Well, we're going to finish off chapter 11 today. It's a very small slice of bread, but it's pretty dense, dense in meaning. It's Joshua 11, 21 through 23. And at that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the mountains, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel. Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel. They remained only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod. So Joshua took the whole land according to all that the Lord had said to Moses, and Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Then the land rested from war. Amen. Father, I thank you for this portion of your Word, and I pray that as we dig into it, that your Holy Spirit would quicken the Word to our hearts and enable us to grow in you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now before we dig into the passage, I want to spend some time looking at the identity of these anakim. And we're actually going to spend quite a bit of time on this introduction. It's uncharacteristic of me to spend so much time on an introduction, but I think it is very, very important. There are some very odd theories about the anakim out there, and I want to clearly distinguish my own views from those other theories. And what I'm going to do is just simply read some scriptures and then just draw some logical conclusions from them. And those of you who are kids, you know, I think if you've read and you enjoy giants, you're going to be very interested in some of the information about the giants in the Bible. Deuteronomy 2, verses 10 through 11 says, the emim had dwelt there in times past, a people as great and numerous and tall as the anarchy. They were also regarded as giants, like the Anakim, but the Moabites called them Emi. Now we can derive five facts about the Anakim from just that verse there. First, the Anakim were a people group. The Hebrew word is Am, and it's one of several proofs that these were not aliens from another planet. They were not a half-angel, half-humans. We'll deal with that half-human theory in a bit, but it's clear that this verse calls them a people group. Second, they were considered by others to be giants. And that doesn't tell us a whole lot, but it does mean these people were a whole lot bigger than even the biggest of the Hebrews or the Moabites or the Ammonites. Third, it indicates that these giants were not disproportionately tall. In other words, tall and skinny, like some of the modern tall people are. No, they were both great, in other words, massive, and they were tall. In other words, they were large overall, okay? Fourth, it says that they were numerous. Well, this implies that this was not just a one-off weird exception of a big person. No, this was common amongst them. There have been actually some tall people, like Robert Wadlow, who grew to be almost nine feet tall. But man, he had to walk around on crutches. It was a growth hormone issue. It was a weird anomaly, and he was not healthy at all. This was not like that. The Bible presents several people groups where everyone is labeled a giant. There's the Anakim, Emim, Zuzim, Rephaim, the Amorites, the Ahimon tribe, the Sheshai tribe, and the Talmai tribe. And speaking of tribes, this verse indicates that both the Emim and the Anakim pulled out of and originated from the Raphaim tribe. In other words, they were related people groups. But the key thing is that they were numerous. They were numerous. There are 80 references in the Bible to the Amorites, and we'll shortly see that the Bible itself describes the Amorites as being as tall as cedars, as strong as oaks. And so don't think of one or two genetic oddities within a people group. These tribes seem to have giantism as the genetic norm. Fifth, there were other people groups that had died off who were similar but were unrelated. And it's another hint against the half-angel, half-human theory, different groups of unrelated giants. Now, I'm not going to read all of Numbers 13, but that chapter gives several additional clues. For example, eight verses in Numbers 13 identify the Anakim as the descendants of Anak. So not aliens from another planet. We know who their descendant was. In fact, in Joshua 21, 11, it tells us who the father of Anak was. It was Arba. He too was a giant. So it speaks of normal human generations. Next, it identifies the Anakim as being very strong or powerful, another indicator that it wasn't just a height issue. I've already mentioned that there have been a number of people in the 8-foot, 9-foot range over the last 100 years, almost all of them very sickly. Not all, but almost all of them very sickly. These were muscle-bound, tough dudes who could lift enormous weights. And by the way, over the past 1,000 years, there have been people who were considered to be giants who were able to lift a lot more than the modern Olympic. weightlifters, and that's saying a lot. Like Chuck Vogelpoel, he did a squat lift of 1,140 pounds. So in the past thousand years there have been some pretty significant huge people. Now it's true that Goliath is not called a giant. And it's true that there were giants bigger than Goliath was. But I think if we analyze him, we've got a lot more data on Goliath, we can learn a lot about these giants. Goliath was nine feet, nine inches tall, and he had such massive hands that the spear that he carried had a girth that was the size of a weaver's shuttle. The point on the end was 15.1 pounds. That's about the weight of a shot put. Chop puts, I think, 16 pounds, something like that. His scale armor weighed 126 pounds. Imagine carrying around 126 pounds of armor on you. I put a picture from the Creation Museum of what Goliath's spear probably looked like into your outlines. That would not be a very useful spear for the average person. William Macdonald says the heavy weapons were no problem for Goliath since he himself must have weighed somewhere between 600 and 750 pounds, possibly more, depending on his build. This gave him many times the strength of a normal man. Now, since Goliath was not called a giant, he was only called a Philistine champion, it's not surprising to find that at least some of the Anakim that are described are described as being much bigger than Goliath, his nine foot nine inches. And other tribal giants, that the Anakim are compared to, like the Amorites, for example, had at least some people who were much bigger, even in the biggest Anakim that we have a record of. For example, Amos 2, verse 9, describes the Amorites this way. God said, yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was as strong as the oaks. Now, is that poetic hyperbole? Probably, you know. But even if it's hyperbole, to compare their heights to cedars, their strengths to oak trees, shows that these were well-proportioned, powerful, incredibly tall giants. The next hint is given in verse 33 of Numbers 13, which calls them Nephilim. Now, the New King James translates that as giants, and I think appropriately does, but people say, okay, Nephilim. This is actually a huge blow to the Nephilim theory of Genesis 6 being the half-human, half-angel people. Let me go ahead and explain that theory briefly. Some claim that the word for giants means fallen ones, and based on interpreting the sons of God in Genesis 6-4 as being the good but as yet unfallen angels, they have come up with a bizarre theory that says that there was a second fall of angels. The first one obviously happened before Adam. because Satan tempted Adam, right? He was already fallen. And Revelation says that he took a third of the angels with him in his fall, in his rebellion. But on this theory, much later in history, there was a second group of good angels who lusted after human women, had sexual relations with them, and that those women bore these half-human warriors, and as a result of this sin, they were cast out of heaven into the lowest part of hell. And they say, this is why 1 Corinthians says that women should be covered because you might make angels lust after you. I think it's a ridiculous theory. But anyway, let me outline just four of about a dozen problems with this theory, just four. There's a lot more problems. And since all Anakim are called Nephilim, these are additional clues in what Anakim are like. And I'm just going through this just to show what incredibly formidable foes these giants were. Much bigger than Andre the Giant. He's not a giant, he's puny. Andre the Giant is small compared to the giants of the Bible. First, Genesis 6 verse 4 calls these pre-flood Nephilim, or giants, men. The Hebrew word is ish, not half men, they were men. Second, the fall of angels happened before Adam fell. On their theory, there was a second fall of good angels who produced the Nephilim in Genesis 6, and then there was another fall of angels producing Nephilim after the flood. Why is that necessary? Well, it's just simple logic. All flesh was wiped out in the flood, right? And so all Nephilim would have been wiped out in the flood, and yet the Anakim are called Nephilim. And so some of these people say, well, there must have been another group of angels who did exactly the same thing. If Nephilim are half angel, then you would have to have a second unrecorded incident after the flood, that produced such giants and a second group of angels who needed to be cast down into the lowest parts of hell. That's all foreign to the Bible. It's pure speculative theory. Jesus said angels neither marry nor are given in marriage. Third, Ancient Jews interpreted the word Nephilim as simply meaning giants. That's the way they translate it in the Septuagint. That's the way the New King James translates it. It does not mean fallen ones. It just means giants. They're not demi-gods. But there's a fourth reason why Anakim were simply humans. In addition to Genesis 6-4 calling the Nephilim Ish, or men, Deuteronomy calling them Am, or a people group, Joshua 14, 15 calls Arba, quote, the greatest man among the Anakim. And the word for man there is Adam, meaning he's related to Adam. He identified with Adam. And six-day creationism has shown that all the genetic code that can produce pygmyism all the way up to 18 feet tall people was in Adam. You don't have to come up with any bizarre theories to account for these huge, huge humans. So how tall were the Anakim? We only have hints, but Deuteronomy 3 and Amos give us two more clues. Deuteronomy 3.11 says that the bed frame of Og king of Bashan was nine cubits long by four cubits wide, according to the standard cubit. Well, we know exactly how big the standard cubit was, so that makes the bed 13 feet, six inches tall, six feet wide. In other words, It's equivalent to two king-sized beds stacked end to end, just to give you a little bit of a picture on that. And he may very well have been between 13, 13 and a half feet tall. Answers in Genesis says, to put this into perspective, if stood up on end, the height of this bed would have been exactly twice as tall as a person who was six foot nine inches tall. So about twice as tall as the tallest person in this room. That's quite something, huh? Now I've already read from Amos 2 that the Amorites were as tall as cedars, as strong as oaks, and while that is not precise, it definitely correlates with the statement of the spies in Numbers 31, 40 years before. They were scared to death to go into the land of Canaan. And they said this, in it are men, again that's ish, in it are men, humans, of great size, And we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight. So to be a grasshopper in comparison to the giants meant they were huge, absolutely huge. Now it's true that at least some of the so-called giant skeletons that you see on the web are probably hoaxes. And though it's true that we have so far no way of verifying the multitude of ancient testimonies to giants, and there is a multitude of testimonies that claim to be history, that claim to have seen these giants, they're all over the world. You see them in China, you see them everywhere. These reports give eyewitness descriptions of humans who are 18 feet and taller. Now, some of them I'm skeptical of myself, but who knows? Given Amos 2's description, who knows? Maybe they're right. But as Answers in Genesis points out, every other species has had a wide range of sizes from small to giant. For example, the uncontested evidence that everybody agrees to in the fossil record shows spiders with a 12-inch foot span. Centipedes, 13 inches long. Actually, since then, I wrote that down. I found bigger ones. Dragonflies with a two and a half foot wingspan. Man, how do you like to have one of those land on you? That would be freaky. We had one and Kathy was freaked out. It was only this long on our door this week. They show pictures of the remains and the record of giant rats with an estimated weight of 750 pounds. And since I wrote this, I've discovered, and actually I put into your outline here, rats that were even bigger than that. Beavers, seven and a half feet long. Scorpions, eight feet long. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I would not want to meet up with a scorpion, eight feet long. I mean, talk about giantism within the genetic code. That's just absolutely amazing. And they give, on creation, enters in Genesis, they give a much longer list of other giant species among birds, insects, reptiles, fish, and other species. So what's my point? Well, my point is, with giantism being in virtually every other species, there is absolutely no logical reason why ancient history should be dismissed out of hand simply because we don't see them today. We don't see those giants that they know everybody admits are in the other species. And we've got reports of giants 10 feet tall, 13 feet tall, 18 feet tall, and longer. Dr. Tim Chaffrey of Answers in Genesis is 6 foot 9 inches tall. And he guesstimates King Og's height at 13 and 1⁄2 feet, which is exactly double his height. And then he goes on to estimate the weight. This is very interesting. He says, this means that along with my height, both my width and depth would double. So we would need to multiply my weight, about 250 pounds, by a factor of eight. So a person of my proportions at 13 foot 6 inches would weigh 2,000 pounds. 2,000 pounds? Are you getting a good picture of how intimidating these giants really were? Okay, he does show that the square cube law is not 100% precise, but it's made him, when you analyze bones and all of those things, it's made him skeptical that the reports are true of giants being 20, 30, and more feet, but then he says, who knows? Maybe it is possible. Maybe their bones were massive enough, like an elephant's bones, that it could be possible. Now, we're just gonna stick with the biblical data. Imagine facing, and this is all provable from the Bible, okay? Imagine facing a seasoned warrior who was twice as tall, much broader than the tallest person in this room, weighing 2,000 pounds, and then you see a whole army of them where the smallest of them were 750 pounds, ranging up to 2,500 pounds. It would be very intimidating. By the way, they're Egyptian papyri from exactly the same period. They give the same kind of measurements and the same weights, all of this kind of stuff. So they were facing giants that seemed absolutely impossible to conquer, and yet they did it. Well, this morning I want us to learn how to take on our own metaphorical giants by looking at how Joshua took on his literal giants. John Bunyan, by the way, did the same thing. Just look at all the giants that he has metaphorical in his Pilgrim's Progress. Great story if you've never read it. Okay, let's dig into the text. Verse 21 says, And at that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the mountains, from Hebron, from Dabir, from Anab, from all the mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel. Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. Now the first thing that I notice in this verse is that Joshua faced his giants and the great men and women down through history have always been willing to face their own giants. And you'd be amazed at how frequently people have had to face absolutely impossible odds. In 1962, Victor and Mildred Goertzel published a study of 413 what they considered to be the most famous and exceptionally gifted people down through history, and the common thread that ran through at least 392 of those 413 people was that they had to overcome almost impossible difficulties. And I'll read you someone else's description. I thought he summarized it nice. Just a handful of this massive, massive writing that they went through. Thomas Edison was deaf. Abraham Lincoln was born to illiterate parents and faced many other impossible hurdles in his life. Lord Byron had a club foot. Robert Louis Stevenson had tuberculosis. Alexander Pope was a hunchback. Admiral Nelson had only one eye. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Louis Pasteur was so nearsighted that he had a difficult time finding his way in his laboratory without glasses. There was Helen Keller who could not hear or see, but who graduated with honors from a famous college. Walt Davis was totally paralyzed by polio when he was nine years old, but he did not give up. He became the Olympic high jump champion in 1952. Shelly Mann was paralyzed by polio when she was five years old, but she would not give up. She eventually climbed eight claimed eight different swimming records for the U.S. and won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. In 1938, Karolyi Takács, a member of Hungary's world champion pistol shooting team and sergeant in the army, lost his right hand when a grenade he was holding exploded. Now you'd think that would be the end of his shooting, at least his competition shooting. But it says, Cox did not give up. He learned to shoot left-handed and won gold medals in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. Lou Gehrig was such a clumsy ball player that the boys in his neighborhood would not let him play on their team. But he was committed. He did not give up. Eventually, his name was entered into baseball's hall of fame. And you read it, it's story after story after story like that. So what are the giants in your life that are hindering you from fulfilling God's calling on your life? You need to identify those giants. For some people, it is depression. Depression is a giant that has held many a person in America captive. For some, it is bitterness or self-pity or doubt. For some, it is indifference or apathy. For some, it is fear. For others, it's lack of faith. Whatever your giant, you need to take it on. You need to refuse to be dominated by it. Declare a holy war against it. And again, John Bunyan's book, Pilgrim's Progress, I think has some wonderful lessons on those metaphorical giants. But when you look at how the left has captured America, that too seems like an impossible arena to capture. But hey, 100 years ago, the leftists probably thought America was an impossible thing to capture, right? And they did it. I think we're too easily intimidated by the giants that we face. If the whole church used the whole armor of God and acted in faith, This nation could be turned into a Christian nation with God's blessing. I have no doubt about that. And according to Hebrews 4, we wouldn't need a sword, not a physical sword. All we'd need is the sword of the gospel, the word of God to do it. Well, let's break this verse down and look at how Joshua faced his giants. First, Joshua was proactive, not reactive. Verse 21 begins, and at that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the mountains. Now the mountains added a dimension of disadvantage to Joshua because they're fighting uphill against giants, but he brought the battle to them. He's not waiting for them and reacting to them bringing the battle to him. And this is a critical first step for us. Too many people hope help will somehow come somewhere else, okay? They're not proactive. And to be proactive, you've got to really believe that you're going to be able to do what God commands you to do. And this is where the promises that we've looked at in previous sermons come in. We need to know God's promises, memorize them, pray them, claim them, and then take action, believing God will come through. And what is true of our personal battles is certainly true of taking the culture as a whole. We're never going to successfully take our culture if we sit in our pews and do nothing to penetrate culture. We've got to be more proactive. Michael Elliott is training anyone who wants to do street evangelism and influence out there on the streets. And there's a couple of you who have taken him up on that. I can understand your fear of this, but you'll get over it very quickly as he takes you. There's really nothing to be afraid of. I sometimes jokingly call it kamikaze evangelism. It's not. You're not going to die, really. But you can take him up on that. There's other ways to be proactive. You can contact your county commissioners about some of the ridiculous things that they are passing. And, you know, it's actually quite easy to contact county and state and city officials because they now give you out emails where you can send in your comments on the agenda items, or you can write letters, or you can make a phone call. You don't even have to show up at the meeting. But, you know, all of you have answers. You have answers that you could provide. We just need to speak those out. Jared Ridge is involving people in Abolish Abortion Now in Nebraska. Now, some of you took advantage of the worldview discussion group, and you're using those principles. But the point is, a miracle will never be taken if God's people do not become proactive. Now, a lot of you are proactive. I'm not preaching at you. I'm just saying that the whole church needs to be proactive. Okay, next, Joshua was systematic in his taking down the giants. You can't fight every battle at the same time, and the land was not taken overnight. Now, if you're a new believer, you're going to have a whole bunch of issues you're going to have to work on. And it's good to be strategic at which things you're taking on. You take on the most important issues in your life, and you start working down to the less critical areas. Last week, we saw that it took seven years of constant effort to conquer the portion of the land that Moses had said that generation I would occupy. And by the way, it was not the whole of Israel. But Joshua was systematic about the way he took the war to city after city. Verse 21 goes on to say, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, from all the mountains of Judah, from all the mountains of Israel. One after another, he took them on. Now chapter 14 will tell how Caleb took Hebron. Chapter 15 will tell how Othniel took Debir. Okay, it's just going to be written. This is just a summary statement. When you are attacking your giants, whether those are depression, bitterness, fear, whatever, you have got to be systematic in your spiritual warfare. Leave no stone unturned. Okay? Hit your giants from every angle. Don't be satisfied if they run for a while and leave you alone. No, no, no. Conquer them. Ask others for biblical homework that's helped them to conquer the similar giant that they have faced, and you start implementing that homework yourself. Wake up every morning claiming God's promises. The moment that sinful thought comes into your head, reject it in the name of the Lord and by His power. Battle it with the confidence that you can win. So be systematic in your warfare. And I believe the church in America needs to be more united and systematic in taking on the strongholds of this country. And by the way, I am thankful that that is beginning to happen, especially in the legal sphere. Let me read you some of the organizations that are uniting Christians in a way and taking strategic battles to the enemy. Alliance Defending Freedom, American Center for Law and Justice, Center for Law and Religious Freedom, Liberty Council, Liberty Institute, National Legal Foundation, Pacific Justice Institute, and there's actually others. What they've done is they've carved out niches that they feel they've got the resources to be able to attack, and they are taking strategic battles that might win a precedent in the whole nation. We need to be in prayer for these. We need to support them. Now, sadly, the church, for the most part, has the bad theology, and they've got the lack of faith that the previous generation of Jews had, but it didn't matter. Minorities can win amazing battles. We're gonna be seeing in chapters 14 and 15, tiny groups doing amazing things. And in the book of Judges, you sometimes had these small groups, nobody else wanted the battle, because they're all intimidated by the giants. You have these small groups that go out and they win a terrific battle and everybody's upset, but they wanna get on board, right? And that can happen today as well. So even as a local church, we can be strategic and systematic on which high places we will take on. And we can't take them all on. We need to be systematic and strategic. Next, refuse to make a peace treaty with your giants. Verse 21 goes on to say, Joshua utterly destroyed them. Now, it's much easier to just live with them and put up with them than to destroy them. And some people, by the way, justify this with their theology, like Daryl Hart, who wrote a book called A Secular Faith, which keeps Christianity out of the public sphere, out of politics. What an oxymoron. A secular faith? Those two words do not go together. But anyway, it's no wonder to me that the people who advocate this kind of a faith, most areas of life are secular for them. They don't apply the Bible to them. But even those who don't have a compromised theology like that are failing to keep the antithesis. And that's a problem because God has not, let me repeat this, God has not called us to win conservative battles in America. He has called us to bring all things in subjection to King Jesus. He is the one that we serve, not conservative politics. So refuse to make a peace treaty with the enemies out there and refuse to make a peace treaty with your own flesh. When things go well for a day or two, it's very easy to get lazy with your devotions, your memory work, your prayer, your spiritual disciplines. But when you start slacking off, the enemy's always around. He knows when to take advantage of you, and he will. So don't make a peace treaty. Don't give in to sin. And deal even with the environment in which your giants thrive. Verse 21 says that Joshua also destroyed their cities. Now this makes sense because none of the houses or furniture or tools that they had would fit the Israelites. The Israelites couldn't use tables and chairs and toilets that were designed for 2,000 pounds, 13 and a half feet or taller people. I mean, it just wouldn't work, right? And so they destroyed it. But it also made sense to destroy because they didn't want to leave giant cities intact that other giants could flee to and refortify. So Joshua destroyed the environment in which giants could be safe. And on every level of America, we need to seek to remove what feeds and houses and protects the enemy. Let's just take one example. Taxes. And people say, well, that's an impossible enemy. You can't fight taxes. Well, don't be so sure. Don't be so sure. This is the one thing I think everybody in America can agree on, that they hate taxes. Well, take advantage of that hatred of taxes and start convincing them, and especially Christians, convince them that the Bible condemns the kinds of taxes that are found on every level of American society. It didn't used to be, but it has been. And if you have a hard time convincing them, hand them Dr. Fugate's book, Toward a Theology of Taxation. I've given a picture of it in your outline there. If Christians were convinced of that, they started only voting for people who believed in biblical taxation. That all by itself would start drying up all of the feed for Leviathan. Okay, you would dry up the revenue. Now a more difficult metaphorical city to take down is the government grants that seem to be constantly being given out on a regular basis. I was so disgusted looking this past week at the worthless grants that were being given by our county to worthless organizations. Just absolutely astounding. And it actually bothers me worse that churches are taking grants from their counties and their states and various parts of America, which means that they would be hypocritical to oppose grants to other organizations. Now, when governments are running out of money, we need to go to them and say, you know what? We don't want any more of your money. We want you to cut off all grants, all welfare, all money that you're giving to the publics. We can't afford it. And besides, the Bible calls it theft. And you can give a couple verses to prove it. Another metaphorical city that our modern giants thrive on. By the way, even if I mention something like that, some of you are probably thinking, yeah, right, they're not going to believe me if I give a scripture. Who cares? God accompanies his word with his power. And that word might get into some person's heart on that city council and make a huge difference. Another metaphorical city that our modern giants thrive on and are protected by is the federal agencies. We should encourage people to destroy Those agencies since they mainly support the enemy anyway now ronald reagan. He tried to shut them down and he was not successful But more and more people are waking up to the fact that these are tyrannical organization. I mean i'm talking pagans even They're they're they're waking up to the fact These are bad bad organizations that are completely out of hand. They're not accountable to any of the three branches of government. They're just doing their own thing. And we can point out, answer a man according to his folly. You can say, Hey, you believe in the constitution? Well, not, I guess you couldn't say that. Uh, you say, well, it's, it's unconstitutional. Article one, section one makes most of these agencies completely illegal. You need to shut these down, but even better point out how it violates biblical justice. That's far more important. If you could close some of the agencies, which even pagans are beginning to be in favor of, you would cut off the environment in which much evil is promoted, funded, and protected. Or if the federal giant cities look too big, well, just start small. Work on county politics. Convince the county sheriff of the old-fashioned doctrine of interposition. And I would say we need to do the same thing with our internal personal giants. If you tend to gossip when you're around certain people, find new friends. Or if you're not willing to find new friends, always bring a friend who's got the guts to confront gossip head on when you're talking with that person. If you tend to get depressed in certain areas, go to a place that's upbeat, play music. I mean, I think it is legit to change our environment if our environment is conducive to sin and try to avoid that. For example, if you are tempted by pornography, well, put covenant eyes on your phone and on your computer and get some friends who are just ruthless in their accountability to you And we'll hold you truly accountable, not saying, oh, well, everybody does. No, no, holding you accountable. So, hey, I've got it on my computer. It's not even, I don't find tempting, but I do it for testimony's sake. I think it's worthwhile. But anyway, those are the sorts of things that fighting against cities could involve, metaphorically. It's what the giants inhabit. But verse 22 reminds us of something else that is important. So as none of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel, they remained only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod. And so Israel had victory in the space that God had allotted for them, but there were giants in other areas that future generations would have to take on. And in our American culture wars, it is extremely unlikely that the church of our generation is going to win all of the battles that need to be won. Extremely unlikely. Doesn't matter. work on the part of the wall that you've been stationed at, work on the part of the battlefield that you've been stationed on, and pass on literature for other generations. Speaking of books, I think it is important for each generation to learn self-counseling. It would be great, you know, in Romans, I think it was, Romans 14 maybe, it says that all of the people in that church at Rome were competent to counsel. Wouldn't that be astounding if every member of this church was so steeped in the scriptures, they were competent to counsel other people in the church? It's hard, you know, when the funnel's narrow, you only got one or two counselors in the church. But anyway, I've gotten lost, where was I? Books, yes. One of the books I was recommending, you know, dealing with techniques for dealing with you know, things like bitterness, fear, depression, unbelief, sexual temptation, discouragement, whatever. Now you may have licked your own giants, but here's the question I guess I was going to bring. Have you trained your children to lick their giants? And how? Do you have resources that you can pass on to them? I've given And your outline's one possible resource by Broeger, Self-Confrontation. Very practical book that can form a foundation, you know, for helping our children learn the ropes of warfare against our flesh. And by the way, there's great podcasts out there. Lately, I've been listening to CCEF, what does it stand for, Brian? Christian Counseling Education Foundation, or something like that. Fantastic, they're only 20 minutes long, so you don't have to sit through a big, long thing, and it deals with all kinds of practical, like the last one I was dealing with was self-pity. And the one before that, and how our words can very tangibly, like the Bible talks about, tangibly affect even our nervous system. There's so many practical things in the CCEF resource. But God always ensures that we will have times of rest from the battle as well, times we can enjoy the fruits of our hands. So verse 23 says, so Joshua took the whole land according to all that the Lord had said to Moses, and Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Then the land rested from war. Rest is a good thing. And it's not just rest on the Sabbath. The Bible wants us imitating Jesus, who called his disciples, let's get aside by ourselves for a while and rest and be refreshed. We call that a vacation. And I have talked to some hyper-driven people who have actually said, well, I just can't afford to not work some on the Sabbath. I can't afford to take a vacation. Let me tell you something, when you die, this world will keep on ticking. And there's always going to be more work that you could do than needs to be done as far as God is concerned. He commands us to rest. And it's not all going to be done in our generation anyways. Very important. But I think we can safely say that rest should not replace taking dominion. When did they rest and stop fighting? Well, the first clause says it was after they had fulfilled their biblical duty. Let me read that. Verse 23, so Joshua took the whole land, here's the clause, according to all that the Lord had said to Moses. A lot of people say, ha, we find out later that they didn't take the land after all, and they try to bring a contradiction in the text. No, he took the land that Moses had told Joshua to take, and we saw last week that there are plenty of scriptures in Deuteronomy indicating that they were not going to be able to take the whole land. That was not God's purpose. In fact, God's purpose was to make this be drug out for 400 years, which is 40, 10, there's 10 generations. There's a symbolism in that to indicate the long period of ups and downs that the New Testament talks about. So we can't do much about the world as a whole, but we can certainly work on what God has placed in our path. Now the next phrase indicates that rest didn't happen until they provided for the future. Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Okay, and in the future, we're gonna be looking at the importance of land and houses and passing on an inheritance and seeking guidance from God on how we should pass that on. But Joshua was thinking about the future, and I think we should as well. When I write books, I'm not just writing for this generation, I'm writing for future generations. I try to invest my money in ministries that are future-oriented, and the reason for that, I wanna leverage the money that I'm giving to organizations. So be thinking like that. Now, the last phrase indicates that there is a time to rest from war. Now, personally, this is true, but in terms of the bride as a whole, this is also true. The last phrase says, then the land rested from war. That is going to happen on planet Earth, according to many prophecies. This will be a converted world. Are we ready for that? I say, if it got converted tomorrow, Would we have the blueprints to run government? No. Would we do all our business according to biblical principles? In many cases, no. We're not ready. I like what Gary North said one time. He asked, do we have a developed body of practical answers to the questions that a newly converted world will raise? That's a great question. He says, if our answer is no, we do not have such answers, then we are in the unenviable position of a newly elected president who has no program. We will have to stall for time. We'll have to announce, we can get the answers, but we'll need a little time. After 2,000 years and still no answers, how much more time can we reasonably ask for? By the way, the reason we have no biblical answers is because people have opted for natural law. They've opted for other things than the Bible. Anyway, he goes on, how can we ask a newly converted world to wait patiently as the humanist culture is collapsing while we figure out specific concrete answers to specific concrete problems? If we ask for more time, won't we make fools of ourselves? What does he expect us to do in order to prepare for a truly biblical revival? Now if and when I do, and there's a big if there too, but if and when I do my sermon series on Deuteronomy, you're going to be seeing there's practical answers for every area of life. It's just an amazing book and I'm wanting, I've got about 30 books I want to write before I die. that deal with very specific issues that other people have not written on. And again, it's to provide for the future should the Lord convert a state or a county or some other entity that there could be immediate answers going in. Biblical Blueprints is just redoing a website. We're just on the tail end of it. I think it should be completely finished probably within a month. And there's gonna be a ton more stuff up there, so you can check that out as well. In any case, Joshua had studied Deuteronomy. He was ready for this rest. But in the meantime, it's my prayer that the Lord would help us to be like Nehemiah, with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. You know a trowel's for making cement, right? Sword in one hand, trowel in the other. We need to be not only able to take down all of the negative things that are out there, but we need to be rebuilding in a positive way a new civilization. Can we pray about that, that the Lord would prosper us in that? Father, we desire so much to see a world that honors you. The pilgrims and the Puritans came to this nation desiring exactly this. They wanted to be a city set on a hill to show to the whole world what it looks like to be a biblical society. And yet somehow, within a few generations, this was hijacked. And Father, that was a portion of Christ's kingdom that was robbed from him. And we are witnesses to this stealing. And we bring this before your courtroom in heaven and we say, Father, this is unjust. your son deserves better. We are saying this is a robbery, this is a highway robbery, and we ask for fourfold restitution that you would take out of Satan's kingdom, this nation, establish it as a Christian nation that is four times, with fourfold restitution, four times more righteous, more biblically oriented than it ever was before. We know you are able to do this. And so, Father, in faith, we ask on behalf of your Son's name and for your glory, and also to alleviate the grief that your Holy Spirit has. You have said that you send the Holy Spirit into the world to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. And I pray that there would be a mighty outpouring of your Spirit upon our land. to return our land to Christ and to cause us to, as a land, to glory in you, to serve you in absolutely everything that we do. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.