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Farewell - Joshua 23
A sermon preached by David Holloway

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We come now in our series on the life and work of Joshua to his FAREWELL. And we are going to be looking at chapter 23 of the Book of Joshua. Joshua is now an old man and safely in the promised land. It had been hard going. He had had to overcome physical and spiritual obstacles. But, then, after many years, things were easier. Verse 1:

a long time had passed and the LORD had given Israel rest from all their enemies around them.

Oh! there were still hostile groups around. But it was a period of "rest". And there was a new generation. And that is so often when God's people start to go astray - when life is easy; when all is going well; when there seem to be no problems. Remember the rich man in Jesus' parable. Life was easy for him; and he forgot God. But Joshua knew that each new generation must face these facts and make a decision - and each individual in each new generation must make a decision - for or against the Lord. So in the next chapter, chapter 24 verse 15, he says this to the assembled leaders:

choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.

For himself there was no question:

But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Joshua knew that this new generation couldn't live on their parents or grandparents faith. They had to decide for themselves. Who has come up to Newcastle at this time of year? Perhaps you have come from a Christian family; or you have had good Christian friends at home or at school. But you have been living off their faith in Christ. Well, you can't do that for ever. You've got to sort things out for yourself. If you don't, you will just drift - morally, spiritually and then eternally. Joshua seems to have seen these dangers in his own day. So in his "Farewell Address" here in chapter 23, Joshua gives us three strategies for combating drift - spiritual drift - when life is easy. And these are in the form of three imperatives that are my headings this morning. First, REMEMBER; secondly, OBEY; and thirdly, LOVE. First, REMEMBER And there are two things you must always remember. First there is the greatness and faithfulness of God. Verse 3:

You yourselves have seen everything the LORD your God has done to all these nations for your sake; it was the LORD your God who fought for you. Verse 4 [So] remember ...

Verses 9-10:

The LORD has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. One of you routs a thousand, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as he promised.

And then verse 14:

You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.

Our God is great and our God is faithful. You must remember that. Yes, sometimes the godly do suffer. That is the mystery of suffering. There are no guarantees in life. But it is also true that nations and societies and individuals that trust God and honour him do benefit. God is no man or woman's debtor. Our God is great and faithful. Even unbelievers see the benefits of the gospel. Lord Skidelsky wrote a biography of the economist Maynard Keynes. In it he tells how Keynes saw that our economy depended on the moral capital the Christian faith gave to it. He quotes Keynes:

I begin to see [said Keynes] that our generation ... owed a great deal to our fathers' religion. And the young ... who are brought up without it will never get so much out of life. They're trivial: like dogs in their lusts. We had the best of both worlds. We destroyed Christianity and yet had its benefits.

People like Keynes and his decadent Bloomsberry Set at the beginning of the century (and their modern followers in the media and in education) have indeed "destroyed Christianity" in much of our public life. Yet they saw the benefits. For them Christianity was like a plant cut from its roots. The flower, or the benefits, survived for a short time. But today, in our own generation, the benefits are withering and going and we are experiencing social and moral breakdown. That relates to the second thing you have to remember. And that is the consequences of disobedience and the consequences of rejecting God. Verses 12-13:

But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you ... then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.

Verses 15-16:

just as every good promise of the LORD your God has come true, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil he has threatened, until he has destroyed you from this good land he has given you. If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord's anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you.

There are consequences to disobedience - both now and for all eternity. Joshua, perhaps, only saw the immediate consequences - a long period of guerrilla warfare and ultimate defeat and exclusion from the promised land. Also today many people only see the immediate consequences of turning away from God and rejecting Christ - the social and moral breakdown. And that is real. In 1914 there were 1000 broken marriages per year - from the divorce statistics; in 1942 there were 10,000; and now we are over 150,000 per year. At the same time crime and violence have escalated. All that has accompanied Keynes' "destruction of Christianity". You can't play around with God. But now we can be forgiven for all our sins and all our moral breakdown through Christ. That is the good news. Far more serious, therefore, than these social and moral consequences for this life are the consequences of rejecting God for all eternity. And these are filled out in the New Testament. There we learn that the wrath and judgment of God are not just for time but for all eternity. Do you believe in Hell? Jesus did. He used language to indicate its horror. It is outer darkness. It involves fire, weeping and torment. This century there has been a conspiracy of silence on Hell and an attempt to suppress it from 20th century consciousness. Marx led the way, with his attack on the afterlife in general. Then there have been liberal theologians within the church. They have tried to tell you that the bible doesn't say what it plainly does say. Joshua would say: "how foolish!" For the first way to avoid drifting is to remember, on the one hand, the greatness and the faithfulness of God; and, on the other, the consequences of disobedience. And we now know that these consequences are both in social and political terms; but even more importantly in ultimate and eternal terms. Secondly, Joshua says OBEY Look at verse 6: Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left. Joshua reminds the assembled leaders of God's word written - such as it was in those days - "the Book of the Law of Moses." Do you want to be an effective Christian? Then you must read the bible. But Joshua wants you to be careful not only to read but also to obey God's written word. And it is no good saying the bible is too hard to understand. It was Mark Twain who said: "the trouble with the bible is not the bits I don't understand but the bits I do understand." And Joshua says that when you do understand the message of the bible be comprehensive in your obedience. Don't pick and choose. Oh! there're people now who say, "I don't like the bible's teaching on sex and marriage"; or "I don't like the bible's teaching that Jesus Christ is the only way, and that other religions don't lead to heaven." Others say they don't like the bible's teaching on sin and judgment. But that is all there in the bible. You must accept and obey all that is written. And you must do so in a balanced way. Listen:

obey all that is written ... without turning aside to the right or to the left.

There are too many Christians today who are spiritual right-wingers or spiritual-left wingers (and that has nothing to do with politics). It means rather that you go after this crazy religious fad or that one. You hear some tape, or listen to someone at a conference, who sounds good, who talks big, but who you don't really check out. I have just come back from Kenya. In East Africa there are a range of prophetic movements. But some of them are false prophetic movements. There is a frightening and murderous prophetic group in northern Uganda where people are taught that they are immune to bullets - the "Lord's Resistance Army". Joshua says, do not "turn aside to the right". But also he says do not turn aside "to the left" either. In the developed world, in the United States, for example, and in Europe you get church leaders now denying the fundamentals of Christian doctrine and Christian ethics. So the first thing is to obey the bible. The second thing is to obey in terms of alliances. Look at verses 12 and 13 again:

if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you.

That is still relevant. On the one hand there is the alliance of marriage. Some of you are not yet married. But you may be thinking about marriage. The bible is crystal clear. A Christian should only marry another Christian. That is not narrowness but common-sense. How can you be united with someone, if you are not united with them in the most important thing in your life?

Then on the other hand there is the way you generally mix with other people. In Joshua's day, as people were having to learn basic lessons, there had to be a total physical separation from non-believers. In the New Testament there is not so much a physical as a spiritual separation called for. Jesus prayed not that you would be taken out of the world, but that you would be kept from evil.

If you trust in Christ, Jesus calls you to go into the world to witness and work for him. But you still need to be careful. Your non-believing friends will get drunk, take drugs, sleep around, and do a range of things. But you must say, "No! I won't do that." The early Christians had to say "No!" Peter in his first epistle said this:

you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do - living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. {4} They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. (1 Pet 4:3-4).

Tough talk - but still relevant for today. So the second strategy to avoid drift, says Joshua, is to obey in terms of the bible, and then in terms of marriage and of what you get up to with your friends. Thirdly, he says LOVE Look at verse 11:

be very careful to love the LORD your God.

And this is where it all must start. It is no good just moralizing and telling people to obey. The human will is weak. You know that naturally you can't do what you should do. But when you love God as someone has said, "the attraction of God drives out the attraction of the sinful world." You say, "that is all very well. But how do I love God?" 1 John 4.19:

We love because he first loved us.

The good news is that it all starts with God. He first loves us. 2 Corinthians 5.14:

For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.

You only begin to understand Christ's love when you understand that Christ died for sins - the righteous for the unrighteous. Today the result of the Bloomsberry "destruction of Christianity" is an ignorance of the sinfulness of sin. The seriousness of sin - of ignoring God and of not believing in Christ - is not proved by how you feel about it. It is proved by the fact that Christ had to die for sins - to bear your punishment, in your place; and by the reality of hell. God's love and Christ's love is a love that saves from eternal consequences: that, indeed, should motivate our love. But more than that - as we turn to Christ in repentance and faith, so God pours "out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (Rom 5.5). You say, how do I know if I love God as I should? That is a good question. But distinguish the emotion from the thing itself. That is where people go wrong. Jesus says:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12.30).

It is a total thing. And the real test of your love is obedience. Jesus says:

If you love me, you will obey what I command (John 14.15).

So Joshua's third strategy was to "be very careful to love the LORD your God."
I must conclude.
When we started this series we saw how the book of Joshua was addressed to people about to cross over the Jordan. So it has lessons for all about to begin new and challenging situations. The God of the desert is still the God of the promised land - that is Joshua's message. But at the end of the book the focus is more on people who are now settled. If you like, chapter 1 is for first year students, or junior doctors just starting out, or other people in new careers or new situations. Chapter 23 is for the old hands - the 2nd and 3rd years, who know there way around; it is for the consultant doctors or GPs that have a comfortable lifestyle. It is for anyone who thinks they can take things easy. Be warned. At that stage you can so easily drift away from the Lord. Who this morning needs especially to learn the lessons about spiritual drift? Maybe there are some here who have spent their whole lives, so far, adrift from God. And you want to change. Well, the message of this chapter is: one, remember that our God is great and faithful - so you can trust him; but also remember that he is a God who judges disobedience. Two, obey God's word written - for us that is the bible; and obey all of it and in a balanced way; and then obey in respect of who you intend to marry and in respect of what you do with your friends. Three, love God. But to love God you first need to accept his love for you and his forgiveness in Jesus Christ and then receive his Spirit who pours God's love into our hearts. That's where it all starts. Who needs to do that now?

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