Gooding, David: 3 - We Will Serve the Lord

By the Lord as a judgment upon that evil civilization. When Joshua led the armies of Israel into Canaan, in that first half of the campaign under Joshua's leadership, they were executing the wrath of God, the executors of his wrath against that godless evil civilization. And it is not I alone who say so, is it? But of course, if we go back to our controlling scripture, Genesis chapter fifteen, Abraham was told the reason why his seed should not inherit Canaan forthwith and immediately. They would go down and be in bondage in a strange land for four hundred years. Verse sixteen: and in the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. In the great mercies of God, God waited four hundred years plus. While the iniquity of the Canaanites rose and rose, and their cup came up till it overflowed its brim. Four hundred years God waited. Until the day came when he could wait no longer, and his judgment and wrath had to be executed upon that civilization. That is the solemn significance of the fighting in this bit. And I think, gentlemen, when you are fighting your spiritual enemies so that you might penetrate more deeply into your inheritance, do you conceive of yourself as ex- ex- executing the wrath of God upon these enemies? You don't, do you? No. I think not. Historically, the only way you could justify what the Israelites did here would be from a belief that what he said it was literally true. Joshua commanded to execute the wrath of God and Israel with him upon Canaan. For that solemn reason, that when Israel had been brought across Jordan, and notice there was no human enemy to oppose them there, they they whatever the obstacle was, it wasn't a human enemy, nor the devil either. But once they had got across the Jordan into the land and were about to start the task of destroying the Canaanite kings and cities, Joshua himself saw as he lifted up his eyes the day before the battle, and there was a shining one with his sword unsheathed and held out. Said, Joshua, are you for us or for our enemies? Neither, he said. For at this moment, there was utter impartiality. Who was this person, this glorious person, with sword outstretched? It was none other, of course, than the second person of the Trinity. Come now with his outstretched sword to execute the judgments of God on that godless society. Impartial, neither for or against, but captain of the host of the Lord. It gives us a measure of the solemnity of what is going on here. And tomorrow, God willing, we shall see some of the significance of that as we study the corresponding doctrines in our New Testament epistles. So then, at least that is the a- the uh uh approach that I shall be taking by and large. This bit, Joshua executing the wrath of God and simultaneously bringing Israel into their inheritance. Secondly, once in the inheritance and the opposition nullified, Israel dividing up into small groups, Joshua not physically with them anymore, Joshua not physically guiding the armies, but each tribe going on its own steam, so to speak, into their inheritance. And I shall apply it at this level that this is a picture of what Christ our Lord has done. And this is a picture of what we must do. Now, having said all that, let me go back just a little bit to deal with some difficulties. I mentioned, uh, the very real, uh, uh, uh, piece of evidence, not, I'm not denying it, that at some levels of meaning, you can take a chronological approach to the prototypes of the Pentateuch, beginning with the Passover in Egypt, which is deliverance from the wrath of God and deliverance from the power of Pharaoh, then on through the Red Sea and into the wilderness journey, and on towards the promised inheritance, you'll see, and eventually you'll get in. And it makes a nice and good and valid chronological sequence. But we have to be careful, because when it comes to to applying the prototype at the higher level, you will not find that the the higher level follows always and invariably the same chronology. Let's see what would happen if we really insisted on the chronology at every point. Coming out of Egypt would be, therefore, conversion, wouldn't it? Being delivered from the power of the devil. By the blood of the Lamb. Then baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea, our baptism to Christ, yes? Then our entry into the, the holiest in the tabernacle, yes? And the Levitical sacrifices that bring us near to God in worship. Marvelous. By this time, all of us redeemed and regenerate and good old pilgrims persevering towards heaven. And then into Numbers. And there having to look to the serpent on the pole. Oh, now wait a minute, who's got it wrong, me, or who's got this wrong, Moses perhaps? Because according to the highest authority, gentlemen, the incident in which Israel had to look to the serpent on the pole in order to be saved and given new life is a prototype of the new birth, as cited by our Lord in John chapter three. How does a, a, a prototype of the new birth come in numbers, I ask you? And that warns us against pressing too rigorously the chronology at the level of the fulfillment. You can press it at the level of the prototype. You've got to be careful that you don't always press it at the level of the fulfillment. Why the story of the serpent on the pole comes in Numbers, you would have to consider by considering that story in the context of the Book of Numbers. And the context of the Book of Numbers would give you a control on the way you expounded the serpent on the pole. Now another, another general observation, if you wouldn't mind. When we come to apply the lesson of the Old Testament to ourselves, there are many different ways that the New Testament applies it. It has very different, uh, it has a number of different techniques, if I might say so, for applying the message of the old. Let me remind you of two, for they are very common. In Romans chapter four, Paul cites the Old Testament, and it's the case much mentioned of Abram justified by faith. Romans chapter four. And because he was justified by faith, Genesis fifteen six, we too are justified by faith. Paul quotes Abram's case, therefore, as a legal precedent, as we were saying this afternoon, not as a type. It's a one-for-one correspondence. Ah, but then when Paul gets to the end of chapter four of Romans, note what he does. Uh, you'll see he points out that Abram, in hope, believed against hope. And you'll see he looked unto the promise of God, and without being weakened in faith, he considered his own body now as good as dead, he being about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. And looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, being fully assured that what he had promised he was able to perform. Well, now Paul has got round to telling us what faith means. If you say Abraham was justified by faith, you'll have to answer the next question, what do you mean by faith? So Paul points to Abraham's faith and the nature of it. Faith with Abraham meant believing in God who could bring life out of dead bodies. Good. Well, Abraham was justified by faith and the particular promise God had made him that he would give him a son. And you're justified by faith. Oh? And what does faith mean for you? That God will give you a son, perhaps, and bring life out of your dead body. Well, no, of course it doesn't. Oh. Well, perhaps your faith isn't the same kind of Abraham then. And if that is so, are you justified at all, gentlemen? How is it any, uh, good citing Abram's case when Abram's faith was so particular, and trying to use it as a parallel to you? And the answer is that Paul now applies the lesson by analogy. Again, it isn't a type, it's an analogy. Abram believed a God who could bring life out of death and was justified. And that same righteousness shall be imputed to us if we believe on God who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification. And the correspondence is not between type and antitype, but between original situation and an analogous situation in ours. That's analogy. And therefore, while typology is valid, of course, I say nothing against true typology. You don't have just to use typology to apply the lessons of the Old Testament. You can use straightforward equivalents, like Abraham's justification by faith, we justified by faith. And then you can draw lessons by analogy. And Paul does it, and does it elsewhere as well. We shall therefore have to be aware of this in our interpretation of Joshua. There are some times when it will be a question of prototype and final fulfillment. Other cases where you will see lessons by analogy. And we shall have to get used to using these various methods for the application of the lesson of Old Testament to ourselves. So, as we go on, I'm afraid you'll find I have a butterfly mind. I'm urging upon you now that there are very l- many different levels of meaning. There is the historical meaning for Israel and Joshua in that actual period up to Joshua's final address. You can then extend that to the history of Israel right down to the coming of our blessed Lord. You can then take off from prototype to higher fulfillment as we know it now, seated in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. You can have another level, Peter's level, that we're still in the wilderness and journeying towards our inheritance, to which we shall come when we cross Jordan and enter in. Different levels and more besides. It's always helpful if you can keep them clear in your mind. You'll find, I'm afraid, that in the course of the week, like a irresponsible butterfly, I shall be hopping from one to another, but you will have the sense to, uh, out of that confusion, to reduce it in your notes to order. Uh, do you see? And learning to distinguish the different levels and what is appropriate when you would be preaching at any one time, so that you don't confuse your audience, as I shall doubtless be confusing you. Let's take a break at that point in the proceedings. Gentlemen, I am no evangelist in the sense that some of you undoubtedly are. But if I were attempting to preach the gospel from Joshua chapter two, According to the audience that sat before me, I might well feel obliged to begin by saying something about the severity of the judgments that were executed upon Jericho. There is no denying, is there, that they were exceptionally severe. While many cities were destroyed, Jericho had this peculiar severity that it and its people were put under the ban, ha-kerem. No other city was put under a similar ban, as far as we are told in the book of Joshua. The slaughter of everything that moved and breathed makes the blood run cold, doesn't it? And that is why many liberal, uh, scholars and others prefer to think that this judgment didn't really come from the living God. They say the record is simply the factual record of what the Israelites did. And then they tie, they add that the Israelites were a kind of a savage coming up from the desert and slaughtering and destroying a civilization which they, as savages, had never understood. Like the Goths and the Vandals came into Roman civilized cities and destroyed them because they didn't understand civilization. They therefore picture to themselves the Israelites as bloodthirsty savages, delighting in destruction, and palming it all off in the belief, may be sincere with them, it was their God who commanded it. Just like an Auca Indian may feel constrained to go and butcher the next door tribe and say that he saw his grandmother in a dream and his ancestors, and they told him to do it. The objection, of course, isn't even true to the fact. So far from the Israelites rejoicing in slaughter, one of the gravest difficulties that Joshua had was getting the Israelites to persist in destroying the enemy. Many of them tired of that very soon, and their great danger was that instead of fighting, uh, the enemy, they compromised with them, settled down among them, and married their sons and their daughters. The Israelites had to be compelled by the stern command of God and the orders of their generals to go to this terrible task of execution. In the second place, we should surely beware of exaggerating the nature of the judgment that fell upon these cities. I at least want to suggest to you that it was a physical judgment. It was a temporal judgment. What the eternal situation, for instance, of the children will be who perished under Joshua's sword is not discussed, as far as I know, in the book of J- uh, book of Joshua. Are we to think that all the children, because they perished under Joshua's sword, are automatically consigned to eternal perdition. Are not the plain facts that this was a temporal judgment? And as to the eternal judgment, the God of all the earth will do as he always does with the children who perish. Moreover, if the physical and temporal judgment that descended upon Jericho is to start us thinking, it shouldn't be, should it, about the severity of that judgment that fell on those far distant ancient people. It should serve to remind us of a more fearful judgment that one day will descend on all mankind. And that judgment will be the more severe because it will be eternal. That is what should, uh, be passing through our minds when we read of this early historical judgment, this temporal judgment executed by human beings. It should point us to a time when God will exercise his eternal judgment, his final judgment. That will not be executed by human beings. It will be ex- executed by the angels of God. Then I should fall, if I were preaching the gospel to this before a very mixed audience and a sophisticated audience. I should begin to point out the reasons for the judgment of God upon Jericho. Like the Canaanite civilization, if you can call it such in general, they would have been guilty, for instance, of heinous sins. Among them, child. What would you have God do with people that, um, sacrifice little infants to their horrible deities? Pat their curly heads? Our Lord is on record of saying, if you stumble one of these little ones that believe in me, it is, would be a better for you that a millstone had been hung round your neck and you be cast into the middle of the sea where you could do no damage. The God of heaven will not forever stand aside and see little children so assaulted. And our modern civilization better beware, hadn't it? We don't sacrifice little infants after they're born, but our modern civilization in this last ten years has murdered millions of infants just prior to their birth. And has done it in the cause of the worship of the goddess of love. Which worship must be carried on by our modern civilization in disregard of God's moral laws. And if God judged an ancient civilization for sacrificing its newborn children to their ugly pagan idols. Do you suppose God will let our modern civilization go forever scot-free? If sexual perversion in our day is largely responsible for the plague of AIDS. What do you suppose sexual perversion did in the ancient world? And was God to stand by to see the gene pool of the surrounding nations polluted? As I think of those godless, sinful, wretched civilizations, God's temporal judgment that obliterated them seems to me to be not too severe, but in the end a mercy for the rest of humanity. While we think of the judgments that fell upon Canaan, Jericho in particular, we shouldn't forget, should we, the long-suffering mercy of God. As we said in our previous, uh, uh, session, God had been observing the rising cup of Canaanite iniquity for four hundred years. And he waited. And waited, and waited, in his magnificent mercy. For it is true that God is not willing that any should perish. He's long suffering to us, Lord. But there came a po- mo- point when God would wait no longer. There'll come a point again when God will wait no longer, and the day of the Lord shall come. We must remember it when tomorrow we get round to talking about the destruction of Jericho here. A judgment that had been announced for four hundred years, now eventually coming. But God's mercy is further seen, isn't it, in the fact that before he judged Jericho, he judged Pharaoh of Egypt and made Pharaoh what Paul calls in Romans chapter nine a vessel of wrath. Meaning, God made him into a warning exhibition to all the surrounding civilizations. Granted that Pharaoh himself deserved it. Granted that Pharaoh first hardened his own heart. But then, when Pharaoh refused to repent and hardened his own heart, God stepped in, and God hardened his heart. And instead of flattening him at once, caused him to stand, that God might make him a beacon light of warning to the surrounding nations, if perchance the nations would be warned and come to repentance. Don't say that it was ineffective because you have staring you in the face from chapter two one example of how tremendously effective it was. Said the woman to the spies, you'll see. Verse ten. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you, when you came out of Egypt, and what you did unto the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond Jordan, and unto Sihon and to Og, whom you utterly destroyed. As soon as we heard it, our hearts did melt, neither there there did there did there remain any more spirit in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. The judgments of God in Egypt, I remember when you're reading about Pharaoh, were mercifully directed towards the warning and the salvation of others. And they led, if to no other, to the conversion of Rahab. And what a lovely thing it is, when you come to think about it. God's mercy on Rahab, not only sparing her judgment, but raising her to the indescribable honor of being an ancestress of our blessed Lord. You know, such is my pride that if I'd been the Lord, I wouldn't have confessed to the world that I had such an ancestress as Rahab the harlot, would you? Do you advertise it, gentlemen? Well, you don't have any harlots in you. I'm sorry. Sorry for the offense. Of course, you don't have any such in your ancestry, but, um, imagine the Lord of Glory. Imagine the Lord of Glory, seated at the right hand of the Father, publicly announcing and letting it be known throughout the whole universe of heaven and earth, that he had for one of his ancestors Rahab, the harlot of ancient Jericho. It shows luster upon the words of the New Testament that he is not ashamed to call us brethren, for by his sacrifice he has cleansed our sins. We have been washed, we have been sanctified, we have been justified, and one day we shall be glorified with him, and he will not then be ashamed to associate with Rahab as part of the body of Christ, as part of his queen forever. But now let's turn and consider for a moment the nature of Rahab's sin. Hers was the oldest profession in the world. It offered pleasure without love, love without loyalty, pleasure and love without morality, and its result, as always, was the depersonalization of love and pleasure. Let us not just concentrate on Rahab, but consider the ethos of the Canaanite civilization. Of course, Gentiles, who, as Romans chapter one reminds us, had originally in the dim and distant past known the true God, but they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They wanted his gifts, they wanted all the enjoyment and the pleasures that come from him, and God certainly, uh, provides us with all things richly to enjoy. But they wanted his gifts without God himself. They resented having to be dependent upon God, having always to yield gratitude and thanks to him. So, discarding the idea of a supreme God, they made other gods that would allow them to pursue their own selfish ends. The goddess of love, the goddess of- the god of aggression. They were, in fact, mere deifications of their own urges. But it is not only Canaanites in the ancient world that were guilty of such perverse attitude. Later, Israel was rebuked by her prophets for taking God's gifts and the blessings of their land and deserting the true God. Spiritual adultery, says Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah. And then the Apostle James talks to us Christians, and he says likewise that friendship of the world is enmity with God and calls those who engage in it adulteresses. When we take that attitude to the true God, that is, we want his gifts but not him, of course it does result in a depersonalization of the universe. Take a girl who is a brilliant musician, enjoying and displaying the wonderful artistic gods that, uh, gifts that God has given her, and yet she has no time for God himself. It means that she is saying that music is nothing more than music. Behind it, there is no personal God. The music is all there is. In that sense, the girl has depersonalized the wonderful gift of music. And when people desert the living God and give themselves, as Rahab did, to the prostitution of sex. What they managed to do is to dishonor their own bodies and to degrade their own bodies and to depersonalize sex itself, so it becomes little more than an animal exercise. This whole story then has its voice of criticism for our modern civilization. But let us now turn to the elements in Rahab's conversion. There was first the awakening awareness of the true and the living God. The report of God's judgment on Egypt, on the Pharaoh, and on his troops at the Red Sea had reached Jericho and had convinced Rahab that God was the God of the whole earth, and that was n- uh, that now he was coming to take the land of Canaan, which after all was his land. It wasn't just a bunch of savages coming to steal somebody else's land. It was the true God, Lord of heaven and earth, coming to resume possession of his own land and to turn the Canaanites out of it. Rahab had also heard what God and his armies had done to the kings, uh, throughout the desert. And now, as she had watched the Ark of the Lord come about to station itself on the other side of Jordan, she had come to the conclusion that not Jordan itself, not nature's great flood barrier, could keep the living God from entering Jericho and the land. That led in the next place to the next great element in her conversion. She turned from idols to serve the living and true God and gave exhibition of the reality of her conversion, in that when the spies came to her house, she received them, though told to receive them was to take a drastic step, to leave the side of her people in Jericho and to turn her loyalty to the people of God. A risky enough thing for Rahab to do. Had the king of Jericho discovered what she was doing, she would have been executed forthwith. Conversion for Rahab, however, meant nothing less than turning from the idolatries of her people and their idolatrous culture and giving her prime loyalty to God. That is still the condition of conversion. In our cultures, there may be much that is good and enjoyable. We are not called upon to abandon that. But what is sinful in our cultures must be abandoned. And when it comes to loyalty, even the most sacred loyalty of parent, mother, and father must not be allowed to stand against and conflict with our loyalty to our Creator. And conversion in this instance meant that she turned from her idols, turned from her people, and put loyalty to the true God. Her plea, therefore, i- to the spies is understandable. She had shown them kindness. The Hebrew word means covenant loyalty. By sparing their lives, by taking their s- her side, by hiding them from the Jericho authorities. Now she was going to let them go. She had shown herself loyal to them. But the question that immediately rose in their minds was, would they be loyal to her? She had had many men in her house, and while they were there, they said all marvelous sorts of sweet nothings in her ear, and how they would be loyal to her when they went home and sent her presents and come back and see her. And when she said goodbye at the doorstep in the black of night, they disappeared, and she never heard from them again. Of course not. But this time, her very life was at stake. When the armies of the Lord came under Joshua to execute the wrath of God, her own very life was at stake. Would she perish with the city? The men said, no, we will save you. But how could she trust them? And therefore, intuitively, she used the biggest thing she knew to guarantee their loyalty. Swear an oath, she said, and give me a token of truth. Swear an oath to me by the God, the real God, your God, that you will spare me. What a wonderful thing that is to watch this conversion in slow motion, and seeing this woman who had long since pandered to men, giving them love without loyalty. Now, in her desperate strait, as she has turned to God and fears the judgment to come, she is asking herself, where can she find truth? Where can she find loyalty? How she can de- how can she depend on their word? And finds the ultimate loyalty. If God is true, if they will swear an oath in his name, and God will be loyal to her and make his servants fulfill their promise. She shall be safe. It's the only guarantee she has in this wild and troublesome world. Swear me an oath, she says. Here is a soul returning to its God and finding a God of love, and what real love is. Real love is not a matter of emotion and temporary pleasant sensations. Real love is a God who will love you and be loyal to you to the very end of eternity. A God, as we know, so loyal to his creatures, sinners though they are, that he would go to the extent of giving his son that they might be saved. And all who trust him have the security of the loyalty of God's truth, who swears an oath saying, by myself have I sworn that in blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you, that we might have strong encouragement like a veritable anchor of the soul in the loyalty and love of God. Marvelous. The woman is discovering true love for the first time in all her adult life. That preaches its own message to us, doesn't it? And I needn't go further and rehearse it. We stand like Rahab stand. We have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. But as we look over our ramparts of our cities and our lives, we have God's warning that there is a coming wrath. As Rahab looked over her walls and saw the armies as they came eventually through the River Jordan, no barrier of nature could keep them out, and saw that the wrath was coming, and Joshua was leading that wrath. She could be calm as she looked out the battlements because she was expecting Chri- uh, Joshua to come, not to execute wrath. She was not ordained to wrath, but to the obtaining of salvation. She had turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for his son from heaven. We would say in our modern language, Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath. What guarantee have we that when the Lord comes and executes God's wrath upon this world, what guarantee have we that we shall not perish? We have the same guarantee as Rahab. We have the word and the oath of God. Being justified by faith, we can argue that if we have been saved and reconciled to God by the death of his son, most surely we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. She let the warriors down through her window, and they made her their way. But there was one final instruction. They said, look, if you want to be saved, take the rope that you let us down with and bind it in your window, so that when we come in as the destroying armies, we may see which is your house and save everybody alive that is in your house. You, your family, and any friends of yours, if they're in your house, they will be saved. If anybody's outside, they will be destroyed. So what do you think she did when the spies had left? She got the cord forthwith. I think she pulled the curtains aside as wide as she could get them so nothing would be in the way, and she di- she tied the rope in her window. She wasn't going to have the soldiers miss it. They would see this when they came. Bother whether her neighbors knew what it was all about or not. She was determined to let the incoming armies see that this was Rahab's house, the woman that had turned to from idols to God to serve the living and true God, and was waiting for Joshua to come and save her. And we would be wise men too, wouldn't we, if we did the same thing. The Lord is coming. Wrath is coming. And if we have put our trust in him and have his oath that we shall not perish, yet nevertheless, gentlemen, let's tie the cord in the window of our lives, so that all may see God himself as well. This is the house occupied by a man that has turned to God, believed in him, and is waiting for his deliverer from the coming wrath. The story is, of course, that when the armies of Joshua came in, Joshua commissioned the men in all the fury of the battle, as they were to go in through the broken walls, they were to go in in the house of Rahab the harlot, bring her out and all her friends and family, and save them alive. And so it was done. And casts a wonderful shun- sunshine over the storm clouds that gather around the beginning of this book. The severe judgments of God on a guilty, sin-risen, diseased, and corrupt and cruel civilization. And yet, against that dark background, the glorious sunshine of the grace of God that saved, that loved and saved the harlot Rahab and taught her what true love was, the very love of God, and gave her love's oath that she should not perish. God be praised for such an exhibition of his gospel, and help us who have known that love of God ourselves to go out to this world where there are many Rahabs, both literal and spiritual, trying to feast themselves on a depersonalized love and finding it miserable. God make us ready messengers of the truth of God to take the real love of a personal God to men and women who perish for the lack of it and point them to the Savior, that they too might be reconciled with God and know peace and love and the certainty that God has not appointed them to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we shall live together.