Gooding, David: 6 - We Will Serve the Lord

Our bearings as to where we are and at what levels we ought to begin to interpret this book. We have found so far that the book of Joshua is in two parts, reflecting historically the two phases of the original conquest. In the first phase, Joshua led the combined armies of Israel, crossing Jordan, smashed the resistance of the con- kings and their confederacies in Canaan. At that stage, no tribe of Israel was allowed to peel off and go its separate way and settle down in its particular inheritance. It was vital that they should not do so, but remain together as one united fighting machine. Now we come to the second half. The division is very clearly marked. It is not one that I have invented. At the end of chapter eleven, with all the kings put down, the text itself says, and the land had rest from war. Though it itself is quite aware that in the following chapters, many individual tribes had to fight. Indeed, you are given some illustrious examples of the way they still had to fight. But their fighting was a different kind, in that it had be- had to be done individually or in small groups, and it was a question now of mopping up or of driving out enemies that had once been defeated but now had surreptitiously crept back into the cities from which they had originally been expelled. We notice too the list in chapter twelve, that long, long summary list that sums up all the kings that were destroyed and brings to a suitable conclusion in a literary fashion the first half of the book. Notice the device by which the author himself arranges his material. Next, notice chapter thirteen, its opening remarks. Now, when Joshua was old and well stricken in years. That itself indicates a different tempo, a different, uh, era in the conquest of Canaan. You might well, of course, uh, notice that in the last three chapters, Joshua is still very prominent, as indeed he is all the way through this second half of the book. He it is that supervises the divisioning of the land and its distribution. And vigorously addresses the Israelites in the last three chapters of the book. But he is no longer the one military commander leading the united armies. The people have to go off on their own and not under his immediate generalship. The early verses of chapter 13 are God's reminder to Joshua that there remained yet much of the land to be possessed. In particular, at this junction, the Philistines receive mention. And as we know, they came up and settled the shoreline in the southwest, and from time to time extended themselves until in the epoch of Samson, and then again of Saul and David, the Philistines became the predominant enemy. They are not mentioned so much in the early stages of Joshua. They are now beginning to find more prominent mention. So there remained much of the land to be possessed, I presume, in the sense that still, in spite of the fact that the land generally had rest, there were some parts that remained completely unconquered as yet. Nonetheless, at this stage, Joshua is detailed in verse seven to divide the land for inheritance unto the nine tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh. Reason being that only nine and a half are there mentioned is, as is next explained, two and a half tribes had already been been given their inheritance east of Jordan by Moses, and now these were to be sent home, uh, to their particular inheritance on the eastern side. Joshua was not responsible, therefore, for deciding what inheritance they got, that had already been decided. He, however, under God, had to decide what inheritance should be given to what tribes of the remaining nine and a half. So then here we begin the second half of the second phase of the conquest, the going of each individual tribe to its inheritance, its allotments of its land. As the surveyors got out their measuring lines, measured out for the tribes, and then within the tribes measured out for each individual family. So that the lines, we hope, fell to them in ve- me- very pleasant places. Places. The application of these things, uh, seems moderately easy, surely. We have been suggesting that the first half, half of the book represents predominantly what our blessed Joshua has done for us. The great battles he has fought, and thus disannulled the enemy. By his cross, his death, his burial, his resurrection and ascension, he has brought us into our inheritance. We have been translated from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of God's dear Son. We are risen and seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Now, of course, some of you may still wish to say that while all that is factually true, the death of Christ, his burial, his resurrection and ascension have secured our position. Nonetheless, as we voyage further and seek each one to enter into our particular inheritance and to explore more deeply the inheritance that Christ has made available to us, there may yet remain in our practical and personal experience a crossing of the Jordan in another sense, such as Paul refers to when in Philippians three he says, I press forward, my goal to know the Lord, that I might experience the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. Being made conformable to his death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. In our emphasis on what Christ has already done by his great exploits, his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, to bring us positionally, legally, and in great deal experimentally into the great inheritance. There is that other side of the matter, where if we would go deeper ourselves, we shall need to follow Paul's example to be conformed the more to Christ's death, if by any means we may attain to the resurrection from the dead. We shall notice now that just as in the first half, there were certain objectives put before Joshua and the Israelites by Moses, and the structure of the narrative is such that it emphasizes that those objectives were achieved. In other words, the analysis and divisioning of the first half of the book into three main sections is not just a matter of convenience to get our fingers round the contents. The very structure is proclaiming a message. Here were the objectives, and the objectives were achieved. You could preach the structure, gentlemen. So, in the second half of the book, certain prominent objectives are described, some as being achieved, having been achieved, and some as, uh, put before the Israelites, but not yet achieved. Achieved. I am in the minister. Yes, a little bit. Oh, yeah, see, see, see, see, see, as far as you like. So, in the second half of the book, we hear of objectives, a series of objectives, one of which was actually achieved, the others, provision was made for their achievement. Again, I am not being arbitrary, at least I do not appear to be arbitrary, at least to myself, i- in uh, uh, selecting that first event in Shiloh as the great objective that was achieved. For you will notice how the author himself tells us the assignment of the inheritance to the different tribes was done. It was not done to all nine and a half tribes at once. The two and a half tribes were sent off to their inheritance east of Jordan. Then the inheritance was assigned to Judah. Following that, the inheritance was assigned to Joseph. Then you have mention of the fact that the tent of meeting was set up in Shiloh. In the next section, the division of the land to the remaining tribes was done somewhat differently from what it was in the divisioning of the land to Judah and Joseph. This time, s- uh, surveyors were sent out to go all around the land and survey what land there was to be parceled out among them. Joshua, in fact, rebukes them somewhat and says, gentlemen, why are you so tardy, so laid back when it comes to entering into your inheritance? Because already Judah and Joseph were in theirs, but the rest of the seven tribes had not yet entered. They were a little bit sluggish. And he has to exhort them to set about seriously the business of entering their inheritance. That meant then sending out surveyors to survey the whole land, to put down the details in a book, and then to come back and to cast lots for it before the tent of meeting in Shiloh. So that was a slightly different operation from this one. You'll notice, therefore, at the, when the inheritance had been assigned to Judah and Joseph and they had entered in, enough of the land ha- was now occupied south and north. Judah was in the south, Judah, uh, Joseph in the north. Enough of the land was occupied to achieve the first objective, the tet- setting up of the tent of meeting in Shiloh, and putting the tent there as distinct from having it in the major army camp. That major army camp would now be disbanded, would it not? And Israel would go to living in their own homes and farms. You wouldn't have one central camp anymore, but there had to be a center of the nation. Nor was it merely a matter of convenience that, uh, you should make the tent of meeting at Shiloh the center. The setting up of the tent at Shiloh, as we shall see in a moment, was, of course, one of the major objectives of this part of the process. So, as we noticed the other day, when they had set up the tent of meeting in Shiloh, then the rest of the seven tribes were given their cities, and among the objectives there achieved, or at least provided for, were these told that out of their cities they should give certain cities for cities of refuge, and secondly, they would give certain cities for the maintenance of the Levites, and thus for the maintenance of the service of God in that tent at Shiloh. No good having the tent of meeting in Shiloh if you can't staff it with Levites. And if you're going to have Levites, Levites have to live and eat Kellogg's cornflakes or whatever for breakfast. They got to be supported, and, uh, therefore, uh, you, you, you, you have to make provision from the rest of the nation's inheritance for the maintenance of the service of God in the tent of meeting at Shiloh. And finally, when the two and a half tribes are going off, Joshua addresses them, and a certain incidents boil up there, and then he has the addresses to the leaders and the second address to the leaders of the nations. And now it's not an objective achieved, but an objective aimed at and promised and hoped for. That being the structure of the narrative, it already begins, doesn't it, the structure in this second half, to indicate, uh, some of the moral and spiritual lessons that are to be learned from this second half. In our application of them, we should perhaps trouble to notice that there are various levels. We might naturally spring direct from the historical situation with Joshua and the tribes in, in Canaan, those long centuries ago. We might be inclined to, um, uh, go directly from that to our- ourselves, our personal entrance at this point in time into the inheritance that God has given us through Christ. Let's, however, spend a moment at the intermediate stage. Very real for those involved in it, and a stage which we need to understand if we're going to understand some of the New Testament epistles. You'll remember that the other day we were contemplating Abraham and God's promise to him of the seed, and how that, um, Hagar and Ishmael were put into his house until the promised seed should come. And the moment the promised seed came, Isaac was born and then weaned, then the very next paragraph in scripture tells us that Hagar and Ishmael were cast out. And then we noticed what use Paul makes of this in the epistle to the Galatians, not allegory, gentlemen, but using it as a prototype. He starts again with the actual historical situation of the covenant made with Abraham and the promise to Abraham's seed of inheritance. But now he stretches the history, so to speak, and thinks not of the interval between Abraham and Isaac's birth. He thinks of the interval between Abraham and the birth of the seed, which is our blessed Lord, at which point it's not Hagar and Ishmael that get cast out, but the law. I want now to do the same thing with, uh, another chunk of history. Here is Abram, here is promised the inheritance. Promise of inheritance. Well, Moses was used to get them out of Egypt. Um, but Moses couldn't bring them in. Eventually, it was Joshua who brought them in. That's the history. Ah, but listen to the writer to the Hebrews, chapters three and four, for a New Testament comment upon this historical effect, these historical situation. Joshua gave them rest. In a certain sense, that's true. But if Joshua had given them rest in the complete and full sense that God had intended, God would not have subsequently, that is subsequently to Joshua's time, have spoken of another rest. But in actual fact, God did speak of another rest. In Psalm ninety five in particular, centuries after Joshua had brought the people into the land, and the land and the people had rest. Centuries afterwards, God said, today, if you will hear my voice, harden not your hearts as they hardened their hearts in the day of provocation, to whom I swore, they shall not enter into my rest. They were the people in the wilderness who didn't get in under Moses. Would you say, ah, they were the bad boys who provoked in the wilderness and perished in the wilderness. They were the bad boys, but the good boys that followed got in. Yes, but so they did, got in under Joshua. But listen, listen. Centuries after Joshua, the psalmist is saying, and now, today, in his period, if you will hear his voice talking today, centuries after Joshua had given them rest, and what is the voice saying? Well, there is still a rest. God has a rest in mind that wasn't, uh, completely fulfilled in Joshua, a bigger rest. And today, if you hear his voice, don't you harden your heart like that crowd in the wilderness did, who didn't even get into the physical rest of Canaan, lest in hardening your heart, you fail to get in to the much more glorious rest that God has in mind. And you'll be aware of how the writer to the Hebrews, uh, preaches that psalm. Today, he says, at this time. You see, there remains a rest, meaning because Joshua's conquest of the land did not completely fulfill all that God intended by way of rest. Way and beyond that rest in physical canion, says the writer to the Hebrews, there remains a rest. The new, the old Testament itself prophesied a bigger rest than that, and it still remains, in spite of the fact that Joshua gave them physical rest in the land. There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God. Make sure you get into it, says the writer to the Hebrews. So we have to consider not just us, but all the people. These are people of all the generations that eventually got into the land under Joshua, but here they are still. And even after Joshua, there remains a rest. For Israel. When will they get into that rest? So we start with Abram and the promise, and we end not with Joshua, but we end with Jesus. Hm. So now let us look how that particular observation may help us to interpret, at the first and primary level, the experience of the great and famous Caleb. But first to our texts. If you look at chapter thirteen till chapter eighteen one, you will find that it is at first concerned with the two and a half tribes at some long length and tells you all the details of their inheritance. Then in chapter fourteen verse six it deals with Judah's inheritance through the rest of fourteen and fifteen. and then in sixteen, it deals with the children of Joseph, and that fills chapter sixteen and seventeen, uh and you'll come to the climax in eighteen: one. From the two main portions, Judah and Joseph, we notice that there are four anecdotes. Most of the rest of the text is given up to surveyor's details of geography and so forth, that make difficult reading for us at this stage, though they are still valuable for the historian and the archaeologist. But, um, special interest for us, naturally, are the four anecdotes that fill this part of scripture, four stories that stand out like cherries in a cake amidst all the other detail of surveyors' directions, you see. And the first big story is in chapter fourteen, verses six to fifteen, the story of Caleb. And the next anecdote is in chapter fifteen, verses thirteen to nineteen. story of Othniel and Exar. Two anecdotes then in the Judah passage. Coming over to, uh, the Josephites, there's a small anecdote in chapter seventeen, verse three and four Following. It relates to the daughters of Zelophehad. Notice in verse 4, they came near before Eleazar the priest and before Joshua the son of Nun and before the princes, saying, the Lord commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren. Therefore, according to the commandment of the Lord, he gave them an inheritance among the brethren of their father. And finally, among the Josephites, there is the anecdote at the end, chapter seventeen fourteen: And the children of Joseph spake unto Joshua, saying, Why hast thou given me but one lot and one part for an inheritance, seeing I am a great people, for as much as hitherto the Lord hath blessed me? And Joshua said unto them, If thou be a great people, get thee up to the forest and cut down for thyself there in the land of the Perizzites and the Rephaim, since the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow for thee. And the children of Joseph said, The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have chariots of iron, both they who are in Beth Shean and her towns, and they who are in the valley of Jezreel. And Joshua spake unto the house of Joseph with not a little, uh, sarcasm in his voice, saying, even to Ephraim and to Manah- even to Ephraim and to Manasseh, saying, Thou art a great people and has great power. Thou shalt not have one lot only, but the hill country shall be thine, for though it is a forest, thou shalt cut it down. So, four anecdotes then, amidst all these detailed geographical notices. Two anecdotes among the Judahites, two anecdotes among the Josephites. And when we look at them, of course, they are all people coming to Joshua or else to somebody else, asking for their inheritance, one way or another. And gentlemen, if you're a preacher at all, you've already got four sermons, I'm sure you'll see. Asking for their inheritance, asking for their inheritance. Are we allowed to do so, gentlemen? Or when we trust the cry- the Lord, is our inheritance sealed, signed, and settled, and you might as well keep quiet and not ask for anything, or because you have your assigned inheritance, and that's that, and there's nothing you can do about it. Or, or, or can we come asking for inheritance? What would you say? I can take the simple course and give a biblical answer to this effect, that you're allowed to ask for your eyes to be enlightened to see how big the inheritance is, ain't you right? And that's getting somewhere, isn't it? If you learn to see how big it is. We are allowed to ask that our eyes be open to see how big it is. But I start with, um, Caleb then, as he came to, uh, uh, Joshua, uh, to talk about his inheritance. And here is what he said. This is fourteen six: Then the children of Judah drew nigh unto Joshua in Gilgal, and Caleb the son of Jephani the Kenizzite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the Lord spake unto Moses, the man of God, concerning me and concerning thee in Kadesh Barnea. Forty years old was I when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. Nevertheless, my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt, but I fully followed the Lord, my God. Notice the phrase. And Moses spared on that day, saying, surely the land whereon thy foot hath trodden shall be an inheritance to thee and to thy children forever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord, my God, says Moses. Notice the phrase. And now behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, says Caleb to to Joshua. The Lord has kept me alive as he spake these forty and five years from the time that the Lord spake this word unto Moses while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old, as yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me. As my strength was then, even so my strength is now for war and to go out and to come in. Now therefore give me this mountain whereof the Lord spake in that day, for thou heardest in that day how the Anakim were there, and the city is great and fenced. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out as the Lord spake. And Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite unto this day, because that he wholly followed the Lord. And in the manner of scripture, if you don't get it the first time, well, you might get it the second, and if you don't get it that time, God in his mercy gives you a third time to get it. The point about Je- Caleb, anybody miss it? Hasn't got quite the story? Well, if you haven't, the point is that he wholly followed the Lord. And it has been used by many preachers to exhort us to do the same, and quite properly. But let us take a little patience with it, gentlemen, to inquire what Caleb meant when he said he had wholly followed the Lord. Says one preacher, you see, there was Caleb, uh, and once he got inside the promised land, he didn't, uh, sit down in his armchair and watch TV. He wholly followed the Lord in the land and went chasing giants off his inheritance, and so do you. Oh, but wait a minute, that's a little hasty. When Caleb says, I have wholly followed the Lord, and the historian said he was given this territory because he had wholly followed the Lord. It isn't talking about what he did after he got into the land, but what he did before he got into the land, isn't it? Yeah, he tells you himself, you'll see. Uh, Joshua says, we, you and you and I were buddies, weren't we? When we went as spies into the land, you'll see, and the rest of the miserable crowd brought back an evil report, but we brought back a good report, you'll see, and uh, uh, alas, the people sided with the majority and would not go in. And yet we were kept back along with them all those years, Joshua. You just think of it, Joshua boy, he says, forty years you and I have been in this wilderness. All because of those other lot. They went back, they refused to enter in, they wouldn't believe the gospel message. But I, as Moses recognized in those far off days, I did not apostatize. I did not refuse to go in. I did not fail to believe God's promise. I believed it with all my heart. I would have gone in there and then if I'd have been allowed. I said, those giants, well, there'll be for us for breakfast, there'll be bread for us. That's me. But there you are. Because I followed the Lord wholly at that time, instead of apostatizing like the rest did. Because I followed the Lord full time, uh, wholeheartedly. Moses said to me, all right, Caleb, when at last the nation gets in, I promise you now in the name of God that every bit of land your foot tread on, you shall have it, because you fully followed the Lord in this particular and didn't apostatize. And so when the time came, Joshua was raised up at last as the one who, as God's savior, should lead Israel into their inheritance. In went Caleb, he'd been waiting all that long, long time. In he went and was giving a whack, given a whacking great piece of inheritance because all through the waiting years he had wholly followed the Lord. And historically, gentlemen, it means, well, uh, Dorsey, if you come back here, and here were your, uh, old Israelites, do they? Run out of chalk now. Oh, here was these. Uh... And this lot refused to go in. Apostatized. Wouldn't go into the land under Moses. Caleb, and of course Joshua, he didn't apostatize, and he wholly followed the Lord, and he would have gone in, but he couldn't, so he had to wait all those forty years until Joshua came as leader, and in he went. And he becomes for us an early example of thousands of dear people in Israel over many centuries. You know, that wasn't the last apostasy in Israel, was it? When the nation as a whole refused to go to go on with God and turned back from the living God and would not go on with God's purpose and entered into the promised inheritance. Later on, there were other apostasies. The ten tribes apostatized from the living God under Ahab and Jezebel. Alas, the 10 tribes for their iniquity were eventually taken away by Assyria. In later times, as Judah itself remained alone, there were good and faithful souls like Jeremiah, but the bulk of the nation had apostatized. And yet, and yet, and yet, all through these long centuries, when the nation as a whole was often in apostasy, there were the bright stars shining, the Davids, the Hannahs, the Jeremias, the Isaias, the, uh, Daniels, the Ezras, the Nehemias, coming right up to the Mary's and the Zacharias who were waiting, waiting, waiting. They believed the prophecies. They believed one day, not merely Joshua, but the greater than Joshua would come, the Messiah would bring them and bring them at last into their promised rest. And they kept on believing. And they wholly followed the Lord, doing what Caleb did, precisely the same, doing the same in their generation. There were others, of course, who didn't. In the time of the, uh, uh, uh, Maccabees, we'll say the high priesthood themselves went over to blatant Hellenism and denied the hope of Israel and gave it up. Compromised with the idolatry of Antiochus Epiphanes. Yet were there still faithful men and women in Israel that wholly followed the Lord. And at long last, God, true to his promise, sent the Lord Jesus. And with him, there dawned now the possibility of entering the great rest of God that God had promised in the Psalm um ninety five, for instance, and in other prophecies. That historically is Caleb and all like Caleb in the centuries that followed up ti- up to the time of the Lord Jesus. And you say, that's very nice to know. That was a, a refreshing little lecture in ancient Jewish history. What's that got to do with us? Oh, gentlemen, hmm. It's got this much to do with us. T- two whole chapters at least are spent on expounding it in Hebrews three and four. But now let us, uh, take a break and consider the implications in our... We ought not to forget how they first apply to the Israelites themselves, not only in Caleb's day, but through the succeeding generations. The Ca- the people like Caleb, who wholly followed the Lord in spite of the nation's constant apostasies, but couldn't enter finally and fully into the great rest of God until the greater than Joshua came and made it possible for them to enter into rest. Then, of course, it will have a message for us today, as of course for our Israelite friends today. This is good gospel for your unconverted Jewish but sincere friends. The pattern of history, that the occupation of Israel according to Psalm itself was but a, so to speak, a prototype of something bigger. Now, before I develop that, that general remark, I want now to come to the other end of this section and look at the objective that was achieved. And the objective that was achieved when Judah plus the Calibs of this world got their inheritance and the Josephites got theirs, the objective was achieved that it was now possible to set up the tent of meeting in Shiloh. First big objective of the pacified country, the setting up of the tent of meeting. How would you have me read it, gentlemen, that now at last they had conquered enough territory for it to be safe to put the tabernacle in a place like Shiloh and not have to keep it guarded day and night, night by soldiers armed to the teeth in the military camp. They had peace, so they could put it there. What a convenience it was, you know, having to drag the old tabernacle about with you wherever you went, and particularly in time of war, where it's enough to see after yourself and look after your wives and make sure they were safe and go and fight the enemy and have to have this great burden on your hands all the time, having to cart a tabernacle about the place. Was it not a great mercy to be able to dump it and get on with real living and build your home and, uh, and take advantage of the situation, all this luscious grass, the like of which hadn't seen forever, some of them, a- a- and possibilities of extending the bungalows that the Canaanites had left, you'll see, and uh, that would take all the hours from morning till daylight, wouldn't it? I mean, and what a convenience about to dump the old tabernacle at Shiloh and get on with seeing after your family. Would you have me read it thus? Or would you want me to say that setting up the tabernacle of God, the tent of meeting, was perhaps the biggest objective in the whole campaign. Why has God saved us, gentlemen? Why has God given us an inheritance? Why will he yet give us an indescribable inheritance, and for what major purpose? So that we may enjoy the green grass of heaven? Pray tell me what the whole great climax and objective of God's ways of redemption are, as the book of the Revelation has its final voice on the subject. With redemption complete, and the great inheritance of eternity, the eternal inheritance, now opening up before our gaze. John shows us what the great objective of all history and of redeemed history is. He saw, says, I saw the great city, the New Jerusalem, come down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a voice saying, the tabernacle of God is with men. It is important that we get this objective right in our minds, isn't it? You see, Israel came a cropper, if you will allow me to diverge somewhat, Israel came a cropper over this very thing when they were still in the wilderness. They came to Sinai, so we are told in Exodus chapter nineteen, and there, as God came down in the splendor of the thunder and the flame, he had Moses explain to the people what the goal of their redemption from Egypt was. And you say, that's easy, the goal of their redemption was Canaan. No, gentlemen, never. Their destiny was to reach Canaan, certainly, but the goal of redemption was not Canaan any more than it is heaven. God himself, uh, didn't wait, this is so important, he wouldn't wait till they got to Canaan to tell them. He came down when they were a few months into the wilderness, came down on Sinai and explained what the goal of redemption was. You have seen, said he, what I have done to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to, to, to, to... to myself. And to get the wrong idea of what the goal of redemption is, is a sure way into spiritual disaster. I brought you to myself that you might be a kingdom of priests unto me, that is my objective, says God, and the offer that I now make to Israel. I brought you to myself, gentlemen. I own the whole universe, but if you will have it, you shall be a special treasure to me, though all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests. I shall be your God, and you shall be my people. That was the goal of redemption. And of they who are part of that eternal city, it is said that they shall achieve it too. They shall be priests to God and to the Lamb. They serve him day and night in his temple. So God came down to Sinai and made the proposition, and were the people interested? And the people said, yes, they were interested, and, uh, were they prepared to agree to his covenant? And they said they were. Very good, said God. Now, please, Moses, come up the mountain, and we shall begin to put the whole thing into operation. In fact, he says, we won't wait till we get to Canaan. Uh, we don't know need, actually, he said. Uh, uh, I'm not fussy as to where my tabernacle is, so we don't need to wait. I'll come down and dwell among you right now, he says, in the desert, uh, gentlemen, if you will. Well, was the goal of a redemption achieved while they were still on the pilgrimage? So make the tabernacle this way, the tabernacle this way, and that way, and the other way, says God to Moses, and uh, I will come down and dwell among them. Righto. So Moses went up to get the regulations and the diagrams and things, and while he was gone, sitting down at the bottom of the mountain, Israel began to say, oh no, this is an odd thing to do, isn't it, to be sitting here at the bottom of a mountain twizzling our thumbs? Uh, as for this Moses, where on earth has he got to? He took no hamburgers and sandwiches in his pocket when he went up. He's got no visible means of support. He's been gone I don't know how many weeks. Where's the man got to? Can't see him. Hm. You know, says one to the other, I think the whole thing's a nonsense. I think the man has disappeared. No, said the other chap, he said he would come back again. Ah, they said that last month, he said, he isn't back yet. And eventually they went to Aaron and they said, look here, Aaron, old boy, we can't sit here at the bottom of a wilderness, uh, supposedly f- uh, following a man we can't see and getting nowhere, twizzling our thumbs. We want some momentum. We want a goal to aim at. You've got to have a goal to aim at in life, haven't you, or else you go round in circles. Well, said Aaron, now what kind of a goal would you like to aim at, gentlemen? Ah, anything suggestions? Uh, I tell you what, said Aaron, what about breaking off your earrings? You'll say. And uh, he took the earrings and made a god. And he said, these are your gods, Israel. Substitute goals to aim at for the redeemed. Because they're funny things to aim at in life, aren't they? Earrings? Well, it wasn't quite earrings, gentlemen. In the ancient world, there were no banks for good or ill, and therefore what capital you had, you turned it into ornaments and carried it on your person, you see, and that's what earrings were very often were, your capital, you'll see. So they made their capital into gods. And then they said it was these gods that brought them up out of Egypt, and these were the gods that would lead them across the desert now. And God was so angry. He threatened to destroy the lot. Moses interceded, and in the end, God in his grace listened to Moses' intercession, and little by little and little by little, Moses won his case. It had to be done little by little, apparently, according to the story. And was not done without severe discipline upon the nation. But at one stage, one dramatic stage in Moses' intercession, you may remember, God said to Moses, all right, Moses, I- I- all right, I'll spare the nation like you say. And indeed, I said, Moses, that I would take you up into the land of the Hivites and Perizzites and Jebusites and give you a land flowing with milk and honey. Right? Yes, I did say it, Moses. You're perfectly true. Uh, all right, Moses, I'll do that. You can go. You can have the land. I'll give you the land, and I, in fact, I'll send an angel in front of you to conduct you to the land. You can have it. Tell the Israelites they want this land, bring grass and cows and bungalows and things. Yes, I said I'd give it. They can have it, but just tell them, Moses, I shan't be coming with them. What would you have said to that offer? Well, Lord, sorry you take that view, of course. We, we would have liked you to come with us, of course, and I mean, even now, if you care to come, we'll make room for you. But, uh, I mean, if you feel now that you'd rather not come, well, that's pity. But still, it is a nice land, and thank you very much, and we will be going up. What would you say if God came to you today, gentlemen, said, look, I promise you heaven, you can have it. I'm not hard up for heavens. You want a few golden gates? There's plenty up there. You can have them. I'll send an angel, and he'll conduct you, but I shan't be there when you get there. Would you go, gentlemen? Would you think it worth going into your inheritance if God wasn't there? There? No, I think not, from the look on your faces. You would say with Moses, were God to give you the option, oh Lord, if your presence doesn't go with us, we don't want to go. What point would there be in going? Moses wasn't content even to secure that God went with them. By trading on God's grace, at last he God got God to consent to this, that God would go among them. Therefore, the tabernacle, the whole scheme of which would had been put in peril and danger of never being completed. The tabernacle scheme was reinstated. The tabernacle was built, and God came down and not only went with them, but went among them. A tabernacle they had now brought in the land. It wasn't just a little convenience when they set it up in Shiloh. There's a sense in which it was one of the great objectives, if not the greatest objective. That in the inheritance, they would set up the tent of meeting to be the very center of the nation, of its worship and all its activities. Gentlemen, it is so, isn't it? Or you see, some of us have been saying we are already in our inheritance, and so we are. We're seated in Christ in heavenly places. And others reminded us that from another aspect, if you take a different slice across the cake of life, you'll see that we're still in the wilderness and we're journeying on. Gentlemen, we do well to keep in mind what the goal of our inheritance is, what the goal of our redemption is. It is nothing but to see at last the glorious tabernacle of God descend and become the center of our life and ministry forever. Oh God, help us not to be errands and let the people of God get away with pseudo goals in life. Instead of aiming at the true objective. And who wouldn't of us, gentlemen, if it required giving up a bit of inheritance in order to make place for the tent of meeting of the living God, who wouldn't give up every bit of inheritance he had? You will note, if you read carefully, those long details and sometimes, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, trying descriptions of the geograph- geographers and the surveyors with all their blueprints and things and geographical maps that the rest of us don't know how to read anyway. Um, if you persist in reading them, you will find one phrase constantly repeated, whether it is in the description of the, of the land that the two and a half tribes got, or the land that the, the Judahites got, or the land that the Josaites got, and it is this, the Levites got no inheritance. The Lord was their inheritance. For they had the privilege of serving God. He was their inheritance. And who wouldn't want to be a Levite then? Mm. With that, we come to our first anecdote there, and that is Master Caleb. Here is Caleb. He was not one of those who built the golden calf when Israel went astray. He was not one of those that refused entry into the Promised Land. He didn't join that apostasy. He wholly followed the Lord. And when finally and at length, Joshua was raised up as the captain of salvation, he entered in. And we're taking him now as a prototype of many successive generations in Israel, the godly in Israel. They didn't join in the recurrent apostasies that marred Israel's history all down the centuries, but look forward to the time and cried, O Lord, how long and how long and how long are you going to leave Israel in her apostasies, in her dispersions, in her exiles? How long, O Lord? They looked forward to the day when the Messiah should come and lead Israel into her great inheritance. And at last, the blessed Messiah came, Jesus Christ our Lord. But whereas, uh, uh, uh, Caleb followed the Lord fully and was ready to enter in, and entering in proved himself vigorous then to explore all the inheritance in spite of the difficulties that lay in the way. Let us think now what the writer to the Hebrews says in chapters three and four. He is talking to people they are, who are Hebrews, and they have professed to believe in the Lord Jesus. The writer is worried about them, isn't he? As he confesses towards the end of the epistle, once, you might think a small thing has got him worried. These people who were once keen, had endured a lot of persecution since they trusted the Savior, and used to come out regularly to the meetings of the church, are absenting themselves and forsaking the assembling of themselves together. And you know, it can be a very ominous symptom when people who once were regular and keen start dropping off from assembling themselves together. And in this situation, it's particularly ominous because if they weren't coming to the Christian church, where were they going? And the horrible thought strikes the writer, they're not going back to Judaism, are they? You say, well, no, no, my good man, no, look, they've trusted the Savior, they say that they said they have trusted the Savior and they've been baptized in the name of Jesus, and they've endured persecution, and they've set out on the Christian pilgrimage. Surely they're genuine. Yes, says the writer, well, in my heart of hearts, I think they are, actually. Or as now he addresses them, he says, I am persuaded better things of you, gentlemen, and things that accompany salvation, though I am speaking as if I were not a hundred percent convinced about you. In my heart of hearts, I think it's okay, but I'm worried, and I'm speaking to you now because I'm not taking any chances. I- I- I'm speaking as though I were not a hundred percent persuaded about you. Well, why isn't he? Well, he says, you know, gentlemen, you know what happened to your ancestors in the wilderness, don't you? They were covered with the blood of the Lamb. They came out, they were baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They crossed the desert, they ate of the food of angels, they had the living God among them. They came to the border of the land. And they refused to go in. All except Caleb and a few, of course. He, Huli, followed the Lord. He would have gone in the day after tomorrow. He couldn't wait. These others didn't. What was the significance of their refusal to go in? It's an anticlimax, to say the least, wasn't it? Here they'd been journeying across the wilderness, staff in hand, all these, uh, months, you see, in hope of this promised land, and and and when they got to the land, put the noses inside it, had to look at what it was, and they said, oh no, Moses, oh Moses, no. Nah, Moses, if we'd have known the promised land was going to turn out like this, we wouldn't have come. And they proposed making another captain and going back to Egypt. Ominous, wasn't it? What did it show? Well, the Holy Spirit is our commentator. He says, we see, this is Hebrews chapter three, in the end of the chapter, we see they could not enter in for twin reasons, through unbelief and through disobedience. Unbelief in what? Unbelief in the gospel. As the writer explains in chapter four, we have had the gospel preached to us, as they also had the gospel preached to them. But the word of God didn't profit them, the gospel preached to them didn't profit them, not being mixed with faith. They didn't believe. They didn't believe the gospel. The Holy Spirit is telling you. I would you say, wasn't it also their disobedience? Yes, it was. But the word that is used for disobedience at that part of a juncture, uh, uh, and indeed throughout the whole of the New Testament, apatheia is the noun, apatheo is the verb, apathes is the adjective. It is used many times in the New Testament. It is never used, not on one solitary occasion, for the disobedience of genuine believers. The disobedience it indicates is the disobedience of refusing to believe the gospel. As you will see, for instance, in, uh, various occasions in Acts, when Paul had preached the gospel and reasoned with the Jews in the synagogues, and many believed the gospel. But those, says Luke, who were disobedient, it means disobeyed the gospel. The Holy Spirit's commentary upon those who didn't get in were that they would not believe, did not believe. They disobeyed the gospel. I'm just a little bit nervous about you, says the writer to the friends he's writing to, lest there being left a promise of entering into his rest, some of you are, might seem to come short of it. You'll see rest is now available in Jesus that was never available in Joshua. Now is the time to enter in. Now is the time for all true men, the calebs of this world, to say, thank the Lord, the great Joshua has come at last, and in we go. I'm worried about some of you. Some of you seem to be faltering as though you didn't want to go in and were coming short of this rest. Let us fear, therefore, lest the promise being left, some should enter in, any of us should be deceived by the hardening of sin and fail to enter in. Shall we say that we and our fellows, friends, are altogether beyond needing the exhortation? If we are genuine people, must we not begin to exhibit in our lifestyle the characteristics of Caleb? Wholly following the Lord one hundred percent in spite of our weaknesses to enter in to the great scheme of salvation. You'll see, gentlemen, you'll say, but how could, how could those ancient Israelites not have been believers? They were, they came out of Egypt. So they did, but read the psalmist about their history. They believed, managed to believe about one day in the whole forty years. You'll see. And while they accepted deliverance from Egypt, they refused entry into the Promised Land. Didn't suit their taste. But can you do that? Can you? Is God's salvation in two bits? Do you suppose Moses came around the pyramids and preached the gospel to the Israelites in this fashion? Now look here, gentlemen, I've got a gospel for you. The main thing is, the most important thing is to get out of Egypt and get your freedom. These old lashes on the back from the taskmasters are rather unpleasant. So the main thing is get out of Egypt. Now that's all we need to settle now. Line up, sign up. Would you like to sign up to get out of Egypt? Once we get out of Egypt, then I- I- I shall, I have, in fact, a deluxe edition of this gospel to- to offer. It is for those who are specially keen. It's a sort of a- a- a senior course, you see. Now, you don't have to take that, of course, if you're not interested. A lot of people aren't interested. But that's beside the point. I won't mention that now. Um, the main thing is to get out of Egypt, you'll see. There never was such a gospel preached. Not by Moses, at any rate. And gentlemen, there is no such gospel today either. There is no gospel that says, now look, the, the, the, the main thing is to get out of the world, that is to get out of the power of the devil. His lashes on your back are uncomfortable, I know. So the main thing is to escape hell. Now, get that settled. Now, when you've got that settled, I can come along and offer you there is a deluxe course of Christianity. It's for keen people. And if you would like to go on the deluxe course, the graduate course in Christianity, it will be open to you to take it. Of course, you don't have to take it. There is no such gospel, gentlemen. The gospel is deliverance out of Egypt and entry into the inheritance. And you don't have one without the other. And you know, there were ominous signs along the wilderness, weren't there? They, while they were coming along the wilderness, they professed that they were going to this promised land and were interested in it. But the promised land, you know, was a land, so they were told, flowing with milk and honey. The honey was one of the attractions of that, uh, that land. Well, along the road, God in his mercy, to get them used to it, I suppose, and encourage them, he fed them daily with a dose of honey from heaven. For the manna, says the historian, tasted like honey. Well, they ate this honey for a week or two, month or two, and then in the end they came to Moses and they said, look here, Moses, we got to tell you something. You'll have to change this diet, this, this honey stuff, this manna is impossible. That's absolutely boring, Moses, you'll see. As for this light honey, you know, our soul loathes this light food. Change our diet, do. I say, well, that was ominous, wasn't it? Because if they couldn't put up with three or four months of honey in the wilderness, what would they do with the land flowing with it? Not to be too down to earth, gentlemen, here is God's conversation. If you find it a bore now, you'd be well advised not to go to heaven. Because if God's conversation is a bore now, what on earth would you do with an eternity full of it? Oh, my dear friends, I don't want to make folks' lives a bore, of course not. I don't believe God is a bore. God doesn't demand that everybody be a theologian, but every believer ought to be delighted to listen to his voice say, sweeter thy words than the honeycomb. And if folks who profess to be Christians find God's word a bore, then that is an omen symptom. Let's remind them that heaven is going to be an eternity of God's word, God's conversation, God's delightful conversation. And therefore, we who have joined the great brigade after Jesus our Lord came and join our Jewish brethren that were expecting him all those long centuries and entered in at his coming. We too are required to show ourselves still, are we not, as Calebs who wholly follow the Lord. In spite of our weakness and failures, determined to carry on seeking the Lord and exploring the great rest as much of it as is available to us, the great inheritance that is available to us now, the earnest of the inheritance that God has given us, and pushing on in great believing hope for the day that will dawn when we shall bodily enter into the very rest of Of God. God. Entering into our inheritance now is not an option, gentlemen. Serious uninterest in entering into our inheritance now raises the most serious questions as to whether we are really believers. But all of us can get wobbly at times, can't we? And, uh, it's a comfort to hear the writer to the Hebrews say, though he has warned his friends very solemnly. I am persuaded, he says, better things of you and things that accompany salvation. I think there has been in your life the evidence that you are genuine believers, saved people, but I'm taking no risks. I'm speaking as if I were not sure. That is a very serious lesson. As far as I see, it comes directly out of the history book of Joshua, interpreted to us by the Holy Spirit in the epistle to the Hebrews. So let's cut our study there.