To Do List for War (Part C)

You say, how can you separate the two? Because the flesh separates from the Spirit.

And that's where the war is. And it just so happens that God put David's life out there in the open for all of us to see, not so that we could judge David and belittle him, but that we could learn lessons on how to deal with him. How do you top creating me a clean heart? Oh God, take not your Holy Spirit from me.

How do you top that? Who can write that from the bottom of their heart, except a sinner that is forgiven? 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. To-do list for war is the title of Pastor Rick's message. And today he'll be teaching in Joshua Chapter 5. Second Timothy Chapter 2. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. You see, I understood that verse as a Christian, just when it came to Christ.

Okay, there's hardship, but I forgot somewhere along the calling that this was to a pastor. I just, I don't adjust well. I find my groove and I want to stay there. And God is masterful at getting us out of our groove because God sees a groove as a rut.

As A.W. Tozier said, a rut's a long grave. Anyway, verse 9. Then Yahweh said to Joshua, this day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you, therefore the name of the place is called Gilgal to this day. So Gilgal gets its name rolled away, the shame, because the world watched the Jews come out of Egypt. Word traveled fast by camel in those days. What had happened to the Pharaoh and his army, and then these people stalled right in the wilderness. They just stopped, and they wandered around in circles like it's no home, nowhere that was there.

Wherever they went, it was somebody else's land. Gilgal, the place of self-judgment, let's not lose sight of that, where the circumcision, the painful act took place, that's where the shame rolled away, where the pain took place. Maybe you have experienced a personal Gilgal. Maybe you've gone through something in this life that has brought shame to you in the eyes of others.

You could be totally innocent. Joshua and Caleb were in this number, they were innocent, yet they bore the shame. That's why it's so meaningful that Joshua, the shame is gone.

So you have this experience in your life, it lasts a long time when you live under shame, but God rolls away the shame. When he is ready, when it has served its purpose, Gilgal becomes a place of restoration, where God says, I never lost sight of it. I never lost sight of you. I never stopped caring for you. I have my Gilgals.

I have some that will be future ones. I don't know if I said that right, but I think you understood what I meant. Well, again, from this place where they turn the knives on themselves, they would go out to conquer, and the first battle will be an impregnable fortress. I mean, Jericho was not this, you know, wasn't, you know, kind of plank boards up and we're just going to huff and puff and blow this thing down. This was going to be a serious first fight, and Joshua doesn't know at what cost how many of my braves will I lose.

It wasn't something that he took lightly at all. Well, verse 10, we continue, now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal and kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho. Well, you can bet at twilight when the campfires were going, Jericho, they were shaking in their sandals, seeing the armies and armies of people camped out.

I mean, this is, again, not just an army, this is a nation of over two million people, but the laws required from Exodus that the Passover be the participants, the men be circumcised, and so we come to another verse from Corinthians because it has something to do with the New Testament. We're going to come to a section later in Joshua where he divides the land to the tribes by lot. This is your lot, this is your lot, and sometimes you go out and you see signs that say lots for sale and there's nothing there. If there's lots for sale, how come there's nothing there? All right, anyway.

Ah, got it. They're going to divide the land and Joshua is going to assign boundaries. That's life. I don't like it either, but there are things that restrict us. God says this is your border, you go no further than this.

You operate behind these lines and those who go over the line are trespassers and the world is full of them. Who has God to say? I think God is. When you say I think God is, you're committing idolatry. It is the first commandment you have violated. It is the worst one to violate of all because you have told God you are not who you say you are. You will be who I say you are because I think God is.

That's your opinion, not his, and you're wrong. The Christian hopefully says, I believe God is as he has revealed himself in his word and through his son. He who has seen the son has seen the father. Let's just pause here from my own devotion time in John. I used to be able to fly through my devotions, you know, three or four chapters a morning. Now I get a paragraph, maybe. I think that's good, but I'm still not comfortable with it. Why am I telling you this?

Point. So I'm reading in John's Gospel, I don't know, yesterday or today, maybe I reread it again today, but John's Gospel chapter 14, considering the love that God has for us, John's Gospel 15. And there in that beautiful section of scripture, he says, as the father loved me, I also have loved you. I can't love you with the same love that the father loved the son.

In other words, the love God has for Jesus Christ is the love that Jesus Christ has for us. You and I can't produce that kind of love. We cannot say, with the same love that the father has for me, I can love you. We don't have that much love.

We can try, we ought to go after it. My point is, you will never love your children, your spouse, your parents, or anything else as much as God loves them. And there it is in scripture. With the same love that the father loved me, I love you. He did not say, with the same love you have for me, I love you. That would have messed up everything. Now that doesn't have very much to do with what I'm talking about, but I wanted to share it.

Back to this. In verse 10, we look at Corinthians. Well, I guess it does in a way, because now we say, there's the Jews at the Passover table, they had to comply with the right of circumcision. First Corinthians. Does this have anything to do with me?

Yes. When we come to the communion table, we are to be compliant. Therefore, whoever eats this bread and drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. That's why when we have communion, I say, if you are not a believer of Jesus Christ, or if you're a Christian, you claim to be a Christian and you are in flagrant sin and you're not dealing with the sin, you need to pass and not take the communion. If you are a Christian and you are struggling, then you are compliant.

When I say struggling, I mean actively trying to get out of the mess that you've gotten yourself into. Well, he says, but let a man examine himself sharp knives. And so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Of course, it's associated with the communion, with the Passover meal. That's when he was, it wasn't the Passover meal, but it was the day of Passover when he instituted this. He continues, for he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. In other words, God's not real to you. You don't understand what the cross is all about, that you're a sinner, that he's the Savior, and you can't just trample these things. Well, so it was for the Jews having this Passover, the first Passover in the Promised Land.

They had to be compliant. He continues, Paul does, he says, for this reason many are weak and sick among you and many sleep, for if we would judge ourselves we would not be judged. And when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world. In time the Lord will come and say, okay, we've got to notch this up some.

We've got to work this out. A very beautiful passage of scripture there in Corinthians, coinciding with the events in Joshua chapter 5. Now verse 11, and they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain on the very same day. Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land, and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land Canaan that year. Of course, he summarizes the writer's thing, you know, after Jericho they had the whole land for the year, whole new life, everything opened up.

It was a summary built into the moment. The manna, of course, was the wilderness food. It suited the wilderness journey. It was a constant reminder that God provided for them even though they weren't where they were supposed to be.

How many lessons are in that? The manna where it was found is very significant. God did not put the manna up high in trees or up on a mountain or deep down in some ravine where only a few, if any, could get to it.

It was everywhere. Where the dew was, there was the manna. Sort of like we have Bibles everywhere, don't we? Poor have the gospel preached to them, Jesus said. When John was in prison, he sent his disciples, some of them, to Jesus to find out what is going on. If you are the Messiah, and I know you are, I baptized you, I saw the Spirit, I know what I saw, what is going on?

Why am I in jail? And you're just out baptizing people. Well, disciples were. Jesus said, go and tell John the things you see, the things you hear. He said the blind received the sight, the lame walked, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. When they took that message back to John, John knew what that meant. He said, this is Messiah.

Nobody can do this. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the gospel is preached. He's not doing miracles or miracles apart from God's Word. And so the manna, God feeding his people, himself, ergo, the communion table. Matthew again, 11, 4, the poor have the gospel preached. The manna ceased for them, but is everywhere for us. God's Word is everywhere. Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. That means everybody can come and get it. You do not have to be a pastor to come and get God's Word. Well, they could own very little in the wilderness.

Now they were going to have to work hard with what they owned. Verse 13, now we get to perhaps the best part of the chapter, but I don't know if you can, you know, it's best read than taught perhaps. He says, verse 13, and it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted his eyes and looked and behold a man stood opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand and Joshua went to him and said to him, are you for us or for our adversaries? Jericho's got to fall, no question about it. Can't have that fortress in the back of the people as they marched through the land.

How? How am I going to get them out? So this is why he's looking at Jericho and it came to pass that Joshua was by Jericho. Now God granted every place that the sole of their foot tread upon, but he could not walk up to the doors of Jericho, knock on the gate and say, here's your eviction notice, please be out of here by tomorrow twilight. He had to get them out, force them out, just like your flesh. You become a Christian. God says every place the sole of your foot treads upon, but you cannot just serve your flesh in eviction notice and expect the flesh to honor it by nature.

It fights anything you give it that has come from God. He says a man stood opposite with his sword drawn in his hand, hammer cocked. That's what that means. He's locked and loaded. It's, he is ready to go.

There's nothing holding him up. That's the idea behind this. And it's a, it's a picture for Joshua to get in his head and when he goes back to camp, he's going to have a lot of conversation.

He goes out for a stroll to consider his strategy and there is this man with his sword out. It speaks of so many things. We don't have time to get into it all. One of them is, yeah, justice has been delayed on this promised land for these depraved people, but it has not been stopped.

Here it is and you are it. He says, are you for us or for our adversaries? It's a fair question. I don't think anybody else is around.

I think it's just these two. Verse 14 comes the answer. So he said, no, but as commander of the army of Yahweh, I have come. Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, what does my Lord say to his servant? Now he said, no, I don't think it was said like I read it. We wouldn't have had the result.

I don't think that we got with Joshua falling down on his face before this man with the sword. I think it was more, he said, no, like that because no, it can be a brutal word. Most of us have a problem with no.

Someone has a good idea and the person and the decision maker says, no, it's not well received. Many people leave churches because no has visited them. Why did you leave that church?

No, that's why. If you want to know. So the answer, what does it mean? Richard Wambran and his book, Tortured for Christ and you, if you haven't read Richard Wambran's book, Tortured for Christ, I would suggest it.

It's a, it's high school level. Anyway, of course he was a preacher and he was arrested and just taken off to Romanian prison and there he was for years, he was abused and he talks about this passage and he says, I don't hate the communists. If you were to ask me, he says, I hate communism. I hate what it stands for.

I can't, I do anything I can to see it off the earth. He understood it was a religion pretending to be a political system. He says about this passage, no one could say this kind of an answer, but a divine, but God, and he applied it to his own life. He says, if you ask me, do you hate the communist, the people?

His answer would be no, because he's, is a love for them that transcends the natural senses. He's not for or against. He's for God preaching the gospel and here the commander of the army is saying, I'm not for you and I'm not for Jericho. I am for God.

That's the answer and as much as there's more to it, I just can't pull it all out, but I know it. I read it. I said, that word stops Joshua. Are you for us? No. Are you for them? No.

Then who are you for? No, look at me. How do I, how can I say that? Because he says, I am the commander as commander of the army of Yahweh. I have now come.

The voice, the look of it all. This response of Joshua tells us everything. Well, let's take the words of Jesus because it's the same thing.

John chapter 15 verse four, he said, abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. There's no place else to go for life. The commander says there's no other army.

There's no other cause. This sword is for the cause of God and you are either with God or you are not. And so, but as a commander of the army of Yahweh, I have now come. Joshua recognizing the supernatural character, the tones, the way he said it, the way he looked. Had it been just words, I don't think he would have fallen down as he did before him, as it says, and he fell on his feet and he worshiped him. That would have been a violation of the first commandment had not this commander been worthy. Joshua knew this was what we know to be a Christophany.

It's an appearance in human form of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. He says and what does my Lord say to his servant? He surrenders to his lordship. In other words, God is commander and I submit, I don't resist. Those who resist run into problems. Verse 15, then the commander of Yahweh's army said to Joshua, take your sandal off your foot for the place where you stand as holy.

And Joshua did so. Now someone might struggle with why is sandal singular? Why is toothbrush singular?

It's a teethbrush. Anyhow, no sense in fighting over these incidentals. So anyway, let's have a word from our sponsors. So Joshua knew, of course, his leadership depended on his submission and so of course he does submit. And then these words, take the sandal off your foot, oh, let's read it from Exodus because his teacher first got it. This is so nice because remember when Elijah was taken up by the fire, a chariot, and Elisha said, my captain, my captain, that's Wordsworth, but I forgot. Anyway, he was, I forgot a complete blank because I'm still in the bathroom looking at my teethbrush. Oh, my master, my master.

And he's just taken. It was, he exclaimed, my master. Well, when it was time for Elisha to die, the king said the same thing of him.

And so there's something very beautiful in being able to be like your teacher. And this is what is happening now to Joshua. He was not the man in his own head that Moses was, but to God he was every bit because God was the one that was making him so. And so here it was said when Moses stood before the bush and he said, God speaking to him, do not draw near this place, take your sandals off your feet for the place where you stand is holy ground. And here, take your sandal off your foot for the place where you stand is holy.

It's sort of like asking the general where his headquarters and the general would respond wherever I am standing. And God is saying wherever I stand is holy. He's given every place the sole of their foot will tread upon, but yet God still owns it.

And when he shows up, it's holy. What about the New Testament? Are we still to have the sense of holiness, purity, uncreated goodness, a sense of it?

Yes. First Thessalonians chapter four, verse seven, for God did not call us to unclean this, but in holiness, be you holy for your father is holy. Hey, that's the old King James, be ye holy. Leviticus chapter 10, this is Moses talking to Aaron after Aaron's two elder sons just lost sight of the whole thing is, we won't go into the details, but of course, lightning came out from God and struck them dead because they were priests and they did what they were not supposed to do and God dealt with them instantly. And Moses said to Aaron, this is what Yahweh spoke saying by those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy and before all the people I must be glorified. So we go back to the sin, the Christian that's struggling and we say, how can that Christian that is struggling dare approach a holy God?

Well, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. That's the standard answer and it is correct, but there's so much more in illustration from the Old Testament. And again, the life of David, a man that blew it when it came to certain things with people, but he never blew it with God, this understanding of who God is, his holiness. You say, how can you separate the two? Because the flesh separates from the spirit and that's where the war is.

And it just so happens that God put David's life out there in the open for all of us to see, not so that we could judge David and belittle him, but that we could learn lessons on how to deal with them. How do you top creating me a clean heart? Oh God, take not your Holy Spirit from me.

How do you top that? Who can write that from the bottom of their heart except a sinner that is forgiven? And that's when he wrote it. He didn't write that when his bones waxed old and he was resisting God. He wrote that when God dealt with him. So God gave Joshua rights to this land and he was going to have to take it. It says here in the bottom of verse 15, and Joshua did so. He was always doing so.

We covered that in the introduction to the man's life. He's a true type of Jesus. John chapter 8 verse 29, Jesus speaking, I always do those things that please him.

I can honestly say I sometimes do those things that please him and we're all that way. Well, at the command of Joshua, they would go up against Jericho and then all the nations that were in the land that occupied this promised land and they would prevail and pick it up in chapter six, hopefully next session where Jericho falls. 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.