A very fitting catechism. Joshua 9. Remain standing for just another moment, if you're able, by God's word, so we can read God's word and honor Him together in it. Joshua, the ninth chapter. And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan in the hills and in the lowlands and in all the coast of the great sea toward Lebanon, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite heard about it, that they gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors. And they took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves, and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, We have come from a far country, now therefore make a covenant with us.' Then the men of Israel said to the Hivites, Perhaps you dwell among us, so how can we make a covenant with you? But they said to Joshua, We are your servants. And Joshua said to them, Who are you, and where do you come from? So they said to him from a very far country, Your servants have come because of the name of the Lord your God, for we have heard of his fame. and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sion, king of Heshbon, and Ai, king of Bashan, who was at Ashteroth. Therefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us, saying, Take provisions with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say to them, We are your servants. Now therefore make a covenant with us. This bread of ours we took hot for our provision from our houses on the day we departed to come to you. But now look, it's dry and moldy. And these wineskins which we filled were new. And see, they're torn. And these our garments and our sandals have become old because of the very long journey. Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. So Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live, and the rulers of the congregation swore to them. And it happened at the end of three days after they had made a covenant with them that they heard that they were their neighbors who dwelt near them. Then the children of Israel journeyed and came to their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon and Kephara, Baroth and Kiriathiarim, but the children of Israel did not attack them because the rulers of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel, and all the congregation complained against the rulers. Then all the rulers said to the congregation, We have sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel, now therefore we may not touch them. This we will do to them. We will let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them. And the rulers said to them, Let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers. for all the congregation as the rulers had promised them. Then Joshua called for them and spoke to them, saying, Why have you deceived us? saying, We are very far from you, when you dwell near us. Now therefore you are cursed, and none of you shall be freed from being slaves, woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God. so they answered Joshua and said, Because your servants were clearly told that the Lord your God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you therefore we were very much afraid for our lives because of you and have done this thing and now here we are in your hands do with us as it seems good and right to do with us So he did to them and delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel so that they did not kill them. And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord in the place which he would choose even to this day. You may be seated. May the Lord bless his word to our hearts. Let's pray together. O Lord our God, we bless you for your word which is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Thank you for the glory and the grace of this passage. May it minister to us. May it encourage us to be truth tellers, covenant keepers, and men and women and young people who always, in everything, seek counsel from the Lord. We ask these things in your name, Lord Jesus. Amen. Verses 1 and 2, we have a conspiracy formed against Israel. Verses 3 through 14, we have an enemy who told a lot of lies. Give them the Academy Award. In verses 15 through 27, we have a warning that surviving by lies is short-lived and leads to slavery. So a conspiracy, an Academy Award you might say, our enemy is a deceiver, and survival by lies is short-lived and leads to slavery. And then a few points for us as we contemplate applying this to our lives. You know, verses 1 and 2 are interesting. So the children of Israel have just come back from Mount Ebel where they covenanted with the Lord and read His law. And as soon as they come back down to the land, 30 miles south, more to the interior, a conspiracy begins to be formed against them. It's oftentimes the way it is. And that is after you've had a time of worship and a time of grace in your own life, you probably know what I'm talking about, a sweet time of fellowship with the Lord. War breaks out. Something happens. A temptation. A fresh challenge in the world in which we live. That's exactly what happened to the children of Israel. They've just come back from covenanting with the Lord. They read God's law. They sacrificed together. And as soon as they come back down, there's a conspiracy waiting for them of the nations that are left in the land of Canaan. But there is also something very interesting here, I think. And that is, why did they not already attack? I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of Canaanites were left in the land. Tons of them. They had big cities. And it's interesting that the Lord held them off to this point. It's almost like He inflicted them with a stupor so that they could not do all the evil that they wanted to do. I mean, as soon as they crossed the Jordan River, that would have been the time to attack. Or when they saw them routed, and their first attack against Ai because of Achan's sin, that would be the time to go and attack. But there's another dynamic that is working for us, and that is that the Lord is working in our enemies to do His will in their lives. We must not be practical atheists and think that God is only the God of the Christians and the God of the atheists and the secularists, that they're kind of on their own. No, He's working in them as well. He works in them to either defund them, scatter them, fill them with a gazillion dollars so that they can bring their fortunes down. Sometimes he lets a little leash out and they really extend themselves in their wickedness. Sometimes he yanks them back in, but the point is we can't lose. because not only was the Lord working in the children of Israel to give them time to get a footing in the land to renew the covenant that he had made with Moses and Joshua earlier but now it's renewed after they've crossed the Jordan but he's also working in the Canaanites in order to give Israel time to be ready for the battle. I think that should be an encouragement to us that the Lord rules the house of the wicked as well as the house of the righteous. And He ordains all things for His glory and for our good. So let that enter into your thinking as you think about what's going on in our world. Now there was one group of people that lived nearby, the Gibeonites. And they're an interesting people. They basically say, we don't want to join this confederacy. And as the story unfolds, we know why. Hey, God's given you this land. We cannot win by fighting. Now the way they went about saving their own skins was by lies and it brought a curse on them. But didn't you see at the end that even that curse becomes a blessing because it's played out by living in the tents of Shem and being able to hear the gospel. But more on that as we go. But they said we can't win this by arms. I'll tell you what. Let's put on a disguise. You don't have to go through the whole thing again. Let's get some moldy bread, some torn wine skins, water skins, shoes ripped off and fallen on our feet, grown-out beards, dirty camels, and let's go and pretend that we have come from a far country and we want to make a treaty with you. Interestingly enough, in verse 7, then the men of Israel said to them, Perhaps you dwell among us. Somebody smells something that wasn't right here. How can we make a covenant with you? So they suspected a trap, but it's interesting how the trap deepened a little bit. Notice here all the things in verses 8 through 13 or 14 that the Gibeonites say. They said to Joshua, we're your servants. There's a passivity already. We don't want to fight you. We want peace. Where do you come from? Verse 9. Very vague. From a far country. A nameless land. Notice here, we've heard of the fame of Yahweh Elohim. The fame of the Lord was growing throughout this area. We ought not to think they never heard anything. If they lived two miles away, they never heard it because they didn't have iPhones. No, they knew what the Lord had done in Egypt to the Egyptian and their firstborn. They knew, verse 10, what God had done to Sion and Og, the two kings of the Amorites on the other side of the Jordan. And so our elders said, and now here's where the lies come in, Take some provisions. Go on a far journey. There's a little flattery in this. Maybe there's a little sympathy. Hey, we've come a long way. We just want peace with you. And so what did the children of Israel do? They looked at the evidence. Oh, that bread is moldy. Those wineskins, they are torn all right. Yeah, your sandals are in bad shape. Even REI won't take them back. So all of these things were going against them. And the children of Israel said, yeah, makes sense to us. But notice the whole hinge of the chapter in verse 14. They didn't ask counsel of the Lord. They trusted their eyes. Oh, yeah, maybe we do need to get accreditation from state agencies and maybe we do need to listen to what the liberal theologians are saying. They've got bigger buildings than we do. I mean, they've got men who've got a lot more letters behind their names than just silly old people who believe the Bible. We ought to be able to understand this because this is exactly the way the church has been doing ever since this happened 3,500 years ago. Going by our eyes, going by the experts, going by our experience instead of asking counsel. From the Lord. Well, Joshua, what does he do? This third verse is 15 through 27. He makes a covenant with him. He makes peace with him. Now again, Joshua was a godly man. Joshua was the servant of the Lord. Joshua had God's promises made to him that I will never leave you or forsake you. But in this instance, We're reminded that even very godly leaders, even very righteous men and women can make real bonehead decisions if they follow their eyes. I mean, the children of Israel had the Urim and the Thummim, perhaps the rocks, the crystals that they used to ascertain God's will and very specific things. That's not New Age, it's in the Bible. You can talk to me about it later if you have questions and I'll be able to tell you nothing more than I just told you because nobody knows what they were. But they had that, but they had a priesthood, they had a prayer, God had already called them to be a holy nation. But they went by what they saw. It made sense. And Joshua fell in with the rest of them. You know, it's a reminder to us, no matter how many successes we think we've had as parents or in our marriages or whatever, we may have done a job at work a hundred times without a mistake. And on the 101st, the Lord makes us fall and rebukes us for our presumption because we were trusting in ourselves rather than trusting in Him. And that's what Joshua did. Now, it says lying lips are but for a moment in Proverbs, and three days later, verse 16, they found out that the Gibeonites were the greatest actors in Canaan at that day, and the biggest liars, okay? And they heard, and the children of Israel said, all right, we're gonna go to their cities, and so they went, verse 17, but they wouldn't attack them. Because the rulers, verse 18, had sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel. And all the congregation complained. Now let's see if we can put a couple of these dynamics together. The rulers said, we made a promise, we made a covenant. Now legally it probably could be argued that a covenant made upon false pretenses is not a covenant at all. I mean, somebody who's already married and they take a second wife under the pretense that they weren't married, that second marriage is nullified because it wasn't legitimate to begin with. So legally, it could be argued, I think, and many have, and Calvin took this position as well, that they were not obligated to a covenant at one level that was made under false pretenses. Verse 19, at the same time, the rulers, I think, recognized two things. One, we have blame in this because we've sinned against the Lord and didn't ask counsel. And secondly, we did swear personally to them in the name of the Lord that we would not touch them. And so there was a personal obligation that they felt. Interestingly, they did right. You may remember that About 450 to 500 years later, and this is recorded I believe in I think it's 1 Samuel 22, that there was a famine in Israel. And when David went to ask the Lord, why are you afflicting us with this famine? You remember the Lord sent a prophet to him and said, Because Saul killed a lot of the Gibeonites, therefore this famine has come. And so David goes to the Gibeonites, wait a minute, how many years later? About 500 years later. 500 years, that's longer than there's been a country here, okay? 500 years, and he says to the Gibeonites, hey, what can we do? And you remember their answer, bring us out nine of Saul's sons, and we'll hang them, and we'll be satisfied. So that's what they did, and the famine stopped. So I think they did right in honoring, obviously, this covenant. It's clearly verified by scripture. It's interesting, and again, this would be worthy of a sermon in and of itself, but 500 years. 500 years. The Lord expects us to keep our promises. We make, oh, you know, things change. Actually, no. We make a promise in the Lord's name. He expects us to keep it. To Him, to each other, in our marriages, to our parents, baptism, etc. Well, this apparently, verses 19 through 21, satisfied The the warring men, I think they were a little bit afraid God's going to start killing us again because he's told us to exterminate all the people of the land. And remember what happened at A.I. or I.E., depending by how you want to pronounce it. And now here we are again. And but apparently this pacified them and a curse was put upon them. Verse 21, verse 20 and 21. Let them be water carriers and woodcutters. That didn't mean they had a wood burning set and put Joshua was here on all the trees in the land. That means let them be wood for fire. And actually down at the end, verse 27, wood cutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar. They served in the tabernacle and in the temple. We don't have time to turn there, but in Nehemiah, if you have a concordance, look up Gibeonites, and you'll find Gibeonites recorded in Nehemiah's day who are preserved on the other side of the captivity, still serving about a thousand years later. God is faithful to His covenant and He knows those who are His. Joshua, however, is a little bit furious. Verses 22 and 23. He's probably a little bit embarrassed as well. You have deceived us! Of course, it could be argued you wouldn't have been deceived had you asked counsel from the Lord. You said you were far from us. You were actually near. And so you're going to be woodcutters and water carriers for the house of God. And it's interesting. I think there's a little bit of electing grace at work in this chapter. I confess I don't really haven't read that in any of the other commentaries. But I think this is one of the ways where the Lord is saying not all the Canaanites were Canaanites. that God had a people even here. Notice what they say in verse 24. What's their ultimate explanation? Your servants were clearly told. By whom? By the way, I wonder too, you do know in Deuteronomy 21, there's two provisions that Israel was supposed to follow when it was going to war. If it was a country that was far away, they could have peace with it. If it was a country that was near, If it was not one of the Canaanite nations, they could make an offer of peace. And if the city accepted it, they could reduce them to slavery. Of the seven Canaanite nations, they had to destroy them. This was suggested by a couple of very astute commentators, and I think there's some value to it, that did they have spies at Mount Ebel when they read the law of God? And that men of Gibeon were there. I mean, you've got a crowd of two million people. You can get a couple of Gibeonites there. I mean, goodnight. They were the people of a thousand disguises. So they could have fit right in. Possibly. It's interesting speculation. But they know somehow. We were told, verse 24, that the Lord your God commanded his servant Moses Man, that world's a lot different than we think. Well, they didn't know anything, okay? They didn't even wear shoes back then. They lived in black and white. They knew nothing. They knew a lot, okay? And they certainly knew this. He commanded you to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you, and we were very much afraid of our lives because of you, and that's why we did this. Why were they afraid? Because they knew they deserved the judgment. Because they knew what God had said. So there's some, at least basic level, I think, of faith. It's not saving faith at this point. But some kind, God has said this, we're not going to join this alliance of the other Canaanite nations. And how they went about trying to save their lives, of course, was sinful. But at the same time, the Lord even turns that sin into a blessing because He lets them serve right there in the tabernacle. You tell me God is not good and that He loves sinners and that our Savior did not, He certainly came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And then notice they say in verse 25, we're in your hands. Do with us whatever you will." So the Lord says, okay, I'll save you and you're going to be among my people for a thousand years serving among those who bring water and wood to the tabernacle and they didn't kill them. By the way, it's interesting that in all the times I've heard, and I heard it in college and other places, oh, the God of the Old Testament was a demon. You know, he just killed people left and right, shot fire out of his eyes, and nobody lived. Talk about mercy. I didn't even make this one of the concluding points, although it could have been the main one. The mercy of God. to these Canaanites. We don't know what kind of religion they practiced. It was probably as perverse as the rest of them. But God said, hey, and I'm going to use their lie to work good for my people. I'm going to bring them basically under the authority of my people and serve as my servants in my house. Why would the Lord want people like this serving near his altar? Well, I would ask one other question. Why would He want me, and why would He want you? Because there is abundant mercy, and so even here I think the Lord is showing my covenant, my purposes are so much bigger. Again, it's just a little shadow, and we get it because we can backlight the Old Testament with the new, but what a beautiful picture of the Lord's mercy and His grace. But I do think, at the same time, there are four or five lessons we ought to take with us from this chapter. So in the few minutes we have left, I'd like to mention these real quickly. First, the usual way the devil and the world try to get into the church is through fake friendship. pretending to be something other than what it is. Oh, we're not evolutionists. We just think that there's other ways you can interpret Genesis. We don't want to have a total breakdown of morality, and so we'll separate, we'll form and put labels on things. The world pretends. Keep in mind, James 4.4, if you're going to be a friend of the world, you're going to be an enemy of God. And Satan knows that our own hearts are weak, and he poses as an angel of light. And we cannot forget this, 2 Corinthians 11.4, the Apostle Paul says that even Satan himself, no, I'm your friend. It's not going to hurt if we reorient our worship services to the perceived needs of unbelievers. Would you have told the Finneys this, and the other evangelists this, and the Crusaders of the late 1800s and early 1900s? And so now what you get is a total man-oriented worship in the bulk of the church. Or did the church in this land really think seriously when it became popular to embrace the idea that, wait a minute, we're not going to insist that Christ is the Lord of this nation. We're going to adopt pluralism because, hey, everybody gets religious liberty. Now I realize there's a place for that in a different discussion at one level when you're living in Babylon, but the church should never endorse political and religious pluralism, many gods, the validity of all religions, just so that she can keep her security in the world. But it's a lie that Satan has whispered that sounds so attractive. Well, yes, everybody should have their their freedom to worship, but we forget that all the false worship and the idolatry and the Marxism and the statism, they don't want to be friends to the church. They want to kill the church. And so when we adopt that feigned, oh, we've heard of the fame of the Lord and we just want to be part and want you to be part of this big picture, we're actually inviting our enemies into our own young people, be very careful with this. You go out there, you meet somebody, handsome man, pretty girl, talks sweet, not too bad, talks a little bit about Jesus. Are you a Christian? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm not like, I'm not against him, okay? I mean, I'm for him, you know? No, let's be really, really careful that we don't make confusing what God has made very clear. A Christian is somebody who loves the Lord Jesus, loves the Lord Jesus more, than he or she loves other people. And so you can always tell who really is a Christian and who is only a pretender. Be careful. The Gibeonites to this day still pretend in order to save themselves. Secondly, we've got to wait upon the Lord to guide us, don't we? Turn to John 10. This is obviously the main point of the whole chapter at one level and I think why this incident is recorded for us because God's people got into this pickle even though he ordained it for good to the Gibeonites because they didn't ask counsel from the Lord. They didn't ask him to be their shepherd. John 10 1. Most assuredly I say to you He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same as a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out. Let that last line sink into your heart again. And he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which he spoke to them. Then Jesus said to them again, Most assuredly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. And then he goes on to talk about how I lay down my life for the sheep. Verse 14, I'm the good shepherd, I know my sheep, and have known by my own. As the Father knows me, I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. Do you know, and here's something very profound, and I want you to spend the rest of your life thinking about it. I don't know that I've ever said that to you before in exactly that way, but that you do not have to guide and figure out your own life because you're not capable of doing it, and neither am I. and that the Lord Jesus takes upon himself the exclusive office of being my shepherd. That means he has to go out, he finds the pasture, he finds the safe place I'm supposed to be, he tells us to follow him, listen to his voice, he says, my sheep know my voice, they don't listen to the voice of strangers. Now perhaps we read this negatively, but we ought to read it, wait a minute, is he really my shepherd? So that like this really didn't have to happen to the children of Israel. They didn't ask counsel of the Lord when the Lord had said, hey, here's the fiery pillar. Here's the the cloud by night. I'm your guide. I'm your shepherd through the wilderness. Why didn't you ask me? And I would have told you these people are false. And if he wanted to save the Gibeonites, he would have found another way to save them. But the point here is ask counsel. Don't think, well, I've got to figure this out. I need to know. Now what happens is that we oftentimes back ourselves into a corner and we feel pressure. I've got to make a decision. Something's got to be done about this. Now in those cases, God's not obligated. God doesn't have an emergency because we plan poorly, okay? And nor is He obligated to, well, I've got to do a miracle because I have to know right now. What if he just does nothing? And what if you just say, I don't have the answer. I don't know. I'm still waiting on the Lord. I'm still seeking counsel at his hand. I've appreciated this about our elders here over the years very much, and that they are not the kind of men to be pressured into, we've got to do something right now and make a decision right now. Because there's a recognition, I believe it's been very influential in my life, that I'm not my own shepherd. And neither are you. Now, we can try to play shepherd and we take that on ourselves all the time. I'll figure this out. I've got this. I know what to do. You know, and even if the Lord lets it work out, you know, we may have a lot more praise forthcoming to him when we, Lord, I'm going to wait upon you. You guide me. You direct me and I will praise you because you are always faithful to this office that you have taken upon yourself to be my shepherd. Third, always keep your promises. Colossians 3.10, I know this is like, we learned this in kindergarten. How's that working out for our nation, okay? We're a nation of liars. And yet, what does Scripture say? Look at Colossians 3. This is very important. Colossians 3, 8. But now you yourselves are to put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created Him. You know, it says in Revelation 21 that all liars have their part in the lake of fire. God hates lies. It's amazing, though. We're so afraid of being exposed, so afraid of being found out, rather than just going to Him and, where appropriate, going to each other and saying, you know what, I'm not going to lie. God hates lies. These six things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are abomination to Him, proud-looking eyes, A lying tongue. Now the Gibeonites, God was merciful to them, and He did use their lie to save their tongues, but it came at a cost. And that cost was a thousand years of slavery. political, historical slavery. Yes, I'm sure we'll meet many of them in heaven that we would not otherwise have met. But I think the lesson for us is, let your word be your bond. Husbands, wives, keep your promises to each other. Yes, there's going to be things that attack it. Your covenant that you have made. but be committed to each other, cleave to each other. When you say, I do, that is for life, that is to work out the issues, even it may take a long time, that you're different about and you think differently about, but we're in covenant. We see how God blessed even the Gibeonites because Israel kept It's covenant. Even it swore to its own hurt, but it did not go back and didn't change. Keep your covenants. Keep your covenants to pray for one another. Your covenants that you made at your baptism. The promises that we have made. God is a promise-keeping God. And we are to keep our covenants and our promises to each other. Now to do this, I'll just mention one more and then we'll be done. We've talked about beware of the world trying to fake its friendship and deceive us. Secondly, we need to wait on the Lord to be our guide. Third, we need to always keep our promises. Fourth, and I think this is the foundation of the rest, we've got to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that we're building on. Because how can I trust the Lord to guide me if Jesus is the answer to a catechism question, but He's not the answer of my life? He's got to be real to me. And again, it's not that I make Him real and I click my heels three times together and I imagine. No, as we saw this morning, the living, the wise, the powerful, the strong, the speaking, the voice, the countenance like the Son. I need to grow in Him. And again, we can do that quietly. That doesn't mean I've got to go home tonight and read the Bible for six hours. But I do need to walk with Him every day, and as I walk with Him and cast my burdens upon Him and seek His counsel. I had a brother tell me a couple of years ago, he was telling me that, he doesn't go here anymore, we still keep up, but he was telling me he just really struggled during the day when he was working to do his work unto the Lord, and he just felt like he lost perspective. And I said, at 11 o'clock every day, set your clock, and do this for a couple of months to be a habit, set your clock, and for two minutes, if you can, unless you're on a call, you don't have to get religious about 11 o'clock, but just sometime in the morning, stop and ask the Lord to be your guide and bless your work. I didn't see him for six months. And when I saw him again, he came in and he hugged my neck and he about kissed me on the mouth. And he said, that has revolutionized my sense that God is with me. And I think that's where we get messed up. And as we go all day, we do our job, you know, hey, yeah, Lord, if you're up, you know, help me. Lord Jesus, you are the center of my life, you're the strength of my life, I need your help in this and this and this. And you're thinking, are you telling me I'm that big of a basket case? Yes, you're bigger than you know, okay? And so am I. We have no strength, John 15, 5, without me you can do nothing. But Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So build that relationship with Christ of trust and of calling upon Him. And then when you come to the big shepherding issues, you'll have some experience with Him to wait upon Him and trust Him to guide you and not likely to be as fooled when the world comes pretending to be our friend. Instead, we will have the Lord for our guide. Let's pray together. Oh Lord we do praise you for your word and for the wisdom that you give. We thank you that these things were written for our admonition and our encouragement that through the patience and comfort of the scriptures we would have hope. Thank you. Thank you for recording that even great men like Joshua do really silly things, sinful things, and yet you don't cast them off. You're not done with them. You rebuke them, but you even bring good through it. Oh Lord, bring good to us and help us to always ask counsel from you no matter what we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.