Joshua 24:14-28

Joshua 24/14 through 28.

God's Word says, "Now therefore, fear the Lord

and serve him in sincerity and truth,

and put away the gods which your fathers

served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve

the Lord.

If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve

the Lord, choose for yourself today whom you

will serve,

whether the gods which your fathers served

which were beyond the river,

or the gods of the Amorites in whose lands you

are living, but as for me in my house,

we will serve the Lord." The people answered

and said, "Far be it from us that we should

forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the

Lord our God is he who brought us and our

fathers up

out of the land of Egypt, from the house of

bondage, and who did these great signs in our

sight and

preserved us through all the way in which we

went and among all the peoples through whose

midst we

passed. The Lord drove out from before us all

the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in

the land.

We also will serve the Lord for he is our God

." Then Joshua said to the people, "You will

not

be able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy

God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive

your

transgression or your sins. If you forsake the

Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn

and do you harm and consume you after he has

done good to you." The people said to Joshua,

"No,

but we will serve the Lord." Joshua said to

the people, "You are witnesses against

yourselves. You

have chosen for yourselves the Lord to serve

him." And they said, "We are witnesses. Now

therefore,

put away the foreign gods which are in your

midst and incline your hearts to the Lord,

the God of Israel." The people said to Joshua,

"We will serve the Lord our God and we will

obey

his voice." So Joshua made a covenant with the

people that day and made for them a statute

and

an ordinance and shechem. And Joshua wrote

these words in the Book of the Law of God and

he took

a large stone and set it up there under the

oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.

Joshua said

to all the people, "Behold, this stone shall

be for a witness against us, for it has heard

all the

words of the Lord which he spoke to us. Thus

it shall be for a witness against you so that

you do

not deny your God." Then Joshua dismissed the

people, each to his inheritance. Let's pray.

Ready to tell you, Father, we love you and

thank you for your mercy and your grace. I

thank you,

Lord, for the peace that you give us in Christ

. I pray that you bless the preaching of your

Word

today. Bless your message in spite of the

messenger and our minds and our hearts to

listen to your

truth in Christ's name. Amen. So in our

satellite view of the Old Testament, we've

gone to many

different places from the prophetic books all

the way back to Genesis and then now we're

back in

the historical books. And I just want you to

notice, and of course I'm picking pieces from

there,

but how many times we've talked about

different covenants that were made, the David

ic covenant,

the Abrahamic covenant, how many promises that

just in the couple of messages that we've had

in

the Old Testament that we've discussed and

that's because almost anywhere you open up in

the Old

Testament, there's promises and there's coven

ants and there's prophecies, all these things

that are

there for us. It's a big important part of the

Old Testament. Back in, we looked at Psalm 132

and talked about the Davidic covenant and how

God had promised David that one of his

sons would always be on the throne in Israel.

And we saw how that was and is still being

fulfilled

by Jesus Christ himself, the son of David. We

looked in the past several times about the

promise made to Adam and Eve that one of their

seed, one of their children, would crush the

head of the serpent and how Christ fulfilled

that in his death on the cross and his

resurrection,

crushing the head of Satan and providing the

gospel and the cure for the sin in the garden.

And the last two messages, we looked at the

Abrahamic covenant, how God promised Abraham

two things, a land and a nation, people, many

descendants, even though Abraham,

who would become Abraham, was without child at

a very old age. And all those descendants,

all of God's people were included was not just

the nation of Israel, but he would have

spiritual

descendants and that would be, we would be

included in that. And so Christ fulfilled that

and is

fulfilling that covenant. Even today, we're

all the tribes, every nation, there are

believers

brought into the family of God, fulfilling the

Abrahamic covenant to Abraham. And when we

looked

at that, we saw that there was this covenant

cutting ceremony, this ritual that God walked

through the dead animals and showed that he

would keep his promise to Abraham. And God

has kept his promise to Abraham and he's still

keeping his promise to Abraham these days

today,

and one day will be completely fulfilled. God

always keeps his promises. So that we talked

about

that, that was the Abraham's life. And then if

you fast forward in history, about 500 years,

you come to the life of Joshua. And there are

so many things that happened in those 500

years

that Abraham's little family, his little son,

Isaac, that he had at an old age, had children

of

his own. And they had children and they grew

into this great and mighty nation with 12

different

tribes in their family, the nation of Israel.

And during that time, they were enslaved in

Egypt.

And God brought them out of slavery in Egypt

by Moses and great plagues, defeating the gods

of

Egypt. And they escaped Egypt and walked

through the wilderness for a time. And in that

time,

God gave them his law. So all those books in

their Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, De

uteronomy,

that where you always get tripped up when you

start your yearly Bible reading plan and that

kind of

goes all those that you should do this and don

't do that and don't look at this and don't eat

that.

All those things God gave his law to his

nation in Israel. And then we come to the

promised land.

And they crossed the Jordan and Joshua became

the general for the people to conquer the land

of Canaan

that God had promised Abraham hundreds of

years before. And all this was a period of ups

and downs

for the people of Israel, kind of just like

our lives and our nation and our world today.

But we come to our passage on the other end of

it. This is the last chapter in the book of

Joshua. And this is Joshua's final speech

before he would pass away and leave this

promised land

to the 12 different tribes. And the Hebrew

people would go on to live in their

inheritance in the

promised land. So then the NASB labels it his

farewell address. And it begins in chapter 23.

And he reminds the people, the nation of

Israel, all that God had done for them in

chapter 23

and conquering the land in verse, verses six

through eight in chapter 23. He says be very

firm then

to keep and do all that is written in the book

of the law of Moses so that you may not turn

aside

from it to the right hand or to the left. So

you will not associate with these nations

these which remain among you or mention the

name of their gods or make anyone swear by

them or serve

them or bow down to them. But you are to cling

to the Lord your God as you have done to this

day.

They were to cling to God. They were to hold

tightly onto the true God of Israel. They were

to

cleave. That's all the same word. It's the

same word that Moses used in Genesis two when

he said

that a husband were to be joined or cleave to

a wife. They were to be faithful to God like a

husband is to be faithful to his wife. They're

warned that just as God kept his word he

promised

to bless them and he had done that. He'd also

promised that if they left him he would curse

them

curse the people and bring them trouble that

he would punish them if they fail to be

faithful

to him. Joshua 23 14. Now behold today I'm

going the way of all the earth and you know in

all your

hearts and in all your souls that not one word

of all the good words which the Lord your God

spoke

concerning you has failed all have been

fulfilled for you not one of them has failed.

It shall come

about that just as all the good words which

the Lord your God spoke to you have come upon

you

so the Lord will bring upon you all the

threats until he has destroyed you from off

this good

land which the Lord your God has given you.

When you transgress the covenant of the Lord

your God

which he commanded you and go and serve other

gods and bow down to them then the anger of

the

Lord will burn against you and you will perish

quickly from off the good land which he has

given

you. So then in the first 13 verses of our

passage of chapter 24 he recounts the history

from Abraham

to their present time kind of like I just did

and how God had worked in the the nation of

Israel to keep his promises. Every step of the

way from from Abraham in Ur of the Caldees

moved

to Canaan through the the Exodus period God

had been with them God had had worked for them

he

protected them he provided for them he rescued

them he had given everything that he had

promised

to the nation of Israel to his people that he

made that he called. Now Joshua is turning to

that

people and and now going to enter the rest of

of the promised land and he's calling on them

to remember what God has done and to dedicate

themselves to choose to follow God and God

alone

in their lives in their new lives in the

promised land and so as we look at what God

has called

them to do we can learn the things that Joshua

we can learn some things that from Joshua's

call

and the Hebrews response to his call about our

lives and our commitment to follow God and so

every

one of us must see the consequences of

deciding to follow God and the first part I

think in

verses 14 through 18 we can do that by

understanding the exclusivity of following God

remove me first

14 again now therefore fear the Lord and serve

him in sincerity and truth and put away the

gods

which your father served beyond the river and

in Egypt and serve the Lord if it is disagree

able in

your sight to serve the Lord choose for

yourself today whom you will serve or the the

gods which

your father served which were beyond the river

or the gods of the amorites in whose land you

are

living but as for me in my house we will serve

the Lord the people answered and said far be

it from

us that we should forsake the Lord to serve

other gods the Lord our God hidden is he who

brought us

and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt

from the house of bondage and who did these

great signs

in our sight and preserved us through all the

way in which we went and among all the peoples

through

whose midst we passed the Lord drove out from

before us all the peoples even the amorites

who

lived in the land we will also will serve the

Lord for he is our God one of things that

marks our

western culture is the the the sheer amount of

choices we have for everything most of us were

alive in 1989 and remember the the transition

that happened from from Soviet Union to Russia

and the the big revolutionary government

change they had and one of the the things that

started

that change was Boris Yeltsin coming to visit

the Kennedy Space Center in Houston before

it happened and while he was in Houston

visiting the Kennedy the not the Kennedy Space

Center the

Johnson Space Center he went to a grocery

store called Randalls in Houston and he opened

the door

to the grocery store and looked at just the

sheer amount of stuff that was available to

Americans

to purchase and not just the different

categories of stuff but the different kinds in

each category

the produce section the people that were his

escort said that he he walked around with his

eyes wide

and his mouth wide open looking at all the

stuff and he he mentioned how even the Politbu

ro you

know the the the the supreme comrades didn't

have all the the good food to eat and it said

that that

was the the beginning the spark for him to say

we've got to do something to change the Soviet

Union

and change their economy and so even more

today with the the rise of of Amazon and

online shopping

do we have more options than they did even in

1989 what would would Boris Yeltsin think

today

if he were still alive so many places in our

world would give everything they have

for a roll of toilet paper and yet we go to

store and we have aisles of different brands

and different

kinds and different thicknesses and with

different designs on the toilet paper it's and

to us it's

no big deal you may be a shaman person and you

may be a cottonel person I won't judge you

unless

you're a scots person and then then you might

have a hard time but it's whatever your

preference is

and you can go from the toilet paper aisle to

next aisle and it's soft drinks or snacks or

whatever

it it doesn't matter you can choose whatever

you want and so we have this attitude as

Americans

as people in this western civilization that

that choice is important that our freedom to

choose

is a very important thing to do and we we

project that idea and those choices onto our

freedom of

religion as well in other words whatever you

choose religiously is is okay it's up to you

it's

whatever makes you feel good whatever helps

you feel the best like just like choosing

whichever

toilet paper you prefer it's the same thing

you can be religious you can be not religious

but I'm

just spiritual whatever that means it doesn't

matter but is that the truth is choosing a

religion

or choosing a belief or choosing a god that

you follow the same as choosing a brand of

toilet

paper no this is the the final address that

Joshua makes to the Hebrew people and he's

making it clear

that God will not allow himself to be placed

on a store shelf for for your choice among the

the

bevy of other gods available to you he will

not be put on the shelf to be chosen by the

style of

art on the label as opposed to another branch

is because you like this one the way that it

looks

better in other words God will only be served

and worshiped exclusively he will not share

his glory with another God so there's Jews had

to choose to worship him or worship the false

gods of their day they could worship many

false gods at once but they couldn't add God

to that mix

of idol worshiping and if you you want to

listen again i'm going to read verses 14 and

15 i want

you to key your ears for how many times he

uses the word serve in those two verses now

therefore

fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and

truth and put away the gods with your fathers

served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve

the Lord if it is disagreeable in your sight

to

serve the Lord choose for yourself today whom

you will serve whether the gods with your

fathers served

which were beyond the river or the gods the am

rites in whose land you are living but as for

me in my

house we will serve the Lord he uses that word

seven times it is a way of making sure that

they

understood that if they were to choose God

they would be choosing to serve him and serve

him alone

they were to be his servants to do his work

the way that he has provided for them to do

in all those books that we have trouble

reading with every year in our our yearly

reading prosams

as as opposed to being the servant of a false

god to the people the land they just took the

choices

between serving the true god Yahweh that just

brought them out of Egypt through the

wilderness

and conquered the land for them or serving the

false gods that's your two new options

Jews this got the serving god is a completely

exclusive and exclusionary non-inclusive

non-woke thing you have to choose him or

something else he will not be added and share

his glory with anyone else he is a jealous god

Moses explained this truth before they even

got

began their conquest to the promised land

Exodus 3411 be sure to observe what I am

commanding you this day behold I am going to

drive out the amorite before you and the Can

aanite the

Hittite the Parasite the Hivite and the Jebus

ite watch yourself that you make no covenant

with

the inhabitants of the land into which you are

going or it will become a snare in your midst

but rather you are to tear down their altars

and smash their sacred pillars and cut down

their

ashrim how judgmental Moses for you shall not

worship any other god for the Lord whose name

is

jealous is a jealous god in a passage

explaining that God is a jealous god for his

people's worship

just like the one that we just read is what

made the Oprah have such a problem with

biblical

Christianity she couldn't conceive of God

being a jealous God all she knew and made her

feel good

was that God was a loving a loving accepting

God not a a jealous God and but his jealousy

is not

like our sinful jealousy over what others have

and what we may miss out on he is the God of

the

universe and there is no one like him all the

false gods that were available to the Hebrew

people

were made by either man and their imagination

or were the wiles of demonic forces behind

them

and God will not share his glory with

something that we make up in our minds or

something that

demons put out there for us to fall for so

Joshua is holding this out for the people you

can choose

Yahweh or the demonically inspired idols of

the people of the land that you just conquered

by the

power of Yahweh that is it you cannot choose

both God will not have it he said fear Yahweh

serve Yahweh in sincerity or incompleteness is

what that means and he says serve Yahweh in

truth

in other words not just in public serve him

for real in your private life and in your

public life

and this has been a problem that they've had

since joshua's time and in the christ time of

the Pharisees

and Sadducees and in our time we have a

problem with the public service or our face of

serving

God but the private not really using God as a

an advertisement for how good you are the

Pharisees

and Sadducees were hypocrites in Christ day

and I just want you to think about all the

people that

we know the the paul whites and all of the tv

preachers and and all those that profess to to

preach God's name and Christ instead of coming

to the Pharisees and and the scribes and the

Sadducees

of his day saying those things to them what he

would say to us and our religious leaders in

our

nation but in Matthew 23 Christ proclaimed

eight woes on the hypocritical Pharisees and

the last

one he proclaimed in verse 29 of chapter 23 he

says woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypoc

rites

for you build the tombs the prophets and adorn

the monuments of the righteous

and say if we had been living in the days of

our fathers we would not have been partners

with them

and shedding the blood of the prophets they

tried to act like they were good like they

were the

spiritual leaders but it was their kind that

murdered the prophets that came before christ

it was their kind who christ called white wash

tuned it was a a monument on the outside clean

and

white and looked beautiful but on the inside

it was full of dead man's bones they they didn

't serve

him in truth they didn't serve him in

sincerity completely or even in public and in

private

and when you're charmed by the the

overwhelming sentiment of our culture to be

inclusive and it

non-judgmental it's so hard for us it's all

around us we need to realize that God will

not be served along the gods of our time and

our age in our land like joshua told the the

conquering hebrus in verse 15 he says if it is

disagreeable in your sight to serve the lord

choose for yourself today whom you will serve

but as for me in my house we will serve the

lord

so we need to make that same choice that josh

ua did for himself and his family and we need

to

make it exclusively we need to make it in

truth and in sincerity and that's the

consequence one

of the consequences of following god is that

we follow him exclusively in the second in

verses 19

through 25 is admitting our inability to

follow god in ourselves and this is a a hard

one for people

to understand verses 19 through 25 said then j

oshua said the people you will not be able to

serve the

lord for he is a holy god he is a jealous god

he will not forgive your transgressions or

your sins

if you forsake the lord and serve foreign gods

and he will turn that excuse me turn and do

you

harm and consume you after all he has done

good for you the people said to joshua no but

we will

serve the lord joshua said to the people you

are witnesses against yourselves that you have

chosen

for yourselves the lord to serve him and they

said we are witnesses now therefore put away

the foreign

gods which are in your midst and incline your

hearts to the lord the god of israel the

people

said to joshua we will serve the lord our god

and we will obey his voice so joshua made a

covenant

with the people that day and made for them a

statute and an ordinance in shechem the last

part

of our passage the people recall it what god

had done for them that they agreed with the

terms of

what joshua was putting forth that he they

would follow him and verse 18 it said the lord

drove out

from up before us all the peoples even the amr

ites who lived in land we also will serve the

lord for

he is our god this is what they were saying

with their mouths but joshua was 110 years old

and he

had been with these people for all those 110

years he had experienced with him he knew

better so that's

what he he replied after they said that then j

oshua said in verse 19 to the people you will

not be able

to serve the lord for he is a holy god he is a

jealous god he will not forgive your trans

gression

or your sins joshua was was before they went

into the land one of the the 12 spies that

went into

the land you remember the 12 men went to spy

on kanan 10 were bad and two were good does

anyone

remember that song from sunday school no just

me joshua and calib were the one of the two

were the

two good spies and the other 10 spies that

went into the land of kanan that they were

about to

conquer had a bad report to tell the people

they didn't trust that god could could rescue

them or

conquer the the men who were like giants in

their sight and so they caused all the fickle

hebrew people to to worry and to doubt god and

and so god punished them for their unfaith

fulness

by making them wander in the wilderness for 40

more years so that everybody in that

generation

that that didn't have faith would perish and

so it was only the younger generation would be

able

to go into the new promised land but he told j

oshua and calib the two good spies that they

would be

allowed to go into the land so joshua was

there for all those 40 years of of unbelief of

rebellion

of stiff-necked and hard-headed people and

then that generation died out and he saw their

children

and he led their children to conquest and now

we're at the end of the conquest and he is

telling

them hey i know who you are i've seen what you

've done i've seen how you responded to god and

you're

not going to be able to serve god like you say

you're not going to be able to do it in your

own

power the the hebrews over and over again

proved that they were a rebellious and stiff-

necked people

and he knew this and you know what his his his

ideas and his his statement turned out to be

true

because the very next book this is the last

chapter of joshua and we go right into judges

and we go right into a time where the people

did exactly what joshua would say they were

not able

to follow god as they said they would they

thought they could do it in their old power in

their own

power but they couldn't and they proved that

they couldn't in the book of judges as we we

've seen

before but this is the age old question this

is the age old debate in christianity do we

have the

power to please god and ourselves can we just

choose to do what's right um that back in uh

the the year of our lord 400 there was a man

named augustine and he had this big debate

with another

man named pelagius and pelagius believed that

if if god gave us a command if he told us to

do

something then we must have the power in

ourselves to be able to follow through

otherwise it would

be unfair it would be unfair of god to require

something of of us that we couldn't do and in

a

vacuum ignoring all other things it kind of

makes sense there's a logic to it if god says

that you

must be holy then then obviously he must

expect that we're we're able to be holy in and

of ourselves

but that's not something that we could do

because that's not in our nature for example

if you had

to walk 500 miles and then you had to walk 500

more to win your girl's heart that's something

that you eventually could do you could start

at one point and go 500 miles and then go 500

more

and eventually you end up right at her door

but augustine said that there no our nature

doesn't allow us to choose and to follow god

in the perfection and to the degree required

by his

holiness it's not like walking 500 miles it's

like being asked to swim from new york to eng

land

now many of you are in better shape than i am

some of you may have swam in in high school

and that takes a lot of strength and so you

can get michael felps and you could shoot him

up with

all the steroids and all the other stuff and

he is going to out swim me probably by miles

but

even then his nature stops him from being able

to make it all the way across the atlantic

ocean

to england and that was augustine's point even

though he didn't know who michael felps was

he said that no our nature doesn't allow us to

follow god to the perfection required

to follow his command so we need help we need

grace we need mercy and we need a change

he said or applied to pelagius's his theory he

says though i am but dust and ashes suffered

me to

utter my plea to thy mercy suffered me to

speak since it is the to god's mercy that i

speak

and not to man's scorn from me too i might

have scorn but thou wilt return and have

compassion on me i only know that the gifts

thy mercy had provided sustained me from the

first

moment all my hope is not save in thy great

mercy grant what thou dost command and command

what thou wilt he realized that god was a

supreme creator of all the universe and he had

the absolute

sovereign right to require anything of his

creatures but if we're in order for us to do

what he asks

we would need mercy and we would need grace we

would need christ to come in and give us the

power

to enable us to change our natures to make us

be able to swim across the atlantic ocean god

is quite pleased in fact and he's quite glor

ified in the fact that we have to ask for his

mercy

and we have to look to his grace through the

even the gift of faith that he gives us he is

glorified

when we cannot do it in ourselves but have to

look to him for his power joshua knew the

people

could not follow god in themselves they would

have to look forward to a second joshua

jesus who would conquer not other men for them

but the inner sinful man that is in all of us

but the people denied this in verse 21 they

said no but we will serve the lord they

promised to

serve the lord they made a profession of faith

to serve the lord and joshua takes this

profession

at their as their word and tells them that

they are witnesses to the promise that to each

other

verse 22 you are witnesses against yourselves

that you have chosen for yourselves the lord

to serve him and they said we are witnesses

then he he makes it real he says that their

profession of faith has been given now we will

know the makeup of the tree of the truth of

their

faith by how they act by the fruit that the

tree bears verse 23 now therefore put away the

four

and gods which are in your midst and incline

your hearts to the lord the god of israel they

can

demonstrate the reality of their faith by

actually putting away the false gods and by

inclining

their hearts to god and so they respond verse

24 we will serve the lord our god and we will

obey

his voice so there's something missing there

from what he just said richard has when he

wrote about

this patch he said he finds their promise

lacking he said the people do not respond to

any of the

specifics that joshua has commanded they only

repeat the earlier promise to serve the lord

the admission of an explicit note of obedience

is ominous it suggests that whatever loyalty

the

people swore they kept their images and

symbols of other deities in other words they

had a public

profession of faith but their private faith

was hypocritical was not full of sincerity

and and truth and this is the problem that we

have all of us it's easy to say yes it's easy

to come and listen to the the list of things

and Ephesians four and they're great things

Lord make make me clean clean my mouth make my

mouth full of wholesome speech and give me

the faith and the grace to speak wholesomely

and not not speak with that that old tongue

I used to have but you know then we I go to

work and everyone starts to joke around you

see

it's easy for us to say yes the hard part the

part that we need the grace we need the mercy

and we need the help of our lord and savior j

esus christ and and his holy spirit sent to us

is

the hard part we glory in that first part of

Ephesians where god has chosen us from before

the foundation the world and and given us the

holy spirit as an earnest and and has changed

us but god

and and his mercy but the difficulty is that

second part and and taking off that old self

and putting

on the new self that's the impossible part

outside of christ and his holy spirit and god

listens when

we call out for help god wants to be there

wants us to ask for help to increase our faith

to to

rely and require to incline our hearts to his

grace the people joshua was calling the faith

they were convinced that they could do it they

would just put their foot foot down and bear

down and follow god with with all their

strength and with all their might

and then they got hit with the reality of life

and this nature and this world and of the

devil

right away so we need to be convinced that we

cannot follow god in our own strength

we have to rely on his gift his grace his

christ that he sent and the power of the holy

spirit

that's given us as an earnest in this christ

ian life that's the consequence of choosing to

follow

god that god will only be worshiped

exclusively and that is impossible to worship

god out of

our own strength we need the strength of

christ and the holy spirit to do that and

lastly

by memorializing our commitment verses 26

through 28 and joshua wrote these words in

the book of the law of god and he took a large

stone and set it up there under the oak that

was

by the sanctuary of the lord joshua said to

all the people behold this stone shall be for

a witness

against us for it has heard all the words of

the lord which he has spoke to us thus it

shall be

for a witness against you so that you do not

deny your god then joshua dismissed the people

each to his inheritance i'm gonna be

completely honest uh this this particular

point is not

illiterated exactly with the other one that

had a hard time trying to to get to get it to

fit now

you may not remember the the points but there

's something about being a preacher and wanting

those points to be illiterated and match so

this one kind of doesn't match but is a very

important point and so i wanted to make sure

to get this out even though i couldn't get it

very perfectly joshua does something here that

is very important for all of us he sets up a

memorial for a constant reminder to the people

of this moment in time when they all agreed to

follow

god and follow god alone he he wrote down

their words and their agreement their promise

in the

book of the law of god so that it would be

read as a future in the future as a reminder

they promised to follow god and god alone and

then he took this large stone and rolled it up

under the oak tree at shechem that was by the

sanctuary so let's look at those two things

that he did and see why they're so important

for us as christians he first he wrote their

promise

in the book of the law of god and this was

preserved and to be read by the future

generations

moses uh had uh prescribed and required that

the people would read the law of god the

priests

and that the king and the leaders of the

people would would over and over again read

the law of god

and as you you go through the old testament

and find uh accounts of the people that that

went back

on this that sinned against this promise that

the people made this covenant that they made

to god we find that they had neglected to read

the the book of of the law of god after the

the

reigns of david and solomon remember the

kingdom got split into two and then the the

kingdoms had

many bad kings and some a few good kings kings

that that followed after the ways of god and

so we come

in second kings all the way in chapter 22 to

one of the good kings named josiah and in jos

iah's reign

that the temple of god had been neglected it

was falling apart it was in disrepair it was

dirty

and so being a good king um he said look we

need to take the money that's been given to

the house of

god and use it to repair it so he got crafts

men to take that money to repair the house of

god there

was cobwebs growing up and and all the

instruments and implements of the temple were

were stuffed in

the rooms and and were forgotten about and

while they were doing the work of repairing

the temple

one of the the priest finds this book and this

book that has been neglected for hundreds of

years in the life of the jewish people was the

book of the covenant the book of the law of

god

and and listen to the story about what what

happened when they recovered that book in

second

kings 229 he says chiffon the scribe came to

the king and brought back word to the king and

said

your servants have emptied out the money that

was found in the house and had delivered into

the hand

of the workmen who had the oversight of the

house of the lord the people who were

restoring it and

maintaining it and bringing it back to repair

in verse 10 moreover chiffon the scribe told

the king

saying hill kaya the priest has given me a

book and chiffon read it in the presence of

the king

and when the king heard the words of the book

of the law he tore his clothes they had

neglected

the worship of god that had been prescribed by

god the god who brought them out of the land

of

egypt the god who conquered the land that he

was a king over and then neglected his house

then

neglected to follow the prescriptions and

shortly after this he they hadn't even

observed the

Passover and so Josiah brings back the

Passover so this has been hundreds of years of

neglect and

forget forgetting to read the book of the law

and if they had done that they would have came

to the

part that joshua wrote in the back said it was

on this day under the oak at shechem by the

sanctuary

that all the jews all the hebrus all the

tribes we finished conquering the land and

they promised

they gave their word that they were going to

follow god and follow god alone in sincerity

and in truth but they forgot to read the book

they never read the book so it was important

joshua wrote it in there for a reason and if

they would even halfway tried to do what they

were supposed to do they would have read read

it and been convicted and tore their clothes

like Josiah did that's a very important and

then the second thing he did was he placed a

large stone

by the oak tree in shechem and shechem was was

very a very significant place so they they

just

conquered the land and they ended up here in

shechem it was it was the last of it it was

the

the end of their conquering now they were

being dismissed and to go live their lives and

their

adherence and peace and rest well shechem was

also the first place that abram came when god

called

them out of ur of the caldees to the canaan it

was the first place that abram stopped so you

see

the circle abram went there and then they all

the hundreds of years and now they're finished

and they

end right up there again and if you keep

reading to the end of chapter 24 it's where

they buried

the bones of joseph remember joseph became a

ruler in egypt and saved hundreds of lives

from famine

and but he told his people he said don't bury

me in egypt bury back home in the promised

land

and so in the next the very end of this

chapter they finally bury him there in shechem

when it was

all completed and it was also the place where

jacob isaac's son buried the family idols when

he

committed his family to worship god and god

alone when god commanded him to move to bethel

look at genesis 35 one so then god said that j

acob arise go up to bethel and live there and

make an

altar there to god who appeared to you when

you fled from your brother esau so jacob said

to his

household and to all who are with him put away

the foreign gods which are among you and pur

ify

yourselves and change your garments and let us

arise and go up to bethel and i will make an

altar there to god who answered me in the day

of my distress and has been with me wherever i

have

gone so they gave to jacob all the foreign

gods which they had the rings that were in

their ears

and jacob hid them under the oak which was

near shechem so it's it's god is completing

many stories

in this one instance in shechem when joshua is

giving his farewell address this is the the

ending

of a major part of the story of god and now

they're moving on from this chapter of the heb

rew people

to the next chapter living in the land and all

throughout that the promises made to abram

promises

made to isek and to jacob and to jacob's

family to joseph all those god had kept his

word and was

faithful and so joshua is setting that large

stone under the the oak in shechem to remind

every single

person who would come there for generations to

come of what they had promised to god and what

god

had done even there under that oak under an

oak tree in shechem so there was a memorial

that that

joshua was placing a reminder of what had been

done for them and what they had promised to do

and and this is how we work as people this is

how our minds work and and god has even given

us today

these memorials reminders like large stones in

our christian lives in in our church we have

physical

things to remind us of spiritual realities

there's there's two ordinances that we observe

in the

church that were given to us by god in the new

testament and that all the church for all the

ages no matter where they are whatever

language they speak observe at least these two

things and

should only be to baptism and the lord supper

and in baptism we have a physical external

reminder

of what has happened to us internally and

spiritually when we're we're we're buried

in christ under the water it reminds us of his

burial and when we're raised up out of the

water

it reminds us that we're risen with him in his

resurrection we're buried with him and we're

raised

again with him so it's a physical tangible

stone of memorial for an intangible spiritual

reality

in our lives and then in the lord supper we

have bread that represents that his body was

broken for

us and we have wine or grape juice to

represent his blood shed for us on the cross

it reminds us of

his person and his work and it's who he is and

what he has done for us these are

memorials for us every single time we do them

it reminds us of what what god has done

spiritually

for us and it's very important god knows us he

created us he's considered our frame he knows

that we forget he knows that we need reminders

and and he knows it's hard work to put off our

old

selves and and to go out into the world and

and be reminded to do that so he he hits us

every

month we observe the lord every other month we

observe the lord supper in our church and so

he

hits us with it in an hd technicolor every

single month and that little piece of bread

and that little

cup of juice the very big spiritual thing that

he's done in jesus christ on the cross

and in the resurrection that is the the stone

of memorial that god has given us and so

joshua places that now every single time the

jews walk past that stone they will remember

this point this promise and they'll remember

what god has done for them in the past so this

passage of joshua could have been a great

marker for the hebron nation it could have

been this is

the time that we decided to follow god and

they could look back to that and say look we

've done

it look what god has done for us look at how

we followed him exclusively look at how we

rely on

him to follow we followed all the the law that

he's given us but it didn't become that it

became

damning evidence that they didn't do it that

they couldn't do it this the last passage of j

oshua the

one that follows this talks about his his

death and how the people followed god until he

died and

until the leaders after him died and then

after that they they stopped following god so

we get to the

the book of judges and in chapter two they

actually repeat that last section of joshua in

the book of

judges uh judges two seven says the people

serve the lord all the days of joshua and all

the days of

the elders who survived joshua who had seen

all the great work of the lord which he had

done for

israel then joshua the son of nun the servant

of the lord died at the age of 110 and they

buried

him in the territory of his inheritance in tim

nath harrys in the hill country of effraying

north of

mount gosh all that generation also were

gathered to their fathers and there arose

another generation

after them who did not know the lord nor yet

the work which he had done for israel then the

sons of israel did evil in the sight of the

lord and served the baals and they forsook the

lord the

god of their fathers who had brought them out

of the land of egypt and followed other gods

from among

the gods and the people who were around them

and bowed themselves down to them thus they

provoked

the lord to anger they did exactly what they

promised they would never do and brothers and

sisters praise god that we are kept by the

holy spirit because outside of his help and

his keeping

we would go the same way but he has promised

to keep us in christ do not be like the faith

less

israelites we need to follow god exclusively

we need to rely on the power of christ and the

holy

spirit and his strength and we need to follow

him by remembering all that christ has done

for us

and all that he is going to do remember that

he keeps his promises by the power of the holy

spirit

and by his great grace we need to follow god

let's pray great study father it is of your

mercy

and your mercy alone that we are even here

today we pray that you continue to bless us

that you

continue to pour your grace and then we

continue to praise you and bring you glory for

everything

that you've done in christ and your holy

spirit bless us as we leave in christ's name

amen