Father, we do recognize that we are so utterly dependent upon you, not simply for our righteousness, but even for the rightness of our minds, for the correctness of our thinking, for our capacity to see what is not seen, to understand things as they really are, to live by faith and not by sight. Father, I pray again on behalf of all of us who are here today that you would cause our understanding to rise above a mere understanding of a history. A mere understanding of an ancient people and their struggles and their triumphs that we would see in these things the systematic and effectual outworking of an eternal purpose. A grand plan of redemption and renewal that all of your people in every age are a part of. A grand narrative that we have been written into Father, it is so true that we desire to write you into the script of our own lives. The delusion, often, of our own lives. What we think we're about. Who we think we are. What we think life is about. The things in which we believe our lives consist. Father, help us to see and to rejoice in and to live into the truth that we are scripted into your story, your narrative, your great work. In that way, we are joined to every created thing. We too find our own destiny, our own significance in the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we would see Him we would discern Him more clearly, even as we have sung. We would know Him. And so, lead us and teach us in this time toward that end, that Christ would be fully formed in us for the sake of your glory, for the sake of the vindication of your own goodness. The goodness that you revealed to Moses. The goodness that we are partakers in. Father, may it bear its fruit in us and through us and ultimately in all things. We ask these things of you with the confidence, with the commitment that are ours in Christ. Amen. God brought Israel out of Egypt And he did so, as we've seen repeatedly, not simply to deliver a people, to show his power, to show his capacity to bring a people out of slavery, but he delivered Israel to bring the nation to himself. And that reality was attested in bringing Israel to Sinai, to his holy mountain, to the place of his sanctuary, his sanctuary mountain. And God did that Not simply, again, because he chose a particular people, but his calling of Israel and his bringing of Israel to himself was a part, a step in the process of fulfilling his promise to the patriarchs. He had pledged to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would be the God, not only of those three men, but of their descendants after them. They would be his people. He would be their God. He would be with them. and they would be with him. And so he brought them to Sinai and there the covenant at Sinai formally established the nation as his son. The seed of Abraham as a nation as the son of God. And the one through whom the promises to Abraham were to be fulfilled. The one in whom the mandate to Abraham was to be realized of bringing the blessing to all the families of the earth. But Israel broke the covenant. No sooner had Israel pledged itself to the covenant than it broke the covenant. And we saw last time how God was merciful. And not in an abstract or an arbitrary way. But God's mercy was really the discipline of His own faithfulness. He didn't simply like a parent who sees a child hurting or a child who there is a disposition of the parent of righteous anger towards and now the child is hurt or the child in need and immediately the anger flees away and there's an embracing of that child in some sort of an emotional way. It wasn't that way with God. It was the discipline of his own faithfulness, the discipline of his chesed. his fidelity to the covenant, his fidelity to the relationship, his commitment to the relationship that he had made in spite of Israel. And so as Moses cried out to God to show him his glory, God showed Moses his glory in a way that testified that he had seen that glory all along. Because he had beheld the goodness of God. A God who is slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness. And yet in His goodness, a God who will not leave the guilty unpunished. And through the, as it were, sacrificial mediation of Levi, the Levites, there was the destruction of the rebels in that day. Some 3,000 men died that day. And yet God relented and retained and preserved and went forward with His covenant to Israel. Many individuals died, but His commitment to the Son, the nation Israel, was preserved. And God said that He would go forward with Israel. Moses appealed to God, not in a strategic sort of way or with a cleverness as a skilled lobbyist, but Moses appealed to God's own has said. He appealed to God's own commitment, God's own commitment to the covenant, God's name, God's honor, the ultimate end. Moses understood the goal for which the promise to Abraham had been made. He understood the significance of Israel in a way that Israel itself did not understand. He actually appealed to God according to God's own mind, God's own purpose, God's own commitment. And therefore, God heeded his appeal. God responded to Moses. And he turned from his statement that he would destroy the nation. And the balance of the book of Exodus now records the construction of the sanctuary. The preparation for the people to move forward. Well, why? God didn't simply deliver Israel from Egypt to set them loose from their captivity, and He didn't simply bring them to Sinai to make a covenant with Him. The immediate goal of the covenant was what? Canaan. As God had brought Israel to Himself at Sinai, so the larger goal was to bring Israel to the sanctuary that was the land of Canaan. This is the song of Moses in Exodus 15. God has brought us out in order to plant us in His sanctuary land. His holy habitation to lead us to Canaan. A kind of reiteration of the Edenic perfection. A land flowing with milk and honey. A place where God would dwell with His people. A place where God would dwell with His Son and the Son with the Father in blessedness. in harmony, in unity, in all fullness. And from that place, the knowledge of God would extend to the ends of the earth. The fulfillment of the promise to Abraham of the blessing of God coming to the whole earth. What Isaiah would later say through the servant will be the knowledge of God covering the earth as the waters cover the seas. That was the goal God had in mind. And the possession of Canaan was the first and the immediate outcome to come from the covenant. And so Israel now is constructing a sanctuary. A sanctuary that is movable. A sanctuary that can be transported. And all the preparation for the priesthood is put in place. Now, the ordination of the priests and the formalizing, the developing out in fullness of the priestly system, the Levitical system, comes in the book of Leviticus, which also is set at the foot of Sinai. It is in Numbers 10 that Israel finally now moves from Sinai. After about a year at the foot of Sinai, arriving there three months out of Egypt, now after that year Israel is ready to move on. The sanctuary is built. And we see at the end of the book of Exodus that when Moses finishes the construction of the sanctuary, his oversight of that, and they take the ark, he takes the ark and it's put into the Holy of Holies. The ark again is representing the footstool of God's feet, the place of His contact with the earth, from His heavenly throne, so to speak. And when that ark is installed, the glory cloud of God descends on the sanctuary. God is now formally showing Israel He is in the midst of His people. And with the establishing of the priesthood and the ordination of Aaron and his sons, and the giving of the whole priestly system for mediating that relationship, Israel is now ready to move on. And all that remains, and this is the first nine chapters of the book of Numbers, is the establishment of the logistical parameters for Israel's movement through the wilderness to Canaan. That's where the name numbers comes from, the numbering of the people, the arranging of the various tribes around the sanctuary, how the sanctuary is to be packed, how it's to be moved, how they're to encamp around it. All of the logistics of the movement of this mass of people centered in God's presence with them in the sanctuary is detailed in the first part of numbers. God has relented. He has re-established His commitment to Israel. He has re-established His commitment to the covenant. And the sanctuary and His glory cloud descending on that sanctuary, and as it were, the Shekinah of God dwelling between the wings of the cherubim and the holy of holies, says that God is with His people. And yet things are forever altered. God has relented, but Moses could not obtain ultimate atonement for the people. And so God is even committed to go up in the midst of his people, but the relationship between father and son is forever altered. What happened in Exodus 24, as I've said so many times, was the high point of Israel's relationship with God, the high point of the life of the nation, and it will never be recovered. And that becomes evident as Israel is poised to move out. I'd like to just pick this up in chapter 10 of Numbers. And today what I want to do is look at, in just a very snapshot way, the critical issue in the wilderness period. And then I want to also look at the fruitfulness, again, of this estrangement, the negative fruitfulness of this estrangement, in the period of the judges. And then, Lord willing, next time what we will do is we will consider the time leading up to the emergence of the monarchy, a king in Israel, and the emergence of David, and then from that the enthroning of God in Jerusalem, the building of the house of God, the Davidic covenant, as the next great stage in this progress of sacred space. This is not a study of the Pentateuch per se. It is not a study of the Old Testament exhaustively per se. So we want to stay on track with our topic. And that's why we're moving very quickly through certain things. But I want to maintain the context. Again, the dynamic of sacred space is the realm or the reality, the realm in which God is present with his people. More broadly, the realm in which God is present in his creation. The point of connection between the creator and the creature. Ultimately, as that is administered and mediated through man, the imaged son. And that dynamic we want to keep in front of us as we move through this study. So if you look then in Numbers chapter 10, I want to pick this up. Where do I want to pick this up? Let's just start reading at verse 11, Numbers 10. Now, it came about in the second year, in the second month, on the 20th of the month, that the cloud was lifted from over the tabernacle of the testimony. God is continuing to go before Israel in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He is visible to the nation during the day and during the night. And when the cloud settles on the tabernacle, they're to wait, and they're to camp, and they're to sit. And however long it is, days, weeks, months, Years? They sit. And when the cloud or the pillar of fire rises and begins to move, the people know it's time to set out. And that's what's happening here. And the sons of Israel set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai. Then the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran. In the wilderness of Paran. So, Israel is now setting out. And in the midst of this triumph, the glory cloud of God with them, God is going with them. There's hanging over this whole arrangement still, as it were, a cloud of darkness. God is with His people, but it's not the same. There is a cloud of darkness, a cloud of foreboding, a cloud of pessimism that is hanging over not just the movement of Israel, but more specifically the relationship of Israel with its Father. Remember again that the glory of Israel's intimacy with God has been eclipsed by the veil, the veil that is testified with Moses' face. No sooner does Moses unveil the glory of God to Israel as he comes from the presence of God than he reveals his face. The glory of the covenant will be lost upon Israel. Both as it respects their understanding of their own relationship with God in their own historical context, but bigger than that, the role of this covenant and this time, this stage of salvation history, as it contributes to the outworking of the larger promise of God. expressed in the Abrahamic Covenant and all the way back there to Eden in Genesis 3.15. That's lost upon them. The glory of God is lost upon them. Israel has already demonstrated, therefore, its inability to be Israel, to fulfill its own role in salvation history. And that cloud seems to continue to hang over Israel and we'll see that dynamic as we move through this and really as we move through the rest of the Israelite history. So the sons of Israel are preparing to leave. The cloud of God is lifting up and it's starting to go forward. Now there's kind of the preparations of the camp to begin to move out. And I'd like to pick this up in verse 33 then of chapter 10 and show you the contrast that the text wants you to see. I've painted this picture of the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the commitment of God, and set it in contrast to the unfaithfulness of the nation. And God did restore or recommit Himself to the covenant with Israel, but not because the people repented, really. Not because they recommitted themselves or committed themselves to a reformation of themselves. Nothing has changed with the obstinacy of the Son. It's simply the Father's faithfulness. So in verse 33, it says, Thus they set out from the mount of Yahweh, The Holy Mount, three days journey with the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord journeying in front of them for the three days. The Ark, which represents the presence of God, leads the congregation. We saw the tribe of Judah goes out first among the twelve tribes, but first you have the Ark being transported with the Levites following, but it's three days journey out. Distance between Father and Son. So for three days the ark leads out ahead with the cloud above it. And that's that cloud that the people see on the horizon that they follow after, or the fire by night. The ark set out, the Lord set out, journeying in front of them for three days to seek a resting place for them. And the cloud of the Lord was over them by day when they set out from the camp. And it came about when the ark set out that Moses said, Rise up, O Yahweh! Rise up and let your enemies be scattered. Let those who hate you flee before you. And when it would come to rest, he said, Return, O Lord, to the myriad thousands of Israel. I want to also back up a little bit and show you, when he was asking his brother-in-law to go with them, the son of Jethro, back up a few verses, what he said to him that helps you to understand this prayer of praise that Moses is praying. Verse 29, Moses said to Hobab, the son of Reuel, the Midianite, this is Jethro, we are setting out to the place of which Yahweh said, I will give it to you. See, Moses thinks of Canaan as the place God is giving to them. No ifs, ands, or buts. Come with us and we will do you good, for Yahweh has promised good concerning Israel. If you will be with us, good will come to you. And the reason is this is a man who knew the area. And Moses thought that there would be a benefit in having him along as well. Now God is going to lead them, but perhaps he can help them to find certain springs of water or whatever, you know, to help them kind of by knowing the area very, very well. Being an assistant, as it were, to go with them. He says, verse 32, it will be if you will go with us, it will come about that whatever good Yahweh does for us, we will do for you. So Moses is saying, we're now setting out to the land God has promised. The time has come. We're back on track. We're going to this land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to their descendants. The sanctuary, the holy place of God's habitation. And so as they set out, this is this prayer of praise. Rise up, O Lord. Scatter your enemies. Lead your people. Bring them into your holy habitation. Very reminiscent again of Exodus 15. There's this note of triumph and exultation grounded in the faithfulness of God. But look at the immediate next verse. 11-1, Now the people became like those who complain of adversity. Immediately juxtaposed with this great prayer of exultation. God, rise up, scatter your enemies, lead your people, bring us into this place. Is the people grumbling? They're like those who grumble at adversity. In the hearing of Yahweh and when Yahweh heard it, his anger was kindled and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp. No sooner does the text record Moses' triumphal prayer of conquest and covenant fulfillment, than we see the unbelief of the covenant son. And this contrast sets the stage for the whole rest of the book of Numbers, and really for the whole rest of the Israelite history. What happened at Sinai, where you see the goodness of God holding things together, the covenant fidelity and faithfulness of God, the commitment to the relationship that He's ordained. God holding that together in spite of the people. That dynamic is going to continue through the rest of the Israelite history. And certainly is highlighted in the book of Numbers. The name of the book Numbers is Bemidbar, in the wilderness. That's the Hebrew name of the book. And it recounts Israel's wilderness wanderings. And the whole of those wilderness wanderings, that whole time is characterized in this way. God's faithfulness, Israel's unbelief. Israel's rebellion, God's mercy. but the vindication of His goodness such that while He is long-suffering, full of loving-kindness, covenant-faithfulness, covenant-integrity, He will not leave the guilty unpunished. And so we see the repetition of the Sinai event over and over and over and over again. An unbroken chain of disbelief and defiance on the part of the Son and faithfulness enduring commitment on the part of the Father to his covenant. So, Numbers and Deuteronomy in terms of the wilderness period is what I want to consider first, and then secondly, the conquest of the land, the time in the land, Joshua and Judges. Very briefly, I just want to pick a couple things related to those four books. Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua and Judges. So first of all, the legacy of unfaithfulness in the wilderness. And as far as the book of Numbers goes, I just want to deal with the one crucial event in the book of Numbers. The whole thing is just an endless litany of defiance and disbelief on Israel's part. But they come first, the text says, into the wilderness of Paran. And that will be the turning point for the nation. They have set out for Canaan, and at this point they're headed straight to Canaan. The initial intention of God was not 40 years of wandering. They're headed straight for Canaan. But this wilderness of Paran, period, will be a very fateful time. It will set the stage for what is to come for Israel. And at the heart of that is that when they come into this wilderness, God tells Joshua, or Moses rather, to dispatch 12 spies into the land. Send out 12 spies, leaders from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and have them go and explore the land. Have them move through the breadth of the land and investigate it. And I think the text shows us there are two main intentions that God has in that. Both of which relate to the things we've been talking about. The first is that the sons of Israel will see through these spies and through their own report back, they will see the truth of what God has said, that this is a land of abundance, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of richness and profusion, an Edenic kind of land in a very harsh part of the world. They will see the abundance They will see the truthfulness of God, that this is a place where they will find blessing and rest, and all provision. But it's secondly, a test for them. A test. Whether they will trust God, or they will trust their own sensibilities. Whether they will walk by faith, or whether they will walk by sight. Well, we all know the story, and the spies come back. And they come back with a mixed message, a mixed report, so to speak. They come back with a report that answers to both of these intentions. The text tells us that they come back with the fruit of the land. And at the heart of that fruit is the fact that one cluster of grapes is being transported on a pole between the shoulders of two men. It's to show you just almost in a caricatured way the profusion of the land. One great cluster that two men have to carry on their shoulders. From the valley of Eshcol. The valley of the cluster. And they bring back this cluster along with figs and pomegranates. The fruit of the land. And the people see, wow! This really is a land of abundance. But the spies also report, yeah, but there's a downside. It is an abundant land. It is a fruitful land. It is a profuse land. It's everything God said it would be. But there's a downside. It's a land full of powerful nation states. It's a land that has powerful tribal entities in it. Its inhabitants are tall and strong and mighty and well-equipped. And we were like grasshoppers in our own sight. And we looked at these people and we said, there's no way. There's no way we can take this land. We don't have weapons. We're not a trained army. There's no way we can prevail. Yeah, it's a great land, that's the good news, but the bad news is it's not going to come to us because we can't prevail against these inhabitants. It provided the encouragement. God wanted them to see it was everything he'd said, but he's also testing their faith. He's testing their resolve. And they failed the test. Immediately, Joshua and Caleb, two of the twelve spies, start saying, don't talk that way. Hasn't the Lord promised to give us the land? You see, put it in the context of what God has done to that point. Put it in the context of what He said to them, all the way back to Abraham. I'm giving it to you. I'm giving it to you. I'm giving it to you. It's yours. And He brought them out of Egypt and destroyed the Egyptian empire to give them the land. And He brought them to Sinai, and though they disobeyed and they disbelieved, He continued His covenant. And now He's leading them out. But they say, no, we'll never be able to prevail. They say, what about our children? What about our wives? They'll become a prey. They'll be destroyed. We'll all be destroyed. Why did God bring us out to die in the wilderness? And they conspired to put together a new leadership to take them back to Egypt. This is the turning point for the nation. And God's fury burned against them. And despite the appeals of Joshua and Caleb, they wouldn't listen. And God's response was to stop and say again, to in a sense go back to His response at Sinai. I'm done with this people. How long can I put up with this? I'm done. I'm going to destroy them, and I'm going to make you a great nation, Moses." We're back at the same responses at Sinai. I'll make you a great nation. And again, Moses intercedes, and he intercedes on the basis of, again, God's integrity and His promise. It's not about them, God, it's about you. It's about you accomplishing your purpose. And again, God relents, but in the same way that He did before. I will preserve the covenant entity that is Israel, but all those who have rebelled against me will be destroyed. And what that meant is that the whole adult generation that came out of Egypt was to die. They would not enter the land. You read this in Hebrews 3 and 4 as well. They perished in unbelief. Their bodies fell in the wilderness. And God says, these children that you say you're afraid for, you say it's about them, they're little, they're powerless, your wives, your children, that they'll become a prey. You will die in the wilderness and these little ones that you're fearful for will go in and take the land. We're back at Sinai again. A God who will keep covenant, but who will not leave the guilty unpunished. And as a result of what happened there in the wilderness of Paran, God said, you are now going to wander through a period of testing, 40 is the number of testing, a time of proving, a time of winnowing for 40 years. You will wander until all of this generation has perished. including Moses and Aaron. Again, we see the drumbeat in the Scripture. Israel cannot be Israel. Israel cannot fulfill its mandate as the seed of Abraham. It cannot be a faithful son. Even Moses can't fulfill that. Aaron cannot fulfill that. Aaron hadn't fulfilled it. We saw he's down there helping them become idolaters even while God is assigning him the priesthood. Israel cannot be Israel. And what is Israel? It's an idea more than anything. Israel is the seed of Abraham. Israel is that entity through which the Abrahamic blessing, the Abrahamic blessing of the knowledge of God filling the earth, it's to come through that seed of Abraham. And Israel cannot be Israel. So, 40 years now, the nation will wander until all of that generation has perished. And the children that they feared for, the grandchildren by then, will go in and they will take the land. And we know that that happened with the assault on Jericho. But before that happens, Israel now comes, at the end of that 40 years, to the plains of Moab, just on the east side of the Jordan River. Across the Jordan River to the west lies Jericho as the first fortified city, and a major fortified city. God's going to give Israel, as a first foothold in the land of Canaan, one of its strongest cities, to show them what He's capable of doing. But they come to the plains of Moab. And this is where Deuteronomy picks up. No longer movement geographically, this is a series of sermons that Moses delivers to the sons of Israel as his final word to the nation. This nation that he's led and mediated for for 40 years, he's now giving them his final word. He knows he's not going into Canaan. He knows he's going to die. And he issues a series of sermons or monologues or discourses to Israel. And fundamentally what the book of Deuteronomy does is it's a rehearsing of Israel's history to Israel. So that Israel will understand who it is. Why they're where they are. How they've gotten there. So that their future with God in the land will be informed and properly directed. There's the old saying that you don't know where you are unless you know where you've been and where you're going. You can't just wake up in a car going down a road someplace and have any idea where you are. You can look at the specifics of the vehicle that you're wrapped up in, but you don't understand where you are unless you know where you've been and where you're going. And Deuteronomy is that. Deuteronomos, the second law or the second giving of the law, captures that idea that Moses is rehearsing the Torah. He's rehearsing the covenant. What does it mean to you? Where have you been? How did you get to be here? What does it mean to be Israel? And what will that mean to you when you enter the land? What is your destiny in the land? You see, this is why Moses would not go forward without God. Because the goal of the covenant was not just the land of Canaan, but the son with the father. And Canaan was the sanctuary, the holy habitation where God would dwell. So it didn't matter if Israel went on to Canaan. It didn't matter if Israel possessed Canaan. If God wasn't with them, the land itself meant nothing. And Moses said, if you're not going to go up with this, we're not going to go. We can't go at all. The issue is to enter in and live with God as the son of the covenant, the faithful son of God. And Moses is rehearsing those things with the sons of Israel. So all these sermons together recount Israel's history under the covenant for the purpose of informing and directing its future conduct in the land. how Israel will live out its identity and fulfill its calling as it now dwells with God in the context of Canaan as it were the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. So, Deuteronomy's primary role in the development of salvation history is to join together and to make coherent or understandable in terms of the significance of these things in relation to the covenant. Deuteronomy conjoins and it makes coherent the key aspects of Israel's existence as the covenant son. The exodus, the wilderness wanderings that are coming to an end. their taking of the land of Canaan to be the kingdom, a theocracy, and ultimately the emerging monarchy that will come later on down the road. Deuteronomy deals with all of those things, past, present, and future, so that Israel can understand who it is and what its responsibility is, and how to live out its identity. The sermons focus on remembrance of the past. in order that there may not be forgetfulness in the future. Remembrance of the past that when the future arrives, when they enter the land, there would not be forgetfulness. Israel was to recall and accurately perceive the past in order to properly enter into and execute its future. with God in the land as its son. So, its well-being under the covenant depended upon its own self-understanding. Israel's well-being depended upon its own self-understanding, the rightness of its self-understanding, and its faithfulness to its own identity and role. Isn't this the marrow of what it means to be a Christian? Isn't this the marrow of New Testament teaching? What is the Christian life? It is understanding who we are in order that we might faithfully live out our identity and our purpose, our role. being who we are. And Israel was called to be who it was. And that's what Moses is doing in his final sermon. Saying, this is who you are. Understand your calling. Understand why you're here. Understand why God has called you forth. Where he's leading you. What he's going to do. And how do you honor your own responsibility in the covenant? How do you be the son? How do you keep covenant? How do you keep Torah? with God. From there, Israel enters in and begins to conquer the land. And again, Jericho is the first point of conquest. I'm not going to develop it today because for the sake of time and just moving forward. But God again requires as a test of faith the sons of Israel to come in off of the wilderness ragtag, 40 years in the desert, no weapons to speak of, no training, no formal military skills. They're a bunch of vagabonds wandering in off the wilderness and to march around this fortified city with its inhabitants and the military presence that kept it because it was a mercantile city. It was a city on a trade route so it always had a military presence because a lot of money and goods went through there and forced them to walk around that city and be humiliated and mocked and walk away and come back the next day and do it again. Seven days. Come back, be mocked, be spit on, be humiliated. And then the seventh day, with the ark of God leading, go around the city seven times. And these people were being forced to say, how in the world can we take this city? The walls go way up and they're thick. We can't scale these walls. And this is a fortified city. But they had to believe God that He had given them the city. And on that seventh day, the trumpet sounds and Joshua issues the call, go up, the Lord has given you the city. And the earthquake drops the walls and they go in and God gives them the city. From there, they go up to Ai and they say, this is nothing, let's just take a few guys, Ai is a nothing city, we can take it. And God has them routed because of the sin of Achan. And I'm not going to go into all of that. But again, God is doing this. And it doesn't matter how many or how few they have, they can't prevail. except that God gives it to him. But he forces them to have to take the land by faith, to let him give it to them in that sense as it were. So the book of Joshua then recounts the conquest and settlement of the land. Israel is coming into and gradually possessing the sanctuary land. Joshua is a book of triumph. It's a book of fulfillment. It's a book that recounts the greatness of God's accomplishment. And Joshua's sermons at the end very much parallel Moses. First, in being triumphal. He says, all of the good word of God to you has been fulfilled. All of his promises have been fulfilled. None have been left undone. He has fulfilled all his good word to you. But at the same time, the triumph again is overshadowed by the cloud of disbelief, by the cloud of failure. And so just like Moses, who sets in front of Israel the glory and the greatness of what God has done, and their incredible privilege in being partakers in that, of being scripted into what God is doing, of being made the Son of God because of His grace and His goodness, Moses also tells them, I know what you're going to do when you go into the land. I know that your hearts are going to depart from God. I know that all of these curses that I have set in front of you today, life and death, blessing and cursing, these cursings are going to come upon you. Because your hearts are not steadfast. And he taught Israel a song of its own condemnation. Just like you teach a little child a song to learn his ABCs or to learn the books of the Bible. Israel had to learn a song. The words of which talked about their own future apostasy and the judgment of God coming against them. How would you like to learn a song like that? But now God has given them the land and yet there's been unfaithfulness along the way. It's a book of triumph, but also a book of, again, pessimism and doubt. And so, like Moses, Joshua says the same things to Israel. God has kept his word. And I'm calling you this day to serve the Lord. But I know you won't. No, we will. We will serve the Lord. No, you won't. You won't. He tells them what's coming. His exhortations to them call them, as Moses had, to live into their sonship. And at the same time, he's telling them that judgment and wrath are coming upon them because they won't. They're being called to live a certain way, but Joshua's leaving no doubt as to the fact that they will not do it. Despite their claims, to the contrary, just as with Moses. You can read this in Joshua 23 and 24. Well, from Joshua then we transition into the time. Joshua brings conquest and settlement. Now the book of Judges is in a sense the outworking of Israel being settled in the land. And the thematic idea in the book of Judges, it comes out a couple different times and specifically and is implied throughout the whole book. Now in those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. If Joshua is a book of triumph, but also has that foreboding sense of, in this exultation, the sun has come in. It has entered the land. God has given them rest from their enemies. He has established them. The tribal allotments are in place. Israel's possessing the land, but it's going to be bad. Judges begins to flesh that out. And the great theme that expresses that is that there is no king in Israel. Every man is his own king. And it's true, there was no human king in Israel, but that's not the issue. God promised to Abraham a kingdom in which he is king. He is the father king, ruling over his kingdom through his image son, the royal son. But there's no king in Israel. Yahweh is not king. Every man is his own king. That's the tone that sets kind of the whole frame of reference for the book of Judges. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. No human king in Israel. And so rather than realizing by their conquest and settlement of the land, rather than realizing the fulfillment of the kingdom promised to Abraham, Israel has become another sort of kingdom. It has become a pagan kingdom. It has become a kingdom in which every man is his own king. This is the theme or the tone, kind of the overarching lens through which the book presents its history. And it substantiates that theme along a whole series of different lines. It moves that theme out along a bunch of different directions. But they're all centered in this general pattern, a cycle for the nation of rest, then complacency, and by complacency I mean indifference, a lack of commitment that follows with rebellion, apostasy, subjugation at God's hand, repentance, God intervening through his judges, bringing restoration and rest, and the cycle starts all over again. That cycle replicates itself throughout the book, over and over again. So, this theme of every man being his own king, every man doing what is right in his own eyes, is worked out through those cycles. But there are three big arenas that I wanted to touch on that kind of capture again what's happening to Israel now as the Son of God as it inhabits this land. That testify to this principle of every man doing what is right in his own eyes. A general attitude or disposition of apostasy, of rebellion against God. The first is the progressive isolation and fragmentation and enmity between the tribes of Israel. Israel, the nation, was the Son of God. The issue with Israel is not so much the individuals, it's the nation. Israel, the nation, is the seed of Abraham. Israel, the nation, is the Son of God. Israel, the nation, is a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. For Israel to live out its identity, for it to be faithful to the covenant, there must be solidarity and unity amongst the tribes of Israel. If for no other reason that a kingdom divided against itself cannot prosper or endure. But for Israel to be Israel, there must be a oneness amongst the people, there must be a unity. Because Israel collectively is the sun. And you see the decline and the tearing apart of that reality through the fragmentation of the tribes. And it escalates and escalates to the point of inter-tribal warfare involving the concubine that's molested. And the other tribes go out against Benjamin and almost wipe out that tribe entirely. Inter-tribal warfare. And that will be replicated later at the beginning of the collapse of David's kingdom when Judah and Israel are split into separate sub-kingdoms and they also fight against each other. And they form alliances with Gentile nations to war against each other. The unraveling of the kingdom. But that's happening in the book of Judges as almost kind of a presage of what is to come. as a result of David's sin, which we will get to. So fidelity to the covenant implied solidarity and there's increasing fragmentation and conflict and finally inter-tribal warfare. The second thing that demonstrates the fact that Israel is not Israel in the land. It's in the land, God's given it the land, He's given them rest, He's fulfilled His promise, but there's failure. The second thing that shows that is the increasing interaction of Israel with the peoples around them. They did not destroy all of the nations of the land as God had directed them. And he warned them that they will become a snare for you. They will become a thorn in your eye. And they didn't fulfill that obligation. And they began to intermarry. And they began to be drawn into the practices of the nations of Canaan that they were to displace and to follow after their gods. And so what happens here in terms of, again, the bigger picture is that Israel has effectively converted its communion with its father in his holy habitation. It's converted its communion with its father in his sanctuary, in his presence, to life in an idol temple. Oh, they're physically in the land and the tabernacle is physically there. But what's really happening and what the significance of what is happening is much more than simply the fact that there's a little bit of lack of commitment or perfect commitment on their part. The communion of the Son with the Father in His holy habitation has been destroyed. And that idolatrous, independent sort of spirit, every man who's doing what's right in his own eyes, finally works itself out in the way that they're even worshipping God. And the way that they're practicing their own morality. You see it at the level of establishing personal priesthoods. You see it in the establishing of another priesthood associated with the tribe of Dan. It moves from a personal level to a tribal level. They're embracing idolatrous practices, self-serving practices, even in their worship of God. They're becoming magicians, as they did at Sinai, and giving themselves over to their basest desires. Every man doing what is right in his own eyes. The worship of Yahweh becomes self-serving. And so dwelling with God in his sanctuary land, the covenant son has become Sodom. That's one of the great themes of the book of Judges. If you read the account of the raping of the concubine, and she's cut into parts, and the parts are, after she's killed, and the parts are distributed to the 12 tribes of Israel. It's a very strange context. But you compare that back with Genesis 19. And what happened at Sodom with Lot, it's the same story. Israel has become Sodom. The Son of God dwelling with Him in His covenant land has become the epitome of rebellion. The epitome of the opposite of that. Abraham sought to intervene for Sodom and he could not. Israel has become Sodom. And this idea will be carried forward through the prophets. Isaiah, more than the other prophets, refers to Israel as Sodom. Listen to me, you rulers of Sodom, you princes of Gomorrah. A stinging indictment. Sodom and Gomorrah epitomize to Israel the Gentiles in rebellion against God, and they've become that. within a couple of centuries of being in the land. That's how far their apostasy has progressed. So, the period of judges saw the fulfillment of the very things that Moses and Joshua warned Israel about. The very things they warned them about and said, these things will come upon you, they have already come. were only a few hundred years after the time of Moses and these things have already come upon the nation. Though Israel had been taken by God to be his son, Israel is showing over and over and over again that it still bears the likeness of Adam, the fallen son. Israel the son still bears the likeness of the fallen son. And the point of that is that bearing Adam's likeness, Israel cannot fulfill its role as son of God. Because what was the nature of Adam's relationship with God after the fall? Estrangement. Distance. Enmity. And the calling of Israel was, as it were, the reclaiming of man as son, the bringing back. But Israel is showing that it is still Adamic. For all of the imagery, for all of the faithfulness, for all the things that the text is showing, it keeps driving this nail harder and harder that Israel is still the son of Adam. God has not fulfilled His promise in Genesis 3. Restoration hasn't come. It's being portrayed. God is working towards that, but it hasn't yet come. The Israelite theocracy, stepping back even more broadly, if Israel is son of Adam and not son of God, then Israel, the Israelite theocracy, as the kingdom promised to Abraham, that Israelite theocracy cannot fulfill God's promise of the recovery of sacred space. God has promised to bring everything back to himself and specifically his imaged son, to restore man to himself. And the Israelite theocracy is not that. It cannot do that. It won't do that. So as the text traces, this is my conclusion for today, as the text traces Israel's movement from Sinai into the land, its conquest, the settling of the land, it continually emphasizes the same core truths. the same core truths that are fundamental to the text development of its messianic expectation. I've said in many different settings that the mechanism that the Bible uses, and this is true of all literature, in a sense, of all story development, is that there is the carrying of the story through the rising of tension, resolution of tension, falling off, rising tension again, and in the case of the scripture, that's accomplished by a promise that comes to a kind of fulfillment, but that fulfillment falls short. It adds to the fullness of the promise. It's more paint strokes, so to speak, on the canvas of the promise. But because it falls short, it leaves the expectation of future fulfillment. And so it's like the slinky that keeps walking forward. God makes a promise and there's a fulfillment, but it falls short, carries forward, falls short. carries forward, falls short. And these truths that are carrying this storyline along are core truths of, again, God's faithfulness, Israel's failure. Abraham's descendants possessed Canaan with Yahweh in their midst as their God, just as God promised it would be, just as, in a sense, it refers back even to Eden and the promise of recovery Israel, the Son of God, is with Yahweh in His sanctuary, His garden land, but the Abrahamic promise in really its true fulfillment seems more remote than ever. And the closer we seem to be encroaching on it, the farther it seems in many ways. And that tension and the kind of incremental resolutions move the story along. We see more and more clearly what it's going to be when God fulfills his promise, but this isn't it. So Israel was chosen by God, not arbitrarily, but as the seed of Abraham. He chose Abraham and then he said, with your descendants, I will establish my covenant and I will cause them to dwell with me. I'll be their God. They'll be my people. They will dwell with me. and through them all the families of the earth will receive the blessing of my presence and my knowledge. That was Israel's mandate as the son of God. It reflects back again on Adam's mandate. Be fruitful and multiply as the sun created in my image. Fill the earth. Take my presence. Take the knowledge of me to the ends of the earth. Mediate it through yourselves, my image sun. cause my presence and my fullness and my kingdom to fill the whole earth moving out from Eden. That was Israel's mandate. And the covenant established that kingdom promised to Abraham. A kingdom by which through fidelity to that covenant Israel would fulfill its calling. The whole world would know that Yahweh is God if Israel will be a faithful son. And Israel will not be a faithful son. And over and over again, and it becomes more developed throughout the Israelite history, Israel not only doesn't cause the world to know Yahweh as He really is by its own faithfulness, Israel joins with the nations against God in testifying against Him, in lying about Him by its unfaithfulness. David himself will epitomize that in his sin with Bathsheba, as we will see. Just as he is positively the epitomizing Israelite, he's also negatively the epitomizing Israelite. Israel's fidelity to the covenant will fulfill the Abrahamic mandate. But Israel keeps showing over and over and over again its inability to be Israel. And so the text wants you to see, again in this tension, does that mean that the promise to Abraham is going to fail? Is God ultimately not going to be able to fulfill what He has promised, His purpose that He has for the whole created order? Is that going to fail because of the failure of man? Because man cannot do what it is that he must do. Will the promise fail? Well, if the promise is not to fail, then God must raise up a new seed for Abraham. He must raise up a new Israel. And that requires raising up a new man, a new humanity. Because all that Israel was, was to be man in communion with God. Another seed, another man, another Abraham. Another seed for Abraham, another Israel needs to come. Stephen Dempster in Dominion and Dynasty says this, the Deuteronomic vision of a curse for failing to follow Torah, the covenant and its instruction, the covenant and its definition for Israel as true man. The Deuteronomic vision of a curse for failing to follow Torah has come upon the young nation with the vengeance in the book of Judges. So much so that by the end of the book, the nation is far worse than its pagan neighbors. Israel is in need of kingship. There is no king in Israel. But a lasting kingship instead of a temporary judge. The pagan concept of a king who is a power-hungry tyrant is not in mind. That's what earthly kingdom is about. That's why the kingdom of God is so radically different. This is all the Gospels, Jesus trying to show that the kingdom of God is not in any way shape or form what you think of when you think of a kingdom. Its power is not of that quality. Its interests are not of that quality. Its operations are not of that quality. It is radically, holistically different. Israel needs a king, but not the pagan conception of a king in a kingdom. A tyrannical, consumptive, self-serving manifestation of the world empire. The gyration of nations and kingdoms and empires that have filled this earth since the fall. Not the city of man. That's not what's needed. But rather, the transformed servant king whose life itself embodies Torah. A new Israel. Israel, the entity. Israel, the son, was to embody Torah. Torah defined Israel as Israel. It said, here's what it is for you to be son of God. Torah was the law, the covenant. The covenant defined Israel to God and to Israel. It told Israel what it meant to be Israel, what it meant to be the Son of God. And Dempster is saying that the tension by the end of the book of Judges is that Israel needs a king. There's no king in Israel. But it needs the kind of king that is a true Israelite, a true son. It needs a servant king whose very life embodies Torah. Law, meaning instruction, definition. That individual will be a king who will lead the people to do what is right in God's eyes. The development of messianic expectation, messianic necessity. If God's promise, if God's purpose, if God's will for His creation is to be realized another son of Torah must come. And I want you to notice that all along the way, God continues to move the promise forward, not because of the people, but in spite of them. God will bring another Israel precisely because Israel cannot be Israel. And in that singular Israel that Isaiah tells us about, in whom God will, as it were, recover Israel, a remnant of Israel, a remnant of Judah, He will also bring in the nations of the earth. In Himself, He will restore man to God. How will God bring a new Adam? How will He bring this servant who Himself embodies Torah? He will do it in a new Adam, a new man. God Himself will come. He will Himself join Himself to our humanity in order that man can be what man was designed to be. There's a sovereign God. There's a sovereign salvation. And we who are Calvinists need to not lose the gospel in our Calvinism. The sovereignty of God is not about the fact that God's in charge and He does whatever He wants. It's not about the fact you didn't come to Jesus, God did it all. It's about Paul's glory, his exultation in Ephesians 1 and in Romans 8. Of a God who, because He does it all Himself, we have nothing to fear. We have nothing to dread. We have nothing to doubt. All we have to do is live into the reality of His sovereign grace, His sovereign power. God says, be sons. That's it. I give, you receive. Love me. Trust me. Hold fast to me. Let me be your life. Let me be your strength. Let me be your consolation. Let me be your hope. Let me be your assurance. Stop striving. Cease. And know that I am God. That's the sense in which Jonathan Edwards could say that the sovereignty of God is the most comforting of all doctrines. And over and over and over again, God is showing us through His interactions with Israel how it is that He will accomplish and fulfill His Word. His ancient promise. His everlasting purpose. Not through me. Not even, oh yeah, Jesus was righteous, so now I can be righteous. Jesus kept the law, so now I'm empowered by the Spirit to keep the law. Now I can be the rule keeper. No. No. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we should become the righteousness of God in Him. The righteous obligations of Torah are fully fulfilled, fully met in us, walking in the Spirit, by the One who is the true Son, the true Abraham, the true Israel, the true Adam. Praise be to God for His indescribable gift. Amen. Let's pray. Father, it's been said to me and it can be rightly said of all of us, if our hearts are where they ought to be, if our doctrine is where it ought to be, that there is one string on our banjo. It is the Gospel. And Father, we can never plumb its depths. We can never get our arms around the depth of Your love. in Christ. We too need what Paul prayed for as he bowed his knee before you on behalf of the whole family that belongs to you. And he prayed that they would know the height and the depth, the width, that they would know the full measure of the love of Christ and in that way be filled up to all of Your fullness. Father, don't let it be lost on us. I pray that that would be our prayer for ourselves and our prayer for one another. It seems so easy for us to become prayer warriors on behalf of temporal perspectives. But Father, how we need to pray with earnestness that Christ would be fully formed in his people. And through that, that the knowledge of you would fill the earth as the waters cover the seas. We don't need to go door to door with your gospel. with a tract, with a message, as much as we need to live out the truth of the Gospel. That you have caused your light to shine in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of your own glory that is in the face of Christ. That's the testimony that we need to bear. the fragrance of Christ in every place. Father, cause us to become obsessed with Your Gospel. Then we will be ministers. Then we will be servants of Your Kingdom and of our great King. Do these things for our sake and for Your sake. For the world's sake, we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.