Chapter fourteen. We'll begin reading with verse six and read through the end of the chapter. Joshua chapter fourteen and verse six. Then the sons of Judah drew near to Joshua in Gilgal, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, said to him, You know the word which the Lord spoke to Moses, the man of God, concerning you and me in Kedesh Barnea? I was forty years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought word back to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless, my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt with fear, but I followed the Lord my God fully. So Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land on which your foot is trodden shall be an inheritance to you and to your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God fully. And now, behold, the Lord has let me live just as he spoke these forty-five years from the time the Lord spoke this word to Moses when Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am eighty-five years old today. I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me. As my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day. For you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. Perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out, as the Lord has spoken." So Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, until this day, because he followed the Lord God of Israel fully. The name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath Arba. for Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim, and the land had rest from war." Thus far is the reading of God's word. Let us pray together. Again, our Father, we call out to You and pray that You would come by Your Spirit and instruct us this evening. We long to have Your Word written upon our hearts. We would not just have it to be a curiosity to be studied and analyzed and then set aside. but we would have your word to come and to abide in us richly, that we might grow in grace, in holiness, that we might be fashioned to be useful vessels fit for the service of the King. And so we pray that you will now come and that you will do that work. We again pray for those that are absent from us, that they might find your people this evening and be useful in the worship service in which they attend, that they might be an encouragement to those with whom they worship, that they might be encouraged by their fellowship with your people. And again, we ask that you would be pleased to knit our hearts together as they are knit to Christ. For we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. Please be seated. The history of God's people that is recorded for us in Joshua and Judges is both exhilarating and yet it is sometimes also very troubling. As you read the book of Joshua, you must remember that the setting of this is that generation to which God had promised the land in the first place, the generation which came out of Egypt, had died in the wilderness. For forty years they wandered in the wilderness because of their unbelief, and so while they had experienced God's mighty acts, yet they fell into unbelief. Stop and think about that generation as they saw the plagues that God sent upon the Egyptians and His sparing of His own people. Imagine them coming to the Red Sea and with the Egyptian army behind them and God parting the sea and them traveling through on dry land for His provision for them, for the giving of the law and all of those things. This was the generation that failed to enter into the land. That was followed by this faithful generation. After forty years, that generation that was forty years and under came to believe God, and they began to enjoy the fruit of their faith as they saw the enemies of God and their own enemies fall in front of them, city after city, land after land, being taken captive, beginning on the transjordan side and then coming into the land of Palestine itself, and yet they believe God. They served him with declining obedience. Keep your hands here in Chapter fourteen, but let's just read a couple of other passages from Joshua and then going on into judges to give you the sense of this. I read this many times before I began to notice the pattern here, but first of all, in sixteen Chapter sixteen and verse. Well, I wrote it down wrong, looks like. It's a chapter sixteen and verse and verse ten, it talks about the victories of Manasseh, but verse ten, but they did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gaza. So the Canaanites live in the midst of Ephraim to this day. and they became forced laborers. Chapter seventeen, verses twelve and thirteen. But the sons of Manasseh could not take possession of these cities because the Canaanites persisted in living in that land, and it came about when the sons of Israel became strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely. Now remember, the Canaanites were those who were to be put to death, they were to be exterminated from the land. So you see this declining faithfulness And then, as you go to the Book of Judges, chapter one, verses twenty-six, verse twenty-seven. But Manasseh did not take possession of Beth-shin and its villages, or Ta-anak, or its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor, and its villages, or the inhabitants of Iblim, and its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo, and its villages. So the Canaanites persisted living in that land, and it came about when Israel became strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely. Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites who were living in Gaza, so the Canaanites lived in Gaza among them. Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Ketron or the inhabitants of Nahalal, so the Canaanites lived among them and became subject to forced labor. Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Akko or the inhabitants of Sidon or of Ala. or of Akazi, or of Helva, or of Aphek, or Rehob. So the Asherites lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for they did not drive them out. Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth Anath, but lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, and the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, and Beth Anath became forced labor. Notice at first the Canaanites were living among them, and now in this thirty-third verse they are living among the Canaanites. And then verse thirty four, then the Amorites forced the sons of Dan into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the valleys. Yet the Amorites persisted in living in Mount Harry's, Agilon, and Sha'albin, Sha'albin. But when the power of the house of Joseph grew strong, they became forced labor in the border of the Amorites from the ascent of Akbim and Sella upward. And so you see this believing generation coming and initiating and seeing the great victories of God, but this declining A faithfulness similar events, I think, can be seen, and we know what happened. If we see in the book of Judges, there was no king in the land, and so every man began to do what was right in his own eyes. They became very quickly like the nations about them. Similar events can be observed throughout church history. Look at the seven churches of Asia Minor, to which Paul wrote. They are now in, if you know your geography, they are now located in what is now present day Turkey. There is not a strong witness indeed. They evidently did not heed the voice, their candlestick was removed. The Reformation in Germany and England was a great work of God, and yet look at Germany today. Germany became the center of liberalism and unbelief in the 19th and 20th centuries. England, which has such a rich heritage, it's very difficult to find those who rest and trust in the Lord in England today, or we can look to our own our own country as well. We think of the great Puritan influence in New England, and yet if you go to New England today, Unitarianism is rampant and unbelief stalks the land in New England. You know, you ask yourself the question, what happened? Well, as we pointed out last week, the last time we were together, we must learn from our history. We need to recognize the failures of our own generation. Remember the brevity of our own generation, our lives. and observe these other lessons from history as well. But unless God builds the house, they labor in vain to build it. We must always come back to this. It is not by human effort. These things fall out according to the plan and purpose of God. But all of our efforts will fail unless God blesses those efforts. We must also recognize the impact that unbelief has upon the present as well as the future. unbelief tolerated in our own lives, in our families, in the church, in the nation, will not just stay there. It is like a cancer that will spread. And so we see that it cannot be looked upon as a matter of indifference. And yet we also must understand that in it all, God accomplishes purpose in all of these things. And so what we see in our own history is the gospel seems to be moving westward. From Palestine, then on through Europe and on to England, on to the United States, and now we see God doing remarkable works in China, for instance, where the church is oppressed, but nonetheless the gospel is spreading, so God is accomplishing his purposes. One of the implications from this, I think, is that good leaders are concerned to work for covenant succession. We cannot be those who are just content with our own generation. We must be those who have a view to the future. We must use, then, the means that God has given us to equip future generations to maintain and improve the work of God's kingdom. If you have interest in athletics, the Olympic Games, it's always an interesting thing to watch the torch being carried wherever the games are going to be. I don't know what they're going to do this year or this coming year. I guess it's going to be in Athens again, so are they going to send it around the world? Maybe they will start in Athens, end up in Athens again. I don't know. What you see is different people carry the torch and as that torch is carried around the world or wherever it's going, it's passed from person to person. In this way, it's the guarantee that the torch will arrive at its destination or the baton in a relay race. Every person in that race does his part in order for the race might be finished. And that's what we want to talk about this evening. And I think this is one of the things that we see here in this 14th chapter of Joshua, although Caleb was a member of that older generation, he had a view to the future as well. And so as we look at these things, we look at the requirements for leaders, the things that God would have us to do in our leadership is we must return to the old paths of godly leadership. This is, of course, that phrase, the old path is taken from the sixth chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy, major prophecy, the book of Jeremiah, where he pleads with the people of Judah to return to the old ways. Now, this isn't just being stuck in tradition. That isn't what we're being spoken is not being spoken of your tradition in the sense of man-made traditions. But there is something also about godly traditions that are firmly rooted in the Word of God, to which we must hold fast to. In fact, the Apostle Paul told Timothy that he must hold fast the traditions that were given to him. Now, again, those were not man-made traditions. Those were the traditions that God had given those things which people do, those things which God instructed and generation after generation had continued to maintain those things which God had given, and so those God-given traditions are there for our good. And so, first of all, we go back to those old paths to rest in God's promises. Again, look at the ninth verse as Caleb had recited the failures of the previous generation of which he was a part. And now he goes back and says, So Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance to you and your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God fully. Now stop and think about that. Forty five years old. The rest of the nation, the Lord had told them, because of your unbelief, you are going to wander in the wilderness. But Caleb and Joshua, you will enter in with the next generation. And he says, and you Caleb, every place that your foot trod when you went in to the land of Palestine, because you were faithful, because you believe my promise. Then he says, you're going to inherit that land. It's going to be your possession. He renewed the covenant as it were with Caleb and Joshua and that new generation. And what Caleb does, he just goes back to that promise, even if he had the first promise, that God had given them the land of Palestine, he believed it then, he goes back again and remembers the word that God had given to him as an individual, and he laid hold of that promise. Now here we can say, well, I don't have, I can say, well, I just don't have that kind of promise. Well, not in the same sense that Caleb did, but you have the same promises of God that he has given to his people throughout their generations. You have the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ that your labor is not in vain. in the Lord, you have the promise that, as you are faithful, he will bless your faithfulness. You have the promise that, as you take the gospel and take it with you and spread it to the nations, that God will use that and will be with you even to the ends of the age, that God will bless the preaching of the gospel. You see, your God is the same. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change. His word is the same to all of his people, and so the promises that are given to every generation are the promises that are given to us. We again. We have been taught to think, I think, unfortunately, to break these things up, and we've been infected with this. We tend to think of the promises given to the old covenant people having nothing to do with us, and yet we understand the promise given to Abraham is the very promise by which we stand in the faith. We are the heirs of Abraham. We have the faith of Abraham. We have the God of Abraham, and we have the promises that were given to Abraham as well. He is the father of believers because your God is the same, and your God also maintains the same purpose. He has not changed his mind. The Lord God will be the one who is exalted in the earth. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted in the earth. That is the promise. In Isaiah chapter 2 he gives us that great picture of Zion, the people of God being exalted and the nations of the earth flowing to Zion and the law of God going forth to the most distant isles of the nations, the nations bowing and the reign of Christ resulting in the nations beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. It's a curious picture because it is contrary to what we usually experience When you see a stream and you look at it, you can determine which way is downhill by noticing which way the streams running, right? You don't usually see water running uphill. And yet, as God pictures the nations streaming or flowing, where are they flowing? They're flowing up to Jerusalem. This is a supernatural work of God. It is what He does by His power. It doesn't just come about in natural terms, but it is the work that He does through the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so his purpose is the same. The nations of the earth should come to know him and to worship him. And as Isaiah says, he says that the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters also cover the sea. That was part of what Caleb was understanding. He understood the land was given to him, but he also understood that the descendants of Abraham would be the heirs of the world. And so he simply went back to the old promises that God had given go back to rest in God's promises. This is what we must do. We must not be those who are driven by what we see with our eyes, what we read in the newspapers. We must always go back that generation before him. Caleb had it firmly in his mind that generation before him looked at everything they saw with their eyes. They heard with their ears And they understood all of these things. They said, there's no way. And Caleb was just focused. He says, they're right. What you've seen is absolutely correct. There are giants in the land. There are fortified cities. They're well armed. We aren't. You're right. But God has said. God has said, and that trumps everything else. Also, go back to your experience from the past. The one who trusts in the Lord shall never be put to shame. That is the promise that God gives to us. And as they went back, and as Caleb was looking back over the promises that God had given, he recognized what the scriptures had taught, that not one promise of God ever fails. And here again, we want to look at a couple of other passages of scripture, Joshua chapter 21 and verse 45. And we'll just, I could give you some, that can't be, can it? I don't know where I have been doing this, but let's look at chapter 20, because it's probably going to be in there. No, but the passage is that not one of the promises of God had failed. Well, wait a second, I'm in Judges. OK, Joshua. 2145, I was in judges. That's why it wasn't working. OK, not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed. All came to pass, and that is repeated in Chapter 23 in verse 14. It is repeated in First Kings Chapter 854 and 56, and so as you go through history, you have a record that not one of the promises of God has ever failed. And so, as the people of God go through their lives, as you go through your lives and you look back over your experience, you say, you know, I believe God here, and he brought it about just as he said. We can look, when we get to the end of our lives, we'll look back over them and we'll be able to say with Joshua, of all the promises that God gave, not one of them has failed. And so, we go back to the experience. And as you do that, then you are to be encouraged by your successes. You're to be encouraged by your successes. When Caleb looked back, he saw that the Lord had protected him during that spying. He looked back to that forty years of history where God had provided for them. He came through all of the trials that God took them through in the wilderness. He looked back on that wilderness experience, not merely as, not only as a setback, though it certainly was for the people of God, but he looked upon that as a time of preparation. And so as he looked back over his own history, he noted that God was faithful. Caleb was faithful to God in the midst of a disobedient generation. And please notice here that leadership is not determined by whether you're followed or not. Let me say it again. Leadership is not determined by how many people follow you. You hear today in all these leadership conferences, well, you're not a good leader if nobody follows you. Well, guess what? Nobody followed Caleb and Joshua. Everybody followed the other ten spies who were the true leaders. Well, obviously, because everybody followed them. No. God says the leaders were Caleb and Joshua, the one who set the course, the one who determined the proper way and stood firm when nobody else would follow. And we see that coming as we come to the end of the book of Joshua, Joshua standing there before the nation. And he's saying, listen, it's set before you. You can choose the gods of your father's or you can choose the God of Israel, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You see, all a leader can do is set before the people the right way. And so, as Caleb was faithful to God in the midst of a disobedient generation, he was the true leader. We also see this in one of my favorite accounts, and that is of the the three Hebrew children, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, also known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, but their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael. And they stood before the king and would not bow before that image, as they were instructed to do. The king brings them in. He says, You know, listen, all you've got to do is you've got to bow down when that image passes by when you hear the music and you'll be spared the fire. And the interesting thing is, these young men were leaders. They were leaders that said, You know, we don't really know what anybody else is going to do. We know that God is able to deliver us But whether he does or whether he doesn't, that's up to him. But we're not going to do now. Were they looking around, seeing if anybody else was bowing down or not? Were they? You know, they were the only maybe they were the only one standing. They're the only ones that were carded before the before the king at that point in time. Maybe there were some other standing who weren't caught. I don't know. But were they really? Did it really matter to them? They were leaders because they stood when very few others did. And so, Caleb was faithful to God in the midst of a disobedient generation, and that was a success to him. That was a success. God granted me faithfulness in the middle of a time and a season and a generation where there was very little faithfulness. And that's the way you are to count your account success. Also, if God grants you faithfulness, It doesn't matter whether anybody else is if you stand when everybody else sits or if you sit when everybody else stands. God counts that as a success. And then we see that God blessed Caleb with both life and strength. He says, The Lord told me that I would live and that I would go in and conquer the land. And he said, Here I am today for eighty five years old. I was forty five when this all came about. I'm eighty five today. God has let me live. And he says, My strength is the same today as it was then for going out, coming in and for war. So he be encouraged by your successes, be corrected by your sins and failures as turning your in your Bibles again to Psalm 78. This is a this is a great portion of Scripture, which we we should remember. It starts out in this way, Psalm 78. Listen, O my people, to my instruction, incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not conceal them from their children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wondrous works that he has done. And then he goes on and he explains the great things that God has done. But as you go through the rest of the psalm, you'll notice that the psalmist recites the faithfulness of God in the midst of Israel's sin, that God again and again bailed them out in spite of their sin and rebellion. And so we must also be corrected by our sins and failures and recognize one of the things that keeps us from enjoying progress as the people of God is the pride that keeps us from admitting our sins, admitting our failures and from correcting them. And so you have the history of Israel, who are always depending on something else, never willing to acknowledge their sin. And of course, God ultimately took them into captivity. And then the third thing, resume your responsibilities by faith. Again, let's look at the fourteenth chapter versus ten. and following. And now, behold, the Lord has let me live, just as he spoke these forty-five years from the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses when Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am eighty-five years old today. I am still as young today as I was in the day that Moses sent me. As my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day. For you heard on that day that Anakim were there with great fortified cities. Perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out as the Lord has spoken." This is a great passage. He doesn't come up and say, You know, I'm eighty-five years old. If you don't mind, could you just give me a A nice little patch down by the Jordan River where I'm where all the armies are going out somewhere around Jericho. It's already been captured and everything. And I'll just settle in there and God will give me the promise and I'll live out the rest of my day. He doesn't do that at all. He says, I'm eighty five years old. My strength is the same. The promise is the same. Where I want to go is I want to go to the hill country. I want to go to the hill country where the giants are. Thank you. tough place. Give me the tough place. That's where I want to go. That's where I want to serve. Perhaps God will give me victory. Well, he knew God would give him victory, but there was a humility there as well, and he simply resumed his responsibilities that were interrupted for 40 years. He resumed. Now, he didn't lay down. He just had different responsibilities during those 40 years, but he picked up the responsibilities that he had before. And so I'd urge you, don't look for the easy way. Don't say, I've done my part, now it's time for somebody else to do it. That isn't what Joshua did. One of the things that I'm finding interesting as I grow older is that your responsibilities and your abilities do change. When you have real small children, there are certain things that you do and don't do because of that. Children are a little bit older. There are other things that you do and other things that you don't do. And then when your children grow and begin to leave home, all of a sudden you have time for doing things that you've never had time to do before. And that's not the time to say, OK, I don't have anything else to do. We'll let somebody else do it. That is the time when we take the instruction that God has given to us. Older men instruct the younger men. Older women instruct the younger women. This is not the time to lay down our responsibilities. This is the time to take up new responsibilities. We don't just look for the easy way out. I've done my part. Now it's time for someone else to do it. You know, it's an interesting thing. Nobody is ubiquitous, everywhere present servant of the church. Or somebody is. Somebody will do it. Well, if somebody is the only one who's going to do it, nobody will do it. And that's the way things are. So we ought to be freed up for ministry, not use our age as an excuse to avoid it. So don't look for the easy way and use your experience as an example for others to follow. This must have been great. Can you imagine those people standing around hearing this, those who were younger than Joshua? And here they see this man who had been faithful through all his life, and he stands up. God's been faithful to his promise. Give me the hill country. That's where the giants are. Can you imagine the encouragement that that must have been to that younger generation? I've told you this before, my grandmother was not converted until very late in her life, and yet she left me and my children and grandchildren a legacy that is a remarkable legacy. It was a very simple legacy in one sense, that her last breath, literally her last words before she passed into glory. were these, Jesus is Lord. Now, what a great legacy to leave as you're standing on the verge of death. And with your last breath to confess, Jesus is Lord. I think of John John Cotton's death as well. He gathered his family around him and he charged each of his family members to be faithful to the Lord. and having having done so, and having had scripture read to him, he dismissed his family, saying that he wanted to use the remaining moments of life on earth, praying and seeking the Lord's face before he's received in his presence. What a great way to die. You know, the only the only better way to die than I can think of is to be in the pulpit and to enter end with a benediction and just collapse. I think that'd be a great way to go. No, you don't want me. It'd be great for me anyway, but I think it'd just be a marvelous, just be a marvelous thing. But the idea here is that we use our experience and God uses that experience as an example for others to follow. And then the last major heading that we'll look at here, pass on the mantle of godly leadership. Pass it on. First thirteen Joshua blessed him, gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, until this day, because he followed the Lord God of Israel fully. Now the name of Hebron was formerly Kiryat Arba, City of Arba. For Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim. Then the land had rest for war. If you also go to chapter 24 in the book of Joshua, you will see those words that were spoken by Joshua in verses 14 and 15. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in the sincerity and truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which are beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." We will serve the Lord. And as we can finish this up at the end of this chapter also, verses 25 and following. Let's see if I can find this. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. 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 oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord, which he spoke to us. Thus, it shall be a witness against you, lest you deny your God. Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance." So you see, in all of these things, there's this preparation for covenant succession, the teaching of the new generation, the setting up of the stone to be a witness against them. So remember then, the intergenerational. nature of God's covenant from the very beginning. It was, I will be your God and you should be my people. I'll be a God to you. I'll be a God to your children after you. And so we see throughout the covenant that God's throughout God's word that the covenant is intergenerational in nature and is designed to be that way. We see it in the second commandment. The iniquity of fathers has passed down for three or four generations. Why is that? Because the covenant is intergenerational. What you do today will affect your generations. And if you are unbelieving, then it's going to affect the next generation. Your iniquity will be passed down for three or four generations among the wicked. But the mercy of God extends to thousands of generations for the faithful. And there you can see again that the overwhelming nature of God's grace While iniquity is visited for three or four generations, God's grace is extended to the thousands of generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. And so what may you expect from this? Well, you may expect progress for God's kingdom. You should expect progress for the kingdom because the intergenerational nature of God's covenant. Stop and think about your own life, your own sanctification. Are you more godly today than you were 15 years ago? If you're over 15 years old, are you more godly today than you were? Well, of course, because you've grown in grace. Now, when we look at that as individuals, then we can see that also in the church of the living God, the church grows and expands and grows older. There's a maturity that comes, but that maturity, because of the nature of our lifespans being brief, that maturity comes about by passing things on from generation to generation. And so, as we are faithful to train our children, our children, and we often pray this, and we pray it because it's an expectation that we have, and it's something that we want God to do. Remember that unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain to do it. But we expect our children to be more godly than we are, and we pray, God, make our children more godly than we have been, and as I have told you When I look at the way my children raise their children, it makes me ashamed of the way that I raised my children. Now, that's the way it should be. There should be progress in the life of the church. Our children should be wiser. They should learn the lessons that we have taught them. They should apply them. And in this way, we can expect progress for God's kingdom. Also, you may expect the decline of the world kingdom precisely because of the nature of God's covenant. God blesses faith and obedience. God curses unbelief and disobedience. How can anyone expect unbelief and disobedience to prevail in the world? It simply cannot work that way because the more consistent the ungodly become in their ungodliness, the greater the curse of God comes upon them. The more faithful God's people are, the more his blessings rest upon them. And so you see, it is simply an impossibility to think that God's word will not prevail. in the word of his word about his covenant is true, but it is intergenerational. We have to think that way. There are ups and downs, but it is our duty to see that the word is passed on. And so, as I say that, not only remember the intergenerational nature of God's covenant, but you must devote yourselves to training future generations. There's a remarkable passage in Genesis chapter 18, remarkable simply because It's not that profound, it's simple, but I guess it's remarkable to me because I read it so many times and never picked up on the implications of this. Genesis chapter 18, this is where God is seeking to determine whether he's going to tell Abraham whether he's going to destroy Sodom. Let's pick up with verse 16. Then the man rose up from there and looked down towards Sodom and Abraham was walking with them to send them off, and the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Now here's the verse. For I have chosen him in order that he may command his children in his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice in order the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about him. Did you hear that? We see God's sovereignty and election. I have chosen him. We see the purpose of his choice, and that is in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. Right there you see the provision for succession. I've chosen him in order to teach and train his children to keep the commandments of the Lord in justice and righteousness. That's what we're chosen for. Why? I've chosen him to do this in order that I might bring upon Abraham all of the promises that I've given to him. In other words, God ordains the means to the end. Read it again. Read that nineteen first. I've chosen him in order that he may command his children household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice in order for Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about. In other words, he's saying for all the greatness of the covenant promises there's a means to an end. Abraham must train his children to believe and obey the Lord, and in this way the promises of God will come upon Abraham's descendants. That's why there's such a big deal that is made in the New Testament about those who fell away. What was the problem? Was the problem with the covenant? No, if they didn't keep the covenant, they didn't train succeeding generations to keep the covenant of God in order that promises might come upon them. So we have to see this, that we must be diverted to training future generations. We read for our New Testament passage, 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2. And we saw there that God, through the Apostle Paul, tells Timothy, the things that you've seen and heard and learned from me, commit to faithful men who will be able to train others also. Why? Because Paul's not going to be around forever. Timothy has to take the mantle, young Timothy, then Timothy. What does Timothy do? Timothy must take that and teach others. So you have three generations right there in Second Timothy, chapter two, Paul and Timothy and the ones that Timothy is going to teach. What's Timothy going to teach them? The things which you've heard and learned and seen in me. You take those and teach them to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. What are they going to teach? Well, they're going to do the same thing. That's that's the way the church grows. We continue to pass on these things. Older men must instruct the younger. Older women must instruct the younger in domestic duties. And here we must all come down and all of us as believers. We want to see the if we want to see the church prosper in the promises come. All must be devoted to thoroughly Christian education. All must be devoted to that. That's where we have gone so wrong. We must be those who are devoted to this covenant succession. And so, as we conclude here, Psalm 85, 4-7, as we think about the place in which we find ourselves and the place in which Caleb found himself, Restore us, O God, of our salvation, and cause thine indignation toward us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us forever? Wilt thou prolong thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not thyself revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us by loving kindness, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. There is a land to be conquered. Let's go back to the old paths and let's pass on the mantle of godly leadership. Let's pray together. Lord God, you have not left us ignorant about the way your world works and the way that you would execute the covenant promises and covenant curses. Lord, we pray that you would give us the spirit that you gave to Joshua. You have given us the promise of that spirit. And we pray that you will give us his vision. We pray that you'll give us his tenacity. We pray that you'll give us strength in our years. We pray that you'll give us a heart for future generations. And we're reminded that the inheritance was given to Caleb and to his descendants, that as he went forward as an old man, You gave him that victory and you passed on not only the land to his children, his children's children, but you passed on also to his children the faith. And so we, being his children also by faith, would ask that you would grant us that. So hear our prayer and grant us grace that you would always provide for your church godly leadership. And may we be those leaders in those areas where you have given us responsibility to lay hold of the promises. to assume our responsibilities, and then to pass them on to generation after generation. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.