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