Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

verses 1-4. Please stand. Joshua 18:1-4. The subject of this election day sermon is, “How long are ye slack to go to possess the land?” Joshua 18:1-4.

And a whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there, and the land was subdued before them. And there remained of the children of Israel, seven tribes that had not yet received their inheritance.

And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, “How long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you? Give out from among you three men for each tribe, and I will send them, and they shall rise and go through the land, and describe it according to the inheritance of them, and they shall come again to me.”

We thank God for his word and pray that he would illumine it to our hearts and encourage our souls.

The providence of God has brought us to this Sunday, the Sunday before the election in which we occasionally and somewhat regularly have an election day sermon prior to a major election in our state or nation. This text shows the establishment of the center of the people of God, the center of their ecclesiastical and their political order which had remained there for 300 years at Shiloh at the tabernacle.

This was the meeting place, the tent of meeting place of coming to hear the voice of God and also the place to come and hear matters of civil importance as well. The tabernacle, prior to its establishment at Shiloh of course, but the tent of meeting was the place where Joshua himself was ordained to office. And so we see here the combination, not the separation but the union of church and state in this center of God’s people.

Separation of church and state in terms of institution was a reality in the Old Testament and is also a reality in our day and age and is supposed to be. But the separation of religion and the worship of God from civil matters was never contemplated by our scriptures nor really by the founders of this country as well. I mention this because it was certainly the practice of many of the earlier colonial preachers leading up into the establishment of our nation.

It was regularly a feature for them to preach election day sermons around the time of the general election and as well the church was the meeting place where people would go and they would discuss issues at the church as well as worship there at other times. And so it is appropriate I think for us to thank God that in his providence he has brought us to this particular text on this particular Sunday. In his providence I want to talk first of all just a quick overview of the text itself and then we’re going to talk about five reasons why the nation of Israel, or the church in today’s parlance, is apparently slack to go out to possess the land.

First of all, there is in these four verses an establishment of a tabernacle. I just mentioned that the tabernacle is set up. That’s where worship occurs. That for the next 300 years, 350 years, will be where the center of the sacrificial system and where the center of the worship is. And that’s the place where the presence of God is particularly in dialogue with his people.

And so we have the establishment of the tabernacle in verse one at a particular place that God has chosen out for himself as he promised he would do earlier on in the history of his people. As I said, this is also the political center. The term the congregation here and the term the reference to the tent of meeting both have political overtones as well as religious ones. And so it is important to see that.

And we see here as well an emphasis in this first verse that all of Israel comes together at Shiloh with the tabernacle of God is established. One commentator remarking on this said that this is not a needless redundancy. This reference to all of Israel and then in the next five verses they’ll talk about how the seven tribes do not possess the land. They’ll mention the other tribes had, in the words of this commentator, he goes to the tribal math again at the beginning of chapter 18 and he says this is not a needless redundancy but proceeds from the writer’s thematic interest in the 12 tribes scheme and of the unity of Israel as it participates equally in the conquest and as it shares alike in the distribution of the promised land.

So here this first verse emphasizes the unity of Israel assembling at a particular place and that place is the place where the tabernacle itself is established. Now the place is Shiloh. That’s the name of the city or the area where this tabernacle was set up. Shiloh geographically was pretty much at the center of the land, roughly speaking, and so it provided easy access, kind of the same way that most state capitals don’t choose the most predominant city, but rather they choose a city that’s more centrally located. There was a time in this country of course when people couldn’t go 70 miles an hour on a horse and so centrality in terms of the state capital was pretty important. And so we have for instance our state capital is Salem, down more toward the south, although still toward the northern end of this state. Well, Shiloh is at the center of the land of Israel and so it made a good central location for being a political and religious center of the nation.

As for Shiloh, people are divided on what the name actually means in its origins. It could mean place of rest or place of peace as well. Those are the two predominant themes that seem to most commentators to think derives from the name Shiloh itself. And so that is a good fitting description of the land where God is present and that centers upon him.

And as I said, in Deuteronomy 12:11, we have the recitation that God will indeed choose out a place in the land where he will be worshiped. He says, “Don’t worship at all the high places that you see when you go into Canaan. I’m going to choose a place where that’s going to be,” and usually you think of that in terms of Jerusalem, but in point of fact the first place God establishes for his name to be in the context of the land is Shiloh and it will stay there for 350 years until it is moved. And then eventually in the time of David of course the Jebusites are finally driven out of Jerusalem and Jerusalem supplants, so to speak, Shiloh. And we see that picture. Remember we talked about that last week. But in terms of the long line of scripture, the idea of Christ supplanting Adam and that theme of the younger supplanting the older is a constant theme throughout the scriptures, indicating the fall of man and then his redemption in Jesus Christ.

And so Shiloh as well is replaced by Jerusalem, the city of peace. But in any event, this is the place where they establish the tabernacle that becomes the center. This is the place that God originally chooses for his people to come and worship him at. And of course, the context for that in Deuteronomy 12:11, he says we’re going to choose out this place. And then in verse 12, he says that’s where you’re going to go and rejoice.

So the context of being able to go to where God had peculiarly decided to meet with the people in terms of dialogue was the place where we would rejoice in him. And so again, the prefigurements of these New Testament church and the rejoicing time we have every Lord’s day. I was at the store yesterday picking up some groceries getting ready for the Reformation party last night and the Lord’s day today and then election night. We’re going to have people over. Whoever wants to come over can come over to our house and watch the election results.

And I was picking up some snacks and stuff and a gal said you must be going to a party and I said well actually we have three parties going. We have a Reformation party last night, then Sunday the Lord’s day is always a party for us, and then Tuesday night as well. Well, Sunday should be thought of in our families and in our churches as a day of rejoicing and that’s what Shiloh was to these people.

God established a place and he caused them to rejoice there. But Shiloh had in the history of Israel then a checkered history. I said it was the place of God’s special dwelling for 350 years. And those of you who are familiar with Old Testament history recognize that in the days of Samuel, Eli’s sons are wicked. He doesn’t deal with them, indicating the wickedness, the disobedience of all the children of Israel, the failure of the rulers, and particularly those in terms of the tabernacle worship itself to be disciplined in their approach to God.

Eli’s sons committed abominations relative to the temple worship that went on. And I was thinking of those, some of those abominations as I was reading through the text this week. And I suppose they are similar to some of the things that go on in the church today. One of the things that the sons of Eli did is they slept with the women. They had sexual relationships illicitly with the women who ministered at the tabernacle.

And you know, the stories we hear of adultery in the context of the church really fits in well with the disobedience of the sons of Eli. But in any event, Shiloh will be abandoned by God. He will cause his presence, his ark to be taken into captivity by the Philistines during the time of Samuel. And so it is a reminder, as we read Shiloh of peace and rest, but it is also a reminder of the disobedience of Israel and the judgment of God against sin.

We mentioned a couple weeks ago about how Ephraim became a synonym for the northern tribes and their disobedience in the prophetic books. Well, in the book of Jeremiah, Shiloh is the place that God says, “You want to know what I’m going to do to you? Look at Shiloh. Look at the desolation there because of her sin.” So Shiloh has this double meaning to it in the text of scripture.

Now we see a bit of that double meaning right here in these very verses because verse one stresses thematically the establishment of God at the center of the people, land of rest, land of worship, the political and ecclesiastical centered in Shiloh and then the land is subdued before them. But verse two goes on to give what actually happened then in the historical record of the establishment of Shiloh. And the very first words that are spoken in the context of Shiloh then are not words of praise and rest and peace. Rather, they’re words of rebuke.

The first word used at Shiloh and issued at Shiloh rather is a word of rebuke and exhortation. How long will you be slack to go to possess the land?

Joshua sensed a feeling of weariness had come upon the nation as they continued to execute the war that they’ve been involved in for a good number of years now. They were exhausted, as one commentator says, in their struggle for conquest of Canaan. So you have this picture of these tribes at the end of many years of war, 7, 8, 9, 10 years, whatever it was. They’re exhausted. Joshua senses that, and what is Joshua’s first word to them? Does he pat him on the head and say gosh I know it’s tough? No he doesn’t. It’s interesting isn’t it? He says, “How long are you going to be so lazy as to not go up and possess this land?”

But he apparently didn’t know much about modern psychology and modern counseling techniques, did he? He goes to a people that were weary yet he exhorts them, rebukes them really and exhorts them to faithfulness. And of course, the context for that is God’s promise of victory. But still, it is a word of rebuke and exhortation. They were letting the window of opportunity that God had given them in Canaan slip by in their weariness and in their failure to prosecute the warfare of God in terms of Canaan.

This window of opportunity was closing on them. Joshua knew that and so he tried to rebuke them and exhort them into action. Bush in his commentary on this passage said that this is surely the language of rebuke and implies that there had been a criminal remissness among the tribes in regards to this matter. These first words of address are totally unexpected in terms of the textual flow here. Verse one, you think this is a neat thing happening, and verse two is kind of like, whoa, what’s going on here?

Why does Joshua say this in verses 2 and 3? These words lament the laziness and the lack of courage displayed by Israel. Both the unexpectedness of this text as well as its placement at the beginning of this section tell us something important. Now chapters 18 and 19 deal with the allotment of the tribes, the seven tribes that were remaining. That’s what we’re going to talk about for the next few weeks. But at the beginning of this section then is this word of rebuke and exhortation.

The fact that it’s placed at the beginning of the section as well as the fact that it is unexpected both tell us the importance of this exhortation to what these next two chapters have to say. So at the heart of this message of inheritance is this message of rebuke and exhortation to possess what God had given to them. The censure is directed toward their indifference, rather to their sloth in terms of prosecuting the warfare.

Now remember these are real enemies that they had out there in these lands. These Canaanites. Remember when they came into the land, the Canaanites’ hearts melt, etc. The more time goes on and they’re not conquered, they’re gaining strength. They’re gaining a sense of being able to withstand these people. So they’re going to become a tougher and tougher enemy to root out the longer they wait.

This term slack, by the way, the particular form it’s in indicates a continued action, a persistent attitude of sloth or inaction on the part of the tribes then. And so they receive a rebuke. This is kind of like what I talked about last week about how one of the things that conquering people have to remember is to not let the other guy up when he’s down. You know, if you’re in a basketball game, I talked about if you get him down 15 points, get him down 30 points, because it can come back. We had a model of that this last week. You know, Clinton’s been playing a defensive posture. He’s playing what Rush Limbaugh call a prevent defense, so to speak, in terms of the election. He’s had a big lead, sitting on the lead, not getting himself in trouble. Well, the result of that is that Bush now has gained points back. And that’s what happens. These guys are kind of sitting on the lead in Canaan, not prosecuting the warfare, and the other team’s coming back now and getting stronger and stronger.

The scriptures repeatedly give us admonitions that the soul of the sluggard might desire things but it will not accomplish it because of its sloth. We see that again and again. The point of this is when you begin a difficult task you had better see it through to conclusion. You do not stop in the middle of a difficult task no matter how tired you may get.

Notice here as well that no new commands are issued by Joshua to the people of Israel. He just reminds them of the continued command they’d received from day one in terms of the struggle. You know, the intellectual thing has long since been taken care of for these people. They know intellectually what they’re supposed to do. The matter now is not a matter of the mind or the brain. It’s now a matter of the soul and the heart. And Joshua speaks to that soul and heart, not by giving them new commands, but reminding them of the same old commands and their failure to aggressively prosecute the war that God had given them to do.

Now it’s going to be 400 years before the Jebusites are finally driven out of Jerusalem. Joshua, it’s not his fault though, because in the very next verse, in verse 4, Joshua sets a strategy. We’ve had an establishment of the tabernacle at a particular place at Shiloh. We’ve had a word of exhortation and rebuke given to them. And now we have a strategy set by Joshua in verse 4. He has them pick three representatives from each of the seven tribes, 21 guys, to go out and write down the context of what they see in terms of the inheritances.

They’re going to do a detailed survey now of the land. Okay, that’s really the first recorded land survey that we see in the scriptures in terms of detailed writing down of this thing. The word write is used four times in chapter 18. The emphasis is not so much on the inheritance as it is on the book, the description of what they will inherit. And this book becomes very important in the legal histories of Israel.

So we have this the earliest instance of land surveying on record. We have then a strategy set by Joshua to help them. Now he doesn’t just give them a word of rebuke and exhortation. He gives them a practical suggestion, a strategy to go about getting themselves reinvigorated in terms of prosecuting the warfare and taking charge of their inheritance.

Concluding this wrap up of these four verses then, one commentator Bush wrote the following. Had all the tribes proceeded with united vigor to fulfill the divine command in its utmost extent, they would not so long have been annoyed by their remaining enemies as scourges in their sides and thorns in their eyes. Is that what the Canaanites turned out to be? And who does not find that corruptions gather strength by indulgence and that graces decay for want of exercise?

And so it is with ours as well. Corruptions, sins left undelt with gather strength through our indulgence of those corruptions. And in our lives, our graces decay for want of exercise. And that’s what Joshua is warning the tribes of Israel about in this section.

Well, let’s bring this into today’s setting then and look at some of the lessons. And I think that there are five reasons that we can discern from this passage of scripture why the Christian community is also slothful and slack to possess the earth, the land, now that God has said we shall possess over time and in history. One of these five reasons I think that we can take out of this passage of scripture.

Well, first of all, I think we are slack to possess the land because there is no unity in the church today. When I say no unity in the church, I mean no unity in the extended church. You talk about families, extended families. We can talk about churches and the extended church, the whole set of churches across the landscape of this state, this region, this nation, etc. There is no unity in the extended church today.

Verse one, as we said from the commentator, it emphasizes the unity of Israel. Joshua, if he’s going to give them an exhortation, a rebuke, and a command to get going again and give them a strategy, brings them together first, makes them all assemble together and show them that in that unity, they have strength.

And so in our situation today, one of the reasons why we have failure to possess the land politically, and that’s what’s going on in Canaan, there’s the political reorganization going on of cities. Remember we talked about the importance of cities, listings here, policies, political stuff, groups of people. Part of this is a political and social reorganization based upon the ship of God, but nonetheless it extends to the community in the social sphere.

And one of the reasons why we don’t have that in Oregon today or in America is because the church, the extended church has no unity. They haven’t learned this first lesson that we must work together in unity. We have for instance in the context of this state politically, when we come to the election in two days, we have a Christian community as divided, if not more so, and more confused and upset this political year as we did two years ago.

Two years ago we had a small percentage of Christians supporting a third party candidate who ended up giving us a very liberal governor in this state. And this year we had Measure 9. These things are just symbols of a much deeper problem. The problem is division, strong division and sin between different groups of Christian political activists in this state. And that is an indicator to us really of this point. There’s no unity in the extended churches.

Who’s supposed to mediate disputes between Christians? Churches. And so if you have warring Christians saying various things about each other in the context of Oregon, who should be involved in trying to mediate this and work it through? The churches.

The institutional thing has long since been taken care of for these people. They know intellectually what they’re supposed to do. The matter now is not a matter of the mind or the brain. It’s now a matter of the soul and the heart. And Joshua speaks to that soul and heart, not by giving them new commands, but reminding them of the same old commands and their failure to aggressively prosecute the war that God had given them to do.

Now it’s going to be 400 years before the Jebusites are finally driven out of Jerusalem. Joshua, it’s not his fault though, because in the very next verse, in verse 4, Joshua sets a strategy. We’ve had an establishment of the tabernacle at a particular place at Shiloh. We’ve had a word of exhortation and rebuke given to them. And now we have a strategy set by Joshua in verse 4. He has them pick three representatives from each of the seven tribes, 21 guys to go out and write down the context of what they see in terms of the inheritances.

So we have this the earliest instance of land surveying on record. We have then a strategy set by Joshua to help them. Now he doesn’t just give them a word of rebuke and exhortation. He gives them a practical suggestion, a strategy to go about getting themselves reinvigorated in terms of prosecuting the warfare and taking charge of their inheritance.

Concluding this wrap up of these four verses then, one commentator Bush wrote the following. Had all the tribes proceeded with united vigor to fulfill the divine command to its utmost extent, they would not so long have been annoyed by their remaining enemies as scourges in their sides and thorns in their eyes.

And I quoted in this first article I wrote 10, 12 years ago. He talked about a prayer meeting at the college he was at, a bunch of the Christians who were at this college and they were dividing. There were problems amongst them. They got together and had a prayer meeting. At the end of the prayer meeting there was a lot of hugging and weeping and kissing. And Kellogg says they walked into the night as divided as ever. They hadn’t worked out biblically the problems that existed in the context of that group, and the difficulties in relationships that had their center in different approaches and different levels of sin and obedience to God’s word.

And so as we seek more extended unity in the church around us, we must do it in the context of truth. We cannot ignore the dimensions of truth that are applicable to these relationships. If all we do is sit down with another group that we’re at odds with—at the OCA, Oregon Citizen Alliance, and the OFC, Oregon Family Council, meet together for instance, the boards of them—and just sit down and have a prayer meeting and at the end of it tell each other how much we love each other and don’t discuss what has happened for the last half a dozen years, what the word of God does in terms of political action, how it should be approached, we’re going to go into the night as divided as ever and it will be night, it won’t be day. That doesn’t mean you have to insist that everything you believe is right. The whole purpose of the church is so we come together and iron sharpens iron. We share concepts, we share principles of political action for instance from the scriptures, and we go away thinking about it, meditating about it, not laying down claims to our own ground, but saying our only ground is God’s word as a standard for our action.

Until churches and men do that, we won’t see much diligence in terms of possessing the land around us.

Secondly, there must be a commitment to conquer. And one of the reasons why the Christian church fails and is slothful to possess the land today, as will be evidenced by the elections two days from now, there will be no real good news on Tuesday. You know, there’ll be degrees of bad news. I was thinking about this with Rush Limbaugh. And we like Rush Limbaugh. His show is kind of good. But why do we like it? Even if it is—don’t be offended if you’re a big Rush Limbaugh fan—but in a sense, it’s only the crumbs of the common grace that Christian culture planted here 200 years ago. We’re left with these tiny little crumbs of conservatism that once had their roots in the scriptures, and we just eat them up like they were, you know, the best candy available, the biggest feast we could have.

We’re so starved for words that speak to God’s people, that speak God’s word to the application of social and political life around us. We eat it up. Even though, you know, I don’t know if the man is a Christian or not, but it’s certainly not what I would call a pious attempt at analyzing political events and frequently it’s off color, etc. But I’m not putting down the show. I’m saying that it’s good that there are still those vestiges, those crumbs left on the table.

But we better see a lot more than that. We better see a lot more commitment to conquer, to actually recognize we’re in a cultural war here in which Christianity is given the victory once and for all in Jesus Christ, our greater Joshua, and we should stop being slothful in going up and possessing the land.

Well, in any event, a commitment to conquer is necessary. There’s obviously what I’m speaking of here is an optimistic eschatology. You know, the word possess could be translated in verse one as occupy. How long are you slack to occupy the land? You know, and we can get even people without an occupationist eschatology to agree that we should occupy until we come. But what does occupy mean here, as it does throughout scripture? It doesn’t mean hold on to the little ground you’ve got. It means occupy what Jesus Christ has already won. And the scriptures clearly teach us he’s won the world. He’s won the political regions. He’s won the geographic regions. He’s won the social regions. He’s won the leisure regions of our lives as well. Every area of life and thought, Jesus Christ is king overall. We must have a commitment to conquer each of those areas, to extend the reign of Jesus Christ.

This church, Reformation Covenant Church, I think is one of the things that keyed us as we began as a church 10 years ago as a realization that Christians will reconquer the world. That’s a done deal as far as I read the scriptures. What isn’t a done deal is our participation in that. Are we going to find Reformation Covenant Church at the end of 300 years of Shiloh a by name of failure? Are we going to find it a name of blessing and peace and victory? Well, the answer to that question, I don’t know. I know Christians will reconquer the world. I don’t know if this particular group, how much we’ll be involved in that battle and how much blessing we’ll receive from God.

I think we’ve received a lot of blessing up to now. You know, as I was looking at this sermon and how I should approach it, first I thought, well, you know, in a sense we’re kind of like Joshua at this church. I hope I can say that without building up your pride. I don’t want to do that. Pride is the mother of all sins. But in a sense we are sort of Joshua. There are many Joshuas in this congregation who understand everything that this passage teaches already.

And you know, you have a responsibility to tell other churches about that, to tell the other tribes. How long are you going to be slothful and not possess what God has given you in Jesus Christ? How long are you going to let your family, you know, not be ruled by a head of a household with a Christian perspective and a commitment to God’s word? Talk to your friends outside of the church. How long are you going to let your perspective of work be a secular one or a materialistic one or a humanist one as opposed to a Christian one?

And how long are you going to vote for guys like Bill Clinton who are committed to putting abortionists on the Supreme Court? People who would allow the murder of the unborn. How long are you going to be slack to possess the presidency, you know, in terms of Christian principles?

So I think there’s a sense in which we are at that stage. There are many Joshuas in this congregation. But I think in a sense too that probably as a group, we might see some real good lessons here in these seven tribes. The seven tribes had some victory already. You know, they’d already done some stuff and now they were getting a little tired. They’re getting distracted from the warfare.

Let me read you a couple of quotes here from effort commentators about this section and what these tribes are up to. H.L. Ellison says the following. The slack displayed by the tribes may well have been due to an unwillingness to settle down. It was fine to have a promised land, but the reality showed the need for learning new skills and engaging in hard work. That is, for many the disappointing side of God’s gifts. They are always given that we may serve him better. Even his rest is linked with a yoke. It’s a gentle yoke, but it’s a yoke nonetheless.

The Expositor’s Bible says this. Many of them, these seven tribes, would have been content to jog on carelessly, as they had been doing in the desert, in a sort of confused jumble and to forge about here and there, as the case may be, in pursuit of the necessities of life. Their listlessness was provoking. They knew that the divine plan was quite different, that each tribe was to have a territory of its own, and that measures ought to be taken at once to settle the boundaries of each tribe. But they were taking no steps for this purpose. They were content with social huggermugger.

You know, I thought of that and by way of confession, all too often in the last 15 years of my married life, that’s what my family has been—kind of a family huggermugger. You know, jog on, kind of you forge about here and there. You do things you have to do to put the things that are coming out the edges back in, but you never really grab a hold of and work with it.

Now I think that overall, many of us in Reformation Covenant have gone a long way toward recovering that in our families, but there’s a greater battle out there as well.

Bush in his commentary on this said the following, and this is so appropriate I think to some of us and maybe particularly to this church in particular. They appear to become tired of the war. Their former conquest had enriched them with spoil. They were enjoying the ample provisions which had been treasured up for the use of the former inhabitants, and they became self-indulgent, slothful and dilatory. They were now living at ease in the midst of their brethren. The regions that yet remained to be divided were remote from the state around which they were clustered.

And if they went to take possession of them, they must break up their present connections, drive their flocks and herds, and convey their wives and children to strange places, and undergo new hardships and trials. Besides this, great numbers of the Canaanites still remained in the unappropriated districts. And these they knew could not be expelled by the expense of great effort, fatigue, and peril. Their hearts accordingly shrank loth in them at the prospect.

We’ve had some victory, a great deal of it these last 10 years. Homeschooling is one example. Time to move on. We cleaned up that territory in my mind. Now a little bit of, you know, maintenance work has to be done. I think we got to look out for this 21st century school thing so that it doesn’t impact on homeschoolers’ rights. But the big problem with homeschoolers in Oregon is not the state, is it? It’s that we’re slack. That’s what makes it tough.

Homeschooling is done politically now in terms of the political reorganization of possessing the land. But there are other battles yet ahead. I talked last night about how God had plowed up Halloween for most of us and then moved us on and planted the seeds of a night of celebrating the Reformation and the sovereignty of God and a reapprehension of that in our culture and in our lives.

What’s God plowing up today? For a while he was plowing up the schools. Remember Sullivan? Remember the doors being locked? Remember the conflict then? He plowed up, he plowed up rather the seeds of public schools and then planted the seeds of Christian private schools and home schools. Those are flourishing now. But there are new battles. We’re not done. We’re like those seven tribes. We’ve got some blessing.

But boy, there’s a lot more to be done. If our homes are getting more ordered, great. Thank God. But that isn’t the end of the game. There’s a whole world outside of the doors of this church and our homes. And God says he wants us to go to all the world, preaching the gospel of Christ, converting many nations, discipling them, teaching the scriptures as the basis for their political action, their political life, the life of the city, the life of their culture.

Restitution. There’s an area we’ve talked about for a dozen years. Now certainly one that God has done a lot of plowing. Nobody likes the criminal justice system we have. Every year it fails worse and worse. Where are the Johnny Appleseed? We’re going to plant the seeds of restitution. Maybe in this church. Maybe that’s the next thing we get involved with. Certainly the attempt to prevent the disruption of Christian families by child abuse advocates gone crazy is another one.

The point is that I think from this text we have an exhortation to us to continue and be committed to the conquest, not just in our personal lives but in the society and the world around us as well.

There was a latter-day Joshua, Paul, and good for us to keep these verses in mind. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth into those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

God tells us that should be our attitude. Good. We’ve had victories in the past. Now let’s not be slack about possessing the rest of the land in our vocations, in our political spheres.

Third, another reason why the church today does not possess the land is a failure of repentance. You know, we come out of our positions of defeist eschatology and a failure to govern our households correctly, etc. And what do we do about it? Oh yeah. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Okay. But what I’m suggesting is what people should be doing when God’s corrective word comes into our lives. The first step is repentance.

I talk about the sword now in counseling and different discussions with people. I might come up tomorrow in our meeting with this other group from another church. The sword—that’s the sin word. That’s a word people don’t like to use much in Christian circles anymore. A lot of mistakes, errors, etc. But boy, sin, that’s pretty tough. Well the sword should be used in our own personal vocabularies a lot more. And when we fail God, when we fail to express forward the victory that he’s won for us in Jesus Christ into every area of life and thought, as we flag behind and find ourselves, we’ve rested for a while and now we become slothful for a while—repentance is the solution.

Christians will not possess this land and the earth until our lives are characterized by a regular and systematic repentance before God for our sins. We just read an excellent confession of sin as we came into worship. And we said that worship serves as the model, as it does here at Shiloh. Tabernacle’s established, land is subdued. Here the tabernacle is established and what’s the very first thing we do? We come to that tabernacle. We confess our sins. And that’s not supposed to happen just on Sunday. We don’t wait for all the sins to pile up till Sunday morning and then confess them. When we feel the convicting power of God’s spirit through the word reach us, and through the consciences that he gives us, the spirit now enliven to us, we should repent on a regular basis.

As Keith was reading the story of Martin Luther last night, I thought, boy. You know, sounds pretty odd, doesn’t it? Guy going up and kissing every step and praying for different people that had gone to purgatory and hoping, how can you get peace with God? Weeping over it, you know, for many hours. That’s odd, isn’t it? Because our lives are like that. We’re in the context of a secularism that has removed any thought of the displeasing of God.

Now I know we’re trying to intellectually layer that back in, but we need to layer it back into our souls as well, so our lives become filled with repentance over our sins and weeping before God for offending his holy character, for wasting the good gifts he gives to us. Until repentance characterizes our lives, there’ll be no political victory in social reorganization.

I thought of the illness check. It’s one thing that I kind of use sometimes, you know, a little strategy that I’m using to see about repentance in my own life. When illnesses come upon me, what’s my first response? How many days, how many hours does it take to turn to God and say, “What are you trying to show me about my life?” Now God doesn’t always give us illnesses to indicate sin to us. But the scriptures are replete with evidences. He frequently does that. Illnesses are frequently God’s messengers to bring us to repentance or at least to a sense of humility before him after our pride gets puffed up as it regularly does.

You might apply that test to yourself. How many hours or days does it take when you get an illness to consult the great physician, the Lord Jesus Christ? There are rebukes in scripture listed to those who consult the physicians first before God. God’s the source of healing. But God also brings his illnesses and different disruptions and trials into our life for the purpose of chastening us, so that we might be matured toward Jesus Christ. But it only happens through repentance, a godly sorrow for our sins and a commitment to turn from them.

And then fourth, another reason I think this text tells us why Christians will not, until they change this, possess the land today is there’s no strategy set. Joshua comes to the people, rebukes them, gets them going to action, but then immediately gives them a strategy for what they have to do as well. He sends out representatives, covenantal representatives into the land.

These representatives, by the way, were very trained. Apparently Josephus records that they were trained in these surveying arts in Egypt where they had been before, at least their fathers had been. And that lineage was passed on, this ability. It was important because the Nile would flood frequently and you had to know just where the boundaries were. So surveying was a very important art in Egypt.

There was a strategy set here and people’s giftings that God had already built in their lives was used in the fulfilling of that strategy. Let’s talk about strategy a little bit. We’ve talked about our consternation over the Mowgli candidacy two years ago and now this year over Measure 9.

Turn in your scriptures to Romans 1. Let’s make sure we understand what homosexuality is. Romans 1, of course, is the passage where most people recognize that homosexuality is not a good thing and is at the long list of a series of turnings and rebellions against God. Verse 26:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change their natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman, burning in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error, which was meet.

Well, this shows us that at the end result of a long series of rebellions against God, people turned to homosexuality. Homosexuality is both an indication of a person’s rebellion against God, hard and fast and settled in their ways. It’s also an indication though of the judgment of God against them because it says here that God gave them over to this. And when we preached to this before, we talked about this is really a judicial action of God against certain people. He gives over to these lusts. Okay?

There’s a series of God’s judicial pronouncements against assorted people that Romans 1 describes that ends in homosexuality. We do not have to wait for Measure 9 to pass or to look at AIDS or something else for God’s judgment against homosexuality. It itself is God’s judgment against the people who engage in it. That’s what the scriptures teach.

Now what kind of people are these? At the beginning of this list in Romans 1, we read that the wrath of God is revealed against people because they knew God. They glorified him not as God. In verse 21, neither were thankful. The basic sin of the homosexual is a failure to be thankful to God for the provision of God’s provision for what he puts our sexual desires toward—a godly wife, for all kinds of things. They fail to give thanks. If you fail to give thanks, you’re in the same lineage as the homosexual. Very important that we understand it.

Yes, homosexuality is a crime. Should be criminalized according to the scriptures. The scriptures, I think, my understanding of the scriptures and I’m open to hear from you on this—my understanding is the scriptures should say it should be a civil crime punishable by death for people who openly engage in homosexual acts that are witnessed, as all capital crimes have to be witnessed in scripture. But let’s not forget as we talk about that, this same act is in a list of sins that begin with unthankfulness to God.

Yes, it’s a degradation. Yes, they’ve rejected the judgments of God along the path. They keep hardening, hardening, hardening, and finally God turns them over to that and they receive in their bodies the judgment of God as is evident from all the diseases that homosexuality ushers into the life of those people.

But let’s not forget the progression. The American people, I don’t know what’s going to happen to Measure 9. Most people today do not approve of homosexuality. And yet we’ve got a presidential candidate who has openly admitted to adulterous affairs, which is part of this whole list as well and one pretty well far down the list as well. The lust that is engaged in adulterous affairs, and that’s no big deal. That’s not an issue to be considered.

Do you realize that according to the national and international religious reporter that I receive every week, the Bush surveyors and other polls indicate that probably up to half of the so-called evangelicals in this country are supporting Bill Clinton for presidency. As I said, a man who’s given a limitless test of being pro-abortion for the Supreme Court, a man who has confessed and not repented of adultery, just a little indiscretion in the past.

See, Measure 9 is okay in the sense that certainly we want to highlight the sin of homosexuality and show the judgments of God against this culture. And certainly I would be in favor of when we are able to do it, to criminalize that action. But strategically, is this the right thing to do? Some of us think not. You know, the most offensive measure part of Measure 9 is the impact upon public schools and attempt to clean up the public schools.

The public schools which themselves are funded by state funds which teach essentially the preeminence of the state, which I know it’s a stretch for many who have never heard this before, but I think is akin to Molech worship, worship of the state. In the Old Testament the word for the concept of passing somebody through a fire to dedicate them was Molech, not to thoroughly emulate them. Of course that did happen in the history of Israel. But the dedication of children to the state, I think, was Molech worship in the Old Testament.

You know, if you heard this for the first time, either on the tape or if you’re sitting here, you know, don’t just reject it out of hand. I’ve got a couple of tapes on it. But in any event, I think it’s a bad deal. So the very core of Measure 9 is an attempt to clean up what is inherently an anti-Christian and a godless institution, the public schools.

And secondly, Measure 9 reads the political climate around us a lot differently than I read it. Two years ago we had an initiative to try to get rid of abortions in the state. Now I’m as committed to getting rid of abortions as any man, as the people of this church. To be a member of this church you have to be committed to eliminating the sin of abortion. You must abhor the sin of abortion and pledge to oppose it in the word of our church covenant.

But when that ballot measure happened two years ago, the only thing that resulted when it went down—I think it was 55-45 or 60-40 or something—the only thing that happened was the anti-abortion movement in the state was set back half a dozen years because when you have a plebiscite and the people decide no, that’s okay. Now the representatives down there are not particularly a bunch of principled people necessarily and they’re saying well there’s our out. We don’t got to deal with the controversial issue.

If Measure 9 goes, if bigger Measure 9 goes down on Tuesday, we will be worse off because the Measure 9 opponents, the homosexual community, will never have been so organized. They used that lobbying effort in Salem and expand their ungodly practices through the legislative mechanism strategically. It was a big mistake.

Now why is that strategic mistake made? Because the proponents of Measure 9 don’t believe the rest of Christian activists in the state. There is no trust. It goes back to point number one—no unity in the extended church. And as a result, people are out there doing things that become very foolish because they don’t have a multitude of counselors. The only counselors they have are the ones they want to hear. I don’t say that in condemnation of them. I think things have been done by other Christian activists that probably have helped them to stumble and not trust what I believe are people that have a little better understanding of what the political climate of Oregon is today.

The point is unless people start sitting down and talking together, our strategies are going to remain silly and no strategy is set. If you think number one, no unity of the institutional church, and then no commitment to conquer, you put those things together, everybody’s scattered and everybody’s committed to a short-term eschatology of defeat. And that’s what most proponents of Measure 9 believe in. We’re just going down.

As I said at our meeting last Tuesday night, there’s this mentality they just want to take a shot in the chest for Jesus. Now don’t be offended by that if you have a short-term eschatology. But you see, it’s sort of like Patton said in that movie, you know, our job is not to die for our country. Now if God calls us to die for Jesus Christ, praise God. Great honor that he doesn’t want us to go out there and be martyred for him. Joshua’s the picture of us—Joshua and his army. He wants us to conquer. He wants the other people to die. Not that we’re supposed to physically kill people. You know what I’m talking about here. I’m saying that our job is to conquer. There’s a war on for the souls and minds of men.

And as the Christian gospel is proclaimed, as people are converted and the Christian gospel is translated into terms that people understand its relationship to the way our culture, society and politics is organized, that war is won by the Christian people. The Holy Spirit empowers us to do that. So that’s our job. We don’t want to go out there and become a martyr for Jesus if that’s not what he calls us to do. He normally calls us to conquer. He wants us to go out with a clear message that homosexuality is a sin and those people are in sin who do it, as is most of the state of Oregon.

You know you could take them in order: necrophilia, pedophilia, here, homosexuality here, adultery here, fornication here, unthankfulness over here. Romans 1 paints this picture of declension, downward spiral. At what point do you cut it off and say all these are abnormal and perverse? All these things are abnormal. It’s perverse to fail to give God thanks for what he has given to us.

Now I know it’s a decline but do you understand what I’m saying here? So to pick it off, to arbitrarily cut it off here and say we’re going to talk about these guys, is a strategic decision, right? I mean if we could we would want civil statutes against adultery, right? I would. The scriptures say it’s a bad thing. It’s a crime. It’s a criminal act in the scriptures. Adultery. It’s treason against God’s government, the family. Scriptures make it clear that adultery is a criminal action, punished by death.

But strategically we’re saying homosexual. Well the majority of the population of Oregon, if they reject that strategic call, if they’ve been so inundated by the media as to say it’s a bad thing, instead they sanctioned the act and as a result the effort to speak forth God’s word…