Changing Times...Unchanging God

Bible, your Old Testament, which we're scripture reading today, which is found in the book of Joshua.

Joshua chapter one, verse eight.

Joshua one verse eight.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.

You shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.

Here ends the reading of God's word.

To have Mac with us, our very own Jen Hoplin.

So would you please give a warm welcome to Jen?

Am I on?

I guess I am.

I would hate to try to add anything to that Mother's Day video, so I won't, except to say happy Mother's Day, and especially to Lisa.

And I'm wondering what's for supper tonight.

There is a well-worn adage that says something to the effect that the only thing that we can count on is change.

And to a great extent, that is true.

Our lives are full of change, and it's something that we simply must deal with in today's world.

I, for one, am frustrated with technology.

This winter I thought I'd have a little spare time and learn to reprogram or learn to program our VCR.

Found out we haven't had one for five years.

That's how much TV I watch.

But sometimes we object to change, sometimes we accommodate it, sometimes we simply have to stand up against it.

But there are things we can count on as well, constants in life.

The sun coming up, cold North Dakota winters.

Things that we can count on.

And today we're going to go back in the Old Testament and look at some things that were constants that we see in a sequence of events that could instruct both us as individual believers and us as a church today while we are in the midst of change.

I'm sure that most of you are pretty familiar with the transition of leadership from Moses to Joshua as the Israelite nation moved from Egypt to the land promised to them.

Along the way, Joshua was something of a right-hand man for Moses.

And he, through those many years, learned much about God, about himself, about leadership.

I think it's fair to say that Joshua was in some senses a born leader.

But there are also senses in which he was a leader that was made.

You don't spend 40 years, I wouldn't imagine, with a man like Moses without learning a few things.

So Joshua was well equipped, well prepared, he had talent and ability, but he also had some things in his favor that were constants.

I'd like to talk to you about four of them this morning.

He had the written word, he had the power of God, he had a supernatural leader, and he had a continuing covenant promise.

And each of these, and taken together, gave Joshua a tremendous amount of confidence and courage for the rest of his life.

Let's look first at the notion of the constant being the written book.

A little background first.

If you go back into Exodus to chapter 17, you'd find that Joshua was the captain of the Israelite army as they did battle against the Amalekites.

This was that famous battle where so long as Moses kept his arms aloft, Israel prevailed.

But when they sank due to weariness, Israel did not.

Eventually, Israel won that battle, but it was interesting what happened afterwards.

God commanded Moses to tell the story of that battle and write it in the book.

And later in Deuteronomy chapter 33 or 31 and in Numbers 33, we also see other occasions where God commanded Moses to continue these writings.

Deuteronomy 33 · chapter mention

So what we see is that Moses not only spoke the words of God to the people, he also recorded them.

There was something that was written, it had content, and it was true.

And not only that, but God commanded that this written book was not to be hid away from the people, but rather it was to be read to them on a regular basis, to the young, to the old, even to the strangers among them, so that they would learn to do all that was written in the law of Moses.

This book, in fact, became central to the nation of Israel.

And when Moses himself died, the Pentateuch was written, complete, the first five books of the Old Testament, and he commanded that the people put that book in a sacred place.

They were to put it in the side of the Ark of the Covenant so that it would be preserved and it could be read regularly to the people.

So we come to Joshua chapter 1.

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

The nation is about to cross over the Jordan into the land long before promised to them.

And I'm going to read the first eight verses.

We've read verse 8 already.

I'm going to read all eight.

Now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead.

Now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel.

Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory.

No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you, I will not fail you or forsake you.

Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.

Only be strong and very courageous.

Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

So Joshua is taking over his leader.

Moses has departed.

But notice that as the nation of Israel stood on the brink of finally entering this land, the emphasis of the Lord was on the book.

Yes, there would be times when the Israelites and Joshua would be led in special ways by God, just as they had been with Moses.

But Joshua's primary guide for faith and practice was to be the written book.

In fact, he was to function much as a believing Christian should today.

Sure, there are times when God may lead in other ways, but always within the propositional commands and statements of Scripture.

It's worth noting that there were three things in verse 8 that God emphasized.

First of all, he said that this book of the law was not to depart from Joshua's mouth.

Kind of a strange way of saying it, but what he was saying was, talk about it.

It should be forever on your lips.

Second, Joshua was to meditate on it.

He was to think on it, ponder it, understand it.

Why?

Well, because this written book contained truth and content.

It was rational and true.

Third, he was to practice the commands in the book.

This book was not only rational and true, but it also was practical.

Practical in the sense that obedience to it would give the greatest chance of living a successful life, but also practical because it expressed the moral will of God and revealed his righteous character.

If you study Joshua, you know that he lived his life out in obedience to the book.

More than anything else, the success that Joshua had was due to his heeding God's admonition regarding the book.

And when Joshua himself was about to die at the end of the book, he tells the people the same thing that Moses told him.

Make sure you do this law of Moses, don't turn from it to the right or to the left.

You know, Joshua's attitude about this written book says a whole lot about how the canon of Scripture grew and was accepted.

You see, Joshua knew Moses, the human writer of the book.

He had seen Moses strike the rock when he was supposed to speak to it.

He knew that Moses wasn't perfect.

But he also had been there and he knew from experience exactly what God had commanded that Moses write.

He had been on the mountain, he was in the battle, he stood outside the tent of meeting.

And I'm sure there were times that aren't recorded in Scripture where Joshua overheard things between Moses and God, and he knew that what was in that book was true.

And immediately upon Moses' death, this book became more than just the writings of Moses.

It was accepted as the very written word of God.

It had authority immediately.

And I think this is exceedingly important for us to understand because it helps us understand the book of Joshua itself as a bridge between Moses' writings and the rest of Scripture.

You know, when Moses was alive, the nation had both Moses and the written book to guide them.

And then Moses died.

But the next morning, the nation of Israel was not left in a vacuum.

Why?

Because they had the written book.

They had the very words of God to guide them.

There was no fracture in their ultimate authority because they had the written book.

They had an objective guide to make judgments.

They didn't have to rely on their emotions or the prevailing attitudes of the culture of the day.

Think about that today.

They had the written book, they had a standard for faith and practice.

So even though times were changing, and that's how we started this talk today, times were changing.

Joshua had a constant.

He had the written book, the written word of God.

Let's move on to the second constant, the power of God.

If you can picture the map, Israel moved then up the east side of the Jordan, and three days later God gave them a command.

In Joshua chapter 3, I'm going to start with verse 7.

Joshua 3 · chapter mention

We read this.

You shall, moreover, command the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant, saying, When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.

Then Joshua said to the sons of Israel, Come here and hear the words of the Lord your God.

And Joshua said, By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will assuredly dispossess you before the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Hivite, the Pyrrhite, the Gergesite, the Amorite, and the Jebusite.

It's a bad time to have sight for a last name.

Behold, the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and all the earth is crossing ahead of you into the Jordan.

And he goes on to describe what should happen.

The priests were carrying the Ark of the Covenant.

They were to enter the Jordan River and stop.

And the waters would pile up in a heap to their right.

Several miles away, the Jordan would be stopped in its flow.

The nation of Israel was to cross the Jordan, and when they had, the priests were to lift that ark again, carry it out of the riverbed, and the waters would flow back within their banks.

And it happened just as God said.

The nation crossed the riverbed on dry ground.

And you know, the scriptures tell us exactly why God did what he did.

He did a tremendous, spectacular thing that day.

But if you look at chapter 4, verse 14, we read that on that day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel, so that they revered him just as they had revered Moses all the days of his life.

The same sign that God had used to confirm Moses when they crossed the Red Sea, piling up that water.

God repeated in a similar fashion as he confirmed Joshua as the leader of the people here.

And as he said in chapter 3, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

You know, I think that we are often guilty of relegating these accounts, these stories, to the realm of children's Sunday school stories and then just leaving them there.

Oh, sure, if we are pressed, I would say, sure, I believe that's true.

Yeah, that really happened.

But we failed to take the time to understand the significance of some of these events.

And when I was preparing this, is Kate Vanderpass here?

Good.

When I was a six-year-old back in Mayville in the basement of a church that no longer stands, we had a we had Sunday school.

We had a big class.

We had five kids in a class.

That was a big class.

Anyone remember flannel boards?

Okay.

They never, ours never worked.

And we had people cutting out stars of Bethlehem and mangers and baby Jesus and wise men and riverbeds and Joshua and Arks of Covenants and whatever.

And Mrs.

Lee would dutifully put them on the flannel board, and she'd turn around and they would fall off, and she'd have to pick them up again and put them on the flannel board.

On and on it went, right?

Well, we had we had a lesson on heaven and hell one time.

And there were characters on the flannel board, and the characters that were going to heaven got taped on the wall above the flannel board, and the ones that weren't were allowed to fall to the floor into hell.

Wasn't long after that that we had a lesson on Joshua crossing the Jordan.

And here we are again.

We got the Ark of the Covenant and we got the river, and the river always curled up and it wouldn't stay, right?

So then you got you got the people and you got Joshua.

And then the Ark of the Covenant fell fell into hell.

And I looked at Rick, and his eyes were about as big as saucers like mine.

We were pretty impressionable.

And then Joanne had to go to the bathroom, and by the time she came back, the only thing that was in not in hell yet was Joshua, and he was hanging by the f by his toenails.

Well, I left Sunday school that day wondering.

By the way, Myron, who was smarter than Rick and I combined, said, it's just a flannel board.

So we took Myron for his word for the moment.

But I left Sunday school that day wondering if the ark was still burning, but sure that Mrs.

Lee had a huge run in her nylons.

And that's where we left it, okay?

Now are we now?

If Kay was here, she would tell you that part of that was true.

Some of it was bad.

But here's my point.

This is true.

Do we take it seriously?

Try to put yourself in the shoes of a 45-year-old walking across that dry riverbed and seeing water piled up over there.

Would anything come to your mind?

Yeah.

40 years ago, you had probably grabbed your father's hand as you raced across the dry bed of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in hot pursuit, right?

Holy cow.

Can you imagine?

And for God to give the Israelites this similar sign to overtly show his power must have filled them with wonder and with awe, but also with confidence and certainty.

Joshua had witnessed the power of God before.

He was on the mountain, he was in the battle.

He had seen the fiery pillar and the cloud.

What Joshua took away from that, I'm going to guess with a good deal of certainty, was that he knew that the power of God was still there.

It was a constant that he could depend on.

Turn to Joshua 5.

Let's look at a third, very related constant.

Start in verse 13.

Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went to him and said, Are you for us or for our adversaries?

And he said, No, rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and bowed down and said to him, What is my Lord to say to his servant?

And the captain of the Lord's host said to Joshua, Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.

By the time Joshua had successfully led the Israelites across the Jordan, they were about to engage in battles, and he's opposite Jericho, and suddenly he has this magnificent encounter.

A man stands across from him with a sword drawn, and upon Joshua's query, he says, No, this time I'm here as captain of the host of the Lord.

Clearly, the implication for Joshua was that you've seen me before.

I've been there before.

You've known me before, but now I'm coming in a different capacity, ready to do battle.

Now I'd like again to note the parallels here.

When Moses stood before the burning bush and was confronted by the great I am, that was Christ also.

He was told to take off his shoes.

He was on holy ground.

Now Joshua is told to remove his sandals because he's doing the same.

Can you imagine what would have coursed through Joshua's being when he heard that?

Joshua had read the book, and I would guess that after 40 years in the wilderness with Moses, he might have heard the story about the burning bush a few times.

He would have known immediately that he was standing before the same person.

Just like that.

The same person that had appeared to Abraham, the same person that had appeared to Moses, standing right in front of Joshua, face to face.

What was God up to?

I wouldn't venture to say we know everything, but I bet it was at least this.

The Lord was saying, Joshua, I'm still here.

I'm still Lord.

You don't need to look for another leader.

I'm all you need.

I'm the same Lord, and this time I'm here to help you fight.

Standing in front of Joshua was a person.

And let me emphasize a person.

A supernatural leader from whom the power we just discussed came.

And so, in a few days, when this person would say, I have given Jericho into your hand, Joshua could turn to the people and say, Shout, for the Lord has given you the city.

And he would do so without fear.

He would do so with full confidence because this.

Person, this supernatural leader was there, he was with him, and Joshua knew it.

A fourth constant: the continuing covenant promise.

We read in the first chapter the words, Be strong and of good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear to unto their fathers to give them.

God had made a promise, and now it was to be fulfilled.

Of course, this land was part of God's promise to Abraham, which was given to Abraham in Genesis 12 when he still lived way back in the Chaldees.

And today isn't the day to go into that promise, except to say that there was a spiritual side and a national side.

We should be very thankful for the spiritual side because God, by his grace, has enabled us through faith in Abraham's descendant, Jesus Christ, to be justified.

Pretty important.

But there was a national side too.

And God had promised that a great nation would come from Abraham and that a land would be theirs.

We know that God repeated that promise on many occasions to Abraham, to his son Isaac, to his son Jacob, who became Israel, and Israel's son Joseph, in fact, when he was in Egypt, took an oath with the nation that they would carry his bones back to the land.

He was that sure.

Hundreds of years passed.

Finally, the Exodus, then the constitution of the nation at the Mount Sinai.

And two months later, God says, I'm sick of the Amorites, their wickedness.

Go and take the land.

Well, of course, the spies went in, most of them came back and said, We can't do it.

So 38 more years in the wilderness.

And now finally they're standing on the verge of entering the land and having the promise fulfilled.

I don't repeat that history to fill time.

Goodness knows I'm running out of it.

But rather to show that the promise had been given and repeated across many years and across generations.

And now finally, after all this time, for an individual Israelite to be participating in that fulfillment must have been awesome.

It must have been tremendously meaningful.

And surely the one who understood that better than anyone would have been Joshua, the new leader.

He now understood that in addition to the written book and the power of God and the supernatural leader, he also had a promise that was being fulfilled.

God was trustworthy.

So what do we have?

Well, we've got a man, Joshua, with the daunting task ahead of him.

He's a proven leader.

Man.

Sure, he was talented.

He was well equipped.

But he also had other things in his favor.

He had these constants, the written book filled with content and truth.

The power of God still there, still available.

The personal, supernatural leader, still with him, still with the people.

And now a long-standing promise, all these filling him with confidence and courage.

So the question, I suppose, is so what?

Are we just, is this Jewish history 101, or does this matter?

Well, it does matter.

It matters a lot.

Clearly, we are not experiencing the same kind of change in our lives or in this church as Joshua was confronting.

We're probably not going to have to lead a nation across a river, and I doubt that we're going to have to fight physically to retain Grand Forks.

But we've got our own things to do.

First, the written book.

We need these constants too.

First, the written book.

Through history, God continued to guide men to write his word.

We now have a completed scripture.

We know it's true.

Listen to Gary Jones' sermon from a few weeks ago sometime for a great introduction as to why we know the scripture is true.

And if you look internally in the scripture, you can look at the Apostle Paul.

He says in 1 Corinthians 14 that anyone who's even thinking they're spiritual should acknowledge that the things he wrote were the commands of God.

Or take Peter in his second letter.

He talks about how he was on the mountain with Moses and Elijah and Christ.

And he heard the voice from heaven.

And basically he's saying, look, I was there, I got to do that.

You're not going to get to do that, but you know what, readers?

We've got something even greater in common.

And he goes on to talk about the sure word of prophecy, not written by the will of men, but written as God moved holy men to write and to speak.

He said, That's even better.

The sure word of God.

And by the way, in the third chapter of that letter, he also includes Paul as being bona fiedly in this continuum of Scripture in the writings of Paul.

Or you can go to John in the Revelation where he says that we are to observe what he has written and dare not add to it or subtract from it.

Here's the point.

God continued to direct its writing.

It is to be our guide for faith and practice, just as it was for Joshua.

What about the second constant, the power of God?

Is that real today?

Think with me.

In Matthew 28, when Jesus is giving what we call the Great Commission, he said, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.

He's talking about the same power that he exhibited when he appeared before Moses, when he appeared before Joshua, when the Red Sea was parted and the Jordan River was stood up in a heap.

It's the same power.

And earlier, he had talked about when the Holy Spirit came that we would be given that power.

Power to be his witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth.

It flows on constantly.

And until Jesus Christ comes again, the Church of God has that power.

What about the supernatural leader?

Is he with us today?

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul discusses the time when Moses struck the rock, and listen carefully to what he says.

He says, Our fathers drank out of that spiritual rock, who was, wait a minute, not that was, which was who was.

Let me read it again.

Our fathers drank out of that spiritual rock, who was in the wilderness, and that rock was Christ.

The same person who was in the wilderness, the person who stood before Joshua with a sword drawn, is the same person we know as the incarnate Jesus Christ.

And what did Jesus say?

He said, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.

The one who is with Moses at the rock and with Joshua just before the campaign against Jericho has promised, until I come again, I will be with you.

And what about the continuing promise?

Well, in Romans 11, Paul says that the gifts of God are without repentance.

In other words, God doesn't go back on his word.

The promise is still effective.

God continues to bless people from all nations by grace who express faith in Jesus Christ, the descendant of Abraham.

And by the way, God isn't done with the Jews yet either.

There will come a time when he will gather them together in their land and all Israel will be saved.

How do I know?

It's in the book.

Right?

So, what's the point of all this this morning?

Well, simply this: the more and better we understand these things, the more we will understand the unity and the continuity of this book.

And also, and perhaps just as importantly, the better prepared, the better equipped, and certainly the more confident and courageous we can be through our lives, especially in times of change.

We've got the same constants.

We have the written book.

It's our guide for faith and practice.

It's our manual as to how to live our lives, our authority to make judgments instead of pandering to the culture of the day.

We have the same power of God at our disposal.

God may or may not choose to exhibit his power in dramatic fashion, like he did occasionally with Joshua and Moses, but you know what?

That's his business.

And we'd best not be trying to put God in boxes of our own making.

His power is here today.

It's with us.

We have the same supernatural leader, the one who is at the burning bush, the one who stood with Joshua, none other than the pre-incarnate Christ.

He was there, he is here, whether or not he chooses to exhibit himself or show himself in dramatic ways or simply through the small, quiet promptings of the Holy Spirit.

And we have the same promise.

As I mentioned, for all of us who are believers, we stand justified before God because he still blesses people from all nations by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the descendant of Abraham.

And who knows, maybe in our lifetime we'll see God begin to bring Israel back to himself.

Who knows?

Life is constantly changing for all of us as individuals and as a church.

But we do have our own tasks ahead of us.

Are we prepared?

Are we equipped?

Will we be strong and courageous?

The answer, obviously, is we can be and we should be because we have these constants.

Will tomorrow be easy?

I don't know.

Might be, might not be.

That wasn't part of the promise.

But what was promised by our unchanging God is that these constants would be there too, and that we ought to be able to move ahead, move forward with Him, as Joshua did, strong and courageous, resolved to be faithful, obedient children of God.

Let's pray.