These two chapters can be summed up very simply: God won a great victory for you - a victory you could never have won on your own - so stick with the Lord and you will be continually blessed. But if you abandon Him you leave the source of blessing and life will be hard.
Chapters 23 and 24 contain some of the most famous words uttered in the Bible - words that create a dividing point in the lives of the nation of Israel and in ours as well.
I always find it instructive to look at people’s last words. You know, things like: "boulder, what boulder?" or "doesn’t look like its gone bad to me." Some famous last words:
BT Barnum: "how were the circus receipts at Madison Square Garden?"
Billie the Kid: "Who is it?" (Pat Garret in a dark room with a gun)
Thomas Edison: "It’s very beautiful over there."
Joshua, at 110, wasn’t thinking about box office receipts, but of his people when he uttered his last recorded words. He knew the future that awaited them if they failed to follow the Lord and his last statements are a warning and a challenge that we should heed as well. As we have studied Joshua, this section could be titled: How to Secure Long Term Victory.
Chapter 23 Verses 1 - 2
25 years have passed since the end of the conquest for Canaan. He knows his time has come so he gathers representatives of the people to pass on his final wisdom and challenge.
Verses 3 - 5
God made the promise, God performed the promise. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Joshua must continually mention this? I think the reason is that our human nature naturally wants to take credit for things. And the further away we are from actually being in the overwhelming situation where God comes through, the more selective our memory becomes. The less we remember of God winning battles for us in the past the less likely we are to look to Him winning victory for us in the future.
Why is this important? Because if we don’t seek God’s promise and God performing the promise then the forces against us will continually push back until they overcome us.
Verses 6 - 13
Do you know what osmosis is? I’m going to give you a somewhat technical definition and then explain how it operates here:
Osmosis: "passage of a solvent, such as water, from the dilute side to the concentrated side of a membrane, filter, or other semi permeable border. Without added pressure, a solution divided in this way will undergo osmosis, in order to equalize the concentration of the two sides"
Osmosis is all about reducing differences. If you put a cucumber in a salt solution the water (lower concentration) in the cucumber will move out into the salt solution (higher concentration) and the cucumber will turn into a pickle.
Joshua is basically saying that Israel is in grave danger of becoming a pickle if it doesn’t cling to the Lord. You see, pressure against the osmosis is the only thing that keeps it from happening. That pressure is the presence of God in their lives, their love for Him, their loyalty to him.
Unfortunately we see the effects of spiritual osmosis in our society all around us. There is a great tendency to equal everything out. If you stick to the Lord then your life will reflect a very different character (concentration) than the world around you. The world will want to equalize that and the only way to do it is to force you to compromise your values - to allow the world’s values to mix with God’s. Why do you think we have so many "religions" that are a mixture of supposedly godly values and worldly values?
That’s why Joshua says in verse 7 not to "mix" with the cultures around them. He even tells them not to make mention of the names of their gods. It’s a process - they start talking about them and what they are like and their benefits, then they do some experiments of seeing if that god can do anything for them and sooner or later they are bowing before them and not Yahweh.
This happens to us as well. We see what the god Mammon is doing for other people. We do some experiments into serving money as a god and sooner or later we are serving it and not the Lord.
In verse 8 Joshua says you have to "cling" to the Lord. It’s not that we’re hanging off a cliff and God is reaching down and if we let go we’re going to fall (though I suppose there is some truth to that). It’s more like we’re holding hands with our daddy as we’re walking along at the fair. There are a lot of dangerous things going on around us - dangerous rides, dangerous people. We’re holding on tight because we’ll be safe but the lights and sounds begin to draw us and our grip begins to falter and sooner or later we are dropping that hand and going off on our own.
We need to actively cling to the Lord because the tendency is to wander off on our own and into danger. That’s what happened to Israel, by the way. We’ll see that in Judges very shortly.
Notice something, though, and this is very important. God said that He would discipline them, force them out of the land even, if they didn’t follow Him. But God never said they would cease to be His people. God made the covenant and He performs it. Israel was always Israel. And I believe that once God makes a covenant with you He sticks by it. He will discipline for sure. But once you are a family member you are always a family member.
So now in verses 1 - 13 Joshua recounts the history of where they came from, how God worked on their behalf, and is setting them up for a decision.
Verses 14 - 16
The bottom line: God has been faithful to you. But if you are not faithful to Him there will be consequences. But notice something. While it sounds really harsh, God is really saying "you shall perish quickly from off the good land." In other words: discipline.
What was the purpose of that discipline? To stop the infection of idolatry; to bring Israel back to faithfulness. That’s the purpose of discipline in the life of a believer as well, for God to attack an infection through the consequences that we brought upon ourselves.
Again, God is showing how He is the One performing all of this, not us. Now we change scenes to another time, but a similar theme: Joshua’s last message about God choosing them, now they’ve got to choose God.
Chapter 24:1-13
Notice this: God took a pagan, Abram, made a covenant with him, blessed him and gave him a relationship with Yahweh, rescued his descendents from their enemies, gave them a Promised Land and then brought them into it with His strength and allowed them to enjoy its fruits which they did not plant.
You get the idea here - "you were nothing. I did it all for you." Israel has nothing to boast about, nothing to claim, nothing to stand on. They were no better than the pagans around them. God in His sovereignty plucked them out and blessed them not at all from their own merits.
They cannot say they earned Canaan or earned God’s blessing. And the same can be said of us as well. God plucked us out from Ur of the Chaldeans too. We served other gods until the light of His love shined upon us. Through His love He gave us Jesus Christ and He defeated our enemy: sin and death; rescued us and now gives us the promise of the Holy Spirit. We enjoy the fruits of that Spirit that we did not plant.
So based on that - grace - they have a decision to make, in words that are probably among the most famous from the Scriptures:
Verses 14 - 15
God is not begging for people to worship Him. He doesn’t need us. He loves us and wants us to come to Him, but we like Israel can only come to Him in faith. Notice what Joshua says: "in sincerity and in faithfulness." It’s a marriage. It’s a covenant. It’s a relationship. You can’t belong to God and the world. You can’t serve the God of heaven and the gods of this world.
As Jesus said: Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."
And then he puts his money where his mouth is: "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." May that be our words of faith too!
So the people respond, perhaps as they thought Joshua wanted to hear, and there is this little interchange back and forth.
Verses 16 - 28
I like what Joshua says: "you are not able to serve the Lord." It’s true. Not only are we nothing without Him, we can’t even serve Him. Our ability to serve God even comes from Him. All He wants from us is a sincere devotion and faith in the power of Jesus to save us sinners from eternal separation from God.
This is prophetic, of course. Israel feigned obedience but in just a few years they will do exactly what Joshua warned them not to do. I take a little comfort here, though. God did not abandon them but spanked them pretty hard. He also sent reminders that they were walking away from him in the form of raiding parties from their enemies.
The writer of Hebrews says: 12:5-6 "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." ESV
Verses 29 - 33
And so Joshua and Eleazar go to be with the Lord - a fitting end to a wonderful story of God’s promise of victory and faithfulness to His people.
Lessons
Be Unmixed
Joshua warned about not marrying into the Canaanite cultures. We need to watch how much we "marry in" to the world around us as well.
Jesus said: Matthew 10:16-17 Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. "Innocent" means "unmixed". What does this mean to us? It means to be careful what ties you have to the world. It even goes to business partners, even marriage partners. But certainly it means not mixing values and close associations that are contrary to the gospel with the Lord. It doesn’t mean we cloister ourselves away, but we in the world, not of it.
Watch out for the semi-permeable layer
Osmosis can only occur if the layer between the two solutions is semi-permeable. Is your life semi-permeable? Do you have a fairly open heart for values that are espoused by a world that has rejected God and is led by God’s enemy?
Our problem is that we have semi-permeable layer towards the world and a non-permeable layer towards the Lord. It should be the other way around.
Osmosis works for the Lord
Though it’s a mistake to allow osmosis to occur in our lives with worldly values, it’s very beneficial to allow it occur with godly character. So my encouragement to us is to place ourselves in situations where we will begin to soak up faith and love and hope from the environment around us: God’s Word, worship, prayer, and gathering together with the saints.
Practice Reverse Osmosis
When it comes to being in the world: practice reverse osmosis. This is when pressure is applied to remove something from a solution through that semi-permeable layer. Let the pressure of the Holy Spirit invading your life push out the sin and flesh, and then, if I can push the analogy further, let the Spirit leak out of your life into the environment around you.
Receive the discipline from the Lord
Are you not walking with Him today? Maybe He has taken you to the woodshed and you feel the rod of discipline in your life. Respond by repenting, seeking forgiveness and cleansing, and renew your relationship with your Father.
Choose you this day
The most important decision of eternity. Whom will you serve?
For more Bible studies, visit our website at: www.CalvaryChapelNewberg.org
