Joshua 8:30-35
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word, beginning at Joshua 8, verse 30. This is after the battle
of Ai. It says, at that time, Joshua
built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
just as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the people
of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses,
an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron
tool. And they offered on it burnt
offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings. And there in
the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones
a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. And all Israel,
sojourner as well as native born, with their elders and officers
and their judges, They stood on opposite sides of the Ark
before the Levitical priest, who carried the Ark of the Covenant
of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half
of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses, the servant of
the Lord, had commanded at the first to bless the people of
Israel. And afterward, he read all the
words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all
that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word
of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all
the assembly of Israel and the women and the little ones and
the sojourners who lived among them.” Amen. This is the word
of the living God for us, his children. I think the best way
to understand this passage, its setting, would be to say this,
the church, when they gathered in Old Testament days in the
wilderness or in the promised land, this would be before Jerusalem
and before things really got more formalized, would be a little
bit more like a vacation Bible school. I ran into a friend of
mine the other week. They were having a vacation Bible
school, and it was in the evening, and he said, I am worn out. We’re
out there in that heat. We’re sweating. We’re coming
home and getting in bed and doing it again the next day. And I
did not envy him. Church in the Old Testament would
be more like VBS in the sense it was like a jamboree. It was
like a camp. It was outdoors. It was in a
field. That might be a good way to think
of this. Remember, there are a couple
million people we’re thinking about here. And then you’re saying,
well, what about the sound system? What about all the technology?
Well, they used God’s technology. I’ll explain this as we go, but
you have to picture Mount Ebal, if you look at a map of Israel,
is in the north. Mount Gerizim is to the south
of it, and in between are the plains, and there’s the little
town of Shechem. So Mount Ebal is a rocky mountain. There are no plants on it. It’s
just a bunch of rocks and rubble. If you go down to Mount Gerizim,
to the south of it, it’s a wooded, fruitful mountain. Now, when
God means to set this up, he does so in Deuteronomy 27. This
is something Moses knew about and commanded them to do. Now
that Moses is dead and they’ve entered the promised land, it’s
time to fulfill this covenant renewal ceremony. So they’ve
got Mount Ebal to the north, they’ve got Mount Gerizim to
the south, one’s rocky, one’s wooded. And the reason for that,
Mount Ebal represents curses. You disobey God, you live on
Mount Ebal, a bunch of rocks and snakes. You obey God, you
get to live on Mount Gerizim where there’s fruit and woods
and shade. You either get the Garden of
Eden or you get East of Eden. That’s sort of the idea here.
And down in the plains in between these two mountains, you’ve got
Shechem where the Levites will be standing with the Ark of the
Covenant. Inside the Ark of the Covenant
would be the two tablets of the law, the Ten Commandments. And
on the cover of the Ark would be the mercy seat where God dwells
and he meets with his people. So you’ve got this grand outdoors
event, acres and acres, probably a mile or two of people You’ve
got this grand scene of blessings Mount Ebal, I’m sorry, curses
Mount Ebal, blessings Mount Gerizim. And so the people of God are
standing at the foot of either mountain facing the Ark of the
Covenant in the center. On Mount Ebal, as you read through
the passage, you’ll find an altar of uncut stones. And it says,
just as the Lord commanded, an altar was not to be made with
stones that were cut with human hands or human tools that would
defile it. No, they were to take the stones
just as they lay naturally in God’s creation. And they were
to build an altar, a rough altar. And on that altar, they would
offer burnt offerings. They would offer sacrifices.
and peace offerings. Now, I want to remind you of
the significance of rocks and stones and altars so far. So far in the camp of Israel,
stones have been used to remember the crossing of the Jordan. Stones
have been used to put to death Achan. Stones are a reminder
of the heap of rubble that Jericho has now become. And if some of
you had on your ears today, your thinking caps, you heard in our
Old Testament reading about Ahab and what did Ahab do? He rebuilt,
anybody hear it? He built Jericho and what did
he lose? Just as Joshua said, he lost
his firstborn sons. Whoever builds Jericho, rebuilds
the city, they’ll lose their firstborn. So the Bible always
comes true, doesn’t it? Hey, our Belgic confession said
that, didn’t it? So things kind of come around, don’t they? Well,
you’ve got all these stones. Now you come to Mount Ebal, a
mountain of stones. They’re building an altar of
undefiled, uncut stones. They’re gonna put these perfect
animals. They’re gonna be cut. They’re gonna bleed and they
are going to die. Why? Because God is renewing
covenant with his people. And anytime a covenant is cut,
There’s always blood. When the covenant is cut in circumcision,
there’s blood. When the covenant is cut with
animal sacrifices, there’s always blood. There’s always death,
which is a removal of sin, a removal of guilt, a removal of pollution.
And so that’s what they’re going to do here at Mount Ebal, Mount
Gerizim, Shechem in the middle with the altar, or I’m sorry,
the arc of the covenant in between. Israel is going to renew covenant
with God. Actually, it’s the other way around. God is going
to renew covenant with Israel. And so the sins of Israel for
covenant breaking will be placed on or imputed to these sacrifices
on this altar of uncut stones. and God will grant them forgiveness
of their sins. Now, I wanna stop for a moment
and think about church in the modern sense. I mentioned earlier
when we read 1 Timothy chapter four about the public reading
of the scripture, the preaching of the word or the exhortation
of the word, where do we get the things that we do in scripture
or in worship? Why do we do what we do and then
why do we do what we do the way we do it? Well, we get these
things from scripture and covenant renewal has a lot to do with
our worship in the New Testament. We approach God. He has called
us. Have a sacred assembly. Show
up. Be ready. Consecrate yourselves.
Now, back in the Old Testament days, God would often say to
the leaders of Israel, you tell the people to come to the foot
of the mountain on thus and such a day in time. And before you
do, you need to take a bath. You need to anoint your head
with oil. You need to abstain from certain activities, certain
foods, and you need to be ready to meet with the Lord. Now, a
lot of times we come cruising into church, maybe a little,
little like life’s had the best of us. And so we would do well,
I think, from that Old Testament practice to ease down. The people of old would ease
down at sundown and they would ease into the day. They would
spend a day of preparations that used to be built into our Sabbath
laws. We would do well to sort of slow our heart down. You know,
get our heartbeats down a little and ease into the Lord’s day
a little better. But our approach to God is important.
And then we come into the house of God and he speaks to us. Why
is there a congregation and then a pulpit? Well, the congregation,
the pews are for the people of God to sit and they can listen
to God and respond to God. The pulpit nowadays is because
the ministry of God is mediated in the new covenant through ministers. Um, we, we, we hear God speak. He greets us. He calls to worship,
calls us to worship. Um, he pardons us of our sin.
He speaks to us through the word, uh, both read and preached. He
speaks to us in the sacraments. Uh, we respond by confessing
our sin. We affirm our faith. We, um, we, we sing songs back
to him, songs of praise, songs of confession, songs of confidence,
all sorts of things. Um, It’s a it’s a back and forth
dialogue between God and his people. God comes into the presence
of people because he has opened the way through Jesus Christ.
There is no Ark of the Covenant, but we do come to the mercy seat
through Jesus Christ. And there’s a real sense where
in our services, where we renew covenant, we’re speaking not
just to God, but to one another. The louder we sing, the more
firm we are in our affirmations of faith, right? The more we
amen the reading or the preaching of the word, I think we are saying
to one another, yes, this is the way, let’s walk in it. You
could see that simply just in the showing up. Aren’t we excited
when more of us are here? Aren’t we excited when new people
show up? We say, hey, the more the merrier, right? There’s something
about our approach to God, our time with God, and when we do
it together. And in our service, aren’t there
blessings and curses? This is the way, walk in it.
We tell our children, you wanna have a good life, as best you
can in this sin-filled world, you need faith in Jesus, and
you need to walk in the ways of wisdom. But if you want curses
in this life, you reject Jesus. and you live out of your own
resources, your own ways. Well, in our passage, we’re kind
of at one of those Christmas Day armistices. Remember in your
history, 1914, World War I, they took a break around Christmas
in the war, and some were reported to have played soccer together
and even exchanged Christmas pleasantries. There was a lull
in the hostilities. And that’s what’s going on here.
This is unofficial, right? They didn’t go to the Canaanites
and say, Hey, we’re going to, you know, we’ve got to have a
worship service. So cut it out for a day or two. Uh, that’s
not what happened. Uh, but we have noticed haven’t
we a pattern of war worship. They go back to war. They worship
God some more. And this, uh, this scene has
been painted for us over the last several chapters. When Israel
crossed over the Jordan, they just didn’t go plowing into Jericho
and knock it down. They first celebrated Passover. And then the generation who had
grown up in the wilderness and who had not been circumcised,
they were circumcised and then they took care of business at
Jericho in Ai. And now there’s a break in the
war. It’s a Christmas day armistice. Now they’re gonna have this covenant
renewal at Shechem. Moses commanded this to be done
back in Deuteronomy chapter 27. So in our passage, they’ve left
behind Ai, the king is warm in his grave. There is no mourning
in the city for the women or the children or the men of the
land because they are all gone. And if you take a peek down at
chapter nine, verses one and two, it says all the other nations
hear about it. And some of them are going to
go to war or attempt to go to war with Israel. Then we’re going
to get into the Gibeonites who say, we don’t want any of that.
We’re going to act like we’re from a far away place and we’re
going to trick or treat them, right? We’re going to dress up
and pretend like we, come from a ways and make a covenant with
them. So Israel is on the plane at the foot of Mount Ebal, curses,
Mount Gerizim, blessings. They’re in the plane, each group
facing the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark is the presence of God. This is the assembly. And did
you notice it’s the whole assembly? And some have noted in today’s
culture, we divide up the people of God. You know, you walk to
a modern day church and the men go here, the women go there and
the children go here, here and here. And we don’t have the whole
assembly of the people. That’s why it’s good, I think,
for us to make mention. It’s nice to hear the sounds
of little ones in church. We like sounds. It’s a great
thing. It shows you walked in the door
and you brought your child before the Lord. That’s a wonderful
thing. And to raise children in a way where they can be in
church, I think is the healthiest way for children to grow up. John MacArthur has said it so
well. We junior church everybody and we junior church them and
then we junior high church them and then we high school church
them. And then we wonder why they don’t want to come to regular
church. Well, he has a solution to that. He says the modern American
church is just junior church all over again. And I think we
see that. Maybe some of you have experienced
that in your goings around. We want to be careful. We want
to be gracious and know that many call on the name of the
Lord and they are worshiping him as best they know how. But
when we come to church, we are coming into the presence of Almighty
God, and it ought to be the whole assembly. It ought to be the
men and the women and the children. The law ought to be read, for
the law is life. What did Joshua say to Israel
before they entered the promised land? He said, it’s for me and
my house, we’re going to serve the Lord. Do not let the book
of this law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and
night. Don’t go to the right, don’t go to the left. What does
Deuteronomy chapter six say? We shall in the way we walk and
in the way we work and in the way we live, teach the law of
God to our, our families. Jesus says, I am the way, the
truth and the life. No one comes to the father except
through me. I’m always amazed at how much
we know about nothing. I can remember as a kid, my brother
and I were really into baseball. It was back in the days of Gary
Carter and all those good, you know, it was back when the Mets
were good and all that. My brother can memorize baseball facts.
I never really could, but he could tell you somebody’s batting
stats and whatever. And we need to be careful, right?
We can know every Disney character, but none of the Bible characters.
And so I think one of the things we ought to do as a church family,
as parents, and many of you are grandparents, we ought to make
sure our children know the building blocks of the faith. Who is Moses?
Who is Noah? Who is Abraham? Who is Isaac?
Who is Jacob? Who is Jesus? Who is Achan? And go through the Bible. We
ought to understand the building blocks. The children’s catechism,
the shorter catechism, for us big ones, are helpful. Why did
they read the law? Well, just last week, was it
Monday, Independence Day? I heard a radio version of John
F. Kennedy when he was still a senator reading the Declaration
of Independence. Isn’t it good to read these sacred
documents from time to time? We’ve definitely forgotten our
declaration in our country. And for sure, we’ve forgotten
the word. That’s why we’re diligent to
say, look, we’re going to preach twice on a Sunday. We’re going
to offer a Sunday school class. There’s going to be a Wednesday
night Bible study. And some of you who come to all these things,
you see the method to the madness. And isn’t it wonderful how it
all just begins to fit. Your eyes are open. We pass out
every year, daily, uh, year read through the Bible in a year plans.
We, we get the table talks. Um, and, and, and it’s there,
there’s, there’s just so many ways to grow. We, if you join
the church, we’re going to give you a reformation study Bible.
Um, or, or you can go down the hall and, and look through the
resource room. There’s all kinds of, you’ve
got no excuse, right? Uh, but they read the law because
they wanted no more Aikens. They wanted people to realize,
young and old and in between, when God speaks, his voice means
something. When God speaks, it’s with authority. And if he says to make an altar
of uncut stone, should you get out your hammer and your chisel
and say, but we want to make it pretty. And we’re going to
erect a decorating committee for the altar. No, that’s not
what he wants. He wants an altar of uncut stones. He wants a stela or a tall stone
with plaster on it with the entire law written upon it. Now, some
people in the commentaries I read haggled over, well, how much
of the law did he wrote? Well, the Bible says they wrote
all of it. Well, that’d be a little tough
to do. Well, what’s the old saying? If it’s worth doing, it’s worth
doing well, and if God says do it, you ought to do it. And so
this is a pretty significant gathering. They had to eat, they
had to prepare, they had to come, they had to stand outside, they
had to listen to the whole law. You know, we whine sometimes
about what the preacher went on today. Actually, I didn’t today,
right? I got out early. But we ought to be amazed that
God himself is in our presence speaking to us, and that he has
opened the way to his throne of grace, and he’s opened his
way of salvation through his word. We don’t want the book
of the law to depart from our mouths, from our hearts. We don’t
want any more Achans. We don’t want any more Judges
2. We’re gonna come to that at some point. Judges 2 says, there
arose a generation that did not know the Lord their God or what
he had done for Israel. That would be like your children,
your grandchildren not knowing Jesus and that he died on the
cross for sins. That’s just a no-brainer, isn’t
it? That’s just an easy thing to do. Well, it’s not so easy.
It’s spiritual. Sometimes that’s hard. And so
we hear the law, we rehearse the law, we let it sink in, and
then we come back as we do, Sunday by Sunday, and we look at the
stones with the law. We read the word. We remember
the crossing of the sea, the crossing of the Jordan River.
We remember Jericho and Ai and Aitken, and we hear the blessings. Remember God told Adam and Eve,
you can eat from all the trees of the garden, except of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil. You shall not eat of it
in the day you eat of it, you will die. That’s the curse. But
if you don’t eat, if you obey my word, take me at my word,
don’t listen to Satan, chop his head off with the garden hoe,
when he comes slithering in lying, you’ll get to live, you’ll get
to live forever. Those are the blessings, those are the curses
God gave to Adam and Eve. And then he puts before the congregation
now the entire law of God, do this and live, do this and die. And don’t you think it was etched
in their minds, aching, being called out of the camp, Achan
admitting his sin, Achan giving glory to God, Achan being taken
outside the camp and Israel stoning him, Achan and all his possessions
being burned with fire and being buried under a heap of rocks.
Well, how does this translate into our day and age? I’ve already
mentioned a little bit about our worship. Many people think
that today our New Testament worship ought to be seen as a
covenant renewal. And so we assemble together.
That’s the Old Testament word, the assembly. In the New Testament,
the word most often used is the congregation. We’re called the
church, the ekklesia, the ek from out of. We’re called from
out of the world, like Abraham was out of Ur of the Chaldeans.
We’re called out of paganism to live for Yahweh. So we’re
the assembly of the firstborn from the dead. We’re the assembly
of those redeemed by God, and we are his people, and we enter
into his presence for a divine dialogue. God means to meet with
his people. He speaks, we respond, and back
and forth we go. Now, many will say every Sunday
ought to have a special covenant renewal to it. That would be
the Lord’s Supper. You see a big trend in today’s
reform circles where every week there’s the Lord’s Supper. To
do that, you would have to start church and have an extra 30,
40 minutes, I think, to do that well. But I think most agree
that the central part of the covenant renewal is the word
read and the word preached. And I think that’s why the writer
of Hebrews, whoever he was, went on to say so well, do not forsake. the assembling together of the
brethren. We look around on a Sunday and
we look around and see who’s not here. And some of you will
come ask me, where’s so-and-so? Well, they’re still on a trip.
Where’s so-and-so? And sometimes our worry is, well,
they’re upset. We took the cookies away at coffee
time or something, made them mad. Usually it’s somebody sick
or traveling, but on a good day, on a good Sunday, we have about
112 people attached to our church right now. Now, not all of them
can come because of sickness or infirmity, but on a good Sunday
with our visitors, regular attenders and members, we ought to have
about 90 people. Well, what’s our attendance? I don’t know
if any of y’all count. I don’t. That’s Baptist, right? Nickels and noses. Sorry for
any of you Baptists. But we might have about 60, 70
on a good Sunday. So where’s the others? We’ll
call them, write them, encourage them. Do not forsake the assembling
together as some are in the habit of doing. We get to come to Mount
Zion. We get to come to a mountain
that cannot be touched. We get to come to the assembly
of the firstborn from among the dead. I’ll read to you from the
book of Hebrews in chapter 12. It says, you have not come to
what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom.
That’s Mount Sinai. And a tempest and the sound of
a trumpet, a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no
further message be spoken to them. They could not endure the
order that was given. If a beast touches the mountain,
it shall be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the
sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But here’s the New
Testament grace. You have come to Mount Zion.
You have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem. to innumerable angels and festal gathering, to the
assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to
God, the judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made
perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled
blood that speaks a better word. than even the blood of Abel. What a wonderful privilege it
is every week to have open access into God’s house. And so how
much more should we say, I was glad when they said to me, let
us go to the house of the Lord. The doors are open, we’re here.
Are you neglecting the means of grace and the covenant renewal?
Are you here? week by week, making covenant
renewal with almighty God. Let’s go to him in prayer. Lord,
we thank you so much that your word shows us that in days of
old, and even today, you require your people to consecrate themselves,
to show up, to gather, to hear the summons, to obey it, and
to receive your word, and to offer you sacrifices fitting
for the sacrifice you have made for us through Jesus our Savior.
We thank you, Lord, that you save us and you save us to worship.
We do it in this life and we will be doing it in the life
to come. So thank you for every week we get heaven practice.
May we enjoy it now for we will sure enjoy it for our days in
eternity. Bless us now as we receive your
word. May we put it into practice in
our lives. We ask all this in the name of Christ, amen.