Authority Speaking

That is actually where we get our strength and our hope from, is when we spend time with his son. And we have a, um, sometimes children have good relationships with their parents, sometimes they do not. But that is what it is all about, is how, how we relate to our Father in heaven.

And of how good of a relationship is with him, some of us, it seems he talks to some of us, and then others of us are looking for someone to talk to about him, and then still others are. So there is different stages, there is different ages, different maturity levels, just like people come in all different shapes and sizes. And, um, that is where each person finds a blessing from the Lord, that he is able to meet everyone on their level, right where they are at, and to have a conversation with them.

And he knows each of us personally, regardless of where we come from or what we have going on in our lives. He knows that. And so, that is where we left off last time in Joshua, in Joshuas journey with the Lord.

(3:22 - 4:09)

Joshua is actually mid-sentence exhorting the people. However, we are looking at the book of the law of God, 24, starting in verse 22, and actually let us backtrack right where it says, And the Lord drove out from before us all the people, even the Amorites, which dwelt in the land. So the Amorites are people that may love other things other than God, may put other things first.

And I get it, life gets busy. But at the same time, we also have a continual struggle. So there is a continual struggle between the love of the Lord and our love for other people.

(4:09 - 4:37)

And sometimes it waxes and wanes, just like with the Amorites. And the peoples relationship with this people, that their relationship with him is not entirely in question at the time. For it says, Therefore will we also serve the Lord, for he is our God.

(4:40 - 6:19)

So first of all, it starts off with a decision to follow the Lord. As with anything, you have a conscious decision. And that conscious decision, when the Lord changes a life, he affects every fiber of your being.

There is not a thing in your life that he does not touch, not a place he does not go. And he goes to it with you, through you, in you. That is the blessing that comes from a life that is lived with his son.

When you walk in the light as he is in the light, and the blood of Jesus Christ just comes and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. It does not say it cleanses from yesterdays only, todays only, and then tomorrow we also have to go and ask for the same. No, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The sacrifice was once and for all, it was a done deal. So that he came to fulfill the law, not to do away with it, not to destroy it. So rather we have a struggle here with serving the Lord.

And as they are walking on this path, and Joshua is trying to exhort them and tell them what about the law that they have chosen. But does Joshua know that they do not know? Perhaps Joshua has walked with the Lord longer, he has been there back when Moses was walking with the Lord, sure. But at the same time, no matter how long you have walked with the Lord, there is always things that you can learn.

(6:20 - 7:12)

Someone can always come up to you and tell you, hey, you are in the wrong on this. And that is the beauty of when you walk in the light as he is in the light, because he illuminates things that maybe we cannot even see about ourselves. And so that is the beauty here, of when we walk in the light as he is in the light, we also see where we are going, and he is able to help us back out of it.

Wherever we find ourselves in, whether we find ourselves in the path of the Amorites, or as the people who are just now trying to decide to serve the Lord. And Joshua said unto the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen you, the Lord, to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses.

(7:14 - 8:22)

Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel. And the people said unto Joshua, the Lord our God will be served, and his voice will we obey. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.

And Joshua read through these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone and set it up there under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto all the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which he spake unto us. It shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest you deny your God.

So Joshua let the people depart every man unto his inheritance. So there is actually a couple of things to be seen here in the text. Among other things is the peoples insistence that no matter what happens, they will serve the Lord.

(8:24 - 13:50)

And so its so often in life we get busy, we get consumed with other things. They distract us, draw our attention away from him, and even the things inside. And as we start to talk about Noahs prophecy more, that is what you see, that it is without bitterness, it is without all of those things that we must come to him, even the people that we have set for ourselves as idols in our life, right? We have to come to him without those two, because it is our relationship with him that matters.

And so it is not about how Noah might have known the Lord, or about how Mary or even Gabriel knew the Lord, rather it is about how God wants to have a relationship with each of you personally, and how he knows you as a person. So that when the people decided themselves to serve the Lord, Joshua put up a stone, basically, and wrote the words down, and put a visual reminder and a written reminder that the people were choosing to serve the Lord, and it was unto him that they went, not unto Joshua to find out what he had to say, not unto anyone else but the Lord. So therefore this following after was not after a man.

And as you will see shortly, that when Joshua died, if the people only had been following Joshua, they would have turned back from the Lord after Joshua died. But yet they did not turn back from following the Lord, rather they kept on, they kept on in his ways and in his steps, because they also had a relationship with him personally. See, God is a living being.

Just as he made man a living soul, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. See, just as in that, our Lord, our God also has made you to have a relationship with him, someone who has created you, who is alive, who is living inside of you. And as the revelation of Jesus Christ would say, hes all I stand at the door and knock.

And he says that if any man opens and hear his voice and open, and he will sup with them and lay with him. And as just as it says in the beginning, that you are to abide with him, abide in me and I and you as the branch cannot bear forth, bring forth fruit of itself, neither can you except you abide in the vine. I am the vine, you are the branches.

And we are to abide in him so that we might produce much fruit, so that when he does appear, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And so there is a conscious putting away that happens here in the text, the strange gods, whatever occupies your time and keeps you too busy from the Lord. And if you need a listing of some of them, the Noahs prophecy has a wonderful listing of everything that can, on the inside, that can hinder your walk with the Lord.

Some of the things can be outwardly too, which is why Joshua both wrote it down in a book so they could see what was inside and put a big stone up underneath the tree, just in case some of them took a hankering to go back after their idols that they served. Because in that time, and as it is still is today, some of us are not above putting up a shrine and bowing down to worship it, whether that is of our ancestors or of ourselves and of whatever else, God or deity that we think might protect or help us. And so after Joshua has done all that, and after the Lord has done all that, because it is only Joshua that is doing the reminders and the Lord is doing all of the saving, just as he had brought them over the river Jordan, that had he not made the priests feet to stand firm and everything else that he did that day, they would have been swept away more than likely with a great flood.

Simply because they were to take stones and put them out in the river, twelve of them in fact, wherever the priests feet stood firm. And so they would do that, they did that there for a memorial that their God had brought them over the flood and over the river and now they were on the other side and out of the of Egypt. And after having done all that, then they also came and dealt with all the people in the land and after they dealt with all the people in the land, then they had to deal with their own walk with the Lord.

Some of it, for some of us, it is a journey that happens over a long time. For some of us, God can do it overnight just like that. So Gods grace can save us instantly at any point in time, no matter where we are at in our walk with him.

(13:50 - 17:29)

But yet when we do not understand that, when we do not have that knowledge of himself present in our lives, then some of us are ensnared by things that keep us as the Israelites found wandering in the desert. As the children of Israel, they were wandering in the desert for forty years. They tempted and proved him and he was grieved in his heart with that generation.

So much so that they saw his works and he sent them downward from the sky in the form of the manna and meet in the form of the quail and they complained and when the waters were bitter then and so our God provided again and again and again. In fact, he was there in visual form as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So his presence was always there, always with them and just as the tabernacle would move when they moved and they were to carry it with them, so the Lord also keeps his people with him at all times.

And he is not a God that has a need of being made of man. Indeed, he is God all by himself from before time began. He is God, means he has existed this whole time.

And so, and it came to pass after these things that Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died being a hundred and ten years old and that they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnathera, which is in Mount Ephraim on the north side of the hill of Gash. And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua and which had known all the works of the Lord that he had done for Israel. And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, and the parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver.

And it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph. And Eliezer, the son of Aaron, died and they buried him in the hill that pertained to Phinehas, his son, which was given him in Mount Ephraim. There is actually, we can talk about the bones of Joseph.

We can talk about what all these places mean. However, there is one thing to note here that the promises were kept. The peoples promises to each other that they remember to bring up the bones of Joseph out of Egypt.

And also there is a stark, striking thing going on here with Eliezer, the son of Aaron. There is a striking thing going on with the priesthood and Mount Ephraim. And we will talk about all of that later because there is a big contention about Aaron and the lamps that were in the sanctuary and the nature of priesthood and the service.