And so we come to Joshua chapter 24. And we have again the ending of an era. The passing of a generation of leadership over the people of God. The servant of Moses, a young man by the name of Joshua, has grown up. And now he's grown old. And the word before us today records the final will and testament of this man of courage for the people of Israel. And in this we hear God's encouragement for our own hearts today. We have many verses in this chapter, so please bear with me as we read through this. We will survey them again as we go along, but we'll read them through their entirety here, Joshua chapter 24. The text says this, Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac, period. And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess. But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. And I sent Moses and Aaron. I played Egypt with what I did in the midst of it. And afterward, I brought you out. 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. And when they cried to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them. And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. And you lived in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. Then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel, and he sent and invited Balaam, the son of Baor, to curse you, but I would not listen to Balaam. Indeed, he blessed you, so I delivered you out of his hand. And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, and the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Gergesites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And I gave them into your hand. And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites. It was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities that you had not built. and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant. Now, therefore, fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord. Then the people answered, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God. But Joshua said to the people, you are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good. And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. And Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. He said, then put away the foreign gods that are among you and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, the Lord our God, we will serve and his voice we will obey. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and put in place statutes and rules for them at 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 terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words the Lord has spoken to us. Therefore, it shall be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God. So Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance. After these things, Joshua, the son of Nam, the servant of the Lord, died, being 110 years old. And they buried him in his own inheritance at Timnasera, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gash. Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua. And he had known all the works that the Lord did for Israel. As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought with the sons of Habor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph. And Eleazar, the son of Aaron, died, and they buried him at Gibeah, the town of Phinehas, his son, which has been given him in the hill country of Ephraim. We made it. This text, there's much here to be said. I will try to respect our time this morning. This text marks the end of an era of conquest. For God's people, a time in which they had to live courageously by faith. And just as any end of a period of heightened activity comes to an end, there's now an inevitable search for what? The next big thing. We recognize in this chapter how the word of the Lord directs his people through Joshua to realize that the surest way for the people to find the next big thing that God has for them is that it's found in their devotion to the steadfastness of a God who has revealed that in the past. Therefore, the key to moving forward for this people is to treasure the past and the steadfastness of their God. This means everything about the first five books of the Bible, keeping the Torah, the Word of God. History of this people, as we'd already read some of it, has been littered with signposts of God's covenant loyalty. And in light of this, Joshua calls the people to choose to serve the Lord. Serve the Lord in covenant loyalty. And in this, we find today an appeal for our own faith in the Lord. So there's two main points in this message today. There are two acts, two calls for us to act. The first of which is this, know that the Lord is steadfast. know that the God of the Bible is steadfast. I cannot presume anything today. I think there are people under the sound of my voice today who need to hear this, that the God of Israel, the God of the Bible is steadfast. And what do we mean by that? Well, we mean that he's unchanging, that he makes promises and he keeps those promises. When your semester isn't going the way you think it needs to so that you can graduate on time, guess what? The Lord is steadfast. When that dear family member of yours and their health concerns takes a turn for the worst, hear this, the Lord is steadfast. When unexpected change sends shockwaves into your comfortable life, hear this, the Lord is steadfast. That's exactly what we find here as a testimony to the steadfastness of the Lord. That's what brings us here to this place, is it not? I hope you didn't come just to see Michael Kahn get all blubbery up here. I hope we all came today to hear again that the words of God are true. That his promises are good. That there is a rock, a solid place amidst the storms of life. That's what brings us here today. And that's exactly what brought Israel and the elders to the place that we find them in this text. They came to hear the word from God. The Lord is steadfast. And that's exactly what we find with this place called Shechem. In this place, Shechem proves the steadfastness of the Lord. To any other simple reading of this text, you'd say this is just a place where they happen to be. Why give any extra thought to it? What we find of Shechem is that Shechem is historically, in this situation, already a place of promise. In verse 1 here of chapter 24, it says, Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and he summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before the Lord. This is not the first time that there's a presentation before the Lord or of the Lord. And so what more can be said of Shechem? Well, Shechem is the place where Joshua has decided to mark the end of this conquest because this is exactly where the beginning of this conquest began. If we were to look back, and you're welcome to turn there, but you can listen as I read. In Genesis chapter 12, we find that the place called Shechem is listed first when another person finds his way there. In Genesis chapter 12, we read these words. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and then you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Verse four, so Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was 70 years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, verse six, Abram passed the land to the place at Shechem, to the yoke of Morah. At the time, the Canaanites were in the land. Verse seven, then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring I will give this land. And so he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. Joshua marks the end of the conquest right where the promise of the conquest began. Many, many generations before, the promise of God given to Abraham. Which at the time of Abraham, who was in the land? The Canaanites. In our text today, in Joshua 24, the Israelites now inhabit the land. The Canaanites have been pushed to the very fringes. Truly, it can be said, by mere circumstance of the location of this, that who is steadfast? The Lord is steadfast. He has kept his word. One place, two points in time with much history in between. And that's precisely what follows in our text in verses 2 and following. We find a history, a summary really, of a testimony of God's amazing grace. So we find in these verses 2 through 13, really, the contents here are many of the mountain peaks in Israel's history from Abram's departure, all the way to the crossing of the Red Sea, right up to the Lord's clearing out of the Canaanites from the land. But what makes the peaks of these stories of God's faithfulness isn't just the splendor of those instances themselves, but it's also the valleys that are in between and right alongside those mountaintop experiences that really points out a couple glaring issues with God's people. Abraham was an idolater. I didn't He calls us to read Genesis chapter 11 due to time today, but there's nothing in Genesis 11 that says that Abraham deserved God's calling. God chose Abraham out of the kindness of his grace. He was an idolater. And even the multiplication of Abraham's seed was very slow and steady, not fast and abundant. Look at our verse here in the text, in verse 3, right? And he made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac. One times one equals one in my book. God, what are you doing? And then how many kids does Isaac have? Two! Here we go! Will God be steadfast? Surely He is. Joshua and the nation standing in the precipice of Shechem testify that surely Amid all the odds, against all the odds, the God of Israel is a steadfast God. But even considering more of this history, Jacob, this line of promise, unlike his brother Esau who gets to settle, guess where he goes? He goes to Egypt, and ultimately to slavery. This history is riddled with a lot of towners. It's precisely against the black backdrop of these issues and these hardships of human sin and failure that the brilliance of God's covenant steadfastness are set on display. Because God graciously chose Abraham out of the kindness of His grace, calling him out from idols. And indeed, his family tree would grow abundantly. And of all places, it would grow where? In Egypt. The nation of Israel is miraculously then delivered from slavery, and a remnant remains to actually enter into the land promised, this land of Canaan, because the Lord fought all their battles for them. Thus, verse 13 concludes this section. It says, I gave you, what, a land in which you have not labored. And you have cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant. We find here, at the end of this book, a complete vindication of the Lord's covenant faithfulness. He made the promise. He kept the promise. But any who doubts the steadfastness of the Lord look to the long history of his character. With every passing day, the promises of God are ever true, ever stronger. It's one of those things where it's like, what more can God do than to hold the universe together by the power of His might? Again, today, and tomorrow, and the day after. What more can He say? How can we think anything otherwise of the Lord in this way? This is precisely what the hymn writer John Rippon prompts us to do in the timeless hymn, my favorite hymn, How Firm a Foundation. First line says this, How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith and his excellent word. Here it is. What more can he say than to you he hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? Have you experienced or observed one of these, what more can he say moments? Truly God works all things together according to his sovereign plan. And we can be confident that he will do so in full accordance to his revealed word. We can believe this. He is steadfast. What more can he say? To you who are lost in the darkness of sin or the despair of this world or in the devastation of sickness and disease, look to the one who makes the paths straight of this crooked road we walk. Consider the millennia of God's steadfastness to his people and the eternity of completeness that he shared in himself. Trusting the steadfastness of God helps us believe that the real needs and issues that we deal with in our life are a part of his path, that he's unfolded for us, that he's making out for us, bringing us to a full completion and a full and final rest for his church. So all who trust in the Lord will not lack anything, for in him he lacks nothing. We can trust this God. History lessons are good for us. Let us learn. And in light of this staggering history lesson, this reminder of the steadfast love and the loyalty of the Lord, Joshua prompts the people of God to act. He confronts them to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. He's not interested in shallow lip service, religiosity to the Lord. He presents before the people a choice. And so secondly, complementing our first point that we are to know the Lord, that he's steadfast, Secondly, choose. Choose whom you will serve. Here's a glaring reality. What are you going to do with it? Choose whom you will serve. What we find in verse 14 then are three commandments. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him with sincerity and in faithfulness. Three commands listed here as Joshua prompts the people to act. We'll look at them individually. The first here in verse 14 is fear the Lord. Joshua's being carefully specific in his final meeting with these elders of Israel. He calls them to approach God in reverence and in fear and subjection to who God is. They ought not to suppose any blessing from God apart from his covenant love, for he is a holy God. and must be regarded as such. And this is an implicit call for the people to do what? To devote themselves to the Torah, the Word of God, that they would rightly live before Him. But secondly, they're to serve Him in sincerity. The word here speaks of completeness, this idea of being sincere, of being wholehearted in your devotion to the Lord. God's people are not to be divided in their loyalty to him. The people must not settle for a half-wet, ulterior motive type of devotion. This complements the last emphasis we see in this verse of serving the Lord in faithfulness, to serve him faithfully. Here Joshua calls the elders to lead the people in accordance to what is true. While sincerity speaks of a wholeheartedness, faithfulness speaks of an unwavering loyalty, unspotted by the pagan worship of the world. Unless we see the end of verse 14 going into verse 15, we see that there's three options before the people. Three commands, three options. You may think there's only two, but let's talk through this. Verse 14 finishes, put away the gods of your fathers that they served beyond the river in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers, who they serve in the region beyond 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." I see three options here. Joshua's careful to dissect and to differentiate between the gods of their fathers back in Egypt and the gods of the land in which they dwell now. When thinking of the gods of their fathers, already we have been reminded that Abraham, before God chose him, was what? He was an idolater, a pagan worshiper. His whole family was a worshiper of false gods from the very start. The issue of pagan influence had riddled the people's past. The issue of the golden calf is a proof of that very point. So Joshua gives a timely reminder here. But he also says, the gods of the land in which you dwell, what stood before the people is not the same gods of those in the past that they've struggled with their infidelity with. Now there's a smorgasbord of new pagan worship. Lots of options, it seems. Thus, the great warnings of not intermarrying with the people of Canaan, since this would inevitably lead to infidelity towards the Lord God. And then there's the obvious choice. Serve the Lord. You know, the one that we just gave a whole history lesson on about how steadfast he is. Why would you go anywhere else? The holy God of Israel. He is your God. Are you going to serve him? Oh, the choices that we make. Oh, the choices that we make. As I thought of these three choices that Joshua kind of lays out before the people, though we could easily, I guess, make them into two, either God or not God. I appreciate the three because it brings me to a point in my life when I was 14 years old. Well, I faced such a choice. I felt that there were really three options before me, and perhaps today, there's many here who stand with that same reality pressing in on their own lives. I grew up in a Bible-preaching church, a Christ-loving home, surrounded by God-fearing family. But for so many years, I had merely conformed to the outward mold of religion that I was being poured out into. I could tell you that Jesus was the Son of God, that there was sin that needed to be dealt with. But when I was 14, I felt convicted by the preaching of an evangelist that it was because of, wait a minute, my sin. Not just this shallow concept of bad stuff in general, but my sin. And I felt the war within me to pursue after sin, and yet I claimed to be a Christian. I was just a shell of that Christian, and I had three choices ahead of me. Either continue in this old path of just wearing this Christian mask, hiding away my sinful depravity that I was utterly enslaved to on the inside, or to walk away from it all. Throw off this Christian game. Just go make a god of my own choosing and enjoy life how I want to enjoy it. repent and submit myself to what I see is to be true. That the conviction of this God, of the word, has on my life. And I praise God that by his spirit he granted me repentant faith in that very soul-searching time. What we see here at Shechem is a soul-searching time for the people of God. The same options stand before all of us today. For anyone who has endured a lifetime of really lip service Christianity, you can either return to your home the same way you came here this morning, or you can walk out of here and pursue other ends, or you can repent and find the steadfastness of the Father in Christ to be what your heart really needs, to put an end to the war that is in your soul. It goes without saying, given the history lesson that we just had, that any of these folks in Joshua's day would be insane, right, to choose anything but following after the Lord. But the truth is, is the book that comes after Joshua proves exactly how long this shallow resolve pans out to be. The book of Judges speaks of a people who do only what is right in their own eyes. And so we're to take note There's a beautiful thing we see here in verse 16. What do the people reply? They answered to Joshua. Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. It's almost like Joshua, how dare you even suggest that we would wander away from Yahweh. For it is the Lord our God who brought us out of the fog. See, they repeat the story. They repeat the history. They're like, we get the history. We know it. We're not going to depart. Verse 18, and the Lord drove us out of all these people, drove out all the peoples before us. Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God. And we see here a beautiful resolve, don't we? There's this willingness to serve. That's the right answer, right? It's the textbook answer. Of course, we'll serve. The elders rightly recognize the Lord's sovereign hand. And they profess how ludicrous, far be it from us, Joshua, it would be for them to depart and wander from the Lord. Because they'd recognize that God truly is faithful. He truly is steadfast. And so they commit themselves to Him. And this is right where the gut punch comes. What does verse 19 say? Joshua said to the people, You are not able to do this. You are not able to serve the Lord. For he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good. And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. Then Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. We're going to do it. Verse 23, he said, then put away the foreign gods that are among you. Joshua was calling them out even now. He knows they're not loyal. We see here people wanting to serve and yet not being able to do so. Have you ever felt that? A willingness to partake in something, to do something, but not having the capacity to do so? I think we all do this around the Olympics, right? We all sit back thinking, that could have been me. Right? Or some of us think it could still be us, right? How about spiritually? It seems Joshua slams the brakes on a good, on a train that's going in the right direction. What's going on here? While everything in this text and even our own human experience would cause us to believe that the elders were speaking with sincerity, and verse 31 even seems to prove that these elders were being sincere, what Joshua knows all too well, however, is the people's tendency towards casual worship of a holy God. Joshua calls the bluff of the people, and the book of Judges would prove his point. And so what's going on theologically in verse 19 and 20 is a great reminder that the Lord, while a kind savior of his people, is still a righteous judge of sin, of their sin. And secondly, we see that the heart of mankind is revealed here as in a perpetual state of conflict between doing what is revealed to be right and what they feel to be good. And it's truly wicked. Is this just an Old Testament dilemma? No. Jesus would pray in the garden for hours, petitioning his disciples to pray, not sleep. Truly, what does it say? Their spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Willing, sincere, but unable to endure. We even see this in Peter's denial. I'll never forsake you. And then even Paul's dilemma we read of in Romans chapter 7, which I think we all identify with very, very close to home. Oh, the wretched man that I am. The things that I know I should do, I don't do. The stuff I do, I know I shouldn't. Who will deliver me from this? Thanks be to God for Jesus. It's a wonderful dilemma. A wonderful dilemma. And what's more is that it appears that these elders have already grown lax in their integrity, right? Verse 24, Joshua says, Nevertheless, the elders here at Shechem confess their devotion, but what else can they do, right? They repent, they resolve, but will it last? Now before we head down the mountain, Shechem. Something significant takes place after these people give their lip service to the Lord. We see here Shechem taking on a whole entirely new meaning. It's no longer simply a place of promise as it was in the day of Abraham, but the people go down from Shechem with Shechem being a place of witness. And here we find the stone of witness that you see in front of you this morning. We see this in verses 25 to 28. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem in this covenant. 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 terabit that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us. Therefore, it shall be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God. So Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance. We see here Shechem is now a place of witness, not only of promise. It's a place where a promise has been kept. We read here a particular covenant, a covenant with statutes and rules, a covenant then that is all about hopeful obedience, that people would keep their faithfulness to the Lord and the Mosaic law and the Torah. Joshua gathers the elders, he renews their devotion to the Lord, and in so doing places a witness of their consideration together and about the words of the Lord that have been given them, this history lesson that God gave them. And even the stone that probably was there in the time in which Abraham heard from God and the appearance of God of this promise. The stone was to be a witness, a signpost, one among many other things, one among many other memorial stones that have been placed throughout this entire book of Joshua. Because the greatest need for the people in Joshua's day isn't to be even more sincere in what they say or what they do, but rather they need a witness. In fact, they need something better than a stone of witness. They need a guarantee. that they would not deal falsely with their God. The best that they could come up with at this point is this stone. It's the final in a long line of, again, these memorials built throughout this book. This stone was to symbolize the aspiration of this people to please the Lord in fear, sincerity, and faithfulness. Will we do it? Judges would tell us. The future would unfold a different story. One of disregard for the Lord, one of lip service religiosity, and of infidelity. So the louder message that really this witness, this stone of witness really gives, is that these people need something better than the stone of witness. At least this one. They need a perfect advocate. They need a greater testimony than what they heard and seen at Shechem. They need something greater than what that rock could provide. They needed one that could say something like we see in Romans 6-11, that you can consider yourself dead to sin and alive in Christ. They would need a better stone, a living stone. But even when the perfect stone came along, they would reject it, wouldn't they? Now I want to be very careful with mingling too much of this language of stones and rocks between our testaments. But what we do see here is a glaring need for a greater witness. A perfect substitute. In fact, a substitute for those whose sincerity falls short of actually being true righteousness. What they needed and what we need today is someone who can guarantee that even when our faith fails, he'll hold us fast. And that's exactly the witness we find in the New Testament, isn't it? This is a greater stone. There is a greater stone in the New Testament that testifies that the righteous demands of God's law have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And that all who look to Him in repentant faith, what? They find in Him a Savior and an advocate before the judgment of God. And so today, would you hear the witness of the stone at Shechem? The Lord is steadfast. Do you believe this? And apart from His grace through Christ, you have no hope of keeping your sincerity You have no hope in your own religiosity. Depend on Christ. As Joshua said, choose you this day whom you will serve. And this brings us to the last few verses here, really just the final conclusion. If you want a third main point, that's what we find here. Just kind of wrapping up the loose ends. But there's more than just simply that. A final conclusion here in verses 29 through 30. The end of the message today considers these final verses that summarize the finale of the life of two men, Joshua and Eliezer. And while the words of these verses do simply only that, this passage does so much more. For here we see the end of an era, the conclusion of a campaign, and the ultimate entering in of the servant of Moses into his rest as the servant of the Lord. And so we see Joshua, it says in verse 29, after these things, Joshua the son of Nun, this is very interesting, the servant of the Lord died. It's not insignificant that Joshua is here finally given this title, a title formerly only ever referred to, associated with Moses, now as the servant of the Lord. Joshua has walked in the shadow of Moses his entire life. In fact, all throughout the book of Joshua, if you read, he's always called the servant of Moses. And Joshua's like, yeah, come on. Can't I have something of my own to say? Well, he aspired to this very thing, that he would be known, as his master was known, as one who submitted himself to the Lord. We see a final grace here in this recognition. And finally, we see that he's recognized as the leader that he had been for so long, a servant leader. And here, after everyone else had been settled in, all the land had been distributed, all the elders and the leaders had gone down the mountain, Joshua finally enters into his own inheritance, this land at Timnasera. What's more is that the elders that he challenged at Shechem actually followed through, it seems. In verse 31, what does it say? Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel. The book of Judges would tell another story, but suffice it to say that this leader, Joshua, sought to demonstrate the same steadfastness, the courageous steadfastness, that was worked in him by the Lord who is steadfast himself. And then we see In verse 33, I should say 32 and 33, just kind of some almost appendices, just some extra notes. But they're important. As we look to Eleazar, let's first look at this reference to Joseph, of all people. A few of these final details are key in bringing completion to this era. And the careful diligence of the burial of, not just of Joshua, but of Joseph from Egypt, demonstrates just that. Inheritance had been given, and the people have their rest. Even Joshua, or Joseph, has been brought into the rest of the people. The same is finally said of Eliezer, the high priest of God's people in those days. And so what are we to conclude with the passing of another generation? Of the moving on of one person to another. Well, this text calls us to see that the good deposit, as it's referred to in 2 Timothy 1, that we've been, that we've received, is not to be neglected. We're to remember that the Lord is steadfast, and that the Lord would be worshipped as the steadfast God that He is, that we would recognize the great choice before us today, to recognize that He is sovereign over all. and his promises are truer every passing day, that we would serve the Lord with fear and with sincerity and in faithfulness as we look to our Savior and the guarantee of our salvation, Jesus Christ. Let's pray and ask God to give us such a heart. Father, we thank you for final words. Father, I pray that as we've heard the last will and testament of this man, Joshua, a very imperfect man, and yet one who you call the servant of the Lord. We ask that you'd give us like faith, faith that, for us, we understand culminates and is found only in Jesus Christ. Father, grant us this grace. May we recognize your steadfastness. May we understand the implications of this. And in that, Lord, grant us faith that we would serve you all our days. and give us discernment as New Testament believers to recognize that Christ has fulfilled all service of righteousness on our behalf. We get to live in gratitude of that. Father, we ask that you today, for those who are listening who've never recognized the God of the Bible, to be steadfast and trustworthy, that, Lord, you'd grant faith and repentance, that we would count the cost, we would see the options before us, that we would not return the way we came today, we would not wander from this place apart from the truth that you have given us here and now. May we treasure this, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.