Joshua 23 - Hold Fast

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Joshua 23 “A long time afterward, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies, and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its fjudges and officers, and said to them, “I am now old and well advanced in years. 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. 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. 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. 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, 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, but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. 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. 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. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. 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, 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. “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. 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, 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.””

INTRODUCTION

General John Sedgwick, a Union commander in 1864, was surveying enemy lines when he turned to his aide and said, "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist…” He never finished the sentence.

Last words are strange things. Some are flippant. Some are tragic. But last words, when captured throughout Scripture, carry weight.

Joshua 23-24 capture Joshua's last words. He is old. Rest has come to Israel. And with the nation's whole life stretching out ahead of them, Joshua spends his last strength on one concern.

Will the next generation give God all of themselves? Or will they begin to divide their hearts?

Everyone in this room understands hedging. That is, a strategy that attempts to offset loss. Hopefully not in the betting sense…

The investor diversifies so no single loss can ruin him.

Tragically, some couples stand at the altar and say, “I do,” while quietly keeping an exit in mind.

Hedging is wisdom in a portfolio, but death in a marriage.

And it is a great danger in the life of faith.

Somewhere in most of us there is a small room we have not opened to God. Because if we opened it, and he did not come through, we would not know what to do. So we hedge our relationship with God because we think we can manage Him. We give him access to some rooms and lock the others.

Here is the question I want you to consider for yourself this morning.

What would it take for you to hold nothing back from God?

If you drew a floor plan of your life with a room for every part of it, your work, your money, your phone, your marriage, your kids, your past, the door you least want God to open, find it. You do not have to say it out loud. Just find the door.

Joshua's answer is to “look at what God has already done."

1. Look Back Before You Move Forward

(Joshua 23:1-5, 9-10, 14)

Before Joshua asks anything of God’s people, he reminds them of God’s faithfulness. He knows something we often forget.

Fear makes us focus on what might happen next.

Faith remembers what God has already done.

That’s why Joshua doesn’t begin with a command. He begins with a memory.

Verse 3: "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."

Verse 10: "One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you."

Then the summit, verse 14. "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."

The charge to obey does not arrive until verse 6. The call to remember comes first.

Grace precedes any imperative. We work from salvation. Not for it.

Here is what that means for a hedged heart.

The antidote to a divided heart is a remembering heart.

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits" (Psalm 103:2).

Why are we so prone to “hedge?” Because we’re so prone to forget.

Rehearse God's faithfulness on purpose. Specifically.

The prayer he answered when you did not think he would.

The provision that came in the last week.

The addiction he broke.

The marriage he restored.

The grave he has already emptied.

Rehearse the plodding days too, the long seasons of living for the Lord that took as much faith as the big victories.

Do this out loud. At the dinner table. In your community group.

A God who has never broken a single promise should not be second-guessed now.

2. Watch What You Cling To

(Joshua 23:6-8, 11-13)

Looking back honestly means facing an honest danger.

The same heart that can cling to God can also drift from him, and Joshua will not let his people pretend otherwise.

Look at verse 7. “Do not mix with these nations. Do not make mention of their gods. Do not swear by them, serve them, or bow down to them.”

Then Joshua says something surprising. Verse 12 uses the very same word again.

But, let’s first look at the first use of this word... In verse 8 he says, "you shall cling to the Lord your God."

That word, dabaq, is the strongest adhesive word in the Old Testament.

It is the marriage word of Genesis 2:24. Hold fast. One flesh. I was able to introduce this concept last week… Then…

Last week, after the service, one of our members who is a neonatal nurse told me about what’s called kangaroo care.

When a baby is born prematurely, one of the first things nurses encourage is skin-to-skin contact with a parent. It seems almost too simple to matter. The baby is held close, resting against the parent’s chest.

And yet researchers have found that this closeness changes things. The baby’s breathing steadies. The heart rate becomes more regular. Stress decreases. Growth is supported. The child begins to flourish, not because the parent is trying harder, but because the child is staying close.

That’s a helpful picture of what Joshua is saying. “Cling to the Lord your God.”

God never tells His people to hold on because He needs us. He tells us to hold fast because we need Him.

Life, strength, peace, wisdom, perseverance, all of it flows from remaining near Him.

The New Testament gives us an even richer picture. We don’t merely cling to Christ externally.

By grace, we have been united to Him. We are in Christ, and Christ is in us through His Spirit.

Jesus says, “Abide in me… for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5). Our strength for obedience doesn’t come from squeezing His hand tighter. It comes from sharing His life.

The same Savior who calls us to remain in Him has already joined us to Himself.

Then, in verse 12, he uses the same word again. If you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations.

Same word. Same intensity… Just aimed at idols.

That is what a divided heart does. It takes the muscle God gave you for holding fast to him, and it wraps that muscle around something else.

Verse 13 tells them what happens next. Those nations will become "a snare and a trap, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land."

A thorn in the eye is not a large object. It is a small one you tolerated too long.

That is how idols work. They are attractive because they promise exactly what our hearts already want.

You control them… at least we think we do. They are more easily paid off than the God of truth, and less demanding.

Money still promises what only God can give.

Approval, career, comfort, the politics you are more passionate about than the gospel, the phone that shapes you more than the Word does.

None of us is immune. And none of these stays small.

So, here’s a question for each of us to consider this morning… What are you clinging to that is not God?

The private habit you have decided to manage rather than mortify.

The grudge you rehearse when you cannot sleep.

The ambition that has become the controlling purpose of your life.

And the harder question. Which of God's warnings have you filed under "surely not for me"? Which promise of loving discipline have you been quietly editing out?

If you are here this morning and you have not yet come to Christ, hear this warning the way you would hear a doctor, not a prosecutor. The danger is real. But there is a way out that Joshua's generation could only point toward. His name is Jesus.

3. Hold Fast With All Ten Fingers

(Joshua 23:6, 8, 11)

So what keeps a heart from drifting? Joshua gives three positives, and they are the most hopeful words in the chapter.

The Word, verse 6: "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."

Scripture breaks the grip of idols by showing them for what they are and putting the living God back in front of us.

Clinging, verse 8: "you shall cling to the Lord your God." Total, loyal, one-flesh devotion.

This is what Jesus later means when he says "abide in me. Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

Love, verse 11: "be very careful to love the Lord your God." This is the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:5, the commandment Jesus calls the greatest of all.

And this love is not something we manufacture on Sunday mornings. "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9).

Picture a small child in a crowded parking lot. She does not grip her father's hand with technique. She grips it with all ten fingers, because everything depends on not letting go.

That is the picture of clinging. That is what God is asking of you this morning.

Name the rooms you’ve compartmentalized. The calendar you protect from God. The bank account that has never been prayed over. The phone that shapes you more than Scripture does. The ambition you have decided is off-limits to Christ. The sexuality you keep on your own terms. The grudge you will not release because releasing it feels like losing.

Obedience as a follower of God means no locked rooms.

And this is not you gritting your teeth into holiness. The Spirit whom Christ has poured out on his people lives in you and empowers you to hold fast. You obey not in order to be loved. You obey because you already are.

The Greater Joshua

This leaves us with a real problem.

Israel was told to hold fast. Israel did not. And if we are honest, neither have we.

So, who ever gave God the whole heart he asks for?

The name Joshua is the name Jesus. Both mean the Lord saves.

But this Joshua says in verse 14, "I am about to go the way of all the earth." He is a mediator with an expiration date. He gives his last speech, and then he dies, and he leaves his people with a charge they will not keep.

And they did not keep it. They mixed with the nations. They served the idols. Eventually the whip fell on their sides and the thorns went into their eyes and they were carried out of the good land into exile, exactly as the word had said. As Joshua breathes his last, the chapter itself is crying out for a greater Joshua to come.

And into that failure he comes.

Where Israel could not render whole-life obedience, Jesus did. He turned aside neither to the right hand nor to the left across an entire sinless life. Where the covenant curse fell on a divided people, Jesus took it.

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13).

He bore the covenant curse we deserved so that we might receive every covenant blessing He secured.

Every idol asks you to prove yourself before it gives you anything in return. Money asks for more. Success asks for more. Approval is never satisfied.

They keep taking and never say, “It is enough.”

Jesus is altogether different. Before He asks for your life, He gives His. Before He calls you to trust Him, He proves that He is trustworthy.

He is not only more powerful than every rival. He is better than every rival.

The rest that Joshua could not finally give, Jesus gives. He did not just “…go the way of all the earth…” and stay there.

He rose. He ascended. He now intercedes for his own.

This is why "not one word has failed" is not finally about real estate in Canaan.

In Christ every promise of God finds its Yes. "For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory" (2 Corinthians 1:20).

We hold fast to him because he first held fast to us. He did not let go in the darkness of Gethsemane. He did not let go in the greater darkness of the cross. And one day the One who has never failed to keep His promises will return, riding on a white horse, called “Faithful and True” (Revelation 19:11).

His promises can be trusted now, and when time is no more.

To any here today who have not come to Christ.

You have spent your life hedging your bets, and honestly, you were right to, because everything else eventually fails you.

Here is the one who never will. Jesus.

He kept the whole law you have broken. He bore the whole judgment you have earned.

You do not have to clean up your divided heart before you come to him.

You simply have to stop trusting yourself, your idols, and every false promise that has failed you, and trust the One who never will.

Come to him this morning.

Looking Ahead to the Table

In just a few minutes we are going to turn to the Lord's Table. And everything we have heard is going to be made visible there.

The bread will be his body, given whole. The cup will be his blood, poured out, sealing a covenant in which not one word will fail.

That meal is grace for the divided-hearted, for people like us who want to hold fast to Christ and keep discovering how tightly we still cling to lesser things.

So while we finish here, begin letting the chapter search your heart:

Where has my heart been divided this week?

What room have I kept locked?

Which of God's promises, especially his warnings, have I been editing out?

What have I been clinging to instead of him?

Bring those questions with you to the Table.

CLOSE

We began today with a question: What would it take for you to hold nothing back from God?

Joshua's generation was handed the answer in a sentence they could not deny. You know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed.

We have been handed more. We have the cross where every promise was kept and every curse was carried. We have the empty tomb where the whole faithfulness of God stepped out into the morning. We have the Spirit who takes what belongs to Christ and makes it ours.

Church, unlock and throw open the doors of your life. Not because you are finally strong enough to trust Him, but because He has already proven Himself faithful.

Every room you surrender is surrendered to the God who has never failed you, the Savior who held fast through Gethsemane, through the cross, and through the grave.

He has never let go of His people, and He will not begin with you.

Trust Him with every room. No locked doors. Hold fast to Christ, because He has already held fast to you.