Joshua Part 17 - Faithfulness Matters

Gavin wright continues the series on Joshua, with chapter 23.

This was preached on Sunday 22nd February 2026

Transcript

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We're in God's words, Joshua chapter 23. It is his word, and we need his help not only to understand it but to be changed by it, God willing. So let me pray for us. Our Father God, we do pray for your help this morning. Please help us not to be numb to the call of your words. Help us not to find it easy to ignore it. I ask that with your Spirit's help we will be prodded and shaped by it. Lord, would your word be a scalpel that cuts deeply but heals beautifully? Would you give me, please, uh words uh that are faithful and true and honouring to you as we unpack uh this passage this morning. Amen. Amen. Joshua chapter 23. I think uh I'll read the whole thing in one go this week. So Joshua 23. A long time afterwards, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies, and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and said to them, I am now old and well advanced in years, and you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you. Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off from the Jordan to the great sea in the west. The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight, and you shall possess their lands just as the Lord your God promised you. Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you, or make mention of the names of their gods, or swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them, but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations, and as for you, no man has been able to stand before you to this day. One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you, and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them, and they with you know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you. And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed. But just as all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have been fulfilled for you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things until he has destroyed you from off this good land that the Lord your God has given you. If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you. The grass fades and the flowers fall. But the word of the Lord stands forever. Friends, if you knew that you didn't have long left on this earth, how would you spend your last days? Your last years maybe? Would it be quality time with those that you love the most, making memories that will last? Would it be working through your bucket list, you know, things you need to experience, books you need to read, places you need to visit before you die? Would it be quiet reflection, perhaps the completion of your memoirs? Maybe you just live in denial and act like everything was fine. Joshua, as he gathers Israel's leaders at the beginning of this chapter, he is old and advanced in years. We're told that twice. And verse 14, if you caught that, it's a slightly poignant phrase, isn't it? He was about to go the way of all the earth. He's gonna die soon. And so, what is Joshua gonna do with his last days, his last years? What is on his bucket list? And there is only one thing for Joshua, really. Joshua wants the people of God to see God truly, that they will love him wholly. And that is what Joshua is going to devote himself to. It's really what he has done faithfully his whole life, but it is particularly powerful and poignant now because he is getting to the end. There are not many sunrises and sunsets remaining. And what we read here really, it is Joshua pleading with the leaders of God's people to help the people to remember God's word and work and character, so that they will gladly love him with all of their hearts, and know the fullest blessings of belonging to the God, verse 3, who has fought for you as they build a life in the land that he has given them. This is his legacy. Every time Joshua is remembered, people will say he showed us God and helped us to love him. He's gonna show us God and help us to love him. But before we jump in actually to the passage, if you can cope with a provoking question this early on in a sermon, what are people going to say about you when you are remembered? Will people remember you for your skills, your exploits, your your life story, good or bad, your collections, your qualifications? Or will people say of you, he helped us show God, he helped show us God and helped us to love him? Or they say she took us to the cross and showed us Jesus and how much he has loved us and she helped us to love him. If you are in the room tonight, the tonight, daytime, if you are this morning old and advanced in years, and for once I will let that pass without a joke, if you are old and advanced in years, what will your legacy be? Will it be a legacy of things that crumble and fade? Or will it be a legacy of having passed on the one thing that will last forever? Joshua is such an example for us in finishing the race well. Chapter 23, what he's doing is kind of passing on the baton to these leaders. Here's the gospel. You need to know and trust it, but it is now yours to pass on. This is your legacy. Friends, I pray that that is going to be our legacy too, that it will be your legacy. He showed us God and helped us to love him. So let's listen to what he says. And Joshua starts with three big things this morning. Firstly, he tells them, Remember what you know about God. Remember what you know about God. So maybe look at those uh first five or so verses. I think in there there are probably three things that Joshua reminds the leaders of in these verses about God. If they are going to help the people to love God, there are things that will help us to press on in devotion to Him as well. And firstly, it is the grace of God. Remember the grace of God. Look at what we're showing. Verse 1. The Lord had given to Israel rest from all their surrounding enemies. And Joshua picks it up again in verse 3. You have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your name's sake. For it is the Lord your God who has fought for you. In fact, so effective has the Lord's gracious intervention been on their behalf. Verse 4 tells us that Joshua has been able to divvy up the land as an inheritance for Israel's sake already. God is gracious. And if you are standing there in that land, God's grace isn't this sort of abstract and vague thought, this idea. Grace isn't about vibes, but God's grace has real practical value. Their experience of grace was concrete, substantial, it was solid. The country itself, the very dirt and stone of Canaan was grace to them. They planted their crops in the soil of grace, they raised their children in the cities of grace, they went to work in a land of free grace. Grace isn't vague and abstract, but concrete and vital and life-changing. It is real. They are facing enormous ongoing challenges, having settled in the land. There are significant pockets of Canaanite resistance still. The nations around them very soon are going to flex their geopolitical muscles and try to expand their territories and empires, threatening Israel's existence. And all the while is the constant pressure and threat from around, from the alluring fleshly enticements of pagan, idolatrous, false worship, which we will come back to in a minute. Joshua is naturally concerned for God's people. How? How are they going to press on and stay faithful? How are they going to love God in light of all of these dangers? And in the first place, the answer is that they must call to mind what they have seen of the free grace that He has lavished upon them. And if you are going to press on in the future, Christian brothers and sisters, you've got to start by taking regular inventory of the grace of God towards you in the past. So these leaders, Joshua says, You have seen, verse 3, you have seen all that the Lord your God has done. Remember it. Dwell on it. Do not lose sight of it. It will deepen and strengthen your faith for the challenge is still to come. Christian, brother and sister, you live in the kingdom of free grace. Okay, we wait for the kingdom in all of its fullness to come when Jesus returns. We wait for the ground of the promised land beneath our feet. But even now, your lives have been bought by Jesus. You are today loved children of God. Today your sins have been forgiven. They have been washed away by the blood of Jesus. Today, God is with you. He has given you the gift of the Holy Spirit. He has given you the church. Look around you, and He cares for you and grows you and sustains you with it. Remember the grace of God. It is real and effective. He has done so much for you that you didn't deserve. But then the second part of the encouragement. And it is the character of God. He is, Joshua, reminds these leaders, the Lord your God, verse 3, who has fought for you. And that is an incredible thing to say. He has fought for you. That phrase, that little phrase there would have had huge significance for the Israelites. It was the phrase that Moses used during the Exodus from Egypt to calm God's terrified people. So think Exodus 14, when the armies of Pharaoh were bearing down upon them and they were trapped with their backs to the Red Sea with nowhere to go. And what are they going to do? And Moses says to them, Fear not, stand firm, see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you. And you have only to be silent. Of course, we know what happened next, don't we? How the Israelites crossed over in dry land while the Egyptians were drowned under the judgment of God. And that phrase comes back again in Deuteronomy 1 when God's people were at the borders of the Canaan for the first time, and they were afraid to proceed. Then we get that expression twice more from Moses, encouraging first Joshua and then Israel to cross into the promised land and not to be afraid of their enemies. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight with you against your enemies, to give you the victory. And now he's that same phrase all over again. It is used to look back. God fought for you. But then if you look forward, if you look down to verse 10, not only has God fought for you, but it is the Lord your God who fights for you still. What is the message about God's character in these verses? It is that the Lord your God bears his arms in your defense. Again and again, at every turn, past and present and future, our God will fight for us. He will never sit back and fold his arms and shrug his shoulders and just leave you to it. He is active and working, fighting on your behalf, your shield and your defender. And we know, don't we, of Jesus, our warrior, King, fighting our greatest battle, beating sin, destroying death, and against whom no enemy will stand forever. Romans 8, if God is for us, then who can be against us? He is the God who fights for his people. He is strong and he loves us, and he uses the arm of his strength for us. And then remember, thirdly, the promise of God. Verse 5. Joshua reminds them the Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight, and you shall possess their lands just as the Lord your God promised you. In passages like Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 7, God had promised them that they would conquer the land, and yet he would not remove the Canaanites all in one go. Instead, he promised that the Israelites would grow as a nation to populate the land, and gradually over time, he would drive out the Canaanite remnants. That's the promise that Joshua is reminding them of. It is a promise that God has shown himself faithful to keep so far, and now he calls them again to believe it and live in light of it in this next phase of their national life. And that is, friends, the sort of encouragement that we need too. How can you fend off the attacks of discouragement and unbelief that inevitably pop up in your Christian life? And the answer is not by screwing yourself up tight and telling yourself to do better and to try harder, but rather speaking to yourself of the past in order to be sure of the future. So first look back and trace the ways the Lord has shown himself to be gracious to you again and again, of Jesus, redeeming you from sin, rising from the dead, making you his own. Then look up and trace the character of God at work now. Who never deserts his children, never ceases to fight for them. He has promised he will never leave you or forsake you. He will be your shield and your defender. And above all, Joshua says, actually look down and trace the promise of God in his word. He doesn't leave us guessing about his plans for us, does he? We don't need to speculate when it comes to his purposes for us. He has promise. He has mapped out the path of sanctification and perseverance and glory to come. And he has promised to carry you safely home, to carry you along that road until you reach your destination. The anchor of your faith in challenging days can't be, how much fuel have I got left in my tank? It can't be how clever are you in sort of figuring out a plan of attack for the difficult days ahead? Let's have a game plan. There's wisdom in that. But that's not the anchor of your faith. The anchor of your faith must be Joshua 23, verse 5. The Lord your God has promised. They are sure and certain and stable and unwavering. He who has promised is faithful and he will surely do it. He has promised to love you. He has promised to bring you home. So Joshua showed them God. And so he helps them to love him. But then, with the grace, the character, and the promise of God behind us, we are empowered, we are freed to obey God, to live in the light of his grace, to live as children of his promises, to respond rightly to the God who has loved us and saved us, to love him with all of our hearts. And in the living. Look down there. Kashna writes down. But you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. The danger that Joshua anticipates here, the danger that he is anxious to avoid, is the intermarriage of the people of Israel with the remaining Canaanites and the nations that surround them. Now, it's worth saying, it shouldn't need to be said, but it is worth saying that. The Bible isn't bothered about people marrying people from different ethnicities. That's not the issue. The issue is a spiritual issue. It is that not that God forbids the intermixing of Israelites stocked with Canaanite genes. It is rather that God knows all too well how hard it is for one partner in a marriage to stay faithful to the Lord when the other partner is opposed to him and worships and serves the idols of their hearts instead of worshiping the living God, the only Saviour Jesus. And if I might be candid with you, I have to say that I have seen far too many seemingly bright, earnest, growing young Christians make shipwrecks of their faith. Because they committed themselves to romantic relationships with non-Christians, telling themselves, really deceiving themselves, she'll come to church with me. Or, you know, my plan is to win them over in time, and if it doesn't work out, then we won't get married. A youth group, single people among us, please hear this. Listen to God's word today. It is a decision of disobedience to God to start a relationship with an unbeliever. If you get to that point, you have already compromised your commitment to Christ in order to be with that person. What makes you think that you won't make still more and more accommodations and adjustments and compromises along the way until before you know it, you are nowhere with the Lord? Why do you think that you can take that risk? Why do you think that you'll be the one who doesn't suffer for it? I've seen it too many times not to warn you today with urgency and seriousness and with love for you. I've actually walked down that road further myself than I should have done. And I too was well on the path to being shipwrecked, were it not for the intervening grace of God bringing me back to my senses in the nick of time. And I had to end it. I'm not this morning uh talking to those who are already married and find yourselves in mixed marriages, so to speak. Those situations are tough, and probably this isn't the moment to speak to that. But we do love you and we keep praying for you and we will support you. But if you are not yet married, you will find it extremely difficult to walk faithfully with the Lord, whom you say you love above all others, while at the same time giving your heart to someone who doesn't share that most fundamental and basic commitment along with you. Please don't lie to yourself. You do not know better than God. Do not tie yourself to someone who is walking away from Jesus rather than running towards him. So God wants us to love him. He wants us to live lives of love for him. And lastly, in our passage today, just briefly, have a look at verses 12 to 16, and we hear a warning about split devotion. The consequences in those verses of turning aside from the Lord to idolatry, well, they are, I think, quite striking. Yet three times over in verses 13, 14, 16, he tells them, if they turn from him to idols, they will perish from off this good land. In this passage, God has called his people to cling to him, verse 8. He causes people, verse 11, to be very careful to love him. He causes people, verse 6, to be strong to keep his commandments and not turn away from them. And we hear that, and then we hear this warning, and we understand that God is not playing here, is he? It isn't possible to have a casual relationship with the Lord. He wants you to be all in, and he will not tolerate rivals to your heart. And we can't wriggle out of this and say, oh, it's an Old Testament thing. It's different now because the New Testament says the same. Reminds you of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5, lying to the Holy Spirit and dead unto the judgment of God. Perhaps 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Do you remember preaching through that? Some of you are weak and ill, and some of you have died because of the way you have been abusing the Lord's supper. God is deadly serious about his covenant with us. So serious that he went to the extent of giving his son's life that we might be part of that covenant. But the question Joshua is posing is: are we serious about our covenant with him? Because if we aren't, we are playing with fire. Joshua 23 is kind of the Old Testament equivalent of Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26 to about 30. I'm just going to read a chunk from there. Listen in if you want to, or you can look up Hebrews chapter 10, but this is what it says. If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? So we can't say that was then and this is now, because this is now. How God will not tolerate rivals for our affections. And I know that feels heavy and scary. And it is not the note, perhaps, that we would choose to finish a sermon on. To be honest, it's not the note that I would choose to finish a sermon on, but it is how Joshua finishes his sermon. And it is my duty before God to hold out to you what the Bible says. That God will not share your heart. He will not share your heart. And we've talked about marriage, but it's not just about marriage, is it? We can try and get God and sport to share our heart. We can try and get God and work to share our love. We can try and get God and any number of things, even good things that become idols to share our love. But God will not tolerate rivals in our hearts. So, Gavin, what should I do then? If I've begun to slip back? If old idols have begun to capture my heart once more, if I know that I've tangled myself up and am tangling myself up with the world in such a way that God gets part of my love, but I will not give him all of it. And sometimes he's just got to come in second place. Let me tell you what not to do first of all. Don't ignore the Bible's warning and tell yourself that it will be okay. Don't brush off the sting of your conscience and make like sin doesn't matter. Don't allow yourself to shrug off the call of God and become numb to the warnings of his word. Remember Hebrews 12, 14, it says, without holiness, no one will see the Lord. You can never take your sin as seriously as God takes it. No matter how Christian you look, no matter how skilled you are at playing the part, no matter how much your face fits, be sure of this. Your sin will find you out. Because God knows your heart. So don't ignore the warnings of his word. But what must you do this morning? You must realize that your only refuge, your only shelter, your only safety from the wrath and judgment of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. As long as you have breath, it is never too late to repent and to flee to him. On the cross, he bore in his body all of the fury of divine judgment. He experienced what it was to be cut off from this good land so that every sinner who flees their sin and guilt and seeks mercy from him might be welcomed in and received and washed clean. That is what you must do. No more pretending, no more putting a brave face in it, not papering over the cracks, but to get on your knees before the cross and cry out to him for mercy, to turn from your sin and to trust in Jesus. And you will find mercy, and you will find rest and you will find help to love him as you ought, and you will find help to say goodbye to the things that are dragging you away from him, and you will not need to fear God in that sort of way, who is faithful in blessing his people, and our passage tells us faithful in judging those who turn their backs on him. If any of that describes you today, today is the day to come home. Don't let the sun go down this evening on unfinished business with God. And of course, if you want to pray about this with me or any of the team, please do just ask. With Joshua this morning, I want to say here is God. Here is his grace, his character, his promises, such depth, such beauty in them, such depth, such beauty in him who fights for us. And so, friend, cling to him, obey him, love him, and him alone, and know that in him alone true rest and forever rest is secure. And I'm going to pray for us now. Father God, please have mercy on us. Where we have not loved you or do not love you, or have set a pattern of life where we will not love you above all things. Please convict us of that now. Please to your Holy Spirit help us to run to Jesus for mercy, knowing that we will find it in him. Please change us. Please help us to put to death all that belongs to our old lives and put on what you would have us put on. Lives that cling to you, lives that obey your commands and don't turn to the left or the right. Lives that put love for you above all things. Lord God, that you would be our number one. That our affections would be yours, that our thinking would be yours, that our hearts would be yours, that our lives would be yours. And we ask that. Please give us your help for your glory. Amen.