Speakers who have challenged you for years come to you now on the series, The Chapel Platform, originating from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. These servants of God, presented on The Chapel Platform, have delivered biblical truth to help prepare Christians to serve the Lord. Dr. Thurman Wisdom introduced our speaker, a preacher from Anderson, South Carolina, Dr. Russell Rice. He gave this message on Monday, April 17th, 1989 at a university chapel service. His text is Joshua chapter 10, verses 16 through 18. His discourse is titled, Dead End Decisions. We're delighted to have as our chapel speaker today, Reverend Russ Rice. Brother Rice graduated from Bob Jones University over 25 years ago. He's been a longtime friend of this institution and beyond that, much more important even than that, He's a great friend of God's people. He has been a great supporter of missions. In particular, he's helped our mission teams in a very definite way. Numbers of our mission teams have held meetings at his churches. He's gotten extra meetings for them. He supported them, had a great interest in them. So he's a friend of God's people. He's a great man of God, a man who loves the Lord. And I think you'll get a great blessing out of what he has for us. Brother Russ, we're delighted to have you with us. Turn to Joshua, if you will, please. And it's my privilege to be here as you're turning to Joshua chapter 10, if you will. I'll make some comments while you're getting ready. We thank the Lord for the university. I know you hear that from the various speakers that come here. You'd be shocked if you heard one get up and say that I don't like the university, I'm sure. So you hear that often, but please believe it. When we return back and have the privilege of speaking here, it gives an opportunity to publicly say to the university, we're so grateful for the training and grateful for their friendship through the years and the stand they take for the Lord. So we wouldn't want to lose this opportunity to say that. Secondly, if you're ever down in Anderson, South Carolina, just go down Interstate 85 South. We're about 25 or 30 miles down the road. You come on down some Sunday nights when you have time. We'd be glad to have any of the students visit with us. It's always a joy to have some come by and spend some time with us. Now, in Joshua chapter 10, I'm going to read just a couple of verses to you for time's sake, and then I'll explain the chapter, and then hopefully we'll get about three or so points that might help you. Look, if you will please, in verse 16. By the way, this is the chapter whereby the sun stood still. You remember that story, of course. And Joshua prayed and the sun stood still and the moon stayed. This is that chapter. Verse 16, But these kings fled, hid themselves in the cave of Makeda. And it was told Joshua, saying, The five kings are found hid in the cave at Makeda. And Joshua said, roll great stones upon the mouth of the cave and set men by it for to keep them. Let me give you a little picture of the story. If you'll just take, turn back to the previous chapter nine and you can kind of follow quickly as I point out. In chapter nine of Joshua, that's where the Gibeonites made a deceptive league with Joshua and the children of Israel. You, of course, remember this book of Joshua is a tremendous book that tells us about the going into the land of Israel after 40 years of wandering. Baxter, I think it is, divides this book into three divisions. The first five chapters explain the entering into the land. Then chapters 6 through 12, if I recall his breakdown, it's the overcoming of the land. and the enemies there, the Canaanites. Then chapter 13 to the end is the occupying of the land. Well, we're in that section right now between 6 and 12 in these chapters that I'm drawing your attention to. We're in that section where they're overcoming the land and their reputation was spreading and the Gibeonites became fearful. They had seen what the Israelites had done to Jericho and After sin was removed from the camp, what they did to Ai, and now with fear in their hearts, they dress up like men who traveled from far away. And their clothes are tattered and worn, and they have only come just a few miles. But they did that to make Joshua make a league with them. He did so. Their deception was revealed and he made them to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, servants to the Israelites. When the five kings, if you'll notice in chapter 10 quickly, when you look at verse 3 and 4 and so forth, there are five kings of the Amorites. I'll not take time to draw your attention to reading their names, but these five kings of the Amorites hear that the Gibeonites had made this league, they became infuriated. They decide that they're going to smite the Gibeonites for making a league with Joshua and the Israelites. And consequently, they put that plan into action and the Gibeonites in turn call for Joshua, with whom they have that league. In other words, they said, come and help us. We ever needed you, we need you now. And so Joshua, he comes. This is basically now getting close to where our text was. Joshua comes in verse 10, says, The Lord discomfited them before all Israel, slew them with a great slaughter. And so the armies of the five kings have been slaughtered and they're scattered and they're fleeing. And the five kings are fleeing also. They came to this cave called Makeda. And they decided that they would go into that cave and they would hide in that cave. from Joshua and the children of Israel. Joshua was told that they're in that cave. He said, seal it up. We'll come back to it later. They went on and completed their victory over these five kings' armies. Then they returned. When they returned, I'd like you to notice please with me in verse 22, Joshua said, open the mouth of the cave, bring out those five kings unto me. They brought the five kings out. In verse 24, Joshua had his captains of war come, had the five kings go on the ground, and the captains of Joshua's armies put their feet upon the necks of these kings. A very humiliating thing, showing the victor's power over the vanquished. And then in verse 25, Joshua reminds his people, fear not, fear not. I think there's a good contrast here of Joshua telling his people fear not in the presence of these five kings on the ground with the feet of the captains of Joshua's men upon their necks. Joshua saying fear not to these men in the presence of five kings who had fled with fear. into a cave. Afterward, verse 26 will tell you, they slew these kings and they hanged them upon five trees. Verse 27 is a good verse. Please read it with me. It came to pass, at the time of the going down of the sun, Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid, laid great stones in the mouth, or the cave's mouth, which remained to this very day. Here is my theme, or even I'll call it my subject. Dead-end decisions. There came a time when these five kings had to make a decision. Their decision was to flee into that cave. That cave had no way of escape, one way in and one way out. All Joshua had to do is, as you read, close off the mouth of the cave. And in turn, you'll recognize that they're dead in decision. And trust me, I want to help you in this. You've got to make a lot of decisions in life. Many of you graduating are facing decisions already. These five kings made a dead end decision. The cave that they thought would be their safety became their sepulcher. That to which they looked for refuge became the ruin. Their bodies corrupted and went to the dust of the earth in that cave. The very place that they were depending upon to be their help is the very thing that ended up where they were hurt the most. And what I see in this text is a dead-end decision. And every one of us face decisions. Daily we face decisions. But there are major decisions that we face. These sometimes can be the ruination of us. I suggest to you when you have decisions to make that you get your Bible. You head to a back bedroom somewhere near that praying closet and you get on your knees with that book before you and you read. I even suggest the book of Psalms heavily. You read and you read until tears begin to come. You pour out your heart before the Lord in prayer and reading the Word. You just, if you have to go back a week and two weeks and three weeks and four weeks or a month or two months, you keep going back until you find God's leadership in the matter. Till you know what God wants you to do, to what His will is. You see, His will will never lead you to a dead-end decision. This was a human decision here. This was a human decision out of a natural man's heart or natural men's hearts. And it led to their death. I'd like to give you a few areas in which you're facing decisions and also decisions that could be very joyful for you or they could be your ruination. In the area of geography or place, it is possible for you to make the wrong decision concerning the place where God wants you in life. There isn't anything more wonderful than being right where the Lord wants you. But there isn't anything more dreadful and heartache in store for you than being in the wrong place. I'm going to give an illustration. You remember in the book of Ruth, the first chapter, Elimelech, is talked about in the first several verses. He is the father of, excuse me, the wife of Naomi. And they're from Bethlehem. And they leave Bethlehem because of a famine, and they go outside of the land of Israel, outside the boundary lands of the land that's filled with milk and honey, and they go down to the land of the Moabites. He made that decision. He went to the land of the Moabites. He died in the land of the Moabites. His two sons died in the land of the Moabites. One of them was Ruth's husband that passed away. You remember when his wife Naomi went back to Bethlehem with Ruth, the daughter-in-law. And they came out and they called her name. She said, no. She said, the Lord hath dealt bitterly with me. It was bitterness for her wife, the widow. Two sons are in a grave back in Moab. And the man that made the decision, the father of that home, the husband of that home, Elimelech, he made the decision to leave Bethlehem and go to Moab. And Moab, where he thought would be a place feed his family ended up being the place where his funeral took place. He made the wrong decision concerning the place where he should be. That place ended up being a tragedy in his life. I even stretch it to say his son's lives. They died outside of Israel. And his wife went back with a broken heart. My friends, I'm telling you truthfully, that you've got to be careful that you make the right decision as the place where you go when you leave this institution. Number two, the wrong person. Just as it's possible to have the wrong decision in that person that you'll spend your life with, it's the place where you'll serve. It's also possible to have the wrong person you'll spend your life with. There isn't anything more joyful than having the right person. My wife and I will be married 34 years very shortly. I'm so grateful for her. I have no doubt. I have had no doubt in all these years that she was the mate that the Lord wanted for me. I have the total confidence. I would recommend to you to be sure you spend much time in prayer and knowing what the Lord's will is for the mate in life. You can get the wrong mate. You can make a dead end decision. When it comes to the wrong person, my mind runs back to Samson. I needn't even have you turn to judges. No need in that. All of us are familiar with Samson's life. You study sometime the 14th, the 15th, and the 16th chapters of Judges. You'll find how Samson went down there and eventually, eventually I say, and I draw your attention to that, in the 16th chapter, we find him with the wrong person, a woman by the name of Delilah. He laid his head in the lap of Delilah, on her knees, the Scriptures say. And over and over again, she's not working for him, she's working against him. Until finally he trusts her enough, which was a terrible decision in itself, to tell her wherein was his strength. We all know that down there in that land of Gaza, I like to call it Gaza, but everybody has their own way of saying it. Down there in that land where he put his head in the lap of the wrong person, Samson died. If he had never became friends and acquainted and yoked up with that wrong person, then Samson may never have had the tragic end that he had. The lap of love turned into a dead-end tomb as far as Samson's concerned. Underneath the rubble of the building collapsed upon him. Sure, the Philistines died, but so did Samson, who need not have died that kind of a life. He made a dead-end decision when it came with the wrong person. Thirdly, besides the wrong place and the wrong person, I draw your attention to the wrong profession. We needn't turn very far to find that Absalom's a good man, to give that example. Back in 2 Samuel, Absalom is the son of David. Absalom stands by the gate coveting his father's position. Stands by the gate wooing the people's hearts and stealing the people's hearts. And finally the day came when he made his break from his father. Proclaimed himself king and he reigned, it says. Didn't reign very long because it wasn't the right profession for him. It wasn't God's will. God's perfect will had taken place one day when Samuel had gone down to Bethlehem and wanted to anoint, at the instructions of Almighty God, wanted to anoint one of Jesse's sons. And sure enough, the little fellow out on the hillsides, tending daddy's sheep, was the boy. He was anointed to be the next king of Israel. Saul had been set aside in 1 Samuel 15. David was anointed in 1 Samuel 16. Later on, in 2 Samuel 5, in the early chapters you read, David then was crowned the king. And David became the king, and he was the one that was God's perfect will to be king. So when Absalom came along and coveted that position while his father was alive and reigned, he was seeking the wrong profession. He'd have been better off going tending some sheep somewhere. I'm simply saying that you need to know where God wants you. And money should never be the criteria for helping you make the decision. Your own preferences to geography and weather, all these, none of these should be included in your decision. You just, once again, you pray. And of the Lord that I'm serving, the Lord that we're talking about, He'll guide you. He'll let you know what He wants you to be in life. He'll know it may be a different area completely than what your major is. That's happened many a time. But I'm simply saying you be sure you know that God wants you in the life service, or I call the word the profession, to keep my peas here. So it's very possible, like these three kings who made a wrong decision, it's very possible to make a wrong decision concerning the place, the person, or the profession of our life. Now, there's several people in the Bible who made the right profession. I'm not going to preach on them. The right place, the right person. Think of Elijah. Study over in Kings sometime, 1 Kings chapter 17, where Elijah was instructed of the Lord after telling Ahab that it's not going to rain for three and a half years. Remember how God told him to go to the brook? And he went there, and he drank the brook water, and the ravens fed him there. There became the place of God's will in his life, the place where God wanted him. Then he told him to leave when the brook dried up and said to go to Zarephath. And he went there. And there a widow woman sustained him there. You'll find that word there several times in 1 Kings 17. One man has a message on, are you there? Because that word there in Elijah's life was the there of God's perfect will for the place for him to be. Another example of the right person in opposition to Samson would be the story in Genesis 24 where Isaac received a bride named Rebekah. Read the 24th chapter of Genesis. What a wonderful story it is. And the servant in that story is the Holy Spirit, really, in typology. And that bride is the perfect will of the Father, Abraham. And I say to you that you need, through the Spirit of God, find that perfect mate like Isaac found, that perfect person. The wrong profession was an example there, of course, of absolute. But the right profession, a good decision, would be found in Matthew's gospel in chapter 4, where Peter and Andrew were working with their nets and fishing and so forth. And Jesus came by and said, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. And they followed him. And they changed from fishing for fish to fishing for men. They changed professions. They made the right decision. And I'm encouraging you, by the help of the Lord, please don't make a dead-end decision like these five kings made. These kings that thought that cave would be their safety, as I said earlier, and ended up being their sepulcher. There's three things I want to draw to your attention in the moments we have left about these three kings. I'd like you to look once again back where they decided, in the earlier part of chapter 10 that they didn't like it that the Gibeonites had made that pact or that peace, that league with Joshua. They, as I see it, they didn't recognize the Lord God in all of these matters. The Israelites, excuse me, the Gibeonites, if you'll notice in verse 24, The reason they told Joshua that they made a league with him, they said, well, we've seen the hand of the Lord God in your lives. We know about the Lord God who commanded His servant Moses concerning your lives. The Gibeonites at least had seen something of God Almighty. That's what made them make that decision. On the contrary, these five Amorite kings, the Lord God of Joshua, the Lord God of Israel, the Lord God of Moses, that didn't mean a thing to them. You'll always do well when you make the Lord God part of all your planning. They made the decision to go to war against the Gibeonites, and that was their first wrong decision, scripturally speaking. And I would remind you a second thought, that that one bad decision led to another bad decision. When they made that decision to go to war, That led to the decision later on when they fled to go into the dead-end cave. You've got to be cautious because life is not a matter of segments that are isolated one from the other. You make a bad decision here, you stand a tremendous chance of making another bad decision and another bad decision. Best time to be sure that you don't fall into that trap of that sequence of one after another bad decisions is to make your mind up right now. God's going to be in the center of every plan you make and every decision you have to make. So they made the wrong decision to begin with and it led to another bad decision. There's another thought I'd leave you about these kings is that you would have thought that five kings would have had enough intelligence among them not to go into a cave that didn't have an exit other than the one that was also the entrance. You would have thought they'd have said, hey, we're not going in there. We go in there, there's no way out. Common sense would have even told a natural man not to do that. When you get wrapped up in the syndrome of bad decisions, you'll make another bad decision without even trying. You'd have thought, as I said a moment ago, that they had the intelligence and the common sense. not to do so, but they did so. Well, why didn't they have any common sense? Why didn't they use good judgment? I'll give you one good reason why. They were afraid. Fear will prompt you to do a lot of things. Fear that you're running out of time to make that decision. Fear that you don't have enough finances to carry you till you can get to the next job. Lots of times fear will enter into the wrong decision. I call it panicking. and a panic decision. These men were fearful of Joshua, so fear almost drove them to make that decision. Now, there were five kings. And Revelation chapter 1 says we've been made kings and priests in Christ. So were kings in Christ. They were kings. They didn't have any common sense, made a bad decision. That doesn't mean we don't have to have any common sense. That doesn't mean we have to make a bad decision. Because the Bible teaches us when it comes to the word fear, It says that perfect love casteth out all fear. And if we'll just depend on God, who is love, perfect love dwelling within us, the Holy Spirit's God, and He indwells our bodies, our bodies are His temple as you well know, then we have within us the capacity of that love which can produce the power to drive away the fear, whereby we don't have to have that kind of fear. Perfect love casteth out all fear. In another verse, that comes to my mind is that God hasn't given us. Who are we? We're kings in Christ, in contrast to these kings. God hasn't given us the spirit of fear, but He says the power and of love and of a sound mind. The power and the love and the sound mind that God gives us whereby we don't have to make dead-end decisions, whereby our decision will end up not being our safety, but our sepulcher. We don't have to do that. We have God to help us, if we'll lean on him. Well, I'm so grateful to be able to preach here today. Would you bow your heads with me in a word of closing prayer? Father, we're so thankful, Lord, for the privilege to be at the university again. We're thankful for each one of these who comprise the faculty and the staff, the administration, and the student body. And I pray, especially now, Lord, as you've given us the privilege of speaking with these college students and high school students and grad students, that thou would embed in our hearts and minds that we don't have to make the kind of decisions these kings made. That by your help and by your strength, we can make the right decision concerning places of service and the person we serve with and the profession we serve. All of our decisions we turn to Thee, Father, in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you for joining us for The Chapel Platform. Copies of today's message are available. So please write us and send us a check for $7 to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, 29614. South Carolina residents, please send $7.20. Just mentioned the speaker, Dr. Russell Rice. The message titled, Dead End Decisions and Today's Date. Please join us again for The Chapel Platform, sponsored by Bob Jones University.