter of God's unfolding plan, which is the book of Judges, which I suppose we'll have to do, tells us how it went. You know, first I wanna read verse 31 here in this current text. It says, Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel. Do you know that that sentence is repeated almost exactly in Judges chapter two? So if we go to the next book of the Bible, two more chapters, we have that almost exact same sentence. And then it goes on to say in Judges 2.10 this.

Joshua has been such a wonderful book up until this chapter. And now we end with this sense of disappointment. But it is not any disappointment in the Lord. God has been faithful. The disappointment we see is in man's ability to love and to serve God apart from his infusing work of power. Man is not able to love God. Man is not able to serve God. And so today we should just do a happy dance and say, hey, look what my covenant looks like. When I enter into a covenant with the Lord, he comes and lives in me. The Holy Spirit is in me, giving me power to serve him, giving me power to love him. I still have to make choices to put away the foreign gods because we can collect those really easily and think that we can keep them under control. I'm gonna serve God, but I also have this, but I'm gonna serve God. And we think we can do that. But then the Holy Spirit whispers to us, and he says, you gotta put that away. You're right, I do. And we have to respond. That's serving the Lord. That is loving the Lord, is by responding to that voice when he points it out. Isn't it interesting, Joshua is the precursor to Jesus. We have the spirit of Jesus. He says the same thing to us now. Put away those foreign gods, whatever that looks like in our life. So let's transition to our memory verse, Hebrews 10, 23.

I loved the two words in there, to hold fast and faithful. God is faithful even when we are unfaithful. But our choice is to hold fast the confession of our faith, hold fast the covenant that we have made with the Lord, hold fast all the way through. So I think that that was a good fit for us. I just wanna recap three things from this entire book that relate to us personally. And the first one is that our spiritual possessions are all because of Jesus, who is our Joshua. He's the one who brings us into the promised land. He is the one who has secured our inheritance for us. We simply follow him into the promised land, right? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. We followed him into this land, this precious land of blessings of God. Second thing is, once we're in the land, we need to hold fast to God's plan, okay? He is the one that wants us to flourish. God wants us to flourish in the place of his promises. He's the one who gives us the power to deny our flesh and fight the battles from within, and the power to fight the battles that come from us from outside, from the devil and from the world. And he is the one, ladies, who gives us a sense of meaning in life and a sense of purpose in life and a sense of belonging in life. Those fuel us. That's what, those are our daily vitamins that give us spiritual and emotional and even physical health. And the third thing is that we must love the Lord and serve him with our whole heart, with all of our mind, with all of our strength. He's the one that loved us first. He called us, he chose us, and he's the one who enables us to serve him. We can't serve him without him, because we're faithless. He is faithful. We need the faithful one in order to be faithful. So let's pray. Father God, thank you for this journey through this book, Lord. And I thank you, Lord God, that we on this side of the cross are able to see glimpses of what you intend for us, Lord God, and the beauty of what you have done for us. And so we just thank you. We thank you as we close this Bible study, Lord. We thank you for calling us, for drawing us, for bringing us into that place of blessing, Lord God. Lord, may we look to you and take your energy in to be faithful. Lord, help us to put away any foreign gods that pop up in our lives, and to cast them aside and serve you with a whole heart. I pray that for myself, for everyone who listens, for the ladies in this room. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.