Dennis Tuuri

Joshua 21:43-45. And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers, and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the Lord gave them rest roundabout, according to all that he swear unto their fathers. And there stood not a man of all their enemies before them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel. All came to pass.

In verses 43-45 the theological conclusion essentially and the theme to the book of Joshua we reached this having come through the last couple of weeks through the cities of refuge and then through the Levitical cities and considering the implications of those things just by way of review. Last week’s chapter we dealt with the cities Levitical cities really demonstrate to us at the center of the worshiping community the bond that unites the tribes together while geographic in terms of the distribution of the cities and the way they were distributed to the different tribes of Levi.

That the bond that holds the church together in the old covenant was Levitical instruction, Levitical worship, Levitical prayer. And as a result of that and refuge at the center of the life of the church is to be the word of God. Which word serves as instruction for us in life. Which words instructs us also in terms of how we worship God? And which word also becomes the basis then for our prayers to God.

And then the worshiping community centered as it is on God’s word uh is given refuge by God in terms of protection from those forces in the country. in the land and one’s environment and one’s culture that would seek to harm the members of the church. Remember though that this is in the context in Joshua of conquest. And so in a way if we see the intent of God in bringing the people into the land of Canaan to move that land from cursing because of the cultural inhabitants who rejected God and whose iniquity become full to now change that land from a howling wilderness into a garden.

Then the maturation process that we see happening here, the removal of the evil Canaanites, the implanting of God’s holy seed, ultimately pointing to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. These Levitical cities then serve as models and instructional elements by which the entire land becomes way great city of refuge so to speak. So the cities of refuge should not be thought of in terms of a ghetto, a restrictive community that doesn’t have cultural implications.

It become they become beachheads so to speak. that now the people of Israel themselves might work against the internal enemies they had no longer the Canaanites from outside but internal sins in their own lives through the instruction and worship of God that they might then move from glory to glory as a covenant people so the cities of refuge are really a beachhead so to speak and a model the model coming from heaven through God’s word pictured in worship counsel in terms of the application of God’s word in life and then with a reliance upon God that’s demonstrated by prayer these refuges, these beachheads are established that the entire land then may be glorified and might grow as a garden.

Now, in order for all this to happen, last week’s sermon again by way of review, the means that God uses to do this, the secondary means are Levitical priests and instructors in the old covenant. In the new covenant, there’s many correlations to the elders and officers of the church. And so, God gives the institutional church as the task of performing this function we’ve just described. And your obligations then is what we talked about last week.

Your obligations are to support such officers. And then secondly, your obligations are to hear the instruction of such officers in their counsel and advice. The obligation of course for the officers is there lies a focus center upon the word of God. no other foundation can be laid other than the word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ who is the word and then that word and the instruction of the scriptures that he gives us and writes in our hearts the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Now this week’s message that sums up really as I said the book of Joshua is it has I suppose you could say it has implications of obligations in it but it is essentially a word that is given to build up faith and trust in the God whose word cannot fail a God who cannot lie and so this week’s message is one of blessing and one of encouragement as opposed to one of obligation this word is blessing and it’s very important to recognize that while obligations always incipient in such a message, the focal point of God’s word is blessing and promise and the faithfulness that he has to his word that he gives to his covenant people.

It is comfort and it is encouragement and as I said that is the theological conclusion of this book. The theological conclusion has at its core the worship of the one whose word does not fail. That’s what this text is all about.

Now, one commentator has described verses 43-45 as the jugular vein of the book. This is really the substance of the whole book. This is the theme that runs through the whole book. And that theme is given to us. You know, we talked before about the torrent of blessings in the benediction from Numbers that we perform usually at the end of the first half of our worship service and how the structure of that benediction uh ically builds to the conclusion of it. and so there’s a torrent of blessings that is bestowed upon God’s people through the benediction. And in many ways, the structure of this these three verses is that same way.

The theological conclusion one commentator said it’s like sledgehammer theology. There’s a point being pounded home in each of these verses. Bam bam. And if you lay out these verses the way that I attempted to read them somewhat, you’ll see at the center of each verse is the complete faithfulness of God in terms of his word.

Verse 43 sums up the second half of the book. It says that God gave all gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers. They possessed it and dwelt therein. There’s three sections to that. God gave the land that he swore to their fathers and they then lived in it possessed it.

The second verse 44 says the Lord gave them rest roundabout according to all that he swore unto their fathers. There stood not a man of all their enemies before them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Same basic structure. God gives land based upon what he said he would do and then the people live in that land. God gives rest based on what he said he would do. And the explanation of that rest is that all their enemies are defeated.

And then it’s summed up in verse 45. They failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel. All came to pass. Nothing failed that he said he could do. All things came to pass. The explanation of what nothing failing means. And so all came to pass is essentially the summation then of this entire book of Joshua.

One commentary on the book of Joshua, the name of it is no failing words. And what does that mean? No failing words. Well, in Hebrew, the language is very pictorial, very graphic, so to speak. And in verse 45, when it says to fail not out of any good thing, it means that none of these words that God spoke Literally, it means none of them fell to the ground. And in the Hebrew, this one’s word either falls to the ground, it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, or it comes out and impacts the world.

And what this passage is telling us is that God’s word never falls to the ground. God’s word impacts the world. And it is brought to completion by God over long periods of time. Sometimes his word tells about a long pattern of biblical history. as we’ll see as we get to the end of this discussion. But the basic theological conclusion then of this book is that we have a wonderful God whose word never falls to the ground. He gives no failing words. All his words are effectual.

That word in 45 then sums up the entire book. Verse 43 as I said sums up the first the second half of what we’ve done the chapters that deal with inheritance. And verse 44 deals with the rest the conquest that had happened in the first 13 chapters of the book. Remember how the book now has had two sections basically. There was the conquest section and there was preparation.

Remember chapter one of Joshua started with God saying, “Be strong. Be very courageous. I’m going to give you this land. I’m going to beat your enemies.” And then he begins by doing that by preparing them for conquest through worship activities. And then eventually through actually then going out in combat against Jericho, Ai, the northern campaign, the Southern campaign. And then the end of that section lists all the kings that were defeated by the King of Kings. Joshua the type of course the greater King of Kings the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the first half of the book is about defeating enemies and in the scriptures that’s what rest means this word here and in the context it means your enemies are killed. God’s word is a judgment word a curse word against enemies of his people. But then the second half of the book talked about the inheritances. Remember we talked about all those tribes Judah first Caleb the daughters of Zelophehad had or we had Benjamin’s inheritance the sons of Joseph Ephraim and Manasseh. And then the last seven tribes, the Simeon, Naphtali, Zebulun, you remember all those tribes. They carved up the land. And that’s what verse 43 sums up. God gave him land to live in.

And at the center of that land is the presence of God with his people. And so God’s word is always effectual. It doesn’t fall short. It impacts the world. It creates a place, an environment for his people that is full of blessings and manifestations of the presence of God.

So that’s the two-fold word that verse 45 says does not fall to the ground from God. God gives us land. He gives us an environment that is full of blessings and he gives us at the core of those blessings his presence. And in doing so, God also gives us rest from our enemies. He kills, he destroys over time, he obliterates enemies to his people. So it is a blessing word and it is a judgment word.

Now There are obligations to life in the land and that’s what we’ve talked about a lot and we’ll talk about that more the next couple of weeks. The people reaffirm covenant at the very close of the book. They agree to obey all the things God gave them to do. But that’s not how they get the land. That’s how they stay in the land. That’s how they remain identified with the people of God in the land as opposed to becoming God’s enemies.

They’re ushered into the land by the grace of God. He gives them it to them. We’re ushered into salvation. by the gift of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ. Threat judgment, the second part of God’s sure word that destroys his enemies only comes against us when we move away from identification with his people and with his land, his presence through violation of his word, and move instead away from that into the camp of his enemies. Mentally first, usually physically, whatever it is.

Okay. A point I’m trying to make here is an extremely important one. in terms of the relationship of blessing, cursing, of promise and judgment being these two elements that these verses tell us are sure about God’s word. I’m going to read several quotes here from James B. Jordan in a book he had on uh the covenant in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The covenant outlines and structures in those books. Very short book, but these are profound things. I’ve read some of this for to you. But it’s very important in the context of these verses to understand this.

Jordan writes that God’s word is always promised before his command. God summons us to eat the life-giving tree of life before we look to the authority giving tree bestowing tree of the knowledge of good and evil for instruction. God always bestows the kingdom as a gift before presenting us with our duties in it. then he’s talking in terms of the five-part covenant structure where the first part is transcendence. God says who he is. Second part is he describes covenant history. and he establishes hierarchy of command of God as the sovereign over us. We’re dealing with the second point of the covenant.

Jordan says, for instance, point two is not simply the establishment of a hierarchy of chain of command. First and foremost, it is God’s action of transferring his people from Satan’s domain into the kingdom. It is an exodus from the old fallen order into a new order. The new hierarchy is a benison. It is a gift. because it replaces our enthralment or our servitude to Satan.

Thus, in covenant renewal liturgies, it is confession of sin and forsaking of the world at the beginning of worship that corresponds to this point of the covenant. We confess that we were slaves of Satan, the world, the flesh, and the and we renounce the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. We reject the old order and we embrace the new. That’s what we do when we come and confess our sins. We reject the old order, we embrace the new. We do it liturgically here. A clear understanding of this transition removes the notion of order and hierarchy from a merely legal context and puts it in a dynamic context of grace and redemption.

Similarly, point three, point three of the five-part covenant model is where God gives his law to people. Point four, blessings and cursings. For point three is stipulations. What do you do now that you’re in covenant relationship with God? And that’s the law. Jordan says. Point three is not simply commands and stipulations. God’s covenant word is always first and foremost promise and then command based on promise. Point three has to do with God’s grant of the kingdom, his gift and promise and then our duties consequent there too.

God’s word is always both promise and command and in reformed theology promise comes first. And then he makes a note that helps us to understand this. In Lutheran law, gospel theology law comes first to drive us to Christ. But in reformed theology, grace comes first. to put us in the kingdom and then the law is given as a guideline for our kingdom duties. Very important distinction.

We can also say concerning point four that cursings and blessings do not function the same way. And now this is correlating to what these two promises that God said he made and will perform. He will bless those who are his covenant people in the land. And he will curse those. He will judge their enemies and remove them. In relationship to this point for cursings and blessings, Jordan’s writes that these do not function the same way. In the kingdom, the blessing is already given while the curse is an eschatological threat, a threat of something that might happen in the future to you.

Here again, promise comes before a law, the gift before the hierarchy. We are entitled to eat the Lord’s supper every week, and thus the blessing is already given. The curse for abusing the supper is something that is threatened for the future. In the kingdom, we don’t live under curse, but under blessing. Thus, while there is a theological equal ultimacy to blessings and curse, to election and predestination, in terms of redemptive history, they are not equally ultimate.

The gospel is good news, not neutral news. The gospel is good news. That is a grace word from God, not neutral news. The kingdom and its blessings are given. The curse is only threatened for now. It’s important to note, he goes on to write that the focus of the laws in Leviticus are not simply obedience to God, but rather the maintenance of the grant. The sacrifices, laws of cleansing, Sabbath observances, and payments of vows are all designed to prevent God from taking offense and leaving or leaving his presence.

Thus, their ceremonies reveal the truth about the moral laws found in Exodus and Deuteronomy. The kingdom is distributed to us as a gift, but if we are to maintain the grant, we must be faithful. Leviticus focuses attention on the maintenance of the kingdom by confession and cleansing.

Okay, so all of that in Point of all that is that it’s very important to a church that has reaffirmed the importance of God’s law that we don’t begin to think of it as the vehicle whereby we get entrance into the promised land. God’s law to God’s people is the way we maintain God’s presence in the midst of us and way we maintain identity with being his people so that we continue to receive the blessings that he gives us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise we move to the second half.

uh the way this book is laid out or this chapter rather verses 43 and 44 verse 44 the promise that God will destroy the enemies of his people okay it’s interesting because in the way the book actually plays out God destroys enemies first he gives rest from enemies and then he divides up the land but here when this when the whole of this book is summed up for us what are we told first God gives the land and he destroys enemies the point out to us with this theological conclusion that God’s word is always gift first and then command its promise.

It is blessings with an eschatological a future threat that God’s word will become judgment against you if you move away in obstinate and persistent disobedience to the king whose presence is guaranteeing you all blessings in Jesus Christ. Okay. So this chapter summation then is a great statement of God’s faithfulness to his people to maintain them in blessings in the context of his land and also to destroy their enemies.

It becomes by implication a threat against us should we decide to associate or identify with God’s enemies instead of doing the simple things that God requires of us in terms of maintenance of the grant that he gives us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay.

Now, this theme of rest and land is repeated throughout the scriptures certainly in the book of Joshua 1:15 God says he’ll give you rest and that you’ll also possess the land he says in Joshua 11:23 Joshua took the whole land and at the end of that verse and the land rested from war remember we talked about that verse Exodus 33:11 Exodus 33 rather in that chapter points out this correlation this two-fold promise of God to give us land and also to give us rest It’s very interesting in this context, by the way, that in Exodus 33:14, it’s that God says, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”

There’s that two-fold statement again of the blessings and then the rest, deliverance from enemies. But you see the difference? He says, “My presence will go with you.” Theologically, in a proper understanding of the land, it’s not the land in and of itself that’s a blessing to us. It’s not those cities that we didn’t build. It’s not those fruit trees. that we didn’t plant. It’s not the children that God gives us. It’s God’s presence in the land. That’s why we want to be there and that’s why we want to be sure that we don’t offend him with our actions and he leads.

You know, the tabernacle uh was the center of it was built with carrying devices that people could look at the Holy of Holies and see these poles sticking out. And they were reminded visually by that God could pick up and leave when their sin became too great for them. When they failed maintaining the great blessings he gave them. And when they identified with his enemies instead of being his people and of course that happens later on, God does actually leave. The tabernacle is removed. The Holy of Holies is removed, taken into captivity, so to speak. He departs his sinning people.

So this concept of rest, deliverance from enemies, land, the presence of God is repeated throughout the Old Testament and forms the basis then for our understanding of the salvation we’re ushered into through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that this rest only is to be associated with the destruction of enemies is again pictured in many places in scripture.

For instance, in Exodus 23:22, God says that I’ll be an enemy unto your enemies and an adversary unto your adversaries. Joshua 23:1, it came to pass a long time after that the Lord had gotten given rest had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about that Joshua’s old and stricken years. So rest is identified in the very in two chapters from now with specific specifically deliverance from enemies as it is in verse 44.

So God gives us land. He gives us the blessings of living in his presence. And his presence is a presence of blessing and abundance and children, fruit trees, houses, etc. And he gives us rest, which means that all the enemies that come against us are destroyed by him. Now that’s a that’s a historical fact that works out over time because remember they don’t get the absence of enemies right away. God says, “We’re going to drive them out gradually, little by little.”

The Psalms is full of statements about enemies. If you read the Psalter, you cannot come away without realizing that whoever writes those books, the individuals, and then essentially God and the identification with his people. One who understands the book of the Psalms understands that the Christian life is filled with enemies. It is not wrong to have enemies. It is a normal condition if we’re to read the Psalms directly of the Christian life. And we are to petition God for the destruction of those enemies as they are also God’s enemies and not just our personal enemies.

And he promises that’s part of this word that won’t fall to the ground is that our enemies will be destroyed. We I’ve talked about this before. We pray thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we pray for the establishment of God’s kingdom, we pray for the destruction of God’s enemies. And if we’re God’s friend, it’s all the destruction of our enemies. And so the things in the Psalms make sense to us. that way.

Now, enemies of course you know this but just to remind you that enemies are external and enemies are internal and then they’re even deeper internal. We have enemies in terms of the world. There are enemies in terms of people within the context of the visible church. and then there are enemies in our own souls. The sins which beset us so easily and hinder our work, hinder our running the race in a proper fashion. And it’s important to understand that your life will normally be characterized as having enemies and to those three areas.

The world doesn’t like what you’re doing if you’re a church that’s active that’s impacting the word or the world rather with God’s word. Members of the Christian church won’t like you and your own sin won’t like what you’re doing. Will attempt to stop you from doing it. You’ll be attempted to be stopped from that activity on all of those levels. That’s normal. it’s certainly the life of our savior. It’s certainly the life of the Christian church.

You know, Paul’s biggest enemies of course in the New Testament were the were the Pharisees and the Jews who were the official established religious structure at the time. We find ourselves today in the context of a country in a world where the predominant official established religions in terms of the larger older churches 90% of them has have apostasized from the faith and so would expect that they would be our enemy in the proclamation of God’s word.

If you invited a 100 pastors from the greater Portland area cross denominations to what we did a couple of weeks ago in terms of liturgy of malediction relative to abortion. Most of them would not be very happy with us. They would consider us their enemies. And it’s important to realize that. And it’s important to realize that God’s sure word says your enemies over time are destroyed by God and you’re protected from them in the meantime.

All of this is put in the context then to help us understand what the book of Joshua is all about. But more than that, it’s to help us to realize that the emphasis of the book of Joshua is this faithful God whose word doesn’t fail, who ushers us into blessing. And it’s the blessing of knowing him and being maintained in his presence of the one whose word is sure makes me think of that Billy Joel song you know honesty such a lonely word is what it is everyone is so untrue you know something about the song goes on to say it’s hardly ever heard but it’s mostly what I need from you honesty is a is a precious commodity in our day and age one that is not overflowing in the streets and we have a god that we come to worship today whose every word is honest and doesn’t fall to the ground.

It is forceful. It is true. And he keeps every word that he utters. He has magnified that word above his name. So the Psalms tell us his word to us a blessing. He magnifies that above the his very person. That’s what the Psalms say. And we see the demonstration of that when the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, suffers in the flesh, death. And he suffers in his soul. the eternal punishment for our sins.

He magnifies his word of blessing to you about his very person laying down his life that we might live and receive the blessings of that word. And so this torrent of blessings that we talked about from Numbers 6, the benediction, that’s what this is about here. The assurance to us that God’s face will shine upon us. He will give us peace because he has promised us that. All those promises of God mean nothing if we cannot rely upon them. If we’re not experiencing them and frequently in our life, we don’t experience the reality of this. And there it is that we must exercise faith that the God who has proved himself faithful time and time again in history will prove himself faithful and not a liar to you and the promises that he makes to you as you are in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you can look at this portion of Joshua the same as you look at Romans 11:33. Paul lays out in Romans a theological a systematic theology of sorts to the Romans. And it and it kind of its summation in verses 33 and following of chapter 11. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him and it shall be recompensed unto him again?

For of him, through him, to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. Well, that’s the sort of conclusion we have here. All came to pass. God promised rest. He promised land and all things came to pass.

Woodstra in his commentary on this passage says that this passage constitutes one of the key sections of the entire book for one to learn from it the revelational purpose that the Holy Spirit had in inspiring the human author to compose this book. Very important couple of verses of Woodstra’s right this tells us the reason why we’ve been spending 26 weeks in the book of Joshua.

Woodstra says this purpose is to let the full light of revelation fall upon the faithfulness of the covenant God who keeps his word once given to the forefathers. That’s the purpose. And I would say that secondarily the purpose is to bring us to worship him whose word is so sure and so blessed and so right and so good. That’s the purpose.

Now this purpose comes after an interesting set of sequence in the chapters we’ve gone through. We went through the conquest portions where Joshua was declared king of kings. Joshua is the picture to us of the king of kings, the greater king of kings to come, the Lord Jesus Christ. We looked at the cities of refuge and specifically the priestly sanctuaries provided there and we saw Eleazar and we saw the great priest act and the priestly mediation of the cities of refuge and then we saw the instruction of three of the four groups of the Levites who received their inheritance in the chapter we’re just concluding now chapter 21 So by now the book of Joshua has portrayed to us the great king of kings, the great priest and the great prophetic work of the Lord Jesus Christ of the old covenant through Levitical orders. So we’ve got prophet, priest and king demonstrated to us at this point.

And now then the summation comes that all things came to pass. All things come to pass from the Father because he sends the Son, the prophet, priest and king to usher us into these blessings. So the means by which God’s word comes to pass becomes the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of which things have been pictured for us in the book of Joshua. And so now it’s appropriate to give this final theological conclusion to the book and prepare us then for the receiving of the grant of the law rather the renewal of the covenant that will follow in a few chapters by which they maintain the position of blessing that God gives them as promise and as a and as a gift from him. Not on the basis of works lest any man should boast.

Now So Jesus Christ the word is the mechanism which he uses and of course the the end of all this is that God’s the focal point of all this I should say is that God’s word is sure that he has indeed given us rest and victory as one commentator said he has brought his bride to her home and he surrounds her with his comforts and promises to kill all her enemies and that’s the fitting conclusion to the bulk of the book of Joshua and that conclusion focuses upon the word of God, prophet, priest, and king and then upon God’s word that it doesn’t fail.

It always is true.

Now, the scriptures redound with these sorts of messages in terms of God’s faithfulness to his word. Numbers 23:19 rather says that God is not a man that he should lie. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless from the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that called you who also will do it. He is faithful to his word. He keeps his word.

Titus 1:1 uh Paul says that he was a servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ according to the faith of God’s elect, the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness in hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. See how essential this is to the message of the scriptures. Hebrews 6:17 and 18 says that by immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie. We might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.

We talked about that verse before in terms of coming to Christ as our refuge. But the basis of that acknowledgment is the acknowledgement that God cannot lie and as a result that we have a strong consolation. Psalm 138:2 says as I quoted earlier that God has magnified his word above his name. Interestingly, by the way, in terms of the idea of God’s word being first a grace word and only secondarily a word of judgment, in Genesis 19:19, we read, “Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight. Thou hast magnified thy mercy which thou has showed unto me.” The magnification of God’s word above his name can be correlated to the magnification of mercy that’s recorded in Genesis 19.

His word is a mercy and grace word in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Three times repeated for emphasis, we have the statement that heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. And then indeed in Revelation 20, the enemies of the earth are depicted as fleeing away, and God’s word is established forever. 2 Corinthians 1:17 says, “But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus, it was not a neutral word.” In other words, it was not yea and nay.

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timothy was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen unto the glory of God by us. All the promises of God in Christ are yea to us. God is faithful. He does not lie. And as a result, we’re told that faithful is he that calls you. He also shall do it.

And we then are called in Psalm 37:5 to commit our way unto the Lord. Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. He shall bring it to pass. These words are given because they’re necessary for us. God repeats this over and over again. He writes the entire book of Joshua essentially for demonstrating his faithfulness to his word because that’s what we most need to hear. And here in our own personal lives, that’s the message of God’s word that’s so crucial to us to understand. That’s the message that buoys us up so that we can indeed walk in obedience, trust in obey.

If you don’t trust, you’re not going to obey. The Psalms, the general theme of the Psalms is one of trusting God. It isn’t so much a call to obedience. Obedience is important, but you cannot obey the one whom you do not trust. And so, the Psalter is full. My wife was telling me about this a couple weeks ago. She reads the Psalms a lot for her personal devotions. She said, “These things are full of not obedience so much, but trust. Trust of God.” And that’s what Joshua is about here as well. It’s telling us God is faithful. He can be trusted.

And what is it in your life? What are God’s promises? What do they mean to you? Can you individually now listening to this? Can you trust God to do what he has said he will do? Well, there are difficulties to doing this. Difficulties happen in our lives. As one commentator said, we entreat God to spare a beloved life. That life is taken away. We pray for victory over temptation. The temptation seems to acquire doubled force.

We pray for success in business. The clouds seem to thicken the more. We ask, has God forgotten to be gracious? Is his mercy cling gone forever? Does his promise fall or fail forever more? Does those words fall to the ground? Difficulties arise in our lives coming here to go on to say, “Let us rally our faith.” Then I said, “This is my infirmity. It’s my weakness here to fail to understand this. I will remember the years of the right hand of the most high. I remember God’s faithfulness in difficult times.”

So the great thing for all of us is to keep up a living connection with God. Now this isn’t explaining. You have difficulties in your life that cause you to not trust God. We all do. And those difficulties are for a reason. And so one commentator says, “The great thing for all of us is to keep up a living connection with God so that our whole nature shall be replenished out of his fullness and purified and elevated by his divine influence.

Whatever draws us to God draws us to the fulfillment of all that is best and purest and no You know, frequently it’s those difficulties that draw us to God. God would have conferred but a poor blessing on Israel if he had just settled in the land, left them to themselves, not any occasion or inducement to fellowship with him. The inducements to resort to him, which they were to be continually under, were by far the most valuable part of what God now conferred upon them. The certainty that all would be long that their possessions would be invaded and the rest disturb that their enemies would prove victorious unless they sought continually to their God. This fostered the most precious of all habits that drawing near to God which brings with it all spiritual blessing.

Now we realize these things as we approach maturity in life and as we approach our deaths. I was talking to one of the individuals from church this week about deathbed conversions. I believe a lot of them because when people are on the verge of death things clear up and when you come in a time of great trouble things start to clear up in your mind in terms of valuations. According to other commentaries, he said that valuations are made more accurately on the margin of eternity. The things that have been shaken and that have perished how little value are they seen to be compared to the things that cannot be shaken.

The loving purpose of divine providence in shattering so many hopes in defeating so many projects in inflicting so much pain is clearly apprehended. The heart is grieved that it was so charging God foolishly when his purpose was really so merciful and so kind. The problems, the difficulties which we can only be sustained in obedience going through them by a trust in God come that we may indeed find a reliance upon him and him alone and not of those things that surround us.

Keith gave me a couple of quotes from George MacDonald which I think are quite to the point here. He MacDonald wrote that I know that good is coming to me that good is always coming though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil is the only and best shape which for the person and his condition at that time could be assumed by the best good. Well, you could read that a couple of different ways, but I think that MacDonald’s point is well taken.

The things that we call evil in our lives, which are evil, there is evil in the world, don’t get me wrong, but the difficulties that tend to produce great anxiety in our lives, these themselves are ministrations of God’s grace to us. that we might trust us and that he might then demonstrate his faithfulness to his word in terms of our lives. Those difficulties that cause us sleepless nights, great anguish of soul and torment, those very difficulties are good coming to us from the hand of God who wants us more than anything else not to love our wives ultimately, not to love our possessions ultimately, not to love friendships or the church or the pastor ultimately, but to love him.

And to accomplish that, he breaks down those things on a regular basis that we might acknowledge that good is coming to us because it’s driving us the relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the result of this agree with MacDonald again another quote he has here for God’s sake don’t cling to your own poor will. It’s not worth having. It’s a poor miserable degrading thing to fall down and worship the inclination of your own heart which may have come from any devil or from any accident of your birth or from the weather or from anything. Take the will of God, eternal, pure, strong, living and true. The only good thing. Take that and Christ will be your brother. Take that and you’ll know the blessings of God’s sureness and his promises.

So, we have marital problems. I don’t know any couple that doesn’t have marital problems. If you have a couple that doesn’t have marital problems, you have a couple that don’t understand what marriage is, they’re somehow living in a dream world because people are different. Men and women are different. That was the point I was trying to make at sharing a couple of weeks ago was problems can only be resolved in obedience to God’s word by taking up his will if we trust him to be a God who keeps his word.

We have friendship problems. We’re we’re afraid at the bottom of moral problems is a great quaking fear, so to speak, of isolation from the very person that we know we’re going to have a most intimate relationship with. And yet, it doesn’t seem to come easily. Our friendships break apart and we have a great fear of isolation from all people and a loneliness from them. Our church may be seem at times to be smothering us, be giving us directives or orders that we fear become fearful about.

These things all come and are questions that must be resolved with the trust and reliance that God’s word is good that it doesn’t fall to the ground that he’ll do these things for us if we stay the course of obedience and if we stay the course of doing his will and not flying off to our own poor miserable will.

We’re all 40 some now. Well, many of us in this congregation, not all of us are 30 something and you know another rock song this is not my beautiful wife this is not my beautiful car and if for a wife to sing the song and I’m not sure if this is the way this fella wrote it or not but it certainly is applicable here wives could sing this isn’t the shining knight in shining armor that I imagine when I was a young girl there are songs about that as well the disillusionment that people face as they realize their mate is not a shining knight in shining armor and their wife isn’t the beautiful wife they had envisioned either And the car we’re driving, it’s paid off maybe, but it’s not the nice car we ever wanted either.

Our lives, you get to 47, you start wondering what happened to the dream. The dream is going away. Well, the difficulties come that we might trust God, that he has blessed us, that the provision of our wives, the car we have, the friends we have, the church we have. These are the manifestations of God’s good toward us and his love, of his faithfulness. That’s hard to believe. That’s hard to hold on to. And so these scriptures redound with promises that God’s will doesn’t fall to the ground.

It will prove effectual in your life. He will bless you. Expectations are unrealized. Hopes become dashed. And I maintain that’s what life is all about if God is ministering grace to you.

Now, I don’t offer a God here who wants us to be content with second best. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t offer a God, the scriptures offer a God who doesn’t want us to grab and get the brass ring, so to speak. No, but God is something much more wondrous in mind for us than food that rots or a spouse that will not be married to in heaven, the scriptures tell us, or gold or silver that tarnishes or is stolen, or land that goes to weeds, or homes that break, rot, sag, and become carpenter ant infested.

These things that I’ve just mentioned, homes etc. They’re wondrous in their place. The simple beauty of the country landscape or the city buzzing with activity and life and vibrancy. These are wonderful gifts from the God of nature and the God of civilization. The shining beauty of gold and silver and the things that men are willing to trade for that gold and silver to give up for gold’s reflected glory, beauty, preciousness, and scarcity.

These are things to behold and to hold as well. The permanency of your own land. God grant that we see such a thing again in our state lifetimes. But the permanency of land and home is a peaceful, rewarding gift from God. I’m at least intellectually certain of that. I probably will never be experientially certain of that this side of glory as nobody will be since the state owns all land, taxes it, zones it, and through eminent domain can take it at any time.

Most wondrous all relationships, friendships, intimacies with other human beings, other images of God. other wondrous and gloryfilled creatures with whom our fellowship can be both intellectually and emotionally satisfying at the same time. Relationships are themselves I think much of what heaven is all about. But if you abstract or remove any of these things away from the context or from the center or source that is of all goodness, joy, peace, excitement and whatsoever adjectives can express delight, these things become once again that simply things.

rotten things or possessions, cranky and sinful things, men and women. God tells us that he is our exceeding great reward. Man cannot take that away from you, your reward, which is God. Well, only one man can take that reward away, so to speak, experientially in your life. And for the believer, that’s yourself, of course. And for the believer, usually we take it away through lack of trust that God is who he claims to be or will fulfill that which he has promised to us.

That he loves us. It’s hard to believe that he loves us as he stated that he does. And that the promise, yes, every bit of it is to us indeed. Yes and amen. In the Lord Jesus Christ, having a correct apprehension of the one who is value, he tells us indeed that we shall indeed be given relationships, land, rest, the defeat of our enemies that Joshua talks about in time and in space, the abilities to eat the fruit of our land, in peace and in joy surrounded by friends and family.

We’re going to do that in a few minutes down at the gymnasium. God does promise all these things to us, but only if we see them in relationship to him.

Do you believe this is the question? This word is given that you might believe it. That you might come here and find your souls resting in the city of God’s promised word. And I, as I said, I’m stressing this point today so much because I think that’s what the text does. Sledgehammer theology. And I’m trying to sledgehammer home to you that you can trust God. You can trust God. And all these difficulties, even if you can’t explain or understand why they come into your life, you have to trust God that they’re for your good, that they’re for your maturation. They’re given to drive you to an ever increasing knowledge of him and a great joy as a result.

Can you trust it? Well, yes. You can tell me probably right now in your own hearts as you sit there that you trust it. You trust this word and you trust this God. But what about tomorrow when the bills start arriving in the mail?