Farewell to Israel’s People (Part B)

Again, the word serve being brought to us 15 times in this address of Joshua.

That's his, again, his dominant point. He wants that to get across to this generation and it does, it just doesn't make it to the next one. And he says, serve him in sincerity and truth. Now sincerity is no guarantee of accuracy. You can be very sincere and be sincerely wrong.

The classic example of sincerity without truth are the prophets of bow. 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 continues his message called, Farewell to Israel's People, as he teaches through Joshua chapter 24. God calls him out from his family to the land of Canaan and made promises to Abraham and Abraham acted on those promises. It says here, and gave him Isaac. No mention of Israel, Abraham's first son, because Isaac is the son of promise.

Through him Messiah's line would be developed. And where it says, gave him Isaac, we think of, of course, that God gave us Jesus, his son. And when I think that God, his son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on a cross my burden bearing.

He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee, how great thou art. I don't know if there's a better song in existence. There may be as good songs, but there's none better than how great thou art. Not in the form I sing it.

I didn't say the way I sing it, but the lyrics I use. All love has its source in God. Love flows down.

That's the ideal. It flows downward. It is supposed to flow from the parents to the children, and then from the children to their children, and then from their children to their children, because we get it from God. Verse 4, to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Sierra to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt.

Well that's a twist. Why not send Esau and his children down to Egypt to be slaves? Because they weren't into God.

God of course used the Jews to save Egypt, to fill his plan. When we get to Malachi in the first chapter, we hear the prophet say, Jacob I have loved Esau, I have hated. But he's not talking about the individual men.

Not themselves. Because right here it tells us that God did not hate Esau because he blessed him. He gave him Sierra and he told the Jews, that's not for you. That's Esau.

His descendants get that. He never would have blessed and protected Esau had he hated him. When Malachi speaks of this hatred, is the spirit that Esau exhibited. When given a choice between the spiritual and the natural, Esau chose the natural. And God says, I'm not about that. You know, it was for the food. I'd rather have a meal than a blessing.

Very practical. Just not very spiritual. And God says, I uphold. I uphold my position and I want you to know that I've not forgotten that Esau made the wrong choice and I don't want you to make it. But at the time of Malachi, the Jews were totally living like Esau in Jacob's name. And God to correct that said, you got it wrong.

You can have all the name you want, but you got the wrong spirit. That's why those who worship God are to worship him in spirit and in truth. Paul talked about those whose God was their belly. Verse five now, also I sent Moses and Aaron and plagued Egypt according to what I did among them.

Afterward, I brought you out. God, not willing to send a man who's not willing to go, but he may influence that man. Two men that come to mind right away who did not want to go. Moses. Moses flat out said to God, get someone else.

Right just like that. And the other was Jonah. Jonah said, you do what you want to do, I'm going to do what I want to do.

You be God, I'll be Jonah. And God influenced Jonah to make the right decision. And Jonah was so struck by it. In fact, he had such a difficult time. I mean, God miraculously influenced Jonah and he still goes with a grudge on him and then he waits for God to kill.

He has so much hatred and racism in him, he waited for God to slaughter everyone. And God tried reasoning with Jonah and he wouldn't have it. God put more pressure on Jonah.

Let him feel it. And finally, Jonah writes the story so that we get it. He wrote the whole story down. Let me tell you what a fool I was in my flesh in the name of my religion. Profound story, the story of Jonah.

He says God does here in verse five, I plagued Egypt. God made it clear I did the judging. Yep, that was me. You don't like it?

I did it. Do something about it. The humanists, the blind humanists would cry out cruelty and bypass that Pharaoh was saying, kill all the newborn boys. Just like they do today. The humanists are so sensitive as they donate to murder clinics for the unborn. Get out of my face with your mock sensitivity that you're more merciful than God. Anyway, they ignore the cruelty of stubborn Pharaoh and just rail against God because it makes them feel good. Verse six, but we're to help them. Before we get to verse six, we're supposed to help them with that by pointing things out if God would give us the chance.

But some people are just irretrievable as far as we're concerned until God says otherwise. Verse six, then I brought your fathers out of Egypt and you came to the sea and the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. So he says, I brought you out of Egypt. Don't forget, I saved you as a people, as individuals. It's a serious thing when we take our salvation for granted.

Take it lightly. Verse seven, so they cried out to Yahweh and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them, over them and your eyes saw it, saw what I did in Egypt and then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time. So God says you, this generation, did see it. The leaders for sure, the elders for sure, some of the young ones of course did not, but many of them saw this.

Joshua was there, he saw it. Satan tries to get us to not believe what we believe and you young Christians, he is coming your way and when he knocks on your door, the simple response is, Lord, could you get that for me? Because he's going to tell you when your tank is full that your tank is empty and you should panic and when your tank is empty, he's going to say it's full and don't worry about it. Whatever the truth is, he's going to spin it against you and if you are gullible enough, foolish enough, lazy enough, he will have you.

You will be junior flambe for Satan. So God will say to you, what did I tell you? That's what Joshua was saying. He said they cried out to the Lord. There were the Egyptians coming behind them and God put darkness so they couldn't see you and he put light so you could see where you were going. He delivered you from this.

Don't take it for granted. Do you remember you saw it? Okay, if you do remember it, then going forward, understand that God is with you and you're going to have to exercise faith in times of terror especially. You can object all you want.

It will not change the reality surrounding us. So Joshua writes, God's words to them, your eyes saw it. I love that. I love when God gets personal with me in a very, I don't mean when he's chastening me, which I try to reduce. It's nice when the Lord encourages. He says then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time until that old unbelieving generation died off because they saw what God did and did not value it. Well, they believed it that they saw the sea roll back, but they did not go any further with their belief and associate that with God and his person and his promises. Jude writes about it in the fifth chapter, sorry, fifth verse, but I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

He said, I don't want you to lose sight of these Bible lessons from the Old Testament because they have everything to do with the New Testament, which is your life now. God destroyed them because they mocked him. They turned against him.

They devalued his work. In verse eight now, and I brought you into the land of the Amorites who dwelt on the other side of the Jordan and they fought with you, but I gave them into your hand that you might possess their land and I destroyed them from before you. These are victories on the east side of Jordan, believers' victories with God. Instead of God just wiping out the enemy, the Jews had to cross swords. They had to face the enemy as much as they did not want to. In my life, I know whenever I'm enjoying a season of peace, it is a season of peace and no more.

There's a season of trouble coming. So I get my garments ready to face it. Usually a breastplate, a gird in my waist, a shield helpful, a helmet, you need that.

I don't look as bad in a helmet because my hair doesn't stick out the sides anymore. Anyway, verse nine, then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose to make war against Israel and sent and called Balaam, the son of Beor, to curse you. Verse 10, but I would not listen to Balaam.

Therefore, he continued to bless you, so I delivered you into his hand. You know the profound thing about that moment with Balaam? It's the same with the witch at Endor. Saul is desperate for his life, facing the Philistines, and he abandons God, and he has his men seek out a witch for him, a medium, someone who can contact the spiritual realm, not up but down. And she's going to perform a seance and bring up Samuel. She was really surprised when Samuel showed up. That's never happened before.

Usually the dead people don't show up, and I just lie, and they pay me the money, and everybody's happy. So the lesson, as with Balaam trying to curse the Jews, but blessing them, is that when God cannot rule, he will overrule should he decide. And that is what Joshua is saying. God overruled Balaam. God overruled the witch, because he, you know, next time you hear an interruption in that annoying test of the national emergency testing system, they're overruling the radio. And next time you hear that, just be reminded, God does the same thing. When he wants to interrupt, he does. And no one can do anything about it.

And if you're on his side, you won't want to do anything about it. So that verse 10 reminds us that the prerogative of God is to overrule should he decide. Verse 11, then you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the men of Jericho fought against you. Also the Amorites and the Pezerites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, here we go, the Gergashites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

I wonder if anybody called out, you left out one, Joshua. But I delivered them into your hand. So remember, when these troops were facing these peoples in war, they were nervous too. Maybe I'm going to die on the battlefield, away from home. Maybe it will be quick or slow. I don't know.

They had to face these opponents, but they were victorious. In 11 verses here, the pronoun I, referring to God, shows up 17 times. As I mentioned, Joshua will be emphasizing serving, and he's emphasizing serving Yahweh. Our flesh wants it to be served. Our flesh wants to be catered.

It does not want to be denied. That's why we fight, and it is very difficult sometimes. In verse 12, I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, also the two kings of the Amorites, but not with your sword or with your bow. So God, of course, did use the sword and bow of his people at times, but he certainly helped.

Now, the hornet here, is it literal or is it metaphor, or is it both? Well, in Exodus 23, God said, I will send my fear before you. I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you, and I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. I don't know if you caught that, but God says, I will cause confusion. See, God confuses his enemies, not his people. In Hebrews, God is not the author of confusion. He's talking about his people. If you're confused, it's not God, it's something on your end.

But his enemies, he will confuse. This is pronounced several times throughout the scripture. In Joshua 2, we read about this very hornet of fear striking the people from Rahab there in Jericho.

And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted. Neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for Yahweh your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. And so there you see the terror that God promised to send before the people. Or was it also a plague of actual hornets? That could empty a village.

I mean, just get out of hand if it is a plague on the level of what was seen in Egypt for that village. He says, but not with your sword or your bow. Sometimes God seems so inactive, so unready to answer prayer, that we're looking for him to bring the victory without the sword or bow.

Sometimes he does. The difficulty for Christians is that we believe in miracles. We have no problems with miracles.

It's the unbelievers. Many of them do not believe in miracles. Our problem is that the miracles don't occur enough. That's our problem.

I don't know about you, that's my problem. I want more miracles, and I need them now. And if you dispute that, I dare you go to a hospital and empty it out with miracles.

You cannot, but you want to. We are in the age of truth. Truth is to bring people to Christ, not miracles. In fact, all the miracles Christ did, not everybody came to Christ. In fact, some of them, when hearing the truth and seeing the miracles, discarded the truth and left him.

Are you two going to leave me? Jesus asked his disciples. Peter said, nobody preaches like you. Nobody's got what you got. Nobody can do what you can do.

We're not going anywhere. And Jesus said, good, because if you did, I would not run after you. It has to be the will.

You have to want it. And there's a closing part in Habakkuk, the prophet, he says, the crops can all fail, everything can fall apart. But you will set my feet on high places.

I trust in you to just live by faith. I'm sure Stephen's parents, colleagues, wanted a miracle. None came.

Not the kind they wanted. The miracle of salvation had already taken effect. And because of his preaching and because of his dying, because he got inside the head of Paul, who was then Saul, Saul never forgot that when he became Paul the apostle. And he would remind us from time to time in his writings. Verse 13, I have given you a land for which you did not labor and cities which you did not build and you dwell in them.

You eat of the vineyard and olive groves which you did not plant. Succeeding generations would behave as though this were not true, that God did not give this to them, that they earned it. Verse 14, now therefore, fear Yahweh, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve Yahweh. Again, the word serve being brought to us 15 times in this address of Joshua. That's his, again, his dominant point.

He wants that to get across to this generation and it does, it just doesn't make it to the next one. And he says, serve him in sincerity and truth. Now, sincerity is no guarantee of accuracy. You can be very sincere and be sincerely wrong. The classic example of sincerity without truth are the prophets of Baal.

They're on Mount Carmel cutting themselves, marching around all day, screaming and hooting and hollering, but they were wrong. No fire came from heaven. In fact, the prophet mocked them. Maybe your God is busy.

Maybe he's in the bathroom and he's just mocking them. And of course, the rules were the God who answers by fire, he is God. These were the days of the prophets and it was a remarkable time indeed. Israel, as Joshua speaks to them, is saying you have to make a decision to serve the Lord and it has to be genuine and it has to be based on truth, not just genuine, not just true. You can say, well, this is true, but you don't really, you're not into it. Or you can be into it, but it's lies you're following.

No neutrality is offered when it comes to truth. And so let's just look at a few verses in the scripture. I won't read the verses.

We don't have the time, but I'll give you the coordinates. Here in Joshua 24, verse 14, sincerity and truth is coupled together. But in Psalm 89, verse 14, mercy and truth are coupled together as with Proverbs 16, faithfulness and truth, Isaiah 25, 1, grace and truth, John, chapter 1, 17, spirit and truth, John 4, 23, righteousness and truth, Ephesians 5, 9, deeds and truth, 1 John 3, 12, love and truth, 2 John 3. And so truth is not a lonely character in the scripture. There's got to be more than truth. If you just have truth, you can be a brute. You can be a fool.

There are other things. For instance, you know, ever meet somebody that really thinks they know the Bible? Satan's not impressed by that, incidentally. Your flesh is not impressed by that.

The world is not impressed by that. So you know the Bible. Do you have grace and truth? Is it their righteousness and truth, the Spirit of God and truth? How about your deeds? How about your faithfulness? Are you sincere?

How about mercy? Or do you just use truth as a hammer, mercilessly on others, judging everybody else? You ever be around someone who's just a lifetime critic? Everybody else is wrong.

He was talking to the hypocrites and Pharisees and everybody else but me. That person needs to be put in their place. Maybe it's not your place to put them. Give me their number.

I'll call them up for you. It's always my place. Let's be careful. Sometimes we can feel so right that we feel like we have license to clobber. And sometimes it is necessary to, but it has to be in the spirit of love. He says, and put away the gods of your father's served, your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Here they are settled in the land and they're still cherishing idols. What is up with that? Did you not see the miracles in the name of Yahweh?

Why do you still do these things? Well, we look around today, we see much of Christian music and church events that take place and much of it is soaked in error. And if it's not soaked in error, it's soaked in shallowness. It's scary. And again, that would be a good opportunity if you're around someone who is misusing these things to be gentle, to be kind, but adhere to the truth no matter what. Jacob gave this warning to his family. They had problems with this.

Rachel, you know, and the idols. Samuel, he had to deal with this centuries later with the Jews. Ezekiel, after they had been taken captive, after all the prophecies of Jeremiah, how could that possibly be? Ezekiel 20 verse 7, then I said to them, each of you throw away the abominations which are before his eyes and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt.

I am Yahweh your God. Verse 15, and if it seems evil to you to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of 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. Well, he says, choose for yourselves this day. He's echoing Moses, of course, and much of this speech is sort of a Deuteronomy type review. Submit and commit to God, he's telling them. Now, I'm not going to spend too much on that power clause in this verse, but as for me and my house, that would merit an entire sermon. But I think we're so familiar with it. What could a preacher really add to that?

We get the point. I think the pastor better serves the flock when he opens up points that maybe the flock has not had a chance to consider. 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.