One of the things I have to do, for biblical stories to hit me the way they should, is try to put myself into the biblical world. I try to crawl into the author's head, and make it my home. In Joshua, I try to put myself in Joshua's shoes at times. Other times, I put myself in the people's shoes. Until I do this, I really struggle to hear the Bible, and have it grab me, the way it should.
In today's sermon, for most of it at any rate, I'm going to ask you to copy my example. I want you to hear this chapter as Israelites. Hear Joshua's words, as though they are addressed to you. Joshua is your leader; he is talking to you.
Verse 1:
(1) And then, after many days, after Yahweh gave rest to Israel from all their enemies surrounding them,
while/when Joshua was extremely old in days,
Our story begins in verse 1, with AJ giving us two pieces of background information. First, what you are about to hear was said after Yahweh gave rest to Israel from all their enemies surrounding them. Second, Joshua is extremely old.
So how are you supposed to hear what follows? First, you are supposed to hear what Joshua is about to say, in light of God's faithfulness. God has done what he said he would. He's been good. Second, you are supposed to understand that what you are about to hear are Joshua's last words. It's Joshua's time to die. This is it for him. If you were Joshua, faithful servant of Yahweh, leader of the nation of Israel, how would you say goodbye to your people? If you could leave your people with one last bit of advice, or encouragement, or anything, what would you say?
Verse 2-3:
(2) Joshua called to all of Israel-- to his elders and to his leaders, and to his exercisers of authority and to his officials--
and he said to them,
"I am extremely old in days,
(3) while you have seen all that Yahweh your Elohim did to all these nations from before you,
for Yahweh your Elohim-- He is the one fighting for you.
Joshua begins by calling to "all Israel." AJ then clarifies this, to say that he called all of the leaders of the nation, who serve as representatives for much larger clans and tribes.
And it's at this point, that I want you to start thinking and listening to this as Israelites. Joshua is addressing you Israelites.
Joshua starts by telling you what AJ just told us-- he is extremely old in days. This is a signal to you, that this is Joshua's farewell speech. What Joshua has said to you has always been important-- Yahweh has demanded obedience to his servant throughout the book, and you have been happy to give this-- but what you are about to hear, in particular, is important. So listen carefully. Respect the words of a dying man, who has faithfully served Yahweh and you for decades.
In verse 3, Joshua directs your attention to Yahweh:
(3) while you have seen all that Yahweh your Elohim did to all these nations from before you,
for Yahweh your Elohim-- He is the one fighting for you.
All of you have seen what Yahweh your Elohim did to all these nations. Every time the nations lined up against you in battle, or hid inside their fortified cities, you know what happened next. You won. Over, and over. And the reason you won is not because you are great soldiers. Although you are (compare Joshua 10:2, 7). The reason you won is because Yahweh your Elohim-- HE is fighting for you. And this is not a past tense thing. This is not something that was only true in the past. Yahweh your Elohim is fighting for you.
Verse 4:
(4) Look! I have allotted to you these remaining nations as an inheritance for your tribes-- from the Jordan and all the nations that I cut off, and the great sea in the west,
(5) while Yahweh your Elohim-- He shall push them from before you,
and he shall drive them from before you,
just as Yahweh your Elohim spoke to you,
Verses 4-5 are helpful verses for us as interpreters of Joshua, in particular. The idea with the conquest is not that the land was completely emptied of Canaanites. There are still remaining nations all around them. Verse 1 told us that the land was emptied of enemies-- all of the Nephilim kings who opposed Yahweh and his people have been killed or driven out. But there's still a sizable number of people living in the land, who aren't Israelites, who aren't enemies, and whose Elohim isn't Yahweh. [This is a key verse for understanding what the book of Joshua actually teaches about the conquest].
In verses 4-5, Joshua talks about these peoples. There are two things you need to know about these people here:
(1) These nations are allotted to you. They are your rightful possession. So when Joshua allotted the land in chapters 13-18, he did so in part out of faith. He is allotting land that you don't yet control. But you will control it.
Let's reread verse 5:
(5) while Yahweh your Elohim-- He shall push them from before you,
and he shall drive them from before you,
just as Yahweh your Elohim spoke to you,
Yahweh your Elohim will push them out from before you. He will drive them out. These nations aren't going to be kheremed-- completely wiped out. They will pushed out. Driven out. And Yahweh will do this for you, just as He promised.
And you Israelites need to hear this as a promise. You need to not simply believe this, and own this, but live on that basis. Because if you really trust Yahweh, it's going to change how you live. This, basically, is verse 6.
Throughout the book of Joshua, we have seen how God's promises of blessings and Israel's obedience are tied together. So here, we aren't surprised to see this again. I'm going to read from verse 6-10:
(6) and be very strong to keep and to do everything written in the book of the Torah of Moses, to not turn aside from it right or left, not to go among these nations-- these remaining with you,
while the name of their elohim you shall not mention/invoke,
and you shall not swear,
and you shall not serve them,
and you shall not bow down to them,
(8) but only to Yahweh your Elohim you shall cling,
just as you have done up to this day,
(9) and Yahweh has driven out from before you great and numerous nations,
while you, a man hasn't stood before you up to this day.
(10) One man from you pursues a thousand,
for Yahweh your Elohim-- He is the one fighting for you,
just as He spoke to you,
You are surrounded by the nations. They are on every side, with you (verse 6). In verse 5, Joshua promised you that Yahweh will drive these people out. They won't live with you forever. BUT, in the meantime, you have a solemn responsibility here. These nations serve and worship other Elohim. You know which ones they serve. You know their names. But these Elohim are not your Elohim. You cannot serve them. You can't mention them. You can't invoke their name in prayer, or speech. Your goal should be to live in a way, that their name is forgotten.
The only Elohim for you, is Yahweh. Cling to him. Yahweh has been amazing to you. He is fighting for you in battle. He's given you nothing but victory. Yahweh has given you no reason to serve any other elohim. What can they offer you, that He hasn't? What can they do, that He cannot? Nothing. And proof of that, is that these elohim couldn't protect their own descendants. Their Nephilim offspring were all killed, hung, and buried, marked as cursed by God.
Now, what happens if you ignore Joshua? What happens if you refuse to learn from your own history of Yahweh's faithfulness to you? Does Yahweh love you unconditionally? Does it make no difference to him how you live?
Joshua continues, in verse 11:
(11) and you must be extremely careful for the sake of your life,
by loving Yahweh your Elohim.
(12) For if you ever turn,
and you cling to the remnant of these nations remaining with you,
and you intermarry with them,
and you go to them,
while they [go] to you,
surely/certainly know that Yahweh your Elohim will not again drive these nations from before you,
and they shall be for you as a net and as a snare and as a whip on your sides, and as thorns in your eyes until you perish from on this good land
that Yahweh your Elohim has given to you.
If you value your life, you will love Yahweh. Joshua is not appealing for you to have emotional affection toward God. I mean, you should. You should appreciate Him. You should value Him. You should want to serve Him. He has been a great God for you. But loving Yahweh means, concretely, being loyal to him, and it means not loving other elohim.
The other nations are going to be driven out of the land by Yahweh through a process. This isn't going to happen overnight. In the meantime, these people are off-limits to you. And what this means, above all else, is that you cannot marry them. You can't marry people who serve other gods. If you mix with these people, how can Yahweh drive them out? He won't. Know this, for sure : He won't drive out these nations from before you, if you do this.
These nations are going to look attractive. You're going to want to serve their elohim. You're going to meet someone you want to marry. But If you do this, they will end up being a net. A snare. A whip on your sides. A thorn in your eyes. And this will continue until you are all dead. You will perish in this good land if you turn to them.
Verse 14:
(14) And LOOK! I am going today on the way of all the earth,
and you know in all your minds and in all of your inner being
that one thing didn't fall from all of the good things
that Yahweh your Elohim spoke concerning you.
All happened for you.
One thing didn't fall from it,
How good has Yahweh been to you? Yahweh has kept every...single...promise he has ever made to you. You can't look at your lives, and find one single thing that's missing. There is no "but" here. There's no qualification. There's no, "God, overall, on balance, has been pretty good to me." No. Yahweh has been a perfect Elohim to you.
Verse 15-16:
(15) and then, just as every good thing came upon you that Yahweh your Elohim spoke to you, in the same way Yahweh shall bring upon you all of the evil things until he destroys you from on this good land that Yahweh your Elohim gave to you.
(16) When you transgress the covenant of Yahweh your Elohim that he commanded you,
and you walk
and you serve other Elohim,
and you bow down to them,
the nose of Yahweh shall be hot against you,
and you shall perish quickly from on the good land that He gave to you.
Yahweh, up to this point, has brought every good thing upon you he said he would. He's held nothing back. Now, what will Yahweh do to you if you aren't loyal?
If you turn from him, Yahweh will act with the same type of whole-hearted devotion to you, but for evil. He will hold no evil back from on you. And He will bring every evil thing on you He can, until He destroys you.
He will become hot with anger against you, and you will all die quickly.
[Pause]
And with this, we end the first part of Joshua's farewell speech. If Joshua had one last thing he could say to you, to help you, what would it be?
It's a warning. The last thing Joshua wants you to hear, is this warning. You will all die, quickly, if you turn from God.
(1) Application #1: Learning to hear warnings
Some of you, when you read passages like this, struggle to believe that warnings are relevant for you. When you are reading your Bibles, and you find scary verses that talk about "you," you remind yourself that it's important to read the Bible with context. You tell yourself, "you" here is the Israelites. "You" here has nothing to do with you. But when you find positive, encouraging verses-- KLOVE/KTIS verses-- you jump at those. Those God gives to you, as a way to bless you.
Maybe you think you're NT people, bought and sealed with the blood of Christ. That God would never bring evil on you.
My first answer would be that God hasn't changed. God still demands loyalty. He still demands that his people serve him alone, and no other elohim.
Maybe you still don't believe me. Maybe you think I'm wrong. Consider Acts 20:25-31 (I like the NRSV here). These are Paul's last words to the Ephesian church. He knows he's about to die. This is his farewell address:
25 “And now I know that none of you, among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom, will ever see my face again. 26 Therefore I declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God[d] that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.[e] 29 I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them. 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears.
Paul and Joshua share the same strong sense of their responsibility before God, to make sure God's people give their total allegiance to him. You cannot live however you want. And when they see people drifting away from God, or when think about this as a future possibility, what do they do? They warn. For 3 years, night and day, Paul never stopped warning people with tears, pleading with them to be faithful.
So, please, hear the Bibles' warnings as addressed to you (1 Corinthians 10:1-13). Understand that God doesn't want to bring evil on you. He wants to give you every good thing he has promised. He wants to fight for you; He wants to be with you to bless you. All the things you sing about in worship, that God does for you, He wants to do for you. But if you are sexually immoral, or an idolater, or adulterer, or [ ], or a thief, or greedy, or drunk, or reviler, or swindler, you should not expect anything good from God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10), unless you repent. You should expect evil.
Let me also say this:
If you never leave church, feeling shell-shocked after coming face to face with God-- understanding who God actually is, and what He actually wants, two things are maybe true of me/your pastor. First, I/your pastor maybe doesn't know God very well. I/He doesn't understand how serious God is about loyalty. Second-- and one or both of these might be true-- I/your pastor doesn't love you.
Maybe, I'm/he's too scared of you to love you. Maybe, I/he values you, his flock, more for the wool you provide him with to keep him warm, than he does you as the flock God entrusted to him. Or, maybe, I'm/he's determined to create a seeker-friendly church that won't offend anyone. And if I/he warned people the way he should, people would leave. Or maybe I'd/he'd get fired. And I'm/he isn't okay with that.
No pastor, or leader, enjoys preaching on passages like this. At least, they shouldn't. But God is serious about all of this. God demands allegiance. If you sin, you confess. You repent. You don't live in that sin. If I/your pastor is brave enough, and knows God well enough, and loves you enough, to help you really understand passages like this, and if he warns you, be grateful. [Know that you've found a good shepherd, who is committed to helping you persevere.]
And if I ever stop warning you, challenge me. My guess, is that something has happened to me spiritually, and I'm in a dark place, and need help.
And please. Hear Joshua's warning.
(2) Application #2: Don't marry non-Christians
If you are single, you maybe find yourselves lonely in life. You go home to an empty house. No one's there to ask you about your day. No one meets you, who cares about you. It's hard, some days more than others.
And what you want, quite badly, is to get married. And you understand, there are no perfect people. Choosing a spouse always requires a certain amount of compromise.
At some point, you might meet someone who genuinely loves you, and cares about you. You have a lot in common; they are easy companions.
But what if that person worships a different elohim, while you are serious about serving God with your entire being, and serious about Jesus being Master of your life? Is this something you can compromise about, when there are so many great things about them?
The answer is "no." If you marry them, your marriage will be brittle. Fragile. It has no shared foundation. And you can love that person, and you can make that marriage work, usually, but it's going to be so much harder than it needs to be. And you are placing yourself at risk-- your spouse is going to live in a way that pulls you away from God-- some spouses more than others. They aren't going to support you; they aren't going to strengthen you. They worship other gods-- money, family, pleasure, power. And you will feel the pull of their worship, and be tempted to join them.
So, if you are single, and you are a Christian, make sure your future spouse is a Christian. Anyone you meet is going to have weaknesses. They are going to have things about them, that you simply have to accept about them if you are going to make your relationship work. You will have to make some compromises. But out of all the things to compromise on, their faith in King Jesus, and their loyalty to God, can't be one of them.
(3) Application #3: Avoid the occult, and demonic
I haven't talked for a while specifically about what "Elohim" are-- I've just kind of hoped people have internalized that, and I can't try to explain that every week (what follows is basically Michael Heiser, for a while at least).
"Elohim" are divine, or supernatural, beings. The sons of God in Genesis 6/Job 1-2/Psalm 82 are "Elohim." Samuel, when he is raised from the dead by a necromancer, is called an elohim (1 Sam. 28:13). Demons are "elohim."
Our God, Yahweh, is also an Elohim. This doesn't mean he is like other Elohim. He is God Most High (El Elyon). He rules over the other elohim (Psalm 82). He is far above all other elohim (Psalm 97).
What difference does it make that there are other elohim? Probably, none of you are tempted to buy a physical idol, and set it up in your living room. Things don't usually work like that in the U.S. And so maybe you think that the warnings against serving other elohim aren't really relevant to you.
But I'm telling you, that you are probably going to drawn, at some point in your lives, to other elohim.
And do you know how it will start? Almost certainly, it'll start with the way you entertain yourselves-- books, TV, movies. You'll find yourself watching TV, or netflix, or something, and you'll see a new show. It looks interesting. You find yourself curious about it. And it just "happens" to be about magic, or demons, or supernatural things. But you tell yourself you aren't drawn to it because it's about those things. You're just drawn to it because you have nothing else to watch.
I grew up in a church where the pastor absolutely railed against the dangers of Harry Potter books. Multiple times. And this was at a time when people would line up outside of book stores, for hours, for a chance to buy the latest book.
My youth group had burning parties, where kids could bring books, movies, ouji boards, to the church, and they would put in trash bags and burn it.
As a teenager, I understood that these things are dangerous. They are a seemingly harmless entry into the world of the demonic. And I understood that God's people can have nothing to do with any of it.
As a young adult, I found myself thinking, I wonder what Harry Potter is like. I found myself thinking unkind thoughts about my pastor's narrow-mindedness. And you know what I found? Harry Potter movies are well-done. I binge-watched the entire series in a weekend. I watched them, and found myself thinking, "Overall, These movies are pretty harmless."
I played computer games with just "a little" demonic stuff in them. Nothing like shooting demons-- nothing grotesque, or extreme, or really violent, right? Just, a little demonic.
I hardly ever watched the "really bad shows" I knew I shouldn't. I never played the really dark, Satanic computer games that other people did. But a little dark? Just slightly satanic? Well, sure. Maybe. If there was nothing else to watch or do. What was the harm?
But now? Now I think my pastor was right. All of these things have real elohim behind them. They aren't harmless. They are a gateway to the demonic. And we are supposed to have nothing to do with other elohim. We don't mention them; we don't invoke them; we don't bow down to them; we don't accept their "help;" we don't become partners with them (1 Cor. 10:19-20). We certainly don't entertain ourselves with them. If they seem harmless, it's because we don't understand that our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with the rulers, with the cosmic authorities, with the powers of this world (Eph 4). If they seem harmless, it's because we don't understand how destructive demons are (Mark 5).
God demands total allegiance. And a main part of what that means, is that God wants you to have nothing to do with other elohim. They are off-limits to you. They are taboo. There are things they can offer you, truly, but they don't have your best interests in mind. They don't really want to help you (ask the guy in Mark 5 how he felt about them). And the help they do give is weak. It's unreliable. And the reason it's unreliable, is there is a much stronger Elohim is who is fighting them-- God Most High. And there is nothing they can give you, that God doesn't provide you with. There is no advantage to choosing them over your God.
God wants to fight for you. He will fight your battles; He will be with you. He will give you every blessing he possibly can. He will be as good of a God as he can possibly be to you. He will keep every promise he has ever made.
But if you turn to serve other elohim, whose side are you on? And what will God do to you next? God's will, turns into, God won't. Those aren't your promises anymore. And the elohim you are relying on instead, aren't going to hold up against God.
So consider this passage a warning about the lure, and dangers, of other elohim. What God demands, is that you cling to him alone. If you value his love, and faithfulness, and help, you will give him your loyalty. You will give him your allegiance.
And know that if you don't, and if you don't repent, God will become angry with you. And it's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
