Good evening. Please turn with me in your bibles to Joshua 23.
Tonight, with God’s help, we fill finish this wonderful book by looking at Joshua’s final two acts. We might call them his final two sermons to the congregation of God’s people.
These twin sermons tell remind us of two dominant themes of this whole book: God has been and will be faithful, and therefore his people should also be faithful. God’s been faithful, so should you be.
Let’s just jump right in and hear of God’s faithfulness to Israel. Joshua 23, verse 1:
A long time afterward, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies, and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, 2 Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and said to them, “I am now old and well advanced in years. 3 And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you. 4 Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. 5 The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you. 6 Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, 7 that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, 8 but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. 9 For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations. And as for you, no man has been able to stand before you to this day. 10 One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised you. 11 Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. 12 For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, 13 know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.
14 “And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things[a] that the Lord your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed. 15 But just as all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have been fulfilled for you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things, until he has destroyed you from off this good land that the Lord your God has given you, 16 if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you.”
Let’s begin by noting in the first 5 verses our fist point: The Faithfulness of God. The faithfulness of God.
Joshua is very clear throughout this book, and especially in these final two chapters, that God has been faithful to his promises. He has done what he said he would do.
That’s where he goes in verses 3 and 4. Joshua tells the people, “you’ve seen what God has done to the people of this land, you’ve seen God fight for you, you’ve all been given the allotment of land that was promised to you.”
And then, in light of the Lord’s past faithfulness, he reminds them of future promise in verse 5: The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you.
He was faithful in the past to do all that he said, and he will be faithful in the future to do everything he’s promised to you.
This is true faith always does. It reminds believers of who God is and what He has done, and then uses that testimony of faithfulness to spur us on in obedience and faith.
Surely each of us has seen this in our own lives. You can look back in your own history, see some major trials or obstacles that the Lord has brought you through, and can remember the faithfulness that he has shown you.
Maybe he spared your life from a difficult medial situation.
Maybe he provided for you financially when you weren’t sure how you’d make ends meet.
Maybe he brought you through that difficult relationship, the stress of which was keeping you up at night.
Maybe he brought you through a period of depression that you weren’t sure would ever end.
Whatever it was, we all have personal testimony of God’s faithfulness to us. And we need to remember that. Not simply rehearsing our gratitude during thanksgiving week once a year. We need to rehearse God’s faithfulness to us regularly. Gratitude should the constant condition of our soul.
Reflection upon God’s faithfulness today is what can help fuel us in faithfulness for tomorrow. When we look backwards and see God’s faithfulness, it gives us hope and stamina to face whatever comes next.
And that’s exactly what Joshua is doing here: he’s pointing everyone backwards to prepare them to move forward.
Brothers and sisters, let us not forget to reflect often upon God’s faithfulness to us. He’s provided everything we have needed along the way, both individually and as a congregation.
He’s never left us, he’s never forsaken us, he’s never been unwilling to forgive us when we’ve failed, he’s never done anything but good to us.
And that same God will do all the same for us in the coming days, months, and years, all the way until the final day when we see him face to face, and we get to rehearse his faithfulness to us for all of eternity.
No word of God failed to the Israelites, and no word of God will fail to us either.
And that Faithfulness is what Joshua uses to encourage the people to also be faithful. Look with me at verses 6-13 and see our second point: The Necessity of Faithfulness.
In verse 6 Joshua makes a preacher’s turn. He has finished recounting all of the ways that God has shown his faithfulness to the people, and then he turns in the rhetoric toward the people, and says now you need to be faithful.
Therefore, in light of all of God’s faithfulness, you need to be faithful. The text reads very similar to the opening chapter of this book.
He charges them to be strong, to keep true to the Law of Moses, to neither turn to the right or the left, to remain unmixed with the pagan nations and their false God’s.
Isn’t that the temptation of every generation? Faithfulness to the word, or falling after the world.
Much like Israel, each of us can usually demonstrate great zeal for Christ for a season. We can all muster up strength for a battle here or there. But it is actually much hard to maintain faithfulness to the Lord over the long haul.
Like Israel, we can get distracted, we can get lazy, we can get comfortable and tolerate those things that hinder us and our devotion.
We forget that a little leaven can leaven the whole lump, and that a little bit of tolerated unfaithfulness, will eventually pollute the entirety of our souls.
He specifically mentions faithfulness to the word, turning aside neither to the left or the right.
Can that be said of you? How are you faring in your battle for faithfulness?
Are you growing in knowledge of the things of God, meditating on God’s word, spending time with him in prayer?
Are you increasingly demonstrating faithfulness with your actions? Using your tongue to build up and not tear down. Reigning in your passions with self-control and patience?
Are you bearing more of the fruit of the holy spirit today than you were last thanksgiving? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control?
If not, you need to be warned. Do not drift to the left or two the right, don’t deviate from God’s word. Reflect again on the faithfulness that God has shown to you.
Satan would love nothing better than for you to fail to reflect upon God’s past faithfulness, and to doubt his faithfulness in the future.
He wants you to drift, slowly, incrementally, almost imperceptibly, from faithfulness to His word, and to slowly accommodate more and more of the world’s ways.
And in this battle for faithfulness, don’t simply here me saying that you need to DO BETTER. That is certainly true. We all should do better.
But what we really need is something deeper than that. We need to address the issue upstream of our doing. We need to address the heart. All of our actions, our doing, flows downstream of our heart.
Joshua even drives at that. Look at verse 11: Be very careful, therefore, to LOVE the Lord your God.
That’s the root of the issue. A failure to obey the word is fundamentally a failure to love the Lord. Everything we do, everything we say, everything we think even before we lift a finger, is all downstream of our hearts.
That’s why Jesus would tell his disciples that if you love me you will keep my commandments. That connection between love and obedience wasn’t new with Jesus. It was very old.
And Joshua new that principle. He had read the book of Moses. God commanded Israel to Love Him with all their heart with all their soul and with all their might (Deuteronomy 6:5).
But Israel wouldn’t do it. Time after time after time they proved themselves unfaithful to God. Right after He demonstrated to the world his faithfulness to Israel by parting the red sea and judging the scary Egyptian army, God’s people get to Sinai and make a golden calf.
They go into the desert and whine about not having food, so He provides for them manna. They then whine about the manna, and he sends them quail.
He promises them the entirety of the land if they would just go take it, and he even promised to fight FOR them if they would just go and go it, and we’ve reached the end of the book, and they haven’t yet purified the land.
Joshua knows the hearts of his brothers and sisters, and he knows the conditions of their covenant with God. He reminds them of this in verses 15 and 16.
He says if you will not be faithful, then the covenant curses that are falling upon the Canaanites, will fall upon you. If you will not be holy, then you will be treated like all the other unholy pagans who follow after false Gods.
Unfaithfulness will bring judgment he says. Not a very warm and fuzzy going away speech for Joshua.
And sadly, we know what happens next in the history of God’s people. The next book tells of the downward spiral that the nation goes into because they would not be faithful to do all that was in the book of Moses. They abandoned the worship of the true God, and followed after the false God, mixing in marriages with the unholy inhabitants of the land, and earn for themselves covenant curses.
They would not love the Lord their God with all their heart.
But praise be to God that that is not the end of the story. God knows the condition of his people. He knows their frame. He knows what they need. And Even though His people fail to be faithful to Him, he remains faithful to his promise that he made with Abraham those hundreds of years ago.
And in due time he makes another covenant. A new covenant. And that new covenant promises to provide what Israel would never do, and could never do. He promises to provide for his people a new heart. Not a hard heart of stone that is cold toward the Lord, but a heart of flesh that burns with love toward Him.
And that heart will have the law of the Lord written upon it. Unlike the tablets of Moses, written in cold stone and external to every Israelite, this new covenant will have God’s moral law permanently etched upon the hearts of his people.
No longer will they be compelled externally to obey, like a bit in the mouth of a horse, but rather this new covenant people would be given both the knowledge of that law, and the desire to be holy from within, because it will be written by the Holy Spirit himself when he comes to reside within every believer.
God’s special presence won’t be in a tent in Shiloh, nor in the temple in Jerusalem, God’s presence will be within every single believer, making his little temples of his presence, able to go and obey Him around the entire world.
Even more, this new covenant will not be like the old covenant. The old covenant demanded perfection in order to receive covenant blessing, and it required absolute holiness in order to avoid the covenant curses. And if you’re not perfect, you can lose access to those covenant blessings.
But the new covenant is different. Because of the high priest and the sacrifice of the new covenant, we have access to the covenant blessings that can never be taken away.
We have an ever-faithful high priest mediating our covenant, and we have a once- and-for-all sacrifice that is eternally sufficient to atone for our sins. His work is complete and final, which means we don’t have to fear being in the covenant blessings today, and out of the covenant blessings tomorrow because of our unfaithfulness.
True believers are united to Christ by faith, and that faith is all that is required to have full access to the salvation of the new covenant, to have the new heart of flesh, to have the law written upon our hearts, to have the Holy Spirit.
The warnings and the curses found in Joshua ought to remind us to be faithful, ought to stir us with renewed zeal for holiness, but they ought not to terrify us, or to let us think that the new covenant children of God are perpetually walking the knife’s edge of perfection, or that God is like some cosmic Zeus with a lightning bolt ready to zap us when we mess up.
God is our heavenly father, and in the new covenant, he’s provided all that we need to have access to him. He loves us, and because he loves us, he will discipline us if we wander, but he will do that in love, not in wrath.
So believer, trust in the Lord, and remember where you are in redemptive history, and let the faithfulness of God stir your love toward him, and let that love stir your own faithfulness to him.
But if you’re not trusting in him, then know that all of the covenant curses and punishments, all of the judgment that the Canaanite peoples endure, all of that is but a small picture of the eternity of judgment that awaits you.
If you remain hard hearted in your disobedience, if you reject his offer of grace extended to you this very night, then you will taste of his holy wrath for all of eternity in hell. Don’t let that be your fate. Trust in Christ, and have his salvation to be your own.
Now, let’s move on to chapter 24 and see what Joshua says in his final charge to the people. We can divide this chapter under two main headings. We have the covenant Rehearsal in verses 1-13, and the Covenant Renewal in 14 and following. The Covenant Rehearsal in verses 1-13, and the Covenant Renewal in verses 14 and following.
Let’s start by looking at the Covenant Rehearsal (24:1-13). Like in the previous chapter, Joshua calls all the people together. And then he begins to list off the various ways that God has been faithful.
We can look at verse 2 and see the grace of God in the selection of Abraham.[1] Verse 2:
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. 3 Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan,
God’s selection of Abraham was a clear example of His grace. Abraham wasn’t looking to be saved. Abraham and his father were servants of other gods, just like the rest of the people around them. There was nothing special about him. He wasn’t an exceptionally holy guy. But he was God’s guy. He was God’s choice.
And that’s a reminder of the grace of the Lord seen in his sovereign choice. The biblical word we might use for such a choice is God’s election. God chose to pick Abraham, out of all of the other guys in the land, and give him a covenant of promise.
And therein we have a picture of God’s initiative-taking grace that worked the same way in our lives. God chose you, out of your darkness and pagan condition, and chose to make you an heir of his covenant. You didn’t do anything special, you weren’t holy and wonderful.
Paul makes a similar argument in 1 Corinthians 1: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,[c] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world…[why?] 29 so that no human being[d] might boast in the presence of God.
We were chosen, NOT because we were so strong and wise and awesome. But in fact, we were chosen because our WEAKNESS and our FOOLISHNESS and our INABILITY to save ourselves serves to magnify the grace of the Lord.
Our inability to contribute to our saving confirms the magnitude of God’s gracious action. That’s the grace of God.
But let’s keep going back in Joshua and look at another reminder of God’s faithfulness, which points us to the Pace of God. The Pace of God. Look again at verse 3:
Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River[b] and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac.
God took Abraham, promised him many children, and gave him Isaac. That’s a funny statement itself. I promised him as many children as the sand on the seashore, and I gave him One son.
And if you go back and study the story in Genesis, it took about 25 years for Abraham to get Isaac. 25 years to receive the thing promised.
The pace of God seen in the story of Abraham ought to remind us that God’s ways are not our ways. God is never in a hurry. God is never in a hurry.
That doesn’t mean that he never acts quickly, from our perspective, just ask Ananias and Sapphira. But it does mean that God is never rushed and panicked. He’s steady and methodical, bringing about all things to completion according to his sovereign plan and timing.
He does what he promises, but does so often times so gradually that we might miss it if we are not paying attention. That’s part of why we need to take the time to reflect upon his work in our lives. Take time to be grateful and take stock of our blessings.
Are you still walking with the Lord? If so, then God has been faithful to his promises.
Have you eaten this week, had clothes on your back, had a place to rest? Then God has been faithful to his promises.
Don’t let your perception of slowness in God’s timing lead you to conclude that his is not faithful.
Satan wants us to demand immediate action and resolution from God; but impatience with God’s timing is never a virtue. Trust in the Lord, and remember that He is faithful, even if that faithfulness might take years to be seen. His pace is not our pace.
Next, let’s keep going and make brief mention of the Ways of God. The ways of God. verse 4:
4 And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. 5 And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it, and afterward I brought you out.
None of us would have done things the way that God did them in the history of Israel. He chose to make a promise of land and blessing and offspring to Abraham, and choses to send that line of blessing through Jacob, not Esau.
And then, that line of blessing was sent down to Egypt. God chose to send his people down to be slaves for hundreds of years. What kind of covenant blessing is that?
But God’s ways are not our ways. The history of God’s people reminds us that while we might not see the logic of God’s plan now, he has a plan and he is faithful. His ways can be mysterious, but we can trust him, even when we can see what he’s doing.
Sometimes God’s people experience comfort, sometimes it is pain. Sometimes they experience ease and rest, sometimes it is trial and suffering.
Read through Hebrews 11 sometime and you’ll see that some of his people conquered kingdoms, shut the mouths of lions, escaped the sword, routed foreign armies, and even observed resurrections.
But there are others who were tortured, mocked, flogged, put to death, were destitute, wandered in deserts and had to live in caves.
Those are the mysterious ways of the Lord. Sometimes God’s people are on top, and sometimes they are on the bottom. But whatever their condition, God is faithful through it all. Trust in the Lord and his faithfulness, especially when you’re on the mountain top or when you’re in the valley.
Let’s keep going and see, what I’ll call, the Gaze of God. The Gaze of God. Verses 6-13 remind us of more of the history of God’s people, and the blessing that they received while God had his eye upon them.
Verse 6, Joshua reminds them of the exodus through the red sea, and the judgment of the Egyptian army. Then he lists the defeat of the Amorites, and God’s deliverance of the people from Balaam, then the defeat of the peoples surrounding Jericho.
All of these stunning military victories would have been impossible, according to mere human strength. But again, God has been faithful to his promises, and kept his eye of blessing upon his children. God fought for his people. He did the work, and they taste of the blessing. Verse 12
12 And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow.13 I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.’
God brought the power, they taste of the blessing. God was faithful. His eye of blessing was upon them, and he saw the people through it all.
Another sweet reminder that God’s eye is always upon his people. He sees you where you are, he’s not forgotten about you. He knows what you need, when you need it.
If his eye is on the sparrow, and he cares for them every day, how much more will he be faithful to keep his eye of blessing upon you, and care for you along the way.
There is an old hymn that comes to mind, called “His eye is on the sparrow” and it says this:
“Let not your heart be troubled.”
His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness,
I lose my doubt and fear.
Though by the path He leadeth,
But one step I may see:
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me;
Remember that His eye is on you, believer, and he will provide for all that you need in the days ahead.
Lastly, let’s turn to the final section of our text, and read of the Covenant Renewal.
The covenant renewal ceremony, where we see the same pattern again: God has been faithful, so now you should be too. Verse 14:
14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, 17 for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. 18 And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”
19 But Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.” 21 And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.” 22 Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” 23 He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.” 24 And the people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” 25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. 26 And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. 27 And Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us. Therefore it shall be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God.” 28 So Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance.
Joshua seems to know that Israel is unable to do what is necessary. But he warns them again. The call for us is the same: we must remember to be faithful, remember not to be tempted by whatever the world will offer. Remember the faithfulness of God to us, and let that be motivation for our faithfulness to him.
But as I said earlier, remember also that we are heirs of a new covenant, a better covenant, and let the sacrifice of Christ in our place stir within us love to God, and out of the overflow of that love in our hearts may we serve him with faithfulness.
Consider this as I begin to close: Joshua told the people in verse 15, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” And when he said it, it was a statement of hope. He hoped that His house will serve the Lord. But he was powerless to effect such a hope because, as we all know, he was about to die.
But that same statement could be put into the mouth of Christ. But when Christ says instead, “As for me and my house, we will serve the lord,” he’s not making an optimistic statement about what he hopes will happen.
He can say it with confidence. In fact, we read from Jeremiah 31 this morning that one of the blessings of the coming new covenant would be just that. That the house of the Lord will serve him.
Jeremiah 31:33-34
“And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. …they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””
Christ is our shepherd and king, he’s our great high priest, and the mediator of our covenant. All the blessings of our covenant come from his hands, which delight to embrace us. He was faithful, is faithful, and will be faithful, and that’s what gives us the ability to be faithful.
Let’s close by reading the final verses, which contain a final reminder of our savior:
29 After these things Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being 110 years old. 30 And they buried him in his own inheritance at Timnath-serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.
31 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.
32 As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money.[c] It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
33 And Eleazar the son of Aaron died, and they buried him at Gibeah, the town of Phinehas his son, which had been given him in the hill country of Ephraim.
Joshua died and was buried. Joseph’s bones were buried at Shechem. And Eleazar buried in Gibeah.
Joshua their prophet, Joseph their ruler, and Eleazar their priest. Their prophet, their priest, and their king are all dead.
But believers today do not have the same condition. Our Prophet our priest and our king is alive, and found in one and the same person: Jesus Christ. He rules and reigns even now from the Father’s right hand, he’s mediating a glorious and better covenant, and he washes us clean by his priestly work.
Trust in that Christ, remember the good news of his gospel, and let his faithfulness to you, stoke the fire of love in your heart to be ever faithful to him.
Amen.
Benediction- 1 Thessalonians 5: 23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
[1] Some of these headings adapted from: Dale Ralph Davis, Joshua: No Falling Words (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2010), 196.
