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Immanuel Sermon Audio
Joshua (6:66)
I have given to you just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness in this Lebanon, as far as the Great River, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the great sea, toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous." Now remember, this is God talking to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers," Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, "and I swore to their fathers to give to them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses, my servant, commanded you, and that just happened in Deuteronomy. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law or this Torah or this Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, this book 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 very prosperous and you will have good success. Have I not commanded you?" Again, he says, "Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." That sets the tone for the book. You are getting ready to go in and God gives Joshua a pep talk. So Joshua, I am thinking at this point, is pretty much on cloud nine, right? Moses just sat him down and said, "Here we go. You are the man. I do not get to go, but you are going to lead him in. You can do it. Love God. Do not turn away. You can lead the people." Then God comes to him and says, "Okay, you are the man. Here we go. You do not be afraid. Be strong. Be courageous. We are going in. You are going to lead these people in and I am going to be with you just like I was with Moses." So that begins the story in Joshua. Here is the outline of the book. I will put it up and it is helpful to know this. Chapters 1 to 12 is the conquest of the land, taking the land, fighting for the land. Chapters 13 to 22 is dividing the land. You guys live over here, you guys live over here, you guys go over there. This is where you live and they split it all up. And then chapter 23 and 24 is a final charge to the people. And we are going to spend most of our time talking about the conquest at the beginning and then the final charge at the end because the division, you can read it for yourself. There is not a whole lot to say about it, they just split it up. Joshua has some amazing stories. Some of the most amazing miracle stories are in the book of Joshua in all the Bible. The most famous story in Joshua is what? The walls of Jericho, the battle of Jericho. So hold your spot right there, close your Bibles, all right? Famous story. You guys know it. You heard it in Sunday school when you were kids. You heard it in grade school. You heard it in middle school. You heard it in high school. You heard it in church, easy peasy. What did God want the people to do when they got to the city? You're going to walk around. Who's going to walk around? Who's going to walk? All the men of the war, okay? All the soldiers, who else? How many priests? That's kind of tricky. Seven priests are going with you. And who else? Joshua would be with the men of war, yeah? What were they supposed to carry? The ark. How many people did that take? Four, right? Polls going through on either side, one man on each spot, so they got four. So you got all the army. You got seven priests, you got four guys carrying the ark, the Levites, we're supposed to do that, right? And you walk around. And what noise was supposed to be being made while they walked around? Huh? The trumpets. Keep your mouth closed, don't yell, don't talk. You walk around and they blow the Rams horn. The priests. And you do it how many times on the first day? Once, then you go back home. Day two, same thing. One lap. Day three, same thing, four, same thing, five, same thing, six, same thing. Day seven, you go seven times and at the end of it, what? You just scream as loud as you can. And God says, when you do that, when you let the shout, the walls of that city are going to come flat down and you're going to march straight in. He told the people, when you go in there, do what? Kill everything that breathes. Save something for me. All the gold, all the treasure, all the plunder, Jericho, it's all mine. I get all of it. You get none of it. You kill everything that breathes, you give me all the stuff, and you spare one person and one family, Rahab. You let Rahab live. So that's the most famous story. Lots of great stories in Joshua, and we're going to talk about several of them just in passing as we go. But when you look at all these stories, Jericho, Rahab, Crossing the Jordan, the Gibeonites, all of you put them together, I want you to see three lessons, three truths about God, and we'll talk about these stories as we go through. Lesson number one in Joshua is this, God's response to sin is wrath. That's how God responds to sin. He's holy, holy, holy, and His response to sin is wrath. In the book of Joshua, there is one major sin of commission. What is a sin of commission? You do something that God said what? God says, "Don't do this, and you do it. You commit a sin." There's one major sin of commission, what is it? Aiken is a soldier who's getting ready to run into Jericho, and he runs into Jericho and it's total pandemonium, I mean can you imagine, the instructions God gave to people. It is total craziness, and in the midst of all that, people running around, plundering, stealing, it's violent, Aiken sees a pile of stuff that he takes a fancy to. He sees some silver, and he sees some gold, and he sees some clothes that he likes. And Aiken says to himself, "That's some nice stuff." And there's a lot of stuff in this city, he's doing the math, he's calculating all this stuff that's going to be piled up, and he says basically, "What's it going to hurt if I take this?" And so he takes his little stuff in the midst of all the pandemonium, he takes it, he goes back to his tent, and he buries it. He's on the meatloaf plan, I'm not talking about a diet, I'm talking about meatloaf the singer, two out of three, ain't bad, that was meatloaf song. And Aiken's thinking two out of three, that's not bad. We killed everybody, and here's Rahab, she's alive, and we gave most of that stuff to God, and nobody knows, he thinks it's all hush-hush, and you remember what happens, the people get ready to go to the next battle, I mean they just romped over Jericho, they get ready to go into this next battle and what happens, they get whooped, and they come back and Joshua says, "Hey God, what is going on?" And God says, " Joshua, there's a problem, there's been sin in the camp, and it affects that person, and it affects his family, and it affects the entire nation." So take your Bible and look at Joshua 7, I want you to see this, Joshua 7, and look at verse 20, 7, 20, Aiken answered Joshua, "Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel," and this is what I did, when I saw, and if you like to make notes in your Bible, that's one word you ought to mark, the word saw, okay? And I saw, among the spoil, a beautiful cloak from Sheinar, from Babylon, and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of goldwing, 50 shekels, then I coveted, you might mark that word, he saw it, and he coveted them, and I took them, saw, coveted, took, and see they are hidden in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath. Hold your spot right there, Joshua 7, 20, and go all the way back to the beginning, Genesis chapter 3, this is fascinating to me. When Joshua wrote this down, and when Aiken said these words, this is not a coincidence, Genesis 3 verse 6 says, "So when the woman saw," there's your first word, "and she saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired," and I know it's translated, "desired," but it's the same word as coveted in Joshua, same word. I saw it, I wanted it, and then what does she say? I took it, saw it, I coveted it, and I took it. And I think God is showing us something to say, "Look, your sin and my sin and everybody's sin looks different, but at the most fundamental level, the progression is the same. You see it, you think about it, the opportunity arises, your heart is lured away, James says in the New Testament, you are dragged away by your own desires, and then you take it, and you cross the line," and Aiken did it, and he is guilty of this sin of commission, and so they take Aiken, and they stone him and his family, and all his stuff, and then they burn him, and then they cover him with rocks. God's response to sin is what, it's wrath, he's angry, and that unsettles us, and that makes us uneasy, but you see it in the book of Joshua, flip over to the end of Joshua, and you can read Joshua's take on the whole affair, Joshua 22, 20, did not Aiken the son of Zara break faith, he broke the faith, Aiken would not have said he was breaking the faith, Aiken would have said this is a small thing, this is not a big deal, and Joshua says you broke faith with God, your relationship with God through faith was severed, you broke faith in the matter of the devoted things and what fell upon the congregation of Israel, wrath, and he did not perish alone for his iniquity, there was consequences for the nation, consequences for his family, and obviously consequences for him. So you see this in Aiken's life, God's response to sin is wrath. Now step back from Aiken, because in talking about Aiken we passed over the biggest example of this that you see in the book of Joshua, that God's response to sin is wrath, and you see it when God tells the people you go into this place and you kill everything that moves, everything that breathes, this is one of the biggest things that people mock the Bible for, and laugh at the Bible for, and say this is not the same God that loves people in the New Testament, they cannot be the same, they are two separate deities, this one is mean and grouchy and sadistic, and the one in the New Testament we really like. We like the grace and the mercy, this just seems way over the top. Think about these people, okay, and take your Bible and go back to Genesis 15. I want you to see that none of these people were treated unfairly, that's hard for us to swallow. Tony said it exactly right in his prayer, there is stuff in Joshua when you start thinking about the instructions and the implications, there is stuff that is hard to swallow, none of those people were treated unfairly, Genesis 15, look at verse 16, this is God talking to Abram, and God tells Abram that they, your people, your family will come back here to the Promised Land in the fourth generation, why is it going to be that long, God, because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete? God says, I'm waiting patiently, they haven't done enough to deserve it yet, but they're filling up their iniquity, and one day it's going to overflow and that's going to be it and you're going to go in and there's going to be destruction like they've never imagined. So flip over to the right, look at Deuteronomy 7, Deuteronomy 7, verse 1 and verse 2, says, "When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and he clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gergeschites, the Amorites, there's the Amorites again, the Canaanites, the Parazites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, you must devote them to complete destruction. You will make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them, you will not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you and he would destroy you quickly, but thus you shall deal with them, you shall break down their altars and dash into pieces of their pillars and chop down their ashram and burn their carved images with fire." Look at chapter 20 in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 20 verse 17, 16, 17 and 18, but in the cities of these people that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites, the Amorites, Canaanites, parasites, Hivites, Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded. That, here's why, that they may not teach you to do according to their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God. Again, you kill them all because I don't want you doing what they're doing right now. What are they doing right now? They're filling up their iniquity, flip back to the left and look at Leviticus. I came across this one in my just personal Bible reading today, Leviticus 18 starting in verse 20, Leviticus 18-20, you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her, you shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech and so profane the name of your God, I am the Lord, shall not lie with the male is with the woman, it's an abomination, you should not lie with any animal, so make yourself unclean with it. Neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it, it's a perversion. We put all this together, here's what you see. These people in the land are a people who worship gods like Baal. When you worship Baal, you go to the temple, you get drunk as you can possibly get and you sleep around with anyone or anything that is there and you do it because Baal is a fertility God and so yes, animals are involved because you want your cows to keep having cows. You depend on having cows for your livelihood and these people think, well, if we go to this temple it's a fertility God and you do things related to fertility, then we're going to be blessed in this and we're going to have more cows and it's all going to be great. God says, don't do that, are you kidding me, don't. And He says it right here in the middle of Leviticus, do not give your kids to Molech, what does that mean? Well, that means you take your baby to the temple and you stab it in the heart or you dash it on the rocks and you offer it burned by fire to the God Molech so that He will bless your people and your crops and the rain and all this stuff. He says, I don't want you doing that. You go in there, this is what these people are doing. This is what they believe. This is what they practice. They're filling up this iniquity and my response to it is I'm ticked off. I'm angry. I don't like it one bit, it's disgusting, it's perverse, it's immoral, it's wrong, it's wicked. My response to all of this, God says to the people, is He's angry. Now, we're going to come back to that and talk about it from the other side in just a minute. But there's other stories in Joshua where they're fighting and you're thinking, okay, God's response to the sin of these people is wrath and the people of Israel are just trouncing these other nations, just destroying them. And at one point, there's a battle going on and God decides to help the people. It's not like they were really losing the battle, but He decides He's going to help them and He sends the Bible, says giant hailstones. I'm not talking about, I'm talking giant hailstones and they come crashing down on this enemy army and God participates in this destruction. And there's another time where Joshua and the people are doing what God told them to do. They're wiping these folks out. And the sun's going down and Joshua says, God, we need a little bit more time to finish them off and God says, okay, the sun's going to stay right there. Finish them off and they finish them off. And you read those stories and if you haven't read anything about these people, worshiping Baal, worshiping Molech, filling up their abominations and their sins, you read that and you say, these poor people, these poor folks, they're just living life and then the income's an army, off with your heads, you're all dead. That's not the story at all. God says, these are wicked, wicked people. And I am kicking them out of the land just as much as I'm bringing you into the land. It's not that you're so great, it's just that they're horrible, so they got to go. The land is going to vomit them out and you're going to come in and I don't want you to end up doing the same thing that they did. Now, I already gave you the seven word summary of the history of Israel. It didn't happen like God wanted it to happen. They took the bait, hook, line and sinker all the way on Molech, Asher, of Baal, all of it and they went down all the exact same road sooner or later that these people were going down. But you see in this command, God's response to sin is wrath. Here's a second lesson in the book of Joshua. God extends mercy to sinners. And people don't think about this in the book of Joshua, but it is absolutely 100% true. God is a merciful God and when you have eyes to see it, it just burns off the pages of Joshua that God is a God of mercy. Look at Joshua 9, we're not going to read it. The section there is called the Gibeonite Deception. Here's what's happening in chapter 9. The Gibeonites are a couple of miles down the road and here comes Joshua's army. And the Gibeonites are not as stupid as all the other people around there. And the Gibeonites say, "Hey, fellas, we're about to get whooped. We need a plan." And so the plan they come up with is they say, "Look, we need Joshua to think we really don't live here. So let's put on your nastiest clothes. Don't take a bath for a month and get the moldiest, nastiest, dirtiest bread, rotten water or whatever. You just take the nastiest stuff we've got and we're just going to come stumbling into camp and we're going to say, "Joshua, we've come on a long journey. Please be our friend. Don't kill us." And that's the best plan they could come up with, not a really a great plan, but that's the plan. We're going to go in. We're just going to try to trick them into making a treaty with us and being our friend. So here they come. They come walking in. They look pitiful. They smell pitiful. They got nothing to eat and they say, "Please, please, please be our friend." And the Bible says, you can read it in chapter 9, it says, "They take their stuff. They look at it." So they're putting their heads together and they say, "Look, the bread is moldy. They've been walking so long. The bread molded." So they must have walked a long way and do you see that guy's shoes? He got holes in his shoes. That must have been an incredible journey to wear holes in your shoes and they put all this together and they come back and they say, "You know what? Since you don't live here, you've obviously come from a long ways off. You and I are friends. We won't kill you." And pretty much at that point, they throw their hands in their air and they say, "We are safe. We're going back home. We're right over there." And it says in there, "We're going to talk about this in a minute." Well, let's look at it right now. Joshua 9, here is a sin of omission. The big sin of omission in Joshua. Comission is you do something that God says, "Don't do it." Omission is what? You don't do what God expects you to do. And what God expected them to do is ask for wisdom and direction and guidance every step along the way and look what it says in Joshua 9, 13. These wineskins were new when we filled them and behold, they have burst. The garments and the sandals are worn out from the very long journey. So the men took some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel from the Lord. They didn't pray about it. They didn't ask God what He thought about it. And it says that they made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live and the leaders of the congregation swore to them. All of this story I'm putting under this heading, God extends mercy to sinners. Follow along with me because this is fascinating. The Gibeonites are part of these wicked people who are filling up their sin in the land. And they come up with a plan to save their hide and the plan is, let's lie. They are bad people, they are sinners. And they come in to Israel basically by the back door, but they made a covenant with them. And they said, "We're not going to kill you." And so just jot this down. Second Samuel 21, you can go read it tonight. Second Samuel 21, hundreds of years later. You're just reading along in Second Samuel. You're reading about David and his descendants and all this stuff. And it just pops up all of a sudden, it says the Gibeonites are still in the land. They still live there and they love God, the God of Israel, Yahweh. They serve Him. And they pretty much just kind of do whatever the Israelites tell them to do. And they're still hanging out in the land. They become followers of the Lord. And it says that these people, the Gibeonites are friends with David, King David. They've got a connection with King David. And you look at that and you say, "Here's one tribe." Just as wicked as the Amorites, Gergeschites, Hivites, all the rest of them. And they're so wicked that they were sneaky enough to sneak in and get a pinky promise, we're not going to hurt you. And God is merciful enough to them that hundreds of years later there they are still in the land, worshiping the Lord, serving the Lord, almost just a regular part of Israel. So you see it in the Gibeonites. Here's the biggest example of this. That extends mercy to sinners. You see it in Rahab. Okay? You can go back to the beginning of the book. Joshua, they crossed the Jordan in chapter 3. They set up some stones in chapter 4. They circumcised the new generation in chapter 5. And then they fight Jericho in 6. And in chapter 6 they save Rahab. Rahab's profession, we don't know if this was her profession when the guys came to town, but everyone knew her as what? Prostitute, not a nice lady. And the spies come in and she brings them in, you remember, she lies and she keeps them safe from the guards of Jericho. And she basically says, "Look, I've heard all this stuff and we're terrified. And please don't kill my family. Please don't kill me." And they say, "Look, you protected us, you helped us, we're not going to kill you when you come in." Now, I was just thinking about this today and this had never crossed my mind. Maybe this is so obvious to you, you just laugh at me for never thinking this. What she says to the people, the spies is, "We have heard what God did in Egypt." And in my brain, I've just always thought, "Yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago because it's just a book, a couple of books before this," how long ago was that? How long? How long? Forty years ago, four decades had gone by. And at some point, she's heard what God did in Egypt and she sat on it and she stood on it and she thought about it and she's prayed about it. And when they show up 40 years later, she says, "I know exactly what happened in Egypt. I know everything that God did for you. And there is no way we can stand before you because God is going to do whatever He wants to do to this city. Please don't kill me." And what Rahab is saying to those people is, "I'm with you. I'm not with these people. I can't prove this to you, but my thought is, at this point in her life, she's not a prostitute anymore." She had done that at one point in time, but at some point, she left that and she said, "Look, here is the true God. It's not Baal. It's not Molech. It's not all these other joke of deities that we're offering sacrifices to and worshiping. It's Yahweh, the God of Israel, who brought His people out of Egypt. This is the God that I'm going to fear. And when they come walking in, she says, "What? I'm with you." And here's another light bulb that went off in my head today. Over the years. Where's all the others? Is she the only one that's heard? What God has done? No, because she says, "We know, we know, and we are terrified of you guys. We are shaken and our boots scared. Why aren't these people going out and waving the white flag? They've been walking around for seven days. Why doesn't somebody walk out there and say, "Look, hey, we know your God can do whatever He wants. The city is yours. Here. They don't do it. They know what God did to Egypt. No one did it. For 40 years, they've sat on the exact same knowledge that Rahab did, and everyone else in this city says, "We're going to hunker down and we're going to fight." He destroyed Egypt, but we're going to be different. We're terrified, but we're going to put up the best fight we can muster. You think about God being a God of mercy. He gave those people 40 years to repent. It wasn't like they walked straight out of Egypt and God said, "Okay, now you go kill all these people." They walked out of Egypt, and 40 years later, He said, "You kill all these folks." And for 40 years, they've known exactly who God was and what He could do. They didn't repent. They were so stubborn and so convinced in their idolatry, they refused to budge. God's mercy is that He gave them this time, this 40-year period. Back to Rahab. Rahab lives, they save her out of the city, and not only that, but they keep her with them. She becomes a Jew. And not only that, but she gets to marry into this nation. and not only that, but she becomes the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus Matthew chapter one just got to read it it's so amazing all the great people in Jesus' family tree Matthew one the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham Abraham was a father of Isaac Isaac the father of Jacob Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers Judah the father of Perez and Zara by Tamar Perez the father of Hezrin, Hezrin the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amenadab, Amenadab the father of Nashan, Nashan the father of Salman, Salman the father of Boaz by Rahab Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse Jesse the father of David the king there she is right in the family line of the Messiah God not only spares her life, but He puts her in the family tree of the promised Messiah so you see God's mercy there The last idea is this our response to God is based on God's mercy Any response that you and I make to God is based on is predicated on is dependent on His mercy to us It's not that we just put two and two together faster than other folks it's that God was merciful to us Look at the last two chapters of Joshua Chapter 23 Joshua gives a charge to the leaders Chapter 24 they renew the covenant starting in verse 14 Joshua says this 24 14 therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness Put away the gods that your father served beyond the river in Egypt and serve the Lord If it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord choose this day whom you will serve Whether the God your father served in the region beyond the river or you can take the gods of the Amorites and whose land you dwell But as for me in my house we will serve the Lord so you can go back to Egypt and worship those gods You can worship the gods that these people are leaving behind or you can worship the Lord but you have a decision to make The people answered verse 16 far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods blah blah blah blah blah we'll do it we'll do it we'll do it we love God we love God and here's what Joshua says in verse 19 You're not able to serve the Lord That's the biggest downer on a motivational speech I've ever heard You need to choose Egypt the Amorites or the Lord choose today who are you going to serve Make a decision We'll serve the Lord No you won't You can't do it You're going to blow it It absolutely is not going to happen He goes on and he talks to them in the last part of chapter 24 Here's the point when he says to them you can't do it Joshua doesn't want the people to trust in their ability to love God He wants them to trust God And there's a subtle dangerous difference He does not want them to trust in their own ability to love God We can do it far be it from us to do anything like that We love the Lord and he's saying you've already missed it It's not about you it's about God I don't want you to trust in your faith in God I want you to trust in God And look what he says in Joshua 24 Starting in verse 1 I just want you to listen I'm going to read 13 verses I want you to listen to all of the things that God does for the people Compared to things that the people do for God What does God do? What do the people do? Joshua 24-1 Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, he summoned the elders, the heads, judges, officers of Israel They presented themselves before the Lord Joshua said to the people Thus says the Lord God of Israel Long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates To rah the father of Abraham and of Nahor They served other gods So there you go, that's one thing the people did They served other gods Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the Jordan And led him through all the land of Canaan And made his offspring many I gave him Isaac And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau And I gave Esau the hill country of Sarah to possess But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt And I sent Moses and Aaron And I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it And afterward I brought you out Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt And you came to the sea And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the sea And when they cried out to the Lord So there's something they did, they cried out to God He put darkness between you and the Egyptians And made the sea come upon them and cover them And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt And you lived in the wilderness a long time Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites Who lived on the other side of the Jordan They fought with you and I gave them into your hand You took possession of their land And I destroyed them before you Then Baloch son of Zippur King of Moab A rose and fought against Israel And he sent him by to Balaam The son of Bior to curse you But I wouldn't listen to Balaam Indeed he blessed you So I delivered you out of his hand And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho And the leaders of Jericho fought against you And the Amorites, parazites, Canaanites, Hittites Gurgazites, Hivites, Jebusites Notice there are no Gibeonites in there And I gave them into your hand And I sent the hornet before you Which drove them out before you The two kings of the Amorites It was not by your sword or by your bow I gave you a land on which you had not labored And cities you had not built And you dwell in them You eat the fruits of vineyards And all of orchards that you did not plant God is saying to them It's all about me and what I can do It is not about you And what you can do for me And when Joshua says Choose this day who you can serve The subtle danger that people slide into is We can do it No you can't You haven't done anything up to this point God has done all of it for you And through you Your faith doesn't need to be in your ability To hold on to God But on God's ability to hold on to you So you come to the end of Joshua Joshua dies in chapter 24 And you move on to Judges Here's the last thing I want you to know about Joshua The whole book points you to Jesus The whole book The angel comes to marry one day And the angel says You will name your son Jesus Why? Because he will save his people From their sins It's the Greek version Of the Hebrew name Joshua Which means God will save his people From their sins That ought to be a clue to the people When Joshua says Choose this day God is the one who will save you From your sins You're not going to be so faithful to God That he can't help but love you But God will save you From yourself And that points you forward to Jesus Think about these first two things we talked about God's wrath in His mercy His wrath in His mercy And there's a big riddle All the way through the Old Testament How are both of those things true? How is he angry with sin And still merciful to some people? Does he just pick one or the other And sometimes mercy wins out And sometimes wrath wins out How do those fit together? And the people never could figure it out In the New Testament where? At the cross Where God's wrath is poured out on Jesus So that His mercy can be given to His people Right? It's not one winning out of the other It's both coming together at the cross And His wrath is poured out on sin On Jesus And His mercy becomes ours You see it in Rahab We talked about her Being part of the family tree And you see it in this last idea in chapter 24 Where He says I will save you I will deliver you I will provide for you I do these things for you And it fits in perfectly with what we're talking about On Sunday mornings Jesus came and He said I haven't come to whip you guys into Spiritual shape Said I have come to seek you And save you Not asking you to do anything But just turn away from your sin and believe I'm going to do the rest of it And that's what God is saying to the people there in chapter 24 So the whole book And the end points you to Jesus And on that note we will pray And we will thank God for His mercy And we will acknowledge His holiness and His wrath And then we'll spend a few minutes praying together Father thank you for the book of Joshua As we read it and study it There are things that are hard for us to make sense of So we ask that you give us wisdom And Father we are Mindful of the fact that you are wrathful Towards sin and Father we are grateful for the fact that Through Jesus your mercy has been poured into our lives It is not because we are good people It is not because we are spiritual people Or moral people Because you are a kind and a patient and a merciful God Father we see that throughout the book of Joshua Side by side right along with your wrath and your anger Father we're grateful for the chance to study your word We pray that you would give us wisdom As we read, as we learn And as we move through this study Father be with us as we pray We ask that your spirit would work among us As we lift up our requests to you And we pray in Jesus name