Intro to Joshua (Part A)

Paul tells us that the law to the Christian was as a child leader.

The word usually is a tutor, but when we think of a tutor, we think of someone who helps you with math and English or other tutoring. But that's not what the Greek word means when Paul uses it in the New Testament, Galatians chapter 3 verse 24. The law was our tutor is actually a child leader, the one that would take the child, according to Greek culture, to the lesson. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Joshua.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, here's Pastor Rick in Joshua chapter 1 as he introduces this book. Joshua chapter 1. It will be a while before you get to read anything, so take your time turning there. We have to introduce the book, and I'm excited.

Bring it down. I will try not to repeat too much from my last study in Joshua, I don't know, 2008 or something like that, but we will take hopefully verses 1 through 9. We'll get there. Conquest, Failure, and Hope, that is the trilogy of studies that I put together for this, and we will study Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. The Conquest, of course, being Joshua, Failure, the book of Judges, and of course Hope, the book of Ruth. But the Conquest of the Christian, that is the parallel that runs right next to this story that is found in the book of Joshua, like rail tracks, you know, running parallel right beside each other, confronting the enemy, Joshua did. We confront the flesh, our own carnality, the natural man. It is a book of new beginnings through war.

I think a lot of commentators wanting to stress positive things, I think they should not leave that out. It is a book of war. It's a bloody book. And so is the Christian life.

Our emblem, one of them, of course, being the cross of Christ. It is all about the struggle. The recurring thought in this book, believe it or not, is summed up in two words. Utterly destroy, shows up 12, 13 times in this book of Joshua alone, more than any of the other books of the Bible. I think the key verse in this book, or I should say a key verse, depending on where you are in life and the mood surrounding your circumstances, but certainly outstanding for me, is Joshua 1-9, have I not commanded you, God speaking to Joshua, be strong and of good courage, do not be afraid nor dismayed, for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go. There are quite a few superlative verses in this book that a newer Christian would do well to memorize.

In fact, an older Christian, of course. It's quite remarkable, if you start adding up, boy, that is a verse worth memorizing. You get a lot of them in just the first five chapters of Joshua.

Now, of course, the book sort of tones down a little bit from our perspective when we get to the division of the lots, the land assigned to the various tribes, but even in that, there are rich lessons that will hopefully squeeze out. The conquest of the soul, that is what is most important to us. That would be the undertaking of being Christ-like.

You have to do it by force. It does not ever come natural. Never does Christ-likeness come natural to the natural man. It is an offense to the natural man. It must be taken in the spirit through hard work, effort.

It's a deliberate action, and it is one that has to be renewed all the time. So these parallels running next to each other, the conquest under Joshua, the man, the son of another man named Nun, N-U-N, not N-O-N-E. And this Joshua, he's leading these armies of these Jewish warriors. Parallel to that is the conquest of the individual Christian and the church, the body of Christ under another. Jesus is his name, but we're going to come back to those names because, of course, as most of you know, they are the same name.

Two different languages and then anglicized into what we have in our English. Exodus 23 verse 24, you shall not bow down to their gods. God told the people of God through Moses, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. This is what the church is supposed to be doing to lies about God and Christ.

The same thing, not with swords, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, yes, but not with the sword of the blacksmith. From the book of Numbers, we learn what happens when God's people refuse to trust God enough to engage the enemy. We learn that in our Christian lives. You find a shallow Christian and they refuse or are not engaging their carnality.

They are indulging their carnality. So again, from Numbers, we learn what happens when God's people refuse to fight by faith because they do not trust God. Numbers 14, 11, then Yahweh said to Moses, how long will these people reject me?

How long will they not believe me with all the signs which I have performed among them? From Joshua, if that's what we learn from Numbers, what it's like to not engage because of lack of faith, from Joshua, we learn what happens when God's people do have faith. Now remember, two different generations. That generation that refused to fight, almost all of them, with the exception of two and their family, died in the wilderness. As the New Testament writer says, their carcasses littered the landscape in the wilderness, turned it into a graveyard. Joshua 23, verse 3, speaking of fighting in the faith, you have seen all Yahweh your God has done to all these nations because of you, for Yahweh your God is He who has fought for you. These things have everything to do with our faith.

We mustn't lose sight of them. And the genius of this book brings it out, perhaps more than any other book in the Old Testament, this war that we are engaged in. Now, I've mentioned to you what we learn from Numbers, how not to fight, don't have faith, from Joshua, how to fight with faith, but from Judges, we learn what happens when God's people decline to fight, God's fight, because they have false gods. They've not taken the sword to the lies about Jesus Christ. And so we all know this verse from Judges 17, in those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

You can't say that enough. And so as we go through these Judges, we'll come back to that, of course. It is a pronounced verse that summarizes all of the aberrant miscreant behavior found in the people who were supposed to be the people of the book, and they were not.

We have them amongst us today, churchgoers totally disinterested in what thus says the Lord for anything in their lives, unless, of course, they can squeeze a blessing in their mind from God. And so while Joshua tells the story of the Jews entering the Promised Land, Judges tells of their settlement in the Promised Land and their early failures, which had everything to do with their latter failures, unfortunately. And these lessons are, you just don't find them anywhere else on earth, except here in the biblical record.

This book of Joshua proved or disproves, it disproves that false idea of the corrupted teaching in Numbers about cyclical curses. Well, you know, I'm this way because my mother was this way and the curse came to me. Not true.

You're that way because you're not fighting. Because if that were true, then this generation should never have entered into the Promised Land because their generation before them was certainly cursed. Being sentenced to 40 years in the wilderness for faithlessness, it did not rub off on them. They entered in. They defeated the enemy.

They subdued the land. Joshua, the name is critical to understanding its connection to the New Testament. The name is, of course, Joshua or Yeshua in the Hebrew. There's really no J sound in the Hebrew.

It's a Yah sound. And the name Jesus is the anglicized Greek version of Yahshua. So it's the same name. If you were to take the name Joshua and put it into the Greek and pronounce closer to Esos, and then by the time it makes its way into the English language, it's Jesus. Joshua and Jesus, the same name. Originally, for the man Joshua or Yeshua, his parents named him Hoshea. He is referred to early on as Hoshea, the son of Nun, meaning salvation. That's what Hoshea means.

Salvation. His parents named him that. Joshua was born a slave. He was not around at the time that Moses was born a slave when they were killing the little boys sometime after.

But he's still born a slave. And so it was a very appropriate name. Let's name him salvation to be delivered from this slavery. Moses, as Joshua came up in the ranks and became his assistant, and Moses recognized what Joshua was going to mean to the nation, what he already meant to Moses personally.

We'll cover some of that in a little bit. Moses had the insight to change the name of Hoshea, and he did it by combining Yahweh with Hoshea. And when he joined those two names, Yahweh and Hoshea, Yahweh, the covenant name of God, and salvation, he comes up with Yeshua. Yahweh saves. Yahweh is salvation. And it is very appropriate because when the angel appeared to Joseph in the dream, this is what he said. She will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sin.

So it's just tied in. This is not, oh, look at that. It's the same name in the Hebrew.

It's beyond that. It is authored by God, not only in the sound of the name, the meaning of the name, but the work that the two entered into. And remember, in the Bible, name is to stand for nature.

It is to describe the direction that the one holding that name was intended to go by the parents. And of course, in Christ, in the case of Christ Jesus, our Lord, the mission laid out for him is found in his name. Yahweh will save, and he does save. Joshua, of course, saved the people from a death in the wilderness, but Jesus saves from that eternal wilderness death of condemnation of the soul being rejected by God. And the assignment of the two men are very clear and very much similar, although one is all spiritual, and the other one is spiritual, but mainly it is physical in the conquering of the land. It is spiritual, of course, because they are the children of God.

They are the time clock of God to this very day. And the temple would go there. How many things, how many things have happened in this promised land after Joshua enters in? I mean, it starts with little things like the judges and you know how Shamgar, the judge with the name like a superhero.

You know, I would like that name, Shamgar, put that on my paycheck or something. But anyhow, all the way to the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, King David, Abraham. Well, Abraham before, but it was there that it started with Abraham, and then on into the New Testament and to the resurrection and the ascension of Christ.

When Christ in bodily form went to heaven, he did so from the land of Israel, the promised land, Jerusalem. So these types, these metaphors and foreshadowings, this profile that is laid out for us are inescapable in scripture. Some types in scripture are subtle and can have dual meanings or more.

Some are just right down the middle and they are unmistakable. And yes, we see in this Joshua of the Old Testament a type of Jesus in the New Testament. Moses, the lawgiver, of course, who came before Joshua, led the people right up to the border of the promised land and not an inch further.

Moses could not enter into the promised land with his sandals on. He had to see it only with his eyes until Christ came 1400 years later. Incidentally, we are about 1400 years before the coming of Christ. And not until Christ is there on the Mount of Transfiguration do we see Moses actually in the promised land.

And very, very disinterested in it, actually. Moses, you're going to the promised land to speak with the Lord in front of the apostles. With the Lord in front of the apostles? Because no one had gone to heaven. When Moses died, he did not go to heaven. He went to Sheol, righteous Sheol. And when we see him on the Mount of Transfiguration, he is occupied with Jesus Christ, talking about his exodus, his decease, his death on the cross and what that will bring. He laid out right before those men who would carry that message to the world, which we are continuing to do because of them.

That's how God chose to do it. So the book of Joshua and the ministry of Joshua, the heavy ministry of Joshua, because he ministered for years, takes up where Moses left off. Paul tells us that the law to the Christian was as a child leader.

The word usually is a tutor, but when we think of a tutor, we think of someone who helps you with math and English or other via tutoring. But that's not what the Greek word means. When Paul uses it in the New Testament, Galatians chapter 3, verse 24, the law was our tutor.

It's actually a child leader, the one that would take the child, according to Greek culture, to the lesson, not give the lesson, just take them to it and then take them back home. And Paul picks up on this and he uses it in his illustration to tell us what the law was like. So Paul says the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under the tutor. We're no longer being led to the lesson, and that is what is illustrated by Moses. Moses was the one that took the people to the lesson, but Joshua brings them in. The law was our tutor.

It brought us to righteousness, but Jesus Christ brings us into the salvation that the law spoke about. And so these illustrations and types and similitudes, they're all over the place. And they're very meaningful because they help us get, I got that now.

They help us to understand. So we have in type the period of the law, passing away with Moses when he died on the Mount, Mount Nebo, which I like to remark, if you can stand in downtown Jerusalem by the Temple Mount and cast your eyes to the east and you will see Mount Nebo. You can see it from Jerusalem, and it's in Jordan.

And you can remind it that that's where Moses' body was hidden by God. The law is right there over Jerusalem. You would think they'd look up and say, we will follow the Lord, we will follow the Scriptures, but they don't. They follow the rabbis. Rabbinical Judaism has just put the lights out on their own Scriptures. Well, these are the types that we're going to consider because it was not until the Lord's resurrection that believers were delivered from the Mosaic law, not the moral law. We're still not to steal and lie.

We need to always emphasize that. But God is blameless in his judgment of Canaan, because the unbeliever will say, oh, how could such a mean God? They always don't know what they're talking about.

It's sort of like they look like a, not a mannequin, but one of those wooden puppets, you know, and somebody's pulling the strings in their mouth. Satan's pulling their strings, and they're mouthing off his words. If God was a loving God, then how come all the slaughtering and the killing of the baby, and they know nothing about what they taught. Oh, that's where we come in, cape flying, big salvation S on our chest. Back off, dum-dum.

I'll fix this for you. God is blameless concerning the conquests, which was actually a judgment on iniquity and immorality, not an act of aggression to take land. It was not a land grab move. This was God's judgment, and he makes it very clear in the Scripture. He tells the Jews straight, right, point blank to their face, I'm sending you in because this is the stuff they're doing, and if you do it, I'm kicking you out too. Paraphrasing, of course.

Being merely civilized in the sense of creating cities and sidewalks and nice things for people, that's not enough to avoid God's judgment. In fact, I mentioned to you the Apple Center in California with that just giant Apple Park. I believe Antichrist will get to speak at that amphitheater. That's where this is all going. He's going to be applauded. They're going to have the money. He's going to want their money.

That's how the worldly politics works, but then it adds on the side. Being civil among men is not the same thing as being a citizen of heaven. And so just because men built cities, aqueducts for water to those cities and all these other things, you know, you go on a tour to Israel, they'll take you to, it's a Grecian town. The ruins of it is well-preserved and a psychopolis, I think it is. And there you can see how they heated up the hot baths for the people in the streets and the bathrooms and all the theaters and all the stuff they had. Well, these guys were, you know, they were on top. Their paving is wonderful.

I wish I could get them to come to my house and pave some things. But they were still immoral. Not far from there was their gladiator arena, which tells you right there that life was not that important to them so long as it was somebody else's life. Sodom was a civilized city as cities go, perverted, of course, in its morality. In Canaan, where God is dispatching the Jews under the leadership of Joshua to pass judgment, it is because in Canaan, vileness of every kind was elevated to an act of worship. They'd find something that was vile and disgusting and they'd bow down to it. It would incorporate it into their church, prostitution, or I don't even want to name the other things that they were doing.

Oh, child sacrifice was also one, but we have that today. What a doctor. You think of a doctor, you think of someone that helps you, not who keeps 2,000 dead babies in his house or office, wherever it was. That's like a horror house.

What kind of mind? Well, back then they were killing them too. You didn't want to have, you wanted to be free from children and all of the responsibility that comes with it, just offer them up a sacrifice and you'd be free.

The gods will bless you. This is the kind of stuff that was going on there. So this wasn't just, you know, we've got to find somewhere for you since we've taken you out of Egypt. How about Canaan? Canaan, it's by the water, it's got a nice river running through, milk and honey flowing, how about we just take that?

No, that's not how it was at all. God's justice, again, no act of random aggression or planned aggression. It was an act of judgment and as God, as he being God, he has prerogatives that are exclusive to him and if he just felt like doing it, who is to stop him? But God is not that way. When he feels like doing something, there's a basis, there's a reason for it and it is right, it is holy and it is just.

He has these privileges, man has to accept it. Well, Joshua the man, how old was Joshua when he left Egypt? We know the answer, 56 there about. You say, how do we know that? Well, we know how old he was when he died, we know how long he spent in the wilderness, we have a rough idea of how long it took him to subdue and divvy up the lots of the land.

We can come very close, these numbers aren't precise. I mean, he might say, no, I was 55. Okay, Joshua, you got it. But he lived to be 110 years old, that's the time stamp for us, we know that. Caleb, we know some things about him because he tells us. Well, Caleb was 40 when he left Egypt because when he's 85, he said, 40 years ago, I was promised this land when I went to spy at Kadesh Barnea.

It's kind of interesting to find out these things about them. So Joshua, at the time of this where we are now, he's about 95 years old, but he's still pretty spry. And if you factor in an estimation of subduing Kaden, the conquest of all the war, about seven years, some say five, seven, I mean, just think about it.

You're not taking helicopters from one part to another part with force. This takes a while to travel, to stage, to fight, to take a long process over this territory. Joshua, 11, 18, Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.

That's the only time stamp we have as far as how long it took him to fight. Probably another few years mapping out the territories, the allotments for the various tribe. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Joshua. Cross Reference is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you're interested in more information about this ministry, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Joshua, right here on Cross Reference Radio.