The Greater Joshua
Joshua 1:1-11
Septuagesima
Perhaps the true genius of Anthony Trollope is his knowledge of human nature. His comprehension of the human condition one can appreciate at the beginning of his classic book, Barchester Towers. It takes place around 1856. In Great Britain, it is the Prime Minister who appoints the Bishops in the Church of England. Archdeacon Grantly is very ambitious to succeed his father as the next Bishop of Barchester. His father is on his deathbed. The current Prime Minister, a conservative, has hinted that he will appoint the son. However, the Prime Minister is a lame duck. He has just lost the election and will be leaving. The new Prime Minister, a liberal, will not elevate Archdeacon Grantly to replace his father. If the Archdeacon is going to get the appointment his father needs to die quickly. The date for the transfer of power draws nigh. Day after day, the Archdeacon sits at the side of his father wondering if he will die by the deadline. The Bishop holds on three weeks longer than the doctors expect, then one more week, and another week. Time drags on. Finally the bishop passes away; too late.
In that last hour before power shifted, the Archdeacon “gazed at that still living face of his father, and then at last dared to ask himself whether he really longed for his father's death. The effort was a salutary one, and the question was answered in a moment. The proud, wishful, worldly man, sank on his knees by the bedside, and taking the bishop's hand within his own, prayed eagerly that his sins might be forgiven him.” These are certainly mixed emotions at the passing of a loved one who has suffered long.
I. In many societies the death of a leader brings a crisis. Who will be the new leader? Will there be a peaceful transition of power? Will the new leader continue in the footsteps of those who have gone before? When the book of Joshua opens, Moses is dead. The Israelites have wandered in the desert for forty years. The old generation that refused to enter the Promised Land has expired. The forty years are up. The old generation is gone. God would now allow Joshua to lead the new generation into Canaan. On this Septuagesima Sunday let's examine the first chapter of Joshua and extract important lessons for Christian thinking and living.
In the first verses God appoints Joshua as the new leader of the nation Israel. The Church in the wilderness had mourned the death of Moses for thirty days (Deut. 34:8). That period had now come to an end. God commanded Joshua to lead the people across the Jordan River. Of course there is a parallel with Moses here. When Moses led the people out of the bondage of Egypt, he guided them across the Red Sea. When Israel was ready to enter the Promised Land, God called on Joshua to trust Him to lead the people across the flooding Jordan River. Joshua obeyed. The people crossed the Jordan on dry land and took the city of Jericho. They were finally entering the land promised to the sons of Abraham when God made a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3).
II. Let's be up front and acknowledge a potential problem: the Church after Pentecost empowered by the Holy Spirit advances across the globe by means of humble service, love and evangelism. Whereas it seems that the Church of Joshua used force to get the Land. Why the difference? God promises Joshua, “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.” This dovetails with God's previous instructions to utterly destroy the seven nations of Canaan.
This command of God to take the Promised Land by force, and slaughter the inhabitants sounds cruel. How could God command the annihilation of the Hittites, Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites? First, anybody who reads the Bible knows about divine judgment. It is in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Usually that judgment begins at the house of God. Second, we should never forget that paganism is degrading at the best of times, but the spiritual condition of the peoples in and around Canaan was one of particular filth. Baalism and the cult of Molech dominated. Baalism was a fertility cult, in which sexual license was glorified as something religious. There were holy prostitutes, male and female, for the gratification of the worshippers. Molech sacrifice was frequent and hideous. At the height of frenzied merrymaking and obscenity a young lad was thrown into the red-hot arms of their god. Such practices could only prove a cancer in the life of any society. Viciousness and fear were the byproducts of such a faith, yet Baal and Molech exercised a lustful fascination that the people could not resist. This was the kind of culture God commanded Joshua and the Israelites to wipe out. Reading verses 6-7. [Read them.]
Joshua is a book of warfare, but it is not like other ancient books that describe war. We are presently studying Homer's Iliad in the Reading Club. The Iliad tells about the great acts of Greek heroes. Achilles, in fact, is the perfect model for inner city thugs and gang leaders. Every petty snub done to him will be repaid with rage and vengeance. The battles play out with a superabundance of blood and guts. The book of Joshua is different. It describes little about actual warfare, and in Joshua, Israel doesn't win because her army has great warriors. Instead, what is important is to trust in God, who is the Warrior of Israel. Joshua conquers the land through obedience to God's law, and faithful worship. [A House For My Name by Peter Leithart, p. 110.] These comments may not completely remove our discomfort with the command to annihilate the nations of Canaan, but we must remember this was a unique situation of exceptional wickedness.
III. What about the place of courage in this story. Several times the Lord God reminds Joshua to be courageous. There is tons of courage in the pages of Scripture. We need this. For humans tend to be weak. Remember when the Israelites first looked at the giants of Canaan? They felt like grasshoppers next to them. They melted into whimpering cowards. They refused to take the Promised Land. What did God do? He judged them for it. He made them wander in the wilderness for forty years. Then and now, courage is rare. Courage means overcoming one's trembling, overcoming panic, and doing what he or she must regardless. Courage means overcoming fear. It is part of the Christian pilgrimage.
Even when people know what is right and wrong, they may do the wrong thing because it is often more difficult, and sometimes dangerous. Or they fail to do the right thing because of laziness. Dennis Prager makes this comment, “It is easier to drive by a person lying in the street than to stop and offer help. At other times, it is enough merely to lack courage; it is easier to call for peace than to confront Nazism, Communism, international terrorism and aggression, and other evils. To do good often necessitates suppressing fear, acting courageously, and overcoming laziness – quite a large order.” [Think A Second Time. p. 198.] Courage is what each one of us needs if we are going to work with God to bring about His kingdom.
It takes courage to share the Gospel of Christ with an acquaintance. It requires courage to speak in front of a group for the first time. It takes courage to resist the peer pressure that wants to smoke pot and utter obscenities. It demands courage to rebuke classmates who cheat on a test. It takes a big dose of courage to confront the bully. Cowardice is easy, cowardice is lazy and cowardice is disgusting. We have all acted cowardly, and I don't know about you but I loathe myself when I act in cowardice. We turn our backs and run from the enemy. We fail to say, “No!” We flee from responsibility; we shirk our duty; we watch the weak get oppressed by the tyrant, or we simply allow ourselves to drift on the breeze of an evil culture. This is wrong! The Lord speaks to you and me with these words: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” Your Heavenly Father tells you, “I am with you.” Doesn't that make a difference? This is what Christ says too: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Mt. 28:20). The eyes of the Lord are upon us. God's Word today calls you to be brave. Are you acting the coward in some area of your life? Seek to please the King and Judge of the world more than men. Ask the Lord's grace to help you become a courageous man, or a courageous woman.
IV. Let's switch gears. Reading Joshua 1:8. [Read it.]
The Book of the Law referred to the Pentateuch, the entire first five books of the Bible. Most likely Moses wrote the bulk of it. As the Israelites stood ready to enter the land, God's main emphasis was upon the Book. Notice how Joshua elevates the authority of this Book. He tells the Old Testament Church to obey it, meditate upon it and do it. Francis Shaeffer offers an interesting application here. He writes, “Joshua's relation to the book teaches us an important lesson about how the canon grew and was accepted. Joshua knew Moses, the writer of the Pentateuch, personally. Joshua knew his strengths and weaknesses as a man; he knew that Moses was a sinner, that Moses made mistakes, that Moses was just a man. Nonetheless, immediately after Moses' death Joshua accepted the Pentateuch as more than the writing of Moses. He accepted it as the writing of God. Two or three hundred years were not required for the book to become sacred. As far as Joshua was concerned the Pentateuch was the canon, and the canon was the Word of God. The biblical view of the growth and acceptance of the canon is as simple as this: when it was given, God's people understood what it was. Right away it had authority.” [Close quote. Joshua, p. 34.]
The same pattern obtains in the New Testament. Peter immediately received the letters of Paul as Holy Writ. He says, “Paul has written to you, as also in all his epistles, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16). In other words, Peter regarded Paul's writings with the same authority as the rest of Scriptures. St. Paul does the same thing when he esteems the Gospel of Luke as the very Word of God. Proof for that is in 1 Timothy 5:18. Of course, the Church did not officially finalize the canon until the Fourth Century. But already within a few years after having been written, Peter considered Paul's epistles as divinely inspired, Paul thought the same of what Luke had written in his Gospel, and Joshua held the same opinion of Moses' writings. Immediately these books were recognized for their divine authority and authorship, it didn't take hundreds of years.
V. Also in our passage we see blessings and curses. “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (1:8). The Scriptures are to be obeyed. When God's people obey the law of God they often experience blessings. When God's people disobey the law, they usually experience curses. We are now talking in terms of the covenant, not exactly in terms of justification. Good works justify nobody. Keeping God's law does not save. We are saved by faith alone, through God's free grace alone, on account of the work of Christ alone. However, covenantally, obedience and disobedience to God's law can make a difference in terms of blessings and curses. The term for this is sanctions, covenantal sanctions. Granted, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, but in the larger picture, in general, God, in His providence blesses His people for obedience and faithfulness, and He curses His people for disobedience and unfaithfulness. (See Deuteronomy 28.)
If we understand covenantal sanctions, we understand the ebb and flow of history. When men and nations violate the law of God, this is not only sin but stupidity. It is like rubbing your hand over a rough board and getting splinters. For it opposes what we are made to be and what the universe really is. God has revealed his character in the Law, and, if God's people keep His law, the conditional blessings stand. Once we understand this, we understand the flow of history.
What are the lessons of Joshua? First, Joshua reminds us that the Church's word and worship promote the Kingdom of God. In order to conquer the Promised Land Joshua meditated upon the word given by Moses, and used holy worship to flatten the citadels of Jericho. In similar fashion, we lean on the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments. Gradually, the Spirit uses them to extend the kingdom of God. Second, the presence of God was with Joshua. “For the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” You and I have the presence of Christ with us today: “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world” With the presence of Christ you are not alone in your trials. You can know that the Lord is with you in your fears. You can be a man or woman of courage. Third, and closely related to the presence of Christ is the power of Christ. The same supernatural power that sustained Joshua as he led the Israelites into Canaan is with you and me today. The power of the Greater Joshua, Jesus Christ is with us. Facing a lost world the Church of God has that power. The same power that parted the Jordan River is available to us today.
Let us pray.
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