JOSHUA 24
It is very striking how Jehovah in making this appeal through Joshua recounts all His former ways and all that He had done for His people, and He brings it to bear in a most touching [p. 100] way as a last appeal for faithfulness and devotion in service to Him. I would suggest that we have in the verses read from Joshua 24 what precisely answers in a typical way to the ministry of Paul.
In this chapter Jehovah goes back to the beginning of His ways: “Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, and led him throughout the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac”. God reminds His people that there had been a time when they were altogether beyond the pale. Euphrates was the boundary, the limit of that sphere which was in the thought of God for man’s blessing, and He says: “Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river ... and served other gods”. I suppose what would answer to our being brought from the other side of the river is what the apostle speaks of as repentance towards God, and along with repentance there is faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. So, if God took Abraham from the other side of the river and from other gods, He gave Him Isaac. He gave him one in whom the covenant was established, in whom all nations should bless themselves. That is, He typically gave him the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is an immense thing to have that great blessing of which Paul testifies — repentance towards God. The real thought of repentance is not merely that a man feels he has done wrong but that he has lost his link with God. One doubts if there is any genuine repentance until there is a desire to know the living God. Paul said to the people of Lystra, We want you to turn from vanities to the living God. Paul speaks to the Thessalonians of the word of the report of God. The gospel brings report of what God is to man, and the first effect of that being received is repentance towards God; that is the judgment of everything that is on the other side of the river. All the other gods there are judged, because, if man has not the true God, he has other gods — man must venerate something.
Serving other gods was not the original state of man as belonging to Noah’s household. We all belonged to Noah’s household. Sometimes we forget Noah and go back to Adam — it would do us good to go back to Noah; he is the father of us all. We were all in Noah’s household and in the ark, and when there we had the knowledge of the true God. All the [p. 101] millions living in this world now were all represented in Noah’s household and in the ark — that is what makes it so dreadful that they serve other gods. They have turned away from the blessed God whose grace and salvation they had proved in the ark. We have all stood round Noah’s altar and worshipped the true God in figure. It is not a question of where Adam’s sin put us — Adam’s sin never made anyone idolatrous; there was no idolatry before the flood. But when God intervened in matchless grace and secured a saved household in the ark, that same household came out on the earth with the knowledge that God had saved them. It was a new beginning for the race of man, a new world; but the solemn thing is that, into that new world where God brought the knowledge of Himself in grace, idolatry came. It says of them that they served other gods; it was departure from the God they well knew. So if God comes in to secure something for Himself, He has to overcome the power of every other god; He has to show Himself superior in the conscience and affections of His creature to every other god, so that there may be repentance towards God, that we may judge everything that is of the nature of another god. We turn to God; I believe that is the essence of repentance.
The race has been influenced by Satan after God making Himself known as a Saviour God. After the time of the flood men allowed their hearts to be drawn away to other gods. God started in the pure sovereignty of mercy and called Abraham. What answers to the call of Abraham is that God brings about in our souls repentance towards Himself; it means the judgment of everything that has taken the place of God in our souls. It is remarkable that we have come into a world into which God has come as a Saviour God and has brought in Christ. So there is a ground on which men can repent, and they can turn back. We can all turn back to the God from whom we have departed; it is not only Adam that departed, but we have all departed in our thoughts and affections, and so the first step of blessing is that we repent towards God, and when we do we find what a wonderful thing God has done. He brought Abraham from the other side of the river, He freed him from other gods, and then He gave him Isaac, and all the families of the earth were to bless themselves in Isaac — God brought in Christ.
The next thing to notice is that they went down to Egypt to [p. 102] learn the favour of God, what blessed favour God had to them. That answers to Paul speaking of the glad tidings of the grace of God. In Egypt they learnt what God was; they were poor idolaters — God tells us so in Ezekiel 20 — they served other gods in Egypt. But God was favourable to them, and He delivered them at the Red Sea; the whole time they were in the wilderness they were learning God’s favour. Every morning they found the manna and all spoke of God’s favour to them; if they had not been in Egypt and had wilderness experience they would not have known it in the same way. It was a wonderful lesson, so they could sing, “My strength and song is Jah, and he is become my salvation”. In the song of Exodus 15 they call themselves His people “whom thou hast redeemed”. We have to learn the grace of God experimentally in that way; we prove in our Egyptian and wilderness experience how favourable God is to us.
It is an immense thing to take these wonderful experiences in the stages in which God presents them. We have first to learn to repent towards God and have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; that separates us from the world of the ungodly. It brings us from the other side of the river and from serving other gods; and then we go through an experience which answers to the affliction in Egypt, and we learn how favourable God is to us. It was an immense thing to me when I began to understand the favour of God to me; it was not until some time after I learned what it was to stand accepted before Him. We dwell a good deal on how we stand with God, and I thank God for it; but there is something more important, and that is how God stands with me, the infinite favour of God towards us through our Lord Jesus Christ. The radiant shining of the favour of God in the face of a glorified Man transcends everything that you can think of. God provides a lamb so that He can put the value of the precious blood on His people for a covering, and He can have them for Himself. It really means that God has put His wing over His people; not only is the destroying angel shut out, but God puts His wing over them. The only other scripture where the word passover occurs is that which speaks of Jehovah spreading His wings over His people (Isaiah 31: 5), He passes over and covers them through the death of Christ, and says, I am supremely favourable to them. And then He leads them through the Red Sea and brings His cloud between them and their enemies, and puts them on [p. 103] the other side with a song in their mouths. Then He starts in the wilderness and gives them a pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day. An Israelite could never look up without seeing the cloud of God’s protecting love, as though God were saying, I am favourable to you. They were a poor, wretched, sinful people just like ourselves, and yet God all the time was bearing witness to His favour to them, giving them water from the rock, manna from heaven, preventing their clothes wearing out, and preserving them in a marvellous way for forty years, “nursing them in the desert”, as Paul says. What a marvellous thing it is to know the grace and favour of God towards us! In spite of what I am, God is favourable to me through our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, as it were, I am delighted to be everything for you. That is the glad tidings. Who can joy in God if they do not know that? Many people joy in forgiveness, in acceptability, never a charge to be brought against them. They are justified — that is blessed — but we joy in God when we see how favourable He is towards us; it is God Himself who blesses.
Jehovah goes on in verse 8 to speak of their going into the land of the Amorites, and He reminds them how His power had been with them to enable them to overthrow the nations on the east side of Jordan, and how Balaam came to curse but God made him bless them. What answers to that is the preaching the kingdom of God. Paul went about preaching the kingdom of God; that is power, not only grace but power. God did it so that Balaam had to say, “The shout of a king is amongst them”. Paul says, “The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power”, 1 Corinthians 4: 20. Here God reminds His people that He was among them in power; “no man has been able to stand before you unto this day”, as we read in the previous chapter. Have we learned the kingdom? Have we learned that there is not a lust in the flesh that we cannot overcome in the power of the kingdom of God? The power comes in so that a Christian has power to carry out everything that is right in the sight of God — that is the kingdom of God. Balaam had to say, “His king shall be higher than Agag” — that is, it is a question of power.
Jehovah then speaks of the seven nations; He reminds them that they went over Jordan and met them, and “I delivered them into your hand. And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you as the two kings of the [p. 104] Amorites; not with thy sword, nor with thy bow. And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat”, verses 12, 13. That is like Ephesians 2, and answers to Paul saying he had declared to them all the counsel of God. Everything that God had in His mind has come out; it is a heavenly inheritance. God is recounting here His ways with His people, His actings in and with them. Nothing is said of their condition but what was the fruit of divine power and grace in them; it is all the divine side, what can be ministered.
Paul calls attention to his ministry, and there was not a flaw in it. There is not a flaw in the blessed ministry which God has brought to us. He has brought to us the testimony of repentance towards Himself and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, the testimony of His favour to us and His grace, and He has brought to us the preaching of the kingdom of God, all His power for us and in us; and finally all His counsels. He has told us all that is in His heart for us — that is like Ephesians. And now what is to be the result? ‘Will you serve me or not? Choose what you will do. I have told you what I am and what I have done, and now what will you do?’ It is a most touching appeal. “And now fear Jehovah and serve him in perfectness and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river, and in Egypt; and serve Jehovah”. It is a wonderful proposal that we should have the privilege of ministering to God. There is not a flaw in the blessed ministry that God has brought to us. People say we are such poor things! It is true, but that never carries anyone a step further spiritually. What will carry you on is what comes from God. Repentance towards God will carry you a long way; it will carry you to God. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ gives you much; it gives you all that the Lord Jesus Christ is. And the grace and favour of God give you a great deal. Then the kingdom of God gives you the power of the Spirit to go on, and the counsel of God — all these set us up. The devil would like us to say we are poor feeble things! All that is true, but nothing pleases the devil more than for us to dwell constantly on our feebleness and unworthiness, but it does not carry us a step further.
We have the thought of serving in this chapter: “Serve now Jehovah”. God has come out in His wonderful grace [p. 105] that He might have sons to serve Him. It answers to John 4, where the Lord lets us into the secret of the giving of God, which answers to the four-fold ministry which we are speaking about. If you knew the beneficent God, how delighted He is to bestow these things, you would ask and get living water. If you only knew how favourable God is, you could get anything from Him. What a contrast to idols! They occupy us but they never confer anything on us; there was never an idol, another god, in this world that conferred anything on its worshippers. If you must have an idol it will be a burden, it will make your heart smart, but will never give you anything; only the living God can give you anything. If we were only wise we would turn to the living God and never look in any other direction. The Lord says, “The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for also the Father seeks such as his worshippers”. The full thought of worship here is serving; that answers to what Joshua says, “Serve Jehovah”. Service in Scripture does not mean what it has come to mean very largely; it means direct ministry to God, that which ministers to His pleasure. We have come to think of it as doing good to men, preaching and so on — that is one form of service, but not the highest form. The highest form of service is to minister to God.
Now Joshua says, “My heart is fixed”. It is like that which underlies Paul’s appeal to the elders of Ephesus. He tells them what he had been amongst them, what he had ministered, the character of his life and service. It is as much as to say, ‘That is what I am, what are you?’ That is a solemn word that should come home to us from our Joshua; our Joshua is Paul. He has led us into the inheritance, and brought us all the wealth of God. Now he says, What will you be?
It is important for us to recognise that all of us who have received the Spirit have some knowledge of God in grace, and He appeals to us according to that knowledge, on the ground of what He is to us. Paul says to the Corinthians, Do ye not know that the Holy Spirit dwells in you? To the Galatians he says, How did you receive the Spirit? They were going astray on the ground of law and works, and he asks them how they received the Spirit. Did they not know that they had received the Spirit from God? He speaks to the Ephesians as a quickened company, who through the great mercy and [p. 106] love of God had been brought to know something of the new man, the one body, access to the Father, being built together as a habitation of God in the Spirit. Now Paul says, “I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you therefore to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye have been called”. That is, he appeals to them on the ground of what God had done for them, and that is the way God appeals to every one of us, and none of us can get out of it. We all have some knowledge of God’s ways in grace, and whatever we know of them becomes the ground of His appeal. There is no getting out of divine appeals; you must respond to a divine appeal if there is anything of God in you. Now this is an appeal to serve Jehovah — we are appealed to in this chapter as those to whom God has been everything, and He appeals to us to serve Him.
Shechem is the place of uncompromising decision in relation to the service of God, which of course had in view the house of God. This chapter would witness to us that whatever God may have done for us, however great the extent of His love and power, the elements of idolatry remain with us and have to be refused. Shechem was where Jacob buried the idols; see Genesis 35: 4.
John in his first epistle gives us the inheritance, but, after speaking of the truth of God and eternal life, he says, “keep yourselves from idols”, showing that the elements of idolatry were there. If they were not there we should not have to keep ourselves from it. There are always the elements in the human heart that will rob us of the enjoyment of God, and then we cannot love or serve Him. What extreme folly it is to turn aside from the One who has done everything for us and who has made Himself known in supreme love to us — to turn from such a God as that to another! The Lord says in Psalm 16, “Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another”. Another can only multiply sorrow, because all other Gods make demands on those who serve them. God is the only one who makes no demands; He supplies everything and does everything.
Of course things take a more subtle form in Christianity. There is not the gross form, images of stone and blocks of wood, but it is remarkable that in writing to the Galatians Paul tells them they had been worshippers of idols, but now he says, ‘You are doing the same thing in another way; you are turning to another and putting yourselves in bondage’.
[p. 107] We have to watch that we do not allow elements that are natural to us which would obscure our enjoyment of God. That is in principle idolatrous; it is “another”. I like the first question and answer in the Scottish catechism — “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him for ever”. There is something grand in that: to glorify God, and on the basis of that you are to enjoy Him for ever. If I do not glorify God I cannot serve Him — and if I am not enjoying Him I cannot glorify Him. Satan is bringing in every kind of idolatry at the present time — evolution instead of creation. That is another god, and what will it do for people? Nothing. Then people have all kinds of sacraments, and all kinds of religious observances that never give them affection or standing before God, instead of the one offering which perfects them for ever. The devil would like to occupy man with something of the creature to obscure the thought of God and to hinder the enjoyment of Him. We can test everything by this. Does it bring God in or shut Him out? If it shuts Him out, it is idolatrous. A man may say, I have my business to attend to, but can you carry it out with God? You need Him in the details of your business, and if it shuts Him out it is idolatry. Then a woman has her household duties. Does that shut God out? Every duty requires God to be brought into every detail, and then it is not idolatrous. We need the blessed God who in grace and love is the source of every supply. An idol is a troublesome thing; you have to carry it, to minister to it, and it will never do a single thing for you. The tendency is to hide things. I think among the people of God things begin in a hidden way; they come in surreptitiously and are kept out of sight. If we want to go up to Bethel, they have to be brought to light and buried under the oak in Shechem. That is the place where the idols have to be buried.
There is a beautiful appeal in verse 14: “Now fear Jehovah and serve him in perfectness and in truth”. It is the Old Testament version of John 4. When God appeals it is irresistible. I do not see how anyone who knows God can refuse His appeal. I admit there is a great deal of failure with us all, but we cannot refuse God’s appeal. We all feel we would like to answer to it and, if we are to answer to it, we must get rid of legal thoughts of serving God. God is not served spiritually in an outward way. The apostle Paul says, “whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son”. No doubt Paul served in [p. 108] a very practical and energetic way publicly, but the peat thing was that he served with his spirit — that is the kind of service that God values. The man who serves in priestly spirit serves with his spirit in right relation to God.
Thousands of people are giving themselves to devoted service on the line that God requires from them, and they are never quite satisfied that they are answering to God’s requirements. That character of service cannot be satisfactory to the heart of God or to themselves; it has an idolatrous character because it obscures the blessed God. The end of Luke’s gospel answers to service being taken up. The gospel begins with a dumb priest and ends with a company of priests who were blessing, and praising God.
Joshua says, “As for me and my house, we A serve Jehovah”. And the people say, “We will serve Jehovah”, even when Joshua takes the other side. The people can speak of all that God has been to them and done for them and they say, “He is our God”. Then Joshua says, ‘If that is so, you must not forget His government; you must remember what He is in His government; He will punish you if you run to another’. We have to face divine government; we cannot allow divine grace to exclude the thought of divine government. If our ways do not please God, we come under His government; that side is for the conscience. The word ‘fear’ is not so much used now as in olden times, but we need the fear of God to regulate the conscience and the love of God to regulate the affections. They are like two rails on which the train runs; all spiritual progress runs on these two lines.
The wonderful thing is that all God said to the people was about Himself and what He had done, and that is what the stone heard. Joshua made a covenant; it has reached its full height here. The covenant is, like every thought of God, cumulative. Every time it is mentioned, some element is added; all God’s thoughts are cumulative. He brings the thing out, then adds to that another, and another, until He has brought out the complete thought. Here the people are in the land, the inheritance, and a covenant is made with them in the full possession of the inheritance, and the stone is set up as a witness. Joshua does not say that the stone heard what they said, but the stone was a witness because it heard all that Jehovah said. That is, it is a witness to the covenant on the divine side. God loves the thought of the covenant;
He says in Hosea, “I will be a husband to them”. Many of us have been brought up with a legal thought of the covenant as if it implied our taking some obligations that we could not carry out. But it all depends on what we are in bondage to. If it is to God, it is perfect liberty. It is the kind of bond the woman comes into when she marries a husband. God loves the covenant idea.
There were seven covenants and every one of the seven originated with God. The natural bond between God and His creature has been broken by sin, and there must be a moral bond to take the place of the natural bond. The covenant is a moral bond; it connects us with the knowledge of the blessed God in the sovereignty of love. The covenant is a beautiful idea; it is God saying, I want you in a bond with Myself, the strength and virtue of which will be in your knowing Me in your affections in the supremacy of My love. What could be more delightful? It all lies in the fact that we know God; that is realised in the covenant, and it is all set forth in Christ. God tells us in Isaiah that Christ Himself is the covenant.
It is very significant that this book ends with three burials. Joseph is buried, and Joshua, and Eleazar. It is God reminding His people at the very end that none of His thoughts will be effectuated apart from resurrection and a quickened people. He is reminding us at the end that Joshua did not bring the people into rest. If the thoughts of God are to be effectuated, it must be through life and incorruptibility being brought to light, and I have no doubt that Joseph had the faith of that. He realised the “dry bones” condition of Israel and that things could not be put right except in relation to resurrection power and a quickened people. He tells them to bring his bones into the land. God will not rest until He has verified every thought in regard to His people, but it will be verified on the principle of resurrection and quickening. The carrying of Joseph’s bones all through the wilderness was the testimony to the people that God would carry through all His thoughts. He has introduced the covenant to His people, but has introduced it in the power of life and incorruptibility in Christ. In the meantime it is realised in our spirits as we have in our souls the power of life and incorruptibility in Christ.