Sermon Tone Analysis

opening

When i was 9 years.

I was reading the sports page of the newspaper.

Yes I did that a lot on sunday mornings.

It was my father’s and I’s tradition to circle our picks for who would win the football games that sunday.

It was the playoff time of the season.

My Greenbay packers had just lost to the 49ers the week previous.

That game is still fresh in my head.

I was still bitter because I believed the packers should have won.

Jerry Rice of the 49ers had been shown to have fumbled the ball on replay, but because the refs had ruled him down by contact, the drive continued and the 49ers won on the final play of the game.

This was the year before coaches could challenge a ruling and have the refs check the replay video.

And as I mentioned earlier, as I was looking up the games for the current week in the newspaper, I saw a heading, Mike Holmgren, coach of the greenbay packers resigns as head coach.

It had only been 2 years prior that the packers had won the super bowl under coach holmgren, and they made it back the next year but lost.

It was those years that I became a fan.

I’m 27, and have been a packers for 20 years now.

It was under Holmgren, the packers had become a winning team again after more than 2 decades of hardly being relevant.

Ive heard interviews since then suggesting, many of the players almost quit because they didn’t want to be coached by anyone other than Coach Holmgren.

Holmgren though, did give a final appeal, to stay the course, keep fighting, keep working hard and be faithful in their fundamentals.

The Packers have always remained a successful competitive team throughout the next two decades.

It wasn’t just having a good coach and leader that was the recipe for success, it was the commitment and faithfulness to to their core values as an organization in their leadership and front office that carried on the winning ways for the Packers.

The book of Joshua is the final scene of the 2nd act of the Israelites story.

It recounts how the Israelites came to possess the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Not unlike the original garden of Eden, not by military endeavors or strategies, but according to the words of Joshua, by the power and direct actions of God.

recount the last recorded intimate moments shared between the Israelites and their human captain.

In these chapters Joshua calls on Israel to abandon any thoughts of other gods and to choose Yahweh as their God and remain loyal to Him.

It is in these two appeals that we will be spending the bulk of our time today, and also identify the present appeal for God’s people today, before we begin, lets take a moment to pray.

Body

If you have your bibles with you, I would encourage you to turn to , beginning in verse 1.

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, 2 Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and said to them, “I am now old and well advanced in years.

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.

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, 2 Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and said to them, “I am now old and well advanced in years.

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.

This is an important address for Joshua to the people whom he has journeyed with the better part of his entire life.

While this would seem to be a point of long over due celebration, the wise Joshua, sees this point as a crossroads, and because of this there is a need for reflection.

It is not simply a reflection on themselves, but even more so of where God had been with them, sustained them, and will continue to be with them imploring them to remain faithful.

What Joshua is doing is not unlike what the Israelites have done throughout their journeys and conquests.

They take time to reflect.

“David Merling, a professor of archaeology and Biblical history, in the SDA seminary makes a connection to Joshua’s final appeals and similar events leading up to this.

In Deuteronomy, Merling writes, the Israelites had spent 40 years in the wilderness and were camped just across the Jordan river on the edge of canaan.

they had been tried by fire of the wilderness, and a new Israelite community had succeeded where the older one had failed.

Looking form the distance, one might assume that the Israelites would immediately dash across the river, but they didn’t.

They took time to stop for a history review and the final appeals of Moses were given, found in Deuteronomy.

A similar parallel experience occurred after the Israelites left Egypt.

We know why they didn’t take the direct route to the promised land, Canaan.

God took them on an easier way.

still they could have been in canaan in a very few months, even traveling through sinai and going around dangerous obstacles and warful peoples.

Surely they could have already possessed the promised land, however God met with the Israelites at Sinai, and establishes a covenant with them and had them build a sanctuary, before leading them on.

Even after the Israelites first arrived in Canaan, crossing the Jordan river, they did not immediately settle the land but first paused for several days at Gilgal, where the covenant between them and God was renewed, found in .

The same goes for their military conquests.

There is a pause to reflect and renew their covenant to God.

From Exodus to the end of Joshua, there are 5 appeals to reestablish the covenant between them on and God.

The Israelites had now come to a plateau in their physical and spiritual journey with God.

Joshua knew there was more ahead.

He had brought them together to acknowledge their success and lift their vision toward the next phase of life: complete settlement of the land.

Joshua continues in his first appeal following his reminder of their successes by God’s hand.

Joshua continues in his first appeal following his reminder of their successes by God’s hand.

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 proceeds to enlighten them of the consequences of breaking the covenant and brings to light one particular pitfall, they had historically struggled with, in intermarrying with idol worshippers, Joshua comments how such wickedness would be a downfall of their nation.

When looked at, outside of its proper context it appears almost as God issuing a fearful threat.

I would suggest it was actually more of a prophecy, and warning.

You can read the book of judges for yourself and see the constant cycle of, and the children, Israel did wicked in the sight of God, and they were conquered.

God’s protection returned in their repentance.

It was a lesson that had to be learned and learned often that their great power as a nation, was not in their numbers, but in their faithfulness to God.

Thus we examine the purpose of these spiritual pauses.

It seems clear form the early history of Corporate Israel that there was a systematic precision or determined plan for moving God’s people forward.

Whenever the israelites plateaued , at a high level of success, God renewed his covnenant and carefully warned the Israelites of the problems they would encounter in the future, then he sent them well warned into the fate that lay ahead.

He did not let them be led by their past triumphs; that is emotions based on their past efforts and experiences, but pushed them into a future focused on his power in past events and his promised help for the future.

So it was with the Israelites at shechem.

They had reached a new level, and once more God assembled them and called for a renewal of His covenant.

In chapter 24

Joshua addresses the people, citing key events from their past, and in light of this reminder again, Joshua appeals to the people to choose to remain faithful and not wander.

It is a choice they are presented with.

Joshua says:

Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016).

Faithlife Study Bible ().

Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness.

Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, 17 for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.

18 And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land.

Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”

Maybe Joshua could have stopped there, but this covenant was no small matter, he wanted them to understand the weight of their commitment.

mAYMaybe

I was asked here recently if I could take a week and be the camp pastor at Nosoca.

Unfortunately, my schedule and duties here would not allow me to go on such short notice, I told them I would love to next year though.

It got me thinking about the appeals I got from my counselors at camp when I was a camper at the end of the week following the pageant we’d have on friday evening.

Depending on our age, our counselor would talk about the different influences that exist in the world and the temptations that lay ahead of us as we got older.

For each mentioned, we as kids would nod our heads and promise to keep Jesus first and not fall victim to any of the worldly infuences, not fully perceiving what actually would lie ahead.

I would later reflect on this experience when it was now me working as a counselor appealing to a group of kids, challenging to keep God first and make a decision to be baptized.

I was now not as naive as to what temptations existed in the world.