Joshua Part 7 - Holiness, death and grace

Andrew Grey continues the series on the book of Joshua, in Joshua 6v15-27. This sermon was given at Immanuel Church Brentwood on Sunday 26th Oct 2025.

Transcript

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So, Bible's open to Joshua chapter 6. Just a brief introduction before I pray and read. The Bible, the whole Bible, it is the Word of God. In it we meet God, we hear Him, He gets inside of us through His Word. The whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, it shows us Jesus and it helps the Christian to trust and obey Him. Even the first part of the Bible, the Old Testament, you could think of it as Jesus' backstory. And we are currently working our way through the Old Testament book of Joshua, the true account of how the one true God brought his people, who he had rescued, safely into the promised land. And for the Christian, for the church of Jesus, it's not an old story, it is our story. And it's a picture and it is a pattern of how the Lord Jesus brings Christians and the church safe home to our promised land. Now we're picking up in Joshua chapter 6 and verse 15 today. We left the chapter last Sunday actually on a cliffhanger. We were mid-story. Do you remember God's people? They've been brought through the river Jordan into the land God had promised them. There is Joshua, the human leader of God's people, but then he met, well, he actually met God himself at the end of chapter 5, the commander of the army of the Lord. And the conquest of Jericho, that first city inside the promised land. Well, it would not be done by Joshua's army, but by the Lord's. And the battle plan, do you remember that? The battle plan made it clear that this is God's doing. It's not like any normal battle plan. The people were to march around the city, blow trumpets, otherwise be in total silence, with the Ark of the Covenant of God at the centre of this procession. It really was a mobile worship service. Well, and that's where we left the Word of God last week. So let's come now to Joshua chapter 6 and verse 15. Let me pray and then read. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word which your Holy Spirit inspired and now brings to us. Thank you that it is written for us that through endurance and through your encouragement and the encouragement of this word we might have hope. Use this word to that end, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. So, Joshua 6 and verse 15, let's listen to the words of Almighty God. On the seventh day they rose early at the dawn of day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, Shout, for the Lord has given you the city, and the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute, and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things, and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction, and bring trouble upon it. But all silver and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord, they shall go into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they captured the city. Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword. But to the two men who had spied out the land, Joshua said, Go into the prostitute's house and bring out from there the woman and all who belonged to her, as you swore to her. So the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and mother and brothers, and all who belonged to her. And they brought all her relatives and put them outside the camp of Israel. And they burned the city with fire and everything in it. Only the silver and gold and the vessels of bronze and of iron they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. But Rahab the prostitute and her father's household and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Joshua laid an oath on them at that time, saying, Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land. Thanks be to God for his word to us today. Question. What would Jesus make of that reading? What would Jesus think about this event which is described for us here? Just consider what happened. Imagine you were there. It's day seven. The people of God, they march around the city seven times, trumpets being blown by the priests. Then we hear Joshua, the instructions which he gave to the people, this is what they needed to do. Shout. Everything in the city must be devoted to the Lord for destruction, apart from Rahab and her family. And you, you must keep away from those devoted things. Don't loot anything for your own gain. He explains why. But all of those precious metals, they belong to the Lord. So those are the instructions. And then we are told that's what happened. It actually then happened. They blow the trumpets, they give the shout, the city wall comes straight down. The fighting men surrounding the city, they're able just to go straight in from all sides and capture the city. They destroy it as God commanded, apart from the household of Rahab. And then we're told at the end of the chapter, this city was to be left untouched, a bit like a monument. And God made it clear that this Joshua was his leader and his representative. Now, question. What would Jesus make of it all? Now I wonder if you can see why you might ask that question. At the heart of this account, don't we see this? Innocent people being destroyed? Is that not what we see here? Are not innocent people being destroyed? Is that the kind of thing Jesus would approve of? Yeah, what we read of in verse 21. Is that a kind of genocide that's going on? And we need to take that seriously. Remember, God commanded Joshua to destroy this city and all its people. In the so-called Battle of Jericho, it's not really much of a battle. It is the Lord who does the fighting. He brings the city walls down by his army and his work. That's really the point of the whole chapter. All Joshua and the people do is simply obey him, walk in, and do what they're told. So simply, this is something that God ordained to happen. There is, though, another problem in Inverted Commas, another problem in the passage. Not just aren't innocent people being destroyed, but also are not really wicked people being pardoned. And I wonder if we see and feel that same problem also. And really, those are the two halves of this passage. And I've summed them up like this in our main headings for today. We see here God's sentence of death, but also God's invitation to life. And both of those, they raise really deep questions about justice. Simply, is it fair? Is it fair? And it takes us right to the heart of God and of his gospel. So let's consider firstly God's sentence of death. Really, that is given to us only in a single verse, verse 21. Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, ox and sheep and donkeys, with the edge of the sword. Now that phrase, devoted to destruction, it means entirely given over to the Lord, but by means of destruction. Put beyond any further possible use. And it's a fact that in the conquest of the land, there was the widespread slaughter of human life. Now, if you've read the book of Joshua and you know the later story of the Old Testament, you do find this tension. The tension between, on the one hand, total destruction, but also the fact that plenty of Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, they did actually remain alive and in the land. And God held his people responsible for that. So is it right? Is it fair? Did God have the right to deal with people in that way? And it is really a problem, if it's if this is a problem, and it's something to be thought through and worked through, it is a problem with God. This is his activity here, his sentence of death. Back in Genesis 15, the Lord had told Abraham, you know, this man he had chosen out of nowhere and obscurity, and had given to him the covenant of grace, uh, that uh relationship of life and grace and salvation, which in which Christian people find our home. He told Abraham that he would not yet possess the land of the Amorites, that is, the land of Canaan, because their guilt or their iniquity or their sin was not yet complete. God was going to wait, he was going to wait patiently, he was going to hold back his anger against this particular people until their guilt and their sin was complete. We'll imagine something growing and growing and growing, or a tide that gets deeper and wider, such that there would be a point when God would say, That is now enough. It is complete. I will now come and deal with you. So when we come to the inhabitants of Jericho and the land of Canaan, we are to imagine a culture of complete sin. So previously it was not yet complete. Now God's judgment comes because it is complete. You imagine groups of people, cities, a culture, ways of being and living and relating that was complete sin. You know, imagine a place where God's common grace has been rejected, silenced, where wickedness reigns in totality. Now we glimpse the wickedness of Canaan in the law, in the Old Testament law, in places like Leviticus 18. It forbade the children of Israel from engaging in a whole array of really vile practices, things like incest and bestiality and homosexuality and prostitution, all of those things often associated with pagan worship. And most chillingly, child sacrifice, you know, the burning of children, babies offered through the fire to the hideous god Molech. Now, why did God's law specifically forbid those things? Answer, because the people in the land of Canaan were devoted to such things. Now, the Bible itself is actually very modest in what it records about the culture of Canaan. Some of what we know and have discovered elsewhere, you know, genuinely, it cannot be repeated in a setting like this. It was a degraded and vile culture. Life was cheap. If you were an enemy or a woman or a child in particular, you were worth little or nothing. And in the law of God, God said, Their sin, this is Deuteronomy 20, their sin is such that the land is going to vomit them out. It's my land after all. It's not their land, it's mine. It is holy, it belongs to me, like every corner of this globe, and they will be spewed out from it. But he also said to his own people, you know, Abraham's descendants, the people of Israel, he warned them if you ever engage in such things, you too will be vomited out of my land. He did not want his people to learn these abominable practices. And so, with all of that in the background, we then come to a verse like verse 21, and we read, Then they devoted all in the city to destruction. Now, one other little side note, just before we sort of address this head on, here's the side note. What God commanded to them back then is absolutely 100% unique. It's a one-off. So God's Old Testament people, they were coming into their inheritance such that this kind of obedience was what was required of them. No other war, no other conquest ever, including what is going on in the Middle East right now, can claim divine backing in this way. The main thing, though, that confronts us as we look at God's sentence of death very simply, it is God who did it. The Lord put to death this culture. He executed the Canaanite culture, he put it to death. And yes, as part of that, the sins of the fathers were visited upon their children. And the responsibility, the iniquity, it lay squarely with those who formed that vile culture and who did not repent like Rahab did. Now there are still puzzles in that. In our minds and possibly in our hearts, we don't, it's not an easy thing to rest on. But what stands out, and hopefully this will help us, uh, is this that God is very holy and sin is very terrible. Okay, God is very holy, and sin is very terrible. God is very holy, and sin is very terrible. So the one true God, the God of the Bible, He He hates sin. He cannot be in its presence. He hates to see it in his image-bearers. He's made us to be like him, to be mirrors to him, and it is loathsome to him, sin. And it ought to be loathsome to us too. And the Lord is so patient, he is very, very patient. So imagine a culture that is that is increasingly degraded. Uh, men and women and families and ways of relating, uh, the way government happens, the way relationships are structured, it's you know increasingly being degraded. Let's be honest, that is our culture, isn't it? Then within that culture, imagine a man or a woman and they don't know Christ and they don't want to know him, their lives are marked out by false worship and selfishness, they're willing to harm in order to get what they want. And by the way, that would be every single one of us, apart from the spirit of Christ. But what is keeping that culture from the Lord's righteous destruction? What is keeping that man or woman from the Lord's total and right judgment? Well, the answer, in them, nothing whatsoever. Nothing whatsoever. It's like they are walking on the thinnest of thin ice. You just imagine that. Or they're dancing on a spider's web. There is nothing keeping them from the judgment of God but his patience. Now, only when we grow our understanding of God's holiness and of the loathsomeness of sin will we understand that of course his patience cannot and must not go on forever, and it won't. What happened on a miniature scale with Jericho, with that city, encompassed by the presence of God, and then experiencing the sentence of God will one day happen on a cosmic scale, and it will happen at the hands of Jesus Christ. Please, please, please don't ever think that the God of the Old Testament is a vengeful God and the New Testament God is a cuddly God. That's a terrible lie. The person in the New Testament who speaks most of hell is Jesus. The New Testament tells us specifically, John 5, that the Father has entrusted all judgment to the Son. In 2 Thessalonians 1, we're told that Jesus will inflict vengeance. So I wonder if in your in your mental picture of Jesus you think Jesus and vengeance, holy vengeance, they belong together. Or think of the vision of Christ as we see him in Revelation. You know, when the curtains are pulled back on the Lord Jesus in just a bit more of his glory, and it is terrifying. He is terrifying. He's so holy, he so hates sin. He will judge not only sin but unrepentant sinners. He comes, he brings the wrath of God. That's why it would be entirely appropriate and perhaps likely that that commander of the army of the Lord, who we met at the end of just Joshua 5, is none other than God the Son. This is his work. Now, when we stop and think about what happened to Jericho, and we think about the slaughter of life in this chapter, and then later on in the conquest, too, it is a hard thing to think about. We shouldn't pretend that it isn't, but it should also make us tremble. Um, sin is sickening, God is holy, we do not want to be like the people of Jericho. Do you remember this city? They they barred its gates to God. It's both a literal and metaphorical. You stay out, you stay away. We do not want to submit, we do not want to find your mercy. But consider now God's invitation to life. Have a look down at verse 25. But Rahab the prostitute and her father's household and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Imagine uh Joshua and the soldiers marching uh around the city. Remember days one to six, once, days seven, seven times. Presumably, each time they went around, they saw that sign. Back in chapter two, uh she was given a sign, a scarlet cord to hang out her window, the sign that she was to be spared. And we might be thinking to ourselves, hmm, that reminds us a little bit of the blood of the Passover Lamb. Now, this woman who was saved, it's kind of bittersweet, isn't it, that almost always scripture calls her the prostitute. She had lived deeply in false worship and false living. The Lord, of course, knows and knew the extent to which she had been sinned against as well as sinning, but this was a daughter of Jericho. This was a true daughter of Jericho in the worst sense of that word. And the Lord had mercy upon her. And it's beautiful, isn't it? He took her out of this degraded culture, he gave her a new home, a new people, a new family, his home, his people, his family. And that should not surprise us. So in the pages of this same Old Testament, we read of the Lord sparing places like Nineveh, in the book of Jonah, this wicked Assyrian city that actually did turn to the Lord and He spared it. And he doesn't just show mercy to her. Saw that in verse 25, but to her whole family who are with her, all who were in her house. The Lord cares about households, whole households, who doesn't just deal with us as a bunch of individuals. Her faith becomes a blessing to all who were with her. Father, mothers, uh, mother, brothers, maybe servants too. We don't know what became of them, but her faith brought them into the covenant people of God. And in verse 25, we read that lovely line, she has lived in Israel to this day. So, in other words, there was among the people of Israel a living, walking, breathing, praying, praising monument to the saving grace of God. And I dare say you could have thought to yourself, maybe if you are troubled by your sins, you know, I feel like my sins are so great that they could just never be forgiven. Well, you could go and talk to Rahab, couldn't you? Maybe we feel the stain of our association with our culture. And maybe it is sexual degradation or rank idolatry, and we feel that stain very, very deeply. Well, in our imagination, if you like, we could go and talk to Rahab, couldn't we? Our sister in Christ. Yes, I used to be like that too. Yeah, I used to be gripped by this power, you know, the sinful nature within me, kind of resonating with this appalling culture around me. The things I said and did and thought, and most of all, you know, that Savior Jesus Christ, I rejected until I heard tell of the one true God, and I heard of his power and his justice, and it scared me. Because I came to realize that this holy God, he's got a problem with me. He is holy, and I was very sinful. Um but he cleaned me up. He cleaned me up. It's a bit like what he did with the Passover Lamb. You know, his judgment, it was spent upon someone else instead of on me. And he brought me, even me, into his family, into his church, and he has changed me. And the story of Rahab, it actually goes on beyond this chapter and beyond verse 25. The Lord used her to establish what we could call a lineage of grace, you know, grace to the unlikely and grace through the unlikely. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, we read that she got married. She was married to a man called Salmon, presumably a faithful Israelite man who knew that the Lord had loved and cleaned him up, and so he was glad to have and marry and love this ex-Canaanite, ex-prostitute, who was redeemed and welcomed into the family of God. And they had a son, and his name was Boaz. Remember the story? You know, one day in Bethlehem, he was out in his fields, and his eye was caught by a gracious and godly woman, and it turned out that she had been a pagan, a Moabite, but she had given up her false gods, and she had come into the embrace of the one true God, Ruth. It's amazing, isn't it? These two generations, you know, they really knew the saving grace of God and it overflowed. And the story goes on, doesn't it? We find that Rahab, she's one of the mothers of King David and of her own Saviour. And it's a joyous thing, isn't it? But the way of salvation, you know, that that cord of red, that cord of blood which stands over the prostitute's window, just like the lamb's blood stood over the doors at the first Passover. Whose blood is it that opens up the gates of salvation? And it is the Lord Jesus. That is, the same one who is the judge, he is also the Saviour. So grace and judgment, you know, mercy and active and terrifying wrath, they both land in the same place. They are in the work and in the gift of Jesus Christ. So, how is it that the holy judge, he came early, didn't he, if you like? He came early in order to shed his blood to obtain forgiveness and righteousness for anyone. So just think about the cross. Does this not shed a new light on the cross? You think of the holiness of God and the loathsomeness of sin to this holy God. You know, what did it mean for the Lord Jesus Christ to become sin? You know, he became sin for me. You just think about your union with him. He became sin for you, he bore that loathsome sin and guilt and judgment yours, and he gives to you grace and mercy. So our chapter here it kind of speaks to us from the mouth of Jesus with two notes, doesn't it? Um, there is a terrifying warning to anyone who keeps the gate shut to Jesus, but for anyone who opens to him, there is his loving and his wide-armed welcome. Let's bow our heads, I'm gonna pray. God, our Father, we pray that you would use this scripture to form Christ in us. We pray that we would think and feel and speak and live increasingly like Him. Pray that we would understand and embrace holiness. I pray that we would increasingly loathe and say no to sin. And we ask that for our good and for Jesus' name's sake. Amen. Amen.