Well, in the surety of that price that was paid, the gospel of Jesus Christ, let's look to Joshua 1, verses 5 through 9. shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may prosper wherever you go This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it and For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success Have I not commanded you be strong and of good courage? Do not be afraid nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go Amen Father, we thank You for Your Word, and as we now tackle yet another book in Your beautiful canon, we pray that You would enable me to bring to the surface those things You want me to bring, and enable this, Your people, to glory in yet another huge resource that we have in Your Scriptures. Do bless this, Your people, through the preaching of the Word. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, last week, a British newspaper published the results of a massive survey, and they published what they considered, through this survey, to be the top ten most offensive passages in the Bible. Number two was the command to kill all of the Canaanites. Number three was the command, do not allow a sorceress to live, Exodus 22, 18. In your minds, take a wild guess as to what the most offensive passage in the entire Bible was, according to this huge survey. You might be surprised. It didn't come from the Old Testament. They said that by far the most offensive passage in the Bible was Paul's command in 1 Timothy 2.12, I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be silent. That was more offensive than the homo rape of a concubine and judges and any of the other killings in the Scripture. And it illustrates to me that what we get offended over has this tendency to shift if we don't have an eternal, unchangeable standard. And it also illustrates to me that people tend to get much more offended over Scriptures that point out their own sins than the Scriptures that point out other people's sins. But having said that, God's direct command to Joshua to kill every man, woman, child, and animal in Jericho and in other cities definitely is in the top ten most criticized portions of the Bible. I've looked at quite a few different surveys. People wonder, does that amount to genocide of the innocents? Certainly, the atheist Richard Dawkins thinks so. His scurrilous attacks on the Scripture are so outrageous, I wouldn't even dare to read them from the pulpit. But his book, The God Delusion, uses the book of Joshua to illustrate inconsistencies in Christians' lives. And I will admit, many Christians have these inconsistencies. So citing statistics and surveys of Jews and Christians, Dawkins shows how Christians are embarrassed by this book, and they believe that the wars in this book are inhumane and unjust. And in the process, he proves that the morals for these Christians comes from a source outside the Bible. Now, that was the one statement in that book that I could agree with for the most part. The morals for most Christians come from a source outside the Bible. If you criticize the justice of God in the book of Judges, your sense of morals comes from some source outside the Bible. It is foreign to the Bible. It is hostile to the Bible. You are not allowing God to define your sense of justice. So before I dive into the book, I want to explain why Joshua's conquests that are described in this book were perfectly just in their historic contest, even though God later forbids nations from engaging in these kinds of wars. Now that's the confusing part for many Christians. This was a one-of-a-kind judgment brought by God Himself by inspired revelation. So here are my responses to a person like Dawkins. First, God forbade genocidal warfare in numerous passages, such as Deuteronomy 20, 2 Kings 6, 8-23, Amos 1-2, and other passages. Israel's normal warfare called for a just war theory, whereas the conquest of Canaan rules are appropriate for God alone to command and God alone to say, this is going to be an executed judgment. They would not be just if a nation declared such a war. So all I am proving, it was just for God to do so. Second, there is a name for those conquest of Canaan rules. God called them harem war. Totally different from the normal rules for warfare. What harem warfare meant is that God had already judged these nations in the courtroom of heaven, and He's simply using Israel as His executioner for His heavenly judgment. And as such, it stands as a symbol for the final judgment in hell that God is going to bring. Now, I will guarantee you Hell is just as offensive to people as the harem warfare in the book of Joshua. If one is unjust, the other is unjust. Really, the two live and stand together, and I think they test people's loyalty to the Scripture. Which brings up the third point. The iniquity of these Canaanites was so deep, so serious, that they were irredeemable. In college, I had a professor who had her Ph.D. in Canaanite literature, and she said she was traumatized by reading through the literature. She had to, to get her Ph.D., but she felt defiled for life. She said the literature portrayed a culture that was so depraved it was far worse than the worst slasher, porno, hardcore pornography that's begun to creep in America. Like I said, she felt defiled for life. And just the little bit that she described for us made me feel defiled. I am for sure not going to be telling you about it. But people object. Okay, the adults, you know, they were ripe for judgment. But what about all of those children that were killed? Surely that is not just as it. Now, of course, many of those same critics who talk about this on the web, you continue digging in their websites, and they believe in abortion. Hypocrites, absolute hypocrites. They're willing to slaughter babies in the womb, and then they accuse God of being unjust for slaughtering these babies. So they are hypocrites, but the question is, are we just as inconsistent in our worldview? And I want to explain how we are not inconsistent at all on this. First of all, and these are three sub-points here, actually I didn't even put this in the outline, did I? Giving you extra material here. First of all, while the Bible is crystal clear that human courts have no right to put a baby to death ever, ever, ever, the Bible explicitly says that God has the right to put a child to death, 2 Samuel 12, 15, Hosea 9, 16, Revelation 2, 23. Now in the case of David's baby that God killed, and the text is very explicit, God killed that baby. In that case, the baby was taken to paradise. The baby wasn't sad. The baby is like, whoa, this is cool, you know, instantly into paradise. But God did judge that baby, judge David by taking the baby. So the baby is not complaining. But here's the point, even though we do not ever have the authority to take a baby's life, God does. And if God wants to kill a child and take him to paradise, he has the right to do so. Next, I would say that there is no injustice in God killing a sinner. and all babies are sinners. They're not innocent like Dawkins claims. Psalm 58 verse 3 says, The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. This means children need a Savior too. Isaiah 48 verse 8 says, for I knew that you would deal very treacherously and were called a transgressor from the room. So rather than criticizing God for killing these babies, what we should do is say, thank you, Lord, that you have extended your grace to our children. You've even included our children in the covenant. Praise God. This is an incredible blessing. But salvation is something that God is not obligated to give to any sinner. Salvation is purely an act of sovereign grace. Next, from the pulpit, I will not get into why the degeneracy and disease reached even the children, but knowing the little bit that I do about the Canaanite culture, God may have spared them a lifetime scarred by the past. One scholar said that even the smallest children would have been ravaged by STDs and Robert Bowman says, quote, would have grown up psychologically and spiritually scarred and perhaps threatened to perpetuate the cycle. So God was actually engaging in a mercy for them. But back to the wars against Canaan. God's patience with sin is absolutely incredible. This is another thing we need to consider when people are judging God. His patience was absolutely incredible. Genesis 15, in the time of Abraham, says, that they are going to be in Egypt afflicted for 400 years. And it talks about after the fourth generation, it doesn't say fourth generation after what, but after the fourth generation, they would return here. And then he gives us his reason that it's because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete. It was not full. Their cup of iniquity was not full, is the way some people take that. Now the Amorites were wicked in the time of Abraham, But God patiently waits for 400 years, and it's only when their cup of iniquity is so full that God says, I'm taking them out. I'm not going to be patient anymore. I would say 400 years is a lot of time to be patient. So people focus on the destruction, and they completely ignore the incredible patience of God with these sinners. Fifth, We've already seen in Genesis that God created all things, owns all things, and is sovereign over all things. God has absolute rights of ownership over everything in this universe. As Romans 9 words it, Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory to the vessels of mercy which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? And that's my next point. Speaking of that mercy to the Jews and Gentiles, individual Canaanites did become believers. They had opportunities to repent, to become believers. Now we do know the story of the Gibeonites was through deception they came into Israel. Through God's sovereign intervention, Rahab becomes a true believer. But there are individuals like Caleb the Kenizzite who were saved long before the conquest and who became heroes of the faith. And when you read Joshua 1 verse 4, it condemns all of the Hittites to harem warfare, to destruction. And yet, God's election pulls some people even out of the fire, so to speak. And so we see a couple generations later that Uriah the Hittite is a godly man. He's a Hittite. And yet, even though his whole tribe had been consigned to destruction, God redeemed him to himself. Later in David's life, his Pelophites and Cherithites were all Philistines condemned to the same harem Canaanite destruction and yet here's hundreds of people who have embraced the true faith in Christ. Likewise Ittai the Gittite was a faithful believer. So even with the harem principle of warfare you see justice and mercy side by side. The question, why didn't God save everybody, is a stupid, lousy question. The real question is, why on earth would God have such patience, such mercy, such grace to anybody? He didn't have to. He didn't save any of the angels that fell. He just decided He was going to showcase His grace to us. And He did indeed save many Canaanites by His sovereign grace. Seventh, these stories are a test of our faith and loyalty to God. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the destruction of Canaan was a perfect act of justice. Questioning God's justice and fairness makes us the judge rather than God. But Deuteronomy 32 verse 4 says, all God's ways are justice. By definition, all God's ways are justice. And to think otherwise is arrogance of the highest order because it puts our mind and our opinion as the judge of the universe. Don't stumble over tests like this that God puts into the Bible. He does put hard things in the Bible to test us. Are you going to be loyal to me? Are you going to trust me? Are you going to submit to me? Or are you going to question me when I put hard things in your way? So have faith. that God is a righteous God. Don't stumble over these. Embrace them. Worship God through them. Humble yourselves before God in them. Eighth, everyone deserves the same justice, destruction. As Romans 3 says, the wages of sin is death. To make exceptions is to edit God. And I think John H. Gerstner just put this so, so well in his book, Repent or Perish. Let me just do a small quote from that. He said, if you recognize that basic Christian teaching that all deserve hell because all are sinners, you'll understand why I wrote a little primer entitled, The Problem of Pleasure. We talk so much about the problem of pain. There is no such thing as the problem of pain. You tell me how excruciating it is and I will look you in the face and say there's no problem. Why? Because we are sinners. We deserve the eternal wrath of God. I don't care who you are, where you are, that you are breathing at all is incredibly gracious. What needs explaining is not that there's pain in the world. If there wasn't pain, we would have a problem. How can God be holy and this world be wholly sinful and there be anything but pain? It's incredible that there is non-pain. Why is anybody not suffering? That's a problem. Christ solves that problem. Temporary freedom from pain is given you so that you may repent and not perish. The only answer to the problem of pleasure is that God is pleased to give hell-deserving sinners an opportunity to repent. I just think that is so well put. And when Canaanites and other people didn't repent, They've got only themselves to blame. They cannot complain. They cannot complain. And then finally, many scholars point out that the Karam destruction of the people of Canaan is a picture, it's a type, as it were, of the final judgment by Christ. To deny the justice of the one, you have to deny the justice of the other. And of course, there are evangelicals who deny both. Now let's move on to the key word. this book. If the key word for Deuteronomy was covenant, the key word for the book of Joshua is inheritance. Now there are some study Bibles that say the key word is conquest or conquer. That word only occurs four times in the book of Joshua and it occurs as a means to the end of getting an inheritance that God has promised. And so the word inheritance occurs 50 times, and the word land occurs 75 times, and of course the land is their inheritance, so it really amounts to the same thing. The theme of the book is that the meek shall inherit the earth. This land had been promised as an inheritance in every single book of the Pentateuch, and now finally comes the fulfillment to a generation that had learned meekness. Meekness is not weakness. The word, if you look even in the secular literature of the Greeks, a meek person is a person who has been fully trained to be righteous and to do the right thing. A meek animal is like it would be a wild stallion who has been trained and humbled to the place where it always follows the master's will 100%. So it's not weakness. Meekness is strength tamed to God's will. And so this theme is a foreshadowing of the church eventually inheriting the entire planet. And by the way, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says this principle continues, the meek shall inherit the earth. The church will not inherit the earth though until it becomes tamed by God and useful for God. Now the key verse is Joshua 21, verse 45. I'm going to go ahead and read it in context. Joshua 21 begins to read, let's begin to read at verse 43. 21 verse 43, So the Lord gave to Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. The Lord gave them rest all around according to all that he had sworn to their fathers, and not a man of all their enemies stood against them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass. So God was faithful in fulfilling His promises of this inheritance. And as I just mentioned, Joshua's conquest of the land foreshadowed the work of Christ, which is the next point. Christ was richly displayed in the first five books of the Bible, and it is richly displayed in the book of Joshua as well. Hebrews 4, 8 through 11 clearly identifies Joshua as being a type of the Lord Jesus. And interestingly, the Greek word for Joshua is identical for the Greek word for Jesus in the book of Hebrews. Identical words. And the Hebrew word that's used in the book of Joshua for Joshua is exactly the same word for Jesus. It's Yeshua. So Joshua's name, Yeshua means salvation is of Yehovah. Yeshua, Joshua's name, pointed forward to a time when a future Messiah would bring salvation for them. So like Joshua, the New Testament calls Jesus the captain of our salvation who brings many sons to glory. Hebrews 2.10, who quote, always leads us in triumph, 2 Corinthians 2.14. And Hebrews 4 calls us to follow Jesus and do not be like that wilderness generation who refused to follow Joshua. He says, be a people of faith, follow Jesus and He will give you your inheritance. So Jesus is the greater Joshua. Second, the Ark of the Covenant is an incredibly marvelous type of Christ, and it plays a very central role in the crossing of the Jordan, as well as in the conquest of Jericho. So let me just describe it briefly. glory cloud. Remember, it would pick up and it would move. When it was settled, it would settle on top of the Ark of the Covenant, and that's why it is called the throne of grace, mercy seat, or the throne of Yehovah, because it represented God's reign, Yehovah's reign over Israel. It was a rule of law, represented by the Ten Commandments inside of it, and it was a rule of grace represented by the blood that was sprinkled on top of it. So both law and grace. The ark was a box made of wood covered with gold, and on top of the ark were these images of two angels, two cherubim. They're warrior angels, and this shows that just like the Holy of Holies on the earth is a representation of the Holy of Holies in heaven, there's angels in both of these realms. So it illustrates that the kingdom on earth is related to the kingdom of heaven. Our earthly battles are intimately related to the spiritual battles of the cherubim angels. Inside the ark was Aaron's rod of leadership, the bowl of manna, and the Ten Commandments, and on the side of the ark was stored the growing canon of Scripture. So by the beginning of Joshua, you had the first five books of the Bible, then Joshua gets added, and then Judges, and you keep adding the canon, and that's stored right there. That's the original copy, they had other copies that were outside. Now all of this richly symbolizes the person and work of Jesus. When that ark stood, you know, they're carrying, the priests are carrying it, they have to wait right in the middle of the Jordan Riverbed while everybody else is going across. So while it is standing there, it's a symbol of the fact that Jesus alone, God alone, is holding back those waters. The moment it says that the priest's feet got out of the riverbed, the waters returned. It's God alone that could hold that back. Now Hebrews 1 verse 8 says that Jesus sits upon Yehovah's throne. He's the glory cloud. But not only does He sit on the throne, the scripture indicates He is represented by the throne itself, by that ark. So The wood represents the humanity of Jesus. The gold represents the deity of Jesus. The throne represents His sovereign rule, His reign. The bowl of manna represents the intimate fellowship and communion that we have with God the Father through Christ. That's Revelation 2, verse 17. The Ten Commandments represent the holiness of Christ's kingdom. You don't even have a kingdom if there is not law. But what's the law of Christ's kingdom? It's the same law that He's always had. in the Bible. And even though the Ten Commandments, when they were brought on Sinai, it brought fear. It brought condemnation. When those same Ten Commandments are taken off of Mount Sinai, they're taken into the tent where all of the grace symbols are, put inside of the Ark of the Covenant with the blood of those bulls sprinkled on top of it, all of a sudden you've got the law in the context of the gospel. So gospel is not anti-law. What the blood of Jesus does when it was sprinkled for us is it makes us friends with the law. It puts us at peace with the law. And then the rod represents Christ's leadership. Now the next type of Christ was circumcision. The circumcision of the second generation of Israelites is an interesting symbol. because the previous generation had not been believers, they were not allowed to circumcise their children. Why? Because it's a covenant of faith. And Romans 4 verse 11 says that circumcision is the sign of faith. So if the parents do not have faith, which Hebrews quite clearly and Numbers quite clearly says they did not have faith, Well, then Moses says you can't circumcise your children. It's the same with baptism. The two mean the same thing, circumcision and baptism. So if the parents do not have faith, we do not allow their children to be baptized. Now, What circumcision symbolized is that the future Messiah would be cut off on their behalf. You may remember in an earlier sermon in Genesis, that we saw that the phrase to make a covenant is literally translated to cut a covenant. And so the way they would make a covenant is they would cut an animal in half, separate the two pieces, and the people would walk between those parts of the animal to say, hey, if we break this covenant, may we be cut off like this animal was. Well, with Abraham, God did something different. He walked between the two pieces of those animals, there was a number of animals there, And he was in effect saying, I'm willing to die for you in the future and take your sins upon me in the future as your substitute. Okay, so it's a marvelous concept. Well, circumcision that was given to Abraham had exactly the same symbolism. It symbolized the fact that the future seed of Israel, who was who? Jesus, future seed of Israel, Jesus, would be cut off on our behalf. Colossians 2.11 says that Christ's crucifixion was His circumcision which put off the body of the sins of our flesh. It's also called a baptism because circumcision and baptism are identical in terms of their meaning. So the gospel, you can see, chapter by chapter, is being so infused in this book. Everything they did, they had to do through the gospel. There could be no victory without the gospel. Now, we've dealt with how Passover on leavened bread and first fruits was a symbol of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. But I want to read Joshua 5, 10 through 12, because this Passover had something very, very unique happening. It says, now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal and kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho, and they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain on that very same day. Then the manna ceased on the day after, this would be the day of first fruits, the day after they had eaten the produce of the land, and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year. Just a number of brief things here. Just as baptism is required before you can partake of the Lord's table, circumcision was required according to the book of Exodus before you could partake of the Passover. So they're circumcised first, then they partake of the Passover. But the miraculous manna which pointed to Jesus stopped when they were finally able to make bread from the wheat of the land. This is a transition point in the kingdom. Once the leaven of sin has been done away with in Passover, all of the next feast, Pentecost, mandates leaven. It's not the leaven of sin that they're going to be eating now. It's the leaven of the kingdom, which is going to permeate as far as sin had permeated before. So this is something brand new. It's the beginning of a new era. This was the first month of the year, Abib. This was the first Passover they had partaken of in probably almost 40 years. This is the first time that the bread prescribed in the law was eaten rather than manna. In fact, this is the first time in decades that they had eaten anything other than manna. This is the first time they would regularly eat in the land of Canaan, and on the third day it was what? The festival of first fruits. So several things symbolize the beginning of a new era. All of those things under Joshua symbolized, according to Hebrews, the new covenant when the church would engage in the Great Commission. Okay, a couple more. The Theophany of God in chapter 5, where The general of the armies meets with Joshua. That's the pre-incarnate Jesus. It shows that, hey, Joshua cannot do this on his own. He's got to do it in sync with the commander in heaven. The stone altar that we looked at last week perfectly foreshadows the person and work of Christ. I won't get into it, because we dealt with it at length. But he engages in it. He puts up this altar in chapter 8, verses 30 through 35. And it shows that they depended upon their coming Messiah for their sins and to strengthen them in the coming battle. And of course, the sacrifices mentioned in chapters 13 and 22 are also foreshadowing the work of Christ. Now, here's the point. Contrary to what the critics say, Christ and the gospel are not absent from this book. It is on the basis of the glorious gospel that they are able to do so much. So don't think of this book as only a book of judgment. Of course there's judgments there. If you reject the gospel, there's nothing left but judgment. But it is a gospel book. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give a shorter overview than I normally have of this book. Saturday afternoon I actually cut half an hour's worth of materials out of this sort of and I realized this has got to be cleaned up. But I'm going to put all of that stuff up on the web. But let me just give you at least a summary of some of the things where I would have headed, in what direction I would have headed. This book is divided into four parts, and you can see that on the chart of the bottom of first page. Okay? First five chapters deal with the preparations made for entering the land. Chapters 6 through 13, 7 deal with conquering the land. Chapters 13 verse 8 to the end of 21 deal with settling the land, and chapters 22 through 24 show what will be spiritually needed if they are going to retain the land. So you can really summarize the entire book with four words. entering, conquering, settling, and retaining. And the application of just those headings should, I think, be pretty obvious. If we are to take America back, we must go through all four steps. If the church is a holy ghetto that never interacts with the world, we'll never conquer. Just as Joshua had to enter the land before he could conquer the land, the church will never conquer America unless it once again penetrates every facet of society with the law and the gospel. And the pietistic two-kingdom retreatist church has failed to do that. We have failed to be salt. We have abandoned politics. We have failed to apply the Bible to business, economics, education, science, and other areas. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. The land of Canaan has penetrated the church and infected virtually every aspect of the church's life until the church has been married with the world. That's how I view the modern church in America. It is Canaan that has penetrated the church. And so you look at where churches go for counseling, And you realize that it is pluralism. It's the mixture of man's wisdom with scripture. You look at education, it's government schools, or if it is Christian education, it's still secular education taught by teachers. So whatever topic you think of, Canaan has entered the church rather than the church entering Canaan with the law and the gospel. Now the second part of this book is conquest. If we are to regain America, we must aggressively seek to take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus. But Paul said we can only do that if we lay down the carnal weapons of the world and we pick up the weapons, the spiritual weapons of the scripture. And this theme keeps getting repeated. But if God repeats it over and over again, I'm going to keep repeating it over and over again. reads 2 Corinthians 10, two through six, which as far as I'm concerned is a fantastic summary of part two of the book of Joshua. Paul says, but I beg you that when I am present, I may not be bold with that confidence by which I intend to be bold against some who think of us as if we walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled." That is part two of Joshua in a nutshell. What's part three? Well, once all humanism has been exposed and torn down, and we're not even remotely at that stage in America, we can enter into the third stage of the book, which is setting up the gospel and law and living out the biblical blueprints positively. You tear down, that's part two, so that you can build up. That's part three of this book. And can you imagine the incredible blessings our nation would have if we were consistently living out the blueprints of Scripture? It would be amazing. It would be tremendous. But the last section of the book warns the Israelites over and over that unless they pass these principles and passions and this vision on to the next generation, it will not stick. The only way they can retain the land that they have possessed is through covenant succession. So the last section of the book gives us what is critical if covenant succession is to happen. So that's the big overview picture. And if you want to see how Joshua and Judges fit into the seamless flow of books from Genesis, let me summarize Genesis through Judges. Genesis shows transcendence. Remember, that's the first point of the five-point covenant. transcendence, that everything begins with God who had no beginning. He's the maker of the covenant. He's the Lord of life. And in terms of the right-hand side of your chart, where it's thematically tied with Israel, He's the creator and maker of Israel. Exodus shows the representatives of God in family, church, and civics. And so it's labeled as hierarchy or representatives. which is the second part of all of these covenant documents. And on the basis of Israel having been saved or redeemed, God gives shepherds to guide his people and represent them. And so we saw that Exodus is where the synagogue system, the churches were set up. Leviticus, which we saw was the book of holiness, gives the ethics for Israel, both moral and ceremonial, and its message is about God's upward call in our lives. Numbers shows God's sanctions, that's the fourth part of the covenant. These are His punishments for disobedience, His rewards for obedience. And we saw that the book of Numbers was a constant testing. And then Deuteronomy shows what must be in place if we are to live Christianly in the land generation after generation. It's covenant succession. The blueprints of Deuteronomy placed within a covenant document show what maturity in God's grace looks like. Joshua takes it one step further into inheritance. So here's what Joshua is about. The vassal Israel the Lord of Life, Yehovah, joins together with that Lord in taking the world for Christ. And Hebrews uses it as a symbol of the Great Commission. Now Joshua is the first of what was known as the former prophets, and Joshua 24-26 says that he wrote the book of Joshua right into the canon the moment it was written. There is no need for church councils to come up with a canon. No, the prophets who wrote those books by divine inspiration immediately put it into the canon. It was connected right to the altar. That canon just kept growing, growing, growing. Not the altar, the Ark of the Covenant. Right to the side of that, that canon was growing right from the beginning. But judges chose what happens when covenant succession is not taught. people can fall away. Maturity is not automatic. It must be systematically trained into the very fiber of our children's lives. Now let's back up, and I want to at least look at Joshua's commission, because that sets the tone for the rest of the book. I'm not gonna have the time to go through all of my notes of overview, but we'll start here. If we're to enter the land, that's the section one of the book, We need to get rid of squishy leaders in American church and honor and follow the leaders who are like Joshua. Joshua 1, 1 through 9 gives the commission for Joshua, and I think it gives several concepts related to leadership. And the first is servanthood. Verse 1 calls Joshua Moses' assistant, and the Hebrew word is shirat, or menial servant. So Moses is called the servant of the Lord, of Yehovah. Joshua is a servant's servant. He's the servant of this servant, of Moses. And what he's doing is he's learning, learning from Moses' servanthood to be a servant himself. Like produces like. He did not learn leadership by going to seminary. In fact, you won't find seminary anywhere in the Bible. period. He did not learn leadership by going to seminary. Like produces like, and if sterile professors who accomplish nothing but academics teach our pastors, our pastors will be academics who have no interest in doing anything but passing on sterile information. Joshua didn't do that. He learned practical Christianity by serving under Moses. Another way to word it, he learned servant leadership by serving. What a novel concept. But it's not the way we train pastors in America. Sadly, what happens in America is 22-year-olds who are still green behind the ears, who have often never done a lick of practical work in their lives, they get out of seminary and they think that they can lead the church. That is not the way God has done that. God's way is apprenticeship. That's how Jesus taught His disciples and how His disciples taught faithful men to teach other men also, 2 Timothy 2.2. And even Jesus He was the perfect man. Why did he not get into ministry as a 20-year-old? Because he's modeling to us how God does things. For 30 years of his life, he learned submission in a trade as carpentry. He learned what the real world was like out there, the kind of tough life. I think if pastors would, first of all, spend some years with a real trade, some kind of real work, like other people go through, they might be more sensitive in their their shepherding ministry with others. Moses, how many years did he spend shepherding? And people think, oh, what a waste of time. We've got to get this talent right away into the pulpit. No. God does not waste His time in the methodology. Forty years in the wilderness as a shepherd. This is the kind of training pastors need, real-life training. It's rare in the Scriptures to see leaders entering their office without first having humble service. When I was in my 20s, because I had to work my way through seminary, work a year and then go to school a year, that kind of thing, I was a little bit older than some others, but when I first got out of seminary, I thought, you know, I knew my stuff pretty well. But Doug Codling, the pastor of our church there, he knew a little better. He involved me in all kinds of menial work, treacherous work, work other people did not want to do to test where my heart was at. And even as I began to be involved in evangelism and teaching and other ministries, I still had to hold down a regular job. In fact, I think one of the best trainings for my pastoral ministry was wiping bottoms and brushing teeth as an orderly in a nursing home. It was fantastic training for ministry. But anyway, enough on that. Book of Joshua shows the kind of dominion that could be taken when leaders have servants' hearts. Second, leadership in office requires calling. Jeremiah 14, 15 pronounces woes on people who become leaders when God did not call them. Jeremiah 23, 32 does exactly the same thing. Well, Joshua was called. Joshua 1, verse 1, God speaks to him. And in the Pentateuch, we already saw the details of that call, much more fully spelled out. But he had a call upon his life. Now, we're not prophets like Joshua was, so we don't have an infallible call. We have guidance from the Lord and His guidance is through the scriptures, right? And so all of our calls need to be confirmed by the church, confirmed by others. But let me tell you something, a strong sense of your calling will take you through the roughest, toughest times and impossible difficulties that are out there. And it'll also enable us to say no to ministry opportunities that belong to others. Joshua had a single-eyed purpose. to fulfill God's call upon his life. Now in verse 2, God called Joshua to action despite risk. This is a critical test of leadership qualifications. When Joshua crossed the Jordan, he had no illusions about what he was going to be facing. He was part of the twelve 40 years before, who had gone in, he saw the giants. He saw the huge wall cities. He saw the ferocious tribes that they would be facing there. So when he was moving, he was moving at great risk. And we need leaders like that today who won't play it safe. I have talked to pastors who refuse to preach on critical topics because they say they might lose their jobs, or they might lose some tithers, key tithers in their congregation, or they might get picketed by homosexuals. They're going to face some kind of risk. That is not leadership. That is cowardice. And if you look at Revelation chapter 21 and verse 8, it puts the cowardly at the head of the list of people who will burn for all of eternity. America will never even be entered, let alone conquered, unless its pastors take action despite risks. So if we're going to take Joshua's call seriously here, it might mean that some of us need to go to the abortion clinic. and start praying imprecatory prayers. And we need to call pastors to go to the abortion clinic and pray imprecatory prayers. It might mean handing out tracts at the LGBTQ plus parades. Now, I've gotten a lot of heat even in the media, just from handing out loving tracts to the homosexuals at those parades, and also when I've gone to the Day of Silence at the schools, and handing out tracts, very positive, very loving tracts, you get spit at, you get beat up, punched by people like this. But America will never be entered unless we have leaders who take action, even if it means risk. Verse 3 gives Joshua an eschatology of victory. God says there in verse 3 that He would give him every place that his foot would tread upon. Now there's a requirement there. I'm not going to give it if you're not going to tread on it, right? So you've got to penetrate, you've got to enter, but I'm going to give it to you. It's an incredible eschatology of victory and hope. God promised victory. Well, the eschatology of the bulk of the church today is a guarantee of defeat. That's the message of dispensationalists, most are millennialists, pietists, two kingdom retreatists, and others who think that the Bible only guarantees that things will get worse and worse during the Kingdom Age. Let me tell you something, the only period in history that God promised things would get worse and worse is the last days going up to the end of the Old Covenant, the destruction of Jerusalem. The eschatology of our age has unfortunately been the eschatology of the previous generation that believed the ten spies rather than believing Joshua and Caleb. It was an eschatology that killed faith and hope and made them refuse to enter. Without a change in the eschatology of American church leaders, we won't even get past stage zero and even attempt to cross the Jordan, let alone conquer the land. Now keep in mind, eschatology is inescapable. Everybody has a view of the future, and there is no such thing as panmillennialism. People like to make all of these distinctions. Well, I'm not this, I'm not that. Really, when you boil it all down, there's only two eschatologies. There is an eschatology that has a dismal view of the future, and there's an eschatology that has a faith-filled view of the future. Only two eschatologies. One of the essentials of even entering the land to possess it is a strong belief that Christ's kingdom has come, and of the increase of His government and of peace, there will be no end. And as Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. People say, well, I think it'll prevail against it over here. No. It will not prevail against it. And so Jesus is giving, since gates are defensive mechanisms, Jesus is giving them an eschatology that if they will believe it, has the ability to bash down those gates and take this world for King Jesus. But this means repenting of the faith-killing eschatology of the 10 spies and embracing the eschatology of verse 3. And I would encourage you to pray that this would happen for the leaders of America's churches. But that same verse had Joshua put his feet on the land. To put your foot on something was symbolic of taking dominion over it. We either give dominion to Satan, or we give dominion to Christ. But dominion is inescapable. Somebody's going to take dominion. And right now, it's humanism that has its feet on us. Why? Well, Jesus said that's what's going to happen in Matthew 5. If you throw out God's law, you throw out the transformational power of the gospel, you're not salty any longer. You are good for nothing, He says. Even though you call yourself a Christian, you are good for nothing but to be cast out and trampled underfoot of men. That's where we're at right now. saltless churches in which God has allowed humanism to take dominion. To enter the land of Canaan, we need to regain a theology of dominion under Christ. And in verses 4 through 9, God gave boundaries or antithesis. He gave physical boundaries in verses 4 through 5 and moral boundaries in verses 6 through 9. These boundaries were crystal clear in the Word of God, and yet they would be challenged every step of the way by the Canaanites. The world always challenges God's boundaries. So discouragement, difficulty, obstacles can make us settle for something less than what God has dictated. But clear-cut lines must be drawn by leaders if they are to be successful. We see culture's opposition graying the lines of antithesis in the church. so that the church no longer takes hard and fast stands on things like premarital fornication, or gender distinctions, or socialism, especially if I can get something for free. I'm against socialism if it's somebody else getting something for free, but if I am gonna get something for free, no, I'm not against it that much, right? That's wrong, and when the kids see the parents compromising, they often take the compromise even further. Now, some people might think that lines or boundaries are not nice. They're declarations of war, yeah. But antithesis or drawing lines is inescapable. If you don't draw the lines where God wants them drawn, those lines will be drawn elsewhere for you by Satan's kingdom. And let me just illustrate why this is always so. Ours is a culture that pretends to tolerate all viewpoints and to be pluralistic. Well, that's a lie. They use that strategy to get us to leave them alone, right? It's a lie. As you may have noticed, Christians are being increasingly marginalized, persecuted, and treated as outside the scope of what can be tolerated in schools, courts, Facebook, Google, or any other public realm. Humanists are drawing the lines. Antithesis is inescapable. It's becoming clear that some congressmen and some congresswomen want to make Christianity illegal in the public realm. Oh yeah, we're okay with your being a Christian in your private house, but do not bring that into the public realm. That's a disqualification. Why is every view, except the exclusive views of Jesus, tolerated? Why is pluralism so intolerant of Christianity? Shouldn't be surprising. It's because antithesis is inescapable. If you think there is no antithesis there, I would challenge you to do a little bit of an experiment. Go to your next sensitivity training at work, and when they deal with women's issues, give the Bible's view and see if you're tolerated. I don't think you're going to be tolerated one moment. When they deal with homosexuality, give the Bible's view. See if you can even keep your job. There's always antithesis, and actually, there are smarter ways of going about this than the way I just suggested. I'm just making the point. They are going to draw the lines, you know. There are strategic ways of drawing your own battle lines, but antithesis is inescapable. The only question is, who has the right to define it, God or man? And until America's church leaders reestablish boundaries, they aren't even ready for square one to enter the land of Canaan. God called Joshua to have faith in His promises in verse 5. Joshua sensed his weakness and inadequacy, but God calls leaders to find their strength in the Lord, not in themselves. Here's what God says, No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. What an incredibly awesome promise. If God is for us, who can be against us? Does that sound familiar? It doesn't matter whether you're a minority, a majority. With God, you're always a majority. You're always on the winning side if you have faith in the Lord. And I love the call to courage in verses 6, 7, and 9. Courage is not lack of nervousness. Some people say, I'm not very courageous. I'm always nervous. No, courageous people are nervous too. Courage is a willingness to do the right thing despite being nervous. Why does God call him to be strong? probably because he was nervous and he sensed his weakness and inadequacy. So he says, Be strong and of good courage. For to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. And skipping down to verse 9, Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. And then finally, leaders often think that they don't have enough time in their week to be able to get into the Bible. But I can't imagine a busier guy than Joshua, and yet he was immersed in the Word of God. And verses 7 through 8 call him to this. And this again takes courage, because it takes courage to be a man or a woman of the Bible. Without courage, the church will not enter the land of Canaan and penetrate every aspect of America's society with the law and the gospel. Again, we're trying to just get to stage one, right? We're not even into stage two. These are all prerequisites. God told Joshua, only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. for then you will make your way prosperous, then you will have good success. So it takes courage to follow God's laws, but when we courageously do so, God promises to turn the tide and to make the church's way prosperous. And the book of Joshua shows the amazing things that can happen when leaders show these characteristics. Now I'm going to skip over about half an hour's worth of notes that I'll put up on the web, but let me at least give you a summary of where they would have taken you. In the rest of chapter 1, Israel takes its cues from the faith, vision, and the excitement of Joshua, and they very enthusiastically follow Joshua's marching orders. The faith, hope, vision, and courage of leaders can be infectious. Chapter 2, we have the marvelous story of the faithful spies that God used in a strange providence to bring Rahab to faith. And Hebrews 11 and James 2 says she was soundly converted, soundly saved. And God mysteriously put her into the genealogy of Christ along with two other Gentile women to show that Jesus is the Savior for all, Jew and Gentile. Aaron Fox actually gave a wonderful talk on memorials this past Thursday morning for the Men's Prayer Breakfast. And in chapter 4, there are some wonderful lessons on memorials and the importance of remembering the past. Tyrants always without exception try to rewrite the history textbooks. Why? Because providential history is so destructive to tyranny. It energizes God's people. If they are to keep people in servile subjection, they've got to write history according to their pattern. But we need to be teaching the true history. And providential history and memorials are one of the tools for doing that. Deals with the circumcision of the second generation. This too is a tangible commitment to the Lord. And I want you to just think about that for a moment. They're in enemy territory when they got circumcised. The whole of the army, all of these men are in pain. They're healing up. They're very vulnerable to attack during this time. So it took faith in God to do this. So there are a lot of other lessons that can be learned, helping our children to put off the reproach of Egypt, to be separated unto God. I already looked at chapter 5, Passover firstfruits. That chapter also has the commander of the heavenly armies, showing the relationship between our battles on earth, the battles of heaven, All of these things, they're preparatory to conquest. They haven't even taken the conquest yet. Once the land, though, was entered by faith, faith won victory after victory. Jericho, I think, is a thrilling story with numerous applications to our modern life. Ai is a somber warning that we must depend upon the Lord and do things His way. And by the way, it's a fantastic reminder that your private sins can make the church powerless. I might not even know about your sins. It's not like I'm putting up with it. But your private, unconfessed sins can make the church powerless, just as Achan's sin made that army powerless. Chapters 6 through 13, 7, you can see we're really racing now, through 13, 7 show that the meek shall inherit the earth. And Joshua ends that section by pointing out none of God's promises had failed them. They inherited all the boundaries that God had promised, even though there were pockets of resistance within those boundaries that would take some generations to complete. But they inherited all of the promised boundaries. Chapters 13 through 21 then deal with building a positive civilization within Canaan. The library cities that showed all of the philosophy of the Canaanites and all of the pornography of the Canaanites and all of that wretched stuff were burned to the ground. They did not want any of that remaining. So that's already happened. And now, once the old civilization has been torn down, the new one had to be step-by-step constructed according to God's Word. And the command is given in chapter 18 to not be content with where they are at, but to dispossess all God's enemies. I think this was the problem with early America. They were satisfied with a predominantly Christian nation, but didn't bother to take things further than the Puritans had taken them, to make every venture more and more biblically consistent. But here's the problem. If you aren't going forward, you're automatically sliding backward. There is no middle grounds neutrality. And that's the story of Judges, which we'll reserve for next week. So settling the land does not mean your work is done. Our work is never done till the day we die. We need to be serving the Lord. Now in the very last section of the book, Joshua tells them what each generation must do if they're to retain the land. And though I don't have time to comment on each point, I think they're at least worth listing. In Joshua 23, he tells them that they must, number one, remember God's faithfulness. Number two, make plans for the future. Number three, be committed to the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. Number four, maintain antithesis and resist all compromise. Number five, have faith that it's worth it. In other words, your labors in the Lord are not in vain. God will indeed bless faithful efforts. And then six, the final call to diligently pass on the worldview and character issues learned to the next generation. So I think you can see, as we've been going through each of these books, from Genesis through Joshua, there is a seamless and logical movement forward. All of these books give us clues as to what must be in place if the church is to make the nations of this world to be Christian nations under God. May God bring such reformation to the church that this would indeed be possible. Amen. Father, we thank you that with you, nothing is impossible. And I pray that you would stir the hearts of a generation in America, in Canada, in Europe, all through the countries that previously were a part of Christendom. and that you would reawaken the embers that are barely glowing there, and that you would cause a reformation to sweep through those territories greater than any reformation before, because we desire your name to be lifted up. We desire your son, Jesus Christ, to be honored. We desire that there no longer be this grieving and resisting of your Holy Spirit throughout the earth. We pray that you would deal with the persecutions in China and in Africa and Asia and India and in so many different places that you would cause those nations to become Christian nations. Lord, this would bring great glory to your name. And so we ask it for your sake, for the joy of the angels in heaven. We pray it for a claiming upon your very veracity of your word, where you have promised that all kings will bow down before you. All kings will bring their tribute into the church. And we pray, Father, you would hasten the day when we would be able to see this. So stir up a new generation of leaders in our country and a new generation of followers who would be inspired by their faith and courage and boldness. We ask all of this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.