Joshua 23 - 24

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Joshua 23 - 24

This commentary delves into the book of Joshua, which tells the story of the Israelites' conquest of Canaan. The speaker highlights key themes, such as the importance of serving only Yahweh, God's covenant with Israel, and the consequences of straying from God's path. He also addresses the controversial issue of Israel's claim to the land, acknowledging that the old covenant is now obsolete and that Christians and Jews alike need Jesus. Overall, the commentary provides a thought-provoking examination of one of the most significant books in the Old Testament.

Transcript

Let's turn to the 23rd chapter of Joshua. There are only two chapters left and this one is a short one. The other one is not exceptionally long, so it won't take us so long to finish the book of Joshua.

After we've completed it, I'd be willing to go over the self-study questions. You guys did on Joshua with you and see if you're satisfied with your answers. Now, Joshua 23 and 24 are a final section.

They're not just the last two chapters, but they are a section, I think, to themselves of the book. If you divide the book into segments, chapters 23 and 24, I believe, would belong in a segment by themselves because they are different. They both contain exhortations that Joshua gives to the children of Israel before he dies, apparently at the very end of his life.

There's not very much exact chronological information given in Joshua. We found that it apparently took about seven years for the conquest to take place from the time they entered Canaan until the conquests are essentially complete. Of course, the conquests are never quite complete because there's still some cities and pockets of resistance that are going to be matters of ongoing warfare, but the land has been secured.

There's no question who owns the land now. There's no question where the Israelites live. They can actually control it enough to actually divide it into tribal sections and be essentially unchallenged in their claims.

So, getting to that point took about seven years, apparently. But the book of Joshua itself seems to cover maybe as many as 25 years because Joshua himself, we don't know his exact age at the beginning of the book. Josephus, the historian, said that Joshua was 85 at the beginning of the book.

We have no scriptural authority for that, but his age certainly must have been something around that. His contemporary Caleb was, what, 79 at the beginning of the book, or 78. And was 85 at the time of the conquest being complete.

So, around 80, 85 is a realistic age to place Joshua at, at the beginning. But he dies at age 110. Interestingly, that's the same age that Joseph died, and Joseph was an ancestor of Joshua's.

Joshua was of the tribe of Ephraim, and that was descended from Joseph. Joseph died at 110, and so did Joshua. And I don't know if there's any one else in the whole Bible recorded as dying at that age.

But before he died, when he was very old, he gave these two speeches. One of them, it seems to be just an exhortation to the people, a farewell address, we might say. The other one was where he actually prophesied to them in the name of Yahweh and led them to make a renewed covenant to be faithful to Yahweh after Joshua was gone.

The people remained faithful to God during the entirety of Joshua's leadership in his lifetime. But, of course, like Moses himself, he knew that, you know, once he was gone, there would be the tendency for Israel to drift from God. And so he commits them to a covenant in chapter 24 of continuing obedience after his death.

But chapter 23, it says, Now, it came to pass a long time after the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their enemies round about that Joshua was old, advanced in age. So this was a long time after all the chapters before this, all the chapters before this were about things that happened approximately seven years after they entered the promised land. But this is a long time after that.

And very possibly, the whole period of time from the beginning of the book of Joshua till now was maybe 25 years. If Josephus is right, that Joshua was 85 at the beginning, and we know he died at 110. That would, of course, make a period of 25 years, the whole length of time.

And Joshua called for all Israel, for their elders, for their heads, for their judges and for their officers and said to them, Now, we have not read previously about the tribes organizing into political units. Each tribe was independent of the other tribes, but within their own tribes, they apparently had some kind of political structure. They had persons who were called elders, but that was always the case.

Even in Moses day, Moses was able to call elders together. These were the oldest men in certain clans who, because of their age, were revealed to be the most powerful men in the world. But it also mentions their heads, which is not clear how that would be different than their elders.

Perhaps, in addition to those men who were revered merely for their age, there were those who had a recognized position of leadership, maybe appointed by their fellows to make some of the decisions for the groups of clans or whatever to work together. But then there's the judges. Now, these are not judges like we have in the book of Judges.

The book of Judges has a series of 12 different individuals, men and a woman, who judged Israel. And these began their careers, it would seem, as deliverers, military deliverers. And then once they had delivered Israel from their enemies, they stayed around to help judge.

And to judge would seem to me to arbitrate legal matters. They had the law of Moses. Israel had the law of Moses.

And in the law of Moses, there were lots of civil ordinances and penalties for crimes and so forth that God had laid out. And so, you know, how do you enforce that? Well, there must be some kind of civil governing authority. And so they had judges here, but what they didn't have the kinds of judges that seemed to be the heroes in the book of Judges that were deliverers of the people.

And more like George Washington types, you know, who were military heroes and then respected for the rest of their lives as, you know, worthy to govern the people. These were probably judges for various regions and the tribes and so forth. In any case, there were different officers, elders, heads, judges.

We don't know exactly how this hierarchy was set up or what their duties were. But they were clearly the ones who spoke for and were responsible for the behavior of the tribe. And so he says, I'm old, advanced in age.

You've seen all that Yahweh, your God has done to all these nations because of you. For Yahweh, your God is he who has fought for you. See, I have divided to you by lot these nations that remain to be an inheritance for your tribes from Jordan, with all the nations that I have cut off as far as the great sea westward.

That's the Mediterranean. And Yahweh, your God, will expel them from before you and drive them out of your sight. So you shall possess their land as Yahweh, your God, has promised you now.

It's interesting, though, Joshua mentions his role in dividing up the land, which was simply a matter of administration, a matter of casting lots and assigning real estate portions to various families. That certainly is not his most heroic claim he could make. He had been their general.

He had been their fearless leader. He had actually led the armies to conquer the land. And yet he makes no mention of that.

When he talks about the conquest of the land, he only mentions the Lord. He said, the Lord has delivered these nations to you. The Lord has done all this for you.

He has fought for you. He doesn't make any reference to his own military exploits, not because he is ashamed of them or unaware of them, but because he really sees that it was through God that he did what he did. And without God, he wouldn't have been able to do anything.

So he doesn't want to take any of the credit for himself. I mentioned in our earlier time that I consider how much that is a contrast to the attitude of Nebuchadnezzar, who did the same thing for Babylon. He waged the wars, was the general who brought victories to Babylon and made Babylon a great city.

But he thought he did it himself. And the Bible says that he went out and saw what he'd done and he congratulated himself, said, this is a great Babylon, which I have built. But God was displeased with him taking the credit for it and struck him mad for a period of time.

But Joshua doesn't have that tendency. He sees very clearly that everything that has been accomplished is really not his accomplishment, but God's. All he has done is administrate the division of the land.

That's all he gives himself any credit for, which is not a great or heroic thing. But he does say, the Lord, your God, will expel them from before you and drive them out of your sight. Perhaps that's the reason why he emphasizes the Lord, not him, because he's not going to be around anymore.

If they saw him as the one who is the great conqueror, then his death might lead them to believe, well, no more conquest now. Joshua's gone. But since he points out all the conquests that have been made before this were the Lord and it's going to be the Lord who continues after I'm gone to finish up this conquering of the land.

So that might be his reason for that emphasis. But I think it's more because he was just a humble man and didn't tend to take credit. But because he was humble, he had every confidence that things would go just as well when he was gone as when he was there.

He had been, from an earthly point of view, the indispensable leader of the nation. But he doesn't see himself as indispensable. He figures, well, what God has accomplished for me, God can accomplish without me.

He can he can continue his work whether I'm here or not. And that's probably a good way to look at our accomplishments. God could raise up of these stones replacements for us if he wants to.

Verse six, therefore, be very courageous and keep to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, lest you turn aside from it to the right hand or the left and lest you go among these nations, these who remain among you. You shall not make mention of the name of their gods nor cause anyone to swear by them. You shall not serve them nor bow down to them, but you shall hold fast to Yahweh, your God, as you have done to this day.

For the Lord has driven out from before you great and strong nations. But as for you, no one has been able to stand against you to this day. Now, much of the wording of this exhortation in verses six through nine is taken directly from the exhortation that God gave Joshua in chapter one.

He first of all, tells them to be very courageous. And you remember back in the exhortation that God gave Joshua in the first chapter, like three times, he said, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous. I'm talking about Joshua one verses five through nine.

Many repetitions of this need to be courageous. Now, he tells the people to be courageous as he will be gone. He also tells them to not turn from the right hand or to the right hand or to the left from keeping the law.

That's also what God told him to do, to be careful not to turn from the law. When he when he exhorted him and then also here, it says that no one has been able to stand against you to this day at the end of verse nine. Well, that's how God began his exhortation to Joshua in verse five of chapter one.

No man should be able to stand before you all the days of your life. So he's remembering the promise that God made to him, and he's kind of restating it to the people, more or less, that this promise applies to you people now that now that I'm not here for it to apply to. Now, he did say.

In verse seven, that they should not make mention of the name of the pagan gods, nor cause anyone to swear by them. The rule that you should not make mention of the names of the pagan gods, there's also a statement like that in Exodus 23, 13, a law he is repeating. I'd like to read it to you in 23, 13 of Exodus, it says, and in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.

Now, making mention of the names of other gods, we do that whenever we mentioned the days of our week by name or the months of our year, they're named after pagan gods. Even in talking about the historical background, we talked about the gods of the heathen. We mentioned some of them.

Even the Bible itself mentions the names of the pagan gods, mentions Baal and Molech and Shemosh. These gods are named. Dagon are mentioned in the Bible.

Obviously, to say you should not mention the names of other gods, it doesn't mean it's wrong for them to ever be mentioned. Although it sounds like it means that what it means is what Joshua says here is that you don't mention their name in your oaths. Now, we don't understand oaths in our culture.

We don't do this anymore. In fact, to us, an oath or swearing almost has a negative connotation. When we talk about swearing, someone is swearing.

We use them in their cussing or that they were using profanity. But oaths and swearing were positive things in the old days because that's how deals were struck between honest parties. Today, we have contracts you sign.

And the reason we have contracts is because men are not honest anymore in our society. At least we can't count on them being honest. And so we want it in writing.

We want their signature. We want it actionable, you know, enforceable by law. You said you're going to do it.

Sign here. And then if you don't do it, I can take you to court. In those days, they didn't have written contracts, generally speaking.

And when two people made an agreement of a sort that we today might make a contract about, they would have said just take an oath. And they would swear that he would do what he said he would do. And his swearing an oath was in the name of something or someone.

The highest oath you could swear would be the name of your God. Although people might swear by something else, too. I swear by this mountain.

I swear by Jerusalem. I swear by, you know, something bigger than me. The idea of an oath in the Middle East or mine was that you are invoking the virtue of something greater than yourself since the person you're dealing with doesn't trust you.

I mean, they can't be sure about your virtue, but they know that the mountain or Jerusalem or God is more virtuous than you are and that you would not dare to invoke their virtue. And and put their virtue at risk by you breaking your oath unless you were serious about it. And when a person would take an oath, they were bound by their oath.

Because if they would break their oath, then they would perjure the virtue of the thing they swore by. Now, swearing by God, we consider it to be a little bit irreverent to swear by God. I swear by God that that's almost like.

We sometimes think of that as irreverent or wrong, but actually, that's that's what Israel was supposed to do when they made oaths. They were supposed to swear by Yahweh. Because his character was supposed to be that which they consider themselves bound by.

They were supposed to reflect his character. And if someone didn't know if you're really as honest as God, then you could swear by God. And then you'd be saying, you know, you know, I wouldn't invoke the name of Yahweh and then do something that's contrary to what he would do.

That's just the other. That's sort of a strange, abstract concept to us. But that's how they felt.

An oath ended all disputes, it says in Hebrews chapter six. And so like a contract would. So an oath did in those days.

Now, swearing was an OK thing to do, actually even a good thing to do. It was the way that you guaranteed your honesty. But swearing by Yahweh was what Israel was supposed to do because culturally people tended to swear by whatever God they respected the most.

To invoke the virtue of a God was about the highest virtue you could invoke. So if you were a Moabite, you'd invoke the virtue of Chimash. Or, you know, if you're a Philistine, you'd invoke the virtue of Dagon, swear by Dagon.

Well, when Moses and Joshua both said, do not mention other gods, they mean in your oaths. The assumption is that everyone takes oaths in the course of doing business and so forth. Don't be tempted to swear by another God than Yahweh.

And you might especially be tempted to do so if you're doing business for the pagan. And, you know, he respects an oath in the name of his God. But don't you succumb to that.

Don't even mention their names in that kind of a context, that is, in the context of swearing oaths. And that's what he says here in verse seven. You shall not make mention of the name of their gods nor cause anyone to swear by them.

You shall not serve them or bow down to them. So swearing by a god was sort of a corollary to being a worshiper of that God. It was essentially invoking them as a virtuous being.

And it's the next step to that is bowing down to them as someone greater than yourself. Because people always invoke someone greater than themselves in an oath. Now, verse 10 says, one man of you shall chase a thousand.

This is perhaps a hyperbole, though it's not entirely not true. Samson, one man, killed a thousand Philistines with the job of an ox or of an ass. And Jonathan and his armor bearer alone chased off a whole garrison of Philistines.

But we don't know, I don't know how big a garrison was. It probably wasn't a thousand. But it was certainly, they were outnumbered.

The idea is if God is on your side, you don't have to worry about the size of your opponent's army. The way Jonathan said it to his armor bearer before they attacked the Philistines, he said, it's the same to God to deliver by many or by a few. You know, he can deliver by one man or by many.

It doesn't, it's God who's doing it. So it doesn't matter how many people are on our side. You and God are, as often was said, a majority.

This is the two of you together. So one of you can chase a thousand. The Lord, your God, is he who fights for you as he has promised.

Therefore, take diligent heed to yourselves that you love the Lord, your God, or else if indeed you do go back and cling to the remnants of these nations, these that remain among you and make marriages with them and go into them and they to you know for certain that Yahweh, your God, will no longer drive out these nations from before you. But they shall be snares and traps to you and scourges on your sides and thorns in your eyes until you perish from this good land which the Lord, your God, has given you. So he says, don't intermarry with them.

Now, many people think Jews were not allowed to marry Gentiles. That's not true. A Jew could marry a Gentile, but they were not supposed to marry a Canaanite.

Canaanites were singled out for special treatment among Gentiles. They were especially wicked and especially to be not tolerated. And obviously, if you begin to marry within that race, you can't suddenly be racially opposed to them anymore.

You know, if you marry a person who's Irish, you can't be anti-Irish from that point on. You know, if you marry somebody who's, you know, Chinese, you can't very well be anti-Chinese. How can you love your spouse and hate the race they belong to? And yet, Israel is supposed to have no diminishing of their animosity toward the Canaanites, which animosity would be diminished if they began to have wives and in-laws and children who are half that race.

You know, I mean, you just don't want that kind of mixture because it dilutes your antipathy and your hostility toward them. These people are supposed to be wiped out, not blended in to your community. Behold, this day I'm going the way of all the earth, verse 14, which, of course, is an idiom that means I'm going to die.

Everybody does. And, you know, in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass for you and not one word of them has failed.

Therefore, it shall come to pass that as all the good things have come upon you, which the Lord your God promised you. So the Lord will bring upon you all harmful things until he has destroyed you from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you. That means, of course, if you have transgressed, he says in verse 16, when you have transgressed the covenant of the Lord, your God, which he commanded you and have gone and served other gods and bowed down to them.

Then the anger of the Lord will burn against you and you shall perish quickly from the good land which he has given you. This exact same warning is given at least twice or three times by Moses in his speeches in Leviticus and especially in Deuteronomy. And most notably in a very detailed chapter that has the same theme, Deuteronomy chapter 28.

Where blessings of every sort are promised Israel if they remain true to God's covenant, but curses and disasters of every sort are threatened if they violate his covenant. But in both cases, in Deuteronomy and here, there's an explicit statement that if you violate the covenant, God will take this land from you or more properly, God will take you from the land. He'll destroy you from the land.

Now, if you're destroyed, you can't come back to it. You're gone. In other words, there was never a time when God had it in mind that Israel could do whatever they want to instill claim this land.

The land was theirs conditionally upon their obedience to God. They were in a marriage with God. If they abandon the marriage, they can't still have the family house.

The property belongs to God. They can leave the marriage, but they can't take the real estate with him. He still owns it.

And so when they violate the covenant and he said he could destroy them from off the land and he says it more than once here. In verse 15, he says, until he has destroyed you from this good land. And in verse 16, he says the same thing.

The Lord will burn against you. The anger of the Lord will burn against you and you shall perish quickly from the good land which he's given you. So these things have to be borne in mind as we consider the modern conflict over the so-called holy land, the land of Israel.

The Israelites, of course, were banished from the land because of their just their crucifixion of Christ, really. That's what Jesus said. And in Luke 19, Jesus wept over Jerusalem and said, if you had only known Jerusalem this your day, the peace that could have been yours.

We said now your enemies are going to come. He means the Romans and they're going to cast a siege mound around you and they're going to level you to the ground and leave not one stone of you standing on another. That was the destruction of Jerusalem and the diaspora, the diaspora of the Jews being spread throughout the world.

That happened, he says, because you did not know the day of your visitation, he said. That is because you didn't recognize the Messiah, because instead you crucified him instead of receiving him, their rejection of Christ, he said, is that which is going to bring about their destruction. That passage I'm talking about is Luke 19, verses 41 through 44.

So the dispersal of the Jews throughout the land in AD 70, Jesus interpreted as a judgment that came upon him because of their rejection of him. But not only that, in Matthew 23, he told him it was because all the blood shed from righteous Abel to Zechariah was going to come upon that generation. He said Jerusalem was that city that persecutes the saints and kills the prophets and those who were sent to her.

He said that all the blood, all the righteous blood is going to come upon this generation, he said, which it did. In AD 70, Jerusalem came under a horrible judgment. The Romans burned it to the ground, slaughtered the Jews, turned the remainder into captivity where they remained.

And Jerusalem remained not a Jewish city up until modern times. Now, obviously, many of the people of Israel have gone back to that land now. Still, most of them haven't.

Places like New York City and Los Angeles have almost as many Jews in these individual cities as there are in the land of Israel today. Russia and Poland probably have more Jews in them than Israel has, although that changes because there's a lot of immigration to Israel. But there's also people leaving Israel.

It's not just, some people picture it like all the Jews in the world, they've gone back to Israel. Well, not exactly. Some are going there, some are leaving there.

It's going both ways. But still, the majority of Jews in the world are not in Israel. They're in Europe and in America for the most part.

And there's some of them in every continent. But the question is, should they be going back there? Is this the promised land? Does God have intentions to restore the land to them? Well, some people think so because there are some prophecies interpreted that way by them. I look at those prophecies that they use, and I'm not sure that they are seeing them in the correct way.

I don't see any clear prediction in any passage of the Bible that says Israel will return to their land in the last days. There are many places that talk about Israel returning to their land, but it's not in the last days, not in the end times. You see, all the prophecies about Israel returning to their land are in the Old Testament.

There's none in the New. The New Testament never mentions Israel returning to their land. And in the Old Testament, the prophecies that do mention it are uttered before the Babylonian exile came to an end.

That is to say, the prophets before the exile and during the exile prophesied a time when God would bring the Israelites back to their land. And he did in 539 B.C. And in the years that followed, through Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, a remnant did return, as Isaiah and the other prophets said would. So he did restore them.

But a lot of water has run under the bridge since then, including the coming of Jesus and the rejection of Jesus and the second destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, after which there's no mention in the Bible of any restoration, which might be why such a long time went by without it happening. Now, it has happened that the Jews are back in the land and Jerusalem is inhabited by them and so forth. And many people see this as a great fulfillment of prophecy.

It could be, but I'm not sure which prophecies. I don't know of anything, like I said, after A.D. 70 that ever predicted that they'd come back again. Maybe they will.

Maybe that is what he has in mind. They haven't. Some have.

But for the most part, the Jews are still scattered throughout the world. But the more important thing is not will they or have they, but should they. Is there something in the Bible that says that the land is like perpetually theirs and that if there's Palestinians or others there who also contest them for the real estate, that somehow God is on the side of Israel and it's their land unconditionally.

I don't know of anything in the Bible that suggests that they have the land unconditionally. Everything I read is that it was conditional. If you keep my covenant, you can prolong your days on the land.

If you break my covenant, I'll destroy you from off the land. Now, this is just the way this is the way the contract was written. This is the way the covenant stipulation stood.

The land was theirs conditionally. Now, rejecting the Messiah was, if anything, the most severe rejection of God's covenant that Israel ever has performed. They did so almost continually worshipping idols, Baal and Moloch and so forth.

They violated God's covenant almost for their entire history. The Old Testament bears witness of that. But when Christ came, certainly the rejection of the Messiah and his crucifixion would be as heinous a violation of God's covenant as could be imagined or described.

Therefore, one could easily argue, as Jesus seemed to be arguing, that they lost their land because they broke the covenant when they killed him. That's why he said, that's why your enemies are going to come and lay siege and wipe you out and drive you out of here. He never predicted they'd come back.

But what about today? Are the Israelites in Israel? Are they back with God? I don't know how much you know about that, because American preachers sometimes represent it somewhat differently than it is. The state of Israel is a secular state. They insist upon it.

It is not as the state of Israel is not dedicated to Yahweh. The government is adamantly secular. And there are at least as many atheist Jews as there are religious Jews in the world, if not more atheist Jews and observant Jews do not make up the majority.

And the nation is for all Jews, not just religious ones. The nation is therefore pluralistic and it's not it's not God's nation. The Knesset would object violently to suggesting that this is a religious nation.

Devoted to God. Furthermore, even if it were so, that they came back together devoted to the Jewish religion, that's not the same thing as being devoted to Christ. The Jewish religion was the right religion to be part of in the Old Testament.

But when Christ came, a new covenant was made and the old covenant was obsolete. The Bible says in Hebrews 8, 13, the coming of the new covenant made the old one obsolete. So Jews or anybody else could have come to God on the terms of the old covenant before Jesus came.

But since that time, that covenant doesn't exist anymore. Neither Jews nor anyone else can come to God on those terms. You come to God today, you have to come through Christ.

Jew or Gentile, there's no distinction between Jew and Gentile. If you come to God, you must come through Christ. Therefore, even if the state of Israel was a religious state and it was the Jewish religion, it would still be rejecting Christ just as much as they were when they crucified him.

And, you know, while most Jews probably are not so inclined that they would crucify Christ if he came, just like most Gentiles wouldn't. I don't think the Jews are any worse than Gentiles in that respect, but they're not much different. They're living their own lives apart from God, rejecting Christ, just like most Gentiles are.

They're not especially God's people. They haven't returned to God. Therefore, there's reason to question whether the land they're on is really theirs by divine grant since God drove them out of it and their condition toward Christ has not improved since then.

Or whether it's just something the United Nations set up because, frankly, the Holocaust was a horrible thing and the sensitives of the world, knowing it, wanted to give Israel a sanctuary in their ancient land. That certainly is a topic that would repay much more analysis. But the main reason I say these things is because most evangelical Christians only hear one side.

And that is that, well, of course, Israel is God's holy land and the people of Israel are God's people and therefore the land is theirs. And so we support them no matter what they do. Well, their own prophets didn't support them no matter what they did.

When they did atrocities, their prophets spoke harshly of them and condemned them and even said the Gods were going to drive them out of their land. That's before he did. Somehow, because of the Holocaust, especially, Western Gentiles, especially Christians and conscientious Gentiles, are very cautious to say anything negative about anything Israel because anti-Semitism, Hitler style, is looming so large in our awareness.

You know, hatred of the Jews. Christians couldn't possibly hate the Jews. The same reason that the Jews, if they married the Canaanites, couldn't hate the Canaanites.

They're family. You know, the apostles are Jewish. They're family.

Jesus is Jewish. He's family. We can't hate Jews.

No one could be anti-Semitic and be a Christian. But we can say that without the slightest trace of anti-Semitism, the Israelites are not different than Gentiles. They're just like anybody else.

They need Jesus. And if they have Jesus, they're just like us. They're in Christ.

And in Christ, there's no Jew or Gentile. If they don't have Jesus, they're just like the Gentiles who don't have Jesus. There's no distinction.

God doesn't accept or reject people on the basis of their ancestry or their races. He does so on the basis of their heart. And that was true.

But all their prophets told them that in the Old Testament. So Christians are not really the most clear thinking people in our modern day. And they sometimes follow what they're told about thinking.

But it's not necessarily a given that Christians will support or should support Israel no matter what they do. Just because there's the assumption that that's God's grant to them is that land. I'm not sure that they have any divine claim to it anymore.

I have no objection to them being there. Just like I don't think we, white Europeans, have any divine grant to North America. I don't object to us being here.

You know, virtually every piece of property on the world is inhabited by someone who were not the originals. You know, maybe some tribal peoples or some island peoples are the originals. You know, ethnic groups are there.

But you go to Europe, any country in Europe or North America, the original indigenous people that were here or there, you know, hundreds or thousands of years ago are not there now. Someone else is there. We're here now.

But that doesn't mean we have a divine right to it. If the Chinese invaded us and took over the country, then it'd be their country. You know, we can't say that the white Europeans have it as a divine mandate to own North America or Western Europe.

We'd like to keep it that way because it looks like the people who are challenged here are the Muslims. And we don't want to lose all that territory to Islam. And I certainly don't.

But the point is we have to think clearly. Israel doesn't have any more divine right to the land of Israel than white people have a divine right to North America. But it happens to be in their possession right now.

And I'm not willing to turn the clock back and try to, you know, unscramble an egg. Things stand as they do. So let's behave.

If the white Europeans who now live in America behave themselves, maybe God will let us stay here. If Israel behaves themselves, maybe God lets them stay there. But that doesn't mean that Christians support everything Israel does because of some Old Testament things that are no longer relevant.

Anyway, that's I mean, we're getting that information from the Old Testament. This is not like, OK, the New Testament tells us that they don't have an unconditional. No, the Old Testament tells us they don't have an unconditional land grant.

Moses told them that. Joshua told them that. The Old Testament, that's a major theme of the Old Testament.

You can have the land if you're faithful. If you don't, you can't have it. So God said through his prophets.

OK, now that's the end of that little farewell address, very much like Moses' farewell address as he warned them the same stuff. Now, chapter 24. Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem.

Now, the first gathering, it doesn't tell us where he gathered them to, probably his own hometown. Well, maybe not. But the second speech, the last one here, is at Shechem.

And he called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, for their officers, the same people as before. And they presented themselves before God. So this is different.

They're not just here to hear Joshua give a speech. They're presenting themselves afresh to rededicate themselves to the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, and notice he begins, Thus says the Lord God.

So he's actually prophesying. Joshua was not just a military leader and a good guy. He was a prophet as well.

He could speak an oracle from God, just like Isaiah or Moses or Jeremiah could do. He said in the form of a prophetic oracle, Thus says the Lord God of Israel. Your fathers, including Terah, that was the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in the old times.

That means on the other side of Euphrates in Babylonia, where Terah and his family, including his son Abraham, lived before God called Abraham. And they served other gods. Now, who's they? It sounds like the people just mentioned are Terah and Nahor and Abraham.

That Terah's family served other gods. And this is probably the case. This is probably what's intended, that this was a pagan family, including Abraham in his earlier years.

But we read in Genesis 12 that God appeared to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees and said, Get away from everything. And it seems that the man Abraham, before God called him, was just an ordinary pagan. But once God appeared to him, he converted.

He became a believer in the one true God. And once he became obedient and left his pagan homeland to go to another land, he was God's man from that day on. And he was the monotheist.

He was the man of one God, as opposed to many gods, which the pagans served and which he had served apparently earlier. Now, there's another possible way of seeing that. The last line in verse three, they served other gods, could be a reference to your fathers in general, not necessarily specifically Abraham and Terah.

And they're the ones mentioned, but many of your ancestors, after all, idolatry was even shot through Israel at this present time. And in their past, too, they tended to serve other gods. But I think I think the most natural way to understand it is that Terah's family, which included Abraham, originally were idolaters in Babylon.

Then I took your father, Abraham, from the other side of the river, led him throughout all the land of Canaan and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. He multiplied his descendants, but gave him Isaac. That's interesting, because Abraham had eight sons altogether, seven of which were born not as gifts from God in the same sense that Isaac was, because Isaac was the son of promise.

Isaac was the miracle baby. Isaac was the son of Abraham and Sarah's old age when they were beyond the age to have children. So he was a gift from God.

Now, in a sense, all children are a gift from God. Psalm 127 says, Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord. God is the one who gives children, but singling Isaac out of all Abraham's descendants and saying he gave him Isaac is a way of saying that there was a special gifting here.

It's a unique son, unlike the others in the family, because he was given not through natural means, but actually through supernatural means, miraculously to them. And to Isaac, I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau, I gave the mountains of Seir to possess.

But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. That sounds like a kind of a raw deal. Esau is not the chosen one, but he gets to go directly to Seir.

And they claim his inheritance. Jacob, the chosen one, gets to go down to Egypt and be a slave for a few hundred years. It's almost like God's picking on him, but actually it's because Jacob was the chosen one that God, you know, whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son that he receives.

It says in Hebrews chapter 12, if you see someone who isn't chastened, it's because they're not God's son. Who is he who is not chastened? But he that is not God's son. God chastens the ones he loves.

So here God chooses Jacob for privilege, but has to put him through the furnace of purification. First, the iron furnace, as it's called, of Egypt. And so I saw a cartoon in a Christian magazine, I think, the other day.

You might have seen it. I think it was in Christianity today, but I'm not sure. But Moses, I think it was for Abraham, some old patriarch is talking to heaven, talking to God.

He says, now, let me get this straight. The Arabs get the oil and we have to cut off our what? Like, who's side are you on, God? You know, the Arabs get the oil and they're not chosen. And we are chosen and we have to be circumcised.

It's like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof said, could you maybe choose someone else for a while? Once in a while, could you choose someone else? Being chosen of God is to be chosen for difficulty in some cases, because we're in a world that makes it difficult to follow God. And to follow God, therefore, puts us through hardship. All who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, for one thing.

And Israel had to make painful sacrifices, including that of their foreskins, obviously, as well as going to Egypt for a time of servitude. This is how God prepared his people to make them a different people. Verse five, also, I sent Moses and Aaron and I plagued Egypt according to what I did among them.

Afterward, I brought you out, then I brought your fathers out of Egypt and you came to the sea, of course, the Sea of Reeds or the Red Sea. And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. So they cried out to the Lord and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them and covered them.

And your eyes saw what I did to in Egypt. Then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time. Now, these are the elders of Israel.

They're younger than Joshua, but still old enough to have seen these things. Now, most of the people in Israel could not be said to have seen these things at that time. But these people, remember, the oldest people in Israel, other than Joshua and Caleb, were 20 years younger than them.

But still, some of them had been 20 years old at the time of the Exodus. God spared all the children under 20 years old that came out of Egypt and they came into the land. So some of these people are now, you know, in their 60s or older, could be in their 80s.

And so he can speak to these elders, say, you've seen this. Now, in a few years more, there wouldn't be anyone left who had because that generation was pretty near the end of their tenure here. But he can at least speak to these people who are still the leaders he's leaving behind.

If you saw this with your own eyes, what happened to the Egyptians? And in verse eight. And I brought you into the land of the Amorites who dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, and they fought with you. But I gave them into your hand that you might possess their land.

And I destroyed them from before you. Then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose to make war against Israel and sent and called Balaam, the son of Baal, to curse you. Now, actually, we don't read of Balak, the son of Zippor, actually waging military war on Israel.

There may have been such a war that numbers does not record. But it's more likely it's referring to the fact that he he he fought against them with a war that was not a frontal attack. But undermining them, you know, bringing a curse upon them.

He was like he did as much damage to them as any army could because he seduced them into bad behavior that caused God to bring curse upon them. But it makes it sound like if you didn't know the story from numbers that Balak actually launched a military campaign against him. But that wasn't so.

But I would not listen to Balaam. Therefore, he continued to bless you. So I delivered you out of his hand.

So this indicates that Balaam really tried to curse the people, but God wouldn't let that happen. And he forced the man to bless Israel. Then you went over to Jordan and came to Jericho and the men of Jericho fought against you.

We don't read about that, actually. We don't read about the men of Jericho fighting, but they must have when the walls went down and the Israelites went into the city and conquered it. There must have been defensive fighting by the men on the inside that we really get passed over without specific mention.

Also, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgisites, the Hivites and the Jebusites. But I delivered them into your hand. I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you.

Also, the two kings of the Amorites, but not with your sword or with your bow. So apparently, although there's no record of it in the book of Joshua, some of these battles were accompanied not only with divine assistance from in the form of hailstones, but some even in the form of hornets in Exodus 23, 28 and in Deuteronomy 720. God, through Moses, promises the people that he will send hornets ahead of them into the land to drive the enemy out.

We don't read of it happening, but we read of him promising it. Then Joshua reflects back and says, God did that. So we don't know on what occasions this was true, but there must have been times when, in addition to Israel's armies fighting against the Canaanites, they were also pursued by swarms of hornets.

And we know on one occasion, at least, hailstones. So God fought on the side of Israel. It wasn't just Israel doing this.

In fact, in all likelihood, the hornets were much more of a terror than the Israelites, because you can't hide from them. I mean, a swarm of hornets around you, that can kill you, too. People can die from enough stings from a hornet.

I have given you a land for which you did not labor and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them and eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant. Now, therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers had served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river, that is the Babylonian gods that Terah and the ancestors served, or the gods of these Canaanites, the Amorites. There's a lot of gods to serve if you don't serve Yahweh. You can, parents, take your pick.

There's a potpourri out there, there's a smorgasbord of gods. You can pick the ones of Babylon, you can pick the ones of Canaan, or any other gods you want. As long as it's not Yahweh, it's all the same.

But, he says, if it seems evil to serve the Lord, then you've got your choice of a lot of other options. Of course, he's not saying that that's OK, but he says that as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now, me and my house, can you guarantee that your children will serve the Lord? You can while they're in the house.

You can control your house. You can't necessarily control them when they're out of the house. But, a man is obligated to control his house.

And so, children at home, a man who is to qualify for eldership, according to 1 Timothy chapter 3, had to have his house in order, had to have his children obedient and so forth. His family had to be in order. But, that's, of course, talking about how he manages his household, because it says, if a man does not know how to manage his household, how can he serve the church of God? So, your house is your domain, and you can decide whether your children will serve the Lord.

You can't determine if they will do it with their hearts or not. You can certainly keep the idols out, though, of the house if you choose to do so. And, that's a determination that Joshua made.

So, the people answered and said, far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh and serve other gods. For Yahweh, our God, is he who brought us and our fathers out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we've passed. And Yahweh drove out from before us all the people, even the Amorites who dwell in the land.

We also will serve Yahweh, for he is our God. But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve Yahweh, for he's a holy God. He's a jealous God.

He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake Yahweh and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done you good. And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord.

So, Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves, that you've chosen Yahweh for yourselves to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. Now, this is, when he says you can't serve Yahweh, this is kind of just kind of goading them on to, you know, they're saying, oh yeah, we won't serve other gods.

God forbid that we'd leave Yahweh. And when he says, no, you can't do that. You're wicked people and he's a holy God.

He's not necessarily making a prediction, though if he had been, it would have been true. Because they didn't. But I don't think he's saying, nah, you might as well give up that determination because you can't do it.

I think he's basically challenging them, putting an obstacle there, saying, you know, this is not easier than you think. He's a holy God. I don't think you can do this.

And they say, no, no, we insist, we will. It's a little like that bargaining that goes on, you know, you can have it for this. No, you know, I give it to you for free.

No, I mean, there's all that Middle Eastern way of doing things. So he says, OK, if you insist, we're going to write that down. You said it.

You witnessed it, that you're going to serve God. And they say, yes, we are witnesses of that. Now, therefore, he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you.

So God forbid that we would serve other gods. OK, if you really mean it, get rid of those foreign gods. Oh, those you mean we have to give up those two? Yep.

He might even mean the foreign gods still served by the Canaanites, but the Jews were not serving at this point, but they were still among them because the Canaanites still live among them. Get rid of those Canaanites and their gods. But it's also possible that they actually had some of these little idols in their homes.

We know that at different times in Israel's history, they did. They're pretty compromised most of the time, just like a lot of Christians apparently are, too. OK, and the people said to Joshua, Yahweh, our God, we will serve and his voice will we will obey.

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. Then Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness to our God.

For it has heard all the words of Yahweh, which he spoke to us. It shall therefore be witness to you, lest you deny your God. So Joshua let the people depart each to his own inheritance.

Now, of course, the stone didn't really hear anything. But the idea is that stone was here the whole time. It absorbed all those promises.

You've said them in the presence. As long as this stone is here, there's a remembrance that you said it. What the stone remembered and could testify if it would.

That you have uttered a curse upon yourself, if you would turn from God. When Jesus was coming into Jerusalem and people crying out, Hosanna. And he was about to be crucified and rejected by Israel, and they were going to bring that curse upon them that had been warned.

He said, you know, if these would stop testifying, then the stones themselves would cry out. Perhaps, perhaps he's saying, you know, the rocks around here are aware of what's going on. They've heard they know what God's up to more than you people are.

I don't know exactly how he meant that the rocks would cry out, except maybe he's just saying what was being said by the people just had to be said. If the people didn't say it, God makes someone else say it. Even rocks, if necessary.

So he let them depart. Now we have the death of Joshua recorded. The Jewish tradition is that it was recorded by Eliezer, the priest.

Now, it came to pass after these things that Joshua, the servant of the Lord, died being 110 years old, and they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Tinnath Sarah, which is in the mountains of Ephraim on the north side of Mount Gash. Israel served Yahweh all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had known all the works of the Lord, which he had done to Israel, the ones he was speaking to here. The bones of Joseph.

Now, this is interesting. The bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried at Shechem in the plot of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem for 100 pieces of silver and which had become an inheritance of the children of Joseph. It was near this place that Jesus met with the woman at the well, because this region became Samaria later on.

And she mentioned Joseph, their ancestor in that region and so forth. Jacob had purchased this region from the Canaanites before the land belonged to Israel. And Joseph was buried there.

I'm not sure why he was buried there when, in fact, all his ancestors were buried at Machpelah. And it seems that since you can bury him anywhere you want, why not bury him in Machpelah? That's where Abram and Sarah and Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Leah were buried. But Rachel wasn't.

And that was the mother of Joseph. And since his mother wasn't buried there, maybe it wasn't necessary to bury him there. It does seem, though, that he should have been buried in the family burial place, but it must not be an issue.

They must have had a reason. We're just not told what it is. And then we have the death of Eliezer in the last verse.

Jewish tradition holds that his son, Phineas, the next high priest, recorded this one verse. And Eliezer, the son of Aaron, died and they buried him in a hill that belonged to Phineas, his son, which was given in the mountains of Ephraim. So we come to the close of another chapter of their history where another leader is gone, Joshua this time.

And then they're going to have a series of leaders in the book of Judges, which we'll take separately, of course, and we'll take next.