Gooding, David: 9 - We Will Serve the Lord

We come now to the last element in the last section of the book of Joshua. Allow me, gentlemen, just to thank you publicly for the way you have cooperated with me in these studies. As our good brother this morning admitted openly, it is a great discipline to sit upon seats for ch- for such a long time. I inquired about this at one stage, and a learned scientist friend of mine says the trouble was gravity. It's something to do with the gravity pulling you down towards the Earth, and when the seat gets in the way, it makes it uncomfortable. So don't blame it altogether on me, but you'll say. But thank you for the way you have sat so long and worked so uncomplainingly. At least if you did complain to the Colonel, he hasn't passed on your complaints to me. So I thank him and you. We come to the last section then, and the last element in that section in the book of Joshua. The famous speech of Joshua, his farewell speech to the assembled tribes of Israel. And I only wish I had the eloquence properly to rehearse it in your ears. This is, even by human standards, one of the most famous, one of the famous speeches of the world, to be put alongside, perhaps, the speeches of Churchill in our day as he rallied the poor battered English in the war. But of course, it's, um, vastly more important than Churchillian speeches because of the cause to which it rallies the people of God. I cannot hope to improve upon its eloquence and its rhetoric and its moving power. I must take the humbler role of analyzing some of the major points within the speech. For the rest, its meaning is best heard as we sit or kneel ourselves in the presence of God. We have now observed that all three elements in this last section have to do with the service of God. They have to do also, each one, with the difficulties and obstacles that lie in the path of the continued service of God. In the first element, the difficulty lie within the people of God themselves. A tendency to unscriptural exclusivism that would cut off some genuine believers from the service of the Lord. In the second, the difficulty, uh, the potential obstacle was a tendency, a danger of compromising with the false gods and the false standards of the heathen cultures around. It necessitated, therefore, that Israel looked well to their hearts, not merely to their heads, and saw to it that they loved the Lord their God and did not allow their love to be compromised. Now we come to the third. It is likewise concerned with the maintenance of the service of God. And the difficulty here comes neither from within the people of God nor externally from the e- from the false gods of the surrounding cultures. The difficulty in the way of serving God, according to Joshua, is the character of God himself. Verse nineteen of chapter twenty four: and Joshua said unto the people, it's all right for you to stand there saying... It's all right for you to stand there saying, we will serve the Lord in the enthusiasm of the moment, when emotion is gripping your hearts. Gentlemen, you cannot serve the Lord, for he is an holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions, nor your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you evil and consume you after that he has done you good. In spite of it, and in face of the solemn warning, the people said unto Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. Joshua, of course, was being true to the spirit that has moved all great prophets. It is to be heard in our Lord Jesus himself, who said, except a man renounce all that he has, come and take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple. The Lord is a jealous God. He will permit none to come to him and say, Lord, I will follow you, but let me first do something else. He allows no prior claim on our devotion or obedience. Choose you therefore, said Joshua, this day whom you will serve. And it is good if we allow those ancient words to remind us of the terms of our conversion. Paul says in Romans six, does he not, what the difference between our pre-converted days and our now converted days is. Know you not, says he, that to whom you present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants you are, whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. But thanks be to God that whereas you were servants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereto you were delivered. Conversion can be told in terms of serving. The unsaved serve sin. The believer serves God and righteousness. That is conversion. The idea that you can come to the blessed Lord Jesus and receive him as savior, but not necessarily accept him as Lord, is grievously amiss, isn't it? Some say, of course, that when Paul lays down the terms of salvation and says, if thou shall confess Jesus as Lord and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved, that all that means is that you confess Jesus is God. It isn't you admitting that from here on you're going to, uh, uh, re- receive him as Lord. You're prepared to receive him as Savior, but may not yet as Lord, and you can be saved on those terms. Sounds interesting to me. Jesus is, is Lord, is God, that's all it means. So I may come to God, may I, and say I'm a wretched sinner, and I do repent, and I would like to be saved. But, uh, now, God, I want to tell you that, uh, while I may pray to accept you as Savior, I'm not prepared to take you as Lord. What do you suppose God would say? Would he not say, excuse me, did you say you had repented? What have you repented of? Did you say you were asking forgiveness? Whatever for? Have you any sins in your life that you need forgiven? Pray tell me. Don't bother to list the little ones, list the big ones. What sins have you got in your life, my man? What about the commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength? And you're coming for forgiveness for not doing that? And nevertheless, you tell me that while you would be like me to be your savior, of course you have no intention at the moment of loving me with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. In fact, you don't even have prepared to accept me as Lord. Would you like me to act as your savior? And let you carry on committing the chiefest of sins? Come, come. You know what conversion is? True conversion. To do like Rahab did. And she turned from God, to God from idols, to serve the living and true God. Nor can we say that that was a gospel suited to that far gone age, but not to our age of Christian grace. The description of the Thessalonians' conversion is given in those same terms. They turn to God from idols to serve the living God and to wait for his son from heaven. Joshua calls his people, no- though now settled in their inheritance, calls them back to the very basis of their conversion, so to speak. Choose you this day whom you will serve. And in that sense, we need gentlemen, as preachers and teachers of God's word, to challenge God's people, however old they are, be they ninety nine and a half and touching a hundred, constantly to come back to their conversion and the choice they made there, that they may reiterate and confirm that choice. Choose you this day whom you will serve. And let the choice be an intelligent choice made in face of the cost that will be involved. The philosophy that in our evangelism we must be user-friendly and hide from the public anything that might accept them and stumble them and thus inveigle them into the church so that we get good attendances. It's false, isn't it? When the Lord Jesus saw the great multitudes around him, he said, if any man would come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me. We are not politicians aiming to get the most support we can get by being all things to all men. We are ambassadors sent by the Son of God, sovereign of the universe. You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a jealous God. And that sentiment, gentlemen, again, is not something primitive. God is still as jealous as he always was. Jealousy in this context, of course, is not a bad thing, is it, but a good thing. There are two kinds of jealousy. The bad, eh, we have to avoid, but there is a true kind of jealousy. The man who really loves his love- his wife will not stand by and see his wife corrupted by some so-called lover. And if any so-called lover attempts to break her faithfulness, the husband will be exceedingly jealous. With a jealousy that is as cruel as the grave. There may be no tampering here. And God is a jealous God. My dear fellow believers, says Paul, you cannot go to that heathen temple, sit in its restaurant, and have the food first offered in ceremony to the gods, and as a part of that ceremony, take part of the food yourself. That whole ceremony is a sacrifice to demons, and to take part in that sacrifice to demons, by eating the food as part of the ceremony, you are aligning yourselves with demons. You cannot eat at the table of the Lord and the table of demons. You cannot have the benefits of the gospel from the Lord and simultaneously the benefits of demonism, for it won't do. It wouldn't do either, would it, if Christian men thought that they could be Christians in church and Freemasons in their business. And in church, praise the Lord, their unique Lord, and in their Freemasonry, engage in the worship of all the old, hoary old pagan deities that ever have been since the world began. You cannot do it. Well, you can, of course, you can physically do it. You cannot do it, says Paul. Do you provoke the Lord to jealousy? And if you do, you better remember that he's stronger than we are. And if he's moved out of jealousy to act, to guard his people, his hand can be very heavy. It is not only in our ecclesiastical practices that we must watch this thing. We must watch it in our intellectual life, mustn't we? In two Corinthians, Paul recurs to this theme of jealousy, and he says to the Corinthians, I'm jealous over you, the godly jealousy, for I have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ, and I- I- I'm scared, frightened, lest that old arch deceiver, the devil himself, should corrupt your thoughts. Thoughts. From the simplicity towards, that is, from undivided, uncompromised, intellectual loyalty to the Lord Jesus. Satan doesn't merely try to get to our hearts, he tries to get to our thinking. And in the process, he will be heard calling on us to keep an open mind. Well, there are multitudes of things that we have to keep an open mind on, surely we do. When it comes to the person and authority of the Lord Jesus, we are not free as Christians to keep an open mind. We're espoused to be married. It is the fact, not that I know much about it, but as long as a girl is not engaged, you'll say she is free to keep an open mind, isn't she? Shall it be Tom? You see, Tom is handsome. Look at his marvelous black hair and that very firm chin and that manly stance. So shall it be Tom? Mm. And yet Tom has a little bit streak of meanness in him and not a little perhaps positive po- possible cruelty. So perhaps not Tom. Well, shall it be Jim? No, he's got a marvelous Cadillac. Not too much brains, but he's got a lot of money and a marvelous Cadillac, and I could get a lot of good dresses out of him, you'll say. Uh, shall it be Jim? On the other hand, it might be a bit boring, hmm, if all he can talk about is rugby. So shall it be Sam. He isn't particularly handsome, he hasn't got a lot of money, but my, he's a fascinating talker. Arty type, and you should hear him playing. Now, but some days I think it should be Tom, and then other days I think it would be Jim, and uh, then I thought, could it be Sam? Or perhaps somebody else? And I'm not making up my mind yet, I keep an open mind. Oh, very good, why not? Sensible woman. Don't want to rush into these things, do you? Um. Once she has given her word and is engaged, she is no longer free to keep an open mind. And certainly in the Middle East, in far gone days, a girl being betrothed was not allowed to keep an open mind. To keep an open mind now would not be a sign of intellectual vigor, but moral turpitude. And if for our salvation we have given our life, love, and everything we have in acknowledgment of the lordship of Christ, and he is our only savior. We are betrothed to him. And to keep an open mind as to his authority. To keep an open mind over his deity. To keep an open mind as to whether he was mistaken or not, in the interest of intellectual theology. That is not a sign of vigorous intellect, it is a sign of seriously defective morality. What do I do when I come across a part of scripture that troubles me and I can't see the answer to it and is a problem? Shall I say, well, as far as I can see, and I can see no way out, and therefore it's wrong, and uh, uh, uh. Shall I? But wait a minute, whose authority stands behind you? You say, but look at the evidence. You mean the evidence so far. What would you think of a scientist if he were in his laboratory and he comes across evidence in the test tube or in the machine that contradicts his pet theory, and he held on to his pet theory in spite of the evidence, you'd say he's a very bad scientist. Of course you would. What you would you think of the same scientist who, coming out of the laboratory, was accosted by a fellow of his and said, uh, I'm sorry to hear about your wife. What do you mean about my wife? Well, running around town with other men. And he said, yes, I quite think she is really. You give me the evidence? Well, I saw her down the street talking to a man, and I saw her i- in a cafe the other day with another man. And you say, you, you, so you may. But I know my wife. You'd fight to the last ditch, wouldn't you, gentlemen? Because I don't care what evidence you bring. I don't care how it looks, but I know my wife, and I will not believe it. You see, the scientist who resists the evidence is not a good scientist, but the husband who's willing, on the spur of the moment now, to accept the evidence against his wife would be a poor fool. And if our blessed Lord has given his authority to Holy Scripture and to his apostles, and we find a difficulty therein, pray remember that what is at last involved is the character and authority of the Lord Jesus. One day we've got to stand before him. In a very powerful analogy, the late C. S. Lewis pointed this out in his article on obstinacy and belief. I commend the article to you. Why is it right for Christians to be obstinate and persist in their belief, even when there are apparent difficulties in scripture that they cannot resolve? Why should they be obstinate? And he draws the analogy. Here's a man, and he is brought up on a charge in court, and the evidence piles up against him, and he is condemned. He languishes in prison. Eventually and eventually, as in Britain recently, new evidence is discovered. The case is reopened, and the man goes to the high court, and in light of the new evidence, the man is set free. As he comes down, a free man, his character cleared, down the steps of the courthouse, up comes one friend, and putting his arm around him, he said, well done, old chap, I always said you were innocent. Marvelous. And here comes another, very embarrassed. Well, sorry, I, I did agree with all the others, you see, because the evidence looks so overwhelming, you see. I'm sorry now, but I did agree with the others that you were wrong. Which friend would you prepare, would you prefer to be? We have to meet the risen Lord, gentlemen. It'll be a bad thing if we have to say, Lord, it did look to me that your word was mistaken, and I taught legions of undergraduates that your word was mistaken. I, I now see it wasn't. I'm sorry, Lord, but, uh, you see, the evidence did look so overwhelming. Happier, gentlemen, when you see the risen Lord, you can say, in spite of what they all said, I always said your word was true, and you would be vindicated. It's ultimately a question of loyalty, gentlemen. So does scripture portray it all the way through. God is a person, not a set of facts, nor a scientific theory. God is a person, and his personal integrity is involved when he gives us his authoritative imprimatur on Holy Scripture. Beware lest anyone corrupt your thoughts from loyalty to the Lord Jesus. I'm jealous over you, says Paul. And if we are disloyal, Israel was warned that God would destroy them. We have a salvation, have we not, that is unconditional, but listen to, to, to the apostle as we come in our loyalty to keep the Lord's Supper, and we take the cup of his covenant, inviting him once again to continue writing his laws on our hearts. If we are being disloyal to him in our life in any sphere, we are invited to judge ourselves and to confess it, to examine ourselves to see whether our loyalty is what it is, or whether we are living carelessly. And if we so do, we shall not be judged. But if we live carelessly... Then, gentlemen, he has promised to write his laws on our hearts. He has pledged himself in his blood to write his laws on our hearts. He will write his laws on our hearts with our cooperation, if we will, but if not, he'll write them. And if he has to do it without our cooperation, it could be very painful. That is the reason why the Lord's people should not forsake celebrating the Lord's Supper, should they? Properly understood, let our worship be all that it should be, but central to it is our taking of that cup of his covenant and the renewal of our re- willingness that he write his laws on our hearts. Why should we? Why should Israel serve such a God who made such rigorous demands upon their loyalty? Joshua precedes the demand by record and a rehearsal of what God had done for them. Time forbidden me to preach them as perhaps Joshua preached them. We merely have an outline of his sermon. He reminded them first how God had appeared to Abram, their father, when he was an old idolater, and brought him out and formed the nation from him. That glorious exhibition of the glory of God. The God of glory appeared to Abram, said Stephen centuries later, and called him out of Mesopotamia. And Abram, seeing the glory of God, lived his life as a pilgrim thereafter. He looked for the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. What a vision the man had. And as he lived as a pilgrim with God, going on to the eternal city, God taught him the marvelous doctrines of justification by faith, and piled on his generosity as I made him a covenant to give him a glorious inheritance. And all Abraham's posterity, what millions and millions and millions. I look forward to shaking his hand in glory and confessing myself one of his seed, don't you? Father of us all. And as for dear old Sarah, well, time fails. Anyway, aha, yes, what an illustrious past that God had done for that nation. Should we not serve him? Oh, my brothers, your eyes see things that kings and prophets would have given their very right arm to see, and they saw them not, and you see them. And shall we not serve him? Joshua adverts to God's deliverance of them from the Red Sea, the marvels of his redemption from the wrath of God by the blood of the Lamb, the power of God that brought them through the Red Sea and broke Pharaoh's domination. Should they not serve him? And remember, we remember Christ our Passover, and the deliverance by his power from the rule of Satan. But have these things receded so far into our background experience that they no longer motivate us and move us to serve him? Remember what Balaam said. Ah, yes, that's not a bad thing. Remember what he said that old evil priest. As he went up the mountain trying to fill his house with silver and gold because he had a hi- a very profitable calling from Barak, king of uh Moab. Come, curse me, the Israelites. Went up his mountain thinking that God was some kind of tutni hepni deity, and you could bribe him with a sacrifice or two to change his mind. If only you gave him better sacrifices than Israel gave him, you could persuade God to turn around and curse them. That was Balaam's concept of the Almighty. As Balaam built his altars and would call upon God to curse them, God himself came out of the shadows and said, God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said it, and shall he not do it? I have received a commandment, says Balaam against his will, received a commandment for the Lord. He has blessed them, and I cannot reverse it. Oh, indeed he can't. It would take a few million Balems to reverse God's determination to bless you, gentlemen. For God only think of his character. Has he said it? He shall make it good. Blessed you. There is Paul's excitement. Once upon a time, it was merely planned. He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world, but things have moved on since then. He has now gone and actually blessed you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who has blessed you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. The Lord Jesus is in glory. The thing is done. God has blessed you, and you sit with him in the heavenly places. It'll take more than Balaam to get God to change his mind. He blessed them, says Balaam in his defeat, and I cannot reverse it. And shall we not serve the Lord? God has brought you into this great inheritance. Therefore, choose you this day who you will serve. Knowing the conditions and the implications. He is a jealous God. He will not allow us to trifle with his love. And the people replied, yes, we will serve the Lord. Joshua erected a big stone. They called it Aza. It was to be a memorial stone, for it had heard their solemn promise that they would serve the Lord. Down the generations it would stand eloquent witness of that original decision to serve the Lord. Ah, yes. You see, when they came over Jordan, they erected at God's command twelve stones on the further bank of Jordan to be a memorial of how they got into the land. Now they're in it, and they raise the stone of witness to remind them of the decision. Now in the inheritance, their decision, we will serve the Lord. Gentlemen, Gentlemen. I think you erected that stone in your life. Some of you many years ago, some more recently. How stands the stone today, brethren? It could have been future generations came to that stone. They found that under the stress of wind and weather, it had wobbled a bit, and the moss had grown on it. Any writing was not quite so clear as once it was. How stands the stone in our lives that witness to our first decision to serve the Lord? I think your stone stands firmly and bright. But ere we leave the conference, we might simply ask the Lord, might and way, to show us if perhaps the stone has got a little bit wobbly, whether unwanted moss has made the writing a little difficult to read. Shall we not rather say, with old Philip Doddridge, good man, oh happy day that fixed my choice on thee, my savior and my God. High heaven that heard that solemn vow, that vow renewed, shall daily hear, till in life's latest hour I bow and bless in death that bond so dear. Choose you this day whom you will serve. And thank you, let's take our break now.