Intro to Joshua (Part B)

It's important to say, we are all tempted as we get older to say, this generation, what a bunch of losers, when I was a boy. Well, this is an exception to that. It's the other way around. They can look back at their generation and say, what a bunch of, they wouldn't say it that way, focused on the future.

But that sort of also breaks that, that behavior. Yeah, I think personally, this generation can use a few tips from me on a bunch of things, but they don't ask. 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.

Today, Pastor Rick will continue his introduction to the book of Joshua in chapter one. 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, 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, somebody's pulling the strings in their mouth. It's just 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 man, they know nothing about what they talk. Well, 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 just a land grab move. This was God's judgment, and he makes it very clear in the scripture. He tells the Jews 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, it's well preserved, and a psychologist, 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. 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? 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, 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, it has, 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 he's, 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 it, estimation of subduing Kaden, the conquest of all the war, about seven years, some say five, seven. I mean, just think about it.

You know, 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, this is 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. And so, by the time we get to Joshua 24, we're told how old Joshua is. Caleb, I mentioned 40 years when he came out of Egypt, give or take a year. At the crossing of Jordan, he is about 80 years old at this time, because about five years into the conquest, he's ready to come up and say, hey, Joshua, I'm 85 now. See, there's another time stamp to give us an idea how long it took to conquer. And just because Judah's territory was ready doesn't mean there was not still other areas to be taken and mopped up and things like that. So, here this man, Joshua, born a slave, as I mentioned in Egypt, died the leader of a nation.

It's a pretty good leap. A slave, a spy, a soldier, a shepherd of a nation. Can you imagine the stories he told his grandchildren? I was a slave back in Egypt. Boy, you don't know war till you've seen the Amalekites.

Breath, oh, kill you. Well, I thought that was cute. So, the eternal rule is upheld. Faithfulness is rewarded by God. If you are faithful in the little things, God will bless you with bigger things. Not bigger as the world counts it, but as Christ counts it. And if you study the word and your heart is ready to preach it to the lost and you've got a balance between your knowledge and you're not a know-it-all, that's what the world needs, another know-it-all.

How much fun they are. But anyway, if you have it balanced and you could field questions by unbelievers with a firmness that they've not seen before coming from a believer, and yet you're sane. A lot of Christians are so wacky, who wants to hear what they've got to say?

Who can sort out what's kooky and what's not? Well, if you do those things, my experience in looking at the scripture and my own life to whatever God can do with it, He will use you. He will bring people your way.

Divine setups, they are doable. I think sometimes we're too preoccupied with our own lives. We forget there's a world out there that's lost. So when we think about as people pray for revival, you have to think about a heart for more than just your life, the souls of others. The loyalty of this servant, a stepping stone to the delight of God. That loyalty that Joshua exhibited, God used it and here he is at the top. Think of the years of blessings that Joshua missed out on because of everybody else. He and Caleb. We could be in a promised land. I could be long time.

I could have had that whole orchard I've been dreaming about, old black cherries, old man on custard ice cream. But he missed it. And it's not his fault.

He did everything right. It was them. How do you feel when you get cheated out of something because of some knucklehead? Well, that's life. What are you going to do with it? You're going to have a temper tantrum. You're going to stay focused on the little things being done the right way in Christ as did Joshua and Caleb. Caleb's another one.

Caleb's the kind of guy that, you know, he should have cut some heads off for that. You know what? I can't go into the prophecy for 40 years because of you. You better watch your back. Okay, okay. I'll move on.

I'll move on. So this Joshua patiently, patiently with Moses as his assistant. So I want to cover some of these things that we find about Joshua in Numbers and Deuteronomy. They're not mentioned in Joshua about the man because there's such things as when Moses needed a general on the battlefield, who did he get? Joshua. Joshua was the man who could get things done. Paul had Tychicus and Titus. When he needed to send and dispatch guys who could get something done, those were his two men that we know of that he would go to. The church, they should have people like this. We have people like this. I have people here that I can ask, can you take this?

Can you do this? And it's done. And it's done right. And not only amongst the pastors, not only with the board members, individuals within the body of Christ.

Well, anyway, we got so much to go, I don't want to elaborate. But 40 years of preparation for his ministry. Remember, in his 50s, he comes out, he's a slave. But we really don't find him entering into ministry until he's out in the wilderness, the place where nobody wants to be. There, as I mentioned, he led the victory against the Amalekites. He didn't know what was happening up on the hillside with Moses and Aaron and the man named Her. It's always hard to just need to give him another name, Lord.

It doesn't work well in English. Well, anyhow, he doesn't know till after the battle is won. You won't believe this. Every time Moses' arms went up, we started winning. But when Moses got tired and put his arms down, you started backing up. So we had to hold, we put a rock under him, we had to hold his arms up. Jesus, get out. Yeah, no, I'm serious.

No. Powerful story. Sticks with him for the rest of his life, no question, because he saw so many things. The name change, the spying out of the land, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us that God says, my spirit's going to be in Joshua.

And that's exactly what he did. Commissioned to be the assistant to Moses. You didn't get to Moses without going to Joshua.

Follow the Lord fully, the Bible tells us. Commissioned a second time to cross into the promised land, as we will read shortly. And also we are told by God that Joshua was filled with the spirit of wisdom. He knew what to do with information. He knew what to do with knowledge.

Being a show-off and know-it-all were not part of it. He knew what to do with what he learned. And that's why he became the man that we have, and in name, associated, of course, with God Almighty and Jesus Christ. So what should have taken place in the book of Numbers takes place now in the book of Joshua, as I keep saying, 40 years.

But let's just review the books. Genesis concerns itself, of course, with beginnings of life on multiple tiers. Exodus concerns itself with deliverance. Leviticus with approach to God. The book of Leviticus, don't just go waltzing in there now. You better understand you're coming before a mighty God. Holiness to the Lord, don't lose sight of that. You know how many Christians give us a difficult time as a church on holiness to the Lord? We try to uphold the Word of God, and they have such a hard time, I don't get it. The book of Numbers, of course, concerns itself with failure before God. Numbers is called that because it numbers the warriors for war who don't go to war in the promised land where they were supposed to go to war.

Not that generation. They had to fight some out in the wilderness. That was wasted stuff.

They got nothing out of it but victory. They didn't possess the land because of it. Deuteronomy concerns itself with review. Now, this is important to understand the book of Joshua. As I mentioned, this is another generation. The other generation died off. All their parents are gone. Those who were alive from 20 years of age and down when the spies came back with their negative report, they lived. And now that generation is going into the promised land, and so Moses reviews the history and the law of God and the mission, the objective before the people. And it's important to say, we are all tempted as we get older to say, this generation, what a bunch of losers. When I was a boy, well, this is an exception to that.

It's the other way around. They can look back at their generation and say, what a bunch of them. They wouldn't say it that way or focused on the future.

But that sort of also breaks that, that behavior. Yeah, I think personally, this generation can use a few tips from me on a bunch of things, but they don't ask. This slow crowd, Lord, come on. Joshua, the book concerns, oh, you know what? We're getting the laugh track in. When we get the cameras up, we'll have that and we won't have to depend on you anymore.

The book of Joshua, of course, concerns itself with conquest, the battles. You know what some folks tell me? You know what, I don't laugh, but I really, it's very funny.

And I want to tell them, well, why don't you laugh? Okay, I have to have these breaks in the middle of the sermon because we can't cut to a commercial and sell you Twinkies or something. But okay, I'm good now.

I think I'm back on focus. This Joshua telling the story of entering the promised land, the judge is telling us about its settlement. We've got that. We understand that. Joshua battling the enemies of the people of God.

Now, catch this. From the time Moses leaves Egypt, goes through the sea, treks around the wilderness to all those places, the manna, the complainers, the bones of Joseph are with them the whole time. There had to have been a special detail assigned to caring for the bones of Joseph. When Joshua was about to march into the promised land, those bones are going with them because it's the word of God. He being dead still speaks as it was said of Abel. God promised that they would get that land and Joseph knew it and he said, when you go to that land, take my dead bones with you and it is done.

Joshua 24 verse 32, the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried in Shechem in the plot of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem for 100 pieces of silver and which had become an inheritance to the children of Joseph, that territory. It's profound. One day you without your dead bones and me will be standing in heaven. We will be there. We won't be here anymore. I don't know how much we're going to remember about this life. I'm sure my servants will be remembered, right? Right? Yeah, thank you. So those bones, and there's another significant thing.

We'll get to this in the adult study. Moses, you know, Moses had a tent set up way outside the camp. He'd leave the people and go to that meeting place with the Lord. Well, I don't want to get to it now.

This is a distraction. But anyway, our New Testament applications, 1 Corinthians 10, now all these things happened to them as examples and were written for our admonition, which is also ammunition if used properly, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. You see, Paul knew, as did the apostles, that we're living in the end times and we're, this generation, I believe, is living in the end of the end times, the last days of the last days. Joshua, he enters the land. He fights for every inch because none of it was handed to him.

Let me ask a question. Has your carnality handed anything to your spirit? Has it surrendered anything of its own free will? You had to fight for everything, every temptation, every wrong, impure thought, or anything. You've got to fight against it, just like these Jewish men had to fight in their wars in Canaan. The Christian life is all about this. The Christian life is one of conquest. It has periods of rest in it, but it has hills and valleys, ups and downs, and it is watered by heaven to sustain it, to keep it going. Deuteronomy 11, the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven. That's a picture of the Christian life.

It's not just this smooth sailing thing. And so it is proper to think of the land of Canaan as a type of the present conquest of over our nature, to see in the wars of Israel a picture of Christ's conflict on the way to our full inheritance, which awaits us in glory. And of course, the Jews did not succeed in purging the land of all the Canaanites, but they did subdue it, and that is also how it is in our life. When we say the Canaanites, now there were other peoples also in the land, the Philistines, there's others were there too, but the Canaanites at this time in history were the dominant people, and so you refer to the land of Canaan because of their dominance with the understanding that there were other ethnic groups there too that had to go. The Gibeonites who will trick Joshua, they were there too, and they get to come back. But we'll cover, you know, Joshua made made some mistakes also for our admonition for us to learn from. So to take the territory, if you look at on our poster on our Facebook page for the Joshua study, you see a map of of the promised land and where the territories of the tribes should be, there are the names of Christian virtues such as love, joy, long-suffering, peace, faithfulness, kindness, self-control, and that's the conquest.

That's the territory we try to take. Galatians 5, we know it. I say then walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh for the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these too are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. Well what are you gonna do about it? Well I'm gonna go to my grave fighting. I'm not gonna lie down and give in.

I'm gonna fail understanding that God has already made a way of escape from me and that is his great salvation through his mercy and grace which is astounding. But the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, gentleness, self-control, against such there is no law. Gentleness. How often we forget to be gentle. You get older I think you get better at it, I hope.

I've been getting better at gentle, being gentle, and I'm very proud of that. It goes along with my humility. So Israel's inheritance of course was of an earthly nature, an earthly character, but ours is spiritual. Ephesians chapter 1, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

That's our inheritance heaven. So now we come to Joshua chapter 1. We've got some time. I don't know again how far we'll get but it's so good you can really stop anywhere and just pick it up later. We are in the springtime and we know that because when we get to chapter 2 we find that there are flax, stalks of flax upon the roof of Rahab the harlot and that is during the spring this May and April so that's a time stamp for us. War wasn't when they would go out and fight, rains and stuff, chilly.

You better just stay and relax and we go kill people later. 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.