Good morning. You can open your Bible to Joshua chapter 10. Joshua chapter 10. Gracious Father, bless this gathering this morning. Open our eyes that we might see the things of Christ which are contained in this portion of scripture. And in Christ's name we pray it. Amen. Now last week we began an overview of chapters 10 through 12 in Joshua, pointing out that these chapters over all, they're just representing the complete victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over all of his enemies. That's what those chapters are about. And going verse by verse and detailing it, is not necessary, you can read it and you get the overall sense of what it's about. But we mentioned last week that the complete victory of Christ will be made known or made obvious when he has restored everything. Now when we say restored everything, We mean this creation which was ruined by man's sin. It wasn't just man that was ruined. Paul indicates the whole creation was made subject to corruption because of man's sin. And then it says that the creation awaits eagerly the adoption of the sons of God. which is a reference to the resurrection. In one sense, we're already adopted. We've been assigned a place as God's sons, and here the scriptures are specific. It doesn't say children, and it doesn't say sons as though there's something about being a daughter of God, that is, being a female Christian that would leave you out of some of the blessedness. Paul, as all the scriptures do, they speak not only in the language of the day, but according to the conventions of the day. And in nearly all of the biblical time period, the inheritance went to sons. And the reason it didn't go to daughters, it was assumed that daughters would be married to men, and those men would be getting their share of their father's household. So daughters did not need an inheritance. Therefore, when Paul talks about us and references us as sons of God, he's doing it. He says, you are sons, therefore you are heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus. So that's the point of sonship there. Everything is done when all that God purposed in salvation is complete. Creation will be utterly and completely restored. All of His chosen ones will be with Him. They will be like Him. completely restored to a pre-sin condition, but with one added aspect of it, that when everything has been restored because of the work of Christ, the restored creation and the restored people cannot fall from that position. And the reason is simple. Adam came theologians like to call it a federal head. That is, he came as representative of the entire race and he failed. And therefore the entire race and the whole creation over which God had put him, all of it failed in him. Christ, who is called the last Adam, he is the representative of All God's elect and the creation which he made, he represents it all as the last Adam and he succeeded. Now notice I put that in the past tense, he succeeded, he's already succeeded. Consequently, nothing that comes to pass because of his success can ever be undone. As the second Adam, he's already, as it were, passed the test. As the representative of a new race of humans, so to speak, he has resisted all temptation, and he has suffered in their place, so their penalty is paid. Righteousness has been established. There's nothing that can overthrow that. Now, you and I live in a tiny slice of time in the process of God restoring all things through Christ. Not everything is restored yet, and that's why it may appear to us sometimes as though Christ is not victorious. But he is. And we are engaged in the warfare. Now, he has already delivered the mortal wound to the chief enemy, Satan, and his kingdom is crumbling. And the kingdom of God is advancing. Whether or not it looks like that's what's going on, that's what's happening. If you look at the news, if you watch the news and you think that what the news is showing you is all that's going on, you're, as Paul said, you're walking by sight, not by faith. By faith, we understand that all those who are in rebellion against God, God will either break them now and bring them or reconcile them to Himself and turn enemies into friends, or if they die as an enemy of God, then God will deal with them according to justice, and he will punish them with everlasting destruction, says the Scriptures. So everything's going according to plan, and when all is said and done, Christ will be obviously victorious in all things. Now, as we conduct, maybe that's not the right word, as we play out our part in this warfare, there are two points illustrated here in these battles of Joshua and the Israelites, which we must keep in mind. The first one is this. In every age and in every place, the battle is the same. I remember, you know, this would have been 20, well, almost 24 years ago now, as we were approaching the year 2000, and religious leaders that like to you know, have their face out there and religious businesses that like to make money off of selling religious stuff. They were saying things like, you know, well, what is the message of the church in the new millennium? So suddenly, at the tick of a clock, the church's warfare changes. I hear people talking about, well, we need a gospel for our day and age. Yes, we need a gospel for our day and age, and it is exactly the same gospel that was for the previous age and the one before that all the way back to the moment that Adam sinned. The gospel has never changed. The battle has never been any different. I realize that the enemy comes up with new tactics, new ways of deception. And it can be helpful if we learn in just what area is he working in his agents and allies to corrupt the truth. But in reality, Even if we don't know exactly what kind of tricks he's pulling, whatever kind of error is being promoted is properly handled by the declaration of the truth. 2 plus 2 equals 4. If somebody says 2 plus 2 equals 5, how do you answer that? 2 plus 2 equals 4. Okay, what if somebody says, well, 2 plus 2 is 22? No, 2 plus 2 is 4. It's always the same answer. Now, you know, Peter, excuse me, Paul, I believe it was, said, you know, we're not ignorant of the enemy's devices. And Peter did say, be sober, be vigilant for your adversary, the devil, goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Now, it's helpful to pay attention. One of the cleverest deceptions of Satan is to work within religious groups who will use exactly the same words we use But they mean different things by those words. But they don't tell people they mean something different. Every church, any religious group that claims to be Christian will use the word grace. They have to. The New Testament is full of that word. You can't ignore it. But it takes paying attention. to realize that they don't mean the same thing by grace that we mean when we say grace, or when the scriptures say grace. I'll give you an example. The Roman Catholic Church will agree that salvation's by grace. But if you listen carefully enough, they act as though grace is some kind of commodity. which you obtain through the various church obligations. Okay? You're born, they sprinkle you, you know, with the holy water or whatever, however it is they do it. Anyway, you pick up a little grace for that. And then you go through the catechism, you reach a certain age, you know, and you have your first communion. Get a little grace for that. Every time you come to Mass, a little more grace for that. Confession, a little more grace. Good works, a little more grace. If you really want to add up, you know, you can maybe devote yourself to the church. You can become a monk or a priest or a nun or something like that. You know, a little more grace. And actually, I don't know how much they promote this now. I assume the doctrine is still there. They talk about the treasury of the saints. Now to them, a saint is someone who has enough grace that they actually got to heaven. You know, you become a saint when you have achieved enough grace to enter heaven. But they think that some people have been so good that they have obtained an excess amount of grace, which they call the treasury of the saints. And by various means, you can tap into that. You say, how can anybody believe that? Well, we also understand how can anybody believe what we believe? It's quite natural to believe what they believe. It takes something supernatural to be freed from that bondage into an understanding of the grace of God. So there's just an example. It's helpful, but it still comes down to this. And if you look at chapter 10, beginning at verse 26, It says, then Joshua struck and killed the kings and hung them on five trees and they were left hanging on the trees until evening. At sunset, Joshua gave the order and they took them down from the trees and threw them into a cave where they had been hiding. At the mouth of the cave, they placed large rocks which are there to this day. That day Joshua took Makeda. He put the city and its king to the sword and totally destroyed everyone in it. He left no survivors. Now look at this. He did to the king of Makeda as he had done to the king of Jericho. Remember Jericho? When he gets to these five kings and then the king of Makeda as well, what did he do? Same thing he did back at Jericho. And then we look beginning in verses 33, verse 33. Actually back, clear back in verse 31. Talks about him going to, from Libna. to Lachish. He took up positions against it and attacked it. The Lord handed Lachish over to Israel and Joshua took it on the second day. The city and everyone in it he put to the sword just as he had done at Libna. Meanwhile, Horeb, king of Gezer, had come up to help Lachish, but Joshua defeated him and his army until no survivors were left. Keep on reading, then Joshua and all Israel with him moved on from Lachish to Eglon. They took up positions against it and attacked it. They captured it that same day, put it to the sword, and totally destroyed everyone in it, just as they had done to Lachish. See what it keeps saying? Every time, what they did at one city is exactly what they did to the city before that, which is exactly what they did to the city before that. Every time, every place, same pattern. And there's more accounts of that. But the point to be made here is that it is the same thing. We do not have a different tack to take here in the 21st century than we had in the 20th. Wherever we are, We declare, and we're going to see this in a minute, but our warfare is carried on through preaching, through declaring the truth. That is the sword that Paul calls the Word of God, the preaching of the gospel. That's how we do it. And everywhere we go, that's what we do. And we take no prisoners. We preach it and we say, this is the truth, nothing else is. Nothing else is. So, we don't have to change. Just because the enemy changes its tactics does not mean that we change ours. Secondly, now I said there's two things to learn. First is, it's the same battle in every place and time. And then secondly, we never fight the way the world does. And we are not to use the tactics and powers of the world to accomplish our warfare. Look at chapter 11, verse 6. Now he's talking about some kings in the north. And the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid of them because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over to Israel slain. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots. Now, here is another example of of probably the most difficult thing for the human mind to get wrapped around in the gospel of Christ. He said, now you go out and you fight against them. Now they're going to come against you with horses and chariots. When you are done, Do not think for a minute to take their horses and chariots into your next battle. Nothing they have can help you. In fact, why did he, he had them hamstring the horses, make them useless, burn the chariots. Why? Was there any danger? I mean, can the horses and chariots by themselves wage a war? No. There was no danger, there was no essential danger in these horses and chariots so long as the enemy wasn't in them. But there was a temptation. And he says, so that you will not take their or assume their manner of warfare. And think that by your horses and by your chariots, you have won the battle. You hamstring those horses so that they can't go to war. And you burn the chariots so you can't pull them with anything else. And it's good that God told him to do that because is that not in our nature? You know, not everything that I see out there that I consider, no, that's not the way to conduct ministry. It's not as though I think all the people doing that are lost. This is a temptation to honest believers to pick up the methods of the world and try to use them against the world. Now, of course, it's easiest for me to speak from my own background. but being brought up in the religion I was, theirs was to approach preaching the gospel as though you were selling something. And, you know, the sermon is the presentation. But I found out something when I worked for Orkin as a salesman. Now, I set a record. I really did. I think I set a record in probably the entire company of organ pest control of selling the least amount and still keeping your job. I'm not kidding. I can't sell anything. Now that when I went to the sales school, you know, and they taught us how to do the presentation going through the book. You know, we had this nice little pamphlet, you know, and we could tell them all the facts about termite infestation and all that and how there's more loss to termites than to fire and tornado and all that combined. I could give a very good presentation. But the sale is not made in the presentation. The sale is made in the clothes. And I'd give such a good presentation, I had nothing else to say, once we got to the point of, you know, we'd always get to the end of it, and we were taught, tell them the 12-month plan, you know, they'd finance it for 12 months or 18 months, you know, never give them the cash price. Whatever, you know. And you never give them a yes or no. It's always just, which yes do you want? But you invariably get no. Because it's tough to sell stuff. It's tough to sell things that people can't see. And that's where the salesman shines if he's good. He can listen to know and know how to respond to that and just keep going until finally they say yes. I could not do that. Well, that's sales. They tried to preach the gospel the same way. The sermon was the presentation. The invitation, as they called it, that's the close. And they just assume, you know, unless somebody's come forward, they're saying no. So just keep singing. Just keep working on the emotions. Just keep bringing up reasons for them to, quote, accept Jesus as your Savior. Ask Him into your heart or whatever it was they used as their description of what it is to believe God. And some of them were really good at the clothes. and they got people come up, we don't do that. Why? We've been given the task of the presentation, God does the clothes, not us. And when he does it, it is an entirely spiritual work on the inside of the man or the woman. We don't manipulate. We don't find some way to make them emotionally vulnerable so that they'll make a decision for Jesus. Nope, we tell them the truth and leave them be. And the truth in the hand of God is powerful enough to bring everyone God intends to bring. We never fight as this world does. Look over at Ephesians chapter 6. Beginning in verse 10, Ephesians 6, finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God. So that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. I like it. Do you notice this? Stand your ground. Didn't even say advance. We're not in the advancing business. We're in the stand your ground. We stand, both feet firmly planted. And we say, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the truth. And we stand there. And our victory, as much victory as we are able to achieve, will be this. that once we have done all and our warfare is over, we're still standing on the same spot. Our Lord, he sent us to take our stand, that is, as far as our face to the world is concerned, to take our stand on his truth, Paul said this, I have finished my course. I finished. And then he said, I have kept the faith. He said, I didn't expand on it. I didn't alter it for the next generation. I did not adapt it to the Gentiles. The faith was handed to me. The truth of God was handed to me. And I delivered it in, let's say, 30 or 35 years, however long it was after he was converted. But here was his victory. I stood. And once I'd done all, I was still standing right there. And that's what we're called to. Okay, and then he goes on, verse 14, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist and the breastplate of righteousness in place. And he begins describing our armor, armaments and defensive armaments according to what a Roman soldier looked like. So I said, you know, belt of truth buckled around your waist, the breastplate of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, which protects us and all of our, as it were, our vital organs. And with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Now, this is hand-to-hand combat. You know, when you're in hand-to-hand combat, of course, you're moving around on your feet. And what's important is that you have something that will, in particular, hold your ankles in place, so that you don't twist your ankle and become weakened. So the gospel itself is the strength of our feet. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith. A defensive thing. This is faith in Christ, faith in Him for our salvation, faith in Him that He is indeed working all things together for our good, faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. That's how they used to fight. You know, the shields back then, we always think of them being made out of metal. Most of them were made out of wood. And so when they'd fire arrows, they'd set the arrow on fire. that sticks in your shield, you know, and you're standing there trying to hold it, you don't have time to put down your sword and pull it out, you know. And I read that they would actually pour water on their shields before they'd go to battle to do that very thing, you know, to quench those firing arrows. And then it says, take the helmet of salvation. And we need a helmet of salvation, the truth of salvation, which protects our thoughts, our minds, our hearts. The salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Now there's only one offensive weapon mentioned here. And it's the Word of God, which we have seen several times. It doesn't mean just the Bible. It means the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now the church has no other weapon. And it doesn't need any other weapon. Our Lord said, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Spirit gives birth to spirit. We can be as charming as we want to be. We can, you know, do all the things we think will make us attractive to the world. But we are not trying to attract them to us. Our desire is to attract them to Christ. And then you'll just quickly, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, read a few verses here and we'll be done. In 2 Corinthians 10, beginning at verse 3, for though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they, that is our weapons, have divine power. The power of God is the way it's put in the scriptures. The power of God to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Now what's Paul saying here? Is he saying we go in there yelling and screaming and forcing people and threatening people? No. That's the world's way of doing things. We take that message and we declare it to people. We tell it to people and say, this is what God says. It's the truth. And God has said, submit to the truth or perish. Now, some will believe and some will not. It's not in our power to make the preaching of the gospel effective or ineffective. We just preach it. God decides who it is that will receive that word. For that reason, we don't have to do anything like the world does it. We don't have to try to elect Christian politicians to make sure the church is able to do its work. We don't. It can be entirely against, politics can be entirely against us. And God will still send forth his preachers, find every one of his sheep, and bring them home. Well, we'll leave it there. Just remember those two things. In every age and in every place, the battle is the same. And at all times, we don't fight like the world does. We have different weapons. And the only offensive weapon we have is the truth. All right, you're dismissed.