We're up to Joshua 10, verse 16. Hear the Word of God. But these five kings had fled and hidden themselves in a cave at Makeda. And it was told Joshua, saying, the five kings have been found hiding in the cave at Makeda. So Joshua said, roll large stones against the mouth of the cave and set men by it to guard them. Do not stay there yourselves, but pursue your enemies and attack their rear guard. Do not allow them to enter their cities, for the Lord your God has delivered them into your hand. Then it happened, while Joshua and the children of Israel made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter till they had finished, that those who escaped entered fortified cities, and all the people returned to the camp, to Joshua at Makeda, in peace. No one moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel." Amen. Father, we thank You for this, Your Word, and I pray that as we dig into it, that You would bless Your people. We love Your feast days, the Sabbaths, in which we can feast upon Your Word, and we pray that Your Spirit would accompany it. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we've come to another one of those passages that Christians sometimes stumble over. People wonder, why in the world does God have so much death and destruction? Why does He consign the wicked to hell? Why doesn't He just save everybody and be done with it? After all, He's omnipotent. Everybody's regenerated by His sovereign grace, right? So why doesn't He just save everyone? But God alone has the prerogative to be God and to do the way He wants. And here's how Romans 9.18 bluntly puts it. Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills, he hardens." So God has chosen not only to manifest his attributes of mercy, grace, love, kindness, etc., but he's also chosen to manifest his attributes of wrath, judgment, and hatred for evil. And some people think, well, that's just not fair. Let me tell you something, not a one of us would be saved if God was fair. We would all deserve hell. But I know that there are many, many people that I've talked to over the years who have thought the concept of hell and God's judgments at all are not fair. In fact, I think it just exposes how exceeding sinfulness sin really is. It blinds us. I have liberal books in my library. Why I've chucked them, I don't know. But I have liberal books in my library that actually insists that the God of Joshua is a different God than the God of the New Testament. And they say that the God of Joshua presents a God of wrath and of judgment, whereas the New Testament presents a God of mercy, love, tenderness, and caring. Now, any evangelical who's worth his salt knows Joshua has already demonstrated just as much mercy and love and grace and tender kindness as the New Testament does. And if you read the book of Revelation, you know that the New Testament presents just as much wrath and judgment as Joshua does. And so the bottom line is I think people tend to make a God in their own image, but He is not the God of the universe with whom you'll have to deal. And I think God deliberately includes passages like this just to test our faith to see if we will really submit to Him as He is. Until we believe in the God of judgments and we receive that deep within our being, we will not appreciate the extent of God's blessings of heaven. And so this is a passage I think helps us to meditate on those two contrasts and in the process to rejoice in our salvation with exceeding great joy. So I'm just going to go through this little section here verse by verse, draw out nine lessons that I think are just as true today as they were back then. And again, as we go through this, remember that Joshua, the Hebrew is Yeshua, is exactly the same name as Jesus in the Greek. So Jesus you could pronounce as Yeshua as well, like many people do. First lesson, God guarantees that though the wicked can run from Yeshua, they cannot successfully hide. Verses 16 through 17. But these five kings had fled and hidden themselves in a cave at Makeda. And it was told Joshua, saying, the five kings have been found hidden in the cave at Makeda. So this was their judgment day, and they were trying, unsuccessfully, to escape from judgment. And I think there are many people who have the illusion they're never going to face judgment from a god. But they will, judgments in history, judgments in eternity. There are currently politicians who are engaged in high crimes, as far as I'm concerned, and they've done that for quite some time. And God knows how to expose them to the world, and He is indeed exposing at least some of them. But I praise God that he not only is reserving judgment for the final day of history, there are judgments that he brings into history as well. Moses warned Israel in Numbers 32, be sure your sin will find you out. He's basically saying your sins will eventually get exposed. And I want to deal with a psychological dread that some people have of judgment. Bible says that judgment was imminent, Okay, when it's imminent, people dread it. When it's a long ways off, they forget about it. They try to put it out of their minds. But the first sub-point in your outline says, the five kings went from confidence, verse 4, to fear, verse 16. And the second sub-point says, in contrast, these Israelites were able to be bold even in the face of God's judgments, verse 11. I just want to take both of those points at the same time. In verse 11, the Israelite soldiers were seeing these large hailstones, or more probably it was meteorites based on the word rock. It's not the normal word for hailstones. They're flying past their heads, killing people left and right. And it's something that was, we saw killing tens of thousands of Amorites, and yet it did not hit one single Israelite soldier. These were kind of guided missiles, guided by angels probably. And it was a miracle. But at the time that these hailstones were falling, I'm not sure, based on the information that we have, that the Israelites knew whether or not one of those hailstones would hit them. You know, Israelites had died in previous battles. They would die in future battles. So what gave them boldness when there's these meteorites that are flying past their heads? What gave them boldness even though they were really outnumbered by the enemy? You could say it was a confidence that God was fighting on their behalf, but I think there's more to it than that. God has determined the exact time when each one of us will die. Scripture says that. You cannot die one second sooner than it's God's will. No matter how much medicine, surgeries, other things are done, you cannot die one second earlier than it's God's time for you to die. And death is not something that we need to fear anyway, because for a believer, it ushers us into the glories of heaven. So I think it was this boldness, this ability to die well, that made the Calvinistic armies of Europe fearless when they were marching into battle, singing the war songs on their lips. It was because they were able to face death with confidence that whether we live or die, we're in God's hands. And unbelievers can have confidence as well when things are going their way. There was a deep degree of confidence that these kings had in verse 4 when they summoned all the rest of the coalition to their battle, but it quickly turned to terror as they saw God's judgments taking out their armies with hailstones. So rather than courageously fighting with their armies, all five kings tried to rescue themselves from the hail by hiding in the caves. You know, they weren't thinking of the others. They didn't invite any other soldiers in there with them. They were just thinking of preserving their own lives, their own skin. And in part, it may have been because they had no certain knowledge of what would happen to them should they die. And so here's my question for you. Do you have the confidence of these Israelites? Are you confident that your life is hidden with Christ in God? Are you confident that it is secure? Do you know with a certainty that if you were to die today that you would go to heaven? If not, I would encourage you to talk to Michael or Gary or myself. because you can have that confidence. Or are you like these kings who did not have anything worth dying for? It's really only our security in the Lord that enables us to do that. Now there's another contrast that we see here. If you take a look at verse 18. So Joshua said, roll large stones against the mouth of the cave and set men by it to guard them. So Yeshua, the son of Nun, he had other things he was going to engage in for a while. He was not going to deal with them right away. He had a purpose for keeping them alive for a little bit. They were being reserved unto judgment. If you look at verse 20, you will see there are other Israelites being reserved, not Israelites, Canaanites being reserved unto judgment because they escaped into their cities. And what happened to those cities later on in the book of Joshua, they're all destroyed. So these people had a slight reprieve, but they were simply being reserved by God unto a later judgment. Christians sometimes struggle with why it is that God allows Hitlers to remain in power for so long, or Eritrea, you know, we just heard about, or Sudan, other places where there's so much killing and imprisonment and torture of believers. Why does God allow that? But Christ assures us all such people will be judged. 2 Peter 2.9 says, the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment, so even now, They are undergoing some punishment in history, but it says, reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment. He knows how to reserve them. And we can have the confidence that the greater Yeshua has his reasons for reserving his enemies rather than instantly judging them. Now the flip side of the coin is God knows how to preserve the righteous for dominion. Not only are the ungodly reserved for judgment, but the righteous are preserved for God's purposes in history, and that's found in verse 21. It says, and all the people returned to the camp to Joshua and Makeda in peace. So they all returned to Yeshua, just as all Christ's sheep are going to return to the greater Yeshua. The Lord not only knows how to reserve the ungodly, he knows how to preserve the righteous. We call this the preservation of the saints. It's God's preserving of us that enables us to persevere. But I think this idea of preservation is a remarkable idea. In history, as I've already mentioned, you are invincible until it's God's time for you to die. And as to salvation, no one can pluck you out of the Father's hands. Jesus said, this is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. So basically the bottom line is Christ is not going to lose even one of his elect. They're all going to make it to heaven. And so it's a second reason why the righteous should take courage, or as John said earlier, be of good cheer, right? But let's move on to verse 19. And do not stay there yourselves, but pursue your enemies and attack their rear ranks. Do not allow them to enter their cities, for the Lord your God has delivered them into your hand." Do not stay there yourselves. What Joshua was telling the Israelites is that they should not settle for partial victories. They must not stop the battle simply because they've captured the kings. They've got to press the advantage. And the temptation for lazy humans is to be happy with a success we've already had and not move on. They had the king's trap. They had deprived the enemy of its power. What more could they want? And I tell you, that's the attitude of so many when it comes to their battle against fleshly desires. They may be motivated to fight real hard when there's a very ugly, socially unacceptable sin that they're trying to overcome. But once they're done with that, they're satisfied. They don't keep fighting against the enemy, their flesh. They give up on their disciplines at sanctification. And the reason is because there's nothing more pressing. The big enemy is temporarily down. It's on the run. The pressure's off. And they want relief from the responsibilities to conquer their sin nature. But just like Joshua, God calls us to press the advantage that we have gained to make even further strides in our sanctification. There's really no vacation from our warfare with our flesh, no vacation. What is your attitude to your war against the flesh? Are you satisfied when you get issues to a place where others respect you, or is God's call of sanctification a lot stronger in your ears? Okay, if your standard of sanctification is, hey, others think I'm pretty good, you've got a social holiness, you've got an outward holiness, but it's not the kind of holiness that God's calling us to. So that's one contrast, the contrast between those who settle for partial victories, those who keep pressing toward the mark of the upward call that we have in Christ Jesus. Actually, we could apply this to the Great Commission or anything else that Christ has called us to do. We shouldn't be satisfied, you know, with a few. Christ has called us to convert the entire world, to disciple all nations. Now, the next point says, Christ will ensure that there will always be sufficient enemies left, that we never grow soft. You wonder why the Lord sometimes allows us to continue to receive opposition. This point may explain it. Verse 20 says, Then it happened, while Joshua and the children of Israel made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter till they had finished, that those who escaped entered fortified cities. Why did God allow some to escape? I want you to turn to Judges chapter 2, and it may give you a partial answer to this question. God allowed full occupation of the land at this point, but he made sure there would always be some enemy to challenge Israel. Judges 2, let's begin reading at verse 20. Then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he said, because this nation has transgressed my covenant, which I commanded their fathers and has not heeded my voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, so that through them I may test Israel whether they will keep the ways of the Lord to walk in them as their fathers kept them or not. Therefore the Lord left those nations without driving them out immediately, nor did he deliver them into the hand of Joshua. Now these are the nations which the Lord left. Here's the key phrase, that he might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan. This was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war, at least those who had not formerly known it. Namely, five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who dwell on Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal Hermon to the entrance of Hamath, and they were left that he might test Israel by them to know whether they would obey the commandments of the Lord which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. Thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And they took their daughters to be their wives and gave their daughters to their sons, and they served their gods." So until the time of the Judge Othniel, they failed that test. But several times in this section, God gives his reasons for leaving some enemies. It was to test them, whether they would really depend upon Him and serve Him when the pressure was off. And then second, to teach Israel godly principles of warfare. And then third, to give Israel opportunity to show the grace of perseverance even when times were good. And I tell you, that's actually the hardest test. Persevering even when times are good, I think that's when you tend to let your guard down. When was it that David fell into sin with Bathsheba? It was after a time that things had been so good that he relaxed, he stopped fighting, he was lazy, he let down his guard. And that happens to many Christians today. The moment some besetting sin is holed up in a cave, where it's no longer doing any damage, these Christians stop beginning their day with intense prayer. They stop memorizing scripture. They stop meditation. They stop spiritual warfare. And basically, they end up, not surprisingly, with a relapse into sin, or sometimes a new error. So it's not enough to put off sins. We need to put on the opposite. J. Adams talks about this as being dehabituation. You're getting rid of old habits, and then you're re-habituating with new habits. You have to develop these new habits of righteousness till they're as easy to do as the old sins were. Well, back to Joshua 10. Because the passages in Judges I think the only reason it's discouraging is because the people lacked obedience. The presence of enemies should not be discouraging to us at all. When we're walking rightly with God, God will bring us through. And so, let's take a look at verse 21. Now the word for peace is shalom, and it speaks not just of an absence of conflict but also of wholeness and prosperity. So at this point, The Canaanites were completely held in check. They were not sharpening their spears. And the text indicates they were not sharpening their tongues against them either. That's the literal rendering of the Hebrew. No one sharpened his tongue against any of the children of Israel. And to me, that's encouraging. God does not leave enemies in the land to defeat us. He leaves enemies in the land to give us something to successfully fight against in the future. But we do need to fight against them. Each victory God gives you over your flesh is designed to give you more confidence in new battles. It's designed also to really demoralize the world of flesh and the devil. One of the things that I found when I was working in the crusty environment of the lumber mill and a later job as well. Both of them were union jobs, but the people were constantly trying to get me to compromise. As soon as they found out that I was a Christian, which was pretty soon, it seemed like they did everything they could possibly do to try to get me to sin. Why, I have no idea. But they would flash pornography at me, use dirty language around me, put blasphemy up on my locker. They would try to get me angry. And as I consistently, you know, responded to them with gracious use of Scriptures, eventually, some of them eventually began defending me against the other people. And a lot of them stopped sharpening their tongues against me. I think mainly because it backfired against them, made them look bad. But let's apply this to our personal fight against sin. Initially, it may seem like a life and death struggle as you're struggling against some besetting sin. And as you begin the battle against the flesh, you find that the flesh fights back with all of its might. It's like a lion that's roaring. But over time, as you persevere, it goes from roaring to whimpering to whispering. And eventually, it's very easy to overcome it. And so we find ourselves winning those battles in seconds rather than weeks. Temptations are still there, but we're much quicker in dealing with them. So God gives us peace. He puts the fleshly impulses to check. And to me, that's encouraging. Now, the warning that Judges gives us is if we give up the battle, if we're content with past victories, well, the flesh is going to resurrect itself, and we're going to start losing battles again. So never feed your enemy the flesh. Never give it any of its desires. The more you feed desire, the more it grows into a powerful enemy. Now we have further encouragement in verses 22 through 24. Not only is there a weakening of the enemy and its resistance, but we have God's renewed promise of total victory and dominion. Let's read verses 22 through 24. Then Joshua said, open the mouth of the cave and bring out those five kings to me from the cave. And they did so, and brought out those five kings to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Egalon. So it was when they brought out those kings to Joshua that Joshua called for all the men of Israel and said to the captains of the men of war who went with him, come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they drew near and put their feet on their necks. So it's Joshua, or Yeshua, who bids them put their feet on the necks of their enemies, and it was a sign of dominion and conquest. And Hebrews says that this is a symbol of the later Yeshua, Jesus, who Legally has all things placed under his feet, but eventually they're going to be physically placed under his feet as well. Romans 16, 20 says he gives the same privilege to us. It promises the Christians at Rome that they will conquer Satan in that region shortly. It says the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly, and he did. Rome fell to the gospel despite incredible persecution. And the Great Commission is the promise we will share in Christ's dominion over all nations. Now, some people say, OK, that's fine in terms of evangelism, but does this dominion extend to our flesh? And I can assure you it absolutely does, because Romans 6.14 says, sin shall not have dominion over you. So don't let sin put its feet on your neck and say, you're the slave, you can't help it. you need to defeat sin. And verse 18 of that chapter says, having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So you never voluntarily allow sin to put its feet on your neck. You are called to subdue it. Verses 12 through 13 of the same chapter says, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it and its lusts, and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. So just as this Yeshua promised total dominion and told those saints to begin acting upon the dominion given to them, Jesus has promised the same dominion to each of us. And He tells us to act, act on that dominion. Bring those besetting sins out of the cave, give them to Jesus, let Him execute those lusts. And by faith, don't get discouraged. By faith, put your feet on those lusts, on those sins, and say, you're finished. I'm taking away from you all of the years that you have ravaged. I'm taking away all of the broken relationships you have caused. Sin, I'm taking dominion over you. I'm claiming all that you have destroyed. And I'm doing it by the power of King Jesus. So that's what we need to really do. And in order to do that, we've got to be willing to let those sins be exposed. Come out of the cave. for the sunlight to see, confess those sins, and declare war on them. Now there's two more points. Next point's pretty simple. It says, present victories are down payments of continuing victory and of a final victory. Verse 25. Then Joshua said to them, do not be afraid nor be dismayed. Be strong and of good courage, for thus the Lord will do to all your enemies against whom you fight. So present and past victories are not the end, they are down payments or assurances of our continued victory. And they're also down payment of the final and full victory in eternity. The scripture says God will not rest until every enemy submits to Jesus. And I'm looking forward to the time when I'll be in heaven and done, you know, completely done with every vestige of sin. Now let's end with the very odd symbolism in verses 26 through 27. And afterward Joshua struck them and killed them and hanged them on five trees, and they were hanging on the trees until evening. So it was at the time of the going down of the sun that Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees, cast them into the cave where they had been hidden, and laid large stones against the cave's mouth, which remain until this very day." Joshua did that as a symbol of God's curse upon all who resist him. Deuteronomy 21, 23 says, He who is hanged is accursed of God. Galatians 3, 13 says, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So it was a symbol of the horrible terror and cursing that comes on those who are outside of Christ. And this teaches us, I think, an important lesson about God, and that is that God hates sin. God has every right to cut off sinners. Scripture actually speaks a whole lot more about cursing, God's cursing, than it does of His blessing. It speaks more of His holiness than it does of His love. It speaks far more of His justice than it does of His mercy. It actually speaks far more of His wrath than it does of His compassion. So God's curse rests upon all who are not believers. And if you die without ever having submitted your neck under the feet of King Jesus, Jesus, guaranteed, will curse you for all of eternity in hell. Gibeonites, they were the enemy, yet they submitted themselves to King Jesus, and now they're fighting side by side with Israel, okay, even though they were just as guilty as these other Canaanites were. But the curse can only be taken away in Jesus. Matthew says, of all others, this is Jesus speaking in Matthew 25, 42, Then he will also say to those on the left hand, depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Galatians 3.10 says, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. So God's cursing is a real thing. We know that the Israelites were sinners as well, so why were they not cursed? Well, it's because chapter 8 tells us they, by faith, offered these sacrifices that symbolized Jesus dying in their place. And that's the only way it can be. If Jesus is not your substitute, he receives the curse in our place, then you have to receive the curse yourself. And unlike some human courts, double jeopardy is not allowed in God's courtroom. as one hymn words it, Jesus bore the price that law could never demand twice. So all for whom Christ died will be saved or you have double jeopardy. Okay, you've got Jesus being punished for them, you've got the person being punished, that's double jeopardy. Galatians 3.13 says, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So he was cursed on that tree till sundown, so that you would never have to face the wrath of God if you put your faith in him. If you have trusted Jesus, then realize it's not just Jesus that was nailed to the cross. Your flesh was also nailed to the cross legally. Romans 6 says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. So your fleshly impulses, which used to be kings in your life, they were crucified with Christ. They're buried in the tomb. They're sealed up. And so the curse picture here not only instills fear into the hearts of rebels, it's a comfort to those who believe. Cursing is at the very heart of what the gospel is all about. If you deny the curse, then you deny the need for the gospel. If you deny the curse, then you blaspheme the cross. For Christ to climb the cross when there was no need for a curse is really to trivialize the crucifixion. And to continue sinning when Christ bore the curse because of those sins is to trivialize your sin. As Hebrews says, it's to trample underfoot the blood of Christ once again. So the curse needs to be understood if we really are to appreciate fully the beauty of our salvation. So let's rejoice that God's curse was compatible with his love for his elect. Father, we thank you that Jesus bore the curse in our place. We thank you that all who cast their sins upon Jesus can have the comfort, the joy, the assurance of fellowship with you, all of the blessings that flow from your throne. I pray that we would never diminish the idea of the curse, but having understood how extensive the curse really is, that we would appreciate the incredible lengths that you went to to save us. We bless you, in Jesus' name, amen.