Introduction
Do you ever stop to review all God has done for you? I have lived long enough now that it is quite easy to forget all the wonderful things Jesus has done for me. It's not that I'm not grateful. It's that there is just so much my brain is not big enough to consciously contain it all--unless I intentionally sit down and try to recall it. As I do, I think of how Jesus saved me from a broken, abusive home and from poverty. I remember how Jesus led me to the woman who would become my wife. I recall how Jesus inspired me and my wife to get a college education, even though it was very difficult and we didn't have a lot of financial support from our families. Then, Jesus called me to leave a promising career in engineering to enter the ministry, which was another great unknown and tremendously difficult. Furthermore, Jesus somehow gave us the wisdom and energy to raise 3 brilliant kids, despite moving around from place to place and living on very little income. I could go on and on about God's blessings to me and my family.
How about you? What has God done for you? Some of you have survived strokes, heart attacks, and other devastating injuries. I know someone who conquered cancer and gone on to be very active in my church. Others have overcome, with God's help, substance abuse or other terribly difficult problems. Some of survived losing a child or a spouse or someone else you love deeply, picked yourself back up after a divorce, or coped with mental illness. We’ve all made it through COVID (so far); do you remember when the world shut down? Here we are. We are still alive and living, with God's help! Let us give thanks for God is good!
This is the last blog in our series about conquering your fears. Through faith in Christ we can overcome our fears because God fights for us and we are not alone. God is with us and the heroes of the Bible and even our loved ones who’ve died and gone to heaven cheer us on when we have faith in Christ.
We’ve been studying how the Israelites had to conquer their fears in order to enter the Promised Land. The Israelites started out as slaves in Egypt. God sent 10 plagues to force the Egyptians to let the Israelites go free. Unfortunately, the Israelites were too afraid to enter the Pormised Land, so they were stuck wandering in the wilderness for forty years until Moses and all the original generation died (except for Joshua and Caleb). Then Joshua became the new leader who led a new generation to conquer Jericho and the rest of Canaan.
Now, as we come to our story for today, Joshua is an old man. God has done all the major fighting for Israel. Most of the unbelievers have been driven out of Canaan. A few remain as a test of Israel’s faithfulness—to see if they will complete the work of driving out all the worshipers of false gods (or if they will be unfaithful to Yahweh, the God of Israel). And now, Joshua is coming to the end of his life and he has some parting advice for his people.
Joshua 23:6-13
6 “So be very careful to follow everything Moses wrote in the
Book of Instruction. Do not deviate from it, turning either to the right or to
the left. 7 Make
sure you do not associate with the other people still remaining in the land. Do
not even mention the names of their gods, much less swear by them or serve them
or worship them. 8 Rather,
cling tightly to the Lord your God as you have done
until now.
9 “For the Lord has driven out great and powerful nations for you,
and no one has yet been able to defeat you. 10 Each one
of you will put to flight a thousand of the enemy, for the Lord your God fights for you, just as he has promised. 11 So be very careful to love the Lord your God.
12 “But if you turn away from him and cling to the customs of the survivors of these nations remaining among you, and if you intermarry with them, 13 then know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive them out of your land. Instead, they will be a snare and a trap to you, a whip for your backs and thorny brambles in your eyes, and you will vanish from this good land the Lord your God has given you.
Joshua’s 4
Pieces of Advice
Joshua gives the Israelites four pieces of advice: 1. Be Obedient. 2. Be Faithful. 3. Continue the Mission. And 4. Love the Lord your God.
Be Obedient
God wanted the Israelites to be obedient. It’s important to point out that God’s grace came before His call to obedience. In Exodus 1, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. Then God does amazing, miraculous things to deliver the Israelites:
He sent ten plagues on the Egyptians to force them to let the Israelites go. Then God parting the Red Sea so Israel could cross the sea safely on dry ground. Next God fed the Hebrews in the wilderness with mana from heaven and quail for meat and water in the desert.
Now notice, all this happens before God gives Israel the Law. Exodus chapters 1-19 is all about what God does for the Israelites. It is not until Exodus 20 that God gives Israel the ten commandments and the rest of the Law. You see, God’s grace and deliverance precedes the requirements He gives, even in the Old Testament.
The same is true for you. God’s
grace pursues you, woos you, encourages you, and invites you before you
even spend a single second thinking about Him.
Then, when you realize you need God and you turn from your sin and turn to
God through Jesus, God saves you and adopts you as His very own child. Now, you are part of His family forever. It is only after God has done all this that you don't deserve that God asks you to be
faithful and obedient and act as a member of His royal family.
Be Faithful
God enabled Joshua and the Israelites to drive out the unbelieving
Canaanites from the Holy Land, because the Canaanites had rejected the One True
God for generations (for at least 400 years).
So now, God gave the land to the Israelites. They were to be God’s royal priesthood who
would represent God to the whole world.
They were to help all the nations return to God. They had a special purpose.
A few Canaanite settlements remained in the land. They were there to test Israel’s
faithfulness. Would Israel be faithful
to God? Would they become bored with
their devotion to God and become intrigued by the exotic foreign gods of the
Canaanites who remained in the land? Would they decide to hedge their bets? (You know, let’s worship the God of Israel so He will be good to us,
but let’s also worship the gods of the Canaanites just in case?) God wanted Israel to be faithful to Him alone.
In this life, there are many things that will entice you away from
God. Be very, very careful that you
remain faithful to God. He is the only
one worthy of your worship. He must be
the first priority of your life. Do not
turn away from Him for riches, for family, for power, for influence, for
nation, for politics, for entertainment, for anything.
Continue the Mission
God chose the Israelites for a purpose. He blessed them so that they could be a blessing. God had already done the hard work of driving out most of the Canaanites. All that was left was to mop up the few remaining groups. This was certainly doable for the Israelites who now had a majority and who occupied the fortified cities of Canaan. Unfortunately, they lost their focus on being the royal priests of God. They turned their attention to their own personal pursuits—their families, income, and pleasure. They forgot the mission of God. Before long, this led to complacency and unfaithfulness.
Christians have a mission too. We are to go into all the world and make disciples of Christ. We are to teach people about the love and salvation of Christ and invite people to follow Him as Lord. We are to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When we get distracted, we worry about all the other things in life. The main mission of Christ becomes an after thought or no thought at all. Our lives are about what makes us happy and soon we don’t even care about God at all, except that maybe He can be useful to give us what we want or help keep us from losing what we love. Where are we then? We've become like the Canaanites. We are right back where we started—full of fear, feeling lost and alone.
We must stay focused on the mission of God or we get lost once and consumed by our selfishness, fear, and depravity.
Love the Lord Your God
Joshua told the Israelites to love the Lord their God. Jesus said the same thing. He said the most important commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second was like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Love is powerful. Fear of punishment only goes so far. It’s an immature and incomplete way of living. God doesn’t want us to obey Him out of fear. He wants us to obey because of love.
How is it with your friends, your children, your spouse? Do you want them to be faithful only because they’re afraid of what will happen or how you will react
if they betray you? No! We want the people we love to be kind and
faithful because they love us. Right?
God is the same way. God has already loved you with the greatest love of all. Romans 5:8 – “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” God wants us to be obedient and faithful—not out of fear, but—out of love. When you love someone, you try to the best of your ability to do what they want. Most importantly, you do what they need (even if it's not what they want). That's love.
What Christ asks of us is not so difficult. It is an easy burden to bear and one He helps us carry. It is love. Love God with all you are love your neighbor as you love yourself. Is that so hard? We are not asked to take up a sword and drive out Canaanite armies. In America, thanks be to God, we are not even in danger of being tortured or killed for our faith as many other Christians are around the world. So can’t we be obedient and faithful and love?
Closing
As I close, I want to invite you to decide who you will follow. Have you ever decided to follow Jesus as a Christian? If not, please do that today. Ask God to forgive you for the ways you've turned your back on Him up until today. Now make a commitment to follow Christ and ask Jesus to help you keep your commitment. From this day on, seek to be obedient and faithful to God through Christ.
Perhaps you are already a Christian. Maybe you even became a Christian a long time ago. Have you been faithful or have you drifted from the faith or from your commitment? If so, please chose to recommit your life to Jesus today. God will forgive you for getting off track. He will help you to make a fresh start if you ask Him. So ask Him today.