Summary:

Joshua began to rehearse Israel’s history in Shechem, for that’s where the nation got started. It’s the spot where the father of Israel first entered Canaan (Gen.12:1-5). So this history lesson marked a fresh start, a chance to begin again after all their rebellion against God, and this time get it right.

Abraham’s kindred worshipped other gods (Josh.24:2), so God called him away from them (v.3cf.Gen.12:1,2). God chose him to make this fresh start after the tower of Babel (Gen.11) because he had a faithful heart (Neh.9:7,8), a heart like David’s (Acts 13:21,22), that never messed with idols. No wonder God called Abraham to make this fresh start! And now, 500 years later, God was making another fresh start with Abraham’s seed in Shechem, the place where Abraham got his fresh start. God gave him Isaac (Josh.24:4), but Isaac let his wife worship idols (Gen.31:19). Then they went to Egypt (Gen.24:4) and were surrounded by idols.

After “a long season” (Josh.24:6,7) of 40 years in the wilder-ness, you’d think they’d forsake idolatry, but no (Ex.32:3,4). God wanted to kill them all for this and make another fresh start with Moses (Ex.32:10). He was testing Moses to see if he remembered that He’d promised to make a fresh start with Abraham, and Moses passed. So Israel remained God’s people, and He fought for them (Josh.24:8-10). When Balaam couldn’t curse Israel, he taught Balak how to curse them by enticing Jewish men to worship his pagan women, and Jews were soon worshipping their gods. God slew 24,000 of them because of it, and only Phinehas stopped Him from killing them all (Num.25:1-10). God continued to fight for Israel when they got to the Promised Land (Josh.24:11-13).

Once in the land, you’d think they’d finally be free of idolatry, but Joshua wouldn’t have had to tell them to forsake their idols if they had (Josh.24:14). And there was no better place to bury their idols and make a fresh start than in Shechem,

where Isaac buried his wife’s idols & all others (Gen.35:4).

The Jews swore they could serve God (Josh.24:15-18), but Joshua kept telling them they couldn’t (v.19), because to serve God you had to keep His commandments (Josh.22:5; IKi.9:6,7) perfectly (James 2:10,11) or be cursed (Gal.3:10).

When Moses gave the law, the Jews said they could keep it (Ex.24:3). God let them try—and they failed! Joshua tried to get his Jews to admit they couldn’t serve God by keeping it by pointing out they couldn’t get past the very first commandment (Josh. 24:20 cf. Ex.20;2,3). They ignored their history and so were doomed to repeat it. It didn’t take long (Judges 2:11,13). Even after 70 years in captivity, we know the Jews still thought they could keep the law, for they were “cursed” when they agreed to it again (Neh.10:29). Here in Joshua 24, they insisted they could keep it (24:21-23).

The law was a covenant, a contract that required “witnesses” (24:22), like Moses had when he gave the law (Deut. 31:12-26). God told them to incline their heart to Him (Josh. 24:23), knowing they didn’t have a heart in them that could (Deut.5:27-29). God later told them to make themselves a new heart (Ezek.18:31), knowing He’d have to do it for them in the kingdom (36:26,27). That’s the fresh start that’ll stick!

Moses gave the law in the beginning of his rule to see if they could keep it, then again at the end of it after they proved they couldn’t. Joshua gave it in Joshua 8 to see if they could keep it, then here after they proved they couldn’t. God gave it in the Old Testament to see if they could keep it, and will give it again in the kingdom with the power to do it.

Joshua ends by talking about Joseph (Josh.24:32) because Joshua and Joseph were types of Christ. Both died at 110 (Josh.24:29 cf. Gen.50:26). Joshua was Israel’s savior, Joseph was the world’s savior. Eleazar (Josh.24:33) was to Joshua what Aaron was to Moses. Moses and Joshua were lawgivers, Aaron & Eleazar saved them from the law’s curse

Summary:

Joshua called for a meeting of Israel’s leaders (23:1,2), reminded them of how good God had been to them (v.3-5), and told them that “therefore” they should have the “courage” to obey God and not turn to the right or to the left(v.6).

That’s a Bible idiom similar to making a beeline. Bees move right and left to gather nectar, but once they are full, they make a beeline for the hive. And once you know how spiritually full God made you in Christ, it’s easier to serve Him without turning to the right or left to the world’s temptations.

It’s natural not to make a beeline, but God can overcome what comes natural, as he did when the Philistines stole the ark. God cursed them with hemorrhoids, but they weren’t sure if God was judging them. So they hooked two cows to a cart, put the ark on it, and locked their calves up. They knew the cows would naturally stick around to nurse them. They learned He was judging them when instead He over-came their natures (cf.Isa.11:6,7) and the cows took the ark home without turning right or left (ISam.6:12). And God can overcome your sinful nature to serve Him as well.

God particularly wanted the Jews to serve Him by steering clear of pagans (Josh.23:7), because that led to worshipping their gods. The best way to do that was to not even “mention” their names. I know Christians say you should learn about Allah to witness to Muslims, but God told the Jews not to learn how the heathen worshipped (Deut.12:30)—or even mention their gods (Ex.23:13;Ps.16:4). Christians won’t stop, but God will stop them in the kingdom (Hos.2:17).

You see, when God remarries Israel (Rev.19:7,8), He isn’t going to want to hear the names of His wife’s former lovers any more than any husband would, and we see this forbid-ding of mentioning their names typified here. You needn’t read the Book of Mormon to know how to witness to a Mormon. If you have a Bible, you have everything you need to do that good work (IITim.3:16,17). God wants you “simple” concerning the evil in religious books (Rom.16:17).

Joshua told them not to “swear by” those gods (23:7) because men “swear by the greater” (Heb.6:16). So if they swore by Baal to convince a pagan something was true, they’d be admitting Baal was greater than God. That sometimes led to forsaking God completely (Jer.5:7), but it usually led to sinfully worshipping both (Zeph.1:4,5). This could be avoided if they’d “come not” at pagan women (Josh.23:7), i.e., marry them (cf.Ex.19:15), and instead, “cleave” to God (Josh.23:8cf.Gen.2:24;Deut.10:20).

To motivate them to cleave to God, Joshua warned them that God will punish them if they don’t (Josh.23:9-13). When verse 12 says not to “go in unto” their women, that’s another warning not to marry them (cf.Ruth 4:13). The wisest man in the world disobeyed this warning and paid the price (IKi.11:1-5). If you marry someone who worships false gods, when you’re “old” like Solomon, you’ll end up worshipping Allah, or Buddha—or more subtle gods, like the god of materialism. If “covetousness…is idolatry”(Col.3:5), then materialism is a religion you want to avoid too. You may never literally sacrifice your children to materialism (cf.Ps. 106:34-39), but letting them grow up as materialistic as your unsaved spouse condemns them to the slow death of a lifetime of covetousness.

To further motivate his people, Joshua reminds them that not one good thing of all God promised to give them had failed (Josh.23:14cf.21:43). But they were under the law that said God would curse them if they disobeyed Him (Lev.26), so Joshua ends with a warning about that (Josh.23:15,16). But under grace, all God’s promises are unconditional (IICor.1: 20). Paul promised to return to Corinth but couldn’t, so they said he took his promises lightly. Paul used that to say that the Lord will keep His promise to return for us, and not one good thing of all He’s promised us will fail in heaven!

Summary:

God had given these two and a half tribes permission to live on the wrong side of the Jordan, so it seemed to make sense to have their own altar (v.10). But the other tribes were willing to go to war to stop them (v.11,12) because the law said all offerings had to be made on the altar by the tabernacle (Lev.17:8,9). Allowing other altars led to worshipping other gods alongside the worship of God (Amos 5:25-27).

But the nine and a half tribes only heard about this new altar (Josh.22:11,12), and their law said they must investigate this rumor thoroughly before going to war (Deut.13:12-15). So they sent Phinehas to check it out (Josh.22:13,14), the man who slew a pregnant woman for introducing idolatry to Israel (Num.25:1-10). He asked them what they thought they were doing (Josh.22:15,16), and then reminded them that God considered idolatry such a heinous sin that He slew 24,000 people for it in Numbers 25 (v.17,18). Then he graciously suggested that perhaps they’d been influenced by their idolatrous neighbors on the wrong side of the river, and advised them to move to their side (Josh.22:19). Then he reminded them of the time a man in Israel sinned, and God took it out on all the Jews (v.20), and then gave them a chance to explain what they’d done.

They exclaimed, as it were, “If we did this to rebel against God, He knows, and we’ll let Him kill us” (v.21,22). In-stead, they built the altar to “witness” (v.24-27) to the children of the other tribes. They knew someday they’d look down on those two and a half tribes who lived on what they’d perceive to be the wrong side of the river and say, “You can’t worship our God. You don’t live by us, so you must not know anything about our God.” Verse 25 says that would make them stop fearing the Lord, thinking, “If God’s people don’t want us, why should we want God?” To keep that from happening, they built that altar as a witness that they did know about Israel’s God, for they made it according to the specifications God gave Moses for Israel’s altar. Verse 27 says it was a witness to the fact that they’d continue to do the service of God “before Him,” i.e., that they’d continue to “come before the LORD” to bring their sacrifices to God in the tabernacle (Lev.15:14). Remember, God lived in that tabernacle between the cherubim atop the ark (Isa.37:16).

How would building an altar witness they weren’t sacrificing on it? It was overlaid with brass (Ex.27:1,2), and brass tarnishes if fires are burned on it! An untarnished altar testified they weren’t burning offerings on it.

When the two and a half tribes said they made their altar according to the “pattern,” they meant the pattern God showed Moses (Heb.8:5). They even used the word “witness” to show they knew what to call their altar. God called the tabernacle that contained His altar “the tabernacle of witness” to differentiate it from the tabernacle where the Jews worshipped God and false gods (Acts 7:42-44).

The two and a half tribes finished their explanation by swearing an oath (Josh.22:29). The Jews who entered the Promised Land here are types of future Jews who’ll enter the kingdom, and unsaved Jews in that day will look down on others who live in other parts of the world. So altars of witness like this one are going to spring up all over the world in that day. Remember, the kingdom will start with all saved people, but then they’ll have children, the majority of whom won’t believe and be saved (cf.Rev.20:7-9).

Some commentaries aren’t satisfied with this explanation, and think the two and a half tribes were wrong to build the altar, but Phinehas was satisfied with it (Josh.22:30), and so was the rest of Israel (Josh.22:31-34). Finally, God put His altar at the “door” of the tabernacle where He lived to teach the Jews they couldn’t get in the door to see God without the blood of an animal on that altar. That teaches us we need the sacrifice of the blood of Christ to get in the door of heaven.

Summary:

Offering your daughter as a reward (15:16) was not unheard of (ISam.18:17,25). Caleb’s daughter is a type of the bride of Christ. God was married to Israel (Isa.54:1-10), but when they began to worship other gods, God considered it spiritual adultery and divorced her for cheating on Him (Jer.3:8).

But God plans to remarry Israel in the person of Christ. That’s why Revelation 19:7 says the Lamb will marry His “wife,” not His bride, for they got engaged way back in the wilderness (Jer.2:2), and married in time past. We know the wedding will take place at the beginning of the millennium, for the kingdom is described a few verses later (20:1-3). That’s also when the land of Israel will be divided up again into 12 sections, one for each of Israel’s 12 tribes, as a sort of wedding present for the happy couple. And we’re seeing this all typified here in Joshua, when the land is divvied up here, and Caleb’s daughter is married here as well.

But to marry Caleb’s daughter, Othniel had to conquer a town in Israel. The Bible calls this overcoming Canaan’s towns (Num.13:30). So when God helped Othniel overcome the unsaved men in Kirjath-sepher to get his bride, that’s a type of how the Lord Jesus will help Tribulation Jews overcome the unsaved men in the Tribulation to get His Bride (IJo.4:1-4). They’ll be saying antichrist is Christ, so Jews will have to overcome them by their faith in Jesus Christ (I John 5:4,5; Rev.2:7,11,17,26; 3:5,12,21).

If they do, they’ll be clothed in white like a bride (Rev.3:5) to symbolize their righteousness (Rev.19:7,8), the way our brides wear white to symbolize their purity. We get in on being part of the bride by grace (Rom.7:4; II Cor.11:2), the way Adam and Eve and Noah, etc., got in on it, even though they weren’t part of Israel either. Some say we can’t be part of the bride because, as members of His Body, we’re part of the groom. But kingdom Jews were also part of the groom (Rom.16:7). So who’s the bride? The Lord overcame unseen wicked spirits at the cross for the saved of all ages (Rev.3:20), so the bride will be made up of all God’s saved.

Brides get new names, like Eve became Mrs. Adam (Gen.5: 2), because they become so one with their husbands that they lose their identities in theirs. That happens to us positionally when we get saved, but it won’t happen experientially until we can’t sin any more and express our old identity.

God wrote His old name on Aaron (Ex.28:36), but plans to write His new name on all the people in His bride (Rev.3:5; Jer.23:5,6 cf. 33:16).

But land without water isn’t much good, so Caleb’s daughter got an additional wedding present (Josh.15:18,19), water!—a type of the water of eternal life (John 4:13,14; Rev.22:17).

If the dividing of the land in Joshua is a type of the dividing of the land in the kingdom, as we’ve seen, does that mean there’ll be complaining in the kingdom (Josh.17:14)? Yes, and judges will settle those issues (Isa.1:25,26; Mt.19:28).

“A great people” (Josh.17:14) meant numerous (cf.IKi.3:8). They were griping that the lot Joshua gave them wasn’t big enough. But he assigned them two lots (Josh.14:4); just had not taken possession of the second. So he told them to (v.15). They said it still wouldn’t be big enough, but that was a lame excuse to hide the fact they were afraid of the giants.

Joshua sounds like he was giving them the kind of pep talk that God said to give Israel’s army before battles (Deut.20:1-4), but he wasn’t their priest, he was their commander. He was actually assuring them that if they’d go back to obeying God, then he’d send the priest to assure them that God would fight for them. Spiritual leaders today who assure modern Gentile armies that God is fighting for them are making a dispensational error–one that might cost soldiers their lives!

Summary:

In our last study, we saw the Canaanite nations gather to fight against Israel in a battle that typified the final battle of history, the battle of Gog and Magog. So there are no more descriptions of battles in Joshua. The Jews must now spread out and “possess their possessions” in Canaan (Obadiah 1:17).

Those possessions included the Canaanites themselves (Isa.14:1,2). Of course, only unsaved men owned slaves in the Bible (Rev.18:13). The servitude that the nations gave Israel was just an example of God’s perfect eye-for-an-eye system of justice, for Gentiles formerly enslaved Jews (Isa. 14:1,2). Plus, Isaiah says that Gentiles will “cleave” to their Jewish masters willingly, and exchange their servitude for the spiritual teaching they will receive from the Jews. Be-sides, it must be okay to possess people, for the Lord possesses you (ICor.6:19,20). He became a servant for you (Phil. 2:5-7), so it’s only right that you become a servant of His.

God planned to “drive” the Canaanites out of the land (Josh.13:6) with hornets (Ex.23:28) little by little (Ex.23:29, 30). Sin messed things up though (Judges 2:20-23)—and it will mess up your life as well if you let it!

God divided the land “by lot” (Josh.13:6) so no one could complain (Pr.18:18), but it wasn’t left to chance (Pr.16:33). God also picked Matthias by lot (Acts 1:26) to someday rule over a tribe in Israel (Mt.19:28). The land will be divided by lot again in the kingdom (Ezek.47:21,22).

The Jews failed to evict two nations (Joshua 13:13), and the Geshurites became a prick and thorn (Num.33:55) to David when he married one, and she gave birth to Abslom (II Sam. 3:2,3), a man who turned out to be a type of the Antichrist.

God gave no land to the Levites (Josh. 13:14) because He

wanted His priests in the tabernacle offering sacrifices, not out farming. They lived on tithes from the other tribes (Num.18:23), and will again in the kingdom (Ezek.44:28).

In Joshua 14:5, God is fixing a problem that came up when He gave no land to Levi. You see, He wanted the land divided into 12 sections, one for each of Israel’s 12 tribes, and if Levi didn’t get a section, that meant the land was divided in-to only 11 sections. The reason God insisted the land be divided into 12 sections was to match how heaven is divided. Revelation 4:1-4 tells of 12 rulers that rule heaven and 12 that rule earth (Deut.32:8)—under God, of course.

To address this problem, God had Jacob tell Joseph that he was adopting his two sons (Gen.48:3), making them equal with his other 11 sons. And that gave God 13 tribes of Israel—at least as far as dividing up the land was concerned, with Levi not getting a tract of land.

Caleb asked for a specific tract of land (Josh.14:6-9). He and Joshua were the only two spies that brought Moses a good report of the land, and Joshua was rewarded by being named leader of Israel, so Caleb wanted a reward for his faithfulness as well. So Caleb is a type of the rewards that faithful Jews will receive at the beginning of the kingdom (Luke 19:17).

But before Joshua agrees to give it to him, for some odd reason, Caleb talks about how old but strong he is (Josh.14: 10,11). That’s because he’s asking for a tract of land where giants lived (12-15). God would ensure he won the fight, but he still had to have the strength to swing the sword!

But his reward is a type of the rewards that Jews will have in the kingdom of heaven on earth. Ruling over “cities” (Rev. 19:17) as a judge (cf.Mt.19:28) is hard work! So is judging angels, which is what we’ll be doing in heaven (ICor.6:3)! So the reward God plans to give us for faithfully serving Him is the opportunity to serve Him faithfully for all eternity.

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: “Joshua’s Old Age Project” Joshua 13