Joshua: Cultivating a Soft Heart

Well, happy Father's Day.

So last week or two weeks ago, Christy and I were tucking in one of my particular daughters.

Not won't mention which one it was, but a particular one.

And we were there and we were snuggled in, and uh Christy was on one side, and I was on the other side.

And uh this particular little daughter, she had her hands up on my face.

You know, your children inspect every area of your face when they're little, and uh she was inspecting my face thoroughly.

She had her fingers running across my eyebrows, and it's then, you know, eight inches apart, this really sweet moment that we're having together, and she looks up to me and she, you know, just like a you know, like a face like that.

And you know, why why are your eyebrows so rough?

You know, like oh, like they're so rough, like like devastatingly like a mistake upon my face.

And then Christy just continued this uh theme and pointed out the one rogue eyebrow I have that grows much longer than all the other ones.

Uh so thank you.

Happy Father's Day to me, thank you for that.

Great humility lesson to show up into your family.

That's where we get our humility lessons.

So, dads, you know this, right?

You've had that moment probably where your kid just kind of delivers that uh humility to you, uh, or your wife, or sweet someone, or a friend, or your boss.

And it's that thing, right?

Like that truth that's laid upon you, and uh you don't know if you were quite ready for it, but when it hits you, you better have some thick skin.

Right?

That's what we say in those moments.

You need to have some thick skin to handle that.

We better have thick skin.

So, what my mentor always says over and over and over again, he'll say, thick skin, soft heart, thick skin, soft heart, thick skin, soft heart.

So I was thinking about that this week and I started to think about the differences between uh, say, an orange and a peach.

So, like an orange, uh thick skin, soft inside, right?

Like I mean, the outside's pretty robust and thick and kind of hard to break into to the point that we kind of don't love to kind of peel them because it's a little frustrating.

So it's really thick skin.

Now peach is really totally different, especially a ripe peach, right?

Like a ripe peach is quite fragile.

Like if you drop it, I mean, usually this one's pretty ripe, and yep, I got a little bruise there, we can start to see it poking out, and like just literally, you could just dig your finger in and just like a little poke, and all of a sudden you can feel how hard the inside is.

So fragile skin, hard heart.

And that's in comparison to thick skin, soft heart, which is really what we want.

We want to be like this, so that if we take a hit in life, uh we can take it, we can absorb it, we're secure enough.

Yet our heart, the inside of us, our heart is soft, vulnerable, loving, accessible for people.

And so that's the question that we enter our story with this morning.

The question is: do I have a thick skin and a soft heart?

Or do I have fragile skin and a hard heart?

So our story is Joshua 11.

So we, if you remember a few months ago, we started Joshua, we broke some uh throughout the coronavirus season, and then coming back into the building kind of prepare us for the fact that some of us would be online, some of us would be here, and all the differences of that we kind of broke for a few weeks.

But we're back in Joshua to finish Joshua the next two weeks.

In Joshua 11, if you remember where we've been, Joshua is the story of these people of Israel that came out of Egypt out of slavery.

They wander around the desert for 40 years, and then finally Joshua becomes the leader of these people, leads them over the Jordan River, and they start winning battle after battle to take back their land, Canaan, the promised land, which is the symbol, the symbol of God's promise and presence and nourishment for them.

And so then we pick up and we get these interesting verses at the end of Joshua 11, and it is after a chapter, really two chapters of just battle after battle, winning, winning, winning, winning.

And then we get Joshua 11, verse 18.

Joshua 11:18

Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.

There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the the Havites and the inhabitants of Gibeon.

They took them all in battle, for it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses.

So we're going to talk about the heart, and then we're going to talk about this idea of hardening of the heart.

So the word heart is from the Hebrew word Lab, which means the inner man.

It's the entirety of our the inner self of who we are.

So it's our it's our mind, it's our will, it's our emotion, it's our understanding, it's the inner core of ourselves.

See, the Hebrews they didn't have modern science.

So, but what they did know is they did know that the heart, the heart and the blood were connected.

The heart controlled the blood, and blood was life.

So when they use the word heart, they're saying, as clearly as they're saying, the very control center of your being.

So that's what heart means.

And then verse 20 says, the Lord hardened their hearts.

Which raises a few questions, right?

I mean, read that and go, oh, what you know, what is this?

Maybe I can just ignore it for a while, or you know, eventually we got to deal with this.

Was this against their will, these people?

Like, did they want to have peace with Israel, peace with God?

Was this against their will?

Did God cause them to not be able to come to peace with him?

And then if that's true, could that be true with me?

Or could that be true with, say, one of your children?

Or maybe a friend of yours?

Well, uh, God is sovereign and just, he can do as he chooses.

I believe that, and I believe there's more.

Okay, so I'm not gonna say we've got to pick two sides here, we don't have to make this like a dualistic notion, but I do believe God is sovereign and just, he can do as he chooses in his world, and I believe there's more.

This is what I mean by that.

That word hardened in the Hebrew is the word kazakh, which means to strengthen.

So these people, look in the context of the story, these people, they made no plea for God's mercy, they made no plea for God's grace, no confession of need, no desire for a relationship with this Yahweh God, no desired relationship to make peace with Israel.

None of that ever happened.

They wanted to do it their way, and then God let them.

See, God strengthened the already intent in their heart.

This is what the hardening of their hearts means in this context: strengthening that which is already there.

So this is point number one, and it's a tough point for us to swallow, but it is point number one.

God may strengthen the darkened resolve already in the human heart.

And this pops up several places in scripture.

It's here, it's in Romans, it's in Hebrews, we see it pop up.

And at the same time, we have to remember these sort of like surprise pop-ups in scripture where you read them and you go, oh, like how does that fit in?

And we're trying to wrestle that.

It's a mystery, and it fits in, we have to fit it into the arc of the scriptures.

Meaning we embrace them in mystery, certainly, while we rest in the arc of the biblical story.

And that is a just and sovereign God who can do as he chooses, and what he chose to do was incarnate himself in Jesus.

And the finished work of Christ allows us to know him as sovereign and just and as a heavenly father, where we are welcomed and we are accepted.

And that's point number two.

By God's grace, we are rescued to live with him and not independent from him.

When I was a boy, my family had a routine.

So we would have dinner, and after dinner, my sister and I, we'd go upstairs, we'd change into pajamas, we'd come back downstairs, and we get each get a bowl of ice cream.

Every single night we had a full bowl of ice cream.

And I always had vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup on top, and I'd let it melt just a little bit, and you swirl it up, and so it's all like a chocolatey mix, kind of like a milkshake.

And then we'd watch a TV show, you know, we'd probably tune into some Family Ties.

I don't know if there's any Family Ties fans.

That was big for us back in the day.

So we're watching Family Ties, we're eating that ice cream, and then I would like to finish my ice cream about halfway through that show because I like to get up on the couch with a blanket, cuddle up, and then at the end of the show, I love to fake like I was asleep.

Did y'all notice?

And then, because then your dad, because I loved it.

My dad would come and he'd pick me up.

Seven, eight years old, he'd pick me up, carried me upstairs to put me to bed.

And I love that.

Now, a few weeks ago, I told you, if you remember the story where I hit my dad in the face with a tennis ball, if you remember that, same dad, okay?

That's an important part of this.

Same dad.

That was dad wrath, that was dad justice.

We know that dad also.

But our hearts desire that tender embrace of a father, of an Abba Father.

And that's what the scriptures give us.

We have a just and sovereign Yahweh.

And the biblical story takes us through the finish work of Christ to where Jesus and the New Testament writers are teaching us the dominant metaphor is a father, a heavenly father.

Jesus' most famous parable, at least to me, it's probably the most famous, right?

The prodigal son, right?

Where the father is waiting to accept and welcome and pour lavish love on that rebellious, hardened-hearted son.

And this is how God's promise and presence to us changes everything because it's not based in your performance, it's based in his love for you.

Verse 21 and 22 of this Joshua story.

And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Dabir, from Anab, and from the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel.

Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities.

There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel.

Only in Gaza and Gath and in Ashdod did some remain.

So point number three is this: by God's promise and presence we can let go of needless fears.

By God's promise and presence, we can let go of needless fears.

We could read right over verse 21 in this reference to Anakim, but if we pause, contemplate a little bit, dig a little bit, what we can remember is back in Numbers 13, 40 years prior, the people of Israel were just absolutely afraid of these Anakim.

The Anakim, the commentator I read this week said that they were hulks of the land.

I mean, they were to be feared.

And the people of Israel feared them.

Feared them.

And now we have in this story, 40 years later, by God's promise and presence, over and over again to Joshua, say, be strong and courageous.

I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you.

All of a sudden, the thing they feared the most, they have had victory over.

What used to paralyze them is no longer there.

See, as we grow in thick skin and soft heart, as the Holy Spirit is working inside of us, as we're growing deeper in our belovedness in Jesus, we're gonna grow aware of our fears.

Because our heart's gonna be softened.

If God gives you that new heart, that heart starts to soften up, you're gonna grow aware of the fears that have been driving you your whole life.

Now, the earlier in life we begin that process of recognizing those fears, the freer we get to become.

Fears like what if I'm defective or unwanted?

What if I'm unloved?

What if I'm worthless?

What if I'm incompetent?

What if I'm harmed?

What if I'm in pain?

What if I'm not in control?

These are real fears, but the fears don't have to define us.

That's the point.

Anakim doesn't have to define us.

And our victory is not in the fears going away.

Our victory is by God's promise and presence for us to deal with them.

So the gospel implication is this.

We'll put it up on the screen.

In the gospel, by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can feel our fears, name our fears, and not allow our fears to define our hearts or drive our behaviors.

That's our victory.

In our membership process of our church, so a lot of you have been through that process, and in it, we have that big packet, and I made you read through it.

And at the end of the packet, there was a long quote by Tim Keller, pastor and author of Tim Keller.

Here's a bit of that quote, and I've read it in sermons over and over again.

I'll read it again right now.

When Paul says he is the worst among sinners, he's not exaggerating.

He is saying that he is as capable of sin as the worst criminals are.

The gospel has equipped him with emotional humility.

At the same time, you can't be gracious to someone if you're too needy and insecure.

If you know God's love and forgiveness, then there's a limit to how deeply another person can hurt you.

He or she can't touch your real identity, wealth, and significance.

The more you rejoice in your own forgiveness, the quicker you will be to forgive others.

You are rooted in emotional wealth.

So what I think Keller's saying here is a thick skin, soft heart.

Because you're already loved, already forgiven, already righteous, you have a beloved identity in Christ, because all of that is given to you, not based on your performance, but by his welcome and lavish love upon you.

Because of that, we are moving more and more and becoming more and more secure, thick skinned, and yet vulnerable and loving a soft heart.

Two questions for our hearts.

Perhaps these would be good to contemplate this week.

Maybe finding a quiet moment.

Abba Father, how would you like me to feel and name my fears?

Abba Father, what does your acceptance of me and presence with me say to my fears?

What's clear in this story in Joshua is promise and presence over and over again.

That's what we get from God to Joshua.

And Joshua feels all sorts of ways.

That's what's so great about this story.

It's not like he's just some hero that's untouchable or inaccessible to us.

He's just like us.

He's winning battles, but at the same time, he feels weak and doesn't know how to, he's not sure if it's gonna work out, what's gonna happen, and then he doesn't want to move ahead.

And God over and over is saying to him, Hey, hey, I under I understand that, but be strong.

I'm with you.

I've promised this, I'm with you.

Be strong, be courageous, I'm with you.

And in that, he keeps having victory.

But it's not because he's perfect, it's not because he's performing perfectly, it's because of God's promise and God's presence.

I read this verse this week, I'll close with this.

I read it this week in one of my devotions in the morning, Isaiah 54 verse 10.

Isaiah 54:10

For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed.

Okay, so that's a way to say, for the mountains may depart and the hills be removed.

That's a way to say maybe you feel exposed.

That's how you fear.

If you go into your fears, you're gonna feel exposed.

The mountains may depart, the hills may remove.

So anything that is keeping you feeling safe and secure, that may depart.

And if that departs, you're gonna feel exposed.

Into the verse, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord who has compassion over you.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for your goodness and your grace that you do not desire us to move through life stuck in fears, stuck fearing anicum, but you desire for us in your promise and your presence that we can feel our fears, name our fears, bring them to you.

And ask for your strength and your courage to gain victory over them.

Not because we're perfect, and not because we're gonna perform perfectly, but because you are with us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.