We'd like you to turn again, please, to the book of Joshua chapter one. Joshua chapter one. We might start at verse five. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shall thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. That thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then Thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee, be strong, and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. For the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you vitals, for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan. To go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it. And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manasseh spake Joshua, saying, Remember the word which Moses, a servant of the Lord, commanded you, saying, The Lord your God hath given you rest, and hath given you this land. Your wives, your little ones, and your cattle shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side, Jordan. But you shall pass before your brethren armed all the mighty men of valor and help them until the Lord hath given your brethren rest as he hath given you. And they also have possessed the land which the Lord your God giveth them then ye shall return unto the land of your possession and enjoy it, which Moses the Lord's servant gave you on this side, Jordan, toward the sun rising. And they answered Joshua saying, All that thou commandest us, we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go. According as we hearkened unto Moses, in all things, so will we hearken unto thee. only the Lord thy God be with thee as he was with Moses. Whosoever he be that doth rebel against the commandment and will not hearken unto thy words, in all that thou commandest him, he shall be put to death, only be strong and of a good courage. Now I like to read one verse in a parallel verse in Ephesians chapter six. now it's just verse ten I want us to think about this verse ten in connection with what we have read finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might Now this morning we remarked on the fact that never in the course of time did two men bear such a precious burden as the documents that were carried by Titicus and Onesimus from Rome to Colossi. Among them was this epistle to the Ephesians. And we as God's people today must be very, very grateful for the wonderful words that the Spirit of God through the Apostle Paul has penned in the epistle to the Ephesians. Now, very, very rarely do I ever get up courage to minister from this book, although it's very, very precious. And occasionally we refer to it But it's an amazing book where the Apostle Paul, by the Spirit of God, unlocks the mystery that was hidden Christ from before the world was and makes it known to us today. They carried those documents, those great many miles, And there must have been numerous perils on the way. But guarding them carefully and the Spirit of God no doubt brooding over them, they were brought to Colossae. And now we have them today in this beautiful epistle. And as we would look into the book of Joshua, we ought to just refer from time to time to the New Testament parallel which we have in the epistle to the Ephesians. Now, isn't it a remarkable thing that the epistle to the Ephesians opens up with our wonderful position in the heavenly, in Christ Jesus. There is no finer language than can describe the position of the people of God as they are brought into this great inheritance. and as they are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And it seems like the Apostle Paul overflows when he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. Now God is the God of blessings. That we know as we trace his words and his dealings with the people down through the Old Testament. The Old Testament unlocks God's prerogative of blessing his people. And there, as we have it today, we are abundantly blessed through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross of Calvary. Now the epistle opens with a people. in this blessed position. But it closes with a picture of a man dressed from head to foot in the panoply of war and being urged to be strong and to stand faithfully in the battle that is before them. We must understand that that is what we see in the epistle to the Ephesians. We who have been brought into such tremendous blessings, and our spiritual blessings are just a spin-off from the blessings practically that the Lord's people came into when they went into the promised land. They ate of the old corn of the land. they dug the minerals out of the mountains. They were blessed with corn and wine. It was a land that flowed with milk and honey. But it was nothing to be compared to the spiritual blessings that you and I can lay claim to as God's people that accrue from the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and his glorious resurrection to God's right hand so that we have all these blessings in this wonderful picture of what we have in Christ and at the end of the epistle we see us poised ready with the panoply of faith ready to do battle and ready to stand against the wiles of the evil one now this morning for those of you that weren't here We spoke of the Word of God as it came to Joshua and spoke about the death of Moses and told him, Arise, go over this Jordan. And we remarked that it's so very important for us to know that the River Jordan, in this respect, and in the Word of God, is the type of the death of Christ. So, at the beginning here we have... Joshua, the man of the sword. And we look back to the one that he followed, Moses, the man of the staff. So we have the staff up to this point, up to the banks of the river Jordan. But as we go into the land, it's not the staff now, but it is the sword. And God had raised Joshua up to lead his people, to put to flight the idolatrous, adulterous generations that were inhabiting the land that God had promised to his people. Now, we have to be sure about this one thing, in our hearts and in our minds, that that land was given by God to his people. I just wish today that some of the men in our country that seem to know so much would get this firmly into their head that God was the giver. It was God's prerogative to give, and no one else's. And he had given it to his people, and he will see to it that they get it, and in a coming day it will be theirs from the river to the great sea, from the wilderness, to the mountains of Lebanon. Joshua, the man of the sword. It means Jesus, the same as Jesus, the Savior. And this man was commissioned by Moses and by the Spirit of God to take off from where Moses left. As Moses laid that staff down, and as Joshua took up the sword, to lead the people of God into the promised land. Now, the remaining part of this chapter is very important and absolutely pregnant with meaning. Many times we read it over. We can read it over and not catch the truth that are there contained. Like we said this morning, there are many geographers, but there are not too many. that put their feet firmly down on the word of God and possess these wonderful things that are there for our learning. Now in these verses that follow, in God's dialogue with Joshua, we have three things mentioned. We have God's presence, we have God's pathway, and we have God's promise outlined to this wonderful man. Now God said to Joshua, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. Now if any man knew what it was to have God with him, it was Joshua as he watched Moses. Now Joshua was Moses' minister. Day after day, week after week, year after year, he spent with Moses. And he must have known deep down in his heart that Moses, a man of God, had learned to prove this one thing, that God was with him in whatever he did. He said this to Joshua, No man will be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. Now what general going out to warfare could have a more comforting message given to him as Joshua had? No man, say God, is going to be able to stand before you, let alone overcome you, all the days of thy life. Isn't it true today? It is true. The nation of Israel, although they're back in the land in unbelief and cannot claim these promises associated with the death of Christ, it's very, very obvious that the promise that was given to Joshua is still theirs if they would claim it, that no man is able to stand before them, and they've proved it down through the years. We know it's abundantly true. Joshua, what presence could you have with you than the Almighty God, the God of Israel? He said, I will not fail thee. I will never leave thee. That's the truth of Hebrews chapter one. God is a God of promise. and that promise can be claimed by the spiritual believer in his warfare against the world and the flesh and the devil we're not fighting a warfare like he fought a warfare of foot soldiers our enemies are not the inhabitants of the land that had to be driven out, the idolatrous nations that had usurped the land. But we fight against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. Joshua could see the enemy. The enemy was before him. We can't many, many times see that enemy. But we know he is present. But the same promise now is a promise that you and I can take that with God, with us, then nothing can stand before us if we are equipped with what God has provided from his precious word. The Lord Jesus Christ rebuffed Satan on every occasion in the wilderness. with the word of God. We have the word. We should be schooled in it. We should use it. We should be comforted by it. And we should go on to fight that battle for the Lord. Secondly, God's pathway. First of all, his presence. Now his pathway. It was a path of obedience to God's word. He said, Joshua, you meditate in this word day and night you obey it you turn neither to the left or to the right from it you tread a straight path and that path is the path that will lead you to victory Hebrews chapter twelve this lovely verse that speaks to the Christian at the close of this wonderful epistle. The writer says, Make straight paths for your feet. Now, brethren and sisters, this is a day that we need to know about this. And knowing about it, this is a day that we need not to swerve from the left to the right, but spiritually speaking, as we fight this spiritual warfare, we had better make straight paths for our feet. As the writer of the Hebrews, it gives us this tremendous command, so to speak. And then God's promise. Thou shalt make thy way prosperous. Have not I commanded thee? Now Joshua was going in as the leader of God's people. But Joshua was going to find out a few chapters on that although he was the general leading the people in the fight, there was one up yonder that was in command. And you and I, as we seek to take the word of God with us, and as we seek to utilize all the resources that God has given to us, we have to remember this one thing. We're fighting a warfare, but we have one up yonder that is in command. And if we commit our way to him, he has promised, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Now at this point, Joshua assumes command of the people. It must have been a tremendous occasion for him. He has never commanded before, or he'd led the battle, we find out, back yonder in the book of Numbers. But never before had he been responsible to give the command directly from God himself. to the nation of Israel as they went and approached the promised land. And this is what he said. He said to the officers of the people, this went down through a chain of command which was God's way. He said, prepare you vitals because in three days you're going to cross the Jordan. There was going to have to be a period of preparation. Now think back to Egypt when Moses took them out of the land of Egypt. They went out in haste. They went out almost in the middle of the night. They carried their kneading troughs on their shoulders with them. They went out in a big hurry. They went out in haste. There was no time to prepare because God was going to be the one that would prepare for his people. But now it's different. As Joshua takes command, he gives his word down to the different officers, and he said, now you prepare in these three days to go into the land. You prepare for this warfare. Three waiting days. Now they had to do two things. They had to prepare food for the journey, for the expedition. And they had to prepare their hearts before the Lord. One was the practical thing. one was the spiritual thing. And Joshua enlisted the help of the officers of the people down through the chain of command. He wanted to point out that human energy was directly subservient to the spirits leading. Or they might have said, well, God is going to give us the land. He's promised, let's go. Let's go into it. And you know, as we approach the spiritual life, and this is a lesson for us, then we need to be careful that we prepare for what we do. And not just crash into the thing, without any thought, without any prayer, without knowing anything. The Spirit's guiding and blessing. Now, I should take this lesson to heart, first of all, which I have done, because I'm one type of man that likes to get things done yesterday if possible, and in the spiritual life it doesn't work that way. Three waiting days. I wonder how they acted during those three waiting days. There was the work of their leaders among them. Now as we look at this spiritual warfare that we're engaged in, and as we take a lesson from this, in First Peter chapter five, He tells the elders to feed the flock of God over which the Spirit has given them leadership. Now for the people of God to go out in this conflict and to challenge the spirits of darkness that surround. They need to be guided by godly elders who will, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, feed and encourage and uphold God's people as they go to the battle. Oh, so important is this. No one knows it better than the elders know it. and every spiritual person in the assembly that seeks to go out and encourage others in the work. We know it only full well. We need these three waiting days in order that we might be able to prepare spiritual food, prepare our hearts, and prepare ourselves before the Lord. Now, isn't it a remarkable thing that when they came out of Egypt, there were three days there? Remember that? There was the day that they killed the Paschal Lamb in Egypt. There was the next day when they went down into the waters of the Red Sea. And there was the next day when they came up on the other side and sang the song of redemption. The Paschal Lamb, the Red Sea, The song of redemption. But the same with the Lord Jesus Christ. On the first day he went into death. On the second day he was buried. And on the third day he rose triumphant over sin and death and hell. Oh how important those three days are. And the Spirit of God is pointing that out to us here in this chapter. That we should take hold of these things. we should know them we should think about them and we should bring them into action in our lives for him down here below these are some of the things that are just maybe below the surface and yet on the surface there that we can see as we follow through the rest of the instructions to Joshua in this famous chapter now where were they when this was happening according to this record they were at Shedham which was just a short distance from the banks of the river Jordan. There were the flowering acacia trees. Beautiful. They were the trees from which they got the wood for the boards of the tabernacle. That was the wood that they used and they got it from here. It was Shedham wood. according to the book of Exodus. That was the wood that they fashioned into the ark and overlaid it with gold. And oh, how these things must have laid hold on the children of Israel as they were back again in this place and making preparations not only practically but spiritually to go into the land. they would remember how God had used that shittim wood that was a type of the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's unfailing humanity down here below. He came to seek and to save that which was lost, and he came to be found among sinners. and to save men by the sacrifice of himself. It was there at Shittim that they had the remembrance of their sin with the nation of Moab. And at that point Joshua took them away and he took them from Shittim and he lodged them right beside the banks of the Jordan, ready to go over when the three days were accomplished. Now, there was something very important in this chapter that Joshua had to deal with. Something that has a tremendous bearing now on our lives and on our spiritual warfare and on our work for the Lord as we go forward in this fight against spiritual wickedness in high places in the heavenlies. that now we are seated in. That's why we needed the armor of Ephesians six. The Apostle Paul knew that. Now, Joshua said to the two and a half tribes, and this we should know, and we should know it very carefully, that the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, did not want to go across the Jordan with the nation of Israel. As they passed through the land and as Israel overcame Sihon and Og, it was beautiful land, it was land that was fit for cattle. They had a lot of cattle and he wanted to stay there. In other words, they wanted to take the fruits of the toil of the whole nation and absorb it for their own good. They did exactly the same thing that Lot did. When he left Abraham on the plains of Mamre and he looked towards Sodom and he saw that it was well watered and he said, that's where I want to be. I don't want to be on the plain living for God out here under. I want to go along with that which is self-satisfying. I want the plains there. towards Sodom, the plains of Sodom, the well-watered plains of Sodom. These people, these two and a half tribes did exactly that. And God was displeased. And Moses was displeased. You read about it in the thirty-second chapter of the book of Numbers. Now when we were coming through the book of Numbers we didn't have time to deal with this specially. But now it comes up in this chapter. They saw the land of Gilead and they wanted it. And they said, bring us not over Jordan. They didn't want to go. Now what were they doing? They were doing two things. They were about to cause a rift or a split in God's people in the assembly. and they were esteeming their own good and their own prosperity far away above, going all the way for God, going over the Jordan and possessing the land that God had intended them to go to. And very reluctantly, of course, very sadly, I imagine, that both the mighty God and Moses let them have their way but i want you to notice this that the first people that were taken into captivity in the later date were these two and a half tribes and that's worth remembering it definitely is now this to me is a type of a worldly christian or worldly christian groups who are satisfied with the status quo, satisfied to go along in the world and receive all that it can give and leave others to fight in the forefront of the battle. Now it's easy, isn't it, to get our eye on worldly things. We can't see it so very well as a challenge But it is a challenge to our hearts. And it's easy to know that we have been saved by grace because we have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as our own personal Savior. We'll never be in hell. We'll be in heaven where God is because that's his promise. And that we will. But doesn't it cost us something? to go off on the other side of Jordan with God's people not only to enjoy the blessings that he has brought us into but to be able to go on and live and fight the warfare of a good soldier of Jesus Christ God said to them show You sit here while your brethren fight to drive the nations out of the land? God made it plain to them that they would come over Jordan and they would fight until all their brethren had their possessions and then they could go back again to the other side, Jordan, toward the sun rising where they had set their hearts. But the nation of Israel were going on with Lebanon in view, its heights, its glory, its God-given rights, and they were going on to triumph in the name of the Lord. There was a danger at that point of repeating the sin of Esau. You remember when they came back and they refused to go into the land. They were divided with only Joshua and Caleb that had trusted the Lord to go on. This is something we have to watch carefully. This almost caused, or perhaps it did cause a split in God's people. And oh, how sad it is to look around today and to see this happening among the people of God today. when we should be united in the battle and we should be taken up with the blessings that God has given us through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and go on over Jordan and possess the wonderful things that God has given to us as we're seated in the heavenly in Christ Jesus. That's why three or four or five times In this chapter, Joshua is exhorted to be strong. And you and I as God's people, we need to be strong. We need to heed the injunction in Ephesians chapter six. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Shall we sing a hymn together? Just a short hymn that has a bearing on what we have been speaking about. Four hundred and ten. But Christ, as on we tread, the gift on Christ, God's living bread, with staff in hand and feet well shot, nothing but Christ, the Christ of God. Nothing save him in all our ways, giving the theme of endless praise. Our whole resource, along the road, nothing but Christ, the Christ of God. Four hundred and ten. In the time that God will remember, That there shall shine the way we remember. When heaven and peace have known, there is the Christ of Christ of God. Every hope, for even people, faith and love, faith and love, Where can we go? Surely, too, where can we go? Where can we go? That is the sight, the sight of God. Now we pray, we know our way. Gaming the things of wisdom came. The Holy Ghost among the good. Night and night, the sight of God. Our Father, we just pray that This might be our object in our spiritual lives as we read the word of God and study it and as we go forward for him from day to day. We pray our Father that our Lord Jesus Christ might be before our eyes as a pattern and as a living, loving, heavenly Savior whose faith we soon shall see. We ask to separate us with our blessing and grant that the few sketchy thoughts that we've had concerning this part of thy book, that the Holy Spirit might be able to take them and enlarge them and let us see the real truth that are concerned therein. So, our Father, receive our thanks for our being together tonight in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.