The Mission of God (14)

The Mission of God

Fight the Good Fight

Joshua 23

Introduction

This is the penultimate chapter in the book. Joshua calls a national assembly to deliver his last will and testament.

It’s a personal speech after a long ministry, and it tells us about the things that are weighing most upon his mind

and on his heart for the people of God as he considers the conclusion of his long life of service. These are the pressing issues with which he wishes to leave them.

What was Joshua to say on such an occasion?

What would he emphasize to these new leaders as he passed the torch to them? [1]

Winning a war is one thing, but building a nation is another. Conquering the land is one thing but establishing new norms for life in that land that’s another thing entirely.

We are reminded of Paul’s words to Timothy, his young protégé, at the end of his own long ministry career.

2 Timothy 4:7–8 (ESV)

7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

Not only is Paul saying, “I am finishing my race,” he is calling them to finish theirs so that along with him they also may receive their reward.

And in many ways, we will see that is precisely what Joshua is saying to the people here in chapter 23. This is his swan song, his final call to the people of God entrusted to his care. And he says to them in effect,

“As I now consider crossing the finish line and finishing my own race, let me exhort you now to do the same. Finish the race.”

Finish the race.

Joshua gave two final charges.

The last chapter of the book contains a charge to the people as a whole assembled at Shechem.

The twenty-third chapter, which we are to study now, contains a charge to the nation’s Leaders.

Israel’s “elders, leaders, judges and officials.” Caleb would be there, and Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest. So would the soldiers who had fought with Joshua through the various campaigns. Most of these men would have been mere youths back then. Now they would be grown. They would have families. All would have risen to positions of important leadership in the nation.

Now think about Israel's situation as Joshua addresses them in chapter 23 in those terms for a moment. They have conquered Canaan; the land has been divided between the tribes for an inheritance.

The issue now, however, is building a sustainable life according to God’s plan in the good land that He has given to them.

The Grace of God

Joshua 23:1–5 (ESV)

3 And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you.

4 Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. 5 The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you.

What God has provided for his people, the grace he has given them has not been abstract and vague. .and ethereal, an ill-defined blob of spiritual stuff whose main function is to give you a warm, fuzzy feeling but has no real practical value. That’s often how we think of grace.

That’s not what grace is. No, and that certainly wasn’t their experience of grace, was it?

The experience of grace that the Israelites had was concrete and substantial, tactile, and solid.

The country, the very dirt and stone of Canaan was all grace to them.

They planted their crops in the soil of grace.

They raised their children in the cities of grace.

They went to work in a land of free grace.

Grace is not vague and abstract, but it is concrete and vital and life-shaping.

They will need ongoing supplies of grace as they face enormous challenges having settled in the land.

There are still significant pockets of Canaanite resistance.

The nations around them, as the subsequent history of Israel will demonstrate,

will flex their geo-political muscles and try to expand their territory and empires, threatening Israel’s existence.

And all the while is the constant pressure and threat from the alluring, fleshly enticements of pagan, idolatrous, false worship.

And Joshua is naturally concerned with the burden –

“How shall they press on and stay faithful in light of all these dangers?”

They must call to mind what they have seen of the free grace of God lavished upon them.

Reflection

If you’re going to press on in the future, you must start by taking regular inventory of the grace of God toward you in your past.

“You have seen,” Joshua says to them, “all that the Lord your God has done.”

Remember it.

Dwell on it.

Do not lose sight of it.

It will reinforce your faith for the challenges still to come.

In time they would be attracted to the world and its ways, to the religious practices and morals of the surrounding pagan cultures.

At that time, these ways would seem “good” to Israel, and the pleasures of sin would “feel” desirable.

They were not to defect from the proper worship of God because they knew certain things about God: he had acted for them powerfully in their deliverance from Egypt and in the conquest and had thereby shown himself to be the true God.

red sea

Jordan river

Jericho walls

The people were to ground their feelings on this knowledge rather than vice versa.[2]

Anchored in The Promise of God

Joshua 23:5 (ESV)

5 The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you.

God had promised them that they would conquer the land and yet He would not remove all the Canaanites in one go.

Still, instead, the Israelites would grow as a nation to populate the land and gradually, over time, He would drive out the Canaanite remnant.

And here is Joshua reminding them of that promise.

God has kept His promise so far,

and now He calls them to believe it and live accordingly in the next phase of their national life.

How can you fend off the attacks of discouragement and unbelief that inevitably will come in your Christian walk?

Not by telling yourself to do better and try harder.

1. Look back and trace the ways the Lord has shown Himself to be gracious to you again and again and again.

Supremely in the Gospel of His Son – giving Jesus to be your Redeemer, raising Him from the dead and making you His beloved child.

2. Look up and trace the character of God, who never deserts His children, and never ceases to fight for them.

He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will be your shield and your defender.

3. Look down and trace the promise of God in His holy Word.

God doesn’t leave us guessing about His plans for us, does He?

We’ve more than mere conjecture to guide us regarding His purposes.

God has promised, He has mapped out the path of sanctification and perseverance and glory to come and has pledged Himself to carry you safely along that road till you reach your destination.

The anchor of your faith in challenging days must not be, “How much fuel do I have left in my tank?” It must not be, “How clever are you in figuring out a plan of attack for the difficult days ahead?”

The anchor of your faith must be Joshua 23 verse 5, “The Lord your God has promised.”

Hang all your hope, all your confidence, all your expectations on the promise of God. They are sure and certain and stable and unwavering. “He who has promised is faithful, and He will surely do it.”

An Exhortation to Obey

Joshua 23:6–11 (ESV)

6 Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left,

7 that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you

or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, 8 but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day.

9 For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations. And as for you, no man has been able to stand before you to this day. 10 One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised you. 11 Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.

· Joshua rehearses in the Israelites’ hearing the imperative God gave to him during the day of his calling: “Be very strong and continue obeying all that is written in the book of the law of Moses so that you do not turn from it to the right or left” (23:6; see 1:6–7).

· Joshua knows Israel had a propensity toward idolatry.

He could never forget the day when Israel, who had miraculously been delivered from four hundred years of Egyptian bondage by the Lord,

danced around a golden calf constructed by Aaron the priest while Moses was communing with God on Mount Sinai.

· Joshua understands the alluring potential the nations surrounding Israel can have on them to dislodge them from their faithfulness to God.

The surrounding peoples were committed to polytheism; they believed in many gods. Joshua thus reminds Israel what Moses said to Israel and what God had said to Moses:

“Do not have other gods besides me.… Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them” (Exod 20:3, 5; Deut 5:7, 9).

They were not even to associate with these nations because these nations would tend to draw them away from God.

They were to witness the nations without fraternizing with the nations

because light has no relationship with darkness.

This was especially pertinent because Israel had failed to drive all the pagan locals from their midst.

· Joshua admonishes his nation not to invoke the names of foreign gods or to swear by their gods.

They must not serve or bow down to such gods. One Hebrew word for idol means “no thing” or “worthless” (Lev 19:4).

It would be ludicrous to bow down to a nothing god who had hands but could not rescue, feet but could not run or walk to anyone in order to deliver them, ears but could not hear the plea of the worshiper, or eyes but could not see the plight of the servant (Ps 115:4–8; Isa 45:20–22).

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, however, could hear, see, and rescue them from any situation. He had already proven this.

· Obedience to the Lord is not to be a laborious effort but rather a loving service (v. 11).

Joshua 23:11 “Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.”

Considering what God had done for Israel,

Joshua implores Israel to be careful to love the Lord their God.

This challenge intends to move Israel to love God beyond duty, so they love him out of delight, beyond a job so they love him out of joy, and beyond a burden so they love him out of a sense of blessing.

The proper response to God for all he has done is to love him.

This is not love coerced or even demanded. It is love that willingly, gratefully submits.

It is love like a spontaneous reaction to the grace of God.

Love means walking in God’s ways, obeying God’s commands, holding fast to God, and serving God with all one’s heart and soul.

Obeying God (the first point) and loving God (the second point) go together.

Do not say you love God

if you are not obeying his commands in the Bible.

To claim that is hypocrisy. If you love God, you will keep his commands.

And it goes with that principle that if you attempt to obey those commands and sincerely walk in God’s ways, you will find yourself coming to love God more and more.[3]

An End to Avoid

Joshua 23:12–16 (ESV)

12 For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, 13 know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.

14 “And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed. 15 But just as all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have been fulfilled for you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things, until he has destroyed you from off this good land that the Lord your God has given you,

16 if 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 be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you.”

· Three times over in verse 13, verse 14, and again in verse 16, he tells them if they turn from the Lord to idols, they will “perish from off this good land.”

God is not playing here, is He?

· There is no causal relationship with the Lord possible. He wants you to be all in, and He will accept no rivals to your heart.

And let’s not for a moment imagine, you know, this sort of temporal judgment from God – “That’s all Old Testament stuff. We live in the new covenant.

That was then; this is now.” Let me just remind you of Ananias and Sapphira. Remember them?

Acts chapter 5, lying to the Holy Spirit, dead under the judgment of God.

First Corinthians 11:31, “Some of you are weak and ill, and some of you have died because of the way you have been abusing the Lord’s Supper.” God is deadly serious about His covenant with us.

The question Joshua is posing is, “Are we serious about our covenant with Him?”

· Joshua warns the Israelites that God’s continued fighting for them is contingent on their continued obedience to him.

If Israel intermarries with the idolatrous nations who remain in the land, the Lord will no longer expel those peoples but will allow them to bring incredible pain and discomfort to Israel.

God will turn the tables on Israel, so they are evicted from their promised homeland in Canaan (v. 14).

Joshua’s warnings were not only for Israel. They are warnings for us also.

They are echoed by Paul’s well-known admonition: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?” (2 Cor. 6:14–15).

The problem was not the problem of racial or ethnic intermarriage.

of course, any more than such things are forbidden today. A mixed race had come up out of Egypt, and Moses had himself married a Cushite, that is, an Ethiopian. Rahab was incorporated into Israel. No, the problem was rather what we would call the marrying of a believer with an unbeliever.

The people of the land were idolatrous and exceedingly corrupt. That is why God had ordered Israel to destroy them. Joshua foresaw that Jews might marry survivors of these corrupt Canaanite nations and so be drawn away to worship their false gods and practice their degeneracies.

You and I need to hear the same admonition as the Israelites. We live as the light in the darkness. Darkness must not snuff out our light; therefore, we should not fraternize with those likely to lead us astray.

Joshua, as he is “going the way of all the earth” (v. 14), reminds the leaders of the truth they already know: everything God has spoken regarding the nation of Israel has come to pass. Not one word spoken by the divine was left unfulfilled. [4]

It is not merely that the people of Israel were urged

to live upright, moral, consistent, and productive lives.

That is what people try to do today, apart from God’s written standard in Scripture, but it does not work.

· Joshua did not give some vague appeal to an undefined moral code. He presented them with “all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses” (v. 6), and they were promised God’s favor and blessing if they continued to live by that standard. It is the same today.

It is the same standard. That standard has been amplified over the centuries when the Bible was written. In the very next chapter we find that “Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God” (Josh. 24:26).

In other words, at this point the book of Joshua was added to the canon as an authoritative revelation from God for his people. But the standard is the same in all these books and is our standard today. In this respect, Joshua’s charge is contemporary.

Time to Choose

The last point of Joshua’s charge to Israel’s new leaders was the need to choose; that is, to make a decision to obey and serve God and not to allow oneself to drift along into eventual disobedience.

The challenge to choose is not as pointed here as it becomes in chapter 24, but this is the idea, nonetheless.[5]

· If the people obey, there will be blessing. If they disobey, there will be judgment. They must choose.

As far as these conditional promises are concerned,

Their response alone will make the difference.

There are inducements, for God never presents a choice as if both sides of the alternative are equal. What strikes me in these last words of Joshua to the elders, leaders, judges, and officials is his fourfold repetition of the word good.

Twice Joshua speaks of the “good promises the Lord your God gave you” (vv. 14–15), and twice he speaks of the “good land he has given” (vv. 15–16).

· We are to follow and obey God not merely because he is the true God.

We are to follow God not even because God’s way is the best, though that is also important.

We are urged to follow God because God is good and because his way is a good way. [6]

Okay, so pastor, what should I do if I’ve begun to slip back? If the old idols have begun to capture my heart once more? Let me tell you what not to do first of all. Do not salve your conscience. Do not brush off the rebukes of a stinging conscience and minimize your sin. Don’t allow yourself to believe, “Oh, I’m just being overly scrupulous,” and shrug it off.

· “Without holiness, no one shall see the Lord.”

You can never take your sin as seriously as God takes your sin.

No matter your public profession, no matter how skilled you are at looking the part, and no matter how much your face fits, be sure your sin will find you out. So here is what you must do.

You must realize that your only refuge from the wrath and judgment of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is never too late to repent and flee to Him.

Jesus bore in His body on the tree all the fury of unmitigated divine judgment of the Father.

He was, in fact, cut off from his Father so that every sinner who flees their sin and guilt and seeks mercy from Him might be welcomed in and received and washed clean.

That’s what you must do. No more performance. Not trying to fake it till you make it. Not putting a brave face on it. Not papering over the cracks.

Get on your knees before the cross, cry for mercy, turn from your sin, and trust in the Lord Jesus. It’s time today to come home.

[1]Boice, J. M. (2005). Joshua (pp. 123–124). Baker Books. [2]Boice, J. M. (2005). Joshua (p. 124). Baker Books. [3]Boice, J. M. (2005). Joshua (p. 126). Baker Books. [4]Smith, R., Jr. (2023). Exalting Jesus in Joshua (D. Platt, D. L. Akin, & T. Merida, Eds.; pp. 231–233). Holman Reference. [5]Boice, J. M. (2005). Joshua (pp. 125–127). Baker Books. [6]Boice, J. M. (2005). Joshua (p. 128). Baker Books.