Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text is Joshua chapter 22. Joshua the 22nd chapter. Please stand. Then Joshua called the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh and said unto them. Ye have kept all that Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, and have obeyed my voice, and all that I commanded you. Ye have not left your brethren these many days unto this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your God.

And now the Lord your God, hath given rest unto your brethren, as he promised them. Therefore now return ye, and get ye into your tents, and unto the land of your possession, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave you on the other side Jordan. But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses, the servant of the Lord charged you to love the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments to cleave unto him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.

So Joshua blessed them and sent them away and they went into their tents. Now to the one half tribe of the tribe of Manasseh, Moses had given possession in Bashan, but unto the other half thereof gave Joshua among their brethren on this side Jordan westward. And when Joshua sent them away also into their tents, then he blessed them. And he spake unto them, saying, Return with much riches unto your tents, and with very much cattle, with silver, and with gold, and with brass, and with iron, and with very much raiment, divide the spoil of your enemies, with your brethren.

And the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh returned, and departed from the children of Israel, out of Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go into the country of Gilead, to the land of their possession, whereof they were possessed, according to the word of the Lord, by the hand of Moses. And when they came into the borders of Jordan that are in the land of Canaan, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by Jordan, a great altar to see to.

And the children of Israel heard say, “Behold, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built an altar over against the land of Canaan and the borders of Jordan at the passage of the children of Israel.” And when the children of Israel heard of it, the whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered themselves together at Shiloh to go up to war against them.

And the children of Israel sent unto the children of Reuben, to the children of Gad, and to the tribe of Manasseh, into the land of Gilead, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest. And with him ten princes, of each chief house, a prince throughout all the tribes of Israel, and each one was head of the house of their fathers among the thousands of Israel, and they came unto the children of Reuben, and to the children of Gad, and to the half tribe of Manasseh, unto the land of Gilead, and they spake unto them, saying, This saith the whole congregation of the Lord, What trespass is this that you have committed against the God of Israel to turn away this day from following the Lord, and that you have built you an altar, that you might rebel this day against the Lord?

Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, from which we are not cleansed until this day, although there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord, but that he must turn away this day from following the Lord. And it will be, seeing you rebel today against the Lord, that tomorrow he will be wroth with the whole congregation of Israel. Notwithstanding If the land of your possession be unclean, then pass ye over into the land of the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord’s tabernacle dwelleth, and take possession among us.

But rebel not against the Lord, nor rebel against us, in building you an altar beside the Lord, beside the altar of the Lord your God? Did not Achan, the son of Zerah, commit a trespass in the accursed thing? And wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel, and that man perished not alone in his iniquity? Then the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe Manasseh answered and said unto the heads of the thousands of Israel, the Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, he knoweth and Israel he shall know.

And if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day that we have built us an altar to burn or to turn from following the Lord, or if to offer thereon burnt offerings, or meat offerings, or if to offer peace offerings thereon, let the Lord himself require it. And if we have not rather done it for fear of this thing, saying, “In time to come, your children might speak unto our children, saying, What have ye to do with the Lord God of Israel?

For the Lord hath made Jordan a border between us, and you, the children, and you, ye children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, ye have no part in the Lord. So shall your children, make our children, cease from fearing the Lord.” Therefore, we said, “Let us now prepare to build us an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice, but that it may be a witness between us in you and our generations after us, that we might do the service of the Lord before him with our burnt offerings and with our sacrifices and with our peace offerings, that your children may not say to our children in time to come, ‘Ye have no part in the Lord.’”

Therefore said we, that it will be when they should so say to us or to our generations in time to come, that we may say again, “Behold the pattern, the pattern of the altar of the Lord, which your fathers made, not for burnt offerings, nor for sacrifices, For it is a witness between us and you.

God forbid that we should rebel against the Lord and turn this day from following the Lord to build an altar for burnt offerings, for meat offerings, or for sacrifices besides the altar of the Lord of God, Lord our God, that is before his tabernacle. And when Phinehas the priest and the princes of the congregation and heads of the thousands of Israel which were with him heard the words that the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the children of Manasseh spake, it pleased them.

And Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest said unto the children of Reuben and to the children of Gad and to the children of Manasseh. This day we perceive that the Lord is among us because ye have not committed this trespass against the Lord. Now ye have delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of the Lord. And Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest and the princes returned from the children of Reuben and from the children of Gad out of the land of Gilead unto the land of Canaan to the children of Israel and brought them word again.

And the thing pleased the children of Israel. And the children of Israel blessed God and did not intend to go up against them to battle to destroy the land wherein the children of Reuben and Gad dwelt. And the children of Reuben, the children of Gad called the altar Ed, for it shall be a witness between us that the Lord is God. We thank God for his word and pray that he would use it in our lives today.

Long text, but really a pretty simple story. I hope you kind of followed the narration in there. And what I want to do today is go over basically four elements of speech in this incredible chapter. I first read this months ago and pondered how I would preach on it. It was, to me, an amazing chapter. We’ll get to that, I guess, but it’s just very remarkable what is going on in this chapter understood correctly.

Now, in order to understand it correctly, we should keep in context where we’re at in the book of Joshua. And so I want to really make sure we do that. Where we’re at in the book is we’ve done—we’re finished with the entry into the land of the first few chapters. They conquered the land in the next set of chapters. They then divided the land up for an inheritance in the next set of chapters.

Remember last time we spoke the last concluding verses of chapter 21 were a theological conclusion or summary of the entire book of Joshua. So essentially the book ended there and I think what we have here in the next three chapters are three appendices almost stressing an important theme.

We talked last week about the last verses from Joshua 21. And the emphasis there was God’s fidelity to his word. His fidelity to the nation of Israel, to the people that were recipients of his word. His word doesn’t fall to the ground. It impacts them strongly. Again, it wasn’t last week. Bloomfeld, Mr. Bloomfeld was here last week. But any event, last time I spoke. So God, the whole thrust of Joshua primarily is God’s preeminence and his faithfulness to have a command word that gives us two things.

Remember what they were? Rest and land. The land is in fact radically only land that God lives in. It’s not land itself that has any value to us. It’s only if God’s presence is in that land. So he gave the nation of Israel two things. Land, his presence in the context of where they were. He brought them to his house, so to speak. And then the second thing he gave them was rest. And we think of rest as you know maybe the Lord’s day and you sit around and enjoy life.

But that’s not what rest is. Rest in the context of Joshua and in many places throughout the Old Testament is the destruction of enemies. Now you know we may not like that in 20th century America and the church today, but that’s what it means. Truly from the scriptures. So he gives us rest by destroying our enemies and destroying the enemies of the church. So that’s the main theme. Well, now we have a whole new thing going on as his final appendices almost leading up to the book of Judges.

And these three appendices stress the necessity for Israel to be faithful to God. God gave him all this stuff and the whole thrust is God’s faithfulness. And now he says your response is to be faithful to me. And that’s what these last three chapters I think are given as—as an instruction that Israel must respond as one commentator said in kind to Yahweh’s unwavering faithfulness. Willing bondage to this faithful God is their only rational and proper response.

Now this is great relevance for us today and I think it’s important just to remark here that if you look at the New Testament epistles and the writings of Paul his epistles are very personal in nature. They were written to individual churches. They’re personal in nature. Now, they’re obviously they have eternal value, but they’re written to particular churches with particular problems. And he doesn’t hold back from addressing those problems in these epistles.

Of course, he’s inspired and modern day preachers are not. Nonetheless, he gives us in those sermons then that’s what they are essentially. These letters were read to the churches for the most part, the epistles to the churches. He gives this very personal instruction. Names are even given in the context of these epistles and these sermons that Paul had read in the churches. And of course, we know that there is great penalties to those who would detract words from God’s revelation.

And so we’re sure that Paul would not have these names in his epistle be deleted. He didn’t want these things edited as they were read to the church at Rome or wherever it was. These actual listing of names were in these epistles. It’s very interesting. These names, by the way, were not always by way of commendation. Frequently, they were by way of greeting. There are also names in some of Paul’s writings that are indeed names of reproach and he warns people not to do certain things directly by name.

Very interesting. Now, and the message that we’re going to talk about, I thought this message essentially is about speech. That’s how I’m going to approach this. Four particular kinds of speech. I was at the office yesterday and I didn’t want to go home and waste time. I was going home for lunch. Well, it wouldn’t be a waste of time, but I needed to focus on what I was doing at church yesterday. Most of this last week, my family saw me very, they saw me, but they did not see me, if you know what I mean, my presence very much this last week. Ten, fifteen hour days, every day of the week.

In any event, so I didn’t want to waste time yesterday and I jumped across the street to McMenamin’s and got a sandwich and brought back to the office to eat. And I noticed very distinctly that both the fellow I ordered the sandwich from and then the gal who delivered it to me, when I would say thank you, there was no response. It was just, it was as if I hadn’t said anything. You’ve probably had that experience in stores or restaurants or something.

The world is growing increasingly away from common courtesies. Now, I say this because people think, well, I suppose there’s some rationalization for that. I don’t know this fellow. Why should I talk to him? You know, there’s they don’t understand why it’s important to say you’re welcome or to say thank you, just like our kids don’t understand until we teach them that. The reason we do that, of course, is that our speech is important.

It can affect people. If we don’t say thank you and you’re welcome, it kind of depersonalizes the whole thing. And it and as I said before, the common rules of etiquette, I think this would be a tremendous study to see done. I haven’t seen it done, but I would imagine the rules of etiquette are primarily ways to avoid unintentional sin in speech patterns. Beyond that, I think our speech patterns and how we write affects our own mindset.

Okay? In other words, if I write a correspondence and I refer to people by last names only, not by using the title of mister or reverend in the case of a pastor or whatever. I think it tends to then not only produce possible offense with the person, but I think it also tends to do something in our own heads. We start thinking like that person’s just a last name to us. We don’t have to give the respect of being a mister or a reverend for instance.

So, I think our speech is very important. It really proper elements of speech is an application of Romans where it tells us to owe no man anything. We’ve applied that text from Romans properly so to debt in this church. We’ve talked about that a great deal. I think it’s proper in the sphere of debt. But really the segment for this the particular admonition to owe no man anything has immediate context of honoring people. Civil magistrates particularly very important for us to remember that honor men. Give them the honor to whom honor is due.

Now an application of that is debt certainly in terms of not trying to live our lives providentially. But debt is a subset of a greater obligation we have to honor men in our transactions to pay our debts. So our speech when we align it correctly to God’s word is a way of honoring people and paying off what we would owe to them. In other words, okay.

Now this text in scripture has tremendous relevance I believe to our situation in our families today in our churches in our relationship with other churches. And you can probably extend the borders out as far as you want to go here. It’s a tremendously important passage of scripture. Of course All of God’s word is always both sure and relevant to our lives. Now that’s a statement which various ones of us myself included we can offer that statement that God’s word is a sure word a relevant word rather glibly and superficially at times and not really focusing on it not really realizing the radical profundity of the implications that God’s word is sure and God’s word is relevant to us sure and relevant.

Men attempt, all of us attempt to obfuscate that word, to cloud it up, to muck it up, to reduce its relevance to our lives in an attempt to get the heat off of our lives. God’s word, just thought of that psalm by Bruce Cockburn. You know, I try to read the Bible, right, but it seems like it’s nothing but a burning light to me. We pray, you know, that the spirit of God in the prayer for illumination, you know, that God’s that tongues of—I don’t remember how we say in the word, but the point is we ask for the spirit of the fire of God’s spirit on us as we hear the word.

Well, that fire burns out draws. Now, it it makes us, you know, pure silver. We shine better, but it burns out draws to accomplish that. Well, we don’t like that. And God’s word, the relevance to us, we try to cloud it up because we get the heat off. But, but I’m convinced that in most cases, it’s it’s my belief as a pastor in one of the churches of Jesus Christ that the heat should usually not be turned off.

As uncomfortable as it may be for us, the pressure that seems almost unbearable at times is usually the very means by which God brings us, as I’ve been saying, to maturation. And if we turn off the heat all the time and remove ourselves from the preaching of a relevant word and the application of that word in our lives, we may be a little cooler. We won’t be under so much heat, but we don’t mature. One may just look at the life of Paul for instance, whose epistles I mentioned is an example of this.

The man had a lot of heat in his life and God matured him greatly through the application of that heat and through Paul keeping the good fight going. The text we just read, it’s interesting, isn’t it if you understood that the text of what’s going on. There’s a problem between the two tribes. They come this close to holy war against each other. Comrades in arms fought together, defeated all those nasty Canaanites and Philistines.

Fourteen years is the estimate of most commentators how long they were fighting together. Comrades in arms and an instant later in terms of the way the text is laid out for us, one tribe, one group of tribes is ready to declare holy war on the other group of tribes. Now, I think they did that properly. You may disagree with me right now. We’ll get to that in the text. The point is this and why I bring it up here.

You don’t read a lot of hand ringing in this chapter. You read of men who are decisive in their actions. They are fervent to do what this appendix has given to encourage us to do—to be zealous for the Lord who has called us to serve him. Now, we’ll get to that a little more readily in a few minutes, but the point is that you don’t back off. You don’t fail to engage because times get tough. You have to do what’s right and proper in your particular sphere and calling that God has given you.

I was thinking of last night as I was trying to sleep, I was thinking of the phrase from the war with Deborah and the defeat of God’s enemies there that there was great anxieties in the tents of one of the children. I remember it was Zebulun who it was great anxiety much searching of hearts going on in Deborah’s song she says well she was talking about a tribe that never came to battle they were home great searchings of heart what shall I do you know and they didn’t come when the horn blast came out so certainly meditation and contemplation is important but when the call comes when the trumpet blows you got to go you got to go and that’s what people do both sets of tribes do that in our text.

And the end result is potential division but greater reconciliation and unity because both tribes heard the bell and came out and engaged properly using proper speech. We’ll get to that. Okay. So, this is a basic truth that you don’t want to cut the heat off that God is bringing to us through a sure and relevant word. Basic truths are so essential to our Christian life. They’re, you know, basic truths such as a sure word.

God’s word is always sure. You don’t have to doubt it. That God’s word is a relevant word. These are basic truths. That God’s word is effectual. It goes out and does what he wants it to accomplish in our lives and in our culture. It doesn’t fall to the ground. As I said, it impacts our lives. That’s the visual picture in the Hebrew text in the Old Testament. In very forceful terms, as people in this congregation know, in very forceful terms, that word impacts our lives and changes us.

Commitments always followed by testing. God always evaluates us. The last thing we want to do is to attempt in various ways to remove ourselves from God’s evaluations. Roy wrote something that he had me read the other day and this was the statement that he made that I thought was quite profound in terms of this. Roy said the following. I think one of man’s worst problems is the inability to receive proper evaluations of our lives.

We must all realize each of our giftings are limited and we must rely heavily at times on godly counsel from others to steer us clear of sin and self-deceit. I think he’s that’s a very profound statement that one of the hardest things for men to do—now men in the gender sense now Christian men is to receive and obtain counsel and hear it and make corrections. And you know I know Roy knows that about himself.

I know he’s learned that lesson about himself how difficult that is. And I know it’s true of me and I know it’s true of some of you. And by way of extension of what the scriptures tell me, I think I can be pretty confident that it’s true of all men in this church and all men in the culture as well. We have a hard time doing that. Men in do indeed, however, need to receive counsel. And as I said, it’s one of the most difficult things for us to do.

But it’s a basic truth of life. Nail that away in your heart. You’re going to have a hard time hearing counsel when people come to you. Nail it away because you’re going to have to rely upon that basic truth. These basic truths in terms of a sure relevant word, effectual word, commitment and testing, the evaluation of our lives. This is what will determine whether or not your Christian life will be marked by maturity and growth or whether be marked by immaturity and a failure and a going away from the things that God brings you into to be effectual for him.

You know, it’s like football. If your team isn’t winning, you want to make sure the basics are performed properly. If you cannot block. And if you cannot tackle, you cannot win a football game. I don’t care how much of a fancy playbook you’ve got or what a great quarterback you’ve got. If you cannot do the essentials, the basics of life, you cannot succeed. Ask Robert about baseball. What do they do when they’re having a losing season problems?

They work on the basics. They go back in their practice to basic things. And usually it’s the failure to properly perform basic things that lose games in football, baseball, basketball, etc. basic truths. Today’s text gives us I think some more such basic truths about as I said a very important part of our lives speech. Speech.

Now a year or two ago, year and a half, two years ago, I gave a couple of sermons on speech. Try to look at God’s word in terms of speech. And it has been amazing to me to watch in the lives of all the members of our church, including my own, how that word has blown right through, cleaved, split, healed, some, you know, various times chronology, this stuff happens. But the word of God blew through here and did things.

Now, I told my wife yesterday that, you know, it’s been a real tough week. And I said, well, you know, I don’t know what I expected when I decided to preach on the book of Joshua. Why did I expect easy times? Yeah, it’s filled with victory, but it’s filled with blood and guts. It’s filled with war and battles and So it shouldn’t be, you know, odd that in our own lives personally in terms of economics, some families in this church have gone through real hard times. Not just, you know, I’m not talking about unemployment, I’m talking about difficult times in terms of trying diligently to apply the word of God in economics and business over the last year and it’s proved very difficult, not harmful, hard on them in the application of it.

One area, polity. We’re going through a major situation here, not in polity, but with trying to have peace with another church across a river like these guys were separated by the river Jordan. Hard times, hard difficult battles to do. What did we expect? We’re preaching on a book that’s filled with war. It is filled with victory, but it’s filled with conflict. I And I just as we This is introduction. Let’s pray that the heat that God may bring from these texts, this text I’ve chosen, not I didn’t choose it.

The providence of God, here we are, Joshua 22. And if you knew what went out of my life this last week, you’d see the relevance of that. But I’m sure there are things going on in your life that are just as relevant and God brings this word to you as a sure and relevant word to you today as well. So here we are in the providence of God. And I’m just saying that it’s by way of introduction. Let’s pray that the heat of God may bring from these texts that are used by him that it would that he would be that this text would be used by him to burn wood, hay, and stubble and to refine gold and silver and Let us not faint when that sure and relevant word of God brings these powerful effects into our lives.

Let us rather be thankful and praise him for those difficult times that mature us all in our lives. We shall see, I believe, that the progression of the speech used in this particular narrative text begins with fairly easy lessons for us to give our amen to. Yeah, I can do that and do that in our lives. Starts with that and I believe it dresses up in increasing levels of difficulty as chapter 22 unfolds in terms of our own personal speech.

You can almost think of it as one of these video games, you know, with four levels. And you’re working at this level, you get to go to the next level, you get to next level. Each level is harder. Now, now what do I think these levels are? Well, I think the first level is commendation. Words of commendation. That’s what Joshua Okay, the scene is these these well, first I’ll just give you the four points, then we’ll go through it briefly.

Commendation is the first part of speech I’m going to stress here. The second element of basic speech patterns for the Christian is exhortation. Exhorting people to be faithful to obey God’s word. The third area is confrontation. See how it’s getting tougher? Easy to commend somebody. A little tougher to start exhorting them to do what’s right and really tough to go out there and say, “Do we have holy war going on here, brother? Is this what you’re doing?” That’s really tough for us to do. And the fourth level looks easier. The fourth level is humiliation and the peace is produced as a result of that one. But I’m convinced that probably in a lot of our lives that’s the toughest thing of all, the last step and we’ll get to that.

These four levels then are commendation, exhortation, confrontation and humiliation. And what goes on in this text is that the war is done. Remember the two and a half tribes? They wanted to land on that side of the east side of Jordan. Moses said, “You better not be doing this to get out of war. They said, “No, no, no. We just want that land.” Somebody had to live there. God had destroyed Og and Sihon. It wasn’t as if the land would be uninhabited. So, it’s okay that they’re there. And they have to go across first though, the men to leave their wives and children for, as I said, could be fourteen years.

I don’t know how that worked out, but at any event, they left their families behind, cross the Jordan with the other troops, help them to get their possession, then they went back home to their possession. And Joshua here is decommissioning this portion of the army of God. He’s sending them back home like the guys come back from the Alamo. He’s sending him back home across the Jordan. And he says a couple of things to him.

And the first thing he says is he commends them for what’s going on. Then he tells them, “Now you be careful to obey the law of God.” And they go home. And on their way back, they build an altar. The altar named Ed. Ed means witness. That’s the last thing reveals for us in the text, but that’s the altar. They don’t name this. They don’t name it yet. They name it later. But they build this altar. Now, it looks just like the altar that Israel has set up at Shiloh where the sacrifices are going to occur and they build it and they put it on Jordan. I think probably the west side of Jordan where it was isn’t important but basically it’s associated with Jordan itself.

They build this altar there. Well, all the other tribes get word that they built this altar and you know altars are real important. Of course, God said when you go into that land there’s going to be lots of altars and you cannot worship there. I will have one altar and one altar only during this particular period of time at which you may worship. That’s it. And of course that’s typical of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in any event, if you start building other altars, it’s a sign that you’re apostatizing. You’re drifting away from God into the religion of the people that surround you, the Canaanites that are still in the land. And so these guys build this altar.

The other nine and a half tribes or ten tribes say, “Uh, they cannot do that.” They the children of Israel plan to make war, holy war on them. And they send out a delegation headed by Phinehas. Now, do you remember Phinehas? He’s the spear chucker. He’s the guy that threw the spear through the couple at Baal Peor. And Baal Peor is mentioned in our text, by the way. Are you going to do Peor to us again? The ten tribes till the two and a half tribes.

They tell him by way of emissary with princes from the tribes. Very interesting that the verse that talks about the princes and the thousands and the tribes. Very interesting in terms of the polity of the Old Testament. But in any event, they send this emissary out headed by Phinehas to go to those people and they approach them about their concerns over the altar and they confront them and they say, “You may not do this. This will bring the judgment of God on you. It’ll bring the judgment of God on us.” And then the other tribes say, “Wait a minute. That’s not what we intended. We just put it up there to remind you that we’re children of God as you are, that we all worship at the one altar, the one sacrificial altar at Shiloh. We didn’t build this to burn stuff on. We built it as just a remembrance to you. so that you don’t later think because we’re across the river, we’re not part of you.

Okay, so that’s the four elements of the speech that goes through here. But it begins as I said with commendation from Joshua to these tribes and he tells them tells them in verse two he says unto them by the way in terms of the structure these three appendices each of these concluding three chapters from the book of Joshua begin with the Hebrew term of summons. A rock, I think, might be the word. I don’t remember the word, but it’s the same word at the head of each of these three chapters where Joshua summons people.

And here he’s summoning the two and a half tribes to decommission them. So, there’s direct literary devices here that tell us these are three separate appendices to this book. And so, he summons them. And here’s what he tells them. The first thing he tells them, he says, “Ye have kept all that Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you and obeyed my voice to all that I commanded you. You’ve not left your brethren many days, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your God.

Good job. Well done, thou good and faithful servants. That’s what the Lord Jesus tells to the people of God who had faithfully done for fourteen years sacrifice their own peace for the peace of their brethren. So Joshua begins, this section begins, the section that exhorts us to faithfulness as the people who read it based on God’s faithfulness to us. It begins by telling us commendation is important. Joshua commends these people before he commands them.

Okay, now this is extremely important. Matthew Henry writing on this said that though it was by the favor of God and his power that Israel got possession of the land and he must have all the glory, yet Joshua thought there was a thankful acknowledgement due to those brethren who assisted them and whose sword and bow were employed for them. God must be chiefly eyed in our praises. Yet instruments must not be altogether overlooked.

Very important. That’s certainly true. Instruments must not be altogether overlooked. Instruments being secondary means that God uses to fulfill his word. By the way, this tells us too that our lives are not to be characterized by disobedience. Sometimes as Calvinists, I think Roy mentioned this to me the other day, too. We start whipping ourselves a lot over our failures. But here, you know, it’s very important that God says that usually you can keep the commandments. They’re not grievous. They’re not difficult.

Oh, yeah. We fall short and we don’t keep them perfectly. But the thrust frequently in scripture is that this word can be kept. This is not tough. So quit, you know, hand wringing over your own faults. You’re going to have faults. And when they’re brought out, respond to them correctly as these guys do. But get on with the task cuz you’re doing a good job. And I tell people in this church, we’ve got a lot to be very thankful to God about.

You have done things in this church for the last ten years that I know of no other church doing. The demands that we have placed upon each other as we pray had to look at the word of God and its application to all of our lives. Homeschooling I that alone requires an incredible amount of effort on the part of the families. And you couple that with the fact that we think kids are a good thing. So all of a sudden you’re not homeschooling the one and 3/4 or two and a half whatever the typical company family has in our country, but now you’re homeschooling six, seven, eight of them or something.

Some of you that’s a hard thing to do and you’re to be commended for that task. And it’s hard to look at the implications of debt in our lives and try to do something about it and you’ve done that. You’re going to be commended for that task and it’s hard to begin to think through and develop how our marriages must be Christian marriages and beyond that they must which it says in our covenant statement and beyond that they must be in relationship to the submission of children to their parents and the parents have to be involved in the selection of mates.

The whole courting idea is something we’ve stressed as part of our Christian culture here at RCC. It’s a hard thing to do that to even figure it out. Where are the books produced by the millions of Christians in this country that tell us how to do this. They’re out there. You’ve had to do that work yourself for the most part. And so, a lot of hard things we’ve done in this church, political action.

I could go on and on. These are hard things. And you’re to be commended as a congregation for your faithfulness to keep the word of God in your families, in the church, in your application of the civil sphere, in your communities, etc. Beyond that, commendation should be individual and personal. Joshua tells these particular tribes, you did a good job. I was thinking about all this and I called up Robert after Katherine had gotten home from the hospital and let’s see, she was still at the hospital.

Jane was on her Jane was there. Joan was on her way home. I think Jane answered the phone and I as soon as he answered the phone and said, “Hi, Dennis.” And I thought, you know, there’s Jane again faithfully ministering to that family over years now. Used sacrificially using much of her time to assist them in their in their troubled times with their health concerns and we’ve pulled you know mentioned demands of the church terms of Kathy we’re trying to do what we can there to help that family and bolster up and support them more burdens on you providence of God these things come folks don’t let yourself get bitter over them but anyway Jane and I told her thank you so much for your ministry to that family to be commended for that and you know folks we need very much this lesson it’s an easy one to learn you all know what I’m saying is true and you all know that you should be commending your wives more often.

Husbands, husbands, wives know they should be commending their husbands more often. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I’m trying to say it’s good to do that. Remember it. And if you can think of something right now, even if it comes to you as I’m preaching here about that you should commend somebody for, write it down and don’t forget about it. Do it and do it here in the church. You know, words are a tremendous extension.

Sam was talking last week about the importance of speech. What a wonderful gift from God that we can minister grace with our speech one to the other. And that’s what the enemy wants. To do is take away the language, take away the alphabet, and take away the ability to communicate commendation among other things, and to see that the word of God tells us where to commend each other. Jesus, when all is done in your life, when you finish the task that God has called you to do, and you meet him in glory, he will tell you if you keep faithful, well done, thou good and faithful servant.

And we can speak Jesus’s words to each other in the meantime. And if you’ve done well this week, you should be told by somebody, well done, thou good and faithful servant. And rec recognize too. By the way, you know, don’t we’re so, you know, like Calvin back and forth. We sin this way, we sin that way. Don’t feel sorry for yourself if people don’t do it because Jesus sees. He sees it all. He will tell you those words.

And those words will make up for any failure of men to give you those words of commendation. You will not be sorry when our Lord fulfills his promise to tell you that word even if his saints have not here on earth. Commendation is important in the home, the church, the community spend a lot of time but that’s that’s enough on commendation.

Exhortation is the second thing Joshua does to these people. You’ve done good he said now I’m sending you home with blessings from God lots of cattle gold silver booty but you be faithful now be very careful to observe and do what God’s word says and again I can’t spend time on each of these passages these verses but the verse says it tells them that essentially the keeping of the commandments is how you love God and how you love him with all your heart and your soul This is what Jesus is talking about.

Verses like this in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy in Joshua here where Moses or where Joshua rather tells him. He says, I will read the verse. Verse 5, take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law which Moses, the servant of the Lord, charge you to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, to cleave unto him, to serve him with all your heart, with all your soul.

He’s telling them how to love God with all your heart and soul. And he’s telling the Christian who hears that word from Jesus and the gospel, this is how you do it. You Take that law found in the Old Testament, you understand it in light of the New Testament and Jesus’s work, and then you apply it in your lives. And when you do that, you’re loving God with all your heart, soul, and might. Let’s not, you know, we know this in this church, but let’s remember that we don’t somehow want to think about love here and law there and spirit here and works there and that kind of nonsense.

This verse wraps them right up together, folks. And it’s a word of exhortation to us as well. You’ve done well in this church, but continue to be diligent to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might and your neighbor as yourself. And do it by looking at this word, this law from God. There’s no other standard than this holy Bible that will get us through whatever the days are ahead for us individually, corporately, as a nation, politically, economically.

This and this alone. No secondary standards will do it. We’ll get to that, too. So God’s the second pattern of speech for us to obey God in is exhortation one to another. To obey the word of God, reminding ourselves to do that by telling each other that. Now, it’s interesting. Calvin in his commentary here said that they cherished these. The reason why Joshua could do this is because they all cherished a mutual agreement in the doctrine of the law.

You cannot fulfill this commandment that we just read in terms of our speech patterns unless you know there are commandments and laws to be kept. Most churches cannot. They fail at this simple step because they don’t even recognize the relevance of God’s law. We recognize that and we should thank God that this church in the context of these families that represent Reformation Covenant Church, we have the same thing, a mutual agreement of the doctrine of the law of God so that we can do this verse.

We can exhort each other to keep that word. That’s a great thing and we should be thankful to God for it. There’s a need for it as well. Again, quoting from Calvin, he said, “Since such is the vanity and inconstancy of the human mind that religion easily fades away from the heart while carelessness and contempt creep in. He requires of them therefore both zeal and diligence in executing the law.

The point here is that this word is told us because we need to hear it. You know, you need to hear it repeatedly. Obey the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. We’re so easy to slide away from that. That’s the second word, exhortation. Now, the third word is confrontation. And now It’s harder. Easy to give somebody commendation. We just forget. We know how to do it. We do it pretty good if we think of it.

Tougher to give them exhortation. Here’s the way walking in it. And this one really gets tough. Now these tribes here on the other from the other group that they built this altar. Now before we go on to make specific application, George Bush, not the president, the old commentary from one hundred or so years, he said this. He said, “There’s no more striking proof of Israel’s obedience to the law and veneration for it in the days of Joshua.

Then this a single altar to Jehovah beside the one at Shiloh is sufficient cause for war against the builders of it. You see these this is not an appendix given to talk about the sin of the people. This is an appendix to tell you how good things were. This is the golden days of glory. We sing about unity today and we read Psalm 133 and we say where is it? Now we have it here in the context of the church to a degree but there’s no unity in the churches of Jesus Christ.

Ross this land let alone the world let alone we can’t there’s not even unity in terms of this specific geographic region and there won’t be for a long time u I’m getting ahead of myself but one of the commentators says this probably he thinks the authorship of this came from the time of the judges but this was all gone when there were altars dotting the landscape thousands of them every street was an altar the prophets say every home had its little altar in it we saw later on the Danites very quickly here they go hire some Levite who’s got all kinds of altars set up in his home to be their priest.

This thing says, “Look how good these guys were doing. They had one altar as soon as another was even thought of it would be built. They were on it and they tried to cleanse it from their land and purify it out to avoid God’s judgment.” Now, that’s the way we are today. We’re disunited. We’re in the time of the judges here. This is not the Joshua generation. This is the judges generation in America.

Every man does what’s right in his own eyes. Every church does what’s right in its own eyes. Now, that obviously there are churches that try to honor God in what they do, but there’s no unity. And so, every church ends up doing what it thinks is right. And there’s no way out of that for probably generations to come, folks. But the only reason it will turn around in generations is if we see this golden age that God gives us, for instance, in this chapter from Joshua and move that way.

He says, “Here’s what it was like.” We think of the frame the Constitution. Well, that’s what he’s saying here. These guys were the good ones. Look at their example and do what they did. That’s what this appendix is all about in my mind. Other commentators disagree. The man who wrote the commentary I quoted from last two weeks ago, no falling words, himself a covenantal theologian and I think very favorable to reconstruction.

He he says that some commentators talk here that this whole chapter is about the tragedy of misunderstanding and he actually quotes from one such commentator who says there’s not much of sweet reasonableness in the world left today and like it was then not much sweet reasonableness in the world and uh Davis whose commentator commentary I’m I’m referring to here says this he says there is a tragedy of misunderstanding here all right but it’s not the expositors and not Israel’s in this text it’s a sign of health that Israel is so stirred by even the appearance of unfaithfulness George Bush I want to read a somewhat extended quote from him, but it’s so important you understand this.

Bush said, “Their holy jealousy, that is of the ten tribes who are willing to make holy war and go out to do it against the two and a half tribes.” He says, “Their holy jealousy, therefore, in these circumstances, was no more than a proper expression of their intense concern for the glory of God and the honor of his institutions. But their zeal was tempered with the meekness of wisdom, and before proceeding to extremities, they determined to send an embassy to inquire into the facts and if their suspicions were confirmed to see whether they could not be prevailed upon by milder methods to abandon their wicked enterprise.

Instead of saying that the case was too clear to admit of doubt or too gross to allow of apology, they evidently go to the presumption that they may have been mistaken in their construction of the affair and that at any rate it was proper that they should not condemn their brethren unheard but should give them the opportunity of justifying themselves in the measure of it where possible. Now, you probably didn’t catch most of that.

Bush is saying it was good. They had great motivation. They were trying to clean up the land. And they also had good methods. He says they didn’t go off half cocked. They went off and did the right thing. They made an investigation. And on the basis of that investigation, they offered alternative solutions. Now, it isn’t evident to most Christians who read this passage that’s what they did. Because we get to this stuff about these tribes going out confrontationally.

We stop right there and say, “That’s not the Christian way. Let’s quiet this thing down. Let’s not stir people up. These guys couldn’t have been doing a very good thing here because they got the other two and a half tribes. They were going to go to war against them. They told them, listen to this speech. Listen to what they tell them. The the embassy, see what what Bush is saying is they did send an embassy out to inquire into the facts.

That isn’t readily apparent from the text, but it is if you just look at it.