We have for the last couple of Sundays been starting and getting good started in a series in the book of Joshua And we once again look at this passage that opens the book of Joshua. Let me read it for you beginning in chapter 1 verse 1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord the Lord said to Joshua the son of none Moses assisted Moses my servant is dead Now Therefore arise go over this Jordan you and all this people into the land that I am giving to them to the people of Israel Every place that the soul of your foot will tread upon I have given to you just as I promise to Moses From the wilderness in this Lebanon as far as the great river the river you freightees all the land of the Hittites to the great sea toward the going down of the sun. She'll be your territory No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life Just as I was with Moses So I will be with you I will not leave you or forsake you Be strong in courageous For you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them Only be strong and very courageous Being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you do not turn from it to the right hand Or to the left hand that you may have good success wherever you go This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth But you shall meditate on it day and night So that you may be careful to do According to all that is written in it for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous do not be frightened do not be dismayed For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go The word of the Lord You may be seated of course When it came time to name Jesus Jesus It was not left up to his parents In almost all cases the parents get to name their children I'm sure Joseph was thinking let's name this little baby Joseph Jr Mary was thinking perhaps I'll name him after my father or some of my kinsmen who knows what they were thinking They didn't have a choice The angel of the Lord that appeared to the Virgin Mary told her that that which was in her womb was of the Holy Spirit And then when the angel appeared to Joseph he gave him the name. He said you will call him Jesus for he Shall save His people From their sins It's a lot in that little state, but the angel made and the name they gave to the little baby that they wrapped in Swadling clothes and laid in a manger was Jesus They named him after an old Testament man. They named him after Joshua For Joshua is the Old Testament form the hybrach form of the Greek form Jesus Same name, why did they name him Jesus because Joshua meant the Lord saves And if you listen carefully to what the angel said you shall call his name Jesus or Joshua because He Shall save His people from their sins He Shall save the name means the Lord saves Precisely He is the Lord and he will save his people from their sins What you had when they wrapped that little baby in Swadling clothes and laid him in a manger what you had was the culmination the climax the great apex point of Salvation history for God throughout all history has been working toward a day when he would bring forth Joshua the savior himself who would save his people by his mighty arm And as you flow through salvation history from the days of Eden to the days of Noah to the days of Abraham and the days of Moses We're now making a transition in salvation history to the days of Joshua Moses is dead His work is done his legacy is literally in the book Now God looks to his assistant his lieutenant. It's interesting early in Joshua the book of Joshua Joshua is called the assistant to Moses Later in the book. He's called the servant of the Lord Joshua now has received his commissioning as we saw a couple of weeks ago and we saw something about his background and his His history and his fittedness for this particular task the Lord had given him He was to be the conquering leader of Israel if you study carefully the book of Joshua You'll see overtones all in that book of monarchy of kingship of leadership of everything that a king would be There was no need for a king God was the king of his people and he needed vice regents He needed assistance and servants and that's what Moses and now Joshua are to the Lord They are affecting his salvation. They're bringing about his program his plan and his purpose is upon earth But what you see here is you see when the nation was constituted under the constitutional covenant document of the law Now God has constituted his people as a nation as a kingdom as it were a kingdom of priests A kingdom of people who were holy to the Lord and separated to him and holy dedicated to him And now God is going to move us forward The book of Joshua falls strategically in our English Bible Where it really should be because it is in many ways and you can see there are many many passages That are reflective of the book of Deuteronomy So much so that some scholars speak not only of a Pentateuch but a Hexatook That is a sixth book That is part of the original five It is so connected But then also it projects forward in the Hebrew Bible the Joshua begins that section of the Hebrew Bible That's known as the former prophets The former prophets begin with Joshua and go through judges and the books of Samuel all the way through the books of kings Of course, you know the latter prophets or we know as the writing prophets me and like Isaiah and Jeremiah And those men the book of the 12 with the minor prophets. So the former prophets are Books that give us the story of salvation history and what it is it's the story of the kingdom of God What it looked like at that time in that place on earth And what you will see is it will start as so many kingdoms do with a conquest of a land One way to read the Bible if you're careful in reading the Bible through and sitting the great scope and the flow of Is to think in terms of two things throughout scripture number one think in terms of a seed an offspring a prodigy a people a lineage a dynasty a genealogy But then also think in terms of a land a place a dominion And that's the story of the Bible all the way through is to bring forth a king Who will rain over a people in a place And that's what the Lord is moving to in our salvation Jesus is our king He's calling us and raising us up separating us and making us Holy and fit to be a people and he's leading us to a place. Jesus said I go to prepare a place for you And we get glimpses in the scriptures of what that place is all about. It's it's Canaan But it's far more than Canaan All the way through the book of Joshua and even in the other books of the former prophets You'll find little glimpses of how actually the the place the geography Of the genealogy where God's people are going to be are always a little broader than what seems to be realistic They see the land of Canaan, but then he talks about the Euphrates river Which is far north and on the other side of the fertile crescent And then he speaks of the great river of Egypt the Nile which is way on down south at the other end of the fertile crescent And only during the days of King Solomon Did Israel physically and literally Dominate and occupy that particular geographic expanse For the rest of the time they were in a struggle and a fight to get there And the sad story of the former prophets is this story. It starts with Joshua Going into the land Conquering and settling the land of Canaan that God had promised centuries earlier to Abraham and the Books of Joshua Judges Samuel and kings end With the loss of that land
The Assyrians had conquered a large portion of the north And eventually the Babylonians conquered the remainder in the south And the whole land Was in exile It's interesting to see that God's people every time God puts them in a good place. They seem to get managed from it It happened to Adam and Eve And there's a An angel standing guard they can't get back into God's Eden God's place Until something is dealt with That is their sin and roll forward many centuries to the days of Joshua And now the angel of the Lord the Captain of the Lord's host perhaps a theophany of Jesus himself Stands at the gateway to Canaan And challenges Joshua Because the people are now going to enter the land of promise They're going to go into Canaan. They're going to occupy it. They're going to possess it. They're going to lock it They're going to divide it up. They're going to settle it
But they're not going to go in Until they have dealt with sin And that's what the wilderness wondering was all about And as we go through the book of Joshua we'll see consecration ceremonies And we'll see the repeat of the Passover and we'll see repeated things that Harken back to the days of Moses when God's people were Separated that's what the word holy means in a basic sense. They were cut out and separated to be God's people And now he had crafted them as a holy nation in the wilderness of 30 years of purging And now he's taking this next generation into the land and it's interesting you can divide the The book of Joshua quite easily into two parts it followed the first 11 chapters is the story of conquest The remainder of the book through chapter 24 is the story of the settlement in the land the occupying of the land In fact, four Hebrew words stand out in four sections The first two in that section of conquest is the word abar Which means to Passover to cross over to get into it They passed over Jordan, but not after not before they had a Passover of the of the Reckoning that they had had in Egypt It's a passing over a crossing over then the word logol or locale which means to possess To conquer and possess The third Hebrew word is the word holoc which means to divide To a lot to apportion the land And the chapters in the toward the end of the book talk about all the allotment in the land the allotment to the tribes East of the Jordan to the tribes on the west of the Jordan in the mainland of Canaan the allotment of the people that God had promised certain things to the allotment to To Caleb and Joshua. Oh, it's interesting to read about those two guys. I can't wait to get there I don't know how Mark's going to divide this out for us But I sure hope he cuts out a little time where we can talk about the allotment that was given to the two spies That had the right kind of attitude when they came back from spying out the land 38 years earlier God gives an allotment to Joshua and Caleb It's interesting that I just can't help it. I'm going to mention it now I just it just came out to me as I was reading this book again this past week You know the portion that Joshua went after he went after the portion that had the The giants you remember they were scared to death about those giants with when the original spies went in from K. Dishbarnia They talked about what a wonderful land it was, but then they talked about those giants And they were intimidated by those giants in the land and those The Anakeem the long-necked man the big strong powerful intimidating physically overpowering people the seed of the serpent actually Goliath was to be a descendant of these people. It was Joshua Who went after those men by himself? He took his band and went after that portion of the land occupied by those giants He had been ticked off at those giants for 38 years By the way, they had intimidated his fellow spies and he personally went after him and occupied their territory Okay, let's talk about him too. Maybe sometime a Caleb took a pretty tough portion of land He took the hill country. He took the country that was the hardest to get to the best fortified area of the land Caleb at 85 years old said I'll take my boys and my nephews Othnell one of the judges was his nephew He took his his client and he went after that This is one of the most inspiring books in the Bible when you start looking at it because this is a book of victory and Conquest this is a book that says God capes his word. This is a book that says God will have success In salvation he will under the man whose name means the Lord saves. He will save his people He will keep his word. He will bring it to pass. He will get it done He will fulfill and reward And this is what will happen in this land The other Hebrew word the final one there is the word Abad or obid The word obidaya comes from it. It's the word the beings to serve Joshua says I don't know what you're going to do But as for me and my house We will serve the Lord the book begins with God speaking to Joshua He's getting his message from the Lord the book ends With Joshua speaking to the people That's what a mediator does There's one mediator between God and man and that's Joshua Jesus the man Christ Jesus And it's so beautifully typified and prefigured and laid out in the life of this man Joshua He hears from the Lord and then mediates the message to the people In the latter chapters of the book of Joshua Well, that's about all the overview we have time for I think maybe just so we get something practical out of this sermon It's not just a dry history lesson. I teach a lot of dry history. I love dry history I want to talk a little bit about one verse Because we can't miss this verse There is an enormous amount of material in this charge and this commission that the Lord gives to Joshua But I want to just isolate down on verse 8 And I want to suggest to you that it's kind of easy to remember and it's kind of easy to isolate on but look at that verse 8 there This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth But you shall meditate on it day and night So that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success The sure success of salvation
Just look at that one verse and and let your eye drop down to the texture looking whether it's in the bulletin or in your own Bible And I'd like to point three words out to you the word mouth The word meditate and the word do mouth meditate and Do and I'd like to suggest that we have here in this particular verse in those three words the paradigm For living out the word of God For making the word of God the oracles of God the holy scriptures operative in our lives And let me just sketch it this way The first mouth is the verbal this book of the law shall not depart Out of thy mouth idiamatically this means you You are not to cease speaking the word of God In fact back in the Deuteronomy the Lord he told him to talk of it when you go in talk of it when you go out Talk of it when you're lying down talk about it when you're rising up talk about it at the dinner table Talk about it before you go to sleep at night teach it Talk about it. This word shall not depart out of your mouth. There is something verbal About the word of God It is verbally inspired It is verbally important and it is verbally applied Look at the second word there is the word meditate Meditate. This is the mental or the intellectual exercise I shall meditate upon it day and night. You remember what David said in Psalm 1 He said blessed is the man and it tells all about the man. It says he meditates upon the word of the Lord day and night By the way, Psalm 1 the first Psalm is a crystallological Psalm the man is Jesus Christ Blessed is the man and it's a description of how Jesus lived his life And this is what the Lord told Jesus in the Old Testament Joshua meditate This is the way we Absorb and learn and let the So let the word of God be inscripturated in our soul. This is the way the law of God is written upon the heart It's a memorization and meditation and then the third thing is to do That thou may observe to do according to all that is in That is written in this word Get that mouth verbal Meditate mental intellectual and then to do Experimental or experiential You work it out you do it you live it out And that's a paradigm kind of the phases of the way the word of God becomes real in our life a lot of people study the Bible read the Bible love the Bible preachers pound on the Bible and thump it but so few of us really Soak it and it becomes part of the warp and woof of our soul and it becomes the way we think And let me just suggest it in that first one in the verbal is that it's very serious In the mind of the Lord that he inscripturated his word God had given oral articles to prophets for centuries But it's with Moses that the finger of the Lord said I'm going to do more than give my word for the auditory hearing I'm going to inscripturate I'm going to write it down And I'm going to write it down in such a way that it's to be understood exact words Word arrangement terminology speech recitation We believe in verbal inspiration The literature is important the literary form is important the figure of speech is important the parts of speech are important The the root word meanings the etymologies are important
The word of God is verbal. It's to not depart out of our mouth. It's to be understood as words from the Lord It is interesting that when God chose to make himself incarnate the term that used is the word the word became flesh and dwelt among us We need to be very very serious about it That's why we ask our pastors to study the Bible a little more carefully And we require that they go to seminary and study a little bit of Greek and a little bit of Hebrew And something so that they can be more proficient in delivering to us the word of the Lord And we looked at a few weeks ago the 119th Psalm today We looked at the 19th Psalm in our reading that magnify the importance of the word of God This is a mental discipline
And it calls for us to memorize scripture You heard me scripture memory is not just for the children who are working to get a get a Bible Or to get a gold star put by their name or to be included in a party at the end of the vacation Bible school Memorizing scripture is for adults Suppose somebody took your Bible away from you and you couldn't ever look at another crop so as you went blind Suppose you had no way of getting your eyes on to the scriptures How much of the Bible could you recall how much would you know We're called upon to memorize it In its verbs in its words The second phase of the paradigm is to meditate This is the intellectual or the mental He says you shall meditate day and night That is the process of thinking upon the meaning of scripture that involves some Interpretation some receiving it some understanding of it It is that understanding that will shape our worldview that will deal with all aspects of life It's that understanding that will enable us to have it fit together one of the saddest things I heard I preached in a retirement home on Friday afternoon and a lady came up to me and she says Tell me how I should answer my friend my best friend that I have lunch with every day tells me that she never reads the old testament Because he's just a bunch of stories and it doesn't mean anything Oh, I just I couldn't hardly take it I say well you go to her and tell her just one thing so you know Jesus and the apostles didn't have the new testament They preached the gospel founded the church took the gospel to the world and said in motion everything We know today and brought about the kingdom of God on earth using nothing but the scriptures Which were nothing but the old testament Because there's a lot of other things. I think I said but they'll just tell that one thing Tell her tell her tell her st. Peter didn't have The new testament until The apostles in the eyewitnesses Gathered and enroted and put it in the form that we know today We have a magnificent canon which fits just like this to the old testament The reason the new testament is small the old testament is big is you didn't need to repeat yourself God didn't need to repeat himself He had already said all of that and he was important You should have all that foundation already laid in 90% of what you need to know you already need to know You only needed to know one thing and that was Christ and him manifested in the flesh And that's what the new testament is it's the declaration of that coming of Christ in the flesh And it fits right back into the old testament That's how you know it where to know something about the Bible how it fits together And I call this the meditation phase learning it Finding the coherence Lating it soak into your soul and have meaning to you where you understand the word of God the third phase in the paradigm that I'm suggesting here is so that see there's a purpose to the first two of verbal and Meditational In order that you might do there's a practical out working. We're not supposed to know the Bible just so We can know the Bible one of the things that breaks my heart is to attend occasionally. I've done this The guy was a Presbyterian by the way I was a Baptist at the time so I felt okay about it But I went to hear a very imminent old testament scholar if I called his name many of you had knowing Give a series of lectures And he was unbelievably informed I was overwhelmed at how he put Isaiah and Jeremiah together And I just just sit there enthralled in his lecture And then we all went over to the student center of the seminary where we were and We had a little gather around and he pulled out and lit up a cigarette and started smoking And the first two or three words out of his mouth were curse words And of course the student just giggled in them because he's a scholar And he was not going to be affected and he just tore me up Because here was a man that knew the word of God better than most of the preachers that I knew But yet it doesn't seem to have affected his conduct It hadn't affected it hadn't cleaned up his soul. It hadn't cleaned up his body. It hadn't cleaned up his mouth The Bible is intended to work us inside out The law of the Lord is perfect converting changing the soul David said And so there's a practical aspect to what needs to be done This is where we develop our conduct if we develop our convictions By meditating upon the word of God if we develop our concepts By understanding the verbal Nature of the speaking of God then this is where we have our conduct. It's experiential This is where we put it into practice and apply it It's not Just the internal life But it's the external life and the affairs of life that must be governed by scripture And there's no area of life Untouched And ungoverned by the word of God The word of God speaks We know to faith and practice To salvation To spirituality and all of these things But do you know the word of God has a very clear cut doctrine of labor A clear cut doctrine of economic activity And private ownership of property There are a number of things that we are Totally unaware even in the Christian community we don't understand what God says about all of life family Our health Our recreation Our government Our finances Our friendships Our relationships Our work ethic All of that is spoken to in Holy Rit And we should know the principles that are there And try with all of our heart, soul and mind to live them out And most of us really are not even aware that they're there Much less what they say This requires all of these things as I say it requires us to memorize To meditate And to take it all as a mandate This requires us To get our convictions in line Our concepts in line That it may affect our conduct
The word of the Lord is eternal Meditating upon it is Internal Living it out is external
The Lord expects us to observe that word means be careful or be diligent to observe to do All that is written here How are we measuring up?